Advocatus Atheist

The other day I posted an article about  the five things that Jesus should have said but didn't  that would have made him a moral teacher.  As it turns out, Jesus wasn't a moral philosopher. He never preached anything original in terms of morality or ethics. He merely repeated Jewish axioms. In my view, someone who is deeply concerned with morality and ethics, this amounts to a big failure for the so-called perfect and sinless man who is held by Christians to be the upright moral paragon we must all aspire to. But there I go, trying to be all logical and what not, thinking a true paragon of morality would have something to say on the subject. Because, in my mind, a politician who doesn’t mention politics isn’t very much of a politician, is he? I’d say the same is true of moral philosophers, of which Jesus clearly wasn’t one. In response to the article a Christian girl who goes by the grammatically incorrect handle "Jesus Daughter" decided not to read my arti...

Jesus may have given us his sermon on the mount, but in all of his teachings the scholarly eye will find that they are basically just reformulations of age old Jewish moral teachings and reinterpretations of the Torah.  A lot of Jesus' own teachings involved mainly the Mosaic laws expounded, and it's no secret that the Gospel narrative of Jesus' life story was *specifically designed to have his life mirror that of the Jewish legend Moses. Even the fictional event of fleeing the homeland to Egypt because of an angry King Herod so-called killing of innocents echoes the Pharaoh's attempt to hunt down the baby Moses.  There are many more similarities too, worth checking out. That Jesus, as contained in the Gospel accounts (to differentiate from the *historical Jesus) is modeled on Moses is common knowledge within the community of biblical historians and has been for decades upon decades is by no means a controversial statement. However,...

Happy Draw Muhammad Day! “The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.” – Salman Rushdie Although some Muslims in the Islamic world often seem to forget that the religion of Islam has had a long and illustrious (see what I did there?) tradition of depicting Muhammad in art, I absolutely love the idea of “Draw Muhammad Day” as a means to push back against totalitarian theocrats and Islamic bullies who would seek to silence the thoughts and opinions others. An artist by the name of Heini Reinert, recently submitted a piece for “Draw Muhammad Day.” It was my favorite piece this year, as it depicted Muhammad being drawn by an off-page artist. Muhammad was without hands, as the off panel artist hadn’t gotten around to drawing them yet. Additionally, in an homage to one of the original Jyllands-Posten drawings, a headdress with a bomb. The tiny Muhammad in the cartoon is captioned ...

I found this via the science channel Vsauce on YouTube and it made me laugh out loud. I just imagined everyone on every tenth floor synchronizing their watches to the exact moment the sun sets at that elevation. So funny.   You cannot trick God by taking the high speed elevator to the top! Like Santa, he'll know. He'll knows if you've been naughty or nice. Which raises a few completely valid questions... It this building simply too high for God to see what people are up to? Is that why they need the reminder? Is the  elevator  too fast for God?  Perhaps that's why they need the reminder? Maybe it's just a way to remind people that God, like Santa, is *always* watching them. Even during  elevator  sex? Don't pretend like it doesn't happen. If you ride the elevator up after Iftar, and get to a second sunset, does that mean you have to do a second Iftar? Why not set a standard time for Iftar instead of just following the sun? If we build...

It's only been out for a couple of days (about a week for the eBook) and we are already getting some very flattering praise for the book. Kaveh Mousavi of Freethought Blogs has written an amazing review on his blog On the Margin of Error . Keveh expresses: So another thing to praise about the book is its polyphony. Each of these 16 individuals are a distinctive voice, and none of them can be overlooked. Reading all of them you really do have a much deeper understanding of atheism, of people struggling with atheism, of people. Also, I want to commend the editors for including ex-Muslim voices. These voices are authentic and cover all aspects. I’m very pleased with representation of ex-Muslims in this book. I don’t want to get to the specifics, because I’d like you to read the book for yourself. But I’ll say that my two most favorites were “Saleha M.” and “Alicia Norman”. Or these two moved me the most. If I could I’d adapt them into a film. About the book, Kaveh adds,...

A challenge to religious believers (and everyone in-between): The problem with ancient books of religion isn't that the iron aged people who wrote them over 2,000 years ago made historical, technical, and scientific mistakes before the advent of scientific reasoning and all the various fields of modern science that fall out of it, rather, the real problem lies in the fact that people 2,000 years later are so scientifically illiterate that it is that is is simply a matter of buying into archaic myths because, in a state of crippling ignorance, these religious devotees don't know any better. Worse, perhaps, is the fact that quite frequently--because of the religious beliefs they may hold--they often don't want to know any better. They are perfectly content to remain taken by the myths of old, and this shows the power of myth's hold over the human imagination. Religious myths give easy to digest answers about the world--the wrong answers--but easy to grasp answ...