Advocatus Atheist

Some days I just deeply miss Christopher Hitchens. Of the so-called "New Atheists" he was by far my favorite. Unlike the rest of the Four Horsemen, to which he was lumped in with, he was the only true polymath. Richard Dawkins was the science expert, Sam Harris was the rhetorician, Daniel C. Dennett was the philosopher, but none of them could hold a candle to Hitchens and his brilliance, his eloquence, and his charming roguishness.  There are many reasons I loved "The Hitch." I loved his contrarian attitude, I loved how he dominated a discourse and would talk over talking heads to stress a point. I love the fact that he never backed down from his position in a discussion. I loved how he had the British way of taking the piss out of our American sentiments, and I loved that he could do it with bravado and with great tenacity.  Like the whiskey he so loved, Christopher Hitchens was extremely charismatic and always went down smooth. But many couldn't ...

I found this image online searching for quotes to share for the (infrequent) quote of the day (I know it's an oxymoron, whatever). It made me laugh for a few reasons.  First, I have a lot of uber religious family and friends. I grew up extremely religious and I see such Jesus posts all the time followed by calls for prayers or a thousand and one needless amens for trivial things.  I see posts in my Facebook feed daily saying things like: Jesus lives! God is good! God is real! God is faithful! God heals! and many more followed by amens ad absurdum. And, like the picture alludes to, I have had people outraged by my irreligious or anti-theists posts. I mean, if you don't like my personal views you don't have to read the whole thing, get irate over it, leave a nasty comment, and then threaten to block me. How about not read it if it bothers you so much? Or, better yet, if you are worried about finding differing points of view...for Pete's sake... don't bothe...

One of my favorite Eddie Izzard shticks about religion.

Admittedly, I thought I was done talking about Randal Rauser. In all honestly, I tried really hard to wash my hands of Randal's nonsense. But sometimes a person just does something so shocking, so unbelievable, that you have no choice but to comment on it. For those that haven't heard, he's released a new book imploring Christian and Atheist alike to engage in civil discussion and express a more charitable behavior toward one another. Those familiar with Randal Rauser and his blog might find this ironic, if not highly amusing, since Randal has a very poor track record when it comes to civil and charitable discourse. Mike D., aka The A-Unicornist, now writing exclusively at his new blog the Mind of Mike D , has written a nice summary (click HERE ) of Randal's condescending attitude and his general dismissal of other people's intelligent responses, often calling them ignorant, or implying they are, in the most condescending fashion imaginable. In Ran...

Whatever you may think of Sam Harris, good or bad, he once made an excellent point regarding moral value judgement and morality. Although I don't remember his wording precisely, Sam once asked the question to the effect that "Can we objectively say that Western Christian husbands treat their wives on average better than Middle Easter Muslim men?" He went on to say because of certainly cultural and religious norms which exist in each society, it is fairly easy to weigh the costs and benefits to the woman and say, yes, that generally speaking -- we can find objective reasons to say that Western Christian husbands treat their wives better than Middle Easter Muslim men (again, this is a broad generalization based on a basic, even simplistic, understanding of the two culture norms given in this example). Sam takes this thought experiment further and then asks us, and I'm paraphrasing here, to consider that fact that "Having weighed the pros and cons to the wom...

"We (as atheists) have too often gone down the road of incivility, and that's helped no one." "The average church goer has never even heard of William Lane Craig. William Lane Craig is irrelevant. The people who are relevant are the people in the pews." Some great quotes and thoughts by American philosopher Peter Boghossian.

There is a video by Christian apologists Tom Gilson and Timothy McGrew going around that claims that Peter Boghossian's concept of Street Epistemology, is a way to manipulate unphilosophical minded Christians by creating a fog of confusion to derail their faith. Now, for those that might not be familiar with Boghossian's concept, which he details in his book A Manual for Creating Atheists , he basically applies the non-confrontational method of asking questions in the Socratic style (known as the Socratic method of dialog) to carry the conversation via having their conversation partner answer very basic questions themselves. In so doing, the point is to get them to think about the questions and express, in their own words, what they believe. It is a way to unravel the mysteries of their faith and reveal the types of thoughts and thought processes that go into making up a persons faith. It has proved to be very effective. But Gilsona dn McGrew seem to not ful...

I think Laci Green is right on the money here. I agree. We must work to decriminalize sex work around the world!  That Amnesty statistic cited in the video is insane. Decriminalizing sex work would actually *decrease HIV and AID by 43%!!!  New Zealand's model of unionizing sex work seems the best chance to make it a safe business and not push it underground, where abuses usually occur. Laci's point about not confusing sex work and sex trade hits the nail on the head. Well worth a watch.