About Me
Who are you?
My name is Luke Muehlhauser. I’m known on the internet as lukeprog.
I grew up an evangelical Christian in Minnesota, USA. At age 21, I began to study the Historical Jesus and the philosophy of religion. I lost my faith in January 2008. Now, I’m an outspoken advocate of reason, freethought, science, and atheism.
Why did you become an atheist?
I suspect most people lose their faith for mostly personal reasons. As chance would have it, I lost my faith for almost entirely intellectual reasons. All other parts of my life – my family life, my emotional life, my social life, my financial life – were pulling me towards Christianity. Only my intellectual life was pushing me toward atheism, but my intellectual life won.
The short story is that when I actually studied the historical evidence for Jesus and the arguments for and against God’s existence, I had to admit to myself that even though I thought I had experienced God many times, I really had no better reason to believe in God than to believe in Zeus or Allah or fairies or Santa Claus. So I admitted I couldn’t believe, and that was the saddest and hardest day of my life. I felt like I had lost everything that mattered to me.
Later, I realized I had only lost something that never existed in the first place. In fact, I was now free to discover what really existed, and how the world I found myself really worked. It turned out I could have purpose, meaning, morality, and joy without God. So now I’m living a life of passion and joy without my childhood invisible friend.
Do you really think atheism is just “common sense”?
No, not if you mean that the way most people think confirms atheism. I have little respect for that kind of “common sense,” which has resulted in millions of false and silly beliefs throughout history.
What I mean by “common sense” is that if people apply the same kind of reasoning they do in many other areas of life (their “common sense”) to their religious beliefs, they will realize that their religious beliefs are false. Belief in God, I contend, requires that you use double standards in your thinking. It’s the goal of this blog to expose those double standards.
What are your moral views?
Right now the ethical theory that seems most plausible to me is desire utilitarianism (aka desirism). The next most plausible is error theory.
I do not respect hocus pocus morality that tells you to close your eyes and ask your “conscience” what is right and wrong. This moral system – which most people follow – is merely an unconscious attempt to justify your own moral prejudices as if they were moral facts, and it has led to every kind of immorality and bigotry ever encountered. There is no reason to think we have evolved an accurate “morality detector” in the brain, and there are lots of reasons to think that we do not directly perceive moral values. So moral facts (if they exist) should be – like everything else - discovered only through our most reliable methods of truth-finding: logic and evidence.
What are your political views?
I don’t trust any politicians. All political systems devised so far are necessarily corrupting.
I advocate an empirical politics, an anti-ideological politics. We should find the right questions, then gather the data, then structure society based on what works, according to the data.
So of course the Bush presidency – which stubbornly and self-righteously contradicted the available data as often as possible – badly upset me. But so has the Obama presidency, which has tried to solve the economic crisis by (1) relying on the crooks and idiots who created the financial crisis in the first place, by (2) ignoring the experts who got it right, and by (3) ignoring the data at every turn.
Quick Stats
Age: 25.
Education: 3 years university, no degree.
Employment: IT consultant.
Location: Los Angeles, California.
Married: No.
Do I make money off this site? No.
What do my friends believe? All types of things.
Does my atheism infringe on my social life? No.
Legal stuff
Everything I write for this site is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license, meaning you can share it and modify it any way you like, as long as you (1) link back to my site, and (2) don’t charge money for derivative works.
The intro music for my podcast, Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot, is “Mescaline_Mix” by Dannepop, licensed through a Creative Commons license. Listen to it here.
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Is there a category of christians who pretend to be atheists so they can have a platform for when they “find Jesus” again and want to make money from seminars? Nina
Nina,
S.E. Cupp, maybe? lukeprog
Hey Luke,
I am curious about how athiests perceive/understand miracles. I have seen people’s lives changed for the better after becoming Christians.
For example, my cousin’s uncle was an alcoholic and drug addict and immediately after ‘turning to Jesus’ had no more desire for either. Another example, I witnessed a friend’s arm which was crippled from birth visibly grow and gain feeling while it was being prayed for.
I understand a lot of your objections to religion in general and Christianity specifically and really appreciate much of what you have to say. But I cannot find any satisfactory explanation for these types of miracles/phenomenon except as some sort of “spiritual” or supernatural event. I am very interested in what you have to say about this. Sarah
Sarah,
People often find comfort or inspiration or help when ‘a light turns on’ and they change their worldview – whether it be from Christianity to humanism, from atheism to Christianity, or from Mormonism to Buddhism. As far as I can tell, there is nothing uniquely useful about Christianity, and of course Christianity has made lots and lots of people worse human beings than they otherwise would have been, as was also the case with Tom Cruise and Scientology. So personal transformation is a common event among all worldviews, not just in Christianity, and not just in religion.
As for people’s arms getting better when prayed for, that discussion is worth a whole series of points, but here are a few thoughts:
1. If you think it’s the prayer that healed the arm, then why does prayer not, on average, have any better luck healing people than pure chance? (This is the result every time it’s been studied so far.) Perhaps you think prayer is doing the work because you’re counting the ‘hits’ and forgetting the misses, as we all inevitably do as humans.
2. If you think Christian prayer healed the arm, then why is this kind of healing also observed in other religious traditions? Do all these gods being prayed to exist? Or does your God answer the prayers of other religions? Or is healing in other traditions the work of demons sent to confuse you, perhaps?
3. Why reach out for a magical explanation of these events when they seem to have fairly obvious natural explanations, ones which are well-understood and often observed, such as: (1) people get better all the time, (2) we tend to interpret things within our own framework, even if events didn’t happen that way, (3) people exaggerate or lie all the time… and so on.
Okay, that’s enough for now… :) lukeprog
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes summed up the method of revealing the truth that appears to baffle most (if not all) ’scholars’, -particularly as it concerns “Jesus Christ”: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’
Aside from “Jesus the Nazarene, a Galilean, called Christ being born in Bethlehem of Judea to the virgin Mary i.e., without the agency of human intervention or sperm (therefore had no biological ‘father’); was inexplicably and incongruently crucified (for ‘envy’?); rose from the dead -alive three days later and, continued among the living for forty days… only to suddenly disappear without notice or reason… but promising to return some time in the future…”, there is a kernel of truth even in the midst of the lies.
There is no point in attempting to determine whether “Jesus Christ was born in the days of Herod the king” (who died in 4 b.c.) as is according to Matthew or, “… in the days of the census” (6-7 A.D.) as is according to Luke (who is Luke anyway? -the same can be asked regarding Mark). Saving the reader from researching ‘Nazareth’, -there was no such named town until after the ‘Church’ created one some time between the 2nd and 3rd centuries, -a ‘Nazarene’ is an ancient Jewish sect member (living in no particular ‘town’), -Samson was, an example a ‘Nazarene’. As for the “Christ” (leading us to the ‘truth’), -a ‘translation’ of the perfectly known and clearly understood Hebrew word ‘messiah’ (which simply means ‘anointed’ or ritually blessed), didn’t make a literary appearance until after Saul of Tarsus -aka the Apostle and eventual Saint Paul’s epiphany or apparition
of the ghost of the deceased ‘descendant of David and Jewish messiah’ (whom Saul himself pursued and persecuted) at least ten to forty years later. Further, least we forget or be confounded, Saul of Tarsus is the actual creator and founder of ‘Christianity’ -not “Christ”.
Not wishing to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’, I am reminded of Emmanuel Kant’s observation: “It matters not the lies, rather, the intent.”
The intention of Saul/Paul is the focus of my attention… -not the ‘historical’, much less the ecclesiastical or theological, “Jesus Christ”.
Saul of Tarsus, of the tribe of Benjamin, was (is) the namesake and descendant of the first ‘anointed’ king of the Jews. King Saul eventually fell from the grace of the (unseen) Lord… for failing to abide by the Lord’s injunction ‘to lay waste Amalek’ and was therefore stripped of the kingship. King Saul was replaced by the ‘anointment’ of David. Later, the former king, during a battle against the Philistines, “fell upon his own sword”, -ostensibly to avoid being captured and made sport of by his enemies, -this abominable, cowardly, dishonorable, shameful and ’sinful’ act brought everlasting dishonor and shame onto his heirs and descendants… including young Saul of Tarsus.
King David was succeeded by the ‘anointment’ of his son Solomon.
King Solomon was succeeded by his son Rehoboam, -the prophet Shemaiah rebuked him and refused to perform and confer the ritual of ‘anointment’ upon Rehoboam, -ten tribes revolted against him and the heretofore theocratic governance of Solomon and David. Rehoboam, marginalized, was king of (the house of) Judah only.
Meanwhile, Jeroboam established a parallel secular government over all of Israel. This schism among the Jews continued from that day… into the days of Herod the Great (an Ideumean and convert Jew, -appointed as ‘king of the Jews by Augustus and re-confirmed by Tiberius).
Enter a ‘descendant of David and Jewish messiah’, Judas the Galilean, shortly after the death of Herod the Great (6-7 A.D.), coming out from marginalization, riding into Jerusalem on an ass… with the hope of restoring the ancient theocratic throne of his forefathers. He was killed during the insurrection against the Herods… then another arose… and another… and no end was in sight until the wealthy and educated Jews scattered themselves abroad, the temple at Jerusalem was razed to the ground and the Jewish nation was utterly destroyed (in 70 A.D.)
But it is not enough for me to lay bare the actual history of the Jews (as well as to provide insight into that which is omitted from the origin of ‘Christianity’), after all, it is the mystery of the ‘Godman’ that is at the heart of the ultimate question.
Standing on the stage of ecclesiastical history’s most dramatic and celebrated hour, like a potted plant of poison ivy, Jesus Barabbas, -portrayed as “a notorious robber, murderer and insurrectionist” (without evidence, much less proof and that no ‘historian’ has ever written a single word about Him… especially Josephus), said nothing whatsoever to anybody, nobody said anything to Him.
It is not without its significance that Jesus Barabbas appears mute. Written in the original Greek Gospel according or attributed to Matthew (27:17) but that His name [Jesus] was removed or omitted from the Latin ‘translation’ (around 390 c. e.) of the same text and most of the subsequent ‘translations’ thereafter, leaving us with only “Barabbas” instead.
It is enough for me to know that “Barabbas” is not a man’s name (as is supposed by most people), -rather, that it is an Aramaic appellation, the meaning of which is: Bar = Son + Abba = Father (as in ‘the Father of us all’ or, ‘God’, if you will). It matter not one jot (to me) that He lived in ancient times… only that He lived at all. Some things simply cannot be expressed in writing, -such is the case as that which applies to Jesus Barabbas.
Know it for certain that such a One as Jesus Barabbas has always lived among humankind… always will. Whether or not we may come to know such a One as Him depends on two things: His grace and our humility.
Respectfully,
Roland, -a reluctant iconoclast. Barabbas126
Your blog is one of the best I’ve seen within the atheist community!
I’m wondering if you have ever heard of or looked into the Venus project / The Zeitgeist Movement?
If you have not I would highly recommend it.
I think your ability for rational thought along with passion for the truth would do the movement a lot of good.
Thanks,
Wes
http://www.theZeitgeistMovement.com Wes Hanson
Luke,
Thank you for your words. I can’t say I agree, but at the same time, it’s good to be in the company of intellectuals. Since you are a rational guy, driven by logic and reason, I thought you might think about something though.
The platform upon which you stand requires more FAITH than Christianity!
You might say, how is that? And my answer, as my Thermodynamics professor used to say is “let’s derive it from basic principle.”
I hope you have heard of a lawyer named Charles Lyell. He wrote a book called Principles of Geology. In that book, he outlined the formation of the rock layers we now see, and suggested the origins of life based on those layers. Lyell was also a very close friend of a Theology student named Charles Darwin, who took a voyage as a “counselor” to the captain of the Beagle, and also as the ship’s naturalist.
Without going too much into Darwin’s theory (and that’s all it is, a theory, since it has never been proven), let’s analyze Charles Lyell’s work.
Lyell postulated that the layers we see are to a certain extent parallel but sometimes they taper off. He also remarked that some of them are not horizontal, but rather diagonal. He also showed that there are shifts in stratification, caused by a rift of some kind at a given fault (we still see these anytime we have underwater earthquakes, and even some vertical sliding on land.
Another admission by Lyell was that the layers seem to have been deposited as clay by a fluid.
In fact, if you do this very simple experiment. Take some dirt (any dirt will do), and put it into a water bottle, enough to take up one third of the volume, or even a quarter. Then fill the rest of the space with water, cover tightly, and shake the dirt into the water. Then let it stand for a few hours.
You will notice the same kind of stratification as you see anywhere in the world as you look at rock formations. If you are able to go one step further and cut a vertical slit into the bottle after a day of letting it settle, you will notice that as the water seeps out, it cuts a “canyon” into the stratified mud. You will notice that the layers remain essentially parallel and undisturbed, except at the area where the water was seeping out. If the slit is large enough, you get to see a very nice observable canyon and you can observe the same stratification in the canyon as on the other side of the bottle.
Why am I going through all of these details?
Well, there is a problem with the geological column that Lyell explained. The problem is that in geology and especially in archaeology, scientists often assign the an age to the fossils based on the age of the rock. Then, circularly, they also assign an age to the rock based on the “index fossils” found in that rock. So, there’s really no way to determine how old the rock is, or the fossil for that matter.
Maybe next time, if you are interested I can also talk about the problems in radiometric dating. Suffice to say that recent measurements with Amino Acid Racemization have yielded ages that are much younger than those previously accepted as “the truth.”
Anyway, back to the layers. The EVIDENCE that we have, and according to Charles Lyell himself, shows that our rock formations were deposited by water. This is physically consistent with the FLAT CONTACT SURFACES that you see between the layers.
Why are flat contact surfaces important? Well, if one layer deposits, and there is time before the next layer deposits, and so forth, then the exposed layer gets eroded. Instead of having flat contact surfaces, you would have something that looks like a stack of corrugated sheets, instead of a stack of pancakes.
However, anywhere you go in the world, you see the stack of pancakes. This is inconsistent with the millions of years that it supposedly took to deposit.
So, we’re left with one big question. Did the earth have no rain or any other weathering events for millions of years, or did the layers deposit very quickly like that dirt in your bottle?
Well, I’m not going to leave you without evidence for you to find an answer to that question. But you’ll have to do a bit of research yourself.
A key to understanding rapid deposition and stratification was given to us on May 18, 1980 when Mount St. Helens erupted out there in Washington State. The pyroclastic explosion sent some ashes, dust, trees and a whole side of the mountain rushing down into Spirit River down below. All the material that hurled down the river created a blockage, a dam. This allowed the water which was mixed with all that debris to settle. Then, just one day later, there were some breaches in the dam and the water rushed out, leaving a canyon in the mud.
If you look at that canyon, it’s like looking at a miniature Grand Canyon. Created in a matter of a day, and not millions of years.
So, back to the basic principles. I admit that it requires faith to believe in God as I do. But I believe in God based on evidence. No, I don’t have proof that God exists, so that I can tell you because of A, B, and C, I can conclude D. But I can also tell you that it requires a whole lot less faith to believe in God than it takes to believe that it didn’t rain on earth for millions of years, or that a geological column that was quickly deposited by water did not get eroded, except at the top.
So, no, I’m not trying to turn you back into an Evangelical, I’m just asking, “Have you really analyzed the platform upon which you stand?” and if you have, and you have chosen to believe in it by faith then so be it. However, if you haven’t really analyzed all the angles, then it’s time to start. John
Interesting tid-bit, John. However, shame on you for letting us atheists have “more faith” than you. Seeing how we’re exercising this incredible amount of faith, you might want to put some more effort into yours. Just you know… even things up? Sarah
Hey Luke,
I really appreciate your writings and your conviction.
I wanted to let you know about a film I recently saw that I think you and your readers (like me) will appreciate.
It’s called THE EVANGELIST, a film that follows a young boy as he goes on a religious crusade in his liberal town. His increasing menace causes problems.
Take a look at the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVI3VeSavtw
Also, you will be able to watch the film for a limited time online starting July 6: http://theevangelistmovie.wordpress.com/web-premiere/
Enjoy! Kathy Adams
Thanks for the heads-up, Kathy. lukeprog
Faith & Logic
I thank Sarah for pointing out the faith issue. When I said that Christianity requires less faith, it doesn’t negate my faith in God. In fact, I believe very strongly in God. However, I’m not a “blind Christian” in that I actually take time to understand the logic of other worldviews. I can’t say that I’ve ever not believed in God, but there was a time that I was not sure whether Christianity made sense. After analyzing the logical underpinnings of the major worldviews (Theism, Philosophical Naturalism — also known as Atheism, and Pantheism), I realized that if one follows the logic of each, the only one that sticks to its presuppositions is Christianity.
Please do not misunderstand the following as an attack on Atheism, or on anyone personally. It took me a while to arrive to where I am, logically, so I don’t want to bash anyone.
But let’s just follow the logical progression of Atheism. Not from my own perspective, but from some of the famous developers of the Atheistic worldview.
Philosophical Naturalism (Atheism) believes that The Cosmos is ALL there is. There are no supernatural events, no supernatural deity who created or sustains the universe. Everything is matter, and everything results a cause-effect relationship. We are here (time and space), because of physical and chemical interactions in the past that were guided by nothing more than the laws of nature and chance events. In summation, we are the results of probabilities. As such, since we’re simply concerned with matter (after all, this is all we’re made of), then it’s futile to try to derive any further significance out of life than just purely physical interactions of a biochemical machine. After all, according to the basic tenets of naturalism, human beings are nothing more than matter and energy. And we are made of matter and energy because those are the only things that exist.
So, how can we expect matter/energy to have “feelings”? How can we expect matter/energy to have “emotions”? How can matter/energy be “self-determined”? The logical conclusion is that none of those things are possible in a purely naturalistic universe.
Nobody, at least in the naturalist world, has been able to explain those things. We know they exist, but we don’t know how to account for them scientifically.
So, the logical progression of naturalism actually leads to NIHILISM. Nothing can have “meaning” because nothing is beyond matter and energy. The universe is a balance of matter and energy, we are part of the universe, and the universe doesn’t operate on any transcendental principles beyond energy/matter interactions. So, human beings are simply constrained by this system that doesn’t allow for freedom of choice and self-determination. Ergo, life has no meaning, just a series of causal relationships with no particular end in mind. When humanity is done, the universe will continue on as if we never existed.
This led people like Nietzsche to say “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
Even Nietzsche realized that once you remove God (or the idea of God) from the picture, then you’re left with ethical problems.
To try and resolve these problems, Immanuel Kant separated reality into two: objective (observable matter and energy), and subjective (our thoughts and imaginations). Interestingly, like Plato, who came over two thousand years before, Kant divided the world into ideas and things. And, like Plato, he assigned higher value to the ideas than to things. In other words, the subjective reality is more important than the objective reality, which later came to be seen as absurd.
Enter Existentialism. If you read Jean Paul Sarte’s writings, you realize that there is an underlying theme of trying to figure out where all these “feelings” and “emotions” and “values” came from. Instead of explaining them, Sartre follows the same pattern as Kant in saying that the subjective reality (what one imagines) is greater than that which is real.
As a Biochemist and Geneticist by training I must stop there and point out that this is irrational. Our thoughts and emotions have their root in the electrical and biochemical interactions that occur in your brain. There is a material connection between thoughts and our physical bodies. Our ideas, feelings, emotions, values and the meaning we attach to life, all these things express themselves PHYSICALLY in our bodies. And, like any doctor will tell you, the state of our mind affects how our bodies will heal or get worse, and likewise our physical fitness or lack thereof affects our mental status.
So, why am I going through all of these things?
The point I’m making is that if you follow the logical implications of naturalism then you end up a nihilist. If you choose to ignore some of these logical implications and you choose the “happy medium” of an existentialist, then you must live in a split world of objectivity and subjectivity. Like John Platt said, “The objective world, the world of isolated and controlled experiments, is the world of physics; the subjective world, the world of knowledge, values, decisions and acts…is the world of cybernetics…they belong to different universes, and no statement about one has any bearing on the other.”
So, do you see this “split personality” syndrome? When you remove a transcendental God from the equation, then you are left without any grounds upon which to build ethics. This would be okay if our brains didn’t have those pesky “values” and “feelings.” But we do have values, feelings, hopes, dreams, emotions and the like. But, the problem is that we don’t want to be subjected to an authority outside of ourselves. So what do we do, we start compromising our own principles. This is called living an INAUTHENTIC life.
I submit to you that if you want to live the most authentic life, then you will follow Jesus Christ. Don’t go by what I say or what any other Christian says, study the Bible for yourself. Most people say “the Bible is self-contradictory” without having read it. I used to do the same thing. But when I actually started reading the book itself, I found it to be the most self-consistent book ever. Not only that, I discovered that God is authentic and He doesn’t violate his own principles of (1) LOVE
(2) Freedom of Choice and
(3) Justice and Mercy
So, when I discovered that God (and not the one who has been misrepresented by the “official church” for centuries, then I chose to serve Him because He makes logical sense.
Yes, there are many things that I don’t understand logically, and I have to put my faith in Him to either reveal those things, or to make sure they work out, in spite of my lack of knowledge. But I still say that it’s easier trusting in God than trusting in self-contradictory philosophies.
So, again, this is for me and for everyone else reading. MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN! John
Uh, John, arguments from incredulity, strawmen, and the writings of a few (who do not represent all atheists) do not an understanding of atheism make.
You’re completely incorrect on your “atheism takes faith” bit, and you don’t seem to understand the simple concept that atheism need not provide all of the answers, nor doesn an atheist need to possess them. Believeing without evidence takes faith. Not believing based upon the lack of evidence does not take faith. It’s the default, axiomatically correct position.
As for atheism leading to nihilism, you’re wrong. The idea that there is no objective meaning does not preclude on from ascribing their won personal meaning to their life. I derive meaning from all sorts of things, and the knowledge that it is all transient and temporary enhances the meaning, it does not mitigate it.
If you believe all of this was created by a magical sky daddy, THAT is a position that leads to logical problems. I’d love to hear how you would reconcile the idea of a perfect, loving god with the cruel reality of our world, and then I’d love for you to explain where god came from, without resorting to special pleading. magx01
“study the Bible for yourself.”
Presupposing that if one is a nonbeliever that he or she hasn’t studied “the Bible” won’t win you any points when conversing with nonbelievers(or in your case, ministering to them). I’ll have you know, reading the bible was one of the leading factors that led to my deconversion. The doctrine of “hell”, alone, is enough to disbelieve Christianity, or at least, it’s enough to denounce it. boomSLANG
“the most self-consistent book ever”
Which bible is that, John? You can’t even get through the first two chapters of Genesis before the contradictions begin. God created Adam and Eve together. God created the animals first. God created Adam, then the animals, then Eve. It’s just a hopeless mess. All of it. Allegory? Then where do you draw the line? Dave000
Atheism is as much a belief system as any other. Atheists believe there is no God. This is a position of faith. They cannot prove or disprove this as incontrovertible truth. If they say they can, they are as guilty of intellectual irrationality, un-reason-ableness and arrogance, as any other believer from any other belief system. fiona.w.
“Atheism is as much a belief system as any other. Atheists believe there is no God. This is a position of faith. They cannot prove or disprove this as incontrovertible truth. If they say they can, they are as guilty of intellectual irrationality, un-reason-ableness and arrogance, as any other believer from any other belief system. fiona.w.”
Oh for Christ’s sake. Don’t purport to tell me what I do or do not believe when you do not even understand my position.
Atheism is a lack of belief in any gods. The belief that no gods exist is secondary, and guess what? Neither is a faith based position. The second MAY seem to be one to some at first glance, and I sort of understand that, but the first? Proposterous. I can explain to you why the latter isn’t one either, btw, but if I have to bother explaining why the lack of belief is a faith based position, you aren’t worth wasting time with, frankly. magx01
Luke,
I’m a 23 yr old philosophy grad student at TX Tech, and evangelical Christian.
Just wanted to say I really appreciate what you’re doing with the podcast. I discovered it recently and have been devouring episodes at the rate of about 3 per day. I appreciate your willingness to press interviewees when they present weak arguments, yet you do it tactfully and with a cool head. Big ups to you pal. And thank Go…whomever we finally have a podcast on PoR! Keep doin’ what you do! Eric Sampson
Thanks, Eric Sampson! lukeprog
I just wanted to thank-you for all the effort you have put into producing your podcasts. I only recently heard about your show (through Stephen Law) and was delighted to find that I could download all 60 episodes on iTunes. Please keep up the excellent work and have a beer on me. Best, TAM. The Atheist Missionary
Great site!! When folks say atheism is a religion it’s because they’ve observed atheists acting “religious” – blabbing about “truth”, proselytizing constantly, quoting “Scripture”, e.g. Dawkins and demonizing the other side who, of course, are morally inferior.
I doubt atheism will ever exceed single digits. It’s too intellectual & the path whereby articles of faith are discarded is too long. Many now mark “Other” on religious surveys, but an NPR report noted that the vast majority were still believers. smb12321
Most posts here are pedantic and prolix and seem to point up the fact that athies have too much time on their hands. You are basically wasting bandwidth convincing each other that your blitherances are valid.
So sorry your minds cannot comprehend the FACT that you don’t know everything and that your FAITH that there is no God constitutes a RELIGION. Bear
Bear, most atheists will quite readily admit that they don’t know everything. In fact, it is the arrogance of theists who believe that they have all the answers which fuels our skepticism of their supernatural claims. Few of us have FAITH that there is no god – we just go where the evidence (or lack thereof) leads us. The Atheist Missionary
This site sucks ass! Stop the torture, stop this site. You give a bad name to atheism; maybe that is your point. Shut this crap down in the name of reality! Jay