I have had an interesting email conversation with a YEC theologian that I wanted to post here in case anyone else would find it interesting or helpful. I challenged his support of young Earth Creationism, since I find it the most untenable and the most obviously ridiculous "empirical" position that he holds.

Within these emails, I have used asterisks to replace a few pieces of information regarding names, locations, email addresses, and so on, since I don't have this man's permission…

http://www.atheistnexus.org/forum/topics/fort-lauderdale-man-arrested-on-child-porn-charges-for-second

rational |ˈra sh ənl; ˈra sh nəl|

adjective

1 based on or in accordance with reason or logic : I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation.

• (of a person) able to think clearly, sensibly, and logically : Andrea's upset—she's not being very rational.

See note at sensible .

• endowed with…

Intelligent Design?

I did something I rarely do at a debate—I lost my temper. Normally, I can let ignorance roll like water from a duck’s back, but sometimes there are such stunning and dazzling displays of dunce-hood that make it hard to catch…

Recently it feels like I've been involved in too many discussions about what actually constitutes rape. Long, involved discussions that boil down to the argument that victims are somehow to blame for what happens to them, whether it's based on how they dress, what their behaviour was, if they did or didn't fight back and so on. I hit on a phrase that seemed to stop one friend in his thinking tracks: bullying someone into accepting sex is still rape, in exactly the same way that bullying…

I just stumbled upon a year-old YouTube video named, “Sam Harris gets destroyed by Dr. William Lane Craig”. It’s the 2-hour University of Notre Dame debate held on April 7, 2011, between Harris and Craig. It was titled: “The God Debate II: Is Good from God?” The video can be found at the bottom of this page.

And guess what? Harris really was destroyed by Craig!…

I don't know if something like this already exists, but I'd like to propose an idea I had I call The Apologist's Dilemma. This was partially inspired by the youtube video Putting faith in its place by QualiaSoup.

All the Apologist's Dilemma really boils down to is you can't lie or cheat in a theological debate, referring to two specific lies that are almost universally found at the core of apologist arguments. These are:

A) No amount of invalid arguments will…

My Brethren without Christ, I have to let you know you're all a bunch of Darwinian primates. (Just hit the link below to get the joke.) I just got back from the September 28, 2010, Dinesh D'Souza/Michael Shermer debate at USF in Tampa. They took questions at the end of the session and I got a chance to ask the following question in front of around a thousand attendees.

The opening…

I am reading Christopher Hitchens' book 'god is not Great' and chapter 5 concludes with an obvious but, nonetheless, important point.

Actually, the "leap of faith" - to give it the memorable name that Soren Kierkegaard bestowed upon it - is an imposture. As he himself pointed out, it is not a "leap" that can be made once and for all. It is a leap that has to go on and on being performed, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary. This effort is actually too…

"So long as a belief in propositions

is regarded as indispensable to salvation,

the pursuit of truth as such is not possible."



Mary Ann Evans, a/k/a George Eliot

It's like they cannot understand basic logic.



Critics have fun, tell me what i did wrong. Cheers, jeers or whatever.

It seems difficult for some people to consider hypothetical situations. For religionists this difficulty is compounded by the fact that they hold dogmas that there are some ideas which, if even considered, will doom them in some way. This results in an inability for many to imagine a reality without a god.

During the course of debating with Christians I realized that many of them have probably never seriously considered the possibility that there could be no god, and are unable to…

And not only…