There is no shortage of people telling us atheists, especially atheist scientists, how we should talk to religious people and very often that recommendation takes the form that we need to avoid offending them. The problem with all this advice is that religious people will always be offended simply by telling them that you think they are wrong. There is no getting around that. The only way to not offend them is by pretending as if their ideas make sense. And that would be wrong. [Read more…]

Stephen Prothero, a professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University, lists the six things he does not want to hear in the wake of massacres like last week’s. [Read more…]

For all my joking around about waging war on Christmas, I actually enjoy the holiday, apart from the commercialism and the insane shopping sprees that people seem to indulge in. Despite all the attempts of Fox News, Christmas is becoming irreversibly secularized and thus gone back to its pagan roots. They may be able to intimidate come commercial establishments to have employees say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” but does “Merry Christmas” really conjure up an image of Jesus in the manger when people say or hear it? I doubt it. It has become synonymous with “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings”, drained of almost all religious significance. The war on Christmas is pretty much over. [Read more…]

Mr. Bean shows us what likely went on on that first Christmas day.

The people who are nonbelievers in any religion sometimes feel like a small minority. But this is purely a local illusion. When it comes to religions, different ones dominate different parts of the world. But when it comes to nonbelievers, we are all pretty much the same everywhere. We are the true uniters, not dividers, our shared unbelief uniting us across nations, races, and ethnicities. [Read more…]

William Lane Craig is a theologian and an ardent advocate of the idea that if god commands something to be done, then that is good by definition, however appalling it may seem to those of us who do not wear the moral blinders of religion. I have discussed Craig’s views and the criticisms of it before. [Read more…]

So the Mayan ‘prophecy’ proved to be a bust. Interestingly, very few of the seven million ethnic Mayans took it seriously. But five Michigan school districts closed 33 schools on Wednesday, two days early, not because they wanted students to prepare properly for the end of the world but because of rumors of violence triggered by the Mayan doomsday. [Read more…]

In the wake of a tragedy, we all want to comfort the bereaved. But to what extent should you make up stuff in attempting to do so?

Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who claims to have had a near-death experience while in a coma for a week. What he experienced apparently convinced him that there is heaven and an afterlife. He has (of course) written a book about it that has become a best-seller, since many people are desperate to believe that the end of their life will not be the end of their story and will seize on anything that promises them a sequel. [Read more…]

The Encinitas school district in California got a grant to teach children yoga. Seems harmless, right? Wrong. A group of parents is threatening to sue to stop the practice, arguing that yoga is derived from Hinduism and thus these classes are a violation of Establishment Clause prohibitions against public schools sponsoring religion. [Read more…]