According to some in the atheist community, religious belief is a kind of mental illness or neurological disorder. This is an opinion that has been expressed by such prominent voices as Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher.1 The thinking seems to be that because certain religious beliefs look so absurd – to these atheists at least
As protests against the murder of George Floyd have spread across the country, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick recently appeared on Fox News to propose his own solution for ending racism. While stating that Floyd’s death and the resulting unrest break his heart, Patrick was quick to attribute the problems facing the nation to a
There are two distinct but related ideas the religious sometimes put forward to explain why some atheists have walked away from belief in a god. The first idea is that the god rejected by these atheists is that of a particularly fundamentalist variety, and so it’s no real surprise that they’ve not just abandoned that
Are you unsure of whether or not God exists? Think of it this way: if you bet that God does exist, and you’re wrong, you lose nothing. On the other hand, if you bet that God doesn’t exist, and you turn out to be wrong, you stand to lose a lot. Not just eternal bliss
For many centuries, the problem of evil has been regarded as one of the most prominent challenges to theistic belief. Recently, however, some religious apologists have tried to turn this history on its head by suggesting that evil actually constitutes an argument for God’s existence rather than against it. Frank Turek is one such apologist
Some people have suggested that atheism is a religion. The reasons typically given for this view often vary, but tend to boil down to either the behavior or the opinions of atheists. Atheists are dogmatic in their disbelief, according to certain people, they have faith in materialism, they rally behind a messianic figure like Darwin,
The so-called rise of the “nones,” or those who profess no religious affiliation on social surveys, is a phenomenon that has been widely publicized and talked about over the last few years. According to a Pew Research Center study, the number of Americans that fall into this group has gone up from 16% in 2007
In this episode, I speak with Candace Gorham about her book The Ebony Exodus Project: Why Some Black Women Are Walking Out on Religion – and Others Should Too. Candace is a licensed professional mental health counselor, a former ordained minister turned atheist activist, as well as a researcher and writer on issues relating to
From its name, the ‘problem of evil’ might give the mistaken impression that there is one singular problem of reconciling a particular observation with theism. In reality, there have not only been several variations upon the argument within philosophical discourse, but also a multitude of different but related experiences and observations buttressing the general discourse
For this episode, I speak with Caroline Matas about a handful of subjects revolving around New Atheism, the #MeToo movement, and Men’s Rights Activism. Caroline is currently a doctoral student in the Religion in the Americas subfield at Princeton University. She is also the news editor and social media manager at the Harvard Religious Literacy
