Based upon court rulings on how tax exemptions for charitable groups work, we cannot be conclude that churches and religious organizations automatically deserve exemptions. Even if one believes that their religion and their church provide a necessary public service, it does not follow that all religions and churches necessarily provide a public service which merits support through tax exemptions.

 

Read Article: Do Churches Deserve Tax Exemptions?

One of the most interesting facets of bigotry is how well some people are able to deny their own bigotry. There are of course plenty of bigots who do not deny it and who are in fact proud of their bigotry, but today bigotry had acquired enough negative connotations that it's more common for people to try to rationalize or explain away their prejudice as not "really" being bigoted at all. They insist that they are making neutral observations that should never be interpreted as promoting hate. Read more...

Religious theists naturally disagree with atheists who say that there is no god, but their disagreement is frequently framed differently from other disagreements over matters of fact. If two people disagree over what car is better, they each offer evidence and claim that the evidence for their position is superior. Religious theists, in contrast, can often be found making arguments quite unlike those found elsewhere: it's immoral not to believe, you'll be punished for not believing, you need faith to believe, etc.

One troublesome objection is the idea that it's somehow invalid to claim that no gods exist -- that we somehow have to be omniscient or have to have inspected every corner of the universe in order to dismiss the existence of gods. This might make sense if the gods proposed by believers were the sort to be hiding in the corner of a distant nebula, but otherwise it's just incoherent. Even worse it's hypocritical because it requires adopting standards which religious theists never employ in any other circumstances. Read more...

It is a very important aspect of the scientific method that any experiments be, in principle, replicable by other people. No matter what you are investigating, in order for your research to be scientific, some other person must be able to do the same experiments to see if she comes up with the same results.

 

Read Article: Parapsychology and Scientific Experiments