Austin's Atheism Blog

When Christians talk about the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling, it’s most often to complain about them - for example, their use of magic. A few Christians, though, argue that the Harry Potter books are not only compatible with Christianity, but in fact contain implicit Christian messages. They compare Rowling’s books with the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis or the books by Tolkein, all works imbued with Christian themes to one degree or another.

 

Read Article: Is Harry Potter a Christian Allegory? Does Harry Potter Teach Christianity?

Edward Said is a frequently cited critic of how Westerners deal with the "orient" — both in terms of international politics and scholarly research. Are Said's critiques justified, though? Some may be, but many others are arguably mistaken because they are based upon errors, poor research, and incoherent text. Read more...

Have you ever had the feeling you were being watched? According to Christian theology, you are — Christians believe their god is omnipresent, which means that their god is in all places at all times. So wherever you are and whatever you are doing, God is right there, watching you. Yesterday, when you were picking your nose? God was watching you. Last week, when you were... well, God was watching you then, too. Why is God such a voyeur? Isn't such stalking behavior a little creepy?

 

Read Article: Omnipresence: God is Omnipresent & Everywhere, Even in the Bathroom...

Parapsychology and the interest in spiritualism and various alleged psychic powers did not develop out of thin air. They are all, at least in large part, the product of religious hopes and aspirations - but more specifically, religious hopes and aspirations which have become disconnected from the anchors of traditional religious dogma and church structures.

 

Read Article: Spiritualism, Science & Naturalism

It's easy to find falsehoods about atheism and atheists on the internet. Most such examples tend to come from bloggers who seem to get an itch to write about atheism despite not knowing anything about it and not realizing that it might be a good idea to do a little research first. More than a few myths originate in published books, though, and in those cases the errors are far less forgivable.

If you going to be responsible for writing a book, you should be responsible enough to do a bit of research and get your facts straight rather than just repeating tired old myths and thereby perpetuating bigotry. Sadly, it does not appear as though Albert Mohler agrees because he has written a new book about atheism — or perhaps I should say he's written a book that has "atheism" in the title, because the book itself looks like it has more to do with his own misconceptions and assumptions than actual atheism. Read more...

Debates over the origins of the human species are some of the most rancorous in America today. Many believe, for purely religious reasons, that humans originated and developed through the work of God. Others, however, argue that science shows that humans have an entirely natural origin and development. The majority of Americans seem to want to straddle the two positions by believing that a god created humanity, but did it somehow through the evolutionary process.

The widespread denial of basic science and evolutionary biology is, perhaps more than anything, a clear demonstration of just how pernicious the negative influence of religion can be. Usually when we think about ways in which religion might be a force for evil the first examples that spring to mind will be religious terrorism, the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. Limiting the bad aspects of religion to just the worst cases, though, helps hide the more common and insidious ways in which religion is a problem.

It's a bit like limiting racism to just cross burning and then pretending that if no one is burning crosses, then there really isn't any serious problem with racism anymore. In reality, undercurrents of racial prejudice and White Supremacism continue to to negatively impact politics, culture, and society as a whole. No one is calling for a new Inquisition, but denying reality as demonstrated through science negatively influences culture and society in a variety of ways as well. Denial of science, and encouraging ignorance of science, is a serious danger for the future of humanity because our future well-being is tightly bound to our ability to understand and manipulate the world around us. That, in turn, depends on our use of science.

A few cultures, like ancient Greece, have postulated gods which appear to be as natural as human beings, but in general gods are supernatural. This means that they are fundamentally different from human beings or anything on earth. Despite this, however, theists consistently describe their gods in ways that make the supernatural appear almost mundane. Gods share so many characteristics with humans that it has been argued that gods were made in the image of man.

 

Read Article: Gods Are Too Similar to Believers: Gods Probably Created in the Image of Humans

You don't have to be a conservative evangelical Christian or a Christian apologist in order to have been taken in by various myths, misconceptions, and outright lies about atheism. This is in fact one of the important reasons for directly and strongly confronting myths and lies: because even people with no apparent motive or reason for gain can be found using them for bigoted attacks. Read more...

That which characterizes "superstitious" behavior can be found in a variety of contexts — not just typical "superstition" but also religion, paranormal beliefs, and so forth. If superstition can be found in a variety of contexts as well as across both cultures and time, we should seriously wonder whether there are deeper, fundamental forces a work. I don't mean supernatural forces, of course, but rather evolutionary forces: have superstitious attitudes and behaviors evolved in humans for some reason? If so, then they will prove very hard to reduce, and perhaps impossible to eliminate. Read more...

It may sound odd to wonder how and why truth matters - under most circumstances the importance of truth should be obvious. Nevertheless, the question of truth does have problems which are difficult to address; among them is the question of what role the notion of 'truth' plays in our philosophy and our understanding of the world around us.

 

Read Article: Why Truth Matters and How Truth is Defined