By DagoodS I have recently been intrigued by the Baylor Religious Survey referenced in some discussion I was observing. I found the following statistical facts fascinating: - Almost 30% had attended their current place of worship for more than 20 years. - 23% attended weekly services, but of those, only 30% attended a Bible class or Sunday School weekly. - Exactly half (49.4%) only read their Bible twice a year (or less) outside of church! - 74% felt “Forgiving” described God very well, yet 67% felt “Just” described God very well. (73% felt “loving” described God very well.) - 33.3% disagreed or strongly disagreed with an atheist teaching at high school. (Close to the 37.5% that said the same about homosexuals.) The fact that approximately 2/3 of the people thought God was both Just and Forgiving (two concepts which are mutually exclusive) made me chuckle, thinking of exactly how much thought we put into our opinion of what a God is. As I Christian, I probably would have voted the ...

Buy Books by Michael Shermer Subscribe to Skeptic magazine. Michael Shermer (born September 8 , 1954 in Glendale, California ) is a science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society , and editor of its magazine Skeptic , which is largely devoted to investigating and debunking pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television series Exploring the Unknown and since April 2004 has been a monthly columnist for Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column. Shermer was once a fundamentalist Christian , but according to his book The Science of Good and Evil , is now an agnostic and an advocate for humanist philosophy. -- Wikipedia The Colbert Report ( IPA : [kol'bɛɹ rɪˈpɔr] ) is an American satirical television program that airs from 11:30 p.m. to 12:00 a.m (10:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. central time) each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central . It stars comedian Stephen Colbe...

Sent in by Steven Cody I want credit for my actions. Good or bad I'd like to be acknowledged for what I do and accomplish. I'd thank all those in my life who helped me with any given situation of course. I want to be acknowledged as a human being who deserves better than what we have. We ALL deserve better. I am a human and so are you. We make choices and decisions every second of every waking hour of every single day of our lives. WE are responsible for the lives and deaths of our fellow human beings with every choice we make. We, as human beings, have total control over everything that happens on this planet. WE are responsible. I wish everyone could see and hear and understand what I'm telling you. Sadly, even though many will agree with me, still more will not hear me. We have ultimate control, but I think we got scared of all the responsibility -- so we out sourced it to an invisible bully in the sky. This will be the part where I think I'll lose a large majority o...

A defense of atheism using the null hypothesis . When used, the null hypothesis is presumed true until statistical evidence in the form of a hypothesis test indicates otherwise. In classical science, the null hypothesis is used to test differences in treatment and control groups, and the assumption at the outset of the experiment is that no difference exists between the two groups for the variable being compared. To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

By Wittu I reexamined some notes I made last year on Bible oddities and contradictions. Here are a few thoughts -- nothing scholarly, but perhaps a few members will still dig it (although so many of you are very savvy and have likely seen these). (1) Is God, the supreme being, who spoke matter into being, concerned with hair? “Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?” - I Corinthians 11:14 Which contradicts: [Those who take the vow of a Nazarite] All the days of the vow of his separation no razor shall come upon his head; until the days are fulfilled for which he separated himself to the Lord, he shall be holy. Then he shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow.” - Numbers 6:5 “Then she [Hannah] made a vow and said, "O Lord of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of your maidservant and remember me, and not forge your maidservant, but will give your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all t...

By Anne Corwin Existence is Wonderful So, someone has finally come out and asked the question: Joe Carter of “The Evangelical Outpost” inquires, Are Atheists Autistic? Great , I thought, when I first read about this. Next thing you know, we’re going to have organizations with names like “Cure Atheism Now”. And their supporters will make all kinds of claims about how this terrible developmental disorder, atheism, prevents people from making friends easily, makes “fitting in” difficult, makes people less likely to be trusted , makes it impossible to get certain kinds of jobs or be elected to public office, cuts people off from the “religious community” (a strong source of social support), and denies them the comfort of belief in an afterlife. Atheist children will be subjected to intense behavioral therapies involving being forced to sit at a small table until they ask for a [Holy Book] or a picture of [Deity or Guru], at which point they will be hugged and praise...

An oldie but a goody from George Carlin To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

by Thomas I sincerely and wholeheartedly hope Christianity is false. I wish this one for one simple reason. If Christianity is true billions of people are being mercilessly tortured in a place called Hell. Hell is an unimaginable place. To be burned for a second, for example when cooking, produces a sharp and excruciating pain. The thought of having every part of your body burned by fire and sulfur, without death and without relief is hideous. It is way beyond world history’s most repulsive torture chamber. Beyond the physical torture there is spiritual and emotional agony, relentless desolation and anguished regret. Hell is for ever. Not for a second, not for a day, not for a year, not for a billion years, not for a billion, billion years. The penalty for not believing the Gospel is as endless as it is brutal. If Christianity is true every single American who died before 1492 is burning, as is everyone from my home country of England before about AD 300, along with virtually everyone ...

From Wikipedia: Michael J. Behe (born January 18 , 1952 , in Altoona, Pennsylvania ) is an American biochemist and intelligent design advocate. Behe is professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute 's Center for Science and Culture . He advocates the idea that some structures are too complex at the biochemical level to be adequately explained as a result of evolutionary mechanisms. He has termed this concept " irreducible complexity ". Behe's claims about the irreducible complexity of key cellular structures are strongly contested by the scientific community . The Department of Biological Sciences, at Lehigh University, published an official position statement which says "It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific." [1] His comments about intelligent design have been charact...

From the makers of the iPod, the iMac, the iBible and all sorts of other iStuff, comes the iBible! It's the completely automated, Charlton Heston-narrated, self-cleaning, disco-dancing, multi-lingual religious tome of the 21st Century. The good book just got even gooder! To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

Christianity provides a perfectly rational way to view the world. Right? To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

By AtheistToothFairy We hear much from Christians about how god takes cares of his own flock, especially when it comes to something like god healing the sick via prayer. These Christians insist that praying for someone can at least help abate their disease (despite many non-biased studies to the contrary). They also tell us that praying even for ourselves when we are sick, will also inspire god to intervene on our own behalf. I haven't met a Christian yet that would deny this 'quality' of god, as his handbook clearly states this as a given Christian benefit. So, let us now assume that the bible god really does exists and that he really is suppose to answer our request for a healing (even if only conditionally). Would it then not make perfect sense that he would also take care of his human religious leaders? Surely if any run-of-the-mill believer can have god help them through this praying ritual, for either themselves or others, then it wouldn't make very much sense tha...

By Bill J I've come to realize that loving someone without God is incredibly freeing. I mean, as a Christian I was compelled to love people, even my enemies, but to truly love someone you have to be free to do it. Christianity is not about freedom because the ever present threat of hell looms near. It’s also a commandment. It’s not an option. How would you like to be commanded to love everyone? I command you to love every vile dictator and every person that has ever done you wrong. I command you to love the homeless mentally ill drug addict in your city. I command you to love the man that raped your love one. I command you to love the neighbor who lets his dog shit on your lawn. I command you to love your spouse who keeps cheating on you. I command you to love the guy/gal at work who bugs you. Is this really what Christians do? I work in corrections, so I see a lot of people who have done bad things. I've learned that being professional and reasonable goes a lot farther when de...

A short clip by comedian Doug Stanhope . Some of the language may not be work friendly. Thanks, xrayman! To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

View Carl Sagan's incredible series Cosmos online. You'll need a DivX player and a high speed Internet connection. LINK Wikipedia article about Cosmos : LINK To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

By Dave, the WM The longer I'm out of Christianity, the more difficult it becomes to comprehend how I could have ever accepted such a twisted view of reality -- one that promotes flying chariots; floating ax heads; talking bushes, snakes and donkeys; magic refilling urns; water walking; zombies; a worldwide flood; giants; raving, naked prophets; fire falling from heaven from time to time; cruel plagues; and life changing visions that resemble the descriptions of bad LSD trips. This is the reality one must accept as a Christian: There is an invisible war going on between the sovereign ruler of the universe and one of His former minions. These "guys" are waging a battle over the eternal souls of the upright-walking, hairless monkeys living on tiny planet circling a particularly unimportant star on the outskirts of a small and ordinary galaxy. The prize? If the monkeys have the correct thoughts in their heads (Believe in Jesus, whatever that really means) at the time they e...

By Dave, the WM The Christian arguments against evolutionary science habitually revolve around impressive sounding statistics that seem to indicate the extreme unlikeliness for life to have evolved. These stats are used as an apologetic against natural processes in favor of a hands-on, designing creator. You know what? They are right! No, not about the creator, about the astronomical chances against me existing. I've thought about this. My father and mother have been married just short of 50 years. They have slept in the same bed their entire married life. And they had a normal sex life. From what I understand, each time they slept together, millions of potential humans died. Only four out of all the hundreds of billions of potential human beings that left my father to find happiness in the womb of my mother survived the process. Only four out of billions. Remarkable. My embryonic genesis was marked by the tragic deaths of millions of competitors. Had the tail twitched just a tiny...

English comedian Marcus Brigstocke rants about religion. To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

By John W. Loftus It's always man's fault, isn't it? It's never God's fault according to Christians, no matter what the problem is. They are letting God off the hook too easily here...way to easily. What would it take for Christians to say, "hey, this is probably God's fault in some way"? The fact is, God did not reveal himself clearly which has led to so much confusion among Christians even to the point of burning other Christian people alive (at least some, and probably many of the people burned at the stake during the Inquisition would be admitted into today's fundamentalist churches). There have been wars between Christians too. Christians killing other Christians due to a disagreement over little things by today's standards by far, leaving many widows without a husband and many children without a father. What would it take Christian, for you to consider what I consider obvious? Name it, or drop this defense of your God. Furthermore, why G...