By John W. Loftus I just watched the first episode of the PBS special, The Secret Files of the Inquisition . The second episode is on next week (5/16/07), and I highly recommend you watch it. One inquisitor, who went on to become Pope Benedict, told a Jew under interrogation, “convert or die!” These three words echoed down into villages and homes for two centuries. That’s two whole centuries. There was no escape from the power of the church since it reigned exclusively, even over the very ideas people entertained. At the beginning of the 14th century the church was losing power because it was unwilling to change. The people did not have access to the Bible (nor was there a printed Bible). They were simply to believe what the church taught. Furthermore, the Sunday masses were done in Latin, which people couldn’t understand. So it gave rise to many ideas about religious truth, including a heretical group called “The Good Men.” Instead of addressing these disputes civilly the Church set o...

A 1985 video produced by Richard Dawkins . The film is about 45 minutes in length. To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

By Micah Cowan My brother-in-law Tim had some interesting points to make about neurotheology, which he submitted in comments to my posted link to DagoodS’s article, Prove It! . I responded in-thread to most of what he had to say, but some comments he made presented an opportunity to discuss a topic that I believe is worth a separate post, and so here it is. Tim says: The fact that you can measure something like that [one’s spirituality, via externally observable properties in the brain] implies to me that atheists and theists should adopt a truce similar to the one Stephen Jay Gould offered between science and religion. I’m very much in favor of this. I have no quarrel with theism, I just don’t personally hold to it. The atheist, if he is honest, cannot lay claim to a certainty of explanation in support of abiogenesis (the spontaneous transition of lifeless matter into living). There are some interesting hypotheses, to be sure, but I’m confident that we will never be able to determin...

By Never Going Back In college I was required to study a book by Lauren Slater called "Opening Skinner's Box." One of the chapters called, "On Being Sane in Insane Places," discusses a psychiatric experiment performed by Dr. David Rosenhan and his friends and colleagues from around the country in the early 1970's. If I remember correctly, the experiment was to see just how well psychiatrists could distinguish between the truly insane and those merely posing as such. A "patient" would admit him or herself into an asylum and claim to be hearing a "thud." This "thud" was the only odd thing about them. There were no other distinguishing characteristics that would give them away in their everyday life. Without a hitch, each of the eight patients were deemed crazy despite the fact that in every other way, they would be considered healthy and sane. I've been thinking a lot lately about how this experiment compares to my sixt...

You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours. You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt. You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God. Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, animals and trees! You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into ...

Christianity is so, so full of... ah... mmmm... Well... You know. To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

By Matthew Sheahan One of the things New Yorkers can always count upon is the unreliability of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Just when you need to get someplace in a hurry or when you’re running late, the MTA will manage to do everything in its power to slow you down. Trains will run late, a train will arrive that is out of service, and signal problems will stall your train. It took me about 25 minutes to drive from my neighborhood in upper Manhattan to the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn in a friend’s borrowed van. It took me about 2 hours to get back home using New York City’s subways. Normally I’d be seething and silently cursing the incompetent boobs and shiftless ne’er-do-wells that run the MTA, but it was a Saturday and I had no place to be and was too tired to be that pissed off. The Q train crawled along so slowly that I bolted from it at the Atlantic Avenue station and ended taking the R train. The R train was an improvement, but not much. I arrived at the 42nd Str...

By Dano Exactly how does someone getting murdered, by being crucified, make me suitable or deserving to go to heaven, and if this is a requirement by God, that does qualify me to pass through the pearly gates, why do I have to believe it. If God wanted and needed a sacrifice to himself before he will let anybody into heaven, then when the Romans finished killing Jesus, didn't we all have a ticket to paradise? God supposedly knows which of us will believe it, and those who won't. What has that got to do with the deal? Once he gets his born of a virgin, boy murdered, then he should be happy. A deal is a deal. Now I'm not going to ask you to explain how Jesus, and God, and the holy ghost can all three be the same being, or how Jesus knowing he was divine, and immortal could really die, because it would unfairly burden your intellect, so I will stick with the original question. What has my belief got to do with the whole thing? God got what he wanted, so we all should be admitt...

By Dave, the WM The Virginia Tech shootings are fading from the major media's short-lived stage, but Christian rhetoric is continuing to lay the blame for the tragedy at the feet of non-theists. Atheism has become very popular in universities--where it's taught that we evolved from animals and that there are no moral absolutes. So we shouldn't be surprised when there are school shootings. -- Kirk Cameron An atheist ... has absolutely no grounds for condemning Cho's actions ... If human and animal history is reliable, massacre is as natural as sex. Therefore, in the absence of God, nothing is wrong. World Net Daily News Others are blaming gun laws and still others blame inaction on the part of school authorities. Who to blame seems fairly simple to me. The shooter apparently became more and more deranged over time until he became a danger to himself and others. Assigning blame to anyone or anything beyond that one thing is a bit unrealistic. Let's face it, some peop...

If you're not familiar with Jack Chick's comic-style evangelical tracts , then these little videos might go over your head. However, for the rest of us, "Depart from ME ye cursed!" Always remember, Jesus loves you more than you can possibly comprehend. But, if for any reason whatsoever you don't come to accept the correct version of Christianity while still breathing air, then that loving god-man is going to make you suffer the most horrific and demented fate ever conceived. There will be no chance of parole or escape. You will not even be allowed to die. You will be tormented and tortured forever. Unconditional love and grace: Isn't it truly amazing? The Titanic: One Way!: To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

By DagoodS Even as a Christian, I was surprised at the blurring of the distinction between Christianity and the American concepts of “Rights.” I recall a Sunday School teacher talking of how the government was questioning one of his contributions to the church and whether it was a legitimate deduction. What I remember so vividly was his outrage followed by the statement, “This is a form of persecution on Christians.” Excuse me? Let me get this straight—something unheard of under both the Bible and U.S. Constitution, yet if you don’t get it, it is some sort of “persecution”? I am sure all those martyrs in Fox’s Book of Martyrs would go pale in the shock of how abusive this concept is—to NOT get a tax benefit for doing something you should do doing anyway. Shocked, I say! A “Right” is a benefit conferred upon citizens by the will of the general populace, usually reduced to writing in the form of a Constitution. While “inalienable human rights” may be referred to, try convincing can...

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Brian Flemming, a former fundamentalist Christian, goes back to interview Dr. Sipus , the superintendent of Fleming's Christian grade school, Village Christian in California. The interview grows heated when Flemming questions the wisdom of teaching children religious belief as fact. The scene is from the documentary, " The God Who Wasn’t There ." To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

Or, ID as explained by ID-iot Kent Hovind: Or, Carl Sagan's view: To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

By Joe B While thinking of my xian experiences yesterday, I was struck by the similarity between American high schools and American megachurches. I had a sudden understanding that the way kids are shaped during their basic 12 years of education has a lot to do with the way evangelical churches are taking in their effort to "minister in a culturally relevant" way. I'm not talking so much about the weekly pep rally, structured curriculum, extracurricular activities or summer camps, although those certainly bear structurally similarity. The more striking thing for me is the function of small group ministries and peer pressure that these churches employ in conforming adults to their model of behavior. See Thomas Hines "The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager" for an insightful history of how the experience of youth has changed with the social and economic dynamics of the last two centuries. The normalization of the High School experience from the 40s and 50...

By Jim Earl After reading umpteen letters written by both local and distant writers of apparently deep faith about the tragedy of Virginia Tech, I decided it was time for a view from one without this mysterious faith. I am dumbstruck by some of the statements from these people of deep faith. According to almost all of these writers, faith is the best thing anyone could ever possess, because it's just so much better than common sense or logic. Whatever life has to offer, including tragedies beyond measure, these writers want all of us to believe that without faith we don't have anything to help us cope. Well, let me assure you that faith is not a requirement to cope with tragedy. Millions of human beings live full and fruitful lives without any religious faith. I happen to count myself among those millions. I live my life with logic and reason, and I assure you, as one who has lived on both sides of the "god" debate, life is indeed good on this side. Of course, this tr...

Jonathan Miller Reveals the Hidden Story of Atheism Three-Part Series Premiers May 4 on Public Television "... the history of the growing conviction that God doesn't exist." — Jonathan Miller The debate over belief-disbelief-atheism intensifies with the national airing of A Brief History of Disbelief on public television stations, premiering May 4. Hosted by Jonathan Miller, the three-part series comes in the midst of the recent release of two provocative books on atheism: Christopher Hitchens’ " God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything " and Joan Konner’s " The Atheist’s Bible ." Jonathan Miller will be interviewed along with clips from the series on the May 4th Bill Moyers Journal seen on PBS. You can watch the promotional trailers by going here. A Brief History of Disbelief is not being aired exclusively by PBS, and it is not being carried on a national feed. Your local public television station may be airing the show on a different ...

A short video discussing the ethical conundrum presented by the religious teaching of hell. To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

By Dano I don't care what anyone believes as long as it doesn't affect the health, wealth, and welfare of their neighbors. (Meaning me) Christians feel threatened by unbelievers because they don't validate the thing, that is supposed to insure their immortality. They see every apostate as another leak in the dam that they have built, to ward off death. If we don't believe like they do, it weakens their faith, that they will never die. The point being, that it "DOES MATTER" what you believe. Your fundamentalist belief can keep you aloof from me, and keep you from responding to my gestures of friendship. It can poison your perception of who I am. If you are my brother or sister, your fundamentalist Christian beliefs can divide our family. You can live your whole life, letting silly irrational concepts like Satan, and original sin, keep you from visiting me, because your religious instruction book teaches you, that my lack of belief in your mythology, is evil....

Last night FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly broadcast a five-minute interview with British ethologist, evolutionary biologist, popular science writer and advocate of atheism Richard Dawkins . To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .