Author Archive

Discussion Techniques: “Why?” and “How do you know?”

Jul 21, 2012 Comments Off by

When you’re locked in vigorous discussion with someone on the topic of religion or related subjects, I find the temptation is to try and present counter-arguments which describe what you think is correct. However, I don’t think this is the easiest or most effective way to do it. In most arguments, it seems the easiest [...]

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A Business in Charity Clothing

Jun 21, 2012 1 Comment by

It has been frequently remarked that churches show strong similarities to businesses. The evolution of such schemes is obvious: the church is set up so that people can gain better lines of communication to the core of their religion, but the church must be built and renovated, and its many services maintained, so it must [...]

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One Year Today

May 25, 2012 Comments Off by

It’s official, it’s one full year since the website was created! So it seems relevant to cover some of what’s happened in the first twelve months. The website was inaugurated on the 25th May 2011. At the time, the general purpose and direction of the website weren’t clear, only the subject matter. The website looked [...]

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Pascal’s Wager

May 05, 2012 Comments Off by

So I’ll start by noting that this won’t be a comprehensive argument against Pascal’s Wager, but I intend to discuss two of my favourite points discrediting it. My motivation on this occasion is from watching too many videos of very stupid people, which is a pass-time I’m sure many of you do too. If you’re new [...]

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Monopoly on Marriage

Apr 03, 2012 Comments Off

Sometimes people wonder why atheists, homosexual or not, take an interest in the equal marriage debate. The response is simple: the opposition to equal marriage frequently originates from religious beliefs. The argument which presently seems to dominate the debate is over who has the right to define marriage. This word ‘define’ is not one we [...]

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The Next Confusing Word: Fundamentalism

Mar 14, 2012 Comments Off

Recently there was another religion-based debate on The Big Questions which discussed one question: whether fundamentalism undermines faith. The show itself was thoroughly interesting, as it often is, even if this episode was an exercise in how many mad people you can get into one room; it was more interesting to simply marvel at the ridiculousness of [...]

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How To Design The Perfect Religion

Jan 16, 2012 1 Comment

The idea of designing a religion is a fascinating one, due partly to the selection of motivations for doing so. One could hope to design a religion that would become widely popular and financially benefit its inventor. One could design a religion for the purposes of making a point: to tear apart the fabrication once [...]

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Why Doesn’t Personal Experience Count As Evidence?

Jan 10, 2012 Comments Off

I dislike categorising people into only two groups, but the conclusions I will draw in this article I find to be independent of this particular distinction, hence let us consider the assuredly religious and the decidedly non-religious. Of the many traits that separate the two groups, one which appears to be crucial, and which arises [...]

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More Ambiguity On Belief

Dec 23, 2011 1 Comment

A while ago, there was an article on this website called The Dangers Of The Word Belief. In the article, it was noted that the word “belief” is inconveniently ambiguous because in common speech it ascribes to a different meaning to in religious debate. But there is another obstacle which much be traversed to deal [...]

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The Bible Is Not The World’s Best-Selling Book

Dec 20, 2011 4 Comments

Whenever religious debates near the topic of the bible, often when considering it as a piece of literature, some advocates are quick to announce that the bible is the best-selling book in the world, of all time. Whilst it is not explicitly said, the insinuation with this is that because so many people have purchased [...]

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Free Will in Quantum Mechanics

Dec 19, 2011 Comments Off

The natural laws as they were understood more than one hundred years ago were significantly different to how we know them today. The classical laws of motion described by Newton were, at the time, the ultimate guide to the future of the universe. In Newton’s universe, everything was determinable; if you knew the precise position and [...]

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Science Is Not The New Religion

Dec 19, 2011 Comments Off

There have been two significant potential discoveries in the world of physics in recent months. Firstly that neutrinos, a type of subatomic particle, seem to have been observed travelling faster than the speed of light, the universal speed limit. And secondly that the Higg’s Boson, another subatomic particle, which is responsible for the mass property [...]

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He’s Dead. It’s Been Two-Thousand Years. Haven’t We Improved?

Nov 28, 2011 Comments Off

It is staggering that after two thousand years since his messages first emanated into the world, millions of people still consider the teachings of Jesus to be some of the most relevent and sublime that can be found. In the last two thousand years the human race has seen greater objective advancement than any other time [...]

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“A Clever and Important Person is Religious, Therefore We All Should Be”

Nov 28, 2011 Comments Off

This title is somewhat biased. It can often be heard that because some person widely considered to be very intelligent is theist or atheist, that this counts in favour of a that particular opinion. It is lines such as “there are many religious scientists” coated with the tone that because religious scientists exist then religion must [...]

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The Dangers of the Word “Belief”

Nov 20, 2011 Comments Off

The more one delves into the discussions around religion, the more one gets used to certain items of terminology being thrown around. Over time, all words take on a very specific, and often subtle meaning, depending on who uses them and how. This seems to be the case for the word “belief”, which since the [...]

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The Return of the Forums

Oct 19, 2011 Comments Off

We’ve removed the old software for the forums, which was a nightmare to manage and distracted from the main site. You can now view the forums on the main site. They are listed on the home page side navigation. You need to be logged in to comment, and you can use the same account for [...]

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Does Our Explanation Of Religion Compromise The Validity Of Its Statements?

Oct 16, 2011 2 Comments

This is something which Peter Atkins once brought up in a debate with William Lane Craig. It is the idea that because we can explain why so many people are religious using evolutionary biology, sociology, and psychology, that therefore there is even less reason to think that religious statements are correct. Certainly the fact that [...]

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You’re Offended, So What?

Oct 13, 2011 Comments Off

It is astounding how, even in intellectual debates, the notion is suggested that none of the participants may offend anyone else. Needless to say, it is consistently suggested by the very religious. But nobody has the right to not be offended, for one simple reason, that you can be offended by anything. You could take [...]

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Fear of Atheism

Oct 04, 2011 Comments Off

On this site we sometimes review phrases which people have typed into search engines and turn them into articles. This article is one such case. Until one hears this title, it doesn’t necessarily seem obvious. It would be correct to say, that there are certainly some people in the world who fear atheism. The important point [...]

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Tradition Is Not A Valid Argument

Sep 23, 2011 Comments Off

This is one of the rarer arguments that emerges in debates. The general idea is that because a certain country has always been tied to a particular religion, or was founded on certain religious principles, that its people should therefore continue to do things according to that religion. There are two obvious examples of when [...]

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