Tag Archive for atheist at Zeal For Truth

Tag Archive for 'atheist'

Links EXPLOSION: Virginity Pledges, Econ, Healthcare and boobs

Published by Colin January 2, 2009 in General. 0 Comments

Poly/Econ
When the “conservatives” lack foresight and give money away, things turn for the worse.

Yet another possible bailout.

The New England Journal of Medicine talks about some of the benefits of a single-payer healthcare system: link.

A tale of two copyrights: one leaving (in the UK) and one fighting for control.
One reason not to live in Dubai.

The Church
“As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.”Secularism wins in Bangladesh!

Bishops may see the opposite sex in the CoE….in 3 years and in complimentary (and, well, complementary) ways only.

Is Heresy Better Than Schism?

An Op-Ed on the female bishops in the CoE.

And Then Some
There’s an extra second this year.
It’s the annual list of words Banished from the Queen’s English.

Don’t cry over spilled MILC?

Weekly Links: Underwear, Obama, Anglicans and Athiests - What a Party!

Published by Colin February 29, 2008 in Current Events. 6 Comments

In the great state of Oregon this week, Carmen Kontur-Gronquist , mayor of the small town of Arlington, managed to get herself recalled. What did she do to anger her fellow citizens? Blow up the budget? Tick off the small town aristocracy? Some kind of bizarre sexual deviance? No, no my friends - long before she ever considered running for office, she had a picture taken of herself in your basic set of underwear. At some point, the photos managed to get up on her personal and private myspace account. Someone who had access to the account copied the photo and it eventually got around to the citizenry.

In being asked why the recalled the mayor, school board member Grant Wilkins provided the nugget:

People aren’t laughing with us, they’re laughing at us

Well, to be honest Grant, I wasn’t laughing at anyone until YOU RECALLED YOUR MAYOR OVER A PHOTO TOO TAME FOR A TARGET CATALOGUE.

Barack Hussein Obama
Informed Comment talks about Barack Hussein Obama’s name.

I want to say something about Barack Hussein Obama’s name. It is a name to be proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It is a heroic name, as heroic and American in its own way as the name of General Omar Nelson Bradley or the name of Benjamin Franklin.

Anglican Church Continues to Fracture
Three Anglican churches have voted to split with the church of Canada and join the South American province.

In all, ten parishes have now split with the Canadian church, all of them because of a fundamental disagreement over its stance on blessing same sex unions.

We spoke to Steve Schuh from Vancouver. Also joining us was The Most Reverend Gregory James Venables, Presiding Bishop of the Province of the Southern Cone. He’s also the Bishop of Argentina and the leader of the parishes that have split with the Anglican Church of Canada. Archbishop Gregory James Venables spoke to us from Buenos Aires.

Audio interview here.

Atheist on Atheist Media
Reason magazine reviews Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, concluding that he is unfailingly critical of religion.

Pullman paints every character connected to the Church or religion, from the fascistic zealots of the Magisterium to the crazed monk in the world of the dead who stubbornly believes he’s in paradise, with an antipathy that sometimes recalls Ayn Rand’s demonization of her welfare-state bureaucrats.

More Linkage
Map of America’s most sinful cities. Who would have though that Salt Lake City managed to make the top 7 in couple categories?

The Pew Forum has published a thorough survey on religious identity in America. Among the findings: one-tenth of Americans are ex-Catholics and the Jehovah Witnesses lose two-thirds of their children but still manage to grow.

A New Ice Age?

Lew Rockwell writes about the triumph of the Red-State fascists. Microsoft fined EU899 Million for “non-compliance” with anti-trust laws. The company overcharged for patent licenses that rivals needed to connect products to the Windows platform, the European Commission said.

Eskimo village sues over global warming.William F. Buckley dead!

Atheism’s “Plus 1″ Argument

Published by Jasen Tracy July 2, 2007 in Apologetics. 3 Comments

Rallying behind people such as Richard Dawkins, a more militant form of atheism is rising. Ironically enough, they often share the worst traits of the religious fundamentalists that they decry. Please note I’m using the term atheism as it’s commonly used today, and not as the original and dictionary correct meaning of “not theist.” Much could be said on this issue, but all I want to do today is to discuss an argument by atheists that seems to be becoming quite popular for them to use. Here’s a few brief quotes that demonstrate the argument.

The atheist argument begins by pointing out that Christians (or another variety of monotheist) do not believe in a large number of gods (Odin, Poseidon, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc). It then states that atheism merely takes that disbelief one god further and applies it to the monotheist’s god. Thus, beliefs are divided like this:

Monotheism - Denies the existence of “X” number of gods.
Atheism - Denies the existence of “X + 1″ number of gods.

The atheist argument then concludes that the monotheist position is actually quite close to atheism, but that atheists merely have disbelief in one more god (which of course is the reasonable thing to do according to atheism). This argument can get tricky for atheists if they instead face polytheists, and it would seem incapable of addressing other religious positions like pantheism, universalism, and others.

I would argue, however, that the atheist claim is a much larger claim than the mere disbelief in one more god than monotheism. It is the complete rejection of the supernatural. Despite huge differences in religious positions between groups diverse as Christianity, Wicca, Hinduism, and others, they all acknowledge the existence of something that is supernatural. Thus, beliefs can be divided like this:

Atheism - Denies the existence of the supernatural.
Everything else - Acknowledges the existence of the supernatural.

I think this shows why the atheist claim is a much greater claim than a mere “plus 1″ on the list of gods not believed in. The claim that no supernatural exists is an extraordinary one.

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