Knowledge Is Not Very Far

Tree of Knowledge

2010-12-20T17:15:00.000-07:00

Another Christmas season another Tree of Knowledge. The Seattle Atheists have erected a Tree of Knowledge on their state capitol grounds. You see these kinds of displays across the country and my general feelings towards them have not changed since I wrote about them last year. Although I have to admit the message they placed next to the tree is really not bad (especially when compared with that

Response to Ignorant Atheist Bull Shit

2010-12-14T21:10:00.002-07:00

This is in response to a comment made on my previous post, Ignorant Atheist Bull Shit, made by a poster going by the screen name skeptic7. Due to the nature of his comment and the length of my response I thought it deserved its own post. You will want to read my previous post and his comment before reading this post (I will assume skeptic7 is a he for the time being to make things easier). Let’s

Ignorant Atheist Bull Shit

2010-12-12T19:35:00.000-07:00

Pardon my tone in this post but I am really beginning to get pissed off. I hear atheists railing about ignorant theist bull shit all the time. But how about some ignorant atheist bull shit, which seems to be all I have been reading lately on various atheist blogs. And the latest example comes to us from Friendly Atheist (which now is a misnomer due to his switch to confrontationalist, i.e. all

The Unlikely Disciple

2010-11-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

I saw this video of the author of The Unlikely Disciple giving a talk about his experiences at Liberty University. After watching it I think I am going to pick up his book and give it a read. He makes several points through his talk that I though were very good. One is that when groups of people from the same spectrum of belief get together, such as a group of moderate liberals or conservatives,

Don't Be A Dick

2010-10-13T10:28:00.000-06:00

I have mentioned the Don't Be A Dick talk from Phil Plait before. I thought I would post the video of his talk in case some have not seen it. I highly recommend it, it is a great talk. Phil Plait - Don't Be A Dick from JREF on Vimeo. Also, it seems the idea that confrontation is best as opposed to accommodation is not getting as much support as I thought. Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist said

Accommodation And Confrontation

2010-10-11T09:34:00.000-06:00

*Imagine a pastor preaching to his congregation on a Sunday morning: There is an answer, and it's on display right here in this room. The solution, the only longterm solution, is the sanity of God’s Word. The lesser struggles to keep silly skepticism out off our textbooks or to keep pseudoscientific nonsense like evolution out of our classrooms are important, but they are endless chores -- at

Final Videos of Jed's Visit

2010-10-06T15:04:00.000-06:00

I got the video I took from Jed's Friday visit to Purdue up now. Here are the links to all the videos: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Parts 1-3 are from Wednesday, 4-7 are the new ones from Friday. And again, Jed has a post on facebook about his visit to Purdue from Friday. As I sat waiting for the class break, I notice students were milling around waiting for me to start.

Article From Jed's First Day at Purdue

2010-09-30T12:34:00.001-06:00

Found this article written by Brother Jed recapping the first day at Purdue. Apparently the Force is strong with our lesbians on campus. Sister Cindy, who is in top form, drew a crowd, which built up to one hundred by crying out against the lusts of the flesh. Lust was the main issue of the day, especially when it is expressed in the “gay” way. The lesbians were out in force. They were

Brother Jed @ Purdue Videos

2010-09-30T10:47:00.000-06:00

The videos I took of Brother Jed yesterday are up. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Brother Jed

2010-09-29T15:26:00.000-06:00

Brother Jed is on Purdue's campus through Friday. You can read about him here if you have never heard of him. I watched him today for about an hour and a half and recorded most of it. I will be putting it on YouTube sometime Thursday or Friday as I will be going back to watch him talk and, more importantly, watch the crowd tear him to pieces. That is literally what they did today. I was happy

The more you know about religion the more likely you are an atheist…

2010-09-29T08:42:00.000-06:00

Or Mormon. The Pew Forum released a new study on Americas’ knowledge of religion. Of the nine different groups surveyed atheists, Jews, and Mormons scored the highest with an average of 20 correct answers out of 32 questions. This survey has been making the rounds on the various atheist blogs and religious debate forums with non-theists shouting its results from the rooftops that atheists know

Wanting to come back to posting

2010-09-20T12:42:00.002-06:00

I have not posted anything in quite a while here. Over the past several months my motivation for continuing in religious debate and discussion has been waning. Not because of lost of interest, but because of my coming to believe that it is rather pointless. This same thing occurred when I first started studying and debating religion as a hobby in high school. Originally I participated on a forum

The God Virus at Purdue

2010-05-01T11:24:00.000-06:00

Thursday the local Non-Theists Society here at Purdue sponsored a lecture by Dr. Darrel Ray, author of The God Virus. He is also the founder of Recovering from Religion. The lecture was a condensed summary of the ideas he puts forth in his book. Those ideas being that religion is comparable to a virus in how it spreads through a society and how it causes people to react to it. Dr. Ray used many

Purdue Students Going to Titan

2010-04-15T19:29:00.005-06:00

A quick little plug for my senior design class. Me and about 40 other astronautical engineering students have spent the past semester designing a mission to Saturn's moon Titan. If you are unfamiliar with Titan it is one of the most unique planets/moons in our solar system. It is the only moon with an atmosphere and has liquid methane flowing in lakes and rivers on it's surface. One of our

Non-Thesits and LDS

2010-04-14T15:18:00.000-06:00

The local Society of Non-Theists got an article in the Exponent today. The article was written by the group’s founder, Jennifer McCreight, who you can find over at Blag Hag. In the article she describes her experiences being an atheist and some of the things she has had to deal with when other people found this out. She talks about how she grew up in a town in Indiana that was very tolerant of

Humans vs. Zombies

2010-03-25T09:52:00.000-06:00

I thought I would post something a little different from the usual. As the majority of the traffic to my blog comes from Purdue (thank you Google Analytics) I wanted to post about the current Humans vs. Zombies game that is currently going on. Me and my friends played last semester and absolutely loved it so we are doing it again this semester. If you are unfamiliar with the game it is

Something Interesting

2010-03-15T12:38:00.002-06:00

I came across something that was very interesting on Saturday while out running. Across from my apartment complex, Crestview, there is a pathway that runs along the river which I run on almost daily. It starts just across the street from our lower parking lot and runs along a small pond connected to the river before going under a bridge. It was under this bridge I saw something sitting right in

Smut for Smut

2010-03-03T13:05:00.003-07:00

A few years ago I heard about an event that a student atheist group was holding at a particular university. It was titled “Smut for Smut”. If you gave them a copy of some religious work, such as a Bible or Quran, they would give you a pornographic magazine in return. I cannot remember exactly what school this was at but I am fairly certain it is the University of Texas at San Antonio, because

Ten Shocking Mormon Beliefs

2010-02-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

That are not really true. I stumbled across this list of “Top 10 Most Weird Mormon Beliefs – Shocking Revelations” a few days ago on the Atheist Adam blog. As I am a Mormon I thought I would see just exactly what was so shocking. I have been participating in religious dialogue and debate online since I was in High School. I have come across all kinds of claims about what Mormons “believe”. So I

God Botherers

2010-02-25T05:55:00.000-07:00

I thought this little piece was funny and worth sharing. It is by a stand-up comedian in the UK. There's "probably no God", apparently. I read it on the back of a bus last year, courtesy of an advertisement paid for by the British Humanist Association. Mind you, then the Christian Party countered with its own series of ads claiming: "There definitely is a God." For a period last year, in fact,

Is God just a delusion? First Meeting Notes

2010-02-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

The notes from the first meeting of the Purdue Reading Group discussion on The God Delusion are up. You can read the section of the book that was discussed here for free. It seems at the beginning of the meeting they went over the differences between the words Theist, Deist, Pantheist, and Atheist. Differences between Theist, Deist, Pantheist, Atheist: - A theist believes in an intelligent god

Send an Atheist to Church (Part II)

2010-02-19T13:07:00.001-07:00

The Send an Atheist to Church charity event I mentioned in a previous post has been going on since yesterday. You can read a thorough update on it over at Blag Hag. So far is seems the Baptists (due to someone donating $40) and the LDS are in the lead. I stopped by and donated $10 to the LDS cup before my class today (I am glad the Union has an ATM as I never carry cash with me). I look forward

Is God just a delusion?

2010-02-15T14:15:00.000-07:00

There is a new book discussion being held by the Purdue Reading Group. They will be discussing The God Delusion. Is God just a delusion? Is it the duty of "enlightened" minds to deny any existence of a heavenly being? Are you lost in the desert, looking for answers? Then meet us across from Oasis in the Union to discuss Dawkins' book "The God Delusion." When: Noon on Tuesday, February 16 Where

Send an Atheist to Church

2010-01-31T16:35:00.002-07:00

The local Non-Theists Society is doing a charity event called “Send an Atheist to Church”. On Feb. 18 and 19 they will be in the Union with some different Christian denominations (I do not know which ones). They will be taking donations that will go towards the Food Finders Food Bank of Tippecanoe County. With each donation they will ask to which denomination the donation should be associated

Pat Robertson is a True Christian: So saith Dawkins

2010-01-26T19:41:00.001-07:00

By now everyone has heard about the earthquake in Haiti. Some are estimating that the death toll may reach 200,000. Whenever a natural disaster of this magnitude occurs one can always count on Pat Robertson to give his, usually illogical, opinion as to why the event occurred. By now his comments on the earthquake in Haiti have been heard by most everyone as they made national news. In case you

St. Cloud Secular Student Alliance

2010-01-23T13:06:00.002-07:00

The Secular Student Alliance is a student atheist group at St. Cloud University in Minnesota. They are a new chapter who is just getting started on their campus. SSA’s goal is to work as an umbrella organization for students who are without religion. SSA works with atheists, agnostics, humanists and other non religious students. “The official mission statement is to create a sense of community

Blog-whoring for Jesus

2010-01-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

If you have not heard, the Thomas Society and the Students for Free Thought at Ohio State will be building houses in New Orleans this spring break. Naturally both the groups need to raise the funding required to pay for things such as gas, food, and various expenses. To help with this they decided to hold a live video blogging event which The Amazing Atheist agreed to host. They had quite a few

I am a Skeptic

2010-01-16T15:14:00.002-07:00

On the site I wrote about in my last post, Mormon Scholars Testify, I found a very interesting testimony written by Ron Hellings from Montana State University who works in theoretical physics. I love his first sentence, I am a skeptic. It seems today that many atheists all but lay complete claim to the term skeptic*. A very large number of atheistic organizations include “skeptic”, or some

Mormon Scholars Testify

2010-01-05T17:46:00.002-07:00

It is always frustrating when anti-theists claim that religion, in general, is a hindrance to education, reasoning, and learning (See this post for an example). Mormon Scholars Testify is an interesting new site, started by Daniel C. Peterson, Scott Gordon, and Tanya Spackman, that helps dispels this mantra of "religion = lower intelligence". One of the unique characteristics of The Church of

Atheism

2009-12-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

In the past century, nothing has been the catalyst of more grief, hatred, war, and crime than atheism. Atheism allows a person to hate, kill, torture, or steal, while allowing him to recuse himself of all blame. Atheism causes people to break the laws of ethics and morality for they have no God to answer to. The only morals they posses, if any, are those they pick and choose for themselves.

No Gods Solstice Sign

2009-12-23T12:35:00.002-07:00

This holiday season the Freedom from Religion Foundation will be, again, placing a sign upon the Illinois Capitol Hill. They originally placed the sign in 2008 as a response to a Nativity scene. The Foundation put up its first solstice display in 2008 in Springfield in response to the state's decision to allow a religious group to plant a nativity display in the Capitol. The state granted the

Tis The Season

2009-12-22T18:58:00.001-07:00

The holidays are here again. The stores are packed with shoppers, lights and decorations adore homes and buildings, I ritualistically listen to my Celtic Christmas CD, and atheists feel the need to let the ignorant masses know the “true” meaning of Christmas, wait, what? It always surprises me the number of atheist posters, bloggers, organizations, and groups who feel an incessant urge to

Will The Real Fundamentalist Please Stand Up

2009-11-29T16:26:00.002-07:00

This was posted on a forum I participate on. I think it sums up the current militant-atheist vs. religion debate quite well. Evangelizing Religious Person: "You're damned for rejecting the WORD OF GOD"!!!! Me: "You mean the Bible? I don't reject it, I just don't read it the same way you do. I read it to try and understand....". ERP: "DAMNED!!!! DAMNED i SAY"!!!!!! and then....

Live Intelligence Squared Debate

2009-11-29T12:19:00.012-07:00

There is a live debate going on right now that will most likely be very interesting. You can view it at the following link. http://www.intelligencesquared.com/live "Atheism is the new fundamentalism" In partnership with livestation.com, from 6.45pm (GMT) this evening, you will be able to watch online as Richard Dawkins, author of ‘The God Delusion’ and Professor A C Grayling, take on

Ray Comfort's Origin

2009-11-26T18:32:00.001-07:00

As many have heard last week roughly 100,000 copies of Ray Comforts edition of the Origin of Species were handed out to college students across the nation. The difference with his version is a few of the chapters have been removed, apparently due to cost restrictions on length, and a special “introduction” was added by Comfort. The introduction is essentially a diatribe on evolution. Originally

Finding Darwin’s God (Part 3)

2009-11-25T14:55:00.002-07:00

The book discussion I have been attending here at Purdue finished last week. You can view my previous two posts over this here and here. We finished Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God and had a final discussion over it. Here is a quick rundown. The beginning of the book Miller dedicates to discrediting various creationist arguments and gives a multitude of evidences and proofs for evolution.

PZ Myers Comes to Purdue

2009-11-12T18:47:00.001-07:00

The local Non-Theist Society had PZ Myers as a guest speaker today at CL 50. If you are not familiar with him he runs a very popular blog called Pharyngula and is a professor of biology. His talk was entitled A Few Things I’ve Learned from Creationists. Due to flight delays the talk started about 20 minutes late but no one seemed to mind. The basic structure of his talk was outlining several

Atheism 3.0

2009-10-28T14:23:00.000-06:00

Continuing with my previous post about the Rift Among Atheists is this opinion expressed by a poster on one of the religious discussion forums I participate on. From what I have been reading, both on that forum and in other places where the original npr article has come up, is that many atheists are dismissing these arguments on the basis that, they claim, the article is categorizing all

The Idea that Religion Rules Out Rationality

2009-10-25T14:36:00.000-06:00

Over at Friendly Atheist Jesse Galef wrote a post where a variant of the question “Could you date someone religious” is posed. This variant is “Could you date someone who could date someone who is religious?”, keep in mind this is from an atheist point of view. At first I thought this was a weird question. For when I pose the same question to myself from a theist point of view “Could I date

Who Killed Jesus?

2009-10-22T15:14:00.004-06:00

On my way to my Intro to Religion class today I came across a group standing on the Memorial Mall with a large sign that read "Who Killed Jesus". One of the people stopped me and asked if I would fill out a survey. I had heard about this group yesterday but was unaware they were continuing through today and tomorrow. I decided to stop and talk with one of them. Turns out they are a local

Finding Darwin’s God (Part 2)

2009-10-21T13:52:00.003-06:00

Today I attended the first in a series of book discussions on Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God. It is being held by the Religious Studies program and the Purdue Religion and Science Group. You can read more about the specifics from a post I wrote previously about the event. We met in the round discussion room on the top floor of Beering overlooking campus which was very nice. That was the

A Rift Among Atheists

2009-10-19T13:15:00.000-06:00

Over at the Thomas Society a link to an online article from npr was posted that I think very accurately describes a current transition within the atheist movement. The article is titled A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists. It describes a current rift among New and Old Atheists. The New Atheists being the ones who actively rely on ridicule to get their points across. This is something I have been

I Hate Religion Because...

2009-10-16T14:13:00.004-06:00

Yesterday a local student group, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, held and event titled "I Hate Religion Because...". They had a board set up for people to come and write down reasons they disliked, or hated, religion. I wish I would have had more time to actually stop and talk with the people who were holding the event but yesterday was fairly hectic for me. I only had time to briefly pause

Western Religion Partially Responsible for Secularization?

2009-10-13T23:30:00.002-06:00

As I referenced in my first post about An Atheist Defends Religion we have been going over Peter L. Berger's book The Sacred Canopy in my Introduction to the Study of Religion class. On Friday the professor went over a section in Chapter 5 about secularization. The basic idea is that Western Religion, particularly Protestantism, carried the "seeds of secularization within itself". I will try to

Finding Darwin's God @ Purdue

2009-10-13T13:32:00.000-06:00

The Purdue Religious Studies department is having a discussion of Kenneth Miller's book, Finding Darwin's God, on Wednesday Oct. 21. If you are unfamiliar with the book here is a quick editorial review off of Amazon. Though he takes a different tack than Wyller (above), Miller tries to draw a straight line between two apparently opposing ideas: the theory of evolution and belief in a creator. In

A Dissenting View About Blasphemy Day

2009-10-12T07:40:00.000-06:00

I stumbled across this article about the recent Blasphemy Day and thought it was well worth sharing. A Dissenting View About Blasphemy Day The celebrating of "Blasphemy Day" by the Center for Inquiry by sponsoring a contest encouraging new forms of blasphemy, I believe is most unwise. It betrays the civic virtues of democracy. I support the premise that religion should be open to the

Final Letter Over FSM Demonstration

2009-10-10T11:20:00.003-06:00

Another letter appeared in the Exponent yesterday about the FSM demonstration by the Non-Theists Society. Unfortunately the Exponent has a limit on the number of letters it will publish on any particular subject and this letter reached that limit. So there will be no more letters in the Exponent about this topic. It would be nice to have another forum of communication on campus for these kind of

An Atheist Defends Religion

2009-10-08T07:42:00.004-06:00

While browsing the religion section at my local Borders I noticed a new book I have never seen before, An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off with Religion Than Without It. The title stood out at me as it appeared to be differing from the norm of current titles dealing with religion. That being either atheists ranting about how religion is the root of all evil and theists are

Exponent Letter

2009-10-07T13:11:00.004-06:00

Looks like my letter to the Exponent was published after all. I guess they have stopped calling people for verification. Here is the link. http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=18127 There have been a series of letters on this topic in the paper over the past three days. Here are a few of them. http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=18125 http://

Blasphemy Day Posters

2009-10-05T13:20:00.003-06:00

The posters placed up during last weeks Blasphemy Day by the local Non-Theists student group have been placed online. Here are a few of them. The comment I left is in the center of the last poster shown bellow. You can view all the other posters, and there are quite a few, here.

Useful Religious Debate/Discussion Guidelines

2009-10-03T19:35:00.005-06:00

I have been participating in religious debates/discussions online now since I was a Senior in High School (2004). I have participated on boards that were staunchly conservative ChristianTM (if you don't know what ChristianTM means just say so in the comments and I will explain), and other forums reaching all the away across the religious spectrum to the board I currently participate on, which is

Blasphemy Day

2009-10-01T05:37:00.002-06:00

(This was originally part of my previous post but I thought it deserved its own separate post) I attended the NTS's Blasphemy Day that was held yesterday. I was able to stop by around three while walking home after finishing some homework. They had several poster sheets taped to the pillars of CL50 with markers available for people to write whatever they wanted to. I spent some time reading the

Letter To The Editor

2009-09-30T15:10:00.004-06:00

It seems the recent demonstration by the local Non-Theist Society on campus has stirred up a hornets nest. So far there have been three or four letters in the Exponent about the demonstration, some respectful, some not. I sent in a letter to the editor responding to the first of these, found here, written by Josh Phillips, and to the NTS as well. In case you did not click the link to Josh's

Criticism vs. Ridicule: Recent demonstration by local non-theist student group

2009-09-21T17:51:00.005-06:00