What it’s like to be a (liberal) Christian

July 27, 2010  
Filed under IRL, religion

I grew up in a liberal Congregationalist church. Officially, the church was part of two denominations, evidently denominations that didn’t care about the sort of thing. I like to tell people it was one step away from Unitarianism, which is funny, but basically true. I also like to tell people that it meant becoming an [...]

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Why not be a dick?

July 21, 2010  
Filed under religion, social and literary criticism

I’ve been hearing something about a Phil Plait talk that became a meme under the heading “don’t be a dick,” but didn’t feel informed enough to comment until I found a partial transcript of the talk. (HT: Jason Rosenau). I got thinking about this, and concluded that for such a commonsensical-sounding thesis, it’s amazing how [...]

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Carnivalia

July 21, 2010  
Filed under carnivalia

New Carnival of the Godless, Humanist Symposium, and Philosophy Carnival.

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Santa Claus, Thor, and God

July 15, 2010  
Filed under religion

I think most people, once they hear it, intuitively understand the thought “I stopped believing in God once I asked myself the question ‘if I don’t believe in Thor, why do I believe in the Christian God?’” I also think most people’s reasons for disbelieving in Thor aren’t fundamentally different than their reasons for disbelieving [...]

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Wow the Colgate Twins are dumb

July 13, 2010  
Filed under religion, stupidity

Recently, Ophelia Benson has been giving the Colgate Twins a bit of a hard time about the fact that they had banned her from commenting on their blog, while they let another commenter call her a liar for months and only banned him once they realized he had been engaging in sock puppetry to boot. [...]

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