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Atheists More Motivated By Compassion Than The Faithful?

The title for this article was swiped, word-for-word, from a Live Science press release. This is important because the point I wish to make has to do with how the press and publicity treat papers. HotAir.com featured another headline concerning the same paper: "Confirmed: Atheists more motivated by compassion in charitable giving than believers are". Now pause and consider just these two headlines, the only words of a story likely to be read by most folks. What would your conclusion be?... Read More

Varieties of (Non)Belief

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Filed under Belief

Atheism

NOTE: Today we share a guest post from one of our non-theist commenters, Paul Rimmer.     Does the world need another article on how to define atheism? Does Strange Notions? These questions had to open the article, in part because there have already been several different Strange Notions articles on how to define atheists, including the most recent article about self-identified atheists who believe in God. Yet here I am, talking about how to define the terms “atheist”, “theist”,... Read More

Do ‘Religiously Knowledgeable’ Atheists Believe in God?

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Filed under Atheism

A new Pew study has found that a majority of Americans (53%) say they would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate if that candidate self-identified as an atheist. Only 5% say that self-identified atheism would make them more likely to vote for a candidate. Perhaps Americans would think a bit differently if they knew about a secret that was hidden (until now) in the data for Pew's U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. Recall what the media focused on when this was data was released: Los... Read More

10 Atheists Who Engage Religion Charitably

David Bentley Hart is one of our foremost theologian-philosophers, an American intellectual treasure who has ransacked the thesaurus while writing books such as The Beauty of the Infinite, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?, and the recent The Experience of God. One of the things I enjoy about his writing is how he rightfully gives credit to Nietzsche for recovering the scandalous nature of Christianity. In The Beauty of the Infinite he goes as far as saying: "Nietzsche... Read More

From Atheism to Catholicism: An Interview with Jennifer Fulwiler (Video)

Jennifer Fulwiler

In Augustine's Confessions, the first Western autobiography ever written, we discover the probing journey of a brilliant man, traveling through a maze of philosophies before emerging into the light of Christianity. The destination brought him to tears for though he sensed Christianity to be true, it was the last place he expected to turn. Years later, when Oxford professor C.S. Lewis embarked on his own pursuit of truth, he too ended up at Christianity, converting with great hesitancy:... Read More

A Manual for Creating Atheists: A Critical Review

Since its release last November, Peter Boghossian’s A Manual for Creating Atheists has quickly become one of the most popular new books on atheism (as of now it has 200 reviews on amazon.com). As someone who has also recently written a book on atheism, though from a far different perspective, I was eager to see Boghossian’s method for “creating an atheist.” In this book review I’ll cover the good, the bad, and the ugly in A Manual for Creating Atheists. The Good   Surprisingly,... Read More

The Road from Atheism: Dr. Edward Feser’s Conversion (Part 1 of 3)

NOTE: Today we share the first part of Dr. Edward Feser's conversion story from atheism to theism. We'll post Part 2 this Friday and Part 3 on Monday. We'd also like to note that Dr. Feser's contributions at Strange Notions were originally posted on his own blog, and therefore lose some of their context when reprinted here. Dr. Feser explains why that matters.     As many friends and readers know, I was an atheist for about a decade—roughly the 1990s, give or... Read More

If Atheism Is True, Does Life Still Have Meaning?

Andrew Sullivan linked to my conversion story recently, and there’s been some interesting discussion in response. It was this particular part of my essay that generated the most controversy, and I can’t say I’m surprised: "If everything that we call heroism and glory, and all the significance of all great human achievements, can be reduced to some neurons firing in the human brain, then it’s all destined to be extinguished at death. And considering that... Read More

The Single Best Argument Against Philosophical Materialism?

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Filed under Atheism

A Dilemma for Materialists   In my experience, it's often difficult for my intelligent atheist friends to seriously consider arguments for the truth of Christianity. An argument from the resurrection of Jesus remains implausible because their worldview fundamentally excludes this sort of event. In light of this, I'd like to engage one popular form of this worldview, namely philosophical materialism. Thus here’s my dilemma for materialists: 1. Either subjective experience, in its... Read More

Vatican II on Atheism: A More Fruitful Dialogue

Welcome to the second post in my little series 'Vatican II on atheism'. As noted last time, according to at least one reputable commentator, the Council's primary statement on the subject "may be counted among [its] most important pronouncements". In future posts, we'll be looking at Gaudium et Spes 19-21, as well as the separate statement on salvation in Lumen Gentium 14-16, in some details. So - let's face it—we've all got plenty of exegetical fun to look forward to. This post,... Read More

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