Are Babies Atheists?

For a long time, the word "atheism" has been defined as the view that there is no God--i.e., the claim "God does not exist." More recently, some atheists have begun to define atheism as simply a lack of belief in the existence of God. On this view, a person would be an atheist if he thought there is no God, thought it unlikely that there is a God, or didn't know if there is a God. Simply not agreeing with the claim "There is a God" would make you an atheist. Some atheists have claimed... Read More

Is Atheism a Religion? Let’s Ask What We’re Asking

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today's post from atheist blogger Chana Messinger continues a series here at Strange Notions on whether atheism is a religion. Be sure to read the past articles by Jimmy Akin (Is Atheism a Religion?) and Stephen Bullivant (Atheist Religions?).     I have been asked to provide the atheist perspective on the question of whether atheism is a religion or can be reasonably called one, and so I shall, primarily in response to Jimmy Akin’s piece, “Is Atheism a Religion?” I... Read More

Do Atheists Really Have Higher IQs than Believers?

Some atheists maintain their non-belief comes through superior intelligence. In particular, many online atheists like to quote, “A fool says in his heart there is a God.” He reads only those sources which confirm and conform to his view and eschews those which do not. And he isn’t shy about telling you how dumb it is not to believe as he does. But consider: nearly all the greatest, best, highest, most beautiful minds that ever existed were theists. Aristotle? Augustine? Confucius?... Read More

Do Atheists Have Faith?

“It takes more faith to disbelieve in God than to believe,” according to some Christian writers. That’s a rather dramatic and cheeky claim. I’m sure that, for some individuals, who feel powerfully convinced of the existence of God, that claim is true: For them it would be harder to disbelieve than to believe. But that’s not the way it is for everyone. The people who make the claim are on solid ground, though, in supposing that atheism involves a leap of faith. For a very large... Read More

Atheist Religions?

  Jimmy Akin recently wrote a post here at Strange Notions asking "Is Atheism a Religion?". The following doesn't engage with Jimmy's post directly—that's what the combox is for—but it does offer a rather different (and fairly blunt) answer to the question. It then tackles what I think is a more helpful question: is there, or could there be, a modern western atheistic religion? Is atheism a religion?   Let us deal with the question quickly: atheism is not and could... Read More

Is Atheism a Religion?

At first, the claim that atheism is a religion might sound ridiculous. It certainly can be a surprising claim. And it’s one that many people, including western atheists, might initially dismiss out of hand. But there’s more to the story here. There is a case to be made that, in a very real sense, atheism is a religion.   A Word About Words Words mean what people use them to mean. So whether atheism counts as a religion will depend on how you use the term “atheism” and how... Read More

If Atheists Want a Creed, They Ought to Have One

In Florida, some atheists, peeved that a monument to the Ten Commandments could not be protested out of existence, are planning to erect their own monument, celebrating their beliefs: A small city in heavily Christian northern Florida is about to become home to the first public monument in the United States dedicated to atheism.   Florida members of American Atheists, a national advocacy group, plan to erect a 1,500-pound granite display in front of the Bradford County Courthouse... Read More

Interview with Atheist Blogger Chana Messinger

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Chana Messinger, a popular atheist blogger who has written before here at Strange Notions. Chana is a recent graduate of the University of Chicago with a BA in mathematics. She was the president of the University of Chicago Secular Alliance for two years, a Speaker at the 2011 Secular Student Alliance Conference, a panelist at the 2012 Skepticon Conference, and a speaker at the 2013 Chicago Skepticamp and at Chicago Skeptics. She describes herself... Read More

Foolishness!

In the Bible, Psalms 14 and 53 both open with the statement: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’” Whatever this may tell us about unbelief in ancient Hebrew society, today it is not only, or predominantly, fools who are saying this. And they do not restrict their utterances to their hearts alone. Especially in the United States and Europe—the historic heart of “Christendom”—there are large (and growing) numbers of intelligent, educated, reasonable people... Read More

(Video) Interview with Atheist Blogger Bob Seidensticker

Bob Seidensticker is a popular atheist blogger at Patheos whose blog is titled "Cross Examined". There he critiques intellectual arguments for of Christianity from an atheist perspective. He wrote a guest post recently at Strange Notions titled 10 Reasons to Just Say Nay to the Naysayer Hypothesis. After graduating from MIT in 1980, Bob designed digital hardware and worked at a number of technology companies from a 10-person startup to Microsoft and IBM. After that, he began to focus more... Read More

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