It must be a terribly confusing time to be a member of the Vatican hierarchy. In an effort to stem the accelerating exodus of Catholic laypeople, they've been cracking down on suspected heretics left and right - on nuns who help the poor too much, on priests who want to change the rules of ...
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Author Archive for Adam Lee
Just a quick note: In the past few days, I've had several complaints about the auto-playing video ads on the right sidebar. Rest assured, I find them just as annoying as you all do. I've written to the management at Big Think, and I've had assurances that they've already been changed so that the ...
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In a previous post about debating on Twitter, I wrote that I conduct most debates these days through the Socratic method. I find this more effective than arguing by assertion, since believers can reply to that with the standard apologetic counter-assertions, most of which they can reel off without ...
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For a mental health break, this weekend I wanted to write about something extremely cool: 3D printing, an emerging technological trend that's been covered by, among others, the Telegraph, the Economist, PC World, as well as right here at Big Think's IdeaFeed.
As opposed to traditional ...
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I've just finished reading Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, an extraordinary book that I think deserves wider attention. I want to write a full review, but this book is far too vast (696 pages!) and too broad in scope to do it justice in a single post, so I plan to split my review ...
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The Secular Coalition for America has hired a new executive director, and their choice is going to raise some eyebrows: Edwina Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and attorney with a long history of supporting conservative causes. Among other things, she's worked as an advisor to George W. Bush's ...
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As I mentioned earlier, I'll be speaking at the Secular Student Alliance's 2012 national convention in Columbus, Ohio over the July 4 holiday weekend. The conference schedule has now been posted, and I'm one of the Saturday night keynote speakers!
For the occasion, I'm debuting a brand-new talk ...
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Last week, the blogosphere was in an uproar over a sermon given by a North Carolina pastor, Sean Harris, who seemingly advised parents to beat their children if they show any signs of being gay or otherwise not following traditional gender norms:
"Dads, the second you see your son dropping ...
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Last week, as you've no doubt heard, Dan Savage gave a speech to a national convention of high school journalists in which he criticized Christians' use of the Bible to excuse mistreatment and discrimination aimed at gays. This spurred a walkout by a small group of Christian students who were in ...
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My friend Sarah Moglia has written an essay, titled Why I Don't Call Myself a Skeptic, that's been making waves in the atheist blogosphere. She's got a thought-provoking argument with which I agree in part and disagree in part, and I thought I'd share my reaction to it.
But first, let me echo ...
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These days, one of the blogs where I spend the most time commenting is Leah Libresco's Unequally Yoked on Patheos. This isn't just because its author has a unique and interesting perspective unlike any I've seen elsewhere, but also because there's a lot more give-and-take between atheists and ...
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(Author's Note: The following review was solicited and is written in accordance with this site's policy for such reviews.)
Summary: A surprising, welcome reminder that atheism has a long and storied history in the U.S.
Letters from an Atheist Nation, edited by Thomas Lawson, is a compilation ...
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This Saturday, April 28, is the date for a collective movement of nationwide marches and rallies, organized by UniteWomen.org and backed by a national coalition of non-profit organizations, the Center for Inquiry among them. I wanted to write a bit about what motivated this and what's at stake ...
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Once again, I've gotten enmeshed in a debate on Twitter. This time it wasn't with a theist, but with two atheists, Daniel Loxton and Reed Esau. It started with these two posts, which I happened to overhear:
I'd support a focussed movement to counter bigoted "atheists as hostile outsiders ...
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My latest column is now up on AlterNet, Apocalypse Soon: Why Are Christians So Obsessed With the End Times? In it, I trace the long and ignoble history of failed apocalypse predictions in Christianity: from Harold Camping's infamous pratfall last year all the way back to prominent colonial and ...
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Back in January, I wrote about Jessica Ahlquist's court victory over an illegal "School Prayer" banner in her high school in Cranston, Rhode Island. That was almost the end of the story, but since then, there have been a few further developments.
In February, following a tumultuous hearing, the ...
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