Category Archives: Atheism
Militant Atheists and associated nonsense..
I see TED has stepped away from the Rupert Sheldrake talk at one if its TedX events.. Then Deepak Chopra and various folk object, etc – and we finally have a response HERE, that defends TED. I am not a great Fan of TED talks really, but they seem on the ball here. Whatever you think of […]
2011 Census – Religion Data available
The 2011 Religious Data from the Census is out.. See http://philosvids.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/2011-census-religion-data/ for a link… I am sure there is much more to say about it – The headline at the British Humanist’s website is: Census results show huge shift in cultural identity from Christianity to no religion. I will get round to it…
Death, Statistics, Happiness – what else?
[Apologies for the pics - having a bit of a meme-fest at the moment..] This post begin by considering some new stats, but ends up far away, considering some issues around death and happiness.. As many have noted, the Pew Forum report has given us some interesting stats about religion. I reblogged Per Smith writing […]
Atheism Plus. Or Not. Or Something Else..
UPDATE: See http://freethoughtblogs.com/blaghag/2012/09/goodbye-for-now/ - although I don’t (see below!) wholly agree with Atheism Plus, the harrassment Jen McCreight has had to put up with is totally uncalled for. It goes way beyond reasonable disagreement, and has often featured real, nasty misognyny. It reminds me of Laurie Penny’s piece about the huge abuse that women get online. I am very […]
Sartre, Human Nature and ‘kusala’…
I was re-reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 piece Existentialism Is a Humanism recently, as I headed off to explore existentialism with some 6th Formers locally. It was an interesting session, and not too doom-laden – I hope… What struck me though, on my -re-read, was the following passage: What do we mean by saying that existence precedes […]
Žižek and the challenge for 21st Century Atheism
Turns out May (on this blog at least) is Žižek month… I was reading an article (Slavoj Žižek, “The Fear of Four Words: A Modest Plea for the Hegelian Reading of Christianity,” in The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic, ed. Creston Davis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009) 27-28) where Žižek seems to touch on another of […]
Marmite Thinkers and Spiritual Rejections
As previous posts attest, I am an atheist. One who also rejects Spirituality. However, in some of my talks I have received flak for seeming to defend organised religion (while attacking disorganised religions). I am not sure I do so that much – but I do feel that some of the more positive fallouts of […]
Heathen atheists? Part 1…
As promised, I wanted to make some comments about Julian Baggini‘s article in the Guardian, his Heathen Manifesto. As I said in a previous post, I share much of his view that atheism is too often seen as arrogant, shouty and aggressive. That doesn’t mean that this is true of all, or even that many, […]
Heathen Manifesto? Is this what we need?
In a recent article in The Guardian, Julian Baggini wrote what he called his ‘heathen manifesto’. These 12 rules for heathens were his way of trying to go beyond the view of atheists as militant extremists with whom it is pointless to enter into debate. Back in September 2011, Julian wrote about a ‘stalemate’ in […]
