You're using the modified definition of "agnostic" that believers favor. We have no reason to accept that.
"Agnostic" literally means "I don't know." "Atheist" means "I don't believe." I don't know that gods are real, and I have no reason to believe they do.
No faith required.
When it comes to the Christian God, that's easy.
https://biblehub.com/judges/1-19.htm
The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron.
https://biblehub.com/1_kings/6-7.htm
In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.
While the Bible never says what was used to fix Jesus to the cross, tradition says it was three iron nails. There are two reasons why the account of the crucifixion is atypical of normal Roman executions: first of all, they didn't usually waste good iron nailing victims to their crosses. They tied them to the posts. Secondly, crucifixion victims normally took days to die of dehydration and suffocation, which is why the Romans did it that way. But Jesus allegedly died in hours, not days.
So clearly, Yahweh has a weakness to iron. I fear no gods I know how to kill.
A changing political mood among evangelicals has many believers imagining the end of the world differently than they used to.
Since the advent of the Trump era, the evangelical landscape has undergone rapid shifts, often in turbulent and dangerous directions. To be sure, there are still plenty of evangelical premillennialists out there faithfully waiting on the Rapture. But their sequestering, defensive posture is becoming outmoded. Remarkably, the most prominent and powerful new leaders—the ones dedicated to fully recentering evangelical politics on Donald Trump, and who have grown their power and influence through their association with him—are overwhelmingly anti-Rapture. They believe Christians have a more active and forceful role to play in the end of the world.
Do you think they’ll go away if Trump fails to take the White House?
These extremely online young Christian men want to end the 19th Amendment, restore public flogging, and make America white again.
They're using this to provoke challenges against the wall of separation between church and state. They feel confident, with good reason, that the christofascist majority on the Supreme Court will reinterpret our Constitution to eliminate that law.
The state is giving millions in taxpayer dollars directly to private schools to help them renovate and expand their campuses. It may be the next frontier in the push to increase the use of school vouchers, proponents say.
The march to theocracy continues.
Religious indoctrination doesn’t promote progress:
This paper studies when religion can hamper diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I examine Catholicism in France during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914). In this period, technology became skill-intensive, leading to the introduction of technical education in primary schools. I find that more religious locations had lower economic development after 1870. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw a slower adoption of the technical curriculum and a push for religious education. In turn, religious education was negatively associated with industrial development 10 to 15 years later, when schoolchildren entered the labor market.
Atheism doesn't mean I know there are no gods. I suspect there aren't, because religious claims about gods and reality don't stand up to scrutiny. The more excuses you have to make for why reality doesn't work the way you insist it should, the less inclined I am to believe you know what you're talking about. Arguing for a prime mover or appealing to consequences doesn't convince me either. I'm intellectually honest enough to say that I don't have concrete knowledge that there are no gods the way I know there's no money in my wallet, but not being able to prove there are no gods isn't enough for me to believe that there are. Wanting to believe there are gods is no more useful than wanting there to be money in my wallet. It's still a claim that requires validation, not a default assumption.
No it doesn't. The only reason I bother calling myself an atheist is because believers keep insisting I have to share their beliefs. If they didn't, I wouldn't need the label.
None. Atheism isn't a religion or philosophy. It's an answer to one question, and only one: do you believe in gods? The answer is "no."
Where we go from there is up to us.
I've read them, and I used to preach from them. When you read them critically rather than reverentially, Jesus was a dick.
Would you like to see some examples?
The canonical gospels, where thought crime is first introduced into the religion? Where the founder of the religion declares that everyone who doesn't agree with him is doomed to eternal torture? Are you sure that's an argument you want to make?
Roman poet Juvenal coined the phrase “bread and circuses” nearly 2,000 years ago for the extravagant entertainment the Roman Empire used to distract attention from imperial policies that caused widespread discontent. Imagine the lavish banquets,
There are a lot of good overviews of Project 2025 and the threat it poses to everyone who lives in America as well as beyond our borders. Here's a look at the Christian Nationalist intent behind it.
A look at Leonard Leo’s American theocracy
...pay attention to Leonard Leo. He is the judicial kingmaker responsible for the list from which Trump selected Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Leo has shaped this Court and acted effectively to keep its Republican justices from abandoning his – and their – sectarian-right vision of America.
Donald Trump's support from white evangelicals and other conservative Christians is as strong as ever.
We're not going to be able to fix these people. The only hope we have is to outlast them.
What an amazing display of privilege. It must be nice to live in a society where religious belief isn't being injected into the public and our government.
At one point in the deposition even Hecker became overwhelmed at the number of times with which he has been confronted with sex abuse allegations.
Just when you thought it was safe to back into the pew.
Johnson met evangelical leader of Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast before last week's press conference.
It should surprise no one that Dominionist Mike Johnson's change of heart on Ukraine was bought by suggesting to him that it could serve his religious agenda.
Well, this is unexpected, and details will be forthcoming. He was 82. I have lots of stories about Dan, and found him amiable and charitable, though sometimes he could be domineering, especially wh…
Daniel Dennett, philosopher, atheist, and one of the tongue-in-cheek "Horsemen" of atheism, died today. He was 82.
An Oklahoma man has been arrested after authorities accused him of throwing a pipe bomb at the headquarters of a group in Salem, Massachusetts, called The Satanic Temple.
Surveillance cameras showed a man walk up to the building soon after 4 a.m. on April 8 wearing a face covering, tactical vest and gloves, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI. The man then ignited an improvised explosive device, threw it at the main entrance then ran away. The bomb partially detonated, resulting in some minor fire damage, authorities said.
I am a journalist who has covered the Christian right for two...
FTA:
> The bottom line is that Christian nationalism takes on different forms, and despite organizational or even ideological differences, ideas can penetrate the often porous borders between different camps. Someone who receives the daily email blast from the Family Research Council might also be drawn to Wolfe’s book, for example. On a more unnerving, macro level, major right-wing and GOP figures, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and the CEO of the Daily Wire, the podcast consortium run by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro, have embraced the rabidly antisemitic, Hitler-admiring antagonist Nick Fuentes, who is Catholic but also is accurately described as a Christian nationalist. The increasingly influential Catholic integralist movement, which seeks a Catholic-inflected replacement for the “liberal order,” is yet another unique form of Christian nationalism.
Over the past month, I’ve been speaking with people who describe themselves...
...In 2022, Stephen Wolfe (no relation to William) published a book called “The Case for Christian Nationalism.” The book was published by Canon Press, a publishing house that began as a ministry of Wilson’s church. Stephen K. Bannon, the Trump adviser, reportedly had a copy of the book stacked on his table.
In the book, Wolfe lays out a vision that veers very far into the fantastic — he rails against the advancement of women over the past several decades by using the term “gynocracy,” and describes both the Obergefell decision and the 1965 immigration reform which abolished quotas on national origin as an “imperial imposition.” One chapter, called “The Christian Prince,” advocates for a “measured and theocratic caesarism.” Wolfe has suggested that he’s playing a somewhat coy game here, using “prince” to refer not necessarily to a monarch, but possibly to the aggregate form of American governmental power. Whatever it is, in his version of Christian nationalism the prince would promote “national self-love and a manly, moral liberty.”
Trump’s efforts to conflate Christianity with his cause, and to mobilize both on behalf of transphobic hate, are offensive to both church and state.
Pity the poor unseen majority who shove their religion in our faces every day. Won't someone think of them?
Phony claims that Democrats “mock your faith” are a cynical excuse to strip Americans of religious freedom
> It's easy to roll one's eyes as the self-serving dramatics of MAGA voters using false claims of victimhood as cover for their ugly views. But, as the threatening language in Greene's tweet shows, this "woe is us" act is deeply dangerous. The hyperbolic conspiracy theories and dehumanizing language serve to convince Republican voters that religious liberty and democracy are simply values they can no longer afford to hold. The message is Christians are so "under siege" that the only way to fight back is by stripping everyone else of basic rights.
T.Rex Arms sells gun accessories. According to one expert, "The product is ideology, too.”
They have money, they have influence, they have charisma, and they have technical expertise. And they're using to pursue a theocratic America, even if they have to kill anyone who gets in their way.
Hosts of The View were gobsmacked at news that Donald Trump is now selling bibles, with Sunny Hostin declaring it "blasphemous."
Could Trump's attempt to pander to evangelicals backfire? We can only hope.
Posted to Truth Social while Trump is in court: Received this morning—Beautiful, thank you! “It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you. But have you seen this verse…?” Psalm 109:3–8 (NKJV): They have also surrounded ...
One tweet illustrates the threat.
Minor nitpick: it was time to start worrying about Christian nationalism over twenty years ago. They've been trying to legitimize Christian nationalism since at least the founding of the "Moral Majority" when I was a boy. I've been trying to sound the alarm about Dominionism and Christian nationalism since the second Bush administration.
But if you're late to the game, fine. The second best time to start worrying about Christian nationalism is now.
Evangelicalese allows Trump’s MAGA supporters to hide their extreme positions in plain sight
A deep dive into the policies proposed in Project 2025 reveal the theocratic intent of its framers. Using language that evangelicals will recognize to hide its authoritarian intent demonstrates they recognize how unpopular these policies will be once implemented. But then it'll be too late.
Koch's reason.com. One of the most ironic site names in the history of the Internet.
Just because there are a few thousand people who still worship Norse gods doesn't mean the religion is thriving.
Yes, they're still making noise. If anything, they're making more noise than ever. But public sentiment is against them by a wide majority. Even a majority of Republican voters favor gay rights along with female reproductive rights. What we're seeing is the impact of a minority imposing its will on the majority, and it cannot last.
They're the dog that caught the car, but they can't keep it.
Who wants to voluntarily move into a slum?
It's not like new culture wars won't be started and fought just the same. But there was a time when slavery was the topic of a fierce culture war in the US, and it wasn't resolved until it broke out into a literal war. Now, nearly two hundred years later, it's still unacceptable to suggest that people who look different are better off as property rather than people. Even Florida's attempts to whitewash Southern slavery doesn't go so far as to blame the slaves weren't people.
They've lost this culture war, just as they lost the fight for slavery and later to keep the population segregated. They'll try again in time, but for the moment, the question of abortion and homosexual rights is largely settled at a cultural level. The conservatives lost, and that's why they've largely moved on to nitpicking the definition of gender and trying (unsuccessfully) to defend their legal victories on women's reproductive rights.
This is a perfect example of how liberalism enables fascism
Today I learned that being inclusive and working toward the betterment of all people instead of a privileged elite is fascism.
