**Remember to nominate candidates for the X-Mormon of the year.** I’ve seen people argue that — given the environmental/climate impact of wasteful consumerism — maybe we should have a war on Christmas. I have some sympathy for that position. All my life I’ve heard the cry to remember “the true…
Category: Atheism
Atheists: Less Crime, Less Vengeance, Less Racism
Check out this article in the LA Times about Secular Family Values and how great they are. It’s a few months old, but worth reading and relevant to many conversations held here. The conclusion will reassure many MSP readers: Being a secular parent and something of an expert on secular…
Some comments on my brother’s “Mormon Stories” interview
The Swiss post-mo club had a fantastic party yesterday — thanks friends!! — and the subject of the recent Mormon Stories interview with my brother (John Hamer) came up. I had linked to it for about a week in the “Exmo Radio” widget (until replacing it with a discussion of…
Points of agreement between atheists and Mormons
In my last SiOB, I highlighted a list of “things that both atheists and Mormons can largely affirm together” by Aaron Shafovaloff. Then Andrew S picked up the discussion and even attracted Aaron Shafovaloff himself to attempt to explain it. I had highlighted the list mostly because many of the…
Gregory Prince Doesn’t Care About Freethinker-People?!?
In the Fall 2011 issue of Dialogue (44:3), Gregory Prince interviews Shaun A. Casey about religion and presidential politics in light of his recently published book, “The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960.” Just one page in is this exchange: Prince: When was the religion of the…
Building on a Religious Background
The following is an article I wrote for the October / November 2011 issue of Free Inquiry (the magazine of the Council for Secular Humanism), reposted here with permission from the editors. The Oct/Nov issue is a special issue on Mormonism, and one other MSP regular also contributed to it….
In defense of religious ‘brainwashing’
Originally published at the USU SHAFT site. Ive enjoyed several of the videos produced by The Thinking Atheist. This video, however, should make them reconsider their (already rather smarmy) name. In the video, several atheists relate their Christian upbringing, which they now not-so-fondly remember as brainwashing. Dawkins has sometimes gone…
the necessity of religion?
I’ve read a number of articles and book chapters over the last month or so that have started to change the way I think about religion. After leaving Mormonism and becoming a secular humanist and atheist, I thought the superiority of my new views would be self-evident to anyone who…
LGBs and atheism
I just finished reading a two-volume set on atheism and secularity. There were a number of interesting findings in the books. I’ll probably post about a few more of them. But I’ll start with this one from p. 98: Whereas 62 percent of heterosexual respondents are believers, only 42 percent…
What happens when journalists don theology hats?
You get arguments like Lane Williams’s in the MormonTimes this morning. Williams begins by lamenting the fact that atheists occasionally receive media attention: Reporters have provided a great deal of attention to these atheists, stoking the controversy over the existence of God. Even if reporters had no purpose to question…