"My friends joke that I am a coconut: brown on the outside, but white on the inside." - Alom Shaha, The Young Atheist's Handbook.

I wrote a post fairly recently for the Rationalist Association's blog (soon set to be in New Humanist…

"I find it astonishing and depressing that many people who lead their lives according to the ideas and rules laid down in these books have not read them" - Alom Shaha, The Young Atheist's Handbook.

You may have guessed it, but faith often has a lot to do with religious belief. Strip even the most 'educated' theological argument down to its core, and what you're often left with is 'we just don't know - therefore God'.

The 'we…

It was a simple question…

But then this happened:

(At least chickens have an excuse, eh?)

I learnt a lesson that day:…

"I once met a Texan who bragged that he had only ever read one book from cover to cover: the Bible" - Alom Shaha, The Young Atheist's Handbook.

I've read the Bible; and if I'm honest, the prospect of having it come along with me, by default, to a celebrity/music-filled island is, to say the least, a little disappointing.

Don't get the reference? I'll explain... Desert Island…

"Despite not believing in God, and not believing in an afterlife where I might be rewarded or punished for my behaviour, I try to be a good person. That's the most any of us can do." - Alom Shaha, The Young Atheist's Handbook.

It's a favourite argument of the Theists: 'How can you be good without God?'

Even supposedly 'enlightened' Theologians (mean?) like William Lane…

For all practical purposes, I am an Atheist. I lack belief in a God (or gods).

It is that, and only that, with which I can confidently say that I share with other Atheists. We're a diverse group.

While there certainly are trends, we're all…

"Nothing that has happened in my life since [I learned of my mother's death], nothing I believe and nothing I know, can provide consolation. This is why I suspect that I am in some way predisposed not to believe in God, because God is the only thing that could have provided solace... If I had felt that there was an afterlife, believe me, I would have killed myself then and there to join her." - Alom Shaha, The Young Atheist's…

Disclaimer: I may not necessarily wholeheartedly stand by everything written below, but it's not like I'm not allowed to poke fun once in a while...

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It doesn't take long on the internet, or in real life, to come across this old chestnut:

'Atheists are so full of themselves, thinking they're right all of the time... So much smug certainty, so much confident piss-taking, so much inconsiderate hate-speech I can't help but…

One argument that I tackled in an earlier post was the fine tuning argument. I thought about it for a while, and I thought of one of my interests: Astronomy. I realized that there are thousands of galaxies and millions of stars and planets out there. So are we really "fine tuned"? Why us and not any one of the other millions of planets? Why haven't we found life on other planets? For those of you who do not know much about cosmology or astronomy there is a certain Goldilocks zone that a…

I have always been a humanist, really. But it’s only recently that I've made the effort to ‘get involved’ with humanism more actively.

At my secondary school I now run an ‘Asking Questions Club’ – “a space to discuss, with rationality, empiricism, and all-round critical thinking in mind”, reads the poster, “absolutely everyone welcome” – which has been going well.

More and more, I am also making the effort to attend lectures, talks,…

The other day, I got a question from a friend...

"Did you really say that you 'respect people too much to respect their beliefs', or something?"

So here's how that went (more or less):

"I did, yes. Kind of." I replied, grinning. "It's a quote from a guy called Johann Hari actually; 'I respect you as a person too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs' is what he said, I…

I am sure that most of you, weather you be Atheists of Theists have heard a whole lot about God's Will. This is thrown out like verbal diarrhea every time that someone dies or a natural disaster occurs. I have often questioned why people are so quick to say that a kid that gets caught in the crossfire of a gang shooting received a "gift" and that it was God's Will that she get shot and killed in a park. How is that a gift? What proof is there that she is in a better place? Who are you to…

To what extent can a religious believer actually argue their faith, reasonably? Not very far, it seems to me.

There are two quantities to consider here, by which all human beliefs can relate back to: Faith and Evidence.

Let's look at the first. Faith, by its very definition, is 'belief without evidence'. It is a gut feeling, and it cannot be proven wrong. Why? Because, for…

You'll likely all have heard this argument at some point. It's a classic.

Outlined rather well by http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm, it goes something like this:

"(1) Person X, a well-known atheist, was morally inferior to the rest of us.

(2) Therefore, God exists."

It's just poetic, isn't it?

So... Assuming Hitler was an…

"I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist." - Bertrand Russell

Atheism, I find, is often misunderstood. To a significant number of people, it is seen as a firm belief that God does not/cannot exist - meaning it's 'just as bad' as religion itself. This is wrong.

Calling Atheism a belief…

I know I do it too often, but to start I feel the need to quote Tim Minchin, yet again. On the very real divide between faith and science, he has this to say:

"Science adjusts it's beliefs based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."

Not…