The Bible is not a book of science, though the first Chapter of Genesis, as the nineteenth-century sociologist Max Weber points out, is the necessary prelude to science. It represents the first time people saw the universe as the product of a single creative will, and therefore as intelligible rather than capricious and mysterious.

Nature has no divinity. Indeed, in the Hebrew Bible, it became “undeified” as G. W. F. Hegel put it. Hegel observed (in lectures notes his students…

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“It is not something that happens because people miss-interpret the text; it is because they believe in them. That is the problem.”

~ Christopher Hitchens ~





Somehow stories contain the very soul of a people; when, for instance, American pastor Carol M. Noren meditated on the crossing of the Read Sea, saying that “God commands Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea,” and Moses obeys without hesitation, she infers the conclusion that, “Our Lord desires…

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Sylvester II – The Scientist Pope



He arose from humble beginnings as a monk to the papacy on account of his scientific knowledge, not in spite of it. In his day, the earth was not flat. People were not terrified that the world would end at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 999. Christians did not believe Muslims and Jews were the devil’s spawn.



The Church was not anti-science: just the reverse. Mathematics ranked among the highest forms of worship, for… Continue

 

For the past decade, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has stood at the forefront of new thought in the philosophy of Islam and its explanation, and Europeans have plenty to learn from her brave commitment to Enlightenment values – in the face of all that extremism.

 

Ali will…

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“All the gods of the pagans are demons"

~ Psalms ~



Dear Sons and Daughters of Ishmael:



As a former Muslim you have certainly read the Koran, and quite probably learned to memorize it in childhood.



So I have some questions:



1. According to the Koran it is blasphemy to call God “Father” or “Abba”?



2. Does the prophet Mohammad recognize God as Father?



3. What about the Holy Spirit? Is the Holy Spirit present in the Koran?…

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(And all my gratitude to Think Atheist - HAPPY 2011, Guys!)







It has been a really bad experience of drug-like intoxication with American religious fantasies which transmitted to other areas of knowledge transformed my life in an erratic and painful trip through the darkness of other people's hallucinations. But I have this one marvelous good which preserves me: I am not ashamed to learn history and I am very grateful to the ones who created web-sites like…

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