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Cosmology, Religion, and Reason: Part 3

Cosmology, Religion, and Reason: Part 3

This is part three of a series. Part one is here. Part two is here. Part four is here. Part five is here. Last post, I talked about the problems with adopting a literal approach to religions’ claims. As alternatives to the literal approach to religious teachings, I listed four reasonable approaches to religious claims beyond just relying on statements from purported authorities: 1) the gaps approach; 2) the symbolic approach; 3) the rejection approach; and 4) the practical approach….

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Cosmology, Religion, and Reason: Part 2

Cosmology, Religion, and Reason: Part 2

This is part two of a series. Part one is here. Part three is here. Part four is here. Part five is here. Last post, I talked about the great benefits that have come from religion, but also about how many of the great religions’ cosmological claims have been proven false. In this post, I’ll talk about the problem with adopting a literal approach to religions’ claims. Much of what our ancestors believed about cosmology is plainly contradicted by what…

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Cosmology, Religion, and Reason: Part 1

Cosmology, Religion, and Reason: Part 1

This is part one of a series. Part two is here. Part three is here. Part four is here. Part five is here. Over the tens of thousands of years of human existence, human cultures have developed much knowledge about creating and maintaining good relationships and building communities. In the development of human society over the last 100,000 years, humans moved from simple hunter-gatherer tribes to societies of increasing complexity and size. The large and complex societies of the last…

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Meet the 18 non-Christian American presidents

Meet the 18 non-Christian American presidents

Over at GNXP, Razib Khan points out the errors1 some media commentators have made when they’ve claimed that if Mitt Romney wins the 2012 presidential election, he would be the first non-Christian president in the United States, or at least the first president outside of “orthodox” Christianity.2 3 Razib points out that this is simply not true – we have had non-Christian presidents before, and cites President Taft (a Unitarian) as an example. Well, as it turns out, we have…

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Believers vs. Non-believers: Everyone Gets it Wrong

Believers vs. Non-believers: Everyone Gets it Wrong

A friend of mine shared the following video on Facebook, as if it were by itself a damning attack on religious belief: I think that the research summarized in the video is fascinating, but the video’s creator commits a huge logical fallacy that really undermines its conclusion. The psychology experiments described in the video explain quite well about group dynamics and how we form opinions, but they tell us nothing about how we should react to the majority opinion of…

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How Can We Find Truth? – Part 5

How Can We Find Truth? – Part 5

Note: This is part 5 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats).   Conclusion Recent history has led to radical changes in how we…

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It’s Getting Better All the Time

It’s Getting Better All the Time

I frequently hear people say that they think the world is getting more evil and more dangerous. But the statistics show that, in most ways, over the last few decades life has been getting better for most people, and violence and crime are decreasing in meaningful ways for most people. Let’s talk about some of the many ways in which the world is getting better. Let’s start with the most evil things in many religions: murder and abortion: Murder, violence,…

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