Yglesias, as is his infuriating gift, makes one of those points that seems glaringly obvious only after he’s said it. To wit: If you assume their goal is to persuade people to agree with them, the “New Atheist” strategy of being an enormous douchebag seems counterproductive. Since folks like Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett, even […]

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So, at some point you’ve probably seen that absurd clip of Kirk Cameron and some Aussie preacher arguing that the banana is “the atheist’s nightmare,” because its perfect adaptation to human food needs implies a divine creator. This would be a hopeless argument under any circumstances, of course. (Obvious first question: Then why aren’t all […]

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The Templeton Foundation has discovered that if you want to create the appearance of a lively exchange of divergent views, just ask a dozen people to answer a short question so insanely vaguely worded that you can be assured no two of them will actually be answering the same question. For instance: Does science make […]

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The Corner reports that, over the weekend, Bill Maher joked on a late night talk show that it is “schizophrenic” to “be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and […]

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Why, New York Times, why, if you’re going to give op-ed space to an atheist to discuss his views, would you decide to print two grafs that come off as whining followed by a sub-sophomoric attempt at refuting Pascal’s Wager? The Wager is an appallingly bad argument that should take about two sentences to dispense […]

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Per Atrios, I can’t shed many tears for Mitt Romney when people start highlighting some of the more unusual aspects of Mormon theology. I don’t think you get to say: “It’s vital, and crucially relevant to my qualifications for office, that I have a powerful set of guiding convictions… but never mind the actual contents […]

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Via Sullivan, it says something about contemporary politics that it’s sort of astonishing to hear a Republican candidate, Ron Paul, say something so mild and reasonable on the subject: We live in times of great uncertainty when men of faith must stand up for American values and traditions before they are washed away in a […]

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Andrew Sullivan notices a moment I’d missed in the recent Republican debate, in which Mike Huckabee is asked to clarify his views on evolution: At the first debate, he’d been one of three candidates to indicate he disbelieved in the theory. Huckabee rather unconvincingly tries to reframe his original response as really being about whether […]

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Well, this is just depressing. I had expressed puzzlement a few years back when Antony Flew, the British philosopher best known as an articulate defender of atheism, professed conversion to deism for what struck me as rather poor reasons. But hey, people change their minds for dubious reasons all the time, and I didn’t give […]

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From Marketplace today: Daniel Mitchell: A capitalist system without losses or bankruptcy is like religion without hell. Yes, I mean, who ever heard of such a thing?

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