Anyone who follows this blog (there aren’t many of you) has probably noticed posts have been sporadic for the last year, at best. I haven’t been showing this site the care or attention that I ought to, so I’m shutting it down. I’m going to leave the site up for archival purposes, but when the domain expires I’m not going to renew it.

When I started this blog nearly 3 years ago, it was because of a conversation I was having with a preacher. I issued him a challenge: assuming I already believed in some kind of higher power, convince me to embrace Christianity.

At the time, I was not very religious but I was very open minded about the possibility of a religion being true. I was still wrestling with doubt and unbelief. I was seeking the truth: some kind of definitive answer about religion. I began a journey: reading many books, some by atheists and some by religious apologists. I wanted to develop my stance on religious belief; I wanted to turn it from an “I’m not sure what I believe…” into a “I’m comfortable believing…” and I started the blog to invite other people who valued logic and reason to come along for the ride.

Over the past 3 years, I’ve developed my positions on religion and faith into something pretty solid. I’ll never stop questioning, and I’ll never stop searching for answers, but I no longer feel as though I need to fill some kind of hole. I’m comfortable with what I now believe. It could change at any time based on new information or good arguments, but I no longer feel the need to seek that information and those arguments out.

Unfortunately, this means that the journey no longer exists, and therefore neither can this blog.

I just wanted to thank everyone who found this site, and especially thank everyone who made comments and participated in the discussion. Whether or not I agreed or disagreed with you when it was all over, I was in some way shaped by the conversation, and I imagine other visitors have been as well. Thank you for the ride.

(This review crossposted from Goodreads)

Christopher Hitchens, author of “God is Not Great” has assembled something of a bible for atheists. There are many similar books out there, often with names like “The Atheist Bible,” and all of them essentially set out to create a collection of inspirational writings about nonbelief.

Many of these have a humanist slant, or a morality slant, or a stress on the logic and reason of nonbelief. Hitchens, however, seems far more slanted in favor of criticism of religion. Most of the writings he has selected for his compilation criticize religion for its various failings.

Now, before I say what I thought about this book, I want to say a bit about my beliefs. I’m not a particularly religious person. I am usually reluctant to use the word “atheist” because that word’s definition differs between people so greatly that using it does little more than fail to communicate anything useful to others. The word I prefer is “nonreligious” as it correctly conveys that I do not adhere to any organized religion or dogma. I am largely open minded but remain skeptical, and I demand evidence to prove things true before I accept them as fact.

I have read Dawkins’s “The God Delusion”, Harris’s “The End of Faith”, and Hitchens’s “God is Not Great” and I found all three to be excellent books, which I would rate and recommend highly (though of the three, I found Harris’s to be the most disappointing).

You would expect, then, that I would find a great deal to enjoy in this book. However, you would be wrong.

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Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, has been taking a lot of criticism lately.

I’m actually quite glad to see this, though I have not yet read Outliers (and very well may not).

I was not a reader for quite some time. I had grown up reading horror and sci-fi fiction but at some point in my life I got extremely bored with all of it, and assumed that I had just tired of reading in general. I didn’t read a book for years after I made this realization.

Then, in my twenties, I heard a lot of great things about a book called ‘Freakonomics‘ and decided to give it a shot. I picked it up before a long flight, expecting to read a few pages until it helped me fall asleep on the plane (I always fall asleep on planes, no matter the duration).

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When I started this blog, the goal was to use it to come to a better understanding of my own religious beliefs. The first 10 posts on the blog were a conversation I had with a preacher who was trying to convince me to embrace Christianity.

It’s a few years after I started the blog, and I’ve come to some pretty set conclusions about my own religious beliefs. This is not to say that I am unwilling to change those beliefs, but once upon a time I was very actively “searching” for religious answers and I no longer am. I am always searching for the truth in matters, but the religious search no longer holds an especially strong weight against other things I study.

Since my ’search’ is now in the back of my mind rather than the front of it, the sorts of philosophical concepts that powered this blog in the beginning no longer come to me at random times during the day. Instead, those thoughts are inspired by the books I read.

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(This review crossposted from Goodreads)

This book starts as a simple biography of George Tenet, director of CIA during part of the Clinton and Bush administrations, but it becomes much more.

Detailing operations at CIA in the years prior to, during, and after 9/11, the book provides valuable insight into a world that the average person simply has to access to.

The Good

The book is extremely interesting. George Tenet gives us far more than a tome of facts, he provides an actual narrative where he is the main character. The book talks not only about CIA, but people he knew and worked with, how he felt about events, and conversations he had with members of various presidential administrations.

The book does an excellent job of sucking you in. It starts a bit slow, but after a few chapters Tenet really hits his stride, and the book becomes difficult to put down.

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On a theist friend’s blog, I got into a discussion with him about the existence of God.

He tried to formulate an argument that God MUST exist, essentially using a more detailed version of the typical cosmological argument (everything that is must have a cause, therefore the universe has a cause and it’s God).

His argument relied on the premise that, before the universe existed, there was no such thing as time.

I am reminded of that discussion as I read this article.

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Recently I had the pleasure of reading I Sold My Soul on eBay on a long car trip. The book is written by Hemant Mehta. I found out about the book by reading the Friendly Atheist blog, maintained by Mehta. I saw on his site that he had written a book, and since I liked many of his blog posts, I decided to check it out.

When I went to the bookstore, I figured they would not have the book. I had never heard of it outside of the blog, and I had never encountered it on the bookshelves whenever I would browse for new books to read. I figured it was one of those self-published sorts of books that you have to order online. It turns out, however, that the book WAS in my local Borders. The reason I had never seen it was exactly the thing that made it so interesting: It was in the Christian section.

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Nearly every “Religion vs. Nonreligion” debate in which I participate ends the same way. At some point, the pro-religion arguer eventually declares that logic isn’t an appropriate tool for uncovering the truth about the nature of their favorite god. They usually will suggest you read their particular holy book and pray to their particular god to convince you.

This just happened in the comments of another post on this blog.

This is always a frustrating point in the conversation, for a number of reasons. One of the most important reasons is that it kills the conversation instantly. We’re having a debate, which means we are following logic and reason in a discussion. When you throw those out, there’s no longer a road for the conversation car to stay on. Furthermore, I’m obviously not going to go read your book and pray to your favorite god. You have to convince me there may be value in doing so - that’s the point of the conversation. The people that make this conversation-killing suggestion would be unwilling to go read the Satanist bible and pray to Satan - but somehow their favorite book warrants this tremendous waste of time.

Yet, as frustrating as this is, I COMPLETELY AGREE.

A believer cannot convince a nonbeliever through evidence, reason, and logic. What they are suggesting is faith, which is at odds with reason. What they are suggesting is not supported by evidence - if it was, everyone would agree on it. The reality is, telling someone to read a book and pray really is the BEST thing a believer can say to a nonbeliever, because logic and reason simply aren’t going to do it.

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As I’ve mentioned on the blog before, I grew up Christian, going to church many times per week and reading the bible regularly. I was very devout, and bought into the whole thing. But early on, even while Christian, I developed a specific problem with the concept of prayer.

Someone in a comment on the last post asked about my experience with prayer, so I will answer him by detailing my childhood experiences with the topic.

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Recently, Dinesh D’Souza debated Christopher Hitchens. Though the media/blogging community is making it out to be as though this debate was a typical Atheist vs. Christian debate about the existence of God, that’s NOT how the debate was framed. It was framed as “Is Christianity The Problem?”

This title is a response to Hitchens’ book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisions Everything”, as well as various speeches Hitchens has given, blaming Christianity for many of the world’s problems.

I’ve read the book, and I feel that the claim many make about it is false. Many claim that the book is about all of the evils that have been done in the name of religion, concluding that religion is therefore bad. The title of the book actually supports the notion that this is what the book is about, but the contents of the book do not.

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