Review: Hell Is The Absence of God

Permit me to geek out a bit.

This past year, the movie Arrival hit theaters. I am an admitted geek with a particular weakness for time travel, linguistics and alien science fiction. So this movie was like crack cocaine for me. After watching…

Graceful Atheist

Jan 19, 2017

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

Linda LaScola over at the Rational Doubt blog asked me a series of insightful questions trying to get at what precipitated not just my deconversion but my willingness to listen to my doubts in the first place. I failed miserably at trying to answer her…

Graceful Atheist

Jan 16, 2017

Review: Doubt: A History

I have just finished Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: A History. It has been around for some time but as I am new to atheism it is new to me. I would suggest this is an extremely important book for modern atheists to provide perspective on where we have come from and direction on where…

Graceful Atheist

Dec 11, 2016

I Am Not A Piano Key: Thoughts on Consciousness

Does consciousness require a soul?

In Notes From The Underground Dostoyevsky’s underground man character is pitiful, spiteful and loathsome. Naturally, I relate to him very much. In the book the underground man is railing…

Graceful Atheist

Dec 6, 2016

You are not broken, you are human

As time passes and my deconversion is further and further in the rear view mirror, I find it more and more difficult to remember how or why I once believed certain things without questioning. Christians might say this is because I have distanced myself from god and I am…

Graceful Atheist

Nov 26, 2016

What if I grant you that?

Since my deconversion and becoming an atheist I am particularly interested in engaging Christian apologists. During my Christian faith I was always fascinated and somewhat uncomfortable with apologetics. Reading apologists I began to realize the arguments tended to have fatal flaws…

Graceful Atheist

Nov 17, 2016

Is it just that I had the wrong image of god?

Tripp Fuller, a progressive theologian, recently put into words on the God Debacle an evasive tactic I used to be guilty of and something I have heard over and over again now that I am an atheist.

When talking to…

Graceful Atheist

Nov 12, 2016

The Beginning of Religion is Death

Philosophy of religion has much to say about the origins of religion. Under no compunction to accept religious claims as fact, philosophy of religion can look at the root causes. In vernacular terms, the explanation tends to be that religion evolved due to early…

Graceful Atheist

Nov 5, 2016

You keep using that word I do not think it means what you think it means

Recently I have noticed in the twitterverse a number of theists arguing some variation of the following:

Atheism takes as much faith as theism

Graceful Atheist

Oct 21, 2016

Secular Grace

Secular humanism has a ways to go to catch up to religious organizations in regards to building community and facilitating deep human connection. Religions have had centuries and sometimes millennia to fine tune their strategies. Some of their strategies have been manipulative and others have been…