On December 19th, I took an invitation from some McKinney Texas residents to speak at their next school district meeting. One of their children was bothered about all the religious symbols in her classroom, and wanted her parents to do something about that. The parents were already concerned that their school district held meetings in […]
Ending My State Senate Run
For the last three elections in my senate district, Democrats have had no candidates. There has only been a Republican running uncontested. Well, there was a Libertarian once, but they’re like Republican-lite, and he only got about 10% of the vote. So following Bernie’s advice, I decided to run just so it wouldn’t be like […]
What Does It Mean To Be Presidential?
Someone recently asked me what criteria I would consider to objectively evaluate Trump as a good president. This is my answer. What is a good president? One who seeks diplomatic solutions instead of immediately and repeatedly threatening nuclear war. Should I stop there or keep going? Let’s add that it should be someone who knows […]
Where I’ll be in October 2017
On Monday October 16th, I’ll be in Raleigh North Carolina talking to Triangle Free Thinkers about Why We Wanted to Believe. On Saturday, October 28th, I’ll be in Fresno California, talking to Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics about Promoting Rationality in a World of Alternative Facts. I’ll also be at the Speakers’ breakfast […]
We’re in California on Sept 23rd – 24th
Just a heads up where we’ll be this weekend. My wife, Lilandra Ra will be speaking to Riverside Atheists and Free Thinkers in Riverside California on Saturday Sept 23rd. Coincidentally that’s the same day that the world is supposed to end again, according to yet another dubious prophesy. Hopefully someone out there will have a big […]
13 questions that don’t even challenge evolution
Brett Keane is one of those people who says he was once an atheist but has since embraced religion. I’ve met a few such people, though none of them have ever been able to provide any reason why they (or I) should believe there’s a god. Keane says that he and I had spoken back when […]
To Billy in Fullerton
When I spoke at the Freethought Alliance Symposium in Fullerton, California a couple weeks ago, there was some misguided superstitious believer there handing out home-made pseudoscience pamphlets. The poor guy, (let’s just call him Billy) was citing deceitful propaganda mills like DarwinIsDead.com and the convicted fraud known as “DrDino”, as well as his own website, […]
ReDefining Faith
In my previous post, I listed just a few of the many authoritative/definitive secular and sectarian sources explaining that faith is “a firm belief that is not based on evidence”. That’s what the consensus of dictionaries, sermons, hymns of pastors past and present, every single former theological scholar to have since discarded faith and all […]
Defining Faith
This last weekend, I participated in the Gateway to Reason conference in St Louis, Missouri. One of the speakers there was John Loftus. He’s an author of religious philosophy with a bachelor’s degree from Great Lakes Christian College, a Master of Divinity degree from Lincoln Christian University, and a Masters of Theology degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity […]
The Largest Gathering of Ex-Muslims in History
Since at least October, I had been planning to attend the International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression in London this month. It was called “the Glastonbury of Freethinkers”. I gather that Glastonbury is to the Brits what Woodstock is to Americans. This looked like the event to attend! There were so many speakers! […]