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What I'm reading now:
The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture
God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman
The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel W Ray
Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life (this is excellent. Well written and fascinating. Highly recommended)
God Is Not Great (Hitchens is extremely erudite but I agree with him a lot here. Excellent so far)
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Listening to the audio version. Excellent!)


What I just finished:
Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language
Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Recommended. The first half is a great read. Thorough and detailed but easy to understand.)
Letting Go of God (I listened to the audio version. It was poignant and funny. Highly recommended!)
His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) (best trilogy I've ever read!)

Series

Happy Atheist Love

Conversations With christians - Beth 5 - Around Again!

loljesus_children_go_to_hellHey everyone! Beth is back for more! I just got her email a bit ago, which is not really good timing. My parents are getting here tomorrow about the time that I get up, so I really don’t have any time to reply in detail. But that shouldn’t stop you from commenting or emailing replies to heavingdeadcats@gmail.com. I’ll be happy to incorporate your replies into the post as well as my reply to her. I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round here!

Here is the email in its entirety. She is replying to my statements (from Conversations With christians 4a) which are not in block quotes:
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Whether you agree to the label or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t make it any less true. What history and science resources are you looking at to come to these conclusions? How are you so sure that [...]

Conversations With Craig The Christian 2 – Biblical Interpretations and A Logical Fallacy

atheist-cat-sees-no-evidence

Remember Craig the christian from last month? He emailed me yesterday about the recent post I wrote: Cherry-Picking and a bible Lesson for Atheists. I’ll quote his email and then post my replies.

Craig said: I do not have a problem with your use of the Skeptic’s Bible per se. The issue I have with the Skeptic’s Bible is the use of the King James Bible, which relies on later documents for its translation (8th and 9th century if I remember correctly) as opposed to the 1st and 2nd century documents other translations use (NRSV & NET to name a few).

Neece’s reply:
If you know of a more accurate interpretation of the bible that I can link to online and read online, can you link me? Otherwise I’ll stick to the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. Because it’s the one [...]

Belief, Unbelief and The Scientific Method

bullets are real. your god is not.Yesterday I wrote a post called the Burden of Proof Lies With The Claimant in which I talked about the burden of proof and who is responsible for it, namely the person making the claim or complaint. I talked about how theists believe in a god, so it’s up to them to prove that god exists, since it’s an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence, none of which has ever been forthcoming.

The first comment I got on the post was from a man named Brian. When I got up this morning  and read his comment I was inspired to reply. After a few minutes I realized my response was quite lengthy and decided a follow-up post was in order. After his comment you’ll find my thoughts.  So here is his comment in its entirety:

There are a string of points here, but let’s just just address [...]

Burden Of Proof Lies With The Claimant

As an atheist, it’s important to understand what the Burden of Proof is, and how it works. Why? Because theists misuse it against us. In return, we need to be better educated and set them straight.

The burden of proof (latin: onus probandi), falls under the maxim ‘necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit’ or, “the necessity of proof lies with he who complains”. The burden of proof usually lies with the party making the new claim, in terms of law.

But where we are much more interested is in science, where the burden of proof lies with someone suggesting a new theory or stating a claim. They therefore must supply evidence to support it.

So if someone makes a bold claim, it isn’t another person’s responsibility to disprove it, but rather the responsibility of the person making the claim.

Also, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, [...]