Atheism Is Not A Rival Religion
For the recurring claim that being unconvinced by theistic arguments somehow requires a complete metaphysical system, a priesthood, incense, and a subscription model.
Open the essayQuick replies
For posts that deserve an answer, but not a book, a candlelit vigil, and three days of archaeological excavation.
Extraordinary claims and ordinary excuses
A concise answer to the notion that testimonial fragments, private feelings, and badly handled probability can bear the weight of cosmic monarchy.
Open the replyObjective morality without divine ventriloquism
For the claim that morality collapses unless the universe has a celestial lawgiver with suspiciously local opinions.
Open the replyThe Euthyphro problem, still inconvenient
A short reminder that calling God "the good" does not magically solve the problem. It often just dresses circularity for chapel.
Open the replyFaith, trust, and the parasocial God
On the difference between defeasible trust in methods and unconditional emotional loyalty to an unseen perfect friend.
Open the essayApologetics often begins by lowering the evidential bar until a god can crawl over it, then immediately raising it again the moment a rival religion approaches.
Longer essays
For arguments that arrive with footnotes, Latin seasoning, and the serene confidence of a man hiding circular reasoning behind a cassock.
Pious Frauds in Christian Literature
Sacred truth, forged paperwork, and the long career of useful falsehood: pseudo-apostolic writings, hagiography, the Donation of Constantine, the False Decretals, and the awkward little industry of holy paperwork.
Open the essayWhen Failure Becomes Mystery - The Apologetic Ratchet
Every evidential collapse quietly promoted to theology: prophecy, hiddenness, miracles, morality, fine-tuning, and the solemn little machinery of unfalsifiable belief.
Open the essayThe Cosmological Argument as a Comfort Blanket with Footnotes
A critique of cosmological apologetics as metaphysical reassurance: ornate, venerable, and far too eager to smuggle consolation into causality.
Open the essayWhy the universe is not your therapist
Against the assumption that reality must be morally legible, emotionally useful, or arranged as a counselling service for anxious primates.
Open the essayAgainst sacred special pleading
One standard of evidence. One universe. No private exemption lane for doctrines that become shy under examination.
Open the essayConsolation metaphysics
On the old habit of confusing emotional need with ontology, then announcing the result as if yearning had become a telescope.
Open the essayCosmicism as philosophy
Cosmicism treated not as tentacle wallpaper, but as a serious anti-consolation discipline: the refusal to flatter humanity with metaphysical importance.
Open the essayCreationism and science
For the moments when someone mistakes a slogan, a meme, or a suspiciously confident YouTube thumbnail for a scientific revolution.
Irreducible Complexity and Other Magic Tricks
Why "I personally cannot imagine a pathway" is not a research programme, whatever the brochure from the Discovery Institute implies.
Open the replyThe law of biogenesis and the toy sword
A reply to the creationist habit of waving Pasteur at prebiotic chemistry as if nineteenth-century microbiology ended origins research.
Open the replyLiving fossils are not evolutionary panic buttons
Coelacanths, horseshoe crabs, and other alleged embarrassments to evolution, rescued from the apologetic meme quarry.
Open the replyGenesis, genre, and the collapse of wooden literalism
A short route through the theological and historical awkwardness of treating ancient cosmology as if it were a laboratory notebook.
Open the replyThe global flood and the missing oceans
The water-volume problem, the heat problem, the tectonic problem, and the small matter of trying to do miracle while pretending to do geology.
Open the replyThe horizon test
Observation, measurement, and the slow indignity of reality refusing to obey a meme account with a P900.
Open the projectTactics for the trenches
Not every claim deserves a dissertation. Some deserve a chair, a lamp, and a quiet question about evidence.
Questions worth asking
- What specific evidence would distinguish your religion from a false but psychologically satisfying belief?
- Are you arguing from evidence, or from the feeling that reality ought to be emotionally bearable?
- Would you accept this standard of proof from a rival religion?
- Where does the argument end and the theological wish-list begin?
- What observation would make you revise your conclusion?
Common evasions
- Redefining God until the claim becomes too vague to test, then restoring the full doctrine after the danger has passed.
- Calling atheism a faith because unbelief is easier to caricature as a rival chapel.
- Invoking science when it sounds useful and denouncing materialism when science becomes inconvenient.
- Mistaking personal incredulity for a peer-reviewed objection.
- Using mystery as a locked door through which only their preferred god is allowed to pass.
Dispatches and reusable fragments
Sharper, shorter pieces for the daily sacrament of seeing nonsense and deciding, regrettably, to answer it.
Prayer as a truth detector
If the method works only when failure can be redescribed as success, it is not a method. It is insulation.
OpenInfinite punishment, finite theatre
The moral obscenity of eternal torment, carefully wrapped in devotional vocabulary.
OpenBad design is still evidence
Retinas, parasites, cancers, extinction, and the awkward theology of a designer who appears to subcontract to indifference.
OpenThe Bible is not a magic hyperlink
Citing a verse is not an argument unless the authority of the text has already been established.
OpenWhat disciplines are necessary to understand the Bible?
A distinction between cursory reading, academic study, informed judgement, and Christian believing interpretation.
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