This list was first published in July 2009, and is occasionally updated: add your own favourite atheist-related book to the comments and I will add it to the list.
History of Irish blasphemy law
If you plan to campaign against the new proposed Irish blasphemy law, here are some key points that it would be helpful to be familiar with.
Ethics of the Ten Commandments
The ten commandments of Judeo-Christianity are not a guide for ethical conduct. They are laws for regulating the conduct of one Bronze Age tribe.
Cultural Map of the World
Religion and wealth are the two main factors that influence cultural values around the world. The influence of religion can be measured on a scale from traditional values to secular-rational values, and the influence of wealth can be measured on a scale from survival values to self-expression values.
Social networks spread happiness
Happiness is infectious. It spreads through social networks, infecting people that you don’t even know. And it spreads more strongly than sadness does. That’s according to a recent study that examined the happiness of almost five thousand people over twenty years from 1983 to 2003.
Medieval faith vs reason Part 2
Religious Medieval philosophers tried to use reason to do three things: to support their belief in a god, to prove their belief in a god, and to develop a unified theory of all knowledge, divine and human. They partly succeeded in the first of these aims, and failed in the other two.
Medieval faith vs reason Part 1
Many medieval philosophers tried to reconcile their belief in a god with the logic and reason of Greek philosophy. In this article, I outline how ten of them tried to do this:
Atheist and humanist groups
How do Atheist groups differ from Humanist groups? And how can we best work together to promote a rational, ethical and secular society?
Did the historical Jesus exist?
If Jesus existed as a human being and did so many amazing things, surely somebody at the time would have written about him? Well, actually, no. The first time Jesus is mentioned outside the Bible is sixty years after he supposedly died.
Reality is basically as it seems
Note: This article was written several years ago. I have since incorporated its content into a more recent article that you can read here:
Why nothing can be known with certainty, and why it is reasonable to say that we know things
I suggest that you read the above article instead of the old one, for a more up-to-date version of my thoughts on this issue.
Old article follows
This is the third article in a series about why I assume that reality is basically as it seems to be. In the first article, I explained why I believe nothing can be objectively known. In the second article, I described five possible theories of reality. This third article examines the patterns in the five theories of reality, and concludes that: