My contemporary Jim Henley (alternate archive) reminisces:

Dammit, when I was a boy we had to work at atheism and agnosticism. We walked uphill in the snow – both ways! – to doubt the cogito! Nobody handed us disbelief on an hors d’oeuvre tray like these lazy brats you see nowadays, with their video games and their piercings!

This comes in the middle of some musings on the effects of Santa Clausery.

One of my correspondents made a joke that could be read as implying that J S Bach (1685–1750) was a Protestant. Which got me to wondering: who was the earliest Protestant composer whose name I’d know? Henry Purcell (1659–95) comes to mind, but who was big in Elizabeth’s reign?

Inherit the Wind somehow never mentioned that the evilutionist textbook used by John Scopes was racist and eugenist. Jim Lindgren, Volokh Conspirator, has the story.

Forensic theology. (Cited by Travis.) (Link updated 2006.)

Atheism and Unalienable Rights by Robert E. Meyer (also cited today on RRND):

Skeptics want to deny that rights come from God, but if they are correct, then there is no sound philosophical footings undergirding their perpetual claim to any rights. They are walking on a tenuous tightrope of conceptual fiat. Obviously they have not thought this issue through very carefully. . . .

In other words, atheists who speak of rights are guilty of what Ayn Rand (an atheist) called “the fallacy of the stolen concept”. Obviously Meyer has not taken the time to find a libertarian atheist (how hard can it be?) and ask a few questions. It would be amusing – for a few minutes – to hear him and an Objectivist debate the roots of rights. ( . . more . . )

Worth a giggle: What if Scientists Behaved Like Fundamentlists?

the Talmud and the gopher protocol