Inaugural Post

Welcome to Atheist’s Corner! This blog is dedicated to sharing and defending the atheist perspective.

In an ever-globalizing and secularizing world, the value of religion has been put to serious question, both as to the truth of the theistic religions – primarily Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – and as to their consequences for the human community as a whole.

To my mind, questions about religion are among the most important that we can ask today.  On the whole, is the practice of religion helpful or hurtful to human communities?  Perhaps most importantly of all, are the claims of the theistic religions true?

Religion is a very complex and ambiguous phenomenon that operates on every level, from the biographical and psychological to the social and political to the metaphysical.  Along with other staples, such as land, food, sex, and status, religion is one of the most powerful motivators in human existence.

For this reason, as everyone knows, talk of religion polarizes people and stirs up extreme, and sometimes violent, emotions in them.  Some people hate religion because they have been hurt by its practitioners; others disparage it as a tangle of superstitions and mass delusions; still others cling to religion as their sole reliable source of meaning, purpose, and morality in a world that constantly threatens with meaninglessness, purposelessness, and senseless cruelty.

These starkly opposed attitudes toward religion are daily less isolated and protected from one another.  For better or worse, an epic war is being waged, with propaganda as well as with more obviously destructive weapons.  This war is not only between the various religions as they contend with one another over land and political hegemony; it is also between religion in general and secularism.

While acknowledging the importance of religion to those who practice it, I will argue over and over that the claims of the theistic religion are unsupported by available evidence; that religion is primarily an agent of division and corrosion of the cooperation so necessary in a globalizing world; that the scientific method and the democratic process provide the cleanest, clearest road to a healthy future for “our kind”; that theistic religion represents an important part of our collective human existence that must nevertheless become a part of our past.

Thanks for visiting, and I hope to hear from you soon!