Tag: Opinion
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Zwarte Piet
Each year the discussion rages again in the Netherlands: Zwarte Piet, innocuous expression of Dutch tradition or horribly racist? In this post, I give you my opinion on the matter. Insofar as it can be heard among the din of arguments pro and contra “Zwarte Piet”.
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Cake
Should bakers opposed to gay marriage be forced to bake a wedding cake for gay couples? This is the discussion I got involved in on Twitter with Gideon. Unlike many debates on Twitter, this one stayed civil and didn’t descend into profanity and calling each other stupid, which was refreshing. I had to leave the…
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The meaning of life
It’s been a while since I posted so I thought I might try to deal with one of the bigger questions to ask: what is the meaning of life? Religious people often remark that without belief in God, atheists can’t possibly have meaning in their lives. To put the argument simply, it goes like this:…
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It’s the kids’ fault
Back in June of this year, I responded to a tweet from the account of the pope, @Pontifex. In his tweet, the pope or someone running the account for him, tweeted how we should build up society in light of the Beatitudes. We need to build up society in the light of the Beatitudes, walking…
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“New Atheism” bashing
Recently, there have been a number of publications that criticise “New Atheism”. Take for instance the article by dr. Patrick O’Connor who complains that atheism isn’t about more than just not believing in god. A silly position, as I have explained here. Or the book “The Leprechaun Delusion“, equating “New Atheism” with a dangerous cult,…
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Persecution complex
I’ve mentioned before that I think religion is harmful. Among other things, it acts as a perception filter that shields the believer from reality but it also makes it difficult to see things in the light of reason. This is illustrated very well in this blog post by Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis fame.