@GodisNotReal_

When I encounter creationists on social media I find their objections to evolution to be rather simpleminded. To put it bluntly, anybody who doesn't *believe* in evolution simply doesn't doesn't understand it. I'll start this blog post with a few samples of silly rebukes, answering the questions ephemerally and pragmatically, and then I'll proceed to my post on phylogeny. If evolution were true, where did life come from? The theory of evolution does not stake a claim on how life started or from where it came, nor does it depend on any one answer being true. Therefore, even if God existed and created life, evolution would still be true. The theory of evolution describes how life changes over time, and never tries to explain how it started. This is in no way a chink in its armor--the evidence for evolution is bountiful. Show me the evidence for evolution, then. Anybody who needs to ask for the evidence has never tried to search for it, or, more likely, they&

Endorses is the key word in title of this blog post. The Bible doesn't merely condone  slavery. It actively endorses and promotes it. Slavery  is the second essential word in the title, because the Bible doesn't simply endorse indentured servitude as many Christian apologists argue. When the Bible discusses slavery, it isn't talking about people who owed a debt working to pay it off in lieu of settling with currency, as sources such as Answers in Genesis will attempt to have you believe. We're talking full blown slavery  every bit as immoral and wicked as it was for 18th-19th century North America. After reading this post, there'll be no uncertainty about truth claim I've made in the title, as the text within the Bible is perfectly clear. Unless stated otherwise, the text quoted below will be the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible. Leviticus 25:44 says "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you. From them, you may

I’m not a socialist. So please erase that presumption from your mind before arguing against a point I don’t defend. I understand that capitalism is a big reason why the United States of America is the wealthiest nation on the planet. Full-blown socialism isn’t good for everybody—but neither is full-blown capitalism. Because of capitalism, the ebb and flow of the stock markets generally favors investing (in the long run, informed investors stand a better chance of making money instead of losing it). Corporate profits rise every year. This doesn’t favor anybody making less than $10 an hour; people living paycheck to paycheck who don’t have enough disposable income to invest in a 401(k) or buy stocks. Since 2009, the last year the federal government raised the minimum wage (to $7.25/hr), the unemployment rate has dropped from around 8% to under 4% today; the Dow Jones Industrial Average has more than doubled, from approximately 9,170 to 21,750 (this is being written December 26, 2018);

I have a lot of questions about heaven, what it's like there, and who is allowed in. If you're a Christian who believes in heaven, you probably don't know all the answers, but I hope you'll give a lot of serious thought to these questions. Where is it? Is it literally in the clouds above, or some other mystical, magical space? If it is physical, how could we find it? If it is metaphysical, what special forces separate it from what I like to call "reality?" Is there weather in heaven? What if some people really like snow, wind, and rain, and others like perpetual sunshine? Is there thunder and lightning there? If there is, what if some people, like children, are afraid of it? How could anybody experience fear in paradise? And if God can magically make people not afraid of it, then why didn't he do that for us on earth? Who goes there and what are the criteria? Do you have to be a Christian? Is any version or schism of Christianity acceptable? Do