If there's a time in one's life fraught with tragedy, it's probably the hormone saturated period in our lives known as our 'teen years'. How many of us have done something so incredibly stupid it still haunts us today? Tyler Alred will need to live with the fact his drunk driving took the life of his friend and passenger, 16-year-old John Luke Dum. He'll also need to spend the next decade going to church re ...

It ain't easy being a Christian: sure, they might be the majority (for now), but every other day the faith is challenged by objective reality. While many Christians will scoff at the idea that their religion is in trouble, the truth is that countries like Canada, Sweden, and Australia are quickly shedding their religious coat in favor of a broader "spirituality" that doesn't have to deal with the many incon ...

I asked a friend of mine a few days ago if she felt I had changed in the past 5 years of knowing me. She replied by saying she felt I was a lot less angry than I was before. I suppose that's true (to be fair, back then I wasn't really getting laid much), but I would actually argue in a lot of ways, I'm actually a lot more frustrated than I ever was. The reason is I've put myself in a position to get angry o ...

Someone sent me a link to this video and wanted me to answer his 5 challenges. Since I'm relatively bored and feeling productive, I though I'd give it a try. 1) Is chance the same as "God in the Gaps" when explaining the origin of life? If you can't accept probability and chance, then you can't accept reality. It would be swell if we lived in a deterministic Universe, but the simple fact is we don't. Mutati ...

"Good Friday" is creepy. As a holiday, I'd say it ranks pretty high up on the weirdo-meter (the biggest one in my book is the cryptic and disturbing celebration of Passover, where Jews celebrate God killing the first born children of Egyptians and "passing over" their own kids). For starters, millions of Catholics celebrate the crucifiction of their messiah, as though his supposed torture and eventual death ...

Normally, if you hear about a plot by an armed civilian militia trying to kill government officials, you figure it's happening in some unstable developing country. It's hard to believe in this day and age, the most powerful and wealthy country in the world also seems to have similar problems with armed maniacs trying to overthrow the present authority. A few days ago, police and FBI agents arrested 9 home g ...

Here Glenn decides random and isolated acts of violence have, as their root cause, a secular leaning. In the video a young man is tragically beaten and killed. In Beck's eyes, he sees too few tears in the eyes of witnesses, something he blames on the fact young people are less religious than they used to be. Even Beck admits he has no idea what's happening in this video, but it certainly doesn't stop him fr ...

Simon was one of the first people to write to me with his story, and was one of the inspirations behind this whole 'atheist life' section. I wanted to understand what it was like growing up in Northern Ireland. Here's his story: For 18 years of my life, I lived in Northern Ireland. Most people don't even know that Northern Ireland is a wholly different country to Ireland. For a seemingly small piece of land ...

On November 22nd, 1963, the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was shot and killed during a parade in Dallas, Texas. It was a gorgeous clear day, one few expected would forever change the lives of so many Americans. Though he was rushed to the hospital, Kennedy died immediately from a fatal shot to the head, the impact of which destroyed a significant portion of his brain. Not long aft ...