Atheism on the web
This topic was presented on March 12, 2000. This is a short list of sites that should appeal to atheists who are
experiencing the internet for the first time.
Pro-Atheist Sites
- www.infidels.org: The Secular Web,
a.k.a. The Internet Infidels
I don't believe in saving the best for last. This is my favorite
atheist site. You can visit it almost every day as they frequently update
their content with new articles and discussions. They do book reviews
several times a month, on books both for and against religion. They have
regular contributors who write commentary on relevant current events and
political issues. They answer a lot of mail, with the same flair and humor
that I also appreciate regularly on Austin's Atheist TV show.
The Internet Infidels site also includes an extensive online library,
divided up into historical and modern sections. The historical section
contains essays by all the most famous freethinkers in history, including
Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Mark Twain, and Thomas Jefferson. It
even includes the complete text of three books by Charles Darwin. The
modern section gets updated frequently, with articles published after 1970.
In many cases, contact information or links are included so that you can
speak with the author directly.
- www.sonic.net/~jhuger/kisshank.htm:
Kissing Hank's Ass
This is great atheist humor. It's a satirical parable about a
billionaire philanthropist who is supposed to give people money if they kiss
his butt. His disciples also claim that he'll beat you up if you don't kiss
his butt. The only problem is, no one has ever actually seen Hank or his
butt, and the only information that anybody really knows about him is
written down on a very cryptic memo that he supposedly wrote which explains
how the world works.
- www.skepdic.com: The
Skeptic's Dictionary
As the name suggests, it's a skeptical dictionary about all kinds of
bizarre claims. Each article usually gives a brief explanation of what the
claim is, who the followers are, and why the claim is probably a bunch of
baloney. The Skeptic's Dictionary is divided into several sections, such as
religion, alternative medicine, paranormal and psychic, frauds and hoaxes, and so on. It's
also fun to browse right through the index if you prefer to do it that way.
Among the hundreds of entries in the Skeptic's Dictionary, a few you'll find
include:
- God
- UFO's
- Channeling
- Scientology
- Uri Geller
- The Bermuda Triangle
- Amway
- www.talkorigins.org:
Talk.origins archive
This web site is affiliated with talk.origins newsgroup, which is where
you go when you want to see and participate in furiously heated arguments
about the origin of the universe and life on earth, including the whole
creation/evolution controversy. This site is sort of a repository for the
best arguments and discussions on the issue. Although the newsgroup is
populated about equally by people on both sides of the argument, this web
site falls quite squarely on the "natural causes" side. Talkorigins.org has
extensive FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions, for you newbies), covering
everything from "The argument from design" to carbon dating methods to
well-known transitional forms that are catalogued today. They also have
transcripts of live creation/evolution debates that have taken place
recently. This is a great place to go if you are planning to get in
arguments about evolution yourself but you don't quite know what you're
talking about. There are answers to most standard creationist arguments
here.
The Other Side
- www.bible.com: The Bible (what
else?)
I thought it would be good to include at least one actual online Bible
in this discussion. There are several available, but the easiest to find
is, of course, bible.com. Now you may be asking, why would I want to
include the Bible as part of a list of atheist websites? Well, I am firmly
of the opinion that actually reading the bible is the best cure for
Christianity.
Now, you can actually read the bible straight through on the internet, but
you'd probably be more comfortable with an actual printed version. What the
internet is good for is jumping around text quickly and searching. Online
Bibles can be really handy for looking up odd passages; for instance, if you
heard that Jesus said you have to hate your parents and wonder "Did he
really say that?", you can just do a search and turn it up pretty quickly.
This can be a useful tool for quickly looking up Bible contradictions. And
above all, if you read the Bible then you will have a pretty authoritative
answer to those Christians who tell you that if you'd only read the Bible,
you'd become a Christian too.
- www.chick.com: Jack T. Chick
publications
If you want to read something that's WAY out there, you can get much
farther out than Jack Chick. Maybe some people have read these obnoxious
little comic book tracts in which cartoon sinners are shown the error of
their ways and usually wind up going to a stylized cartoon hell. When I was
in college, I would occasionally run across people lurking on campus,
waiting to give tracts to students as they passed by. Now I've found that
Jack Chick has his own web site, with complete online versions of his
cartoons. This guy is extreme. He not only opposes atheists and liberals,
he also thinks there's some grand world-wide conspiracy by Catholics and
that the pope is the Anti-Christ. I think these tracts are about as
entertaining as they come.
- www.capalert.com: ChildCare Action
Project
Christian movie reviews, believe it or not. No, not reviews of Christian
movies, but reviews of movies by Fundamentalists. He has a rating system that
uses that acronym WISDOM, short for Wanton violence, Impudence, Sex, Drugs,
Offense to God, and Murder. Each movie is given a score up to 100. The more of
these six items that the movie contains, the lower the score. The only movie
that has EVER received a 100 on this ratings scale is Mary Poppins, with some
of the worst movies being The Basketball Diaries, Scream 3, and of course
South Park. After reading a few reviews you may believe that it's all a joke,
but they're very serious and they have editorials explaining why they go
through the obvious torment of watching these movies that they hate so much.
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