Author: Donald R. Burleson
Donald R. Burleson is a mathematician and a widely published writer on nonbelief. He is a contributing editor to The American Rationalist, from which this article is reprinted with permission.
Religion as Emotional Blackmail
There are no atheists in foxholes.” Attributed to World War II journalist Ernie Pyle and various other people, this gratingly smug (and of course factually inaccurate) dictum, often addressed to nonbelievers, seems on a practical level to mean something akin to “Sure, go ahead, be an atheist and sneer at religion, as long as you’re …
Bundle Thinking: Atheism and the Political Spectrum
As a moderate socioeconomic conservative and an atheist, I often find myself misunderstood by people of many diverse viewpoints. When I mention that I’m an atheist, that I’ve become convinced after years of contemplation that the whole notion of God is a diseased and dangerous concept, many people automatically assume that I must be a …