Atheism Resource

A common refrain among Atheists is that the oldest manuscripts of the Bible that we possess are copies of copies, often involving numerous scribal errors and mistranslations. A competing Christian claim is that the Bible as we have it today is virtually identical to the ancient manuscripts, and that the ancient manuscripts largely agree with one another. Where the two camps seem to generally agree is in the belief that there have been no modern changes to the Bible (save for the appearance of new translations). This seems to be an unspoken assumption on the part of both camps, with most people I've spoken to believing that the Bible was set in stone either at the Council of Nicea or with the publishing of the King James Bible. This belief in the absence of modern changes is so pervasive that I've frequently seen Christians attempt to extend an olive branch to other denominations (especially Protestants reaching out to Catholics) by saying "we may disagree on some things, b...

With the recent Supreme Court decision, it seems that Student loan forgiveness won't be coming to us in 2023. Since student loan payments are scheduled to resume at the in October, I spent several years working in student loan repayment, and folks with more education tend to be less religious, I think that a quick discussion about student loans and how to handle them will probably be helpful for a decent percentage of this readership. Before we dive in, please note that this only applies to people who got their loans from the federal government. If you got your loans from a private bank, unfortunately there's nothing that I can do for you. To start, I want to take a moment to provide a "glossary" so that we're all on the same page. Loan Programs: Direct loans: Direct loans are loans made by the U.S. Dept of Education. FFEL loans: FFEL loans are loans that were made by private banks, but were backed by the Dept of Ed, which allowed the Dept of Ed to regulate some o...

I have had a long-time interest in mythology, and one of my many personal favorites is the Garden of Eden myth. There's just so much going on in those couple of pages that lends itself to a deep dive into the lore. Folks who've followed our Facebook page  for a while may have noticed that I've made several rather lengthy posts about it over the past few years one of which was even converted to a blog post about 2 years ago. Well, today I've decided that there should be a proper home for my research into the story, complete with links to sources cited. Before we dive in, I want to acknowledge up front that I will largely be discussing the Garden of Eden story as it exists in Christian mythology. Bearing that in mind, I think it is important to note that this is originally a Jewish myth and so I will also be referencing some rabbinic literature, as I think that details about how the myth was understood by its original culture can be enlightening. However, my writings sho...