2012 in Review

Okay, so 2012 wasn't exactly a banner year for Other Side Reflections in terms of activity—at least compared to the previous year, which is when I began blogging. 2011 had 170 posts while 2012 had only 39, and just eight of those came from the latter six months.

There are a number of reasons for that, including writing fatigue, lack of necessity, and moving on to other interests. Still, I do plan to update here now and then, and hopefully to at least match the level of activity I managed last year.

In the meantime, here's an index of the posts I made in the last nine months of 2012, much as I've done in the past. Here are my posts from April:

• January–March in Review: An index of the 20 posts from the year's first quarter
• Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 5: More skeptical quotes from great thinkers
• Born at the Wrong Time: Why is this the only time that God's not talking to us?
• The Uncertainty of Intuition: This useful mental tool can also lead you astray
• My 5 Favorite Freethought Quotes: Culled from my Powerful Thoughts series
• On Ultimate Significance: Does life still mean something if it will ultimately end?
• The Purpose of Hell: It fails to fulfill any of the various theories of justice

From May through July:

• Fun With Memes: They're silly, but can make their point in a concise, funny way
• The Televangelist's Con: Analyzing a scammer I found while channel surfing
• The Key to Science: How a few simple steps can put the world at our fingertips
• No Religious Test: 8 state constitutions discriminate against atheists holding office
• Shifting Focus: Why I've been less active on the blog
• Political Sites for Skeptics (1/2): Fact-checkers, statisticians and other resources
• But It's Not Hurting Anyone!: 5 ways that snake oil harms our society

And from the remainder of the year:

• Political Sites for Skeptics (2/2): Informative voting databases, Snopes and more
• While We're Young: How Christianity is packaged into a slick production for kids
• Electoral Prediction and Cognitive Bias: Beware the rationalizations of politics
• San Diego New Atheists & Agnostics Meetups: Summary of two great events
• Problems of Implementing Rationality: Not Respecting Superstitions: A guest post from Michael Caton of The Lucky Atheist

It's not much, but what I did put out, I'm happy with.

Shifting Focus

I haven't written anything here in a while now—seven weeks, to be precise. There are a few reasons for that. One is a reduction in free time now that I have a full-time job on my plate. Another, frankly, is laziness. I still have a decent amount of free time, but I spend far too much of it on television and internet browsing. But perhaps most importantly, the original purpose of this blog has been accomplished: I've laid out in some detail why I'm no longer a Christian, and I'm (partially) out as an atheist.

So, what now?

Well, ever since I created this blog at the beginning of 2011, the subheading has been "My Reasons for Leaving Christianity." At the time I came up with it, I didn't yet consider myself an atheist yet—that happened a few months later.

But at this point I have more than enough reasons for leaving the religion I was born into. Despite my lingering bias towards Christianity, I feel I should be shifting focus a bit now that I really have migrated fully to the other side. And just what is the other side, anyway? Well, that's now answered explicitly in my new blog tagline:

Leaving Christianity and Embracing Skepticism

Although I call myself an atheist, it doesn't mean very much in itself to "embrace" atheism. It's only a stance on a single question, so I wanted a more positive and encompassing term to describe myself. I would also consider myself a freethinker and possibly a humanist, but "skeptic" really captures the basis of what I think atheism should be rooted in: applying proper standards of evidence equally to all claims, not just theistic ones.

I'll still have plenty of criticism for Christianity here—after all, it makes sense to stick with what I know. But the harm religion causes is just a small part of the harm caused by credulity in general. Fundamentally, it's the notion that belief can be justified without sufficient evidence that opens the door to belief in everything from vaccine denialism to faith healing to repressed memory therapy. So sometimes I'll be delving into a skeptical topic that's unrelated to any religious theme. But it'll all be for the same basic purpose: to help, in my own small way, to build a more informed and rational world.

In the past I've also tried to funnel my efforts into very detailed and involved posts. But that high bar has been a big part of my drop in motivation, and I'd rather have shorter, simpler posts than none at all. That doesn't necessarily mean a drop in quality; it just means that the deep analyses will be interspersed with pithier observations.

With these two changes, I hope to start posting a bit more often. Welcome to the next chapter of Reflections from the Other Side!

January–March in Review

My situation has settled down considerably in contrast to the last couple months of last year. My parents tend to bring up my lack of belief only when necessary, and that's fine with me: our relationship remains more or less as healthy as ever. The biggest blog-related development of the past three months has been the creation of the 30 Questions Project website. I'm quite happy with it now that it's pretty much finished, although I haven't decided what (if anything) I'm going to do with it from here.

In any case, let's review. Here are my posts from January:

• 2011 in Review: Reflections on the year & my 18 posts from the past 2 months
• The Tree of Religion: They proliferate via cultural adaptation & vague holy texts
• 5 Things I Don't Believe About Believers: Stupid? Crazy? Hateful? I think not...
• The 40 Questions Project: Clearly & succinctly listing problems w/ Christianity
• Hitch and Fry Are Wizards: A legendary debate on Catholicism's crimes
• 40 Questions for Fundamentalist Christians: First draft of the project
• Tackling the Big Objections: Responses to "I have faith" & "can't question God"

From February:

• The World We Would Expect: The one we'd predict the Christian God to make
• The 30 Questions Project Website: It's now up; you can find it here
• A Success Story Already?!: A thank-you from a user of the 30QP website
• One Nation, Indivisible: Analyzing believers' reactions to removing "under God"
• A Look at Rick Santorum's Madness: His quotes on sex, science & Christianity
• The God We Would Expect: The one we'd predict based on our universe

And from March:

• Errancy.org: A site that ranks Bible errors and responds to apologist excuses
• Through the Pearly Gates (Part 1): A story illustrating the problems with heaven
• Through the Pearly Gates (Part 2): There will be no more sorrow, they say...
• Quotable Me, Vol. 3: A third helping of thoughts on God, skepticism & more
• The Dullness: I was unhappy w/ religion growing up, but never truly questioned
• Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 4: More religion-related quotes from great minds
• The Book We Would Expect: Based on our world & the Christian God

The pace of my posting has slowed a bit more, but I'm not too concerned about that. I'm still happy with the quality of the content, and I have plenty of ideas for topics I want to cover in the future.

2011 in Review

What a year it's been! In January I had left Christianity but was still wavering on the question of God, and just 12 months later I've been accepted by my immediate family and a group of school friends as an atheist. Along the way I read a few very enlightening books and made a few popular posts that I'm quite happy with. I've been slacking a little recently, but overall I accomplished much more with this blog than I ever expected to.

Here are my posts from November:

• September & October in Review: An index of my 25 posts from Sept. and Oct. 2011
• Atheist Ear Candy: A look at 6 podcasts that cover science, atheism & skepticism
• The Ontological Argument Defeats Christianity: Just by replacing a few words
• The Holy Sacrament... of Doom: Can communion cause illness, death & damnation?
• Born from Above: A translation blunder shows the "born again" story in John is fake
• Truly Big Ideas: Concepts like the afterlife are poorly conceived—& we can do better
• The Suffering Servant: How we know Isaiah 53 doesn't predict Jesus' crucifixion
• The Sorcerer and the Squid: A fable illustrating the flaws in saying "God did it"
• Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 3: A third batch of quotes on God, religion, science & more
• What Do You Mean By That?: Christians often uncritically accept vague buzzwords

And from December:

• Keeping an Open Mind: What should convince one that God does or doesn't exist?
• The Ultimatum: UCSD preacher says I must tell my parents I'm an atheist, or he will
• Breaking the News: Preacher lets up on the ultimatum, I still tell them, things go well
• The Debate Begins: Discussion with my dad about atheism, miracles & more
• Infographic Interlude: 5 charts that effectively & efficiently criticize religion
• Church Happenings: The egregious things I've heard pastors say while preaching
• Advanced Redditing: More about reddit for atheists, skeptics and science lovers
• 'Tis the Season: Examining the myriad problems with Jesus' birth narratives

I probably won't be posting quite as much in 2012 as I did last year. One of my major objectives has now been accomplished: to help me prepare for revealing my unbelief to my family. That said, I'll certainly remain active, because there are plenty of topics I still want to explore.

September & October in Review

It's hard to believe that the year is almost over already, but here we are in November. As I've done four times now, I've made an index and summary of my posts from the last two months. Here are my posts from September:

• July & August in Review: An index of my 22 posts from July and August 2011
• The Problem of Poorly Communicated Salvation: God could make clearer criteria
• Powerful Thoughts, Vol. 2: Another group of quotes on religion, science & more
• Deflating the Supernatural: Examining an extraordinary and unsupported claim
• Letter to a Christian Nation: Nothing new, but still a deft critique of religion
• A Time for Remembrance: The root cause of 9/11: violent, dogmatic belief
• The Death of the Soul: Philosophy, bio. & neuroscience demolish this dated idea
• My Pro-Christian Bias: I'm still investigating it long after I'd reject other religions
• Homophobia in the Bible: Being gay is called immoral & worthy of death and hell
• How to Destroy Naturalism in 4 Easy Steps: Witnesses, records, evidence, tests
• Quotable Me, Vol. 2: More of my thoughts on Christianity, religion and skepticism
• God Doesn't Care About Free Will: Based on the Bible and the observable world
• The Secret's Out: My sister discovers I'm an atheist; things turn out okay

And from October:

• The Worst of YouTube: 3 videos that showcase Christianity at its most obnoxious
• The Best of YouTube: 3 videos that both inform and encourage skepticism
• Those Pesky Craters: Why they're totally incompatible w/ young earth creationism
• The Bible for Skeptics: Verses backing skepticism imply unbelief is reasonable
• Yahwism: An Anachronistic Curiosity: Summarizing Christianity like an outsider
• Talking It Out: Discussing the implications of my atheism with my sister
• Men Like Trees Walking: In one Markan passage, Jesus makes an odd mistake
• Against Omphalos: Why "God only made the universe look old" is a bad idea
• Jesus in an Alternate Universe: What if he valued skepticism over faith?
• A Tale of Three Centurions: The gospels' centurion story is rife w/ contradictions
• Judgment Day 2: Judge Harder: Aftermath of Camping's latest failed prediction
• Detecting Intelligent Design: 4 examples show that it's harder than it looks

Several pieces of good news from these past couple of months. First, I managed to write a few pretty substantive essays, like these three. I also saw a huge uptick in traffic when John Loftus linked to my essay Why Believers Think Prayer Works from his Debunking Christianity blog. And finally, my sister found out quite accidentally that I'm an atheist, and I was pleasantly surprised at her accepting attitude.

Unfortunately I haven't had time to get very far with the two books I've been reading. I hope to dig into them more deeply before 2011 is out.

July & August in Review

Continuing my tradition, this is an index and summary of my posts from the past two months. Here are the ones from July:

• May & June in Review: An index of my 27 posts from May and June 2011
• Endogenous Retroviruses: Viruses "fossilized" in the genome demonstrate evo.
• JI: Out of Chaos, Canon: The NT came from power struggles among biased men
• Two Rational Thought Sites: Atheism resources from 2 UCSD club members
• Misogyny in the Bible: Censorship & rape are totally inconsistent w/ a loving God
• Why Creationists Should Drop the Issue: ...Even from their own perspective
• Abraham in an Alternate Universe: How his tale would look if God rejected faith

And from August:

• The Bolted Door: Why as a Christian I often refused to let myself doubt
• Parsimony, Explained Like You're Five: Examining the power of Occam's razor
• WEIT: The Naked Ape: The abundant fossil evidence for human evolution
• LY5: Why Creationism Isn't Taught: Simply explained, it's religious & unscientific
• JI: How Christianity Evolved (Part 1): Origins of anti-Semitism & Messianic Jesus
• JI: How Christianity Evolved (Part 2): The divine Jesus, the Trinity & the afterlife
• WEIT: The Meaning of Life: Evolution doesn't sanction evil or rob us of purpose
• Murder in the Bible: God directly and indirectly massacres innocents in the OT
• JI: Reconstructing Faith: Can Christianity survive the Bible's errors & forgeries?
• WEIT and JI Indexes: A summary of my posts on the two books I've been reading
• Self-Help and Skepticism: Think & Grow Rich lacks rigor, uselessly invokes God
• r/Atheism: The net's largest atheist forum is shallow, but witty and supportive
• A Dual Perspective: My Christian upbringing lets me see things from their angle
• The Little Things Add Up: Religion can harm via things like church attendance
• Two Approaches to Ignorance: Religion loves it; science sees it as a challenge

I was on vacation for most of July, which explains why my activity slowed down quite a bit. Last month I managed to finish off my coverage of both of the books I've been writing about since January. It was an enlightening experience, but I'm glad to be done so I can move on to new projects. I'm also quite happy with my posts about misogyny and murder in the Bible; I don't see how anyone can find the passages therein to be consistent with a benevolent God.

When I started this blog at the beginning of the year, I didn't really think it would get this far. It's allowed me both to organize my thoughts on religion and to improve my writing skills through consistent practice, and in my view that alone makes the endeavor well worth it.

WEIT and JI Indexes

Now that I've finished both Why Evolution is True and Jesus, Interrupted, I thought it might be useful to create indexes for the two of them.

I'll start with WEIT. I was surprised to see that nearly half of my coverage came from the intro and first two chapters of the book. It seems that early on I was in the habit of making shorter, more in-depth posts about individual subjects. However, since the latter chapters were less about the evidence for evolution and more about its workings, I sped through them at a rate of a chapter per post.

• Intelligent Design Is Creationism: Wedge document & "cdesign proponentsists"
• The Tree of Life: Nested hierarchies of organisms confirm evolution
• Continental Drift: Plate tectonics makes accurate predictions, but YEC is a mess
• Radiometric Dating Works: Isochron dating and coral growth rings confirm it
• Tetrapod and Bird Evolution: Tiktaalik, Archaeopteryx and the origins of flight
• Cetacean Evolution: Indohyus, Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus and more
• The Big Picture: Geologic column's overall fossil pattern & YEC's inadequacies
• Human Vestigiality & Atavisms: Appendix, goosebumps, ear muscles & tails
• Other Vestigiality & Atavisms: Whale legs, chicken teeth, inactivated genes, etc.
• The Layout of Life: How geographical distributions of life & fossils support evo.
• Island Evolution: Studying patterns of life on continental vs. oceanic islands
• A Force to Be Reckoned With: Predictions & examples of natural selection
• The Peacock's Tail: The role of sex and sexual selection in evolution
• What Makes a Species: The process, fulfilled predictions & observed speciation
• The Naked Ape: Fossil evidence for human evolution & creationist confusion
• The Meaning of Life: Evolution neither sanctions evil nor robs us of purpose

My coverage of JI began with a focus on specific contradictions in the Bible, which is what I was expecting from the book given its subtitle. Later on, though, Ehrman began to focus more on forgeries and general disagreements in tone, as well as the fierce competition within the early church.

• What Christians Don't Know and Why: Two reasons they don't notice Bible errors
• On What Day Was Jesus Crucified?: Was it Passover or the Day of Preparation?
• What was Mary & Joseph's Hometown?: Was it Bethlehem or Nazareth?
• The Gospel of Nobody: Apologists create stories none of the gospels agree with
• John Versus the Synoptics: Differences in content, emphasis and teachings
• Paul and the Ignorance of Idolators: Did God excuse some unbelief in the past?
• Introduction to Forgeries: Who really wrote the gospels & the motives of forgers
• Forged in the Name of Paul: How we know Ephesians, Titus & others are fakes
• Our Sources for Jesus: Why they're bad, and 4 ways we make the best of them
• Failed Prophets and Historical Methods: What we can & can't know about Jesus
• Out of Chaos, Canon: The NT came from power struggles among biased men
• How Christianity Evolved (1/2): Origins of anti-Semitism & the Messianic Jesus
• How Christianity Evolved (2/2): Origins of the Trinity, afterlife & Jesus' divinity
• Reconstructing Faith: Can Christianity survive the Bible's errors and forgeries?

I learned a lot from both of these books. Alternating between them was an interesting experience as well. While it did take me a bit longer to get back into the mindset of one book after having previously covered the other, it was also nice to have a continuous change of pace, a balance between science and history.

I also already have my next two books lined up: Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation and Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. The former is very short and easy read, so I'll finish that before starting on the latter.

May & June in Review

As I've done before, I'm creating an index of my posts from the past two months, both for my convenience and for that of anyone who may stop by. Here are my posts from May:

• March & April in Review: Indexing my 37 posts from March and April 2011
• Can Unbelievers Interpret the Bible?: Why it's absurd to say they can't
• Doubts on the Horizon: Times of trouble & uncertainty while I was a Christian
• JI: Forged in the Name of Paul: How we know many of "Paul's" letters are fake
• The Absurd (and Unbiblical) Trinity: It's neither coherent nor found in the Bible
• Can Creationism Be Falsified or Not?: It depends on how one defines God
• WEIT: A Force to Be Reckoned With: Predictions & examples of natural selection
• Powerful Thoughts: A compilation of quotes on theism and skepticism
• Collapsing the Trilemma: The "lord, liar, lunatic" argument is massively flawed
• JI: Our Sources for Jesus: Why they're terrible, & how we make the best of them
• May 21: The Aftermath: Documenting the rationalizations of Camping's cult
• When Our Need for Explanation Backfires: Answering the unknown w/ "Goddidit"
• Where Morality Comes From: Its evolutionary and cultural building blocks

And from June:

• WEIT: The Peacock's Tail: The role of sex and sexual selection in evolution
• Christianity as a Meme: Why this set of ideas is so good at self-replication
• The Inerrant Word of George Lucas: For true fanatics, any explanation will suffice
• Common Sense Atheism: A blog (& podcast) about atheism's philosophical side
• Slavery in the Bible: Slaves are held for life and beaten—& the Bible endorses it
• JI: Failed Prophets and Historical Methods: What we can & can't know of Jesus
• The Death of Pascal's Wager: Its bad assumptions and abuse of decision theory
• My Current Dilemma: The problems I face in coming out as an atheist
• Who's Really Being Persecuted?: Atheists: the most hated, distrusted minority
• Quotable Me: Compiling my own thoughts on Christianity, religion & skepticism
• WEIT: What Makes a Species: The speciation process and resulting predictions
• Problems with Biblical Prophecy: Vagueness, forgery, outright failure and more
• The World According to Evangelical Leaders: Views of atheists, gays & women
• 10 Questions for Christians: A condensed list of reasons I rejected the faith

My pace is certainly slowing down, but a little bit of burnout is to be expected. In any case, quality should be a higher priority than quantity, and I'm quite pleased as far as that's concerned. I'll probably be aiming for about three posts a week in the future, but I won't stress about it.

I noticed that in the past two months I've delved more into the particulars of Christianity, such as the Trinity, inerrancy, prophecy and its success as a meme. I also made a bit of headway into some of the common apologetic arguments with the Trilemma and Pascal's Wager, although they're not exactly the most well-respected ones in the bunch. In the next couple of months I hope to finish off my two book series on Why Evolution Is True and Jesus, Interrupted so I can start on something new.

March & April in Review

On the first of March I created an index for my first two months of posts, and I figured I'd do the same thing for the next two. Here are my posts from March:

• My First Two Months: Summarizing my posts from January & February
• Coffee and Conversation, Meeting #1: My first talk with Rational Thought @UCSD
• PhyloIntelligence: Now-defunct site shows many lines of evidence for evolution
• The Evidential Bottleneck: Paul saying 500 saw a risen Jesus doesn't make it so
• WEIT: The Big Picture: The overall fossil pattern in the geologic column
• Hangin' with Dan: Rational Thought has a pre-debate chat with Dan Barker
• The Barker–D'Souza Debate, Part 1: "Is Religion the Problem?" opening remarks
• The Barker–D'Souza Debate, Part 2: Rebuttals, Q&A, conclusion and my analysis
• Dendrochronology Demolishes YEC: Tree ring dates conflict w/ Noah's Flood
• JI: The Gospel of Nobody: Deconstructing a common inerrantist tactic
• Creationism Notes Refuted, Part 1: A series debunking my sister's school notes
• The Euthyphro Dilemma: Why God can't serve as an objective moral standard
• WEIT: Human Vestigiality & Atavisms: Appendix, goosebumps, ear muscles, etc.
• What It Means to Say I'm an Atheist: Some basic principles & misconceptions
• Creationism Notes Refuted, Part 2: Dinos, dating methods, old earth "problems"
• JI: John Versus the Synoptics: Differences in content, emphasis and teachings
• Creationism Notes Refuted, Part 3: YEC "evidence," design arguments and ID
• I Love When Religions Make Testable Predictions: Talking w/ a doomsday cultist
• The Fate of Innocents: Where do kids & others go when they die?
• Creationism Notes Refuted, Part 4: IDist "persecution" and the "evils" of evolution

And from April:

• Souls and Human Cloning: Many believers think clones wouldn't be people
• OSR on Twitter & YouTube: Introducing this blog's corresponding accounts
• Ken Ham's Really Dumb Question: "Were you there?" is a bad YEC argument
• Conceptualizing Eternity: A thought experiment to help grasp the ungraspable
• WEIT: Other Vestigiality & Atavisms: Whale legs, chicken teeth & more
• A Quranic Interlude: A sample of the worst verses in Islam's holy book
• JI: Paul and the Ignorance of Idolaters: Did God excuse some unbelief... or not?
• Were We Never Christians At All?: By any reasonable definition, we were
• The 10 Commandments, Version 1.5: How they'd look if they were truly from God
• WEIT: The Layout of Life: How biogeographical patterns support evolution
• Conservapedia: A look at the zaniest bits of this ultraconservative Christian wiki
• My Conversion Story: How I became a Christian (officially) at age seven
• A Potential Reading List: Books on atheism, the Bible, etc. that I might cover here
• WEIT: Island Evolution: Studying patterns of life on continental vs. oceanic islands
• Making Connections: Befriending atheists at UCSD, plus upcoming events
• A Relic of Skepticism: A critique of theistic arguments—from when I still believed
• JI: Introduction to Forgeries: Who wrote the gospels & the motives of forgers

In these past weeks I've done a little of the ethics and philosophy stuff that I had previously expressed interest in, and I hope to elaborate on those topics fairly soon. I also gave more details on my personal history and situation. My coverage of WEIT and JI continues to proceed slowly but steadily.

I'm still pretty satisfied with how things are going. Although I expect my rate of posting may gradually decrease to 13–14 posts per month, I think I've already exceeded my initial expectations.

OSR on Twitter & YouTube

This blog (OSR for short) now has corresponding YouTube and Twitter accounts: OtherSideReflections and @OtherSideReflec. I'll be using Twitter to occasionally jot quick down thoughts that I don't feel a pressing need to make full posts about. For example, here are my first three tweets:

• A rule of thumb: If you wouldn't accept something as evidence for another religion, don't accept it as evidence for yours.
• A single Quran is burned in Florida. In response, radical Muslims in Afghanistan riot and kill 12 people. Madness. http://on.cnn.com/e0WFdF
• Two examples of religious faith being directly responsible for global warming denialism: http://bit.ly/9e0iDg, http://n.pr/g7rBBf

As for the YouTube channel, I probably won't be uploading any videos of my own, so it'll just be a place for interesting and informative videos that I feel are relevant to this blog. I'll also include more lighthearted fare, like this hilarious yet terrifying dramatic reenactment of actual comments taken from fundamentalist forums:

There's a wealth of great content available on YouTube. But it's often hard to find, so it's convenient for me to have a place to store all of the gems that I discover buried among the dreck.

My First Two Months

Yep, it's been two months since I started this blog, and for the most part I'm pretty happy with how it's going. There's so much I want to cover, but I often just don't have the time (and it doesn't help that I'm kind of a slow writer). I thought I'd make a quick index/summary of what I've written about so far. Here are my blog posts from January:

• Welcome!: A quick summary of why I'm not a Christian, and what I do believe
• Don't Just Believe...: Christianity stresses belief & denigrates evidence
• The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: A shallow but useful resource for Bible issues
• A Few Definitions: Defining terms commonly used on this blog
• The TalkOrigins Archive: A definitive, comprehensive pro-evolution resource
• My History with Young Earth Creationism: How I became a YEC, & how I fell away
• An Atheist on the O'Reilly Factor: Part 1/4. Discussing an atheist billboard & God
• Exploring Cognitive Biases: Religious belief exploits a ton of them
• Viva Wikipedia!: Convenient, broad, & has some great pages relevant to this blog
• It's Not Just Me: Part 2/4. Comedian Stephen Colbert responds to Bill O'Reilly
• Why Not Theistic Evolution?: How the whole Bible assumes creationism is true
• I Visit a Megachurch: Analysis of the experience & what it means for Christianity
• The Alternate Religion Comparison: Giving believers a different perspective
• WEIT: Intelligent Design is Creationism: Starting on Why Evolution Is True
• Defining (and Dispensing with) Faith: Most faith exists apart from evidence
• WEIT: The Tree of Life: How nested hierarchies support evolution
• The Way of the Master: The slick, fallacious tactics of an evangelism ministry
• WEIT: Continental Drift: A massive problem for young earth creationism
• Creationism and Blind Faith: Creationists stress faith over (& despite) evidence
• Expectations Influence Perception: Why believers see what they expect to see
• News of the Resurrection: Bible conflict: did the women proclaim it right away?
• WEIT: Radiometric Dating Works: We have independent confirmation to prove it
• Genesis 1, Version 2.0: How Genesis 1 might look if it was divinely inspired
• JI: What Christians Don't Know and Why: Starting on the book Jesus, Interrupted
• Bible Study Resources: Reading and analyzing the Bible online
• Simulated Evolution: A test of a natural selection sim that "evolves" 2D cars

And from February:

• Wrong Rite Reviews: Superstitious reviews of The Rite in my local newspaper
• WEIT: Tetrapod and Bird Evolution: Tiktaalik, Archaeopteryx, and more
• The Stupid, It Burns...: Part 3/4. O'Reilly asks more ignorant, pointless questions
• A Creationist Examines Human Tails: And badly misinterprets a scientific paper
• JI: On What Day Was Jesus Crucified?: On Passover or the Day of Preparation?
• It's (Still) Not Just Me: Part 4/4. Colbert, Conan & an astrophysicist respond to Bill
• Pharyngula: An incendiary but witty and informative blog on evolution & atheism
• Why Believers Think Prayer Works: How biases strengthen belief in prayer
• WEIT: Cetacean Evolution: Transitions from land mammals to whales
• God and His Ant Farm: Objective observers would see God as weirdly obsessive
• Ebon Musings & Daylight Atheism: Many great essays & an accompanying blog
• Is the Singularity Near?: Examining an extravagant prediction of tech revolution
• A False Echo of Discontinuity: Creationist mag gets genetics & evolution wrong
• Developments at UCSD: Upcoming religion debate & the Rational Thought club
• JI: What was Joseph & Mary's Hometown?: Was it Bethlehem or Nazareth?

That's a pretty good variety of topics, and I think the arguments I've made are fairly substantial. I may focus a bit too much on countering more evangelical strains of Christianity, although given my personal religious background it's hard not to.

In the future I'll try to focus a little more on philosophy and ethics, and I plan to make more posts on the two books I've been reading (Why Evolution is True and Jesus, Interrupted) as well.