[UPDATE: Oct 11, 2019]

By: Michelle Zorzella

As I was doing research for an essay on the topic of agnostic atheism, I came across a curious article written by one of Learn Religion’s atheism and agnosticism experts, Austin Cline. With a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, a Masters from Princeton University and 18 years of experience educating others on the subjects of atheism and agnosticism, one would not expect to encounter such a poorly written article concerning Agnosticism and Thomas Henry Huxley.

In his article, he attempts to provide some details about the life of Huxley and explain his understanding of agnosticism. He quotes the following statement from his 1889 essay on Agnosticism:

After reading the article, I searched for a copy of Huxley’s essay and began to read it in its entirety. When I found the statement Cline quoted in the image above, I immediately became suspicious. The quote Cline offers is not quite the same as what is seen here in the following source provided by Clark University:

Why does Cline’s quote vary so dramatically from the original? It’s hard to imagine how someone with his experience could miss such an elementary error. The article was updated as recently as March 2017, which means either no one has noticed the mistake or it’s intentional.

This was not the first time I ran into major issues with Cline’s writing.  Some years ago when ThoughtCo was still about.com, Cline wrote an article on “What is Positive Atheism?” which fortunately no longer exists. In my notes for what would eventually become this article, I quoted the following statement from the opening paragraph: “Positive atheism is defined as the positive claim that no gods exist or the denial that the claim ‘at least one god exists’ is false.” Here, Cline makes an elementary error: he employs a double negative. According to his definition, a positive atheist is one who would say the statement “at least one god exists” is not false. One could argue for charity’s sake, that he may not have intended to say atheists do not believe the claim at least one god exists is false– only that the claim lacks evidence. Yet this would hold true only if Cline was attempting to define negative or agnostic atheism. Cline admits this much in the first portion of his opening sentence.

Takeaways: the importance of evaluating our sources carefully cannot be overstated. No matter who is giving us information, it is our personal responsibility to ensure we cite our sources accurately and articulate our ideas without undermining them. Have an editor read over your work before publishing it, especially if the work is meant to be a resource for others to learn from.

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[1]https://www.learnreligions.com/agnosticism-and-thomas-henry-huxley-248044

[2]http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE5/Agn.html 

By: Michelle Zorzella

There are several varying approaches to apologetics. A common strategy among Christian Fundamentalists and Biblical literalists is Presuppositionalism; the belief that Christianity provides the only coherent foundation for rationality. This approach relies on the presupposition that the Bible is divinely authored and consequently inerrant. A presuppositional apologist therefore seeks to demonstrate that Christianity is perfectly coherent, while exposing the logical flaws in all other worldviews. A common objection to this radical approach is that by presupposing the Bible is infallible, one begs the question as to whether Christianity is actually true and internally consistent. The full extent of this problem is best illustrated in a controversial statement offered by American Pastor Peter LaRuffa, in HBO‘s 2014 documentary Questioning Darwin:

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