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She laughed. I had invited Cheryl Hall to the screening of “Religulous” to get a faith-based reaction to comedian Bill Maher's diatribe on the divine. Hall's credentials: longtime member of the United Methodist Women and faithful San Diego churchgoer whose husband teaches a weekly Bible study class. Surely, she would be offended at roasting religion as if it were a Hollywood has-been. But she laughed. Several times. Her defense: “I think God has a sense of humor.” And then she added: “If his point was to make religion look ridiculous, then he did a very good job.” It did not,...

AUSTIN — Scientists from Texas universities on Tuesday denounced what they called supernatural and religious teaching in public school science classrooms and voiced opposition to attempts to water down evolution instruction. The newly formed 21st Century Science Coalition said so far it has 800 members who have signed up online. "Texas public schools should be preparing our kids to succeed in the 21st century, not promoting political and ideological agendas that are hostile to a sound science education," said David Hillis, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin. The State Board of Education is considering...

A Shasta County atheist sued top state corrections officials Monday, claiming that his constitutional rights were violated when he was returned to prison after objecting to participation in a program with religious overtones as a condition of parole. Barry A. Hazle Jr., 40, was released from prison in February 2007 after doing a year for drug possession. He was required to complete a 90-day drug treatment program and was assigned to one in Shasta County. The Redding computer technician says he objected several times to "coerced participation" in a program based on the 12-step recovery method originally developed by Alcoholics...

Bill Maher's Anti-Religion Movie “Religion is detrimental to the progress of society.” That’s my favorite quote from Bill Maher’s often brilliant, but often unfocused “documentary,” called “Religulous.” It opens in early October right after its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. The articulate, quick-witted comedian sets out in this film — which was supposed to have been released last Easter — to prove that line is true. Directed by Larry Charles, the man who put "Borat" together so skillfully, "Religulous" is blatant about Maher’s feelings: religion is bad. All religions are bad. They are ruining everything. If you go for...

Without God In his celebrated 1837 Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard, titled "The American Scholar," Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that a day would come when America would end what he called "our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands." His prediction came true in the twentieth century, and in no area of learning more so than in science. This surely would have pleased Emerson. When he listed his heroes he would generally include Copernicus and Galileo and Newton along with Socrates and Jesus and Swedenborg. But I think that Emerson would have had mixed feelings about one consequence...

Neo-atheism has had a very successful publishing run over the past several years, with best-selling books by Christopher Hitchens ("god is not great"), Sam Harris ("Letter to a Christian Nation") and Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion"), among others. But this year there has been an equally impressive counter-phenomenon. Three recent books, written from three widely divergent perspectives, have responded to the arguments of neo-atheism with both intellectual force and literary grace. In April, David Berlinski, a secular Jew and well-known skeptic of Darwinism, who holds a Ph. D. in Philosophy from Princeton and has written widely on mathematics and science,...

Lord Robert Winston has renewed his attack on atheist writers such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens, whose arguments he said were "dangerous", "irresponsible" and "very divisive". The science populariser and fertility expert said...

DHP Review: Religulous Posted by Dirty Harry on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 While more entertaining and better paced, director Larry Charles‘ Religulous can’t help but remind of Morgan Spurlock’s dreadful Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?, especially at the end where both films are undone by their attempts to close on serious points the preceding 90 minutes of antics simply can’t sustain. It’s surprising Charles let this one get away from him. After all, he also directed Borat, and one of the few saving graces of that humiliation-fest was that it never lost sight of the fact that...

This is the Apocalypse of St. Bill the Stoned. Though funny, smart and often profane, Religulous doesn't want to send you out of the theater with a smile on your lips. The final moments of the film aren't laugh out loud funny, but a parade of images of death and destruction. This, Bill Maher says, is what humanity is in for if it doesn't get rid of the nuerological disorder that is religion. You probably know my bias going into this film. I believe that religion is not just irrational but anti-rational, a Bronze Age worldview that should have been...

We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion -- intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of "heretics," holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion. What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism -- the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies....

We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion -- intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of "heretics," holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion. What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism -- the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution, and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies....

An atheism-promoting organization has withdrawn its lawsuit demanding that Christian baptisms of children be banned in Italy, after a U.S.-based legal team took on the defense of a bishop and the Roman Catholic Church there."This was a preposterous lawsuit, and we are pleased that it has been dropped," said Joseph Infranco, senior counsel for the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund.However, he said, "Americans should be aware that such lawsuits may seem far-fetched, but they really are happening … foreign legal decisions are increasingly cited in American courts."The ADF battled back when the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics filed a...

The Democratic National Convention's Aug. 24 interfaith service in Denver is supposed to be about unity. But to a Washington, D.C., coalition that supports nontheistic views, it's about division. The Secular Coalition Group, a lobbying organization for church-and-state separation, is pushing to get an atheist on the speaker list, and contends the service is divisive because it alienates nonreligious Democrats at a time when the party needs to unite to support the presumptive nominee, Sen. Barack Obama. "We can all hold different beliefs," said the group's executive director, Lori Lipman Brown, "but we can still come together as patriotic Americans."...

I never expected to become the one Catholic journalist to be granted an interview with Paul Zachary (PZ) Myers.... “Professor Myers, there is a palpable level of hatred towards religion on your blog,” I told him. “What’s the source?” “Oh, it’s not hatred,” he said. “It’s contempt.” So began my conversation with PZ Myers.... ...“I was brought up as a casual Lutheran and left the church when I was 14,” he said.... That Myers has the equivalent of a junior high school education in religion is glaring. He understands little about the history and function of the Catholic Church and...

Priests at the London Oratory have called for prayers of reparation after a consecrated Host was allegedly stolen during High Mass and desecrated by an atheist professor in America. Several priests have celebrated Masses of reparation this week responding to a video posted on the internet of a young man taking the Host and later placing it next to a condom, claiming he was holding it "hostage" inside the prophylactic until the Pope changed his policy on contraception in light of Africa's Aids epidemic. An evening of reparation with Mass and Adoration with prayers, litanies and silent meditation is planned...

In his capacity as a scientist his efforts should be directed at safeguarding the longevity of Darwinism which, with the unsettling figure given by the British Humanist Association that at least 40 UK schools teach creationism, has the potential to be under attack from certain organs of the religious community. But given his more demanding role as fundamentalist, cedes all religiosity as dangerous, thus quashing any potential union to debilitate the creeping infection that is intelligent design, a topic where moderate atheists and those of faith can meet eye to eye. Indeed, Darwinism is not under attack from the religiously...

This item is available on the Apologetics Press Web site at: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3762 - it was originally published in Reason & Revelation, 28[8]:57-63 AP Content :: Reason & Revelation The Bitter Fruits of Atheism [Part II]by Kyle Butt, M.A. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I of this two-part series appeared in the July issue. Part II follows below, and continues, without introductory comments, where the first article ended.] SEXUAL DEVIANCE AND PERVERSION Not only does atheistic evolution devalue human life, it also taints many of the most important areas of human interaction. Sexuality is one area of human behavior that has been completely...

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened. Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate...

Religions thrived to protect our ancestors against the ravages of disease, according to a radical new evolutionary theory of the genesis of faith. Prof Richard Dawkins the atheist and sceptic, has condemned religion as a "virus of the mind" but it seems that people became religious for good reason - actually to avoid infection by viruses and other diseases - according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences. Dr Corey Fincher and Prof Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, come to this conclusion after studying why religions are far more...

Stumbling to my feet amidst this show of inspiration, Crumbling to the earth in chunks of ebony; sublime! Wonder fills my senses with divine anticipation… Peeking through the twilight; blankets laced with starry night, ______________________________________________________ Like an orange flower blooming out of just a notion, Gentle beams of sunlight soon initiate the stream, Before you know it, floods of light come streaming like an ocean The sea lay there before me basking in its radiant beam ______________________________________________________ What do I owe this pleasure? To the gods of here or there? Or to a Heavenly Father who created all we see,...

Religion – including Christianity and Judaism – is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." At least that's according to the No. 1 New York Times bestseller "God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything" by journalist Christopher Hitchens. In the news business, we often cite a nation's current top-selling books – for example, the popularity of anti-Semitic titles in Arab countries – as evidence of the mindset of the people. Well, in the United States of America right now, some of the...

LAS VEGAS – It was billed in jest as a Friday Night Fight in the city known for epic bouts, but a libertarian conference's headliner debate last night featuring "God is not Great" author Christopher Hitchens offered much more, reflecting the growing visibility and muscle of a new breed of atheists spreading their message with evangelical fervor. The debate was one of eight at this year's FreedomFest, which describes itself as the tradeshow for liberty and the world's largest gathering of free minds. With his trademark wicked wit, the British-born journalist Hitchens, now an American citizen, took on political writer...

Neither faith nor science can answer the most important questions. So why are believers and atheists still bickering? I went to a debate recently in New York between a rabbi and the famous polemicist Christopher Hitchens, on the question "Does God exist?" Hitchens was called on to speak first, and he won the debate with his first two sentences: "I don't know why I have to speak first. He has the burden of proof." The mostly secular ... audience heartily applauded this sally, which was based on the premise -- never challenged by the rabbi -- that science provides an...

Paul Zachary Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, has pledged to desecrate the Eucharist. He is responding to what happened recently at the University of Central Florida when a student walked out of Mass with the Host, holding it hostage for several days. Myers was angry at the Catholic League for criticizing the student. His post can be accessed from his faculty page on the university’s website. Here is an excerpt of his July 8 post, “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker!”: “Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers continued by saying, “if any of...

This item is available on the Apologetics Press Web site at: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3740 - it was originally published in Reason & Revelation, 28[7]:49-55 AP Content :: Reason & Revelation The Bitter Fruits of Atheism [Part I]by Kyle Butt, M.A. [EDITOR’S NOTE: For several decades now, evolution has received preeminent exposure throughout American culture via public schools, natural history and science museums, television programming, national parks guide booklets, popular magazines, children’s toys and clothing, movies and cinema, and the list goes on. What have been the results of such widespread, unilateral propaganda? Has the teaching of evolution exerted a positive influence...

A University of Central Florida student, upset religious groups hold church services on public campuses, is holding hostage the Eucharist, an object so sacred to Catholics they call it the Body of Christ. Church officials say UCF Student Senator Webster Cook was disruptive and disrespectful when he attended Mass held on campus Sunday June 29. It was during that Mass where Cook admits he obtained the Eucharist.... A church leader was watching, confronted Cook and tried to recover the sacred bread. Cook said she crossed the line and that's why he brought it home with him. "She came up behind...

Pope John XXIII believed Padre Pio, the hugely popular Capuchin monk who was canonised in 2002, was a fraud who had "incorrect" relations with women and whose soul was in danger.... Sergio Luzzatto...has also found documents in the Vatican archives suggesting that Padre Pio may have faked his stigmata, the marks of the wounds of Christ, with acid. Vatican officials say both allegations are already well known.... Followers of Padre Pio believe he exuded "the odour of sanctity", had the gift of bilocation (being in two places at once), healed the sick and could prophesy the future.

As many readers know, I recently wrote a column titled “Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound,” which explored the logical and philosophical case for the Divine. As I painstakingly pointed out in the column, all of the arguments hold true whether one believes in evolution or not. Nonetheless, many chose to attack the column from a scientific standpoint, not by bringing specific examples, but because of the lack thereof. While they entirely missed the meaning of the column, I would still like to address their issues.

A psychology researcher has controversially claimed that stupidity is causally linked to how likely people are to believe in God. University of Ulster professor Richard Lynn will draw the conclusion in new research due to be published in the journal Intelligence, the Times Higher Education Supplement reports. Lynn and his two co-authors argue that average IQ is an excellent predictor of what proportion of the population are true believers, across 137 countries. They also cite surveys of the US Academy of Sciences and UK Royal Academy showing single-digit rates of religious belief among academics. That professional skeptics don't believe in...

One of the beautiful aspects of self evident truths is that they can be proven on both the simplest and the most complex of levels. By contrast, to make an argument for what is in fact an illogical fallacy, one must use plenty of skill, sophistry and remain beholden to a dogmatic protection of what is really an illogical position. Yet even after a detailed case is made for the illogical side of the argument, it can instantly be deflated like a balloon with the simplest poke of clear logic. It can also be attacked piece by piece with even...

Can anyone tell me what they think of this? (see debate in comments section from post 36 on, see liberal spin before that) http://atheism.about.com/b/2008/05/26/yomin-postelnik-why-some-liberals-unresponsive-to-falsehoods-illogic.htm

"Don't believe in God?" a bright blue billboard with images of puffy white clouds asks. "You are not alone."The 20-by-60-foot sign alongside I-95 was designed by a group of area atheists as an invitation to join the Greater Philadelphia Coalition of Reason, or PhillyCoR, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports."If you don't ... [h]undreds of thousands of your neighbors in the Delaware Valley feel the same as you do," the organization's website declares.Steve Rade, president of Wireless Accessories, Inc., gave the $22,500 to fund the billboard May 1, and he plans to keep it there until the end of August."Our mission is...

VIRGINIA - The objective of a new video game is to stop the spread of Christianity and Islam by brutally killing biblical prophets, says the game’s atheist creator. A graduate student at the University of Virginia created the game --which has not yet been released-- in order to give a voice to atheists, according to WSLS Television News. The grad-student wishes to remain anonymous for “fear of his safety.” His request is understandable --considering at one point in his game players win by beheading the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. Nearly a year ago, an even less bold stunt resulted in death...

Atheists like to promote the false argument that religion has killed more innocent people than any other force in the history of mankind. Is that really true about those people professing the Christian religion? Actually, according to Vox Day in THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST, atheist regimes in the 20th Century alone killed and murdered about 153.3 million people for philosophical, political and economic reasons, while in 2,000 years people mis-representing the Christian faith killed and murdered only about 1.65 million, or 93 times less the number of people in 20 centuries compared to only one century!!! Democide* Statistics, Christianity vs. Atheism...

CHICAGO (AP) - A federal judge on Thursday barred school districts statewide from holding the daily moment of silence suitable for prayer that is required under state law. U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman said he had given school districts time to object to his March 28 preliminary injunction on enforcement of the moment of silence law but received no objections. He therefore extended to the entire state the preliminary injunction originally designed to apply only to suburban Buffalo Grove District 214. The law passed by the Illinois General Assembly says every school district in the state must hold a...

Trailer Because it's billed as a more personal project for Mark Pellington after a string of interesting, idiosyncratic thrillers ("Arlington Road," "The Mothman Prophecies"), "Henry Poole Is Here" is all the more disappointing. Pic's tendency to lecture on the power of faith and religion and on the demerits of science seems to assume an almost childlike audience that needs to be spoon-fed Pablum. This tale of a single man whose medical death sentence is reversed in part by a neighborhood of believers won't advance the profile of the always-likable Luke Wilson, and Christian moviegoers will have to show up in...

Unbelievers think that skepticism is their special virtue, the key virtue believers lack. Bolstered by bestselling authors, they see the skeptical and scientific mind as muscular thinking, which the believer has failed to develop. He could bulk up if he wished to, by thinking like a scientist, and wind up at the “agnosticism” of a Dawkins or the atheism of a Dennett—but that is just what he doesn’t want, so at every threat to his commitments he shuns science. That story is almost exactly the opposite of the truth. Men of Truth The story is right about virtue: The smoothly...

Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests. The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. A lack of funds from the collection plate to support the Christian infrastructure, including church upkeep and ministers’ pay and pensions, will force church closures as ageing congregations die. In contrast, the number of actively religious Muslims will have increased...

It is a common myth of our day, not surprisingly propagated by atheists, that religious believers are undereducated folk who have abandoned the use of reason in favor of blind faith. So in his book Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris writes that because of the religious belief of its citizens, the United States appears to the rest of the world "like a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant." It is not surprising, in fact, that two of the most prominent neo-atheistic authors, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, are British, representing an island known in our day for its religious indifference....

Hollywood has long been a purveyor of cultural poison, and a magnet for individuals to whom shame is a foreign concept. The trap of letting the facts get in the way of the weaving of a yarn that serves their ends is one they have always dodged quite artfully, but never has the disconnect between image and reality been as acute as in one of their latest efforts, Kinsey. The movie is based on the life and work of Alfred Kinsey, who wrote two volumes on human sexuality in the late 1940s and early1950s: Sexual behavior in the Human Male...

“The ‘atheist nation’ of China mourns for their dead and undertakes a huge humanitarian effort which proves their system of shame and honor is vastly superior to the Christian system of dogmatic and silly superstitions. Christians absolutely hate it when other people show more concern for their fellow humans than the Christians do. Christians only pretend to love their fellow humans and do so only because they think they have to, not because they actually want to. Once again atheism trumps Christianity as a much more viable and sane worldview. This is why Christianity is a dead religion that...

Maybe the reason the misperception persists that there are no atheists in foxholes is that nonbelievers must either shut up about their views or be hounded out of the military. Just ask Army Spc. Jeremy Hall, who is making a splash in the news because of the way his atheism was attacked by superiors and fellow soldiers while he was risking his life in service to his country. Hall, 23, served two combat tours in Iraq, winning the Combat Action Badge. But he's now stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., having been returned stateside early because the Army couldn't ensure his...

Peter Singer is a calm, lucid and able debater, and our debate at Biola University in Los Angeles on April 25 was lively and hard-fought. Not for nothing is Singer considered a world-class philosopher and advocate. To watch the debate go to dineshdsouza.com and click on my AOL blog. Singer praised me for not simply making assertions of faith or hurling Bible passages at him but rather for using reason and argument to make my case . And I complimented Singer for stepping, so to speak, into the lion's den. (Biola actually stands for Bible Institute of Los Angeles.) Unlike...

New film takes Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories and shaky evidence to new heightsJoseph Brean, National PostWhen Ben Hammott discovered the apparent tomb of a Knight Templar at the bottom of a hole in a cave in the countryside of southern France, he thought he had discovered the final resting place of Mary Magdalene, and so he did what any amateur treasure hunter in this age of the Da Vinci Code would have done. He returned with a Hollywood director, lowered a pole into the tomb with "some sticky stuff on the end," removed the shroud from the body, plucked...

JUNCTION CITY, KAN. - Like hundreds of young people joining the Army in recent years, Jeremy Hall professes a desire to serve his country while it fights terrorism. But the short and soft-spoken specialist is at the center of a legal controversy. He has filed a lawsuit alleging he has been harassed and his constitutional rights have been violated because he doesn't believe in God. The suit names Defense Secretary Robert Gates. "I'm not in it for cash," Hall said. "I want no one else to go through what I went through." Known as "the atheist guy," Hall has been...

FORT RILEY, Kan. — When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending. But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement. Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from...

[An oldie-but-goodie from 4/22/2005, appropriate for Earth Day and the environmentalist cult.] April 22, 2005 -- Today is a religious holiday that should make us all into atheists. April 22, 2005, marks the 35th anniversary of Earth Day. For many people it's simply a day to think warm and fuzzy thoughts about clean air, crystal lakes, verdant forests and soaring eagles. Until the 1990s May Day marked the worship by the communists of an abstraction called the "workers" at the expense of real flesh-and-blood workers and every other human being on the planet. The result was human carnage. Now Earth...

[An oldie-but-goodie appropriate for Earth Day.] April 22, 2005 -- Today is a religious holiday that should make us all into atheists. April 22, 2005, marks the 35th anniversary of Earth Day. For many people it's simply a day to think warm and fuzzy thoughts about clean air, crystal lakes, verdant forests and soaring eagles. Until the 1990s May Day marked the worship by the communists of an abstraction called the "workers" at the expense of real flesh-and-blood workers and every other human being on the planet. The result was human carnage. Now Earth Day marks the worship by eco-extremists...

CHICAGO (CBS) ― A state lawmaker from Chicago has gotten some not-so-adoring attention from news-talk show host Keith Olbermann for her rant against an atheist activist. State Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago), who represents parts of the South Side, was named the "Worst Person in the World" on Tuesday because of her rant against Rob Sherman, an atheist activist who was testifying last week about the constitutionality of a plan to donate money to rebuild Pilgrim Baptist Church. "This is the Land of Lincoln, where people believe in God; where people believe in protecting their children. We don't want – in...

Anyone reading this blog who isn’t aware of the dustup that occurred at the Mall of America somewhere in Minnesota this past Friday must not be a reader of the New York Times (or any of the teeming millions of ‘mom and pop’ atheist/Darwinist / boffin blogs that are all atwitter about it and still writing well into the night.) The controversy around Premise Media’s upcoming movie Ben Stein’s EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed became the hottest topic in the blogosphere. According to BlogPulse, a service of Nielsen Buzzmetrics, the issue held the number one slot throughout the day on Monday,...