Free Republic

The ideal of the coolly rational scientific observer, completely independent, free of all preconceived theories, prior philosophical, ethical and religious commitments, doing investigations and coming to dispassionate, unbiased conclusions that constitute truth, is nowadays regarded by serious philosophers of science (and, indeed, most scientists) as a simplistic myth...

Morality is both a universal and a surprising fact about human nature. When I say that morality is universal I am not referring to this or that moral code. In fact, I am not referring to an external moral code at all. Rather, I am referring to morality as the voice within, the interior source that Adam Smith called the “impartial spectator.” Morality in this sense is an uncoercive but authoritative judge. It has no power to compel us, but it speaks with unquestioned authority. Of course we can and frequently do reject what morality commands, but when we do...

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights'The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life'. NEW YORK, NY (Catholic League) - On October 30, atheist Christopher Hitchens appeared on Dennis Miller’s Internet radio show condemning Mother Teresa, yet again. Here is one of his choice statements: “The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it’s a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to.” Catholic League...

SANTA ANA, Calif., Nov. 3 /Christian Newswire/ -- While many people continue to believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, a group of scientists will present overwhelming scientific evidence against Darwin's speculations. "If Charles Darwin knew 150 years ago what we know today, he likely would not have published Origin of the Species," said John Baumgardner, Ph.D., whose organization, Logos Research Associates, will lead the two-day "Darwin Was Wrong" conference Nov. 13-14 at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. "We can perhaps excuse Darwin, given his ignorance about the true complexity of living organisms and about genetics," said Dr. Baumgardner, a geophysicist...

Is there good without God? John Mark ReynoldsTheology 10.30.2009 Can people be good without God? How can people be good, in the moral and ethical sense, without being grounded in some sort of belief in a being which is greater than they are? Where do concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, come from if not from religion?Children often repeat ideas gained elsewhere as if they were their own profound insights. I remember in school “inventing” what I thought was a stunning new idea for propulsion only to be told that jet engines were, in fact, fairly common....

LAKELAND - Motorists along one of Lakeland's major thoroughfares are being greeted with a billboard asking a provocative question: "Don't believe in God?" Then there's the answer: "You are not alone." The billboard went up Sunday on eastbound Memorial Boulevard near Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, making Lakeland the second Florida city to have a billboard sponsored by an atheist organization.

Life is not a naturalistic phenomenon with unlimited evolutionary potential as Darwin proposed. It is intelligently designed, ruled by immutable laws, and survives only because it has a built-in facilitated variation mechanism for continually adapting to internal and external challenges and changes. The essential components are: functional molecular architecture and machinery, modular switching cascades that control the machinery and a signal network that coordinates everything. All three are required for survival, so they must have been present from the beginning—a conclusion that demands intelligent design. Life’s built-in ability to adapt and diversify looks like Darwinian evolution, but it is not....

Catholics and other Christians probably don't care what anyone says about them anymore, given the relative lack of outrage over Richard Dawkins' comments in The Washington Post this week. (See blog post below). So who will notice what Christopher Hitchens just unloaded on the Dennis Miller show this morning? Miller, let it be said, was not buying it at all--merely letting Hitchens spout this about abortion and Mother Theresa: "Mother Theresa spent her whole life saying (that what Calcutta needs) is a huge campaign against family planning. I mean, who comes to that conclusion who isn't a complete fanatic? She...

Why is thought, being a secretion of the brain, more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter? It is our arrogance, it is our admiration of ourselves… — Charles Darwin, age 29, in his notebook This is an incredible comment. It is difficult to understand how anyone with a brain could not observe that thought produces such things as symphonies, literature and mathematics, while gravity just makes things fall down and holds planets in their orbits. Furthermore, thought does not secrete like insulin from a pancreas, it is willed (at least that’s what I do, and I assume others do...

Did you miss it? Last month the country celebrated national Blasphemy Day! According to NPR.com, atheists marked Blasphemy Day last month at gatherings around the world, celebrating the freedom to denigrate and insult religion. Activities included de-baptizing people with hair dryers and an art exhibit in Washington, D.C., which showed, among other titles, Jesus Paints His Nails, in which "an effeminate Jesus after the crucifixion [applies] polish to the nails that attach his hands to the cross." The atheist group Center for Inquiry hosted the exhibit. Addressing a capacity crowd at the University of Toronto, columnist Christopher Hitchens elicited enthusiastic...

At the launch event for his latest book, Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago attacked the bible, saying that the world would be better off without it. The writers latest book "Cain" is an ironic retelling of the story of Cain and Abel from the book of genesis. Looks like President Obama is in great company. ...

A group called The Big Apple Coalition of Reason has started a monthlong ad camaign on the New York City subway system. The group aims to convince people that there are many atheists in New York, and that they are still moral without religion. ...

First the atheists began an ad campaign in London, and now atheists are getting ready to advertise that they are “Good without God”. Starting next Monday, a coalition of local groups will run a monthlong advertising campaign in a dozen Manhattan subway stations with the slogan “A Million New Yorkers Are Good Without God. Are You?” The posters also advertise the Web site BigAppleCoR.org, which provides a listing of local groups affiliated with the Coalition of Reason, the umbrella organization that coordinated the campaign.The campaign — which is being paid for by $25,000 from an anonymous donor — follows a...

Leading atheists are arguing that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime were theist and specifically Christian. Christopher Hitchens in God Is Not Great depicts Hitler as a pagan polytheist -- not exactly a conventional theist but still a theist. Atheist websites routinely claim that Hitler was a Christian because he was born Catholic, he never publicly renounced his Catholicism, and he wrote in Mein Kampf, "By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." Atheist writer Sam Harris writes that "the Holocaust marked the culmination of...two hundred years of Christian fulminating against the Jews"...

"There is no purpose to life, but it's not an accident." -- Richard Dawkins CLICK THE ABOVE LINK TO WATCH THE VIDEO. Stephen Colbert uses his comedic talents to question Richard Dawkins on his latest book --- THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

The Anti-Defamation League, the country's leading group dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, is rightly sensitive to the offense of trivializing the Holocaust. Why, then, has the ADL said nothing in protest against the Darwinian biologist and bestselling atheist author Richard Dawkins and his comparison of Darwin doubters to Holocaust deniers?...

Many atheopaths1 and their compromising churchian allies claim that biblical belief and science are mortal enemies. Yet historians of science, even non-Christians, have pointed out that modern science first flourished under a Christian world view while it was stillborn in other cultures such as ancient Greece, China and Arabia. The historical basis of modern science depended on the assumption that the universe was made by a rational Creator. An orderly universe makes perfect sense only if it were made by an orderly Creator (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:33). For example, evolutionary anthropologist and science writer Loren Eiseley stated:...

Computers are becoming faster and more powerful all the time and those improvements have been mainly due to better hardware. Future improvements, however, may well rely increasingly on better architecture and software. One reason why this seems likely is that the human brain, with its very different architecture, dramatically out performs computers in performing various tasks (such as perceiving an object in a complex visual scene). If computers are to match the brain's performance, they likely will need to exploit features of the brain's design. In some regards the brain's hardware is far beyond that of a computer. Its "wires,"...

Einstein’s God by Jean F. Drew Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) — reluctant scientific revolutionary and one of the most prolific theoretical physicists who ever lived — continues to fascinate us as a world-class thinker and important public actor to this day. There has been much speculation regarding his religious views in particular over the course of many decades. Some people nowadays maintain that Einstein was an atheist. Others, a pantheist. His great biographer Abraham Pais (in Subtle Is the Lord, 1982) averred that Einstein’s God was simply the God of Baruch Spinoza ((1632–1677), one of the most influential European...

Ready for a day to honor blasphemy? According to press reports, September 30 is set as the observance of the first-ever International Blasphemy Day. This could be interesting. The choice of September 30 looks back to that date in the year 2005, when the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad's face sparked outcry and protests in the Muslim world and threats toward the West. Now, as Religion News Service reports, the Center for Inquiry is planning a day of observances to mark the occasion. Ron Lindsay, a lawyer who serves as president of the Council for Inquiry International, said...

TORONTO—You’ve never seen Jesus like this before: dripping red nail polish around the nails in his feet and hands, an irreverent riff on the crucifixion wounds. The provocative title of the painting: “Jesus Does His Nails.” Blasphemous? Absolutely. Deliberately provocative? You bet. It is part of an upcoming art exhibit in Washington that will mark the first-ever International Blasphemy Day next Wednesday (Sept. 30) at the Center for Inquiry DC near Capitol Hill. Artist Dana Ellyn says her “Blasphemy” paintings are a tongue-in-cheek expression of her lack of belief in God and religion. The self-described “agnostic atheist”—she doesn’t believe in...

Recently there has been a flurry of books from the “New Atheists.� Such figures as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have been holding forth to state . . . well, not anything new.The reason there is nothing new to say is that there cannot, by the nature of the discussion, be anything new to say. When it came to the question “Does God exist?,� St. Thomas could only think of two reasonable objections in the whole history of human thought. Objection 1: It seems that God does not exist, because if one of two contraries be...

A theomachist is one who works against God; hates God in fact. Theomachism is the political belief and practice of hating or destroying God. Unlike atheists who merely deny the existence of God, perhaps the most disgusting set of ideas known to the world is the active hatred of God. Not new to history it has become a major part of the ideological landscape in the last century with the rise of materialism and positivist science. Those who practice this detestable belief do so under the cover of other political ideals which are compatible with their belief.

The American university is the anti-Disneyland, the saddest place on Earth. Today's colleges can make MSNBC seem fair and balanced and give the term "clinical depression" a sunny and joyful flavor. It's no wonder so many prominent liberal intellectuals are angry, begrudging, and gloomy. They imbibe four to ten years of it during their college studies. And their brethren in the media give them a consistent platform for their gloom. A few years ago, the Washington Post discovered that over 72 percent of college professors classify themselves as liberal. The study showed that the most left-leaning departments are in the...

The Wall Street Journal may be an unusual venue for theological debate, but this past weekend's edition featured just that - a theological debate of sorts. The "of sorts" is a necessary qualifier in this instance, because The Wall Street Journal's debate was not, as advertised, a debate between an atheist and a believer. Instead, it was a debate between two different species of atheists. The paper's "Weekend Journal" section front page for the September 12-13, 2009 edition featured articles by Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong set in opposing columns. The paper headlined the feature as "Man vs. God: Two...

Agnostic attorney Clarence Darrow once said, "I don‘t believe in God, because I don’t believe in Mother Goose." Now those controversial words and others are being used in part of a new push to promote the thinking of atheists and agnostics. Dozens of new ads will target the people of San Francisco. The campaign is the brainchild of the Midwest-based Freedom from Religion Foundation, which represents some 14,000 nonbelievers across the country. The association has been working since 1978 to keep church and state separate. The ads are already popping up on city buses. The group ordered 75 exterior signs...

"And not just atheists," said Bill Donohue during an August 31st Fox News interview. "I’m talking about people who are disaffected Catholics and Protestants who are mutineers within their own religion, trying to change things." It wasn't just "militant, dogmatic" atheists and "disaffected" Christians that the Catholic League president complained about either. Donohue also had a few choice words for magicians Penn & Teller whose Showtime series, Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t!, just ran an episode on the history of the Catholic Church. "This was the most Nazi-like assault,” Donohue said. “The most unrelenting half an hour of bashing I’ve ever...

This man is very articulate in making his case. His book should be a good read.

Why is it that atheists so vehemently deny that there is a correlation between atheism and Communism? It is that they are simply unaware of history as recent as that of the 20th century: the most secular and bloodiest century in human history? Have they really not read texts as basic to the issue as the “Communist Manifesto” the “ABC of Communism” Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism or any other statements at all written by founding Communists and Regime leaders? Is it that one of their favorite talking points is that “religion” is discredited by the evil done in its name...

Fratricide: New Atheists vs. Framing Atheists As of late there has been a lot of spittle passed between two camps in the Darwin-sphere. Things are getting really nasty, as so often happens among atheist factions. On one side are the new atheists: Coyne, Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, Myers. On the other side are the … well for want of a better word — the "framing" atheists: Ruse, Mooney, Kirshenbaum, Nisbet, Scott. With the exception of a few theist Darwinians (an oxymoron, I know) like Ken Miller, the motivation of the combatants seems to be the same: how to best advance an...

See Part I of my NewsReal Sunday discussion of Friday night's interview between Bill Maher and Sam Harris on Real Time. Leftist comedian Bill Maher just can't help being a jackass even toward people he respects. You'd think that if anyone could get him to at least attempt to grasp the value in the religious experience it would be believers who share his "progressive" political faith: Maher: I have unending respect for Bill Moyers. He's a brilliant man. He's also a Baptist minister. Jimmy Carter, y'know, a pretty bright guy. How do we reconcile someone who is so intelligent but...

""Freedom from indoctrination ought to be a basic human right for all children," argues ABBA star Björn Ulvaeus in a passionate plea for Sweden to rethink its policy on faith-based schools."

Atheist Alliance International, an atheists rights and pro-separation of church and state group, praised former United States president and devout Christian Jimmy Carter for having the courage and integrity to condemn his own church and religious community for their use of scripture to justify and promote the ongoing oppression of women. In an article published in TheAge.com, an Australian newsmagazine, the former president explained how he came to the difficult decision of leaving the U.S. Southern Baptist Convention, severing all ties after 60 years a member, based on its perpetuation of the biblical values of women as subservient and inferior....

In my seventieth year I find myself in a very peculiar position. Raised a Quaker, I lost my faith in my early twenties and it has never returned. I think of myself as an agnostic on deities and ultimate meanings and that sort of thing. With respect to the main claims of Christianity - loving god, fallen nature, Jesus and atonement and salvation - I am pretty atheistic, although some doctrines like original sin seem to me to be accurate psychologically. I often refer to myself as a very conservative non-believer, meaning that I take seriously my non-belief and I...

The so-called New Atheists are attacking the mantra of science and faith being compatible. Others in the science community question the value of confrontation.This fall, evolutionary biologist and bestselling author Richard Dawkins -- most recently famous for his public exhortation to atheism, "The God Delusion" -- returns to writing about science. Dawkins' new book, "The Greatest Show on Earth," will inform and regale us with the stunning "evidence for evolution," as the subtitle says. It will surely be an impressive display, as Dawkins excels at making the case for evolution. But it's also fair to ask: Who in the United...

I first heard of PZ Myers when he became known for being the man who was literally expelled from a screening of the creationist mockumentary Expelled. . .despite not doing anything wrong and actually being one of the stars of the film. Now he can add being expelled from the Creation “Museum” to his resume. Well, actually he wasn’t expelled; it was some of the atheists he was with that were expelled from the “museum” and another atheist he was with that was harrassed by the “museum’s” security staff. It all began several weeks ago when PZ Myers along with...

Atheists claim that they are happy, healthy, moral, etc. The assert that atheism is more moral than theism and that is leads to health, wealth, morality etc. Yet, consistently, finding via studies and surveys of various sorts cut through the propaganda and demonstrate that atheists are consistently the least charitable, less sociable, more depressed, more immoral than their counterparts. Even when it comes to societal and political issues and perhaps related to those more activists atheists who define atheism as anti-theism; things do not generally fare very well for atheists. These links have compiled various studies and other recourses on...

Mayor Chesapeake Alan Krasnoff Chesapeake, Va., Aug 5, 2009 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Following complaints from a Wisconsin-based atheist group against a Virginia city that opens public meetings with prayer, the Alliance Defense Fund and the Family Foundation of Virginia have offered to provide pro bono legal assistance if the city adopts a prayer policy that is challenged in court.The 14,000-member Freedom From Religion Foundation had sent letters of complaint to the city of Chesapeake, Virginia because of what the group called its “illegal practice” of routine opening prayers at its public meetings.ADF Senior Legal Council Mike Johnson, speaking...

Large portions of evilbible.com have been considered, dissected and declared fallacious on very many levels. Two examples of this fact are as follows: Whilst besmirching the Bible for allegedly commanding rape evilbible.com, for some odd reason, neglects to mention the most relevant biblical text related to the biblical view of and law about rape. Why this omission? Who knows, but it would certainly have gotten in the way of a good session of emotive expression of prejudice—it would have discredited evilbible.com to reference this most important text. Indeed, those annoying little facts have an annoying way of getting in the...

Dawkins Supports First UK Atheist Kids' Camp by Christine Dao* The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins has sponsored a week-long summer camp geared towards making atheists out of children...

The Evolutionist is "Shocked, Shocked to Find Religion in Here" --snip-- Evolutionary thought is, and always has been profoundly religious. Of course that is nothing new--religious mandates have always been influential. What is remarkable is the denial of evolutionists about their own arguments and convictions...

  Atheist Philosopher Bradley Monton Defends Intelligent Design Theory Dr Bradley Monton is a philosopher of science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has specialised in the philosophy of physics and the anthropic fine tuning argument. Prof. Monton thinks that Intelligent Design theory is science, and that its arguments have some force, although he is more impressed with ID arguments in physics than in biology. He is also an atheist. You can find Prof. Monton's Blog here, and his website here - including a link to his paper 'Is Intelligent Design Sience? Dissecting the Dover Decision' Listen...

Atheists are often an unfairly feared and scorned group. Many people tend to look upon them with disdain just because they have doubts about theology and like to go on TV and scream about how the majority of Americans are stupid for believing in God. This has led many religious people to have negative misconceptions about atheists, thinking among other things that they are followers of Satan. That’s ridiculous. Atheists don’t worship Satan. They worship Athor, rational god of logic, who cherishes all that is logical and smites all that is illogical, such as religion. His worshipers leave him gifts...

As soon as Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian geneticist who headed up the pioneering Human Genome Project during the 1990s, was floated as the possible new director of the National Institutes of Health—he was officially named to the post on Wednesday—the criticisms began flying. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, for one, said Collins is too public with his faith. Collins wrote a book called The Language of God, frequently talks about his religious conversion during medical school, and recently launched the BioLogos Foundation, which declares, "We believe that faith and science both lead to truth about...

 Early warning shots-- the War against Religion......developing:  The Left's 'Dominionist' Demons -- As near as I can tell, "Dominionism" is the Left's version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A big lie used to justify bigotry and irrational hatred.    "Dominionist" Fantasies     Why I'm Rooting for the Religious Right -- The professional haters of the "religious right" are a bunch of narrow-minded, doctrinaire bigots     Scary Stuff: Venom Against Conservative Christians (Discussed on Rush Limbaugh) more-- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1395264/posts    The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party(Moonbat Warning!)  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1395231/posts    Dominionist Domination: The Left runs...

Britain’s Leaders Warn of the Loss of Common Values The decline of Christianity and moral values in general is reaching new lows in Britain. While the number of faithful has been decreasing for some time now, warnings about the situation are starting to come from all quarters. Britain is no longer a Christian nation, affirmed Anglican bishop, Paul Richardson, in an article published Jun. 27 in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. The Anglican prelate was also critical of his fellow bishops for not understanding just how serious the change is in contemporary culture, and for their lack of action in dealing...

We’re never going to have an atheist president, are we? Besides the one we have now, I mean. OH YES. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based church-state watchdog group, claimed the engravings are unconstitutional and would exclude the 15% of Americans who identify themselves as non-religious… Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who sponsored the bill in the Senate, said historical references to God should not be censored for political correctness. “The Founders based the Constitution and our laws on religious faith and principles that clear the way for individual freedom,” he said in a statement. “Our true motto, ‘In God...

The title of this paper, "The Psychology of Atheism," may seem strange. Certainly, my psychological colleagues have found it odd and even, I might add, a little disturbing. After all, psychology, since its founding roughly a century ago, has often focused on the opposite topic-namely the psychology of religious belief. Indeed, in many respects the origins of modern psychology are intimately bound up with the psychologists who explicitly proposed interpretations of belief in God. William James and Sigmund Freud, for example, were both personally and professionally deeply involved in the topic. Recall The Will to Believe by James, as well...

The most serious challenge for Christianity today isn't one of the other religions of the world, such as Islam or Buddhism. Nor is it simple atheism, which has no depth, no mass appeal, no staying power. Rather, it's a religion most of us think is dead. That religion is paganism — and it is very much alive. Paganism is simply the natural gravity of the human spirit, the line of least resistance, religion in its fallen state. The “old” paganism came from the country. Indeed, the very word “paganism” comes from the Latin pagani, “from the fields” or “country-dwellers.” Country...

Well I must say, I had a great time reading the comments, critiques and insults that came in after my last post with its modest attempt to define "atheism". In particular, many self-described atheists took umbrage to my claim that atheism is denial of the proposition that God exists. (Apparently my smarmy attitude was also ripe for verbal assault.) One of my most spirited opponents drew comparisons between belief in God and unicorns as he/she asked: "do you believe in unicorns? Can you disprove the existence of unicorns?" The idea, presumably, is that belief in unicorns and God are equivalent....