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If you had to come up with a subject for a debate, one that would persuade more than a thousand people to leave their firesides on a wet winter evening to sit in a draughty sports hall, what would you plump for? It would have to be something pretty charged, you would imagine. Or at least salacious. About Katie Price, perhaps, or Tiger Woods. But no. The motion that had them standing in the aisles and dangling from the rafters at Wellington College was: "Is atheism the new fundamentalism?" True, this was an Intelligence Squared debate, and there was a...

  As Catholics, it comes as no surprise to us that the human brain is hard-wired for religion. We believe in a God who created us in His image so that we would come to know and love Him. But for Enlightenment thinkers, who had committed themselves to the "liberation" of human thought from the shackles of religious dogma, the news would not have been welcome at all.   If political society, as Hobbes wrote, abhors a vacuum, the same is true of religious belief. One cannot destroy without creating something else in its place. The new society or...

The American Humanist Association is expanding its “Godless Holiday� advertising campaign to five major American cities this Christmas -- taking its message of a holiday season without religion nationwide for the first time. The ads read: “No God -- no problem! Be good for goodness’ sake. Humanism is the idea that you can be good without a belief in God� and feature several people in red and white Santa hats. The new ads come on the heels of an AHA campaign last year which asked “Why believe in a God?� and featured ads on public transit in Washington, D.C. Previously,...

A controversial Merry Christmas sign has returned to its traditional spot outside the Main Street fire station, after the town reversed an earlier decision to take it down. The decision to put the homemade sign back on display was made this afternoon, after residents protested its removal this morning outside Town Hall. "The townspeople have spoken," Selectman Richard Nardella said. Firefighters put the sign back up around 4 p.m.

NORTH ANDOVER — First it was the menorah on the town common. Now it's the Merry Christmas sign on the fire station. The town has put an end to a longtime holiday tradition ordering firefighters to take down their homemade Merry Christmas sign from outside the fire station after people complained. The sign had been up for a week before it was taken down Friday. Fire Chief William Martineau said the sign was made by firefighters some 50 years ago and was never an issue before. "I think Christmas is officially a religious holiday. But to all of us, it...

NORTH ANDOVER — An annual "Merry Christmas" sign on a North Andover fire station has been ordered removed. Town officials told firefighters last week to take down the homemade sign after they said people complained. Fire Chief William Martineau said Monday that the sign was made by firefighters about 50 years ago and never had been an issue before.

William Dembski, who was recently elected as the new Vice President of the EPS, released his latest book earlier this month from Broadman & Holman Academic, titled, The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World (2009). We interviewed Dembski about his book and its implications for Christian work on the "problem of evil." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What’s the main point that you are trying to communicate in this book? What is the “end of Christianity” that you speak of in your title? My book attempts to resolve how the Fall of Adam could be responsible for all evil...

The first of five U.S. cities will be hit by a new atheist holiday ad campaign this Thanksgiving weekend. Washington, D.C., residents can expect to see ads proclaiming, "No God?...No Problem!" inside buses and rail cars. Washington, D.C., residents can expect to see ads proclaiming, “No God?...No Problem!” inside buses, rail cars and on the side or tail of buses by week’s end. The campaign, sponsored by the American Humanist Association, will then target the transit systems of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. According to AHA, the holiday ad campaign is the first by a humanist group...

The “Nothing Butters” are rampant in the world of atheism. Philosopher Daniel Dennett presupposes that “the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon.” Dawkins assures us that the universe is “nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” Crick tops it off with we’re “nothing but a pack of neurons.” If we are all “nothing butters,” why is it wrong for white “nothing butters” to own and sell black "nothing butters"?

CNN correspondent Max Foster’s short report about Richard Dawkins on Tuesday’s Situation Room played more like a commercial which promoted the militant atheist’s new book. Despite Dawkins’s past inflammatory statements about Christianity, Foster only labeled him “an outspoken critic of creationism....[whose] atheist views have put him at the center of controversy” [audio clip available here]. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux’s introduction for the correspondent’s report highlighted the 150th anniversary of the printing of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” and how Dawkins was a “controversial successor [to Darwin] carrying the torch for evolution.” Foster gave a very basic description of Dawkins’s...

Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design --snip-- (CNN) -- While we officially celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on November 24, celebrations of Darwin's legacy have actually been building in intensity for several years. Darwin is not just an important 19th century scientific thinker. Increasingly, he is a cultural icon. Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that...

Dawkins argues that there is no doubt that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is true and, unlike some other scholars of the subject, says belief in evolution is not compatible with faith in religion. In fact, he argues, science and religion undermine each other. "I believe a true understanding of Darwinism is deeply corrosive to religious faith," Dawkins says in his TED Talk. There's no room for a God in the world as he sees it, and he believes atheists should be forceful in opposing religion. He acknowledges that it's an unpopular case to make, particularly in the...

A poster from the atheist billboard campaign. Photograph: Public Domain This week, the final phase of the atheist bus campaign will appear in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast – not on buses, but on billboards. Due to the amazing sums donated to the campaign fund by many Cif readers at the end of last year, we raised enough for a second wave of adverts – and the above posters will launch today. When, in this Cif piece back in October 2008, we asked how the extra funds should be spent, one of the issues which came up repeatedly in the...

While Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species has been described as “a grand narrative—a story of origins that would change the world”,1 ironically his book very pointedly avoided the question of the origin of life itself. This ought not be surprising. Darwin’s theory of the origin of species “by means of natural selection”2 presupposes self-reproduction, so can’t explain the origin of self-reproduction. Unfortunately, many proponents of evolution seem unaware of that. They don’t acknowledge that natural selection requires pre-existing life. As leading 20th century evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky lamented: ...

A BBC Debate Motion: That the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. .................Before.........After...........Change For...............678............268............-410 Against.......1102...........1876...........+774 Undecided....346..............34

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...