Free Republic

Legendary conservative columnist George Will says he is an atheist. […] “I’m an amiable, low voltage atheist,” Will explained. “I deeply respect religions and religious people. The great religions reflect something constant and noble in the human character, defensible and admirable yearnings.” “I am just not persuaded. That’s all,” he added. …

<p>David Niose, an attorney for the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center, said public schools should not permit an exercise that "teaches students that patriotism is tied to a belief in God."</p> <p>“Such a daily exercise portrays atheist and humanist children as second-class citizens, and certainly contributes to anti-atheist prejudices,” Niose said in a statement.</p>

PISMO BEACH, Calif. – Officials in a California city have agreed to end their practice of presenting prayers at public meetings in order to settle a lawsuit with a local atheist organization. City officials in Pismo Beach state that they decided to settle the matter because they did not want to spend taxpayer money to fight the legal battle. The announced their decision on Wednesday. As previously reported, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) filed a complaint against the city in November, asserting that the prayers offered regularly by Pismo Beach chaplain Paul Jones promote Christianity to residents. The organization...

An atheist group is combatting a Christian Easter display at Wisconsin's Capitol building in Madison by setting up a sign that reads "Nobody died for our 'sins,' Jesus Christ is a myth." The Freedom From Religion Foundation says it rushed to get a permit for their display after seeing that the Concerned Women for America group was able to set up their own display at Wisconsin's Capitol building. The CWA group's display reportedly included a Christian cross and pro-life literature. The conservative women's group says on its website that it's dedicated to bringing "biblical principles into all levels of public...

Democrats are waging war on the faithful and are even comfortable booing God on national TV. Give it three more presidential election cycles and the Democrat Party’s platform will be expressly antireligious. Today, they still pretend not to hate the concept of faith or hold those who have it in contempt. You’ll see Hillary hitting plenty of black churches in 2016 – after all, that condescending empty suit is in no ways tired. But otherwise, Democrats are delighting in their opportunity to burden, harass and humiliate the believing. They use Obamacare to try to force the faithful to breach their...

<p>‘as time goes on, weirdly, I’m growing less liberal. I’m more like, ‘No, religion is ruining the world, you need to stop!’.</p>

The head of the Russian Pensioners' Party has come up with an initiative to change the Constitution and define marriage as only being between a man and a woman. Igor Zotov, who is also a Lower House MP has explained his move by his assertion that Russia's traditional values are under threat from the latest modern tendencies. "I got this idea from members of the Pensioners' Party. These people are extremely concerned over the processes that are currently taking place all over the world, in particular by the fact that the laws allowing gay marriage have been passed in 15...

The Kremlin has confirmed that the divorce of Russian President Vladimir Putin from his wife of 30 years, Lyudmila, has been finalised. The country's best-known couple, who have two daughters in their late 20s, went on TV in June to announce they were breaking up. Mr Putin, 61, was still officially listed as "married" only last week.

Since its founding in the 1930s, Alcoholics Anonymous has become part of the fabric of American society. AA and the many 12-step groups it inspired have become the country's go-to solution for addiction in all of its forms. These recovery programs are mandated by drug courts, prescribed by doctors and widely praised by reformed addicts. Dr. Lance Dodes sees a big problem with that. The psychiatrist has spent more than 20 years studying and treating addiction. His latest book on the subject is The Sober Truth: Debunking The Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs And The Rehab Industry. Dodes tells NPR's...

There’s not a lot to like about Vladimir Putin: he’s autocratic, vain and runs a corrupt government. And he doesn’t give a fig for human rights. The repression in Chechnya, the jailing of the businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Pussy Riot protestors, the murders of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and of Alexander Litvinenko, the former spy – all this happened on Putin’s watch. Who would not be on the side of the 100,000 people who turned out on Moscow’s streets last winter to protest against Putin’s election to a third term as president and to demand fair elections and an honest...

Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, revealed in a recent interview that his family goes to a Catholic church and that religious morality inspires a lot of his charity work. He also shared his personal thoughts on God and the biggest issues facing the world today. "The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important. We've raised our kids in a religious way; they've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in. I've been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that's...

Maher began the monologue by declaring that America is “stupid” because 60 percent of the country reportedly believes the tale of Noah’s ark is literally true. He went on to slam the film Noah as “floating giraffe cr**,” but said it “must be doing something right” since it’s been condemned by both Muslims and Christians. And the fact that it might lose a lot of studio money, he joked, “may put it in hot water with the Jews too.”

The American Humanist Association filed a lawsuit last week in federal court in Maryland calling for the removal of Bladensburg’s 40-foot Memorial Peace Cross, which honors men from Prince George’s County who died during World War I. The association and three individual plaintiffs contend that the cross, which is on state property, violates the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. The cross was dedicated in 1925. ...One of the individual plaintiffs, Steven Lowe of Washington, contends that the cross "associates a Christian religious symbol with the state and gives the impression that the state supports and approves of...

Oral arguments in a lawsuit by an atheist organization against the placement of the "World Trade Center cross" at a museum on government property will take place later this week. American Atheists will present their case before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, arguing that the WTC cross does not belong in a museum on government leased property. Two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, construction workers found a cross beam among the wreckage of the Twin Towers. Measuring 17 feet tall and approximately 4,000 pounds, the piece of debris became known as the World Trade...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Museum of Tolerance has acquired a 1937 letter written by Bertrand Russell in which the Nobel Prize-winning philosopher says if the Nazi army invades his native England the British should invite Adolf Hitler to dinner rather than fight. ... “The fact of the matter is he had all the credentials. He probably was Britain’s greatest philosopher and won the Nobel Prize for literature after all,” Hier said. “But he didn’t understand a basic concept: that the idea that you allow evil to flourish under these conditions, that if we act nice to Hitler, serve him...

That's why it's pretty chilling to hear Vladimir Putin hurling accusations at the West and pointing out that what's going on is identical to what went on when communism was established and religion was completely expunged from the Soviet Union. Between 1917 and 1937, almost a quarter of a million Christians were executed, and churches that survived destruction were converted into things like museums of atheism. Russian President Putin, who hasn't been shy about expressing his disapproval of homosexuality and has banned what he defined as "homosexual propaganda," had this to say: Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their...

I'm most likely an atheist, leaning to the agnostic side of the spectrum. I know I'm a sceptic, in the true sense of the word. Or shallow. One of the two. [snip] About five years ago, work took me, my fellow-journalist wife and our then three-year-old child from eastern England to southwest France. We enrolled our little girl at a local Catholic school, selected purely on the recommendation of a colleague for the quality of its education. [snip} Being a Catholic school, an hour is set aside each week for catechism. A friend takes the class. She has often told...

Waiting for the axe to fall, the soldiers discuss the hereafter. Jocko: I say this :I BELIEVE ! I can never find a way to argue down you that don’t believe, but I believe in the Lord God Almighty,all knowingand all forgiving. [Music.] And I believethat Good shall be triumphant in the endand that evil shall be vanquished. I believein a hereafter. Bob: Me, too. I figure a man’s got to believe in those things, does he want to believe in the good things about man — ?about his very own self — ? [Green Leaves…] the real good...

One of the more common misunderstandings of the modern age, we might even call it a delusion, is to confuse explanation with meaning. Through scientific method and other empirical ways of studying, we have gotten very good at explaining many of the processes and mechanics of the natural world.But to give explanation, is not the same as to ascribe meaning. To answer how things work is not the same as to answer why.Why, for example, do things exist at all? Why is there existence vs. nonexistence? Why is there observable order in the universe vs. chaos. Showing for example the...

LONDON (CNN) - The Sunday Assembly was riding high. The world’s most voguish - though not its only - atheist church opened last year in London, to global attention and abundant acclaim. So popular was the premise, so bright the promise, that soon the Sunday Assembly was ready to franchise, branching out into cities such as New York, Dublin and Melbourne. “It’s a way to scale goodness,” declared Sanderson Jones, a standup comic and co-founder of The Sunday Assembly, which calls itself a “godless congregation.” But nearly as quickly as the Assembly spread, it split, with New York City emerging...