Free Republic

EDITOR'S NOTE: For the last half of the twentieth century, Antony Flew (1923-2010) was the world's most famous atheist. Long before Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris began taking swipes at religion, Flew was the preeminent spokesman for unbelief.However in 2004, he shocked the world by announcing he had come to believe in God. While never embracing Christianity—Flew only believed in the deistic, Aristotelian conception of God—he became one of the most high-profile and surprising atheist converts. In 2007, he recounted his conversion in a book titled There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His...

The American Atheists of Cranford, N.J., announced Friday they will be sending books on atheism to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to be placed next to Gideon Bibles inside every cabin and lodge at the state's parks. On April 28, Ed Buchner, the former president of American Atheists, a nonprofit organization that was founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair in 1963, complained to the Department after he found "nine Bibles" inside his cabin, according to American Atheists. In a move to avoid controversy, and a potential lawsuit, the decision was made to remove all Bibles from the state's parks that...

[SNIP] The Church's predictions came as it launched an attack on plans by the First Minister, Alex Salmond, for a new class of “belief” ceremonies – alongside traditional religious and civil weddings. The Scottish Government is currently attempting to overhaul the marriage laws north of the border, primarily to introduce same-sex marriage. But the bill would also include a wider update of matrimonial laws including plans to create a “third way” to get married, through so-called “belief” ceremonies to accommodate those who do not belief in a deity but do but do promote a belief system. It follows the popularity...

On 10 May the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church was received by President Xi Jinping, leading to the creation of a new Moscow-Beijing axisThe overture to Patriarch Kirill’s official visit to China marked an important moment in relations between China and the Orthodox Church. Yesterday, in the Great Hall of the People, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church had the privilege of meeting Chinese President, Xi Jinping. “You are the first Patriarch of Moscow and the first supreme religious leader from Russia to visit our country,” Xi told Kirill, presenting this unprecedented event as a “clear sign of...

HOUSTON, TX (Catholic Online) - Finding that there is no law against what they were doing, a judge ruled that the cheerleaders violated no laws by holding banners during football games that made references to God. Koutnze Middle School cheerleaders say they have a tradition of making biblical and religious references on the banners which they hold at the end of halftime and the players run through when they return to the field. It's a widespread tradition practiced at schools across the nation. However, when the "Freedom from Religion Foundation" a litigious atheist organization whose purpose is to destroy any...

Brethren, Peace and Good to all in Jesus Christ. Many of you are already familiar with the different approaches to biblical interpretation. There are many because the Word of God is such a versatile collection of writings that no single approach is sufficient to fathom its riches.   Higher criticism and the Bible student Among the approaches developed in the 17th century that survives to this day is that of “higher criticism.” This approach is really a toolkit of techniques that requires seeing Holy Scripture and its constituent books as primarily literary works made by human beings. Theology and...

Famous atheist author Richard Dawkins has been named the world's top thinker in a global vote that counted 10,000 voices from over 100 countries."When Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist, coined the term 'meme' in The Selfish Gene 37 years ago, he can't have anticipated its current popularity as a word to describe internet fads," said Prospect Magazine, which conducted the poll, in explaining the biologist professor's popularity."But this is only one of the ways in which he thrives as an intellectual in the internet age. He is also prolific on Twitter, with more than half a million followers – and...

In a potentially career threatening move, News Editor Paul Sims gets something off his chestI have a confession to make: I think I might be a fan of the Pope. Not what you’d expect to read from the News Editor of a godless magazine but, watching the coverage of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s election to the top job, I couldn’t help thinking that I actually quite like the guy. Because really, what’s not to like? From the moment he stepped on to the Vatican balcony on the evening of 13 March, the new Pope Francis has seemed unusually down to earth...

Professor Richard Dawkins has claimed that forcing a religion on children without questioning its merits is as bad as 'child abuse'. In typically incendiary style, the leading atheist said he was against the 'indoctrination of religion' and teaching it as fact. The evolutionary scientist and Emeritus Fellow at Oxford University, speaking at the Chipping Norton Literary Festival yesterday, was repeating claims he made last year which were roundly condemned by charities and politicians. Professor Dawkins said at the festival that children should be taught religion but scorn should be poured on its claims. 'What a child should be taught is...

I am needing to gather information for a paper for my Philosophy course. The information needs to be gathered from other people's thoughts. Could you help me? - What is ultimate reality to you? God? Matter? An impersonal force? Something else? - Is truth absolute or relative? - Are moral values absolute or relative? - Let's go back to ultimate reality. Do you believe in God? If so, why? If not, why not?

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is struggling to get its estimated 100 million religious believers to banish superstitious beliefs about things like sickness and death, the country's top religious affairs official told a state-run newspaper. Wang Zuoan, head of the State Administration of Religious Affairs, said there had been an explosion of religious belief in China along with the nation's economic boom, which he attributed to a desire for reassurance in an increasingly complex world. While religion could be a force for good in officially atheist China, it was important to ensure people were not mislead, he told the Study Times,...

PASADENA, Calif. — Our universe didn't need any divine help to burst into being, famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking told a packed house here at the California Institute of Technology Tuesday night. Many people had begun queuing up for free tickets to Hawking's 8:00 p.m lecture, titled "The Origin of the Universe," 12 hours earlier. By 6:00 p.m. local time, the line was about a quarter-mile long. A second auditorium and a Jumbotron-equipped lawn, which itself was jammed with an estimated 1,000 viewers, were needed to handle the crowd. At least one person was observed offering $1,000 for a ticket, with...

Over the past few years, evangelical atheists have switched places with fire-and-brimstone Christians: where once it was the Christians who brooked no disagreement, now it is the atheists; and it is the atheists, too, who perform cartwheels on the heads of pins. Christopher Hitchens once even managed to argue of the Reverend Martin Luther King, of all people, that ‘In no real as opposed to nominal sense . . . was he a Christian’. A weaselly self-righteousness is now the hallmark of the celebrity unbeliever. Meanwhile, it is the Christian who nods diligently in any discussion, taking pains to reassure the atheists...

Our Heavenly Father has taken dear Edith Schaeffer to himself. She passed away quietly in her sleep last night in Gryon, Switzerland where she has been living with her family. We cannot express how deep is our gratitude for her life and we thank the Lord that she is enjoying the Hope that she has so longed for. .....

Little has changed in China’s official attitude toward the Vatican since Chairman Mao famously described Christians and other religious groups as, “enemies without guns.” During the most intense years of the Maoist era, the Chairman praised the “life-and-death class struggle” between religion and the People, and continued: “The enemies without guns are more hidden, cunning, sinister and vicious than the enemies with guns.” While China’s rhetoric has softened somewhat since Mao, it still adheres to its position that the Catholic Church interferes in China’s affairs “under the cloak of religion.” China’s spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying,...

An atheist "church" in London has modeled itself after the Christian church and plans to add more locations worldwide soon. Since its launch, The Sunday Assembly has heard from over 200 people who want to start their own location. The Sunday Assembly's website says that it is "a godless congregation that meets on the first Sunday of every month to hear great talks, sing songs and generally celebrate the wonder of life." They say that it is a service for anyone who wants to "live better, help often and wonder more." Atheist "church" co-founder and comedian Sanderson Jones says in...

Consider looking at the sky. One can often see a layer of clouds, where the sky is completely clear below a certain height, but the clouds seem to mushroom expansively, all emanating from the same height, as though resting on a great unseen glass shelf in the sky. In other, rarer, circumstances, one may happen to see a column of smoke rising, and abruptly halt and spread out horizontally, as though it has hit an invisible ceiling. The same thing happens in the mind: one travels along the paths of knowledge, absorbing information and learning all one can about a...

In the past few years, the number of affiliated student secular organizations has increased more than threefold This month at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a select group of students will show their humanitarian spirit by participating in the Bleedin’ Heathens Blood Drive. On February 12, they will eat cake to celebrate Darwin Day, and earlier this year, they performed “de-baptism” ceremonies to celebrate Blasphemy Day, attended a War on Christmas Party, and set up Hug An Atheist and Ask An Atheist booths in the campus quad. These activities and more are organized by the Illini Secular Student Alliance...

In his most eloquent account of the relationship between faith and reason – the 2006 Regensberg address – Pope Benedict XVI argues that the modern understanding of reason that restricts rationality to the deliverances of the hard sciences is incapable of offering a rational justification of itself, and much of anything else that makes life worth living. “Modern scientific reason,� the Holy Father writes, “quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit [i.e., mind] and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based.�...

The beginning of my religious conversion was a lonely time for me. I'd spent my whole life as an outsider to Christian circles, and it was hard to imagine that I could ever be comfortable being one of them, the Christians, the people whom I had firmly categorized in my mind as "Other." I'd come to believe in God on an intellectual level, yet I felt stuck, unable to move forward from there. Years of looking down on the entire concept of religion left me with a lingering impression that Christians and Christian culture were different from anything I'd ever...

Last month I stumbled upon an article about an atheistic “church service� in London. I didn’t even read the whole thing before I decided I had to go.The Sunday Assembly, as the group is called, meets once a month at The Nave in North London for “anybody searching for a sense of community, to meet and ‘turn good intentions into action.’�It is, all things considered, an atheistic church.Yes. A church for atheists.The Nave – new home to the atheistic church The Sunday Assembly This morning I woke up, sacrificed hearing Os Guinness speak at my own church, and ventured down to...

Colbert Report chaplain and envoy-at-large to the entertainment community, Jim Martin, S.J., has announced the very good news that Walter Ciszek’s With God In Russia, is now available on Kindle, courtesy of America Press. For anyone not yet familiar with Ciszek or this book, I urge you to get hold of it. You will be rewarded by encountering heroic sanctity, not through the hagiographic distancing of centuries, but in the searing light and existential detail of a time still very much our own. It is an opportunity to be with someone who loved God the way so many of us...

"I feel sorry for the church next door, waiting for their three people to trickle in," says Nick Julius, glancing at the small adjacent hall that will shortly be hosting its own gathering. There are still 40 minutes before the Sunday Assembly, an atheist service run by two standup comedians, is due to begin, but a queue of eager congregants is already forming outside a grand but crumbling former church in Islington, north London, hands shoved deep into pockets against the cold. Julius arrived an hour early, just to be sure of a place at the service, which is described...

TORONTO (RNS) Talk about an unlikely course in an unlikely place. The main chapel at Jesuit-run Regis College at the University of Toronto is adorned with stained glass windows, icons of Mary and Joseph, and the Stations of the Cross. The eight-week course, which meets every Wednesday afternoon, is on atheism. Or more precisely, “Responding to 21st-Century Atheism.”Atheism “has become militant, aggressive and proselytizing,” said Lewis, a Jesuit scripture scholar, who teaches the class with three other scholars. “It’s made great in-roads and is now socially acceptable. If you’re young and educated and believe in God, you’re (seen as) a...

Anyone on a faith walk will eventually ask the question, “How do I pray?” Except for the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, there is no easy answer, for prayer is a very personal and personalized pursuit. And, as with all pursuits, practice is the key to success and prayer is no different. You will soon discover the more you pray, the more you will find answers to difficult questions, along with mental or physical healing from various maladies, protection for you or your loved ones and comfort from any number of storms that happen to be raging in...

In a move that surprised many, Benedict XVI will receive today the secretary general of Vietnam's Communist Party. Nguyen Phu Trong will stop by the Vatican during a tour of European capitals. The audience with Benedict XVI is unusual for several reasons. The first is that Tuesday is usually a rest day for the Pope. In addition, papal audiences are usually reserved for heads of state, and not leaders of political parties.

General audience, Benedict XVI defines the Incarnation as "something unimaginable, the face of God can be seen, the process that began with Abraham is fulfilled." The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, he asks "for the great gift" to "proclaim together that Jesus is the Savior of the world."Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "The desire to know the face of God is in every man, even the atheists," but this desire is only realized by following Christ, in whom, in the Incarnation, "something unimaginable took place, the journey that began with Abraham is fulfilled. He is the Son, the fullness of...

Last week the New York Times published an opinion piece that offered atheism’s response to the evil/tragedy in which 20 children and six adults were murdered at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut. What prompted Susan Jacoby to write her piece was a colleague telling her that atheism “has nothing to offer when people are suffering.” She wrote the piece, “The Blessings of Atheism” (“It is Here and It is Now!” screams the subhead), to prove her colleague wrong by offering a consoling atheist alternative to religion’s consoling belief in an afterlife. Atheists cannot believe that there is any...

Susan Jacoby, an author and atheist wrote a column in last Sunday’s New Your Times entitled “The Blessings of Atheism.� In it she proposes that atheism has a lot to offer, especially in times of tragic loss and that it frees human beings from having to ask and answer difficult question. As you may imagine, I am not so sure that asserting a question can be avoided means that it has actually been avoided, or that what she calls blessings are in fact blessings.I would like to excerpt her article and make a few comments. Her original writing is in...

Raising your children as Roman Catholics is worse than child abuse, according to militant atheist Richard Dawkins. In typically incendiary style, Professor Dawkins said the mental torment inflicted by the religion’s teachings is worse in the long-term than any sexual abuse carried out by priests. He said he had been told by a woman that while being abused by a priest was a ‘yucky’ experience, being told as a child that a Protestant friend who died would ‘roast in Hell’ was more distressing. Last night politicians and charities condemned the former Oxford professor’s views as attention-seeking and unhelpful. The remarks...

I was asked by the Young Adult group in my parish to address some ads on our local buses and subway trains here in Washington. The members of the Young adult group found the ads offensive and troubling, especially since they were aimed at kids. The ads are posted by the American “Humanist� Association (AHA) and are indeed aimed at kids and teenagers. The focus of the message is “Kids without God: You’re not the only one.� I have altered the ad at the upper right of this post to avoid listing its website but as you can see God...

The formula seems simple: parents pass down what they believe to their children. Atheist parents don’t believe in God or go to church, therefore…. Yet, a surprisingly large number of atheist scientists from elite universities raise their children in a religious community such as a church. Sociologists Elaine Ecklund (Rice University) and Kristen Lee (University of Buffalo, SUNY) found that these atheist scientists do so because they want to give their children religious choice, have a religious spouse, or think that religious communities will give their children moral bearings and community. Unfortunately, very little research has been done concerning how...

An international Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life poll has found that Christianity remains the religion with the most adherents worldwide, while roughly one-third of people around the globe have no religious affiliation. The comprehensive poll examined more than 230 countries worldwide, and asked respondents to identify which religion, if any, they belong to. The results determined that 32 percent of the world's population, 2.2 billion people, are Christians, 23 percent or 1.6 billion are Muslim, 15 percent or 1 billion are Hindu, and that 7 percent or 500 million are Buddhists. African, Asian, Native American and...

The American Humanist Association is promoting a new Web site that is designed to furnish children with a naturalistic or atheistic perspective on science, sexuality, and other topics. The stated goal of the Web site is laudatory: “to encourage curiosity, critical thinking, and tolerance among young people, as well as to provide accurate information regarding a wide range of issues related to humanism, science, culture, and history.” The problem is that those values have no inherent connection with naturalism, which is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that there is nothing beyond the physical contents of the universe. One doesn’t need...

Lawsuit threat cancels Christmas concert HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - A threatened lawsuit had put a halt to what's become a Christmas tradition for members of the Moanalua High School orchestra. For the past six years, the award-winning group and volunteers from the New Hope Church have raised more than $200,0000 for a charity that treats poor people in Hawaii. But that all came to a halt on Monday when the Department of Education decided to cancel the concert just four days before the event. In a letter to the Department of Education, Mitch Kahle, founder of the Hawaii Citizens for the...

Yes, You Can--Know God... Why would such a powerful, just God care enough about you and I to take the form of a man—Jesus, called Christ--come to earth and die on a cross to pay for our sins? I asked this question, before I knew God. I have heard physicians say that dying on a cross is the most painful death imaginable. Even after many years as a Christian, I still can’t totally grasp God’s love, except to say that He has proved His love to me. Jesus is the only one who ever died to save me. He proved...

Pic de Bugarach, a small mountain in southwest France, is rumored to be the only spot on earth that will be saved from the Mayan Apocalypse predicted for Dec. 21, 2012, says a Latinos Post report dated Nov 27. According to doomsday theorists, the mountain will open up and reveal an alien spaceship ready to whisk humans away to safety. That is, if humans can access the mountain. French officials have banned access to the mountain to New Age enthusiasts, sightseers and journalists, says Daily Mail in a Nov. 19 report. Access to the small village with the same name...

Lu Zhengai is so scared by the Mayan apocalypse, that’s he’s spent all his money - $160,000 - on building his very own Noah’s Ark. The barely sea worthy boat, which he claims will save him and his family when flood waters destroy his house, was designed by Lu himself, measures 65 feet and will weigh 80 tons when finished, according to Chinese media. Land lubber Lu, who lives in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region of China – thousands of miles from the sea, began building the boat out of fear for the “doomsday” floods, predicted by the Maya calendar...

An Oklahoma senator has released a report outlining what he believes is some of the Pentagon’s most wasteful spending. Among a number of odd items includes a workshop on how Christianity would be affected if aliens were proven to exist. Senator Tom Coburn is known to be the “waste-watcher” on Capitol Hill, as he investigates unnecessary spending in various branches of the government. On Thursday, he issued what some consider to be a laughable list of Defense Department expenditures that have nothing to do with defense. In addition to $1.5 billion being spent on a plan to invent roll-up beef...

SPW- I am part of a contact group which for 37 years has been receiving psychographic messages that have been corroborated through UFO sightings once appointments were made. There have been witnesses, like Spanish reporter Juan José Benitez and Judge Dr. Ana María Polo from “Caso Cerrado” (a TV program) in Miami. Throughout these years we haven’t just seen appearing and landed spacecraft but we have seen the crew members and also some related experiences have taken place such as when a spacecraft appears and projects a beam of light forming a luminous dome or “Xendra” which is a dimensional...

Bugarach, with its two narrow streets, 176 residents, little agriculture, scores of wild orchids and virtually no pollution, was barely heard of a few years ago. Now, it's arguably the most famous village in France, known variously as "the village at the end of the world", the "chosen village", or as CNN put it, "the doomsday destination". According to a prophecy/internet rumour, which no one has ever quite got to the bottom of, an ancient Mayan calendar has predicted the end of the world will happen on the night of 21 December 2012, and only one place on earth will...

UFO Sightings Daily now reports that giant cubic entities that resemble the "Borg Cubes" in the Star Trek science fiction series are orbiting the Sun, and could soon head toward Earth. If one combines the beliefs of the ancient Pagan Gnostics with the Luciferian Liberation Front’s interpretation of the Bible and a 2011 report to UFO Sightings Daily, one has to conclude that GOD is orbiting the sun in the form of a giant cube. In this case, however, GOD stands for Galactic Obliteration Device. Revelations, chapter 22, does describe the "City of God", the New Jerusalem, as a giant...

Sunday, Solemnity of Christ the King, 25 November 2012, Beijing, China. Only recently the auxiliary bishop of Shanghai bravely announced from the pulpit of Saint Ignatius cathedral that he would no longer subject himself to the leadership of China’s Catholic Patriotic Association. Soon after, he was “escorted” to the Sheshan Catholic Seminary, where is presently on a forced “spiritual retreat” to “reconsider” his affiliation. In addition, the seminary has been closed “until further notice.” China’s Catholics are keenly aware of their situation, and they are also keenly aware of how to respond. Sitting in the pews during 10:00 am Mass...

An atheist group at Dartmouth College is planning an event aimed at skewering the reputation of the late Mother Teresa. The Atheists Humanists Agnostics (AHA) club sent out a campus-wide e-mail announcing the program on Tuesday and promising a “full-out romp against why one of the most beloved people of the century, Mother Teresa, is as Hitchens put it… ‘a lying, thieving Albanian dwarf.’” The e-mail says the group plans to screen an anti-Mother Teresa film, discuss Hitchens’ book, Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, and question how the public has been “conned into thinking this woman [Teresa]...

Pope Benedict XVI gives the final blessing Nov. 14, 2012 during the general audience in Paul VI Hall. Credit: Matthew Rarey-CNA. Vatican City, Nov 14, 2012 / 10:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The practical atheism of those who say they are Christian but live as if God does not exist is a greater threat than actual atheism, Pope Benedict XVI said as he presented three ways for people to more fully discover God. While actual atheists often think deeply about God before rejecting belief, practical atheism “is even more destructive … because it leads to indifference towards faith and the...

A secular group has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service against the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, alleging that the ministry's activity during the election season violates its tax exempt status. Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based organization, argued in its filed report that BGEA's "vote biblical values" ad campaign violated the IRS' rules on religious groups and political campaigning. "BGEA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has run full-page ads publicizing Billy Graham's call for the electorate to 'vote biblical values,'" said FFRF in a statement last week. "The ads have appeared in several 'swing state' newspapers in preparation for tomorrow's...

If the religious makeup of the GoP candidate didn't matter to many FREEPERs, why is the religious make-up of certain voter demographics of sudden interest to many of these same posters? In three post-election days, I've seen five FR threads on what Evangelicals did -- or didn't do -- at the polls...and yet NONE on what Catholics did. Why the lopsided attention? Given that Catholics supported Obama by a 50-48 percent margin, wouldn't that be at least as relevant -- if not more? [Note: Going into the election, Pew Forum found that Latino Catholics were supporting Obama 73-19%, so even...

The largest demographic of Obama's religious coalition supporters is made up of those who have stated they are not affiliated with a religion. The Public Religion Research Institute's 'American Values Survey' pegs that number to be approximately 23%. The largest percentage that supported Mitt Romney came from white, evangelical Protestants, at 37%.The survey also revealed that Obama supporters are younger, more diverse and more accepting of growing minority groups. Compared to the older, largely Caucasian and fundamentally religious group that supported the Republican candidate, analysts are predicting the demographic supporting Obama will translate into more wins for the Democrats in...

88% of the population professes to believe in God, while the number of agnostics and atheists is constantly dropping: a study examines religion’s comeback in former kingdom of State atheism.The long slog is over. The exile of the Orthodox Church from Russian society began in ’17 with the October Revolution and the birth of “gosateizm”, or State atheism. Ninety five years on, the Patriarchate in Moscow is reliving its youth all over again. A recent survey carried out by the Levada Centre has captured the religious sentiment within the Federation: 79% of Russians profess themselves to be Orthodox, 6% Muslim...