Free Republic

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

The fastest-growing faith in America is no faith at all. And now some atheists think they need a church. It seems unlikely that many of the 850 or so people at the Society for Ethical Culture on a recent Saturday night believed that God was still extant. But evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion and possibly the most famous atheist in the world, was not taking any chances. He gave a PowerPoint presentation driving home that religion does not meet any of the standards of basic scientific inquiry, before casually flicking away a few of His last...

Representative tries to put the fear of God in atheistRead Eric Zorn's full post: Rep. Monique Davis to atheist Rob Sherman: `It's dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!' By Eric Zorn | Change of Subject April 6, 2008 Did you hear about the state legislator who last week blasted a Lutheran minister during a committee hearing for spewing dangerous religious superstitions, and then attempted to order the minister out of the witness chair on the grounds that his Christian beliefs are "destroying what this state was built upon"? Of course you didn't, because it didn't...

A former member of the U.S. Supreme Court serving on an appeals court panel has justified a city's decision to ban prayers at council meetings that are "in Jesus name," calling it a "reasonable" restriction on a councilman's speech rights. The comments came this week as the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard a case handled by the Rutherford Institute on behalf of Rev. Hashmel Turner. Turner, a resident of Fredericksburg, Va., and a member of its town council, was part of a rotation of council members who took turns bringing a prayer at the council meetings, and he...

Historical facts clearly prove the murderous evils of atheism and big government At a minimum, atheist dictators in the Soviet Union, Red China, Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia murdered 105 million people in the 20th Century, more than 60% of the mass murders, genocide and political murders in that time. In comparison, only about 2% of the 169 million examples of democide in the 20th Century were due to religious conflict. Also in comparison, the Crusades murdered only 1 million people over several centuries, the Spanish Inquisition only murdered 350,000 people over several centuries, and the witch hunts added...

"An age of science is necessarily an age of material­ism," wrote Hugh Elliot early in the last century. "Ours is a scientific age, and it may be said with truth that we are all materialists now."[1]One does not have to look far to discover the con­tinued accuracy of Elliot's assessment. Scientific materialism--the claim that everything in the uni­verse can be fully explained by science as the prod­ucts of unintelligent matter and energy--has become the operating assumption for much of American politics and culture. We are repeatedly told today that our behaviors, our emotions, even our moral and religious longings...

To hear some Floridians tell it Tuesday night, introducing the word ''evolution'' into state science-education standards would be a needed step into the 21st century. Others at a meeting at Everglades High School in Miramar urged state education officials to give other theories of the origin of life equal space -- and let students decide what to believe. ''We don't teach science in Sunday school,'' said Ken Loukinen, president of the Atheists of Broward County. ``Please don't teach religion in science class.'' The public forum -- the fourth statewide and only one in South Florida -- was the last before...

FORT WORTH: A passenger on a Fort Worth bus says the T. Bus Service discriminated against her religion. Christine Lutz says she was reading her Bible to her children when the bus driver asked her to stop or get off the bus

The “In God We Trust” inscription, currently on the edge of the presidential $1 coin, apparently will return to the obverse (front) or reverse (back) of the coin, thanks to a bill recently passed by Congress. Photo Terms of Use WASHINGTON (BP)--Presidential one dollar coins are the only U.S. coins currently being issued by the United States Mint that have the inscription "In God We Trust" along the edge, but public pressure soon may send the motto back to the front or back of the coins. Legislation introduced by Sens. Sam Brownback, R.-Kan., and Robert Byrd, D.-W.Va., that would...

As the movie studios gear up for a big Christmas movie season, one trailer that looks like a blockbuster is "The Golden Compass," which must be trying to cash in on the "Narnia" movies. It has flashy special-effect polar bears in armor and a young heroic damsel in distress facing off against evil forces. The casting is top-notch, led by Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, the current star spy in the James Bond movies. But buyer beware: Narnia it's not. It's the anti-Narnia. Instead of a Christian allegory, it's an anti-Christian allegory. The author of "The Golden Compass," Philip Pullman,...

"In Lyra's world, a person's soul lives on the outside of their body, in the form of a daemon--an animal spirit that accompanies them through life. A child's daemon can change shape, assuming all the forms that a child's potential inspires; but as a person ages, their daemon gradually settles into one form, according to their character and nature...In our world, it is possible that people that people have daemons as well, only they are invisible. If you would like to learn more about your daemon, and create a daemon avatar to take out into the world with you, select...

Consider the latest fad perpetuated by, or at least partner of the Progressive Left agenda; Atheism. Here we have all the ingredients of the flashiest and most delicate means yet of evading morality ever conceived. Why, the Atheist has it made! Who can question another’s faith whether it be Christian, Buddhist, Mormon or Jew or any other faith? The topic is out of bounds as it should be. The Spiritual basis for one’s faith should never be questioned. This legally enforced right holds true when the topic is one of faith but the entire context of the discussion changes when...

On Dec. 7, 2007, the movie "The Golden Compass," based on the first book in the fantasy trilogy entitled "His Dark Materials" by atheist Philip Pullman will be released in theaters throughout the world. Pullman wrote his fantasy trilogy because he was so upset by the Christian evangelism of C.S. Lewis in his wonderful series of Christian tales entitled "The Chronicles Of Narnia." Pullman is an avowed atheist who has dedicated his life to undermining Christianity and the Church among young readers. The film's release is only another example of a culture spiraling away from faith, a culture into which...

NEW YORK — A week into the cross-country launch of a radio talk show for "Godless infidels," the son of the late former President Ronald Reagan will be a guest. Ron Reagan will speak this weekend on Freethought Radio, which Air America Radio is now broadcasting nationally, about his own atheism.

As if we were back in eighteenth-century France, atheist tracts are abroad in our land, their flamboyant titles defiant. The God Delusion, God Is Not Great, Letter to a Christian Nation, Atheist Manifesto, Atheist Universe: These are not subtle insinuations against God, requiring inferences from readers, but open opposition inviting readers to join in thumbing their noses. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, newly published, offers comfort and scholarly reassurance, if not consolation, to atheists who might otherwise feel lonely--as, believing what they do, they surely must. Atheism isn't what it was in the eighteenth century. Now, the focus of the...

Atheism has nearly always been with us in one form or another, but the atheists we’ve been hearing the most from lately—chiefly Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris—are a new breed. Unlike the old-school humanists, the new atheists—or anti-theists, as some of them prefer to be called—don’t want to just deny the existence of God, they want to wipe religion off the map. Christopher Hitchens follows this pattern with his new book, belligerently titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. In his first chapter, called “Putting It Mildly,” Hitchens writes, “I will continue to [respect my friends’...

The God that whined Barbara Kay, National Post Published: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 Back in the day, the many atheists I knew went about their unbelieving lives in a quietly sardonic, but non-combative way: They'd abandoned organized religion, but sought no quarrel with those who stayed. They explained their non-belief to their children, but let them join the boy scouts. Everything old is new again, but ? different. Yesterday's live-and-let-live atheism has morphed into today's truculent "atheism with attitude," where God is not only dead, but --postmodern glee having replaced Nietszchean gloom regarding His demise -- with good riddance...

"There is nothing new under the sun," proclaims the Book of Ecclesiastes. The rise of the new new atheism confirms this ancient biblical wisdom. Of course the famous words of Ecclesiastes should not be taken in a slavishly literal sense, a technique that is all-too-common among those who think they can refute belief in God by showing that the Bible abounds in demonstrably false and self-contradictory statements. But one stunning new development under the sun is that promulgating atheism has become a lucrative business. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, in less than 12 months atheism's...

In just the last few months, three books attacking belief It is not due to their eloquence, originality or persuasiveness that these books have become best sellers. I believe other factors are at work. And they are: First and most significant is the amount of evil coming from within Islam. Whether Islamists (or jihadists, Islamo-Fascists or whatever else Muslims who slaughter innocents in the name of Islam are called) represent a small sliver of Muslims or considerably more than that, they have brought religious faith into terrible disrepute. How could they not? The one recognized genocide in the world today...

"The God Delusion" Debate Wednesday, October 3, 2007 The Alys Stephens Center Birmingham, Alabama Remaining true to our goal of engaging secular culture on critical issues in a thoughtful, respectful manner, Fixed Point Foundation will sponsor a debate on what is arguably the most critical question of our time: the existence of God. The decision one makes regarding this question has implications that reverberate throughout eternity to be sure, but it also affects temporal existence from government policy to the individual. Historically, man’s belief in the transcendent has served as a restraint on his conduct and provided hope for his...