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Not all atheists are supercilious, of course. Many are content to live and let live, and some even grant that religion (which, in America, basically means Christianity) does some good. But atheism as an organized, evangelizing movement has been on the offensive lately. Witness the "New Atheists" such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, with their aggressive stance against God and their bestselling books attempting to debunk religion. So, assuming you are a theist, what do you say to the atheist who asks, "You don't (chuckle) actually believe in God, do you (snicker)?" The natural response would be...

What would happen to planet earth if the human race were to suddenly disappear forever? Would ecosystems thrive? What remnants of our industrialized world would survive? What would crumble fastest? From the ruins of ancient civilizations to present day cities devastated by natural disasters, history gives us clues to these questions and many more in the visually stunning and thought-provoking new special

DALLAS (AP) — A Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder. "If it sells, well, then we can come another day," Joe Taylor said. "This is very important to our continuing." Heritage Auction Galleries says the skull is estimated to be 40,000 years old, and projects it will fetch upward of $160,000. The artifact discovered in...

The No. 2 atheist activist in Illinois doesn't have an office or a car. Reporters have been banned from her home -- her mother is adamant on this point -- so the McDonald's across the street from Buffalo Grove High School has to serve as her impromptu media headquarters. None of which is surprising, when you consider that Dawn Sherman is all of 14. Her lawsuit challenging the new Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act in Illinois has already resulted in a temporary injunction blocking the law's mandatory moment of silence for the 13,000 students in Township High School District...

I watched the movie "The Great Debaters" last night, and it helped me to understand why atheists are such bad debaters. The movie portrays four students from a little black college in Texas, and shows how, under the tutelage of their pugnacious coach, they went on to defeat Almighty Harvard. Denzel Washington, who plays the coach, says early in the movie that debate is a kind of bloodsport. It's great virtue is that it puts rival ideas up against each other, as argued by people who passionately espouse those ideas, and then it lets the truth emerge through a kind...

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

#1 | Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith Letters Mother Teresa wrote to her confessors describe the agony of not being able to sense her beloved God for half a century. "The silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see," she wrote. These revelations raise the question of whether her spiritual "dryness" made her a greater saint or some kind of self-deceiver. #2 | Faith Stalks the Campaign Trail! Hillary tells Rick Warren about her White House prayer group! Mitt explains how he's a Mormon! Huckabee is an actual preacher! #3 | The Rev. Jerry...

One presidential hopeful is a preacher, another proudly Mormon, and most openly tout their Christianity. In an arena where faith can make or break a politician, the one in 10 Americans who profess no religion feel left in the cold. "They're very disconcerted," said Darren Sherkat, an atheist sociology professor specializing in religion at Southern Illinois University. "They're horrified by both the Democratic and Republican rhetoric surrounding religion -- that people who are not religious ... are immoral, that they're not qualified to serve in public office," he said.

And in only its second weekend in release, the bottom fell out of costly domestic flop The Golden Compass from New Line, which forked over $200+ million to make it. I know, I know, the pic is doing OK overseas after earning $50.9 mil from 27 territories December 7th-9th. But the fantasy epic is so lost domestically it earned only an anemic $2.6 million Friday and $3.7 million Saturday from 3,528 nearly empty runs for 3rd place and a new cume of just $40.5 mil. I hear studio topper Bob Shaye once again is blaming everyone but himself -- including...

Christian kids are typically sent to Sunday school for lessons on the Bible and morals. For nonbelievers, there's atheist Sunday school. With an estimated 14 percent of Americans professing to have no religion, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies, some are choosing to send their children to classes that teach ethics without religious belief. Bri Kneisley sent her 10-year-old son, Damian, to Camp Quest Ohio this past summer after a neighbor had shown him the Bible. "Damian was quite certain this guy was right and was telling him this amazing truth that I had never shared," said Kneisley, who...

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’...

Police clashed with 3,000 Christians protesting the forced demolition of a partially built church in eastern China, leaving four people with serious injuries, a human rights group said Monday. Fighting broke out Saturday when 500 officers arrived in Xiaoshan, a district on the outskirts of the resort city of Hangzhou, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported. The demolition work went ahead despite the clash, in which about 20 people were hurt, the Hong Kong-based group said. A Xiaoshan police officer confirmed an "illegal building" had been torn down, but he refused to give his name or any...

How Many Did Stalin Really Murder? May Day is coming up, which used to be a day of celebration in the Soviet Union with an impressive show of weapons and infinitely long parade of soldiers. Perhaps, then, it would be appropriate to pay special attention on this day to the human cost of communism in this symbolic home of Marxism, and worldwide. This blog is on Stalin and the Soviet Union. I will post one on the overall cost of communism next week. By far, the consensus figure for those that Joseph Stalin murdered when he ruled the Soviet Union...