Free Republic

Christopher Hitchens has achieved for himself quite a strong position as the American center-right's favorite Trotskyite. To a large extent this is well-earned. Hitch has stood fast in his adamant support for the War on Terror in all its aspects when plenty of fainter hearts far to rightward have fallen into equivocation, second thoughts, and whining. But there is another Hitch, one who defends his remaining hard-left convictions with a vituperation hard to match in the English-speaking media. We usually see this Hitchens when he's writing about religion. Hitch the Rabid was in full display in "Bah, Hannukah" in the December...

Minnesota Atheists are taking their message to the air waves with a new radio program that will debut in January on the talk station Air America Minnesota. Called "Atheists Talk" -- the same name as a show the organization airs on cable access television -- the live radio broadcast featuring news, interviews, listener call-ins and special guests is believed to be the first show of its kind in Minnesota, said August Berkshire, a spokesman for the Minnesota Atheists. The show will air Sundays from 9 to 10 a.m. on AM 950 starting Jan. 13 when Oxford professor, evolutionary biologist and...

GREEN BAY, Wis. — The putting up of a nativity scene at Green Bay's City Hall has prompted a tongue-in-cheek request from a suburban man for permission to display a Festivus pole on the overhang of the building's northwest entrance.

Vernon (WTNH) _ A sign posted by Atheists in the Rockville's Central Park has people talking, prompting calls to the town hall and the local clergy. The Connecticut Valley Atheists posted the three-sided sign, which some call a billboard, and it was the only sign in the town center marking the Holiday season. Two sides of the display feature the Twin Towers, framed by the words "Imagine No Religion." This Christmas, Martha Chennelle and Amy Houser say Vernon could use a few prayers, considering the sign standing in front of town hall. "We believe that Christ is the reason for...

WEST CHESTER — For the first time a regional atheist group will display a holiday tree on the Chester County Courthouse lawn during the winter holidays, potentially setting a seasonal model for other communities. County commissioners have allowed groups to display a Christmas tree and menorah on the lawn. But last year, The Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, an atheist group, asked the commissioners to either let any group set up a seasonal holiday display or ban the displays entirely. This fall, the commissioners approved a policy that allows any group to put up a seasonal display if it meets...

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...

My new book What’s So Great About Christianity, just out, is already an amazon.com bestseller, a Wall Street Journal bestseller and No. 16 on the New York Times bestseller list. On Saturday C-Span broadcast my debate with God Is Not Great author Christopher Hitchens. Many people have commented that this is the best debate on the topic of Christianity v. Atheism that has yet been held. If you haven’t seen it, you can find the debate on my website dineshdsouza.com. Following the debate, AOL posted the video on its main page, and asked people to make up their minds and...

We all get "those" emails from time to time-the ones making claims that are meant to be passed on. We've learned to check things on sites like snopes.com to make sure what we pass is true. When it comes to the movie The Golden Compass, whats going around is...true

When some of the world's leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They'll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.

If a national atheist organization has its way, a series of 12-foot-tall memorial crosses that adorn Utah's highways will be taken down. But not if the families of the people those crosses honor — state Highway Patrol troopers killed in the line of duty — have anything to say about it. American Atheists Inc. has filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the 13 white, steel crosses represent the death of Jesus Christ and therefore violate the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits government establishment of religion. But the families of the fallen heroes say otherwise. They say the crosses,...

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.

Religion Must Be Destroyed, Atheist Alliance Declares By Matt Purple CNSNews.com Correspondent October 03, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Science must ultimately destroy organized religion, according to some of the leading atheist writers and intellectuals who spoke at a recent atheist conference in Northern Virginia. God is a myth, and children must not be schooled in any faith, they said, at the "Crystal Clear Atheism" event, sponsored by the Atheist Alliance International. Some of the luminaries who spoke at the conference, held at the Crown Royal Hotel in Crystal City, Va., over the weekend, included Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris...

A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.”The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant’s Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford Universityin England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed...

September 16, 2007 Julian Huxley And The Idolatry Of Evolution By Gary Wolf Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has come under increasing attack in recent decades within the scientific community, primarily as the result of a dramatic expansion of knowledge in the field of biology. I do not wish to enter that debate. What I would like to discuss, however, is the idolatry of evolution, or the transformation of a scientific theory into a quasi-religious cult. This phenomenon has contributed to the erosion of intellectual life in the West during the 20th century. In the thinking of many Darwinists, evolution...

WASHINGTON - Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday. Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody's home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years...

The effort to recast Darwin as a religious man, more religious in fact than the common run of Christians and other believers, in the runup to the bicentennial of his birth is well under way in many quarters: "Darwin counted himself an agnostic, but in his reverence for the creative agency of nature we should count him a devoutly religious man. "There is a grandeur in this view of life," he famously wrote on the last page of The Origin of Species. The grandeur of which he spoke of has more of the divine about it than did the anthropomorphic...

Books: Notable anti-religion and anti-Christian books of the past year—particularly Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great—make something out of, well, nothing. Nineteenth-century novelist Gustave Flaubert used to joke about archaeologists discovering a stone tablet signed "God" and reading, "I do not exist." His punch line had an atheist then exclaiming, "See! I told you so!" These days, nothing stops atheistic caissons from rolling along the bookstore aisles. Maybe that's because atheists on average have small families and lots of discretionary doubloons jingling in their pockets. Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf), Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell (Penguin), and...

Day 1 (Sam Harris): Why Are Atheists So Angry? Zeus, Thor, Poseidon—and Hashem. by Sam Harris, November 16, 2006 ENTRIES: Day 1 (Sam Harris): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | Day 1 (Dennis Prager): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | Day 2 (Harris): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | Day 2 (Prager): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | Day 3 (Harris): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | Day 3 (Prager): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | Day 4 (Harris): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | Day 4 (Prager): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | TAGS: Atheism God Hashem Poseidon Religion...