Atheists // Current

Church Simulator 'Mass: We Pray' Revealed To Be 'Dante's Inferno' Publicity Stunt

Once again, Electronic Arts has exploited Christians to help promote its upcoming... more

remanns
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4 days ago
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2 comments

Six great religious truths

1. Muslims do not recognize Jews as God's chosen people. 2. Jews do not... more

SleepDirt
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15 days ago
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51 comments

The Atheist Recruiting Machine

From subway ads to “Blasphemy Day,” nonbelievers are proselytizing louder than... more

atomiclegion
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20 days ago
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0 comments

Sean Hannity Tries To Provoke Culture War Over NYC Subway Atheist Ads

During his Fox News show on Tuesday night, right-wing pundit Sean Hannity attacked a... more

Future_America
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1 month ago
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6 comments

A bitter rift divides Atheists! We are all is the midst of a massive SCHISM!!! (apparently!)

Last month, atheists marked Blasphemy Day at gatherings around the world, and... more

atomiclegion
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1 month ago
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25 comments

Christian Writer Decides to add 50 pages to Darwin's Origin of Species

MEDIA ADVISORY, Sept. 24 /Christian Newswire/ -- The author of a new book called... more

hpseaton
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2 months ago
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1 comment

You can run, but you can't hide! The Godless are rising!

The results of yet another poll are out, showing that the godless are rising and promise to rise for years to come. In 1990, we made up 8% of the population; now in 2009, we're 15%. They're extrapolating forward and estimating that we will make up 25% of the country in 20 years.

It's not enough, is all I can say. I suppose it's good news, but I am disappointed in my fellow Americans. I will not be content until the number is 100%. (OK, 95%. It's not fair to demand rationality from people who are brain damaged or locked up in asylums.)

The really bizarre news here is the way people are squirming to put a twist to the data to reassure the believers. They've got a label for that 15% that isn't "godless atheist unbelievers": they are "Nones". Don't panic, they say, only 10% of them call themselves "atheists"! They're mostly agnostics and skeptics of organized religion! You don't have to stockpile food and ammo, bar the doors and windows, and prepare for the anarchy and evil that would follow if all those people were atheists.

It's rather annoying. Every article I see on this subject makes this desperate rush to reassure their readers that this growing cohort of Americans aren't really those goddamned atheists — they're nice people, unlike those cold-hearted, soulless beasts called atheists, and they aren't planning to storm your churches and rape the choir boys and boil babies in the baptismal fonts, unlike the scary atheistic monsters. They're special. And most of all, they aren't French.

"American nones are kind of agnostic and deistic, so it's a very American kind of skepticism," says Barry Kosmin, director of Trinity's Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. "It's a kind of religious indifference that's not hostile to religion the way they are in France. Franklin and Jefferson would have recognized these people."

Oh, please. All the low frequency of self-reported atheists in the survey tells you is that the long-running campaign in American culture to stigmatize atheism has been highly successful — and it's an attitude that we still see expressed in reports like this. The most important news they try to transmit is not the increase in unbelievers, it's "Thank God they aren't atheists! They're just rational skeptics, instead!"

Atheism is not a state to be avoided. It does not distort your features so that the founding fathers would throw you out of the country as an undesirable alien. It does not give you a French accent. It doesn't even make you want to bomb churches. We are "rational skeptics," too, we're just the ones who aren't afraid to confront the social conventions that insist that you must be churched or in some way pious in order to be a good person — we are just the ones who will get in beatifically complacent faces and tell them they're wallowing in bullshit.

So don't be reassured. Those "Nones" don't believe in a Bearded Ape of Cosmic Proportions, they aren't propping up the local priestly den of ignorance with donations, and Pat Robertson is still confident that every one of them will burn in hell. Most are not as vocal or as confident as the spokespeople for atheism are, but then, most of the people who have been filling church pews for centuries haven't been as noisy or assertive about their faith as have the priests and bishops and deacons, but no demographers have therefore felt compelled to split definitions and point out the weakness of Christianity by declaring only some tiny percentage to be church leaders.

More at link. Great blog!The results of yet another poll are out, showing that the godless are rising and... more

hpseaton
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2 months ago
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20 comments

Atheists strike Alpha Course billboard

Found this nice photo on the net, theres an Alpha course billboard near my house...... more

sophosthegreat
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2 months ago
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1 comment

Allah - FAQ ( Islam Q&A )

"Allah" - FAQ Frequently Asked Questions Questions atheists usually ask about... more

baspren
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2 months ago
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0 comments

Randy Paush,Atheist and UUs

I like the these evil atheist

evilliberalbastard
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2 months ago
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0 comments

Atheists get more dates in world of online dating?

A study by OkCupid, an online dating site in the US, has shown that atheists have more... more

burukku16
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2 months ago
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9 comments

Is Richard Dawkins an atheist?

So, is Richard Dawkins an atheist? He seems more like a God-hater than a genuine atheist. That’s why my colleague, Jonathan Sarfati, invented the word ‘misotheist’ (hater of God), which he has applied to Professor Dawkins and other fanatical opponents of the God of the Bible.

George Orwell identified this sort of ‘atheist’ in the character of Bozo, in Down and Out in Paris and London: ‘He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him)’. Interestingly, in The God Delusion, Dawkins carries on about what he doesn’t like about the God he doesn’t believe in.

Dawkins likened himself to ‘the Devil’s Chaplain’, the title of a compilation of his essays. However, the Devil does not disbelieve in God; he knows only too well that God is real (cf. James 2:19). The Bible indentifies him as ‘a liar and the father of lies’ (John 8:44); so what of ‘the Devil’s chaplain’? Perhaps Dawkins did not think very carefully about this biblical allusion!

If Dawkins really believed what atheists supposedly believe, he should just put his feet up with a bottle of scotch and just enjoy himself as he waits for his death and his consumption by worms so he can fertilize the grass. Getting his blood pressure up over people believing in God all seems rather futile, if atheism is true. But perhaps it isn’t? Ah, there’s the rub.

The fool says in his heart, ‘No God’. (Psalm 14:1).

[But] Dawkins’ proselytizing ways remind me of my pimply youthful days at boarding school where those into smoking cigarettes and boozing (worse was yet to come) seemed to be really keen to get others to follow their destructive and illicit behaviour. Why did they try to coerce their fellow students into doing such things? Was it ‘safety in numbers’, that they felt a little guilty for their behaviour and would feel more secure if they could get more to join in their little rebellion?

Professor Dawkins’ obsessive campaign to try to convince others to be atheists reminds me of those days. Perhaps it is not that Dawkins really believes that there is no Creator-God, but that he wishes there were not and if he could just convince enough others to agree with him, then he will feel more secure. Has he confused his wishful thinking for reality? Perhaps ironically, the Humanist Manfesto III says, ‘We accept our life as all and enough, distinguishing things as they are from things as we might wish or imagine them to be.’ Dawkins’ wishful thinking comes out in his definition of biology, where he wishes away the evidence for design (a Creator): ‘Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.’

Another self-professed atheist, Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy at New York University, put it rather candidly:

‘I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and naturally, hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.’

Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and grandson of T.H. Huxley, ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, was even more explicit:

‘I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. … For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.’

...it's a good article, making some important distinctions in "atheist" affront.So, is Richard Dawkins an atheist? He seems more like a God-hater than a genuine... more