Recently in Atheism Category

Here's the newest ad campaign that will be hitting billboards in the UK starting November 20:

The atheists believe that kids should be allowed to choose their own belief system and not have it decided for them:

As Richard Dawkins states, "Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a 'Marxist child' or an 'Anarchist child' or a 'Post-modernist child'. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. We need to encourage people to think carefully before labelling any child too young to know their own opinions, and our adverts will help to do that."

We have scheduled the launch of the billboards to take place during the same week as Universal Children's Day (20 November), which is the United Nations' "day of worldwide fraternity and understanding between children". We hope the advert's message will encourage the government, media and general public to see children as individuals, free to make their own choices as soon as they are old enough to fully understand what these choices mean, and that they will think twice before describing children in terms of their parents' religion in the future.

Of course our children identify themselves with our religion, that's the family dynamic. Atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. all share the values of their belief system with their children. And like Christians, atheists label their children with their religion.

Does anyone think that atheists would fairly present the religions of the world to their children and then let them decide which belief system is true?Their children will follow in the path of their parents, just as our children do until they either believe it or reject it. Christians understand that their children might not be believers because faith is personal, children have to make their own commitment to Christianity.

Christian children aren't considered believers just because their parents are Christians, as many pastors have said: God doesn't have grandchildren. They become Christians when they believe that Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9), until then they are part of the community of faith and if we really believe the word of God, we have to make sure we don't hamper their access to Jesus:

Mark 10:13 And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.

We have been commanded to teach our kids:

Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Adhering to the word of God means teaching them what we believe and why we believe it. A Christian can do no less.

Sorry, atheists! But I think it's pretty dangerous for us to abandon our kids to their own devices when it comes to a belief system. They are part of the church, it would by impossible to treat them as outsiders, not to mention unbiblical and cruel (as anyone who has taught their child they can't take communion until they are older knows).

Here is a link to the BBC's The Intelligence Squared Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry and Catholics, Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Anne Widdencombe MP debating: "Is the Catholic Church a Force for Good in the World?" Evidently, according to this report, it wasn't so much a debate as a romp, Hitchens and Fry ran away with it:

The voting gives a good idea of how it went. Before the debate, for the motion: 678. Against: 1102. Don't know: 346. This is how it changed after the debate. For: 268. Against: 1876. Don't know: 34. In other words, after hearing the speakers, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774. My friend Simon, who's a season ticket holder, said it was the most decisive swing against a motion that he could remember.

Maybe the Catholics should have limited the debate to the last hundred years so they could have avoided the whole Inquisition thing. Of course that leaves them with other very difficult issues to defend but at least it removes torture and death from the debate.

If I were to defend the church (not just the Roman Catholic Church but the universal church) as being a force for good in the world, I would focus less on our actions (though, we do get it right more often than not) and more on our message: that Christ is a force for good in the world. He came to take away the sin of the world, to give eternal life to those who believe in himand reconcile us to the Father so that in Christ we may have peace and know the everlasting love of God. That's a message that's a force for good in the world, which is why it's called the gospel :-)

Too bad I didn't see this before I posted a link to the Hitchens article. Hitchens and Wilson on their press tour plugging the Collision documentary were on the Laura Ingraham Show, Fox and Friends and the Joy Behar Show. Here's a clip of the Behar show, you can watch the whole segment here:

Here's Fox and Friends (you have to sit through their other segments first):

And you can listen to Ingraham here.

You have to give him props for taking on all comers. It's not surprising that he hasn't been convinced by the arguments of his Christian opponents. Who has ever been argued into the kingdom of God?

I haven't yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a "script" that is known in advance, and known to me, too. However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe. I haven't been asked to Bob Jones University yet, but I have been invited to Jerry Falwell's old Liberty University campus in Virginia, even though we haven't yet agreed on the terms.

Wilson isn't one of those evasive Christians who mumble apologetically about how some of the Bible stories are really just "metaphors." He is willing to maintain very staunchly that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and that his sacrifice redeems our state of sin, which in turn is the outcome of our rebellion against God. He doesn't waffle when asked why God allows so much evil and suffering--of course he "allows" it since it is the inescapable state of rebellious sinners. I much prefer this sincerity to the vague and Python-esque witterings of the interfaith and ecumenical groups who barely respect their own traditions and who look upon faith as just another word for community organizing.

I'm glad that Hitchens was able to debate an opponent from the Reformed tradition, we do stand up for our doctrines and don't usually equivocate. And yeah, we have some pretty harsh things to stand by, but the Bible has some pretty harsh things to say so we don't have much choice. Though, I would never say that Hitchens or any unbeliever was going to hell. I have no way of knowing that and neither does anyone else.

And as to the Christian right being less monolithic than he thought, I'm surprised that wasn't obvious by the number of Protestant denominations and how much we argue with each other. Case in point.

The article was way too short, I would have really appreciated hearing about what he thought of his debates with other religions (Muslims and Jews). And hearing more about the various types of debates he's had with other denominations. I guess I'll have to wait for the follow up to his book.

Richard Dawkins was on Hewitt last night plugging his new book. I can't link to the podcast (since you have to pay for it now) but he's posted a transcript, so you can at least read it.

Hewitt did a great job asking penetrating questions and the hour was quite interesting and informative. Hewitt asks the questions that cut to the chase and get to the point of dispute, like this one:

HH: But the universe is itself awfully complicated, Professor Dawkins. Where did it come from?

RD: Well, the universe is not awfully complicated at the beginning. It has become very complicated through such processes as evolution by natural selection.

HH: No, I'm talking about the whole cosmos. Where did that come from, 13 billion years ago?

RD: It came from the big bang, which is not a complex process. It's a simple process.

HH: And what preceded the big bang?

RD: Well, physicists won't answer that question. They will say that time itself began in the big bang, and so the question what preceded it is illegitimate.

HH: What do you think?

RD: I'm not enough of a physicist to understand what I'm saying, but I have to say that that's what physicists say.

HH: So when you consider before the big bang, what does Richard Dawkins think was there?

RD: I don't consider the question, because I recognize that it's an intuitively appealing question. I recognize that I, along with everybody else, wants to ask that question. Then I talk to physicists who say you can no more ask what came before the big bang than you can ask what's north of the North Pole.

OK, let's concede for argument's sake that Dawkins actually accomplishes what he states: that the case he makes for evolution in his book is beyond dispute. What does that prove? It's doesn't tell us how the universe began, physicists (and Dawkins) won't even entertain the question. It still leaves room for a creator God who created the universe and then allowed the planet to populate itself.

And it's pretty silly to reject the Gospels because they were written "decades" later:

HH: On the person of Jesus Christ, did He exist?

RD: I suspect He probably did. I suspect there are lots of itinerant preachers, and one of them was probably called Yehoshua, or various other versions of Jesus' name, but I don't think that a miracle worker existed.

HH: How do you rate the evidence for Christ's existence, manuscript evidence, eyewitness evidence, things like that?

RD: As I said, it wouldn't be at all surprising if a man called Jesus or Yehoshua existed. I would say the evidence that He worked miracles, He rose from the dead, He was born of a virgin, is zero.

HH: Well, you repeatedly use the analogy of a detective at a crime scene throughout The Greatest Show On Earth. But detectives simply can't dismiss evidence they don't want to see. There's a lot of evidence for the miracles, in terms of eyewitness...

RD: No, there isn't. What there is, is written stories which were written decades after the alleged events were supposed to happen. No historian would take that seriously.

HH: Well, that's why I'm conflicted, because in your book, you talk about the Latin teacher who is stymied at every turn, and yet Latin teachers routinely rely on things like Tacitus and Pliny, and histories that were written centuries after the events in which they are recording occur.

RD: There's massive archaeological evidence, there's massive evidence of all kinds. It's just not comparable. No...if you talk to any ancient historian of the period, they will agree that it is not good historical evidence.

HH: Oh, that's simply not true. Dr. Mark Roberts, double PhD in undergraduate at Harvard has written a very persuasive book upon this. I mean, that's an astounding statement. Are you unfamiliar with him?

RD: All right, then there may be some, but a very large number of ancient historians would say...

HH: Well, you just said there were none. So there are some that you are choosing not to confront.

RD: You sound like a lawyer.

HH: I am a lawyer.

RD: Oh, for God's sake. Are you? Okay. I didn't know that. All right. I will accept that there are some ancient historians who take the Gospels seriously. But they were written decades after the events that happened, and they were written by people with an axe to grind, written by disciples. There are no eyewitness written accounts. The earliest New Testament...

HH: I understand you believe that, Professor. I do. But what I don't understand is how you can use the analogy of the Latin teacher or the detective, when it breaks down given your dismissal of evidence you don't see fit to deal with squarely?

RD: I think that's a very, very specious comparison, because the Latin teacher is dealing with enormous numbers of documents. Remember, my Latin teacher is supposed to be confronted with skeptics who don't even think the Latin language was ever spoken. And there's huge amounts of documentary evidence of the Roman Empire. We're talking about the entire Roman Empire here. There's enormous amounts of eyewitness accounts written down at the time. It just is no comparison.

HH: Actually, it is. It's actually a very persuasive...in fact, the arguments for the manuscript evidence of Christ and His doings is much stronger than anything, for example, Tacitus or Pliny wrote. It's just much stronger. Now you might counter with Cesar's Gallic war commentaries, and you do mention those, and those are contemporary accounts by an eyewitness, but so are the Gospel evidences, say, of Luke accompanying Paul about. And yet you're dismissive of the miracles that occurred in there. So I'm just wondering...

RD: They may be. The accounts of Luke accompanying Paul may be real, but Luke never met Jesus.

HH: But again, I'm not arguing that point with you. It's just that you dismiss that all without dealing with it serially, which would not be, I think, consistent with your detective argument, or your Latin teacher argument, because...

RD: I cannot believe that you're doing more than just trying to score points. You cannot seriously be saying that the case for the existence of the Roman Empire is as weak as for Jesus.

HH: That's not what I'm saying at all. I didn't say that. I said that your argument, by analogy, to a Latin teacher being harried by people who deny certain things, but especially your idea of a detective using evidence at a crime scene, that it doesn't comport with your dismissal of the evidence for Christianity and the historical Jesus.

RD: Okay, do you believe Jesus turned water into wine?

HH: Yes.

RD: You seriously do?

HH: Yes.

RD: You actually think that Jesus got water, and made all those molecules turn into wine?

HH: Yes.

RD: My God.

When you look at how oral tradition works in the Middle East, I can't see how you'd have a problem with a book written years after the death of Christ. Oral tradition explains the similarities in the Gospels and how the NT Gospel writers could be certain they were conveying the words of Jesus.

That's a quote from Richard Dawkins hawking his latest book in an interview with Salon. Doesn't that make it difficult for a creationist to read this book without feeling insulted? Won't that hurt your goal? No, I'm not really aiming...

It seems I ticked off Ricky Gervais by stating that I wouldn't see his new movie because the reviews I've read stated that it was a slam against Christianity and it was dishonest in its advertising. Evidently, I'm the first...

Richard Dawkins was on "The Colbert Report" again, this time plugging his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. For those of you who might have missed it: The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cRichard...

The night before I was to have surgery to remove the tumor on my ovaries, we had Chinese food and watched "Ghost Town" which was pretty funny and the perfect movie to watch before an operation :-) So, when I...

Pretty funny that Dan Barker didn't want his book, Godless, quoted during the debate. So much for his confidence in the veracity of his own book which was on sale at the debate :-) (via)...

You can preorder COLLISION: Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson, the debate documentary from Amazon for $13.99. It's set to be released on October 27, 2009. For those of you who were in a bubble and don't know about the debates,...

Atheists, you better be up in arms over this or you are utter hypocrites on the whole separation of church and state issue: President Barack Obama needs some outside help pushing health care reform, and he's turning to rabbis to...

More atheist humor. Yes, it's so funny when we're portrayed as ignorant hicks who refer to atheism as "the atheism" as if we don't know how to use the word properly: The blog where I found the video didn't tag...

You'd have to define the term "art" very loosely for this to qualify: A publicly funded exhibition is encouraging people to deface the Bible in the name of art -- and visitors have responded with abuse and obscenity. The show...

What passes for humor among the atheists: I hope they don't think they're original with their commentary on the Bible. Been there done that. It's so 19th century higher criticism! Nothing new after all these years? Blah, blah, blah, Isaiah...

Atheists, you can't erase God from the public square, you don't have enough votes yet. When you do, then you can start tearing it all down. You can knock down the Washington monument with it's Laus Deo inscription, tear down...

Once our brains evolved and we became sentient beings and could choose for ourselves what to do, we gained control over the evolution process and can now decide how to evolve based on our own moral decisions. But it's pretty...

Here's a debate between atheist Richard Dawkins and Obama's nominee to head the NIH, Francis Collins from 2006. It's on God vs. Science. (via)...

If you allow "In God We Trust" on a license plate, then you really have to let an atheist put a "No GODS" license plate on his car. Just seems like the fair thing to do in a society that...

Here's a very interesting exchange between Robert Wright and Ann Althouse discussing his new book,The Evolution of God. Althouse asks some very penetrating questions of Wright: I think she's convinced me to read the book. I had originally dismissed the...

Right Wing News polled us "right-of-center" bloggers to see what we thought of various topics including Sanford (whether he should resign, I said no but I was in the minority), voting for an atheist for president (I said yes and...

I would love to see this type of reality show here in America but I'd add a Protestant minister to the mix (preferably a Calvinist :-). This is definitely something Mark Burnett should think about doing. I'd watch it:A new...

Here's the extra credit question for an Introduction to Computer Applications for Business course:Bonus Question 02 - What Book in the Bible describes the End Times (i.e. The Seven Seals, Tribulation, Armageddon, etc.)? A. Revelations B. Joshua C. Galatians D....

Making the case that he might be the next Evangelical spokesman: Who is this self-appointed defender of the faith? Until last year, those who had heard of Doug Wilson most likely knew him in his other roles: pastor provocateur in...

I'm amused to see that the atheists actually thought this study proved anything: IS PRAYER just another kind of friendly conversation? Yes, says Uffe Schjødt, who used MRI to scan the brains of 20 devout Christians. "It's like talking to...

This should send a tingle up the leg of the atheists, more people are leaving organized religion:Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the...

An anonymous analytic philosopher posts his take on the exchange between Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga and atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett on the question of whether science and religion are compatible. He's anonymous because he sides with Plantinga and doesn't want...

Scott Dikkers is the Editor of the Onion newspaper and as most of you are probably aware it is a satirical magazine. As funny as his newspaper is, I expected more humor from his speech. I guess it's hard for...

According to a federal judge. He didn't think he had the authority to tell the chief justice of the Supreme Court that he was doing something unconstitutional! Poor atheists! Now they face the discrimination of hearing the words "so help...

So, prayers at the inauguration are as bad as segregation? Seriously?In a motion filed Tuesday afternoon, lawyers representing the atheists submitted the 1952 Supreme Court brief filed by the United States in Brown v. Board of Education. They point to...

"Probably?" Wow! That seems like a punt, don't you think? The atheists raised more than enough for the ad this time: The archsceptic professor Richard Dawkins today launched Britain's first atheist campaign posting the message: "There's probably no God. So...

Not just for aid but because of the change that conversion brings: Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and...

Without the God part of course. Parents want an environment to raise their children with like minded people. They want an community that meets regularly where they learn to raise their kids: They are not religious, so they don't go...

"We're talking about Christianity." That's what Gretchen of "Fox & Friends" fears if we allow the atheists to have their say and we just ignore it. The context of the quote is the Washington capital atheist sign controversy. Michelle Malkin...

Professor Opliphint shares some thoughts on the debate at Westminster. He makes a pretty good point about the medium impacting the message (the debate was being filmed for a documentary) and he notes the moment in the debate when it...

OK, I'm a little conflicted about this story. I totally support the separation of church and state (no such thing as a Christian nation, Jesus said he's kingdom isn't of this world, can't impose Christian morality on unbeliever, blah, blah,...

In the state Capital of Washington: I love how the atheist is pushing the whole winter solstice thing. Yeah, we are running out and buying presents, decorating our houses with lights and nativity scenes and preparing to make cookies and...

I finally got around to getting a link to the debate between Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens at Westminster. You can listen to the introduction by Professor Scott Oliphant here, the debate here and the Q & A here. If...

Like I need an atheist to tell me to be good. They're just as preachy as the Christians :-) Though, I have to say in this debate with Bill Donahue, the atheist comes off as much more reasonable (and all...

They'll be debating at Westminster Thursday at 6:30 and the debate is open to the public, better get there early, there are only 400 seats available:Christopher Hitchens, renowned atheist and author of God Is Not Great, and Doug Wilson, author...

So, how would you celebrate World Humanist Day, atheists? Dress up like your favorite human? Haven't we secularized the Christian holidays enough that you can just celebrate humanism then? You could do what the Christian church did and take over...

The atheists are all excited that Scientology beat them for the most negatively viewed "religious and spiritual group." I find it shocking the Methodists are number one. What the heck is that about? Well, at least the atheists made the...

The atheist blogs are upset over the remarks that Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) made at a recent Illinois General Assembly to atheist Rob Sherman and who can blame them:Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of...

An atheist requested that a street be named in honor of Madalyn Murray O'Hair but the city council voted 6-0 against it. Atheist Raymond Zbylut had asked the council to put up the sign on the stretch of 108th Street...

Freedom religion has been restored on the Internet! I guess they didn't like all the negativing press they were getting about it!...

No, the Friendly Atheist, isn't praying! Someone set up a blog to pray for the Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta 's conversion to Christianity. He says that it would take a miracle for it to happen so the blog has been...