Tag: Atheist

Excerpt:

“She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years. “

Andrea Steele, director of the International Freethought Film Festival, shares a word about their film submissions, and the upcoming event.

The Queen of England, head of the Church of England, spoke to her bishops and acknowledged that atheists possess virtue and contribute to the life of the nation.

“All science teachers, whatever their specialism, have to deal with questions about God. We should be prepared”

Several secular organizations are sponsoring the Freethought Film Festival, which will be held in Tampa, Florida on May 13, 2011.

Opponents of a bid by Muslim states to “protect religion” claim a small success

I honestly think the wheels are coming off our picture of the way the universe works at the moment. We don’t know what 96% of the universe is made of – that tells us that we don’t understand something fundamental. It reminds me of the start of the 20th century when quantum mechanics and relativity were about to appear.

HERE’s a fact to flatter the unbelievers among you: the bright young things at the University of Oxford are among the most godless groups ever studied in the UK. Of 728 students surveyed in 2007, 48.9 per cent claimed not to believe in any god, with 49.6 per cent claiming no religious affiliation. And while a very small number of Britons typically label themselves as “atheist” or “agnostic” (most surveys put it at about 5 per cent), an astonishing 57.3 per cent of the Oxford sample did.

Richard Dawkins calls for atheists to come out of hiding and cease being timid about their convictions.  He highlights and rejects stereotypes associated with atheism, and notes that only when they organize, will they have a voice loud enough to hear.

A secular campaign group has lodged a formal complaint against Cherie Blair for allegedly sparing a violent criminal from jail because he believed in God. The wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, and a current judge who sits under the name Cherie Booth QC, said that she would suspend Shamso Miah’s prison sentence because he was a “religious man.”

An atheist group in the Irish Republic has defied a new blasphemy law by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations on its website. Atheist Ireland says it will fight any action taken against it in court. The quotations include the words of writers such as Mark Twain and Salman Rushdie, but also Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad and Pope Benedict XVI.

Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government—but he doesn’t believe in God. His political opponents say that’s a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they’ve got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

It is not quite plastered on the bus but the outworking of last year’s Atheist Bus campaign has made its way onto a wall in Belfast.

Sir Ludovic Kennedy died earlier this week at the age of 89. During a long and eventful career as a journalist, broadcaster, author and campaigner for social justice, Sir Ludovic made a huge contribution to the abolition of the death penalty in Britain through his rigorous investigations into miscarriages of justice. It was he who proved that Timothy Evans — a young man who was wrongly hanged for the murder of his wife — was innocent. Kennedy later campaigned for the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia and wrote an influential book about atheism, “All in the Mind – a Farewell to God.” He was a long-time honorary associate of the National Secular Society.

In a comic vein, Tarico suggests a playlist for ex-Christians.

Atheists are shaking off their joyless image and trying to put forward a positive face. But most of all they just want to have fun

The author discusses misconceptions about Atheism, including that “Atheism is a Denial of God That Requires Faith,” “Atheists Lead Meaningless Lives of Despair Without Love or Beauty,” “Atheists Worship Satan, Themselves, Money, or Some Other God,” and more.

An uninspired re-hashing of NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria), that attempts to use Intelligent Design to prove the existence of God.

Kris Hartung argues that atheists should abandon talk of God all together and take a different approach. He argues the talk of God legitimizes the concept further and creates an “either or” scenario that is hurting the chances of progress.

We must not preserve the myth of God – it was a useful crutch, but we’ve outgrown it. Daniel Dennett outlines the perils of belief for it’s own sake.