Free Republic

Just as the atheist Richard Dawkins discloses he doubts God's non-existence, Richard Holloway, Episcopal Bishop of Edinburgh, asserts his doubt in the Deity's existence. The atheist and the bishop have wound up at the same place. In the case of the world's most outspoken non-believer, the step is progression, but in the case of the leader in the Scottish Episcopal Church, the step is regression. "I can't be sure God does not exist," said Dawkins, crusader against belief in God, during a debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury February 24. The next day Holloway was quoted as saying he can't...

Why didn't Mubarak send in the tanks? Why didn't Tahrir Square turn into Tiananmen Square? Is the Egyptian regime less cruel than its Chinese counterpart? How is it that all the dictatorships in the Arab world have suddenly gotten weak in the knees over unarmed civilians doing nothing more than demonstrating? After all, the regime is all-powerful; they have built their security forces over decades in concentric circles so that the inner circle will owe its existence and power to the ruler and will always do his bidding. And if the need will arise, it will always force the ruler's...

If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist. Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term "blind faith." A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the...

Judeo-Christian religion in the United States is far from dead, but other religions are increasingly viable. In addition to Radical Islam ("eighty percent of the prisoners who 'find faith' in prison convert to Islam,"  generally of the radical kind), Leftism, Multiculturalism, Progressivism and the like seem pervasive. Even the Church of Global Warming, while modestly weakened, remains sufficiently vibrant that absolution may yet be had by buying dispensations. Mere ideologies perhaps, aside from Radical Islam, but their adherents bring religious passion to their dogmas and consider it churlish, if not criminal, to question them. While the Judeo-Christian religions remain vibrant,...

The ideal of the coolly rational scientific observer, completely independent, free of all preconceived theories, prior philosophical, ethical and religious commitments, doing investigations and coming to dispassionate, unbiased conclusions that constitute truth, is nowadays regarded by serious philosophers of science (and, indeed, most scientists) as a simplistic myth...

Darwin’s bulldog—Thomas H. Huxley --snip-- Huxley, although an unbeliever, was thoroughly familiar with the gospel, and had little time for Christians who compromised their position by supporting the anti-biblical belief of evolutionary naturalism. He wrote: ...

Does it ever occur to anybody (religious) out there that maybe, just maybe, their “Holy Book” is a crock? Maybe it’s just a 2,000 (+/-) year old urban legend gone horribly righteous and viral?

For the opening interview on Friday's Real Time, leftist talk show host Bill Maher interviewed fellow secularist Sam Harris, noted author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. Harris was on to promote his new 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation The Reason Project, of which Maher is a member of the advisory board.I was delighted by this opening interview. In the summer of 2007 I wrote a three-part series on the "New Atheists" for WTHR. I interviewed secularists, believers, and those who find themselves falling somewhere between the two. I end up in the third category, thus I...

What are the implications of God's existence or non-existence?

It started out as the dream job for a passionate Christian -- reporting about religion for a major newspaper. But writing about other people's religions ended up costing William Lobdell his own. The former Los Angeles Times reporter chronicled his soul-wrenching, emotion-laden journey in the recently released book "Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America -- and Found Unexpected Peace," published by Harper Collins. Lobdell's spiritual journey led him from an uninspired Protestant childhood to agnosticism before he attended a weekend Christian men's retreat where he was "born again." Concerned with what he considered...

David Hume was a Scottish philospoher well known for his attack on the principle of causality - the principle that nothing can occur or exist without a cause. He believed that although one event (set of impressions) always preceded another, this did not prove that the first event caused the second. The constant conjunction of two events, he said, built up the expectation that the second event would take place after the first. But this was nothing more than a strong belief or habit of mind taught by experience. One could never prove that there were causal connections among impressions....

Lesson 34: The First Commandment "Come let us praise the Lord with joy:  let us joyfully sing to God our savior.  Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to Him with psalms.  For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.  For in His hand are all the ends of the earth:  and the heights of the mountains are His.  For the sea is His, and He made it:  and His hands formed the dry land.  Come let us adore and fall down:  and weep before the Lord that...

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher well known for his attack on the principle of causality - the principle that nothing can happen or exist without a cause. 1.) He believed that although one event (set of impressions) always preceded another this did not prove that the first event caused the second. The constant conjunction of two events, he said, built up the expectation that the second event would take place after the first. But this was nothing more than a strong belief or habit of mind taught by experience. One could never prove that were causal connections among impressions....

This thread is a continuation of the first thread "Questions For Atheists & Non-Atheists" Some points were brought up that I wish to address here. I look forward to the responses. Taken from one of my dictionaries in my personal library: "Occam's Razor. A principle devised by the English philospher William of Occam, which states that entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary. In a scientific context, Occam's Razor is the choice of the simplest theory from among the theories which fit what we know. In logic, Occam's Razor is the statement of an argument in its essential...

Folks, Zenit.org reports:Religion in the Cross Hairs Secular World Attacks Organized BeliefBy Father John Flynn LONDON, NOV. 26, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Organized religion is coming in for harsh criticism in many parts. English singer Elton John said religion turns people into "hateful lemmings." He also accused it of lacking compassion. His comments came in an interview with the Observer newspaper's Music Monthly Magazine, published Nov. 12. The aging pop star's criticisms were sparked off by the matter of how religion deals with homosexuality. "I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people," he said. He is far from...

If I am not mistaken, atheists do not believe that God exists, whereas agnostics state that God may exist, but that they simply do not know if God does exists. Questions: 1.) Where did all the matter in the universe come from? 2.) Was this matter created by a Supreme Being (God)? 3.) If all the matter in the universe was not created by God, then where did it come from? 4.) Has this matter always existed? 5.) or did this matter bring itself into existence? 6.) If this matter has always existed, then why isn't it equally possible that...

Chesterton's reputation as one of the key figures in Christian literature during the 20th century is linked inextricably with the concept of "orthodoxy." His book of that title, published in 1908, was, according to Wilfrid Ward, a major milestone in the development of Christian thought. Wilfrid Ward was certainly not alone in his flattering praise of Chesterton's book. Its influence on the intellectual development of a whole generation was summed up by Dorothy L. Sayers. She had first read Orthodoxy as a schoolgirl when her faith had been threatened by adolescent doubt. In later years she confessed that its "invigorating...

-----Editor's note: As reported in the Washington Times, the U.S. Air Force last Wednesday "released revised guidelines on religious observance that say chaplains need not recite prayers incompatible with their beliefs... The move won tepid praise from evangelicals, who see the move as progress but not close to a guarantee that they can pray 'in Jesus' name.'" This action follows in the wake of strong critical reaction to guidelines issued by the Pentagon last summer, as described in this article from our February issue.---- THE ATHEIST FOXHOLE by Angelo CodevillaArguably the worst, most gratuitous, most ominous act inflicted on America...

Freedom of speech is a great thing. Unfortunately, it comes at an unavoidable price: When citizens are free to say what they want, they’ll sometimes use that freedom to say some pretty silly things. And that’s the case with the 12 claims we’re about to cover. Some of them are made over and over, others are rare. Either way, while the proponents of these errors are free to promote them, we as Catholics have a duty to respond.1. “There’s no such thing as absolute truth. What’s true for you may not be true for me.” People use this argument...

Hi, I am the Founder of the Reed College Freethinkers, a college atheist, agnostic, humanist, liberal Christian, and Separation of Church and State group, based in Portland, Oregon. We noticed that the majority of freethinkers are liberals, or at least those who seem to speak out tend to be left-of-center. While I consider myself to be a moderate, I was wondering if anyone knows of any prominent (or fairly prominent) conservatives/Republicans who also espouse some brand of freethought? If so, could you please list the person and contact information, if possible. Or feel free to contact me directly at reed.freethinkers@gmail.com.

In the face of spreading agnosticism and relativism, the term 'reparation' is most unusual. Moreover, not only is the term unusual but also is its theology. We witness today the loss of the meaning of penance, prayer, fasting, confession, and reparation. The modernists call it change when its real name is decay. In a culture where sin is no longer considered sin, why should anyone make reparation? How many today remove the body of Christ from the Crucifix and look only at the empty cross. If we Christians have a Crucifix before us, instead of an empty cross, we...

Everyone looks forward to Christmas. It's a redemptive time of year for many of us. The people we've forgotten or overlooked in the past 12 months are suddenly forefront in our minds. We all, at least I do, strive to reconnect with family and friends that I don't get to see everyday. These traditions are part and parcel to our holiday celebrations. It's the spirit of the Christmas Season and it brings a welcome levity to the dull slog of Winter and a fitting coda to another year's striving. However, the very underpinnings that make Christmas a spiritual holiday of...

I am an evangelical Christian who believes in the doctrines of God's existence, His creation of the universe out of nothing and His omnipotent and omniscient nature as taught in Scripture, articulated in the pronouncements of the early Church councils, and held in common by orthodox Christian churches. What I want to discuss with those who do not hold such opinions is the basis of their not fully accepting or rejecting these positions. (I recognize that Orthodox Jews and devout Muslims hold to a basically similar view of God, even though they reject the Christian concept of the Trinity.) The...

What is Agnosticism? So, what is the definition of agnosticism? Some imagine that agnosticism represents an alternative to atheism, but those people have typically bought into the mistaken notion of the single, narrow definition of atheism. Strictly speaking, agnosticism is about knowledge, and knowledge is a related but separate issue from belief, the domain of theism and atheism. 'A' means "without" and 'gnosis' means "knowledge". Hence, Agnosticism: without knowledge, but specifically without knowledge of gods. The term 'agnosticism' itself was coined by Professor T.H. Huxley at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1876. For Huxley, agnosticism was a position...