Free Republic

<p>It’s Christian vs. Atheist in a new thriller released Friday.</p> <p>Except the Christian is the bad guy. And atheists are saying this film could be their “Brokeback Mountain,” which broke down barriers for gays six years ago.</p> <p>The atheist director of “The Ledge” is hoping to start a similar conversation on behalf of non-believers.</p>

<p>Conservative commentator Bill Bennett says that anyone looking for democracy, good government, business and job growth, the best medical care, a lower cost of living and taxes should look to Texas as the model and to Rick Perry as the model governor.</p>

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Consider how a group of ornery atheists in the US is suing Texas governor Rick Perry for daring to do an incredibly outrageous thing: hold a prayer meeting. Yikes, you would have thought the governor just called for the legalisation of child sex. Actually these angry atheists would clearly have preferred him to do something like that. This is what Perry stated, “Given the trials that beset our nation and world, from the global economic downturn to natural disasters, the lingering danger of terrorism and continued debasement of our culture, I believe it is time to convene the leaders from...

Science and Religion: God Didn't Make Man; Man Made Gods In recent years scientists specializing in the mind have begun to unravel religion's "DNA." By J. Anderson Thomson and Clare Aukofer July 18, 2011. Before John Lennon imagined "living life in peace," he conjured "no heaven … / no hell below us …/ and no religion too." No religion: What was Lennon summoning? For starters, a world without "divine" messengers, like Osama bin Laden, sparking violence. A world where mistakes, like the avoidable loss of life in Hurricane Katrina, would be rectified rather than chalked up to "God's will." Where...

Dr. Carol Swain, conservative commentator, joined Thom Hartmann for a debate about Texas Governor Rick Perry's prayer summit. Insisting that America was "founded as a Judeo-Christian nation," Swain declared that "atheists have hurt our nation" because of suing to remove prayer from the public schools. "I believe the one reason we have some of the conditions that you talked about at the beginning of the show is because we have ousted God from public life because of a small minority of people, those atheists that created trouble in 1962. And the Constitution does not say anything about a wall of...

Hollywood once eschewed making movies that openly advocated atheism. That is no longer the case. "The Ledge" is the latest in a series of recent Hollywood films that actively promote atheism. Director Matthew Chapman hopes that his movie will be the "'Brokeback Mountain' moment for atheists."

A group of New York City atheists is demanding that the city remove a street sign honoring seven firefighters killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because they say the sign violates the separation of church and state. The street, “Seven in Heaven Way,” was officially dedicated last weekend in Brooklyn outside the firehouse where the firefighters once served. The ceremony was attended by dozens of firefighters, city leaders and widows of the fallen men. “There should be no signage or displays of religious nature in the public domain,” said Ken Bronstein, president of New York City Atheists. “It’s...

The impulse to create new bibles is not new. ...So while making new bibles may be an old tradition, when an atheist does it, it’s certainly news. Shouldn’t atheists be the last people producing bibles? The fact that the latest edition of the “new” bible has been created by famed British philosopher A.C.Grayling, an avowed atheist, makes one wonder, why has he written this book?

The BBC has received hundreds of complaints from views over a program it aired Monday night showing an assisted suicide of a person killing himself at a suicide tourism facility in Switzerland. The program featured footage of a man dying at a Dignitas suicide tourism clinic in Switzerland and it was hosted by Sir Terry Pratchett and it showed millionaire Peter Smedley taking a lethal cocktail of drugs that resulted in his death. Almost 900 people contacted the BBC to complain while just 82 supported the showing of the program. Four senior peers complained abotu the program and accused the...

The U.S. Supreme Court Washington D.C., Jun 16, 2011 / 06:08 am (CNA).- On June 13, the Supreme Court ruled against atheist activist Michael Newdow's latest attempt to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.“Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court has again rejected the argument that saying the Pledge of your own free will creates an official state religion,” said attorney Eric Rassbach, litigation director at the religious liberty defense group the Becket Fund. “The words 'one nation under God' make clear the bedrock American principle that our rights come not from the State, but are endowed...

"The principal source of my melancholy, however, is my firm conviction that today’s most obstreperous infidels lack the courage, moral intelligence, and thoughtfulness of their forefathers in faithlessness. What I find chiefly offensive about them is not that they are skeptics or atheists; rather, it is that they are not skeptics at all and have purchased their atheism cheaply, with the sort of boorish arrogance that might make a man believe himself a great strategist because his tanks overwhelmed a town of unarmed peasants, or a great lover because he can afford the price of admission to a brothel. So...

When the Founding Fathers declared America’s independence from Great Britain, they founded the United States with a declaration that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Two hundred and thirty-five years later, according to a new Gallup poll, the vast majority of Americans continue to believe in God. But self-identified liberals, Democrats, Independents, people with post-graduate educations, and Easterners are less likely to say the believe in God than conservatives, Republicans, people without post-graduate educations and Americans from the South, West and Midwest. Young adults between the ages of 18-29 are also less likely to say...

A federal appeals court has ruled that New York City can ban churches from using public school facilities for Sunday worship services and does not violate free speech. Thursday's 2-1 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan overturned a lower court ruling that allowed the Bronx Household of Faith to hold services in a public school. The justices said that it could unconstitutionally convert schools into state-sponsored Christian churches on weekends. ======snip========== “If we do not get an emergency stay, the churches could be thrown out by the school district,” Lorence told Fox News Radio. ======snip==========...

A federal judge has ordered a Texas school district to prohibit public prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery’s order against the Medina Valley Independent School District also forbids students from using specific religious words including “prayer” and “amen.” The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Christa and Danny Schultz. Their son is among those scheduled to participate in Saturday’s graduation ceremony. The judge declared that the Schultz family and their son would “suffer irreparable harm” if anyone prayed at the ceremony. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the school district...

Medina Valley High School officials plan to appeal a federal judge's ruling that barred public prayer at Saturday's graduation ceremony, and apparently have the backing of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the San Antonio Express-News confirmed. Abbott and the district have called a news conference for 3 p.m. Wednesday in San Antonio to discuss the lawsuit filed by Christa and Danny Schultz on behalf of their sons, one of whom is graduating Saturday. The Schultzes, who are agnostic, alleged the district violates students' constitutional rights by subjecting them to religion via prayer at graduation ceremonies and other school events...

A Bachelor’s Degree in Atheism? In more how-now news, California's Pitzer College is starting a department of “secular studies.” To critical thinkers, however, groupthink-related questions are hard to suppress. From Alan Jacobs a professor of English at Wheaton College, in The Wall Street Journal: Religious believers may see another sign of encroaching, well, secularism on American campuses. Let the evangelism commence: The sociologist behind the new Pitzer department, Phil Zuckerman, clearly isn't telling a narrative of decline: “There are hundreds of millions of people who are nonreligious,” he told the New York Times. “I want to know who they are,...

China has claimed for several years a national fertility rate of 1.8 children born per female of child-bearing age. The latest census figures, released just weeks ago, report about 220 million children aged 0-15. This is consistent with a fertility rate of only 1.4. So why the discrepancy? Why would China lie about failing to reach a birth rate goal that it has succeeded in reaching? If China is lying about having as many as 1.8 children per female, doesn't that suggest that China finds it more advantageous to report the higher birth rate? The birth dearth in China is...

Richard Dawkins has made his name as the scourge of organised religion who branded the Roman Catholic Church “evil” and once called the Pope “a leering old villain in a frock”. But he now stands accused of “cowardice” after refusing four invitations to debate the existence of God with a renowned Christian philosopher. A war of words has broken out between the best selling author of The God Delusion, and his critics, who see his refusal to take on the American academic, William Lane Craig, as a “glaring” failure and a sign that he may be losing his nerve.

British scientist Stephen Hawking has branded heaven a "fairy story" for people afraid of the dark, in his latest dismissal of the concepts underpinning the world's religions. The author of 1988 international best-seller "A Brief History of Time" said in an interview with The Guardian published on Monday that his views were partly influenced by his battle with motor neurone disease. "I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he told the...