Free Republic

We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of religion -- intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of "heretics," holy wars. Though far from the whole story, they are, nevertheless, true. There have been many awful consequences of religion. What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences of secularism -- the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian genocide with secular regimes and ideologies....

The Democratic National Convention's Aug. 24 interfaith service in Denver is supposed to be about unity. But to a Washington, D.C., coalition that supports nontheistic views, it's about division. The Secular Coalition Group, a lobbying organization for church-and-state separation, is pushing to get an atheist on the speaker list, and contends the service is divisive because it alienates nonreligious Democrats at a time when the party needs to unite to support the presumptive nominee, Sen. Barack Obama. "We can all hold different beliefs," said the group's executive director, Lori Lipman Brown, "but we can still come together as patriotic Americans."...

The atheist Freedom from Religion Foundation has taken its anti-faith message to Denver, the site of the Democratic National Convention. Their "Imagine No Religion" sign demands Denver residents and Democratic Party officials preparing for the convention to envision an America without people who believe in God. In response, Bishop Council Nedd, chairman of the In God We Trust has asked Senator Barack Obama to condemn the sign's message. The Freedom from Religion Foundation President, Dan Barker, has called Christianity "and enemy to humanity" and "the antithesis of freedom." In his letter to Senator Obama Nedd states, "By placing their billboard...

Hi everyone, I'm just wondering if anyone had this experience before. I wrote a column about the proof of the existence of a Divine Creator (see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2029192/posts ) and am now getting google stalked by an Atheist Group in Austin, in addition to phone calls and emails. I'm not going to stop saying/writing what I believe or stop speaking out against these tactics, but was wondering if anyone here had experience and knows what to do about google, etc. I know some of us may disagree on the issues, but I don't think there's much debate about these tactics. The...

"Don't believe in God?" a bright blue billboard with images of puffy white clouds asks. "You are not alone."The 20-by-60-foot sign alongside I-95 was designed by a group of area atheists as an invitation to join the Greater Philadelphia Coalition of Reason, or PhillyCoR, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports."If you don't ... [h]undreds of thousands of your neighbors in the Delaware Valley feel the same as you do," the organization's website declares.Steve Rade, president of Wireless Accessories, Inc., gave the $22,500 to fund the billboard May 1, and he plans to keep it there until the end of August."Our mission is...

One man’s personal experience of state school anti-Christian intolerance in the USA The year was 1996. I had just moved to Arizona with my family, and though as a musician I had some income, it was not enough. So I worked as a substitute elementary school teacher. At the beginning of the day the students would recite the American Pledge of Allegiance. In many schools, students would then recite this well-known excerpt from America’s Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable...

The assault on America's religious beliefs is not a new one. It is derived from a practice which Damon Linker, the author of Theocons: Secular America Under Siege referenced in his December 2007 article for The New Republic titled, "Atheism's Wrong Turn, Mindless argument found in godless books." He stated that far from being what modern journalists incorrectly label the "new atheism," the campaign to "act as missionaries for unbelief" is centuries old. Advertisement The American version of this mission to demonize religion is founded on a distorted interpretation of the establishment and free-exercise clauses of the First Amendment. Those...

"An age of science is necessarily an age of material­ism," wrote Hugh Elliot early in the last century. "Ours is a scientific age, and it may be said with truth that we are all materialists now."[1]One does not have to look far to discover the con­tinued accuracy of Elliot's assessment. Scientific materialism--the claim that everything in the uni­verse can be fully explained by science as the prod­ucts of unintelligent matter and energy--has become the operating assumption for much of American politics and culture. We are repeatedly told today that our behaviors, our emotions, even our moral and religious longings...

In the house I grew up in, there was no god but Science, and the PBS Nova programming was his prophet. There was a little-g god, as we attended church every week, but we were just there for the dose of morality and the teachings of Jesus. So what if we did not believe in concepts like heaven or hell, probably not the devil, and now that you mention it, that idea of an omnipotent creator? Going to church wouldn’t do us any harm. There is no fire and brimstone with Methodists — just a few hymns, a quiet sermon,...

I watched the movie "The Great Debaters" last night, and it helped me to understand why atheists are such bad debaters. The movie portrays four students from a little black college in Texas, and shows how, under the tutelage of their pugnacious coach, they went on to defeat Almighty Harvard. Denzel Washington, who plays the coach, says early in the movie that debate is a kind of bloodsport. It's great virtue is that it puts rival ideas up against each other, as argued by people who passionately espouse those ideas, and then it lets the truth emerge through a kind...

Connecticut atheists, taking advantage of a town's policy of allowing holiday-season displays in its public park, have erected a 10-foot tall sign in celebration of the winter solstice that includes a message blaming the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on religious believers. The 3-sided sign was erected in the Town of Vernon's Central Park on Dec. 1 by the Connecticut Valley Atheists. The two sides facing Main Street feature a pre-attack image of the Twin Towers with the sun shining between them and the message, "Imagine no religion," drawn from the John Lennon anthem, "Imagine." Use of the image...

Is "The Golden Compass" a sinister piece of anti-religious propaganda, designed to convert impressionable young viewers into atheist heathens?

When some of the world's leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They'll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.

The God that whined Barbara Kay, National Post Published: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 Back in the day, the many atheists I knew went about their unbelieving lives in a quietly sardonic, but non-combative way: They'd abandoned organized religion, but sought no quarrel with those who stayed. They explained their non-belief to their children, but let them join the boy scouts. Everything old is new again, but ? different. Yesterday's live-and-let-live atheism has morphed into today's truculent "atheism with attitude," where God is not only dead, but --postmodern glee having replaced Nietszchean gloom regarding His demise -- with good riddance...