Free Republic

Did you know that the English-speaking world is in the midst of an Atheistic revival? It is fueled by a small but widely celebrated group of authors and thinkers who call themselves “the Brights”, and who lecture, debate and write best-selling books which have a wide following among young college and University students. These are not your father’s atheists either. They are articulate, impassioned, and effective at the use of the media, and the internet. The “new Atheists” believe that the old atheists were too tolerant of religion, and not aggressive enough in their attacks upon it. To them, religion...

BRITISH academic and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins has angered Muslim groups by comparing the burqa to a trash bag. Muslim organisations reacted angrily... "I think it is ignorant and Islamaphobic," said Seyyed Ferjani, of the Muslim Association of Britain. In 2008 he said: "It's almost impossible to say anything against Islam in this country, because you are accused of being racist or Islamophobic."

ROME, June 30, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When a European Christian pro-family group applied to join the Fundamental Rights Platform (FRP) of the EU’s Human Rights Agency, they did not expect to be denounced as promoters of “hate.” The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) objected to a statement by the Alliance of Romania’s Families (ARF) calling same-sex “marriage” an example of “human degeneration,” and denied their request for membership. The ARF, a group lobbying to retain Romania’s traditional Christian social and legal underpinnings, had written on their website that, “So-called alternatives such as ‘families’ consisting of same-sex, are nothing but expressions...

What is a “bright”? It is not, as is by now well known to contemporary thinkers, the opposite of a “dim”, a “dark”, or a “slavish, easily led idiot.” No. A “bright” is a “is a person who has a naturalistic worldview [one which] is free of supernatural and mystical elements.” Further, the “ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview.” In plain words: an “atheist,” a label brights reject, for the same reason some feminists despise the term “history”—their enemies form part of the words. When this merry band of illuminators, these light-bringers to the...

Comedian Richard Dawkins and seasoned troublemaker Christopher Hitchens plan to put a headlock on Pope Benedict when he steps onto English soil. “Stop!” they plan to yell, “We arrest thee as a criminal against humanity!” It should be some good joke. Most of us know Dawkins’s stand-up routine. His “selfish gene” riff caused giggles in science clubs all over the Continent. But it was his award-winning “memes” gag that really sent them rolling in the aisles. And now he plans to perp-walk the Holy Father down a Heathrow jet bridge. Such inspired hilarity can only come from an academic. Dawkins...

April 11, 2010 Richard Dawkins: I Will Arrest Pope Benedict XVI Marc Horne Atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”. Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998. The...

The “scientific fundamentalism” promoted by the atheist Richard Dawkins was criticised yesterday by the winner of a prize he had attacked. Professor Francisco Ayala, who won the £1 million Templeton Prize for scientific thought, said that attacking religion and ridiculing believers provided ammunition for religious leaders who insisted that followers had to choose between God and Darwin. “Richard Dawkins has been a friend for more than 20 years, but it is unfortunate that he goes beyond the boundaries of science in making statements that antagonise believers,” he said.

I have read Christopher Hitchens’s book God Is Not Great twice, in preparation for a book I have co-written with Biola University philosopher Dr. John Mark Reynolds. Due to come out this spring, our book is titled Against All Gods: What’s Right and Wrong About the “New Atheism.” Because not all readers may know at once who the new atheists are, I will say that they are a group of very fervent opponents of “religion,” of whom the best known are zoologist and science popularizer Richard Dawkins, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett, and Hitchens. What is new about these atheists...

IF YOU'RE one of those committed atheists in the Richard Dawkins mould who dreams of ridding the world of religious mumbo-jumbo, prepare yourself for a disappointment: there is no good evidence that education leads to secularisation. In fact, the more we learn about the "god instinct" and the refusal of religion to fade away under the onslaught of progress, the more the non-religious mindset looks like the odd man out. That is why anthropologists, psychologists and social scientists are now putting irreligion under the microscope in the same way they once did with religious belief (see "Where do atheists come...

In this provocative essay, Dinesh D'Souza argues that the atheist critique of life after death is actually irrational. He takes on Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and more to say their arguments lack evidence. Recently I saw atheist Richard Dawkins being interviewed on Bill Maher's television show, and Dawkins declared that he wanted to have his own death videotaped. Asked why he might contemplate such a strange thing, Dawkins replied that he was sure religious believers would spread rumors that he had converted on his deathbed, and he wanted to make sure there was a record to show he did not....

Richard Dawkins has something of a reputation for provoking the religious community, but it seems he may have underestimated the atheistic fervour of his own fanbase. Amidst a tsunami of vulgar and vitriolic comments, the 85,000-strong forum on his official website RichardDawkins.net had to be shut down this week. The implosion appears to have been provoked by an announcement on the website that discussion threads and responses would in future be tightly moderated to help curb irrelevant discussions, frivolous gossip and abuse. However, the announcement itself created such an explosion of ire that the planned 30-day switch-over period had to...

The First Evangelical Church of the Atheistic Promulgation of Richard Dawkins is having its first schism. Awwww. Isn't that so cute. And guess what, poor widdle Dawkins doesn't like to be called names. Poor thing. The Times Online reports:Richard Dawkins is accustomed to provoking the wrath of religious communities, but now a schism seems to have opened up within the atheist community who make up his fan-base. The split occurred after he announced that a discussion section on his website, considered one of the busiest online atheist forums, would in future be tightly moderated and “irrelevant postings and frivolous gossip”...

referring to U.S.-based evangelist Ray Comfort, who argues that the universe and life is the result of an intelligent creator, Dawkins said: "There is no refutation of Darwinian evolution in existence. If a refutation ever were to come about, it would come from a scientist, and not an idiot. "You can't prove there's no God, no fairies, no leprechauns, or that Thor or Apollo don't exist. There's got to be a positive reason to think that fairies exist. Until somebody does, we can say technically we are agnostic about fairies. We can't disprove them, but we think it's a bit...

Just a few years ago, it seemed curious that an omniscient, omnipotent God wouldn’t smite tormentors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. They all published best-selling books excoriating religion and practically inviting lightning bolts. Traditionally, religious wars were fought with swords and sieges; today, they often are fought with books. And in literary circles, these battles have usually been fought at the extremes. Fundamentalists fired volleys of Left Behind novels, in which Jesus returns to Earth to battle the Anti-Christ (whose day job was secretary general of the United Nations). Meanwhile, devout atheists built mocking Web sites like...

CNN correspondent Max Foster’s short report about Richard Dawkins on Tuesday’s Situation Room played more like a commercial which promoted the militant atheist’s new book. Despite Dawkins’s past inflammatory statements about Christianity, Foster only labeled him “an outspoken critic of creationism....[whose] atheist views have put him at the center of controversy” [audio clip available here]. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux’s introduction for the correspondent’s report highlighted the 150th anniversary of the printing of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” and how Dawkins was a “controversial successor [to Darwin] carrying the torch for evolution.” Foster gave a very basic description of Dawkins’s...

Two smiling child models featured on an atheist billboard are actually Evangelical Christians, it has been claimed. The boy and girl can currently be seen next to the slogan "Don't Label Me" on adverts funded by the British Humanist Association (BHA) and endorsed by Prof Richard Dawkins, the scientist and prominent atheist. The posters form part of a campaign urging parents not to define their children by their own faith, which some secularists claim amounts to an abuse of their human rights. But the campaign appears to have backfired after a Christian community leader said that the models pictured in...

Morality is both a universal and a surprising fact about human nature. When I say that morality is universal I am not referring to this or that moral code. In fact, I am not referring to an external moral code at all. Rather, I am referring to morality as the voice within, the interior source that Adam Smith called the “impartial spectator.” Morality in this sense is an uncoercive but authoritative judge. It has no power to compel us, but it speaks with unquestioned authority. Of course we can and frequently do reject what morality commands, but when we do...

Catholics and other Christians probably don't care what anyone says about them anymore, given the relative lack of outrage over Richard Dawkins' comments in The Washington Post this week. (See blog post below). So who will notice what Christopher Hitchens just unloaded on the Dennis Miller show this morning? Miller, let it be said, was not buying it at all--merely letting Hitchens spout this about abortion and Mother Theresa: "Mother Theresa spent her whole life saying (that what Calcutta needs) is a huge campaign against family planning. I mean, who comes to that conclusion who isn't a complete fanatic? She...

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:Last Friday on the Washington Post blog, “On Faith,” English atheist Richard Dawkins said the Catholic Church was “surely up there among the leaders” as “the greatest force for evil in the world.” He labeled the Eucharist a “cannibal feast,” adding that “possession of testicles is an essential qualification to perform the rite.” He also blamed the Church for sending missionaries “out to tell deliberate lies to AIDS-weakened Africans” regarding condoms. The Church’s outreach to Anglicans, he said, makes it “a common pimp,” noting that those who convert “will be joining an institution...

Following on the heels of his last bestseller, The God Delusion, Darwinian biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins has scored another publishing triumph. The No. 5 bestseller in the country, according to the New York Times, is Dawkins’s The Great Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. You might think his success would give him the courage to face critics of his ideas in open debate. But you would be wrong. As one of the architects of the theory of intelligent design, I have formally challenged Dawkins to debate our contrasting views of evolution before the public, but his representatives have...