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AUSTIN — Scientists from Texas universities on Tuesday denounced what they called supernatural and religious teaching in public school science classrooms and voiced opposition to attempts to water down evolution instruction. The newly formed 21st Century Science Coalition said so far it has 800 members who have signed up online. "Texas public schools should be preparing our kids to succeed in the 21st century, not promoting political and ideological agendas that are hostile to a sound science education," said David Hillis, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin. The State Board of Education is considering...

Christopher Hitchens has achieved for himself quite a strong position as the American center-right's favorite Trotskyite. To a large extent this is well-earned. Hitch has stood fast in his adamant support for the War on Terror in all its aspects when plenty of fainter hearts far to rightward have fallen into equivocation, second thoughts, and whining. But there is another Hitch, one who defends his remaining hard-left convictions with a vituperation hard to match in the English-speaking media. We usually see this Hitchens when he's writing about religion. Hitch the Rabid was in full display in "Bah, Hannukah" in the December...

Minnesota Atheists are taking their message to the air waves with a new radio program that will debut in January on the talk station Air America Minnesota. Called "Atheists Talk" -- the same name as a show the organization airs on cable access television -- the live radio broadcast featuring news, interviews, listener call-ins and special guests is believed to be the first show of its kind in Minnesota, said August Berkshire, a spokesman for the Minnesota Atheists. The show will air Sundays from 9 to 10 a.m. on AM 950 starting Jan. 13 when Oxford professor, evolutionary biologist and...

The Vatican on Wednesday condemned the film "The Golden Compass," which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God. In a long editorial, the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano, also slammed Philip Pullman, the bestselling author of the book on which the family fantasy movie is based. It was the Vatican's most stinging broadside against an author and a film since it roundly condemned "The Da Vinci Code" in 2005 and 2006. "In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and...

(CNSNews.com) - With Dec. 25 only days away, a central image in the celebration of Christmas - the manger scene featuring replicas of Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus - has become the focus of attacks by vandals and leaders of "the secular Left," Christian groups charged on Wednesday. While the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights was erecting a nativity scene in New York City's Central Park, the group issued a news release condemning three dozen instances in which manger scenes were vandalized or stolen from Antioch, Calif., to Leesburg, Va., this Christmas season. "In perhaps the sickest...

Well before "The Golden Compass" opened last weekend, e-mails were circulating throughout the country warning people that this film could cause children to become fascinated with atheist Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. "The Golden Compass" is the first book of that series. The e-mails stated that the movie was toned down from the book series, which in the last book ends with the children killing God. The fear was that innocent children would see the film and want to know more about the book series behind it. The movie industry has experienced these kinds of grass-roots attacks on questionable...

And in only its second weekend in release, the bottom fell out of costly domestic flop The Golden Compass from New Line, which forked over $200+ million to make it. I know, I know, the pic is doing OK overseas after earning $50.9 mil from 27 territories December 7th-9th. But the fantasy epic is so lost domestically it earned only an anemic $2.6 million Friday and $3.7 million Saturday from 3,528 nearly empty runs for 3rd place and a new cume of just $40.5 mil. I hear studio topper Bob Shaye once again is blaming everyone but himself -- including...

GREEN BAY, Wis. — The putting up of a nativity scene at Green Bay's City Hall has prompted a tongue-in-cheek request from a suburban man for permission to display a Festivus pole on the overhang of the building's northwest entrance.

Like Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, "The Golden Compass" (an atheist's stealth attack on faith) was unleashed on December 7. Unlike Yamamoto's attempt to sink the U.S. Pacific Fleet, there isn't much bang to "The Golden Compass." The $150-million blockbuster is as flat as cola left in a glass overnight. The first in a planned cinematic trilogy intended to rival "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" and "The Lord of The Rings," "Compass" may turn out to be the "Heaven's Gate" of juvenile fantasy films. The movie is based on a series of children's books ("His Dark Materials"),...

Dear Ellen, Christmas is disgusting. It’s all pagan worship. Even most Christians don’t realize that all their decorations and traditions come from ancient Babylon. Our family doesn’t cave in to all this stuff and I tell friends at church they shouldn’t either. Signed, Ms. Christian Grinch Dear Ms. Grinch, By saying “all this stuff,” I assume we’re talking Christmas trees, mistletoe, hasty pudding, Yule logs, etc.? I grant that Christmas choices are a matter of personal conscience. I had a similar e-mail conversation with another Christian killjoy last month so I retrieve and relate to you my comments to him....

LOS ANGELES, Dec 9 (Reuters) - "The Golden Compass," a $180 million family fantasy starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, did not meet expectations at the North American box office, opening at No. 1 but with weekend ticket sales of just $26.1 million, its distributor said on Sunday. New Line Cinema, a unit of Time Warner Inc, had hoped the film would pull in between $30 million and $40 million. "It's a little bit disappointing," said Rolf Mittweg, president and chief operating officer of New Line's worldwide distribution and marketing operations.

There was no Saturday miracle surge for New Line. The Golden Compass, an effects-laden family film starring Nicole Kidman with a reported budget of $200M, received a modest 16% increase from its opening day, posting an estimated $10.2M on Saturday. Assuming a Sunday drop of 33%, Compass will finish its opening weekend with a disastrous $25.84M. (For a comparison to other big budget, family-oriented films in this mold along with details about New Line’s dismal 2007 and Nicole Kidman’s box office cold streak, scroll down to my Friday Night report.) Disney’s Enchanted blew past $80M domestic with a $4.9M Saturday,...

Vernon (WTNH) _ A sign posted by Atheists in the Rockville's Central Park has people talking, prompting calls to the town hall and the local clergy. The Connecticut Valley Atheists posted the three-sided sign, which some call a billboard, and it was the only sign in the town center marking the Holiday season. Two sides of the display feature the Twin Towers, framed by the words "Imagine No Religion." This Christmas, Martha Chennelle and Amy Houser say Vernon could use a few prayers, considering the sign standing in front of town hall. "We believe that Christ is the reason for...

Where are Harry and Frodo when you really need them? Here is a magical-mystery movie with everything money can eagerly buy: big-name stars, boffo effects, a story pre-sold in a mass-cult fantasy novel. The only thing "The Golden Compass" lacks, alas, is magic. And its mystery is a little too mysterious. The picture looks great — director Chris Weitz and his town-size team of digital technicians have created a fantasy world of misty cities, gleaming dirigibles and intricate steampunk gadgetry that really pops. But in attempting to cram as much as possible of Philip Pullman's 400-page novel into a two-hour...

Christians staying away from a movie that wants to "Kill God in the minds of children" isn't the only challenge facing the new film Golden Compass. The critics just don't like it.

CNA STAFF, Dec 3, 2007 / 05:44 pm (CNA).- The promoters of the controversial movie, The Golden Compass, are making an effort to diminish the boycott being threatened by Catholics and other Christian groups. The advertising agency for the movie has sent an email to the top 50 weekly Catholic newspapers asking that they consider running an ad promoting the movie. Advertising Media Plus, the agency promoting The Golden Compass, is trying to use a review by Harry Forbes, the director of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference Office for Film & Broadcasting, as leverage against the boycott being called for by Catholics...

A controversial children's movie described as anti-Christian is set for release in South African cinemas on Friday, prompting an outcry from Christians, and email circulars warning people against taking their children to see the film. The Golden Compass is based on the book Northern Lights, the first of a trilogy entitled His Dark Materials by British author Philip Pullman. Pullman has described himself in the European and American press as both an agnostic and an atheist. He was quoted saying that to his knowledge, there was not the "slightest evidence" that God existed. He added that he loathed The Chronicles...

When parents look at the beautiful covers adorning the gift-boxed sets of Philip Pullman's fantasy series, His Dark Materials, they might be forgiven for believing that these books follow in the tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings or C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. In fact, the publishers are counting on it. The display tables have arrived just in time for Christmas and the release of the screen adaptation of the first volume: The Golden Compass.What Pullman's promoters desperately hope is that parents will not get beyond the colorful covers, which appear to depict nothing more than an...

Onward Christian Straw Men by: Malcolm A. Kline, December 04, 2007 The myth of marauding Christian street gangs has really taken hold among academic elites who pride themselves on demythologizing myths. When I recently wrote about the concerted effort in academic circles to banish doubters of Darwin’s theory of evolution from faculties everywhere, a poster on Free Republic offered this reminiscence:

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

Darwinian Dictatorship by: Malcolm A. Kline, November 30, 2007 Want tenure? Learn to love Charles Darwin. Want to keep your tenure? Work his name into your license plates. Want to keep your job? Never, never cast aspersions upon academia’s favorite butterfly expert. “We need to caution young people and let them know there are consequences for expressing doubt about Darwin,” biologist Caroline Crocker said recently in remarks at the Family Research Council. “I’m going on 50, my career is over.” “I can start over but for young people it can be devastating.” Dr. Crocker was fired from George Mason University...

WEST CHESTER — For the first time a regional atheist group will display a holiday tree on the Chester County Courthouse lawn during the winter holidays, potentially setting a seasonal model for other communities. County commissioners have allowed groups to display a Christmas tree and menorah on the lawn. But last year, The Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, an atheist group, asked the commissioners to either let any group set up a seasonal holiday display or ban the displays entirely. This fall, the commissioners approved a policy that allows any group to put up a seasonal display if it meets...

Christian kids are typically sent to Sunday school for lessons on the Bible and morals. For nonbelievers, there's atheist Sunday school. With an estimated 14 percent of Americans professing to have no religion, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies, some are choosing to send their children to classes that teach ethics without religious belief. Bri Kneisley sent her 10-year-old son, Damian, to Camp Quest Ohio this past summer after a neighbor had shown him the Bible. "Damian was quite certain this guy was right and was telling him this amazing truth that I had never shared," said Kneisley, who...

Science must ultimately destroy organized religion, according to some of the leading atheist writers and intellectuals who spoke at a recent atheist conference in Northern Virginia. God is a myth, and children must not be schooled in any faith, they said, at the "Crystal Clear Atheism" event, sponsored by the Atheist Alliance International. Some of the luminaries who spoke at the conference, held at the Crown Royal Hotel in Crystal City, Va., over the weekend, included Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris and journalist Christopher Hitchens. The Atheist Alliance International describes itself as "the only democratic national atheist organization...

My new book What’s So Great About Christianity, just out, is already an amazon.com bestseller, a Wall Street Journal bestseller and No. 16 on the New York Times bestseller list. On Saturday C-Span broadcast my debate with God Is Not Great author Christopher Hitchens. Many people have commented that this is the best debate on the topic of Christianity v. Atheism that has yet been held. If you haven’t seen it, you can find the debate on my website dineshdsouza.com. Following the debate, AOL posted the video on its main page, and asked people to make up their minds and...

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.

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue is the subject of much chatter around the blogosphere for leading several hundred Georgia citizens in a public prayer for rain. Georgia has been in the midst of a drought this year, which is ruining agriculture crops and causing water shortages. So Mr. Perdue asked for divine intervention on Georgians' behalf. He and colleagues came together Tuesday to "pray for a storm." Sure enough, two days later, an unpredicted cloudburst dropped an inch of rain over the southeast. But the rain wasn't everybody's idea of a happy ending. The Atlanta Freethought Society staged a public protest...

If a national atheist organization has its way, a series of 12-foot-tall memorial crosses that adorn Utah's highways will be taken down. But not if the families of the people those crosses honor — state Highway Patrol troopers killed in the line of duty — have anything to say about it. American Atheists Inc. has filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the 13 white, steel crosses represent the death of Jesus Christ and therefore violate the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits government establishment of religion. But the families of the fallen heroes say otherwise. They say the crosses,...

What Every Parent Should Know About "The Golden Compass" Interview With Pete Vere and Sandra Miesel INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana, NOV. 14, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The film "The Golden Compass" isn't simply about using fairy-tale magic to tell a good story, it corrupts the imagery of Lewis and Tolkien to undermine children's faith in God and the Church, says Catholic author Pete Vere. In this interview with ZENIT, Vere and Sandra Miesel discuss the movie adaptation of the fantasy novels written by Philip Pullman. The film, staring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, will be released in the United States in early December. Vere...

Embarrassed at the murderous legacy of atheist Communist regimes in the twentieth century, leading atheists seek to even the score with believers by portraying Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime as theist and specifically Christian. Atheist websites routinely claim that Hitler was a Christian because he was born Catholic, he never publicly renounced his Catholicism, and he wrote in Mein Kampf, “By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” Atheist writer Sam Harris writes that since “the Holocaust marked the culmination of…two hundred years of Christian fulminating against the Jews,” therefore “knowingly or...

On Dec. 7, 2007, the movie "The Golden Compass," based on the first book in the fantasy trilogy entitled "His Dark Materials" by atheist Philip Pullman will be released in theaters throughout the world. Pullman wrote his fantasy trilogy because he was so upset by the Christian evangelism of C.S. Lewis in his wonderful series of Christian tales entitled "The Chronicles Of Narnia." Pullman is an avowed atheist who has dedicated his life to undermining Christianity and the Church among young readers. The film's release is only another example of a culture spiraling away from faith, a culture into which...

NEW YORK — A week into the cross-country launch of a radio talk show for "Godless infidels," the son of the late former President Ronald Reagan will be a guest. Ron Reagan will speak this weekend on Freethought Radio, which Air America Radio is now broadcasting nationally, about his own atheism.

The tripartite division of the recent CNN series God's Warriors into Jewish, Christian and Islamic segments conveyed its underlying message: Religions produce murderous fanatics. That particular trope features in all the recent spate of books proclaiming, "I am an atheist, and if you had any brains, you would be too." That thesis, however, is badly flawed. First, religious fanatics prove no more about the inherent nature of religious belief than Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot prove about non-belief. And the implicit equation of Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious fanatics is absurd. In the first two categories, CNN's Christine Amanpour...

Our most celebrated atheist, the biologist Professor Richard Dawkins, has briefly turned his attention away from bashing people who believe in God. Instead, he is about to bash people who subscribe to 'new age' therapies which he says are based on 'irrational superstition'. In a TV programme to be shown later this month, Dawkins looks at a range of ludicrous therapies and gurus, including faith healers, psychic mediums, 'angel therapists', 'aura photographers', astrologers and others. Not surprisingly, he is horrified by such widespread irrationality, not to mention an exploitative industry that fleeces people while encouraging them to run away from...

I'm so worried about Richard Dawkins' daughter, Juliet. I shake my head. Shake, shake. Why does he set himself up this way? Perhaps we can help. I've made similar gaffes. Christians are fairly good at driving their children away, but it breaks the heart to see secularists following the path. Here is some of what Richard wrote Juliet when she was just ten. Ten. He did sign it, "Your loving Daddy." That was good. Love is good. Just before that, though, he exhorted her, "Next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: `What kind...

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...

While many Americans know Oxford professor and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins for The Selfish Gene, the 1976 science bestseller that portrayed all life as a struggle to propagate DNA, they may be less familiar with his other identity as a crusading atheist. Yet last fall Dawkins made news with a new book, The God Delusion, dismissing all religious faith as “insanity.” Arguing that “natural selection and other scientific theories are superior to a God hypothesis in explaining the living world,” Dawkins says he wrote the book as a “consciousness-raising exercise,” in the hope that “religious believers who open it will...

Sam Harris, author of the books, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation, was given a forum at the Aspen Ideas Festival. I'm not sure how I ended up finding the video, "Believing the Unbelievable: The Clash Between Faith and Reason in the Modern World," but I believe I was referred by one of the Science Blog forums. I can't remember which one, and, as far as I can tell, only one of these blogs is owned by a believer. Which is probably how I got lost. There's a bit...

The Richard Dawkins Mutation Challenge     Learn how point mutations contribute to evolution by crossing swords with legendary evolutionary guru Professor Richard Dawkins of Oxford University. See how quickly and easily evolution can come up with new genetic information as you battle the master at his own game! Here are the rules:   YOU: You have to change just two measly codons that each code for one amino acid into two other codons that each code for a different amino acid. Nothing special - it's just the kind of thing that evolution does every day. We will even...

Some of you may know that I have a brother, Christopher, who disagrees with me about almost everything. Some of those who read his books and articles also know that I exist, though they often dislike me. But in general we inhabit separate worlds – in more ways than one. He is of the Left, lives in the United States and recently became an American citizen. I am of the Right and, after some years in Russia and America, live in the heart of England. Occasionally we clash in public. Family differences: Christopher Hitchens and Peter have disagreed about politics...

The article begins thusly: SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president. Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural. The article then lists 10 things allegedly attributed to atheists but which...