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NEW YORK, April 8 (UPI) -- The head of a leading Roman Catholic lay group says U.S. leftists are about to unleash an avalanche of invective against the church and its leadership."The storm is about to hit," William Donohue of the Catholic League said in a news release. "For the most part, anti-Catholic bigots and the disaffected dissidents within the Church have been quiet. What they have been waiting for is about to happen: the week between the end of the mourning and the beginning of the conclave is upon us. And that means the left is ready to explode."...

TESTING THE FAITH Bill Maher: Christians have neurological disorder Says parents 'drill' religion into kids' heads using biblical 'fairy tales' Bill Maher Television personality Bill Maher, host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," says Christians and others who are religious suffer from a neurological disorder that "stops people from thinking." Appearing as a guest on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" this week, Maher told host Joe Scarborough: "We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building...

Big Canadian real estate is on the market. A rather sizable chunk of Lord Robert Baden-Powell's Empire is available for investors, homebuilders, fishing resort prospectors, or blacktop barons. Scouts Canada is pounding in "for sale" signs at the entrances of a number of Scout camps across the country, including at least twenty camps in Ontario. But don't worry. No Boy Scouts will mourn the loss of their summer camps, for the Boy Scouts of Canada no longer exist. Thinking they could become more inclusive, the Boy Scouts of Canada Board of Governors decided in November 1998 to admit females, atheists,...

MAHER: Yes, we are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.

The tsunami of sea water was followed instantly by a tsunami of spittle as the religious sputtered to rationalize God's latest felony. Here we'd been placidly killing each other a few dozen at a time in Iraq, Darfur, Congo, Israel, and Palestine, when along comes the deity and whacks a quarter million in a couple of hours between breakfast and lunch. On CNN, NPR, Fox News, and in newspaper articles too numerous for Nexis to count, men and women of the cloth weighed in solemnly on His existence, His motives, and even His competence to continue as Ruler of Everything....

A long-overdue debate has been ignited thanks to a recent article by Washington Times reporter Julia Duin posted on Poynter Online. In it Duin asserted that too many newspapers, TV news stations and networks are failing to cover religion, and those that do have been failing to hire journalists who truly understand religion.

Did anyone see Bill Maher on MSNBC's Scarborough Country tonight? I know he's done it before, but Maher went on another one of his hate-filled rants against religion, calling the millions of people in America who go to church on Sunday as having a "neurologiocal disorder." He then referred to Christianity (veiled) as a "fairy tale." What was almost as bad, however, was that Scarborough just sat there and was unable to retort Maher's EASILY REFUTABLE OBJECTIONS! (ALL of which are answered in books like Kreeft and Tacelli's "Handbook of Christian Apologetics." or Paul Copan's "That's Just Your Interpretation.") Just...

I am really tired of the implicit assumption in almost all MSM reporting that “evangelicals” and other (non-Moslem, of course) religious fundamentalists are more “moral” than the rest of us. Since when did we secularists (religious and otherwise) cede the definition of morality to them? If you ask me, it’s pretty damn “immoral” to discriminate against gays and working women, or to force a thirteen year old girl who has been raped by her father to give birth to that child. What’s more, I don’t find a literal reading of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, to be a very...

Bracing for what's to come from a Republican-controlled White House and Congress, people who don't believe in God are joining forces as never before to make sure their rights don't get trampled in what they perceive as a stampede of religious zeal. Riding a post-election spike in new memberships, groups of humanists, agnostics and other non-theists are raising funds to put their first-ever lobbyists on Capitol Hill. To shape an agenda, leaders from as many as 20 non-theistic groups will convene Jan. 15-16 for their largest summit since Ronald Reagan took the Oval Office with help from the Moral Majority...

As Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of the Christ child and Jews give thanks and praise to God for sustenance even in alien lands and hostile cultures, it's a great time to reflect on how the relentlessly secular entertainment industry reflects -- in fact, mocks -- the religious beliefs of its American audience.  In the arid land of secular orthodoxy, there is no alarm at simple "spirituality" if it is trendy and harmless, and the God-idea is conveniently controlled by the individual, instead of the individual submitting to a sovereign you-know-Who. Even traditional faiths can be tolerated by Hollywood...

Four days after the election, Democratic partisan and comedian Garrison Keillor announced on his national radio show that he was recovering from his Election Day shock by embracing a new purpose: "to pass a constitutional amendment to take the right to vote away from born-again Christians." Amid laughter and applause from his audience, Keillor said, "Born-again people are citizens of heaven," not of America. "If you feel that … tribulation and suffering are just the natural conditions of life, that higher education is vanity, that there is only one book that you need to read … if you feel that...

Election exit polls showed that twenty-two percent of voters ranked "moral values" as the most important issue, above terrorism and the economy. Nearly 80 percent of that group voted for George Bush. As the dust settles in the aftermath of his decisive victory, people are still talking about the so-called moral divide in America. Were the polls flawed? Does it matter? What divide is this? The irreligious have morals values, too. They just differ in many ways from those of Christians. For example, they may claim that the moral law derives from man's best efforts through trial-and-error evolutionary processes. Christians...

October 31, 2004FAITHBattle Cry of Faithful Pits Believers Against the RestBy DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK LLENTOWN, Pa., Oct. 27 - With one Sunday left before the election, conservative churches and Christian groups are rallying their members with a singularly intense battle cry: that this presidential race, more than any before, is a contest pitting faithful of all kinds against unbelievers."I see it as a spiritual divide between true believers and seculars," said Neil E. Kulp, pastor of First Baptist Church, echoing comments made in dozens of other interviews. "I think we as a nation are more divided now than we were...

Like many comedians, when Bill Maher talks, it's difficult to tell where the shtick ends and the truth begins. Or, for that matter, whether there's any difference between the two. So when Maher is already riffing on religion as a reporter walks into the Los Angeles offices of his HBO show "Real Time With Bill Maher" for an hourlong interview about his spiritual beliefs, it's hard to say if the commentary is spontaneous or part of a routine. "If there was just one topic I could talk about for the rest of my career, I would pick religion," Maher says,...

Dear friends, GAMPAC, the GODLESS AMERICANS POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE, has endorsed Sen. John Kerry and Sen. John Edwards for President and Vice President of the United States. The November election is a crucial one for our nation, and in particular the First Amendment separation of government and religion. The winner will likely be in the position of naming key appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary. Other important legislative issues, as well as the fate of the faith-based initiative — a dangerous experiment aiding religious groups and imposing a “Religion Tax” on the American...

Democrats Rely on Non-Religious Voters By RICHARD N. OSTLING, AP (Aug. 26) -- After years of talk about the close ties between religious conservatives and the Republican Party coalition, an opposite factor is gaining wider notice: the Democrats' reliance upon non-religious voters. "Seculars have become an increasing portion of the Democratic electoral coalition and especially of the party's activist base," says Geoffrey Layman of the University of Maryland, who dates the trend from 1972 and considered it obvious by 1992. A religiously linked values clash is redefining U.S. politics, Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio of City University of New...

A newly formed group encouraging political action on behalf of “Godless Americans” has announced that it is endorsing the Sen. John Kerry for president and Sen. John Edwards for vice president in the 2004 national elections.

Found on this site: http://dailykos.com/story/2004/7/26/14184/8954Here's their statement of purpose from the group's page at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KerryPagan/This is a group for Pagans and Agnostic believers. George Bush has voilated our constitutional rights. He has blurried the line between church and state. The great thing about America is that a Pagan's vote is just as powerful as a Christian's vote. Although we tend to be a free unorganized crowd, we are a community of American's with the same rights as any other community. Preserve your rights. Claim your justice. It is time to rise up and as "we the people" are required to...

"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!" -- William Shakespeare The Presbyterian Church USA is vying for the title of the leader of America's Irreligious Left. It has done so by sanctimoniously weighing in on a complex foreign-policy issue, announcing this month that tiny Israel is an evil, undemocratic state akin to a racist South Africa. Say what? The Presbyterian Church's leaders, upset with Israel, which dares to defend itself from...

The Godless Americans Political Action Committee (GAMPAC) has formally endorsed John Kerry for President. The committee, that was formed in March, announced at a press conference that they represent nearly 30 million Americans that could translate into as many votes. Their website is: www.godlessamericans.org This endorsement of Kerry, by those who do not believe in God, and want to outlaw all references to God in public places, re-define marriage, make homosexuality the norm, advance a culture of vulgarity and kill all babies of inconvenience, [should not] come as a surprise. If elected, Kerry will fully represent them. Before this...