Why should we believe in God? Because God said so? What if God doesn't exist? What shall we believe in then?
This is a place to promote the vision of a humanist society. A society that places the value of all human life as...
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Why should we believe in God? Because God said so? What if God doesn't exist? What shall we believe in then?
This is a place to promote the vision of a humanist society. A society that places the value of all human life as the central value and concern, higher than money or institutions. A society that promotes non-violence as the only way to achieve results, fighting discrimination in all its forms; racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, etc. A society that encourages the continuous development and free distribution of human knowledge and allows freedom of beliefs and ideas
With increasing numbers of freethinkers "coming out" and openly identifying themselves as atheists, agnostics, and/or secular humanists, some are suggesting that secular churches may be useful. Of course, atheism is not a religion, and the concept of atheist churches strikes some as a bit silly. Still, I do not think we should hastily dismiss the idea without carefully considering the advantages they might bring. Besides, calling an institution a church does not necessarily mean that it must...
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Mississippi atheists are invited to a presentation by Glen Sandberg on Saturday, May 17, at the New Orleans Public Library. The presentation, "Naturalizing the Magic of the Mind," will start at 2:00 PM and is brought to you by the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association. Here is Glen's description of the presentation:It tries to clarify how imagination and creativity are natural results of the massively-parallel processing by billions of neurons in our brain, that each constitute an...
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I don't know about you, but if I was driving along and saw a billboard like this one recently placed along the New Jersey Turnpike, it would put a big smile on my face. Bravo to FreeThoughtAction and their partner, the American Humanist Association, for the latest secular billboard. Here is the press release from the American Humanist Association: Nontheist Billboard Greets NYC Area Motorists (Washington, D.C.) "Don't believe in God? You are not alone." Starting...
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I guess I've never been a fan of the phrase "atheist pride" because it reminds me at some level of white pride. I've preferred to talk of an "atheist movement" or "atheist revival." And yet, these phrases do not quite capture the self-affirming, pro-atheist sense of "atheist pride." At first glance, it may appear silly to feel pride in what is simply a lack of theistic belief, but as I look ahead to 2008, I think this is exactly what we need. In defining atheism as a lack of theistic belief...
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Many atheists will acknowledge that they sometimes feel sorry for their Christian neighbors. But this pity is not the same thing as empathy. How many atheists experience feelings of empathy for the believers surrounding them? Are such feelings beneficial, possibly contributing to effective dialogue, or do they get in our way? Pity vs. Empathy Pity amounts to feeling sorry for someone and often carries a condescending aspect. For example, one may pity Christians for their inability to live...
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The BBC reports that, "The Archbishop of Westminster has urged Christians to treat atheists and agnostics with "deep esteem". Believers may be partly responsible for the decline in faith by losing sense of the ...
I read with interest your recent story about 23-year-old U.S. Army Specialist Jeremy Hall who calls himself an atheist and feels harassed because his superiors challenged him in his ability to lead people of ...
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." Turns out that Albert Einstein...
In a recent, interesting attempt at logic, a letter writer from Princeton tried to connect the following unrelated dots: religion is thinly disguised hysteria, unlike atheism, which teaches that the earth is ...
Colfax, Placer County. A mysterious light on a church wall that many believed was a divinely inspired image of the Virgin Mary did not appear yesterday amid heavy clouds, seeming to confirm the theory it was ...
I'd like to write today about two stereotypes of atheism that are common among some quarters of religious apologists: that we are moral nihilists, recognizing no such concepts as right and wrong; and that we are Satanists who worship, or at least admire, the adversary power of monotheism. The...
Sometimes Einstein is put forward as an example of an eminent scientist who was also a religious believer. What he did or did not believe has been literally the subject of books (Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion) , as well as websites and magazine articles. What he actually believed is complex...
Because from Stalin's, and to a lesser extent from Lenin's, time on Communism was associated with atheism and with a materialistic world view that condemned pretty much every philosophical idea about the nature ...
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 Shahina Maqbool Islamabad System-wide governance and regulatory issues; disconnect between data, policy-making and budgeting decisions; and non-alignment of budgetary allocations with ...