Category Archives: Atheism

Apparently, people subsconsciously stereotype atheists as serial killers yet also assume theyre more open-minded and fun at parties.

According to research published Social Psychological and Personality Science, Americans can simultaneously believe opposing stereotypes about one group of people, as proven by their varying assumptions about atheism.

The study, led by Arizona State Universitys Jordan W. Moon, explored said stereotypes of the religious and nonreligious, and found that while atheists are occasionally considered threats in certain circumstances, their non-religious principles were seen advantageously in others.

Past research on anti-atheist prejudice has shown so many negative stereotypes atheists are associated with immorality [and] narcissism, Moon, lead researcher, told PsyPost. Even atheists tend to show some level of intuitive distrust toward atheists. Yet many people are open about their disbelief in public, and there are organizations that promote disbelief. My coauthors and I reasoned that, at least in some contexts, being an atheist must be viewed positively.

For the study, participants read descriptions of people with certain positive and negative traits. These characteristics included open-minded viruses close-close-minded, scientific or non-scientific, and fun or not fun. Participants were then shown statements about the characters and asked to choose which was most likely. For example, one response was Henry is a teacher and Henry is a teacher and is an atheist.

Moon and his team concluded that participants often associated the positive traits open-minded, scientific and fun with atheists, while the negative traits close-minded, non-scientific, and not fun with more religious people.

The next experiment found that vignettes illustrating the disturbing behaviours of serial killers were far more commonly associated with atheists.

That said, when it came time to query participants as to whose party they would rather attend, those low and average in religiosity strongly preferred atheists. Participants also demonstrated a preference for the non-religious when it came to picking someone with whom to discuss politics, and to tutor them in science.

Even though there is prejudice toward atheists, and many negative stereotypes, it is not necessarily the case that atheists are viewed negatively in every way, Moon said. Atheism might not necessarily boost perceptions of trustworthiness, but it might make people be viewed as more fun, open-minded, or scientific. In those contexts, people are probably more open to interacting with atheists.

Originally posted here:
People think atheists are more likely to be serial killers, but also more open-minded and fun at parties - indy100

China may have been blamed for the coronavirus crisis but it is also responsible for a much bigger crisis that has been decades in the making. In a nutshell, the number of babies being born in China is at an all-time low while the number of people growing old is at an all-time high. Ironically, the worlds most populous nation is running out of babies.

An economy highly dependent on labour-intensive industries like construction, manufacturing and mining cannot afford a labour shortage. A fall in birth rate threatens to halt Chinas historic rise and Beijing knows this.

Ordinarily, nations face population stagnation after their citizens have reached high levels of economic well-being (Germany, South Korea, Japan etc). Relative to these, China is a poor country. Around 200 million Chinese still earn less than 5 dollars a day. The reason the Chinese population is on the brink of collapse is not socio-economic. It is political.

Unlike other nations, it has not been caused by an increase in female literacy or access to contraception. Instead, the primary cause of Chinas unnaturally low population growth rate is the one-child policy. This has forced single children to take care of both their parents and in some cases even their grandparents. Not only does this divert money out of the economy and into elderly care, but it also puts immense strain on workers who are expected to take care of up to 4 dependent family members (excluding their spouses side). Adding children to the mix rightfully frightens many.

Pressure on future parents is further compounded by the prohibitively high cost of quality Chinese education, and the absurdly costly housing market in cities. Furthermore, the Chinese workforce follows a grueling 996 schedule, where they work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 6 days a week. This leaves very little time for family life. Lastly, the trends of increasing urbanisation (initially forced by the government) and atheism further inhibit population growth in China.

But if there is one thing the world should expect from the CCP, it is the unexpected. The State is trying to increase government-run family care to reduce the burden on parents. Furthermore, even if the government reduces the economic disincentive to have children, the culture formed over three generations of having only one child shall remain.

However, the CCP has experience in modifying birth rates. A few decades ago, while the rest of the world was horrified by forced population control, the Chinese government was actively practicing it. In the western provinces, growth rates are still in free fall. There is no reason for the government to not wield its authoritarian powers to simply force population growth. In Xinjiang, it was 1984. In the rest of China it might be the Handmaids Tale soon.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

See the article here:
The Peoples Republic of the Elderly? - The Times of India Blog

I was 17 years old when I heard the Lords Prayer spoken in public for the first time. It was in November 1989 during the Velvet Revolution, which brought freedom to Communist Czechoslovakia. The crowd of almost 500,000 people chanted and cheered while the dissidents spoke. But when the Rev. Vclav Mal started praying the Our Father, it grew quiet.

After two generations of religious suppression and intense Communist indoctrination, few people could recite the prayer by heart. Many had never heard of it. But everyone understood it was a solemn moment.

Father Mal, a Czech priest who had been previously imprisoned and persecuted, led peaceful meetings in Prague with Vclav Havel and other prominent dissidents of the underground anti-Communist movement. The police could have arrested the priest at any moment for public preaching, but he remained calm.

That cold and snowy day marked for many their first encounter with public worship, spirituality and prayer. The Catholic Church that Father Mal represented was very different from the church that I knew. I knew of the church from textbooks that passed through the government censorship and presented a very biased interpretation of history.

Father Mals church also felt different from the artistic and architectural wonders of silent, empty buildings that I somehow knew I belonged to, but whose mystery was far beyond my reach. As if coming out of the shadows of its cathedrals, the Catholic Church came alive in the humanity and vulnerability of Father Mal. He encouraged and comforted everyone, baptized or not. He was there for us whether or not we had found the courage to defy 40 years of official atheistic teaching and openly contemplated the possibility of Gods existence.

The fall of Communism ushered the world into a new era of unprecedented technological progress, interconnectedness and acceleration of political developments. The church finds itself now in a similar place. It can be a transformative forcepolitically, economically and spirituallyby standing with the powerless and vulnerable today as it did during the fall of Communism. The church has also demonstrated it can be an amazing force of change in Africa and China. But its alignment with government establishment or nationalism is problematic in Hungary and other countries, where religious leaders, appealing to a Christian national heritage, struggle to pass laws that would bring their secularizing societies back to their Christian roots. This top-down approach is not effective or sustainable in our current globalized world, and it overlooks the tremendous opportunities for revival and transformation from the ground up.

Throughout history, Christianity was frequently spread by the ruling elites, who introduced it and maintained it among their subjects. The conversion of Emperor Constantine in A.D. 312 was a pivotal point for the Christianization of Europe; and from then on, Christianity usually spread through the conversion or arrival of rulers, who built churches, invited missionaries and established laws favorable to Christianity. The system of political elites sustaining the religious values and order in their countries was definitively reaffirmed and codified in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia treaties, which ended 30 years of religious conflicts in Europe, established the modern international system of nation-states and made a clear distinction between domestic and international politics.

But this distinction has become blurred in recent decades, when information and ideas travel freely across borders. As most Western countries gradually embraced liberal democracy, freedom of religion and free access to information, religious control and influence of governments over their domestic populations has steadily diminished, and the Westphalian principle of cuius regio, eius religio has lost its significance.

Gradually, younger generations have grown accustomed to question societal norms and values and to put emphasis on personal spiritual experience rather than to reflectively adopt the religious values of political or parental authority. Thus, the transmission of faith from generation to generation is no longer automatic; and our current era has been marked by a significant decline in established forms of Christianity, particularly in countries with a historically strong alliance between Christianity and governmental authority.

St. John Paul II understood the opportunity to reach out particularly to those outside of government authority. His famous words, Do not be afraid! addressed to all the oppressed peoples in Communist regimes somehow penetrated even the most stringent authoritarian censorships and reached the hearts of the powerless all over Eastern Europe. The impact of this saint on the liberation of the entire continent is recognized and well documented by prominent non-Catholic scholars of the Cold War, like the British historian Timothy Garton Ash and the American Cold War expert John Lewis Gaddis, who wrote: When John Paul II kissed the ground at the Warsaw Airport on June 2, 1979, he began the process by which communism in Polandand ultimately everywherewould come to an end.

The popes kiss was not merely a symbolic gesture; he literally worked to dismantle Polands authoritarian regime from the ground up. By celebrating Mass in the public square in Warsaw and in a shipyard in the port city of Gdansk, he was able to engage directly with the common people, who suffered the most.

The late pope also contributed to the unusually peaceful character of most of the democratic transitions in Europe by promoting the ideology of peaceful resistance and by befriending and encouraging the notorious dissident peacemakers Lech Walesa and Vclav Havel.

But St. John Paul II did not limit his influence and support for anti-authoritarian grassroots movements to his native country or continent. He was also critical of Latin American right-wing authoritarian regimes. His visits to Chile, Paraguay and Haiti, and his particular attention and encouragement of the oppressed dissidents are often cited as catalysts to the eventual demise of the regimes of Pinochet, Stroessner and Duvalier. A particularly moving incident revealed to the Chilean people that the pope was unequivocally on their side: when he publicly kissed and embraced a young student protester, Carmen Gloria Quintana, who was scarred as a result of brutal beatings and an incineration attempt by dictator Pinochets soldiers.

St. John Paul II demonstrated the potential for the Catholic Church to be a transformative force for dismantling authoritarian regimes when it engaged with the grassroots movements of the oppressed. The recent spread of Christianity in many countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East shows that the connection with the poor and marginalized is still crucial.

These vibrant churches, in countries where Christianity has not been a part of the political establishment and especially in places where believers have to overcome tremendous hurdles and persecution, prove that Christianity does not need favorable political conditions to flourish. The rapid growth of both Catholic and Protestant churches in sub-Saharan Africa has been widely reported. Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya have ranked as having record numbers of Christian conversions.

Different from the church in Europe, the African church is not so deeply entwined with the power of historically established political structures. Many may first see the work of the church alive in the dedicated effort of numerous missionaries and organizations like Unbound, Cross-Catholic Outreach and Catholic Relief Services, which work side by side with local people in construction, agricultural advancements, vaccinations, basic medical care and education. Direct evangelization work by other charities has also borne much fruit.

Because of increased economic partnership between China and Africa, Chinese workers encounter hospitable and vibrant Christian communities, which often leads to their conversion, as Christopher Rhodes of Boston University reported last year for UnHerd. The American management consulting firm McKinsey & Company reported in 2017 that there were more than 10,000 Chinese-owned operating firms in Africa and approximately one million Chinese workers living mostly in Algeria, Angola, Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia.

When they return to China, they not only bring their newly found faith with them but also continue practicing it and spreading it through underground networks, despite a persistent and intensified government persecution.The estimated number of active Christians there, which most research institutes put between 40 million and 70 million, has already exceeded the number of practicing Christians in France and Great Britain, and it is predicted that by 2030 China will be the largest Christian country in the world, surpassing Brazil and the United States.

In order to be a truly vibrant and transformative force in our globalized world, Christianity needs to detach itself not only from dominating power establishments but also from nationalism and ethnic sentiments, presenting itself foremost as a religion of conversion rather than an attribute of an inborn ethnic or racial identity. Connecting Christianity to nationalism leads to the rise of extremism and reduces ones capacity to see the potential for conversion among people of different ethnic or national affiliation. The recent trend of conversion among immigrants is well documented in Darren Carlsons 2020 book Christianity and Conversion Among Migrants, for example, and their potential for future growth and renewal of Christianity in Western societies has been underestimated among politicians in the United States as well as in Europe, where the question of accepting refugees from non-Christian countries has been particularly pertinent and where many politicians pursue anti-immigration policies, arguing for the preservation of Christian culture.

Hungarys prime minister, Viktor Orban, himself a Calvinist convert from atheism, wrote in 2015 that the acceptance of Muslim refugees should be limited because Europe and European culture have Christian roots. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland likewise argued in a 2017 interview for accepting only Christian refugees to reshape Europe and re-Christianize it.

Matteo Salvini, the former minister of the interior and deputy prime minister of Italy, used Catholic symbols as campaign props. But he is known for denying asylum to hundreds of refugees and for turning away the rescue ship Aquarius from Libya, with 600 people. He justifies his actions in the name of protecting Europes Christian heritage.

These arguments are based on the erroneous assumption that a secularized European is closer to converting to an active Christian faith than a Muslim immigrant. The opposite is true, and evidence shows that Muslim immigrants are converting to Christianity at much higher rates than native Europeans. They have revitalized declining churches in several European countries.

Both Protestant and Catholic charities throughout Europe have reached out to impoverished and homeless migrants from conflict zones in the Middle East, especially Syria and Iraq. Having experienced an extremist and distorted version of Islam, some of them were already inclined toward Christianity but could not pursue the faith in their home country because of the risk of death, mutilation, imprisonment or social ostracism. Bishop George Saliba of Beirut, Lebanon, recently reported to Public Radio International that he personally baptized more than 100 such refugees since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011. Other immigrants encountered Christianity for the first time when they found protection in churches temporarily converted into makeshift refugee homeless shelters. Pope Francis directive for every Catholic parish in Europe to host at least one refugee family enabled many impoverished immigrants to find hospitable homes in a Christian environment.

Some Muslim immigrants and refugees voluntarily convert to Christianity when seeking asylum, even though there are no advantages in most European countries for doing so. They convert despite facing a tremendous risk if their asylum application is denied. According to The Guardian, the archbishop of Vienna received over 300 requests for adult baptism in the year 2016, three quarters of whom were Muslim refugees. Protestant churches in Hamburg and Berlin had so many former Muslims seeking baptism that they reserved municipal swimming pools to celebrate the sacrament.

Pastor Gottfried Martens testified that in his church alone, Trinity Church in Berlin, the congregation has grown from 150 to almost 700 because of converts from Islam. The curate of Liverpool Cathedral, Mohammad Eghtedarian, who is a convert from Islam and a refugee from Iran, conducts weekly services in Farsi to accommodate the growing number of newly converted Christians from Iran and Afghanistan.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, a strong advocate for greater acceptance of Muslim refugees in Germany, said that Europes problem is not too many Muslims but too few Christians. Europe needs a Christianity that is capable of sharing the political space with moderate Islam and other minority faiths and still continuing to be a transformative force that remains close to the poor and marginalized. Europe desperately needs a church that equally embraces all people regardless of their previous affiliation, their social status, the color of their skin or whether their ancestors built the cathedrals.

These trends unequivocally show that Christianity is more likely to penetrate secular Western societies when it is aligned with immigrants and the powerless than when Christian values are promoted and legislated from a position of power. Fortunately, Pope Francis is already leading the way in this direction by reaching out to the poor and marginalized, by his relentless advocacy for immigrants and refugees and by his astounding peacemaking efforts, especially with the Muslim world.

Following in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi, who penetrated enemy lines during the fifth crusade to engage in a three-day dialogue with the Sultan Al-Kamil, the pope likewise reaches out to the Muslim world. In February 2019, he celebrated the first papal Mass on the Arabian Peninsula. However, his most remarkable acts of Christian leadership are his engagement with the powerless, such as his efforts to ameliorate the situation of the impoverished and often forgotten tribes of the Amazon and his relentless advocacy for the refugees who end up on the European shores.

He is known to wash and kiss the feet of Muslim immigrants and to welcome and offer a new home to non-Christian refugee families within the Vatican residence. He is not afraid to openly criticize cruel and inhumane decisions of powerful politicians, such as the mistreatment of refugees, the building of border walls, family separations, the death penalty and policies that foster further economic inequality, but he manages to stay away from specific political endorsements as he declines to tell his American flock which candidate they should vote for in presidential elections.

The globalized world needs to encounter a Catholic Church that is not entangled with power politics and nationalism and that will follow the leadership of Pope Francis. The church needs the examples of leaders like St. John Paul II, who kissed the ground of Communist countries and the scarred faces of victims of oppression, and Father Mal, who risked arrest to pray with an overwhelmingly atheist crowd. To be a truly relevant and transformative force, the Catholic Church of the 21st century needs to be willing to relinquish political power and meet the suffering and marginalized in their humble and vulnerable position.

Embracing those with a strong Christian upbringing as well as those who have not yet heard the Gospel, the church needs to recognize that the greatest potential for the future of Christianity may be among those who practice their faith despite oppression. In Western societies, there is hope that revival may come from the least powerful, especially the immigrants and refugees, who often end up on our shores untouched by the waters of baptism. The newly found faith of those who convert and their powerful testimonies may inspire those who have taken their religion for granted.

The Catholic Church of my childhood in Prague was stripped of all its former worldly power and glory. The contradiction between the dazzling beauty of Catholic art and architecture on every corner of Prague, and a widespread lack of knowledge of even the most basic tenets of Christianity during Communist times was an absurdity that only Franz Kafka would have been able to describe adequately. Tall gothic spires and baroque domes form the skyline of the city and witness to the former political, ideological and cultural influence that the church enjoyed throughout centuries of Czech history. Yet the role of the Catholic clergy was often reduced to the upkeep of the church building and limited service to the elderly and foreign tourists.

Lured by the serene beauty of the interior, sublime organ music and perhaps the spiritual effects of my infant baptism I did not yet know about, I was occasionally able to witness Masses celebrated in languages that I could not understand and to walk around beautifully ornate fonts filled with holy water, which I was not permitted to touch. Silent priests, who could face severe repercussions for engaging with the young, never acknowledged my presence as I tried to piece together the basic tenets of the Gospel story, partially preserved in ancient paintings, Latin inscriptions and Christmas carols, which could not be sung outside our homes.

The public prayer by Father Vclav Mal in front of half a million people in November 1989 was thus a stunning event and a sure sign of change. Although the spirit of freedom was already in the air, there were still lingering fears of military suppression, as older generations recalled their vivid memories of the brutal invasion by troops of the Warsaw Pact that snuffed out the 1968 Prague Spring freedom movement 21 years before.

Despite these well-founded fears of possible repression and despite the fact that most dissidents and the majority of the public were not believers, many Catholic priests as well as other Christian leaders embraced all the risks and vulnerability and joined the humble and spiritually impoverished crowd in the public square. Under the cold grey skies of those pivotal days, their prayers and encouragement helped change the course of history and opened the gates of freedom for millions of people, whose lives would never be the same.

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The church in the West is in declineand nationalism won't save it - America Magazine

Articles and letters may be edited for the purposes of clarity and space. They are published in good faith with a view to enlightening all the stakeholders. However, the contents of these writings may not necessarily match the views of the newspaper.

Restore Quaids Pakistan

Pakistan has suffered enough ever since we diverted from Quaids vision that Pakistan should be a modern democratic welfare state where all citizens would have equal opportunities, laws and constitution would be supreme and fundamental rights assured.

This country was not created to provide sanctuary to extremists, exploiting sectarian and ethnic divide, for perpetuating their greed for power, nor a country to be a haven for land mafia and cartels involved in black-marketing and hoarding, nor to fight proxy wars for others.

This country was created through a democratic political struggle waged by politicians with integrity, unwilling to submit to temptations of allotment of lands and assets.

It was expected that the Muslim majority would incorporate the Islamic concept of justice, tolerance, meritocracy, pursuit of knowledge in science & technology, economics and welfare for all in Constitution. MAJ elaborated this on 11 August 1947.

Instead, what we have witnessed is exploitation of religion and a system based on the legacy of colonial laws with a paid bureaucracy created by Raj to serve the interests of an occupying colonial power, conspiring to ensure that modern welfare state, where the will of people reigns supreme does not emerge.

Half the country was lost, when Pakistan under a debauched dictator refused to hand over power to the elected representatives on one pretext or another.

A country created through a political process for the establishment of a modern democratic welfare state was derailed by opportunists exploiting religion and today we face danger of chaos.

MALIK TARIQ ALILahore

Myth of atheism

The existence of God the Magnificent is the ultimate Truth and tangible Reality of this universe.

He is the All-Knowing and Master of this humungous workshop before our eyes. His creations and the wonders of human existence hold the ground of His Existence.

But unfortunately, the increasing reliance on the scientific empiricism and experiments have led the humanity astray. It has diverted man from his ultimate Benefactor.

Nowadays, another prevalent spook of atheism is trending in our society. From the metropolitan cities to the interior cities of the Sindh and Punjab, people are instantly modernizing themselves as atheists hopelessly denying their own existence on the face of this earth.

They are ready to be in discord with their Creator making their life an unpardonable offence.

One may say that despite having the greatest wonder of this world their mind, they are denying the purpose of their creation and existence on this pale blue dot. Any logical being having the senses and intellect can not dare deny the identity of Lord.

Implicitly, one, being a rational and logical, can easily prove the existence of God. Take a look around you.

Dont you see the working of all human beings, the day being converted to night and vice versa.

Are these impassable and undiscovered roots of this unending universe deniable? Is it possible to say that this huge mechanism of universe is working without any Powerful Entity?

The logical answer which strikes to human mind is no. Lets reflect upon our daily life and scientific research. Can a person be begotten without father? Could the technology and giant vehicles come into existence without their manufacturer? If everything present on the surface of this earth has a creator so how come this beautiful universe come into being without any Manufacturer. Even the logic itself refutes the argument.

AWAIS GOPANGKarachi

World Population Day

11 July was observed as World Population Day across the world to raise awareness about the reproductive health needs and susceptibilities.

In 2007, United Nation projected that in 2050 Pakistan will move to 5th place with around 292 million people, but it is alarming to note that UNs projection became true in 2021 almost 29 years earlier.

Not only in Pakistan but all over the world this growth is successively increasing which is not good for any country.

Because no country has graduated from developing status to developed in the last sixty years without first reducing population growth.

It has been observed that the countries that have balanced population, crime rate is very low in such regions. But where people are not provided with the basic necessities, it elevates crime rate.

Overpopulation exacerbates many social and environmental factors, including overcrowded living conditions, pollution, malnutrition and inadequate or non-existent healthcare, which wreak havoc on the poor and has increased their likelihood of being exposed to infectious disease.

Approximately 350,000 women die each year due to pregnancy-related causes, despite recent improvement and international commitments to reducing maternal mortality.

So lowering fertility rate by increasing the use of family planning helps reduce pregnancy-related deaths and population growth.

This year the World Population Day theme focuses on importance of the reproductive health and rights for all people, that is, Rights and Choices are the answer: whether baby boom or bust, the solution to shifting fertility rate lies in prioritizing the reproductive health and rights of all people.

So there is a dire need on national and international level to reduce population because not every growth is inspiring and beautiful if it hampers our home.

NADEA SOOMROIslamabad

Appeal to Interior Minister

As recently Federal Investigation Agency FIA announced 1148 various catogeriesed vacancies in the country to fill them out within four provinces of the country for which more than one million people cleared their online registration through FIA online portal.

So here the vacancies are categorised into various steps to fill them on open merits like Inspector, Assistance Sub-Inspector, Constable and many more which are needed to be filled.

For instance, first step is physical exercise, along weight and height of the candidates, if they will have been selected, then go for the written test.

Likewise, there are so many candidates who applied for the vacancies from Makran Division Balochistan which is far from the capital city of the province.

Since most of them belong to middle class families so it is tough for them to bear the cost of travelling to the capital city for the physical test, if they dont complete the requirements of the physical test, obviously they will be rejected from the beginning without sitting in written examination.

For this reason, they face many problems about their financial condition to come back without any good consequences.

Therefore, it is the kind request to the Interior Minister to bring this concern into the test taking members of FIA to conduct the physical examination in any district of Makran division so that the aspiring candidates can feel comfortable to not face any bad consequences without not being selected. Hope the honourable Minister will listen!AZEEM ABDULLAHTurbat, Makran

The rest is here:
Voice of the People - Pakistan Observer

Lets jump into more bad atheist arguments!

The Atheist Who Didnt Exist (2015) by Andy Bannister promises to critique a number of atheist arguments. The subtitle is, The dreadful consequences of bad arguments. Im on board with bad arguments having bad consequences, so Im curious to hear what Im guilty of.

In the introduction, Ravi Zacharias says, Time and again the atheist is unable to answer the fundamental questions of life, such as is there a moral framework to life? In the first place, Ravi has been revealed as a poor source of any critique of morality.

But back to the book: I disagree that atheists cant answer questions about morality. More importantly, the Christian thinks he can?! Unfortunately, though the author seems to understand his need to show that Christianity is more than just groundless claims, all he provides in the entire book are a couple of references and apologies that pro-Christian arguments arent within the scope of the book. Its like a Creationist approach in this regardall attack and no defense.

The tone is deliberately lighthearted, often to an extreme of silliness, though it was too full of insults for me to find it amusing. I cant in one paragraph frisk in field of lavender clover with a miniature pink rhinoceros who plays show tunes through a calliope in its horn but then two paragraphs later be lectured that my arguments are embarrassing, extremely bad, or disastrous. The flippant tone got old fast.

Bannister wrote from a UK context (and five years ago), and some of his Whats the big deal? comments in response to Christian excesses didnt translate well to the religious environment in the United States. Christian privilege is indeed a big deal in the U.S., both for atheists living in the Bible Belt and for any American who must deal with Christian motivations behind federal laws and Supreme Court decisions.

He begins with the 2009 atheist bus campaign sponsored by the British Humanist Association that put the following slogan on hundreds of buses in the UK: Theres probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life. I remember being impressed when I first heard about this campaign. It seemed edgythough public Christian proclamations were commonbut the message was pretty tame.

If youre going to give a reason to reconsider religion, there are plenty of harsher ones. Maybe: In the name of God, the Thirty Years War killed 8 million people. God, I hope youre happy. Or: Christianity makes you do strange things with a photo of a child killed by parents who insisted on prayer instead of medicine or a teen driven to suicide by Christian bullies.

But the mild Theres probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life still exasperates Bannister. He says,

The slogan, despite its friendly pink letters, is a perfect example of a really bad argument. An argument so bad, so disastrous, in fact, that one has to wonder what its sponsors were thinking....

Much of contemporary atheism thrives on poor arguments and cheap sound bites, advancing claims that simply dont stand up to scrutiny.

Only after several pages of throat clearing do we get a glimmer of an actual complaint.

One might begin by noting the preachy, condescending, and hectoring tone.

With that gentle slogan? Oh, please. Drop some of your Christian privilege and grow a thicker skin.

The atheist bus campaign was triggered by a 2008 Christian bus ad campaign that gave a web address that said that all non-Christians would burn in hell for all eternity. Youve got to be pretty clueless to miss the difference between Theres probably no god and stating that non-Christians deserve to burn in hell forever.

Bannister next asks, Whats the connection between the non-existence of something and any effect, emotional or otherwise? Do atheists complain about unicorns or the Flying Spaghetti Monster not existing?

In a dozen places, Banister writes something like this that makes me wonder if hes just not paying attention. No, we dont complain about unicornsthey dont exist, and they dont cause problems. Christianity, on the other hand, does exist, and Christianity and Christians docause problems. See the difference?

He next gives Christian author Francis Spuffords critique:

Im sorryenjoy your life? Enjoy your life? Im not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment.

If youre not causing problems, thats great, but if youre not aware of the problems, youre also not paying attention. Christian adults live burdened with guilt. Christian children startle awake at a noise and wonder if this is the beginning of Armageddon, which their parents have assured them is imminent. Christian homosexuals deny themselves romantic relationships to satisfy an absent god. This isnt true for all Christians, of course, but imposing a worldview burdened with Bronze Age nonsense and informed by faith rather than evidence has consequences.

Bannister wants to highlight the problem with the slogan by proposing this variant: Theres probably no Loch Ness Monster, so stop worrying and enjoy your life. Imagine telling this to someone down on his luck, someone whos been kicked around by fate. Would he be cheered by this new knowledge?

No, because the Loch Ness Monster has zero impact in anyones life. Remove Nessies non-existent impact from someones life and nothing has changed. But do I really have to explain that god belief has a big impact on many people? For example, the United States has a famously secular constitution, and Christians nibble at the edges like rats looking for ways to dismantle its separation of church and state for their benefit. See the difference?

He wants to force atheists to take their own medicine.

If the atheist bus slogan is right and there is no God, theres nobody out there who is ultimately going to help [you pull yourself together]. Youre alone in a universe that cares as little about you (and your enjoyment) as it does about the fate of the amoeba, the ant or the aardvark.

First, I hope we can agree that its vital for us to see reality correctly. If there isnt a god out there, best we figure that out, come to terms with it, and shape society in accord with that knowledge.

And youre seriously wagging your finger at us to warn that our worldview has no beneficent Sky Daddy? Yes, we knowwere atheists! The heavens dont shower us with benefits that disbelief will shut off. God already does nothing for us nowthats the point. Its not like we dont want to admit that we dont believe in Santa anymore because were afraid the Christmas presents will vanish.

You know who improves society? We do. Were not perfect, and some of the problems are of our own making, but lets acknowledge where we have improved things. Slavery is illegal. Smallpox is gone. Clean water, vaccines, and antibiotics improve health. Artificial fertilizer and improved strains of wheat feed billions and make famine unlikely. We can anticipate natural disasters. (More here and here.) God has done nothing to improve society.

As for the universe not caring about us, well, yeah. Is there any evidence otherwise? If so, make a case.

A popular Christian argument shifts attention from Christianitys excesses (wars, Crusades, and so on) to bad atheist leaders like Stalin.

What about atheisms own chequered history? Stalin was responsible for the deaths of some 20 million people, while the death toll for Maos regime is at least double that.

Richard Dawkins lampooned this argument with this tweet: Stalin, Hitler and Saddam Hussein were evil, murdering dictators. All had moustaches. Therefore moustaches are evil.

Yes, Stalin was a bad man, but why? Was it the mustache? Was it his atheism? No, Stalin was a dictator, and dictators dont like alternate power structures like the church. Religion was competition, so Stalin made it illegal. Atheist dictators didnt do anything in the name of atheism. Lack of a god belief is no reason to order people killed. (I expose the Stalin argument here and here.)

Bannister concludes that the bus slogan and the moustache argument are both examples of not just weak arguments, but extremely bad arguments.

Uh huh. Youll have to tell us why some day. He continues, I have been struck by how many of my atheist friends are deeply embarrassed by these terrible skeptical arguments.

Oh, dear. Hes disappointed in me, and I would be embarrassed at these arguments, too, if I had any sense.

Sorry, Im not riding that train. Give me less outrage and more argument.

Bannister laments, The atheist bus advertisement illustrates the danger not just of poor arguments, but especially of argument by sound bite.

This is coming from a believer in Christianity? Where some think that evolution is overturned by mocking it as from goo to you via the zoo? Where church signs have slogans like How will you spend eternitySmoking or Nonsmoking?? Where emotion is the argument, not intellect? Get your own house in order first, pal.

More to come.

Wandering in a vast forest at night,I have only a faint light to guide me.A stranger appears and says to me:My friend, you should blow out your candlein order to find your way more clearly.This stranger is a theologian. Denis Diderot

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/19/16.)

Image from Wikimedia (license CC BY 2.0)

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Read more:
Book review of The Atheist Who Didn't Exist: more bad atheist arguments? - Patheos

Atheist PartialMitchoffered a response to my paper, Reply to the Nonsense of Atheists Have No Worldview (2-13-21) in the combox underneath. His words will be in blue. My words that he cites from the older paper will be in green.

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Before I start counter-responding, let me briefly reiterate what my argument was in this paper:

Technically, non-belief in God is not a belief, but a rejection of another; I (and we) agree.However(and its ahugehowever), atheists dohighly tend to hold to certain beliefs, whether they will acknowledge them or not. And these beliefs do in fact add up to a particular worldview held by the vast majority of atheists. Briefly put, most of them arephilosophical materialists,empiricists,positivists,methodological naturalists, enraptured with science as supposedly the sole validepistemology: making it essentially their religion (scientism): all of which are objectively identifiable positions, that can be discussed and either embraced or dismissed.

So its not so much that we are saying that there is an atheist worldviewper se. Rather, we make the observation (fromlong personal experience, if one is an apologist like myself) that every self-described atheist will overwhelmingly tend to possess a particular worldview (whatever they call it or dont call it) that is an amalgam of many specific, identifiable things that themselves are worldviews or philosophies or ways of life.

After I laid out my general perspective on the matter, I listed some of the many things that atheistsen massebelieve: a list of eleven, that our atheist friend reacts to below. This doesnt mean that every single atheist believes every single thing, but its a generality that massively holds. Synonyms for en masse include by and large, all in all, generally, and on the whole.

I didnt indicate what I myself believed about the eleven points, so PartialMitch thinks I deny some that I do not deny at all. I fully and wholeheartedly accept #1-7. I obviously reject #8, as any Christian or theist must, because its philosophical materialism. I reject the second portion of #9 and believe that the Big Bang occurred because God willed it to be so. I reject #10 too because it denies the existence of God and His status as Creator of the universe. I deny #11 because science is not the only means to attain knowledge. Its fantastic as far as it goes in its own domain but it is not the sum total of all knowledge or ways of arriving at it.

1) that matter exists.

Im on my porch, wearing slippers. If I kick the metal leg of this nearby table, my toe will hurt.

So we agree on this self-evident truth.

2) that he or she exists.

Well, technically speaking, thats the only thing I can know for sure. Cogito, ergo sum, and all that jazz. Sure, everything could be an illusion, but I lack the ego to take such a concept seriously.

We agree on this self-evident truth, too.

Remember, my point was that atheists believe certain things, and I listed what I thought were the main ones. They have a worldviewand/or a philosophy (just like everyone else), whether they are aware of it or not, which consists of the totality of these separate beliefs that they accept. So every time PartialMitch agrees with one of these eleven points, he bolsters my own case (which he seems to be unaware of, too).

3) that matter can be observed according to more or less predictable scientific laws (uniformitarianism).

Show me otherwise, and Ill take it into consideration. Science works as a description of what we observe. Those laws are codified explanations, not mystical rules. Give me some demonstrations, and then we can talk.

Now we have agreement on three straight points. He seems to think that I would deny uniformitarianism, which is ridiculous. He appears to make the usual atheist assumption (I could have almost added it to the list; at least applied to the anti-theist sub-group of atheists) that somehow Christians are inexorably opposed to science and are overall just sort of dumb and clueless.

Any Christian or other kind of theist who has spent more than three days on an active online atheist forum is fully aware firsthand of the extreme hostility towards Christians and their worldview. If I had a dime for every lie Ive heard in these places about what all or most Christians supposedly believe or disbelieve, Id be richer than Croesus.

4) that we can trust our senses to analyze such observations and what they mean (empiricism).

Nope. Our senses are weak, limited and flawed. Evolution is sloppy. So we have to find as many ways as possible to get around that. And researchers have to redo our observations and experiments again and again in as many novel ways as they can invent. Its the very opposite of trusting our senses.

That is true as far as it goes, but I was speaking at a more fundamental or presuppositional level. Empiricism presupposes that our senses can make sense of reality and attain knowledge, through observation and experience, as opposed to simply generating ideas in our heads in some kind of theoretical isolated bubble. What I was driving at is more fully expressed in these past statements of mine:

We trust our senses for giving us accurate information about the external world. Indeed, all of science is built upon this initial premise.

We all do that naturally. A baby can do it. Does that mean its not valid or trustworthy or serious until and unless we can fully explain it? Clearly not.

Its only recently, in fact, that we have advanced in neuroscience to the extent that we can actually explain the particular processes that go into sight and storage of such information obtained by sight into our brains.

But we all had trusted our eyesight (and other senses) all those years before we had technical explanations of it. We had created modern science before we could prove all the ins and outs of sensory perception. (11-17-15)

In order to do science at all (to even get it off the ground) one must accept a number of axiomatic propositions; e.g.,:

a) the external universe exists and is not illusory.

b) the universe observes scientific laws [is not chaotic].

c) these laws apply to all times and places (uniformitarianism).

d) these actual or potential realities are able to be observed and tested.

e) we can trust our senses to provide us reliable data with which to conduct these experiments, whose utility and epistemological relevance we assume without empirical evidence. (10-27-15)

5) in the correctness of mathematics, which starts from axioms as well.

Math works. Better than anything. If you are going to dismiss math, then I see no reason to take you seriously. If youre simply being blithe, then youre wasting everyones time.

Right. Now he thinks that I am somehow against mathematics (the Christians are so ignorant and anti-intellectual that they reject obvious truths a, b, c, d that all thinking people accept mentality). In fact, we fully agree on this, making it four out of five; and I think we would really agree on #4 also: rightly understood (as clarified).

6) in the laws of logic, in order to even communicate (not to mention argue) anything with any meaning at all.

Kinda, maybe. But doesnt everyone? Theists do. Apologetics often relies on logic. So how is this a jab at atheism?

Once again, its not a jab at atheism. The list addresses the claim that atheists have no worldview. I show that they do indeed possess one, by having all or most of these beliefs. This is something we all have in common, and so its agreement on at least five of the first six propositions: thus rather dramatically supporting my overall argument.

7) in presupposing that certain things are absolutely true.

See my response to #6. Read it twice.

And read my reply to #6 twice. We now agree on 6 out of 7.

8) that matter has the inherent God-like / in effect omnipotent capability of organizing itself, evolving, inexorably developing into all that we observe in the entire universe. There is no God or even any sort of immaterial spirit that did or could do this, so it has to fall back onto matter. The belief in this without any reason whatsoever to do so is what I have written at length about as the de facto religion of atomism. [link]

We can observe matter organize itself on levels from the subatomic to the cosmic. Fusion happens in stars and bombs, crystals form wherever they can, complex organic chemicals develop on the surface of comets, circumstellar discs coalesce into planetary systems. Matter organizes itself in a near-infinitude of ways and at no level have we seen sign of or need for divine intervention.

Exactly! He agrees again! The point is not to deny anything that we observe; rather, its to note that atheists accept in blind faith the idea that matter can do all these wonderful things by virtue of some inherent capacity or capability or potentiality. Atheists rarely attempt to explain the how and why of that at its deepest, most fundamental level. Its a quasi-religious belief in the most blind, pure faith that matter alone can do all these things without need for divine intervention.

Seems to me like youre the one believing in something without any reason whatsoever.

The question at the moment is not what I believe and why I believe it (which I have explained in more than 3,600 articles and 50 books, as a professional Catholic apologist), but what atheists believe and why they believe it. But in any event, all people accept things they cannot prove. Thats what we call axioms.

9) that the universe began in a Big Bang (for who knows what reason).

This is two separate things.

Yes, which is why I could agree on part A but not part B.

One, the Big Bang, which is merely an observation (originally described by a Catholic priest, Lematre) that the currently-expanding cosmos can be traced back to a single point. This matches all other observations from all other sources using all known methods (and new ones as we come up with them).

Yet more evidence that atheists have a very definite worldview (and one which is actually in agreement with theists and Christians on many points, as this exchange demonstrates with flying colors) . . .

Two, the need for a reason. I have none. I dont need some grand purpose behind existence, let alone an emotional or personal one.

This shows that he fully agrees with #9, thus making my case for me again.

10) that the universe created itself out of nothing (for who knows what reason), but its deemed more rational than the Christian believing that God is an eternal spirit, Who created the universe.

Again, you have two points here, and they are wildly divergent. Youre making a disingenuous leap.

Its one thing to debate the rationality of cosmological models.

I take it that he agrees with the first part, since it basically re-states #9.

Its something quite different to assert that one specific religion based on a jumbled scripture and evolving traditions with sketchy ethics and a decidedly unrighteous history is equally rational. Even if one rejects the former, its kinda ridiculous to jump straight to the latter.

Im making no leap at all; let alone a disingenuous one. Im describing what atheists massively believe. And they definitely believe that the universe somehow creating itself out of nothing, for no reason or an unknown or unknowable reason, is more rational than the Christian belief in an eternal Spirit Who created this universe. Im simply stating the obvious.

PartialMitchs reaction, with its quick profound insults of the Christian worldview precisely prove what I am saying. He cant hide his intellectual hostility and condescension. Its gotta come out. He despises and detests the Christian view at a very deep level, as fundamentally confused, ever-changing, unethical, and unrighteous.

11) that science is the only method by which we can objectively determine facts and truth (extreme empiricism + scientism).

Thats really been your point through most of this. You could have saved yourself some bullet points by leading with that.

Nonsense. None of the points up to this one asserted or even remotely dealt with the notion that science is the only way to attain knowledge; the sole epistemology. But in fact, science essentially serves as the religious view of many if not most atheists. Many atheists cant comprehend that one can passionately love science (as I do) and yet not consider it the be-all and end-all of existence and thinking.

Similarly, many Protestants (I was one for my first 32 years or roughly half of my life) cant comprehend how Catholicscan passionately love the Bible (as I do) and yet not consider it the be-all and end-all of Christianity and theology. To adopt some belief is not the same thing as denigrating or somehow lowering another belief (consistent with the new one) in the scheme of things.

The answer here is the same as so many of the others: science works.

Of course it does. That has nothing to do with my argument.

It works better than any other method of understanding, and it does so in the majority of fields. After all, science is nothing more than the application of the scientific method. We come up with ideas, we test them, we see the results, and our knowledge grows from there; repeat as much as possible.

Is it the only method of understanding? That was my specific point. If he says it is, then he agrees with my description of the atheist worldview yet again. If he denies, it, what are the other means to attain knowledge?

It doesnt take faith to accept science. In fact, all sorts of scientists are believers. You spend most of this post trashing atheists for scientism while ignoring the devotion to science seen in individuals across all religious and cultural divides.

Beside the point again (non sequitur). But it takes several axioms to accept science, and since they are unproven by nature, it is an act very similar to faith (acceptance of an unproven or not minutely understood proposition).

You also ignore the fact that those people who do reject science generally do it because of their religion, not because of any problems with science itself.

I agree. The sad history of Islam for hundreds of years shows that. It (on the whole) rejected reason and science alike. At least the virulent fundamentalist strain of it did that. Its also the fundamentalists among Christians who reject many aspects of science.

When religions allow it, appreciation of science is common, and many deeply religious people have made incredible contributions to science.

Yep. For example, see my papers:

Christianity: Crucial to the Origin of Science[8-1-10]

Scientific & Empiricist Church Fathers: To Augustine (d. 430)[2010]

33 Empiricist Christian Thinkers Before 1000 AD[8-5-10]

23 Catholic Medieval Proto-Scientists: 12th-13th Centuries[2010]

Christians or Theists Founded 115 Scientific Fields[8-20-10]

So, yeah, I think youre kinda straw-manning here. Youre accusing atheists of worshiping science while ignoring that science has no barriers against religious people. That countless religions people rely on it. That countless religious people love science, too.

Completely irrelevant to (and in part misrepresents) my argument . . .

Acceptance of science is not the same thing as religious belief. Atheists accept it at a higher rate than religious people specifically and only because those religions command it. Thats it. We arent worshiping science; we simply are not worshiping anything that would prevent us from admiring it.

What other forms of knowledge and epistemology do you also accept? You didnt say, so you may indeed be a science-only atheist: precisely as I have said is a major characteristic or hallmark of the atheist worldview.

My argument has not been overthrown to the slightest degree. To the contrary, PartialMitch affirms and supports it again and again. And of course Im delighted to see that.

I couldnt care less about overthrowing your argument. Because you dont seem to be making much of one. You accuse atheists of scientism as if most religious people are any different. You claim that science is our worldview, despite the fact that you share it.

Its less that atheists have no worldview, and more thatatheismhas no worldview. The acceptance of science is, as you pointed out, independent of ones opinion on gods.

Thats why its disingenuous of you to use most of these points to deride atheists. I didnt miss your point; I was calling it what it is, disingenuous.

Of course we believe in science; so do you. The difference is that we dont believe the other things that you do. The rest has been stripped away, but that which actually works remains. Therefore I find it foolish to claim that scientism is a hallmark of atheism or that it is an atheistic worldview. Its a shared worldview that many of us have in common.

As far as other epistemology goes youre kinda right. Our methods of knowing (axioms and logic and the like) are tools and nothing more, and if the tool proves itself worthless, then it deserves to be discarded. Faith is not required to accept things that work.

I dont take any sort of revealed knowledge seriously, and the same is true for any attempted epistemology thats tied to it. I dont take traditions seriously, because they are mere reflections of the cultures that formed them. And word games of any sort fail to impress me.

Finally, its hilarious that you make a big deal of my condescension, when your comments both here and elsewhere positively drip with disdain. Hi there, Mister Kettle, I am Mister Pot. Its nice to meet you.

Thanks for the first round. The second in a dialogue / debate is, for some reason, quite often a more tricky, sensitive affair and many people want no part of it. They take their final potshot and split. I think thats unfortunate, because the 2nd and 3rd rounds of a debate are where things get far more interesting and challenging.

To be honest, I dont really consider this a debate as much as conversation. I dont want to change your mind, and I seriously doubt youll change mine, but discussions are my favorite entertainment. I used to be friends with a Jesuit (he moved away some time ago), so this sort of thing is old hat for me.

My question to you is this: Do you consider science a part of your religion? If so, how? If not, then how can you consider it religion for atheists?

To me, they are different things. When you tack on the ideas you consider deeper or fundamental youre adding your own religious needs to the topic. A follower of a nontheistic religion would have rather different fundamentals. The same is true for nonbelievers.

Science isnt part of my religion, technically, but its very much a part of my worldview, epistemology / philosophy, and overall search for truth.

I say it is the religion of many atheists precisely because they fall prey to scientism and make it the sum of all knowledge. Thus it very much takes on several qualities of a religious view: strong allegiance, faith in numerous axioms, explanatory power, replacement of traditional theistic views of omnipotence with the all-powerful atom, authoritative priest / authority-figures like Fauci (who is a humanist), etc., etc.

Christians not only played the key role in the development of modern science, but we respect it so much that we have been willing to modify our understanding of Scripture itself based on scientific advances (a local Flood and an old earth would be two of those).

When you say I was disingenuous do you mean just certain ideas or me as a person being deliberately dishonest?

The ideas, nothing personal. This specific idea, actually.

See more here:
Atheist Unwittingly (?) Confirms the Usual Atheist Worldview | Dave Armstrong - Patheos

The article, "'The JAB, or Your JOB': Mandatory Vaccinations in the Private Workplace," details employers' rights to require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccination. As always, there are some caveats and Grant explains some of thosestipulations. From the article:

The Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") of 1990 prohibits covered employers from discriminating against applicants and employees based on "disability", some of whom may claim that they have a disability that prevents them from being able to submit safely to a COVID-19 vaccination. Such a claim requires an employer to consider whether it has a duty to provide the employee or applicant with a "reasonable accommodation" of the alleged disability.

Such an accommodation such as exemption from a vaccination requirement can be required unless providing it would inflict "undue hardship" (i.e., significant difficulty or expense) on the employer. Employers that insist on vaccinations should therefore expect some people to assert that they suffer from a "disability" that entitles them to an exemption.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII") prohibits covered employers from discriminating against applicants and employees based (in part) on "religion." Religion in this context means sincerely held religious beliefs and practices, whether part of an "organized" religion (e.g., Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity) or some other sincere system of spiritual belief. It includes atheism too, butnotmere political or personal beliefs or preferences, such as objections to vaccinations unmoored to religious faith; or, for an odd but real example, a personal religious creed that Kozy Kitten People/Cat Food" contributes to an employee's "state of wellbeing."

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Media Mention: Grant Osborne Featured in Business North Carolina - Ward and Smith, PA

When people asked me why I chose to be a religion reporter, they usually got one of two answers. One was my official response; the other was the truth.

The official response ran something like this: Religion is a force that moves billions of people, for better or worse. You cant really understand our world without understanding religion.

Broadleaf Books225p $26.99

Thats true, but it is not why I became a religion reporter. The real answer was more personal. I was on a quest for the truth and saw journalism as the means to a free or at least modestly subsidized education. I think this idea was stolen from Pete Hamill, who advised young writers in New York to apprentice in one of two story-rich fields: driving a taxi or journalism.

My plan worked at first. During my nearly 16 years as a religion reporter, including the last eight at CNN, I learned more than I could have hoped. But over time, the stories other religion reporters and I tackled grew darker: religious violence, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism; the lies, crimes and casual cruelties of the Trump administration; the rise of QAnon and demise of truth; the Catholic sexual abuse crisis; and, of course, the pandemic. Peoples pain and anger and confusion seemed fathomless, institutions hopelessly self-involved and religious leaders wilfully blind and enthralled by politics or fame. In any other era, such a beat would be challenging. For me, in our relentlessly online culture, it was deflating. By the end of my time at CNN, I was a beat reporter.

I thought about all of this while reading The God Beat: What Journalism Says About Faith and Why It Matters. The anthology of 26 essays is edited by Costica Bradatan, a religion editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books and a professor of humanities at Texas Tech University, and Ed Simon, a staff writer for the literary site The Millions and author of several books about religion and morality.

In their introduction, Bradatan and Simon say they are most interested in what Simon dubs New Religion Journalism, a literary movement that they argue was given life by Killing the Buddha, an online journal of religion writing for people made uncomfortable by church.

Like New Journalism, the movement heralded by wizard-suited Tom Wolfe in the 1970s (and before him, by Matthew Arnold in the 1880s), New Religion Journalism prioritizes the personal, including the reporters subjective experience in the story. More importantly, argues Simon, New ReligionJournalism questions the theism/atheism binary and displays the full ambiguity and ambivalence of belief.

That ambiguity is explored in Leigh Eric Schmidts deeply researched essay, Monuments to Unbelief, which guides readers on a short jaunt through 19th-century atheism and introduces characters like the miraculously named Octavius Frothingham.

In Ammas Cosmic Squeeze, Erik Davis muses on the title characters trademark gesturea hugas a quietly subversive transformation of traditional South Asian worship as he stands in a Disneyland-worthy line awaiting his sacred embrace. But Amma, who has hugged more than 26 million people, is not only about silent subversion, Davis reports: During her massive fiftieth birthday celebration in 2003, which was inaugurated by Indian president Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Amma cranked through a stadium full of devotees for twenty-one hours straight while a scoreboard racked up numbers well into the five figures.

Cool scene. But, as I said, these are dark times, and many writers in The God Beat address topics like death, hatred, abuse and decay.

In Will Anyone Remember Eleven Dead Jews? Emma Green ponders the paradoxical satisfactions of an archivist in Pittsburgh charged with collecting artifacts from the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history. Likewise, Shira Telushkins essay, Their Bloods Cry Out from the Ground, is a powerful meditation on the murders in 2018 of those 11 people while they were worshiping and the task of those left behind. Telushkin explores the work of the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society charged with collecting different kinds of remains. They slipped quietly into the crime scene, scraping blood from walls and floors, burying their martyrs just as Jews have done for millennia.

The best essays in The God Beat are like thisquietly reflective, deeply informed, subjective but not solipsistic. They combine an insiders knowledge with an outsiders practiced observation, transcending the limitations of both third- and first-person writing.

As a one-time Catholic, Patrick Blanchfield brings an insider-outsider perspective to his essay on the Catholic Churchs sexual abuse scandal, written in 2018, a few weeks after a grand jury report in Pennsylvania described in detail decades of soul-crushing sexual abuse committed by priests against children. Blanchfield raises a question that perhaps only an ex-Catholic would voice. Namely, is there something inherently Catholic about the Catholic abuse scandal?

Whatever the problems of society more broadly, it is impossible not to see in these horrors a very particular Catholic feature: tropes, however twisted, of penance, mortification, and punishment, concepts and ritual items wielded as tools of abuse, Blanchfield writes. These priests, in other words, did not just rape children using their hands, mouths and genitals. They also raped them using their faith.

Behind this rhetoric lies the force of truth. I have heard many victims of sexual abuse by clergymen recount how their abuse and lost innocence amounted to soul murder, as Blanchfield titles his powerful piece.

The essay reminded me of another, coincidentally published on the same day in America. Kerry Weber, an executive editor at America, wrote of the questions she pondered as she read the Pennsylvania grand jury report while her children napped. I have found myself truly afraid of what it means to ask and to allow my children to be part of the church, Weber wrote.

Reporting for CNN, I had been chasing the hard newscounting the victims, tracking down perpetrator priests, trying (and mostly failing) to hold bishops accountable. Webers voicesingular, plaintive, coming from within the foldwhipped my head around. Behind all the hard news, this is what the scandal has wrought, I realized: a mother afraid to raise her children in the church she loves. And that is a story that needs to be told.

Read more from America:

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Review: Reporting on religion can be dark. But we need people on the God Beat more than ever. - America Magazine

Last weekend, amid the sound of nearby fireworks, I talked to a friend in a Cape Girardeau coffee shop who began discussing Marie Curie, the renowned Polish-French scientist, who died on America's Independence Day, July 4, 1934.

I suppose Curie's death date is the reason the discoverer of two elements in the periodic table came to mind in our conversation.

My friend told me Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person in history to win the Nobel twice and managed it in two scientific fields: physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911.

Even the most knowledgeable people can't know everything -- and Madame Curie did not know it all.

She used to carry bottles of radium, atomic number 88, and polonium, atomic number 84, in the pocket of her lab coat, my friend told me -- a fact biographies of her life verify -- and continuous exposure to those radioactive elements shortened her life.

Curie passed at 66 of aplastic anemia after spurning the danger such materials posed.

Even today, most of Curie's papers and books remain radioactive and are stored in lead-lined boxes, which the curious may only view after donning a protective suit and signing a liability waiver.

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Even the brilliant among us have limits and do not possess all knowledge.

In an illuminating 2018 article in Forbes magazine -- "Did History's Most Famous Scientists Believe in God?" -- we read Curie's own theological perspective was akin to one of her scientific contemporaries, German-born Albert Einstein.

Curie, the daughter of an atheist father and a Catholic mother, did not reject belief in God but admitted to agnosticism -- a position mirrored somewhat by Einstein, who himself rejected the notion of a personal deity and thought intercessory prayer foolish. Yet the man best known for the equation, e=mc squared, did not claim the mantle of atheism. Einstein wrote that he embraced "Spinoza's God."

Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century Dutch philosopher, wrote that God is "a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence," adding, "whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God," a notion usually interpreted to mean God is identical with the universe.

If you invited most church people to examine Spinoza's statements, they might not cause alarm, but orthodox theologians of the Judeo-Christian tradition would no doubt disagree. God, the theologians would probably argue, stands apart from the created universe -- which the book of Genesis attests.

England's Charles Darwin, writer of "Origin of the Species" in 1859, held more conventional religious views.

A believer in what he called the "Abrahamic God," Darwin, whose grave my wife and I once visited in London's Westminster Abbey, penned the following in 1879: "I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God."

Sir Isaac Newton, the Englishman who gave the world the three laws of motion, the bedrock principle of modern physics, was a firm believer in the idea of God who self-identified as a theist yet did not accept the concept of the Christian Trinity -- Father, Son, Holy Spirit -- as divine. Newton, who died in 1727, is buried near Darwin inside the Abbey.

Galileo, the 16th century Italian astronomer and physicist whose life predated all the men identified so far, was tried by the Inquisition, found guilty of heresy and forced to recant.

Despite a Church-enforced house arrest, which lasted the remainder of his life, Galileo's writing demonstrated his theist tendencies.

To wit: "I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

The insightful Forbes article, after examining the views of Curie, Einstein, Darwin, Newton and Galileo, includes a summary statement which makes sense to this writer and forms the conclusion of this essay.

"The most famous [scientific] figures all have nuanced religious views that tend toward a belief in a higher power. Some of those views faltered over time [e.g., Curie] and the others are unconventional but are theist beliefs nonetheless. So, yes, it is possible to be a religious individual and be a scientist. The two are not mutually exclusive."

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Column: Jeff Long: Marie Curie, her scientific fellows and God (7/10/21) - Southeast Missourian

Almost exactly 60 years ago, the newly appointed Chadian ambassador to the United States, Adam Malick Sow, was heading south on Marylands Route 40 toward Washington, D.C. He stopped at the Bonnie Brae diner and asked for a menu. The owner, Mrs. Leroy Merritt, sneered and threw him out because he was Black.

The same thing happened to other African diplomats at other Maryland establishments, and it became an international embarrassment. President John F. Kennedy worried that this treatment of diplomats from Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Congo and other newly independent African nations would harm U.S. efforts to limit Soviet influence in Africa.

The story, recounted in Ted Johnsons exploration of race and history, When the Stars Begin to Fall, illustrates something thats worth pondering: How much did Cold War competition spur us toward fulfilling our national ideals?

Johnson notes that the steps toward integration following the Route 40 Incident did not go entirely smoothly. Several restaurants demanded to see credentials before proffering meal service ... loudly apologizing to white customers who had to endure eating alongside black diplomats. And, of course, it would be several more years before African Americans could expect the same service as African ambassadors.

The Cold War was the reason that Americans could be embarrassed by what had been routine for centuries. We were engaged in a contest with the communist world that was about everything. It was a great power rivalry for influence and resources. It was a military competition for supremacy. It was a religious war about belief in God versus atheism. And it was an ideological conflict about how to organize society and how to live. As such, everything we did, everything we were, was viewed through the lens of how our enemies and allies would see it. The Cold War shaped our sense of national identity and purpose.

When arrayed against an ideological foe that rejected individual rights, trampled on religious liberty, murdered millions and enslaved even more all in the name of a supposedly morally superior system we had a clear sense of who we were. We were for freedom, both economic and political. We were for religious rights. We were for an independent judiciary and a nonpolitical military. We were for individuality, not coerced collectivism. And we were for strivers and dreamers who wanted to share the blessings of liberty.

The Soviets couldnt build a car that functioned or stock their markets with food, but, prodigious liars, they were skilled at propaganda. No, the CIA did not invent HIV as part of a biological warfare program. No, the U.S. did not start the Korean War. No, the CIA did not kill John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr.

Perhaps even more maddening than the lies they told about us were the truths they concealed about themselves: the Gulag, the terror famine in Ukraine, the mass deportations, the mass executions, the antisemitism, the censorship, the Hitler/Stalin pact, the war on peasants, the empty shelves, the psychiatric hospitals full of dissidents, the crushing of liberty in other nations and too many other crimes to list. Not to mention the luxuries enjoyed by the communist elite.

But the Soviets didnt always have to invent lies to discredit us. The case of the Scottsboro boys became a fixture in Soviet textbooks, and Communist Party members in the U.S. did play a prominent role in campaigning for civil rights (if only in this country). When American cities went up in flames after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Soviet outlets made sure the world saw this as proving our hypocrisy on human rights. That they were insincere in their concern for Blacks (as some African Americans who emigrated to the USSR discovered) did not invalidate their criticism of us. We were hypocrites, and many Americans were ashamed of it.

Concern about how our treatment of African Americans made us look abroad was one rationale for the Truman administrations decision to file an amicus brief in Brown v. Board of Education. The argument was explicit:

The United States is trying to prove to the people of the world of every nationality, race and color, that a free democracy is the most civilized and most secure form of government yet devised by man. ... The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.

In that sense, our enemies did us a favor by pointing to our flaws, because it played a role in spurring us to be better.

Today, we still have enemies, but we no longer have the morally organizing idea of liberty versus tyranny that shaped our self-concept during the Cold War. We no longer see the need to sell our way of life to others around the globe. Many Americans shrug at the prospect of the Chinese government crushing freedom in Hong Kong, or Eastern European countries closing universities and independent media. We dont see ourselves as leading Team Liberty. And even though in most respects we won the Cold War, that is a real loss.

Mona Charens column is syndicated by Creators.

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Charen: What we lost when we won the Cold War - The Winchester Star