Category Archives: Atheism

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Its been a wild three days in the City of Brotherly Love at the first annual Atheism, How to Fail Conference. The godless flocked to the Pennsylvania Convention Center to hear prominent academics, bloggers, and the mentally ill speak on how they are ruining the secular cause in America.

This is a matter of Build it, and they will come, stated conference organizer, Andrew Canard. This was only a dream a year ago. There was no doubt in my mind that atheists were doing their best to undermine the fight against religious fundamentalism in America. However, we needed this conference to put the stake in the heart of the secular movement.

The Pennsylvania Convention Center offered an ideal place for the thousands of anti-activists to meet. The one million square feet of available retail space allowed authors to parade their books like Dont Call Your Legislator, Its a Waste of Time!, Apathy is Your Ally, and theall-time bestseller If You Dont Like Another Atheist, Go on Twitter and Act Like a Psychotic TwelveYear Old. I got two copies of the Twitter book one for me and one for my buddy whos really into talking smack anonymously online, said one convention goer who refused to state his name.

I got two copies of the Twitter book one for me and one for my buddy whos really into talking smack anonymously online, said one convention goer who refused to state his name.

Spirits were high as seminars were packed to the max. The popular writer of the blog Skeptically Rambling, Jonathan Adams, gave a moving talk titled: Leftfielding, How to Derail Atheist Meetups by Saying Irrelevant but Nerdy Facts. Mr. Adams issued forth interesting points on a small French hamlet during the Hundred Years War for 90 minutes. A lengthy question and answer period ensued on topics that had nothing to do with atheism or the Hundred Years War.

The most popular seminar, however, was held by Richard Galley, Ph.D., titled You Dont Agree With Me? You Suck! The professor spent two hours detailing the nuances of how much people suck who dont find his particular psychiatric diagnosis agreeable.

The crowd ate up impassioned lines like, Would a crazy person be calling other people crazy? Of course not!

The conference ended with Andrew Canards speech detailing the necessity of presenting the worst possible ad campaigns to the public and never ever doing any local organizing:

Look, nobody likes doing the grunt work of community organizing. Dont do it. Tell other people not to do it. Make some really bad ads to demoralize the community. Above all be a dick to everyone. All. The. Time.

It was no surprise his message was met with thunderous applause. After all, he was preaching gospel to the choir.

Note: This post means nothing. Atheists have only a shared non-belief in gods and have no common interests.

I first wrote this bit back in 2013. I saw David Smalleys postReasonably Controversial: How The Regressive Left is Killing The Atheist Movementand thought it was time to shine it up and share it.

I have a Patreon account just in case you wish to show your appreciation for my work here on Laughing in Disbelief.

Andrew Hall is the author of Laughing in Disbelief. Besides writing a blog, co-hosting the Naked Diner, he wrote two books, Vampires, Lovers, and Other Strangers and Gods Diary: January 2017 . Andrew is reading through the Bible and making videos about his journey on YouTube. He is a talented stand-up comedian. You can find him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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Read the original:
Report From: Atheism, How To Fail - Patheos (blog)

The last verse of Chapter 8 in Gita perhaps contains the kernel of all Vedantic thought. The chapter, as is well known, begins with Arjun asking Krishna about the nature of Brahm, adhyatma and karma, and how they might be interrelated.

Having explained the first two albeit in the aphoristic way typical of the Vedantic spiritual tradition Krishna focuses on the third element of the triad.

Karma, or action, he says, is the real-life bridge that links the two. The ontological or transcendental realm of Brahm (or absolute), on the one hand, and atma, or individuated consciousness rooted in the here and now, on the other.

It is not easy to see this link in a logical or material sense how does one associate that which exists in time and space with that which is both beyond time (without beginning) and space (boundless)?

The true being of atma, attached to the corporeal body, is of course clouded by desire. In a paradigmatic sense, this desire is the desire for the rewards of action. The Gita makes no category distinction between different kinds of action.

Depending on ones worldly calling, or svadharma, going to war is on the same footing as going to a temple or pursuing politics. The key then is not what you do but with what intent or motivation you do it.

The true yogi, as the Gita declares, is one who goes beyond whatever fruit or merit is declared to accrue from the Vedas, sacrifices austerities, gifts. The path to moksha lies in overcoming desire and is described as liberation from the inexorable law of karma.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Excerpt from:
Spiritual Atheism - Economic Times (blog)

The single most annoying thing a nonreligious person can say, writes a Hollywood screenwriter, isnt that religion is oppressive or that religious people are brainwashed. Dorothy Fortenberry is writing in The Los Angeles Review of Books, not a place youd expect to find a Catholic explaining why shes Catholic. They even ran it in the print edition.

The most annoying thing is the kind, patronizing way that nonreligious people have of saying, You know, sometimes IwishI were religious. IwishI could have that certainty. It just seems socomfortingnever to doubt things.

Fortenberry wishes she were as certain as her atheist friends. She doesnt quite say so, but she suggests that if she were certain that God doesnt exist, shed be happier with herself. Catholicism comforts us, sure, but weirdly enough, its not as comforting as atheism.

Broken individuals travelling together

The comforts she finds in the Church are the comforts of membership in such a body. She likes singing and praying together. She likes being one of the crowd. I am not special at church, she says. The Church tells us that God loves us all equally. We are all exactly the same amount of special. The things that I feel proud of cant help me here, and the things that I feel embarrassed by are beside the point. Im a person but, for 60 minutes, Im not a personality.

Unfortunately, she doesnt draw enough on the comforts of the Churchs teaching, because she doesnt believe it all consistently, as she admits. Thought about with even a smidgen of rationality, prayer makes no sense, she says. Hold a second, I want to say, lets talk about your defective idea of rationality. If she keeps praying, as she seems intent on doing, someday she should see the reason of it.

I think, if I read her right, she doesnt really want the comfort of being an atheist. It has a kind of specious attraction, because its so simple and easy. No God, nothing to worry about. No God, no Hell below us, all the people living for today, sharing the world. Imagine that.

It doesnt work out that way. As Flannery OConnors Misfit famously noted, if theres no God, then its nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness.Imagine theres no Heaven. See the Misfit shoot your family.

Gods in His heaven, but

The atheist seems to think Christianity means the cheerful happy vision of life Robert Browning put in the short passage known as Pippas Song from his verse play Pippa Passes: The year s at the spring, / And day s at the morn; / The lark s on the wing; / The snail s on the thorn; / God s in His heaven / All s right with the world!

Only sometimes, but basically no. Christianity comforts, but it comforts through the Cross. It requires a subtler, more sophisticated vision of life than the atheists or Pippas. Among other things, it forces you to see yourself more clearly. Gods in His heaven, and alls right with the world, except me.

Really not except me. Because Im not all right, Jesus became man and let the Romans torture him to death. A relief to hear? Yes. But comforting? Yes and no. The Christian sees both sides: the self that sent Him to the Cross and the once dead Jesus walking out of the grave. As the great Lutheran hymn O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded asks: Ah, keep my heart thus moved / To stand Thy cross beneath, / To mourn Thee, well-beloved, / Yet thank Thee for Thy death.

Seeing yourself more clearly

Fortenberry explains what its like to see yourself more clearly. It is not comforting to know quite as much as I do about how weaselly and weak-willed I am when it comes to being as generous as Jesus demands, she writes. The Church shows her the kind of person she wants to be but therefore also the ways she fails to be that person:

Nothing promotes self-awareness like turning down an opportunity to bring children to visit their incarcerated parents. Or avoiding shifts at the food bank. Or calculating just how much I will put in the collection basket. Thanks to church, I have looked deeply into my own heart and found it to be of merely small-to-medium size. None of this is particularly comforting.

Church, she says, is a group of broken individuals united only by our brokenness traveling together to ask to be fixed.

Comforting? Not in the way the atheists think. But yes.

Read the original post:
The comfort of atheism and the consolation of faith - Aleteia EN

Seriously gents: just because Richard Dawkins says weird things about women on the internet doesn't mean you have to as well.

Dear god, it's hard to be an atheist sometimes.

That's not just because Australia's non-atheist community get to have cozy little get-togethers in Parliament House, in which a subset of a subset of a subset of Australian Christians buddy up with politicians that continue to ensure that LGBTIQ citizens have fewer civil rights and less protection from schoolyardbullying.

No, it's also because atheists have failed to make a strong organisational case to become a meaningful lobby group because we have a tendency to well, act like a bunch of jerks.

On the face of it there's nothing super-controversial about atheism. After all, it's basically just a statement along the lines of "I don't believe in the supernatural".

The greatest exponent of this sort of worldview was the late, great Carl Sagan via his groundbreaking science and cosmology series Cosmos in the earlyeighties. When talking about the still-unknown origins of the universe in the episode 'The Edge of Forever', he laid out a case for scientific thought that struck me then and now as having a gentle humility to it:

"In many cultures, the customary answer is that a God or Gods created the Universe out of nothing," he explained. "But if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: where did God come from? If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the Universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step, and conclude that the Universe always existed?"

However, that attitude - that the unknown is a wonderful thing to explore, not something to be closed off by adhering to dogma - has been less in evidence in recent times as atheism seems to have become less a travelling companion to science and knowledge and morean excuse to jump on the Islam-creates-terrorists bandwagon(out of which the US atheist author Sam Harris has made a career) orto express remarkably misogynist opinions.

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It's become a massive problem in the international atheist community, due in no small part to comments made by the likes of Richard Dawkins, whose ill-considered "Dear Muslima" letter basically told women that since they didn't experience the level of repression of those in Muslim theocracies they should shut the hell up when guys get pushy - and though he later apologised for that, he did subsequentlytweet that women that drink can't be trusted when they claim to have beensexually attacked.

Harris, for his part, weighed in to let women know that "There's something about that critical posture that is to some degree instrinsically maleit doesn't obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe." In his defence, "Estrogen Vibe" would be a pretty decent name for a jam band.

Even sceptical pioneer James Randi, a personal hero of mine, has rationalised reports of an employee making unwanted advances at Randi's annual Amazing Meeting in 2008 as "he misbehaved himself with the women, which I guess is what men do when they are drunk."

Thus in recent times there hasbeen a concerted, deliberate effortto overcome the not-inaccurate perception that atheism is exclusively a boys' club. And there has been predictable pushback from members of said community who are deeply concerned that this progressive attitudemay yet expose them to dangerous levels of girl germs.

The latest example came on Tuesdaywhen the upcoming Atheist Global Convention in Melbourne announced that feminist author and commentator Clementine Ford would be one of the speakers.

Predictably, this made a few people unhappy - but the venom levelled at Ford and the conference generally for daring to have a line up of speakers which approached gender parity was a shock.

And that's despite the moderators on the Facebook page makingclearthat "we have been deleting specific rape and death threats as they occurthere have been substantial numbers", just in case there was any doubt about the calibre of awesome dudes weighing in with their important opinions about the line up.

And this breaks my little non-theistic heart, because this is exactly why women and men who aren't terrified cowards think twice aboutjoining atheist groups. It also means such groups end up much like the Australian Christian Lobby: filled with reactionary voices that don't remotely represent the diverse community for which they're claiming to speak.

The likes of Sagan made atheism seem like a welcoming way to escape from the dangerous constraints of superstition and enter a wider, more spectacularuniverse. These sorts of atheistsreduce it to a tatty ideologyexactly as small, petty, violent and exclusionary as their own cartoonish portrayal of religion.

It's also proof, if any was needed, that faith - or not-faith -isn't what makes people behave like jerks: it's an excuse that jerks use to justify their jerkiness.

Here is the original post:
Why do public atheists have to behave like such jerks? - The Sydney Morning Herald

CHANNEL INTRODUCTION: Atheism TV is an educational channel dedicated to promoting rational thinking, defend the separation of church and state, and providing support for atheists worldwide.

About the video: It's about time this channel gets a trailer video. Thanks a lot to Rictus Gate for his great acoustic interpretation of Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing". Thanks to BionicDance for 3D graphics that look pretty much exactly like the original music video, except with the Tom and Al characters featured in a few previous videos such as this one: http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Lyrics can be seen by turning on the captions, as well as at the end of this description section.

No religious fucktards were hurt during the making of this video.

CREDITS Lyrics: AtheismTV Music: Rictus Gate http://www.youtube.com/user... Graphics: BionicDance http://www.youtube.com/user...

====== LYRICS

Many will watch it (x3) AtheismTV Many will watch it (x3) AtheismTV

Now look at'em Infidels, deconverting to it Watchin' the news and celebrities Well they ain't kiddin', deconverting to it Many will watch it: AtheismTV Now They ain't kiddin', deconverting to it Wacky World: worshipers are so dumb Maybe watch it in with a good beer, Maybe watch it with a little rum.

We gotta watch those annoying morons Get their ass pwned repeatedly We gotta watch religious fucktards We gotta watch AtheismTV

See that little muslim wants shariah thrusted upon us Yea little buddy, go fuck yourself

See that little muslim Exploding his own car Hear that little muslim scream "allahu akbar"

We gotta watch those annoying morons Get their ass pwned repeatedly We gotta watch religious fucktards We gotta watch AtheismTV

I shoulda learned about the bible I shoulda learned about the qur'an

Look at that mother, she got indoctrinated children And the father who's giving them the rod

And what's up there, What's that? Invisible sky daddy? Prayin' to the ceiling Like a schizo-crazy That ain't workin' That's no way to do it Nothing fails like prayer And wishful thinkin'

We gotta watch those annoying morons Get their ass pwned repeatedly We gotta watch religious fucktards We gotta watch AtheismTV

Look at 'em Infidels deconverting to it Many will watch it: AtheismTV That ain't workin' That's no way to do it Nothing fails like prayer And wishful thinkin'

Many will watch it (x2) AtheismTV

Many will watch it (x3) AtheismTV

Many will watch it Look at it, look at it Many will watch it AtheismTV

Many will watch it (x2) AtheismTV Look at it, look at it Show less

Link:
Atheism TV - YouTube

Marie Alena Castle is the communications director for Atheists for Human Rights.

She was raised Roman Catholicbut became an atheist. She has been important to atheism, Minnesota Atheists, The Moral Atheist,National Organization of Women, andwrote Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom (2013). She has a lifetime of knowledge and activist experience, which I wanted to explore and crystallise in an educational series. Here are the results.

Scott Jacobsen: You have a lifetime of experience in atheism, womens rights, and human rights. Of course, you were raised a Catholic, but this changed over the course of life. In fact, you have raised a number of children who became atheists themselves, and have been deeply involved in the issues on the political left around womens rights and human rights.

To start this series, what has been the major impediment to the progress of womens rights in the United States over the last 17 years?

Marie Alena Castle: Its actually at least the last 40 years. In the U.S., control of women is no longer about the right to vote or pursue careers. Those battles have been won. What is left is the religious rights last stand: womens right to abortion and the ultimate control over their own bodies. An anti-women legislative agenda began and has been going on ever since the Supreme Courts 1973 Roe v Wade decision.

Almost immediately, the U.S. Catholic Bishops established a Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities that reached down to every Catholic parish in the country. The bishops recruited Catholic academics, journalists, and political commentators to disseminate pro-life propaganda. They drew in Protestant fundamentalists and provided them with leaders such as Jerry Falwell. They organized to get pro-life politicians elected at every political level and eventually took over the Republican party.

I was there and watched it happen. We, Democratic feminists, worked almost non-stop to prevent a similar takeover of the Democratic party and, thankfully, were successful. The pro-life campaign has never stopped. Over a thousand bills have been, and are, proposed at the state and federal level to restrict womens access to contraceptives and abortion, as well as advantageous reproductive technologies that dont conform to irrational religious doctrines.

(Stephen Mumford has documented this in full detail in his book, The Life and Death of NSSM 200, which describes how the Catholic Church prevented any action on a Nixon-era national security memorandum that warned of the dangers of overpopulation and advocated the accessibility of contraceptives and abortion.)

Jacobsen: Who do you consider the most important womens rights and human rights activist in American history?

Castle: No contest. Its Margaret Sanger, hands down. Many people have spoken out and worked for womens rights throughout history, not just American history. But Sanger got us birth control. Without that, women remain slaves to natures reproductive mandate and can do little beyond producing and raising children.

This is often claimed to be a noble task. True enough. However, it always reminds me of the biblical story of Moses, who had the noble task of leading his people to the Promised Land, but because of some vague offense against Yahweh, he was condemned to see that Promised Land only from afar and never go there himself.

Women have raised children over the ages and have led them to the Promised Land of scientific achievements, Noble Prize Awards, academic honours, and so many others. But they and their daughters have seen that Promised Land only from afar and almost never allowed to go their themselves.

Sanger opened a path to that Promised Land by fighting to make contraceptives legal and available. The ability to control the time and circumstances of ones childbearing has made the fight for womens rights achievable in practical not just philosophical terms. She founded Planned Parenthood and we see how threatening that has been to the theocratic religious right. They cant seem to pass or try to pass enough laws to hinder womens ability to control their own bodies.

As for human rights in general, a good argument can be made that by freeing women half of the human population we free up everyone. As Robert Ingersoll said, There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women.

Jacobsen: What is one of the more egregious public perceptions of atheists by the mainstream of the religious in America?

Castle: Its that atheists have no moral compass and therefore cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner. No one ever comes up with any evidence for that. Most people in prison identify themselves as religious. Studies that rank levels of prejudice for racism, sexism, and homophobia show nonbelievers at the lowest end of the graph generally below 10% and evangelicals at the very highest almost off the chart.

Ive had religious people tell me it is religious beliefs that keep people, including themselves, from committing violent crimes. I tell them I hope they hang onto their beliefs because otherwise, they would be a threat to public safety. As physicist Steven Weinberg said, Good people will do good and evil people will do evil, but for good people to do evil, that takes religion. I have known good and evil atheists and good and evil religionists, but the only time I have seen a good person do evil, it was due to a religious belief.

I have also observed that liberal religionists generally share the same humanitarian values as most atheists, but to have that moral sense they had to abandon traditional religious beliefs. There is a lot of evil in religious doctrines. The 10 Commandments are almost totally evil. Read them and the descriptions of the penalties that follow. Read the part about what you are to sacrifice to Yahweh the firstborn of your livestock, your firstborn son Yup, thats what it says.

So they include dont kill, steal or bear false witness. There is nothing new about that. Its common civic virtue any community needs to function effectively. So religion promises a blissful afterlife. Ever stop to think what that might be like, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever? People believe that!? I so hope theyre wrong.

Jacobsen: Your life speaks to the convergence of atheism, womens rights, and human rights activism. How do these, in your own mind, weave into a single activist thread? What is the smallest thing American citizens, and youth, can do to become involved in this fabric?

Castle: We all are what we are. Im an activist because I cant help myself. Its who I am. Others would rather hang by their thumbs than do what I do. They like to get out in the yard and do gardening. You couldnt pay me enough or threaten me enough to get me to do that. We should just try to be honest and compassionate and cut everyone some slack as long as no one is getting hurt. Live and let live.

We are a fragile species, making the best of our short life spans, stuck here on this hunk of rock circling a ball of flaming gas that could eject a solar flare at any time that wipes us out. Life is, as Shakespeare said, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Just accept that. Its reality. Just be decent and helpful and try not to hurt anyone. If thats the limit of your activism, its still pretty good.

If you think it would be great to be able to do more and to be politically active but that is just not in your DNA, then settle for the next best thing: Find a political activist whose views you agree with and vote the way they tell you. That is the smallest thing you can do. If you did not vote in the last election you made yourself part of the problem and you see what we got. From now on, try to be part of the solution.

Previously published on Conatus News

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Continued here:
Atheism, Women's Rights, and Human Rights with Marie Alena Castle Q&A Session 1 - The Good Men Project (blog)

College is the period in your life after adolescence and before adulthood where you truly discover who you are as an individual. Experimentation with drugs and ones sexuality are interestingbut far more profound and lasting is experimentation with new ideas. One such idea you should at least read up on is atheism.

Atheism is a philosophical movement that has existed for thousands of years, spreading across many borders and cultures over the course of time. Simply put, atheism is the rejection of belief in any god or supernatural dimension. Any variation on that simple premise qualifies as atheism: there are hard atheists (also called anti-theists), who state with firm belief that a god certainly doesnt exist, and there are also soft atheists who reject the notion of a god but remain open to the possibility. Some atheists still consider themselves spiritual, but separate contemplative practices like meditation from any kind of faith system.

Generally speaking, many atheists put heavy emphasis on the power of science and philosophy on our everyday lives, and assert the superiority of such a position over religious belief. Many books have been published to this effect, putting forward arguments against religion and belief in the supernatural. In this list, we explore 10 such works that offer an absolutely essential view of the arguments associated with atheism. Whether youre a skeptic yourself, a firm believer, or havent made up your mind yet, this list will provide the most helpful material available for understanding the minds of those who doubt.

10. Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell

The classic pamphlet by mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell that declares boldly: I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.

In it, Russell goes through the numerous reasons he finds the Christian religion, as well as religion generally, to be unconvincing in the extreme. Our narrator argues that to be a Christian, one must overcome the historical difficulties surrounding the life of Jesus and the authorship of the Bible something he contends is impossible to an impartial reader of the texts.

9. God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

Moved into action by what he saw as the creeping threat of theocracy in the world, the late journalist and literary critic treats his reader to a multifaceted critique of organized religion of every form, from Judaism and Christianity to Buddhism and Hinduism. Writing with profound wit and eloquence, Hitchens examines the texts and history of all the major faith traditions, showing explicitly where each allied itself with tribal violence and regressive thinking. Especially powerful is his exploration of how little humanity knew of science in the days when these religions came into existence, and how laden with obvious mythology each of them is. A thoroughly engaging read.

8. Breaking The Spell by Daniel Dennett

A philosopher and behavioral scientist at Tufts University, Dennett makes the case that religious belief must be treated as a proper scientific hypothesis that can either be supported or refuted (a topic which will appear later in this list). Dennett traces the development of religious thinking through evolutionary biology and social psychology, showing the thoroughly natural foundations for its claims. In true philosophical fashion, the last part of the book dismantles the idea that morality is derived from supernatural beliefs.

7. The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

Evolutionary biologist and former Oxford professor Richard Dawkins lays out the factors that influenced the evolution of life on this planet and shows how it eventually culminated in Homo sapiens. In so doing, he demonstrates how the mechanism of natural selection requires no intervening god to guide the process.

The crucial point Dawkins makes here is that while we cant prove that a god didnt intervene in human evolution, whats important is that such a being is unnecessary; that is, we can understand nature in the exact same way if we abandon the notion that we are the center of the cosmos. This is summed up by one of the books most lyrical passages:

Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no minds eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

6. God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor Stenger

In this New York Times bestseller, physicist Victor Stenger proposes the idea of God as a scientific hypothesis like any other: an idea open to consideration and debate, and therefore thoughtful criticism and refutation. Like the earlier entry by Daniel Dennett, Stenger contends that if a god really does exist, then his (or her) presence must be measurable in some way by science.

However, whereas Dennett focused on the philosophical and cognitive underpinnings of belief, our author here focuses on the observable claims made by the faithful. Evidence of intelligent design in biology, the efficacy of prayer in medicine, signs of salvation in human behavioral psychology, the existence of an immaterial soul in physiology, and discoveries in physics that may point toward divine creation are all examined and systematically refuted. A wonderful resource for those skeptics wanting to debate with believers head-on.

5. The Atheist Universe by David Mills

An excellent primer to give as a gift to those who are considering atheism, Mills does a fine job of setting fire to the straw-men presented by theologians and laypeople alike. Written in concise, straightforward language, the author tends to shun the complicated arguments used by professional philosophers and scientists.

Mills clarifies the facts surrounding the classic questions like, How did the universe begin?, and Is there any meaning to life without religion? for those who are just beginning to ask these questions. This entry is especially profound because of its scope and accessible language that nearly anyone can follow.

4. Why There is No God by Armin Navabi

This entry is styled along a Q&A format; it offers a typical point in defense of religion or in criticism of unbelief and then responds to the point with a straightforward and concise answer. Much like the previous entry, this one gets props for being accessible to a larger audience. Lets face it with the trappings of modern college life, most people dont have the time or energy to read some massive title. For those who want fast clarification on tough topics, this one is the way to go.

3. The End of Faith by Sam Harris

Provoked into action by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris argues that, in the age of nuclear weapons and targeted missile strikes, humanity must abandon religious barbarism if we are to move beyond this century. As he says, the worst fear of any sane individual in the 21st century needs to be the possibility of a state possessing weapons of mass destruction, with the psychological equivalent of Osama bin Laden at its head. Harris makes an interesting caseand treads fearlessly into deep philosophical waters in this scathing critique of human tribalism.

2. The Portable Atheist by Various

If your goal is to understand the actual ideas of unbelievers, look no further. A massive anthology containing essays from unbelievers like Einstein, Darwin, Marx, Hume, Orwell, Twain, Sagan, Spinoza, and Lucretius, as well as more modern writers like Penn Jillette, Salman Rushdie, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, this anthology is packed with memorable essays and profound ideas.

To add to its appeal, the whole collection has been selected and edited by Christopher Hitchens, the wit and prose of whom know no end. It also doesnt hurt that this anthology is a veritable gold-mine of memorable quotes, among them: All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically from the physicist Steven Weinberg, and Who wishes that there was a permanent, unalterable celestial despotism that subjected us to continual surveillance and could convict us of thought-crime, and who regarded us as its private property even after we died? from the eloquent editor of this collection.

1. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

So rarely does a work achieve such a level of name-recognition among those who were never its intended audience. In its heyday, Dawkins attempt to convert believers to atheism resulted in the publishing of more than a dozen books responding to the claims presented. It landed him on news programs and in the pages of magazines and newspapers to take up the mantle of atheism in formal debate. Any proper list of atheist writings would not be complete without this iconic book, which has slowly become a symbol of rebellion from authority.

pixabay.com

Excerpt from:
An Essential College Atheist Reading List - Uloop News

Why would God allow evil to exist? is one of the main questions asked by atheists, according to the first chapter of There is a God.

BYU-Idaho students typically feel comfortable explaining why God allows this to members of their same faith. But when the person they are talking to is an atheist, the conversation changes. Such was the case for Lauren Terry, a freshman studying public health.

I would use the idea that we all have agency because we all have it, said Terry I dont know.

Hyrum Lewis, a faculty member in the Department of History, Geography and Political Science, published a book titled There is a God on May 1, 2017.

Lewis said the book helps members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with tough questions asked by modern atheists.

The primary objective of There is a God is to address the questions and concerns brought by atheists, agnostics and members having doubts about the existence of God.

Lewis said this book was the result of years of thoughtful consideration with questions of faith until he had enough material to make a publication.

Link:
Responding to atheism in the last days - BYU-I Scroll

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Religion was a major backdrop in the 2016 election. Donald Trump campaigned hard in white Christian America, promising voters that he would essentially turn back the clock to an America when religion and Christians overall were more influential in the country.

This strategy paid off, asthe Washington Postreported: Exit polls show white evangelical voters voted in high numbers for Donald Trump,80-16 percent. Thats the most they have voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004.

White evangelicals are the religious group that most identifies with the Republican Party, and 76 percent of them say they are or lean Republican, according to a 2014survey. As a group, white evangelicalsmake upone-fifth of all registered voters and about one-third of all voters who identify with or lean toward the GOP.

So it is no surprise that Trump has quickly moved with anexecutive orderto relax restrictions on thepolitical activitiesof tax-exempt churches in an effort to strengthen the role of religion, in essence working to strengthen the political hand of churches in political campaigns.

Trump playing the conservative religious card is in stark contrast to the role nonbelievers play in American society. Atheists, those who disbelieve in the existence of god, comprise a growing sector of American society. Their numbers are often hidden in polls and generally undercounted because some fear reporting their identity and facing social stigmatization.

There have been various reports showing a marked increase in nonbelievers, including atheists, agnostics and others who do not identify with a religion or say that religion is not important to them. Between 2007 and 2014, the portion of Americans who do not believe in a god grew by over 10 percent, according to astudydone by thePew Research Center. The growing numbers of nonreligious people in the United States are propelled by generational change, asyoung people, who are more likely to be unaffiliated with a religion, reach adulthood and slowly replace their older and more religious counterparts.

A recentstudyby psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle at the University of Kentucky concluded that the number of atheists in the United States exceeds 20 percent with a roughly 0.8 probability. This estimate is more than double the conclusion of the study collected over the telephone by Pew Research Center, which found that approximately 10 percent of Americans dont believe in god and only 3 percent of Americans identify asatheists. This disparity toward what is essentially the same question suggests that people are hesitant to identify themselves as atheists.Furthermore, a study byPRRIin 2016 revealed that more than 30 percent of atheists hide their disbelief from friends and family for fear of disapproval, suggesting that many might find an admission over the telephone similarly difficult.

To obtain accurate results, Gervais and Najle constructed a very subtle test that would remove the stigma around atheism.Using a sample population of 2,000 Americans, they asked respondents to answer true or false to seemingly banal statements such as I am a vegetarian or I own a dog.The control group responded to nine statements while the test group responded to the same nine statements plus an additional one I do not believe in God.

Participants only had to acknowledge the number of statements that applied to them. They never had to deny believing in god or identifying as an atheist, which omitted any social stigma from the test.

By comparing the responses of the two groups, Gervais and Najle came to their conclusion approximately 26 percent of Americans are atheists. Assuming the number of vegetarians and dog owners is the same between the two groups, any increase in the test group compared to the control group indicates the number of atheists.

The two psychologists admit that their study is not free of error, but they have undoubtedly proven that previous polls conducted over the telephone or in person have yielded deceptively small numbers.

In fact, another study performed by the Pew Research Center found evidence supporting the existence of social stigma around being openly atheist. Pew found that only a third of Americans feelwarmly toward atheists. Daniel Cox of PRRI wrote in FiveThirtyEight that a third of Americans believe that atheists should be banned frombecoming president, and a similar percent thinks that they should be prohibited from teaching in public schools. With pressure to conform to the dominant religious beliefs, some American atheists choose to hide their beliefs.

In an interview withSlate, Renee Johnson, a single lesbian mother in Point, Texas, said that she would rather have a big L or lesbian written across [her] shirt than a big A or atheist, because people are going to handle it better. Johnson is just one of many who feel uncertain about revealing their nonbelief in a country where religion and spirituality seem like national imperatives.

As the discrepancy between the poll performed by Gervais and Najle compared with previous polls indicates, the role of religion in the daily lives of Americans is becoming increasingly complex. Many polls require respondents to select a single religious identification from a list, which does not allow people to choose multiple answers. By this method, someone cant be Jewish and an atheist or Catholic and atheist. Although its possible to follow a religion for cultural, heritage or spiritual reasonsseparate from a belief in godin previous polls, religion and atheism have been considered mutually exclusive. This method of polling fails to recognize the possibility that religion may be determined by heritage and cultural background, rather than belief; it also presumes one concept of god.

However, ideas of god or spiritual forces are entirely subjective, as indicated in a study byGallup, which found that 89 percent of Americans believe in god, but only about half believe in an anthropomorphic god. The various studies about religion, belief and god exemplify how the United States necessitates having a society that can accept a full range of religious belief and spiritual ambiguity.

While feelings toward atheism are certainly changing60 percent of Americans reportknowingan atheist, which is significantly more than 10 years agothe stigma surrounding people who do not believe in god is continuing to stifle freedom of belief in America. As with his other attempts to turn back the clock in America, President Trumps remark inhis inaugural address about joining all Americans together with thesamealmighty Creator, threatens the intricate and varying histories, beliefs and ways of being that are present in this country.

Here is the original post:
Trump Evangelicals face a growing number of hidden Atheists - Salon

Ivy Taylor, the mayor of San Antonio who blamed generational poverty on broken people who didnt believe in God, no longer has a job. City Council member Ron Nirenberg defeated her 55%-45% in a runoff election yesterday.

While theres no proof Taylors anti-atheist comments led to her downfall, they did go viral online, and its worth reminding people of just how awful they were.

They took place during a mayoral forum in April in which candidates talked about the impact of and challenges for non-profit groups in the community. At one point, Taylor was asked about the deepest systemic causes of generational poverty. Theres no simple answer to that, of course, but Taylors response didnt even come close.

To me, its broken people. People not being in a relationship with their Creator, and therefore, not being in good relationship with their families and their communities, and not being productive members of society. I think thats the ultimate answer. Thats not something that I work on from my position as Mayor of the community

It was bizarre, offensive, and not based on any facts whatsoever. It was irrelevant that she was directing her response to an openly Christian questioner. Poverty isnt caused by atheism, and atheism doesnt mean you dont have a good relationship with your family and community. (And you better believe we contribute to society.)

Taylor later said that clip was a dishonest, politically motivated misrepresentation of her record, intentionally edited to mislead viewers.

That was a lie. You can see the full exchange at the 1:07:39 mark in this video. Her comments arent any better in context.

She was condemned by several national atheist groups, many of which offered to set up a meeting with their members so Taylor could see for herself what they offered the city of San Antonio.

She never took them up on it.

And now she wont have to.

When speaking to her supporters last night, Taylor once again brought up her faith.

Taylor seemed to concede during her speech, saying, A majority of the votes have come in. It doesnt look like its going the way that we anticipated this evening. But you know what? I am so grateful to God I am at peace. I am so thankful to God for each and every person in this room, for your support, for your prayers, for being here.

And were thankful to no-God that shes no longer in office.

Even though he just got elected, I hope Ron Nirenberg does what Taylor never did and offers to meet with atheists as a gesture of solidarity. He doesnt have to agree with us on theology, but theres no reason to shut us out. It would be a welcome overture.

In case youre wondering, the city council is a non-partisan group and Nirenberg does not declare affiliation with any political party.

(Thanks to @SarahHancock23 for the link. Portions of this article were published earlier)

More here:
San Antonio Mayor Who Blamed Generational Poverty on Atheism Loses Runoff Election - Patheos (blog)