Naturalism
Critics of Cecil Bothwell cite N.C. bar to atheists | citizen-times.com | Asheville Citizen-Times
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By Jordan Schrader • December 8, 2009
ASHEVILLE — North Carolina’s constitution is clear: politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office.
Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue he should not be seated as a City Council member today, even though federal courts have ruled religious tests for [...]
Are we better off without religion? | Sue Blackmore | guardian.co.uk
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Popular religious belief is caused by dysfunctional social conditions. This is the conclusion of the latest sociological research pdf conducted by Gregory Paul. Far from religion benefiting societies, as the “moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis” would have it, popular religion is a psychological mechanism for coping with high levels of stress and anxiety – or so he [...]
9Dec2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Last Thursdayism - SkepticWiki
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Last Thursdayism
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[edit] Definition
Last Thursdayism, also Last Tuesdayism and Last Wednesdayism, is the unfalsifiable belief that the whole of the universe was created Last Thursday with the apparent age of an ancient universe.
[edit] Discussion
The belief, much like the belief in the Invisible Pink Unicorn, is a parody of one of the many [...]
Joey Nelson: Atheists Have No One to Thank on Thanksgiving
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I read a lot of material written by religious theists — mostly Christians — about atheists and atheism. I see a lot of different myths, misconceptions, mistakes, and even outright lies. Too many to count, in fact. One characteristic which I see that is common to so many different myths and lies, though, is the [...]
25Nov2009 | Admin | 1 comment | Continued
In defense of Atheism
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Over the past few months an organization called the United Coalition of Reason (United CoR) has begun putting up posters and billboards supporting atheism. They display very poignant statements like: “Good without God? 40 million Americans are.” Also: “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”
In many cases, billboards are vandalized with some words removed [...]
The Associated Press: Atheist student groups flower on college campuses
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AMES, Iowa — The sign sits propped on a wooden chair, inviting all comers: “Ask an Atheist.”
Whenever a student gets within a few feet, Anastasia Bodnar waves and smiles, trying to make a good first impression before eyes drift down to a word many Americans rank down there with “socialist.”
Bodnar is the happy face of [...]
Row erupts over humanist poster in Belfast
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THE war of words between atheists and religious believers has entered a new chapter with the launch of Northern Ireland’s first ever humanist advertising campaign.
The British Humanist Association (BHA) yesterday unveiled a billboard with the slogan:
Please Don’t Label Me. Let Me Grow Up And Choose For Myself.
Located on one Belfast’s busiest routes, the poster is [...]
Evolution to be compulsory subject in primary schools - Times Online
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Evolution is to become a compulsory subject for study in all state primary schools. The Government announced yesterday that Darwin’s theory of how life evolved through natural selection would be a legal requirement in science teaching from September 2011, although it will be left to schools to decide how this is done.
The move, which was [...]
The Atheist Blogger » 101 Atheist Quotes
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The following 101 quotes are some that I have stumbled upon on the web, or seen in books / popular culture. Each quote was either written by an atheist, or is about atheism / religion in general.
1. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the [...]
European Court Bans Crucifixes in Italian Public Schools - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News - FOXNews.com
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STRASBOURG, France — Europe’s court of human rights ruled Tuesday the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religious and education freedoms under the continent’s rights convention.
The ruling, which could force a Europe-wide review of the use of religious symbols in government-run schools, rejected arguments by Italy’s government that the crucifix was [...]
Skeptic » Reading Room » A Tribute to Carl Sagan: Our Place in the Universe
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Carl Sagan was a scholar and a visionary. He changed the world. His work still does. As I think back on the time I got to spend in his classes, I realize now what made him the best science communicator of his day. He loved discovery, he encouraged exploration, and he celebrated science. That last [...]
17Nov2009 | will | 0 comments | Continued
Godless Children and the Future of Atheism: Raising Godless Children - How Can Godless Parents Today Affect the Future of Atheism?
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Question:
What does raising children in a godless, irreligious environment mean for the future of atheism in America?
Response:
It’s a simple fact that the godless children being raised by atheists today are likely to be at the forefront of atheism in the future. What’s not so simple is what godless parents are going to do about this [...]
CBT = Existentialism? | Psychology Today
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I’ve recently come to the conclusion that cognitive behavioral therapy, the empirically-demonstrated gold standard for treating depression and a host of other problems, necessitates a belief in existentialism, a philosophy holding that we live in a meaningless universe.
How can happiness derive from appreciating the fundamental pointlessness of existence?
Existentialism (at least atheistic existentialism) does not argue [...]
Bacterial computers can crack mathematical problems | Science | guardian.co.uk
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Bacterial computers can crack mathematical problems | Science | guardian.co.uk
Scanning electron micrograph of E. coli bacteria. A rapidly growing colony can be programmed to act as a hugely powerful parallel computer. Photograph: Getty
Computers are evolving – literally. While the tech world argues netbooks vs notebooks, synthetic biologists are leaving traditional computers behind altogether. [...]
God is the Creator & Sustainer of Existence
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God is the Creator & Sustainer of Existence
A very common attribute of gods in religious traditions around the world is that of creation — our universe, our world, and indeed our very selves often owe their existence to creative acts of the gods. In the Western traditions of philosophical theism, the existence of everything is [...]
Myth: Religion is Central to Human Existence, Everyone Is Religious
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Myth:
Everyone is religious and everyone has a religion because religion is central to human existence. So, atheists have a religion of some sort, even if they deny it.
Response:
For some religious theists, their religion and religious beliefs are so important to them that they can’t imagine anyone being without a religion of some sort. For such [...]
Activists Protest Church of Christian Science
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MEDICAL NEGLECT IS CHILD ABUSE! JOIN VICTIMS IN PROTEST!!!
June 8 from 11:30-3:30pm
200 Mass Ave., Boston, Mary Baker Eddy Library
Dr. Seth Asser, a pediatrician who is dedicated to the cause of protecting children from medical neglect, CHILD, Inc, the RI skeptics Society and the RI Atheist Society would like to invite you to protest the [...]
Not a very bright idea
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When Tony Blair first became leader of the Labour Party in 1994, the Sun newspaper, a British tabloid, took to calling him ‘Bambi’, presumably in the hope that the nickname would become established in the public consciousness. It did not, of course, for it lacked any kind of resonance with what people could believe about [...]
9May2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
It’s Church not Prayer That Makes Us Good
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Mike Gerson has a column up today laying out some of the key findings to be featured in Bob Putnam and David Campbell’s upcoming book, “American Grace,” that I mentioned on Wednesday.
In a nutshell, writes Gerson:
Against the expectations of hard-core secularists, Putnam asserts, “religious Americans are nicer, happier, and better citizens.” They are more generous [...]
How to Say You Don’t Believe
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By Nica Lalli
writer, educator
With the recent publication of the new American Religious Identification Survey, we now know that there is a full 20% of the U.S. population that claims their religious identity as either a “none” (one who identifies as non-religious) or a “don’t know” (one who chooses to not answer the religion question or [...]
Darwinist Teacher Violates Establishment Clause?
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My Keloland Colleague Cory Heidelberger beat me to this one. From FoxNews:
A federal judge ruled that a public high school history teacher violated the First Amendment when he called creationism “superstitious nonsense” during a classroom lecture.
U.S. District Judge James Selna issued the ruling Friday after a 16-month legal battle between student Chad Farnan [...]
A Critical Mass of People Studying Secularity
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RELIGION CAN BE good for more than the soul, a growing number of studies seem to say. Over the past decade, academic research on religiosity has exploded, and with it has come a raft of publications suggesting that spiritual beliefs and practices can add years to life, lower blood pressure, or keep at-risk kids on [...]
2May2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops
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CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.
The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had [...]
Georgetown University Hid Religious Symbols at White House Request
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Georgetown University, a Catholic institution, covered up religious insignia symbolizing the name of Jesus during President Obama’s address there Tuesday after the White House requested the change.
Georgetown University hid a religious inscription representing the name of Jesus during President Obama’s address there Tuesday, [...]
An Amazon tribe converts the missionary
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By Lynn Harnett
April 12, 2009 6:00 AM
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
Daniel L. Everett
Pantheon
The Pirahã are the “Show me!” tribe of the Brazilian Amazon. They don’t bother with fiction or tall tales or even oral history. They have little art. They don’t have a creation myth and don’t want [...]
23Apr2009 | Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedTranslate
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The Center for Naturalism
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Snapshot of the International Space Station
On March 13, 2008, the International Space Station passed across the field-of-view of Germany's remote sensing satellite, TerraSAR-X, at a distance of 195 kilometers, or 122 miles, and at a relative speed of 34,540 kilometers per hour, or more than 22,000 mph. In contrast to optical cameras, radar does not 'see' surfaces. Instead, it is much more aware of the edges and corners which bounce back the microwave signal it transmits. Smooth surfaces such as those on the station's solar generators or the radiator panels used to dissipate excess heat, unless directly facing the radar antenna, tend to deflect rather than reflect the radar beam, causing these features to appear on the radar image as dark areas. The radar image of the station therefore looks like a dense collection of bright spots from which the outlines of the space station can be clearly identified. The central element on the station, to which all the modules are docked, has a grid structure that presents a multiplicity of reflecting surfaces to the radar beam, making it readily identifiable. This image has a resolution of about one meter (about 39 inches). In other words, objects can be depicted as discrete units--that is, shown separately--provided that they are at least one meter apart. If they are closer together than that, they tend to merge into a single block on a radar image. Since this image was taken, the station has expanded and is more than 90 percent complete, including a full complement of solar arrays. Image Credit: DLR
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