Tag Archives: Topic: Atheism

God and Country : US Representative Randy Forbes (R-Va) has written a letter (PDF) signed by 35 members of the House asking the Air Force restore a unit’s motto that was changed after an atheist’s complaint. The incident to which Rep Forbes is referring was actually first reported on ChristianFighterPilot.com, with the Religion Clause and the ADF Alliance Alert subsequently citing this site.

NYTimes.com: ut Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

God and Country : The band Aiden has announced it will be playing the atheist festival “Rock Beyond Belief” at Fort Bragg in March 2012, as the lead-in act to Richard Dawkins, the main attraction at the “concert.”

Freedom from Religion Foundation: The Freedom From Religion Foundation this afternoon filed a formal complaint with the State of Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights, alleging “illegal discrimination based on religion” when a flower shop in Cranston refused, on the basis of religion, to fill an order to send a dozen roses to Jessica Ahlquist.

MalakoffNews: The FFRF answered back Monday in a letter to Abbott signed by foundation co-presidents and husband and wife, Dan Taylor and Annie Laurie Gaylor.

MyFoxDetroit: You may have heard this argument before, that a nativity scene or any display of religious symbol on public ground is a violation of church and state. In Warren, a man wants to challenge the argument a step further by displaying a ‘certain’ sign right next to the nativity scene.

LoHud.com: Christmas decorations and Nativity scenes at four homes and Sacred Heart Church in northwest Yonkers were descrated over the weekend, Yonkers police said.

Capitol Times: “This is all we do in November and December is Nativity scene violations,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, the group’s co-president. “We tell our attorneys to get ready. It’s our busiest time of the year.”

Local churches have traditionally claimed 14 of the 21 Palisades Park display spaces to illustrate the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. But atheists managed to get all but three of the spaces this year because of a new city lottery system.

The Red and Black: Shewmaker responded with a letter Nov. 1 saying “invocation at commencement is part of the University of Georgia’s heritage,” according to documents provided by Joiner.
“There have been no Supreme Court of the United States cases interpreting this issue,” Shewmaker wrote.

CNSnews.com: The man pushing to get the military to install “atheist chaplains” in the armed forces told government-subsidized National Public Radio that military officers should not be praying with their men before going out on missions.

Available at RushLimbaugh.com.

The Volokh Conspiracy: The New York Times Room for Debate Forum has an interesting symposium on the role of religion in presidential elections. In his contribution, polling expert Andrew Kohut cites a 2007 Pew survey showing that atheism is viewed more negatively by voters than virtually any other possible trait of a presidential candidate.

The Christian Institute: The National Secular Society (NSS) threatened Woking Borough Council with legal action, claiming that allowing free Sunday parking for three churches in the town centre was a breach of equality and “almost certainly illegal”.

The Jackson Sun | jacksonsun.com: The Board of Aldermen voted last week to let the Alliance Defense Fund look into the town’s options for responding to the complaint about the cross. The board meets the first Monday of each month.

Beliefnet News: The town council has voted to consult with the Alliance Defense Fund about their legal options, “This is their cause in life – to ride up and down the highway and find small towns that maybe have a religious symbol somewhere on public property,” he said.

Red County: What CARD wants is for Christian faith-based groups to be forced to hire atheists, should they apply, and Catholic or Orthodox Jewish groups to be forced to hire Muslims, Hindus, or Wicca Priestesses should they apply. CARD’s letter, and the request it makes of the President, is akin to the same God-hating logic we’ve seen groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State leverage inasmuch as CARD’s contention is that once a faith-based organization accepts federal money, they have to cash in their religious freedom.

Freedom From Religion Foundation: The Freedom from Religion Foundation, a national state/church watchdog, is sounding the alarm on unlawful, exploitative activities in public schools by The Gideons International. “It takes constant vigilance to keep the Gideons out of public schools,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.

Education News: A group of 30 scientists have signed a statement saying it is “unacceptable” to teach creationism and intelligent design, whether it happens in science lessons or not. The statement claims two organisations, Truth in Science and Creation Ministries International are “touring the UK and presenting themselves as scientists and their creationist views as science”.

ADF Attorney Dave Cortman appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss this: Amen! Principal, teachers at Miss. school told prayers are protected. | MP3 audio 15:33 mins

Washington Times : In Losing Faith in Faith, Dan Barker – the preacher-turned-atheist – wrote this about the origin of sin: “The very concept of sin comes from the Bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?”

Action News 5 – Memphis, Tennessee: After an atheist group asked DeSoto County Schools to stop praying before school events or face legal action, the same group is now demanding the district to stop allowing Gideon International, a Christian missionary group, to distribute bibles during school sponsored activities.

11alive.com: Like most governments, the City Council of this Fayette County municipality of 37,000 begins their meetings with a prayer. But now they’re being threatened with legal action if they don’t change it.

KLFY.com: An atheist group wants a local superintendent to reprimand one of his principals for allowing a prayer rally to take place in a school.

Gary Bauer at Human Events: American atheists are a litigious bunch. They constitute a minuscule share of the American population—roughly 1%, according to most polls. Yet with the help of liberal judges and secular elites, they’ve spent the last few decades on a series of often successful courtroom crusades to eliminate all public recognition of Christianity.
Three current cases highlight the extremes . . .

Tad Armstrong: It’s still OK to say ‘God’: What lawsuit will Christianity be faced with next week? Ignorance abounds on this topic, so much so that I was compelled to write my first book to set the record straight. “It’s Ok to say God” will be released soon.

Ventura County Star: “The framed poster at issue was presented to the city not by, or on behalf of, any religious or religiously affiliated organization, but rather was an expression to the City Council of appreciation by families of those serving in our armed forces.”

The Republic: hese days, Bechman has set his secular sights on what he considers another separation issue — a framed poster in the Simi Valley City Council’s foyer in City Hall saluting U.S. military personnel. The problem, in Bechman’s view, is that the poster also states “God Bless America” and “God Bless You.”

David French at National Review Online: Our military is comprised of hundreds of thousands of Christians and thousands of members of other faiths (and thousands of atheists as well). They come from different intellectual and spiritual traditions, and the government is emphatically not “serving” them when it essentially acts as if they — or their ideas — don’t exist.

TheLedger.com: Since February, atheists from Pinellas and Hillsborough counties have made appearances before the Polk County School Board requesting that it no longer pray at its meetings.

Alan Jacobs at the Wall Street Journal: One could respond in several ways to the news that California’s Pitzer College is starting a department of “secular studies” and creating a major in the field. Religious believers may see another sign of encroaching, well, secularism on American campuses. Conversely, just as the rise of religious studies—as opposed to theology—happened when religious belief was in precipitous decline among academics, perhaps the rise of secular studies indicates that secularism is a fading enterprise.

The Telegraph: The new chairman of the BBC has waded into the growing row over secularism by warning that atheists are “intolerant” of religion.

MLIve.com:Should city officials allow prayer events to be publicized through government mailings?
That is the question one Metro Detroit municipality is facing after being confronted by the nation’s “largest atheist/agnostic association.”

NY Times: Strange as it sounds, groups representing atheists and secular humanists are pushing for the appointment of one of their own to the chaplaincy, hoping to give voice to what they say is a large — and largely underground — population of nonbelievers in the military.

MDJOnline.com: The list of speakers is being finalized and the time is drawing near for the 27th annual Cobb County Prayer Breakfast. But a small group of protesters from the Smyrna-based Atlanta Freethought Society and American Atheists say they will protest the event . . .

Daily Mail: Education bosses in Blackburn with Darwen, Lancashire, have radically restructured the RE syllabus to accommodate non-religious beliefs. Youngsters will continue to learn about the six major faiths – Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism – but they will also be taught humanism, the belief that there is no God or Gods, and that moral values are founded on human nature and experience.

Newschief: “With Bibles in their hands, more than 100 people showed up at Tuesday’s School Board meeting to show their support for prayer.”

The judges think it is wise and humane to assert that there is no hierarchy of values, and that all creeds are equal. But this is both absurd and nihilistic. Some values will always trump others.’

The Sun News: “A Fort Bragg soldier canceled a concert with a secular theme and no ties to religion, saying Thursday that base leadership failed to honor promises to support his show as it had a Christian rally last fall.”

“A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit seeking to block a prayer luncheon at the Air Force Academy.”

The AZ Daily Star carries commentary by Dr. Gilbert Shapiro: Indeed, 84 bills (22 in the past two years) advanced by the Center for Arizona Policy have become law. No CAP-opposed bills were passed. It should come as no surprise this was due to overwhelming support from Gov. Jan Brewer and Republican House and Senate legislators. In 2010, The Arizona Capitol Times, a nonpartisan newspaper covering state politics and government, reported that “insiders” judged CAP and its president Cathi Herrod among the most influential lobbying organizations and lobbyists in Phoenix. Has theocracy come to Arizona?

ChristianNewsWire: “Tom Ritter, who taught physics and chemistry for over a decade, has filed a federal lawsuit against The Blue Mountain School District in the Middle District of Pennsylvania . . . If evolution is unscientific, why teach it? Because no Creator means no God. In other words, evolution taught without a possible alternative is Atheism.” | Complaint is here (via Religion Clause).

David Briggs writing at The Huffington Post: “No more than 15 percent of adults in the world’s most populous country are ‘real atheists.’ 85 percent of the Chinese either hold some religious beliefs or practice some kind of religion, according to the Chinese Spiritual Life Survey.”

NBC 11: “For the first time in the city’s history, an atheist delivered the opening invocation.”

The Ledger: “Atheists of Florida Inc. intends to file suit against the Polk County Sheriff’s Office over its donation of jailhouse basketball goals to churches, the nonprofit’s legal coordinator said Thursday.”

Orlando Sentinel: “Atheists of Florida wrote a letter to Judd asking him to donate basketball equipment from county jails to other county organizations instead of the handful of churches currently designated to receive the materials.”

ABC 7: “‘Reason’s Greetings’ and ‘Yes Virginia, There Is No God’ is what the Freedom From Religion Foundation billboards will proclaim for the next two weeks.”

Mercury News (NYT): [T]he reaction from believers has been harsher than anyone in the nonbelievers’ club expected. Some black ministers organized a boycott of the buses, with limited success. Other clergy members are pressing the Fort Worth Transportation Authority for a ban on all religious advertising on public buses. In addition, a group of local businessmen paid for the van with the Christian message to chase the buses with atheist messages around town.”

KWTX: “Starting next year, city buses in Fort Worth will not display religious advertisements after an atheist group’s ads on four buses drew criticism.”

Paul Kengor writing at The American Spectator: “In the interest of faith and charity, I’d like to add my own ecumenical offering — a history lesson. It concerns some fascinating material I recently published on the ACLU’s early founders, especially three core figures: Roger Baldwin, Harry Ward, and Corliss Lamont. I can only provide a snapshot here, but you’ll get the picture.”

Arutz Sheva: “Several weeks ago, Palestinian Authority police arrested 26-year-old Walid al-Husseini because of a series of anti-religious blog posts he had written. Now PA officials say Husseini is not in jail for his religious beliefs, but rather, for his own safety. If he is released, they say, he could be murdered.”

First Things Web Editor Joe Carter and Barrett Brown, author of Skeptical Inquirer as well as the author of Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design (and blogger at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen), are debating “the nature and existence of God and his proper relation to the state.” According to Carter, “the format will include the posting of quotes chosen by each participant followed by at least three rounds of exchanges with one post on each side (the level of interest will determine if it will continue after that agreed upon minimum limit).”

Christian Post: “The Freedom From Religion Foundation has unveiled ‘friendly atheist[s]‘ as the new face of its ad campaign. While the billboards are aimed at welcoming national conference goers, the atheist group is planning to expand the campaign to the national level.”

Politics.uk: “Atheists are set to launch a campaign calling on people who are not religious to explicitly say so during the next census. Data from the last census is constantly used by journalists and politicians too promote and defend various policies, but secular groups are concerned that many Brits describe themselves as Christian because of their cultural heritage.”

Christian Today: “Carver Yu, President of the China Graduate School of Theology in Hong Kong, said that ‘confusing ideologies’ were creating emptiness and alienation among people, while indifference to religion was ‘tightening its grip’ . . . ‘Atheism is about to become the new religion,’ he said. ‘Christians must preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ fearlessly because he is the way, the truth and the life. Only he can lead us away from the present state of godlessness.’”

“The American society decreasingly values religion, seriously jeopardizing the future of religious of freedom. A society that does not value religion will not protect religious freedom. The attitude of the next generation towards religion is nothing short of frightening . . . ”

Utah Statesman: “Silk, who currently teaches Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, said people across the country, particularly in the Pacific Northwest and New England, are increasingly holding an atheist view. Silk also offered some reasons why an increasing number of people may share these views.”

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence writing at The Christian Post / Advancing Religious Liberty: “The . . . sobering but unsurprising video that purports to be of freshman orientation at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota . . . is also available on Youtube. (Warning: The video is full of pro-homosexual verbiage, but no graphic yuckiness. It also has a student foolishly explaining how he abandoned his Lutheran faith for atheism thanks to his time at Gustavus. It also has a weird sequence where students utter offensive racial ephithets. The video is painful and difficult to listen to. If you don’t want to watch it, the summary you have just read gives you a sufficient summary of its tragic ‘high points’) . . . if this video is indeed from freshman orientation at Gustavus Adolphus College, then it shows that Gustavus Adolphus College allows students to contradict the teachings of Christ.”

KRMG: “Gabe Sherman with Whistler Outdoor Advertising spoke with our partners at the News On Six. He says the [Freedom From Religion Foundation] initially wanted his firm to post the ad . . . Whistler decided it couldn’t and opted to display ads promoting God.”

Badger Herald: “In a move some have termed politically risky, Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton will address the Freedom From Religion Foundation at a convention in Madison next month.”

“Benedict’s argument, to be made most dramatically tomorrow at the Palace of Westminster, is that an exclusive or extreme secularism that drives all religious values and voices out of public life leaves itself defenceless against the tyranny of passing trends. A Europe that cuts itself off from its religious roots puts at risk the foundation of a free and virtuous society.”

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. writing at The Christian Post: “Give the strident atheism a rest, [Chris Mooney, author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future] demands, and adopt the language of spirituality. As he tells the atheists, the language of spirituality is utterly compatible with atheism, but it will not scare the public . . . In its own way, Mooney’s column serves to illustrate the vacuity that marks modern spirituality. There is nothing to it – no beliefs, no God, no morality, no doctrine, no discipleship. Spirituality in this sense is what is left when Christianity disappears and dissipates.”

Associated Press: “Atheists in Oklahoma City have erected a billboard seeking fellow non-believers, and Satanists have scheduled a conference in a city-owned building, drawing criticism from ministers in a state where more than 8 out of 10 people say they are Christians.”

The Ledger: “In the coming weeks, Lakeland city commissioners will vote on whether to accept money from outside groups to help pay for a lawsuit between the Atheists of Florida and the Commission. Conservative legal groups, including Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit litigation and policy organization affiliated with the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, and The Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit law firm that focuses on religious liberty cases, have offered to help pay for the lawsuit.”

UPI: “Nowhere is the culture war more apparent than in battles over religious displays. The latest skirmish was fought earlier this month in Denver, where a federal appeals court said crosses erected along Utah highways as memorials to fallen Highway Patrol officers were in violation of the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment of religion . . . The Becket Fund also predicted the U.S. Supreme Court would be asked to review the Utah case. Which begs the question: Is there anything in Supreme Court jurisprudence that would lead observers to conclude the justices would uphold the Denver appeals court?”

Hugh Hewitt Show transcript: Peter Hitchens discusses the decline of Christianity in the West, and his book, The Rage Against God. Excerpt: “We are a country in very severe decline of all kinds, and there is, at the moment, no sign whatever of any serious attempt to recover from that decline. On the contrary, it’s embraced by a large part of the population . . . unless something is done about it very soon, then as a society, we will cease to function. We are becoming an uncivilized anarchy, and a very, very uneducated and immoral one as well. The other thing, the institution of marriage is in an advanced state of collapse here. Marriage simply doesn’t enter into the lives of many young people who set up home without even considering getting married. It doesn’t happen. It’s gone. The number of children being born outside wedlock is colossal. I think it’s now the majority.”

ADF attorney Joe Infranco appeared on the Mike Gallagher Show to discuss the recent 10th circuit decision holding that Utah Cross memorials for fallen State Troopers violates the Constitution. | MP3 7:04 mins | Related ADF Media information

Guardian: “Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to take decisions that might shorten the life of somebody who is terminally ill as doctors who are deeply religious – and doctors with strong religious convictions are less likely even to discuss such decisions with the patient, according to Professor Clive Seale, from the centre for health sciences at Barts and the London school of medicine and dentistry.”

Terry Jeffrey writing at Townhall: “Why has President Barack Obama on at least two occasions told specifically Muslim audiences that America is a nation of — among other things — ‘non-believers’? . . . The Census Bureau’s official Statistical Abstract of the United States says a miniscule 0.7 percent of American adults — or 1,621,000 out of 228,182,000 — are atheists.”

Religion Clause: “In Sherman v. Quinn, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83313 (CD IL, Aug. 16, 2010), an Illinois federal district court has dismissed both facial and as-applied Establishment Clause challenges to Illinois 2009 capital appropriations bill . . . After dismissing some of the claims on 11th Amendment grounds, the court held that plaintiff lacks taxpayer standing to mount a broad facial challenge to the legislature’s appropriation of $2.23 billion for the governor to distribute to community-based human services providers.”

The Iowa Independent: “Citing a desire to build upon the excitement that has already been generated by state and regional groups, American Atheists announced Monday that they will ‘caucus in the heartland’ when they bring their national convention to Des Moines in April 2011.”

Hindustan Times: “An Italian atheist group campaigning for a quiet life called for tighter restrictions on church bells ringing in the Tuscan town of Pisa, after complaints about the noise from locals.”

Telegraph: “The Education Secretary said he would be ‘interested’ to look at proposals for non-religious schools from figures such Professor Richard Dawkins. Prof Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said last month that he approved of the idea of setting up a ‘free-thinking’ school. The comments follow the publication of Coalition plans to give parents’ groups, teachers and charities powers to open their own schools at taxpayers’ expense.” | Via Religion Clause

National Secular Society: “An Irish Senator has called for the country to adopt a secular constitution. Labour Party Senator Ivana Bacik told the AGM of Atheist Ireland last weekend that there was now an appetite for constitutional reform in Ireland now that it is no longer dominated by Catholicism.”

The Observatorium: “What’s the biggest bone of contention among progressive post-modernists? Bring together all their complaints and talking points and distill their essence. What you get is a hatred of non-permissive belief systems. What’s the biggest non-permissive belief system in the United States? Christianity. … [Greg Baylor], senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, tells us that, ‘The Hastings policy actually requires CLS to allow atheists to lead its Bible studies and the college Democrats to accept the election of Republican officers in order for the groups to be recognized on campus.’”