Atheism - Network For Church Monitoring

Why Atheists Have Become a Kick-Ass Movement You Want on Your Side

Posted by N4CM Belief 11 May 2012

Source: AlterNet. Why would any organization or social change movement want to ally itself with a community that’s energetic, excited about activism, highly motivated, increasingly visible, good at fundraising, good at getting into the news, increasingly populated by young people, and with a proven track record of mobilizing online in massive numbers on a moment’s notice? If you need to ask that – maybe you shouldn’t be in political activism.

Why Does Religion Always Get a Free Ride?

Posted by N4CM Belief 2 May 2012

Source: AlterNet. Why should religion, alone among all other kinds of ideas, be free from attempts to persuade people out of it? We try to persuade people out of ideas all the time. We try to persuade people that their ideas about science, politics, philosophy, art, medicine, and more, are wrong: that they’re harmful, ridiculous, repulsive, or simply mistaken. But when it comes to religion, trying to persuade people out of their ideas is somehow [...]

The Top 10 Reasons I Don’t Believe in God

Posted by N4CM Belief, Features 6 Apr 2012

Source: AlterNet. When you look at the history of what we know about the world, you see a noticeable pattern. Natural explanations of things have been replacing supernatural explanations of them. Like a steamroller. Why the Sun rises and sets. Where thunder and lightning come from. Why people get sick. Why people look like their parents. How the complexity of life came into being. I could go on and on. All these things [...]

The Fall of Foolish Faith

Posted by N4CM Belief, Christian Right Watch 12 Mar 2012

Source: HuffPost. I want to talk about a particular group of secularists — scientists — and their interaction with religion. Most scientists prefer to stay out of any conflicts with religion. They don’t want to endanger their sources of research funding and generally just don’t want to be bothered. They have better things to do, or at least they think they do. I want to urge those of you who are not scientists to try to convince [...]

FFRF tells Catholics it’s time to leave the church

Posted by N4CM Belief, News, Top Stories 9 Mar 2012

Source: whyevolutionistrue. Way to go, Freedom from Religion Foundation! Their co-presidents, Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker, have put a full-page ad in today’s New York Times calling for Catholics to do a mass egress (cutely, “exit en mass”) because of the Church’s odious position on reproductive rights. Predictably, there’s a response from the Catholic League’s creepy Bill Donohue, which includes this [...]

An Atheist in Catholic School Wants to Show That He Can Be Charitable, Too

Posted by N4CM Belief, Uncategorized 5 Mar 2012

Source: Friendly Atheist. Here’s the story of a boy named Daniel. He was born into a Catholic family. He is forced to attend Catholic School. He has come to the conclusion that he is an atheist. Recently, Daniel’s school began a fundraiser. In my chat with Daniel, he said the principal rants about how “atheists never give to charity; only Christians do.” I decided I’d try to beat my school in a fundraiser for a secular charity instead of for the church.

Atheism in America

Posted by N4CM Belief, Features 5 Feb 2012

Source: Slate. Point, Texas (pop. 792) is not the easiest place for a single lesbian to raise her child. But neither her sexuality nor her unwed parenthood are enough to make Renee Johnson an American conservative’s worst nightmare. As she explained to me when I met her at Rains County Library, “I’d rather have a big ‘L’ or ‘lesbian’ written across my shirt than a big ‘A’ or ‘atheist’, because people are going to handle it better.”

Student Faces Town’s Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer

Posted by N4CM Belief, Features 28 Jan 2012

Source: The New York Times. She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But 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. A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s [...]

American atheists must define themselves, not be defined by the religious

Posted by N4CM Belief, Opinion 2 Jan 2012

Source: The Washington Post. I am sorry to tell you that this will be my last regular “Spirited Atheist” column, and I want to thank all of you who have followed my essays, including many who have taken the trouble to write me lengthy personal letters on my author Web site. Although I will continue to write occasionally on issues of unusual importance, a weekly column diverts too much time from the research for [...]

Doing Justice To Agnosticism

Posted by N4CM Belief, Features 7 Dec 2011

Source: The Huffington Post. “I was raised among people who knew — who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They had no doubts… In their creed there was no guess — no perhaps.” These words by Robert G. Ingersoll, the celebrated American orator and political thinker, appear in his 1896 essay “Why I Am an Agnostic,” and they help remind us that in the 19th century the [...]