Criticism Of Religion - Network For Church Monitoring

Apocalypse Soon: Why Are Christians So Obsessed With the End Times?

Posted by N4CM Belief, Features 26 Apr 2012

In the summer of 2010, I saw him several times a week: a portly gentleman, leaning against a pillar in Penn Station and holding out two fistfuls of pamphlets to the disinterested commuters. He wore glasses and earbuds connected to an MP3 player in his coat pocket, and always had a serene, almost bored expression that was in sharp contrast to the urgency of his message. He was one of the devotees of Harold Camping, a formerly obscure Christian [...]

Ophelia Benson: The Trouble with Gods

Posted by N4CM Belief, Opinion 30 Mar 2012

Source: Council for Secular Humanism. It could have been a good idea, the invention of gods. It could have been a way of solidifying thoughts about how humans could be better than they are. It’s an impressive and touching thing about us that we realize we’re not good enough. Gods (or God) could have been a helpful or even inspiring way to conceptualize The Better. But there’s a flaw at the heart of the idea: [...]

Atheism Rising, But God Is Not Dead Yet: 10 Ways Religion Is Changing

Posted by N4CM Belief, Editor's Choice 30 Mar 2012

Source: AlterNet. For most of the 20th century, smart people assumed – with smug certainty and probably more wishful thinking than they’d be willing to admit – that humanity’s long obsession with religion is finally winding down. God is dead – done in at last by the forces of enlightenment and reason. Humanity is now free to chart a new course, without worrying about the Big Bad He-God In the Sky.

In secular Britain, a clash over public prayer

Posted by N4CM News, Top Stories 11 Mar 2012

Source: The Washington Post. Perhaps the locals should have anticipated sparks on a town council stocked not only with a practicing pagan, a staunch atheist and an agnostic former stripper but also two evangelical Christians and a Methodist church organist. But few could have predicted that one small town’s fight over the abolition of Christian prayers at public meetings would escalate into Britain’s own culture wars.

Tragedy of religion stifling science

Posted by N4CM Belief, Opinion 10 Dec 2011

Source: CapeCodOnline.com. It’s almost a cliche nowadays to hear people talk of where the world of computers will be in 50 years. Or where medical science will be. Advances are moving at such a rapid pace that few of us can imagine the technological future even 10 or 20 years from now. But few people realize how much time has been lost and how forces are gathering to slow or stop research that might enhance [...]

How We All Pay For the Huge Tax Privileges Granted to Religion – It’s Time to Tax the Church

Posted by N4CM Belief, Features 16 Dec 2011

Source: AlterNet. Would the world be better off without religion? That was the topic of a recent debate in the NYU Intelligence Squared series. One of the audience questions concerned the enormous wealth hoarded by churches, which Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza defended as follows: I think in the case of the Vatican, the wealth of the Vatican is in priceless treasures, tapestries, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, art.

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 [...]

Why Is Atheism a Bigger Obstacle to Political Office Than Mormonism?

Posted by N4CM Features 11 Nov 2011

Source: AlterNet. When America was founded, it was the first modern nation to throw off the rule of absolute monarchy and prove that democracy was feasible. But at the same time, when America was founded, it was hardly a democracy at all. The vote was denied to women, to millions of enslaved human beings — to everyone except a relatively small number of its citizens. [...]

The state, religion and the need for rational scrutiny

Posted by N4CM Belief, Opinion 24 Dec 2010

Source: ABC “Drum Unleashed”, 24 December 2010. By Dr Russell Blackford. Religious teachings promise us a deeper understanding of reality, more meaningful lives, morally superior conduct, and such benefits as rightness with a Supreme Being or liberation from earthly attachments. One way or another, the world’s religions offer spiritual salvation, or something very like it. [...]

Christopher Hitchens: my hero of 2010

Posted by N4CM Belief, Opinion 1 Dec 2010

A gentleman and a truly formidable debater, Christopher Hitchens is a giant of the mind and a model of courage