Religious Belief - Network For Church Monitoring

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.

How Religion’s Demand for Obedience Keeps Us in the Dark Ages

Posted by N4CM Belief, Features 30 Mar 2012

Source: AlterNet. For the vast majority of human history, the only form of government was the few ruling over the many. As human societies became settled and stratified, tribal chiefs and conquering warlords rose to become kings, pharaohs and emperors, all ruling with absolute power and passing on their thrones to their children. To justify this obvious inequality and explain why they should reign over everyone else, [...]

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 [...]

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.”

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 [...]

Poland adjusting to more secular age

Posted by N4CM News, Top Stories 28 Dec 2011

Source: The National Catholic Reporter. The traditional primacy of the Roman Catholic church in Poland has been shaken. On Oct. 9, one of every 10 Poles voted for the socially egalitarian and explicitly anticlerical party known as the Palikot Movement, named after founder Janusz Palikot. While politicians generally avoid criticism of the church in a country that is 97 percent Catholic, the Palikot party has already demanded [...]