| Atheism, Not God, is Odd Where Do Atheists Come From? Editorial: Time to accept that atheism, not God, is odd. HERE's a fact to flatter the unbelievers among you: the bright young things at the University of Oxford are among the most godless groups ever studied in the UK. Of 728 students surveyed in 2007, 48.9 per cent claimed not to believe in any god, with 49.6 per cent claiming no religious affiliation. And while a very small number of Britons typically label themselves as " atheist " or " agnostic " (most surveys put it at about 5 per cent), an astonishing 57.3 per cent of the Oxford sample did. This may come as no surprise. After all, atheism is the natural stance of the educated and the informed, is it not? It is only to be expected that Oxford students should be wise to what their own professor Richard Dawkins calls " self-indulgent, thought-denying skyhookery " - and others call " faith " . The old Enlightenment caricature, it seems, is true after all: where Reason reigns, God retires. Of course, things are never quite that simple. Within the sample, for instance, the postgraduates (that is, the even-better educated) were notably more religious than the undergraduates, in terms of both belief in God and self-description. Although the greater number of non-Europeans in the postgraduate population is almost certainly a significant factor here, evidence from elsewhere backs the idea that there is no straightforward relationship between atheism and education. Let's look at some results from the World Values Survey, an international attempt to assess the global state of socio-cultural, moral, religious and political values. The 2005 results show that while there is a clear positive correlation between education and lack of belief in God, the effect is slightly weaker, not stronger, among those with a university education (14.8 per cent were non-believers) compared with those whose highest attainment was secondary level (17.2 per cent). What is more, the survey shows a far stronger correlation between education and certain " irrational " beliefs: for example, only 29.6 per cent of those without even an elementary education believe in telepathy, compared with 51.8 per cent of people with degree-level education. |
| священник Олег Мумриков Скачать epub pdf В рецензии преподавателя Московской духовной академии священника Олега Мумрикова на книгу известного английского зоолога и этолога Ричарда Докинза «Бог как иллюзия» рассматрены одиозные и подчас кощунственные утверждения автора книги, не поленившегося бросить ещё один камень злословия в сторону христианской религии. В конце прошлого года на русском языке вышла в свет очередная книга известного английского зоолога и этолога Ричарда Докинза (Clinton Richard Dawkins, род. в 1941 г.) «Бог как иллюзия» («The God delusion», 2006), по сути, являющаяся продолжением серии других его научно-популярных бестселлеров («Эгоистичный ген», «Слепой часовщик», «Восхождение на пик невероятного» и др.). Публицистика Докинза, регулярно издаваемая на многие европейские языки, посвящена обоснованию и популяризации атеистической интерпретации дарвиновской теории эволюции и естественного отбора. Стремительное нарастание «мировоззренческой составляющей» в трудах известного британского ученого нетрудно проследить от одной книги к другой. Если в «Эгоистичном гене» автор лишь мимоходом замечает: «Нам теперь нет нужды обращаться к суевериям, когда мы сталкиваемся с извечными проблемами: существует ли смысл жизни? Для чего мы живем? Что есть человек?» («The Selfish Gene», 1976) 1 , то последняя работа, состоящая из десяти глав, представляет собой попытку построения «целостного мировоззрения» современного атеиста, своего рода «учебника основного богословия наоборот». На страницах объемного труда регулярно встречаются не только едкие высказывания о религии (в первую очередь о христианстве), но и откровенное кощунство. Сам автор заявляет, что не имеет намерения кого-либо оскорблять, однако оставляет за собой право, «сняв белые перчатки», жестко иронизировать, так как не видит принципиальной разницы между религиозными убеждениями и политическими идеологиями. А в полемике с последними, как известно, такой тон и стиль считаются вполне традиционными и допустимыми. |
| Two major atheist groups, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science and the Center for Inquiry, have announced that they will be merging into one organization, with a mission to promote the continued ascent of secularism in America. " Secularism is on the ascendency in the United States and beyond. Science has proven to be the engine of human progress. Bringing more resources and ambition to promoting these forces of reason is what this merger is about, " explained Robyn Blumner, currently the president & CEO of RDFRS. A statement released Thursday revealed that the new organization will bear the name of the Center for Inquiry, while the RDFRS will be one of its divisions. Blumner will be appointed CEO of the combined entity on Jan. 25, while Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and atheist author, will serve as a member of the CFI board of directors. Dawkins explained that he is very pleased with the merger. " CFI is the biggest player in the secular/non-religious/skeptical world, and I like to hope that RDFRS will have something to add to its already flourishing enterprise. In turn, among our projects which will benefit from a larger team of professionals are Openly Secular and the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science, " Dawkins said. " I look forward to adding my voice to CFI's focus on promoting secular humanism and fighting the proliferation of pseudoscience. " Ronald A. Lindsay, currently president & CEO of CFI, will retain the title of president until the merger is complete, and also spoke of his enthusiasm for the merger. " Both organizations share a vital common mission, and together we can accomplish much more. And, of course, CFI looks forward to the benefit of close collaboration with Richard Dawkins, indisputably one of the preeminent public intellectuals of our time, " Lindsay said. Several national surveys have documented the rise of people identifying themselves as non-religious in America, with a Barna Group study in 2015 revealing that one in four unchurched adults in the U.S. now identify as either atheist or agnostics. |
| New atheist ads go head-to-head with Bible, Quran November 9, 2010 The Stiefel Freethought Foundation and The American Humanist Association, which has run ads critical of God and the national motto, launched a nationwide campaign Tuesday that directly challenges the Bible and the Quran. In its largest marketing endeavor, the groups plan to spend at least toward television, newspaper and bus ads promoting secular humanist values by putting them head-to-head with what the group calls " biblical morality and fundamentalist Christianity. " Last year, AHA ran “No God? No Problem!” bus ads for its national holiday ad campaign. But this time around, the group is taking it a step further to show " that secular humanist values are consistent with mainstream America and that fundamentalist religion has no right to claim the moral high ground. " " While the Bible may contain some valuable lessons, it has messages on hate and war. It teaches hate and religious bigotry. It presents values that are the antithesis of American self-reliance, individual liberty and equality before the law, " AHA Executive Director Roy Speckhardt said Tuesday at a press conference announcing the campaign. The latest atheist ad campaign takes on moral topics including women, slavery, war, homosexuality, and punishment by comparing verses from the Bible and Quran with quotes from AHA or humanist figures. It then invites viewers to " Consider Humanism. " One ad on homosexuality juxtaposes scripture from Leviticus that calls the act of a man lying with another man " detestable, " with an AHA resolution affirming " sexual equality " and the legalization of same-sex marriage. One video ad features the renowned atheist Richard Dawkins giving the humanist take on intelligence. Responding to a Bible verse from Proverbs 3:5, which calls on believers to trust in the Lord and not lean on their own understanding, Dawkins says that belief should be supported by " evidence and logic " and not by " tradition, authority or revelation. " |
| How dare God disagree with Richard Dawkins SOURCE: The Telegraph By Charles Moore Richard Dawkins John Henry Newman wrote the greatest spiritual autobiography in English, his Apologia. In it, he recalls that, when young, he lived under the ''detestable doctrine’’ of predestination. He believed he was saved, which made him ignore everyone else and ''rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator’’. The great atheist Richard Dawkins seems, as a boy, to have had a similar cast of mind. Unlike Newman, however, he quickly discarded the idea of God. Which left only one absolute and luminously self-evident being – Richard Dawkins. Or, to give him his full, hereditary name, Clinton Richard Dawkins. The Clinton is because Richard’s great-great-great-grandfather married the daughter of the British general Henry Clinton, who helped lose us America. As befits a great expert on genes, Dawkins is extremely interested in his own ancestry. His autobiography reproduces his family tree, showing, you might say, the origin of his species. It culminates in the name – printed, uniquely, in bold capitals: (CLINTON) RICHARD DAWKINS. Dawkins has a generous self-centredness. Everything associated with him is blessed – his parents for giving birth to him, Ali, the ''loyal’’ family servant in colonial Africa, and Balliol College, Oxford, which had the good fortune to admit several generations of Dawkins men. When he admires others, one is made to feel how lucky they are. After his friend the scientist Mike Cullen died, Dawkins delivered his eulogy. It is beautiful, thinks its author: ''I almost wept when I spoke that eulogy in Wadham chapel, and I almost wept again just now when rereading it 12 years later’. Although his politics are theoretically of the Left, his mindset is imperial. As he wrote, in an earlier work quoted here (Dawkins quotes Dawkins as often as Jesus quotes the Old Testament): ''I was all but born with a pith helmet on my head.’’ This is attractive, because he dislikes political correctness. He is breezily at ease with mild paedophilia at prep school, and chortles away with anecdotes about (non-paedophilic) masters called things like Bunjy, Bufty, Boggy and Snappy. He rightly admires eccentricity and rightly associates it with private education. There is something marvellous about a book published in 2013 so old-fashioned that it ends a chapter with the resounding sentence: ''Oundle beckoned.’’ |
| Richard Dawkins Loses Debate Against Former Anglican Head Rowan Williams at Cambridge University (FULL VIDEO) admin 06 February 2013 Former Archbishop of Cantebury Rowan Williams (right) and atheist scholar Richard Dawkins pose for a photograph outside Clarendon House at Oxford University, before their debate in the Sheldonian theatre in Oxford, central England, Feb 23 (Reuters/Andrew Winning) The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, defeated prominent atheist professor, Richard Dawkins, in a debate at the University of Cambridge in England on Thursday night, as a vote taken at the conclusion of the debate ruled that religion does have a place in the 21st century. The debate motion that “religion has no place in the 21st Century” was well-defeated at the event held in front of an audience of about 800 people, mostly students, at the Cambridge Union Society’s chambers, according to the U.K.’s Independent newspaper. Dawkins lost the debate by 324 votes to 136, as he failed to convince the house that religion has no place. Here is a video recording of the Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams debate at Cambridge University “Religion has always been a matter of community building, a matter of building relations of compassion, fellow-feeling and, dare I say it, inclusion,” Williams, who stepped down as the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion on Dec. 31, said in his address. “The notion that religious commitment can be purely a private matter is one that runs against the grain of religious history.” Williams pointed out that respect for human life and equality was inherent in all organized religion. “The very concept of human rights has profound religious roots… The convention of human rights would not be what it is were it not for the history of philosophical religious debate.” Dawkins, who described himself as a “cultural Anglican,” said if he was a cultural Muslim, “I would have something to say about that faith’s appalling attitude to women and various other moral points.” |
| On Atheistic Fanaticism A Typical Attack There are different ways to talk about religion and atheism. A deep, thorough discussion is possible, and I have had occasion to encounter serious, thoughtful atheists who are sincerely aspiring towards an honest and independent judgment. I am genuinely indebted to certain atheistic writers for helping me to acquire a most valuable habit: that of thought. However, a serious discussion about serious questions is often replaced by highfalutin propaganda designed for an audience that is ill-informed and, more regrettably, intellectually lazy. Both believers and atheists can become prone to such propaganda; it is harmful, first of all, in that it encourages and forms a habit of intellectual laziness and dishonesty. In this article I would like to consider one of the clichés of atheist propaganda. A commonplace of this propaganda is the referral to crimes committed under the banner of religion: have a look, they say, at the madness to which faith in God leads. Therefore, this faith itself is foolish and harmful. This argument, which is repeated constantly, can be found in Richard Dawkins’ recent book, The God Delusion, which “has had an enormous sales success” according to the BBC website. The arguments that Dawkins puts forward are wholly typical; therefore I will use his book to reply to one of the most typical atheistic arguments. Dawkins writes: “In January 2006 I presented a two-part television documentary on British television (Channel Four) called Root of All Evil? From the start, I didn’t like the title and fought it hard. Religion is not the root of all evil, for no one thing is the root of all anything. But I was delighted with the advertisement that Channel Four put in the national newspapers. It was a picture of the Manhattan skyline with the caption ‘Imagine a world without religion.’ What was the connection? The twin towers of the World Trade Center were conspicuously present. “Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as ‘Christ-killers,’ no Northern Ireland ‘trouble,’ no ‘honour killings,’ no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money (‘God wants you to give till it hurts’). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it.” |
| Atheism Becoming the New Religion--Professor Warns CAPE TOWN, South Africa Carver Yu, president and professor in dogmatics at the China Graduate School of Theology in Hong KongPhoto: The Christian Post/Hudson Tsuei. Evangelical Christians heard the call on Monday, October 18, 2010 to be guardians of the truth in the face of widespread indifference to religion and the “denial” of Scripture within parts of the church. 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.” He said the recent advertising campaign by Richard Dawkins and other atheists on London buses was a perfect example of the “enthusiastic zeal” with which atheists were campaigning against Christianity and religion. “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.” Yu was addressing more than 4,000 evangelical leaders from around the world at Cape Town 2010, the Third Lausanne Congress on world evangelization taking place this week in the South African city. Also taking to the podium was Michael Herbst, researcher in evangelism and church development. He warned that the decline of faith among parents was leading to a whole generation of children in Germany growing up with an “atheist mindset” and the belief that “faith doesn’t matter.” He noted that the idea of a “singular truth” and monotheism had become unpopular and were widely regarded as dangerous, arrogant and potentially violent. “Everything is relative now except for this one new and ultimate truth – that there is no singular truth,” he said. " All those professing a singular truth should be silent in a tolerant world.” Os Guinness, co-founder of The Trinity Forum, echoed his sentiments. He said that the biblical view of truth had become “obscene to modern minds” and was being taken by many to be exclusive, intolerant and divisive. |
| Creationism increasingly proving to be good science Satellite view of the earth. Having a minor in biology, I have maintained an interest in earth sciences. Following are insights from keen scientific minds on the subject. There are several scientific societies made up of members with advanced degrees from prestigious institutions. " I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist " by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek quotes some of these scholars. In this worthy read many scientists speak on the topic of origins. They range from creationists to theists to atheists. Note these insights by them on the topic of the Teleological Argument. " Telos " is Greek for design. Isaac Newton wrote, " This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. " Cosmologist Ed Harrison said, " The fine-tuning of the universe proves prima facie evidence of deistic design. " Microbiologist Chandra Wickramasing admits Darwinists are acting on blind faith when it comes to spontaneous generation of life and observed, " The emergence of life from a primordial soup on the Earth is merely an article of faith that scientists are finding hard to shed. Indeed all attempts to create life from non-life, starting with Pasteur, have been unsuccessful. " Einstein said, " God doesn't play dice with the universe. " Phillip Gold, referring to the orderly design of the universe concluded, " God plays Scrabble. " Though not a scientist, former astronaut John Glenn looked out of the space shuttle Discovery and remarked, " To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible. " Michael Denton, a respected atheist adds, " The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle. " Design indicates a designer. Consider the design of a single one-cell amoeba. Darwinist Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University, acknowledges the message found in just the cell nucleus of a tiny amoeba is more that the 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica combined. The entire amoeba has as much information in its DNA as 1,000 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica. That is detail intricate design yet naturalistic evolutionists claim it came about by spontaneous generation. |
| Atheist Richard Morgan Finds God by Following Richard Dawkins " Forum/Православие.Ru Atheist Richard Morgan Finds God by Following Richard Dawkins " Forum By Eryn Sun Post Correspondent Three years later and still going strong, one man continues to prove to atheists that his conversion was not a “temporary brain infraction.” Richard Morgan Having been through his share of religious inquiry at a young age, Morgan realized that he was constantly in search of something, whether it be spiritual or not. Embracing answers in whatever shape they took, he found himself a Mormon at one point in his life after meeting two Mormon missionaries. But after becoming a missionary, he began to have some serious doubts about his beliefs, which later caused him to abandon that religion altogether. Blindly searching still for something to hold on to, Morgan shared in his interview, “I was aware that probably much more than seeking God I was seeking a social context where I would be accepted. I think basically all of us deep down, we’re all looking to be accepted in some way or another.” Having grown out of the need for that kind of moral support however as he aged, Morgan one day began to read Dawkins’ book, The Blind Watchmaker which revolutionized his life and made sense of everything he had been experiencing. The book made one thing clear: There was nothing to look for, so stop looking and get on with your life. “This was a real epiphany experience… to realize of course all those years of searching for something spiritual or God-like were bound to be completely frustrating because God didn’t exist. “I didn’t feel like I became an atheist, the feeling was more that I realized I always had been,” expressed Morgan. “I had a feeling that I never actually believed in God but I was looking for some unhealthy psychological reason [to believe]… coming out as an atheist was really a hallelujah experience for me.” Morgan’s interest in evolution increased dramatically after reading the book, redirecting his attention towards understanding the nature of living things around him more than trying to understand things that were above. |
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