Merry Christmas, Dear Atheist (and Free Mark Steyn!, too)

From Albert Mohler:

Richard Dawkins appears quite comfortable with his status as the world's most influential apostle of atheism. He can rest his atheist laurels on the reputation of his best-selling book, The God Delusion, and his incessant advocacy of atheism in the media worldwide. To date, Professor Dawkins has demonstrated a take-no-prisoners approach to pressing his case, arguing that parents who inculcate religious beliefs within their own children are guilty of a form of child abuse.

And yet, it seems that Dawkins now wants to call himself a "cultural Christian." The BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] reports that Dawkins now wants the traditions of cultural Christianity and plans to sing Christmas carols this season "along with everybody else." Now, why would an atheist want to sing Christmas carols?. . .

Read it all.
H/t to The WebElf Report. And check out their new blog, Free Mark Steyn! As Binks says:

Why this blog? I’m defending Mr. Mark Steyn and his right to say stuff, not every single thought he ever had or wrote or said. Don’t know the guy, yet I’ve read (and enjoyed) the hateful and narrow-minded Islamophobical screed America Alone, and many other of his columns, comments, videos, and suchlike– and actually wrote to The Steyn himselfs on certain aspects of the AA book I disagreed with. No doubt he’ll address my concerns in an upcoming abjcct apology edition of the book, over which I demand complete editorial control, including the cover art, dedication, pagination, font, and paper-quality.

Our freedoms are under attack, and this is the thin edge of the wedge, and a foretaste of more and worse to come. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Just saying, that’s all.

Sunday school for atheists

From Time:

On Sunday mornings, most parents who don't believe in the Christian God, or any god at all, are probably making brunch or cheering at their kids' soccer game, or running errands or, with luck, sleeping in. Without religion, there's no need for church, right?

Maybe. But some nonbelievers are beginning to think they might need something for their children. "When you have kids," says Julie Willey, a design engineer, "you start to notice that your co-workers or friends have church groups to help teach their kids values and to be able to lean on." So every week, Willey, who was raised Buddhist and says she has never believed in God, and her husband pack their four kids into their blue minivan and head to the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, Calif., for atheist Sunday school.

An estimated 14% of Americans profess to have no religion, and among 18-to-25-year-olds, the proportion rises to 20%, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies. The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. "It's important for kids not to look weird," says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it's O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.

The pioneering Palo Alto program began three years ago, and like-minded communities in Phoenix, Albuquerque, N.M., and Portland, Ore., plan to start similar classes next spring. The growing movement of institutions for kids in atheist families also includes Camp Quest, a group of sleep-away summer camps in five states plus Ontario, and the Carl Sagan Academy in Tampa, Fla., the country's first Humanism-influenced public charter school, which opened with 55 kids in the fall of 2005. . .

Atheist parents appreciate this nurturing environment. That's why Kitty, a nonbeliever who didn't want her last name used to protect her kids' privacy, brings them to Bishop's class each week. After Jonathan, 13, and Hana, 11, were born, Kitty says she felt socially isolated and even tried taking them to church. But they're all much more comfortable having rational discussions at the Humanist center. "I'm a person that doesn't believe in myths," Hana says. "I'd rather stick to the evidence."

Read it all.

Atheists host pornographic Christian art exhibit

From the Creative Minority Report:

. . . It's an odd thing to be so pushy about a negative which is what atheism is, though. The International Federation of Atheists [Federación Internacional de Ateos (FIDA)] is a group of atheists and they do what it seems atheists do -which is to speak incessantly of religion.

I wonder what atheists talk about. Do they whisper sweet nothingness into one another's ears? Or do they always speak of those things in which they do not believe. There are any number of things in which I don't believe including Bigfoot but I don't start a group called the International Federation of Exclusively Smallfeet. It's odd how people rally around a banner of negation. Atheism is not a philosophy on life.

It seems to me completely silly to announce (and they always do) that you are an atheist. There are many things that I am not. I have never announced that I am not a Buddhist. Or a vegetarian. I would just typically say, "I am a Catholic" or "Is anyone gonna' eat that last cheeseburger?"

But anyway the International Federation of Atheists announced this week it will hold the first Council of Atheists in Toledo, Spain, during which it will present a pornographic exhibit entitled Sanctorum, which features images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints.

Organizers said the event will be held in the old church of San Vicente of Toledo, which is now administered by the Toledo Art Circle. The first Council of Atheists will be held December 7-9.

Rather odd. A bunch of people who supposedly want nothing to do with religion going to see an exhibit about religion. I suppose they want attention, the poor things. If they would just become Christians they'd realize that Someone is paying quite close attention and they wouldn't have to be so outrageous and silly.

If only all Christians would get this obsessed with religion the world might be a better place.

Read it all.

Rational Atheism: An open letter to Messrs. Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens

From Michael Shermer at Scientific American.com:

Since the turn of the millennium, a new militancy has arisen among religious skeptics in response to three threats to science and freedom: (1) attacks against evolution education and stem cell research; (2) breaks in the barrier separating church and state leading to political preferences for some faiths over others; and (3) fundamentalist terrorism here and abroad. Among many metrics available to track this skeptical movement is the ascension of four books to the august heights of the New York Times best-seller list—Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006), Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great (Hachette Book Group, 2007) and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)—that together, in Dawkins’s always poignant prose, “raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral and intellectually fulfilled.” Amen, brother.

Whenever religious beliefs conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, we must respond with appropriate aplomb. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about irrational exuberance. I suggest that we raise our consciousness one tier higher for the following reasons.

1. Anti-something movements by themselves will fail. . .

. . . 3. Rational is as rational does. If it is our goal to raise people’s consciousness to the wonders of science and the power of reason, then we must apply science and reason to our own actions. It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind. . .

. . . 5. Promote freedom of belief and disbelief. A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe. . .

Of course, the person most quoted in the article is Martin Luther King, Jr., especially in invoking the "golden rule" to everyday life (something atheists usually seem to assume is a given). I always wonder where atheists really think this anti-self-interest idea came from if not from a higher being (aka God). But I learned a while ago that atheism is almost as strong a faith as theism, but with a higher dose of frustration and hopelessness, so I leave them to it. Read it all.