Using language apparently borrowed from Dan Dennett’s Breaking The Spell, in which the philosopher encourages his readers to regard religious adherence as a subject that can and should be studied scientifically, the Guardian asks contributors to do the same for the atheist point of view.

Science must consider atheism as naturalistically as it considers religion. The word describes a number of beliefs around which social structures may form, or may not. It clearly isn’t natural or any kind of human universal, since it is unknown in most cultures and at most times. But the same is true of any particular theological belief. They are all equally susceptible to sociological and psychological analysis.

The first two contributors, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (Institute for the Study of Secularism at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA) and Wendy M Grossman (Skeptic Magazine), paint a not unflattering picture of the evidence on the non-religious. Beit-Hallahmi notes that the non-religious are generally “younger, mostly male, with higher levels of education and income, more liberal, but also more unhappy and more alienated from wider society. Such findings have been reported in the US, Australia, and Canada.”

Irreligiosity is tied to greater political liberalism, and to being less prejudiced.

… The claim that atheists are somehow likely to be immoral or dishonest has long been debunked. Studies that looked at readiness to help or honesty showed atheists standing out, not the religious. When it comes to the more serious matter of violence and crime, ever since the field of criminology got started, and data collected of the religious affiliation of criminal offenders, the fact that the unaffiliated and the non-religious had the lowest crime rates has been noted.

Starting in 1925, LM Terman and his colleagues studied 1,528 gifted youth from California with IQ levels higher than 140 who were about 12 years old. Members of this group were followed up throughout life, and were found to be consistently irreligious. Studies on the religiosity of scientists and academics have shown consistently low levels of religiosity, and the prevalence of atheism. Moreover, the more eminent scientists were less religious than others.

… Can we speak about an atheist personality? A tentative psychological profile can be offered. We can say that atheists show themselves to be less authoritarian and suggestible, less dogmatic, less prejudiced, more tolerant of others, law-abiding, compassionate, conscientious, and well-educated. They are of high intelligence, and many are committed to the intellectual and scholarly life.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/11/aetheists-research-scientists

Drawing mainly on research by one Jon Lanman, Wendy Grossman indicates that higher levels of irreligiosity are to be found when people are more “comfortable” and have less reason to start attributing agency and finding Fate where none exists.

[T]he US has massive inequality and a weak welfare state and a very small percentage of (open) non-theists. In the mid-20th century, Scandinavia built a very strong welfare state and now has a high percentage of non-theists.

Strong atheism, however, is a different matter: “Atheism can also be an identity,” [Lanman] said (just as religious beliefs can serve as markers for social groups), “though I wouldn’t call it a religion.” As an ideology, strong atheism tends to emerge under the threat of theocracy. Strong atheism found its public voice in the US under the twin stresses of George W Bush’s second term in office and 9/11′s demonstration of the worst dangers of fundamentalism.

“The UK,” Lanman concluded, “seems right in the middle between Scandinavia and the US.” The UK had Blair, and has blasphemy laws [ed: actually the blasphemy laws per se were abolished in 2008], a growing perception of the dangers of militant Muslims, and increasing numbers of faith schools – “but you don’t have Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee”.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/12/strong-atheism-origin-religion

In light of the BHA’s new annual Shelley Lecture, the first of which was held last week, Andrew Copson writing in the Guardian at the weekend explains why we should remember Percy Shelley and his controversial atheism.

As an Oxford undergraduate in the early 19th century, Percy Bysshe Shelley developed an argument for the non-existence of God. He entitled it The Necessity of Atheism, and 2011 is the bicentenary of his being expelled from the university for printing it.

… Atheists today are too often castigated as materialistic calculators whose lack of spirituality sucks their universe empty of all beauty. Remembering Shelley’s atheism gives us an opportunity to counter this stereotype and to reflect on the aesthetic of enchantment with which a non-theistic world-view can be associated. The works of Shelley join the novels, poems, songs, sculptures, paintings, architecture and plays of generations of godless artists in exposing the straw man of the desiccated rationalist for what it is, and showcasing a humanist vision of life.

More timely is a remembrance of the social and political consequences of Shelley’s argument. In The Necessity of Atheism he reminds us of the mistake that people make when they think that “belief is an act of volition, in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind” and the way that “continuing this mistake they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief of which in its nature it is incapable”. We cannot pillory someone for their disbelief – it is not an area in which choice operates.

Today in Britain, non-religious people are not thrown out of universities because they don’t believe in God, but in other parts of the world many suffer this fate – and worse. There are still places where it is illegal to declare yourself as non-religious on your identity papers or official records.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/02/shelley-the-necessity-of-atheism

Update: Also see a not entirely sympathetic Channel 4 News report.

Christopher Hitchens, oh how little you know. You think that religious people obsess over belief and try to convert atheists, that they evangelise, that they worry about who’s being prayed for. You think that religious people – evidently belying fundamental insecurities about their own faith – worry about whether the prayed-for atheist will respond with a miraculous conversion or die without ever feeling the need to embrace the cosy myth. But you’re wrong, wrong I tell you. Let me explain it all for you in this gossipy article I wrote for the Catholic Herald… which I’ve entitled “Christopher Hitchens has mellowed, but his idea of Christianity is still grossly distorted”, in which I obsess about your beliefs, recite who’s now trying to pray for/convert you or otherwise, and speculate in a roundabout way as to whether or not you’ll recant your atheism.

[... Dr Francis] Collins is the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute; and it is his research which has pioneered the experimental treatment that Hitchens is receiving for his throat cancer. Interestingly, Hitchens, as well as naturally hoping that this treatment will efficiently target the site of his tumour, has become good friends with Collins and has publicly debated religion with him.

The Holy Father, as is generally known, is a Catholic; Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian, and author of The Language of God: A Scientist presents Evidence for Belief; and Hitchens, in case you didn’t know it, is a devout atheist. “Devout” is probably the wrong word but “keen” or “committed” don’t quite convey his evangelical brand of atheism. Some Christians hope that if the experiment, involving Hitchens’s DNA, is effective and he is cured, he will undergo a change of heart. But conversion doesn’t work so straightforwardly; you have to be open to grace at some level and, judging from his public pronouncements, Hitchens has slammed this particular door shut. Yet who am I to judge him? As Carson McCullers once wrote, the heart is a lonely hunter.

What is obvious, though, is that in Hitchens’s case, it is not a question of Christianity having been tried and found wanting: it has simply never been tried – or understood… [blah, blah, blah, Hitchens, prayer, belief, religious language, Hitchens should be prayed for, yadda yadda]

Link: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2011/03/28/christopher-hitchens-has-mellowed-but-his-idea-of-christianity-is-still-grossly-distorted/

Thanks Francis Phillips! That’s really helpful.

Nearly two-thirds of people do not regard themselves as “religious”, a new survey carried out to coincide with the 2011 Census suggests.

The British Humanist Association (BHA), which commissioned the poll, said people often identified themselves as religious for cultural reasons.

The online poll asked 1,900 adults in England and Wales a question which is on this month’s census form.

The Office for National Statistics has defended the wording of the census.

While 61% of the poll’s respondents said they did belong to a religion, 65% of those surveyed answered “no” to the further question: “Are you religious?”

…

Among respondents who identified themselves as Christian, fewer than half said they believed Jesus Christ was a real person who died, came back to life and was the son of God.

…

The chief executive of the BHA, Andrew Copson, is running a national campaign encouraging non-religious people to state their unbelief clearly on their census forms.

He said: “This poll is further evidence for a key message of the Census Campaign – that the data produced by the census, used by local and national government as if it indicates religious belief and belonging, is in fact highly misleading.["]

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12799801

Clergy are to be urged to be more vocal in countering the arguments put forward by a more hard-line group of atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who have campaigned for a less tolerant attitude towards religion.

A report endorsed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warns that the Church faces a battle to prevent faith being seen as “a social problem” and says the next five years are set to be a period of “exceptional challenge”.

It expresses concern that Christians are facing hostility at work and says the Church could lose its place at the centre of public life unless it challenges attempts to marginalise religious belief.

The rallying call comes amid fears that Christians are suffering from an increasing level of discrimination following a series of cases in which they have been punished for sharing their beliefs.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/8305803/Clergy-told-to-take-on-the-new-atheists.html

Of course there is no reflection here in the Telegraph that those “fears” are only that; that the desperate, media-friendly trickle of court cases is being brought by one pressure organisation; and that they keep losing on all substantive points because the far from these hand-picked Christians being discriminated against they are in fact the ones discriminating and that’s why they end up in court in the first place.

Having invited a comedian famous for his clever, awkward and sometimes too-close-to-the-bone humour to present the Golden Globes this year, the ceremony organisers, guests and the world were apparently amazed that Ricky Gervais chose to go with cheeky bawdy British humour, after he delivered a series of ego-puncturing gags which Hollywood seems to have taken to heart. But his relatively innocuous closing joke, “Thank God I’m an atheist”, has also prompted ridiculous questions in the western world’s most religious country.

In the video Piers Morgan uses his CNN show to ask Gervais whether “Thank God” was meant to be offensive, whether Gervais knew it would offend Americans, and – apparently incapable of understanding atheism – whether there’s an afterlife. Gervais responds in the manner of a grouchy, rather more salt of the earth Bertrand Russell.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1XGTrrZjlI (via The Perplexed Observer)

Sholto Byrnes in the New Statesman recognises a degree of religious freedom in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, where even radical Islamic parties pay lip service to the rights of others. But the system is very far from inclusive.

However, this liberty has one major omission. You cannot officially be an atheist in Indonesia. For the constitution also says that “the state shall be based upon belief in the one, supreme God” – although it deliberately doesn’t specify which. This vagueness may sound like the kind of fudge we in Britain, with our traditions of gradualism and compromise, should recognise. But this, too, is limited. Only six religions are recognised – Islam, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. (Judaism, it may be noted, is not listed; but then, according to the World Jewish Congress’s estimate, there are only 25 Jewish people in Indonesia[...])

All this has a consequence: you have to declare your religion on your ID card, and atheism is not an option. In practical terms, most people will choose to enter the religion their families follow, however loosely (it is often not appreciated that for many, especially in urban areas, religion is often much more a badge of cultural identity than a faith). It still means, however, that atheists are having to profess publicly to something they don’t believe in. Their own belief, or lack of belief, cannot be officially acknowledged.

Full article: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/12/religion-indonesia-belief

The deluge of non-stories in the media about imaginary atheists trying to “ban” Christmas continues. Now the Archbishop of Canterbury, seemingly just trying to keep pace with the hysterical tabloid tone of Carey and Sentamu, has joined the fray.

So too has the Rt Rev John Davies, Bishop of the Church in Wales diocese of Swansea and Brecon, who decided to tell his local press that atheists don’t understand the truthful basis of biblical stories. Standing at the bottom of a massive hole he was digging for no good reason, Bishop John Davies said that atheists in the UK make “vociferous outbursts” every Christmas (there’s no citation of any particular atheists, obviously) telling everyone that ”it’s all made up”. The Bishop is of course referring to the annual protests in which atheists yell through megaphones at Christmas shoppers to go home… oh no wait that’s street preachers. Or maybe he’s referring to the way that atheists barge into Christmas grottoes and pull the beards of Santa’s helpers… on no wait, that’s no one. Anyway, according to the Bishop, definitely some atheists, in a mass, organised way which recurs every year, definitely spend the entire Christmas period ripping up Bibles in front of the astonished faces of weeping and persecuted Christians. (Even though the great majority of the country including most atheists do celebrate Christmas in our own way every year, and no one does anything like the above.)

But actually, the Bishop explains, even though “one version of a particular story varies from another” all the biblical stories definitely are true. Not true-true, not historically actually true, his voice echoed from the deepening hole, because  ”in a strict sense, the stories are deemed not to be historically true in each and every detail” but they definitely are true in the sense that they “convey truth, the most profound truth.” So they’re “true“, just not about facts… Blimey, sounds like he should join one of those angry, atheist, Bible-denouncing anti-Christmas campaigns. He might have to start one of his own, obviously.

Cardiff Humanists become the latest secular folk to respond gently that no one is trying to ban Christmas.

Julian Bennett, secretary of Cardiff Humanists, who describe themselves as a group of atheists, agnostics and non-religious free thinkers, said not all atheists were aggressive or calling for Christmas carols to be banned.

He said: “The humanist view is to call for change not through aggression but by peaceful persuasion and democratic means.

“We object to faith schools, for instance, because things like sex education are based on religious beliefs not the best health interests of children.

“But we would never object to people’s right to hold religious beliefs or to celebrate festival like Christmas.

“I have a feeling these comments from the Bishop and the Archbishop could be something to do with falling numbers in churches rather than genuine anger.

“I object to being called part of the ‘aggressive atheist lobby’.

“After centuries of aggressive lobbying by soothsayers, when attempts to convince by rational argument have failed, they have turned to legal prohibitions on protecting themselves from criticism and complain about the freedom of thought exhibited by atheists.

“I consider atheists to be disciplines of integrity and truth, even when the truth is uncomfortable to bear.

“I agree Christmas stories can be charming and contain some element of truth, like many fairy stories, but as atheists we do not venerate Robin Hood as our saviour and await his return, nor do we condemn the Big Bad Wolf for being true to his nature.”

Emma Bryce, spokeswoman for the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS) added: “Christmas is now a festival shared and enjoyed by the majority of the non-religious community, focused around positive messages of love, caring, and goodwill. While the stories presented in churches throughout Advent may well be much-loved and traditional, with no extraordinary evidence backing up the extraordinary claims they describe, we must see them as just that – much loved and traditional stories.”

Full article: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/12/09/bishop-slams-aggressive-atheists-for-not-believing-91466-27793381/

“I believe in God and I’m perfectly intelligent and rational,” says Victoria Coren. Elsewhere in the column, which broadly complains that not enough “cool, brainy people” are on God’s side in public debate, Coren:

• relates that she gabbled when she met the Archbishop of Canterbury
• compares belief in an inexplicable God favourably to belief in the inexplicable iPad
• insinuates that the rule of law is a useless replacement for divine law because of the Twitter Joke Trial
• notes that faith in altruism is only as daft as faith in religion anyway
• atheists offer “nothing” by way of solace or comfort and without religion human life is “no longer sacred” in such a way as to invalidate all sense of value, apparently

Well, if the point was to demonstrate that not enough “cool, brainy people” argue for God, this might be an excellent article.

There is a new [read any Enlightenment history, Victoria?], false distinction between “believers” and “rationalists”. The trickle-down Dawkins effect has got millions of people thinking that faith is ignorant and childish, with atheism the smart and logical position. [No one thought this before Dawkins, obviously.]

I interviewed the comedian Miranda Hart recently. She told me she believes in God but was nervous of being quoted on it.

“It’s scary to say you’re pro-God,” she said. “Those clever atheists are terrifying.”

“Oh, nonsense,” I said. “Let them tell you it’s stupid to believe in something you can’t explain. Then ask them how an iPad works.” [Because electronic engineering is exactly as impenetrable as Divine Mystery.]

… So why do the proselytisers fight so hard to be right? In place of the comfort which faith can provide in the face of death, grief or loneliness, they offer… nothing. They are suspiciously eager to snatch away the consolations of their fellow men. [This being atheism's only possible motivation.]

Why? Because they think religion causes violence? Human nature contains a streak of fear, greed, selfishness and territorialism that must result in a mean level of dissent and bloodshed, with or without the excuse of religious difference. Without religion, human life is no longer sacred – nothing is – so it’s not “logical” to believe we’d be gentler if it disappeared. All we’d have to replace it is a trust in altruism, which is certainly no less naive than believing in God.

So what would that leave, as a moral framework? The law? Do google “Twitter joke trial” before you throw our future behind that. [Oh wow, zing!]

Or is it because some religious arguments are misogynistic or homophobic? Believers can still argue back. [Well, that's fine then, if you can argue back then misogyny and homophobia hardly matter.]

It is not “logical” to imagine that faith could disappear anyway. It is natural to seek hope beyond the trials and finity of existence. If the big religions were destroyed, humanity would simply invent new, smaller, madder ones. Thousands of them. The man who attempts to argue both that religious difference causes violent bloodshed and that the big faiths should be dismantled is therefore being short-sighted, obtuse and not very clever.

Not very clever.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/05/victoria-coren-belief-in-god

Fresh from arguing that science needs more high profile women and skepticism is preaching to the converted, Alom Shaha argues that atheism has a white ethnic bias and needs to take active steps to be more inclusive.

There are issues that black and Asian atheists face that white atheists do not, for example, greater pressure to adhere to the religion of the communities in which they live. … They fear being ostracised from their family and friends, and “not being able to get married”. Sure, there are some white people who might face these same issues, but I would suggest the problem is more widespread in, for example, some Muslim communities than in the typical readership of the Guardian.

These are issues that the white “leadership” of the atheist and sceptic movements have largely ignored because they are not issues that concern them. But these issues should concern all atheists – because if we are to be a “community”, if, as so many of us want, we are to be given the same standing in society as people who identify with a religious group, then we must ensure that black and Asian people are not just made to feel welcome but actively encouraged to join atheist and sceptic movements.

I have been disappointed by the refusal of many atheists and sceptics I know to acknowledge that there is even a problem. Saying “there isn’t a big conspiracy to keep black and Asian people out“, is tragically missing the point.

Simply arguing that black or Asian people are free to go along to gatherings of atheists or sceptics is to ignore an uncomfortable truth: people tend to be more comfortable with people who are like them.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/nov/17/non-white-atheists-exclusion

New Humanist’s Paul Sims replies:

[W]hile he may indeed have a point in terms of numbers, I’m inclined to say he’s being a little harsh on humanist organisations, as well as the white, male “leaders” he identifies. As a publication, New Humanist is slightly different from a group organising meet-ups and talks – we’re not necessarily catering to a “community”, except perhaps for a readership who share common interests – but the concerns of our magazine, as well as the diversity of the people who write for it and the people we meet as a result, hardly suggest that we are inadvertently excluding ethnic minorities. And some of the most committed campaigners I have met have been former Muslims who have first-hand experience of the excesses of religion and possess a frame of reference for their unbelief that is probably lacking in someone such as myself, who has never really had any religious affiliation worthy of the name (the former Catholics I have met tend to be similarly committed).

Full article: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2010/11/are-atheistshumanists-excluding-ethnic.html

The Times Higher Education supplement reviews Mary Warnock’s Dishonest to God: On Keeping Religion out of Politics.

We humanists are materialists, egoists, relativists, nihilists, amoralists, libertines, and no doubt in the privacy of our own homes cannibals and child molesters. For only God stands between humanity and these things.

In reply, the militant wing of secularism talks freely of superstition, ignorance, bigotry, self-deception, stupidity, tribalism and rank hypocrisy. It is not an edifying debate, although sometimes rather fun.

How splendid, then, to find a totally respectful, firm, committed and experienced voice guiding us through the way this issue should be addressed.

… [Mary Warnock's] book is the fruit of long years at the front line.

It is powerful partly because of this, but also because of her great sympathy with the religious spirit, coupled, however, with her iron conviction that it issues no knowledge, no special authority and no particular right to be heard in issues of morals and legislation.

Full review: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=414085&c=2

Monica Shores laments a lack of women’s participation and representation in the growing public face of atheism. Jen McCreight responds that the problem may be more about perception and the media than enthusiastic women atheists per se.

Given the immense harm many organized religions inflict on women through outright violence and institutional oppression, it seems women may have more to gain than men from exiting their faith. Yet no women are currently recognized as leaders or even mentioned as a force within the movement. The lack of lady presence is so visible that Conservapedia commented on it by noting that Dawkins’ website overwhelmingly attracts male visitors.

One study-supported theory is that there simply aren’t as many female atheists as there are male, while another is that new atheism is “off-putting” to women. Earlier this year, journalist Sarah McKenzie suggested that women aren’t socialized to defend their beliefs with the same vigorous and “militant” zeal expected of atheists, and proposed that the movement make space for traditionally feminine characteristics like “story-telling [and] empathy.”

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/11/01/will-new-atheism-make-room-for-women/

Atheists are well aware of this gender disparity and have been actively trying to close the gap. Local organizations are creating more family friendly events to encourage mothers to participate. Popular blogs like Pharyngula (written by a man) and Friendly Atheist (written by a, gasp!, young non-white man) frequently address women’s issues and ask how to make the movement more welcoming. Conference organizers have been recruiting more women as speakers and, thanks to that, women have become better represented as conference attendees. Just looking at my own schedule for the next couple months, I’ve been invited to speak about women and atheism by five different groups so far.

So why the gap?

People like to speculate that women are more inclined to supernatural thinking, hate to be aggressive or are more afraid of leaving community behind. These nonsensical ideas illustrate the true problem: We live in a society where everything is affected by sexism, and the atheist movement is downstream from those effects. So when atheists draw many members from academic and scientific circles, which have their own gender bias issues, we end up being a victim of statistics. What’s more, people in leadership positions tend to be older because they have more experience, so there’s always a bit of a time lag in diverse representation. (Given time, I think we’ll see more and more atheist women in positions of greater visibility, and I’d hazard a guess that one will have a best seller soon enough). This problem is compounded when the media fails to mention deserving women atheists–even in articles in feminist publications asking where all the atheist women are. Screaming “Right here!” only does so much.

It’s irritating when the media makes it seem like the atheist movement has a “woman problem.” For one thing, my experience in the movement has shown atheists to be far less sexist than the general population. It’s not surprising–humanism is explicitly supportive of gender equality, while many mainstream religions are extraordinarily anti-women. There’s always room to improve, mainly because we’re human, too, but we’re actively working towards those improvements.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/11/03/where-are-all-the-atheist-women-right-here/

In his writings about his diagnosis, Hitchens has asserted: “To the dumb question, why me? The cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: ‘Why not.’ ” Hitchens concedes that the dumb question “is bound to occur” — but not for long. He says he decided on his beliefs a long time ago, well before he became ill.

“I’m here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn’t make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply,” he says. “I mean, most human beings who’ve ever been born would have been dead long before they reached my age. And I would think in most of the rest of the world — well, I know it — is still true. So to be relatively healthy at 62 is to be dealt a pretty good hand by the cosmos, which doesn’t know I’m here — and won’t notice when I’m gone. So that seemed the only properly stoic attitude to take.”

Since Hitchens got sick, there has been a whole movement of prayer around him, including “Everybody pray for Hitchens day.” When asked what he makes of it, he said there are three reasons why people do it “apart from affection for me, which of course I shouldn’t be churlish about.”

He says his readers are responding and reaching out. And that “has meant quite a deal to me, made me feel I haven’t wasted the years I have had,” he says. Or, he says, it’s a simple wish he gets better, “which again, I don’t want to quarrel with.” Or, finally, it’s a wish that he reconcile himself with the supernatural or divine, something that he calls “a large counterfeit.”

“I wrote back to some of the people — some of them in holy orders who are running registered organizations: ‘When you say, “Oh pray for me,” do you mind if I ask, “What for?” ‘ A lot of them said, quite honestly, ‘Not really for your recovery, but that you see the error of your ways.’ Now I find that not as easy to be graceful about, because though it’s put in a nice way, it’s part of a phenomenon that I’ve always thought of as very disgusting, which is the belief of the religious — which they keep expressing — that surely now you’re dying, your fears will overcome your reason. I hope I don’t have to underline what’s horrible about that…”

Full interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130917506

The Economist reviews A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment, by Philipp Blom.

ATHEISM is a hot topic. In recent years writers from Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett to Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have penned popular tracts advancing the cause of godlessness. But, as the Bible reminds us, there is nothing new under the sun. Philipp Blom’s latest book tells the story of a set of remarkable individuals on the radical fringes of the 18th-century European Enlightenment, whose determinedly atheistic and materialist philosophies denied the existence of God or the soul. Echoing ancient thinkers such as Democritus and Lucretius, they held ideas that were to prove too revolutionary even for a revolutionary age.

It is the story of the scandalous Paris salon run by Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach, a philosophical playground for many of the greatest thinkers of the age. Its members included Denis Diderot (most famous as the editor of the original encyclopedia, but, Mr Blom argues, an important thinker in his own right), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of romanticism, and the baron himself; even David Hume, a famous Scottish empiricist, paid the occasional visit.

A philosophy grew up around the baron’s generously stocked table that denied religious revelation and shunned Christian morality, embracing instead the primal passions (the fundamental motives, said the philosophes, for human behaviour) and cool reason (which could direct the passions, but never stand against them). They dreamt of a Utopia built on pleasure-seeking, rationality and empathy. Their ideal nation would leave no room for what they saw as the twisted ethical code of Christianity, which they argued prized suffering and destructive self-repression.

Continues: http://www.economist.com/node/17358838

“New Atheism” is often dismissed as a publishing phenomenon even by those whose books contributed to the trend. Victor Stenger, on the other hand, offers a characterisation that is possibly more substantive than just being louder.  ”Atheists”, he says, “have long been telling us that we can be good without God. The new atheism says that we can be better without God.”

Belief in ancient myths joins with other negative forces in our society to keep most of the world from advancing scientifically, economically, and socially at a time when a rapid advancement in these areas is absolutely essential for the survival of humanity. We are now probably only about a generation or two away from the catastrophic problems that are anticipated from global warming, pollution, and overpopulation. We can expect flooded coastal areas, severe climatic changes, epidemics caused by overcrowding, and starvation for much of humanity. Such disasters are predicted to generate worldwide conflict on a scale that could exceed that of the great twentieth-century wars, possibly with nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable nations and terrorist groups.

This is a time, if there ever was one, when science is needed to lead the way. It won’t do so by sitting back and letting irrationality rule the day. And make no mistake about it; the irrationality we see on today’s political scene, as exemplified by the Tea Party, is fueled by the irrationality of religion.

It’s time for secularists to stop sucking up to Christians — and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and any others who claim they have some sacred right to decide what kind of society the rest of us must live in–what a human being can do with her own body.

Continues: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/why-religion-should-be-co_b_775163.html

The atheist billboard that you can't see in Russia

The Moscow city authorities have turned down an application from an atheist organization to erect a series of billboards quoting the Russian constitution.

Zdravomyslie, an organization that works to protest violations of the principal of the separation of church and state, filed an application with the Moscow Advertisement, Information and City Appearance Committee in September to put up ten billboards showing the quote: “Religious associations are separate from the state and equal before the law. – Constitution of Russia” against a plain white backdrop. But on October 5, the committee sent back a letter saying the request had been denied.

While no official explanation for the rejection was given in the letter, a press release from Zdravomyslie said that a member of the committee had told the foundation during unofficial talks that civil servants had found the text to be “provocational.”

In their press release, Zdravomyslie goes on to accuse the Moscow city authorities of lobbying in favor of the interests of religious organizations, and links this with the committee’s refusal to allow the foundation to erect the billboards. In particular, they pointed to mayoral deputy Sergei Baydakov, who has been awarded for his service to the Russian Orthodox Church. According to Zdravomyslie, Baydakov has proposed spending millions of rubles from the city budget on “state-church events.”

Continues: http://www.theotherrussia.org/2010/10/19/moscow-rejects-ad-quoting-constitutional-freedom-of-religion/

Last Monday, I delivered an atheist “sermon” from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey. It was surprising enough that the chaplain of Westminster School had invited me to give a “thought for the day” to the assembled students, even more so when he suggested I talked about why I was an atheist.

The fact that this sounds strange, shocking even, tells us something important about how atheism is now perceived, and its relationship to faith. The problem is that while the word atheist itself means nothing more than “not-theist”, it seems that for many, “a” stands for anti.

Of course, in one sense, anyone who believes anything can be described as being anti what they don’t believe. But, for instance, we would not usually call a Christian an anti-Jew, or a Muslim an anti-Hindu. Why not? Because being anti suggests more than just disagreement; it suggests hostility, active dislike, the desire to eliminate the thing one is against. That’s why anti-capitalists are rightly called, because they don’t just disagree with capitalism, they want to destroy it.

If being an atheist meant being anti-theist, then I would not be one. I am an anti-dogmatist, an anti-fundamentalist, yes. But I have no hostility to theism as such, and have no desire to strip all theists of their faith. Of course I think theists are mistaken, but no one should be automatically hostile to everyone they disagree with. Hostility should be reserved for the pernicious, the wicked and the harmful.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/17/atheist-sermon-westminster-abbey

Sue Blackmore on a recent experience at a christening service.

A charming elderly gentleman, whom my parents had long known, proceeded to the lectern to lead us in prayer. I wish I’d paid more attention, for I cannot now remember how he led up to the fateful words asking God to help us in the fight against “the rise of secularism and the aggressive atheists”.

“He’s talking about me,” I thought. I don’t mean to be aggressive, and I don’t believe aggression is called for, but I have certainly been dubbed one of those aggressive atheists before now. So it’s to be a fight, is it? With us secularists as the “forces of evil”, the “wiles of the devil”. Are we to be countered with armour, breastplates, shields and swords?

This seemed to be the gist of the service. Coffee and tea being served in the smart new kitchen corner, I took my chance to ask him what he meant. And he meant it as a fight all right. But the really scary thing was what he thought we wicked secularists were up to – we apparently want to prevent him worshipping, destroy his faith and banish Christianity from the face of the earth. I explained that I don’t want to stop him worshipping or destroy his faith. As a secularist, I am quite happy if people carry on with their religious practices as long as these do not give them special privileges in the affairs of state. As a humanist, I think we should rely on ourselves, not on an invented god. As an atheist, I would be delighted if people stopped believing in their various gods, and stopped believing their religion was right and everyone else’s wrong. But I do not want to fight them over it unless they try to impose it upon the rest of us.

All this left me wondering just what I would fight over. I think faith schools are an abuse of children’s precious minds and the last thing we need is more of them; I don’t think bishops should have seats in the House of Lords. Unlike some humanists, I think we should follow the French and ban the burqa.

But really fight?

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/14/atheism-fighting-talk-in-church

There’s a promising tagline about morality transcending religious belief. But then Lucia Hudson, former Jesuit-trained convert to Judaism, explains that in the debate between religion and atheism, it needn’t be the case that either side will win as such, and even if we can explain the universe entirely without God technically the model could still be wrong so we could still believe, and believing in God is like looking at a rainbow times a million (you definitely wouldn’t get it if you don’t believe) and if only people of all religions and beliefs could stop trying to outdo each other, because they’re all the same really, except that the Torah is better than any other book and Judaism is more alive and more timely than any other religion, and atheism might imply moral relativism which is bad.

The faultline is deepening between those who see themselves as having a faith and those who do not. And it is deepening in part because of a mistaken perception one side has of the other: that only one world view can prevail. We must challenge the assumption that one side has to be wrong for the other side to be right.

I converted to Judaism after being brought up a Catholic, educated by French Jesuits in Paris. My religion may have changed, but my faith in God has provided a fixed point, as has my faith in the power of reason and choice. I was not driven away from Roman Catholicism, but was drawn to Judaism, especially Liberal Judaism, its blend of tradition and modernity, its elegant mix of questing and questioning.

Far from seeing that it was a choice between the two, I spotted similarities, much to the surprise of my rabbinic board…

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/oct/13/dont-let-dogma-divide-us

Andrew Brown seems to revel in Václav Havel making a speech about atheism, which isn’t really about atheism but about greed.

Václav Havel made a perfectly extraordinary speech yesterday, condemning ours as “the first atheist civilisation”, which “has lost its connection with the infinite and with eternity”.

Havel is not often thought of as a defender of religion, and the Czech republic is by some measures the most completely dechristianised part of Europe. But he means by atheism the kind of insatiable proud greed which mashes both interior and exterior landscapes into something as homogenous as mechanically recovered chicken. It is a vision of the consumer society as hell…

If you must: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/oct/13/religion-atheism

Also see: Havel’s speech.