A new movie starring Dawkins and Krauss

A new movie, “The Unbelievers” (Facebook page here) follows Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss around the world as they promote science and reason and go after religion at the same time.  According to a post at the Richard Dawkins Foundation, the movie includes, among others, these talking heads: Ricky Gervais Woody Allen Cameron Diaz Stephen […]

Atheism grows on campus

Just a quick but heartening note from the airport: a new article in Religion Dispatches, “Are atheists the new campus crusaders?”, discusses the growing influence of the secular movement on American college campuses. It highlights the Secular Student Alliance, but also mentions the Richard Dawkins Foundation, the Center for Inquiry, and the Secular Coalition for […]

Jesuit college teaches atheism!

Well, as reader Diane G. told me when she sent me this link, “Don’t get your hopes up.” And indeed, although, as the Washington Post reports, the Jesuit-run Regis College at the University of Toronto is starting a new course, “Responding to 21st-Century Atheism,” it isn’t all it appears to be. (Why are Jesuits running […]

Heartening debate about atheism in the New York Times

I think this is a sign that atheism is becoming more accepted, for I can’t imagine a piece like the one I’m about to describe being published fifteen years ago. Three days ago, the “Room for debate” section of the New York Times published a series of six short pieces under the title “Is atheism […]

An increasingly common argument of religionists and faitheists

As science advances at the expense of religion, the faithful evolve new strategies to keep to the trenches and avoid a retreat. One of these runs something like this (not a literal quote; I’m confecting the argument): “The New Atheist accusation that religion rests on literal beliefs is bunk. Dawkins and all you miltant atheists […]

Pascal’s Wager comes around again

There’s a new “Note to atheists” by Sidney Callahan in the National Catholic Review online. Callahan is not as critical of atheists as even some other atheists are (viz., Julian Baggini or Alain de Botton), but at the end she brings up a modernized version of Pasal’s wager: When atheists realize they are accepted and […]

NPR show on Robert Ingersoll

From yesterday’s National Public Radio’s “On Point” show, Tom Ashbrook discusses The Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, whom you surely know by now.  Ashbrook has two guests (Susan’s book is new, and she’s quite eloquent about the man): Susan Jacoby, author, “The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought.” Dale McGowan, writes the secular parenting blog […]

Quote of the day: Walter Kaufmann on the gerrymandering of theologians

I am repeatedly told—as have all of us sympathetic to New Atheism—that we are not engaging with the “very best” of theological thought, the so-called “Sophisticated Theology™” (I notice that the term now has a nice RationalWiki entry, and I will greedily claim credit for the trademarked phrase).  Instead of dealing with Kierkegaard, Tillich, or […]

NPR series on Americans’ loss of faith

Starting last Sunday, National Public Radio (NPR) in the U.S. has had a daily segment on “The Morning Edition” called “Losing Our Religion”.  You can access all the archived segments here; each is about 8 minutes long and contains a transcript if you can read faster than you can listen. Here are the shows so […]

Jared Diamond: religion is rationally irrational

Polymath Jared Diamond (he has three full careers as an evolutionary ecologist specializing in birds, as a membrane physiologist, and as a popular writer) has written a new piece in Salon about religion: “Jared Diamond: It’s irrational to be religious.” It’s an excerpt from his new book, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from […]