Posts tagged Atheism
Miracles, God, Faith, Ecumenism And Other Cosmic Oddities

(OPINION) After researching everything I could find about supposed miracles — from books and articles, doctors, religion experts, skeptics and, naturally, dozens of people who’d claimed they’d run smack dab into the hand of God — here are three conclusions.

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Religious ‘Nones’ Have Soared In Recent Years, But Why Not The Number Of Atheists?

(ANALYSIS) The number of individuals in the U.S. who do not identify as being part of any religion has grown and “the nones” are now larger than any single religious group. According to the General Social Survey, religiously unaffiliated people represented only about 5% of the U.S. population in the 1970s. This percentage began to increase in the 1990s and is now around 30%.

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New Novel Explores The Mysteries Of Faith And The Loss Thereof

(REVIEW) Though “Eli Harpo’s Adventure to the Afterlife” author Eric Schlich comes to this tale from a different spiritual trajectory than mine — I’m a former skeptic turned Holy Roller preacher — I found myself caught up in Eli’s story. That’s partly the result of good plotting. By the end of each chapter, I had to see what would happen next.

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How Many Atheists Are There In Your State?

(ANALYSIS) Most “nones” are not atheists. I do, however, believe that atheists are crucial for the future of American society and politics. As I’ve previously written, they are among the most politically active groups in the United States. But how many are there? The Cooperative Election Study can help us with an estimate.

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How Secular Congregations Fill A Need For Some Nonreligious Americans

(ANALYSIS) Shared testimonies, collective singing, silent meditation and baptism rituals — these are all activities you might find at a Christian church service on a Sunday morning in the United States. But what would it look like if atheists were gathering to do these rituals instead?

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Christian Apologist And Prominent Atheist Debate God’s Existence

There was no interrupting, no yelling, no hurled insults, no pounding the podium in this debate, despite its divisive and eternally consequential subject. Instead, the two speakers — Kyle Butt, a Christian apologist, and Michael Shermer, an atheist, or skeptic — treated each other with remarkable respect as they argued the existence of God.

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Muslim Critic And Outspoken Atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali Converts To Christianity

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of Islam and vocal atheist, has gone through a new conversion — revealing that she’s now a Christian for spiritual and cultural reasons. "I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity,” she said. “I discover a little more at church each Sunday.”

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An Essayist Evangelizes Readers For Atheism

(OPINION) The Washington Post recently featured an unusually lengthy newspaper essay by Kate Cohen, a contributing columnist. Cohen’s takeaways are that religion is irrational, there are a lot more atheists out there than you’d imagine, that they should share their beliefs widely and that atheists make demonstrably better citizens than do the religious. But for me, Cohen’s essay is also misleading.

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Is the Church No Longer a Refuge for Struggling People?

(OPINION) If you, like me, think faith in God and religious affiliation are generally good things for people, then you, like me, ought to feel unsettled by the findings of political scientist Ryan Burge. He argues that religious participation in the United States is now largely the domain of the educated and comfortable, rather than a buttress for those on the margins of society, who historically were the core audience for Christianity.

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Cormac McCarthy’s Tragic Coda ‘Stella Maris’ Doubles As A Philosophic Seminar

(REVIEW) The novel, released Dec. 6, serves as a coda to the stories of siblings Bobby and Alicia Western, though it takes place before sister novel “The Passenger” began. The book is an ambitious dialogue-only novel that contains a tragic but fascinating heroine and deeply explores math, philosophy, physics and more.

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Once Again, An ‘Act Of God’ Leaves Us With More Questions Than Answers

(OPINION) The cosmos is complex beyond our imagination. We can’t understand the wonders going on beneath our own skin, much less in the vast heavens. How complex, then, must be the God who created all that? As St. Augustine famously observed, if you can understand it, it’s not God.

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Freethought Caucus in U.S. House reflects the political potential of the non-religious

(OPINION) The House’s Freethought Caucus attracts more members from the rising number of religious ‘nones’ in U.S. politics. With the growth of groups like these that promote the representation of the ‘nones,’ what is the future of the U.S. House’s religious standpoints?

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Religious traditions are a salve for the woes of modern youth

(OPINION) The mental health and lifestyle benefits of faith in adulthood are well-documented. A recent Harvard study suggests that kids are better off in many ways when raised in a religious tradition. As the media and grown-ups fret about the state of today’s youth, journalists should pay attention to what works.

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'Lords of Chaos' film tells origins of Norwegian black metal

(NEWS ANALYSIS) The genre became infamous in the early 90s for suicide, arson, murder and more. Were those metal heads and their successors devil worshippers? Or just creative, dark rock musicians?

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Jordan Peterson: The Devil's in the details of all those Youtube debates (Part 1)

(COMMENTARY) University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson answers critics, the faithful and seekers in between on his popular Youtube channel. Peterson has sent mixed signals about Christianity.

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