TED: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism

ATHEISM IS THE NEW FUNDAMENTALISM

Intelligence Squared Video

The motion proposes that "atheism is the new fundamentalism", i.e., atheism has replaced religion as the new faith of the secular age, exploring the notion that modern atheism is itself guilty of the very dogma and belief in its own infallibility which it scorns in the religious community.

The Dawk: At TED

Biologist Richard Dawkins makes a case for "thinking the improbable" by looking at how the human frame of reference limits our understanding of the universe.

Islamic scholar being tolerant... sorta.

Islam demands tolerance from Europe and this is their answer to why other religions are not allowed to build churches in Muslim theocratic countries.



No wonder the Swiss have voted to ban the construction of minarets.
Where are all the moderate muslims denouncing his outrageous claims? Clean up your own act before you start attacking others.

Why We Believe in Gods - Andy Thomson - American Atheists 09

Pat Condell's new video.

Salvation Army homophobia

Opposition to hiring homosexuals
The Salvation Army in the U.S. has been the topic of some controversial discussions about discrimination against homosexuals in their hiring practices.[22] According to lesbian/gay newsmagazine The Advocate, in 2001, the Bush administration was "willing to do whatever it takes to perpetuate, support, and defend discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals" in exchange for The Salvation Army's lobby support for Faith-Based Initiatives, in what the publication described as a "secret arrangement."[23] The New York Times reported that the Salvation Army believed it had a firm commitment from the White House to issue a regulation that would override local antidiscrimination laws. A disclosure of The Salvation Army's request "outraged some civil rights groups and lawmakers," and resulted in an immediate reversal of a previous promise to honor the request. The Salvation Army maintains that they were "not trying to get permission to discriminate against hiring gays and lesbians for the majority of its roughly 55,000 jobs and merely wanted a federal regulation that made clear that the charity did not have to ordain sexually active gay ministers and did not have to provide medical benefits to the same-sex partners of employees. [24]
The Salvation Army's position is that because it is a church, Section VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 explicitly guarantees its right to discriminate on the basis of its religious beliefs in its hiring. To reinforce its position, it threatened to close all soup kitchens in New York City when the city government proposed legislation that would require all organizations doing business with it to provide equal benefits to unmarried domestic partners.[25]

Howard Stern bags Kirk Cameron

Hitler, Stalin and Statistics

Statistics on the number of religious people in Australia.

Arguments against he Hitler/Stalin/Mao = atheism bomb from RichardDawkins.net

New Left Media - Palin

Australian Skeptics Announce: TAM! Australia 2010

The 2010 Australian Skeptics National Convention will be held in Sydney. Six years after the last time Sydney hosted the convention, and 10 years after the World Skeptical Convention III in 2000, this will not be an ordinary convention; it will be an international event in the true sense of the word. Not only will our speakers come from all over the world, but so will many of the delegates, and we expect more than 500 of those.

Link:

Dawkins on CNN

Good interview.

Nell McCafferty makes a good point.

From Pharyngula

I think I like this woman. Nell McCafferty rips into representatives of the Catholic church, asking, "What's holy about the Vatican?" and insisting that they ought to set aside the titles of "Father" and "Grace" and so forth, because they've betrayed them. I love the Irish when they get that fire in their eye!

PZ Myers

"Victorian Government Refuses Funding for Atheist Convention in Melbourne"

From:

The Victorian State Government has basically ignored the request for funding for the "Rise of Atheism" Convention in Melbourne next March, while allocating $4.5m in funds for the "The Parliament of the Worlds Religions".

This decision to basically ignore the funding request shows gross contempt for Atheism and Atheists alike in favour of religion and religious organisations.

See article posted at the convention's website Atheists Too Hot to Handle for Victorian Government.

Today in the "Comment & Debate" section of The Age devotes an entire column to this injustice.

I see this as an odd reaction from the Government, who describes Australia as "multicultural and secular".

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

And the Lord said unto John, "Come forth and receive eternal life."

But John came fifth and won a toaster.

Bush: Iraq Must Be Invaded to Thwart Gog and Magog

Link - please read the original article. I've put it all up here in case the original gets taken down.

I wonder if all of the allies of USA got the same story? Did John Howard believe in all this biblical rubbish and drag Australia into it?

A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

JAMES A. HAUGHT

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn't a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their "common faith" (Christianity) and told him: "Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins."

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its "coalition of the willing" to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush's call and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs."

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn't comply with Bush's request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to "turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws," and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, "and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush's strange behavior in Lausanne University's review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: "When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass." France's La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline "A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog." But other news media missed the amazing report.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada's Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a "stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House." Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.

The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush's renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was "on a mission from God" to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim "absurd."

Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: "Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground."

It's awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who "got saved." He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

For six years, Americans really haven't known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn't in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq's oil-or to protect Israel-or to complete Bush's father's vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) and a Free Inquiry senior editor.



While I knew Bush was a nutjob, this still surprises me and frightens me deeply. Why, oh why, is this not on the front page and top story of every news organization in America???

When foreign policy, particularly war policy, is being made based on fundamentalist religion (regardless whether it's Christianity, Islam, or even Mormonism), every person in America should be very, very concerned.

Strike that- I meant every rational, thinking person in America.

Link:

NAZIs actually banned Darwinism

6. Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (H?ckel).

Militant Atheist

From:

The Dawk: Supervillian

From:

AAI 2009 Conference

Symphony of Science - 'We Are All Connected' (ft. Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye)

"We Are All Connected" was made from sampling Carl Sagan's Cosmos, The History Channel's Universe series, Richard Feynman's 1983 interviews, Neil deGrasse Tyson's cosmic sermon, and Bill Nye's Eyes of Nye Series, plus added visuals from The Elegant Universe (NOVA), Stephen Hawking's Universe, Cosmos, the Powers of 10, and more. It is a tribute to great minds of science, intended to spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through the medium of music.

Language, not created 6000 years ago.

Best headline ever:

From:

The Intelligence Squared Debate - Christopher Hitchens

Aired 11-7-09 on BBC World Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world? "It stands up for the oppressed and offers spiritual succour to billions say the Church's supporters. But what about the Church's teachings on condoms, gays and women priests, ask the detractors." Speaking for the motion, Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe MP. Speaking against the motion, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry.

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Evolution's classroom crisis

Surveys show that, around the world, teachers and students are rejecting evolution.

Questions abound in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina on the second day of a conference on Darwin's legacy. Where can I get a coffee? Is this seat taken? Is religion compatible with evolutionary theory? Delegates search for answers.

Link:

The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion

What happens when an Pro-Lifer actually has to face the fact that they need an abortion.

Link >

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When the Anti-Choice Choose

By Joyce Arthur

Copyright September, 2000

Abortion is a highly personal decision that many women are sure they'll never have to think about until they're suddenly faced with an unexpected pregnancy. But this can happen to anyone, including women who are strongly anti-choice. So what does an anti-choice woman do when she experiences an unwanted pregnancy herself? Often, she will grin and bear it, so to speak, but frequently, she opts for the solution she would deny to other women -- abortion.

In the spring of 2000, I collected the following anecdotes directly from abortion doctors and other clinic staff in North America, Australia, and Europe. The stories are presented in the providers' own words, with minor editing for grammar, clarity, and brevity. Names have been omitted to protect privacy.