In fact, these same people—even other atheists—seem to think atheists are the immoral ones.
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Study after study has shown that most people (even other atheists) believe atheists are less moral.
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Atheists are perceived to face even less discrimination, with 28500 percent of those surveyed saying atheists face discrimination in the U.S., compared with 6900 percent who said there is no discrimination against atheists.
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While there are certainly atheists and humanists doing the work and speaking out, too often atheists simply ignore this toxicity.
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Spencer's views are not shared by the majority of atheists in America, but if we want to keep it that way, atheists cannot stay silent.
|
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I don't think that day created a lot of atheists, but I think it made a lot of atheists want to speak up a little more.
|
|
There are atheists for whom disbelief is not terribly dissimilar to an absent interest, but these atheists are precisely not the ones who find themselves quoting James Randi.
|
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One image on the Reddit forum r/dankchristianmemes characterizes "Angry Hulk" as atheists (or "heathens") in conversation with each other and "Civil Hulk" as atheists in conversation with Christians.
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And some people -- even atheists -- appreciate our efforts.
|
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Perhaps atheists are troubled by the fact that several states still have legislature banning atheists from being elected or that they can't form recognized clubs in some schools and universities?
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They were activists, LGBTQ individuals, atheists in deeply religious countries.
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"Atheists" suffer in this designation: It defines us by inaction.
|
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They each filed written complaints to American Atheists this week.
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The most religiously strident are as likely to be atheists.
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Agnostics and atheists were also not acknowledged, the court said.
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"There's a lot of atheists in the closet," Gervais says.
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It goes back to her analogy about atheists and Baptists.
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They are atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews, Muslims and more besides.
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He said the petition had been put forward by atheists.
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They just thought I was one of those rabid atheists.
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The atheists miss their target because they are aiming elsewhere.
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I actually think secularists and atheists would be more troubled.
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Mr Gray uses this observation as a launch-pad to criticise "New Atheists" such as Richard Dawkins, and to point out that most modern atheists do not follow their reasoning to its logical conclusion.
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It's time for people to see what atheists really look like.
|
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At 27, she joined a Facebook group for Oklahoma City atheists.
|
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He has attacked the opposition as terrorists, foreign lackeys and atheists.
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Meanwhile, the number of atheists has risen from 1% to 3%.
|
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Quite a few of the "nones" identify as atheists or agnostics.
|
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Mr Erdogan regularly denounces opponents as traitors, and sometimes as atheists.
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But are atheists a suspect class, or just a skeptical one?
|
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Scialabba answers the question of whether atheists think too much like
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Atheists for years have been trying to make a political impact.
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Atheists regularly report uncomfortable, frustrating experiences while serving, alongside outright discrimination.
|
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The article about Bart Campolo painted atheists with a broad brush.
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Atheists and agnostics, however, took things in a completely different direction.
|
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A new study published in Nature Human Behaviour found that people around the world are predisposed to believe that atheists are more likely to be serial killers than religious believers — a bias even held by atheists themselves.
|
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Again, feelings toward some groups, particularly Muslims and atheists, remain fairly chilly.
|
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Let me push back a little on behalf of the New Atheists.
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In 2014, they surpassed atheists as the country's "least accepted" religious group.
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Who they've recently attacked: The ABT has mostly targeted bloggers and atheists.
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Mostly, how important that record is to people who are now atheists.
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Rather, atheists are united in their lack of belief and nothing else.
|
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Most of my friends are atheists, but I happen to be Catholic.
|
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You could extract its essence and offer it to thirsty young atheists.
|
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Finally, a brief word to the really hardened atheists: Oh, come on.
|
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They were both grandsons of rabbis from Eastern Europe, and both atheists.
|
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The evangelizer counters: How do atheists know right from wrong at all?
|
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According to the Cornell professors R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick, the authors of the new book "Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life" (Norton), that is only because no atheists presented themselves for execution.
|
|
That's what I'm really arguing against in my critiques of the New Atheists.
|
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If they are right, atheists waste their breath when they debunk Biblical stories.
|
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Not only that, atheists and agnostics were more likely to believe in aliens.
|
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But what about the number of members who openly describe themselves as atheists?
|
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There are no atheists in foxholes and no true Randians in state government.
|
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The region is home to the highest percentage of atheists in the world.
|
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The success of "His Dark Materials" made Pullman one of Britain's prominent atheists.
|
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The authorities have arrested some atheists and barred others from leaving the country.
|
|
It means talking to Irish Catholics in Boston and atheists in San Francisco.
|
|
Putin is continually railing against gays, Muslims, atheists, the "infertile and genderless" West.
|
|
Avowed atheists exhibited the same bias in judging sadistic criminals, the study found.
|
|
A great many atheists and agnostics, of course, do not think U.F.O.s exist.
|
|
Atheists have also begun offering invocations before town boards all around the nation.
|
|
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, Minnesota rejected claims by 29 atheists, children of atheists and atheist groups that inscribing the national motto on bills and coins violated their First Amendment free speech and religious rights.
|
|
I asked Hazony how atheists, or Muslims, or Buddhists might fit into this movement.
|
|
Silverman became president of American Atheists in 2010 and helped raise the organization's profile.
|
|
Most recently, Pew found that around 22 percent of Americans say they are atheists.
|
|
Their views are likely shared by more atheists than many would like to admit.
|
|
Atheists also need to ask ourselves difficult questions about the culture of our movement.
|
|
Mr. Taunton runs the Fixed Point Foundation, which organizes debates between Christians and atheists.
|
|
He spoke of the inherent constitutional rights of all Americans, including gays and atheists.
|
|
These Americans come in all flavors of faith: Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists and more.
|
|
Atheists simply lack belief in the faith-based assertions of the world's many religions.
|
|
They told me that they don't really believe in God there; they're more atheists.
|
|
Lecturing Christians or Jews about whale digestion will not make them atheists, Jonah notwithstanding.
|
|
One reason could be the internet, says Nick Fish, the president of American Atheists.
|
|
I was under the impression that those who lack BELIEF are generally called atheists.
|
|
Can't they even let atheists have one day to have a rally for themselves?
|
|
It's a flourishing world of men's rights activists, libertarians, anti-feminist atheists, and white nationalists.
|
|
Still, as mentioned, the data does seem to support a well-documented bias against atheists.
|
|
Even atheists can appreciate Mr Warpechowski's powerful critique of the modern world's impregnability to scripture.
|
|
Atheists are even more likely to be Democrats than evangelical Protestants are to be Republicans.
|
|
Some atheists want Sanders to be more outspoken about his religious beliefs -- or lack thereof.
|
|
Episcopalians become evangelicals, Catholics leave their childhood faith and sometimes come back, Muslims become atheists.
|
|
I view internet videos with the same arch cynicism that YouTube atheists express for God.
|
|
Gervais and Najle recently conducted a new analysis on the prevalence of atheists in America.
|
|
Americans, in large numbers, still do not want atheists teaching their children, or marrying them.
|
|
The state also imposed a religious test to exclude atheists from public office until 1961.
|
|
I don't think people know there were black atheists and free thinkers in black history.
|
|
He grew up nonreligious, following in the footsteps of his parents, who were both atheists.
|
|
"Not because they're atheists, but because they want the state to be God," he said.
|
|
Moore and Kramnick, who have written a thorough and useful history of the legal and political status of atheists in America, unsurprisingly believe that such work is salvific—that understanding the bias against atheists in the past can help end it in the future.
|
|
It used to be said during World War II that there are no atheists in foxholes.
|
|
Even this 290 World War One Cross in Maryland is now considered offensive to militant atheists.
|
|
The large room was filled with young people - half were Christians, half were self-described atheists.
|
|
The interests represented by the Freethought Caucus, therefore, are far broader than those of straightforward atheists.
|
|
It seemed, and may the atheists out there bear with me, distinctly like a religious experience.
|
|
Most of the so-called "new atheists" have espoused that view in one form or another.
|
|
In other surveys most Japanese report that they are atheists or have no formal religious affiliation.
|
|
She had never been religious, but I know even atheists sometimes turn to God near death.
|
|
There are many of us who are atheists but retain some cultural elements of the religion.
|
|
The report said Saudi Arabia has used counter-terrorism laws to target atheists and Shi'ite Muslims.
|
|
Shedding some religious nomenclature might bolster Quakerism's attractiveness both to community-seeking atheists and spiritual agnostics.
|
|
It's true that other orders of Freemasonry, like the Grand Orient in France, will admit atheists.
|
|
Following the Supreme Court decision, O'Hair moved to Austin, TX, to found the American Atheists organization.
|
|
Are you one of the Christians who love trying to prove to atheists that God exists?
|
|
He told the audience he doesn't like those YouTube videos where Christians "destroy" atheists in debates.
|
|
They were Christians, they were Jews, they were atheists, they were Hindus, and they were Buddhists.
|
|
It's not surprising then that atheists, who are often marginalized in America, may be prime targets.
|
|
I'm a Christian and a divinity school graduate, but I'm with the atheists on this one.
|
|
But the States are still centered on Judeo-Christian beliefs, so black atheists face additional isolation.
|
|
He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists and creator of the app Atheos.
|
|
Atheists can be equally bossy by demanding that I immediately give up any search for meaning.
|
|
The Bolsheviks were atheists, and religion was expunged from the whole of the new Russian state.
|
|
Therefore, arguing that goodness is unattainable without God is baseless; many atheists can be good people.
|
|
"In Europe, even atheists are Christian," he wrote, a phrase that Mr. Orban has also used.
|
|
They shared political views that were fairly radical; they were feminists, environmental conservationists, atheists and communists.
|
|
There have always been atheists in the Muslim world, including some famous medieval scientists and philosophers.
|
|
Many of the asylum seekers identified themselves as atheists, having given up their faith in God.
|
|
That number encompasses 65 percent of the "religiously unaffiliated" (and, somewhat bafflingly, 10 percent of atheists).
|
|
The next lowest number, for atheists and candidates over the age of 70, is 68 percent.
|
|
Atheists either see the error of their ways and convert or die horribly (or sometimes both).
|
|
In one sketch, he told his cellmate that the country's high-ranking public officials were all atheists.
|
|
Atheists were out—they could not be trusted—as was anyone whose faith threatened the social order.
|
|
Even 18 percent of self-proclaimed atheists said they believed in some kind of higher spiritual power .
|
|
That's probably why I've always found the so-called "New Atheists" misguided in their critiques of religion.
|
|
Yet there is some controversy over coalition building between those who consider themselves "hard" and "soft" atheists.
|
|
Yet it has targeted minority groups – notably Shiite Muslims, Coptic Christians, and atheists – for contempt of Islam.
|
|
"I'm trying to eliminate discrimination against atheists," said Mr. Appignani, who is 83 and lives in Florida.
|
|
Targets have included atheists, liberals, Hindus, gay-rights activists and, on May 7th, a Sufi Muslim leader.
|
|
Their modern heirs will not be deterred by a few rude atheists or long waits for visas.
|
|
The differences were especially pronounced between evangelical Protestants and people who said they were atheists or agnostics.
|
|
The problem with Operation Christmas Child, for atheists, is that the care packages aren't just care packages.
|
|
The government solved that the problem for them — by banning atheist books, if not also punishing atheists.
|
|
And among self-described "atheists," a full 18 percent believe in some form of spiritual higher power.
|
|
The staff was planning a conference to teach Christians how to evangelize to atheists, agnostics and Mormons.
|
|
The audience includes atheists, evangelicals, mainline liberal Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox Christians, all seeking new spiritual community.
|
|
Fear drives them to secrecy, but we should not dismiss the esoteric dimension of the new atheists.
|
|
Contrary to Wood's argument, time is not all that we atheists have if there is no God.
|
|
Herb wanted to overturn the provision in the state constitution that prohibited atheists from holding public office.
|
|
Is it fair for Protestants, Jews, Muslims and atheists to pay for religious instruction in Catholic schools?
|
|
"We are aware the Satanists and Atheists have decided to pile on this poll," the group tweeted.
|
|
David Silverman, the president of American atheists and a "self-described firebrand," demands we all chant atheist!
|
|
Americans have warmed toward almost all major religious groups, including Muslims and atheists, over the past few years.
|
|
So when Francis compares hypocritical Christians to atheists, he's not being flip; he's trying to protect his flock.
|
|
Albert said that his current AA group is LGBTQ-friendly and includes a lot of atheists and agnostics.
|
|
In the past two years, at least eight atheists and gay rights campaigners have been killed in Bangladesh.
|
|
I'm most interested in the atheists who've seriously asked what it's like to live in a godless world.
|
|
Atheists are also one of America's most negatively viewed groups and can face social isolation or family rejection.
|
|
There are certain atheists who have no compunction about dismissing fervent believers as victims of delusion and hallucination.
|
|
Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, atheists and many more, from all over the United States and many other countries.
|
|
This week I've received grace from Christians, atheists, evangelicals, exvangelicals, straight people, LGBTQ people, and everyone in-between.
|
|
A subset of science-based atheists are the "transhumanists," who believe that we are destined to become gods.
|
|
As it turns out, they're all not atheists, or even members of the "spiritual but not religious" crowd.
|
|
By stark contrast, religiously unaffiliated voters such as atheists overwhelmingly believed Israel is used as a political tool.
|
|
In opposing Gorsuch, Decker said, atheists will be reaching out to secular and religious groups with similar concerns.
|
|
That made them much more agreeable for long-marginalized atheists and agnostics, but pushed many religious Americans aside.
|
|
Bieber's original is fantastic — it turned us from atheists into Beliebers — but Steinfeld's simpler version has its charms.
|
|
That biblical ethic, embraced by atheists as much as the faithful, is not in great shape these days.
|
|
Church membership is declining, and the number of Americans who say they are atheists is on the rise.
|
|
"I asked Mr. Mazyek whether he would approve of marriages between Christians or atheists with Muslims," she announced.
|
|
Liberal Democrats, Satanists and Atheists hijacked this poll - please #Retweet to ensure we get fair representation and participation.
|
|
The heads of American Atheists and the Center of Inquiry and the Freedom From Religion Foundation are speaking.
|
|
In virtual reality church he founded, VR Church, atheists regularly came to listen to him preach about divine love.
|
|
My complaint with the New Atheists has always been their insistence on treating God as a purely epistemological question.
|
|
He's the one who believes that separation of church and state gives the most freedom for theists and atheists.
|
|
I feel like this entire world is becoming corrupt with atheists and gay people that want to get married.
|
|
That second figure includes 3% of the total population who call themselves atheists and 4% who identify as agnostic.
|
|
More than 40 atheists, secular activists and members of religious minorities have been murdered in the past three years.
|
|
The latest controversy about a late-in-life religious turn involves Christopher Hitchens, one of world's most prominent atheists.
|
|
Maybe atheists don't appreciate how they're less likely to be hired for jobs requiring a high degree of trust?
|
|
John Gray thinks that such problems with theism shouldn't make most atheists any more confident about their own outlook.
|
|
Its strategy, however, is not to show that theism is unscientific, as the "new atheists" have tended to do.
|
|
Third, Christians, Jews, disbelievers, atheists and others are free to believe and practice whatever they wish across the world.
|
|
Most atheists, too, would prefer a system of religious balance and openness rather than one of coercion and repression.
|
|
It's worth noting that although they do identify as atheists, the term only represents a fraction of their worldview.
|
|
Five of the program's 503 steps explicitly mention god, which can be tough for atheists and agnostics to swallow.
|
|
Everyone from agnostics, atheists, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and the non-religious people participated in a mundane task.
|
|
Avowed Christians and atheists, gay and straight, politically active and not, they have nonetheless rallied behind this collective cause.
|
|
Born to atheists, Serna didn't grow up using prayer candles and says she has no connection with any religion.
|
|
" Nations are "atheists, which is to say they find their strength not in any God but in their guns.
|
|
Now, most people, even most atheists, concede that heaven would be lovely if it existed, but you reject this.
|
|
He notes that atheists, too, might locate our equality in the idea that we each have our own story.
|
|
Eli's parents are atheists, and it was the first funeral I'd ever been to that didn't once mention God.
|
|
I'm not a believer, but I've been critical of some of the so-called New Atheists in the past.
|
|
For Chen in Wenzhou, faith should be at the forefront of education until believers outnumber atheists in China's young.
|
|
"We live in a much more friendly world for atheists than we did even 10 years ago," she says.
|
|
Enforcement authorities last month launched a probe into the Kuala Lumpur chapter of Atheists Republic, a Canada-based organization.
|
|
Her family, lapsed Catholics and avowed atheists, didn't have much in the way of religious tradition to pass on.
|
|
About 10 percent of all Americans say they are atheists, although this estimate may be on the low side.
|
|
Atheists all believe there is no god that governs the universe, but other than that, nothing necessarily unites us.
|
|
I've met and talked to a lot of atheists, and I can testify that we are a diverse bunch.
|
|
Bibi's plight had drawn support worldwide from Christians, human rights groups, atheists and critics of Islam and blasphemy laws alike.
|
|
Any expression of support for free speech, especially that of bloggers, would be twisted into support for atheists or apostates.
|
|
Now atheists regularly came to listen to him preach about divine love, and they talked openly about their own faith.
|
|
Although they were right about a lot of things, the New Atheists missed something essential about the role of religion.
|
|
Two prominent atheists confirmed to BuzzFeed News that R. told them about the incident in the days after it happened.
|
|
When extremism divides Muslim from Christian and religious people from atheists, those of all faiths and none are mourning together.
|
|
I'd heard about atheists, how sad they were, how depressed they were because they didn't have a purpose in life.
|
|
We now talk of atheists being protected by the First Amendment as if their "sect" were a "religion-less" religion.
|
|
True, the number of young atheists has doubled in a decade, and most young people think premarital sex is fine.
|
|
The Federalist Society is a secular organization which includes people of many religious faiths, as well as agnostics and atheists.
|
|
In the 1920s, Soviet groups such as The League of Militant Atheists encouraged schoolchildren to campaign against Christmas at school.
|
|
It is also a refreshing look beyond the so-called "new atheists" who have lately dominated the conversation surrounding unbelief.
|
|
DNC wanted to expose Bernie Sanders as an atheist, well aware of the prejudice atheists face in getting a Govt.
|
|
"She rightly realized that it was a straight-up case of religious discrimination against atheists and nonbelievers," Mr. Katskee said.
|
|
On the other hand, Mr. Irwin points out that atheists may on occasion consider that God may exist after all.
|
|
But just as there are alleged to be no atheists in foxholes, there are no free marketeers in dying industries.
|
|
And while the predominantly white atheist groups might welcome a black face, many black atheists feel their voices are obscured.
|
|
"In increasing numbers, blacks marry whites, atheists marry Baptists, men marry men and women women, Democrats marry Republicans," she wrote.
|
|
But when broken down by demographic, atheists and agnostics outscored other groups even after controlling for different levels of education.
|
|
Research shows that among all those millennials who say they're religiously unaffiliated, only about half call themselves atheists or agnostics.
|
|
Atheists bought tarot decks and went to outposts in Mendocino to supervise one another through sustained, high-dose LSD trips.
|
|
Less than two months after his election, he said Christians should see atheists as good people if they do good.
|
|
Just like there are no atheists in a foxhole, there are very few Ayn Rand followers in an unemployment line.
|
|
Our 18 member organizations are established 85033(c)(3) nonprofits who serve atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers and other nontheistic Americans.
|
|
Speaker after speaker urged the atheists in the audience to go out into the world and actively serve their communities.
|
|
On the other hand, the other local terror outfit, Ansarul Bangla Team, or the ABT, has mostly targeted bloggers and atheists.
|
|
Ham's genius is in creating places where fundamentalist Christians can get together, safe from the moral superiority of liberals and atheists.
|
|
But then again, I've met other atheists in the program who have found strength by simply believing in the group itself.
|
|
The Wisconsin-based group of atheists, agnostics and free-thinkers, was enraged by the devotional and accused the preacher of proselytizing.
|
|
I got inducted into the pantheon of atheists and this whole New Atheist phenomenon happened with Hitch and Dawkins and Dennett.
|
|
He has held high-profile public debates with famous atheists and secularists including Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the late Christopher Hitchens.
|
|
Perhaps not wholly surprisingly, the proportion of Saudis reporting themselves to be "convinced atheists" was about the same as for Americans.
|
|
Gray is especially interested in those atheists who, in addition to having no faith in the divine, have none in humanity.
|
|
He equates religious freedom with freedom of conscience, and believes agnostics and atheists should enjoy the same civil rights as monotheists.
|
|
In Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and other countries suffering under the yoke of censorship, however, Muslims hadn't tried to counter the atheists.
|
|
Both atheists and believers are hamstrung by the seeming fact that the existence of God may neither be proved or disproved.
|
|
Whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos — we've got 'em all, not to mention Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Christians, lapsed Muslims and a few atheists.
|
|
A full 16 percent of Church of England priests aren't sure there's a God (and 2 percent identify as outright atheists).
|
|
In fact, many atheists adhere to profound abstract principles, and can remain morally self-disciplined without belief in a holy law.
|
|
Some may call it God, and others the cosmos, but even atheists come out of psychedelic therapy changed by the experience.
|
|
The administration's latest efforts were swiftly criticized Thursday by some nonprofit groups, including the Freedom From Religion Foundation and American Atheists.
|
|
Atheists and agnostics have long tried to rebottle religion: to get the community and the good works without the supernatural stuff.
|
|
We also must recognize that religious hate of all kind, whether it is against Muslims, Jews, Christians or atheists, are linked.
|
|
The central conflict in La Belle Sauvage pits freethinkers against fanatics, which is not simply a conflict between atheists and believers.
|
|
In some ways, atheists and believers are just playing different language games, which is frustrating if you're interested in persuading people.
|
|
Of the roughly 25 percent of Americans the rally insists constitute the new secular movement, only 11 percent are avowed atheists.
|
|
He's encouraged by the fact that some atheists have offered to help with coding or building various features of the church environment.
|
|
But in August of 2013, with accusations swirling about sexual harassment by several other prominent atheists, McCreight pointed the finger at Krauss.
|
|
I give about 150 speeches a year and talk to all kinds of audiences: conservative, progressive, believers, atheists and everything in between.
|
|
Europeans -- Muslims, Christians, atheists and others -- are fiercely debating the question of what women should be allowed to wear at the beach.
|
|
They tried to drag the partially-educated Muslim youth who are deprived of the Islamic knowledge into the vicious circle of atheists.
|
|
The threat to free speech on Western campuses is very different from that faced by atheists in Afghanistan or democrats in China.
|
|
"New atheists have directed their campaign against a narrow segment of religion while failing to understand even that small part," he writes.
|
|
But they say there are no atheists in foxholes, and maybe none in surgical waiting rooms or in thewake of violence either.
|
|
To the Editor: William Irwin suggests that atheists and believers have a commonality: Both may experience doubt about the existence of God.
|
|
RICHARD C. JOHNSON Tucson The writer is a board member of Freethought Arizona, a community of secular humanists, skeptics, agnostics and atheists.
|
|
Such views are clearly visible on atheist web forums and were also broadcast in a BBC documentary on Pakistani atheists last month.
|
|
Since 2013, assassinations and small-scale attacks had been taking place every few weeks, typically targeting foreigners or non-Muslims, including atheists.
|
|
Pullman is too savvy to indulge in the kind of simplistic polemic that propels the celebrity of New Atheists like Richard Dawkins.
|
|
Fighters for many of the groups routinely chant racist slurs against the Kurds, Syria's largest ethnic minority, calling them atheists or pigs.
|
|
Younger Americans, aged 18 to 29, rated Muslims and atheists more warmly, and Jews far more coolly, than Americans 50 and older.
|
|
I know you've taken fire from both sides: The religious people say you're impious, and the atheists say you've betrayed the cause.
|
|
Perhaps atheism is as trivial as not keeping a stamp collection, but the atheists who come to Reason Rally don't believe it.
|
|
Given our growing numbers, it's important for non-atheists to understand what it means for someone to not believe in any god.
|
|
That's still far from welcoming — and atheists and Mormons don't fare much better — but it's a notable increase in just a few years.
|
|
Pew researchers compared the attitudes of respondents who described themselves as practicing Christians, non-practicing Christians and religiously unaffiliated, including atheists and agnostics.
|
|
In the last two years, at least eight atheists and gay rights campaigners have been killed in attacks in the majority Muslim country.
|
|
"Skeptics and atheists like to think they are above human foibles like celebrity worship," Rebecca Watson, a prominent feminist skeptic, told BuzzFeed News.
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She said he told her not to apply for an internship with American Atheists because appointing her could be seen as preferential treatment.
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Ivory Tower In recent years, the scientists and polemicists known as the New Atheists have been telling a certain type of evolutionary story.
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They tend to share respect for the flag and the English language, and negative feelings towards Muslims, immigrants, atheists, and gays and lesbians.
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Despite the apparent fishiness of this scene, everyone, from the Austin police to the American Atheists society, went on with business as usual.
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The least likely groups to experience discrimination, according to the poll, were white men (45%, virtually no discrimination), atheists (37%), and Christians (35%).
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Gray's larger complaint is that the new atheists fail to offer a more coherent moral vision than the one they want to replace.
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But 26 percent of American Protestants said the same thing, as did 85033 percent of Catholics and 23 percent of atheists and agnostics.
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To disagree implies civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates would be "less black," because they are also atheists.
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Having seen [Camara] in person and actually finding a group of black atheists online on Facebook, that was my breath of fresh air.
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It's also worth noting that, as Vox's Brian Resnick points out, polling for religious belief isn't always accurate — atheists often under-self-report.
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Atheists. I'd encourage you to read Max Boot's recent column in The Post — the one I quote above — about the discrimination they face.
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Atheists have little faith in the supernatural, but we would hate to think our faith in The New York Times is in peril.
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There is also a new movement of atheists in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which takes the form of secret societies.
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Although many assume that we are atheists, the right to worship is just as precious to us as it is to human beings.
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Aslan spends much of his public life defending Muslims against bigotry, including comments by New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.
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It is definitely true that some atheists are angry — at religion, at religious people, at the government — but not all of us are.
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In Our Non-Christian Nation, I discuss the many ways that atheists have started to demand their rightful place in American public life.
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Comparing the neurological responses of devout Catholics with those of atheists, she found that the two groups had similar baseline experiences of pain, but that, if the subjects were shown a picture of the Virgin Mary (by Sassoferrato, an Italian Baroque painter) while the pain was administered, the believers rated their discomfort nearly a point lower than the atheists did.
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In one of those complaints, a woman described a hotel room party held at the end of the 2015 American Atheists Convention in Memphis.
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And our soldiers are presently sharpening their knives to slaughter the atheists, the mockers of the Prophet, and every other apostate in the region.
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In August, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to the slogan on coins and bank notes from a group of atheists.
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Rizvi speaks directly to agnostics, atheists, and humanists living in the Muslim world, enjoining them to embrace secular culture without abandoning their Muslim identity.
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Sam Harris, one of the original members of the group dubbed the "New Atheists" (by Wired!) 12 years ago, says he doesn't like tribalism.
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But I also know that, to atheists or adherents of other faiths, it can be confusing to know how to respond to such outreach.
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Nick Fish, national program director of American Atheists, tells Refinery29 that atheism is about as "none" as you can get in terms of belief.
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If the Supreme Court carves out a narrow bona fide religious exemption, would atheists and agnostics then have no right to refuse offensive cakes?
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"If we keep our mouths shut, then they'll finish the atheists one by one, and after that, they'll eventually come to us," he said.
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Such men—and almost all the atheists in Gray's book are men—would not recognize the hopeful atheism that is all the rage today.
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In fairness, contemporary American atheists may be inclined to wage war on religion because religion has been waging war on them for so long.
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In the absence of openly atheist members, it's highly likely that the interests and concerns of atheists will continue to be ignored and unappreciated.
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The first was when David Silverman, the president of an organization called American Atheists, applied for a license plate that said "ATHE1ST" in 2013.
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We talked to five black atheists about what it's like to be black in America and reject the the idea of a higher power.
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Atheists are rarely persuaded by Pascal's wager—the argument that you should believe in God to avoid the infinite downside risk of eternal hellfire.
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For more: A paper by Will Gervais and Maxine Najle of the University of Kentucky argues that about one quarter of Americans are atheists.
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One was that atheists and the religiously unaffiliated appeared even less likely now than in the past to believe the story of Jesus' birth.
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Islamists have succeeded in branding secularists as atheists; one of the most dangerous things to be called right now in Bangladesh is an atheist.
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To devout Christians and Buddhists and atheists alike, it sums up the afterlife into the Good Place … and the ominous, self-explanatory Bad Place.
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COM By Nathan Englander There are reportedly no atheists in a foxhole, but do any exist beside the grave of a beloved, devout father?
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"FETOist" has become a blanket accusation in the media, courts and public discourse, sometimes implausibly applied to known atheists and leftists and other dissenters.
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Respect for it has diminished in almost every corner of modern life — not just among atheists and intellectuals, but among the wider public, too.
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Ms. Tyson of Snowflakes Embryo Adoption said her clients skewed heavily Christian, and weren't always as open to single parents, gay couples or atheists.
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Americans are comfortable voting for every other group tested — multiple religions, multiple races, gays and lesbians, and now atheists — but not for a socialist.
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For atheists (who, let's not forget, are Judeo-Christians in their own way), man's purpose is in part to topple God from his throne.
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When Cousins has the ghost of Welles offer an answer to his letter, some Welles enthusiasts, and maybe some atheists, are likely to bristle.
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Germain, a member of the group Military Atheists and Secular Humanists of Fort Bragg, was at the rally with her husband, an Air Force veteran.
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"According to our samples, about 1 in 3 atheists in our country don't feel comfortable disclosing their lack of belief," Najle explains in an email.
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Like the alt-right, American atheists—a growing segment of the US—are more likely to be male, white, and younger than the general population.
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He starts with a chapter on the New Atheists, who have poured scorn on the more obvious logical difficulties and historical implausibilities of dogmatic religion.
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Even the New Atheists' admirers must admit that they sometimes display more zeal than finesse, and that they give a general impression of punching down.
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Yes, atheists are one of the most disliked "religious" groups in the nation, and yes, they tend to be stingier givers than their religious counterparts.
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Thanks to their tax breaks, the religious attractions have drawn the attention of national and international observers, including atheists, scientists, and PhD-carrying fundamentalist Christians.
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They are required to pay for public schools that cannot be religious, which may be fine for atheists and agnostics but is unacceptable to them.
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The rise of populism has seen new types of leaders taking control: divorcees, socialists, atheists, people with a history of dodgy political and business ties.
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I find that even atheists tend to perk up when discussing the possibilities and freedoms a more open, forgiving spirituality might bring to their lives.
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The survey also found that those who identify as Christian were more likely than atheists and agnostics to hold at least one New Age belief.
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A Pew Research Center survey measured Americans' "warmth" toward different religious groups, with Christians and Jews ranking the highest and atheists and Muslims ranking the lowest.
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Today, there are pockets of liberals and even atheists at Baylor, but the vast majority of students are Christian, and Baptist and/or evangelical in particular.
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The next day, R. took photographs of bruises where she said Silverman had grasped her, and these pictures were included in her complaint to American Atheists.
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Another friend of St. Clair's, Dustin Tucker, also wrote to American Atheists on Thursday, saying that St. Clair had told him about the incident in 2013.
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Opinion THE population of nonreligious Americans — including atheists, agnostics and those who call themselves "nothing in particular" — stands at an all-time high this election year.
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One group, the Washington-based Secular Coalition for America, which lobbies for atheists, agnostics and other nontheistic Americans, also called for a veto of the bill.
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But unlike atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, he is not out to embarrass religious belief and chase its subscribers from the public square.
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Before there were notable atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, there was a Texas housewife who didn't want her son to pray in the classroom.
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Playing live is different than what it once was; she hosted a stand-up show called "All Atheists are Muslim," which ran from 2011 to 2015.
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Among them are casual Catholics, born again Baptists, ordained Rabbis and preachers, secular atheists, and teachers who use the podcast as an example of close-reading.
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Atheists who do not explicitly disavow this brand of atheism aren't just missing an important opportunity to distinguish our community from Spencer's dehumanizing ideas and actions.
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Just as there are proverbially no atheists in foxholes, it's increasingly difficult to be a local politician in coastal Florida and deny the sea is rising.
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"Religious liberty arguments can marginalize people who are not religious, and we know that atheists are actually among the most despised groups in America," Sepper said.
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In contrast, 81 percent of atheists and 80 percent of agnostics said it was not fundamentally different from other ways humans have tried to better themselves.
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Gabbard called it an ideology that "preaches hatred and bias" toward Christian, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists, as well as Muslims who practice other forms of Islam.
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Not only are black atheists a part of a racially oppressed group, but now they can't be moral and ethical because they don't believe in god.
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" He's opened discussions about allowing married priests in the Amazon, permitted divorced and remarried Catholics to take Communion and said that God redeems "even the atheists.
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While appreciative of the attention to atheists and agnostics in Mark Oppenheimer's article, I dispute the cartoonish caricature of the free-thought movement and its conferences.
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It is, on the contrary, to throw oneself more deeply into friendship with complexity, with different believers and atheists, liberals and conservatives, the dissimilar and unalike.
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It was probably the Amazing Randi who gave New Atheists their favorite bit of cleverness: Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
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Deadly attacks have been mounted against atheists and members of religious minorities in the mostly Muslim country of 160 million people, with attackers often using machetes.
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Elaborating on one of his favourite recent themes, he poked at the new atheists from several angles, while also back-handedly acknowledging that they were onto something.
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After that day, the immorality of letting religion run wild, while atheists kept quiet and enjoyed delicious potluck suppers full of community and Jell-O, was inescapable.
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By the end of the aughts, everyone was "coming out" as their own "non-traditional" identities: vegetarians, emo fans, nerds and atheists, just to name a few.
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Both atheists and their critics often make a hopeless muddle of the category, sometimes because it is genuinely complicated to assess belief, but often for other reasons.
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He advocated equality among Muslims of all sects, somewhat more grudgingly extending it to Christians and Jews, and legalistically referring to "constitutional protections" for atheists and agnostics.
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But he also contends with passionate or existential atheists, rebels who cannot forgive God for the horrors of the world or the miseries of their own natures.
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As I started to do research, I realized that all of the reasoned arguments against Dr. Dawkins and other "new atheists" had been written by Western Christians.
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Cryonics—the science of using sub-freezing temperatures to preserve people in the hope that resurrection may come in the future—is a pseudo Easter for atheists.
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While the primary audience will be Christians seeking on-demand sermons, Osteen's unique position within his community may make the show an informative listen even for atheists.
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They were essentially writing God out of the picture, but they did not consider themselves atheists; Dr. Altizer called himself a Christian atheist, further muddying the waters.
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Atheists like Richard Dawkins, E. O. Wilson and Sam Harris, are evaluating religion at the neocortical level — their criteria for assessing it is the rational scientific method.
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The rally, intended to protest a Ten Commandments monument that had been installed at the capitol, was attended by Satanists, atheists and Christians, The Associated Press reported.
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He is the author of six books, including Our Non-Christian Nation: How Atheists, Satanists, Pagans, and Others Are Demanding Their Rightful Place in American Public Life.
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Atheism is not just the lack of belief in higher powers or deities; it's often interwoven with antitheism, and many who identify as atheists have furious antitheist tendencies.
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Gray has been one of the most forceful critics of the New Atheists since they first emerged on the scene, and his new book continues in that vein.
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These New Atheists are mostly ignorant of religion, and only really concerned with a particular kind of monotheism, which is a narrow segment of the broader religious world.
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The Islamists' argument came down to one essential point: To celebrate Christmas or New Year's was to imitate the "Kuffar," or atheists, which is to say, basically, Westerners.
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"I would be very reluctant to conclude that phone surveys like ours are underestimating the share the public who are atheists to that kind of magnitude," he says.
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You'd expect if people were unwilling to say that they're atheists over the phone to a stranger, they'd be slightly more likely to input it into a computer.
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Even more disturbing is the revelation that Democratic bosses advocated suggesting Bernie Sanders is an atheist rather than a Jew in states where they believe atheists are unpopular.
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One version of the sign proposed by the group, Atheists of Florida, would also include a line from the First Amendment, the Tampa Bay Times reported on Monday.
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"Even atheists come here and appreciate this place, as a spiritual place, a place of peace," she said recently, standing barefoot on the pale carpet of the mosque.
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As one Houellebecq character puts it: Couples who follow one of the three religions of the Book and maintain patriarchal values have more children than atheists or agnostics.
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Bangladesh, a deeply religious but moderate Muslim-majority country of 160 million people, is struggling to control attacks by Islamist groups on secular bloggers, atheists, foreigners and religious minorities.
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It acquired a sharper political edge in the US culture wars, as skeptics, atheists, and scientists — including Krauss — joined forces to defend the teaching of evolution in public schools.
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Once the free market of ideas does its work, the future will be full of educated multiracial atheists who love nothing more than being totally destroyed by John Oliver.
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The breakdown of religion in the United States includes 22.8% who are unaffiliated, describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular," according to a Pew Research Center study.
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When they limited the sample to people who were self-professed atheists (as measured in a separate question), 100 percent said they didn't believe in God, which is correct.
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" Routledge said that he finds that "the same cognitive traits that predict [the] level of spirituality among believers similarly predict level of non-religious spirituality [ETI beliefs] among atheists.
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The zealots who hack atheists to death in Bangladesh (see article) are far more frightening than the American students who shout down speakers with whom they disagree (see article).
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Still, as Gray might have predicted, it is difficult, in this particular political moment, to believe that the circle of rights is expanding for atheists or for anyone else.
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Atheists, agnostics and those who do not believe in a god or gods can be barred from delivering invocations in the Pennsylvania statehouse, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
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The pop culture success of such prominent atheists as the talk-show host Bill Maher and the author Christopher Hitchens attests in a different way to the same trend.
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Separately, in a 2010 case, some atheists challenged the saying of a prayer at presidential inaugurations and the phrase "so help me God" in the presidential oath of office.
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"I was born and grew up in the Soviet Union, where 98 percent of citizens were atheists," Mr. Navalny said on Twitter while the hearing was being streamed online.
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The practice was most common for Protestants (60%) and Catholics (52%), though some people of other faiths, as well as atheists and agnostics, reported saying grace regularly as well.
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Young people and people in urban areas felt the most comfortable expressing themselves, while atheists, Christians and supporters of third-party candidates were most concerned about expressing their opinions.
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John 22020:16 "Liberal Democrats, Satanists and Atheists hijacked this poll - please #Retweet to ensure we get fair representation and participation," it added in another tweet to its followers.
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Manning was presumably drawn to Jones because they both identified as gay men at that time, and they were both atheists who were interested in computers and mathematical theory.
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A new study from an international team of scientists tried to add some data to the "moral distrust" of atheists, a prejudice that exists in America and around the world.
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His oft-repeated assurances that people will be able to say, "Merry Christmas!" again portrays Christians as the victims of atheists, agnostics, Jews, and Muslims (all of whom they outnumber).
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And those of us who are atheists -- living godless since forever -- have been trying to get a hint as to why so many are suddenly seeing through the glass darkly.
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A survey by ICM, a pollster, in 2012 found that British Muslims give an average of £371 each year to charity, compared with £202 for Protestants and £116 for atheists.
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"We spend a lot of money, and a lot of time, trying to persuade atheists to become Catholics," says Stacey Abrams, the minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives.
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Tuesday morning, Cavadini talked to one of his classes about why the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral seemed to so deeply affect people around the world, Christians and atheists alike.
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Losers: Families headed by atheists, LGBTQ people, people who have been divorced or remarried, and others will have more barriers when looking to place their child in state-funded care.
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Bangladesh, a deeply religious but moderate Muslim-majority country of 160 million people, is struggling to control attacks by Islamist groups on bloggers critical of extremism, atheists and religious minorities.
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Among believers an atheist, among atheists a skeptic, among skeptics an agnostic, among agnostics all emphatic on the apophatic, I laughed in my beard at market panics, fanaticism, Beyoncé worship.
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Strikingly, atheists showed the same ingroup bias as religious participants, suggesting the bias is not so much about religion as it is about the degree of affiliation to a group.
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Atheists, long discriminated against by civil authorities and derided by their fellow-citizens, were suddenly eligible for some of the exemptions and protections that had previously been restricted to believers.
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Lack of belief in God is still too often taken to mean the absence of any other meaningful moral beliefs, and that has made atheists an easy minority to revile.
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For atheists, at least, this definitional elasticity provided a kind of safety in numbers, however inflated: as their ranks grew, so did their willingness to make their controversial beliefs public.
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Many of Mr. Trump's most vocal and prominent evangelical supporters, because of their rank hypocrisy, are doing more to damage Christian witness than the so-called New Atheists ever could.
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" In "Dear Atheists," he pretends to try to find common ground by arguing that "on both sides, we hold to positions for which by definition there cannot be any evidence.
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Friends suspect Abdulrahman was shot dead by Islamist militants who they say are waging a campaign of persecution against secularists accused of promoting an anti-Islam message or being atheists.
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Most of the members are atheists who have come together through online communities and have sought recognition of their individual freedoms in Tunisia through several previous protests, especially during Ramadan.
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Matt Ball of One Step for Animals wrote that "vegans are viewed more negatively than atheists, immigrants, homosexuals, and asexuals," citing a recent study by Cara MacInnis and Gordon Hodson.
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Some atheists think religion is ridiculous or generally awful, while others don't think about religion at all, and still others think religion is fine, or even a force for good.
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Atheists recognize this (and of course we can do the same), but as minorities, we also understand that the government is in a different position than the people it governs.
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The New Atheists — Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others — attack religions in the sublime confidence that these religions are myths and that they themselves harbor no myths, but that's not true.
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On the other hand, many atheists seem to have made a new religion out of science and think that new inventions are going to pull our arses out of the fire.
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R. told BuzzFeed News that she did not complain to American Atheists at the time because she was worried that her reputation would be attacked, given Silverman's power within the movement.
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The New Atheists tell other stories in this vein: about our predilection to believe in nonphysical entities, to believe in life after death, to believe that everything happens for a reason.
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According to a 2015 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, around 23 percent of Americans currently consider themselves not religiously affiliated, while around 8 percent call themselves atheists or agnostics.
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In condemning Spencer, atheists have the chance to offer a robust, humanistic alternative to alt-right atheism that affirms the worth and dignity of all people to an increasingly secular generation.
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That is the charity so seldom extended to atheists in America: the notion that they, too, may be awed by and struggling to make sense of the human and the cosmic.
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Alito's conclusion leaves out those who look at the cross and see a reminder that they don't belong, a group that includes not just atheists but anyone who is not Christian.
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"I'm 100 percent sure there are many gay Muslims who hide themselves like I did," he said, either becoming atheists or fighters with militant groups like the Taliban or al Qaeda.
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At the same time they were discovering their audience resembled something like America: gay people and people of color, along with liberal whites and conservative Republicans, even a lot of atheists.
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Atheists were the identity group that GOP voters were least likely to see victimized by society but even then, 28500 percent said that people who don't believe in God face discrimination.
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What led me to found Black Nonbelievers was the need to connect with other black atheists and other blacks who were leaving religion, because there are so few of us represented.
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In America, virtually every form of faith or belief has at some point suffered unfavorable reception by others; the victims include Roman Catholics, Mormons, evangelical Christians, Jews and atheists, alongside Muslims.
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These — Edmund Wilson was among the first — take the delight of New Atheists in poking holes in these same security blankets, denouncing Christie's hoary formulas, her two-dimensional characters, her bigotry.
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Over the last 20143 years or so, these conferences have grown in tandem with the rise of the Christian right and megachurch evangelicalism, as atheists sought comfort in a parallel world.
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While Hindus, Parsis, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan will be put on a fast track to naturalisation, Muslims, Jews and atheists will receive no such benefit.
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"The last result is surprising because one might expect that atheists/agnostics would be indifferent to people praying for them -- why care, if you don't believe in the gesture?" said Thunström.
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For instance, did you know that he had to apologize for his wife (who is also the co-founder of Lucas Oil) going on a Facebook rant against atheists and Muslims?
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Evidence that atheists are not smarter (Image: Eli Christman)Religion has played an important part in countless wars, conflicts, terrorist attacks, murders, and genocides, yet people seem to associate it with morality.
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The research surveyed 3,256 people from 13 different countries, and found that, sure enough, anti-atheist prejudices still exist among religious people and other atheists alike, in both religious and secular countries.
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Gray told me that the New Atheists are shaped by myths of their own, and that their failure to understand or acknowledge that is one of the biggest flaws of their movement.
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The allegations reported by BuzzFeed News included unwanted sexual advances and groping at conferences of atheists and skeptics, a movement against superstition and quackery in which Krauss has risen to celebrity status.
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There's no evidence that the DNC ever acted on any of this, and stressing Sanders' supposed atheism in states where atheists aren't particularly popular doesn't rise to the level of sleazy politics.
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This is the outrageous and absurd situation in the supposed democratic state of Bangladesh, where a bloody campaign of terror is being waged against secularists and atheists who have criticized radical Islam.
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The third allegation reviewed by the American Atheists board involves a student, Rose St. Clair, who alleged that Silverman used his position of power to pressure her into having sex with him.
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However, if you only want to date female atheists who are taller than six feet, drink frequently and live within half a mile from you, you might need to reevaluate your standards.
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We spoke with Pastor Brandon Brown of Milwaukee's CollectiveMKE church about the trend, and his own boozy meetup, Jesus & Beer, where Christians and atheists alike meet to talk faith over a pint.
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It would also be a good idea if government agencies or departments working in this area made clear their determination to defend the rights of non-religious dissidents, including atheists and humanists.
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The difficult truth spotlighted by both Spencer's atheism and the silence of other atheists is that, despite the late Christopher Hitchens's infamous proclamation that "religion poisons everything," religion was never the problem.
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A "narrative floor" will tell the Bible's best-known stories but will not make claims about their truth: the goal, Mr Green says, is to be "respectful" of all visitors including atheists.
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Many of the points Spufford makes against Dawkins are valid, but if he is right in saying atheist polemicists caricature religious faith, so does his condescending truculence toward atheists distort their argument.
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Israel Folau's declaration to gays, alcoholics and atheists that "hell awaits you" got Folau, an evangelical Christian, sacked from the Wallabies for violating the employment contract he had renewed just months earlier.
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I've had my share of religious debates, but I also have had all these debates with others I'll call Professional Strident Atheists.. who are more aggressive in their anti-religion than I am.
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In many cases, the New Atheists are animated by 19th-century myths of various kinds: myths of human advancement, myths of what science can and cannot do, and all kinds of other myths.
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I think that's what you had in mind when you said earlier that the New Atheists irritated you because they treated the idea of God as a kind of theoretical or epistemological question.
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And it's unclear that anyone on the task force is atheists or agnostic — or holds political views that diverge from Sessions' — or that the task force will meet with groups that think differently.
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Alister McGrath's "The Twilight of Atheism" and Nick Spencer's "Atheists: The Origin of the Species" are excellent critiques; but both writers are Christians, so they have been relatively easy for unbelievers to dismiss.
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A study by the Pew Research Centre found that Jews are the most popular religious group in America, edging out Catholics and evangelical Christians and much better liked than either Muslims or atheists.
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Washington (CNN)Thousands of atheists turned out Saturday on a muggy Washington day to take part in "Reason Rally," dedicated to boosting the political power of the growing number of non-religious Americans.
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In the 2017 survey, only around 10 percent of people believed that science and technology will someday make religion obsolete, and only around one-third of "nones" (atheists and agnostics) said the same.
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" He argues that many on the alt-right who consider themselves atheists or pagans only lost their faith in Christianity "due to the antiwhite hatred and Marxist dogma held by the modern church.
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The most evident manifestation of this resurgence of Christian nationalism has been animosity toward Muslims and Jews, but the group most literally excluded from any godly vision of America is, of course, atheists.
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It wasn't until the 1960s, in response to lawsuits by atheists and others against public schools that still had religious exercises, that the U.S. Supreme Court banished all official religion from the schools.
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Their father believed so much in embracing arguments that despite being a bishop in the local church, he had multiple books by atheists in his library — and encouraged his children to read them.
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It is one that decentralizes power from Rome to the bishops around the world, that is willing to work through the challenges of the modern world together with other faiths, and with atheists.
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To be moved, like puppets, by appetites and passions, is common to us with the wild beasts, with the most effeminate wretches, Phalaris, and Nero, with atheists, and with traitors to their country.
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I tried to humanize Muslim families, with my one-woman show, "All Atheists Are Muslim," sharing the story of moving in with my white atheist college boyfriend, and telling my parents about it.
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Most of Rizvi's general arguments against religion are familiar, from Bertrand Russell's famous essay "Why I Am Not a Christian" to the popular books by the contemporary atheists Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
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While Christians value these gestures from religious people, some atheists and agnostics would pay money to avoid them, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Sixty-one percent of respondents who identified as Christian said they held at least one New Age belief, compared with 28503 percent of atheists and 22019 percent of agnostics who said the same.
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I spoke with de Botton about his work at the School of Life and his criticisms of fellow atheists who he says fail to ask the right questions about the religions they're refuting.
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And American atheists are frequently forced to defend themselves against charges of amorality, or immorality, which is not something that one would ever be asked to do on this side of the Atlantic.
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For the Women's Wall demonstration on New Year's Day, the Communists were joined by a rainbow coalition of social organizations representing Muslim women, Catholic nuns, marginal-caste associations, atheists, rationalists and many others.
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However, atheists looking for AA meetings without a God attached will not find one in any of them because the GTA Intergroup eliminated local atheist and agnostic meetings from their promotions and directories.
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Chapel Hill shooting forces uncomfortable conversations among Reddit's atheists A question Krauss does not ask is if reasons may be found elsewhere, if hatred may find its rationalizations outside the language of God.
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Where the new atheists go wrong, Mr Eagleton says, is in failing to see the symbiotic relationship between the Western world, with all its technological and cultural prowess, and the advent of global jihadism.
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In the last few years, the United States has seen a rise in religious "nones" — people who, when asked to define their religious identity, state that they are atheists, agnostics, or nothing at all.
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Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed responsibility for the killings of more than 30 people since early last year, in an escalation of militant violence targeting liberals, atheists, foreigners, gays and religious minorities.
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Meanwhile, those who came to atheism via the new atheists might be startled to find that many of their intellectual forebears did not wage war on religion, or even feel any distaste for it.
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The only atheists I know of who might be said to oppose charitable giving are atheist Republicans (yes, these exist) who don't like the government getting too charitable with giving away their own money.
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"We will not allow whole groups in our society to be quietly excluded," she said, adding that Jews, Muslims, Christians and atheists all belong in German society, and stressing that human dignity was paramount.
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Crane resists the notion, common to combative atheists, that the core of religion is an archaic cosmology (beliefs about things like the origin of the universe and supernatural agents) grafted onto a moral code.
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Case in point—Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, two of the richest men in the world, are atheists, and both have funded and launched charitable organizations that help millions of people worldwide ("World's Largest").
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While nonblack evangelicals had one of the lowest levels of support for the free speech of atheists, gays and lesbians, Communists, racists and militarists in 1976, they now nearly match nonevangelical levels of support.
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Knight explained how atheists have kept their mouths shut for the sake of recovery, or out of fear of reprisal, or perhaps apathy, hoping the fundamentalism and exclusion in the rooms would eventually stop.
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On Friday night, Krauss was due to appear at the Comerica Theater in Phoenix, Arizona, at an event called A Celebration of Science & Reason, talking with two other leading atheists, Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty.
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Atheists flee Bangladesh Members of the besieged "free-thinker" intellectual community in Bangladesh say they do not trust the police, because in recent years authorities prosecuted several writers for "insulting religion" in their published work.
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They also have a set of feelings about the flag, about Muslims, immigrants, atheists and gay people that are not always shared by the half of all Democrats who do not describe themselves as liberal.
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To require the demolition or "radical alteration" of the monument nearly a century later—in response to a challenge from atheists and non-Christians who view it as alienating—would not be a "neutral act".
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" She warned that Christian theocrats were taking over America and that those present—atheists, satanists, fans of heavy metal and punk music—were allowing it to happen: "There's too much apathy and not enough resistance!
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" Why, he wondered, would atheists who reject a belief in God be drawn to a belief in "intelligent alien beings monitoring the lives of humans (these are the types of paranormal ETI beliefs [they] measured)?
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Until atheists and humanists confront this Something head on, we will continue to struggle with people like Spencer who embody an atheism that got rid of the gods but put white men in their place.
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"We used this psychopathic serial killer because we thought that, even if people didn't trust atheists enough to let them babysit their children, they wouldn't necessarily assume them to be serial killers," Dr. Gervais said.
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The oncologic pathologist Ali A. Rizvi is in the unenviable position of being in the two religious groups that are, according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study, ranked lowest by Americans: atheists and Muslims.
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Instead, diversity and pluralism is the signal quality of the blue vision of America — it's the place where you find the Muslims and the Jews and the atheists, the immigrants and the descendants of slaves.
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Italy's Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) has collected a number of instances, including in the theater and dance worlds, where Article 404 of the Italian penal code has been invoked for insulting Catholicism.
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According to a working paper published this week by Resul Cesur, Travis Freidman and Joseph Sabia, a trio of economists in America, there is some truth to the adage that there are no atheists in foxholes.
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Atheists flee Bangladesh But members of the besieged "free-thinker" intellectual community in Bangladesh say they do not trust the police, because in recent years authorities prosecuted several writers for "insulting religion" in their published work.
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"Support the jihadis and report the information of apostates around you be they soldiers, agents, conscripts, policemen, officers, bank managers, Christian leaders, atheists, crusaders or Zionists who live among you," Islamic State urged its supporters online.
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Although mainstream Satanism doesn't even worship the Devil (followers are atheists who consider the devil a symbol for individualism and freedom, rather than an actual entity), its followers have been accused of some pretty devilish stuff.
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David Niose, the legal director of the American Humanist Association, is one of many who have suggested that atheists might even be a suspect class, the sort of minority who deserve special protections from the courts.
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If it seems like that's asking too much — if you think leaps of faith are for children rather than adults — consider this: Materialists, rationalists and atheists ultimately place their trust in certain propositions that require faith.
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England number eight Vunipola was among some 30,000 Instagram users who "liked" the post by Folau, a fundamentalist Christian, saying "sinners" including drunks, atheists and gay people were going to "hell" if they did not repent.
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He has come all the way from Madison, Wisconsin, to Washington, DC, to hear the nation's foremost atheists tell an expected crowd of 19203,000 the good news: We are at a turning point in American life.
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Atheists have also succeeded in putting up symbols and displays on government property celebrating the absence of god, including an atheist monument in Bradford County, Florida, and all sorts of godless displays around the holiday season.
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Of course, that hasn't stopped the so-called new atheists like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris—and their annoyingly fanatical online acolytes—banging on about exactly what they don't believe in all the time.
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The lawsuit, filed on Friday in U.S. District Court by American Atheists Inc against officials including Kansas City Mayor Sly James, asks a federal judge to block the city from spending taxpayer dollars to support the event.
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This kind of dynamic seems to extend into other, less tangible spaces: About three-quarters of people who call themselves atheists, agnostics, or nothing in particular still say they believed in a higher power of some kind.
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But informally, discussions about origins—the age of the earth, evolution and human uniqueness—emerged, allowing the scholars to trade reflections on how Lutherans, Christians more broadly, scientists, atheists, and theistic evolutionists approached these fundamental questions differently.
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Wednesday's post, which took the form of a meme based on verses from the bible, said gay people and others he perceived to be "living in sin", including "drunks", "idolaters" and "atheists", would be condemned to hell.
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Just 23 percent of European Christians believe with absolute certainty that there is a God, whereas 27 percent of American "nones" — the religiously unaffiliated, which includes atheists and agnostics but also the "spiritual but not religious" — do.
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Atheists who aren't open about their beliefs—especially those living in totalitarian or ultraconservative environments where it isn't safe to be open—can find resources that help them connect with likeminded peers, or simply feel less alone.
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If this is a part of why the alt-right seems to appeal to some atheists—and I suspect it is—then we must take a hard look at why that is and how to address it.
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Challenging those he calls "the Quartet" of "belligerent atheists" — Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris — who see in religious traditions nothing but willful ignorance, Konner sets out to investigate the persistence of religious belief.
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The West has rapidly become more secular, with the "nones" — the religiously nonaffiliated, including atheists as well as those who feel spiritual but don't identify with a particular religion — accounting for almost one-fourth of Americans today.
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Cosmologies, in other words, can make for strange bedfellows, and some of what Gray does best in "Seven Types of Atheism" is not only to draw distinctions among atheists but to make connections between nonbelievers and believers.
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The Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University last year found that 35 percent of Americans consider themselves "nones," or atheists and agnostics, and almost half of that 35 percent are millennials.
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China guarantees freedom of religion for major belief systems such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, but party members are meant to be atheists and are barred from what it calls superstitious practices, such as visits to soothsayers.
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Through my reporting, I met women who had removed the veil, Islamic reformists who were challenging conventional sheikhs, groups of outspoken atheists, and young Muslims turning to mystical Sufism as an alternative to the austere Salafi creed.
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If atheists think it's enough to dismiss the believer on the grounds that he should never buffer the pains of life, then I'll assume the atheist has no recourse to any pain management in his own life.
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A 2012 WIN/Gallup International poll showed that 5 percent of Saudis identified as atheists — more than in the United States — while 19 percent did not consider themselves religious, in a country that punishes unbelief with death.
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Cast aside, even by some in his own party, as a bigot and a hatemonger, Mr. Moore has turned high-decibel clashes with his critics — he blamed "atheists, homosexuals and transgender individuals" for one conflagration — into opportunities.
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A growing number of Americans reject organized religion "Religious nones," as they are called by researchers, are a diverse group made up of atheists, agnostics, the spiritual, and those who are no specific organized religion in particular.
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"The Fairness for All Act is anything but fair for all and reads like a wishlist for conservative religious groups," said Alison Gill, vice president for legal and policy at American Atheists, in a statement to Vox.
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"Without him who sustains our lives, life itself is empty," Today the threat comes from a virus that makes no distinction between believers and atheists, but the fundamental tension between religion and secular authorities is still there.
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Chowdhury was killed in August in one of a series of raids on suspected militant dens in Bangladesh, which has seen dozens of deadly attacks on atheists, secular writers, and religious minorities in the last two years.
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Although of course individual atheists do plenty to help others, we usually don't think about atheist groups or communities coming together to provide services for those in need, at least not in a self-consciously atheist way.
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I have a very clear memory of leaving out the "under God" part of the pledge when I was forced to recite it in elementary school, and I've talked to countless other atheists who have similar memories.
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I know of no one who in the name of cultural diversity defends the barbaric practices of ISIS, the chillingly efficient holocaust perpetuated by the Third Reich, or the execution of homosexuals and atheists in some Islamic countries.
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That feeling has dwindled into non-existence, but it has been replaced by unease at the policing of other people's faiths—Reddit atheists launching spectacularly unfunny attacks on the religious, or Ricky Gervais belittling believers from his iPhone.
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We have got a wide range of contributors: from doctors and lawyers who have fought for the right of patients or clients to die as they choose, to medical practitioners and atheists who are opposed to the idea.
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As far as I'm concerned, I don't think that atheists (minority), muslims (minority) or any other minority group has the right to tell the majority of people in the United States what they can and cannot do here.
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Three years ago Reddit's atheism subforum, perhaps the largest community of atheists on the internet, was found to be the website's third most bigoted—meaning not just tolerant of overt displays of bigotry, but actively supportive of them.
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At last, just as many readers will have begun to wonder if any Western thinkers ever succeeded in freeing themselves from monotheism, millenarianism, and Gnosticism, Gray introduces us to his favorite atheists: the anti-progressives and the mystics.
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Meanwhile, the belief-in-God and frequency-of-prayer gaps are even larger, with American men twice as likely as women to call themselves atheists — something that will surprise exactly nobody who has sojourned among Richard Dawkins fans.
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" But Avinoam Bar-Yosef, the president of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, noted that many Israeli Jews, though not religiously observant themselves, accepted the traditional establishment, a sector he described as "Orthodox atheists" or "secular Orthodox.
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" Bella, 1203, shared a photo of herself holding a sign that read "We are all Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Atheists, Christians, Jews," with letters from each word in bold to highlight the meaning of the sign: "We are all humans.
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The other asked BuzzFeed News to refer to her by her first initial, A. A. was an undergraduate who had first met Krauss in 2008 at the annual American Atheists Convention through her work as a student atheist activist.
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In one camp, liberal Christians, Jews and atheists make common cause, while dismissing any spiritual differences between them as trivial; in the opposite camp conservatives, ranging from evangelical or Catholic theocons to hard-boiled secularists, stand shoulder to shoulder.
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In 2012, he organized the Reason Rally in Washington, DC, which brought thousands of atheists to the National Mall to hear speeches promoting secularism from celebrities, including evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, comedian Eddie Izzard, and MythBusters cohost Adam Savage.
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The real reason the New Atheists doubt the claims of religion, Jones contends, isn't that religious beliefs have natural causes (what beliefs don't?); it's that these crusaders are convinced that science is the only arbiter of reality and truth.
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This idea that him and Richard Dawkins and others, the quote-unquote "New Atheists," they are attacking the idea of Islam and "no idea should be…" and it's just bullshit, because if it was that, I really wouldn't care.
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We were a group of Muslims, Hindus, and Jews, atheists and agnostics, straights and gays, doing more or less what the innocent young men and women at Pulse night club were doing before they were mowed down by bullets.
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"Over 50,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that delegates at the Republican convention in Cleveland should be allowed to carry guns Atheists in foxholes"NPR has sent its political reporters to 90-minute hostile-environment awareness training.
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In April the magazine carried an interview with the "emir of the caliph's soldiers in Bengal", who said they were "sharpening their knives to slaughter the atheists, the mockers of the Prophet, and every other apostate in the region".
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The political philosopher John Locke famously wrote in 1689 — even as he was arguing for religious toleration — that atheists could not make binding promises and Catholics and Muslims belonged to external communities that called into question their civic commitment.
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Mr. Powell said others have tried to erect monuments: A Hindu group did not complete the application process, and a group of atheists and Satanists had also sought approvals, but those had not been acted upon by the Legislature.
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While there is some irony apparently in the fact that the alleged shooter was reportedly an atheist — that does not mean that atheists are murderers, nor that people who profess Christian faith are free from evil in their hearts.
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If the goal is to convince people that the sense of transcendence and community achieved through religion can be had without it, what kinds of questions should atheists be asking or what sorts of arguments should they be making?
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Writing for the Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan, whose interrogations of gender are as welcome by young feminists as hymnals are by atheists, was the first to wonder why Grace, pushed beyond her point of interest, had not simply gone home.
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Bangladesh has seen an increase in militant violence in the last year-and-a-half, with a series of deadly attacks targeting atheists, gays, liberals, foreigners and members of religious minorities in the mostly Muslim country of 160 million people.
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The category of the "none" includes atheists, to be sure, but also the "spiritual but not religious," and a number of people who may feel alienated from the culture or politics of their birth religion but still retain its spiritual practices.
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"NEW YORK values", a phrase Senator Ted Cruz used to posit America's greatest city as an East-Coast Gomorrah—liberal, licentious, infested with bearded atheists wearing unhealthily constrictive jeans—turn out, electorally at least, to be consistent with American norms.
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"Saudi Arabia's Vision for 2030 is an important and encouraging statement of tolerance, respect, empowering women, and economic development," Trump declared, an absurd claim considering that Saudi Arabia is a theocracy where women can't even drive and atheists are beheaded.
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Every such ruling is a Pyrrhic victory for the devout, for whom invocations of God are sacred, and no victory at all for atheists, for whom invocations of God, when sponsored by the state, are obvious attempts to promote religion.
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The reason that atheists were not allowed to testify in court for so long was the certainty that witnesses who were unwilling to swear an oath to God had no reason to be truthful, since they did not fear divine judgment.
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" Writing on the page of a Syrian Facebook group with 245,000 members, a 45-year-old Syrian refugee, Hamadi al-Khaldi, said that Deutsche Welle "has become the channel of gays and atheists that is constantly depicting Syrians this way.
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And indeed, that's how the Communist Party defends the policy: It claims that Uighur simply have to follow the same rules that apply to everyone, such as requiring Communist Party members to be atheists and forbidding the religious education of minors.
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For instance, in his opening talk, Fernando Alcántar, a former religious youth leader turned self-described "gaytheist," told the audience that atheists can't just be "busy reading papers and making discoveries," leaving the business of saving people to churches and religion.
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He was inspired, in part, by previous research that suggested the rise of the internet since the 1990s has contributed to an increase of people becoming religiously unaffiliated (a group otherwise known as "Nones," which includes, but isn't limited to, atheists and agnostics).
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The attack, claimed by the regional arm of al Qaeda, was the first of its kind to target the community, although it followed similar killings in the last 16 months of university professors, bloggers and atheists who published views critical of Islam.
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A 2013 study from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga found that the atheists who consider themselves "anti-theists," or vehemently opposed to religion in all its forms and eager to proactively fight it, have the highest rates of dogmatism and anger.
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Christians ignorant of their own history, for instance, will be surprised to learn that their earliest ancestors in the faith were themselves ridiculed as "atheists" because they refused to participate in polytheistic worship: in Greek, atheos means "without gods," not anti-God.
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The groups on the letter included the American Red Cross, the Anti-Defamation League, Habitat for Humanity International, the Hindu American Foundation, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, Public Citizen, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, American Atheists and the American Jewish Committee.
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At that time, I didn't specifically identify as an atheist, but when I saw that there was actually a community of people who were atheists and who were black and who were openly expressing their thoughts about God and religion, I thought, Wow.
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The attack, claimed by the regional arm of al Qaeda, was the first of its kind to target the LGBT community, although it followed more than 30 killings since early 2015 of academics, bloggers and atheists who published views critical of Islam.
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The letter noted in part: Religious minorities in Pakistan, including Hindus, Christians, Ahmadi Muslims, and Shia Muslims, as well as atheists, face systematic persecution and violence, and their religious freedom is severely restricted by the government through discriminatory laws and inequitable constitutional provisions.
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In September 2013, Francis sent a letter to Mr. Scalfari, later published in La Repubblica, in which the pontiff wrote that atheists should "abide by their own conscience" and said that Christians should engage in "a sincere and rigorous dialogue" with nonbelievers.
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But when we think of it primarily in terms of unpopular groups — Nazis, atheists, communists — and in terms of the offense it might cause people, we remove speech, expression, and the associated freedoms protected by the First Amendment from their historical context.
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Most people around the world, whether religious or not, presume that serial killers are more likely to be atheists than believers in any god, suggests a new study, which counters the common assumption that increasingly secular societies are equally tolerant of nonbelievers.
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I squabbled publicly with fellow atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Lawrence Krauss over their aggressive condemnation of every aspect of religion, even the parts that inspire working people who haven't had the extraordinary fortune to become as educated as them.
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In 2014, Saudi Arabia introduced draconian new counter-terrorism laws that said atheists are the same as terrorists, criminalized all expression of dissenting speech, and gave the Interior Ministry the legal authority to jail people or spy on their communications without judicial oversight.
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After all, even the most hardened of New Atheists would be forced to give pause and rethink a thing or two after being confronted with the incontrovertible evidence of an omnipotent higher being that has, just this past week, been delivered unto mankind.
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And the third is movies that are essentially political in nature, focusing on narratives that posit conservative Christians as a group persecuted by a variety of groups (atheists, liberals, elite academics, the ACLU); the God's Not Dead movies fit into this category.
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Stoppard is clearly on Hilary's side; in real life, he's said that he tries to live "as if" there is a God, along the lines of Pascal's wager, and rejects the conclusions of New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, whose irritating mouthpiece Spike seems to be.
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One of the few who did was Roger Williams, who, after he was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for spreading "diverse, new, and dangerous opinions," offered a view of the separation of church and state so extreme that it seemed to accommodate atheists.
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The Texas House of Representatives has approved a bill that would allow foster care and adoption agencies that receive state funding to refuse to place children with families they disapprove of on religious grounds, including families headed by gay or transgender people, atheists and others.
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He has been declared a "saint" by the Russian Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a spoof religion run by atheists, and has attracted a dedicated following among young Russians who delight in his caustic, often profane, attacks on their elders and their hypocrisy.
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George V. Coyne, a Jesuit astrophysicist who as the longtime director of the Vatican Observatory defended Galileo and Darwin against doctrinaire Roman Catholics, and also challenged atheists by insisting that science and religion could coexist, died on Tuesday in Syracuse, N.Y. He was 87.
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Pew found that even the religious "nones" — the ones who didn't self-identify as atheists or agnostics — were becoming what Pew characterized as "more secular": Fewer believe in God, fewer pray, and fewer attend religious services or think religion is important in their lives.
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The Christian right and the New Atheists tend to focus on Islam to the exclusion of other issues—ask them about the white gunman who was arrested with explosives en route to the Los Angeles Pride Parade the same day, and you might get a shrug.
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With atheists still often stigmatized and disparaged in this country, it took some persuading for the University of Miami to agree to create a chair with the word "atheism" in the title, according to Harvey Siegel, a professor of philosophy who has helped to broker the arrangement.
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Whether we think of ourselves as Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikh, Buddhists, Jews, atheists, agnostics, or anything else, it is imperative that we stand united in our commitment to protect religious freedom and the right to worship or not worship, safely and without the fear of retribution.
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Some atheists try to claim as one of their own everyone, dead or alive, who has ever thought twice about religion—and there's a bit of this slippage in Moore and Kramnick, where the religiously unaffiliated (the so-called "nones") are all equated with the unbelieving.
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A group that claims to represent Christian lawmakers in the U.S. took aim at "Satanists and Atheists" over the weekend after a Twitter poll it created asking users if they believed the country would be better off with more Christians in office didn't go as planned.
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" According to the statement, the caucus will actively work to "protect the secular character of our government"; promote science-bred public policy; counter discrimination against atheists, agnostics, and humanists; and provide a "forum for Members of Congress to discuss their moral frameworks, ethical values, and personal religious journeys.
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Candidates who rightly denounce the persecution of Christians by radical Islamists should be ashamed of themselves for not expressing equal indignation at the persecution of freethinkers and atheists, as well as dissenting Muslims and small religious sects, not only by terrorists but also by theocracies like Saudi Arabia.
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Gray does not brook what he describes as their "tedious re-run of a Victorian squabble between science and religion," and, in contrast to Moore and Kramnick, who believe that new atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have generated an "Atheist Awakening," Gray dismisses them in a single chapter.
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As he explains in his lucid and thoughtful book THE MEANING OF BELIEF: Religion From an Atheist's Point of View (Harvard University, $24.95), he is more troubled by some of his fellow atheists — specifically, those who campaign against religion as an irrational vestige of primitive thought outmoded by modern science.
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It's not hard to see why internet atheists and free speech advocates of various persuasions were drawn to Yee's battle: Here was a kid who was unafraid to lay into organized religion in the crudest of terms, and was punished not just by squishy social norms but by an actual repressive government.
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His proclamations about his popularity — amplified by a media he dominates — are drowning out the genuine opposition to him: not just the so-called secular elite, but Alevis, Kurds, Armenians, atheists, the pious, feminists, leftists, independents — all sorts of ordinary people who simply do not want to have to worship this man.
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Religious libraries sit alongside traditional bakeries like Korcaz (where the scent of challah escapes from the building into the street every Friday morning at dawn), and atheists cross paths with Chabad Jews who grab young people in the street and place tefillin on them (the phylacteries that are worn during morning prayer).
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