I remember clearly the day I deeply offended a close friend by refusing to oversee the religious education of her future children. It was years ago and we were walking through Cashel Mall during an afternoon shopping jaunt and she asked if, when she had children, I would be their godmother. Now, what I think Read more
Atheists’ arrogance is their Achilles’ heel, as a cringemaking radio performance has proved. Which of us hasn’t groaned when the Rev Giles Fraser, former canon of St Paul’s, pops up with his Thought for the Day on Radio 4? Dr Fraser is the archetypal 21st-century vicar, as predictably Lefty as he is drearily on-trend. That Read more
Of the many remarkable things about Christopher Hitchens, who died on Thursday after one of the most prolific and provocative careers in modern Anglo-American letters, perhaps the most remarkable was how much religious believers liked him. Not all believers, of course: When Hitchens’s esophageal cancer diagnosis became public last year, the famous atheist took obvious pleasure in Read more
Religious believers distrust atheists more than members of other religious groups, gays and feminists, according to a new study by University of B.C. researchers.
The only group the study’s participants distrusted as much as atheists was rapists, said doctoral student Will Gervais, lead author of the study published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
That prejudice had a significant impact on what kinds of jobs people said they would hire atheists to do.
“People are willing to hire an atheist for a job that is perceived as low-trust, for instance as a waitress,” said Gervais. “But when hiring for a high-trust job like daycare worker, they were like, nope, not going to hire an atheist for that job.”
The antipathy does not seem to run both ways, though. Atheists are indifferent to religious belief when it comes to deciding who is trustworthy.
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According to the annual “Status of Global Missions” study, in this first part of the millennium non-believers will lose two million seven hundred thousand members, whilst declared atheists will lose one million and 370 thousand “faithful”. “Catholicism is growing at a rate of 34 thousand people a day,while Islam is gaining 79 thousand followers per day, and Hinduism 37 thousand.
Between 2000 and 2011, the “non religious” category lost 700 members every day, while the “atheist” category lost 300 per day.
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It was five years ago this month that we launched On Faith. The idea was to inform and educate about all faiths (and no faith) and to initiate an on-going discussion about the role of religion, values and ethics in our daily lives. I hoped that after learning more, people would become more accepting of those Read more
The Oct. 27 gathering of religious leaders in Assisi to discuss global peace will include four leading atheists, but will not include any common prayer. “It is an exercise of dialogue, and dialogue always respects the specific identity of the people, of individuals,” said Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Read more
Dr Rowan Williams argued it has become difficult for the Church to convey its message because of the popularity of non-believers such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.
Read the article...“If there’s a reason to support religion in the military, it’s the ethics and values that come out of it, not the supernatural claims,” he said. “We also have constructive ethics and values, but we rally around humanism rather than the supernatural,” said Army Capt Ryan Jean.
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Is religion necessary for morality? Many believers would say yes. Ricky Gervais is working on a new show,”Afterlife”, about an atheist who died and went to heaven – the point being made that believers don’t have the monopoly on morality. “All too often religious people equate faith with moral behavior”, says Pamela Taylor. “As a Muslim, I Read more