Another article outlining reasons not to believe new atheism.

Dawkins preaches to the deluded against the divine
The Australian, March 16, 2010

"Like revivalists from an alternative universe, 2500 hardcore believers in the absence of religion packed into the Global Atheists Convention in Melbourne last weekend to give a hero's welcome to the high priest of belief in unbelief, Richard Dawkins.

The bestselling author of The God Delusion was similarly fawned over by the Australian media, which uncritically lapped up everything he said.

This was even after (or perhaps because) he referred to the Pope as a Nazi, which managed to combine defamation of the pontiff with implicit Holocaust denial.

By comparison, Family First senator Steve Fielding may feel he got off lightly when Dawkins described him merely as more stupid than an earthworm.

For someone who has made a career out of telling everyone how much more tolerant the world would be if only religion were obliterated from the human psyche, Dawkins manages to appear remarkably intolerant towards anyone who disagrees with him.

The fact is, however, the shine has come off Dawkins. For sure, he remains a superstar for the legions who loathe religion. But, nevertheless, a strong feeling has developed in less credulous quarters that he has gone too far.

While he was writing about the "selfish gene" and the "blind watchmaker", he received a respectful reception even from those who might have disagreed with him but were nevertheless impressed by the imaginative brio and dazzling fluency of his argument. But then he left biology behind and became the self-appointed universal crusader against God. Flying the flag of Darwinism, he went to war against religion on the grounds that any belief that did not follow the rules of scientific inquiry was prima facie evidence of imbecility or insanity.

He became the apostle of scientism, the ideology that says everything in the universe has a materialist explanation and must answer to the rules of empirical scientific evidence; to believe anything else is irrational.

A second's thought tells one this is absurd. Love, law and philosophy are not scientific yet they are not irrational. So it is scientism that seems to be irrational.

As for Dawkins's claim that religion is responsible for the ills of the world, this is demonstrably a wild distortion. Some of the worst horrors in human history - the French revolutionary terror, Nazism, communism - have been atheist creeds. And although terrible things indeed have been done in the name of religion, the fact remains that Christianity and the Hebrew Bible form the foundation stone of Western civilisation and its great cause of human equality and freedom.

Through such hubristic overreach, Dawkins has opened himself up to attack from quarters that, unlike the theologians he routinely knocks around the park, he cannot so easily disdain.

Books taking his arguments apart on his own purported ground of scientific reason have been published by a growing number of eminent scientists and philosophers, including mathematicians David Berlinski and John Lennox, biochemist Alister McGrath, geneticist Francis Collins, and philosopher and recanting atheist Anthony Flew.

These have itemised his many howlers, sloppy assertions, internal contradictions, unscientific reasoning and illogicality. His responses to these stellar intellects are fascinating. He claims they cannot possibly have meant what they wrote, or they are senile, or their scientific credentials are somehow obviated by the fact they are practising Christians.

Indeed, he seems almost to believe that, since everyone who believes in God is stupid or evil and Christians are stupid and evil because they believe in God, those who oppose him must be Christian and can be treated with contempt...."

Click here to read more.

To discuss the atheist movement, go to our forum.

Advertisements seem to have the ability to take what is promiscuous and make it fashionable. This has been happening for many years. So perhaps it is no surprise that the boundaries keep getting pushed further back.

The latest example of this is by Lynx deodorant, a subsidiary of Unilever who have their finger in a lot of pies. There are two products that really seem to struggle to sell themselves, judging by their advertisements. The first is beer. With restrictions upon what they can actually show in advertisements beer advertisements usually combine the nonsensical with the hilarious.

However, in many ways deodorant advertisements take the cake for stupidity. For instance, the regularly played Brut Code advertisements try to sell their product by giving men advice such as “boardies over budgies”. While such a message is both stupid and completely irrelevant to the use of deodorant it is one step up from the advertisement that merely has a robot picking up things that are perceived as manly. But neither of these are as demeaning as the “spot and share” Brut code which blatantly states that a man should point out a hot, scantly-clad woman to his mates so they can drool over her as well. Talk about selflessness.

A brilliantly written article appeared in The Age today. It critiqued the idea that Atheism is a position of greater intellect and exposed other atheistic arguments as having little merit.

Mysterious rituals of the atheists
The Age, March 15, 2010

"Those declaring themselves godless provide a fascinating study for sociologists.

Unbelievers from across the world met in Melbourne at the weekend for the 2010 Global Atheist Convention. They were undoubtedly in a jubilant mood, and they have every right to be. Atheism, as you've probably noticed, is in vogue.

From the 2004 publication of Sam Harris' The End of Faith onwards, impassioned polemics against religious belief have rarely been out of the bestseller lists. The God Delusion (2006) by Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins - who spoke yesterday - sold more than 2 million copies in its first two years.

But book sales alone weren't responsible for the atmosphere of celebration - even, perhaps, self-congratulation. For many, high spirits would have come from the thought that, simply by being there, participants were demonstrating their affiliation with a group that is more intelligent, better educated and more open to ''the evidence'' than the general population - not to mention those whom Dawkins calls ''dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads'', otherwise known as ''religious believers''.

Article by Cameron Spink

The National School Chaplaincy Programme (NSCP) was introduced in 2006 by the federal government with John Howard at the helm. Now secular groups are trying to claim that the program is unconstitutional and are seeking to test its constitutional validity with a High Court Challenge. I say bring it on.

Ron Williams is the man bringing the challenge and his contention is based upon section 116 of the Australian Constitution which states:

Bibles and other holy books were being traded for pornography at a Texan University. The Atheist Agenda at the University were terming the trade "smut for smut".

Texas students argue the Bible is smut
The Atlanta Journal, March 5, 2010

"There’s a religious war in San Antonio.

The Atheist Agenda, a University of Texas San Antonio student organization, is preaching the Bible and other religious writings are just as smutty as recognized pornography.

The “smut for smut” campaign this week tries to counter the religious message of love by noting that the Bible and the Quran recount violence and torture, according to the San Antonio News-Express.

“It’s a First Amendment right,” said Bradley Lewis, an 18-year-old member of the Atheist Agenda. “If religious groups can put out missionaries and go knock on my door and wake me up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, I can put a table outside of a college.”

Nobody seems to be contesting the group's right to have their say, but Robin Lorkovic -- standing nearby with a sign proclaiming “God Loves you! Keep your Bible and learn from it” -- said the Atheist Agenda’s campaign was inappropriate...."

Click here to read the full article.

Have your say on this event on our forum.