By Stronger Now It is often stated by Christians that something must have created the universe and that something is God. It seems they mean that because the universe is sooo vast and soo complex that it needed to be created by an even more complex thing. Never seems to occur to them to think that if complexity and largess require a creator then their god would also be subject to the same type of creating force that they claim the universe needs. So, why do they do this? Perhaps, it just seems unimportant to think about such things when people were going to burn in hell for not trusting the lord. That's the main thing, to trust the lord and not worry about it. "Don't worry about it" In other words: "Don't think about it". That's how I walked my walk in faith. I didn't think about things like that. Don't think about who created God. God doesn't need a creator, he just is. And so it went. As if my brain was on a self inflicted leash. Neve...

By Sharon Now that I’ve escaped the cult of Christianity and am becoming more aware of my freedom and my choices in life, I have to make a decision about Thanksgiving and what it means to me. I want to picture this Thanksgiving 2007 as separate from all the others. I want to ask myself, “What does Thanksgiving mean to me?” Maybe if I put all the other Thanksgiving’s in a big pile and set them aside in my mind, I’ll be able to focus on this one as an Ex-Christian. All the other ones were about being thankful to God. They were about sitting around the table with loved ones and saying grace with hands clasped around the table. The person who offered the prayer would always call God “Heavenly Father.” Now I cringe at the thought of it. “Heavenly Father,” ugh! “Heavenly Father, we bow to you and humbly thank you for all the things you provide for us, because we’re afraid you might take them all away in a terrible natural disaster if we don’t!” That’s really what was meant. That’s not humili...

Televangelist Benny Hinn is threatening to sue the religious satire magazine The Door for the video clip it is distributing that shows Hinn's wife, Suzanne, preaching at their former church in Orlando, Florida. She says if you're a lifeless, blackslidden Christian, you need a "Holy Ghost enema... right up your rear end."

By Scott Calling all atheists, agnostics, religious people, Christians, Hindus, Islam, Buddhists, Jewish, secular or religious, Wiccans, spiritualists, near death experiencers, philosophers, artists or poets -- what is the meaning of life? I know, I know, the most important and colossal issue of are time and throughout history. But wait before you answer, I need to throw a wrench into the works. My ten year old son Connor died from a heart attack related to leukemia. See my testimonial: Where are you, God? When we were in the intensive care unit at Children's Hospital we were thrust into a chamber of horrors. Our son was unconscious, hooked up to every machine imaginable and the only thing that was more nightmarish was seeing the horror, in the face of my wife, when my son coughed up blood before he was admitted to intensive care. The Doctor told us that my son's heart rate and breathing were that of a marathon runner, running consecutive marathons. Walking through a children...

Growing Up in the Universe is a series of lectures given by Richard Dawkins as part of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures , where he discusses the evolution of life in the universe. The lectures were first broadcast in 1991, in the form of five one-hour episodes, on the BBC in the UK . The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science was granted the rights to the televised lectures, and a DVD version was released by the foundation on April 20, 2007. Part 1: Waking Up in the Universe Part 2: Designed and Designoid Objects Part 3: Climbing Mount Improbable Part 4: The Ultraviolet Garden Part 5: The Genesis of Purpose For more information on this series, or to order the DVD, go to http://richarddawkins.net/growingupintheuniverse

Bill Maher pokes fun at all the oppressed Christians.

By John Fraysse There is an important adage in engineering circles that goes something like this… “the more important a concept or process is, the simpler it should be to understand.” This is particularly true of instruction manuals. Many of us, (especially guys J ) read the instructions as a last resort! I, admittedly, skip the instructions most of the time. Why? Well, it’s because I expect the (properly engineered) process to be self-evident or intuitive. When it is not, or I’m too dumb to figure it out, I read the manual. I’m sure many of you have heard the Christian admonishment…“when life has you stumped, read the “owner’s manual”, that is, the Bible. Well, I did this and the more I read and studied, the more complicated the “simple godly life” became! But, hold on here! How could anything be more important than “God’s Will and His Salvation”? For to be without them condemns every man, woman and child past, present and future to an unbearable...

By Valerie Tarico In the name of God all manner of moral boundary crossings become conceivable. In the service of a biblical god or the Bible-as-God, they all too often become real. For Evangelical Christians, the greatest good in the world is winning converts. A Christian who wins a convert saves a soul that would otherwise be condemned to eternal torture. According to traditional Roman Catholic theologies in which modern Evangelicalism has its roots, only true believers are exempt from this fate. With stakes so high, intellectual and moral slight of hand in order to win converts or keep people from deconverting becomes a lesser evil than leaving souls to suffer damnation. Evangelical missionaries, often genuinely decent people driven by compassion, choose this lesser evil even if it means they have to engage in distasteful manipulation or deceit. As they should! That’s what moral reasoning is about: being able to weigh the consequences of our actions and choose the lesser evil or the...

Richard Dawkins talks about Antony Flew 's recent conversion to deism. Lee Strobel holds an interview with Antony Flew on the afterlife. From Wikipedia : Professor Antony Garrard Newton Flew (born February 11 , 1923 ) is a British philosopher . Known for several decades as a prominent atheist , Flew first publicly expressed deist views in 2004 [1] . Biography Antony Flew, the son of a Methodist minister, was born in London, England . He was educated at St Faith's School , Cambridge followed by Kingswood School , Bath . During the Second World War he studied Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies , and was a Royal Air Force intelligence officer. After the war, Flew achieved a first class degree in Literae Humaniores at St John's College , Oxford . Flew was a graduate student of Gilbert Ryle , prominent in ordinary language philosophy . Both Flew and Ryle were among many Oxford philosophers fiercely criticised in Ernest Gellner 's book Wor...

Reposted from the Freethought Cafe by J.C. Samuelson Christians often make much of the manuscript attestation for the Bible. Popularized by Josh McDowell in his book, "Evidence that Demands a Verdict," this particular apologetic is frequently offered to support the assertion that the Bible is not only historically reliable, but divinely preserved. Basically, it's reasoned that if archaeologists have recovered many more manuscripts for the Bible than any other ancient text, and those texts don't differ substantially from one another, it means the Bible must be a unique and special document. Certainly the Bible is unique in some respects. As an ancient document, it stands well above its peers in that its components were authored over a span of several centuries, making the fact of its substantial attestation that much more impressive. Many other ancient documents have been lost entirely, being known to us only second or third hand. It's very easy to understand how ...

By DagoodS We often see the “Who’s Who?” game in this debate. We want some intellect to be on “our side” while pushing the moral miscreant on to “their” side. Everybody wants Einstein. Everybody wants Hitler…to be on the opposing team. So we enter (in my opinion-- ridiculous) debates over what teams certain individuals played for. As if the theistic belief of Abraham Lincoln, or Ghandi, or Stalin makes a wit of difference to the viability of anyone else’s belief. (And I should note we ALL play this game. No particular group is any better or worse than another.) Recently, the hot, hot person of the hour is Antony Flew. A formerly atheist philosopher, who now is a deist. Two or three years ago, if the name “Antony Flew” was mentioned, most people, Christians and atheists alike, would have said, “Antony who?” But now, apparently his change in beliefs is supposed to be making tsunami-like impact throughout the world. The recent salvo is his book, “There is a God,” in which he descri...

From Wikipedia: Pat Condell is an English stand up comedian and writer. He has caused controversy with outspoken monologues on YouTube denouncing religion and promoting the cause of atheism. His 2006 stand up show ‘Faith Hope and Sanity’, subtitled ‘A Few Jokes About Religion Before It Kills Us All’, was a platform for his comedy and atheist beliefs. He said of the show "It seems to me that fundamentalist Christians, jihadist Muslims and settlement-building Jews are causing more than their share of trouble in the world. World events are being driven by people with apocalyptic delusions, while here in Britain a paralyzing liberal guilt allows religious bigots to use intimidation and violence to stamp out free speech. If you can’t get laughs out of all that, you can’t get them out of anything." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6904... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news... http://www.spiritrestoration.org/Chur... http://skeptically.or...

From Wikipedia: Pat Condell is an English stand up comedian and writer. He has caused controversy with outspoken monologues on YouTube denouncing religion and promoting the cause of atheism. His 2006 stand up show ‘Faith Hope and Sanity’, subtitled ‘A Few Jokes About Religion Before It Kills Us All’, was a platform for his comedy and atheist beliefs. He said of the show "It seems to me that fundamentalist Christians, jihadist Muslims and settlement-building Jews are causing more than their share of trouble in the world. World events are being driven by people with apocalyptic delusions, while here in Britain a paralyzing liberal guilt allows religious bigots to use intimidation and violence to stamp out free speech. If you can’t get laughs out of all that, you can’t get them out of anything." An audio version of this video is available at http://patcondell.libsyn.com/

This video features Eugenie Scott vs. Stephen Meyer (of the Discovery Institute ) on intelligent design. This appeared on MSNBC in 2005. Scott's organization: http://www.natcenscied.org/ Richard Sternberg , who served as editor for the science journal that published Meyer's article, by-passed his editorial board and skipped the peer-review process. Funny enough, that is the only article Meyer can cite! His own article, which was NOT peer-reviewed and did NOT mention intelligent design. Read the journal's statement on the article: http://www.biolsocwash.org/id_stateme... To see a creationist/intelligent design clip posted by someone who took a segment of this out of context: http://youtube.com/watch?v=z7-YVVf8fvk Read more about Sternberg's creationist interests and the Sternberg-Meyer controversy: http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2...

Kenneth R. Miller (born 1948 ) is a biology professor at Brown University . Miller, who is Roman Catholic , is particularly known for his opposition to creationism , including the intelligent design movement. He has written a book on the subject entitled Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution , in which he furthers the argument that a belief in God and evolution are not mutually exclusive. A video of Ken Miller's 2-hour talk on Intelligent Design at Case Western University was posted to YouTube nearly two years ago. In the video, Miller basically rips Intelligent Design apart and exposes tactics that creationists employ to get creationism shoehorned into the American school system. Evolution resources from Miller's website: LINK

By Valerie Tarico My book, The Dark Side , has an in-your-face subtitle: “How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth.” It’s in your face and so, not surprisingly it triggers push-back. One of the questions I get is a wearisome post-modern “What is truth, anyways? What is all this whining about Christian dogmas violating truth like you have some higher standard? (Implied: As if any perspective could lay any more valid claim to truth than any other.)” Whenever this question comes up, I have to fight the urge to say: Go put your left ankle on a train track and come ask me again after a long freighter goes by. Why do I have this urge? Because at one level, it’s a dumb dope-smoking question. People who are being tortured or dying of cancer or, I would assume, getting their feet crushed by locomotives don’t spend a whole lot of time speculating about whether the experience is real. Why do I resist? Because at another level the question is valid. And so I try to answer it –for the quest...