Pope Francis says "It's better to be an Atheist" than a bad Christian.

Courtesy of CNN:

If you're a Christian who exploits people, leads a double life or manages a "dirty" business, perhaps it's better not to call yourself a believer, Pope Francis suggested in a homily on Thursday in Rome. 

"So many Christians are like this, and these people scandalize others," Francis said during morning Mass at Casa Santa Marta, according to Vatican Radio. "How many times have we heard -- all of us, around the neighborhood and elsewhere -- 

'But to be a Catholic like that, it's better to be an atheist.' It is that: scandal." "But what is scandal? Scandal is saying one thing and doing another." 

In the Catholic Church, causing scandal also a grave offense. 

Examples of such sins abound, the Pope said, from money launderers to business owners who take beach vacations while stiffing their employees.

Well this is essentially what I have been saying for years. 

Of course I would probably just have stopped with "It's better to be an Atheist." But still the Pope makes a good point.

There are SO MANY so-called Christians who use the religion as camouflage to do terrible, and even criminal things, while using their "faith" to deflect criticism.

We have seen that with tons of politicians, performers, and even pastors.

And these "Christians" seemingly feel absolutely no guilt in judging all of those around them while acting in ways that are direct violations to the teachings of Jesus Christ. 

And yes, Sarah Palin of course definitely falls into that category.

Personally I am typically FAR more trusting of a person who openly rejects religion than I am of somebody who constantly reminds everybody about their faith.

Don't get me wrong there are quite a number of very kind, and very moral religious people in the world.  And some of them have been good friends of mine.

But since I place such a premium on critical thinking skills there is always a little distance between myself and those who can accept the existence of extraordinary things without the benefit of evidence.

Atheists are still the most disliked group in America. So we have that going for us.

Courtesy of World Religion News:

Ten years ago University of Minnesota sociologists conducted research showing that, among a long list of racial and religious minority groups, atheists were the most disliked group of people in the United States. Last month they followed up with new research that shows that Americans still have negative opinions of atheists and the non-religious–and now they have a good theory about why that is. 

Survey data collected in 2014 shows that, compared to data collected in 2003, Americans have sharpened their negative views of atheists, despite an increase in people identifying as non-religious and an increase in public discussion of non-belief. 

The findings of this most recent survey support the argument that atheists are persistent cultural outsiders in the United States because they are perceived to have rejected cultural values and practices understood as essential to private morality, civic virtue, and national identity. Moreover, any refusal to embrace a religious identity of any type is troubling for a large portion of Americans. 

Well I would argue that the second and fourth contention are pure bullshit, however depending on your definitions the first and third may not necessarily be incorrect.

Yeah if you are an Evangelical, I really DON'T share your vision of American society.

And if by "elite" you mean a critical thinker who is not easily duped by superstitious nonsense, and believes they are intellectually superior to those who are, then yes guilty as charged.

I guess the same probably holds true concerning "perceived to have rejected cultural values and practices understood as essential to private morality," if by that they mean Judeo Christian values, as well as rejecting a "national identity" if that national identity means describing oneself as a Christian.

So great it appears that I have confirmed all of the reasons that certain religious groups may distrust and even fear those of us who identify as "Atheists."

However I would argue that some of those reasons are also WHY some of us defiantly argue for the integrity of the title Atheist.

I cannot speak for the entire group as we are wildly eclectic, but for myself I have eschewed the safety of the less threatening label "Agnostic" because for one it does not adequately describe my point of view, and two I do not believe it right to judge people solely on their beliefs, or lack thereof.

If you want to dislike me, dislike me because I am an arrogant asshole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else. THAT is a legitimate reason to dislike me.

However if you dislike, or distrust, me based on the fact that I do not attend your church, or worship your god, then I reject the legitimacy of your feelings.

For they are not based on anything to do with who I am, but only based on the misconception of the label with which I identify.

A misconception by the way which is changing ever so slightly every day, until at some point the labels will mean nothing, and all that will remain is the content of our character.

As it should be.

New book claims that White Christian America is dying.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

Robert P. Jones is the founding CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). His new book, “The End of White Christian America,” has been called “quite possibly the most illuminating text for this election year.”

Like an archaeological excavation, the chart sorts Americans by religious affiliation and race, stratified by age. It shows the decline of white Christians among each successive generation. 

Today, young adults ages 18 to 29 are less than half as likely to be white Christians as seniors age 65 and older. Nearly 7 in 10 American seniors (67 percent) are white Christians, compared to fewer than 3 in 10 (29 percent) young adults. 

Although the declining proportion of white Christians is due in part to large-scale demographic shifts — including immigration patterns and differential birth rates — this chart also highlights the other major cause: young adults’ rejection of organized religion. Young adults are three times as likely as seniors to claim no religious affiliation (34 percent versus 11 percent, respectively). 

This subject is of course one of my all time favorites, and I have covered the demise of religion around the world for many years now.

In fact when I started The Immoral Minority I always hoped that I would someday have the opportunity to write the obituary for American Christianity.

I seriously doubt I will hang in there long enough to see that day, but at least I can document our shifting away from religion and toward enlightenment, and that's good too.

However a troubling bit of data in this book is the following: 

The rising number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has more to do with people being less likely to claim a formal connection with organized religion than it does with widespread doubts about the existence of God. While there has been an uptick in the number of Americans who identify as atheist or agnostic, this has not been the main driver of growth of the religiously unaffiliated.

Many unaffiliated Americans, for example, still believe in God, even as they are happily unconnected to any church and show little interest in seeking out institutionalized religion.

I find that somewhat less than satisfying as I would of course prefer that the religiously unaffiliated to be made up more from those who reject the idea of a supreme being altogether rather than to be made up of those who no longer find organized religion palatable.

Don't get me wrong, I am still pleased that fewer Americans will find themselves manipulated by men standing behind the pulpit, however continuing to have blind faith in superstitious nonsense still leaves people vulnerable.

Oh well, as I always say, baby steps.

The Sioux Falls Atheists are not playing around anymore.

Courtesy of the Friendly Atheist: 

Back in May, Dale Hemming, the one-man show behind the Sioux Falls Atheists, paid for more than 20 billboards (most of which were digital) to go up in South Dakota. 

Now he’s back with a collection of billboards, both static and digital, to promote science — specifically evolution and climate change. 

Well so much for subtlety, but then again when has that approach ever seemed to work?

I am typically not a huge fan of the more in your face approach to Atheism, preferring instead to write my ideas down here on my own blog and inviting people to come and discuss or disagree with what I say.

However there is little doubt that this approach will stimulate conversation in Sioux Falls, and who knows perhaps even a few people will find their way to enlightenment.

My new mantra.

"Atheism is not a religion, it's a personal relationship with reality."

I wish I could take credit for writing it but I can't.

Personally I really hate it when people call Atheism a "religion," as it shows not only a profound misunderstanding of Atheism but also of religion.

Here is the video that Richard Dawkins sent to the Reason Rally this year.

Religious people described as cowards.

And people say that I'M not diplomatic.

Still he makes excellent points.

P.S. I should probably add that in light of the events that took place in Orlando, this video seemed especially appropriate. Hiding behind religion to camouflage your inhumanity to man may be one of the most prevalent acts of cowardice that we see.

Just a reminder.

We are actually making progress.

However there is still much progress to be made.

Article makes case that world is more peaceful due to rise in Atheism.

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

The quiet truth behind the inescapable headlines about man’s inhumanity to man is that the world is actually becoming a more peaceful place. Deaths from war and conflict have been declining for decades – and, if current trends continue, we can make them rarer still. 

What mysterious force is sowing peace among humankind? One possible reason is that there are more atheists and nonbelievers than ever before. 

In America, millennials are the largest and least religious generation in the country’s history. The trend toward secularization in the US mirrors the movement in Europe and throughout the developed world. And poll after poll have shown that the nonreligious also lean more progressive and more pacifist on a wide variety of issues relating to violence: torture, the death penalty, corporal punishment, military adventurism and more. 

As long as humanity was in thrall to the violent morality of religious texts, our societies were warlike and cruel. As the American revolutionary Thomas Paine said, belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man. It’s only in the last few decades, as we’ve begun to cast these beliefs off, that we’re making real moral progress.

As an outspoken Atheist I of course want to think that the rise of non-deists is the reason for all kinds of positives in the world

And though I would agree that much of the warlike behavior we are witnessing in the world today is driven by religious ideologies,  I am not entirely convinced that doing away with religion automatically translates into a more peaceful world.

We kill for a variety of reasons, religion is just a convenient method by which to excuse our hatred or demonization of a group that we deem less worthy than our own tribes.

 So I am interested in your thoughts on the matter.

Another Atheist comes out to run for the office in Arizona.

Courtesy of Deadstate:  

Another atheist lawmaker emerged from under the shadows of the predominate Christian Arizona Senate. 

Athena Salman, who describes herself as a ‘half Arab, part Mexican’ atheist, is running for the State House and will be joining fellow secular Arizona politicians Cara Prior, Scott Prior and Jaun Mendez. 

Salman “came out” while speaking to the Secular Student Alliance at Arizona State University this week, by going public with her own atheism and telling the group that she is running for the State House in District 26. 

“What I do, just telling my story, running for office — still an experience, still it scares me sometimes because I’m atheist, I’m half Arab, I’m also part Mexican… there’s a lot of things in Arizona that just doesn’t resonate with most people. But to me, picturing people like Rosa Parks, and who she really was and what she really did, what her real contribution was… I want to embody my life after that.”

Being an Atheist running for office in Arizona is certainly no walk in the park, but the more people who openly do so the better it will be in the long run.

Especially if they are elected and their are no reports of them eating babies or consorting with Satan.

There was a time not too very long ago that NO politician would have openly admitted to being and Atheist and now there are more all of the time.

Hopefully I live long enough to see the day where a person's faith or lack of faith is no longer a determining factor in their ability to be elected.

Is Bernie Sanders the Atheist presidential candidate we are looking for? Maybe.

Courtesy of the Washington Post: 

But as an adult, Sanders drifted away from Jewish customs. And as his bid for the White House gains momentum, he has the chance to make history. Not just as the first Jewish president — but as one of the few modern presidents to present himself as not religious. 

“I am not actively involved with organized religion,” Sanders said in a recent interview. 

Sanders said he believes in God, though not necessarily in a traditional manner. 

“I think everyone believes in God in their own ways,” he said. “To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.”

Actually science has proven that we are all connected by the planet on which we live, the materials that compose our bodies, and the energy we share to survive, so there is really NO reason to introduce gods into the equation. 

Actually IF Sanders was to subscribe to any religious belief or philosophy it would seem that Taoism would be a far better fit than Judaism, or any of the other western religions.

Having said that it really does sound as if Bernie is given the most political cautious answer he can give while covering for the fact that he is in reality an Atheist.

Just my opinion, but then I also think that there are a large number of Atheists in politics, entertainment, and the media who are still too afraid to accept that label publicly.

A little perspective.

My mother spent the night at my house the other night, because she did not want to drive back to Palmer in the dark.

While here she brought up the topic of religion and we had a long talk about my atheism and her very basic brand of faith.

I played for her Professor Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Most Astounding Fact, and explained how understanding that the entire universe, and everything in it, shared the same DNA if you will was both humbling and exhilarating, and how I saw the fables of religion as interfering with our understanding and acceptance of that simply truth.

She seemed to understand but also said that her faith gave her comfort, and she was worried that I would strip her of it just to make an intellectual point.

I said that I had no intention of doing that, and that at her age there was no reason for her to abandon her faith, so long as she was on guard against those who would use it to manipulate her or take advantage of her.

In the end it seemed that she understood me a little bit better, and that I certainly have no intention of doing anything that takes something away which gives her comfort and a sense of peace.

As I come to the end of this post it suddenly dawns on me that what I have written has virtually nothing in common with what is printed on that image up above.

Oh well it's my blog, and if think a story about a conversation with my mother about religion, and a Carl Sagan quote about the insignificance of human conflict are connected in some way, well so be it.

Church attendance in England has plunged to the lowest levels ever.

Courtesy of The Telegraph: 

Attendance at Church of England services has plunged to its lowest level ever as the Archbishop of Canterbury warned it was battling to maintain its place in an increasingly “anti-Christian” culture. 

Official figures – based on an annual pew count – show that only 1.4 per cent of the population of England now attend Anglican services on a typical Sunday morning. 

Even the Church’s preferred “weekly” attendance figures, which include those at mid-week or extra services, has slipped below one million for the first time ever.

Now if only America can follow suit, and critical thinking gains a stronger foothold over here, I think we will all be in a much better place over all.

I have to say that when I started this blog I had no idea that I would be helping to chronicle the slow demise of organized religion. But more and more I think that is exactly what we are witnessing.

And I'm not going to lie, it is pretty gratifying.

Justice Antonin Scalia believes that the government should favor the religious over the non-religious.

Courtesy of NOLA: 

Government support for religion is not only justified by the Constitution, it was the norm for hundreds of years and it helped the United States become a free and prosperous nation, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday in Metairie. 

Speaking before a small crowd at Archbishop Rummel High School, Scalia delivered a short but provocative speech on religious freedom that saw the conservative Catholic take aim at those who confuse freedom of religion for freedom from it. 

The Constitution's First Amendment protects the free practice of religion and forbids the government from playing favorites among the various sects, Scalia said, but that doesn't mean the government can't favor religion over nonreligion.

 Scalia goes on to suggest that when Thomas Jefferson first invoked the idea of the "wall of separation between church and state," that he did not intend for it to be taken literally since he also mentioned God in the Declaration of Independence, and penned Virginia's religious freedom law.

However it is within that Virginia religious freedom law that Jefferson wrote the following:

That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.

That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right.

You know to me that sounds very much like a man who absolutely does not want special privilege provided to those who profess a faith in any god or adherence to any particular religion.

And that is even before taking into account the Jefferson Bible, where he methodically removed all mentions of miracles and left only the words ascribed to Jesus that he felt reflected his moral teachings.

No Scalia is wrong, dead wrong.

But even if he is right about the "common practice" of Christianity during the time when the country was formed, that time is long past and if we as a nation to not progress past the superstitions and ignorance of our forefathers we will find ourselves left in the dust by the rest of the world.

In fact in many ways, we already have.

Just in time for the holidays.

 Courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation's Winter Solstice sign has just returned to the Illinois State Capitol for its seventh display. 

"This sign is a reminder of the real reason for the season, the Winter Solstice," says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president, which is the shortest and darkest day of the year, and takes place on Dec. 22 this year. The natural holiday heralds the rebirth of the sun and the natural new year, and has been celebrated for millennia in the Northern Hemisphere with festivals of light, evergreens, feasts and gift exchanges. 

"We nonbelievers don't mind sharing the season with Christians," Gaylor adds, "we just don't like the pretense that it's about a supernatural birth of a god." 

An engraved sign with the same wording has been erected by the Foundation for 20 Decembers in a row at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. 

Should fit quite nicely next to the Christian Nativity, the Jewish Menorah, and the Kwanzaa Bendera ya Taifa. 

(Hat tip to The Friendly Atheist.)

Just a reminder that the tenets of the Satanic Temple are far more instructive and moral than the Ten Commandments.

There are seven fundamental tenets. 

• One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason. 
• The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions. 
• One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone. 
• The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo your own. 
• Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs. 
• People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused. 
• Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word

By now I'm sure that most of you realize that the Satanic Temple really has very little to do with Satan, and actually exists mostly to troll Christians.

I actually enjoy much of their work, and I might think about joining them if I were not already dedicated to repairing the reputation of Atheists instead.

He has a point.

We shouldn't need the word Atheism. If people didn't keep inventing gods I wouldn't have to keep explaining why I don't believe in them :)

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) November 22, 2015

A non-belief in gods is our natural state.

It is only through aggressive proselytizing that we are convinced that the supernatural is natural. 

It isn't.

Saudi Arabia gives man death sentence for "doubting the existence of God."

Source

Courtesy of Middle East Eye:  

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a Palestinian poet to death for renouncing his religious faith, according to documents seen by Human Rights Watch. 

Ashraf Fayadh was handed the sentence on Tuesday on charges of “doubting the existence of God,” according to court documents seen by the group’s Saudi Arabia researcher, Adam Coogle. 

Fayadh, who was born to Palestinian parents but grew up in the Gulf kingdom, was arrested by religious police in late 2013 after a reader complained that one of his books, his 2008 poetry collection Inner Teachings, could encourage people to renounce Islam. 

Fayadh, now 50, was released after a day due to lack of evidence, but was rearrested in January 2014 in the southwestern city of Abha. 

The poet was arrested in a coffee shop after watching a game of football, and was threatened with being deported to Gaza, his father told France24 at the time. 

Fayadh was initially sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes, but an appeal judge this week increased the sentence, handing down the death penalty.

Remember this is a Muslim country with whom WE have a special relationship.

In fact our former President seemed to have a crush on their former leader King Abdullah.

And our current President did not seem to have any problem cozying up to his successor King Salman.

The country has money to burn, and they send their children to some of the best schools in the world, and yet they STILL consider it reasonable to murder a man for using his critical thinking skills.

If America were really a place that respected freedom above all else, it would immediately cut ties with his back water country and tell them not to give them a call until they managed to drag themselves into the 21st century.

Is now a good time to remind everybody that fifteen of the nineteen 9-11 hijackers were Saudi nationalists?

More good news about the end of religion in America.

Courtesy of Quartz:  

Pew’s new report—which surveyed 35,071 people in 2014, and encompasses the second half of findings released in May—can be juxtaposed with the group’s similarly sized 2007 study on the same topic. Americans who are “absolutely certain” in God’s existence have decreased by eight percentage points in the intervening time. Religiously unaffiliated people now make up 23% of the adult population, compared to 16%; even among the pious, regular service attendance is faltering. 

When sorted by generation, the contrasts get even starker. Younger Americans, by some measures, are almost twice as likely to be uninterested in religion as their parents and grandparents. For instance: only 27% of millennials attend weekly religious services, versus 51% of adults in the Silent Generation (those aged 70 to 87). Emphasis on the importance of religion is also lagging. 

The wide difference in generational religious interest is explained in part by people’s tendency to care more about religion as they age—a caveat Pew has carefully noted. But even so, the research group finds that younger people nowadays aren’t showing the same increase in religious fervor when they get older as past generations did. 

“As older cohorts of adults … pass away, they are being replaced by a new cohort of young adults who display far lower levels of attachment to organized religion than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations did when they were the same age,” wrote the authors of the report.

As I have mentioned before, I have been here all along, unshackled by fear, prejudice, and superstition, just waiting for everybody else to finally join me. 

And increasingly they have been doing exactly that.

New study finds that non-religious kids are more generous than children raised in religious homes. Gee, no kidding.

Source

Courtesy of The Oregonian:

A new study in the journal Current Biology found children in religious households are significantly less generous than their non-religious peers. 

At the same time, religious parents were more likely than non-religious ones to consider their children empathetic and sensitive to the plight of others. 

It's a common assumption in the United States that faith goes hand-in-hand with goodness. The Pew Research Center reported last year that 53 percent of Americans think it's necessary to believe in God to be moral. 

Americans overwhelmingly elect Christian representatives, and they distrust atheists. 

This study challenges those attitudes. It was the children in non-religious homes most likely to be generous toward a stranger. The longer a child had lived in a religious home, the stingier he was compared to his secular peers. 

Here is another obvious fact that people cannot accept without a study to back it up. And let's face it religious people are not going to accept it even WITH a study to back it up.

Clearly if you are raised to expect rewards for good behavior (Heaven) and dire consequences for bad behavior (Hell), and taught that you are constantly under surveillance (God) to monitor those behaviors, then you are going to have a severely underdeveloped morality.

Generosity and goodness cannot be forced on children through threats or rewards. They learn that by observing the example of those around them.

And those who are constantly struggling with doing the right thing, and who openly admit that their morality comes from their fear of a supreme being, set a very poor example indeed.

The non-religious among us give and take care of each other because it is the right thing to do, not to earn passage into eternal life.

To do it with the expectation of reward, cheapens what it means to be human.

Study finds that belief is easier on the brain, and therefore favored by many in the population, than disbelief which requires the brain to work harder.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:

While in an fMRI scanner, participants were asked whether or not they believed in a number of statements. Sentences ranged from the very simple and fact-based (California is larger than Rhode Island), to the abstract and highly subjective (God probably does not exist). The data revealed activation of distinct but sometimes overlapping brain areas during belief versus disbelief conditions. 

Additionally, the scans clearly showed something that was more straightforward. Brain activation, overall, was much greater and persisted longer during states of disbelief. This is important because neuroscience has long shown that greater brain activity requires more mental resources, of which there is a limited supply. A cognitive process that demands little mental resources, such as believing, is less work for the brain and therefore favored. This concept was summed up nicely in a 2015 NewScientist cover story on the science of beliefs, which stated, “Harris’ results were widely interpreted as further confirmation that the default state of the human brain is to accept. Belief comes easily; doubt takes effort.”

Well that makes sense.

I favor cognitive thinking and skepticism because I have an active intellect, while those who simply accept things on faith are intellectually lazy.

Makes pretty good sense actually.