San Antonio Mayor Who Blamed Generational Poverty on Atheism Loses Runoff Election – Patheos (blog)

Ivy Taylor, the mayor of San Antonio who blamed generational poverty on broken people who didnt believe in God, no longer has a job. City Council member Ron Nirenberg defeated her 55%-45% in a runoff election yesterday.

While theres no proof Taylors anti-atheist comments led to her downfall, they did go viral online, and its worth reminding people of just how awful they were.

They took place during a mayoral forum in April in which candidates talked about the impact of and challenges for non-profit groups in the community. At one point, Taylor was asked about the deepest systemic causes of generational poverty. Theres no simple answer to that, of course, but Taylors response didnt even come close.

To me, its broken people. People not being in a relationship with their Creator, and therefore, not being in good relationship with their families and their communities, and not being productive members of society. I think thats the ultimate answer. Thats not something that I work on from my position as Mayor of the community

It was bizarre, offensive, and not based on any facts whatsoever. It was irrelevant that she was directing her response to an openly Christian questioner. Poverty isnt caused by atheism, and atheism doesnt mean you dont have a good relationship with your family and community. (And you better believe we contribute to society.)

Taylor later said that clip was a dishonest, politically motivated misrepresentation of her record, intentionally edited to mislead viewers.

That was a lie. You can see the full exchange at the 1:07:39 mark in this video. Her comments arent any better in context.

She was condemned by several national atheist groups, many of which offered to set up a meeting with their members so Taylor could see for herself what they offered the city of San Antonio.

She never took them up on it.

And now she wont have to.

When speaking to her supporters last night, Taylor once again brought up her faith.

Taylor seemed to concede during her speech, saying, A majority of the votes have come in. It doesnt look like its going the way that we anticipated this evening. But you know what? I am so grateful to God I am at peace. I am so thankful to God for each and every person in this room, for your support, for your prayers, for being here.

And were thankful to no-God that shes no longer in office.

Even though he just got elected, I hope Ron Nirenberg does what Taylor never did and offers to meet with atheists as a gesture of solidarity. He doesnt have to agree with us on theology, but theres no reason to shut us out. It would be a welcome overture.

In case youre wondering, the city council is a non-partisan group and Nirenberg does not declare affiliation with any political party.

(Thanks to @SarahHancock23 for the link. Portions of this article were published earlier)

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San Antonio Mayor Who Blamed Generational Poverty on Atheism Loses Runoff Election - Patheos (blog)

Trump Evangelicals face a growing number of hidden Atheists – Salon

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Religion was a major backdrop in the 2016 election. Donald Trump campaigned hard in white Christian America, promising voters that he would essentially turn back the clock to an America when religion and Christians overall were more influential in the country.

This strategy paid off, asthe Washington Postreported: Exit polls show white evangelical voters voted in high numbers for Donald Trump,80-16 percent. Thats the most they have voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004.

White evangelicals are the religious group that most identifies with the Republican Party, and 76 percent of them say they are or lean Republican, according to a 2014survey. As a group, white evangelicalsmake upone-fifth of all registered voters and about one-third of all voters who identify with or lean toward the GOP.

So it is no surprise that Trump has quickly moved with anexecutive orderto relax restrictions on thepolitical activitiesof tax-exempt churches in an effort to strengthen the role of religion, in essence working to strengthen the political hand of churches in political campaigns.

Trump playing the conservative religious card is in stark contrast to the role nonbelievers play in American society. Atheists, those who disbelieve in the existence of god, comprise a growing sector of American society. Their numbers are often hidden in polls and generally undercounted because some fear reporting their identity and facing social stigmatization.

There have been various reports showing a marked increase in nonbelievers, including atheists, agnostics and others who do not identify with a religion or say that religion is not important to them. Between 2007 and 2014, the portion of Americans who do not believe in a god grew by over 10 percent, according to astudydone by thePew Research Center. The growing numbers of nonreligious people in the United States are propelled by generational change, asyoung people, who are more likely to be unaffiliated with a religion, reach adulthood and slowly replace their older and more religious counterparts.

A recentstudyby psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle at the University of Kentucky concluded that the number of atheists in the United States exceeds 20 percent with a roughly 0.8 probability. This estimate is more than double the conclusion of the study collected over the telephone by Pew Research Center, which found that approximately 10 percent of Americans dont believe in god and only 3 percent of Americans identify asatheists. This disparity toward what is essentially the same question suggests that people are hesitant to identify themselves as atheists.Furthermore, a study byPRRIin 2016 revealed that more than 30 percent of atheists hide their disbelief from friends and family for fear of disapproval, suggesting that many might find an admission over the telephone similarly difficult.

To obtain accurate results, Gervais and Najle constructed a very subtle test that would remove the stigma around atheism.Using a sample population of 2,000 Americans, they asked respondents to answer true or false to seemingly banal statements such as I am a vegetarian or I own a dog.The control group responded to nine statements while the test group responded to the same nine statements plus an additional one I do not believe in God.

Participants only had to acknowledge the number of statements that applied to them. They never had to deny believing in god or identifying as an atheist, which omitted any social stigma from the test.

By comparing the responses of the two groups, Gervais and Najle came to their conclusion approximately 26 percent of Americans are atheists. Assuming the number of vegetarians and dog owners is the same between the two groups, any increase in the test group compared to the control group indicates the number of atheists.

The two psychologists admit that their study is not free of error, but they have undoubtedly proven that previous polls conducted over the telephone or in person have yielded deceptively small numbers.

In fact, another study performed by the Pew Research Center found evidence supporting the existence of social stigma around being openly atheist. Pew found that only a third of Americans feelwarmly toward atheists. Daniel Cox of PRRI wrote in FiveThirtyEight that a third of Americans believe that atheists should be banned frombecoming president, and a similar percent thinks that they should be prohibited from teaching in public schools. With pressure to conform to the dominant religious beliefs, some American atheists choose to hide their beliefs.

In an interview withSlate, Renee Johnson, a single lesbian mother in Point, Texas, said that she would rather have a big L or lesbian written across [her] shirt than a big A or atheist, because people are going to handle it better. Johnson is just one of many who feel uncertain about revealing their nonbelief in a country where religion and spirituality seem like national imperatives.

As the discrepancy between the poll performed by Gervais and Najle compared with previous polls indicates, the role of religion in the daily lives of Americans is becoming increasingly complex. Many polls require respondents to select a single religious identification from a list, which does not allow people to choose multiple answers. By this method, someone cant be Jewish and an atheist or Catholic and atheist. Although its possible to follow a religion for cultural, heritage or spiritual reasonsseparate from a belief in godin previous polls, religion and atheism have been considered mutually exclusive. This method of polling fails to recognize the possibility that religion may be determined by heritage and cultural background, rather than belief; it also presumes one concept of god.

However, ideas of god or spiritual forces are entirely subjective, as indicated in a study byGallup, which found that 89 percent of Americans believe in god, but only about half believe in an anthropomorphic god. The various studies about religion, belief and god exemplify how the United States necessitates having a society that can accept a full range of religious belief and spiritual ambiguity.

While feelings toward atheism are certainly changing60 percent of Americans reportknowingan atheist, which is significantly more than 10 years agothe stigma surrounding people who do not believe in god is continuing to stifle freedom of belief in America. As with his other attempts to turn back the clock in America, President Trumps remark inhis inaugural address about joining all Americans together with thesamealmighty Creator, threatens the intricate and varying histories, beliefs and ways of being that are present in this country.

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Trump Evangelicals face a growing number of hidden Atheists - Salon

This Week in White Atheism – HuffPost

When white atheist Islamophobe poster child Bill Maher referred to himself as a house nger in an interview with Senator Ben Sasse, he was not only demeaning black bodies but doing a familiar minstrel danceappropriating a term with deep cultural and historical symbolism in black speech. Maher has prided himself on the kind of f-you outlaw irreverence and establishment-bashing that only a cis-het white male with the reward of a multi-million dollar HBO contract can enjoy without censure. Supposedly docile and less black, HNs have been characterized as complicit with white massa; a distortion that erases the painful history of black female domestic slaves who were often subject to rape and other forms of ritualized violence in the so-called plantation Big House.

Mahers racist vitriol is not new to atheists and humanists of color who have long pushed back against the unapologetic Islamophobia, Eurocentrism and misogyny of him and his fellow alpha males Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. His identity as an atheist is relevant to this latest flap because hes long been a golden boy of the white New Atheist clique; slobbered over for the dudebro swagger with which hes skewered right wing and liberal sacred cows. This kind of stagecraft pimping black experience has become a hallmark of the dudebro white atheists. In 2013, white atheist You-Tuber Dusty chastised black Christians on being House Negroes and Uncle Toms because of their religious indoctrination and was called out by black atheists like myself and Foxy Jazzabelle. Prior to that, American Atheists trotted out the black enslaved body in a 2012 street billboard campaign to boost its activist cred with a lily white donor base that didnt give a damn about segregated African American communities.

Some are starting to learn. I recently received an outlier email from a white donor to the Black Skeptics Los Angeles First in the Family scholarship fund who acknowledged that his primary mission should be to let humanists and non-believers of color lead without white intervention. This was the recurring theme during a May forum featuring black, feminist, trans and indigenous activists across the religious spectrum at the Humanist Institute in Minneapolis. Ashton Woods, Diane Burkholder, Andrea Jenkins, Desiree Kane and Sincere Kirabo spoke out powerfully on the right to self-determination of people of color in radical, progressive and intersectional movement organizing, and the necessity of getting white folk hell bent on being allies to sit down, shut up and retreat.

This issue of white incursions into intentional, as well as institutionally segregated, spaces of color is magnified by the seismic shift occurring in urban communities of color pushed to the brink by gentrification. As black and brown neighborhoods are increasingly under siege from white homebuyers, developers and speculators, communities of color are in even greater peril. Housing and rental affordability has plummeted, and the unemployment rate for African American youth has continued to skyrocket (with the unemployment rate for black male youth ages 16-24 hovering around 20% as of July 2016, in comparison to approximately 9% for young white males). The malign neglect of neoliberal democratic policies is symbolized by the Obama administrations piecemeal attention to black youth employment under the anemically funded My Brothers Keeper Initiative, which shut out African American girlsbased on the erroneous premise that their status was better than that of black boys. Since his election, Trumps Orwellian misinformation about 59% black unemployment has only fueled the familiar narrative of pathological inner cities overrun with lazy, shiftless violent black men.

Taken in this context, Mahers minstrel-esque appropriation of the term House N is even more infuriating as it implies insider-outsider status within a power structure based on white supremacy. Outsider or outlaw status has been a card frequently played by white atheists fronting as though their non-believer status makes them an oppressed class bereft of race and class privilege. Now, as they bemoan the Trump administrations latest assaults on secular rights and womens rights, more of themas Diane and Desiree noted to the Humanist Institutes mostly white audiencehave become freshly galvanized as freedom fighters and allies when the liberation struggle of people of color was never on the menu before. Mahers use of the black body to front is yet another reminder of why atheist identity politics will always be a sham.

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This Week in White Atheism - HuffPost

The Trouble With Atheism – Top Documentary Films

The Trouble with Atheism is an hour-long documentary on atheism, presented by Rod Liddle. It aired on Channel 4 in December 2006. The documentary focuses on criticizing atheism, as well as science, for its perceived similarities to religion, as well as arrogance and intolerance. The programme includes interviews with a number of prominent scientists, including atheists Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne. It also includes an interview with Ellen Johnson, the president of American Atheists.

Liddle begins the documentary by surveying common criticisms of religion, and particularly antireligious arguments based on the prevalence of religious violence. He argues that the "very stupid human craving for certainty and justification", not religion, is to blame for this violence, and that atheism is becoming just as dogmatic as religion.

In order to support his thesis, Liddle presents numerous examples of actions and words by atheists which he argues are direct parallels of religious attitudes. He characterizes Atkins and Dawkins as "fundamentalist atheists" and "evangelists".

In response to atheistic appeals to science as a superior method for understanding the world than religion, Liddle argues that science itself is akin to religion: "the problem for atheists is that science may not be as far away from religion as you might imagine".

He describes Fermilab, a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory focused on particle physics, as a "temple to science", and characterizes Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species as a "sacred text" for atheists.

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The Trouble With Atheism - Top Documentary Films

Trump Evangelicals Face Growing Number of ‘Hidden Atheists … – AlterNet

Photo Credit: ep_jhu / Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

Religion was a major backdrop in the 2016 election. Donald Trump campaigned hard in white Christian America, promising voters that he would essentially turn back the clock to an America when religion and Christians overall were more influential in the country.

This strategy paid off, asthe Washington Postreported: Exit polls show white evangelical voters voted in high numbers for Donald Trump,80-16 percent. Thats the most they have voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004.

White evangelicals are the religious group that most identifies with the Republican Party, and 76 percent of them say they are or lean Republican, according to a 2014survey. As a group, white evangelicalsmake upone-fifth of all registered voters and about one-third of all voters who identify with or lean toward the GOP.

So it is no surprise that Trump has quickly moved with anexecutive orderto relax restrictions on thepolitical activitiesof tax-exempt churches in an effort to strengthen the role of religion, in essence working to strengthen the political hand of churches in political campaigns.

Trump playing the conservative religious card is in stark contrast to the role nonbelievers play in American society. Atheists, those who disbelieve in the existence of god, comprise a growing sector of American society. Their numbers are often hidden in polls and generally undercounted because some fear reporting their identity and facing social stigmatization.

There have been various reports showing a marked increase in nonbelievers, including atheists, agnostics and others who do not identify with a religion or say that religion is not important to them. Between 2007 and 2014, the portion of Americans who do not believe in a god grew by over 10 percent, according to astudydone by thePew Research Center. The growing numbers of nonreligious people in the United States are propelled by generational change, asyoung people, who are more likely to be unaffiliated with a religion, reach adulthood and slowly replace their older and more religious counterparts.

A recentstudyby psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle at the University of Kentucky concluded that the number of atheists in the United States exceeds 20 percent with a roughly 0.8 probability. This estimate is more than double the conclusion of the study collected over the telephone by Pew Research Center, which found that approximately 10 percent of Americans dont believe in god and only 3 percent of Americans identify asatheists. This disparity toward what is essentially the same question suggests that people are hesitant to identify themselves as atheists.Furthermore, a study byPRRIin 2016 revealed that more than 30 percent of atheists hide their disbelief from friends and family for fear of disapproval, suggesting that many might find an admission over the telephone similarly difficult.

To obtain accurate results, Gervais and Najle constructed a very subtle test that would remove the stigma around atheism.Using a sample population of 2,000 Americans, they asked respondents to answer true or false to seemingly banal statements such as I am a vegetarian or I own a dog.The control group responded to nine statements while the test group responded to the same nine statements plus an additional oneI do not believe in God.

Participants only had to acknowledge the number of statements that applied to them. They never had to deny believing in god or identifying as an atheist, which omitted any social stigma from the test.

By comparing the responses of the two groups, Gervais and Najle came to their conclusionapproximately 26 percent of Americans are atheists. Assuming the number of vegetarians and dog owners is the same between the two groups, any increase in the test group compared to the control group indicates the number of atheists.

The two psychologists admit that their study is not free of error, but they have undoubtedly proven that previous polls conducted over the telephone or in person have yielded deceptively small numbers.

In fact, another study performed by the Pew Research Center found evidence supporting the existence of social stigma around being openly atheist. Pew found that only a third of Americans feelwarmly toward atheists. Daniel Cox of PRRI wrote in FiveThirtyEight that a third of Americans believe that atheists should be banned frombecoming president, and a similar percent thinks that they should be prohibited from teaching in public schools. With pressure to conform to the dominant religious beliefs, some American atheists choose to hide their beliefs.

In an interview withSlate, Renee Johnson, a single lesbian mother in Point, Texas, said that she would rather have a big L or lesbian written across [her] shirt than a big A or atheist, because people are going to handle it better. Johnson is just one of many who feel uncertain about revealing their nonbelief in a country where religion and spirituality seem like national imperatives.

As the discrepancy between the poll performed by Gervais and Najle compared with previous polls indicates, the role of religion in the daily lives of Americans is becoming increasingly complex. Many polls require respondents to select a single religious identification from a list, which does not allow people to choose multiple answers. By this method, someone cant be Jewish and an atheist or Catholic and atheist. Although its possible to follow a religion for cultural, heritage or spiritual reasonsseparate from a belief in godin previous polls, religion and atheism have been considered mutually exclusive. This method of polling fails to recognize the possibility that religion may be determined by heritage and cultural background, rather than belief; it also presumes one concept of god.

However, ideas of god or spiritual forces are entirely subjective, as indicated in a study byGallup, which found that 89 percent of Americans believe in god, but only about half believe in an anthropomorphic god. The various studies about religion, belief and god exemplify how the United States necessitates having a society that can accept a full range of religious belief and spiritual ambiguity.

While feelings toward atheism are certainly changing60 percent of Americans reportknowingan atheist, which is significantly more than 10 years agothe stigma surrounding people who do not believe in god is continuing to stifle freedom of belief in America. As with his other attempts to turn back the clock in America, President Trumps remark inhis inaugural address about joining all Americans together with thesamealmighty Creator, threatens the intricate and varying histories, beliefs and ways of being that are present in this country.

Anna Sanford is an editorial assistant at AlterNet's office in Berkeley, CA.

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Trump Evangelicals Face Growing Number of 'Hidden Atheists ... - AlterNet

How should an atheist behave at a religious funeral – Toronto Star

Just because you do not follow a relgion doesn't mean you don't share common values with those who do, Ken Gallinger tells a reader. ( dreamstime )

How is one to conduct themselves at a funeral when one doesnt practice the religion? I am a 55-year-old atheist. I know many elderly people and, as a result, have attended more than the average number of funerals. In the past I went through the motions of standing and sitting when instructed but never sang or participated in any responses. I am at the point now where even that feels wrong; I am not being true to my atheistic beliefs. Is there a right way to handle this?

OK, so Im puzzled. What, exactly, are atheistic beliefs?

Please understand: I ask not as a critic, but as a fellow traveller. Many would describe my own faith as atheistic. I prefer the expression post-theistic but the distinction, as my dad used to say, is the difference between damn and swearing.

So I know first-hand what atheists dont believe. We dont believe that, somewhere in the faraway heavens, there is a being named God who spends his time meddling in human lives, punishing evildoers and getting those he likes off airplanes before they crash. We dont believe that the earth was handmade by a heavenly potter, or that a distant deity decides the winner of the World Series. We also, incidentally, dont believe in unicorns or the Loch Ness monster.

But what do atheists believe? Is there a creed that distinguishes legitimate atheism from, say, lapsed Catholicism, cultural Judaism or secular Islam? If so, Ive never found it.

I do, however, know a few atheists. We dont talk about religion much but, judging by their lives, my atheist friends seem to believe that love is better than hate, relationships are more important than possessions, building up is preferable to tearing down, peace is more noble than war. My atheist friends are, in general, driven by a conviction that the earth is sacred, life is precious, and beauty, joy and hope should be the goals of their lives.

Are those your beliefs? If not, well, youre correct; youll feel uncomfortable in most religious services. You probably should stay home.

But if you do believe these things, you should feel comfortable in almost any religious gathering, funeral or otherwise, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, traditional Spirituality, or whatever. Yes, yes in all of those communities there are a few fundamentalists who will judge your atheism harshly, but setting them aside (which, trust me, is the right response), worship in the worlds main religions celebrates and lifts up exactly the same values that you espouse.

Sure, you may hear some God-language. Big deal; it wont hurt you. You may also hear a poem in which the hills are said to be singing. Or a hymn in which the stars are alive with joy. Someone may read a sacred text that celebrates the wonders of heaven. So what? Thats all poetry, and, viewed as such, its quite lovely.

So go with the flow. Let the music wash over you. Enjoy the poetry. Weep with the passion of a good eulogy. Honest, you wont catch religion just by being in a church; I was in one every day for 45 years and escaped unscathed better for the experience, in fact. And so will you.

Send your questions to star.ethics@yahoo.ca

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How should an atheist behave at a religious funeral - Toronto Star

Could Atheism Survive the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life? – Discovery Institute

Recently, NASA granted amillion dollars to the Center of Theological Inquiry to study the theological, humanitarian, and social implications in the event that extraterrestrial life isever discovered. It was another reminder of related discussions, over the years, of whether religion could survive the discovery of life on other planets.

I think, though, that the concern is misdirected. The real question is whether atheism could survive.

There are at least two points to consider here. First, God is the Artist of Hidden Beauty. Second, getting mind-staggeringly lucky twice would strongly suggest that something is going on here.

The Artist of Hidden Beauty

In the early 1980s I spent many a fascinatinghour down on my hands and knees in the forest undergrowth, engaged in macrophotography of all sorts of wonderful, tiny things. It occurred to me, about 35 years ago as I was polishing my 65 Ford Custom that God wasnt like us when it came to making things look nice. Ford Motor Corp. only made the sheet metal look nice on the outside where people would see it, but nature was filled with beauty that no one would ever see.

At that moment, the question popped into my head, What about all those possible planets throughout the universe? Amazing plant and animal life on other planets would be exactly what I would expect to see from the One who creates beauty simply for the sake of beauty, even if no human will ever enjoy it. Consideration of alien beings with eternal souls does raise some deeper issues, however space here prevents me from an adequate discussion of this possibility. Suffice it to say that, from my own Christian perspective, plant and animal life on other planets would not be in the least surprising, God being the Artist that He is.

Mind-Staggeringly LuckyTwice?

A friend of mine worked for the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and occasionally entertained me with stories of how they would identify and solve cases of lottery fraud. In each case, the tip-off would be something unusually improbable, such as an unusual number ofwins from the same store.

When it comes to the idea that life spontaneously self-assembled itself in the past, thousands of our brightest minds have worked on the problem for over half a century with no prospect of success in the foreseeable future. In fact, the more we learn, the more we realize how difficult the problem is.1 The challenge is three-fold. First, we have to figure out how intelligent scientists can create a simple life form from scratch in the lab. Second, having done it ourselves, we have to see if realistic natural processes can do the same thing. The third problem is vastly more difficult: figure out how the information to build life forms gets encoded in these self-replicating molecules without an intelligent programmer. We are still working on the first problem, with no hint of success on the horizon. That might be significant, right there.

A 2011 article in Scientific American, Pssst! Dont tell the creationists, but scientists dont have a clue how life began, summarized our lack of progress in the lab.2 Of course, there are plenty of scenarios, but creative story-telling should not be confused with doing science, or making scientific discoveries. With regard to thousands of papers published each year in the field of evolution, as Austin Hughes wrote, This vast outpouring of pseudo-Darwinian hype has been genuinely harmful to the credibility of evolutionary biology as a science.3

Evolutionary biologist Eugene Koonin, meanwhile, calculates the probability of a simple replication-translation system, just one key component, to beless than1 chance in 10^1,018 making it unlikely that life will ever spontaneously self-assemble anywhere in the universe.4 His proposed solution is a near-infinite number of universes, something we might call a multiverse of the gaps. My own work, using data from the Protein Family Database, produces results consistent with Koonins estimate.5 Indeed, we would need a vast number of universes all working on the problem to get lucky enough to see life spontaneously assemble itselfin just one of them.

Heres the Point:

The probability of life spontaneously self-assembling anywhere in this universe is mind-staggeringly unlikely; essentially zero. If you are so unquestioningly nave as to believe we just got incredibly lucky, then bless your soul.

If we were to discover extraterrestrial life, however, then we would have had to get mind-staggeringly lucky two times! Like the forensic detectives at the lotteries commission, a thinking person would have to start operating on the well-founded suspicion that something is going on.

On the other hand, the existence of life and beauty elsewhere in the universe is not at all surprising under the hypothesis of a Creator who is the Artist of Hidden Beauty. Indeed, logic dictates the existence of a supernatural creator, as I have shown here,6 and our observations of the universe indicate it was specifically designed to support life.

Conclusion:

The discovery of extraterrestrial life would be the death knell for atheism, at least for the thinking atheist. On the other hand, such a discovery should not be in the least surprising, if there is a supernatural Creator who has designed the universe to support life, and has brought about life and beauty throughout the universe, even if no human ever gets to see it.

References:

(1) The RNA world hypothesis: The worst theory of the early evolution of life (except for all the others),Biology Direct, 2012.

(2) Pssst! Dont tell the creationists, but scientists dont have a clue how life began,Scientific American, 2011.

(3) The origin of adaptive phenotypes,PNAS, 2008.

(4)The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution, Eugene V. Koonin, 2011.

(5) Computing the Best Case Probability of Proteins from actual data, and the falsification of an Essential Prediction of Darwinian Theory, Kirk Durston, Contemplations.

(6) A simple but elegant argument for the existence of God, Kirk Durston,Contemplations.

Photo credit: Kirk Durston.

Cross-posted at Contemplations.

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Could Atheism Survive the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life? - Discovery Institute

Conrad Black: I put this as simply as possible: Many atheists are excellent, but atheism itself is hurting the West – National Post

I had intended to confine my long-jump from Senate controversies and the Carson case to the moth-eaten current state of the Enlightenment in the West to mylast two action-packed columns here. But the scope and vigour of the reaction they elicited obliges me to return to the subject for the last instance for what I promise will be a long time. Many thanks to readers for the approximately three quarters of the messages that I received that were positive and sensible, and betrayed no trace of proselytizing Christian zeal, which is a much too energetic and narrow focus than I am personally comfortable with(though, of course, I respect it, as I do all sane views on this contentious subject). I am less grateful for the unctuous assurances of the self-professed agnostics and atheists at pains to tell me they were law-abiding and civilized. I never implied otherwise, and have no problem with agnostics, who at least imply that their minds are open.

I have had as much as I can take for a while of the belligerent atheists who come crackling through the Internet assuming the airs of prosecutors, declaring ex cathedra that any suggestion of the existence of a supernatural force or that anything is not explicable by applied human ingenuity is medieval superstition. They have a trite little formula that they dont have to prove the existence of anything and so have the high ground in any argument and then lapse into Hitchensesque infantilistic mockery about pink-winged little men in the clouds. They are repetitive and obnoxious and their fervour betrays the vacuity of their position. I am declaring a moratorium for at least afew monthson trying to reason with these self-exalted champions of reason.

Because there was so much misunderstanding and overwrought, misplaced hysteriafrom some readers, I will wind this up by restating key points with mind-numbing simplicity. We have no idea how the universe, or any version of the life and context we know, originated. We have no idea of the infinite, of what was before the beginning or is beyond any spatial limits we can imagine, even with the great exploratory progress of science. Miracles sometime occur and people do sometimes have completely inexplicable insights that are generally described as spiritual. No sane and somewhat experienced person disputes any of this. But there is a cyber-vigilante squad of atheist banshees that swarm like bats over such comments and are hyperactive philistines better responded to with pest control measures than logical argument.

My contention is that it is more logical and reasonable to attribute these phenomena to the existence of a supernatural force or intelligence than either to deny that they exist, or to take refuge in the faith that they are merely aspects of our environment that we will eventually understand as we explore our planet and the contiguous universe.

I made the point that the Enlightenment that produced what is commonly called the Age of Reason started with a fusion of religious exuberance, scientific and intellectual exploration, and artistic and literary originality, all of which elements essentially reinforced each other. But the Enlightenment gradually adopted the position that science, exploration and reason are incompatible with religious faith, although the Judeo-Christian traditionthe role of conscience, the practice of justice, mercy, and forgiveness, along with intellectual curiosity and initiative are the overwhelmingly powerful formative force in our history. Montreals Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger was generally acclaimed when he addressed the scientific and intellectual communities at the Second Vatican Council and described faith as This greatest friend of the human intelligence.

I did not suggest that the probable existence of a supernatural intelligence required anyone to plunge into religious practice or worship of any kind. That is a matter of taste and people should do what works for them and avoid what doesnt. I did not imply for an instant that those who deny the probability of a supernatural intelligence, whom I defined for these purposes as atheists, were incapable of being honest and decent people. Of course, in our society, most people, including most atheists, are reasonably honest and decent and get through their lives without horrible outbursts of sociopathic behaviour. I did write that those atheists who purport to espouse the Judeo-Christian life without admitting the probability of some supernatural force are essentially enjoying the benefits of Judeo-Christian civilization while denying even the least onerous definition of its basic tenets. Thus do schism and hypocrisy raise their hoary heads.

As atheists renounce the roots of our civilization, they are troublesome passengers, and are apt to be less integral defenders of the West in time of challenge. They often dissent so uniformly and strenuously from any theistic notions that they have effectively established a third force that enjoys the society Judeo-Christianity has created while despising Judeo-Christianity and also purporting, generally, to despise the succession of dangerous adversaries that have threatened Judeo-Christianity, including Nazism, international Communism, and radical Islam.

Of course, an immense number of atheists, as defined here, fought with great valour over centuries and up to the present to defend our civilization. They certainly found it preferable to the enemies assaulting it.But they pose the difficulties of what Cardinal Richelieu called a state within a state (referring to autonomous 17thcentury Protestants) in renouncing Judeo-Christianity while enjoying and espousing an intellectually neutered version of it.They are effectively setting up a third option between Judeo-Christianity and its mortal enemies. This is an illegitimate option, intellectually, since it is really a hijacking of the West from its origins. It also does not gain any recognition from our enemies: the Islamic militants despise the West not because of the faith at its origins, but because it perceives the West now as a society without any spiritual views or values at all; as a wretched mass of materialist atheists (an understandable misapprehension at times). Presumably, we are all powerfully motivated to resist such an Islamic assault and will all presumably lock arms again and repel boarders when and where necessary, as we have since the rise of the Christian Era.

It is, however, and as I also wrote, a steadily more uneasy alliance between the atheists on one side and the theists and agnostics on the other, precisely because the commanding heights of our society the ranks of government, academia, and the mediaare so heavily dominated by aggressive atheists vocally contemptuous of Judeo-Christianity. The frictions in our own ranks become steadily more aggravated. Our Islamist enemies (which it need hardly be emphasized is far from being all Muslims) do not, when they contemplate us, detect our religious tradition, or any respect for anything except hedonistic and consumerist pleasures and spectacles. Of course, this is to some extent an illusion, as all polls and most experience show that the great majority of people in the West do accept the basic premise cited at the outset of this series of columns, that the most probable source of the inexplicable is a supernatural intelligence.

I also wrote that the atheists are becoming steadily more aggressive, more generally dismissive of the supernatural tradition, while swaddling themselves in commendable precepts that are generally variants of the Golden Rule and other such formulations. These are fine, but they will not in themselves assure a norm of social conduct and they have already led to the ghastly enfeeblement of moral relativism. Alternative scenarios emerge of equal worthiness, as right and wrong are concepts that are diluted by being severed from any original legitimacy. All schools of behavioural conduct compete on a level playing field and disorder gradually ensues. Man is deemed to be perfectible, the traditional matrix for authoritarianism. Where there is deemed to be no God the classic human deitiesor Robespierres Supreme Being, the Nazi Pagan-Wagnerian leaders, or the Stalinist incarnation of the toiling Slavonic masses replace deities. Anyone who imagines that our legal system, unto itself, will assure acceptable social conduct has had little experience of it. The entire apparatus of our society of laws has degenerated into a 360 degree cartel operated by and almost exclusively for the benefit of the legal profession.

Atheists are becoming steadily more aggressive, more generally dismissive of the supernatural tradition

I also wrote that, indicative of our deteriorating societal moral confidence and cohesion is our cowardly indulgence of sociophobic Islamwe both under-react to the outrages committed by Islamists and incite the inference that this is what religion produces. The implication, which was explicit in an exchange in this space last month, is that Islam is not more violent than Christianity, and that once embarked on the idea that any religious or spiritual conceptions at all may be worthy of consideration, that will include terrorist versions of religion. (That exchange had the added flourish that Nazism was deemed by my correspondent to be a discernible outgrowth of Christianity, an unspeakable falsehood and defamation.) There is even an element of this in the mawkish, excessive pandering to and amplification of the grievances of the native people in Canada. They have grievances and we have to address them more generously and thoughtfully than we have. But no one in the official leadership of Canada as an autonomous jurisdiction ever dreamt of imposing any version of genocide on them, and bumping John A. Macdonald off the currency and likening him to Hitler is a profanation made more scandalous and repugnant by its cowardly acceptance of historic lies.

I made all these points in gentle terms, as impersonally as I could, and dealt even with sharpish and laborious correspondence in the same way. These are, however, I submit, facts that have very serious implications for all of us, and we should not, as a culture and as a civil society, sleepwalk around them any longer.

National Post cbletters@gmail.com

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Conrad Black: I put this as simply as possible: Many atheists are excellent, but atheism itself is hurting the West - National Post

Professors debate relationship between atheism and science – The Daily Evergreen

Students packed the CUB auditorium on Friday night to hear an atheist and a Christian discuss whether science supports atheism.

The event was presented by the Veritas forum, a non-profit Christian organization that holds discussions across college campuses to ask life's hardest questions, according to their website.

The discussion featured WSU professor Margaret Davis, an atheist, and Washington University in St. Louis professor S. Joshua Swamidass, a self-identified scientist Christian.

Davis said she was raised Christian but began to question it at an early age. She said she became an atheist at age 14 and now also considers herself a humanist.

Swamidass was raised Christian and, like Davis, soon began asking himself if he would still be a Christian had he not been raised that way. It was then that he began to study and try to find something within the Bible that he said was not man-made. It was once he began to study Jesus Christ that he really started believing, Swamidass said.

He said he believed the evidence that Jesus had risen from the dead, pointing to the book More Than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell, as something he read early on that cemented his faith.

Swamidass said the only evidence he could find for the existence of God was Jesus.

Davis said she believes the world is governed by science. She said she lives her life thinking from a rationally scientific point of view, and from that she did not think a creator was the most plausible explanation.

I dont think there is a higher reason for us being here, Davis said.

Swamidass asked Davis if there was any part of her that wondered about the existence of a God, to which she replied that she believed the Christian God was a human creation. She said if there was a God, it may or may not be a cloud, or a giant turtle floating in space.

Davis said she could not imagine an accumulation of evidence which could convince her of the existence of God.

Both discussed how historically natural phenomena such as earthquakes or lightning were said to be Gods doing and now are explained scientifically.

Theology is just the attempt to understand what transcends human understanding, Swamidass said.

Davis said she believes one day science will come close to, or answer, all of life's questions, including those about human consciousness.

Many students described the event as interesting, but also said it was not what they were had expected. Two students said they identified as Christians but did not believe Swamidass accurately represented them in his role.

There is a lot of value in hearing two different perspectives, said Ty Bjornsom, a WSU junior.

Continued here:

Professors debate relationship between atheism and science - The Daily Evergreen

Renowned atheist is hated, murdered, revived in new Netflix film … – America Magazine

The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. This is not just a lyric in a Lumineers song, but a universal truth that could be applied to loves sister in virtue: faith. The opposite of belief in God is not in fact that long despised enemy of godly people everywhere, atheism. The enemy of belief, rather, is run of the mill indifference. This notion is given credence by Tommy OHavers The Most Hated Woman in America, a recent film from Netflix. The film goes a long way in arguing that atheism isnt the converse of theism, but just another shade on the color wheel of belief, with all the pageantry and chaos which that frequently entails.

The film tells the (true) story of Madalyn Murray OHair (Melissa Leo), a woman who garnered notoriety in the early 1960s for suing the Baltimore public school systema move that ultimately led to a Supreme Court decision banning mandatory bible reading in the public school classroom. OHair then went on to found American Atheists, a national organization dedicated to advocating for the rights of atheists, while continuing to work toward ensuring the separation of church and state.

In the summer of 1995, OHair, along with her youngest son and granddaughter, was kidnapped and murdered by a former employee of American Atheist. Eventually it came to light that the murders were an attempt to seize the substantial amount of money OHair had laundered into offshore accounts throughout her time at American Atheists.

The films primary thrust is exploring the what, the why and the how of OHairs kidnapping and murder. Outside of the Supreme Court case that first brought OHair to the publics attention, OHairs activism on behalf of the atheist agenda is paid little heed by the filmmakers. The audience is left with a paint-by-numbers look at the seemingly inevitable corruption that bubbles to the surface when a grassroots movement turns into an organized institution.

The film is quick to indict OHair as no better than the corrupt religious leaders and institutions that she rails against. As she becomes the public face of unbelief, people start donating money to her and the movement she dubs The Cause, and with that comes the incorporation of American Atheists. OHairs rise to fame includes making the cover of Look magazine, where she was first given the films title phrase. We see her in the guest chair of those late 20th century cultural mainstays, Johnny Carson and Phil Donahue, talking fast and loose at a time when the public did not necessarily want its public figures to tell it like it is.

OHair quickly discovers the financial benefits that come with being the face of a beliefor non-belief movement, as it were. Most Hated makes a point of highlighting her collaboration with televangelist Bill Harrington, which consists primarily of their questionably authentic debates for and against religion, put forth for public consumption in the style of P. T. Barnum, andmore importantlydesigned for profit.

Melissa Leo as the hard-to-love OHair gives integrity and complexity to a character who could have easily been played for laughs. She never condescends to OHair and gives authenticity to a volatile and larger-than-life woman without overplaying or veering into camp. It is unfortunate that the rest of the film cannot live up to Leos incredible work, as the production values are shoddy and the writing is strictly TV-movie-of-the-week. The remainder of the casts talentwhich includes Peter Fonda, Juno Temple, Josh Lucas and Adam Scottis wasted in a film that primarily plays like a poorly done imitation of a Coen brothers film.

OHairs story does, however, raise questions worth investigating. The most significant: Can a deeply embedded commitment to unbelief avoid mirroring the very thing it opposes? It would seem that any cause worthy of faith and commitment cannot help but become organized, incorporated and hierarchical. An ideology, a faith, a movement, always begins rather formless, even chaotic, necessitating a leader to give it shape, be it Jesus, Lenin or Madalyn Murray OHair.

As dark a gloss as Most Hatedtries to put on organized movements, the fundamental reality seems to be that we need some kind of hero, or vaunted ideal (be it Jesus or Never Jesus) to give some sort of shape to our existence. And we like to run in packs, or prides, groups, coteries, sects, denominations, religions, take your pick; but whatever you call them, we like to be a part of them. We like to be a part of.

The reality is that people need something to believe in, even if that very thing just happens to be unbelief.

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Renowned atheist is hated, murdered, revived in new Netflix film ... - America Magazine

The Case for Christ: Can Atheism and Faithfulness Coexist Under One Roof? – UrbanFaith

The Case for Christ film, debuting nationwide this Friday, is the most authentic journey from hardcore atheism to faith. The film is based on Author, Journalist, former atheist, and now Pastor Lee Strobels life without Christ as he intensly seeks the truth behind the Christian faith that he once deemed bogus in order to save his wife and marriage.

Although Lee (Mike Vogel) and his wife Leslie (Erika Christensen) collectively decide not to induldge in faith as a married couple, Leslie makes the decision to turn back to God after their daughters near-death experience and her asking questions about who Jesus is.

The unexpected series of events sends Lee on an exploratory tirade with his investigative journalism in tow. Throughout the film, viewers are able to witness how an atheist fights to prove his beliefs as gospel through the use of science, historical facts, and general disbelief.

Many people have been a part of debates both online and in-person that discuss whether or not Jesus is a fairytale based upon scientific facts and anger towards the plights of the world. However, even with scientific evidence of the miracles of Christ and God, the doubt often continues to leave non-believers searching for more. So, when is enough evidence, enough evidence?

Before Leslie decides to become a born-again Christian, her marriage to Lee was considerably solid. However, as her faith grows, so does Lees rage and presentation of facts against Christianity.

Lees main argument is that his wife believes in something that no one else can see, and he only chooses to believe in things that he can see. To add insult to injury, Leslie tries to force her husband into becoming a believer, which only drives him further away.

In fact, there are several moments like these throughout the film that makes moviegoers wonder, Can a faithful and faithless love co-exist?

On social media, the answers vary in the form of everything from scripture that discusses the concept of being equally yoked to those who think you should meet in the middle.

C.B. Fletcher Twitter

Gary goes on to say that, as long as her children were not coerced into believing in God or atheism, he finds comfort in knowing they are making their own choices.

Case for Christ is a love a story between God, Leslie, and Lee. When we love someone we want the best for them and fight and are willing to fight on our loved ones behalf. Lee fought for his wifes sanity , while Leslie fought for Lees peace and salvation. And all of this took place as God fought for both of them to find Him and grow together.

It is the undying love between Lee and Leslie that keeps them going despite their differeces, and that love is what saves them both.

Check out the trailer for The Case for Christ below:

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The Case for Christ: Can Atheism and Faithfulness Coexist Under One Roof? - UrbanFaith

Pakistan’s War on Atheism – The Diplomat

On Tuesday a High Court Judge in Pakistans capital Islamabad reiterated in a hearing that blasphemers are terrorists,as a petitioner sought a ban on social media pages allegedly uploading derogatory posts against Islam and Prophet Muhammad.

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui, who has broken down in tears in every single one of the three hearings on the case this week, on Wednesday asked the government to put blasphemers on the Exit Control List (ECL).

On Thursday, Siddiqui, who has represented Islamic State-sympathizing Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz in the past, said he would summon the prime minister if no action is taken against social media pages that post blasphemous content.

The Islamabad police have since registered a case against the owners of these pages. The Senate has approved a resolution demanding strict action against blasphemous content online. Meanwhile, the Federal Investigation Agency has published ads in national dailies asking citizens to help identify blasphemers on Facebook.

During the hearing this week, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) judge, implied that murder would be inevitableif the pages arent blocked. He went on to add that liberal secular extremism is a bigger threat than Islamic extremism.

Pakistans interior secretary assured Justice Siddiqui that the entire government machinery would be set in motionto address the issue. This was followed by the interior minister vowing to block social media completely if the issue isnt resolved.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman, in his defense, said that similar social media pages have recently been blocked and that it takes time to convince the Facebook administration to take action.

These blocked pages include Bhensa, Mochi, and Roshni, which have either been blocked or taken over by the Elite Cyber Force of Pakistan.

In January, secular bloggers and activists, many of whom were accused of being affiliated with these pages, were abducted from various parts of the country, with the well-coordinated maneuver accused of being a state-backed operation by many quarters.

While many were subsequently recovered, some fled the country immediately. One of these activists revealed on Thursday how the state had tortured him beyond limits.

Almost parallel to the activists release, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Chief Hafiz Saeed, accused of masterminding the Mumbai Attacks, was put under house arrest. Many believe the states long overdue action against Kashmir-bound jihadists is being pushed by China, as it seeks security for the much touted economic corridor.

With the current ruling party forging political alliances with many of these jihadist groups, and the Army using them as strategic assetsfor proxy wars in Kashmir and Afghanistan, only external pressure can lead todecisive counterterror action.

But what this has meant is that both the civilian and military leaders now have to appease their heretofore Islamist allies to avoid collective backlash, as action against jihadist groups becomes inevitable. Pakistans overt war against freethinkers might just give the state the respite that it needs.

Last year, Pakistan also passed its cybercrime law, which upholds identical punishments for Penal Code violations in the cyber-sphere. This means that blasphemy would be punishable by death, even if committedonline.

The immediate impact of Januarys abductions was a mass exodus of anonymous secular bloggers from the web. Satirical publication Khabaristan Times was also banned by the PTA, while a shift in editorial policies has been visible in many online and mainstream liberal publications.

This is why Justice Siddiquis juxtaposition of liberal secular extremists and radical Islamists is critical. All state institutions echoing apologia for Islamists, and slamming secularists, is menacing for an already endangered species: the Pakistani atheist.

Delineating the ideological divide, which would result in any liberal ideals being thrown to the wolves, couldve instigated Bangladesh-like violence had Pakistani freethinkers been a quasi-significant demographic. As it is, a few abductions, and banned web pages, were enough to silence many of us.

Ironically, it is the states appeasement of radical Islam that has caused an upsurge in the number of atheists in Pakistan. This is why an official discourse on atheism has been going on in Pakistan, resulting in many expressing non-belief online, most doing so anonymously.

While one still cant officially register as an atheist, or opt for No Religion as identity for the national database, the number of atheists is believed to have increased following the advent of Internet and social media allowing isolated nonbelievers to connect.

Muslims abandoning Islam even if not their Muslim identity is a global phenomenon, and the apostasy wave is upsetting the Islamist cart in Pakistan as well.

In 2015, the hashtag #___ or Aik crore Pakistani mulhid (10 million Pakistani atheists) trended around Darwin Day, with thousands of Twitter users tweeting both for and against atheism. It trended around February 12 last year again. But we didnt see a repeat last month.

While 10 million might be significant exaggeration, a Gallup poll of 50,000 people found that 2percent of Pakistanis self-identified atheists in 2012, which had doubled from the 1percent in 2005.

Pakistani atheists a broad term encompassing agonistics, the irreligious, deists, and humanists alike have been lazily painted by the Islamists as liberals and seculars, despite the fact that many believing and practicing Muslims identify as such as well.

Muslims openly identifying as atheist in Pakistan would be an open invitation to violence, considering the states blasphemy laws are interpreted to outlaw apostasy, coupled with the National Database and Registration Authoritys (NADRA) refusal to let citizens officially change Islam as their religion. Hence, the aforementioned secular liberal label also provides refuge to the atheists.

Even so, in websites and social media pages that are critical of Islamic theology, the Islamists at the helm of state institutions have found the filter to sift atheists. Justice Siddiqui himself was quick to clarify that non-Muslims shouldnt be considered in the ongoing case against blasphemers, clearly underscoring apostates as the intended target.

And while these atheists of Muslim heritage arent an organized political entity as is the case in Bangladesh the IHCs verdict, and the capital police registering a case weeks after action against secular activists had already been taken, smacks of a thirst for blood.

Whether the episode is being staged to mollify Islamists amidst the crackdown on jihadists, or if theres a genuine clampdown against free-thought, remains to be seen. But the state seems more than willing to sacrifice its nonbelievers at the altar of its security failures.

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Pakistan's War on Atheism - The Diplomat

Why I’m not an atheist – MyAJC

The more-direct sun of spring has already arrived, the azaleas in my front yard have opened, and green sprigs of Bermuda grass are starting to emerge.

After fall, this is my favorite time of year, when in the words of Tennyson, a young mans fancy turns to thoughts of love, and everywhere I look I see God.

I understand belief in Him/Her take your pick is becoming less popular and the number of atheist is on the rise.

Why?

Apparently theres ample evidence pointing overwhelmingly toward the non-existence of God, particularly the non-existence of a loving and all powerful deity, the God that I believe in.

You wont get any argument from me for or against. I can only say what I believe and why.

I believe that there is one God who created all that there is in all the universe. I believe he sent the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, to be born literally of a virgin to come to earth to save me because He loved me. I believe that unlike me, he lived an absolutely perfect life.

Why do I believe that? Because I need to and Ive discovered over the years that thats what works for me. Its the thing that gives me joy and, on most days, no matter what Im going through, the peace that surpasses understanding.

Ive held fast to this belief since I was a 10-year-old growing up in Mississippi, and never once have I doubted God is real. That doesnt mean my faith has never wavered. It has. It doesnt mean Ive blindly followed without question. I havent.

But my faith doesnt demand I have all the answers or that I understand all the workings of God. That, by the way, includes the arrival of, yes, an early spring.

Ive thought of little else since reading the news story about the rise in atheism in which Drew Bekius, president of the Clergy Project, said that about a third of its members no longer believe in a higher power.

They see tragedy in the world, yet you see people claiming God just got them a parking space. So God will answer the prayer for a parking space while millions of people are in poverty?

It reminded me of these words from Job: Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?

If you believe as I do that God is sovereign the answer is a resounding no. God can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants, however He wants.

Bekius and others quoted in the story seem to have a problem with that. Sometimes I do, too. The difference is I dont disown God just because He and I disagree.

But in my search to understand, I reached out to the only former atheist I know, the Rev. Fredrick Robinson.

Robinson, now a resident of Charlotte, N.C., grew up in the church but in 1984 began to question the existence of God for the first time.

Little by little, he said, he struggled to believe the literal story of creation in Genesis and the idea that the world was only six thousand years old. More than that, there seemed to be a disconnect between what Christians believed and how they behaved.

Because of its ostensible rejection of reason and science, I started to believe that religion was an enemy to human progress, he said.

At the same time he continued to attend church, taking every opportunity to challenge believers faith in God.

Eventually, though, he said the Holy Spirit moved in my heart to show me how religion and how faith in God was a powerful thing, how it helped African-Americans through slavery and subsequent generations of discrimination. I was reminded that faith doesnt necessarily lead to passivity. After all, it was faith that was responsible for so many of the freedom movements in our history, from the rebellion of Nat Turner to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the point of view of science, he decided science couldnt explain everything.

He was also starting to see firsthand the transformative power of the gospel in his brother, whose faith led him out of a life of addiction.

That was a turning point for me. I had overlooked how impactful some churches were in the lives of hurting people, Robinson said. It helped to rekindle my faith in God.

And so in 1993, Robinson walked away from atheism and became a believer because while still in Atlanta he sensed a divine call on his life. He accepted his call into the ministry and eventually became a pastor. His goal, he said, is to be Gods hands, feet and heart in the world. To save bodies as well as souls.

Today Robinson is coordinator of MeckMin (formerly called Mecklenburg Ministries), a nonprofit interfaith organization representing 14 faith traditions and 100 churches that works to foster understanding and compassion; vice president of the Charlotte/Mecklenburg branch of the NAACP and executive board member of the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice.

He believes the recent uptick in atheism has more to do with rejecting the way Christianity is practiced than with rejecting God.

In its desire to be all things to all people, Christianity in America glosses over injustice, turns a blind eye to evil and rubber stamps greed, racism, sexism, homophobia and the status quo, he said. People are rejecting a religion that has become more about what you believe than what you do. More about church attendance than living out the principles of Christ.

As we witness the rise in police brutality, income inequality, poverty, the shrinking middle class, hatred of the foreigner, mass incarceration, and a host of other injustices, people are wondering where the church stands. And to the extent that it stands with the status quo, it is being rejected. They are rejecting a religion that makes justice secondary.

Weve created a religious culture where we worship Jesus rather than following him, Robinson said. We have turned faith into a system of beliefs rather than a journey toward union with God. We are more interested in belonging and being instead of being transformed.

But that doesnt mean he agrees with atheists who reject God by focusing on the ills of religion. He doesnt and neither do I.

Bottom-line faith comes down to a personal experience with God. It doesnt demand that I be right, it simply says why I believe in the existence of God, the source of my joy, hope and peace.

Even as a child I needed that, because no matter when spring shows up, Hes still God the reason I attend church each Sunday and why, despite all the reasons to leave, Ive stayed.

RELATED: Liberal or conservative? Religious outlook can blur the answer.

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Why I'm not an atheist - MyAJC

These Networks Are Now Airing Once Banned Atheist Commercial – CBN News

For the first time, an ad inviting viewers to join the Freedom from Religion Foundation is airing on multiple cable news networks.

The 30 second spot features Ron Reagan proudly proclaiming his atheist views.

It originally aired in 2014, but had been refused by CBS, NBC, ABC and Discovery. The ad had aired on some regional network markets, as well as CNN and Comedy Central.

Now the spot will run on "Morning Joe" and the "Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC through March 12. It will also return to CNN.

Michael Reagan, the adopted son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is boycotting MSNBC and CNN for airing the commercial featuring his atheist brother.

Now a conservative commentator, Michael Reagan took to Twitter to denounce the ad and called for a boycott of media outlets running it.

He said his father was "crying in heaven" about Ron's endorsement of the atheistic organization.

"Our father is crying in heaven! MSBNC, CNN airing FFRF's Ron Reagan endorsement ad - Freedom From Religion Foundation," he tweeted.

He also wrote, "I AM BOYCOTTING BOTH. MSNBC, CNN, airing FFRF's Ron Reagan endorsement ad - Freedom From Religion Foundation."

Michael Reagan tweeted this response when asked about the ad.

"Not upset with Ron as much as CNN and MSNBC for reairing it...3 years later as we begin the Holy Days leading up to Easter," he wrote.

"I'm Ron Reagan, an unabashed atheist, and I'm alarmed by the intrusions of religion into our secular government," Ron Reagan says in the ad.

"That's why I'm asking you to support the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the nation's largest and most effective association of atheists and agnostics, working to keep state and church separate, just like our Founding Fathers intended."

He ends the ad with a wry smile, saying, "Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell."

According to the New American, Michael had seen the ad back in 2014.

"I remember having dinner with my father - with our family," he recalled. "And he (Ron) was talking about his atheism at dinner one night and my dad leaned over to me and grabbed my hand and said, 'My only prayer is that my son becomes a Christian'...and that was his prayer."

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These Networks Are Now Airing Once Banned Atheist Commercial - CBN News

JNU’s Umar Khalid hosts a seminar on Atheism with Dawkins & Harris, says ‘A’theism means One God – Firstpost (satire)

New Delhi: JNUs Umar Khalid is all set to unleash his atheist ideas onto the nation. In that line, he has hosted a seminar on Atheism with global atheist stalwarts, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

Umar Khalid shot to fame last yearwhen as a student of JNU, he and Kanhaiyya shouted Bharat tere tukde hoge, which resulted in a surge of outrage from his co-ideologists from journalist and political spheres. While Umar Khalid was targeted for his religion, he shot back saying that he is an Atheist. It has been a year since and Umar was blamed for not sharing anything related to Atheism in his Facebook timeline.

To put an end to all controversy around my atheism, I am hosting this session, said Umar from the seminar stage. Richard Dawkins was seated on his left and Sam Harris was seated on his right. Today, I am going to discuss atheism. I call upon my brothers and sisters of India to walk out of their Hinduismand embrace atheism. Before our other members could open their mouth, let me explain what my Atheism is.

Taking a look at the audience from left to right, Umar uttered these words, Atheism is a combination of two words A and Theism. It means there can be only one God. And He is watching us every day. And there can be only one Prophet(saw).

Turning back to Dawkins and Harris, Umar bent his head and asked, Do you agree to what I say?. Both of them looked shocked and shook their heads from left to right. Umar continued, Let me explain. Take 5th chapter, 23rd page, 432nd verse, 2nd line. What does it say? It says Immediately, the crowd went into cheer as goatee grew out of Umars chin. His glasses rim turned more translucent and a skull cap came out of nowhere. It was not Umar Khalid but Zakir Naik they saw there on the stage. While Umar was turning into Zakir, the seminar was turning into a seminary.

A conch blew from somewhere and Umar Khalid who is now Zakir Naik kept on growing in size uttering verses after verses. With his head touching ceiling, he then turned to the atheist duo, Do you not see who I am, O Infidels?, after which Harris and Dawkins ran from the stage to Delhi airport.

A visibly cheerful fan of Umar shouted from the audience, If a Zakir Naik is banned from India, thousands of Zakir Naiks will come out.

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JNU's Umar Khalid hosts a seminar on Atheism with Dawkins & Harris, says 'A'theism means One God - Firstpost (satire)

Pope’s comments about atheism are true – The Daily Cougar

In a recent interview, Pope Francis talked about being truthful to the teachings and practices of Christianity.

If youre a Christian who exploits people, leads a double life or manages a dirty business, perhaps its better not to call yourself a believer, Francis said.This comes as a sharp contrast between much of Christian theology, as his statement implies that works do not determine salvation, but rather belief alone.

Religion should be followed and acted upon if it is to be a force for good in the world. However, it is often used as justification for reprehensible actions that harm others. This is not to say that only Christians must have the mindset of putting into practice the teachings of religion, but that to be a practitioner of a religion, one must be pious not only in words, but in deeds.

Pope Francis also said many Christians scandalize others with their double-life practices, including fraudulent business leaders, teachers who perturb students and manipulators who discourage others from following righteous principles.

To call yourself a believer, you must live the life of a believer. This is not to say that you must be perfect, but it is to say that you must try earnestly to better others and yourself. We must not allow injustice to be perpetuated in the name of higher powers.

It is dangerous for individuals to twist the meaning of religion to correspond to their worldviews. Religion should not be used to stifle science, education or opportunity. This perversion of religion only serves to give ammunition to people who blame religion for the atrocities in the world, when the true culprit is greed. We must use religion as a tool to advance ourselves spiritually.

Religion is a well, and it spiritually brings us the water that feeds our moral and loving nature.

To be a Christian means to do: to do the will of God and on the last day because all of us we will have one that day what shall the Lord ask us? Will He say: What you have said about me? No. He shall ask us about the things we did, Francis said.

This concept can be applied not just to Christians, but to every practitioner of any belief system. We must actively fight against injustice, prejudice and inequity.

Let deeds not words be our adorning, Francis said.

Opinion columnistAdib Shafipour is a biochemistry sophomoreand can be reached [emailprotected]

Tags: atheism, Catholicism, Pope Francis

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Pope's comments about atheism are true - The Daily Cougar

Church presents seminar to address challenges of atheism, science – Morganton News Herald

Burke Community Bible Church will present a case for Christianity in an apologetics-type seminar aimed at discussing challenges made to religious views from atheists and scientists.

The church invites the community to join them for the free seminar called, Reason, Evidence and Christianity, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Foothills Higher Education Center. Doors will open at 8:30 a.m.

Napoleon once asserted, Men do not rule, ideas rule, said church pastor the Rev. David Doster. A survey of human history (which includes) Martin Luthers idea of grace, Rousseaus idea of the state and Gandhis idea of nonviolent resistance, validates this claim. There are good ideas and bad ideas. Consequently, it is reasonable to point out that ideas or concepts cannot be of equal value, especially when they contradict one another. The intent this Saturday is to provide an intelligent, cogent and well-reasoned case for Christianity that specifically addresses challenges from atheism, (including) their attempt to position science as necessarily adversarial toward religion and people of faith.

The church has invited Dr. Neil Shenvi and Patrick Sawyer to speak about the various objections atheists have to Christianity. They will give presentations on the following three topics:

Atheisms Ideological Noose

Science and Religion: Is it Either/Or or Both/And?

Why Believe? The Case for Christianity

A question and answer session will follow the presentations to facilitate discussion of the issues.

Shenvi earned a PhD in theoretical chemistry from UC Berkeley and is a former research chemist with Duke University. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles on topics such as electronic structure theory, non-adiabatic dynamics, electron transfer, quantum computing and high model representation. He is a Christian with a particular interest in apologetics and the intersection of science and religion, which he has been speaking about publicly for the past decade.

Sawyer holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UNC Chapel Hill and a Master of Arts in Communication Studies from UNC Greensboro. He is currently a faculty member and a PhD candidate in Education and Cultural Studies with a concentration in Philosophy at UNC-G. His work has been peer-reviewed and published and presented at a number of academic conferences in related fields. He has been involved in apologetics ministry for the past 25 years.

Doster encouraged people to attend the seminar, no matter what views they hold.

We welcome Christians and skeptics of all flavors to a civil, responsible and engaging discussion that will provide an objective analysis and evaluation of these issues using critical thinking, Doster said.

Those interested in attending should RSVP by contacting 828-448-2819 or dldbcbc@gmail.com.

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Church presents seminar to address challenges of atheism, science - Morganton News Herald

Dan Hannan on Communism, Ostalgie, first loves and enforced atheism – EurActiv

Fresh from his Brexit victory over Brussels, Conservative MEP and thinker Daniel Hannan now has Communism in his sights organising an ACRE conference next month in Tirana, Albaniaon the legacy of state socialism for Europe.

EURACTIV.coms Matt Tempest met him for a discussion ranging across the 1968s Prague Spring, first loves, enforced secularism, Che Guevara and the Dunblane handgun ban.

Mr Hannan, youre organising a conference on the legacy of communism and its to coincide with the centenary of the Bolshevik revolution. But it seems to me that anybody who can remember a communist government in Europe must be at least 40 years old and no communist party is in government or even poised to take power anywhere across Europe. So it has to be asked: why now?

Its exactly the centenary year. So 100 years since the beginning of what has to be reckoned, mathematically, the most murderous ideology ever devised by human intelligence. But I think this is an argument that we have to have in every generation. Youre right, there is not a communist regime still standing in Europe and most communist parties have transformed themselves into something else. But the argument has to be held again in every generation.

I read a poll last month that a third of American millennials think that more people were murdered by George W. Bush than by Stalin. When you see those idiotic Che Guevara t-shirts when people unconsciously adopt Marxist language about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, very few people realise that theyre indirectly quoting him. You realise that this is something that goes very deep and you need to show that this is not some respectable alternative among many. The ethic of coercion which was intrinsic to communist rule, leading, sooner or later, to the secret police and the gulags. You can have it in a mild version or you can have it in a brutal version, but in the end, it always ends in autocracy.

I lived in Berlin for six years and had several East German friends. None of them was nostalgic at all for the Stasi, or the Berlin wall, or for the fact that they couldnt leave the country. But there was a certain sense, youve heard of the term Ostalgie they were nostalgic for that sense of free education, full employment, effectively rent-free accommodation. Obviously, none of it was very nice but it removed that worry you have in a capitalist rat race society of How do I pay the bills every month? Is there anything in you, even from the right end of the spectrum, that can see those lures or attractions of communism?

I think something else is going on there. I think people are nostalgic for having been 17-years-old. Which is a very natural and human thing. Were all the centre of our own universes. When we think back to the bright primary colours of our teenage years; the intensity of your first adolescent crush on someone, then the Stasi and the shortages and the drabness fade into the background. Thats not really what youre thinking about. But youre right, it has created this bizarre nostalgia in every communist country from people who forget what it was really like. Theyll say things like we had time to talk.

Well, living one week like that again, without even the most basic necessities being available would be a pretty strong cure if you actually had to go back and do it. But again, this exactly illustrates why we need to keep explaining to people where it leads. This wasnt a system that just meant a bit more state control and a bit less individual liberty. It was a complete hollowing out of civil society; the destruction of everything between the individual and the state. And then, ultimately, the NKVD, the knock in the night, and the torture chambers.

Obviously, all communist governments and regimes were officially atheist and secular. Isnt there something now, when were living in a period of, supposedly, a clash of civilisations Islam versus the West or Islam versus Christianity wasnt there something progressive in this idea of secular states?

I think theres a very respectable argument for secularism on the American model, where the state is effectively holding the ring and allowing each religion to proselytise. Or even secularism on the French model, where you say all of this is a private business. But enforcing atheism, which is effectively what ends up happening because everything is enforced, is every bit as tyrannical as enforcing Taliban-style sharia law, or enforcing fundamentalist Christianity, or any other belief system. The reason that this still matters is its very difficult, even a generation on, to rebuild where civil society has been systematically hollowed out and destroyed.

In 1948, when the Communists took power in Hungary, Jnos Kdr, who went on to become the Hungarian leader, was given the job of destroying independent associations. He systematically went through and closed down every church, every charity, every chess club, every village band, every boy scouts troupe; everything that fills the space normally between the individual and the government. 5,000 organisations, he boasted, that hed liquidated. Thats what we mean by a totalitarian society. And it bizarrely leaves people both atomised and controlled because people are denied the wherewithal to relate one to the other in a voluntary way as individuals. Everything is channelled through the party and the state.

I think of you as the libertarian, free market, property rights end of the right-wing spectrum, but not really the evangelical Christian, who are more obsessed with issues around handguns, banning abortion. Am I right in thinking that those arent your pet issues?

Handguns are not a big issue in the UK. Actually, I do regret the handgun ban. I think it was disproportionate and I dont think it was anything to do with what had just happened the abomination that wed seen. Nobody serious tried to argue that it would have made a difference. But, you know, we are where we are. Its not a campaign of mine to try and reverse the ban. But I do believe in freedom. I believe, very much, in people perusing their own happiness by making their own decisions and finding virtue by not having it coerced. And the defining ethic of communism was not equality, it was coercion.

Sort of a Brexit question, the only Brexit question, and its not a totally facetious analogy; but having defeated the EU with Brexit, and looking at communist regimes, can you see something of that in the EU? Not with the violence or the oppression or the authoritarianism, but as a supranational institution; pan-states and sucking sovereignty inwards.

Not in my worst nightmares have I ever thought that the European Union is going to take away our passports, throw us into gulags or torture us. I suppose that the parallel, and its a very minor and limited one, but its an interesting one in so far as it goes, would be this. By the end of the communist era, you really struggled to find anyone who believed in it. I remember travelling in what we still called Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and I remember thinking this cant carry on because nobody believes in it. None of the people running these countries still believed, if ever they did believe, in the principles of Marxism or Leninism.

But on the other hand, how was it going to end? Because so many people had a vested interest in the status quo. So many people had learned to rise through that power structure. And in that limited sense, I think you can draw a parallel, in that there are very few true believers left in Brussels. But there are an awful lot of people who have learned how to make a good living out of it. And I dont just mean Eurocrats. I mean the armies of consultants and contractors, the big landowners getting money from the CAP, the lobbyists, the professional associations; all sorts of parastatal actors who have learned how to make a handy living out of the EU, one way or another. And just like the nomenklatura in the 1980s, they will fight very hard to maintain their position, not on dogmatical grounds, but out of sheer self-interest.

Certainly, we saw that in the UK referendum a lot of the opposition came from organisations that were directly or indirectly funded by the EU. This wasnt, in other words, about sovereignty or federalism or democracy; it was about mortgages and school fees. And that is a very difficult thing to end. But Ill end on a cheerful note. I think the communist system had been basically delegitimised after the Prague Spring. Up until 1968, you could find idealistic Marxists in central and eastern Europe, who believed that they would eventually get to the stage where they could reintroduce democracy. That once the system had been shown to work, shown to be more economically productive than capitalism, then they could have free elections again. After 1968, nobody really believed that and there were just people clinging on to their position.

I think the French and Dutch referendums in 2004 were a similar moment in Brussels. I think after that, people stopped believing that European federalism would win mass support. But they were determined to cling on to their positions. What was it in the end that brought the communist system down? Again, I can remember in the 80s, very few people saw the end coming. People would say maybe over twenty or thirty years there will be a gradual move to a more reformed kind of Marxism. And a few isolated dreamers would say, no, maybe there will be an exogenous shock; a kind of Chernobyl type massive event that will bring it all down. What was the event that brought down the Marxist system in the end? It was the smallest thing. It was the decision of the Hungarian interior ministry to stop requiring exit visas from East Germans who wanted to travel to Austria. Within two weeks, the whole rotten system had unravelled. And that, I think, does give me hope. Permanence is the illusion of every age.

So why Tirana, Albania?

Tirana is, if you like, the most vivid physical place where you can see the legacy of a communist regime. It was the ultimate autocratic system and the ultimate paranoid system. Enver Hoxha spent an immense amount of money fortifying the country. It was rather like North Korea is today. And a hungry and immiserated population, to use a Marxist word, was paying the cost of what had become a leadership cult, because thats where it ends.

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Dan Hannan on Communism, Ostalgie, first loves and enforced atheism - EurActiv

Reagan Sons at War Over Atheist TV ad – Newsmax

Michael Reagan has come out swinging at his brother Ron Reagan, CNN and MSNBC for a controversial TV ad that promotes atheism.

The conservative commentator took to Twitter on Friday to proclaim he was boycotting both cable news networks for running a 30-second spot that features his liberal brother plugging the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

He also said their father, the late Ronald Reagan, was "crying in heaven" over Ron's TV endorsement of the organization whose members do not believe in God.

The ad is appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and the "Rachel Maddow Show," and on CNN's "CNN Newsroom," "The Lead with Jake Tapper" and "The Situation Room."

In the ad, Ron looks into the camera and explains he is "an unabashed atheist, and I'm alarmed by the intrusion of religion into our secular government.

"That's why I'm asking you to support the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the nation's largest and most effective association of atheists and agnostics, working to keep state and church separate, just like our Founding Fathers intended."

Ron identifies himself as a "lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell."

The ad had previously been refused by CBS, NBC, ABC and Discovery Science.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation describes itself as "the nation's largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), with more than 27,000 members. It works as a state/church separation watchdog."

This week, the foundation condemned a proposed West Virginia bill to name the Bible as the "official state book," calling it unconstitutional.

And last month, its co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Energy and Natural Resources to question President Donald Trump's nomination of Dan Coats to be director of national intelligence.

According to the FFRF, "throughout Coats' career, his religion has played an important role. He helped author Don't Ask, Don't Tell, has opposed gay marriage, and has vowed to 'defend the sanctity of life from the moment of conception' all because of his religious beliefs."

Ron has not yet responded to his brother's fiery remarks.

The political beliefs of Michael and Ron have been like night and day for years, with Michael being an unabashed conservative like their father, the late President Ronald Reagan, and Ron being a card-carrying liberal and longtime atheist.

Michael, 71, a Newsmax contributor, is the half-brother of Ron, 58. Michael was adopted as an infant by Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Oscar-winning star Jane Wyman. Ron is the only son of Ronald Reagan and his second wife, actress Nancy Davis.

2017 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Reagan Sons at War Over Atheist TV ad - Newsmax

Officially, China’s Communist Party believes in atheism, but it makes … – Quartz

China has for decades feared the power of organized religion. But religious suppression has intensified in recent years under the rule of president Xi Jinpingalongside a broader crackdown on civil societyaccording to a report (pdf) by Freedom House released yesterday (Feb. 28). For example, Chinese authorities have systematically been destroying churches and taking down crosses, while persecution against Muslims in the western Xinjiang region has become very high.

Buddhism and Taoism, however, are different. As Asian religions, the party is able to harness Chinas religious and cultural traditions to shore up [the partys] legitimacy, says Freedom House, and at the same time use them to help contain the spread of Christianity and Islam. The latter two religions are viewed as so-called Western values by the party, according to Freedom House.

The preference for Taoism and Buddhism over other faiths fits with the larger crackdown by Xi against Western ideas in China. In education, the Chinese government is purging Western ideas like democracy and replacing them with Confucianism, which emphasizes obedience. Xi has also urged families to educate their children with imperatives like love the party while cracking down on international-style education. According to Freedom House, Buddhism and Taoism are in line with the partys signature campaigns, the China Dream and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Those two faiths are compatible with the governments Sinicization drive, says the NGO.

But religion has been gaining ground in China in spite of the governments efforts. China is undergoing one of the worlds great spiritual revivals, according to a recent book by long-time China journalist Ian Johnson. And an increasing number of Chinese view religion as a way to escape the iron grip of the Communist partyChristianity, for example, is seen by many higher-income Chinese people as a symbol of modernity and Western prosperity, says Freedom House.

Freedom House said it did not have data on the number of Taoists in the country.

And Beijings heavy-handedness has actually reinforced solidarity among religious groups, according to Freedom House. The relentless crackdown on Christianity has brought Catholic and Protestant groups closer together. Ties have also grown stronger between the official state-sanctioned Church and illicit underground churches. The cross-removal campaign has been especially pivotal as a unifying force for Chinas Christians, says the report.

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Officially, China's Communist Party believes in atheism, but it makes ... - Quartz