Category Archives: Atheist

I cant do this because Im an atheist.

I cant do this because Im Christian, not Catholic.

I cant do this because I dont know what I believe.

These were some responses I got from students. I appreciated the combination of honesty and cunning. Teenagers often put the two together to try to get out of an assignment in the first months of a high school theology class. This is especially true when that assignment asks them to reflect upon an experience in their lives that they would consider religiousthat is, when one unexpectedly finds oneself in the presence of something more that cant quite be named, cant quite be understood, cant always be logically categorized, but that is felt and experienced nonetheless.

After I stated the prompt, some students looked at me perplexed. Others laughed and shook their heads in disbelief. A few seemed to understand, and their mental wheels began to turn.

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So, I got more specific. I asked them to raise their hands if any of the following applied to them: Who has been to a large sporting event? Hands went up. Who has been to a concert of any kind? Lots of hands went up. Who has ever had fun with family or friends? More hands went up. Who has enjoyed being out in nature? A few hands went up.

I continued: When you were at that concert, at that sporting event, with friends and family, or out among the trees and fresh air, have you ever had an intuition that you could not explain? Have you ever momentarily felt connected to something larger than yourself? Like you were part of something bigger, even though you couldnt name it or may have even told yourself it was silly and pushed it away?

I didnt ask for hands, just to nod their heads if it sounded familiar. Almost everyone nodded their heads. It now made more sense. I told them: That experience is what you need to write about. Dont worry if it sounds religious or not. Just write about it in narrative form. And, as a follow-up, post a song to the class website that you think describes your experience. Preferably, a clean version of the song. Youll explain to a partner later why you chose that song, and well play a few of them in class.

Heads nodded. There were a few smiles, and everyone understood better what to do.

Teaching theology to teens is an art and a ministry. It is not merely passing on information, although that is one part of it. It is the process of accompanying them in their spiritual development wherever they are on the journey. Its a practice of creating a safe space for honest questioning and conversation, teaching various prayer methods, and offering ways for them to integrate their experiences into a cohesive narrative that uses the long Catholic tradition as a foundational dialogue partner.

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To that end, I have learned three things while teaching teens. First, students need to ask questions, be taught how to ask questions, and be given a safe space where any and all religious, theological, philosophical, life, and human questions are valued and taken seriously. These questions run the gambit from Why does religion cause so much violence? to Do you, Dr. C., think Jesus was really God? to Why is the church so hateful toward LGBTQ people when Jesus was accepting and loving? and Is masturbation a sin?

As a teacher I do not need to answer every question. After all, this is not algebra. Rather, it is the messiness of learning how to be human in the presence of a loving God. But I do need to respond to every question in a way that validates the question and the student, offers additional information or directions to think in, and remains open-ended for further reflection.

Second, teachers need to be more like coaches than pontificating professors. If you let them, teens will be very honest about how difficult it is to make sense of spirituality, to show love to an enemy, or to generally believe anything any adult has to say about theology. They need to be reminded that they are loved unconditionally by God and encouraged to seek out the divine in all things using whatever language makes sense to them. No student should be penalized for doubt, atheism, agnosticism, or resistance to Christianity or theology. Doubt, protest, rebellion, and skepticism are natural parts of youth spiritual development.

Third, all education is the formation of an entire human person, not just the intellectual muscles of the mind. Nowhere is this truer than in theology. Every day, teens are inundated with media messaging that claims there is something wrong with them. In order to fix this, they are told they need to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and act a certain way. And if they buy a variety of products, this will magically happen. So, teens need to know that they are valued, they matter, their voices matter, their questions matter, and theology can attune them to the infinite love and acceptance that Gods Spirit offers here and now.

Adults need to realize that many teens have been harmed by a religious tradition in one way or another and have good reasons for skepticism. That is why one of the best compliments I received from a student was that I presented Christianity in a way that was compassionate, reasonable, inclusive, and explorative of Gods Spirit in all things. The student had little interest in any church, least of all the one her family attended weeklyat least not at that moment. But she said for the first time she was open to Christianity in the future if her life went in that direction.

Back in the classroom, I have learned to anticipate students complaints and objections to any assignment. For the student who said they were atheist, I told them of course they still had to do the assignment. They just had to approach it from the perspective of whatever they thought their beliefs as an atheist entailed. They had to follow the guidelines while remaining true and honest to their own stage in life and its corresponding beliefs. I said the same to the students who did not know what they believe, to Protestant students, to Muslim students, and to confused students. In doing this, I was teaching them to think about God in the most Catholic way possibleanalogically from their authentic experience of the something more to how this connects to God.

Theology is a process, journey, and struggle. The purpose of theology in a high school classroom is to assist in authentic human development more than the mere acquisition of new information. For no other discipline can assist youth in becoming integrated persons who can look beyond the immediate and begin to ask the most challenging questions: What is the ultimate meaning of your life? And how does that connect to how you actually live your life?

When teens know that you take them seriously as thinking and soulful young adults, they tend to take you more seriously as a teacher. And then they creatively engage in the work of theology: trying to articulate a meaningful word about God to themselves and others. And, most importantly, they do this by using their own terms. And thats not nothing. Thats the beginning of a journey toward spiritual maturity.

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Teaching theology to teens? Be open to unexpected answers - U.S. Catholic magazine

Humans are unique in sharing one very peculiar trait: We believe. The nature of that belief varies a lot these days, when secularism is so prominent. Belief is not just faith in a supernatural god or deity, or in spirits and ghosts. Belief is an essential need for all humans. You believe in your capacity for success when you start a new project. You believe that your team will win the game this time. You believe that your idea is the right one, even though its still just an idea, an unrealized plan. You are passionate about your beliefs, and this passion fuels your drive to push forward. Without belief, we stagnate.

Even if you are a vocal atheist, you still believe in your creed that there is no god. Given that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, to say that the lack of evidence for a supernatural being is enough to rule out its existence in some definitive sense is, well, an act of faith. It is belief in non-belief.

Note that a historical critique of the evils of religion, with its wars, massacres, and persecutions, has nothing to do with the nature of belief or the need to believe. Belief may lead to fanaticism, but the two are not the same thing. You may believe you are superior to others (silly you), but that does not mean you should act on your belief and attempt to crush your supposed inferiors. (It pains me to even write that sentence.)

When discussing the relationship between science and religion, people often take a polarized position. They take a stance of belief or non-belief. Much grief comes from the insistence that one or the other is wrong or meaningless.

In practice, however, there is a whole spectrum of in-between positions, as doubt creeps in and we reach the limits of what we know. Many scientists are perfectly fine with practicing their science and believing in God. They claim that science is an incomplete description of reality, that there are many questions beyond its reach. More to the point, they claim that the more they understand the world through their science, the more they admire God. To them, science is a form of religious devotion.

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Many great historical thinkers have shared this position, and many still do. What irks more aggressive secular thinkers is that they consider this in-between approach to be inconsistent with the tenets of science. To these thinkers, Nature is material, and matter is organized according to quantitative laws. The goal of science is to uncover these laws. There is nothing else. They claim that this metaphysical position of being both a believer and a scientist, although appealing and apparently conciliatory to many, is fraught with epistemic difficulties: It places the natural and the supernatural in an uneasy coexistence. How could Nature be both natural and supernatural? What does supernatural even mean? If I see a ghost in the mirror while Im shaving, whats going on? One of the problems is that to define something unusual as a supernatural phenomenon seems inconsistent. Any event that has been observed or heard has emitted some kind of electromagnetic radiation or sound waves, and it has physically impacted a detector or your own sensory organs. As such, this supernatural event is very much natural, even if it is deeply mysterious.

One can adopt what Stephen Jay Gould called a NOMA approach, short for non-overlapping magisteria. This approach compartmentalizes science and religion into limited spheres of influence, holding that religion begins where science ends. But clearly such a worldview will not carry very far. As science advances, the boundary between the two magisteria keeps shifting, as will any god-of-the-gaps approach. To state that the supernatural has an intangible existence, one that is immeasurable and thus undetectable, places it beyond the scientific discourse and renders the conversation moot. An intangible existence can only be sustained by faith, not by evidence.

In reality, religion and science do overlap. They intersect in peoples minds, in their life choices, and in the difficult moral challenges society faces. To strictly deny the power of religion in the world, with billions following a diversity of faiths while they seek a sense of identity and purpose in difficult lives, is terribly naive, and frankly, cruel.

The difficult question that needs to be asked is why so many people across every culture need to believe. What is religion providing that so many need to embrace?

To belong to a religious group immediately confers a person with a sense of community. You meet your peers in church, mosque, or temple, and you feel justified in your beliefs as you see that many others share them. This is as true for the religious as it is for secularists. Humans are tribal animals, and tribes unite around a central symbol, narrative, or moral code. There was an evolutionary advantage to being in a tribe, because power in numbers enhanced your chances of survival. There was a social advantage as well, because within the tribe a person finds legitimacy and a sense of purpose. To many people, belief may justify the allegiance to the group, but its the sense of community, of shared values, that drives it.

However, there is another aspect to faith, one that is purely subjective. As William James portrayed in his masterful The Varieties of Religious Experience, there is something unique about the individual at the crux of a true religious experience. This person shares a sense of community with the unknown, with what transcends the confines of our humanity. There is more to the world than what is seen and measurable, and these hidden features are equally important to us: Your whole subconscious life, your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and something in you absolutely knows that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it, James wrote.

Even if philosopher George Santayana and others have criticized James for encouraging superstition, one cannot deny the obvious fact that the reach of reason is limited. Science extends its reach into all aspects of the world, but there are boundaries past which it cannot extend. The choice we have is how to deal with what we cannot know.

When Einstein invoked his cosmic religious feeling to describe his unorthodox spiritual connection to Nature, he was trying to express this elusive feeling of the mysterious, of our human attraction to the unknown. Perhaps surprisingly to many especially to those who do not understand what drives people into science the engagement through science with unknown aspects of Nature is deeply spiritual.

Science is a flirt with the unknown, as is religion. The difference is that science uses tools to expand the domain of the known, while religion is sustained by faith. This is where belief comes in. It fills the space of the unknown so that we can sustain our sense of purpose. Even the secularist scientist, using research to probe beyond the known, is practicing this creed, fulfilling our deep need to understand our origins and make sense of the world, and to extend our grasp of a reality we can never fully comprehend.

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All humans are believers - Big Think

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VENICE, Aug 31 (Reuters) - U.S. actor Adam Driver piles on the years in his latest film, "White Noise", which premiered in Venice on Wednesday, but said he liked what he saw as his hairline receded and waistline bulged.

A former Marine who has appeared muscle-bound in previous films, Driver was asked if he had been "freaked out" by having to become a middle-aged dad with a paunch in the new Netflix movie directed by Noah Baumbach.

"I am very satisfied where things are going. It was a window into the future and I am ready," the 38-year-old star told reporters, adding that his body double had not been called on.

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"I put on weight. As a back up, we had a back-up stomach, and then we didn't need the back-up stomach. It was just my weight," he said.

Driver portrays a Hitler studies professor who has to face an "airborne toxic event" with his inquisitive children and wife, played by Greta Gerwig, who is suffering from a mysterious ailment that brings its own set of trauma.

"The movie is about life and death and how essentially we have to acknowledge they are the same and exist together rather than be two different things," said Baumbach, who last worked with Driver in the 2019 picture "Marriage Story".

The 79th Venice Film Festival - Photo call for the film "White Noise" in competition - Venice, Italy, August 31, 2022 - Cast member Adam Driver poses. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

"White Noise" is an adaptation of a satiric 1985 novel by Don DeLillo, but the film still resonates in a world grappling with the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I was re-reading (the book) by chance to coincide with the pandemic. I couldn't believe how relevant it felt and how it felt so much like the moment," said Baumbach.

The movie projects a sometimes surreal version of small-town, 1980s America, with exaggerated colours, dancing in the supermarket aisles, atheist German nuns and university classes that view Adolf Hitler and Elvis through the same warped lens.

"DeLillo's novel is a satire of academia as well as pop culture," said Baumbach.

"White Noise", which also stars Don Cheadle and Jodie Turner-Smith, is one of four Netflix films premiering at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, highlighting the growing ambitions of the U.S. streaming giant.

The highly anticipated "Blonde", starring Cuban actress Ana de Armas in a take on Marilyn Monroe's tragic life, opens next week, while Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu's long-awaited film "Bardo" hits the Lido on Thursday. French film "Athena" completes the Netflix lineup.

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Reporting by Crispian Balmer, editing by Deepa Babington

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Adam Driver likes what he sees as he gets plump for Venice film - Reuters.com

As the celebrated neurosurgeon, atheist and campaigner for assisted dying faces his own death, he reflects on what matters most: honesty, humility, serving his patients and building a dolls house for his grandchildren

I have often cut into the brain and it is something I hate doing. So begins neurosurgeon Henry Marshs 2014 bestseller, Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery, a mixture of memoir and reflection that plunges readers into the world of brain tumours, strokes and head injuries that Marsh has inhabited for 40 years. It is a world in which life is so fragile and uncertain youd think it would serve as a daily memento mori for anyone working in it. Not so. Recently retired, 71-year-old Marsh has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, and the switch from surgeon to patient, and the prospect of death, has come as a profound shock. And Finally, published this month, is in part a cry of anguish: My wish to go on living, he writes, is as overwhelming as love at first sight.

But meeting Marsh at his house an unassuming nineteenth-century semi in Wimbledon, south London he seems the opposite of lugubrious. With a plummy accent, Harry Potter-ish glasses, and a forehead deeply furrowed by decades spent probing and peering deep into the white jelly of brains, he is welcoming and humorous, and radiates restless energy. We begin our interview in his kitchen, with the Ukrainian family to whom hes given sanctuary wandering in and out. But its not long before he suggests that we walk down his long, lush garden, past his beehives, to his workshop. This looks like a potting shed but is in fact a charmed lair filled with thousands of tools, including three lathes, a radial arm saw, a bandsaw and a spindle moulder. Marsh has always taken pleasure in creating his own staircases, tables, roofs and garden fences. Uninterested in money, he says hed far rather make things than buy things.

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A top neurosurgeon looks to the future as he confronts questions of life and death - The Tablet

Im an atheist but Im pretty sure I just witnessed a miracle, thanks to the Palestinian-American comic Mo Amer. His new semi-autobiographical Netflix sitcom Mo is hilarious and, no matter your background, I guarantee youll find a lot of it relatable. If you are of Palestinian heritage, as I am, however, Mo is far more than just a laugh: its a groundbreaking piece of television.

Palestine is not exactly a major theme in popular culture. If you do hear the P-word on TV its usually during the news and its normally nothing positive. Its the same for Arabs in general, of course. If we are on the telly, were usually terrorists. And, if were not being demonised, we tend to be the punchline not the people delivering the punchline. Palestinians, however, are dehumanised on a whole other level. You cant even say the P-word without it causing problems: an anchor on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation once had to apologise for using the word Palestine (instead of Palestinian territories), for Gods sake. Being Palestinian means constantly being told you dont exist or being accused by certain pro-Israel voices of being antisemitic simply because you assert that you do exist. I have written only a handful of articles about being Palestinian; every time I file one I have anxiety attacks for days because of the inevitable character assassinations and online trolling that occur after publication.

All this is why Mo, a show that is unapologetically about being Palestinian-American, is such a big deal to me. My jaw was hanging open in disbelief as I watched. Wait, Id think, are they really saying Palestine multiple times in one episode? Did they really just mention Palestinian farmers having their olive trees burned by Israeli settlers a regular occurrence that news outlets either tiptoe around or ignore? Did they really talk about all this and make it funny to boot? I cant tell you how significant it is to see being Palestinian treated with humanising humour. Mo of this please.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

The headline of this article was amended on 31 August 2022 because, due to an editing error, an earlier version misdescribed the author as Palestinian-American. As the article made clear, she has Palestinian heritage.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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For anyone with Palestinian roots like me, Netflixs sitcom Mo is groundbreaking TV - The Guardian

Attendees listen to speakers during the National Atheist Organizations Reason Rally March 24, 2012, on the National Mall in Washington, DC. (Allison Shelley/Getty Images)

Ten years ago, thousands of atheists, humanists, and skeptics descended by the busload upon the National Mall in Washington to attend the Reason Rally, the largest-ever gathering of nonbelievers. Were here, were godless, get used to it, chanted the crowd, estimated to have between 10,000 and 30,000 people. For Americas growing non-religious movement, it was a jubilant coming-out-of-the-closet party.

For so many people who attended the rally, it was the first time they had been around other atheists who are open about it, recalls Hemant Mehta, a top atheist blogger who spoke at the rally. Its the first time they could be themselves without having to put up a filter We were like, Wow, were on the cusp of something huge.

Billed as a Woodstock for atheists and skeptics, the rally seemed to be a watershed moment for atheist and humanist political representation. But even as the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated has grown steadilyPews polling shows a jump from 19 percent in 2011 to 29 percent this yeara follow-up rally held on the Mall in 2016 saw lackluster turnout.

What happened to Americas promised atheist political revolution?

They were delusional, said Jacques Berlinerblau, a Georgetown University professor who researches secularism and politics. He points to early manifestos written by leading atheist thinkers in the aughts, in which they predicted a force of more than 27 million non-believers who would take American politics by storm. They see this data on the nones, and they assume that all these people in that category are fellow travelers.

Now, a decade after that first rally, the under-resourced non-religious voting bloc seems no closer to competing with the so-called Religious Right, which so many Reason Ralliers had sought to overpower. Growing atheist backlash against Christian nationalism has proven impotent in the face of President Donald Trumps ascent to power, the January 6 insurrection, and a slate of pivotal Supreme Court decisions that undermine church-state separation. These verdicts include overturning federal abortion protections, allowing public funding for private religious schools, and gutting the Lemon test in its ruling in favor of a coach who prayed on the football field after games.

Critics say that todays atheist movement is asleep at the wheel. What secular America needs now is policies to push back as opposed to policies to push forward, said Berlinerblau. So how do you defuse this legislative and judicial juggernaut, this Death Star, that is the Christian right? Using laws and using statehouses. But the atheist movements legal apparatus and energy, which are often focused on local school districts and Christian cross displays, lack the ability to take on well-funded, well-connected right-wing think tanks, let alone a Supreme Court stacked with conservatives. The movements crown jewel, Berlinerblau said, may well be the Satanic Temples legal project for religious freedom, which critics accuse of mocking religious liberty claims.

Observers say that the movements current impotence is in part due to atheist and humanist leaders inability in the 2010s to unite and mobilize the religiously unaffiliated. Some of these so-called nones identify as atheists and agnostics; but about one in five Americans identify as nothing in particular. The individualsas they can hardly be called a grouphave particularly low levels of social and political engagement.

The demographic shift is shifting away from organized religion, but not to organized anything else, which makes it all but impossible to ask them to do anything, Mehta said. Because most of them are apathetic. Theyre not atheists.

While religious conservatives are shrinking in numbers, the Religious Right maintains a strong, politically active core. The number of religiously unaffiliated Americans may be rapidly expanding, but they lack that core: Their identities are hard to pin down, their interests are disparate, and they are often politically disengaged. So were still fighting an uphill battleand we will for a while, Mehta said. Because it wont matter even if were 75 percent of the population, because its really hard to get them to care about this stuff.

That political apathy hasnt been helped by atheist and humanist leaders failures in the aughts and early 2010s. Some were hoping to build strategic alliances with religiously moderate voters and religious minorities, such as Muslims and Jews, over central issues such as religious freedom.

In that period, American atheism and humanism were popularly linked to Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the other so-called Four Horsemen of New Atheism. Their hyper-intellectualism and brash anti-religious polemics left an unpleasant taste in the mouths of many non-believers and moderate believers. It became difficult to disrupt the longstanding image of atheists as angry white men in their 50s.

While these failures have crippled the movements political power, much of that has begun to change in recent years. Many of the old guard atheist leaders have faded from the mainstream spotlightsome in disgrace, like American Atheists firebrand former president David Silverman, after facing #MeToo-era sexual misconduct allegations. Their downfall heralded a broader split between right-wing reactionary atheist circles and atheist organizations explicitly committed to social justice issues. Recently, more atheist and humanist groups have moved away from anti-religion evangelism.

Theyre not doing the work to convert you out of your religion to become an atheist, because even they kind of acknowledge that, well, we wouldnt win anything if youre an atheist, Mehta said. Instead, theyre shifting their focus to organize around issues that matter to their membership: church-state separation, reproductive rights, racial equity. Theyre also increasingly working to engage people of color, women and LGBTQ people in their efforts, working with racial and ethnic affinity groups such as Black Nonbelievers, which runs an annual Women of Color Beyond Belief conference, and the Latinx Humanist Alliance to do so.

Since 2017, California Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman has publicly begun identifying as a humanist agnostic (his religion is listed as other, according to Pew Research Center). In 2018, Huffman founded the Congressional Freethought Caucus with the aim of upholding the church-state separation and advance policy rooted in reason and science. It now has 16 members, all Democrats.

Mehta said, I know they dont have power. But the idea that you could openly say, Yeah, Im part of the Freethought Caucus, we represent the interests of atheiststhat is unheard of, thats insane and amazing.

The same phenomenon is playing out in state and local politics. Take Arizona, long a bastion of deeply Republican politics intertwined with conservative Christian culture. In the early 2010s, atheist activists in the state began laying the groundwork for a movement of political representation and engagement for atheists and the religiously unaffiliated.

Nine years ago, Democratic State Rep. Juan Mendez ignited a furor in the Arizona House of Representatives when he delivered the daily invocation without any mention of God. This is a room in which there are many challenging debates, many moments of tension, of ideological division, of frustration, Mendez said during the House meeting on May 21, 2013. As my secular humanist tradition stresses, by the very fact of being human, we have much more in common than we have differences.

Rather than asking them to bow their heads, Mendez asked his colleagues to look around at one another. Rather than citing Scripture, Mendez quoted agnostic astrophysicist Carl Sagan. Rather than calling for divine assistance in their proceedings, he called upon his fellow lawmakers to root their policymaking in gratitude and in love, in reason and in compassion, values relevant to all Arizonans regardless of religious belief or nonbelief.

A few years before, the Secular Coalition of Arizona had become the countrys first organization with a full-time lobbyist advocating for the states non-theists. Arizona humanist James Woodss 2014 campaign as the only openly atheist candidate running for Congress in the country, though unsuccessful, made national headlines. And in 2012 the state voted Democrat Kyrsten Sinema into Congress, where she became the first member to list her religion as none.

Leaders of the statewide movement for secular political representation believe theyve largely fulfilled their aims.

Did we win the presidency? No, but that wasnt the goal, said Evan Clark, co-founder of Spectrum Experience, a Tempe-based political communications firm that has represented Wood and other humanist and atheist candidates. The goal is to build a political system in which candidates of divergent secular identities, of many different religious identities, can feel welcome and equal in the process.

While Woodss campaign was unsuccessful, by the 2016 primaries, nine openly atheist or humanist candidates were running for office in Arizona, more than in any other state. All nine were working with Spectrum, then the countrys only communications strategists focused on humanism and non-religious movements.

But by the next election cycle, we werent feeling it needed to be a priority anymore, because candidates werent feeling like they had to come to us to figure out how to be atheist politically, Clark said. We had trailblazed to the point that you didnt need groundbreaking anymore.

While closeted atheists, agnostics, and skeptics have long held political power in the U.S, as the stigma of identifying as atheist wanes, theyre just not as scared to talk about it, he said. From state house races to school board elections, what we have seen is a radical uptick in atheists, non-religious, and secular identification in candidates running for office, and a willingness and excitement to connect themselves with organizations that lobby for those issues, Clark said.

The Center for Freethought Equality, the American Humanist Associations political advocacy arm, has identified more than 90 elected officials who openly identify as atheists or humanists, including Jewish humanist Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Massachusetts State Rep. Tram Nguyen, a spiritual-but-not-religious Buddhist. The centers PAC, the Freethought Equality Fund, helps bankroll many such candidates campaigns in Arizona and across the country.

Organizations have emerged nationally to help guide, fund, and support secular candidates. In 2020, the Center for Freethought Equalitys political and PAC director Ron Millarwho worked with Huffman to announce his non-theism and launch the Congressional Freethought Caucusco-founded the Association of Secular Elected Officials as a network for local secular elected officials around the U.S.

Dedicated secularist lobbying agencies are also beginning to emerge, too. Sarah Levin, who used to serve as a lobbyist for the Secular Coalition for America, has begun her own firm called Secular Strategies. She also helps lead OnlySky Media, a newly launched news site focused on non-religious communities.

The rise in religiously unaffiliated Americans has also pushed lawmakers, religious and non-religious alike, to offer their support to secular causes and communities. Ahead of the last presidential election, the Biden campaign collaborated with the Secular Democrats of America to launch the Humanists for Biden initiative, touted as the first time secular Americans have been invited to participate in a coalition of communities of faith and conscience on a presidential campaign.

That organizing may become more common in coming elections. In the days after the Supreme Court eradicated federal abortion rights protections, 78 percent of Americans said the ruling made it more likely that they would vote in the fall. The post-Roe backlash, then, may make it easier for left-leaning constituencies, including the non-religious, to fundraise and politically mobilize going forward.

The atheist-humanist movement will also benefit from demographic shifts, as young voters and politicians come of age. Now, you cant deny that if young people run for office, about one in three of them are just going to naturally be non-religious, Clark said, pointing to recent survey data. Its happening naturally, so representation is no longer our top priority. Clark added, You cannot expect to have young voter participation and ignore that most of them are not religious these days.

Aysha Khan is a journalist covering religion and justice. Follow her @ayshabkhan.

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A Decade After the First Reason Rally, What Happened to Americas Atheist Revolution? - Religion & Politics

All the way through this article, I ask you to be thinking this: It only takes one generation.

This article is going to be a bit different. Im going to start by quoting two US presidents, an atheist, a dictator, and a Christian researcher! And of course, I will be quoting Gods Word.

Prior to his presidency, in his gubernatorial inaugural address in 1967, Ronald Reagan stated:

In responding to mob violence in the country in 1838, President Abraham Lincoln stated:

How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction were our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

While delivering a speech in Australia, in August 2014, atheist Lawrence Krauss stated:

In 1935, Nazi Germanys dictator, Hitler, was reported as stating:

(The quote was translated from German into English in 1946 during the Nuremburg trials.)

In the book of Judges, we read:

Then we are told Joshua and the generation with him who saw the great work of the Lord (e.g., the crossing of the Jordan River) died.

They lost the spiritual legacy they had in one generation.

In January 2018, Christian researcher George Barna stated that Generation Z (born between 19992015) is the first truly post-Christian generation. In fact, statistics show Generation Z is twice as likely to be atheist as any previous generation.

Its well known that a culture, a family, or an organization (e.g., church, Christian college, etc.) can change dramatically in one generation. Now many of you may have read my book Will They Stand: Parenting Kids to Face the Giants or heard me speak on the family. In that book and in my presentation, I emphasize that the family is the first and most fundamental of all human institutions. The family is the backbone of the culture, and the family is the educational unit God set up to pass on a spiritual legacy to the next generation and impact the world for him in each generation. It only takes one generation to lose the spiritual legacy, and the devil knows this. Thats why the family has come under incredible attack.

The devil knows that to destroy the family is to destroy the culture and stop a godly legacy from being passed to the next generation so it can impact peoples lives. As President Lincoln detailed, its the attacks from within that will destroy.

If you think about it, the evil issues permeating our culture right now are all ultimately an attack on the family to destroy the culture from within.

The devil has also attacked the family in the church. More attacks from within! Theres been a generational loss from the church, and now we are seeing church attendance figures for Millennials and Generation Z down to less than 9%. Much of the church has given up (compromised/ignored) the authority of Gods Word in Genesis, thus undermining the foundation of all doctrine and a biblical worldview. Much of the church is lukewarm, not raising up generations to boldly stand on Gods Word.

Sadly, we are now in a situation where generations of kids have been taught through the education system, media, internet, and movies that the Bible is a book of mythology, man is just an animal, and morality is relative.

Proverbs 29:18 states, Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint. Now this literally means that where there is no revelation (e.g., prophetic vision, word from the Lord), there is no restraint.

Notice that this verse finishes with but blessed is he who keeps the law. People will not be happy until they are obeying Gods law. We do live in a time where we see this happening. The younger generations are casting off restraint as purpose and meaning in life is whatever they can get out of it right now. And in their rebellion against God, they will do whatever they can to justify doing whatever they want to do (especially with sex).

But heres the good news! Theres an increasing number of churches using our powerful VBS program, Sunday school curriculum, and other resources. These resources are unique because they include apologetics, biblical worldview training, science experiments, and doctrine and are evangelistic.

Weve now produced a homeschool Bible curriculum based on the Answers Bible Curriculum for churches.

Our Answers magazine for the whole family is a unique and powerful tool that has won awards year after year.

Our eldest daughter, who was a nurse for five years but then worked as my executive assistant for a number of years (she wanted to be in the ministry of AiG), had a burden to start a Christian school (Twelve Stones Christian Academy) as a true biblical worldview discipleship school.

The school is really growing and in need of facilities to expand. As a part of this outreach, we have stepped out in faith to employ curriculum writers to produce a truly biblical worldview curriculum for all grades for Christian schools. This project is well underway but will take some time before it is available (and we need more writers).

Shockingly, statistics indicate less than 6% of all Christian schools teach a truly biblical worldview. Eventually, we want to see Twelve Stones provide online classes (such as for homeschoolers) and be a model to, in a sense, franchise the school in the future.

At the same time, the Lord has brought some phenomenal specialist staff to AiG to enable us to offer all sorts of worldview training (including special lab programs) in a variety of subject areas throughout the year for different age groups at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter.

We are also working on many other resources to help parents, churches, and schools in raising up godly generations, equipped to stand in this very secularized, anti-Christian culture.

And of course, the exhibits at our two attractions have impacted millions of all agesincluding millions of young people.

No other organization in the world is providing the apologetics worldview training available in many ways through the ministry of Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum, the Ark Encounter, and Twelve Stones Christian Academy.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for your support and prayer,Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiGs research team.

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It Only Takes One Generation - Answers In Genesis

In Christianitys most well-known conversion story, a persecutor of the new religion falls off his horse on the road to Damascus and becomes the apostle to the Gentiles. Like Saint Paul, many Christians repent of their sins and also earnestly try to convert others.

But to believe is one thing and to convince others is something else.

Why cant you people just accept it that some people dont even want to believe in God, a non-believer says to the man who tries to convert him in The Sunset Limited.

The short play consists entirely of a conversation between those two characters: a suicidal university professor and an ex-con with his own conversion story. Written by Cormac McCarthy, whose harrowing novels The Road and No Country for Old Men were turned into acclaimed films, The Sunset Limited is likewise the basis of a film. It stars Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones, who also directed.

More wounded than arrogant, the atheistic professor is utterly pessimistic about the future of civilization. He has tried both anti-depressants and group therapy, to no avail. After a raw, intense and often profane conversation with the Christian who desperately wants to convert him, he leaves, presumably with the intention of killing himself.

At the end of the play, the would-be evangelizer is alone, feeling defeated from his debate with the articulate and erudite professor. He complains to God: If you wanted me to help him how come you didnt give me the words?

Like The Sunset Limited, the short story The Last Word describes an encounter between a believer and an atheist.

The author, Graham Greene, like Cormac McCarthy, has had several of his novels turned into films, including The Power and the Glory, a story set in Mexico during the 1930s when the government was attempting to suppress the Catholic Church.

The Last Word envisions a future world in which the suppression of religion is complete. It is specifically the story about the execution of Pope John XXIX, who is the worlds last living Christian.

As the story begins, the pope has survived an assassination attempt (shot while saying Mass) 20 years earlier. Since that time, he has been living in a government-sponsored single room apartment. His injury has left him a frail man with no memory of who he is.

One day, a stranger arrives and escorts him to a meeting with the General.

The General apologizes to the pope for the attempt on his life carried out by his predecessor so many years ago. The killing would have been a mistake, the General says, because it would have made the pope a martyr. But now, he continues, the pope is no longer a threat. All this nonsense is finished, forgotten, he says of Christianity.

Understanding he is about to be killed, the pope makes no outward effort to preserve his own life or the future of Christianity.

The General invites Pope John to have a last meal with him. The pope politely declines but agrees to a glass of wine.

With the glass in his hands, Pope John raises it and says words that the General does not understand: Corpus domino nostri.

As he drinks, the General shoots him.

The story has only one last sentence, but told from the Generals point of view it suggests that this persecutor of Christianity may well become a new Saint Paul in this future world: Between the pressure on the trigger and the bullet exploding, a strange and frightening doubt crossed his mind: Is it possible that what this man believed may be true?

One interpretation of the story is that God gives the words to use the language of the ex-con of The Sunset Limited to the Church, and thus the Church will ultimately prevail. More broadly, the story suggests that the Word (Jn 1:1) and the mysteries of faith transcend politics, history, culture or any purely human concepts.

Saint Pauls own words are believed to be the oldest writings of the New Testament. Nonetheless, the saint a martyr, like the fictional Pope John XXIX taught that faith cannot be fully understood or communicated solely through language, either in philosophical debate or emotional appeals.

Using his own rhetorical skills, Saint Paul told early Christians (and he tells us) to concern themselves first with their own inner lives. If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, he wrote, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal (I Cor 13:1).

Carl Peters is former managing editor of the Catholic Star Herald.

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More than language needed to understand faith - Catholic Star Herald - Catholic Star Herald

I have heard it said that one can be Jewish without believing in God. I came across an article by a rabbi who tears that notion to shreds. But the problem he cites and the issues he raises are relevant for Christiansand those who claim to be Christiansalso.

He is responding to an earlier article by Andrew Silow-Carroll, who describes the phenomenon as fictionalism. Silow-Carroll defines the term as pretending to follow a set of beliefs in order to reap the benefits of a set of actions. He quotes philosopher Philip Goff, who relates the term also to Christianity:

Religious fictionalists hold that the contentious claims of religion, such as God exists or Jesus rose from the dead are all, strictly speaking, false. They nonetheless think that religious discourse, as part of the practice in which such discourse is embedded, has a pragmatic value that justifies its use. To put it simply: God is a useful fiction.

Silow-Carroll gives the example of a Jewish professor who fasts on Yom Kippur and celebrates Passover even though he is an atheist.Its just what we Jews do, he explained. It keeps me connected to a community I value. He went on to say,When it feels like the world is falling apart, I seek refuge in religious rituals but not because I believe my prayers will be answered.

Silow-Carroll respects this position, seeing Judaism and religion in general in terms of actions, ethics, and ritual, rather than beliefs and doctrines. Fictionalists differ from humanists and new atheists because they keep God and the observances of religion, including prayer and worship, in the picture. They just think God is fictional, prayer is a useful form of meditation, and worship is beautiful.

I have heard from Catholic fictionalists, who say, Of course, I dont believe all this stuff, but I am a Catholic, and this is what Catholics do. Also liberal Protestants, including Episcopal bishops who publicly reject Christs resurrection, but soberly intone the Easter liturgy. In fact, much of liberal Protestant theology is fictionalism, denying the tenets of Christian belief while still carrying on the ministry of the churchpreaching, teaching, leading Bible studies, conducting worship services, praying, singing hymns, and offering spiritual counselingas being somehow valuable, even though they consider Christian teachings like the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, the atonement, salvation, eternal life, and the Word of God to be untrue. They dont believe the Bible, but consider it to be a good piece of fiction, even though, as C. S. Lewis shows, fiction written like the Bible would not be invented until the 1700s.

I suspect this can be found also among evangelicals and even confessional Lutherans. Pastors, I suppose, have a profession to consider, so that if they lose their faith, they have to keep on in their jobs. They become fictionalists, either teaching their whole congregation to be the same, or, probably more commonly, keeping their unbelief to themselves, but persisting in the traditional forms.

I suppose in the latter case, the members of the congregation can still receive the sacraments and hear Gods Word from a faithless preacher. At least thats what the orthodox side said in opposing the Donatist heretics. Meanwhile, some laymen might come to church to keep a spouse happy or because they enjoy the music or even because they think religion conveys psychological or social benefits, even though they dont believe in it themselves.

Rabbi Goldstein refutes Jewish fictionalism, saying, among other things, that,

if you remove God from Judaism it ceases to be recognizable as such. When we say may the Omnipresent comfort you at a funeral , or God who blessed bride and groom at a wedding, or God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh during Kiddush, or God is one every morning and evening, and on our deathbed these are all just fictions? If so, Judaism is meaningless; it becomes a system based on falsehoods. . . .

The only form of Jewish identity that has proven itself capable of surviving more than a few generations is one rooted in the complete embrace acceptance of the truth of all the factual claims made by Judaism, including belief in God and His authorship of the Torah. Throughout our long history no Jewish community has ever survived without a belief in the foundations of our faith. A pretend Judaism wont cut it. Only the real thing is worthy of us and our children and a guarantee for a bright Jewish future.

One could say the same about Christianity. A pretend Christianity wont cut it.

This syndrome would be an example of holding the form of religion but denying the power of it (2 Timothy 3:5). Simply holding onto the forms is not just a matter of denying the doctrines of the religion, as fictionalists assume. It also denies the power that those doctrines testify to and that the forms of the religion convey.

As Hamann reminds us, doctrines are not just abstract ideas, to be debated or proven or refuted or disagreed with. Rather, they are mighty realities that we neglect to our ruin.

Put another way, religion without faith is dead.

Image byGerd AltmannfromPixabay

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The Fictionalist Approach to Religion | Gene Veith - Patheos

Shia LaBeouf arrives for the Hollywood Film Awards in 2019. DFree / Shutterstock.com

Pio saved my life, this is not just a movie or something, and I dont mean that lightly, said Transformers star Shia LaBeouf in a soulful interview with Bishop Robert Barron. In the course of their conversation, the actor laid bare his encounter with Catholicism, mediated by St. Padre Pio and the friars of the Capuchin Franciscan San Lorenzo Seminary in Santa Ynez, California.

My life was on fire. I was walking out of hell, said LaBeouf. The actor, who has appeared in 40 movies, confessed that when he accepted the role of Padre Pio in an upcoming film, he didnt want to be an actor any longer. His world had crumbled. I hurt a lot of people, he told Bishop Barron. I felt deep shame and deep guilt.

A former Jewish atheist, the actors moving comments about his experience of religious faith have touched many. One YouTube viewer commented, I started watching this dismissively, knowing hes an actor and expecting him to put on a perfunctory show. The same viewer went on to say: Id like to apologize for my own presumptuousness and small-mindedness. God deflated my ego when I watched Shia engage so openly and straightforwardly, and so humbly admit to his own humanness and wrongdoing and the hurt hes caused.

Others have answered LaBeoufs newfound religious faith with unchanged suspicion. The interview with Bishop Barron was released concurrent with a development in the sexual battery and assault lawsuit from singer FKA Twigs, his former girlfriend, which will go to trial next April. To others, the interview seems like an amazing promotion strategy for the Padre Pio biopic.

Only time will offer more evidence of LaBeoufs conversion. But for now, I think we should take him at his word. Id rather believe in the power of conversion and the healing grace of the Holy Spirit than live under the tyranny of constant cynicism and suspicion.

I will also insist that my interpretation is not Pollyannaish. LaBeouf offers considerable engagement with the Faith. From his thoughts on the Latin Mass to his experiences reading St. Augustine and Thomas Merton, this is a man who seems to have undergone a genuine change of heart. His affection for the Franciscans, including Father James, Father Jude and Brother Alex, was evident. LaBeouf marveled at how the friars invited him in to their life by laughter, joking, petting cats and eating ice cream. And they did all of this without asking him for anything.

For me, the most powerful moment in LaBeoufs story comes when he describes what it was like to read the Gospel of Matthew for the first time. LaBeouf undertook the task to prepare to be St. Pio. He said John the Baptist made a deep impression, that he felt like an old Western character. The actor found the Forerunner rustic and strong and masculine.

Then, unexpectedly, the Gospels story of redemption began to capture him. I started reading about a route, a map, toward something that felt like let go,' LaBeouf says. The actor emphasized: Thats really what I got out of the Gospel. If I could wrap it up in two words it was, let go.' With his life slipping away, having no place else to go or turn, he found himself embracing the Gospels message of surrender. For LaBeouf, that message of surrender became more than preparation for a role. It stops being this prep of a movie and it starts feeling like something beyond all that, he told Bishop Barron.

We ought to listen to LaBeoufs words. Too often, we doubt that the life of Jesus has the ability to touch a soul. We can so easily forget the liberating power of the basic tenets of the Gospel. We shouldnt gloss over LaBeoufs troubled past marred by plagiarism, alcoholism, theft and accusations of sexual assault. In the days since the interview with Bishop Barron, the actor admitted another deceit: the depiction of his father in the autobiographical film Honey Boy was nonsense.

Christ can overcome all these things and greater wrongs still. Let us pray for LaBeouf and that every suffering soul might discover the message of the Gospel to let go.

Father Patrick Briscoe, OP, is editor of Our Sunday Visitor.

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'Let go': Shia LaBeouf on conversion and the meaning of the Gospel - Our Sunday Visitor