Atheism seems to be proliferating in literature, the media, and the Internet as more atheists challenge the dominance of religion and spread their worldview, urging other nonbelievers to "come out of the closet."
Just recently, one of the nation's largest associations of atheists and agnostics launched their first ever national radio broadcast over the weekend greeting listeners with a weekly program that presents "the secular point of view."
"Hello all you godless infidels, out-of-the-closet atheists and happy heathens!" says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., on a one-hour weekly radio show that began broadcasting over Air America Radio on Saturday. The Freethought Radio program invited outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of the bestselling book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, as its first guest on the air.
"You can turn on the radio or TV 24/7 to be preached at. This is one hour a week of the public airwaves that offers an alternative," says Laurie Gaylor, who describes the program as "an antidote to the domination of public airwaves by the religious right."
Atheists are still a minority in the country with only 9 percent of the American population describing themselves as having no faith which includes atheists and agnostics. And only around 2 percent staunchly reject the existence of God and call themselves "atheist," according to The Barna Group.
But with atheists finding themselves more comfortable with openly expressing their views, Christians are being asked to think about how they're representing Jesus as they live and share their faith.
"Believers should continually be asking themselves questions such as: Am I loving and caring toward nonbelievers? Am I living out the relationship I say I have with Christ? Are there any discrepancies between what I say I believe and how I live my life?" says Earl Creps, who is working with the Northern California-Nevada District of the Assemblies of God to plant a church in Berkeley, Calif., according to "Today's Pentecostal Evangel."
Furthermore, S. Michael Craven, president of the Center for Christ & Culture, wonders if it is the actions of Christians that are causing nonbelievers and seekers to doubt the existence of God. The Center for Christ & Culture is a ministry of discipleship and Church renewal that works to equip Christians with a Christian and missional approach to culture.
"Has Christianity become so politically defined that true faith and the person of Jesus Christ is obscured in the minds of many?" he asks in his latest weekly commentary. "Is it possible that Christians are conducting themselves in such a way that the spiritually seeking are looking anywhere but to Christ?"
At a time when more Americans view Christianity as judgmental and hypocritical, Christians are being cautioned to live lives that do not contradict the message of Christ.
"In our culture, which is one that is hugely exposed to Christian images and verbiage, the credibility of the messenger is paramount," says Randy Hurst, commissioner on evangelism for the Assemblies of God.
Leading British atheist Richard Dawkins, author of the bestselling The God Delusion, is currently spearheading a campaign around the world, including the United States, to challenge the dominance of religion in everyday life and in politics and to get more atheists to speak out.
Dawkins believes atheists in the United States account for about 10 percent of the population, but that many are closeted.
"As with a lot of social groups, atheists have become defensive and have started to 'evangelize,'" says Creps of the Assemblies of God.
"Christians need to be well informed about atheism and able to give a defense of their faith," he notes. "But Christians shouldn't treat atheists as a special class of people. Like all humans, atheists need a radical solution – which is Jesus – to a radical problem – which is sin."
And when the Church serves like Jesus, it can make a tremendous impact, says Randy Rich, operations director for Convoy of Hope, a Christian relief agency, according to Today's Pentecostal Evangel.
"For many people – including atheists – such outreach may be the first real demonstration of Christ's love they've ever seen," says Rich. "When an individual feels loved, respected and cared for, that greatly opens up his or her heart and mind to Christ."
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DARWINISM and ATHEISM: UNSCIENTIFIC and MYTHICAL
http://www.evolutionfacts.blogspot.com
“The very existence of morality is evidence of a supreme moral governor.”
The existence of morality means that we evolved as bipedal primates that lived in bands and groups for hundreds of thousands of years. Not cooperating—not being “moral”—would have gotten you dead, and thus, not able to reproduce.
“The evidence of a complex design demands an even more complex designer.”
The evidence of complexity reveals a natural progression of existence. Designers and engineers like things simple and efficient, which life and the universe are not.
“The atheist believes that something came from nothing.”
Not quite. The atheist doesn’t have all the answers and we do not pretend we do.
“Since everything is ultimately an effect, there must be an uncaused first cause.”
What caused god(s)?
The very existence of morality is evidence of a supreme moral governor. The evidence of a complex design demands an even more complex designer. The atheist believes that something came from nothing. It makes much more sense to believe nothing comes from nothing and something is cause by something. Science says that every effect has a cause. Since everything is ultimately an effect, there must be an uncaused first cause. Otherwise, you believe in infinite regress. Defend that scientifically. We know that there is no such thing as perpetual motion. There must be a force that causes anything to move. Is it so hard to believe that there exists an Unmoved Mover who started the universe? These are just a samll portion of the evidence of God. The belief in a supreme being is a rational, intelligent, and even scholastic position to hold. The atheist has much faith to believe in no God in light of all the evidence.
correction * don't take my word for it...research it yourself** PS the Barna group is a statistics group usually hired by the church
http://atheistempire.com/reference/stats/main.html
the stats...please look at the references and take my word for it like you do from your preachers
YES,I will correct you because you are wrong. Many of you believers think that we are atheist because we don't want to follow rules, But if you look at the stats for population by religion...here in America 74% claim to be christian, 12-14% nonthiests if you were correct it would be fair to say that prison populations would be less than 74% and more than 12% nontheists...a 1999 fed prison study states that 78.2% are christian and .28% non...so as far as atheists not having morals, ethics or wanting to follow rules, we seem to do just fine.
Your only problem seems to be that we won't believe your stories based on a book written by men well after the supposed events as facts when they contradict what we see, test and know to be true
To Quill: Since you have read the Bible, perhaps you may remember this parable from Mark 18, starting at verse 10:
10 "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
11 "The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
12 'I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.'
13 "But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner!'
14 "I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."
The point being made is that not all who profess to be one of His elect, are sometimes not. There have been many great atrocities committed in His name. The Bible also speaks of these as well, from Matthew 7, starting at verse 20:
20 "So then, you will know them by their fruits.
21 "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.
22 "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'
23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.'
Don't be fooled by the ones who said that they did this or did that for Him, when it does not align with His word. They are false prophets and truly do not speak for Him.
Please remember this: God is not about religion, He is about relationship. If He were about religion, stores would be setup all over the place called "Get your Salvation Here, only $49.95", or Wal-Salvation, or Salvation-R-Us, and on and on.
This is something that we can not buy, but does require a heavy price of one we cannot afford. Thank Yeshua in that he paid it for us!!
i'm also going to mention how nonsensical it is for people in these comments to point out "evil atheists" like Stalin who have done bad things throughout history. How many of you people who tote out Stalin during these discussions know that Josef Stalin was trained as a PRIEST in an Eastern Orthodox seminary? And even if it were an atheist, so what? Christians were burning people at stakes for almost two thousand years nonstop before Stalin came along. Even just 300 years ago, any public atheist would have been tortured and publicly executed. And you Christians want to portray atheists as historically intolerant? Give me a break.
Grow up already. Deciding whether there is a god or not is not a matter of piling up body counts and seeing whether believers have more atrocities on their side of the fence than nonbelievers. There really is no such thing as a god, and yes we can know that, to exactly the same degree that we can know there is no Santa Claus, no fairies, no unicorns (which the Bible mentions six times) and no leprechauns, because the evidence for the existence of all of those things is exactly the same.
This article is every bit as biased as one could have expected from such a publication. Some corrections:
According to a 2007 Harris study which anyone can find online, 15% of Americans now say there is probably no God, and are atheists, a far cry from the 2-9% that the author of this little smear piece would have you believe. Whether those 15% identify themselves as "secular humanists," "atheists", "brights", "freethinkers", or some other obscure term is irrelevant. Atheists are clearly what they are.
And here's another little tidbit that the author omitted: according to the last American Religious Identification Survey, atheism and agnosticism were both growing at a rate faster than ANY religion, while Christianity was at the same time declining faster than any religion. Even with a church on every streetcorner and trillions spent every year proselytizing, Christianity can not manage to even keep its own numbers from slipping away to atheism, which has no churches, no trillions, and very little proselytizing to speak of. How do you account for this, propagandists? Maybe the other side just has a more convincing argument.
Atheism presents itself as the “reasonable” alternative to religion which it broad brushes as oppressive and violent, while ignoring or dismissing atheism's potential to do likewise or worse. Lacking a transcendent authoritative codified code of morals, atheism operates out of an objectively baseless morality, and can only assure us it will do what is “reasonable,” such as insisting that pagan Hitler was a Christian (compare with original recipients of that name: Acts 11:26), while vehemently protesting against atheism being linked to men like Stalin. Yet the fact is mass murderers like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were acting out of the atheistic basis for morality, doing what was “reasonable” to them in murdering their multitudes, with their “political religion” being an effect of atheism. it has a legacy that is recently worse than even false formal religions http://www.geocities.com/heartland/estates/6535/krealmurd.htm. Presently, many atheists think it “reasonable” to remove children from Christian/creationist homes. http://richarddawkins.net/article,313,E-Petition-Abolish-Faith-Schools,Petitionspmgovuk
Atheism conveniently makes no real distinction between Biblical type Christianity versus it's aberrant (RC, etc.( forms), or other religions, and even must resort to attacking the character of Jesus Christ, and ignoring or dismiss the abundant and ongoing positive empirical proofs of His reality. Which is that ALL those who genuinely turn in their hearts to the LORD Jesus from sin, and cast all their faith in Him who died for their sins and rose again to save them, realize effects that correspond to the claims of Object of their faith, and are contingent upon obedience Him. Praise the Lord!
All human misconceptions about God are based on: an attempt to approach Him on ones own terms, conform Him into a being filled with human vices, reduce Him into an impersonal force easily manipulated by human will or elevating the created order as equivocal with the transcendent creator as if all physical substance of the universe were eternal. The very fact that atheists have faith in the improbable odds and chance as the "creator" of the universe and life means that they are superstitious by definition. Instead of seeking to know the one and only God who created this Earth, only to discover that it has been affected by humanity’s own evil, atheists sought to condemn Him as evil - in order to justify their lifestyle of defiance.
The atheists are only right in this sense: the god which the atheists have invented in their own minds does not exist and is merely the reflection of their own evil heart. The atheist’s god concept was manufactured to justify their personal rebellion against the Holy God, who will by nature hold them accountable for their crimes against Him. The atheist’s god DOES NOT exist. The one and only Holy Creator subsists necessarily.
http://evolutionfacts.blogspot.com/
Well this is weird to report. I had been trying for two days to log on from my computer, and the system here would not allow it! I was beginning to think that I may have been banned for some reason.
I am on my husband's computer today (the original computer when I signed up here) and I was able to log in! Isn't that bit strange? Hmm....
Anyway...
Citizen, since I could not log in to reply here, I created a post at my Talk Wisdom blog.
http://talkwisdom.blogspot.com/2007/10/greatest-experiment.html
I hope you will consider replying there. If not, then copy and paste it here (if you wish to continue our conversation, that is).
I hope the Atheists are tolerant to us who pray as they are to those who kill.
Shawn: Our responsibilities are to each other, not to an imaginary deity.