Atheism

Famed atheist Alain de Botton, also a best-selling Swiss author and philosopher known for challenging Richard Dawkins and what he calls his "destructive" atheistic theology, has in a recent interview highlighted many ways in which religion is useful even for secularists.

De Botton and Dawkins most recently clashed over plans to build a 151-foot atheist temple in London. De Botton is helping fund the project, which will he says will symbolize more than 300 million years of life on Earth and be a place for "love, friendship, calm and perspective."

Dawkins, on the other hand, the author of The God Delusion, described plans for the temple as being "misplaced for non-believers to build quasi-religious buildings, because atheists did not need temples to probe the meaning of life." more >>

An atheist group has raised more than $40,000 as "scholarship" fund for Jessica Ahlquist, a 16-year-old student from Rhode Island who sued her public school and got a nearly 50-year-old Christian prayer banner removed from its walls.

Atheist Hemant Mehta is running an online scholarship fundraising campaign for Ahlquist, who attends Cranston High School West in Cranston, on his blog FriendlyAtheist.com. He says he has received $40,976 "to make her future better than her present by giving her the opportunity to go to college without worrying about things like tuition and books."

Mehta, whose bio says he is the chair of Foundation Beyond Belief and a high school math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago, will end the fundraiser on March 1. The money will be given to the American Humanist Association, which will hold onto the money in a trust fund and provide it to Ahlquist when she is ready to go to college. more >>

British comedian and actor Ricky Gervais told CNN's Piers Morgan on Thursday that telling a child that gays will go to hell is "child abuse."

When asked by Morgan how his atheist beliefs impact God-fearing Americans, Gervais responded by saying, "Why should they take offense that I don't believe in their God or any other god? And I say to them, 'Tell me the reasons you don't believe in all the other gods, and that's the reason I don't believe in yours.'"

During his response, the image of Gervais on the cover of New Humanist magazine from September/October 2011 appeared on the screen. The image shows Gervais standing in the shape of a cross, with his shirt off and the word 'atheist' written across his chest, while his arms are outstretched and tied to a microphone stand. more >>

A Rhode Island public school board voted on Thursday not to appeal a federal court ruling that required the school to remove a 40-year-old prayer banner from its walls after an atheist student said it conflicted with her beliefs.

The Cranston School Committee voted 5-2 against an appeal, saying it did not want to meet the rising legal costs needed to defend the banner. The city of Cranston is already responsible for almost $200,000 from the original court case and legal experts say an appeal would cost more than half a million dollars.

A federal judge ruled last month in favor of 16-year-old junior Jessica Ahlquist and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), saying the banner – which begins "Our Heavenly Father" and ends in "Amen" – was unconstitutional. The banner was a gift from the school's inaugural graduating class in 1963, and features a moral credo written by a student. more >>

A new billboard unveiled this week by an atheist activist group in Orange County, Calif. makes the claim that "Atheists make better lovers."

The sign is sponsored by the Backyard Skeptics group with the help of New York members of the national American Atheists organization. The Orange County atheists group has been using a billboard campaign featuring various signs disparaging Christianity and belief in God for the last year to help other nonbelievers "come out of the closet," leaders say.

The sign, located on an American Legion parking lot off a major street in Midway City, depicts a couple in bed by showing two pairs of bare feet outside the covers and reads, "Atheists make better lovers. (After all, nobody is watching.)" more >>

Famed atheist biologist Richard Dawkins had a surprising "oops" moment during an interview yesterday, when he forgot the title of Charles Darwin's most famous book.

Dawkins was debating the Rev. Giles Fraser, former canon chancellor of St. Paul's Cathedral in England, on BBC Radio 4 when the evolutionary biologist could not remember the full title of Darwin's famous book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.  

Dawkins and Fraser, of the Church of England, were debating because of press releases from the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science that had claimed that Christians in Britain tend to be more secular then the "Christian lobbyists" who speak on their behalf. more >>