Naturalism – coming your way soon?
In October 2012, 14 eminent scientists, philosophers and other thinkers met for 3 days in a workshop entitled Moving Naturalism Forwards. What should we learn from this meeting?
Category: Culture
Christians and Chick-fil-a
Chick-fil-a is apparently a chain of about 1600 chicken fast food stores in the US. Being an Aussie, I wouldn’t know. But apparently the chain has been in the news recently because of an allegedly anti-gay stance, mainly, as far as I can tell, seen through large donations to christian anti-gay causes. Recently protests by […]
Atheists who once were christians
We can read the statistics which show that, in most western countries, church attendance has fallen in the last century. In some cases it is still falling, though in others it has levelled out. The ‘leavers’ are not necessarily giving up all belief in God – many list themselves as ‘not committed’ – but some […]
Does God prefer belief or obedience?
“God Prefers Kind Atheists Over Hateful Christians” said the article and the photo, and it caught my attention as it caught many others’ (as it was aimed at doing). Is it true?
Gay marriage
The Australian Labor Party, which forms the present Australian Government, is having its national conference, where policy ideas are discussed and decided. This year, one of the “hot” topics for discussion is gay marriage. (Technically, I think the proposal is a change to the Marriage Act, which currently specifies marriage is between a man and […]
(The future of atheism)
Last post I looked at some statistics on church attendance, which has been declining in recent years in many countries. This is just a brief aside to reference a post on the Christian CADRE blog suggesting that while churches may be losing numbers, these people are not going over to atheism, at least not in […]
David Sloan Wilson, evolution and religion
David Sloan Wilson is an eminent evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University in New York. He is an atheist “but a nice atheist”, he assures us, and he is interested in the study of religion from an evolutionary viewpoint and the use of evolutionary principles to develop community development programs. You may be surprised to know […]
Worldwide belief in God
Is belief in God dying out, in the western world at least? Some recent surveys give some answers, and some challenges for christians.
The western world is dying?
John Carroll is Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, and a secular humanist. He believes secular humanism has failed western society and he has something useful to say to believers about how we communicate to postmodern people.