Celebrity nontheists

I hadn't read a list of prominent nontheists (atheists, agnostics and other religious skeptics) for awhile. Here's a recently updated list with lots of prominent names. Here's another. Both of these lists include background information regarding each name on the list. Some famous contemporary atheists, agnostics and skeptics are: Daniel Radcliffe Bill Maher Pat Tillman Oliver Sacks Bill Gates Omar Sharif Dave Barry Warren Buffet Phil Donahue Katharine Hepburn Angelina Jolie Lance Armstrong This list includes numerous scientists, along with many actors. Noticeably absent are politicians, which brings to mind polls showing that half of Americans would absolutely refuse to vote for any atheist politician. What follows are the percentages of people indicating in 2006 that they would refuse to vote for "a generally well-qualified person for president" on the basis of some characteristic; in parenthesis are the figures for earlier years: Catholic: 4% (1937: 30%) Black: 5% (1958: 63%, 1987: 21%) Jewish: 6% (1937: 47%) Baptist: 6% Woman: 8% Mormon: 17% Muslim: 38% Gay: 37% (1978: 74%) Atheist: 48%

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Can churches for non-believers survive?

There are some new local humanist centers springing up and they resemble churches in many ways, according to an article by USA Today. What do they do?

[They meet] monthly with about 10 families. Acosta says trips to museums and a parenting course called "Compassionate Communication" are planned. The Harvard chaplaincy also hosts "Humanist Small Group" biweekly Sunday brunch discussion and buys drinks at biweekly "Humanist Community Pub Nights." Last month, it hosted holiday-style celebrations around Charles Darwin's 200th birthday and is hosting a talk by humanist writer and director Joss Whedon of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fame.

What is the long-term outlook for such groups? I have always assumed that there was something about traditional churches that would help keep the group intact, something having to do with a solution to the fear of death. Churches work hard to play up both the fear and the solution. Non-believers tend to have a different focus: the here and now.

The USA Today article quotes Richard Lints, a professor of philosophical theology who

doubts humanism can sustain itself in the local congregations Epstein envisions because community is not a natural part of humanism, where the individual is the ultimate source of meaning. If humanism becomes concerned with the "greater good," and a sort of natural moral order that implies, it starts to resemble religion and humanists will back away, he said. "At the heart of the humanist project is deep individualism," Lints said. "It's always going to be difficult to sustain a real robust community."

Certainly one of model of such a community has been successful, that of the Ethical Societies such as this one. Also, consider that many religions are not traditionally religious--they run along a continuum. As proof, consider the scorn heaped on Unitarian Churches by right wing fundamentalists. Here's one dramatic example.

Can non-theistic "churches" hold together? Time will tell.

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Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sit down to discuss religion.

Would you like to listen to Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens discussing religion for two hours?  My initial impulse was that I wasn’t especially interested, even though I admire these thinkers/writers and I agree with many of their ideas.  My hesitation was that I was already…

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New “Beware of Dogma” billboards springing up

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is decorating Madison, Wisconsin with "Beware of Dogma" billboards this month. What is the FFRF? The following mission statement is from the FFRF website: The history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion.…

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Mother Teresa secretly doubted God’s existence

OK, believers.  It's allright for the rest of you guys to step forth and admit those doubts that all of you have.  CBS has reported that Mother Teresa has unwittingly led the way, thanks to the disclosure of tormented letters she wrote: Shortly after beginning work in Calcutta's slums, the…

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