Everyone has their own definition of what it means to be a real Christian. Usually, people think of real Christians as the ones who agree with them, though this doesn’t solve anything. When I wrote Dragged Into the Light, a book about Christians who believe the world is full of monsters, including and especially Reptilians in the halls of power, it was better shorthand to call them a cult than it was to call them a sect.

People who grew up in a home with relatively little credible displays of faith are more likely to be atheists, according to new research published in ...

They are ex-missionaries and military pilots, yoga instructors and computer programmers, mothers, fathers, professors and political activists. Some left religion on a rocky, anguished path, stung by abuse or shunned by family. Others came to the realization slowly, after a lifetime of questions they couldn't shake.

rAmen.

Greg Epstein, unanimously elected by his fellow university chaplains, says: ‘I want to be a positive force’

The Puritan colonists who settled in New England in the 1630s had a nagging concern about the churches they were building: How would they ensure that the clergymen would be literate? Their answer was Harvard University, a school that was established to educate the ministry and adopted the motto “Truth for Christ and the Church.” It was named after a pastor, John Harvard, and it would be more than 70 years before the school had a president who was not a clergyman.

Britain is one of the most secular countries in the world. Belief in God has been declining, along with other indicators of religion, since polling began. In 1961, when a question about God was included in a survey by the National Opinion Polls, 91 per cent of Britons expressed belief. By 2018, according to the British Social Attitudes survey, that had fallen to 55 per cent of the population, with 26 per cent affirming that they’ve never believed.

In the eternal words of Freddie Mercury, someone whose life was cut tragically short: “Who wants to live forever?” Lots of people, it turns out. Or at least they want to live for a very long time (I doubt anyone would really want to live forever, which I discuss here).

Two new books explore what unbelievers actually believe.

In moral philosophy and mass culture alike, “nihilism” has a bad name. And little wonder. It is most often associated with meaninglessness, pessimism, and amoralism. At its heart, nihilism is a view of the world in which progress is not assured, a world without overarching meaning. Does that present a problem to the moral life?

I believe colonial revolutionary Thomas Paine was mistaken in believing himself a godly man. Most of what he wrote reads like pure atheism to me.

A new study reveals Australian teenagers do not relate to established ideas on religion and spirituality. Instead, they fall into six broad groups and show great tolerance for others' ideas. This-worldly, Indifferent, Spiritual but not religious, Seekers, Nominally religious, Religiously committed

According to an ancient Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Very often, we focus not on those initial small steps but on giant leaps, often undertaken by government. Think, for example, of Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Social Security into law in 1935, a giant step that changed the lives of the elderly. Or Lyndon B. Johnson’s signature on the Medicare law 30 years later that did the same.

We talked to five black atheists about what it's like to be black in America and reject the the idea of a higher power.

Is god dead? If he isn't to you, then no.

Atheists have a reputation for putting their faith in science, not divination. Now, it’s a fact. A new Pew Research Center survey shows that the godless are more likely to get vaccinated for COVID-19 compared to religious groups — as 90% of atheist respondents said that they will “definitely” or “probably” seek the shot, or have already received their first vaccine dose.

Christians long held a monopoly on virtue—until Pierre Bayle made the case for moral atheists, using comets and aliens.

In recent decades, a number of studies have found that being religious can be good for your health. People who regularly attend services are less likely to smoke, may be less likely to use drugs or be obese and may live longer than those who don’t attend services. Those findings have led some to conclude that, if religion is good for you, being an atheist will be bad for your health.

When it comes to religion, parents—atheist parents, in particular—may find themselves stumbling to explain to their kids why other families believe in certain things, but we don’t. There are an endless number of “Big Talks” we have with our kids over the course of their childhood, but talks about religion are often steeped in the experiences of our own childhood, which may or may not hang off us like baggage now.

One doesn’t have to believe in God to believe in goodness, according to an analysis published in PLOS ONE on Wednesday analyzing various values driving the morals of atheists and religious believers. This finding challenges many people’s belief in belief itself.