by Richard Dawkins
2006, Houghton Mifflin Co., 374 pgs.

Dawkins is a celebrated evolutionary biologist who, along with Sam Harris (The End of Faith), has emerged as one of the better known proponents of atheism in contemporary literature. Both books have been New York Times best sellers.

In my own work, New Pilgrim Chronicles, I have likewise argued for the critical need of the species to evolve from faith to reason:

“Faith, as the antithesis of reason, is a barbarous relic that must be discarded if civilization, much less any prospect for freedom, is to emerge.”— from Chapter 5

Dawkins’ main thesis is the natural world and even sentient beings such as ourselves are accounted for by natural explanations. Thus, God is not a requirement for and has a vanishingly small probability of existence. Continue reading →

No compromise
by Ron Burcham

This one came my way via an email exchange Mr. Burcham had been part of. And I thought his concise and absolute statement was one of the more heroic expressions of loyalty to the human world of reason and science I had read. Right arm! How many times are we accosted by the purveyors of supernatural Jesus to buy into their Byzantine fantasies or face dire, eternal consequences? Remember Jesse Ventura’s comment in a 1999 Playboy interview: “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people…”[1] (That’s a big reason I put Jesse on my short list of national leaders who can unite the country under the Constitution and solve real problems in the real world.) — bw, editor Continue reading →