Atheist News

Find out what's been happening as we review the last two weeks worth of news regarding atheism and religion. Gen Z has surprising statistic on the nonreligious, a pastor is arrested after being found in a golf cart with a 15 year old, the Church of Scientology appeals to the Supreme Court, and more happening in the news!

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Season finale! Today we feature: Christopher Hitchens’ opening remarks in a debate versus Dr. Barry Brummett, recorded June 4th, 2011, to address whether religion has been a positive force in  culture. Hitch, still debating in his final year with us. Plus Steve from Atheist News 8 May 2021. Donate to Steve’s Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews

Today we feature: Christopher Hitchens' opening remarks in a debate versus Tony Blair, recorded November 26th, 2010, to address the question: is religion a force for good in the world? Plus Steve from Atheist News 24 April 2021. Donate to Steve's Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews

Today we feature: Christopher Hitchens’ opening remarks in a debate versus Tariq Ramadan, recorded October 5th, 2010 at the 92nd Street Y in New York, to address the question: is Islam a religion of peace? Plus Steve from Atheist News 10 April 2021. Donate to Steve’s Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews

Today we feature: Christopher Hitchens’ opening remarks in a debate versus Shmuley Boteach - over whether there is an afterlife, recorded September 16th, 2010. Plus Steve from Atheist News 27 March 2021. Donate to Steve’s Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews

Today we feature: Christopher Hitchens’ opening remarks in a debate versus John Haldane - Scottish philosopher, and broadcaster, in a discussion on rights, dignity, faith and public life for The Veritas Forum, recorded at Oxford May 12th, 2010. Plus Steve from Atheist News 28 Feb 2021. Donate to Steve’s Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews

Today we feature: Christopher Hitchens’ opening remarks in the god debate versus Dinesh D’Souza, recorded April 7th, 2010. Plus Steve from Atheist News 13 Feb 2021. Donate to Steve’s Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews

Today we feature: Christopher Hitchens’ opening remarks in the Re-Evolution debate alongside fellow advocates of Science and Reason: Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, recorded November 8th, 2009. Plus Steve from Atheist News 30 Jan 2021. Donate to Steve’s Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews

Today we feature: Christopher Hitchens’ opening remarks in an intelligence squared debate with teammate Stephen Fry, recorded November 7th, 2009. Plus Steve from Atheist News 16 Jan 2021. Donate to Steve’s Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews

Today we feature: Christopher's opening remarks in a debate questioning the very existence of god versus Dinesh D’Sousa, recorded September 17th, 2009.  Plus Steve from Atheist News 03 Jan 2021. Please consider donating to Steve’s Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews 

Today we feature: Christopher's opening remarks in a debate versus Frank Turek on what best explains reality theism or atheism, recorded August 21st, 2009.  Plus Steve from Atheist News 19/12/2020. Please consider donating to Steve’s Patreon at patreon.com/atheistnews

Hitchens describes how religion denies us our moral autonomy.

How holy books, written by man, not only leave out major moral societal teachings, but also recommend them.

How insulting it is for a believer to claim a moral edge on nonbelievers when so much violence comes to us via religious culture.

He continues explaining, how unfalsifiable theories are weak theories. How religious claims in the face of increasingly overwhelming scientific evidence can only present themselves as infantile dismissable assertions.

How absolving ourselves of responsibility, like the religious do, is intellectually futile and potentially sinister and that we should emancipate ourselves from such immoral behaviour.

Today we feature: Christopher's opening remarks in a debate versus Dinesh D’Sousa, recorded January 26th, 2009. Plus Steve from Atheist News 06/12/2020.

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Today we feature: Christopher's opening remarks in a debate, recorded October 30th, 2008 at the Westminster Theological Seminary.

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Hitch explains how religion is a deterministic universal toxin from which nothing is exempt and that we have no need for divine permission. How each religion denies each other and ignorantly excludes thoughts and principles from anywhere else. How the wish to refer our responsibilities upward is a wish for a totalitarian solution to our problems, and this is how we end up with the divine right of kings political doctrine resulting in dictatorship with humans claiming they have divine authority.

Christopher ends on the moral point of how those who take solace in their belief that a holy book coerces good morals in people are insulting themselves, because we don’t need permission to act morally. This theocratic death wish is the greatest insult and has been and still is the greatest threat to us and all the gains of civilisation.

Christopher responds to the question of why christianity is bad for the world, beginning with  the illusory nonsense you’d have to believe to be a christian and follows up with the immoral and totalitarian nature of christian ethics.

Christopher discusses recent examples of ontological arguments backpedalled by both the catholic and protestant churches, revealing how man made the ideas of, for example, limbo and hellfire are.

He then calls out the catholic church’s cyclic behaviour to apologise to the world and then reclaim infallibility all over again.

He explains and defines widely, what an atheist is, and that we make no knowledge claim at all, we simply refute the theist claim.

Hitchens then clarifies the difference between deists explaining the world via a designer and theists explaining the world with a designer that answers prayers and more.

Hitchens then claims that we  don’t need a supervisor to be moral beings and that we find too many vicious immoral acts from humanity that are performed by those who believe they have divine permission.

Finishes with the Hitchens challenge on morality against the religious and addresses the argument for fine tuning and the wanton craving for a totalitarian situation of the human condition.

Christopher's opening remarks debating Dinesh D'Souza, recorded July 11th, 2008 at freedom fest.

Hitch speaks with some regret, about the catholic Robert Mugabe and the levels of evils one can inflict on others, yet still be considered part of the church.

We then hear him warn of the inevitability of weaponised messianic cultures.

And finally he discusses christian mythology and squaring the circle of fabricated stories.

Hitch explains how, in a sense, religion poisons everything.

He then goes into what might now be known as “Christopher’s Challenge”:

Christopher finishes highlighting the indifference shown to man with the gullible belief that divine intervention in human history only occurred so recently.

Christopher summarises our historical explanation for things and how wishful thinking from our fearful bronze age times still prevails to this day.

He then wipes away the cosmological argument for design explaining that nothingness is innate, programmed and very likely the next big thing as we observe from our expanding universe. Even if the universe had a first cause, there is nothing to prove a designer at all.

He explores the idea of a designer further more locally, showcasing our poorly evolved vestigial organs and our extreme luck in surviving early human life.

Hitch ends highlighting some of the absurdities of both deist and theist beliefs.

Covering similar points to the previous debate, Hitch is on fire in this one.

He opens with the problem of faith in all monotheisms. One being the promise of salvation and two,  that religion is in itself, virtuous, conveniently dispensing with the need for evidence…

He goes on to claim christianity is immoral just as much as it is untrue.

While scientists like Einstein say the beauty of the universe is that it’s laws cannot be suspended, the religious over-promise that they can, and in your favour if you make the right prayers.

- christianity is the problem vs Dinesh D’Souza, recorded October 22, 2007

Christopher argues, while it may be admitted that biblical stories are myths and not metaphysically true, it is not true that we would require these myths as a basis for our ethics, our morals.

That the wishful thinking, of vicarious redemption, through human sacrifice is absolutely immoral, and allows followers to absolve themselves of personal responsibility via scapegoating.

We hear Hitchens first time arguing against the unethical and ridiculous idea of being convicted and condemned eternally for "thought crime", by the imagined totalitarian regime that is the celestial dictatorship.

That out of self respect we should acknowledge that we are capable of moral action without the help of religion and furthermore, that moral capability is innate within us.

How science and reason are irreconcilable with religion. And religion is sinister, childish nonsense that appeals to our solipsism and to our masochism.

Hitchens explains how Atlanta burned during the civil war with both sides believing they had god on their side all the while with either side’s so-called god watching as the war went on.

Continuing that thought, this is also the first time in his debates where we hear Christopher’s argument about how illogical it is that a deity would watch on as humans suffered greatly the first couple of hundred thousand years, only to reveal himself and intervene in the last 2 thousand.

He finishes with how the secular position is the most rational, truthful and consistent with evidence as we understand it.

Today we feature: Christopher's opening remarks in a religious debate on religion and politics vs Marvin Olasky, recorded in May 2007.

Hitchens opens the debate with reasons for antitheism, and renouncing the Abrahamic religions as evil.

He demonstrates how in all likelihood man created religion and not the other way around.

How we are apparently created sick, and commanded to be well.

How it gives people power in the here and now where it counts, and what they do with the arrogance of power when it is backed by the divine, including the mistreatment of women.

Having visited North Korea, Christopher explains what a lifetime of servitude might be like in a godlike theocracy, and let’s us know of his distaste for such an existence, should it be true that something like this might last for an eternity.

All of this, just a few reasons for antitheism.

Christopher ends pointing out the intolerance among religious sects, and how the USA’s constitution insists on the separation of church and state.

Hitchens begins with a reminder that religion comes from the infancy of our species, when we didn’t know what we have learnt over time as better thinking has progressed our understanding.

He provides sound reasoning for myth creation, being that the mind searches for form, and how unfortunately, we are now stuck with what we made in our infancy, when things said were not exactly true.

Recognising we make our own myths, it is a good thing however, that we do not take the old religious stories seriously, for example the warrants for genocide, slavery, torture of children, genital mutilation, annexation, rape etc. And it’s a very good thing that we know these religious writings are man made.

Hitchens ends with, how the behaviour of religious fanatics is not just offensive to civilisation but threatens it, with people dying from religious dogma. From the killing of a danish cartoonist, to the threatening of education with  teaching in schools of nonsense like intelligent design theory.

Today we feature: Christopher's opening remarks debating whether we'd be better off without religion, recorded in the year 2007 alongside team mates A.C.Grayling and the world reknowned Richard Dawkins. 

Hitchens starts off exclaiming he would NOT feel safer in religious surroundings, in such towns split by barbaric religious sectarian warfare. In towns where it's a matter of faith that determines your identity and human rights. Describing places of ethnic cleansing where minority citizens are persecuted under religious constitutions. 

He then points out lessons we should learn from history - how the preaching of religion gravely poisons and retards civilisation. 

How facsist countries historically have in no way been secular, actually driven by the religious impulse of man, with the argument from faith driving opportunist forces.

Hitchens then lifts up the cause for atheism quite bluntly saying, There's no moral equivolence between non-believers who hold evidence, scepticism and reason with conviction and principle, and the fanatics who think they know god's will and can tell you what it is.

Today we feature: Christopher's 20 minute opening remarks in a debate with Shmuley Boteach, recorded in the year 2004 at The Makor Center for Spiritual Judaism in New York City. 

Hitchens argues against the ontological religious argument from design, and points out the differences between those of us who think they know, to those of us who admit they don't know.

He makes compelling points about the unwanted aspects, of the masochistic Abrahamic religions and, why Pascal's wager argument is actually an appeal to immorality. Further begging the question: if the heavenly existence described by the religious really were true - would we actually want it to be true?

He also poses the question of whether religion makes people more ethical, using the still relevant example of the immensely difficult progress, barely trying to be made, toward peace in the so-called holy land, seemingly forever torn apart by 3 different religious ideologies and claims.

Welcome to the Anti-theist Atheist podcast, where we feature prominent speakers with their arguments against religion. 

This season we are exploring: Opening speeches in religious debates, with Christopher Hitchens.

Today we feature: Christopher's opening speech on religion versus Bill Donohue, recorded in the year 2000.

It is the inaugural debate from ChristiFideles taped in front of a capacity crowd at the Union League Club in New York City. Donohue and Hitchens discussed the hostility of the American cultural elite, religion in general, and Catholicism in particular. 

Without any further throat-clearing: Here is the opening speech from Christopher Hitchens...

and remember: love all people, hate bad ideas...