EDITOR—The Root of All Evil?, later retitled The God Delusion, is a television documentary written and presented by Richard Dawkins in which he argues that humanity would be better off without religion or belief in God. The documentary was first broadcast in January 2006, in the form of two 45-minute episodes (excluding advertisement breaks), on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. Dawkins did not think The Root of All Evil? was an ideal title. His book The God Delusion, published in September 2006, explores topics from the documentary in more detail.
RELIGIOSITY & SUPERSTITION
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THE BIBLE VS THE EAGLE: WHY CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM IS UN-AMERICAN
40 minutes readBRUCE LERRO—When the founders mention “The Creator” the Christian nationalists break out in celebration, declaring victory. Hold your horses and bugles! Nowhere is Jesus or Yahweh specifically mentioned. Virtually all cultures have a creator god who is more or less involved in his creation. The same is true with the Golden Rule. Christian nationalists act as if this rule was unique to Christianity. Most cultures in the world have their own version of the Golden Rule often dating to thousands of years before Christianity. Furthermore, when god was named it was “nature’s” god. Seidel rightly points this is more likely to resemble the god of the wind or the trees than the description of a biblical god. Nature’s god is a pagan god, not the Judeo-Christian monotheistic god.
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Via his iconic novel Elmer Gantry Sinclair Lewis criticized the US pervasive religiosity, and warned Americans about their propensity to believe hucksters. That America has long been the land of appalling, bovine gullibility, a fact that has made multi-millionaires of scores of religious charlatans, the most outrageous preaching and flaunting a “prosperity gospel” (get rich quick) to justify their own greed, is a reality decried by all progressive observers across the globe.
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ED CURTIN—In 2007 the Catholic Church declared Jägerstätter a martyr and beatified him. The irony of making a saint out of a man whose spiritual witness was opposed by the institutional church authorities cannot be lost on a thinking person. Long dead, safely in his grave, a monument can be erected to his memory. [As, by official overpraise we also defanged the meaning and legacy of Martin Luther King.—Ed]
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While christofascim makes inroads in government and armed forces, a significant number of Americans are choosing atheism
10 minutes readReligiosity —chiefly Christian fundamentalism of a variety of sorts—has long been a feature of the American social and political landscape. Its effects have been nefarious, not just for the culture as a whole, but for the faithful themselves, who are often victimised by reactionary ideologies and outright predatory preachers. The impact of these people—as a voting bloc —has helped to elect the likes of George W Bush and similar types, with consequent injuries to American society in the form of support for criminal imperialist wars (Billy Graham set the pattern for this in the postwar), delays in badly needed medical advances (blocking of stem cell research), and so on.