August 27, 2008
It’s no wonder evangelical atheists need to shout so loud
by Barry Cooper
Calgary Herald (Canada), August 27, 2008
p. A16 (editorial)
The shining example of free thinking said to characterize the French Enlightenment was Voltaire. In the face of dogmatic clerics, both Protestant and Catholic, he urged reasonable people everywhere to “crush the infamous thing.”
His argument was as obvious then as it is today: organized religion not only divides humanity into believers and infidels, it authorizes the former, with a beatific smile, to extinguish the latter. Often religion claims to be doing so for the good of the infidel.
That Voltaire had Christianity in mind is indicated by a rather more vulgar expression from his pen: “the people will not be free until the last king is strangled in the guts of the last priest.”
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August 24, 2008
Science and religion can go hand in hand
by Renee K. Gadoua (Religion News Service)
Leader-Post (Canada), August 23, 2008
p. G7
The Rev. Michael Dowd’s Dodge Sprinter van bears an image of kissing fish. The fish, labelled “Darwin” and “Jesus,” reflect his belief that evolution is sacred and that science and religion go hand in hand.
“I’m not into reconciling science and religion,” said Dowd, 49, a former believer in creationism. “If evolution doesn’t wholly jazz someone religiously, they should continue to reject evolution.”
Dowd, a pastor in the United Church of Christ, is the author of the new book, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your World.
Since 2002, he and his wife, Connie Barlow, an atheist and a science writer, have lived on the road, sharing their perspective that an understanding of evolution strengthens, rather than undermines, faith.
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