CHRISTOPHER Hitchens has lost what he described in April as his “long argument with the spectre of death”. The BBC reports that the 62-year-old British author, literary critic and journalist – renowned for his fiery attacks on religion – died yesterday from pneumonia, a complication of the oesophageal cancer he was suffering from at a [...]
A DOCUMENTARY scheduled to be screened on RTE One tonight features Irish Catholic priests complaining they have the hump with Catholics of Convenience using the Church simply for hatches, matches and despatches. In the Would You Believe? documentary, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, urges the rising numbers of “a la carte” Catholics to “have [...]
A NEW study in North America concludes that “Atheists are distrusted to roughly the same degree as rapists”. The research, led by University of British Columbia psychology doctoral student Will Gervais, found distrust to be the central factor motivating antagonism toward atheists among the religious. Said Gervais: Where there are religious majorities – that is, [...]
THIS morning we salute a 20-year-old soldier who yesterday refused to bow his head during a benediction given at a graduation ceremony at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. But we deplore the fact that the soldier, for fear of repercussions, has felt the need to keep his identity hidden. Said Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military [...]
A CRUEL ritual, said to date back some 800 years, involves ultra-Orthodox Jews swinging chickens above their heads to absolve them from their sins. The ghastly spectacle takes place to mark Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – and the birds are slaughtered afterwards. But now some concerned rabbis, according to this report, are [...]
SIT on the sidelines and mutter his disapproval, if pious rugger prop Euan Murray, 31, is to be believed. I just wish that games of rugby weren’t played on Sundays. Christ doesn’t want them to be played on Sundays. That’s what the Scottish international told the Guardian back in February, 2010 – but yesterday the [...]
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
