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 [...]
MORE bad news for the Vatican … Poland, once one of Europe’s staunchest bastions of Catholicism, seems to be falling out of love with the faith. The latest manifestation of growing secularism in the country occurred earlier this week when the leader of a new ultra-liberal party – Janusz Palikot of the Palikot’s Movement – [...]
A PROMINENT Israeli writer has won a significant court victory in his battle not to be officially registered as Jewish. Yoram Kaniuk, 81 – born and raised in Tel Aviv and an internationally acclaimed author and critic – petitioned the Interior Ministry in 2010 to change his status on the population register from “Jewish” to [...]
DESPITE the fact that German reaction to Ratzinger’s four-day state visit was one of overall apathy, Germany’s top archbishop, Robert Zollitsch, said the Church was extremely pleased with the visit. He told reporters: All our expectations have been surpassed. But according to this report, the posturing old bigot’s first state visit to his native Germany: [...]
SCHOOLS in Australia which would rather have a secular welfare officer rather than a religious chaplain can now do so, following changes made to the country’s controversial national school chaplaincy programme. The amendment was announced by Schools Minister Peter Garrett – and, according to this report, among the first to applaud the move was Essendon [...]
NEXT month – on September 17 – a large-scale protest by secular groups against the Vatican’s persistent interference in politics is due to take place in London. But bizarrely, a left-wing German politician appears to be calling for MORE papal involvement in the way in which countries run their affairs. Ahead of Pope Ratzinger’s visit [...]
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
