One really great way to learn about the arguments for Atheism and skepticism is to watch the many debates that are out there on the internets.

Two of my favorite skeptic/atheist debaters are Michael Shermer (of the Skeptics society) and Christopher Hitchens (of course).

Shermer excels at the scientific approach and Hitchens excels at the philosophical.

You can see this played out in their separate debates against Dinesh D’Souza a conservative Roman Catholic and political commentator.

D’Souza’s main point is that without Christianity you couldn’t have morality. A topic in which Shermer has done much scientific research and playfully rebutts D’Souza in the opening of the second video clip, with reference to the large amount of primate research going on.

Hitchens argument to that claim is more philosophical, in that we couldn’t have progressed this far without already having some innate sense of morality.  In either case, the point is the same.  Morality is innate in us, evolved as a way to facilitate cooperation among groups.  

Religion is, once again, a superfluous afterthought.

Shermer vs. D’Souza		Hitchens vs. D’Souza

From the Pharyngula blog, we’ve got the U.N. passing another step towards an enforceable anti-blasphemy law, backed primarily by the the Organization of Islamic Countries.

It’s not just UN involved in the restriction of freedom of speech but attempts are made in Canada and in other democracies to suppress points of view in the name of ‘religious tolerance‘.

Here’s a quote from Christopher Hitchens (full clip below) in which he explains how restrictions on freedom of speech affect everyone in a society.

“It’s not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard. It is the right of everyone in audience to listen and to hear. And everytime you silence somebody you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something.”

I was fortunate enough to spend 3 months in the People’s Republic of China. It was my first time living in an officially Atheist country.

However, it by no means, is the atheism advocated by people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

For atheism or secularism to have any meaning it must be backed up by a support of freedom of expression, opening questioning, and respecting one’s right to dissent.

The Chinese government of course will say it’s for all these things but in true doublespeak it also restricts the Internet, imprisons dissentients, and attempts to ban beliefs.

The backbone of atheism is science and science needs a free society to succeed. Although truths are not something one can vote on, the process of  science must be free and unfettered or else it will fail to uncover those truths.

Without freedom, there is no science. Without science there can be no atheism.