What aspects of religion should atheists (respectfully) adopt? Alain de Botton suggests a "religion for atheists" -- call it Atheism 2.0 -- that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.

The Workshop will explore transhumanist spirituality and “Religion 2.0″, the convergence of science and religion, highly imaginative future science and technologies for resurrection, emerging science and technologies for immortality, social and memetic engineering.

Turing Church Online Workshop 2, December 11, 2011. Remi Sussan, incoln Cannon, Brent Allsop, Dan Massey, Mike Perry, Andrew Warner, Lincoln Cannon, Brent Allsop, Dan Massey, Mike Perry.

The Turing Church Online Workshop 1, on Saturday November 20 2010 in Teleplace, explored transhumanist spirituality and “Religion 2.0″ as a coordination-oriented summit of persons, groups and organizations active in this area.

Panelists:

Ben Goertzel (Cosmist Manifesto)
Giulio Prisco (Turing Church)
Mike Perry (Society for Universal Immortalism)
Lincoln Cannon (Mormon Transhumanist Association)
Martine Rothblatt (Terasem)

http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/turing-church-online-workshop-1...

Second part of series on morality. See below for bible references included in this video.

Death for victimless 'crime'
Yahweh requires death of sabbath workers
(Numbers 15 : 32-36)
Yahweh requires death of gay people:
(Leviticus 20 : 13)
Yahweh requires death of women who can't show virginity on wedding night:
(Deuteronomy 22 : 20-21)

Unaccountable slaughter
Yahweh kills 70,000 for David's census:
(2 Samuel 24 : 1-15)
Yahweh kills almost all land animals for human wickedness:
(Genesis 6 : 5-7)

Entrapment through mind-control
Yahweh hardens Pharaoh's heart:

First in a series on morality

Link to Epley article:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/12/01/0908374106.full.pdf+html

"Nightline" tackled the debate with a provocative take on the issue. The sixth "Nightline" "Face-Off" asked: Are we at a time in history when the argument can now actually be settled? Given all that we know today about the cosmos and life on Earth, is science killing God -- or can it bring us closer to him? Does God -- or should God -- have a future?

In this highlight from May 2007, noted atheist Christopher Hitchens compares monotheistic belief to a despotic dictatorship -- similar to his observations of North Korea under Kim Jong Il. The key difference, he argues? "You can get out of North Korea - you can die, and it's over. You can't do that with monotheism."

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Christopher Hitchens speaks about his new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Transhumanism - the proposition that human beings should use technology to transcend the limitations of the body and brain - is a product of the Enlightenment humanist tradition. As a consequence most avowed transhumanists are secular, and many religious are skeptical or hostile towards the transhumanist project. However there are also many religious transhumanists who find the project of human enhancement at least consistent with, and sometimes a fulfillment of, their metaphysics, soteriologies and eschatologies.

After spending the first years of his life in an Anglican household in Nairobi, the path was in no way clear for Richard Dawkins to become a scientist. Here the legendary evolutionary biologist chronicles his passion for the field, describing his first discovery as well as his favorite research project.

11 videos from Big Think

The Dalai Lama wants to be a machine avatar. A frightening maybe enlightening confession of the Buddhist religious overlord.