My latest article has been posted on AlterNet, Once Again, Believers Have it Wrong: Atheists Don't Just Want Sex, Drugs, and Lack of Morality. As you might have guessed, it's the culminating entry in my recent exchange with Peter Hitchens. In it, I discuss the absence of evidence for non-human moral authority, the fact that accusations of unbridled hedonism have always been used in an attempt to silence social reform movements, and the evidence which shows that the rise of atheism has no negative impact on public morality. Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the rest:

The death of Christopher Hitchens last month sparked an outpouring of tributes. Most of them praised his best qualities: his ferocious courage, his seemingly effortless erudition, and his crusading defense of free speech and rationalism. Of course, he had his faults as well -- most notably his support for the Iraq war -- and I was happy to see that relatively few of the eulogies, even those written by his personal friends, overlooked or excused this. Given how averse Hitchens himself was to whitewashing the lives of the deceased, I have no doubt that this is how he would have wanted it.

There was one item, however, that caught my attention...

Continue reading on AlterNet...

Image credit: Kenneth Freeman