Richard Dawkins, the author of the new book Outgrowing God and one of the world’s leading atheists, says ending religion would a bad idea.

Dawkins told The Times and the Sunday Times he fears if religion were abolished it would “give people a license to do really bad things.” 

“People may feel free to do bad things because they feel God is no longer watching them,” he said. 

Just as security cameras deter shoplifting, he said, individuals might feel free to commit crimes without a “divine spy camera in the sky reading their every thought.”

Dawkins told the newspapers about an experiment by professor Melissa Bateson at the University of Newcastle. She set up an “honesty box” in a university coffee room to pay for drinks – whether coffee, tea or milk – and placed a price list on the wall. During some weeks, she decorated the sign with pictures of flowers. Other weeks, she placed an image of a pair of eyes. People paid “nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed,” she and the other researchers wrote in a paper about the experiment.  

Dawkins discussed the experiment in his 2019 book, Outgrowing God, in a chapter titled, “Do we need God in order to be good?”

“Whether irrational or not, it does, unfortunately, seem plausible that, if somebody sincerely believes God is watching his…

A Chinese church was fined this year the equivalent of $1,400 in U.S. for having a copy of the Bible in a different language, according to a religious watchdog.

The congregation, Fengyang Road Three-Self Great Church in the northeastern province of Liaoning, is a member of the officially recognized Three-Self network of Protestant churches that face severe restrictions.

In April, Chinese Communist Party officials found copies of South Korean Bibles in the church’s possession – an illegal action that sparked a fine of $10,000 RMB (about $1,400 USD), according to Bitter Winter, which monitors religious freedom in the country. 

“The church was also prohibited from selling Bibles,” Bitter Winter reported.

The fine was part of the Communist Party’s effort to “eradicate pornography and illegal publications” – and the latest example of the party’s crackdown on Christianity. 

“Many believers have reported that the Three-Self churches to which they belong have been subjected to sudden inspections by the government,” Bitter Winter reported. “All newspapers, hymnbooks, gospel leaflets, and especially Bibles that weren’t published and printed by the state were confiscated and even burned.”

The government even has forced churches to hang banners promoting the campaign against illegal books. In August, Fengzhuang Three-Self Church in the central…

A new research study has revealed that it is becoming increasingly less likely for young people who leave church to return when they are older.

In a Barna Group research analysis done by assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and pastor of First Baptist Church of Mt. Vernon, Illinois, Ryan Burge, showed that those born between 1965 and 1984 were much less likely to return to church than those born between 1945 and 1964.

The data, Burge said, should have major implications for the way ministry is done in today’s evangelical church.

“Many pastors are standing at the pulpit on Sunday morning and seeing fewer and fewer of their former youth group members returning to the pews when they move into their late-20s and early-30s,” he said, according to the Christian Post. “No church should assume that this crucial part of the population is going to return to active membership as their parents once did.”

Burge added that the “data is speaking a clear message: the assumptions that undergirded church growth from two decades ago no longer apply.”

“If churches are sitting back and just waiting for all their young people to flood back in as they move into their 30s, they are likely in for a rude awakening,” he said. “Inaction now could be creating a church that does not have a strong…