On this week’s show we’re going to try something different.  We’ll have a discussion between an atheist and a Christian about the current state of morality in this country.  Is the decline of religion really leading to a loss of moral values, as the Religious Right claims?  Is America going to hell in a handbasket?  Join us for what promises to be a lively debate between August Berkshire, past president of Minnesota Atheists, and Robert Dull of The Pearlygate Network.

Produced by Minnesota Atheists.  Directed and hosted by Mike Haubrich. 

• The numbers on moral decline - The Washington Times
  

• United States Crime Rates 1960-2007  [Note: Violent crime begins to decrease in 1992, 19 years after “Roe v. Wade”]

• “Important Distinctions: Morality vs. Sexual Morality” by Winston Smith
• The Culture of Morality: Social Development, Context, and Conflict by Elliot Turiel
• Lawrence Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development
• “Godless Moral Values” by Austin Cline

 

• American Religious Identification Survey 2008
• [The Political] Rise of the Godless
• “The coming evangelical collapse” - Christian Science Monitor

 

• unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters by David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons

• “A Christian by Any Other Name” by Lisa Miller, Newsweek  [Christians running away from the word “Christian”]
• “Religious Leaders Battle Abuse Bill in New York” - The New York Times
• Subscribe to FFRF’s Freethought Today newspaper to get listings of “Black Collar Crimes”

 

• “The Character of God in the Bible” by August Berkshire

 

 NATURAL ETHICS

• Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others - by Marco Iacoboni
• On Being Moved: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy - edited by Stein Braten
• Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions, and Experience - by Giacomo Rizzolatti, Corrado Sinigaglia, and Frances Anderson
• Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (Princeton Science Library) - by Frans de Waal, edited by Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober
• Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals - by Frans B. M. de Waal
• Moral Minds: How Nature designed a Universal Sense of Right and Wrong - by Marc D. Hauser
• The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Car, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule - by Michael Shermer
• The Evolution of Morality - by Richard Joyce
• The Ethical Brain - by Michael Gazzaniga