From PRI, Public Radio International and KCRW Santa Monica, this is To the Point.

Are atheists evangelizing against God?

Hello again, I'm Orman Alney, and this is To the Point from Public Radio International.

A daily look at the issues. Americans care about most.

The growing influence

of religion in public life is seen by some non-believers as an attack on reason and science.

They're fighting back with an intellectual movement, some call the new atheism, which has

produced several best-selling books. At the same time, surveys show that atheists are America's

least trusted people,

and critics accuse them of being fundamentalists in their own right.

On to the point, does religion foster ignorance and lead to violence and war?

Can human society survive without it?

On reporter's notebook later on, Hugo Chavez, dictator out of control, or secular saint.

First, here's the news.

Support for To the Point comes from subscribers of KCRW Santa Monica

and from the Public Radio International Program Fund,

whose contributors include the Ford Foundation

and the John D. and Catherine

T. MacArthur Foundation. Hello again. More than Alany, back with To the Poet, is the renewed influence

of religion in public life, a threat to reason and science. That's the conviction of some non-believers

who are now aggressively advocating atheism. On To the Poet, we'll hear the latest version of an ancient argument in the U.S.,

where atheists have less credibility than anyone else.

...