Back in 2006, a Southern Baptist preacher who happens to sit in the Kentucky legislature introduced a law that would require the Kentucky Department of Homeland Security to declare in its training materials that security is unattainable without reliance on “Almighty God.” American Atheists filed a lawsuit, claiming that the law violated both the U.S. and Kentucky Constitutions. The Franklin Circuit Court in Kentucky (the trial court) agreed with them and ruled that the law was unconstitutional. Then, the law… Read more
David G. McAfee has written a revised version of his book Disproving Christianity and Other Secular Writings and it’s perfect for anyone who has studied the Bible and loves to see its inconsistencies pointed out. One of the chapters, Morality versus Worship, is republished below: “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If… Read more
Beginning on Monday, the Freedom From Religion Foundation will sponsor their first billboard in Rhode Island (on Interstate 295 at Route 2 in Warwick): Annie Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-president, said it’s fitting that the campaign has expanded to Rhode Island, which was founded by Roger Williams, a strong advocate of keeping religion out of government and vice versa. “Although Williams was a religious man, he believed deeply that civil and sectarian authorities should not intrude on each other, for the… Read more
We’ve talked before on Friendly Atheist about Tim Tebow’s tempting eyes. Seriously, who could resist this face? It makes me want to run out and get (re-) baptized. But once Tebow graduated, the NCAA had to spoil everyone’s proselytizin’ fun by banning messages on eye black, or as it’s called in the official rulebook, “eye shade.” So where does that leave Illini quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase, whose eye black is now in a cross shape? There are two aspects to this… Read more
***Update***: Mattheiss is a staffer at the school and not a teacher. My apologies for the post’s title. Still, that doesn’t take away from anything she writes on the Facebook wall. Staffers, just like teachers, cannot use work time to proselytize. And Mattheiss makes it clear that she’s ignoring that rule completely; she writes that she prays with kids daily. If this were part of some after school Christian club, that would be legal, but there’s no indication of that…. Read more
The Chicago Gay Pride Parade takes place the last Sunday of June and the route happens to pass by a Catholic church. When you’re in a big city, it’s kind of hard not to pass a church along a large parade route. It’s not like they did it on purpose. But the priest at the church said he would be unable to hold Sunday morning mass if the parade went on as planned. That led Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of… Read more
High-schooler Elise Brown recently wrote this fantastic opinion piece for her community’s local paper regarding celebrating Christmas as an atheist and the importance of religious pluralism in our country. While it’s not online at the paper’s site, she reposted it here. I love this excerpt, a response to Rick Perry’s “Stronger” ad: A statesman who insists that the national dialogue about religion must be limited to Christianity is no statesman at all. We all have different beliefs and ways to… Read more
Robert Wilonsky, blogger for the Dallas Observer, reports that Westboro Baptist Church will protest the TicketCity Bowl in Dallas on January 2nd. Why that game in particular? Well, the participants are Penn State and the University of Houston: You can probably figure out why The Most Hated Family in America is out to get the Lions: “Penn State is like all of the universities in doomed USA: full of proud, fornicating, brutish sinners, bowing down to college sports. That’s why Jerry… Read more
