Jessica Bluemke grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and graduated from Ball State University in 2008 with a BA in Literature. She currently works as a writer and resides on the North side of Chicago.
Those of you with far-reaching memories may recall the series of video interviews that my trusty sidekick Mikey and I put together from The Amazing Meeting 2013. I understand it is now 2014, but we had some technical difficulties (i.e., the computer he was using to edit everything unexpectedly crapped out and we needed to get a new one. Guys, computers are not cheap. Even with this baller blogging money. Apparently, the four-year-old semi-functional laptop I write on is not good enough for his fancy schmancy editing programs. La. De. Dah.) Anyway, now that we have gotten everything back in good working order, Mikey has been able to get back in the swing of things. For our long-awaited relaunch, we’re kicking things off with the remarkable Dr. Karen Stollznow. Though I had missed her talk at TAM, there was a gentleman who was also blogging there who told me that I absolutely needed to talk to her. Holy cow. He was right. Read more
No. No it’s not. Okay, we got that out of the way. On The Stone, The New York Times’ philosophy/opinion blog, Gary Gutting interviewed Alvin Plantinga. The former is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame; the latter is a former professor of philosophy and a former president of the Society of Christian Philosophers and the American Philosophical Association. Plantinga also recently wrote a book called Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. When I initially read this article, I just skimmed it and rolled my eyes a couple of times. When I began writing something up on it, I read it more thoroughly and had this response: The conversation between the two philosophers was… interesting. It seems like to be an exercise in various types of bad arguments. But, here we are. Who’s ready to dive in with me? Read more
Ah, Bryan Fischer, we meet again. In the past, we’ve sparred (rather one-sidedly, I must admit) about gay people, NBA players, abortion rights and tax law, and I think it can be agreed upon that at least a couple of those topics are ones that neither of us are actually qualified to discuss. And yet here we are to discuss another area of mutual expertise: Politics. Today, Sir Fischer decided that those of us who believe in evolution should be “disqualified from holding public office in the United States of America.” Read more
Now that Thanksgiving is upon us, it’s time to kick off this year’s Heathen Holiday Cards! As you may recall, last year, we posted readers’ best/funniest/most irreverent/warmest non-religious holiday cards. We wanted to kick off the 2013 holiday season by featuring some cards that our readers are selling. The reason this particular post is going up earlier this year (Yes, guys, I read your gripes that the call-out for cards was too damn early. I hear your complaints) is because I wanted to give readers a chance to sell their cards, and they’ll likely need a couple weeks to get them out to you. Not only did we get responses, we had some generous offers for giveaways! Let’s start with those. First up: Noble Works Cards They have a bevy of irreverent cards for sale, like this one: Read more
Have you ever thought about reading the Bible and then thought to yourself “Naw, that writing is the worst!” Well, you wouldn’t be wrong, and we have a solution for you! Jacob Fortin of The Good Atheist fame is working on translating (for lack of a better word) the Bible into regular human words that are compelling, funny, yet still aligned with the original texts. Here’s a preview: In the beginning of everything that ever was, God created the heavens and the Earth. A boring, formless mass of liquid cloaked in darkness, the Earth had relatively low property value but tons of potential. The Spirit of God, hovering above it like a comic book villain, said “Let there be light” and the whole place lit up magically without any point of origin. To ensure this bright new creation would forever be different from the black void, the Creator named one of them ‘light’ and the other ‘darkness’. God saw what he had done, and needless to say, was extremely impressed with himself [I mean, wouldn’t you be?]. Awesome — the whole book of Genesis is ready to go and can be found here. It’s wonderfully written and will feature some awesome original drawings by Fortin, too. It’s funny and irreverent without The book is due out in March, but he needs one more financial bump to get it out in time, so he’s doing what any of us would to raise a few bucks: Holding a telethon. Read more
