Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Why should Reddit get all the AMA (“ask me anything”) fun? All of us at Friendly Atheist are getting ready to answer your questions this weekend. Maybe you’ve always wanted to know where we find our material; or how we handle fact-checking; or how we moderate the comments; or if we ever go to church; or whether our views of religion have changed; or how often we secretly get together and plot the demise of the world’s religions while stroking our cats and pressing a pinkie to our mouths. Ask us whatever you wish to ask in the comments, and as long as it’s related to atheism, religion, and/or the inner workings of this blog, we’ll jump in and answer. Read more
It can be hard to tell the child-raping Christian missionaries apart after a while, so let me assure you: No, you haven’t read this post before. Gerald Campbell, whom we featured yesterday, “only” assaulted eight victims, in Malawi. Today’s paragon of godly virtue, Donn Ketcham, made Bangladesh his hunting ground, and he notched his belt with at least 23, um, conquests — 18 of whom were underage. There are credible accusations that Ketcham drugged some of his victims before raping them. A recent 280-page report by Professional Investigators International (Pii) reveals how Ketcham, a medical missionary for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) from 1961 to 1989, spent decades sexually abusing women and girls. Pii, hired by ABWE, conducted more than 200 interviews to get to the bottom of the long-swirling accusations against Ketcham, and, during the years-long probe, reviewed more than 14,000 pages of documents. Here’s what Pii unearthed, according to a lengthy account of Ketcham’s exploits in Christianity Today. Read more
Allah must have blessed Iran with a culture that’s free of theft, rape, murder and other serious crimes. Why else would law enforcement officials instead go after models with uncovered tresses? Iran has arrested eight people working for online modeling agencies deemed to be “un-Islamic,” the prosecutor of Tehran’s cybercrimes court has said. The arrests are part of an operation that has seen women targeted for posting photos showing them not wearing headscarves on Instagram and elsewhere. Read more
