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.
Not since watching the half-gutbusting, half-terrifying footage of “God Warrior” Marguerite Perrin have I felt this sorry for a Christian’s kids. And there’s a lot of them to be sorry for, because the anonymous woman in this brand new video has one dozen little and not-so-little darlings. Her brood and husband in tow, she marches through a Target store as if she owns the place, waving her Bible and yelling about transgender people and about Target’s “perversion” in letting trans customers choose the bathroom that matches their gender identity. Read more
Throw a number of people together in new and trying circumstances, and you’ll have some version of The Real World or Big Brother on your hands. Turf will be fought over, feuds will fester, power struggles will erupt, and annoying habits will become flashpoints for more of the same. Now throw competing religions into the mix, and the situation is sure to take a dramatic turn for the worse. That’s what’s happening in refugee centers all over Germany, among many of the 1.1 million asylum seekers who arrived in that country last year from war-torn nations like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Read more
George Zimmerman, the neighborhood-watch vigilante who killed unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin four years ago, has always been a man of great piety. He’s remarked philosophically that taking Martin’s life was God’s plan: “I believe God has his plans, and for me to second-guess them would be hypocritical, almost blasphemous.” Read more
I’m not sure about the legality, but if Richard Dawkins isn’t bothered by the copyright ramifications, then neither am I. An unauthorized PDF translation of Dawkin’s The God Delusion, by Iraqi emigrant Bassam Al-Baghdadi, who lives in Sweden, has reportedly been dowloaded ten million times, … with 30 percent going to Saudi Arabia. Bassam said that there were over 1,000 downloads on the very first day after he uploaded it, and the numbers only climbed as the translation was picked up and shared on the blogs, websites and forums of prominent Arab atheists. The book has prompted unprecedented controversy and debate in the Arab and Islamic worlds. Read more
I know what you’re thinking: both ventriloquism and religion rely on dummies. Well, no need to be quite so snarky. Writing in the Atlantic, Michael Graziano, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University, has something different in mind. He’s talking brain chemistry and consciousness — and their evolutionary progress. Ventriloquism … pits perception against cognition. Everyone in the audience knows cognitively that there’s no mind in the puppet’s wooden head, but we still can’t help falling for the illusion. Spirituality is another example. Read more
