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.
It was one of the strangest religion stories of 2013. A year ago, Arnoud van Doorn, who came to modest prominence as a Dutch politician for the anti-immigration/anti-Islam PVV party, had a change of heart. After a period of reflection, he finally saw the light, the truth, and the way — and it was Islam. In other words, the Dutchman became a convert to the very religion he justifiably made a career out of criticizing and lampooning. Formerly a close associate of PVV head honcho Geert Wilders, in whose 16-minute anti-Islamic movie Fitna (below) he participated as a producer or a distributor (depending upon whom you believe), van Doorn disavowed Wilders, the PVV, and Fitna. Read more
Pareidolia is alive and well: A cafe in Norco, Calif., says that the Mickey Mouse pancake it was trying to make on Good Friday ended up looking like Jesus Christ, something they’re taking as a sign from above. “The night before, she [his wife Karen] decides to pray about something and the next day on Good Friday we get this pancake,” said Gary Henderickson, the co-owner of Cowgirl Café with his wife Karen, said. “To us it looks like a picture of Jesus looking down, like he’s looking down over us.” Read more
Travis and Wenona Rossiter, an Oregon couple, are among a special type of shitty parents: those who let their kids die of a treatable disease, rather than take them to a doctor. The Rossiters belong to the Church of the First Born, a fundamentalist outfit that holds that prayer is the way to making sick people better. Does it work? Like hell it does. Their daughter Syble died of complications from diabetes a little over a year ago. She was 12. Prosecutors say the girl would likely be alive today if it wasn’t for the parents’ wishes to deliver her to the care of Jesus, rather than the care of a trained medical team. Now the Rossiters, accused of manslaughter, claim that it would be “prejudicial” for the jury to learn of the religious beliefs that killed their daughter. Read more
