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.
A 700 Club viewer named Michele revealed that soon after she’d watched a horror film, she got into a traffic accident. And she wondered: “Did watching a creepy movie cause a curse, or the Lord’s protection to be lifted from me? Did I grieve the Holy Spirit?” Host Pat Robertson wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what had happened to Michele, he said. Read more
Greg Candelaria didn’t get on the Malaysian airplane that disappeared with all crew and passengers now feared lost. He was too tired from previous trips and decided to cancel his ticket. The Houston-based IBM worker calls the fact that he’s alive the “providence of God”: “The very grace of God and nothing more. It wasn’t a coincidence — it was by design.” Read more
Where do atheists get their morality? Possibly from a better place than lots of people of faith get theirs. I wonder what would happen if you ran this story, devoid of religious identifiers, by 1,000 random adults and asked them whether they surmised that the sledgehammer-wielding landlords were atheists or devout believers. Anyway: Hasidic slumlords Joel and Aaron Israel are accused of having terrorized tenants in Brooklyn in an effort to get them out of their rent-controlled apartments. CBS New… Read more
Spare the rod, spoil the child? That’s the credo that members of a church in Wisconsin live by. The courts, however, call it child abuse. A couple who spanked their young children on their bare bottoms with wooden dowels in keeping with the teachings of the church they belonged to were convicted Friday night of child abuse, the last of eight people connected to the church charged with abuse. Matthew Caminiti, 29, was convicted of four of the five counts… Read more
