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.
Last week, an Oklahoma resident named Scott accompanied his wife to the Catholic Mercy Memorial Hospital in Ardmore. As I reported on Thursday, the two of them made their way to one of the registration rooms to check in Scott’s spouse for some tests. After the receptionist asked them about their religious affiliation and was told “no preference,” the following happened, Scott says: [S]he went on to say in all her time doing this, she’s had two people claim [to be an] atheist. One was a typical punk teenager with black eye-liner, and just didn’t know any better. The other really surprised her though because she was a sweet lady and had two cute kids with her. “How can she say atheist in front of these kids?! You shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce if that’s how you feel. That’s just my opinion.“ Read more
Archeologists, long a thorn in the side of those who believe in the accuracy of the Bible, are again posing a challenge to the Scripture. This time, Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef and Dr. Lidar Sapir-Hen, of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures, carbon-dated the earliest known bones of domesticated camels. It turns out that, according to Science Daily, … camels were not domesticated in the Land of Israel until centuries after the Age of the Patriarchs (2000-1500 BCE). In addition to challenging the Bible’s historicity, this anachronism is direct proof that the text was compiled well after the events it describes. … In all the digs, [the archeologists] found that camel bones were unearthed almost exclusively in archaeological layers dating from the last third of the 10th century BCE or later — centuries after the patriarchs lived and decades after the Kingdom of David, according to the Bible. Read more
The team at the Washington Post had a clever idea when looking at the Gallup numbers that came out a week ago. … Gallup released a 50-state study of the most and least religious states in the country. We took the data … and overlaid it with the 2012 presidential election results. Here’s what we found. The 19 most religious states — ranked by Gallup as those who identify as “very religious” — all went for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in 2012. Read more
Does Hollywood hate Jesus? In a fiery essay about movie makers’ supposed bias against religious values, conservative author Fay Voshell hangs her case on a recent kerfuffle over a Christian song that was eliminated from Oscar consideration because one of the songwriters hadn’t played by the nominating rules. Somehow, that’s evidence of anti-Christian bigotry. Voshell’s piece is interesting reading, which is not to say that it’s convincing, except to some of her commenters who say things like It is time for a total boycott on every new Hollywood product. These degenerate atheist-marxists worship $$$ and themselves. and It’s no accident that a major fault line runs from Hollywood to San Francisco. At an appointed day the wrath will come. God is just. For her part, Voshell reminisces a little too fondly about the infamous Hays Code, a set of binding moral censorship guidelines that ruled American movie-making from 1930 until 1968. Read more
For the past few days, ever since I saw the photos of these Creationists and their questions (courtesy of Buzzfeed’s Matt Stopera), I’ve been thinking about what it means to be curious. As science journalist Philip Ball reminds us in his 2013 book Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything, people of faith have often had a fractured relationship with curiosity. Read more
