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.
No “missionary position” jokes, please. From the Orlando Sentinel: A former missionary for the Sanford-based New Tribes Mission was sentenced to 58 years in federal prison Tuesday for sexually abusing girls who were part of an indigenous tribe in the Amazon, and filming the acts. Authorities said Warren Scott Kennell befriended and abused girls over a several-year period, while he was establishing a church with the Katookeena tribe [more commonly spelled Katukina]. Homeland Security Investigations agents began investigating the 45-year-old after receiving a tip that he posted pictures on a website used by people who trade child pornography. After his arrest, law enforcement officers found several thumb drives and an external hard drive that contained almost a thousand child-pornography images. Read more
Teresa of Ávila, a Catholic mystic and Carmelite nun, has been the unofficial patron saint of Spain for some 400 years. She rose to fame in the 16th century when she first began to inflict “various tortures and mortifications of the flesh” upon herself, and then graduated to the imagined penetration by a heavenly seraph, like so: I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. These days, I bet she would be a writer for kink.com — or maybe an adviser to the Spanish government. The Guardian explains: Read more
Fellow Patheos blogger Ben Corey heaves a deep sigh over the American Atheists’ digital billboard that will be on display outside Metlife stadium during the 2014 Superbowl. Corey considers the billboard a bit of a dick move. He doesn’t like it when people of faith are mocked, and he’s tired of all Christians getting tarred with American Atheists’ broad brush. Cards on the table: I unreservedly mock religion at least a few times a week (usually while dining on a Christian baby) and would consider the world a darker place without the wit of Monty Python, Bill Maher, and George Carlin. Now let’s look at what Corey is saying and think about it from a media strategy point of view. Read more
Small world: I found out only weeks ago that a British colleague with whom I’d exchanged friendly messages over the years is the anonymous artist behind Jesus and Mo, the acidly witty comic strip featuring two self-obsessed prophets. Every month, the Freethinker publishes a new installment, but the two roomies’ divine black-and-white adventures can also be found in six Jesus and Mo books — and on their own website, which is updated twice a week. Since its launch, a little over eight years ago, the atheism-influenced comic has attracted some prominent admirers. Richard Dawkins praises Jesus (I’m tempted to stop here for effect) and Mo, saying the gruesome twosome and their creator provide some of the … shrewdest, wittiest, most critically penetrating running commentary on the absurdities of contemporary religion. Fans also include novelist Salman Rushdie, columnist Nick Cohen, biology professor Jerry Coyne, and, truth be told, me. This month, over in England, Jesus and Mo became something a flashpoint in a national debate over free speech, censorship, and religious accommodation. You can read up on the tumult here. I asked Jesus and Mo’s creator if he would answer your questions and mine. “Gladly,” he said. Allow me to start us off. You first published Jesus and Mo in the late fall of 2005, just a month or two after the Islam cartoon controversy involving the Jyllands-Posten in Denmark began to rage. Any connection? “It was right after the start of the Danish toons controversy — the shit didn’t really hit the fan until January or February of the next year, after months of determined campaigning by Danish imams. I’d been harboring thoughts of a religious satire comic featuring Jesus and Mo for ages, and I think the early stages of that particular controversy acted as the catalyst that kicked me into action. It was [Islam’s] ludicrous depiction taboo that provided the strip’s first joke.” Read more
Don’t delay teaching your children about divinely-inspired morality until they’re older, like six weeks. If you didn’t read your baby Holy Book verses while he was still in utero, what kind of parent are you? You’ve got some serious catching up to do. Don’t keep God waiting! A clip from Al-Manar TV in Lebanon, translated and captioned by MEMRI, shows two parents doing just that: Read more
