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.
On Saturday, Mark Lewis, a suspect in a bizarre case involving stalking, a possible murder conspiracy, and arson, was released on bail of half a million dollars. On Sunday, he was back in the pulpit, giving moral pointers to his unfazed congregants. Lewis is the pastor of the Fellowship Baptist Church in Vacaville, California. Police believe that he asked three homeless people that his church had taken under its wing to firebomb the home of his ex-girlfriend, Sarah Nottingham. Early last Thursday morning, the three, sans Lewis, allegedly went to the residence, in which six people (including three children) were asleep, and threw a molotov cocktail through a bedroom window. The occupants were able to extinguish the fire before it got out of control. Read more
A funny thing happened in the comments section over the weekend. First, we had a pretty wonderful discussion about the atheist closet, and about the risks and rewards of coming out as a non-believer. I did feel a little uneasy about something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then Hemant posted an anti-GOP cartoon. Reading the comments below that post made my vague unease snap into focus. This is what had been bothering me: I am out as an atheist to all of my friends and relatives, and obviously also to the community that has formed around this blog — a group of mostly funny and insightful people of whom I’ve grown rather fond. But I suddenly realized that politically speaking, I’ve been tiptoeing around other people’s sensibilities in a way that’s begun to feel a little stifling. That’s because (someone fetch the smelling salt, and cue the choir of hisses!)… I’m a libertarian. Read more
Kevin Donnelly, director of Australia’s Education Standards Institute, is on a government team that’s currently reviewing the country’s school curriculum. Donnelly has expertly identified the problem with his country’s schools: not enough religion. Mr Donnelly says religion does not have enough of a presence in Australia’s “very secular curriculum”, and that it needs to be taught “more effectively”. “I’m not saying we should preach to everyone, but I would argue that the great religions of the world — whether it’s Islam, whether it’s Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism — they should be taught over the compulsory years of school,” he said. And if he’d left it at that, we might have been in agreement. The world’s major religions (Donnelly forgot Judaism) have had an indelible effect on world history; even today, it’s all but necessary to know about each religion’s concepts and characteristics to make sense of what’s happening around the globe. But Donnelly quickly gave the game away. Read more
Is there anything the faithful won’t do if you first make them believe it’s a way to honor God? It looks like South African pastor Lesego Daniel is on a mission to find out. In a wildly unorthodox demonstration of how humans can be controlled by the Holy Spirit and eat just about anything to feed their bodies, a South African pastor made members of his church eat grass. … According to a report in African Spotlight, Pastor Lesego Daniel of Rabboni Centre Ministries had his followers eating grass after explaining in a sermon that Jesus had many other disciples other than the 12 listed in the traditional Bible who were doing new things which were considered unconventional at the time as well. Clearly, grass is not the only thing these folks are swallowing. Read more
