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.
The strange saga of the Scottish public school that allowed American homosexuality-denouncing evangelists to “help out,” and to give children as young as five years books like How Do You Know God Is Real? and Exposing the Myth of Evolution, has just entered a new phase: Two head teachers at a Scottish primary school who allowed members of a US creationist Christian religious sect into classrooms have been removed from their posts, it emerged last night. Headteacher Alexandra MacKenzie and her deputy Elizabeth Mockus — who job-share at Kirktonholme Primary School in East Kilbride — are to be “redeployed” to backroom duties while South Lanarkshire Council carries out an investigation. … Education chiefs want to determine why the Church of Christ sect had been allowed into the school to work as classroom assistants for the last eight years. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Here’s another small data point in the discussion about whether religion is good for you: Scientists have discovered that 86 per cent of water samples from holy sources contain faecal matter. Austrian researchers also found that church fonts contain high levels of bacteria and that none of the holy springs they studied could be considered safe for drinking from. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Welcome to “Jeopardy!: Special Edition.” What’s special about it? Instead of one clue, you’re getting three! Let’s begin. I’ll take Stunning Sexism for $600, Terry! You got it. Ready? (1) If your daughter goes here, she will attract the wrong types of men, (2) she will succumb to an inherently sinful environment, and (3) she will regret it. What is a crack den? Oh, too bad. I’m sorry. The correct answer is, “What is college?” =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The most recent religiously-inspired advice to keep women from going to college comes courtesy of Raylan Alleman (below, with his helper wife Missy), the co-founder of the Catholic website Fix the Family. And I haven’t done him justice, because Ray actually has eight reasons, not just three, to deny a higher education to the ladies. You can read all of them here. The gist of it is, in part, that even if the women excel in college, they’ll attract irresponsible, lazy, mooching men who’ll want to marry them. (For some reason, women are unable to resist the type, I guess.) [Click headline for more…] Read more
