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 topics we feature on Friendly Atheist are usually plucked from the headlines. I wouldn’t want it any other way, but it does make it dicey, sometimes, to write about something noteworthy that happened decades or centuries ago. For instance, I have a historically accurate account of a medieval nun who, in the throes of religious passion, believed that she felt Jesus’s foreskin on her tongue, and orgasmed as soon she swallowed said prepuce (which, in her dream, she did over and over again. I think the proper response to that is “I’ll have what she’s having”). [Click headline for more…] Read more
Six years after I bought my home, the coffeehouse across the street was transformed into a Hard Rock Café. The new management decided to promote the place by affixing a couple of trunk-sized, weather-proof speakers to the roof and playing a one-minute rock medley several times a day, at such eardrum-shattering volumes that the din could easily be heard three or four blocks away. A trip to City Hall resulted in the town manager telling me his hands were tied, as there were special rules permitting the loud music, based on the interests of the hundreds who are clearly drawn to such places. So I had a talk with the Hard Rock Café business manager, first pleading and then demanding that she stop or reduce the ruckus. She heard me out while studying her nails, and said a bit nonchalantly that she had every right to do what she did, and that her clientele obviously enjoyed the thrice-a-day sonic bursts. At my wit’s end, last week, I filed a lawsuit, because the joint illegally interferes with my peaceful enjoyment of my property. The Hard Rock Café management, in response, put out the following statement: So many in the community have enjoyed hearing the snippets of rock music for years for but minutes a day. The Hard Rock Café believes such sounds are reasonable and well within its rights. The music-loving community is saddened that a sole individual would continue personal, inappropriate attacks harassing visitors and staff. … All right, time to come clean. If this story sounds vaguely improbable, it’s because I invented it. Sort of. (Last year I took this photo of my actual view — note the absence of noisy rock temples!). But the tale is very close to real for some people. Just substitute church for rock joint. Ask yourself why virtually no home owner would stand for the situation I described, but why it’s okay for a house of worship, as opposed to a house of rock to produce an ungodly number of decibels some 25 times a week. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Let me share with you what the trouble with the poor is. The trouble with the poor is that they are messy. Oy. That’s the opening line from a blog post written by British priest Ray Blake. A few paragraphs in, he explains that …’the poor’ challenge our complacency. They interrupt our comfort, our prayer, our routine, bringing the mess of their lives into our lives. It would be easy — and it sure is tempting — to hang Father Blake with his own (admittedly inartful) words; and sure enough, various journalists in the U.K. did just that. For instance, The Daily Mail gleefully said that Blake launched “a scathing attack” on the very people he is honor-bound to love and help as a servant of Christ. The Argus claims that the priest “condemned” the poor and that he “raged” about the topic. And so on. To be honest, when I skimmed the headlines that the priest’s controversial piece generated, I thought it might be fun to join the melee and rip him on this blog. But a funny thing happened on the way to this trial-by-Internet. I read his article, and it seems to me that Blake got a raw deal. My reflex to pile on turned into my wanting to say a few words in the man’s defense. While I do, hold the pitchforks. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Two days ago, I wrote about Israel’s education authorities censoring science textbooks — specifically, removing information about female sexual organs and human reproduction. A friend then sent me a link to a mindbending 2012 interview with Deborah Feldman, who grew up in the Satmar sect among Brooklyn’s Hasidic Jews. She was forced into marriage at 17, but, encouraged by college friends, mustered the courage to leave that deeply misogynist culture some three years ago. Feldman wrote a riveting book about her experiences: Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. In this post, I’ll simply do some prodigious quoting from the interview — or you can read the complete exchange between Feldman and interviewer Sara Stewart for yourself, here. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Is a church allowed to put religious symbols on its own property? No problem, have at it. But what if it’s 11 stories tall — as in a 110-foot-high, 18-ton cross? So massive that the Federal Aviation Administration has to sign off on it? The planning commission of Brandon, Mississippi decided to oppose erecting such a cross in the town, for two reasons: the highest edifice in Brandon is just two stories tall, plus local zoning laws stipulate that “auxiliary structures,” such as the planned cross, may be no taller than 20 feet. Case closed? Not according to an outraged pastor Scott Thomas of Brandon’s First Baptist Church, who took his case to the media, including FOX News. [Click headline for more…] Read more
