I didn’t hear this when it first premiered in 2006, but Lauren Becker’s audio essay on Earth Day (which is today in case you missed it) is just fantastic: Read more
For several years, Ergun Caner (below), a one-time leader of Liberty University’s theological seminary, told everyone about his tragic background and story of redemption. He said he had grown up in Turkey in a Muslim family, with a polygamist father, and he was trained to do “that which was done on 9/11.” But he later became a Christian and that saved his life! In truth, he was born in Sweden and immigrated to Ohio when he was two. He was no terrorist-in-training. The crux of his life story was a fiction. Blogger Jason Smathers has been documenting Caner’s lies for years now… to the point where Caner was removed from his position at Liberty when they were investigating his background. Read more
According to a new survey by GfK Public Affairs for the Associated Press, we’re dumb. Really, really dumb. While most Americans understand that smoking causes cancer and that a mental illness affects the brain (real stumper, that one), only 53% are confident about childhood vaccines being safe and effective, 31% confidently accept evolution, and even fewer are confident about the age of the Earth and origin of the universe. There’s actually a striking contradiction on the list. While only 31% of adults accept human evolution, 65% of them accept microevolution (though not in name) in the sense that overusing antibiotics can lead to drug-resistant bacteria. But what is human evolution but a long series of microevolutions? Read more
Travis and Wenona Rossiter, an Oregon couple, are among a special type of shitty parents: those who let their kids die of a treatable disease, rather than take them to a doctor. The Rossiters belong to the Church of the First Born, a fundamentalist outfit that holds that prayer is the way to making sick people better. Does it work? Like hell it does. Their daughter Syble died of complications from diabetes a little over a year ago. She was 12. Prosecutors say the girl would likely be alive today if it wasn’t for the parents’ wishes to deliver her to the care of Jesus, rather than the care of a trained medical team. Now the Rossiters, accused of manslaughter, claim that it would be “prejudicial” for the jury to learn of the religious beliefs that killed their daughter. Read more
Last month, Louisiana state Rep. Thomas Carmody (below) proposed legislation to make the King James Bible the state book. It was a controversial proposal, even in committee hearings, but not for the obvious reasons. Read more
Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila (below) has only been in his position for a couple of years, but he already has a firm grasp of the biggest problem in his community: Those damn dirty atheists. Here’s what Aquila blames on atheists: Read more
The Boy Scouts of America have blocked a Seattle church from sponsoring a scouting troop after it refused to fire the openly gay Scout leader, proving once again that its discriminatory policies are more important to the organization than the actual people it serves. Last May, the Boy Scouts of America rescinded its ages-old policy barring openly gay scouts from the organization, but firmly upheld its ban on gay adult volunteers. While that decision made a world of difference for LGBT youth, it’s a bittersweet underachievement for the adults who first launched the campaign to remove the policy. Read more
The American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center announced yesterday that they had filed a lawsuit against the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District in Monmouth County, New Jersey. If successful, the lawsuit could put an end to saying the Pledge of Allegiance in the state’s public schools. Much like their lawsuit in Massachusetts, the plaintiffs are anonymous for the time being (presumably to avoid harassment from Christians) and the argument is all about discrimination. They’re not trying to take “Under God” out of the Pledge — instead, they’re arguing that reciting the Pledge itself goes against the state’s constitution and that ritual should stop immediately. Read more
You may recall that Bryan College, a Christian school in Dayton, Tennessee, was considering a change last month to its statement of faith that all faculty members have to sign. It would be revised to include a section regarding the origin of man. “We believe that all humanity is descended from Adam and Eve. They are historical persons created by God in a special formative act, and not from previously existing life forms.” In other words, you had to be a Creationist. No room for theistic evolution (much less how it actually happened). Read more
After Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Judaism, what is the largest religion in the U.K.? In the 2011 census, no fewer than 177,000 Brits ticked the box next to “Jedi Knight” — more than those who checked atheism, agnosticism, and humanism combined. (It’s possible that claiming to be a Jedi Knight is very much born from the desire to poke established faiths in the eye.) Now, one of the Jedis is protesting his treatment by Her Majesty’s prison authorities. Read more
