Minnesota resident Aaron Miller has two daughters. As a concerned father, he wants to shield them from the burdens of learning about evolution. So Miller, a conservative, is running for Congress — not just for his own kids, but for the benefit of other people’s evolution-averse offspring too. Part of his plank: “There’s a war on our values by the government. We should decide what is taught in our schools, not Washington, D.C.” Read more
We learned a couple of weeks ago that Louisiana Republican State Rep. Thomas Carmody wants to turn a copy of the King James Bible into the official state book: Yesterday afternoon, the House Committee on Municipal, Parochial and Cultural Affairs voted 8-5 in favor of sending the bill to the full House — but many of the committee members had a problem with the legislation. About damn time, right? Surely someone there would be a voice of reason, explaining how the KJV, a Bible that not even all Christians use, shouldn’t be the official book for a diverse state! And that voice of reason was Rep. Stephen Ortego: “Let’s make this more inclusive of other Christian faiths, more than just the ones that use the King James version.” Read more
Pesticide was on the menu when Wasila Umaru, a young teenager, cooked a meal for her new husband and his friends. Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses how evangelical Christians are fighting a losing battle against civil rights for LGBT people: You can read more about this here. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next! And if you like what you’re seeing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon. Read more
The team at Right Wing Watch has a game going on where they just watch every speech given by Christian pseudohistorian David Barton just to see what new lies he’ll tell next. The most recent one is so far-fetched, it’s amazing that even his already-gullible audiences haven’t called him out on it yet. In a speech given at the Victory Christian Center in Austin, Texas last month, Barton explained how the Founding Fathers cited the Bible, specifically Luke 11:20, as the reason we have a written Constitution in our country. Read more
Dave Silverman, writing for himself (and not as the President of American Atheists), just posted an open letter to Fred Lawrence, President of Brandeis University, in response to their offering and rescinding an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Silverman is a graduate of the university. Read more
You may recall an incident from last year where self-described “militant atheist” James Maxie attended a church service with his girlfriend and ended up severely beating the pastor, Rev. Norman Hayes, after Hayes asked his girlfriend if she felt safe with him: A lot of you chipped in for Hayes’ recovery fund, which I thought was a very classy move by many atheists appalled by what Maxie did to Hayes. In case you’re curious, there’s an update to the story: Maxie has been sentenced to eight years in jail: Read more
For years now, the Poland branch of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has been working to have the country recognize Pastafarianism as an official religion. Even when a court rejected their arguments last year, they kept fighting. “Do not be afraid, as it will only be a matter of time before our community is registered as a religious association,” the statement continued, adding it will first appeal to the Polish supreme court. Well, guess what? It worked. Thanks to a ruling by Judge Wlodzimierz Kowalczyk, Poland will now have to recognize Pastafarianism as an official faith! The ruling (which you can read in Polish here) comes on a technicality… but let’s not let that ruin the celebration: Read more
In 2012, Philippines President Benigno Aquino III (below) signed a law to make government-funded sex education and contraception widely available to the nation’s poor. The law made so much sense and helped so many people… that the Catholic Church felt compelled to oppose it, saying at the time that the law was “an attack on the church’s core values — the sanctity of life — [and] that contraceptives promote promiscuity and destroy life.” (What’s that? Contraception prevents abortion rather than causes it? You and your silly logic…) On Tuesday, after more than a year of opposition from Church forces, the country’s Supreme Court upheld most of that law, putting the Church in unnecessary defense mode: Read more
