We post a lot of stories on this site featuring religious leaders who get caught doing immoral, illegal things — and we often get pushback for that. We’re told they’re one-offs. Just anecdotes of bad eggs that prove nothing. I disagree completely. I think those stories show how God is not synonymous with good. Religious people are still fully capable of doing awful things. Gabe Kapler just realized that. He was a professional baseball player for twelve years, including a stint as an outfielder for the Boston Red Sox in 2004 when they won the World Series. In an essay for Fox Sports, Kapler — a secular Jew — writes about one of his former teammates, a guy he once had a lot of respect for: Read more
The belief that the Earth is at the center of the universe and that the sun circles our planet went out the window in the mid-1500s after Nicolaus Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. It became completely discredited when Johannes Kepler added in his two cents a century later. Copernicus, by the way, came 1,800 years after Aristarchus of Samos, who posited a similar theory: that the Earth circles the sun, not the other way around. In that regard, there’s nothing new under the, em, sun. That is, unless you’re Katheryne Thomas, the director of The Principle, a soon-to-be-released Christian documentary that promises to turn the current knowledge of our galaxy on its head by allegedly returning to the old saw that our sun circles the Earth. Read more
Over the weekend, Eric Pickles (below), the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in the UK, made a remarkable claim in London: “I’ve stopped an attempt by militant atheists to ban councils having prayers at the start of meetings if they wish,” said Pickles. “Heaven forbid. We’re a Christian nation. We have an established church. Get over it. And don’t impose your politically correct intolerance on others. Pickles rewrote the laws in 2012 to ban lawsuits against parish councils for their public prayers (though the National Secular Society begs to differ on his impact). So it’s intolerant when “militant atheists” (which means what, exactly?) attempt to keep a government meeting neutral, but imposing religious prayers at those meetings is somehow inclusive? Non-theistic groups in the region are already weighing in on the matter, holding very little back. Read more
Betty Bowers reminds us that, if the Bible wasn’t the Bible, conservative Christians would be trying to ban it from public libraries, what with all the sex and violence… Read more
New Zealander Toby Ricketts wants to know why churches in his country get a major tax break — when they don’t necessarily deserve it — and he’s trying to fund a film that will answer that question and more. It’s called Pennies From Heaven: Read more
On Tuesday night, a Catholic university in Texas is hosting a potentially controversial and tremendously important event: a symposium about the physical and mental harm religion can inflict upon children. Read more
There’s a great science museum in San Mateo, California called CuriOdyssey (get it?) that also puts on programs for local students on field trips. Very cool place. But one of their programs featuring live animals made the rounds online because of a disclaimer that appeared on a promotional poster: This program may discuss the topic of evolution. What the hell…?! It’s like a warning sign… But for whom? Did someone attend the program, hear the “E” word come up, and go, “Oh shit! I didn’t know this was that kind of museum!”? Read more
A Christian couple, Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar, have been ordered to pay with their lives after they allegedly sent the imam of a local mosque a text message that a court deemed an insult to the Prophet Muhammad. The exact content of the message is unclear. Pakistani media are mum about it, as quoting the offending text would be blasphemous all over again — an inevitable Kafkaesque twist in cases like these, which means that no one but the Islamic judges can gauge how serious the so-called offense was. Whatever the words used, Kausar and Emmanuel say they are are innocent, claiming that the text was sent from a cellphone that the couple had lost some weeks earlier. Read more
What’s the difference between running a church and running a religious business? The Internal Revenue Service is happy to pretend that there isn’t one, NPR’s John Burnett found in a two-part investigation: Televangelists have a choice when they deal with the IRS. Some, like Pat Robertson and Billy Graham, register as religious organizations. They’re exempt from most taxes but still must file disclosure reports showing how they make and spend their money. Daystar [one the largest religious TV networks in America] and dozens of others call themselves churches, which enjoy the greatest protection and privacy of all nonprofit organizations in America. Churches avoid not only taxes, but any requirement to disclose their finances. And, as NPR has learned, for the past five years churches have avoided virtually any scrutiny whatsoever from the federal government’s tax authority. Read more
South Carolina State Senator Mike Fair, whose district includes Bob Jones University, has already been in the news this year for trying to block the state from adopting new education standards regarding evolution because he wanted to “teach the controversy” and trying to block the adoption of the Wooly Mammoth as the state fossil. . Now, the man who can’t seem to get more conservative has hit a new low, voting to defund the required reading program at the University of South Carolina Upstate because he thinks it’s promoting the “gay agenda”: Read more
