The War on Christmas (2014 edition) has begun! Years ago, the Norwood Public Schools decided to change the name of “Christmas Recess” to “Winter Recess” since, you know, not everyone believes in Jesus. Theresa McNulty is still pissed off about that: Read more
This could have been a prank. Or a hoax. Whatever it was, Belgium’s glowing Virgin Mary statue, which began setting Catholic passions ablaze in January, isn’t a miracle. Police had to control crowds in the village of Jalhay, near Liege who were eager to touch the figure. The statue reportedly began to glow in the kitchen of an elderly couple’s home. Over 500 people visited the house in one day, eager to pay homage to it. Then scientists took a look and found that the statue had been painted with luminescent paint. Read more
Edwin Kagin was one of the first atheist leaders I ever had a chance to meet in person. When I was running a Secular Student Alliance group in college, we were very excited that Edwin, the Kentucky State Director of American Atheists at the time, agreed to come to Chicago to debate a Catholic professor about the existence of God. The event drew several hundred audience members to our mostly-commuter school and gave our group a lot of energy, momentum, and additional members. That was well over a decade ago and Edwin has been a friend to me ever since, most recently giving me permission to include his essay “Thoughts for Atheists at Graduation” in my book The Young Atheist’s Survival Guide. On Friday, American Atheists confirmed that Edwin had died at the age of 73. Read more
Last fall, the ACLU of Kentucky sent letters to superintendents in the state warning them about how Gideons International, the Bibles-in-your-hotel-room people, were often given access to public elementary school children, “solely for the purpose of actively distributing copies of New Testament Bibles directly to students.” It didn’t stop Casey County School District Superintendent Marion Sowders from allowing the Gideons into the district’s three elementary schools earlier this year. If you were a non-Christian group, how would you respond? Rather than filing a complaint, the Tri-State Freethinkers decided they just wanted equal access. You let the Gideons give away material to children? Then we want to do the same. So with the help of the ACLU, they sent a letter to Sowders requesting that books about Humanism be left for students to pick up. It worked. Read more
Someone asked Philosophy professor Dr. Peter Boghossian, author of A Manual for Creating Atheists, what his goal was in promoting atheism. His response was fantastic (beginning at the 2:18 mark): Read more
I don’t know what the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology was thinking starting a petition to get Wikipedia to treat their pseudoscience more favorably. … people who are interested in the benefits of Energy Medicine, Energy Psychology, and specific approaches such as the Emotional Freedom Techniques, Thought Field Therapy and the Tapas Acupressure Technique, turn to [Wikipedia’s] pages, trust what they read, and do not pursue getting help from these approaches which research has, in fact, proven to be of great benefit to many. They urged petitioners not to give any money to Wikipedia unless these changes were made. However, their efforts were slammed by none other than Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who wrote up a blistering rebuttal: Read more
There was a time when students who finished Basic Cadet Training at the U.S. Air Force Academy would recite this Honor Oath: “We will not lie, steal or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does. Furthermore, I resolve to do my duty and to live honorably, so help me God.” “So help me God”? That clause finally became optional last October thanks to Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The Air Force Academy even issued a statement explaining why it was a common sense change: Read more
Only one day after a judge told the Carroll County (Maryland) Board of Commissioners that they couldn’t pray to Jesus during board meetings, one of the commissioners has already defied the ruling: Carroll County Commissioner Robin Bartlett Frazier opened up Thursday morning’s Carroll County Board of Commissioners budget meeting with a prayer containing references to Jesus Christ… … Frazier, who seemed near tears, began the meeting by expressing her displeasure with the judge’s ruling. Frazier, R-District 1, said she was willing to go to jail to fight the preliminary injunction ruling. “If we cease to believe that our rights come from God, we cease to be America,” Frazier said. “We’ve been told to be careful. But we’re going to be careful all the way to Communism if we don’t start standing up and saying ‘no.'” She then proceeded to quote a prayer that she said was by George Washington, which included references to Jesus Christ, Lord, our Father, merciful father and the Holy Spirit. Got that, everyone? Somehow, an order demanding that prayers, if used, remain non-sectarian — a perfectly reasonable accommodation for anyone to make — turned into an order telling Frazier what to think and was the first step in a march to Communism. I thought Frazier’s biggest problem was that she was defying a court order. Now I realize she has far deeper issues she needs to address… Read more
Greg Gianforte (below) is a wealthy Christian whose family foundation has donated a lot of money to “Christian causes in education, poverty and evangelism” including the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum — a Creation museum in Montana. By itself, that’s not a big deal. He can waste his money however he’d like. But it gets worse. He and his wife have worked closely with both the conservative Heritage Foundation and an affiliate of Focus on the Family. His wife even testified against an ordinance that would ban discrimination against LGBT people. But back to the Creation museum thing for a second. We’re talking about someone who believes the world is a few thousand years old, an idea that makes no sense to anyone trained in science. So who was the genius who invited the Gianfortes to be the commencement speakers at an engineering school that graduates many of the top geologists in the world? That would be Don Blakketter, chancellor of Montana Tech. Read more
