The Onion informs us of the history of Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church: And that’s only the beginning… Read more
On Sunday, like millions of Americans, Tennessee resident Stephanie Faye Hamman drove to church. The reason you’re reading about it is that she deliberately kept on driving when she got there — crashing right through the double doors. Ms. Hamman could have walked; the church is across from the apartment she shares with her husband, Steven. But something — God, she said later — told her on Sunday evening to grab a knife, get in her Toyota Celica, drive through the church entrance, lay down by the altar, call her husband, and wait for him to arrive. And then: Mr. Hamman stated he found his wife lying in front of the altar, and as he checked on her, she stated, ‘The devil is in me’, and stabbed him on the right side of his chest with a large kitchen knife, [police chief Mark] Johnson said. “Mr. Hamman stated he pulled the knife out of his chest and fled the scene. He went back to the apartment where he waited on police and EMS assistance.” Read more
For 15 years, high school biology teacher Larry Booher gave his Biology 2 students an extra credit assignment. All they had to do was read a 500-page book that Booher had compiled from a variety of sources… all of which pointed to Creationism as the way we came to be. It was awful science to begin with, but the fact that a public school teacher was advocating it made it completely illegal. In all that time, no one complained about the book. Why not? Maybe because John S. Battle High School was in Bristol, Virginia and pretty much everyone you knew was a Christian. But that shouldn’t have mattered. In 2005, administrators in the district received an “anonymous tip” about what Booher was doing. Ultimately, they forced him to stop distributing his book. And that was it. A slap on the wrist. He continued teaching for several years before finally retiring. “He told the students, ‘You may read this. You don’t have to. It has some Bible references in it,'” Washington County School Superintendent Alan Lee said Thursday. “This teacher felt like he wasn’t doing anything wrong.” … The superintendent declined to say what punishment, if any, Booher would face, calling it a personnel matter. But he said the 48-year-old Booher was “one of the finest science teachers I’ve ever been around” and would return to the classroom in the fall after he agreed to stop distributing the creationism materials. “He must teach evolution exclusively — observable scientific fact, not beliefs or religion,” Lee said. “I fully believe he will comply. He just stepped over the line.” Keep in mind: this all happened just months before the verdict in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a case about teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. Creationism was a major topic of discussion and the Associated Press story about Booher (along with similar reports) made the rounds throughout the media. So why do I bring all this up now? Because I’ve been in contact with the “anonymous” tipster who outed Booher in 2005 — and I now possess a scanned copy of the 500-page Creationism booklet. Read more
On Friday night’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher mocked those who literally believe in Noah’s Ark: Yesterday, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer took to his radio show to explain why Maher is still alive: God is keeping him that way so that Maher has a chance to repent: Read more
Yesterday’s big news in support of cosmic inflation, gravitational waves, and the Big Bang theory sounds like a death knell for Young Earth Creationism, right? Is Ken Ham going to finally shut down the Creation Museum?! Of course not. In fact, Dr. Danny R. Faulkner of Answers in Genesis has already posted a rebuttal to the Nobel-Prize-worthy discovery… and it’s precisely what you’d expect: Complete denial. Read more
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: A high school student wants to form an atheist club. The administration tells him no. Often, this ends in one of two ways: The student backs down, not wanting to get in any trouble, or the student informs a group like the Secular Student Alliance and it begins a long drawn-out battle (see: Pisgah High School). But at Central High School in Aberdeen, South Dakota, there was a happy ending. Adam, a student at the school, was told by Principal Jason Uttermark a few weeks ago that he couldn’t form an atheist club because the district had a policy against allowing any sort of religious club. After Adam informed the SSA about this, they contacted the principal: Read more
The British Humanist Association has just released a series of cute animations (with narration by Stephen Fry) answering some basic questions about Humanism. Read more
What a great day for science. In 1980, physicist Alan Guth proposed inflationary theory to modify the current Big Bang theory. Whereas conventional wisdom was that the universe started as a fireball, Guth theorized that it, instead, “inflated extremely rapidly from a tiny piece of space and became exponentially larger in a fraction of a second. ” Later that decade, Russian physicist Andrei Linde updated Guth’s hypothesis to what became known as “new inflation,” and then again revised it to “eternal chaotic inflation.” Well, today, it appears that Linde was proven correct — new evidence from the South Pole appears to support his theory: Read more
I know Christian publishers are always looking for new ways to make the Bible relevant and hip and totally awesome for children… but Wacky Bible Gross Outs from Zonderkidz makes me think they’ve jumped the shark: On the surface, the whole “Let’s talk about gross stuff in the Bible” doesn’t sound too bad… but just look at how they’re marketing this thing: Read more
There’s an interesting discussion about Christian forgiveness going on at the Patheos blog Formerly Fundie, in the wake of pastor Mark Driscoll’s purported apology for being an angry, manipulative dick. After a bit of thread drift occurred, this comment from a Donna L caught my eye: If I believe that Jesus is the only true pathway to God (and I do), then causing someone to reject Jesus is real hurt. Jesus said it would be better for such a person to have a millstone put around their neck and be cast into the sea. Read more
