When a man is declared clinically dead and his body subsequently spends six weeks in a freezer, a good guess would be that he’s no longer alive. But followers of Ashutosh Maharaj insist that their beloved guru is just in deep meditation (and possibly pining for the fjords). Read more
How would you feel if you got an official letter that held you, an ordinary homeowner, responsible for the repairs of a local church? Even if you didn’t belong to the congregation and never set foot inside the building? That, amazingly, happens frequently in England and Wales. When Elaine Hession opened the letter she almost passed out, and her partner Jonathan Hill turned “as white as a ghost”. Last month the couple received a notice from the Land Registry informing them their local church had registered its right to make them contribute to the cost of repairs. Under chancel repair liability, homeowners living within the parishes of churches built before 1536 can be held liable for costs. Read more
Earlier this week, the Georgia state House passed a bill on a 138-37 vote that would install a Ten Commandments monument on or around the state Capitol grounds… much like they did in Oklahoma: Now, the Senate has followed suit with a 40-10 vote, leaving only Republican Governor Nathan Deal in the way of yet another Christian shrine on government property. Read more
This is a guest post written by Nikki Moungo. Nikki is a self-employed, work-at-home mother to three inspiring children. … As a bereaved mother, my heart goes out to Ann Marie Devaney and what she is experiencing since the death of her son. A word exists to describe the loss of a spouse: Widow. There is no word to describe the loss of a child, because no words can begin to convey the sheer gravity of what we parents experience. It’s an all-consuming loss, and that’s an understatement. Every fiber of your being is stretched beyond imagination. You think of all the ways you could build a time machine. Denial takes center stage. “It’s not over until I say it’s over! I simply refuse!” repeats like a mantra in your head. One month after my son turned twenty-one, I received “The Call.” I don’t remember the flight. I don’t remember packing my suitcase. All I remember is trying to make it to the city he was in as quickly as possible. When it came time to remove his life support, in spite of my grief, I knew that having the chance to be with him in his final moments was not a “luxury” all parents in my position were afforded. I was able to lay down on his hospital bed with him. I took my grown, young, adult son in my arms, just as I did when he was a baby. I laid my head on his chest and listened to his healthy heart continue to beat for nearly fifteen minutes after life support was removed. Each beat brought with it a ray of hope… but then his heartbeats slowed, until the monitor flat-lined with it’s macabre long beep. Read more
Pensacola Christian College, one of the most conservative Christian campuses in the country, has a problem. (In addition to all of their other problems, I mean.) Like other fundamentalist institutions, they’re brushing off reports of sexual assault on their campus basically saying those things didn’t happen, have never happened, and never would happen. In this case, the story begins at Fred Clark’s site with a guest post by Samantha Field, a former Pensacola Christian College student who suffered through her own assaults and now tells the stories of two of her peers: Read more
A Colorado man who was rescued from his submerged car by first responders now claims, via his lawyer, that it was something else that saved him: grace, presumably of the divine kind. And he’s getting ready to sue the people who pulled him to safety — because he says they took too long to show up. A Broomfield man who was rescued from his submerged car during the September floods has filed papers indicating he might sue his rescuers and first responders. Read more
The Onion News Network explains that the leading cause of death in the U.S. is… “God Needing Another Angel.” And that’s not the only reason our loved ones are taken away from us: Read more
The prophet Mohammed famously married a six- or seven-year-old, Aisha, and consummated the marriage when the girl was nine or ten. Even Muslim theocracies can’t get away with that kind of child rape anymore, so they’ve made concessions to modernity and raised the marriageable age of girls. In Pakistan, it’s officially 16 — but many of the nation’s top clerics now say that’s an un-Islamic innovation that ought to be reversed. They want no marriageable age set by law. None. Read more
Libby Anne offered a very interesting response to the guest post by Kristine Kruszelnicki by explaining how Kruszelnicki’s secular arguments against abortion really aren’t all that different from the religious arguments against abortion that Libby Anne grew up with: Read more
Blogger Avicenna at A Million Gods offers a point-by-point rebuttal to the guest post from pro-life Humanist Kristine Kruszelnicki that I think is well worth reading: Read more
