Last week, jittery representatives of the student’s union at London’s South Bank University removed atheist posters featuring the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) — and initially lied about the reason, according to the British website politics.co.uk. The posters had been put up at a Freshers’ Fair (a new-student orientation event) by a secular student group, the South Bank Atheist Society. Union officials at the London South Bank University removed the posters from the society’s stall overnight and then barred representatives from printing off more, citing the visibility of Adam’s genitals as offensive. Right. Because we all know that Leonardo da Vinci, whose depiction of Adam (taken from his Sistine Chapel masterpiece) we’re talking about here, was an infamous pornographer who gave Adam a massive erection (topped only by the holy boner of Jesus). Oh, wait. Read more
Have you ever thought to yourself: Alabama is great and all, but what it really needs is more Jesus? I know. Me too. Thankfully, State Rep. Steve Hurst is here to save the day with his new proposed bill: House Bill 318 would put prayer right back into school. Specifically, Hurst wants teachers to lead their students in the same sort of prayers chaplains (or their guests) recite before sessions of Congress — and he wants schools to set aside up to 15 minutes a day for this purpose: Read more
If you’re a college student, recent graduate, or faculty advisor who’d like the opportunity to speak at a Secular Student Alliance conference this summer (there are two, one in Arizona and the other in Ohio), they’re looking for anyone who has something interesting to talk about for 20-TED-like-minutes. If your group does an amazing event or you’ve been doing some personal activism that we should know about, let us know! It’s a blast and a wonderful way to spread great ideas. (It’s also my favorite part of the conferences.) Read more
Last week, an Oklahoma resident named Scott accompanied his wife to the Catholic Mercy Memorial Hospital in Ardmore. As I reported on Thursday, the two of them made their way to one of the registration rooms to check in Scott’s spouse for some tests. After the receptionist asked them about their religious affiliation and was told “no preference,” the following happened, Scott says: [S]he went on to say in all her time doing this, she’s had two people claim [to be an] atheist. One was a typical punk teenager with black eye-liner, and just didn’t know any better. The other really surprised her though because she was a sweet lady and had two cute kids with her. “How can she say atheist in front of these kids?! You shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce if that’s how you feel. That’s just my opinion.“ Read more
A couple of weeks ago, the Pew Research Center came out an extensive and confusing-as-hell report on religious hostilities around the world and found that Christians, more than any other religious group, were the most persecuted: (Atheists are in there, too, lumped in with “others”) One conservative website even uses the headline: “Pew Study: Christians Are The World’s Most Oppressed Religious Group.” But there are two points worth noting. Read more
Given that I write about American atheism all the time, it’s always interesting to read how other publications from outside the country cover the same topic. So I’m grateful that The Telegraph (UK) shined a spotlight on atheists in one Virginia town and the difficulties of being non-religious in a religious environment no matter how the demographics are shifting: Read more
Archeologists, long a thorn in the side of those who believe in the accuracy of the Bible, are again posing a challenge to the Scripture. This time, Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef and Dr. Lidar Sapir-Hen, of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures, carbon-dated the earliest known bones of domesticated camels. It turns out that, according to Science Daily, … camels were not domesticated in the Land of Israel until centuries after the Age of the Patriarchs (2000-1500 BCE). In addition to challenging the Bible’s historicity, this anachronism is direct proof that the text was compiled well after the events it describes. … In all the digs, [the archeologists] found that camel bones were unearthed almost exclusively in archaeological layers dating from the last third of the 10th century BCE or later — centuries after the patriarchs lived and decades after the Kingdom of David, according to the Bible. Read more
If you’re a high school student in Ohio, you may be enrolled in a Post-Secondary Enrollment Options Program where you can take courses that’ll earn you college credit (similar to Advanced Placement classes). But there are rules about the kinds of classes that are offered under this program: Public and nonpublic high school students may enroll in nonsectarian, college-level courses and receive college credit and/or credit toward graduation from high school. So let’s say you’re a college willing to take on some high school students. The publicly-funded school districts will help reimburse the cost of tuition. Good deal! That brings us to the shenanigans taking place at Ohio Christian University, exposed by Carol Biliczky of the Akron Beacon Journal. Read more
The team at the Washington Post had a clever idea when looking at the Gallup numbers that came out a week ago. … Gallup released a 50-state study of the most and least religious states in the country. We took the data … and overlaid it with the 2012 presidential election results. Here’s what we found. The 19 most religious states — ranked by Gallup as those who identify as “very religious” — all went for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in 2012. Read more
