On Friday, the Texas Board of Education did something you won’t believe they didn’t do a long time ago: Among the changes approved Friday was a mandate that teachers or professors be given priority for serving on the textbook review panels for subjects in their areas of expertise. They also enable the board to appoint outside experts to check objections raised by review panels and ensure they are based on fact, not ideology. “It won’t eliminate politics, but it will make it where it’s a more informed process,” said Thomas Ratliff, a Republican board member who pushed for the changes, which he said “force us to find qualified people, leave them alone, and let them do their jobs.” Wow! Giving teachers and other subject experts a say in which textbooks students should be using! That’s so… obviously the right thing to do. Despite voting in favor of the new rules, one of the conservative board members, David Bradley (below), is still upset, calling the change anti-Christian: Read more
Larry Craig. Ted Haggard. George Rekers. There’s quite a range of pastors and politicians who, after years of making money off of demonizing gay people, turn out to really like rent boys and male prostitutes or who can’t contain their wide stance in a men’s bathroom. Now there’s a very special newcomer to that august company. Meet Rev. Michael Abromovich, pastor of Set Free Christian Ministry in the fundamentalist-Christian hotbed of Colorado Springs. Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, shows us that the Bible predicted the Seattle Seahawks would win the Super Bowl!: We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next! Read more
It leads to headlines like this one on the front page of today’s Cincinnati Enquirer: Bible! Science! Who will win? But there are a few problems with that attention-getting text: Read more
Today, on Stupor Bowl Superb Owl Super Bowl Sunday, we learned via Hemant and the Christian Post that there are more than a dozen Bible verses that predict a Denver Broncos win — and that there are just as many that give the nod to the Seattle Seahawks. We’ve also observed, courtesy of the Public Religion Research Institute, that 50% of Americans think God will determine the winner of the Super Bowl, and that half of the people in that group pray to God to guide their team to victory. (Amazingly, the Almighty is able to give roughly half of them exactly what they asked for!) Noting the same survey, CJ Werleman at Alternet raises a good point. Believers have put their pro-prayer fingerprints all over the Super Bowl, CJ says. Without a doubt. It’s hardly surprising; remember the generally positive response Tim Tebow got in his college days when he put Bible verses on his eye black? Read more
Suppose you want to read the Bible… but you don’t really want to read the Bible. It’s long. It has a few too many “begats.” You don’t want to get bogged down by unnecessary details. William Pocock has a solution for that. He condensed the Bible down to the good stuff and wrote it plain English. It’s called Bobo’s Bible: In the excerpt below, we learn about the trouble with Cain and Abel: Read more
And again a metzitzah b’peh makes the news. As we’ve seen before, the procedure is carried out by unlicensed and unregulated mohels who, after cutting away the child’s foreskin and tearing the membrane with their fingernails, place their mouths on the boy’s penis to suck away the blood. Since 2000, metzitzah b’pehs have been responsible for at least thirteen cases of herpes transmission — including two resulting in the death of the child, and two more in which the boys suffered brain damage. (It’s not clear to me whether those numbers, released by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, are countrywide or New-York-only.) Now there is another infant victim. From the Forward: Read more
In anticipation of Tuesday’s debate between Creationist Ken Ham and Bill Nye the Science Guy, the Secular Coalition of Australia (SECOA) wants to send a message to Bill: They’re sorry. Really, really sorry. Read more
