On Friday, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a formal declaration of how Mormons should respond to the recent court decision to allow gay marriage in the state and the Supreme Court’s decision to halt those marriages temporarily until further legal action. The gist of it was that gay marriage is awful, awful, awful, and church leaders should not perform same-sex ceremonies, and church buildings shouldn’t be used for any activities related to gay weddings, and the church has to remain moral in the face of rampant immorality, and good Mormons should oppose gay marriage… but gay people deserve respect. I guess they don’t see the inherent contradiction between saying gay people deserve “respect” while simultaneously trying to deprive them of their civil rights. Read more
A funny thing happened in the comments section over the weekend. First, we had a pretty wonderful discussion about the atheist closet, and about the risks and rewards of coming out as a non-believer. I did feel a little uneasy about something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then Hemant posted an anti-GOP cartoon. Reading the comments below that post made my vague unease snap into focus. This is what had been bothering me: I am out as an atheist to all of my friends and relatives, and obviously also to the community that has formed around this blog — a group of mostly funny and insightful people of whom I’ve grown rather fond. But I suddenly realized that politically speaking, I’ve been tiptoeing around other people’s sensibilities in a way that’s begun to feel a little stifling. That’s because (someone fetch the smelling salt, and cue the choir of hisses!)… I’m a libertarian. Read more
There’s a church controversy brewing in Alexandria, Indiana. The leadership of the United Methodist Church there can’t seem to figure out how much they hate gay people. It’s one thing to ban them from church leadership — but what about non-pastoral members of the staff? It looks like the church leadership wants to block gay people — even those who are celibate — from joining any part of the staff. The church members disagree and they’re leaving in protest: David Steele said his family has stopped attending the church, which has been difficult. They aren’t alone either. About 80 percent of the congregation left because of the situation with [fired gay choral director Adam] Fraley. “They all embraced him,” Nancy Steele said. “They’re upset about the way he was treated.” Of course, the church members have the moral and logical upper hand here. It makes no sense to ban gay people because of a narrow interpretation of certain parts of the Bible when the church has no history of barring gluttonous people, divorced people, shellfish eaters, or those who mix their linens and wools. Read more
If any newspaper article began that way, it would make no sense at all, but that didn’t stop The Times (UK) from saying something just as silly: Almost a tenth of babies and toddlers in England and Wales are Muslim, a breakdown of census figures shows. The percentage of Muslims among the under-fives is almost twice as high as in the general population. In an indication of the extent to which birthrate is changing the UK’s religious demographic, fewer than one in 200 people over 85 is Muslim. Richard Dawkins, echoing what he wrote in The God Delusion, rightfully called them out on it in a letter-to-the-editor today: Read more
NonStampCollector explores the theory that the whole story of Jesus’ resurrection was really part of a giant cover-up: Read more
Dr. Carin Anne Bondar does her best Miley Cyrus impression while educating us on evolution: Read more
In an fascinating clip from one of his debates, Richard Carrier argues that if Jesus really had divine powers and wanted to help the world, he could’ve at least mentioned something about germs, something that people living during his time were intuitively aware of (even if they didn’t have the biological evidence to back it up): Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, answers the question: Is the Creation Museum a threat or a joke? 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
As Utah courts and legislators go back and forth on the subject of marriage equality, a new set of players has emerged: Christians who want a pat on the back for not taking to the streets in protest of marriage equality. Take Michael and Jenet Erickson. Last week, they wrote a column for Deseret News titled “Being For Traditional Marriage Does Not Mean Being Against Anyone.” Their thesis statement? Because Utahns didn’t start riots or pillage gay folks’ houses during the brief window when marriage equality was legal in their state, they are clearly not anti-gay. They’re just pro-“traditional” marriage. Here’s the totally twisted, borderline-offensive analogy the authors craft to make their point: Read more
Kevin Donnelly, director of Australia’s Education Standards Institute, is on a government team that’s currently reviewing the country’s school curriculum. Donnelly has expertly identified the problem with his country’s schools: not enough religion. Mr Donnelly says religion does not have enough of a presence in Australia’s “very secular curriculum”, and that it needs to be taught “more effectively”. “I’m not saying we should preach to everyone, but I would argue that the great religions of the world — whether it’s Islam, whether it’s Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism — they should be taught over the compulsory years of school,” he said. And if he’d left it at that, we might have been in agreement. The world’s major religions (Donnelly forgot Judaism) have had an indelible effect on world history; even today, it’s all but necessary to know about each religion’s concepts and characteristics to make sense of what’s happening around the globe. But Donnelly quickly gave the game away. Read more
