Let’s say that there’s this European politician who is openly agnostic, and who one day decides to distribute free stickers criticizing Christianity. The stickers contain a statement of opinion that is harsh, but a far cry from incitement. Christianity is a lie. Jesus is a crook. The Bible is poison. Anybody who wants one can send a message to a dedicated gmail account, christianitysticker@gmail.com. However, offended Christians petition Google to shut down the account — and Google does just that, ostensibly because it doesn’t want to help spreading “hate.” What are your thoughts? Go ahead, let it all out. I’ll wait. Read more
If you delve into skeptic media even a little bit, you probably already know who Kylie Sturgess is. For those who don’t, she’s a first-class communicator of science and skepticism, known best for her podcast and blog Token Skeptic, and her work writing at the Skeptical Inquirer website. Podcasting, though, doesn’t pay the bills like it ought to. So Kylie’s taken to the indie fundraising site Patreon to crowdsource the funding of her podcasting work. Read more
A cheesecake comes out of the oven, it cools, and a crack on the top forms in the vague shape of a cross. Is it just an accident? Did someone just cut the shape into the cake? Or, as reporter Daniel Clark seems to ask without a trace of irony, “is this Jesus Christ coming back and showing support for this family’s religious beliefs?” Read more
Suzanne Moore at The Guardian writes about the thought process that went into holding some kind of celebratory ceremony for the birth of her third child (congratulations, by the way!). In doing so, however, she found that her desire for some form of ritual to mark the event conflicted with her desire to be “a good atheist.” Here’s how she explains the problem: She worries that “New Atheism,” whatever you believe that to be, “fixates on ethics, ignoring aesthetics at its peril,” and that “ultra-orthodox atheism has come to resemble a rigid and patriarchal faith itself.” Read more
This is a sad and frankly strange story. On Monday, Robert W. Wilson, a multimillionaire hedge fund mogul and philanthropist, jumped to his death from his high-rise apartment in New York, months after suffering a severe stroke, at age 86. The reason this story is here is because Wilson was an avowed atheist, but one whose substantial philanthropy was directed not just at causes one might expect (the environment, cultural heritage, wildlife, etc.), but to Catholic schools. Wilson had expressed a… Read more
Apparently it’s not enough to have invented the World Wide Web, but Tim Berners-Lee also has to infect the airwaves of the United Kingdom with his godless propaganda. For some time now, nonbelievers have been clamoring for representation on BBC radio’s “Thought for the Day” segment, which is always presented from a religious viewpoint. But in a stint as guest-editor for BBC 4’s Today, which hosts the segment, Berners-Lee was able to at least get an “alternative thought” for Boxing Day an hour earlier in the show, but notably, still wasn’t able to co-opt the “Thought for the Day” segment itself on behalf of atheism. Read more
Atheist bloggers and antiestablishment protesters aren’t the only ones with blasphemy charges leveled against them. Sometimes the victims are the well-to-do. In February, for example, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Sherry Rehman, was charged with the crime of blasphemy for, get this, criticizing the blasphemy law on television in 2010. And today in Pakistan (again), we have the case of Eraj Sajjad. According to The News International, Sajjad is the daughter of “a famous bureaucrat,” and had refused to take part in an arranged marriage. The would-be groom didn’t take kindly to the rejection, and filed blasphemy charges for allegedly “giving derogatory remarks on a very sensitive religious issue.” Read more
Were you aware? Dancing to any music but God’s is an invitation to the devil, according to this minty-fresh YouTube video. Non-Christian dancers and performers become puppets and slaves to the devil through the rhythm of the devil’s music. … [They] get their inspiration for their dance movements from Satan. Satan uses your body through dance to get you to glorify him and to glorify sin instead of Jesus, and he will eventually take your soul to hell when you… Read more
The Star of Bethlehem, as told in the Bible and other myths, did some impressive things that stars don’t normally do, moving in different directions, hovering in one spot, oh, and heralding the birth of the messiah. But what, if anything, was really going on? Kimberly Winston of the Religion News Service recently interviewed Aaron Adair, the author of a new book on the subject, The Star of Bethlehem: A Skeptical View, and they run through some of the theories, ruling many of them out. Comets and supernovae, for example, don’t fit the picture. But one idea that sticks out to me, and also to Winston, is that the “star” may have been something a little more mechanical in nature Read more
John Hagee, he who says Hurricane Katrina was sent by God to warn us about the dangers of The Gay, he who thinks the Holocaust had some theological merit for nudging those stubborn Jews toward accepting Jesus, would like us all to leave. Hagee, in this video, begins with the straw man of the atheist who is horrified at being told “Merry Christmas,” gives the usual blather about the U.S. being founded as a Christian nation (it wasn’t), and then suggests that if we don’t like religious displays on government property, we can just leave the country. Read more
