What an odd flare-up! In Chickasha, Oklahoma, Tiffany Wait and her husband brought their 7-month-old baby to the Bible Baptist Church’s toy shop for Christmas presents that the church gives away for families in need. But things got weird and nasty. According to the Chickasha News, the church volunteers insisted that Wait hand her baby over, but I can’t make out why. To receive the gift? To be blessed or something? Just to cuddle? I don’t know. Wait said her baby doesn’t like strangers and she’d prefer to be with him. She said the volunteer said it has to be done this way, or the family wouldn’t be able to participate. “I stood there, fighting back tears and asked, ‘You would turn a baby away on Christmas,'” said Wait. The volunteers held their ground, according to Wait and one woman tried to forcibly take her child. Read more
Chris Arnade has a PhD in physics, used to work on Wall Street, and now works with the homeless. He is an atheist, but just about none of the people in trouble that he works with are, calling them, “some of the strongest believers I have met, steeped in a combination of Bible, superstition, and folklore.” In a piece he wrote for The Guardian, he seems to be saying that this is more or less how it should be. And why? Because it is this religion and superstition that they find hope. In doing so, he unfortunately invents a heartless atheist straw man… Read more
Saudi blogger and religious dissident Raif Badawi has been cruelly punished and toyed with by the Saudi legal system for about a year now, and things have taken a darker turn. According to Badawi’s wife, now living in Lebanon, the high court will try Badawi on the charge of apostasy. If convicted, Badawi could be executed. Read more
No fabric design comes as close to being an outright Rohrschach test as the run-together colors of a tie-dye shirt. Nonetheless, A Florida man said he was shocked to discover an image of the Virgin Mary over the heart area of a homemade tie-dye T-shirt. Read more
A few days ago, many of us marked the anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan. Since becoming part of the larger community of nonbelievers, I continue to be taken aback by how strongly so many of us continue to feel about that loss. I was more or less alone among my circle of friends at the time who even knew who he was, let alone grieved. Well, his life obviously meant a great deal to filmmaker Penny Lane as… Read more
There is no shortage of exasperation about the hypercommercialism of Christmas. Secular or devout Christian, it’s not news that the Dickensian ideal of enjoying time with one’s family with some drinking and music and feating upon a big goose is gone, replaced with an overwhelming and mind-numbing consumeristic orgy of overspending, overeating, and over-stressing. Or maybe that’s just me. But one aspect of the holiday season that gets less attention is just how Hanukkah managed to get lumped in with the whole mess. Read more
By the time you read this, I’ll be off in some far-away land enjoying my (slightly-delayed) honeymoon 🙂 The excellent Paul Fidalgo will be taking over while I’m gone. Paul is the Communications Director for the Center for Inquiry, a blogger at Near-Earth Object, the host of The Obcast, and someone who just plain cracks me up. I’ll be back in a week (minus a few posts thrown in here and there), hopefully relaxed and caught up on a stack of books and tanned. (More tanned?) Be good to Paul while I’m away! Read more
