New York Times columnist Frank Bruni did a facepalm when he saw Senator Mark Pryor’s preening I-love-the-Bible commercial, and was inspired to write in opposition: “So help me God.” “Under God.” “In God We Trust.” Perhaps we’re meant to register these ubiquitous phrases as unspecific inspirations, vague recognitions of an undefined higher power, general appeals to generous living. But they’re rooted in a given religious tradition and are arguably the gateways to the Arkansas ridiculousness and to the overwrought accusations of a “war on Christmas” that herald the holiday season as surely as Frosty the Snowman and Black Friday do. Read more
According to newly-released census results, New Zealand is becoming even more non-religious that anyone thought: Overall, the Census figures continue a trend for people turning away from religion, with all major churches shedding followers. The number of people who said they have no religion increased 26 per cent to 1.6 million. Want more precise numbers? The number of people who categorized themselves under “No Religion” was 1,635,348. Given that the total number of people surveyed was 4,242,048, that puts the Kiwi Nones at a staggering 39% of the population. (It’s 42% if you only count those who gave answers to the “religion” question.) Read more
The veneration of the folk saint Santa Muerte, while nominally a Catholic phenomenon, is causing more and more problems for the Catholic Church in Mexico. Santa Muerta is believed to have some eight million followers in Mexico alone, from average poor folks to drug-trafficking criminals to, oddly enough, LGBT people. Reports BBC News: “[She] has also been adopted by the drug traffickers who ask her for help to avoid arrest and to make money,” [Francisco] Bautista [an exorcist] says. “In exchange they offer human sacrifices. And this has increased the violence in Mexico.” … Mexico’s exorcists say there is unprecedented demand for their services. Some are even not taking new cases, as they are having to exorcise demons almost every day. The way Bautista sees it, the cult around Santa Muerte is only one of two reasons why [cough] demonic possessions are spreading in Mexico. Can you guess the other one? It’s a doozy. Read more
This year, the holiday displays inside Florida’s Capitol building are going to be just a little more inclusive than usual: After hearing about a group installing a manger display in the State Capitol as well as another group intending to add the Three Wise Men, Deerfield Beach resident Chaz Stevens, a self-proclaimed “militant atheist,” felt that his Festivus pole rightfully deserved a place there as well. So he asked the Governor’s office if he could pretty please erect his ode to Festivus, … an 8-foot-tall tower made of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans. He received the approval [yesterday] and will be making the trip up to Tallahassee to install the Festivus pole himself this Wednesday. Read more
Jonny Scaramanga got his hands on Packets of Accelerated Christian Education (PACEs) — curriculums used by many Christian educators in the United States and the United Kingdom. Normally, when you see exam questions from Christian schools, the criticism is that the answers are all about the Bible (and also just plain wrong). But Scaramanga’s images of multiple choice questions from a broad range of subjects shows that they’re not just bad questions; the answer choices all point to the obvious answer. Imagine an entire test filled with $100 questions from “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” It’s just like that. Let’s start with the questions for the 10-year-olds: Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses Chris Mooney’s article in which he explains why “it’s easier for humans to believe in God than evolution”: 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
Last week, I posted an interview with Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves about his group’s desire to place a monument of their own near the Ten Commandments monument outside the Oklahoma Capitol building. They were executing a tactic atheists have been using for a while now: When a Christian display is allowed on government property, you might as well take advantage of the floodgates being open and demand a display of your own. Along the way, if legislators decide to ban religious and non-religious displays altogether, that’s just too damn bad… and if they ban your display, it’s an easy victory in court. Oklahoma legislators are aware that the Satanists want to erect their own monument and they have no clue how to respond, so they’re just putting their collective foot in their mouth and crying “Christian privilege!” left and right: Read more
My mind is still reeling after I just watched the footage of a recent feminist protest outside a cathedral in San Juan, Argentina. In the NSFW video, shot on November 24, the female demonstrators are seen attacking a cordon of non-violent Catholic volunteers who said they were trying to protect the building from vandalism (apparently, the attendees of the annual women’s rights conference that spawned the demonstration had been on graffiti rampages before). How can people do this and still look at themselves in the mirror the next morning? The protesters, many of whom were topless, sprayed paint on the men, wrote on their faces with markers, and spat on them, in addition to other indignities. The men stood with linked arms and prayed during the assault. Inside the church the Archbishop Alfonso Delgado also led 700 people in prayer. If I were merely reading about this, I admit I’d be inclined to bring some skepticism to these allegations. Did exaggerations or miscommunications color the reporting? But the video — as far as I can tell — doesn’t lie. Even if some creative editing occurred, it’s a stunning record of nastiness and destruction. And it seems to go only one way. Again, the footage is not safe for work. Read more
Dusty Smith takes a look at atheism in the news over the past twelve months in his year-end review — and the best part is he could have made this video so many hours longer: Read more
A year after it released its first report on anti-atheist discrimination around the world, the International Humanist and Ethical Union has published “Freedom of Thought 2013: A Global Report on the Rights, Legal Status, and Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists and the Non-religious”: Read more
