The 4th annual Imagine No Religion conference will take place this May in Kamloops, British Columbia and I’m thrilled to say I’ll be speaking there alongside some pretty awesome people. If you’re in the area or able to come there May 16-18, you’ll want to get your tickets now! You can catch the talks from last year right here. Read more
Bob Seidensticker, one of my fellow bloggers at Patheos, has written a really neat alternative version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with an atheist twist. His novella features a televangelist (Nathan) who gets visited in the night by ghosts that take him through his past, present and future to show him the problems with his message and the consequences that await him if he keeps pushing it. In the excerpt below, Nathan and Bill (the “Ghost of Christmas Present”) look in on an old couple watching Nathan’s show on TV: Read more
A month ago, Sam Harris posted on his website an audio excerpt from one of his debates. It’s a popular excerpt, where he talks about the flimsy morality of God. Harris gave his readers permission to turn that excerpt into a video and Devon Tracey came through with this very nice visual representation of a powerful speech: (Thanks to Brian for the link!) Read more
Paul Crouch, the 79-year-old founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, died yesterday morning from what appear to be heart problems. While Crouch will be remembered in religious circles for starting the world’s largest Christian-owned cable station, let’s not forget how wealthy he made himself on the backs of gullible viewers who were asked to send his station (and, thereby, him) money. It was the prosperity gospel at work: Give us money and God will reward you… even though the Crouches always seemed to be the ones getting all the rewards. Read more
Dr. Narendra Dabholkar was assassinated in mid-August, presumably because his battle against superstition and irrationality upset a few too many religious extremists. While an arrest had been made a week after he was killed, it appears that we are still no closer to achieving any sort of justice: Read more
Creationist Ken Ham is really upset at atheists who are going to “extreme lengths” to… um… read the Bible. It turns out we’re reading it too critically for his tastes: A recent article from the Religion News Service reports, “Atheists use a popular Bible app to evangelize about unbelief.” The article contains interviews with a number of young atheists who have chosen to use YouVersion, one of the most popular apps around, as a way of trying to shake the faith of Christians. … Sadly, atheists like Lauren haven’t approached Scripture with the desire to have these problems resolved by believers who are equipped to answer such claims. No, instead they have come with a bias against God and His Word, and they desire to damage the faith that others have in God. These skeptics are intentionally searching for supposed problems in Scripture — so they can spread more disbelief. Serious question: Isn’t that what everyone should be doing? If there are problems with Scripture, shouldn’t Christians be at the front of the line to point them out and try to rectify them? Then he quotes me without mentioning my name: Read more
It’s a public secret that the (Noah’s) Ark Encounter, a planned 800-acre theme park in Kentucky that is a twin to the Creation Museum, is having financial difficulties. According to this article on Kentucky.com, the Biblical tourist attraction is two years and millions of dollars behind schedule. The money pinch may soon lessen thanks to a generous $62,000,000 bond issue being offered by Williamstown, Kentucky, population 3,600. The city, which has already granted the project a 75 percent break in property taxes over 30 years, won’t have to repay the bonds, according to the bond-offering documents. That’s good, experts say, because the bonds are not rated, which makes them speculative, or “junk” bonds. … The taxable bonds are backed by future revenues from the project, which organizers believe will attract more than 1 million visitors in the first year. An investment professional, Gene Gard, said of the bond issue: “You could look at it almost as a loan to a family member and not be as concerned about being paid back.” Read more
Not being a connoisseur of comics, I’d always assumed that most comic book characters were religiously neutral. After all, religion can be divisive — so if you’re a creator of comic books, why alienate a big chunk of your prospective audience with your character’s God beliefs? But that was before I stumbled across Comic Book Religion, a website that claims to have sussed out the theological leanings of everyone from Batman (lapsed Episcopalian/Catholic) to Bart Simpson (Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism). Read more
Earlier this year, physicist Lawrence Krauss was scheduled to debate Islam lecturer Hamza Andreas Tzortzis on the question of whether atheism or Islam made more sense. Just as the debate was about to begin, though, Krauss decided he wanted no part of it. He saw that women were being forced to sit in the back while men (and couples) were given seats up front: When Krauss saw people being moved from their seats, he said he would not speak at an event that was segregated and walked out to cheers and boos from the audience. An organiser pursued him and said segregation would be abandoned. … Dana Sondergaard who attended the event, wrote on her Facebook page: “After having been told the event would NOT be gender segregated, we arrived and were told that women were to sit in the back of the auditorium, while men and couples could file into the front. “After watching three people be kicked out of the auditorium for not following this seating plan, Dr Krauss bravely defended his beliefs of gender equality and informed event staff that he would not participate unless they removed the segregated seating. “Needless to say, the staff got their shit together pretty quickly and the event (thankfully) continued.” In this particular case, the Islamic Education and Research Academy (a sponsor of the event) denied the enforced segregation but was banned from participating in future events at the college. Now, Universities UK, an advocacy group for universities in the United Kingdom, has published a guide for how to deal with controversial speakers. Read more
Here’s an advertising tactics atheists might want to use with their own billboards. In Bnei Brak, an Israeli city with a super-conservative religious population, a lot of men don’t like to see images of women dressed “immodestly.” That means their elbows and knees and hair must be covered at all times. So advertising company Twisted came up with a clever way to raise awareness about the need to stop violence against women. They put up this poster, knowing it would get vandalized by the ultra-orthodox men: Less than 24 hours after it went up, the face of the woman was ripped off… revealing a hidden message: Read more
