Considering that one of the common criticisms people have of churches in general is that they’re all about taking your money, you’d think pastors would at least try to be subtle in how they ask for it. You know, pass around collection plates while talking about something else. Or maybe leave boxes in the back of the church where people can discreetly drop money in as they leave. Sagebrush Community Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico never got that memo. They’re not just asking for money; they’re asking people who haven’t tithed in the past six months to start doing it again while offering a 90-day money-back guarantee if God doesn’t reward them as a result. It’s called the 90-Day Tithe Challenge: Here’s how this works. You give the church 10% of your income. After 90 days, if God hasn’t rewarded you and shown His “faithfulness,” you are eligible to get a complete refund. I guess no one at the church ever read Matthew 4:7: Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Read more
Brian Pallister is the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba — kind of like a Canadian version of John Boehner. He recently offered some holiday greetings to interviewer Natalie Pollock, and his comments took a strange turn when he began to talk about atheists: Read more
Alyssa Rosenberg of Think Progress explains why the “Naughty or Nice” list put out by the Christian group American Family Association and, by extension, the “Friend or Foe” list put out by Liberty Counsel make absolutely no sense, even from a Christian perspective. (Remember: These are the lists that reward you for using the word “Christmas” in your marketing campaigns and condemn you if you don’t.) Read more
Next Spring, the University of Missouri Skeptics, Atheists, Secular Humanists & Agnostics (SASHA) will be hosting a free conference at the Columbia campus called SashaCon 2014: I’m looking forward to speaking there — it’s always nice to be part of a student-run event! They could use some help with funding, though. If you support these kinds of events, consider chipping in on their Indiegogo page! They need to raise about $3,000 and they have limited time in which to do it. Read more
I’d never heard of this guy until yesterday, but Casimir Liszinski (a.k.a. Kazimierz Łyszczyński) was a Polish soldier executed for the crime of atheism in 1689. Zenon Kalafaticz created an English-language documentary about how atheism fares in Poland more than three centuries after Liszinski was killed. In it, he speaks with a number of Polish atheist leaders and describes why there’s so much pushback against the powerful Catholic Church. I watched excerpts of it yesterday and it looks fascinating (though I can’t shake how the narrator’s voice sounds like one you’d hear in an episode of “South Park”). In any case, if you have some time, check out 324 Years After…: Read more
Amazon runs a cool program called AmazonSmile where a small percentage of selected purchases will go to the non-profit group of your choice, something that really adds up when lots of supporters make purchases. Naturally, reader Steve looked up the Freedom From Religion Foundation but he was a little surprised by the category it was in… Read more
If you were to visit Pine River Elementary School in Leroy, Michigan, you would see this sign in front of the building: I have a couple of issues with that sign… do adults who work there also have a great day, or just the kids? And what exactly is the name of that book? It’s like they were trying to cram buzzwords on its spine. Idea! Think! Book! But those are minor issues. It’s a cute sign that I’m sure serves some purpose. It actually went up earlier this year when the other two elementary schools in the district shut down and the remaining school was renamed and given a bit of a makeover. This sign helped inaugurate the new building. But when LeRoy High School Class of 1943 graduate Carl Gustafson made the sign, the spine of the book had another phrase on it: “In God We Trust.” Read more
Hazelmary Bull was saddened and distressed when Britain’s highest court told her and her husband Peter on Wednesday that they had no right to refuse a double room to a gay couple. Peter and Hazelmary Bull had asked the Supreme Court to decide whether their decision not to let Martyn Hall and his civil partner Steven Preddy stay in a double room constituted sex discrimination under equality legislation. … They argued their decision was founded on a “religiously-informed judgment of conscience” and that earlier judgements against them were a breach of their human rights to freedom of religion. Read more
The other day, I posted about Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone’s visit to a local high school to discuss, among other things, his plan to put the words “In God We Trust” in every public school in the state. Saccone visited Avonworth High School to speak to students in a “Problems in Democracy” honors-level class. Reporter Trina Orlando’s coverage of the event for Pittsburgh’s CBS affiliate made it sound like everything went just fine: “I think [the bill] teaches students the history of our national motto and I also think that it reeducates people that there isn’t always a strict separation of church and state,” [student] Brady Collins said. … “I thought that they were very-well versed in the subject. They had great questions. Actually, they had better questions than some of the committee questions I received. So, they did their homework and I thought it was very exciting,” Rep. Saccone said. Students at Avonworth took an informal vote on the issue prior to today’s debate. About 60 percent of students supported the bill. Even though that report featured students who supported Saccone’s bill, and the commentary implied a general level of support, too, the comments on the news station’s website told a very different story. Students who were at the assembly, it appeared, were chiming in that a majority of them firmly disagreed with Saccone — and took him to task for trying to push God into the classroom — and that perspective was missing from the news report. Yesterday, I was able to get in touch with Max, one of the seniors who attended the event. (I was able to verify that he is, indeed, a student at the school.) Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses how I’m no longer outspoken about my vegetarianism: 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
