Remember the trailer for the forthcoming Christian movie God’s Not Dead? It featured a mean atheist professor (played by Kevin Sorbo) and a brave Christian student… As I said before, it was as if someone turned Snopes, the urban-legend debunking website, into a movie. Well, LoveInvasion.org just posted a 9-minute movie on YouTube that is somehow even more cliché than that. But without the post-production and raw celebrity power. It features a professor who walks into a (I presume philosophy) classroom and announces that God isn’t real and that Christianity is a big lie — something that has happened zero times in the history of ever. Several students walk out of class, angry and upset, leaving behind a small group of men to fend for the faith — the female students are never heard from again. Turns out a couple of the guys know *all* the apologetic arguments… Read more
Myrtle Grove Christian School in Wilmington, North Carolina says its “students thrive in a nurturing Christian environment,” but apparently that only applies to straight students with a mommy and a daddy. A new school policy, announced Wednesday via a letter sent to parents, reserves the right to deny admission to any student whose “home life” opposes or counters biblical principles — for example, any practice or support of homosexuality. Here’s the portion of the official statement from the school barring any child with gay “influences” from attending. First, the “moral reasoning” behind such a decision: Read more
If you’re a college student (or a high school senior about to enter college), American Atheists has some money for you! If you’ve done any activism this past year individually or with a group, if you’ve written letters-to-the-editor which were published, if you were an outspoken atheist in some way or another, you should think about applying. The winner receives a $2,000 scholarship. The runner-up receives $1,000. And there is also an LGBT-specific scholarship worth $1,000. As an added bonus, all applicants get a year-long free membership into AA and winners will receive free admission to AA’s 2014 national conference this April. Read more
Conservative pundit Pat Robertson this week had shocking words for a mother who wrote to him distressed because her 16-year-old son had just come out as gay. First reported by Right Wing Watch, on an episode of “The 700 Club,” Robertson suggested that the parent of a gay son should try to find out if her child was gay due to molestation. Robertson answers the woman’s question by essentially suggesting that her son is gay because he was sexually abused, one of the most common — and most harmful — myths perpetuated about LGBT youth by anti-gay religious extremists. Read more
Earlier this week, I posted about how the Kansas City Atheist Coalition had volunteered to deliver meals to the hungry on Thanksgiving through the Kansas City Rescue Mission… but were told by the Christian charity that their services wouldn’t be needed: As KCAC President Josh Hyde said: Kansas City Rescue Mission has decided to use the meals they deliver as a chance to proselytize to its recipients by inserting religious literature into the meals. They informed us that we “would not be a good fit” (emphasis theirs) for volunteering with them, and declined to respond to any further inquiries. Since the story broke, KCAC has received a crazy amount of media attention, and with that, came new opportunities. It turns out that other charities, Christian and non-Christian, are happy to have all the help they can get even if it involves working with heathens: Read more
East Point Academy is a charter elementary school in West Columbia, South Carolina where, for the third year in a row, teachers and administrators were encouraging students to participate in Operation Christmas Child — a program where students could donate toys to impoverished kids overseas. Sounds nice, right? Just one catch: Operation Christmas Child is run by the group Samaritan’s Purse and the boxes of toys they give to those impoverished children each come with a pamphlet designed to convert them to Christianity, pledge card and all: On Monday, the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center sent the school’s administrators a letter telling them to stop their faith-based outreach: Read more
Despite the fact that millions of people consider the Catholic Church to be its own crime syndicate, Pope Francis is now under a threat from actual gangsters — the kind with guns. So claims Italian prosecutor Nicola Gratteri via the Washington Post. The mafia crime cartel that may have its sights trained on the pointiff is known as the ‘Ndrangheta. Read more
Are Republicans being unfairly maligned as the anti-science party? The easy answer to that is, “don’t be ridiculous, and what right-wing industry lobby is funding that question?” But to Mischa Fisher, a former House GOP science policy staffer who described himself as “a politically centrist atheist,” the answer is yes, and the stereotype is harming science generally. In a piece in The Atlantic, Fisher argues that Democrats are, more or less, just as prone to anti-scientific thinking as Republicans, but on different subjects, and that Republicans aren’t nearly as backward on science acceptance as their more extreme clown-characters like Paul Broun and Michele Bachmann would make them seem to be. At the outset, let me just say I agree with where Fisher is going with his argument, but its presentation is flawed. First, the problems. Read more
Earlier this week, we discussed 27-year-old tattooed rebel Matt Walsh and his terrible, harmful views on sex. The gist of Walsh’s post was that if you have sex with someone before you get married, you’re pretty much the worst, your future spouse will hate you, and all you’ll have left to look forward to is a long, horrible life of empty, second-hand banging. Now, I know Walsh isn’t the only religious fella obsessed with virginity. In fact, it’s a pretty solid theme across most major religions. So imagine my lack of surprise when this came across my desk: 5 Reasons Shacking Up Before Marriage Is a Bad Idea Now, as a current shacker-upper myself, I was pretty excited to hear what promised to be five super-solid reasons I should move out of my lovely apartment in Chicago since it’s been tainted with the pre-marital-living-together-ness of my boyfriend and me. So, let’s start with #1 and work our way down, shall we? Read more
