Last month, an incredible video of a man hitting some knives right into the ping-pong paddles of his partner began going viral on YouTube: Now, Captain Disillusion, the true skeptic that he is, debunks the whole thing, showing us exactly how it was done: Read more
You may have heard that, earlier this week, India launched a spacecraft that will soon be orbiting Mars (for a fraction of the cost it took American scientists, no less). What you may not have heard is what the Indian Space Research Organization Chairman K Radhakrishnan did before the launch: he took miniature versions of the rocket and spacecraft to a local temple and asked the (idols of) deities for their blessings, saying later that “a little divine intervention” wouldn’t hurt. Cultural traditions aside, just imagine what it would look like if the head of NASA decided to go to church in the days before a rocket was set to launch so that he could ask Jesus for a little help. You know, if you think your rocket — your pinnacle-of-scientific-achievement-rocket! — need supernatural help, maybe it’s time to double-check your calculations instead of speaking to the spirits. Shrey Goyal is appalled by Radhakrishnan’s behavior: Read more
Knoxville pastor Andrew Hamblin, who handles poisonous snakes as part of his faith, got in trouble with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency the other day. TWRA agents raided his Tabernacle Church of God, and took the dozens of illegal snakes they found, including rattlesnakes and copperheads, to the Knoxville Zoo. The TWRA says some of them were in bad condition when they were confiscated, a charge that Hamblin denies. The pastor, reports the local Gannett news station, was cited with possession of Class 1 wildlife (wildlife inherently dangerous to humans). Hamblin is crestfallen over the loss of his beloved animals. Oh wait, my bad — he isn’t at all, actually. Read more
We’ve heard the stories of those poor children in Oregon who died after their parents, on account of their religious faith, refused to take them to doctors. The kids died from preventable causes because their health was put in God’s hands instead of the care of those who knew what they were doing. (And existed.) 15-month-old Ava Worthington. 16-year-old Neil Beagley. 8-month-old Alayna May Wyland. 9-hour-old David Hickman died that way. And now, Dan Tilkin, a reporter at KATU in Oregon, tells us he went one state over, to Idaho, and stumbled upon several more children who were killed because of their parents’ neglect and faith. Read more
The UK Telegraph reports that in a ruthless Vatican power play, Father Renato Salvatore fabricated unspecified criminal charges against two rivals so that he would be re-elected Superior General of the Camillians, also known as the Order of Ministers to the Sick. The Camillians have been around for some 440 years. Whether they’ve ever seen this level of venality before, I don’t profess to know. Read more
John Carlson loves him some Albert Camus. Carlson is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University; Camus (1913-1960) was the famously godless French novelist and essayist. On the Huffington Post, Carlson writes fondly about Camus, because the Frenchman … offers a powerful counter-example to the stridency and animus of the “new atheism” associated with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others. Indeed Camus makes us long for the days of the “old atheism” when religious people weren’t mocked for their so-called irrational beliefs; bullied by the charge that “religion poisons everything”; and told to step aside while secularism sweeps clean the religious debris from public life. Nothing new there. When, post-9/11, atheists no longer felt forced to use only their inside voice, people of faith — and the media — were quick, almost gleeful, to attach the adjective “strident” to the noun “atheist,” as if the two are conjoined twins. Does it get old? Not to Carlson. Hardly a picture of originality, he uses the term repeatedly. Read more
Last week, the Penn Secular Society put up an awesome display on the main part of campus. It was a “partial list” of all the gods people don’t believe in with a handwritten sign on the far right (it’s hard to see below) reading, “So what’s one more?” Within a couple of days, one of the pages had been ripped down and coffee had been thrown on the middle of the display: Read more
How do you promote your book when its ideas are flawed and easily refutable? Simple. You put out a press release, let Google Alerts do their magic, and sit back and relax until everyone wants to know more about how anyone could *seriously* believe what you’re saying. That’s a page from the playbook of Dr. Paul Vitz, the author of the (newly updated!) book Faith of the Fatherless. In it, he makes the argument that we became atheists because we were disappointed in our fathers. Read more
Malala Yousafzai’s recent book, I Am Malala, is causing a lot of commotion in her native Pakistan. In the latest example, Mirza Kashif, the president of the All Pakistan Private Schools Federation, said he’s decided to protect Pakistani children from the impertinent book — banning it to keep them from entering “a confused state of mind.” He’s afraid that Malala’s biographical account “will challenge the ideological foundations of our next generation.” Read more
Mark Russell excerpted bits from his book God Is Disappointed In You (illustrated by Shannon Wheeler) on Medium and, if the piece is any indication, you’ll enjoy this summary of the Bible: Read more
