Sarah Pulliam Bailey of Religion News Service interviewed Malcolm Gladwell, author of All Those Popular Books People Buy at the Airport including his latest hit David and Goliath, about his faith. It turns out there’s a religious side to Gladwell we’ve never heard much about: Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, answers the question: How religious can atheists be?: 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
After Senator John Kerry became Secretary of State, Rep. Ed Markey ran for and won his Senate seat. That left an opening in the House, which will soon be filled in a special election this December. The first stop to that seat is the primary, which will take place next Tuesday. The Secular Coalition for Massachusetts and Secular Coalition for America have released a scorecard grading the candidates for the 5th Congressional District. The overall grades aren’t all that newsworthy… one awful Republican candidate, a handful of good Democratic candidates, a smattering of candidates on both sides for whom we don’t have enough information about to see a grade. But then we get one incredible response from William Brownsberger, a Democratic State Senator: Read more
For some reason, people keep plopping a microphone down in front of Rep. Michele Bachmann and she obliges them by just blathering on about whatever insane crap enters her brain. Most recently, she went on a show called Understanding the Times and explained how, obviously, President Obama is giving bombs to terrorists and, oh by the way, end times are upon us and Jesus is on his way. You really just have to read it. And let me take a moment to thank the fine folks over at Right Wing Watch for transcribing this crap because I just couldn’t have done it. Read more
Former Congressman and right-wing blowhard Allen West was in Washington, D.C. today and he saw something that disturbed him: One of the bus ads from the Center for Inquiry’s new ad campaign: West wrote on Facebook: Read more
Steve Vincent, a self-described agnostic, supports the separation of church and state, and he was rightfully disturbed by the fact that the Rancho Cordova City Council (in California) opened its meetings with an invocation prayer. Since it’s a non-sectarian prayer, a lawsuit may be out of the question, but Vincent decided to jump into the fray by getting ordained through the Universal Life Church and signing up on Facebook to deliver an invocation: “Fortunately, I found the city to be very open and courteous to my request, although they did inquire what church I was with, and they joked a bit when I said they can put me down on the agenda as ‘Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster,’” he said. Vincent spent his time talking about how it didn’t make much sense to have an invocation in the first place. He didn’t represent the faith of other people and they didn’t represent him: Read more
Philippe Geluck is a Belgian cartoonist best known for his comic strip “Le Chat.” His latest collection, La Bible selon Le Chat, comes in two volumes, but it may be the promotional commercial that gets the most attention… that is, if Bill Donohue of the Catholic League ever sees it. Read more
About a month ago, Sale Creek Middle/High School in Tennessee held a memorial service, as many schools did, for the victims of 9/11. Nothing wrong with that at all. The problem is that a local pastor, Alan Stewart, was invited to speak to the students during the event. His speech, as you would expect, was littered with God: When tragedy struck, our nation was humbled to its knees. Through the brokenness, tears would flow and people began to pray. Prayer occurred in churches, in classrooms, in the marketplace, on the street corner, and in government offices. But, it was interesting to note, there was not a single protest over praying in all of America! In times past, God had always protected America in this war torn world, and our nation called upon God to do it again. As Dwight Eisenhower signed the law adding the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, he said, “In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.” Our leaders were reminded that our first line of defense was not found in alliances, not in weapons of war, but in God almighty Himself. Naturally, the Freedom From Religion Foundation caught wind of this and wrote a letter to an attorney for the district: Read more
