If you work in America, you likely have Christmas Day off because it’s a federal holiday. While there are arguments to be made about how that’s an illegal establishment of religion, it also just makes sense from an employer’s perspective. If the majority of your employees would be taking the day off, anyway, why bother having anybody come in? In France, Dounia Bouzar, a recent appointee to the country’s National Observatory of Secularism, made some controversial remarks to the magazine Challenges when she suggested that the country would be better off replacing a couple of the Christian holidays with Jewish and Muslim ones: “At the moment, every French person celebrates Christmas, and I think our public holidays should include one Jewish festival and one Muslim festival,” she said. Rather than simply adding those dates on to the list of public holidays, however, the anthropologist insisted: “We must replace two Christian festivals with Yom Kippur and Eid.” [Click headline for more…] Read more
I’d like your opinion on this: Sports commentator Ralph Gurdy was recently fired from an NBC affiliate for saying — not on the air, but during a public function unrelated to his TV work — that gay people are born that way and that there’s nothing wrong with same-sex marriage. That’s pretty weird and outrageous, isn’t it? It didn’t actually happen (I made it up as a thought experiment; there is no Ralph Gurdy who’s a talking head for NBC), but this did: Sports commentator Craig James (pictured below) was fired from a regional Fox outfit because he was “not a good fit” and a “polarizing figure in the college sports community.” Fox also said that James, who had just one on-air performance before he was kicked out, had not been “properly vetted.” So far, so uninteresting, but the problem lies in a further statement made to the Dallas Morning News by an unidentified Fox spokesperson who referred to James’s unsuccessful Senate run, during which the candidate said that being gay is a choice and that gay people will have to answer to God. [Click headline for more…] Read more
We’ve heard stories of Jehovah’s Witness parents willing to let their children die rather than accept a life-saving blood transfusion. Thankfully, the law almost always sides against the parents. If they want to refuse the blood to save their own lives, so be it. But they have no right to kill their children because of their own religious beliefs. In Sydney, Australia, a 17-year-old Jehovah’s Witness cancer victim compared receiving a blood transfusion to “being raped.” He told doctors he would “rip the IV out of his arm” if they gave him the transfusion. He would rather die than betray his religious beliefs. Thankfully, the New South Wales Supreme Court told him he has to accept the transfusion. He’s a minor, so he doesn’t get to kill himself… yet. [Click headline for more…] Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses how the Creation Museum’s Ken Ham says atheists secretly believe in God: You can read more details about the story here. 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
This, too, is the face of religion. After the four-day Islamist siege of the Westgate Shopping Center in Nairobi, Kenya, soldiers and first responders came upon a scene seemingly straight out of Saw or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hostages were left hanging and had their eyes gouged, others were dismembered. Others had their throats slashed or were castrated and had fingers amputated, according to media reports quoting soldiers, medical personnel and investigators sorting through the rubble of the collapsed mall. A doctor and forensics expert who examined some of the victims angrily described the unimaginable savagery: [Click headline for more…] Read more
I’ve posted a couple of times already about how Pastor Mark Brewer of Crosspoint Wesleyan Church in Fredericton, New Brunswick kicked 20-year-old Colin Briggs out of the church because he was gay. Despite Briggs being a long-time volunteer, missionary, and camp counselor for the church, Brewer feared that other members of the congregation would not want to leave their children near Briggs if they ever found out about his sexual orientation… so instead of enlightening the congregation, he asked Briggs to stop volunteering with them. On Facebook, Christians and non-Christians alike blasted Brewer for his decision. Even conservative Christians could argue this was a violation of “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” This week, Brewer spoke to his congregation about his decision: [Click headline for more…] Read more
The University of North Georgia Skeptics Society held an illuminating event on campus this week, one that can and should be copied by other campus groups, especially with Halloween approaching. They called it Graveyard of the Gods. It featured the tombstones of a number of ancient gods we now consider mythological. It also raised an important question: What’s stopping Allah and Yahweh from joining the mix? [Click headline for more…] Read more
Ray Downs at The Atlantic tells the story of an Alabama city with a high murder rate and how local cops are fighting back with taxpayer money and Jesus: … Operation Good Shepherd [is] a publicly funded Christian outreach ministry started by the Montgomery Police Department that puts Christian pastors on crime scenes to counsel and pray with victims and witnesses. Police claim the program is a way to regain trust in the community, but there’s another motive, which they aren’t at all coy about: evangelism — they believe a stronger sense of Christianity will reduce crime. I’m sure while they’re at it, they’ll replace all neighborhood watch programs with giant pictures of Jesus… [Click headline for more…] Read more
