Why won’t comedian Bill Maher be running for Congress anytime soon? Because he thinks his atheism will get in the way. In an interview with Hollywood site TheWrap, Maher chatted with host Sharon Waxman about the lack of representation of atheists in politics — and how it doesn’t quite match up with the rising number of atheists in the country. He told her that while the percentage of atheists in America is approaching 15%, “we have zero representation.” As a person who’s pretty public about his atheism, he should know: [Click headline for more…] Read more
The Secular Coalition for America (in conjunction with the Secular Coalition for New Jersey) just released its scorecards for the upcoming gubernatorial and senatorial elections in New Jersey and, in both races, the grades couldn’t be further apart. In the October 16 special election to Frank Lautenberg’s senate seat, Democrat Cory Booker is running against Republican Steve Lonegan. The SCA gave Booker an “A” on issues of church/state separation while Lonegan received an “F”: [Click headline for more…] Read more
I guess writing for La Repubblica has become the trendy thing to do among the papal set lately. Just a couple weeks after Pope Francis’ published response to the paper’s open letter made headlines, his predecessor (Benedict, now called Pope Emeritus) has written a letter for the same publication, in which he takes on critiques from Italian mathematician and atheist Piergiorgio Odifreddi — including, naturally, criticism of the Catholic Church’s handling of clerics’ sexual abuse of minors. On that subject, Benedict defended the Church, insisting that the percentage of abuser priests is comparable to the percentage of abusers in any other profession. (Though you really would think a divinely-led institution could manage a little better than the rest, no?) Perhaps in reaction to speculation that he retired in a bid to evade responsibility for abuse cover-ups, a meme that ran rampant around the time of his resignation, Benedict made a point of explaining that he had nothing to do with concealing sexual abuse in the priestly ranks: [Click headline for more…] Read more
This past Tuesday, members of the Unified School District No. 480 school board (in the misnamed city of Liberal, Kansas) lost their minds. They voted unanimously to “allow student-led prayers at all activities in the district”: “I think that’s one of the greatest things we’ve ever done,” said board member Tammy Sutherland-Abbott, who seconded board member Nick Hatcher’s motion. … “I would like to see us bring prayer back to the games,” he told his fellow board members, after expressing admiration for the LHS Redskins football team. “I have struggled with that — not having prayer at our activities — because it’s ‘not the thing to do,’ but if the board thought it was important enough that they would support it, and defend it if the time came, I’d like to ask that we do that at our next meeting.” “Why not do it now?” asked Sutherland-Abbott. “We do live in a democratic society, and I personally feel like our community would support that decision, regardless of the rest of the world,” Hatcher said. Just so we’re clear, students are already allowed to pray on their own. But what the school board is saying with this vote is that students can use the public address system to pray before games and all other events. [Click headline for more…] Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, answers a reader’s question: How can you be an atheist if your brother survived a brain injury?: 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
With his new video depicting a story from the Bible, DarkMatters2525 will undoubtedly anger a lot of people… mostly because they won’t be able to handle the fact that they once believed this. Remember: Some people still say this all literally happened. (Warning: NSFW language and animation) Read more
All this talk of a progressive new Pope may have been jumping the gun. Writing for the National Catholic Reporter, Brian Roewe reported this week that Pope Francis has excommunicated an Australian priest from the Church for his liberal values and activism. Fr. Greg Reynolds publicly supports LGBT rights, marriage equality and women’s ordination, three big no-nos in Catholic tradition. (We reported on Reynolds’ dismissal from the church the other day, but at the time, Pope Francis’ role wasn’t exactly clear.) Here’s the Vatican’s “explanation” behind its decision, according to NCR: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Just a day after a whole host of other atheist groups submitted their joint amicus brief for Town of Greece v. Galloway, the Supreme Court case that could decide the fate of government invocation prayers, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has submitted theirs as well. Just as the other brief did, this one focuses almost entirely on the Supreme Court case of Marsh v. Chambers (1983), the last time the Court decided a case involving government prayer. Unlike the other brief, though, this one’s just flat-out blunt about how awful Marsh was and urges the Court to overturn it — or, barring that, to affirm the Appeals Court’s ruling against the blatantly sectarian prayers in the town of Greece, New York. It also highlights the changing demographics in our society in order to show that, even if we were once a Christian-majority country, we are no longer heading in that direction: [Click headline for more…] Read more
This was the entrance to the Christian ministry Faith and Action — right behind the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.: This was the same entrance after some vandalism over the weekend: … But Rev. Rob Schenck actually did something admirable in the wake of this damage. Check out what he said yesterday: [Click headline for more…] Read more
