It’s good to be back 🙂 Huge thanks to Paul Fidalgo for taking care of this site so I could go off the grid for a few days. … Turns out there was news of a big wedding while I was away: Lauren Drain, a former member of Westboro Baptist Church, was married early last month, something we found out about after she posted pictures of the ceremony on Reddit. While her “God Hates Fags” church members weren’t there to support her (or, thankfully, protest), two of her “church sisters” who also escaped the cult were. Check out this picture and try not to smile: [Click headline for more…] Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses my five favorite books about atheism: If you’d like to check out those five books, just click the links below! Atheism for Dummies by Dale McGowan Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible by Steve Wells Letting Go of God by Julia Sweeney We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and… Read more
In an artless but still compelling summary of A House in the Sky, a new memoir by former hostage Amanda Lindhout, the piousness of her Muslim kidnappers is a recurring theme. [Click the headline to read more…] Read more
Serving as almost a direct contradiction to the video I posted yesterday on the Catholic explanation of Hell, today I came upon this 2006 interview with Bishop Shelby Spong, an Episcopalian who is extremely liberal theologically, saying that, in fact, Hell is made up. [Click the headline for more…] Read more
The Vatican has released the first encyclical letter written by Pope Francis. That’s big news for Catholics, who comprise the target audience for this sort of document, and who often put a great deal of stock in the pontiff’s opinions on how to live their faith. In atheist circles, the most likely reaction is a shrug, a raised eyebrow, and a big ‘so what?’ But with news about outreach to the ‘nones’ and dialogue with non-believers making headlines in the early days of Francis’ pontificate – and it is still early days, at least in relative terms – this document is instructive. It gives us a window into what the pope really thinks about the irreligious. [Click the headline for more…] Read more
The battle over prayer in schools and other public institutions is not exclusive to the United States. In Nashik, India, English teacher Sanjay Salve is in a struggle with his school to be allowed to refrain from prayers, where he has been denied traditional pay grade increases because of his “defiance” — visibly not taking part in prayer sessions, which began on the school playground. Reports the Hindu Times: As students began their prayers and pledge, I remained standing as… Read more
There’s little doubt that human beings seem to like the idea of messiahs, deus ex machinas that will save us in our darkest hours. Obviously, even we seculars find something appealing about it, or else we’d be rolling our eyes, or else outright rejecting, stories that are messiah-tastic, such as Harry Potter, Dune (Paul Atreides), and even Lord of the Rings (Frodo and Aragorn are both “foretold”). At The American Scholar, William Deresiewicz sees a pining for messiahs throughout more than our fiction, but in our very response to word events and technology. He cites our collective awe over the Web, and its liberating potential, as well as “politics,” in the sense of either elected leaders (Obama in ’08) or revolutions (the Arab Spring and Occupy) who will magically “change everything.” And he thinks he spots where this inclination has gotten us into serious, serious trouble: Climate change. [Click the headline for more…] Read more
Pop quiz. Was Mark Twain 1. an atheist, 2. an agnostic, or 3. a deist? Well, the author’s name is on Wikipedia’s list of agnostics. Also, on its list of deists. Hmm. [Click the headline for more…] Read more
Since February of last year, Dr. Robert Price has been hosting his solo podcast The Human Bible for CFI. It’s a show in which Bob brings his encyclopedic knowledge and his trademark humor to demystifying the many layers of myth and conjecture about the Bible. The bad news is that it’s coming to an end (at least as a CFI podcast, though Bob does his own thing as well). Funding and listenership were, of course, among the big culprits. And I admit, I had kind of lost track of it myself. You see I have to consume a great deal of skepto-atheist media in my work, usually very quickly, so even things that CFI produces, things I really love such as Point of Inquiry and the magazines Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer, can pile up. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Sam Harris has apparently grown weary of what he considers ill-informed attacks on his book The Moral Landscape and its central thesis, that science can be used to definitively determine whether something is “right” or “wrong” morally. So weary, in fact, he’s willing to shell out his own cash and endure a public humiliation if he’s taken down. [Click headline for more…] Read more
