Around midnight late Thursday night, a small explosion went off near the Mingus Park Vietnam War Memorial cross in Coos Bay, Oregon: There were no injuries. The memorial itself is still standing, but with some damage. There are no suspects yet. There’s no established motive. We pretty much know nothing about this incident other than “it happened.” So, of course, atheists are already being blamed for it because they once challenged the constitutionality of it: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Earlier in the week, I posted about a wonderful website from programmer Daniel G. Taylor called BibViz. It showed you all the biblical contradictions in one easy-to-see visualization and allowed you to click on specific ones for more information. Daniel is improving the site daily and the latest iteration of it allows you to sort the contradictions by color, by the book in the Bible, and by the type of contradiction we’re talking about. Here’s what I found when I selected the Book of Matthew, filtered for contradictions about Jesus, and sorted those contradictions by color: [Click headline for more…] Read more
I just spent the past hour looking through the Facebook page of Leif Greening-Hamlin and my eyes have this weird liquid-y feeling now… This past March, two-year-old Leif was diagnosed with a rare kind of bone cancer, Ewing sarcoma. The chemotherapy that he went through made things much worse, leaving him with liver failure. The fact that he was born premature didn’t help matters… but Leif’s fighting through it and he’s making slow, steady, gradual progress. Just look at some of these pictures (in chronological order) and try not to fall in love with this kid: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Long-time readers of this site are aware of St-Matthew-in-the-City church in Auckland, New Zealand. They’re known for their support of equal rights for the LGBT community and putting up the best billboards ever. Like these: Reverend Glynn Cardy, the vicar of the church (at least through October) just spoke out in favor of the new gay marriage law with words we’re *so* not used to hearing in America: [Click headline for more…] Read more
In February of 2007, after spending time in prison for drug possession, Barry A. Hazle Jr. was finally released on parole. Parole came with a few strings attached, though. Hazle had to attend a 90-day drug treatment program which, in his case, involved the Twelve-Step program most commonly associated with Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. As we’ve discussed on this site before, several of those steps include references to God and submitting to a “higher power.” Hazle — an atheist — wanted no part of that, so he asked to be reassigned to a secular treatment program. Even as he began attending the Twelve-Step classes, he objected to them. Three days after his parole officer received the appeal, Hazle “was called out of a program class and arrested for violating parole… He was sent back to prison for four months.” It made absolutely no sense. That same year, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals specifically ruled “that a parolee [couldn’t] be ordered to attend [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings as a condition of staying out of prison.” It has taken a long time to resolve this issue, but there’s finally some justice for Hazle today and it comes from the same Court of Appeals: [Click headline for more…] Read more
John Figdor is the Humanist Chaplain of the Humanist Community at Stanford and he appeared on a HuffPost Live segment discussing angels. Angels. It would make sense if the panel consisted entirely of six-year-olds, but these were grown adult humans talking, John being the only voice of reason: Seriously, just listen to the sort of thing John was saying throughout the broadcast (11:06 mark): [Click headline for more…] Read more
The Subway sandwich chain is very clear on its website that it’s an equal opportunity employer. They say that they: [do] not tolerate discrimination of any kind on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, creed, religion, color or national origin within the SUBWAY® brand family. Kermit Ball operates about 20 Subways in the Charleston, West Virginia area and I guess no one told him about the anti-discrimination policy because he has made it very clear that Christians should apply to work for him because he needs some “honest” employees… [Click headline for more…] Read more
On September 4, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will hear a case that could change the daily ritual of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in the state’s public schools. Here’s the relevant backstory (with additional updates at the bottom): [Click headline for more…] Read more
If you’re a public school football coach who happens to be a Christian, there’s a very simple rule you have to obey: Don’t mix the two worlds. Paul Calley, the coach of the Bryant High School football team (in Arkansas), either doesn’t know that rule or he doesn’t care. We know that because he recently invited the team members to his church for a “kickoff” celebration to the season: [Click headline for more…] Read more
