In 2009, Cormac Flynn, Paul Dunbar and Gráinne O’Sullivan began a website called CountMeOut.ie which gave step-by-step directions for how to formally leave the Catholic Church: They published a sample “declaration of defection” (PDF) that you could download. You just had to get it signed, witnessed, and sent to the Church where you got baptized, and that was it! You could finally wash your hands free of Catholicism. Obviously, if you were already a former-Catholic (like the three guys starting the site), this sounded like just a mere formality. But it made a strong statement, and more than 12,000 people downloaded the form. More importantly, it removed your name from the Church’s roster, a list the Church frequently touted as it got involved in government-run things like education and health care. You would think the Church would support such a declaration of defection — why keep people who are no longer Catholic on your rolls? Wouldn’t you want an accurate count of how many people were truly in your Church? Wouldn’t it be deceptive to inflate those numbers with people who really wanted nothing to do with you? Well, it’s not like the Church is known for taking the ethical high road… [Click headline for more…] Read more
I have some advice for Christians (if they want it): When someone says that “kindness” is important, don’t argue against them. You won’t win. You won’t look good. And you’ll just give people like me blog fodder. This all stems from writer George Saunders’ viral commencement address in which he said the following: What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded… sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly. Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth? Those who were kindest to you, I bet. It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but c’mon, it’s a beautiful sentiment. And hard to disagree with, right? Of course. Unless you’re Christian. Jen Pollock Michel writes at Christianity Today that Christians would be misguided if they followed Saunders’ advice: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Get ready to cringe: Rule #1: If you look awkwardly into the camera when you want to make a point, that doesn’t make you more believable. [Click headline for more…] Read more
This is a guest post by Chantelle Moghadam. [Hemant’s Note: For the sake of disclosure, I wrote a blurb for the back of the book. This review, however, was written independently] … PZ Myers writes the first half of The Happy Atheist (Pantheon, 2013) with all the bound-up angst against religion that most atheists hold and, as an atheist myself, I completely understand where that frustration comes from. I can’t help but wonder, though, what a religious person might think of atheists if they read this book. The most convincing arguments against religion are not always the ones telling religious people how ridiculous they are, but ones that make valid criticisms of religion itself. Even someone who is on the fence about religion may be offended within the first few pages and unable to finish the rest of it. The Kirkus Review held nothing back when it said of the book: “Unlikely to change a single mind or cause even the slightest shift in perspective.” [Click headline for more…] Read more
SkeptiSketch’s video is fairly simple, but it’s very effective. It takes a soundbyte from Sam Harris about the nature of God and gives it some visual flair: Read more
The Creation Museum recently added zip line courses to its property and an insect exhibit inside the building. Both of those things, on the surface, seem to have little to do with Creationism. So… what’s up with that? The Associated Press’ Dylan Lovan writes about how it’s all about increasing attendance: Museum co-founder Ken Ham said he knew when it opened to big crowds in 2007 that new features would need to be added from time to time. Total attendance since the opening is approaching 1.9 million, he said. … Ham said the museum is welcoming of people seeking fun without a creationism lesson. “That’s what we wanted to see, because it will bring in a broader range of people in here and provide something for the community as well — they don’t have to go to the Creation Museum, they can just come for the zip lines,” Ham said. I appreciate that Lovan added my own perspective to his piece: [Click headline for more…] Read more
A couple of days ago, I posted a story about 19-year-old Katie Lentz, who was hit by a drunk driver, got dangerously pinned down in her own vehicle, and came ever-so-close to death. The interesting thing was that the firefighters’ equipment wasn’t working properly — they could do some stuff but not fully extract Katie from her car — and as they waited for backup, a mysterious Catholic priest seemed to come out of nowhere, even with the perimeter blocked off (!!!), prayed with Katie, used some anointed oil, and left before anyone could get his name. Suddenly, the backup equipment arrived and was able to get Katie out of harm’s way and into a hospital. Crazy, right?! So who was that priest? Firefighters and friends assumed he was an angel: “I think that this time I’ve actually witnessed a guardian angel at work,” Jeremiah See of the New London Fire Department told ABC News. … “Whether it was just a priest as an angel, or an actual angel coming down,” Lentz’s friend Travis Wiseman said, “he was an angel to everyone and to Katie.” [Click headline for more…] Read more
I went to church yesterday. Don’t worry, I’m still your friendly neighborhood atheist, and “neighborhood” is the operating term here. I’m literally the friendly neighborhood atheist because back in February two families right on my street were in the audience when I first spoke publicly as an atheist at the Master’s College. Everyone on the block knows, and so far, things are still friendly, but I must do more in the wider neighborhood of my home town: Since starting the “Ask Richard” column three years ago, I’ve received hundreds of letters from atheists facing difficult conflicts with their religious co-workers, friends, and most often their families. Some of their stories are sad, frustrating, or infuriating, and some are downright appalling. They can be heartbreaking because the strife and suffering is so often unnecessary. The particular issues and situations in the letters vary, but one overriding theme hovers above almost all of them: The co-workers, friends, and families react to the atheist with fear, anger, hurt, and rejection because they believe the stereotypes, misconceptions, and outright lies about atheists that are heard and repeated, heard and repeated, with no one to challenge them, no one to say, “Hey, that is not actually true about atheists.” Well, I’m tired of only responding to these letters, only being reactive, trying to fix messes that could have been prevented. I want to get out ahead of the letters, be proactive, and bring accurate information to the religious public about atheists before these families explode, before so much love is needlessly thrown away. [Click headline for more…] Read more
I was going to skip this, but Pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona was talking about how all sins are not equal and this was the screengrab: How could I resist that?! Most of it was uneventful, but toward the end, Anderson spoke about virginity and fornication… and we got this gem at the 45:43 mark: [Click headline for more…] Read more
“Forced marriages: School holidays prompt warning,” says a current headline on BBC News. The article explains that annually, “more than 5,000 people from the U.K.” are reportedly being forced into arranged marriages: Teachers, doctors and airport staff need to be alert to the problem of forced marriages over the school holidays, the government has warned. Ministers said there were concerns about teenagers being taken abroad thinking they were going on holiday but being forced into marriage instead. Figures suggest cases are particularly common during the summer break. The government’s Forced Marriage Unit received 400 reports between June and August last year. The piece is remarkable mostly for what it doesn’t say. The words religion, Muslim, God, and Islam are all missing. Another feat is that the reporter more or less manages to sweep the misogynistic aspect of the arranged-marriage phenomenon under the rug, the BBC’s favorite phraseology for the victims being “teenagers” and the non-descript “people,” rather than “girls” and “young women” (those words aren’t anywhere in the article, either). [Click headline for more…] Read more
