The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, answers the question: Am I an Antitheist? 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
Since 2000, Charles Darwin has graced the back of British 10-pound notes, much to the chagrin of Creationists everywhere: But after 2017, he’ll be bumped in favor of author Jane Austen, the Bank of England recently confirmed: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Next Monday night (7/29), I’ll be speaking to the Grand Traverse Humanists in Traverse City, Michigan! The event begins at 7:00p at the Traverse Area District Library. More details are on Facebook and on the group’s website. Hope to see you there! Read more
More than a thousand people took to the streets in Port-au-Prince, Haiti last week to protest homosexuality and a proposed same-sex marriage bill. A Haitian gay rights group has reportedly announced a plan to introduce marriage equality legislation, but religious groups including Protestants and Muslims led Friday’s demonstration protesting the idea. Some held signs and sang songs in which they threatened to burn down the country’s Parliament if marriage equality were legalized. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Steve Wells is the author of the brilliant Skeptics Annotated Bible website. It was only a few months ago when he published a print version of the site — a massive tome that chronicles the messed up shit in the holiest of books. Now, Wells is back documenting something else just as interesting. For years, he has been blogging about the people God kills in the Bible. How many people are we talking about? Wells knows the answer, to the best of anyone’s knowledge. His latest book, detailing God’s loving, caring bloodlust, is called Drunk with Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible (the completely revised second edition): [Click headline for more…] Read more
The Hancock Clarion is the local newspaper for residents in Hawesville, Kentucky (part of Hancock County). Like many small-town newspapers, the mayor writes a monthly column talking about local government issues, but what makes Mayor Rita Stephens’ columns stand out is that she sprinkles them with God and Jesus: The Freedom From Religion Foundation has compiled a short list (PDF) of her godly comments: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is notorious for not-so-subtly making legal decisions based on his irrelevant personal and religious beliefs. This week, one LGBT-interest columnist says his twisted understanding of how the law works doesn’t just hurt American citizens — it also makes him look ignorant. Bridgette P. LaVictoire, of the Vermont-based LGBTQ news site Lez Get Real, says the justice applies the Constitution based on its meaning at the time it was written — a legal principle known as “originalism” — to impose his personal standards of Catholic morality on the country. She writes: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Earlier this year, at the request of Mayor Terry Frank, officials in Anderson County, Tennessee voted to put up a sign on the front of the county courthouse reading “In God We Trust”: The ACLU argued that this sign could violate church/state separation and it’s hard to argue with that since it seems so obvious in this case. That didn’t stop Frank’s husband, Lee, from telling the press, “We don’t need to deal with that ACLU crap here.” I bring all of this up because, on Tuesday morning, the “In God We Trust” plaque was unveiled over one of the entrances to the courthouse (another three signs are expected to go up by the end of the week): [Click headline for more…] Read more
In a promotional video for his movie Unstoppable, Kirk Cameron explains how he’s a “recovering atheist.” He was such an atheist, in fact, that he can tell us the two things all of us *have* to believe (by faith!) if we’re “good” atheists: Let’s break those two things down: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Last month, Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) suggested an amendment (PDF) to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act that would allow Humanist, ethical culturist, or atheist chaplains in the Army Chaplains Corps: The Secretary of Defense shall provide for the appointment, as officers in the Chaplain Corps of the Armed Forces, of persons who are certified or ordained by non-theistic organizations and institutions, such as humanist, ethical culturalist, or atheist. The amendment made so much sense that, of course, Republicans were quick to condemn it: There’s some first class ignorance for you: “They don’t believe anything,” said Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) “I can’t imagine an atheist accompanying a notification team as they go into some family’s home to let them have the worst news of their life and this guy says, ‘You know, that’s it — your son’s just worms, I mean, worm food.'” “This I think would make a mockery of the chaplaincy,” said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.). “The last thing in the world we would want to see was a young soldier who may be dying and they’re at a field hospital and the chaplain is standing over that person saying to them, ‘If you die here, there is no hope for you in the future.'” You can see the full debate on the issue in my previous post. Needless to say, the amendment failed on a 43-18 vote. [Click headline for more…] Read more
