The end is near, and it’s full of rainbow-colored wedding cakes. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, told churchgoers at Moscow’s Red Square this past weekend that marriage equality is a terrible, terrible sign of what’s to come: “This is a very dangerous sign of the apocalypse… It means people are choosing a path of self-destruction.” [Click headline for more…] Read more
The Internet is buzzing with news of another sex scandal involving Anthony Weiner (a.k.a. Carlos Danger), the former congressman who resigned in 2011 after reportedly exchanging lewd messages with women online. His web history has certainly been called into question as Weiner powers through the mayoral race in New York City, but one thing nobody’s addressing is his sexual orientation. That’s a mistake, according to Michael Brown, a columnist for the Christian site Charisma News. In a column titled “The Most Selfish Thing In The World,” Brown compares the Weiner scandal and the fate of another sex-scandalized politician, Eliot Spitzer, to stories of powerful men who abandoned their families to start gay relationships. His hypothesis? Men who run away with other men are praised for their “honesty” and “boldness,” while men who have affairs with women are shunned. Effectively, he says Weiner is only being punished because he’s straight. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Fred Clark has a great explanation of why debates — especially about God’s existence — aren’t as useful as they appear to be: When Ray Comfort challenges someone to a debate over the truth of Christianity, I wince because I am a Christian and I know that Comfort is most likely going to “lose” that debate, leading some to the mistaken conclusion that this indicates something meaningful about the truth or untruth of what I believe. When William Lane Craig challenges someone to a debate over the truth of Christianity, I wince because I am a Christian and I know that Craig is most likely going to “win” that debate, leading some to the mistaken conclusion that this indicates something meaningful about the truth or untruth of what I believe. [Click headline for more…] Read more
A couple of months ago, filmmaker Scott Burdick posted parts one and two of The March of Reason. The footage comes mostly from the Reason Rally and individual interviews with atheists, many of whom are familiar to readers of this site. Burdick has now posted part three of his film (some of the footage, involving body painting, may be NSFW): Burdick plans to create an edited 90-minute “documentary-style” version of the film after all five parts are posted. Read more
You know a Christian movie is going to be good when a lesser Baldwin brother shouts out “This guy is the biggest drug trafficker in all of California which is exactly why we want to nail this guy.” Wait, no, my new favorite line comes from the evil mob boss who tells drug dealer Ja Rule: “Oh, that’s Vanessa. She goes to Bible study every week with my wife.” Wait, no! It’s when Ja Rule says to Vanessa, “Right now, I’m kinda in between churches.” Wait, no! It’s when — oh, just watch the trailer: I’m in Love with a Church Girl comes out in October. (via The American Jesus) Read more
Alfred S. Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann, who previously wrote the excellent book The Fabulous Fibonacci Numbers (1997), have teamed up once again to write Magnificent Mistakes in Mathematics (Prometheus Books, 2013). It’s a book with a self-explanatory title, and you only need a high-school-level background in math to understand it. The following are excerpts from the book, reprinted with permission of the publishers: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Just weeks after I posted about the rise of godless funerals in Ireland, there’s another trend worth noting in the country: Demand for the Humanist Association of Ireland’s secular weddings has surged as the moral authority of the once almighty Catholic Church collapsed in recent decades amid sex abuse scandals and Irish society’s rapid secularisation. … But statistics show rising demand for non-Church weddings. In 1996, 90 percent of Irish weddings were performed by the Catholic Church or the Church of Ireland. But by 2010 that percentage had fallen to 69 percent. The pent-up demand from those who want more than a civil ceremony in a registry office but reject a religious wedding has created a major backlog for the humanist group’s ceremonies director. More godless weddings and more godless funerals. Let’s hope there’s no connection. [Click headline for more…] Read more
The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, answers the question: Should atheists pray? Herb Silverman offers his take on a similar question here. 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
Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the family in Duck Dynasty, spoke at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church over the weekend. He’s a Christian, and the sermon was pretty much what you might expect, but at one point, he did something I’m surprised any Christian still does: He used Pascal’s Wager: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Sunday night, just like last year, I had the privilege to donate another science presentation for the kids at Camp Quest West, Southern California. They are now using a larger facility still in the Angeles National Forest where stately Ponderosa Pines tower over handsome, well maintained cabins. There is plenty of wildlife, and wow, bringing my show equipment in from my truck, I came face-to-face with a beautiful and unexpectedly large deer. I usually do these shows for a fee for libraries, schools, clubs, and gem and mineral shows, about 50 to a hundred performances each year, but Camp Quest has now become the repeating highlight of the year for me. Last year the topic was dinosaurs, and this time it was volcanoes, but the awesome power that evening was erupting from the kids, not from the Earth. [Click headline for more…] Read more
