Over the weekend, a Ten Commandments monument was unveiled in front of St. Paul’s AME Church in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, courtesy of the group Thou Shall Not Move. You’re probably thinking: Who cares? That’s not a story. You’d be right. But the church members — for reasons that have everything to do with a complete lack of understanding about how the law works — thought they were hoisting up a giant middle finger to atheists: “Freedom from religion offends Christians,” Colatch said. “Christians don’t believe that atheists should tell us what we can and cannot do. This monument is the free speech zone. “They have wakened up people of this area,” Colatch said. “We decided to stand up for Freedom of religion — not from religion. No one is going to move this stone. We will not allow it. We’ve decided to stand up for this monument and to stand up for Jesus Christ.” And the atheist response has been a collective: Seriously, it’s fine. No atheist group has any plans to take down this monument. So what’s this all about? [Click headline for more…] Read more
Somehow, I missed this when The Stranger came out last week, but I couldn’t resist posting it (click image to enlarge): Once you see it… While you’re at it, Seth Mnookin has posted a chapter from his book The Panic Virus online, covering Jenny McCarthy’s rise to prominence and her anti-vaccine beliefs. (Thanks to Alli for the link!) Read more
We’ve probably all been confronted with some variation on this question from frustrated theists or apathetic “nones” who find our whole movement a little baffling: Why do you atheists spend so much time worrying about a God you don’t even believe exists? If you think he’s not real, why not just let it go at that? Austin Cline, About.com’s Atheism and Agnosticism guide, recently highlighted just such a query from a reader, one who reaches a conclusion that requires something of a Super Mario-worthy leap: Doesn’t [atheists’] obsession with non-belief indicate that they secretly do believe? Otherwise, wouldn’t their actions be inconceivable? I can’t for the life of me put that one together. Even if you grant the premise that atheists are irrationally obsessed with their lack of belief, there’s no connection I can imagine that thereby leads to “therefore they actually are theists, Q.E.D.” Maybe that whole “denial ain’t just a river in Egypt” thing? I dunno, I’m reaching. But that’s not really what I wanted to highlight about this post. I particularly liked Cline’s conclusion at the end of his post: [Click headline for more…] Read more
You know you want to be an extra in a Christian movie that’s bound to be cringe-worthy and that there’s no movie that better fits that description than the upcoming Left Behind remake. And you know the fact that Nicolas Cage stars in it makes it all the more appealing! (As someone who has been in a movie with Cage, I highly recommend it.) Director Vic Armstrong tweeted this today: The actors casting and extras casting office is now open in Baton Rouge leftbehindactors@gmail.com & leftbehindextras@gmail.com— Vic Armstrong (@VicArmstrong) July 22, 2013 If you’re an atheist in Louisiana, you owe it to all of us to make this happen. Just because. (via RELEVANT) Read more
I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a clever or meaningful way to sum up my experiences at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas last week, and I simply can’t think of anything to do the experience justice. I certainly had an atypical experience compared to most — because I had a press pass for this blog, I had the pleasure of interviewing about a dozen speakers, each of whom was as nice and smart and interesting as could be. … We’ll be releasing the interviews one by one as Mikey finishes them up. We’re aiming to put out about two per week. To kick it off, here is a trailer that he just finished cutting together to give you an idea of who you’ll be hearing from in the coming weeks: [Click headline for more…] Read more
For whatever reason, Salon loves to take digs at the New Atheist authors and the atheist movement in general. The latest salvo is Katie Engelhart’s piece asking, “Where are the women of New Atheism?” It’s not a bad question — we know that one of the problems in our movement is that it’s predominantly men who are involved and who get most of the publicity. There are individuals (men and women) and groups working to change that and we shouldn’t stop discussing how to make things better. But that’s not really where Engelhart’s piece goes. [Click headline for more…] Read more
The NPR affiliate in Kansas City ran a wonderful story about the inaugural Camp Quest Kansas City which took place earlier this month: [Click headline for more…] Read more
The Texas Home School Coalition is hosting a conference On August 1-3, and Head Creationist Ken Ham will be one of the keynote speakers, preaching his lies to parents and children, like how our planet is only a few thousand years old, and how dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, and how the Creation Museum is doing just great financially. The Houston Atheists are planning to welcome Ham to their city their own way: Houston Atheists will be there too, in a demonstration outside the convention, to promote the real science and to encourage convention attendees to find out what science really says — by researching for themselves the truth about the age of the universe and where we all came from, and by attending our event the following day, Answers In Science. [Click headline for more…] Read more
You may have come across the argument before: How can you say there isn’t a God, when butterfly wings are so perfect, or the Earth is just right for us, or [insert awesome nature fact here]. This argument is typically presented as an “argument from incredulity” (“How else could everything possibly come to be?”) with a healthy dose of appeal to emotion (“But have you seen how perfect the hand of a newborn is?”)… Here is the counter-argument, in video form, from the always excellent TheThinkingAtheist: Read more
