I live in the suburbs of Chicago where we don’t always hear the anti-gay rhetoric a lot of you hear in other parts of the country (we’re at least somewhat close to approving same-sex marriage in the state). Maybe that’s why Patrick Guinane’s reporting in my local paper stood out to me. It involved the approval of a Gay/Straight Alliance group at Lockport Township High School. The club had been on probation for two years — as are all new clubs — and it was time for the school board to decide whether or not to make them official. The good news is that the board voted to approve the club 4-3. The bad news is what the dissenters said at the meeting: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Yesterday, a student spat tobacco juice on the American Atheists bench in front of the Bradford County Courthouse in Florida, took a picture of it, and sent it to AA: He added on Facebook: AA said they would file a police report. Today, that student has apologized: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Reader Brad spotted this unintentionally hilarious sign outside Rocky Hill Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee: YOU MAKE THE CHOICE “GOD” MAKES THE CHANGE You know, maybe I should change the headline to this post. That sign looks about right to me. Read more
Fred Phelps’ mother is having a grand old time in Heaven. How do we know this? Because gay people have been kissing over her gravesite. Every time that happens, the deceased receives an orgasm in the afterlife, provided that the grave has been been the subject of a Pink Mass. A Pink Mass turns the dead person gay, very much like the Mormon practice of baptizing the dead. Only much gayer. The idea and phraseology come from the Satanic Temple of New York, whose leaders located the grave of the Westboro Baptist Church’s head bigot, made a pilgrimage to that Mississippi location, and turned Phelps’ mother into a lesbian (posthumously) by performing the Pink Mass. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Laurie Goodstein has a fascinating article in today’s New York Times about Mormon leaders who begin doubting their faith after discovering, on the Internet among other places, that there were massive holes in their theology. Around the world and in the United States, where the faith was founded, the Mormon Church is grappling with a wave of doubt and disillusionment among members who encountered information on the Internet that sabotaged what they were taught about their faith, according to interviews with dozens of Mormons and those who study the church. The story focuses on Mormonism but it could easily apply to so many other faiths. The greatest tool religious leaders used to have was the ability to contain knowledge and suppress dissent, keeping the flock inside of a bubble. The Internet popped that bubble and we’re all better off because of it. Hans Mattsson was a Mormon leader overseeing churches in Europe, and he initially dubbed criticism of his faith “anti-Mormon propaganda”… until he began to research the ideas himself: [Click headline for more…] Read more
On Friday night’s Real Time, Bill Maher went after brilliant people who contain a core of stupidity — people like Dr. Eben Alexander and Dr. Ben Carson, who are trained neurosurgeons who also believe in complete nonsense: “There’s no more attractive figure in the Republican Party these days than an anti-intellectual with an advanced degree,” Maher said, noting other figures like Antonin Scalia, Ted Cruz, and Bobby Jindal, “who are accomplished scholars on the outside, and on the inside a creamy layer of [Michele] Bachmann.” (via Mediaite) Read more
Earlier tonight, at Comic-Con in San Diego, host Neil deGrasse Tyson, writer Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan’s widow), and director Brannon Braga premiered a trailer for the Seth MacFarlane-produced reboot of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey More. I need more. Looks incredible. I can’t wait to watch this. The show premieres in the spring of 2014. Read more
We all knew the American Atheists bench outside the Bradford County Courthouse in Florida was a prime target for vandals… but I wasn’t expecting this. Someone named “Zach Hillbillyboy Osborne” spit tobacco juice on the bench — a stain I’m not sure will come out — and then had the audacity to (A) take a picture of it and (B) send that picture to American Atheists: [Click headline for more…] Read more
If anyone has ever read (or had to read) Christian apologist Josh McDowell’s The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict, Steve Shives is doing a chapter-by-chapter rebuttal of the book on YouTube. Chapters 1 and 2 are now available: You can see Steve’s notes (also a partial transcript of the video) on his website. Read more
It is no new thing to compare Apple, Inc. to a religion. The fanatical devotion it has inspired over the decades has made many outsiders eye it suspiciously, as it hawks a kind of techno-faith in which the textbook charismatic leader, Steve Jobs, emits a Reality Distortion Field that turns the skeptical into zealots, hungry for the latest sleek combinations of glass and aluminum like the damned crave absolution. The term “Cult of Mac,” begun by Leander Kahney in his book and website of that title, both pokes fun at and celebrates this comparison. Those who live inside the Reality Distortion Field, in my experience, rarely resent this. Just as true religious zealots do not mind being known for their blind faith, but wear it as a badge of honor. This is a bit of an exaggeration, of course, as even the most doughy-eyed Apple user will still vent criticisms and complaints, but very often this is done in the spirit of keeping true to a central credo; as in, if device X does or does not have Y feature, is that really keeping with The Apple Way? Is it What Steve Would Have Done? Et cetera. I, too, have embraced this. Being an atheist, in particular, it’s actually kind of fun to have a pretend religion to subscribe to. I follow the teachings of The Steve, Apple keynotes are like a twice-yearly mass, and I look for signs from the prophets Tim Cook and Jony Ive, just as much as I shook my head in despair at the heretics Scott Forestall and John Browett as they fell from grace. At New York Review of Books, Edward Mendelson explores the idea of Apple-as-religion anew: [Click headline for more…] Read more
