The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, answers the question: Will the United States become a theocracy? Note: I accidentally called the filibustering Texas state senator Wendy Wright. It’s actually Wendy Davis. My bad. 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
Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times has a nice story about American Atheists’ monument now up in front of the Bradford County Courthouse: Most of it rehashes why it’s there in the first place, but I loved two particular bits. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Sanal Edamaruku is nicknamed “the Indian James Randi” for a good reason: He debunks ridiculous claims with perfectly reasonable explanations. More than a year ago, Edamaruku was charged with “hurting the religious sentiments of a particular community” after he explained how a statue of Christ could be dripping water seemingly on its own (spoiler: It involves science). The “crime” was punishable with up to three years in prison in addition to a fine. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Maybe you recall this perfectly maddening case (if you do, skip ahead for a good-news update): [A]n 11-year-old girl named Madeline Kara Neumann [photo], known as Kara to family and friends… died of undiagnosed diabetes on Easter Sunday in March 2008 at her home in Weston, a central Wisconsin village about 140 miles north of Madison. Kara, who had been growing weak for several weeks leading up to her death, eventually became too sick to speak, eat, drink or walk. Her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, don’t belong to any organized religion or church but identify themselves as Pentecostal Christians and believe visiting a doctor is akin to worshipping an idol. … Dale Neumann testified that the possibility of death never entered their minds. After the girl died, Leilani Neumann told police God would raise Kara from the dead. For some reason, that didn’t happen. [Click headline for more…] Read more
This is the atheist bench that was recently installed in front of Florida’s Bradford County Courthouse, in response to a Ten Commandments monument on the city-owned property: Let’s get the obvious out of the way: It’s not all that pleasing to the eye. It’s asymmetrical. It looks like someone just slapped a bunch of random quotations on any available space. Your head has to be damn near the ground to read some of the words on it. As far as design goes, it could be a lot, lot better. In fact, Gordon Haber at Religion Dispatches calls it “proof of unintelligent design”: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Well, that was quick. The Springboro School District in Ohio had tried to institute a 12-week summer course on the Constitution that would feature video lessons from Christian pseudo-historian David Barton: But after complaints from parents in the district, groups like FFRF, and everyone who knows something about history, the school board members have changed their minds: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Most people probably think of witch burnings as a terrible fever (or fervor) that died out sometime soon after the glory days of Salem’s infamous witch hunter Cotton Mather. But an Agence France-Presse story today, commemorating the almost one hundred 17th-century executions of accused witches at Norway’s arctic “Gates of Hell,” points out that witch killings never ceased. In fact: Some 50,000 people are believed to have paid with their lives in Europe during the medieval witch trials. But by comparison, the number of people killed for the same reason worldwide since World War II is estimated at between 70,000 and 80,000. [Click headline for more…] Read more
You know, if I were going to write a profile of a Christian apologist, I probably wouldn’t bring it up in front of Richard Dawkins… but that’s what Nathan Schneider did: When, during a conversation in a swank hotel lobby in Manhattan, I mentioned to Richard Dawkins that I was working on a story about William Lane Craig, the muscles in his face clenched. “Why are you publicizing him?” Dawkins demanded, twice. The best-selling “New Atheist” professor went on to assure me that I shouldn’t bother, that he’d met Craig in Mexico — they opposed each other in a prime-time, three-on-three debate staged in a boxing ring—and found him “very unimpressive.” “I mean, whose side are you on?” Dawkins said. “Are you religious?” That’s quintessential Dawkins for you right there 🙂 It’s actually a very interesting article about Craig, if for no other reason than it explains his usual debate game plan, which amounts to little more than a Gish Gallop: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Did you ever hear the story of how the band Van Halen had a line in their contract rider stipulating that a bowl of M&Ms had to be backstage before a show… but there couldn’t be any brown M&Ms in it? The request wasn’t there just for the hell of it; it served a practical purpose. If there were brown M&Ms in the bowl, that meant the local crew hadn’t read through the contract. If they hadn’t read through the contract, they might have also missed out on checking some very important technical details, which could have ultimately led to minor or major problems during the performance. The principle was that if you got the little things wrong, you probably screwed up the big things, too. That’s what was going through my mind when I read Luke Dittrich’s fantastic takedown of Dr. Eben Alexander in Esquire (the story is behind a $1.99 paywall). Alexander is the man who claimed to have visited Heaven while nearly dead, only to come back, write a book about it (Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife), and rake in the cash. [Click headline for more…] Read more
In the 19th century, Adelaide was nicknamed “the City of Churches,” not so much for its many houses of worship, but for its variety of beliefs and denominations. Adelaide was established by Protestants who wanted to be free from the clutches of the Church of England, and they understood that others might like the same freedom of conscience. It’s fertile ground for atheists, who find both a climate of relative tolerance and a population still largely in the throes of superstition. Enter Atheists SA (South Australia), an organization of rationalists founded by Brian Morris. He’s already made enough waves that Britain’s the Guardian newspaper gave the group some lovin’ a couple of weeks ago. [Click headline for more…] Read more
