The Foundation Beyond Belief has just announced its five beneficiaries for the new quarter — each charity will likely receive several thousands of dollars, courtesy of atheist donors: [Click headline for more…] Read more
This is Cardinal Timothy Dolan speaking immediately after last week’s Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage: The common good of all, especially our children, depends upon a society that strives to uphold the truth of marriage. Now is the time to redouble our efforts in witness to this truth. These decisions are part of a public debate of great consequence. The future of marriage and the well-being of our society hang in the balance. This is what we learned about Dolan today, after the release of thousands of pages of documents regarding the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal: [Click headline for more…] Read more
A few years ago, just after I Sold My Soul on eBay came out, a pastor at Willow Creek, a megachurch outside of Chicago, invited me to come onstage with him and have a discussion about my experience visiting churches and meeting Christians. There was a lot I liked and didn’t like (that went well beyond just belief in a God). It wasn’t a debate. We weren’t there to score points. And I really enjoyed my time there. I also appreciated how the pastor let the audience know that, when they met me afterwards, there was nothing they could say that I hadn’t heard many, many times before, so they should show some respect by not trying to convert me 🙂 That pastor, Randy Frazee, is now a pastor at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, and he invited me to his church to have a similar sort of discussion this weekend. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes, considering that it’s been years since our last public discussion and my views on churches are probably not as generous as they may have been in the past. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Last summer, Rimsha Masih, a young teenager who is the daughter of a Pakistani Christian couple, was arrested and jailed on charges of blasphemy. Her accuser was a mullah, Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti (a.k.a. Khalid Jadoon) who said he’d caught the girl with charred pages from the Koran. Something was fishy about the case from the get-go. For one thing, Rimsha (pictured below, left) was widely reported to be of limited mental capacity (some sources say she has Down Syndrome); even if she had really done what Chishti (right) accused her of, her culpability was in question. Also, Chishti is a known agitator against Christians, … even appearing on a popular national television show to complain that the noise made by Christian worshippers had disturbed Muslim residents. Which is an observation lacking in the self-awareness department if you’ve ever heard the racket a muezzin blares from atop his minaret five times a day. [Click headline for more…] Read more
After huge ratings and impressive DVD sales, “The Bible” miniseries that aired on the History Channel will get a second life: [Click headline for more…] Read more
I don’t usually post about various leadership changes within our movement, but this one was particularly interesting because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Chinese person’s name on the masthead for any national atheist group, at least in North America. (If I’m wrong, please correct me.) John Xu, who began volunteering at CFI in 2007 and started his own secular student group at York University, has just been appointed the Acting Director of CFI Canada’s Toronto branch. It’s a… Read more
This story has all the drama of a Vatican soap opera, and it’s moving at a breakneck pace. Don’t blink, or you might miss it. First, the media got wind that Don Patrizio Poggi, a former parish priest once convicted of abusing young teen boys, had filed an explosive complaint with the Italian police. He alleged that a former police officer had been recruiting underage boys living in poverty to sexually service Catholic clergymen in Rome. According to Poggi, the ex-Carabinieri “pimp” would approach youths at saunas, gyms, gay bars and discotheques. Most of the boys were Eastern European immigrants in need of cash. The unnamed pimp would lure the boys with offers of modelling and acting jobs, opportunities that invariably fell through. Instead, the boys were paid €150-€500 ($195-$650 USD) to engage in a variety of sex acts with Catholic priests, both retired and active. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Today, the “Mississippi Student Religious Liberties Act of 2013” goes into effect. The law makes student-led, administration-supported proselytizing perfectly legal in the state’s public schools. The state’s House passed it on a 109-6 vote, while the Senate supported it 50-1 (the lone “Nay” vote was cast by the aptly-named Democrat Deborah Jeanne Dawkins). Republican Governor Phil Bryant signed it into law in March: What does the law say? While much of it just reinforces laws that are already in place (e.g. Students can pray without punishment, Students can form after-school religious clubs), it also allows for Christians to push their faith onto other students in ways we’ve often fought against: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Sunday’s massive protests in Egypt were unprecedented, of a scale not even seen during 2011’s Arab Spring. The protesters aimed to show by sheer numbers that the country has irrevocably turned against [President Mohamed] Morsi, a year to the day after he was inaugurated as Egypt’s first freely elected president. But throughout the day and even up to midnight at the main rallying sites, fears of rampant violence did not materialize. Instead the mood was largely festive. [Click headline for more…] Read more
