Richard Dawkins spoke at the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival last Thursday… about something… but I don’t know what because the last four minutes of the video (beginning at 4:55) have broken my brain: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Earlier today, the Secular Coalition for America announced that they had met with representatives from the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. It marked the first time since February of 2010 that an official, publicized meeting like this took place: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Christian Apologist Todd Friel (who’s worked with Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort) has a new video series out teaching Christians how to respond to “atheist assaults” on their faith (a.k.a. when atheists use logic). My favorite screenshot from that trailer has to be this one: [Click headline for more…] Read more
The post that Hemant published yesterday about Joe Klein’s absurd, unfair, and false dumping on Secular Humanists in the latest TIME Magazine got me madder and madder the more I thought about it. People have sometimes said that I can be eloquent, but many commenters had already written very eloquent letters of protest to the TIME editors, and I was so pissed off that eloquence wasn’t within my reach. By the time I got around to commenting, the post had mostly run its course with over 240 comments, so I decided to expand my comment into a post of its own so that more people can see the idea. There was some discussion at the first of the comments about whether or not Klein had himself lent a hand in the Oklahoma tornado disaster zone, but as I said, that doesn’t matter. Regardless of whether he was out anywhere helping, and regardless of why he was, his out-of-the-blue disparagement of Secular Humanists was completely unnecessary for the point of his article, and even unnecessary for that part of his article, and it was factually false. It was just a stupid, bigoted dig when he saw he’d given himself an opportunity. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee addressed the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference in Houston recently. The ex-pastor and ex-presidential candidate told his rapt clergy audience that the pastorate once was … a wonderful, respected position, but not anymore. [Click headline for more…] Read more
For those of us who weren’t in Louisiana yesterday, former pastor Jerry DeWitt hosted the state’s first-ever “Secular Service” with a theme of “Joie De Vivre: To Delight In Being Alive”: The New York Times already has some positive coverage of the event: [Click headline for more…] Read more
The 24th of June in 1973 was a Sunday. For New Orleans’ gay community, it was the last day of national Pride Weekend, as well as the fourth anniversary of 1969’s Stonewall uprising. You couldn’t really have an open celebration of those events — in ’73, anti-gay slurs, discrimination, and even violence were still as common as sin — but the revelers had few concerns. They had their own gathering spots in the sweltering city, places where people tended to leave them be, including a second-floor bar on the corner of Iberville and Chartres Street called the UpStairs Lounge. That Sunday, dozens of members of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the nation’s first gay church, founded in Los Angeles in 1969, got together there for drinks and conversation. It seems to have been an amiable group. The atmosphere was welcoming enough that two gay brothers, Eddie and Jim Warren, even brought their mom, Inez, and proudly introduced her to the other patrons. Beer flowed. Laughter filled the room. Just before 8:00p, the doorbell rang insistently. To answer it, you had to unlock a steel door that opened onto a flight of stairs leading down to the ground floor. Bartender Buddy Rasmussen, expecting a taxi driver, asked his friend Luther Boggs to let the man in. Perhaps Boggs, after he pulled the door open, had just enough time to smell the Ronsonol lighter fluid that the attacker of the UpStairs Lounge had sprayed on the steps. In the next instant, he found himself in unimaginable pain as the fireball exploded, pushing upward and into the bar. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Back in March, Richard Dawkins and (former President of the Secular Coalition for America) Herb Silverman had a conversation at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, video of which is now available: I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, but if you hear any good parts, please leave the timestamp and summary in the comments! Read more
Wendy Williams Montgomery was hardly ever fazed by slurs and invective against gay people. When God calls upon you to be an anti-gay crusader, you think there’s nothing wrong with opinions like “Gay people are disgusting and immoral” and “AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality.” So Wendy did her part for a world that she thought had arrogantly shut God out: She and her husband Tom, both Mormons, went from door to door in 2008, convincing California voters to vote yes on Proposition 8, the state referendum that overturned the ruling allowing same-sex couples to marry in the Golden State. All the while, their son Jordan (pictured below), now 14, slowly descended into confusion and then depression. He was starting to realize that he’s attracted to boys. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Talk about nostalgia! Public Radio International has a pretty entertaining piece from Greece about the Return of the Hellenes, … a movement trying to bring back the religion, values, philosophy and way of life of ancient Greece, more than 16 centuries after it was replaced by Christianity. Remember the good old days? Neither do they, but that doesn’t prevent them from worshiping the dodecatheon, including the long-moribund deities Zeus, Apollo, and Hera. The New Hellenes don’t pray to the old gods, they say, but they do hold them worthy of veneration (as representations of things like beauty, health, and wisdom), and some revivalists offer them sacrifices such as flowers, fruit, milk, and honey. [Click headline for more…] Read more
