Who knows more about the Bible? The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue or Current TV’s John Fugelsang? Or, to put it another way, the guy who makes a living as a self-proclaimed spokesperson for his faith, or the guy who makes a living asking questions? Yeah, we all know where this is going… Some of the highlights: [Click headline for more…] Read more
On May 7th, Elizabeth Colbert Busch (D) will run against Mark Sanford (R) and Eugene Platt (Green) in the special election for South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. The Secular Coalition for America — a non-partisan group — grades candidates on the basis of their public responses to matters concerning church/state separation. And, in this race, Colbert Busch received the highest grade while Sanford failed miserably (PDF): [Click headline for more…] Read more
Children and teens in New York are being forced off-campus for education about sexual health and HIV prevention at the insistence of the Catholic Church. How can the Church get away with that? Well, it helps that they own the buildings in which the public schools are housed: As a result of a longstanding but little-known agreement between church and city officials, dozens of city schools that lease church-owned buildings must take students off site for sex education. So the church is using its ownership of the buildings to dictate what public school students can and cannot learn on campus. To my surprise, it turns out that the interference in public education has been going on for several years: Read more
Okay, technically he’s only 45.3 feet tall. (That’s 13.8 meters, for those who speak metric.) But that still makes this statue, recently erected in Poland, the tallest likeness of Pope John Paul II in the entire world. [Click headline for more…] Read more
The people of Pakistan are just weeks away from achieving a historical election — whatever the result. The Pakistani Taliban do not like this, not one bit. If a government is successfully elected in the general election on the 11th of May, it will be first time Pakistan has ever successfully peacefully transitioned between two elected governments. To give you a sense of how momentus this could be, the forthcoming election will be the 11th general election for Pakistan since 1962. One man who sadly won’t get to see this happen is Fakhrul Islam. A 46-year-old grocer from the southern city of Hyderabad, Kakrul was a candidate for the secular (in this case, meaning “not representing Islam”) Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), part of the outgoing coalition government which has previously been threatened by Pakistan’s Taliban. He is the first candidate to be killed in current election campaign. [Click headline for more…] Read more
An article in The Spectator (UK) by Theo Hobson argues that “Richard Dawkins has lost” because the “New Atheism” is dying out: The success of five or six atheist authors, on both sides of the Atlantic, seemed to herald a strong new movement. It seemed that non-believers were tired of all the nuance surrounding religion, hungry for a tidy narrative that put them neatly in the right. Atheism is still with us. But the movement that threatened to form has petered out. Crucially, atheism’s younger advocates are reluctant to compete for the role of Dawkins’s disciple. They are more likely to bemoan the new atheist approach and call for large injections of nuance. [Click headline for more…] Read more
Earlier this week, Camp Quest Oklahoma was scheduled to hold a fundraiser at Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ (in the city of Broken Arrow), but the owner of the place told them — after the event had already started — that he would not be giving them anything because he disagreed with their beliefs. There has been an outpouring of support from across the Internet in response to this treatment, and Camp Quest issued this statement on their website: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Imagine the frustration of a conservative Christian member of Congress, sitting idly by while godless jackals attack sacred war memorials with religious symbols on public property with their petty little lawsuits. How could such a person just sit there and do nothing? Can’t these atheists be stopped? Rep. Duncan D. Hunter of California is trying. Yesterday, he introduced the War Memorial Protection Act, a bill that would enshrine into law the ability for federal war memorials in the public square, like the one in Coos Bay, Oregon, to include religious symbols. It’s a direct response to moves by groups like the Freedom from Religion Foundation and Americans United for Separation of Church and State who make it their business to, well, separate church (the crosses and other religious symbols) from state (the U.S. government’s memorials, existing on public property and paid for with public funds). The bill would be all the more remarkable if it were a new idea. But it isn’t. Last year, in fact, the U.S. House passed by voice vote the same act, also introduced by Hunter. Here’s how the LA Times reported it then: [Click headline for more…] Read more
Somehow, Crispian Jago broke into God’s computer and got ahold of his timeline: I can’t believe it. God uses Windows?! For shame… Read more
