Last week, I wrote about a controversy concerning a student at Florida Atlantic University, his professor, and “Jesus” written on a piece of paper. I asked the question “Did a student really get suspended for refusing to ‘stomp on Jesus’?” The answer, it seems, is probably not. If you didn’t catch it, here’s a quick recap: Junior Ryan Rotela, a Mormon, was in his Multi-Cultural Communications class taught by Dr. Deandre Poole. As a class activity, Dr. Poole asked all students to get out a piece of paper and write “JESUS” on it. He then asked them to put the paper on the ground and step on it. Rotela refused and, as a result, was suspended from Dr. Poole’s class… or, at least, that’s Rotela’s version of the story. Last week, I postulated that it seemed unlikely that this is was how the story actually went down, but we only had Rotela’s account to work off of. Normally, I really love being proven right, but this particular story has me pretty unhappy with the way it panned out. [More…] Read more
Whenever I come across a new word, I try to look it up… it’s a practice banana-man apologist Ray Comfort might want to adopt. On his Facebook page, Comfort posted a comment about Christians, the Bible, etc. His usual schtick. And then the following conversation actually happened: [More…] Read more
Alix Jules… where do I even begin? First, let me explain the big blocks of quoted text you’re about to read. Summarizing much of what he said would have been a huge disservice to this article. I didn’t want to leave anything out and distort his message. I’ll start with what he’s doing today and work my way back. Alix is the President of the Black Nonbelievers of Dallas. He’s the Coordinator and Chair for the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason as well as the Chair for their Diversity Council. (No, not done yet!) He’s the Executive Director for the Fellowship of Freethought–Dallas. And, just to round all of this out, he sits on the speakers bureau for African Americans for Humanism. Impressive, right? The best part of getting these details is that Alix felt “uncomfortable with titles.” He’s just humbly doing what he can to help. I’m not the only one who is impressed with Alix, either; he was even featured in Ebony magazine: [More…] Read more
This is a nifty story: Nearly 14 years ago, Neal Yeager recorded a song that was inspired by his heroes Carl Sagan and James Randi. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, the song has been “rediscovered” and it’s getting a lot of play on online radio stations. Check it out — it’s easy to tell why people are enjoying it: Read more
Coming off of his last viral hit, Crispian Jago has updated and re-released one of his classic graphics, the Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense: You’re gonna want to click on that image, zoom in, and look around. It’s amazing how many crazy things some people can believe… Read more
The Arkansas legislature just passed a bill called HB 1690 that will enact a freakishly-long moment of silence in the classroom: A public school in this state shall observe a one (1) minute period of silence at the beginning of school each school day. A minute. A full damn minute. That’s not a “moment” of silence. That’s not a “period” of silence. That an “excruciatingly long goddamn minute” of silence. [More…] Read more
On Sunday’s edition of “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Susan Jacoby was a panelist to “discuss the role of religion in our civic debates.” (What should’ve been the fastest panel discussion *ever* — “Role?! Why should it have a role?!” — somehow became an actual conversation…) Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames. Jacoby used her time wisely, making a number of points we rarely hear echoed in the mainstream media: [More…] Read more
When you put it like that, you have to wonder why anyone would put those ideas in their children’s heads. Read more
Regular readers have seen Daniel’s videos before — he usually makes monthly montages documenting the damage caused by religion. Now, he’s back with a video focusing on children who have been accused of witchcraft: [More…] Read more
