This is a guest post by Michael Tracey. He is a journalist in Brooklyn, New York. *** You may have heard that Mitt Romney “won” the first presidential debate last week. This unmitigated truth was proclaimed far and wide by journalists, pundits, PR strategists, and the rest of the characters who comprise America’s Chattering Class. Romney came off as forceful, bold, and “presidential,” they informed us, while Obama was disengaged and weak. A mere twenty minutes into the debate, expert… Read more
Everyone give a big Internet high-five to Ernest Perce V (Pennsylvania State Director of American Atheists) and Carl Silverman (PA Nonbelievers)! They’ve been attending school board and city council meetings in Greencastle-Antrim in Pennsylvania trying to convince the them to drop the Lord’s Prayer, a 50-year-old tradition in the district. When you watch the videos and media coverage, it looks like it’s the two of them versus the world. Turns out that’s all you need: Brian Hissong, [Greencastle-Antrim School District… Read more
This is Joshua Horn in 2010, when he was president of Arizona State University’s Secular Free Thought Society: This is Horn now, recalling what happened a couple of months after that video was taped: “The best way I can explain it is it wasn’t just perceiving something or experiencing something, it was experiencing some particular thing in a whole new way of experiencing it,” Horn says. “And it was the fact that it was a new way that was strange,… Read more
This is Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA): This is the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which Broun sits on. And this is Rep. Broun telling people at Liberty Baptist Church a couple of weeks ago that evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of Hell”: God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight… Read more
Remember how the cheerleaders at Kountze High School won a temporary reprieve on their Bible run-through banners this past Thursday? Well, a day later, under the Friday Night Lights, the varsity football team lost their first game of the season: That puts them at 4-1 for the year now. As a coach of a competitive high school team myself, I’m not mocking the football players at all. But it probably takes an atheist to point out that the cheerleaders’ banners… Read more
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: POVERTY & HEALTH: GlobeMed HUMAN RIGHTS: MADRE CHALLENGE THE GAP: Friends for a Non-Violent World EDUCATION: Prison University Project THE NATURAL WORLD: DC Greenworks … Most of my donations this month are going to Prison University Project. What an amazing way to help prisoners once they are released! If you’re not already… Read more
The (excellently-named) website Jews On First has a lengthy piece on how Jewish students in the South suffer at the hands of overzealous Christian proselytizers in public schools: One parent relates how his son would eat breakfast in the school cafeteria when a group of athletes would come in and “perform” for the students. “They would basically lift weights for about 30 minutes,” then go to the microphone and “announce that Christ helped them become athletes. After five or 10… Read more
Two charts stand out from the Public Religion Research Institute’s latest report (PDF) about the Millennial generation (ages 18-25) and their voting habits. And while the media coverage of the report focuses mostly on the race issues, the religious aspects of it are fascinating in their own right. The first chart isn’t surprising at all until you consider the implications of it: It shows that the religiously “Unaffiliated” (atheists, agnostics, those who are religious but don’t use any religious label,… Read more
What is Sally Quinn thinking? She wrote a piece for the Washington Post offering her take on the Presidential debate. Had she said the following, I probably would have agreed with her: “Mitt Romney made several references to God during the debate and President Obama didn’t. Whether you like it or not, if you want to get votes from religious Americans, you’ll want to mention God as much as possible.” But she didn’t just say that. Instead, she took the… Read more
