The Light the Night walks are already happening and Foundation Beyond Belief and our members are making our last pushes to raise $1,000,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. No matter where you are in the country, you can check out the list of teams here. In fact, there are some great incentives for anyone who is willing to ask friends and colleagues for donations: If you send an email to at least 20 people asking them to donate to… Read more
In advance of the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s convention in Portland, Oregon next week, the group is putting up a variety of billboards in the region. Some will say “This is what an atheist looks like” while others will say, “I’m Secular and I Vote!” “We were pleasantly surprised we had more volunteers than we could manage to use in the campaign. We wish we hadn’t had to turn anyone away,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. She noted that… Read more
Last year, a podcast directed at secular parents went off the air. But original host Colin Thornton and new co-host Noelle George are restarting Parenting Within Reason and this time they’re going all out: The initial return show will feature a discussion with Dale McGowan, author of Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, and Julia Sweeney, of Letting Go of God. Other confirmed guests include Sean Faircloth, Director of Strategy and Policy for the Richard Dawkins Foundation of Reason and… Read more
I know it’s not news to most of the readers here that the Boy Scouts of America is a bigoted organization. If you’re gay or atheist, they want nothing to do with you. But it always helps to have a reminder. Ryan Andresen just accomplished all the requirements needed to become an Eagle Scout. He’s not going to get the award, though, because the BSA doesn’t think he deserves the honor: Andresen recently “notified his unit leadership and Eagle Scout… Read more
You hear a loud noise. Involuntarily, your heart skips a beat, your lungs inhale sharply, your muscles tense to fight or run. An instant later, you realize it’s the smoke detector letting you know you left your bagel in the toaster and it’s started to burn. Your body’s reaction — pumping adrenaline and cortisol through your system — is extremely important. When it detects something wrong, the stress response helps you assess and handle the problem. In this case, it… Read more
There’s been a lot of violence in Orlando, Florida lately and one of the more tragic stories involves a 15-year-old girl, Danielle Sampson, who was shot in the head during a drive-by shooting. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office knows exactly what to do to make the violence stop: Pray. For the next 40 days, Orange County Sheriff’s Office Chaplains will be leading Operation Transformation. It’s 40 days of nightly prayer vigils bringing OCSO and the faith community together to reduce… Read more
My friend and Christian blogger Rachel Held Evans has a book coming out at the end of the month called A Year of Biblical Womanhood about the time she spent trying to be the type of woman the Bible commands her to be. Of all the passages in the book, this one is causing the most controversy: I signed my first abstinence pledge when I was just fifteen. I’d been invited by some friends to a fall youth rally at… Read more
This is not the Muslim prophet Muhammad: We know that because it’s a pineapple. You can call it whatever you want, but it’s a pineapple. No confusion there, right? Then that makes you smarter than the administrators at Reading University in England. They kicked an atheist group out of the school’s organization fair (“Freshers’ Fayre”) because the students labelled a pineapple “Muhammad” in order to talk about “blasphemy, religion, and liberty”: “We wanted to celebrate the fact that we live… Read more
Good Morning America had a story this morning about the Kountze Independent School District cheerleaders and their football run-through banners with Bible verses on them: Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames. My favorite part of the clip has to be the banner they featured in the segment: If God is for us, who can be against us? I don’t know… how about the other team?! And atheists. And Constitutional scholars. And, heck, God Himself if you’re gay or lesbian…. Read more
