Last week, I posted about the Greencastle-Antrim School District (in Pennsylvania) and how the school board began its meetings with The Lord’s Prayer. Ernest Perce V, the Pennsylvania State Director of American Atheists, and Carl Silverman (of the PA Nonbelievers) attended a meeting and documented the prayers firsthand. Now, there’s a bit of an update. The atheists attended a meeting of the Antrim Township Board of Supervisors (i.e. the City Council) to raise this issue there. Once again, there’s a… Read more
The Charlotte Atheists and Agnostics will be holding a protest near the Democratic National Convention later tonight about the need for church/state separation in our government: The protest will be held September 4, 2012, from 6:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. at the Speakers Platform on the corner of Stonewall Street and Caldwell Street in Charlotte, North Carolina. The protest will include speakers from the CAA discussing the necessity of the separation of religion and government in the United States. This… Read more
The Democratic Party just released its 2012 platform. There will be a lot of talk about the inclusion of marriage equality (yay!), but what does it say about faith? In short, atheists aren’t going to be happy: Faith. Faith has always been a central part of the American story, and it has been a driving force of progress and justice throughout our history. We know that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by… Read more
I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet, but if it’s Annie Laurie Gaylor speaking about the history of women in freethought (from CFI’s Women in Secularism Conference), it’s bound to be good. As always, if you hear anything especially noteworthy, leave a timestamp and summary in the comments! Read more
There have been a couple of posts on this site about Tommy Coleman and Brandon Jones, two college students who are currently battling the Hamilton County Commissioners (in Tennessee) because they pray “in Jesus’ name” at meetings: In order to pay for the filing fees and court costs associated with the case, they need to raise about $5,000. They’re more than halfway there on their fundraising page, but there’s only a day left to go. If you support what they’re… Read more
Miriam has a list of lies she was told when she was younger. Here’s a sampling: Being fat is the worst thing that could happen to you. Men don’t like strong, opinionated women. Your parents know best. Sex can only be one of two things: Dangerous, or Special and to be saved for The Right Person. Outside of the obvious religious myths, what would you add to her list? First thing that comes to my mind: Meat-eaters are bad people…. Read more
It was bad enough when we learned that an 11-year-old girl with Down Syndrome, Rimsha Masih, was arrested for blasphemy for alleged Koran desecration in Pakistan. Now, we’ve learned that Muslim cleric Khalid Chishti may have planted the evidence on her: The cleric, Khalid Chishti, was arrested late Saturday for allegedly planting pages of a Qur’an in a shopping bag containing burned papers and ash that had been carried by the Christian girl, said Munir Jaffery, an investigating officer in… Read more
Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, O.P. is not a popular guy within the Catholic Church. Mostly because he has this nasty habit of calling them out on their shit. In the video below, he speaks with host Allison Hope Weiner on the online show Media Mayhem about “Abuse, Cover-Up and the Catholic Church”: As always, if you hear anything noteworthy, please leave the timestamp and summary in the comments! (Thanks to Matthew for the link!) Read more
