We’re less than two weeks away from the Oklahoma Freethought Convention, taking place on June 23rd at the Tulsa Convention Center Assembly Hall. Tickets are still available, you can now see the convention schedule, and there’s also information about an afterparty! (Oh! And there’s a zero-tolerance harassment policy for the event. Good!) I’ll be at all the festivities. If you’re able to make it, consider coming out for the event! Read more
A recent Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll found that there are a bunch of Catholics in Ireland. Ok, not a surprise. But here’s the interesting part: many of them didn’t even believe in the tenets of their own faith: A total of 89 per cent of respondents were Catholic. The remainder were either not religious (6 per cent), Protestant (3 per cent) or from other faiths. … When it comes to the church’s teachings, many Catholics do not subscribe to key… Read more
Last month, Richard Dawkins & Daniel Dennett — half of the “Four Horsemen” — had a discussion in Oxford (in front of an audience) about religion, evolution, and all sorts of other fun stuff: Someone needs to take the clip of Dennett speaking at the 9:20 mark and turn it into a looped video… As always, if there are parts you really enjoyed or want to discuss, leave the timestamp and summary in the comments, Read more
You know how large chain stores will pay people to be “secret shoppers” to see how well their employees perform? Well there’s a company that does this exclusively for churches. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. It’s called Faith Perceptions: The Mystery Guest Program tells church leaders what first-time visitors think and feel during the worship experience. We hire primarily “unchurched” individuals to attend church services and they provide numerical and written feedback on their experiences. Faith… Read more
When it comes to high school class requirements, the rule of thumb is this: You have to do what the state requires… but if you’re interested in the subject, you should do more. In Illinois (PDF), for example, you have to take at least three years of math (including Algebra I and Geometry). But if you’re planning to major in engineering or business or anything that might require math, you want to take more than just three math classes. Colleges… Read more
In case you need a good read, Maren Stephenson has a wonderful story at Alternet. The short version: She and her husband were Mormons. He lost his faith. Conflict, conflict, tension, tension. Resolution. A couple of excerpts: We rarely talked about religion, yet it consumed us. When Sean replaced his temple garments — the sacred underwear he’d promised to wear day and night — with boxers, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was too much betrayal. I called up a… Read more
Fledgling author Timothy Kurek has a new book coming out this fall entitled Jesus In Drag. The premise? The author (who is straight) came out to his conservative Christian friends and family to see how they would react and he kept the label for a year: Raised and educated in the heart of the Bible-belt, I didn’t look at certain groups of people as valid or respectable. Liberals, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, I was taught to convert them all. But there… Read more
For some reason, the Oakland Unified School District in California has helped subsidize the 195 students at Saint Andrew Missionary Baptist Church Private School for 12 years for tens of thousands of dollars. That’s just one problem. Here’s another: The school lied about the 195 kids. There are actually fewer than 20. And those 20 kids are spending time at the local BART (public transit) station panhandling to get even more tuition money: At least one school board member is… Read more
Annie noticed this comment at Glenn Beck’s website for the Todd Stiefel article I posted about earlier: Enough said. Read more
