It’s been a while since we’ve heard that name… For those unaware, Dennis Markuze is the Montreal resident who was infamous for making death threats to atheists online as well as spouting crazy rants, using a variety of pseudonyms and a seemingly endless supply of Twitter/Facebook handles. If you blogged or tweeted about atheism — or even commented on sites about it — you were likely one of his “victims.” Last year, thanks to pushback from a number of threat… Read more
The latest issue of Freethought Today (May, 2012) tells a wonderful story of a student who tried to begin an atheist group at his high school… only to have it denied. That’s when FFRF stepped in. … Colin Muller, a junior at George Walton Comprehensive High School in Marietta, Ga., was denied approval from his school in April to start a new student group titled Freethinkers for Acceptance Cooperation and Trust. (FACT). The school has more than 70 approved student… Read more
If you haven’t been paying attention for the last few days, you can catch up and check out Max Nielson’s story here, here, and here. He’s a student who tried to put a stop to his public high school’s graduation prayer and the story has reached SourceFed! Max also had an interview with another local news station, the local FOX affiliate, which (if you ask me) is the best interview so far. There’s been a lot of concern raised… Read more
On Sunday, pastor Rick Warren tweeted this (Yesterday, he deleted it… thanks, screenshots!): Before we get into how bad of an idea tweeting this joke is, let’s be clear here. Rick Warren isn’t some nobody. This man is a pastor of Saddleback Church, a mega-church with ten locations and weekly attendance around 20,000 parishioners. He delivered the inaguration prayer for President Obama. As of this tweet, he had 623,000 followers on Twitter, where his bio says that he mentors young… Read more
According to a Gallup poll released today, 46% of Americans believe in Creationism, 32% of Americans believe in god-guided evolution, and 15% of Americans are actually right: We are a country full of deluded people… Not surprisingly, the less education you have, the more likely you are to believe in nonsense: Americans with postgraduate education are most likely of all the educational groups to say humans evolved without God’s guidance, and least likely to say God created humans in their… Read more
Last month, a few different billboards for the Mid Ohio Atheists went up in the city of Mansfield: Incredibly, that middle one turned out to be the most offensive. Today we received the news that the owner of the land where one of our billboards was placed has threatened to cancel his lease with Lamar if they do not take down our billboard. Had I been forced to guess which one of the three we put up people would find… Read more
In news that’s shocking to no one, the Catholic Church is in the middle of another scandal: Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee. So now we know how much money the Catholic Church thinks a child’s innocence is worth. Just to be clear: Priests molested children. But instead of… Read more
The last time we talked about the Ten Commandments banner in Giles County schools, the district has suggested surrounding it with other “historical documents” and a judge had offered the district a compromise: Just cut the Ten Commandments down to six! Where are we at now? There’s good news! The Giles County School Board voted today to remove a copy of the Ten Commandments that has hung on a wall of Narrows High School during a year and a half… Read more
