Francis House, a non-profit group in Sacramento, does a lot of amazing work: Each morning, dozens of poor people line up at Francis House, located in Sacramento’s homeless services epicenter, for help with basic services such as housing and transportation. Now in its 42nd year, the organization is one of the largest homeless services agencies in the Sacramento region, serving upward of 25,000 people. It has an an annual budget of about $500,000. In addition to that, they help people… Read more
Congratulations to my dear friends at the Illinois Family Institute! They just made the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay Hate Groups… again: Want an example of their wretched ideology? On the Day of Silence (a student-led initiative to raise awareness about the “silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying”), IFI wants parents to remove their kids from the classroom (emphasis theirs): Call your children’s middle and high schools and ask if students and/or teachers will be permitted to refuse to… Read more
Using the exact words of Robert Green Ingersoll from 1887 (!!!), David M. Beadle has made a short film explaining what Secularism means: If you’d like to follow along, the transcript is below: Read more
On February 22nd, Daniel, the Catholic School Atheist, began his fundraiser for Responsible Charity. We here at Friendly Atheist felt so inspired by Daniel’s story that we decided to post about it. Originally, Daniel’s goal was to double his Catholic High School’s fundraising goal — they are raising money to build a fence for an orphanage in Africa. His original goal, $1,200, was reached and surpassed quickly. In fact, over the course of 14 days (through March 7th), Responsible Charity, received… Read more
David, a shoemaker from Germany, is working on a quest to make sure atheists have soles 🙂 … admittedly, an atheist shoes sounds like a peculiar idea. But we think a shoe is a lovely, understated way for atheists to out themselves and to be less shy about their godlessness. And we also think our Bauhaus-inspired, 1930s-infatuated shoes will be a welcome antidote to the samey junk pumped out by the big sneaker corporations… Love the video. Buy our shoes!… Read more
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has agreed to appear in a videotaped message that will play during the Reason Rally. He and Representative Pete Stark (D-California) represent the only politicians courageous enough to “speak” at the large gathering of atheists: Said a Harkin spokesperson, “Just like the rest of his colleagues in Congress, Senator Harkin, a lifelong Catholic, strongly endorses the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. It was out of this conviction that he agreed to the invitation to send… Read more
I’m just gonna leave this headline right here: The study conducted by the British Parliament showed there were 41 million Christians in Britain, down nearly 8 percent since 2004. Meanwhile, the number of nonbelievers stood at 13.4 million, up 49 percent over the same period. … “If these populations continue to shrink and grow by the same number of people each year,” the study said, “the number of people with no religion will overtake the number of Christians in Great… Read more
There’s a website called familysearch.org that allows you to search through the records of the Mormon Church and find information about people who are now dead, who have since been “baptized” into the Mormon faith… Like Anne Frank. Or Mahatma Gandhi. Or Elie Wiesel (not dead yet but a Mormon-to-be-named-later). Obviously, a “proxy baptism” has absolutely no effect. People don’t magically become Mormon after they die… because, you know, they’re dead. (I know, I know, that sounds obvious, but try… Read more
At the start of the Oklahoma state legislature’s sessions, they invite a pastor to speak before the elected officials. It’s a part of the official business. On March 1st (PDF), Rep. George Faught invited Pastor Bill Ledbetter of Fairview Baptist Church to speak to the House of Representatives. And… well… you should just watch this: I watched the whole damn thing. And here are the soundbytes I took away from it: … this great nation was underpinned and rooted and… Read more
