The brilliant writer, speaker, and thinker died tonight at the age of 62 after a tough battle with esophageal cancer. His final piece for Vanity Fair is as powerful as anything else he’s written. If this is a surprise to anyone, it may be because we harbored some secret hope that he’d find a way to beat cancer into submission. Or somehow argue it out of his body. While I’ve seen him from a distance at a conference or two… Read more
Remember back in July when a consecrated communion wafer fell on a church’s floor, was placed in water, and turned red? A number of Catholics were acting like the Pope had knocked on their front door: they were way too excited about something that was bound to be anti-climactic. [St. Augustine Church Rev. John Echert] added: “I’ve never in my 24 years as a priest seen or been aware of a phenomenon where a consecrated host placed in water turns… Read more
All you have to do to win is promote Sean Faircloth’s Ten Point Vision of a Secular America: Make a video, create a graphic image, write a song, or try something else! The deadline for submissions to this contest is Thursday, January 19th, 2012. Contestants must be from North America. The two plane tickets for the winning submission will only be offered from North American locations to meet Richard Dawkins at the Reason Rally. (If you cannot make it to… Read more
The Atheist Alliance International 2012 North American Convention will take place in Kamloops, BC, Canada May 18th – 20th. The roster of speakers looks great, there’s a debate on god’s existence Friday night featuring Matt Dillahunty, and hotel rooms are still available (though probably not for very long). So get registered if you can make it! (Thanks to Loren for the link!) Read more
By now, you’ve heard plenty about Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow and his public displays of faith. Maybe it’s not a big deal to you and you turn up your intellectual nose at professional sports, but this guy, for all intents and purposes, is preaching to tens of millions of Americans every week, whether they like it or not. One result of his efforts is “Tebowing” which essentially means assuming a “bowing thinker” pose to emulate Tim Tebow’s pre/in-game prayers…. Read more
BANG!: How We Came To Be by Michael Rubino is a beautifully designed 62-page children’s book on how humans came into existence. We start at the “nothing,” before the Big Bang, and go all the way through single-celled amoebas, fish with feet, and apes standing up to full-fledged humans. Each left-hand page is filled with simply gorgeous artwork on the subject described on the right-hand page. In this way, it is a lot like every other children’s book: many pictures… Read more
Sports create narratives. Really appealing ones — underdog stories, hard-work parables, rags-to-riches daydreams. But ultimately, sports teams are run by businessmen, not writers, and athletes are people with jobs first and heroes second (if at all). Fans of the St. Louis Cardinals got a painful reminder of exactly that last week, when superstar first baseman Albert Pujols took his talents to the Los Angeles Angels for a 10-year, $254 million deal. Cardinals fans are understandably pretty upset, and the possessiveness… Read more
What happens when a local government allows groups to put up holiday displays on public property? They can’t legally favor one group over another, so they have to be fair about doling out spaces. In Santa Monica, California, 21 display places were up for grabs and a lottery determined who’d get the spaces. Atheists won 18 of the spots. (Though they’re only using three of them.) Christians won 2. Jews won 1. Guess who’s complaining? The Nativity story that once… Read more
Last month, the board of directors of the Foundation Beyond Belief (including me) met in Chicago to discuss the future of the organization, both immediate and long-term. One of the major issues we talked about was the number of charities we supported each quarter (10, including FBB) and how much money we were donating to them: We’ve heard that it’s often hard for members to get familiar with our slate of ten charities each quarter before a new quarter is… Read more
