If you are, then American Atheists is looking for you: When someone emails us asking about an atheist-friendly lawyer in Cincinnati or Seattle or Omaha, we want to be able to direct that person to a lawyer that fits their legal needs. If someone in Denver is looking for a family law or divorce lawyer who is atheist-friendly then we should be able to help them with that and get them to a lawyer who meets their criteria. To do… Read more
This hotel in the Dominican Republic must be catering to atheists: (via Reddit — Thanks to Juan for the link!) Read more
Paul Harris at The Guardian (UK) has an article about how the rise of atheism in recent years is putting the ‘religious right on the defensive’… and he got this quotation from Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition for America: So far just one member of Congress, Californian Democrat Pete Stark, has admitted that he does not believe in God. “Privately, we know that there are 27 other members of Congress that have no belief in God. But we… Read more
As far as I know, no one I’m close to believes in New Age bullshit. Hoagy Wilson seems to be surrounded by that nonsense, though, and he’s written an ebook explaining how to deal with it. It’s called How to Talk to Your New Age Relative. An excerpt is below: One area of substantial challenge, and our final source for sample dialogues, is when the New Age relative creates a family financial crisis due to their New Age beliefs. This… Read more
I guess I’m supposed to be scared watching these Christians reenact life in Hell, so explain to me why I’m laughing… (You might want to lower the volume over the last 15 seconds. Goddamn, that’s annoying.) (via Christian Nightmares) Read more
What would you do if your child came home with this assignment from his high school’s World History class? (I’m going to ignore the precarious position of the male child…) And what if this followed another assignment in which the Ten Commandments were discussed in regards to how they changed the lives of the escaped slaves and how Moses received them from God? Well, I’d want some more information about this teacher and this class. I’d want to know if… Read more
What does an “atheist lobbyist” do? Amanda Knief is one of the few people who can answer that question from experience since she’s the Government Relations Manager for the Secular Coalition for America. You may remember Amanda as the person who asked President Obama why he still permitted taxpayer-funded organizations to practice faith-based discrimination: At the 2011 Secular Student Alliance conference, Amanda spoke about what she does and what all of us can do to make a difference in our… Read more
At a recent talk for the Center for Inquiry Michigan, the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Dan Barker described Christian beliefs in a pitch-perfect-and-yet-kinda-disturbing sort of way: Imagine you are strolling down the sidewalk and a man excitedly calls you over to his front porch to share some “great news,” Protestant minister-turned atheist author Dan Barker asked his audience on Wednesday. The man’s got a gruesome torture chamber in his basement, Barker said, but you don’t have to go down there…. Read more
A couple weeks ago, I posted a picture from reader Jessica that showed Christian books being sold at her daughter’s Wichita, Kansas public school book fair: This was especially surprising, given that Scholastic — the company sponsoring the book fair — doesn’t even carry religious titles… so how did they get there? The Freedom From Religion Foundation wants to know and they sent a letter (PDF) to the district yesterday. … it is assumed that a faculty member in charge… Read more
It’s not that hard to understand where public schools have to draw the line with respect to religion. Teachers and administrators are not allowed to proselytize during school hours or anytime they’re wearing their “Teacher” or “Coach” hats. They can, however, sponsor a Christian club after school (assuming the school allows clubs for other faiths and no faith as well) and talk about faith in that capacity. Students can pray or read the Bible in school (provided that it’s not… Read more
