After Madison, Wisconsin; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “Out of the Closet” billboard campaign is now in Columbus, Ohio. “We atheists and agnostics are your neighbor, your classmate, your colleague, the person who opens the door for you at the grocery store,” says Dan Barker, FFRF co-president. “We’re your friendly neighborhood atheists and agnostics.” “Our members are FFRF’s greatest asset, the best advertisement for freethought,” adds Annie Laurie Gaylor, who co-directs FFRF with Barker…. Read more
Oscar Zavala is an infantry squad leader in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division and he’s served two tours in Afghanistan. Last month, he nearly lost his life: On May 28th, Oscar was leading his squad on a foot patrol in eastern Afghanistan when he was injured by an explosive device in eastern Afghanistan. He was evacuated from the scene quickly and is currently recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. What you probably won’t hear about anywhere else is that… Read more
As I stated before, the $31,000+ you all raised for Damon Fowler is now in a trust fund and will go toward his education when the time comes. Some people (including commenters on this site and the Support Damon Facebook page) are upset by this because it means Damon can’t use the money to buy a car or other things that’ll help him transition into life away from home. Reader Hannah set up a (separate) donation drive on Reddit to… Read more
The Miss USA Pageant was last night. (SPOILERS BELOW Oh, screw it, no one cares.) Before the competition took place, all 51 delegates were asked a series of questions… including: “Should evolution be taught in schools?” This is just full of fail…: Watch that thing. All 14:48 of it. I dare you. What you see are a lot of women who (at least in theory) are supposed to represent our country but who know jack shit about science. (Come to… Read more
Note: Letter writers’ names are changed to protect their privacy. Dear Richard, I’m married to a strong (and sweet) Christian woman. Since we’ve been married, I’ve realized that I’m an atheist. I’ve tried explaining this to her a couple times, but her belief in God is so natural to her that it never really sinks in. She thinks I’m “questioning my faith” or “mad at God.” I’m not doing either, I just don’t believe he exists. I still continue to… Read more
Last week, I was part of a religious roundtable discussion for the Chicago Tribune — they wanted people representing different faiths (and no faith) to talk with some staffers about the paper’s religious coverage. At one point, we introduced ourselves, saying our name, who we represented, and the message we wanted to get across. One of the people representing a let’s-all-get-along organization said as one of her goals (I’m paraphrasing): As this election season gets underway, I want to make… Read more
The Idaho Atheists weren’t the only ones who did some highway cleanup over the weekend! The Capital Region Atheists & Agnostics did the same thing in New York: Things we learned today, as said on Facebook by Rick, the event’s organizer: Apparently, high proportions of the nation’s dwindling number of smokers are drawn, irresistibly, to Cohoes, NY, much in the way that visionaries flocked to Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Litterers exhibit a strong preference for… Read more
If you’re watching the U.S. Open championship (because you really like golf… or you lost the remote… dammit, where’s my remote?), then you might have caught a nice little surprise in NBC’s introduction, when they said the Pledge of Allegiance: “Under God” was just skipped over (so was “indivisible”), so it went like this: ONE NATION… [Soldier noises]… WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. Twitter’s currently in an uproar over this. (via Reddit/r/atheism) ***Update***: Apparently, the Pledge was said twice,… Read more
Police in Bend, Oregon may have caught the vandals who tagged a couple local churches with references to the Flying Spaghetti Monster: Three teenagers suspected in multiple recent graffiti incidents were arrested by Bend Police shortly before 2 a.m. Saturday. … The three suspects were jailed and released. They face four counts each of first-degree criminal mischief. I’m not mentioning their names. They don’t deserve the extra publicity. But I hope this is the last we hear of the church… Read more
Last week, the Idaho Atheists helped clean up a two-mile stretch of Boise: There was lots of great conversation and we found some interesting things. Card by card we picked up almost a whole deck of cards, we also picked up a porn magazine almost page by page, a page from a hymnal, a church bulletin, a small baggy of unidentified pills, and a pack of 1 cc syringes (without the needle). So the litterers include porn enthusiasts and Christians…. Read more
