***Update***: The school issued a response regarding the religious ceremony: 1. The baccalaureate ceremony is a privately sponsored religious event. The Tamaqua Area School District is not and will not be involved in or associated with the baccalaureate ceremony and does not or will not endorse the ceremony in any way. 2. As a public school entity, the Tamaqua Area School District does not or will not require any student to attend the baccalaureate ceremony. 3. The Tamaqua Area School… Read more
Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers sing about atheism. I laughed 🙂 (Thanks to Shannon for the link!) Read more
I love an engaged lesbian couple with a sense of humor: Is there anything that’s equally funny that you could use when two atheists get married? (via Joe. My. God.) Read more
According to Martin Ssempa, everything you need to know about homosexuality can be summarized by 2 Girls, 1 Cup. It’s laughable, until you realize Ssempa is a leading advocate of the Kill the Gays bill in Uganda, which could sentence homosexuals to death. (Thanks to Joe for the link) Read more
Michael Largo is the author of God’s Lunatics, a book being published by Harper Paperbacks later this month. What is the book about? [It] chronicles history’s vast and colorful cast of true believers — from the hidden side of the Bible’s eccentric characters to today’s street-corner doomsayers, and from extraterrestrial communicators, levitating hermits, and flagellating ascetics to self-serving preachers of overindulgence who believed money, sex, and drugs were the keys to the portal to divine understanding. In addition to the… Read more
Leonard Pitts, a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald, wrote a decent article about how Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has frequently opposed big government but is now backtracking because of the BP disaster: [Jindal] is singing a new song, starkly at odds with what he said last year in a speech before the Republican faithful. Now he’s begging for federal “interference.” He wants federal money, federal supplies, wants the feds to help create barrier islands to protect Louisiana wetlands… Read more
The Maldives is a tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean. You wouldn’t want to live there. According to the revised constitution, in article two, it says that the republic “is based on the principles of Islam.” Article nine says that “a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives”; number ten says that “no law contrary to any principle of Islam can be applied in the Maldives.” Article nineteen states that “citizens are free to participate in or… Read more
Dear Richard, I always read your advice letters and they always seem to make sense, so I felt you would be the best person to seek advice from. A month ago, I went out of town to visit the university I will be attending in the fall. When I came home, my family began acting very hostile towards me and I didn’t understand why. I endured about three days of constant insults, including being called idiotic when I didn’t even… Read more
Andrew Park had no problem raising his children, but he was stuck when one started asking him about religion. He had grown up faith-free and he wasn’t quite prepared when his son asked him whether or not God was real. If he didn’t give his son a good answer, no doubt there were others ready to give him false ones. How did Andrew respond? That’s the basis for his new book, Between a Church and a Hard Place. An excerpt… Read more
A lot of you have sent me emails about this and I’m hoping to fix it… Here’s the issue. If you share a posting from this site on Facebook (which is wonderful and I love that you do it), this is what people see: I would *like* it to look something like this: (This screenshot is courtesy of RSS Graffiti and not something you can really use to share a particular item, I don’t think.) What am I doing wrong?… Read more
