Merril Leroy Jessop, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, got what he deserved. Jessop was convicted Wednesday on allegations that he illegally married and fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl while living at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Schleicher County in 2006. He was sentenced to 75 years in prison and has to pay a $10,000 fine for sexual assault of a child. in addition to impregnating an underage girl, he… Read more
It made the rounds quite a bit yesterday, but in case you missed it, the Raleigh News & Observer ran a fantastic article about atheist benefactor Todd Stiefel. Todd has given organization-changing gifts to the Secular Student Alliance, Secular Coalition for America, and American Atheists in the past year. That’s not all: Last week, he donated $20,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi so it could sponsor a high school prom after the Itawamba County School District canceled… Read more
Alexandria High School in Alabama is a public school where the administrators are uneducated about the law. They thought it was okay for students to recite Christian prayers over the public address system. It took a young man (who wishes to remain anonymous) to challenge the practice: “Every day in the morning we would have student-led prayer over the PA system and I looked this up. It’s illegal,” the student said. “It wasn’t just me; there were a bunch of… Read more
Dear Richard, I’m a high school student, and while my parents know this, my Christian mother insists on sending me to church Youth Group every Friday. It doesn’t really bother me, but submitting to church feels as though I’m submitting to my mother. She believes that this is a “phase” and that it will “disappear” if I keep going to church. Some of my friends know that I’m atheist, but my church friends/acquaintances have no clue. I don’t like telling… Read more
Religious fundamentalists have a lot of babies. They don’t even have to be fundies. I mean, there’s clearly something in holy water that makes a Catholic woman’s uterus extra-powerful. Last year, I shared an excerpt from Kathryn Joyce’s book Quiverfull that really haunted me. It described a patriarch’s long-term plans for his family: One of Geoffrey Botkin’s catchiest contributions to patriarchy is his branding of the dominion vision in his “two-hundred-year plan for multigenerational faithfulness”: a concept that started as… Read more
Phil Zuckerman is the author of Society Without God and the forthcoming book Faith No More: How and Why People Reject Religion. He spoke at the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s convention last November and a transcript of his talk is now available online in the most recent issue of Freethought Today. In it, he listed (in no particular order) the Top 10 good things about being godless: Secularity is on the rise in the U.S. and throughout much of the… Read more
David Hayward draws the truth: Ultimately, we all just end up in the same place. The different is that atheists are honest about what happens when we all die. We don’t make up stories about the afterlife. We don’t claim to have knowledge about something no one has ever experienced. We accept that death is the end of the line and hopefully we’ve left behind wonderful memories and a positive legacy for those around us. Side note #1: One of… Read more
Madeline Kara Neumann died unnecessarily a couple years ago because her parents prayed for her recovery from ketoacidosis instead of taking her to a doctor. The whole tragedy shed light on the exemptions given to religious parents under Wisconsin law. As it now stands, her parents have to spend a month in jail every year for six years. Under current Wisconsin law, parents can’t be found guilty of child abuse if they choose spiritual treatment rather than medicine or surgery…. Read more
Hi everyone, this is Ron Gold. Latino-Americans have traditionally been dependable Catholics, though they are slowly but surely becoming more religiously diverse, as seen below: Notice the number who report no religion has almost doubled from 1990 to 2008, going from 6.4% to 12.4%. This is encouraging, because it shows that cultural influences can drive people to become more moderate and enlightened in their religious beliefs. Hopefully, other cultures can benefit from assimilation in a similar manner. Read more
Can we reconcile science and religion? The host of American Public Media’s Speaking of Faith, Krista Tippett, believes we can. She calls them both “pursuits of cohesive knowledge and underlying truths” and does not believe they are necessarily in opposition. (Clearly, a view everyone reading this shares…) In her new book, Einstein’s God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit, Tippett speaks to a number of scientists, theologians, Templeton prize winners (what category are they in?), and artists about these… Read more
