I got this email yesterday from a North Carolina resident: Over the past couple of years I have slowly realized, that… I don’t believe in the spirit in the sky with magical powers. This is all fine and dandy, except I literally live in the middle of the bible belt. Nearly my entire community it Christian, I have 6 churches in walking distance of my house. I am constantly being invited to church and to youth functions. I do not… Read more
Here’s a great example of where I don’t want to go after religious people, but they’re doing just enough to push me away from them. Agnostic Carrol Roberson was in court on a disorderly conduct charge when he noticed that the pews in the Southaven, Mississippi courtroom had crosses on them. This made him upset. He felt he couldn’t get a fair trial if religion played a role at the courthouse. (I don’t actually understand that since his beliefs had… Read more
The Illinois Family Institute is at it again: The Day of Silence (a student-run initiative during which volunteers don’t speak on behalf of the members of the GLBT community who have been forced to be silent about their sexual identities) is coming up in April and IFI can’t stand any of that “inclusive,” “tolerant,” “accepting” type of behavior: Parents should call their middle and high school administrators and ask one question: Are students permitted to refuse to speak in class… Read more
***Update***: Dawkins has responded to the situation here: Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of… Read more
Note: When letter writers sign with their first names instead of a pseudonym or nickname, I randomly change their name for added anonymity. Rita wrote a long letter which I have edited and paraphrased for space reasons. She was raised as a Christian and has recently come out as an atheist to her friends from her home town. One girl in particular, whom I grew up with and whom I love very much, has become uber-conservative and evangelical in recent… Read more
Ray Comfort wants to treat you to a free dinner at Red Lobster. Does he have an ulterior motive? Never… It’ll be nothing like that time an atheist group offered to meet him for dinner, and Ray paid the tab, and wrote about how wonderful he was for doing it afterwards. In any case, he’s trying to cover his bases this time around: It’s not a publicity stunt (it would be a pretty pathetic one). There is no ulterior motive…. Read more
Since we’ve been talking about abortion on this site pretty heavily, this story seemed appropriate and highly disturbing. Partly because it means some people actually elected this nutjob. [Virginia] State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God’s punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy. He made that statement Thursday at a press conference to oppose state funding for Planned Parenthood. “The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has… Read more
Brother Jed & Sister Cindy are notorious campus preachers and they were at the University of Arizona last week. Reader Benjamin tells me it was a great recruiting tool for their Secular Student Alliance affiliate group: They’ve probably brought more new people to our campus group in 4 days than all the other events we’ve participated in over the last 5 months. And they’ve made the most of the experience. They also created a little game that’s fun for everyone… Read more
Are there any atheists out there who oppose same-sex marriages/civil unions? If so, reader Teresa would like to talk to you for a paper she’s writing. You can contact her directly. Thanks! Read more
The Secular Student Alliance recently held a leadership conference on the West Coast (at Stanford University) and there’s plenty of excellent talks from that conference available on YouTube. I know the sound quality is pretty weak (we’re working on that for the next leadership conference) but you can still get tons of great information from them! One attendee, Heather, even took notes on everything, in case you’d rather skip the videos. … Here’s the video shortlist: David Byars, President of… Read more
