Once again, I’m going to be interviewing someone soon for a project. The subject I will be discussing is why so many people believe in a god. (Could that many people really be wrong?!) I could use some help in compiling questions to ask. Here are some questions I thought of that are the kind I’m looking for: Do atheists really believe billions of people are mistaken about their beliefs? Can we deny someone else’s personal testimony about God? Why… Read more
I expect we’ll all enjoy Doonesbury this week: The bigger question: What symbol will represent Mark Sanford? If you’re unfamiliar with The Family, you can see Bill Maher’s interview with Jeff Sharlet, the man who authored a book about the secretive Christian organization: (Thanks to Eric for the link!) Read more
Father Jonathan Morris appeared on FOXNews again… He was there to speak partly about Kara Neumann’s parents, the people who let her die because they wanted to heal her sickness through prayer instead of modern medicine. His goal was to defend God, while at the same time saying what the parents did was wrong. His argument is essentially that God gave us doctors, so let’s use them — something I imagine a lot of Christians who hear this story are… Read more
It’s fun explaining religious-y beliefs to gullible people: (via Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis) Read more
A new study from the University of Michigan tells us some somewhat surprising news about college majors and their effect on religiosity. Majoring in which subjects would decrease your religiosity? (That is, make you less likely to go to church and less likely to view religion as a good thing) According to the study: the humanities (e.g. Music, Religion, Philosophy) and the social sciences (e.g. Economics, Sociology, Psychology). If the findings are accurate, I’m not too shocked to see those… Read more
This past May and June, 25 buses in Chicago ran the following ad, courtesy of the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign: It didn’t receive the level of publicity we’ve seen with other atheist bus ads, but still, it was nice to get the message out there. Now, the New Life Covenant Oakwood Church is countering with its own ad, which looks something like this: It reads: God is still God whether you believe it or not… Just believe.” Essentially, they ran… Read more
You just have to fold your hands like this: No wonder His Noodliness hasn’t been answering my prayers. I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time! (via Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) Read more
One way to know whether to take a reporter seriously is to see whether he/she paid attention to details and got them correct. It’s also important to see what mistakes were made… and how they play into the story. Was it just a harmless mistake or something else? Ian Bell in the Sunday Herald (Scotland) is trying to persuade the reader that Camp Quest is really a breeding group for atheists, despite what organizers say. He makes a “mistake” that… Read more
Last week, courtesy of Jeff Wagg, I learned about a Denny’s in Euless, Texas that was offering this special discount: Danielle and her friend Jenny wanted to test this promotion out with a non-religious bulletin, so they visited the North Texas Church of Freethought: … I looked at the bulletin, and it had the required information for the promotion, which was the full name of the organization and its mailing address. Off we went! You can visit her site to… Read more
I’m going to be interviewing someone soon for a project. The subject is religious texts (mostly the Bible, but also the Koran and others). I could use some help in compiling questions to ask. I’m not focusing on, say, specific contradictions in the Bible. What I’m looking for are broader questions about the books. Here are some that came to my mind: What do we actually know about historical religious figures like Jesus and Mohammad? Did they really exist? Are… Read more
