Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern is back in the news. (She’s the lovely lady who said gays are a bigger threat in America than terrorists a little while back.) So how much nuttier can she get? She is now saying that our country’s problems are due to Obama not being religious enough, the godless heathens and their pornography, and (of course) those sodomizing gays. The economic crisis, for example, is just a product of our immoral nature. Here’s the full… Read more
Jason lives in Indiana, home of the “In God We Trust” license plates. He applied for a personalized license plate reading NO GODS. Take a wild guess what happened… Rejected. Why? It was deemed inappropriate. According to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles: Personalized license plates allow creativity; however, under Indiana Statue IC 9-18-15-4 (b) the BMV may refuse to issue a combination of letters or numerals, or both, that carry a connotation offensive to good taste and decency. The BMV… Read more
***Update***: AxeGrrl informed me that there’s an older video of Björn speaking about his atheistic beliefs: … Here’s Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA, talking about the Swedish atheist bus campaign and why the country shouldn’t be mixing religion with schools: Without thinking too much about it at the time, when I wrote the lyrics for Abba’s songs the message I wished to convey tallies well with campaigns launched recently by humanist organisations in the UK, US and Australia: “There’s probably no… Read more
My fellow Secular Student Alliance board member Phil Ferguson is an avid Pharyngula reader and knows PZ Myers has an opinion or two about the Creation Museum. Since PZ is speaking at our conference the first weekend in August, he had an idea: Why not invite PZ to join us a day early, have as many people as possible join us, and lead a tour through the Creation Museum? PZ graciously agreed to do it and now we’re inviting anyone… Read more
Last night, the anonymous atheist who donated money for the New York City atheist bus campaign was named “Worse” (i.e. #3) on Keith Olbermann’s list of Worst Persons in the World: Olbermann said the following: Tonight’s worst persons in the world. The bronze: To the person who donated the scratch for ten thousand dollars worth of ads on the sides of buses in New York City, promoting atheism. They read, “You don’t have to believe in God to be a… Read more
Reports started going around this morning that President Obama had finally chosen a church: Now, in an unexpected move, Obama has told White House aides that instead of joining a congregation in Washington, D.C., he will follow in George W. Bush’s footsteps and make his primary place of worship Evergreen Chapel, the nondenominational church at Camp David. In a rush to break this news, Amy Sullivan at Time may have spoken to soon. The Christian Science Monitor and several other… Read more
***Update***: As commenters have noted, the book is not available for pre-order in America… just in the UK. Yet another reason they are superior to us 🙂 … Ariane Sherine is the brain behind the Atheist Bus Campaign, and her new book The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas is finally available for pre-order: The book features (not coincidentally?) “42 atheist celebrities, comedians, scientists and writers” offering “funny and serious tips for enjoying the Christmas season.” In case you need an incentive… Read more
The upside: The Sunday Times (UK) ran a series of pieces about Camp Quest UK. The downside: They kept referring to it as a camp for atheists. Which it most certainly is not. This headline doesn’t help: Dawkins sets up kids’ camp to groom atheists Neither do excerpts from the articles: The author of The God Delusion is helping to launch Britain’s first summer retreat for non-believers, where children will have lessons in evolution and sing along to John Lennon’s… Read more
Remember that video “Betty Bowers Explains Traditional Marriage to Everyone Else”? (In case you don’t remember, here’s the link.) Today, at the Atheist Film Festival in San Francisco, she won an award for “Most Humorous YouTube Video.” Woo! Here’s her acceptance speech: The whole thing is entertaining but the last couple seconds are particularly sweet… (via Atheist Media Blog) Read more
Six dozen paleontologists visited the Creation Museum last week. There’s a joke in there somewhere. Amazingly, they were shocked by what they saw: “It’s like a theme park, but the problem is it masquerades as truth,” said Derek Briggs, a Yale University paleontologist. … The critique of scientists even extends to the gift shop, where among the DVDs for sale is one entitled, “The Cure for a Culture in Crisis: It doesn’t take a Ph.D.” It all had Wednesday’s visitors… Read more
