Would this bumper sticker help or hurt President Obama in a 2012 re-election bid? (Thanks to Jeff for the link!) Read more
This post is by Jesse Galef, who works for the Secular Coalition for America. He also blogs at Rant & Reason … Is religion the primary source of people’s moral judgments? It looks like a nation’s culture plays a larger role than religion itself. ‘David Hume’ had an interesting post on SecularRight.org last week examining data from the World Values Survey on abortion opinions between religions and between religions within a country: All things equal there was an international tendency… Read more
Reader Gryph offers a suggestion for new atheists (having recently left their faith) who are in relationships with Christians and want to come out to them: I’ve read several stories about how to deal with being in a relationship with someone after your own deconversion. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to convey my thoughts to my Christian wife without making her feel like I was attacking her. See, there’s a fine line between attacking… Read more
Look what came in the mail the other day: Woo! It’s the Italian version of I Sold My Soul on eBay, called Ho Venduto L’anima Su E-bay! I’ve accomplished a life-long goal: Writing a book with the word “Ho” in the title. (Do I get to go on a book tour in Italy now? Because that would be awesome.) Read more
(When Geometry Becomes Dirty, Part 1 is here.) … A colleague of mine had some time to kill after his kids finished a final exam last week. So he decided to play Pictionary on the electronic chalkboard in the room. The kids wrote down topics on scraps of paper and scrambled them up. Then, they chose teams. At one point, a kid went up to the board and drew the following… At this point, the teacher was shocked. He told… Read more
From a reader: As atheists we know better than to use woo to console us: Karma, prayer, chakras, puh-lease… But I really need to re-charge as the world of non-profit in which I work goes from suck to doomsday across the country. The more I try to come up with a logical solution to this problem the worse I feel. The thoughtful answers are no good. So what do you do when you feel like you are on the Titanic?… Read more
Everyone’s always picking on that one aspect of Jesus’ life… (via Jesus and Mo) … I don’t know why this one makes me laugh, but it does. The comic is Anomaly by Kennedy Rose, and the Jesus theme appears plenty of times. (via Jolly Heathen) Read more
Read this paragraph for a moment: Joel Anderson, a member of the California Assembly, has more expansive goals. He has introduced a bill in the state Legislature that would prohibit “virtual globe” services from providing unblurred pictures of schools, churches and government or medical facilities in California. It also would prohibit those services from providing street-view photos of those buildings. Anderson is worried that terrorists may be spying on certain buildings in order to plan future attacks. Outside the whole… Read more
I grew very excited when I saw the headline. I gather you can imagine my frustration afterwards… how dare they mislead me that way?! (Thanks to Nick for the link!) Read more
There’s a segment of Humanists that has tried (with varying degrees of success) to create local communities around the country — promoting “Sunday schools” for atheists and whatnot. The idea behind it is that “organized atheism” might not be an oxymoron and could actually be useful in helping advance our ideas. Robert Jensen couldn’t find a community like that around him, so he had to find it elsewhere: His convictions revolved around anti-war, feminist, anti-capitalist movements, but to him, the… Read more