Liberty University, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, has decided to stop recognizing the Democratic Party club at the school “because its parent organization stands against the conservative Christian school’s moral principles.” Mark Hine, the VP for Student Affairs sent this email to the organization last week: … Even though this club may not support the more radical planks of the democratic party, the democratic party is still the parent organization of the club on campus. The Democratic Party Platform… Read more
A great question at Reddit (paraphrased below): So many of our grandparents were racist, and many of our parents are homophobes. Which of our closely held beliefs will our own children and grandchildren by appalled by? Some of the responses include: Eating meat Our drug policies Circumcision Of course, I’d like to include religious faith on the list, but I fear that’ll still be around for a while… What would you add to the list? Read more
The LA Times published Charlotte Allen’s anti-atheist rant on Sunday. Today, they published a response by PZ Myers. Guess which of the two pieces makes more sense? She should drop the pretense that the objectionable part of our character is our lack of excitement. What really annoys Allen is that in our books, blogs and media appearances, we challenge religious preconceptions. That’s all we do. It’s admittedly not exactly a roller-coaster ride of thrills, but it does annoy the superstitious… Read more
***Update***: There are 25 buses with the ads. They will be up through June. … Finally! Atheist bus ads come to my city of of Chicago, thanks to a private donor who gave money to the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign. What will the ads look like? A simple and true statement, yet powerful enough to begin several conversations. I’m not sure when these will go live, but I’m already looking forward to the fake controversy that local media will generate… Read more
Richard Wade here. A few days ago, Hemant brought to our attention an article written by Randal Rauser, “Atheism: A Cost/Benefit Analysis.” He is an associate professor of historical theology at Taylor Seminary, Edmonton, Canada. Hemant’s post brought on a small avalanche of well-crafted rebuttals both on this blog and over on the site where Mr. Rauser had published, the Christian Post. Now it appears that Mr. Rauser has re-posted his exact same article, but all the comments and arguments… Read more
A more serious question from a reader: A friend I met online has recently left the Quiverfull movement. She has 9 children and is seriously doubting her faith. But she fears that her husband, privately manipulative but publicly charming, will win full custody because she is not “religious enough” anymore. Unfortunately upon searching through the atheist web presence, I found many examples to validate her fear, but no contact information for organizations which might be able to offer legal advice… Read more
My friend Hope Knutsson is president of Sidmennt (The Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association). Her group was all over the news (in Iceland and beyond) this week because of what they did to welcome in their new Parliament — it was an idea hatched and implemented in under 36 hours. Here’s her story: The new session of the Althing, the Icelandic Parliament, is always opened with the Members of Parliament going into the main cathedral in Reykjavik, which is next door… Read more
When a new Chick Track pops up and I see that it features black people, I cringe in advance… This one doesn’t fail to disappoint. It’s about young Denzel who would do anything — anything — to become a great basketball player. His dad’s a preacher and his brother was killed in a drive-by. Thank you, Jack Chick, for breaking the stereotypes. And we can always count on these tracts to tell us new and useful information… I’d love to… Read more
Charlotte Allen wrote her absurd anti-atheist rant in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. By Monday, a staffer had already issued a response — a non-apology which focused on the backlash from atheists. Yesterday, they began publishing letters-to-the-editor. The one thing that Allen gets right is that many atheists are motivated by anger. We are angry that freedom is deprived from people of all faiths by people of one faith simply because majority rules. We are angry that scientific research… Read more
