I had previously mentioned my upcoming Summer of Christianity. For some personal reasons I’d rather not get into, I’ve decided not to go through with it. For what it’s worth, the family in question was wonderful about everything. Just wanted to get that out there. Read more
This is why you should never say “There are no atheists in foxholes.” It just leads to confusion. (Click to enlarge.) (via Darby Conley’s Get Fuzzy. Thanks to Brian for the link!) Read more
Jim Underdown, the Executive Director of the Center for Inquiry – Los Angeles, takes a page from Dante’s Inferno and outlines his Nine Circles of Atheist Hell: Circle #5 Any Catholic church in August in Chicago. You are sentenced to a perpetual wedding mass which includes taking communion, doing all the Stations of the Cross, and having gone to confession beforehand. You were at the groom’s bachelor party last night where you timed each other drinking juice glasses full of… Read more
Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a relatively curable disease: The survival rate is generally 90% or higher when the disease is detected during early stages, making it one of the more curable forms of cancer… Most patients who are able to be successfully treated (and thus enter remission) generally go on and live long and normal lives, due to a remission success rate of 90% to 95%. Of course, if your mother is a religious nut who refuses to let you have… Read more
Who knew atheists had their own card game? Unfortunate name, considering we’re all reminded of the Catholic cult, but it looks interesting enough… Opus-Dei: Existence After Religion™, is a new entertaining and irreverent card game that takes place in a universe where religion is almost completely something of the past. In this world without religious dogma, the players represent rival “Zeitgeists” (German, Time-Spirits) competing in a battle of rational ideas to maintain ethics, morals and meaningful lives for all by… Read more
As if there wasn’t enough religion in Oklahoma, the state House passed a bill to put a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the State Capitol. They should’ve just installed a giant middle finger with a plaque reading, “To the non-Christians.” At least that would be legal. Without debate, House members voted 83-2 for the bill on the National Day of Prayer in which televangelist and Oklahoma native Oral Roberts addressed the state Senate. A public prayer service was… Read more
I mentioned last week that the Indiana Atheist Bus campaign hit a snag when they city rejected their ad for being “too controversial” (which is another way of saying “you’re atheists, so forget it”). A local news channel did a report on it: There’s a girl in the segment saying, “You can’t be good without God!” — That’s her reason for why the ad should be rejected. That sort of messed up thinking is precisely why the ad needs to… Read more
What does Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane have to say about the rise of the atheists? “It’s about fucking time.” Here he is on Real Time with Bill Maher last night: Bill tries to give credit for this to his movie Religulous. Of course, this movement was happening long before he came onto the scene. It’s thanks to the national organizations for getting their acts together, the grassroots movement to get people to come out, the success of the bestselling… Read more
There have been a lot of stories this week about James Corbett, a history teacher at a public high school in California. A Christian student of his, Chad Farnan, had claimed Corbett was being hostile to religion in class. Corbett had spoken about his “unequivocal belief that creationism is superstitious nonsense” — of course, that is absolutely true. Nevertheless, Judge James Selna said there “was no legitimate secular purpose to the statement and it constituted ‘improper disapproval of religion in… Read more
Last night was Prom for my high school students. I never sign up to chaperone the dances… partly because I have no desire to see any of my students skanking it up on the dance floor. That was the least of Tyler Frost’s problems. He’s a senior at Heritage Christian School in Ohio, a fundamentalist Baptist school. His girlfriend goes to a public high school. He wanted to go to her Senior Prom because his own school doesn’t hold such… Read more
