I was inspired and bored the other day. And that’s never good for anyone. After seeing Daniel Florien’s list, and this list of popular church blogs, I had a desire to crunch some numbers. Disclaimer: Ranking popularity is a way to measure quantity over quality. And when it comes to writing about atheism, there’s a great argument to be made that quality of postings is far more important than how popular your blog is. I would hope the higher ranking… Read more
I take it you can find these at the same pharmacies where they don’t dispense birth control and morning-after pills for “moral” reasons: There are more products where those came from courtesy of Derek Walborn at CollegeHumor.com. Read more
Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who landed a plane safely into the Hudson River, was asked on 60 Minutes tonight about whether or not he prayed when US Airways Flight 1549 had lost its engines. Here’s Katie Couric talking with CNN’s Howard Kurtz about her interview with the pilot: Couric:… In fact, at one point I said [to Sullenberger], “Did you pray at any moment?” And he said, “There were a lot of people in the cabin doing that… Read more
So hilariously cruel… and yet you can’t look away. I know what I will be doing when my future octuplets are born: Read more
Mike Clawson (NOT Hemant) here… Last month I promised a review of Daniel Harrell’s new book, Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith. This is a book written by a Christian pastor for other Christians, but on a topic that I know many of you have an interest in: the intersection of Christian faith and evolutionary science. I have written a more detailed review of the book from my own Christian perspective on my blog. However, there are a number… Read more
Discussing The God Delusion would make for one interesting Sunday School class… (via Atheist Cartoons) Read more
As I mentioned yesterday, we all know how important it is for colleges to reach out to atheists and for atheists to reach out to each other — especially when they’re surrounded by religion everywhere. The exciting news is that from the beginning of 2008 to the end of it, the number of Secular Student Alliance affiliates grew by 40%. We finished the year at 129 campus groups around the world. There’s no non-exciting news. What did our affiliates do… Read more
Reader Craig was running low on checks the other day so he went online to order some more. He noticed that he could customize his checks — have quotations put on them, get checks that use his favorite sports team’s logo, etc. He could also choose from a few religious options, like getting checks that contained the saying, “Thanks be to the Lord.” Since none of those options appealed to him, Craig created his own checks and used a saying… Read more
If you’re offended by this, then I’ll just say it was drawn by a Christian pastor, David Hayward: Some of this is painfully honest — nice to see a Christian admitting some of the flaws within his own community. Some of it, even I think goes too far — not all Christians are hypocritical and sexless. Now I wonder: What characteristics would the “perfect atheist” possess? (via nakedpastor) Read more
Research psychologist Jesse Bering writes in Scientific American about how homophobes have “secret gay urges”: I may have failed as a homophobe, but unfortunately, many people succeed. And it turns out we may have something in common—many young, homophobic males may secretly harbor homosexual desires (whether they are consciously trying to deceive the world about them as I was or not even aware they exist). The best part of the article seems to be the methodology of the experiment. They… Read more