Did religion come up at the dinner table? Was your atheism an issue? How did you handle it? Is there now one fewer family member…? Share your stories on this thread, or send them to me, and I’ll compile a list! Read more
A step-by-step guide for those of you in inter-faithical relationships: (via Glocal Christianity) Read more
If you’re still shopping around for a science-obsessed child, check out Charlie’s Playhouse — shipping is free to anywhere in the continental U.S. for the next week! You can finally get that Giant Timeline of Evolution you’ve been dreaming about: Read more
You may already have heard that Focus on the Family is cutting jobs: “There’s still a great demand for the resources we offer,” said Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger on Tuesday. “It’s simply a fact that the economy is affecting our donors and, therefore, affecting us.” The staff reductions, which will decrease the number of employees from about 1,150 to about 950, include 149 people whose positions will be eliminated, and 53 vacant positions that will be cut. The ministry founded… Read more
Last week, I spoke to the Secular Students Association at Elmhurst College in Illinois. Before the evening ended, we took the obligatory amusing group photo. This one includes students of a few other faiths, too, but they had a great sense of humor about it: Do any other student groups take semi-sacrilegious photos? If you have any good ones, please send them to me at ! (Thanks to Afiya for the pic!) Read more
Here’s an interesting new blog — one for atheists who are right-wing, center-right, and libertarian: We believe that conservative principles and policies need not be grounded in a specific set of supernatural claims. Rather, conservatism serves the ends of “Human Flourishing,” what the Greeks termed Eudaimonia. Secular conservatism takes the empirical world for what it is, and accepts that the making of it the best that it can be is only possible through our faculties of reason. John Derbyshire is… Read more
Tom Ackerman at Religious Dispatches no longer recognizes marriage: Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend. She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,” “Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.” The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years, “How’s your longtime companion, Jill?” “She’s my wife!” “Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.” Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels…. Read more
