A couple of Christian rockers have received over 75,000 hits on a YouTube video requesting viewers to boycott Bill Maher’s movie Religulous. Poe’s Law may be in effect. On one hand, The Rapture Right has other, older videos on their YouTube channel… On the other hand, this could just be a parody created by Maher’s people. The video is on the movie’s website, Disbeliefnet.com, after all… If they did it themselves, it really would be a great way to drum… Read more
The headline is “Nepal president endorses child goddess.” Somehow, the president intends to be taken seriously. But I can’t get through the article without being amazed that anyone is taking this absurdity seriously: Three-year-old Matine Shakya was chosen to replace the current Royal Kumari, 12-year-old Kumari Preeti Shakya, because the older girl is close to puberty, after which she will be considered ritually unclean. … The Kumari, which means virgin, must meet 32 strict criteria — including having a “chest… Read more
Bjorn is expanding on a list I’ve discussed before on this site and during lectures I give — 10 lessons atheists could learn from Christians. So far, he’s covered two topics in some depth. Charity Work: For all of the faults in theology, Christians have a lock on charity work. When someone thinks of Christian kindness, I doubt that they imagine brainwashing children to fear a non existent Hell and a deity who watches every move and knows your thoughts…. Read more
One of the upsides to the recent surge in atheism is that instead of just talking about evidences for/against God, we can expand the dialogue to include specific parts of atheism-culture. How to raise children without religion, for example. Rational Moms is a group blog that plans to discuss raising babies without faith. What sorts of issues come up? Well, what should you teach children about religion when you live in a very Christian area (where they will inevitably hear… Read more
Turns out Sarah Palin doesn’t follow the Bible as closely as we thought… Steve Wells points out the relevant Bible verses. Proverbs 10:10: He who winks the eye causes trouble, And a babbling fool will be ruined. Proverbs 6:12-15: A scoundrel and villain, who goes about with a corrupt mouth, who winks with his eye, signals with his feet and motions with his fingers, who plots evil with deceit in his heart — he always stirs up dissension. Therefore disaster… Read more
Here’s the update: Over the weekend, Bill Maher’s Religulous made $3,519,000 in around 500 theaters for a $6,972 per theater average. That puts it in 10th place for the weekend box office. (Sadly, it’s behind Kirk Cameron’s pro-Christianity movie Fireproof (8th place) which was in ~850 theaters.) However, it did do better than Expelled did on its opening weekend — Expelled made $2,970,848 in just over 1,000 theaters in its first days. In all, it made $7,690,545. Religulous looks like… Read more
It’s no Twilight, but here’s a young adult novel you may want to check out: Box Out tells the story of Liam Bergstrom, a sophomore basketball player at Horizon High School. Liam is a Roman Catholic and doesn’t feel comfortable when his coach leads the team in prayers that employ Protestant language and rituals. Although he doesn’t want to rock the boat and jeopardize his position on the team, Liam knows he has to do something. The story is eerily… Read more
The arguments against vegetarianism/veganism and atheism are both similar and weak, says Brad Pritikin. That’s just a snippet. The full comic can be seen here. If you’re one but not the other, what’s your reason? Perhaps you think, as co-artist and non-vegetarian Lisa Faires does, “I can’t stop because mmmm.” (via ReasonableComics) Read more
What are the similarities and differences between Bill Maher’s Religulous and Ben Stein’s Expelled? I haven’t seen either one yet (hopefully seeing Religulous soon), but the Orlando Sentinel’s Roger Moore compares the two films. First, the similarities: Both use mockery, sometimes droll, sometimes nakedly hostile, to ridicule their foes. Both travel far and wide to find interview subjects, sometimes apparently hiding their purpose from those they’re chatting with. Both mix in some pretty comical straw-men for their stars to humiliate… Read more
Let’s say you and your partner are thinking about your future babies. Neither of you are religious and you don’t care about baptism. It’s just some irrelevant ritual. But you figure both your parents would want a child to get baptised. What do you do? Reader Ray doesn’t mind letting the parents just go ahead with it: My feeling is that, because the ceremony has no meaning to anyone outside of that faith and the child certainly doesn’t know what’s… Read more
