While Congress was debating what to do with the Wall Street bailouts this week, they took the time to vote on one other piece of legislation dealing with money. Amidst the largest financial crisis in our nation’s history, our senators unanimously passed a bill yesterday supporting an organization that discriminates against atheists and gays. Yesterday, the Senate approved the “Boy Scouts of America Centennial Commemorative Coin Act” (S. 3070): The bill mandates that the U.S. Mint create and sell as… Read more
The blogroll has shrunk. Now it can expand! If you’re interested in joining, please fit these criteria: Write a blog with a religious, non-religious, or scientific bent (and be interesting)! Please make sure you have an RSS feed so I can read your posts through my Blog Reader! If that sentence made no sense to you, go here. As you can see from the nifty orange icons on the left of the current blogroll, cool people have RSS feeds. Check… Read more
I was waiting for my flight home from Minnesota the other day… so I had to do it: The infamous Larry Craig bathroom. Somehow, the trip just felt complete after finding that. Read more
Dan Barker, the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, used to be a fundamentalist evangelical preacher. He writes all about it in his book Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists. In the latest Secular Student Alliance newsletter, he explains the mindset of a fundamentalist: It would be your lucky day when God directed you to sit next to me on a bus. Maybe you didn’t consciously admit that you wanted the truth I was… Read more
Don’t forget to fill out this coupon while you stand in line to purchase tickets for Bill Maher’s new movie Religulous! If you turn in ten of those coupons, you get a special surprise from the Jonas Brothers! In fact, you should just check out the entire advertisement from the Landover Baptist Church (PDF). Read more
If you’re in New York City, you can get your dose of atheism and comedy at The PIT Saturday night! The show is Saturday night at 11:00 p.m. It features: Jared Logan (Comedy Central’s Live At Gotham) Ross Hyzer (Aspen Comedy Festival) Jamie Kilstein (BBC, Comedy Central) Hosted By John Knefel (The Huffington Post) With a video by Mike Drucker (The Onion, McSweeney’s) Tickets are $8. If I were in NYC this Saturday, I’d go. If anyone wants to buy… Read more
I’ve written before about a student activist from Oregon, Leslie Zukor, who has been running a service project for a few years now where she donates freethought books to prisoners. It a way to counteract the potentially harmful religious literature they’re usually exposed to behind bars. Every now and then, the prisoners send Leslie a letter of appreciation. Leslie just passed along this letter to me — it was sent to her last week. It shows how important it is… Read more
A couple years ago, a college friend of mine found out they were holding a casting call for extras for a Nicolas Cage movie being filmed in Chicago called The Weatherman. The two of us showed up at an office building in the city, where a staffer had us both fill out forms with vital information (name, age, height, etc) and took a polaroid an inch from our face. A few days later, I got a call saying they wanted… Read more
I was reading this article about how churches, rather than asking the congregation to turn their phones off during a service, are doing the opposite. Worshipers are asked to keep their phones on and text questions to the pastor. Let’s see what they are texting: During [Rev. Mike] Schreiner’s 30-minute sermon, [director of worship Amie] Haskins received 35 questions. — When we are in heaven, will we be able to touch our relatives still on Earth? — Will we look… Read more
