Alright… it looks like the site is nearly finished. Some spacing issues will be worked out, and I’d like to fix/change that picture up top. But what do you think? Is there anything else that needs to be changed? Read more
Michael Phelps: The greatest Olympian of all time, holder of several world records, on his way to 8 gold medals in swimming in Beijing. Fred Phelps: Notorious fundamentalist Christian, ardent anti-gay advocate, on his way to Westboro Baptist Church’s next protest. Someone had to put them together. No? You can do better. What subtitle should go with this picture? Read more
Since 2005, the University of California has had to deal with a lawsuit filed by a number of Christian high schools and students. The Christians claimed that the university was “developing and implementing an admissions process that allegedly violates the Free Speech Clause, the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause.” They said the university would not accept several (required) courses for admission because they came from a Christian school system. That sounds pretty bad… until… Read more
A couple weeks ago, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family posted a video on its website urging viewers to pray for rain — Specifically on the night Barack Obama will give his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for President. The video features Stuart Shepard, director of digital media at Focus Action: The video was meant to be “mildly humorous.” I guess it’s hard to distinguish Focus on the Family’s sense of humor… these are the same people, after all,… Read more
Reader Bjorn recently got married! (He’s the dapper fellow on the right in the pic below.) He and his wife Jeannette had a Humanist wedding ceremony in all of its aspects, and he has now helpfully written about his experience, which I suspect may be helpful to a number of you who want to do something similar in the future. It’s definitely helpful to me. So far, the only thought I’ve put into my future wedding is that it will… Read more
Olivia Judson has a simple but effective op-ed in The New York Times about why evolution must be taught in Biology classes (and not Intelligent Design/Creationism): In these arguments [of evolution versus ID/Creationism], evolution is treated as an abstract subject that deals with the age of the earth or how fish first flopped onto land. It’s discussed as though it were an optional, quaint and largely irrelevant part of biology. And a common consequence of the arguments is that evolution… Read more
First, a picture of churches in North Carolina: We found this mildly interesting — a row of three churches, all the same denomination (Baptist), in western North Carolina. The congregation continued to grow over a period where a larger church was needed, and the old one kept operating until the new one was completed. The older churches weren’t demolished, and are used for auxiliary activities. Not sure how common this is, but we’ll be on the lookout for a 4-… Read more
The Barna Group just released their latest survey about how various religious and non-religious people will be voting. Only Evangelical Christians swing John McCain’s way and even they’re dropping like flies. The current number of 61% of them voting for McCain used to be at 78%. Among self-identified Evangelicals, McCain’s lead is within the ±3.2% margin of error. Group Barack Obama John McCain Undecided Self-Identified Evangelical Christians 37% 39% 23% Barna-Identified Evangelical Christians 17% 61% 14% Born-Again, Non-Evangelical Christians 43%… Read more
Hi all. You can now use Gravatars on this site when you make a comment. If that last sentence made no sense, here’s a detailed explanation of what they are and how you can get one. They’re not necessary, but we would be able to catch a glimpse of what you look like! Read more
When Will Wright (an atheist himself) created the game Spore, he thought he’d be on the receiving end of wrath from the religious. That makes sense since the game simulates evolution: Spore could well be the most complicated model ever constructed in the name of interactive entertainment: not for nothing was it originally known as ‘Sim Everything’, depicting the evolution of life from single-celled organism to galaxy-hopping civilisation. But the largest group of haters turned out to be “militant atheists”:… Read more
