According to British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, the BBC’s blasphemy rules dictate that one can say “God” and “Jesus” on TV, but you cannot say “Christ.” Also, one “can only get away with saying ‘fuck’ two or three times in a sketch show.” But don’t you dare say “Christ.” I don’t have any links to the story, but it’s recounted on the New Humanist blog. [tags]atheist, atheist[/tags] Read more
True story: I spent a year in medical school. To make a long story short, at some point during the year, I felt that I wasn’t as passionate about becoming a doctor as I thought I would be. So I took a year off (the school was fine with this). In that time, I got certified to teach math. The whole eBay thing happened and I got to spend more time working with the Secular Student Alliance. I student taught… Read more
Last night, I watched the first episode of The Root of All Evil, Lewis Black’s new show on Comedy Central. I didn’t find it that funny… it was just the lead-in to The Daily Show for me. (Very disappointing, though, that Comedy Central hasn’t found a better venue to showcase Black’s talent.) The episode revolved around the topic whether Oprah or the Catholic Church is more evil. A different comedian took each side to task and Black acted as the… Read more
There are some atheists who despise Barack Obama’s faith and think he will use his Christianity to override good judgment. I’m not proud of everything he says, either, but I recognize the need to pander to a religious audience to gain their goodwill and votes. Obama is a Christian; there’s no denying that. But his actions have shown us that he is not about to become a puppet to the Religious Right — or even the Religious Left. In fact,… Read more
It’s choppy video, but it’s understandable. And it’s part 1 of 9. (The rest are here.) (via Life Without Faith) [tags]atheist, atheism, Richard Dawkins[/tags] Read more
Mike Clawson here again. I honestly hesitate to post this. Who knows what nefarious ulterior motives will be imputed to me because of it. 😉 Nonetheless, I though some of you might be interested in this. Jon Meacham in Newsweek just had an interesting review of a new book by Steven Waldman (editor-in-chief of Beliefnet), Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America. While the review highlights the books emphasis on lesser known Founding Father James… Read more
James “The Amazing” Randi spoke at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign a couple nights ago. It seems to have gone well. Justin Doran, a member of the Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers group that helped bring Randi to the school, wrote a piece about him and (Nobel Prize winner and fellow speaker that night) Dr. Richard Roberts in the Daily Illini: Randi’s speech focused on one central theme: how reasonable, intelligent people can be tricked. This includes trained scientists. In… Read more
Tobasco da Gama (hehe) recently attended his grandfather’s funeral. He describes two eulogies that stood out, the first by a family friend: … it talked about how my grandfather grew up in a poor neighbourhood, served in the Army, raised his kids and then grandkids. It talked about how proud he was of his grandkids, how he took care of all of us even into his old age. The eulogy talked about his personality, how he could be stubborn and… Read more
The money quotation from Mark Melady’s article about a campus atheist group in Massachusetts: Activist secular college students from the Boston area said here last night that campus secularism is on the rise even if most nonbelievers are unlikely to advocate against the supernatural and are unsure what to call themselves. “If I’m in a hurry, I say I’m an atheist,” Byung Min, founder of the Secular Student Alliance at Bentley College told the Greater Worcester Humanists. “If I have… Read more
The Secular Student Alliance is having its annual conference the first weekend in June in conjunction with the American Humanist Association and the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Students who wish to attend the Washington, D.C. conference can now apply for an SSA travel grant! Thanks to generous donations from the Roxbury Foundation, the American Humaniast Association, and other donors, we have established a grant fund to help offset the travel costs incurred by students who attend the conference. We… Read more
