Most Christians who’ve heard of him will be surprised that that’s even possible anymore. Rob Bell, the pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, has a two page spread in the latest issue of Time magazine. (Rob also wrote the excellent foreword for I Sold My Soul on eBay.) Even as an atheist who disagrees with many of his core beliefs, I’m still willing to lend an ear to just about anyone who can effectively promote an anti-Religious-Right… Read more
A quick heads up: Lori Lipman Brown, lobbyist for the Secular Coalition for America is scheduled to appear on Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor tonight. She will talk about Mitt Romney’s faith speech. As always, Lori could be bumped in the case of breaking news. But if she’s on, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. She tends to get a positive reception from Bill O’Reilly when she appears. ***Update***: She was fantastic 🙂 The link to the video… Read more
Pastor Mike here again: Many of you may already know that I consider myself part of the “emerging church” – a movement within Christianity that is fed up with many of the same problems that you all have often pointed out regarding religion, and that wants to re-imagine “a new kind of Christianity”. That phrase, “a new kind of Christian” was coined by my friend Brian McLaren, who is one of central influencers of the emerging church movement and was… Read more
Landover Baptist Church doesn’t want you to see The Golden Compass. And they have good reason for it: Not only is the film full of cute, enticing, furry animals with mouths like horny sailors on leave in a Shanghai red light district, it exposes youngsters to alarming viewpoints that are anti-religious right, anti-morality, and anti-(just believing what you are damn well told!). We now live in a world where we have to constantly worry about our children being presented with… Read more
Dave is putting God to the test. Which Christians would say is a big no-no. But hear him out on this… Dave is an atheist. He says he’ll believe in God if he sees a miracle: Burning bushes, disembodied hands writing on the wall, talking donkeys, water into wine – there are any number of Biblical precedents for things that I’d readily accept as evidence for God. But it doesn’t have to be anything fancy like that. Any small thing,… Read more
Mitt Romney gave his speech on faith today and, not surprisingly, he got the state/church separation angle completely wrong: We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public… Read more
Thank you, BBC. First, Catholic Igor Toronyi-Lalic’s take on The Golden Compass: I didn’t find The Golden Compass offensive at all. … The main message was so convoluted, there was no serious atheistic content, and it didn’t seem obvious that they [the Magisterium] were religious in a way that I understand it. … There’s no need to call for any boycott of it. The whole thing is about polar bears – it’s nothing to do with the Magisterium. I’d be… Read more
Jessica Hagy adds political cartoons to her repertoire 🙂 [tags]atheist, atheism, abstinence only sex education, Republican[/tags] Read more
They’re all nominees for (UK publication) New Humanist magazine’s 2007 Bad Faith Awards. The award, with nominees selected by readers, aims to figure out “who will be crowned 2007’s most scurrilous enemy of reason.” The nominees: Chuck Norris: These days the martial arts legend seems to spend less time cracking skulls and more time lamenting the moral decline of Western civilisation. His weekly column on conservative Christian website WorldNetDaily is a goldmine of evangelical rantings, and his Bad Faith nomination… Read more
Remember the chart that placed America just above Turkey and just below everyone else when it came to acceptance of evolution? (Miller JD, Scott EC, Okamoto S (2006) Public acceptance of evolution. Science 313:765-766.) Well, the Programme for International Student Assessment survey was just released. The PISA survey is “the most comprehensive and rigorous international yardstick of secondary-school students’ attainments.” More specifically: [The survey] tested students on how much they knew about science and their ability to use scientific knowledge… Read more
