For anyone who thinks there are no atheist charities… From Jim Underdown, Executive Director of the Center for Inquiry — Los Angeles: We are deeply concerned about the hardship and suffering caused by the wildfires here in Southern California. We want to help, so the Center for Inquiry—Los Angeles is launching an effort through SHARE (the Secular Humanist Aid and Relief Effort) to raise charitable funds to assist low income and displaced families who have been affected by this disaster…. Read more
Last week, Elevation Church in North Carolina did something quite commendable. They take in an average of $40,000 weekly even though they don’t have a building of their own. They’re trying to raise capital to get one. What are they doing for their capital campaign? Giving away money. Taking a page out of Oprah’s playbook (I assume), they decided to take a week’s worth of money and Pay It Forward — it was called the Bless Back Project. When pastor… Read more
Being dealt the first hand of 13 cards or the second? As onegoodmove writes: There are 635,013,559,600 possible hands and the chances of being dealt the first hand is just as likely as the second though a common intuition is that the second is far more likely. This I believe is because the second has a more likely distribution of the cards, but we are talking about individual hands not distributions. I think it is the same wrong intuition that… Read more
Me neither. But if you are, Professor Eric Schwitzgebel at the University of California at Riverside has compiled his seven postings on applying to Ph. D. programs in philosophy. The seven parts: Part I: Should You Apply, and Where? Part II: Grades and Classes Part III: Letters of Recommendation Part IV: Writing Samples Part V: Statement of Purpose Part VI: GRE Scores and Other Things Part VII: After You Hear Back (via The Uncredible Hallq) [tags]atheist, atheism, philosophy degree[/tags] Read more
True story. Wiccans move into small-town Bible-Belt-ish Christian community in Illinois. They set up their own school. Chaos ensues. The Christians meet in the local high school’s gym to discuss what to do: As more than 150 people filed into the shuttered high school Wednesday night for the meeting, Andy Thomas, youth minister at the Rossville Church of Christ, said residents had a spiritual responsibility to drive the witches out. If they didn’t, he said, young people were in danger… Read more
Humanist Network News’ latest podcast has a series of one-on-one interviews with Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. I listened to it yesterday and I think it’s one of the best episodes they’ve done to date. (And congratulations to hosts Duncan Crary and Jes Constantine on their two year podcasting anniversary!) You can download the episode here. It also includes discussion with all those authors (including Sam Harris) on Harris’ speech where he suggested doing away with… Read more
Dilbert creator Scott Adams is answering questions for the Freakonomics blog. He’s said some increasingly crazy things about atheists and evolution. On atheists: This brings me to atheists. In order to be certain that God doesn’t exist, you have to possess a godlike mental capacity – the ability to be 100% certain. A human can’t be 100% certain about anything. Our brains aren’t that reliable. Therefore, to be a true atheist, you have to believe you are the very thing… Read more
Illinois has a law mandating a moment of silence in public classrooms. A familiar name is now suing over it. And she’s only 14. Dawn Sherman on Friday filed a lawsuit against Northwest Suburban Township High School District 214 to fight the state-mandated moment of silence. The district is planning to implement the law on Tuesday during morning announcements. The suit is believed to be the first seeking to overturn the new law. Sherman’s father, Rob, said they will be… Read more
If you tried checking the site out last night…. or this morning… or two seconds ago, you probably got a page that said this account was suspended. That’s because 302423 people were coming to the page at once. Because my posting on the new atheist symbol was Farked. (See the bottom of the picture) I’ll change servers soon. This is getting frustrating. [tags]atheist, atheism[/tags] Read more
Manya Brachear writes as The Seeker for the Chicago Tribune. She recently posted about Frank Warren and his popular blog PostSecret. These were some of the confessions people had about their spirituality: “I became Muslim because I liked the way I looked in a headscarf.” “I stole Christian music.” “I’m an editor for a large online atheist newsletter — and I believe in God.” “I hate when people tell me that Jesus answers prayers because he didn’t answer mine when… Read more
