A court case in Alberta, Canada is going to decide whether Reverend Stephen Boissoin’s letter, which was published in a newspaper, can qualify as hate speech. The controversy stems from a letter Boissoin, then a youth pastor in Red Deer, wrote that was published in the Red Deer Advocate in June 2002. “From kindergarten class on, our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators,” he wrote. “Your children are being warped… Read more
Peter Odoyo, a member of the World e-Parliament, has a op-ed piece titled “Kenya: The Death of Religion And Rise of Atheism in the West” in The Nation (Nairobi). It has some great lines in it. On Christopher Hitchens: He attended Oxford University and was a well-known communist sympathiser. He has published widely. After talking about what Richard Dawkins and Hitchens say in their books, he moves on to other perceived attacks on his faith: When I read several of… Read more
(The Secular Student Alliance now has a blog! Here’s the RSS feed. Add the SSA to your feed reader and blogroll!) If you live near Albany, NY and are looking for a worthwhile internship during the school year, the SSA has one for you: These positions are ten weeks long and have a $100/week stipend. The start and stop dates are flexible, as are breaks, we only require a commitment of approximately ten weeks between late August and late December…. Read more
The Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles will be paying a $660 million settlement to 508 victims of priestly abuse stretching back to the 1940s. The total cost for the Roman Catholic Church’s abuse case settlements worldwide is now approximately $2,100,000,000. The Great Realization estimates there are 24,000 abusive Catholic priests in the world. We also get a link to explanations of why all this happens from one fundie Christian site: Why are so many perverts in the “priesthood”? I… Read more
Cracked present “6 Questions The Last Harry Potter Book Had Better F#@king Answer”: Occam’s razor suggests that the simplest explanation—Snape is evil— is likely the correct one. But for Snape to be truly evil, that means that Dumbledore would have been wrong about something. And until we see proof of that, we’re going to stick with our needlessly convoluted conspiracy theory. In other words, fuck you, Occam’s razor. You’re one smug principle we can live without. [tags]Harry Potter, Deathly Hallows[/tags] Read more
NBC announced today that Criss Angel (Mindfreak) and Uri Geller (just a freak) will be appearing in a new reality show this fall tentatively titled “Phenomenon.” The show is “a mysterious live competition series in which both men will conduct an intensive search for the next great mentalist.” I didn’t know there was a first great mentalist. The series, based on a successful Israeli version judged and monitored by Geller which achieved a historical record-breaking viewing audience, tests 10 hopeful… Read more
I want to believe Greg Gutfeld is joking… but this is FOXNews, so I could be wrong. Even if he is attempting humor, you wonder why no one else picked up on this… This was his monologue from Friday’s episode of Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld: Thank God it’s Friday! But how can you have “TGIF,” if there’s no “G”? I mean: What if there was no God? Then what would you say? Thank Bob it’s Friday? Thank Dick it’s Friday?… Read more
Christopher Hitchens faced off against Edd Doerr in a debate on Interfaith Voices recently. Hitchens is the atheist author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Doerr is the past president of the American Humanist Association. I haven’t heard the whole show yet, but here is the synopsis: Christopher Hitchens believes that religion is a poison because it asks humans to surrender the precious faculty of reason in favor of faith where the message of God is accepted… Read more
Dinesh D’Souza is right. His article today criticizing Peter Berkowitz’s take on “The New New Atheism” in today’s issue of The Wall Street Journal is on the money. First, some facts from Berkowitz: According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, in less than 12 months atheism’s newest champions have sold close to a million books. Some 500,000 hardcover copies are in print of Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion” (2006); 296,000 copies of Christopher Hitchens’s “God Is Not… Read more
Over a week ago, Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) spoke to a crowd of people in the city of Edina. He was speaking to the group Atheists for Human Rights. The crowd enjoyed his talk. It’s not that often you hear a member of the government say something like this: You’ll always find this Muslim standing up for your right to be atheists all you want. Here’s a clip of his talk: An article about the event appeared in the… Read more
