Every state school in England is to receive a new copy of the King James Bible from the government — with a brief foreword by Michael Gove, the education secretary, to mark the 400th anniversary of its translation. In a move intended to help every pupil access Britain’s cultural heritage, every primary and secondary school will be sent a new copy of the 1611 translation by next Easter.

Right… for “cultural heritage.” Sure.

In any case, Richard Dawkins doesn’t know why he wasn’t asked to donate to make the initiative happen… because he fully supports it. In fact, he’s surprised all schools don’t have a copy already:

I am a little shocked at the implication that not every school library already possesses a copy. Can that be true? What do they have, then? Harry Potter? Vampires?…

His first reason for offering support is that, much like Shakespeare, there are allusions to it everywhere. You can’t really be an educated, learned citizen without understanding where those references are coming from.

Oh… and there’s that other reason:

I have an ulterior motive for wishing to contribute to Gove’s scheme. People who do not know the Bible well have been gulled into thinking it is a good guide to morality. This mistaken view may have motivated the “millionaire Conservative party donors”. I have even heard the cynically misanthropic opinion that, without the Bible as a moral compass, people would have no restraint against murder, theft and mayhem. The surest way to disabuse yourself of this pernicious falsehood is to read the Bible itself.

…

Whatever else the Bible might be –- and it really is a great work of literature -– it is not a moral book and young people need to learn that important fact because they are very frequently told the opposite.

Of course he’s right. There’s a reason so many churches and pastors ignore discussing the more immoral, disgusting, abhorrent parts of the book. They’d rather ignore it and pretend it’s not there. American Atheists’ Dave Silverman had this memorable line in a New York Times article a couple of years ago, making the same argument:

“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”

Anyway, guess how the Daily Mail covered that story?

Look at our headline!!! (Oh and by the way here’s what he actually said…)

Even with the government’s intentions and Dawkins’ wishes, it’s likely neither is going to happen. Having one copy of the Bible in every school library isn’t going to allow all the students to read it from start to finish — and I find it hard to believe kids are just going to willingly come into the library to read a Bible they can find easily online.

But I love that the government’s ultimately-useless idea gives Dawkins a platform to talk about how awful the Bible actually is.

…

A group of Amish men are currently in court because they refuse to install smoke detectors in their New York homes:

(via Blaine Shahan - The Associated Press)

[Amish resident] Andy Miller explained that it would be against their Christian beliefs to have something so modern in their homes.

It did not wash with the judge. Miller and the other Amish men were fined.

They refused to pay — pointing out that that would imply they had accepted that obeying God’s laws was wrong — and how could God be wrong?

Mr Ballan persuaded the judge to stay the case and contacted a religious liberty law firm that has taken it to federal court, where now it sits waiting to be heard.

Director David Belton spoke to one of the Amish men taking this case to court. He asked the man (Mose Miller) why he didn’t want to use a smoke alarm. Miller’s response was horrifying:

“I use this,” he said pointing at his nose, “or him,” and his finger pointed upwards. “I don’t need a devil on the wall to tell me if my house is burning.”

I asked him what would happen if he did not wake up and all his children were burned to death.

“If God does not wake us, well, that must be part of his plan,” Mose told me.

In other words, if something happens to my kids because of my own negligence, it must be part of God’s will.

It’s the same argument used by Christian Scientist parents who refuse to take their children to a hospital in an emergency because they wrongly think God will just magically fix everything.

It’s a bad argument and the safety of others ought to come before the irresponsible habits of deluded people.

…

What does all this have to do with blood transfusions?

When a blood transfusion is needed, it really only affects the person needing the blood and that person’s family.

When a house catches fire, it can quickly spread to neighboring homes in the community. Failing to detect fires early isn’t just a personal decision — the ramifications are huge.

The Amish deserve to lose this case.

Belton doesn’t think they will:

The chances are Mose and his recalcitrant friends will win their battle — they usually do.

For the sake of everyone else in that community, I hope Belton is wrong.

(Thanks to James for the link)

My favorite line: “This is a school you flunk out of when you get the answers right.”

(via god and son)

(Video via Thunderf00t)

In previous years, I’ve compiled and posted large sets of images as a way to show solidarity with others who refuse to be censored by religious extremists… this year, for a variety of personal reasons, I just didn’t have the time to put it all together. I didn’t think anything of it — it wasn’t as much of a hot topic this year as it was in the past, right?

Maybe I need to reconsider.

Pakistan shut down Twitter in the country after the company refused to censor Tweets linking to the Everybody Draw Muhammad Day Facebook page:

Muhammad Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, said the micro-blogging site had been shut down on Sunday after it refused to remove tweets promoting a Facebook page encouraging people to post images of the prophet Muhammad.

He said Facebook agreed to address Pakistan’s concerns but officials had failed to persuade Twitter to do the same. “We have been negotiating with them until last night, but they did not agree to remove the stuff, so we had to block it,” Yaseen said.

Tech-savvy Pakistanis found ways to get around the censors, but the idea that a country can censor a website because some of its users don’t treat Islam with respect it doesn’t deserve in the first place is crazy.

It makes me want to draw Muhammad just to spite them. For now, I’ll just link you to Facebook pages featuring drawings of him.

Then again, the whole thing is just going to backfire, anyway:

Emrys Schoemaker, director of iMedia, a research organisation that studies social media in Pakistan, said attempts to control the internet reflected a shift from the media freedoms introduced by the former president Pervez Musharraf.

“This is a very defensive, dated response to politics in the digital era,” Schoemaker said. “Closing down debate simply makes the voices louder.”

People will keep drawing images of the Islamic prophet until Muslims stop censoring other people from doing it. If they can’t handle freedom of expression, that’s their problem. No one else has to abide by their religious rules — and as long as they kill and suppress others who criticize their faith, we have all the more reason to fight against it.

***Update***: Pakistan’s Prime Minister has restored Twitter access in the country.

(via Atheism Examiner)

***

On May 3^rd of this year, a monument of the Ten Commandments was unveiled at the Bradford County courthouse in Florida. The $20,000 monument was a gift from Lee Anderson of Lake City. Anderson gave a similar “gift” to Dixie County a few years ago. The Dixie County monument was ruled unconstitutional in July of 2011, but still stands today as the county appeals. The Bradford commissioners knew about the state of the Dixie County monument before they agreed to acquire their own. Lawsuits are nothing new to the city of Starke (home of the Bradford County courthouse). In March of 2007, a federal judge ruled that the crucifix affixed to the city’s water tower (and was even illuminated at night) was unconstitutional and had to come down.

Here is the Ten Commandments monument unveiling ceremony that took place a couple of weeks ago:

On Saturday, May 19^th, about eighteen atheists traveled from all over Florida to protest the newly-erected Ten Commandments monument. The Bradford County Courthouse is located in Starke, Florida, a small north central city that straddles U.S. 301 with Camp Blanding to the east and Florida State Prison to the west.

As the protestors proceeded from the parking lot to the front of the courthouse, they passed a circle of thirty bowed heads that were praying for strength and courage. Several people took turns leading the group in prayer, and many prayed for the hearts of the atheists to be turned over to Jesus.

The woman above was saying, “Father God, we’ve remained quiet for too long. We will let your word be heard, Father God.”

Another group of counter-protestors were in a similar circle in the courtyard of the U-shaped building where the Ten Commandments monument stands. By 11:00a, the scheduled start time of the protest, the atheists were lined up along the sidewalk facing U.S. 301, and the counter-protesting group was growing. A headcount at 11:30a revealed that there were 100 counter-protesters and about 18 atheists.

Both groups were in good spirits and relatively peaceful towards each other. However, I overheard Ken Weaver, a Bradford County resident who led the dedication of the monument on May 3^rd say to his friend, “They’re not arguing against Church and State; they are arguing about our religion being a myth.” His friend responded, “They’re just a bunch of damn Democrats,” to which both men chuckled.

I briefly interviewed Laura Finley, who was the National Day of Prayer organizer for Bradford County. When asked if there might be a more appropriate place for the monument than the courthouse lawn, she said no, as it represented the word of God, the person who created us. She continued, “We would be kind of like… animals who have no souls” without it. “The protestors here today,” Finley continued, “they don’t have any beliefs in anything.” Finley was quick to point out that she was not at the event to counter-protest, but rather to share her support that the monument had a right to be there.

Early in the event, an unidentified preacher in a gold vest started to encourage the crowd to sing and pray. He utilized an interesting tactic to decipher who was there to protest and who was there to counter-protest. After leading the group in singing “Jesus Loves Me,” he asked participants to shout out if they love Jesus. He then asked them to raise their arms in the air if they love Jesus. He tried to corral the counter-protestors away from the atheists by saying, “Come on people! You’re talking to the wind!” A big circle was formed around the Ten Commandments for more prayer.

The atheist protestors came from all over the state. Nathaniel Hall, a member of the Tallahassee Atheists (in the red shirt below), was the first to break the invisible barrier and converse with counter-protesters.

Melody Delaney, another member of the Tallahassee Atheists and founding member of the Tallahassee Secular Chorus, shared her reason for coming out to protest: “We are not trying to disparage anyone’s religion… we just believe in separation of church and state as Constitutional law.”

Sean Fraser traveled from Crystal River wearing two hats, one as a protester and another to cover the story for a blog he writes. When asked if he was surprised by the turn-out he said, “Of us? No. Of them? Yes.” This was Fraser’s first protest as an atheist, but he said he’d like to attend more.

Brandi Braschler, president of Freethinkers FSU, was not discouraged by the small turnout or the lack of press coverage. She was part of the group that “unannointed” roads in Polk County earlier this year. “No one was out there, but everyone posted on it” afterwards. As we spoke, a counter-protester (the woman above who was praying to “Father God”) interrupted our conversation. She said, “We don’t want tax payers dollars!” She continued on about “people like you” when Braschler calmly responded, “The First Amendment says a lot of things. But it’s up to the courts, the judges, to interpret what the Constitution means.” This made the other woman walk away, which I observed several times when the counter-protesters had no rebuttal.

I asked David Silverman (who was quick to point out he is not that David Silverman) why he traveled from his home in Jacksonville to protest. “I feel strongly about this and decided to give up a day’s work for this.” He was surprised by the massive monument that was erected and that it was actually a “solid, fixed display.” Silverman (holding the sign in the picture below) added that he had a “long, interesting talk with a Christian and I think I planted a germ.”

Rob Curry (in white shirt), president of the St. Petersburg chapter of Atheists of Florida, speaking with a counter-protester

Bridget Gaudette (right), Florida state director for American Atheists and organizer of the protest, chats with fellow protester in Starke, FL

A member of the motorcycle group 'F.A.I.T.H. Riders' waves his bible in the air at the Bradford County Courthouse

What surprised me most about the event was that this was not about religious rights, but strictly about Christianity. There was no attempt to pass this new monument off as representing a generic god that many could relate to, this was all about Jesus. I asked one counter-protester how he thought a non-Christian in his county might feel about the monument. He couldn’t see why they would care. “I don’t bother them and they don’t bother me” was his response.

The counter-protesters were giddy with delight in their numbers exceeding the protesters. One man yelled out to the crowd, “There’s more preachers in Starke than there are atheists today!” which very well may be true. But what failed to impress them was the great distance the protesters traveled to be in Starke today. Driving for a few hours (as opposed to walking down the street) requires a bit more dedication to a cause. As the sun rose directly overhead, the breeze died down, and stomachs started to ask for lunch, the majority of the counter-protesters drifted off to go about their life. When I asked Brandi Braschler how long she would be there, her response was, “I’m planning to stay here all day.”

Daniel Dennett:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

A C Grayling:

I will be test driving religions around my country of New Zealand (sometimes referred to as Godzone). I am planning to visit many groups who think theirs is the one true religion and everyone will get the chance to pitch their god or gods.

I will also be talking to experts in religion including professors who have had their lives threatened and even faced trial for heresy.

He’s trying to raise the funds he needs to complete the movie and distribute it via iTunes, Netflix, and eventually for free. If you’d like to contribute, you can do so here.

Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.

…

But also, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.

In other words, scientists ought to be applying the ideas of logic and reason to religion, just like they do everything else. Trying to mix science and religion means you’re doing both of them wrong.

(via Letters of Note — Thanks to Amanda for the link!)

1. Never buy textbooks. There are always places to find cheap (or free) versions.
2. Don’t sign up for a credit card, no matter what “prize” they’re offering you. If you do get one, though, be sure to pay it off each month.
3. If you can avoid it, try not to get a job during your first semester. Better yet, make plans for a summer internship early in the school year.
4. Don’t do anything stupid. But if (when) you do something stupid, don’t post pictures about it on Facebook.
5. Don’t get a tattoo unless you designed it and you’ve thought about it for at least two years.
6. Back-of-the-envelope calculation: (15 credit hours a week) x (18 weeks in a semester) x (2 semesters) = 540 hours of class a year. If tuition is $20,000/year (it’s probably more), you’re paying about $37 (or more) per hour of class. Don’t skip class!
7. Sit in on large lecture classes in subjects you aren’t actually taking. No grades, no one will notice, and you’ll learn a lot.
8. There are scholarships available everywhere. Most people don’t apply for them. Go get the money they don’t want.
9. Join clubs. Get to know your professors. Talk to people in your dorm. Besides getting to know really cool people, you’re setting yourself up to get a job in the future.
10. Study abroad. Don’t want to leave the country? Then just spend time around people whose viewpoints you completely disagree with.
11. Unless you’re playing with a huge group of people, put the video games away. Unless you’re creating the next Facebook, turn the Internet off every now and then. It’ll be there for you later.
12. Cover your drinks. Cover yourself. Eat healthy. Do everything in moderation.
13. Get your requirements out of the way early. You don’t want to be ready to graduate only to find out there’s one course you still need to take… and it’s not available that semester.
14. The thing that made you socially successful in high school was conformity. But if you want to be successful in college and beyond, think differently and do your own thing.
15. Call your parents.

What would you add to that list?

President José Mujica (via EFE)

Reader David Osorio was kind enough to translate:

“I still have not been able to believe in God… if such an important man exists I hope he gives a helping hand to the poor in Latin America by defending the health of the commander,” said Mujica.

Ignoring for the moment the suggestion that Chavez is the solution to poverty in Latin America, it’s not very often that a sitting president makes a declaration like that.

Even stranger (at least from my American perspective) is how that barely seems to register as “news.”

No moment of silence this year. No public prayer. And no controversy.

Those are Damon’s efforts coming to fruition. Bastrop High School won’t thank him for what he did anytime soon, but the rest of us can.

In case you’re wondering, Damon will be starting college in Texas this fall. That scholarship so many of you donated to is going to be put to good use

As always, if you hear anything we should all pay attention to, please leave a timestamp in the comments!

(Of course, most of you won’t do that and you’ll just argue about how interfaith activism is bad for atheists without even hearing what Chris said in the discussion… *sigh* I tried!)

If you’d like to share your experience as an atheist in a Christian workplace, please shoot me an email.

…

I met my husband in church. We had both been raised in fairly conservative, Bible-believing homes. Our parents are well-educated, though, and always encouraged us to think for ourselves. By the time we met, we were both fairly liberal in our political beliefs but very involved in our church life. We soon moved to New York City so my husband could pursue graduate school. At the time, I taught physics at a public high school. We attended a local megachurch, but as soon as we finished premarital counseling we stopped attending. (That is the wonderful part about megachurches — they are so easy to leave!) We also moved in together a few months before our marriage, unbeknownst to our parents.

A couple of years after getting married, my husband was accepted to law school in Florida. I had to leave my teaching job and search for a new one — the problem was that I had to look for a job at a private school because I did not have a teaching license in this new state and it was going to be prohibitively difficult to get one — about a year’s worth of classwork and hoops to jump through. My husband and I only plan on staying in Florida for his three years of law school after which we will relocate back to NYC.

I applied to a conservative Christian school, as they seemed very dedicated to their education and it was a good position. I still considered myself a Christian at that point and I had once been conservative… so I figured that it wouldn’t be so bad for three years.

Well, by about the third week of classes I realized that I just couldn’t convince myself of my faith anymore. I had read a lot of Brian McLaren‘s work and a little of Rob Bell‘s, and these paved the way for me to stop taking the Bible very seriously. My science background had me doubting the reliability of the entire book of Genesis. I think it was finally seeing the way that young people are indoctrinated into the faith that finally forced my visceral rejection of my faith.

For months, I still believed that Christianity was real and that I had simply rejected it. I kept on waiting for the principal to call me into his office and ask me to pack up my things — I figured that if I was a mole in a Christian workplace, God would promptly inform his leadership of my presence and they would root me out. No such thing happened. In fact, I received glowing praise — all the while, I was desperate to quit and find work elsewhere. Unfortunately, not a single job was available this spring when I looked. We are in a small college town and there aren’t a lot of options. I would quit if I did not have to support myself and my husband while he is in school.

I began reading books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Bart Ehrman. (Somehow Daniel Dennett got the boot for Ehrman ) I was fascinated at the idea of redaction criticism and some of the theories behind the formation of the Jewish religion, the Israelite people, and Hebrew Bible. I read voraciously and I listened to all of Reasonable Doubts’ podcasts. It took me about five months from my first epiphany about rejecting Christianity to be able to admit to myself that I was an atheist. It still feels weird.

It was rough at school for a while, but I have settled into a routine. I do feel like a two-faced liar at times, but most of the time I really go out of my way to say “Many Christians believe this…” when I have to talk about faith. I never talk about my personal faith and I don’t think the kids even notice it because they get it from so many other places they just assume I’m a Christian. I do my best to teach critical thinking skills and ethics without ever teaching something that goes against the school’s principles. The school itself is conservative (politically and doctrinally) but they also care a lot about education. That is one redeeming factor that helps me continue to show up every day.

I do have a handful of stories I have been writing down in case I ever want to share them in a more organized manner. They include teachers telling me that they are glad they believe in God and hell because otherwise they would do all kinds of awful things, hearing a 6^th grader at a football game scoff at the local Jewish team because, “They don’t believe Jesus is the savior… what bullcrap… how can they believe that?” When a sibling was killed in a car crash, our teachers consoled one student by telling him that God “preordained” it. It may not make sense to us, but then again, “God’s ways are above our ways.” What tripe.

I have resigned myself to the fact that I will stay here for the next two years and I will get out only when we move back to the Northeast. I have almost become cognitively dissonant in the way that I approach my job, to the point that I actually enjoy a lot of it now (while still hating a very few parts, and my duplicity). I am thankful that I still have employable job skills and am gaining more valuable experience… I really feel for clergy members that have to stand up in front of their church every Sunday and preach something they don’t believe. I plan on contributing to the Clergy Project as soon as I stop supporting my husband and his education.

***Edit***: Commenters point out this video’s a joke. Glad to hear it. I still think this is a conversation worth having.

I think the atheist’s message would’ve been more effective without the CAPS LOCK and exclamation point… But still, I like seeing that comment in those kinds of Facebook threads.

Now, is that really bravery? I don’t think it takes bravery to write a comment like that — it’s more of just having the mindset that you’re going to tell the truth no matter what, and if others can’t understand that, screw ‘em.

The downside is that it comes off as insensitive and dickish (especially if the cancer survivor is the person who made the comment about god). But if you’re making that comment, you probably don’t care. Does that mean we shouldn’t make the comment? Not at all. We should be the voice of reason in that situation. It wouldn’t hurt to use some tact, though. (*Cue accusations of being a tone troll*)

The town of Greece, New York has been opening board meetings with prayers since 1999 thanks to Town Supervisor John Auberger. Sure, they’ve allowed different members of the clergy to deliver the prayers… but virtually all of those clergy members were Christians.

A prayer is delivered at a Greece Town Board meeting (via Democrat and Chronicle)

Finally, in 2008, they were called out on it by two residents of the town, Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens. After they complained, the town allowed non-Christians to deliver the invocation four times out of the next twelve meetings… and then went back to Christians Christians Christians.

Initially, a district court dismissed their case, saying that the fact that representatives from different denominations were invited to deliver the prayers meant that the town wasn’t pushing Christianity on its citizens.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit correctly reversed that ruling.

In practice, Christian clergy members have delivered nearly all of the prayers relevant to this litigation, and have done so at the town’s invitation. From 1999 through 2007, every prayer-giver who gave the invocation met this description. In 2008, after Galloway and Stephens had begun complaining to the town about its prayer practice, nonChristians delivered the prayer at four of the twelve Town Board meetings. A Wiccan priestess and the chairman of the local Baha’i congregation each delivered one of these prayers, and a lay Jewish man delivered the remaining two. The town invited the Wiccan priestess and the lay Jewish man after they inquired about delivering prayers; it appears that the town invited the Baha’i chairman without receiving such an inquiry. However, between January 2009 and June 2010, when the record closed, all the prayer-givers were once again invited Christian clergy.

In all, there were about 130 invocations given between 1999 and 2010. And it looks like all but four of them were given by Christians.

It wasn’t even subtle:

A substantial majority of the prayers in the record contained uniquely Christian language. Roughly two-thirds contained references to “Jesus Christ,” “Jesus,” “Your Son,” or the “Holy Spirit.” Within this subset, almost all concluded with a statement that the prayer had been given in Jesus Christ’s name. Typically, prayer-givers stated something like, “In Jesus’s name we pray,” or “We ask this in Christ’s name.” Some prayer-givers elaborated further, describing Christ as “our Savior,” “God’s only son,” “the Lord,” or part of the Holy Trinity. One prayer, for example, was given “in the name of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.” Other prayers, including ones not expressly made in Christ’s name, spoke of “the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives,” and celebrated Christ’s birth and resurrection

But somehow, according to the town’s lawyers at the Alliance Defense Fund, that didn’t mean this was an establishment of Christianity in the town.

The judges at the Appeals court were very blunt in their conclusion:

We conclude, on the record before us, that the town’s prayer practice must be viewed as an endorsement of a particular religious viewpoint. This conclusion is supported by several considerations, including the prayer-giver selection process, the content of the prayers, and the contextual actions (and inactions) of prayer-givers and town officials. We emphasize that, in reaching this conclusion, we do not rely on any single aspect of the town’s prayer practice, but rather on the totality of the circumstances present in this case.

The town’s process for selecting prayer-givers virtually ensured a Christian viewpoint. Christian clergy delivered each and every one of the prayers for the first nine years of the town’s prayer practice, and nearly all of the prayers thereafter. In the town’s view, the preponderance of Christian clergy was the result of a random selection process.

The randomness of the process, however, was limited by the town’s practice of inviting clergy almost exclusively from places of worship located within the town’s borders. The town fails to recognize that its residents may hold religious beliefs that are not represented by a place of worship within the town. Such residents may be members of congregations in nearby towns or, indeed, may not be affiliated with any congregation. The town is not a community of religious institutions, but of individual residents, and, at the least, it must serve those residents without favor or disfavor to any creed or belief.

The ADF could now ask all the judges in the Second Circuit court to reconsider the ruling (an “en banc” review). Barring that, this case c possibly ask the Supreme Court to rule on the issue.

Hopefully, though, this ruling will stand. There’s no reason to have Christian prayers — or any prayers at all — delivered before city councils get to work. If government officials want to waste time, they can do it at home.

(Thanks to Brian for the link)

Several years ago, I pitched a freelance piece about black atheism to a prominent magazine geared toward African-Americans. The pitch was denied, but not for any real reason. “That one might be a bit, uh, hard,” is all my editor said. I’d later come to find out that he was merely sheltering me from his ultra-Christian executive editor, who would never let a piece questioning religion run in the magazine.

…

I can’t remember exactly when the last line of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” address began to bother me, but I think it was sometime around 6th grade. That was the year my history teacher had the class sit through all 14 hours of Eyes on the Prize, memorizing dates and important heroes and the names “Selma” and “Little Rock.” Growing up with a black history-buff father, I’d heard the speech many times before. But I’d never pored over it in conjunction with a deep dissection of the Civil Rights movement as a whole. And when I finally did, I just couldn’t get over that last line.

“One day, if everyone does get free at last,” I asked my dad, “why would we thank God Almighty? Why not thank ourselves for working hard?”…

Jefferson doesn’t blame African-Americans for their religious devotion — like so many people, church is much more than just some place where they listen to theological bullshit:

For a long time, black houses of worship doubled as war rooms to plan protest actions and galvanize people made weary by centuries of racist violence and legislation. When many black children attended Sunday school throughout the 19th and early 20th century, they not only received the standard Biblical lessons, they also learned to read and write, skills not necessarily afforded to them, often by law. By the time Dr. King was preaching in churches throughout the South, the strength of the black church was made obvious by how many white supremacists sought to destroy them with explosions and fire — the Klan wasn’t bombing black bars or brothels, and there was a reason for that.

Change in the religious demographics of African-Americans will be hard to come by, though, especially when so many leaders in their community have their foot in the church doors and the word “Reverend” in front of their names. So what’s the solution to this?

Ironically, Jefferson proposes Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist who won’t even bring himself to use the word “atheist,” as the new black leader. (For what it’s worth, I don’t disagree with the idea. Tyson’s still fantastic, even if he shies away from the “A word.”)

… I’d simply like us to start listening to and seeking out the opinions of blacks who eschew religious faith in favor of finding motivation and glory outside the church. I think we’d discover that many of the opinions religious blacks may think of as churchly are actually similar to those held by nonreligious blacks, which would be a lesson in and of itself.

So why Tyson? Not only because he self-identifies as an agnostic and says that there is “no evidence” to support the fact that anyone benevolent created the universe. But also because Tyson, whose Twitter account and YouTube reputation are stuff of internet legend, seems to be possessed of an inquisitiveness from which I believe the entire world could learn.

Jefferson thinks Tyson can help bring about the change he wants to see. I don’t know if that’s necessary. We just need more black people willing to go public with their atheism. Jefferson’s piece — and hopefully the many others that will follow it — is one of the best ways to spur the discussion that is needed.

It turns out the story of Abraham and Isaac is still very much alive in the 21^st century.

A young man, barely old enough to drink, well, went out and got drunk, as young men do. He was involved in a dispute of some sort involving drugs and was administered some street justice. He came in to me quite ill indeed. He had stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, as well as an actively bleeding deep cut to the left arm extending up over the deltoid and into zone 3 of the neck. The paramedics reported a large amount of blood loss at the scene, and his arm wound was still bleeding heavily on arrival.

The resuscitation went very well, considering the injuries. He was intubated and thoracostomied in a jiffy, and I tacked together that big arm wound in a temporizing fashion to stanch the blood loss. But clearly, he was going to need to get to the OR pretty soon. His hematocrit dropped dramatically after fluid resuscitation and he was showing signs of shock so we began to prepare for transfusion.

It was around that time that his parents showed up and informed us that the patient was a Jehovah’s Witness and would not accept blood products under any circumstances. Even if that meant his death. They were adamant on this point even after I explained that we were not in hypothetical territory any more — that his injuries were quite life-threatening and the blood loss might be the factor that caused him to die. They were firm and well-prepared and even showed us a piece of paper signed by the patient, fairly recently, expressly refusing blood transfusions.

You can read the conclusion of the story here.

How sickening is it that parents are still willing to sacrifice their children in order to honor an imaginary god?

(via The Atheist Pig)

In North Jutland, Denmark, a Lutheran vicar said he would not bury a 74-year old woman because she was a lesbian:

“I thought — can this really be possible that we have to be ashamed? I looked at my mother’s partner and she was silent. I was upset for her. What a terrible situation to put her in,” Kirsten Østergaard told DR1.

The vicar has since apologized, but little good that does now:

“What use is that to me? This is about his views about humanity, and I don’t think those have changed. He has probably regretted it, but not because of us — rather because he has put himself in a very bad light,” Østergaard tells DR.

Must be an example of religious love… it’s not enough to hate gay people during their lifetime; the bigotry has to be implemented full force even in death.

Becky, who lives in Denmark, adds:

Complicating the issue further, is the fact that Denmark does not have separation between church and state. The Danish Lutheran Church is a state church, and as such, not only do all members of the church have the right to be buried at their local church — and the vicar has no right to refuse to bury any member of the church for any reason, but even non-members of the church have the right to be buried at the local cemetery (although in the case of non-members the vicar may choose not to officiate the burial).

(Thanks to @rksteg for the link)

A long time ago, there was a small band of cavepeople trying to survive in a harsh world. Their two best hunters, Grog and Zog, had been tracking prey together for years. Among the many things Grog and Zog had learned was that when they worked together, they were more likely to catch the meat that helped feed themselves and their band, and to get all sorts (yes, all sorts) of adulation and affection as a result.

One morning, Grog and Zog were out hunting when a bear ambushed them. Grog knew that if he sprinted away, he’d probably survive, but his trusted friend Zog would be killed. Zog knew that if he bolted, he’d be the only reliable hunter left in the band, the thought of which saddened and terrified him. Whether they realized it or not, there was a good chance they would both survive if they both stayed and fought. For whatever reasons, they stood their ground together, fought off the bear with their spears, and lived to hunt again.

And hunt they did, that very day. They used their imaginations to “think like a deer,” employing that early form of empathy to track a big buck and eventually kill it. But soon after they hoisted the carcass onto their shoulders, a large man they’d never seen appeared on their path. He was just one man, but he looked strong, and he had a club. With the bear incident fresh in their minds, Grog and Zog decided to play it safe, stick together, and kill the man before he could hurt them.

As night fell, Grog and Zog returned to the cave to much drooling and cheering. The two hunters relayed the story of that eventful day while the others shouted and danced with abandon. Everyone ate as much as possible while the food was available. The old man of the clan, perhaps feeling left out of the hunt, warned the others not to get too happy because The Spirits could take everything away. After all, that had happened to a less-cooperative clan in the next valley: their single best hunter had been hit by lightning, and the little band had perished the following winter.

And now back to modernity.

Polls show that most Americans are people of faith, and that those who aren’t comprise the least trusted group in the nation. Among people of faith, the most persistent obstacle to entertaining the possibility that a moral nonbeliever could exist is the widespread and intuitive assumption that nonreligious equals non-moral. (If experience or careful thought hasn’t yet brought you to this conclusion about our faithful friends, take it from a writer who lives in Alabama.)

So, given this reality, wouldn’t it be useful to have a simple, reproducible way to explain how and why the baseline of human morality stems not from religious belief or ancient texts but from a natural process? What if this secular humanists’ teaching-aid was a four-paragraph story that could be read or told in roughly two minutes, with perhaps another minute of explanation if necessary?

That additional explanation, by the way, might go something like this:

Imagine the events in the story of Grog and Zog repeated hundreds, thousands, millions of times down through the generations, wherever there were people. Which individuals would last long enough to reproduce? Which would reproduce more while alive? And which types of bands were more likely to survive? (Further hints here could include the words strength, intelligence, imagination, cooperation, nurturing, and trust, as in trust in your teammates in the game of survival.)

Of course, true biblical literalists — the hardcore “New Earthers” — wouldn’t accept the point of the story because it doesn’t jibe with their archaic conceptions of the age of the universe. But in this real world of limited time and resources, it’s not the thumping thoughtless fundamentalists whom we secular humanists should try to convince of the possibility of our being moral. It’s the relatively reachable and reasonable middle – the thoughtful people of faith who sometimes ponder morality on a level deeper than “God says X” or “the Bible says Y.” To believers or nonbelievers who’ve kept up with recent science on genetic altruism and the like, and to people with the most basic grasp of human history, it’s clear that small bands of weak, slow, tiny-toothed, nearly clawless early humans couldn’t have survived and thrived in an indifferent world without working together. And the Parable of Grog and Zog — a simplified fusion of relevant events that must have happened to our ancestors countless times — offers a snapshot of how. But in this case, the snapshot comes before the bulb flashes: once a reader or listener understands that cooperation and altruism (not just fear, aggression, and greed) have worked for us through the ages, it’s a tiny leap to grasping how, over time, basic human morality came about through a natural process independent of religion. It evolved, even if that e-word is something to avoid with certain audiences.

An understanding that morality has natural roots would undercut the no-religion-means-no-morals equation. It would also help chip away at one of humanity’s most persistent sources of division, at belief systems that undoubtedly contain lots of wisdom (which can be retained) and lots of nonsense, and at the mindset that most causes humans to shirk ultimate responsibility for what happens here on Earth.

More specifically and locally, the knowledge that morality has natural roots would counteract the self-fulfilling and institution-serving notion that a newborn baby is a somehow a “sinner” — a sick, damaging concept that persists despite a growing body of research that shows humans are born with an urge to help others.

As freethinkers around the world know consciously or intuitively, and as the Parable of Grog and Zog demonstrates, basic morality is human, not Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist. This is not to say that religious belief hasn’t been beneficial to humanity and therefore bred into us also (there is such a thing as a helpful misconception), only that human morality — which of course is shaped, molded, undercut, or bolstered by our physical and cultural environment — evolved long before the faiths we know today. It’s sad that the idea that morality evolved is so out-of-left-field, so alien to most believers, though that mental block makes perfect sense when you’ve been taught since toddlerhood that God/Jesus/Allah/etc is what makes you and life good, or provides just a chance to be good. The lack of the knowledge that morality evolved — and is therefore shared — is the main barrier to a less superstitious view of the world, and to a less judgmental view of people who don’t buy into a particular orthodoxy or believe in a warden in the sky. The assumption that the good in humans comes exclusively from God (and the bad from nature) will always trump anti-religion metaphysical arguments about the universe. So we have to address the questions, “How would I live without my faith? “What would be my guide?”

Luckily, stories have power (see Bible, etc), and a simple tale that shows how natural processes account for the roots of human morality is no exception. The parable even illustrates how positive and counterproductive aspects of human nature — seemingly opposite traits — arose from the same process: some of what worked for us a long time ago, including preemptive aggression with spears, in generally unhelpful today. It’s a simple and elegant explanation that has the added bonus of being true. There’s no need for a God as interpreted by fallible primates in explaining the origin of morality, or for God’s horned opposite — tellingly, often a symbol of nature — in explaining our worst behavior. There’s also no need for the futile mental gymnastics required to rationalize a moral, omniscient, and omnipotent God currently allowing a starving girl to be raped and butchered by drug-addicted child soldiers. (One’s revulsion at that has nothing to do with faith. It has to do with being a human who hasn’t been made into a killing machine by horrendous external factors and/or abnormal wiring.) The believer’s Problem of Evil is sidestepped, its burden made moot by basic and increasingly verifiable knowledge of ourselves.

Nature has long been blamed for the Hobbesian nasty, brutish, and short aspects of human existence but is only recently getting credit for the other traits that have made us human, not to mention humane. Our natural heritage is complex, and it’s our job — our job — now to decide which traits to try to perpetuate and reinforce (cooperation, empathy, altruism, curiosity?) and which traits to try to mitigate or outgrow (aggression, prejudice, fear of the other, gluttony?). It turns out that the Big Ethical Question isn’t, “which faith must win out for us to live in peace?” but, “which human traits are still desirable, and which are now counterproductive?” I think most people would even agree on the answers, once the right question is asked.

Imagine a world where the vast majority of people — religious and otherwise — understood that the baseline, if not the particulars, of morality itself was something that grew out of our long history of working together, that it was something shared throughout humanity. That’s not an anti-religion idea. It’s a unifying, pro-human concept regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof.

So with that in mind, go forth, my brothers and sisters. Spread the word. Tell it. Copy it. Paste it. Post it. Email it. Snail mail it. Put it on T-shirts. Inject it in one form or another into the body societal. Make it a meme. Make it a vaccine against the insidious equation. Plant a seed of self-knowledge that sprouts up through the orthodoxies that seal off otherwise fertile minds. Go forth, fellow secular humanists, and spread the Gospel of Grog and Zog. Given a wide audience and time, it could help us all.

Reprinted with permission from the April-May 2012 issue of Free Inquiry, the bimonthly journal of the Council for Secular Humanism.

Researchers Will M. Gervais and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver are back and they believe there is a way.

In the May, 2012 edition of the journal Psychological Science, they lay out one solution:

Remind people of secular authority. In other words, remind them that we place authority in cops and courts (and, implicitly, not god).

For believers, thinking of God, like thinking of social surveillance by peers, increases both public self-awareness… and socially desirable responding… By making people feel that their behavior is being monitored, belief in watchful gods may increase cooperative behavior… As a result, religious people may interpret other people’s belief in watchful gods as a cue that they can be trusted.

…

Secular and sacred authority may also serve interchangeable functions in encouraging prosocial behavior, albeit with different implications for distrust of atheists. The view that atheists are untrustworthy because they do not believe that their behavior is monitored by a divine power may erode to the extent that people are aware of effective monitoring by other “higher” (but not supernatural) powers. If so, then reminders of secular authorities that enforce prosocial behavior should reduce believers’ distrust of atheists. Furthermore, this effect should be specific to distrust of atheists, rather than extending to prejudice in general.

Here’s what they did.

In one experiment, participants watched a movie about either a tourist visiting Canada (control group) or the Vancouver police chief giving the year-end report (experimental group). Afterwards, the groups were asked questions that included items dealing with the trustworthiness of atheists (e.g. “In times of crisis, I am more inclined to trust people who are religious”).

What happened? The amount of atheist distrust was lower with the group who watched the video of the cop:

Maybe that was a fluke, though…

So they compared distrust toward atheists with disgust toward homosexuals (both are minorities, with concealable identities, who are seen as “threats” to religious groups). Basically, they wanted to know whether examples of secular authority reduced distrust among atheists or distrust among generally-unliked minority groups.

They gave a (different) group words to unscramble and rearrange. Some of the group members were given words like “civic,” “contract,” “jury,” “court,” and “police.” The others were given random, non-authority-related words.

Then they asked them questions measuring their anti-gay and anti-atheist prejudice.

This time, the anti-gay prejudice didn’t change… but anti-atheist distrust was reduced:

But even if people harbor anti-gay prejudice, do they distrust them like they do atheists?

Time for one last experiment. A different group was chosen and broken up into subgroups. Each was assigned the same unscrambling task as before. Then, in a seemingly unrelated task, they were asked questions specifically about distrust of atheists and gays.

Once again, the effect on distrust of gay people was negligible. But the level of distrust of atheists went down:

So what’s up with that?! Gervais and Norenzayan conclude:

Our three experiments demonstrated that subtle reminders of effective secular authority — secular institutions that help secure cooperation among individuals — reduce religious believers’ distrust of atheists. In addition, we tested and found no support for three theoretically plausible alternative explanations for these findings.

…

Although religious prosociality may have served as an initial mechanism for bootstrapping large-scale cooperation in some cultures, cooperative groups may create a variety of secular institutions that also promote cooperation. As reliance on these secular institutions waxes in many societies, the influence of religion wanes… As a result, places that tend to have more effective governments also have much less religious belief (e.g., Scandinavia…).

What can we do with this information? I don’t know about you, but this is my new business card:

(Thanks to Lauren for the link!)

Atheists in Hats:

Author Douglas Adams in a hat.

Cats Questioning the Bible:

See? Isn’t your life better already? Obviously.

(Click to enlarge)

Also, I don’t know how to make those images.

If you like the film, considering making a small donation so the creators can continue to create work like this.

(via religiousantagonist)

A few days ago I asked why not become religious, if it will give you a better life, even if the evidence for religious beliefs is weak? Commenters eagerly declared their love of truth. Today I’ll ask: if you give up the benefits of religion, because you love… truth, why not also give up stories, to gain even more… truth? Alas, I expect that few who claim to give up religion because they love truth will also give up stories for the same reason. Why?

The answer seems obvious: Most of us enjoy fiction because it allows us an opportunity to see ourselves in the characters, to see how they grapple with problems that we face — or will have to face in the future. It’s also fun to use our imagination and explore new worlds through the eyes of a gifted author.

More to the point, though, we enjoy fiction because we know we’re reading stories. People aren’t making the claim that Harry Potter must be real and then basing their lives and creating laws around that. People do that all the time when it comes to Holy Books.

Here’s a related question: Why is it that books described as “Christian fiction” (like the Left Behind series) are so predominant that they get their own shelves in bookstores, but atheist books are overwhelming non-fiction? It’s always about science or arguments against god/religion… I mean, can you even name a fictional book centered around atheism? There have been some, but certainly not many. Is there a reason atheist authors rarely dabble in the fictional world?

***Edit***: Readers point out that there are several other authors of atheist fiction — e.g. Phillip Pullman, Douglas Adams, Gene Roddenberry — so maybe a better question would be why atheist fiction isn’t as popular lately?

But that’s what Lexington Catholic High School in Kentucky did to senior Hope Decker and her date, sophomore Tiffany Wright:

In an email Sunday, Lexington Catholic president Steve Angelucci said, “As a Catholic high school, we uphold every teaching of the Catholic Church. The policies and procedures of our school reflect those teachings.”

When the couple tried to enter the school’s gymnasium, where the prom was held, they were turned away…

But the students — always smarter than the administrators at these schools — got the last laugh:

Dancing outside the prom (via Lexington Herald-Reader)

Armed with several car stereos and a group of supportive friends, the teens hosted their own prom in the school parking lot, complete with a table stacked with snacks. After the night’s final song under the stars, 108 students signed a letter to the administration criticizing its decision to turn the girls away.

…

“We had a wonderful night, and we were surrounded by true friends,” Wright said. “I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”

Beautiful

And Wright even got in the perfect response to anything the administrators could say against them:

“I would understand and respect the school’s decision if they truly upheld church teachings,” Wright said Sunday night. “They didn’t forbid the entrance of all the couples who’ve had premarital sex and all the kids who planned to get drunk after the prom.”

It didn’t happen in the classroom, but the girls and their classmates learned something valuable that night: If you stand together for the right reasons, people will be on your side. Too bad school officials aren’t supporting them, but the media sure as hell will be.

My favorite part, talking about what atheists believe (starting at the 5:41 mark):

We believe there is no rational basis to discriminate on the basis of race or gender. We believe our sex live are our business, not the government’s. We believe life has the meaning we give it through increasing happiness and decreasing suffering in the world. We believe healthcare is our decision and our doctors’, not the bishops’. We value teaching how to think, not what to think. We value science, over the supernatural, as an explanation for the world around us. We believe, and value, forming opinions based on reason, not authority. We believe moral principles are tested based on their consequences, not on the dictates of ancient books and preachers. We believe we should change our beliefs based on evidence, not make them immune to questions. We believe marriage should be based on love, not hate. And most of all, we believe freedom is based on “We the People,” not “They the Clergy.”

Damn, there was a lot of rain that day…

The statistics are most striking among those under 28 years old: more than 71% of eastern Germans in this age group say they have never believed in the existence of God. That’s nearly as many as in the 38-47 group, of which 72.6% are non-believers.

What the figures mean is that in eastern Germany, very young people are on the same wavelength as people from the middle generation when it comes to belief in God. The political transformation of former East Germany, in other words, hasn’t had much of an effect on people’s ideas about religion. While there are somewhat fewer atheists among young adults aged 28 to 37, where “only” 63.6% say they’ve never been believers, those in the following generation are at least as non-religious as their parents.

…

Because results for Germany were divided into East and West, it emerged that former East Germany was by far the most atheistic region on the planet. There, 52.1% of those asked agreed with the statement: “I don’t believe in God.”

This is all according to a new study called “Beliefs about God across Time and Countries” (PDF) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.

America has a long way to go…

1) Babies are atheists

Barnes says that religion is innate! Babies believe in the supernatural from early on! One study showed it! So there! How dare all the atheists equate religious indoctrination with child abuse!?

Well, babies don’t believe in god the same way that many adults do… so we’re not actually off base. Still, no atheist ever suggests that babies are thinking, “There’s no proof for God’s existence.” We’re saying babies aren’t mature enough to consider questions about the supernatural at all. Just because they might have thoughts about the supernatural at a young age doesn’t mean any of it is accurate. Just because children believe in Santa doesn’t make him real. And no one really believes babies are thinking about Jesus or Allah or Vishnu or miracles or all the other nonsense that comes along with belief in god…

When parents teach children — who are not old enough to challenge them — that Genesis is factual or that they must pray five times a day (or else!), that is a form of abuse because you’re not allowing the child to make up his or her own mind about a very serious issue. And we’re not even talking about the threat of hellfire for not believing these things…

2) Priests Rape Boys

This is a sell-out argument, right up there with HITLER WAS AN ATHEIST SO ATHEISM IS BAD! Now to be fair, the Internet-Atheist crowd hardly ever use it as an actual argument. It’s just this awkward, religiously pasted bit of snark that ends every post about why the Catholic Church is the worst thing in the world.

You know why atheists say priests rape boys? Because priests have raped boys.

To be sure, even if all priests raped boys, that wouldn’t be an argument against god’s existence, only an argument that no one in their right mind ought to support the Catholic Church.

But no one’s saying all priests are rapists. What we object to is the way the Church covered up the pedophilia that existed for so long, how priests were shifted from one parish to another in a way that let some of them rape young boys again.

Zach Weiner captured our side of this well:

Yes, there are also other pedophiles out there in other professions. But the pedo-priests’ devout faith obviously didn’t stop them from committing these awful crimes. So what good did it do?

3) Light before the sun? #godsfake

Barnes is responding to the idea that, in Genesis, God created light on Day 1… but the Sun/Moon/Stars on Day 4. (His response: God just created photons on Day 1, you guys…)

Well, I guess if you think a fertilized egg is basically the same thing as a grown fetus, that’s not a huge stretch…

I don’t even need to get into the science, though. This is only one of *many* things Genesis gets wrong if taken at face value. And it goes against the 60% of Americans who believe in the literal six-day-Creation-myth in Genesis (according to The Barna Group).

…

After all that, Barnes still thinks he has a slam dunk. He doesn’t. And he ought to know better than to create atheist strawmen.

Someone once observed that the great drama of Christianity is not a crowd shot, following the movements of collectives or even nations. The drama is always personal, individual, unfolding in one’s own life. We’re not alone in sensing this. Men and women of every faith, and good people with none at all, sincerely strive to do right and lead a purpose-driven life.

Ok, so it’s not glowing praise, only the idea that non-religious people, too, can be good. But that’s so abnormal to hear in conservative circles that it qualifies as something worth noting.

Then again, it’s followed by a reference to Rick Warren‘s book… What’s that supposed to suggest? That atheists have a god-given purpose in life?

Anyway, GodVlogger puts this in some context:

Morgan: You have five kids, right?

Perkins: Yes, I do.

Morgan: What would you do if one of them came home and said, dad, I’m gay?

Perkins: Well, we would have a conversation about it. I doubt that would happen with my children, as we are teaching them the right ways that they are to interact as human beings.

In other words, his kids wouldn’t turn out gay because he raised them “right.”

Chris Matthews invited Perkins on Hardball to elaborate on the comment… and, for some reason, Perkins accepted. Barney Frank was there, too, and both he and Matthews went off on Perkins for 15 glorious minutes:

When Barney Frank is defending Dick Cheney for any reason, you know it’s a good one… the entire clip makes you wonder why Christian leaders don’t just stick their usual one-direction-only method of conversation. Whenever they allow themselves to be fact-checked, their arguments are torn apart.

One of Perkins’ arguments is that children are better off raised by a mother and father and studies have shown that. GLAAD points out that those studies only compare two-parent homes to single-parent homes:

No study has ever found any differences between kids raised in straight two-parent homes and kids raised in gay two-parent homes.”

To add insult to injury, Lawrence O’Donnell took Perkins to task for suggesting there has only been one definition of marriage throughout mankind’s 5,000-year history (wait, what?):

I don’t know why Perkins agrees to go on national TV to defend bigotry but I hope he keeps doing it. He makes Christians look bad, he makes Christian values seem outdated and immoral, and he makes it a lot easier for people to realize Christians are flat-out wrong when it comes to social issues.

So Smith wrote up some 1-star reviews of the church online… and began a blog called “Beaverton Grace Bible Church Survivors.”

How did Pastor Charles (Chuck) O’Neal respond? With forgiveness? With an apology for her bad experience?

Nah. He’s suing her for $500,000:

… the pastor claims in the lawsuit he filed that her words, “creepy,” “cult,” “control tactics,” and “spiritual abuse,” are defamation.

…

The lawsuit didn’t just target Smith. Her daughter and three other commenters are also being sued.

“He can say what he wants in the church and say, don’t talk about this or don’t talk about that, or don’t talk to this person, but when you’re out in the civil world, you don’t do that anymore,” Smith said. “And he’s not my pastor anymore. He does not have that right to keep people from talking.”

The Smiths filed a special free speech motion to dismiss the lawsuit. It goes before a judge later this month.

The Streisand Effect is in full force since the media’s taken notice:

Neither the pastor, the pastor’s wife, nor his attorney wanted to speak with the press. Because, you know, they don’t want any negative attention…

Interestingly enough, in the few days since the story went public, the church has gotten multiple 1-star reviews on the Google and DexKnows websites

The way Pastor O’Neal’s handled all this just goes to show Smith was right to point out the “control tactics” in the church. They can’t handle honest criticism — it messes with the whole “let’s brainwash our congregation” thing.

So where are all the people who attend the church? Why aren’t they speaking out? Even if they like the church, do they support this frivolous lawsuit? Or are they just keeping silent so they don’t piss off this pastor-dictator?

ZOMGitsCriss doesn’t approve of it either:

The Illinois Family Institute, a SPLC-certified hate group, offers five reasons Christians should continue to fight against gay marriage (written by Kevin DeYoung of The Gospel Coalition). When you read their list, it’s clear they’re out of ideas. They know they’re fighting a losing battle, and they’re clinging to whatever bigotry might still go unchallenged by their members:

1. Every time the issue of gay marriage has been put to a vote by the people, the people have voted to uphold traditional marriage.

As if civil rights should be up for a vote…

Even if gay marriage bans have passed in several states so far, it won’t happen much longer. The tides are turning. Eventually, equality will prevail, the bans will be overturned, and then this argument will become useless. What will they do when acceptance of marriage equality becomes an overwhelming majority and not just a slim one?

2. The promotion and legal recognition of homosexual unions is not in the interest of the common good. That may sound benighted, if not bigoted. But we must say it in love: codifying the indistinguishability of gender will not make for the “peace of the city.” It rubs against the grain of the universe, and when you rub against the grain of divine design you’re bound to get splinters.

Aww… they’re trying to turn their bigotry into poetry. Isn’t that sweet of them.

Besides the fact that there’s no “divine design,” accepting gay marriage (and even civil unions) would result in more committed couples, more couples willing to adopt kids who need homes, stronger families, etc. Obviously, it doesn’t hurt straight families in the least bit. It would be good for everyone… except the organizations that exist solely to prevent equality from happening.

3. Marriage is not simply the term we use to describe those relationships most precious to us. The word means something and has meant something throughout history… What’s more, as Christians we understand that the great mystery of marriage can never be captured between a relationship of Christ and Christ or church and church.

Ah, the “definition” of marriage argument. Look, marriage used to be all about property. It used to be allowed only between people of the same skin color. It used to be (and in some places still is) decided by the parents and not the people getting married. Definitions change over time and marriage certainly hasn’t meant the same thing “throughout history.” If anything, definitions get more accurate over time and it’s about time we changed this one.

Oh… and regarding relationships between “church and church,” it turns out churches merge all the time

4. Allowing for the legalization of gay marriage further normalizes what was until very recently, and still should be, considered deviant behavior.

There’s a reason homosexuality stopped being viewed as a mental illness: It wasn’t one. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association finally accepted that in the 1970s. But what do they know? They’re only professionals who work with real disorders on a daily basis.

5. We are naive if we think a laissez faire compromise would be enjoyed by all if only the conservative Christians would stop being so dogmatic.

The idea here is that it wouldn’t be enough if conservative Christians stopped putting up a fight; the victory for gay-rights advocates will only occur when people accept same-sex marriage instead of merely tolerating it.

While that would be great, I don’t really care what conservative Christians believe about gay people. I want them to stop getting in the way of civil rights legislation, but if they refuse to perform gay marriages, fine. If they want to ban gay people from their churches, fine. If they want to put up a sign that says “black people can’t take communion,” that’s their business. No one’s forcing them to be accepting and loving of all people. That sort of behavior is reserved for liberals and Jesus, I guess.

…

Obviously, there are many Christians who don’t buy into the hate.

They’re upset that older members of their church (or younger, more conservative Christians) can’t get over their homophobia.

They know that even the more liberal Christians who claim to “love” gay people and want to “apologize” for the wrongs done to gay people in the name of Christians would still vote against gay marriage and still believe homosexuality is a sin.

But if those Christians who support same-sex marriage want to make the change happen faster, it begins by calling out pastors and Christian groups who oppose it for awful reasons — like the Illinois Family Institute and all the other groups like it. By name and often.

Don’t stay silent. And if your church doesn’t get it, get out of there and take other people with you.

…

Biola University, an evangelical Christian school in southern California, is one of those schools that will expel you if they find out you’re gay. (Because, you know, they love everyone.) In fact, they just put out a Statement on Human Sexuality (PDF).

Biola University affirms that sexual intimacy is designed by God to be expressed solely within a marriage between one man and one woman. This view of sexuality and marriage is rooted in the Genesis account of creation, reflected in the teachings of Jesus Christ himself, and is maintained consistently throughout Scripture. It is a view based on the biblical teaching of monogamy — that God designed sexual union for the purpose of uniting one man and one woman into a permanent, lifelong, one flesh union in the context of marriage.

Considering all that, it’s pretty damn amazing that a group called The Biola Queer Underground has formed in spite of all the risks.

They’ve already responded to the school’s Statement:

The recently published policy, eighteen months in the making, did not bring change except to make it clearer that Biola views “any acts of sexual intimacy between two persons of the same sex as an illegitimate moral option for the confessing Christian.” It did not even attempt to address those with transgender or other non-conforming gender identities. Nor did it speak to the consequences for those who do not view their own or other’s homosexuality as “a struggle to maintain sexual purity.”

…

Biola claims to want a dialogue. However, unless LGBTQ students who don’t view homosexuality or transgender identity as sinful are allowed to speak openly without threat, this conversation will continue to be one–sided. Without inviting Christians speakers who have a different view of homosexuality, fruitful dialogue will not happen. In the past, your monologues on homosexuality have not been good or fair to us. We understand your interpretation of scripture; please hear ours.

In creating this group, they’re following in the footsteps of other similar groups that have also formed (or are trying to form) at Christian schools.

The obvious question is: Why do they remain at Biola? Why not transfer to a more accepting school? They’ve answered those questions here.

Christian blogger John Shore did a phone interview with one of the group’s founders and offers a bit more insight into how and why the group formed.

For anyone who attends Biola and may be questioning or hiding their sexuality, here’s what the group suggests:

If you would like to be apart of what we are doing, or want a safe place to be yourself, we would love to talk to you. Because of the nature of our community however, we cannot simply post a time and a place for you to meet with us. If you are truly interested in joining or talking to us please email us at: biola.underground@gmail.com

Here’s hoping they stay hidden from the university — but known to (and able to find community with) their fellow LGBTQ classmates.

…

I asked the founders what the response has been like from the other students. They said:

This has caused quite a stir at Biola, more than I think most of us had expected. By the second day we had one thousand Facebook likes and a dozen tweets on our website. The Chimes, our school newspaper, was very quick to get a story on us, and it is now the most popular in their history. Many students are angered over the group, but we have been pleasantly surprised at how many students are completely supportive of us. And not just in a “love the sinner hate the sin” type of way, a lot of students don’t think homosexuality is morally wrong and are excited to help us as a group. This has been shocking but wonderful.

And how many members are currently in the group?

We would like to maintain a level of mystery as to how many people are in our group. We feel comfortable saying we are comprised of a few dozen individuals. (although we’re fairly certain more LGBTQ people go to Biola than exist in our group). We definitely aren’t just one or two kids, we have structure like any other group. We represent several majors, range from freshman to seniors and are happily made up of L,G,B,T, and Q’s. One thing that might surprise people is that we have a fair amount of transgender people in our group. Sadly, that is a group of people completely ignored and whose struggles and lives are dismissed at Biola.

Besides the huge collection of speakers, they end late on Friday and Saturday night — which makes sense since most of the attendees are still wide awake – and begin relatively late on Saturday morning (because, you know, why not?)

That means no speaker will get an unenviable time slot on Sunday morning… it also means there’s plenty of time to digest and discuss the talks after they happen. As in previous years, there are several different tracks — all short talks — so you get tons of good information relatively quickly without getting bored.

This is one of the conferences I’m thrilled to attend every year. It’s great for students and adults. Plus, Columbus is kind of awesome. If you can swing it, register now and help the secular students

She has more jewelry available at her Etsy shop — check it out, buy something, and support crafty atheists!

…

When I was 16, I started working at a church nursery. At the time I was a junior in high school and I was still an ardent Christian. They started me as a floater and teaching assistant. I was put in whatever room needed the most help that Sunday or Wednesday. After a few months as a paid employee, I found out that the lead teacher in the 3-year-old room was leaving, so I was asked to be the lead teacher.

I left this church after 3 years of service still only making $7.50/hour when I knew that other churches paid their lead teachers at least $10. The congregation was in general very judgmental and unwilling to help in the nursery when we needed it. The quality of care went down because of this. So I got a different job working at a smaller church. This other church was closer to home, started me out at $10/hour, and the people were much nicer. Of course, by the time I took that job my problems became personal. I had been questioning my beliefs for a long time. Aside from the initial background check and the application I had to fill out, after working for about 6 weeks they handed me another form I had to fill out. This was the beginning of my personal problems with the job.

The first page of this form had you fill out the basics (name, number, address, etc.), but then at the bottom it had a long list of dogmatic claims and asked you to check any and all that you believed.

The second page was simply for you to list or explain what other ministerial work you’ve done, such as mission trips and the like. The last page was the one that surprised me. It was basically a questionnaire about which “sins” I had committed.

One question asked “Have you ever had a homosexual experience? Yes___ No___ If yes, please explain below:”

I didn’t see how this was relevant to my job at all. I’m bisexual, and at the time I was finally starting to accept that part of myself. I had had homosexual experiences before, but I was not about to tell that to my employers when it was none of their business. There were similar questions about smoking or drinking. It also had a question about pre-/extra- marital sex. I never turned in this form. In fact, I think I threw it away.

The first page was insulting to me, because it reduced what little beliefs I still had in Christianity to a mere checklist, and implied that if I don’t fit the whole checklist then I may not be fit to work there. The second page was insulting to me because it wouldn’t let me list any extra-curricular activities that weren’t specifically linked with church. I spent most of my time in high school in band, practicing, performing and helping teach the younger students, yet I could not use that teaching/leadership experience on the form. The last page, where I was asked to list and confess to “sins” that had nothing to do with my employment, was insulting and intrusive.

I worked for this church as the lead teacher in the 3-year-old room for almost three years. I loved teaching the children. The rest of my week I spent as a server at a restaurant or at school, so those kids were the highlight of my week. At this job, I was paid more, but I also had more responsibilities. I was in charge (mostly) of the curriculum. I put together the lessons for each Sunday morning and Wednesday night. I set the schedule for the day and put the crafts and snacks together. I had to stay a few weeks ahead so I could list my supplies for my boss. I also had to keep up with the bulletins (inside and outside the class) and attendance. When a child hadn’t attended for three weeks, I would send a letter to their parents. It was a lot of work but I still loved it… until I stopped believing.

It had been a long time coming. Over the course of my 3 years there, I went from liberal Christian to deist to agnostic to atheist. The last year there was the hardest. I felt trapped and alone. I didn’t tell anybody I was an atheist — no friends or family, not even my boyfriend. I had spirited, anonymous, debates online. I had always loved debating, and I had been debating Christianity and belief in god since I was about 11 or 12, but now I was on the other side.

Every day I worked there felt like a lie. At first, I tried to hide it by diving deeper into the work. I would come up during the week and work on lessons, months in advance. I would come up with intricate crafts and games to teach the kids. I always tried to find a way to link the Bible story to real life problems. I started almost completely omitting god, even in the songs we sang. One particular lesson that stands out in my memory was the one I taught of Moses’ sister watching over him while he was floating down the river in the reed basket. The curriculum I worked from wanted me to stress that god watches over them the same way Miriam watched over Moses, but it didn’t feel genuine to me. The kids can puppet-talk about god if you prompt them, but that day I changed the discussion. I opened it with this question: Who looks after you and takes care of you?

The children’s answers were: mom, dad, my sisters, my brothers, my aunts, my uncles, grandma and grandpa, my teachers. I just smiled and we had a long discussion about how each person looks after them. This was one of the first times I had changed the lesson to talk about their daily life instead of the abstract concept of god. The children loved it and I felt better. I had been torturing myself for months. When I first became an atheist, I was angry about the indoctrination that I had been put through as a child. I was just like these 3-year-olds. I didn’t want to be a part of their indoctrination. What would they think of me if they grew up and shed their beliefs as well? Would they remember me as a kind and good teacher, or would they resent me for being a part of the system that indoctrinated them? What of the parents that I sent letters to for low attendance? Are they still believers? Would they think I was just trying to coerce them into coming back to church?

I couldn’t come out as an atheist to my boss though. She’s friends with my mother. She is possibly the nicest person I’ve ever met, so I don’t think she would have judged me or thought badly about me, but I knew she would tell my mother. I was not ready to have that conversation with my mother yet. I finally quit, but I was able to use school as an excuse. I was taking journalism classes and most of the work was done outside of class time, so I didn’t have time for two jobs. I still miss the kids, and I miss teaching. If I could work at a secular preschool and have time for school, I would do it. I count myself lucky that I got out when I was young. If I felt trapped at the age of 22 and it was just my part-time job, then how must a middle-aged pastor who’s never done anything else feel?

The advice I would give to those in this situation is to make the best of it while you’re there, but search for a way out. Find a friend or family member in whom you can confide. They can help you and lend support when you need it. Mine was my boyfriend. He knew what I was going through, since he had become an atheist while studying at a Bible college.

My advice for everybody else is to support the Clergy Project.

The Lord’s Prayer? The one that begins, “Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name”? The one that appears in the Bible? We’re debating if that’s Christian?!

How could anyone suggest otherwise?

“You could consider it a prayer for multiple religions, because Jesus is considered to be a rabbi or a great teacher by many of the world’s religions. It was not originally delivered as a Christian prayer; it was simply a teacher teaching his disciples a good way to pray.”

Clayton Schmit, professor, Fuller Theological Seminary

Right… I’m sure Hindus everywhere will begin reciting it immediately.

Then there’s this question:

What?! Let same-sex parents adopt a child?! But if we let that happen, then… then… then the parents will love the child unconditionally just like all other parents.

(For what it’s worth, the issue at hand is whether a Christian adoption agency should be able to discriminate if they get taxpayer money to run their agency.)

But let’s hear how some Christians “hate the sinner and the sin”:

… Christians should not stop their adoption and foster-care programs, but neither should they comply with laws that would force them to place children with same-sex couples. Christians should continue operating their charitable organizations according to their principles, and they should continue serving the least among us until the state coercively shuts them down.

They should do this because when Jesus commanded us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and care for the widow and orphan, he meant it. He meant it when he said we should love our neighbor, but he didn’t mean that we love them according to secularist liberal values or the dictates of the state. We should love them as Christ loves them.

– Editor of online publication Public Discourse Ryan T. Anderson

Jesus said love everyone! But those damn liberals think we should love everyone. We know better. Everyone is equal. Some are just more equal than others.

…

Again, I know there are many Christians who are rolling their eyes as they read those passages, too, but fact remains that these are questions being debated in the Christian community as if there’s a debate to be had.

Why anyone would continue to attend a church where the pastor preaches homophobia, I don’t know. Why anyone would support a church where the pastor just avoids the topic altogether, thus silently supporting bigotry, I don’t know. But the more of them who speak out, the faster the church will weed out the bigots.

Rachel Held Evans is a Christian trying to get the bigots to see the light, by posing the argument in strategic terms:

So my question for those evangelicals leading the charge in the culture wars is this: Is it worth it?

Is a political “victory” really worth losing millions more young people to cynicism regarding the Church?

Is a political “victory” worth further alienating people who identify as LGBT?

Is a political “victory” worth perpetuating the idea that evangelical Christians are at war with gays and lesbians?

And is a political “victory” worth drowning out that quiet but persistent internal voice that asks — what if we get this wrong?

Too many Christian leaders seem to think the answer to that question is “yes,” and it’s costing them.

As much as I wish Christians would listen to her, part of me wants them to just stand stubbornly against gay rights and push all those young Christians out of the church. It’d be tough for all those gay Christians, but they’re all better off outside that insidious faith.

(via MrsBettyBowers)

Worry no more. It’s happening:

This is why we can't have nice things (Kerry Brown)

Kerry Brown said the “God-given vision” of the Branson Cross came to his father Dean two decades ago after he bought land atop Bear Mountain near the intersections of U.S. highways 160 and 65 in Branson, tourist mecca famous for its country music venues.

“It started as a vision with a 7-foot-tall cross just so people would have a place to go and meditate with the Lord,” Brown told FoxNews.com. “As time went on, additional portions of the vision came to him and ultimately it was to build the largest cross that anyone has ever seen.”

Brown hopes to have the $5 million project completed by the end of 2013. The cross will feature a 100-foot crossbeam and twin elevators to the 17-story-tall horizontal bar. The project is being funded by donations, and though Brown declined to say how much he’s taken in, a website associated with the effort said some $410,000 has been raised so far. Much of the expense will go to preparing the mountaintop site.

It’s a good thing this is going up. I was beginning to think Missouri was going to suffer from a complete lack of crosses.

“I know St. Louis has the Gateway Arch and San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge, and those are all fantastic monuments, but they’re all secular monuments,” he said. “This will be the first monument to the spirit of man and there’s a reason why it’s being built in the heartland of the nation. It’s absolutely in the right place at the right time and it’s going to have ten times the spirituality as any one of those monuments.”

Would someone like to tell Brown that 10 times 0 is still 0…?

If it’s all happening on private land with donated money, there’s not going to be much of an argument from atheists. But if they suddenly get tax breaks for a monument to their faith, they’re going to see a lawsuit. In both cases, this is an unnecessary monument that accomplishes nothing useful.

And can we stop with all the nonsense about how the Cross isn’t a Christian symbol? It was a bad argument then and it’s a bad argument now.

Even though I’ve been supportive of gay rights as long as I can remember, I’m not as well-versed in its history. Early in the book, Carpenter sets us up with where the gay rights movement in Texas (specifically, Houston) used to be and what they were up against. Along the way, we’re taken to John Lawrence‘s apartment, where a string of events led to police arriving at his home late one night in 1998. Carpenter documents exactly what happened that night — evidence that contradicts what the police said — and we come to find out there’s a story behind the Supreme Court case Lawrence v Texas that most of the public never knew about.

As I understood it, the case involved police breaking into a gay couples’ home and arresting them for having sex because they were violating Texas’ Anti-Sodomy Law. The case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, where the couple prevailed in a 6-3 decision, overturning sodomy laws across the country.

It turns out the actual story leading to the case was nothing like that. The Supreme Court justices didn’t know that when they decided the case and I didn’t know about it until I read Dahlia Lithwick‘s brilliant article about the book in the New Yorker a couple of months ago.

What if, Carpenter asks, this weren’t a story about love, or even sex? What if, in the end, Lawrence v. Texas was less a whodunnit than a who didn’t? And, if there was no sex, let alone an intimate relationship, in John Lawrence’s apartment that night, how did the case come to be about both?

After reading that article, I had to get the book. It’s always strange to read a book when you already know the ending, but it didn’t stop me. I was captivated for weeks, reading whatever I could during lunch breaks at work, on planes, at red lights (don’t judge me)… hell, the footnotes were just as interesting as the book itself.

When I got to the end, I realized the namesake for the case, John Lawrence, died this past November and I never even heard about it. For as much as I read online, that one completely slipped past me. Lambda Legal attempted to raise money to give him a decent burial, but they barely raised anything… and I thought to myself I’m sure I could’ve donated or raised what they needed to cover those expenses. The whole book made me reconsider how much I’m really doing as an activist and how much more I could be doing. That’s a good sign.

Even more importantly, as you read about the chain of improbable events — all the people who had minor-but-vital roles in the case getting to the Supreme Court, all the things that had to go right for this case to get out of just the local court system in Texas — you realize we all have a part to play if we want to see justice served, not just for LGBT folks but for atheists, too.

Read this book. It’s incredible.

That’s what the Winnipeg Secularists (in Canada) are offering to their local city council in an effort to stop the prayers read before every meeting:

About 300 people have signed a petition delivered to city hall on Wednesday that calls on councillors to eliminate religious exercises at meetings.

Robert McGregor, a member of the Winnipeg Secularists, said he launched the petition after he attended a recent council meeting and was asked to stand for a prayer.

“As someone who is not Christian and who’s non-religious, I felt fairly uncomfortable in that situation,” McGregor told CBC News on Wednesday.

“I thought I was there for a city council meeting, not a church service.”

So far, the only thing city council representatives are responding with is the usual, “But it’s tradition!”

There’s a poll at the CBC website asking whether the prayer should be removed. Go nudge it in the right direction:

Paige Sultzbach (Carlos Chavez - The Republic)

Her school, Mesa Preparatory Academy in Arizona, doesn’t have a softball team, so she decided to try out for the boys’ baseball team. To no one’s surprise, she made it. They went undefeated all season (with a 9-0 record) and were excited to play for the Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship on Wednesday night.

Unfortunately, her team faced the aptly-named Our Lady of Sorrows Academy… a school that doesn’t think women ought to allowed to play a Man’s Game:

But Our Lady of Sorrows, a fundamentalist Catholic school in Phoenix that lost twice to Mesa Prep during the regular season, chose to forfeit the championship game rather than play a team fielding a female player.

Our Lady of Sorrows school officials would not comment, but Sultzbach’s mother, Pamela Sultzbach, said her daughter and the rest of the team received the news after Wednesday afternoon’s practice.

“This is not a contact sport, it shouldn’t be an issue,” Pamela said. “It wasn’t that they were afraid they were going to hurt or injure her, it’s that (they believe) that a girl’s place is not on a field.”

…

“I respect their views, but it’s a bit out of the 18th century,” said Mesa Prep athletic director Amy Arnold, who is the only woman now coaching a boys high-school football team in Arizona.

Sultzbach’s team won the state championship, but not in the way they would’ve liked to. Meanwhile, the athletes on the opposing team didn’t even get a chance to play in the game they had worked toward all season.

In a statement put out by Our Lady of Sorrows, school officials didn’t seem the least bit sorry for what they did:

As a Catholic school we promote the ideal of forming and educating boys and girls separately during the adolescent years, especially in physical education.

Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty.

… and we all know the best way to treat women with respect is to avoid letting them beat the crap out of our team.

They’re not doing the ladies any favor by refusing to play a team that has one on it. What part of teamwork and practice can’t women participate in?

The school needs to issue a second statement that begins with an apology to the entire Mesa Preparatory Academy team for choosing the cowards’ way out of the game. Then they can apologize to their own students for not letting them play for the state title because of some warped policy that bans co-ed sports because boys and girls must be taught “separately” in their little world.

Sultzbach has already been way more respectful to the other team than they deserve. When they played each other during the regular season, she sat out during both of the games. But she rightly refused to do that for the state championship.

I hope college recruiters are taking a good look at her. She seems like a strong girl who has a great athletic career in front of her.

(Thanks to Dani for the link)

(via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

The headlines were all about how acceptance for same-sex couples was at 50% — it was only the second time that support for gay marriage polled higher than rejection of it.

But I can’t believe this result didn’t get more attention:

88% of the Nones support gay marriage! The people with no religious identification, including atheists and agnostics, are on the right side of history. And, it turns out, the less you go to church, the more accepting (and loving) you are.

If anyone needs a reason to build the case of why religion is bad for us, there’s Exhibit A.

(Thanks to Ben for the link!)

(In response to Rush Limbaugh‘s criticism)

The Freedom From Religion Foundation just won a legal battle against the former and current governors of Colorado regarding their proclamations in support of the Day of Prayer.

The three-judge panel issued this unanimous ruling today (PDF):

A reasonable observer would conclude that these proclamations send the message that those who pray are favored members of Colorado’s political community, and that those who do not pray do not enjoy that favored status.

…

… the six Colorado Day of Prayer proclamations [2004-09] at issue here are governmental conduct that violate the Preference Clause [of the Religious Freedom section of Colorado’s Constitution]… [The content is] predominantly religious; they lack a secular context; and their effect is government endorsement of religion as preferred over nonreligion.

In short: We know you’re using your role as governor to endorse belief in god and you can’t do that.

The FFRF litigants wanted previous Colorado Day of Prayer proclamations declared unconstitutional and they want to prevent further proclamations from being issued. Initially, a judge said FFRF had the right to sue on behalf of Colorado taxpayers but the governor wasn’t doing anything illegal.

FFRF didn’t like that ruling and wanted to challenge it. The Governor didn’t like that FFRF had a right to sue. So they took the case to a state Appeals court.

There, the judges said FFRF still has the right to sue.

The Governor’s people didn’t want to address the Constitutionality of the proclamations — they just said it was a part of state history. But the court said that was a lie:

There [was] no indication in the record that, at the time of Colorado’s founding or at any time before 2004, Colorado’s governors had an annual tradition of proclaiming, separately from Thanksgiving, a Colorado Day of Prayer.

Furthermore, they said, it’s not a secularized day, like Christmas or Thanksgiving. It’s “avowedly religious.” The court then said “we conclude that the six Colorado Day of Prayer proclamations have predominantly religious content.”

So what would a reasonable observer think about the proclamations?

The court had an answer:

Looking through the eyes of a reasonable observer, we conclude that the Colorado Day of Prayer proclamations at issue here have the primary or principal effect of endorsing religious beliefs because they “convey[] or attempt[] to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred.”

As a result of the ruling, all six of the Day of Prayer proclamations from 2004-2009 have been ruled unconstitutional. Whether the governor can issue proclamations in the future is still up in the air — they’ll figure that out next.

So will this affect the National Day of Prayer? Nope. That’s a separate issue.

What about proclamations regarding the Day of Reason? No idea… it’s likely those will be just fine… unless a religious group wants to say in court that supporting Reason is somehow anti-religious… it may be true, but I don’t think any religious group wants to say that out loud

FFRF’s litigation attorney Richard L. Bolton gets the credit for making this happen, as do the Colorado taxpayers who sued in the first place: Mike Smith, David Habecker, Timothy G. Bailey and Jeff Baysinger.

You know, for someone who doesn’t call himself an atheist, he’s kind of awesome…

(via melodysheep)

Yesterday, one of her followers questioned her status as a role model because of that:

Not one to shy away from the label, Kailyn not only reaffirmed her atheism, she did it while giving a shout-out to President Obama:

And a few minutes later, one of her “Teen Mom 2″ costars, Jenelle Evans, wrote back to both of them:

Again, it’s not so much that these are teenagers coming out as atheists — That happens all the time. But we don’t normally see teens already under the glare of the media spotlight willing to talk about something like religion, especially when their views put them in the minority. Maybe the fact that they’re already letting people peek into a huge part of their lives gives them the confidence to be honest about other aspects of it.

In any case, it’s welcoming to see MTV stars open up about their atheism like it was no big deal.

(via Gather)

(Lori was also hilariously interviewed by Stephen Colbert in a “Better Know a Lobby” segment.)

With Edwina Rogers taking the helm of the organization, I asked Lori what the thought of the new appointment — especially in light of all the ensuing controversy — and this is what she told me:

I wish the new Executive Director success as she leads the Secular Coalition for America. It is important that the person speaking to members of Congress and their staffs has good skills for the Hill. This is more important than party affiliation. While I may find it difficult to imagine working for some of her previous employers, given their theocratic views on our issues, it is my understanding that Ms. Rogers specialized in health care and economic issues when she worked for them, not church/state separation or the treatment of nontheistic Americans. Hopefully, she will bring a strong voice for OUR issues. It is also important to recognize that it may take a few weeks for the new person to become fully versed on the current issues on the table. I recall that I learned much from our partners in allied coalitions during my first few weeks. Time will tell, but I’m always hopeful that our movement will succeed.

Lori added that she’s aware that there can be overlap between health care/economic issues and nontheistic issues, but hopefully, Rogers’ focus was not on things like “pushing public money to churches or denying access to prescriptions based on religious belief of pharmacists.”

The old Ten Commandments display in a Giles County school

Is that still government endorsement of religion?

That battle is playing out in the courts right now.

During oral arguments this week, Judge Michael Urbanski offered up a possible compromise as the case goes into mediation:

“If indeed this issue is not about God, why wouldn’t it make sense for Giles County to say, ‘Let’s go back and just post the bottom six?’” Urbanski asked during a motions hearing in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

“But if it’s really about God, then they wouldn’t be willing to do that.”

Interesting theory. Here are the Commandments that would get cut if both sides accepted the deal:

• I am the Lord thy God, Thou shalt not have strange gods before me
• Thou shalt not make for thyself any graven image
• Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
• Remember to keep holy the sabbath day

And there are the ones that would remain:

• Honor your father and your mother
• Thou shalt not kill
• Thou shalt not commit adultery
• Thou shalt not steal
• Thou shalt not bear false witness
• Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife

Stephen Hirtle from the Steel City Skeptics doesn’t think this revised version would be any better:

As rules for the students to live by, this list is very odd. How about “Study hard” or “Do not cheat on exams”. More to the point, the Ten Commandments are there not because of what they say, but because of what they imply. They are an arbitrary list of rules that are important to the religious, as they establish the precedent that certain rules transcend humans and come directly from a god. To accept the Commandments is to accept your god as the ultimate decider. The judge even mocked the school board in their disingenuous comments:

He’s right. The revised version isn’t any better than the original. You might as well cut the bits about coveting a neighbor’s wife and committing adultery since it doesn’t directly apply to them. Good luck telling high school students to obey their parents. And it’s more than a bit dispiriting that anyone would have to tell high school students not to kill each other.

If mediation doesn’t work out, the same judge will have to decide the case. From his comments so far, it sounds like he understands this is all about sticking god into the public schools — not showcasing a display of historical documents for students — and he will likely vote it down. Let’s hope that’s the case anyway.

If the school board loses the case, they run the risk of having to pay over $100,000 in court costs to the ACLU.

…

Incidentally, an anonymous student from Giles County’s Narrows High School is the plaintiff:

In court documents, the Associated Press reported, the student spoke of feeling compelled to “hide participation in this lawsuit from my closest friends and the person I am dating.”

“Filing this lawsuit has not been easy, and I would not have done it if I were not genuinely disturbed by the Ten Commandments in the school,” the student said in the court statement…

I’ve heard from a few of you who are in that type of predicament right now. Turns out the secret’s owner isn’t alone.

From one reader:

Five years ago, after growing up in and being educated in church institutions, I lost my faith. Trouble is, I’m married to a pastor and have since entered church employment myself — I lost my non-church job early in the economic crisis and a number of months later was finally offered a job at a church institution. I keep the job because it provides education benefits to my children and will for some time to come.

The only scenarios in which I can imagine coming out are these: a) my husband also loses his faith, and b) divorce. Every other one involves both of us losing our jobs and those education benefits.

In the meantime, I view church and my workplace as an anthropological expedition while maintaining authentic relationships. I try not to do both things at the same time.

Another noticed a secret of his own at the church he works at:

I was an agnostic when I started working at church, grew to an atheist while working there. I think it’s probably more common than you think.

I have a few stories, like how the head preacher puts an envelope into the offering bucket faithfully every service and it’s always empty. He gives once a year, on 12/31, probably after consulting his tax accountant.

Also, staff meetings suck. As with any place, people often disagree on how things should be done. But inevitably some idiot is going to chime in and say “Well I believe God wants us to….” or even better, “I prayed about this last night and
God told me we should…”

HOW THE HELL DO YOU REASON WITH THAT?

I can’t quite say “That’s just bullshit.”

And that is why so many bad decisions are made in the church business.

One reader worked in a religious non-profit group for a long time:

You asked about atheists working in religious organizations. I did for 15 years and it was interesting. At the start, about 20% of the money came from the US Government and 80% came from private donations. Being an older Christian organization, the main donors were also older. Between this core group starting to die off and the general economic downturn, the funding started to shift until it was about 50/50. Total budget was about $80 million, at least as of two years ago when I left.

Now, the fun thing about federal grants is that they explicitly cite that the money has to go to the designated project (no surprise), but in our case, it also said we had to not be using it for religious purposes. I don’t know if this is standard federal contract language (I hope it is) but it was in ours.

As the shift in funding sources progressed, I got more and more requests to find ways to move some of my funding ($10 million of the government money) over to the more religious side. I will admit I took some delight in draping myself in the constitution and contract and regretfully telling them I couldn’t. I am not American, which made it a bit more fun. In any case, I had that legal support, which helped a lot. My direct boss, also an atheist, was in charge of the full $40 million and worked in head office. He faced much more constant pressure on the topic of funding and was the one who taught me to reach for the contract every time it came up.

Our half of the office worked with refugees and he came to the US as a refugee. He was ideologically motivated to work with refugees, so he was willing to deal with the churchy part of things. In my case, we were in Kenya and did direct service, so the churchy part never came through, at least until I was promoted to more senior levels. By then, I ran our office and could set the tone, so I didn’t have to deal with constant churchy-ness. In both our cases, there were a lot of “fellow travelers” who wanted to help refugees, but for religious reasons. Given how limited aid to refugees is, we could usually find enough common ground to work with the church groups.

Writing this, I realize that it may impact on the recent “Catholic hospitals getting government money and refusing to give staff birth control.” It might be rather interesting to see the contract, agreement, or cooperative agreement that the government gives those hospitals. I wager there are a number which have language about keeping things secular and where the terms of the contract are being breached. I wonder if they can be accessed with FOIA or some other public transparency method.

There have to be more of these… keep sending them!

Here’s a hypothetical: Regardless of what Obama said, what if it was Mitt Romney who had come out in support of marriage equality instead?

What if he figured out that most of the people voting for him are going to support him regardless? They’re not about to vote for Obama. What if Romney decided to make a play for the youth vote? What if he was the one who made news by saying he was in support of marriage equality — despite what others in his party want him to say — and he hoped states would follow in that direction? What if he said his marriage was strong and wonderful and he wanted all couples, both gay and straight, to experience that as well?

Implausibility aside, a Republican nominee for president voicing an opinion like that could arguably do more to get bigoted voters to think differently about gay marriage than anything Obama could do. (I mean, it’s not like they’re going to change their mind because of what he said.)

So, I’ve been reading the conversations about Edwina Rogers and listening as everyone goes out of their way to find reasons to discredit her. She recently gave money to Republicans like Rick Perry. She wasn’t a vocal atheist before now. She’s not realistic about what the GOP is like these days.

None of these things concern me very much.

I wasn’t part of the hiring conversations but it looks like the Secular Coalition for America made a strategic decision based on everyone who applied. They took on someone who had significant lobbying experience, knew how to manage a staff, and believed in our mission. The fact that she was a Republican was seen as an asset — a way to get through to the people least sympathetic to our cause — not a liability.

Everyone seems to be forgetting that Sean Faircloth, who is now working for the Richard Dawkins Foundation and has been an outspoken advocate for our issues, had virtually no knowledge about our movement until he read an article quoting SCA President Herb Silverman in the New York Times. He was surprised to find an organization that promoted his non-belief and he soon applied for the Executive Director position.

The article came out on April 29^th, 2009. The SCA publicized Sean’s hiring as Executive Director on June 3^th, 2009. In other words, it was about a month between discovering our movement existed and taking the reins of the SCA.

Did he know everything about our cause beforehand? No, but he self-identified as an atheist. He just never really did much with that label before his new job compelled him to make a big deal about it.

Is anyone doubting his sincerity and dedication to our cause now?

Edwina Rogers is only different in that she’s coming from a party that actively opposes our values. Still, she has said time and time again that she doesn’t align with the party on those fronts. If she’s a Republican, it’s for different reasons.

She also says she believes (“100%”) in our mission.

Now, we have to give her time to figure out what makes our movement tick. I know we want her to be well-versed in it already, but that’s not going to happen overnight.

People are threatening to stop donating to the SCA because of her — to that, I’d say, “Stop acting prematurely.”

Yesterday, when the SCA denounced Catholic CEO group Legatus for filing a lawsuit because they didn’t want their insurance plans to cover contraceptive care as the Department of Health and Human Services mandated, Rogers offered a statement that sure as hell sounded like it would come from “one of us”:

“Legatus is asking the government to place the religious beliefs of the employer over the individual religious beliefs of the employees, and they are doing it under a smoke screen of religious persecution,” said Edwina Rogers, Executive Director of the Secular Coalition for America. “True religious freedom allows for individuals to make personal moral and health decisions for themselves.”

Doesn’t sound like a “typical” Republican to me.

If Rogers works out for the SCA, it could help us *considerably* in the long run. A lot of people are being way too myopic about her hiring. Give her time to learn her job and advocate for us well. If she can’t, there will be plenty of time to complain.

If you do, is it even worth it?

(Also, how the hell does a pig type on a computer?)

(via The Atheist Pig)

When I posted about it then, I had no idea what prompted his deconversion.

Roy Culver recently caught up with Barnes and asked him about what made him walk away from his faith (and, therefore, his band) and what it was like telling the people close to him:

And what began that journey to begin thinking more objectively about Christianity? Did that present a crisis for you?

Well, for me it was just bound to happen. I am the kind of person who needs good reason and evidence to believe something, and it became increasingly difficult to square my Christian worldview with reality. The amount of mental gymnastics I had to put myself through to keep rationalizing my religious faith started to get really old. There seemed to be a mental mechanism that I was employing that felt dishonest and didn’t allow me to really address challenges and questions about faith. Once I decided to be completely honest about what I believed to be true and where the evidence pointed, religion naturally dissolved for me.

…

How has your family dealt with your departure from Christianity?

That was actually the most unpleasant conversation — nobody wants to make their mother cry. The bizarre part of it is, I didn’t do anything wrong, you know? I was just being honest. I would imagine gay people deal with a similar coming out process.

The good news is that Jason has moved on and he’s with a new band (called, appropriately perhaps, On the Shoulders of Giants). Check out the rest of Roy’s interview here for more of the details.

[Host] Neil Conan: Was there a moment when you decided you had to come clean about your beliefs?

Jerry DeWitt: Yeah, there actually was. It came for me — I began to realize that there was no way that I could live a satisfying life without ministering to someone. I had been in the ministry for 25 years, growing up in the Pentecostal Church, and as I tried to take on just a secular lifestyle, I realized that being a minister is who I am.

And so I had made connections through the Clergy Project and had a connection with an organization called Recovering from Religion. And I said that’s the people I’m going to minister to now, fellow clergy who don’t believe, people who are trying to move out of their religious experience. I’m going to minister to them, and that’s going to require a public commitment.

So at that moment, things begin to really get exciting.

…

While we’re on the subject, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is now allowing people to tag The Clergy Project when they make donations. The money will go specifically toward help ministers and clergy members who don’t believe in god anymore and who need a way out of the pulpit.

Funds donated to The Clergy Project will help meet many needs, including:

• Scholarships for educational retraining. It is hard for someone with a divinity degree and a history of preaching to find new employment, especially in today’s economy. Without an exit strategy that allows a minister to continue to provide for their family, it is nearly impossible to consider leaving the pulpit.
• Temporary hardship grants. Some of the clergy in the project tell heartbreaking stories of being unceremoniously thrown out into the street (literally, in one case!) and locked out when their nonbelief became known. Others who have voluntarily “graduated” to civilian life are finding it immensely difficult to land on their feet.
• Maintenance of the forum. The Clergy Project forum is a secret, invitation-only online sanctuary where former and active nonbelieving clergy can talk freely, comparing stories, suggesting resources, sharing concerns, asking for help, and finding a sympathetic nonjudgmental community of others who have wrestled with this unique situation.

If you’d like to contribute, you can do that here — just click on “Clergy Project” from the dropdown menu.

The Illini Secular Student Alliance reminds us of this excerpt from an interview he did with NPR’s Fresh Air in 2003:

“I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets. The war took care of that for me. You know, I was brought up strictly kosher, but I — it made no sense to me. It made no sense to me what was happening. So nothing of it means anything to me. Nothing. Except these few little trivial things that are related to being Jewish. … You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson — she’s probably the top — Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.”

It’s sad to see him go, but what a legacy of stories he left behind.

Why do otherwise rational people think it’s a good idea to profile people at airports? Recently, neuroscientist and best-selling author Sam Harris related a story of an elderly couple being given the twice-over by the TSA, pointed out how these two were obviously not a threat, and recommended that the TSA focus on the actual threat: “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim.”

This is a bad idea. It doesn’t make us any safer — and it actually puts us all at risk.

Harris says he’ll respond to Schneier soon.

In addition, they put up the following billboard as a response to a sign a local church put up last summer (which strangely used the same wording). They ran a similar billboard back in November:

How soon before the complaints begin? The crazies are already rearing their heads…

What would other belief systems say? Let us know in the comments

(via Toothpaste for Dinner)

Better yet, he asks, what has changed since you became an atheist?

Here’s just one of his examples:

Because I am an atheist, I am on the organ donor list

Far more pragmatic and less self-reflectively thanatophobic than the first one, I realize that my body is a meat machine that has a lot of parts that can be inordinately useful to others when I’m dead. I hold no reverent sentiment toward my meat — when I die, that’s the end of me caring what happens to my body. Bury me, burn me, freeze me, shoot me into space, carve me up and use me as a bizarre sideshow in a Hallowe’en display — I won’t be around to have an opinion. However, I am cognizant of the fact that there are a lot of people who are literally dying to have a fresh shot at my slightly-used organs. If my atheism-fueled joi de vivre leads me to a premature death in a freak motorcycle-jousting-with-a-tiger accident, let those salvageable bits of me go to some use!

What has changed for you?

The first one was put up in conjunction with American Atheists and pays homage to the late Christopher Hitchens:

You can check it out in the American Legion parking lot in Midway City.

The second one, promoting the upcoming Freethought Alliance Conference at UC Irvine, pokes fun at the idea of Noah’s Flood:

Apparently, it’s in the same location… or maybe the two billboards are swapping out. I can’t figure it out. Maybe someone can tell us what’s going on…

(via OC Weekly)

A couple of additional interesting links:

Ashley F. Miller writes the sample apology letter she wishes Rogers would send out:

My final big mistake is that I’ve been trying to focus exclusively on my positives without acknowledging my negatives and without engaging with them openly and honestly. This is a fault of being in politics, it makes you quite the bullshit artist. I should have known better in this community than to think I could dance around questions without being called on it. So let me say that you are right. You are right that I’ve worked for and support a party that disagrees, in majority but not in totality, with many of your goals. But I was working for causes that I cared very deeply about, and I will not apologize for doing that. And I will not abandon my party because other people have taken it in a direction I disagree with. It is better for all of us if we can bring the party back in line with the goals of the secular community and I really do think that is possible.

…

SCA Communications Director Lauren Youngblood believes we can and should try and reach out to the other side in a show of bipartisanship:

We do ourselves a disservice when we actively attempt to align ourselves with only one party. Of course, we may naturally gravitate toward one side or the other, but we must remember that most people are not single issue voters. That is to say that when they go into the voting booth, they are not voting solely on their beliefs on religion (or any one issue). They may be put off by the religious rhetoric of a particular candidate, but are more concerned about immigration policy, for instance, and vote for a religiously-affiliated candidate anyway.

It’s our job as a movement to make voters see the importance of voting based on secular issues. We should never give up on creating relationships and building coalitions where ever we can.

Today, the FFRF is running the same basic ad in the Washington Post — this time, without editorial changes made to it (Click to enlarge):

The same ad (this time, in color) is also running on the back of the today’s free Washington Express daily.

Reaching out to the like-minded isn’t the only goal of the coalition: “We hope folks will realize that we are a part of their community,” said Jim Parker, coordinator of the San Antonio Coalition of Reason. “Atheists and agnostics like us live all over Texas. We’re your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends and your relatives. One of us might even be sitting in the pew next to you at church.”

The United Coalition of Reason put up $5,000 to fund the ad. They add that this is the 31^st state to feature an atheist ad campaign:

The states are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, ‘Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, ’cause that’s what boys do,’ [laughter] you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed [shouts of "amen"]. Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist [several in audience: "amen"]. Man up. Give him a good punch [laughter]. Ok? ‘You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male.’

And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you rein her in. And you say, “Oh, no! Oh no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play ‘em. Play ‘em to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to walk like a girl, and talk like a girl, and smell like a girl. And that means that you are going to be beautiful; you’re going to be attractive; you’re going to dress yourself up.”

Say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?” Yeah, you can [laughter]. You’re authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.

Here’s Justin’s interview with the pastor:

The highlight (at the 6:10 mark):

Justin Griffith: “But you wouldn’t literally use a rod would you?”

Sean Harris: “No, of course not. We may use some instrument of discipline in a careful and appropriate way. Depending on the age of the child, depending on the weight of the child.”

See? All better now.

(via Rock Beyond Belief)

It’s insulting and demeaning and Libby Anne has responses to all of it:

… if the only way to preserve your creationist beliefs is to not have them challenged — i.e. not attend a college that teaches any contrary view — that says more about your beliefs than anything else. If creationism is true, someone raised as I was should have no problem defending it.

…

… I didn’t “give up.” Rather, I realized I had been wrong. There’s a big difference there. And once I saw that creationism didn’t actually hold water, and that evolution was supported by the evidence, I had the intellectual honesty to change my mind. Why? Because that’s what you do when you realize you were wrong.

…

… My goal is not to teach [my daughter] to believe one specific thing, but to open her mind and teach her to think critically and come to her own conclusions. Ken Ham and Dr. Purdom, though, refuse to do that. Because, apparently, exposing children to a variety of viewpoints and teaching them to think critically and make their own decisions is dangerous.

I wonder if Ken Ham remembers the little girl in braids who stood in awe in his presence and eagerly asked him for his autograph all those years ago. Probably not. But that little girl, that little girl fascinated by science and ever eager to find truth, she’s still here. She’s just sitting on the other side of the fence now.

It’s a powerful response worth reading in full.

Also incredible is how neither Ken Ham nor Georgia Purdom have the guts to actually link to Libby Anne’s website, as if they’re afraid their followers might — *gasp* — get exposed to new ideas.

The event goes from 7:00-9:00p in Harris Hall 107. It’s sponsored by the Secular Student Alliance and Northwestern University Interfaith Initiative (NUii). Stop by if you’re in the area!

And as I write this, there’s no second panelist. So I think I win by default! Score one for the firebrands.

(via Silver Outlined Window)