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We’ve got a blizzard on the way. Plants do not exist in an uncrystallized state right now.

Huffington Post
Why Does eBay Keep Removing This 'Take an Atheist Leader to Church' Post?
Mediaite
Eve Brannon of South Carolina's Upstate Atheists group just wanted to raise money for charity by offering up her time to any churchgoer who wanted to show her what religion is all about. But now she claims eBay made that process exceedingly difficult ...
eBay Kills Eve Brannon's 'Take An Atheist Leader To Church' Ad Again And AgainHuffington Post
Holy War Breaks Out Between eBay and an Atheist Over Quirky 'Church' Post ...TheBlaze.com
Atheist's charity auction to attend church goes awrySpartanburg Herald Journal

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The Week Magazine
The atheist's version of God is a straw man
The Week Magazine
appreciate Isaac Chotiner's objection to my review of David Hart's book The Experience of God. I'm somewhat less appreciative of the characteristically nasty, self-satisfied response of Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago professor who is capable of ...

Huffington Post
Holy War Breaks Out Between eBay and an Atheist Over Quirky 'Church' Post ...
TheBlaze.com
A holy war recently broke out between eBay and a South Carolina atheist who claims an ad she posted was repeatedly removed from the popular consumer website. Eve Brannon, president of Upstate Atheists, a secular charity group, posted a quirky offer on ...
eBay Kills Eve Brannon's 'Take An Atheist Leader To Church' Ad Again And AgainHuffington Post
Atheist's charity auction to attend church goes awrySpartanburg Herald Journal

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Karen Hughes, former advisor to GW Bush, and someone I never liked, has some advice for her Republican colleagues.

"And if another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue," she wrote. "The college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion of ‘legitimate rape.’"

Interesting strategy for intra-party enforcement at least. But…1) threats aren’t a viable strategy, and 2) I notice she just wants them to shut up, but not a word about changing their actual odious policies. I know I’d rather that all politicians were forthright about what they propose to do.

Atheist group's prison book project aims to turn inmates against God
Washington Times
“The project offers donated books on atheism, humanism, science, and skepticism to prisoners who seek alternatives to the religious proselytizing and indoctrination that is often unavoidable within the prison system,” states a press release announcing ...

An End to Arrogant Atheism
Huffington Post
As an atheist who is also a humanist, I find that in our efforts to point out the dangers and failings inherent in religion, we sometimes fall into the language of arrogance. I read a recent quote from famed evolutionary biologist and past Humanist of ...

PolicyMic
Why 'Atheist Churches' Are Making Us Atheists Look Ridiculous
PolicyMic
"Organizing atheists," said Richard Dawkins, "is like herding cats." That fact became quite clear recently, as one of the largest organized assemblies of nonbelievers suffered an internal rift. Some members of the Sunday Assembly — an "atheist church" ...
Atheist church undergoes ideological schismThe Daily Cougar

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Huffington Post
eBay Kills Eve Brannon's 'Take An Atheist Leader To Church' Ad Again And Again
Huffington Post
Eve Brannon of Upstate Atheists in Spartanburg, South Carolina, came up with a creative way to raise funds for charity, by volunteering to auction off some of her time on eBay with an ad titled, "Take an Atheist Leader to Church," reports Fox Carolina.
Holy War Breaks Out Between eBay and an Atheist Over Quirky 'Church' Post ...TheBlaze.com
Atheist's charity auction to attend church goes awrySpartanburg Herald Journal

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Christian Post
Police Chief Refuses to Remove Cross From Lawn Following Atheist Complaint ...
Christian Post
A police chief in Arkansas is refusing to remove a small white cross from the lawn of the local police department after an atheist group demanded he do so. The police chief has argued that residents do not find the cross offensive and therefore it will ...
Arkansas Police Chief Defies Atheist Demands to Remove Cross From ...Christian News Network
Police Chief Jeremy Clark Rejects Atheists Demand To Remove Cross From ...Opposing Views
Atheists demand Ark. police chief tear out Christian crossWashington Times

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Last semester, I wrote about our vile, racist, ‘alternative’ campus newspaper, the North Star. I seem to have annoyed its editor, John Geiger, who slipped a complaining letter (pdf) under my door last night. In it, he comically accuses me of stealing their November print run (his evidence? The distribution locations smelled like chloroform and other sciency things.), and ploddingly goes through his calculations of how much it was worth, adding things like 20% interest and a 40% “charity tax”, to demand that I immediately pay him $4,017.

Ho hum. Right wing humor.

I suggest that he chalk it all up to the White Man’s Burden that afflicts him so, and just hit up the far right dink-tanks that subsidize these awful papers all across the country. Forward the letter to the Koch brothers, I’m sure they’d respond with sympathy and cash.

From me, though, he demands checks, cash, paypal, debit, credit, bitcoin, appreciating assets (such as real-estate or valuable time-pieces), and tangible assets (like gold and silver). I don’t see eye-rolls or mocking laughter on the list, so I guess he’s out of luck.

Atheist group fighting to remove Bible from Florida city council chamber
Fox News
An atheist group is fighting to remove a Bible that rests on a podium inside a Florida city council chamber, sparking a heated battle over separation of church and state. The Freedom From Religion Foundation – allied with Pinellas Park businessman ...
Atheists persuade UW-Extension to remove BiblesJournal Times

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It was an easy sell. The World Humanist Congress, 8-10 August, Oxford.

It’s the most boring game to watch, ever, and it’s also terribly destructive to the saps who play it. Yet Superbowl Sunday comes up in a few weeks, and hordes of people will be watching it. Why? Maybe this chart explains it all:

There’s no game there! It’s mostly commercials. Maybe that’s why it’s a popular party focus: there isn’t actually much going on to distract you from drinking beer and chatting with friends.

A while back, everyone — Democrats included — were saying that Chris Christie seemed to be a moderate Republican. The Tea Party hated him, and liberals were saying he wasn’t so bad. He reminds me a lot of this current pope, getting a free ride because of superficialities while everyone overlooks the actual details of what he does.

But maybe the current scandals he’s facing are chumming the waters so that the media will actually take a look at his policies. Latest case in point: denying transgender people the right to amend their gender identification.

While New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) navigates scandals about blocked bridges and misused hurricane-relief funds, he’s continuing to conduct business as usual, and on Monday that included vetoing a bill that would make it easier for transgender people to obtain amended birth certificates. Assembly Bill 4097, passed by the legislature in recent months, would allow trans people to change their gender identification without undergoing gender reassignment surgery.

Just remember: “business as usual” for a Republican is oppression and discrimination, and Christie is no exception.

Apparently, there’s an emerging food fad for toast arising in the wealthy burbclaves of Silicon Valley, and the linked story traces it back to one woman and a couple of small cafes. It’s an interesting story, and also rather encouraging — the woman uses her cafes to help manage her mental illness.

But the story is wrong. There are plenty of places with great toast.

Come on out to Morris, Minnesota. Go for breakfast at Don’s Cafe. The toast there is legendary.

Consider also backwards, repressive Germany, where Baden-Wuerttemberg’s plan to make “acceptance of sexual diversity” a part of the official school curriculum, is being resisted. Who, you might ask, would possibly think that tolerance and acceptance of different sexual preferences would be undesirable? The German Catholic and Lutheran churches, that’s who.

Regional church branches issued a joint statement Friday cautioning against any ideologization and indoctrination, not least in the sensitive area of sexual identity and connected personal and family lifestyles.

By which, of course, they mean the opposite: the state cannot promote equality, because that would oppose the ideologization and indoctrination of the church.

(Don’t worry, Germans, I’m not picking on you: I know the US is even worse for its infestation of evangelical gay haters.)

Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé has died after being released from prison.

On January 10, 2014, we learned that Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé had died in Cameroon. Roger had been sentenced to 3 years in prison because he sent another man an SMS that said "I’m very much in love w/u" – in a country where it’s illegal to be gay.

The details of how Roger died are not yet clear – but what we know is this: In prison he faced physical abuse and medical emergencies. Out of jail he was attacked and turned away from employment, school, shelter and even critical healthcare.

Actually, we are learning a little bit more about how he died, and it’s horrible. Mbédé had testicular cancer, and had surgery last summer, but had ongoing problems that needed treatment. His family refused him that treatment; they wanted him to die.

Alice Nkom, a lawyer who worked on his case, said he died on Friday after his relatives removed him from the hospital where he had been seeking treatment for a hernia.

She said: ’His family said he was a curse for them and that we should let him die.’

The only curse here was his hateful family.

The Kellers, those big name media people who punched down at a woman with cancer, are never going to live it down. I have been entertained by many take-downs on the internet (none of which will perturb the Kellers in their little bubble of arrogance), but one I particularly liked was Christie Aschwanden’s dissection of their errors. She hit on several major problems that I initially missed.

It’s Bill Keller’s complete failure to see the woman he saw fit to criticize that has ignited rage and charges of sexism. ("Whiny woman making a big fuss about cancer. Shush! Go pet your therapy dog!" tweeted Susan Orlean.) His grand (though by no means novel) ideas about death and dying blinded him to the human being he sought to exploit for his argument’s sake. He violated the journalists’ ethical obligation to treat the ill people they write about with respect and sensitivity. As a result, he didn’t open the discussion about dying that he’d intended, but instead provided the internet with one more example of female invisibility in the face of a powerful man with a big idea.

I wonder if we’ve been conditioned by that familiar Disney trope of the dead mother as a generic symbol of privation, with no specific consequences and no details about the individual. Women are supposed to die offstage so the hero can get on with his or her journey!

One thing I also found striking is that we talked about these same themes in my cancer class last semester — the problems with the ‘war’ model of cancer research, the ethics of dealing with death, etc. — and my students showed more awareness, sensitivity, and intelligence on these subjects than Bill Keller.

Christian Post
Atheist organization seeks removal of Ten Commandments monument from ...
NewsOK.com
Atheist organization seeks removal of Ten Commandments monument from Oklahoma Capitol grounds. A national atheist organization has filed a suit in Oklahoma City federal court challenging the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments monument on ...
Atheist Lawsuit: Majority Of The Ten Commandments Violate US ConstitutionCBS Local
Atheist group sues over 10 Commandments monument at Oklahoma CapitolFox News
Atheist Group Sues to Remove 2000 Pound Okla. Ten Commandments Display ...Christian Post
KRMG
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