Ex-Atheist Pens Open Letter to Christians, Liberals and Unbelievers
Charisma News
I am a former atheist and evolutionist and now a sellout for Christ. Because I am “sold out” for Christ, that makes me a Christian. With views that are formed from the Bible, I believe 100 percent of all that it says and try to live according to the ...

Charleston City Paper
Famed SC atheist Herb Silverman leaving On Faith blog
Charleston City Paper
South Carolina's most famous atheist has announced that he will no longer write for On Faith, a religion blog started by the Washington Post. Herb Silverman, a retired College of Charleston math professor and founder of the Secular Coalition for ...

The right has been obsessed with putting up pointless obstacles to getting an abortion: waiting periods, ultrasounds, vaginal ultrasounds, etc. Their entire purpose is to punish and increase the suffering and anxiety of women trying to get a legal and necessary procedure done, because they sure as heck have nothing to do with actually dissuading women from getting abortions.

Researchers analyzed over 15,575 visits to a large, urban abortion provider in 2011. All of the patients received an ultrasound before continuing with the abortion procedure, and all of them were given the opportunity to look at the image. Most patients chose not to look at it. Women did opt to view the ultrasound about 42 percent of the time — and among those women, about 98 percent of them went on to have an abortion anyway. Looking an the ultrasound only had an impact among the seven percent of women who reported they didn’t feel very certain about ending the pregnancy. “Such viewing does not alter decisions of the large majority of women who are certain that abortion is the right decision,” the researchers concluded.

That aligns with previous, smaller studies into this area. In 2012, after reviewing the data from two separate studies on the impact of ultrasounds, University of California researchers concluded that women’s emotional responses to seeing an ultrasound can vary, but those emotions ultimately don’t lead them to cancel their abortion appointment. Other studies have reported that 87 percent of women are “highly confident” about their decision to have an abortion, and state requirements that are intended to give them time to change their minds — like forced waiting periods, mandatory counseling sessions, and ultrasounds — don’t change their mind. Furthermore, a full 90 percent of women say their primary reaction to ending a pregnancy is “relief” and report they don’t regret their decision, suggesting that further invention wouldn’t have changed that reality.

The whole idea that ultrasounds might have a persuasive effect is built on the infantilization of women: if I show you a picture of your big-eyed placid fetus, you’ll break down in tears, fall in love with that grainy image (because you’re a woman, and that’s what you do, coo over baby pictures), and abort the abortion.

What the data actually show, though, is that women think seriously about the consequences of their decisions and make choices confidently — and that maybe significant life-changing decisions will not be lightly swayed by a jebus-lovin’ state senator telling doctors to make pregnant women stare at flickering gray images.

Online harassment is a real source of serious problems. Jill Filipovic writes about her history as a target. It’s a very personal account, and this is what matters most:

“When people say you should be raped and killed for years on end, it takes a toll on your soul,” Hess quotes feminist writer Jessica Valenti as saying.

We want to believe that the Internet is different from “real life,” that “virtual reality” is a separate sphere from reality-reality. But increasingly, virtual space is just as “real” as life off of the computer. We talk to our closest friends all day long on G-Chat. We engage with political allies and enemies on Twitter and in blog comment sections. We email our moms and our boyfriends. We like photos of our cousin’s cute baby on Facebook. And if we’re writers, we research, publish and promote our work online. My office is a corner of my apartment, and my laptop is my portal into my professional world. There’s nothing “virtual” about it.

Once upon a time, using the internet was something “those kids” did, or “those academic nerdy people” did. It was something that was easy to dismiss as a strange activity that only others did, others who could probably use a good comeuppance. It wasn’t simply communication, like two ordinary people do face-to-face or over a telephone, it was mysterious weird and probably nefarious stuff. It was also probably undermining the family and traditional values.

But more people have grown up now. Online communication is everywhere. Families are keeping in touch with facebook, career people make connections with linkedin, everyone arranges dinner dates with instant messages, people skype rather than telephone, everywhere you look people are peering into smartphones, tapping away. It’s not just kids and college professors, either. It’s just about everyone.

It’s the norm.

You know that one of the key events in human evolution was the acquisition of speech — we are social animals, and we have developed wonderfully intricate mechanisms of communication that allow us to build and reaffirm the social structure, and to maneuver within it. This is what humans do. And of course once we built new tools that expand our ability to communicate, we have thoroughly integrated them into our everyday life.

Well, “we” meaning most of us. There are always sluggards who don’t quite get it (but have no fear, they will be assimilated). Right now, law enforcement is split; I think half of them are having orgasms over the depth of tech-assisted communication going on that they can exploit to keep an eye on the public, and the other half are australopithecines who don’t believe in anything more sophisticated than a grunt and a punch in the face, so all this information flying about is irrelevant. You still find Luddites whining that the children will be warped forever if they learn to communicate over the internet.

And of course, the worst of all, the parasites of the internet: people who see these tools as a way to avoid responsibility, who want to shirk accountability for what they say in a way that they could not do face-to-face, who want to disrupt rather than augment communication. The trolls of the internet are nothing but the heavy-breathing, gutter-slurring harassing phone callers of the 20th century, now given access to Photoshop and mountains of free internet porn, yet still mostly getting by on denigrating one-line hate texts sent to random women that want nothing to do with them.

Here we stand with the most wonderful tools for uniting humanity in a web of sophisticated communication, at a time when most people are able to find it socially acceptable and even desirable, and what’s holding it back? Emotionally stunted grownups, mostly man-children, who see the internet as a playground for abuse, sniping away from hiding and avoiding all consequences. They continue to propagate this idea that somehow the internet is different from other means of talking to people; that communication should only be one-way and anonymous; that words don’t matter, they’re only words.

But that’s what people are: words. You don’t know me except for the strings of words I throw around. I came to know my wife by the words we volleyed back and forth for years, sharing our histories and our cares, building a web of connections that tied us together. We don’t judge human beings by how they look, but by what they think and say, and by what they do…which we usually don’t witness, but see described in words.

When “people say you should be raped and killed for years on end”, it means something. It says volumes about the people who say those things. And what they say matters.

So let’s stop pretending that communication over the internet is something different and exceptional requiring new manners and rules, with extravagant liberties we would not grant anyone standing in the same room with us. It’s all just talking. And it’s all central to our social natures.

Salon
An atheist finally finds someone to take his money
Salon
During a debate over whether to accept the money, trustee Cathy Peters cited some of the more incendiary commenters on Mehta's Friendly Atheist Facebook page and said, “They're a hate group,” and asked, “Would you take money from the Klan?” Mehta ...

Atheist's donation of $3000 finally finds a home
Chicago Tribune
Two months and two rejections later, a $3,000 donation raised by a high school math teacher and atheist blogger has found a home with the Niles Township Food Pantry. Niles Township Clerk Charles Levy said the food pantry foundation received and ...

The Week Magazine
Memo to atheists: God's not dead yet
The Week Magazine
In a move sure to enrage atheists, Hart even goes so far as to argue that faith in this classical notion of God can never be "wholly and coherently rejected" — and not only because it may very well be self-contradictory to prove the nonexistence of an ...
The God Atheists Can't Easily DismissThe American Conservative

all 2 news articles »

It’s predicted to be a good night to see the Aurora Borealis tonight for us northerners. If it weren’t cloudy out right now. If you’ve got clear skies and you live somewhere north of Iowa, you might want to take a peek in a few hours.

Don’t watch this video if you can’t laugh at grossly over-the-top comic horror with buckets of fake blood — do watch it if you want to learn the true story of Jesus.

Is it too soon to keep making jokes about the Ark?

NorthernLife.ca
Atheist ad campaign reaches out to non-believers
NorthernLife.ca
Atheist-themed ads have been rejected in other cities – Vancouver, for example – and pro-Christian bus ads have caused controversy. Last year, a conservative Christian group voluntarily pulled an ad in Toronto that said, “Does God care that I'm Gay?
National Organization for Atheists Opens Sudbury Branch, Announces Sudbury ...Marketwired (press release)

all 3 news articles »

New York Daily News
Ex-pastor loses jobs after proclaiming he'll 'try atheism'
New York Daily News
A former pastor who blogged about his attempt to spend a year as an atheist lost his three jobs with different Christian organizations just four days into the godless experiment. Ryan Bell, 42, will now do odd jobs — whatever it takes, he says — as ...
Christian School Teacher Fired After Deciding to Live 2014 as an AtheistKTLA
Atheists Raise $17K for Former Pastor Living Year 'Without God'Christian Post
Trial Atheist Might Be A SimpletonThe American Conservative
The Inquisitr
all 51 news articles »

Robert Asher is a Cambridge mammal paleontologist, zoologist, phylogeneticist, author of Evolution and Belief, and generally really smart guy. He has just published a commentary at HuffPo on one aspect of Stephen Meyer’s arguments, namely, Meyer’s argument about “uniformitarianism.”... Nick Matzke http://www.talkdesign.org

Blog Roundup: Depressing Charts, Atheist Churches, and Fond Remembrances
First Things (blog)
Phillip Cary takes on Plato and proclaims good news, David Mills brings to our attention an obscure rite and does some math, Dale M. Coulter discusses African Pentecostalism, and Joseph Knippenberg ponders the atheist church. On the Square, we've been ...

After a schism, a question: Can atheist churches last?
CNN (blog)
The world's most voguish - though not its only - atheist church opened last year in London, to global attention and abundant acclaim. So popular was the premise, so bright the promise, that soon the Sunday Assembly was ready to franchise, branching out ...

Daily Mail
Christian teacher Ryan Bell fired after deciding to live as atheist
Daily Mail
As part of his experiment into atheism, Mr Bell intends to attend gatherings of non-believers and read the works of religious skeptics such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Dawkins. Instead of praying for the sick, for example, he intends to do ...

Robert Cargill

It’s looking dire for the Ark Park. They are facing financial collapse.

Bloomberg reported on Friday that creationist ministry Answers in Genesis must sell $29 million in unrated junk bonds by Feb. 6, or else their entire bond structure will collapse for the construction of Ark Encounter — the proposed evangelical tourist attraction in Grant County that will feature a giant boat telling the story of how a 600-year old man rounded up dinosaurs and fire-breathing dragons onto Noah’s Ark a few thousand years ago.

To put that in perspective, they need to raise $29 million in less than a month…and they have only managed to raise a total of $27 million in a few years of heavy PR.

And you know whose fault all this is? Well, Satan, but also…Ken Ham blames us!

As you have read in some of my prior emails, many challenges and road blocks came up as we worked through the stages of the bond offering and the first closing. From atheists attempting to register for the bond offering and disrupting it, to secular bloggers and reporters writing very misleading and inaccurate articles about the bonds, to brokerage firms saying “yes” but after reading these incorrect reports saying “no” in allowing the Ark bonds into their client accounts—the obstacles were numerous and disruptive. Frankly, it has been an extremely stressful and frustrating time for all of us.

Well done, everyone.

I guess as a sign of desperation, AiG has now opened up free attendance to the Creation “Museum” for kids under 12. He’s quite proud of this, and has a cartoon to illustrate it.

To which I must reply, if he’s so interested in helping souls into heaven, why is there an asterisk there that says “with paying adult”? Don’t us grownups get to be saved?

There are lots of creationists commenting on it that make a similar point; I like this one. Why not make it free to atheists? Or those other non-Christians, like the Catholics.

KEN HAM: You should open up the museum, free to atheists for a certain time period. However some ppl may lie to get in for free. Idk how you would discern the atheists from the theists. Or possibly all non Christians free (Catholics, Muslims etc)

As always, Jon Stewart gave the best analysis of the ongoing pettiness and spite in the Gov. Chris Christie administration:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Christie gave a press conference this morning. Firings! Humiliation! Excuses! It’s all his aides’ fault!

With any luck, his political career is over and done with now.

ChristianityToday.com
The Problem With Trying On Atheism
ChristianityToday.com
How does one try atheism on, as if it were no more than a pair of jeans to wriggle into? I applaud Bell's pursuit of truth here, though not his methodology. Every person should have the freedom and ability to seek out truth, so Bell's curiosity and ...

In 2014, let's stop saying “atheists are immoral” and “believers are stupid”
Religion News Service
Theists are welcome to their perspectives on morality, but to claim that atheists cannot possibly be moral is to attack our character. And the problem extends beyond passive beliefs—this claim has been rhetorically weaponized and is frequently ...