Christian News Network
Atheist Agrees to Attend Church of Highest Bidder in Online Auction
Christian News Network
GREENVILLE, S.C. – The president of a South Carolina-based atheist organization is auctioning off the chance for her to attend church with her daughter. Eve Brannon, the president of Upstate Atheists, posted the offer on Ebay this week in an auction ...
Utahns grace Mormon-inspired 'We're Atheists' billboardSalt Lake Tribune
Atheist Leader Auctions Off Chance for Highest Bidder to Invite Her to ChurchChristian Post
Upstate SC Atheist leader auctioning off chance to go to churchWFSB
Spartanburg Herald Journal
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All right, I have to stop reading world news first thing in the morning. What did I encounter today? A crisis in South Africa — there is an epidemic of really stupid men who believe the way to ‘cure’ lesbians is gang rape.

"If we want to finish lesbians and gays they must be forcefully raped," says one, grinning at the camera. "A man must go back to his manhood. Women must be women. She must be ready and willing to have sex."

"They must be raped so that their gay and lesbian behaviour can come out," adds another.

The third raises his voice, points two fingers at his temple and concludes: "This gay and lesbian thing must end. I say bang bang bang!"

If I were a woman, those men would turn me into a lesbian, I think. Also, no illusions here: this isn’t about converting women to heterosexuality. It’s about intimidation and power. Some of the events in the story are about women being executed after the rape.

I will not post cute cat pictures. I can’t. Our cat is in her manic phase right now, darting about the house, pouncing on us as we try to fix breakfast (her next phase will be her hyper-manic phase, in which she is just a blur), so she won’t hold still for photos. I can show off her handiwork, though. She has lately discovered the most fantastically wonderful cat toy we’ve got:

I think it’s been ripped down to the bone.

If you think you’d like living with a spawn of satan — and what atheist wouldn’t? — contact the Stevens Community Humane Society and ask for Ivy. Please.

Without a prayer: Politicians of no faith afraid to say so
The State Journal-Register
“Known,” that is, as an atheist. Even as Americans become less religious and their tolerance for atheism is growing, there are still very few politicians who are openly nonreligious. They have to walk the thin line between their personal feelings and ...

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On every point. This debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye is a mistake. It’s a fundraiser for the Creation Museum. Bill Nye is going to be making profits for creationism.

That should give Nye pause. At least demand it be held on neutral ground and that all revenues be donated to a mutually acceptable charity.

Martin Robbins has a good guest post at Adventures in Ethics and Science on the Bora situation. I asked what is the path to redemption; he provides an answer. There isn’t one. If you’re looking for a way back to the previous situation, you won’t find it.

Because ultimately, getting your friends and your career back shouldn’t be the goal at all. The goal should be to fix yourself, and to do everything in your power to ensure that you never find yourself back here again. That means acknowledging everything that happened – not just the stuff people have found out about so far. It means accepting that there may be situations that you need to avoid in future. It means admitting just how bad things got, and beginning a process of real, honest change to make them better.

It isn’t easy, and it may not relaunch your career or win your friends back or repair your damaged reputation. It may mean sacrifice – changing career, moving cities, accepting that you’ll never regain certain friendships – but eventually you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know that you’ve grown and improved; that you’ve made genuine progress toward a better and healthier future; that you can be proud of your achievements in the months or years since you made the decision to change. 

TheBlaze.com
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 ...
Seventh-day Adventist pastor plans to flirt with atheism for 12 monthsReligion News Service
Ex-Preacher Reveals Why He's 'Living for a Year Without God'TheBlaze.com

all 3 news articles »

Atheist Leader Auctions Off Chance for Highest Bidder to Invite Her to Church
Christian Post
The president of a South Carolina atheist organization will decide what church she will attend depending on how high church-goers bid for her attendance in an auction called, "Take an Atheist Leader to Church," posted on eBay. Eve Brannon of Upstate ...

TheBlaze.com
Seventh-day Adventist pastor plans to flirt with atheism for 12 months
Washington Post
California pastor Ryan Bell has a novel New Year's resolution. For one year, he proclaimed, he will “live without God.” It's an odd resolution for an ordained minister, former church pastor, teacher at two highly regarded Christian universities and ...
Ex-Preacher Reveals Why He's 'Living for a Year Without God'TheBlaze.com

all 4 news articles »

New Atheist Billboards Take Aim at Mormons, Encourage 'Pride' in Non-Belief
Christian Post
A new atheist billboard campaign launched in Salt Lake City is looking to parody the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' "I'm a Mormon" ads, encouraging nonbelievers to stop identifying altogether with faith denominations and feel pride for ...

Crossmap
New Atheist Billboards Take Aim at Mormons, Encourage 'Pride' in Non-Belief
Christian Post
A new atheist billboard campaign launched in Salt Lake City is looking to parody the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' "I'm a Mormon" ads, encouraging nonbelievers to stop identifying altogether with faith denominations and feel pride for ...
Atheist Eve Brannon Agrees to Attend Church of Highest Bidder in Online AuctionCrossmap
Atheist Agrees to Attend Church of Highest Bidder in Online AuctionChristian News Network
Upstate SC Atheist leader auctioning off chance to go to churchKSLA-TV

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But he wouldn’t debate Aron Ra and me. I guess he was fishing for a bigger media bang for the buck.

I have a feeling this won’t go well. Neither Nye nor Ham have reputations as debaters (neither do I, but I was going to just be there to back up Aron Ra), and let’s face it, debating is a very specific and narrow skill. They’re probably going to bumble past each other for an hour. Nye will do a better job of explaining how the science actually works, Ham will just do his usual canned schtick for his friendly audiences, and given that he will pack the place with evangelicals, it will go over well there…but the rest of the world will see it and declare it stupid.

Ham has already announced that he’s going to school Nye on this “historical and observational science” bullshit that his cronies invented. I hope Nye is prepared to reject it.

TheBlaze.com
Ex-Preacher Reveals Why He's 'Living for a Year Without God'
TheBlaze.com
A former Christian pastor has decided to give atheism a try by “living for a year without God.” Ryan J. Bell, who recently explained his journey in a Huffington Post blog entry, was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. While he inevitably ...

It’s supposed to be a respectable newspaper, but it has always published the most awful trash — and the latest example is a paean to white people. Not just any white people, though, but specifically well-bred WASPs. He favors a hereditary ruling class defined by race.

The U.S. once had an unofficial but nonetheless genuine ruling class, drawn from what came to be known as the WASP establishment. Members of this establishment dominated politics, economics and education, but they do so no longer. The WASPocracy, as I think of it, lost its confidence and, with it, the power and interest to lead. We are now without a ruling class, unless one includes the entity that has come to be known as the meritocracy—presumably an aristocracy of sheer intelligence, men and women trained in the nation’s most prestigious schools.

It just gets worse and worse. The country has gone downhill to the point where mongrels like Obama and Ted Cruz can achieve high political position. He also sneers at education, other than the social primping done at Andover and Yale; but even they’ve gone to the dogs ever since they began dropping their age-old quotas on Catholics and Jews, lessening the number of legacies automatically admitted, and using racial preferences to encourage the enrollment of blacks.

I know we’ve all been busy rolling our eyes at that racist misogynist homophobic shitbat, Phil Robertson, but maybe we should spare a moment to recognize that not just the A&E network, but one of the most influential newspapers in the US, loves its racism.

He confesses to criminal behavior. He smoked marijuana in high school, although he later stopped.

I think we gave it up, first, because we each had had a few embarrassing incidents. Stoned people do stupid things (that’s basically the point). I smoked one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in English class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple phrases, feeling like a total loser. It is still one of those embarrassing memories that pop up unbidden at 4 in the morning.

I’ve read his essays in the New York Times, and given that response to smoking weed, I suspect he’s still lighting up a couple of times a day.

But here’s the weird disconnect in this particular story: He and his buddies smoked weed back in the day. It was fun. They went at it for a while, and then It just sort of petered out, and, before long, we were scarcely using it. I’ve never done the stuff myself — I have kind of a phobia about smoking anything, from growing up in a house with chain-smoking parents — but that’s what I saw in all my friends, too. There might have been a brief stoner phase, but then they gave it up, or maybe would just have an occasional joint at a party, but it was not a serious problem. I knew more people lost to alcoholism than to marijuana.

Yet the point of Brooks’ column is that Colorado and Washington have made a major mistake in legalizing marijuana! Apparently he was a wise and sensible human being who could try a drug a few times without harm, but all those kids in those Western states? Not to be trusted. And how dare the government abstain from scolding activities that he once enjoyed!

But, of course, these are the core questions: Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture? What sort of individuals and behaviors do our governments want to encourage? I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship. In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned.

In legalizing weed, citizens of Colorado are, indeed, enhancing individual freedom. But they are also nurturing a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be.

Right. Subtly discouraging lesser pleasures involves throwing young people in jail.

It’s bizarre. Brooks really is a prim little snob; what he got away with should not be allowed for Youth of Today, and he’s got this weird thing going where he wants less government except that the government should be using threats and the police to make damn sure the kids like the arts rather than partying. So…does he also favor shutting down all state-run liquor stores? It would be the only consistent position to take, after all.

But it doesn’t matter. Brooks needs to be jailed, just to encourage a nurturing moral ecology for the rest of us and to get him off the pages of the NYT. If they can’t get him on drug charges, how about arresting him for wanton cruelty to logic and reason?

Real Monstrosities

For perspective, it’s roughly 10 meters long.

Letter: Atheist billboard gets Christmas wrong
AberdeenNews.com
It has been brought to my attention that the atheists have put up a large sign in Time Square in New York which says, “Who needs Christ in Christmas? Nobody.” Well I think we do. If we did not have Christ in Christmas then there would be no Christmas.

and more »

Christian News Network
Utahns grace Mormon-inspired 'We're Atheists' billboard
Salt Lake Tribune
The latest billboard for the American Atheists lacks the shock value of the organization's past Mormon-targeted campaigns, which include a billboard at the 2012 Democratic National Convention that read, "God Is A Space Alien. Baptizes Dead People.
Atheist Agrees to Attend Church of Highest Bidder in Online AuctionChristian News Network
Atheist Leader Auctions Off Chance for Highest Bidder to Invite Her to ChurchChristian Post
Upstate SC Atheist leader auctioning off chance to go to churchWFSB
Spartanburg Herald Journal
all 11 news articles »

Atheist Magazine Offers 5-Year Subscription Contest
Newswire (press release)
However non-catchy that title may be, the prize of a five-year subscription to the atheist magazine is a total retail value of $49.95 and will provide years –five, to be exact– of The Celestial Teapot's highly regarded content. When asked why the ...

Atheist leader auctioning off chance to go to church
WHNS Greenville
A leader of Upstate Atheists has launched an eBay auction with a church visit going to the highest bidder. The auction, going on until Monday night on the online auction site, is for President Eve Brannon and her child to go to the church of the ...
On eBay: Leader of Upstate Atheists says she'll attend church service of ...Spartanburg Herald Journal
Utahns grace Mormon-inspired 'We're Atheists' billboardSalt Lake Tribune

all 3 news articles »