David Silverman from American Atheists was on Fox Business with Lou Dobbs to discuss the need for Humanist chaplains in the military. Here is the clip:
Category secularism
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy claimed that prayer (even explicitly Christian prayer) is not really religious; it is just ceremonial. It is merely a tradition and has no real religious purpose.
CNN’s BeliefNet writer, Candida Moss claims with a straight face that Christians didn’t steal Easter and that this is just a myth. Yeah, it’s just a myth no doubt created by the Devil or some atheists. Okay, she didn’t say that last part, but you get the idea. The funny part here is that Easter is one of those holidays where Christians were too lazy to even bother to change the name of the holiday.
Look, I understand that in countries like China, Iraq, Egypt, or Israel, it is certainly possible and even probable that a Christian might be persecuted for his or her religious faith, but in America where 80% of the country is made up of Christians and roughly 95% of our government is made up of Christians (including the President), it is extremely unlikely. It is more likely that a Republican would be persecuted in Alabama than a Christian to be persecuted in the United States.
This is why I love it that the number one online news program are filled with rational people who self-identify as “agnostics.” The on-air personalities of The Young Turks aren’t those mean atheists like me; they are open-minded progressives like me. They are also not “preaching” to the “choir” in that their audience isn’t just atheists. I don’t know if I can call them mainstream, but they are certainly more mainstream than the average atheist broadcaster.
A while ago, I created a Facebook page specifically for Dangerous Talk, but it really didn’t take off the way I was hoping it would for a variety of reasons. For starters, I mainly posted there at 2am and as a result fewer people saw those posts on their feeds. Also, I had one other content creator and he was busy with his own stuff and didn’t post there that often either. But mainly I think the problem was that most people don’t know what Dangerous Talk is. The name alone could mean anything. It just isn’t descriptive enough to people outside of my blog.
The news is abuzz at the thought that the head of Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, is near death. There has been talk about picketing his funeral and everything. For starters, Fred Phelps was excommunicated from his own church last year and even if that were not the case, WBC members don’t believe in having funerals.
Last night, I attended my county’s Democratic Party nomination convention and unlike the last few years, there was no religious invocation and no one missed it.
I was dropping my son off at pre-school this morning and one of the other parents had a car with a bumper sticker that said something along the lines of, “Dear God, why do you allow so much violence in schools? I’m not allowed in schools. – God”
Matt Stopera of BuzzFeed asked 22 Creations to write down some questions for the scientifically literate following the Nye/Ham debate. I thought it would be fun to answer these questions playing the role of Bill Nye The Science Guy. You can see the photos of the Creationists asking the questions on the BuzzFeed article.