CNN has an article about a recent atheist conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. Much of it focuses on the difficulties of being an atheist in the Bible belt, but there's one section in it that jumped out at me. I'm afraid I have to disagree with Bart Ehrman on this one: … [Read more...]

The New York Times did a story about the Women in Secularism conference that took place recently in Alexandria, VA and much of the article focuses on Heina Dadabhoy, who will be joining Freethought Blogs as soon as the redesign is finished (yes, it's still coming, I promise), and a few other ex-Muslims. She talked about the difficulties of leaving Islam: … [Read more...]

I'm pleased to see the creation of a new coalition, Openly Secular, that will encourage atheists, agnostics, skeptics and humanists to be open about their beliefs if they can and give them a forum for documenting instances of discrimination that may occur. … [Read more...]

Yet another atheist sign has been vandalized, but this time it isn't even a billboard or a sign advocating atheism at all, it's a road sign that only says that a particular section of the highway is being cleaned up by the Omaha Atheists. Here's a picture of what was done: … [Read more...]

Leading up to Easter last weekend I saw a whole lot of people on my Facebook friends list sharing a meme saying that Easter "was originally the celebration of Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex." It was posted by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science on their Facebook page and then shared almost 200,000 times. There's just one problem: It simply isn't true. … [Read more...]

A friend on Facebook put up a link to this t-shirt that is being sold by Hobby Lobby on their website. My response is on the right: … [Read more...]

Tuesday night I participated in a panel discussion at Grand Valley State University with six other atheists (three students, three professors and me). Someone brought up something that is often said to atheists by Christians, that they really do believe in God even if they claim not to ("in their heart of hearts" in the often annoying phrase). I pointed out that this was offensive and patronizing. … [Read more...]

This is a guest post by my friend Dan Linford about a rather unfortunate situation that took place last week after he appeared on HuffPo Live. Dan is, in my opinion, one of the most thoughtful voices in atheism and deserves much more attention and I'm happy to give him this platform to clear the air. … [Read more...]