THIS will be my last post on Patheos. Together with such well-known blogs as The Friendly Atheist, Daylight Atheism, The Secular Cinephile and Laughing in Disbelief, I am in the process of moving over to OnlySky which will be officially launched in early January, 2022. OnlySky has been created as an explicitly secular media outlet – the first of its kind – with international contributors covering a variety of subjects from a shared secular perspective. The site will have a… Read more
BACK in 2010, Anne Rice who gained international fame with her first novel, Interview With The Vampire, revealed in an interview with NPR that she was through with Christianity. Rice, who died on Saturday, said: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years,… Read more
SHORTLY before Darwin Day 2021 (February 12) the Freedom From Religion Foundation and its Chicago chapter unveiled the striking billboard above in Chicago. At the time FFRF Co-President Dan Barker said that that science works and must be trusted during pandemics such as Covid. He added: It was a natural selection given the continuing pushback by the Christian Right against masking and social distancing mandates. Tom Cara, FFRF’s Executive Director for the Metropolitan Chicago Chapter, coordinated the billboard project. He… Read more
THE discovery last month of $600,000 behind a toilet wall in a Texas church run by mega-rich televangelist Joel Osteen, above, raised several questions. First off, people began asking why Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, was hoarding so much money in a safe, which got robbed back in 2014. Next came the question “will the the 28-year-old plumber who found the cash and cheques be rewarded?” No answers have yet been given to the first question, and as for… Read more
A LIBRARY in Fairfax County, Virginia, has been forced to remove a festive holiday reading display after local residents branded it “offensive” – even though it included a Bible. One angry prodnose, Stacy Langton, said “it’s so outrageously offensive” – then made sure that millions, who would never have seen the display, got to view it when she posted pictures on Twitter. “It was intentional, it was meant to be offensive,” Langton told Fox News. She called the display “pretty… Read more
WHAT does the Greater Hope International Church in Lumberton, North Carolina – headed by pastor Ron Barnes, above – know about treating people with drug problems? According to NC Health News, sweet bugger all: There’s no evidence on the six-year-old church’s website to suggest it has experience in treating addiction disorders, and the church failed to respond to multiple media requests for details of the nonprofit’s plans. The money will be used to establish a nonprofit, called Hope Alive Inc… Read more
THERE a two reasons why the city of Enid in Oklahoma should never have erected a 140-tall “Christ tree” decked out with baubles weighing 4,200 lbs. First, the area is subject to extremely high winds. According to this report: Wind is always an issue in Western Oklahoma … insanely, crazy winds. Second, and most important, Enid’s Mayor George Pankonin, inset above, was warned in a letter from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) that spending more than $150,000 of taxpayers’… Read more
“If you’re going to make fun of Catholic dogma, make damn sure that you get your facts right first!” Those words were barked at me down a crackly telephone line by Barbara Smoker, above, best described as Britain’s answer to Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Smoker, apart from being President of the UK’s National Secular Society, was also the proofreader for the now defunct print version of The Freethinker magazine, which I began editing almost 25 years ago. I had just sent… Read more
THE moment I posted a piece last month about a pastor donning drag for an HBO show called We’re Here I just knew that local Christians in Newburgh, Indiana, would soon be baying for his blood. And that’s exactly what happened. Craig Duke, lead pastor at the Newburgh United Methodist Church, has been relieved of his clerical duties because of the outrage he sparked among small-town bigots. He will continue to receive a reduced salary until the end of February…. Read more
A COUPLE of weeks ago an Islamic scholar, Hussain Salafi from Kerala in India, issued a stark warning to women: stay away from shopping malls because (a) Allah doesn’t like them and (b) they attract people who are “children of the Devil.” That was pretty mild in comparison to a sermon delivered earlier by Maulana Swalih Bathery, above, a “famous” Kerala cleric who claimed that women who venture out after 9 pm are nothing but prostitutes and deserve to be… Read more
