Examiner.com
Atheist student faces harassment after Ten Commandments complaint
Examiner.com
In Oklahoma, an atheist high school student and his family face threats and intimidation from angry Christians after the young atheist had the courage to report the unconstitutional display of the Ten Commandments in his public school classrooms.
TODD STARNES: School district pulls Ten Commandments plaques under ...Bayoubuzz (subscription)
Oklahoma student fighting to remove Ten Commandments from schoolDigitalJournal.com
Oklahoma school district removes Ten Commandment plaques from classroomsRed Alert Politics
Raw Story -Christian News Network
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Those who know John Searle’s “Chinese Room” critique of the possibility of genuine consciousness in artificial/machine intelligences will enjoy this: John Searle’s homunculus announces phased retirement After 54 years of teaching at Berkeley, the man inside John Searle’s head has announced he will be entering a three-year phased retirement after the end of the current semester. The diminutive Zhu Tao made the announcement at a press conference Monday in a rare out-of-costume appearance. At the... Richard B. Hoppe

Photograph by Dennis Venema. Photography contest, Honorable Mention. Drosera rotundifolia – round-leaved sundew, Fort Langley Bog, British Columbia.... Matt Young http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung

Christian Post
My Questions About Atheist Churches - The Christian Post
Christian Post
One of the fastest-growing is in London. Its leader asks, "Why is it that people who are atheists get married in a church?" He then answers his question: "There is just something about these places, it's a place of worship, where people have gone for ...

Why I Call Myself an 'Atheist Muslim'
Huffington Post (blog)
I highlighted this distinction by describing myself as an "atheist Muslim," which drew the single most commonly asked question about the piece by both atheist and Muslim readers: "How can you be an atheist and a Muslim at the same time? Isn't that ...

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The Minnesota senate will be debating our gay marriage bill this afternoon; if it passes there, we have a done deal, because our governor Dayton has promised to sign it into law as soon as it hits his desk. This has thrown the Christians into this state in a frenzy (and make no mistake, the opposition is zealously Christian — every argument calls on their god to justify their hatred), and we’re getting email and mailed flyers and phone calls at home all the time. They don’t seem to have very good organization, either. You think they’d learn from the contemptuous sneer and slammed phones they get from me that they should write me off as a lost cause.

But their arguments are just getting weirder and more desperate. Take this from @MnForMarriage:

Yesterday, millions of Minnesotans celebrated the Lord’s day. Today, should the gay “marriage” bill pass, those who believe in the Lord’s design for marriage will become “bigots” under our laws.

Yep, that’s their major argument right now. It’s OK to discriminate against gay people, but suggesting that people who want to deny others their civil rights are “bigots” is unfair and oppressive!

Don’t worry, @MnForMarriage, you’re already bigots, so the law will change nothing in that regard. It’ll just mean you don’t get to practice your bigotry against gay people under the cover of law. But I’m sure you’ll still be the same nasty, hateful, mean-spirited, narrow-minded jebus-shaggers you’ve always been.

Here’s one. Mark Zuckerberg is pushing for more oil drilling and pipelines.

Two major tech leaders have resigned from Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group, FWD.us, in protest of the organization’s controversial decision to bankroll ads supporting Keystone XL and drilling in the Arctic National Refuge.

The Zuckerberg group publicly says its top priority is immigration reform. But through two subsidiary organizations it has quietly spent millions on ads advocating a host of anti-environmental causes. The ads were created in support of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mark Begich (D-AK), and although neither ad mentions the issue, both support immigration reform.

I can understand the importance of political compromise and coalition building, but sleeping with the devil is just going too far.

Sye Ten Bruggencate, the obnoxious presuppositionalist, has been on a spammin’ rampage lately — he’s got some new video he’s plugging, and I suspect it’s the usual tripe — you can’t disprove god, and the True Atheist has to set aside some tiny bit of provisional doubt for his premise, therefore… ☆ ☆ JESUS ☆ ☆.

The True Pooka describes how to deal with this nonsense.

I’ve been sharing the same message for years — in fact, just last night I did a podcast on The Place with Dr. Michael W. Jones (I’ll include a link once it’s available) in which I discussed the Christian bait-and-switch of announcing they have evidence for “god”, which is usually some natural feature which is evidence for the existence of our universe, not their zombie-onna-stick. I don’t share this trait with Jerry Coyne, who reserves some remote possibility that a god exists; I’m willing to go on the record and state with complete finality that no god exists. That’s not because I have complete knowledge of everything in the universe, but because the believers are utterly incapable of telling me exactly what their god is — it seems to be quantum jello, oscillating at an impossibly high frequency with an amplitude that spans galaxies.

So let them get specific. Let them describe their god with sufficient detail that I can actually test its existence; so far, the only consistent detail they’re willing to offer is that it is invisible and untestable (which leaves one wondering how they know about it). It puts them in an interesting state, in which our lack of knowledge is the only thing that allows them to make extraordinary claims about nonexistent beings, but committing to any one detail collapses the whole vibrating edifice and makes it testable — and then the whole lie unravels.

And don’t let the “scientific” skeptics fool you: wobbling in a state of pointless vagueness is not somehow an epistemically superior condition to having specific testable claims, it’s far, far worse. It’s a state of being not even wrong.

Oh, no. I had just begun to absorb the astounding implications of the Space Ape Theory, when along comes Henry Gee to blow my mind with a new theory of proboscidean evolution. Q: Why do elephants paint the soles of their feet yellow? A: So they can hide upside down in bowls of custard. So, all you need to do is find elephants with yellow feet, and the fun can begin. Elephants have trunks, obviously, which they can use as snorkels while so submerged, and also as navigational aids – the tip of the trunk is very sensitive to touch, which is useful in an opaque medium such as custard. Their thick, leathery skin is quite plainly an adaptation against the heat of the custard. Tusks are devices for forcing an elephant’s way through custard that has started to congeal. I am sure you can think of more. You may laugh, but think about it: the whole story hangs together perfectly. Every feature of the elephant can be explained in the context of this theory. Furthermore, it’s predictive and guides future research: as an example, the greater diversity of proboscideans in the past implies that there may have been a more diverse array of puddings available in the Miocene-Pliocene, and different species may have specialized to hide in tapioca or spotted dick. Further, there may have been co-evolution; dare I suggest that perhaps the currants in some puddings evolved to feed the elephants and encourage them to hide in their bowls? That “I am sure you can think of more” is typical British understatement, but bodes well for the productive future of this powerful theory.

In-Your-Face Atheism: Condemnation Or Compliment?
News24
Among my freethinker friends, I've been hearing a lot of questioning of and condemnation of what people are calling in-your-face atheism. Some of our group having noticed that Howard Thompson, to name one, uses the word "atheist" pointedly to provoke a ...

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Haaretz
Atheist Stephen Hawking and Church of Scotland Both Determined to Demonize ...
Algemeiner
I was looking forward to hearing the iconic Stephen Hawking, the internationally renowned English theoretical physicist as he helped celebrate Shimon Peres' 90th birthday at next month's annual “Facing Tomorrow” Presidential Conference in Jerusalem.
Viewpoint: Stephen Hawking's Israel Boycott Is Lost in SpaceTIME

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Haaretz
Viewpoint: Stephen Hawking's Israel Boycott Is Lost in Space
TIME
displayName 2 Like. Stephen Hawking studied physics and astronomy, not ethics nor politics. Let's Emmanuel Levinas teach us ethics and let's Israeli citizens - whether Jew or Arab, muslim, christian or atheist - decide democratically the policy of ...
Stephen Hawking, Church of Scotland 'Demonizing' Israel, Says RabbiChristian Post

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Spectator.co.uk
Atheist Delusions Busted
News24
This article has been prompted by a statement from Delusion buster on Friday 10 May. I will answer each point separately. I will be answering from the Christian faith point of view, as that is the faith that I am most familiar with. 1) Religion sucks ...
The Political Dominance of Fundamentalism - PatheosPatheos (blog)
Hey, schools: Rent a church building for your graduation, get hauled into courtCanada Free Press

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It’s the Attack of the Killer Ice Sheets! Winter isn’t quite over here in Minnesota. It’s mostly over, but some vestiges still like to sneak up on us when we’re not looking.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Catherine Deveny, that wonderful godless Australian comedian, was kicked of out of a hotel tonight — but not for being a god-hating militant atheist. She was ejected for being a pacifist who has been criticizing our eternal state of war.

The Grand cancelled my booking after pro war trolls objected to my anti war stance. The Grand cancelled my booking on the ground I damaged their brand. Tellingly The Grand was very happy to take a booking from Today Tonight trolls to harass me, other customers and Mildura residents. Today Tonight exists solely to make dumb and hateful people dumber and more hateful. You choose. Every time you spend a dollar you vote on how you would like the world to be.

I just asked them on their facebook page ‘If a comedian with anti war opinions damages your brand, what is your brand and what do you stand for?"

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Quality-Hotel-Mildura-Grand/245077038846605

She may have left that comment on their site earlier, but it’s gone now.

What really pissed off a lot of people is that she dared to criticize ANZAC Day, that sacred commemoration of the perpetrators and victims of war.

As you might expect, many of the furious patriots defending their national honor from an uppity woman responded with rape threats. I don’t think they know what honor means.

One or a few people shot up a Mothers’ Day Parade in New Orleans — nobody was killed, but 17 were injured.

It’s strangely quiet out there. The news has been non-stop “Boston terrorism!”, “Lone wolf terrorism!”, “Oh, woe, what shall we do about terrorism?” for the last few weeks, but guns blasting a parade, and…hush. I don’t know whether they’re waiting to see if the gunmen were foreigners (in which case it will be more non-stop wailing), or whether they’d rather not tag raging use of guns for their designed purpose, lest someone criticize home-grown gun culture again.

This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly. It’s not as if you were raised by wolves.

Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread

Good Boy Scouts don't need God: Column - USA Today
USA TODAY
Undergirding the Boy Scouts' ban is the dubious premise that people cannot be moral without religious belief. It's an assumption that non-believers are wisely challenging as the public face of atheism moves away from angry anti-religious diatribes ...

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At first glance, I thought it was an epiploon or omentum, but no, it’s a lovely octopus mother tending her brood. Go hug your mom right now, or if she’s not nearby, hug a mollusc instead.

I was very saddened to receive the following a few minutes ago: It is with great sorrow that Talk Reason announces the death of TR co-founder and major contributor Mark Perakh on May 7, 2013, following a brief illness. He was 88 years old. Mark Perakh was a professor emeritus of mathematics and statistical mechanics at California State University in Fullerton, CA. Perakh taught physics and wrote some 300 scientific papers. His work in physics... Matt Young http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung