The Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte, has often angered people for many statements and policies but he has finally gone too far for the Christians of his nation. He called god stupid. This is enough for Catholic Bishop Arturo Bastes to declare Duterte a madman with dictatorial tendencies. Duterte’s other sins have not raised quite as […]
Cases of people asking for demons to be expelled in rights of Exorcism are rising rapidly in at least Italy if not elsewhere in the world and the Catholic Church is responding by holding a conference on the subject. The church hopes to train more priests capable of properly performing the exorcism. There are apparently […]
The owner of the Houston Texans, Bob McNair, recently made a comment for which he later apologized. A National Football League player named Richard Sherman thinks the original statement was a true indication of the feelings McNair has and that the apology is merely pretend. What I’m going to discuss is not the nature of […]
As an Atheist, one of the things I talk about frequently is the relative nature of ethics. My religious friends believe their morality is handed down from god to them. I argue that morality is not fixed by any being, be it god or the government, but is subject to interpretation. This reasoning usually does […]
There is an interesting phenomenon going on surrounding the behavior of people during the playing of the national anthem. I don’t want to talk about the reason behind the kneeling but the reaction to the protests. There are largely two categories of offense in these situations. Either you are affected or you are not. Protestors […]
I was watching my favorite Atheist Based show, Atheist Experience, when they once again took on the topic of Pascal’s Wager. For me it all comes down to integrity. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. What is Pascal’s Wager? The idea is an interesting study of probability and decision theory. The premise is that a […]
I hate to break the bad news to all the alarmist, but race relations are absolutely fantastic in the United States. Interracial marriages are at an all-time high. Tolerance of homosexuals is growing beyond any level seen before. Atheists like me are freer to come out and talk about our lack of belief with greater […]
She’s not. Debbie Reynolds might well have believed when she died she would be reunited with her daughter but she wasn’t. There’s a lesson here. For all of us, Atheist or no. Debbie Reynolds was with her daughter. She raised Carrie Fisher to be the woman she became, flaws and all. She was with her every […]
As I read the news, take in the comments, watch the pundits, and listen to friends and strangers something strikes me quite powerfully. What I’m about to say might hurt your feelings. I don’t much care. Never in the history of the world have so many people had it so good. Never have so many […]
I read a story from the Associated Press about a Twitter war that is raging because a prominent Saudi Arabian, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdelaziz Al Sheikh, declared that Muslims should not play chess. No big deal? Just some religious kook making an outlandish statement? I disagree. For Al Sheikh to make this statement there is clearly […]
They’re both jerks. I thought I’d take the suspense out of this blog right away. Steve Williams is a caddie who worked for Tiger Woods and now selling a book about his time on the PGA Tour. Leah Remini is an actress who was also a Scientologist and knew Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes pretty well. […]
Thanks to my Facebook friends I just read an interesting story about Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson. Robertson examines the thought processes of a family who is brutally murdered, raped, and dismembered by a group of insane people. He does not mention a second family but the comparison is there, if not overtly mentioned. One family […]
There’s a fairly major sports story being reported all over the internet right now and it raises some interesting Libertarian questions for me. A football player named Josh Gordon is being suspended for one full season because he tested positive for … alcohol. At first glance it would seem a severe punishment but there are […]
I just read an interesting article and was “blindsided” by the blatant and disgusting misleading blurb that accompanied the headline. The story comes from Yahoo news and involves a Maryland school district that decided to remove all religious holiday references from their calendar rather than include references to Muslim holidays. The headline itself is accurate: […]
There’s an interesting legal story making the news these days and it hits home for this Atheist. Supreme Court Justice Scalia recently spoke at a gathering at Colorado Christian University and put forward the idea that the federal government and the states are not obligated to protect people who do not have a religion. That it […]
I’m an atheist. I’m not a what I would call a fundamentalist atheist in that I’m not out there trying to convince every Christian, Jew, and Muslim that atheism is the only right thing to believe but I do get into conversations with religious people on occasion. I think religious freedom is extremely important to […]
There was an interesting question in Dr. Abby this morning and it made me think about my own situation in regards to Atheism and my friends’ children. In the column an atheist couple had been asked by their parents to refrain from telling nieces and nephews about their lack of religious belief. I’ve been asked by […]
There was an interesting question in Dr. Abby this morning and it made me think about my own situation in regards to Atheism and my friends’ children. In the column an atheist couple had been asked by their parents to refrain from telling nieces and nephews about their lack of religious belief. I’ve been asked by […]
I wrote a post about a misleading headline last week but now I’d like to talk about the article to which the satiric story was really about. There was a Supreme Court decision last week which allowed a municipality to open their meeting with a prayer as long as that prayer is not intended to […]
And NBC News claims the big award for misleading headline of the week with this doozy: Former NYPD Officer Arrested for Anti-Semitic Graffiti in Brooklyn The headline is one of those things that is technically correct but incredibly misleading. The fellow being charged with the crimes, Michael Setiawan, served in some capacity for the New York […]