- To Win, We Just Have to Show Up
The Garden • June 29, 2011
In the wake of marriage equality's victory in New York State last Friday, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler posted the following to Twitter:
Now, fully 1 in 9 Americans will live in a state with legalized same-sex marriage. Our mission field is getting more complicated.
On the surface, this is a strange statement. Mohler apparently [...]
- Book Review: Losing My Religion
The Library • June 27, 2011
Summary: A hard-hitting and emotionally moving story of a religion reporter's deconversion, despite a few lingering blind spots.
Losing My Religion is the autobiography of William Lobdell, the religion reporter turned atheist whom I wrote about in 2007. I briefly mentioned the outline of his story in my previous post, but this book is a much [...]
- I Am An Atom of Atheism
The Foyer • June 26, 2011
The blog Ungodly News has created a whimsical periodic table of atheism, and I was surprised and pleased to find out that I'm on it:
(click for larger version)
I'm an actinide, if you can't find me - one of the green rows on the bottom, labeled as "The Wicked of the Web". I'd never have counted [...]
- Photo Sunday: Córdoba
The Foyer • June 26, 2011
To see the pictures, follow the link to continue:
- Take the Ideological Turing Test
The Foyer • June 25, 2011
My guest blogger alumnus, Leah of Unequally Yoked, has proposed a very interesting challenge for Christians and atheists alike which she calls the "ideological Turing test":
One of the greatest gifts of my time at Yale has been living, writing, and arguing in a community of smart people with whom I fiercely disagree... The imitation test [...]
- Love Wins
The Garden • June 24, 2011
And tomorrow is a brand new day.
Congratulations, New York!
EDIT: It seems appropriate to repost these photos, which I took in 2009 at a rally in Union Square for the victory we had tonight:
And because really, how can you not:
- Grieving Without Religion
The Garden • June 24, 2011
Recently, a long-time reader (thanks, Stacey!) sent me an e-mail with a link to this wrenching story, about a married couple chronicling the grief and anger they've been feeling since their daughter was stillborn in late 2009. By their own account, this tragedy happened in part because they put their trust in irrational thinking and [...]
- Religion Is Dangerous to Women
The Rotunda • June 22, 2011
Last week, the legal news service TrustLaw released a poll of the most dangerous countries for women. Based on a survey of 213 experts on women's issues from around the world, the poll ranked countries on the basis of six categories: health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to [...]
- Poll and Feedback: Proposed Advertising Policy
The Foyer • June 20, 2011
Since the beginning, I've resisted having paid ads on Daylight Atheism. But I'm wondering if the time has come to change that, and I'd like to know what readers think of the idea.
I've been thinking about this because, lately, I've been getting a more-than-usual number of e-mails from strangers who want me to promote their [...]
- The Evangelist's Funnel
The Loft • June 20, 2011
Through some odd stroke of coincidence, when I was in San Francisco earlier this year, I encountered more than the usual amount of religious nuttiness. I've already written about the woman who gets divine communications in God's actual handwriting. There were also Scientologists handing out pamphlets on a street corner, advertising something called the "Purification [...]
- Photo Sunday: Toledo
The Foyer • June 19, 2011
More pictures from my Spanish trip. Click the link below to see:
- Link Roundup and Facial Hair Update
The Foyer • June 18, 2011
As regular readers may remember, when our team of underdog bloggers triumphed last month in a fund-raising contest for Camp Quest, I vowed to grow a beard so as to prove that PZ Myers wasn't the only atheist overlord out there who could boast of manly facial hair. Well, that experiment is underway as we [...]
- Do the Right Thing, New York!
The Rotunda • June 16, 2011
I wrote in May about the legalization of civil unions in Delaware (which has now been signed into law), and the ongoing push to pass a marriage-equality law in my own state, New York. Although New York already recognizes same-sex marriages performed in any of the neighboring states that allow them, passage of the bill [...]
- Atheists Are Not Fascists
The Garden • June 15, 2011
This week, my first article on Alternet was published, which spurred several comments asking that we not forget about libertarian and conservative atheists. That's why it's so amusing that this same week, PZ Myers points out the curious tale of a pundit named Jeff Sparrow, who's convinced that the New Atheist movement is so right-wing [...]
- New on Alternet: Atheists as a Political Force
The Rotunda • June 13, 2011
Today I'm very happy to announce that I've become a contributor to AlterNet, the award-winning online progressive news and opinion magazine. My first essay is titled "There Are 10 Times As Many Atheists as Mormons: When Will Non-Believers Become a Political Force?" Read an excerpt below, and then click through to see the rest:
The propagandists [...]
- Photo Sunday: Madrid
The Foyer • June 12, 2011
As I've mentioned, my wife and I took a trip to Spain last month to celebrate our first anniversary. I'm not going to inflict all my vacation photos on you, but we did see some sights that are relevant to the kind of thing I usually write about on Daylight Atheism. If you're interested in [...]
- News Flash: Psychics Still Useless
The Observatory • June 10, 2011
You may have heard about this bizarre story out of Texas this week, where a self-proclaimed psychic called police with a tip that a certain home was the site of a mass grave containing dozens of dismembered bodies, including the bodies of children. A swarm of reporters, FBI agents and Texas Rangers promptly converged on [...]
- The Value of Autonomy
The Garden • June 9, 2011
I've been following this debate between Ross Douthat and Kevin Drum about the morality of assisted suicide. In his latest post, Douthat made a telling, though apparently unintentional, statement:
The slippery slope that I discussed in the column doesn't amount to much if you don't disapprove at all of people deciding to take their own lives. [...]
- Standing Up for Young Freethinkers
The Garden • June 7, 2011
This is another story that broke while I was away in Spain, but I wanted to write about it. I'm sure it will no longer come as news, but it's definitely worth commenting on.
Greta Christina sums it up on Alternet, but in brief: A Louisiana public high school student, Damon Fowler, objected to a prayer [...]
- Strange But True: The Misnumbered Pope
The Library • June 6, 2011
I've been reading Bob Curran's book Unholy Popes, an extremely amusing chronicle of papal misbehavior over the centuries and the more infamous scandals and shenanigans attributed to the various men who've held the seat. There have been periods of decades when Rome was rife with corruption, nepotism, bribery, and at times, open warfare and murder [...]
- Darwin's Long Regret
The Observatory • June 4, 2011
Since we've been reading a lot lately about scientists pandering to religion, it's worth remembering that there's nothing new under the sun. As long as there's been science, there have been believers who fought fiercely to prevent their god of choice from being dislodged from a gap, and there have been scientists who felt obliged [...]
- Justice for the Victims of Faith Healing
The Rotunda • June 2, 2011
I'm still working through a backlog of interesting stories that accumulated during my vacation, so here's the first of them.
As freethinkers know too well, claiming that your religion requires you to do or not do something is an almost all-purpose excuse for immoral behavior. It's frustratingly rare for believers to be punished for wrongdoing when [...]
- The Evil Overlord Has Fallen!
The Foyer • June 1, 2011
On a brighter note, the Camp Quest fundraising contest pitting the atheist blogosphere against PZ Myers has come to a close... and as the smoke clears, a tattered flag is waving defiantly among the heaps of squid. Yes, the once unthinkable has happened: Barad-dur has fallen, the Death Star has been destroyed, and our motley [...]
- On the Treatment of Guest Authors
The Foyer • June 1, 2011
Hi folks,
Now that I'm rested, I've been catching up on the posts written by my guest authors, as well as the 200+ comments they attracted. I'm mostly up to date now, and I have to say a few things about the way they were treated.
In particular, I want to speak to Leah's posts on mockery [...]
