I took a dog friend to the beach at Golden Gardens this afternoon. It was beautiful and stormy.
I took a dog friend to the beach at Golden Gardens this afternoon. It was beautiful and stormy.
The Center for Inquiry reports:
Prejudice against atheists manifested itself again when The Wyndgate Country
Club in Rochester Hills, Michigan (outside of Detroit), cancelled an event with
scientist and author Richard Dawkins after learning of Dawkins’s views on
religion. The event had been arranged by the Center for Inquiry–Michigan (CFI), an advocacy group for secularism and science, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. [Read more…]
Haredi protesters pitch a fit about a new girls’ school – a religious school! – next to “their” neighborhood.
Senior Beit Shemesh rabbis took part in the rally, in which participants called for “maintaining the purity of the haredi neighborhoods against strangers plotting to desecrate them, backed by the evil regime.”
Got it all, dunnit – purity, strangers, plotting, desecrate, the evil regime. You can’t get much more viciously crazy and anti-human than that. [Read more…]
Another intimidation piece directed at journalists and researchers who write about dominionism, back in August. It’s in the Washington Post, which is a nice gig if you’re trying to intimidate people.
Here we go again. The Republican primaries are six months away, and already news stories are raising fears on the left about “crazy Christians.” [Read more…]
More on Jim Wallis and Mark Pinsky, at Talk2Action, which was the object of much of their criticism/bullying.
It was bad enough when Mark I. Pinsky recently took to the op-ed page of USA Today to smear four Jewish writers who have had the temerity to write critically and well about dominionism and related matters — comparingtheir work to historic anti-Semitic smears including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Then Jim Wallis chimed in last week, accusing unnamed liberal writers of engaging in thought crimes against evangelicals. His charges were as unsubstantiated as Pinsky’s, whose essay he praised and linked to. [Read more…]
Hundreds of people are expected to gather tonight on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard to declare themselves “without religion.” The move follows the recent District Court ruling granting author Yoram Kaniuk recognition as “without religion” by the Interior Ministry.
The meeting, to be held in the abandoned building on Rothschild Boulevard which has become an ad-hoc community center for protesters, is being organized on Facebook by Tel Aviv poet Oded Carmeli. So far, about 600 people have confirmed they will be attending.
Participants will be signing affidavits in the presence of attorneys, informing the Interior Ministry of their change of status to “without religion.”
Mazel tov!
Oxford Christians tell Dawkins where to get off.
In 2009, atheists in London paid for 200 adverts on the city’s buses, declaring: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
Now Premier Christian Radio has paid for its own version on Oxford buses, after the distinguished evolutionary biologist turned down the chance to debate with Christian philosopher William Lane Craig when he visits the city later in the month.
The new advert reads: “There’s probably no Dawkins. Now stop worrying and enjoy Oct 25th at the Sheldonian Theatre.” [Read more…]
Terry Glavin reports that Peter Tatchell went to a stoppers’ rally in Trafalgar Square today.
Attaboy Peter.
Richard Bartholomew signs an open letter to Jim Wallis from writers about US religion and politics. The letter says
Dear Jim Wallis,
We are writing in response to your e-mail to the Sojourners list on September 29th, and your similar piece on The Huffington Post, in which you claim that “some liberal writers” — whom you do not name — are broad brushing evangelical Christians as “intellectually-flawed right-wing crazies with dangerous plans for the country.” You characterize unnamed writers — writers like us — as people who are “all too eager to discredit religion as part of their perennial habit and practice.” This charge is as unfair as it is unsubstantiated. [Read more…]
The pope talked to the Bundestag a couple of weeks ago, and according to the Iona Institute, his remarks went down a treat. The II says they gave him a two-minute standing ovation, as if he’d sung an aria or acted Hamlet.
(Why, one wonders? German boy made good? Big famous holy guy in gleaming white outfit? Name recognition? Why?) [Read more…]