Sally Morrow reports on a volleyball tournament pitting atheists versus Christians in Kansas City to raise money for charity and to increase dialogue and understanding between the two groups.

When it comes to issues of morality, I take the attitude of live and let live. If people are not harming others, then I think that they should be given a great deal of leeway for their actions. Similarly, consenting adults who are of sound mind should be allowed to live their lives as they wish. Since this approach to morality does not use as its basis religious texts written by men thousands of years ago when standards of morality were less enlightened than they are now, it is bound to come into conflict from time to time with the moral standards of religions. [Read more…]

The group Exodus International, a Christian ministry that tried to ‘pray away the gay’ (which I have to admit is a pretty catchy slogan) has suddenly announced that they are closing shop. But that is not all, they are closing because they are admitting that they were wrong and their head Alan Chambers has issued a statement explaining his reasons and in the process given an apology that is remarkable for its unequivocal nature. [Read more…]

The Girl Guides of the UK (the equivalent of the USA’s Girl Scouts) no longer require their members to take an oath to “love God and serve the King/Queen.” Instead they will promise to “be true to myself and develop my beliefs” and “to serve my Queen (Elizabeth II) and my country.” [Read more…]

Anyone who has ever been to a church has probably wondered what the letter IHS on the crosses and other icons stand for. I know I did but never bothered to actually find out, limiting myself to making guesses during the times when my mind wandered during the ceremony. I remember thinking that maybe it stood for ‘In His Service’ or, as I got older and more sophisticated in my wild guesses, for ‘Jesus of Nazareth, Savior’ in some other language, say Greek, with I standing for the J sound and the H for the N sound. [Read more…]

You may recall Navenna Shine, a ‘breatharian’ who had decided to forego all nourishment and live on light alone. Fortunately she has decided to stop her ‘experiment’ today. She gives her reasons in a long statement. It consists partly of practical reasons (she seems to be running out of money and her phone and internet services will be cut off today) and partly because she says that the world may not be ready for this dramatic way of living and people may try to copy her without the careful preparation necessary and die as a consequence. [Read more…]

A judge in Texas has ordered a psychic to pay a couple $6.5 million for the harm she caused them by telling police that a mass grave containing 25 to 30 bodies was on their property.

But the major question is why police would act on the basis of information provided by psychics. Surely there must be someone in the police department who could have pointed out that psychics are useless people who prey on the gullible and desperate?

This is another consequence of the magical thinking promoted by religion.

While perceptions and treatment of the LGBT community by the general public have undoubtedly improved in recent years, they still feel some stigma, as a new Pew survey reveals. [Read more…]