Yoga has its roots in India and Hinduism and Buddhism, though now many do it purely for the mental and physical wellbeing it provides practitioners without concerning themselves too much with the religious aspects. So is having a twice-weekly half-hour yoga program as part of the physical education curriculum in public schools a violation of the Establishment Clause, because it is promoting religion? [Read more…]
Larry Alex Taunton (a Christian) has an interesting article in The Atlantic magazine where he undertook a project to interview young people who had become atheists. It was not meant to be a scientific survey but more a collection of individual stories, which can often provide richer insights than dry statistics. While Taunton’s goal was to find ways to create a more appealing form of Christianity, the themes that emerged from his conversations as to why young people stopped believing are interesting on their own. [Read more…]
Mr. Deity explains why this is so in an episode riddled with clichés and bad puns.
(Via Machines Like Us.)
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…]
Sometimes we nonbelievers forget how difficult times have become for Christians who can no longer make bigoted statements without experiencing pushback. They are being bullied and called meanies and worse. They are simply not used to it and are suffering deeply. Samantha Bee of The Daily Show lends a sympathetic ear to their plight. [Read more…]