Atheism

The latest helpful guidance from Mr. Deity. If like so many of us you hear voices in your head, but aren't sure it's God, this vid's for you.

In March, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler canceled a student drag show organized by several campus student clubs including members of the Secular Student Alliance.

In an email to all students, faculty, and staff, President Wendler cited his personal religious beliefs and evoked God and Creator multiple times in his justification for canceling the student event. He also falsely likened drag to blackface, claiming that the art form is misogynistic, divisive, and void of human dignity.

President Wendler’s personal religious beliefs and biblical references have no place in justifying the cancellation of the event. West Texas A&M University is a public institution and the wall of the separation of state and church remains standing.

Last week, Andrew Seidel, a constitutional lawyer and vice president of strategic communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, visited West Texas A&M University to give an address to support the students suing President Wendler, demonstrate that drag is not threatening, and detail the dangers of Christian Nationalism.

Andrew explained that drag shouldn’t be a concern for anyone: “Drag is art. Drag is human. Drag is beautiful.” However for religious conservatives, anything that calls into question the gender binary or the conservative Christian idea of what men ought to look like is perceived as a threat – solely because of their religious beliefs.

I've got news for you, crackpot. The rapture already happened and you, the self-righteous, have been left behind with us, the great unbelieving. Let that sink in.

The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.

Time Enough for Love

For the purposes of organizing and discussing the RE syllabus, humanists are deemed to be on a par with other religious representatives. However, it is not like the situation in Kent is the norm across the country. Out of the 151 SACREs, some 67 have humanists as members of group A. The ideal would be to have members sitting in every group. The argument often given behind decisions such as those made by Kent County Council is that humanism isn’t a religion. But, Humanists UK have stated regarding the court’s decision That the law requires far more clarity and that this decision has a larger scope:

However Bowen is clear that references to religion in the relevant legislation should be read in a way which would ‘read in’ words extending the scope of possible group A members to include humanists. Reading it in this way is required by the Human Rights Act 1998. The law has now been unambiguously clarified in this area.

Furthermore, the new Bowen judgment restates the Fox judgment, that humanism should be included and given ‘equal respect’ in RE syllabuses. In fact, it is even clearer on this point: those syllabuses failing to be inclusive will leave themselves open to legal challenge.

The news that Kent County Council will not be going to the Court of Appeal means that the name Bowen now joins Fox as a key element of case law upholding the equal respect that must be afforded to humanism in education. It also represents a further instance of the Human Rights Act being used to clarify that humanism should be ‘read in’ to references to religion in other legislation – in this case the Education Act 1996. There may well be further examples in public life where this would apply.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ mansion experienced the impact of Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall in the state as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday. The storm, continuing inland into Georgia and northern Florida, felled a 100-year-old oak tree that landed on the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, Fla., Casey DeSantis, Florida First Lady, said on Twitter. The storm is expected to bring considerable flooding and potential tornadoes to coastal northern Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina on its way to the northeast.

It’s discouraging to see some of my fellow conservatives attacking rising GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for his Hindu faith. It is wrong and un-American. It violates the spirit, if not the law, of the Constitution. And it could backfire on Christians as our share of the US population dwindles.

It is also entirely counterproductive for those who claim to support traditional values and religious liberty. Ramaswamy is steadily climbing in Republican primary voter support, closing in on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in some polls and neck and neck with him in the betting markets. He is also one of the candidates best positioned to further major conservative Christian agenda items.

FTA:

The people who said the bible isn’t true aren’t being true to themselves. They think some parts are true. They are never going to say this to you. Just ask them that. And the rest is just metaphor.

There is another palpable difference between science and religion. What do you do when you make an assertion about the world that you know turns out to be false? In science it goes into the dustbin of discarded results like cold fusion or any number of falsified theories.

When a religious claim is falsified like creation or Adam and Eve, it simply turns into a metaphor. “We didn’t really mean it, folks. It wasn’t meant that way. It means something else completely.”

FTA:

In the long run, advocates of private school vouchers and charter schools may come to regret the Carson decision. By forcing states to choose between either having a single, unitary public school system, or having government-funded private and charter schools that teach religious views many citizens may find objectionable, Carson places secularly minded states in a difficult position. If those states don’t want to fund schools like St. Isidore, or other religious schools that may teach that LGBTQ people are immoral, Carson suggests that they must eliminate any programs funding private schools or publicly funded charter schools altogether.

Nevertheless, the Court’s Republican-appointed majority appears as unconcerned with this problem as it is with the problem of taxing secular citizens to pay for religious education.

The future of religion in the United States, in other words, is unlikely to involve police officers breaking into people’s homes to arrest them for skipping church. But it is likely to include far more government funding of religious activity, far more proselytizing by teachers, coaches, and other government officials who wield authority over children, and many more monuments to Christianity — all paid for by your taxes.

Quote from the article:

"It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — [and] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis."