Marc kreidler
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
I swear, I don’t think I could have made this up: A member of the UFO “religion” the Raelians, whose last name is “Bilbo,” is suing to have “so help me God” removed from the U.S. citizenship oath, which of course should be removed. And who’s her lawyer? The secularism-enforcer who gets knocked down but gets back up again, Michael Newdow.
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
In the cosmic sense, this is a big damn joke. In the immediate, real-world sense, this is no joke: Dr. Oz is appointed to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. We have something to say about it:
“This is an abysmal appointment, akin to having anti-vaccine zealot Robert F. Kennedy lead the now-abandoned vaccine safety commission,” said Robyn Blumner, president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry…
In the wake of the guilty verdict for Bill Cosby on three counts of sexual assault last week, the news media predictably jumped on the story. One angle, however, was more opinion than fact.
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
We put out a statement yesterday on Trump’s new faith-based initiative executive order, pointing out how it screws over LGBTQ Americans and the nonreligious. Emma Green at The Atlantic shows how Trump’s version of an Obama-era idea comes in a “radically different context.”
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
At The Daily Beast, Brandon Withrow looks at the weird relationship between American Christians and guns. Dig this:
When asked what [theologian Ron] Sider would do if an intruder threatened the life of his family, he said that while he thought such a situation would be extremely rare, he would have to follow Jesus’s command for nonviolence and trust God.
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Today China implements its own kind of “blasphemy law,” intended to “protect” the legacies of Communist Party-approved heroes and martyrs.
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
It’s official: U.S. Reps Jared Huffman (D-CA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Jerry McNerney (D-CA), and Dan Kildee (D-MI) announce the formation of the Congressional Freethought Caucus:
The Congressional Freethought Caucus has four main goals: 1) to promote public policy formed on the basis of reason, science, and moral values; 2) to protect the secular character of our government by adhering to the strict Constitutional principle of the separation of church and state; 3) to oppose discrimination against atheists, agnostics, humanists, seekers, religious and nonreligious persons, and to champion the value of freedom of thought and conscience worldwide; and 4) to provide a forum for members of Congress to discuss their moral frameworks, ethical values, and personal religious journeys.
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Joe Nickell has a really great blog post up about belief in demons, responding to the recent “Exorcism and Prayer of Liberation” event held in Rome:
The 300 conservative Catholics who attended the 13th annual event (mostly clerics) believe there is a recent increase in evil. They attribute this to atheism, to the Internet, and even, supposedly, to the lax modernistic views of Pope Francis. … In fact, it is they, their religious ilk elsewhere, and the allegedly “possessed” who are out of place in time, ironically harking back to the Middle Ages and earlier. […] The Internet can help dispel these [reports of possession], and so it is not a cause but a remedy; atheism is not a consequence but, coupled with humanist values, a salvation.
As a “skeptical demonologist” for nearly half a century, I would have had much to say at the course on “Exorcism and Prayer of Liberation” held in Rome April 16–21, 2018. I know there are those who would say that—because I have never found a single demon in all that time—I appear to be too skeptical. I beg to differ.
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Did you know that Stephen Fry is going to be at CSICon 2018? Do you need to know anything else about it?? If you MUST, then I can tell you that Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, James Randi, Kavin Senapathy, Yvette d’Entremont, and approximately a bazzilion other great speakers will also be there. Go act on this new knowledge.