Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1758

California Bill Offering Double Pay on a “Family Holiday” Inadvertently Promotes Christianity

A bill introduced by California State Assembly Member Lorena S. Gonzalez a couple of months ago, called the “Double Pay on the Holiday Act of 2015,” just passed through the Labor committee. And it’s a roundabout way to promote Christianity.

In short, the bill would mandate that employers pay their workers at least “twice the employee’s regular rate of pay” on certain holidays.

Like Christmas and Thanksgiving and nothing else.

You could make a compelling case that those are the two biggest nation...

Conrad Black Rails Against the “Shabby, Shallow World of the Militant Atheist”

Conrad Black, hardly a paragon of moral virtue, has plenty to say about “militant atheism” and the National Post gave him an outlet for it:

The current militant atheists: those well-known and learned professionals who not only strongly dispute the existence of God, but are hyperactive on the international speaking and debating circuits evangelizing random audiences both to the non-existence of God — hardly a novel contention nor one any of them puts forth with much originality — but to the evi...

Children in London School Instructed Not To Watch Solar Eclipse For “Religious and Cultural Reasons”

But what if Ra,Tonatiuh, and Svarogwantedus to watch the solar eclipse? When childrendisobey ancient sun deities, what is to become of their immortal souls?

From the U.K. Telegraph (confirmed via the Independent and ITV):

A London primary school was criticized for banning children fromwatching the eclipsefor “religious and cultural reasons.” Pupils at North Primary School in Southall were stopped from watching the solar eclipse directly and had to observe it on screens instead.

Sometimes known a...

God’s Bankers: Gerald Posner’s Financial Exposé of the Catholic Church Produces “An Acute Sensation of Disgust”

A new book by investigative journalistGerald Posner, a732-page tome titledGod’s Bankers, lays bare the “history of money and power at the Vatican.”

Writesreviewer Damon Linkerin the New York Times:

[T]he church from the beginning has been an all-too-human institution that often follows a logic of self-interest, placing the good of its members ahead of those outside it, and the good of those in positions of ecclesiastical power ahead of the good of everyone else. To a greater or lesser extent, t...

Do You Believe the Reviews of Do You Believe?

This is a guest post by Bo Gardiner, the nom de plume of a Virginia-based environmental professional, naturalist (in both senses of the word), writer and humanist activist. She blogs at Under the Greenwood Tree.

…

They’re baaaaaaackkkk… those smarmy Christians and evil atheists have returned to your neighborhood theater! Pure Flix’s Do You Believe? opened yesterday in theaters nationally to the same critics-hate-it/audiences-love-it response that their film God’s Not Dead received last year.

You...

CNN Publishes a Lengthy, Positive Profile of an Atheist Family

You know, it’s not often you see a positive story about an atheist…

But this long feature by CNN’s Daniel Burke is just a wonderful look at a family of atheists from North Carolina.

Charlotte and Harry Shaughnessy were both Catholic when they got married in 1991, but their faith began to fade more than a decade later.

Harry wondered whether telling a priest you’re sorry and reciting a few Our Fathers could really wipe a sinner’s soul clean. Even Hitler? Charles Manson?

If Harry had talked to a pr...

How Meaningful Can a Relationship with God Be If There’s a Threat Involved?

DarkMatter2525 explains how God’s worst idea may have been to use Heaven and Hell as a threat over people in order to inspire “meaningful” relationships with them.

(It may help to watch the first two episodes in this trilogy beforehand, though it’s not necessary.)

CNN Will Air a Special on Atheists This Tuesday

Since a lot of you may be interested, CNN will be airing a special on atheists Tuesday night: “Atheists: Inside the World of Non-believers.”

The clip on their website shows interviews with American Atheists’ Dave Silverman, pastor-turned-atheist Jerry DeWitt, and Richard Dawkins. That alone suggests they’ll focus on how atheists are “coming out” now more than ever before and how difficult that can be in some instances.

If anything noteworthy happens on the special, we’ll cover it here.

Christians Have Destroyed Almost All the Mosques In the Central African Republic; an American Fan Cheers Them On

Christian and Muslim militias have been battling each other in the Central African Republic since 2012. First, a group of Muslim combatantscalled the Seleka started an aggressive trekinto Christian areas, and the Christians in turn organizedtheir own armed rebelforce, the Antibalaka, which quickly morphedfrom a defensive civilian army into a genocidal hordethat wants to eliminate Muslims from the country of 4.5 million people.

TheChristian fightershave been especially successful, if you define...

20 Years Ago Today, the Aum Shinrikyo Cult Attacked the Tokyo Subway System With Nerve Gas, Killing 12

A groupthat’s based on Buddhism and yoga sounds like it would be about as dangerous as the sixth-grade chess teamatPleasant Valley Elementary. And yet:

On this day, March 20, in 1995, 12 people were killed and thousands were sickened in Tokyo when members of [Shoko] Asahara’s cult, Aum Shinrikyo, released sarin during the Monday-morning rush hour in one of the world’s most crowded subway systems. Members of the cultused the tips of their umbrellasto puncture plastic bags filled with liquid sar...