Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1760

Gunmen With Assault Rifles and Grenades Attack Museum in Tunisia, Hunt and Kill Tourists

In my best Reza Aslan voice: “They could be Baptists, or Buddhists, or atheists. We just don’t know.”

From the New York Times:

Gunmen in military uniforms attacked a museum in downtown Tunis around noon on Wednesday, killing 19 people, officials said. Security forces later advanced into the museum and killed two gunmen in a firefight, state television reported.

Prime Minister Habib Essid said at a news conference that the dead included 17 tourists and two Tunisians. Eight people were killed as t...

Daesh Defector Describes Drug Use, Rape Sessions With Non-Muslim Girls, and Serial Marriages For Muslim Ones

An ex-fighter for in Iraqopens up about the atrocities he was asked to commit to help establish the caliphate:

“The executions, or more horribly the beheadings, as well as the raping of the non-Muslim girls … These scenes terrified me,” [Hamza]told the British newspaper [the Independent]. “I imagined myself being caught up in these shootings, executions, beheadings and raping, if I stayed where I was.”

Being a member of the Islamic State was just too brutal for Hamza, who is from the Iraqi...

The Largest Presbyterian Denomination in the U.S. Just Redefined Marriage To Be More LGBT-Inclusive

Officials from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), that church’s largest denomination in the country, have changed their constitution to be more inclusive of same-sex marriages.

A majority of the church’s regional bodies approved a change recommended by the General Assembly last year: the church’s constitution now defines marriage as “between two people” rather than between a man and a woman.

“Finally, the church in its constitutional documents fully recognizes that the love of gays and lesbian c...

California Judges Are Banned from Belonging to Boy Scouts, State Supreme Court Says

The California Supreme Court has taken another step to formally oppose the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on LGBT adult leaders: State court judges may no longer participate inthe BSA. Judges have a year to end their relationships with the organization, which in 2013lifted its ban on LGBT youth Scouts, but not on adult leaders.

This is an extension of an earlier decision in California, which said in vaguer terms that judges couldn’t belong to groups which discriminate againstmembers based on sexu...

Once Again, a Texas Elementary School Can’t Stop Promoting Christianity at the Book Fair

Last year, I posted a lot about the numerous church/state violations taking place in Texas’ Hardin-Jefferson Independent School District.

Things got even stranger in October, when China Elementary School held a book fair sponsored by Scholastic Books… that featured a display table full of Jesus:

That picture is courtesy of a parent in the district who attended the fair.

Needless to say, Scholastic doesn’t offer those titles for a book fair unless it’s a religious school.

After pushback, they said...

Azealia Banks: Atheism Makes No Sense Because God is Too Big to Understand

Hip-hop artist Azealia Banks (below), who is as well-known for her Twitter feuds as she is her music, is featured on the cover of the latest issue of Playboy. In the interview, she offers an… um… illuminating take on atheism:

I don’t understand how someone could be an atheist. Think about God as software, right? If you were to look at God’s face, your head would explode. Because your head is a calculator, and the amount of information that would be embedded in his face would fit only on a Goog...

Nearly Two Years After Killing an Atheist Blogger, a Muslim Cleric and Several Students Are Indicted by the Court

In early 2013, there was a clash in Bangladesh over the writing of atheist bloggers that left at least two people dead, including blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider.

Ahmed Rajib Haider (via Faith Freedom)

The country’s 12 Islamic parties called the protests after Friday prayers in nearly half a million mosques nationwide, demanding the execution of bloggers whom they say blasphemed Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.

Tensions have risen in the Muslim-majority nation over allegedly anti-Islamic blog posts by...

Mind Your Tongue: Why, At Friendly Atheist, We’ll Use “Daesh” From Now On, Instead of ISIL, ISIS, or Islamic State

The violent Muslim fundies who’ve taken over swathsof Iraq and Syria go by different names/acronyms. That’s a bit confusing,and it produces editorial inconsistencies that play out across newspapers and websitesworldwide.

On this blog, we have nochanceto force conformity on the issue even if we wanted to, but we can at least be more consistent ourselves.

To that end, we’re dropping ISIS, IS, Islamic State, and ISIL–and will be using Daesh from here on out.

As Zeba Khan writes in the Boston Globe,...

The Viral “Rush Hour” Video is a Hoax

Captain Disillusion explains why the viral “rush hour” video really isn’t documenting reality:

Somehow, a video was Photoshopped. I’m still impressed…

The Courthouse at the Center of the Scopes Monkey Trial May Soon Get a Statue of Lawyer Clarence Darrow

The Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee is famous for hosting the legendary Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. (Quick summary: Substitute teacher John Scopes was charged with teaching evolution, which was illegal in that state at the time. He was found guilty and fined $100.)

The two prominent lawyers in the trial were William Jennings Bryan, arguing for the state, and Clarence Darrow representing Scopes. (If you haven’t seen Inherit the Wind yet, stop reading this post and go do that.)

Anywa...