Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1775

At CPAC, Dr. Gina Tells Dave Silverman He Doesn’t Have “Any Right” To Call Christianity a Myth

“A reliable source of truth… a voice of clarity, wisdom and understanding about [the] issues,”

… remarkedTodd Akin about WorldNetDaily columnistand Tea Party co-founder Dr. Gina Loudon (I’m appending the title because she likes to go by Dr. Gina).

Her impeccable credentials thusestablished, let’s take a quick lookatwhat Ms. Loudon has to say about the presence at CPAC of American Atheists president Dave Silverman. CPAC is the annualConservative Political Action Conference. The footage below, wh...

Atheist Billboard with the Words “Easter” and “Church” Rejected in Nashville for Being Too “Aggressive”

American Atheists has its annual convention this Easter weekend in Memphis, Tennessee. As has been the group’s custom in recent years, they decided to purchase a couple of billboards to advertise the gathering. And this is what they wanted to put up:

Cute billboard! (You may remember that little girl from such previous billboards as this one.) As far as “aggressive” goes, this is pretty tame for American Atheists. They’re not attacking Christians, unless you consider disagreement with Christia...

When Back Sides Touch: In Tennessee, Churchgoers Protest Swingers Club Moving In Close-By

A church in Madison, Tennessee, may be getting a new neighbor: aswingers clubis hoping to move in close-by.

The club has operated at 700 Division St. but is looking to relocate to 520 Lentz Drive in Madison, adjacent to Goodpasture Christian School, where the back sides of the two properties touch.

And the congregants know that bad things will happen when back sides touch:

A community-wide prayer meeting held at the school Sunday appealed to God and community leaders to keep that from happening....

Does Religion Make People Good? Of Course Not, Says Author of New Book

Barbara G. Walker, an author and past recipient of the American Humanist Association’s “Humanist Heroine Award,” has written quite a bit about the intersection of feminism and religion. And her latest collection of essays, Belief & Unbelief (Humanist Press, 2015), holds little back, dismantling many of the defenses we frequently hear about religion.

In the excerpt below (published without footnotes for ease of reading), Walker explains how religious belief doesn’t actually make you good:

But is...

Serial Disrupter Christine Weick Strikes Again At Muslim Prayer in Oklahoma Capitol Building

Christine Weick is back. She’s been featured on this blog on several occasions– firstfor getting into an altercation about gay rights, then for trying to convince people that Monster energy drinks are the work of the devil, and finally for disrupting an interfaith service involvingMuslims (where she saidGod had made her“temporarily invisible” despite the fact that she’d beencaught on camera).

What I appreciated about Weick was that she was so wonderfullyerratic — you never knew what or where s...

Raif Badawi, Possibly Spared from Additional Lashes, Could Now Be Sentenced to Death

While the fate of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi (below) is still up in the air — he received 50 lashes of a 1,000-lashes punishment for “insulting Islam,” though the flogging has been indefinitely delayed — it looks like things may be getting worse for him.

Mr Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, told The Independent in a series of messages that judges in Saudi Arabia’s criminal court want him to undergo a re-trial for apostasy. If found guilty, he would face a death sentence.

She said the “dangerous infor...

Rape Pastor Victor Barnard, Who Claimed He’s Jesus, Is Caught in Brazil After a Long Manhunt

The year-long manhunt for Victor Barnard, an American pastor charged with 59 counts of sexual assault, is over. Barnard, who was on the U.S. Marshals Service’s Most Wanted List, was arrested in a beach town in Brazil on Friday. I previously wrote about him here.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

The arrest took place in a condominium by Pipa Beach, considered one of Brazil’s most beautiful coastal locations. Barnard was reportedly staying with a 33-year-old Brazilian woman who previously lived...

Kansas Senate Approves Bill That Criminalizes Teaching Material Deemed “Harmful to Minors”

The Kansas State Senate on Wednesday passed S.B. 56, with twenty-six Republican senators supporting the measure, and six Republicans and eight Democrats opposing. The bill is ostensibly designed to protect students by making it illegal to display or present material that is “harmful to minors,” such as pornography.

But the broad categorizations and vague language have caused concern among teachers and free speech advocates about what will and won’t be policed. While libraries, museums, and uni...

Did Jesus Die On a Cross… Or On a Pole?

You learn something new every day.

For centuries scholars have known that the Greek New Testament word “stauros,” which is translated into English as cross, can refer to a device of several shapes, commonly a single upright pole, “torture stake” or even tree.

The Romans did not have a standard way of crucifying prisoners, and Josephus tells us that during the siege of Jerusalem, soldiers nailed or tied their victims in a variety of positions.

Early Christians may have centered on the vertical po...

A Most Unsettling Trend: Christians Rejoicing in ISIS

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.

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Charisma News is praising a video in which families of murdered Egyptian Christian Copts thank ISIS for making martyrs of their loved ones. In it, a smiling man named Beshir who just lost two brothers to ISIS chats with an audience and callers:

Beshir: ISIS gave us more than we asked…...