Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1985

This Visualization Tool Will Help You Find Where Atheists Live in the UK

Using data from the 2011 UK census, Oliver O’Brien at University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis created a tool called DataShine so you could see all sorts of information, including which cities had the highest rates of people claiming “No Religion” (in dark blue):

You can see a summary of the results here. When I visited the DataShine website, it was running very slowly for me, but hopefully it’s faster by the time you check it out.

(via The Guardian — Thanks to Brian for the link)

Rowlett City Council in Texas Refuses to Let Atheists Deliver Invocation. Cue the Lawsuit in 5… 4… 3…

In 2010, the Rowlett City Council in Texas changed their prayer policy. They used to have Christian prayers, then the Freedom From Religion Foundation warned them of the repercussions of doing that, so the council opted to go with non-sectarian prayers.

As it turned out, though, since the town is predominantly Christian, those non-sectarian prayers turned out to be almost all Christian prayers, anyway.

Local atheists called them out on it last year:

“How would they like it if they were forced to pray to Muhammad or Allah or Ganesha the Hindu God — any of the others out there, because that’s what they’re doing to us,” said [atheist Chad] Aldridge. “They just don’t see the error that they are oppressing a smaller minority in us the atheists, the Hindus, any Muslims or even Jews in this town that don’t believe in Christ’s divinity and don’t want it enforced on us at the meetings.”

The atheists say they will keep fighting for the change.

Meanwhile, a prayer vigil is scheduled to precede Tuesday’s 7 p.m. city council meeting at Rowlett City Hall.

“Just because there are more Christians in Rowlett, does not give them the right, in the United States, to leave others out,” said Terry McDonald from the Metroplex Atheists.

The atheists said they would accept a moment of silence, but the city council said they wouldn’t budge… because all the people who mattered were Christian:

“The established bodies of religion in Rowlett are Christians,” Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Michael Gallops. “There’s a Catholic church here, there are multiple denominations of churches but there aren’t any from other religions.

…

“There is no reason for us to change the policy, the policy is constitutional, the policy is neutral, it’s non-discriminatory we’re gonna stick with it,” said Gallops.

Yep, the policy was non-discriminatory… to everyone who’s in the majority. And it’s “neutral,” too, unless you were someone excluded from the neutrality.

But that was all before the Town of Greece v. Galloway decision came down. Now, the Metroplex Atheists are saying they have every right to deliver invocations — and the law is on their side:

The organization, backed by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, is giving the city 10 business days to respond to a request to add two of its Rowlett members to the list of those who can give the invocation at council meetings.

“We would still rather see no invocation at all in government meetings, but if they’re going to have them, we want to push for equal time,” said Randy Word, president of the area group, which has been battling the city for four years.

Rowlett leaders say they’re not changing their policy… which all but guarantees they’re going to sued:

City Attorney David Berman said Tuesday that Rowlett’s position was unchanged and that the city probably wouldn’t respond to the letter. Mayor Todd Gottel also reaffirmed his stance.

“As long as I’m mayor, we are going to pray,” Gottel said Wednesday.

And as long as Gottel is mayor, the taxpayers in Rowlett will be throwing away their money to cover FFRF’s legal fees.

(Portions of this article were posted earlier)

An Online Sexuality Class for Atheists Who Grew Up Feeling Guilty or Misinformed About It

Virginia Brown (below) grew up in a conservative Christian home and became an atheist in her mid-twenties. But it took several more years before she could “re-connect with her own sense of sexuality.” In a culture where Purity Balls are normal, sex before marriage can get you expelled from college, and some couples wait until their wedding day for their first kiss, she knows it’s no surprise that people raised in that environment might be sexually repressed — even after leaving it.

Now, she intends to fix that. Brown will be teaching a six-week-long online workshop called “Recovering Your Sexuality” with the help of the group Recovering From Religion:

After years of being told that sex was wrong, dangerous, sinful, or only to be enjoyed in narrow circumstances, our goal is to empower you to move past those roadblocks to discover what truly works best for you! We will discuss issues like guilt, pleasure, and ethics; learn about sexual anatomy, arousal, and sexual response cycles; and provide concrete exercises and actions to begin the road of healing the damage that repression and guilt can do.

You can register for the class here. The early-bird cost is… oh. I see what they did there.

Creation Museum’s New Ad Campaign Will Go After Children

Ken Ham, the Creationist version of Joe Camel, is trying to lure kids and their gullible parents into the Creation Museum with a new series of billboards and TV commercial to appear in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana:

A billboard mockup

Oh! And Ham’s onto us. He knows the only reason people like me criticize his ad campaigns is because we want to suppress all dissent:

We find that many secularists just can’t help themselves when we conduct these promotional campaigns — they react in various ways because they don’t want people to know about the Creation Museum. They are so intolerant of Christians getting their message out. Yes, these secularists only want people to hear their message of hopelessness and meaninglessness which comes out of their humanistic worldview.

Ham is a liar. We know this because no atheists are protesting his campaign. No one’s calling for the billboards to be taken down. No one’s trying to vandalize them (and most of us wouldn’t stand for it if anyone did).

And the only people who think atheists have a message of “hopelessness and meaninglessness” are those who never bother to challenge their own stereotypes.

We oppose the advertising because it’s promoting a product that’s bad for children: Misinformation.

We want kids to become strong thinkers, not automatons who mindlessly believe bullshit because of a very specific and false interpretation of the Bible. The Creation Museum is all about promoting what you should believe, not how you should think.

In fact, Answers in Genesis will never run an ad campaign promoting critical thinking skills — because that’s not what they offer. Only real science museums would dare to expand your mind. Ken Ham will just give you cutesy animations and the ability to take a picture next to some dinosaur bones. That should be enough to distract children for a little while so they don’t have time to pick up a science book and actually learn something.

The two-month advertising campaign can’t end fast enough.

This October, Tim Minchin Will Release an Illustrated Book Version of “Storm”

How’s this for some holiday news?

Renaissance man Tim Minchin will soon be releasing a book version of his wonderful beat poem “Storm”:

The book will be out in the UK this October (no U.S. publication date has been announced yet) and includes a foreword from Neil Gaiman.

And if you have no idea what we’re talking about, just watch this video:

Minchin can do no wrong, can he?

The Hobby Lobby Case, Summarized

Jonathan Schmock perfectly encapsulates the Hobby Lobby verdict:

(via Reddit)

Atheists Helping the Homeless in Washington State

The Secular Humanists of Everett (in Washington state) are embarking on a mission to provide small backpacks full of toiletries and other necessities to homeless people in their community.

As Humanists, we seek to foster a society that is more equitable, compassionate and humane. One of the main goals of SHoE is to find better ways to support parts of the population that are usually forgotten or left behind by other community service/charitable organizations. This campaign is one of our first endeavors.

It’s a great cause that’ll help a lot of people. Please consider pitching in so they can reach their $5,000 goal.

Supreme Court Gives Christian College an Easier Way to Get Out of Providing Emergency Contraception

Remember when we thought the Supreme Court had only allowed an exception to the contraception mandate to closely-held businesses?

They were just kidding about that.

Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in Illinois, already had the ability to avoid offering emergency contraception to employees and students. All they had to do was fill out a form for their insurance provider saying they didn’t want to cover it directly, and the insurance provider would have to cover it separately. Problem solved, right?

No. Wheaton administrators weren’t happy with that solution. They felt it was still too much of a burden on their religious conscience, because they were indirectly supporting abortion. (Which isn’t even true, but that doesn’t seem to matter.)

Today, the Supreme Court said that Wheaton had a point. It is too much of a burden. Now, all the school has to do is let the government know directly it doesn’t want to provide emergency contraception and it’ll be up to the government to figure it out from there.

The female justices on the court were rightfully furious, with Justice Sotomayor writing a blistering 16-page dissent:

Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so today. After expressly relying on the availability of the religious-nonprofit accommodation to hold that the contraceptive coverage requirement violates RFRA as applied to closely held for-profit corporations, the Court now, as the dissent in Hobby Lobby feared it might…, retreats from that position.

…

The sincerity of Wheaton’s deeply held religious beliefs is beyond refute. But as a legal matter, Wheaton’s application comes nowhere near the high bar necessary to warrant an emergency injunction from this Court…

…

Let me be absolutely clear: I do not doubt that Wheaton genuinely believes that signing the self-certification form is contrary to its religious beliefs. But thinking one’s religious beliefs are substantially burdened — no matter how sincere or genuine that belief may be — does not make it so.

…

The Court’s actions in this case create unnecessary costs and layers of bureaucracy, and they ignore a simple truth: The Government must be allowed to handle the basic tasks of public administration in a manner that comports with common sense. It is not the business of this Court to ensnare itself in the Government’s ministerial handling of its affairs in the manner it does here.

Sotomayor also pointed out that the substantial “burden” that Wheaton wants to get out of is essentially a tiny bit of paperwork. And if the Court lets them get away with this, where does the slippery slope stop?

We knew the “narrow ruling” on Monday would become a broad ruling soon enough. I didn’t expect it to start happening this quickly.

By the way, this is the same school that had no problem providing emergency contraception in its insurance plan prior to 2012, but they had to quickly change their coverage just so they could get angry about it. Because Obama.

(Image via Shutterstock)

Pseudohistorian David Barton: Senator Harry Reid is an “Atheist Mormon”

We’re all wondering when another member of Congress will follow Pete Stark‘s lead and admit to not believing in God, but who knew there was one right under our noses?

That’s what Christian pseudohistorian David Barton claimed today on his “WallBuilders Live” radio show. He was talking about Mormon Senator Harry Reid‘s support of a bill that would let states regulate the amount of money raised and spent during elections:

David Barton: [Reid] has actually proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would re-write the First Amendment to take away original protections and limit the protections in the First Amendment.

…

What it also tells me is, and he’s apparently a Mormon guy, that’s fine. He is probably an atheist Mormon… Mormon in name only… and the reason I say that is that so many Mormon folks are so conservative on the Constitution, such great defenders of the Constitution… And so, when you look at what he’s doing, you gotta remember, the Bill of Rights is laid out in the Declaration of Independence, you start with the first belief that there is a Creator, the second belief that the Creator gives us certain inalienable rights, the third belief in the Declaration is government exists to protect those rights inalienable rights.

…

If you don’t have that belief that you will answer to God for what you do, you will sell your country, you will sell your kids’ future, you will sell everything going on and that’s where we’re getting. And so it’s not just a belief in God, it’s the belief that you answer to God and you believe that. And see that’s where Harry Reid is not. You know, he may believe in God, he probably says he does; I don’t think he has any cognizance of having to answer to God for what he does.

Yep. According to David Barton — words you should never take seriously — Harry Reid is really a lapsed Mormon because he doesn’t support unchecked, unlimited amounts of money being used in elections. The heathen bastard.

By Barton’s logic, a lot of religious Democrats are atheists, too…

And the Senate Senate is currently controlled by those Democrats…

You guys, that means atheists control the Senate!

If my logic’s off, just blame Barton. As usual.

(via Right Wing Watch. Image via spirit of america / Shutterstock.com)

Christian Rappers Sue Katy Perry for Linking Their Music to Witchcraft, Paganism, and the Illuminati

Remember when Katy Hudson was a Christian singer no one knew about? Ah, the good old day. Then she shed the good-girl image, kissed a girl, became Katy Perry, and now you can’t get away from her.

According to a new lawsuit, some of that Christian past may be catching up with her.

Christian hip-hop artists Flame (Marcus Gray), Lacrae (Lecrae Moore), Emanuel Lambert, and Chike Ojukwu wrote a song called “Joyful Noise” about five years ago. Listen to the first few seconds of it:

The men are claiming that Perry — along with singer Juicy J (Jordan Houston) and a team of songwriters/producers — stole the eight-note riff from their song for her hit “Dark Horse” (listen beginning around the 0:19 mark):

This is the same music video, by the way, that was under fire earlier this year because thousands of Muslims were offended by what they claimed was blasphemy in the video. In response, Perry’s team removed from the video a pendant with the word “Allah” written on it.

The most notable part of the Christians’ lawsuit explains the plaintiffs’ injuries:

… Defendants unlawful actions have caused irreparable harm to Plaintiffs’ reputation and the reputation of the Joyful Noise song within the Christian gospel music world by, among other things, creating a false association between the music of Joyful Noise and the anti-Christian witchcraft, paganism, black magic, and Illuminati imagery evoked by Defendants’ Song, especially in the music video version.

Riiiiiight. Because when I hear Katy Perry, I think of the Illuminati and witchcraft and Harry Potter and goth people and magical potions. And all of that automatically makes me think of Jesus and the Dove Awards.

Look, there may be copyright infringement going on, but I don’t know how any rationale person — much less a jury, which is what Flame’s side wants — could think this somehow tarnishes Flame’s reputation in any way. Certainly not by associating him with Voldemort.

Will jury members even be swayed by the explanation of the infringement given by Flame’s DJ, Cho’zyn Boy?

“What listeners are hearing is Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ at 66 beats per minute and they’re hearing Flame’s “Joyful Noise” at 76 beats per minute,” he said. “When they’re separated, they seem a bit different, but when you bring them to the same tempo and you just change her pitch down one octave, they’re identical… When things are that similar, it’s hard to dispute.”

They don’t sound exactly alike, but when you speed it up and bring the pitch down, they kinda do!

Yes, that’s very convincing…

There’s far more similarity between Perry’s “Roar” and Sara Bareilles‘ “Brave” (which came out first) — and Bareilles laughed off the notion of any lawsuit when her fans complained.

On a side note, Flame’s attorney is the same guy who sued the folks behind The Hangover Part II because his client designed Mike Tyson‘s face tattoo, a design which appeared on Ed Helms‘ face in the movie. That suit later settled for an undisclosed amount.

(Image via s_bukley / Shutterstock.com. Thanks to David for the link)