Free Republic

How very open-minded and reasonable it was of Bill Maher to deliver this little riff on the Santorums' decision to homeschool their children (h/t NewsBusters):CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Let’s not even get into his use of the term “madrassa,� which refers to an Islamic seminary that teaches mostly Islamic subjects. Suffice it to say anyone concerned about brainwashing should worry less about Rick Santorum’s children and more about subjugated women and children in the Middle East.Instead, let’s focus on the “comedian’s� own appalling lack of knowledge. What Bill Maher doesn’t know about homeschooling could fill a book he’d...

Hey there, liberal outrage brigadiers! It sure was fun going after Rush Limbaugh for using the word “slut” in reference to the arguments of a professional leftist agitator, even though he never actually called her one. Here’s your new boycott target: liberal radio host Mike Malloy. Courtesy of the SooperMexican blog, here are Malloy’s absolutely disgusting comments about Midwestern tornado victims: Their God, if this is the way they want to look at it, keeps smashing them into little grease spots on the pavement, in Alabama, in Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia and Oklahoma, you know the bible belt.. where they ain’t...

Franky Schaeffer is the son of the late, highly influential evangelical thinker Francis Schaeffer, who helped shape the modern conservative evangelical movement. The son boasts he was himself a co-founder of the Religious Right. But he since has denounced Christianity as “stupid,” writes bitter tell-all books about his parents, and ferociously attacks conservative religionists as the virtual root cause of all American evils. A blogger for The Huffington Post, young Schaeffer is now faulting religious conservatives for facilitating Wall Street greed. He’s imploring the Wall Street Occupiers to “protest the root source of America’s tilt to the far unregulated corporate...

Tuesday, an Atheist wearing a “Zombie Muhammad” costume while marching in a local Pennsylvania Halloween parade was attacked by a Muslim. According to reports, the Parading Atheists of Central Pennsylvania (PACP) were marching in a Halloween parade in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania,when a Muslim stormed out of the hometown crowd to assault one of the marching atheists who happened to be wearing a Zombie Muhammad costume. The atheist in the Zombie Muhammad costume was proclaiming that he was the Prophet Muhammad, risen from the dead. Apparently the words and costume offended a Muslim man, who came out of the audience and began...

If you believe any of the hogwash about the irrelevance of the religious right to this election, take a look at the numerous right-wing evangelical websites promoting the 40/40 Prayer Vigil, which began in September with a prayer for Christian voter registration and ends--you guessed it--just before election day, Nov. 2. The 40/40 stands for the forty days and forty nights that Jesus supposedly spent wandering in the desert before finally saying no to Satan's temptations. I'm sure that you won't have any trouble figuring out which political party the Southern Baptist Convention--America's largest religious denomination and one of the...

The man who shot himself on the steps of Memorial Church Saturday morning had published online a 1,905-page document entitled “Suicide Note,” according to his mother. The death of Mitchell L. Heisman, a 35-year-old Somerville resident, on campus was met with shock, and University officials described the incident as “tragic.” “It’s really sad, it was horrible, and these kinds of incidents affect all of us really negatively,” Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds said in an interview yesterday. “This campus is situated in an urban context, and we can’t control these kinds of things.” Born in New York City...

For at least six years, a Jersey Shore community has begun its borough meetings with a flag salute and a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. But a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey last week may remove the prayer from the monthly civic meetings in Point Pleasant Beach, Ocean County. The suit asks a Superior Court judge to issue an injunction to stop the prayer. The judge will rule on Sept. 30, two days after the next meeting. "The Constitution forbids a government entity from showing preference to a particular religion," said Jeanne LoCicero, deputy...

Hobbes, Locke, and Cicero be damned. President Obama single handedly overturns Natural Law. Friday evening President Obama addressed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. At around 22:30, he incorporates part of the preamble of The Declaration of Independence, removing "Creator". "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..... endowed with certain unalienable rights, life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" After President Obama says "created equal...", there is a long pause during which he scowls and blinks several times. For once, he may actually have opted to not read something that was on the...

What is it called when someone has paranoid delusions that someone with paranoid delusions is out to get him? Whatever it is, Bill Maher has it in spades. This guy is seriously paranoid about paranoid Christians – or as he calls them, “nativist bedwetters” who wave signs on Tax Day and offer burnt sacrifices, I gather, to the most “Evil Dingbat,” Sarah Palin. On Monday’s Tonight Show, Maher snarked about the dreaded Sunday School teachers, organists, moms in jumpers, and little girls in patent leather shoes who “control the national dialogue” and “perpetuate mass delusion” – through electromagnetic microwaves, I...

The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded. In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.” “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the...

[James Lee Demands as posted at http://www.savetheplanetprotest.com/] The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:1. The Discovery Channel and it's affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue...

I have read Christopher Hitchens’s book God Is Not Great twice, in preparation for a book I have co-written with Biola University philosopher Dr. John Mark Reynolds. Due to come out this spring, our book is titled Against All Gods: What’s Right and Wrong About the “New Atheism.” Because not all readers may know at once who the new atheists are, I will say that they are a group of very fervent opponents of “religion,” of whom the best known are zoologist and science popularizer Richard Dawkins, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett, and Hitchens. What is new about these atheists...

Somewhere along the way, the man who last held the Lucasian chair in mathematics at Cambridge once held by Sir Isaac Newton has forgotten how to construct a scientific hypothesis.  To the delight of his interviewer, Diane Sawyer of ABC News, Stephen Hawking asserted the superiority of science over religion: When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works." Ironically enough, Hawking would have us accept this...

It was decided at the Communist Party, USA's recent national convention that the Party will continue to mobilize primarily in order to combat the efforts of the ultra-right. This article is meant to illustrate the basic reasoning behind two ideologies most exhibited by the modern right-wing. It is not meant to address specific issues with which one differs from the right, but to assist in responding to such issues by summarizing the right's ideological foundations. The ideologies of the right may seem non-sensical to those who do not count themselves among the conservative camp, but their ideological systems are actually...

Letter to a Christian Nation Sam Harris, Knopf, $16.95, 112 pages   For those unaware of Sam Harris, his bestseller The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason established him as the American atheist laureate, the Yankee counterpart of the Brits' Richard Dawkins. Now comes the inevitable follow-up: Harris has composed a Letter to a Christian Nation for our edification. Harris is no H. L. Mencken. He is not even in Dawkins's league. But, I confess, I like him anyway. Unlike many of our culture's atheists who pretend to be friendly to religion -- and speak to...

An atheist rapist has complained that his human rights were breached by having to share a prison cell with a Christian inmate. Barman Steven Relf, 40, was jailed indefinitely after admitting raping two women he targeted when he served them drinks in a pub. Police branded him a "sexual predator" and said he could have had as many as 40 victims. In a letter to an inmates' magazine, Relf wrote: "I recently had the displeasure of sharing a cell with a Bible-thumping believer."

ctor Sam Elliott claims that the Catholic Church prevented Hollywood from proceeding with the next two film’s in the His Dark Materials trilogy based on Philip Pullman’s books. “The Catholic Church ... lambasted them,” said Elliott. “I think it scared New Line off.” The film...angered Catholics who accused it of promoting atheism. In the book trilogy, set in a series of parallel worlds, heroine Lyra fights the Magisterium, an evil organisation some have interpreted as being based on the Catholic Church. Pullman, 63, told the Western Mail: "If Sam is right then I am very disappointed because it obviously would...

The Issaquah School Board may consider eliminating the Pledge of Allegiance at its regular business meetings. At their Dec. 9 meeting, school board members were asked to eliminate the pledge from their meetings by parent Matthew Barry. “The words ‘under God’ in the pledge are offensive to your atheist residents in this school district,” Barry said at the meeting. “A study from last year, The American Religious Identification Survey, indicates that 15 percent of Americans aren’t religious. In Washington, which is one of the most nonreligious states, 25 percent aren’t religious. So, I think it is safe to assume there...

SAN FRANCISCO — It was the week before Christmas when Irv Sutley, a former warehouse worker, first saw the offending ornament in a government building in Sonoma County, just north of here. “I was turning around in the lobby, and I noticed the tree,” Mr. Sutley said. “And then, I noticed the angel.” Mr. Sutley, an atheist, said he then went to the office of the county Board of Supervisors. “And there was a star,” he said. Technically, neither stars nor angels belong to any particular religion. But to the mind of Mr. Sutley, 65, a veteran who has fought...

A student says a Dallas public community-college teacher compared crosses to swastikas while explaining a school ban on religious items made in ceramics classes.

November 20, 2009 Public faces of Richard Dawkins' Atheism Campaign Were ... Devout Christian Children [Pics in URL] Exclusive: Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent The two children chosen to front Richard Dawkins’ latest assault on God could not look more free of the misery with which he associates religious baggage. With the slogan “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself”, the two children, their hair flying and with broad grins, seem to be the perfect advertisement for the new atheism being promoted by Professor Dawkins and the British Humanist Association. Except that they are about as...

LOS ANGELES, CA, September 2, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In all of his 16 years defending the rights of Catholics, the President of the Catholic League has "never seen a more defamatory, obscene and vicious show on TV."  League President Bill Donohue was referring to the August 27 edition of the CBS/Showtime program Penn & Teller.  The half-hour show libeled the Catholic Church with impunity, blaming the Church for, as Donohue put it, "every evil in history." Show host Jillette said the "intolerance, greed, paranoia, hypocrisy and callous disregard for human suffering" was the hallmark of the Catholic Church. Others on...

"And not just atheists," said Bill Donohue during an August 31st Fox News interview. "I’m talking about people who are disaffected Catholics and Protestants who are mutineers within their own religion, trying to change things." It wasn't just "militant, dogmatic" atheists and "disaffected" Christians that the Catholic League president complained about either. Donohue also had a few choice words for magicians Penn & Teller whose Showtime series, Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t!, just ran an episode on the history of the Catholic Church. "This was the most Nazi-like assault,” Donohue said. “The most unrelenting half an hour of bashing I’ve ever...

Imagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world — for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar...

Lonewolf Diaries: Brad Pitt Leading the Anti-Christian Charge Posted By Steven Crowder On August 18, 2009 @ 5:40 pm In Celebrity News, Featured Story, Lone Wolf Diaries, Religion | 235 Comments I should say right off the bat that I can’t just blame Brad Pitt. The plague of closed-mindedness permeates every corner of Hollywood… Brad Pitt just happens to be the one who’s most recently crystallized it so perfectly. Much like the time Megan Fox tipped Tinseltown’s hand when she said that if given the chance, she’d urge Megatron to only murder the “white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people...

A video of a debate held at a leading Christian Book Expo on the topic of the existence of God can be found at THIS LINK. The panelists are: Christopher Hitchens -- an erudite, outspoken atheist Lee Strobel -- former atheist who has become a noted Christian apologist. William Lane Craig -- Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology Douglas Wilson -- Pastor of Christ Church, Moscow Idaho Jim Dennison -- Theologian in Residence, Baptist General Convention of Texas Be advised the video is almost two hours long. Also be advised it is a fascinating philosophical exchange. Enjoy /Zak

I was watching Bill Mahr this weekend - Not because I like him, trust him, or agree with ANYTHING he says, just to see what the other side is saying about things - and one of his guests was Hip Hop Artist Mos Def. Mos Def made a statement that I would like to know a little more about. I'm still learning about politics and history and things so I am hoping that there is a good answer to this question as it will probably come up in conversation with friends and family and I want to be prepared to...

I stopped watching Bill Maher a long time ago, and it’s moments like this that remind me why he’s a waste of broadcast air time. Maher complains that we need to bring home the troops from World War II by pulling out of Germany and Japan, and gives us this pithy little “salute” to American fighting forces:

This past Shabbat my family and I hosted Rabbi and Mrs. Nachman Holtzberg, parents of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, the head of Chabad in Mumbai who was brutally murdered with his wife Rivkah. You'd think that a family that watched their son and daughter-in-law slaughtered on TV by Islamic terrorists would feel hatred and a desire for revenge. But what this saintly father asked of our many guests was simply their participation in rebuilding Chabad of Mumbai so that his son's selfless work would continue. What a shame Christopher Hitchens did not join us. It might have dissuaded him from penning...

Last night, I watched the Kennedy Center show honoring (posthumously) George Carlin. A truly brilliant, insightful, funny comedian, Carlin's bits over his 40 year career in standup were introduced by a number of comedians and I thoroughly enjoyed the chuckles down memory lane. Until the next-to-last presenter: Bill Maher, the smirking, rabidly liberal former funnyman who is not only a professed atheist, but virulently anti-religious.

Religion is the problem, just like government is the problem. In both cases people have beliefs that don't fit reality. In both cases people try to push their beliefs on other people. In both cases people believe in fairytales that just aren't true. They have no factual support. In both cases people believe "faith" should substitute for facts, like with Obama for instance, and Bush for that matter, and "going to heaven" for instance, and an "ever-burning hell" for that matter. In both cases you can't say what you think. In both cases you have to be "politically correct." In...

  Professor Richard Dawkins told the launch ceremony that the existence of God was as likely as the tooth fairy     The archsceptic professor Richard Dawkins today launched Britain's first atheist campaign posting the message: "There's probably no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life" on the side of 800 British buses. The posters – launched in conditions cold enough to freeze a presumably non-existent hell over – co-incided with the Christian feast of the Epiphany, when according to tradition three magi from the East presented the baby Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Dr...

December 05, 2008, 1:40 p.m. Enough with the Oogedy-BoogedyReligion, politics, and us. By Shannen W. Coffin Kathleen Parker’s war on religion in the Re-public-an square entered a new phase today. In her syndicated column, she nobly attempted to explain her use of the term “oogedy-boogedy� to describe religious conservatives. It’s not that she is “anti-God.� It’s just that God really shouldn’t be mentioned in polite company. Religion can inform our values (gee, thanks). But reason, not religion, should inform our public debates. I hadn’t realized religion and reason were mutually exclusive. It seems Pope Benedict hasn’t gotten the memo,...

Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation on December 1, 2008's Fox & Friends stated that the nativity scene represented 'hate speech' and 'a direct attack on good human values.'

First of all I want to say that were I a resident of California, I would have voted "no" on Proposition 8. In other words, I am in favor of gay marriage. However, I get the feeling the homosexual community believes they now have a monopoly on non race related discrimination. Excuse me, but last time I paid for a sandwich I didn't see any catchy pro-heterosexual slogans on my money. "I'll have a turkey club on whole-wheat and a small soda. Four-fifty, no problem, let me just pull out a five spot with, 'Sex Between a Man and Woman...

The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales. Prof Hawkins said: "The book I write next year will be a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking. "I haven't read Harry Potter, I have read Pullman who is the other leading children's author that one might mention and I love his books. I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales." Prof Dawkins said he wanted to look...

'Silhouette City' Captures Essence of Christian Right as Supremacist Political Movement By Bruce Wilson It is the mark of a truly outstanding documentary that it can survive the test of a fast-changing political and religious landscape and remain relevant and even transcendent. There have been many superb documentaries in the last few years about religion and politics, but my own personal opinion is that Michael W. Wilson's Silhouette City stands above the pack, and for one overriding reason - Wilson's deep understanding of the dynamic in which the militant, militia-movement grounded Christian right of the 1980's has morphed into a...

When Atheists act like FundamentalistsOctober 7, 2008 On his blog, “Ssnot! - God Snot, Where God’s Not!�, Tatarize writes:  So I am apparently retarded. I watched something called the Shroud of Turin which was get this, about the Shroud of Turin and completely bogus nonsense.The argument went like this,The Shroud of Turin carbon dates to the 1360s. The Shroud of Turin was first seen around 1325. However, there were other fake shrouds which purported to be the burial cloths of Christ which dated back to the 11th century. So the Shroud of Turin dates back to the 11th century. There’s...

She laughed. I had invited Cheryl Hall to the screening of “Religulous” to get a faith-based reaction to comedian Bill Maher's diatribe on the divine. Hall's credentials: longtime member of the United Methodist Women and faithful San Diego churchgoer whose husband teaches a weekly Bible study class. Surely, she would be offended at roasting religion as if it were a Hollywood has-been. But she laughed. Several times. Her defense: “I think God has a sense of humor.” And then she added: “If his point was to make religion look ridiculous, then he did a very good job.” It did not,...

America is "dumb" because it remains the most religious country in the western world. This according to Bill Maher, who made such a statement on the September 30 edition of "The View." Appearing to promote his new documentary "Religulous," Maher continued his soapbox rants against organized religion. Elisabeth Hasselbeck set up Maher noting his comparison of President Bush to Osama Bin Laden, and noted that many presidents such as John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, spoke publicly of a higher power. Maher likewise replied "of course, it’s, it’s a religious country, unlike every other civilized western democracy...

Bill Maher's Anti-Religion Movie “Religion is detrimental to the progress of society.” That’s my favorite quote from Bill Maher’s often brilliant, but often unfocused “documentary,” called “Religulous.” It opens in early October right after its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. The articulate, quick-witted comedian sets out in this film — which was supposed to have been released last Easter — to prove that line is true. Directed by Larry Charles, the man who put "Borat" together so skillfully, "Religulous" is blatant about Maher’s feelings: religion is bad. All religions are bad. They are ruining everything. If you go for...

John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick. [READ MORE BELOW]

Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it's early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about "carbon dating." This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you've gotten to the "evolution module"... The student is talking about C14 dating and how it "has problems." But you are a life science teacher and can't think of a single point in your...

DHP Review: Religulous Posted by Dirty Harry on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 While more entertaining and better paced, director Larry Charles‘ Religulous can’t help but remind of Morgan Spurlock’s dreadful Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?, especially at the end where both films are undone by their attempts to close on serious points the preceding 90 minutes of antics simply can’t sustain. It’s surprising Charles let this one get away from him. After all, he also directed Borat, and one of the few saving graces of that humiliation-fest was that it never lost sight of the fact that...

This is the Apocalypse of St. Bill the Stoned. Though funny, smart and often profane, Religulous doesn't want to send you out of the theater with a smile on your lips. The final moments of the film aren't laugh out loud funny, but a parade of images of death and destruction. This, Bill Maher says, is what humanity is in for if it doesn't get rid of the nuerological disorder that is religion. You probably know my bias going into this film. I believe that religion is not just irrational but anti-rational, a Bronze Age worldview that should have been...

Religions thrived to protect our ancestors against the ravages of disease, according to a radical new evolutionary theory of the genesis of faith. Prof Richard Dawkins the atheist and sceptic, has condemned religion as a "virus of the mind" but it seems that people became religious for good reason - actually to avoid infection by viruses and other diseases - according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences. Dr Corey Fincher and Prof Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, come to this conclusion after studying why religions are far more...

"My dear, let us hope that it isn't true!" the wife of the bishop of Worcester is reputed to have exclaimed 150 years ago, on hearing that human beings might be descended from apes. "But if it is true, let us hope that it doesn't become widely known!" When it comes to sociobiology - better known these days as "evolutionary psychology" - the bishop's wife has modern counterparts: The religious right and the secular and supposedly scientific left are remarkably on the same page, both sides inclined to dispute or misrepresent the relevance of evolution to human beings. The former,...

Creationism is much more specific and much less plausible. Its central claim is that the precise mode of creation has been revealed in the Bible, and follows the pattern set out in the first chapter of Genesis. In thus identifying God’s action with a particular series of events and a particular timetable, rather than as the ultimate mystery underlying all reality, it lays itself open to the possibility of direct conflict with alternative scientific explanations. The main motive for risking this potential conflict has been to uphold belief in the verbal inerrancy of the Bible, and the literal interpretation of...

Christian protests put Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials film trilogy in doubt By Stephen Adams Last Updated: 1:01pm BST 18/07/2008 The future of the film trilogy based on Phillip Pullman's books His Dark Materials is in doubt after the controversial author said he did not know if the sequel to The Golden Compass would be made. The first in the trilogy, which starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, was dogged by accusations from American religious groups that it was anti-Catholic and even sought to "destroy God". British author Pullman admitted such objections may have hit US box office sales.... The...

Creationists (I mean, Intelligent Designers) often cite the dictum by IDer William Dembski that non-intelligent processes cannot produce new information. From this they conclude that biological evolution is impossible. But what to do when a researcher shows bacteria evolving new capabilities?