There will be celebrations all over the place to mark Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday.
But this one in Rhode Island (PDF) looks like it’ll be a blast.
It’s sponsored by Charlie’s Playhouse and it’ll take place in the city of Pawtucket (a mecca for any Family Guy fan) on February 15th.
What are you doing to celebrate the occasion of Darwin’s Bicentennial?
I swear, this exact child has appeared in other costumes before…
I must find his parents. And thank them.
(via MyConfinedSpace)
If you’re a high school or college atheist, you have a month left to apply for the $2,000 Founders’ Scholarship from American Atheists.
Definitely worth pursuing if your atheist identity is a big part of your life!
If I didn’t have a grad school midterm tomorrow, I’d be doing this right now:
When was the last time you were that happy? 
(via Kottke)
A couple months ago, I wrote about how, if atheists couldn’t get elected to public office, perhaps they could be appointed.
It seems that may have already happened.
Ted Kaufman (pictured above) is now the junior Senator from Delaware, replacing Vice President Joe Biden..
The New York Times hints at his potentially non-religious viewpoint:
In a Senate dominated by lawyers and career public servants, Mr. Kaufman, who holds an undergraduate degree from Duke and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School, is one of only two engineers. (The other is Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island.)
What he calls his “humanistic” way of thinking he attributes largely to his Irish Catholic mother, a teacher, and his father, a secular Jew, a social worker and his hero.
Alex Pareene at Gawker analyzes that paragraph:
See, “humanist” is a code-word. Like “lifelong bachelor.” “Secular Jew” is not code, that really just means straight-up atheist. But still! Ted himself can’t admit to it straight up!
As far as I can find, the 69-year-old Kaufman has never publicly said he doesn’t believe in God. Until he does so, his status as a closeted “Humanist” doesn’t do anything for us.
Even if he were to come out as a non-theist — and I hope he does — he says that he will remain in the Senate only for two years, at which point he will step aside and let a special election decide who will finish up the final four years of Biden’s current term.
We have one non-theist in the House — Pete Stark (D-CA). It would be nice to have one in the Senate, too… Stark is the only Congressperson in my lifetime who has been elected even when voters knew he was an atheist.
We have to poke many more holes in that glass ceiling before it breaks.
If, indeed, Kaufman doesn’t believe in God, he would be doing the millions of Americans who agree with him a huge favor by saying as much during the short time he’ll be a Senator.
It promotes Darwin instead of Dogma:
Cute… but the “Praise Darwin” bit is just feeding into the stereotype that atheists treat Darwin as some infallible God. (I’m sure they know that and they did it on purpose.)
The billboard was be making the rounds in Madison, Wisconsin… before it heads to (wait for it) Dayton, Tennessee and Dover, Pennsylvania.
Score!
The beautiful billboard image, designed by Adams Outdoor Co., in Madison, Wis., utilizes the Foundation’s ironical signature stained-glass window motif and King James biblical style, but adds the iconic image of Charles Darwin.
The phrase “Evolve Beyond Belief” is directed at the 50% of Americans who still reject evolution and accept creationism: the Genesis myth that the earth was created out of nothing by a god less than 10,000 years ago.
“We want to ‘Praise Darwin,’ to give credit to human intelligence, not the supernatural, for answering the question, ‘Where do we come from?’ And who greater than Charles Darwin?” asked Annie Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-president.
“America’s willful ignorance over evolution and the scientific method is an embarrassment and impediment. It’s time our nation and its public schools enter the 21st century and embrace this keystone of biology,” added Foundation co-president Dan Barker.
(via FFRF)
Valerie Tarico, the author of The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth, used to be a psychologist.
We all know about how atheists are often called “arrogant,” but Tarico writes about how, beneath that label, there are actually a whole host of emotions we have that slip under the radar:
EMPATHY
Not all atheist pain about religion is personal. Many nontheists feel anguished by the sexual abuse that is enabled by religious hierarchy, by women shrouded in black and girls barred from schools, by the implements of inquisition that lie in museums, by ongoing Christian witch burnings in Africa and India, or by those images of people leaping from windows. Even less dramatic suffering can be hard to witness — children who fear eternal torture, teens who attempt suicide because they are gay and so condemned, women who submit to their own abuse or the abuse of their children because God hates divorce. To the extent that we experience empathy, these events are can feel unbearable, the more so because they seem so unnecessary.
…
DESPERATION
Have you ever had a dream in which, no matter how hard you try no-one can hear you? Many freethinkers feel like that whenever they try to talk about their journey of discovery.
“Hey,” say former fundies. “Guess what I found out. The Bible contradicts itself. Do you want to see where?”
“I never meant to end up godless,” say former moderates. “Do you want to hear how it happened?”
“‘A theory’ isn’t something we dream up afterhours,” say biologists. “Can we tell you what a scientific theory is to us?”
“We think we’ve figured out how those out-of-body experiences and bright lights work — at a neurological level,” say neuroscientists. “Care to know?”…
Plenty more emotions are on Tarico’s list at Tacoma Atheists.
What other emotions does your atheism bring out in you?
First they were deemed too offensive. But a slogan change means that Genoa, Italy will be seeing an atheist bus ads next month!
Just on one bus, though.
The old (supposedly offensive) slogan was: “The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that you do not need him.”
The new one reads: “The Good News Is There Are Millions of Atheists In Italy; The Excellent News Is They Believe In Freedom Of Expression.”
I like it It’s not really taking a side, but it informs people that there are atheists out there, and isn’t that really the point?
[Advertising agency] IGP Decaux said the message would be carried by a single bus in the northwestern Italian city, ”probably” from the middle of February to the end of the month.
The secretary of the Italian Union of Atheists, Agnostics and Rationalists (UAAR), Raffale Carcano, said the UAAR was working to get the original message approved in cities where IGP doesn’t control advertising.
”We aren’t offended if someone writes that God exists,” Carcano said.
”But the (Genoa) Curia demanded a halt to our bus and hailed its banning”.
”It would be nice to be able to run the campaign all over Italy,” he said, adding that a Facebook group in favour of the UAAR’s drive had drawn 4,000 members.
(via Atheism Examiner)
Gallup just put out the lists of the Top 10 Most Religious States and Top 10 least Religious States in the country. This was based on responses to the question: “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”
Can you guess which states are at the top?
My guesses were pretty good on that one. Except for Utah — Not in the top 10.
The ones at the bottom, though?
Not so much.
(Who knew Sarah Palin’s state was less religious than Oregon?)
It is sad to see that fewer than half the citizens find religion to be important in their lives in only four states.
(Work on it, Alaska.)
Even more telling is this map of the United States, comparing the most religious states (dark green) to the least religious (offwhite)
Are there any surprises on here for you?
(via The Invisible Pink Unicorn)
If you’re in New York City, you can get your dose of atheism and comedy at The PIT tonight!
One of the actors in the show informs me that the cast is preparing material for an atheist comedy mini-tour. (That would be awesome. I call dibs on front row seats.)
The show is tonight at 7:00 p.m.
It features:
Mike Drucker (The Onion)
John Knefel (Huffington Post)
Myq Kaplan (Comedy Central Live @ Gotham)
Lee Camp (Mocked Fox News on Fox News)
and more!
I Sold My Soul on eBay
Jim and Casper Go To Church
