“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers.”

It could be considered lip-service (and nothing more, some could argue) but it was a meaningful gesture for a lot of us.

Yesterday, he did it again.

While addressing the massacre at Fort Hood during his radio address, President Obama made this comment:

“Thursday’s shooting was one of the most devastating ever committed on an American military base,” Mr. Obama said in prepared remarks. “And yet, even as we saw the worst of human nature on full display, we also saw the best of America.”

Mr. Obama was also quick to note the diversity of U.S. military personnel. “They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers,” he said. Mr. Hasan, a Muslim, was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan.

Again, it may not seem like much, but it goes a long way to combatting the stereotype that there are no atheists serving the military. I’m glad he did it and I hope he continues to include in when talking about the diversity of viewpoints in America.

American Atheists president Ed Buckner was also thrilled to hear it (via email alert):

We thank the president for including us in the diverse population that is the people of the United States. We appreciate the fact that President Obama has acknowledged what we have always known: Of course there are Atheists in foxholes, and there are and always have been men and women who have worn the uniform of this nation and have served with courage in the military and in many other ways.”

We should still go after the President for encouraging faith-based initiatives and the like, but he deserves our appreciation when he does something right. This is one of those gestures that can make a big difference.

I’m an organ donor and proud of it. Most atheists I know are.

I think it’s selfish not to do that (or to donate your body to science). It’s not like we need our body after we’re gone.

Last year, the winner was Sarah Palin.

This year’s nominees are certainly worthy… to say the least.

• Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya
• Anjem Choudary
• Anthony Bush
• The British Chiropractic Association
• Cormac Murphy O’Connor
• Dermot Aherne
• Damian Thompson
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Terry Eagleton and Karen Armstrong
• Tony Blair

If some of the names are unfamiliar to you, there are fuller descriptions on the website.

I cast my vote. Who are you voting for?

But this notion of religious fundamentalists thinking the rules don’t apply to them stretches beyond the pharmacy.

Pam McLaurin, an evangelical Christian and kindergarten teacher in Texas, refuses to give police her fingerprints for a background check and she’s suing over it.

Her lawsuit cites the Bible — which, in her mind, says that fingerprints are the Mark of the Beast.

Her attorney, Scott Skelton, said his client believes that the computerized fingerprinting, in which her fingerprints will be stored in a database, is the mark addressed in Revelation. The teacher does not believe that it is merely coincidence that Revelation says only those with the ‘mark on his forehead or on his hand’ will be able to buy or sell, since only those teachers who comply with fingerprinting requirements will keep their jobs, he said.

“This law prohibits the free exercise of her religion,” Skelton said in a telephone interview.

Before anyone comments that someone with her mentality shouldn’t be allowed near children, I should mention there’s no evidence that she teaches Creationism or preaches hellfire or anything like that to the children. So I’ll avoid that characterization.

As for her sanity? That’s up for debate.

Regardless, this is still a problem.

If she gets her way, what’s to stop criminals who don’t want to be fingerprinted from using the same argument? Couldn’t they refuse to give a DNA sample for religious reasons as well?

It’s a slippery slope we’d be heading down if this lawsuit gained any traction.

(While we’re at it, how could the Mark of the Beast come from fingerprints that she surely believes God created? Oh, never mind… there’s no use trying to parse the logic in her argument when there is none to begin with.)

The reason? He led the prayer while driving a Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority bus… And he wouldn’t let passengers out until the prayer was over.

In the complaint, the passenger told MARTA officials the bus was traveling northbound when it stopped at the corner of Northlake Parkway and Lavista Road.

As the passenger, whose name was not released, approached the front of the bus, Matthews stood from his seat and asked everyone to hold hands for a brief word of prayer.

Maybe Matthews and Angela Shiel should form some sort of Christian bus driver union…

It’ll be tough for Matthews to spin his way out of this one and who knows if he’ll learn his lesson in the five days during which he’s suspended. It’s bad enough that he’s wasting his own time by praying, but he has no right to waste the time of others or, even worse, not give them the option of getting off the bus.

(Thanks to Ashes for the link!)

Shake up your phone and a new Bible verse appears.

An amusing, possibly-graphic, potentially-obscene, and/or violent Bible verse.

Good times.

The designer of the app, Francis Dierick, took this project personally. In an email, he writes:

Selecting those quotes was actually a very interesting personal experience that renewed my atheist ardour. The app was developed with tongue firmly planted in cheek: e.g. it has a 17+ rating to protect the children from the obscenities described in the bible.

The app costs $0.99, but Francis has been nice enough to offer free promo codes for a few readers.

If you want them, all you have to do is leave a comment with the most mis-interpret-able Bible verse you can find

If you use your real email address, I’ll pick my favorite three and those people will get an email from me with their promo code tomorrow. (To use them, go to the iTunes store and click on “Redeem.”)

You may want to be sitting down for this.

It looks like your money will continue to have “In God We Trust” written on it.

The lawsuit filed by atheist Carlos Kidd against President Obama and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to remove the motto from the currency was dismissed by a judge earlier this week.

The brief ruling by the judge said that there was no Establishment Clause conflict based on previous church/state separation cases.

I’m no lawyer… but how is that phrase not an endorsement of religion over non-religion? (Not only that, you know the phrase refers to the Christian god…)

It’s not the most pressing issue atheists have to worry about — we still have to fight against faith-based initiatives, for one — and I would think it virtually impossible to get the phrase off our currency anytime soon, but this is a lawsuit I don’t mind seeing.

Some could argue that it’s yet another case that will set a precedent for the future — a lawsuit that will hurt our future efforts in this area.

Still, I see an upside. Lawsuits like this can get blasted by the media and bloggers. But it raises the question of why that phrase is on the currency in the first place. People start to read up on why the phrase was adopted by our country as its motto — in response to those “Godless Communists” — and why it was originally put on our coins in the 1860s.

Why was it, you ask? Here’s a piece of the letter from Rev. M. R. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, Pennsylvania to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase which urged the Secretary to put holy words on the coins:

Dear Sir: You are about to submit your annual report to the Congress respecting the affairs of the national finances.

One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.

…

This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my hearth I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters.

A couple years later, “In God We Trust” was adopted. It went away for a little while, but it’s been there since the 1950s.

How is that phrase not Christian? How is it not a violation of church/state separation? How is it not a violation of the Establishment Clause?

The judge was wrong, plain and simple.

And, yes, so were all those other judges before him.

(Thanks to Donna for the link)

The subject: Bait and Switch.

This week the theme is Bait and Switch and of course they thought about Christians.

So they found Off The Map because we are in the business of helping Christians learn how to not be jerks which means we hear a lot of jerky stories (some of which are bait and switch).

So last weekend I found myself sitting in the studios of KUOW / NPR Seattle (94.9 FM), headphones firmly situated, with Ira Glass in the middle of my head talking with me. The conversation continued for an hour and fifteen minutes…

I suppose Jim still technically owns my soul… which means I can safely say I have now met Ira Glass.

My life is complete.

I can’t wait to hear the episode.

First, we have her personal response, titled “Why I Was Dis-Invited, Why I Did Not Just Shut Up And Go Away, and Why It Still Matters“:

… All of this is informed by my worldview as a communist. At the same time, because this communist worldview is rooted in confronting the world as it actually is and as it actually can be, there is tremendous room for others, coming from their own worldviews but similarly committed to the betterment of humanity, to be enriched through an engagement with these views on morality.

From all this, it is clear that the EHSC knew I was a communist from the very beginning. But, as the date of my long-scheduled talk approached, some began a drive to cancel my talk exactly because of these views…

Second, we have a statement from a woman (Sue B.) who coordinated Sunsara’s tour and worked closely with the EHSC over the past few weeks:

… I believe that part of the reason EHSC is persisting in deliberately misrepresenting what happened and spinning a story that fortifies an untruthful account is because they don’t want to confront the reality of how ugly this whole thing has been, how much it goes against their own principles…

Finally, there’s a statement from lawyer Martha Conrad, who was present at the event:

… I was present at the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago [EHSC] on November 1st. I personally witnessed the entire incident leading to the arrest and can lay out the salient facts of what occurred at EHSC that day.

That morning, I entered the building behind Ms. Taylor and others about ten minutes before the 10:30 am program was to start. No one at any time told Ms. Taylor, the videographer or anyone else that they could not enter the event, which was advertised as being “free and open to the public.”…

I’m not sure if there’s any resolution to be had between Sunsara and EHSC. But at least both sides have had a chance to explain themselves in a public setting.

–

I just started my day with a dose of outrage. The notion of hell exists in many religions and denominations. If a person believed it to be torture and that his friends or family members would suffer eternally unless they converted, it makes sense for them to evangelize.

What a powerfully successful meme. What a sick, twisted, and fucked up belief system.

I almost blew a blood vessel watching the following bullshit. It’s a hypothetical letter from hell written by a teenager to his Christian friend describing the terrible agony and asking why he didn’t evangelize.

I refuse to watch it again to type up a transcript of any kind.

I used to think that John Stuart Mill was right that when ideas were freely exchanged the marketplace of ideas would eventually expose the truth and that people would come to know it for the truth. But then I started learning more about the flaws and weaknesses in human reasoning and perception. We’re extremely vulnerable to this kind of emotional manipulation, and it threatens to overwhelm our rational faculties. Being true is different from being convincing. I no longer trust that the truth will win out.

Talk about intellectual cowardice. This entire argument is a blatant appeal to emotion which should be dispelled by stopping to think for 10 seconds. But when you’re irrationally terrified, it’s hard to form rational thoughts. Too often, religion uses bad logical arguments slipped in the ‘emotional’ side door to our beliefs.

These are the memes we are up against. People believe it because they themselves have been affected by the meme. I give them credit for genuinely believing in the horror of hell and for – understandably – wanting their friends and family to avoid it.

We are not up against the people who believe; we are up against the memes that have infected society and are spreading irrational fear. It’ll be a tough struggle – we can’t overcome the inherent flaws in our evolved brains. But I for one think it’s a struggle worth having.