americanatheists

http://www.gisburne.com/ngbook.phpNow, I don’t know how good the book is, but I know I like the promo. I’m somehow sure drugs were involved (KIDDING). Please check out the Best Promotional video ever.

Bush Administration Agrees To Approve Wiccan Pentacle For Veteran MemorialsSettlement In Americans United Lawsuit Comes After Discovery Of A Pattern Of Bias Against Minority FaithThe Bush administration has conceded that Wiccans are entitled to have the pentacle, the symbol of their faith, inscribed on government-issued memorial markers for deceased veterans, Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced today.The settlement agreement, filed today with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, brings to a successful conclusion a lawsuit Americans United brought against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in November. The litigation charged that denying a pentacle to deceased Wiccan service personnel, while granting religious symbols to those of other traditions, violated the U.S. Constitution.”This settlement has forced the Bush Administration into acknowledging that there are no second class religions in America, including among our nation’s veterans,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “It is a proud day for religious freedom in the United States.”

Imagine, here in the land of “religious freedom”, that we still have to sue the government for something this obvious. Bravo Barry!

American Atheists President, Ellen Johnson, will be on the FOX Network’s “FOX and Friends” Sunday morning, April 22. FOX and Friends airs at 9am eastern time. She will be discussing a Virginia public school that allows it’s students to go to church for lunch.

VATICAN CITY (April 20) – Pope Benedict XVI has reversed centuries of traditional Roman Catholic teaching on limbo, approving a Vatican report released Friday that says there were “serious” grounds to hope that children who die without being baptized can go to heaven. Theologians said the move was highly significant – both for what it says about Benedict’s willingness to buck a long-standing tenet of Catholic belief and for what it means theologically about the Church’s views on heaven, hell and original sin – the sin that the faithful believe all children are born with. Although Catholics have long believed that children who die without being baptized are with original sin and thus excluded from heaven, the Church has no formal doctrine on the matter. Theologians, however, have long taught that such children enjoy an eternal state of perfect natural happiness, a state commonly called limbo, but without being in communion with God. “If there’s no limbo and we’re not going to revert to St. Augustine’s teaching that unbaptized infants go to hell, we’re left with only one option, namely, that everyone is born in the state of grace,” said the Rev. Richard McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. “Baptism does not exist to wipe away the “stain” of original sin, but to initiate one into the Church,” he said in an e-mailed response. Benedict approved the findings of the International Theological Commission, a Vatican advisory panel, which said it was reassessing traditional teaching on limbo in light of “pressing” pastoral needs – primarily the growing number of abortions and infants born to non-believers who die without being baptized.

http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/catholic-church-reverses-teaching-on/20070420203609990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001In other words, this is the infallible truth, unless lots of people don’t like it. Then the truth will change to a more popular infallible truth, and will take effect retroactively.I mean, really. How can people look at this and actually believe it to be true?

Richard Dawkins will be interviewed by conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly on Monday, April 23, at 8.00pm EST on FOX. The program will be rebroadcasted at 11.00pm. Check your local listings for times.For more informations, go to http://www.foxnews.com/oreilly/index.html———————————————-New Humanism conference at Hahvahd this weekend with Salman Rushdie http://www.thenewhumanism.org/?page_id=13

We need to speak about this.If the fetus is alive, it needs to be protected. If it is not alive, abortion is contraception. Nothing more. This marks very dangerous territory, because it loses that distinction and blurrs the line between life and non-life. This is a procedural ban, not a conceptual ban. I’m very wary of politicians having a say of what doctors can do. Politicians (and lawyers)are not doctors and have no right to pretend to know more than doctors.

WASHINGTON ? Students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, according to a study ordered by Congress.Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes that were reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes. And they first had sex at about the same age as other students _ 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.The federal government now spends about $176 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education. Critics have repeatedly said they don’t believe the programs are working, and the study will give them reinforcement.However, Bush administration officials cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from the study. They said the four programs reviewed _ among several hundred across the nation _ were some of the very first established after Congress overhauled the nation’s welfare laws in 1996.Officials said one lesson they learned from the study is that the abstinence message should be reinforced in subsequent years to truly affect behavior.

These guys just won’t admit they’re wrong! If they were going to ignore the findings, why do the tests? What? All the tests showed us to be wrong? Let’s blame the liberals and throw more money at it!

When unexplained violence takes center stage, we tend to turn to modern psychology to explain it.But there is an alternative explanation, one that has been played out in film, stage and writings since the beginning of history.

Was Cho Seung-Hui schizophrenic ? psychotic ? manic-depressive? Or were the shooting deaths of 32 people, including Cho himself, at Virginia Tech University part of the ongoing struggle between God and Satan ? good against evil ? lightness and darkness?Could Cho have been possessed by the Devil? Could that explain the massacre at Virginia Tech?Dr. Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University, shouts an unequivocal ?Yes!??Based on what I?ve seen in the news,” Roberts said in an interview, “there?s no doubt that this act was Satanic in origin.”

Gee. I wonder if he’d be saying this if Mr. Cho wasn’t Christian, if he didn’t mention Jesus in his rantings as if he were in some kind of communication (anyone who claims to talk with God is nuts, right?). I wonder if he’d blame Atheism if Cho were an Atheist.I write this because I was ABOUT to write a blog entry urging you not to link Cho’s Christianity with his dimentia. He was very disturbed and we can’t honestly blame Christianity for this.But… we can certainly point the finger at scumbags trying to capitalize on tragedy for their own personal gain. Shermer was quoted in passing in this article, but he wasn’t trying to twist the facts.

In a five to four decision, the Supreme Court of the United States today upheld the partial birth abortion ban. All five of the justices in the majority were Catholics. This case stands for the proposition that the Supreme Court of the United States will no longer adjudicate cases based on the Constitution or the laws of the United States. From now on the SCOTUS will decide cases based on the morality dictated by the Vatican who is now in charge of the law in the United States.This is of course very bad news for all women in the United States, all gays and lesbians in the United States, and of course, anyone else not Catholic, especially Freethinkers, Agnostics, and Atheists.Last year when the Court struck down the death penalty for minors, conservatives throughout the country condemned the Court for considering the briefs filed by Britain, EU, and else where about how it was no longer acceptable practice in the world to execute children. With today’s Catholic majority upholding the Vatican position on abortion, we all await those same conservatives condemnation of the Court for failing again to consider U.S. law and Constitutional right of privacy when it comes to decisions between a woman and her doctor over the state of her health and life.Peter Nuhn

For those who wish to study the history of Church-State Relations, one source of scholarly endeavor can be found at Baylor University:http://www.baylor.edu/church_state/index.php?id=36168#twentiethFor those of us who question what should be done with Christians, I ask you to consider the dilemma of Pliny the Younger back in 111 CE when he asked for guidance about what to do with Christians:

“Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.”

Sound familiar? Unfortunately, in the next paragraph, Pliny gets a little too optimistic:

“I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and cure it.”

Guess he failed, huh?Read the whole entry above in the link to the title of this posting.

[Please be aware that I neither condone, nor support the torture of deaconesses or the usage of slavery for anybody, including Christians.]

Peter Nuhn