So you live in the heart of the Southern Bible Belt. Your neighbors have elected an anti-evolution teaching skool bored. You don’t have the money to afford adequate private education for your children. What do you do?Or you live in an urban area with the now usual violence in the public schools and once again you can’t afford private schooling. What do you do?A California ruling says you can’t homeschool unless you are a certified educator. Great news for the teacher unions and real bad news for the Dobson Focus on the Family. Read the link to the title to this posting. Also, Ask Rockridge is discussing this situation. Can a progressive support homeschooling?Got Children? Discuss…..Peter Nuhn

American Atheists has just learned of the sudden demise of our own National Outreach Director and my friend, Lance Wilhelm. Lance was a fixture in our activities and conventions, and I had dinner with him twice last week at the convention in Minneapolis, which was one of his favorite things (along with Dr. Who and really heavy metal music). Lance will be missed.If anyone has any pictures of Lance at the last convention, please send them to me. I will post funeral upodates on this thread as they become available.Mortality sucks.

The Vatican acknowledged that Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world’s largest religion.Vittorio Formenti, who compiles the Vatican’s yearbook, said that Roman Catholics account for 17.4% of the world population – a stable percentage – while Muslims are on the rise at 19.2%.Mr Formenti, in comments to Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, said the data referred to 2006. http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/islam+worlds+largest+religion/1898147

Buuuttt..

ROCHESTER, N.Y. and LONDON ? December 20, 2006 ? A Financial Times (FT)/Harris Poll conducted among adults in the United States and in five European countries (France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain and Spain) shows that Americans are more likely than Europeans to believe in any form of God or Supreme Being (73%). Of the European adults surveyed, Italians are the most likely to express this belief (62%) and, in contrast, the French are the least likely (27%).

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/allnewsbydate.asp?NewsID=1131

http://www.thefitna.com/Just released, This anti-Muslim movie is about 15 minutes long and is very scary and graphic. I wonder how many innocents will be killed by barbarians THIS time.Watch it — before they pull it off the server.Thanks Zac and Marc.

David Silverman, Communications Director, and Kathleen Johnson, Military Director for American Atheists were both featured on the show Interfaith Values which airs on XM radio and has already been made available through the show?s web page.The show?s producers have asked for an Atheist prospective and so they now have one.To listen to the show through the web page, visit:www.interfaithradio.orgThe show will also be on Fri. March. 28- Thur. April 3rd on our 40 stations across the country, including XM satellite radio. Here’s the full list of when and where the show is on: http://interfaithradio.org/tuneinWho: David Silverman, Communications Director for American Atheists Kathleen Johnson, Military Director for American AtheistsWhat: Interfaith Values radio showWhen: Available now online: www.interfaithradio.org Airs Fri. March. 28- Thur. April 3rd on 40 stations across the country