November 24th marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. On November 19th, a guy named Ray Comfort, who does not accept evolution, will celebrate the fact that when copyrights expire and works enter the public domain you’re free to do with them what you will. Thus Comfort will be distributing his own edition of Darwin’s masterwork, with a new introduction. This is roughly the equivalent of me fingerpainting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel so as to improve the work.
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The NCSE has set up a Web site with useful, truthful info. It’s at www.dontdissdarwin.com.

Read More from Scientific American

I am insulted FOR Darwin, that two mental throwbacks like Comfort and Cameron actually try to place themselves in a position of authority with regard to Darwin’s work. They somehow get evolution better than Darwin? A Preacher and an out-of-work actor? They somehow see themselves on the same level, or even in the same game, as one of history’s greatest thinkers?

It gets my blood boiling, but the above-referenced article and website are worth the read.

Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house’s owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house — despite being home to numerous lawmakers — had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building’s owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. “It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes,” she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation.

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Don’t forget to see Jim Slartlet, author of The Family, at our convention in April! Book your reservations now! (Tickets on sale soon)

These are the kind of services I attended as a child. This was the ceremony I performed when I was 13 years old. Those were more-or-less the words I said, under duress.

As I sat there today, watching the people who showed up avoid paying attention, it struck me how empty the place was — perhaps 10% full. Given that most of those who showed up were there for the Bar Mitzvah, I guessed that no-one at all was there for the service itself. No surprise there I guess.

We all know that the principle reason for Bar Mitzvahs and weddings to be held in church is to present the church (synagogue) to potential new members. It’s advertising; “if you don’t come to see our beautiful facility your family will be pissed.” I get it. Nice place.

So I sat there in the back row with my daughter, and we looked at the prayer book and listened to the sermon together. I pointed out each time the Rabbi begged, the idolatry associated with kissing the Torah, and the sales pitch behind the assertion that religious services were necessary for us. My atheist daughter picked up on it all, right away.

They call the service ancient. They call it time-tested. “Passed down from generation to generation”, claimed the rabbi. All true, to some extent (you can say the same for any mythology), but the word that went through my mind wasn’t ancient, it was primitive.

Intelligent people wearing prayer shawls and yamulkes, begging an invisible man in the sky to bless them and their dead relatives. I wanted to scream “Come ON! It’s 2009! we don’t need this kind of bunk anymore.”

I’m glad the pews were nearly empty. I’m glad those who attended were clearly more interested in the party that followed (which ROCKED) than in the content of the service. Finally, I’m glad I am going to live to see the decline of ridiculous theism. Good riddance to yesterday’s silliness.

Back to work.

How many other doomsday fads can you remember? Post them here, and I’ll move them onto our December Fool’s Day page!

Sound familiar?

The truth is that mythology, religion, and superstition are synonyms. They all start by someone making stuff up, and the lies are spread and believed without thought or contemplation.

Tonight, I will be heading to the Jolly 13 event in NY to celebrate my own freedom from idiocy. I invite you all to do the same. Spill some salt, step on a crack, or pray to a god (any one will do). Trust me. Nothing will change.

(Cincinnati, November 12, 2009) In the wake of “multiple, significant threats,” the downtown billboard that says, “Don’t Believe In God? You are not alone,” came down early this morning. It had been up only since Tuesday afternoon at Reading Road and 12th Street, one block south of Liberty Street. It is being moved to a new site today at the Sixth Street Viaduct.

Around 2:00 PM yesterday, the United Coalition of Reason, which paid $3,875.00 for a one-month run of the billboard, was contacted by Lamar Advertising of Cincinnati. Lamar reported that the landowner of the site had been threatened over the billboard’s message and wanted it taken down. Lamar only leases the land the billboard stands on.

“We weren’t given the landowner’s name or precise details,” reported Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason. “Nor did we pursue them. It was sufficient to learn that this person had received multiple, significant threats and that Lamar would act quickly to alleviate the problem.”

Edwords added: “Lamar was most apologetic to us regarding the situation. It was a development they hadn’t expected. Nor had we. Nothing like this has ever happened to us before.”

The new location on the 6th Street Expressway, U.S. Highway 50, is owned by Lamar Advertising of Cincinnati and therefore isn’t subject to landowner restrictions. The billboard will face east, visible on the left to traffic traveling west out of the city across the viaduct toward the suburbs of Delhi and Price Hill.

Shawn Jeffers, co-coordinator for Cin CoR, the Cincinnati Coalition of Reason, which is the local organization the billboard advertises, sees this controversy as evidence of the billboard’s importance.

“Everything that has happened shows just how vital our message is,” Jeffers said. “It proves our point, that bigotry against people who don’t believe in a god is still very real in America. Only when we atheists, agnostics and humanists come together and go public about our views will people have a chance to learn that we too are part of the community and deserve respect.”

On its website at CinCoR.org, the Cincinnati Coalition of Reason describes itself as “a collection of nontheistic groups in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky working together to increase awareness of secular-minded principles and organizations.” The coalition was launched on November 10 when the billboard first went up.

“We are now more committed than ever to the goal of making our presence known,” Jeffers added. “Hopefully this turn of events will cause more and more nontheistic people in Cincinnati to realize how necessary it is to get organized. Only by working together can we end prejudice against philosophical and religious minorities.”

The United Coalition of Reason has now funded fourteen campaigns this year.
Each has involved a billboard or public transit ads. They have appeared in places as far flung as Boston, Massachusetts; Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; Morgantown, West Virginia; Newark, New Jersey; New Orleans, Louisiana; New York, New York; Phoenix, Arizona, and San Diego, California. On November 10, three were launched in Ohio: in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus.

# # #

The Cincinnati Coalition of Reason ( www.CinCoR.org ) is a group of like-minded member organizations from the greater Cincinnati area that advocate science and reason as the most reliable sources of knowledge and truth.

The United Coalition of Reason ( www.unitedcor.org ) exists to raise the visibility and sense of unity among local groups in the community of reason by providing funding and expertise to help them cooperate toward the goal of raising their public profiles.

Can we hear from the vets out there?

On Saturday, the 19th of December, the Red Bank Humanists and the NJ Humanist Network will have a Humanlight celebration in Bound Brook ($30). Then, at night, we all sleep at the Hampton Inn, where we will have a BYOB party with music ($65 for the night, the party is free). The next morning, after free breakfast, we all go to the Center for the Solstice event ($20). It’s an inexpensive, full-but-relaxing weekend.

Here’s the scoop — this is meant to bring in atheists from farther away than the very-locals. We need this to happen, to show that cooperation between groups will work better than operating separately. Call your friends and come. Stay at the hotel and socialize. Have fun. Join multiple groups. Tweet and Facebook this blog entry. Shout this from the rooftops!
MORE INFO
Deadline to register for the Solstice event is December 5! See you there.

By a vote of 4-1 the Spencer (Iowa) Community School Board of Education agreed “to discontinue the pursuit of a Religious Liberty Policy” .
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This is as official as it gets, at least for the foreseeable future, in the effort to defeat an attempt to introduce Intelligent Design and a sectarian Bible class earlier in that school district. And, this time, the Discovery Institute did not even put up a fight in Iowa.

Read more from our friends at TalkReason