Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Nate Phelps is the son of the infamous leader of Westboro Baptist Church, a hate group that is renowned for turning up and picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, declaring the death to be God’s judgement upon the US. I don’t propose to go into too much detail on their antics, but needless to say, … Read more
Becoming a Catholic cardinal (the only guys who get to vote for a new pope now) is a tad tricky at the best of times. You need to start by being ordained as a priest, then work your way up to bishop, and finally try to bring yourself to the notice – in a good … Read more
We know that many belief systems make truly weird assertions, but some truly do push the boat far out into uncharted territory. One classic example are the Mormons. You might indeed have the impression that you have a gasp on what they believe, but do you? For example, the following is quite well known: No … Read more
John Sweeney is a BBC Panorama reporter who, while making BBC Panorama’s Scientology and Me in 2007, became famous because he lost his rag on camera and started yelling abuse at them … rightly so because they had been pushing all his hot buttons with the aim of getting him to do exactly that. He has an … Read more
This one has gone a bit viral in some quarters so you might (or might not) have come across it. The core story is that a pastor stiffed a server in a restaurant by writing on the bill, “I give God 10%, why should you get 18%” and left no tip at all. So far … Read more
Jonny Scaramanga, an ex-fundamentalist, writes in the Guardian about some of the completely crazy things being promoted by Accelerated Christian Education. This is a Bible belt based group that promotes religious indoctrination under the banner of “education”, and consists of a biblical literalist agenda. The specific concern here is that they not only have 3,000 Schools in the US … Read more