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I come from a Jewish family hardwired to Socialist ideas and to atheism for four generations. The last one in my lineage to believe in God must have died in the beginning of the last century. Christmas is to me a date with no special significance, even though I have learned to respect those who celebrate the birth of Jesus. But I wish to take the opportunity of this Christmas Eve to make a confession. A year and a half ago, I wrote for Opera Mundi one of the most flawed articles of my journalistic career. The title says it...

And the bells chimed for victory at 1211 Avenue of the Americas. The so-called War on Christmas, says overpaid bloviator Bill O’Reilly, has been won by his god-fearing, flag-flourishing side. “We won the war,” the Fox News personality proclaimed last week. “I have to confess, you know, I’m like a guerrilla fighter in the War on Christmas…We did this War on Christmas thing for about 10 years. This is the first year I didn’t get one call or letter saying, ‘This store has said it won’t say [“Merry Christmas”].’” Hallelujah.

Powerful gods and demi-gods impregnating human women—it’s a common theme in the history of religion, and it’s more than a little rapey. Zeus comes to Danae in the form of a golden shower, cutting “the knot of intact virginity” and leaving her pregnant with the Greek hero, Perseus. Jupiter forcibly overcomes Europa by transforming himself into a white bull and abducting her. He imprisons her on the Isle of Crete, over time fathering three children. Pan copulates with a shepherdess to produce Hermes. The legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus are conceived when the Roman god Mars impregnates Rea...

What if, instead of climbing Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God, Moses had turned to the Israelites and asked: Hey, what do you guys think we should do? Considering the Hebrews' bad behavior in the Bible, what with the coveting of neighbors' wives and murdering their own brothers, that might have been a disastrous idea. But in our own more enlightened age, we're perfectly capable of crowdsourcing our own commandments -- or, at least, that's what a new project would have us believe.

Link to the video.This has to be seen to be believed. I rarely post, but this really shocked me.

Like many cities, Lake Worth opens its commission meetings with an invocation, usually given by clergy who sometimes pray in Jesus' name. Last week, an atheist named Preston Smith was allowed to give the invocation.Before he opened his mouth, four of five commissioners -- including Mayor Pam Triolo -- walked out of the room. - click here to watch via YouTube . Triolo has told WPTV-Ch. 5 that she walked out before Smith's invocation because of an allegedly offensive Twitter comment he posted in July. "I didn't leave because he's an atheist, I left because of his alleged Tweet," Triolo told...

Christmas and Easter have been stricken from next year’s school calendar in Montgomery County. So have Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Montgomery’s Board of Education voted 7 to 1 Tuesday to eliminate references to all religious holidays on the published calendar for 2015-2016, a decision that followed a request from Muslim community leaders to give equal billing to the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Adha.

SALEM, Mass. – A video showing a little girl with pigtails screaming at a street preacher to ‘shut up’ as she relentlessly mocked him and his message of redemption through Jesus Christ has gone viral. The video posted on Live Leak, which has been viewed more than 250,000 times, shows a child approaching Austin Coppock, who had been preaching on Salem’s busy Essex Street pedestrian mall during the city’s annual Halloween celebration. Salem, which is also known as “The Witch City” and where police uniforms and patrol cars are even marked with the slogan and an image of a witch...

Hello, everybody. I’m 19 years old, and %100 pro-life. I’m also an atheist. But before you decide to stop reading this, you deserve to know a few things about me. I was born and raised in a Catholic family. I was baptized a month old, went to Sunday school, and went to church every Sunday. Okay, I went most Sundays. I also know that there are other divisions of Christianity, as well as other religions, and I respect your spirituality, what ever it may be. I stopped breathing twice the day I was born. They doctor didn’t think I would...

North Alabama Freethought Association board member Kelly McCauley will open the Huntsville City Council meeting Thursday in a non-religious invocation after a secularist group threatened to sue the council over its tradition of Christian Prayer. McCauley, who according to his Meetup page was confirmed in the Lutheran Church and "dropped out" at age 23, told AL.com, "My goal is to offer a non-sectarian invocation that, I hope, will lend gravity to the meeting and point to our civic values." McCauley was invited by Huntsville leaders to give the body's first atheist "prayer" after secularist group Freedom From Religion Foundation complained...

<p>It’s football time in Tennessee where longtime gridiron traditions are cherished – from Rocky Top to the Pride of the Southland Marching Band. At the start of every game inside the colossal Neyland Stadium, thousands of the football faithful rise to their feet, remove their hats and pause for the pre-game prayer.</p>

The US Air Force has told a sergeant he will have to leave the military unless he agrees to take an oath with the phrase "so help me God," officials said Tuesday. In the latest religious controversy to roil the air force, the atheist airman last month was denied his request to re-enlist because of his refusal to swear to God -- and he is now poised to take the military to court, his lawyer said.

Link only, per agreement with Gannett

How do we decide who deserves a place in history? Generations of devoted American history buffs have spent countless hours reading and writing long books about the American Revolution without ever having come across the name of Dr. Thomas Young. Yet it was Young who came up with the idea for the original tea party—the one in Boston Harbor. And he went on from there to help kick off the Revolution in Pennsylvania, co-write the first modern constitution, and name the state of Vermont. The reason he isn’t well remembered today is just this: The grandfather of today’s Tea Party...

Dedication plaques at two Midlothian elementary schools will be replaced because they reference God and the Holy Christian Church. Superintendent Jerome Stewart confirmed the plaques at Mountain Peak Elementary and Longbranch Elementary are covered up for now. Over the summer, someone complained about the plaque at Mountain Peak to the Freedom from Religion Foundation. After doing some research, the organization sent a letter to the Midlothian ISD. The 2-by-3-foot display next to the front entrance of the school included two Latin crosses and read, “Dedicated in the year of our Lord 1997 to the education of God's children and to...

The Faith & Freedom Coalition demanded Monday the release of a secret legal agreement between the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice and atheist organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation charging that it is likely to censor churches by "potentially infringing upon their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association". The agreement was reached on July 17 in federal court to settle a lawsuit filed by the FFRF in 2012. The group celebrated it as a victory last month. "We're proud that FFRF's litigation should ensure that the IRS will now resume enforcing the law, and go...

Is the Internal Revenue Service a threat to religious liberty? As the IRS continues to come under well-aimed fire for harassing conservative groups, on Friday it secured a final court order formalizing what amounts to a secret agreement to monitor the pulpits of ill-favored churches. The serious danger, as former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams told Fox News, is that the IRS will start treating “theology as politics,” and regulate it accordingly. Lovers of liberty should be very concerned. According to a June 27 IRS letter to the Justice Department, 99 churches merit “high priority examination” for allegedly illegal...

Image credit: Jimmy Demello Artworks[/caption] The last time I was in Houston, I had to change the fuse in my paradox meter after meeting a self-described pro-choice Republican woman, who was also a lawyer.  I told her at least she was better than Wendy Davis, to which no response was offered.  I said it a second time, and with a puff of white smoke, the paradox-meter died. Dang, the fuse just blew again, reading Time’s August 4 issue, Religion section article “Atheist “Churches” Gain Popularity—Even in the Bible Belt” (behind a paywall).  Yup, the “Atheist Church” they wrote about...

Americans feel warm toward Jews, Catholics and Evangelicals but they are colder toward Muslims and atheists, according to a new Pew Research Survey. Respondents were asked to rate each faith group according to a "feeling thermometer" ranging from 0 to 100, 0 reflecting the coldest and most negative rating and 100 being the warmest, most positive. The outcome concluded that U.S. adults are more fond of individuals who share their same or similar faith. "In a society like the United States, where religion is such an important part of life, of how people view the world, how people approach politics...

President Barack Obama is replaying his turnout-boosting 2012 contraception fight against Christian groups by staging a pre-election fight over religion and new legal rights for gays.He’s expected to sign a regulation on July 21 that would force religious contractors to give up federal funding if they don’t submit to progressive claims that homosexuality and heterosexuality are morally equivalent, and that there’s no connection between biology and good sexual behavior.The regulation creates that fight by banning grants to groups that are reluctant to hire gay, lesbian and cross-dressing or transgender people who contradict the groups’ religious beliefs about sex.The regulation doesn’t...