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The man who shot and killed 26 people in a Texas church on Sunday is reported to be a creepy, crazy, and weird outcast who preached atheism online. Former classmates of the Texas church shooter, Devin Patrick Kelley, said he was an atheist and outcast who thought Christians were stupid, the Daily Mail reported. “He was always talking about how people who believe in God we’re stupid and trying to preach his atheism,” former New Braunfels High School classmate Nina Rose Nava posted on Facebook. She said she was in “complete shock” after learning Kelley was the killer. “I legit...

The Texas church shooter who mercilessly shot dead 26 people and injured 24 others was an 'outcast' who 'preached his atheism' online. Former classmates say Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, who stormed First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Texas and opened fire on Sunday, was 'creepy', 'crazy' and 'weird'. Patrick Boyce, who attended New Braunfels High School with the killer, told DailyMail.com: 'He had a kid or two, fairly normal, but kinda quiet and lately seemed depressed. 'He was the first atheist I met. He went Air Force after high school, got discharged but I don't know why. 'I was...

Yesterday, Facebook restricted and then shut down the public pages of Ex-Muslims of North America (24k followers) and Atheist Republic (1,6 million followers) –groups that advocate secularism and provide support to “apostates” (people who leave Islam and who often face persecution). In fact, the ex-Muslim group claims that for the last several years, Facebook has been continuously blocking groups like it. The ex-Muslims have written an open letter to the social media giant, calling on it to “to stop exercising intellectual persecution” against atheist and ex-Muslim organizations and to “whitelist” such vulnerable groups from organized false flagging attacks. On Monday,...

Several days ago, one of my arch nemesis oldfartrants, a senile old hippie bum from West LA who has a YouTube channel advocating socialism has now called for the overthrow of Donald Trump. This, after spending nearly a decade referring to Conservatives as traitors and opponents of Barack Obama as seditionists. He attacks Trump comparing him to Hitler and attacking other conservatives such as Ron Paul, Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Sarah Palin and so on. Yet now its not treason anymore to be in dissent, its no longer treason to want to overthrow an elected official like Trump or...

The Christian women’s blog Sheologians received a powerful testimony recently from an atheist who visited Planned Parenthood looking for adoption information. That’s not what she got. In her letter to Sheologians, she described how the abortion group repeatedly pressured her to abort her unborn child, ignored her desires to make an adoption plan and tried to manipulate her emotionally. The Blaze reports Apologia Studios created a video of blogger Summer White reading the woman’s letter. The woman’s name is not used. “I am a victim of rape, but I’m also a victim of feminism. I was lied to,” the woman...

Pope Francis delivered another criticism of some members of his own Church on Thursday, suggesting it is better to be an atheist than one of "many" Catholics who he said lead a hypocritical double life. In improvised comments in the sermon of his private morning Mass in his residence, he said: "It is a scandal to say one thing and do another. That is a double life." "There are those who say 'I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this and that association'," the head of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church said, according to...

His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman has announced he will release the long-awaited follow-up to the popular trilogy - sparking an online frenzy from his delighted fans. The next trilogy of books, which the Cambridge-based writer describes as an 'equel' rather than a prequel or sequel, begins with The Book Of Dust which will be published on October 19 by Penguin Random House Children's and David Fickling Books.

[Jazz critic and longtime Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff died Saturday at age 91. Though a self-identified man of the left, he was hard to pigeonhole. This op-ed appeared in the Inquirer on Feb 28, 1988.] ***** As a former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, I am nonetheless considered a bewildering heretic by many of the ACLU's officers and members. They can't understand how I became pro-life. The lawyer for the ACLU's Reproductive Rights Division refers to me rather contemptuously as having been "born again." Yet I remain an atheist. What changed me on the question of...

MARENGO, Ill. — Officials have identified the pilot killed in a small plane crash over the weekend. 63-year-old Robert Sherman of Poplar Grove, Illinois died when his homebuilt Zenair CH601 crashed into a cornfield near Meyer and Pleasant Grove Rd. Sherman was the only person on board. The cause of the crash is not yet known. Local officials believe it may have gone down overnight, but it wasn’t spotted until around 7 a.m. Saturday. Sherman is an atheist activist known for his court battles dealing with the separation of church and state.

Atheist activist, Green candidate Rob Sherman dies in plane crash Rob Sherman, who died over the weekend in a crash of his small plane in Marengo, operated a business helping people build aircraft from kits. But the 63-year-old was better known as a colorful political activist and Green Party candidate — some might say gadfly — who called journalists and introduced himself as “Rob Sherman, your favorite atheist.” At one time, he had license plates that spelled out ATHEIST. Though he came in for derision as a self-promoter, he challenged the use of government-sponsored Christmas creches and displays and anything...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - An atheist's request for a personalized license plate saying "IM GOD" was denied by the state of Kentucky, which said it might distract other drivers, and would be in bad taste. Bennie Hart says that by announcing "IM GOD" on his license plate, he simply wants to show the impossibility of disproving anyone's claim to being "God." Besides, Hart says, he had the same plate for a dozen years when he lived in Ohio, without causing any problems.

"...The party's leader is at best indifferent to, and often is hostile to, much of the party's recent catechism: limited government, the rule of law, a restrained executive, fiscal probity,..."

The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a dynamic, activist minister with a loyal following at her Protestant congregation in suburban Toronto. She is also an outspoken atheist. “We don’t talk about God,” Vosper said in an interview, describing services at her West Hill United Church, adding that it’s time the church gave up on “the idolatry of a theistic god.”

That ‘ol Freedom From Religion Foundation is at it again, this time sending out letters to “every public school district in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, West Virginia and Ohio” warning them not to undertake field trips to a Noah’s Ark theme park — Ark Encounter — because they would “violate” the First Amendment. The FFRF specifically mentions the park’s owner, Ken Ham, stating he “is free to erect monuments to his bible, but public schools are not permitted to expose the children in their charge to religious myths and proselytizing.” In response, Ham lowered the admission price for kids to $1,...

Conservative columnist George Will told PJM he has officially left the Republican Party and urged conservatives not to support presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump even if it leads to a Democratic victory in the 2016 presidential election. Will, who writes for the Washington Post, acknowledged it is a “little too late” for the Republican Party to find a replacement for Trump but had a message for Republican voters. “Make sure he loses. Grit their teeth for four years and win the White House,” Will said during an interview after his speech at a Federalist Society luncheon. Will said he changed...

Atheists are embracing Gods and creationism Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor and entrepreneur, the twenty-first century’s answer to Howard Hughes, believes we are living in a computer simulation. The chances that we exist in ‘base reality’ are billions to one, he says.Last week he told an audience of Silicon Valley tech evangelists: ‘Forty years ago we had Pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were.’‘Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality.’‘If you assume any rate...

It’s always a sad day when someone you admire tremendously, who has entertained and challenged you for years lets you down and reveals themselves to really stand up only for themselves instead of the ideas of freedom they claim to support. Reason Magazine highlights some deeply discouraging remarks from Penn Jillette, the libertarian co-host of the extraordinarily great Showtime show “Penn and Teller’s Bullsh*t”: Are there any groups you won’t go after? We haven’t tackled Scientology because Showtime doesn’t want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists—I’m not sure. And we haven’t tackled Islam because we have families.

Are there any groups you won't go after?We haven't tackled Scientology because Showtime doesn't want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists—I'm not sure. And we haven't tackled Islam because we have families. Meaning, you won’t attack Islam because you’re afraid it’ll attack back ...Right, and I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you’re afraid to talk about it—I can’t think of anything more horrific. [...]

I don’t speak for all Libertarians any more than Sean Penn speaks for all Democrats. I’m not even sure my LP membership card is up to date. I’ve voted Libertarian as long as I can remember but I don’t really remember much before the Clintons and the Bushes. Those clans made a lot of us bugnutty. When I go on Glenn’s show he calls me a Libertarian, I think that’s my only real credential. There are historical reasons and pragmatic reasons to be a Libertarian, but there are historic and pragmatic reasons to be a Democrat, a Republican or a...

The outspoken atheist Penn Jillette destroys the modernist Piers Morgan in a debate on Catholicism and the papacy.