Free Republic

Wasserman Schultz calls Jerusalem omission from platform 'technical error' By Daniel Strauss - 09/06/12 09:15 AM ET Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) explained the exclusion of language recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital in the 2012 Democratic national platform as a "technical error" that had not been discussed at all during the drafting process. "Essentially, with Jerusalem, it was a technical omission and nothing more than that," Wasserman Schultz said Thursday on CNN. "There was never any discussion or debate commentary over adding or subtracting it." A day earlier, Democrats amended the 2012 party platform to include...

BOSTON (CBS Connecticut) — The National Atheist Party is canceling its secular convention due to a lack of funding. Troy Boyle, the party’s president, announced on its website won’t be holding NAPCON 2012 in Boston in October because it would bankrupt the group. “After this year’s amazing Reason Rally, and flush with our successful recruiting and a spike in donations, we decided to hold our OWN secular event. NAPCON 2012 was supposed to be our biggest and best public event; our chance to show the U.S. that we could fund and organize a large, noteworthy and impressive ‘Secular Summit’ that...

The funniest thing about the r/K divide within our species is how pervasive it is. Everywhere I look, I see aspects of it manifesting in our culture, our behavior, our history, and even our future. Here is a free abstract from an interesting study examining the “balancing selection hypothesis” of homosexuality. Let me rephrase this, so it makes more sense. There may be a gene which produces women who are more fertile, have more offspring, and want to deal with children less. At the same time it makes men more feminine (and more promiscuous, since that correlates with homosexuality). (There...

Pastor Became Atheist. Why? by Brian Thomas, M.S. | Aug. 8, 2012 Teresa McBain ministered in the Methodist church for twenty years. She formerly pastored at Lake Jackson United Methodist Church in Tallahassee, Florida, but today she ministers as the public relations director of the American Atheists.1 She says that she used to believe in the God of the Bible, but she recently changed her mind: "I know it's a lie. I know it's false."2 Why has she rejected God? She explained her reasons to the Christian Post, saying, "One [reason] was the contradictory nature of the Bible; the lack...

A former Methodist worship and teaching pastor who served in ministry for 20 years before becoming an atheist has been appointed as the American Atheist's public relations director. In an interview with The Christian Post, she revealed that despite initially being ostracized by friends, she is now happy and at peace with her decision. "No it was very, very gradual. Actually there's not really one single moment where I can look back and say ah, that was the moment. It was kind of a slow progression," Teresa MacBain shared about her loss of faith with CP in a phone interview...

An atheist has called out a Christian pastor for ignoring Bible passages condemning homosexuality to argue that gays can go to heaven. "If Christians support that (putting LGBT individuals on equal footing), that's great, but it's going to happen in spite of what the Bible says, not because of it," said Hemant Mehta, also known as the Friendly Atheist, in a recent blog post. Mehta was referring to commentary written by Pastor Craig Gross, founder of XXXchurch.com. Gross suggested that there will be gays in heaven just as there will be fat people and other sinners. "Why do they (religious...

The younger generation is becoming godless. Increasing numbers of Americans under the age of 30 are skeptical about the existence of God. This will have profound repercussions upon our society, fostering moral disintegration and the eventual death of our Judeo-Christian civilization. Traditional America is dying. In its place, a new liberal barbarism is being born. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center finds that belief in God has dropped dramatically among so-called millennials — those born after 1980 — during the past five years. In particular, the Pew poll found that 31 percent of respondents say they doubt whether...

Alternate headline: "Blogger's plan to be president by 2040 still on track."Note to The One: You can admit it now.I've blogged a bunch of these Gallup polls over the years and my demographic has always been at the bottom of the barrel preference-wise. But things are improving: In 2007, just 45 percent said they'd vote for an atheist, then last year it crept up to 49 percent. Now we're over the hump at 54. I wonder why. It's not like the "new atheism" suddenly exploded onto the national scene over the past six months, and to hear believers tell it,...

The noted atheist Richard Dawkins has been very active recently in his campaign to discredit religious belief, in particular Christianity, and Roman Catholicism has been a special target. He had a debate of sorts with Rowan Williams, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, and appeared on an Australian television program, “Q and A,” with Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney. His animus against Catholicism was also evident in a joint appearance with Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and fellow non-believer (as Krauss likes to be called), at the Australian National University. Krauss is the author of the much heralded, A Universe...

Actor Keira Knightley, a self-confessed atheist, says she is desperate to be Catholic because she would “just get to ask for forgiveness”. “It sounds much better than having to live with guilt. It’s absolutely extraordinary. If only I wasn’t an atheist, I could get away with anything,”

WOONSOCKET, R.I. (FOX 25) - “The Firefighter’s Prayer” is a creed dear to firefighters all over the United States; however, that prayer and a monument in Woonsocket, R.I. are under fire by a national group which says the department is blurring the lines of religion. Tom Poole, a disabled veteran, is one of many in Woonsocket trying to protect a cross that stands on top of a monument located in the parking lot of the city’s fire station on Cumberland Hill Road. The monument was erected 91 years ago to honor Woonsocket war veterans, including the three brothers killed in...

When Patrick Greene learned that a county five hours north of his San Antonio home had placed a nativity on the courthouse square, he vowed to file suit if they did it again, the Malakoff News reported. An atheist, Greene did not believe the religious symbol of Christmas had any place on government property. Then, as quickly as he blew into Henderson County, he withdrew. He would not lead a rally, he told reporters there, because he believed he suffered from a detached retina and was going blind. He had to leave his job as a taxi driver, he elaborated,...

An atheist activist group is fighting the Catholic Church's "war against contraception" by stepping up its campaign that suggests believers should end their faithfulness to their religion. The Madison, Wis.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation plans to run a full-page ad in The New York Times that states, "It's Time to Quit the Catholic Church." FFRF is conducting a fundraiser to pay for the $52,000 ad and has collected $45,000 so far, according to a chart on the group's website. The FFRF campaign began last month in light of opposition from the Catholic Church to the Obama administration's decision that seeks...

The ayatollahs are not a great advertisement for faith in God. Here in Sydney, Australia, where I’ve been lecturing for a week, I may have had one Australian-born waitress or waiter, and one Australian-born taxi driver. As is my wont, I have been asking all my waiters, waitresses, and taxi drivers where they were born and, whenever possible, having some discussion about their native country. I say “whenever possible” because, unlike in the United States, where taxi drivers, whether foreign- or American-born, are known for being talkative, in Sydney, apparently, the influence of the famous British reserve is still very...

With all the talk of holding radio talk show hosts accountable lately, it’s probably worth bringing you what liberal firebrand Mike Malloy said last week as storms ravaged the South. According to a clip from his March 2 show, it seems the storms are God’s way of getting back at them for not believing in science. Or something. “Their God … keeps smashing them into little grease spots on the pavement in Alabama, and Mississippi, and Arkansas, and Georgia, and Oklahoma,” Malloy says in his broadcast from Friday. “You know, the Bible belt, where [in a mocking voice] they ain’t...

An atheist organization says it will unveil a Hebrew-language billboard calling God a “myth” near a Brooklyn hassidic enclave, and a similar billboard in Arabic in heavily Muslim Paterson, NJ. The group American Atheists says it will unveil a billboard Monday in hassidic-dominated South Williamsburg. The billboard writes out the name of God in Hebrew, and then features in English and Hebrew translation the phrase “You know it’s a myth… and you have a choice.” “If there are atheists in those communities, we are reaching out to them,” Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, told CNN last week. “We are...

Mark this in your book of bizarre celebrity sightings. Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking is somewhat of a regular at a Devore, California sex club, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting. According to a source who has been a member of Freedom Acres swingers club for nearly half a decade, Hawking, 70, shows up to the club with a bevy of nurses and assistants and has naked woman grind on him.

Oral arguments were heard in a Massachusetts Superior Court on Monday over a lawsuit filed by an atheist couple who believe that their children are being discriminated against because the Pledge of Allegiance – which is said every day in Mass. public school classrooms under state law – contains the phrase "under God." "The daily recitation in public schools of a pledge declaring that the nation is 'under God' is discriminatory toward atheists and humanists," David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association and lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, stated. "No child should go to school each...

Timeless words...written 149 years ago but could have been penned yesterday, but not by the current Imposter-in-Chief: "Insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and...

Atheists are using a music video that celebrates the burning of churches and synagogues to promote an upcoming atheist-themed festival at Fort Bragg. “Rock Beyond Belief” is scheduled to be held on the parade field at Fort Bragg in March. The event was created in part as a response to a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association event that was held last year. FOLLOW TODD ON FACEBOOK! Justin Griffith, who organized “Rock Beyond Belief,” said he was personally offended that a Christian evangelical event like “Rock the Fort” was held on the base. “We felt it was entirely inappropriate for anyone to...