Can We Just Ban Them and Be Done With It?

I tell you these Nanny State types really are grating. Now it isn't just second hand smoke, but third hand smoke. What is third hand smoke? That smell from people that have just had a cigerette. That is apparently a super duper deadly toxic brew of chemicals that can KILL!!! Run!!!! Third-hand smoke is what one ...

Virginity Pledges Don’t Work, Except When They Do

MSNBC is touting the results of a new government funded survey under the headline: "Study: Teenage 'virginity pledges' are ineffective" and the subhead, "Youths who promise abstinence are also less likely to use protection." The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had ...

The Muslims are Coming!

The Muslims are quietly taking over our banks and imposing Sharia law on our financial system. Would you believe that this is a good thing? Read my New Atlanticist piece, "Islamic Banks Surge, Thanks to Financial Crisis" to see why.

Obama Picks Warren, Angers Gays

[caption id="attachment_28949" align="alignright" width="231" caption="Rick Warren and Barack Obama at Saddleback"][/caption] President-Elect Barack Obama has made the most controversial move thus far in his transition, naming far right televangelist Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.  While this initially struck me as a brilliant move on his part, winning points with Evangelical Christians with little downside, the announcement has ...

Obama Skipped Church for Gym!

Barack Obama blew off going to church yesterday in favor of a workout, a breathless Politico report informs us. President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend church services since winning the White House earlier this month, a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors.  On the three Sundays since his election, Obama has instead used his free time to ...

Jonesing For An Apology

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports today that Bob Jones University's current president has "apologized" for his institution's racist policies, which persisted until the Civil Rights Movement finally made it to their little corner of Greenville, South Carolina in 2000. Per the university's website: For almost two centuries American Christianity, including BJU in its early stages, was characterized by the ...

GOP’s G-O-D Problem

Kathleen Parker is getting quite a response to her WaPo piece "Giving Up on God." As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit. Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D. I'm bathing in holy water as I type. To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ...

Americans Hate America for Its Freedom

Eugene Volokh points to a First Amendment Center survey (PDF) showing that 42 percent of Americans disagree with the proposition People should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to RELIGIOUS groups and 54% disagree that People should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to RACIAL groups.  What's more, he notes, ...

Pope: Accept Death at ‘Hour Chosen by God’

Pope Benedict says that those suffering from debilitating illnesses must not seek the easy way out but to die "at the hour chosen by God." People must accept death at "the hour chosen by God," Pope Benedict XVI told ailing pilgrims Monday in an anti-euthanasia message at Lourdes, the shrine that draws the desperate, sick and dying. At the chilly open-air service ...

Left Behind Authors Say Obama Is Not the Antichrist

The authors of the best-selling Left Behind authors have done their research and are now positive that Barack Obama is not the Antichrist.But even the series authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins don't think Obama is the antichrist. What may have been created as a farce has generated a firestorm of controversy on the internet. LaHaye and Jenkins take a ...

Obama the Antichrist?

Here's one of John McCain's recent ads: You would think that the rational response to this ad would be to chuckle to yourself, as it does do a nice job of making fun of some of the messianic fervor that some of Obama's fans have. (Yeah, I'm voting for him, but I've no illusions that Obama is anything more than ...

Random House Kills Book for Fear of Radical Muslim Violence

"Have you ever heard a death rattle before? Do you think it would live up to it's name, or would it just be a death hairball? Do you want to wait, and listen to me describe death?" - Marla, Fight ClubProf. Reynolds is fond of the rhetorical question as to why one rarely worries about Christian violence in response to ...

Making Friends and Influencing People

Biologist PZ Myers has followed through on his threat to acquire a consecrated communion wafer and deface it--for good measure, he also decided to desecrate an English translation of the Koran (which, according to my understanding of Islam, doesn't actually count as a copy of the Koran) and a copy of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion apparently just to ensure ...

Does Religious Outreach Equal Evangelical Outreach?

Both Mark Hemingway and Ross Douthat have linked to these recent Pew polling numbers, which indicate that Obama has one point less white evangelical support than Kerry did at this point in the 2004 election. Douthat notes that this isn't actually good news for McCain:Or you could read them as good news for Obama, since McCain is currently running ...

The Great Catholic Cracker Caper

Sometimes, Freud told us, a cigar is just a cigar.  Sometimes, though, it's a cracker. Apparently, there's a huge wave (that's media speak for at least two similar incidents) of people using Roman Catholic communion wafers for something other than their intended spiritual purpose.  Earlier this month, it a University of Central Florida student: Webster Cook says that, instead of eating a ...