What a horrible idea…please do it

David Silverman, the disgraced former president of American Atheists, floated a trial balloon on Twitter.

If I created a non-woke atheist convention, focusing on atheist activism and fun, starring notable canceled speakers and stars, would you be…
Very interested 23%
Somewhat interested 18%
Not interested 59%

Who are the “canceled speakers and stars” he’d invite? It’s not as clean an identity as he imagines. Is Richard Dawkins one of them? Because people have expressed their strong dislike of his views, but he’s not exactly broke and living on the street, and he would still be a strong draw. Would I be one of them? I’ve been canceled by a huge number of atheists, and never get invited to speak at conferences anymore 😢.

It’s interesting that even in the limited, select group of regressive atheists who follow David Silverman, his poll couldn’t even break 50% in favor. Not that it actually matters, this is a kind of Elon Musk non-poll where the pollster is going to just ignore the numbers.

P.S. I’m only going to attend if there is a ball pit.

Probably touched by an angel

Asbury University is a small Christian college in Kentucky with a reputation for promoting these weird cultish revival meetings.

What started as a standard chapel service on Feb. 8 quickly ballooned into something much larger than anyone could have anticipated. “The first day we had a very ordinary service, I would call it unremarkable,” university President Dr. Kevin Brown told NBC News. But by nightfall, students began returning to the auditorium, joining the group of those that stuck around after the initial mass. More followed, and more, and more, until the chapel was overflowing with students eager to join their peers in prayer. For the next 12 days, the ever-growing congregation worshipped around the clock, as word of the movement meanwhile spread like wildfire on social media, encouraging thousands of pious hopefuls to trek to Asbury and join what many participants had dubbed a “revival.”

It did go in a direction nobody anticipated. Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!

Someone who attended the “large spiritual revival” at Asbury University on Feb. 18 has measles, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services announced Friday night.

“Anyone who attended the revival on Feb. 18 may have been exposed to measles,” Dr. Steven Stack, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Public Health, said in a statement. “Attendees who are unvaccinated are encouraged to quarantine for 21 days and to seek immunization with the measles vaccine, which is safe and effective.”

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Thanks for clearing up that reasoning

If you haven’t noticed, the whole Republican raison d’etre has been distilled down to one thing: ramping up the culture war. Once it was semi-benign because it was stupid (the War on Christmas, for instance), but now it’s escalated because their target isn’t a mythical being, it’s real humans, and specifically, the “T” in LGBTQ. We can thank a Canadian for spelling it all out for us. It’s religion. Here’s Jordan Peterson telling us he thinks the male and female distinction is more fundamental than up and down, and tracing it all back specifically to the book of Genesis, where God created us, male and female.

Transphobes have a divine transcendent value now. Like god-soaked Peterson, they are going to be justifying their bigotry with the Bible, and they’re going to be increasingly blatant about it. I made a mistake backing away from the atheist movement, since right now it’s clear that trans rights are an atheist issue. (I’m going to get so much hate mail from atheists for saying that.) And Peterson is a fundamentalist fanatic.

Also, the stupid, it burns. Seriously? Using “up” and “down” as an example of a categorical binary? Think, guy, if you can with your drug-addled constipated brain.

I think you have the wrong address

What a strange spam email.

Hey Friend,

(Resending this to make sure you saw it…)
We’re putting together a group of 12 Pastors/Church Leaders who want to GET RESULTS for a new LIVE cohort inside our FB Ads Bootcamp Coaching Program starting on Tuesday, February 7th:

Specifically, we’re looking for:

You have at least 1 hour per day to devote over the next 8-10 week to implement our proven system to land high ticket clients
You’re Kingdom minded and feel called to being a Digital Tentmaker so you can support the Church
You want more time freedom AND financial margin
You genuinely want to serve businesses and help them grow
No marketing experience needed, but you’re coachable, take action, and are willing to get out of your comfort zone

If that’s you, please hit reply to this email and I’ll send you more info and details on getting started.

We’re starting ASAP and space is limited to 12. So let us know if you’re in.

Cheers,

Jeremy & Alejandro

P.S. Yes this email is real, and yes, I will reply!

It’s kind of revealing, though, isn’t it? The message isn’t about spreading the gospel — it’s about landing high ticket clients, financial margins, and serving businesses. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that there’s some MLM scheme underlying it, too.

I didn’t reply to Jeremy & Alejandro, even though I felt like just sending them one image.

It’s funny that Jesus and an atheist can find common ground in scourging the venal profiteers in the church.

Felicia Entwhistle has the deets

She’s speaking out on Facebook about the problems with Andrew Torrez. It’s all about constant harassment, violation of boundaries, unwanted innuendo, etc. An excerpt:

Here’s what I find particularly infuriating: several well-known atheist groups were “aware of multiple instances [of harassed individuals] with Andrew and none of them have cut ties with him at this time” and also “I’ve left all these communities. I felt unsafe and frankly unwelcome. People with power to do something have done nothing.”

I’ve also abandoned so many atheist communities after seeing this behavior time after time, which has made me one of those people with no power to do anything. I’ve heard similar stories so many times, just the names change…but it’s like there’s an endless reservoir of sex pests out there who ruin everything.

Goddamnit, American Atheists

Not this again. It’s another wave of sexual harassment allegations, and big names stepping down.

Two board members of American Atheists, one of the nation’s best-known atheist advocacy organizations, resigned in the past month after ethical concerns were raised about their actions at conferences for nonbelievers.

One of them is Andrew Torrez, who I don’t know personally at all, but I have listened to his podcast, Opening Arguments. I’d heard rumors third hand, so this isn’t entirely surprising.

The other is Mandisa Thomas, and that is shocking! I’ve known her for years as an energetic leader of the Black Nonbelievers, and now, what’s worse is that there is a wave of resignations from other members of that organization. Bria Crutchfield is leaving? It’s hard to believe.

Embarrassing confession: in all my years, decades even, of atheist promotion and activism, I’ve never even been asked to serve on the board of any atheist or humanist organization. Not even so much as a tentative enquiry. I used to think it might have been that I was too controversial, but now I’m wondering…maybe I’m too boring? Too homely? Too unreliable? Too anti-Dawkins?

Anyway, if American Atheists (or other godless organization) would like to recruit a staid old atheist who is also incredibly unsexy (but also fundamentally monogamous), I’m available. I feel sad about saying this, but maybe I’ve been the uncontroversial atheist all along.

Montana is right next to North Dakota

The disease is spreading. Montana legislators have introduced a new law.

4 A BILL FOR AN ACT ENTITLED: “AN ACT ESTABLISHING REQUIREMENTS FOR SCIENCE INSTRUCTION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS; DEFINING “SCIENTIFIC FACT”; AND PROVIDING AN IMMEDIATE EFFECTIVE DATE.”

WHEREAS, the purpose of K-12 education is to educate children in the facts of our world to better prepare them for their future and further education in their chosen field of study, and to that end children must know the difference between scientific fact and scientific theory; and
WHEREAS, a scientific fact is observable and repeatable, and if it does not meet these criteria, it is a theory that is defined as speculation and is for higher education to explore, debate, and test to ultimately reach a scientific conclusion of fact or fiction.

That isn’t how it works! That isn’t how anything works! The legislators clearly don’t know the difference between scientific fact and scientific theory, and it sounds like their understanding is straight from the Answers in Genesis school of ignorance.

If I were to dig up a trilobite fossil in my backyard, a location that makes finding 350 million year old fossils highly improbable, it is still a fact; it is a demonstrable phenomenon, even if I can’t repeat it and find more of them. I would then have to formulate an explanation for how the fossil got there, that’s the theory part, and it’s often the more interesting scientific question that requires further investigation and hypothesis testing.

There isn’t a progressive scale from theory to fact. Theories are explanatory frameworks to integrate a body of facts. They don’t ‘become’ facts, although they can be so well supported that you’d have to be a fool to reject them.

It’s clear that this is a bill targeting evolutionary theory, composed by ignoramuses who know nothing of science. Evolution is a fact and a theory. There is a body of facts that creationists would like to disappear, such as it is a fact that the Earth is billions of years old, it is a fact that life exhibits a pattern of constant change on a geological time scale, it is a fact that there was no global flood, but that there have been many cataclysmic geological and geochemical changes, it is a fact that organisms share genetic properties that reveal common descent. Then there are theories to explain those facts: evolution is a good one that robustly accounts for the phenomena we observe, and creationism is a bad one that fails multiple tests and does not explain the facts we have.

Trying to associate scientific theory with the colloquial interpretation of “theory” with unsupported guesswork is a tired old stratagem that creationists have been playing with for decades and it doesn’t work, it just flags them as idiots and fools and liars.

Creepypastor

Who are these people?

  • David Lloyd Walther
  • Timothy Jason Jeltema
  • Chad Michael Rider
  • David Pettigrew
  • William C. Robinson
  • Brian Pounds
  • Lawrence Hopkins
  • Conner Jesse Penny
  • Jonathan Ryan Ensey
  • Aaron Duane Shipman
  • Conrad Estrada Valdez
  • Rob Shiflet

Hint: they’re all Texans.

Not enough? Another hint: they’re all church leaders.

Now you can probably guess what significant fact unites them: they’re all people who have been charged with child porn, sexual assault on a minor, or child sex trafficking in just the past year. I have to wonder how many atheists have been similarly arrested.

That’s just scratching the surface!

In May, a document released by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) revealed the case of more than 700 Baptist leaders—including pastors, teachers, ministers and volunteers—accused or found guilty of sexual abuse of children.

The 205-page document, which looks at cases dating back to a period between 2000 and 2009, details the arrests and—sometimes—sentencing of Baptist leaders found guilty of sexual assaults, soliciting children, child pornography and more.

I wonder what it is that draws pedophiles and groomers to religion.