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Happy Easter (from the Church of the Dead Bunny)!

 

The above ad, in the spirit of the holiday, is from an actual church. It’s one of the rotating banner images from Conway Baptist Church, of Conway, South Carolina.

Sometimes you just have to gasp at the galaxy-class lack of awareness (or, just possibly, someone’s DEEPLY camouflaged sense of humor). Go take a look now, before church authorities become temporarily sane and realize how incredibly tasteless, in this context, the picture really is.

Also, as I suggest in the title to this blog post: Henceforth, I think Conway Baptist Church should be known as The Dead Bunny Church. As in “My grandmother goes to Conway Baptist; you know, The Dead Bunny Church.”

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Ebola and Gonorrhea on Sale!

Science nerd alert!

Yes, now YOU can enjoy deadly disease microbes in the privacy of your own home!

From the commonality of the Cold virus or the season delights of the Flu to the exotic pleasures of Rabies, Syphilis, or even that sensational destroyer, Flesh Eating Disease, these pettable petri dish poxes will bring hours of eww! to you and your friends.

And they’re on sale.

Where else? ThinkGeek.

This Christmas, I’m giving someone Hepatitis.

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THIS Is The Future I Want

Google’s “Project Glass.”

Don’t know if the reality will live up to the hype in this video, but … I’ve had dreams about something like this. I’m so getting a set of these when they come out.

Also: Won’t it be fun to virtually tag churches with atheist comments? So when you — or your friends subscribed to your comments — walk around town, you all get these friendly little warnings.

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Sad News: Greg Laden Departing

Many of you know that Greg Laden and I are good friends. He has asked me to make an announcement.

I met Greg some years back at a cultural anthropology conference I was attending out of curiosity. He and I hit it off immediately, and became great friends. I loved his stories of life among the Ik, the Mountain People of northern Uganda, and he liked my stories of working with cowboys and mule packers in the mountains of California.

I lost touch with him after he moved to Washington state. The last I heard was that he was doing fieldwork with a physical anthropologist colleague, Gideaon Oliver, studying a tribe of Pacific Northwest Neo-Primitives. Continue reading “Sad News: Greg Laden Departing”

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The Joy of Coming Out

Several speakers at Reason Rally spoke about “coming out,” and the phrase showed up in a couple of the sketchy news stories about it.

Speaking as someone who has “come out” twice, as an atheist and as – well, you know, this other thing I don’t usually talk about very much because it’s just not relevant to my work as an atheist blogger – I’d like to persuade you all to do it.

It can be rough at first, but you will eventually realize it’s one of the best things you’ve ever done. The freedom that comes with it will more than repay the transitory pain that might accompany the initial shock.

I remember my own coming out – the first one – very well. Continue reading “The Joy of Coming Out”

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Rusted Pickup at the Senior Prom

I sort of keep this to myself, mostly, but I can’t tell you how often I look around at my fellow bloggers here on FreethoughtBlogs and wonder “What the hell am I doing here? What have I ever done to deserve  to be in this company?”

I even felt some of it at Reason Rally, as I watched person after person stand on the podium and say (or sing) fantastic things. When I walked around the corner that morning and first saw the Rally, I threw up my arms and said “My People!” I even know some of the people who spoke; I co-blog with a couple of them. But there were still moments when I felt unworthy. As if I hadn’t done enough  to deserve to be there. Continue reading “Rusted Pickup at the Senior Prom”

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Reason Rally: Mainstream Media Blackout?

I’m collecting a list of major news media outlets that have not (so far) covered the Reason Rally. I’ve checked a few of them; if you find others, I’d appreciate knowing, so I can add them to the list. (There’s a list at the bottom for the news sites that DID cover the event, even if negatively.)

The point of this is twofold. In reverse order:

Second, to make the point that, all the times Christians cry about being discriminated against, the real story is exactly the opposite. Christian thought and action gets automatic coverage, automatic benefit of the doubt, and freethinkers have to fight for every scrap of progress. Continue reading “Reason Rally: Mainstream Media Blackout?”