The Jewmanist

The Atheist Blogroll Photography Contest ends September 15! If you have not entered yet, you still have some time.

Via Deep Thoughts:

I am pleased to announce the 2009  Atheist Blogroll photography contest. This year’s contest is open to any member of the Atheist Blogroll, their family, friends or significant others. By request, I’ve also opened the contest up to members of the Atheist Nexus too. We have five categories this year.

• Atheism/Religion
• Travel and People
• Self-Portrait
• Altered Images
• The Natural World

The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2009.  Send your photographs as a .jpg file to the Atheist Blogroll.

Our neighborhood Friendly Atheist is under attack by a hateful Christian extremist group. Via the Portland Humanist Examiner:

Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, is under attack by a right wing Christian hate group. The Illinois Family Institute, led by Laurie Higgins, is harassing celebrity atheist Mehta.

According to Mehta, a high school math teacher, Higgins emailed his boss, his high school’s entire administrative staff, and every school board member to inform them about Mehta’s private life as an atheist blogger. The attempt was to smear Mehta, claiming Mehta was unprofessional and unsuitable to be teaching because of his affiliation with atheism.

In Huggins’ disturbing letter, she argues that parents have the right not to have their children taught by those without faith in any god:

Rabbis attempt to fight off swine flu by blowing shofars. Accompanied by prayer, of course.

Via BBC News:

A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics have taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial trumpets to ward off swine flu.

About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing the horns called “shofars”.

The flight’s aim was “to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it,” Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Aharanot newspaper.

The flu is often referred to as H1N1 in Israel, where pigs are seen as unclean.

Thanks to BBC for this gem I can’t unsee. Watch the video here.

H/t

Like what, you ask? History. Evolution smevolution. That’s just a piece; there’s a whole lot of recent history the Texas Board of Education would like to remove and alter.

If any question remains about the religious and political motivations of certain members of the Texas Board of Education, one need only read the words of their social studies curriculum experts.

Rev. Peter Marshall, for example, one of their appointed academic experts, wants to restore America, according to the website of his Massachusetts-based ministry, “to its Bible-based foundations through preaching, teaching, and writing on America’s Christian heritage and on Christian discipleship and revival.” He also believes that Hurricane Katrina, Watergate and the Vietnam War are the result of divine wrath.

And I could just as easily say that the events of the Holocaust displays there is no god. Hmm…