Is Obama going to be a promise breaker? Will NHS funding for homeopathic treatments be banned? Can an octopus really predict world cup results? Don’t act like you don’t care. Come on in to find out.
Gillard Won’t Play Religion Card
Julia Gillard, Australia’s new Prime Minister, is an atheist. Her predecessor Kevin Rudd is Catholic, and before him they had a young-Earther in the hot seat. What’s great is not Gillard’s lack of faith, but her openness about it. In a recent interview she explained that she will not pretend to have a faith that she does not feel and will not go through religious rituals for the sake of appearance. They may be down and under, but they ain’t all backward.
Read more here.
[Via Richard Dawkins]
Tell the President to Keep His Word to End Religious Discrimination in Faith-Based Initiatives
On July 1, 2008, then-senator Obama promised to modify Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives program to end proselytizing and religious discrimination by organisations that receive tax dollars. Under the Bush administration such organisations were able to discriminate against potential employees on the basis of their religion, or lack of, and they still are. Now the Secular Coalition for America is calling on all US citizens who believe in a separation of church and state to tell their president to keep his promise, which he can do ‘at the stroke of a pen’, requiring no congressional action. In the words of that interminable woman from Jesus Camp ‘don’t be a promise-breaker, be a history-maker’.
Read more here.
[Via Richard Dawkins]
Pakistan to Monitor Google and Yahoo for ‘Blasphemy’
In May Pakistan banned access to Facebook after it hosted a ‘blasphemous’ competition to draw the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Now Pakistani authorities will monitor seven major websites, including Google and Yahoo, blocking individual content deemed blasphemous. Get with the twenty-first century people. I mean really, who uses Yahoo nowadays?
Read more here.
[Via Richard Dawkins]
Richard Dawkins Interested in Setting up ‘Atheist Free School’.
Last week Richard Dawkins took a break from panel debates and news appearances to discuss the significance of religion in education on Mumsnet, a parenting website for mothers. On the subject of the coalition’s new ‘free schools’, one Mumsnet user suggested Dawkins set up an atheist school, an idea that he rightly tweaked into a ‘free thinking school’. Dawkins has no plans to realise such an institution, but did disclose plans to make a documentary on the subject of religion and education. I’ll keep you posted.
Read more here.
Doctors call for Homeopathy Ban
Amidst calls for NHS spending cuts the British Medical Association has voted against offering homeopathic treatment on the NHS, and that in pharmacies the remedies should be labelled ‘placebos’ rather than ‘medicines’.
You may have seen this story in the Telegraph or the Guardian and turned all giddy. So did I. But when I found that no other news sources had covered it I knew it was too good to be true. It turns out that the British Medical Association’s decision has no bearing on NHS policy. Maybe it should.
Read more here.
[Via Richard Dawkins]
Atheist Billboard in North Carolina Vandalised Within a Week
Last week the North Carolina Secularist Association erected a billboard on Billy Graham Parkway. The excerpt from the Pledge of Allegiance read ‘One Nation Indivisible’ until vandalised by some nut who presumably gets pissed off every time he reads anything that doesn’t mention god.
Read more here.
[Via Friendly Atheist]
Psychic Octopus picks Germany to beat Argentina
Get yourself down to the bookies now. I’ve got an inside tip that’s a dead cert. A psychic octopus that hasn’t failed yet in its (four) world cup predictions has picked Germany to beat Argentina tomorrow. Why are you still here?
Read more here.
[Via Skepchick]
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