Atheist raising fundie kids turns 180

If you’re an atheist and you don’t know the name Phil Ferguson, go ahead and store it in your memory bank. This won’t be the last time you’ve heard his name.

Phil Ferguson is the brain behind Skeptic Money, an atheist blog that covers all kinds of topics, including how to be skeptical about where to invest your hard-earned money.

He is also responsible for organizing a lot of atheist get togethers, like the trip to the Creation Museum, a great big student secular group in Champaign, Illinois.

Phil is one of those behind the scenes guys who when you’re in the industry you know they’re there. But a lot of times, they get overlooked because there are people stealing the limelight for some reason or another. Like, their blog is bigger. Or their celebrity status is more … um, celebrity.

Kid you not, Phil is one of the leaders of the atheist movement.

I met Phil because he organized the debate between Dinesh D’Souza and John Loftus. We bonded over the trip, and I remember him opening up to me that his kids were getting a religious upbringing. But before a recent post over at his blog, I didn’t realize the enormity of his kids’ religious upbringings.

Go check out his post where he outs himself as a, well, a hypocrite. Initially, he wanted his kids to be well-rounded with a decent understanding of religion. He probably wanted his kids to be accepted in a place where religion is paramount to social acceptance. But religion can grapple a tight, ugly hold on kids. And it was better that he realized it sooner than later.

He writes:

I have been an atheist since I was 13 but shortly after having kids I spent 5 years pretending to be a christian – a fundamentalist christian.  The kids were going to church and Sunday school every week, sometimes more than once a week.  I was a methodist as a kid and was not worried.  I thought that it would be nice for them to know about religion and never thought that it would take over their minds.  Everyone told them that the crazy was true and I kept silent.  I was an atheist raising fundamentalist kids.  Just a few short years after I stopped pretending they have both come out as atheists.

Go read the rest. 

You know Jesus didn’t discriminate, but his supposed followers think it’s sexy.

If you’re open to the public and take public tax dollars, you can’t discriminate … or can you?

This story should make better rounds, but I’m afraid it won’t …

A hetero couple and a gay couple go to Date Night at the Creation “Museum,” and guess what happens?

Take a wild guess.

Read here.

Via

 

 

State never saw feasibility study for Noah’s Ark theme park

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark Kentucky.

When Gov. Steve Beshear held a Capitol news conference to announce potential state tax incentives for an amusement park built around a life-size Noah’s Ark earlier this month, he cited a feasibility study that predicted the park would attract 1.6 million visitors in its first year.

However, neither Beshear nor other state officials had seen or read the study, which was commissioned by Ark Encounter, LLC, the group building the theme park.

Read on

Via Pharyngula

Blog and news links of the day

So I’m reading other blogs this morning kicking myself because I haven’t been talking about all the cool stories as much as I should.

Hemant Mehta has been on a roll lately. Here are a couple stories he’s touched on that you should read (if you haven’t already). I would just go over to his blog and read between:

• Anne Hathaway Explains Why She Left the Catholic Church and
• Christian Group Says Jesus is Coming Back… Let’s See Them Back It Up

The stupid burns brightly this time of year, eh.

PZ Myers tackled the Creation Museum and that the state of Kentucky is subsidizing the build with $37,000,000 to line Ken Ham‘s con artist pockets.

• Hooo-weeee! Look what the state of Kaintucky is gittin’ for $37 million!

Jerry Coyne gets his panties wadded up over the National Center for Science Education reaching out to religionistas. Read his post:

• NCSE becomes BioLogos

The Atheist Media Blog says Fort Worthians are getting pissed off while local atheists advertise that people can be good without god. They collectively stomp their feet and scream, “NO THEY CAN’T, MOMMY!!!”

• Fort Worth Buses: Good Without God

Theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel tackles an excellent question in an approachable way. He writes:

• How The Universe Makes the Building Blocks of Life

Go see Julie at Attempts at Rational Behavior if you haven’t been over there lately. Just go.

And finally, Joe My God posted “The Best Speech Of Today’s Civil Unions Debate In The Illinois State Senate”

Above: Talulah’s throwing you a freaking bone. She’s the boss. She’s giving you the info.

 

Henry Rollins on Creationism

I love that he says, “Bush libary [sic]“.

Via Reddit

Covered in Shit … Gross.

So I’m covered in shit right now. LITERALLY!

Not really. Isn’t it awful when people use “literally” incorrectly? There’s a bit from David Cross about it. It’s around 7:25 of this YouTube clip. It makes me giggle with glee.

But I am covered up, and I have a big weekend approaching. Tomorrow I’m giving a presentation on using YouTube that will be broadcast via video conference to several cities across the country. Don’t get excited. It’s going to broadcast as an internal briefing for one company and its employees. Then I’m jumping in the car with Tina and driving 3 hours to see my parents and grandparents for one night in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Then Friday morning we’re driving back to Chicago, and we’re picking up the keys to … bum bum bah … my NEW STUDIO SPACE!!! I’m so excited I could spit. LITERALLY! I’m going to rent a space in my accountant’s basement to use for portraiture and other photography.

I miss the Twitterati more than they know. LITERALLY. The Twitterati is the name my photographer friend Pete gave our gang of godless promoters who share ideas on Twitter. I wanted to point them at this response I got to the #creozerg post I did (click here to view). A person named Jack Porch wrote the following:

Mr. Deity and the Really Unique Gift (Season Three, Episode Five)

It’s an okay episode. The deity series needs money, but they’re not going to get money if they don’t put out a winner soon. Get the whole gang together in front of the camera. Maybe some new blood. A new cast member. Take a trip to the Creation “Museum”. Something.

My wife and I were watching a History channel show about Greek Mythology last night. That stuff predates Christianity by almost a thousand years, and yet, somehow the mythologies found in the bible are somehow “true” while all of those Greek stories that tirelessly informed the biblical ones are “false”.

As a bovine farmer I once knew used to say, “Bull Shit.”

repost: The Whole Experience

I hate being guilty of the PZ Myers repost-a-rama, but here is a production a group put together about the visit.

PZ discusses Creation Musuem

You can read his criticism here.

Some highlights:

The guards are a clear example. Real museums have guards, of course: they’re there to protect valuable exhibits from theft and vandalism. But real museums want their guards to be discreet and not interfere with the attendees appreciation of the exhibits. At the Creation “Museum”, one of the jobs of the guards is to suppress criticism. They hover about in rather conspicuous uniforms, armed with tasers, and some use police dogs to check out the visitors. They don’t want dissent expressed in their building, and they admit it themselves.

AND

Think about the genuine museums you might have visited. Can you imagine the curators at the American Museum of Natural History being concerned that someone might openly disagree with an exhibit? Do you think Niles Eldredge bustles about the museum, shushing anyone who questions the displays? Would they turn away a visitor wearing a Jesus shirt, or one that baldly declared evolution is false? At real museums, the attitude would range from indifference to active encouragement of discussion. The Creation “Museum” cannot tolerate that.

AND

Again, no science anywhere in there, just reasoning after the fact from a pre-determined conclusion. Everything written in the Bible must be literally true, so since 1 Corinthians and Genesis teaches that Eve was the mother of all people, no other interpretation is possible but that Cain had to marry another child of his mother and father.

I would repost the entire text, but I’d rather you went and explored PZ’s blog for yourselves.

More about my experience should be ready soon.

More Photos from Creation Museum #creozerg

Something the Creation Museum has going for it is the botanical garden and petting zoo. At least these are places that are attractive without shoving an agenda in guests’ faces. Although, I have to say, the animals in the petting zoo were a metaphor for the creation literalists’ agendas: they were drugged to docility, caged to servility and the idea was to have children attracted to their beguiling civility. These animals would not have been so kind had they been approached in nature.

(on a Mac, command click images and they will open in new tabs if you have tabs activated. On a Windows machine, I have no clue how to help you.)