At the University of Georgia yesterday, the UGAtheists celebrated “Stone a Heathen Day,” using some Bible verses to generate some buzz about their group on campus.

The idea came from the Pastafarians at the University of South Carolina. As UGAtheists president Randall Bourquin said to me, “They dreamed it up, shared it with me, and will be executing their own day on Sept. 30^th.”

Here are some pics from the awesome UGA event:

So, how exactly does one “stone” a heathen?

With water balloons. (Obviously.)

Bourquin and other atheist students encouraged people walking in Tate Plaza to stone them according to the Bible’s commands.

Leviticus 24:14, a command from God to Moses, reads: “Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him.”

The UGAtheists laughed at their own self-condemnation.

“Jesus said, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,’ but he said nothing about water balloons,” Bourquin said.

…

… Bourquin said one reason his group organized “Stone a Heathen Day” is because it is not easy to be an atheist in a community such as the one at the University.

“It’s pretty tough to extract sympathy from almost anyone,” he said. “It’s more or less socially unacceptable to come into a room and say, ‘I’m an atheist’ and get a pat on the back.”

What a great way to show some of the crazier stuff in the Bible. You shouldn’t take it seriously (or literally) here, so why should you take it any more seriously when it is used to justify bigotry and promote Creationism?

It clearly hit some nerves, too:

Butler Stoudenmire, a sophomore from Albany, watched Bourquin recite Bible verses and ask for the group’s punishment.

“They’re definitely poking fun at religion,” he said. “It doesn’t personally offend me, but they’re giving Christianity a bad name.”

Yes, it’s poking fun at religion. There’s nothing wrong with that. And if Christianity has a bad reputation, I’m pretty sure we can blame most of that on Christians themselves.

After one atheist student asked if Christian student James Wood would throw a water balloon at him, Wood declined.

“Behind that action I think is a sinful desire to get back at them,” said Wood, a senior from Marietta. “I don’t think Jesus would throw a balloon at them.”

Right. But Jesus would *totally* have banned gay marriage and voted for Sarah Palin.

One professor called out the atheists for using Old Testament cruelty:

Richard Elliott Friedman, professor of Jewish studies in the religion department, said any argument using the Bible — whether theist or atheist — requires extensive study.

“It’s not for amateurs to interpret the Bible,” he said.

Like that’s ever stopped anyone before. When Christians heed that lesson, I’m sure the atheists will follow suit

By the way, there’s a great picture of group member Daniel Brettschneider getting “stoned” in the UGA student newspaper. Check that out.

And look at the featured video on the paper’s website!

I love the beginning of the school year. All these creative atheists groups are out in full force, getting their message out, shaking up theistic sensibilities, and making me smile in the process.

(Pics via Lisa Lansing on Facebook)

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It’s hot… I am lazy and am not going to do a long synopsis this week. But, I did promise some info during the show.

First, a letter from Steve [Last Name Withheld]

Hi Joe,

Can you give the owners of the Empire State Building some love on the next podcast, and encourage listeners to do the same? I’m sure they’re getting it from all sides on this one.

http://wcbstv.com/local/mother.teresa.snub.2.1740885.html

I sent the management company a congratulatory note through the below link. Don’t know if it’s the best way but it works.

http://malkinproperties.com/about-us/contact-us

I’ve also written to the City Councilman who wanted to (did?) introduce a resolution compelling the ESB to reverse it’s decision. You can do so by clicking on Email Us here:

http://council.nyc.gov/d22/html/members/home.shtml.

Steve

Give them a shout.

Also, the results are in. You guys like it when we ramble about random stuff on the Atheist News Podcast. This week, we may have taken it a bit too far, but you get what you pay for.

Should we stick to only talking about religious/atheist subject matter on the show?
* Eh, some digression is interesting. (62.0%, 32 Votes)
* No, talk about whatever catches your interest. (27.0%, 14 Votes)
* Yes, that’s why I listen. (12.0%, 6 Votes)

There is a new poll this week on the site

Should I bring back the doot doot doot doot music before the atheist news segment officially begins?
Go cast your vote! The fate of… absolutely nothing… depends upon it…!

That’s it.

Oh, check out the site, I am posting a nutty proposal there for all you gamer nerds.

Ok, now that’s it.

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“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of he main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
-Bertrand Russell

and if possible could you interpret this to the crucible?
and could you please give a quote from the crucible, its extremely hard and im suffering T_T

          

If you can’t say anything more than “I wouldn’t read a book with a title like that”,or “I liked the book”, just skip the question, and have a nice day.

I will pick the best answer.
A&L- I got it at Books a Million $20.00, and well worth it.
I also found it on Ebay, at very cheap prices!

          

Kentucky now has an atheist billboard, courtesy of the Louisville Coalition of Reason!

It’s up until August 28^th, thanks to $4,100 from the United Coalition of Reason.

Reaching out to the like minded isn’t the only goal of the effort. “We also want the public to know that people who don’t believe in a god are part of the Louisville population,” added Edwin Hensley, coordinator of the Louisville Coalition of Reason. “People like us can be found all around: in families and among friends and co-workers, including cheering kids at soccer games. We can even be found in churches, temples, and mosques!”

Leave it to a local priest to find something negative in that simple message:

“Some people are offended merely by our existence,” Hensley said, “and so matter what we do those people will be offended.”

“It’s a disturbing sign, or at least potentially disturbing sign,” said Fr. Elias Henritzy, a Roman Catholic priest.

Fr. Henritzy, a Dominican priest at Saint Louis Bertrand Catholic Church in Old Louisville, said he is not offended, but he is troubled by the billboard and what it might do.

“I think God really made us to be close to Him and have His love draw us close to each other more,” Fr. Henritzy said. “It’s a saddening sign in some ways, if that’s the real intent of it to draw people away from God.”

“Our answer is not so much what we turn people away from, but what we turn them to,” said Hensley, “which is rational thought, evidence based thinking, evidence based belief.”

While Fr. Henritzy’s faith is strong, he worries about those whose faith may not be.

“I’m hoping this isn’t an invitation to like a dead-end path for a lot of people and that’s the real danger of it, I think,” Fr. Henritzy said.

“A billboard in and of itself is not going to convert somebody. No one is going to drive down the road, see that billboard and say, ‘oh I’m now an atheist,” Hensley said.

It’s anything but saddening. It’s uplifting and a wonderful sign for any atheist to see.

I’m sure the discussions started because of the billboard will be useful for everyone who sees it, though, regardless of their beliefs.

How soon until this one gets vandalized? Let the guessing begin…

(Thanks to Wayne for the link!)

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First, and most important, Roger Scott Jackson (AKA Brother Sam Singleton: Atheist Evangelist) and his wife Cari need your help. Sam Singleton, in case you don’t already know, is a traveling Atheist Evangelist (stand-up comedian) who roams across our great nation spreading the bad news. He is a fictional persona of Roger Scott’s. Consequently, he is not a terribly rich man. Persona’s rarely are.

Just days ago, his wife Cari had a bad accident and broke, cracked, sprained, punctured and cut what sounded to me like god damn near everything in her body. Right now she’s stable, but is still in the ICU.

Because his wife is in the hospital, Roger Scott can’t tour, which means he can’t make money, which means he can’t pay the jillion dollars in medical bills he’s about to have rammed up his ass.

This is where the Atheist News Posse comes to the rescue.

We have to help Roger Scott. He’s not only a good man, he’s one of our own. If his alter ego was a religious preacher, rather than an areligious preacher, his house would already be filled with pies and flowers and his community would rally around him. There is no reason at all we can’t rally around Roger. There is no excuse not to!

$10.00

That’s what I want from you. I want you to click below and PayPal or use your credit card to kick down $10 to Brother Sam, because Brother Sam is royally fucked. Optionally, buy some of his swag over here. This is what I am buying from you guys and gals this year with the karma I have saved up from doing this show. You do this, you don’t have to do anything else I ask for for the rest of the year…

…Except vote during the podcast awards, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

(The name on the account is the name of his Agency, by the way.)

But don’t stop there. Tell your friends, post this around on the sites you frequent. Let’s help Sam! Go go go!

If you want to put this button on your site, you can do so with the following mess of code:

<form style="margin: 0pt;" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input name="cmd" type="hidden" value="_xclick" />
<input name="business" type="hidden" value="loveofferings@samsingleton.com" />
<input name="item_name" type="hidden" value="Save Our Sam!" />
<input name="return" type="hidden" />
<input name="cancel_return" type="hidden" />
<input name="image_url" type="hidden" />
<input name="bn" type="hidden" value="yahoo-sitebuilder" />
<input name="pal" type="hidden" value="C3MGKKUCCAB9J" />
<input name="mrb" type="hidden" value="R-5AJ59462NH120001H" />
<input src="http://www.atheistnews.org/img/sos.png" type="image" />
</form>

Or, just put a link to his site, he has a donate button on the right hand side.

http://www.samsingleton.com/

Thanks guys!

As for the show: we talk more about Israel and I dig my hole even deeper whilst Richard plays the sensible one. During this conversation, I promise a link to this:

Netanyahu talks shit.

Richard talks about Death, dying and Daniel Dennett: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dennett06/dennett06_index.html

And here we have a video of Woodruff, SC City Council meeting defying the warning from FFRF about prayer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xmxwdGNfpI

We go over a bunch of listener mail and eventually get to the news (now with 100% more doot doot doot goodness!)

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Alan Watts interviews Bertrand Russell on the topic of philosophy and religion.

          

Lately, in large part due to this post, I’ve heard from a couple different Christians who insist that while they may believe that homosexuality is a sin, they do love gay people and they think gay people deserve to be treated equally — the includes the right to marry even if their own church wouldn’t marry them.

While it’s not perfect, I don’t mind it. If you’re for equal rights for all people, I don’t really care what you personally believe about homosexuality. It’s a secondary issue, anyway.

But here’s a clear case of bigotry.

In Hawaii, the state legislature had approved same-sex civil unions back in April. Not marriage. Just equal rights. Yesterday, Republican Governor Linda Lingle vetoed that bill.

She explains how she came to her decision in the video below.

There was one part in there that disgusted me the most:

After listening to those both for and against House Bill 444, I have gained a new appreciation for just how deeply people of all ages and backgrounds feel on this matter and how significantly they believe the issues will affect their lives.

Few could be unmoved by the poignant story told to me in my office by a young big island man who recounted the journey he had taken to bring himself to tell his very traditional parents that he was gay. I was similarly touched by the mother who in the same office expressed anguish at the prospect of the public schools teaching her children that a same-gender marriage was equivalent to their mother and father’s marriage.

So this man’s coming out to his parents — and perhaps ultimately wanting to be in a legal marriage with someone he loves — carried the same weight as some mother who couldn’t handle her daughter knowing that straight people and gay people can all get married.

Oh, cry me a river.

Lingle is saying she doesn’t want to give gay people equal rights because some irrational mother is too afraid to teach her child to love and respect other people? Ugh…

She goes on to explain why she vetoed this particular bill when it wasn’t even about gay marriage (which she had openly opposed):

“It is essentially marriage by another name… because it has the same rights, benefits, responsibilities and protections.”

Which of those four things is she against gay people having…?

All this from a woman who loves marriage so much, she got married (and divorced) twice.

The alternative newspaper, Maui Time, had two covers prepared to run based on what Lingle decided:

Take a wild guess which one they’re going with now.

Joe. My. God. has a lot more information about all this, including the fact that the ACLU and Lambda Legal are planning to sue.

I want to see any Christian who finds this despicable to say so. Blog about it. Tell your Facebook friends. Tell your church members. Call out anyone who disagrees.

If you don’t, you’re part of the problem.

Don’t tell me you love gay people and think this was the wrong decision… and then sit back and say/do nothing in response. I don’t care for your apologies if you’re not backing it up with action.

View full post on Friendly Atheist by @hemantsblog

          

Richard and I had a lot of fun making this episode, though we did a fair bit of ranting and digressing. Consequently, I put up a new poll about show subject matter that you can check out on the Atheist News website. It seems unlikely that we’ll ever stop rambling, but we could constrain our topics of focus if you cats dig it. Or we could go off about damn near anything.

We’re wild like that.

We did start the show off with some pretty big news: I will no longer be co-hosting the Chariots of Iron podcast. This is probably actually not news to most of you as the guys announced it a couple of weeks ago much better than I could have, but just in case you hadn’t heard, I’m going to stick to doing just one podcast for a while and Eli and Lamar are going to keep the wheels turning over on Chariots of Iron. I hadn’t had a chance to listen to their last episode by the recording date of this show, so I had no idea that they threw me a wake! I only hope my actual funeral is as touching as it probably won’t be so well attended. Gracias amigos, salute!

Anyhow, it’s not too bad for you guys, there will still be two podcasts featuring overly-opinionated, under-qualified nerds floating around out there for your listening enjoyment. Besides, we have agreed to join forces once again if Oprah gives us a daytime talk-show.

It could happen.

Oh, and uh… IT IS ON.

At the next large atheist event Richard and I attend, we will conduct a foot race of indeterminate length for Charity. It is currently a personal bet of $100, but if anyone has any good ideas on how we could take pledges or work out some sort of matching system, let me know. It just seems rather anticlimactic for me to leaving Richard chewing on my dust in an epic display of athleticism and then hand one wrinkled, nasty $100 bill that’s been in his sweaty pocket to Noel as a donation to the Secular Center.

How can you contact me with your fantastic idea concerning the humiliation of Richard for charity, you ask? Why, over at the new Contact section!

That’s right, I have finally gotten off my ass and added a contact form. My email address is also listed there. It only took a year-and-a-half.

And finally, I leave you with the Sad Tale of the KillDozer.

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