Abortion is currently banned under all circumstances in Ireland, and a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that the procedure should be legal if necessary to save a woman's life has done little to clarify if and when a woman can receive a medically necessary abortion. This lack of clarity was cited in the report investigating the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar, who died of septicemia after being denied an abortion by her doctors. “The interpretation of the law related to lawful termination in Ireland, and particularly the lack of clear clinical guidelines and training, is considered to have been a material contributory factor in this regard,” the report said of Halappanavar's death.

Continue Reading...

For the first time since I’d entered the ministry, I settled in my mind that the spiritual fix I sought in order to return to preaching was unlikely to be found. I was going to have to live my life without a spiritual resolution. I needed to face the cold fact that I would not be back behind the pulpit anytime soon. Preaching at a somewhat traditional Pentecostal church was going to be impossible and I’d even been unable to make the liberal Pentecostalism of Grace of DeQuincy or First Community work for me. But I could not completely let go of the ministry: I had been ministering for nearly twenty-five years and from the very beginning it was not a career but a mission. Perhaps, I reasoned to myself then, I’ll find a mentor in the church and quietly work under him—or maybe I’ll pastor to the faithful individually. But as the spring of 2011 began, I had to push my spiritual crisis even further back into my mind. I was just emerging from the training period with Ronnie, which meant that I’d soon assume real responsibilities at BIG. The promotion would be a big boost to Kelli and me financially as we were just beginning to rebuild from the near financial collapse of my Village Profile period. With a happy, contented wife and a boss who treated me as both a business partner and a brother, life was good again. I couldn’t allow my questions of faith to consume me.

Continue Reading...

VENICE — Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s six-part “S.A.C.R.E.D.” (2011–2013) is a stark installation that sits beneath a round, heavenly fresco by the late Baroque artist Sebastiano Ricci, surrounded by the works of other Italian Old Masters, including a fresco by Alessandro Vittoria, an altarpiece by Renaissance artist Lazzaro Bastiani, and a chapel with works by Mannerist painter Palma il Giovane.

Entering from the street, you walk into a typical Venetian church interior, but in place of pews you see six oversized iron boxes that at first resemble a Minimalist installation. Upon further inspection, you discover windows and “skylights” that allow you to peer into six scenes from the artist’s 81-day incarceration in 2011.

Continue Reading...

"But people need religion for community! For social support! People get so much from religion—counseling, emotional help during hard times, financial help during hard times, rituals and rites of passage, day care, even job networking. Why do atheists want to take that away?"

There are a lot of arguments people make for religion. But this one gets atheists' attention. Not because it's a good argument for religion—it's not. People don't need religion to help each other out, or even to form organized groups to help each other out. We form communities and support networks around all sorts of ideas and identities: philosophies, political views, sexual orientations, gender identities or lack thereof, hobbies, geographical accidents, food preferences, and much, much more. And the communities people build around religion are hardly evidence that God exists... any more than Dickens re-creation societies are evidence that Oliver Twist exists.

Continue Reading...

Madison Baxter's mother Cassy Blythe told Atlanta's WXIA-TV that "in the meeting with the CEO of the school [Stuart], I was told that the reasons behind it were one, that the boys were going to start lusting after her and have impure thoughts about her, and that the locker room talk was not appropriate for a female to hear even though she had a separate locker room from the boys.”

Stuart went on say: "The best I can up with is that men and women are created equal but different," Blythe told Fox 5 Atlanta.

In a statement that richly explores the complexities of gender, nuances of adolescent sexuality and legacy of Title IX, Strong Rock Athletic Director Phil Roberts defended the school's decision thusly: "Our official policy is that middle school girls play girl sports and middle school boys play boy sports.”

Continue Reading...

Following a Wednesday statement in which Exodus' president Alan Chambers apologized for "years of undue suffering and judgment at the hands of the organization and the Church as a whole,” Chambers announced the group would close its doors late Wednesday night.

“Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism,” Chambers said. “For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical":

Continue Reading...

Evangelical pastor Marco Feliciano -- who has called AIDS a "gay cancer" in the past -- heads the commission and led the initiative to reinstitute the discredited treatment.

"In practice, [the initiative's] result would be that a person over 18 years of age, responsible for his actions, who is homosexual and wants to reorient his sexuality, can be attended by a psychologist," lawmaker Joao Campos, an evangelical member of Brazil's lower house, told the Associated Press.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

The videos, taken from a mobile phone, were first uploaded on YouTube and Facebook last week and were taken down in a few hours. But the videos resurfaced for several hours on June 11. Local Tajik police are now investigating the matter, attempting to determine who uploaded the videos to the Internet. While the imam -- whose name has not been disclosed to the public -- admits to creating the videos, he denies responsibility for making them publicly available.

Meanwhile, members of the community have condemned the imam for making the tapes, writing comments like "Mullahs like you are discrediting our dear Islam" and "He does not deserve to be a cleric. Don't call him a cleric" on RFE/RL's Tajik site.

Continue Reading...

Researchers surveyed participants to see how often they had committed crimes in the previous 12 months, and found that loosey-goosey spiritual types (just kidding! you're great!) were more likely to commit vandalism, theft and burglary than religious people; the study also found that agnostics and atheists were less likely than spiritual people to commit such crimes.

Continue Reading...

Let's start with the cake. This week, the Colorado ACLU filed a discrimination suit against Lakewood, Colo.'s Masterpiece Cakeshop after the owners refused last year to make a cake for same-sex couple Dave Mullin and Charlie Craig. The ACLU says it has affidavits from two other gay couples who have been likewise refused wedding cakes from Masterpiece.

At the time of Mullin and Craig's thwarted order, owner Jack Phillips told CBS News, "If gays come in and want to order birthday cakes or any cakes for any occasion, graduations, or whatever, I have no prejudice against that whatsoever. It's just the wedding cake, not the people, not their lifestyle." But it doesn't much help Masterpiece's credibility that its owner allegedly didn't blink when recently asked to make a cake for a dog wedding. 

Continue Reading...

The women have allegedly been following him for quite some time, as McGill told AL.com on Tuesday: "During the [2010 legislative] campaign, we had two strippers come to my house at 1 o'clock in the morning. Me and my wife both got up to address the situation. They did inform me that they were strippers at a particular club in Huntsville."

McGill would not speculate over why he would be the target of a late night visit from two exotic dancers, though he did report a separate incident in which he was again approached by a stripper in a parking lot: "She thought she had a flat tire and wanted her tire looked at, but she did not have a flat tire."

The woman-who-did-not-have-a-flat-tire then handed one of his employees a business card for a strip club, McGill said.

Continue Reading...

For centuries, a dominant majority of Western philosophers and intellectuals have asserted that humans are the “rational animal.” Our ability to reason, so the logic goes, is the one thing separating us from the plethora of other animals on the planet. Instinct, passion, and emotion, traditionally assigned to the animal side of life, often meant that being “good”—being the sort of human who behaves morally—required a removal of the animal or “beastly” nature that resides somewhere deep within our fleshy bodies.

In recent decades, however, this fragile logic has been falling apart. It’s become increasingly clear that while our digital technologies behave quite rationally, they are often deeply cruel. And on the other side of the ledger, the accumulation of data on animal behavior makes it more and more difficult to support the claim that “goodness” is something that only humans exhibit.

Continue Reading...

Until it was struck down in 1987, the state's "Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act" gave equal weight to the Christian creation story and evolutionary science, mandating that teachers "provide insight into both theories in view of the textbooks and other instructional materials available for use in his classroom."

“There’s no good reason to keep an unconstitutional law on the books,” Josh Rosenau, programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), told Eric Dolan at Raw Story. “But since a law which has been struck down is dead letter, the choice to remove it is symbolic, too.”

But the intent behind the legislature's decision to keep the law intact isn't all that symbolic, as NCSE goes on to note in a release on the vote:

Continue Reading...

His response, that women were "designed" to serve their husbands from inside the home, was predictably bananas; but, interestingly, wasn't too far out of step with Pew's own findings about Americans' discomfort with working women and single mothers.

According to the Pew report, 74 percent of adults said that working mothers make it "harder for parents to raise children," while 51 percent of respondents believed that children are "better off" if a mother is home and does not hold a job.

Continue Reading...

After lauding Francis' ability to speak in a "language that everyone can understand," the Rev. Thomas Rosica issued a corrective to the pope's homily and suggested that, basically, people misunderstood the pope.

In a message delivered on Vatican Radio last week, the pope said: "The Lord has redeemed all of us... not just Catholics. Everyone!" Adding, in case there was any confusion: "Even the atheists. Everyone!" In response to the homily, Rosica wrote that, while the pope is a gifted speaker, Francis was not rewriting theological doctrine when he made his inclusive remarks:

Continue Reading...

In recent moves by Congress to slash $4.1 billion or more from food stamps (otherwise known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) over the next 10 years, Fincher quoted from 2 Thessalonians 3:10:

For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.

Fincher used this line to prove his point that lazy poor people shouldn’t be depending on the government to feed them. Of course, Fincher and his fellows are worried because SNAP rolls have swelled by 70% since the financial collapse back in 2008, causing the government to spend $80 billion* to feed poor people. But instead of curbing the bankers’ economy-destroying ways or ending their corporate welfare, they seek to take it out of the stomachs of poor people.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Thirteen years ago, I carried a baby into a church and, as her family and friends stood around her, promised to raise her in that church. Four years later, I made the same vow for her sister. And now, in two weeks, my firstborn makes her confirmation. She will be, for all intents and purposes, an adult in the Catholic Church. She will no longer attend Sunday school, and she will be free to make all her own decisions regarding her faith (or lack of it), and her relationship with the church (or her departure from it).

Continue Reading...

He knows the interview was a setup because he is an expert who has been doing this "long enough to know that [the exchange]... wasn't natural" and just has really good journalistic instincts in general, OK?

h/t Right Wing Watch

Continue Reading...