Spotted this on the BBC News this morning:

In a land of faith and flag, Justin Griffith is challenging the US military to abandon its religious ties.

When Justin Griffith was a child growing up in Plano, Texas – a place he describes as the “oversized, goofy buckle on the Bible belt” – he would bring his bible to science class and debate his teachers on the finer points of evolution.

“In my head, I won every time,” says Mr Griffith, now 29.

But somewhere along the way, his penchant for picking ideological fights with the non-religious got him in trouble. He found it harder and harder to argue with the points they were making. At 13, he suffered a crisis of faith.

“It was so painful. I lost my religion before I lost my first girlfriend. Nothing that big had ever happened to me, and I didn’t have any coping skills,” he says.

Mr Griffith found peace with his atheism, but he is not done sparring with the opposite team.

As an active-duty sergeant in the US Army, he’s leading the charge to get atheists more respect in the armed forces. In the process he is earning attention, both positive and negative, from around the world.

You can, of course, read the full article here.

I was surprised to learn, from reading this article, that the US Army introduced a mandatory Spiritual Fitness Test last year. Any thoughts on that?

“Organizers of Santa Monica’s well-known Christmas Nativity scene at Palisades Park are accusing atheists of “hijacking” the tradition.

Atheist groups objected to use of the park by churches to espouse a religious message and applied to the city of Santa Monica for their own spaces.

Officials used a lottery to dole out spots in the prime location along Ocean Avenue. The atheists turned out to be the lucky ones: Of the 21 plots in the park open for displays, they won 18. The Nativity story that once took 14 displays to tell — from the Annunciation, continuing to the manger in Bethlehem and onto infant Jesus’ journey to Egypt and back to Nazareth — had to be abridged to three and crammed into two plots.

“A small group of out-of-town atheists is trying to hijack Santa Monica’s nearly 60-year-long Christmas tradition,” said Hunter Jameson, chairman of the Santa Monica Nativity Scenes Committee, the group that works with more than a dozen churches and civic groups to organize the display.

Jameson said he intends to keep the Nativity tradition many have enjoyed since 1953 from being displaced. Palisades Park, he said, is the “historic home where it really belongs.”

“Their goal is getting rid of us, and squelching our 1st Amendment rights,” said Jameson, 65, who no longer lives in Santa Monica but still worships at Lighthouse Church of Santa Monica.

Patrick Elliott, a lawyer for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said tradition is no excuse for violating the boundaries between church and state. “Just because they’re long-standing doesn’t mean they’re right,” he said.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said December is a busy time for the organization’s attorneys, who challenge the use of public spaces for religious messages.

“It’s littering — literally, littering — these spaces,” Gaylor said of such displays, which she said are a “territorial attempt by Christians to impose their beliefs in this season.”"

Read more at Los Angeles Times (Thanks Roz)

“Street artist Banksy has installed a vandalised sculpture of a priest in a gallery in Liverpool.

Cardinal Sin is a bust with its face sawn off and replaced by blank tiles, designed as a response to the child abuse scandal in the Catholic church.

In a statement, Banksy said: “I’m never sure who deserves to be put on a pedestal or crushed under one.”

The sculpture was unveiled at the Walker Art Gallery, where it is sitting alongside 17th Century religious art.

The bathroom tiles have been put in place of the priest’s face to create a pixelated effect.

“I love everything about the Walker Gallery – the Old Masters, the contemporary art, the rude girl in the cafe. And when I found out Mr Walker built it with beer money it became my favourite gallery,” said Banksy.

“The statue? I guess you could call it a Christmas present. At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity – the lies, the corruption, the abuse.”"

Read more at BBC News (Thanks Annette)

Since being arrested at a punk rock concert in the provincial capital Banda Aceh on Saturday night, 59 male and five female punk rock fans have been forced to have their hair cut, bathe in a lake, change clothes and pray.

“We feared that the Islamic sharia law implemented in this province will be tainted by their activities,” Banda Aceh deputy mayor Illiza Sa’aduddin Djamal, who ordered the arrests, said.

“We hope that by sending them to rehabilitation they will eventually repent.”

Hundreds of Indonesian punk fans came from around the country to attend the concert, organised to raise money for orphans.

Police stormed the venue and arrested fans sporting mohawks, tattoos, tight jeans and chains, who were on Tuesday taken to a nearby town to undergo a 10-day moral rehabilitation camp run by police.

A girl cried as women in headscarves cut her long unruly hair into a short bob, and some of the men groaned as their heads were shaved.

“Why did they arrest us? They haven’t given us any reason,” said Fauzal, 20.

“We didn’t steal anything, we weren’t bothering anyone. It’s our right to go to a concert.”

A 22-year-old man from Medan city who did not want to be named said he feared he would lose his job for staying at the camp for 10 days.

“I’ve just started with a bank in Medan. I don’t even know what to tell them because I don’t know why I’ve been arrested.”"

Read more at ABC News (Thanks Antony)

The only group the study’s participants distrusted as much as atheists was rapists, said doctoral student Will Gervais, lead author of the study published online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

That prejudice had a significant effect on what kinds of jobs people said they would hire atheists to do.

“People are willing to hire an atheist for a job that is perceived as low trust, for instance as a waitress,” said Gervais.

“But when hiring for a high-trust job like daycare worker, they were like, nope, not going to hire an atheist for that job.”

The antipathy does not seem to run both ways, though. Atheists are indifferent to religious belief when it comes to deciding who is trustworthy.

“Atheists don’t necessarily favour other atheists over Christians or anyone else,” he said. “They seem to think that religion is not an important signal for who you can trust.”

The researchers found that religious believers thought that descriptions of untrustworthy people – people who steal or cheat – were more likely to be atheists than Christians, Muslims, Jews, gays or feminists.

Gervais was surprised that people harbour such strong feelings about a group that is hard to see or identify. He opines that religious believers are just more comfortable with other people who believe a deity with the power to reward and punish is watching them.

“If you believe your behaviour is being watched [by God] you are going to be on your best behaviour,” said Gervais. “But that wouldn’t apply for an atheist. That would allow people to use religious belief as a signal for how trustworthy a person is.”"

Read more at The Vancouver Sun (Thanks Berber)

A new law which allows civil partnership ceremonies to be conducted in places of worship in England and Wales comes into effect on Monday.

The Church said it would not host them just as a “gentlemen’s outfitter is not required to supply women’s clothes”.

The government said no religious group would be forced to hold ceremonies.

In a letter to the general synod – its national assembly – secretary general William Fittall wrote that no Church of England religious premises would be allowed to host the registration of civil partnerships unless they had written permission from the General Synod.

The legal office of the Church says this move does not constitute unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act as marriage and civil partnerships are different services and so legally distinct concepts.

It says: ”A gentlemen’s outfitter is not required to supply women’s clothes. A children’s book shop is not required to stock books that are intended for adults. And a Church that provides a facility to marry is not required to provide a facility to same-sex couples for registering civil partnerships.”

The legal office added that if legislation was changed to allow same-sex marriage, this issue would need to be re-addressed.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell is urging clergy to defy the ban, which he described as “dictatorial and homophobic”.

He said it was “ironic” that the government was allowing civil partnerships in religious premises, but continuing to ban religious gay marriages even if a faith organisation wanted to conduct them.

Mr Tatchell said it was an “infringement of religious freedom” and accused the equalities minister of supporting discrimination.

When the law was approved, Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone said no religious group would be forced to host them, but those who wished to could apply by the end of the year.”

Read more at BBC News (Thanks @TammyWebsterX & @RichardWiseman)

Reading JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books is no less dangerous, said the 86-year-old priest, who is the honorary president for life of the International Association of Exorcists, which he founded in 1990, and whose favourite film is the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist.

The Harry Potter books, which have sold millions of copies worldwide, “seem innocuous” but in fact encourage children to believe in black magic and wizardry, Father Amorth said.

“Practising yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter,” he told a film festival in Umbria this week, where he was invited to introduce The Rite, a film about exorcism starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as a Jesuit priest.

“In Harry Potter the Devil acts in a crafty and covert manner, under the guise of extraordinary powers, magic spells and curses,” said the priest, who in 1986 was appointed the chief exorcist for the Diocese of Rome.

“Satan is always hidden and what he most wants is for us not to believe in his existence. He studies every one of us and our tendencies towards good and evil, and then he offers temptations.” Science was incapable of explaining evil, said Father Amorth, who has written two books on his experiences as an exorcist. “It’s not worth a jot.”

Read more at The Telegraph (Thanks Annette)

The billboards and full-page newspaper ads contain the message, “Bias Against Atheists is Naughty, Not Nice,” and features Santa Claus making up his “naughty” list. The ads are placed in cities across the United States where atheists have experienced discrimination due to their lack of belief in a traditional god.

“Nonbelievers in America continue to be the object of discrimination,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “We hope this campaign will spur a conversation about this problem that moves us in a positive direction.”

Speckhardt continued, “Many humanists and atheists in America experience hatred in their own communities when simply standing up for the separation of church and state, or fighting for other rights that should be afforded without question.”

For example, the AHA placed an ad in the Cranston Herald newspaper because a high school student, Jessica Ahlquist, endured harassment and threats—one even called her a “stupid atheist”—for objecting to the display of a religious prayer banner hanging in her public high school auditorium.

Another ad was placed in a newspaper near Bastrop, Louisiana, where a student named Damon Fowler was ostracized by his community—even his own parents kicked him out of his home—for objecting to a Christian prayer that would be held during his graduation ceremony.”

Read more at Secular News Daily (Thanks Annette)

Harold Camping, Christian radio broadcaster and international spokesperson for the Apocalypse, has predicted that the world will end this October 21st.

(Coincidentally, this also happens to be the same day that The Experiments broadcasts on Channel 4.)

You probably remember a lot of hubbub about the world ending earlier this year on May 21st. You should also remember then that the world did not end and that the Faithful were not spirited off to Paradise, leaving the rest of us with their pets. That was Harold’s prediction as well.

Harold divines his dates for doomsday using a complex numerological system that incorporates Jewish Feast Days, the Lunar calendar, the Gregorian calendar (naturally) and a complex method of interpreting the phrase ‘begat’ in the Bible as an indicator of what the year was. He’s no newcomer to the End of the World racket, either. His previous predictions for our ultimate end include May 21, 1988, and September 6, 1994.

Of our latest date with destiny, Harold says:

“I do believe that we’re getting very near the very end. We’ve learned that there are a lot of things that we didn’t have quite right and that’s God’s good provision. If he had not kept us from knowing everything that we didn’t know, we would not have been able to be used of Him to bring about the tremendous event that occurred on May 21 of this year, and which probably will be finished out on October 21, that’s coming very shortly.”

So you would probably be safe in assuming that if God neglects to conclude our Earthly business at the end of this month, Harold will be back on the airwaves with a new save-the-date for our souls in the not too distant future.

This reminds me of a fun game you can play when you’re out and about: You can control when the traffic lights are going to change by saying: “They’re going to chaaaaange…now!” until they do.

Harold Camping is also the published author of 1994? and Adam when?

In it he tackles, you guessed it, issues of Faith from the perspective of a confirmed Atheist.

He’s currently doing Press duties to promote the publication, even going so far as to sit across a table from the delightful Piers Morgan who, in Penn’s own words;

“Seems he hadn’t read the book, and I had no idea what he was trying in the interview. Odd.”

You can see a snippet of that odd interview here, read a short essay that Penn’s penned for CNN giving a flavour of the book here and, if you’re ready to go the whole hog, you can buy the book here.

Do let us know if you’re going to get it, or have got it already, and what you think of it in the comments below!