On Tuesday someone stumbled on our Let’s Get Hammered shirt and decided to unleash it on the social media site, Reddit. Their post was titled Even I don’t have the nerve to wear this! and so far, despite nearly 10,000 visitors, few have shown the sense of humor and balls to actually wear it.

Might it provoke a drunken Christian to take a swing at you? Sure, but if he doesn’t black out this is an image he won’t soon forget! Images like this may seem mean or distasteful, but they are meant to be taken as twisted humor, and if there’s anything that needs its more humorous side poked, it’s religion.

Today is the last day of our Saint Patrick’s Day sale (17% off $25 or more with coupon code MARCH19), and probably the last day to get a shirt before the holiday without rushing the shipping, so if you think you’re brave enough for Leprechaun Jesus, now is the time to show it.

For those of you considering purchasing multiple items to qualify for the sale, here are a few recommendations:

If you want something funny and you don’t care if you piss people off, we have the brand new design Yahweh? No way!, Pwned Jesus, and of course Let’s Get Hammered.

Those of you who want something more friendly that shouldn’t land you in hot water in most places might want to try Smile, There is no Hell.

If you’re not sure which way you want to go, Faith: Is there anything it can’t do? or Give up God for Lent may help you decide whether you’ve got the nerve for the more offensive end of the spectrum or not without being quite as blatantly offensive to Christians.

If you’re brave enough to face drunken Christians while wearing the crucified LepreChrist though, there really is no better shirt for Saint Patty’s Day.

In their attempts to pretend that the species homo sapiens (human) is somehow not part of the animal kingdom, and is instead uniquely created very different from and above all other life on Earth, creationists often go to great lengths to convince themselves that all other animals are essentially automatons working purely on instinct. I’ve even heard some of them claim that animals do not think or make any decisions at all.

Of course this idea is ridiculous on the face of it, as anyone who has ever had extended and thoughtful interactions with animals can see, but due to communication barriers between us and other animals, the level of thought that they are capable of is difficult to discern, and nearly impossible to prove to someone who doesn’t want to understand. Even worse, many scientists have been very skeptical about the cognitive abilities of other animals, and obtaining the unequivocal evidence necessary to persuade them has been difficult.

That is why recent observations of the actions of Santino, a 31 year old male chimpanzee at the Furuvik zoo in Sweden, are so exciting. It is not that he is by any means alone in displaying the ability to think deeply, but his actions are very clear and easily identifiable, and most importantly well observed and documented.

So what did he do that was so special? During the season that the zoo was open, and only during that season, he collected stones while the zoo was closed and made piles of them around the side of the enclosure where tourists would gather to watch him. Later, when the zoo was open and people came to stare at him and annoy him, he would go back to his caches of stones and hurl them at the visitors!

He would even smash the concrete to get more good throwing stones, which became more important once the zoo keepers started confiscating his piles of rocks. Santino’s rock throwing may not seem nice, and we may be tempted to think it’s beneath us, but what would a human prisoner who wanted to look tough and get rid of the gawkers do in his situation? Probably the same thing.

The reason that this particular behavior was so important was that Santino was showing a very clear ability to remember and think about what had happened in the past, and then anticipate and plan for future events. This is an ability which had been widely thought to be exclusively human, but it’s time to either start calling chimpanzees human or admit that other animals may have much greater mental capabilities than we once believed.

Or maybe this is all a mistake and God was just using this poor dumb animal like a robot to stone the horrible sinners at the zoo for him, but more likely Santino just wanted them to leave him alone, and the stones were the best ammunition he had to encourage them with.

Sadly, if it was God using him, and if God had big plans for his future, those plans are probably doomed to failure now because Santino is no longer eligible to enter into the congregation of the lord since he has been castrated (Deuteronomy 23:1). It has curtailed his anger, but what a price to pay!

The version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 recently passed by the House of Representatives contains $100 million in funding for “faith-based” programs. The Senate version of the bill does not currently contain this funding, but if we do not tell our senators that we oppose this irrelevant addition to this “economic stimulus” package, it may well make it into the final bill.

Fortunately the Secular Coalition for America has made it easy to send a message to your senators from their web site. In a time when hundreds of billions of dollars are being thrown around without much care, a hundred million may not seem like much, but it is still a lot of money, and every time these questionable programs are given additional funding they become more entrenched and more difficult to reform or get rid of.

It is our responsibility to take action to oppose these measures. The “Religious Right” should not be the only voices our Senators hear.

No, Texas’s science teachers are not being physically threatened, but their ability to properly teach science is in serious danger this week. From January 21st to 23rd, the Texas Board of Education is holding public hearings and then voting on whether or not creationism (in the guise of “Intelligent Design”) should be taught in their schools.

If you live in Texas or know anyone who does, please contact your representative and if possible attend the remaining meetings in support of sane education policies, because it sounds like the vote is going to be close. If the creationists win here and the decision is not overturned at the BoE’s meeting in March, the policy will be in place for 10 years, or until a court is forced to step in.

Texans can find information on how to get involved at the Teach Them Science site, and through the Texas Freedom Network. Others who just want to learn more about what’s going on, check out the post on Bad Astronomy. There is a pretty good discussion in the comments section, but here’s my contribution to the thread in case you don’t go there:

Randy T Says:
January 19th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

I understand the need for you to raise alarm and to ridicule; you have nothing to back up you position. Here’s a thought, what if God did create the universe…of strongly influenced the creation of it? Is that remotely possible? Your position is based on the initial premise that you are certain this is not true.

How could you know such a thing with absolute certainty? I suppose you also think believers arrogant?

Kazz Says:
January 19th, 2009 at 9:39 pm

We have nothing to back up *our* position? Claiming that it is “remotely possible” that your god created the universe isn’t much backing.

Evolution has 150 years of testing and hard evidence in many different scientific fields. Creationism has…the Bible. There is a reason that movies like Expelled just attack evolution and scientists without presenting any real case for creationism, and that is because the only things that creationists have to back up their claims are easily disproven nonsense from such great minds as Kent Hovind and Ken Ham.

Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research do not do good science. The vast majority of their claims have already been torn to shreds by people who actually know what they’re talking about, but they continue to spew out the same nonsense that they must already know is wrong.

Even worse are people like Ray Comfort with his “atheist’s nightmare” banana. We already know that bananas as we see them today have been very heavily influenced by artificial human selection. Bananas, like many of the plants we use for food, are very different from their wild ancestors, and the aspects of these plants which we find desirable are generally magnified by human intervention. In the unlikely event that there are creator gods out there, they did not make bananas the way they are today.

We could go on all day about these subjects. What exactly do you have to back up creationism? I have yet to see a shred of real evidence for any god, let alone anything to make me believe in a literal interpretation of the creation of the world as laid out in the Bible.

When you have as much evidence for creation as we have for evolution, then I will consider this a real debate. Until then, “creation scientists” had better get to work on coming up with their first piece of evidence.

We don’t need to have “absolute certainty” that something is wrong before teaching it to children. We don’t know with absolute certainty that there are not Martians living under the ground of the red planet just waiting and building an army to conquer the Earth, but we have no evidence to suggest that this is happening, so we do not teach it in science classes.

Please, Texas, don’t use the board of education to beat your children. We are already falling woefully behind the rest of the world in education, particularly in science, and pretending that believing in the Biblical creation story and twisting or ignoring science in an attempt to justify your beliefs is just as good as accepting the facts is only going to hurt us more.

A couple of months ago we told you about the upcoming atheistic bus ad campaign set to start in the UK in January. Well, it’s here!

The campaign’s organizers have raised much more money than they had originally hoped (£140,000 when their goal was £5,500), and they have expanded it to more locations in more cities across the UK. It’s time for those who fear God’s coming wrath against the atheist advertising venues to seek alternate transportation. Maybe for the next couple of months they can follow Jesus and walk or ride donkeys to work.

Sadly, other parts of the world do not appear to be ready to hear any kind of atheistic message. The Atheist Foundation of Australia, who wanted to run even more innocuous ads saying “atheism – celebrate reason” and “atheism – sleep in on Sunday mornings”, were rejected by the state-owned bus company in Tasmania, and by the largest outdoor advertiser in Australia.

Even the United States is not immune to this problem though. Despite having a signed contract for a billboard deal already worked out by a professional in the business, the Freedom From Religion Foundation(FFRF)’s billboard campaign in Phoenix ran into trouble at the last minute and had to be moved so that none of the billboards were near a church or school, as if the suggestion to “Imagine No Religion” were a dangerous and offensive message.

If they didn’t have pressure to run the ads from a valued client, the Phoenix atheists could have been in the same boat as the Australian atheists.

If you still have freedom of expression wherever you live, use it.

I would like to encourage all of our readers in Phoenix to pick up a New Times this week. It’s got great pictures and an overall good story, but I would also like to give a little bit of a response and clarification on a few issues.

I do understand that they took a particular interest in Omar. He is an interesting, well spoken and good looking guy with a good story to tell, so the fact that the rest of us are a bit buried in the article is alright. What I don’t like is the Secular Free Thought Society (and me in particular) being painted as the villains and unwanted hangers-on who followed Omar down to Mill like lost puppies.

As Omar knows, but apparently Niki forgot, the Mill Avenue Resistance started when I started visiting Mill on a regular basis and arguing with preachers by myself. I believe it was the first night of doing that when I met a former street preacher named Emmanuel who was also having one on one discussions with preachers, and the initial group was formed.

Shortly after that I started making tracts to pass out and Emmanuel and I started talking to passers-by as well as the preachers, but it wasn’t until about two months later when Omar showed up with his megaphone that we were really able to make a difference in what the preachers were doing.

Omar and Jim have played an important part in the development of the Mill Avenue Resistance, intentionally or not, but we are not his groupies. We are out there every week, whether or not Omar is around.

Just to be clear, Emmanuel and I started going out there individually at first, and Omar and Jim showed up independently as well. None of us followed any of the others down there, and in fact with Emmanuel and I not having a speaker yet, Omar and Jim didn’t even notice that we were there the first night they came out. We definitely noticed the megaphone though.

Since then we have developed in parallel. I have always considered Omar and Jim to be somewhat peripheral members of the group, but they have seen themselves as more independent. Either way you look at it though, although I respect them and value their contributions to what I see as the betterment of Mill Avenue, I am not and never have been either following or intentionally interfering with Omar and Jim.

Historically, the Mill Avenue Resistance goes where the preachers go, and it is generally the same for Omar and Jim. For the most part this has not been a problem, particularly since most of us were using similar methods most of the time, but as we have more and more people wanting to speak, and as some of us begin to change our ideas about the most effective ways of accomplishing our goals, there is some friction. We are doing our best to resolve these issues and get everyone back on the same page again though.

It is not a situation where one brilliant man must shake off the chaff and let his singular glory shine through, it is a situation where many people with similar goals are attempting to do similar things in the same place, but not everything is meshing as well as it could at times. As far as I can tell though, there is no animosity between any of us, and I am confident that the issues which we have will be resolved to the satisfaction of nearly everyone involved.

Another problem I saw in the article was that I am not the founder of the Secular Free Thought Society of ASU. I do have a strong connection with the group, and I did help bring together the people who re-formed it (although Brother Jed deserves more credit for that than I do), but betterthanfaith.com and the Mill Avenue Resistance are the only things I can claim credit for starting myself.

Finally I would like to clarify (or un-clarify) what my intention is on Mill. Jim sees it more as an art project, and Omar may see it that way too. To an extent I see it that way, but I don’t have a singular reason for being there or one way of looking at it. If I have to pick something though, I see it mostly as an educational exercise. I want to share what I know about the world and religion in particular, and I want to add to that knowledge by learning from anyone who wants to talk to me.

I do want people to know the whole truth about the Bible and the things the preachers are saying, and I do hope that the things I tell them will make them think and do more research, but after that it is up to them. I am only trying to convert people to atheism inasmuch as I am trying to present the facts and opinions that have led me to my own disbelief.

There are some other minor mistakes related to me, the SFTS and the preachers in the article, but they’re probably not worth mentioning. Basically I see it as a good article about Omar and a somewhat less accurate and fair article about the rest of us.

I understand though that the author can only report it the way she sees it, and conflict helps the story, so we get stuck playing the villains a bit. If it helps with what we’re doing though, then I’m willing to take the hit, and Niki, you’re still welcome to come hang out with us any time.

Congratulations on the overall good article and very amusing pictures Omar!

Much of the gay community and many others are upset by Barack Obama’s choice of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation (prayer) at Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony, but perhaps this is the wrong issue to complain about?

Not only is there to be a prayer by a controversial pastor, but there will also be a benediction (blessing) by Joseph Lowery, a less divisive choice, but still a Christian reverend who will bring little diversity. If we do include religious activities, why not Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims or others?

Some religious zealots feel that not only is it unquestionably right to have their (supposedly America’s) religion exclusively represented in government events, but that the only question we should be asking is whether or not what we’re doing will be good enough for God.

It is unlikely that anything short of a Christian theocracy would be enough for people like these, and for others nothing but a Muslim theocracy would do. Neither of these views is worthy of consideration for our explicitly secular government, and attempting to appease these people by including their religions in official government events can do nothing but encourage them to push forward with their theocratic ideas and to widen the gulfs in our already divided country.

Given the secular nature of our government, prayers, blessings and oaths to gods are out of place. Religion is extremely important to many people, and if they wish to pray for their president and their country then they are and should be allowed to do so, but an official government ceremony is not the place for it.

Not to trivialize the feelings that many people have about their faith, but to many people something else such as football can be almost a religion too. Would it be appropriate or useful for Lovie Smith, coach of the Chicago Bears, to speak at Obama’s inauguration? It might make Bears fans cheer, it might make the fans of other teams angry, but it would add nothing of relevance to this secular government event.

In the end the most questionable action here is not choosing a controversial pastor to pray at the presidential inauguration, it is choosing to have a prayer at the inauguration at all.

The Nontheist Nexus has released their twelfth and final issue of the Nexus Zine in its current format. Fortunately, they are not going away, and will be releasing content more frequently rather than saving it up and for a monthly zine.

This month largely focuses on Christmas, with several pieces by 19th century political leader, orator and free thinker Robert Ingersoll, along with an amusing account of a Christmas pageant performance and a somewhat disturbing interview with Santa.

Octavia also brings us a little dose of reality in the form of an article entitled Plant Talk: Seeding the Future.

As much as many of us would like to lose ourselves in our own happy little worlds for the holiday season, we must not forget that the world continues around us, and the problems we had in November are still with us, as urgently in need of attention this month as any other.

Some of you (okay, probably none of you) have been tempted to go to Kentucky to visit Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum”, but now there’s no need to subject yourself to this monument to willful ignorance.

The Secular Alliance of Indiana University has taken one for the team and brought back some amusing video for us. Their video reveals a museum full of hilarious exhibits of mind boggling nonsense, all carefully designed to show us why we can’t possibly take the whole Bible as literally true.

Wait…this can’t be right. I’m being told that the museum is not trying to make that point? Apparently they actually believe this stuff. Wow. Just…wow.

At least the SAIU got to hear some funny conversations, including probably the funniest creationist quote I’ve heard in a long time:

Little girl: “Pappy, if Noah took all them dinosaurs on the ark, why aren’t there no dinosaurs now?”

Old Man: “That’s ’cause Jesus killed ‘em all.”