Overwhelming majority of women getting abortions are Christians. Let's file this under "Things we kinda already knew."

Courtesy of Reverb Press:  

When it comes to anti-choice activists interfering with women’s reproductive rights, there’s no denying that it’s mostly Christian groups trying to get Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers shut down. From the Pro-Life Action League to the National Pro-Life Religious Council, there’s an undeniable link between Christianity and anti-choice activism. That’s what makes a recent survey, sponsored by a self-proclaimed pro-life group, so ironic. 

The newly released research, conducted by Christian research group LifeWay at the behest of pro-life group Care Net, paints a very different picture of those seeking abortions than you might imagine. The study interviewed 1,038 women who had received an abortion. Surprisingly, a full 70 percent of these women were Christian.

The study’s results were broken down by religious beliefs, and Christianity was further divided into four distinct categories — Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and non-denominational. The two groups with the highest reported abortion rates were Protestants (26 percent of respondents) and Catholic (27 percent of respondents).

I have two favorite parts of this report.

First that Atheists only account for 4% of abortions which should be shoved in the face of every one of those smug fundamentalist who call us sinners and accuse us of lacking morality.

Second that this study was paid for by a pro-life group who certainly expected a different result to emerge.

The study goes on to point out that 43% of those Christians who had an abortion go to church at least once a month, and 20% go weekly. So these are not just women who picked the label Christianity out of a hat, they are died in the wool church going believers.

Which leads to only one conclusion. When it comes to baby murdering none of us can hold a candle to Christians.

Now whose turn is it to be smug?

Star Trek actor, John de Lancie, discusses being openly secular.

I really enjoyed this because it so closely reflects my own experience as a very young child dealing with my own doubts about religion and my realization that I was going to see forever the world differently than many of my peers.

Part of my goal on this blog is to dispel the notion that Atheists, Agnostics, and those living a secular lifestyle are amoral psychopaths who hate the gods and want to engage in drunken orgies everyday. 

(Okay well maybe there is a hint of truth to that last part.)

Hopefully by presenting evidence of reasonable, critically thinking individuals, who are living a life free of superstition and a religiously constructed prison of fear and shame, that I am helping to do that.

Number of Christians in America continues to decline.

Courtesy of Pew Research Center:  

The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among women as well as men. 

To be sure, the United States remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world, and a large majority of Americans – roughly seven-in-ten – continue to identify with some branch of the Christian faith.1 But the major new survey of more than 35,000 Americans by the Pew Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%. And the share of Americans who identify with non-Christian faiths also has inched up, rising 1.2 percentage points, from 4.7% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2014. Growth has been especially great among Muslims and Hindus, albeit from a very low base.

It is such a great time to be alive.

I have been waiting for this change since I was a child, and to see it happening right before my eyes is perhaps the most gratifying thing I have ever witnessed.

In my own personal opinion we simply cannot advance as a society until we throw off the shackles of superstition, and the fear that it uses to control our citizens.

New poll in UK finds that 33% do not believe in "any sort of god or greater spiritual power." Wow!

Courtesy of the National Secular Society:  

One third of under-24s describe themselves as atheists, according to a new poll which offers more evidence for a "generational shift" away from religious belief. 

The YouGov/Times poll found that 42% of adults in the UK said they had no religion, including 19% who described themselves as atheists, 7% who identified themselves as agnostics and 3% as humanists. 

49% of respondents described themselves as Christian, whilst 9% were listed as "other". 

The Times reports that "33% said that they did not believe in 'any sort of god or greater spiritual power', compared with 32% who believed in God and 20 per cent who believed in a spiritual power."

So one third of the adults in the UK are now non-deists?

That is amazing.

And you have to love this next part.

Interestingly, the poll noted that political leaders were "viewed slightly more positively as a result of their admissions that they do not believe in God."

This marks the first time I have ever wanted to move to the UK in my entire life. 

What must that be like, to be surrounded by so many rational people?

The number of secular people in America may be much larger than previously believed.

Courtesy of Religion News:

If you’re dismayed that one in five Americans (20 percent) are “nones” — people who claim no particular religious identity — brace yourself. 

How does 38 percent sound? 

That’s what religion researcher David Kinnaman calculates when he adds “the unchurched, the never-churched and the skeptics” to the nones. 

He calls his new category “churchless,” the same title Kinnaman has given his new book. By his count, roughly four in 10 people living in the continental United States are actually “post-Christian” and “essentially secular in belief and practice.” 

If asked, the “churchless” would likely check the “Christian” box on a survey, even though they may not have darkened the door of a church in years. 

Kinnaman, president of the California-based Barna Group, slides them into this new category based on 15 measures of identity, belief and practice in more than 23,000 interviews in 20 surveys. 

The research looked at church worship attendance and participation, views about the Bible, God and Jesus, and more to see whether folks were actually tied to Christian life in a meaningful way or tied more by habit or personal history. 

Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, once called nominals — people attached by name only — “survey Christians.” They don’t want to cut ties with their parents or go all the way to atheism, Stetzer said, “so they just say ‘Christian’ since it is the default category from their heritage.”

I think these findings probably reflect what most of us see in our own lives. 

I have met numerous self described Christians who have not attended church services for years, or who only show up for holiday celebrations like Christmas or Easter.

Many of those people also have a perfunctory understanding of the Bible, and embrace few, if any, of the doctrines of Christianity.

I personally believe that a number of these people are actually agnostic of atheist but lack the courage to come out of the closet if you will and risk attracting the wrath or disappointed of family and friends.

That is why it is so important in my opinion to remove the stigma attached to atheism so that people will feel more comfortable in allowing people to accept them for who they truly are.

Heathen scum who hate Jesus. (Sorry couldn't resist.)

Barney Frank and former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe are teaming up in campaign to help end discrimination against the non-religious. Hey, that's me!

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe have signed on to a new campaign to end discrimination against atheists, agnostics and the nonreligious. 

Openly Secular, a coalition of more than two dozen secular organizations, seeks to debunk misconceptions about secular people by encouraging nontheists to come forward and raise awareness for the 29 percent of Americans who identify as nonreligious. 

In an Openly Secular campaign video posted Friday, Kluwe, who described himself as "cheerfully agnostic and openly secular," urged nonbelievers to advocate for their rights. 

"It's important for secularists to be vocal about who they are ... in a truly functional society, in a stable society, everyone is afforded the same freedom to be who they are no matter what that is as long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of other people to be who they are," Kluwe said. "If you want to enjoy your own beliefs, then you have to fight for everyone else's beliefs just as hard, because if you don't, someday you might be on the other side of that line and you're not going to be very happy when that day comes."

Is it weird that I want to say amen to that?

Personally I am in favor of anything that will de-stigmatize Atheists and allow people to understand that we are not attacking their religious beliefs. We simply do not want them shoved down our throats.

Canadian teenager fights, and wins, to have a "sexual purity" course taught by conservative Christians removed from her school's curriculum.

Courtesy of Think Progress:

 After a Canadian high school student filed a human rights complaint against her school district, saying that her rights as a nonbeliever were violated by being required to attend a course on sexual purity taught by a conservative Christian group, school officials agreed to reconsider the curriculum. The anti-abortion group that taught that abstinence education course, Pregnancy Care Centre, won’t be invited back next year. 

Emily Dawson and her mother, Kathy, lodged a formal complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission after Emily was required to attend a two-day abstinence class in order to graduate. The complaint alleges that the Pregnancy Care Centre’s course used scare tactics, like misleading information about STDs and negative stereotypes about single parent homes, to dissuade students from having sex. The Dawsons identify as agnostics and were offended that they had no option to opt out of a course taught by a conservative religious organization with an explicit agenda. 

Now, thanks to the public backlash sparked by their allegations, Emily’s school district is looking for new speakers to cover topics related to sex ed. 

“We’ve heard a lot of concerns expressed from the public over the last several days about guest speakers invited to present on the topic of sexual health education,” the board wrote in a statement released Friday. “We are asking our schools in the fall to use different presenters so that we can continue this conversation, and focus on meeting the needs of students and parents.”

Well good for Emily! That is incredibly brave of her to fight for her right not to be exposed to religious indoctrination and misinformation is her classroom.

How the school did not know realize that the America based anti-abortion, pro-abstinence group would be selling their children slut shaming snake oil is a little beyond me.

The Pregnancy Care Centre is affiliated with a network of right-wing “crisis pregnancy centers” in the United States called Care-Net. Both groups are opposed to abortion and advocate for sexual abstinence until marriage. In an interview with CBC News, a researcher at the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada said it’s somewhat surprising that a Canadian public school would use a sexual health curriculum from a U.S. group, since Canada has been “far ahead of the U.S. when it comes to teaching about sexual health free of ideology or religion.”

Yeah America has a history of outsourcing our religious zealotry to other countries. Just look what we have done in Uganda.

New survey shows that Evangelicals are the most likely to cheat on their spouse.

Courtesy of New York Daily News:

A new survey from Ashley Madison, a website for married people looking for something on the side, found that the religious affiliations of cheaters lines up with the breakdown of religion in the U.S., meaning the majority of them identify as Christian. 

In fact, a quarter of the survey participants self-identify as evangelical, making it the most common faith among the unfaithful. 

Here is the actual breakdown:

Evangelical 25.1% 

Catholic 22.75% 

Protestant 22.7% 

Agnostic 2% 

Mormon 1.6% 

Muslim 1.5% 

Jewish 1.4% 

Atheist 1.4% 

Jehovah's Witness .5% 

Hindu .3% 

Now this IS America so it is perfectly reasonable that the majority of respondents would be of some Christian denomination or another, you know of course unless being a Christian meant you were the moral superior of those who were NOT Christians, but who believes that?

 I mean it's not like I'm doing the Snoopy dance around my desk right now in celebration of the fact that Atheists are more trustworthy marriage partner than just about any other group except Jehovah's Witnesses and Hindus, or anything.

That would be juvenile.

Though perfectly justified.

The descent of the Modernists.

Sometimes it feels like I have been waiting at the bottom of this staircase forever waiting for the rest of the world to join me.

However, in my opinion, every step made by the individual is a victory for rational thought and for the progress of the world.

The "Nones." Perhaps soon to be the most powerful, and barely recognized, new political demographic in the country.

Courtesy of NPR:  

The big demographic story out of the 2012 presidential election may have been President Obama's domination of the Hispanic vote, and rightfully so. 

But as we close the book on the election, it bears noting that another less obvious bloc of key swing state voters helped the president win a second term. 

They're the "nones" — that's the Pew Research Center's shorthand for the growing number of American voters who don't have a specific religious affiliation. Some are agnostic, some atheist, but more than half define themselves as either "religious" or "spiritual but not religious," Pew found in a recent survey. 

They are typically younger, more socially liberal than their forebears, vote Democratic, and now make up nearly 20 percent of the country's population. Exit polls suggest that 12 percent of voters on Election Day were counted as "religiously unaffiliated." 

"This really is a striking development in American politics," says Gregory Smith of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. "There's no question that the religiously unaffiliated are a very important, politically consequential group."

To me the interesting thing about this group, of which apparently I am a part, is that they will be almost impossible for the political parties to woo.

These would not be one issue voters by an stretch of the imagination, and would have numerous and probably conflicting opinions on any number of political issues.

Even the label of "Nones" is problematic as it really does not define anything except that they are either skeptics, non-joiners, or both.

However I would feel comfortable in saying that they are very likely a group that responds better to a candidate who is intelligent, articulate, and contemplative while approaching difficulty decisions. In other words somebody just like President Obama.

Having said that I am quite thrilled that this group is growing and having a positive impact on the world of politics.