One random morning my housemate went out to work and found hanging on the door handle a plastic bag with a couple of books in it. As she was in a hurry, she didn’t look at them but just put them inside on my side of the table and left. When I found them, I also had no idea what it was as I had not ordered anything and it was too big to be campaign material.
Every issue of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) newsletter has at least two pages of “Black Collar Crime” that is a smattering of criminal and civil activity across the country against those of a religious order. An example is one issue in November 2020 that revealed fifteen cases of pastors and church officials who were arrested and charged with crimes ranging from sexual assault of girls from 7 to 14, to the beating of a one-year-old, to shooting a wife in the head, to meth, to child pornography, and to embezzlement up to $22 million.
If I believe in God and He exists, I’ve gained everything. If I believe in God and He doesn’t exist, I’ve lost nothing. If I disbelieve, and He does exist, I’ve lost everything. Therefore, a rational person who has any doubt should take the leap of faith just in case. I don’t know when I first heard about Pascal’s Wager, the argument for believing in God based on possible outcomes. It went on to be an enormous part of my training to defend Christianity in a secular and hostile culture and be ready always to give an apologia for the hope within me.
On April 12, 2019, a man in west Phoenix, Arizona shot and killed his wife and two children, and then he drove to another location and shot and killed a man there. When the police stopped him he said that he had a sincerely held religious belief that in his church, not only would this behavior be all right, it would be mandated by God because the man thought the woman was having an affair with the other man.
I am pleased to introduce our new website for FFRF-Valley of the Sun Chapter. Start-up of our chapter was completed in August after more than a year’s preparation which included pre-launch events featuring separate visits from FFRF co-President, Dan Barker and FFRF Director of Strategic Response, Andrew Seidel. Your response at those events was enthusiastic and encouraging so we…