Show some creationist sarcasm with these cool Teach the Controversy T-Shirts by graphic designer Jeremy Kalgreen.

And my personal favorite…

Which one is your favorite?

Yes, they can.  But what happens when they do, can be to the detriment of secular societies.

The Vatican and Muslim leaders can get together but they do so to: “act together in defending and promoting the moral values which are part of our common heritage.”  and Proposition 8 passing is such an example of such promotion of moral values.

As well as pushing for censorship over free speech in the Danish Cartoon controversy:

“The Al-Azhar-Vatican committee issued a final communique… Members of the committee called on the media not to misuse the freedom of expression to insult religious beliefs and symbols, MENA said.”

It’s always nice to see people get together, except when their idea of the world isn’t good for you.

Although, I don’t track these things very objectively there seemed to be a more ‘atheist’ news this Holiday season. Last year, all I could remember was the ‘War on Christmas‘.

But there were some newsie notable events that happened this time of year.  Such as:

Washington State’s acceptence of an Atheist sign next to a nativity scene on state capitol grounds.

 A new ad campgin to put atheist advertisements on busses.

And I saw CNN cover a “Humanist Holiday” called HumanLight on Christmas Day. (Yes, perhaps rather corny but it’s nice to see this stuff on the news.)

Daniel Dennett has an interesting proposal.  Teach religion in schools, in a fact based way.  Similar to how other topics like math and history are taught.

“No religion should be favored, and none ignored… This should all be part of the mandated curriculum for both public schools and for home-schooling.  

As long as parents don’t teach their children anything that is likely to close their minds — through fear or hatred or by disabling them from inquiry (by denying them an education, for instance, or keeping them entirely isolated from the world) then they may teach their children whatever religious doctrines they like.”

It’s a decent callenge to parents who wish to indoctrinate their children with a specific religious viewpoint.  If their religion is so good, let it be opened up to compition. Some religious groups and parents are already opposed to such classes.

One could say that the religious are gullible or easily influenced with regards to their ‘faith’.  But we all can be hoodwinked or negatively influenced.

A book that’s on my reading list is the Annals of Gullibility: Why we are duped and how to avoid it.  Written by Stephen Greenspan who himself was duped in the Madoff Scandal.

You can listen to Stephen talk about the book on the NPR Science Friday Podcast.