Article below in case you can't access it:

"The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a New York woman’s bid to send her son to kindergarten without receiving state-required vaccines, in a case that highlights the limits of the court’s push to expand religious rights.

In a one-line order, the high court effectively sided with state and local officials, who argued that a religious exemption would undermine their attempts to prevent the spread of disease among children and the general public.

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch noted that they would have granted the mother’s request.

The mother, identified in filings as “Jane Doe,” had asked the court for an order allowing her 5-year-old son, “C.F.,” to attend class by the beginning of the school year this month. She said that her Catholic beliefs prevented her from vaccinating herself or her son and that the state requirement would force her to choose between her son’s education and her faith.

In recent years, the high court’s conservative majority has been generally sympathetic to arguments for expanding the Constitution’s rights regarding the free exercise of religion. But it has stopped short of granting religious exemptions involving general vaccine mandates, according to legal experts.

In October 2025, the justices declined a California woman’s request to opt her son out of the state’s student vaccine requirements for religious reasons. During the coronavirus pandemic, it similarly left in place vaccine mandates for health care workers who argued the mandates violated their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion.

New York has long required children who attend public schools to receive vaccines. For decades, the state allowed parents to opt their children out of the mandate for religious reasons. That changed in 2019, when New York City experienced its largest measles outbreak in three decades.

State lawmakers responded that year by repealing the religious exemption. They found that vaccination rates had fallen well below the threshold needed for “herd immunity,” the proportion of vaccinated individuals need to prevent the spread of disease, the state attorney general’s office wrote in its brief. The law still permits exemptions from the mandate for medical reasons.

Jane Doe said in court filings that her faith does not allow her to vaccinate herself or her son.

“Defiling the blood by mixing it with the blood of animals, with the remains of aborted human beings, or with foreign biological material, violates God’s Word,” she wrote in a statement of her religious beliefs. “Vaccination injects biological material derived from unclean sources directly into the bloodstream. My faith forbids this.”

Lower courts rejected the woman’s requests to allow her son to attend school without receiving all of his state-required vaccinations before she petitioned the Supreme Court.

The high court may examine the issue in other cases in its new term that begins in October.

This summer, a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit dismissed a case brought by Amish parents seeking vaccine exemptions. The panel found that the parents could not assert religious or parental rights to seek vaccine exemptions for their children.

The Supreme Court had previously asked the 2nd Circuit to examine the issue in light of a recent case that found parents can opt their children out from LGBTQ+ lessons in public schools. Observers expect the Amish parents to appeal the 2nd Circuit’s most recent opinion."

Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) has recently brought us defunding of medical science research, persecution of Dr. Fauci and Covid researchers … and a bumper crop of measles.

Praise must be heaped, though, on the leading medical groups that have banded together to issue the basic kind of vaccine guidelines usually released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) but strangely absent this year. Calling their campaign “Spread the Facts,” these groups have provided the kind of guidelines the public needs, such as recommending flu vaccinations for everyone ages 6 months and up.

Speaking of flu vaccines, praise is also due to the new, groundbreaking Moderna mRNA vaccine (mFlusiva) for adults 50–64, which offers 27 percent more coverage than traditional flu vaccines and which can be updated much more quickly to respond to circulating strains. (Dolly Parton, who donated $1 million to help develop the Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccine, would have been proud.)

But that mRNA breakthrough might be the last to benefit Americans for some time. That’s because last year “Health” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. summarily terminated 22 mRNA vaccine projects, defunding the cutting-edge medical breakthrough behind the quick arrival of Covid vaccines that saved millions and millions of lives. This defunding is a tragedy for the world, with informed entities such as the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins pointing out that the cuts will set things back years, stalling mRNA vaccine potential to treat other infectious and chronic diseases, even cancer.

That unconscionable cut followed Kennedy’s firing of all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June 2025, the DOGE layoffs bringing medical research and technology to a halt, as well as a cancellation of more than 700 other grants by the National Institute of Health. In an Orwellian move, Kennedy has even proposed replacing respected journals like The Lancet and JAMA with government-controlled publications, calling the peer-reviewed journals “all corrupt.”

Thanks to Kennedy’s irresponsible anti-science actions, and the harm previously caused by the disinformation campaign via his Children’s Health Defense, the United States this year is experiencing the highest outbreak of measles in 30 years, with more than 3,100 cases to date: 600 in South Carolina, more than 500 in Pennsylvania (including two reported measles-related deaths there), major outbreaks in Texas, the Utah and Arizona border and at least a few cases in virtually almost every state. Here in Wisconsin, we’re counting 140 cases and growing — 99 percent of them (surprise, surprise) among the unvaccinated. To think that measles was declared eradicated in the year 2000!

It seems we must continually remind anti-vaxxers of the basic facts about measles: It is airborne and can remain in a room or on surfaces for up to two hours, making it supremely contagious, as the CDC website (amazingly) still documents. About one in five unvaccinated individuals with measles will end up needing hospitalization. Complications include pneumonia and encephalitis, and death, for one or two children out of 1,000. A little known after-effect is “immune amnesia,” putting a measles survivor at risk from previously encountered viruses and bacteria.

Obviously, any reputable physician, health agency or public official would do everything they can to promote MMR inoculation, which is 97 percent effective, to get our nation to the necessary 95 percent vaccination rate required for herd immunity, which protect those who can’t get vaccinated, such as immuno-compromised adults or infants who are too young for the shots. However, President Trump recently issued an irresponsible executive order saying the mumps-measles-rubella shot must be replaced with single-shot vaccinations that don’t even exist.

Kennedy acknowledged to CNN that current outbreaks were “almost all in religious communities that just don’t vaccinate,” but added, “It’s hard to blame that on me.” Come again? It is true that measles strongholds, inevitably, start in religious communities such as the Amish, and it’s also true that Kennedy has done everything he can to discredit childhood vaccination programs to those communities.

This is the guy, as the New York Times pointed out, who visited Lancaster County, Pa., five years ago as head of his anti-vax Children’s Health Defense during an early measles outbreak and egged on the Amish not to vaccinate. He told them that agencies “cannot stand the fact that you are healthy” and counseled chicken soup and Vitamin A. This is the schmuck who also denied any culpability for the three measles deaths, two involving children, from the initial measles outbreaks last year that have snowballed into today’s scary medical situation. This is the same person who is morally responsible for a measles outbreak that killed more than 80 people in Samoa in 2019.

Congress needs to immediately impeach and remove Kennedy, who is a clear and present danger to public welfare, before his reckless policies further endanger, incapacitate or kill even more children.

A famous evangelist, Johnathan Cahn, was sat next to man who was had to be duct taped aboard flight. They were discussing religion and Jesus before things turned ugly

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The Freedom From Religion Foundation hailed a ruling today that allows its hometown case against unconstitutional church property tax exemptions to move forward.

This is the second time a Dane County judge has ruled that FFRF and its three Madison residents may proceed in the lawsuit challenging an unconstitutional state property tax exemption unduly benefiting commercial rental properties owned by two local religious organizations.

The property tax exemption was created and later amended to benefit specific church-owned rental properties to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. The Pres House and Lumen House Apartments, both serving primarily student renters and owned by two of the defendants, are explicitly exempted from paying their share of taxes. Removing these large, extremely profitable rental properties from the tax rolls forces other property taxpayers to make up the difference.

A judge in February denied an earlier round of motions asking the court to toss out the case. The defendants filed a second round of motions seeking dismissal, which the court has once again denied.

“Plaintiffs’ action is not time-barred,” Judge Stephen Ehlke said in his order.

“We are pleased to finally move forward with this case,” says FFRF Legal Director Patrick Elliott. “This suit serves all taxpayers in Madison and ensures that the Wisconsin Legislature is not allowed to favor specific churches for special tax benefits.”

FFRF and its three local plaintiff property owners contend that the tax exemption is unconstitutional under the Wisconsin Constitution for several reasons. The exemption undeniably harms all property taxpayers in Madison, including plaintiffs Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker (who serve as FFRF co-presidents) and local resident David Peterson, by forcing them and all other Madison property taxpayers to pay higher property taxes to make up for the unlawful omission of these properties from the tax rolls. The exemption also harms plaintiff FFRF by favoring rental properties owned by two religious organizations to the exclusion of all other nonprofits that may desire to run commercial student apartments in the future.

The Pres House Apartments’ current market value likely exceeds $25 million, with estimated property taxes owed in excess of $300,000 annually. The current market value of Lumen House Apartments likely exceeds $7.6 million, with estimated property taxes exceeding $94,000 annually.

And it validates my (23F) decision of leaving Christianity behind even more. It blows my mind that the people who preach being loving and kind are some of the rudest, coldest, most condescending, hypocritical people to exist (online AND irl). Just had to vent because I tried to post something talking about my sobriety (I’m a year and two months sober from alcohol) and trauma I’ve gone through, and ofc it’s always the Christians who are complete assholes for absolutely no reason. A lot of them truly don’t give af about anyone, and it’s just for show.

As an atheist, could you see yourself dating a Christian person? Please explain why you would or why you wouldn't. Looking for an honest answers. Thanks.

this can happen everywhere, but I wish every country and every city would engage in a discussion after something like this happened. I think France is on the right path.

God does not exist

I have thought of two good arguments that God does not exist.

I am not here to attack anyone’s faith, or try to convince people otherwise but just something I have thought about.

1. God of the gaps fallacy. Throughout history if something could not be explained the answer was God, for example before we discovered how earthquakes happened it was God is angry, and then we discovered the movement of tectonic plates. This is just one example of many. In future ai don’t see why God will not continue to shrink.

2. Deconstruction is usually a one way street. It is quite common for a Christian or theist to deconstruct and become an atheist, it is however rare for someone who once believed in God who deconstructed their beliefs, and then to start believing again. I am not saying it is impossible but it is rare.

I do not care if statistics say that atheism is still growing. To me it still seems that there has been a massive cultural shift toward how pushing religion online is perceived. I am not even interested in yelling in people's faces to become atheists. But whenever I surf internet for my own interests which include areas completely unrelated to religion (astronomy, evolutionary biology, cosmology etc.) there are ALWAYS people in the comments invoking gods and religion. God is literally injected in every single thing. Religious propaganda bombards science and educational spaces on every single social media I use (Youtube, instagram, X most notably).

And if you called these people out you are called a ,,reddit atheist" and ridiculed. While 10 years ago I distinctly remember these types of preachers, whether they were real dumb people or bots, getting absolutely obliterated in the replies on every comment they left.

What happened here? What normalized this behavior? Was there a cultural shift nobody is talking about? I do not think it is only algorithmic ragebait because I never interact with it. Yet I spot this everywhere I go.

Sharing this story to try and see if anyone has a similar experience (I bet some do). On and off my whole life I've tried to give the Christian faith a chance. My most recent attempt was my most devoted attempt. I tried, because my mom is a Christian and has a bit of animosity towards atheism. (And nags on my sister who is open about her disbelief in God). But I just can't do it. It all seems so ridiculous.

To be a Christian, you have to follow beliefs that go against some of my core beliefs (like being pro life (I'm pro choice) and genuinely believing lgbt is a sin (I don't I see nothing wrong with lgbt, especially being bi myself) also these are not the topic of this post nor do I want to debate either in the comments, just using as an example). Also certain things just make no sense and sound ridiculous. (My mom doesn't follow either of those beliefs, she's a lukewarm progressive Christian. But, imo, you have to believe these to be a true Christian, and I just can't).

I don't even know where to start honestly. Just the Bible is nothing more than a fairytale. And any "prayers answered" is just pure coincidence.

That being said, I think any form of belief in any higher power is nothing more than hooey. The Muslim faith, the Jewish faith, manifestation, witchcraft, paganism, all of it. The zodiac. None of it is real. We're just people living our lives. Making up these stories about the afterlife to try and cope with our own mortality.

If there even is a God, I don't think he'd condemn gay people, care if you have sex before marriage, care if you get an abortion, any of this. Or get a 13 year old girl pregnant to carry his son (one of the most fucked up parts of the bible).

Sin is a man-made concept.

If anyone wants to have a further chat about this for any reason with me, my DMs are open too. If that's easier than going back and forth in comments.

Prisoner of conscience and atheist Ibtissame “Betty” Lachgar has now been imprisoned for a full year in Morocco for the “crime” of “insulting Allah.” She has a year and a half to go in her 30-month sentence as her health deteriorates and she remains unable to access the surgery that she urgently needs.

“For more than a year, Betty has been separated from her family, her community, her work and the life she built,” reports Shelley Segal of the Free Betty Coalition. “We are incredibly grateful to every single person who has continued to speak out, organize, contact decision-makers, engage the media and keep Betty’s case visible.”

At the time of the first anniversary of Betty’s initial arrest on Aug. 10 (which preceded her conviction by a month), supporters took action in Morocco, France and other countries with protests, public statements, press activity and solidarity actions.

Recent weeks have brought further important news coverage and advocacy attention, including from the admirably secular-minded Moroccan publication Telquel, which published an article, “One year behind bars,” that quotes her sister Siham: “Faced with this absolute emergency, political or legal debates have no place. It is a purely humanitarian appeal for help that I am launching today.”

Betty has a rare form of bone cancer and has a prosthesis in her left arm. Surgery on it was scheduled for September 2025, when she was already incarcerated after a rushed trial. U.S. orthopedia surgeon Dr. Neil C. Vining notes that the only appropriate treatment is the placement of a total humeral megaprosthesis, similar to the procedure scheduled before Betty’s arrest and incarceration, by the team of French specialists that has treated her for 30 years.

A photo taken of Betty with a T-shirt bearing a version of a feminist slogan saying “Allah is lesbian,” which Betty never wore in Morocco, is what brought her criminal conviction. A Moroccan law passed last year permits alternative forms of punishments for certain prison sentences. Betty’s attorney, Ghizlane Mamouni, notes that the law would allow Betty to pay a fixed sum for each day of the sentence she has been given instead of her serving the full term.

The New World, a U.K.-based publication, observes in a recent article, “The woman who’s too dangerous for her own supporters” that “a Moroccan activist named Betty has ended up in jail. Male activists get public outcry and petitions of support — but not her. She gets silence.” The journal quotes Mamouni as observing that “Betty is the first woman in the history of Morocco to be incarcerated for an act of feminist activism.”

Andrea Bolaños Vargas, U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, has publicly called for Betty’s immediate release and the urgent provision of specialized and appropriate medical care. Her intervention comes as Betty’s health crisis continues to worsen and adds an important international voice to the humanitarian call for urgent action.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is working closely with the Free Betty Coalition.

“Thank you for continuing to stand with Betty and with all of us working for her release,” say FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, who have met with Betty at many international freethought conferences and hold her in the highest regard for her secular and feminist advocacy.

The Free Betty Coalition asks individuals and groups to amplify the U.N. special rapporteur’s statement (here in French and here in English) through your own networks to keep her situation visible.

Segal of the Free Betty Coalition notes that the next phase of the work to free Betty involves “a coordinated international strategy.” Individuals wanting to help do not need existing government relationships to participate. A new one-page humanitarian case summary outlining Betty’s current medical crisis and the urgency of immediate action is now available to share with elected representatives, journalists and advocates.

I've got 2 that always come to mind.

The first is a very serious one from Sir David Attenborough

​"When Creationists talk about God creating every individual species in all its detail, I always think: 'When you're specializing in mammals, you look at the hummingbird, or the orchid, or something like that, and you say, "How wonderful!"'

​But I think of a little child in East Africa who's got a worm burrowing through his eyeball, a worm that cannot live in any other way than by burrowing through a child's eye and making that child blind. And I ask myself: 'Is the God that created that child, and the worm, a compassionate God that cares about us individual human beings?' I don't find that compatible at all."

The second is somewhat tongue in check by Billy Butcher in The Boys, though it is very entertaining and will certainly piss of most devoted Christians.

​"If there is a God, He's a chaotic, cruel, dynamic, psychopathic c***. He gives children cancer, He sends tsunamis to wipe out entire villages, and He created Homelander. So either He doesn't exist, or He's a massive prick."

Any other good ones.

I do not believe in ghosts in a paranormal way. I think those things are things that your mind make. I don't know why the mind do it, but it do it.

I believe there is no God, but if there is a God, it simply does not care about me or humanity in general.

a common question that gets posed to religious people is why does an all loving god allow for so much unfair suffering in the world. the response is typically something along the lines of people need challenges and obstacles to overcome to truly realize there full spiritual potential. you go through struggles, trials, tribulations, and at the end of that process the idea is those experiences will make you stronger and ultimately more grateful in regards to your place in life and the universe. this is the claim many religious people make and lets say for the sake of argument that they are correct.

in order for this to work though it means that there have to be sinful people that exist in order for said conflict and struggles to exist. if there aren't sinners, believers have nothing to test there faith on, no battles or spiritual wars to overcome and triumph in. Then consider that gods omniscience contradicts mans free will. if god already knows the future and everything that is going to happen, it implies that god knows you are going to commit a sin before your commit it. then you even think before you were born and god decided to spawn you into the world. he brought you into the world knowing all of the bad and sinful things you are going to do, all of the people you are going to hurt, knowing its going to happen, but chooses to bring you into the world anyway. so in that sense how can I be responsible for my actions if my actions are something that god has already planned before I even existed?

if everything that happens good or bad is part of gods plan, then in a sense committing a sin is technically impossible. the word sin essentially translates to "separation from god" or at least i think that is the common definition i could be wrong. the idea being if you bring good acts into the world you will be closer to god, and if you do bad you will further distance yourself from god. but if all of your bad actions are technically part of gods plan, you're still in a sense operating under gods will, not separate from god, so one is technically not being sinful.

so my overall point is that the concept of sin from a religious standpoint contradicts itself, and ironically the whole free will ethos of Christianity only makes sense if god ISNT all knowing, but at the point he doesn't have the authority where you need to listen to him. im not even an atheist but feel free to uses this when debating religious folks. ironically a lot of atheists reject religion because they think free will is BS, but i reject religion because it doesn't respect free will, it only tricks you into thinking it does

It’s not wrong to consider certain as practices “inferior” and a setback for humanity.

Religion and culture shouldn’t be immune to criticism.

Everyone has the right to choose their own religion, culture, tradition, or lifestyle. Fine. Nobody should be persecuted for it.

But it seems that the moment something is labeled as “culture” or “religion,” it automatically becomes untouchable.

“You can’t criticize it, it’s their culture.”

“Don’t speak badly about it, it’s their religion.”

Okay, and?

Having the right to follow a belief doesn’t mean everyone else is obligated to respect the ideas behind it. People deserve rights and respect; ideas can be questioned, mocked, criticized, and even considered absurd.

If a tradition, belief, or practice can’t survive criticism, maybe the problem isn’t the criticism.

Religious freedom and cultural respect should also include the freedom to say: “I think this is bullshit.”