Tim Minchin: WoodyAllenJesus

by Tim Minchin

This song was meant to air on the Jonathan Ross Show tomorrow night (23rd December 2011), but at the last minute ITV cut it. Here's my whiney blog about it.

(Thanks Gordon)

Channel 4 - Can Atheists Enjoy Christmas?

From 4Thought.tv:

Christmas is one of the most important dates in the Christian calendar but what does it mean to non-believers? In the week before Christmas seven atheists spell out their views.
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(Thanks Dharmender)

The intolerance of diversity

by Pat Condell

Fischer: God Sent Christopher Hitchens to Hell Because He Loved Him

Bryan Fischer says that God sent Christopher Hitchens to Hell as a demonstration of his true love for him.

To XMAS And Beyond!

by The Thinking Atheist

Christopher Hitchens - The Best of the Hitchslap

Christopher Hitchens Dies at 62

December 16, 2011 on ABC News:

Christopher Hitchens, the maverick essayist, unabashed atheist and cable television gladiator whose long list of targets included Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and even Mother Teresa and organized religion, has died of complications from pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer. He was 62.

Hitchens died Thursday at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, according to a statement released by Vanity Fair late Thursday night.

"There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar," Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter said in the statement. "Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

Born in Britain April 13, 1949, and educated at Oxford, Hitchens authored more than a dozen books. He achieved his greatest notoriety with the 2007 best-seller "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," in which he dismissed faith as wish fulfillment and religion as "the main source of hatred in the world."

With its publication, Hitchens became the public face of atheism. Critics assumed his cancer diagnosis, in 2010, would lead Hitchens to relent and embrace God. But he remained a proud non-believer to the very end, as he made clear in an early October 2011 speech at the annual Atheist Alliance of America convention in Houston, as he accepted the Freethinker of the Year Award.
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See also:
In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens - Vanity Fair
Christopher Hitchens Remembered - Slate
'A great voice falls silent': Christopher Hitchens tributes pour in on Twitter
Christopher Hitchens' Amazon page

Saudi Woman Beheaded for 'Sorcery'

December 13, 2011 on CNN

Jailed Afghan rape victim freed but 'to marry attacker'

Video embedding disabled by uploader, watch on Youtube
From BBC News:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned a rape victim who was jailed for adultery, after she apparently agreed to marry her attacker.

A government statement said she agreed to the marriage, although her lawyer said she did not wish to marry him.

Senior Afghan officials told the BBC the government put no preconditions on her release.

"President Karzai tasked the minister of justice to go and talk to Gulnaz to see what she wants. During her meeting with the minister, she said she will marry the attacker only if her brother marries the attacker's sister," Emal Faizay, a spokesman for President Karzai, told the BBC.
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Fox News: Outrage Over Rhode Island's 'Holiday Tree'

December 1, 2011 on Fox & Friends

Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberley Academy

(via RichardDawkins.net)