I do not think that the Bible or any other sectarian text should be the basis of one’s views on separation of church and state. Such views should be formed from a position of neutrality about all religious or anti-religious sources of authority and simply be grounded in fairness to each individual’s conscience. But for [...]
Ed Schultz summarizes: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Your Thoughts?
The students at Wesleyan College want to be treated respectfully and as adults and to have the government respect and support organizations like Planned Parenthood which help them manage their sexual activity safely and responsibly: Their Facebook page. via Your Thoughts?
Below is some of Michael Moore’s documentary footage which he cut from Sicko. He explores Norway’s exceedingly high standard of living and the values which produce it. Along the way he talks to Hynrik Syse, the philosopher who the government hired to manage the nation’s oil profits so that they would be used in the wisest [...]
Here’s some perspective: via Andrew Sullivan Your Thoughts?
This is some powerfully hateful hypocritical harassment and stupidity right here. It creeps me out to see the American flag, which I love in a deep way, look like a fascist symbol in these nativistic, jingoistic, authoritarian, theocratically Christian Americans’ hands: The YouTube description sums up the context of the above: (ANAHEIM, CA, 3/2/11) — [...]
A new blog with a promising premise: I’ve created this blog as a forum for academic philosophers who are attracted both to libertarianism and to ideals of social or distributive justice. Labels are often a greater source of confusion than insight in academic discourse, and no doubt most of the contributors to this blog will [...]
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy An earlier report on the heartbreaking consequences of the Westboro Baptist Church’s recklessly malicious, yet clearly Constitutional, free speech: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy No atheist in the world does—or ever could do—as much to damage [...]
Jean Kazez argues that the public square is not the place for atheists to be arguing that science and religion are incompatible. I strongly reject her position on this point because not only do I believe that ordinary people are quite capable of handling a vigorous, no-holds-barred debate about religion but because I believe the [...]
This looks like a profound and moving film: Your Thoughts?
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Thanks to The Radula for calling attention to this. If only more people on the right would be as unequivocal in saying their movement should have no place for an ideological leader who is a complete and total conspiracy theorist nutcase. Your Thoughts?
The one fair and balanced guy on FOX News speaks up again: Your Thoughts?
Get ready for the deceptive meme to come flying your way that the Obama administration is abnegating its responsibilities to enforce law by not enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act. The administration will continue to enforce the unconscionable law, it will only not defend it from legal challenges in court. Others, starting with the House [...]
Today’s ‘Nuff Said Award comes not from a Camels With Hammers commenter but a Huffington Post one named Holden Mirror: Between union busting and uterus busting, are you Baggers ever going to do any work on jobs? ‘Nuff Said. Your Thoughts?
And Louis CK takes him the opportunity to ask him if he is a lizard from outer space who eats human flesh. A strange interview: Your Thoughts?
The Onion reports on the blunder: WASHINGTON—At a press conference Monday, visibly embarrassed leaders of the Republican National Committee acknowledged that their nonstop, effusive praise of Ronald Reagan has been wholly unintentional, admitting they somehow managed to confuse him with Dwight D. Eisenhower for years. The GOP’s humiliating blunder was discovered last weekend by RNC [...]
Andrew Sullivan points out and documents that even though Governor Scott Walker campaigned on the promise to cut public sector salaries, as he claims, and has an arguable democratic mandate therefore to propose some of the cuts he has (and which unions have conceded to), he did not during the campaign advocate ending unions’ collective [...]
In an e-mail to me, Caroline proposes thought provoking reasons for non-believers to encourage (or at least to not actively discourage) religious beliefs: It would also be nice if people would carry out actions in good conscience of just being decent human beings rather than in fear of reprisal in the afterlife, but as there [...]
Apparently in France the legal concept of defamation treats attacks on honor as a form of assault. Karin N. Calvo-Goller, an Israeli author, is taking a German book reviewer to court in France over a four paragraph long negative review on Global Law Books, a New York Web site associated with The European Journal of [...]
Last Christmas Eve, I argued that the belief that God “guided evolution” was not a rationally respectable way to reconcile science with faith but rather it was essentially an effective denial of the theory of natural selection, in its scientifically explanatory sense. Part of the revolutionary character of the discovery of evolution by natural selection [...]
Is it possible to both be appalled at what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin where there was no budget crisis before he introduced tax breaks the state could not afford earlier this year and yet still be sympathetic to Chris Christie’s gutsy approach to achieving fiscal solvency in a state otherwise headed for an [...]
Razib Kahn has a most disturbing chart: Kahn explains the above: On the x-axis you see the proportion who accept that adulterers should be stoned. On the y-axis you see the responses to amputation and apostasy. The red points are the proportion who agree with the death penalty for apostates, and the navy points those [...]
From an Esquire interview online now: SR: Like many nice Caucasians, I cried the night Barack Obama was elected. It was one of the high points in American history. And all that’s happened since the election is just a shitstorm of hatred. You want to weigh in on that? CR: I actually like it, in [...]