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) — [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Atheists do not exactly claim to “love sinners but hate sins” (if for no other reason than that most, if not all, of us reject the category of “sin” as a meaningful or valuable way to talk about ethical failure). Also, atheists may be more realistic than to think that we really do, or feasibly [...]
Is it always excessive force to taser someone who is not posing a serious physical risk to others? Your Thoughts?
In reply to yesterday’s open philosophical question whether a Swedish law banning any school, even private ones, from indoctrinating students by teaching their religious tenets as truths (with the ulterior motive of undermining Islamic schools’ abilities to radicalize their students), Mary Young makes a rigorous and eloquent case against such bans well worth highlighting (and [...]
Sweden is planning to make it illegal, even for private schools, to teach religious doctrines as true. Their content may be discussed, of course, but they will not be able to be presented as facts. In The Guardian, Andrew Brown explains the issues involved and the ulterior motives which may really explain the legislation: The [...]
Last week a heinous, conscience-shocking injustice occurred when the brave, openly gay, Ugandan gay rights campaigner David Kato (pictured above) was murdered shortly after a Ugandan newspaper featured him on the cover with the headline: “100 PIctures of Uganda’s Top Homos Leak” and the words “Hang Them” next to it. The AP photo of the newspaper [...]
A good day for freedom of speech as the censorious FCC loses its case trying to levy a fine for a naked butt on NYPD Blue: NEW YORK – The Federal Communications Commission cannot fine broadcasters for showing a woman’s nude buttocks on a 2003 episode of “NYPD Blue,” a federal court ruled Tuesday, citing [...]
Enraging news: Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — The governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province was assassinated by his own security guard Tuesday, according to Interior Minister Rehman Malik, apparently because he spoke out against the country’s controversial blasphemy law. The security guard was arrested, Malik said. The shooting occurred at Islamabad’s Kohsar Market, which is frequented by [...]
Your Thoughts?
EuroNews.net writes: A law banning the wearing of a full Islamic veil in public in France has been adopted by the lower house of parliament. The ruling UMP and the New Centre party voted for the ban on the burqa or niqab while the Socialists, Communists and Greens abstained. The law goes to the upper house in [...]
The LA Atheism Examiner reports: Two art curators, Yuri Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeyev, were convicted Monday by a Moscow court of “inciting religious hatred’ for putting on an exhibet called “Forbidden Art” in 2007. A Mickey Mouse Jesus, a Coca Cola Christ with the slogan “this is my blood” and a Christ on the cross [...]
A great interview with Ralph Nader: Napolitano’s new book, in which he discusses all these issues, is Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History. Thanks to Aram for the link. Your Thoughts?
What do the distinctions in the map mean in specific legal terms? This post runs down the history and present kinds of religious exemptions in American law. (The map comes from the same blog, The Volokh Conspiracy) Your Thoughts?
Unspeakably sad and outraging: A search for a missing pro-gay priest, the Rev Henry Kayizzi Nsubuga, who disappeared almost two and half weeks ago after delivering a scathing speech at St. Paul’s Church, Kanyanya supporting homosexuality in Uganda, led the joint search team of Integrity Uganda and Namirembe Diocese to the severed head of another [...]
Anderson Cooper reports: Your Thoughts?
I already highlighted Penn Jillette’s Vanity Fair interview in which he praised Christians for being better at taking criticism than Muslims, but this quote from his new Las Vegas Weekly interview, which I found via Boing Boing and Reddit, conveys his feelings as much as his thoughts, and those feelings are both depressing on the one [...]
Zack Ford explains: Here’s a brief recap of the situation: The University of California has a nondiscrimination policy. If you want to be recognized as a student group (i.e. use the university’s name, access funding for student groups, reserve campus spaces, etc.), you must abide by the nondiscrimination policy. The Christian Legal Society at Hastings [...]
Recently, United States bishops petitioned Congress to not protect gays from being fired for their sexual orientation. Andrew Sullivan already precisely attacked the bishops’ immoral political calculation by which they explicitly committed themselves to a perverse moral contradiction whereby they simultaneously concede that homosexuality is to a significant extent not a choice and argue that [...]
Because no legal or moral principles matter more to some fundamentalists than their drive to evangelize: “Every day, 55 million American children and their teachers show up for school. For the nearly 90% who attend a public school, the ACLU and other anti-Christian organizations have systematically stripped almost every vestige of Christianity from their schools. [...]
Johann Hari makes the argument that we have the right to stand up for the rights of those in other cultures without fear that we are not “multicultural” enough: Should you shut up about human rights abuses because they are happening far away, to people you don’t know, who have a different culture or colour [...]
(Image: “God Is Great” by Makan Emadi) Betwa Shermer has a really interesting piece about Muslim artists in America who incorporate nudes into their art. Defenses of nudity in art as permissible by Islamic standards: The Lebanese-born artist, who now lives in New York, insists that the taboo stems from a conservative society and not [...]