Recently I had the honor of interviewing my favorite atheist blogger, retired Marriage and Family Counselor and addiction medicine specialist Richard Wade who writes the “Ask Richard” column at Friendly Atheist. In his column, which was inaugurated two years ago this upcoming Sunday, Richard wisely advises atheists and religious people who seek his help in [...]
Your Thoughts?
Sila Sahin’s appearance in the German version of Playboy has symbolic connotations: the 25-year-old Sahin, who plays Ayala in the RTL German soap opera Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten (Good Times, Bad Times), managed to link her public exposure to the debate over a central sociopolitical issue: that young Muslim — in this case, Turkish — women [...]
SUPERB: 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) — [...]
Johann Hari goes into detail about how bad it is: Here’s a few portents from the East End that we have chosen to ignore. In May 2008, a 15 year old Muslim girl tells her teacher she thinks she might be gay, and the Muslim teacher in a state-funded comprehensive tells her “there are no [...]
This is one of the most concise, eloquent, and accurate statements on the problem with religious absolutism in morality and the superiority of secular, non-absolutist approaches to morality I have ever heard. And it is certainly Dawkins’s best 2 and a half minutes on the topic of morality I have ever heard: Thanks to Lucy. [...]
I always tell my students as they start studying philosophy that it is crucial that they not associate their ideas too closely with themselves. They need to get used to not taking criticism of their ideas personally. I warn them that if they cannot disassociate from their ideas when they fail, they will never be [...]
Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s show ash-Shariah wal-Hayat has an audience of 40 million. He is the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, is a trustee of Oxford University, and is considered a leading Muslim Brotherhood intellectual. He returned to Egypt from exile after the fall of Hosni Mubarak and led Friday prayers on February 18. [...]
Last summer there was a cheesy ad for the latest Exorcist film, and the tagline epitomized and exploited a key twist of twisted religious logic. The film’s tagline was “If you believe in God, you have to believe in the devil.” What’s the idea behind this?
Anderson Cooper interviews Montana State Representative Bob Wagner who refuses to admit that he knows either that President Obama was born in America or even that being born in America makes someone a citizen: Stupefyingly, Representative Wagner is representative of more than 50% of likely Republican primary voters: Birthers make a majority among those voters [...]
Of course I disagree, but I’m sure glad he thinks so and hope more Muslims do too. Your Thoughts?
The usual outrageous outrage: A Muslim mob burned churches and clashed with police in Indonesia on Tuesday as they demanded the death penalty for a Christian man convicted of blaspheming against Islam, police said. Two days after a Muslim lynch mob killed three members of a minority Islamic sect, crowds of furious Muslims set two [...]
Nathan Brown is a political science professor at George Washington University and director of the school’s Institute for Middle East Studies. He gives an overview of the Muslim Brotherhood’s evolution from their found through to today, explains how their renunciation of violent means came to pass decades ago, why al-Qaeda sees them as sell outs, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> Video Archive Your Thoughts>?
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 [...]
Gary Bauer makes the ludicrous case that left wing “elites” and Muslims have a common cause of destroying Judeo-Christian culture and so have conspired together to make America more hospitable to Muslims than to Christians: If Muslims were treated like Christians, Muslims would be mocked by late night TV talk show hosts and lampooned in [...]
Gary Bauer thinks Christians aren’t treated as well as Muslims in America because there are greater quantities of art works which use Christian symbols in ways that offend Bauer’s sensibilities than there are ones that use Muslim symbols in ways that would offend Muslim sensibilities: in a variety of contexts, American Muslims are treated better [...]
Glenn Greenwald offers a mirror for those of us who worry about the elements of theocratic expansionism which are enough a part of the Koran and early Islamic history to be considered potentially dangerous forms of the religion itself on its own terms (and not just of its appropriation by political agents): I’m always amazed [...]
5 of the best minutes of discussion on this topic anywhere on the internet: Your Thoughts?
The depth of the conspiracy is so chilling: Your Thoughts?
Noting the shadiness and creepiness of public remarks by Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the plan to build a mosque blocks away from the former site of the Twin Towers, Christopher Hitchens is nonetheless repulsed by the tactics adopted by his opposition. Starting with Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, he writes: [...]
In a nutshell, the question is, what proof is there that there is one god and not multiple? Your Thoughts?