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Category Archives: Separation of Church and State
Support Rock Beyond Belief
April 12, 2011 – 9:10 amAn important message from an atheist who wants equal treatment in the military: Your Thoughts?
On The Conflict Over The Meaning And Cultural Influence of Political Secularism
March 22, 2011 – 11:00 amIn this post I just want to jot down some thoughts about a knotty issue. I probably will not make much progress in untangling all its strands but hopefully will stimulate a discussion that straightens things out at least a bit. Is political secularism inherently neutral or antagonistic to religiosity? There are a couple of [...]
Bigoted Americans
March 5, 2011 – 10:23 amThis 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) — [...]
Why Atheists Should Not Give Up Challenging Theism And Theists
February 25, 2011 – 11:08 pmGreenGeekGirl advises the atheist community (and she has a nice defense of the existence of an atheist community against those who do not believe one exists) that we should no longer bother arguing with theists, since this is supposedly futile, but should rather accept we have it pretty good in America and focus on protecting [...]
How Would Apostates, Adulterers, And Thieves Fare In A Democratic Egypt?
February 18, 2011 – 10:04 pmRazib 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 [...]
Just How Much Control Over Their Children’s Thought Are Parents Entitled To?
January 31, 2011 – 10:39 amIn 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 [...]
Daily Hilarity: Bill Maher On The Founding Fathers Vs. The Tea Party
January 15, 2011 – 11:19 amYour Thoughts?
Who Cares About Atheists?
January 5, 2011 – 5:00 pmThere are a lot of anti-atheistic responses to us that get indignant that we try to organize, have community, and make ourselves known as a public presence. A lot of people reflexively and unfairly respond to all of this by feeling it as inherently threatening and inherently rude and intolerant. The most upsetting part of [...]
Against Accommodationism: Religion Has NO Rightful Claim To An Unencroachable “Magisterium” Of Its Own
January 5, 2011 – 6:00 amChris Mooney is an accommodationist. In the conflict between science and faith, he is the sort of atheistic science defender who wants to minimize all appearance (and existence) of conflict between religious and scientific ideas because he thinks that vital public policy on matters like climate change hinges on scientists’ abilities to garner trust, cooperation, [...]
How Christian Beliefs And Values Are No More Creditable With America’s Founding Than Islamic Ones
December 29, 2010 – 7:15 pmGary Bauer displays a hilarious sense of grievance in his article “If Christians Were Treated Like Muslims”. I want to take a few posts to fully dissect all of its self-absorbed, phony, distorted victimhood. The first three sentences merited a full post themselves, so here we go. Bauer starts out with the following falsehood: Few [...]
Roman Catholic Adoption Agency In Britain Not Allowed To Refuse To Place Kids With Gays
August 22, 2010 – 4:17 pmGreat news: LONDON (RNS) A Roman Catholic adoption agency has lost its fight for the right to continue its policy of refusing to place children with same-sex couples based on religious principles. The agency, Catholic Care, saw its battle to limit its adoption services to heterosexual-only parents collapse in a ruling Thursday (August 19) by [...]
Richard Dawkins: “Faith School Menace?”
August 22, 2010 – 2:33 pmJerry Coyne relays this truly eye-opening new documentary from Richard Dawkins which aired in the UK last week: Here’s a link (thanks to Johann Hari) for donating to the cause of abolishing state funding of faith schools in the UK. Your Thoughts?
True Religion?
August 17, 2010 – 8:46 pmMany a religious person defending her own religious beliefs will argue that a given politically, morally, or intellectually unflattering interpretation of her faith is simply not a true representation of her faith. While the question of who has the right or the adequate means to decisively determine with any rational clarity which competing interpretation of any [...]
Hitchens On Crass Responses To The Proposed Ground Zero Islamic Center
August 12, 2010 – 9:49 amNoting 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: [...]
Dying British Church Prone To Whining
August 11, 2010 – 12:05 amJohann Hari does a little pre-mortem dancing on the foreseeable grave of British Christianity: And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. Britain is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of [...]
ProfMTH Pwns William Lane Craig Over Ignorant Demand For “Strict Constructionism”
July 14, 2010 – 10:42 pmYour Thoughts?
Sundaily Hilarity: Permission Slip
July 11, 2010 – 12:10 pmI have been hearing numerous appalling stories of late of public school districts incorporating field trips to churches into their activities. On Facebook, in reply to my friend Jessica’s anxiety about what to do about a proposed trip for her own son, another friend, Glynis pointed to an e-mail exchange presenting one approach for dealing [...]
The Latitude Offered For Claims Of Religious Exemptions To Laws On A State By State Basis
July 10, 2010 – 12:49 amWhat 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?
The Treaty Of Tripoli
July 4, 2010 – 9:45 pmArticle 11: Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [...]
George Washington’s Letter To Touro Synagogue
July 4, 2010 – 7:04 pmThe first president of our secular republic writes: To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Rhode Island. Gentlemen, While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in [...]
Bursting The Chains Of Monkish Ignorance And Superstition
July 4, 2010 – 2:46 pmI should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them [...]
A Dictatorship Of Relativism?
July 3, 2010 – 9:20 pmBBC Radio 4 analyzes the pope’s catchphrase, “a dictatorship of relativism”, used for describing the secular West. Here’s the program description: The idea that no one has a monopoly on the truth seems to be fixed in the modern Western psyche. But it’s an idea that is under attack. Pope Benedict claims that we are [...]
If Atheists Acted Like Politically Conservative Christians
July 1, 2010 – 9:22 amSo well done: Your Thoughts?
New Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard Affirms Her Non-Belief, Will Not Patronize Believers
June 29, 2010 – 1:31 pmI love what she has to say and do not know why anyone, religious or irreligious, would prefer a faith panderer to this, even if the faithful politician was at least somewhat sincere: She says does not go through religious rituals for the sake of appearance. “I am not going to pretend a faith I [...]
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