Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Background Context On 2nd Dec Mr Garvin wrote an article within the Roanoke Star entitled – Atheism and Adolescent Rebellion in which he writes that “the proper application of modern science persuaded me that my atheism was a nonintellectual exercise in self-deception“ On 4th Dec I replied with a long rebuttal on my blog that analysed the … Read more
Did you by any chance know that today, the 25th of December, is supposed to be the day that a god was born? It is all associated with a time when specific things happen … People exchanging gifts People attending a religious ritual, then later indulging in feasting and drinking. People decorating their houses with … Read more
A war on what? The first observation to make is that the celebration of Christmas as we now experience it is very much an invention of the victorian era, and historically it was Easter that had far more significance to Christians. Much may in fact has been prompted by Charles Dickens writing A Christmas Carol in which he constructs Christmas as … Read more
Blasphemy laws are meaningless bits of legal nonsense that do nothing except empower a specific religious faction to oppress and stifle almost anything that they decide they are offended about, and that “offence” is never actually defined but is usually sufficiently vague enough to be applied to whatever a random cleric thinks it needs to … Read more
There has been a “10 ‘Non-Commandments’ Contest,” in which people were asked to offer modern and far better alternatives to the famous 10, and the prize on offer for the winner was $10,000. Who is doing this? Lex Bayer, an executive at AirBnB, and John Figdor, a humanist chaplain at Stanford University Why? The cynical might simply make … Read more
You would think that outside of ISIS themselves, anybody openly criticising ISIS would be commended and supported, even within the Islamic world. Alas, apparently not. The New York Times reports … The chief editor of a prominent Indonesian newspaper, the English-language Jakarta Post, has been summoned for questioning by the police for publishing a cartoon that … Read more