International Blasphemy Rights Day is this Wednesday, 30 September.
Trump’s “Top 250 Victories for People of Faith” collapse under scrutiny.
Oklahoma must allow taxpayer-funded religious charter school, judge rules.
Spain: Atheists now outnumber practicing Catholics, but the culturally Catholic label will persist considerably longer than Catholicism as a lived worldview.
Iran: 4 years after Mahsa Amini, women continue openly defying compulsory hijab rules. Freedom of religion by default means freedom from compulsory religious observance. If not, then it is merely freedom for whichever religion controls the State.
Nigeria: campaign grows over Samalia Bala, accused of witchcraft.
New Zealand secularists are now running a Cult Leavers Support Group. Nice work!
Humanists tell the UN that human rights derive from the equal dignity of individuals, not from revelation or membership of a religious group, and school systems that segregate children according to parental religion are incompatible with genuinely common human-rights education. Good point!
Liars for Jesus: Your faith is their business.
World of Woo: Grief Vampires.
Environment: What’s the better bargain, protecting a rainforest or regrowing it?
Kennedy wallows in misinformation as he reneges on his vow to Congress at his confirmation hearings not to cause upheaval in vaccine policy. President Trump also has another terrible idea about vaccines.
New Hampshire is America’s most atheist State, and its experience challenges the assumption that a population must become predominantly atheist before it can support a secular government.
Christian school board member melts down over class trip to “Satanic” Salem Witch Museum.
The past is not a defendant. Criticizing earlier cultures is lazy and useless, we should learn from them instead.
New evidence from the depths of the Red Sea supports the oxidation of manganese and iron as an engine for life in the earliest oceans.
With AI, are we only arguing about the future intentions of systems whose present-day understanding and agency we haven’t yet satisfactorily defined?
Imagine having 8 arms but no fingers to type with? I suppose someone might lend a hand?
Jürgen Habermas was a philosopher who spent much of his life studying rational agreement demonstrated its value by publicly disagreeing with his former self. Cicero would be proud to stand on the steps with him. They both understood that epistemic humility is not epistemic relativism.
When it comes to Social Media, I can be in complete agreement with a Christian but I arrive at the same conclusion through entirely different epistemological routes. Some Christians even think it is insane to allow women unsupervised access to social media!
In a culture obsessed with staying young, we ignore the many benefits of ageing.
Sunday Book Club: Life’s Chemical Secret.
Some photographs taken last week.
While you are waiting for the kettle to boil.
Coffee Break Videos: Skepticism as a Way of Life. The end of the Phil Bro epidemic. The best argument against Free Will? The Christian victimhood Industrial Complex. The Simple Idea humans missed for thousands of years.
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