In general, I find that the next generation to be more tolerant, more accepting of diversity, less religious, and less warlike than the earlier ones, which gives me some hope for the future. But on a recent visit to Israel, Philip Weiss finds (admittedly based on personal experiences and not as part of a scientific survey) that the younger generation there was more warlike about Syria than the old-timers. [Read more…]
One of religion’s weakest points is that of prayer. People are urged to pray to their gods and invariably these prayers end up at least partly being requests for things or other forms of divine intervention. Naturally, prayers are not answered (except by sheer coincidence) so it becomes the task of religious leaders to rationalize away this seeming lack of responsiveness on god’s part. [Read more…]
Bill Di Blasio won the Democratic primary for the mayoralty of New York City and will likely be elected mayor in the general election. He is reputedly a progressive who has opposed things like the random ‘stop and frisk’ tactic by police that targeted young men of color and was favored by outgoing mayor Michael Bloomberg. [Read more…]
The pastor who gets himself in the news by periodically threatening to burn copies of the Koran has done it again. This time he threatened to burn 2,998 copies of it (one for very person killed in in the 9/11 attack) on the anniversary but he and his assistant pastor were stopped and arrested by police as they were taking the fixings to the bonfire site, and slapped with a felony charge of “unlawful conveyance of fuel”, plus a misdemeanor charge of “unlawful open-carry of a firearm”, and also for not having a valid registration for the trailer. [Read more…]
There are a lot of people in the US who advocate for war. The neoconservatives are one such group, because they have as their goal the projection of US power all over the globe to establish complete dominance. The Israel lobby is another group that seeks to have the US act on Israel’s behalf and attack and destabilize and even overthrow all the Middle Eastern countries that it sees as enemies. And of course, there is the military-industrial complex that makes a lot of money out of the death and destruction wreaked by the US on other people. [Read more…]
The issue of whether the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance made it unconstitutional to say at state-sponsored events seemed to have been settled in 2010 when several US Courts of Appeals ruled that since no federal law required people to recite the pledge, no violation of the US constitution occurred. Since there was no divergence in the various appeals court rulings, it was unlikely to be heard by the US Supreme Court and the issue seemed no longer contestable. [Read more…]
The province of Quebec proposing a ban on all public sector employees wearing headgear or jewelry that is overtly religious raised the issue of how far a government should go to accommodate the religious preferences of people. My personal view, and one that I think is consistent with the US constitution, is that people should be allowed to wear what they want provided: (a) it does not interfere with how well they can perform their jobs; and (b) the rule should be such that anyone, whether religious or not, should be allowed to wear similar items if they wish. [Read more…]
I had thought that on domestic matters involving its Jewish population, and especially when it came to issues involving women, the state of Israel was quite enlightened and egalitarian, except of course for the ultra-Orthodox segments of the populations who are hopelessly sexist. [Read more…]
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has been busy fighting the practice of local governments beginning their sessions with prayers. Now they have taken on the town of Chico, CA where they are backing the local Coalition of Reason which is petitioning the city council meetings to stop beginning their meetings with a prayer, even though these prayers were not exclusively for one religion. [Read more…]
I wrote last year about a lawsuit that was brought by the group Freedom From Religion Foundation to require the IRS to enforce its current rule against religious organizations that engage in direct politicking and revoke their tax exempt status if they were found to be engaged in blatant politicking. [Read more…]