The impact of the Boy Scouts vote to allow gays

So the Boy Scouts of America voted quite overwhelmingly (61-39% of the 1400 member national council) to allow gay students to be members. Of course, the Boy Scouts still ban participation by gay adults as scout leaders. But that change will come, sooner rather than later. This kind of backing and filling towards a goal is how religious institutions operate. [Read more…]

Is monotheism worse than polytheism?

We are taught to think of polytheistic societies as primitive and intellectually shallow and that the introduction of the idea of monotheism, that there is only one god, was a generally good thing, a sign of increased sophistication as civilization progressed. But an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education reviewing the work of Egyptologist Jan Assmann says that his view is that this may not be true, and that the shift to monotheism was actually a bad thing and the likely cause of violence spawned by religions over millennia. [Read more…]

There are many atheists in foxholes and among tornado survivors

I am pretty sure that everyone has seen the video clip that has gone viral of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asking Rebecca Vitsum who, with her husband Brian and infant son Anders, narrowly escaped the tornado though their home was destroyed, whether she ‘thanked the Lord’ for her narrow escape. When she mumbles her reply, he presses her to answer at which point she says that she is an atheist. For the two people who haven’t seen the clip yet, here it is. [Read more…]

Supreme Court to hear case on prayer at government meetings

I went as a guest to a big function recently that was organized by a major corporation to honor its long-service employees. There must have been close to a thousand people in the ballroom. The program began with a prayer, as if the organizers did not care that in such a large group there would be a significant number who did not share the religious views of the prayer-giver. I am of course used to this kind of public piety. [Read more…]