Pope Francis fails a test

While Pope Francis has received great press for his symbolic gestures of openness and warmth and humility, the real test of how different he would be from his predecessors was when he was confronted with decisions that had significant consequences.

One of the first was how he would deal with the ‘problem’ of the ornery US Catholic nuns who were more focused on helping the poor and sick and homeless, and not pulling their weight when it came to enforcing Catholic dogma against gays and contraception and abortion. Francis’s predecessor Ratzi set in motion a process (run by a male archbishop of course) to overhaul the Leadership Conference of the Women Religious, the organization tat represents the majority of US nuns. The nuns were none too pleased with how that process was being conducted. [Read more…]

Should atheists in the US encourage the establishment of religion?

Whenever I give a talk, as I did recently, on the fight over the teaching of evolution in schools, I am almost always asked why these take place mostly in the US. That is not exactly true but in many other countries, there is no equivalent of the Establishment Clause that people can appeal to to keep religion out of the affairs of the state and so there is little recourse to the courts. In other countries, religion is either so deeply entrenched that the dominance of religious views are taken for granted or religion is so weak (in most of the developed world) that it is not a serious issue or gets resolved in the political arena. [Read more…]

Russian blasphemy laws

As I have said before, when religions are in the minority, they tend to emphasize tolerance and acceptance of diverse views. It is only when they get political power or influence that they reveal their true intolerant natures. Even if they do not become a state religion, as long as political leaders feel they are important enough to pander to, they start to suppress anyone or anything that opposes them. [Read more…]

The need for anti-discrimination laws

Robert Ingersoll was a decade-long customer of Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts, a store in the town of Richland, WA who had often asked the proprietor Baronelle Stutzman to send flowers and other gifts to his partner Curt Freed. After the state passed a referendum last November legalizing same-sex marriage, Ingersoll and Freed decided to get married and Ingersoll naturally turned to Stutzman to provide flowers for his wedding. To his surprise, she refused saying that “I am sorry. I can’t do your wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.” even though she had long known about his relationship. [Read more…]

The Science-Religion panel discussion

Last Friday, I participated on the panel that discussed Science and Religion. The room was full (I estimate well over 100 people) showing how much interest there was in this topic amongst students, staff and faculty. It lasted about 75 minutes but many people stayed on afterwards to discuss in small groups. I spent about 90 minutes afterwards talking with some people and it was a lot of fun. What follows is a summary of the discussion and Q/A that focuses mostly on the topics that interested me. [Read more…]

Another episode of ‘Fun Times with Pat’

For a while I was getting worried. Pat Robertson had started saying sensible things, such as that religious people should not be saying things like the age of the Earth is just 6,000 years old that oppose well established scientific facts, and that marijuana should be legalized. I was afraid that these were signs that we had entered some strange alternate universe. [Read more…]

My talk to the Secular Legal Society

Some freethinking law students at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law have organized the Secular Legal Society, one of the many new similar student groups that are springing up all over the country. I will be giving a talk the group (and to any other interested people who wish to attend) on the topic God, Darwin, and the Constitution: The Essential Tension. [Read more…]