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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
Nicholas Coppola was a very active member of his local Catholic parish, carrying out a variety of services such as being a religious education teacher, lector (a person who reads aloud scriptural passages as part of church service), altar server, and visitation minister for shut-ins, i.e., people who are unable to attend mass in church. [Read more…]
Philosopher A. C. Grayling has a new book out titled The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism that I have not read yet but looks interesting. He appeared on The Colbert Report and it was pretty interesting. Despite the brevity of these interviews, he made some cogent points and provided a succinct definition of humanism, which he says is “an attitude about how we live the moral life… We human beings are responsible for thinking about our ethical outlook, not a set of laws or a code which comes from outside us but we have to take responsibility for ourselves, not just about how we are going to live good and flourishing lives but how we are going to relate well to other people.” [Read more…]
Sanal Edamaruku, a prominent rationalist from India was forced to leave the country because of blasphemy charges brought against him by the Catholic Church there because he showed how a ‘miracle’ of a Jesus statue dripping water from its feet was caused by a leaky connection to a plumbing system. It was and is a crazy case and shows the danger of blasphemy laws and how they can be used to protect religious beliefs that are used to fool believers. [Read more…]
In discussing the issue of how the US Supreme Court may dismiss one or both of the same-sex marriage cases that it heard last week because of the lack of standing of the parties to sue even though the lower courts had granted them that right, I was reminded of an earlier case that had similar issues and decided to look into what had happened subsequently, to see if the issue had been resolved. [Read more…]
Listen to this Catholic priest who argues on Fox that opponents of gay marriage are now the victimized ones, the oppressed ones. What is amazing is that he thinks it is unfair and outside the bounds of civilized debate to characterize certain views as bigotry while at the same time he thinks nothing of referring to people as sinners. And even though many religious people believe that sinners go to hell where they face everlasting torment, that is supposed to perfectly acceptable to say. [Read more…]