I have argued that the world would be a lot better off without religion. Religious people disagree and one would expect them to. But more surprisingly, there are those who are not believers and yet feel that religion serves a useful purpose and is worth retaining. [Read more…]
While writing about the Lenski experiment, I recalled the hilarious episode when Andrew Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia and the son of conservative icon Phyllis, concerned about the support this experiment gave to evolution, tried to discredit Lenski and his work and got a polite but severe smacking from him, resulting in Lenski’s work becoming even more widely known. [Read more…]
This film has just been released on DVD and I watched it last night. It is a comedy-thriller with a religious backdrop, starring Pierce Brosnan as the charismatic Pastor Dan of a megachurch who has grandiose plans to create his own self-contained city based on Christian principles. [Read more…]
I appeared on Wednesday on the show HuffPost Live in a segment they call Community Sound Off where they have guests pick a Huffington Post article for discussion. [Read more…]
Remember the news item about Cecilia Giménez, an 85-year old parishioner who took it upon herself to restore a faded mural of Jesus in a church and turned it into something that looked like a monkey that then became known as ‘Rhesus Christ’? [Read more…]
The Mormons, like the Christian end-timers, think that Jesus will return someday to Earth, no doubt to collect his laundry or something. Much of the attention has focused on when he will return and not much attention to where. [Read more…]
The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has now published what are described as ‘obscene’ cartoons featuring the prophet Mohammed. [Read more…]
We know that free speech is not an absolute right. There are some limits that even the most tolerant societies have imposed in order to (say) protect children. In the US, the limits to what adults can say is usually judged according to the landmark US Supreme Court decision in the 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio. [Read more…]
So now a key figure in Iran’s Islamic hierarchy has said that the reason that the film Innocence of Muslims was even produced was because Ayatollah Khomeini’s order to execute novelist Salman Rushdie was never carried out, thus emboldening critics of Islam. Yes, he seems to feel that the fear of summary execution is a worthy threat to hold over anyone who even thinks of offending his sensibilities. [Read more…]
