One can make the case that the US is a far too litigious a society.

But going to court does have one big advantage when it comes to highly charged issues. Its structure of rules requiring facts and evidence and arguments in support of a claim, and the requirement that people have to tell the truth and directly address questions that are posed to them by opponents, can be remarkably effective in brushing away a lot of the obfuscation that accompanies debates in other less formal venues.

This happened in the case of so-called intelligent design. As I discuss [Read more…]

The fuss over the rule that religious institutions that employ and serve the general public do not qualify for an exemption to providing free birth control services to their employees seems likely to go away, now that the Obama administration seems to have outmaneuvered opponents on this issue by saying that while the religious institutions do not have to pay for the cost of birth control, the health insurers must absorb the cost. While this can arguably be said to be a mere accounting trick, it does undermine the religious freedom argument considerably.

If they are smart, the Catholic Church and [Read more…]

He lays into the bigots with great gusto, with his usual strong language.

The Rolling Stone article he refers to is by Sabrina Rubin Erdely and appears in the February 16, 2012 issue and can be read here. It is well worth reading for [Read more…]

Via Jerry Coyne, I learned about a debate in 2006 in which Christopher Hitchens gave a full-throated defense of freedom of speech and on the evils of religion, and how religion survives by restricting or intimidating speech. His talk lasts about 20 minutes and is in four parts, the first of which is below, with the rest being prompted at the end.

I am becoming more and more of a First Amendment absolutist on free speech. I can [Read more…]

Yesterday a three judge panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision upheld the ruling of US District Court judge Vaughn Walker that Proposition 8 (that reversed the policy allowing same sex marriage in California) was unconstitutional. This ruling will likely be appealed to either the full Court of Appeals or the US Supreme Court and until such time as they uphold the appeals court ruling or decline to hear it, the ban on gay marriage in California will continue.

One of the things that really puzzle me is [Read more…]

When Sgt. Justin Griffith’s efforts to gain formal recognition of atheists and organize the Rock Beyond Belief event reached the ears of Fox News, they naturally didn’t like it. They interviewed him and did their usual [Read more…]