Good and bad news from Ireland

Leo Varadkar has been elected leader of the Fine Gael party in the Republic of Ireland which means that he will become the country’s next taoiseach, the equivalent of prime minister. On the positive side is the fact that the 38-year old Varadkar is the son of an Indian immigrant father and Irish mother. He is also gay. Neither of these is insignificant given the overwhelming Roman Catholic culture of the country and the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment that saw the passage in 2004 of legislation that removed citizenship rights from the Irish-born children of non-national parents.
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Should a racist and homophobe have a tennis stadium named after her?

Tennis great Martina Navratilova has not been shy about speaking her mind and trying to advance the cause of women and the LGBT community. She has now called on Australian authorities to rename the Margaret Court Arena, one of the main courts where the Australian Open is played, because Court is a racist and a homophobe and is thus not worthy of the honor, though there is no denying her tennis accomplishments.
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God is still dead and this effort at resuscitation fails miserably

When I saw an article titled Five rational arguments why God (very probably) exists I felt I had to read it, since I am someone who has argued repeatedly that there is every reason to believe, based on scientific reasoning, that god does not exist, and expand on this in my forthcoming book. So what argument does Robert H. Nelson, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, advance in support of his contention that god exists that he has taken from a book he published in 2015?
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Trump, Saudi Arabia, and Iran

Yesterday I posted the weird photo of Donald Trump, the Saudi King, and Egyptian dictator al Sisi placing their hands on a glowing orb, something that has sparked plenty of mockery and internet memes. Some have said that touching the orb was what caused a sinkhole to suddenly open up in front of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida at roughly the same time.
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Fighting religious indoctrination in South African schools

I have been hearing from Christopher, a reader of this blog and is a secular activist in South Africa, about a court case that being waged in that country to remove religious bias in their public schools. The group that has brought the case is called OGOD which is an acronym for the Afrikaans Organisasie vir Godsdienste-Onderrig en Demokrasie. The group challenged the practices of six schools that are explicitly teaching Christian doctrine.
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Why Buddhism can be as violent as any other religion

The country of Myanmar provides a good example of my view that the true nature of a religion becomes visible when that religious group is in the majority and enjoys state support. Myanmar is a country that is almost 90% Buddhist but in the southern part of the country that borders Muslim-majority Malaysia, Muslims are in the majority. So what do we see? We see Muslims in the southern part attacking Buddhists and Buddhists in the northern part attacking Muslims.
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The curse of blasphemy laws

The outgoing governor of the Jakarta in Indonesia, who is a double minority in that he is both Christian and ethnic Chinese in a country that has the largest Muslim population in the world and is 85% Muslim, was sentenced to two-years imprisonment for blasphemy. His crime? Quoting a verse from the Koran which he said that opponents were using to mislead people that Muslims should not vote for a non-Muslim.
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Stephen Fry investigated under Ireland’s blasphemy law

When we think of people being targeted for blasphemy, Muslim-majority countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia immediately come to mind. But it turns out that atheist Stephen Fry is being investigated for this offense in Ireland for comments he made on a television show when he was asked what he would say to god if it so happened that after he died he was confronted by god.
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