In 2009, the Center for Inquiry decided to mark September 30th as International Blasphemy Rights Day. This day was chosen because it was the day in 2005 when the satirical cartoons about prophet Mohammed appeared in a Dutch Danish newspaper setting off a firestorm of protests among Muslims.
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As Paul Waldman writes, it is almost inevitable that some person who is angered by what is happening in the middle east will be inspired by ISIS/ISIL or whatever the terror group du jour is, to get a gun and shoot up a crowd somewhere in the US. Then instead of treating it as just another mass shooting of the kind that has become routine, the terrorist connection will cause everyone to flip out and hide under their beds and demand that the government do something so that they can come out.
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There is still time to register for Northeast Ohio Center for Inquiry biennial one-day conference this coming Saturday, October 4, 2014 from 9:00am-4:00 pm in Independence, Ohio. The theme is Science Peers Into the Future: Research for the 21st Century and Beyond and four scientists will be featured speakers.
More details and registration information can be found here.
(The text of my talk at the Cleveland Sunday Assembly held two days ago.)
I must say that when I got up this morning and got ready to come here, I felt a strong sense of déjà vu. When I was a young man I was ordained as a lay preacher in the Methodist church in Sri Lanka and many a Sunday would find me dressing up to go to a church in the region to inflict my sermon on some hapless congregation. And now, decades after I became an atheist, here I am doing something that seems surprisingly familiar. Let’s see if I still have my preacher skills though if some people are getting a little worried, you can relax. Even in my heyday I was never a fire-and-brimstone, you’re-going to-hell-and-damnation-if-you-don’t-repent kind of preacher, and so am not going to be that way today either.
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It is always pleasant to read things that support the things you already do. One such article (that I came across via Machines Like Us) is where psychologist Walter Mischel suggests that it is better to distance oneself from bad experiences, like the breakup of a relationship, rather than revisit them.
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For the first time, someone has run a marathon under 2 hours and three minutes. Kenyan runner Dennis Kimetto achieved this feat over the weekend in Berlin, setting a new world record with a winning time of 2:02:57.
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Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech at the United Nations where he accused Israel of committing war crimes in its assault on Gaza and called for the body to set a firm deadline for the withdrawal of all Israelis from the occupied territories.
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Yesterday saw the kickoff around the globe of 35 new Sunday Assembly programs to add to the 28 existing ones and I attended the Cleveland one. The event was a lot of fun. Special credit must go to organizers Layla Nelson and Eric Tawney who rounded up an impressive array of volunteers to put together the whole thing and did an excellent job. There must have been close to 100 people present. They had a nice array of refreshments for people to help themselves before, during, and after the event, and when it was finally over about 40 people went to an adjacent Mexican restaurant for lunch. I had an enjoyable conversation with people and an enlightening discussion with a philosophy teacher whom I happened to sit next to.
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The Harry Potter series of books captivated many people young and old, but especially the young. As I discussed back in 2005, the students at Hogwarts seemed to be well and truly heathens because the books had zero references to god and religion, with only a passing reference to Christmas (a pagan holiday anyway) and the name of a Christmas carol, while filled with stories of sorcery and witches and wizards and spells.
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