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Freethought in the light of the sun
Now that the election is over, it's time for American freethinkers to turn our attention to some unfinished business. And here's one thing that should be at the top of the list. Churches in America receive a broad array of special tax privileges and exemptions, in exchange for which they have ...
The 2012 election is officially over, and it was glorious. Barack Obama and the Democrats have delivered what one of our elder statesmen once referred to as "a thumping" to Romney and the Republicans. Here are some of my thoughts: • The sweeping electoral college victory. I'm glad to admit that ...
Tomorrow is Election Day for all us Americans. And while I normally try to base my arguments on solid evidence, far be it from me to deny everyone the chance to speculate wildly about the future every few years. So, let's have it: What do you think is going to happen tomorrow? I'll start off ...
• The big news, of course, is that the U.S. presidential election is on Tuesday. Take heart, progressives: although the media and the Republicans are straining mightily to pretend that the race is a dead heat, the state-by-state polls make Obama a clear favorite for reelection. • Skepticon 5 ...
In my earlier post about whether to vote for third parties, there were some commenters who asserted that there's no good reason to vote at all. Since we're now right on the verge of Election Day, I thought it was worthwhile to address this argument. Putting aside the inevitable paranoid ...
My recent post "Building Justice" talked about how human beings have to work together if we want to build a just world to live in. I want to say some more about that, not least because this week, everyone on the U.S. East Coast had a vivid demonstration of what we're up against. New York City ...
Last week, four third-party U.S. presidential candidates had a debate in Chicago. As is usual in American politics, third-party debates tend to be all over the map: a mixture of completely loony ideas and eminently sensible ideas that no major candidate dares touch. On the surface, I probably ...
Well, once again, a major storm is heading toward the East Coast and New York is in the bullseye. (Climate change? What climate change?) Last year, it was all about Hurricane Irene, which ended up passing over where I live without causing too much havoc. Hopefully, I'll be lucky twice. But just in ...
This week, we witnessed another step in the Republican party's long drawn-out national suicide: "I've struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God," Mr. Mourdock said. "And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is ...
As you probably know by now, my friend Greta Christina was diagnosed with cancer last week, and she's having surgery today. In the grand scheme of things, it could have been much worse: she has health insurance, it was caught early, and there's an excellent chance that the operation will be a ...
Summary: The compelling true story of the Renaissance humanists who rescued Greek and Roman philosophy from oblivion and wrenched the Western world out of the Dark Ages. After the collapse of the Roman empire, Europe descended into a centuries-long era of cultural and intellectual stagnation, a ...
Some links from the last week: • As you may have heard, my good friend and awesome secular activist Greta Christina was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. It's fully treatable, but she needed some help to cover her living expenses while she recovers, and the atheist community came through in ...
Although the initial riots and flare-ups of violence over the "Innocence of Muslims" video were over a month ago, the global battle over blasphemy laws is still raging. In London this week, thousands of Muslim marchers assembled outside Google's U.K. headquarters to demand the banning of ideas that ...
This week's all-consuming internet drama was sparked by the journalist Adrien Chen of Gawker, who published a piece exposing the real identity of "Violentacrez", one of the most infamous trolls of Reddit. Violentacrez, real name Michael Brutsch, was notorious as the moderator of a forum called ...
My first book hasn't been out for long, but I'm thinking it's almost time to start writing the next one. I came back from my trip to the U.K. with a head full of ideas, and I want to start getting them down on the page. My next book is going to be a novel, not nonfiction. I may write another ...