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Freethought in the light of the sun
I'm putting up a post tomorrow about writing and the creative process, but on this crisp fall morning, I've been thinking more about the social aspect of the profession. Although this blog gets thousands of visitors, only a tiny fraction of them ever comment. I understand why that is, and I ...
The big news this week, as well it should be, was a new survey from Pew showing that America's religious "nones" continue their demographic ascent: The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of ...
[Editor's Note: These mysterious messages seemingly always come in pairs, so after receiving the last one, I was expecting a counterpoint to arrive in my inbox soon. I wasn't disappointed, as you'll see. Like the previous one, it claims to hail from a future world, but a very different future world ...
Last spring, I wrote about the Secular Coalition for America's new executive director, Edwina Rogers, a Republican lobbyist whose selection raised more than a few eyebrows. While I had (and still have) my doubts about Rogers, I have to admit the SCA has been doing some good work, including setting ...
Some links gathered over the week for you to peruse: • Ed Miliband, the leader of the UK's opposition Labour party, is a nonbeliever. He says he doesn't hold religious faith, but rather a faith in human progress. This column by Fraser Nelson admits that this may be a smart move in increasingly ...
My latest article for Salon has just been published, "Atheism's growing pains". It's a brief survey and distillation of the Atheism Plus movement: what it is, why it was needed, and what we hope to accomplish with it. I'm very glad to be able to bring these arguments to a new audience! Read the ...
It's just a few weeks until the U.S. presidential election, and while nothing is set in stone, Mitt Romney's hopes are looking increasingly dim. Despite the depressed economy, which would normally mean an easy win for the challenger, this election has taken a different course. Romney's electoral ...
[Editor's Note: It's happening again. I hadn't gotten any of these messages since last year, and I was starting to hope that the wormhole, or whatever strange conduit it was, had closed for good. But once again, in my inbox this morning, there it was: the same anonymous remailer, the same ...
This article was originally published on AlterNet. What kind of world would we have if a majority of the human race was atheist? To hear religious apologists tell it, the triumph of atheism would mean a swift descent into selfishness and chaos. The defenders of the faith argue that atheism ...
This past July, I had the privilege of being one of the keynote speakers at the Secular Student Alliance's annual convention in Columbus, Ohio. I've been promising video, but until now, I've only had this teaser photo. Well, I'm happy to say your waiting is over, because the SSA has just posted the ...
I'm surprised to still be writing about blasphemy laws, but it seems the idea just won't die. At the United Nations this week, the elected leaders of newly democratic Egypt and Yemen called for restrictions on free speech, in addition to similar demands from Turkey and other Islamic-majority ...
I've been writing a lot lately about reasons to quit the Catholic church, and judging by the demographic trends in many Western countries, there are a lot of people whose thinking runs along similar lines. I didn't think the church would ever deign to acknowledge its apostates, but it appears that ...
Over the weekend, I was interviewed by Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor from the Freedom from Religion Foundation for their Freethought Radio show. That episode is now available for download and podcast, so if you'd like to hear me talk, give it a listen! In the interview, we talk about my new ...
This is part 4 of my review of Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature". Read Part 1 here, part 2 here and part 3 here. In my last post, I talked about some of the cultural factors Steven Pinker identifies that have led to a reduction in violence. There are two other major forces he ...
Just a brief announcement: The weekend of November 9, I'll be in Springfield, Missouri for Skepticon 5. Since I had such a blast at Skepticon 4 last year, there's no way I couldn't go back. And though I don't want to reveal any spoilers, there's a distinct possibility that I'm not just going to be ...