So the Boy Scouts of America voted quite overwhelmingly (61-39% of the 1400 member national council) to allow gay students to be members. Of course, the Boy Scouts still ban participation by gay adults as scout leaders. But that change will come, sooner rather than later. This kind of backing and filling towards a goal is how religious institutions operate.
May 24 2013
Is monotheism worse than polytheism?
We are taught to think of polytheistic societies as primitive and intellectually shallow and that the introduction of the idea of monotheism, that there is only one god, was a generally good thing, a sign of increased sophistication as civilization progressed. But an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education reviewing the work of Egyptologist Jan Assmann says that his view is that this may not be true, and that the shift to monotheism was actually a bad thing and the likely cause of violence spawned by religions over millennia.
May 23 2013
And then there were four…
The US government now formally admits that it has killed four Americans in drone strikes, while continuing to assert that it has the right to do so and that it is ‘consistent’ with American law.
May 23 2013
Are you celebrating National Masturbation Month?
Did you know that May is National Masturbation Month? I had no idea until today and wondered why this is not better known. Hugo Schwyzer partially answers this question in an article in which he says that this because of a remarkable prudishness about one of the most common sex acts, one that is central to the culture wars.
May 23 2013
There are many atheists in foxholes and among tornado survivors
I am pretty sure that everyone has seen the video clip that has gone viral of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asking Rebecca Vitsum who, with her husband Brian and infant son Anders, narrowly escaped the tornado though their home was destroyed, whether she ‘thanked the Lord’ for her narrow escape. When she mumbles her reply, he presses her to answer at which point she says that she is an atheist. For the two people who haven’t seen the clip yet, here it is.
May 23 2013
An opening prayer we can live with?
Recall my earlier post about an upcoming US Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of opening government meetings with a prayer, thus seeming to re-open an issue that it had addressed in 1983 in Marsh v. Chambers and which had served as the precedent for all subsequent cases.
May 22 2013
Just putting on a show
The investigative journalistic body ProPublic has an informative article explaining its own role in the IRS ‘scandal’ and what the fuss is all about, saying that “it reinforces the point that much of the heat generated last week on this subject is just the latest expression of Washington cynicism and its consequences—that the talk show hosts and their fellow travelers, and the representatives and senators and officials in the executive branch, aren’t really looking for answers here. They’re just putting on a show.”
May 22 2013
A better way of starting meetings
Via Jonathan Turley I learned about an Arizona state representative Juan Mendez who, when it was his turn to open the session with a prayer, chose instead to use the occasion to reveal that he was a secular humanist.
May 22 2013
God backs ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Support’
Fred Phelps Jr., the son of the head of the Westboro Baptist Church Fred Phelps, knows what caused the massive tornadoes in Oklahoma. It was the fact that Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma Thunder spoke in support of Jason Collins coming out as the first openly gay active player in a major US professional sport.
May 22 2013
Is America a democracy?
Political scientist Robert Dahl said in 1971 that “a key characteristic of a democracy is the continued responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals.” The part I italicized emphasizes the key point, that a democracy involves more than enabling all citizens to vote freely in fair elections. While that is a minimal requirement, democracy also requires that political influence be distributed equally.
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