In the second part of its series ‘Losing Our Religion’ (I linked to the first part yesterday), NPR convened a group of young people from varying religious family backgrounds to talk about why they were no longer religious. The young people came from families that were Jewish, Muslim, Protestant Christian, Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, and mixed. [Read more…]
Having a hereditary monarchy in this day and age seems ridiculous. Having an official state church is equally ridiculous. When both anachronisms are simultaneously present, they give birth to the kind of absurd controversy currently taking place in the UK. [Read more…]
Last September I wrote about four people in England who had claimed that they were discriminated in their workplace because of their religious beliefs. They took their case to the European Court of Human Rights which has just issued its ruling. [Read more…]
When I talk with people and tell them that science and any religion that has supernatural elements are incompatible, I will often get the response that this cannot be true since so many scientists were (and some still are) religious. In particular, names of scientific icons like Galileo and Newton are dropped as devoutly religious people whose research revealed how the world works and who saw the hand of god as the creator of that marvelous feat of engineering. If such scientific luminaries could be religious, what right had scientific basement dwellers like me to say that the science and religion were incompatible? [Read more…]
When we got Baxter as a puppy, he learned to up the steps to the next floor quite easily but was scared to come down and had to be carried. One can see why. If anyone of us got down on all fours, it would be easy for us to go up a flight of steps but quite scary to come down head first. I don’t think I could do it, frankly. [Read more…]
NPR is having a series of reports this week around the theme ‘Losing Our Religion’, on the rise of those now being referred to as the ‘nones’, people who say they are unaffiliated with any religion. In their report today they showed a graph with a sharp rise in the nones in the 1970s, a plateau until 2000, followed by another sharp rise. This trend is especially pronounced among young people. [Read more…]
To be eligible to be president of the US, one must meet the ‘natural born citizen’ constitutional requirement of Article II, Section 1. It is accepted that if one is born in the US, then this status is automatically conferred on you. This is why the birthers are so desperate to show that Obama’s birth occurred elsewhere. [Read more…]
Via Machines Like Us I came across this demonstration by Audi of a car that will, by itself and without a driver, find a parking space in a parking garage and park itself and then return to you at the entrance when you call it. [Read more…]
Joel Diaz recounts a remarkable experience in Columbus, Ohio when he and a gay friend started being harassed when they were holding hands and chatting while waiting in line at a popular pizza truck. A man in front of them told them to stop doing stuff that indicated that they were gay. This is when things got interesting. [Read more…]