Joseph Smith explains to Mr. Deity, Lucy, and John the Baptist how to make Mormon proselytization cost-effective.
(Via Machines Like Us)
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Joseph Smith explains to Mr. Deity, Lucy, and John the Baptist how to make Mormon proselytization cost-effective.
(Via Machines Like Us)
The principal of a school banned a fifth-grader from reading his entry in a school-wide speech contest after he had won his class contest. Why? Because his speech supported same sex marriage. [Read more…]
Via Jerry Coyne, I came across an excellent 2006 essay titled My God Problem by science journalist Natalie Angier in which she tackles something that also bothers me, which is the way that so many scientists seem to be so concerned about surveys that show low levels of acceptance of the theory of evolution while ignoring, let alone trying to counter, evidence of much worse anti-scientific thinking. [Read more…]
I finally got around to seeing Julia Sweeney’s 2007 monologue performance Letting Go of God, where she describes her journey from being a good Catholic girl to an atheist in adulthood. It was funny, informative, and moving, as she describes the kinds of questions that occurred to her and the answers she sought from her parents, her priest, other religions, and her readings, before she finally accepted that she was, in effect, an atheist. [Read more…]
A Mormon woman describes what happened when her husband told her that he had stopped believing in god. It is a poignant story of the tensions that can arise between believers and non-believers in the same family. [Read more…]
Back in 2006, I speculated in a post titled Is the Pope an atheist? that it was possible that many religious clergy were atheists, with the probability increasing the higher they were in the religious hierarchy. I had no evidence that this was actually the case but was basing my argument on what I thought were plausible premises. [Read more…]
Some time ago, I commented favorably on an essay by philosopher Richard Rorty titled Religion as Conversation-stopper. In his essay, he responds to another essay by Stephen Carter in which the latter said, “One good way to end a conversation — or to start an argument — is to tell a group of well-educated professionals that you hold a political position (preferably a controversial one, such as being against abortion or pornography) because it is required by your understanding of God’s will.” [Read more…]
South Korea is one of the so-called ‘Asian tigers’, a modern, rapidly developing, and highly educated country with a large and still-growing role in the world’s economy. So it was a surprise to me to read that they are purging the teaching of evolution from the country’s textbooks. [Read more…]
Opponents of same sex marriage kept saying that if we allowed it, then it would open the floodgates to every possible combination of marriage, even involving turtles. We laughed at them but, astonishingly, they were right after all. And the new form of marriage that has been spawned is even worse than was imagined. [Read more…]