Some freethinking law students at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law have organized the Secular Legal Society, one of the many new similar student groups that are springing up all over the country. I will be giving a talk the group (and to any other interested people who wish to attend) on the topic God, Darwin, and the Constitution: The Essential Tension. [Read more…]
Nicholas Coppola was a very active member of his local Catholic parish, carrying out a variety of services such as being a religious education teacher, lector (a person who reads aloud scriptural passages as part of church service), altar server, and visitation minister for shut-ins, i.e., people who are unable to attend mass in church. [Read more…]
Jon Stewart of The Daily Show comments amusingly on something that has struck me too, and that is why is it that the thought of same-sex marriage seems to drive opponents so crazy that they immediately start making the most outlandish arguments. [Read more…]
I hate corporal punishment. I was fortunate to have parents who did not believe in it and have never used it on my own children. I did go to a private boys school in Sri Lanka that allowed its principal and vice-principal to cane students and there were some teachers who also hit students with rulers or slapped them even though they were not authorized to do so. [Read more…]
When wars and famines and floods and earthquakes strike a region and threaten large numbers of people with starvation, food is often the most urgent need of the affected people. While the amount of food aid promised is often impressive, the reality is somewhat different. [Read more…]
Philosopher A. C. Grayling has a new book out titled The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism that I have not read yet but looks interesting. He appeared on The Colbert Report and it was pretty interesting. Despite the brevity of these interviews, he made some cogent points and provided a succinct definition of humanism, which he says is “an attitude about how we live the moral life… We human beings are responsible for thinking about our ethical outlook, not a set of laws or a code which comes from outside us but we have to take responsibility for ourselves, not just about how we are going to live good and flourishing lives but how we are going to relate well to other people.” [Read more…]
Sanal Edamaruku, a prominent rationalist from India was forced to leave the country because of blasphemy charges brought against him by the Catholic Church there because he showed how a ‘miracle’ of a Jesus statue dripping water from its feet was caused by a leaky connection to a plumbing system. It was and is a crazy case and shows the danger of blasphemy laws and how they can be used to protect religious beliefs that are used to fool believers. [Read more…]
In discussing the issue of how the US Supreme Court may dismiss one or both of the same-sex marriage cases that it heard last week because of the lack of standing of the parties to sue even though the lower courts had granted them that right, I was reminded of an earlier case that had similar issues and decided to look into what had happened subsequently, to see if the issue had been resolved. [Read more…]
I have said before that the emerging modern consensus is that there are no particles or waves in the classical sense of those terms, although those concepts are still useful to us in visualizing physical processes. (For previous posts in this series, click on the Higgs folder just below the blog post title.) [Read more…]
Listen to this Catholic priest who argues on Fox that opponents of gay marriage are now the victimized ones, the oppressed ones. What is amazing is that he thinks it is unfair and outside the bounds of civilized debate to characterize certain views as bigotry while at the same time he thinks nothing of referring to people as sinners. And even though many religious people believe that sinners go to hell where they face everlasting torment, that is supposed to perfectly acceptable to say. [Read more…]