On Tuesday, November 14, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) will hold an event at the National Press Club entitled “Science and Secularism: Defending America’s True Values.” This will be the inaugural event for the Office of Public Policy (OPP). So far, the OPP already has three employees and is trying to raise nearly $1,000,000 for startup costs for the first three years. According to an email from CFI, the Office of Public Policy will focus on two issues: 1. Defending… Read more
The Sepia Mutiny, a blog for Indian people, made mention of Sam Harris’ endorsement (but not support) of Jainism as a more peaceful religion. They forget to mention he made the same “endorsement” in The End of Faith. But it is interesting to see Indians, often religious and certainly not the target audience for Harris’ book, respond to his take on Jainism. [tags]Sepia Mutiny, Jainism, atheist, Sam Harris, The End of Faith[/tags] Read more
Last week I posted a link to a story about Andrew Marin, a man who was reaching out to the LGBT community as a gay-friendly pastor, but was also leading anti-gay activist training sessions at the same time. The original Chicago Reader story on him is here. The story of the conflicting interests is here. Marin responded to this post with the following: Hello, I just saw this blog and figured I’d pop in and give my 2 cents worth…whatever… Read more
Philip Paulson passed away yesterday. Liver cancer. It wasn’t unexpected– he had known there wasn’t much time left– but it is still upsetting. He had fought for many years to remove the Mount Soledad cross from public property in San Diego. This year, President Bush transferred ownership of the cross to the Department of Defense in response to Paulson’s An article on Paulson can be found here. [tags]Philip Paulson, Mount Soledad, atheist, President Bush, Department of Defense[/tags] Read more
As I mentioned before, Wired magazine has an article on The New Atheists. It’s getting a lot of circulation and the article itself raises an interesting question: How are the “new” atheists different from the “old” atheists? I don’t mention Daniel Dennett very often since I haven’t read his book Breaking the Spell yet, but a few possible answers to the question are below: 1) Age When asked about the difference between old and new atheists, someone commenting on Fark.com… Read more
