Paul is communications director for the Center for Inquiry, as well as an actor and musician. His blog is iMortal, and he tweets as @paulfidalgo, and the blog tweets as @iMortal_blog.
The opinions expressed on this blog are personal to Paul and do not necessarily represent the views of the Center for Inquiry.
Atheists generally believe we have a good sense of the degree to which our group is subject to discrimination based on our rejection of supernaturalism, but that understanding is primarily anecdotal. We hear each other’s stories, we see how we’re spoken about in the culture, and we form an idea of just how low that stained-glass ceiling really is for us (wow, that metaphor sounds familiar). Read more
Yesterday, the Secular Coalition for America (of which I am a former employee) held a Capitol Hill briefing, something that’s actually kind of gutsy considering the toxicity with which atheism is regarded within the Beltway. It featured a handful of big names from our movement, including Harvard’s Greg Epstein, David Niose (most recently notable for his new book Nonbeliever Nation), and of course SCA’s chief, Edwina Rogers. What ought to have been a real boon for its efforts was the attendance… Read more
President Obama has disappointed nonbelievers and those who take seriously the concept of church-state separation many times. In his participation in the National Prayer Breakfast, in his continuation and expansion of the Bush-spawned “faith-based initiatives,” and his general pandering to religious figures, such has his inclusion of the risible Rick Warren at his inauguration. But there are times when the president shows a side of himself that should help seculars take heart. Yesterday, Obama addressed the UN General Assembly, primarily… Read more
Rick Perry, a.k.a. “Governor Oops,” made news recently when he ascribed the concept of church-state separation to the machinations of Satan. No really, he did. And in case you thought that maybe he was being hyperbolic, perhaps talking in the heat of some spiritual passion, well… Here’s the governor on stage for a sit-down interview for the Texas Tribune Festival, talking calmly, soberly, and without a hint of irony about how scared he is of Satan. He even uses The… Read more
