The Secular Student Alliance will be hosting its annual conference on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA next year, in conjunction with Harvard’s Humanist Chaplaincy. The Chaplaincy will be celebrating its 30th anniversary and symposium. This is bound to be a very exciting event! The SSA will be hosting a separate activist training session in addition to the main events and speakers. Which speakers, you ask? The tentative list currently includes: Salman Rushdie. Amartya Sen. E.O. Wilson. Steven Pinker…. Read more
Wow. Read the article. The poll gives us some information worth delving into. I found interesting the demographics that do believe in God: “People with no college education (62 percent) or who have some college education (57 percent) compared to college graduates (50 percent) and those with post-graduate degrees (53 percent)” People in all age groups 40 and over compared to people in age groups under 40 Maybe the most amusing part: 10% of people believe God is a hermaphrodite…. Read more
A little while back, a Christian named Matt sent me a Bible he thought I would enjoy. He wrote, “As a Christian it bothers me so much to hear how stupid Christians are. It’s all a numbers game and it’s just all about how many people you ‘share Christ’ with. And to all of them, that just means trying to convince people why Christianity is right.” The Bible he sent was a Holman New Testament (Personal Evangelism Edition)! Matt said… Read more
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
I’ll be back to normal posts soon, but just wanted to clear a slight backlog: — Can someone please explain why contestants on “Deal or No Deal” actually think that case #[whatever] is the lucky one? Because they know it’s right? Because a voice is telling them to do it? Because they feel that it’s the lucky case? Someone tell me there’s not a connection to religion there. And does anyone else also feel *really* good when the contestant picks… Read more
For those who would like to hear the interview from last night, going here is the best way to hear it. Otherwise, you can subscribe to GodTalk on iTunes and hear the podcast. [tags]GodTalk, CJOB, Winnepeg, Manitoba, eBay atheist, Jim Henderson, Christian, Hemant Mehta[/tags] Read more
