Rational Passional Persuasion

Andrew writes: So atheists don’t have emotions which inform them of the truth of something? And their rhetoric is completely dispassionate to the point where logic and reason are not fully objective? I have addressed the proper ways to consult the emotions in looking for truth in the post, Disambiguating Faith: Heart Over Reason, so for […]

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Disambiguating Faith: Why Faith Is Unethical (Or “In Defense Of The Ethical Obligation To Always Proportion Belief To Evidence”)

A couple of weeks ago, I argued that there was a real distinction between “lacking a belief in any God or gods” on the one hand and “believing there is no God (or gods)” on the other hand.  Primarily I saw the heart of the distinction as resting with the difference between on the one […]

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On The “Compassion” In The Catholic Bishops’ Letter To Congress Against Gay Rights

Recently, United States bishops petitioned Congress to not protect gays from being fired for their sexual orientation.  Andrew Sullivan already precisely attacked the bishops’ immoral political calculation by which they explicitly committed themselves to a perverse moral contradiction whereby they simultaneously concede that homosexuality is to a significant extent not a choice and argue that […]

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Workshop To Teach Public School Teachers How To Proselytize In School

Because no legal or moral principles matter more to some fundamentalists than their drive to evangelize: “Every day, 55 million American children and their teachers show up for school. For the nearly 90% who attend a public school, the ACLU and other anti-Christian organizations have systematically stripped almost every vestige of Christianity from their schools. […]

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Judge This: Cop Responds To Push With Punch

The YouTube description provides the following context: It all started when a cop stopped a man for jaywalking. Things escalated quickly from there as voices were raised and a crowd gathered. When two young women intervened an onlooker pulled out his camera phone and started to roll tape. The altercation took place yesterday on Martin Luther […]

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Multicultural Human Rights

Johann Hari makes the argument that we have the right to stand up for the rights of those in other cultures without fear that we are not “multicultural” enough: Should you shut up about human rights abuses because they are happening far away, to people you don’t know, who have a different culture or colour […]

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Louisiana To Require Ultrasounds Before Abortions

It was a unanimous 79-0 vote: Women seeking abortions in Louisiana will be required to get an ultrasound first, even if they are a victim of rape or incest, under a bill that received final legislative passage Wednesday. The bill by Democratic state Sen. Sharon Broome of Baton Rouge was sent to the governor’s desk […]

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YouTube’s Margaret Stewart Explains Their Approach To Copyright

Margaret Stewart explains how rights identification is allows copyrighted videos uploaded by users to be accepted or rejected by the rights owners and makes the pitch to rights holders to let their material get uploaded onto YouTube: Your Thoughts?

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Follow The Closing Arguments Of The Proposition 8 Trial Today

And you can follow them as they are live-blogged on the Proposition 8 Trial Tracker website, which was an invaluable resource during testimony, filled with fascinating in-depth accounts of the arguments everyday.  They’ve also started rolling already today on their Twitter feed and on their Facebook page. Here is the schedule for the arguments, all […]

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The Rise Of Islamo-Erotica

(Image: “God Is Great” by Makan Emadi) Betwa Shermer has a really interesting piece about Muslim artists in America who incorporate nudes into their art.  Defenses of nudity in art as permissible by Islamic standards: The Lebanese-born artist, who now lives in New York, insists that the taboo stems from a conservative society and not […]

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Is Shari’a Law “Inevitable” For UK Muslims?

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, claims it is: Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4′s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system. Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social […]

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Cults Of Inerrant Leaders

Glenn Greenwald summarizes an atrocity of institutionalized injustice, whereby the executive branch of the United States has the power to abduct and torture innocent people with impunity: The Supreme Court today denied a petition of review from Maher Arar, the Canadian and Syrian citizen who was abducted by the U.S. Government at a stopover at JFK Airport when returning […]

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Iceland Unanimously Approves Gay Marriage

Iceland, the only country in the world to have an openly gay head of state, passed a law on Friday allowing same-sex partners to get married in a vote which met with no political resistance. The Althingi parliament voted 49 to zero to change the wording of marriage legislation to include matrimony between “man and […]

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Rejecting The Ex-Gay Movement

Michael Bussee co-founded the “ex-gay” ministry Exodus International. In the videos below he explains the problems with the movement and how he came to reject it.  Here are a bunch of the videos, and more can be found on his YouTube channel.

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Family Research Council Lobbied Congress NOT To Denounce Uganda Bill

Enraging: Your Thoughts?

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Children Of Lesbians Did Better In Study Than Traditionally Raised Children

Nanette Gartrell and Henny Bos (author of Parenting in Planned Lesbian Families (UvA Proefschriften) have the authored the first longitudinal study to track the outcomes of children created through artificial insemination through their teenage years.  The results? The authors found that children raised by lesbian mothers — whether the mother was partnered or single — […]

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Should Church Vandalism Be Considered A Hate Crime?

That’s essentially what New York state senator Jeffrey Klein is arguing when he explains proposed legislation to make vandalizing a house of worship a felony. And I agree with him.  Desecrating the grounds of institutions that represent specific subset communities is not simply attacking the specific owners of that property but sending a threatening message […]

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Michael Sandel On “The Lost Art Of Democratic Debate”

A good video from Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, who recently wrote a book on justice for a popular audience, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, and who last year released on YouTube high production value videos encapsulating his lectures for his standard introductory level ethics class at Harvard. You can start watching those videos here. […]

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Make Homosexuals Marry

Starring Mike White, writer and co-star of two of my favorite movies (The Good Girl and School of Rock), a look at the realities of gay marriage: Your Thoughts?

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Lars Vilks, Recently Attacked At Speech, Joins “Kill Lars Vilks” Facebook Group

After he drew Mohammed with the body of a dog, an Al-Qaeda front organization put a bounty on Lars Vilks’s head: $100,000 for killing him and $150,000 if it’s a death by slit throat.  He was recently attacked at a talk he was giving when he showed photos of his controversy riling drawings. Now he […]

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Angry Atheist Debate About A Mosque Near Ground Zerosts

Saturday I put together a large post highlighting a spectrum of thoughtful and/or provocative opinions on the recently approved plan to build a mosque a couple of blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center in New York.  That day, for the sake of balance, I wanted to find someone who could […]

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8: The Mormon Proposition

8: The Mormon Proposition, a new movie out in theaters next Friday and available on DVD in July, explores the way that a tax exempt organization has waged a “secretive, decades-long campaign against gay rights”: Thanks to Richard for the link. Your Thoughts?

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A California Attorney General Candidate Who Supports Gay Marriage

His name is Steve Cooley and he could use your support in a primary for the Republican party’s nomination.  Think about it if you’re qualified to vote for him and live in California: Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley is running for the Republican Party nomination for California State Attorney General. And those readers who […]

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U.S. Bishops Argue Employers Should Be Allowed To Consider Being Gay A Fireable Offense

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a letter addressed to the United States Congress people opposing ENDA, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act For the sake of clarity, permit us first to state two basic tenets of Catholic Church teaching on this issue. First, persons with a homosexual inclination “must be accepted with respect, compassion, […]

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Bill O’Reilly Compares Gays To Al-Qaeda

A little over an hour ago, I posted this McDonald’s commercial, running only in France thus far, which gently sends a pro-gay message.  Little did I know yet that Bill O’Reilly got seriously O’riled up about it tonight: His physical hostility towards such a remarkably understated and delicate ad and his adamant insistence that the […]

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