Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
History once again repeats itself. Back in 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwā calling for Salman Rushdie’s death due to his book The Satanic Verses, and as a result tens of millions of copies were sold. It earned Salman Rushdie $2 million in the first year alone, and also became an all-time best seller for the publisher. Without the assistance of the Ayatollah … Read more
Fox News already has a reputation as a highly unreliable and extremely biased source for everything they do and so it came as no surprise to discover one of their “experts” simply making stuff up. The latest rather hilarious (for us) gaff is their terrorism expert, Steve Emerson, making the rather absurd claim that Birmingham in the UK was ‘totally … Read more
It is a sad fact there even in the 21st century, a 7th century mindset still prevails in some places. Is that a factual statement? Indeed it is, the above diagram illustrates the nations that have explicit laws that oppress those that dare to simply stop believing religious nonsense, and if you still doubt this, … Read more
The question came up today on the BBCs Big Question, and so in response to that I’ve written this up to add a few additional observations. Offensive Images The idea that an image of a specific human is offensive is a specifically religious idea, and while popular within Islam today, it was not always the case, … Read more
A rather common religious claim is that by default humans are violent and that without the moral guidance of a god, our natural instincts will lead to great darkness and evil … cue citations for Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc… and you are then advised either implicitly or even explicitly that this would be you if you do … Read more
Derren Brown, the famous illusionist, came out as gay back in 2007. At the time the rather inevitable happened; because he is famous, some of the tabloids ran with it …. In 2007 he did a “discreet” interview with The Independent where he officially came out. “If you don’t do anything at all then suddenly it’s … Read more
