Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
In response to various stories that criticise belief I’ve seen the moral argument pop up. For example, David Quinn writes in the Irish Independent a response to Stephen Fry’s observation that the God of the bible is quite immoral.. But matter cannot produce a moral law. It cannot produce ‘justice’. If matter and its emanations … Read more
Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi continues to face 950 lashes and a decade in prison – simply for calling for free speech. The UK government has so far failed to call for Raif’s freedom, despite knowing of and speaking on his case – alongside a visit to Saudi Arabia by the Prime Minister. Ask our … Read more
Freedom of speech is a rather important right, and while it is quite easy to support the concept when it is manifesting itself as criticism of ideas we oppose (drawing Mohammed for example), what happens when we are faced with the promotion of things that we find to be highly offensive and utterly absurd – … Read more
Maajid Nawaz (pictured above), a former radical Islamist, now a liberal counter-extremism activist, and author of his autobiographical book ‘Radical’ , held an AMA (ask me anything) over at /reddit/r/books a few days ago, here are some of the questions and answers from that session. The Introduction to the AMA opened with this … My name … Read more
Peter Tatchell is a gay rights and also a human rights activist, who has courageously taken a consistently brave stand. In his mind human rights are universal, so regardless of who is doing the oppressing, he will speak up for the oppressed … and rightly so. As an example, he openly criticises Hamas for targeting civilians, … Read more
There has been a “10 ‘Non-Commandments’ Contest,” in which people were asked to offer modern and far better alternatives to the famous 10, and the prize on offer for the winner was $10,000. Who is doing this? Lex Bayer, an executive at AirBnB, and John Figdor, a humanist chaplain at Stanford University Why? The cynical might simply make … Read more