Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
John Oliver takes aim at the prosperity gospel swindlers and nails them beautifully. This one is doing the rounds, and yet it is so good that it deserves to be highlighted and promoted, and so that is exactly what I’m doing. I confess that I loved this because these fraudsters are not simply harmless religious cranks, … Read more
A recent article in Salon reports on the rising tide of disbelief in Saudi Arabia … In this country known as the cradle of Islam, where religion gives legitimacy to the government and state-appointed clerics set rules for social behavior, a growing number of Saudis are privately declaring themselves atheists. The evidence is anecdotal, but … Read more
I tripped up over the details of this one the other day, and it truly is bizarre. It is one of those cases that pops up whenever you might be tempted to think, “nobody could be that stupid”, because sure enough, up pops somebody who is quite determined to prove you wrong about that. A couple of … Read more
The former Islamic extremist and now anti-extremist campaigner, Maajid Nawaz, has had a bit of a hatchet job done to him by David Shariatmadari within a Guardian article. He was supposedly being profiled, but then Mr Shariatmadari laced it all with some anonymous quotes and essentially stuck the knife into him. Was it Really A hatchet Job? … Read more
OK, let’s cut to the chase and give you the answer up front … probably not in our immediate future, because humans are by nature naturally selected with many cognitive biases that make us like this. There is a really good article over at BBC Future by Rachel Nuwer that covers this question, and so I’m … Read more
The sad news is that yet another blogger in Bangladesh, Niloy Chakrabarti, has been hacked to death by a gang of Islamist thugs. The Guardian reports the horrific details … A well-known secular blogger in Bangladesh, who has been murdered at his home in the latest such attack, had told police of threats against him and requested … Read more