Culture
Family, Faith, and Unconditional Love
Third, all parents should respect the developing autonomy of their children. If parents attempt to force their faith, agnosticism, or atheism on their children, they are failing to respect the developing personhood of those children. Children have an interest in becoming autonomous and rational, and the manner in which parents raise [...]
17Aug2010 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
What do we know about the science of team success?
The role of teams in organizations has been growing, spurred by globalization and aided by communications technology. Teamwork has become a standard structure and process in most organizations today. Leaders and management consultants often assume that a team approach to work produces superior results. Yet, only recently has research identified both [...]
17Aug2010 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Music fails to chime with Islamic values, says Iran’s supreme leader | World news | The Guardian
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said today that music is “not compatible” with the values of the Islamic republic, and should not be practised or taught in the country.
In some of the most extreme comments by a senior regime figure since the 1979 revolution, Khamenei said: “Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it [...]
Muhammad Cartoonist Lars Vilks Attacked During College Lecture - AOL News
Muhammad Cartoonist Lars Vilks Attacked During College Lecture - AOL News
May 11 — A Swedish artist who depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog was attacked today while delivering a university lecture on artistic freedom.
Lars Vilks was speaking at Uppsala University in Sweden when a man jumped onstage and head-butted him. [...]
French attempts to outlaw the burqa strike a blow for the rights of women. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
French attempts to outlaw the burqa strike a blow for the rights of women. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
The French legislators who seek to repudiate the wearing of the veil or the burqa—whether the garment covers “only” the face or the entire female body—are often described as seeking to impose a “ban.” To [...]
Deborah Strod - Should Humanists Do Rituals?
It is winter, the season of ritual! It seems there are more religious celebrations packed into these months than any other time of year: Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, and a bit earlier, Diwali and Eid. There are religious rituals you’re invited to out of friendship and other rituals you may feel obligated to join [...]
3Apr2010 | will | 0 comments | Continued
Are we better off without religion? | Sue Blackmore | guardian.co.uk
Popular religious belief is caused by dysfunctional social conditions. This is the conclusion of the latest sociological research pdf conducted by Gregory Paul. Far from religion benefiting societies, as the “moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis” would have it, popular religion is a psychological mechanism for coping with high levels of stress and anxiety – or so he [...]
9Dec2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
White House Pushes Science and Math Education - NYTimes.com
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: November 22, 2009
To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.
President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle [...]
Row erupts over humanist poster in Belfast
THE war of words between atheists and religious believers has entered a new chapter with the launch of Northern Ireland’s first ever humanist advertising campaign.
The British Humanist Association (BHA) yesterday unveiled a billboard with the slogan:
Please Don’t Label Me. Let Me Grow Up And Choose For Myself.
Located on one Belfast’s busiest routes, the poster is [...]
BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Girls ‘becoming Facebook addicts’
Parents fear their daughters are becoming addicted to social networking sites, a girls’ school leader says.
Girls seem to be “permanently connected” to sites like Facebook and Bebo, president of the Girls’ Schools Association Jill Berry said.
This issue now tops the list of parents’ worries by some way, she told the association’s annual conference.
Mrs Berry also [...]
Skeptic » Reading Room » A Tribute to Carl Sagan: Our Place in the Universe
Carl Sagan was a scholar and a visionary. He changed the world. His work still does. As I think back on the time I got to spend in his classes, I realize now what made him the best science communicator of his day. He loved discovery, he encouraged exploration, and he celebrated science. That last [...]
17Nov2009 | will | 0 comments | Continued
Godless Children and the Future of Atheism: Raising Godless Children - How Can Godless Parents Today Affect the Future of Atheism?
Question:
What does raising children in a godless, irreligious environment mean for the future of atheism in America?
Response:
It’s a simple fact that the godless children being raised by atheists today are likely to be at the forefront of atheism in the future. What’s not so simple is what godless parents are going to do about this [...]
Red Bull Faces German Ban Following Positive Cocaine Test
Red Bull Faces German Ban Following Positive Cocaine Test - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News - FOXNews.com
BERLIN — Six German states have told retailers to stop selling Red Bull Cola energy drinks after a test found a trace amount of cocaine.
The bans started Friday after [...]
Woman who sees Christ in snack may put it on eBay | The Reason Project
Woman who sees Christ in snack may put it on eBay | The Reason Project
Preston Hollow resident Sara Bell recently stopped by this newspaper’s office with a unique discovery: a Cheeto that she thinks looks like Jesus.
Bell came across the strange snack a few weeks ago while she and her husband, Dan, were driving home [...]
‘Faith Fighters’ Developers Launch Sequel to Controversial Game
A team of game developers has put back on its Web site a video game that pits major religious figures such as Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha against one another in head-to-head combat.
On top of that, they have also added a sequel to “Faith Fighters” that “teaches the universal values of tolerance and respect,” though most [...]
Not a very bright idea
When Tony Blair first became leader of the Labour Party in 1994, the Sun newspaper, a British tabloid, took to calling him ‘Bambi’, presumably in the hope that the nickname would become established in the public consciousness. It did not, of course, for it lacked any kind of resonance with what people could believe about [...]
9May2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
An Amazon tribe converts the missionary
By Lynn Harnett
April 12, 2009 6:00 AM
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
Daniel L. Everett
Pantheon
The Pirahã are the “Show me!” tribe of the Brazilian Amazon. They don’t bother with fiction or tall tales or even oral history. They have little art. They don’t have a creation myth and don’t want [...]
23Apr2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Bruce Sterling - Prophet and loss
Author Bruce Sterling is one of the most respected writers of science fiction. He is also a web activist, columnist, teacher and one of the most anticipated speakers at the South by South West Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, at which he will give a talk entitled: The state of the Cybersphere.
The difficulty with interviewing [...]
More Americans say they have no religion
Study finds percentage of Christians in the nation has declined
A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.
Fifteen percent of respondents [...]
The Fight for the Soul of Secularism
The “old” New Atheism consists of writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and, of course, Christopher Hitchens. It was Hitchens’ mega-best seller in 2007, God is Not Great, that brought atheism to mass consciousness in a way previously unknown in America. All of the New Atheists placed opposition to religion at the heart of [...]
5Mar2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Evil Gays, Atheists Force Scouts into Unethical Logging
The Boy Scouts of America are supposed to teach boys the virtues of understanding and properly caring for nature. They may not be quite an “environmentalist” organization, but they have portrayed themselves as generally “conservationist” for promoting a better appreciation for nature. All the while, though, Boy Scout troops have been making lots of money [...]
27Feb2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Do People of all Cultures Believe in Free Will?
Imagine a universe in which everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before. So the things that happened at the very beginning of the universe caused the things that happened next, which caused the things that happened after that… right up until the present day. Now imagine that human decision making [...]
25Jan2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Roger Ebert Watches Ben Stein’s “Expelled” So You Don’t Have To
And there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually did want to title it “From Darwin to Hitler.” He finds a Creationist who informs him, “Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism.” He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal. Arbitrary [...]
15Jan2009 | Admin | 0 comments | Continued
Learn Resilience and Endurance from Nature
Pantheism, unlike many other belief systems, provides its practitioners
with an earthly understanding of how species cope with
crisis. As humans we sometimes separate ourselves from the
natural world, believing that the rules of nature do not apply to
us. Fact of the matter is that what we require to survive are the
very same things that other species require [...]
UK housewives rule in online time
A survey of more than 27,000 web users in 16 countries has shown that the Chinese spend the largest fraction of their leisure time online.
However, UK housewives spend even more than China’s average - 47%.
Germans are the most likely to meet someone in real life that they first met online; more than three quarters have [...]
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The Center for Naturalism
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A Chameleon Sky
The sands of time are running out for the central star of this the Hourglass Nebula. With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a sun-like star's life occurs as its outer layers are ejected and its core becomes a cooling, fading white dwarf. In 1995, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to make a series of images of planetary nebulae, including the one above. Here, delicate rings of colorful glowing gas (nitrogen-red, hydrogen-green, and oxygen-blue) outline the tenuous walls of the 'hourglass.' The unprecedented sharpness of Hubble's images revealed surprising details of the nebula ejection process and may resolve the outstanding mystery of the variety of complex shapes and symmetries of planetary nebulae. Image Credit: NASA, WFPC2, HST, R. Sahai and J. Trauger (JPL)
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