Life is not lived in black and white
Someone by the name of Lawrence Newman left a comment under the Freethinker article about the tragic suicide of transgender teen, Leelah Alcorn, above: As a logical atheist, it amazes me how other...
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The new religion of madness
How the Christian concept of mental illness still infests psychiatric treatment. Emerging from the subway in San Francisco, before the sight of the city strains into view, you are hit with the smell of...
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Raif Badawi’s torture
Last May the liberal Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was sentenced to one thousand lashes along with ten years in prison and a one million riyals fine for ‘insulting Islam’ and setting up a web forum called...
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No cringing!
Now that the nightmare in Copenhagen is over, the commentary is rolling in, and as always, some of it is enragingly eager to adopt the point of view of the murderous theocrats at the expense of their...
View ArticleJoey Barton says ‘privatise religion’
In the run-up to the General Election in the UK, the Independent is publishing the views of 100 people, none of whom are politicians. Last Friday it published a piece by footballer and philosophy...
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Making Jesus ‘cool’
Christianity’s Suicidal Embracing Of Pop Culture Churches change. The Catholics threw over neo-Platonism when Aristotelianism turned trendy. The Southern Baptists gave up – evennnnn….tuallllllllly –...
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Gita Sahgal was right
Five years ago Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty International, told the Amnesty bosses that it was a mistake to collaborate with Moazzem Begg, a mistake that would damage Amnesty’s...
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Wrong, Mr Trudeau!
On April 10 the satirical cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, gave a speech at the George Polk Awards in Journalism ceremony where he received a lifetime achievement award. In that speech...
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My Family
It is easy, looking around us, to believe that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, the masters of the world. We have developed tools with which we have spilt atoms, put probes on other planets and...
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The rise of university ‘faith warriors’
The protagonists of the anti-communist hysteria were commonly referred to as ‘cold warriors’. The trademark of the cold warrior was the obsession with their ideology, and the ideology of the...
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A Clash of the Uncivilised
Trump, Muslim Profiling and the Far-Right’s Assault Donald Trump’s suspension of new refugee admissions for 120 days and the barring of nationals from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia...
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What does Dr Manners think?
We live in a chronically boorish and uncivil world, and in the spirit of the great Miss Manners, above, I’m going to set up as an advisor on how to be not quite so unpleasant to each other. You can...
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Is a fascist Christian theocracy REALLY the stuff of paranoia?
When Hulu launched its highly-acclaimed dramatisation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale earlier this year, Barbara Kay, writing for The National Post, had this to say: Atwood chose...
View ArticleA very bad man
We in the US have been feeling a little overwhelmed lately, what with a racist president and racist marches in the streets and a racist president pardoning a racist sheriff who was famous for his...
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Pride parade in Vancouver rejects Iranian over veil float
Iranian Shawn Shirazi and his group Cirque de So Gay were denied entry to the Pride Parade in Vancouver, Canada this year because their float criticising the veil was deemed to be ‘culturally...
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Signs of godliness
Christians, as a rule, don’t wear ridiculous garb. They leave that to their poncy spiritual leaders. But devout Jesus junkies identify themselves by having a certain madness stamped on their features,...
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More – especially the young – discard Christianity in the UK
Britain is fast becoming one of the least religious countries in the world. Although vestiges of the religious establishments that formerly set the pace of British public life still manage to exert...
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Living in an Age of Anger
Let’s talk about anger. We seem to be living in an Age of Anger, so it seems like a good idea to try to understand it better. It’s central to a lot of literature and stories, including movies and...
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Identity and its discontents
I’ve been thinking about what we mean when we talk about identity and ‘identity politics’. It needs thinking about because it’s a muddled conversation: identity has more than one meaning yet the label...
View ArticleBe merry, god damn it!
Well Baby Jesus’s Pretend Birthday is over for another year, so now that everyone is busy scrubbing gravy stains off the ceiling and wrapping up the leftover spam and chestnut pie for the week’s...
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