Last Straw

While cor­rel­a­tion doesn’t neces­sar­ily prove caus­a­tion the study doesn’t need to. It only needs to prove cor­rel­a­tion to chal­lenge the claim that “reli­gion leads to bet­ter soci­et­ies.” Click through for the video.

How to defend the Enlight­en­ment:

On the pub­lic­a­tion of his new book In Defence of the Enlight­en­ment, Tzvetan Todorov tells Brit­ish philo­sopher AC Grayling why the Enlight­en­ment must be sep­ar­ated from sci­ent­ism and cul­tural chauvinism.

Nich­olas D. Kris­toff, writ­ing for the New York Times:

Research­ers have found, for example, that some humans are par­tic­u­larly alert to threats, par­tic­u­larly primed to feel vul­ner­able and per­ceive danger. Those people are more likely to be conservatives.

Don’t panic Haiti, the Sci­ento­lo­gists are com­ing:

Were an idiot like you to itemise the myriad things that this most wretched of dis­aster zones cur­rently lacked, chances are you’d omit “mil­it­ant Sci­ento­lo­gists who claim post-traumatic stress is a con­spir­acy cre­ated by the evil psy­chi­at­ric pro­fes­sion, and who believe the cor­rect response to extreme shock is to touch suf­fer­ers with one fin­ger, before attempt­ing to con­vert them to the ways of Hubbard”.

Pat Con­dell:

Reli­gion is now com­pletely out of con­trol. It’s already got it’s hands around the throat of the United Nations and it’s push­ing for a world-wide blas­phemy law to pro­tect people from hear­ing words that might crow­bar their tiny minds out of the stone age.

Click through for the video.

I’ve been fol­low­ing a debate between Sam Har­ris and Philip Ball, in which Har­ris takes Ball and Nature magazine to task over their capit­u­la­tions to reli­gion. In one pas­sage I was reminded of one of many dis­cus­sions I’ve had over the years with my mother about reli­gion. In this par­tic­u­lar dis­cus­sion she became very dis­tressed and […]

The Reason Pro­ject, co-founded by Sam Har­ris, launched today:
The Reason Pro­ject is a non­profit found­a­tion devoted to spread­ing sci­entific know­ledge and sec­u­lar val­ues in soci­ety. The found­a­tion draws on the tal­ents of prom­in­ent and cre­at­ive thinkers in a wide range of dis­cip­lines to encour­age crit­ical think­ing and erode the influ­ence of dog­mat­ism, super­sti­tion, and bigotry […]

via one­good­move.

Jonathan Cook on Dr. Shlomo Sand’s new book:
Dr. Shlomo Sand argues that the idea of a Jew­ish nation  —  whose need for a safe haven was ori­gin­ally used to jus­tify the found­ing of the state of Israel  —  is a myth inven­ted little more than a century ago.

In addi­tion, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, […]