- The Contributions of Freethinkers: Albert Einstein
The Loft • July 30, 2008
In 1999, Time magazine named Albert Einstein its "Person of the Century". The choice was understandable: In a global society increasingly underpinned by science and technology, perhaps no one person has had a greater individual impact on humanity's understanding of the cosmos. Among his many scientific contributions, he discovered the special and general theories of [...]
- Imaginary Crimes
The Garden • July 28, 2008
One of the defining attributes of all the world's religions through history is that they create imaginary crimes; that is, arbitrary rules the obeying of which helps no person, and the breaking of which hurts no person. In the beginning, many religions start off as simple, humble affairs; some even have the audacity to insist [...]
- Is Evangelicalism On the Wane?
The Rotunda • July 27, 2008
Is the power of the religious right declining in America? Several lines of evidence would seem to indicate so.
Heading into the 2008 election, the evangelical movement is fragmented and leaderless, lacking a clear sense of enthusiasm or a preferred candidate to rally behind. Several important figures, including Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy, have [...]
- The Uses of Pre-Scientific Cosmology
The Observatory • July 25, 2008
Before the dawn of the scientific age, humankind had only its unaided senses to examine the universe. Certainly, there were awe-inspiring sights, but those alone give little insight into natural phenomena. At night we saw the stars and the planets circle overhead; each season we felt the rains fall and the wind blow; and in [...]
- Strange and Curious Sects: Sabbatai Zevi
The Library • July 23, 2008
Past editions of Strange and Curious Sects have explored religious splinter groups that came into existence relatively recently. Today's edition will focus on an older cult that still has lessons to teach us: the bizarre story of the would-be Jewish messiah, Sabbatai Zevi.
Sabbatai Zevi was born in 1626, supposedly on the anniversary of the Roman [...]
- Noises in the Night
The Garden • July 21, 2008
In the first chapter of her autobiography Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali recounts some of the Somali folktales her grandmother taught her when she was a child. One was a story of a nomad, searching for a home for his wife and child, who mysteriously finds an oasis with a fine grass hut already built in [...]
- Vignette from the New York Subway
The Foyer • July 19, 2008
Presented without further comment:
Last night, when I got on the subway, I noticed an older, balding white man wearing a white T-shirt. The front of his shirt read, in multicolored block letters, "I'm so happy I'm saved," and the back read, over a backdrop of flames, "I won't have to spend eternity in the lake [...]
- Little-Known Bible Verses X: Don't Trust Your Heart
The Library • July 18, 2008
I first came across today's little-known Bible verse while reading The Pilgrim's Progress, and it was so amazing to me that I had to set the book aside and look it up on the spot. Search on the internet, and you'll find volumes of Christian apologetics seeking to justify the author's belief in God by [...]
- An Exercise in Empathy
The Rotunda • July 16, 2008
In 1967, Mildred Loving and her husband Richard, an interracial couple, were arrested at their Virginia home for violating that state's anti-miscegenation law. At trial, Judge Leon Bazile offered his explanation for why the state of Virginia had chosen to ban interracial marriage:
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he [...]
- Doubting the Sun
The Loft • July 14, 2008
Imagine, in some medieval monarchy or modern-day oligarchy, that the government passed a law which made it a crime to deny that the sun exists.
No country either ancient or modern has ever done this, and it's easy to see why. Who would ever be tempted to deny the existence of the sun? The evidence to [...]
- A Personal Note
The Foyer • July 13, 2008
As I've said in the past, I don't usually write about myself or my personal life on this blog. But every so often, something forces me to break that rule. This is one of those occasions.
As of yesterday, I'm engaged to be married to the love of my life: a wonderful woman who, for the [...]
- Smoke on the Breeze
The Garden • July 11, 2008
In May, I wrote about the freethinker Giuseppe Verdi and my experience attending a performance of his operatic masterpiece, the Requiem. At the time, I had one other thought: strange as it sounds, and despite the fact that its composer was no friend of orthodoxy, Verdi's Requiem was one of the more effective arguments for [...]
- The Child Brides of Islam
The Rotunda • July 9, 2008
The New York Times published an article last week, Tiny Voices Defy Child Marriage in Yemen, about a stunning act of courage and feminism: in the nation of Yemen, a 9-year-old girl named Arwa Abdu Muhammad Ali, on her own initiative, sought and obtained a divorce from the abusive, violent 35-year-old man she had been [...]
- Why I'm Skeptical of the Singularity
The Loft • July 7, 2008
In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made a famous observation: that the speed of computer hardware (to be precise, the number of transistors that can be packed onto an integrated circuit) tends to double every two years. In the four decades since, Moore's law has held true with remarkable accuracy. The technology to fabricate ever-smaller [...]
- Poetry Sunday: The New Colossus
The Foyer • July 6, 2008
To commemorate the Fourth of July, here's this month's Poetry Sunday. American readers will likely recognize today's poem immediately, as well they should: it's engraved on a plaque mounted on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. But what may not be as widely known are the freethought sympathies of the poet.
Emma Lazarus was born [...]
- Popular Delusions X: Crystal Power
The Observatory • July 4, 2008
To mark the tenth installment of Popular Delusions, I'm turning my attention to one of the most common and enduring superstitions among the New Age set: the belief that naturally occurring crystals have some sort of special power to store, concentrate, or focus vaguely defined "energies".
A web search readily brings up hundreds of sites [...]
- A Riotous Diversity
The Rotunda • July 2, 2008
Much head-scratching has been occasioned by the Pew Forum's latest report from its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which found, among other things, that 21% of atheists claim to believe in some sort of god. I've linked to a press release from the Secular Coalition for America on this finding, and I'd like to add some [...]
- A Free Speech Outrage
The Rotunda • July 1, 2008
Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician, an elected member of that country's Parliament, infamous for his right-wing views on immigration and social policy. In 2008, he released a short film, Fitna, which criticizes Islamic radicalism by interspersing video footage of terrorist attacks with quotes from the Quran and from prominent Islamic religious authorities praising the [...]
