The Morning Heresy 10/31/12: Squirrel Beats Sea Monster
October 31, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Happy spooky day! I know we're all looking forward to an evening of dissecting our kids' candy as we check each individual piece for razor blades and evidence of poisoning. My baby daughter Phoebe will be donning a puppy costume, presuming she's awake and not screaming, and my almost-3-year-old son Toby will be a Tyrannosaurus Rex, pictured here with my lovely wife. You could just die, he's so cute, right??
CFI's new campus organizer Sarah Kaiser takes a valiant stab at chronicling last week's CSICon using mainly tweets. Remarkably effective.
James Croft discovers an "interfaith" organization that, rather than pretend all religions are the same (<cough>Karen Armstrong<cough>), puts religious differences front and center in a Stephen Prothero God-is-not-one kind of way. I'm intrigued.
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The Morning Heresy 10/30/12: Rational Suspension of Instinct
October 30, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
If you want to help out those affected by Hurricane Sandy, here's the Red Cross's donation page. Google has a pretty robust map with information on the storm, power outages, and shelters.
You knew it was coming. Hurricane Sandy is a manifestation of God's wrath for Israel or gays or yadda yadda.
Fake hurricane photos quickly proliferate on the Internet, which seems like a weird waste of fakery-creativity.
Defying a ban on their demonstration, thousands of secularists in Turkey march in opposition to the imposition of Islam on Turkish government and culture. Protesters were attacked with tear gas and water cannons and the like, but did not back down.
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The Morning Heresy 10/29/12: Nones for Nader
October 29, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
The Tennessean's Bob Smietana has a great report on CSICon (which just ended yesterday), talking to CFI's Debbie Goddard, board member Leonard Tramiel, and that other guy with the blog and the thing for tentacles.
Twitterers could follow the hashtag #CSICon to keep up with the conference's goings-on, and Kyle Hill has even Storified his copious live-tweetings.
Our own Michael De Dora gets a fancy profile in the Washington Examiner.
The Morning Heresy 10/26/12: Folklore-for-Profit
October 26, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
The conference is now officially in full swing, and tonight is the big CSICon Halloween party. I'm actually missing the first event so I can deliver all this crucial information to you, the Morning Heresy readers. You are so welcome. Also of note: Because I forgot my own razor, I had to use the hotel's cheapie razor to shave, and now my face looks and feels like I just nuzzled up to a cheese grater. Can only get better from here, I hope.
And just in time for our skeptical conference, NBCNews.com profiles Joe Nickell and his quest for truth about the paranormal, calling him, "the world's longest-running full-time professional paranormal investigator."
Tom Flynn's latest salvo against Florida's religion-funding Amendment 8 addresses the Blaine Amendment's 19th century anti-Catholic baggage.
Billy Hallowell at Glenn Beck's The Blaze does a pretty detailed treatment on CFI's lawsuit in Indiana to allow secular celebrants to solemnize marriages.
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The Morning Heresy 10/25/12: A Minute Amount of Intelligence
October 25, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Ladies and gentlenerds, CSICon 2012 kicks off today in Music City. Your Morning Heretic is a little discombobulated from late night travel and time zone changes, plus being in the human presense of people who I have known exclusively as email addresses or Twitter handles. But all signs from the ineffable consciousness of the universal spirit point to a really fantastic event.
FoxNews.com covers the CFI lawsuit in Indiana to allow for secular celebrants to solemnize marriages, and wherein I inartfully try to make the distinction between just getting a government functionary to sign a paper and having an officiant of the secular community do the business of sealing the matrimonial deal.
The Morning Heresy 10/24/12: The Seeds of its Own Destruction
October 24, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
CFI founder Paul Kurtz gets full obituaries in both the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Prometheus Books, run by Kurtz's son, posts its official obituary.
Herb Silverman pens his own memorial of Kurtz:
A true visionary, he gave meaning, substance, and a philosophical grounding to the importance of advancing ideas of reason and science over religion. He will be remembered as a significant, and perhaps the most significant, force in the second half of the 20th century in support of secular humanism and living a good life without religion.
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The Morning Heresy 10/23/12: One of “Those” Atheists
October 23, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Reports and remembrances of Paul Kurtz, CFI's founder who died this weekend at the age of 86, continue to stream in throughout the web.
Carolyn Thompson at AP tells the story of Kurtz's life and work.
Robert Evans at Reuters writes that Kurtz "devoted his life to fighting prejudice against people who reject belief in a god and promoting a non-religious stance in life," and notes that CFI has "spawned a movement" that has spread globally.
Ed Brayton: "You would be hard pressed to find anyone who did more to advance secular humanism, atheism and skepticism over the last century."
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The Morning Heresy 10/22/12: The Tree of Life
October 22, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
CFI is mourning the passing of our founder, Paul Kurtz, who died Saturday at the age of 86. We have a comprehensive obituary here, which gives a lot of detail on his work and incalculable impact on secularism, humanism, and skepticism. I actually have never met the man, being a relatively recent hire for CFI, and working remotely from home, but I still feel the loss, and I am enormously grateful for the movements he helped ignite and philosophical foundations he helped lay down -- from which I and many others benefit today.
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The Morning Heresy 10/19/12: Now Pork-Free!
October 19, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
CFI's Michael De Dora heralds the news that a bloc of Islamic nations is dropping is efforts to lobby the UN to adopt binding blasphemy laws, but cautions:
. . . concerned secularists should not sit back and relax. As evidenced in the Center for Inquiry's new report "Dissent Denied," many countries around the world simply international agreements and have in place blasphemy laws that punish innocent people for victimless crimes. But also, the OIC has signaled that, instead of pushing for a blasphemy ban, it will appeal to member states to apply hate speech laws to criticism of religion.
Speaking of free expression, Michael joined the panel on HuffPost Live to talk about Twitter's recent censoring of a neo-Nazi group in Germany.
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The Morning Heresy 10/18/12: I Could Fly Like a Blue Heron
October 18, 2012
Your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
This is a big deal: The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation has declared that it will drop its efforts to pursue a binding blasphemy law at the UN. Kuwait is not satisfied, nor are other members of the coalition.
Also today in blasphemy:
Egyptian atheist Alber Saber is "defiant" as his blasphemy trial resumes. You can sign a Change.org petition on his behalf here.
