Satan (Hearts) Rick Scott
January 15, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Yesterday, Ron Lindsay joined the panel on HuffPost Live to talk about the practice of borrowing religious rituals between and outside of their originating faiths. Of course it gets heated.
Who doesn't want to be more like Sherlock Holmes? (I mostly just want to be more like Benedict Cumberbatch.) On Point of Inquiry, guest Maria Konnikova tells us how to think more like the literary supersleuth.
CSI's Joe Nickell (nonreligious) talks about how he and his wife Diana (Baha'i) go together on "religabouts". . .
Towards Increasing Non-knowing
January 14, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Internet activist, co-creator of RSS, co-founder of Reddit Aaron Swartz kills himself in the midst of prosecutorial pressure after attempting to make freely available the contents of the JSTOR academic archive.
U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald refuses to stop a new regulation in NYC concerning parental consent for metzitzah b'peh circumcisions, which are the ones "involving direct oral suction of the penis" by the rabbi.
Amanda Marcotte on scientists' limited political options:
Since scientists have no ability to stop Republicans from attacking science, their only real option is to take power away from Republicans by supporting Democrats.
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Here’s Where Science and Brainless Merge
January 11, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Apparently the "nones" are leveling off, just as we were "rising," like, five minutes ago. Who can keep up?
The Supreme Court turns down an appeal to stop embryonic stem cell research.
Anti-gay pastor Louie Giglio takes himself out of the presidential inauguration ceremony. Sarah Posner unpacks the mess.
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The Silliness Bound Up in Being Human
January 10, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
CFI chief Ron Lindsay is asking for it. As he gets set to meet with the leaders of the other big groups of the skepto-atheosphere, Ron wants to know what you think about how best to address some of the latest controversies and concerns of the movement. I tried to stop him, but he never listens to me. Anyway, read his post and help him out.
CSI's Ben Radford at Yahoo News sounds the alarm on the threat to vaccination workers around the world due to urban legends and xenophobia.
Meanwhile Faheem Younus at WaPo, a medical doctor and a Muslim, tells of his often-obstructed attempts to bridge religious divides in providing free flu vaccinations:
The ruthless flu virus was not going to screen Americans for their faith before attacking. I gave the flu shots to the worshippers at Bait-ur-Rehman mosque located in Silver Spring, MD. Free of charge. Free of expectation. Free of faith.
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Phantasmagoric Biotheology
January 09, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Don't miss this big CFI event in DC: CFI presents a symposium on the topic "Why Tolerate Religion?" with such heavy-hitters as Jacques Berlinerblau, Caroline Mala Corbin, Wendy Kaminer, Brian Leiter, Barry Lynn, and our own Ron Lindsay and John Shook. April 27 at the Wooly Mammoth theatre (where my wife has totally performed).
Hoosiers take note: CFI wants you to contact your state legislature to stop the expansion of a religion-subsidizing school voucher program.
Elizabeth Drescher at Religion Dispatches warns against lumping all "Nones" with nonbelievers and secularists.
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You Have Died of Dysentery, Jesus
January 08, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
HuffPo's Jaweed Kaleem explores the atheist take on death and lack of an afterlife, and talks to me and CFI-Indiana's Reba Boyd Wooden for some perspective. My quote's pretty fatalistic, but hey, that's me for ya.
We're pretty excited about this one, folks. Point of Inquiry's got Phil Plait, talking the end of the world.
The Verge: Kuwaiti activist Rashid Saleh al-Anzi sentenced to two years in prison for a tweet that "stabbed the rights and powers" of the country's emir.
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Whatever it is Humans are Responsible For
January 07, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
An Indiana state senator introduces a bill to allow prayer in public schools, and Indiana's WTHR TV news talks to CFI-Indiana's Reba Boyd Wooden, who calls it "a lawsuit waiting to happen."
Katherine Ozment pens a long feature in Boston magazine on the choices faced by nonreligious and "none" parents.
National Catholic Reporter headline: "Bishops investigating US nuns have poor records on sex abuse cases"
New Religion: Not Liking Flu Shots
January 04, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Buzzfeed rounds up some firsts for the 113th Congress (first Buddhist senator, first openly gay senator, etc.), but it's US News that focuses in Kyrsten Sinema as the first "none," as in "no religion."
The image to the right is from the Hindu American Foundation, which is pretty excited about the first Hindu congressperson, Tulsi Gabbard, here being sworn in by John Boehner on a Bhagavad Gita -- which I'm sure threw him for a loop.
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Triskaidekaphilia
January 03, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Look out! Today's date is 1/3/13!!! That's, like, two thirteens right in a row if you ignore the slashes! And you don't add a zero before the single-digit numbers! And you don't write out "2013" in its entirety!
Speaking of which, the Washington Times, the paper founded by a guy who thought he was the messiah, reports on the fear of the number 13.
Michael De Dora reports on the UN's resolution calling for the end of female genital mutilation, "an irreparable, irreversible abuse of human rights of women and girls."
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Ricocheting Between Hysteria and Delusion
January 02, 2013
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Welcome to 2013! Let's all try not to screw it up.
Slate comes down hard on Dr. Oz for peddling medical malarkey to a credulous public:
We can . . . arm ourselves with the knowledge that not all evidence is created equally, and celebrities—even famous doctors—are not credible sources of health information.
Best-selling sci-fi author Scott Sigler talks to Indre Viskontas on the latest Point of Inquiry, the best podcast in the history of the universe.
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