There’s been a lot of unhappy and unfortunate stuff going on at the Center for Inquiry lately. I’m not going to link to any sources because I haven’t been able to find any that seem at all impartial (and also because several of them are at Facebook rather than at more public sites). To summarize briefly – Paul Kurtz was ousted or removed or set aside (see? I can’t even find an impartial verb) as CEO, and Ron Lindsay took over that job. There were changes. There were funding cuts or re-allocations. (See? Depends what you call it.) Senior people left, for various reasons. (See?) Paul Kurtz resigned altogether, and published an open letter about his resignation and the changes … Read the rest

There’s Rowdha Yousef, who is worried about this alarming trend for Saudi women to start making a few faint gestures toward acting like human beings. She is outraged.

With 15 other women, she started a campaign, “My Guardian Knows What’s Best for Me.” Within two months, they had collected more than 5,400 signatures on a petition “rejecting the ignorant requests of those inciting liberty” and demanding “punishments for those who call for equality between men and women, mingling between men and women in mixed environments, and other unacceptable behaviors.”

Her guardian knows what’s best for her, therefore she wants to help see to it that all women will continue to be required to have guardians whether they want them or … Read the rest

Eli Horowitz of Rust Belt Philosophy finds the Templeton Foundation and its everlasting questions irksome. The World Science Festival has its Science ‘N’ Faith panel, as we know, which asks rilly deep questions:

For all their historical tensions, scientists and religious scholars from a wide variety of faiths ponder many similar questions—how did the universe begin? How might it end? What is the origin of matter, energy, and life?

Ooh yeah, how, how? Eli adds a few more deep questions.

How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free? Who put the “bop” in the “bop-shoo-bop-shoo-bop”? Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? What’s eating Gilbert Grape? Who framed Roger Rabbit?

Jason Rosenhouse has an excellent post on the science ‘n’ faith panel at the World Science Festival.

He notes that Chad Orzel says, “The simple fact is that people with fixed and absolute views do not make for an interesting conversation,” and comments

Right, because it’s only New Atheists that have fixed and absolute viewpoints. When someone like Francisco Ayala writes,

I contend that both — scientists denying religion and believers rejecting science — are wrong. Science and religious beliefs need not be in contradiction. If they are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction because science and religion concern different matters.

there is nothing fixed or absolute in his views? To declare bluntly that any conception of