Founded to promote atheism, agnosticism, humanism, rational thinking, and education through science, PATAS is growing rapidly.
Category: Latest News
Welcome to our archive of news stories relevant to the project of fighting fashionable nonsense. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world’s media. On this page, you’ll find links to those stories that have been featured on Butterflies and Wheels during the current year. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.
We’re always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on Butterflies and Wheels. Just send an email here, if you want to point one out to us.
A note about links
Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.
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GP who championed assisted suicide dies
Dr Ann McPherson, who was a strong advocate for assisted suicide, has died after a long battle with cancer, just days after writing of her frustration at not being able to die.
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The putative harmony between science and faith
Look here. Scientists like doing science. That’s faith. See?
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Washington state is full of stupid anti-vaccine hippies
Washington ranks among the worst in meeting childhood vaccination targets, ranging between 88 and 93 percent for “required” vaccinations.
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Classifying ‘corrective rape’ as a hate crime
Seventeen years into its democracy, South Africa should not be tolerating crimes of this nature.
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Alan Johnson on Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Revolution
What is being described here is fanaticism and it licenses within Žižek’s thought what John Holbo has called Žižek’s ‘towering un-thoughtfulness’.
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Catholic doctors offer homeopathic ‘gay treatment’
In Germany the Union of Catholic Physicians has been offering homeopathic “Therapy Options for Homosexuality” on their website.
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Guy has himself buried alive, dies by mistake
He thought being buried alive for a night would bring him luck.
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A friend remembers Saleem Shahzad
His book on “Inside Taliban and Al-Qaeda” was about to be published and it was going to name names. Some of his colleagues suspect intelligence agencies.
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Committee to Protect Journalists presses Pakistan
“The protection of journalists is in my mandate,” you told us.
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Journalists rally to condemn murder of Saleem Shahzad
Shahzad wrote his last article in the aftermath of the attack on PNS Mehran, which revealed al Qaeda infiltration in the navy.
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Manal al-Sharif released after promising not to drive
“I will leave it up to our leader to reach a decision that will consider the best interests of the people, while also being pleasing to Allah, and in line with divine law.”
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“We’ve Never Seen Such Horror”
Victims and witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch described systematic killings, beatings, torture using electroshock devices, and detention of the injured.
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Jason Rosenhouse on “atheism is a religion” canard
Offering your views as an alternative to traditional religious systems does not mean that your views comprise a religious system of their own.
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The Moral Maze on science and morality
Jerry Coyne, David Aaronovitch, Kenan Malik, Claire Fox et al.
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Religious experience linked to atrophy in hippocampus
Is it possible that those people with smaller hippocampal volumes are more likely to have specific religious attributes, drawing the causal arrow in the other direction?
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AI to Egypt: bring “virginity testers” to justice
A senior Egyptian general told CNN that women detained on 9 March at Cairo’s Tahrir Square had been forced to undergo ‘virginity tests’.
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Justice for Magdalenes takes its case to the UN
Ireland has failed to investigate a 70+-year system of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of women and girls in the Magdalene laundries.
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Mladic arrest stirs unhappy memories in Sarajevo
“The fact is that the war has not been won by either side. The only correct term would be that it is a frozen conflict.”