Really: the exact same ones.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Hitchens on the King James bible
Tyndale translated ecclesia to mean “the congregation” as an autonomous body, rather than “the church” as a sacrosanct institution above human law.
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PZ on the great quest for martyrs
We should no more find vindication in the execution of heretics than doctors would revel in the glory of millions of miserable deaths by typhoid and cholera.
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Grayling reviews Baggini on the self
The unity that is you, constructed from the interplay of various physical and psychological factors, is in some ways very fragile and in other ways robust.
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No abortion and no contraception either
Many social conservatives are simply opposed to giving women the ability to have sex without the possibility of procreation.
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Paula Kirby on religion and women
Right after the commandment to women to submit to their husbands comes the commandment to children to obey their parents, and to slaves to obey their owners.
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Religion lays foundation for gender discrimination
No institutional religious leader accepts the premise that he or his denomination seriously discriminates against women.
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Pakistan’s blasphemy vigilantes kill exonerated man
He was cleared, but he was murdered anyway; thus Mo is protected.
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Grayling’s secular bible is a sequel, not an attack
The truth is that both the religious bibles and this new “secular bible” come from the same source – human experience.
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Guardian supports women’s right to self-obliterate
Not a word about Muslim women who support the ban.
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How to ossify religious identity
Train social workers as “Muslim social workers” so that there will be “enough role models for Muslim teenage girls.”
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Berlinerblau scolds the gnu atheists again
Louis, this looks like the start of a beautiful friendship.
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Mona Eltahawy on the burqa
The burqa represents an ideology that does not believe in Muslim women’s rights to do anything but choose to cover her face.
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French burqa ban is in effect
Said a man, “According to this law, my wife would have to remain cloistered at home.”
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Bangladesh: girl whipped to death for being raped
She was 14. The man who raped her was her cousin, age 40. He’s alive and well.
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Does Mo want to make $50,000?
He knows it’s not as easy as it looks.
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Ben Goldacre on why cigarette packs matter
Cigarette packaging has been used to sell the crucial lie that cigarettes which are “light”, “mild”, “silver”, and the rest, are somehow “safer”.
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When wives are set on fire for their dowry
At least 249 women were killed in 2010 for their dowry, according to the Bangladesh Society for the Enforcement of Human Rights.
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“Holy man” committed sexual assault by proxy
Golossian convinced two Greek Orthodox women that they had been cursed by black magic and had to obey his angel-given instructions.