Dawkins, Kroto, Coyne, and Grayling point out that in religion, faith is a virtue, while in science, faith is a vice.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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 Karzai and Jones
The terrible thing about indiscriminate violence and religious hysteria is how much damage a little of it can do.
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Pertussis closes Waldorf-based private school
The local Health Care Director unambiguously stated that lack of vaccinations caused this outbreak and that the children affected were unvaccinated.
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Mark Vernon on Templeton and evil gnus
Dawkins called Rees a quisling. Now Rees has “hit back” by winning the Templeton prize. This is a turning point in the God wars. Wut?
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Jerry Coyne on Templeton and its implications
When it gives the prize to someone like Dawkins, who doesn’t go to church and is not prepared to say nice things about religion, then…
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Jerry Coyne on the Templeton travesty
Templeton plies its enormous wealth with a single aim: to give credibility to religion by blurring its well-demarcated border with science.
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Ian Sample interviews Martin Rees
“I’ve got no religious beliefs at all. Of course some of the winners have, but I think not all of them.”
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Martin Rees wins controversial Templeton Prize
The astronomer royal has accepted the annual prize from the Templeton Foundation, which critics say makes a virtue of belief without evidence.
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Lauryn Oates on where the blame belongs
Jones should have simply been ignored, or perhaps satirized, for the fundamentalist bigot that he is.
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Terry Glavin on the massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif
About three years ago, Shia Khomeinists and Sunni Wahhabists teamed up in their efforts at subversion in Mazar.
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Paul Rudnick: “I was Gandhi’s boyfriend”
And I say, “If someone punched me, I would throw my drink at them. I mean, maybe you should try that with the British.” -
UK bus ad campaign to tackle “Islamophobia”
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Association is behind the campaign. Yes really.
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Eman al-Obeidy was pressured to change her story
She told Anderson Cooper she was placed before state television cameras with several guns pointing at her from just off camera.
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Eman al-Obeidi speaks to the media
She said that she was pressured to recant the rape claims on Libyan state television. She refused.
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High school atheist club
Or to put it another way, as the Times does, “teenagers speak up for lack of faith.”
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Interfaith Alliance declares 1st Amendment null and void
“We as a nation must do more to make clear that bigoted rhetoric and action against the Muslim faith will not be tolerated.”
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PZ on shades of grey
Don’t even try to pull out a scale and toss a copy of the Koran on one side and the life of a single human being on the other.
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Assisted suicide for those not terminally ill
Nan Maitland was 84 and had agonizing arthritis. Her life consisted of more pain than pleasure, and she was relieved to be able to choose to end it.
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BBC wonders what to think about Grayling’s book
So it asks Giles Fraser and Mark Vernon.
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Decca Aitkenhead talks to Anthony Grayling
“The charges of militancy and fundamentalism of course come from our opponents, the theists. When the boot was on their foot they burned us at the stake.”