Hey, everybody, let’s pay attention to the positive aspects of religion!
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Inevitably links go out of date.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.
-
“Evangelical atheists”
Hey, everybody, let’s bring people together around shared values in spite of religious differences!
-
Anglican clergy hate women
“Many traditionalist clergy are unhappy with the level of protection so far offered to them from serving under a woman bishop.”
-
Frans de Waal on morals without God
Fortunately, there has been a resurgence of the Darwinian view that morality grew out of the social instincts.
-
Yale fraternity pledges chant “No means yes!”
And “Yes means anal!” – while marching past women’s dormitories. Welcome to rape culture.
-
Sean Wilentz on Glen Beck as “educator”
The return of the John Birch Society.
-
Anglican congregation accepts pope’s invitation
To convert to Catholicism to escape ordination of women. God hates women.
-
Baggini gives atheist “sermon” in Westminster Abbey
Divides atheists into good, reasonable atheists and bad, dogmatic, theist-hating atheists. Puts himself in the first group.
-
Alex Clark reviews Luka and the Fire of Life
Rushdie includes a trip through the Respectorate of I, where everyone takes offence and visitors are warned to mind their manners.
-
Benoît Mandelbrot 1924-2010
Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” to refer to a new class of mathematical shapes whose uneven contours could mimic the irregularities found in nature.
-
10 die in Indian temple stampede
The victims had gathered to witness the traditional sacrifice of goats; 40,000 devotees had thronged the temple at the time of the stampede.
-
Gender equality in Sweden
Both in education and in the labour market, the genders are not equally represented.
-
The anger fuelling Serbia’s rioters
“The gay parade was a provocation against Serbian people,” explains a member of the nationalist group 1389.
-
Anthroposophy is not a safe haven from despair
It’s a common accusation from anthroposophists that materialism, atheism and even intellectualism cause mental disease and unhappiness.
-
Waldorf communities
The very strong community bonds and shared values and ideals risk creating very strong exclusion mechanisms as well.
-
Science as a ‘faith-laden exigential discourse’
…the insight of the wider spectrum of human thought and experience rather than a singular self-establishing discourse which asserts superiority and hegemony…
-
NY Times: “Atheists debate how pushy to be”
“They agreed that people can be good without religion, and religion has too much influence. But they disagreed about how stridently to make those claims.”
-
Why documentation matters
The excesses of the bubble years have created a legal morass, in which property rights are ill defined because nobody has proper documentation.
-
Rift in Canadian Islamic Congress
The forces of orthodoxy are resisting the progressives. -
Oklahoma: 19-year-old gay man kills himself
His family says the suicide followed by just a week his attendance at a Norman City Council meeting where he heard some hostile views.