Do you tweet? “I think it really is without any redeeming qualities.”
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Sweden: Christianity gets top billing in schools
National Agency for Education wants all major world religions to be treated equally; the government is steamrolling the agency, education minister told Svenska Dagbladet.
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Ahmadinejad to Ratzinger: let’s fight secularism
One theocrat calls on another for cooperation by “divine religions” against secularism.
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Mandela letters published
“One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint.”
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Saqlain Imam on secularism in Pakistan
Currently seculars are supporting democratic forces, while the religious forces are bent upon undermining the democratic disposition of the state.
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Salman Rushdie and his son Milan discuss Luka
And magic realism, gaming, Islamism, the fading of the fatwa, Bombay, and the movies, with Andrew Marr.
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Jerry Coyne says science and religion aren’t friends
He says it in USA Today! The walls are crumbling…
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LA Times on “new” atheists v warm fuzzies
About 300 nonbelievers from across the US and Canada gathered for three days of lively and, at times, gleefully blasphemous debate.
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Historians admit to inventing Ancient Greeks
“We were young and trying to advance our careers, so we just started making things up: Homer, Aristotle, Socrates, Hippocrates, all the different kinds of columns…”
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PZ’s opening statement at the debate
Religion provides solace to millions, we are told, it makes them happy, and it’s mostly harmless. “But is it true?”, we ask, as if it matters.
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Salil Tripathi reviews Salman Rushdie’s Luka
We encounter the self-righteous, injured innocence of those easily offended, who want to silence anyone who criticizes anything they hold dear.
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Hitchens reports from Tumor Town
Religious maniacs are trying to prevent the use of existing embryos for stem cell research that would help existing humans.
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Watch the Secular Humanist Conference live
Mooney was better than one might expect; PZ was great.
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Let’s “move beyond the theism of New Atheism”
And while we’re at it, let’s accuse “the New Atheists” of braying. That will set the tone nicely.
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Homophobic vandalism at University of Cape Town
A pink closet, meant to promote gay rights at UCT, was torched on Monday night, just hours after it was set up
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Jesus and Mo scold barmaid for strawmanning
Just what you’d expect from someone who wants to stamp out beauty and replace people with robots.
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Ahadi and Namazie meet European Parliament VP
Mina Ahadi and Maryam Namazie met with Roberta Angelilli to discuss the urgent case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and hand deliver a letter from her son.
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The BHA Census campaign
Data on religion produced by the 2001 census gave a wholly misleading picture of the religiosity of the UK, halving the number of non-religious people.
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More on Smithsonian human evolution exhibit
And why David Koch funded it: because it gives the impression that human-caused climate change is no big deal, we’ll just “adapt.”
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Kitcher and Dennett on new atheism
The orientation model and the belief model, and whether the first makes the second worth keeping.