Allahabad High Court will rule Sept 30 who is in rightful possession of the site where the demolished mosque stood—a Muslim organization or a Hindu one.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Salman Rushdie on religion and myth
“I don’t look to religion to answer the two great questions of life.”
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Thousands of Nigerian women in slave camps
Nigerian girls are being forced to work as prostitutes in Mali “slave camps”, say officials in Nigeria.
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Open letter from Ashtiani’s son Sajjad Ghaderzadeh
I tell you these words from the bottom of our hearts: I want the whole world to rush to our help.
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John Shook is all “can’t you read?”
Everybody else is all “yes, we can, thanks, and we read what you wrote.”
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Lars Vilks to finish Uppsala lecture
He was interrupted by an attack in May, will complete the lecture on October 7.
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Why US universities recruit athletes, not scholars
Too many Jews were getting in, so universities started looking for “manliness.”
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Religious belief linked to being a bit dim
As a study found that atheists know more about religion than religious people, experts said that in all fairness that should not really count as news.
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Minnesota archbishop “defends marriage”
Church is sending “educational” DVDs to Catholics to reaffirm “the unchangeable nature of marriage.”
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Cartoon rejected just for mentioning Mo
A satire on the fear of publishing anything Mo-related prompts fear of publishing anything Mo-related, and doesn’t get published.
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Aliens are sabotaging missiles, US pilots claim
Srsly. It’s totally true. They’ve been doing it since 1948. They landed 7 years ago.
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Ajita Kamal on moderating freethought groups
Most freethinkers are wary of all ideologies. These are not usually the ones that are politically motivated towards promoting freethought.
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Narendra Nayak on the rise of intolerance in India
It is not just the saffron gang or the green gang that is responsible for this sort of thinking; it is just that they are the most vociferous and violent.
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Jason Rosenhouse on Swinburne on God
The God hypothesis should be given such a low prior probability that truly extraordinary evidence is needed to render it plausible.
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Carlin Romano does his Templeton homework
“This essay is adapted from a talk he gave this summer as a Templeton-Cambridge Fellow in Science and Religion.”
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Bad science education impairs US economy
US mathematics and science K-12 education ranks 48th worldwide.
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How a journalist should report on a scientific paper
First make an obvious pun, then ask an inane question, then say which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges.”
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Hossein Derakhshan could face execution
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and PEN Canada say the prosecutor in Derakhshan’s case has called for the death penalty. -
Blogger Hossein Derakhshan on trial in Iran
He has been charged with “collaborating with enemy states, creating propaganda against the Islamic regime, insulting religious sanctity” and more.
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Pragna Patel at protest the pope rally
“Nor am I surprised to learn that the Muslim Council of Britain will be taking part in the papal visit.”