Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow and the implications for morality and universalism.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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.
-
PZ on Sam Harris v Sean Carroll
Can we use science to justify maximizing the well-being of individuals? No.
-
Sean Carroll on Sam Harris and a science of morality
There’s no simple way to aggregate well-being over different individuals.
-
Sam Harris: Toward a science of morality
His goal is to start a conversation. “Few things would make this goal harder to achieve than for me to speak and write like an academic philosopher.”
-
Metamagician: tone does matter
Many readers don’t get tone, but the cure for that isn’t less discussion of tone; it’s more intelligent discussion of tone.
-
Evan Harris is no stranger to principle
Harris was a rare voice in Parliament for reason and evidence and against quackery and nonsense.
-
Heidegger as Nazi philosopher
The seminars of 1933-5 show the outright transformation of Heidegger’s thought into a tool of Nazi indoctrination.
-
Worldwide trends in honor killings
Honor killings are based on codes of morality often reinforced by fundamentalist religious dictates.
-
Palin thinks US law should be based on bible
Cites 10 commandments, which mandate monotheism, sabbath, methods of swearing, iconoclasm.
-
Prayers and god ruled ok at inaugurations
Because they’re longstanding traditions therefore they are constitutional, federal appeals court rules.
-
Scripture classes “lose” half of students to ethics
Because of course the scripture classes owned the students to begin with.
-
Hesba law lets fanatics sue intellectuals
There are many in Egypt who regard this type of legal vigilantism as ludicrous.
-
Egypt: call to ban Thousand and One Nights
A direct result of opening Egypt to the fundamentalist winds of Wahhabi Salafism.
-
Saudi photo of women with naked faces shock
Titanic struggle between reactionaries and lunatics plays out in Wahhabi kingdom.
-
The pastor and the rent boy
Baptist minister George Rekers co-founded influential right-wing Family Research Council, hired male prostitute to “carry heavy baggage.”
-
The document trail: William Levada
The New York Times gives 81 pages of primary docs.
-
NY Times looks at Cardinal Levada’s record
Complicated by the fact that his congregation’s decisions are shrouded in confidentiality rules.
-
Religious Right’s Public Piety Pageant Goes On
But this year Shirley and James Dobson were not invited to the White House.
-
Jesus and Mo are sad about bigots
Nobody seems to care what they think any more!
-
Behzti is no longer taboo
Of course that doesn’t mean you can actually see it performed.