Defamation resolutions conflate individual rights and liberties with protection for ideas, religions and gods.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Church of Scotland Mag: Accept Homosexuality
Editorial in Church’s in-house mag challenges belief that the bible outlaws homosexuality.
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Sydney Archbish Defends Pope’s Condom Advice
Non-marital sex bad therefore condoms no help. Uninfected spouse should have married someone else.
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Quantum Gods Don’t Deserve Your Faith
Victor Stenger isolates and debunks the claims of ‘quantum theology’ and ‘quantum spirituality.’
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Salil Tripathi on the Southall Uprising and Story
The Southall Story celebrates what Salman Rushdie described in The Satanic Verses as ‘the city visible but unseen.’
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The Science and Religion Question
Paul Fidalgo on Coyne, Dawkins, Myers, Scott, and ‘instigator’ atheism v the other kind.
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Iranian Prosecutor: Death for ‘Corruption on Earth’
A ‘person who manages many immoral, anti-religious and anti-revolutionary sites’ should be executed.
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Jerry Coyne on Truckling to the Faithful
The accommodationist position of the NAS and the NCSE compromises the science they aspire to defend.
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Cutting Pay for the Sake of Gender Equality
Sheffield city council plans to cut the pay of many of the lowest paid workers in the name of gender equality.
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Pay Cuts Make All Equal
Anomalies where low-paid women have lost pay have emerged across the UK.
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Supreme Court to Hear Strip-search Case
Do schools have a right to peer into 13-year-old girls’ underpants in search of ibuprofen?
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Normblog on Obama and the Torture Memos
There is no higher authority that can legitimize the practice of torture. It is a crime under international law.
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Taleban Moving Into Bandur
Spokesman for Swat Taleban said his movement’s aim is enforcement of Sharia in all of Pakistan.
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School Hires People to Teach Students to Think
What a novel idea.
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J G Ballard 1930-2009
Fused external landscapes of futuristic visions with the internal workings of his characters’ minds.
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A C Grayling on Some Pressing Questions
One is about scientific literacy: we need more people who are excited by what’s happening in science.
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This is Not the Shower of a Free Society
This is a totalitarian shower. It permits no space for the free application of soap.
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Diplomats Walk Out of Ahmadinejad’s Speech
The walkout by delegates from at least 30 countries happened within minutes of the speech starting.
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Durban II Considers ‘Arabism’ a Religion
‘Deplores all religious intolerance including “Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christian phobia and anti-Arabism”.’
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Ahmadinejad Defends Saberi’s Rights – Sort Of
Would be a good-will gesture to release her. Even better not to have arrested her in the first place…