The Nobel Prize “is honoring the science and the publicity, and they’re necessarily different.’
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Falwell Colleague Found Dead
He was wearing rubber underwear…
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Jesus and Mo Swap Religions
Jesus hits a snag.
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Wars in Africa Piss Away $300 Billion in 15 Years
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf wrote the preface to the NGO report.
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Quebec Council on the Status of Women v Hijab
‘Freedom of religion must be limited, intrinsically, by the right to equality between women and men.’
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Ibn Warraq Debates Tariq Ramadan
Easterners flock to collect their degrees from Oxbridge, Harvard and the Sorbonne. Traffic in the other direction is minimal.
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Normblog on the Debate About Values
To assert the superiority of some values over others is no different from defending the former.
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What Kind of Dialogue?
Where does it start? Jokes? No. Cartoons? No. A film? No. A book? No. Where then?
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David Barash on Redirected Aggression
The urge to pass along pain lurks behind modern warfare no less than it did behind medieval pageantry.
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New Humanist Poll
Is Sam Harris right to reject labels like ‘Atheist’ and ‘Humanist’?
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Kanan Makiya
The catastrophe in Iraq has made Makiya and the others who justified the invasion look reckless and naïve.
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Hitchens on a Death in Iraq
‘I don’t remember ever feeling, in every allowable sense of the word, quite so hollow.’
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Hitchens on Protection for Ayaan Hirsi Ali
A symbol of the resistance, by many women from the Muslim world, to the horrors of clerical repression.
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Sam Harris and Salman Rushdie on Hirsi Ali
An indispensable witness to the splendor of open society and to the boundless energy of its antagonists.
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The ‘Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act
The Texas law is a salvo in a long-running battle over the place of religion in US public schools.
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Dawkins on Dennett
One of the things that strikes me about reading Dan’s books is how much science I learn from them.
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Philosophy and Popular Culture
Is this new wave exploiting pop culture in the service of philosophical inquiry? Yes, and a good thing too.
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Paul Gross Reviews Michael Behe
The Edge of Evolution represents the best ID can do today in its effort to overcome ‘Darwinism’ with science.
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Medical Students Have ‘Religious Objections’
Some Muslim medical students are refusing to attend lectures that ‘offend their religious beliefs.’
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The Crisis in North Pakistan
Khatoon Bibi was murdered near a security check post while attempting to reach the school where she taught.