Is it time for Britain, as a state, to turn secular?
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Sam Harris on Bad Reasons to be Good
The link between religion and morality in our public life is almost never questioned.
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Deborah Solomon Interviews Harry Frankfurt
‘People in this country are starved for the truth.’
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Free Speech at Columbia
In the last month Columbia has been embroiled in four separate free-speech controversies.
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Pope Warns Scientists Against Doing an Icarus
By doing research that the Vatican disapproves of. Don’t touch that apple.
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Bérubé’s ‘What’s Liberal’ Reviewed
‘An unrepentant liberal, fond of postmodern culture, but not of Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore.’
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Columbia Teachers College and ‘Loyalty Oaths’
Does stated ‘respect for diversity and commitment to social justice’ amount to an ideological loyalty oath?
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Religious Believers Will Just Have to Live With It
Pissed-off atheists are finding their voice in a debate set up and manipulated by religious forces.
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Untruth in Advertising
‘Feminists for Life’ might as well be an office of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
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Nick Cohen on Bono and Being ‘Tax-efficient’
And humbug.
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Mary Warnock on Music and Education
‘Nobody can deny how central a part music plays in the life of most children and adolescents.’
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P Z Myers Reviews The God Delusion
Promotion of religion as a guide to absolute truth and substitute for scientific thinking is a bad idea.
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Ben Goldacre on Oliver Curry’s Fanciful Essay
Empty ‘science’ stories are being generated by PR companies who pay academics to produce some spurious piece of ‘research’.
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A C Grayling on What Merits Respect
Time to refuse to tip-toe around people who claim immunity on the grounds that they have a religious faith.
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Shahid Malik MP Tells Azmi to Give Up Fight
Muslim parents in his constituency don’t want their children taught by veiled teacher.
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Eagleton’s Review of The God Delusion
Now non-subscription at LRB.
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Jim Holt Reviews The God Delusion
Underestimate of difficult philosophical questions about religion makes it intellectually frustrating.
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Religious Groups Protest New Gay Rights Law
Blair and Kelly block plan in response, others in cabinet are angry.
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Secular State Needed to Protect Women’s Rights
The veil turns women into things.
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Jeff Weintraub on Salah Choudhury
He deserves solidarity and support from those of us who can say what we want without taking risks.