You'll find this in the current edition of Newsweek. Here's an excerpt regarding the source of morality in the absence of religion: WARREN: Sam, what are the secular sources of an acceptable moral code? HARRIS: Well, I don't think that the religious books are the source. We go to the…
My daughters and I have started to watch some of the episodes from the Star Trek Voyager series on DVD. We are not disappointed at all. All of us are finding that the series contains well-written, thought-provoking, stories. Here is a topic that might seem unrelated to Star Trek: According to…
Now there is a reasonably-priced way to know . . .
Jonathan Chait of Common Dreams raises a good question: why do Republicans disagree with climate scientists more at a time when climate scientists are accruing new terrifying evidence that human activities are truly responsible for warming the atmosphere?
Last year, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and House members: “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?” Of the respondents, 23% said yes, 77% said no . . . So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results? Only 13% of Republicans agreed that global warming has been proved.
As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans are actually getting more skeptical. . . . How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It’s certainly true that many of them are. . . But the financial relationship doesn’t quite explain the entirety of GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.
The truth is more complicated — and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement . . .Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.
In other words, the thinking process of most Republicans is worse than …
Ebonmuse (one of our authors, who also writes thoughtful posts at Daylight Atheism) recently interviewed Dale McGowan who has edited a book of essays on raising a child without religion. McGowan’s book, Parenting Beyond Belief, will be released next month.
The book features original essays by Richard Dawkins, Julia Sweeney, Penn Jillette, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Michael Shermer, and more . . .
This book looks to be of superlative scope and quality, covering a wide range of important topics: religiously mixed marriages, secular education, humanist ceremonies, moral instruction, teaching children about death, and more. [B]ooks like this may well be at the forefront of the “third wave” of atheist activism – atheists moving into society, living alongside everyone else in openness and honesty, establishing a set of social structures that can directly compete with and provide an alternative to religion.
Ebonmuse’s post intrigued me enough that I placed my order for a copy of Parenting Beyond Belief. I look forward to reading it, then discussing it on this site.
In the meantime, I’ve been busy raising two open-minded daughters (aged 6 and 8 ) without the benefit of McGowan’s book. Notice that I’m not really trying to raise them “without religion.” We regularly discuss various religious traditions. On several occasions, I’ve taken my daughters to churches (not just weddings and funerals). One of my daughters received 1 1/2 years of her kindergarten and 1st grade school education at a neighborhood Catholic school. …