Articles
Welcome to our articles section. The articles below either have
been written specifically for ButterfliesandWheels or are appearing
here having been published elsewhere previously.
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please click here for our information for contributors page.
The British Labour Government's Ruinous Approach to Combating Islamic Extremism
By Edmund Standing
'It is not for Government to intervene in theological debates.'
Date filed: 11-03-2010
Take One Traumatised Child
By Clare Sambrook
Classify as 'adult', arrest, lock up, and bundle onto plane, bound for danger - Labour's Britain in 2010.
Date filed: 10-03-2010
The Spirituality of an Atheist
By Andrzej Koraszewski
Do atheists have any spirituality? Well what is 'spirituality'?
Date filed: 04-03-2010
Political Theory and the “Group Rights” Debate
By Joshua F. Leach
Individual rights are not Western prejudices; nor can they be thought of as simply one more culture among many.
Date filed: 17-02-2010
Iran Needs a United Democratic and Secular Opposition
By Jahanshah Rashidian
Our society is strong enough not bow to any ideology.
Date filed: 16-02-2010
Islam's Black Dog
By R Joseph Hoffmann
The easy equation between religion and goodness is a relatively modern invention.
Date filed: 13-02-2010
Humanism and the Quest for Justice in Africa
By Leo Igwe
Millions of people around the world are living, languishing, suffering and dying under unjust conditions imposed on them by fellow human beings.
Date filed: 08-02-2010
Amnesty International and Cageprisoners
By Gita Sahgal
The necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.
Date filed: 07-02-2010
Remember Them!
By Maryam Namazie
Two young men executed by the Islamic regime of Iran for ‘enmity against god’
Date filed: 03-02-2010
Reflections on John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty
By Eric B. Litwack
It can be said of very few texts that they are touchstones for important discussions across many generations.
Date filed: 09-01-2010
This Nonsense Must Stop
By Leo Igwe
Leo Igwe tells what happened, and that it will not stop him from fighting for justice for Daberechi Anomgam.
Date filed: 07-01-2010
'Islamophobia' and the Abuse of the Discourse of Anti-Racism
By Edmund Standing
Opposition to religious ideology is not racism.
Date filed: 06-01-2010
The Many Ways Africans are Dying
By Leo Igwe
'There are many ways to die, and not all of them have to do with extinction.'
Date filed: 10-12-2009
Witch Hunter Sues Humanist Activist in Attempt to Quell Criticism
By Nathan Bupp
The suit equates witch hunting with protected religious freedom.
Date filed: 09-12-2009
A Deal-breaker
By Ophelia Benson
From 50 Voices of Disbelief - what business does God have hiding?
Date filed: 02-12-2009
Ashis Nandy and the Postcolonial Trap
By Joshua F. Leach
Because postcolonialism has only one idea, it can easily become oppressive in practice.
Date filed: 01-12-2009
Why Do We Believe in Witches?
By Ikechukwu Okechukwu
People who have other options mostly do not believe in witches.
Date filed: 30-11-2009
Rally Against Sharia London November 21
By Maryam Namazie, One Law for All
To oppose religious laws, show solidarity with people resisting Sharia, defend universal rights and secularism.
Date filed: 15-11-2009
Why Prohibition Fails and What We Should Do Instead
By Colin Brewer
Prohibition has created a highly productive hypocrisy industry.
Date filed: 14-11-2009
'A Road Which Eventually Can Lead Only to Success'
By Colin Brewer
How cannabis came to be prohibited.
Date filed: 13-11-2009
Humanism and Witch Hunt in Nigeria
By Leo Igwe
At the Nigerian Humanist Movement's National Conference on Witch-hunt, Christian Fundamentalism and Child Abuse
Date filed: 12-11-2009
Putting Human Rights First
By Joshua F. Leach
Human rights are some of the most difficult things for people anywhere to practice consistently.
Date filed: 06-11-2009
Debate or Change
By George Taylor
If the dead hand of the God of Abraham is to be lifted, a new approach is necessary.
Date filed: 04-11-2009
Sketching faces for the faceless, giving voices to the unheard
By Tasneem Khalil
A magazine for the people who care and want to be informed about the state of human rights, freedom and liberty around the world.
Date filed: 03-11-2009
Five Scheduled Executions in Iran
By Jahanshah Rashidian
Tehran's Revolutionary Court has recently sentenced five political activists to death.
Date filed: 21-10-2009
The Mortal Coil
By Colin Brewer
Both sides are being dishonest about the abortifacient effects of intrauterine contraceptive devices, but only the anti-abortionists are being hypocritical as well.
Date filed: 20-10-2009
The Christian Right: Giving Conservatism a Bad Name
By Edmund Standing
Conservatism is not automatically linked to fundamentalism or pseudo-science.
Date filed: 17-10-2009
An Open Letter to Sen. Jeff Sessions and the 29 Other Male Republican Senators
By Phil Molé
Who Voted Against the Rape Punishment Amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill
Date filed: 16-10-2009
Confound the Unbelievers
By Paula Cerni
A review of Dinesh D'Souza’s What's So Great About Christianity.
Date filed: 15-10-2009
Interview With Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk
By Tauriq Moosa
What does this project do that other "atheist" books don't?
Date filed: 12-10-2009
Child Witchcraft and Child Rights in Akwa Ibom State
By Leo Igwe
The implementation of the child rights act is critical to the eradication of child 'witchcraft' hunts in Akwa Ibom State.
Date filed: 06-10-2009
Humanists to Hold an Anti-witchcraft Conference in Uyo
By Leo Igwe
Churches incite parents and family members to abuse, beat, kill or abandon innocent kids accused of witchcraft.
Date filed: 26-09-2009
The attack in Calabar: Religious Extremism in Nigeria
By Leo Igwe
The activities of unscrupulous Penticostal pastors are largely to blame for the tragic phenomenon of witch children.
Date filed: 26-09-2009
Review of Keith Ward’s Why There Almost Certainly Is a God
By Eric MacDonald
The arguments all take a step which takes us beyond anything that we can possibly know.
Date filed: 22-09-2009
Rape in the Mullahs’ Prisons
By Jahanshah Rashidian
It's fine to rape prisoners, just don't forget the ablutions first.
Date filed: 08-09-2009
The Myth of the Holy Fool
By Joshua Leach
The fool is the eternal darling of the deepest reactionaries.
Date filed: 07-09-2009
Review of Karen Armstrong's The Case for God
By Eric MacDonald
Armstrong has but one book, and she has written it many times.
Date filed: 04-09-2009
Saving Child Witches: a Nigerian Perspective
By Leo Igwe
The plight of children accused of witchcraft in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria.
Date filed: 03-09-2009
Iran: A female revolution
By Azar Majedi
A monumental challenge to Islam.
Date filed: 16-08-2009
The Uses of Common Sense
By Joshua F. Leach
It's often wrong - yet we'd be in trouble without it.
Date filed: 15-08-2009
The far-left campaign to silence critics of Islam
By Edmund Standing
Rational criticism of religious ideology as bourgeois collusion.
Date filed: 14-08-2009
Reading Darwin in the Divinity School
By Michael Clegg
There is no escape from theology.
Date filed: 13-08-2009
Reply to the Archbishop of Canterbury
By Eric MacDonald
The archbishop does not understand.
Date filed: 05-08-2009
Judith Shklar and Materialist Mercy
By Joshua F. Leach
If appeasing
God is what matters most, then our relations with one another
seem insignificant at best.
Date filed: 18-07-2009
Free Speech in a Plural Society
By Salil Tripathi
Freedom of expression was not only the product of Western Enlightenment; it
belonged to all of us
Date filed: 15-07-2009
Unscientific America and the 'New' Atheists
By P Z Myers
Science is a sublimely human activity and a central part of every culture on earth that aspires to be something more than a collection of dirt-grubbing subsistence breeders.
Date filed: 11-07-2009
Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury
By Eric S MacDonald
On the church's inhuman refusal to see that suffering at the end of life can legitimately be relieved by assistance in dying.
Date filed: 10-07-2009
Fool’s Gold: Reflections on the Great Crunch
By Max Dunbar
When bankers talk about derivatives, they delight in swathing the concept in complex jargon.
Date filed: 25-06-2009
Iran: Myths and Realities
By Azar Majedi
What do the people want? More than the mainsteam media admit.
Date filed: 24-06-2009
The Movement Improves in Iran
By Jahanshah Rashidian
Iranian youth do not want to risk their lives for the survival of an undemocratic theocracy.
Date filed: 23-06-2009
Iran’s Post-Election
By Jahanshah Rashidian
Khamenei has constantly said each vote is above all a "yes to the Islamic regime."
Date filed: 21-06-2009
Unveil Women in Iran!
By Azar Majedi
It is high time to throw the veils out.
Date filed: 20-06-2009
Gina Khan's Diary
By Gina Khan
June 17: Theology is being used to underpin women's oppression in the modern West.
Date filed: 17-06-2009
Reinforcing presumed religious identities
By Marieme Helie Lucas
Where are women and secularists of Muslim countries in Obama's speech in Cairo?
Date filed: 07-06-2009
Measuring the Books: Truth Claims in Islam and its Others
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
All religions make truth claims, which are supported by a set of rationales.
Date filed: 11-05-2009
Religious Disagreements and False Allegations of Anti-Semitism
By Edmund Standing
Assertions about the superiority of Christianity should be challenged, but accusations of anti-Semitism are not the way to do it.
Date filed: 09-05-2009
Denying AIDS
By Max Dunbar
Seth Kalichman draws a line between dissidence and denial.
Date filed: 08-05-2009
Pig-headed Mullahs
By Fawzia Rasheed
Divine retribution had to rear its ugly head over swine flu.
Date filed: 07-05-2009
How Pleasant to Know Mr Ham
By Ed Turner
How an atheist spent an evening in the company of a young earth creationist and was nearly scarred for life by the experience.
Date filed: 02-05-2009
Religious Laws and Customs are a Disgrace of the 21st Century
By Houzan Mahmoud
In memory of Du’a Khalil Aswad and in condemnation of the flogging in public of a 17 year old girl in Pakistan
Date filed: 21-04-2009
The International Conference on Secularism
By Azar Majedi
The conference on the occasion of Women's Day 2009 asked why secularism is necessary.
Date filed: 14-04-2009
Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State
By Max Dunbar
Tarek Fatah explains why the past is not the future.
Date filed: 31-03-2009
Do Religions Have Rights? Further Pages from The Victim’s Handbook
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
The oxymoronics of victimology need to be outed.
Date filed: 28-03-2009
Reinventing the Sacred for a Godless Age
By Kenan Malik
The way of saying something is part of what is said. To say that you must write differently is in practice to say that you must write about different things.
Date filed: 25-03-2009
Free Speech: Liberty and License
By Nigel Warburton
Defenders of free speech almost without exception recognize the need for some limits to the freedom they advocate.
Date filed: 12-03-2009
The One Law for All Rally
By Maryam Namazie
Rally against Sharia and religious-based laws and in defence of citizenship and universal rights.
Date filed: 11-03-2009
The Plight of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia
By Edmund Standing
Where is the outcry?
Date filed: 04-03-2009
The Weight of a Mustard Seed
By Max Dunbar
A dark and thoughtful study of moral luck.
Date filed: 03-03-2009
Wilders Has a Right to Express Appalling Views
By Azar Majedi
We don't want big brother telling us what ideas we can hear.
Date filed: 23-02-2009
The Idiocy of 'Defamation of Religion'
By Russell Blackford
It is in the public interest that the truth and credibility of various religions be tested continually.
Date filed: 16-02-2009
A Critical Examination of the Qur'an
By Edmund Standing
A look at exactly what the Qur'an says.
Date filed: 06-02-2009
A Critical Examination of the Qur'an
By Edmund Standing
Part 2
Date filed: 06-02-2009
A Critical Examination of the Qur'an
By Edmund Standing
Part 3
Date filed: 06-02-2009
A Critical Examination of the Qur'an
By Edmund Standing
Part 4
Date filed: 06-02-2009
The BBC and PBS: A Contrast in Complaints Procedures
By Allen Esterson
The BBC's complaints process is not perfect, but PBS's is worse.
Date filed: 04-02-2009
On Rights and Sexuality
By Alexander Park
Is it really necessary to prove the biological roots of homosexuality in order to advance the cause of gay rights?
Date filed: 03-02-2009
AIDS Denialism’s House of Cards
By Seth Kalichman
AIDS denialism and pseudoscience.
Date filed: 01-02-2009
A Nation of Believers And Nonbelievers? - A Letter to President Obama
By Ronald Aronson
Nonbelievers are often scorned, or treated as if we don't exist.
Date filed: 28-01-2009
The Choice of Hercules
By Max Dunbar
A C Grayling shows us that pleasure and duty are not incompatible.
Date filed: 26-01-2009
Against Mythicism: A Case for the Plausibility of a Historical Jesus
By Edmund Standing
Jesus and Haile Selassie have something in common.
Date filed: 22-01-2009
Rocks, Hard Places and Jesus Fatigue
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
Jesus Seminar and Jesus Project
Date filed: 18-01-2009
Taking Relativism Seriously
By Andrew Taggart
Relativism ultimately offers us an impoverished ethical vision of the world and of our place in it.
Date filed: 12-01-2009
Fighting Straw Men: Mary Midgley and Scientific Discourse
By Tauriq Moosa
Midgley invents a monster called 'Scientism.'
Date filed: 27-12-2008
Medical Mistletoe Myths
By Colin Brewer
Mistletoe is fine as a decoration and fertility symbol; as a treatment for cancer it's worthless.
Date filed: 26-12-2008
Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora
By Max Dunbar
The survival memoir of an atheist red triangle.
Date filed: 24-12-2008
Women’s Right Activist Beheaded in Iraqi Kurdistan
By Azar Majedi
In the context of Iraqi society, 'the circumstances that led to her death' are well known.
Date filed: 21-12-2008
Call for End to Sharia Courts
By Maryam Namazie
A new report shows widespread injustice in sharia courts.
Date filed: 16-12-2008
Quest for the Historical Jesus Begins Anew
By Center for Inquiry
A non-theologically-driven effort to determine what can be reliably recovered about the historical figure of Jesus.
Date filed: 15-12-2008
Jihadism and the 'Dreamers of the Day'
By Edmund Standing
Jihadism shares the obsessions and aspirations of followers of other genocidal and terroristic movements.
Date filed: 11-12-2008
Launch of Campaign against Sharia law in UK
By One Law for All
Campaign organiser Maryam Namazie notes: 'Even in civil matters, Sharia law is discriminatory, unfair and unjust, particularly against women and children.'
Date filed: 04-12-2008
Science in Wonderland: A Case in Point
By Stewart Justman
In an ideal world people would live such healthy lives that medicine would wither away.
Date filed: 25-11-2008
The Dogma of Halal and Haram
By Jahanshah Rashidian
What is revolting must be purified.
Date filed: 13-11-2008
The New Atheists
By Max Dunbar
Tina Beattie attacks the New Atheists for who they are rather than what they say.
Date filed: 12-11-2008
The Gospel of Matthew: A Book for Today?
By Edmund Standing
Is the New Testament a big improvement on the Old?
Date filed: 11-11-2008
Education and Wishful Thinking
By Raymond S Mackintosh
The trap of believing what we wish to be true rather than that which is true.
Date filed: 10-11-2008
New Dimensions for American Democracy
By Paul Kurtz and Tom Flynn
The editors of Free Inquiry offer some basic, humanistic ethical principles and goals.
Date filed: 06-11-2008
The Republican Glossary
By R Joseph Hoffman
A straight-talking lexicon.
Date filed: 04-11-2008
Choosing to Know
By Ronald Aronson
To choose to know is to encounter the world in a specific way.
Date filed: 21-10-2008
Review of C S Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion
By Ophelia Benson
Is Lewis's God a good god, or just the boss?
Date filed: 16-10-2008
Reiki "cannot do harm" - or can it?
By Christopher A. Moyer
If reiki can cure severe heart conditions that easily, why don't all doctors prescribe it?
Date filed: 11-10-2008
Conversions, Caste and Communalism
By Yogesh Snehi
Globalisation, State and Challenges of Secular Politics in India
Date filed: 30-09-2008
Gender Division Based on Mahram and Non-Mahram
By Jahanshah Rashidian
Gender inequalities in Islam go beyond the those of other monotheistic religions
Date filed: 29-09-2008
Islam and Human Rights
By Austin Dacey and Colin Koproske
Rights belong to individuals, not ideas.
Date filed: 22-09-2008
Fighting Fashionable Nonsense: Beyond the Hoax
By Max Dunbar
Nonsense does matter.
Date filed: 19-09-2008
The Free Speech Deniers
By Edmund Standing
Genocide denial laws suggest that we do not have the documentation to prove that these people are liars.
Date filed: 15-09-2008
God's Messenger
By Tauriq Moosa
What is the difference between a cult and a religion?
Date filed: 14-09-2008
The Barbarians' Raw Deal
By Christopher Orlet
Who was really to blame for the Dark Ages?
Date filed: 01-09-2008
The MCB and the Muslim Marriage Contract
By Allen Esterson
The fine details of the MCB’s opposition to the proposed Muslim Marriage Contract reveals much about that organisation.
Date filed: 24-08-2008
On Intellectual Ethics
By Stephen Law, R Joseph Hoffmann, Daphne Patai, Nick Cohen
On Denise Spellberg and Random House.
Date filed: 17-08-2008
The State of the Nayshun
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
Stupidity is the most respectable life-stance available in New Millennium America.
Date filed: 09-08-2008
Investment in the Placebo Effect
By Stewart Justman
Allowing patients to tell their story and hearing them out in full was itself a sort of bromide.
Date filed: 03-08-2008
David Littman's Statement to UN HRC June 16 2008
By AWE and IHEU
What you cannot say to the UN Human Rights Council.
Date filed: 02-08-2008
Calls to Kill in the name of God or Religion
By IHEU and AWE
A statement to the UN Commission on Human Rights in February 2006.
Date filed: 30-07-2008
To be a moderate
By Carl Anders
There is a moderate center in politics, but not in religion.
Date filed: 27-07-2008
This Is An Annoyance-Free Zone (but tacky souvenirs welcome)
By Josh Slocum
Would people be arrested for noting that the Pope’s hat didn’t match his shoes?
Date filed: 17-07-2008
The Animal Liberation Front and Intimidation
By Ophelia Benson
If violence and intimidation are harms, then is the ALF really 'non-violent'?
Date filed: 12-07-2008
Dogs in Islam, According to the Hadith
By Edmund Standing
Kindness to dogs is required, according to sayings attributed to Muhammad.
Date filed: 11-07-2008
Identity is That Which is Given
By Kenan Malik
An identity has become a bit like a private club: once you join, you have to abide by the rules.
Date filed: 09-07-2008
The myth of Science in the Quran
By Adrian Reddy
Is it true that there is no contradiction between the Quran and modern science?
Date filed: 08-07-2008
Honour crimes or terrorism against women
By Azar Majedi
A certain ideology is behind glorifying crimes against women.
Date filed: 02-07-2008
Pew Study Finds One in Five Atheists Believe in God
By Anne Singer
The Secular Coalition for America responds.
Date filed: 01-07-2008
Heat and Light: Christopher Hitchens and His Critics
By Max Dunbar
It’s a misconception that the absence of conflict is possible or desirable.
Date filed: 29-06-2008
Forced marriages and Divorce...and kangaroo sharia courts
By Gina Khan
What it's like to be married off for a passport.
Date filed: 21-06-2008
Health Report From Zimbabwe
By Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights
Most of these fractures will have been sustained in attempts to defend the face and upper body from violent blows with a weapon such as a heavy stick or iron bar.
Date filed: 19-06-2008
Time for a Paradigm Shift in Indian Higher Education
By Rajesh Kumar Sharma
Improving education in India.
Date filed: 18-06-2008
The Jesus Religious Attitudes Survey
By R Joseph Hoffmann
Hell is a lot like a marathon without snacks.
Date filed: 02-06-2008
Evidence is for conformists
By Tim Goot-Brennan
To the paranoid mind everything should have a rapid explanation.
Date filed: 27-05-2008
Scientology: Cult or Mirror to all Faiths?
By Carl Anders
Is Scientology a religion? Or are religions cults?
Date filed: 26-05-2008
The Compleat Sceptic: Of Fathers and Dissident Daughters
By R Joseph Hoffmann
Daphne Patai inherited from her father the compleat sceptical gene that very few people possess.
Date filed: 23-05-2008
Edward Blyth: Creationist or Just Another Misinterpreted Scientist?
By James K. Willmot
New discoveries in science seldom emerge from a single source.
Date filed: 19-05-2008
Cowboys and Palestindians: what the Kaiser thought about Israel
By 'Benedict Gardiner'
Time to come to terms with dispossession.
Date filed: 17-05-2008
All the Tom-Toms of the Global Village
By Andrzej Koraszewski (translated by Malgorzata Koraszewska and Sarah Lawson)
Everything is much scarier now, right? No.
Date filed: 09-05-2008
The Democratiya Interviews
By Max Dunbar
Self-examination is the beginning of renewal.
Date filed: 28-04-2008
Apologetics and the Surrender of the Fourth Estate
By Gil Gaudia
The parallels between religion and politics; and science and journalism.
Date filed: 16-04-2008
The Pseudo-Science of the '9/11 Truth' Movement
By Edmund Standing
Academics making extraordinary claims without the extraordinary evidence required to back them up
Date filed: 09-04-2008
The truth about Islam...and where to find it
By Adrian Reddy
What happens when you ask a theologian?
Date filed: 06-04-2008
Distorted Outlook on the Archbishop’s Speech
By Allen Esterson
Is the BBC asleep at the switch?
Date filed: 02-04-2008
Swat Valley After Emergency in Pakistan
By Khadim Hussain
The people of the whole valley feel themselves hostage to the firebrand Maulana Fazlullah.
Date filed: 31-03-2008
Conference to Remember Du’a Khalil
By Houzan Mahmoud
An international panel will debate the rise of violence against women and political Islam in Kurdistan/Iraq and the Middle East.
Date filed: 30-03-2008
Colin Blakemore on Stem-cell Research
By Jeremy Stangroom
We have to recognise that an embryo, certainly before the nervous system begins to form, is just a bundle of cells.
Date filed: 26-03-2008
The Counter-Enlightenment
By Max Dunbar
The enhanced status of counterknowledge makes it dangerous.
Date filed: 25-03-2008
Rome Town 2008: Per Omnia Saecula Saeculorum
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
The Vatican learns to Moonwalk
Date filed: 21-03-2008
Against Sexual Apartheid
By Maryam Namazie
As the source of ‘corruption’ and ‘chaos’, women must be segregated everywhere.
Date filed: 20-03-2008
The Life of Ivan Ilyich
By Allan Nadel
So what was so terrible about Ivan Ilyich? He wasn't authentic enough?
Date filed: 09-03-2008
A Secular Symposium: The Portable Atheist
By Max Dunbar
Even even in liberal creeds we get a frightening sense of what the clerics would do if they could.
Date filed: 05-03-2008
Religion is Owed no Respect
By Robert Nola
Tolerance is quite consistent with according religion no respect.
Date filed: 23-02-2008
Save Southall Black Sisters
By SBS
Southall Black Sisters may lose its funding.
Date filed: 21-02-2008
Triumph of the Hedgehogs
By David Dabscheck
Foxes are outnumbering hedgehogs, and this clouds our understanding.
Date filed: 17-02-2008
The Archbishop's Message
By Azar Majedi
The status and rights of women in Islam is the Achilles' heel of this religion.
Date filed: 16-02-2008
The Sound of Mullahs
By El Omar Rodgers and Ibn Yusuf Hammerstein
Oh how can we make you learn to love sharia?
Date filed: 15-02-2008
Organisation for Women’s Liberation Conference
By Azar Majedi
A conference against religious and traditional misogynist practices.
Date filed: 14-02-2008
What would Becket Do?
By R Joseph Hoffmann
Rowan Williams runs the risk of missing the great lesson of western history.
Date filed: 07-02-2008
Current Islamic Guidance on FGC: Do Not Cut Too Deeply
By Colin Brewer
As a public relations exercise, Dr Ar-Rumaikaan's anthology is perhaps not ideal.
Date filed: 05-02-2008
Towards a Reasonable Approach to the Israel-Palestine Question
By Edmund Standing
Are we all Hizbollah now?
Date filed: 21-01-2008
The Cosmopolitan Possibility
By Paul Sikander, introduction by Gina Khan
The MCB would snuff out the hopes and dreams of any young Muslim boys or girls who have a talent in art, drama or dance.
Date filed: 15-01-2008
Matchless Prose?
By Adrian Reddy
Is the Quran inimitable, as believers claim?
Date filed: 02-01-2008
Lessons of Atheist Dictatorships
By Christopher Orlet
The Vatican was very fond of fascism.
Date filed: 31-12-2007
Benazir, Daughter of destiny
By Gina Khan
Benazir Bhutto was an inspiration for British Pakistani women
Date filed: 28-12-2007
Never forget Aqsa Parvez
By Homa Arjomand
Aqsa, Heshu, Fadima, Hutun, Du'a...
Date filed: 13-12-2007
Pyrrho and Mitt
By R Joseph Hoffmann
Pyrrho has just a few questions to ask Mitt - such as how he knows all this.
Date filed: 10-12-2007
Center for Inquiry Experts Comment on Texas Science Education Standards
By Nathan Bupp
This is a highly charged political issue - both science and secularism are under political attack.
Date filed: 03-12-2007
A new charade by the Islamists
By Azar Majedi
Is there any connection between the teddy bear and Annapolis?
Date filed: 02-12-2007
‘1.5 Million Muslims Know Who I Am’
By Max Dunbar
The First Biography of George Galloway
Date filed: 02-12-2007
"Skepticism" and Ignorance
By George M. Felis
Experts can be wrong, but non-experts aren't the best corrective.
Date filed: 27-11-2007
Einstein’s Wife: PBS continues to fail the test of integrity
By Allen Esterson
PBS continues to promote a meretricious documentary.
Date filed: 12-11-2007
The Turning
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
Roy Vagaries talks to former world heavyweight atheist Professor Antony Bird.
Date filed: 11-11-2007
Interview With Azar Majedi
By Rosa Valentini
There are two poles of terrorism, state terrorism and Islamist terrorism.
Date filed: 10-11-2007
Gina Khan on Breaking the Silence
By Ophelia Benson
'I wasn't going to participate in my own oppression!'
Date filed: 09-11-2007
Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial
By Barbara Forrest
The Kitzmiller Trial comes to tv.
Date filed: 08-11-2007
Can’t We All Just Get Along?
By Tim Goot-Brennan
What's so great about consensus?
Date filed: 03-11-2007
Plato’s Nephew
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
The humanist intellectual tradition was shaped by a healthy respect for epistemic limits.
Date filed: 01-11-2007
About Intercessory Prayer
By Gil Gaudia, Ph.D.
The scientific study of miracles.
Date filed: 30-10-2007
The Echoes of the Bell
By Ravi Dhungel
Becoming secular in Nepal.
Date filed: 28-10-2007
Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?
By Edmund Standing
Consider the Nicene Creed...
Date filed: 27-10-2007
A plan? A man? The Quran
By Adrian Reddy
Does the Quran’s origin suggest divine forethought or human improvisation?
Date filed: 26-10-2007
Those who Lived Under 'Islamo-fascism'
By Marieme Hélie-Lucas
The term 'Islamo fascism' was initially
coined by Algerian people struggling for democracy.
Date filed: 24-10-2007
Mina Ahadi Named Secularist of the Year
By Terry Sanderson
Richard Dawkins cites the importance of women in resisting fundamentalist oppression.
Date filed: 21-10-2007
The Cliché That Won’t Die
By Max Dunbar
Pundits claim that proponents of free speech and human rights are fundamentalists.
Date filed: 19-10-2007
What Label for People Like Us?
By Paul Kurtz
To organize, we need a name.
Date filed: 10-10-2007
The New Humanist Manifesto
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
A big table, green tea, rainbow love.
Date filed: 03-10-2007
Open Letter to the UN Secretary-General
By Akbar Ganji
Are you aware that, in Iran, writers are lawfully banned from writing?
Date filed: 24-09-2007
Letter to a Friend: On Islamic Fundamentalism
By Daphne Patai
Many academics on the supposedly progressive side do not admit that everything they value is intolerable to radical Islam.
Date filed: 07-09-2007
Murder in Amsterdam
By Max Dunbar
Buruma tiptoes around the issue of religion.
Date filed: 04-09-2007
Open Letter to the Home Office
By IRQO
Pegah Emambakhsh has to be saved.
Date filed: 01-09-2007
The Islamic Rules of Inheritance in the Quran
By Adrian Reddy
An imperfection in the Quran.
Date filed: 01-09-2007
When a Lesbian Says 'We Are all Hezb’ Allah Now!'
By Azar Majedi
Just being a female is enough to make you a staunch enemy of a radically misogynist movement.
Date filed: 24-08-2007
Twelve Iranian 'Thugs' Executed
By Jahanshah Rashidian
A new phase of repression.
Date filed: 16-08-2007
Review of The Islamist
By Max Dunbar
Ed Husain's long process of disengagement.
Date filed: 15-08-2007
The Attack on Taslima Nasreen
By Rationalist International
Rationalist International expresses shock about the attack on Taslima Nasreen
Date filed: 10-08-2007
New Death Sentence on Journalists in Iran
By Jahanshah Rashidian
Iran sentences two journalists to death for being 'fighters against Islam.'
Date filed: 07-08-2007
Einstein’s Wife: PBS Fails the Test of Integrity
By Allen Esterson
ABC dropped 'Einstein's Wife'; what does PBS think it's doing?
Date filed: 31-07-2007
Summer Educational Program to Explore What Lies “Beyond Belief”
By Nathan Bupp
Exploring an alternative approach to humanity’s greatest questions.
Date filed: 10-07-2007
Crackdown on Tehran’s Thugs
By Jahanshah Rashidian
Why is the Iranian regime afraid of its own youth?
Date filed: 01-07-2007
The Assault on Freedom of Speech in China
By Edmund Standing
Journalists, bloggers, academics, dissenters are at risk in China.
Date filed: 01-07-2007
Review of Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran
By Max Dunbar
Any antiwar movement that advocates silence in the face of tyranny can count us out.
Date filed: 01-07-2007
What Is God?
By D. R. Khashaba
Unfortunately, most of us do not think for ourselves.
Date filed: 30-06-2007
Politics, People and the Spectacle
By Rajesh Kumar Sharma
The rules of democratic politics as a rational discourse do not seem to apply.
Date filed: 27-06-2007
Launch of the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain
By Maryam Namazie
The Council of ex-Muslims of Britain is to be launched on Thursday 21 June in London.
Date filed: 19-06-2007
How to be a successful atheist priest
By Colin Brewer
The secret life of Jean Meslier, unsung Enlightenment hero.
Date filed: 17-06-2007
Thailand: Education in the South Engulfed in Fear
By Human Rights Watch
Gun-toting monsters murdering teachers in Thailand; whole provinces closing down all schools.
Date filed: 16-06-2007
The Case for Humanity: Hitchens on Religion
By Max Dunbar
Hitchens has been writing this book all his life, and plans to continue.
Date filed: 13-06-2007
The Anti-War Left's Betrayal of the Iraqi People
By Edmund Standing
With dewy-eyed romanticism, the insurgency is presented as a David against the evil US Goliath
Date filed: 12-06-2007
Islam’s Voltaire: A Life of Aayan Hirsi Ali
By Max Dunbar
'Look at how many Voltaires the West has. Don’t deny us the right to have a Voltaire, too.'
Date filed: 05-06-2007
Why Islamic Hijab
By Jahanshah Rashidian
What are the origins of the hijab?
Date filed: 31-05-2007
Descartes’ Meditations (Digested)
By Julian Baggini
A busy week for M. Descartes
Date filed: 23-05-2007
Atheists Versus Theists
By D. R. Khashaba
Humans need a ‘likely tale’ to hold on to, to give the chaotic mass of their experiential content some coherence.
Date filed: 20-05-2007
Bangladesh: Release Tasneem Khalil
By Human Rights Watch
Journalist and Rights Activist arrested by army. Make a loud noise.
Date filed: 10-05-2007
An Essay on Man: A Trumpet Blast Against the "New" Humanism
By R Joseph Hoffmann
What the New Humanism isn't about is the intellectual self-confidence that calls faulty judgment faulty
Date filed: 23-04-2007
Five Questions About Clarity
By Stephen Law and Nigel Warburton
Why does clarity matter?
Date filed: 23-04-2007
We Aim to Misbehave
By P Z Myers
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform.
Date filed: 22-04-2007
We say no to a medieval Kurdistan
By Houzan Mahmoud
'Here and now in Kurdistan we are facing the forced Islamisation of people's lives.'
Date filed: 21-04-2007
Walter Isaacson, Einstein, and Mileva Marić
By Allen Esterson
Is there any evidence that Marić 'helped Einstein with the math'?
Date filed: 17-04-2007
The New Humanism Yet Again
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
Dateline Cambridge, Mass
Date filed: 06-04-2007
Truth Still Matters
By Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson
Accuracy and methodology are not ivory tower concerns.
Date filed: 29-03-2007
'Honour' Killing Victim Could Have Been Saved
By Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation
Nationalist and religious sentiments are used to reinforce the subjugation of women.
Date filed: 23-03-2007
A Dialogue with the Diggers
By R Joseph Hoffmann
Where are you getting your information?
Date filed: 22-03-2007
An historic 8 March in Iran
By Maryam Kousha
Security forces attacked International Women’s Day gatherings; a report by Organisation for Women's Liberation - Iran
Date filed: 10-03-2007
"Faccidents": Bad Assumptions and the Jesus Tomb Debacle
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
History that is disrespectful of logic and facts deserves to be known by a new name.
Date filed: 07-03-2007
The Erroneous Basis of 'The Blasphemy Challenge'
By Edmund Standing
The 'Blasphemy Challenge' follows the unfortunate approach of many Christian fundamentalists.
Date filed: 03-03-2007
The Bones of Our Lord
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
Jesus, Mary, and dear little Timmy...
Date filed: 26-02-2007
William Paley's Wonderful Watch
By Ian MacDougall
Imagine that you are walking through a field and you come upon a watch…
Date filed: 21-02-2007
Let's build an international secular movement!
By Azar Majedi
The civilized world needs it.
Date filed: 17-02-2007
Goldenbridge II
By Marie-Therese O'Loughlin
Education at an Industrial School.
Date filed: 01-02-2007
Global Warming, Intelligent Design and the Re-Ascendancy of the Pro-Scientific Political Left
By Steven Gimbel
The return of science and reason.
Date filed: 31-01-2007
Howard Gardner’s reading of Freud: A case of wilful ignorance?
By Allen Esterson
Why does credulity about Freud persist?
Date filed: 10-01-2007
The Goldenbridge Secret Rosary Bead Factory
By Marie-Therese O'Loughlin
An orphanage that was really a child-labour camp.
Date filed: 27-12-2006
Religion’s Role in the Expansion of AIDS
By Arash Sorx
Religious morality obstructs the fight against AIDS,
Date filed: 18-12-2006
Globalisation and the Civil Society
By Rajesh Kumar Sharma
Rethinking Indian Higher Education.
Date filed: 06-12-2006
Are we rational self-interested choosers?
By H E Baber
Deracination is something to strive for.
Date filed: 30-11-2006
Einstein’s Wife: Open Letter to PBS Postscript
By Allen Esterson
Gerald Holton did come forward and claim he was misrepresented.
Date filed: 27-11-2006
Einstein’s Wife: An Open Letter to PBS
By Allen Esterson
Producers of informational content must be prepared to correct material errors.
Date filed: 23-11-2006
New Office of Public Policy in Washington, D.C.
By Center for Inquiry
Advocacy Group Will Bring a Bold Defense of Science and Secularism to DC
Date filed: 17-11-2006
Revisiting the question of the veil
By Azar Majedi
Are veils just a fashion choice?
Date filed: 16-11-2006
A Bastion against Irrationalism
By Robert Wilcocks
Robert Wilcocks reviews Frederick Crews's Follies of the Wise and the French translation of the Freud-Fliess letters
Date filed: 13-11-2006
Who did Einstein’s Mathematics?: A Response to Troemel-Ploetz
By Allen Esterson
How did the notion that Mileva Marić helped Einstein with his mathematics get around?
Date filed: 04-11-2006
Freud's Perjuries as 'Spots on the Sun'
By Frank Cioffi
Never mind 'the simplistic argument of a reality of facts.'
Date filed: 30-10-2006
Mass resistance is the other side of mass oppression
By Azar Majedi
Women in Iran are not resigned.
Date filed: 28-10-2006
Looney American Foundation threatens to sue the Nobel Committee
By Ra Ravishankar
This is a gross violation of minority rights.
Date filed: 23-10-2006
The Shorter History of God
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
An Idiot's Guide to Messianism might say God has been a little rough with his people.
Date filed: 22-10-2006
The Veil: a Non-Muslim Feminist Perspective
By Helen Gray
Imagine asking men to wear it.
Date filed: 11-10-2006
On Multiculturalism And Religion – Jesus Doesn’t Morris Dance
By Jonathan Thake
Religion is not just one more exotic cuisine.
Date filed: 24-09-2006
Rights Trump Culture and Religion
By Maryam Namazie
Cultural relativism is a prescription for inaction and passivity in the face of oppression
Date filed: 11-09-2006
Who needs sophistry, anyway?
By Ben Nelson
Sophistry isn't all bad...
Date filed: 07-09-2006
Poseurs of the World Unite
By J. Carter Wood
When you spot a fascist beast, be sure to deconstruct it.
Date filed: 25-08-2006
Things CNN Will Never Tell You About Religion
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
No matter how nicely you ask them.
Date filed: 14-08-2006
Al-Guardian & the Brotherhood
By David Thompson
Why does the Guardian seem to have a bashful crush on the Muslim Brotherhood?
Date filed: 25-07-2006
On Nature and Justice
By Edmund Standing
To act naturally is not necessarily to act justly.
Date filed: 23-07-2006
Pearse’s “Perfect Little Pigs” or Translating Celsus
By R. Joseph Hoffmann
Celsus knew that Christianity in the year 180 was not a garden but a barnyard full of squawking hens
Date filed: 22-07-2006
Meet the Deity
By Ophelia Benson
So what's God really like?
Date filed: 18-07-2006
Karen Armstrong: Islam’s Hagiographer
By David Thompson
Why is it impermissible to mention an opponent's explicitly stated motives?
Date filed: 11-07-2006
An Open Letter to Oriana Fallaci
By Azar Majedi
Resistance to Islamism does not justify or need racism.
Date filed: 11-07-2006
Einstein’s Wife: A challenge to PBS
By Allen Esterson
PBS has been 'considering' the matter for months now...
Date filed: 05-07-2006
Naturalism and its Discontents
By Daniel Koffler
What explains Leon Wieseltier's oracular certainty?
Date filed: 22-06-2006
Truth and Consequences at Brigham Young
By Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom
Religion and the pursuit of knowledge are uneasy bedfellows
Date filed: 15-06-2006
Introducing Follies of the Wise
By Frederick Crews
We strain against our animality by inhabiting self-fashioned webs of significance
Date filed: 12-06-2006
Re-Open the M F Husain Exhibition
By Awaaz-South Asia Watch
Stand firm against fundamentalist intimidation
Date filed: 02-06-2006
Death by Da Vincititis: Of Professorial Pimps and Humanist Harlots
By R Joseph Hoffmann
A new form of superstition blends historical implausibility with a modern passion for intrigue and a postmodern indifference to truth.
Date filed: 22-05-2006
A Seductive Story
By Allen Esterson
A Freudian tale is still seducing people – especially in Jeffrey Masson’s dramatic revised version.
Date filed: 15-05-2006
When the Devil Still Matters
By R Joseph Hoffmann
Extrinsic and intrinsic violence in Islam.
Date filed: 08-05-2006
The Myth of Productivity and the Function of Consumerism: An Institutional Perspective
By Jim Cornehls
Are CEOs 600 times more productive than line workers?
Date filed: 23-04-2006
The Gospel of Judas: Exclusive
By R Joseph Hoffmann
Mikado, Messiah, what's the difference.
Date filed: 18-04-2006
The State of Ayurveda: Examining the Evidence
By Meera Nanda
Yoga and Ayurveda are being mass-marketed in India as never before
Date filed: 09-04-2006
Brutality, War Crimes, Genocide, and Rape - Should Children Be Reading This Book?
By Edmund Standing
The good book.
Date filed: 05-04-2006
Move over ID, here comes Bhartiya Creationism
By Ravi Ravishankar
Ask the Swami.
Date filed: 03-04-2006
Letter from No Man’s Land
By Niala Maharaj
A report from The World Summit on the Information Society
Date filed: 03-04-2006
Freedom of Expression: No Ifs Ands or Buts
By Maryam Namazie
Free speech and expression are not luxuries. We need them.
Date filed: 26-03-2006
Newsweek and the Undead Freud
By Frederick Crews
Newsweek's devotion to Freud is second only to its devotion to Jesus.
Date filed: 24-03-2006
Handling evidence in history: the case of Einstein’s wife
By Alberto A. Martínez
Historical claims must be inspected carefully, just as when testing hypotheses.
(Copyright 2005, Alberto A. Martínez and School Science Review.)
Date filed: 18-03-2006
Mileva Marić: Einstein’s Wife
By Allen Esterson
PBS has been complicit in the dissemination of tall stories about the alleged role of Einstein’s first wife in his early scientific achievements.
Date filed: 06-03-2006
On the Occasion of 8th March, International Women’s Day
By Azar Majedi
Celebrate International Women's Day March 8
Date filed: 04-03-2006
Sectarian Hijacking of Textbooks Blocked
By The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate
South Asians mobilize to prevent the injection of Hindu supremacist ideology into textbooks.
Date filed: 03-03-2006
Manifesto
By Rushdie, Hirsi Ali, Namazie, Manji, Lévy, Nasreen, Ibn Warraq et al.
A manifesto calling for resistance to religious totalitarianism.
Date filed: 02-03-2006
Victory over Hindu nationalists in California textbooks rewrite
By Friends of South Asia
Dalits and women testify against proposed changes.
Date filed: 01-03-2006
'Repressed Memory' Challenge
By Harrison G. Pope, Jr. and James I. Hudson
$1000 reward to anyone who can produce a published case of “repressed memory” (in fiction or non-fiction) prior to 1800
Date filed: 27-02-2006
Letter to the New York Times
By Daniel Dennett
The suggestion that 'evolutionism' is a religion is a transparent example of a familiar trick.
Date filed: 25-02-2006
Sense and Sensibility
By Paula Bourges-Waldegg
An exciting new career in self-censorship awaits you.
Date filed: 23-02-2006
Why Truth Does Matter
By Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom
Truth, history, Irving, Evans, the Holocaust.
Date filed: 21-02-2006
Distortions Are Not Worth Debating
By Deborah Lipstadt
Newspapers have no responsibility to print falsehoods.
Date filed: 21-02-2006
Misdirected Outrage: The Strange Case of ‘Gay Muslims’
By Edmund Standing
Is 'gay Muslim' simply an oxymoron?
Date filed: 20-02-2006
Why Review a Book When You Can Sneer?
By Brian Leiter
Again the New York Times gets a non-philosopher to review a book of philosophy.
Date filed: 20-02-2006
Freedom of speech is not for sale
By Mina Ahadi
Self-censorship is regression.
Date filed: 11-02-2006
Silent but not Deadly
By Thomas R DeGregori
Consider all the epidemics that haven't happened.
Date filed: 11-02-2006
Hindutva, California Textbooks and a Smear Campaign
By Steve Farmer
Scholars block Hindu right's attempt to change California textbooks
Date filed: 03-02-2006
Defend striking bus workers of Tehran!
By Bahram Soroush
Security forces attack striking bus workers in Tehran.
Date filed: 01-02-2006
Faith is a Moral Failing
By George M Felis
If we give up on reason, we give up on the only access to truth we have.
Date filed: 29-01-2006
When Theology Met Postmodernism
By Edmund Standing
If God is dead, but you still want to be a theologian, what are you supposed to write about?
Date filed: 26-01-2006
The Kitzmiller Decision
By Dawkins, Dennett, Kurtz, Jones, Ridley, Forrest, Haack
Latest: Susan Haack notes good sense in Dover.
Date filed: 25-01-2006
Theory’s Empire
By Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral
Those who question Theory do so at their peril.
Date filed: 14-01-2006
Reactions to the Dover Decision on Intelligent Design (with special attention to the unfortunate intervention by Professor Alschuler)
By Brian Leiter
Misreading Judge Jones's decision.
Date filed: 02-01-2006
Trading Faith for Spirituality: The Mystifications of Sam Harris
By Meera Nanda
Mysticism matters because beliefs matter.
Date filed: 09-12-2005
Godless States in God Lands: Dilemmas of Secularism in America and India
By Meera Nanda
The postmodern deconstruction of science has been all too helpful to reactionary religiosity.
Date filed: 01-12-2005
Fear and Loathing in Lacania
By Filip Buekens
Is it possible to understand Lacan without becoming his hostage?
Date filed: 28-11-2005
Intelligent Design or Natural Design
By Raymond Bradley
A philosopher looks at the arguments for design in nature.
Date filed: 23-11-2005
Religion, Uncertainty and My Mother
By Paula Bourges-Waldegg
Does religion hold the patent on consolation?
Date filed: 15-11-2005
Was Freud a Pseudoscientist?
By Frank Cioffi
The question is one of interpretation rather than science.
Date filed: 09-11-2005
A Zero Theory
By Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen; introduction and translation by Frederick Crews
Why has psychoanalysis enjoyed such success?
Date filed: 05-11-2005
Does Relativism Matter?
By Simon Blackburn
Toleration is one thing, and relativism is quite another.
Date filed: 18-10-2005
Afghanistan: Women's rights editor Mohaqiq Nasar arrested for blasphemy
By Rationalist International
Article criticizing harsh punishments considered 'blasphemy'
Date filed: 13-10-2005
Secularist of the Year Award
By Keith Porteous Wood, Maryam Namazie
The National Secular Society honours secularists and the work they do.
Date filed: 09-10-2005
Freud and his Critics: a Discussion
By Allen Esterson, Richard Warnotck, Paul Power
Freud and knowledge
Date filed: 01-10-2005
French Connection III?
By Robert Wilcocks
The Black Book of Psychoanalysis is a start but it omits a lot
Date filed: 28-09-2005
Political Spirituality
By Sean McCann
Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson on Foucault and the Iranian revolution
Date filed: 26-09-2005
Open Letter: Don't ghettoize women's rights
By Margaret Atwood, Maud Barlow et al.
Canadian writers, journalists, activists send an Open Letter to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty
Date filed: 11-09-2005
Islamic [In]Justice
By Maryam Namazie
On the establishment of an Islamic court in Canada
Date filed: 02-09-2005
Women Victims of Islam
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali's speech at the UN Conference 'Victims of Jihad'.
Date filed: 25-08-2005
Sharia Law and the Globalization of Political Islam
By Homa Arjomand
Homa Arjomand's speech at the Toronto Sharia Conference
Date filed: 23-08-2005
Toronto Sharia Conference
By Homa Arjomand
Featuring Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and Homa Arjomand
Date filed: 16-08-2005
Who is William T. Vollman and Why Did the NY Times Invite Him to Write about Nietzsche?
By Brian Leiter
Why does the 'newspaper of record' ask a novelist with little apparent knowledge of Nietzsche to review a biography of him?
Date filed: 15-08-2005
IT Giant India Has Feet of Chalk
By Rajesh Kumar Sharma
Is information technology making a big difference in India?
Date filed: 09-08-2005
Darwin and Design: The Flawed Origins of a Critique
By Paula Bourges-Waldegg
Some silly myths about scientists are put under the microscope.
Date filed: 04-08-2005
How to Make a Revolution in Historical Linguistics
By Merlijn de Smit
You too can be a star.
Date filed: 28-07-2005
Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman
By Nick Cohen
Sometimes one book can convince us to turn the telescope around and look through the right end.
Date filed: 13-07-2005
Political Islam in the heart of secular Europe
By Maryam Namazie
Time for another transformative enlightenment.
Date filed: 09-07-2005
Pulling Down the Moonshine
By Geoffrey Dean
Review of a postmodernist take on astrology.
Date filed: 28-06-2005
Planet of the Hats
By PZ Myers
Without hats, anything is permitted.
Date filed: 19-06-2005
Magic vs. Modernity
By Thomas R. DeGregori
Rhetoric vs. rationality.
Date filed: 18-06-2005
“Theory’s Empire”
By Mark Bauerlein
The institutional effects of Theory have displaced its intellectual nature.
Date filed: 15-06-2005
On Being a Mitigated Sceptic
By Philip Stott
Degrees of questioning and doubt do not conform easily to the modern world of sound bites.
Date filed: 09-06-2005
Gravity, or Paranoia II
By David Hadley
It was all that gravity that kept us down.
Date filed: 30-05-2005
Wallification, or Paranoia I
By Ophelia Benson
All these barriers keep us separate.
Date filed: 29-05-2005
We expect that Ontario should do the same
By Homa Arjomand
Quebec’s decision to ban Sharia court is a victory for all defenders of human rights.
Date filed: 28-05-2005
Separation of god & science
By Azar Majedi and Bahram Soroush
Especially on gender issues and sexual equality, religious schools contradict society's achievements.
Date filed: 26-05-2005
Mayor of London, Political Islam, and Us
By Maryam Namazie
Bahram Soroush and Fariborz Pooya discuss Ken Livingstone's dossier on Qaradawi.
Date filed: 14-05-2005
Apostasy, Human Rights, Religion and Belief
By Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq's speech at the UN on new threats to freedom of opinion and expression.
Date filed: 02-05-2005
We Need to Fight the Battle for Enlightenment
By Azam Kamguian
Azam Kamguian's speech at the UN Conference 'Victims of Jihad' on the fate of apostates under Islam
Date filed: 27-04-2005
Campaigning against the Sharia Court in Canada
By Homa Arjomand
Is a Sharia tribunal truly optional? For whom?
Date filed: 25-04-2005
Different Ways Of Thinking And Thinking In Different Ways
By Paula Bourges-Waldegg
Do we all think in different ways, or is cognition universal?
Date filed: 22-04-2005
No, No Way, You Mooks
By Nick Slater
Wise-guys fight back against that secular extremism bullshit
Date filed: 15-04-2005
A fresh breeze in the labour movement in Iran
By Fariborz Pooya and Bahram Soroush
International solidarity helped textile workers’ strike in Sanandaj succeed
Date filed: 11-04-2005
The University of Minnesota is Touching
By PZ Myers
Why is the University of Minnesota spending money on TellingtonTTouch while cutting substantive programs?
Date filed: 05-04-2005
Why so much fuss about ‘a piece of clothing’?
By Azam Kamguian
Azam Kamguian defends the ban on the veiling of young girls.
Date filed: 28-03-2005
A Moratorium on 'Public Intellectuals' Opining About Nietzsche?
By Brian Leiter
John Gray gets Nietzsche all wrong in the New Statesman
Date filed: 15-03-2005
An Interview with Rebecca Goldstein
By Ophelia Benson
'If ever there was a man committed to the objectivity of truth, and to objective standards of rationality, it was Gödel.'
Date filed: 09-03-2005
Islam, Political Islam and Women in the Middle East
By Maryam Namazie
Misogyny cannot be interpreted to be pro-woman even if it is turned on its head.
Date filed: 06-03-2005
A Curious Accident in Space-Time
By Paula Bourges-Waldegg
The search for intelligent life in the universe.
Date filed: 05-03-2005
Old News You Can Use: the denaturing of history
By Barney F. McClelland
Jefferson? That's the name of a high school, right?
Date filed: 02-03-2005
'More Than a Stretch'
By Graham Larkin
Are Stanley Fish, Todd Gitlin and Michael Bérubé really in favor of the Academic Bill of Rights? Graham Larkin asked them.
Date filed: 24-02-2005
Against Nature: Why Nature Should Have No Say on Human Sexuality
By Edmund Standing
We're always correcting Nature, so who cares what kind of sexual activity is 'natural'?
Date filed: 18-02-2005
Rationalist International Bulletin # 140
By Rationalist International
Vatican kidnap program, woman-free democracy in Saudia Arabia, pious spies in India.
Date filed: 14-02-2005
Behe Jumps the Shark
By P Z Myers
Biologist Myers is not entirely convinced by Michael Behe's case for Intelligent Design.
Date filed: 09-02-2005
The Naturalistic Fallacy and Sophie’s Choice
By Paula Bourges Waldegg
If nature is sacred, then we are helpless before it.
Date filed: 03-02-2005
Academic vs. Horowitzian Truth Standards
By Graham Larkin
An Open Letter from Graham Larkin to David Horowitz
Date filed: 29-01-2005
“Chief” Objections: Racism, Rhetoric and Native American Mascots on College Campuses
By Phil Mole
Sloppy use of the epithet 'political correctness' can short-circuit rational discussion.
Date filed: 26-01-2005
Beloved Cartoon Character Comes Out of Retirement
By Barney F. McClelland
Finally, a cartoon hero who's not a little light in the loafers. Whew.
Date filed: 24-01-2005
Letter to David Horowitz
By Graham Larkin
It's not about balance? Really?
Date filed: 23-01-2005
What's Not To Like About The Academic Bill of Rights
By Graham Larkin
Would simplistic Manicheanism improve universities?
Date filed: 22-01-2005
Minority or Citizen? A Roundtable Discussion
By Hamid Taghvaee, Ali Javadi, Azar Majedi
The conflict between minority and collective rights versus individual rights
Date filed: 11-01-2005
Are You an Altie?
By an American Cancer Surgeon
If you like to claim that science is a religion, you could be one.
Date filed: 05-01-2005
Stop the Death by Stoning of a Woman in Iran
By The International Committee Against Stoning
Hajiyeh Esmaelvand is due to be stoned to death for adultery in one week.
Date filed: 20-12-2004
The Stinking Ninth Class
By David Stanway
Chinese intellectuals in 'a Leninist velvet prison with consumer characteristics.'
Date filed: 15-12-2004
Sorry to Disappoint, but I'm Still an Atheist!
By Antony Flew
Antony Flew denies rumours that he has turned theist.
Date filed: 13-12-2004
Review of Taner Edis’ Ghost in the Universe
By Phil Mole
Phil Mole reviews a brilliant contribution to the discussion of science and religion.
Date filed: 05-12-2004
Introduction to Creationism's Trojan Horse
Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross on the national intellectual seduction of 'Intelligent Design.'
Date filed: 01-12-2004
The Derrida Industry...
By Brian Leiter
What philosophers actually think of Derrida
Date filed: 29-11-2004
1621: A Historian Looks Anew at Thanksgiving
By Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs
New publications still have some errors in fact.
Date filed: 26-11-2004
The Pre-Established Harmony - Not
By H. E. Baber
Cultural myth-makers often obscure the facts when telling us what we want to hear.
Date filed: 23-11-2004
Not the first time
By Maryam Namazie and Azar Majedi
Azar Majedi talks to Maryam Namazie about the murder of Theo van Gogh.
Date filed: 18-11-2004
Political Islam vs. Secularism
By Azar Majedi
Azar Majedi says Islamism is best understood as political rather than fundamentalist.
Date filed: 15-11-2004
Patience and Absurdity: How to Deal with Intelligent Design Creationism
By Paul R. Gross
A review of Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism
Mark Young and Taner Edis (Editors)
Date filed: 08-11-2004
Between God and Gibson: German Mystical and Romantic Sources of The Passion of the Christ
By Andrew Weeks
Gibson's movie was based on a book by a German Romantic poet, not the Bible and not a nun's vision.
Date filed: 08-11-2004
Another Murder Committed by Political Islam
By Azar Majedi
Azar Majedi of the Organisation for Women’s Liberation-Iran condemns the murder of Theo van Gogh.
Date filed: 05-11-2004
Who Loses in the Truth Wars?
By Julian Baggini
Julian Baggini says intellectuals and academics have lost sight of an important shared value.
Date filed: 01-10-2004
The Sleep of Reason
By H. E. Baber
H.E. Baber on the roots of the Left's antipathy to reason and logic.
Date filed: 20-09-2004
This Should Be the Last Straw for Anyone
By Maryam Namazie
Fariborz Pooya and Bahram Soroush say all progressive people should campaign to discredit and oppose Islamic terrorism.
Date filed: 13-09-2004
'Christian Feminist' Biblical Exegesis: Ideologically Motivated Pseudo-Scholarship
By Edmund Standing
Edmund Standing takes a look at an implausible reading of Mark 12.
Date filed: 05-09-2004
Unveiling the Debate on Secularism and Rights
By Maryam Namazie
Maryam Namazie points out that defending secularism has nothing to do with racism.
Date filed: 01-09-2004
1893--1895--1897--1899: Or How Norman N. Holland Gave Game, Set, and Match to Frederick Crews
By Robert Wilcocks
Robert Wilcocks on Freud as Tartuffe.
Date filed: 28-08-2004
Requiem for Ateqeh Rajabi
By Maryam Namazie
'No, she was not mad.' Maryam Namazie on the execution of a 16-year-old girl in Iran.
Date filed: 24-08-2004
A 'Paradigm Shift' in Finnish Linguistic Prehistory
By Merlijn de Smit
Merlijn de Smit on the uses of epistmic relativism to prop up right-wing nationalist pseudo-history.
Date filed: 22-08-2004
Pure But Not Yet!
By Thomas R. DeGregori
Tom DeGregori points out some of the impurities in organic agriculture.
Date filed: 18-08-2004
Pacifists Praising Fascists Killing Democrats
By Phil Doré
Phil Doré on how sections of the anti-war movment romanticise Iraqi resistance.
Date filed: 17-08-2004
The Politics Behind Cultural Relativism
By Maryam Namazie
'They say the whole population is religious, it’s Islamic, and that they have one culture.'
Date filed: 15-08-2004
Reply to Holland
By Frederick Crews
Frederick Crews replies to Norman Holland's 'Psychoanalysis as Science' (the long version).
Date filed: 10-08-2004
Psychoanalysis as Science
By Norman N. Holland
Norman Holland argues that psychoanalysis is indeed a science.
Date filed: 09-08-2004
Why Islamic Law should be opposed?
By Azam Kamguian
Azam Kamguian on why Sharia should be opposed by everyone who believes in human rights.
Date filed: 06-08-2004
Islamism & Multi-culturalism: A United Camp against Universal Human Rights in Canada
By Azam Kamguian
Azam Kamguian points out that human rights and the Sharia are irreconcilable and antagonistic.
Date filed: 28-07-2004
Veiling young girls must be banned!
By Azam Kamguian
Azam Kamguian on what the hijab does to young girls.
Date filed: 25-07-2004
Letter to Scientific American
Freud scholar Peter Swales questions the scholarship of a recent article on Freud.
Date filed: 22-07-2004
A Meeting to Discuss Shari'a Court in Ontario
By Homa Arjomand
Update: Homa Armojand reports on meeting with Ontario official regarding Shari'a Court
Date filed: 21-07-2004
'Arrogance' and Knowledge
By Brian Leiter
Brian Leiter considers the widespread resentment of reason and knowledge.
Date filed: 15-07-2004
Lesson Plans
By Daniel Green
Daniel Green on the transformation of literature into a vehicle for professorial self-aggrandizement.
Date filed: 08-07-2004
Machiavellian Monkeys
By Carl Zimmer
Carl Zimmer on the connection between large brains and deception.
Date filed: 05-07-2004
The Respect Coalition - Reactionaries in Progressive Clothing?
By Phil Doré
Phil Doré points out that Respect has to choose between promoting all human rights and pleasing the Muslim Association of Britain.
Date filed: 26-06-2004
Presentism Defended: Part 2
By Christopher Orlet
Christopher Orlet argues that we can make moral judgments even about people who lived many centuries ago.
Date filed: 24-06-2004
The Stop the War Coalition: A Monumentally Successful Failure
By Phil Doré
Phil Doré argues that the Stop the War Coalition was fatally undermined by its links to extreme leftist and Islamist groups.
Date filed: 25-05-2004
Calling India's Freethinkers
By Meera Nanda
Meera Nanda argues that insistence on a clear distinction between religion and science is essential for India.
Date filed: 24-05-2004
Proof of Astrology?
By Ivan W. Kelly
Ivan Kelly on misleading reviews of Percy Seymour's The Scientific Proof of Astrology
Date filed: 22-05-2004
Myths, Damned Myths, and Psychoanalytic Case Histories
By Allen Esterson
Allen Esterson dissects a BBC radio programme on Freud and hysteria.
Date filed: 05-05-2004
Freud Returns?
By Allen Esterson
Allen Esterson examines an error-strewn article in Scientific American by neuroscientist Mark Solms.
Date filed: 03-05-2004
Saving the Seed or Saving Romantic Assumptions
By Thomas R. DeGregori
Thomas DeGregori explains why 'traditional' farmers rely on new technology.
Date filed: 19-04-2004
Postmodern Approaches to Gender, Sex, and Sexuality - A Critique
By Edmund Standing
Edmund Standing takes a skeptical look at some postmodern approaches.
Date filed: 04-04-2004
The State of the State of Feminism
By Cassandra L. Pinnick
Cassandra Pinnick reviews Martha Nussbaum's global look at the conflict between liberal feminism and radical and communitarian varieties.
Date filed: 24-03-2004
Bonfire of the Bourgeois Vanities
By David Stanway
David Stanway on a time when Mao Zedong Thought was used to cure tumours, improve rice yields and defy gravity.
Date filed: 02-03-2004
A Defense of Whig History
By Christopher Orlet
Christopher Orlet has a good word for presentism.
Date filed: 28-02-2004
Green Myth vs. the Green Revolution
By Thomas R. DeGregori
Thomas DeGregori on myths that underpin misgivings about the Green Revolution.
Date filed: 05-02-2004
Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India
By Robert Nola
Robert Nola reviews Meera Nanda's Prophets Facing Backward
Date filed: 02-02-2004
Saffron Infusion: Hindutva, History, and Education
By Latha Menon
Latha Menon analyzes the effects of the 'saffron brigade' on rational inquiry and education.
Date filed: 01-02-2004
Fundamental Epistemology
By Cassandra L. Pinnick
Cassandra Pinnick asks whether feminist epistemology rests on sound foundations.
Date filed: 22-01-2004
Postmodernism, Hindu nationalism and `Vedic Science'
By Meera Nanda
In the conclusion of her two-part article, Meera Nanda examines the arguments for 'alternative sciences'
Date filed: 12-01-2004
Postmodernism, Hindu Nationalism and 'Vedic Science'
By Meera Nanda
Hindu dharma is not just another name for the laws of nature, Meera Nanda says in Part One of a two-part article.
Date filed: 04-01-2004
The Great Leap Backwards
By David Stanway
When Marxism becomes superstition, religion can seem counter-cultural, David Stanway observes.
Date filed: 26-12-2003
If I Had A Hammer: Why Logical Positivism Better Accounts for the Need for Gender and Cultural Studies
By Steven Gimbel
Steven Gimbel on a Genealogy of Quarrels, after the style of a certain German hammer.
Date filed: 04-12-2003
Authenticity or Depravity? Murder and Mayhem As Entertainment
By Barney F. McClelland
Barney McClelland looks at rappers who get street cred by murdering women.
Date filed: 24-11-2003
How the Humanists (Not the Irish) Saved Western Civilization
By Christopher Orlet
Christopher Orlet says it wasn't the Irish monks who saved Western civilization after all.
Date filed: 15-11-2003
Postmodernism, Science and Religious Fundamentalism:
By Meera Nanda
Meera Nanda explains why Hindu fundamentalists love postmodernist skepticism about science.
Date filed: 28-10-2003
Paradigms U Like
By Ophelia Benson
Ophelia Benson argues that epistemological egalitarianism is a Trojan horse.
Date filed: 11-10-2003
Not a Very Bright Idea
By Jeremy Stangroom
Jeremy Stangroom argues that secularists should stay clear of the 'brights' movement.
Date filed: 03-10-2003
The Virtue of Innovation and the Technological Imperative
By Andrew Apel
Andrew Apel argues that a duty exists to allow the dissemination and use of novel technology.
Date filed: 30-09-2003
Are All Religions Identical?
By Phil Mole
Phil Mole argues that it is comforting but false to believe that all religions are essentially the same.
Date filed: 23-09-2003
In Defense of the Essay
By Christopher Orlet
Christopher Orlet says the essay is not, popular opinion notwithstanding, a second-rate genre.
Date filed: 19-09-2003
The Plant Protection Racket
By Thomas R. DeGregori
Thomas DeGregori on the taste for luxurious imperfection at the expense of productive agriculture.
Date filed: 11-09-2003
Is Astrology Relevant to Consciousness and Psi?
By Geoffrey Dean and Ivan W. Kelly
Does astrology draw on a transcendent metaphysical reality that could change the way we think about consciousness?
Date filed: 01-09-2003
There is Nothing Wrong With Humanism
By Kenan Malik
Kenan Malik takes issue with Jeremy Stangroom's view of the tensions within humanism.
Date filed: 18-08-2003
Slums from the Qing Dynasty are Still Slums
By David Stanway
David Stanway asks some questions about poverty and nostalgia up the Yangtze.
Date filed: 31-07-2003
There is Something Wrong With Humanism
By Jeremy Stangroom
Jeremy Stangroom argues that there is a tension right at the heart of humanist philosophy.
Date filed: 24-07-2003
The Anti-Monoculture Mania
By Thomas R. DeGregori
Thomas DeGregori on the follies of alarmist criticism of the Green Revolution.
Date filed: 12-07-2003
How to Avoid Pop Culture
By Christopher Orlet
Christopher Orlet on smugness and how to be amused about popular culture.
Date filed: 07-07-2003
The Arts and Cultural Diversity
By Jatinder Verma
Jatinder Verma argues that when the wheel is having to be reinvented every 10 years or so, it is time to question the wheel.
Date filed: 15-06-2003
Who Mourns the Gepids?
By Robert Davis
Robert Davis explains why it’s a mistake to think that vanquished cultures are morally superior to those of their conquerors.
Date filed: 01-06-2003
Debunking Edward Said
By Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq takes Edward Said to task for a one-eyed view of the relationship between the Arab and Western worlds.
Date filed: 30-05-2003
The Rise of the Info-Novel
By Peter Lurie
Peter Lurie wonders why the novel has come to be about arcane information instead of about characters.
Date filed: 15-05-2003
The Optimist's Slaughter
By Christopher Orlet
Christopher Orlet gives two cheers for pessimism.
Date filed: 13-05-2003
Poetry and the Politics of Self-Expression
By Barney F. McClelland
You want to express yourself, yes, but do we want to read you? asks Barney McClelland.
Date filed: 08-05-2003
Anti-realism - what's at stake? An interview with Jonathan Rée
Interview by Jeremy Stangroom
According to Jonathan Rée, there is less to worry about in post-modernist inspired criticisms of science than one might think.
Date filed: 24-04-2003
SARS in a Wilderness of Mirrors
By David Stanway
David Stanway on living with rumour, misinformation and SARS in Shanghai.
Date filed: 22-04-2003
Shiva the Destroyer?
By Thomas R. DeGregori
The post-modernist celebration of "local ways of knowing" might sound like a good thing, but it can have terrible practical consequences, argues Thomas DeGregori.
Date filed: 16-04-2003
Life's Lethal Quality Control
By Geoff Watts
Geoff Watts on how some scientists have started to take seriously the claims of a US businessman that cancer plays an important role in evolution.
Date filed: 15-04-2003
Don't Bury the Bones
By Tiffany Jenkins
There are good reasons why old bones should not be returned to ancient burial grounds for reburial, argues Tiffany Jenkins.
Date filed: 07-04-2003
A Bluffer’s Guide to Science Studies and the Sociology of "Knowledge"
By Robert Nola
Robert Nola on the life and times of science studies and the sociology of knowledge.
Date filed: 05-03-2003
Postmodernism and truth
By Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett explains how postmodern skepticism about truth can cause real-world harm.
Date filed: 02-03-2003
Relatively Speaking
By Simon Blackburn
Simon Blackurn considers whether truth is just a matter of perspective.
Date filed: 30-01-2003
Claiming Darwin for the Left: an interview with Peter Singer
Interview by Julian Baggini
Peter Singer explains why left wing politics needs to take Darwinism into account.
Date filed: 28-01-2003
Psychoanalytic Mythology
By Allen Esterson
Allen Esterson debunks some of the myths surrounding Freud's seduction theory.
Date filed: 19-12-2002
The PC Tyranny
By Lou Marinoff
Lou Marinoff argues that political correctness brings with it the worship of folly and the death of the love of wisdom.
Date filed: 20-11-2002
Evolutionary Psychology and its Enemies: an interview with Steven Pinker
Interview by Ophelia Benson
Steven Pinker answers our questions about his new book and what its reception says about public worries over evolutionary explanations.
Date filed: 09-11-2002
Higher Superstition Revisited: an interview with Norman Levitt
Interview by Ophelia Benson
Eight years after the publication of his best-selling book Higher Superstition (co-authored with Paul Gross), Norman Levitt talks to Ophelia Benson about how things now stand in the strange world of Science Studies.
Date filed: 30-10-2002
Postmodernism and History
By Richard J. Evans
Historian Richard Evans distinguishes between the valuable insights of moderate postmodernism and the corrosive effects of the radical variety.
Date filed: 22-10-2002
The Ancient World As Seen By Afrocentrists
By Mary Lefkowitz
Mary Lefkowitz rejects claims that classical Greeks "stole" their ideas from Egypt.
Date filed: 15-09-2002
Misunderstanding Richard Dawkins
By Jeremy Stangroom
Jeremy Stangroom argues that in order to understand why people get it so wrong about sociobiology it is necessary to work out what they're frightened of.
Date filed: 01-09-2002
Science Wars: an interview with Alan Sokal
Interview by Julian Baggini
Julian Baggini talks to the physicist who published a "transgressive" article in Social Text, only to unmask it as a parody.
Date filed: 15-08-2002
Lay Sceptic's Travels on Planet Energy
By Elina Rigler
A kind of metaphysics it may be, but, argues Elina Rigler, Energyspeak has nothing to do with science.
Date filed: 14-08-2002
Archive
By Editor
Notes and Comment archive.
Date filed: 01-08-2002
Interrogations Archive
By Editor
Archive of Interrogations essays
Date filed: 12-04-2002
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