“What, after all, is the difference between a sectarian school which disallows challenges to the divinity of Christ and a so-called nonideological school which disallows discussion of the same question? In both contexts something goes without saying and something else cannot be said (Christ is not God or he is). There is of course a... Continue Reading

The court found that the atheists had no standing to bring the suit, in part because American Atheists could have applied to the Internal Revenue Service for designation as a religious organization, but never had. It’s just speculation that the IRS would reject the application, the court wrote; in fact, the IRS has granted nontheistic groups... Continue Reading

Judge Garry Neilson, from the district court in the state of New South Wales, likened incest to homosexuality, which was once regarded as criminal and “unnatural” but is now widely accepted. He said incest was now only a crime because it may lead to abnormalities in offspring but this rationale was increasingly irrelevant because of... Continue Reading

In New Mexico, there’s certainly a bad precedent with Elane Photography. If I was an artist living in New Mexico, I would be greatly concerned about my First Amendment rights. What we’re about to do is force gay print shop owners to make the signs for the Westboro Baptist Church. I think most of your... Continue Reading

Contrary to the forceful assertions of some prominent atheist authors (e.g., Dawkins 2006; Dennett 2006), however, the data consistently point to a negative association between religiosity and criminal behavior and a positive association between religiosity and prosocial behavior. Both relations are modest in magnitude and ambiguous with respect to causation. At the same time, they... Continue Reading

Studying the effects of fasting on cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy produced the unexpected result. Fasting not only protected healthy tissue, but also allowed the body to recycle old and damaged white cells. When the patients resumed eating, their white counts returned to normal. Where were the new white cells coming from?   (WNS)–University of Southern... Continue Reading

After a 14-month investigation, JVC determined the ring involved “aliases” and fake e-mail addresses of reviewers — up to 130 of them — in an apparently successful effort to get friendly reviews of submissions and as many articles published as possible by Chen and his friends. “On at least one occasion, the author Peter Chen... Continue Reading

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau had threatened to sell the girls “in the market.” “I abducted your girls,” Shekau said in a 57-minute video obtained by the AFP earlier. “I abducted a girl at a western education school and you are disturbed. I said western education should end. Western education should end. Girls, you should... Continue Reading

In her letter, Driscoll wrote that Salem has had “a long and positive relationship with Gordon College over the years” and she was saddened to cut ties with the school. But she told Lindsay, “I hope you realize how hurtful and offensive these ‘behavioral standards’ are to members of the greater Salem LGBT community, some... Continue Reading

With the Pill, the legalisation of homosexuality and shrinking taboos against premarital sex, the Seventies was an era of quite sudden sexual emancipation. Many liberals, of course, saw through PIE’s cynical rhetoric of “child lib”. But to others on the Left, sex by or with children was just another repressive boundary to be swept away... Continue Reading