Doug Phillips’s 200 Year Plan envisages a godly United States, six generations from now, with fundamentalist evangelicals in the majority and a theocratic government in charge.… Read the rest

In order to count as sane, you don’t necessarily have to conform to the norms of the world, but you do have to be nonconformist in a generally acceptable way.… Read the rest

Teacher beat her, principal told school management, prayer leaders fumed in their sermons, the girl was expelled, she and her mother had to leave the city.… Read the rest

Just as farmers try to prevent their livestock from killing one another, so rulers will try to keep their subjects from cycles of raiding and feuding.… Read the rest

RD: But how do you decide which bits to doubt and which bits to accept? As scientists, we do it by evidence. CO: You can’t boil everything down to evidence!… Read the rest

Racist epithets are unquestionably considered unacceptable, but the sexist versions operate in a context where misogyny is so deeply entrenched that it can escape notice.… Read the rest

Says “Religions do not depend upon their myths and miracles. They are there as
illustrations.” Says other things too.… Read the rest

He covers a lot of ground by addressing a series of pleasingly simple questions. Who was the first person? Why are there so many kinds of animals? Why do we have night and day?… Read the rest

17-year-old Jessie faced being forced into marriage to her 40-year-old cousin in Bangladesh. She begged the British Consulate for help and officials stepped in.… Read the rest

Dominionism is theocratic, and that’s alarming.… Read the rest

Many of the cows and buffaloes wandering Delhi’s roads are owned and neglected by illegal dairies who are concerned only about milk production.… Read the rest

How to take a woman’s rights away.… Read the rest

Hugh Hefner as liberator. Really.… Read the rest

One for Jad Abumrad, the co-host and producer of “Radiolab,” a program on WNYC in New York that explores questions of science and philosophy, like the nature of altruism.… Read the rest

Most of the 19th century wasn’t prosperous people gathered around a hearth, it was ragged people crowded into tenements.… Read the rest

Every night I would go to bed fearing the same god I had been taught loved me and “had the whole world in his hands.”… Read the rest

She wears a headpiece but she swears up and down it’s not two-way. That’s good enough, surely!… Read the rest

Religious groups demand these pseudo-rights because they don’t want to compete with liberal, rational, progressive and humane ideas on equal terms.… Read the rest

Says the popularity of Dawkins and Hitchens make it harder for church to convey its message.… Read the rest

It paid for a billboard showing an obese woman with the message: “Save the Whales. Lose the Blubber. Go Vegetarian.” Now it’s launching a porn site.… Read the rest