Watch this. Keep in mind that this is an American politician—a Republican mayor of San Diego. And not only does he come out in support of gay marriage (that’s only civilized, I figure), but never in his speech is there any religious reference. Amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnTwrnKb61Q

(Hat tip to Ed Babinski, who found this at the Wittenburg Blog. The music is titled “Det snurrar i min skalle” and is from a Swedish group called Familjen–they’ve got several other songs on YouTube.) I found an apposite quote about this in an Economist article published last year titled “Christianity reborn”: “A Pentecostal service … Pentecostal rave party

I’ll be giving talks on “Science and Islam” at three Ontario, Canada universities: Ryerson University, Wilfrid Laurier University, and University of Toronto at Mississauga. All are free and open to the public, and are on September 27 and 28. Click on each event above for more details. Just in case anyone is interested in attending…

IslamOnline.net just ran my article “Intelligent Design: A Blind Alley,” which asks Muslims to reconsider widepread Islamic sympathy toward creationism and intelligent design. Mind you, it’s a bit of a fruitless task. My article appears as one in a series on the debate among Muslims concerning creation and evolution, and the creationist contributions are more … Intelligent Design: A Blind Alley

Lately there has been a line of social science research that has been very positive for the egos of secularists. This tends to point out that religious belief is correlated with social insecurity, and that a high proportion of nonbelief in societies goes together with indicators of societal health. (See, for example, Phil Zuckerman’s “Is … W(h)ither Europe?

I often complain about the scarcity and relative lack of influence of liberal Muslim groups. Nevertheless, they exist, and secularists and infidels should hope that they get stronger. They are natural allies. For example, the mission statement of the Muslim Canadian Congress expresses liberal-minded convictions that any secularist can celebrate. I point out such organizations … Liberal Muslims

Among secularists, Islam has a nasty reputation. And nowhere is this clearer than when the issue is the status of women. It’s hard to generalize about more than a billion people who identify themselves as Muslim. Nevertheless, Muslims tend to have a patriarchal orientation. And the more observant, the more orthodox the Muslim, the greater … Does Islam Oppress Women?