Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. Just after I griped about some things he’s said recently. I feel bad. A great novelist and a great social critic; occasional griping aside, I will sorely miss him. The AHA has set up a web site for those who would like to make a contribution in Vonnegut’s memory.

Complementing Jim Still’s post about “The Family,” Ed Brayton writes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars about how Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School, a 4th-tier law school barely half of whose graduates pass the bar exam, has managed to be the source of at least 150 appointees to the Bush administration. Perhaps the fact … Pat Robertson’s continuing influence on the Bush administration

Hullabalo provides a fantastic update on the intriguing story of The Family, the secretive fundamentalist group that organizes the National Prayer Breakfast and enjoys a powerful influence over U.S. national leaders.

According to Bruce Flamm, long-time critic of one of the best known studies that claimed real effects due to intercessory prayer, further reasons to be dubious of the study authors’ work has surfaced, in the form of one being caught in plagiarism. In summary, the man who designed and supposedly conducted the prayer study resides … The study without a prayer

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite novelists (the somewhat obscure Deadeye Dick in particular) and cultural commentators. He is deeply rooted in the freethought tradition, and has served as honorary president of the American Humanist Association. Lately, though, he seems to be on a strange anti-Darwinian kick. For example, about a year ago, the … Vonnegut goes off deep end about Darwin?

I like to keep religious interference in my life to a minimum. I count myself lucky that I Iive in a social and work environment where there’s no expectation that I should attend any kind of religious service. And in politics as well, one of my leading concerns is to preserve church-state separation and to … After Secularism?

If anyone’s in the area—I’ll be giving a talk on Tuesday, April 3, 7pm, at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. It will be in the Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Memorial Union, entitled “The Creation/Evolution Debate in the Muslim World.” Based on An Illusion of Harmony, naturally. Free and open to the public.

Normally, I don’t buy the sentiment expressed by Voltaire, that “as long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.” Someone with accurate views about the nature of the universe can still be a complete and utter bastard; some of the most gentle, most pacifist people in the world link their behavior … Global warming and evangelicals

The Secular Islam Summit earlier this month appears to have produced “The St Petersburg Declaration,” which expresses some very agreeable sentiments. Normally I’d endorse it, and encourage others to endorse it as well. But I find it hard to support an event organized by some thoroughly vile neocon figures such as Michael Leeden, is dripping … Nice declaration, but…

That’s the headline of an opinion piece in today’s Los Angeles Times by Stephen Prothero. Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, is author of a new book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–And Doesn’t. Part of his book is based on a “religious literacy quiz” he has given to his … We live in the land of biblical idiots