A splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban targeted a crowd of Christian children celebrating Easter: http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/27/asia/pakistan-lahore-deadly-blast/ In the comments section of my last post on religious violence we had a lively discussion about the causes of religious violence and to what extent they were genuinely religiously motivated. Such attacks as this one (which, alas, are not … Really Religious Violence

A recent studv (based on surveys conducted between 1972 and 2014 that produced responses from over 58,000 Americans) shows that belief in God has declined significantly in recent decades. =============== The findings show that from the early 1980s to 2014: • Those who identified their religion as “none” increased from 7 percent to 21 percent. • Those … Hope for a Brighter Future

Every time there is yet another terrorist attack by jihadists, you can count on some immediate responses: The media will devote obsessive attention, national leaders will condemn and decry, bigots will blame the innocent, and presidential candidates (some of whom are bigots) will issue calls to “get tough.” And scores of liberal pundits and academics … Religious Violence: The Question that Will not go Away

Texas Attorney General (and indicted securities fraud suspect) Ken Paxton has hired fundamentalist activist Jeff Mateer as his top assistant: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/150years/article/Paxton-hire-draws-ire-for-fighting-gay-marriage-6925133.php In Texas it is just business as usual to hire zealots and ideologues and put them in positions where they are supposed to be working for the people, all the people (an not just the ones, … Texas AG Hires Anti-Gay and anti-Church/State Separation Activist

What do you get when you partner a chaired professor of religious studies at a prestigious university with a popular writer in order to study the paranormal? According to The Houston Chronicle (3/6/16), Jeffrey Kripal, who holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair of Religious Studies at Rice University, has teamed with Whitley Strieber, author of … The Professor, the Abductee, and the Aliens

This story has already been noted on at least one other atheist site, but I have to run it here also. It looks like Mary Lou Bruner, a wacko who says that Barack Obama was a gay prostitute, is headed for the Texas State Board of Education: http://www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2016/03/02/mary_lou_bruner_extremist_who_thinks_obama_was_a_prostitute_heads_to_runoff.html As I have noted here (many times) … Bird Sighting: The Greater Right-Winged Texas Loon

Karl Popper famously said that the criterion demarcating science from nonscience was falsifiability. Scientific theories and hypotheses are falsifiable; it is always possible to cite specific observations that would prove them wrong. Dinosaur fossils found in Tertiary strata would falsify the claim that the K/T extinction event gave dinosaurs the coup de grace. Nonscience, on … Popper on Falsifiability

(Redated post originally published on 1 May 2015) John Mark N. Reynolds, Provost of Houston Baptist University has written a lengthy reaction to criticisms of his earlier blog post claiming that anti-theism is the murderous force behind communism. I and Bob Seidensticker criticized his earlier essay. Reynolds’ more recent piece is, as I say, a … Murderous Anti-theism: A Further Response to John Mark N. Reynolds