The New York Times reports that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to rule on a case in which a town (Greece, New York) mandated the saying of prayers before every town meeting (a town assembly dealing with local governance). As the Times reports; For more than a decade starting in 1999, the town board […]
The first thing I want to say is that I had nothing to do with this episode, so don’t start calling me the Religion Police. It’s simply one of the many admirable actions of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) in its incessant battle to keep religion out of the public-school classroom. And that includes […]
Inside Higher Education reports today that the letter written to Ball State University (BSU) by the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), calling attention to Dr. Eric Hedin’s “science” courses that are infused with Christianity and intelligent design, has had an effect. An excerpt from the report: Ball State University has agreed to investigate complaints that […]
If you need some background, have a look at my earlier post about Ball State University (BSU) in Indiana. At that University resides one Eric Hedin, an assistant professor at BSU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Hedin teaches two courses (actually, probably one course with three different names, “Inquiries in the Physical Sciences,” “The Boundaries […]
Earlier today I posted about how a 16-year old student, named “M.B.” in the court documents, was suing Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, Mississippi for forcing students to listen to pep-talks about Jesus. Those talks, mandatory for all the students, clearly violated the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. Well, that student has […]
It’s in Mississippi, of course, perhaps America’s most benighted state. Although the news is a bit late (this was reported three weeks ago), it’s timely in representing the never-flagging forces of religious indoctrination in my country: From The Raw Story: A high school in central Mississippi allegedly forced students to watch a Christian video and […]
Last October I reported that cheerleaders in Kountze, Texas, were displaying Christian banners, with slogans from the New Testament, at high-school football games. The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) brought suit against the school district, maintaining, correctly, that such displays violated the First Amendment, which prohibits government endorsement of religion. The case was then working […]
It’s deeply misguided to criticize the New Atheists for attacking Islam and branding it as an especially pernicious faith. It’s even more misguided to label them as racist “Islamophobes”. Such critics are in fact erecting a double standard for human rights, as Islam is clearly more oppressive than other major faiths, and more eager to […]
Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, is a public university (i.e., part of the state university system). As such, it must abide by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which has been interpreted as disallowing religious viewpoints (or religiously based theories) in public-school science classes. It is of course kosher to teach courses on […]
Smelling blood, the media has spent the past two weeks attacking New Atheism, going so far as, in the case of Theo Hobson of The Spectator, to label Richard Dawkins as a “joke figure“, which he most certainly is not. Just two days ago, one Freddy Gray, Hobson’s colleague at the Spectator, piled on with […]
