The attempts

[...] equality laws. Malik’s post addresses the argument by Catholics that the legalisation of gay marriage is effectively an act of persecution against them, since it would “severely [restrict] the [...]

[...] of the country in which the Church operates. Whether it concerns abortion, contraception or gay marriage, the Church holds its laws to be above those enacted by civil, secular society. Such insolence [...]

[...] come to mind, the Australianreports that “[t]he inquiry will not be confined to the Catholic Church, but extend to all religious organisations and to children in state care, and into other [...]

[...] I would rather not write a third consecutive post on the pernicious Catholic Church, but I write this to show solidarity with those who mourn the death of Savita Halappanavar. I [...]

[...] principles, the laws of any religious body must not take precedence over civil laws. The Catholic Church in particular is notorious for its primary allegiance to the dictates of the Holy See in Rome, [...]

[...] that divorcees can remarry) – all legally permit practices condemned by the Catholic Church (and by many other faiths). Are these also expressions of the ‘persecution’ of [...]

[...] medical science writer. Dr Goldacre calls this bias “a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine” and has written a book, Bad Pharma, that addresses this widespread problem. [...]

[...] and professor of genomics Eric Topol, Dr Oz’s lack of discrimination between evidence-based medicine and alt-med can mislead people, since “how are consumers to know what is real [...]

[...] that is denied – for good reasons – to secular ideologies and institutions. This religious privilege manifests as the automatic assumption of moral rectitude, and as special treatment [...]

[...] . There is a trend among some religious lobby groups to dress up the principled removal of religious privilege as a form of persecution, and this trend is not unique to the UK. The British Humanist [...]

[...] any profession. Finally, Malik expresses the gist of secularist arguments against religious privilege (not religious freedom). [Catholics] have every right to believe [that marriage is [...]

[...] , Alex Knapp declares that “this economy, at its root, is built on a web of scientific knowledge from physics to chemistry to biology. It’s impossible to just cherry pick out [...]

[...] biology professor and author of Why Evolution Is True Jerry Coyne for many reasons: his scientific knowledge and passionate advocacy for science, his informed criticism of religion and theology, the [...]

[...] expertise itself, with the idea that politics is improved by the input of the best scientific knowledge we currently possess in various fields. O’Neill’s position is in stark contrast to that of [...]

[...] growth of the United States.” In a Slate article, Plait retorts (emphasis his): Perhaps Senator Rubio is unaware that science—and its sisters engineering and technology—are actually the very [...]

[...] extremism while giving a passionate defense of science, arguing for the importance of scientific literacy among the general public. Below are a few quotes from the first part of the interview that [...]

[...] Here’s a fine example of scientific literacy, or at least a proper respect for medical science, in our legal system. An Australian judge [...]

[...] creationists? So far, I’m with Plait and Krugman. After all, isn’t it obvious that scientific literacy is essential for a technology-based economy to flourish? Not necessarily so, [...]

[...] the passage quoted above, I nodded my head conceding that he had a point. But not so fast. Jerry Coyne wrote a post responding to Hitchens’s negative book review, and found a serious flaw in his [...]

[...] this month, on the 9th, if he hadn’t succumbed to pneumonia caused by a rare blood disorder. Jerry Coyne wrote a post commemorating the great scientist who played a huge role in educating and [...]

[...] MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I admire the biology professor and author of Why Evolution Is True Jerry Coyne for many reasons: his scientific knowledge and passionate advocacy for science, his informed [...]

[...] -expanding scientific knowledge of human nature. Then I read what his critics had to say. Massimo Pigliucci had one of the more trenchant responsesto The Moral Landscape. There were other equally [...]

[...] of Ethics’) is pertinent to the debates going on between Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Massimo Pigliucci and others. Unsurprisingly, Hughes dedicates a fair amount of space to critiquing Harris’s [...]

[...] critics of scientific rationality like Max Horkheimer and Theodor Ardono are also guilty of false equivalence when they paint science as just another kind of totalitarian ideology, with the same [...]

[...] will not discriminate is simply political correctness. Many of us are not fooled by the false equivalence being made. The Catholic Church’s role in child sex abuse and its subsequent cover-up is [...]

[...] prejudice with how an environmental group wouldn’t hire someone who was pro-logging, a false equivalence since the latter discriminates on purely ideological grounds while the former discriminates [...]