Author: Adam Lee

I had another post written for today, but there’s much too much going on! This week has been a rollercoaster of disappointment, despair, joy and exaltation, and it’s only Wednesday. On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court issued an awful ruling that struck down a key section of the Voting Rights Act. As compiled by Slacktivist,…

Almost lost in the furor last week over the NSA spying story, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to ban all abortion after 20 weeks. The debate over the bill brought forth some ludicrous moments, such as when Rep. Michael Burgess defended it by arguing that male fetuses at that stage of development can masturbate.…

When I wrote about the CFI board’s disappointing non-statement addressing the blowup at Women in Secularism 2, I thought that would be the last thing I’d have to say about this. That statement gave no hint that any further action was being contemplated, so I assumed the board’s plan was to hunker down and wait…

Atlas Shrugged, p.56-66 I’ve lingered on this section for a while, but the few brief scenes in these pages provide a wealth of unintentional insight into Rand’s thinking and her ideas about what motivates her characters. There’s one more insight I think we can glean, and it comes in the form of our introduction to…

I’ve been assembling some thoughts on the NSA leaker Edward Snowden who revealed the existence of top-secret government surveillance programs, including the PRISM project to tap into the customer data of the nation’s largest internet companies, and a court order requiring Verizon to turn over metadata on all calls in its system on an ongoing…

Tonight, I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve had an essay published on a new forum: the website of IHEU, the International Humanist and Ethical Union, an umbrella organization representing humanist groups all around the world. It’s titled We’re not that terrifying – A response to “Atheism Has Failed”, and in it I respond to…

So, I was at a restaurant yesterday for Father’s Day dinner and had a terrible experience. Everyone else at my table was served what they ordered, but the kitchen got my order very badly wrong. I’d ordered a soup and salad, but they brought me a plate of wilted, slimy brown lettuce and a bowl…

This article was originally published on AlterNet. In the aftermath of President Obama’s electoral romp over Mitt Romney, the media and pundits have paid much attention to the demographics that propelled him to victory, especially women, Hispanics and young voters. But there’s one more group which played an underappreciated yet crucial role in his reelection,…

I’ve been reading The Great Agnostic, Susan Jacoby’s biography of Robert Ingersoll, which has only increased my admiration for the great 19th-century freethinker. I knew that, in addition to his tireless opposition to religion, he was a staunch defender of women’s equality, of racial justice and of free speech unconstrained by blasphemy laws, despite living…

Tanya M. Luhrmann, an anthropology professor at Stanford, wrote an op-ed last month titled “Belief Is the Least Part of Faith“, arguing that belief in the supernatural doesn’t play the pivotal role in religion that secularists think it does. This, she claims, makes philosophical debates about God’s existence largely irrelevant. (Unmentioned in the piece, Luhrmann…