Author: Adam Lee

We’ve been discussing Islam a lot on this blog in the past few days, and much to my amusement, I’ve seen two different commenters promoting diametrically opposite distortions of my position. One says that I’m a left-wing Israel-hater who has a soft spot for Muslim violence, the other that I’m a right-wing Islamophobe spouting reflexive…

Last week, four third-party U.S. presidential candidates had a debate in Chicago. As is usual in American politics, third-party debates tend to be all over the map: a mixture of completely loony ideas and eminently sensible ideas that no major candidate dares touch. On the surface, I probably look like the kind of voter third-party…

I’m surprised to still be writing about blasphemy laws, but it seems the idea just won’t die. At the United Nations this week, the elected leaders of newly democratic Egypt and Yemen called for restrictions on free speech, in addition to similar demands from Turkey and other Islamic-majority nations. Russia, too, is advocating for laws…

For those who are interested, here’s my schedule for the next few months. I’ve got a few SSA speaking events, a conference or two, and one big announcement! • On February 24, I’ll be speaking at the University of North Dakota, courtesy of FUND, the Freethinkers of the University of North Dakota, as part of…

In 2009, the Roman Catholic church convened an “apostolic visitation” – a sort of modern-day auto-da-fe – a rare step taken when the Vatican feels that a church-affiliated institution has gone seriously astray. The church officials in charge of the investigation conducted interviews at almost 400 religious institutions throughout the U.S., and this month, they…

This essay was previously published on AlterNet. Last November, I attended a debate in the NYU Intelligence Squared series on the topic, “Would the World Be Better Off Without Religion?” One of the audience questions concerned the enormous wealth hoarded by churches, which Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza defended as follows: I think in the case…

My latest article has been posted on AlterNet, Once Again, Believers Have it Wrong: Atheists Don’t Just Want Sex, Drugs, and Lack of Morality. As you might have guessed, it’s the culminating entry in my recent exchange with Peter Hitchens. In it, I discuss the absence of evidence for non-human moral authority, the fact that…

Via Dangerous Intersection, I saw this TED lecture by Daniel Kahnemann, based on his book Thinking Fast and Slow, about the conflict between the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self”. His thesis is that we have countless moment-to-moment experiences, most of which quickly fade from memory and leave no trace, while a few significant ones…

I originally got this idea from Feministe, and I used to do it every couple of months on the old site. I think it’s about time for another. This is an open thread for the purposes of self-promotion. If you maintain a blog or other site that you want to tell us about, now’s the…

This week, there’s been a flurry of stories about Muslim groups trying to suppress criticism of Islam, both by law and by force. It’s worth summarizing them briefly to show how these aren’t isolated incidents, but parts of a larger and more disturbing trend. First up: I mentioned earlier the story of a campus secular…