Author: Adam Lee

The world is increasingly taking notice of the turmoil brewing in Israel, where a growing culture war between the rest of Israeli society and the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, or “haredim”, is becoming impossible to ignore. Simply stated, what the haredim want is gender apartheid: the forced segregation of the sexes in all public accommodations and…

Guest post by Samantha Eliza Benten The Law of Non-Contradiction, as stated by Aristotle: “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.” Often, this is expressed in the formula: A ? ¬A, where “¬A” signifies “not A” or “not having quality…

• Here’s the top story for this week: After Jessica Ahlquist’s court victory over illegal state-sponsored prayer in her high school, she’s been receiving a torrent of vicious hate mail and threats of violence, presumably from good and pious Christians who support prayer. Here are some of the most appalling; some of the threats were…

Peter Hitchens has written two further comments on my previous post, in one of which he states that he’ll be bowing out of the debate from this point on. So be it; there are, of course, many respects in which we disagree, but I appreciate the time and effort he’s put into this conversation. That…

I’ve previously written about the case of Jessica Ahlquist, an incredibly brave young atheist from Rhode Island who’s the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging an unconstitutional “School Prayer” banner in her high school’s auditorium. Today, I’m happy to announce that the judge has ruled, and it was a resounding victory for the good guys:…

One of my all-time most popular posts on Daylight Atheism, “The Scars of Evolution“, lists some of the kludges, hacks and jury-rigs left behind in the human genome, the telltale signature of evolution. The vestigial structures and design compromises still found in human bodies are tangible evidence that our species has a long evolutionary history…

Last month, I was invited to Syracuse University by the local affiliate of the Secular Student Alliance, where I spoke on the topic of atheism and morality. I’m happy to announce that video of that talk is now available, in three parts, which I’ve embedded below. The talk is about 25 minutes long, with Q&A…

My latest article has just been published on AlterNet, Why Is America’s Most Progressive Voting Block Often Overlooked? In it, I discuss the strong progressive leanings of American nonbelievers, what we could accomplish if we worked together with liberal religious believers on causes we held in common, and what the obstacles to that alliance are.…

As I’ve often mentioned, religion has a set of cognitive tricks – unconscious ideas, prejudices and habits of thought it tries to instill in believers – which shield their minds against contrary argument and make it less likely that they’ll leave the faith. One example is the selective wall I’ve written about in the past,…

This weekend, I was upstate in the Hudson Valley visiting my parents, and we went hiking along the ridge of Schunemunk Mountain. While we were walking, I spotted the rock depicted in the image accompanying this post, a reddish pebble about a thumb length in diameter and cemented into a loose boulder of conglomerate the…