The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.     

Yesterday, we officially announced our 2015 international conference, Reason for Change, happening in June at the CFI mothership in Buffalo. It’s kind of a big deal.

Raif Badawi, imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for his dissent, is awarded the PEN Canada One Humanity Award, and he asks Alishba Zarmeen to accept it on his behalf. 

A doctor in NYC is found to have Ebola, and now everyone really is completely freaking out. NYTimes is doing full-on interactive maps tracking where the guy went in the city and everything. 

The shooting attack at Ottawa’s National War Memorial on Wednesday is being blamed on Islamic extremism, revenge for Canada’s support of the battle against ISIS. NYT reports:

On Twitter, followers of the Islamic State praised the attack — and warned of more to follow. In an audio message last month, the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, exhorted sympathizers to carry out revenge killings and included Canadians on the list of target nationalities.

CFI-Canada (CFIC), which acts independently of the U.S. CFI, releases a statement:

“Events such as these shock and offend all people of Canada. `Secular Humanists and atheists join all Canadians in rejecting the violence and hatred promulgated by murders such as these,” said Kevin Smith, Chair of CFIC’s Board of Directors. “We value reason and a rational approach to understanding and addressing these crimes as our country investigates any immediate or deeper-seated causes.”

Amnesty International says police in Ferguson, MO committed human rights abuses:

The use by law enforcement of rubber bullets, tear gas and heavy military equipment and restrictions placed on peaceful protesters all violated international standards, the group said. 

Sam Harris sits down for a tense interview with Cenk Uygur. FOR THREE HOURS. I’m not kidding. 

Religion researcher David Kinnaman takes the “nones,” adds in “the unchurched, the never-churched and the skeptics,” and comes up with 37 percent as the portion of the U.S. population that is secular, or as he puts it, “churchless.” 

Ben Radford reminds us that the evidence for the existence of ghosts is approximately zero:

In the end (and despite mountains of ambiguous photos, sounds and videos), the evidence for ghosts is no better today than it was a year ago, a decade ago or a century ago. 

The New York State Legislature is being lobbied to put Bigfoot on the endangered species list. I think they’re endangered because of the unicorns using up all the limited resources. 

Meanwhile, these hunters/cosplayers mean to kill Bigfoot.  

Doctors determine that a Wisconsin 12-year-old girl who died suddenly did not die because of the HPV vaccine as some had been presuming, but because of “a lethal level of an antihistamine.”  

Rep. Bill Posey of Florida has a worrisome connection to some anti-vax activists.  

There is as of yet no Ebola vaccine, so for now, this news anchor has the solution: Don’t eat poop you find on the street. 

Don’t eat charcoal either.  

Pope Francis decries America’s maximum security prisons as a form of torture. 

At NYT, Pankaj Mishra worries over India’s new prime minister, writing that “crude xenophobia” is “now officially sanctioned in Mr. Modi’s India.” 

Christian scholar David Skeel at WSJ gives new atheist qualified props for having “offered a testable claim: that an atheist theory of reality can offer the same consolation and connection that religion has provided from the beginning of human history.”

Seculars in Sioux Falls, SD are trying to get Jesus stuff off of the city’s plows. 

Joe Nickell reviews the new book Ghosts of the Queen Mary. 

Proof of alien visitation via a 16th-century painting. This part is kind of creepy, via Yahoo News: “The image is painted on the wall on a 14th
century church in Sighisoara – thought to the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, the historical figure on whom the Dracula legend is based.”

You say “toxic” amount of sugar, this guy sees a challenge.

WCPO interviews paranormal “hunter” Michele Hale, who says, “Over the past 22 years, we have only ran into about 5 percent being truly haunted.” That’s probably off by about 5 percentage points.

He’s not just Pope Fluffy. He’s about bust a rhyme. 

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