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

Tomorrow is International Blasphemy Rights Day, launched five years ago by CFI. Ron Lindsay takes stock of the state of free expression and blasphemy laws around the world:

It’s a profound irony that the prophets who founded the three major monotheistic religions all complained bitterly about the persecution they and their followers  faced, at least if we are to believe the statements attributed to them. It’s an irony because as soon as these religions gained controlled of a territory they immediately undertook to relentlessly persecute those of different faiths. If the Hebrew Bible is to be credited, the ancient Israelites make the fanatics of ISIS look like UN peacekeepers.

Doing our diplomatic work overseas last week was our UN representative Michael De Dora. We have a full recap of his work in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council, including video from four statements he delivered on issues such as women’s rights and free expression.

Meanwhile, the UNHRC votes for a resolution to work to end violence against homosexuals. The usual suspects vote against it (Pakistan, Russia, etc.), but surprise backers include Cuba and Venezuela. 

Stephen Law, at his new CFI blog, rebuts the assertions made by Karen Armstrong about the “myth” of religious violence:

You submit that we Westerners tend to view ‘secularism’ as something inevitable – something at which all peoples will eventually arrive. That’s not my view. I consider Secularism a recent and fragile development under attack from religious conservatives and fundamentalists around the world. 

Nigel Barber uses a recent Free Inquiry piece by Michael Paulkovich [subscribers only] to back his assertion that Jesus never existed, and wonder at the psychology of belief in the seemingly fabricated. (“A fudged text is not compelling evidence for anything.”)

Ross Douthat is worried that there aren’t enough cults. 

Atheist Carole Beaton wins his lawsuit to stop officially-sponsored prayer breakfasts in Eureka, California. 

A man in Oklahoma beheads his coworker at a food processing plant. He was apparently trying to convert coworkers to Islam, and had images of beheadings on his Facebook page. 

NYT on how Muslims are using hashtags to combat stereotypes and address extremism. 

Bill Maher says that the fact that the kid who “violated” the Jesus statue won’t get killed is an example of why Western liberal culture is “better” than that of the wider Muslim world. 

Ben Radford gets to the bottom of a “ghost” caught on video by a police department:

Because the object is out of focus its edges and exact dimensions can’t be measured, but it’s clearly a very small ghost — perhaps the spirit of a squirrel. 

Ben also has some advice for putting together your investigative paraphernalia. “It also helps to have a MacGuyver streak.”  

Steven Salzberg throws cold water on some claims that standing more and sitting less will have any effect on your chromosomes.

Eva Illouz at Haaretz on the difficulty of secularism in Israel:

In Israel, citizenship laws, marriage, burial, adoption, conversions – all are controlled by clergy, who regularly trample human rights, and make religion into an active component of state repression and state discrimination. 

Of course the powerful speech on feminism by Emma Watson (have you watched it yet? Go watch it) is on the receiving end of a lot of hate, but one reaction turns out to have been a hoax: the alleged threats of 4chan.

Jamila Bey is looking to crowdfund the return of her radio show, “SPAR: The Sex, Politics, And Religion Hour.” 

Miracles were attributed to a Western New York priest, Father Nelson Baker (after his death of course), and Joe Nickell at Skeptical Inquirer says these are merely “examples of the logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance.” 

Joe also says skeptics and humanists will love the movie Magic in the Moonlight. 

Wow. Black holes might not exist. The paper making this assertion, it might be noted, is in a non-peer-reviewed journal.

Speaking of which, The Economist looks at the growing movement for open access to scientific research. 

Herb Silverman parses the Pledge. All of it. 

This Salon piece is agog at Michele Bachmann for saying we should “declare war” on Islam, but as much as I am no fan of Bachmann’s, I don’t think it’s so clear that this is what she meant, as opposed to saying we should declare war on ISIS.

Here’s how Richard III probably died, and he may well have needed that horse. 

David Gorski sends up more flares about the infiltration of quackery into medical academia. 

University of Washington professor David P. Barash describes “The Talk,” where he clarifies for his class how religion and evolution do and do not jibe:

I conclude The Talk by saying that, although they don’t have to discard their religion in order to inform themselves about biology (or even to pass my course), if they insist on retaining and respecting both, they will have to undertake some challenging mental gymnastic routines. And while I respect their beliefs, the entire point of The Talk is to make clear that, at least for this biologist, it is no longer acceptable for science to be the one doing those routines. 

Neil deGrasse Tyson addresses some questions about citations of quotations he’s used, not to everyone’s satisfaction.

@#$%ing hiccups: How do they work? We’re not sure, but here are some things Clay Jones reminds us don’t work to cure them.

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