The Southern Poverty Law Center reverses itself and apologizes to Maajid Nawaz for including him on a list of anti-Muslim extremists, and has paid Nawaz’s organization the Quilliam Foundation $3.375 million to fund their work. SPLC president Richard Cohen writes:
Among those who contacted us were human rights advocates affiliated with the United Nations who emphasized that Mr. Nawaz’s work combatting extremism “is actually analogous to that of the SPLC over the years in the South.” Indeed, one of the reasons Mr. Nawaz has said that he was so troubled by our listing was the fact that he had respected our work for many years. Although we may have our differences with some of the positions that Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have taken, we recognize that they have made important contributions to efforts to promote pluralism and that they are most certainly not anti-Muslim extremists.
Nawaz said in an official statement:
With the help of everyone who contributed to our litigation fund, we were able to fight back against the Regressive Left and show them that moderate Muslims will not be silenced. We will continue to combat extremists by defying Muslim stereotypes, calling out fundamentalism in our own communities, and speaking out against anti-Muslim hate.
President Trump once again declares his intention to create a Space Force, a distinct branch of the military. As in not part of the Air Force. It’s just the Space Force. This was so very important to Trump, that he went and said this:
We are going to have the Air Force, and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal.
Really? Really???
Pope Francis is like the opposite-Boy Scouts. The Scouts are okay with gays but not atheists. Francis seems okay with atheists (mostly) but not gays. Case in point:
Today, it is hard to say this, we speak of ‘diversified’ families: different types of families. It is true that the word ‘family’ is an analogical word, because we speak of the ‘family’ of stars, ‘family’ of trees, ‘family’ of animals … it is an analogical word. But the human family in the image of God, man and woman, is the only one. It is the only one. A man and woman can be non-believers: but if they love each other and unite in marriage, they are in the image of God even if they don’t believe.
This guy just gets less and less fluffy the longer he’s around.
While the LDS Church isn’t budging on its opposition to same-sex marriage, it is at least acknowledging the existence of same-sex couples, specifically in its genealogy database FamilySearch, which will now be open for same-sex couples to submit their information. The church says, “They are simply collections of data to be assessed for their genealogical value by each researcher.” Congratulations, y’all! You’ve been promoted to collections of data!
Sukmawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia’s founding president Sukarno, gets the blasphemy charges against her dropped by police. Amanda Hodge at The Australian reports:
Her prosecution would have been a powerful victory for Islamic hardliners who seek to topple moderate President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, and ultimately scrap the pluralist constitution that was Sukarno’s legacy in favour of an Islamic state.
EJ Sorrell, one of CFI’s summer outreach interns, says at CFI’s Course of Reason blog, “I’m just going to come out and say it: atheism has a problem with transgender people, especially in online circles.” They write:
…Many online atheists view themselves as the arbiters of pure reason and logic and the saviors who will rescue the masses from the evil oppression of religion. Yet many of these atheist saviors immediately turn around and heap more oppression and hatred onto trans people and other marginalized groups just as religious people often do. Their war cry is “science says I’m right” and the hill they want to die on is that your genitalia and/or chromosomes determine some intrinsic part of your being, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Susan Gerbic interviews William M. London, a CSI contributor, editor of Quackwatch’s Consumer Health Digest, and a CSICon 2018 speaker, naturally. London says he might sneak out of his workshop to get authors to sign their books, so when you go to CSICon you can see if you can catch him! I’m mostly kidding.
In the Times, Krista Burton takes a stab at why she and her fellow millennials, and especially gay millennials, are turning to astrology and other forms of woo:
Now, I’m not stupid. I may be a woo-woo, crystal-worshiping homosexual, but I know that a polished red rock is not going to heal my tailbone. It’s not going to bring my mom back either. It may not do a thing. But none of us know anything about anything, really. So why not be open to the possibility of hope?
The archaeological discovery of the remains of a crucified Roman adds more evidence to what we already know to be true, that the Shroud of Turin is a fake. Joe Nickell explains.
Experiments at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory seem to indicate the existence of a new kind of elementary particle, a “sterile neutrino”:
The existence of a sterile neutrino would revolutionize physics from the smallest to the largest scales. It would finally break the Standard Model of particle physics, the immensely successful theory of the subatomic world that has reigned since the 1970s. “The neutrino paradox could point our way to a new, better model,” [physicist Scott] Dodelson said.
Quote of the Day
H.G. Wells, from The Time Machine:
I went out of that gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified.
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