SGI Newsletter
A genome taken from a 36,000-year-old skeleton has helped scientists shed new light on interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals. The ground-breaking study of DNA recovered from a fossil of one of the earliest known Europeans - a man who lived in western Russia - shows that the genetics of the earliest inhabitants of the continent survived the last ice age, helping form the basis of the modern-day population...
Why does it take suing the Catholic Church to get them to release the names of priests who rape children? Why is an organization that claims the moral high ground time and time again, refuse to stand up against pedophilia and continue to harbor priests around the world? And how can a church leader fain sadness when it took a court order for him to name the abusers? The Catholic Church continues to fight very hard to protect these abusers.
Uganda's ruling party has drawn up new anti-gay legislation and could push it through parliament before the end of the year, rights activists said Saturday. The move comes nearly a year after Ugandan MPs passed a bill that would have seen gays face up to life in prison, only to see the bill struck down by the constitutional court on a technicality. According to a leaked copy of the new draft bill, MPs have instead focused on outlawing the "promotion"…
By one count, there are over 7,000 Americans serving as state legislators nationwide, and with a group that big, there are going to be some strange, fringe figures that most of the American mainstream would find cringe-worthy. It's hardly worth the effort to point out every nut who somehow gets elected to help write a state's laws...
The anti-LGBT Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) filed a 22-page legal brief on Sunday demanding Kansas allow it to legally challenge same-sex marriage in order to protect the state from God's wrath, the Washington Blade reports. "If this Court requires Kansas officials to treat what God has called abominable as something to be respected, revered, and blessed with the seal-of-approval of the government, that will cross a final line with God, the brief stated. "The harm that will befall this state...
I'm a huge fan of Why Evolution is True, the blog by University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne, who wrote a book by the same name. But he's really blowing it when it comes to Pope Francis. You probably heard the hubbub about this Pope saying that "God was not a magician," and that it's important for Catholics to embrace scientific ideas like evolution and the Big Bang...
The commemoration of Remembrance Day should be rethought and re-designed to make it a truly inclusive national event, and not one that is dominated by a single Christian denomination, say secularists. The National Secular Society (NSS) has written to the Government asking it to review the dominant role of the Church of England at the national ceremony of remembrance, which it argues should be equally inclusive of all citizens, regardless of religion and belief...
Faithful pour wine on a statue of Yemanja, Goddess of the Sea, during a ceremony in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Yemanja is from the African Yoruban religion brought to America by West African slaves. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana) Silas Malafaia, an influential evangelical minister, tweeted on 30 August that if Marina Silva of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) didn't "take a position [against same-sex marriage] by Monday, she'll get one of the harshest speeches I've ever made about a presidential candidate."…
An federal district court in Oregon has declared Secular Humanism a religion, paving the way for the non-theistic community to obtain the same legal rights as groups such as Christianity. A Senior District Judge Ancer Haggerty issued a ruling on American Humanist Association v. United States, a case that was brought by the American Humanist Association (AHA) and Jason Holden, a federal prisoner. Holden pushed for the lawsuit because he wanted Humanism - which the AHA defines as "an ethical…
Finnish television network recently filmed a Southern Baptist pastor as he visited secular Nordic countries and struggled to come to grips with widespread LGBT rights and atheism. In an episode of Yle's The Norden, Summit Church of West Georgia Lead Pastor Marty McLain tells the network that he is a creationist who believes in the story of the Garden of Eden, and that there is a "literal Hell." "The Bible does refer to - in the book of Revelations -…
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