My friend Maria Bangs (AKA @BarrelOfOranges) invited me to write a piece on humanism for her awesome blog Barrel Of Oranges. This is an excerpt, but please visit her blog if you’d like to read the piece in its entirety. As social animals, we tend to align ourselves with people who are “like us”; We associate with those who share our outlook on life, with those with whom we are related, with those that we share ideas...

Image: Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster via Wikipedia. Tauriq Moosa writes the Against the New Taboo Blog at Big Think, lives in South Africa and loves coffee. His Twitter handle is @tauriqmoosa. How often do we watch an online argument quickly descend into name-calling, derision, mockery, or slander? Few communities are free from such responses. The Internet, far from threading together reasonable discussions and ideas...

It’s not always necessary to be polite. Sometimes, being abrasive or rejecting diplomatic niceties is exactly what’s needed to get a point across. And sometimes, getting a point across is preferable to pleasing the crowd, a subset of the crowd, or even the person you’re talking to. For every person who has been disabused of some fanciful metaphysics by a self-styled “friendly” atheist like Hemant Mehta, you’re likely to find one...

The last time I wrote a post for Martin, I focused on the psychosexual factors that contribute to the cycle of child genital cutting in the developed world. As an intactivist, I’m continually amazed at the lack of knowledge surrounding male genital cutting, among people who vehemently defend it, and the intense aversion and refusal to recognise the uncanny similarities to female genital cutting. Even suggesting FGM & male circumcision...

The Background Recently, I wrote about antics not being perceived as a mature aspect of the atheist and secularist movement.  That others see these antics and can easily dismiss our movement because of the tactics used. I singled out the use of “unholy” water as an example of an antic.  I received “feedback” from a few organizers and participants: Brandi Braschler, John Porgal, and EllenBeth Wachs. As a disclaimer, I am on the Board...

Last week, an article in the Washington Post reported on the 2012 platform of the Republican Party in Texas and, in particular, its scarily backward education agenda. In part, the platform statement reads: “Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery...