Reading Time: 12 minutes Welcome back to Humanist Book Club! For the next few weeks, we’re tackling The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. It’s a huge text, but in our series opener I highlighted why I’d selected it: because this ambitious exercise in speculative anthropology, which asks us to imagine other ways to read human history […]
equality
Posted inBooks
Humanist Book Club: When philosophy is mistaken for field research
Reading Time: 11 minutes Well, folks, we’re diving into The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. If you missed our book club opener last Friday, you can always double back to see why we’re thinking about this 2021 work of imaginative anthropology, which explores the history of how we created our […]
Posted inDrugs
Are Biden’s pot pardons a glimpse of reason in politics?
Reading Time: 2 minutes As a long time Californian, where marijuana has been legal since 2016, I still have to resist the urge to stuff my purchase down my pants on the way out of a legal dispensary. As silly as that sounds, it’s even sillier when you consider my demographic. As a white lady from the suburbs, I […]
Posted inLaw
This week in progress: Colombia, Cuba, and the Indian Supreme Court
Reading Time: 5 minutes With Russia having formally annexed four occupied regions in Ukraine after a series of sham referendums, to strong rebuke and promises of escalating consequences from the EU and NATO, one can be forgiven for thinking this was an altogether bleak week. (The recent press of an extreme hurricane in Florida, and ongoing energy grid destabilization […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Why a Black Targaryen makes more sense than a white Jesus
Reading Time: 6 minutes If your orbit includes Amazon Prime, HBO, and social media, you may well be aware of a whole lot of fuss being kicked up in terms of casting decisions. It has come to the horror of many fantasy fiction literalists that recent TV prequels to The Lord of the Rings and The Game of Thrones […]
Posted inResearch
The leading edge of social justice is secular
Reading Time: 5 minutes As Israeli soldiers and settlers continue to brutalize, humiliate, and kill Palestinians with impunity, there is one major human rights organization in Israel documenting and protesting these crimes: B’Tselem. Given that B’Tselem is a humanitarian organization dedicated to fighting for justice, human rights, and the alleviation of suffering, you might think it is a religious […]
Posted inSex & Gender
Gender Identity Debated
Reading Time: 2 minutes I have listened to the first speaker in this debate so far but will continue to watch the whole thing. But I just thought I’d share a couple of early thoughts. First, this is why debates about conceptual nominalism and realism are important. Once you understand the distinction, you will see how important one’s understanding […]
Posted inSex & Gender
Humanists Launch Project to Uplift Marginalized Writers
Reading Time: 2 minutes From the American Humanist Association: Today, the American Humanist Association (AHA) launches the Call for Voices project, which strives to increase the visibility of historically marginalized writers. This project was piloted in 2020 by the Feminist Humanist Alliance and LGBTQ Humanist Alliance and will now be a part of the AHA’s ongoing programs. The AHA will […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Politics
Freedom of Speech Advocates as Hypocritical Right-Wingers Wanting Permission to Offend
Reading Time: 4 minutes This is such a common problem; those who claim that they are advocates of freedom of speech merely do so because they want to be able to offend people freely and with no consequences. Rights should come with responsibilities, but in this context, it is more often about demanding rights but forgoing responsibilities. I know […]
Posted inPolitics, Sex & Gender
Reflections on Dawkins and the AHA
Reading Time: 9 minutes The AHA have just rescinded an award they gave to Richard Dawkins in 1996. It seems like this episode has created something of a hubbub in the skeptical community – itself a bunch of people loosely associating with each other by hanging around on atheist websites like this. Herding cats, and all that. The background […]