Secular Café Archive

Does white America care? What is the likely result of this lawsuit?

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... lu-lawsuit

I just watched a DVD version of The Jewel in the Crown , a TV series from the early 1980s, based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet . It was rather hard-going for the first few episodes but got better as it went on. It sent me off to start reading the four books. IMO they are better than the TV series, but...

OTOH there might be pathways to multicellularity that have yet to evolve. With evolution there always seems a possibility that the development of one pathway blocked the possible development of another.

[quote=""Tubby""] Incidentally, I know of a Christian who claims animals don't suffer. He realizes the implications for the goodness of God if creatures who aren't guilty of original sin do suffer, so, clinging to scripture as the ultimate authority in all matters, he is forced t...

It's quite rare for people to say "I was wrong" about something that they used to promote.

I hadn't heard of presuppositional creationism until I read this. Itseems really weird to me. (I'm afraid you need to read the whole article to get the sense of it.)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfem ... onism.html

I think a lot depends on the type of society. It's not just a question of modernisation but on how much individual freedom there is in the society. I would say that we're all aware of certain trends towards authoritarianism. Democracy is simply not a given. A democratic society can move in the direc...

[quote=""Ozymandias""]I wonder how much they gave him. I suspect it was rather a lot - probably a value such that I would be happy to be forcibly removed and beaten up for if I knew I would be so compensated.[/quote] But aren't you a bit younger than 69? At his age one may be a b...

The roads look pretty empty for a capital city.

See this for example:

https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip ... DQ:1:63/gg

And another terrorist arrest on the Continent http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-terror-cell-nabbed-after-arrests-in-italy-and-germany/a-38630800 Italian police said on Friday that they had helped break up an 11-person terror cell based in Berlin not long after Anis Amri allegedly plowed a truck into a Chr...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-28/woman-shot-six-arrests-after-counterterror-raids-in-england/8481824 British counter-terrorism police say they have thwarted an active plot with raids in London and south-eastern England, which saw one woman shot and six people arrested. Metropolitan Police Depu...

[quote=""Tharmas""] a monarch's ability to deal with problems by beheading some of them and decreeing some others out of the way might look like making the life of a ruler easier, but QEII still needed to be a canny and skilful politician to maintain a delicate balance of interna...

If you have dual nationality, it gives you no protection in Iran. So it's a regular story. Someone with dual nationality decides to visit Iran to see family members and than they get imprisoned under bad conditions and their other country of nationality is powerless to help them. https://www.amnesty...

For a long time schools in England and Wales have been obliged to hold daily "acts of worship" of a "predominantly Christian character". Religious education (RE) has also been an obligatory part of the curriculum. Back when I was at school in the 1940s and 1950s RE was entirely C...

A German POV: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/trump-100-days-the-erosion-of-american-democracy-a-1145294.html Trump has never made a secret of his intense disdain for the institutions that are necessary for a vigorous democracy: an independent judiciary, a critical press and a healthy oppo...

This young woman tried to get away but was brought back. http://www.newsweek.com/campaign-save-saudi-dina-ali-lasloom-590282 Two days after a bloodied Tennessee doctor was filmed being dragged off a United Airlines flight to secure a seat for an employee, another airline earlier this month loaded a ...

lpetrich, please don't insult QE2 by comparing her to Trump.

There is an enactment of a boar hunt in this film starting at about 1:26:25


(View video on YouTube)

It is going out. These dives inside the rings are its swansong and it will finish off by falling into Saturn.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ual-passenger-idUSKBN17T2WM United Airlines (UAL.N) and the passenger who was dragged from a Chicago flight earlier this month have reached a settlement for an undisclosed sum, they said on Thursday, in the carrier's latest step to contain damage from an incident t...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cassini-survives-closest-ever-encounter-with-saturn-snaps-stunning-images/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/E8E17EA6-127B-49AA-8249B9378FADE4B9.jpg?w=590&h=393&87000785-49D8-4970-A0137C645C18809A https://www.scientificamerican.co...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-man-sentenced-death-atheism-ahmad-al-shamri-hafar-al-batin-appeal-denied-a7703161.html A man in Saudi Arabia has reportedly been sentenced to death on charges of apostasy after losing two appeals. Several local media reports identifie...

[quote=""No Robots""]J Look at how, for example, England, divorced from its connection to Judaism , is, in the grand English tradition, disappearing up its own ass. The Americans, in typical infantile imitation, are right behind.[/quote] (my bold) Do you mean British Israelites ?

VOICE sounds like a sort of American Stasi. How nice.

I get the odd impression that Poli's Christianity is what he defines it to be and doesn't need to be upheld by anyone else: he is his own pope. When you were five, Poli, I don't suppose you did say something was true because your dad said so: it was true because you said so.