We can take crimes committed in the name of Satanism and the occult seriously without trading in misrepresentation and caricature of those who subscribe to minority religions. In fact, taking those crimes seriously demands that we do so.
If you aren't careful, all of your "blank" water might mysteriously turn into "medicine". Which you couldn't tell apart from water, but never mind that.
It's important to manage oyster fisheries "in a manner that would please, praise and glorify that one who provided and gave man the power to rule over the fish (including oysters)". Apparently.
Our short-attention span world of headlines and attendant hyperbole often results in our not giving credit where it's due, for example in acknowledging that the Pope's recent comments should be welcomed.
Even though we’re not yet at the halfway mark of the annual initiation ceremonies in one South African province, as many people have already died there as in the Boston bombings. Yet by contrast to the bombings, the initiation deaths were easy to anticipate and prevent.
Dennett's new book "Intuition pumps" contains many useful tips for improving our thinking, including using Rapoport's rules as the "best antidote for the tendency to caricature one's opponent".
Death should not be trivialised, so it’s understandable that some of us are wary of legislation that allows for assisted suicide. But if it’s the dignity of life that we’re hoping to preserve, it’s unclear how denying suffering people their final choice promotes a sort of dignity worth preserving.
The National Institutes of Mental Health – the largest research organisation devoted to studying mental health – has decided that patients deserve better than to be diagnosed according to DSM V, typically regarded as the “Bible” of psychiatry.
PZ Myers's "divorce" from skepticism highlights how we sometimes forget how trivial our disagreements - and the actors in those disagreements - are. All these blogs, quabbles, rifts and so forth are sometimes operating in some crude filter-bubbles, where we can become sanctimonious, defiant, and so stubborn that we're unable to see our own errors.
The IHEU World Humanist Congress is an opportunity to strengthen the host organisation, the local Humanist movement, to connect organisations together internationally, and to examine a theme in-depth, with workshops and debate, and high profile speakers drawn from across the world.
Jacques Rousseau is the founder and current chairperson of the Free Society Institute, a non-profit established to promote secularism and science in South Africa. He lectures critical thinking and ethics at the University of Cape Town. 
