You all know about Godwin's Law - first person to introduce Hitler into a thread loses the argument. Well, I'm about to invent a new law, let's call it (oh, I don't know, do you really think so? all right then) Horton's Law. Very similar idea, different hero - first...

From time to time some religious leader, somewhere, seeking to be provocative, will announce, smugly, that of course all morality comes from religion and therefore atheists, those scum of the Earth, have no morality.

Let's leave aside for the moment, the fact that not only is there absolutely no...

The day after the Samoan tsunami I heard a tv reporter, after recounting the death and destruction and misery and coming plagues, say "their Christian faith will comfort them". It's the kind of thing you say on these occasions of course, and people nod wisely. Ah yes indeed, wouldn't do...

I blame creationism for everything I don't blame corporate media for in my ongoing attempts to come to terms with what is wrong with the world of the 21st Century.

But something I hadn't previously put on the creationist list was oppression of female women. Fundamentalist religious oppression of...

Look, like everyone else I have no trouble dismissing creationists as bat-shit crazy religious fundamentalists who wouldn't know a scientific fact if the ghost of Richard Feynman bit them on the backside. No trouble at all, and I am always happy to join in a little gentle poking of a...

A year ago I nearly had a fatal heart attack. Fortunately my wife spotted that the warning signs I had been either ignoring or explaining away (indigestion, flu, lung problems) were serious and whisked me off to hospital. Even then it wasn't cut and dried. My heart is a subtle...

Just when I think the hypocrisy of fundamentalist christians can't get worse. When I read of support for the Iraq war, hatred of immigrants, the killing of doctors, the prayers for the death of a president, the church that encourages bringing guns to services, the anti-science crusades, the subjugation of...

In recent years, a tactic of the Right, promoted by Murdoch and his clones, has been to decry the role of the elites in government. The last thing you want in government, according to this view, is anyone with intelligence, education, knowledge, experience, or wisdom, because such attributes make you...

Caught up recently with the announcement of a world meeting of atheists in Melbourne, Australia, in March next year. I'm very tempted to go, not just because of the caliber of speakers (including Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer) but just because it is a big assembly of rational human...

Karl "World's Greatest Democracy" Rove famously developed into its fullest flowering the concept of using your opponents strongest quality to attack them. In earlier times, Max Cleland and John Kerry, both Vietnam War heroes, were attacked on precisely that point. Kerry, with Purple Hearts, for injuries, was mocked with purple...

Look: the war on terror isn't winning the war on terror. Everyone knows that, in fact, the more you go to war on terror the more terror you create, one way or another. And the major reason that we find it so hard to counteract terrorism is the suicide bomber....

As a biologist I tend to observe the behavior of conservatives in the way that I would observe bird behavior, or the behavior of, say, skunks. There has always been material available for study -- in the corporate newspapers, talk back radio and TV breakfast shows, but in recent years...

The position of climate change denialists these days is roughly the same as that of Flat Earthers from the day that Yuri Gargarin circled the Earth in a capsule. That is a continual denial of something which it is no longer tenable to deny, and being something of a student...

Whenever the madness of massive gun ownership is challenged you can bet one of the first responses will be "How dare you libruls try to stop us enjoying the healthy and natural sport of hunting with our children", or words to that effect. But this is one of those many...

Hardly a day goes by, it seems, without, somewhere in the world, some wild-eyed, or cold-eyed, religious fanatic imposing his (yes, his) will on someone slightly less wild-eyed in the cause of the one true religion worshipping the one true god. And if imposing his will, when it comes to...

I see the Global Financial Crisis is now popularly known by the initials GFC. A little strange (was the 1929 Wall Street Crash called WSC?) but I guess both the acronym and the longer title (itself a shorthand description, though much better than the "meltdown" that was used initially) have...

Why can't I be banned in Oklahoma? Look, I know I haven't actually been invited to give a talk there, but that's not the point.

I've tried to get banned, tried so hard - insulted the religious believers here, insulted creationists there, insulted climate change denialists another day, said that...

As I float like a bee around the internet, here a sip of nectar, there a load of pollen, I seem to acquire, like unwanted hive mites, a swarm of spam emails.

You know the kind of thing. A sender's name consisting of a jumble of computer-generated random letters; a...

In this year of twin Darwin anniversaries, I find myself thinking of the great man (one of the few historical figures I would invite to a dinner party, but would he come, would he come?) even more often than in a normal year. I turn again to the Galapagos Islands,...