Matthew Chapman

When my British uncle Richard Chapman met American Ben Duncan at Oxford in the 50s, being gay in England was punishable by over 20 years in prison. Five decades later they got married, one of the first couples to do so in England. They were in their seventies and by...

I am not writing to support every aspect of the two pieces of legislation dealing with internet piracy, nor am I suggesting that better alternatives can't be found. But in the middle of this debate, it can be forgotten that what's at issue is theft of something that either has...

Christopher Hitchens is dead. Huge loss. I went to school about a mile from where he went to school, we met when I was in my twenties, and then again about six years ago and became friends after sharing 3 or 4 bottles of wine and several whiskeys one lunchtime...

In a thinly veiled threat to my film, The Ledge, Bill Donohue proudly brags that his organization, the Catholic League, successfully boycotts films it considers anti-religious, then goes on to claim that it is "the Judeo-Christian ethos of America that accounts for the unprecedented levels of justice and...

Who has the bigger closet, gays or atheists?

Since writing and directing The Ledge, a film with an atheist lead, I've been going to more atheist events. At the American Atheist's conference in Iowa a few weeks ago, I found myself drinking with a couple of prison guards, a...

Co-authored by Lawrence Krauss

On April 13, Messiah College in Pennsylvania will be hosting a "Compassion Forum," an event at which Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will sit on the same stage and talk about "faith, values, and other current issues." John McCain has been invited but has not yet...

Twelve weeks after launching our website, ScienceDebate2008.com, over 15,000 people -- most, but not all, involved in science, technology, or academia -- have signed on in support of our petition calling for a presidential debate on science and technology policy.

At the end of last week, we sent invitations...

Tonight on PBS, Nova is presenting a documentary about Kitzmiller v. Dover, the evolution versus intelligent design trial that took place in the fall of 2005. It is called "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial." I know the subject well, having written extensively about it, and the title is...

Pat Tillman, an extraordinarily square-jawed football player who gave up a lucrative professional life to go and fight for his country, was at first hailed as a hero by a military eager for good publicity. When it was discovered Tillman died as a result of "friendly fire" -- he was...

When I was a child growing up in Cambridge, England, our dining room contained a bookshelf. In it were numerous reference books, among them an Encyclopedia Britannica, the Oxford English dictionary, a Webster's dictionary, a Bible and a concordance, the complete works of Shakespeare and its concordance, a Dictionary...