See diabolical contents of letter that teenager Jessica Ahlquist got in the post. She pointed out a prayer embedded in the wall at her school at Cranston, that should not have have been there. She took her case to court and won. She has since then suffered horrendous abuse allegedly at the hands of so called Christians. The latest one is very frightening. http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/04/christian-love-2/

Census Form for 1901 Fairfield Farm, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford. James and Anastatia (Ansty) Murphy and their two children, Mary-Ellen and James and staff. They were my great-grand parents. Mary-Ellen was my grandmother and James was my grand-uncle.

“As a member of the ‘flock’ of an avowedly antidemocratic Old Boys Club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass,” requests the ad, signed by FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker.

The ad features a cartoon by Steve Benson depicting an angry bishop, with a woman next to a birth control pill telling him: “All the outrage over something this small is a bit hard to swallow.”

The Times required FFRF to alter its punchy headline, ‘It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church,’ to ‘It’s Time to Consider Quitting the Catholic Church.’ Barker called that decision “disappointing” and “a sign of the Catholic Church’s inordinate power to intimidate and muzzle criticism.”

Determinism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and events, asserting that these hold without exception. The wide variety of deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse motives and considerations; some of which overlap considerably. All should be considered in the light of their historical significance, together with certain alternative theories that philosophers have proposed. At the same time, some forms of determinism may be empirically testable, and this page mentions some relevant ideas from physics and the philosophy of physics. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called Nondeterminism).

Deism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Deism is a religious philosophy which holds that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful creator. According to deists, the creator rarely, if ever, either intervenes in human affairs or suspends the natural laws of the universe. Deists typically reject supernatural events such as prophecy and miracles, tending instead to assert that a god (or "the Supreme Architect") does not alter the universe by intervening in it. This idea is also known as the clockwork universe theory, in which a god designs and builds the universe, but steps aside to let it run on its own. Two main forms of deism currently exist: classical deism and modern deism.

Authoritarianism is a form of social organisation characterised by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and libertarianism. In politics, an authoritarian government is one in which political authority is concentrated in a small group of politicians.

Atheism. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists. The term atheism originated from the Greek ἄθεος (atheos), meaning "without god", used as a pejorative term applied to those thought to reject the gods worshipped by the larger society. With the spread of freethought, skeptical inquiry, and subsequent increase in criticism of religion, application of the term narrowed in scope. The first individuals to identify themselves as "atheist" lived in the 18th century.

Absolutism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The term Absolutism may refer to:
Absolute idealism, an ontologically monistic philosophy attributed to G.W.F. Hegel. It is Hegel's account of how being is ultimately comprehensible as an all-inclusive whole
Absolute monarchy, a form of government where the monarch has the power to rule their land freely, with no laws or legally organized direct opposition in force
Absolute space, a theory holding that space exists absolutely, in contrast to relationalism, which holds that space exists only as relations between objects
Absolute truth, the contention that in a particular domain of thought, all statements in that domain are either absolutely true or absolutely false
Absolutism (European history), historiographical term used to describe a form of monarchical power that is unrestrained by any other institutions, such as churches, legislatures, or social elites
Autocracy (also known as 'political absolutism'), a political theory which argues that one person should hold all power
Enlightened absolutism, a term used to describe the actions of absolute rulers who were influenced by the Enlightenment (eighteenth and early nineteenth century Europe)
Moral absolutism, the position that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are either good or evil, regardless of the context of the act
Graded absolutism, the view that a moral absolute, like "Do not kill," can be greater or lesser than another moral absolute, like "Do not lie".

Charles Dickens in his study at Gad's Hill Place. Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Feature

Genius: Mozart would have been 256 years old on the 27th January 1012. He died at the age of 35, but during such a short lifetime, he gave humanity too much.

Taoiseach in unprecedented attack on Vatican - RTÉ News http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0720/cloyne.html via @rtenews

Charles Fernyhough on How Reliable Are Our Memories?

Memory is our past and future. To know who you are as a person, you need to have some idea of who you have been. And, for better or worse, your remembered life story is a pretty good guide to what you will do tomorrow. "Our memory is our coherence," wrote the surrealist Spanish-born film-maker, Luis Buñuel, "our reason, our feeling, even our action." Lose your memory and you lose a basic connection with who you are.

Plans to build a £1m "temple for atheists" among the international banks and medieval church spires of the City of London have sparked a clash between two of Britain's most prominent non-believers.

The philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is proposing to build a 46-metre (151ft) tower to celebrate a "new atheism" as an antidote to what he describes as Professor Richard Dawkins's "aggressive" and "destructive" approach to non-belief.

London

'Children of the Kindertransport' statue based outside Liverpool Street Train Station, London. The memorial remembers those Jewish refugees who survived the journey on the Kindertransport and made it to Britain as the country opened its doors and offered them a home before WWII - saving the lives of more than 10,000 children. Sir Nicholas Winton unveiled the plaque expressing gratitude to the people of the United Kingdom who helped protect them from Nazi persecution in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. H/t: Press Association.

Warsaw

President Barack Obama speaks to Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors after laying a wreath at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial during a trip to Poland in May 2011. H/t: Photo: Charles Darapak Press Associated.

Budapest

Shoes are seen on the Danube Promenade Holocaust Memorial in memory of the Jewish victims of Arrow Cross militiamen, in Budapest, Hungary. H/t: Press Association.

Boston

At the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, USA, a glass wall carries the serial numbers that the Nazi Party tattooed on the arms of all those imprisoned in the German concentration camps. H/t: Press Association.

Jerusalem

An ultra-orthodox Jewish man visits the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. The country usually marks its annual Holocaust Memorial Day, or Yom Hashoah, in April or May. Hundreds of photographs of victims of Nazi persecution are displayed on the ceiling of the exhibition. H/t: Press Association.

Berlin

The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe contains 2,700 concrete slabs of varying heights with no names or dates. The slabs are laid out on a 4.7-acre site near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. After the memorial was unveiled in 2005, architect Peter Eisenman said he had spoken to Holocaust survivors, who had got off the trains at Auschwitz with a sense of disorientation and loss. The monument was designed to offer visitors a chance to feel these emotions themselves. H/t: Press Association.

Paris

A visitor takes a picture in front of pale stone walls engraved with the names of 76,000 people deported from France to Nazi death camps in WWII. The memorial in central Paris' Jewish quarter was opened in 2005 by former French President Jacques Chirac. H/t: Press Association.