UN Human Rights Council statement prepares the way for international criminalization of religiously offensive speech
President Barack Obama in his history-making Inaugural Address today sounded the clarion call for a more inclusive and progressive America. The President’s speech outlined a largely humanistic agenda, promising to “restore science to its rightful place,” as we collectively face the massive challenges facing us as a country in the twenty-first century. Significantly, in affirming the pluralistic character of American society, President Obama expressly included “non-believers” among Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus, as part of the body politic.
The Center for Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism, in collaboration with the American Humanist Association and seventeen other nontheistic organizations, have banded together to call for President-elect Barack Obama to decline an invitation by the Boy Scouts of America to receive the honorary presidency of the group. The BSA makes no attempt to downplay the fact that it does not allow a substantial segment of the population to join—and ejects members in good standing—for the simple reason that they do not believe in a deity. What these nontheistic groups perhaps find most offensive is the Scouting bylaw that claims, “no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God.”
In a move designed to firm up faith-based opposition to embryonic stem cell research and other cutting-edge biomedical technologies, the Vatican has released a 32-page document titled “Dignitas Personae” – meaning “the dignity of a person.”
The Center for Inquiry is appalled that at its current session the U.N. General Assembly is adopting a resolution to combat the “defamation of religions,” which urges member states to curtail freedom of expression out of respect for religious belief, particularly Islamic belief
Scholars gathered this past weekend, December 5-7, in Amherst, New York, for the inaugural meeting of The Jesus Project in a renewed quest for the historical Jesus.
