“I would expect a Catholic school to teach the benefits of contraception as a prophylactic against AIDS and STDs as part of basic sex education. Anyone who can't teach this on grounds of 'conscience' is frankly not fit to teach.”
Anon.
“The cover story about Darwin was a big mistake [on my part], an unforgivable error. In the current political climate in Turkey, something like that could be perceived as a provocation.”
Cigdem Atakuman
“The rise of the West had much less to do with democracy than with the rise of secularism. The West's advance was chiefly related to the decline in the influence of religion that sought the truth by 'looking in' to see what God had to say, and its replacement by looking out, deriving authority from observation, experimentation and exploration.”
“From Salt Lake City to Gaza, religious people tend to marry younger and breed faster than non-religious ones. An ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman in Israel will produce nearly three times as many children than her secular peer. By some counts, three-quarters of the growth in the hotter varieties of American Protestantism is down to demography.”
“Secularism is not about being anti-religious, it is about civility and keeping people's faith, or indeed lack of it, separate from the workings of the state.”
Paul Pettinger