Prof Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and atheist, stepped down from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) on Saturday after it censored an article supporting the belief that gender is biological. Prof Dawkins accused the group of caving to the “hysterical squeals” of cancel culture after it deleted the article from its website, saying it was a “mistake” to have published it. (Henderson, The Telegraph)
Read MoreDepending on how the Supreme Court rules, we may be in the final days of TikTok in the U.S. But it continues to be a powerful platform for creators and communities the world over, "particularly with young people in the Global South," says Payal Arora, a digital anthropologist at Utrecht University. (Daniel, NPR)
Read MoreThe year’s news in religion was dominated by a war already in progress on Jan. 1 between Hamas and Israel. Though not at root a religious war, as the months went by the conflict supercharged American-Jewish divisions over Israel, fractured some Jewish-Muslim alliances and made antisemitism on campus a rallying cry for the right. (Religion News Service)
Read MoreThere’s a reason why even streamers like Netflix now want a piece of the live sports action. It’s what rules our viewing habits, as witnessed by Variety‘s annual list of the year’s 100 most-watched primetime telecasts. (Schneider, Variety)
Read MoreWe could tell by the calendar that 2024 was going to be a big year. We had a US presidential election, the Olympic Games, the launch of a new denomination, and a total solar eclipse (Christianity Today)
Read MoreThe Native American Church is considered the most widespread religious movement among the Indigenous people of North America. It holds sacred the peyote cactus, which grows naturally only in some parts of southern Texas and northern Mexico. Peyote has been used spiritually in ceremonies, and as a medicine by Native American people for millennia. (Bharath, AP News)
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