Michael Nugent

I’ve been doing more cooking than usual during the lockdown, and I’ve gradually refined this recipe that I like for spicy hummus.

Big Jack Charlton died today aged 85. The World Cup winner was at the heart of the Leeds United defence of my childhood, along with Norman ‘Bites Yer Legs’ Hunter who recently died of Covid aged 76.

Six in ten Americans would vote for an atheist as President, compared to fewer than half a decade ago, and only two in ten at the start of the 1960s.

Two recent incidents highlight the need to promote robust debate about ideas, and to protect people from defamatory smears.

Atheist Freethinkers/Libres Penseurs Athées of Montreal is trying to protect Bill 21, a new law that promotes separation of Church and State in Quebec.

To summarise my twenty short posts so far: do gods exist? We don’t know for certain, and we can’t know for certain. But we can form reliable beliefs, to the same degree of confidence that we routinely do with other extraordinary claims.

As our fifteenth man in a row settles into the job of Taoiseach, I wonder when Ireland will have our first woman as head of government? Mary Harney, Mary Coughlan, Joan Burton, and Frances Fitzgerald have been Tánaiste. We have had two successful women Presidents in Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese. But we have not […]

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child will soon be questioning Ireland again. Atheist Ireland, the Evangelical Alliance of Ireland, and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Ireland have sent this joint submission to the UN Committee.

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Three online storms yesterday make me concerned about the future of humour online, with online mob outrage about jokes leaking into mainstream media and employment matters.