After many months of planning, thinking and hard work, The Reason Project launched today. It’s a secular non-profit founded by Sam Harris, well known author of The End of Faith, and Letter to a Christian Nation, and his wife, Annaka Harris. Their official mission is thus:
“The Reason Project is devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The foundation draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.”
In aid of that, Sam has assembled an amazing group of advisors, volunteers and contributors to amass and create compelling content. Some of the many highlights of this long-in-development site are: an Archive of Articles culled from great thinkers on secular values; The Scripture Project, an annotated wiki with the full text of the Bible, the Quran and the Book of Mormon;. and several rich and wonderful galleries of art and images.
From a technological standpoint, the Reason Project is perhaps our most complex site ever. Built mostly in ExpressionEngine, it includes a wiki with extensive customization to allow intra-page linking and automatic navigation, a forum and registration system with custom design and all sorts of collections of blogs, articles archives and photo galleries. A SalesForce donation CRM system is integrated into the EE member database in a clever way, too. Overlaying the structure are many layers of member permissions, allowing the site to be run by dedicated volunteers who can administer most of the site without ever needing to access the EE control panel. It also pulls in content automatically from other sites via RSS and Yahoo Pipes.
It’s an fabulous, ambitious undertaking, and Hop Studios is proud to be a part of it.
EDIT: The Reason Project changed its name to Project Reason.
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