There’s a dreadfully wrong-headed article by Eboo Patel in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. You can probably guess the gist if you remember that he’s one of Chris Stedman’s favorite interfaithy types. The gist is that faith is great, it doesn’t matter what kind as long as it’s faith, and it’s a kind of identity like race so let’s start making sure there’s lots of diversity of it, because faith.

Part of the rationale for 1990s-era campus multiculturalism was to remedy the racial bias in the broader society: to lift up underrepresented narratives, to remind people that many communities have contributed to the American project, to ensure that our perceptions of race were not driven by the crime reports on the evening news. Gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity all got some airtime, but mostly we talked about race. And one form of identity was almost totally excluded: faith.

Now that the evening news is full of stories of faith-based violence, and our public discourse has a constant undercurrent of religious prejudice (Barack Obama is a Muslim! Mitt Romney isn’t a Christian!) colleges can no longer ignore faith identity. For many of the same reasons that they actively engaged race, so should they now actively and positively engage faith identity.

That’s how he gets the toe in the doorway: treating “faith” as identity rather than a set of beliefs and claims, and then treating identity as something that has to be “engaged.” But that’s a bad idea. Religion does operate like an identity in a lot of ways but it’s bad to treat it like one because it makes it less open. It shouldn’t be hard to leave one’s religion just because it feels like an identity.

What if campuses took religious diversity as seriously as they took race? What if recruiting a religiously diverse student body, creating a welcoming environment for people of different faith and philosophical identities, and offering classes in interfaith studies and co-curricular opportunities in interfaith leadership became the norm? What if university presidents expected their graduates to acquire interfaith literacy, build interfaith relationships, and have opportunities to run interfaith programs during their four years on campus? What impact might a critical mass of interfaith leaders have on America over the course of the next generation?

I have one word to offer as an alternative to Patel’s nightmare vision: secularism.

H/t to Christopher Moyer, via Jessica Moyer.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I know it’s obvious, I know it’s too easy, I know everybody and its dog is all over it, but can I just point and laugh at Romney a little all the same? Because it’s too perfect.

That is how they think. I know some, and that’s how they think. They think everybody who isn’t rich is contemptible, and out to steal their stuff.

At the fundraiser, Romney was asked how he could win in November, and he replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax…[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

You have to love the way it ticks all the boxes, and the way it ignores reality. He seems to think that 47 percent of the population is on welfare, which is never cut off. That’s Romney’s America! Almost half of us are beneath contempt and not his job to worry about.

Class war. Booya.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

This is funny. I got a tweet from Linky ‏@LinkyGray saying

putting on an event celebrating & supporting women in science and media, called LogicGrrrl in Edinburgh, cld you spread word?

So I said sure and asked if she had any useful links and in the meantime I tried Google, which turned up nothing relevant but did turn up something from a Christian apologetics site explaining “Girl Logic.” It’s chapter 4 of something (a book? a manifesto?) called What does a Woman Want? A Real Man.

“Girl logic” is the label given to describe that series of semi-consecutive feminine thoughts that favored “cute things,” “soft things,” and cuddly little kittens and puppies. It causes girls to act in such strange displays of behavior that the average man is stupefied in useless attempts to comprehend. The smart man quickly abandons such ventures as he soon realizes severe head pain and vertigo follow.

Each and every man has encountered this highly illusive mental game of matching wits with a woman, most often to his confusion and demise. The average male thinks too clearly, too linearly, and, therefore, can’t figure women out at all. The strange marvel is that girl logic makes sense to all women.

There is, most probably, a genetic something that unites all females this way. I have seen groups of them act in behavioristic unison — as if driven by some common cosmic feminine force — when they encounter a jewelry department, a sale on clothes, or choosing the color of their shoes. This is all fine and dandy as long as men are excluded. But we aren’t!

Every man knows the unmerited agony of being dragged into a clothes store only to have his aesthetic senses crushed into ridiculed oblivion when he says that blue blouse goes well with that green sweater. I’ve seen girls almost lose their lunch and stare in pathetic disbelief at some poor shlup who got cornered in the women’s department and made the inexcusable blunder of commenting on how yellow and pink polka-dots go together.

There’s lots more. I think it comes from deep experience of watching tv sitcoms. What it has to do with Christian apologetics is anyone’s guess, but I’m not going to research any further.

Oh and spread the word about the event called LogicGrrrl in Edinburgh!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Hey hurry up today is the last day for Early Bird pricing for the American Atheists 50th Anniversary National Convention. You want to go to that! It’s in Austin. You can see the bats from it.

I’ll be there. Anthony Grayling is the keynote speaker. Who else is there? Jessica Ahlquist – Jamila Bey – Greta – Elisabeth Cornwell – Jerry De Witt – Matt Dillahunty – Margaret Downey – J.T. Eberhard – Janet Heimlich – Linda LaScola – Teresa McBain – Dale McGowan – and Dave Silverman of course. Along with many others. It should be fuuuuuuun.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Roy Brown told the UN Human Rights Council what’s what last week.

States which fail to punish faith-based violence against religious and non-religious minorities, or which legitimize faith-based violence through laws against ‘blasphemy’ or ‘apostasy’, should have no seat on the UN Human Rights Council. This was the view presented by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) delegation to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.

And quite right too.

The 21^st session of the UN Human Rights Council (Geneva, 10 September 2012) opened with a report from the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. Speaking in response to her report, IHEU Main Representative Roy Brown thanked her for her recognition of the problem of violence against religious minorities, however, reading a text drafted by team member Leo Igwe, [he] pointed out the wider problem of discrimination, oppression and violence against the non-religious.

Which Leo has very up close and personal experience with.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Amanda Marcotte at Slate discusses Susan Jacoby’s article based on her Women in Secularism talk.

Jacoby argues that secularism really should embrace feminism, especially considering that feminism (and I’ll add, gay rights, which is intertwined with feminism) is the most secular social justice movement in history. Maintaining male dominance has been one of the primary functions of religion throughout history…

As it has been one of the primary functions of culture throughout history, as Susan Moller Okin argued in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? It’s central. Make sure women are dominated so that there won’t be any scary doubts about paternity or any scary possibility of being pussy-whipped.

Jacoby doesn’t mention it, but the problem has grown beyond the casual sexism behind marginalizing women’s issues or even male atheists ignorantly deploying negative stereotypes about women in their arguments. As more women have joined with the movement, more voices have been making these connections between feminism and secularism, which awakened a previously unknown contingent of angry misogynist atheists. Atheist activists who make overtly feminist arguments have been targeted by vicious harassment campaigns, often for no other reason than trying to reduce the amount of sexual harassment women encounter at conventions. One blogger who started a forum for atheists who want to focus more on social justice than trying to get “under God” out of the Pledge received so much abuse that she quit blogging. While most secularists are agreeable to incorporating feminist worldviews into the agenda, the few who oppose feminism have been so dogged that female atheists can’t be faulted if they decide to put their time and attention elsewhere. Casual sexists can be persuaded to take a more female-inclusive approach through education, but unfortunately, education doesn’t work on dogged misogynists. As long as the harassment and abuse of atheists who speak out about feminism [doesn't] stop, the low numbers of female participation in secularist events will likely continue.

It’s true you know. For the first time, yesterday and today, I’m feeling something like what Jen felt – wanting to get out. Everything seems dirty and polluted, including me.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

No wonder Naomi Wolf’s book is so silly, if Zoe Heller gets her right.

For those familiar with Wolf’s career as a polemicist and memoirist, it will not come as a complete surprise to find her attributing occult properties to the female anatomy. Wolf, who has always understood feminism to be a spiritual cause as much as a civil rights movement, has made several moony allusions over the years to the numinous character of female sexuality. In Promiscuities, her memoir of growing up in 1970s San Francisco, she proposed that “female sexuality participates in the divine image.”

Feminism as a spiritual cause – ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.

If it’s a spiritual cause there’s no need or place for it to begin with. Nobody minds if women are “spiritual” all over the place, as long as they don’t go demanding unspiritual things like serious work and freedom to wander and equal rights.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I forgot to say about the judge’s ruling that threw out Wisconsin’s anti-union no collective bargaining for you law.

The law, Walker’s crowning achievement, made him a national conservative star. It took away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most workers and has been in effect for more than a year.

Because nobody is allowed to do any collective bargaining except bosses and owners and CEOs and lobbyists. The people on top can collective bargain! The people on the bottom cannot! That’s how God wants it, also the Chamber of Commerce and the Supreme Court.

But the judge didn’t agree. A good thing for a change.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Zena Ryder sent me this response to what trinioler said in..“What trinioler said”:

I am one of the administrators of the [name omitted] branch of the Centre for Inquiry, based in [ditto], Canada. In response to trinioler’s comments about our branch, I would like to explain what has been going on over the last few months.

Our branch is very active. We have a number of regular events: the purely social monthly “Skeptics in the Park”; a monthly discussion group for kids, “Kids for Inquiry”; monthly informal talks, “Café Inquiry”; and a new monthly discussion group, “Round Table”. We are also associated with a couple of independent local groups — including a local women’s discussion group, Chick Chat, with whom we are co-hosting a lecture by Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada next month.

The topics of our Café Inquiry events range widely — from astronomy to math to humanist rituals. They have also included  “Dismantling the Gender Binary”, “Digital Hatred: White Supremacy in the Information Age” and we have one coming up in October, “Addictions”. Our Café Inquiry talks are usually held at our local LGBT Centre, and when they are there, we always collect donations for the Centre.

In addition to these regular events, we hold a number of special events. We have volunteers who care deeply about social issues. We want to make the world a better place, and we are working hard — as volunteers — to do our share. (In addition to working at our jobs, doing our studies, raising our kids and all the rest of having lives.) We did a winter clothing drive last year — collecting winter clothing for a couple of local charities. We protested Sylvia Browne, concerned that she was ripping off vulnerable, grieving people. We co-hosted a debate on assisted suicide. We held a mini-conference in May, “All About Vaccines”, to help educate people about vaccines because there is an outbreak of whooping cough here in BC, which is of course incredibly dangerous for babies. This event raised money for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. We held a summer fundraiser for our branch, at which we also collected donations for our local Food Bank. Along with CFI Canada’s Executive Director, Michael Payton, our branch co-signed a letter to the Mayor of [omitted for now], objecting to his recent pro-life proclamation. We are holding a Halloween blood drive, and in the spring we are holding an event that will raise funds for a mental health charity.

But we also have a public Facebook discussion group, which anyone (not just CFI members) can join. It caused us major headaches in the past. And it is this Facebook group that trinioler is largely judging us by. While we never had problems with hate speech, rape threats, or anything like that (such comments would not, of course, be tolerated and would result in an immediate ban) there were indeed issues with sexist comments, there were issues with belligerence and hostility. People understandably got sick of the fighting and, with the support of the national leadership, a number of us — volunteers who care about our group, and care about decent online behaviour — drafted, refined and installed a set of guidelines for posting. We ditched the Facebook group, and started a new one from scratch, with the new rules in place. Volunteers have spent hours moderating the group, and discussing whether we thought rules had been broken and what to do about it. One particularly egregious case, which trinioler mentioned, was a thread in which a number of inappropriate comments were made about breasts. This thread triggered a real life meeting — more volunteer time — when we discussed what to do. This was back in June, soon after we had instituted our new rules. We knew that there would be teething troubles, while people got used to the new situation. (The new situation being that, no, it’s not the case that anything goes just because you’re sitting anonymously behind a computer. There are real people, with real feelings, who read your comments. Your words do indeed matter.) We decided that rules had been broken and we issued warnings as a result. Unfortunately, the fighting and unacceptable comments didn’t magically disappear over night and the Facebook group continued to cause us problems, but we have tried — tried very hard — to make it better. We have not just ignored the problems. We worked on them and continue to do so. We have issued warnings and we banned someone who made threats in a different Facebook group. And our Facebook group is much better. It’s not perfect, but we’re working on it.

Some volunteers (and non-volunteers) weren’t happy with the speed of our progress on the Facebook discussion group, and decided to leave the Facebook group. That’s healthy. If a Facebook discussion group is causing you stress, and isn’t pleasant for you to engage in — it makes sense to leave. But these same volunteers have not left CFI-[omitted for now]. They come to volunteer meetings, they come to our events, they work on organizing events, they contribute to our fundraising activities, they help out in various ways behind the scenes. A great deal of CFI-[ditto] energy goes into our events — creating a real life community (as well as a Facebook community), doing some real life work, making the world a better place. That’s where most of our volunteers are inclined to direct their energy.

I  completely agree with trinioler that ignoring sexism can be divisive. It’s no doubt true that if the administrators of CFI-[ditto] had ignored the sexism in our Facebook group, then we would have lost volunteers and CFI members. But the facts are that CFI-[ditto] did not, and does not, ignore the sexism on our page, and so we have not lost volunteers because of it. I am proud of our volunteer team and their hard work. I also enjoy working with them and I care about them as people. Their concerns are certainly not ignored.

CFI-[ditto is currently in the process of arranging a presentation by Desiree Schell, who will be talking with our group later this month about what the atheist movement can learn from the social justice movement. I sincerely hope that trinioler will join us. The more people with energy and enthusiasm working to get things done, the better.

Zena Ryder

[branch omitted for now]

[location omitted for now]

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Erdoğan has big plans. Erdoğan wants to make it globally illegal to say anything critical of Islam. Erdoğan calls saying anything critical of Islam “Islamophobia” and then demands that “Islamophobia” be made a crime against humanity.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has stated that Turkey recognizes anti-semitism as a crime, while not a single Western country recognizes Islamophobia as such.

That’s because the two are not comparable, and they’re not comparable because “Islamophobia” is the wrong word for hatred of Muslims. The “semitism” in anti-semitism picks out a set of people, even though it’s a clumsy way of doing it. “Islamophobia” picks out a religion, not its followers.

Erdoğan commented on the 14-minute trailer for “Innocence of Muslims,” an obscure film that mocks the Prophet Muhammad, which sparked violent riots across various Muslim nations.

There’s that lazy journalistic trope again, that a film or book or cartoon “sparked” violent riots, thus making the film or book or cartoon guilty along with its creator. It’s not that simple.

Erdoğan said he will continue to give messages at the next UN General Assembly meeting about adopting international legislation against insulting religion. “I am the prime minister of a nation, of which most are Muslims and that has declared anti-semitism a crime against humanity. But the West hasn’t recognized Islamophobia as a crime against humanity — it has encouraged it. [The film director] is saying he did this to provoke the fundamentalists among Muslims. When it is in the form of a provocation, there should be international legal regulations against attacks on what people deem sacred, on religion. As much as it is possible to adopt international regulations, it should be possible to do something in terms of domestic law.”

No, there shouldn’t; no, it shouldn’t. What people deem sacred is very often also what allows them to impose horrible rules and limitations on women, other races, “polluted” people, and the like. The deeming sacred is what makes the horrible rules and limitations immune from criticism and even laws. People in Virginia can deny their children education on religious grounds and no other. The concept of “sacred” is not such a great thing.

He further noted, “Freedom of thought and belief ends where the freedom of thought and belief of others start. You can say anything about your thoughts and beliefs, but you will have to stop when you are at the border of others’ freedoms. I was able to include Islamophobia as a hate crime in the final statement of an international meeting in Warsaw.”

Erdoğan said the government will immediately start working on legislation against blasphemous and offensive remarks. “Turkey could be a leading example for the rest of the world on this.”

No. I can say anything about my thoughts and beliefs, and I can say anything about yours, too.

That’s really a staggeringly benighted thing to say, when you look at it. “Freedom of thought and belief ends where the freedom of thought and belief of others start.” So freedom of thought and belief doesn’t include discussing any thought and belief other than your own! You can’t discuss Mill if you’re not a Millian, Plato if you’re not a Platonist, Freud if you’re not a Freudian – in short, you can’t discuss at all.

No wonder people tend to be critical of Islam, if this is the mindset it fosters.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The usual stupid “rage” about the prophet-bashing movie is spreading around the world – Afghanistan and Indonesia basking in the rays today – and Iran has joined the fun by renewing the fatwa on Salman Rushdie and adding half a million bucks to the pot.

Iran has seized on widespread Muslim outrage over a film insulting the Prophet Mohammad to revive the death threat against Salman Rushdie, raising the reward for killing him by US$500,000 (£320,000).

Ayatollah Hassan Sanei, head of a powerful state foundation providing relief to the poor, said the film would never have been made if the order to execute Rushdie, issued by the late Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had been carried out.

Well that’s a fucking stupid claim. What, if Khomeini had succeeded in bribing someone to murder Rushdie for writing a novel, then all criticism of (and disdain for) would have dried up because the source was cut off? I hate to tell you, Mr Sanei, but Salman is not the only person in the world who is critical of Islam in some way. He never has been, and he certainly isn’t now. There’s a lot to be critical of in Islam. Furthermore, if the fatwa had succeeded, if Rushdie had been “executed” (by which of course he means murdered), there would be more criticism of (and disdain for) Islam, not less. Why? Because reasonable people don’t think it’s admirable or even acceptable for heads of state to offer bribes to murder novelists (or anyone else). Khomeini would have created whole new levels of hatred of Islam. He has anyway, and he would have done so all the more if the fatwa had won.

That’s true of all these shits, of course. They all make us hate Islam more, and more, and more. If universal love and respect for Islam is what they want, they’re going about it the wrong way. Boko Haram? Hate it. The Taliban? Hate it. Salafists? Hate them. Sharia? Hate it. The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam? Hate it.

If the imam’s order [had been] carried out, the further insults in the form of caricatures, articles and films would not have taken place. The impertinence of the grudge-filled enemies of Islam, which is occurring under the flag of the Great Satan, America and the racist Zionists, can only be blocked by the absolute administration of this Islamic order.

Nope. Dead wrong. If the imam’s illegal and presumptuous “order” had been carried out, there would have been a whole new generation of further “insults.” You’re murderous and stupid and authoritarian, so we have contempt for you. That’s how it works.

Although Ayatollah Sanei has offered financial rewards for carrying out the edict in the past, he said Muslim anger over the recent film meant the time was now ripe.

“The aim [of the fatwa] has been to uproot the anti-Islamic conspiracy and now the necessity for taking this action is even more obvious than any other time,” he said. “I’m adding another $500,000 to the reward and anyone who carries out this order will immediately receive the whole amount.” The total bounty is now $3.3m (£2.1 m).

“Compassion is at the heart of every great religion.”

It is unlikely that Ayatollah Sanei, personal representative of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the 15th Khordad Foundation, was acting without higher approval. In 2005, Ayatollah Khamenei himself reaffirmed the fatwa while addressing pilgrims preparing to visit Mecca.

In a speech last Friday, he decried the film as the work of US imperialism and “Zionism” and linked it to other perceived western attacks on Islam, including The Satanic Verses and the Danish cartoon contest depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

We are allowed to do that. You are not allowed to murder us.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I like to get useful advice, and helpful suggestions for how to learn more about things so that I can understand better and not be wrong. I saw some advice on Twitter about what to do about internet trolls.

If you want to understand why jumping up & down in outrage isn’t the best reponse to internet trolling, you could do worse than learn about old-style Chicago School subcultural theories of deviance. Albert Cohen & Walter Miller, in particular, would be relevant.

In one way that advice is odd, because it comes from someone who has done a lot of “jumping up and down” (which I think means talking or writing) in outrage about “FTBullies” for many months…but then again maybe the best response to internet trolls is radically different from the best response to bullies (FT or otherwise), so that the advice is not odd at all. Or maybe the best response to internet trolls is exactly the same as the best response to bullies – which would be my guess, since I think they’re pretty much the same kind of thing - so the advice is odd in that way but still good advice. Maybe the jumper up and down suddenly remembered about subcultural theories of deviance, and realized the jumping had been a waste of leg muscles.

So anyway – who knows lots about Chicago School subcultural theories of deviance and can fill us in? Of course I consulted Google and Wikipedia, the library being closed today, but I need more.

In criminology, subcultural theory emerged from the work of the Chicago School on gangs and developed through the symbolic interactionism school into a set of theories arguing that certain groups or subcultures in society have values and attitudes that are conducive to crime and violence.

Looks like a tautology to me, but whatever.

The reformed jumper also offered a dark warning about deviance amplification, which is something I had heard of. Wikipedia is more helpful here.

According to Cohen the spiral starts with some “deviant” act. Usually the deviance is criminal, but it can also involve lawful acts considered morally repugnant by a large segment of society. With the new focus on the issue, hidden or borderline examples that would not themselves have been newsworthy are reported, confirming the “pattern”.

Reported cases of such “deviance” are often presented as just “the ones we know about” or the “tip of the iceberg“, an assertion that is nearly impossible to disprove immediately. For a variety of reasons, the less sensational aspects of the spiraling story that would help the public keep a rational perspective (such as statistics showing that the behavior or event is actually less common or less harmful than generally believed) tend to be ignored by the press.

As a result, minor problems begin to look serious and rare events begin to seem common. Members of the public are motivated to keep informed on these events, leading to high readership for the stories, feeding the spiral. The resulting publicity has the potential to increase the deviant behavior by glamorizing it…

Ah yes, I get it – this is the sociologists’ version of “Ignore the trolls.” There’s a problem with that, which is that a particular behavior may be minor in the great scheme of things (and internet trolling certainly fits that bill), but that doesn’t mean it’s minor to the people splashed by it. Most behaviors are “minor” compared to something else. This planet is minor compared to the universe, but it’s not minor to us because we live on it. Also – blogs aren’t the same kind of thing as The New York Times or CNN.

Jason has a related post, on The scope of the problem and the availability heuristic.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I think Richard Dawkins called the UK’s ”Chief Rabbi” (whatever that is) a very nice man somewhere on RDF before their BBC debate. I thought at the time that that was dubious, and it seems all the more so now that the CR, Jonathan Sacks, has said RD’s description of the Old Testament god in The God Delusion is “profoundly anti-Semitic.”

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Sacks really is a nice guy, and just says and does and thinks some nasty things. That can be the case, obviously. But enough quantity or quality of nastiness and you no longer have a nice person.

The thing I dislike about Sacks is his boast about being glad his dying father didn’t have the option of assisted suicide, because the long time it took him to die gave Sacks the opportunity to show his father compassion. He didn’t say anything about what his father might have preferred – it apparently never crossed his mind that what his father wanted should trump what he wanted in that situation. That level of self-absorbtion makes real niceness difficult.

The dispute began with Prof Dawkins’ claim that a controversial passage from his 2006 book was intended to be “humorous”.

“The beginning of chapter two, which says the God of the Old Testament is the most unpleasant character in all fiction, that’s a joke,” he said in the early stages of the debate.

Later Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks said that Dawkins had misunderstood sections of the Hebrew Bible, which are also part of the Christian Old Testament, because he was a “Christian atheist” rather than a “Jewish atheist”.

It meant that Dawkins read the Old Testament in an “adversarial way,” he said, something that was “Christian” because the faith’s New Testament was believed to have “gone one better”.

“That’s why I did not read the opening to chapter two in your book as a joke, I read it as a profoundly anti-semitic passage.”

The text was read out loud by Lord Sacks at the debate.

It described “the God of the Old Testament” as a “vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser” as well as “misogynist”, “homophobic”, “racist”, “pestilential” and “infanticidal”.

“How you can call that anti-semitic, I don’t even begin to understand. It’s anti-God,” said Prof Dawkins.

I suppose I can begin to understand it, because there are such things as tropes and stereotypes, and they can be dangerous…But then the Old Testament can be dangerous too.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Human Rights Watch says Tunisia’s draft constitution needs improvement. Now there’s a surprise.

The shortcomings in human rights protections largely concern the status of international human rights conventions ratified by Tunisia, freedom of expression, freedom of thought and belief, equality between men and women, and non-discrimination, Human Rights found in an analysis of the proposals.

Quite a few things, in other words. Quite important things.

Article 3 threatens freedom of expression by stipulating that, “The state guarantees freedom of belief and religious practice and criminalizes all attacks on the sacred.” This provision, which defines neither what is “sacred” nor what constitutes an “attack” on it, opens the door to laws that criminalize speech, Human Rights Watch said.

Anything for a quiet life, eh? But what if someone comes along who has a different idea of what “the sacred” is? Don’t ask.

Other provisions that cause concern are:

• Article 3, which says that, “The state guarantees freedom of belief and religious practice,” but omits wording that would affirm freedoms of thought and of conscience, including the right to replace one’s religion with another or to embrace atheism. Human rights would be best protected by an explicit guarantee in the constitution of a right to change one’s religion or to have no religion, Human Rights Watch said.
• Article 28 on women’s rights invokes the notion of complementarity of the roles of women and men inside the family, omitting the principle of equality between the sexes.
• Article 22, stating that, “All citizens are equal in rights and freedoms before the law, without discrimination of any kind,” is contradicted by another article that states that only a Muslim can become president of the republic.

Familiar, and repellent.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Egypt’s Prime Minister wants the US government to do all it can to “stop people insulting Islam.”

Time out while I sigh a huge sigh.

No. Shut up. Fuck off.

First of all, there’s no such thing as “insulting” a religion to begin with. “Insult” is a human term. You can’t “insult” socialism or libertarianism or skydiving or birdwatching or apricots or cats.

What you mean is “disparage” or similer. We’re allowed to do that. Everyone should be allowed to do that.

If you tried to persuade the US government to do all it can to stop people disparaging Islam, you would still be doing a silly and bad thing. There’s a lot about Islam that cries out for disparaging, and the US government is very limited in its ability to tell us what to say. It’s a pity yours is not equally limited.

Here’s an idea for you: do all you can to stop mobs getting into stupid rages about perceived “insults” to a guy who’s been dead for 14 centuries.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Kristina Hansen demonstrates her aversion to bullying again by turning me into an Amish crone in a bonnet. Hahahahahahahahaha she is one witty blogger.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Bernard Hurley did a very informative comment about the law under which Azhar Ahmed was found guilty of  “posting an offensive Facebook message.” It’s too informative to hide in comments so here it is.

Bernard Hurley

Ahmed was prosecuted under clause 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003. The purpose of the act is to define the rôle of OFCOM and to regulate such things a local radio and indeed any services running over publicly funded or partially publicly funded electronic networks. Section 127 is buried in the middle of it and reads:

127 Improper use of public electronic communications network (1) A person is guilty of an offence if he—

(a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character; or (b) causes any such message or matter to be so sent.

(2) A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—

(a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false, (b) causes such a message to be sent; or (c) persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.

(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both. (4) Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply to anything done in the course of providing a programme service (within the meaning of the Broadcasting Act 1990 (c. 42)).

As far as I can tell, the intent of the legislation was to stop nuisance calls, but, as can be seen, it is very vague. The judgement is only in a magistrate’s court; personally I think it should be appealed. I think, Ophelia, you have put your finger on two legal problems. Which are:

(A) What precisely is a message in the context of services like Facebook?

and:

(B) What makes a message grossly offensive?

The second of these is dealt by the Law Lords decision in DPP vs Collins http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldjudgmt/jd060719/collin.pdf In this case Collins had sent repeated telephone messages to his MP in which he called immigrants and asylum seekers “Wogs”, “Pakis”, “Black bastards”, and “Niggers”. One question at issue were whether, in the given context, this was grossly offensive or merely offensive. The context includes the fact that the actual recipient of the message was likely a secretary or an intern and that Collins did not know or care whether this person would be offended.

The Law Lords found for the DPP (i.e. the messages were grossly offensive) however the criteria they used look like a legal minefield to me:

“Usages and sensitivities may change over time … there can be no yardstick of gross offensiveness otherwise than by the application of reasonably enlightened, but not perfectionist, contemporary standards to the particular message sent in its particular context. “The test is whether a message is couched in terms liable to cause gross offence to whom it relates.”

As to (A) it seems that a message has to have a recipient or group of recipients. I’m not sure what the distinction is as regards Internet communications. Is there a distinction between a blog post and a comment on the blog? Is there a distinction between posting something on your status and posting the same thing on someone else’s timeline? I’m not sure what Ahmed did and why it was considered to be a message.

However there is another interesting part of DPP vs Collins. It is made clear that the aim of this particular offence is to prevent a service provided and funded by the public, for the benefit of the public, for the transmission of communications from being used in a way that contravenes certain basic standards. In the UK most of the land line and internet backbone is publicly funded and in practice it is difficult to avoid using them. However it is clear that the law does not apply to a companies private network, it it does not use these services. It would presumably not apply to a message sent over a completely privately owned mobile phone network either.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Well there’s one thing about the ElevatorGATE stalker’s obsessive stalking and Storifying, which is that it makes it easy to point to some crazy.

I can’t remember why I decided to look at his Storify just now, but I did, to find that he’d storified a conversation I was still having with Amy and Glendon and Melody. Whew! Don’t I feel special! Being watched every second…yeah, that rocks.

But he also Storified this one, in which two people who have lived in totalitarian countries earnestly testified that yes indeed “they” really are totalitarians.

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  @Metamagician @philosophyexp @notungschwert They hate being likened to totalitarianism, but their behaviour speaks for itself.
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  @PaulaSKirby @Metamagician @PhilosophyExp @NotungSchwert This isn’t really hyperbole. I lived in a communist country for almost 8 yrs.

Absolutely; not hyperbole at all.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)