There’s a nice atheist/freethinkers/humanist con coming up: Apostacon: A Midwest Freethought Conference, in Omaha, September 20-22. Omaha! The heart of the midwest. A place in need of more and more apostates and freethinkers.

A couple of thoughts though. One, not nearly enough women. Four out of nineteen. Not.e.nough.

Two, they forgot to get Vyckie Garrison to speak. Midwest freethinkers and apostates! You’re missing a trick! Vyckie is just up the road from you. Vyckie is No Longer Quivering. You need Vyckie.

Vyckie’s talk at Eschaton 2012 was dynamite. I can’t wait for the video to come out so that you can see for yourselves. She has fascinating material – life as a Quiverfull woman, and what it did to her and her children and her husband, and how much better things are now that she and her children have escaped. She has fascinating material, and she presents it well – not least, she’s damn funny.

They need her.

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

Mary Ellen boiled down the irony of the pope’s retirement very neatly on Monday, but unfortunately in the rush of various flying missiles I didn’t get to it until today.

Guest post by Mary Ellen Foley

Somebody gets into a situation in which their health begins to fail, and if they stay in that situation, it might kill them.  They believe that God himself put them into that situation, but they just don’t feel that they can see it through — the strain is just physically too much.  And anyway, they’d prefer a quiet life, and they want to spend their time studying.

So if this person is a pregnant woman whose pregnancy is life-threatening, the Pope says she has to go through with it even if it kills her.

If this person is the Pope himself, however, he gets to retire.

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

The Tories want to re-describe poverty as being not to do with a lack of money. Next project: re-describe hypothermia as being not to do with lack of heat.

The government’s desire to alter the official definition of child poverty risks deliberately downplaying the importance of money just as a series of government policies will reduce the incomes of poor families, a group of senior academics warn in a letter to the Guardian.

Let’s define it as a lack of initiative, shall we? A shortage of grit and determination and ambition? A refusal to get up at 5 a.m.? A habit of eating three pieces of pie every evening?

A consultation on how to measure child poverty more accurately that was launched last November, seeking input from charities and experts into “better measures of child poverty”, comes to an end on Friday. The government believes that a wider definition of what constitutes poverty will give a better picture of what it means to “grow up experiencing deep disadvantage“.

A better picture, eh? So that they can hang it next to the Van Dyke in the library?

Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, the lead consultant on the UK’s contribution to Unicef’s Child Well-Being report, said he believed that the government was “trying to move the goalposts” at a time when child poverty was increasing rapidly.

He described the consultation document as the worst paper setting down government policy direction he had ever read, questioned whether it was written by civil servants and said it read more like it had been “plagiarised from a right-wing thinktank tract”.

He said civil servants had been working for the past 40 years on developing accurate poverty measures, but the document had ignored previous work by the department on the subject as well as ignoring work by academics in the field. The new approach would not work because it attempted to “combine all sorts of things that are the consequence of poverty or may be even be the causes of poverty, but are not a measure of child poverty”.

That’s the best wheeze of all: treating the consequences of poverty as the causes of poverty. That way you get to stop spending money on it, and you get to sneer and judge at the same time. Look at you, you dirty peasant, you never went to school; no wonder you’re poor!

In a speech to launch the consultation, Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, outlined his theory that other factors aside from money caused poverty, highlighting his concern about children growing up in “dysfunctional families”.

He argued: “It cannot be right that experiences so vital to childhood, like seeing a parent go out to work or growing up in a stable family, are not reflected in our understanding of child poverty.” He was critical of the Labour government’s focus on “income as the significant cause and solution”.

Sure enough…

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

More on Ahmed Rajib and the context of his murder.

A blogger who had been critical of Bangladesh’s Islamist groups was killed in the capital late Friday, police said, a day after he attended a big rally against leaders of the country’s largest Islamic party.

…

Police found the body of Ahmed Rajib, 35 — better known by his online identity Thaba Baba — near his home in Dhaka’s Pallabi suburb, with his head hacked apart with a machete.

“We recovered the machete. It is clear the attacker wanted to murder him. They did not touch his laptop or other valuable objects,” police official Sheikh Motiur Rahman told AFP.

Police have not commented on a possible motive for the killing, but Rahman, citing Rajib’s relatives, said the blogger played a large role in organising the anti-Islamist protests.

Rajib’s brother, who declined to be named, told AFP his sibling had been “threatened frequently” by Islamists angry at his role in the protests and his writings against the religion.

He isn’t the first.

The killing late Friday was the second fatal attack in Dhaka against a blogger critical of Islamist groups in less than a month, after the stabbing death of a self-styled online “militant atheist” by three unidentified men near his office in the upscale Uttara district.

Taslima doesn’t live in Bangladesh any more. Tasneem doesn’t live in Bangladesh any more.

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

Another upcoming event, this time in Dublin. Atheist Ireland is doing a conference called Empowering Women Through Secularism the weekend of 29-30 June 2013. I will be there.

Everybody should go to this! It will be fantastic.

Speakers will include

• Ivana Bacik, Irish Senator and member of Atheist Ireland
• Dan Barker, Freedom From Religion Foundation, USA
• Ophelia Benson, author and commentator, USA
• Ann Brusseel, Member of Flemish Parliament, Belgium
• Mairin de Burca, writer and secularist, Ireland
• Jane Donnelly, Education Policy Officer Atheist Ireland
• Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freedom From Religion Foundation, USA
• Anthea McTiernan, Editor Irish Times Ticket Magazine
• PZ Myers, science professor and blogger, USA
• Maryam Namazie, Council of Ex-Muslims in Britain
• Taslima Nasrin, novelist and activist, Bangladesh and India
• Michael Nugent, Chairperson Atheist Ireland
• Nina Sankari, Polish Rationalist Association
• Farhana Shakir, lawyer and legal consultant, Pakistan
• Kate Smurthwaite, comedian and activist, Britain
• Anne Marie Waters, One Law for All Campaign, Britain
• Rebecca Watson, Skepchick network, USA

Fantastic, I tell you.

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

An activist blogger was murdered in Dhaka today.

A blogger and online activist, who was active in the Shahbagh movement, was killed in the capital’s Pallabi area Friday night, prompting the Shahbagh protesters to return to their 24-hour demonstration.

Police recovered the body of 30-year-old Ahmed Rajib Haider, full with indiscriminate stab injuries, from near his Kalshi residence in Mirpur.

I know nothing about the Shahbagh movement, but if he was killed for being an activist, I know something about the movement’s enemies, and thus a little about the movement by inference.

Pallabi police also confirmed that Rajib was an active participant of Shahbag movement.

Rajib used to write a Bangla blog nicknamed ‘Thaba Baba’.

He had also written many blog on the country’s Liberation War and Jamaat-e-Islami’s wicked activities.

About eight hours before his assassination, Rajib posted a status on Facebook calling upon mass people to boycott Jamaat’s media houses, coaching centers, cultural organisations and commercial institutions.

Ah. He was an opponent of Jamaat. Now he’s full of stab wounds, and dead.

Thanks to Tasneem Khalil for alerting me.

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

Brave hero JREF Saviour ElevatorGATE storifies an “exchange” between two Twitter accounts that use my real name as their handles. No harassment here folks! Public figure! Freeze peach!

Conversation with @OPHELlABENSON and @OpheIiaBenson

1. 

    

   O’FemFührer Benson@OPHELlABENSON

   ACHTUNG! send us donations to annoy zee haterz ! zend us all the moneys now! #ftbullies#opheliabenson

   3 hours ago

   ·

   Original link

   ReplyRetweetFavorite
2. 

    

   Ophelia F’ing Benson@OpheIiaBenson

   @OPHELlABENSON HAIL OPHITLER!

   3 hours ago

   ·

   Original link

   ReplyRetweetFavorite
3. 

    

   O’FemFührer Benson@OPHELlABENSON

   @OpheIiaBenson  danke schon. vee kan do thinky.  HEIL OPHITLER!#opheliabenson

   3 hours ago

   ·

   Original link

   ReplyRetweetFavorite
4. 

    

   Ophelia F’ing Benson@OpheIiaBenson

   @OPHELlABENSON who ist dast femfuhrer? You ist dast femfuhrer! Hail thinky femfuhrer Ophitler!

   3 hours ago

   ·

   Original link

   ReplyRetweetFavorite

Ain’t that funny? Tim Minchin, look to your laurels.

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

A new study provides evidence that yes Virginia in online gaming women are harassed much more than men. (This is in sharp contrast to philosophy, math, computer science, engineering, the military…wait…)

Using Halo 3 and choosing its most popular playlist as a sample group, they established three gamer tags, each assigned to either a pre-recorded male or female voice, or no voice at all, and recorded the reactions of their opponents after playing back innocous phrases designed to engage, but not anger, them (ex: “Hi everybody” or “I like this map”).

Taking into account negative and positive comments as well as neutral queries, this simple experiment (the full methodology of which you can read here) revealed that of the three gamertags, the one established as female received “roughly three times as many” directly negative comments than the male or control (no voice) gamertag did.

While the conclusions are unsurprising to anyone who plays games online, nonetheless the study provides verifiable evidence that women are in fact on the receiving end of a disproportionate amount of verbal abuse, and the many entries at Fat, Ugly, or Slutty are not isolated incidents so much as they are a grim illustration of status quo.

And the verbal abuse is just for being female, not for saying anything irritating like “I have an opinion on this.”

H/t Sarah Moglia.

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

You know that thing where you make a point, and it gets ignored, and then a guy makes the same point – (yes, “you” are a woman in this particular that thing) and the guy you were talking to is all “good point, dude, thanks, I totally get it now”?

That.

Stephanie summed it up in a tweet. (One of the virtues of tweets, innit. Summing up.)

Nothing like watching a male colleague be thanked for making the point I’d just made in a different form. Especially when talking sexism.

Ayup.

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

The Ottawa Citizen reports -

OTTAWA – An evangelical organization that describes homosexuality as a  “perversion” and a “sin” is receiving funding from the Government of Canada for its work in Uganda, where gays and lesbians face severe threats.

Well that seems like bad planning. The funding is for unrelated activities, but the government of Canada should find non-homophobic organizations to fund for unrelated activities.

The federal government has denounced virulent homophobia in that East African  country and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has condemned plans for an  anti-gay bill that could potentially include the death penalty for  homosexuals.

At the same time the government is providing $544,813 in funding for  Crossroads Christian Communications — an Ontario-based evangelical group that  produces television programming — to help dig wells, build latrines and promote  hygiene awareness in Uganda through 2014.

Until Tuesday, the organization’s website carried a list of “sexual sins”  deemed to be “perversion”: “Turning from the true and/or proper purpose of  sexual intercourse; misusing or abusing it, such as in pedophilia, homosexuality  and lesbianism, sadism, masochism, transvestism, and bestiality.”

Not a good fit for work in Uganda.

To be fair, the government is apparently looking into it.

Crossroads defends its position on homosexuality as grounded in  scripture.

“Crossroads’ views on sexuality are informed by our Christian faith and values,” spokeswoman Carolyn Innis told The Canadian Press in an email.

And that’s the problem with letting one’s views on sexuality be informed by one’s Christian faith and values, isn’t it. The views are shitty, and the adjective “Christian” doesn’t make them one bit less so. On the contrary, the adjective creates a halo effect for the views, which shields them from careful reasoning.

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

Good old NPR, always middlebrow to a fault. Talk about atheism and religion? Well you know what will be said, because NPR wouldn’t allow anything else to be said.

Sometimes the debate between atheism and religion can be enlightening, showing us how both of these different approaches dive deeply into the currents of human experience. Sometimes, however, it can be deeply depressing, devolving into hard lines and acrimony. As an atheist, I often find myself exasperated with what I call “strident atheism.”

The banality, it…well it doesn’t burn. It stifles with fuzzy fluffiness. Atheism and religion are “approaches,” which are different but not more or less accurate. They are approaches that dive (how can an approach dive?) “deeply into the currents of human experience.” Well that sounds profound, but is it right? Not particularly. It’s approximate, and it sounds deep to the unwary and inattentive. If there’s anything I dislike it’s writing that sounds deep to the unwary and inattentive and to no one else.

And then the atheist winds up brightly informing us that he has a brand new label for argumentative atheism, and that brand new label is “strident.”

Thud.

People in this vein seem intent on ignoring the long narrative of human spiritual endeavor. They often reduce it to histories of ignorance and intolerance. Believers in strident atheism convince themselves that it’s OK to ignore the scholarship on the long and ancient history of human spiritual endeavor. And that brings me to my Valentine.

Oh, god, that is shitty writing. Every word of it is bad. “People in this vein”? And what’s the long narrative of human spiritual endeavor that those people are ignoring? Religion isn’t that narrative. Religion isn’t history of religion. And nobody is a “believer in strident atheism” and the rest of the sentence is just baby talk.

It’s insulting, to use such bad writing on what’s supposed to be a serious news show.

Adam Frank ends with a hymn of praise to Karen Armstrong, despite admitting that she’s not much good.

Armstrong has been criticized for shallowness and for skipping over the subtleties that formal scholarship would reveal. I am sure some of that criticism is true. I can see that she is, indeed, often painting in broad strokes. But like a good science writer, she is opening doors into the history of ideas and experience that we can all follow.

No she isn’t. She’s giving people an illusion of knowledge and a distorted view of the subject.

There is another reason I, a scientist, love Karen Armstrong. All of her writings are illuminated by a deep and resonant compassion. As a scientist I am always interested in universals, things that are always true. Armstrong, who founded the wonderful Charter for Compassion, is interested in the same thing when it comes to human behavior as an expression of spiritual longing. Compassion, she tells us, must always come first, must always be the first concern of a religious life. I am not religious but I could not agree more.

Thank you Ms. Armstrong. Will you be my Valentine?

Gag me. But she doesn’t only tell us compassion must come first; she also insists that all religions put it first, and that’s a damn lie.

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

Private medical records. Photos taken on the roof of a parking garage. Ultrasound. About as invasive as it could get.

H/t Stuart F Taylor.

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

[inarticulate scream of rage and disgust]

PZ tells us what a Saudi father – a “religious scholar” – did to his five-year-old daughter. Read it, if you can bear horrors.

Maryam tells us too.

The father had to pay a little blood money. That’s all. Half the blood money he would have had to pay if Lama had been a boy. (But if Lama had been a boy he wouldn’t have done what he did to her.)

I know heinous child abuse, rape and torture occurs everywhere. I’ve heard some of the worst cases right here in Britain. But it is only under Sharia (and religious laws) that there is always some Islamic justification for leniency or for blaming the mother or child. This case reminds me of an Iranian asylum case I worked on years ago where the Sharia judge told the woman that she was responsible for her child’s sexual abuse as she was not satisfying her husband…

And in the wonderful Islamic tradition of obsessing about females, one Saudi cleric has issued a fatwa calling for parents to put burkas on their babies to prevent child sexual abuse…

Ana Lama

Ana Lama

Ana Lama…

I despise Sharia

I despise Sharia

I despise Sharia…

Sign a petition calling for justice for Lama here.

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

You know that trope about the expansion of or meaning-shift in the word “misogyny”? The one that says it’s being used to mean the same thing as sexism? I don’t use it that way, but I’ve found an example that, I think, does.

It’s a petition to the White House asking the Obama administration to

Stop using the “wives, mothers, & daughters” rhetorical frame that defines women by their relationships to other people.

The petition is hopeless of course, but it’s a good point. But I think the word “misogyny” doesn’t belong.

In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama said: “We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace and free from the fear of domestic violence.”

This “our wives, mothers, and daughters” phrase is one he routinely employs, but it is counterproductive to the women’s equality the President is ostensibly supporting.

Defining women by their relationships to other people is reductive, misogynist, and alienating to women who do not define ourselves exclusively by our relationships to others. Further, by referring to “our” wives et al, the President appears to be talking to The Men of America about Their Women, rather than talking to men AND women.

I too hate the “our” usage, but every time I flinch when I hear it, I also realize why he does it and that it’s not going to change. It’s framing. It’s prodding the audience to remember that we’re all in this together. It’s not possible to do that without also seeming to be assuming that “we” are not women, that “we” are only related to women as opposed to being women, so that women are again – probably accidentally – shoved off into some other realm, in the very act of reminding everyone that women are right here. That’s language for you; it mends one thing only to break something else.

But in any case, “misogynist” is the wrong word there. There’s not the faintest whiff of hostility in the phrasing of what Obama said. The word should be “sexist.” Sexism can include hostility but it doesn’t have to; misogyny is hostility [to women].

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

The US Senate has renewed the Violence Against Women Act, 78 to 22. (It’s odd that I’m pleased about the 78 rather than appalled by the 22. Low expectations strike again.)

The act expired in 2011, putting efforts to improve its many federal programs on hold. Last year both the Republican-led House and the Democratic-controlled Senate passed renewal bills, but they were unable to reach a compromise.

This year House Republicans, sensitive to their lackluster showing among women voters in the November election, have vowed to move expeditiously on the issue. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., has taken the lead in negotiating the terms of a House bill.

So…”Ok, bitchez, if you’re going to get all bitchy about it and not vote for us, fine, we’ll pass your fucking Don’t Hit the Bitchez bill. But don’t come crying to us when all the men run away because they can’t stand you telling them not to hit you.” Is that how that went? Not in so many words, maybe, at least not in public, but that’s basically the thinking? The principle is hell no, no laws against violence against women in the Land of Libertee, but expediency, well that’s another story, but damn those…ladies for making us ditch our principles.

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

Atheist leans over backward to find something contrarian to say about religion because of finding Dawkins too simplistic on the subject. Douglas Murray, in The Spectator. (It sounds like something piping hot and fresh from 2009, but oh well.)

These new atheists remain incapable of getting beyond the question, ‘Is it true?’ They assume that by ‘true’ we agree them to mean ‘literally true’. They also assume that if the answer is ‘no’, then that closes everything. But it does not. Just because something is not literally true does not mean that there is no truth, or worth, in it.

Schopenhauer said that truth may be like water: it needs a vessel to carry it. It is all very well to point out — as Dawkins did again the other night — that Adam did not exist. But to think that this discovery makes not just the story of Eden but the narrative of the crucifixion and resurrection meaningless is to rather startlingly miss a point. You can be in agreement with Professor Dawkins that Adam did not exist, yet know and feel that the story of Eden speaks profoundly about ourselves.

Oh come on. The story of Eden? Speaks profoundly about ourselves? Really profoundly, more profoundly than most stories, to say nothing of psychology or history or journalism?

No it doesn’t. It’s a crude little story, taking up all of 13 verses, and its “profound” speaking amounts to saying obey imaginary rules from imaginary gods, and by the way you’re supposed to be ignorant. What’s profound about that?

People do talk such bullshit about this kind of thing. It’s the old magic of reputation – priests are always saying The Fall is a profound story, so because repetition trumps truth, lots of people believe it. It’s crap. Shake off the prestige of the story and look at it without mystification. It’s not profound. It’s the theocratic version of The One Forbidden Thing. It has a talking snake. Next contestant please.

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