Surly Amy has a nice post about the women in secularism conference (cue squawks from agonized bores with facetious cod-Edwardian advice for zee laydeez). She’s made Surly-Ramics necklaces for people who donate to a scholarship fund to send students to the conference.

It is important that we lend our support to conferences like this groundbreaking event so that we can pave the way for future events while encouraging future leaders in the movement to stand up and be counted. I support women in secularism and I hope you will too.

I think that’s true. I think that’s true even if you accept the contemptuous premise that all the speakers at the conference were invited solely because they have the korrekt genitalia. I don’t accept that premise, of course; I think Susan Jacoby and Margaret Downey and the rest [bracketing me, of course] have more than that; but if I did, I would still think it was true that we should lend our support to conferences like this. I’ll tell you why. It’s because just representation, by itself, does something important, and lack of representation does too, but in the opposite direction. It has to do with that business of encouraging future leaders. It has to do with stereotype threat, with give me the colored doll, with implicit associations.

On another note: while reading the post I noticed something I hadn’t known, which is that Skepchick is international, and there’s a Swedish Skepchick. Swedish! There’s a post up right now advertising a debate between Christer Sturmark and a guy called Marcus Birro. Google translate reveals that the Swedish Skepchick blogger considers Birro a bullshitter. But small world, hey, I know Christer Sturmark! Isn’t life funny.

I’ve been seeing a lot of excitement about the conference, here and there. I’m thinking it’s going to be pretty good fun.

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

One piece of slightly good news: Helen Ukpabio has canceled both her planned trips to the US. That doesn’t do the children of Nigeria any good, but it does throw a wrench into her plans to go global.

Once Ukpabio’s travel plans emerged, campaigners against her activities in Africa began appealing to the US authorities to prevent her from preaching in that country. Prominent Nigerian humanist Leo Igwe, who has had many confrontations with Ukpabio and her Liberty Gospel Church, wrote that “efforts must be made to stop this evangelical throwback from spreading her diseased gospel in the US”, while online campaigners called for her exclusion from the US, and set about raising money for the UK-based charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, which campaigns to protect children threatened by witch hunts in the Niger Delta region of Africa.

Now, four months after details of Ukpabio’s US trip first emerged, it seems the campaign against it has paid off, with Nigerian media reporting that she will no longer be visiting the country. In a report sympathetic towards Ukpabio, the Nigerian Voice website quotes the preacher’s attorney Victor Ukutt, who confirms that the trip has been cancelled, and makes a series of bizarre allegations against her opponents, including Stepping Stones, suggesting that the campaigns against her are a front for obtaining money through fraudulent means. This is a common tactic for Ukpabio, who has long dismissed the “child witch scam” as an atheist conspiracy.

Actually, what that website says is that Ukpabio got death threats “on behalf of” Stepping Stones Nigeria.

The President and founder of the Liberty Gospel Foundation Church, Lady Apostle Helen Ukpabio says she has indefinitely cancelled her scheduled visits to the USA which where billed for March and May this year.

Speaking through her attorney, Victor Ukutt, Esq., the Pentecostal Pastor and Nollywood actress, who has her church branches spread all over Africa, said her decision to cancel her trip was based on the series of death threat she received from organisations like Stepping Stones Nigeria a based in the United Kingdom which claimed to work as a charity to protect witch children in Nigeria.

I don’t believe that for a second.

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

Teresa MacBain is another one of those ministers – the ones who lose their grip on god and then wonder how on earth they can deal with the situation.

“I’m currently an active pastor and I’m also an atheist,” she says. “I live a double life. I feel pretty good on Monday, but by Thursday — when Sunday’s right around the corner — I start having stomachaches, headaches, just knowing that I got to stand up and say things that I no longer believe in and portray myself in a way that’s totally false.”

MacBain glances nervously around the room. It’s a Sunday, and normally she would be preaching at her church in Tallahassee, Fla. But here she is, sneaking away to the American Atheists’ convention in Bethesda, Md.

Her secret is taking a toll, eating at her conscience as she goes about her pastoral duties week after week — two sermons every Sunday, singing hymns, praying for the sick when she doesn’t believe in the God she’s praying to. She has had no one to talk to, at least not in her Christian community, so her iPhone has become her confessor, where she records her private fears and frustrations.

I can’t think of any other job that has exactly that problem. Even various woo-based jobs like homeopath aren’t exactly the same, because homeopathy isn’t a person, or a Person. It’s that that makes it a matter of conscience, I think.

She was raised a conservative Southern Baptist. She had questions about conflicts in the Bible and the role of women.

She says she sometimes felt she was serving a taskmaster of a God, whose standards she never quite met.

For years, MacBain set her concerns aside. But when she became a United Methodist pastor nine years ago, she started asking sharper questions. She thought they’d make her faith stronger.

In reality,” she says, “as I worked through them, I found that religion had so many holes in it, that I just progressed through stages where I couldn’t believe it.”

The questions haunted her: Is Jesus the only way to God? Would a loving God torment people for eternity? Is there any evidence of God at all?

And another, key question: would a loving God make the evidence so hard (we, being atheists, would say impossible) to find and then punish us for not believing without evidence? Would a loving God give us useful capacities to seek out the truth and test for falsehood yet demand that we ignore all that and have faith that there is a loving God?

I say no. That’s not a loving god. I am completely unable to believe in god, and I’m unable to countermand the aspects of my mind that make me unable to believe. That’s not something a loving god could or should or would punish me (or anyone) for.

MacBain misses the relationships, and she misses the music. But she doesn’t miss God.

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

It sounds like an awkward time at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature panel on the life and works of Christopher Hitchens last night. Apparently it was billed as a tribute but it was also a discussion, and the result is that it wasn’t an unadulterated tribute.

Mr. Hitchens’s erudition, wit and prolificacy were taken for granted by the five participants: Katha Pollitt and Victor Navasky, his erstwhile colleagues at The Nation magazine; Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair; and George Packer, a staff writer for The New Yorker. The question initially posed by the writer Ian Buruma, the event’s moderator, was whether Mr. Hitchens’s work and ideas would stand the test of time.

Well I’ll tell you what I would have said if I’d been on that panel. Yes. Absolutely yes; very much yes. I think he had huge flaws – or, more to the point, that there were huge flaws in some of his ideas and work – but I also think the quality of his work was of the kind that stands the test of time. I think he wrote far too well and too shrewdly on too large a range of subjects with too much wit and insight not to stand the test of time.

Mr. Navasky said Mr. Hitchens didn’t have “original theories,” but rather offered “original takes” on things. Ms. Pollitt said that no magazine writer who “weighs in” so regularly on the issues of the day can expect their work to age well. She went further — since, she claimed, it was probably “the reason” she was invited to be on the panel — and called Mr. Hitchens a “tremendous misogynist” who didn’t have “a lot of serious, professional respect for women writers.” She also chided his habit of greeting her with a kiss on the hand, a habit she called “grotesque.”

That was one of the huge flaws – although I’m not sure I would call it misogyny (but then Katha knows a lot more about it than I do, having been a colleague for many years) – the failure to take women seriously. (Although there were exceptions. That Jefferson scholar who wrote about him shortly after he left the scene, for instance.)

But they also pointed to some of his vital work, both serious and comic, like the time he was voluntarily waterboarded, or his series about self-improvement, for which he had a seaweed body wrap and dabbled in yoga. Mr. Packer singled out Mr. Hitchens’s performance in a debate with Tony Blair about whether religion is a force for good, and he also praised Mr. Hitchens for speaking out strongly and often about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie when no one else was willing to “stick out their neck.”

Mr. Rushdie, the festival’s founder, was sitting front and center in the crowd. During the time allotted for audience participation, he approached a microphone and said he wanted to pay tribute to Mr. Hitchens, “which is what I thought we were doing tonight,” he added, with an edge in his voice. He championed his friend’s best works as “masterpieces of style,” called his book “God is Not Great” an “extraordinary polemic,” and said he fit comfortably in the tradition of great essayists going back to the 18th century and his work would undoubtedly endure.

That’s what I think. It’s exactly what I think. I said much the same thing almost ten years ago, when B&W was new.

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

I’ve just published Adele Wilde-Blavatsky’s response to The Feminist Wire’s “Collective Response” to her article (also for The Feminist Wire) on the hijab and the hoodie. Don’t miss it. The “Collective Response” and the actions of The Feminist Wire – especially in summarily booting Wilde-Blavatsky from TFW – are a stinking outrage.

The ”Collective Response” said, among other things,

What we do find deeply problematic, however, is the questioning of women’s choice to wear the niqab and the presumption that this decision is rooted in a “false consciousness.”

Wilde-Blavastky replied (but the Feminist Wire booted her out instead of publishing it, so I have the privilege of publishing it instead)

This is not a presumption, there is significant empirical evidence from Muslim women bearing witness to a deeply oppressive patriarchal culture and religious practice which entails being brainwashed and forced to wear the hijab and burqa from a young age and being severely punished for not doing so.  Women have been tortured and murdered for not wearing these clothes.  However, you only refer to the Muslim women who have the freedom to exercise choice. What about the millions of Muslim women who don’t? Are their voices and experiences not relevant in this debate at all? Is the fear of Islamaphobia so intense that it cannot accommodate the voices of Muslim and non-Muslim women who want to see the hijab banned?

In some circles, yes it clearly is.

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

Update: omigod – tricked again. I so nearly missed it…you just can’t ever be careful enough.

I nearly missed it, and didn’t because one of the comments on An Explanation From Nothing? quoted Krauss saying “the nasty review in the Times by the templeton funded philosopher is bringing more people out of the woodwork…”

Oh? thought I, so naturally I googled, and yes David Albert is Templeton funded, and furthermore, the Explanation From Nothing blog is part of the project, so it too is Templeton funded. I had no clue. I thought it was just a blog like any other blog.

I’m not saying the people in the project are corrupted by Templeton, but I do think the Templeton role should be very visible. It shows if you get there via the project but it doesn’t if you don’t. That’s…dubious.

Naïve pre-update post

Here’s a change of pace for you – the relationship between physics and philosophy. Something you can get your teeth into.

It’s a follow-up to An Explanation From Nothing? which was about David Albert’s review of Laurence Krauss’ A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something rather than Nothing and drew comments from David Albert himself and from Sean Carroll and Lee Smolin.

Meanwhile in another part of the forest Krauss said in an interview that philosophers are big poopyheads who don’t know squat, and a number of philosophers disputed that claim, including Massimo Pigliucci and Brian Leiter.

I’ll give Leiter the last word, because I can.

My best guess is that the culture so celebrates physics, that physicists have come to believe the “PR” about them. Very good physicists tend to be very good at physics, and I, at least, am inclined to the view that if you want to know what really exists, it’s better to ask a scientist than a philosopher. But it’s not obvious that even talented physicsts are very smart about other matters, such as those that require conceptual clarity, subtle distinctions, reflectiveness about presuppositions, and the appreciation of logical and inferential entailments of particular propositions. More than anything, I hope Krauss’s tantrum and its aftermath will help disabuse the culture of the myth that being good at physics means being good at thought.

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

Watching the Dan Savage video again.

The first student walks out after Savage says let’s talk about the bible for a second, because people point out “that they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans…that being gay is wrong.” Boom, she’s up.

That’s very quick. That’s very quick.

Why so quick?

It’s true that people say that. Why is she leaving just because Savage says people say that? Why is she leaving so fast when he hasn’t even said “bullshit” yet?

We can learn to ignore the bullshit about gay people in the bible, the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner

And the second student is up and on his way out.

about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation.

Two more up and leaving.

We ignore bullshit in the bible about all sorts of things.

And now it’s a torrent and you can’t count any more.

The bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slaveowners waved bibles over their heads during the Civil War.

Bigger torrent. Lots of smirking.

The shortest book in the bible is a letter from Paul to a man who owned slaves. And Paul doesn’t say, “Christians don’t own people.” Paul says how Christians own people.

No more walkouts.

We ignore what the bible says about slavery because the bible got slavery wrong.

Two stragglers leave.

It does look orchestrated. Or it looks as though that first one, who was on her feet after one sentence, inspired a bunch of others.

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

Another journalist in Mexico murdered apparently for doing her job too well.

New York, April 30, 2012–Authorities must immediately investigate the murder of Mexican journalist Regina Martínez Pérez, determine the motive, and ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The body of Martínez was found in her home on Saturday evening in Xalapa, the capital of the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, according to news reports. She had been badly beaten around the face and ribs and had been strangled to death, news reports said. The state attorney general, Amadeo Flores Espinoza, said in a news briefing that it appeared her TV, cellphones, and computer had been stolen.

Martínez had worked for the national magazine Proceso for more than 10 years and was known for her in-depth reporting on drug cartels and the links between organized crime and government officials. In the week before her murder, she covered the arrest of an allegedly high-ranking leader of the Zetas; the arrests of nine police officers charged with working for a cartel; and the story of a local mayor who was arrested with other alleged cartel gunmen after a shootout with the Mexican Army, according to news reports.

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

About those high school students walking out on Dan Savage when he started talking about anti-gay bullshit in the bible.

They were there for a conference on journalism, a conference for the Journalism Education Association and the National Scholastic Press Association.

Journalists need to be able to listen to things they don’t agree with in order to do their jobs.

That’s one thing. Another thing is that walking out sends a message. What message were these students sending? That harsh criticism of the bible is a bad thing, bad enough to be worth the disruption and message-sending of walking out on a speaker.

But what Savage was saying is true. It is true that the bible accepts slavery as a given. It is true that there is a lot of bad stuff in the bible. It’s true, and it has done harm and it continues to do harm. So why is it bad to say so?

I think it’s mostly because we’ve all been trained to think that religion deserves a lot of deference, and that refusing to pay it deference is shockingly bad; walk out of the talk level bad.

We’ve been trained to think that, but it’s bullshit.

One of the teachers attending the speech with his students told CNN’s Carol Costello on Monday that he was taken aback by the speech and that he supported the decision of some of his students to walk out of it.

“It took a real dark, hostile turn, certainly, as I saw it,” said Rick Tuttle, a teacher at Sutter Union High School in Southern California. “It became very hostile toward Christianity, to the point that many students did walk out, including some of my students.

“They felt that they were attacked … a very pointed, direct attack on one particular group of students. It’s amazing that we go to an anti-bullying speech and one group of students is picked on in particular, with harsh, profane language.”

Ah but they weren’t picked on. They’re not the bible, so they weren’t picked on. No group of students was picked on; no group of students was the object of a very pointed, direct attack by Dan Savage. Those students are not Christianity. People don’t get to consider themselves identical to an organization or institution so that they can consider themselves attacked when the org or inst is criticized.

John Shore takes a dim view of the walkout in the Huffington Post.

I, for one, have no idea what the world has come to, when a person who has made his career out of speaking, in the most unadorned language possible, directly to great numbers of young people about some of the most important issues in their lives, dares to speak in unadorned language directly to a great number of young people about one of the most important issues in American life today.

Besides the fact that he was raised in a devoutly Catholic home and is the country’s leading gay activist, who is Dan Savage to say anything at all about the ages-old Christian condemnation of gay people? So what if his claim is manifestly valid that nothing contributes more to the destruction of the lives of gay people than do Christians falsely and hypocritically using the Bible as an instrument of brutality? So what if he believes that among the most egregious of all Christian sins is daring to proclaim that God’s love ends where their own fear and hatred begin? So what if every day, for decades on end, Dan Savage has dealt with young lives obliterated through violence informed and buttressed by the bedrock “Christian” view that gay people are less than human?

…

You know, it’s almost like the people who put on this conference, as well as a small but now (thanks, media machine!) significant number of individuals who attended it, don’t even know what the word “journalism” means.

Well, thank you, young people who walked out of Dan’s speech the moment he began talking about the parts of the Bible to which he takes exception, for reminding us of what beats so passionately in the heart and soul of every true journalist. Speaking as a person who for twelve years made his living as a journalist, I admire your dedication to the journalist’s creed: When you personally disagree with something someone is saying, get up and leave.

Well how else are they going to achieve martyrdom in this day and age?

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

And I’ve been meaning to post Dan Savage telling high school students how the bible got some things wrong.

We ignore what the bible says about slavery because the bible got slavery wrong.

What’s interesting is that a whole bunch of kids got up and stalked out. What’s your point, kids? That it’s good to persecute gay people because it’s in the bible? Or as Savage said -

It’s funny as someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the bible how pansy ass some people react when you push back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao0k9qDsOvs

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

Eric does a really thorough job on Bill Donohue and the Catholic League.

A sample:

This explains, for instance, the insistence, by Catholic bishops, archbishops and cardinals, that the law of marriage not be changed to accommodate the relationships of homosexual persons. Although according to canon 1059, “the marriage of Catholics is governed not only by divine law but also by canon law, without prejudice to the competence of civil authority concerning the merely civil effects of the same marriage,” (my italics) it is clear that, by insisting that civil authorities cannot unilaterally declare the validity of marriages between homosexuals, Catholic bishops are holding canon law to be, in effect, superior to, and determinative of, what can be licitly determined by civil law. We should not be under any illusions about the scope of canon law in terms of the church’s own self-understanding. Canon law is, in crucial respects, prescriptive for civil law.

This is particularly evident with respect to laws governing abortion and assisted dying. The very existence of legal abortion or assisted dying is offensive to obedient Catholics. (The qualification is necessary, though, in general, the church holds that dissidents have effectively excommunicated themselves by their beliefs and actions. Only those Catholics faithful to the teachings of the Magisterium are considered to be Catholic in the true sense of that word.) In a short paper entitled “Response to Our Critics,” (The Review of Politics, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Winter 2000) 43-48) the Catholics Gary Glenn (I believe the linked Gary Glenn is the co-author of this paper) and John Stack inveigh against what they call the “civil liberties” regime in the United States, which they hold to be a great danger to Catholics.

Read on.

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

As promised, from Victor Stenger’s Quantum Gods (Prometheus 2009).

First, from the Foreword by Michael Shermer. On a book tour in the spring of 2004 he met the producers of the documentary (although I would call it a “documentary”) What the Bleep Do We Know?

What the Bleep Do We Know? went on to become one of the highest grossing documentary films of all time…The explanation is to be found in the fact that the film is not really about quantum physics. The documentary’s central motif is that we create our own reality through will, thought, and consciousness, which, according to the “experts” who appear as talking heads throughout the film (most of whom are not scientists, let alone quantum physicists), depends on quantum mechanics, that branch of physics so befuddling even to those who do it for a living that it can be invoked whenever something supernatural or paranormal is desired. [p 7]

He quotes University of Oregon physicist (ret’d) Amit Goswamy saying the material world is nothing but movements of consciousness and that he chooses moment by moment his experiences.

I publicly challenged Dr Goswami to leap out of a twenty-story building and consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground’s tendencies. [p 8]

He cites Deepak Chopra and J.Z. Knight, Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff. He asks Victor Stenger if the Penrose-Hameroff conjecture (about microtubules and stuff) has any merit.

Stenger explained to me that the gap between sub-atomic quantum effects and large-scale macrosystems is too large to bridge. [p 9]

In other words, no.

Stenger explains in the preface what “quantum spirituality” is.

The primary theme of the quantum spirituality movement is that “we make our own reality.” This principle is the subject of many book in which the authors grandly claim a new “paradigm” in our understanding of the nature of reality, with the human mind somehow tuned into a “cosmic consciousness” that pervades the universe. [pp 14-5]

Ok, now I get it. When I say that I too think I’m part of something much bigger than my own self, and cite the species, and animals, and living organisms, and the cosmos, and history, I’m not talking about what quantum spirituality people are talking about when they say they are part of something bigger than their own selves. They’re talking about something else; they’re talking about being somehow tuned into a “cosmic consciousness” that pervades the universe.

Yes. I don’t think we make our own reality, and I don’t think I’m somehow tuned into a cosmic consciousness that pervades the universe.

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

A commenter on The golden tree of bullshit said some things about Quantum Consciousness which I don’t understand.

All my life I’ve lived in both the physical and spiritual world leaving me a bit spacey. I’ve always known I was part of something bigger than my own self but had to call the feeling God or Goddess even though the names didn’t fit. After much research I found Quantum Physics which calls what I feel the Quantum Consciousness. At last a scientific explanation for what I do and who I am.

I don’t understand any of that, to tell the truth. As I said in reply, I too know I’m part of something bigger than my own self, in fact many things -

The human species, the animal kingdom, the layer of life on this planet, the galaxy, the cosmos…History; the loose community of people who like to read and think and talk about stuff; nature…and more.

But I certainly don’t have to call the feeling (and it’s not just a feeling, it’s an obvious fact) god, nor does it leave me a bit spacey. (Other things do that.) I can’t begin to understand what that or what Connie mentions has to do with quantum physics, or why quantum physics would call what Connie feels quantum consciousness. I’m lost in a maze here.

So of course I turned to my friend, Google, which offered me Deepak Chopra (just as I expected), and Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. I have no idea whether the latter item makes any kind of sense or not. Google also offered me Victor Stenger, with whom I once shared the weird Hyatt view-of-the-air-terminal elevator in Orlando last month, and who gave me the fish eye both times I spoke to him. Stenger says it’s bullshit, which is what I thought.

A new myth is burrowing its way into modern thinking. The notion is spreading that the principles embodied in quantum mechanics imply a central role for the human mind in determining the very nature of the universe. Not surprisingly, this idea can be found in New Age periodicals and in many books on the metaphysical shelves of book stores. But it also can appear where you least expect it, even on the pages of that bastion of rational thinking,The Humanist .

…

The assertion is made that quantum mechanics has ruled invalid the materialistic, reductionist view of the universe, introduced by Newton in the seventeenth century, which formed the foundation of the scientific revolution. Now, materialism is replaced by a new spiritualism and reductionism is cast aside by a new holism.

The myth of quantum consciousness sits well with many whose egos have made it impossible for them to accept the insignificant place science perceives for humanity, as modern instruments probe the farthest reaches of space and time.

…alas, quantum consciousness has about as much substance as the aether from which it is composed. Early in this century, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s relativity destroyed the notion of a holistic universe that had seemed within the realm of possibility in the century just past. First, Einstein did away with the aether, shattering the doctrine that we all move about inside a universal, cosmic fluid whose excitations connect us simultaneously to one another and to the rest of the universe. Second, Einstein and other physicists proved that matter and light were composed of particles, wiping away the notion of universal continuity. Atomic theory and quantum mechanics demonstrated that everything, even space and time, exists in discrete bits – quanta. To turn this around and say that twentieth century physics initiated some new holistic view of the universe is a complete misrepresentation of what actually took place.

The final sentence of the piece:

The myth of quantum consciousness should take its place along with gods, unicorns, and dragons as yet another product of the fantasies of people unwilling to accept what science, reason, and their own eyes tell them about the world.

Aww.

Well I’ll just go on realizing I’m a part (a very damn small one) of a lot of other bigger things, and let it go at that.

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

Yes it makes us look bad but we have to do it anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z0DB2XOoHc

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

I promised to pay more attention to Bill Donohue, so here goes. (It’s going to be irritating, doing this; the fingernails on a blackboard kind of irritating. The fact that he’s the only one who talks but he still finds it necessary to quote himself as if he were another person – that’s going to be very irritating.) He says Catholics can do whatever they want to so shut up.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the right of Catholic institutions to determine their own prerogatives:

If a racist Catholic were disinvited from speaking at the commencement exercises of a Catholic college, the only relevant issue would be why the invitation was extended in the first place. But when a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage Catholic, Victoria Kennedy (the widow of Sen. Edward Kennedy), was disinvited from giving the commencement address at Anna Maria College, the issue was not why she was invited in the first place—it was the decision to disinvite her. That’s because many liberal Catholics are angered by racism and tolerant of abortion. Worse is the spectacle of non-Catholics like Faithful America petitioning the public to get Worcester Bishop Robert McManus (who properly intervened in this matter) to allow Mrs. Kennedy to speak.

You see what I mean about irritating. How would you like it if I said at the top of every post, “Butterflies and Wheels blogger Ophelia Benson comments on [whatever it may be]“? Whom would I fool if I did that? No one. Yo, Bill, you can skip that part – we know it’s you talking, we know there’s not a third party telling us it’s you – just say what you have to say and sign your name to it, that’s all. No need for the fake introduction by a pretend ghost.

So, what he said – check out that “Worse is” – he’s saying that it’s bad that many liberal Catholics are angered by racism and tolerant of abortion. He’s saying Catholics should be tolerant of racism and angered by abortion.

Then he’s saying that what Catholic bishops do is none of our business. Yes it is. They interfere with government. They violate their tax-exempt status by telling parishioners how to vote. They all but wrote parts of the health care bill. What they do is very much our business.

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

Cristina Odone was very annoyed a couple of weeks ago that religions she takes to be inferior in some unspecified way are sometimes counted as Big Serious Grown-up religions like Catholicism.

Saint Morwenna, who in the 6th century built a church on a cliff with her bare hands, must be turning in her grave. Her beloved Cornwall, the last redoubt of Celtic Christians, is to teach witchcraft and Druidry as part of RE. The county council regards her religion (and that of other Cornish saints such as Piran and Petroc) as no better than paganism.

And? So what? If that’s true (which I doubt), what of it? Why shouldn’t Religious Education simply teach about all religions (or as many as there is time for in the curriculum) impartially? The county council is a branch of government, and as such, ought to be secular. The county council isn’t a branch of the Church of England…much less of Odone’s favored religion.

 When the BBC’s The Big Questions asked me to join its panel of religious commentators two years ago, I was taken aback to find it included a Druid. Emma Restall Orr rabbited on inoffensively about mother nature, but I was shocked that her platitudes were given the status of religious belief by the programme makers. Ms Restall Orr exults in her website that the media has stopped seeing Druidism “as a game” and now invites her on serious faith and ethics programmes from ITV’s Ultimate Questions to Radio 4’s The Moral Maze and Sunday Programme.

Well I’m shocked that Odone’s platitudes are given the status of serious thinking worth a spot in major media. Are Catholic platitudes really better (or more serious) platitudes than Druid platitudes? Odone gets invited on “serious faith and ethics programmes” even though she’s confused enough to think that “faith and ethics” make a natural and sensible pair, so why shouldn’t Orr be likewise?

H/t Roger.

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

Mark Vernon, always eager to plow new ground and alert us to new insights and ways of looking at the world, asks

Is it just me or has the dialogue between science and religion become a bit stale?

Ok I was joking. That question is staler than last year’s bread. The very idea that there is such a thing as “the dialogue between science and religion” is not only stale but also blatant propaganda by pro-religion types who are desperate to convince everyone that religion’s claims to discover truths about the world are every bit as reasonable as those of science. It’s unpardonably naïve to talk about “the dialogue between science and religion” as if it were an obvious, sensible, reasonable thing with no trace of an agenda or vested interest. It’s unpardonably naïve to talk about it without pausing to thank the Templeton Foundation for all the cash.

The bulk of the article is the usual slush about talking stones and spiritual nature and listen to the music and how evil is materialism. There’s one item that sticks out though.

Barfield argued that we need to recover our full imaginative capacities if we are deeply to know that the world is alive. Matter, he believed, would then be seen for what it once was, as an expression of spirit. (“Matter” is linked to “mater”, or mother, remembered in the expression, mother earth.) This might not be so difficult to achieve because, actually, we experience it every day. When you perceive the matter called a human being speaking, you spontaneously know those perceptions as one person communicating with you, another person. You do not have a theory of other minds, as some philosophers have proposed, driven by a flattening scientistic ideology. We know such matter as spirited people – as souls, you might say.

What?

When you perceive the matter called a human being speaking, you spontaneously know those perceptions as one person communicating with you, another person. You do not have a theory of other minds, as some philosophers have proposed, driven by a flattening scientistic ideology.

That’s one of the most willfully mindless, incurious statements I’ve seen in awhile. “You do not have a theory of other minds” – yes you do! Of course you damn well do. It’s a measurable stage of development*, and if you never acquire it, that means you are autistic. Not having it is a crippling disability for a human. It’s important to understand this, and it’s interesting. Sneering at it as a product of “a flattening scientistic ideology” is revoltingly know-nothing and anti-intellectual.

*You know those experiments – the researcher shows the child a crayon (say), then puts it in a cookie box (say), then a new person comes in and the researcher asks the child where the new person will look for the crayon. Until about age 4 (I think) children always say the new person will look in the cookie box. After that age they realize the new person will be fooled by the cookie box. It’s the difference between understanding that other people don’t know what you know, and not understanding that.

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