There is a big upgrade in the works for tonight so FTB will be down for 2 to 3 hours starting at 7 pm my time which is 10 pm in New York and 3 am in London and…I’m not sure what time in Sydney. Late morning or noonish maybe – yes that should be right – it’s late there when it’s early for me and early there when it’s late for me, so around midday should be close.

4 hours and a quarter from now, anyway.

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

Andrew Brown goes out of his way to misunderstand William Lane Craig and Richard Dawkins on William Lane Craig. Does he really misunderstand or is he just playing silly buggers? I often think coat-trailing is all Andrew Brown ever does. He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases.

What he misunderstands is the part about the slaughtered children of Canaan.

…if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy.  Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

Brown misunderstands or pretends to misunderstand the outrage at that claim of Craig’s.

The question is whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that the innocent victims of such crimes go to heaven.

No it isn’t.  The question is whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that that belief makes it perfectly all right for “God” to “command” humans to kill them. It’s not whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that people go to heaven; it’s whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that because people do go to heaven therefore it is fine to kill them, at least if you’re “God” or obeying “God’s” command. That’s Clifford’s leaky ship. Human beings have no right to believe that their spooky mysterian boss tells them to massacre people and that that’s ok because the innocent ones will go to heaven. That’s a reckless, negligent, self-serving belief that would justify horrors.

via WEIT

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

I should at least read to the end before I throw a verbal punch, but you know sometimes it just can’t wait. Rabbi Adam Jacobs, ornamenting the Huffington Post with his wisdom.

He just doesn’t get it about believers, he confides. They keep making him jump with surprise.

 Often, I’ve inquired of non-believers if it at all vexes them that nothing that they have ever done or will ever do will make the slightest difference to anyone on any level?

Stupid man. He thinks because we don’t believe in the omni-god, we believe nothing makes any difference to anyone on any level. He thinks either there’s an omni-god, or nothing makes any difference to anyone on any level. On any level. If only he’d had the wit to leave off the “on any level” he wouldn’t look so dumb! But he just had to add that, thus underlining that he really was talking unmitigated nonsense.

After all, one random grouping of molecules interacting with another has no inherent meaning or value. I still await the brave soul (or neuron complex if you prefer) who will respond that I am quite correct; that no thought, deed, action or impulse is any more significant or meaningful than any other, that statements like “I would like to enslave all of humanity” and “I would like a chocolate bar” are functionally equivalent, and that their very own thoughts and words are intrinsically suspect as they are nothing more than some indiscriminate electro-chemical impulses. Until then, I will carry on believing that most “non-believers” actually believe a bit more than they generally let on, or are willing to admit to themselves.

Nooooo, you dope – we believe that things do matter on the level where we live, and that belief in a magical spooky omni-god is not necessary for that belief. It’s really not that difficult!

H/t Ezra Resnick, who does a more patient and meticulous critique on his blog.

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

Anyway, even though I have no immediate plans to out any of the people who put a little sparkle into their drab lives by calling me and some of my friends cunts and manginas and worse than genocidal dictators, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do anything at all. Nuh uh. I’m going to go on kvetching and nagging, like the other women bloggers who have decided no thanks, not having any more of that.

I’m going to call your attention to the AAUW report on sexual harassment in schools, for instance. I’m going to quote from it.

Girls were more likely than boys to say that they had been
negatively affected by sexual harassment—a finding that
confirms previous research by AAUW (2001) and others.
Not only were girls more likely than boys to say sexual
harassment caused them to have trouble sleeping (22
percent of girls versus 14 percent of boys), not want to go
to school (37 percent of girls versus 25 percent of boys),
or change the way they went to or home from school (10
percent of girls versus 6 percent of boys), girls were more
likely in every case to say they felt that way for “quite a
while” compared with boys. Too often, these negative
emotional effects take a toll on students’ and especially
girls’ education, resulting in decreased productivity and
increased absenteeism from school (Chesire, 2004). Thus,
although both girls and boys can encounter sexual harassment
at school, it is still a highly “gendered phenomenon
that is directly and negatively associated with outcomes
for girls” (Ormerod et al., 2008).

It’s not harmless. It’s not just “how it is.”

Many of the students who admitted to sexually harassing
others didn’t think of it as a big deal (44 percent), and
many were trying to be funny (39 percent). Only a handful
of students who harassed others did so because they wanted
a date with the person (3 percent) or thought the
person liked it (6 percent). Thus, sexual harassment does
not usually appear to be a misunderstanding. Few harassers
see themselves as “rejected suitors,” and many appear
to be misguided comedians or simply students who are
unaware, or unwilling to recognize, that their actions
may bother others. These findings suggest that prevention
efforts need to address when humor crosses the line and
becomes sexual harassment. Moreover, for some students,
understanding that sexual harassment can indeed be a big
deal for other students is a necessary first step.

Of course, for the ones who do it precisely because they do understand that it’s harmful, it’s more difficult to know how to improve their thinking. What’s a school to do? Sit them down and look them in the eye and say “why are you so determined to be a malicious piece of shit?” Well no. I don’t know what they can do though.

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

Since Maryam has just joined FTB and Kenan is about to, I thought I would repost this item from October 2005, when Maryam was named Secularist of the Year and I rejoiced rather noisily. Pleasingly, I quoted an earlier article in the Guardian in which Kenan talked about and quoted Maram. It all joins up, you see.

October 9, 2005

Maryam won! Maryam Namazie is Secularist of the Year. Ya-hoooooo. Sorry to be so American, but I’m really really pleased. As a matter of fact, I’m also damn smug. Here I’ve been publishing her articles like mad all this time, which I haven’t noticed the Guardian or the Independent bothering to do. Well? Well??! Wouldn’t you be smug? Wouldn’t you? Who has the better judgment? Eh? Eh? Which would you rather have published – Dilpazier Aslam, or Maryam Namazie?

Well maybe now they’ll start publishing her. Maybe this will be the push they need. Kenan Malik said, you know. Remember that? In the Guardian (she said pointedly). All the way back in January.

It also creates a climate of censorship in which any criticism of Islam can be dismissed as Islamophobic. The people who suffer most from such censorship are those struggling to defend basic rights within Muslim communities. Marayam Namazie is an Iranian refugee who has long campaigned for women’s rights and against Islamic repression. As a result she has been condemned as an Islamophobe, even by anti-racist organisations. “On the one hand,” she says, “you are threatened by the political Islamic movement with assassination or imprisonment or flogging. And on the other you have so-called progressive people who tell you that what you say in defence of humanity, in defence of equal rights for all, is racist. I think it’s nothing short of an outrage.”

I don’t see anything about the award in the papers yet (Maryam told me herself, and Azar Majedi sent a congratulatory message), so I’ll just link to this for now. It wouldn’t do for people not to know.

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

Chris Rodda points out a really staggering example of abuse of privilege: an Air Force Major defaming enlisted service members who can’t reply because he outranks them. You probably won’t be astonished to learn that the Major is a Christian, and a proselytizing one at that, while the soldiers he goes after are atheists.

For the past three years, an atheist Army sergeant has had to remain silent as lie after lie was told about him by an Air Force Major named Jonathan Dowty. Major Dowty, a.k.a. JD the Christian Fighter Pilot, is a Christian officer who belongs to the Officers’ Christian Fellowship (OCF), an organization that thinks the real duty of a military officer is to raise up “a spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit.”

As a devout Christian officer, Major Dowty has made it a practice to publicly attack and defame atheist and other non-Christian enlisted service members by name, knowing that they can’t respond to defend themselves because he’s an active duty officer, so it would be insubordinate for them to respond to him.

Would you believe it? I really do find myself incredulous. Wouldn’t you think he would recognize that that is taking a grossly unfair advantage?

Major Dowty has relentlessly targeted five particular service members on his christianfighterpilot.com blog — three atheists and one Muslim in the Army, and one Air Force tech sergeant who practices an earth-centered religion. All of these service members are or have been clients of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), and include my fellow blogger here on Freethought Blogs, foxhole atheist SGT Justin Griffith.

Well, one of the soldiers Major Dowty has been lying about on his blog, SGT Dustin Chalker, just got out of the Army, and is now free to fight back against this Christian bully who has dogged him for the last three years.

Dustin’s “first order of business” upon becoming a civilian was to go straight to Major Dowty’s blog and post a little comment on a post that Dowty wrote about him just this week. Dustin’s comment, submitted last night, has not yet shown up on Major Dowty’s blog, where the comments are, of course, “moderated,” so I thought I would post it here.

And she did. It’s not a “little” comment, and it’s very satisfying. Go read it.

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

All your bases are belong to us, or, Freethought blogs assimilates more of the very best secular and/or atheist bloggers, or, yee-ha! Coming soon to a Freethought blog near you:

Kenan Malik

John Loftus of Debunking Christianity

Richard Carrier

Do admit.

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

This is no good. No good at all. The video of the Haught-Coyne Q and A is mysteriously gone. Just gone. Page unavailable.

Perhaps there is some explanation other than the obvious (and discreditable)? I don’t know. I await further knowledge.

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

From Tigerbeatdown, less than a month ago.

It’s concerted, focused, and deliberate, the effort to silence people, especially women, but not always, as I can attest, and particularly feminists, though again, not always, as I can attest, online. The readers, the consumers, the fans, may not always notice it because people are silent about it. Because this is the strategy that has been adopted, to not feed the trolls, to grin and bear it, to shut up, to put your best foot forward and rise above it.  To open your email, take note of the morning’s contents, and then quickly shuttle them to the appropriate files for future reference or forwarding to the authorities. To check on the server, fix what needs fixing, and move on with your day. To skim the comments to see what needs to be deleted, to know that when you write a post like this one, you will have to delete a lot of heinous and ugly comments, because you want to protect your readers from the sheer, naked, hate that people carry for you. To weigh, carefully, the decision to approve a comment not because there’s a problem with the content, but because you worry that the reader may be stalked by someone who will tell her that she should die for having an opinion. And when it happens to people for the first time, they think they are alone, because they don’t realise how widespread and insidious it is.

I really despise this idea that you’re supposed to “rise above it.” I fucking hate it. It makes it our problem, while the shit-throwers don’t have to do anything – they just get to go right on throwing shit. I despise the idea (that I’ve seen touted approximately seven trillion times in the last few months) that saying this is misogyny and it sucks is “playing the victim.” I beg your pardon? If you’re mugged is it “playing the victim” to say you were mugged? Sure, it’s childish to make too much of a fuss about one cross remark; it’s spoiled and whiny to talk about your own thin skin while ignoring tanks running over other people; but that doesn’t mean anyone should “rise above” deliberate calculated sustained campaigns of vituperation. If people are trying to bully you into shutting the fuck up, you really do get to resist. Not “rise above”; not ignore; resist.

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