The Massachusetts Republican party wants Harvard to stop paying Elizabeth Warren’s salary while she runs for the Senate. It doesn’t just want Harvard to do that, it’s trying to tell Harvard to do that.

“By restoring her to the faculty, even though she has now formed a federal
election committee and is actively campaigning, the university is establishing a
bad precedent for academic appointments,” Nate Little, executive director of the state GOP, wrote in a letter to Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust.

As if that’s their business. As if they’re the boss of Harvard. As if Harvard were taxpayer-funded.

The Globe adds later, drily,

During last year’s special election, [Republican Senator Scott] Brown continued to accept his taxpayer financed salary as a state senator. He has not expressed any plans to give up his federal salary while running for reelection to the US Senate.

 

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

The Archbish of C is annoyed because the perceived coolitude of atheism is making it “difficult for the Church to convey its message.”

Well jeez, Rowan, I’m annoyed because the perceived wonderfulness of theism makes it difficult for atheism to convey its message – and your message has had it all its own way for quite a long time, please note.

…the coolness of atheism is very much in evidence. The problem is it’s become a bit of a vicious circle. Atheism is cool, so books about atheism are cool.

They get a high profile, and books that say Richard Dawkins is wrong don’t get the same kind of publicity because atheism is the new cool thing.

It’s difficult to break into that, but plenty of people are trying.

No, it’s not just because atheism is the new cool thing (which is itself highly debatable, given the volume of the backlash); it’s also because so far the books that say Richard Dawkins is wrong are terrible books. (That’s not because it’s impossible to write a good book that says Richard Dawkins is wrong. It’s probably because a whole book devoted to saying that is kind of a silly idea, so people who can write good books don’t write that kind of book.) (There are good books that say Richard Dawkins is wrong along with other things, but I take the Archbish to mean books written especially to say Richard Dawkins is wrong; there are no good ones of those.)

The archbishop said that Christian witness is the strongest argument the Church has to rebut the claims of atheists such as Dawkins. He said the evolutionary biologist would struggle to explain the growth of the Church in Zimbabwe in the face of constant brutality and harassment.

What? No he wouldn’t. Humans can be passionately devoted to beliefs that are mistaken. Opposition often strengthens that devotion – as it does with atheism in the US, for instance. We like a challenge. Devotion is not a marker of truth.

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

From David Futrelle at Man Boobz - some guy says feminism causes male violence. (Well sure it does – makes perfect sense if you think about it – if we just do what we’re told what’s there to get violent about?) Guy points out it’s a bad idea, because after all who can hit harder?

In other words, the fact that there are violent men out there is why women shouldn’t complain about violent men. Presumably the only marches women should be organizing would be “No, Go Ahead, You Keep the Night” marches.

Good one.

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

Archbishops say the funniest things.

Archbishop Smith said that although Sikhs and Muslims had successfully used the law to uphold a right to manifest their beliefs in such areas as religious attire and jewelry, Christians were denied the same right because the courts had decided that it was not essential to the practice of their faith.

“Why can’t Christians wear the symbol of the cross?” he asked in an interview with the American Catholic News Service.

“It is absolutely part of the Gospel,” he said. “Without the cross there is no salvation. It is at the heart of our faith because it is the symbol and sign of God’s unconditional love.”

That really did make me laugh aloud. A torture device is the symbol and sign of God’s unconditional love. Without the symbol and sign of being tortured to death, there is no salvation. Oooooooooooookay.

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

Religion makes people better department.

Let’s say you lived in Giles County, Va., a rural enclave of about 17,000 people in the southwestern portion of the state. Let’s say you were a high school student and you were opposed to the school board’s decision to post the Ten Commandments in your school.

Would you be eager to be public about it?

Nope. I’ve learned too much about how a great many people feel about perceived attacks on their religion.

At AU, we know from experience that plaintiffs in church-state lawsuits can and do experience harassment. When we sued Judge Roy Moore, Alabama’s infamous “Ten Commandments judge,” the plaintiffs were named. That means people could track them down – and some did.

During the litigation, plaintiff Melinda Maddox , who was newly married, returned from her honeymoon to find that the windows of her house had been shot out.

As I noted in a February blog post about plaintiffs in church-state cases, it can take real courage to stand up for church-state separation in court. Consider the case of Joann Bell, a mother in Little Axe, Okla., who protested religious activity in her children’s public schools in 1981. Her home was burned down by an arsonist.

But don’t forget: religion makes people better.

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

Via Metamagician, a piece by Brian Thompson of JREF on “diversity” at JREF.

we at the JREF do take diversity  seriously, and it’s something we strive to achieve at our events.  If  the skeptics community is going to thrive and grow, it’s essential that no one feel unwelcome or excluded due to race, gender, religion, or  sexual orientation.

I don’t understand that – it looks like a typo, or a thought-typo. It looks like grabbing an established category without taking the time to think about it and thus notice that it needs tweaking for the purpose.

There’s no sensible or substantive reason to cause people to feel unwelcome due to race, gender, or sexual orientation, but there can be such a reason due to religion (or atheism), for the same sort of reason there can be sensible or substantive reasons to cause, say, socialists to feel unwelcome at a gathering of libertarians or vice versa. That is, people can be caused to feel unwelcome simply by being exposed to ideas they disagree with, and that could easily happen to religious people at a skeptics’ event.

It seems like a futile idea for a skeptics’ organization to commit itself to not causing religious people to feel unwelcome in that way. Race gender and sexual orientation are a different category, but ideas can’t be prevented from possibly causing people to feel unwelcome, without being emptied of all their content and so ceasing to be ideas.

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

Read them.

Lastly, I discovered the beauties of Science That really opened my mind to new possibilities. There was just so much wonder in the world that Islam seemed too petty and small.  Why would Allah who creates the Universe worry about little things us humans do? Surely he has better things to do, and don’t tell me he watches over us because he cares for us and loves us. Have you read the Quran? If anything, Allah hates us considering the only ability he has shown in the Quran is the ability to find any excuse to torture you and bring you pain.  Islam seemed to diminish the beauty of the Universe by teaching that you are born into a pointless test which is rigged to make you fail. Allah apparently created us, just to see if we’ll worship him and find out which of the hundreds of religions was the real one. That began to seem if not absolutely pointless, then to be honest, rather stupid. What kind of a test is it in which most people only pass just because they were born into the winning team? If life is a test, it seems the most unfair test imaginable. If that is the meaning of life, to pass a pointless quiz, I would rather live a meaningless life.

My view exactly. Why would a god create humans with some cognitive abilities and “test” us on our willingness to refuse to use them for the sake of “faith”? A god like that is a cheat; it’s an outrage to worship it.

Noshina Fawad, Leeds

I grew up in a household where my father was an atheist and my mother, a liberal Muslim. We were taught ethics and morality and were raised as Muslims. The more I learnt about Islam, the more I became aware of its many restrictions and how I was totally against them. Islam preaches peace and serenity and yet encourages the murder of ‘kafirs’, those who have said anything against it. Islam prohibits listening to music and yet many of the surats and ayats of the Quran are in musical form. Islam conveys equality for both men and women while men are allowed to have four wives, and this liberty is not mutual. Living in Pakistan, I witnessed how women were brainwashed to believe that they only existed to be of service to men, how children were scolded to memorise verses that they didn’t even understand. Religion limits an individual to a certain way of life; it restricts us to grasp any other possibilities of existence. I believe in justice and freedom and I am proud to say I have renounced religion!

No longer quivering.

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

Now it’s time for an ironic juxtaposition. Are you ready?

First, from Vision Forum -

Housewives Desperate for God

Next, from lawyer-turned-designer Duncan Quinn -

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