Via The Freethinker, have a cartoon:

Cartoon: David Fitzsimmons

It’s via The Freethinker, but you can also see it on the Facebook page of Shaykh Noor Ul Aqtab Siddiqi. He says he’s a public figure, but I suspect that’s aspirational more then descriptive. Barry Duke tells us more about him at The Freethinker itself.

Last month we reported that Shaykh Noor Siddiqi, of the Muslim Action Forum, praised scaredy-cat British media for not publishing Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

Oh that kind of public figure. Remember the Muslim Action Forum? And that absurd “no cartoons of the prophet” demonstration in Downing Street? That’s who our Shaykh is.

Well, the Muslim Action Forum is back in the news. It has

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

NPR did a blog post about Vani Hari aka “Food Babe” the other day.

…as her profile grows, so too do the criticisms of her approach. Detractors, many of them academics, say she stokes unfounded fears about what’s in our food to garner publicity. Steve Novella, a Yale neuroscientist and prominent pseudoscience warrior, among others, has dubbed Hari the “Jenny McCarthy of food” after the celebrity known for championing thoroughly debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.

Hari is a self-styled consumer advocate and adviser on healthful eating.

Her website, FoodBabe.com, offers recipes, tips for nutritious dining while traveling, and, for $17.99 a month, “eating guides” that include recipes, meal calendars and shopping lists. But she’s best-known for

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

Michael Nugent has decided to defend Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer from the violence and abuse of those evil Freethought bloggers. It’s not a very even-handed account of the situation, in my view.

Let me preface this post by saying that I accept that I might be mistaken in anything that I write, and that I am open to changing my mind on the basis of reasonable civil discussion. Also, I assume that I have done variations of at least some of the things I am complaining about others doing here.

I believe that atheist and skeptic people and groups, like all people and groups within society, should promote compassion, empathy, fairness, justice, equality and respect for people, combined with

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

So now Dawkins is going full-on sleaze, by talking like any random troll about bloggers “faking outrage” or “playing the bully” in order to make thousands of dollars per post.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins 11h
Can it be true, some bloggers are paid by the click, and consequently fake outrage, or play the bully, in order to attract clicks? Hope not.

I pointed out (in a tweet that I now can’t find, don’t ask me why) that he is paid per book, so should we assume he “fakes outrage” in his books in order to sell copies?

Updating, because I figured out why. (Forgot to hit “tweets & replies,” like a chump.)

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson · 4h
@RichardDawkins Did you “fake

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

This is great. It starts with a powerful, inspirational talk by Dawkins in 2006, that changed a lot of minds about religion and related subjects.

That speech was a critical point for a great many people, spurring them to read TGD and other atheist books, to reevaluate their beliefs and to ask questions they’d not asked before – to seek answers they mightn’t have even known were possible to find. Perspectives were changed, as was the social landscape of the internet, not to mention many “real” communities: homes, towns, perhaps countries.

Now, the blogger says, Dawkins needs that kind of experience himself.

First, he needs to talk to educated people about what comprises “real” feminism and stop assaulting this

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

Meriam Ibrahim arrived in the US a few days ago.

Mrs Ibrahim flew from Rome to Philadelphia with her husband and two children, en route to Manchester, New Hampshire, where her husband has relatives and the family hope to settle.

The mayor said nice things to her there.

Her next stop was Manchester, and there were about 40 relatives and supporters at the airport to greet her, some of them chanting “Long Live America”, says the BBC’s Gringo Wotshela, who was at the scene.

He said her husband said a few words, in which he thanked the US government for its strong stance, the New Hampshire senators who worked hard to arrange her asylum and the people of Sudan for

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