Hayley Stevens is one of the bloggers at The Heresy Club. I met her at QED – well sort of met; we were across the table from each other at the farewell dinner, though we never actually had the “Hi I’m __” moment. I saw her at QED, then, but I didn’t realize she’s the person who made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority about ‘Healing on the Streets of Bath’ who were claiming to heal illnesses with prayer. I’m impressed! Young People Today eh…When I was Young People Today I wasn’t doing anything as productive as that.

She’s now being called a meany atheist because the ASA ruled against HOTS (and because three MPs are making … Read the rest

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A cheery news item from Tunisia:

A Tunisian court has sentenced two young men to seven years in prison for publishing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, the justice ministry said Thursday.

“They were sentenced, one of them in absentia, to seven years in prison, for transgressing morality, defamation and disrupting public order,” ministry spokesman Chokri  Nefti  said, adding that the sentence was handed down late last month.

Defamation…of someone who lived 14 centuries ago.

On March 28, a primary court in the coastal city of Mahdia, sentenced the two men, Jabeur Mejri and Ghazi Beji, both in their late twenties. to seven years in prison and a fine of 1200 Tunisian Dinars (around USD $800) each over the use

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The pope reminds his hostages flock that if he wanted their opinion he would ask for it.

In a rare public rebuke, Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday (April 5) denounced a call for optional celibacy and women’s ordination that was issued by a group of Austrian priests, saying true reform will not come as a result of open dissent.

How will it come then? As a result of obstinate resistance by a tiny body of priests?

The Austrian group launched an “Appeal to Disobedience” last year, asking for an end of compulsory celibacy for priests, the ordination of women and allowing divorced people to receive Communion. The group says it has the support of 400 priests, or around 10

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Tom Flynn replies to James Croft on the subject of ritual.

First he points out that once a religious ritual is removed from its original (religious) context, it becomes something different. Why? Because religious ritual is about or addressed to a supernatural entity, and secular ritual isn’t, and that’s a big difference.

Believers direct their singing toward the supernatural; naturalists disbelieve that the supernatural exists. In other words, in the single case when activities that were ritualistic in congregational life are transplanted into humanist – even religious-humanist – practice, the motivations for engaging in that behavior do not – cannot follow along with them. The other-referring practice of ritual hymn-singing becomes non-other-referring when dragged into a naturalistic setting.

And that … Read the rest

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I posted about Bart Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? last month, here and here. I was addressing the fact (discussed by Richard Carrier on an article by Ehrman in the Huffington Post) that Ehrman says “we have” sources that we don’t actually literally have, because they didn’t survive. I confirmed that he does it in the book too (because Richard didn’t then have the book), and that it had jumped out at me. There are other things to say about the book though.

First, however: there are more places where his wording is (in my view) too realist about hypothetical early sources that have not survived.

In a passage where he is talking about the NT evidence (Galatians … Read the rest

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There’s this thing called Skepticon, and the next one (5) is November 9-11, and because we are Special here at FTB, we can tell you how to order a Skepticon 5 T shirt and get a free gift. (How Special is that?!) (No I don’t know what it is. I’m assuming it’s a secret decoder ring, because what else could it be, but I don’t know.)

Here’s what you do: you enter a Special Code in the Special Code section. Can you do that? I thought you could.

The Special Code is:

FtButterflies

Unless of course you decide you’d rather get a different code from a different FTB blogger.

… Read the rest

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There’s a new Jesus and Mo…which Jesus kicks off by pronouncing the Koran overrated.… Read the rest

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I’m reading Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen’s collection of essays Making Minds and Madness: From Hysteria to Depression. It’s about what one might call the epistemology of psychoanalysis, and its relationship to things like reputation and fashion and consensus. There’s a bit on page 160…

The fact is that psychoanalysis managed to impose itself in significant sectors of twentieth-century society as the only psychological theory worthy of the name and the only psychotherapy capable of theorizing its own practice. In such locations, calling into question the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, or infantile sexuality could – and still can – provoke the same incredulous hilarity as do Kansas creationists or members of the “Flat Earth Society.” There, psychoanalysis has become indisputable, incontrovertible. It

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Excellent piece by Dan Fincke the other day, on why Dawkins wasn’t wrong or mean to say at the Reason Rally that patently absurd religious beliefs should be as subject to mockery as any other patently absurd beliefs, and in fact more so, since their very immunity helps people to go on being included as “Catholics” and other brands of believer when in fact they aren’t really believers at all.

While the media has largely ignored The Reason Rally, the one most popular bit of news that seems to be traveling around and getting criticized is Richard Dawkins’s recommendation to the crowd that we should incredulously and mockingly ask people who say they are Catholic whether they really believe in

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The archbishop is at it again. This time it’s “enough of all this selfish focus on how you are marginalized because you’re a woman or black or gay – we are all in this together so shut up about it and let the nice straight white men keep running things as we always have, ok?”

Of course he doesn’t put it quite that way. Well naturally not – you don’t get to be an archbishop by putting things that way. (Oh yes? What about George Carey then?) He puts it in the usual grand archepiscopal way.

In Cardiff he was joined a group of teenagers debating the idea of “identity politics” which he said amounted to saying: “This is

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A nice write-up of a chat by David Cameron to some religious bossies.

He starts by saying he welcomes the Easter message as being one of hope, but at the same time admits that he has problems believing a word of it – particularly the resurrection! Even so, he welcomes what he calls the “Christian fightback” in Britain.

It is not clear what this “fightback” is against but he measures it in “the enormous reception of the Pope’s visit.”

However, the Pope’s visit – as the Catholic Church’s own research showed – was a comprehensive flop.

And if it hadn’t been, what would he be doing rejoicing about it anyway? What is this deranged assumption that all of a … Read the rest

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The French approach to autism was discussed a couple of months ago, too.

A controversial new film by French documentary filmmaker Sophie Robert, screened  last week at an autism  conference here in Philadelphia, reminds the world that in France these  thoroughly discredited and dangerous ideas still hold considerable sway. The film, Le  Mur or The Wall, already viewed  tens of thousands of times on YouTube, is calling attention to the ongoing  stranglehold that psychoanalytic theories still have over autism treatment in  France.

The film’s interviews with prominent French psychiatrists leaves the viewer  wondering whether in France treatments for pediatric developmental disorders are  stuck in some sort of bizarre Freudian time warp. These ideas have been so  thoroughly debunked in

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In France people are still medically treated on the basis of the four humors.

No they’re not, that’s a bitter joke, because the truth is almost as horrifying – children with autism are treated with psychoanalysis.

In many countries, the standard way of treating autistic children is with behavioural therapy – stimulating and rewarding them to develop the skills they need to function in society – but France still puts its faith in psychoanalysis. And an increasing number of parents are now demanding change.

For autism campaigners, it is one of the most serious health scandals of our times.

How for decades France turned its back on the latest scientific thinking, and treated autism as a form of psychosis.

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Here’s a funny thing – Geoff posted some photos from QED at Facebook today, including this one

It turns out that the guy at the mic asking a question is David Aaronovitch. I hadn’t even known he was at the talk, let alone that he’d asked a question! This is all the funnier since I’d gone to his talk three hours earlier, and been informed and entertained by it.

I guess while talking I was so focused on content that I didn’t register faces. Or something. Mind you, people were instructed to say their names when they asked their question…I’m hoping he didn’t actually say, firmly and distinctly, “I’m David Aaronovitch.” I’m hoping he just said “I’m David.” I’m hoping … Read the rest

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