Nick Cohen has some gently critical things to say about the new fad for calling secularism “militant” and “extreme.”

‘Militant secularist’ has become the ‘neo-con’ of the 2010s: a know-nothing label that signifies extremism, without explaining where the extremism lies. Radio 4 broadcasters  prove that their bias is not always squishy liberal by allowing the religious to denounce the supposed militancy of their critics, without allowing the critics to reply. Like the small-c  conservative columnists in the broadsheets, they forget to tell you what is ‘militant’ about ‘militant secularism’ because if they did, they would expose their own fatuity.

Or their mendacity, or their rebarbative blend of the two.

If you turn on the news tonight and hear of a

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My friend EllenBeth Wachs and other Florida atheists have been teasing the Polk Under Prayer crowd.

County Road 98 in Polk County, Fla., was scrubbed today by a group of atheists who are protesting the “Polk Under Prayer” campaign, supporters of which poured olive oil on the road last year in an anointment ceremony.

“Mainly we want this to be a safe haven for folks who want to raise their families,” explained Polk Under Prayer organizer, Dr. Richard Geringswald, according to ABC News affiliate WFTS-TV in Tampa. “Asking God’s protection from ne’er do wells and evil doers.”

Ellen Beth Wachs, the president of Humanists of Florida Association and Atheists of Florida, said that she feels unwelcome as an

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Who do they think they are, the theocrats? Who do they think made them boss?

At least 200 Anglican primaries and secondaries could be established within the next five years as part of a major expansion plan outlined by the Church.

A report – to be published later this week – will also recommend rebranding existing Anglican schools to “reinvigorate” them in the face of competition from new academies and free schools.

So these will all be state schools, taxpayer-funded schools, run for the benefit of churches and their priests. Why?

The Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard, chairman of the Church’s board of education, said major reform was needed to tackle “the level of   religious illiteracy

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Saturday night at QED one of the prizes was for Best Podcast, and it was won by The Pod Delusion. I felt enthusiastic about this, because they had asked to interview me at QED. Hooray for ME, thought I, I get to be interviewed by the WINNAZ.

And I did. We went into a nice quiet little room off the main area which alas turned out to be a little room on the way to another little room where the QED people were keeping things. That’s why if you listen you will hear several breaks for editing. It’s not because I burst into a flurry of oaths for no apparent reason.

Episode 127.… Read the rest

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Yet more from the misogyny files.

On Saturday morning, after getting the news that President Obama would be giving the commencement address at Barnard College this May, graduating senior Marly Faherty did what her generation does: she went online, to a Columbia University blog called Bwog. But as she watched the comments pouring in, her excitement turned to shock, and then despair. “It was the first time I’d seen something get that nasty that quickly,” she told The Daily Beast. “It was like watching a train wreck. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”

…commenters started attacking Barnard, Columbia’s all-women’s sister school across the street, and accusing its students of academic inferiority and much, much worse. Using terms like

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Um………no.

Bill Maher explains that it’s fine for him to call Sarah Palin a cunt.

No it isn’t.

In a brief interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper, Bill Maher explains why calling Sarah Palin a “cunt” or a “twat,” as he has, is in no way equivalent to calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” or a “prostitute,” as Rush Limbaugh did.

I don’t care whether it’s equivalent or not; I care that it’s sexist and bad. Jacob Sullum notes:

Maher seems sincerely oblivious to the fact that “different tastes and different opinions” tend to color people’s views about when sexist epithets are acceptable and when they are so “disgusting” that they are beyond the pale.

And here’s another thing that tends … Read the rest

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Interlude. (By the way it’s snowing here right now. Quite hard. This is very odd for March 17 in this particular spot on the globe. A few miles east, in the mountains, it wouldn’t be odd, but down here it’s very odd.) One of the entertainers at QED last Saturday, as I mentioned, was Alun Cochrane, and I thought he was dam’ funny. This is what he’s like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boy-b0kH-6M

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And speaking of going to things – for people in the Seattle area – Richard Dawkins, Elisabeth Cornwell, and Sean Faircloth will be doing a talk in Bellevue on April 1. Details at RDF.… Read the rest

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Rock Beyond Belief has an official statement from Fort Bragg saying they are allowed to be critical of organized religion. Chris Rodda explains how that happened.

So, why are we thanking Major Dowty? Well, because it was his blog post about his “concern” over the lyrics of a Rock Beyond Belief performer being picked up by FOX News that caused Fort Bragg officials to scrutinize the Rock Beyond Belief lineup and attempt to require additional promises from the performers and speakers that they would not be critical of religion.

But Justin stood his ground, as he always does, and got it in writing that the speakers and performers at Rock Beyond Belief can be critical of religion (just like

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We were talking about Hazlitt on the Baggini/de Botton thread, and it appears that some of you know not of him. Do not die before you have remedied this!

There is a sample of his essays online along with entire books. From The Spirit of the Age, the chapter on William Gifford, editor of the Quarterly Review:

Mr. Gifford, in short, is possessed of that sort of learning which is likely to result from an over-anxious desire to supply the want of the first rudiments of education: that sort of wit which is the offspring of ill-humour or bodily pain: that sort of sense which arises from a spirit of contradiction and a disposition to cavil at

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