Sometimes yipping is effective. Justin Griffith yipped about a school charity project that turned out to have a missionary element, complete with a question asking children to complete the sentence “I love Jesus because _______.” The school is fixing at least some of the problem. Justin says -

This is not the first time that I’ve put out a request for help that was massively successful because of the public and legal pressure it generated. In the last year, I’ve learned that those two things are the only forces that work when the system is broken.

I’m proud of you, internet atheists. Crowd-sourced activism is like an effective Lorax, speaking for those who can’t.

Speak up, Lorax.… Read the rest

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

Enough of this frivolity; back into the theocratic trenches. Back to the anti-feminist “Biblical” reactionaries. It’s time to wade into The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

There is One Woman’s Wrestling Match with Submission, Part IV. Yes, part 4 – we want to be thorough about our wrestling matches with submission (provided, of course, we end up by submitting).

Christ’s purpose and joy was to glorify his Father, and he did this by submitting to him, thus elevating submission and the role of a servant for all time.   The Holy Spirit, for his part, was to glorify Christ.  If God gives me, as a woman, a task, that is the place and position from which he wants

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

Someone is mean on the internet. No really?!

Yes but sometimes it is worth noting. When it’s part of an extended misogynist group-rant is one time; when it’s an ostensibly rational person going off the charts for months on end is another; when it’s a matter of singling out a few women is another.

What is it this time? Some guy called Ed Clint did a snide Facebook post about feminists always thinking people are telling them to shut up when really it’s just a matter of polite disagreement, linking to a post of Jen McCreight’s. Abbie Smith made a considerably more snide comment on Ed Clint’s post.

‎*newsflash* Watsons LIFE is fucking around on the internet.  Thats all

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

It’s a woman’s chance for martyrdom.

In her book, The Way Home, Beyond Feminism and Back To Reality, Quiverfull proponent Mary Pride explains that mothers who risk their lives for the sake of building the Kingdom of God are to be honored the same as missionaries:

“Routinely we send missionaries off to work in unsavory climates, knowing full well that they will probably come down with amoebic dysentery, be overheated (or frozen), receive inadequate medical care in second-rate hospitals, and on the average live ten years less than other people. But we don’t tell people not to be missionaries. Instead, we commend missionaries for their courage.

“Missionaries go to foreign countries to beget new Christians; mothers get pregnant

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

And now for something completely different – the anti-Michelle Duggar – Farzana Yasmin in Bangladesh.

A top human rights group in Bangladesh has praised a bride who disowned her husband within minutes of their wedding because he demanded a dowry.

Sultana Kamal of the Ask rights group said that Farzana Yasmin had taken a “principled and brave stand against the gross injustice of dowry payments”.

…

“Already she is facing recriminations with several parties trying to defame her and portray her as a loose woman. In fact she is a heroine of Bangladesh.”

Ms Yasmin’s decision to divorce her husband within minutes of their wedding in the conservative southern district of Barguna has sent shockwaves through the country, with

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

See what it’s like to grow up as a Quiverfull child.

I’m the oldest of 12. I was 13 when my baby sister Tess slept in my room. I was responsible for changing and feeding her in the middle of the night (she was 6 months plus…I don’t remember exactly). That was pretty much the beginning. (To be fair, she was one of two babies who was passed off so young, but still.)

My second sister (seven years younger than me) is mother to our second-youngest sister, Abby. I don’t say second mother. I say mother. After a high-risk pregnancy, mom had an emergency C-section, and Abby became Beth’s buddy. She couldn’t nurse, so she was purely bottle-fed. Beth

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

So I watched the Duggars for half an hour or so last night. I hadn’t seen them before apart from a few minutes once, before I knew they were Quiverfull. The whole thing is, not surprisingly, blood-curdling. Especially Jim Bob. God he’s awful – genial and ignorant and intrusive. They all went to Edinburgh (apparently because Jim-Bob is under the delusion that “King James” translated the bible), their first time ever out of the country, and perhaps even Arkansas – and on their very first afternoon there, Jim Bob got in a friendly chat with a street performer and damn if he didn’t come right out and say “what’s your faith background?” No really, he did – 90 seconds into … Read the rest

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

And speaking of Facebook, it didn’t cover itself with glory in the matter of Charlie Hebdo, either. Charlie H says Facebook prevented CH from moderating its own Facebook page.

Charlie Hebdo’sFacebook page has been swamped with 13,000 messages, many of them threats and insults, since the publication of this week’s issue retitled Charia Hebdo and featuring a cartoon of Mohammed on its front cover.

But its moderator cannot remove them, the blog says, “under the pretext – surprise! surprise! – that Charlie Hebdo is not a ‘real’ person” and because it breaches a ban on “publications featuring nudity or other sexually suggestive content”, says the satirical paper’s blog, launched on Thursday to show that it is

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

Someone who blogs at the CHE under the title “Female Science Professor” ruminates on how to respond to sexist comments.

The incidents themselves are not what generates the debate on my blog. Instead, the sometimes-heated discussion focuses on how I have chosen to respond to such slights: that is, my tendency to react in a calm, polite way, perhaps with a bit of humor or gentle sarcasm. Except in extreme cases, I prefer not to respond to insulting remarks with anger, and I try to move on with the research, teaching, or service task at hand.

No wonder there’s debate.

Granted, it’s sensible to respond calmly and politely, in a professional setting. You don’t want to turn purple in … Read the rest

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

Update: Facebook caved, fixed it. Let the experts do the magic realism, please.

Facebook decides to try its hand at magic realism. If cool people like Salman Rushdie can play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, why shouldn’t Facebook do likewise? And how better to do that than by playing silly buggers with the identity of Salman Rushdie himself?

So what Facebook does is, it de-activates Salman Rushdie’s Facebook account on the grounds that it (Facebook) thinks it’s an impostor. That’s a very silly claim, because if Facebook had taken the trouble to read a few posts and comments it would have seen that it wasn’t. But then it wouldn’t have been able to play around … Read the rest

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

Current glitch is that comments are coming in but they’re not visible (except to me), and that the two “wait patiently” posts I did today are gone. The comments are excellent, especially one from a student at Penn State – good luck with Westboro! – and they will show up eventually, so keep commenting.… Read the rest

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

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.… Read the rest

(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

(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 … Read the rest

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