I got a package in the mail today and it turned out to be two copies of Does God Hate Women translated into Polish. Yip!
Dlaczego Bóg nienawidzi kobiet?
This feminist and human rights activist likes it.
Greetings, Poland.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Valerie Tarico interviewed Janet Heimlich last May, on the subject of Heimlich’s new book on religious child maltreatment.
Tarico: Some people would say that religion prevents child abuse – that a supportive spiritual community or a personal relationship with a higher power, or a strong moral core is the antidote to maltreatment.
Heimlich: As I state in the book, families generally benefit from participating in religious activities. Still, we are only beginning to understand how children are harmed in certain religious communities. In my research, I found that, in these problematic cultures, the good of the faith community as a whole takes priority over members’ individual needs, and this is particularly true with how those communities view children.
And … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Jesus and Mo are too deep for the barmaid.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Definitely; the thing to do when you disagree with a woman or girl is to threaten violence. Absolutely. It’s only weak feeble worthless people – like women and girls - who hesitate to do that.
A high school girl objects to a prayer on a wall of her school; Fox News reports; the threats come in.
… Read the restI say just take her out to the parking lot, put on some gloves so as not to leave any marks, and just b e a t her selfish little a s s for her. If she tells on you, b e a t her a s s again. What have you got to lose? I can guarantee that throwing bibles at
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
An interview with Valerie Tarico.
How and why she left evangelicalism:
I would say that from adolescence on I struggled to fend off moral and rational contradictions in my faith, evolving more and more idiosyncratic ways of holding the pieces together. In particular, I couldn’t understand how I was going to be blissfully, perfectly happy - indifferent to the fact that other people were experiencing eternal anguish.
Bingo. That’s something that always troubles me (to put it as mildly as possible) about non-questioning evangelicals - that indifference to the fact that other people are experiencing eternal anguish. It’s a horrible, unspeakable thought, yet some people are apparently perfectly fine with it.
… Read the restThe final straw came while I was completing
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The Nigerian columnist and public intellectual Edwin Madunagu has written a piece about Leo Igwe and the Nigerian Humanist Movement.
… Read the restI first met Leo Igwe a couple of years ago when he came to the free library I oversee in Calabar to do some research. From the type of books he consulted in the library and the books and papers he had with him, I guessed he was interested in philosophy, sociology and human rights. Later, I learnt from him that he was working for a higher degree or diploma at the University of Calabar. I also learnt that, simultaneously, he was active in a human rights organization called the Nigerian Humanist Movement…
…when Leo Igwe sought audience with
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
What’s going on, has ERV blown a new whistle or what? Suddenly Teh Menz are popping up on an old thread to display their vocabularies.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
James Fallows is irritating in a different way from Andrew Sullivan. He’s reliably…middle. Safe; predictable; good at thinking what Everyone thinks.
Sometimes what Everyone thinks is just wrong. Fallows as Everyone thinks anti-Mormonism is simply another bigotry, like racism.
Groan.
I do understand the political handicapping aspect of stories about the “Mormon angle.” It’s like asking three years ago whether America was “ready” for a black president. Or whether we’re “ready” for a Hispanic, female, Jewish, Asian, Muslim, atheist, gay, unmarried, overweight, etc President.
Not quite. Some of those items are based on ideas or beliefs, while others aren’t. It’s not sensible to treat them all as the same kind of thing for this purpose.
… Read the restTo be against Mitt Romney
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Three long-term holds at the library all just turned up at once (long-term as in there are a lot of people on the list ahead of you).
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.
Rubs hands with glee.
(I know, very horse-and-buggy. But I still like books.)… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Andrew Sullivan thinks “militant atheists” have an excessively crude epistemology. (Via WEIT)
First he tells us how his works.
… Read the restAs to Coyne’s challenge to present a criterion of what is real in the Bible and what is true, I’d argue that empirical claims - like, say, a census around the time of Christ’s birth, or the rule of Pontius Pilate in Palestine at the time – can be tested empirically. But the Gospels themselves have factually contradictory Nativity and Crucifixion stories…and so scream that these are ways to express something inexpressible – God’s entrance into human history as a human being.
If you are treating these texts as if they were just published as news stories in the
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Bride kidnapping, or “bridenapping”, happens in at least 17 countries around the world, from China to Mexico to Russia to southern Africa. In each of these lands, there are communities where it is routine for young women and girls to be plucked from their families, raped and forced into marriage. Few continents are not blighted by the practice, yet there is little awareness of these crimes, and few police investigations.
Well, you see, it’s something that happens to women and girls, and it doesn’t matter what happens to them. They aren’t really people you know. They look like people, sort of, but that’s deceptive – it’s just an outer thing, like the skin on a mango. … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The new bandwagon (or meme): moan a deep moan about the persecution of Christians in places like the UK and the US. A guy called (inelegantly) Tom J Wilson does a particularly maudlin version for the Huffington Pest.
… Read the restThe fact that British police would consider the displaying of Christian scripture an illegal offence is a concerning indication of the mentality that British society has come to adopt towards all things Christian.
For anyone who follows the British media’s reporting of American politics, the continuous attempt to run down certain American politicians on account of their faith rather than engaging with their politics has now become a rather boring familiarity.
Bush and Palin are crazed evangelical fundamentalists we are forever
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Leo Igwe sent me the link to a heartening article about the global energization of atheism.
… Read the restAt the World Humanist Congress in Oslo in August, delegates from India,
Uganda, Nigeria, Argentina and Brazil — all countries where belief in a supreme deity or deities has a strong hold — reported mounting interest in their philosophy.Like their counterparts in Europe and North America, they argue that morality
is based in human nature and does not need a father-figure god to back it up
with punishment in an afterlife, in which they do not believe.“There are more godless groups in the world than ever before,” Sonja
Eggerickx, a Belgian schools inspector who is president of the International
Humanist and
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Via Ed Brayton, Terry Gross talks to the apostle C Peter Wagner. Be afraid.
… Read the restOn demons
“As we talk, in Oklahoma City there is an annual meeting of a professional
society called the Apostolic — called the International Society of Deliverance
Ministers, which my wife and I founded many years ago. … This is a society of
a large number, a couple hundred, of Christian ministers who are in the ministry of deliverance. Their seven-day-a-week occupation is casting demons out of people. And they have professional expertise in this and they happen to meeting — to be meeting right now. My wife is one of them. She’s written a whole book called How to Cast Out Demons.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A-News talks to Justin Griffith, FTB colleague, Military Director of American Atheists, and the guy behind Rock Beyond Belief.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhKKLhGijuQ
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Another reply to Wallis and Pinsky. (I like it when the objects of theist bullying fight back. Sue me.) This one is by Rob Boston of Americans United.
… Read the restThere are people in this country who belong to fundamentalist Christian religious groups and who believe that they have the right (and perhaps the duty) to run your life.
That is a fact. These people exist. I’ll be spending some time with them this weekend at the Family Research Council’s “Values Voter Summit.”
It’s also a fact that some folks would like to pretend that these people don’t exist, or that they are a fringe group that can be easily dismissed. Some evangelicals are embarrassed by the antics of politically active,
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
I took a dog friend to the beach at Golden Gardens this afternoon. It was beautiful and stormy.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The Center for Inquiry reports:
… Read the restPrejudice against atheists manifested itself again when The Wyndgate Country
Club in Rochester Hills, Michigan (outside of Detroit), cancelled an event with
scientist and author Richard Dawkins after learning of Dawkins’s views on
religion. The event had been arranged by the Center for Inquiry–Michigan (CFI), an advocacy group for secularism and science, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.The Wyndgate terminated the agreement after the owner saw an October 5th
interview with Dawkins on The O’Reilly Factor in which Dawkins
discussed his new book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really
True.In a phone call to CFI–Michigan Assistant Director Jennifer Beahan, The
Wyndgate’s representative explained that
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Haredi protesters pitch a fit about a new girls’ school – a religious school! - next to “their” neighborhood.
Senior Beit Shemesh rabbis took part in the rally, in which participants called for “maintaining the purity of the haredi neighborhoods against strangers plotting to desecrate them, backed by the evil regime.”
Got it all, dunnit – purity, strangers, plotting, desecrate, the evil regime. You can’t get much more viciously crazy and anti-human than that.
… Read the restA female journalist was assaulted by a small group of young protestors, who
cursed and spat at her as well…According to the students’ parents, groups of radical haredim arrive at the
school from time to time and swear at the girls.Two haredi men were
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
