The new issue of Free Inquiry is out. It has a special section on the Women in Secularism conference. I did an article for that section, based on my part at the conference but not restricted to it. It is online.

The basic idea is that the stereotypical idea of women is not very well suited for overt rebellion against god.

The main stereotype in play, let’s face it, is that women are too stupid to do nontheism. Unbelieving in God is thinky work, and women don’t do thinky, because “that’s a guy thing.”

Don’t laugh: Michael Shermer said exactly that during a panel discussion on the online talk-show The Point. The host, Cara Santa Maria, presented

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We’ve got new people joining Freethought blogs – it’s going to be great.

Lalala I can’t wait to say who they are but I have to, we don’t say until their blogs are up and running, lalala I can’t wait.

You’ll be thrilled. I guarantee it.

(Well. When I say “you” I mean people who read B&W because they like it – not because they agree with every word of it, but because they like it as opposed to hating it. I don’t mean people who read it solely because they hate it and more especially me, and are monitoring it for things to spit bile at – thus increasing my hit count and causing millions of dollars to flow … Read the rest

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A festive Sunday morning in Indonesia in 2006, with coconut cakes and Javanese music and lots of women in hijabs and lipstick. They were there to chop up the genitals of 248 little girls.

It is April 2006 and the occasion is a mass ceremony to perform sunat perempuan or “female circumcision” that has been held annually since 1958 by the Bandung-based Yayasan Assalaam, an Islamic foundation that runs a mosque and  several schools. The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut.

The foundation pays the parents to slice up their daughters’ genitals.

At

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This thing on Facebook…

… Read the rest

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I don’t keep up with everything. I should but I don’t. A friend mentioned Eric Dondero to me and I had to resort to Google, because I hadn’t kept up. He’s pretty funny.

 Republicans around the country are responding to President Obama’s reelection in a variety of ways — among them: anger, depression, finger-pointing. But nobody had the same reaction as Eric Dondero, a former Ron Paul aide who blogs at LibertarianRepublican.net. In a post yesterday, Dondero, reasoning that the only recourse to Obama’s victory is “outright revolt,” laid out the terms of the “personal boycott” against Democrats which he plans to maintain for the rest of his life and which he hopes his followers will as well. What

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And it continues. Remember the crazed reactions to Rebecca’s article in Slate? In particular the one where Russell Blackford took the trouble to tweet a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in order to call Rebecca a liar? This one?

He’s at it again, or still. He’s still doing what he can to harm Rebecca.

 Why? I don’t know. I do not know.

He might say it’s because of Stef McGraw, but that doesn’t make sense. Stef McGraw doesn’t consider Rebecca the world’s most evil monster bully. Remember?

 Photo by Brian S. Engler.

 There are a lot of crazy people out there who want to destroy Rebecca. And there’s Russell Blackford, who also wants to destroy Rebecca. I … Read the rest

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Moving from Dublin and Galway to Athens for a moment – actors in and the producer and director of “Corpus Christi” have been charged with blasphemy.

A production of “Corpus Christi” in Athens was canceled this month after weeks of almost daily protests outside the theatre by priests and right-wing groups, including deputies from the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party.

Charges of “insulting religion” and “malicious blasphemy” have been filed after Bishop Seraphim of Piraeus lodged a lawsuit against those involved in the play, the officials said.

Our worst nightmare, eh? Fascists joining priests, priests joining fascists. Teaming up to stamp out everything that’s not fascist and priestly.

Dozens of demonstrators, including some from Golden Dawn, blocked the entrance of the

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There’s a group that’s going to examine the A, B and C v Ireland judgment of the European Court of Human Rights. It was set up as of January 13th this year…so it doesn’t seem to be breaking its neck in the rush to get the job done.

The Expert Group is to report back to Government within six months with options on how to implement the judgment of the European Courts.

The European Court held there is no right for women to an abortion in Ireland, emphasising that there is no straightforward right to an abortion under the Convention, and that member states have a broad margin of appreciation to prohibit abortion.  However, given the violation of applicant C’s

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There are a lot of tweets about the terrible way the RTE is reporting on the Savita case and the protests against it. I’d already noticed its ridiculous headline.

Rallies held in Dublin, Galway in memory of Savita Halappanavar

Uh, no – those were protest rallies, not memorial services. They weren’t about just remembering Savita, they were about trying to make sure that what happened to her doesn’t happen to other women.

Subhead:

Several thousand people are marching through the centre of Dublin to attend a rally in memory of Savita Halappanavar, the woman who died following a miscarriage at University Hospital Galway.

That is one misleading subhead.

RTE talked to an official.

Earlier Minister of State at the

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There was a big rally in Dublin in the name of Savita Halappanavar to say Never Again. It just ended, I think. There are lots of pictures of the crowd on Twitter. I got permission to post one, by Gavan Reilly at TheJournal.ie.

Here’s another great photo, by Cathy Heffernan.

 … Read the rest

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