Bill Cooke is the Director of Transnational Programs at the Center for Inquiry.

On the fertile high country in central Kenya, in the shadow of the Nandi Hills, is the Ogwodo Primary School. Five or so buildings, two of them built by the parents out of mud and cow dung. All quite large and bare, with forty or more children to each room, sitting on hard pews and working at long benchtops. Here is where a sizable group of orphans are getting their schooling thanks to the Center for Inquiry, the humanist think-tank based in Amherst, New York.

There are many orphans in Kenya, most the result of their parents having died from HIV/AIDs, being too poor to afford medication, … Read the rest

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Yemisi Ilesanmi is having an argument with some God-invoking homophobes on her Facebook wall, and using graphics and cartoons to illustrate some of her points. Good clean fun.

And there’s her book…

… Read the rest

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You know how there’s something of a tension in feminism between different attitudes to “femininity”? To put it crudely, one view is that it’s just a set of (implicit) rules that keep women feeble and silly, while the opposite view is that disparaging femininity is patriarchal because it just amounts to seeing anything female as worthy of disparagement.

What about that? I tend toward the first view, but I also suspect that means I’m an unreconstructed dinosaur beached on the second wave and incapable of learning better.

But, I think the words (and what they express) are stupid, both of them – masculine as well as feminine. They’re advertising language, for one thing – have this masculine cologne at $3700 … Read the rest

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No reason. Just because.

… Read the rest

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The Bishops continue their tireless efforts to impose their viciously obscurantist godbothering views on all of us. They report it proudly on their episcopal website, because they think they are morally better than the rest of us. They are so wrong about that.

The chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities wrote to members of the House of Representatives to support the “Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act” (H.R. 3279), to address one part of the abortion-related problem in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The House of Representatives ought not to be beholden to the US CCB. It ought to be entirely independent of them.

In his Nov. 1 letter, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, Archbishop

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Chris Clarke wrote a wonderful little bit of ethological observation as a Facebook status.

Today I watched a raven with a Cheeto being carefully stalked by two California gulls looking for a way to snatch the treat away. The raven hid the Cheeto under a leaf as the gulls watched. The gulls seemingly concluded that the Cheeto was gone and wandered off.

As people pointed out in comments, this neatly shows that gulls don’t have object permanence while ravens do have theory of mind.

(I look forward to an avalanche of Cheeto ads in my future…)… Read the rest

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Some of you are in Spain, and thus probably know other people in Spain, and others of you not in Spain might still know people in Spain. Maybe you know someone who can offer Michael Dickinson a spare room or a flat empty during vacation or similar.

Here’s what Torcant Torcant told me:

Do you remember Michael Dickinson, the British collage artist that lives in Turkey? I remember you blogging about him in 2009 – I know it’s been a long time.

Back in 2009:

1. He was sued for insulting Turkish PM with a jail sentence prospect 2. The court acquitted him 3. The case went to the high court and the high court overturned the case 4. He … Read the rest

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Becca Aaronson reports that at least nine abortion facilities in Texas – a quarter of the Texas total – have stopped providing abortion services.

I keep telling people this and they (some of them) don’t believe me. Yes abortion isn’t yet 100% illegal again, yet, but it is more and more difficult to get one in more and more of the country.

From Aaronson’s story in the Texas Tribune:

After the U.S. 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision Thursday to lift an injunction on new abortion regulations in Texas, at least nine abortion facilities — about a quarter of the state’s abortion providers — have discontinued abortion services in light of the new law.

The court’s decision is

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Another thing about the two sheds – I’ve mentioned this before, I think, so apologies if you’re bored with it – is that even if we can’t know there is no god, we can know other relevant things, such as, that no one has managed to convince us (“us” being atheists) that god exists.

You could say that you don’t really know that because maybe way down deep somewhere you are a little bit convinced. But I don’t think so: being convinced is entangled with being aware of being convinced – being aware of the conviction is part of the conviction. It seems nonsensical to claim you can be convinced of something without being aware of it.

I know that … Read the rest

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Cara Santa Maria gave a talk at the CFI Summit which I enjoyed a lot. She talked about having tattoos and piercings and always making sure to have the arm tattoo visible when she does public stuff, because she wants young people (and people in general) to realize that scientists can look like her and like them.

She also talked about becoming an atheist at 14, having been raised Mormon, and how difficult that was. Her parents were divorced; her father (but not her mother) was very strictly Mormon; her father told her it was his duty to force her to continue going to church until she was 18. So a gulf opened up between them that lasted for years. … Read the rest

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Tickets for QED 2014 are now on sale. If being in Manchester the weekend of the 12-13 April next year is at all feasible for you and you have £99 I strongly recommend going.

The people who run it are terrific and they do a brilliant job, and there are terrific people attending as well. (I met Rhys Morgan there, also his father Dr Paul of that ilk, also Alex Gabriel, also Maureen Brian, also Author of Jesus and Mo, to name only a few.)… Read the rest

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Originally the second part of a comment by Salty Current on Shock-horror: research fails to find Big Danger in GMO crops

[Quoting "The Beautiful Void" @ 14]

Regarding the fact that Monsanto et al are for-profit companies: Of course they are. Farms themselves are for-profit companies, and often ones with dismal environmental records. Medicines are made by for-profit companies too; so are clothes, so are cars, so are computers. We live in a world where most of the things we encounter every day were made by for-profit companies. Where I live, in London, my very drinking water is supplied by a for-profit.

If your position is that all for-profit is inherently deplorable, then while I might disagree, I can’t fault

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Carrie Poppy has a public post on Facebook that elicited a lot of very funny and apposite comments. I’ll share some of the best.

First the post (which started life as a tweet) (should I do that thing where your tweets go to Facebook?) (no, probably not, because I wouldn’t do it right):

Me: I don’t feel safe in that alley, because people got stabbed there. Them: HAVE YOU COMPARED IT TO EVERY OTHER ALLEY? You’re overreacting.

Then some of the best comments. Without authors, in case they prefer it that way. Except Carrie.

If there’s one thing the skeptical community taught me, it’s that one person’s lack of an experience can be accurately extrapolated out to all others.

Carrie

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Never trust people approaching you in the street with a petition! They could be testing you.

A Londoner who suffered female genital mutilation has warned that political correctness is hampering the fight to stamp it out after asking people to sign a fake petition in its favour.

Leyla Hussein, 32, said many were scared to speak out against FGM because they were worried about criticising another culture.

She decided to conduct an experiment to see “how crazy political correctness has become” but was left in tears by the end.

Approaching shoppers with the petition supporting FGM, she told them she wanted to protect her  “culture, traditions and rights”.

In only 30 minutes 19 people signed it with some saying

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Let’s do a comparative study, or rather, let’s compare a couple of things. The American Humanist Association has a ten commandments, and I made up a ten commandments a few weeks ago, so it might be interesting to see if they have much in common. I naturally assume they have a good deal in common – a lot more in common with each other than either has with the Old Testament version.

The Humanist version:

1) Thou shalt strive to promote the greater good of humanity before all selfish desires.
2) Thou shalt be curious, for asking questions is the only way to find answers.

3) Harm to your fellow human is harm to humanity. Therefore, thou shalt

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Pentecostal churches in Africa do a lot of harm. The president of Cameroon is attempting to do something about that.

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has ordered the closure of nearly 100 Christian churches in key cities, citing criminal practices organized by Pentecostal pastors that threaten the security of the West African nation.

But Pentecostal pastors said the move is evidence of Biya’s insecurity about the churches’ criticism of the government.

Biya is using the military to permanently shut down all Pentecostal church denominations in the nation’s capital, Yaounde, and the North West Regional capital, Bamenda, which have the largest Christian populations in Cameroon.

To an American, steeped in the culture of freedom of [including from] religion, that seems like a … Read the rest

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GMO-phobes please note:

Massive Review Reveals Consensus on GMO Safety

“The scientific research conducted so far has not detected any significant hazards directly connected with the use of genetically engineered crops.”

That’s the conclusion from a team of Italian scientists, who just completed a thorough systematic review of the scientific research conducted on genetically modified (GM) crops in the past decade. Their work is published in the journal Critical Review of Biotechnology.

But but but the genes of GM crops will spread to wild plants, other crops, and microorganisms.

The review affirmed that this can indeed occur.

“The formation of hybrids between GE crops and wild relatives is possible and documented,” Nicolia said.

There is a caveat, however. According

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Was there a rumor that the slime pit had gotten not so bad? Or did I imagine it? Anyway it’s not not so bad, that I can see. I normally don’t look at it, but it showed up in the stats again (as it does so often) and I was vaguely curious to see if they were raging at me for posting about the CFI Summit because whrblxqfxx. No, they’re raging at me for being so (physically, aesthetically, sexually) disgusting.

• Re: Bleeding from the Bunghole

by katamari Damassi » Mon Oct 28, 2013 2:44 pm  •  [Post 18619]

Cunning Punt wrote:Suddenly I want to fuck Service Dog.

Only because society has indoctrinated you that SD is sexy and that

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It’s exhilarating to know that Egypt is in such wonderful shape that its national security officials can squander their valuable time arresting people for posting atheism on Facebook.

A 20-year-old Egyptian student is reportedly under investigation for starting a Facebook group calling for atheism.

The unnamed student who studies commerce at the Suez Canal University in Ismailia, was arrested after the university’s administration filed a complaint over his alleged activities, Egypt’s largest news organisation Al-Ahram online writes.

The newspaper adds the accused student is now being investigated by national security officials.

There’s actually a law against that though?

Don’t be silly; of course there is.

While the story has yet to be verified by other sources, article 98 of

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