Solidarity amongst ordinary people – wherever we live – is the most powerful weapon we’ll ever have when facing totalitarian movements.… Read the rest
BBC solemnly reports on “demonic activity”
Aug 6th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“Exorcists point to risky behaviour such as practising yoga, reading horoscopes, and an increase in new age forms of spiritualism.”… Read the rest
Katha Pollitt on birth control
Aug 6th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAnd the people who say “If they want to have a good time, why not let them pay for it?”… Read the rest
Women are not their possessions
Aug 5th, 2011 4:52 pm | By Ophelia BensonShaher Bano Shahdady was just 21, a young mother who wanted to live her Canadian life as a free Canadian woman. And for that, she was strangled to death in front of her toddler.From the Baloch region of Pakistan, she came to Toronto as a little girl. [When she was] 14, her father, Mullah Abdul Ghafoor, sent her back to Pakistan to study at a religious fundamentalist madrassa and a few years later she was forced into an arranged marriage with her first cousin.
That would be a forced marriage, not an arranged marriage. If she’s forced into it it’s forced, not arranged.
She was able to get back to Canada though, and she had hopes … Read the rest
Suspected “honour” killing victim rebelled
Aug 5th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSo she was strangled in front of her 3-year-old child, who was then left alone with her body for 15 hours.… Read the rest
Meera Nanda on the Breivik-India connection
Aug 5th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSome of the most revered personalities of the Hindu Right have actively cultivated and nurtured links with the European New Right.… Read the rest
Warren Jeffs found guilty of child bride rapes
Aug 5th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonProsecutor will present evidence of hundreds of other “bad acts,” including that Jeffs has 78 plural wives, and that 24 of them were under the age of 17.… Read the rest
Somethingism
Aug 5th, 2011 12:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonNewsflash: some people in the Netherlands go to church but don’t take goddy beliefs altogether seriously.
The Rev Klaas Hendrikse…[doesn’t] believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.
“When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that’s where it can happen. God is not a being at all… it’s a word for experience, or human experience.”
No it isn’t, actually. It may be a word that Hendrikse is using to mean that, Humpty Dumpty fashion, but it’s not a word for that, any more than “Anna Karenina” is a word for borscht, or mulligatawny. “God” is a word for a supernatural agent with omni-properties.
Not to say that I think Hendrikse … Read the rest
Is atheism the opposite of skepticism?
Aug 5th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReligion is a walled garden, within which skeptics are not supposed to tread, because their skepto-rays will make the foliage of faith wither and die. … Read the rest
UK: creationist academy passes to interview stage
Aug 5th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe church was up front about its plans with regards to teaching evolution…… Read the rest
WLUML dossier on the struggle for secularism [pdf]
Aug 5th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonArticles by Marieme Hélie-Lucas, Karima Bennoune, Gita Sahgal, Pragna Patel, Maryam Namazie, many more.… Read the rest
BBC finds godless priests in the Netherlands
Aug 5th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“There must be ‘something’ between heaven and earth, but to call it ‘God’, and even ‘a personal God’, for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far.”… Read the rest
Next year in DC
Aug 4th, 2011 4:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonI mentioned this in a comment but in case you didn’t see that: CFI is doing a Women and Secularism conference in Washington DC next May 18-20.
Speakers will include (in alphabetical order) Ophelia Benson, Jamila Bey, Greta Christina, Elisabeth Cornwell, Margaret Downey, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Sikivu Hutchinson, Susan Jacoby, Jennifer McCreight, Wafa Sultan, and Rebecca Watson.
Be there.
Perhaps I will do a talk on sexist epithets…… Read the rest
Last rites for the church in Ireland
Aug 4th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe deceit and cover-up of child abuse detailed in the Ryan, Murphy and Cloyne reports have transformed passive indifference into white-hot rage.… Read the rest
Salafists move in
Aug 4th, 2011 10:42 am | By Ophelia BensonNo good. Bad. Islamists are having success in Egypt.
… Read the restIt is already clear that the liberal-minded parties that have been the focus of
much Western media attention are not doing well as the competition hots up…When a protest was called in Tahrir Square late last week, it was known the
Islamists would dominate it. But the numbers brought in by the Salafists far
exceeded even those the Muslim Brotherhood could muster.The Salafists favour an Islamic state, with Sharia law, as soon as possible,
whereas the Brotherhood has emphasised the separation of state and religion – at least for the time being.Hundreds of thousands of Salafists came to the square – many waving the flag of Al
Egypt’s Islamists mobilising mass support
Aug 4th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt is already clear that the liberal-minded parties are not doing well as the competition hots up. … Read the rest
“Rock Beyond Belief” will go ahead
Aug 3rd, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe event was planned in response to Fort Bragg’s overwhelming support of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association’s Christian evangelical concert.… Read the rest
Crazy dot dot dot
Aug 3rd, 2011 1:09 pm | By Ophelia Benson[Update August 19. I’ve edited this, and I’m going to edit some of the comments. Very Orwellian; very memory-hole. Yes; too bad. I disagree with myself about much of this now, so I want to get rid of the worst of it, and thus the worst of the comments it triggered. I make mistakes. It happens.]
Sexist epithets. The subject keeps coming back. We think we’ve killed it and then it pops up again, undead. The disagreements of the past month have brought it back more robust than ever and fifty times as large.
Russell Blackford has astonished me by consistently brushing them aside as unimportant. I’m pretty sure that in one of the many epithet-discussions we’ve had here he … Read the rest
Jurors in Warren Jeffs trial hear “sex tape”
Aug 3rd, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIn which the 55-year-old man allegedly has sex with a 12-year-old “plural wife.”… Read the rest
US: church attendance down among women
Aug 3rd, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBut belief in the devil is up.… Read the rest