Hey kids – want to get dead?

Dec 12th, 2011 4:49 pm | By

Ohhhhhhhhhh dear god. Meet Stephanie Messenger, author of a children’s book about the wonders of having measles.

As Reasonable Hank points out, measles make you sick.

Measles can be deadly. Recent outbreaks in Australia, the US, and New Zealand are all traced back to unvaccinated individuals. The overwhelming majority of those infected are unvaccinated or undervaccinated individuals. In Europe there have been several deaths this year alone.

Yet there’s an imbecile who wrote a book teaching children that vaccinations are ineffective and to embrace childhood disease. Fuuuuuck.… Read the rest

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He has all the right enemies

Dec 12th, 2011 4:06 pm | By

The FT (I’ll refrain from belaboring the irony, apart from saying I’m refraining) does a profile of Peter Tatchell.

Tatchell’s campaigns for gay rights, racial equality, civil liberties and democracy have attracted death threats, bullets and bombs from an unsavoury mixture of homophobes, neo-Nazis and Islamic fundamentalists.

“The bricks now bounce off the windows,” Tatchell jokes, “although I can’t walk outside and feel totally relaxed.” Nonetheless, the man who made front pages around the world in 1999 by attempting a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe  remains an indomitable campaigner. He has just returned from addressing the  Occupy London camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, which is the kind of “tent city” protest that he proposed three decades ago.

He lives in … Read the rest

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Nominate your nominations

Dec 12th, 2011 3:06 pm | By

The Skeptic is giving awards for best skeptical things in several categories. This is its debut in the awards business, so give it a big hand!

Please join in, by voting for:

  • The best podcast
  • The best blog
  • The best event, campaign or outreach event of the year. This could be an organisation or website that has done a particular task over a period of time, or it could be one event which has helped to raise public awareness of a skeptical issue
  • The best science video clip on the web
  • The best sceptical video clip on the web

We’ll sort the five most popular of your podcast, blog and event/campaign/outreach nominations and present them to our panel of judges

… Read the rest

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Kill the witch!

Dec 12th, 2011 11:33 am | By

Religion as compassion in Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi woman has been executed for practising “witchcraft and sorcery”, the country’s interior ministry says.

A statement published by the state news agency said Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was beheaded on Monday in the northern province of Jawf.

She wasn’t stoned to death. That’s the compassion.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpLpy4VSJXE

Amnesty says that Saudi Arabia does not actually define sorcery as a capital
offence. However, some of its conservative clerics have urged the strongest
possible punishments against fortune-tellers and faith healers as a threat to
Islam.

And we can’t have threats to Islam, because if we did, conservative clerics would be out of a job, and no longer in a position to … Read the rest

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The inconvenient truth about Islam from an ex-Muslim *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

Nazanin was imprisoned and raped by the Islamic regime in Iran for opposing veiling.… Read the rest

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BBC on Saudi woman beheaded for ‘sorcery’ *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

Conservative clerics have urged the strongest possible punishments against fortune-tellers and faith healers as a threat to Islam.… Read the rest

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Religion is about literal doctrines after all

Dec 12th, 2011 10:07 am | By

So after weeks of heavy breathing, Julian’s Heathen’s Progress arrives at what we already knew – that believers actually do believe the tenets of their religion.

So what is the headline finding? It is that whatever some might say about religion being more about practice than belief, more praxis than dogma, more about the moral insight of mythos than the factual claims of logos, the vast majority of churchgoing Christians appear to believe orthodox doctrine at pretty much face value. They believe that Jesus is divine, not simply an exceptional human being; that his resurrection was a real, bodily one; that he performed miracles no human being ever could; that he needed to die on the cross so that

… Read the rest

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Newsflash: Christians actually believe orthodox doctrine *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

No kidding.… Read the rest

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Saudi Arabia executes woman for ‘sorcery’ *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

She was convicted of practicing magic and sorcery.… Read the rest

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The Skeptic Magazine inaugurates The Skeptic Awards *

Dec 12th, 2011 | Filed by

Nominate best podcast, blog, event, science video, skepticism video. Awards will be presented at QEDCon in Machester in March 2012.… Read the rest

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Up a steep hill

Dec 11th, 2011 4:44 pm | By

Steve Jones wrote about denial of science in the Telegraph the other day.

Anyone, of course, is free to believe whatever they wish. But why train to become a biologist, or a doctor, when you deny the very foundations of your subject? For a biology student to refuse to accept the fact of evolution is equivalent to choosing to do a degree in English without believing in grammar, or in physics with a rooted objection to gravity: it makes no sense at all. The same is true for doctors. How can you put a body right with no idea as to why it is liable to go wrong?

I suppose the idea is that you do it by following … Read the rest

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We drift and dabble

Dec 11th, 2011 11:42 am | By

Oh goody, another more in sorrow than in anger rumination on Atheists Are As Bad As Theists And Vice Versa for a Sunday.

For a nation of talkers and self-confessors, we are terrible when it comes to talking about God. The discourse has been co-opted by the True Believers, on one hand, and Angry Atheists on the other. What about the rest of us?

What does he – Eric Weiner – mean “co-opted”? What does he even mean “what about the rest of us” – what about them? “Angry Atheists” haven’t “co-opted” anything, and the rest of us are just as able to speak up as the people Weiner is trying to portray as marginal.

It’s such a typical and … Read the rest

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Here he is, he’s all yours

Dec 11th, 2011 11:05 am | By

Some parents in Irvine California suspected their son, age 15, of smoking. So they sat him down and explained to him how useful it is to be able to breathe freely, how addictive tobacco is, how bad smoking makes you smell, right?

Not quite. They asked a guy to beat the kid up for them (authorities said).

 An Irvine couple who suspected their 15-year-old son of smoking turned to a man believed to be relied on in their church to violently discipline children, authorities said.

Ah in their church – relied on in their church. Uh…whut? So people who attend this church have a designated guy who beats their children, and this is understood and relied on? Funny kind of … Read the rest

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Parents ask a man to beat their child *

Dec 11th, 2011 | Filed by

They suspected their 15-year-old son of smoking, so turned to a man believed to be relied
on in their church to “discipline” children by beating them.… Read the rest

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Sirleaf, Gbowee, Karman accept Nobel Peace Prize *

Dec 11th, 2011 | Filed by

The Peace Prize was presented to three female activists and political leaders for “their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights” as peacemakers.… Read the rest

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An atheist talks cloying dreck about god *

Dec 11th, 2011 | Filed by

“We Nones may not believe in God, but we hope to one day.” The hell we do.… Read the rest

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Hitchens on Nietzsche on what makes us stronger *

Dec 11th, 2011 | Filed by

And what doesn’t. One thing that doesn’t is debilitating illness.… Read the rest

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Please confirm, please note, please stand, please sit

Dec 10th, 2011 3:39 pm | By

One of the beneficial side effects of the Burzynski uproar was finding Popehat (via Rhys Morgan, finding whom was another beneficial side effect). Popehat is funny.

A few days ago he got a “friendly note” from Marc Stephens.

The note contained what I would characterize as a decent effort, given his apparent abilities, to intimidate me. He sent it to my Popehat address and to my real-world big-boy-pants Ken’s-sekrit-identity law firm address.

The note is classic Marc Stephens. (Which is odd, because the Observer reported a week ago, on December 3, that Stephens was no longer working for the Burzynski clinic, but Popehat says Stephens sent him this note on December 6.) Very very bossy, as if … Read the rest

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Popehat replies to Marc Stephens *

Dec 10th, 2011 | Filed by

“Marc, kindly take this post — the link to which I will email to you — as a formal, legally binding, 100% certified style invitation to snort my taint.”… Read the rest

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Tenets of Islam are not subject to change

Dec 10th, 2011 11:21 am | By

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay went to the Maldives, and there she said some things. She said some things relevant to human rights.

In an address delivered in parliament last Thursday, Pillay said the practice of flogging women found guilty of extra-marital sex “constitutes one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women, and should have no place in the legal framework of a democratic country.”

The UN human rights chief called for a public debate “on this issue of major concern.” In a press conference later in the day, Pillay called on the judiciary and the executive to issue a moratorium on flogging.

Well yes. Commissioners for human rights can be expected … Read the rest

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