More dreck from LifeSiteNews. (This may become an absorbing new hobby. LifeSiteNews is a real swamp of nasty.)

Shock-horror: Obama wants (and says he wants) his daughters to have reproductive rights. Imagine that! He wants them not to be trapped by unwanted pregnancies if they don’t choose to be. (That’s not a tautology. Some women choose to continue pregnancies that they don’t want.) LSN wants to lose its lunch at the thought.

Mr. Romney wants to get rid of funding for Planned Parenthood. I think that’s a bad idea. I’ve got two daughters. I want them to control their own health care choices. We’re not going backwards, we’re going forwards.

We all know the word “choice” is a

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And now a word from the bigots. The creepy LifeSiteNews reports gloatingly that a bakery in Colorado has seen a surge in business after the owner refused to provide a cake for a gay wedding. Isn’t that heart-warming? A little piece of spiteful meanness is popular in Lakewood Colorado.

Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, told local media that this wasn’t the first time he had turned away homosexuals seeking wedding cakes, but it is the first time his stand for Christian principles has resulted in so much media attention and some death threats.

What stand for Christian principles? Where did baby Jesus say don’t provide wedding cakes to gay people who want to get married? Where did Paul … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Islamists who grabbed power in northern Mali have settled in and gotten comfortable. On Sunday they stuck a woman and a man in two vertical holes in the ground, leaving just their heads exposed, and threw stones at them until they were dead. They did this in front of 200 people.

Mali’s government has expressed disgust.

“The government learned with indignation and astonishment of the stoning to death of a couple in Aguelhok by the extremists occupying northern Mali,” read a statement from the communication ministry.

“At the same time as it expresses its sympathy to the families of the victims, the government severely condemns this dark-age practice and assures that this act will not go unpunished.”

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

This is very cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h98P5Ti4xS0

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Holy crap.

A Christian guy in Largo, Florida who did a puppet show on tv has been arrested for

well

I’ll let the Tampa Bay Times tell you.

But there was another side to Brown, according to a 29-page criminal complaint filed July 20 in federal court in Tampa: The man who, as he was feeding pizza to teenagers, nursed fantasies of murdering and eating them. The one who acted out Bible stories with puppets at his church, while musing online about carving and cooking the body parts of a young parishioner for Easter.

“I imagine him wiggling and then going still,” Brown told an associate in an Internet chat session, describing his plot to kill and cannibalize a boy

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The other day I told a brief version of how Vyckie Garrison’s then 3d grader fared going to school after eight sheltered years. She tells a fuller version at NLQ.

These days, I am thoroughly enjoying my “blessings” ~ they are far from perfect as they’ve gone from passive, obedient little robots (a couple of them were more like zombies ~ and, Chassé ~ my “spirited” child ~ really reminded me of a jack-in-the-box gone bonkers ~ no matter how many times she was stuffed into the box and the lid slammed down on her, she had this quirky way of popping back up with a crazy, intimidating, you-can’t-get-rid-of-me smirk) ~ to “normal” kids with their own unique personalities,

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Eric describes an odd thought experiment in Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue.

He asks us to imagine a time in the future when people have got fed up with science, have removed science from the curricula of schools and universities, killed or imprisoned all the scientists, and then government is carried out — well, how, exactly? Since science is not only physics and math and chemistry and biology, but a fairly strict methodological approach to information, how would a government function where fact checking was ruled out, and decisions were based on pure whim? MacIntyre seems to forget that science is not only composed of lists of facts, but is tied together by theory and based on experience, and that

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Barry Karr is the Executive Director of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer Magazine. Surly Amy posts his statement.

I find totally reprehensible statements advocating violence, rape and even death directed towards women. I have said it in personal communications, and I will say it here now: People who make statements filled with hatred and threatening or calling for acts of violence have no place in the humanist or skeptical movements.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Good old religious entitelement. The state can’t tell religious entities what to do, because freedom, but if the state wants to give religious entities lots of money, why it’s the least they can do. That’s how the people who run Hope Christian School in Albuquerque view the matter.

A three year-old was denied admittance to Hope Christian School in Albuquerque, N.M. because he has two gay fathers, KOAT-TV reported.

A letter sent to the family offered the school’s rationale:

“Same gender couples are inconsistent with scriptural lifestyle and biblical teachings,” and “Home life doesn’t reflect the school’s belief of what a biblical family lifestyle is.”

The letter added that because Hope Christian School is private, it is exempt from

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

More on this issue about how to discuss things without everyone getting out the flamethrowers, and do we even want to discuss things that way, and is it the right thing to do even if we don’t want to.

I do think it’s better to err on the side of avoiding calling people names, but I have to add that I don’t actually want a Fully Sedate™ discussion. Chris Hallquist explains one reason today.

Furthermore, most of Dan’s suggested alternatives are to a degree academic and there’s a risk of classism in demanding people put their criticisms of others in academic terms. Robin Hanson makes a good point about this:

Lower “working” class cultures tend to talk more

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)