Author: Ophelia Benson

  • How do we get to where we are?

    EcksLibris (amusing nym!) replies to my request for topics to post about:

    I would love to hear more about you, how you came to your beliefs/lack thereof, and how you became an activist (in the best possible sense of the word)!

    I don’t generally like to talk directly about Me Me Me, but talking about how we come to our beliefs/lack thereof is another matter. It’s always interesting, at least to me.

    I came to my lack of theist beliefs mostly by never really having theist beliefs in the first place, as well as I can remember. I was told things, as a child, but I think they must have always been hedged. I know they were sometimes, because I can remember bits of discussions with my mother and they were hedged. I don’t think “God” ever sank in. I don’t think it can have, because I had stronger feelings about tv characters and characters in children’s fiction than I ever did about “God.” If the idea of “God” really sinks in, you surely have strong feelings about “God.”

    But atheism was mostly in the background for me, until the publication of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-haunted World. It wasn’t the book itself that changed that so much as it was a couple of interviews he gave to promote it, one on Fresh Air and the other on Science Friday. They galvanized me, somehow. That became my way of making the world a better place: not just being a non-theist but arguing with theism and the way of thinking that makes it “normal” and beyond dispute.

    That’s not a very full account, but in fact it sums up quite a lot.

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  • Reasons

    Ewan answered my request for suggestions by asking for reasons to support the SSA. Greta has a good selection of quotations on that.

    JT Eberhard, a campus organizer and high school specialist with the Secular Student Alliance, gives us his personal account of what he does. He starts with Jessica Ahlquist on what the SSA did for her:

    When JT Eberhard contacted me and gave me the support of the Secular Student Alliance I felt like I had friends again.  Over the course of two years the SSA provided me with support and JT closely monitored the actions of the school committee, always ready to come to my defense at any minute.  He expressed that he cared not only for the issue at my school but also for my well-being and shared personal stories and advice.  Anyone can tell that for JT and the rest of the SSA staff, their positions within the organization are not merely a source of income, but a life-long passion and a genuine desire to help young secular people.  When I attended their annual conference last summer and was given the opportunity to share my story I felt a sense of community I had never experienced before.  I know so many other students who share my feelings and are thankful for the SSA and their brilliant staff.  They are literally changing lives.

    You know (if you’ve been reading here) how isolated Jessica has been and still is at her school and in Cranston. You know what it’s like to be a teenager. Adults have had time to thicken their skins and get used to conflict, but teenagers are raw. Given the bizarre way the religious majority has been encouraged to see itself as a persecuted minority over the past two or three decades, their unleashed rage can be incredibly intimidating. That right there is a good reason to support an organization that can give isolated bullied teenagers a set of allies and friends.

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  • Graffiti

    It’s 8:05 – no, 8:06. Get going.

    An item on Twitter just now caused me to read the Wikipedia entry on the atheist’s wager, an alternative to Pascal’s of the same ilk.

    You should live your life and try to make the world a better place for your being in it, whether or not you believe in god. If there is no god, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent god, he will judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in him.

    Not alternative enough, if you ask me. It’s still too focused on postmortem, as if we were going to be alive postmortem to care what people think of us. It’s also too focused on incentive or reward. Try to make the world a better place so that people will remember you fondly. That’s a stupid reason. If you’re going to try to make the world a better place, do it so that the world will be a better place, not so that people will remember you fondly. Jeez. Get over yourself.

    Here’s a news flash: apart from a few intimates, most people won’t remember you at all, fondly or otherwise. After a few decades no one will remember you at all. “Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” said Keats on his tombstone. Well he was wrong, but for most of us, that’s the story.

    Vanity and longing for posthumous affection is a pitiful motivation for making the world a better place. Come on. Write your name in a few toilet stalls and on a few garage walls and garbage cans, and let it go at that. For the rest, just concentrate on making the world a better place so that the world will be a better place.

    8:14. Woo hoo! Bags of time to catch up on Twitter and write the 9:00 item.

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  • Good morning blogathon

    Here we go. The miniature blogathon begins.

    Brianne did hers yesterday, except hers wasn’t miniature: she did the whole 24 hour thing. I encouraged her by reminding her that the second half was going to be much longer than the first. I’m kind that way.

    You were supposed to suggest things for me to post about. Seriously: any suggestions? But then it’s Sunday, when nobody reads this. People read this exclusively during working hours, so that they’ll know for sure they’re not wasting their time.

    Not to worry. It’s not as if the world is empty of things to talk about.

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  • A whole Trojan stable

    Via Tarek Fatah, a Calgary conference has invited Bilal Philips as the top speaker; Philips has repeatedly said homosexuals should be executed. Get the name of the conference – The Power of Unity: Islam in a MultiCultural Canada. Some unity!

    And there’s a slew of other craps, too.

    Munir El-Kassem, a dentist from London, Ont., wrote a column back in 2001 that condemned the West as hypocritical and defended the Taliban regime for destroying the sixth-century Buddha statues in Bamiyan…

    Shaykh Hatem Alhaj recently lost his job at the Mayo Clinic because he wrote papers in support of female circumcision. He later tried to clarify his position by saying he only supports nicking the clitoris, not cutting it right off.

    And George Galloway is on the dance card too.

    Abraham Ayache, chairman of the Muslim Council of Calgary, said the conference is being organized to celebrate 50 years of Islam in Calgary and is all about unity and celebrating multiculturalism…

    But a recent posting on the MCC website under the heading “Ask the Imam” seems to  indicate that some of the organization’s hired imams haven’t read the memo about  cultural tolerance and unity.

    In answer to a question by a single mother concerned about her children no  longer being obedient to her, an imam on the site wrote: “You should instil a  hatred for this culture and its ways in the hearts of your children.” He also  wrote: “It is haraam (forbidden) for you to give your children free rein in  forming friendships with the children of the kuffaar.”

    That’s not multiculturalism. Calling people “the kuffar” is not multiculturalism. Advocating the execution of gays is not multiculturalism. Happy Canada day.

     

  • What could possibly go wrong?

    It seemed like such a good idea – spending three years, three months and three days in a Buddhist retreat seven thousand feet up an Arizona mountain, living in rustic conditions and meditating silently, with a charismatic Princeton-educated monk for a “spiritual leader,” in order to “employ yoga and deep meditation to try to answer some of life’s most profound questions.”

    Wait, what?

    How would yoga and deep meditation enable anyone to answer some of life’s most profound questions? Unless, I suppose, some of those questions have to do with how boring it would be to spend three years, three months and three days meditating silently, no matter how charismatic one’s Princeton-educated spiritual leader is.

    Erik Brinkman, a Buddhist monk who remains one of Mr. Roach’s staunchest admirers, said, “If the definition of a cult is to follow our spiritual leader into the desert, then we are a cult.”

    Yes, that’s one pretty good definition of a cult. Following spiritual leaders into the desert has “cult” written all over it. Pro tip: it’s because of the following, and the spiritual leader, and the desert.

     

  • Mob attacks women at Cairo anti-sex assault rally

    The attackers pushed several women against a metal railing, shoving their hands down their clothes and trying to grab their bags.

  • Death on Buddhist yoga retreat in Arizona

    The retreat was designed to allow participants to employ yoga and deep meditation to try to answer some of life’s most profound questions. Yeah no that’s not going to work.

  • BBC promotes quack charity “Yes to Life”

    The charity “helps people with cancer choose integrated treatments.”

  • Neil Denny visits the Creation Museum

    It promotes the idea that not only is everything stated in Genesis chapters 1-11 true, but it can be proved … with science.

  • Boko Haram and Religious Minorities in Northern Nigeria

    The radical Islamic sect Boko Haram appears to have taken its ‘jihad’ to religious minorities in Northern Nigeria, and there are clear signs of danger ahead in terms of inter-religious peace and harmony in the country. Today a suicide bomber reportedly drove a car full of explosives into a church in Yalwa, which is on the outskirts of Bauchi state. At least 12 people are said to have died in the attack. Though there is no confirmation yet of those who carried out the attack, Boko Haram militants are suspected to be behind it.

    This suicide attack has occurred just a day after the representatives of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria met with President Goodluck Jonathan drawing his attention to the fate and problems of christian minorities in Northern Nigeria. But will this make any difference in the way the Federal Government is handing the violent campaign of this militant group? I do not think so.

    In April, an attack on Christian worshippers at a university theatre in Kano left at least 15 people dead, including university professors, and many more injured. Similar attacks have been carried out on churches in Niger, Abuja, Plateau, and more. It is important to underscore the dangerous possibilities of attacks on religious minorities in Northern Nigeria. First of all, the implications for inter-religious relations are enormous. Both Christianity and Islam are dominant faiths in the country and exist as majorities and minorities in different states. Nigeria cannot afford a religious war, particularly at a time mostly western nations are pitched in ‘battle’ against Islamic terrorists with connections in Arab and Middle East countries. Even without a war, Nigeria is divided into an Islamic North and a Christian South. Since independence, attempts to steer the state away from religion, erect a wall separating church/mosque and state, and guarantee equal rights of Nigerians of all faiths and none anywhere in the country, have yielded limited results. Following a return to democratic rule in 1999, the Muslim majority states in Northern Nigeria adopted sharia law as state law.

    Internationally, Nigeria, with its Christian-dominated South and Muslim-dominated North, risks being turned into a battle front for the war on terror or jihad as the case may be. With the recent kidnapping and killing of European nationals by groups and militants linked to al-Qeada Northern Nigeria, this painful and gory reality stares Nigeria in the face.

    Locally, many Christians in the North hail from the South, and many Muslims from the North live in the Christian-dominated South. Attacks on religious minorities could spark reprisal killings as has often been the case in the past, particularly in Southern Nigeria where Muslims are in the minority. In this way Nigeria is edging towards religious cleansing. Boko Haram attacks could provoke the cleansing of Christians in the Muslim majority states and of Muslims in the Christian majority communities. Already there are reports of Christians leaving Muslim majority communities for fear of being attacked and killed by militants. Sadly the authorities in Northern Nigeria, including the leaders and politicians, have refused to acknowledge the religious agenda of Boko Haram attacks. A few who have spoken out attribute the violent campaign of this Islamist group to the abject poverty and marginalization in Northern Nigeria. They claim that the attacks are attempts by this group to draw the attention of the government to the poverty and underdevelopment in the region. Really? So Boko Haram militants who are opposed to western education are carrying out suicide bombing to get the government to create jobs and invest in the region? In other words, Boko Haram militants do not really mean what they say – that western education is sin or that they want to implement sharia and enthrone Islamic state. According to these analysts, the militants are saying so in order to attract more federal allocation, funding and development programs to the region. This is an obvious attempt to shy away from the truth and turn a blind eye on the unfortunate reality of Islamic fanaticism in the North. And if we cannot muster the courage to acknowledge this fact now and address it, when are we going to do that? Is it when all the non-Muslims in Muslim majority states have been bombed out of existence by these militants?

    Attacks on Christians and Christian worship centers in Northern Nigeria did not start today, did they? In fact jihadist campaigning by Islamic militants predates the creation of Nigeria and of Nigeria’s independence. When Uthman Dan Fodio launched his jihad in 1804, has it anything to do with poverty or piety? Did his jihad bring wealth and prosperity to what was later to become Northern Nigeria? What about the attacks by the maitatsine sect and of other Islamist groups? They also had nothing to do with religion? What has poverty to do with Islamic militants throwing bombs at christian worshippers in Kano and slaughtering innocent citizens? What has marginalization got to do with bombing of churches in Jos, Abuja, Niger, or Bauchi? If there is one thing that is clear in the attacks and killings going on in different parts of Northern Nigeria, it is the sworn mission of Boko Haram to impose sharia law and turn Nigeria into an Islamic state by force. We should take them at their word and not label them ‘heroes’ and champions of justice and development for Northern Nigeria. We should take measures to forestall the breakdown of peace and harmony among adherents of different faiths and none. We should strive to rebuild trust and to defend the rights of religious minorities to exist and practice their faiths or beliefs anywhere in the country.

    June 3, 2012

  • She won’t shut up or back down

    Athena Andreadis is disgusted but not surprised at the spectacle of Golden Dawn spokesman Elías Kasidhiáris hitting Liána Kanélli in the face on a tv talk show the other day.

    For those sequestered in silently running nuclear submarines, Golden Dawn got 7% of the vote in the May elections, gaining seats in the parliament – the first time such a thing has happened since World War II (not counting the junta). Its platform is the standard troglodytic garbage: ethnic purity, “natural” order – which includes the de jure disenfranchisement of women and Others – and bodily violence against those who disagree. Its members regularly assault immigrants, minorities and journalists as well as other “undesirables”, with tolerance (if not cooperation) from the police and portions of the media. Serial killer Anders Breivik listed Golden Dawn in his diary as the likeliest group to “cleanse” Europe.

    The violence against those who disagree is not figurative violence, or “merely” threatened violence.

    To anyone speaking Hellenic, it becomes obvious when you watch the video that Kasidhiáris was as well-informed as Sarah Palin. The two women, Kanélli in particular, let him know this. His response was standard: first he accused them of bringing “personal matters” (namely, his impending trial) into politics. Then, after a brief exchange of verbal insults, he flung a glass of water at Dhoúrou’s face. The three male politicians present sat through this like statues while the talk host made feeble mewling noises. The only one who did something was Kanélli, who went toward Kasidhiáris brandishing a newspaper.

    To show that he doesn’t take guff from uppity broads, even ones old enough to be his mother, Kasidhiáris jumped out of his seat and hit Kanélli three times. On the face. The first was a slap. The other two were left-right closed-fist punches.

    Yet again, I’m naïve. I’ve always thought that was taboo, and known to be taboo – at least taboo enough not to be done on television. Silly me.

    He then threatened he would “return with reinforcements” and somehow managed to escape from the TV station to “parts unknown” (almost certainly the offices of Golden Dawn) to avoid the automatic arrest warrant for assault which, by a quirk of Hellenic law, expires within 48 hours of its issue. The police, not surprisingly, have been “unable to find him” – even though he issued a lengthy (and presumably traceable) statement from his ultra-secret location, in which he said that Kanélli should be the one to be arrested and face assault charges because she “attacked him first”. The head of his party stuck by him, arguing that the incident had been blown out of proportion and, in any case, the two women are really to blame because, well, they provoked him and what’s a manly man to do except respond (literally) two-fistedly?

    The defense of men who beat up women everywhere – she provoked him. Bitchez always provoke.

    Sound familiar? The tactics of cowardly bullies do not change across time and cultures. Yet even more mind-boggling is the enormous number of people who opined anonymously online that “the cunt had it coming” and “finally, someone put the fat ugly dyke in her place.” Kanélli infuriates many people because she won’t shut up or back down…

    Uh oh.

  • A bad day for cyber-bullies

    “Thank You Hater” went viral yesterday; I saw it everywhere. It was all over my Twitter feed, including via Roger Ebert and Stephen Fry. Isabel Fay tweeted about the phone ringing off the hook and interviews lining up to be done. The Guardian reports on the instant virality.

    It also reports a different cyber-bully story.

    A woman has won court backing to force Facebook to reveal the identities of cyberbullies who targeted her with a string of abusive messages on the website.

    Nicola Brookes was granted a high court order after receiving “vicious and depraved” abuse on Facebook after she posted a comment in support of the former The X Factor contestant Frankie Cocozza.

    The woman, from Brighton, was falsely branded a paedophile and drug dealer by anonymous Facebook users who set up a fake profile page on the website.

    Now Brookes plans to bring a private prosecution against at least four alleged internet trolls, after the high court said Facebook should reveal their identities.

    Interesting.

     

     

  • “Voice of woman is voice of revolution”

    Sarah El Deeb is a journalist with the AP in Cairo; she tweeted about the protest against violence against women, and then about the attack on the protest. Before the attack she posted a nice hopeful photo –

     

    That was before a mob of men attacked them.

  • A mob of men attacks women in Tahrir Square

    Holy shit. Holy fucking hell god damn it piss crap.

    A mob of hundreds of men assaulted women holding a march demanding an end to sexual harassment Friday, with the attackers overwhelming the male guardians and groping and molesting several of the female marchers in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

    What is the matter with them? What the hell is their point – that assaulting women is good? That women’s wish not to be assaulted is evil and deserving of punishment in the form of assault?

    From the ferocity of the assault, some of the victims said it appeared to have been an organized attempt to drive women out of demonstrations and trample on the pro-democracy protest movement.

    Misogynist fascists then. Lovers of violence, force, hatred, crazed hyper-and-pseudo-masculinity. The worst kind of people imaginable.

    Friday’s march was called to demand an end to sexual assaults. Around 50 women participated, surrounded by a larger group of male supporters who joined to hands to form a protective ring around them. The protesters carried posters saying, “The people want to cut the hand of the sexual harasser,” and chanted, “The Egyptian girl says it loudly, harassment is barbaric.”

    After the marchers entered a crowded corner of the square, a group of men waded into the women, heckling them and groping them. The male supporters tried to fend them off, and it turned into a melee involving a mob of hundreds.

    The marchers tried to flee while the attackers chased them and male supporters tried to protect them. But the attackers persisted, cornering several women against a metal sidewalk railing, including an Associated Press reporter, shoving their hands down their clothes and trying to grab their bags.

    Turning everything into shit. Nice job.

    I saw this via Mona Eltahawy on Twitter. Three of her best friends were attacked.

     

  • Cognition and science

    We never fully unlearn our mistaken intuitions about the world. We just learn to  ignore them.

  • Radical cooties

    Lisa Miller in the Washington Post takes a look at the Vatican’s way of using the epithet “radical feminist.”

    Members of the Vatican hierarchy are using the word “feminist” and even “radical feminist” the way third-graders use the word “cooties.” In April, the Vatican accused the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents 57,000 nuns nationwide, of allowing “radical feminist” ideas to flow unchecked in their communities. In 2008, after launching an investigation against American nuns (the results of which have not yet been released), Cardinal Franc Rode told a radio interviewer that the nuns are suspected of “certain irregularities,” a “secular mentality” and “perhaps also a certain feminist spirit.”

    That second item is especially impressive – “irregularities” – meaning deviation from authoritarian “rules” laid down by an ecclesiastical heirarchy; a “secular mentality” – meaning thinking about human issues in human terms; “a certain feminist spirit” meaning thinking women are as capable of thinking about human issues as men are (and perhaps, when the men in question are Vatican clerics, quite a lot better). Granted, they’re the Vatican hierarchy, so they’re not going to think about things in reasoned, secular, egalitarian, rights-based, liberal terms…but it’s a little surprising that they don’t even disguise their adamant opposition to reason and secularism and equality and rights and liberalism.

    Their casual use of these terms convinces me that the cardinals, in their vast experience, have never actually met a radical feminist theologian. Such creatures do exist, although American religious orders are hardly their breeding ground. What the Vatican hierarchy sees as a “radical feminist” is a woman who dares to believe that she’s equal to a man.

    They start from a different place, so any feminism at all looks hair-raisingly radical.

    Lisa Isherwood is a real-life radical feminist theologian. She is editor of the journal Feminist Theology and a professor at Winchester University in England. She believes that the men at the Vatican are using the term “radical feminist” as a right-wing scare tactic, for it evokes other enemies far more dangerous than nuns. Their thinking, she says, goes like this: “We hear the word radical Islam, and everyone panics, so let’s chuck that at them.”

    They’ve been studying the Republican party in the US, haven’t they.

  • Racism and antisemitism in Polish and Ukrainian football

    Racism, antisemitism and violence are often intertwined  and together they create a very intimidating atmosphere inside the ground.

  • A message of thanks from Rothamstead Research

    Dear Friends and Colleagues

    The scientists at Rothamsted Research want to record their sincere thanks for the amazing, spontaneous outpouring of support for safeguarding their research on aphid repellent wheat. As you all know, this project represented years of painstaking discovery research and the careers of a number of dedicated scientists. The idea that a self-appointed group would decide to destroy this was unconscionable and the researchers felt that they had to reach out to reasonable people for support. No-one expected such enthusiastic and heartfelt support, but it had a number of very positive effects.

    You brought the discussion about the research into the realms of sensible debate. Your support really affected the attitude of commentators, who realised what strong support there is for public sector research even when it involves transgenic plants. It also had an effect on those threatening the work and certainly helped to reduce the size of the demonstration that was intent on destroying the experiment. Finally, it was a great source of encouragement to our scientists, even in the depressing period leading up to the direct action, when everyone was feeling under siege. They would read some of the comments and were re-energised to go ahead and struggle for the right to do good science despite the threats.

    As you now know, the day of the action went by peacefully and the demonstrators were well behaved. We still live under the threat of another night-time raid, but we are doing our best to safeguard the experiment. Our ecologists and field entomologists are in the field (in the pouring rain!) most days counting aphids, ladybirds and parasitic wasps that live off the aphids. But they are even more enthused to perform this work because of your support. They feel like they are members of a much larger team. This is a reminder of why we do science. It isn’t to produce scientific papers (although we must…), but it is to improve agriculture and all that depends on it.

    So thank you, each individually, for your support, your comments and your suggestions. We have learned a great deal though this process, much of it due to you and your help.

    The researchers will keep this list apprised of the progress of our work and invite any and all to contact us directly at Rothamsted.

    With best wishes to all,

    Maurice Moloney

    Director and Chief Executive

    maurice.moloney@rothamsted.ac.uk

  • Stirred up

    It’s good that forms of group-hatred like racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia don’t really matter, because they never make anything bad happen. It’s good that they’re all just words, just being “offended,” and basically just a kind of fluff blowing around on the surface of life.

    Right?

    Buddhist residents in western Burma have killed at least nine Muslims as sectarian tension worsens in the region, police say.

    …

    Rakhine is home to Burma’s largest concentration of Muslims, including much-persecuted Rohingya Muslims, and their presence is often deeply resented by the majority Buddhist population.

    In a joint statement quoted by Reuters, eight Rohingya rights groups based outside Burma condemned the attack on the Muslims on the bus, whom they termed “Muslim pilgrims”.

    Although it appears those on the bus were not Rohingyas, the groups said the attack followed months of anti-Rohingya propaganda stirred up by “extremists and xenophobes”.

    Yes but propaganda doesn’t matter. Propaganda never makes anything happen. It’s just words. Grow a thicker skin. Ignore them.  Complaining about it just makes potential victims afraid when they otherwise wouldn’t be. Grow a pair. Get a life. Move on.