Identity anti-racists such as the Stop the War Coalition have dismissed and continue to dismiss secular activist voices like those of Gita Sahgal or secular organisations such as Just Peace.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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Rebecca Watson on seeing the patriarchy
There may always be something big and obvious about the way the world works, that we may be missing.
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Standing up the better to fall down
Poor Ireland – it just can’t escape from the Vatican, it seems. It can try but then the theocrats will raise a stink and it will be dragged back.
The Irish government faces a potential Holy War over the decision to close the country’s Vatican embassy.
Coalition party leaders Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore are at loggerheads over the closure, announced after the attack by Kenny on the Vatican’s failure to act on child abuse in the Cloyne diocese.
Kenny has given in to calls from Fine Gael backbenchers to reconsider the decision to remove the Irish embassy from the Vatican.
The calls also come from a group called, risibly, Ireland Stand Up. Yes Ireland stand up and grovel to the Vatican again!
An Irish Catholic lay group has met with politicians to voice their frustration over the closure of Ireland’s embassy to the Vatican.
…
The protesters, from the group Ireland Stand Up, met with 50 TDs, 25 senators, and seven representatives of ministers in Dublin.
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Ireland Stand Up also asked that the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny issue a formal invitation to Pope Benedict XVI to visit Dublin during the International Eucharistic Congress this summer.
Stand up the better to fall prostrate. Ooooookay.
[smothered laughter] The link to Ireland Stand Up goes to a twitter account! It has 400 followers – I have more than that! So…82 politicians met with a Twitter group? That’s hilarious.
Anyway, Fine Gael apparently takes them seriously.
TANAISTE Eamon Gilmore is facing growing demands from Fine Gael backbenchers for a rethink about his closure of the Ireland’s Vatican Embassy.
The closure has cast doubt over the prospects of the Pope coming here in summer for the Eucharistic Congress.
The decision to close the embassy is particularly sensitive in Fine Gael, with some party sources privately suggesting Taoiseach Enda Kenny should not have allowed it to happen.
But why? Why this slavish love for the Catholic church and the Vatican? Given the history, why on earth? Does the Vatican act as if it loves its dear Irish subjects?
Maybe it’s a new syndrome, to go with Stockholm Syndrome. We could call it Dublin Syndrome.
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Damian Thompson on the delusions of bishops
Senior churchmen speak of the “spiritual hunger” of the young. That’s wishful thinking.
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How not to marginalize women
There are so many ways not to do that. It seems so simple, yet somehow, it proves elusive.
One way is:
If you disagree with a woman, or several women, don’t introduce your disagreement with that familiar Shakespeare tag “the lady doth protest too much.” That’s especially true if you are a man.
Let me explain. (Yes, of course it’s obvious; of course it shouldn’t need explanation; but apparently there are always people who profess not to understand.) There is no need for such a preamble. It is entirely normal to disagree with people by just disagreeing with them. There is no need for a preliminary throat-clearing in which you disparage whatever perceived group your object-of-criticism belongs to via an overused quotation from Shakespeare (or the bible or The Purpose-driven Life).
So, if you are American and your object is French, there is no need to start with a stale joke about The French before you get to the substance. If you are white and your object is not, it is unnecessary to begin with a joke about Other Races. The fact that you are disagreeing with someone from Group X will be clear enough without any introductory joke about Group X talking too much.
So it is with women. If you disagree with a woman, or several women, just disagree with them. Just get on with it. Don’t pause to say they talk too much first; just get on with it. Don’t try to frame the discussion as a matter of women talking too much by talking at all. Don’t try to locate yourself on higher ground by treating women who talk as needing a mild rebuke just for talking, before we even get to the actual disagreement.
I hope that’s clear? It seems very clear to me, but then I have a bias. I have a bias that tells me I get to talk, just like anyone else, and that I’m not doing anything weird or abnormal by talking, and that there is just no need to make stupid creaky is-this-1850 jokes about women talking, just because I talk. Not everyone has this bias, so what seems clear to me won’t seem clear to everyone.
I’ll explain a little more, just to make sure. I’m allowed to talk. Women are allowed to talk. We don’t need permission or approval; we get to do it, just as you do. Jokes about women talking too much are just as funny as jokes about blacks being lazy or Jews driving a hard bargain. They’re nasty ingroup jokes that are meant to keep marginalized people marginalized, and people with any sense don’t make them.
That’s how not to marginalize women, chapter 1.
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Ireland: Fine Gael wrangles over re-opening Vatican embassy
One of the most surreal moments saw TD Peter Mathews brandish a set of rosary beads at the “secularist members of the party”.
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Rituals not detachable
Sometimes they admit it. Sometimes they admit, “no it’s not just practice, it’s not just being good – it’s belief.” The Spectator does.
It is certainly the case, as AN Wilson says in a Spectator review, that, until relatively recently, religious ritual did include unbelievers as a matter of course since those rites focused on participation rather than subscribing explicitly to a creed. But the ‘consoling subtle or just charming rituals’ of religion that Mr de Botton would like to co-opt for unbelievers are not, I’d say, detachable from the beliefs that inspired them. It’s a little like saying that the music and poetry of love are too charming, too consoling to be confined to those who love and should be extended to those who have never been in love or who find themselves incapable of it. The benefits of religion flow, I’d say, from the things believers believe.
We agree with you, except that we think that most of the benefits aren’t really benefits. We think believing there is an omnipotent being who wants us to believe it exists but refuses to give us any good reason to do so is not a benefit but a mind-impeding device.
Christians believe in the brotherhood of man, for instance, because we believe in the Fatherhood of God, or its feminist equivalent.
But believing in the Fatherhood of God entails believing that the male sex is the better one. The brotherhood of man is not entirely a benefit to women. “Its feminist equivalent” is a throwaway phrase which makes little dent in the existing patriarchal arrangements.
And so on. We can go on for hours in this vein. But the point is, they think what we’ve always said they think: that the beliefs do matter and that they do take them seriously.
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Why god is a problem
I want to say a little more about George Pitcher…
There’s the way he began his nasty squib about the putative “shrillness” of Richard Dawkins.
There’s something divine in the air. Agnostics and atheists are beginning to nod respectfully in the direction of the Almighty, while still, of course, maintaining that He’s not there.
Jokey, in a way, but he also means it. He especially means the assumption that underlies it: that we (we atheists, we humans in general) owe “the Almighty” our respectful nods. That the Almighty is entitled to them, and that we are obliged to give them.
That’s a stupid assumption, but more than that, it’s an inherently authoritarian, illiberal, hierarchical, dictatorial one. It may seem less so than the demands of a physical, present dictator or mob boss, but in a way it’s more so because the dictator is not physical and present. Pitcher’s “Almighty” is explicitly absent; it’s unavailable; it’s hidden away and mysterious and sekrit. This means we can’t negotiate with it or protest its decisions, much less boot it out or send it to prison for crimes against humanity.
Pitcher is attempting to shore up the principle of submission. There’s nothing “divine” about that.
The same applies to his boneless gesture at the epistemology of theism –
The problem is that faith isn’t primarily evidential, as he demands it to be, but revelatory…
If that’s true, you see, it makes “faith” fundamentally arbitrary and incorrigible, and thus authoritarian and dictatorial. “Revelation” is in fact often treated as “dictation” by the deity. This is a bad way to think about things that people are supposed to heed and respect and obey. It’s morally bad, epistemically bad, politically bad – it’s bad all around.
That’s what the god-botherers need to start realizing. It’s not that atheists need to start to “nod respectfully in the direction of the Almighty,” it’s that theists need to stop trying to make everyone bow to the principle of arbitrary authority.
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Bullies protest hiring of Ellen DeGeneres
Group calling itself “One Million Moms” accuses JC Penney of “jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon” and rants about “traditional values.”
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Iran accused of intimidating BBC Persian staff
Mark Thompson wrote in his blog that for BBC Persian staff, “interference and harassment from the Iranian authorities has become a challenging fact of life”.
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McLean’s on the Shafia murders
The father on the tape: “They betrayed kindness, they betrayed Islam, they betrayed our religion and creed, they betrayed our tradition, they betrayed everything.”
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Thou shalt not bear false witness
From a few days ago, the same old dreck – the priest George Pitcher calls Richard Dawkins “shrill.”
First there’s the usual boring empty non-argument –
The narrow and rather meaningless argument to which Dawkins confines himself is the incessant charge that there is no “evidence” for God. And evidence, of course, is defined only within the strictures of his own empirical scientism. The problem is that faith isn’t primarily evidential, as he demands it to be, but revelatory – and we would claim no less true for all that in explaining the human condition.
Oh yes? We need a “revelation” to explain the human condition? And when we have one, it’s reliable? Please.
That contemptuously lazy pass at justifying belief in god accomplished, Pitcher gets on with the “shrill” accusation.
The shrill voice of Dawkins is gradually being marginalised by those of no more faith than him, but who nevertheless perceive mystery in humanity and, while not accepting the presence of God in the world, are prepared to face in the same direction as the rest of us and stand in awe and wonder.
God that’s bad writing. “Of no more faith than him”? Yuck. And then he moves on briskly without bothering to pick a subject for the verb, and then changes to a new one – what a dog’s breakfast. But as for shrill – George Pitcher has a nerve calling anyone else shrill. Remember him after the election, rejoicing that Evan Harris had lost his seat?
A stranger to principle, Harris has coat-tailed some of the most vulnerable and weak people available to him to further his dogged, secularist campaign to have people of faith – any faith – swept from the public sphere. The Lib Dems served the purpose of providing him with a parliamentary seat, but his true love was the National Secular Society. For a doctor, he supported the strange idea that terminally ill people should be helped to kill themselves.
I commented at the time. That’s the man who thinks Dawkins is shrill.
At any rate – Russell posted on the “shrillness” meme, and Richard pointed out that Pitcher told a big fat lie in the Mail piece. Yes, a whopper. Pitcher said Hitchens said cuddly things about Christianity near the end, “much to the evident frustration of his interlocutor Richard Dawkins.” That was rather stupid of him, since he should have realized Richard could just say “no he didn’t.” But apparently he is stupid (as well as shrill), because he said it anyway. Richard said “no he didn’t.”
I was his interlocuter in his very last interview, for the Christmas issue of New Statesman, which I edited, and I can state with total certainty that he expressed no sympathy whatsoever, generous or otherwise, for the Christian worldview. So that is a lie, and so is the “evident frustration of his interlocutor Richard Dawkins.”
Shrill George Pitcher caught in lie shock.
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Oh if only
I get envious of people in other countries quite often. The other day on the CBC’s The National I saw an item about a politician suggesting that certain criminals should be given a rope, so that they could decide to hang themselves if they liked. There was outrage from all parties. Here in the US the outrage is all for people who want to get rid of the death penalty.
And in the UK – the Advertising Standards Authority has told a Christian group it can’t tell people God will heal them.
The ASA said the leaflet read: “Need Healing? God can heal today! Do you suffer from Back Pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction … Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness?
“We’d love to pray for your healing right now!
“We’re Christian from churches in Bath and we pray in the name of Jesus. We believe that God loves you and can heal you from any sickness.”
The ASA said it had been alerted to the adverts by a complainant, and concluded that they could encourage false hope and were irresponsible.
That would never happen here.
[gazes longingly out the window toward distant lands]
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Standup in Tehran
Ah it is sweet of Mehr to provide so many pretty pictures of Khomeini’s re-enacted Return to Iran as Cardboard Dude.
It’s cool that Khomeini is a giant. It’s cool that he has no feet. It’s cool the way his two handlers’ white gloves appear discreetly on his shoulders and at his sides, while his own hands don’t appear at all. It’s just all so dignified and holy and impressive.
The New York Times likes it too.
Shortly after the airport arrival, another cardboard cutout made an appearance in southern Tehran at Refah School, which served as Ayatollah Khomeini’s base of operations. There, it was joined by officials, including the education minister, who sat in a large circle with the silent version of the revered leader and awkwardly drank tea.
Well now I don’t see why that would be awkward, do you? Officials sitting around with a giant cardboard Dude, drinking tea? Where does the awkwardness come in?
(Oh I bet I know. They didn’t dare burst into shrieks of laughter, yet it must have been so hard not to. Of course; that would do it.)
There’s something missing though. There should be a giant cardboard Khomeini issuing a giant cardboard Fatwa.
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Atheism in America
Well at least Julian now realizes that we Murkan atheists haven’t been exaggerating about the level of hostility to atheism and atheists there is in the US. He took an evidence-gathering trip here last year, and a long article in the FT talks about what he found.
As I found out when I travelled across the US last year, atheists live in isolation and secrecy all over the country. In a nation that celebrates freedom of religion like no other, freedom not to be religious at all can be as hard to exercise as the right to swim the Atlantic…The issue is somewhat neglected because it’s not usually perceptible on the coasts and in the larger cities, but the almost complete absence of overt atheism is striking at all levels of US public life, even in cosmopolitan areas.
I don’t think the issue is “neglected” but maybe that’s because I’m thinking of my particular corner of the Internet, which talks about it all the time. At any rate: yes indeed: the almost complete absence of overt atheism is striking at all levels of US public life. This is one reason we (in this particular corner of the Internet) talk about it so much. It’s worth talking about, plus talking about it makes it less true. We talk about our absence and thus make ourselves a little more present.
This week, Barack Obama was invited to speak at the 60th National Prayer Breakfast, an interfaith gathering which every president since Eisenhower has attended.
And he accepted, too. Boy did he ever.
it’s always been an opportunity that I’ve cherished. And it’s a chance to step back for a moment, for us to come together as brothers and sisters and seek God’s face together. At a time when it’s easy to lose ourselves in the rush and clamor of our own lives, or get caught up in the noise and rancor that too often passes as politics today, these moments of prayer slow us down. They humble us. They remind us that no matter how much responsibility we have, how fancy our titles, how much power we think we hold, we are imperfect vessels. We can all benefit from turning to our Creator, listening to Him. Avoiding phony religiosity, listening to Him.
Vomit.
This is why we have to be so noisy and obnoxious – it’s because the president of a secular democracy feels obliged to talk sick-making drivel like that, which is made especially illiberal and objectionable by all the “Him” crap. He wouldn’t use language that implied that “God” is white; he has no business calling “God” male. He should leave the whole damn thing alone.
But he can’t, or at least he and his handlers think he can’t; so back to Julian’s article.
Julian talked to Harry Purdy, of Manchester, who met his GI father for the first time in 1991, and then moved to the US – only to have all his newly-found relatives reject him because he’s an atheist.
“I’ve been told things like ‘I hope you have an accident, die and go to hell.’ So that’s what I’ve been up against.”
Friends have rejected him. “I used to be a good running friend with somebody who doesn’t live far from here. I mentioned on one occasion that I was an atheist and I’ve never seen him again … I came here knowing this was the Bible Belt, but I didn’t realise it was a more like a totalitarian Christian society: you’re either one of them or you’re not and there’s no in between. So I’ve learnt this lesson, to keep it to myself as much as possible.”
There’s a woman whose relatives had no problem with her babysitting for their children when she was a crack addict, but won’t have it now that she’s not an addict but is an atheist.
No wonder atheist groups talk of modelling their campaigns on the civil rights, gay and women’s liberation movements. It is not that they claim their persecution is on the same level but that they suggest the way forward requires a combination of organising and consciousness-raising. “We want people to realise that some of their best friends are atheists, some of their doctors, and lawyers and fire chiefs and all the rest of them are atheists,” says Dennett.
And that there are a lot of us; that we’re here, and we’re not leaving; that we’re not fanged or rabid or given to eating babies.
The word is getting out, Julian notes; numbers are rising; things may be improving.
When it comes to identifying the main cause of atheism’s recent growth, most people agree. “It’s all about the internet,” says Silverman. “The reason that atheism is on the rise is because there is no way that a person who is an atheist can think they’re alone any more. When I was growing up, I was the only atheist I knew. I had to get on my bike, ride to the public library and take out the one atheist book that they had in the whole library: The Case Against God by George Smith. Now any atheist can go on Facebook or Myspace and find literally millions of friends.”
Or Freethought blogs…
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Vancouver Sun talks to Pat Churchland
She considers neuroscience more reliable than folk psychology.
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Julian Baggini notes it’s not easy being atheist in the US
In a nation that celebrates freedom of religion like no other, freedom not to be religious at all can be as hard to exercise as the right to swim the Atlantic.
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Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?
Members of UCLASH were not reposting the cartoon to reoffend, but to reaffirm that if the freedom to speak means anything, it means the freedom to say things that people do not like.
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Bath Christian group’s ‘God can heal’ adverts banned
Advertising Standards Authority said leaflet that says “Need Healing? God can heal today!” is misleading. Group said it’s just normal Christian belief.