From Dave Muscato of AA:

We have an urgent message for anyone who may be in a position to help.
Please assist us in spreading the word.

We need to contact anyone who is related to an atheist or other
nonbeliever who died in the terrorist attacks on September 11. This is
extremely time-sensitive.

We need the names of atheist victims of the attacks, and we need
contact information for relatives who knew them personally and can
vouch for the fact that they were nonbelievers.

If you have contact with anyone who knows a victim from 9/11, please
contact us immediately.

Our phone number is 908-276-7300 extension 7, or email
dmuscato@atheists.org. Again this is extremely time-sensitive.

Thank you and please … Read the rest

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Which is good, according to him, because journalists, according to him, are afraid to read science. Even ones with PhDs in science like Phil Plait and Laura Helmuth (health and science editor of Slate).

As RFK Jr. explained, “journalists get their information from government officials who are saying there’s no problem. Not one of them has picked up the multitude of studies that say thimerosal is the most potent brain killer imaginable.” When RFK Jr. challenged the university scientist about a study of the biological activity of thimerosal in vitro, which “everybody accepts because journalists hadn’t read it,” the scientist said, “ ‘Oh, yeah, you’re right about that.’ He backpedaled.” That’s because “now he was dealing with somebody who

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He was fifteen. It’s not even clear that he was an atheist. (But what difference does it make? It’s not as if it’s any more acceptable to murder if they were correct in thinking he was an atheist.)

Coffee seller Mohammad Qataa was allegedly shot in the face and neck a day after being kidnapped by an Islamist group in Aleppo, called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, once previously known as the Nusra Front.

…

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the boy had been arguing with someone about the existence of God, and was heard to say: “Even if the Prophet Mohammad returns, I will not become a believer.”

But other sources suggested that the

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You know that thing about all the raping going on in the US military? You know whose fault that is? I’ll tell you. It’s those pesky liberals trying to “take over the military.” That’s right! They cause all those guys in uniform to trip and fall onto women and get their penises all stuck accidentally up them. It’s a liberal holocaust type of deal.

Fox News contributor Allen West agreed with radio host Michael Savage’s assertion that “Khmer Rouge feminists” are attempting a “coup” against the military by proposing to change the military chain of command in sexual assault cases. West also used the sexual assault issue to criticize liberals for wanting to “put women into combat arms units” “so

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Wow, the Google doodle today. If you haven’t already, click on the play button. At Google.… Read the rest

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I mentioned yesterday that I was more cheerful about the Dublin conference, and added that it was because there had been some communication. I was cryptic about it because I’d forgotten to ask if it would be ok for me to mention it.

(Some buffoon pretended to think I was making a threat. Seriously – “there’s been some communication” – a threat.

Not a communication, some communication. And why would that be a threat anyway? … Read the rest

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Another branch of Deep Rifts, this time nothing whatever to do with me (hooray!).

The story, as concisely as possible: before the Freedom From Religion Foundation had a Facebook page, someone set up a group called Freedom From Religion Foundation as a place for fans of FFRF to hang out. It apparently became rather…contentious as time went on, and meanwhile FFRF got itself a Facebook page. On Friday the publicist for FFRF posted there.

My name is Lauryn and I’m the publicist for the FFRF. Eric and other admin have been kind enough to agree to shut down this group  by June 30 and start a new group. The reason for this is because our pages have been

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According to Reality Check, the Texas case didn’t happen the way it was described.

It is not in dispute that the defendant, Ezekiel Gilbert, paid the victim, Lenora Frago, $150 for 30 minutes of escort services advertised on Craigslist. After Frago refused to have sex with him, the defendant shot her. Frago was paralyzed and the defendant was charged with aggravated assault.  When she died seven months later Gilbert was indicted for murder instead.

At trial, defense attorneys made the shocking argument that Gilbert was justified in shooting Frago because she had stolen from him and Texas law permits the use of deadly force to defend one’s property at night. That a defense was raised in this case based

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Prepare to turn pale with horror, then scarlet with rage. Prepare also to send a message to the Texas Attorney General.

A court in Texas just exonerated a man who shot and killed a woman who had refused to have sex with him. She’s dead, and he will serve no time at all.

Here’s what happened: Ezekiel Gilbert shot and killed a Craigslist escort after she left without having sex with him. His lawyer argued that since he had paid her $150 for the evening, he was justified under Texas law in shooting her because state law allows people “to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft.”

It’s legal in Texas to kill a woman for refusing … Read the rest

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I’m much more optimistic about the Dublin conference now* – and thus able to be excited about it again. It’s going to tackle important subjects, and Ireland needs it. Lucky lucky me to get to be involved.

There’s a bit of privilege for you.

The clouds really are parting here, the band of blue really is bright, the colorful sails on the many sailboats on the Sound are festive.

*Because there’s been some communication.… Read the rest

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I’m still thinking about “privilege” and its discontents. It interestes me, for several reasons, not just the ones that have to do with Ron’s talk at Women in Secularism 2 and the disagreements and battles that ensued.

Sometimes (often in fact) people hear things that aren’t intended in the use of any particular claim or word or phrase. Words and phrases can be used in many ways, some of them less reasonable than others.

Is that enough platitudes to get us started?

I do have a point. I’m thinking that one thing people who bristle at the word “privilege” hear is an added “unearned” in front of it. That can be massively annoying if one has in fact earned the … Read the rest

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Some Alabama pastors say they don’t want any pesky Boy Scout troops meeting in their churches now that the organization has gone all queer.

The Rev. Mike Shaw, of the First Baptist Church of Pelham and former president of the Alabama Baptist Convention, says his church will no longer sponsor Troop 404 after the policy takes place next year.

“We’re not doing it out of hatred. The teachings of the scripture are very clear on this. We’re doing it because it violates the clear teaching of scripture,” Shaw told the Birmingham News.

And obviously a three thousand year old book is right about everything, and its “clear teaching” must be obeyed, and never mind what actual thinking about the issue… Read the rest

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The hacker known as KYAnonymous went after the rapists in the Steubenville case:

he obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about the incident and belittled the victim.

The FBI busted him, and if he’s convicted he could get a lot more time than the rapists did.

He’d read about the Steubenville rape in the New York Times, but didn’t get involved until receiving a message on Twitter from Michelle McKee, a friend of an Ohio blogger who’d written about the case. (You can read about her story here.) McKee gave Lostutter the players’ tweets and Instagram photos, which he then decided to publicize because, as he put it, “I was

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Maureen Brian at Pharyngula, on PZ’s post about the limits to any perceived right to anonymity on the internet. She addresses a couple of commenters.

You both seem to be to be ignorant of or deliberately ignoring a key aspect of how we human beings work.

Plead innocence and confusion all you want but it is a factor which the bullies and harassers know well and exploit to the full.  Bullying and harassment work by the cumulative effects of abuse, lies, threats over time.  We may appear to brush off an individual incident but that does not mean we are unaffected or that we recover instantly from the hurt.  Bullies know and exploit this, keeping up the pressure and

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From Jason’s megapost on privilege and strawprivilege.

Our minds are notoriously buggy machines, being made of meat and all. We’ve evolved toward certain biases in daily living, one of the biggest of which is that we can filter out things as white noise. Normally this is a huge advantage — there is so much going on all the time that we would be immobilized by trying to process it all, since our brains — fast though they are — are pitifully underpowered. Evolution came up with the trick of being able to ignore certain inputs as unnecessary. Thus, you stop hearing rain on your window after laying in bed for a while. Thus, you stop noticing every tiny

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Tunisia is considered one of the more secular states in the region. And yet -

Thirty-year-old Tunisian blogger and secular activist Lina Ben Mhenni is concerned about death threats posted on her Facebook page and sent to her mobile phone.

“You see this message is in Arabic, it reads: ‘You infidel, we will kill you.’”

Pointing to another message, she says: “And this is just as clear: ‘We will find you.’”

If there’s anything that’s not secular, it’s the concept of being an “infidel.”

But many of the country’s more radical religious groups do not like people like Ms Ben Mhenni pushing to keep post-revolution Tunisia liberal and secular.

“This is not Tunisia it used to be,” she laments

“Radical

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