A couple of studies found a correlation between belief in hell and unhappiness.

Both studies only showed a correlation between the belief in Hell and unhappiness. But does believing in Hell make a person unhappy, or are unhappy people more likely to believe in hell?

“While we suggest that a belief in Hell leads to lower levels of well-being, these data cannot rule out the possibility that individuals with low levels of well-being are more likely to adopt the belief in Hell or that some third variable is responsible for this pattern,” Shariff and Aknin explained.

It certainly seems to me a very grim thing to believe – a place of eternal punishment for things done during a very … Read the rest

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Jamie Kilstein spends a few minutes explaining why being an asshole who is also an atheist isn’t a great marketing campaign for atheism.

He has a point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGwlGg-m4rc… Read the rest

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Atheist Ireland is collecting accounts from parents about religious discrimination and indoctrination in schools.

The second story in that post is terrifying.

Both my boys have autism, one of them being an Aspie. They both attended Catholic schools, as state schools did not have places for them, and it has been interesting to see how religion affects their reasoning.

The worst case scenario was when our eldest boy was told the story of the Resurrection at Easter in his first year at school. He’s rather more compliant than his Asperger’s brother, which is always a worry on so many levels. This is the gist of the conversation that we were faced with that evening with an overly-trusting 5 year old.

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A good thing happened at the University of Missouri on Saturday. (My sister-in-law the historian taught there for a few years.)

Hundreds of students formed a human wall around the basketball stadium at the University of Missouri on Saturday because the Westboro Baptist Church had pledged to protest gay football player Michael Sam.

After Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam came out last week last week, anti-LGBT members of the Westboro church vowed to show up at Missouri’s game against Tennessee. But a group of students wearing “Stand with Sam” pins made the extremist group’s demonstration impossible by surrounding the stadium.

Good. Non-violent, even cuddly – and it got the job done.… Read the rest

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Elyse posted a picture of her dog on Facebook and it’s one of my favorite pictures ever. I asked her if I could post it and SHE SAID I COULD.

Do you not love that?… Read the rest

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And now to consider the deep injustice of the way women dominate all the bimbo roles in popular culture.

If you have spent time on the Internet, you’re probably tired of hearing how we need more Strong Female Characters. For some reason, people don’t seem to realize that sexism no longer exists today and both sexes are treated with complete equality, especially in the entertainment industry. If anything, men are the ones being discriminated against.

Seriously, think about all those roles that women selfishly hog up (e.g., passive victims requiring rescue, femmes fatales, joyless nags) that are off-limits to even the most talented male actors. It’s time to stop this woman-centric hand-wringing on how to make female characters better and

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According to CBS News, Hillary Clinton has given women some advice.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a new project called “No Ceilings” with her daughter, Chelsea, and Melinda Gates. During a talk at New York University, Clinton told the students that women in the public eye need to form a thick skin.

I don’t think that’s the best advice, at least not unless it’s worded very carefully. A personal, individual thick skin is no doubt very useful, but a social thick skin is a terrible idea. A social thick skin just treats the status quo, in which women in the public eye are subject to torrents of abuse just because they are women in the public eye… Read the rest

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Michael Nugent has more about the release of Ben Baz, aka Abdel Aziz Mohamed Albaz, on his blog.

Ben Baz is a 28 year old Egyptian atheist, with a degree in commerce, who was working in Kuwait, and blogging about secularism and religion, when he was arrested over a year ago on charges of blasphemy. His friends highlighted his arrest, and said they suspected that a personal disagreement with his work sponsor, about work matters, may have been translated into a blasphemy accusation. This type of abuse of an already unjust law is common in Islamic countries.

This is a link to his blog, in Arabic, where he writes about the relationship of religion, the State and secularism.

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This guy? BenBaz Aziz?

Who is BenBaz?

Watch our video: http://youtu.be/2B_n7wo4Ji4

Abdul Aziz Mohamed El Baz, aka BenBaz, Egyptian, living & working in Kuwait, Born on 1985 in Kuwait. Aziz holds a Bachelor Degree in commerce Division of the English language and worked as an accountant until his arrest.

What happened to BenBaz?

BenBaz has been thrown in jail by the Kuwaiti Government since December 31, 2012. On February 7, 2012, he was sentenced by the same Kuwaiti Government for one year in jail plus forced labor, plus a fine, plus deportation from Kuwait.

The Kuwaiti Government charged BenBaz with contempt of religions & attempting to spread atheism, they have sentenced BenBaz for peacefully writing his views in a

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An academic – an atheist – who teaches religion at a university is finding the job less rewarding than it used to be, because the students have come over all dogmatic.

When I first started teaching in my current institution, a decade or so ago, I was impressed by the diversity of students in lectures. Lots were believers of one sort or another, but many others would describe themselves as atheists and agnostics.

Whatever they thought about religion, they shared an intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness that made teaching the best part of my job: they enjoyed being challenged in their assumptions, and they loved exploring the ways religions have shaped and been shaped by cultural, social and political shifts.

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Mary Beard has a long piece in the LRB about public speaking as definitional of manhood, and women’s exclusion from it as a result.

I want to start very near the beginning of the tradition of Western literature, and its first recorded example of a man telling a woman to ‘shut up’; telling her that her voice was not to be heard in public. I’m thinking of a moment immortalised at the start of theOdyssey…The process starts in the first book with Penelope coming down from her private quarters into the great hall, to find a bard performing to throngs of her suitors; he’s singing about the difficulties the Greek heroes are having in reaching home. She isn’t

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An incident in Kentucky.

A Kentucky pastor who co-starred in the TV showSnake Salvation has died of a snakebite.

Emergency personnel received a call Saturday night that someone at a church, Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name, had suffered a snakebite, Middlesboro Police Chief Jeff Sharpe said in a statement. He said an ambulance crew went to the church, but the Rev. Jamie Coots had left. The crew went to Coots’ home and found him suffering from a bite to the hand.

“After a brief examination and discussion of the possible dangers if the wound was not treated, treatment — and transport to the hospital — was refused,” Sharpe said.

So he died.

Well I tell you what – … Read the rest

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I got a mysterious piece of mail yesterday. It was exciting. A real letter in the real mail; an envelope with my name and address hand-written, in writing that I didn’t recognize, with a nearby return address that belongs to no one I know. It’s from a neighborhood a mile or two west of here, but farther away than that sounds because it’s a peninsula with a valley between the two, so it’s complicated to reach by car and totally forbidding on foot. Who oh who could be writing to me from Magnolia? Could it be a threat? Abuse? A rant? Or could it be a friendly surprise?

It was exciting, but then I threw it aside when I got … Read the rest

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Dave Muscato has an interesting post about the reactions he’s seen from straight men to the news of Ellen Page coming out. (I had to think for a second to remember who Ellen Page is.) It’s not a sign that she’s more available, it’s a sign that she’s less available. So he goes on to wonder what’s up with that. Why are “I’m not interested” and “I’m gay” taken as a challenge while “I have a boyfriend” is more of a discouragement?

Well obviously one reason is that the boyfriend might be a puncher. But a slightly more complicated reason, I think, is that there’s a massive amount of cultural training that “I’m not interested” is the first part of … Read the rest

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An interview with Rita Banerji of 50 Million Women Missing.

5.What was the motivating factor behind the 50 Million Missing Campaign?

I’d say: outrage. I’m an Indian woman, and my country tells me “We’ve eliminated your kind by the millions, like flies! You are not human. You are nothing!” 20% of women have been exterminated from the population. And people need to know – this is unprecedented in human history. It is not normal for any society! No other human group has been subject to this kind of systemic and targeted extermination. China is the other country that has female gendercide. But what makes India worse than China, is first the apathy of the Indian government. The Chinese government

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Seen at Secularism, Philosophy and Culture on Facebook -

Doesn’t Taslima look angelic?… Read the rest

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Oh good god. I didn’t even know about this one until I saw a mention of it yesterday. It was more than two years ago, and it’s the same damn thing.

Oxford University Press is under growing pressure to explain its role in suppressing A.K. Ramanujan’s essay, “Three Hundred Ramayanas,” as the renowned indologist Sheldon Pollock and a number of other leading academics on Saturday joined the mounting outrage over its decision to stop publishing and selling the essay in India following protests from a right-wing group.

In a strongly-worded joint letter to Nigel Portwood, Chief Executive, OUP, U.K., they conveyed their “shock and dismay” at OUP India’s action which, they said, was compounded by its abject apology in

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You can sign a petition to members of both houses of the Indian parliament and the Honorable Law Minister to fix that godawful law that keeps getting books shut down.

We the undersigned are appalled by the recent settlement reached between Dina Nath Batra for the Shiksha Bachao Andolan and Penguin Books India, to cease the publication of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History (Penguin USA 2009; Penguin India 2010), and to withdraw and destroy remaining copies of the book on Indian territory.

This case is only the latest in a long series of outrages against freedom of expression. Academic, intellectual and artistic expression of any kind is becoming increasingly hazardous in India. What has happened to Professor Doniger

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