Skepticon is this weekend. Half the people I know are there or on their way there.

So there must be outrage, right? Of course.

In chronological order, so bottom to top:

Sara E. Mayhew @saramayhew

@LaurenPants @Funkmon @RealSkepticon You do a disservice to skepticism by giving a platform to bullies and pseudo-skeptics. #sk6

@LaurenPants Seriously, there are tons of skeptics who do good work, Tim Farley, Doubtful News, Drescher, Susan Gerbic, Reality Check…

@LaurenPants

 …Bob Blaskiewicz, David Gorski, Hariett Hall, Daniel Loxton—why go for cheap drama bloggers like Watson Myers Benson? #sk6

 What??? How did I get in there? I’m not at Skepticon. I’ve never been at Skepticon. I’ve never been asked or approached. I’m not on their … Read the rest

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Part of why I’m interested in this claim of Conor Friedersdorf’s that

Nick happens to be one of the best people I know. Even though I don’t have faith in the same things that he does, I see how his faith makes him a better person. I see how he makes the world a better place, and how his belief system drives him to do it. And whenever I think about Nick, I think to myself, you know, I disagree with the Catholic faith on a lot of particulars, but there must be nuggets of truth within it if it inspires people like Nick to be this good.

is because I want to figure out how he gets there. I … Read the rest

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The Guardian reports that the pope is tackling the mafia. Good on him if so, although he shouldn’t utter biblical death threats in the process.

In a fiery sermon on Monday, Francis railed against corruption and quoted the bible’s advice that practitioners be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck.

Yeah don’t do that.

But the article gives an interesting picture of the friendship between church and mafia.

“The mafia that invests, that launders money, that therefore has the real power, is the mafia which has got rich for years from its connivance with the church,” said [magistrate Nicola] Gratteri. “These are the people who are getting nervous.”

Gratteri attacked priests and bishops in

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Originally a comment on How his belief system drives him to do it, responding to a quotation from Chesterton.

G.K. Chesterton was a very engaging writer with a lovely prose style, but he was also a very shallow thinker who specialised in dressing up fallacies and bigoted prejudices in quaint costumes to make them seem attractive, and was very fond of clever syllogisms that were actually meaningless except to make him seem superior to everyone else around him. Examples?

The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.

Aesthetes never do anything but what they are told.

When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they

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Jesus ice-skating christ. A twitter exchange:

Ahmed Safder @AhmedSafder

When you have Allah on your side. No force in the world can fight you and win Mashallah! Thank you God for everything.

Rah @francosoup

“@AhmedSafder: When you have Allah on your side. No force can fight you and win”

~Unless you’re a Muslim woman being stoned to death.

Ahmed Safder @AhmedSafder

@francosoup

those cases are rare majority of the Muslim women are kept like princesses

A smiley! A smiley!!! A smiley!!!!!

A fucking smiley about women being stoned to death.… Read the rest

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I’m reading a piece about discourse and persuasion in the Atlantic, and my attention is snagged by a peripheral point.

A friend taught me this.

He’s an orthodox Catholic. I am not. I went to 14 years of Catholic school and decided that it wasn’t for me. As you can imagine, I’ve heard all the arguments for Catholicism. So when my friend, Nick, argues with me about Catholic doctrine, he is very unlikely to persuade me of anything. But Nick happens to be one of the best people I know. Even though I don’t have faith in the same things that he does, I see how his faith makes him a better person. I see how he makes the

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The Cellular Solutions staff page – does something seem a bit unusual here?

Scroll down.

Keep going.

More.

Ah! There we go!

Via Helen Dale… Read the rest

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Another useful item from the UN: a statement that states that have ratified the UN Women’s Rights Convention have to uphold women’s rights even when there’s a war on. Imagine that.

States that have ratified the UN Women’s Rights Convention are obliged to uphold women’s rights before, during and after conflict when they are directly involved in fighting, are providing peacekeeping troops or donor assistance for conflict prevention, humanitarian aid or post-conflict reconstruction, a key UN women’s rights committee has said in a landmark document.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) also said that ratifying States should exercise due diligence in ensuring that non-State actors, such as armed groups and private security contractors, be

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There’s a difference between authoritarian morality and let’s call it reasoned morality. What’s the difference? Well obviously, the first is commands and the second gives reasons.

When bishops moan about attacks on the “religious freedom” of Catholics to punish gay people by refusing to officiate at their marriages or rent them rooms at bed&breakfasts, they cite “church teachings” as their reason for treating homosexuality as wrong and deserving of punishment. That’s authoritarian. “The church teaches that homosexuality is evil” is not reasons, it’s a detour around reasons.

That’s why the habit of punishing people for being gay is gradually (yet also, historically speaking, rapidly) crumbling away: it’s because once it’s pointed out that there are no real reasons for this … Read the rest

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Mother Jones has a “Richard Cohen’s 10 Worst Moments” piece, which is good, because I have hitherto neglected this rich vein of bad moments.

1 (tied). Richard Cohen goes to the movies, finds out slavery is wrong.

I sometimes think I have spent years unlearning what I learned earlier in my life…slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks. Slavery was a lifetime’s condemnation to an often violent hell in which people were deprived of life, liberty and, too often, their own children.

About a week ago, Richard Cohen went to see 12 Years a Slave and came out surprised by the brutal depiction of slavery in America. He defended himself

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So Toys “R” Us has this ad about how boring trees are and how ecstatically enthralling Toys “R” Us is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5SXybm6bss

Note the little girl saying, “A princess is loyal, and never gives up, and always follows her dreams.” Unless of course her dreams have anything to do with learning about trees as opposed to toys in shiny boxes.

Peter Gleick at the Huffington Post is forthright.

This ad is offensive on so many levels:

• It insults science and environmental education teachers.
• It insults science and environmental education programs and field trips.
• It insults science and nature in general
• It insults children (though no doubt these kids got free toys, and maybe even money, to be in the ad

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Bad news from Uganda.

Activists in Uganda report that police have arrested Sam K. Ganafa, executive director of Spectrum Uganda Initiatives and board chair for the Sexual Minorities Uganda coalition.

Charges against Ganafa have not yet been determined.  He was handcuffed after he reported to the Kasangati police station in response to a call from the district police commander.

Police also searched his home and took two of Ganafa’s guests to the police station for interrogation.

Activists said Ganafa has opened his home to many homeless LGBTI persons and it was also used as a Spectrum Uganda office for more than eight years.

I hope he will be all right.… Read the rest

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A sandwich-board sign outside a coffee shop in my neighborhood. Written on it was

What if this sign didn’t say anything?

I live in a witty neighborhood.… Read the rest

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From the petition to free Sherif Gaber:

20-year-old Egyptian student at Suez Canal University in Ismailia, Jaber Cherif, has been arrested and is being inverstigated for alledgely starting a Facebook group calling for atheism.

Jaber was arrested after a muslim reported him to the university administration who then filed a complaint against him with Egyptian authorities.

The newspaper Al Watan online and The Newspaper Ahramonline reported that Jaber was arrested and was being inverstigated by Egyptian national security officials. 

This is what Sherif published:

Hi, my name is sherif gaber (Yamirasu) from Egypt. I was taught to be a Muslim; for that my dad sent me to some Sheiks, so I memorised the Quran and more than 1000 (Hadith)

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From a public Facebook page:

What happened to BenBaz?

BenBaz has been thrown in jail by the Kuwaiti Government since  December 31, 2012. On February 7, 2013*, 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 blog where he explained the benefits of secular values.

Kuwaiti Official documents of BenBaz’s case attached below. We have hidden BenBaz info.

Why was BenBaz arrested?

The Mirrors of the Gulf Company owner, where BenBaz worked, reported BenBaz to Kuwaiti Authorities as … Read the rest

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Originally a comment on Why the Catholic church is an intrinsically immoral institution.

Minow (#22):

No it isn’t, it could reform to be less or more authoritarian, as the Anglican church did.

There are two issues here regarding the authoritarianism of the Church. Firstly, there’s one of authoritarianism in practice – the fact that it is a hierarchical organisation which emphasises obediance to the teachings promulgated from the top, and which traditionally has had a low tolerance of dissent from those teachings. This might be capable of reform, although I’m not holding my breath. There’s an awful lot of institutional and doctrinal inertia to be overcome, and any reform is (at least initially) going to have to be top-down. … Read the rest

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Richard Cohen, a political columnist for the Washington Post, wrote a very…surprising thing in a column yesterday. The column is about the familiar (and very dull) subject of the Republican party and whether it can ever achieve happiness when it combines normal mainstream country club only slightly racist conservatism and the off the wall fanatics of the Tea Party and the theocracy faction. Oh gosh I don’t know, can it? Let me know when you figure it out.

So there we are: the moderates turn off the barn-burners while the barn-burners turn off the swing voters lalalala chorus and finish.

Iowa not only is a serious obstacle for Christie and other Republican moderates, it also suggests something more ominous: the

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Originally a comment by Gordon Willis on Why the Catholic church is an intrinsically immoral institution.

Let’s look at Christian doctrine. Because of the sin of Adam (he believed a woman who believed a snake) we are fallen creatures, which means that we cannot obey the Law. This means that we are all condemned to eternal torment. But God, in his mercy, sends his only begotten Son to redeem us: his willing self-sacrifice on the cross expiates our sinfulness and makes us one with God, as we were before the Fall. Therefore, whoever believes in Jesus as the Saviour of the world will inherit eternal life. Jesus reduces the Law to two commandments (love God, love your neighbour) and … Read the rest

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So what’s the psychology of the gigantic princess eyes? Olga Khazan explains at the Atlantic.

The debate over the merits of Disney princesses is as old as time, but it’s fairly undeniable that the animated films’ female leads tend to look like a “pretty girl” cliche.

There’s some research behind why the princess formula is so effective: Enlarged eyes, tiny chins, and short noses make them look more like babies, which creates an air of innocence and vulnerability. There’s evidence that adults who have such “babyfacedness” characteristics are seen as less smart, more congenial, and less likely to be guilty of crimes.

Well what could be more wonderful than illustrations and cartoons that make women look like … Read the rest

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