Via PZ – Scalia explains heaven and hell and the devil to an incredulous journalist, and then bullies the journalist for being incredulous. Yeah, gee, how dare anyone be surprised that an adult intelligent Supreme Court justice thinks there’s such a thing as The Devil.

Whatever you think of the opinion, Justice ­Kennedy is now the Thurgood Marshall of gay rights.

[Nods.]

I don’t know how, by your lights, that’s going to be regarded in 50 years.

I don’t know either. And, frankly, I don’t care. Maybe the world is spinning toward a wider acceptance of homosexual rights, and here’s Scalia, standing athwart it. At least standing athwart it as a constitutional entitlement. But I have never

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Question for the day, from Mike Booth @somegreybloke:

 Would you rather fight a thousand wasp sized mountain lions or one mountain lion sized wasp?

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Originally a comment by Eamon Knight on She is too enraptured by the mystery of the divine.

I’ve occasionally found myself caught up (the literal meaning of “enraptured”) in a bit of mathematics or physics, such that I would ponder on it during otherwise mindless moments (like long drives, or when falling asleep at night). And there’s this sense of exploring a mysterious, fascinating territory. Eventually I either figure it out, or write a program to brute-force it, or (these days) consult Google and find that real mathematicians and physicists (ie. people who aren’t me) have already been there and devised tools to describe it. Sometimes I get into a similar mindset when trying to figure out how to … Read the rest

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Amnesty International issued a new report a few days ago, Education under attack in Nigeria.

In the week that saw more than 50 students killed by gunmen in an agricultural college in Yobe State, Amnesty International publishes a new report assessing attacks on schools in northern Nigeria between 2012 and 2013.

“Hundreds have been killed in these horrific attacks. Thousands of children have been forced out of schools across communities in northern Nigeria and many teachers have been forced to flee for their safety,” said Lucy Freeman, Amnesty International’s deputy Africa director.

“Attacks against schoolchildren, teachers and school buildings demonstrate an absolute disregard for the right to life and the right to education.”

According to the report Education under

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There’s another odd thing that Meghan Florian said in that Religion Dispatches/Salon article that’s been nagging at me.

I can’t pull off atheism. I am too enraptured by the mystery of the divine, too convinced of human limitations, too busy continuing this life of faith seeking understanding.

In a way it’s not worth trying to make sense of it or pointing out why it doesn’t make sense, because it’s just normal religious bafflegab – just a string of poeticky words that don’t actually mean much, but sound nice. That’s what they do. They have license to do that, because religion. That’s one of the many reasons I dislike religion: because it not only allows, it encourages empty bafflegab, and … Read the rest

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Meghan Florian in Salon (via Religion Dispatches) notes that Teresa MacBain isn’t a reason to bash atheists. What she goes on to say after that got my rather annoyed attention.

(I haven’t said anything here about Teresa. That’s because I don’t want to. I like her a lot, so I don’t feel like it. I’m assuming that you already know the story.)

Florian recounts the recent events and disclosures first.

What strikes me as inappropriate is to use this as an opportunity to bash atheists—even those who we might feel misrepresent the Christian faith. Did it irk me when MacBain said, in an interview on Religion Dispatches,“I’d always been a thinker so when questions relating to my faith

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Ok you wanted a Sunday afternoon quiz, so here is one.

Friendly wags on Facebook have been creating new “Should Miri Mogilevsky…” pages – be given a goldfish, be given a cheesecake, be given a goldfish, a cheesecake, and a tardis. So on the goldfish one, I commented

Yes but make sure she remembers where the car is before the fish goes into the plastic bag.

What is the reference?

… Read the rest

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Oh great, the return of the great push to enact global blasphemy laws. This time it’s not the OIC but a group of Arab countries.

Manama: Arab countries are working on a draft law that bans the defamation of religions and empowers them to take abusers to court even if they are not residents.

The draft, presented by Qatar, is being reviewed by delegates from several Arab countries at the Arab League.

Under its provisions, all forms of defamation, derision or denigration of religions and prophets will be considered crimes.

Is that sweeping enough? Under that wording, anything could be considered a crime – something that doesn’t explicitly mention religion could just be treated as allegory or sarcasm.

Oh … Read the rest

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It’s ironic. On the one hand we get Facebook going “no, a page that threatens a named college student is not a problem, we won’t take it down,” and on the other hand we get the LSE student union going “omigod tshirts with Jesus and Mo cartoons on them, you have to take them off or get out immediately.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong - completely backwards. Death threats and passive-aggressively veiled death threats are the thing to resist. Cartoons that make jokes about the tenets of religions are not the thing to resist.

It’s so simple. Do try to pay attention.… Read the rest

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So as I mentioned, this Mike Shaver, an engineering director at Facebook – he generated a whole bunch of tweets last night explaining that the title of the Facebook page, Should named person be murdered?, was not a threat. Offensive, yes, tasteless, yes, but not a threat.

A small sample of his explanations, in chronological order.

Mike Shaver @shaver

[to Miri and a couple of other people] I was disputing your point of it being necessarily a threat. law on threatening statements pretty clear here, IMO

[to Miri and a couple of other people] to be clear, I find the page title offensive too, but I don’t want my tastes mandatory for 1B people either

[to someone else] I

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Right. Facebook. Let’s take a look at that.

It has a Safety page, which has a Safety Philosophy page.

There we find:

Our Part
In reviewing reports of abusive content, we remove anything that violates the Facebook Terms or Community Standards.

So we look at the Rights and Responsibilities page, which is also a Terms page, aka a TOS page. I assume that “terms of service” means what it says – these are the terms on which we let you use the service.

Item 3 on that page is Safety.

Safety
We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help to keep Facebook safe, which includes the following

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More on that law that lets Iranian men marry and fuck their own adopted daughters, from the Guardian.

Parliamentarians in Iran have passed a bill to protect the rights of children which includes a clause that allows a man to marry his adopted daughter and while she is as young as 13 years.

In a bill to protect the rights of children? How…paradoxical.

To the dismay of rights campaigners, girls in the Islamic republic can marry as young as 13 provided they have the permission of their father. Boys can marry after the age of 15.

In Iran, a girl under the age of 13 can still marry, but needs the permission of a judge. At present, however, marrying

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The hinges of my jaw are not large enough to accommodate the drop it wants to do.

Support Dashboard

Here you’ll find the status of content you’ve reported, inquiries or requests you’ve made, or your content that someone else reported.

We’ll let you know if we need any information from you or when we’ve made a decision. History

• You reported Should Miri Mogilevsky be murdered ? for harassment.

  This page wasn’t removed

  Details

  Status	This page wasn’t removed
  Details	Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the page you reported for harassment

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Rory Fenton, president of the National Federation of Student Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Societies (in the UK), made a statement on the way officers of the LSE Student Union bullied the LSE ASH group on Thursday and Friday.

For the second day in a row our affiliated society, the LSE Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society, have faced intimidation and threats from its students union and university for their refusal to remove t-shirts featuring the cartoon Jesus and Mo. Their statement on today’s events can be read below. For their statement on yesterday’s event please click here.

The LSESU’s statement, which omits any reference to the use of security guards, can be read here.

The National Federation of Atheist,

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A petition:

On 22 September 2013, one day before the start of the school year in Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Majlis or parliament passed a law permitting a stepfather to marry his adopted child.

In defence of the law, one Member of Parliament said: “According to Islam, every child who is accepted as an adopted child is not considered a real child. Islamic jurisprudence and Sharia law allow the guardian of the child to marry and have sex with his step-child.”

This shocking law will encourage child ’marriages’ and is nothing more than legalised paedophilia and child rape. It will further endanger the welfare of the child and violate her basic rights. It will deny the child any

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Krishnan Guru-murthy went to Afghanistan to report on abused women for channel 4. He found it unsettling. He has a daughter, who is 8. He loves her.

So listening to a young woman in Kabul describe how her father stabbed her 16 times, slashed her throat and left her for dead because she refused to marry the man he’d chosen is an unsettling experience. I was in Afghanistan for Unreported World  making a film about how some fathers and husbands treat their daughters and wives.

There is all sorts of cultural history and religious pressure to explain how women have been deprived basic rights in Afghanistan. But this kind of violence? I can’t pretend to understand how anyone can do

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Deeyah’s documentary film about the “honor” murder of Banaz Mahmod won the 2013 Emmy for Best International Current Affairs Documentary Film on Tuesday. That’s fantastic news, because it will obviously bring more attention to the subject.

Well done Deeyah, and congratulations.… Read the rest

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Facebook pages can be reported. Facebook pages that threaten people can and should be reported. I was being quiet about this in public in case Miri wasn’t aware of it, but she is aware of it now, so if you’re on Facebook and you have a minute, you could report this.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Should-Miri-Mogilevsky-be-murdered-/465247246924802… Read the rest

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Rebecca has a transcript of the ThunderfQQt video at Skepchick.

I know all of this seems very silly to those of you who don’t know as much about preventing rape as Thunderfoot, but let me tell you, I’ve done a lot of research into this and a lot of what Thunderfoot says in his video is indistinguishable from the words of wisdom offered by actual admitted rapists in prison. There have been several studies looking into their stories and what they have to say and let me tell you Thunderfoot has done a great job of sounding exactly – exactly- like those rapists.

For instance, there was a study done in 1984 that included in-depth interviews with rapists

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Wuhey, Rebecca’s back at the video game – and it’s a corker. It’s about ThunderfQQt and his Excellent Advice About Rape.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8TBz5OCxYI

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