So Arizona State Representative Juan Mendez gave a secular invocation in the state House of Representatives on Tuesday. (Invocation. Honestly, what a word. Normally the legislators in Arizona call up spirits every morning. “Hellooo. Hellooooooo, is anyone there?” Then one day there’s a slip-up and one legislator talks sense for once.) Well we can’t have that.

American Atheists announced Friday that it has demanded an apology on behalf of all non-Christians for disparaging remarks made by Arizona state Senator Steve Smith on Wednesday. Smith’s remarks were in response to the secular invocation offered by state Representative Juan Mendez on Tuesday in the state House of Representatives.

Smith, a conservative Christian, opened Wednesday’s House session with not one, but two prayers,

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Obama gave a commencement speech at the Naval Academy today, and used the occasion to tell them to quit saying “shut up and listen” to their superior officers. No no I’m kidding, he used it to tell them not to do sexual assaulting.

President Obama used a commencement speech before Naval Academy graduates on Friday to urge them to follow an “inner compass” and to warn that rising numbers of sexual assaults in the military threatened to erode America’s faith in the armed forces.

No, it doesn’t “threaten to”; it’s already done it. It’s not so much eroded as gutted my trust in the willingness of the people who are in charge of the armed forces to do a god … Read the rest

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Why would anyone think otherwise??!

That fake account appeared a lot on #WISCFI during the conference, too. I don’t think I saw any other fake accounts of any other speakers; just that one. I’m special. I don’t know why, particularly, but I am.

Twitter deleted the account on Monday, but of course the genius behind it just created another one.

But that, as we all know, is not harassment. It’s dissent, it’s criticism, it’s disagreement.… Read the rest

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No not bridges between atheists. Not bridges between atheists and People of Faith. Not bridges between the Boy Scouts and faggots their friends in the gay community. No, bridges. The kind that carry cars and trucks across rivers.

Yesterday evening one such bridge carried one such truck across the Skagit River, some 90 miles north of Seattle (where I am). It was a big truck, with an oversize load, and the load whacked into one of the overhead girders – and that span of the bridge fell into the river.

Fell into it, right then, right after the truck whacked the girder. I spent an hour last night staring at the tv with my mouth open. There were two … Read the rest

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There was that panel Saturday morning.

One question Greta gave us was “does affirmative action work?”

I don’t think I started by saying it depends what we mean by “work” but I think I did indicate that that’s what I meant. Maybe I started with “Yes in the sense that” and went on from there. I think it does work in the (familiar) sense that if you always see X job or vocation or career full of all or mostly men (or white people or rich people and so on) then if you are not a man (or white etc) you will conclude, without deciding to conclude it, that you’re not supposed to be there.

This thought irritates the bejesus … Read the rest

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What is that hilarious hashtag? #vaculamustdenounce

Geddit? It’s a hilarious joke about Dave Silverman’s effort to get Vacula to say that harassment is bad. Yeah what could be funnier than that?

That’s only a sample of what was posted over the space of an hour or so. Busy!

Update to add a few more, because they’re so funny.

The one about American Atheists is especially weird. Woooooo; welcome to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.… Read the rest

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Just because. I like the picture. I like the moment. Pieter Breitner in the kilt.

Photo by Brian D. Engler.… Read the rest

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Mark Urban at the BBC explains the ways the Woolwich murder is different from other such murders – it’s not networked, it’s just a couple of guys with everyday tools, so it’s not the kind of thing that intelligence services can prevent; the guys look ordinary; there’s no way to prevent their “message” from spreading; responses have changed…

Governments have become better at calibrating their response to these acts and so has the public. After Boston and Woolwich, for example, they were careful not to leap to conclusions or to issue responses of the “War on Terror” kind that would have inflamed communal tensions.

There are still some who are defaulting to stereotypical responses to such situations, and certainly in

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I’m belatedly listening to Citizen Radio on Women in Secularism 2. It starts 16 minutes in. It’s as good as everyone said it is.

Update. Great line. Jamie Kilstein:

If Ron LIndsay was opening an NAACP conference, he’d be the guy who’s like, “Welcome! WHERE’S WHITE HISTORY MONTH?”

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I mentioned PZ’s post about Silverman v Vacula on Twitter. (PZ is on his way to Romania. Jeez. I felt all exotic going to DC.) Dave Muscato also mentioned it. First he quoted this part.

How much do I appreciate it? With my dollars. My wife is going to sign us up for a lifetime membership in American Atheists while I’m away. It’s not a casual investment, so not everyone can do that, but you could send them a donation to let the organization know that you like a leader with a spine.

That’s a big deal, a lifetime membership. They get special treatment at the AA convention. (Like what? Well, I forget. A shout-out, I think. … Read the rest

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Juan Mendez! Yes!

On Tuesday, May 21, Juan Mendez, a 28-year-old Democratic State Representative from Tempe, Arizona, was given the task of delivering the opening prayer for the afternoon session of the House of Representatives. Instead of offering a prayer, Mendez spoke of his secular humanist tradition, while asking those in the room to recognize their shared humanity. 

Mendez said:

Most prayers in this room begin with a request to bow your heads. I would like to ask that you not bow your heads. I would like to ask that you take a moment to look around the room at all of the men and women here, in this moment, sharing together this extraordinary experience of being alive and

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PZ has a post pointing out that Dave Silverman has been telling off Vacula and co on Twitter. David Silverman, a principled atheist, is the title. Commenters who don’t do Twitter found the discussion hard to follow and I just happen to have grabbed some screen shots, so I thought I might as well make them available.

Yeah.… Read the rest

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Good old mass media and conformity and assuming everybody thinks the same thing. Wolf Blitzer chats with a woman who just barely escaped the tornado and simply assumes that a lot of god-blather will be welcome.

 At the end of the interview, Blitzer told her, “You’re blessed. Brian, your husband is blessed. Anders is blessed… I guess you got to thank the lord, right?” When the woman shrugged off the question, he repeated it, asking, “Do you thank the lord for that split-second decision?”

“I–I’m actually an atheist,” she responded. After the awkward laughter that followed, she added, “We are here and you know, I don’t blame anybody for thanking the lord.”

“Of course not,” Blitzer replied.

Awkward!

Not. Why … Read the rest

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I had no idea anyone was taking pictures. Candids!

Photo by Beth Zucker

I was talking to Michael DeDora about Imad and Waleed and the Bangladeshi atheists, or rather he was talking to me about them, since his office (CFI’s Office of Public Policy) works on these issues.… Read the rest

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It’s like this, you see…

Also by Monica Harmsen.

That’s the panel I was on.… Read the rest

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Dave’s turn to demonstrate throttling techniques, this time from below.

Also by Monica Harmsen.… Read the rest

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But we don’t want to let all this mishegas overshadow the brilliance of the actual conference, do we. No we don’t. So time to post some happy place stuff. Like pictures for instance.

Monica Harmsen took this. She’s a friend and a CFI intern.

I really don’t remember what I was saying to Dave Silverman that could be illustrated with a throttling gesture.

I know what we were talking about though: Rebecca Goldstein’s magnificent talk, and mattering, and the implications of mattering for atheism -

Maybe that’s where the throttling gesture came in. I was talking about the fact that for people who don’t feel as if they matter there is one obvious remedy, which is theism. Even if nobody … Read the rest

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Update May 21 see update below.

Oh good god. Really?

Three posts on CFI about the Women in Secularism Conference – May 17-19

That’s on the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science website.

But we’re the bullies. Never forget that. We use our immense ruthless power as bloggers to argue with other bloggers, while poor tiny powerless meek obscure humble shoemaker Richard Dawkins simply tries to stamp Rebecca Watson into the ground a little bit more by re-posting Ron Lindsay comparing her to North Korea.

We’re the bullies. How does that work again?

And no those are not “three posts about the Women in Secularism Conference” – that’s false advertising. They’re three posts about Ron Lindsay’s dislike of feminism … Read the rest

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Amanda Marcotte on a post of Stephanie’s:

(By the way, Amanda was at Women in Secularism 2, as you probably know, and she rocks.)

I’m sick of being targeted by people who confuse their own unwillingness to say stupid things with feminists using magical powers to stop them from saying it.

 … Read the rest

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