The Family Research Council thinks Uganda’s commitment to hatred of gays is just the best thing ever.

Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga has taken up the challenge of national repentance by promising passage of the “Kill the Gays” legislation as a “Christmas gift”to the people of Uganda.

Naturally, Christian conservative leaders in the U.S. are thrilled with what FRC has called an “inspirational moment for the [Ugandan] nation.” As Alvin McEwen pointed out, FRC President Tony Perkins tweeted a big, warm hug to President Museveni for “leading his nation in repentance” and thus helping to create a “nation prospered by God.” But Perkins’ tweet was an hors d’oeuvre for the main course, a November 26 email alert

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Oh so that’s what interfaith is for – fighting secularization! There I was half-convinced it was for dialogue and bridge-building and working together to do things. Ok no I wasn’t, I wasn’t even quarter-convinced, but I was at least aware that that was the advertising slogan. But it appears that not everyone got the memo.

Well of course not. Lots of faith people don’t want secularism, after all – they want their particular dogma imposed on everyone else. And if there’s anybody who not only wants that but has the power to make it happen, it’s the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The National Catholic Register was there.

WASHINGTON — Participants at a recent interfaith conference in the nation’s  capital

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I mentioned meeting Mark Fournier at Eschaton. (There are surprisingly many B&W readers-and-commenters in Ottawa.) Step in the time machine and go back to 2006, and Richard Swinburne…

Remember this of Swinburne’s? The interjection is mine.

Theodicy provides good explanations of why God sometimes — for some or all of the short period of our earthly lives — allows us to suffer pain and disability.

Good? Good explanations? Good in what sense?

Although intrinsically bad states, these difficult times often serve good purposes for the sufferers and for others. My suffering provides me with the opportunity to show courage and patience. It provides you with the opportunity to show sympathy and to help alleviate my suffering. And it provides society

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Neil deGrasse Tyson did a couple of alarming and disheartening tweets just now -

Neil deGrasse Tyson‏@neiltyson

Done with Jury Duty. I said I could not convict a person solely on eyewitness testimony. They sent me home. I’m now 0 for 4.

After hearing my skepticism of eyewitness testimony, six other jury candidates promptly agreed. And they got sent home too.

Oyyyyyyyyyy.

Eyewitness testimony is so crappy – so very unreliable and yet so trusted.

TV trains everyone to think it’s infallible, as if there were a video camera in our brains and all we have to do is roll the tape. We’re bad at noticing stuff even when it’s right in front of us, and then … Read the rest

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Jesus and Mo and Moses are on the story.

… Read the rest

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Hank Fox took a bunch of nice photos at Eschaton. There’s Genie Scott, PZ, Larry Moran – and there’s Eric.

Eric and I had the opportunity for several long talks. He’s a compadre.

There is Dorothy Grasett. Dorothy gave me a beautiful wooden box her brother made, as a present. It’s here on the desk beside me.

That’s Saturday evening, before or after PZ’s talk.

And there’s one of me squirming.

Hank calls it relaxing, but it’s squirming. I always squirm. That’s Heina up in the right corner.

Thanks to Hank for letting me re-post a few. Go over there to see them all.… Read the rest

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It’s a literary trope, the father who disowns or betrays a daughter. I don’t say that to make light of it, but on the contrary, to point out the way it has haunted the human imagination, which underlines how horrible it is. (This applies to all combinations of parents and children, but fathers and daughters gets noticed less than fathers and sons.)

Agamemnon, you know. He sacrificed Iphigenia – which is to say, he killed her on an “altar” – to get a wind when the attack on Troy was becalmed. Not very fatherly, as one of the Mitfords might have put it. Lucretius used it as the occasion for his famous comment, tantum religio potuit suadere malorum – religion … Read the rest

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And speaking of horribly unenlightened views, there is also Ashley Miller’s father, who has decided to stop talking to her, to disown her, to cut her off, to make her an undaughter, because her boyfriend is unwhite.

I can’t get my head around it. Imagine caring more about your racism than you care about your daughter! Imagine giving up a daughter for the sake of racism. What an incredibly bad bargain. What a pathetic, wrong-way-around exchange.

I suppose I am thankful that he waited until the day after Thanksgiving to do it.  Not that he told me, he made my stepmother his proxy as he was too angry to speak to me directly.  I have been disowned for loving

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I’m back. I didn’t get sucked into the engines even once.

Yesterday morning CFI demonstrated in front of the Ugandan High Commission in Ottawa to protest the Kill the Gays bill. Vyckie and I went too. Kevin Smith, the director of CFI Canada, used Twitter to summon media attention, and took pictures. He gave me permission to post them.

That’s Seanna in the purple coat. She’s the Director of CFI Ottawa, which is an unpaid position – a volunteer position, but that word suggests to me a not quite real job, and that certainly doesn’t fit. The guy tweeting on her right is Michael Payton, and I’m hiding behind him.

Kill the bill, kill the bill, kill the bill.

Kevin … Read the rest

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Ahh that was fun. Went out for a nice refreshing walk – to Parliament Hill then east on Laurier and along the canal and then back here. Pitch dark but all the nicer for that.

Last night we went to the Museum of Nature for nibbles and PZ’s talk on chance in evolution and then we got to wander around in the bird and dinosaur galleries. After hours! Cool or what?… Read the rest

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Eschaton is over. I just had a long conversation with Eric in the doorway of the larger of the two rooms where it was held, until he had to leave for the airport. It’s been wonderful to meet him and talk to him.

Udo Schuklenk gave a great talk on secular ethics this morning. I kept wishing some of the sciencey types who think philosophy is useless could have been present. He based it on three of the myths in his forthcoming book with Russell Blackford on 50 myths about atheism. He used three Jesus and Mo toons to illustrate his analysis of three of the myths – no morality without god; no-god robs life of purpose and meaning; denial … Read the rest

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So I’ve met Eric MacDonald at last. Also Mark Fournier. Conversation about Job, and Steiner schools and anthroposophy, and people who think they know things, and the quiet revolution in Quebec.

My talk is this afternoon; Vyckie is after me; Eric is after Vyckie.

Note to hotels: don’t have tv on in the breakfast room. Ugh.

 … Read the rest

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All riiiiight – I got to see inside the Parliament library. That makes up a little for the crushing fact that I didn’t get to see the second floor of Manchester Town Hall (with the murals by Ford Madox Ford) because it was off-limits that afternoon.

I had to take the tour, because you can’t go as many places if you just wander around on your own, such as the library for one. The tour it is then, I exclaimed, and accepted my orange pass with 2:50 stamped on it. It was 2:30, so I nipped up to the Peace Tower to look at the view. It was very like the time I nipped up to the Old Post Office … Read the rest

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Second trip, to walk by the canal.

First I went around the corner from the hotel to get a look at that park I can see from my window, where I saw dogs being walked in the frozen sunrise. I found that it’s not a park at all, it’s the grounds of the Science Museum (where PZ is doing a talk tomorrow evening) – so now I see that I can see the museum from here! It’s right over my left shoulder as I speak. It’s one of those massive castle type museums – the bit I can see looks like Caernarvon Castle or something. There’s also a new glass part, which I can also see from here.

Also, Ottawa … Read the rest

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Hey if you’re a magician, be careful about what tv talk shows you grace with your presence. Go on the wrong one and you might be set on fire.

Wayne Houchin, a Las Vegas-based magician, was.

Shocking footage has emerged on YouTube of a magician being attacked and badly injured by the host of a TV show on which he was a guest.  In an apparently spontaneous gesture, the man (who has been named as Franklin Barazarte) who is both host and producer of a talk-show in the Dominican Republic, doused 29-year old Wayne Houchin with a flammable liquid and set it on fire.

Well at least Bill O’Reilly doesn’t do that.

We shouldn’t jump to any

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