I’m watching this episode of The Point on atheism.
The first item was a clip of James Randi, who started by saying there are two kinds of atheist, those who say there is no god, and those who say they can’t find any evidence for god. My version of the second one is different: it’s that I don’t know of any good reason to think there’s a god. That includes evidence, but it’s more than that.
Seen it?… Read the rest
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Jean Kazez has a good post on the backlash against feminism today. She warns against exaggerating the size of the backlash specific to atheism, and says the issues boil down to skepticism about various claims. She then makes a distinction between two types of backlasher.
… Read the restThe respectable skeptic may be on board with all substantive feminist goals, but they lean very liberal on sexual issues and libertarian-ish on rules and codes. They may also have distinctive positions on purely empirical matters, like how often harassing incidents occur, and what the impact is of discussing them at blogs. Their views on what will advance the status of women may also be distinctive. It strikes me as inflammatory and distorted to accuse
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Trending on Twitter right now: #legitimaterape. Why? Because Missouri Representative (R) Todd Akin, who is running for Senator, thinks there is such a thing.
Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, who also happens to be the state’s Republican senatorial nominee, has some important information for women everywhere:
“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Now, what is the difference between legitimate and illegitimate rape? Akin, who is somehow a member of the House’s science and technology committee, did not explain.
Now, to be fair, it was … Read the rest
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Jen’s post about the need for a new wave of atheism is everywhere, and rightly so.
… Read the restI’ve become used to being called a cunt or having people threaten to contact my employers because a feminist can’t be a good scientist. Rebecca Watson is still receiving constant rape and death threats a year after she said “Guys, don’t do that.” And mentioning her name is a Beetlejuice-like trigger for a new torrent of hate mail.
Groups of people are obsessively devoted to slandering Freethought Blogs as a whole because many of us have feminist leanings. They photoshop things to try to humiliate us, they gain unauthorized access to our private email listserv. And anyone associated with us feminists are
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BBC headline: Cardinal Keith O’Brien snubs gay marriage talks with Scottish government.
Snubs? The cardinal snubs? Talks on same-sex marriage with the government? Is Scotland a theocracy? Why was the Scottish government inviting the cardinal to discuss legislation in the first place?
Scotland’s Roman Catholic leader – Cardinal Keith O’Brien – has suspended direct communication with the Scottish government on gay marriage.
The move is in protest at the Scottish government’s support for the introduction of same-sex marriages.
The cardinal has turned down an invitation to discuss the issue, leaving any talks to officials.
This is all backward. It assumes that the normal and good state is that the Scottish government and the Catholic church collaborate on legislation, … Read the rest
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Cardinal Keith O’Brien has turned down an invitation to discuss same-sex marriage, leaving any talks to officials, just as he ought.… Read the rest
Assange is a rape suspect who skipped bail. Yet some of his supporters have made
arguments that they would never make about anybody else.… Read the rest
Surprise surprise – the Vatican says French bishops are totally right to hate Teh Gayz.
… Read the restThe French Catholic Church is right to defend traditional family values, a top bishop told Vatican Radio yesterday, a day after rights groups criticised a prayer focused on families and children as homophobic.
The prayer, read out in French churches to mark the Assumption holiday, said children should “fully benefit from the love of a father and mother”, underscoring the Church’s opposition to a commitment by French President Francois Hollande to allow gay couples to marry and adopt children.
“French bishops are right to insist that children ‘grow up with a father and a mother’,” Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Vatican’s families committee, told
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More detail on the Andrew Shirvell case, because CNN has more.
… Read the restShirvell was fired from his job in the attorney general’s office in 2010 after targeting the student leader online and in person — then lying about his actions to investigators, state Attorney General Mike Cox said at the time.
Shirvell “repeatedly violated office policies, engaged in borderline stalking behavior and inappropriately used state resources,” Cox said, referring to Shirvell’s activities during his work day.
Asked for specifics about Shirvell’s conduct, Armstrong lawyer Gordon said, “He said (Armstrong) had an orgy in a dorm room and sex in a park and that he had liquored up underage freshmen to recruit them to the ‘homosexual lifestyle.’”
Shirvell also referred to
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Imagine having an assistant state attorney general harassing you, even including following you around and showing up where you live.
That’s what happened to the University of Michigan’s first openly gay student body president.
… Read the restLate this week, a federal court jury in Detroit awarded $4.5 million to Chris Armstrong, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan and the campus’ first openly gay student body president, who was harassed and stalked by the former Michigan assistant attorney general Andrew Shirvell in early 2010.
Shirvell was found guilty of defamation, stalking, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy on Thursday. After Armstrong was elected student body president, Shirvell took to his personal blog called “The Chris Armstrong Watch” to
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Reports say that she has Down syndrome and that she and her mother were beaten by a mob.… Read the rest
I’d never heard of “GirlWritesWhat” until a few days ago when I saw a video of hers in which she accused “FTB” – on the basis of absolutely nothing – of filing a fake DMCA complaint on her in order to force her to reveal her address. A couple of days later I saw a second video of hers in which she again blamed FTB for a DMCA complaint on the basis of nothing whatever.
So now there’s David Futrelle pointing out where she says a good word for domestic violence.
Oy.
… Read the restYesterday, we took a look at Ferdinand Bardamu’s manosphere manifesto “The Necessity of Domestic Violence,” a thoroughly despicable piece of writing that concludes:
Women should be terrorized
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Well isn’t that sweet – the Russian Orthodox Church declares it has “forgiven” Pussy Riot. It forgave them all along. It wanted to see them severely punished, certainly, but hey, that doesn’t mean it didn’t “forgive” them.
… Read the restTwo top clerics in the Russian Orthodox Church said Saturday that it has forgiven the members of feminist punk band Pussy Riot who were convicted of hooliganism and sent to prison for briefly taking over a cathedral in a raucous prayer for deliverance from Vladimir Putin.
Tikhon Shevkunov, who heads Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery and is widely believed to be the Russian president’s spiritual counselor, said on state television Saturday that his church forgave the singers right after their “punk prayer” in the
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Never forget: it’s Freethought bloggers who are the bullies.
Trigger warning for sheer vicious ugliness:
Little skeptic twat Rhys…… Read the rest
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“We did forgive them from the very start. But such actions should be cut short by society and authorities.”… Read the rest
Moscow city government claims the parade would cause public disorder and that most Muscovites do not support it.… Read the rest
His new book takes in language and the arts in its bold attempt to demonstrate that generosity, as mandated by group selection, is humanity’s secret ingredient.… Read the rest
There are two (yes two!) women working at Gizmodo now. One of them has a few tips for some of their readers.
… Read the restSome of you seem to be under the misguided impression that sexual favors are the only way a woman could possibly end up writing for a tech blog—wrong. And you know what? It’s not just wrong, it’s rude.
It’s rude to come into our posts and say that the only reason we have the jobs that we do is because Gizmodo needed to fulfill some imagined gender quota. It’s fucking rude to say that we’re only writing for Gizmodo because we “lipstick shampooed” some guy’s “jock” to “get our job.” (Your over-evolved metaphor only further proves your
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The US and EU said the sentences were disproportionate. Amnesty International
said they must be overturned.… Read the rest
Paul Fidalgo has a gut-wrenching open letter to Alexander Aan at Friendly Atheist. The petition failed, you know. I should have done more, maybe – I blogged about it twice, the second time with considerable urgency, and tweeted and re-tweeted often. I guess I figured blogging a third time would be counter-productive, like begging Mummy for ice cream once too often and being put on an ice cream fast for a month. But I was probably wrong.
Anyway – it failed, and failed pathetically.
… Read the restIn order to guarantee such a response — and it was a loose guarantee at that — we had to collect at least 25,000 signatures. Alexander, I promise you, I and my colleagues truly believed this
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
