Author: Ophelia Benson

Oh, this is depressing. A 2010 article by Jeff Sharlet (I was browsing him for background on “The Family” and the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill) on how Hillary Clinton moved to the right on abortion at the behest of (gag, choke) “Mother” Teresa and “The Family” at the 1994 (gag, gag) “National Prayer Breakfast.”

HC was at the 58th annual nationalprayerbreakfast in 2010, and there she got nostalgic about the late Albanian nun.

In  her address,  Clinton sentimentally recalled meeting Mother Teresa at the 1994  National Prayer Breakfast. Mother Teresa had used her platform as guest  speaker to chastise the Clintons (standing right beside her, smiles  stretched to the breaking point) for their nominal support of abortion  rights. “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to  love, but to use any violence to get what they want,” Mother Teresa  said, and went on to suggest adoption be promoted as an alternative to  abortion. “Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child.”

Well, that’s the problem with having national prayer breakfasts where people in government go to be all goddy, isn’t it. They get blackmailed into forgetting all about the women who simply don’t want to be pregnant, and instead get all sentimental about “the child” who doesn’t exist yet, at the behest of a religious fanatic who thinks pain is a prezzy from Jesus.

The Clintons remained seated, yet  both — particularly the ever-politic Hillary — understood how  behind-the-scenes power politics work within the Christian Right, and  responded to the rebuke by finding “common ground” with the nun.  Although Clinton didn’t mention this in her public reminiscence last  week, after C-Span stopped taping and the breakfast plates were cleared,  Fellowship head Doug Coe gently brokered a peace between Hillary and  Mother Teresa.

Coe left the Breakfast with one of the most  powerful women in America in his debt for political services rendered.  And Mother Teresa had the satisfaction of watching Hillary’s support for  abortion as a fundamental right give way to an acceptance of it as a “tragedy” — one that should be made as “rare” as possible. In the long  run, Hillary turned a public scolding into a highly visible friendship with a figure whose widely accepted moral bona fides came with an  explicitly anti-abortion imprimatur from the Christian Right.

Read on, if you have a strong stomach.

There’s a conversation (or a thread) at Christianity Today about the Ugandan anti-gay bill that its sponsors say will pass in time for Christmas, jingle jingle jingle. I just want to look at one comment because it’s such a pure example of how not to think about such things. It’s not at all surprising; don’t go expecting anything like that; it’s just that it’s usefully pure.

I do not advocate killing homosexuals. I think Uganda is on the wrong track here. But I also do not believe that we should glorify a behavior that God has clearly condemned. Sin is sin. Sin is rebellion against God. You cannot be a Christian and live a holy life unless you repent and turn from all sin. Otherwise you do as the writer to Hebrews says and “crucify Christ all over again.” I do not hate homosexuals but I am called by God to preach the life giving Gospel to all people who are all sinners so that they might be freed from their bondage. As a Christian the Bible teaches us the thoughts of God and how to live a righteous life. I do not understand it all. Some things may not always make sense but I accept it by faith just as I accept God’s gift of salvation for me.

See what I mean? It’s got it all, and it’s just disastrous.

There’s a behavior that “God has clearly condemned” so we have to condemn it too, without further thought and for no other reason. It’s just an order, that’s all. “Sin is sin.” No further thought. “Sin is rebellion against God.” No further thought. Just the dogmatic insistence on obedience to a magical name, who is purported to have clearly condemned something (clearly? really? more clearly than other items in the bible that no one pays any attention to?).

And then he (his name is Jeff) admits he doesn’t understand it all and that he accepts it by faith. Fabulous. What about the bit of the bible that says to kill the witches? What about the passages that command genocide? What about everything that’s missing from the bible?

It’s so pure. Sin is sin. Sin is rebellion against God. The bible teaches us how to live a righteous life.

Disastrous.

Salman Hameed tells us more about that girls’ school in Lahore that was torched by an angry mob because a teacher accidentally photocopied the wrong page of the Koran for an exam. It’s heartbreaking.

He starts with Umair Asim and his passion for astronomy.

But what truly lights up Asim is his passion for public education. During the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) in 2009, Asim helped lead and organise numerous public observations in Lahore as well as in government schools in smaller cities and towns in Punjab. Wherever he went, he would bring his telescope with him. During IYA, it was a common sight to see Asim standing in front of an audience of 500, first explaining to them basic principles of astronomy and then entertaining long lines of people – from ages eight to 80 – to show them craters of the moon and rings of Saturn.

It is not hard to explain where his passion for public education comes from. His parents established Farooqi Girls’ High School 34 years ago. It is now considered one of the premier private schools in Lahore. Asim also serves as vice principal and I get emails from him when a student or students from the school would take top positions in the province-wide exams.

And now it’s gone. Incinerated.

The accused teacher is now in hiding and the police have arrested the 77-year-old principal of the school. He also happens to be Asim’s father, and his appeal for bail has been denied by the court. Asim and the rest of his family are now in “protective custody”.

…

But what is the future of Asim, his family and the accused teacher? With the charged emotions around blasphemy, once accused, it is virtually impossible to ever be safe afterwards, even if the court clears your name. Like the era of European witch trials, Pakistan is going through its darkest phase.

If she is lucky, the accused teacher will be able to find asylum out of Pakistan. Asim’s father, now sleeping on the floor of a jail cell, will have to cope with the fact that all the effort that he and his wife poured in for those past 34 years is gone.

And Asim – one of Pakistan’s brightest gems – must be wondering if he will ever feel safe in a country where he shared his love for astronomy with so many people.

Heartbreaking.

Via Tarek Fatah…

Life on the metro in Cairo.

Two niqab-wearing women assaulted and forcefully cut the hair of a Christian woman on the metro Sunday, the third such reported incident in two months, raising fears of a growing vigilante movement to punish Egyptian women for not wearing the veil in public.

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said in a statement that the assaulters called the Christian woman, who is 28 years old, an “infidel” and pushed her off the train, breaking her arm.

Well isn’t that pleasant. You’re on the train, minding your own business, and a couple of women in bags chop your hair off, call you an infidel, and break your arm in the process of throwing you off the train. All because you have the audacity not to be of their religion and not to be in a bag.

EOHR Director Naguib Gabriel urged the interior minister to address the recurring attacks on unveiled women before it becomes a common practice.

Last week, a woman wearing the niqab cut the hair of a 13-year-old Christian girl, Maggie Milad Fayez, in the metro. That same week, an Egyptian court gave a female teacher in Luxor a six-month suspended prison sentence for cutting the hair of two 12-year-old girls after they refused to cover their heads.

It’s all cut cut cut, isn’t it. Hair, genitals, hands, feet – just have to cut something off, for the greater glory of gudd.

Mainstream religious scholars say wearing the veil is compulsory for Muslims, but that no one can be forced to wear it.

Then don’t say it’s “compulsory,” you fools. If it’s compulsory that means that people can and should be forced; that’s what the word means. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t insist that things are compulsory in your religion but then pretend that no one can be compelled to comply.

The Vatican, shaken to its core by the shocking US elections in which three states voted for legalizing same-sex marriage and no states voted against it, has raced to reiterate its own stupid insistence on the obvious and the wrong.

“In western countries there is a widespread tendency to modify the classic vision of marriage between a man and woman, or rather to try to give it up, erasing its specific and privileged legal recognition compared to other forms of union,” said Father Federico Lombardi.

“It is a question of admitting that a husband and a wife are publicly recognized as such, and that children who come into the world can know, and say they have, a father and a mother,” he added.

There you go – an imbecilic combination of obvious and wrong which add up to nothing.

Dude, the fact that two women can marry doesn’t somehow mean that a wife and a husband are not publicly recognized as such. I know this. I know this for a fact. Apparently you don’t, because the Vatican is as isolated as if it were on Mars before the arrival of any Rovers, so I will assure you, from my own knowledge: wives and husbands are still publicly recognized as such. It happens all the time. I mean, granted, there aren’t constant shouts about it wherever they go – but then that was true before, too.

In other words, nothing has changed. Nothing has changed for straight couples. They haven’t been made Uncouples overnight.

Also, children can and do still know, and still say they have, a mother and a father. Nothing has changed there either. Not a thing. No children are looking around in shock and wondering why they can no longer say they have a mother and a father. No children are staring at their parents in amazement and saying “why aren’t you my mother and father any more?!!”

Try again, Father Lombardi. Try to think of something that’s not just stupid mindless obstinate distaste cultivated into pious hatred. We’ll wait.

Are any of you good at Wikipedia stuff? I ask because Leo Igwe’s entry could do with expansion. I would do it but I’ve never taken the time to learn the many baroque rules there, so I’d be sure to do something terribly wrong.

Leo was appointed a research fellow at JREF a few days ago. That’s very good – the more support Leo gets, the better!

I just published his tribute to Paul Kurtz at ur-B&W.

Late yesterday afternoon my time people in Australia were calling for a royal commission to look into the Catholic church’s coverup of child rape by priests. This morning my time I learn that Gillard has already announced such a commission – though not confined to the Catholic church.

Hmm. Why not confined to the Catholic church? Well because the Catholic church doesn’t want it to be confined to the Catholic church.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said earlier today he’d support a “wide-ranging” commission that didn’t focus solely on the Catholic Church.

“Any investigation should not be limited to the examination of any one institution,” Mr Abbott, a high-profile Catholic, said in a statement.

“It must include all organisations, government and non-government, where there is evidence of sexual abuse.”

Cardinal Pell had said he believed his church was being unfairly targeted due to “anti-Catholic prejudice”.

Yeah no. The Catholic church is highly organized, and hierarchical. It’s also highly secretive. It has extra special super-duper magic rules about the confessional and about the priesthood that just happen to make it a whole lot easier for it to hide everything and a whole lot more difficult for outsiders to unhide everything. The Catholic church is special. It makes special excuses for itself, and makes special rules that protect its special people against everyone else.

Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox explains what the abuse was really like.

A sample from the transcript:

TONY JONES: As we’ve heard, the scale of this abuse in Newcastle-Maitland Diocese over many years is truly shocking. It’s astonishing in fact. 400 victims, 14 clergy charged (inaudible), six Catholic teachers convicted, three priests currently on trial. How does this much evil get concentrated in one small area?

PETER FOX: I don’t think it takes a detective chief inspector to work that out, Tony. Alarm bells were ringing there for me many, many years ago, so much so that I actually detailed a number of reports to hierarchy within the Police Department to launch fuller investigations.

It was quite evident that something was going on. These priests were operating in adjoining parishes abusing children, they were meeting at meetings together. In many cases that I came across, one priest who had previously faced paedophile charges was donating parish money to the legal support of another priest to defend him against those charges.

I had other priests that hadn’t been charged with anything removing evidence and destroying it before we were able to secure it. And we just went around in circles.

TONY JONES: This is actually – this is – as horrific as the litany of sexual crimes against children are, to me one of the most disturbing lines in your letter was along these lines: “I can testify from my own experience the Church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the Church.” You’re saying you have evidence of all of this?

PETER FOX: Oh, not only do I have evidence, it’s irrefutable. Most of that is fact that’s been admitted by many of them. We encounter it all the time. For people to sit back and say it’s not going on, they’ve got their head in the sand. The greatest frustration is that there is so much power and organisation behind the scenes that police don’t have the powers to be able to go in and seize documents and have them disclose things to us.

The Mafia, dressed up as something else.

Zach Alexander has a very thoughtful review, or review-essay, on Chris Stedman’s book. He admires much of it, but also dissents strongly from part of the argument.

The most obvious problem is that even as Chris extolls the virtues of religious pluralism, he delivers an anti-pluralist message to his fellow atheists. Not content to merely do his own work, inviting like-minded people to join him, he expects the entire herd of cats to conform to his particular temperament and interests. Rather than increasing the breadth of the movement with his unique voice, he wishes to narrow it.

Second, even as he preaches respect, he casts aspersions on the so-called New Atheism, calling it “toxic, misdirected, and wasteful” (14). This is a curious way to call for more civility. And it betrays what, on closer inspection, seems to be a rather shallow appreciation for some of the dangers of religion – dangers that arguably justify much of the sharper New Atheist rhetoric.

In short, the central irony of the book is that the person who hopes to inspire atheists towards greater respect of religious diversity is disrespectful of the diversity in his own community.

This is what several of us (us meanies) have been saying all along: his outreach is all in one direction. James Croft defended that the other day by saying he thinks it’s because Stedman thinks of atheists as we and he’s making the conscientious effort to be hard on his own group, as opposed to cutting it slack because it is his own group.

 There is a world of difference between principled criticism of individuals who share an identity characteristic with you and the attempt to participate in the continued marginalization of that identity group. Atheists with a public personae criticize each other all the time over a multitude of issues, often disagreeing strongly on points of principle – and that is as it should be. Not all such criticism is traitorous and self-defeating: some of it stems from genuine ethical considerations which deserve to be heard.

I see Stedman offering such a critique. He believes, rightly or wrongly, that some of the ways some atheists pursue their criticism of religion is unethical, contributing to the dehumanization of individuals and perpetuating stereotypes of already-marginalized groups. Just as I, as a gay man, try to speak out against misogyny in the gay community, Stedman, an atheist, wants to speak out against Islamophobia in the atheist community (for instance). Suggesting other gay men refrain from sexist or racist language does not, I hope, make me an “Uncle Tom” (or an “Uncle Mary”). I hope it makes me a principled human being – even though it would restrict the freedom to act of members of a community of which I am a member.

Reminding your own side of their ethical responsibilities toward other human beings – even if applying your understanding of those responsibilities would limit their freedom of action – is not the action of a traitor but of a principled person making a stand for what they think is right both for the group of which they are a member and for others.

Yes but. It’s a matter of emphasis and proportion and repetition and venue and so on. Yes it’s great if gay men speak out against misogyny in the gay community, but if that’s all they ever say about that community, and they say it in big mainstream outlets where they know people who hate gay men will use it for their own purposes, it’s not so great after all.

Alexander thinks there is a key to understanding the mutual misunderstanding here.

…something dawned on me while reading the book last weekend. It’s a fundamental difference between Chris and the mainstream of the community that I don’t think anyone has fully grasped – perhaps not even Chris himself.

Before he gets to that he tells a couple of stories about dialogue despite disagreement, then comes back to the idea that people should do what suits them best, Chris what suits him and PZ what suits him.

But strangely, Chris is unwilling to be so generous. And I think I’ve figured out why.

The source of the alienness felt between Chris and much of the atheist community, myself included, is this: he values compassion and social justice to a remarkable, exemplary degree, yet places almost no value on the epistemological virtues near and dear to most in the atheist movement, such as rationality, skepticism, and the scientific method.

Ah that. Yes. I do think some of us have fully grasped it though. I’m pretty sure I’ve been talking about it all along. Many of us talked about it for instance in “Good old interfaith atheism” in April 2011.

Alexander goes on.

In passage after passage, he rightly preaches compassion and decries injustice, but is conspicuously silent on reason. He owns up to religious “atrocities” and “conflicts” – but not the absurdities that facilitate both (8). He desires a world in which “suffering and oppression” have been eliminated – but not ignorance or superstition (11). He faults some religious beliefs for being “dehumanizing” or “intolerant” – but not for being false (84, 154). He seeks to make society “more cooperative and less conflict-oriented” – but not more evidence-based (115). His mission is to “advance equality and justice” – but not rationality or free inquiry (158).

Exactly. It’s possible that I have a little more sympathy for that approach now, in the time of the Deep Rifts…but only a little. I still don’t like to see the “yes but is there any reason to think it’s true?” aspect left out altogether.

In sum, Chris does not merely have a different take on religion – much more deeply, he seems to only superficially share the epistemic values that are important to most people in the atheist and humanist [3] movements, and central for many of them. In this he is like a restaurant critic who is mostly indifferent to the quality of food. He may indeed have a column, and indeed go to restaurants, and indeed write reviews about their ambiance and service, which are indeed important. But few of his peers would fully resonate with his opinions. And if he began a quixotic campaign to moderate their negative reviews – because no chef should be belittled merely for their food – they could be forgiven for responding with bemusement, annoyance, and even scorn. Because really, what right does a culinary know-nothing have to lecture others on how to talk about food?

[3] You weren’t expecting that? The Humanist Manifesto III is very clearly about both rationality and compassion-oriented values, not just the latter.

That’s an amusing way of putting it. It is a serious point though, and it is the major point of contention between the Stedmanites and the Badnewatheists. (Whatever happened to badnewatheists, anyway? That used to be a Twitter and Facebook thing. Oh yes, I remember – it was replaced by FTBullies. That was replaced by Atheismplus. I wonder what # 4 will be.) Zachary Alexander’s essay might help to shed new light on that particular rift.

So after Obama was re-elected the other day, naturally lots of people took to Twitter to call him a nigger. I mean what else do you do when you’re pissed off? Nothing, right? Because there is nothing else. There’s only whatever epithet fits the crime.

Ricky Catanzaro plays football for Xaverian High School, a private Catholic prep school in Brooklyn, NY. Students who play sports there must sign an athlete’s contract that stipulates a promise “to be a worthy representative of my teammates and coaches, abiding by school and community expectations.”

The day after the election he tweeted, “No nigger should lead this country!!! #Romney” His Twitter timeline (since removed) revealed that “nigger” is a word he regularly uses in his day-to-day vocabulary. After other people tweeted their disgust at his comment about the president, Catanzaro responded to his black critics by referring to them as “slaves” and “cotton-pickers”…

Well that’s what language is for. That’s what free speech is for. It’s for calling people niggers and faggots and cunts when you hate them. Otherwise we live in a dictatorship.

Stories. I was thinking about stories, earlier. Stories, narrative, interpretation, explanation; and science, evidence, testing. I forget what started the train of thought, but it was about the way stories give us explanations of why people do things that are peculiarly satisfying, and that science can be irritating when it tells us a story is wrong.

The thing about stories is that they give us permission to make unquestionable claims about what people think, and what their motivations are. We can’t do that in real life, you know. If we’re sharing a bit of gossip about Eleanora or Archibald, we don’t tell it the way a storyteller does. We narrate facts or reports, what we’ve seen or what others say they’ve seen; we don’t announce what the protagonists thought. That’s because we don’t know. Stories have opposite rules – in telling stories it’s just normal to say what everyone thinks. Homer did it all the time.

That’s interesting, isn’t it. In real life we don’t know what other people think, we just infer it from how they behave, and often we’re aware that we don’t have a clue. In reading or hearing stories, we enter an alternate world where we can be told what everyone thinks.

Why is that so peculiarly satisfying? Probably partly because we can’t do it in real life; we can’t have that comfortable sense that we understand exactly why everybody does everything. Probably also partly because it’s explanatory. There just is something satisfying about a good explanation – “good” in the sense of being a good fit and making sense of something that was a puzzle or a jumble.

I suppose I’m talking about folk psychology. I’m thinking that stories probably have a lot to do with where we get our folk psychology. I’m also wondering if they trick us into thinking we understand other minds better than we really do.