The Freedom House report on blasphemy laws gets it right.

[A]n examination of the application of blasphemy laws indicates that they typically give rise to the violation, not the protection, of fundamental human rights.

…

  By definition, these laws, which are designed to protect religious institutions, doctrines, figures, and concepts—in other words, nonhuman entities and ideas—from insult or offense, impose undue restrictions on freedom of expression.

Precisely. Institutions (including corporations), doctrines, figures and concepts do not need protection from insult or offense, and they cannot be given such protection without restricting freedom of expression. Since they do not need the protection, it is a bad and stupid idea to restrict freedom of expression in order to give it to them.… Read the rest

As you saw if you keep up with the News here, Marc Alan Di Martino helpfully translated some theocratic bullying from Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini in the Vatican’s house rag the Osservatore Romano.

Christians also must be able to forge an agreement with Muslims on how to fight those aspects which, like all extremisms, threaten society. I refer to atheism, materialism and relativism. Christians, Muslims and Jews can work together to reach this common objective. I believe it’s time for a new humanism in order to struggle against these perverse phenomena, because only the centrality of the human being is an antidote to fanaticism and intolerance.

Very papal, isn’t it. Also stupid and deceitful – the whole point of … Read the rest

The loveliness of the religious mind.

Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers committed suicide. The only way im wearin it for them is if they all commit suicide. I cant believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed therselves because of their sin. REALLY PEOPLE

Ooh ick – who’s that – some high school kid, right?

No, it’s a school board member at Midland School District in Arkansas. It’s a grown-up male adult mature citizen over the age of 16.

being a fag doesnt give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being

… Read the rest

I was very chuffed to see that Time did a story on Freethought Kampala. Uganda needs all the freethought it can get, so publicity is good.

A study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 97% of Ugandans are believers, and the fact that professions of atheism are invariably met with incredulity has prompted most of Uganda’s freethinkers to keep their skepticism in the closet.

Exactly. This is why solidarity is needed, and why atheists really shouldn’t stay in the closet or go back in the closet if they have the freedom and safety not to. Yes we are too so helping.

But James Onen, a former Pentecostal Christian who once spoke in tongues, is

… Read the rest

Victor Stenger sends encouragement.

It’s time for secularists to stop sucking up to Christians–and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and any others who claim they have some sacred right to decide what kind of society the rest of us must live in–what a human being can do with her own body. The good news is that young people are joining the rising atheist movement in increasing numbers. I have not met one yet who is an accommodationist.

That is indeed what it is time for. This does not mean, contrary to what accommodationists keep saying (whether they believe it or not, and I suspect they mostly don’t), it is time for us to call believers idiots whenever we encounter them. … Read the rest

More from John Shook’s The God Debates. I’m finding it very quotable.

Religion’s defenders often show a preference for defining atheism as the strongest claim to know that no god exists. If atheists cannot justify such a claim (and they can’t…), perhaps belief in god then appears reasonable?This tactic fails, since it uses the wrong definition of atheism and conveniently forgets how religious believers do claim extravagant knowledge of a supreme infinite being. It is religion that credits an extraordinary capacity for knowledge to humans, not atheism. [pp 22-2]

It is just too easy to proclaim a mysterious god, deride dogmatic atheism’s inability to prove that such a mysterious unknowable god cannot exist, and conclude that the faithful should

… Read the rest