Author: Ophelia Benson

The Heresy Club is a group blog of young heretical bloggers – Alex Gabriel, Siana Bangura, Rhys Morgan, Richard Nicholl and Hayley Stevens. You’re already familiar with Alex and Rhys if you’ve been reading B&W for awhile: they were starring daily back in January. I met both of them at QED, and Hayley as well. Check them out and if you like the blog, spread the word!

To be young and heretical in 2012 is to experience the intense realities of superstitious thought.

In our schools, we see science teachers treat Genesis with kid gloves. We see intereference in students’ private lives who blaspheme online. We see religious worship in British classrooms, and prayer creeping unconstitutionally back into American schools. Those of us at religious schools see indoctrination and sectarianism first hand, often with sex-negativity, misogyny and heterosexism in tow.

On campus, we’re targeted by evangelists from day one. We get threats of violence at atheist events, face censorship attempts from student unions, witness fellow students walking out of lectures on Darwin. Our universities still frequently make Christian chaplains central to pastoral care, and cling to Christian prayers and mottos from their Latin-speaking pasts.

They’re clearly paying attention, and the right kind of attention.

It seems odd that the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne publishes an article by an Anglican minister, but I guess it’s just the usual ecumenical – interfaith – he hates Them so we love him – any port in a storm deal. Catlicks and Prods join hands to fight the real enemy, Teh Atheists.

the sad atheists are those who do take the God question seriously. They know that the stakes are high and that without God it is notoriously difficult to make sense of the world or of human life or death or joy or pain or love-making or justice or even, at the philosophical end of the spectrum, of truth itself.

Do they? You sure about that?

I ask because it’s also notoriously difficult to make sense of the world with “God.” I claim it’s a good deal more difficult. Since god is generally defined as perfectly good, there is a huge difficulty in making sense of such an entity creating a world in which living organisms develop via natural selection. Natural selection is not the creation of a being who is “good” in any sense we can understand (which is, after all, the one we’re talking about).

Our minister was disappointed by the quality of the last GAC. No thinking, you see.

Where I hope for serious engagement with the issues of atheism and the nature of science, the convention is more like a Christian revival meeting: a rally for the faithful with abundant noise, laughter and loud affirmation. Only the songs and the interjected ‘amens’ are missing. In 2010 it was quickly clear that the gathering was not about debating issues of faith and (non-)belief nor to defend the assumption that science is the only source of truth. The overwhelming and simplistic dogma was that religious people are misguided and unwilling to accept the clear evidence of the natural sciences.

But then he doesn’t do any of that kind of thinking himself, in this piece. He just talks some waffle that’s basically a demand for more deference please.

We need to examine the implications of living in an increasingly secular society where a harmonious future will only be forged through mutual tolerance. Trust can be built, but only when beliefs and values are clear, and when all parties accept the limitations imposed by living in a multicultural democratic state. As Christians we ought to preach the Gospel in word and deed, we ought to persuade others, offering good reasons for our hope. But coercion and manipulation are ungodly and will bring disrepute to the Church and its Lord.

In other words, if we just preach and nag and pressure, but don’t actually kick or hit, please demonstrate mutual tolerance by shutting the fuck up about us, amen.

PZ is at this very moment in a church. Not a joke this time, he really is – he’s there to observe Chris Stedman in action. His tweets sound very…restless.

• You know what would be a crappy April fools joke? If I said I found Chris Stedman persuasive. So I won’t.
• It’s a very *nice* room, with very *nice* people. Jeez, but I detest “nice”.
• I learned that Stedman did good rewarding work in assisted living home. How NICE!
• Stedman: religion studies major. Seminarian. Pro-religion advocate. Atheist? Not one word for atheism today. Weird.

Not weird; typical.

Oh damn, wouldn’t you know it, grumble grumble. Here I’ve been friends with Maryam for years but we hadn’t met, so three weeks ago we did at last meet, to our mutual joy, and what happens? She leaves FTB and her heretical ways to get in touch with her fun feminine side. She tells me she’s always loved fashion, and she’s going to go into the trendy decorative hijab line.

“I love beautiful fabrics and colours,” she told me on Skype, ”and what a great canvas you have in a burqa! Yards and yards of the stuff, to fill up with your own creative genius.”

Well yes. You know the sort of thing she means.

All very decorative and creative, to be sure, but couldn’t she just work with T shirts and jackets instead? Couldn’t she design clothes that are…you know…secular?

“They don’t use as much fabric!” she explained with a merry laugh.

Ok, then why not curtains, quilts, murals, tablecloths? Why not paintings, for that matter?

“Ah,” Maryam said dreamily, “but think how beautiful it is to decorate our cities with all these sparkling brightly-coloured women. Imagine all the cities in the world crowded with magenta and peacock-blue and scarlet embroidered women. I can see it now.”

She has plans for a Fashion Calendar for 2013.

From the F Word –

The Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW Asia Pacific) and Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) have released a joint statement on the failure of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to adopt agreed conclusions at its 56th session earlier in March.  They draw particular attention to the role that arguments about protecting “traditional values” have played in preventing consensus on the human rights of women.

We say NO to any re-opening of negotiations on the already established international agreements on women’s human rights and call on all governments to demonstrate their commitments to promote, protect and fulfill human rights and fundamental freedoms of women.

We are particularly concerned to learn that our governments failed to reach a consensus on the basis of safeguarding “traditional values” at the expense of human rights and fundamental freedoms of women…

…it is alarming that some governments have evoked so-called “moral” values to deny women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Sexual and reproductive rights are a crucial and fundamental part of women’s full enjoyment of all rights as well as integral to gender equality, development and social justice. Social and religious morals and patriarchal values have been employed to justify violations against women. Violence against women, coercion and deprivation of legal and other protections of women, marital rape, honour crimes, son preference, female genital mutilation, ‘dowry’ or ‘bride price’, forced and early marriages and ‘corrective rapes’ of lesbians, bisexuals, transgender and inter-sexed persons have all been justified by reference to ‘traditional values’.

“Traditional values” are just what get in the way of women’s rights. If you make an exception for them, you’re giving up on the whole idea.

Glory for Ken Livingstone: Iran’s Press TV reports

Ken Livingstone to make London a beacon of Islam

Ken Livingstone, Labour party’s candidate for mayor of London has promised to turn London into a “beacon” for the words of the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) in a sermon at one of the British capital’s mosques.

Livingstone pledged to “educate the mass of Londoners” in Islam, saying:  “That will help to cement our city as a beacon that demonstrates the meaning of the words of the Prophet (PBUH).”

Livingstone described the Prophet (PBUH)’s words in his last sermon as “an agenda for all humanity.” He praised the Prophet’s last sermon, telling his audience: “I want to spend the next four years making sure that every non-Muslim in London knows and understands [its] words and message.”

What happened? They forgot the last (PBUH). A disgraceful lapse, if not outright blasphemy!

But anyway, how lovely of Ken, forcing Islam on all Londoners that way. Good that he won’t be frittering away his time on things like public transport or libraries.

In a letter or pamphlet before the election:

God KNOWS who is a Muslim. And he KNOWS who is not. Instinctively, so do you. Let me point out to all the Muslim brothers and sisters what I stand for:

I, George Galloway, do not drink alcohol and never have. Ask yourself if you believe the other candidate in this election can say that truthfully.

How does Galloway KNOW that God KNOWS what Galloway says it knows? How does Galloway KNOW that there is such a thing as “God”?

Oh, he doesn’t, it’s just electioneering, I know. But I wanted to say anyway.

It appears that Cristina Odone wrote a piece blaming Merat’s killing spree on – wait for it – secularism, but alas, the piece has been removed and can no longer be found. A bit too much, was it?

A young woman of 19 in Mersin, Turkey, Hatice Ferat, ran away from home to live with her boyfriend. Her brother Mahsun did not approve.

Mahsun visited her in her new home and invited her out to take a walk along the beach. He then lured her in[to a] secluded area, slit her throat, stabbed her forty times, and disposed of the body in a river. When it was eventually found, her family refused to attend her funeral.
The investigation is ongoing – no trial has yet taken place. The funeral was held by 50 women, who took the opportunity to make it clear that such behavior would not be tolerated under their watch, shouting slogans that included “We are not going to be anyone’s honor,” “End honor killings,” and “Hands that hurt women should be broken.”

 H/t Deeyah.

Rock Beyond Belief is going on right now. Toooot!

Dan Fincke has a post saying that, and that Ed Brayton is the MC, and that he had a good time hanging out with Ed at the Reason Rally, and that Jessica Ahlquist rocked the Reason Rally, and that you can buy evil little thing T shirts which go into her scholarship fund…

…and that the evil little thing T shirts were my idea. Whoa, what?!

Oh yes, so they were. I’d actually forgotten that!

That’s too bad, because it means I didn’t think to introduce myself to Jessica that way in Orlando. “Hi, I’m the one who had the evil little thing T shirts idea.” If I remember correctly I just did the bumbling fan thing, instead.

Two things.

One, will someone please explain to me how Republicans keep getting away with playing the “anti-elitist” “I hate Harvard/Yale/people who speak French” card when they themselves went to Harvard or Yale and speak French?

How did Bush keep getting away with it? I’ve never understood that. Andover, Yale, Harvard Business School, grandfather a Senator, father the President, oil money up to the eyeballs, and he got away with pretending to be a Texas workin’ stiff just by drawling and being pig-ignorant.

Now apparently Romney’s getting away with it.

Mitt Romney likes to take jabs at President Barack Obama for representing the values of the Harvard faculty lounge. He should know.

Like the president, the former Massachusetts governor is a graduate of Harvard Law School. Unlike the commander-in-chief, Romney also has a second Harvard graduate degree, in business.

While bashing Harvard is intended to paint Obama as an ivory tower theorist out of his depth in the presidency, Romney owes his chief White House credential — his business career –to the school.

That Ivy League pedigree undercuts Romney’s appeal to many Republicans who already doubt that he shares their values. So as he heads for his party’s nomination, Romney lacerates his alma mater on the campaign trail, seeking to channel the resentments of voters soured on elite institutions.

“I didn’t learn about the economy just reading about it or hearing about it at the faculty lounge at Harvard,” Romney, 65, said on March 18 in Illinois, in a swipe at Obama.

Why don’t people just shout “You pathetic liar!” when he tries that?

Two, oh for the good old days.

Brains and determination were taken for granted at Harvard, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, institution that is consistently ranked among the world’s top universities. Romney, seen as smart, though not exceptionally so, stood out for the intensity of his work ethic and his commitment to his Mormon faith.

“He was very serious about his religion and his relationship with God,” says Mark Mazo, a member of Romney’s law school study group. “That was highly unusual at the time.”

Ohhhhhhhhhhh wouldn’t it be nice if it were still highly unusual?

Rachel Maddow on Fresh Air the other day.

On why she came out in the Stanford student newspaper when she was 17

“I think because I was 17 and incredibly cocky and full of myself, and I thought that everything I had to do had to make a statement. I think I had a confrontational mindset. I think I was frustrated by the casual anti-gay stuff that I saw among college freshmen in the milieu that I was in. And my attitude toward that was not to try to bring people along gently, gently, and show people by my evident humanity their callousness. I just wanted to throw something up in peoples’ faces. I’m not sure that I would do it that way now. I don’t really have any regret about it. I wish I had been more sensitive to my parents. But I certainly don’t regret coming out. I think that everybody has to find their own way on coming out issues. And some people decide never to. I tend to think it is always better to be out than not out. But not everybody has the option. And when I was a freshman in college, I felt like I had the option, and I exercised it with an exclamation point. I think it says more about being 17 than it does about being gay.”

Not everybody has the option – but some of us do, so we go to Reason Rallies or we write confrontational blog posts. Ya.