Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Homeless vets? Let’em starve

    Justin has some shocking news – Fort Bragg wont let us feed homeless vets at the atheist festival

    I fought very hard for this to happen at the festival this weekend. We went back and forth for several months. The ‘pro-starvation’ camp has prevailed.

    The idea was simple.

    Our festival is already paid for, via a generous donation from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation (directly deposited into our accounts at American Atheists). So here we are with a free festival on our hands. We would have put the word out to bring canned food (and similar items). Next, we would drop off the food where it needs to go.

    It’s a win-win. Obviously we get a measure of publicity that is undeniably ‘good’, seemingly attack/spin proof. But that’s obviously not the real motivation. We really care about the homeless population, especially the one around this military town.

    • Less than 1% of Americans are currently in the military (reserve and active).
    • 7% of Americans have served at some time in their life. (2010 Census data: 24 million)

    23% of the homeless population are veterans 33% of the male homeless population are veterans 47% served Vietnam-era 17% served post-Vietnam 15% served pre-Vietnam 67% served three or more years 33% were stationed in war zone 25% have used VA homeless services 85% completed high school/GED, compared to 56% of non-veterans 89% received an honorable discharge 79% reside in central cities 16% reside in suburban areas 5% reside in rural areas 76% experience alcohol, drug or mental health problems 46% are white males, compared to 34% of non-veterans 46% are age 45 or older, compared to 20% non-veterans [source]

    America has left a population of heroes behind. It’s a goddamn shame. And we want to raise visibility and perhaps even make a noticeable dent in our area.

    We are accepting donations at the after party!

    The free party is at the Holiday Inn Bordeaux (call 910 323 0111 for room reservations) from 9PM – Midnight. It’s the official American Atheists after party, featuring music from Shelley Segal and appearances from the majority of our lineup. You can take pictures with them and give them hugs!

    The donations are being handled by Military Atheists & Secular Humanists of Fort Bragg (MASH Fort Bragg). Bring some canned food, or other non-perishable items. Or simply drop some cash to the MASH Fort Bragg peeps at the hotel, and we’ll spend 100% of cash collected that night on bulk food purchases to supplement what you guys bring.

    But Fort Bragg says it’s fundraising, and illegal. Go read Justin’s whole post.

     

  • Mothers and daughters

    Via a tweet by the great Deeyah – a woman in India is murdered for refusing to “compromise” in her daughter’s rape case.

    I suppose I should warn you: it makes very ugly upsetting reading. That’s so often the case, but maybe I should give warnings more often.

    A month-and-a-half after a schoolgirl was reportedly raped in Betul, her mother was allegedly shot dead by the accused and his friends on Friday night. No arrests have been made so far.

    Imarti Uike, a 45-year-old tribal woman, had refused to withdraw the case related to the alleged rape of her 16-year-old daughter and had filed a written complaint about the repeated threats being faced by her family.

    Late on Friday, when the family of six was preparing to retire for the night, six persons, including Raju Gavli — the main accused in the rape case — his brother Bantu, Rajesh Harode, Praveen and two others, reportedly entered their house in Hamlapur locality.

    The 16-year-old girl, her father and three brothers were present when the accused reportedly shot Imarti, who had refused to agree to a compromise in the rape case. She was rushed to a hospital where she died during treatment late in the night.

    That upsets me.

    It reminds me of Leila Hussein, who was murdered for leaving her husband after he murdered their daughter for talking to a British soldier. Remember her?

    Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband – the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young daughter Rand in a brutal ‘honour’ killing for which he has shown no remorse.

    Though she feared reprisals for speaking out, she really believed that she would soon be safe. Arrangements were well under way to smuggle her to the Jordanian capital, Amman. In fact, she was on her way to meet the person who would help her escape when a car drew up alongside her and two other women who were walking her to a taxi. Five bullets were fired: three of them hit Leila, 41. She died in hospital after futile attempts to save her.

    She had been up all night packing, and making a cake for the women who had sheltered her.

    It reminds me of Rona Amir Mohammad, the first wife of Mohammad Shafia, who tried to protect and support the Shafia daughters, and was murdered for her pains.

    It reminds me of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, who accused some militiamen of raping her, and was stoned to death for adultery in front of a crowd in Mogadishu. She was 13. Remember her?

    “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me,” she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.

    …

    Numerous eye-witnesses say she was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones until she died in front of more than 1,000 people last week.

    This upsets me.

     

     

  • Vocational hazards

    Barbara J King at NPR is repeating her mantra that it’s wrongwrongwrong bad awful reprehensible to say that absurd beliefs are absurd.

    Last Thursday, I spoke with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in a recorded interview at the NPR studios in Washington, D.C. That meeting was suggested by the American arm of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, in the wake of a post I wrote here at 13.7 last month.

    In my original post, I questioned whether Dawkins was the best choice to be headline speaker at the March 24 Reason Rally in Washington, given that one of its goals was to change negative stereotypes about atheists.

    Yes she did. She wondered if Dawkins was “the best man for the job” of giving the keynote speech at the Reason Rally, given its aim to “combat negative stereotypes about nonreligious Americans.”

    In a 2006 interview with Steve Paulson at Salon (during his tenure as professor of public understanding of science), Dawkins suggested that greater intelligence is correlated with atheism. He also said that when it encourages belief in the absence of evidence, “there’s something very evil about faith.”

    Slam. That noise you hear is the sound of thousands of minds closing down and turning away from anything that Dawkins might go on to say about science.

    By choosing words hurtful and harsh, Dawkins closes off a potential channel of communication about science with people who hold faith dear in their lives.

    I disputed her claim, and especially her way of making it, at the time.

    She isolates the core issue clearly this time.

    In insisting that he does not insult people who believe in God, only their beliefs, Dawkins tries for a distinction I find problematic.

    On his blog last year, Dawkins called a person named Minor Vidal a “fool” for his expression of thanks to God after surviving a deadly plane crash. (To be fair, Dawkins called “billions” of other people fools, too, in the same post.)

    …

    Dawkins told me that if he insulted any person, he regrets it. But this example shows how hard it is, in practice rather than theory, to aim harsh language only at a person’s belief, and not at the person.

    How much does that distinction matter? When it comes to religion, does demeaning a person’s belief not also demean the person?

    Why use demeaning terms, and urge others to use them, for either the belief or the person?

    Because many beliefs are absurd, and if everyone everywhere is deferential about them at all times, then it becomes a lot harder to get rid of them. That’s why. It seems so obvious. Many beliefs one just expects people to shed as they grow out of childhood, because of their obvious absurdity. It’s cute when a child thinks maybe her toys come to life when she’s asleep; it’s worrying if an adult thinks her car has a mind.

    Check out Richard’s post about Minor Vidal. He wasn’t just calling him a fool, and he wasn’t just being randomly obnoxious – he was making a point (and a good one). Minor Vidal was the sole survivor of a plane crash in Bolivia that killed eight people, and he was found after three days by a rescue team.

    And when he was eventually found, did he thank Captain Bustos and the rescue team? Did he thank the boy scout teachers who had taught him vital survival skills? We aren’t told. But what we are told is that he knelt down and thanked God.  God who, he presumably must have believed, allowed the plane crash to happen in the first place and allowed his eight fellow passengers to die. He knelt down and thanked God. And billions of people, all around the world, will think that was a perfectly natural thing to do. They would have done the same. Does religion manufacture fools, or do fools gravitate towards religion?

    Now on the one hand it’s perfectly understandable that Vidal felt enormous relief at being rescued, and thanking god may be just a way of expressing that – but still – on calm reflection one remembers the other eight, and the survival skills, and the hard work of the rescue team. It really is an ugly belief, that god drowned thousands but saved precious Me. It really is an ungrateful belief, that surgeons worked all night but it was god who saved My life. Richard really isn’t just being a big meanie to point that out.

    Maybe because King is an anthropologist she has a vocational aversion to thinking that absurd beliefs are absurd.

     

     

  • Amnesty: sharp rise in executions in Middle East

    There were at least 360 judicial killings in Iran (up from 252+ in 2010), at least 82 in Saudi Arabia (up from 27+), and at least 68 in Iraq (up from 1+).

  • Discourses

    There’s a new course at UBC this spring: ‘Ecology, Technology, Indigeneity and Learning: Contexts, Complexities, and Cross-cultural Conversations’ May 7 – June 15, 2012. Tuesdays & Thursdays, 1:00 – 4:00pm
    Here’s the skinny:

    Ecological and technological educational discourses are often taught as separate discourses downplaying, or ignoring altogether, their interconnectedness, complexities, and complicities, as well as their diverse cultural contexts. This course offers students an opportunity to critically explore how to reconnect and reshape these storylines into enactments of equity, social justice, cultural inclusivity, environmental sustainability and environmental justice.

    Students will be introduced to the voices of Indigenous Peoples and other marginalized peoples impacted by neoliberalism and global economics who share their struggles for survival, cultural regeneration and protection/reclamation of their lands, as well as their vibrant and rich technological ecoliteracies. These ecoliteracies speak to the complex social and ecological crises worldwide. Students will reflect on how they learn, think, feel, act, and write as they work toward the creation of sustainable learning communities — Indigenous, non-Indigenous, urban, rural, on-line, on-the-ground, classroom, or otherwise delineated — based on principles of respect, reciprocity, equivalency of epistemologies/methodologies/protocols, and shared dialogue.

    This course will be of interest to education students seeking ways to introduce cross-cultural eco-sensibilities into their classroom teaching, as well as to students outside of education who are seeking a graduate course that addresses the multiple contexts, complexities, and complicities of the ecology—technology—Indigeneity/social justice interfaces.

    I’m particularly interested in the “principle” of equivalency of epistemologies.

  • CNN talks to Dave Silverman

    “We want people to know we are huge, we’re everywhere, and we are growing.”

  • Big Reason Rally roundup

    Everything.

  • What Jason Rosenhouse learned from talking to creationists

    On many occasions I asked people the blunt question, “What do you find so objectionable about evolution?”  Never once did anyone reply, “It is contrary to the Bible.”

  • A tribe of one

    There was an earlier Heathen’s Progress a few days ago, which did hint that the series isn’t in fact intended to go on forever. That’s good to know. (One needs to know what to pack.) On the other hand, Julian used it to treat all disagreement as “tribalism,” which looks to a naive observer like an unfair move.

    First of all, it is dispiriting to see how tribal so many people seem to be. For all the interesting, thoughtful comments that have been posted on the pieces I’ve written, and supportive emails I’ve been sent, there have been many more that have used whatever the subject of the week is as a simple pretext to get in the familiar old digs against whoever the other tribe happens to be. There’s also been a tendency to take any critical comments I make as indications that I’m on a certain “side”, as though it is not possible to criticise your fellow travellers, or that we only agree with friends and those we disagree with are enemies.

    Maybe, maybe, but then again one could just turn the whole idea back on him. One could argue (with evidence via quoting) that the whole series was full of “the familiar old digs” at the tribally-hated gnu atheists. I’ve been arguing that throughout: his “critical comments” have been 1) familiar 2) tribal 3) generalized and evidence-free. Given that, it seems painfully self-serving to say that most of the criticism his series has received has been tribal as opposed to thoughtful.

    It’s probably true that much of the response was tribal; mine probably was tribal, but then Julian’s critical comments were directed at a tribe. His response now is rather like poking a dog with a stick and then complaining when the dog growls. He’s been talking about “new” atheists in a tribal way for years; we bristle because he talks about us that way; then he complains when we do what he’s been poking us to do. It’s all tribal. Sure, our response may be tribal, but his hand-waving generalizations about us are every bit as tribal, and his came first.

    Actually I think his are a good deal more tribal, because they’re so general and vague, while the responses give chapter and verse.

    The conclusion is pure poisoning the well.

    …atheists need to be a bit more modest and self-effacing than they have appeared to be. The whole idea of the “heathen” label was to take ourselves a little less seriously. We say we respect science and reason, but what both have taught us more than anything is how fallible, biased, irrational and prejudiced we all are.

    If you agree with these conclusions, then I expect you’ll find much to agree with in the Heathen Manifesto. If you don’t, and you like a good excuse to fire off a ranting response to a Comment is free belief blog, then start rubbing your hands now.

    In other words, if you don’t agree with my conclusions, you’re the kind of person who likes to fire off ranting responses to a Comment is free belief blog. That’s how to be modest and self-effacing, folks! Just announce that all disagreement is malicious hand-rubbing ranting.

    Tribal indeed.

     

  • A spectre is haunting the Guardian Open Weekend

    Oh no not that – not another installment of Heathen’s (ant-like) Progress. But yes, it is so.

    This time it’s a manifesto. Oh good, more management of atheism by a self-nominated boss of atheism. More telling us all how to do it more korrektly by some random guy. More “we have to do it this way” from one person who keeps forgetting to show us his Certificate of Rulership Over All Atheists.

    In recent years, we atheists have become more confident and outspoken in articulating and defending our godlessness in the public square. Much has been gained by this. There is now wider awareness of the reasonableness of a naturalist world view, and some of the unjustified deference to religion has been removed, exposing them to much needed critical scrutiny.

    Unfortunately, however, in a culture that tends to focus on the widest distinctions, the most extreme positions and the most strident advocates, the “moderate middle” has been sidelined by this debate. There is a perception of unbridgeable polarisation, and a sense that the debates have sunk into a stale impasse, with the same tired old arguments being rehearsed time and again by protagonists who are getting more and more entrenched.

    Sigh.

    I’ve pointed this out a million times, and here I am having to point it out again. (Well not having to – but there it is again, so it needs pointing out, and I’m right here, so I’ll save you the bother.) Here’s the glaring problem with that passage (and with the article and with the whole series): Julian is himself contributing to the very perception he cites, in this very article and series. He’s been contributing to it for a long time, ever since the piece in the Norwegian humanist magazine Fritanke. The backlash against “new” atheism has created a perception that “new” atheism is shrill-and-militant, and having created the perception, it cudgels “new” atheism for being shrill-and-militant, thus enforcing the perception, for which it cudgels “new” atheism, some more, etc, in an endless cycle which does its bit to keep journalists solvent. Given that Julian is himself one of the people responsible for the “perception,” he’s the wrong person to keep wringing his hands about the perception. He’s the wrong person to point the finger at “a culture that tends to focus on the widest distinctions, the most extreme positions and the most strident advocates” when he’s a stalwart of that very culture. The fact that his statement that “there is a perception of unbridgeable polarisation” links to one of his own articles demonstrates this hilariously; I suspect that the link is editorial rather than authorial, but that makes it no less ironic.

    It is time, therefore, for those of us who are tired of the status quo to try to shift the focus of our public discussions of atheism into areas where more progress and genuine dialogue is possible. To achieve this, we need to rethink what atheism stands for and how to present it. The so-called “new atheism” may have put us on the map, but in the public imagination it amounts to little more than a caricature of Richard Dawkins, which is not an accurate representation of the terrain many of us occupy. We now need something else.

    This manifesto is an attempt to point towards the next phase of atheism’s involvement in public discourse. It is not a list of doctrines that people are asked to sign up to but a set of suggestions to provide a focus for debate and discussion. Nor is it an attempt to accurately describe what all atheists have in common. Rather it is an attempt to prescribe what the best form of atheism should be like.

    Modest, isn’t it. Who’s “we”? Who commissioned Julian to manage the next phase of atheism’s involvement in public discourse? Whence comes all this instruction and prescription?

    The manifesto itself – meh. It’s not so much a heathen manifesto as a Julian manifesto. It’s not quite up there with Marx and Engels for rhetorical flair, so meh.

    h/t Geoff

  • Fuck the pope…but use a condom

    Rowdy irreverent people in Mexico city protest the pope’s visit. I want to be friends with all of them!

    Wisely, the pope is not going to Mexico City. He’s going to a city where people like him.

    I wonder if his BFF Sayeeda Warsi is going to meet him there so that they can plan the war on militant secularism some more.

    h/t Roger

  • Bifurcated epistemology is doing it wrong

    PZ is doing another talk tomorrow, at the American Atheists National Convention. Subject: “Scientists! If you aren’t an atheist, you’re doing it wrong!” Regular commenter (here as well as there) julian disagreed.

    Meh.

    I’d say if a philosopher’s not an atheist they’re doing it wrong but a scientist can be whatevs so long as they’re sufficiently ignorant of things outside their area of expertise.

    I disagreed with that.

    How is that not doing it wrong? How is believing something that is dependent on being sufficiently ignorant of things outside their area of expertise not doing it wrong?

    I see how it’s technically possible, of course, and how it can be made to “work” in a narrow, vocational sense, but I don’t see how it is, considered more broadly, anything but doing it wrong.

    To put it another way, of course strict compartmentalization is possible, but it’s not a respectable solution for a scientist or any other kind of honest inquirer.

    That’s what I think. Being ignorant in order to do a special, defective kind of thinking is doing it wrong, as long as “it” is understood to be cognitive functioning in general as opposed to just doing a particular (scientific) job. Yes a scientist can do science in the lab and woo everywhere else, but that’s doing it wrong. NOMA is doing it wrong. Doing it wrong is doing it wrong.

     

     

  • It’s not a priority

    I saw a powerful BBC report on FGM in Egypt the other day.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bObvzSHRKT8

    The most chilling part is at the very end (11:00) when Sue Lloyd Roberts asks a Salafist honcho if he’s on board with the campaign to end FGM and he said it’s not a priority. She pressed him by saying, “So you wouldn’t deter a mother who wants to get her underage daughter mutilated.”

    He stared for a second and then said, with a tiny smirk, “I have nothing further to say on this matter.”

    Sue Lloyd Roberts in voiceover: “The will of mothers like Olla will therefore be respected, and 11-year-old Raja will be mutilated.” Freeze-frame on young Raja.

  • Sometimes the ploy is really too obvious

    One such time is when a clerical type (or “expert” or “scholar” or other male boffin who dispenses religious rules) tells a woman she has to open her legs whenever her husband tells her to and that if she doesn’t she’s a sinner and that godknowsbest.

    It’s Sheikh Assim Al-Hakeem I’m talking about this time. A woman said her husband was issuing the open legs command three times a day and it was too much, what should she do.

    It is not permissible for a wife to refuse fulfiling her husband’s desire. You should answer his calls as this is not phisically hurting you.

    If you can’t do that for no legitimate reason, you are sinful. You should ask him to marry another woman or to divorce you.

    And Allah knows best

    See what I mean? Transparent. Self-interested. God says women can never say no to a spousal fuck, and godknowsbest. If she wants an occasional break she should ask him to get a second wife. (Then maybe a couple of decades down the road she can have the fun of being murdered by the husband and wife #2, as with the Shafia family. It’s a great arrangement any way you look at it.)

    If toddlers were in charge of religion it would be sinful for adults to refuse to give toddlers candy. Godknowsbest.

  • Marriage is defined as

    The Muslim Council of Britain says no thanks to marriage equality for gays.

    Farooq Murad, Secretary General of the MCB, said: “Whilst we remain opposed to all forms of discrimination – including homophobia – redefining the meaning of marriage is in our opinion unnecessary and unhelpful.

    “With the advent of civil partnerships, both homosexual and heterosexual couples now have equal rights in the eyes of the law. Therefore, in our view the case to change the definition of marriage, as accepted throughout time and across cultures, is strikingly weak.”

    He added: “Like other Abrahamic faiths, marriage in Islam is defined as a union between a man and a woman. So while, the state has accommodated for gay couples, such unions will not be blessed as marriage by the Islamic institutions.”

    Wut? Marriage in Islam is defined as a union between a man and a woman? Orilly? What happened to sura 4:3? What happened to “or two, or three, or four”?

    It’s sweet that they remain opposed to all forms of discrimination though. Really adorable.

  • MCB opposes marriage equality for gays

    Farooq Murad, Secretary General of the MCB, said, “marriage in Islam is defined as a union between a man and a woman.” Or a man and two women, or three, or four.

  • Islamist preacher barred from university talk

    A Muslim preacher who said homosexuality was ‘unnatural’ and gays needed to be ‘treated’ has been barred from speaking at an event for the Islamic Society at U of Hertfordshire.

  • ACLU 1 USCCB 0

    It’s about time. Sarah Posner reports that – at last! – a judge rules for the ACLU in a challenge to the stinking meddlesome theocratic US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

    Late yesterday a federal court in Massachusetts ruled [PDF] in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union in a challenge it brought against the Department of Health and Human Services over contracts with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. When the ACLU first brought the case in 2009, HHS permitted the USCCB to prohibit the referral of victims of sexual assault to be referred for contraception and abortion services. Although HHS did not renew the USCCB contract last year, the ACLU proceeded with the case “to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not misused to impose religious restrictions on vulnerable trafficking victims that receive U.S. aid,” according to a statement.

    And the judge ruled against theocracy.

    Judge Richard Stearns agreed the case was not moot, and in holding that the policy permitting the Bishops to restrict trafficking victims’ access to reproductive health services violated the Establishment Clause, noted, “[t]o insist that the government respect the separation of church and state is not to discriminate against religion; indeed, it promotes a respect for religion by refusing to single out any creed for official favor at the expense of all others.”

    It does that and it also promotes respect for and freedom of people who follow no religion. It rules, in short, against theocracy.

  • Mexican activists protest pope’s visit

    And they do a good job of it, too!

  • Washington Post on the Reason Rally

    “We have the numbers to be taken seriously,” said Paul Fidalgo, spokesman for CFI, one of the organizations sponsoring the rally. “We’re not just a tiny fringe group.”