Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Which priest is more culpable?

    Lynn drew up a list of abusive priests, Bevilacqua and Molloy ordered the list destroyed, Bevilacqua secretly kept the list in his safe.

  • Equalities minister says the church does not own marriage

    “It is the government’s fundamental job to reflect society and to shape the future, not stay silent where it has the power to act and change things for the better.”

  • Amitava Kumar on reading Rushdie (aloud) in Jaipur

    I had felt a great sense of freedom—a liberation from fear—as I read Rushdie’s words out loud in public for what I believed was the first time in the country of his birth.

  • Christians got no manners

    More from ill-mannered intrusive uninvited missionary Christians planning to crash the Reason Rally, this time from a site called Ratio Christi: Student Apologetics Alliance. They call their rude intrusive uninvited plan Reason Rally Reachout 2012. “Reachout” is it – crashing other people’s event in order to harass them with dogmatic nonsense that you know they dislike and don’t want – that’s “reachout.” Nice name for it. Yo student apologists: if we all turned up for one of your Apologetics meetings would you consider it Reachout?

    Ratio Christi, along with some other groups and campus ministries, are planning on attending the rally to interact one-on-one with skeptics and atheists in attendance, conduct surveys, engage in dialogue, and present the Christian view in a well-reasoned and respectful manner. This trip does not involve street preaching, tract distribution, or blind faith.

    That’s just fucking rude. It’s aggressive and obnoxious and rude. They don’t want to interact with you, do they – they’re there to interact, for once in their lives, with thousands of people who are not theists, all in one place. They’re not there to get the Christian view, are they – they’re there to escape from it, and enjoy their freedom from it. Do you creeps think they’ve never had the Christian view presented to them before? Do you really think they need to get it from you, on that one day at that particular time and place?

    Of course you don’t. You just want to mess it up. You just want to be theist pains in the ass. You just want to patronize and be passive-aggressive pseudo-nice and do your best to muck up everyone’s fun.

    There will be two mandatory training sessions for all UNCG participants. The dates and times will be decided soon (they will be in late February and early-mid March). Failure to attend the training may result in an inability to attend this trip as this is a mission trip into the “lion’s den” so to speak.

    Ah so you admit it. How obliging. Fuck you and fuck off.

    Really; what is the matter with you? Why can’t you leave them alone? They don’t intrude on you, why are you insisting on intruding on them?

    Also, as with anything like this, please pray. While we are promoting a reasonable faith and offering well-reasoned responses to questions, we also believe that the Holy Spirit works through our reason to draw people to Himself. Please bath this event in prayer and ask others to do the same.

    Or bathe, whichever works worst.

    But seriously. I find this “offensive” the way some people profess to find Motoons “offensive.” I consider it deliberately hostile and aggressive – a flat refusal to let people do a perfectly reasonable (yes reasonable) thing unmolested. A flat refusal to just mind their own god damn business. It’s like Joe Lieberman and others announcing that freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion. Yes it does!! That’s exactly what it means, and it would be nice if the Christians would allow it.

     

  • Baby steps

    Well that’s one good thing.

    The Vatican, which previously enjoyed an exemption, must now pay taxes on its commercial properties, the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Monti, has announced.

    Like anyone else. Why did it enjoy an exemption before?

    The state has been exempt from paying property taxes since 2005, one of several  fiscal perks enjoyed by the Catholic Church and introduced by the Berlusconi  administration.

    Ah! Of course. One autocrat doing a favor for another. Naturally.

    The Vatican owns 110,000 properties, including shopping centres and  residences, which are collectively worth about $12 billion, the Business  Insider said.

    As Italy tightened its belt to deal with the financial crisis, more than  130,000 people signed an online petition calling for the Church’s tax-exempt  status to be revoked, it said.

    ”This is a victory for public pressure,” Mario Staderini, the leader of the  Italian Radicals party, told The Independent.

    ”We’ve managed to break down – a little bit – the wall protecting the  Church.”

    Rome wasn’t built in a day.

  • Italy: Catholic church properties to pay tax

    The law now allows businesses operating out of Church property such as hotels and restaurants not to pay property tax as long as the building also has a chapel or similar.

  • Defiantly wholesome

    Want to splash around in morbidity for a moment?

    There’s always the new season of 19 and Counting.

    And Counting – geddit? It’s not really “and Counting” now because Michelle Duggar miscarried #20. The new season is kind of morbid that way.

    And not just that way. I find it kind of morbid overall. “Morbid” isn’t really the right word, I suppose – the Atlantic’s “creepy” is better – but it is, in a way – what’s dead is the mind. The whole atmosphere is Stepfordish. Yes they’re all very cheery and smiley and friendly and warm – but so would programmed pod people be.

    This is, at least on film, a defiantly wholesome family; these kids aren’t constantly moaning about shopping malls and video games, cellphones and parties. Maybe that stuff factors in off-air, but in TLC’s carefully edited version of the Duggars’ world, all children, ages 2 to 18, are happy to be gamboling about together in a cornfield. That’s fine! It’s a little weird, of course, but why would anyone watch TLC if they didn’t want something a little weird?

    Yes but the weirdness isn’t really fine, given what we know about how this weirdness is achieved. As Richard Lawson goes on to say.

    And then of course there was the infusion of religion that probably earns the series a fair number of looky-loos (ahem). Michelle Duggar, the broodmare who gave birth to this baseball team, was invited to speak to a ladies group at a nearby church, and though what we saw of the speech was mostly a series of platitudes about family and children and all that, there was a single shot that said much more — the camera panned over a handout that Michelle brought to the event, and the content was pretty unsettling. TLC maybe included this shot for people like us, who of course paused it and advanced the frames to read as much of it as we could, and, whooo boy, was it unpleasant. It was all about how to make your husband happy in a marriage, which is of paramount importance to patriarch-dominated Quiverfull families. There were things about how wives shouldn’t refuse their husbands’ sexual advances, about how self-reliance is what kills marriages, about not stepping out of bounds in terms of what your responsibilities are as a wife (do too much and you emasculate him, you see). It was all reeeeally gross stuff that you never really hear the Duggars talking about on the show, but is absolutely the unspoken (on camera, at least) foundation of their family.

    We know. We know this thanks to Libby Anne and Vyckie Garrison and others. 19 and Counting is morbid because of the death of potential and freedom and exploration.

     

  • Guest post by Musical Atheist on Richard Dawkins

    After the torrent of spiteful dreck we’ve seen directed at Richard Dawkins lately, the comment by Musical Atheist came as a blast of cold fresh air in a stuffy room. Therefore, I’m putting it up on the main page.

    Musical Atheist says:

    I don’t like my own country very much at present. I think our politicians and our press display the lowest sort of sneering childishness, on a regular basis. Playground bullies who grew up to apply their bullying on a wider scale.

    For this reason, when I first discovered Dawkins’ writing, I felt that he was one of the few public figures in Britain I could find genuinely inspiring. He’s honest, his moral integrity is innately bound up with his passion for his work, which is the noble work of the pursuit of truth. You’d think the religious authorities ought to get that, even if they think he’s wrong. He’s flawed and human, he’s made errors in judgement and sometimes takes cheap shots, but he still stands out as one of the few British public intellectuals engaged in doing active good and treating moral ideas seriously.

    When I read TGD a few years ago I, as many Christians keep saying,  didn’t recognise the god he described. I thought it witty, acerbic and entertaining, but not applicable to me. But I gradually realised that the example of scepticism and rigorous commitment to evidence that he was describing was applicable to all types of spiritual belief. When I began to apply it to my own (woo, new agey, vaguely pantheist, occasionally animist) spiritual ideas, I was genuinely shocked to find how much baggage of unjustified belief I’d accumulated over the years, and how much, if I was being honest with myself, I had to throw out.

    Reading Dawkins got me interested in scepticism; led me to other writers and blogs like B&W and Pharyngula; reminded me of my childhood pleasure in science, long stifled by mediocre teaching; but more than anything, gave me the tools to reclaim my own mind. How do you repay the people who help you do that?

    And he did it with one entertaining bestseller that didn’t even address the specific beliefs I actually held, but that I was able to use as a springboard for my own thought process.

  • Telegraph amazed: Dawkins not “certain” God is not

    He said that in the book. Whence the surprise?

  • Gender and risk aversion

    After eight weeks, the women in the single-sex classes were no more risk averse than men.

  • Lancs boy, 16, has jaw broken in homophobic attack

    He was walking down the street with his sister when three men shouted homophobic abuse at him; then they beat him up.

  • Shall I compare thee to a spotty adolescent

    Well at least Amol Rajan gets it.

    Proof, if proof were needed, that “militant secularism” isn’t having such a great time of it in modern Britain has been in plentiful supply over the past week, during which there has been a sustained and vicious assault in our media on one of our most distinguished academics. Professor Richard Dawkins (FRS, FRSL) presumably personifies militant secularism, and has been made to suffer for it.

    Or if not suffer, at least be the object of a lot of mud-throwing. (Being the object of something is the core meaning of “suffer,” but that meaning is intransative; you can’t just “suffer” in that sense without a direct object.)

    In the Daily Mail last week, A N Wilson launched a nasty attack on him, comparing him, among other things, to a “spotty adolescent”. The lead interview in The Sunday Times was one long personal attack on his character, rather than an examination of his ideas. My distinguished colleague Mary Ann Sieghart, who at least has met him, described Dawkins yesterday as “puffed-up, self-regarding, vain, prickly and militant”. Rod Liddle wrote a blog for The Spectator with the ludicrous title “Dawkins exposed”.

    Damn, I’m not even caught up. I haven’t seen the Wilson or the Liddle.

    Dawkins has done a number of valuable and important things, Rajan goes on.

    These are achievements and contributions to the cause of civilisation that none of his critics can boast. Their assault illustrates the extent to which defenders of religion still dominate our press, the brutal retaliation exacted on clever opponents of faith and the incorrigible stupidity of Sayeeda Warsi’s claim about “militant secularism” last week.

    Why yes, yes it does. Thank you for noticing.

     

  • However childish

    Speaking of the dopy endlessly-recycled vendetta against gnu atheism, John Gray obliges with another iteration of his version, via a perfunctory review of some book or other which he barely notices.

    It is only the illiteracy of the current generation of atheists that leads them to think religious practitioners must be stupid or thoughtless. Were Augustine, Maimonides and al-Ghazali – to mention only religious thinkers in monotheist traditions – lacking in intellectual vitality? The question is absurd but the fact it can be asked at all might be thought to pose a difficulty for de Botton. His spirited and refreshingly humane book aims to show that religion serves needs that an entirely secular life cannot satisfy. He will not persuade those for whom atheism is a militant creed. Such people are best left with their certainties, however childish.

    I can do that. It is only the thoughtless stupidity of the current generation of John Grays that leads them to think atheists must be illiterate. See? It’s easy! Shall I try another? He will not persuade those for whom hatred of atheism is a militant creed. Such people are best left with their certainties, however childish.

    I can haz New Statesman gig now?

    [De Botton] shows how much in our way of life comes from and still depends on religion – communities, education, art and architecture and certain kinds of kindness, among other things. I would add the practice of toleration, the origins of which lie in dissenting religion, and sceptical doubt, which very often coexists with faith.

    Depends on? Communities, education, art, and architecture depend on religion? No they don’t. (The “certain kinds of kindness” can be made true just by definition – religious kinds, for instance.) And toleration has other sources than dissenting religion, and very often coexisting hardly amounts to depending on. Skeptical doubt can coexist with “faith” (though not really with faith, which is its opposite), but coexisting with is much more minimal and undemanding than depending on.

    Today’s atheists will insist that these goods can be achieved without religion. In many instances this may be so but it is a question that cannot be answered by fulminating about religion as if it were intrinsically evil. Religion has caused a lot of harm but so has science. Practically everything of value in human life can be harmful. To insist that religion is peculiarly malignant is fanaticism, or mere stupidity.

    He says, insisting and fulminating, either fanatically or stupidly.

    The church of humanity is a prototypical modern example of atheism turned into a cult of collective self-worship.

    Oh look, it’s narcissism again!

    It’s good that John Gray is so thoughtful and careful and non-self-worshipping.

  • Humbly lovingly thoughtfully crashing the party

    Here’s something I hadn’t seen before. I probably could have predicted it if I’d thought about it, but I didn’t, so I didn’t. It’s a website called True Reason, set up to rally Christians to go to the Reason Rally in D.C. next month in order to pester it, because religion doesn’t get to pester us enough already without shoving itself into an event that is not all about religion.

    It has a nice line in passive-aggressive pseudo-decency.

    This is not a counter-demonstration. We are going there to share Christ person to person as opportunity arises. We will not raise our voices. We will talk with those who want to talk with us. We will offer gifts and materials to all, but we will not press ourselves on those who do not wish to converse.

    Nonsense. They’re already pressing themselves on those who do not wish to converse by horning in on an event that they know perfectly well is about not doing the kind of thing they do. The Reason Rally for instance is about realizing that “sharing Christ” is a bit of empty jargon.

    They admit they know this when they go on to say

    We’ll provide you some advance training by way of Internet, so you will be prepared for interactions in this unique “Lion’s Den” environment.

    They’re actually the ones who are importing the “Lions’ Den” by intruding on other people’s rally. The only sense in which the Rally will be a Lions’ Den is that the Christians weren’t invited and aren’t wanted (not as opponents and missionaries, that is).

    They claim that they’re just as fond of reason as the people attending the Reason Rally.

    A Reasonable Response to the Reason Rally

    This website represents Christians from all over the country—even some from as far as Australia and New Zealand—who know that Christianity is both good and reasonable.

    But you don’t know that. Christianity is not “reasonable” in the sense of being based on reason.

    Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers and other New Atheists are planning a “Reason Rally” in Washington, D.C. on March 24. They’re billing it as “the largest gathering of the secular movement in world history,” and they’re using it to trumpet their message that reasonable people reject belief in God.

    We disagree.

    Together, we represent Christians from the United States and around the world who believe that Christianity is a reasonable worldview.

    Well you would, wouldn’t you, but nevertheless, it isn’t.

    Our goal is to demonstrate a humble, loving and thoughtful response to the Reason Rally.

    Not possible. The only humble, loving and thoughtful response would be to mind your own business. It would be to stay away and let other people do what they want to do. It would be to refrain from intruding. We don’t pile into your churches every Sunday; why the hell can’t you just extend us the same courtesy? [I speak broadly when I say “us”; I can’t afford to go to the Rally so I’m not part of that “us.”]

    They want it all, don’t they. They want to throw their weight around and they also want to get credit for being humble and thoughtful. Not going to happen.

  • John Gray reviews Alain de Botton

    The illiteracy of the current generation of atheists; atheism a militant creed; childish certainties; fulminating about religion; but so has science.

  • A brutal price still paid for daring to challenge faith

    The assault on Dawkins illustrates the extent to which defenders of religion still dominate our press and the brutal retaliation exacted on clever opponents of faith.

  • Narcissus leaves the pool

    Some goon was sniping at FTB on Twitter the other day – stupid snipey generalizations that have nothing to do with reality. Why would anyone even bother sniping at FTB in general? We’re not all the same, so what can one say that will be true? We all post in English, mostly. Anything else? We all sleep with our eyes closed? We all eat food and drink water?

    Anyway, the stupidest tweet said “narcissism is near a sine qua non for blogging at FtB.”

    Oh yes? Why?

    No seriously, why? Why more than any other group of bloggers, or just any other blogger? What’s so narcissistic about everyone at FTB?

    (Note: I always spell it FTB, because Thought is a full-size word, not a mini-word like “the” which doesn’t get a capital letter in titles. Most people spell it FtB, I guess because Freethought is one word in the title.)

    What’s so narcissistic about everyone at FTB? Nothing in particular that I know of. We all have our share, no doubt, but so do lots of people; why is narcissism a particular sin of FTB’s?

    I don’t think it is. I think that was just one of those “whatever comes to hand” snipes, that don’t bother with accuracy.

    But it pisses me off, because if we’re narcissistic just because we write blogs, then almost everything is narcissistic – gardening, writing poetry, playing football, composing music, decorating, scholarship, research – anything. It’s a nasty stupid small-minded little jeer at anyone having the gall to try to do something. It’s that “what makes you think you’re so special?” that a certain type likes to use to squelch everything but the blamelessly ordinary.

    And because it’s a crock. I’ve thought of another thing we all have in common, and that is that we’re interested in things. Not just ourselves, but things external to ourselves. That’s why we write blogs, I think, most or all of us. (I can’t think of any exceptions.) We’re not exceptionally interested in our precious selves, we’re interested in the world. Yes it’s true that writing a blog involves one in the presumption of offering something for other people to read – but what is so terrible about that? Why does it deserve to be called narcissistic? (That’s the only reason I can think of for calling us that.) Should everyone everywhere stop offering things for other people to read or listen to or watch or play, thus ending narcissism?

    The hell with that. The hell with sniping and spite and belittling. Only narcissists do that.

  • Religious groups to candidates: a bit less religion please

    You’re doing it too much even for us, say 14 Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh organizations.

  • Assault is ok if the attacker is “offended”

    Muslim guy attacks “zombie Mohammed” in atheist parade, is arrested and tried; judge dismisses case, blames victim for being so offensive.

  • About us – except for who we are

    Ben Goldacre wondered aloud on Twitter why it’s impossible to find out who is behind “Coalition for Marriage.” Why is it a secret?

    Good question. What’s up with that? If you have a cause, why be secretive about it?

    It’s a stupid “cause,” I must say.

    The Coalition draws upon a substantial body of evidence showing that marriage – as it has been understood for thousands of years – is beneficial to society, and that changing its definition would undermine that benefit.

    Except that marriage hasn’t been “understood” that way (they obviously mean one woman and one man) for thousands of years. The imbeciles are forgetting polygamy.

    Well maybe that’s why they don’t want us to know who they are. They’re sekrit imbeciles.