It is not only in Ghana where those accused of witchcraft are banished or maltreated. In Burkina Faso, hundreds of elderly women accused of witchcraft are also living in camps.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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Conservatives plot to destroy Scott Walker recall petitions
These plans, discussed in Facebook posts, entail posing as recall supporters and gathering signatures, only to later destroy the petitions.
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Progress report
Current glitch is that comments are coming in but they’re not visible (except to me), and that the two “wait patiently” posts I did today are gone. The comments are excellent, especially one from a student at Penn State – good luck with Westboro! – and they will show up eventually, so keep commenting.
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James Kirchick on Bruce Crumley on Charlie Hebdo
What made Crumley’s entry into the genre singularly poisonous is that it was written by a working journalist, not an academic, politician, or anti-“Islamophobia” activist.
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PSU protesters blindly ignore real victims
Petulant chants of “One more game” and “We want JoePa” united the crowd in a bond of youthful stupidity and shortsightedness
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How is college football like the Catholic church?
The football program at Penn State was so sacrosanct as to be almost untouchable.
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Spiked sneers at humane animal slaughter law
Portrays it as a “sign of religious intolerance.” What the animals might think is not mentioned.
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Separation of church and state essential for civil liberties
“When we are dragging religion into politics, then we are not searching for truth, but we do it to support our agenda in order to preserve our position.”
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Go all fucking Gandhi on their arses
Hipster guy tells Rebecca Watson what’s what. Really funny stuff that nobody’s thought of saying before, like hey you’re an adult and you’re all upset that some guy wanted to fuck you, grow up, people like to fuck, especially at 4 a.m. See what I mean? Witty.
Tim Minchin commented. Hmph. Rebecca has all the fun – well, except for being called a cunt 85 times a day. Anyway Tim Minchin commented.
No permalink – how tiresome. Use CTRL F.
I stay in a lot of hotels and travel in a lot of elevators. They are very helpful, what with their elevating properties and all. Sometimes, I am in an elevator with a woman. Just me and her. In this little, quiet, rumbly box. Actually, this happened this evening here in New York, just a couple of hours ago.
And I thought to myself, “What would it be like right now if I asked this woman for a coffee”? I’ve pondered this many times in the months since Rebecca’s video managed to unlock the secret door into the mysterious fuck-head chamber of the personalities of a thousand commenters, and the answer is always: fucking weird.
It would be really pretty fucking weird. No, not “deserving-of-arrest, definitely-a-rapist, just-as-bad-as-female-circumcision” kind of weird. But just about weird enough to justify, say… a comment. Y’know, the sort of comment you might make if you were, say, a video blogger who talks about life and skepticism from a woman’s perspective.
I have been substantially depressed by the scale and tone of the subsequent brouhaha.
Some advice, if you’ll forgive me, from someone who has, in the past, been rude to people on the internet, and also has been the subject of plenty of abuse:
Just don’t be cruel to ANYONE, ever. On the internet, or in your life.
Just imagine, as you sharpen your pen, that every man is your uncle or your brother, and that every woman is your mother or your sister. Just don’t spread vitriol. It’s not clever, it’s not funny, it doesn’t improve anything, it fails to educate, elucidate or encourage debate. It’s lazy. It’d be boring if it wasn’t so awful.
Just stop. Breathe. Don’t be defensive. Think hard about what you think. Clarify your point of view in your head. Try to find a way to articulate it – if you still feel you must articulate it – in a manner that assumes the person you are addressing is an actual human.
Preferably make it rhyme. Rhyming your anger seems to help, in my experience.
Go on, I dare ya – go all fucking Gandhi on their arses. Even if you hate them. It’s a good feeling. Little glasses, sandals, chilling out and drinking chai. Trying not to have sex with your great niece. Lovely.
You can experiment on me, if this post ignites your ire.
It’s too chilly for sandals right now, let alone the loin cloth, but apart from that – Gandhi R us.
Jamila Bey was asking Rebecca earlier why this stuff happens and why it doesn’t get called out. I don’t know why it happens, although I have some ideas, but – it does get called out now. We’re all over the calling out.
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Kurt Metzger totally pwns Rebecca Watson
Then Tim Minchin says go all fucking Gandhi. Even if you hate them. Little glasses, sandals, chilling out and drinking chai. Trying not to have sex with your great niece. Lovely.
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Colbert defends the religious right to bully
“That’s not me, that’s God, the all-knowing all-loving creator who made all things and hates some of them.”
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“Reformed” atheist turned rabbi says religion is good
This is all a real search for something transcendent because that transcendence exists in the world.
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Prepare for FTB outage
There is a big upgrade in the works for tonight so FTB will be down for 2 to 3 hours starting at 7 pm my time which is 10 pm in New York and 3 am in London and…I’m not sure what time in Sydney. Late morning or noonish maybe – yes that should be right – it’s late there when it’s early for me and early there when it’s late for me, so around midday should be close.
4 hours and a quarter from now, anyway.
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Ethan Clow on CFI, skepticism, and women
It’s been reported that CFI Vancouver, and presumably CFI Canada, have decided not to sponsor feminist-skeptical meet ups.
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More personhood for zygotes
64 Republicans are pushing a bill that would extend personhood to all zygotes in America.
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Whether it is morally outrageous to suppose
Andrew Brown goes out of his way to misunderstand William Lane Craig and Richard Dawkins on William Lane Craig. Does he really misunderstand or is he just playing silly buggers? I often think coat-trailing is all Andrew Brown ever does. He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases.
What he misunderstands is the part about the slaughtered children of Canaan.
…if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.
Brown misunderstands or pretends to misunderstand the outrage at that claim of Craig’s.
The question is whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that the innocent victims of such crimes go to heaven.
No it isn’t. The question is whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that that belief makes it perfectly all right for “God” to “command” humans to kill them. It’s not whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that people go to heaven; it’s whether it is morally outrageous to suppose that because people do go to heaven therefore it is fine to kill them, at least if you’re “God” or obeying “God’s” command. That’s Clifford’s leaky ship. Human beings have no right to believe that their spooky mysterian boss tells them to massacre people and that that’s ok because the innocent ones will go to heaven. That’s a reckless, negligent, self-serving belief that would justify horrors.
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It’s the spook or nothing, punk
I should at least read to the end before I throw a verbal punch, but you know sometimes it just can’t wait. Rabbi Adam Jacobs, ornamenting the Huffington Post with his wisdom.
He just doesn’t get it about believers, he confides. They keep making him jump with surprise.
Often, I’ve inquired of non-believers if it at all vexes them that nothing that they have ever done or will ever do will make the slightest difference to anyone on any level?
Stupid man. He thinks because we don’t believe in the omni-god, we believe nothing makes any difference to anyone on any level. He thinks either there’s an omni-god, or nothing makes any difference to anyone on any level. On any level. If only he’d had the wit to leave off the “on any level” he wouldn’t look so dumb! But he just had to add that, thus underlining that he really was talking unmitigated nonsense.
After all, one random grouping of molecules interacting with another has no inherent meaning or value. I still await the brave soul (or neuron complex if you prefer) who will respond that I am quite correct; that no thought, deed, action or impulse is any more significant or meaningful than any other, that statements like “I would like to enslave all of humanity” and “I would like a chocolate bar” are functionally equivalent, and that their very own thoughts and words are intrinsically suspect as they are nothing more than some indiscriminate electro-chemical impulses. Until then, I will carry on believing that most “non-believers” actually believe a bit more than they generally let on, or are willing to admit to themselves.
Nooooo, you dope – we believe that things do matter on the level where we live, and that belief in a magical spooky omni-god is not necessary for that belief. It’s really not that difficult!
H/t Ezra Resnick, who does a more patient and meticulous critique on his blog.
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Rabbi Adam Jacobs asks damn fool questions
“Often, I’ve inquired of non-believers if it at all vexes them that nothing that they have ever done or will ever do will make the slightest difference to anyone on any level?”
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Suzanne Moore on internet misogynists
This is a conversation we needed to have a long time ago. Let’s talk.
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Sandals with socks? A whiff of wet dog?
Another rather heavy-breathing piece by Julian in his “Heathen’s Progress” series. Once again he’s saying very much what “new” atheists have been saying all along, so why is it again that he’s so annoyed by “the new atheists”? Loud voices was it? Bad haircuts? Garlic breath?
I’m very much in sympathy with this view*, and this series is largely an attempt to try to find more constructive points of engagement that can only emerge if we ditch lazy and tired preconceptions about those with whom we disagree. At the same time, however, I’m all too aware that “you just don’t understand” is a card that is often played far too swiftly and without justification.
On the one hand, but on the other hand. I agree with the obvious, but at the same time, I also agree with a different obvious. That’s philosophy.
It has become evident to me, however, that many people, especially the religious, suffer from a kind of conceptual claustrophobia. Their beliefs are of their essence somewhat vague and they are terrified of being pinned down. Although critics often leap on this and claim that this betrays woolly thinking, evasion or obscurantism, I think that there are times when such a refusal to commit is justified.
Yes – provided that you don’t then go on to make lots of confident claims, but how often is that condition met?
But embracing this mystery comes at a price. If, like the archbishop of Canterbury, your faith is a kind of “silent waiting on the truth, pure sitting and breathing in the presence of the question mark”, then think very carefully before you open your mouth. Too often I find that faith is mysterious only selectively. Believers constantly attribute all sorts of qualities to their gods and have a list of doctrines as long as your arm. It is only when the questions get tough that, suddenly, their God disappears in a puff of mystery. Ineffability becomes a kind of invisibility cloak, only worn when there is a need to get out of a bit of philosophical bother.
Precisely; my point exactly. I’ve been saying that for years. Julian doesn’t need instruction from me, of course, but nevertheless I don’t quite see why he’s presenting all this as if it’s new and fresh as opposed to just the kind of thing the gnu atheists get so much shit for saying, sometimes from Julian himself.
*that disputants in the religion debate are talking past each other because they do not have a sufficiently rich understanding of the positions they stand against.