Worshippers at three churches do not pay to use two public car parks on a Sunday
morning, while shoppers do.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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NSS challenges free parking for church goers
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International
I got a package in the mail today and it turned out to be two copies of Does God Hate Women translated into Polish. Yip!
Dlaczego Bóg nienawidzi kobiet?
This feminist and human rights activist likes it.
Greetings, Poland.
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The good of the faith community takes priority
Valerie Tarico interviewed Janet Heimlich last May, on the subject of Heimlich’s new book on religious child maltreatment.
Tarico: Some people would say that religion prevents child abuse – that a supportive spiritual community or a personal relationship with a higher power, or a strong moral core is the antidote to maltreatment.
Heimlich: As I state in the book, families generally benefit from participating in religious activities. Still, we are only beginning to understand how children are harmed in certain religious communities. In my research, I found that, in these problematic cultures, the good of the faith community as a whole takes priority over members’ individual needs, and this is particularly true with how those communities view children.And women.
Tarico: Are some kinds of religious communities more prone to maltreatment than others? What are the patterns?
Heimlich: In writing Breaking Their Will, I felt it was imperative not to simply expose problems but answer the question: What makes religious experiences healthy and unhealthy for children? I came to the conclusion that children are more vulnerable to abuse and neglect if they live in religious authoritarian cultures. There are three perfect-storm factors that identify a religious culture or community as authoritarian: one, the culture has a strict, social hierarchy. Two, the culture is fearful. And three, the culture is separatist. The more intense these three factors are—the more authoritarian the culture is—the more likely children will be harmed. It’s important to note that it doesn’t matter whether the community is Christian, Jewish, or Muslim; whether people worship a deity called “God,” “Allah,” or “Jehovah”; or whether they read from the Bible, the Qur’an, or the Book of Mormon. Any religious culture has the potential to subscribe, and be subjected, to authoritarian “rule.”A very important point. We’ve been learning about how it plays out lately from Vyckie Garrison and others at No Longer Quivering and Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism and the people at Broken Daughters.
I met Tarico and Heimlich, and a lot of other great people, last night. Not an authoritarian in the bunch.
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When in doubt, threaten
Definitely; the thing to do when you disagree with a woman or girl is to threaten violence. Absolutely. It’s only weak feeble worthless people – like women and girls – who hesitate to do that.
A high school girl objects to a prayer on a wall of her school; Fox News reports; the threats come in.
I say just take her out to the parking lot, put on some gloves so as not to leave any marks, and just b e a t her selfish little a s s for her. If she tells on you, b e a t her a s s again. What have you got to lose? I can guarantee that throwing bibles at her isn’t going to help.
And
She should be removed…PERMANENTLY…Nothing here but a wannabe future aclu w h o r e….
Did they forget the ever-popular “If I was a girl, I’d kick her in the cunt. Cunt.”?
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Why do televangelists ask for money?
Why don’t they just pray for it, instead?
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YouGov–Cambridge survey of British attitudes
79% agreed and 11% disagreed that religion is a cause of much misery and conflict in the world today.
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Duct tape and baling wire
An interview with Valerie Tarico.
How and why she left evangelicalism:
I would say that from adolescence on I struggled to fend off moral and rational contradictions in my faith, evolving more and more idiosyncratic ways of holding the pieces together. In particular, I couldn’t understand how I was going to be blissfully, perfectly happy – indifferent to the fact that other people were experiencing eternal anguish.
Bingo. That’s something that always troubles me (to put it as mildly as possible) about non-questioning evangelicals – that indifference to the fact that other people are experiencing eternal anguish. It’s a horrible, unspeakable thought, yet some people are apparently perfectly fine with it.
The final straw came while I was completing a doctoral internship at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. My job was to provide psychological consultation to kids and families on the medical units. I was working with kids who were dying of cancer or enduring horrible, frightening treatments in order to survive it. As I listened to the explanations offered by people who believed in an all powerful, loving, perfectly good interventionist God, it seemed to me these “justifications” were comforting, but they didn’t make things just. I re-read The Problem of Pain, and the resident rabbi offered Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. Both rang hollow. Finally I said to God, “I’m not making excuses for you anymore.” And suddenly it felt like I had been holding my God together for so long with duct tape and bailing wire that all I had left was tape and wire. So I walked away.
She took the problem seriously, as so many people fail to do.
Morality doesn’t come from religion. Healthy human children come into the world primed to become moral members of society, just like they come into the world primed to acquire language. Moral emotions like empathy, shame, guilt and disgust begin to emerge during the toddler years regardless of a child’s cultural or religious context. A toddler may pat an injured peer or offer a grubby toy to an adult who is distressed. A preschooler may hide behind a couch to cover a transgression. As a child’s brain develops, moral emotions are joined by moral reasoning. By age five or six, kids can argue long and loud about fairness.
Research is just starting to show how our moral emotions and reasoning are guided by powerful moral instincts.
Cf Patricia Churchland’s Braintrust – see here and here and here.
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Meanwhile, in Calabar
The Nigerian columnist and public intellectual Edwin Madunagu has written a piece about Leo Igwe and the Nigerian Humanist Movement.
I first met Leo Igwe a couple of years ago when he came to the free library I oversee in Calabar to do some research. From the type of books he consulted in the library and the books and papers he had with him, I guessed he was interested in philosophy, sociology and human rights. Later, I learnt from him that he was working for a higher degree or diploma at the University of Calabar. I also learnt that, simultaneously, he was active in a human rights organization called the Nigerian Humanist Movement…
…when Leo Igwe sought audience with me his request was promptly granted. He told me he was organizing a number of seminars on child abuse in Cross River and Akwa Ibom states as well as a national conference on human rights. I have forgotten the theme of the conference, but I think it was to take place in Ibadan.
I could not personally attend Leo Igwe’s events, but I encouraged the young persons around me to attend and participate actively. Our interest in the seminars was strong on account of its specific subject, namely: rescuing, and defending the rights of, children accused of “witchcraft”. Unrescued or undefended, these named “child witches” faced gruesome death or serious permanent disfigurement carried out, of course, criminally or extra-judicially. The victims of the anti-witchcraft “crusades” were mainly children from poor families and the campaigners were usually fundamentalist church groups, aided and abetted by the victims’ parents and older family members who, in almost all the cases, initially identified the “child witches” and then invited churches to “deliver” their “evil” children.
The seminars were invariably subject to attack, and Leo was assaulted every time.
Edwin Madunagu seems to be my kind of guy.
In addition to the public library, I ran a programme aimed at developing anti-sexist, anti-patriarchal and critical consciousness in adolescent boys. As we all should know, the prime victims of patriarchy or patriarchal system are women and children (of both sexes). Other victims include strangers, the poor, the “outcasts” and the minorities (ethnic and religious). You will therefore appreciate why the adolescent participants in our conscientisation programme were interested in Igwe’s pro-child seminar and why I encouraged them to attend and participate actively.
Meanwhile, officials in Nigeria are throwing up stupid obstacles to keep the Nigerian Humanist Movement from registering as a corporation. Madunagu is trying to help.
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Edwin Madunagu on Humanism and its enemies
Our interest in Leo Igwe’s seminars was strong on account of its specific subject: rescuing, and defending the rights of, children accused of “witchcraft”.
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Did a wolf howl?
What’s going on, has ERV blown a new whistle or what? Suddenly Teh Menz are popping up on an old thread to display their vocabularies.
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Eric MacDonald on Julian Baggini on religion and science
Religion can’t give up on the hows of the universe, since, from the religious point of view, the hows just are answered in terms of whys.
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Further detail on “Obedient Wives” story
‘In a 115-page book titled “Islamic Sex, Fighting Jews to Return Islamic Sex to the World,” the group calls on Muslim husbands to have sex with all their wives simultaneously.’
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Obedient Wives Club of Malaysia publishes Islamic sex guide
In June the club’s vice-president advised women to behave like a ”first-class whore” while in the company of their husbands.
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Fallows on anti-Mormon “bigotry”
James Fallows is irritating in a different way from Andrew Sullivan. He’s reliably…middle. Safe; predictable; good at thinking what Everyone thinks.
Sometimes what Everyone thinks is just wrong. Fallows as Everyone thinks anti-Mormonism is simply another bigotry, like racism.
Groan.
I do understand the political handicapping aspect of stories about the “Mormon angle.” It’s like asking three years ago whether America was “ready” for a black president. Or whether we’re “ready” for a Hispanic, female, Jewish, Asian, Muslim, atheist, gay, unmarried, overweight, etc President.
Not quite. Some of those items are based on ideas or beliefs, while others aren’t. It’s not sensible to treat them all as the same kind of thing for this purpose.
To be against Mitt Romney (or Jon Huntsman or Harry Reid or Orrin Hatch) because of his religion is just plain bigotry. Exactly as it would have been to oppose Barack Obama because of his race or Joe Lieberman because of his faith or Hillary Clinton or Michele Bachmann because of their gender or Mario Rubio or Nikki Haley because of their ethnicity.
No, no, no, no, no. Not “exactly as” – differently from. Religion is not the same kind of thing as race or gender or ethnicity (it is however the same kind of thing as “faith” – does he really think Lieberman has a “faith” as opposed to a “religion”?).
It’s very very simple. Race and gender aren’t systems of ideas; religions are. It really is necessary to know what candidates think and believe, because what they think and believe will (obviously) influence what they do in office, even if all they think and believe is “I will do whatever it takes to stay in office.” It really is necessary to know, for instance, whether or not a given candidate can separate her religion from her work. Some people can, but it’s no good just assuming that everyone can. It’s also no good just assuming that Mormon beliefs couldn’t possibly inspire or motivate any whacked actions in office. “Mormon” isn’t just a label or an identity and we can’t treat it as such. Imagine if a Dominionist were a candidate for president – we would really have to discuss that!
I do understand that voters assess a whole suite of traits, including race and gender and class background and religion and family status, in deciding whether or not they are comfortable with a candidate.
See what I mean about Fallows? That’s so…what is it, it’s so normal and so clueless. He’s not a clueless guy but he has this instinct for the wrong-by-banality. It’s not about being “comfortable” with a candidate, it’s about doing our best to get a sense of what the candidate will do in the job.
But for people to come out and say that they won’t back a candidate because he’s Mormon and therefore a “cult” member is no better than saying “I’d never trust a Jew” or “a black could never do the job” or “women should stay in their place” or “Latinos? Let ‘em go back home.”
Not the same thing. Mormon beliefs and political beliefs are the same kind of thing; being black and political beliefs are not.
I disagree with most of the LDS church’s political stances, and I hated the role it played in the California Prop 8 struggle last year. But to be against candidates because of their religion? That should be seen as bigot talk — yes, even when applied to Mormons.
So there he just comes right out and says it (yet apparently still doesn’t realize he’s said it). “I disagree with the candidate’s politics, but to be against candidates because of their politics? That’s bigot talk.”
Really? So does this also apply to libertarians, socialists, communists, anarchists, centrists, reactionaries, fascists? You disagree with their politics but to be against candidates because of their politics is bigotry?
It’s nuts.
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Jackpot
Three long-term holds at the library all just turned up at once (long-term as in there are a lot of people on the list ahead of you).
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.
Rubs hands with glee.
(I know, very horse-and-buggy. But I still like books.)
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Higher bullshitting
Andrew Sullivan thinks “militant atheists” have an excessively crude epistemology. (Via WEIT)
First he tells us how his works.
As to Coyne’s challenge to present a criterion of what is real in the Bible and what is true, I’d argue that empirical claims – like, say, a census around the time of Christ’s birth, or the rule of Pontius Pilate in Palestine at the time – can be tested empirically. But the Gospels themselves have factually contradictory Nativity and Crucifixion stories…and so scream that these are ways to express something inexpressible – God’s entrance into human history as a human being.
If you are treating these texts as if they were just published as news stories in the New York Times, you are missing the forest for the trees. You are just guilty of a category error – or rather of forcing all experience into the category of science.
No, not science. News stories in the New York Times are not science (apart from the few that are). That’s a false dichotomy. Science is not the only alternative to fiction or myth. News stories in the New York Times are not science, but they are supposed to be, and expected to be, accurate. They are expected to get things right. They are not expected to make things up. (If you don’t believe me, Google Jayson Blair.) They are expected, in short, to tell the truth.
Sullivan apparently doesn’t agree with this (which is disconcerting, given that he is a journalist).
The rub is the miracles, as Hume noted. Here we have clear empirical accounts of things that we cannot account for in nature, indeed stories that are told precisely because they defy the laws of nature. And when the real and the true seem to conflict, I think we need to rely on the true, and leave the real to one side. The point of curing a blind man is the lesson of faith: “I once was blind and now I see.” I remain agnostic about the miracles as real; I have no doubt that they were true, that those who experienced Jesus’ touch and message were transformed in ways perhaps only expressible in terms of physical miracles. That goes for Lazarus as well. When we are talking about coming back from the dead, we are entering non-real truths. And the most profound unreal truth is, of course, the Resurrection.
He’s saying stories about miracles can be true even if they’re not real. Try that with the New York Times then. Try it with the Atlantic. Try it with the Daily Beast. If Sullivan reports something, as opposed to commenting on it or interpreting it, does he give himself permission to report it as true even if he knows it’s not real? Does he actually make truth claims in print in journalistic outlets that he knows are not “real” (by which the rest of us mean “true”)? I doubt it, and if he does, he risks getting in the kind of trouble that Jayson Blair did – but with a much bigger reputation to lose.
In other words, I think he’s bullshitting. I think he’s bullshitting rather shamelessly, since he probably wouldn’t act on that (bogus-seeming) distinction in his professional life. He wouldn’t call a fiction “true” to his editors or his readers (at least I don’t think he would, because as far as I know he’s a reputable journalist).
It’s interesting that this kind of special rule doesn’t apply in other areas. There’s no such thing as “true but not real” in the courtroom, or psychology, or history, or engineering. It might be a way of talking about fiction and story-telling, but that of course is the opposite of what Sullivan means – he is not saying that the Resurrection and the New Testament are fiction.
At the end he quotes a reader
Notice that the fundamentalist and the militant Atheist both confuse truth with fact, the fundamentalist by insisting that truth overwhelm fact, and the militant Atheist by insisting that fact overwhelm truth. Neither, usually, have [sic] solid epistemological grasp of truth or fact.
And adds
Because their epistemology is too crude, in my opinion.
No. Thanks, but no.
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Finally, a game for girls
All about clothes, shopping, dieting, flirting, and hairstyles. What else do they care about, after all?
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Tennessee mayor calls secularists “terrorists”
“We don’t have people of that belief here and if we do they’re not going to raise that kind of ruckus for the rest of the town.” Gee I wonder why.
