“I love Jesus, and the cross and if you don’t, I hope someone rapes you!” says smiley woman.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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Loving Christians respond to atheist WTC case
Nail them to that cross then display it. Kill them all and let them see for themselves that there is a God. Shoot them. Shoot to kill.
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Debut of new blogging group
It’s Freethought blogs. There’s a Facebook post about it. It starts August 1. It will be “led by” (I’m not sure what that means) PZ Myers of Pharyngula and Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars. There will also be The Digital Cuttlefish, This Week in Christian Nationalism, and Zingularity.
http://freethoughtblogs.com -
Preying on the gullible and vulnerable
Update: A joker on Twitter pretending to be Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks Edzard Ernst should be sent to the Tower. Why? Because Ernst said Prince Charles is a snake-oil salesman. Well he is! I guess saying that makes me fit for the Tower too, or would if I were a subject of the Crown, which I ain’t.
This week Ernst showed how little his critics have dented his confidence. At a press conference to mark his retirement he joined in the name-calling, agreeing with a Daily Mail reporter’s suggestion that the Prince of Wales is a “snake-oil salesman”.
Excuse me, that’s not name-calling – it’s the simple truth. The p of Wales sells a bogus “detox remedy”; he sells it for money. There’s no such thing as “detox” and if there were it wouldn’t be a dab of dandelion and a whiff of artichoke. It’s bogus and expensive; how is it “name-calling” to say he’s a snake-oil salesman?
“He’s a man, he owns a firm that sells this stuff, and I have no qualms at all defending the notion that a tincture of dandelion and artichoke [Duchy Herbals detox remedy] doesn’t do anything to detoxify your body and therefore it is a snake oil.” Far from regretting the choice of words and the controversy it has generated, he appears to relish it.
Goodness, how prissy. Yes Mr Posh and Privileged is flogging a silly hand-waving “remedy” to credulous people; he’s the one who should be regretting something, not Ernst for pointing it out.
it was a complaint from Prince Charles’s principal private secretary five years ago that nearly cost Ernst his job. The letter, sent by Sir Michael Peat in his capacity as chair of the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, accused Ernst of violating a confidentiality agreement in relation to the publication of a report. Prince Charles denies having anything to do with the letter personally, and Ernst was cleared by a subsequent inquiry. But Ernst believes the power of the royal family has distorted public policy in relation to complementary medicine, and does not plan to let the subject drop.
Good. It’s an outrage, the royals using their archaic meaningless privilege to push homeopathy and “detox remedies.”
When in 2005 he was asked to comment on a report on the economic benefits of complementary medicine – commissioned by Prince Charles’s complementary health foundation, written by economist Christopher Smallwood and due to be delivered to government ministers – Ernst let rip.Sir Michael Peat’s letter of complaint was the result, and the investigation of his conduct which dragged on for 13 months.
They fight dirty, the royals.
He believes there is a “conflict of interest” for Prince Charles in using his public and charitable activities to promote complementary medicine, and making money from the “Duchy Herbals” range of remedies (Ernst calls them “Dodgy Originals”). The Foundation for Integrated Health was shut last year and its finance director jailed for theft.”I think it’s an abuse of power. It’s not his job to do that. He’s not a politician. He’s the king to be, and that is a very defined role, and it’s not to mingle in health, politics or anything else.
“He would probably argue he doesn’t make money from it, it all goes to good causes and so forth, but it’s still preying on the gullible and vulnerable. And it implies we can all overeat and over-drink and live unhealthy lives and take a few detox tablets and everything is right again. That’s not true.”
He likes the queen though.
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Quebec spa detox treatment leaves woman dead
The “treatment” consisted of being wrapped in mud, plastic, blankets, and a cardboard box for several hours with no water.
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Edzard Ernst calls P. Charles a snake-oil salesman
A tincture of dandelion and artichoke doesn’t do anything to detoxify your body and therefore it is a snake oil.
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Istanbul cracks down on outdoor restaurants
Ramadan starts next week; it’s always a time of tension in Turkey between the pious and the secular.
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FFRF will keep fighting Perry prayer rally
FFRF maintains that coercion into a religious practice is not required in order to bring suit under the Establishment Clause.
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Chris Hedges is still frothing at the mouth
Chris Hedges is as nasty as ever. It’s a wonder he has any spittle left, he’s expended so much of it on people he hates.
The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik. This filth has poisoned and degraded our civil discourse. The looming economic and environmental collapse will provide sparks and tinder to transform this coarse language of fundamentalist hatred into, I fear, the murderous rampages experienced by Norway.
Hitchens and Harris peddle racist filth, says Hedges mildly. Really? No, but that’s ok, Hedges writes for Truthdig, so he can’t be just making it up out of his own bile and bad-tempered mendacity.
Our secular and religious fundamentalists come out of this twisted yearning for the apocalypse and belief in the “chosen people.” They advocate, in the language of religion and scientific rationalism, the divine right of our domination, the clash of civilizations. They assure us that we are headed into the broad, uplifting world of universal democracy and a global free market once we sign on for the subjugation and extermination of those who oppose us. They insist—as the fascists and the communists did—that this call for a new world is based on reason, factual evidence and science or divine will.
No they don’t; no they don’t; no they don’t; no they don’t.
All fundamentalists, religious and secular, are ignoramuses. They follow the lines of least resistance. They already know what is true and what is untrue. They do not need to challenge their own beliefs or investigate the beliefs of others. They do not need to bother with the hard and laborious work of religious, linguistic, historical and cultural understanding. They do not need to engage in self-criticism or self-reflection. It spoils the game. It ruins the entertainment. They see all people, and especially themselves, as clearly and starkly defined.
Unlike Chris Hedges, who does such a brilliant job of seeing people as complicated and various and difficult to pin down, not to mention his genius for self-criticism and self-reflection.
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Chris Hedges rants about Hitchens and Harris
Secular fundamentalists, bigoted, hateful, racist filth and intolerance, poisoned and degraded, blustering, utopian visions, infatuation with the apocalypse.
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Sam Harris replies to Chris Hedges
“The man is not only wrong in his convictions, but dishonest. I trust this is a consequence of his most conspicuous quality: sanctimony.”
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Judge dismisses FFRF suit against Perry’s prayers
If people don’t like Perry’s use of his governorship to promote religion they can just ignore it.
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UN body criticizes restrictions on free expression
UN Human Rights Committee says anti-blasphemy laws and restrictions on criticism of governments are incompatible with existing norms.
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Breivik wants a theocracy
In his manifesto, titled “2083 – A European Declaration of Independence”, Mr Breivik argues for the establishment of a strict, patriarchal society.
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Numerology and astrology booyah
Why rock stars dying at age 27 actually doesn’t mean a damn thing.
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Vatican is annoyed at reaction to Cloyne report
The Murphy commission asked the nuncio for documents; he did not reply. Twice. So the Vatican is annoyed about what exactly?
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Claiming to speak for
One strange meme that has turned up in the recent wars is the idea that feminists are “claiming to speak for all women” and that that’s why feminism is so bad and awful.
That’s a ridiculous claim. All political and moral views do that; they all say this is better than that, and not just for me but for everyone in whatever the relevant group is, from the neighborhood to the species. Feminism has always made large claims about what women should be and do, and it has never had unanimous agreement from all women. Of course in some sense feminism claims to speak for all women, but it’s not unique or weird in doing that.
Feminism has never meant “whatever all women agree on” or whatever the majority of women agree on. It’s never meant agreeing with all women because they’re women. It’s always been demanding – it’s always urged women to be more than they currently are, which is guaranteed to be annoying and irksome. Reformist movements are like that.
The recent disturbance has triggered an astonishing amount of sneering and jeering at feminism and feminists, so much so that it has created a glaring example of the very problem it’s busy denying and sneering at: the sense that women are alien to “the atheist movement.”
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Asking Dawkins to observe the evidence
The culture of subtle sexism can be altered when people have their attention drawn to it.
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Norway: the dead and missing
76 people.
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New Statesman asks atheists to say why
Maryam Namzie, Kenan Malik, Polly Toynbee, Susan Blackmore, A C Grayling, Ben Goldacre, Victor Stenger, P Z Myers, Andrew Copson, more.