Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Newsflash: wood smoke is toxic

    Lots of chumps still think it’s “environmentally friendly,” but it’s actually as friendly as car exhaust.

  • Xian group launches petition against equality legislation

    Is it true that “individuals who hold to mainstream Christian teaching” are “being barred from different areas of public life and employment”?

  • She’s 11 years old. It shouldn’t have happened.

    Last week the New York Times reported that an 11-year-old girl was gang-raped in a Texas town. It also reported a bunch of people saying she dressed like an adult and that the rapists would have to live with this for the rest of their lives. It forgot to say that the girl might have some displeasure with the whole situation too. People were disgusted. The Public Editor (as they call him) said they had a point. But…

    My assessment is that the outrage is understandable. The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim.

    Yes; good; but…..

    The Associated Press handled the story more deftly, I think. Its piece on the crime also noted the community view that the girl dressed provocatively and even the view of some that the girl may have been culpable somehow. But the AP also quoted someone in the community saying: “She’s 11 years old. It shouldn’t have happened. That’s a child. Somebody should have said, ‘What we are doing is wrong.’”

    Um…..so if it’s not a child it’s ok? If the raped girl or woman is 17 or 25 or 40 or 70 it’s ok?

    It’s weird the way people think about rape. Still, after all this time, when we’ve gone over it and gone over it. Nobody thinks of murder or assault or robbery that way, but rape is still sort of kind of the raped woman’s fault.

  • NY Times says “gang rape story lacked balance”

    Balance?

  • What is neuroquantology?

    Stephan Schwartz tells us that science is hindered and plagued and obstructed by three kinds of denialism

    actively engaged in trying to impede the free development of science: the Creationists (e.g., Hornyanszky and Tasi, 2002), the climate change deniers (e.g., Lomborg, 2008), and the consciousness deniers who cannot, or will not, consider consciousness as anything other than materialistic processes.

    Yes that’s right. Creationists deny evolution, climate change deniers deny climate change (that’s an easy one), and consciousness deniers…deny that consciousness is something that floats around the universe independent of brains or brain-like organs inside bodies that sustain them.

    This is bad. They are breaking science.

    …progress in understanding the nature of consciousness, particularly that aspect, the nonlocal that has not been explained by physiology, but is addressed by nonlocality and quantum processes, has a very direct social consequence. The nonlocal aspect of consciousness may very well account for the insight of genius, for religious epiphany, as well as for psychic experiences.

    I’m so curious about nonlocal consciousness. Is it like soup? Oxygen? Ectoplasm? Weather? Energy?

    I don’t know, but maybe if I read NeuroQuantology regularly I will eventually find out. Yes, NeuroQuantology. What are you laughing at?

  • Tarek Fatah, in hospital, gets death threats

    He calls the cops. Two cops arrive to ask questions, then two intel officers arrive to shut the investigation down.

  • Stephen Schwartz explains about Deniers

    Of evolution, climate change, and nonlocal consciousness. Srsly.

  • Oh look, it’s NeuroQuantology

    Check out the table of contents.

  • Eric MacDonald on John Polkinghorne

    A particle physicist turned Anglican priest, who writes consecrated pap for those who think that religion somehow completes or fulfils the scientific project.

  • Gingrich worked so hard his pants fell off

    That is, things happened that were not appropriate. But now he’s converted to Catholicism, so his pants will stay on.

  • The Religion Communicators Council

    What is the Religion Communicators Council? I’d never heard of it before yesterday. I’ve heard of it now though, and I’m curious. Is it, like, a household name? Is everybody aware of it off in the background somewhere, taking care of Religious Communication?

    I don’t know. I think it sounds pretty horrible though.

    The Religion Communicators Council, founded in 1929, is an interfaith association of religion communicators at work in print and electronic communication, advertising and public relations.

    It’s a PR-advertising outfit for Religion, all Religion, Religion as such.

    So it would be a peculiar kind of laurel for a journalist to get an award from them, wouldn’t it? Journalists don’t really want awards from PR outfits and advertisers, do they? Isn’t an award of that kind an announcement that one is not a journalist but rather an advertiser or PR-rep? Aren’t the two lines of work considered opposites rather than colleagues? Isn’t journalism supposed to be fundamentally not about marketing? The way the Religion Communicators Council itself puts it, that seems to be obviously the case:

    The Religion Communicators Council and its members promote excellence in communicating religious faith and values in the public arena and encourage understanding among faith groups on a national level. Testaments to our goal of excellence are the Wilbur Awards.

    It’s an award not for reporting but for communicating religious faith and values in the public arena. Fundamentally different and antagonistic kinds of thing.

    Yet the Religion Communicators Council does give the award to practicing journalists. There’s one for Christopher Hitchens, which seems surprising. And there’s one for Chris Mooney’s Playboy article about “spiritual” scientists.

  • When interests conflict

    Should big PR firms that represent drug companies also run scientific societies’ media operations?

  • Ben Goldacre on why cigarette packs matter

    Cigarette packaging has been used for many decades to sell the crucial lie that cigarettes which are “light”, “mild”, “silver”, and the rest, are somehow “safer”.

  • Tudge reviews Flannery on Darwin

    And recycles every dreary cliché there is.

  • His elbow slipped

    I was inspired by the new levels of Wallyism we dug up yesterday so I thought I would dig up a little more.

    Am I rubbing it in? Yes, I am. But when you look at the newly-dug levels, I think you will see why. I think nose-rubbing is just the right thing to do about this degree of mendacious bullying. I mean, in particular, the place where Wally is caught lying by one “Sean” and uses four sock puppets posting right on top of each other to bully Sean and then congratulate himself on the bullying. What could be more suitable than to make this contemptible behavior public?

    It wasn’t about gnu atheists this time, December 2009; it was about climate change and denialism. It’s not a disagreement on the substance this time; it’s a disagreement on morality.

    Wally as bilbo had said there were a lot of tobacco-deniers “here”; Sean had said who, where, show me; bilbo didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t; Sean pressed; bilbo wriggled; Sean pressed; bilbo coughed up one, without a link. Sean said link please; bilbo was silent; Sean said link please; bilbo was silent; Sean said you were noisy enough yesterday, how about it – and bilbo rose to his full height and let fly. bilbo let fly in a fashion that is all too familiar from our Wally-You’re Not Helping-bilbo-Tom Johnson (though kept under wraps by our friend Hammill).

    …and Sean chooses the petty, desperate adult path. Or, should I say the Way of the Troll. Predictable. I wish I had bet money on it.

    Why Sean, if it is this much of an issue to you (after now FOUR responses over two days with evidence on my part which you have made no concerted effort to disprove or even respond to outside of rote repetition), you are free to browse the blog archives yourself and find the quote(s) you are looking for. They are there for you, I promise. I will not argue with a brick wall who demands evidence but offers no retort when evidence is provided.

    You have two choices: find the quote yourself (or some other form of evidence refuting my point since you were the one who challenged it, after all) or continue repeating yourself into troll obscurity. The choice is yours, but I have a feeling I already know which one you’ll pick.

    Enjoy.

    Brings it all back, doesn’t it?

    That’s comment 82; 83 and 84 are jeering socks. Yes really: immediately after bilbo posts, the socks chime in. He’s not what you’d call subtle!

    Sean, bilbo is slapping you around this comment board like a little child. Man up!

    Since making his original point, bilbo has posted multiple quotes from this very blog that support it. Yet you continue you scream “WRONG!!!!!” without backing yourself up with evidence of yor own. The burden of proof is on the accuser, and you’re screaming accusations like a child. If you’re not trolling like bilbo says, let’s see something to back your point up. Put up or shut up.

    I agree with Polly-O!

    There’s more of the same kind of thing, then one genius – FergalR, he’s called – points out the sockery. December 2009 that was. Too bad Mooney and Kirshenbaum didn’t check. Wally, of course, simply blustered in his usual way.

  • 98.   bilbo Says:
    December 10th, 2009 at 8:49 pm

    Of course, Fergal! It’s soooooooo clear that I have multiple personality disorder.

    So, by agreeing with me, EDK, The Accuser, Bill S., and Seminatrix all become me? Is this what you’re accusing, or am I missing something here?

    • I agree with Polly-O!

  • Why are atheists so angry?

    Rabbi David Wolpe pretends to be mystified that atheists find theism irritating.

    How harmless is it to post an article about why people should read the bible on a site devoted to religion? I did on this very page, and it evoked more than 2,000 responses, most of them angry…

    It is curious that a religion site draws responses mostly from atheists, and that the atheists are very unhappy…Only the untutored assume that religious people predominate on websites (Huffington Post Religion page, On Faith in the Washington Post, Beliefnet.com) devoted to religion.

    He thinks a section of a website is itself a website, or he pretends to think that so that he can claim that the religion section of the Huffington Post is a website and therefore that he was just minding his own business on a religion website and a lot of pesky atheists barged in and started yelling at him. But HuffPo is not a religion website and it is not obvious or self-explanatory that news sites or commentary sites have to include “faith” sections at all. The fact that some such sites treat “faith” with such deference is a major source of the irritation.

    Or to put it another way, HuffPo has a mixed audience, so Wolpe can’t expect atheists to stay off his particular articles on the grounds that he’s not talking to us. It doesn’t work that way. There’s no invisible fence around the “faith” section of HuffPo. We don’t look at his stuff and say “well he’s just doing his job” and go away again without saying anything.

    In short, no, it’s not curious that pieces like his draw more atheists than theists. It’s not that we’re trespassing on his space, it’s that he’s trespassing on ours – on everyone’s. We simply don’t take it for granted that religion should have a place at every single table.

    But why seek out a religious site solely to insult religion? I wondered: Why are atheists so angry?

    It’s not a religious site; it’s a section of a secular site, which we think pays far too much attention to religion. We don’t seek it out; it thrusts itself upon our attention. We’re angry because we’re tired of sanctimonious nagging.

  • HRW report

    On Islamic dress code for women in Chechnya.

  • Rosenhouse reviews Collins and Giberson

    Their book is not a good defense of theistic evolution.

  • A more hopeful view of women and Egypt

    But she wrote just before going to Tahrir Square for the March 8 Million Woman March…

  • Why are atheists so angry?

    Because theists keep asking why they’re so angry.