Author: Ophelia Benson

  • There was an arrogance, an independent and defiant air

    Maniacal Catholics are still explaining that the bishop was right. Gerard Nadal even explains that the bishop was right to “push back against a culture of death.” By insisting that a woman should have been allowed to die along with her fetus, the bishop was pushing back against a culture of death. How does that work?

    Nadal explains the “principle of double effect” to our wondering eyes.

    In essence the principle states that a lifesaving procedure that cannot be delayed, such as the removal of a cancerous uterus before the baby can be taken in a Cesarean section at viability (~25 weeks gestation), is permissible so long as the death of the baby is the indirect and unintended effect…

    Such circumstances are extremely rare, given how early a baby can be delivered before full term at 40 weeks. The mother’s life must be in immediate danger and the treatment of her disease, which would also result in the death of the baby, cannot be forestalled.

    Do you see what Nadal is doing there? He’s saying that if the woman’s life is in danger that is less than immediate, it is not permissable to do an abortion in order to remove or reduce the danger. He’s saying that doctors and hospitals should force women to risk their lives rather than abort an early fetus.

    Keep constantly in mind that Nadal himself will never be put in danger by this policy. Neither will the bishop of Phoenix. Neither will a single one of the members of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Neither will any of the Vatican honchos who pronounce on these matters. These rules and laws and policies are created entirely by men and they apply entirely to women. Women are a subject race when it comes to the Vatican.

    Patients who seek Catholic healthcare do so because of the assurance that the facility and its clinicians adhere to the ERD’s. They do so because they seek the assurance that they will be told the truth and treated in accord with Catholic moral norms, and not railroaded down the disastrous path American medicine has decided to follow.

    Bullshit. Not everyone in a Catholic hospital does “seek Catholic healthcare”; lots of people are stuck with it because it’s all there is; others want some features of Catholic healthcare without signing up to every crazed item of Vatican dogma.

    I opined, and was pilloried for it, that Sister McBride was presiding over a shadow healthcare system that was active in promoting an agenda that ran counter to the mission of the Church. Nobody commits first-degree murder as a first crime. No Catholic hospital administrator, especially a professed religious, signs off on such an abortion for the first time in the manner in which Sister McBride conducted herself.

    He’s implying, in a deniable sort of way, that McBride committed first-degree murder.

    There was an arrogance, an independent and defiant air about it that pointed to something deeper and darker, something that would eventually come to light.

    Aha! Now we have it! A god damn woman had an arrogant independent defiant air, and that points to something deeper and darker, which is female independence in general. Kill the beast! Mark its forehead!

  • Remembering Denis Dutton

    The lesson on display every day at ALD is that one can be precise and brisk, and nuanced and weird, at the same time.

  • Women are trafficked into marriage in India

    Shafiqur Rahman Khan is a gender rights activist and columnist; his organization helps rescue trafficked women.

  • Dickens’s Xmas Carol is his protest against Xmas

    Eric MacDonald does a close reading.

  • Apathy about human rights is deadly

    Lauryn Oates points out that tyrannies are just as lethal and sorrowful as earthquakes and tornadoes.

  • Ashtiani’s fate is still unclear

    Her lawyer has been forced out of the country.

  • Godless women

    Jen McCreight has a second Most Influential Female Atheist contest, and I’m nominated again, which is my reward for being notoriously obnoxious, which I would be even without a reward, but rewards make it even more fun.

    But other sweller more influential people are also nominated, and you get three votes, so vote. Allow me to put in a plug for Maryam Namazie, who rocks. They all rock, but allow me to put in a plug for Maryam anyway.

  • So long and thanks for all the links

    It’s sad about Denis Dutton. ALDaily is all in black.

    Denis was a friend to B&W, from very early in its career – about three months into it, I think. He added it to Favorites, and soon after that he started linking to articles. He helped B&W get an audience.

    It is melancholy that he’s gone.

  • Most influential female atheist of 2010 poll

    Second annual blaghag poll. It is an Honor Just to be Nominated. It’s an honor to get ten votes, too, chiz chiz.

  • There’s plenty of time for evolution

    Jerry Coyne on a new paper that shows mathematically that simultaneous substitution is much much faster than “serial” substitution.

  • The relevant self-development training modules will be helpful

    The US Army requires its soldiers to have something called “spiritual fitness.”

    The US Army distributes a mandatory survey called an SFT, which stands for “Soldier Fitness Tracker”.  The purpose of this survey is to measure an individual soldier’s competency in four areas, Emotional, Social, Family and Spiritual.

    Yes really.

    Here is what they tell someone who scores badly in that last area:

    Spiritual fitness is an area of possible difficulty for you. You may lack a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. At times, it is hard for you to make sense of what is happening to you and others around you. You may not feel connected to something larger than yourself. You may question your beliefs, principles, and values. Nevertheless, who you are and what you do matter. There are things to do to provide more meaning and purpose in your life. Improving your spiritual fitness should be an important goal. Change is possible, and the relevant self-development training modules will be helpful.

    Extraordinary, isn’t it? The dreaded gummint instructing people in how to have a sense of meaning and purpose? The gummint imposing a particular sense of meaning and purpose on a very captive audience?

  • Trivia

    This is very trivial, but quite funny in a way. Remember “steph” who derailed the “F word” thread last week with endless passive-aggressive rambling about gnu atheism and New Zealand? And then suddenly at the end went all cuddly and we can get along? No, you probably don’t, because you probably stopped reading that thread when she derailed it, and quite right too.

    But if you do, you might be amused to learn that she didn’t really mean the cuddly part. She derailed someone else’s thread – some theology type – to say how horrible I am. Apropos of absolutely nothing. I mean, it’s like a clown suddenly appearing in the middle of a sober newscast. Wha?? Truly funny.

    as someone who doesn’t subscribe to any camps or societies (apart from being a member of NZ Green Party and Greenpeace..), what do you mean by the atheist ‘Camp’? Are you suggesting a ‘camper’ as one who would affiliate themselves with the likes of the religious ignorances of Dawkins and co and well as the obnoxious rhetoric of the apparently notorious ‘Ophelia Benson’

    Etc etc etc.

    The fluffy ones are always so funny – pretending to be all Warm and Goodhearted and Sweet while actually brimming over with malice. Me, I just plain brim over with malice; it’s so much quicker that way.

  • Celebrities and Science 2010 [pdf]

    Detox, the Master Cleanse, magnets, Power Balance bracelets, charcoal.

  • Denis Dutton 1944-2010

    Bad news.

  • Five suspected Islamist militants arrested

    The four held in Denmark planned to enter the building housing the Jyllands-Posten and “kill as many of the people present as possible”.

  • Police arrest 5 in plot against Jyllands-Posten

    The Danish newspaper and those connected with the publication of the Muhammed cartoons have been regular targets of violence.

  • Katha Pollitt’s hero of 2010: Shirley Sherrod

    What does it say about the US that a hack like Breitbart can destroy a decades-long career in one day?

  • Critical Thinking and the African Identity

    I start this piece by stating emphatically that if lack of critical thinking or inability to apply one’s common sense to issues is what makes one an African, then I am not an African. I say this – and I really mean it. That I hereby renounce my African identity if it means that I should not exercise my critical intelligence or apply reason and science in all areas of human endeavor. If being an African means I should suspend and shut down my thinking faculty and blindly accept whatever any person or prophet says or preaches, then, I say, count me out. Don’t count me as an African. I am making this assertion because very often blind faith, dogma and fetishism are identified with African mentality.

    Whenever I try to apply logic, critical reasoning and scientific temper to issues during public debates, I am often accused of not thinking like an African. I am always told that I think like a white man or that I have a western mentality. As if critical thinking or the scientific outlook is for westerners alone or that critical thinking can only be exercised by people from a particular race or region. No, this is not the case.

    Surprisingly, nobody has ever stepped forward to tell me how an ‘African’ thinks. For me it is either this ‘African mode of thought’ is one which nobody knows about or is one that does not exist or qualify to be called a thinking pattern. Nobody has tried to let me know if Africans think at all. Because this misguided view that one is unAfrican or western in outlook is often employed to block or suppress critical reasoning or inquiry particularly when it is used to challenge traditions, positions and opinions informed by blind faith or dogma.

    While holding on to beliefs and outlooks informed by superstition and primordial thinking is often glorified as African. Even in this 21st century, reason and science are still perceived as western, and not African values. I have yet to understand how we came about this mistaken idea. Hence, it is often portrayed as if the African does not reason and dare not reason or that the African does not think or cannot think critically. It seems thinking like an African means suspension of thought, logic or common sense. Thinking like an African means not thinking at all- thoughtlessness or thinking in spiritual, occult or magical ways.

    For instance, whenever I try to challenge or question the irrational and absurd claims of witchcraft, juju and charms, and other ritualistic and religious nonsense that dominate the mental space of Africans, I am often reminded that my mentality is western. And you know what, whenever in the course of a public debate, somebody allges that a position is western, it means that it is unacceptable though it may be reasonable or may have a superior argument. Is that not unfortunate?

    Whenever I try to fault or expose the absurdity of witchcraft accusations or the persecution of alleged witches or wizards, many people often urge me to set aside this my oyibo(white man’s) mentality. As if critical thinking is the exclusive cultural preserve of white people while mystical thinking is for blacks and for Africans. Personally, I am aware that the white race and the western world have recorded significant achievements in the areas of science and technology, in rational and critical disourses. They also have their own share of dark age nonsense, dogmas and superstitions.

    But that does not make the values of science, reason and critical thinking western or white. The values of science and reason constitute part of human heritage, which all human beings can lay claim to, exercise, access, express, celebrate, cultivate and nurture. The progress which the western world has recorded as a result of their institutionalization of reason and science is one which any society can realize and supercede if it wants. Africans should stop hiding behind this misrepresentation thatreason and science are unAfrican western values. Africans should embrace the enlightening matrices of critical mindedness and work to dispel the dark age and barbaric mentality that loom large on the continent.

    Those who are propagating this erroneous idea that critical thinking is alien to African identity and mentality are doing the African race and civilization a great disservice. They are frustrating the take off of African enlightenment, emancipation and emergence. There is no sound mind who would fault this logic. The syllogism that says –

    All human beings can think critically. All Africans are human beings. Therefore all Africans can think critically.

    So Africans should rise up to the challenge of critical evaluation of issues. Because lack of critical thinking is at the root of most problems that plague the continent. Africans should strive and make critical inquiry part of African culture, identity and civilization. I am also appealing to all all lovers of science, reason and critical thought around the globe to help Africans realize this intellectual breakthrough.

  • Blindfold the cow and everything will be fine

    Amir Afkhami, an American psychiatrist, gets to meet a “faith-healer” in Iraq and watch him doing his stuff.

    The path of a faith healer is arduous, Mullah Eskandar told us, speaking in Kurdish. “Such a calling,” he said, “is best reserved for a religious and spiritual man.”

    Right. Religious and spiritual because there is no actual knowledge or technical skill involved, and man because it’s women who get fucked up by misogynist religions and traditions. Totally makes sense.

    He went on to recount his 15-year apprenticeship to a renowned senior healer, who taught him the basics of spiritual treatment and the essentials of Koranic law and prophetic traditions. His description reminded me of my own long and difficult years in medical school and residency training.

    Except for the difference in the acutal substance of what you learned compared to what Mullah Eskandar learned.

    “Over 80 percent of my patients are females,” he continued. “They struggle with insomnia, headache, depression and marital problems.”

    Gee I wonder why!

    “Ours is like your profession, which has both good and bad doctors,” he continued: “those who care about patients and those who are in it for worldly rewards.”

    Nooooo, not exactly. The difference between good and bad doctors isn’t just caring.

    The first patient to enter his reception room was a young woman in red flowing garb typical of the rural inhabitants of eastern Kurdistan…Like most unmarried Iraqi women, she was accompanied by family: a heavy-set, mustachioed father and a watchful mother.

    The mother explained that the day her daughter became engaged to a relative, she had developed fainting fits, nightmares, foul moods and an inability to walk. Her family had consulted a general practitioner, who referred them to a neurologist, to no avail. She continued to faint at the talk of marriage — even became agitated at the prospect of her younger sister’s impending betrothal.

    Yes. She doesn’t want the marriage. The way to cure her is to call off the marriage and let her run her own life.

    But the mullah didn’t suggest that. He

    began to chant a Koranic verse into her right ear, imploring God’s help and warning of the devil’s temptations.Then he explained that the young woman was possessed by a jinn, one of the race of evil spirits that the Koran blames for sowing mischief and illness in the world — in this case, spreading discord in the young woman’s family by disrupting her marriage. To banish the jinn, Mullah Eskandar prescribed a regimen of prayers, daily bathing and rosewater perfume. And he counseled the patient on the responsibilities of a daughter to marry and the happiness that awaited her once she had a family of her own.

    It struck me that Mullah Eskandar’s rituals, particularly his reassuring counsel, appeared to mimic our oft-practiced supportive therapy in Western medicine. His authoritative opinion and his apparent empathy, coupled with his ability to realign the young woman’s vision to a more positive outlook, appeared to give her some degree of comfort immediately.

    Well isn’t that sweet. The mullah conned the young woman into resigning herself to her horrible unwanted fate, and the American psychiatrist watched in cheery approval. The mullah talked away some of the young woman’s symptoms while leaving the cause entirely untouched, and the medical professional was impressed.

    I’m not.

  • Katha Pollitt on Julian Assange

    The furor over the rape allegations against Julian Assange reveal that when it comes to rape, the left still doesn’t get it.