Yesterday the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a couple for homicide – or, as NBC News put it, the conviction of a ”deeply religious Wisconsin couple who prayed over their dying daughter rather than seek medical help.” Not fanatically religious or irrationally religious or stupidly and dangerously religious but “deeply” religious. Let’s give them extra deference and admiration for the profundity of their unreasonable magical thinking even as we report that their “deep” religion caused them to let their daughter die of an easily treatable condition.

Kara Neumann, 11, of Weston, Wis., died March 23, 2008 — Easter Sunday — of complications of untreated juvenile onset diabetes.

According to the case records, Kara had been showing symptoms of exhaustion and dehydration for more than a week, but her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, refused to take her to a pediatrician, and decided to respond to her illness with prayer, not medicine.

How deep. Or rather, how inexcusably stupid and self-indulgent and whimsical. They might as well cut their children’s arms and legs off to make a nice dinner, in the expectation that praying will make the bleeding stop and the arms and legs reappear.

The Neumanns don’t belong to any particular church, but they identify as Pentecostals, according to factual findings in the court record, none of which the Neumanns disputed. Some Pentecostals — but by no means all — believe that prayer and strong religious belief can cure all illnesses, a tradition that helped give rise to famous “faith healers” like Oral Roberts and Benny Hinn.

They have no right to believe that. They might as well believe a power saw is the best implement for combing their children’s hair. If your beliefs are lethal to other people you have to stop coddling them. You don’t get to believe that you can push your child out of a tenth floor window because God will catch her.

As Kara weakened, the Neumanns asked family and friends to pray for her, too. The day before his daughter died, Dale Neumann posted a message on a Christian listserv with the subject line “Help our daughter needs emergency prayer!!!”

“We need agreement in prayer over our youngest daughter, who is very weak and pale at the moment with hardly any strength,” the message said.

He posted a message on a Christian listserv, did he. So technology is ok for him. Technology is ok when it gives him an extra tool with which to mess around with idiotic “beliefs” – but when it comes to his daughter’s health and life, why, no, only magical incantations will do.

Dale Neumann testified that he knew Kara was sick but never thought she might die. In fact, he testified that he thought that Jesus would bring her back from the dead, as he did with Lazarus in the Gospel of John.

Wisconsin is among 17 states that allow religious defenses against felony charges of crimes against children, according to records compiled by Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, a nonprofit activist group that opposes religious exceptions to child health and safety laws.

Shame on you Wisconsin, and the other sixteen states along with you.

“If we were to adopt the parents’ reasoning, no prayer-treating parent would know what point is beyond ‘a substantial risk of death’ until the child actually stopped breathing and died,” Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson wrote.

Steven Miller, Dale Neumann’s attorney, criticized Wednesday’s decision as having “essentially gutted the faith healing privilege under the child abuse statute.”

The what??! There shouldn’t be such a thing as a faith healing privilege – it’s insane! You can’t abuse your children except you can if faith. Wrong! Bad idea. Bad, bad, bad idea.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Well great. Which is least worst, military rule or Islamist theocracy?

Couldn’t Egypt manage a third possibility?

Egypt’s military has moved against the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood a day after deposing President Mohammed Morsi.

Mr Morsi is in detention, as well as senior figures in the Islamist group of which he is a member. Hundreds more are being sought.

The top judge of Egypt’s constitutional court, Adly Mahmud Mansour, has been sworn in as interim leader.

Let’s hope they can figure it out soon.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

So there’s this comedy writer Kurt Metzger, who’s on the staff at Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer. You know the next line already.

Lindy West and Sady Doyle, two outspoken critics of rape humor in comedy, are accusing Metzger of an online harassment campaign that started more than a month ago. Doyle is taking the evidence straight to Amy Schumer and Comedy Central.

Are they sure it’s harassment? Couldn’t it just be…you know…comedy?

Doyle and West both drew Metzger’s attention after they voiced their opinions on the ongoing debate about rape jokes within the comic community—a persistent issue since last year’s Daniel Tosh controversy.

The bloggers claim Metzger is targeting them and other feminists by making impersonator accounts on various social media platforms and filling them with obscene Photoshops of the women he’s mocking.

Well there you go – just as I thought, it’s not harassment, it’s pure comedy gold. What could be funnier than impersonator accounts and obscene Photoshops of women you don’t like? And obviously that kind of thing is totally harmless no matter what.

Even if the true creator of the sockpuppet account is never exposed, the level of Metzger’s vitriol may give a boost to feminism’s argument within the comedy community. While Metzger argued on Facebook, “Don’t worry about jokes. Rapists don’t hide behind rape jokes,” the domestic violence in his past—not to mention the threats in his current language—illustrate in a grim way the very real connection between “jokes” and actual assault. Ironically, Metzger is a textbook example of the academic study he mocked and dismissed—the one that explored how men who enjoy jokes about sexual violence are more likely to commit sexual violence. Metzger’s admissions, truthful or not, are horrifying enough: He stated that some women “deserve a beating,” then he copped to choking his girlfriend because she didn’t “fear” him enough.

Yes but that’s because his girlfriend deserved it. Jeez – people are so dense.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh by the way did I mention that I’m back? I am, I’m back. It was a looooooooong trip. Jane and Michael picked me up at 11:15 yesterday (Tuesday) morning and I got home at 7:30 the next morning Dublin time. That’s 20 hours. Lordy.

I had a bit of good luck though, that made it a little shorter than it might have been. I looked on the board at JFK to find my gate and saw that there was an earlier flight in half an hour. Ooh, could I get them to put me on that one? Could I get there in time? It was a long shot, especially when I found I had to take a shuttle bus that trundled around the airport pausing to wait while planes oozed by – but I got there in time, and there were apparently seats open. There’s a $50 charge, they told me. Oh, never mind then, I said. Ok so they put me on it anyway. I guess they just try the $50 thing in case they get someone easy, or too rich to care. I figured I would get the most miserable seat on the whole plane, so imagine my surprise to get an F seat, and my even greater surprise to find that row 35 has a partition behind it and massive leg room in front with a pull-out leg-rest. Best seat ever.

Just as I stepped onto the plane I had a violent gasping can’t-breathe tears pouring sweaty coughing fit. That was a lot of fun. But then to make up for it I saw Captain Keith Colburn of the Wizard, from the absurd but oddly fascinating Discovery show Deadliest Catch, among the toffs in first class. Very amusing.

We crossed the mountains and turned south just at and after sunset (from the plane’s height), and the view of Puget Sound and the islands was spectacular. Best view ever.

So that’s not too bad. Best seat ever, best sighting of a crab captain from Deadliest Catch ever, best aerial view of sunset over Puget Sound ever.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Anne Ferris TD, Vice Chair of the Oireachtas Committee for Justice, Defence and Equality, has a scorching article on the Magdalene laundries. If you read it it will make you feel angry.

In 1955 Halliday Sutherland was doing research for a book on Ireland and managed to visit a Magdalene laundry in Galway.

The day before he visited the laundry in Galway, Dr Sutherland visited the Mother and Baby home in Tuam. He noted that the accepted practice was that unmarried mothers in the Tuam home ‘agreed’ to provide a year of unpaid domestic service to the nuns, and that in addition to this servitude, the home received State support, via Galway County Council, to the tune of £1 per child or mother per week.

A year of slavery.

Sutherland was told that any child not adopted by the age of seven was sent to work in one of Ireland’s notorious Industrial Schools, no doubt a factor in the decisions of the thousands of Irish women who ‘agreed’ to the export of their children for Catholic adoptions abroad. Women who were re-admitted to the Tuam Mother and Baby Home on a second occasion were automatically sent to work at the Magdalene Home Laundry in Galway.  By directing the women to the laundry and the children to the industrial schools the State saved money and the Church made money.

And women were treated like dirt.

Today, thanks to the Magdalene survivors groups we know what the women suffered and that the Mother and Baby homes were only one of many routes by which the Church and State incarcerated women in the Magdalene laundries and similarly operated religious institutions.  This is why in February of this year, after successive governments failed to engage meaningfully with the Magdalene survivors, the current Taoiseach made a formal apology to the women on behalf of the State.

This week the Government announced a redress fund for the survivors. It remains to be seen if the amount and means of payment will prove sufficient to compensate for the State’s role in this tragedy. No sum of money can take away the pain that these women have endured.  In my capacity of Vice Chair of the Oireachtas Committee for Justice, Defence and Equality I personally undertake to closely monitor the progress of any necessary legislation designed to effect the speedy and appropriate distribution of redress to the women concerned. But there can be absolutely no ambiguity regarding the financial contribution to be made by the Church. There is now no hiding from the enormity of what these women suffered in the so called ‘care’ of these religious institutions.

One of the times I walked through Stephen’s Green I studied the pictorial map in hopes of finding the rest rooms. (Apparently there aren’t any. Ok Dublin that’s weird. It’s a busy, popular place.) I spotted a memorial to the Magdalene women. Oh, gotta see that, I thought, so I went looking for it. It turned out to be a little plaque on a bench. Calling that a “memorial” just renews the insult. It’s kind of like the nun who, when the brother of one inmate rescued her after years, tried to give the inmate 2/6 as payment. Half a crown! As payment for years of backbreaking work!

On the day in 1955 that Dr Halliday Sutherland visited the Galway Magdalene he met some of its seventy-three unpaid manual workers who lifted and toiled in the heat and wet doing laundry work for businesses, institutions and homes in Galway.  One woman told him she had been there for 25 years. He asked another if she liked the laundry.  She answered “yes” but according to Sutherland she did not look him in the eye. Later, he said, a nun told him that she was a bold girl.

“On Sundays they’re allowed to use cosmetics”, the sister-in-charge told him.

But…“Are the girls free?” asked Sutherland.

“Yes” said the nun.

“Can a girl leave whenever she chooses?

“No, we are not as lenient as all that.” said the Mother Superior.

That’s for sure.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Irish abortion bill passed, 138 to 24.

It’s very limited though. Don’t go getting any ideas about a general right to decide about your own life.

Mr Kenny issued a stern defence of the legislation in his own speech to the Dáil, saying it was not possible to remove the suicide clause. He also rejected demands for a time limit to be applied to when a termination can take place.

“To those who fear that this Bill is the first step towards a liberal abortion regime in Ireland, I say clearly that this extremely restrictive Bill is the only proposal that will be brought forward by this Government on this issue,” he said.

What about those who fear that this bill is a great deal too restrictive?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The videos are flooding in now!

Rebecca Goldstein’s amazing talk at Women in Secularism 2 is one.

It starts with a bang.

I probably agonized over this talk more than any other talk in my entire career.

…

The source of my agony is this: do I, for the first time in my life, publicly address the gender issue. My MO has always been to try to behave as if my being a female doesn’t matter insofar as my professional life is concerned.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do that? The trouble is, other people don’t try to behave as if our being female doesn’t matter as far as our work is concerned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rekIIHooss

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Here’s my talk at the Atheist Ireland conference on Saturday. That was before I developed a cold and started coughing every 3 seconds!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnpXTDxfF3o

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Big Dublin-explore this morning.. Where did I go, you don’t ask. Let’s see…

Through the back gate to Trinity College to the far (west) side, to College Green and Dame Street and Lord Edward Street. (Funny the way the streets get a new name every few yards or meters). Along the north side of Christ Church cathedral, down the hill to the Liffey, along the south bank to the next bridge and across, along the north bank to the next bridge and cross back, up to St Audouen’s church, to the castle for a look at the courtyard, to the spectacular St George’s Street shopping arcade…

To a modern version of that near Stephen’s Green, like Joseph Paxton but with bigger clocks. (Clocks, I said. There’s a gigantic clock on the third floor, with two different faces. I want it.

To Stephen’s Green, to Iveagh Gardens, through Stephen’s Green (yes, again) past Merrion Square to here.

Now for chapter 2. This pesky cold is making me want to laze, but I can laze on the plane, so

…onward.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The conference finished yesterday. In the meantime, during the night between Saturday and Sunday, the cold passed on to me by the two lavishly sneezing coughing guys who sat next to me on the plane made itself known; I felt crappy all of yesterday and coughed enough for ten people. Oddly, though, it’s much better today. (But thanks, guys on the plane. Thanks a lot. Thanks for never properly covering your coughs and sneezes during the ten hours of that flight. Thanks for never giving a thought to the people trapped an inch away from you for ten hours. You’re real pigs, both of you.)

[pause to cough]

For dessert last night we went to a comedy bar for a show by Kate Smurthwaite, which was brilliant.

Before that I had tea with Marie-Therese in the hotel restaurant/bar. It was terrific to meet her at last, after all these years.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I was on a panel this morning, so now that’s over. I thought it was terrific (leaving my part aside). Clare Daly TD is someone you want on your side and part of government! She’s a pistol.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I’m here.

Took a quick walk through Merrion Square, then Stephen’s Green. Two swans with eight cygnets in the latter.

Jane Donnelly picked up Maryam and me at the airport. Good times.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I’m at Schiphol. I survived! Mind you I expect to get very ill, because the guys on each side of me coughed and sneezed all over me for 10 hours.

I like the airbus though. There’s a nice little passage in the back where if things are quiet you can stand and exercise and stretch. I did that twice.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

In this matriarchal culture where jokes about rape are simply forbidden…

Brave heroes each…and every one of you. [salutes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjWd9eJbIGI

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I leave for the airport in under three hours. I keep vaguely thinking I should be doing preparing things, but they’re mostly done really. I’m neurotic about travel.

It’s raining here. I keep thinking I should take a hoody because rain, but I don’t want to. I’m neurotic about packing.

It will get quiet here while I’m on the road, because I won’t have time (or Wifi) to post much. You guys should make this a nice coffee house thread to discuss all the things, so that you don’t get lonely for each other.

You could discuss

• travel
• places you’ve never been to that you want to be to
• how to endure ten hours on a plane in an inside seat in the inside aisle
• what food to pack in what quantity
• crime and punishment
• feminism and its allies and its wannabe allies who are actually more interested in their own standing as allies than they are in feminism or the status of women
• how to frame questions as passive-aggressive shots
• the Bechdel test
• the role of the Catholic church in US healthcare
• the role of the Catholic church in Ireland
• goats

That’s not an exhaustive list, just a place to start.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Sensibly, a Lothian (Scotland) NHS board decided to stop funding homeopathy yesterday.

Homeopaths are fighting back.

The British Homeopathic Association (BHA), which claimed the controversial 
alternative medicine had been the victim of a “hate campaign”, today refused to rule out a challenge in the courts.

The organisation believes the removal of clinics, used by around 500 people a year in the region, constitutes a “major service change” and is therefore a decision for the Scottish Government, rather than NHS Lothian.

However, other groups expressed delight that the service had been cut, calling the decision a victory for “evidence over superstition”, and said the BHA should “shut up”.

Shut up and listen? Or just shut up.

I kid, I kid.

The group’s chairman, John Cook, said: “[The] consultation failed to listen to actual patient feedback in the form of general correspondence and feedback at public meetings, instead concentrating only on the flawed online survey which was hijacked by people outside of Lothian who campaign against homeopathy.”

Health board sources claimed the Scottish Health Council has advised that the removal of homeopathy would not constitute a “major service change” and that NHS Lothian was therefore entitled to take the decision.

Keir Hardie, president of Edinburgh Skeptics, backed the NHS Lothian board and ridiculed the prospect of a legal challenge. He said: “The ­evidence has spoken, the service users have spoken and frankly it is probably time for the BHA to shut up.”

Um…not Keir Hardie, actually. That’s someone quite different. Keir Liddle is the Keir they want.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A guest post by Torcant Torcant

Warning: it’s a horror.

Husband’s family gathered to discuss the problem and decided that they should kill the bride, and the husband should do it. The husband summoned his wife to the family gathering and stabbed her multiple times in front of his father, mother and brother. Then the men loaded her dead body to their car and buried somewhere, while the mother cleaned up the blood in the house.

The news story says that later “The husband felt remorse and he turned himself in to the police” but I highly doubt it. There must be something else going on.

The guy, the brother and the father are under detention now. The mother is at home, still scrubbing!

The link to the news story in Turkish: http://www.sabah.com.tr/Yasam/2013/06/26/yirmi-gunluk-kocasi-oldurdu-ailesi-izledi

Turkish media do not publish such stories in English!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Wired has a nice amusing interview with Richard Dawkins. They asked him about comment moderation at RDF the website.

I’m afraid the internet is filled with people using really very intemperate language. I’m in favour of ridicule, but not abuse and I think we do a pretty good job on RichardDawkins.net of controlling the abuse.

Part of the problem all over the internet is anonymity. Because people are anonymous they would say things to other people that they would never dream of saying to their face and would never dream of saying if they had to sign their own name to it. But if you call yourself Tinky Winky or something no one knows who you are or where you are.

Exactly, and what that means is that you can say any horrible thing you like and suffer no real life consequences at all. People keep saying yes but a nym can build up a reputation over time so there can be consequences. Please. The consequences are not of the same kind or weight.

What do you think about the fact that many modern atheists see atheism as part of their identity?

I didn’t know that was the case. It’s undoubtedly true that many religious people see their religion as part of their identity, but I thought atheists were largely free of that.

Really? Good lord. That seems quite inattentive.

Do you still stand by the “Dear Muslima” comments you made about Rebecca Watson?

I’m not saying anything about her.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?

I’ve changed my mind in science.

Ah.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A court in Burma found two Muslim women guilty of setting off a recent outbreak of sectarian violence, which seems a tiny bit suspect given that it’s usually Muslims who are the victims of sectarian violence in Burma.

Myint Thein of the pro-government National Unity Party, who attended their trial, said Wednesday that the two women in the central township of Okkan were convicted of “insulting religion.” Both were sentenced to two years in prison with hard labor.

Sigh. Has it all, doesn’t it. Minority religion. Women. “Insulting religion.” Two years. Hard labor.

Although the vast majority of victims of the Buddhist-Muslim violence in the past year have been Muslims, most of those convicted of serious offenses in the unrest have been Muslims. Rights groups have argued that Myanmar’s courts are biased in favor of the Buddhist majority. The two women’s trial was related to an April 30 episode in Okkan that culminated with Buddhist mobs destroying shops and homes in several villages. Myint Thein said the court heard that one of the women bumped into the monk as he was collecting alms and the other grabbed the monk by his shoulders. It is considered inappropriate in Buddhism for women to have any physical contact with monks.

So inappropriate that it merits two years in prison with hard labor.

Humans. So good at getting it wrong.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Even though the Republicans in the Texas Senate tried their best to cheat, the bill still failed.

The final outcome took several hours to sort out.

Initially, Republicans insisted the vote started before the midnight deadline and passed the bill that Democrats spent the day trying to kill. But after official computer records and printouts of the voting record showed the vote took place Wednesday, and then were changed to read Tuesday, senators retreated into a private meeting to reach a conclusion.

At 3 a.m., Dewhurst emerged from the meeting still insisting the 19-10 vote was in time, but said, “with all the ruckus and noise going on, I couldn’t sign the bill” and declared it dead.

Still insisting the vote was in time despite what the pesky record showed. Self-justification much?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)