Gary Gutting talked to Alvin Plantinga for the NY Times blog The Stone awhile ago. They start with talk about evidence and what to conclude from the presence or absence of evidence. They arrive at Russell’s teapot.

A.P.: Russell’s idea, I take it, is we don’t really have any evidence against teapotism, but we don’t need any; the absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and is enough to support a-teapotism. We don’t need any positive evidence against it to be justified in a-teapotism; and perhaps the same is true of theism.

I disagree: Clearly we have a great deal of evidence against teapotism. For example, as far as we know, the only way a teapot could have gotten into orbit around the sun would be if some country with sufficiently developed space-shot capabilities had shot this pot into orbit. No country with such capabilities is sufficiently frivolous to waste its resources by trying to send a teapot into orbit. Furthermore, if some country had done so, it would have been all over the news; we would certainly have heard about it. But we haven’t. And so on. There is plenty of evidence against teapotism. So if, à la Russell, theism is like teapotism, the atheist, to be justified, would (like the a-teapotist) have to have powerful evidence against theism.

Ok, but you could say the same kind of thing about the “God” of the theistic religions (which Plantinga says at the beginning is the one at issue.) You could come up with all kinds of specific reasons for not accepting the claims made in the bible about that god. For example, as far as we know, the only way a book written by god could have been passed to humans would be if some god with sufficiently developed communications capabilities had communicated it to us. No god with such capabilities is sufficiently frivolous to give us the material for one book over a period of a few centuries and then stop. No god with such capabilities would dream of stopping dead in whatever century CE the last book of the bible was written. That would be absurd. Having opened communications with us, it would keep on communicating. But it didn’t. And so on.

Moving on.

A.P.: I should make clear first that I don’t think arguments are needed for rational belief in God. In this regard belief in God is like belief in other minds, or belief in the past. Belief in God is grounded in experience, or in the sensus divinitatis, John Calvin’s term for an inborn inclination to form beliefs about God in a wide variety of circumstances.

No. Belief in god is not at all like belief in other minds. Belief in other minds develops from experience of and with other people. There’s no equivalent experience of and with god. With god you have to imagine out of thin air; there is no person in front of you who knows where she put the cookies while you don’t know where she put the cookies. We understand other minds (to the extent that we do) via extrapolation: I feel this way in this situation, so probably other people do too, or maybe I’m weird and they don’t, so I’ll ask and find out. There’s nothing like that with god.

You know one way to confirm this? Think of god as a character in a novel or a tv drama. You what? It doesn’t work. Why not? Because god isn’t human enough. God is boring to humans. Making up stories about god is very different from belief in other minds.

But Plantinga’s other mind disagrees.

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

The NY Times has a brief interview with Barbara Ehrenreich (who will be at WiS3 in a few weeks ohboy).

She had some mystical-type experiences when she was a teenager, although she didn’t conclude they were from god or anything. She’s written a memoir about it.

You’ve written and spoken extensively about your atheism. Did you ever feel you were being deceitful because you’d had these experiences with a world beyond the rational? 

I realized that whatever I experienced was not anything like a deity that I knew of. It certainly was not a good, caring God of Christianity. On the other hand, I knew it was way out of the reach of science, and I did feel uneasy. My younger sister was distressed that I wrote a book with “God” in the title. We are hard-line atheists, and I had to re-establish my credibility with her or I’d get booted out of the family.

How did you earn back your bona fides?

I told my sister how much I was annoyed by a friend of hers. She’s very New Agey. Damn that stuff. I can’t be around it. If something has happened that you don’t have words for, keep thinking.

Great line. A variation on Wittgenstein’s line, I suppose, but I like hers better – it’s less fatalist. Not we must be silent, but keep thinking.

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

St. John Health System issued a statement this afternoon. The Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise reports:

Contrary to reports last week that contraceptives could only be prescribed for medical reasons, the statement released Monday appears to indicate that physicians employed by SJHS and practicing at Jane Phillips Medical Center can prescribe contraceptives to be used as birth control, leaving the decision to individual physicians.

“Appears to” is right – it’s very muddy. Very Cover Your Ass; very waffling; very You Can Have Both.

The unsigned document states in full:

“Consistent with Catholic health care organizations, St. John Health System operates in accordance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, and therefore does not approve or support contraceptive practices. However, only physicians (not institutions) are licensed to practice medicine and make medical judgments. While our physicians agree to abide by the Directives, they also have the ability to prescribe medications, including hormonal medications, in accordance with their independent professional medical judgment. This includes informing patients when they are operating under their own professional medical judgment and not on behalf of St. John Health System.”

Wut?

Our physicians agree to abide by the Directives, and they also have the ability to prescribe medications, including hormonal medications, in accordance with their independent professional medical judgment. The ones that are contrary (in the official view) to the Directives. So what does that even mean? If the doctors agree to abide by the Directives and then don’t abide by them, what happens? Is that a firing offense?

Also – fuck the fucking Directives. Again: clerics should not be issuing religious “Directives” to health care institutions. Period. Health care should be secular. Period.

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

That News Corpse article provides interesting information.

Hobby Lobby pays millions of dollars to stock their shelves with cheap products made in China, a country where abortion is legal and is even provided by the government for free – when they aren’t forcing it on women who want their babies. It is impossible to accept that the company is unconditionally opposed to a voluntary form of preventive health care that obviates the need for an abortion, while supporting a system that encourages abortion outright. If Hobby Lobby can do business with China when the profit motive compels them to, they cannot simultaneously pretend that an American woman having access to an insurance policy that includes coverage for contraception is some sort of abomination against their Lord.

So now I’m wondering how many Tea Partiers and Focus on the Familyers and bishops and other such meddlers have closets and cabinets and garages bulging with shirts and toys and running shoes made in China. My guess? Most of them.

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

Ah yes. Ain’t hypocrisy grand.

Update: the source at News Corpse.

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

The Tennessee ACLU reported that the state dodged a different religious bigotry-enabling bullet last month.

NASHVILLE – A bill that would have made Tennessee the first state in the nation to codify into state law the use of religion to discriminate will not be considered during this year’s legislative session.

The bill was put into General Subcommittee, effectively ending the journey of SB 2566 for this legislative session.

Under the guise of protecting religious freedom, SB 2566 would have allowed individuals, businesses and organizations to use religion to discriminate against LGBT and other unmarried couples by refusing to provide them goods or services.

Religion is really covering itself with glory these days.

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

In Tennessee…another one of those “Protect Religious Rights to Talk Shit About People God Hates” laws is on the governor’s desk.

Tennesee’s Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act, or SB1793/HB 1547, purports to prevent students from being silenced when expressing their religious beliefs in the classroom, when turning in written assignments, and at official school functions, including graduation and mandatory assemblies. In addition to specifying “that a student may express beliefs about religion in homework, artwork, and other written assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions,” the bill also requires that students will “not be penalized or rewarded on account of the religious content of the student’s work.” Further, the bill appears to establish special speaking engagements for students to share their religious beliefs at official school functions — and even over the school’s announcement system.

Opponents of the legislation say it’s the latest attempt to establish a so-called license to discriminate, this time doing so in public, state-funded schools. They say that in addition to being unnecessary, as the U.S. Constitution includes strong protections for religious liberty, in practice the law would be exploited by those wanting to impose their religious beliefs about such matters as LGBT rights, evolution, contraception, and even racial and religious diversity, on other students who don’t share those perspectives.

They should just make the law broader, and then it will be fine. The bill should be written prevent students from being silenced when expressing any unreasonable baseless evidence-free beliefs in the classroom, in homework, at assemblies. It should be a charter for students’ rights to believe any old shit, and not just believe it, but get good grades for saying it in homework and on exams. It should just forbid any pesky secular reason-based attempt to teach students concepts and theories and knowledge based on evidence and argument as opposed to speculation and arbitrary beliefs.

As David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement points out, the bill likely violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, commonly recognized as mandating the separation of church and state. But Badash also notes that if the bill became law:

“An evangelical student, for example, could preach the gospel during a science class, or ‘witness’ during English. Attacks on LGBT people and same-sex marriage are automatically protected under this bill, offering anti-gay students a state-sponsored license to bully. And of course, a student could claim they worship Satan and subject their classmates to that ‘religious viewpoint’ as well.”

Let a thousand flowers bloom.

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

The Lawyers’ Secular Society has an open letter to the Law Society.

Dear Sir,

Law Society’s practice note on “Sharia succession rules”

This is an open letter which we have published on our website this morning.

We refer to the above practice note dated 13 March 2014.

(www.lawsociety.org.uk/advice/practice-notes/sharia-succession-rules/)

Please can you explain why and how the Law Society has adopted guidance to assist in drafting wills which treat women far worse than men, and non-Muslims far worse than Muslims? How is this consistent with the Law Society’s claimed commitments to equality?

For your information, you may be interested to know:

1. We have launched an online petition calling for withdrawal of this practice note (approaching 2,000 signatures at the time of writing)
2. There is also an open letter calling for withdrawal of this practice note, signed by public figures and human rights campaigners from around the world
3. There will be a protest against the Law Society’s decision to issue this practice note on Monday 28 April 2014, in London

Further details are here:

lawyerssecularsociety.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/protest-against-law-societys-sharia-wills-practice-note-mon-28-april-london/

An emailed response (in addition to or in place of a postal one) would be appreciated.

Given the serious nature of the LSS’s concerns we expect to receive a substantive response to our questions at the earliest possible opportunity.

Yours faithfully

Charlie Klendjian
Solicitor
Secretary, Lawyers’ Secular Society

I predict the substantive response: Because there’s a demand for it.

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

Brigitte Amiri of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project was at the Supreme Court for the Hobby Lobby arguments and blogs about it for the ACLU.

…my heart fell as I watched the attorneys for the parties take their seats. There wasn’t a single woman. Not a single person of color. Although it was great that the government sent their top lawyer to defend the case, it was disheartening to see no women at counsel’s table for either party, especially because the case involves women’s access to contraception. How can that be in 2014?

How indeed. The case involves women’s access to contraception.

But then she cheered up.

Right out of the box, the female justices asked question after question that tested the limits of Hobby Lobby’s argument that religious liberty should trump the contraception rule. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor asked intelligent and pointed questions that demonstrated the fallacy of the companies’ arguments. They asked whether every employer that had a religious objection to any type of health care should get to pick and choose what to offer in health plans, despite the Affordable Care Act requirements. They also asked whether employers should be allowed to refuse to comply with anti-discrimination laws or minimum wage laws because of their religious beliefs.

It wasn’t just the women justices who “got it.” Kennedy asked the companies’ attorney about whether Hobby Lobby would be putting its employees in a “disadvantageous position,” and whether “religious beliefs just trump?”

The answer is no. They don’t trump. Everyone has the right to his or her religious beliefs, but those beliefs cannot be used to take away a benefit from someone else or to discriminate against others. That’s exactly what is at stake here. The contraception rule was designed to ensure women’s equality by eliminating the disparities in health care costs between men and women, and to ensure women have the ability to make decisions about whether and when to become parents, which in turns allow them to participate equally in society.

But the believers believe that god doesn’t want women to participate equally in society. They believe that god wants them not to. They believe that god shares their belief that women are altogether smaller and less capable beings, who are good at taking care of children but bad at everything else. For those reasons they want women to be imprisoned in their putative role as mothers (and later, if they have the bad manners not to die as soon as they stop having children, as grandmothers).

They might win.

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

Mehdi Hasan has really gone into overdrive lately in his public jeering and sniping at people he dislikes – or maybe he’s always like this, I ignore him most of the time so I don’t know. Anyway he’s doing a lot of it. It’s very reactionary right-wing stuff, which for some reason finds a home in more or less left-wing outlets. Why is that? Why do people on the left persist in thinking that the most reactionary Muslims or even Islamists are the ones they should be giving a megaphone?

Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan

“Baroness Warsi, Faith Minister, Dismisses Richard Dawkins As A ‘Secular Fundamentalist”

(The quotation marks are a nice touch; he probably wrote that himself, since he’s an editor there. The quotation marks make it look more impersonal.)

He’s A ‘Secular Fundamentalist’
Baroness Warsi has denounced atheist academic Richard Dawkins as a “secular fundamentalist”, as she spoke about tackling Islamophobia. During a wide-ranging interview with the Huffington Post UK, the…

Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan

Guy who smears for a living is now screaming ‘smear’ at anyone who questions his credentials as a ‘Muslims’ or ‘extremism’ expert. Funny.

Baroness Warsi questioned Maajid Nawaz’s credentials. So he now retweets people calling her a ‘corrupt South Asian’. #stayclassy

Baroness Warsi: extremism policy shouldn’t be influenced by “ex-extremists” who “created problem in the first place”: http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/5036065?1396104864 …

Horrible man, yet the BBC and the Huffington Post UK and the New Statesman can’t get enough of him. Why? Why the attraction to religious bullies as long as they’re not of the local established religion? Why do they like him? Why do they talk so much to him and so comparatively little to Maryam? I will never understand this.

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

Exactly. I keep thinking this. If being pro-life is your central goal, saving fetuses should be way way way down on your list of priorities. Or, in my view, not on it at all, but even (for the sake of argument) if you think it is a way to save lives, it should still be near the bottom of the list.

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

Uh oh, Jimmy Carter is going to be in big trouble with the MRAs.

Sexual assaults, honour killings, prostitution, physical abuse – No matter where you look in our world, you will find women and girls being abused. It’s why the 39th President of the United States calls it THE biggest challenge of our times. Today, we hear from Jimmy Carter with his Call to Action and his new book in his only Canadian interview.

In the US military alone 26,000 sexual assaults took place and only about 300 actually resulted in anybody being punished. There’s an aversion to admit what goes on even in our most cherished institutions.

Well that’s because there were 25,700 false accusations of men by lying bitchez. Actually the 300 that resulted in conviction and sentence were probably mostly lies too. Right?

It’s a volatile east, west, north and south for many of the world’s women. Special crimes, special punishments and special hatreds are directed at so many women and girls.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter despairs of the mistreatment and abuse. He believes religion is often an excuse for discrimination against women.

Indeed it is; we see it every day. And the best part is, it’s such a powerful excuse – because few people like to piss off the believers, especially few people who depend on votes to keep their jobs.

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

Stephanie has a post about a town without contraception. I followed her link to get more details on the situation in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

The Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise reports:

Some Bartlesville women are taking issue with a recent directive prohibiting doctors affiliated with Jane Phillips Medical Center from prescribing contraceptives, saying the decision is not only an affront to women but could have an economic impact by driving patients away from local doctors.

Confidential sources told the Examiner-Enterprise this week that a meeting was held Wednesday to inform local doctors of gynecology and obstetrics that they can no longer prescribe contraceptives of any kind — if they are to be used as birth control.

Stephanie fills in the missing background:

Bartlesville is a town of only about 35,000 people. They have one hospital, Jane Phillips Medical Center. That hospital is part of Ascension Health, a large Catholic health care consortium, and nearly all of the OB-GYNs in town need to maintain privileges there in order to do their jobs.

Ah, one of those situations – where the Catholic church gets a monopoly on health care and uses its monopoly to refuse to provide vital services to women. The Catholic church has a monopoly on health care in Bartlesville so it’s exploiting its monopoly power to prevent women from having sex without getting pregnant. The Catholic church is using its power to deny women access to birth control – as if it were 1880 instead of 2014.

Back to the Examiner-Enterprise:

When contacted Friday, JPMC officials referred the E-E to Cheena Pazzo, director of St. John Health System Community and Physician Relations.

Pazzo offered the following statement via email:

“Consistent with all Catholic health care organizations, St. John Health System operates in accordance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Facilities.”

The ones drawn up the the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Why are we in the US allowing Catholic bishops to control a large chunk of our health care? They are bishops. Our health care is none of their business. And by “our” I mean all of us, including Catholics. If conservative Catholics want to do what the bishops tell them to do, more fool they, but they can go ahead – but that does not mean the bishops get to impose their religious “directives” on anyone whatsoever.

This should not be happening. It’s an outrage. It’s grotesque.

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

It’s not just Phyllis Schlafly who talks ridiculous crap about the futility of a “war against Nature” and disseminates that crap via the latest communications technology. There is Noah, for instance, if David Plotz describes it accurately in Slate.

Like the last Noah’s Ark movie, this Noah tells a straightforward environmental parable. Expelled from Eden, mankind has gutted and burned creation, chopping down every tree, butchering every beast, and crowding itself into black, sooty cities. Alas for mankind, the heavenly think tank only has one idea for addressing the issue: start over, with a lot fewer of us—like, half a dozen, preferably vegetarians.

Aronofsky’s message to us moderns is clear: We, too, have corrupted our world, just as the antediluvian humans (save Noah) did theirs. But the director’s public policy chops are scarcely more nuanced than Yahweh’s. He ends up condemning progress of all kinds. The movie pits Noah and his family against all the other humans of the world, led by the king Tubal-Cain. Noah and his family are rural gatherers, living gently off the fruit of the land. Tubal-Cain, by contrast, is a machine-maker and warlord who has strip-mined and clear-cut forests to build his cities. The Noah family is constantly moving further and further away from these cities, off the grid, to be alone.

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

I can still be surprised. I’m surprised by the student senate at the University of Alabama. Last week it voted to kill a resolution supporting racial integration of fraternities and sororities there.

The resolution cited damage to the reputation of the university, in Tuscaloosa, after it was revealed last year that all-white sororities were denying membership to black women based solely on race.

I did not know that.

Some student senators said they were concerned the language in the integration resolution would lead to an affirmative action-like Greek system. Some asked whether traditionally black or Latino fraternities would be required to admit white students.

Others talked about political correctness gone mad, others said there goes the neighborhood, others asked if you would want your daughter to marry one, others said freedom of choice is what makes this country great, and so the sun sets on another day in exotic Tuscaloosa.

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

Sweet.

Via Global Secular Humanist Movement on Facebook.

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

The Secularist of the Year prize was awarded today, to Turkish MP and human rights campaigner Safak Pavey.

Safak Pavey is a member of Turkey’s main opposition party and sits for the Istanbul constituency. She is known for her international work in human rights, the promotion of the rights of women and minorities in Turkey, as well as humanitarian aid and peace-building.

She was also the first disabled woman elected to the Turkish parliament and, in 2012, was awarded a Woman of Courage Award by the White House for her efforts to raise awareness of the plight of those with disabilities in countries where resources are limited.

Safak has spoken out about the need for secularism and the better protection of the rights of women in Turkey, a country where the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said that he does not think men and women are equal. Freedom of expression is deeply threatened in Turkey, with the banning of youtube and twitter in the midst of a corruption scandal involving high government officials, and where infamously last year, Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say was handed a suspended 10-month prison sentence for “insulting Islam”. Turkey ranks 154th among 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index.

Congratulations to Safak Pavey. I’m glad to learn of her.

You know who else got an award?

Also honoured at the award ceremony were two nominees, Chris Moos and Abishek Phadnis, both students from the London School of Economics who have, in the past year, challenged their own university and Universities UK over important and fundamental issues such as free speech and gender segregation.

Yes they have.

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