A month ago Steven Pinker had a long article in The New Republic in praise of ”scientism.” One part I particularly like:

In  which ways, then, does science illuminate human affairs? Let me start with the most ambitious: the deepest questions about who we are, where we came from, and how we define the meaning and purpose of our lives. This is the traditional territory of religion, and its defenders tend to be the most excitable critics of scientism. They are apt to endorse the partition plan proposed by Stephen Jay Gould in his worst book, Rocks of Ages, according to which the proper concerns of science and religion belong to “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science gets the empirical universe; religion gets the questions of moral meaning and value.

Unfortunately, this entente unravels as soon as you begin to examine it. The moral worldview of any scientifically literate person—one who is not blinkered by fundamentalism—requires a radical break from religious conceptions of meaning and value.

To begin with, the findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the origins of life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken. We know, but our ancestors did not, that humans belong to a single species of African primate that developed agriculture, government, and writing late in its history. We know that our species is a tiny twig of a genealogical tree that embraces all living things and that emerged from prebiotic chemicals almost four billion years ago. We know that we live on a planet that revolves around one of a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, which is one of a hundred billion galaxies in a 13.8-billion-year-old universe, possibly one of a vast number of universes. We know that our intuitions about space, time, matter, and causation are incommensurable with the nature of reality on scales that are very large and very small. We know that the laws governing the physical world (including accidents, disease, and other misfortunes) have no goals that pertain to human well-being. There is no such thing as fate, providence, karma, spells, curses, augury, divine retribution, or answered prayers—though the discrepancy between the laws of probability and the workings of cognition may explain why people believe there are. And we know that we did not always know these things, that the beloved convictions of every time and culture may be decisively falsified, doubtless including some we hold today.

And especially especially, We know that the laws governing the physical world (including accidents, disease, and other misfortunes) have no goals that pertain to human well-being. That’s a big one. It’s important to grasp it, in order to do our best to achieve goals that do pertain to human (and animal and planetary) well-being.

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

Did you know that one of the members of ABBA is a pillar of the secularist-humanist community in Sweden? I did. Sven Grundberg tells about it for a Wall Street Journal blog.

STOCKHOLM – Björn Ulvaeus, one of the two Bs in ABBA, sat down with Speakeasy on a sunny summer day in central Stockholm at a hipster coffee shop. The joint is located just around the corner from the capital’s buzzing club scene that has hatched several global music wonders in recent years, including Swedish House Mafia and Avicii.

Sweden has long played an outsized role in the global music industry, providing a host of songwriters, producers, technological innovations and successful performers.

A solid musical education system, general prosperity and a deftness at imitation have all been mentioned as drivers. But one of the patriarchs of Swedish pop has a different explanation: godlessness.

Ulvaeus, now 68 years old and far removed from his ABBA days, talked in a wide ranging interview about his view that the absence of religious culture here is a bedrock of Swedish creativity.

Hmm. I don’t know…I think about the influence of gospel music on Motown, and I wonder. I like the idea, I’m just not sure it’s true.

“Sweden is an open, liberal, secular and democratic country,” he says. “We strive towards achieving equality, we are forward-looking and refuse to be pulled back by social constructs, such as religion.”

While ABBA never made any serious political statements with its music, Ulvaeus himself has emerged as a controversial social commentator in recent years. Less known outside Sweden are his secularist views, and his avid criticism of religion.

An active member of Humanisterna, the Swedish member organization of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, he says religion constraints creativity.

“Religion is the root of so much misery in the world and I’ve always thought there is lack of criticism against it.”

See that’s why I knew he’s a pillar. Humanisterna is related to Fri Tanke, the publisher of the Swedish translation of Does God Hate Women? Björn Ulvaeus’s daughter picked me up at the airport when I went to Stockholm for the launch.

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

Jesus and Mo discuss the burqa as a symbol of freedom.

That’s the end of that discussion.

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

A good thing. Manitoba has passed a piece of anti-bullying legislation.

Bill 18, the Manitoba government’s controversial anti-bullying legislation, has been passed.

The public schools amendment act (safe and inclusive schools) passed third reading 36-16 late Friday afternoon.

NDP MLAs stood up and applauded after the vote results were announced, with some hugging Education Minister Nancy Allan.

A clause in the legislation has concerned some religious educators and community members because it would require schools to accommodate students who want to start specific anti-bullying clubs, including gay-straight alliances (GSAs).

And we can’t have that, because teh gay is evil, in fact it’s so evil that bullying is a good thing when it’s gay kids who are being bullied.

Some who attended public hearings on the bill earlier this month argued that forcing schools to accommodate GSAs goes against their own beliefs and infringes on religious freedoms.

Religious freedoms to persecute people not for being murderers or violent or, in fact, bullies, but for being gay – those “religious freedoms” are not worth having or defending. Deal with it.

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

Thanks to grumpyoldfart’s comment on Likely to enhance his progressive reputation I checked out Frankie the pope’s encyclical Lumen fidei aka the light of faith. One does wonder why they bother. They can’t color outside the lines, ever, so why not just re-issue the old encyclicals?

But let’s take a look at it anyway, since it’s there.

Faith is light; Jesus brought light; yadda yadda.

But then modernity. People said it’s just a fake light. Faith was associated with darkness.

Faith was thus understood either as a leap in the dark, to be taken in the absence of light, driven by blind emotion, or as a subjective light, capable perhaps of warming the heart and bringing personal consolation, but not something which could be proposed to others as an objective and shared light which points the way. Slowly but surely, however, it would become evident that the light of autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future; ultimately the future remains shadowy and fraught with fear of the unknown.

Therefore, the thing to do is decide that you do know all about the future after all, and what you know just happens to be consoling and cheerful. Yay.

There is an urgent need, then, to see once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim. The light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence. A light this powerful cannot come from ourselves but from a more primordial source: in a word, it must come from God.

It must? Why must it? Why couldn’t it instead come from human imaginations, which can simply decide they have a light that is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence.

Also, why does Frankie the pope even think that? If that light is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence then why did the church or its employees or both do such shitty things over the centuries? Why is the church still doing shitty things? Why isn’t it obvious that the light is in fact just one more human thing, which has all the limitations that humans do have? It’s not transcendent or limitless, it’s the opposite of that, and that’s why it didn’t notice all those children imprisoned in Irish industrial schools and being told their parents were dead when they weren’t.

He said a lot more after that, but with such a bad start, I don’t see any need to read all of it.

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

I was curious about how long I’ve been reading and publishing and trying to help promote Maryam, so I went into the archives to find out. The answer is since August 2004. Nearly a decade.

I published an International TV Interview with Fariborz Pooya and Bahram Soroush August 15 2004.

Have a sample:

Maryam Namazie: You hear this also from the progressive angle as well. People who like what we say – for example, that we are standing up against political Islam – immediately assume that we are ‘moderate Muslims’. In the interview that you Bahram Soroush gave on the incompatibility of Islam and human rights for example, you clearly said that you were an atheist. But it just doesn’t seem to register, even among progressives. Why is that? I understand the political interests of Western governments, but why do even progressives have that opinion of us?

Fariborz Pooya: Part of it is ignorance. Purely ignorance. And it’s our duty to show the facts of the society in Iran and in the Middle East. To show that, for example, Iranian society is not Islamic at all. It’s deeply secular. It’s anti-religious. If you remove the dictatorship of the Islamic government from Iran, within a week or two, you will see the depth of secularism and the depth of the anti-Islamic movement. You will see the backlash that will have a major impact in the Middle East and the world, and not just within Iran. There is a strong socialist and workers’ movement in Iran. There is a history and tradition of the socialist movement. There are fights for workers’ interests; there are fights for improvements of living conditions.

So part of it is ignorance, and it is our duty to speak to our friends who are misinformed and to show them the realities of life in Iran. That’s part of our responsibility. I don’t think we have done enough work on that. We need to do more, and this sort of TV programme and our publications and activities are partly geared towards clarifying this and showing the reality of Iran and the Middle East. The other side of it, as Bahram clearly said, is political interest. To divide people based on religion, based on nationality, serves certain political interests. Because then it’s easier. You have similar movements in Western societies as well; ghettoising people and dividing people based on ethnicity, which is part of controlling society as well.

Maryam’s a comrade.

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

Brian Earp had a very interesting post a year ago on motivated reasoning and “moral coherence” and how people resolve moral conflicts.

I was thinking “moral coherence” sounded very like dissonance theory, and then Brian went ahead and said as much, so that’s good. I know where I am.

He started with Todd Akin’s interesting take on pregnancy and rape, and how he could have believed that.

what could be going on with Todd Akin’s moral reasoning for him to casually downplay the relevance of rape and incest to the abortion debate while maintaining, as he does, that there should be no exceptions to anti-abortionism even in those cases? Psychologist Brittany Liu uses the notion of “moral coherence” to provide an explanation:

The misuse of scientific information in support of one’s moral position is not new. When it comes to controversial and morally-laden issues such as abortion, it is difficult for people to separate their moral intuitions from their factual beliefs. With Akin, for example, his stance that abortion is fundamentally immoral (even in cases of rape and incest) is tightly wrapped up in his beliefs about the consequences of abortion and the science of female reproduction.

According to Liu, “moral coherence” refers to:

… the power our moral intuitions have to shape beliefs about facts, evidence, and science. Often, our intuitions about right and wrong conflict with well-rehearsed economic intuitions based on a cost-benefit logic. That is, it is often the case that a particular act feels morally wrong even though doing it would maximize positive consequences.

So how do people resolve this kind of moral conflict? In a paper with her colleague Peter Ditto, Liu suggests that people’s desire for moral coherence “initiates a motivated cost-benefit analysis in which the act that feels the best morally becomes that act that also leads to the best consequences.”

Which is understandable, although unfortunate.

The idea of “moral coherence”— a clear cousin of Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory—seems plausible enough, and Liu lays it out in a thoughtful, compelling manner. Unfortunately, this sort of fair-minded effort to understand how it is that an otherwise intelligent person could fall so far afield of reality is rare when it comes to political hot-topics involving moral disagreement.

Yes but what Todd Akin said was so infuriating!

I have a feeling that’s not a very careful or philosophical response.

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

The pope is getting pats on the back and kisses on the bum for patronizing atheists and telling us we’ll be “forgiven” by his imaginary friend as long as we grovel and mewl and puke first.

Not going to happen, Frank. Not interested. It’s your fantasy, not mine, and I don’t give a damn what your pretend boss is imagined to think of me.

In comments likely to enhance his progressive reputation, Pope Francis has written a long, open letter to the founder of La Repubblicanewspaper, Eugenio Scalfari, stating that non-believers would be forgiven by God if they followed their consciences.

That’s progressive? Gee, lower your expectations much? What’s progressive about that? It assumes atheism requires to be “forgiven” and that non-believers give a fuck about god’s “forgiveness” in the first place. That’s the opposite of progressive; it’s backward-looking.

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

A woman writes to her daughter’s high school programming teacher.

First, a little background. I’ve worked in tech journalism since my daughter was still in diapers, and my daughter had access to computers her entire life. At the ripe old age of 11, my daughter helped review her first tech book, Hackerteen. She’s been a beta tester (and bug finder) for Ubuntu (Jaunty Jackalope release), and also used Linux Mint. Instead of asking for a car for her 16th birthday, my daughter asked for a MacBook Pro. (I know, I know … kids today.)

My daughter traveled with me to DrupalCon in Denver for “spring break”, attended the expo at OSCON 2012, and even attended and watched me moderate a panel at the first Women in Advanced Computing (WiAC ’12) conference at USENIX Federated Conferences Week. Thanks to my career, my daughter’s Facebook friends list includes Linux conference organizers, an ARM developer and Linux kernel contributor, open source advocates, and other tech journalists. My daughter is bright, confident, independent, tech saavy, and fearless. In fact, she graduated high school last May — two years early — and is now attending high school in India as her “gap year” before heading off to college.

So what’s the problem?

I bet you can guess what the problem is.

Daughter was the only girl in the class. Daughter did well, helped other students. Then they started harassing her.

Did you not see her enthusiasm turn into a dark cloud during the semester? Did you not notice when she quit laughing with and helping her classmates, and instead quickly finished her assignments and buried her nose in a book? What exactly were you doing when you were supposed to be supervising the class and teaching our future programmers?

Um…don’t feed the trolls? If you don’t like being harassed, don’t take a programming class? Stop being such a drama queen?

She added an update:

Update: Thank you for all the great feedback on this post! For those of you wondering why I chose the USENIX blog as my platform — instead of another tech publication or my personal site — it’s because the USENIX membership and community have a long history of working toward increasing diversity in IT and supporting women in tech. Many of you suggested immediate action is needed to help combat this issue. I agree and that’s why I’m working with USENIX on their Women in Advanced Computing (WiAC) initiative via the WiAC Summits and the Facebook WiAC page, as well as other efforts within the community. I hope you’ll join us in this effort.

H/t Pieter Breitner.

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

So the question is, has this guy in China been reading Boccaccio, or did Marco Polo bring this story to Italy?

A MAN who claimed he could use his penis to rid a woman of ghosts that had taken up residence in her vagina, was arrested in China after performing the “sexorcism” for which he charged $3,000.

Huang Jianjun was arrested in the Guangdong Province after he convinced A Xin that he could remove evil spirits from her vagina by having sexual intercourse. A day later, Xin reported the incident to the police, and Jianjun was promptly arrested.

It’s Alibech and Rustico – or Alibech and Rustico were originally A Xin and Huang Jianjun.

He began by eloquently showing how the devil is the enemy of the Lord God, and then gave her to understand that the service most pleasing to God is to put the devil back into hell, to which the Lord God has condemned him.

The girl asked how this was done, and Rustico replied:
“You shall soon know.  Do what you see me do.”
He then threw off the clothes he had and remained stark naked, and the girl imitated him.  He kneeled down as if to pray and made her kneel exactly opposite him. As he gazed at her beauty, Rustico’s desire became so great that the resurrection of the flesh occured.  Alibech looked at it with amazement, and said:
“Rustico, what is that thing I see sticking out in front of you which I haven’t got?”
“My daughter,” said Rustico, “That is the devil i spoke of.  Do you see? He gives me so much trouble at this moment that I can scarcely endure him.”
Said the girl:
“Praised be God!” I see I am better off than you are, since I haven’t such a devil.”
“You speak truly.” said Rustico, “but instead of this devil you have something else which I haven’t.”
“What’s that?” said Alibech.
“You’ve got hell,” replied Rustico, “and I believe God sent you here for the salvation of my soul, because this devil gives me great trouble, and if you will take pity upon me and let me put him into hell, you will give me the greatest comfort and at the same time will serve God and please him, since, as you say, you came here for that purpose.”

I love these cross-cultural influences, don’t you?

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

The BBC will introduce you. There are three of them. They met at karate school.

They are now karate black belts, but because of their particular Christian beliefs, they have also decided to do battle – they say – against evil spirits or demons. They believe that these demons can possess a human being and cause suffering, depression or addiction.

“A demon can’t just come into anybody whenever it chooses to – God doesn’t allow that,” says Brynne.

“What happens is when someone sins or does something, or something’s done to them that allows the demon to come into them, that’s called the legal right or the reason that it’s there.”

Is that a fact – and how does Brynne think she knows that?

The young women have been trained by Brynne’s father, the Reverend Bob Larson, who says he has performed more than 15,000 exorcisms. They have appeared alongside him in America and overseas, including the UK.

They were told it by an apparently ignorant and credulous cleric, and they didn’t have the resources to know it was bullshit, so now they think they know it.

“Every single country has a specific kind of demon,” says Tess, 18, who loves music and reading.

They believe that the UK in particular is a hotbed for “witchcraft”, because of the popularity of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books.

“The spells and things that you’re reading in the Harry Potter books, those aren’t just something that are made up, those are actual spells. Those are things that came from witchcraft books,” says Tess.

Well here’s a fun fact: things can be in books and still be made up. Things can be in “witchcraft books” and still be made up.

Exorcism is an ancient practice and one that appears in many different religions, but many believers doubt the existence of demons.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, saw spirit possession as a neurotic delusion, and demons as repressed “instinctual impulses”.

Freud? What’s Freud got to do with anything?

Tess, Savannah and Brynne have all been home-schooled. In Brynne’s case it was because her father’s profession led the family to travel widely.

“With going [to] over 20 countries and stuff, I don’t really have time to go to school, but I’ll just sit at my desk and work on calculus or read all my books,” she says. “This is so much better than going to a stinky old school room.”

Brynne and Tess have been awarded places at college this year, while Savannah is already a college student. But as well as continuing their education they are determined to continue their spiritual battle against what they see as the forces of evil.

Well let’s hope they’re not going to a bible college, and will actually learn something now.

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

At the end of August, epidemiologists in Texas traced a measles outbreak to people who attended a particular megachurch, the pastor of which has preached against vaccinations. The pastor has apparently repented that stupid move.

Fortunately, that outbreak was able to be pretty well-contained — after the disease sickened about 21 people, Texas issued a public health alert and quickly found the source of the issue. The megachurch’s pastor was very cooperative and even agreed to host several free clinics to encourage the congregation to get their shots.

That’s good, but a fundamentalist area of the Netherlands isn’t doing so well.

The Netherlands has been struggling with a measles outbreak since May. So far, more than 1,200 people have been sickened, and 82 of them have ended up in the hospital. It’s the first time in the past 13 years that the country has experienced a rash of measles cases. And as the Irish Times reports, the “outbreak is concentrated in the country’s extensive Bible Belt, where the majority of fundamentalist Protestants do not believe in having their children vaccinated.”

So I look at the Irish Times article, from last June.

For the first time in 13 years, the Netherlands has been hit by a serious outbreak of potentially deadly measles. The outbreak is concentrated in the country’s extensive Bible Belt, where the majority of fundamentalist Protestants do not believe in having their children vaccinated.

More than 30 cases have so far been reported, but the public health institute, RIVM, says that “in view of the low vaccination uptake in the Bible Belt, it is assumed that the illness will spread further among unvaccinated children in the near future”.

In fact, the figure of 30 could already be a significant underestimate, acknowledges the RIVM. Given the reluctance of most of the ultra-conservative population to put their faith in medicine, not everyone who has become ill will have visited the family doctor.

So the Netherlands has its own Texas, only more so. Fewer people but more wrong. I did not know that.

The country’s epidemiologists are having difficulty tracking the outbreak because orthodox Protestants don’t usually seek treatment at the doctor after they become sick. The close-knit religious community believes in faith healing, and opposes medical interventions like vaccines because they undermine “divine providence.” And because they live among other orthodox Protestants, rather than being integrated among the rest of the country’s residents, they don’t benefit from the “herd effect” that helps prevent the spread of diseases — that is, the fact that vaccinating some people can end up protecting the unvaccinated ones around them.

So they believe in a stupid incompetent god that wants them to do stupid incompetent things like not getting vaccinated and not using medical treatment. How miserably pathetic.

And how horrible for the children of that “close-knit religious community.”

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

Bad idea department.

An online nursery based in Raleigh, didn’t like the original name of one of the plants they were selling, so they changed the name to Domestic Violence. You know — because they thought the new name was funny.

What is worse, the reason Plant Delights chose that name is because the plant colors are black and blue.

Yes, bad idea is definitely the department you’re looking for.

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

More from #standwithpax, because it’s that funny.

Neil Edmondson @NeilJEdmondson

I #standwithpax because the west cannot compete with China when tech is staffed by man hating feminists and leukophobic race hustlers.

You cannot innovate or disrupt while bound by the chains of political correctness #standwithpax

Chad Daring II @Single_WM

How much smoke is gonna come out of the ears of the uber liberals tweeting me bcuz I #standwithpax when they realize I’m dating a black girl

“Chad Daring”? Hahahahahahahahahaha

Christopher Benton @hyperdeath128k

I #standwithpax, because I’m too ignorant to realise that free speech also includes the rights to complain, and to inform others.

ancalgon @ancalgon

You can have any sort of humour, but once the femi-fascists are on to it, you’re fired. #standwithpax

And then I ran into yesterday’s – it’s not a very popular hashtag, as it turns out. So long, pax.

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

The  Foundation Beyond Belief has launched an urgent fund drive in response to the worsening Syrian refugee crisis.

FBB explains:

Our staff evaluated several charities working to aid Syrian refugees and selected International Rescue Committee as the beneficiary of our crisis response drive. The IRC is working in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq to provide the following assistance:

• In Syria, more than 700,000 vulnerable people have been served to date with medical and emergency supplies. The IRC’s Emergency Response Team is at work in camps for the displaced, providing clean water and sanitation, education to primary students, and emergency supplies to families.  
• In Jordan, the IRC provides reproductive health care, cash assistance, and social services to refugee families, as well as counseling and other support for survivors of sexual violence. In Jordan’s refugee camps, the IRC is providing technical support for refugee women and girls and helping to reunite children with their families.
• In Lebanon, the IRC operates four Women’s Centers for refugees and medical consultations. They are also helping hundreds of refugee families with cash assistance, enabling them to pay for rent, food, utilities, and other essentials.
• In Iraq, at the Domiz camp in the north, the IRC provides camp management and a safe space for women. They are also building a secondary school for refugee children. At Al Qaim camp, near the border with Syria, the IRC is providing free legal assistance, mobilizing community groups, and helping survivors of sexual violence.

A unique aspect of the IRC’s work is its emphasis on protecting women and preventing gender-based violence in situations of mass displacement. Click here for the IRC’s latest Syrian crisis updates.

A unique aspect of the IRC’s work is its emphasis on protecting women and preventing gender-based violence in situations of mass displacement. Click here for the IRC’s latest Syrian crisis updates.

“No matter what the military or political situation is, the human  situation is catastrophic. The relief organizations on the ground are  doing heroic work, and the humanist community is stepping up to help,”  said Dale McGowan, FBB’s executive director.

What you need to know about the Syrian refugee crisis:

• More than 2 million people are now externally displaced and 4.5 million internally displaced by the violence, a total displacement of one-third of the population of Syria. Half are children.
• More than 3,500 children currently in Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq crossed Syria’s borders unaccompanied or became separated from their families, according to UNICEF.
• Half of all Syrians are now in need of humanitarian aid.
• 35% of Syrian hospitals are now non-functioning; 70% of medical professionals have fled, according to the WHO.
• The scale of this humanitarian disaster is “unparalleled in recent history,” according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Donations to this crisis response drive will be forwarded continuously to the IRC. FBB retains no portion of donations. All donations to and through Foundation Beyond Belief are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. Click here to make a donation.

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

A couple of days ago Dan Fincke posted a cartoon on his Facebook page, and a lively discussion followed. The cartoon was about the bind women are in: no matter what we do, we get shit for it. Be more feminine/you’re a slut type of thing. I have Dan’s permission to quote from the discussion (and his posts are public, so you can see it for yourself). Part of what made it extra interesting is that Ben Radford participated. Yes that Ben Radford.

Ben Radford I agree with the premise, but unfortunately the piece ignores important distinctions between WHO is saying these things: A respected parent, or an anonymous Internet troll? Just because someone hears a criticism (or compliment) doesn’t mean they pay attention to it or influences them.

That’s convenient, isn’t it. No worries. Internet trolls don’t matter, and people at work don’t matter, and shouts on the street don’t matter – we can all just go back to sleep.

Dan and Heina make the same point. Radford goes on pushing his, though, insisting that not all comments are equally significant (when no one had said they were) and pretending that brought no implied message (“so calm down already, it’s not a big deal”) at the same time. Later he thought of another point.

Dan, another reason why I find this piece superficial, since you asked, is that it suggests a problem without providing, or even hinting at, a solution. The only way to prevent people from using sexist slurs or expressing their opinions is censorship. Unless the comic creators (or anyone else here) thinks curbing free speech is a good idea, I’m not sure what the proposed solution is.

Now that’s some hard thinking he did there. Nothing to be done other than censorship! No social pressure, no social consequences, no argument (despite the argument going on around that very comment) – just censorship, or nothing.

…pointing out social problems is easy. Racism exists, sexism exists, poverty is a problem, etc. No one denies that, and yes, I would say that without offering at least some hint of a way to solve the problem, simply stating that it is a problem is, as Dan would say, a truism. Carl Sagan noted, “It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

And

As I noted, I agree with the cartoon’s message… I’m pointing out that the issue of this sexist language is a legitimate and serious problem, and that it is much more complex and nuanced than can be shown in this cartoon. Apparently we can’t even agree on the message of the cartoon, so perhaps that’s part of the problem… I just wish it offered solutions to the problem instead of simply stating that it exists, which we all know. I’m not saying the cartoon is wrong, I’m saying it doesn’t go far enough toward clarifying the issue or offering a way to address it.

“Which we all know?” Oh really – then what’s all this been about, lately?

His final contribution:

Curious that people are touting how important and socially relevant this cartoon is, while at the same time diminishing its importance as “just a cartoon.” (And we can’t even agree on what its message is!) I make no apologies for wishing that it had suggested a solution to the sexism it highlights, instead of merely pointing out that it exists. If others are okay with cursing the darkness that’s fine, but I prefer to light a candle.

And which candle would that be, exactly?

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

It’s fun to read the tweets under #standwithpax. A few are serious and a lot more are sarcastic. Both sets are funny.

Mike Booth @somegreybloke

I’m going to go #standwithpax and play the world’s tiniest violin whilst laughing.

barefootwriter @bfwriter

if by unpopular you mean ignorant, incorrect, and harmful, then yes, we’re all mad at Pax for expressing unpopular opinions. #standwithpax

The New Bard @The NewBard

#standwithpax I don’t want to live in a country where free speech is punished and a man isn’t entitled to an opinion unless it’s popular.

#standwithpax because if you can’t exercise freedom of speech without a lynch mob coming after you, then freedom of speech does not exist.

Lynch mob!

Matthew Forney @realmattforney

#standwithpax because you shouldn’t lose your job because of your completely unrelated political views.

Not completely unrelated at all. Completely related is more like it. Toward the end of his post Ken White quotes one I hadn’t seen:

Pax Dickinson @paxdickinson

Tech managers spend as much time worrying about how to hire talented female developers as they do worrying about how to hire a unicorn.

Yeah. It’s related. Ken glosses it:

Pax Dickinson is apparently an officer within Business Insider, someone who supervises employees, and someone who interviews applicants to jobs at Business Insider.  If anyone ever accused Business Insider and Pax Dickinson of sex discrimination in hiring or firing, or of workplace harassment or discrimination, that tweet would be useful evidence for the plaintiff, and might convince the jury of discriminatory intent on the part of a Business Insider officer whose actions are attributable to his employer.  He has a First Amendment right to tweet that and cannot be prosecuted for it.  Nor is the tweet, itself, a civil violation.  But it’s potentially powerful evidence of how Business Insider is run, and it’s a freakishly reckless thing for an officer of a business to say in public.

And now he’s not an officer of that business any more.

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

Four of the Bangladeshi atheist bloggers have been charged with “defaming Islam” and other bullshit, and could get seven years in prison if they’re convicted, AFP reports.

Judge Zahirul Haque, sitting in a court in the capital Dhaka, said the bloggers were being charged under the country’s Internet laws, senior public prosecutor Shah Alam Talukdar told AFP.

“They have been indicted… with defaming Islam, the Prophet Mohammed and other religions through their Internet writings. They spread malice against all religions,” he said.

What can one say? That should never be a crime. It was normal to treat it as a crime all over Europe a few centuries ago, but we should have learned better by now. Learning better is a ratchet, and it’s shareable and universalizable, so “defaming” religions should never be treated as a crime. Religion should be voluntary.

The government has said it is determined to ensure communal harmony in the deeply conservative country where 90 percent people are Muslims.

Oh yes, “communal harmony,” meaning, everyone does what the majority demands.

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

Ken White has a post about Pax Dickinson at Popehat.

He starts by pointing out that free speech does not mean that speech will and must be free of consequences.

Speech has consequences.  It ought to.

In America, we have an elaborate set of laws strictly limiting the government’s ability to inflict those consequences.  That is right and fit; the First Amendment prevents the government from punishing us for most speech.

Private consequences are something else. Speech is designed to invoke private and social consequences, whether the speech is “venti mocha no whip, please,” or “I love you,” or “fuck off.”¹ The private and social consequences of your speech — whether they come from a barista, or your spouse, or people online, or people at whom you shout on the street — represent the free speech and freedom of association of others.

Yet people often confuse these categories. It’s one of the fundamental errors of free speech analysis that I like to write about the most.

I think Jason Walsh was doing that on Twitter a few hours ago, but I can’t be sure, because he never did answer my question asking what he meant by “off colour.” But I digress. Ken goes on to say criticism of Pax Dickinson led to the creation of a hashtag #StandWithPax, and to quote a tweet -

I #standwithpax because being offended is not grounds to start a witch hunt.

Paging Russell Blackford, paging Michael Shermer, paging paging paging.

The foundation of “witch hunt” rhetoric is the notion that some free speech (say, Pax’s) is acceptable, and other free speech (say, the speech of people criticizing and ridiculing Pax and his employer) is not. You can try to find a coherent or principled way to reconcile that, but you will fail. Pax Dickinson is not stupid. He tweeted provocative things, which have a natural and probable tendency to cause social consequences, seeking the social consequences he wanted:  the admiration of the like-minded, the anger of people he could laugh at, and general attention.

But not too much attention; not the wrong kind of attention; not the attention of his boss, for instance.

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