Patricia Churchland once talked to the Dalai Lama. You can guess what they talked about from knowing it was Pat Churchland. She tells Religion Dispatches about it.

Then what about religions that believe in reincarnation, where the soul survives bodily death and is reborn in another body? 

What would it be, this thing? If the brain is the repository of memories and skills and thoughts and perceptions, what would this thing be that goes off somewhere else and gets born in a squirrel or something? I actually had a conversation about this with the Dalai Lama many years ago and he was very interested in the brain. He asked a group of us to come and talk to him about it and teach him about it.

He and I got into this long conversation about reincarnation and I presented him with my reservations about such a thing. Something is left, namely the body, and as that disintegrates small creatures make use of the bits and pieces and in that sense it’s reincarnated, but there isn’t anything else, some nonphysical thing that has feelings and thoughts and memories and personality that goes into the little critters or into a person. What gets transferred from parent to child is information in the DNA, but that’s not quite what he had in mind either.

I think he was actually moved by this discussion. Of course, he didn’t immediately change his mind and say, “Oh, yeah, you’ve got to be right.” Which is fine—it takes time to get used to these things. But, I think it did motivate him to be very worried that there perhaps was not this nonphysical thing that had all the properties of personality and mood and temperament and learning that got transferred.

One would hope so, because what would it be, exactly? I’ve been wondering that for years – what people think they mean by it. What do they mean by thinking they’ve been “reborn” many times? What is the self in that thought? I think the self is, as Churchland says, “memories and skills and thoughts and perceptions”…which are accumulated over a lifetime, not born. A clone wouldn’t be you, and being reborn isn’t anything.

Interesting, given that Tibetan Buddhists believe that the Dalai Lama himself is a reincarnated soul.

That was what made the discussion particularly awkward. I told him, “I don’t think you could possibly be reincarnated. They may have identified something about you that was wonderful when you were a baby, but it can’t possibly be that something that was once in the Buddha got put into you. What would that thing be?”

It was a very frank conversation. The great thing about him was he didn’t want to stop this conversation. He wanted to know and he just pressed for more and for more. I was blown away by that.

New age books and even the Buddhists talk about how we are not our minds, that instead there is an “eternal Self” or “observer” that is really us. Aren’t your findings at odds with that? 

I think different circuitry is involved in the brain when the mind is thinking about something and when there is a kind of observation of those thoughts. I think it’s just different parts of the brain doing different things. There’s not a separate self in the sense that it’s a non-physical brain beyond the brain. The part of the brain that controls an eye blink reflex is very different than the circuitry that is thinking about that reflex. At one and the same time those two things can happen, so you can have a reflex of blink and be mentally observing that blink, so that’s just two different circuits in the brain doing what they normally do.

We’re all our own Omniscient Narrator.

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

Michael Nugent tweeted from the Dublin marriage equality march a couple of hours ago, with a photo:

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

We’re arguing about it in comments, so I’ll bring it up here to argue some more. (And watch: now no one will argue any more. That always happens.)

We’re arguing about this question of whether it’s ok for conference speakers to hook up with attendees, assuming mutual enthusiasm and availability.

I’m not on the side my haters* would expect.They would expect me to screek in horror and demand that everyone be taken away in chains. You know the drill – ugly old bitch, crazy bitter ugly angry old bitch jealous of all the hot young people having secks, wants to see them all boiled in oil.

But nah. I don’t see the problem. I agree that the bigger stars among the conference speakers shouldn’t be obnoxious about it; they shouldn’t blatantly leverage their status to get laid; but other than that, go for it. Why not? These things are social, and that’s why they’re fun. You meet people, you talk, it’s fun. Sometimes that leads to sex and/or romance, a happy weekend or an extended relationship. What’s wrong with that?

Conferences aren’t universities. Nobody’s grading anybody. Nobody has any real power over anybody. If people want to jump on each other, I can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t.

Conferences (of the kind we’re talking about) are like universities however in the sense that they’re meant to be intellectually stimulating, and often are. That’s erotic itself, as any fule kno. I was always getting crushes on the guys in the tweed jackets when I was at university – little crushes, big crushes, fun crushes, yearning crushes – alla crushes. This was 400 years ago, too, so there were far more men teaching than women; lots of scope for crushes. I never did anything about them though apart from trying to write really good papers. Sublimation, but then again, I wrote some good papers. Win-win if you ask me, but then I’m a nerd. But the point is: at conferences there’s not much reason not to act on attractions provided they are mutual. At least I can’t see any. You?

*They’re not just my haters. They all hate other people too. I don’t think I have any haters who focus on me alone. I don’t want to be boastful about them.

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

Brian Dalton has a follow-up to his “how to say no to more wine” video.

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

It’s obnoxious. For some reason he makes a big issue of the fact that the “no more wine thank you, I’m good; see how easy that was?” segment was about this one bit of PZ’s post and not about the other bit. Well I knew that but it doesn’t amaze me that other people didn’t, and anyway, I don’t see why he makes a big issue of it since he didn’t spell that out in the original video. If you do a parable and people don’t figure out exactly what the reference is, it’s conceivable that that’s your doing and not theirs. It’s obnoxious to get belligerent about it.

And then there’s the fact that six seconds in he casually refers to “Slandergate,” as if that were a real name.

And then there’s the text on the screen at the end.

P.S. All claims require evidence, whether they are extraordinary or not. And a claim, in and of itself, is not, by definition, evidence.

Oh, please.

In the first place, what does that even mean? What does it mean for a claim to require evidence? He must mean something like “all claims, to be reasonably believed, require evidence.” But that’s not what he said. Claims don’t require anything.

In the second place, a claim is evidence that a claim has been made.

In the third place, lots of claims can be reasonably believed without evidence. Countless everyday claims can be perfectly reasonably accepted and believed and acted on without evidence, and yes that is partly because they’re so ordinary. If a friend says she’s thirsty it’s perfectly reasonable to believe her unless you have some reason not to. Belief is the default with ordinary claims like that. Dalton doesn’t mean “all claims” at all. He probably means something like all contested claims, or all controversial claims – but then he should have said that. He shouldn’t have made such a big smug obnoxious deal of setting us all straight on the matter and then done a sloppy job of it.

So – meh.

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

It’s the turn of “Ardent Atheist” Emery Emery to try to peddle the line that all this talk of sexual harassment is actually a campaign to stop everyone having sex. It’s a campaign to shut down pleasure and fun and joy and good things altogether.

The in-groupers at FtB have been attempting to redefine flirting as sexual harassment and sexual intercourse as rape. The problem with this tactic is that it obfuscates actual acts of sexual predation while criminalizing very healthy sex-positive human interaction.

No actually we have not. Not at all. We’ve been attempting (as have many others – we sure as hell don’t deserve all the credit for this) to define sexual harassment as sexual harassment. Flirting is mutual; harassment is unilateral. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to sexual intercourse and rape.

We are not opposed to healthy sex-positive human interaction. That’s an idiotic thing to say – but of course it’s also a very familiar trope about feminists and feminism. DJ Grothe and Emery Emery and the rest of them are reaching into a particularly foul box of tools for this particular trope. It ought to be beneath them, and it says a lot about this haha “community” that it isn’t.

Adults choosing to be sexual with each other is beautiful. and we in the atheist/skeptic community are by and large, not weighed down by sexual hangups. We tend to be not only sex positive but also highly honest and moral people.

Oh dear god. That last sentence froze me in place for a second when I read it – from a capital S Skeptic!!

No. No, you don’t; no, we don’t. We don’t tend to be highly honest and moral people. I’ve never thought that about any set of people, because it’s just a ludicrous claim, about anyone; but in addition I’ve been learning to think it’s less and less true of people in “the atheist/skeptic community” over the past couple of years. That “community” is riddled with malice and aggression and tribal dudely misogynist bullshit. EE’s post is a classic example of that.

This insidious attempt to malign the fine people who frequent skeptic/atheist conventions as white, male dominated communities who both prey on women and work tirelessly to protect this so-called culture of rape we’ve been accused of building, must stop!

Not all of the people who “frequent skeptic/atheist conventions” are fine people. Why would they be? People are people. We’ve all got faults, and many of us have the kinds of faults that can inflict misery on other people. It’s not in any way extraordinary for people to be selfish or greedy or sexually predatory, or all those at once. Some people like that frequent skeptic/atheist conventions. Shocker! Not. And saying that doesn’t equate to saying all such conventions are “white, male dominated communities who both prey on women and work tirelessly to protect this so-called culture of rape.” That’s not what’s going on here.

The A+ folks have demanded that convention organizers add to their harassment policies, that no speaker be allowed to engage in sexual contact with any convention attendees. The attempt to instate such an insidiously over reaching rule speaks volumes to the mind set of these people.

I don’t know what he means by “the A+ folks” there. That is a label of course that is pervasively misused to name people who have nothing to do with “A+” apart from agreement with the claim that atheism by itself is not enough to make “highly honest and moral people.” If that’s what he means by it, then his claim is a ridiculous lie. Nobody I know or know of has demanded any such thing.

As this drama unfolded I found myself becoming more and more afraid to speak my mind and share my thoughts. And as I pondered whether or not I should say anything about this new development I realized something quite horrific. The only people who have frightened me into silence prior to this moment have been extremist Muslims. Think about that. The tactics of the FtB in-groupers have had on many in my community the exact same effect as the tactics of Muslim extremists. Ask yourself, “have I been frightened into silence?”. If the answer is yes please, speak up.

I’ll tell you what’s “horrific” about that. It’s the malicious dishonesty of it. It’s the grotesque insinuation that he’s afraid of being killed by “the FtB in-groupers.” People like us – people in our oh so honest and moral “community” – are afraid of violent Islamists because violent Islamists kill people they dislike. We don’t do that.

Moral and honest. No, I don’t think so.

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

Maryam Namazie writes:

PROTECT NAHLA MAHMOUD

Following her interview on Channel 4 on Sharia law, Islamists have threatened Sudanese secular campaigner and Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) Co-Spokesperson Nahla Mahmoud with death, calling her a ‘Kafira’ and ‘Murtada’ who has offended Islam and brought “fitnah”. The threats have been reported to the police who have advised that nothing can be done about the particular threats made by Salah al Bandar who has until recently been a Lib Dem Councillor. The police have even urged Nahla not to “anger” him further.

Hundreds of individuals and groups have already signed on to an open letter calling for the authorities to take action. You (and/or your organisation) can read more about the specific threats made and sign the open letter here.

After receiving a number of complaints from CEMB supporters, Spencer Hagard, Chair of the Cambridge Liberal Democrats, has written to al Bandar seeking an urgent response from him. Pending the outcome of his enquiry, the link between al Bandar’s webpage and the Cambridge Liberal Democrats website has been temporarily discontinued.

The Lawyers Secular Society is providing support and looking into various options available to address the matter.

Clearly, everyone has a right to religion or atheism without fear and intimidation. This is something al Bander and his Islamist friends need to learn.

EVENTS

14 September Rally and March for Secularism

Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain is endorsing the Central London Humanist Group’s Secular Europe March and Rally on Saturday 14th September 2013.

We will assemble at 12.30pm in Temple Place, next to Temple Tube Station; the March will start at 1.00pm and end in a Rally at Richmond Terrace, opposite Downing Street at around 2pm.

Confirmed speakers include Sue Cox (Survivors Voice), Charlie Klendjian (Lawyers Secular Society), Rory Fenton (AHS President), Philosopher AC Grayling, Adam Knowles (Chair of GALHA – LGBT Humanists), Philosopher Stephen Law, Houzan Mahmoud (Organisation for Iraqi Women’s Freedom), Nahla Mahmoud (Council of Ex Muslims of Britain), Maryam Namazie (Fitnah, CEMB and One Law for All), Pragna Patel (Southall Black Sisters), Naomi Phillips (Chair of Labour Humanists), Nina Sankari (Polish Rationalist Association) and Anne Marie Waters (One Law for All) amongst others.

More information available here: Join event page on Facebook and Event page on Meetup. We will be using the hashtag #SECM2013.

Other events

In the upcoming months, there will be evening drinks in London with philosopher Arif Ahmed and a meet-up of apostate asylum seekers and refugees on 19 September; lunch in Manchester on 24 August and Birmingham on 7 September organised by the Northern Ex-Muslim Meetup Group and the CEMB’s Annual General Meeting on 12 October 2013 in London.

Maryam Namazie and Nahla Mahmoud will also be speaking in Marseilles, Boston, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Nottingham, and Brighton in the coming months. More details can be found here.

CEMB FORUM, SKYPE AND GOOGLE HANGOUT AND AFFILIATES

The CEMB’s active web forum with over 3,000 members continues to support ex-Muslims. It represents a safe space where ex-Muslims can come together to discuss their problems and help each other. The forum includes sections on health and wellbeing and gender and sexuality, a parents’ corner, a resource centre and more. It is known for exposing Islamists and Islamic laws, and publishes articles and videos debunking Islamic myths and claims, including “science in the Quran. You can join the forum here.

Ex-Muslim Jaimie Barr will be working with CEMB as its Outreach Coordinator, including assisting ex-Muslims outside of Britain needing support and managing our Skype and Google Hangouts. Jaimie can be reached at cemboutreach@gmail.com.

A list of CEMB affiliated organisations can be found here.

NEW WEBSITE ON QURAN AND ISLAM

CEMB member The Rationaliser has a new website to help with research on Islam or the Quran. Features include Search, Ability to view each verse word-by-word and to see where else in the Quran the same Arabic word is used (helps with context), Verses have links to tafsirs explaining them, Verses link to any relevant hadiths and Verses also link to the “circumstances of revelation” (Asbab Al Nuzul). Please contact The Rationaliser with websites, documents, etc. containing other tafsirs or hadith collections which he might be able to incorporate. You can find more information here.

SUPPORT US

Help us to continue our important work: volunteer your skills; ‘Like’ our Facebook page; follow our Twitter account @CEMB_forum; join our events; and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please donate if you can. No amount is too small and every bit helps.

We are also in desperate need of office space so you if know of any free or reasonable spaces in central London please do contact us.

The issue of apostasy without a focus on Islam and Islamism is irrelevant in this era as it is only apostates from Islam who are killed due to Islamism’s access and influence. The CEMB is an important challenge to this regressive movement. Support us.

Warm Wishes

Maryam Namazie
Nahla Mahmoud
Spokespersons
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
BM Box 1919, London WC1N 3XX, UK
tel: +44 (0) 7719166731
email: exmuslimcouncil@gmail.com
web: http://ex-muslim.org.uk/

Company limited by guarantee and registered in England and Wales under company number 8059509.

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

Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast – I totally know the Buffalo Beast, they interviewed me once, like a million years ago – Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast, I say, had a little chat with Michael Shermer.

A friend warns, don’t read it aloud to someone who’s driving a car. That clearly implies also don’t read it while drinking, eating, lighting a match, balancing on a high wire, cutting your toenails, sitting with a cat on your lap, holding a baby, soldering a pipe, crossing a street, swimming.

It starts this way:

DR. MICHAEL SHERMER is known as an editor, a skeptic, a TED talker, a thinker. Others see him as “that intellectual lightweight who loves Ayn Rand and didn’t ‘understand’ global warming until unconscionably recently.”

And then it goes on. Read the list of things not to be doing while reading it before you read it. But do read it. Read it all.

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

Yesterday I told you about that stupid Facebook page Skeptics and Atheists against Rebecca Watson. Today Rebecca presents some new information about one of the people behind that page. First, there was a message…

A few days ago, I received this email via the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe contact form:

From: Cecil Fuson

Email: Viciousvestments@gmail.com

Location: Raleigh, NC

Category: Question for the Show

Subject: quote request

Message: Good day, my name is Cecil Fuson. Together with Brandi Olson and a member of the Atheist news group (A news) we run a small Facebook group that is called Skeptics and Atheists against Rebecca Watson. We currently have 87 members and are growing everyday. It should be noted that a fair number of our fans are also fans of the SGU as well as on the personal friend list of some of the members of the SGU

We were wondering if you could give us a quote and answer a question for us. Why is Rebecca Watson still on the SGU?
It is clear that by her own blog post that she no longer supports the JREF, the CFI or Richard Dawkins. It is clear by the large number of posts, groups and petitions that the Skeptic and Atheist community no longer support Watson. It is clear that Watson uses the fame from programs like the SGU to spread her own agenda and misinformation. While we fully agree that Rebecca Watson has every right to speak her mind, we feel that her actions , no matter how well meaning they may be, are doing more damage than good.
the SGU seems to support the same groups that Watson boycotts and the same groups that want nothing to do with Watson.
So with the public opinion being what it is, why dose Rebecca Watson still have a spot on the SGU?

Thank you for your time. And we hope to get a reply soon.

That’s what prompted her to find the Facebook page, and do a sarcastic tweet about it, which in turn is what reminded me of that page (which I’d seen, and reported to Facebook, of course to no avail, weeks ago), and what prompted me and several others to post on it. Meanwhile…

A few days after I Tweeted the link to the Facebook page, I received an email from someone who explained that they had discovered that Cecil Fuson is a registered sex offender who was convicted and went to prison for “indecent liberties with a minor.”

I spent the past day checking to make sure that this was, in fact, the same Cecil Fuson, and the facts line up. Cecil’s email address links to the Facebook page of Vicious Vestments, an LLC registered in North Carolina using the same address that is registered for the sex offender. Cecil’s dad is also named Cecil Fuson, but it appears he moved to Florida. Besides, Cecil’s Google+ profile that showed up when he emailed me has an avatar that looks much more like a 33-year old man than a 57-year old man, and I’m going to assume that the younger man is more likely to dress up as Boba Fett and start a company selling steampunk costumes, so I think we can say with a high degree of confidence that we’re dealing with the junior.

So there’s that.

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

John Scalzi quoted an informant who emailed him about ElevatorGATE and harassment via Twitter and Storify yesterday. (The quoting was with permission.)

A Twitter and Storify user who goes by the handle “@elevatorGATE” is a well-known cyberstalker of women via social media. His latest method of doing this is to compile thousands of pieces on Storify, often including every single tweet sent by his chosen targets, and then publish them, which notifies the women in question that he had published yet another piece archiving their every word. After repeated complaints and requests for help, Storify temporarily deactivated the notification feature on his account, which doesn’t actually solve the problem.

In a conversation yesterday with Xavier Damman, the Storify CEO suggested that the women @elevatorGATE is targeting turn off all notifications from Storify, which essentially suggests that they withdraw from the medium if they don’t like being stalked, and which also wouldn’t solve the problem of this user archiving everything these women say. One of the users pointed out that this is very much like telling a woman who is being harassed via telephone to never answer the phone. It was at this point in the conversation that Damman went from passively enabling a stalker to actively assisting one. He tweeted, in response to the women, that they “…can’t do anything about that. It’s @elevatorgate’s right to quote public statements…”

To interrupt for a moment – no it isn’t, not in every sense. It’s a legal right, but that doesn’t make it every other kind of right. The fact that it’s a legal right isn’t a reason for the CEO of Twitter Storify to pretend it’s also every other kind of right.

Prior to this point in the conversation, the women had named their stalker, but not used the @ symbol in front of his username. You know enough about Twitter to know why that’s a big deal. Damman either carelessly or deliberately notified a man stalking multiple women that they were seeking some way to prevent him from continuing to harass them, and then claimed it was no big deal because anyone searching for the information would have been able to find it. But there’s a very big difference between information existing and that same information being directly brought to a person’s attention.

If you know much about stalking, you’ll know what happens next. @elevatorGATE has substantially stepped up his harassment of the women who had asked Damman for help. Men who follow him on both Storify and Twitter have been bombarding these women via Storify notifications and Tweets with additional harassment. He has also increased his harassment of known online associates of the women in question, making it difficult for them to seek out help or support from fear of his beginning to stalk their friends as well. It’s the reason I’m contacting you privately, via email, rather than via social media: I’m afraid. I don’t want to be added to his list of targets.

Despite Damman’s claims that they can’t do anything, @elevatorGATE is violating Storify’s Terms of Service, which forbids users to:

Post, upload, publish, submit or transmit any Content that: (ii): violates, or encourages any conduct that would violate, any applicable law or regulation… (v) promotes discrimination, bigotry, racism, hatred, harassment or harm against any individual or group…

As I’ve mentioned here many times, I’ve tried to get Twitter to do something about 3 or 4 of the many instances of harassment I get via their service, and Twitter has been almost entirely unhelpful.

One comment sums up the nature of the harassment neatly.

When someone who has no particular welcome connection to you follows you around recording everything you say, and reposting all of it, and making sure you know they’re reposting everything you say, that is some sort of implicit threat. It might be a little less obvious what exactly the threat is, but I would note that, among people I know, women are pretty much always going to be a bit nervous when a hostile stranger is making it very clear that he is obsessively interested in them…

I’m not sure that applies only to women though, in fact I strongly doubt that it does.

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

Oh and did you know Alex Gabriel has joined Freethought Blogs? He has.

This is very good news.

Of course, it’s sad for him that FTB is in imminent danger of collapse – well people do keep telling us that, so it must be true – but he’s young, I’m sure he’ll bounce right back when it happens.

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

A beautiful Jesus and Mo yesterday.

I love the “women still dodgy” bit, also the fact that it’s in the Guardian.

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

Oh I think I get it – what DJ Grothe meant by saying he thinks “unduly-moralistic scolds end up actively diminishing human flourishing by their sex-negativity.”

He means if we get our way, and sexual harassment at atheist/skeptic conferences becomes unfashionable (aka “politically incorrect”), then there will be less sex at those conferences. There will be less total sex. Our goal, if achieved, would lead to less sex. That equals sex negativity.

Yes, if you define it that way, he’s right. The kind of sex where a dudebro plies a woman with alcohol until she becomes too out of it to consider whether or not she wants to have sex with him and just has it – that kind of sex there would be less of.

So, yes, if you’re thinking about sex purely from the angle of “I want as much of it as possible, under whatever conditions, in whatever circumstances, whatever the other person actually thinks about it” then anything that gets in the way of that goal is going to appear to be sex-negative.

But that’s a slaveowner’s way of thinking about sex.

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

And for today’s installment of thinly-veiled loathing – Stephanie quotes DJ Grothe on Facebook.

It’s rank.

There is an impressive distemper these days on the internets.

Many smart, good people that I know personally seem to fear this “call-out culture” online that is going on right now in many communities online. Folks are immobilized by a moral scare or panic that they think they are watching unfold presently. As for me, I think it all seems increasingly like some surreal science fiction imagining of some bizarre future dystopia. And so, I say:

Consensual sex — between any mature adult male or female etc. — is a human good. It is something that should be prized and promoted (would there be world peace if people just had more and better sex, ha?).

But instead I think unduly-moralistic scolds end up actively diminishing human flourishing by their sex-negativity.

And I curse the unholy alliance of the quack far-left so-called feminists: a different kind of ardent feminist than I am — and the authoritarian anti-sex rightist religionists whom I used to run with decades ago. (How the heck is it that these two equal opposites agree on so very much these days, and the two last decades, too?).

I have a disturbing answer, but it doesn’t work for a social networking or FB comment..

For a start – moral panic? Really? Trying to end sexual harassment – not consensual sex, but sexual harassment – is a moral panic? What an ugly thing to say.

Then, “unduly-moralistic scolds” – that’s right out of the time-honored woman-hating playbook.

There was such a thing as a scold’s bridle.

A scold’s bridle, sometimes called brank’s bridle or simply the branks, was a punishment device used primarily on women, as a form of torture and public humiliation.^[1] It was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclosed the head. The bridle-bit (or curb-plate) was about 2 inches long and 1 inch broad, projected into the mouth and pressed down on top of the tongue.^[2] The “curb-plate” was frequently studded with spikes, so that if the tongue moved, it inflicted pain and made speaking impossible. ^[3] Wives who were seen as witches, shrews and scolds, were forced to wear a brank’s bridle, which was locked on the head of the woman.

Nice job, DJ. That’s the way to convince everyone that there’s no misogyny in the skepticism community – call women you dislike “scolds.”

Branks were used in Scotland to punish slander, cursing, witchcraft or irreligious speech.

And then, wanting to end sexual harassment is not “sex negativity.” For that matter, sexual harassment is not sex positivity, either.

And then, there’s “the quack far-left so-called feminists.” Dog whistle dog whistle dog whistle dog whistle.

And then, perhaps worst of all, there’s “I have a disturbing answer, but it doesn’t work for a social networking or FB comment..” It’s so easy to imagine what he means. It’s even uglier than what he did say in social networking FB comment, so it’s ugly indeed, and we can easily guess what kind of ugly.

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

Transcription courtesy of John Morales.

I want to take this time today to answer this question I get a lot: why don’t I believe in the gospels.

Um — the first big problem I have with the gospels is that they are anonymous — a lot of people don’t know that, but it’s true.

Um, and no good skeptic, atheist, freethinker should ever accept any anonymous report just offhand; aah especially when we’re talking about something truly awful — I mean, the gospel writers have Jesus doing some pretty ugly stuff.  Umm, killing a tree for no reason, which makes him look completely insane; they have him claiming to be God, which would have been a major blasphemy within Judaism at the time; and they have him turning water into wine, which we all know is just a tactic to get the ladies drunk — right? — I mean, no-one turns water into wine for any reason that’s not just completely nefarious!

But if you’re gonna talk [whoopee noise] about someone like that, you can’t do that anonymously — and if you do, what is that?  What are we talking about?

That’s nothing more than gossip.

And I think that as good skeptics, atheists, freethinkers, we should all know how absolutely toxic, disgusting and beneath us it is to repeat and or report mere gossip.

[Person with wine bottle approaches wineglass-holding Mr. Deity: "would you like a refill?" "Um, no.  Thank you."]

Now.  See how easy that was?

Here’s another little tip: if you find it hard to say no to the refill, you can just leave the glass full!  Don’t take another sip!

That’s my friendly little piece of advice to those of you without a backbone, or any sense of personal responsibility!

The other problem with the gospels is that these anonymous reports are made years after the fact; some scholars say decades. Ah, that gives Jesus no opportunity to refute the claims — I mean, there isn’t a decent justice system in the entire world that doesn’t give the accused the right to confront his or her accuser.  That’s just basic justice.

And in many cases, even the witnesses of the witnesses are anonymous.

Really?! C’mon!  We’re skeptics! We don’t take stuff like that at face value!

The other problem here is confirmation bias: the tendency to see only what we wanna see.

That’s clearly what the gospel writers were doing here; they wanted a hero (or a villain, depending on your perspective), and they found one!

But, as good skeptics, we should all know the power of confirmation bias — I mean, for heaven’s sake, they found witches in Salem, and Joe McCarthy found the communists under every bed — as skeptics, we need to stand up to these anonymous gossipal authors and those who would repeat such gossip and say “have you no sense of decency, Sir! At long last, have you left no sense of decency.”

Of course, if you’re completely divorced from the skeptic community, I don’t expect you to understand these basic principles — but the rest of us should know better!

Remember: “do unto others”

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

A three-year-old observation by John Scalzi, just because I saw it and like it. The failure mode of clever is asshole.

So, apropos of nothing in particular, let’s say you wish to communicate privately with someone you’ve not communicated with privately before, for whatever reason you might have. And, wanting to stand out from the crowd, you decide to try to be clever about it, because, hey, you are a clever person, and as far as you know, people seem to like that about you. So you write your clever bit and send it off, safe in the knowledge of your cleverosity, and confident that your various cleverations will make the impression you want to make on the intended cleveree.

I hate that person already.

Is that so wrong of me?

I can’t bear people who think they’re fraffly clever and are always being it, which means they aren’t. Always being funny when really they’re just being obnoxious or tedious or both.

Two things here.

1. The effectiveness of clever on other people is highly contingent on outside factors, over which you have no control and of which you may not have any knowledge; i.e., just because you intended to be clever doesn’t mean you will be perceived as clever, for all sorts of reasons.

2. The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”

That makes this whole day worthwhile.

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

Behold: an asshole.

Start at 5:15.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMZ86PGVOQk

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

American Atheists has sent out a press release.

Cartersville, Georgia—Beginning Wednesday, visitors to Georgia State Parks vacationing in government-owned rental cabins can read atheist books during their stay courtesy of American Atheists. The national non-profit announced that its former President, Ed Buckner, will distribute hundreds of donated copies of atheist literature to the Red Top State Park for placement in cabin bedside drawers, alongside Bibles already placed there, on Wednesday morning.

Additional atheist books will be distributed to A.H. Stephens Historic Park in Crawfordville, Georgia at 2:00 PM EDT on Wednesday afternoon, with more parks to follow later this week.

In May of this year, Buckner was vacationing in Amicalola Falls State Park with his family, where he had rented a state-owned cabin. Within the cabin he found nine Gideon Bibles, placed there by park management. Since the cabins are government owned, Buckner considers it a violation of separation of church and state to allow their placement without granting equal representation to other religious groups. “When you go into a state park cabin and the only piece of religious literature there is a Protestant Bible, that suggests the government’s endorsement of that particular perspective,” said Buckner.

Upon receiving his complaint, park management initially removed the Bibles, but after conferring with his Attorney General, Governor Deal ordered them to be returned, noting that the books were donated by the Gideons, and adding “Any group is free to donate literature.”

The upset made international media, including The Economist and Reuters (see links at end of release).

American Atheists took Deal up on his offer this week with the first delivery of donated books, including copies of The Skeptics Annotated Bible by Steve Wells, Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq, and Fear, Faith, Fact, Fantasy by Dr. John A. Henderson. See images here.

“American Atheists does not believe the State of Georgia should be placing Bibles or atheist books in state park cabins; however, if the state is going to allow such distribution, we will happily provide our materials,” said President David Silverman.

“We appreciate the governor’s invitation to place atheist books in the cabins and look forward to providing visitors with the opportunity to learn more about atheism when they visit Georgia’s beautiful state parks,” said Managing Director Amanda Knief.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a national 501(c)(3) organization that defends civil rights for atheists, freethinkers, and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of religion and government; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy. American Atheists celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

American Atheists’ 40th Annual National Convention will feature such speakers such as NFL Oakland Raiders Chris Kluwe, Survivor®: Philippines grand prizewinner Denise Stapley, Grammy-winning Spin Doctors bass player Mark White, Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Maryam Namazie of the Council of Ex-Muslims, popular bloggers PZ Myers and Greta Christina, and American Atheists President David Silverman. The convention will also feature a costume party, live music, stand-up comedy, an art show and silent auction, national and local exhibitors, and childcare options for attending families. The convention takes place the the weekend of April 17-20, 2014 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

American Atheists, Inc.

P.O. Box 158

Cranford, NJ 07016

Tel: (908) 276-7300

Fax: (908) 276-7402

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

We need a painting.

Vermeer

The Geographer

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