In Ireland a group of priests – who have an official group, called Association of Catholic Priests, ACP, which makes it official and substantial and everything – got together with some other priests and mostly a bishop except for that one bishop who had to be somewhere. They got together and talked about things, and then issued a report on the things. This is that report on things.

They talked about how being a priest isn’t a red-hot popular career these days.

There is no doubt that priests are under great pressure, and that was generally acknowledged.  But we did meet with a fair degree of disagreement with our analysis of the situation. There seems to be a substantial number of bishops, and some priests, who believe that the problems we are facing are not due to any difficulties in the Church or with the priesthood, but are caused by a lack of faith in the people.  The people, they told us, have bought into the evils of materialism and consumerism, and don’t have time or interest in faith any more. They have, to all intents and purposes, become pagan.

Because those are the only two choices – being goddy, or being consumerist.

To their credit, the Association priests disagree.

It is a convenient belief, in that the blame lies elsewhere than among ourselves.  But, apart from stating their understanding of the problem, there didn’t seem to us to be any practical ideas, or indeed energy, around how this evangelisation could be progressed.  One bishop told us bluntly that he totally disagreed with our analysis, and another felt that dialogue with us would be very difficult while we held such unacceptable views about priesthood. We consider there are real problems here for the Irish Church. If there are such radically different understandings of the current situation, it is hard to see how we can make headway in working towards a solution.

Deep rifts.

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

Caspar Melville talks about what the Apostasy Project can do, and what it can’t.

Since we launched our funding drive for the Apostasy Project – our initiative to help those who feel trapped in their faith and want to leave – we’ve received a lot of messages of interest and support. Two hundred people have so far donated, and as of writing we are at just over £4,000, which is 20% of our target of £20,000.

Along the many messages of support and offers of help we we also get messages like this:

“I am an ex Muslim living in Kenya. I am in the closet because if I go public I will lose my job, my children, my security and even my life. Would you please advice and assist me.”

They goes on to say that they feel their only option is to look for asylum in a more liberal country, and to ask for our assistance in this.

The Project can’t give assistance with asylum, which is heartbreaking, but true.

That’s one of the things Michael DeDora and I talked about at WiS2. There are so many people who would like to escape theocratic oppression…and it just isn’t possible for CFI or any other non-profit to help all of them emigrate. It’s horribly sad.

But messages like this – and we’ve had many from all over the world – do show how widespread the problem of people being trapped within faith is, and why something like the Apostasy Project is necessary. While there is much we won’t be able to do, we can provide resources, personalised advice and a sense that there are people out there who have gone through the same thing, people who care. We can provide some hope.

So for those who have contacted us asking for specific help with asylum or financial assistance I hope you understand why we can’t do this. But we want you to know that we support you in your plight and that it’s worth persevering.

We still have a long way to go until we can really get going offering this support. We need another £15,000 and though we are in talks to get additional grant funding we won’t succeed without the financial support of concerned individuals. So please donate if you can, and spread the word.

Apostasy solidarity forever.

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

Guest post by Martha, originally a comment on Stephanie’s post Apologies Are Hard.

I think those who wish to reject Ron’s apology are forgetting that the goal here is not to have a movement only for feminist atheists, but to bring together a large coalition of people committed to social justice and atheism. Such a movement cannot exist without a commitment to feminism. Nonetheless, our culture makes such a commitment difficult for many decent and otherwise reasonable people – all the other side has to do is say “shrill” and all the buttons are pushed for many white men of privilege – and not just for white men of privilege.

I started reading atheist blogs – mostly here at FtB – about the time that DJ Grothe started blaming people calling for sexual harassment polices for the dropoff in women’s registration at JREF. I was appalled, but unsurprised by some of the misogynistic responses during the arguments that followed Groethe’s boneheaded statement. What really upset me, though, was the hyperskepticism of so many toward the feminists.

That didn’t surprise me; it’s pretty much a normal day at the office for someone in academic chemistry, but it did make me almost stop reading atheist blogs altogether. Yeah, I have to put up with this at work, but I don’t have to put up with it in my free time. I reasoned that with both atheist groups and UUs, there is a segment of the population I agree with pretty much completely, and a segment that drives me crazy. With the UUs, it’s the woo crowd that drives me crazy, and with the atheists, it’s the antifeminist/libertarian strain. I was willing to self-identify as a UU, because I shared a commitment to social justice and the inherent dignity of women even with those who I wished were more rational. I wasn’t willing to self-identify as atheist with those who promote or condone antifeminism.

There are basically two reasons I stayed and have slowly become more increasingly involved. First, I saw a couple clips from the first WiS conference and realized that there are many people involved in the atheist movement who share my values. The clips also made it clear that there are a lot of intelligent, witty and fun women in this movement, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know many of you better through your writings, and, more recently, in person at WiS2.

The second reason I stayed – and this is more relevant to the current discussion – is even during the worst of the battles, people like Stephanie and Greta convinced me that we’re making progress. I started to see comments from men who explained that their minds had been changed during these discussions, and I watched many of these men become strong advocates of feminism in atheism. I found that incredibly encouraging, and it’s a fight I can take part in. It was pretty clear to me that a split between those who embrace egalitarianism and those who don’t would eventually lead to a larger, more productive community than an atheist community so worried about divisions that it was willing to countenance MRAs and other misogynists and their apologists. Yes, a split at some level has to happen, but the end goal is to become the mainstream segment of the atheist community as the other groups become increasingly marginalized. How long it takes for that to happen depends a great deal on how much of the current movement is willing to get on board.

The question is not about whether there are enough people out there to build such a movement, but about whether current instituions are capable of leading such a movement. Abandoning institutions with similar goals is a measure designed to (a) get those institutions to respond to under-served groups or (b) lead to the formation of newer institutions who can lead professionally. Those are not necessarily mutually exclusive goals.

I take Ron Lindsay’s apology as an important sign that, whether or not the CFI board as a whole is listening to feminst atheists, he cares enough about the feminist atheists who work for him to put his ego aside and begin to listen. Yes, we might wish that this weren’t as difficult a task as it is, but I think we nonetheless have to give him credit for moving in this direction in spite of the difficulty.

I don’t mean that it’s not necessary to develop institutions with a primary focus on feminist atheism; indeed, I think we’ll need effective institutions that lead in this area. And, yes, I’d be more inclined to give my financial support to those institutions than to CFI or American Atheists. But I contributed to AA to show my appreciation for Dave’s support of the feminist community.  I think I will now follow Stephanie’s lead and make a contribution to CFI earmarked for Melody’s salary.

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

A sign on a bus in Israel:

Translation: “Every passenger may sit wherever he chooses (with the exception of those places marked for people with disabilities), harassment of a passenger on this matter may be considered a criminal act.”

“He” is the wrong pronoun there, but good about the sign.

Photo and translation by Gnu Atheism.

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

Reactions from the other direction also give us reasons to take Ron’s apology as genuine.

Like this for instance:

Center for Inquiry @center4inquiry tweets

CEO Ron Lindsay apologizes. http://t.co/ZMyrx2PHbL This weekend, Ron also gave a heartfelt apology in person to CFI staff and branch leaders

Russell Blackford @Metamagician tweets

@Center4inquiry This was a terrible thing for Ron to do. He has handed a victory to the people who bully, vilify, and intimidate.

What a horrible thing to say. Even what Ron said to CFI staff and branch leaders is terrible? Russell is so confident that all the staff and all the branch leaders are completely wrong to be upset about anything that he knows it was terrible for Ron to apologize to them? I don’t see how he can possibly know that, and I don’t see how he can possibly be unaware that he doesn’t know that, so I don’t see how he can reasonably make such a sweeping and savage assertion.

He goes on in the same vein.

Russell Blackford @Metamagician tweets

By giving an apology, @RALindsay hands a victory to people who trash and vilify opponents for reasonable disagreement.

There was nothing wrong with @RALindsay’s remarks. They were correct, diplomatic, and timely. He should withdraw his apology.

@RALindsay should not have apologised for anything.

You know…I’m all for internationalism, but internationalism doesn’t mean just brashly meddling in other people’s organizations and internecine quarrels from the far side of the planet. That’s colonialism rather than internationalism. I’ve never been able to understand why Russell feels entitled to meddle so energetically in the affairs of US secularist organizations. I don’t feel entitled to do that when it comes to UK or Indian or Australian organizations. Why does Russell carry on as if CFI were accountable to him?

I don’t know.

Note: avoid name-calling if you respond. Seriously.

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

So now I think my post yesterday on Ron’s apology was too grudging. It read as chilly to me then, but see Stephanie’s post for reasons to think it’s not.

Some specifics on the remarks and the circumstances surrounding them.

• While the remarks don’t contain much in the way of specifics, the apologies there are solid apologies. I’ve heard them referred to as not-pologies. They are not. They apologize for both the behavior and the results of that behavior.
• CFI is holding a branch leaders meeting at the moment. Several people who are there are telling me (in varying degrees of public settings) that discussions there have been intense. They are also confirming that when Lindsay says he’s starting to understand what the letters told him. He is listening again.
• Lindsay has apologized to CFI staff. Official communications from CFI refer to this apology as “heartfelt”, and people at the meeting confirm this. Both in terms of professionalism and in terms of him dealing with people I care about, this is huge to me.

Yes. The hell with being grudging. I apologize for being grudging. I take it back.

Amy too is optimistic.

You know what would be great for WiS3 (assuming it happens)? Martha Nussbaum and Christina Hoff Sommers doing a dialogue.

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

With some further remarks on his talk at WiS2.

It’s not a warm document. I wouldn’t call it friendly. But…it might make conversation possible.

I am sorry that I caused offense with my talk.  I am also sorry I made some people feel unwelcome as a result of my talk.  From the letters sent to me and the board, I have a better understanding of the objections to the talk.

I am also sorry that my talk and my actions subjected my colleagues and the organization to which I am devoted to criticism.

Please accept my apologies.

Ok it’s downright stiff. But it still might make conversation possible. I think that would be better than permanent war.

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

I saw the item about the woman who attempted to demonstrate that humans can live on “light” instead of food the other day, but opted to ignore it out of my usual tact and compassion. But Roger sent me a link to the Guardian’s coverage and my tact and compassion faded away when I read her profound thoughts on the subject.

A Seattle woman is attempting to go 100 days without eating to prove that humans can “live on light”.

Naveena Shine says she believes it is possible for human beings to survive without food and is conducting what she describes as an experiment to prove it.

Well it wouldn’t prove that. It would show that one woman could survive a hunger strike of 100 days. That wouldn’t show that humans can survive without food.

The 65-year-old, originally from Birmingham in the UK, has been consuming just water and “one, maybe two cups of tea a day” for the past 41 days, losing 30lbs in the process.

Hm. You would think she’d be able to spot a trend there, and then extrapolate from the trend, and thus figure out that she didn’t seem to be on the road to showing (much less proving) that humans can survive without food.

A doctor pointed out that humans aren’t plants and so they can’t live on “light”; it isn’t physically possible.

Shine contends that “a doctor can’t see living on light because he looks through different lenses” and has said she is not undergoing medical tests as during the experiment. She said she had experienced a “calling” which inspired her to stop eating.

“It came as an idea that became so powerful, I knew I had to do it,” she said. “And this has happened a few times in my life; I suddenly got this strong desire or need to do something that nobody in my world could imagine but it came so strongly to me, it was just like: ‘This is what I need to do.’ It’s intuition.”

Intuition that humans can survive without food? That’s a dopy intuition.

She said she had heard of others who claim to be able to forgo conventional nutrition, including a friend who claimed to have survived without food for three years.

“I know that people say it is [possible] and I don’t disbelieve them, and I don’t believe them, so the only way to find out is to do it,” she said.

No, it isn’t. There are other ways to find out, which are much less trouble and less hard on the body.

While Shine says her inspiration to eschew food does not come from a particular set of beliefs, her website praises Jasmuheen, an Australian woman who describes herself as an “ambassador of peace” and “international lecturer”, and whose teachings that it is possible to subsist on light alone have been linked to the deaths of four people.

Oh! Well how inspiring.

Jasmuheen claims to have lived for years on light alone, but tried and failed to go without food and water for 10 days in an experiment for Australian television program 60 Minutes in 1999. A doctor for the network noted that after 48 hours Jasmuheen displayed symptoms of dehydration, stress and high blood pressure. The network cancelled the experiment after four days when Jasmuheen’s health continued to deteriorate.

Without food and water? That’s idiotic.

Shine has eschewed medical evaluations.

“Doctors can’t really have that much to say with this, because it’s not within the doctors’ paradigm. A doctor can’t see living on light because he looks through different lenses, he looks through different eyes.”

That’s some dangerous woo.

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

Divided Under God on the reversal in the Margaret Doughty case.

On Friday June 14th, we broke the story of Margaret Doughty, a 64-year old atheist from the UK who was told by the USCIS that in order to gain conscientious objector status, she would need to provide evidence of a religious reason for her objection “on official church stationery, attesting to the fact that [she is] a member in good standing and the church’s official position on the bearing of arms.”  This was a clear violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, as pointed out in a similar Supreme Court Case, Welsh v. United States.

The story hit the national stage, featured in articles on CNN, Huffington Post, Raw Story, RichardDawkins.net, and many others. Ms. Doughty’s case was brought to the attention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who wrote a letter to the USCIS on her behalf, as well as the American Humanist Association, who did the same.  Ms. Doughty’s local Congressman, Blake Farenthold, also got involved, helping to get her case escalated to the highest levels of the USCIS for review.

Today, she received an email from the congressional office with the following message from the USCIS included:

“This Service hereby withdraws the request for evidence (RFE) issued on June 7, 2013.  This Service accepts your detailed statement in satisfaction of the information requested by the RFE.  Your application for naturalization has been approved.”

Solidarity forever, eh?

More coverage -

The American Humanist Association

The Huffington Post

Salon

The BBC (via YouTube)

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

From the Secular Coalition for America newsletter:

An atheist woman, who was originally told she must join or church or her U.S. citizenship application would be rejected, yesterday was granted citizenship.

Margaret Doughty, an atheist and permanent resident of the U.S. for over 30 years, was told by immigration authorities earlier this month that she had until today, Friday June 21, to officially join a church, because her conscientious objections to war were only valid if those beliefs came from religion. On Thursday, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services retracted their demand that Doughty show proof of religious affiliation and informed her that her application for naturalization had been approved.The Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, sent letters on behalf of Doughty.

Ahhh. That’s good. That’s excellent.

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

Some game developers (is that the right name for them?) got a desirable spot at a gaming expo but then decided not to take it up after all, because of the people behind the expo.

But in the back of our minds all along, we’ve been bothered by the public stances that Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the founders of PAX’s parent organization Penny Arcade, have taken on a number of issues.

First there was the entire “Dickwolves” debacle, during which Mike said that it “felt pretty good” to “support rape culture.”

Then there were the Penny Arcade Kickstarters, one of which offered to let backers pay them $7,500 to work as a Penny Arcade intern for a day.

When critics recently raised objections about the over-the-top depiction of female characters in Dragon’s Crown, Jerry referred to opinions that differed from his own as “censorship.”

And then yesterday a panel was announced for PAX Australia entitled “Why So Serious?” Its description initially included the lines

Any titillation gets called out as sexist or misogynistic, and involve any antagonist race aside from Anglo-Saxon and you’re called a racist. It’s gone too far and when will it all end?

Hmmmyeah.

This morning we stopped pushing those long-held reservations about Jerry and Mike into the back of our minds. We talked to each other and did a simple show of hands– do any of us feel comfortable presenting Gone Home at PAX?

No hands went up.

We believe that people’s opinions and actions on social issues and business ethics are important. We believe that agreeing to pay the organizers of PAX over $1,000 for booth space, and to present our game on their showfloor for four days, provides explicit support for and tacit approval of their publicly demonstrated positions on these subjects. And we have finally come to the conclusion that we cannot support Jerry, Mike, and their organization by participating in this event.

So they’re not presenting their game at PAX.

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

Wo. Megan Carpentier at Raw Story interviews Dave Silverman at Net Roots Nation, and he has some very good things to say.

Raw Story: I notice on your lanyard that’s you’re wearing the “Trust Women” button from NARAL, and I know there’s been a lot of controversies within atheism over the last few months about the confluence of atheism and feminism, and sexism within the atheist community. Obviously, there was a very big blow-up after the feminism and secularism conference because of some remarks made by a male atheist that reinforced sexist tropes. How do you think that atheists can address these problems within the community and address the kind of language that’s been used to marginalize women?

Wo. She’s been paying attention.

Silverman: That’s a difficult question, and it’s a big question. The reason I’m wearing this NARAL pin is because I’m a feminist. I’m a proud feminist. And I’ve always been a feminist. Now, American Atheists is not a feminist organization, but I believe pretty firmly that feminism is the inevitable result of atheism, that sexism is rooted in religion. And that’s not a perfect thing, there are other roots of it, the paternalistic societies.

But really when we’re talking about how we’re dealing with this, it’s hard because atheism is all about free speech, atheism is all about open communication, and some atheists are simply not nice people. And just like some Christians are not nice people, and some Jews are not nice people, some atheists are simply not nice people. And there’s a lot of people who are in that middle area, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding. So what I think has to happen is that the feminist voice in atheism has to be protected — protected may be not the right word, but I’ll use it anyways. The voice of feminist has to be protected, it has to be amplified, it has to be helped by the men in atheism and by the women as well. We have to make a stand that says, “It’s just obvious that men and women are equal and it’s also obvious that rape jokes sent to feminist speakers and sent to feminist bloggers, that’s not what good people do.”

At the crux of that, I’ve said many times that the atheism movement is the good guys. We are the good guys! We strive for equality, not advantage, that’s what makes us the good guys. Good guys don’t act like that. They don’t act like that to our enemies, and they don’t act like that to our allies. I have seen people within the atheist movement treat other atheists more poorly than I would treat the worst of our adversaries, and that shames me. That makes me ashamed of them.

I think the Women in Secularism Conference was a huge success, in my personal opinion. I was there, and I though it was great, and it was also packed full — and packed full larger than the first one (it was the second conference), and I hope there’s going to be a WISC 3, I hope there will be a third one. And I think that even if there isn’t, I think the feminist voice in atheism is going to continue to expand, as it should, I think it’s going to diversify more, and we are seeing that diversification within the feminist movement, within the atheism movement. And what I hope, and what I think will happen, is that the atheist movement on the whole will see the anti-feminists for what they are and drop them. And I think that’s going to happen.

I’ll do what I can to help!

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

So how about that Paula Deen, huh? First there’s the whole thing with producing recipes for cheeseburgers served between two doughnuts while diabetic, and then there’s the racism. Isn’t American life interesting?

She has faced a volley of criticism this week over her remarks in a deposition for a discrimination lawsuit by a former employee. In the document, she admitted she had used racial slurs, tolerated racist jokes and condoned pornography in the workplace.

Part of her down-home charm, isn’t it? Wasn’t that the idea?

Ms. Deen has managed to offend even her most uncritical fans before, most recently in January 2012 when she announced her diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes on the same day she endorsed the diabetes drug Victoza and a lucrative collaboration with Novo Nordisk, the drug’s manufacturer. Because she had built her career on a no-holds-barred approach to sugar and fat (creating recipes like a cheeseburger patty sandwiched between two doughnuts and a Better than Sex cake made with cake mix, pudding mix, and heavy cream), she was roundly criticized for encouraging an unhealthy diet for others, hiding her illness and then trying to profit from it.

Well I’ve always liked Lidia Bastianich better anyway.

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

Guest post by Eamon Knight and AJ Milne.

Eamon Knight, starting with a silly claim by Rabbi Sacks:

you cannot expect the foundations of western civilisation to crumble and leave the rest of the building intact.

I see this fallacious metaphor often enough that it deserves a name. A society is not a building; it does not rest on its history in the same sense a building rests on its footings. A society is more like a living organism, with the capability of continually renewing and even resculpting itself (think of the radical transformation of insect larvae into adults).

(But if we do want to run with the civil engineering metaphor, note that these days, we can even replace the footings of large historic buildings in situ, eg. replacing rotted wooden pilings with modern materials like concrete and polymers. And in fact Western societies have been gradually, over the last few centuries, replacing the rotten wood of _a priori_ moral order with secular ethics based on known human needs.)

AJ Milne, starting with Eamon’s retort:

I see this fallacious metaphor often enough that it deserves a name. A society is not a building; it does not rest on its history in the same sense a building rests on its footings. A society is more like a living organism, with the capability of continually renewing and even resculpting itself (think of the radical transformation of insect larvae into adults).

Now that’s actually a decent metaphor, right there.

And re replacing rotting wood, exactly. And it’s not like it’s a new thing, either.

It isn’t like this is actually such an obscure phenomenon, Dear Mr. Sacks. But let’s review all the same, as apparently you’re in the slow class…

See, the earliest human civilizations of any size were fairly brutal affairs by modern standards. And there’s something of a continuum from those to what the various modern states try to make work now. I figure the earliest monarches are a little better than straight out dictatorships really only in that succession is worked out ahead of time, and the relative continuity of the hierarchy did, over time, allow a somewhat persistent social contract between the rulers and the ruled, which could then evolve to something a little less brutally one-sided. If you were lucky, anyway. As in: if it’s been worked out the king actually has to try people (or at least people with any title) in public and declare the charges, his son is generally expected to follow the same rules if he wants to get along as well as he did with folk who might care and might also be armed and/or tempermental.

That’s one of the things state religions maybe did for civilization: having a proper royal cult turned the tyrant into a king, and the state religions Constantine and Uthman found convenient for their purposes did much the same job. That’s one of the ways religious flakes maybe get to declare their preferred superstition a ‘foundation’…

But it hardly means anyone* wants the pharoahs back. Shocking, I guess, how we’ve allowed that particular bit of masonry to ‘crumble’, too, innit.

And the reality is, against the fable propagandists like Sacks sell, it was never about an absolute code. The code was always being worked out and modified over time by humans; it’s just that over the same time, this process has become somewhat less obscurantist. Time was once you declared yourself god and had a priesthood dutifully inform the people regularly that they’d better bow if they knew what was good for them; time moves on and if you had sufficient political acumen maybe you pick your holy man and holy book, or edit it to fit the needs, à la Constantine, and then thereafter if you get a little selective about which rules the constabulary actually bother to enforce, well, again, let’s be practical; who’s going to check whose shirt is of mixed fibres anyway? (Mind, this presents problems, sure; fundamentalists will fundament, given half a chance, and having that canon around was always a hazard that way, but anyway, we’re working with what we got, here…)

And then take that celebrated Magna Carta; it has a proper ‘in God’s name’ on it, somewhere, but it was a treaty made effectively at the point of a sword (and at best very selectively followed for generations after and only revived as the Rule To Follow somewhat conveniently by a parliamentarian who liked the cut of its jib much, much later). And now lots of modern parliaments argue like mad about what the law’s to be, and if you’re paying attention, what actually winds up written, it’s about a lot of things and power and politics and stability and who may actually protest and who may actually pay and who may actually show up to vote and so on… But some clerk will still have the job of stamping some god’s name on the finished document at the end of the day to make it all official-like, all the same. This is a little more naked than were those earlier emperors who would declare themselves god and then work out just what they could get their barons to tithe as a more practical matter behind closed doors, but the principle’s much the same.

Now you can protest legislation isn’t morality, but again, the latter’s essentially the same phenomenon, and they do reflect one another. And they do evolve similarly, and are similarly subject to revision. And we do, again, work them out, bit by bit, between ourselves, as we bump up against one another, fight and argue and sometimes get along. We’re social beasts with this curious thing about us called culture that can change vastly faster than can our biology, and change it does.

So, seriously: Sacks thinks the Gnus aren’t thinking about this? Huh. Cute…

I might be more impressed with his self-serving, tediously overexposed smear, if I could see he were. Or at least that he were reporting it with the faintest interest in reflecting something remotely like the reality our civilization has lived.

(*/Or wait, in fairness, there’s probably people who do. So let’s keep outvoting them, shall we?)

Part deux

I figure I kinda know the minds of hacks like Sacks by now. Next it’s gonna be, oh, look, religion did this great thing, made kings from tyrants, isn’t that great, hallelujah, yadda yadda…

Let’s not oversell anything. Kings may be a mite better, sure. A little more stability, a few fewer revolutions and violent bloodlettings over succession, that’s nice, sure…

But until it’s been tamed by time and politics and angry mobs and rebel barons, that’s the only thing that’s better about a monarchy. And lots of places the only way you get anything near a modern democracy out of that is when those pesky and frequently very ugly Enlightenment revolutions get rolling, and various dark threats about nooses made of intestines are uttered. Some places it’s less marked and total than those revolutions, but even there it’s a messy business often beginning in the streets; you don’t get to Elizabeth II and her largely ceremonial role from Henry VIII without a few very ugly brawls. And claiming any religion has a whole hell of a lot to do with any of that is again, typically facile and self-serving. Note that, sure, it took off in Christian Europe first, but it’s not like we particularly see the religious authorities universally egging it on, either, nor is it ever real clear it’s the religion that has a lot to do with that so much as the wealth and prosperity spreading more generally through society, the causes of which may have as much to do with geography as human creeds. And at a more meta level, sure, the priesthood sometimes does get closer to the people than the king they’re supposed to support, and the politics gets complicated, and you get your Romeros and your revolution theology, but that’s no more surprising than the fact that sometimes the people working in the secret police start realizing what they’re supporting with their work really isn’t in their long-term interest either.

And none of this, of course, again, makes the underlying code laid down by any particular religion at any particular time sacred, nor the religion itself that important, nor at all indispensable. Publicly run programs and less formal community and social groups fill vast areas of the civic roles the old state religions took (public education, especially, not that the religion is always so happy about letting that go). What’s worth discussing at any time, sure, is how well those are filling needs, and that will always be a complicated story, and secular democracies, as relatively new phenomena, are always working on those, and societies in general always tuning, always fiddling, and probably always will be. But this isn’t a sign of some dreadful underlying malaise or decay; it’s the hallmarks of the living, dynamic, changeable things our societies all are.

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

More from the God hates women brigade.

Sajila Gujjar, 18, was a first year university student studying computer science in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Family and friends described her as talented, intelligent and determined to make a difference.

She was especially popular among younger children in the Faqirabad neighbourhood of the city where she lived – providing them with free after-school tuition classes.

Last Saturday, Sajila left her home in the morning for university.

“It was the last day of her exams and she was looking forward to her summer holidays,” her mother recalls.

It was the last time her mother saw her.

In the afternoon, Sajila’s father Shahjahan Gujjar, received a phone call. A female suicide bomber had been used to target the students on a university bus and 14 young women were dead including his daughter.

The injured were taken to a nearby hospital, and relatives rushed there, so then the hospital was attacked by men with guns. Nurses were killed.

“This was an attack on women’s education because they want to keep us illiterate,” says Sana Bashir, a teenage biotechnology student who narrowly escaped the bombing.

She’s brave though. Appallingly brave.

Established in 2004, Sardar Bahadur Khan Women’s University is the only all-female university in the province of Balochistan.

For some tribal and conservative families in smaller towns, it was seen as the only place to send their daughters for higher education.

The bloodshed on the university campus may well change that now.

Sana feels the attack is a setback for women’s education. But she says it is not going to stop her from going back to her studies.

“We cannot let them achieve their targets [of preventing female education]. No matter what happens, I am determined to continue with my education. We cannot give up our goals we have worked so hard for.”

She shouldn’t have to be brave. It shouldn’t take appalling courage to go to university.

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

Dan Cardamon looks back on The Great War and rallies the troops. He exaggerates the time a little – it’s two years, not three – but it feels like twenty, so hyperbole makes sense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYw-HjKrmY4

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