What makes a message grossly offensive?

Sep 15th, 2012 10:46 am | By

Bernard Hurley did a very informative comment about the law under which Azhar Ahmed was found guilty of  “posting an offensive Facebook message.” It’s too informative to hide in comments so here it is.

Bernard Hurley

Ahmed was prosecuted under clause 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003. The purpose of the act is to define the rôle of OFCOM and to regulate such things a local radio and indeed any services running over publicly funded or partially publicly funded electronic networks. Section 127 is buried in the middle of it and reads:

127 Improper use of public electronic communications network (1) A person is guilty of an offence if he—

(a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character; or (b) causes any such message or matter to be so sent.

(2) A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—

(a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false, (b) causes such a message to be sent; or (c) persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.

(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both. (4) Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply to anything done in the course of providing a programme service (within the meaning of the Broadcasting Act 1990 (c. 42)).

As far as I can tell, the intent of the legislation was to stop nuisance calls, but, as can be seen, it is very vague. The judgement is only in a magistrate’s court; personally I think it should be appealed. I think, Ophelia, you have put your finger on two legal problems. Which are:

(A) What precisely is a message in the context of services like Facebook?

and:

(B) What makes a message grossly offensive?

The second of these is dealt by the Law Lords decision in DPP vs Collins http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldjudgmt/jd060719/collin.pdf In this case Collins had sent repeated telephone messages to his MP in which he called immigrants and asylum seekers “Wogs”, “Pakis”, “Black bastards”, and “Niggers”. One question at issue were whether, in the given context, this was grossly offensive or merely offensive. The context includes the fact that the actual recipient of the message was likely a secretary or an intern and that Collins did not know or care whether this person would be offended.

The Law Lords found for the DPP (i.e. the messages were grossly offensive) however the criteria they used look like a legal minefield to me:

“Usages and sensitivities may change over time … there can be no yardstick of gross offensiveness otherwise than by the application of reasonably enlightened, but not perfectionist, contemporary standards to the particular message sent in its particular context. “The test is whether a message is couched in terms liable to cause gross offence to whom it relates.”

As to (A) it seems that a message has to have a recipient or group of recipients. I’m not sure what the distinction is as regards Internet communications. Is there a distinction between a blog post and a comment on the blog? Is there a distinction between posting something on your status and posting the same thing on someone else’s timeline? I’m not sure what Ahmed did and why it was considered to be a message.

However there is another interesting part of DPP vs Collins. It is made clear that the aim of this particular offence is to prevent a service provided and funded by the public, for the benefit of the public, for the transmission of communications from being used in a way that contravenes certain basic standards. In the UK most of the land line and internet backbone is publicly funded and in practice it is difficult to avoid using them. However it is clear that the law does not apply to a companies private network, it it does not use these services. It would presumably not apply to a message sent over a completely privately owned mobile phone network either.

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Storify fame

Sep 15th, 2012 10:25 am | By

Well there’s one thing about the ElevatorGATE stalker’s obsessive stalking and Storifying, which is that it makes it easy to point to some crazy.

I can’t remember why I decided to look at his Storify just now, but I did, to find that he’d storified a conversation I was still having with Amy and Glendon and Melody. Whew! Don’t I feel special! Being watched every second…yeah, that rocks.

But he also Storified this one, in which two people who have lived in totalitarian countries earnestly testified that yes indeed “they” really are totalitarians.

Absolutely; not hyperbole at all.

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No defence

Sep 14th, 2012 5:43 pm | By

Jacques Rousseau has a good post on The Bumblebee Affair and assigning blame and when bullying is what’s called for. (Spoiler: never.)

The takeaway:

No matter how you assign blame for past actions, or what your character judgements are in relation to all the players in this soap opera, we should all remember to include ourselves in those character judgements also, and try to be objective when thinking of our roles in causing or facilitating harm to others. In this instance, Ms Bumblebee has no defence – in the knowledge that Jen McCreight has been jeered off the stage, and had a long-standing depression triggered, she doesn’t take the option of silence (never mind sympathy). Instead, she broadens the net of victims to members of Jen’s family (and of course carries on with ridiculing Jen while doing so). That’s all “on her”, as the Americans like to say, no matter what sins you think Jen might have committed in the past.

Might be a handy insight for a workshop on bullying.

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In which I eat crow

Sep 14th, 2012 4:42 pm | By

A bit of housekeeping. I asked Chris Stedman about that whole business of my doing something not 100% unlike what Booly Wumblebee did the other day in the matter of Jen and her father. He replied honestly that he thought my self-repudiation should have been more public than comments. Fair enough!

It was June last year. The title was Helicopter parents. It was not my finest hour. I hadn’t even remembered it when I wrote the post about Kristina Hansen’s version. That’s one time when the obsessed haters who monitor my every word actually did get something right, and taught me something.

There are a lot of comments on the Helicopter parents post, but never mind that; they wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t written the post, and the blame is all mine.

Sorry, this all looks a bit self-obsessed and vain – you know, making a display of one’s scruples and so on. Ew. I hate that kind of thing. That’s not it – it’s because of what Chris very fairly and honestly said when I asked him.

I apologized to Toni Stedman at the time, and it didn’t occur to me that I should make that public. Now it’s public.

Now…if the pope starts getting family members to stick up for him when I go after him, I’ll be super-critical of them and I won’t apologize. But he’s the pope. I think that’s fair. Strict, but fair.

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The Virginia Taliban

Sep 14th, 2012 11:17 am | By

Parents in Virginia can prevent their children from getting any education at all if they want to, provided their reasons are religious. What a great arrangement.

Nearly 7,000 Virginia children whose families have opted to keep them out of public school for religious reasons are not required to get an education, the only children in the country who do not have to prove they are being home-schooled or otherwise educated, according to a study.

Virginia is the only state that allows families to avoid government intrusion once they are given permission to opt out of public school, according to a report from the University of Virginia’s School of Law. It’s a law that is defended for promoting religious freedom and criticized for leaving open the possibility that some children will not be educated.

 

The possibility? The near-certainty. The regulation of home schooling is appallingly lax in most states, and the result is children whose education consists of watching tv.

Home-school advocates say the law is essential to preserving the rights of families who believe that any state control of their children’s education would violate the tenets of their faith. It takes on particular importance in the state where Thomas Jefferson helped define religious freedom as a bedrock principle for the country.

“They feel that their deity has given them that responsibility,” said Amy Wilson of the Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers. For such families, she said, to have to file paperwork and evidence of progress would put them in a crisis of conscience.

So they get to stunt their children’s lives. Fabulous.

Block became interested in the statute years ago, when a teenager asked for help because her parents had requested a religious exemption from compulsory attendance when she was a little girl, and she later wanted to go to school. It wasn’t until Block and a research assistant began looking into the 1976 law that he realized it was unique.

Once parents in Virginia are granted a religious exemption, they’re no longer legally obligated to educate their children.

The statute does not allow exemptions for political or philosophical beliefs “or a merely personal moral code,” but the beliefs do not have to be part of a mainstream religion.

“We were surprised at how regularly the exemption is granted,” Block said. “School systems almost never deny it.” And, according to a survey of superintendents in the commonwealth, school leaders rarely have further contact with the families after granting an exemption.

Sorry, kids. It’s the free exercise clause. Have a nice life; bye!

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Another neighbor reports on Amish life

Sep 14th, 2012 10:08 am | By

A comment by Socio-gen, something something…

I grew up in northeastern PA in an area that had a small Amish population (about 80 families — or 18-ish depending on whether one counted households or kin relationships). My experience was pretty similar to yours [isavaldyr's].

Most of the families were dairy farmers, with the poorer men working “outside” jobs in construction. The wives and daughters often ran roadside vegetable and baked good stands, in addition to all the housekeeping and child-rearing — all made more difficult and labor-intensive by their refusal to use modern technology. Few Amish women had any schooling past the 6th grade.

The amount of abuse that Amish women and girls experienced (then and now), and the degree to which it’s simply accepted by everyone in the Amish community as an expected, normal, day-to-day experience is sickening.

Trigger Warning for a description of abuse: I still remember seeing the girl who sold baked goods on the corner being whipped by her father (with a buggy whip) for failing to sell as much as he’d expected. I was crying and begging my grandmother to stop the car and help. . . I was only 7 or 8 and didn’t understand any of her explanation of why we couldn’t interfere. Someone is being hurt, what do you mean we can’t do anything?! I’m still brought to tears by that memory and the sick sense of horror and utter helplessness. And I remember how disillusioned I was, realizing that adults could not be counted on to act to protect someone in danger.

From that day on, my grandmother would go to the stand on Saturday evenings and buy whatever was left so that Dora would not be hurt. It was the only form of protection she could offer (and which Dora would accept).

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Can’t drive, can’t throw, can’t shred

Sep 14th, 2012 9:11 am | By

And while I’m rummaging around on the BBC’s site – there’s also a piece on the Stasi.

“The Stasi was an organisation that loved to keep paper,” says Joachim Haussler, who works for the Stasi archives authority today.

It therefore owned few shredders – and those it did have were of poor East German quality and rapidly broke down. So thousands of documents were hastily torn by hand and stuffed into sacks. The plan was to burn or chemically destroy the contents later.

But events overtook the plan, the Stasi was dissolved as angry demonstrators massed outside and invaded its offices, and the new federal authority for Stasi archives inherited all the torn paper.

Typical feminists, eh? Can’t even tear up the records properly.

Ha!

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He will be sentenced later

Sep 14th, 2012 9:05 am | By

No no no; doing it wrong. A Yorkshire teenager has been found guilty of “posting an offensive Facebook message.” Posting an offensive Facebook message is a crime?

Azhar Ahmed, 19, of Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire, was charged with sending a grossly offensive communication.

Waaaaait a second – posting a message on Facebook isn’t “sending” it. It’s more like publishing it. And does adding “grossly” to “offensive” make it a crime?

Apparently it was considered so because it was posted two days after six British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan.

The offensive message, which said “all soldiers should die and go to hell”, was posted by Ahmed just two days later on 8 March.

……….And?

Facebook has a reporting system. Perhaps the message could have been taken down. Perhaps it should have been – I don’t know enough to have an opinion. But prosecution and conviction? For posting a message on Facebook?

District Judge Jane Goodwin said Ahmed’s Facebook remarks were “derogatory, disrespectful and inflammatory”.

He will be sentenced later.

Oy. Doing it wrong.

 

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What happens within the movement

Sep 13th, 2012 5:46 pm | By

Stephanie has a good collection of items in her post Within the Movement - items that are more than just “trolls on the internet.”

    • If announcing a conference about the role of women in secularism on your organization’s site is met with charges of misandry or comments on a report of the conference have to be shut down, with the problems coming from registered users, that happens within the movement.
    • If a speaker and writer hosts a discussion for about a year that is devoted to tearing down those who call harassment an issue, posting personal information and lies, tracking everything said or tweeted in obsessive detail, that happens within the movement.
    • If an atheist organization’s leader declares publicly that what you received couldn’t have been a real threat and uses that organization’s podcast to grossly misrepresent what you did receive, that happens within the movement.

And that’s only some of it.

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What Amish life is really like, by an eyewitness

Sep 13th, 2012 1:22 pm | By

A comment by isavaldyr on Big Amish Brother. Life among the Amish.

I grew up in a very rural part of Ohio less than a mile from some Amish families. My parents, who were (and are) avid gardeners, had dealings with them related to seeds, produce and simple woodcraft–stakes for tomato plants, things like that. It’s not uncommon for the Amish to have small businesses. Sawmills (only gas-powered machines of course–being connected to an electrical grid is too worldly) and things like that. Less entrepreneurial Amish men often fall into the same niche that Mexican illegal immigrants do in many other places, providing cheap labor for things like home renovations, since Amish will work for less than an “English” roofer or sider and won’t sue you if they get hurt on the job.

Some Amish are fairly well-to-do and have pretty luxurious lives (by Amish standards–meaning they can afford battery-powered headlights and a plastic windscreen for their horse-drawn buggy), but the ones I grew up around lived in grinding poverty. Think subsistence agriculture. The father worked part-time picking fruit at an orchard, but no one else in the family had an income. And it was a BIG family. At least 12 kids–I wish I was exaggerating. Male children (often at really horrifyingly young ages) were expected to do the farm work, while female children did everything else. The family bathed once a week, all using the same tub of water and homemade soap made from animal tallow. The father and some of the older male children had shoes, but most of the family didn’t. A few years back, the mother died from cancer; she was younger than 50. A lot of Amish will go to chiropractors or veterinarians instead of medical doctors when they have health problems, or rely on folk remedies. I remember hearing about a man from another local Amish family who was badly burned in a workshop accident and rushed to the hospital by his English coworkers. He was bandaged and given instructions to come back for a follow-up appointment, but as soon as he got home he took his wound dressing off and went into the woods to gather herbs for a poultice. I wouldn’t believe that this kind of thing still went on in 21st century America if I hadn’t seen it myself.

Amish children go to special Amish schools whose curricula have little or no science and only go up to about 8th grade. They have inadequate nutrition, inadequate healthcare, and live in homes without running water or electricity, meaning no cooling in the summer and no heat in the winter that can’t be provided by a wood-burning stove. It’s hard for me to imagine what it’s like for the women, especially, who have to work outdoors in the brutal heat and humidity of the Ohio summer wearing heavy, black or dark blue-colored dresses and tight-fitting bonnets. They can’t even count on having a glass of ice water to cool down when they’re done–no freezer. (We’ve let this family use our freezer to store their meats more than once.) It’s just an awful, awful life of deprivation that “English” people, even poor ones, can scarcely imagine. It’s also worth noting that Amish parents very much believe in corporal punishment.

The thing that pisses me off is that the way Amish people live would be considered abusive to their children if “English” people did it. But because they believe it’s mandated by their religion, they get a free pass. People I know don’t understand why I get so worked up about the Amish, but I’ve lived around them, talked to them, seen where they live, and it’s awful. One thing I will always remember: when I was younger, we used to have a trampoline in our front yard, and whenever the Amish kids would come down to ask a favor of my parents or barter on behalf of their father, they got to jump on it, and they were more thrilled with it than I’ve ever seen anyone be about anything. They’d also stand outside and look in our livingroom window at the TV, standing utterly still and transfixed in complete wonder. It makes me sick to think of how many other amazing things they’ll never get to experience simply because they had the misfortune of being born into a religion that rejects the whole world.

 

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Big Amish Brother

Sep 13th, 2012 11:53 am | By

Have you seen “Breaking Amish”? It’s pretty fascinating – in how horrible the Amish life is.

It’s not just in all the deprivation (no school past 8th grade for you!) and rules (as one rebel says, “you can wear this but not that…”) – it’s the revolting coldness of “shunning.” If you step out, you’re done. You can never go home, you can never see your family again. Period.

And then there’s the surveillance – there’s the dreaded bishop’s wife, always watching and reporting. There’s the dreaded bishop, who can throw you out for any infraction.

People like it because it seems quaint and pretty, but in reality it’s impoverished, and laborious (“do everything the hard way”) and tyrannical – and ultimately cold-hearted. Affection is contingent on rigid obedience to stupid rules.

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One of our own killed in Libya attack

Sep 13th, 2012 10:53 am | By

Chris Rodda tells us the horrible news that one of the victims of the attack on the US consulate in Libya was a member of the MRFF Advisory Board, former Navy SEAL Glen Doherty.

The Huffington Post has more.

Doherty himself had a history of opposing religious intolerance.

Doherty was an “extremely active” member of the advisory board of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), an advocacy group that fights inappropriate religious proselytizing inside the armed forces, said founder Mikey Weinstein, a retired Air Force lawyer.

“He confirmed for me how deeply entrenched fundamentalist Christianity is in the DoD Spec Ops [Department of Defense Special Operations] world of the SEALs, Green Berets, Delta Force, Army Rangers USAF … and DoD security contractors like the former Blackwater,” Weinstein said in an email to The Huffington Post. Doherty “helped me on many MRFF client cases behind the scenes to facilitate assistance to armed forces members abused horribly by fundamentalist Christian proselytizing.”

So he gets killed by Islamists.

Dammit.

 

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What trinioler said

Sep 13th, 2012 10:39 am | By

A powerful (and depressing) comment by trinioler on PZ’s excellent response to Ron Lindsay’s post:

Okay, so, people believe that the slyme pitters are just trolls on “the internet”. Well, disabuse yourselves of that notion.

So, we have a local CFI branch. It started out as fairly libertarian, focused on laughing at creationists, etc.

So, some of the original organizers were the branch of libertarian skeptics/atheists we are having so much trouble with now.

Now, given that, what impact does this have now? Well, its had a pretty severe impact, as several of the younger organizers (nearly all women) have left CFI or stopped participating.

The Facebook page for the branch is filled with assholes who mislead, lie, make comments about breasts, lie, use slurs willy-nilly, etc, and no one stops them anymore.

Everyone who had fought them, while getting in trouble for “causing trouble” has left.

Essentially by NOT throwing out the racists, the sexists, the ones who lie and mislead and are not skeptical at all, they’ve lost most of the next generation of skeptical organizers. They’ve lost volunteers and dues-paying members.

In effect, they’ve doomed the local CFI branch, which could have been and was starting to do good things.

THIS is the cost. THIS is the divisiveness. You lose willing and hard-working young volunteers, who want and expect better from the leaders. You turn them apathetic and cynical. They burn out from the fighting, without a lack of support.

So to whoever says this divisiveness is bad? It really is, for your organizations, not ours. It will cost you volunteers and members and energy, because you won’t do what’s necessary.

 

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Outraged in the Hebrides

Sep 13th, 2012 9:54 am | By

The Highlands Presbyterians are outraged because Dawkins is invited to the Faclan Hebridean Book Festival on the Isle of Lewis.

The festival does not take place until November but as soon as Prof Dawkins’ name appeared on the schedule it was enough to rouse the ire of many in this stronghold of Presbyterianism.

Pastor Donnie Stewart of the New Wine Church in Stornoway said: “It is disappointing he has been invited, given the Christian heritage and local sensitivities here.”

Is it? So the Christian heritage there means atheists should Keep Out? Only one opinion allowed, in the whole region? Really, Mr Stewart – that’s an awfully theocratic claim.

…the Free Church (known locally as the Wee Frees) got involved, challenging Prof Dawkins to a debate.

His response – a deliberately antagonistic jibe on Twitter – did not go down well.

“As a great president of the Royal Society said, ‘That would look great on your CV, not so good on mine,’” he tweeted.

Oh those deliberately antagonistic jibes on Twitter! Hahahahaha

As of last night, Prof Dawkins insisted he will attend the festival but still refuses to debate.

The main winners at this stage, it seems, are the organisers of the Faclan Book Festival who have generated the sort of publicity they could only ever have dreamed of before they decided to put Prof Dawkins on the schedule.

Oooh – deliberately stirring up controversy to get blog hits ticket sales. Naughty!

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Has it already been repudiated?

Sep 12th, 2012 11:53 am | By

Ron Lindsay has a post on divisiveness in the secular community, which is attracting a hailstorm of comments.

I don’t altogether agree with it. I agree with the normative part but not entirely with the descriptive part. For instance…

…if hate-filled comments and threats to women have not been expressly called divisive, it’s because such conduct does not threaten to divide the movement. It has already been repudiated, both implicitly and explicitly, by many, if not most, of the organizations in the movement.

But that doesn’t do it. It has not already been repudiated, even implicitly, by some prominent individuals in the movement. To put it another way, there are some prominent individuals in the movement who promote it or even engage in it themselves. Not many, I think, but some. Yes that makes a difference. Imagine if there were several prominent individuals in the movement who were promoting or even engaging in openly racist discourse. That would be divisive, pretty clearly. For most of us, it works the same way when the discourse is about women (or feminists).

…the haters are not threatening to divide the movement.  No matter how frequently the haters pollute our blogs, they are outside the movement already.  No one in a position of responsibility wants them in the movement.  Whatever differences may exist among the various movement organizations, we are united on this issue.

I wish, but no. Not all of the haters are really outside the movement.

There’s Paula Kirby for example. She’s not exactly in a position of responsibility, but she seems to be because of her connection to the RDF, so what she says has some influence. She called me and Skepchicks and “FTB” generally Feminazis and Femistasi, and she circulated that caricature. That’s hater stuff.

(A lot of people think she is the Executive Director of RDF UK. I thought so myself, and referred to her as such more than once. She’s not. Look on the RDF website or where you will, you can’t find her listed as ED or any other kind of officer. It’s not fair to blame Dawkins for things that Kirby has said.)

Ron doesn’t mention Paula, but he does mention Russell Blackford.

…the label “misogynist”  is sometimes thrown about carelessly. For example, Russell Blackford, the Australian philosopher (and Free Inquiry columnist) has been called a misogynist shitbag. Yet, as far as I know, Blackford has never made any hateful comments or threats to women; indeed, he has condemned them. He has expressed doubts about the wisdom of harassment policies adopted by some organizations and, if I recall correctly, he has taken exception to some of the criticism directed against TAM (the JREF’s annual meeting). But although Blackford’s views on these issues may be misguided, that hardly qualifies him as a misogynist.

I don’t think Russell is a misogynist. I’m not sure if I’ve called him one or not, but since I don’t think he is one, I’ll guess that I haven’t. But I disagree that he has, as Ron says, condemned them (“them” being hateful comments to women). He hasn’t. That’s the issue I’ve had with him all along, ever since the summer last year: he hasn’t. He hasn’t condemned them and he has at times joined in with them. He regularly praises Abbie Smith, who is a hater-enabler as well as a hater herself. (Remember “smelly skepchick snatch”?) For many weeks he has been ranting about “FTB” many times every day on Twitter, and he’s never that I’ve seen said a word to condemn the haters. He has been all but climbing into Paula’s lap; he retweeted her deeply unpleasant “Sisterhood of the Oppressed” article more than once; he said not a word to condemn that nasty crucifixion caricature. All that does qualify him as at least a fan of misogynists.

So…I think Ron is being a little over-generous to that faction.

…the movement is divided, but it’s not divided for any good reason. It’s divided because too many in the movement are not willing to recognize that their fellow secularists can be mistaken without thereby being bigots; that their fellow secularists can have different understandings of the implications of feminism without being misogynists or “sister-punishers”; and that their fellow secularists can have can have different perceptions of the problem of harassment without being feminazis.

Yes but. Yes but sometimes it really isn’t just different perceptions of the problem of harassment, it’s labels like “Approved Male Chorus” and “Femistasi” and “FTBullies” and “smelly skepchick snatch.”

I agree with Ron’s overall point though. And I’m not without hope that things will improve.

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Dawkins disses Mormonism shock-horror

Sep 11th, 2012 5:10 pm | By

The Telegraph is outraged because Richard Dawkins had the temerity to say that Mormonism has ridiculous stuff in it. It uses loaded language to convey its outrage.

Richard Dawkins on Sunday accused Mitt Romney of being a “massively gullible fool” as he launched into a furious tirade against the Republican’s Mormon faith.

Britain’s most prominent atheist attacked the core tenets of Mr Romney’s religion, saying that the Church of Latter Day Saints’ founding prophet was “a fraud” and that the presidential contender was “too stupid to see it”.

“No matter how much you agree with Romney’s economic policy, can you really vote for such a massively gullible fool?” asked Prof Dawkins during an outburst on Twitter that lasted several hours. [emphasis added]

So? Mormonism does have ridiculous stuff in it. We need to know if candidates for public office believe ridiculous stuff. (In the US they almost all do, but that’s no reason not to point it out when they do.)

The Oxford academic focused his criticism on the Church’s belief that its founder, Joseph Smith, was visited by an angel in 1820s New York, who guided him to a set of golden plates buried in a hill.

Smith claimed to have translated runes engraved on the plates, and compiled them into the Book of Mormon. The text describes how Jesus Christ appeared in the United States after the Crucifixion and how Adam and Eve went to the site of present-day Missouri after being expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Well exactly – and that’s ridiculous!

Dawkins expanded on his “outburst” in a couple of comments at RDF. He addressed the claim that Mormonism is no more absurd than the other religions.

Christianity, even fundamentalist Christianity,  is substantially less ridiculous than Mormonism…Christian scriptures are genuinely ancient. The translations from Hebrew and Greek that Christians use are in a language contemporary with the translators. The Book of Mormon is not ancient and the language of its alleged “translation” is ludicrously anachronistic. It was dictated by Joseph Smith, a man with a track record of charlatanry, purporting to translate it from “Reformed Egyptian” with the aid of a magic stone in a magic hat (Douglas Adams’ Babel Fish is not less plausible). The English in which Smith dictated it is not the English of his own time (1830) but the English of more than two centuries earlier. As Mark Twain cuttingly observed, if you remove all occurrences of “It came to pass” the book would be reduced to a pamphlet. The language in which it is written proclaims it to be a palpable fake – as if Smith’s cock-and-bull story of golden plates hadn’t already given the game away. Smith obviously was steeped in the King James Bible, and he made up a whole new set of “scriptures” in the same style of English.

Which is so…rube-like. It depends on not realizing that the King James language is 17th century English, not goddy or holy English. Mind you, it worked, so perhaps I shouldn’t laugh. But I do.

Setting aside the mountebankery of Smith’s English style, many of the core beliefs of Mormonism run counter to everything we now know for certain about the colonisation of America. DNA evidence, for example, utterly refutes the claim that native Americans are “a remnant of the House of Israel”. The idea that Jesus visited America is preposterous, and the idea the Adam and Eve did too is even worse (it is at least arguable that Jesus existed). The traditional Mormon belief in the inferiority of black people (only lately renounced for reasons of political expediency) is as scientifically inaccurate as it is obnoxious.The great “prophet” Brigham Young even prescribed the death penalty for inter-racial marriage.

Yes but it doesn’t do to say so! 

And then there’s the no religion test retort.

The other main retort to my Mormon tweets is an important one. It is that a candidate’s religion should be ignored unless he allows it to impinge on his policy. The principle of this was laid out by J F Kennedy, when his Catholicism was counting against him. It appears to some readers to be enshrined in Article VI of the Constitution: “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Of course that is right. There should never be any law barring a person of any particular faith (or none) from holding office (as the law of England, for example, prohibits a Roman Catholic from occupying the throne). But of course that admirable constitutional clause doesn’t prohibit individual voters from taking the religion of a candidate into account when they make up their own minds in the voting booth.

Yes and not just individual voters; also observers and commentators…and bloggers and tweeters. We all get to point out the problems and discuss them and form opinions because of them.

Even if Romney, like Kennedy (but unlike G W Bush) scrupulously kept his religion out of his politics, a voter would still be entitled to take account of his religious beliefs in deciding whether he had the intellect and the judgment to be a good president. It is rational to say something like this: Never mind whether Romney’s taxation policy, foreign policy, education policy etc is completely free of Mormon influence, I am still entitled to say that a man sufficiently gullible to believe in Joseph Smith as a prophet, and sufficiently unscientific to believe Native Americans are a lost tribe of Israel, is not qualified to be president of the world’s most powerful country.

Yes indeed. (But never forget – it doesn’t do to say so.)

 

 

 

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

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The healing of Cooper

Sep 11th, 2012 4:51 pm | By

Today was Cooper’s last trip to the vet, to get the stitches taken out. His paw is healed! I still can’t take him out to run after the tennis ball at 90 miles an hour or to race over rocks to swim in the waves, but we can go for long walks.

Whew. Glad that’s over.

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

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Eran Segev on a few cruel individuals

Sep 11th, 2012 4:08 pm | By

Another in Amy’s series: another guy saying yeahno, harassment and bullying and threatening aren’t funny or cute. Eran Segev, contributor to the Skeptic Zone podcast and to the Skeptic magazine (in Australia), and former President of Australian Skeptics.

He’s had some of it himself. Way too much of it.

When organising TAM Australia, my fellow organisers and I were the subject of some astonishingly rude and unfriendly tweets and blogs over some decisions we made. Not one of the authors had contacted us to ask for the reasons behind the decisions. All were skeptics; people who wanted to attend the conference, and most eventually did. And over the past year or so, I have had a cruel and nasty campaign of vicious defamation directed at me. Obviously I will not be repeating what was said, but I’ll say that it was directly related to my being a man, and I can assure you it was so nasty that it could easily ruin my life. No exaggeration. Let’s just say, that because of a few cruel individuals I have had a pretty tough year. These people got to me.

We can see that he knows what it’s like.

I have met Rebecca a few times, and exchange emails with her occasionally, but we are not close friends by any stretch, and until fairly recently I had no idea of the composition of her mailbox. However, some mutual friends gave me some of the details of the emails and other messages she has been receiving, for years. I was horrified. I was at the local police station for less than Rebecca receives in an average week.

When I found that out, I started asking around, and discovered that not only is Rebecca not alone, it is practically the norm for women who are active online. And if they dare to be active feminists, then the level of hate becomes immense. And these are not just some gamers or kids. There are good reasons to believe that at least some of the messages come from adult members of the skeptical community; from people you might meet at Skeptics in the Pub or at TAM.

I have no idea how Rebecca and women like her tolerate it. I don’t completely understand how they don’t crack under the pressure. Perhaps they sometimes do.

No, we turn into Feminazis and Femistasi instead. We morph into the Oppressed Sisterhood. We become Infantilizers and Victims.

I also don’t understand, and surely never will, what goes through the minds of the perpetrators. I try to reason: OK, so you think Skepchicks are sometimes unreasonable about sex relations, or you disagree with what Rebecca wrote about TAM. Fine. SO DO I. So what? Why does it mean that she deserves to be insulted, humiliated and threatened with physical violence? If you want to say something, say “I disagree with you and you’re being unreasonable. Here’s why.” And if that gets shot down, argue some more; or leave. But hatred and violence?

Do you threaten a colleague you argue with that you’ll kill them? Do you wish the shop assistant that hasn’t helped you that she’ll be raped on the way home? What gives you, what gives ANYONE, the right to subject another person to such hate? And where does this hate come from? And why women? Do you not have a mother; a sister; a girlfriend? Do you hate them too? Do you insult and threaten them, too?

I was shocked that someone could hate me enough to want to ruin my life; imagine having dozens, maybe even hundreds of people personally wishing you raped. I can’t imagine what it’s like. I hope I never find out.

It’s what we’re supposed to expect because we say things in public. We have to develop a thick skin and then it will all be fine.

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

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Anatomy of a bully is it

Sep 10th, 2012 6:06 pm | By

Yeah here’s Wooly Bumblebee’s “Anatomy of a Bully” post.

Her name is Kristina Hansen, by the way, she made it public the other day on a blog post about how evil atheism+ is. Hansen is easier to type than Bumblebee, and besides Bumblebee makes her sound cuddly. That doesn’t work for me.

So here’s her “Anatomy of a Bully” post that all the FTB haters were so wowed by.

What is bullying?

Bullying is persistent unwelcome behavior, mostly using unwarranted or invalid criticism, nit-picking, fault-finding, also exclusion, shunning, being singled out and treated differently, being shouted at, humiliated, excessive monitoring, having verbal and written warnings imposed, and much more.

Excessive monitoring! Funny she should mention it. Hansen and her friends monitor a few selected people they hate very excessively indeed – daily and hourly, via tweets and blog posts. They seem to do nothing else while online. And then there’s “humiliated”…Not to mention  unwarranted or invalid criticism, nit-picking, fault-finding, exclusion, shunning, being singled out and treated differently. Check check check check check check check.

Bullying is present behind all forms of harassment, discrimination, prejudice, abuse, persecution, conflict and violence. When the bullying has a focus (e.g. race or gender) it is expressed as racial prejudice or harassment, or sexual discrimination and harassment, and so on.

No comment necessary.

Gang bullying is a serial bully with multiple partners. Gangs can occur anywhere, but flourish mostly in corporate, educational, and on-line arenas. If the bully is an extrovert, they are likely to be leading from the front; they may also be a shouter and screamer, and thus easily identifiable. If the bully is an introvert, that person will be in the background initiating the mayhem but probably not taking an active part, and may thus be harder to identify.

Half the people in the gang are happy for the opportunity to behave badly; they gain gratification from the feeling of power and control, and enjoy the patronage, protection and reward from the serial bully. The other half of the gang is coerced into joining in, usually through fear of being the next target if they don’t. If anything backfires, one of them will be the scapegoat on whom enraged targets will be encouraged to vent their anger. (Sound familiar, FTB?)

No, Kristina, not in the way you intended. It sounds like you and the other obsessives.

Cyber bullying is the misuse of email systems or Internet forums, Social media, blogs, etc for sending/writing aggressive, abusive, or belittling messages, statements, e-mails, or articles.

There is quite a good example of this happening recently on Greta Christina’s Blog, and on the Lousy Canuck where they thought it would be funny to take over the Twitter hashtag #FTBullies and use it to mock Paula Kirby who had written an open letter titled Sisterhood of the Oppressed, as well as any, and all those on Twitter who are speaking out against FTB and exposing their bullying for what it is.

No, it had nothing to do with Paula Kirby, or any other individual; it was mockery of the hashtag itself. It wasn’t personal and vicious the way Hansen’s disgusting post about Mike McCreight is.

The expert on bullies is a mind-searingly vicious bully herself.

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

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There is no low too low

Sep 10th, 2012 5:02 pm | By

Fucking hell. I keep thinking they can’t go any lower, but they always do.

Remember when all the FTB-haters were retweeting that post on bullying by “Wooly Bumblebee” at Is God a Squirrel? She’s an expert on bullying, she said. The haters were way impressed.

Today she has a post shitting on Jen McCreight’s father for writing a blog post saying boo talking shit on the internet and yay Jen.

Yes you read that correctly. Wooly Bumblebee/Is God a Squirrel wrote a longish blog post shitting on Jen McCreight’s father for writing a blog post defending his daughter.

You could light a small city with me right now.

Here’s some of Wooly’s shitting:

But, some parents are abject failures, such as Jen McCreight’s father. He has written a short blog post for and about Jen. He has come to her rescue, like a parent does for their small child, only Jen is not a child… She is an adult. Well, an adult in the sense that she is over 18 and looks older than 12. But apparently she still needs daddy to come to her rescue when she gets emotional. She still needs daddy to kiss her boo-boos and frighten the monsters away. She needs this because her daddy failed as a parent and never equipped his daughter with the tools she needs to get through life. It’s quite sad, and a great example of bad parenting.

When you coddle your kids constantly, refuse to see them as their own person, and feel the need to constantly prop up their ego, you get people like Jen. Jen should be completely embarrassed by the fact that her father wrote what he did. If she had any self-esteem she’d be furious that her daddy felt he had to come out and publicly chide everyone as if we are all 5 year olds because she got a boo-boo. She doesn’t because she is just like a child, and doesn’t see her daddy saying what he did as him actually infantilizing her.

This has to be the most pathetic thing I have yet to see. A grown woman being rescued by her daddy. It’s a fucking joke, and speaks volumes as to why she can’t handle the slightest little bump in the road. She is completely incapable of functioning as an adult. I rather pity her, and that is not a good thing.

Congratulations daddy dearest, and thank you for proving once and for all how completely incapable your little Jen really is.

Unfuckingbelievable.

 

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

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