The Sunday Assembly idea is getting a lot of mockery – at least I think it is, but maybe that’s because most of my friends on social media are the kind of people who mock things like Sunday assemblies, which they certainly are. That could be it. It could be that people who have more social media friends who sing solemn songs about Sunday assemblies or crochet scarves (from organic non-GMO fully local twice-blessed wool sheared from athletic non-smoking sheep) to wear to Sunday assemblies – it could be that people like that don’t have the impression that the Sunday Assemblies idea is getting a lot of mockery. I do though.

Melbourne has already hosted five Sunday Assemblies. Perth, Adelaide,

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Bill Cooke is the International Director of the CFI’s Transnational Program. 

Fifty or so miles out of Kampala is a small town called Wobulenzi, and here CFI–Uganda runs a clinic devoted to testing the local population for HIV/AIDS and educating them how the disease is contracted. The education program is vital because, as in much of Africa, superstition and misinformation are rife.  So much of what is not understood is attributed to witchcraft and, not infrequently, whoever is identified as the witch ends up dying a horrible death. The churches and the mosques do little or nothing to prevent this superstition, and in many cases are the chief propagators. So, against huge odds, CFI–Uganda is fighting these debilitating superstitions.

CFI–Uganda … Read the rest

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So what’s George Bush up to these days? I know you’re wondering. He’s up to converting the Jews, that’s what. Sarah Posner explains at Mother Jones.

Next week, former President George W. Bush is scheduled to keynote a fundraiser in Irving, Texas, for the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, a group that trains people in the United States, Israel, and around the world to convince Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah. The organization’s goal: to “restore” Israel and the Jews and bring about the second coming of Christ.

I have to wonder how one goes about “training” people to convince other people to accept Jesus as the Messiah. I do. I wonder because training seems like a secular … Read the rest

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Cruelty doesn’t get enough attention. Judith Shklar pointed that out; Montaigne pointed it out.

When I drew up that quick secular 10 commandments recently I put “don’t be cruel” first. I kind of take it for granted that that’s essential…but apparently I’m not in the majority on that.

I just Googled the word and I’m a bit shocked to find that most of the first entries are for cruelty to animals, as if cruelty to humans isn’t a thing.

Cruelty to humans is a thing.… Read the rest

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So that study on sadism I’ve been meaning to talk about for weeks.

Most of the time, we try to avoid inflicting pain on others — when we do hurt someone, we typically experience guilt, remorse, or other feelings of distress. But for some, cruelty can be pleasurable, even exciting. New research suggests that this kind of everyday sadism is real and more common than we might think.

So does regular interaction on the internet, and it’s very depressing. I mean really depressing. I don’t like realizing that a lot of people like to inflict pain just for the hilarity of it.

To test their hypothesis, they decided to examine everyday sadism under controlled laboratory conditions. They recruited 71 participants

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So since I was reading a piece by Laura Bates I saw another piece by Laura Bates, so I read that too.

A UK tabloid, the Daily Star, is in such a lather about the urgent duty of telling Kate-who-married-William how to body that it published a story about the ghost of Diana – the mother of said William who died I think it was 16 years ago – giving Kate how to body advice. Yes really.

Laura Bates comments:

Under a front-page headline so ridiculous I assumed it was a spoof for a couple of hours, the paper ran the “story”: Di ghost tells the duchess: You’re too thin! They labelled it an exclusive.

That’s right. Not

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Actual, not figurative, out loud blurt of laughter. An American Legion post in North Carolina wanted to give the local schools a poster yelling “in god we trust” but the school board said no thank you, and a member of the Legion who is also a pastor has hurt feelings.

“We got an email from the school saying thank you but on advice of their legal counsel they could not accept the posters because of separation of church and state,” American Legion member Rick Cornejo told me in a telephone interview.

Cornejo, who is also a local Baptist preacher, said the decision to ban the posters has resulted in a lot of hurt feelings.

“It’s disappointing, it really is,” he

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Ron Lindsay objects to the way the plaintiffs’ attorney in Greece v Galloway briskly threw the atheists under the bus.

Roberts was asking whether the concerns of atheists had to be considered in
determining whether the prayer practice is constitutional. And, incredibly, the plaintiffs’ attorney responded, “We’ve excluded the atheists.” (Transcript, p. 46.) In other words, to all atheists: Your concerns don’t matter. You’re not part of the community. You’re a special case and your constitutional rights are limited. Or, if you prefer blunter language, eat shit.

What Laycock said really is rather tooth-grinding.

We can treat the great majority of the people equally with the tradition of prayer to the almighty, the governor of the universe, the creator of

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Movie theatres in Sweden are introducing a new rating system to highlight the scarcity of women in movies. It’s a Bechdel test rating. That’s not even a joke or a figure of speech: they’re using the Bechdel test.

I love Sweden.

To get an A rating, a movie must pass the so-called Bechdel test, which means it must have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.

“The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, all Star Wars movies, The Social Network, Pulp Fiction and all but one of the Harry Potter movies fail this test,” said Ellen Tejle, the director of Bio Rio, an art-house cinema in Stockholm’s trendy Södermalm district.

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The article I’m reading in Slate is from 2004, and it’s about what the FBI ended up concluding about why Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot up Columbine High School. It wasn’t because they were bullied; they weren’t. Klebold was depressed and suicidal, and Harris was a psychopath.

It’s not just that his private journal bristled with hatred. It was more than that.

It rages on for page after page and is repeated in his journal and in the videos he and Klebold made. But Fuselier recognized a far more revealing emotion bursting through, both fueling and overshadowing the hate. What the boy was really expressing was contempt.

He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not

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Reading an article in Slate, I see a headline in the right margin:

Ugly Celebrities Without Makeup

 … Read the rest

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The AP reports on the SCOTUS discussion of Greece v Galloway yesterday.

The Supreme Court wrestled Wednesday with the appropriate role for religion in government in a case involving mainly Christian prayers at the start of a New York town’s council meetings.

The justices began their day with the marshal’s customary plea that “God save the United States and this honorable court.” They then plunged into a lively give-and-take that highlighted the sensitive nature of offering religious invocations in public proceedings that don’t appeal to everyone and governments’ efforts to police the practice.

Sigh. Why is there such a thing as the marshal’s customary plea that “God save the United States and this honorable court”? Why can’t the government … Read the rest

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Pamela Gay published a wrenching, heartbreaking, infuriating post early today about her struggles as a woman in science and skepticism.

With ever increasing difficulty I’ve been dealing with issues of gender related to my career. Right now, I am struggling with hearing that an event I categorized as “A drunk ass  tried to grab my boobs,” is now being discussed by witnesses as, “He tried to sexually assault her in a bar while intoxicated.” I had created a euphemism for myself, and having that euphemism striped away is making me realize that I have been hiding from myself the true degree to which I have been harmed.

I have previously tried to confront and to give voice to the harm

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The Guardian on the FGM report itself.

Thousands of girls in danger of genital mutilation are being failed by the health and justice systems, a coalition of health professionals has warned in a report that recommends aggressive steps to eradicate the practice in the UK.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) should be treated the same as any other kind of child abuse and evidence of it must be reported to the police, according to the report.

Janet Fyle, a policy adviser of the Royal College of Midwives and one of the report’s authors, said that just as it was inconceivable that a health worker would not report evidence of child abuse to the police, it should be equally important to report

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