The National Review Online has figured out what went wrong at Sandy Hook school. It was too feminized! There weren’t any men around!! Feminist witch hunts!!!

Charlotte Allen makes the case:

There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. [Read more…]

Now I know why I got such an unusual number of first-time commenters on my post about Shermer on subliminal influences yesterday, all of them wrong about what I’d said. It’s because Shermer did a Facebook post about it, in which he completely missed my point.

That’s partly my fault; I didn’t spell it out. As usual, I wrote for regular readers, who would get the implications. That saves a lot of tedium for the regular readers, but it can confuse others. [Read more…]

That’s probably why Dave Silverman is on Hannity tonight, which he is.

Anyway – yessssssssss. AA is suing the IRS.

American Atheists and two co-plaintiffs today filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Kentucky a lawsuit demanding that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) stop giving preferential treatment to churches and religious organizations via the process of receiving non-profit tax-exempt status under the Internal Revue Code (IRC) procedures and definitions.

“American Atheists receives tax-exempt status under Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3),” said American Atheists President David Silverman, “but because the organization is not classified as religious it costs American Atheists, along with all other secular non-profits, significantly more money each year to keep that status. [Read more…]

The thing about the NPR think piece on theodicy that was really annoying was the foregone conclusion that it doesn’t make any difference.

I knew that was going to be the conclusion as soon as whoever it was introduced it. I knew what was going to be said, and I knew what wasn’t going to be said. I knew they would say the obvious – god; all-knowing and good; bad things; Newtown. I knew they would get clerics to knot their brows. And I knew that would be that. Next story, then the pause to thank the MacArthur foundation.

I knew there would be not a trace of a genuine recognition that there’s a disconnect here, and that it matters, and that their fucking god would have a lot to answer for if it existed. I knew that no one would admit for one second that they were supporting the worship of a god that could prevent bad things from happening but doesn’t.

And yet at the same time they were mentioning the problem, so they get credit from brow-knitting NPR types for being thoughtful and worried and non-dogmatic. Lots and lots of brow-knitting but no real thinking or grappling at all. Just a rote gallop around the bases and then a return to exactly where we started.

It annoys the shit out of me. Look, if you’re going to bring it up, you ought to admit that it does make a difference. You shouldn’t bring it up just to dangle it around like an ornament and then put it away. And you sure as hell shouldn’t pretend that the absence of god equals no love while the presence of it equals love. God isn’t love, god allows horrors! Face up to what you’re saying for once, or else don’t talk about it on the radio.

Another item we need to sign. I saw this one via Waleed Al-Husseini’s Facebook page.

To: Secretary-General of the UN
CC :  – Amnesty International  – Front Line Defenders – Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) – Human Rights Watch

—————————————————————

Raef Badawi, a Saudi who is one of the establishers of the “Liberal Saudi Network”, which angered Ultra-orthodox clerics of Saudi-arabia could be beheaded soon for a claimed “apostasy” if no action is taken.

The news in Arabic about this issue is numerous, in English it has not got good attention till now, however, this piece of news has been published by AFP:  “A Saudi court on Monday referred a rights activist to a higher court for alleged apostasy, a charge that could lead to the death penalty in the ultra-conservative kingdom, activists said.  A judge at a lower court referred Raef Badawi to a higher court, declaring that he “could not give a verdict in a case of apostasy,” a rights activist told AFP. Apostasy means renunciation of a religious faith.  Badawi, who was arrested a June in the Red Sea city of Jeddah for unknown reasons, is a co-founder of the Saudi Liberal Network with female rights activist Suad al-Shammari and others.”  The full article below:  http://uk.news.yahoo.com/saudi-rights-activist-faces-apostasy-charge-154957146.html

We demand that Saudi-arabia free and safeguard Raef Badawy and stop threatening people merely for expressing nonorthodox views on Islam or religion in general, because without freedom of speech, one can not counter the dangerous beliefs of extremist Islam that leads ultimately to terrorism and threatens the safety of all people around the world.

 

I found something interesting while browsing Michael Shermer’s columns in Scientific American. It’s about how subliminal influences affect our choices.

WITH THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION looming on the horizon in November, consider these two crucial questions: Who looks more competent, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? Who has the deepest and most resonant voice? Maybe your answer is, “Who cares? I vote for candidates based on their policies and positions, not on how they look and sound!” If so, that very likely is your rational brain justifying an earlier choice that your emotional brain made based on these seemingly shallow criteria. [Read more…]

Crooked Timber has a statement on Erik Loomis. Before the statement, there is the background.

This past Friday, in the wake of the tremendous grief and outrage millions of people felt over the Newtown mass shooting, Loomis tweeted the following:

I was heartbroken in the first 20 mass murders. Now I want Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick. [Read more…]