Archive for October, 2012

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And of course the deity has the same sick twist to it all.

As you know, NonStampCollector has joined Freethoughtblogs. Check out the responses to his latest video—angry people are unsubscribing from his youtube channel because a) PZ Myers is an evil dictator, b) they refuse to contribute to PZ Myers’ profits, c) they’re all evil feminists at FtB, d) they banned Matt Dillahunty! and e) PZ Myers will have total control over what NSC can post. Not only are these totally irrelevant to NSC’s video, but they’re all wrong. a) I don’t control FtB; Ed Brayton holds the purse strings, b) Profits from advertising are all split up by percentage of total traffic, so visiting NSC’s site puts money in his pocket, not mine, c) we’re all good feminists, like all decent human beings should be, d) we haven’t banned Dillahunty (look, here he is!), and e) all of our bloggers are completely independent, and they can write whatever they want. We took on NSC because we talked to him and learned that he’s not a total asshat, unlike some previous, poorly vetted admissions, so we trust him to be rational and reasonable. I think he’s better off with the cretins unsubscribing, since it means the quality of his comment stream will take a great leap upwards. It will also improve because all of you will head over to youtube and subscribe.

Mitt Romney gives lots of money to his church! Sorta. It turns out he’s also a very clever man, with a deep knowledge of the tax code, who has cunningly used loopholes to generate the appearance of giving money to the church while keeping most of it for himself. Romney reportedly took advantage of a loophole, called a charitable remainder unitrust or CRUT, which allows someone to park money or securities in a tax-deferred trust marked for their favorite charity, but which often doesn’t pay out much to the non-profit. The donor pays taxes on the fixed yearly income they get from the trust, but the principle remains untaxed . Congress outlawed the practice in 1997, but Romney slid in under the wire when his trust, created in June 1996, was grandfathered in. The trust essentially lets someone “rent” the charity’s tax-exemption while not actually giving the charity much money. If done for this purpose, the trust pays out more every year to the donor than it makes in returns on its holdings, depleting the principal over time, so that when the donor dies and the trust is transferred to the charity, there’s often little left. The actual contribution “is just a throwaway,” Jonathan Blattmachr, a lawyer who set up hundreds of CRUTS in the 1990s, told Bloomberg. “I used to structure them so the value dedicated to charity was as close to zero as possible without being zero.” Indeed, this appears to the case for Romney’s trust as well. Bloomberg obtained the trust’s tax returns through a Freedom of Information Request and found that Romney’s CRUT started at $750,000 in 2001 but ended 2011 with only $421,203 — over a period when the stock market grew. Romney’s trust was projected to leave less than 8 percent of the original contribution to the church (or another charity that he can designate). This, along with the trust’s poor returns — it made just $48 in 2011 — suggest the trust is not designed to grow for the LDS church but just...
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Last week, the Irish Times published an opinion piece that was generally quite positive about atheism, but also perpetuated a stereotype. Ireland is seeing the emergence of a newer kind of atheist, who is anxious to dispel the myth that they are all one-dimensional, rabidly anti-religious Dawkinsians. It then goes on to praise charitable efforts by atheists, the emergence of the Atheism Plus movement, and the ongoing discussions about ethics within the atheist community (like I said, it’s mostly a nice article saying good things about atheists). However, it’s as if the author is surprised that we aren’t all out hanging priests from lampposts and blowing up churches. But that’s wrong. The New Atheist movement has always been about applying reason and evidence-based thinking to everything, without exception. Atheism+ was established by aggressive, out atheists who do not compromise on the foolishness of faith, and take the very same take-no-prisoners approach on social justice issues. In 2010, atheists met and formulated the Copenhagen Declaration (see also the Irish amendment). These are entirely ‘Dawkinsian’ in spirit! It is actually no surprise at all that atheism is taking this direction. The only people who have been surprised are that obnoxious subset of atheists who thought nobody would ever expect them to defend their viciously anti-equality views rationally and with evidence — they’ve gotten a bit of a shock when they’ve found themselves marginalized and regarded with contempt. But they are well out of the mainstream of the New Atheist movement, and are reduced to angrily lashing out on the internet against the decent human beings who make up the bulk of our godless horde. Michael Nugent has written an excellent article rebutting some of the misconceptions in the original opinion piece, which has also been published in the Irish Times. “New Atheism” as promoted by Richard Dawkins has...
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