Maybe it’s something in the air: Spring brings out the sociological criticisms of science, or something. But for some reason, this week people have been talking at me about the “deficit model” repeatedly, and it is really beginning to annoy me. The latest source is Alice Bell in the Guardian, who says some sensible things …
Category Archive: Culture
May 16 2013
Creeps get what they deserve
Facebook allows porn sites? Yeah, it looks the other way. So I find it hilarious that a group of feminists managed to gain control of a facebook page dedicated to creepy content and give it a total makeover. The Bra Busters page now has just over 3,000 subscribers. One admin spent an hour removing all …
May 16 2013
After they defeat Darwin, the creationists will be coming after psychiatry next
I think David Dobbs is going to be amused to learn that the Discovery Institute thinks he has just demolished Darwinism by way of psychiatry. But in an article that is delusional even by the standards of that bastion of lunacy, the DI argues that the collapse of evolution is just around the corner. Again. …
May 16 2013
The scarlet crayon of atheism
I’ve been trying to understand how people — not just people, but self-declared “leaders of the atheist movement” — can claim that atheism is only the lack of belief in any gods, and further, that absence of god-belief entails no other significant consequences. It’s been difficult, because that way of thinking is alien to me; …
May 15 2013
I think we call that an own goal
An article in the Houston Chronicle blog, Female atheists fight for equality in freethought movement, goes out of its way to find some people who disagree with that sentiment. I don’t know whether the author was being cunningly ironic or not (he is a religion writer), but he really picked the worst possible critics, which …
May 15 2013
I get email, gay marriage redux
Yesterday, I showed you that email promising 77 secular reasons to oppose gay marriage. Now the same guy has written back. My hope in suggesting this pamphlet to you was to get you to see that there is opposition,for sociological reasons, to the legislation signed by Gov. Dayton yesterday. I can accept that you have …
May 15 2013
Good times, good times. Wait, I meant bad times
Remember the good old days, when you could always trust a creationist to claim their theory was not religious, and then they’d turn around and neatly undermine their own claims for you? Think Bill Buckingham at the Dover trial, who completely won the case for the good guys by saying a lot of stupid stuff. …
May 15 2013
Won’t they hang you or set you on fire for that?
The Rationalist Association has started The Apostasy Project — they’re trying to provide resources for people who want to leave their religion. As recent events in Bangladesh have shown, apostasy is regarded by some as a terrible crime. If you can, help them out with a donation. Apostasy is something to praise and encourage!
May 15 2013
Stand up against sexism
Amanda Marcotte shares a success story in the struggle against casual sexism, and also plugs this great conference coming up this weekend. I bring this up because I’m one of the speakers at Women in Secularism, which starts on Friday in D.C. (There’s still time to register, if you want to come!) The very existence …
May 15 2013
The stupid problem
This really is a constant problem. I don’t think most theists are stupid, just as I don’t think being an atheist makes you smart, but theists are led to say the most astonishingly stupid things by their abysmally stupid mythology. Ken Ham is probably a smart guy — he’s at least got cunning and business …
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