Zach Alexander has a very thoughtful review, or review-essay, on Chris Stedman’s book. He admires much of it, but also dissents strongly from part of the argument.

The most obvious problem is that even as Chris extolls the virtues of religious pluralism, he delivers an anti-pluralist message to his fellow atheists. Not content to merely do his own work, inviting like-minded people to join him, he expects the entire herd of cats to conform to his particular temperament and interests. Rather than increasing the breadth of the movement with his unique voice, he wishes to narrow it.

Second, even as he preaches respect, he casts aspersions on the so-called New Atheism, calling it “toxic, misdirected, and wasteful” (14). [Read more…]

So after Obama was re-elected the other day, naturally lots of people took to Twitter to call him a nigger. I mean what else do you do when you’re pissed off? Nothing, right? Because there is nothing else. There’s only whatever epithet fits the crime.

Ricky Catanzaro plays football for Xaverian High School, a private Catholic prep school in Brooklyn, NY. Students who play sports there must sign an athlete’s contract that stipulates a promise “to be a worthy representative of my teammates and coaches, abiding by school and community expectations.” [Read more…]

Stories. I was thinking about stories, earlier. Stories, narrative, interpretation, explanation; and science, evidence, testing. I forget what started the train of thought, but it was about the way stories give us explanations of why people do things that are peculiarly satisfying, and that science can be irritating when it tells us a story is wrong.

The thing about stories is that they give us permission to make unquestionable claims about what people think, and what their motivations are. We can’t do that in real life, you know. If we’re sharing a bit of gossip about Eleanora or Archibald, we don’t tell it the way a storyteller does. We narrate facts or reports, what we’ve seen or what others say they’ve seen; we don’t announce what the protagonists thought. That’s because we don’t know. Stories have opposite rules – in telling stories it’s just normal to say what everyone thinks. Homer did it all the time.

That’s interesting, isn’t it. In real life we don’t know what other people think, we just infer it from how they behave, and often we’re aware that we don’t have a clue. In reading or hearing stories, we enter an alternate world where we can be told what everyone thinks.

Why is that so peculiarly satisfying? Probably partly because we can’t do it in real life; we can’t have that comfortable sense that we understand exactly why everybody does everything. Probably also partly because it’s explanatory. There just is something satisfying about a good explanation – “good” in the sense of being a good fit and making sense of something that was a puzzle or a jumble.

I suppose I’m talking about folk psychology. I’m thinking that stories probably have a lot to do with where we get our folk psychology. I’m also wondering if they trick us into thinking we understand other minds better than we really do.

Deborah Hyde is at Skepticon.

On Sunday morning, I will be talking to a crowd of American atheists about belief in werewolves in post-Reformation Europe. My subject is usually consumed enthusiastically by atheists, because they find vampires and witches no sillier than angels and, in any case, studying these things leads to insights into what makes us human.

As a story, the idea of the werewolf is really very good. So are the ideas of vampires and witches. The trouble is just that stories bleed into what we take to be real, and in the case of things like witches that can have terrible results.

If the tweets are any guide, James Croft killed it at Skepticon earlier this morning, doing funny accents and acting out a comic and then inspiring everyone.

 

It makes my head hurt. Bringing more women into leadership roles so that they can force women into more submissive roles. No not Sarah Palin, no not Michelle Bachmann – the women in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt has brought with it a new  group of female politicians who say they are determined to bring more women into  leadership roles — and at the same time want to consecrate a deeply conservative Islamic vision for women in Egypt.

But if they are determined to bring more women into  leadership roles then why do they want to consecrate a deeply conservative  Islamic vision for women?

Really, people, those two things do not go together. It’s like trying to eat and vomit at the same time. [Read more…]

It’s Malala day today. It’s global.

People around the world are expected to hold vigils and demonstrations honoring Malala and calling for the 32 million girls worldwide who are denied education to be allowed to go to school.

Pakistani prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf saluted Malala’s courage and urged his countrymen to stand against the extremist mindset that led to her attack.

That’s sweet. But…when I say “global” I mean partly global. I don’t mean Malala’s own hometown, for instance. It’s not Malala day in Mingora, not openly.

But in Mingora, the threat of further Taliban reprisals casts a fearful shadow, and students at Malala’s Khushal Public School were forced to honor her in private. [Read more…]

A bit of wisdom from Dan Fincke on Facebook.

Stop saying it’s pointless to debate. People change their minds. They just change them slowly, over time, and often imperceptibly.

It’s true you know. People do change their minds. They do; we do; you do; I do.

We all know this when we think about it, right? We can easily think of things we’ve changed our minds about. We do it multiple times every day. If we learn something new and it sticks, we’ve changed our mind. Debates can include information as well as argument, so it would be very odd if all debates were pointless. Even stubborn people with bad Dunning-Kruger effect can learn something sometimes.

That’s another reason for not letting stalkers and harassers and name-callers take over your blog, by the way. It’s easier to be optimistic about debate when it’s a good debate than when it’s a festival of shit-flinging.

If your website’s full of assholes, it’s your fault, says Anil Dash.

…as I reflected back on the wonderful, meaningful conversations I’ve had in the last dozen years of this blog, I realized that one of the reasons people don’t understand how I’ve had such a wonderful response from all of you over the years is because they simply don’t believe great conversations can happen on the web. Fortunately, I have seen so much proof to the contrary.

Why are they so cynical about conversation on the web? Because a company like Google thinks it’s okay to sell video ads on YouTube above conversations that are filled with vile, anonymous comments. Because almost every great newspaper in America believes that it’s more important to get a few more page views on their website than to encourage meaningful discourse about current events within their community, even if many of those page views will be off-putting to the good people who are offended by the content of the comments. And because lots of publishers think that any conversation is good if it boosts traffic stats.

Well, the odds are I’ve been doing this blogging thing longer than you, so let me tell you what I’ve learned: When you engage with a community online in a constructive way, it can be one of the most meaningful experiences of your life. It doesn’t have to be polite, or neat and tidy, or full of everyone agreeing with each other. It just has to not be hateful and destructive.

Makes sense to me.

H/t Chris Lawson

Deeyah has a powerful, moving article about honour culture and making a documentary film about the murder of Banaz Mahmod.

I grew up in a community where Honour is a social currency that defines our lives from the moment we are born.

Having honour is often the most sought after, protected and prized asset that speaks to the status and reputation of a family within their community. The burden of honour is most often placed on the behaviour of women. This collective sense of honour and shame has for centuries confined the movement, freedom of choice and restricted the uninhibited expression of ourselves.

You can not be who you are, you can not express your needs, hopes and opinions as an individual if they are in conflict with the greater good and reputation of the family, the community, the collective.  If you grow up in a community defined by these patriarchal concepts of honour and social structures these are the parameters you are expected to live by. This is true for my own life and experiences as well.

Any strong expression of yourself, of autonomy, is not acceptable and can be punished by a variety of consequences from abuse, threats, intimidation, excommunication by the group, violence and the most extreme manifestation: taking someone’s life; murdering someone in the name of honour because their expression of the individual self was not in accordance with the group expectations.

There are people, even people who consider themselves progressive, who think that’s a good thing. I think they don’t properly consider what it means.

One particular thing Deeyah says is so sad.

What has upset me greatly from the very beginning of this project is how absent Banaz was from her own story.  What I mean by that is whenever you see a film or a piece on tv about someone who has passed you will always have family members, friends, people who knew the person sharing their love, their memories and thoughts about the person who has died, they often show family home videos, photos and other momentoes.  In this film that was just not the case at all.

Absent from her own story. It’s terrible.

The Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society yesterday received an “official warning” from the Student Union, which will be on record until the end of spring term provided they “watch their behavior” – which presumably means they name no more fruits “Mohammed,” neither pears nor grapes nor papayas.

Oh yeah?

Mohammed

Aisha

Ayatollah Khomeini