An “intellectual romance”

The New York Times had a piece about Colin McGinn yesterday, and (better) about the implications for paying attention to sexism in philosophy and universities.

While the status of women in the sciences has received broad national attention, debate about sexism in philosophy has remained mostly within the confines of academia. But the revelation this summer that Colin McGinn, a star philosopher at the University of Miami, had agreed to leave his tenured post after allegations of sexual harassment brought by a graduate student, has put an unusually famous name to the problem, exposing the field to what some see as a healthy dose of sunlight.

“People are thinking, ‘Wow, he had to resign, and we know about it,’ ” said Jennifer Saul, the chairwoman of the philosophy department at the University of Sheffield in England and the editor of the blog What Is It Like to Be a Woman in Philosophy? [Read more…]

The link between status and virtue

This question of credentials, accomplishments, fame, status, titles, and what it has to do with whether or not someone can behave badly. As I discussed yesterday, Tim Farley seems to be claiming that fame and titles in the skeptic/atheist world are incompatible with acting like a shit. I say “seems to be” because it’s not clear exactly what he’s claiming. I’ve asked him to clarify but so far he’s said only that that’s a small part of the post, which doesn’t help and is frankly beside the point. [Read more…]

An argument from false authority

Our friend Tom at Dubito Ergo Sum has an excellent, thorough post about Tim Farley’s objections to the block bot.

He too quotes the list of credentials and then comments on it.

This would make for a great game of spot the fallacy, wouldn’t it? Farley lists all these qualifications, but none of them are “noted anti-spam crusader” or “longtime anti-bigotry activist,” not that those would be excuses either. See, none of these qualifications are inconsistent with “abusive […] anti-feminists, MRAs, or all-round assholes” or “annoying and irritating”3. It’s possible to be an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning comedian and also be an annoying asshole who delights in baiting feminists with disingenuous arguments, just as it’s possible to be a Ph.D. biochemist who believes in intelligent design. This is a pro hominem argument, an argument from false authority, that these people’s lofty credentials make them somehow incapable of being bigots, jerks, trolls, abusers, or just antagonistic assholes to specific groups of people. [Read more…]

Just a casual scan

Yesterday Tim Farley wrote a piece about the block bot and some objections he has to it. One objection he has is that it blocks some people whom he considers…I’m not sure what, exactly – too good to merit blocking, I guess is the clearest way to put it. He considers them people who shouldn’t be blocked, because they don’t deserve to be blocked. But he makes this case in a very odd way.

The community needs of this very specific group (“Atheism+”), combined with the lack of auditing and transparency of control, has resulted in some (in my opinion) very strange choices. I am familiar with many of the people in these communities.  I know many of them in real life as well as online.  Scanning the list of Level 2 and 3 blocks makes me repeatedly scratch my head in puzzlement. [Read more…]

Protect Nahla Mahmoud

Nahla Mahmoud is being threatened, and the police won’t do anything about it.

From the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain:

Following an interview on Channel 4 on Sharia law, Islamists have threatened Sudanese secular campaigner and Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain Spokesperson Nahla Mahmoud with death, calling her a ‘Kafira’ and ‘Murtada’ who has offended Islam and brought “fitnah”. The threats have been reported to the police who have closed the case and advised that nothing could be done.

We the undersigned are extremely concerned about the safety of Nahla and that of her family in Sudan. We ask the authorities to investigate the threats made particularly by Mr Salah Al Bandar. [Read more…]

Milking it

Tauriq Moosa alerted me to an example of “there is no depth too low.” What is it? Harassing a child who has leukemia? Torturing a kitten in front of the kitten’s weeping human? Firebombing a picnic just for the lolz?

No, it’s harassing Amanda Berry for going outside and having fun – Amanda Berry, who spent ten years not being able to go outside and have fun because she was imprisoned in a house by a filthy human being who kept her locked up there. [Read more…]

Alex’s list

Alex Gabriel has a list of 100 Irish and British atheists who don’t fit the stereotyped image of what an atheist is. It’s a great list. I know a few of them, know of many of them, am pleased to learn of the ones I don’t know of.

25. Jane Donnelly is Atheist Ireland’s Education Policy Officer, and has spoken widely on the need for secular education. Recently, at Empowering Women Through Secularism, she also gave a presentation on secularism and human rights. You can find her writing and updates on AI’s dedicated Teach Don’t Preach site. [Read more…]

Priests who brooked no opposition of any kind

There’s a little book published in association with RTE (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) in 1986, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl. It started as a series of radio interviews with writers, who then lived up to their job titles by writing up what they’d said. Polly Devlin included in her account a look at the grip the church had on Ireland in the 1950s.

As a social system our Catholic religion constituted a tyranny – not within the confines of our family but certainly outside it. We as a family were brought up in a dispensation that was different from that heavily medieval Catholic one that obtained in the parish…My father had been brought up in an enlightened way so that not only was there no bigotry in our house, there was a real tolerance. The parish, however, was run as a great many Irish parishes were run at that time, by priests who brooked no opposition of any kind. [Read more…]