A visit to the adult table

PZ listened to all of that conversation between Stefan Molyneux and Peter Boghossian. I managed only about twenty minutes, because it’s so gross and also so tedious, and I plan to go back to it, but PZ did it in one gulp. He took some notes – not a transcript, because he was doing other work at the time, which is the only way listening to the whole thing could be tolerable – not a transcript but just some notes.

Curiously, Boghossian is having a conversation with Molyneux, who is notorious for his misogynist remarks. Not just the mild, unthinking sexism that so many Atheist Thinky Leaders engage in, but outright contempt for women. This is the guy who claims that women are the root of all evil, because Women have to be held accountable for choosing assholes. They have sex with assholes and have little baby assholes, none of which is the father’s fault, but entirely due to women’s evil choices. [Read more…]

A kind of proxy blasphemy code

The ExMuslims Forum (i.e. someone from the forum, writing under that name) has an excellent comment on a wrong-headed piece by Andrew Brown at Comment is Free. Brown’s claim in his piece is that people who criticize Islam in fact hate Muslims. I saw progressive liberal Muslim friends venting huge irritation with Brown and his article. It’s a myth that liberal Muslims also hold the view that people who criticize Islam in fact hate Muslims; they don’t.

As Exmuslims, we critique Islam because there are many aspects of Islam that need to be critiqued. In particular, we seek to oppose Islam’s apostasy codes, which are oppressive and lead to persecution.

We have found it is quite difficult to get some people to listen to our stories because they fear that acknowledging these issues will contribute to a critical view towards Islam. [Read more…]

What magic words?

Sometimes laws can be hard to understand. There’s a case in the UK where an underage girl was violently married off and raped, but the judge says he can’t annul the marriage. Sorry for citing the Daily Mail but it’s the only source:

A judge says he cannot nullify the marriage of a teenage mother who says she was forced at ‘gunpoint’ into becoming a bride when she was just 14. [Read more…]

Was it a sincere question?

Chris Stedman has a post at RNS replying to Peter Boghossian’s “why gay pride?” tweet. He is, you won’t be surprised to hear, much better at being even-tempered about it than I was.

Many atheists, such as LGBTQ atheist author Greta Christina, responded—but Boghossian dug in and continued to defend his statement, tweeting additional statements like “Questioning that one can be proud to be gay is a leftist blasphemy.” [Read more…]

Parents raised concerns about her trip to Kenya

Africa’s a big continent. A very big continent. It can be hard to grasp just how big if you’ve grown up on maps that make it look as if the US dominates the universe. Joan McCarter at Daily Kos provides a nice graphic that shows how easily China, India, Western Europe and the UK, and Argentina all fit into the space Africa takes up, with some to spare.

McCarter does that by way of illustrating the cruel ignorance of this story: [Read more…]

Even to change their beliefs

Seven years ago an Anglican bishop was saying that laws against “apostasy” are a bad thing.

One of the Church of England’s most senior bishops is warning that people will die unless Muslim leaders in Britain speak out in defence of the right to change faith.

Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, whose father converted from Islam to Christianity in Pakistan, says he is looking to Muslim leaders in Britain to ‘uphold basic civil liberties, including the right for people to believe what they wish to believe and to even change their beliefs if they wish to do so’.

[Read more…]