The Russian Orthodox Church is annoyed that a guy in a dress won the Eurovision song contest. This strikes Russians as hilarious, because The Russian Orthodox Church features guys in dresses.

The drag queen’s performance and its enthusiastic reception was a sign of the world’s moral decline and part the aggressive assertion of Western cultural norms, according to Vladimir Legoyda.

The chairman of the church’s information department told Interfax news agency: ““The process of the legalisation of that to which the Bible refers to as nothing less than an abomination is already long not news in the contemporary world.” [Read more…]

Sinister.

Imagine that a little-known but increasingly powerful group of ideologues had hatched a plan to transform the United States into a Christian theocracy harkening back to the Dark Ages of Europe, a time when society was governed by the laws and officials of the Catholic Church.

Suppose further that this plan had a scary simple strategy: Recruit bright, young law students; put them through an intensive indoctrination program; place them in plum internships across the country; and watch as they swim upstream until they reach the top of the legal system, where they can create, enforce, and interpret laws according to a legal philosophy infused with fundamentalist Christian theology.

Got it?

Now learn that it’s already here. Sofia Resnick and Sharona Coutts at RH Reality Check report: [Read more…]

A terrific event in London on August 6 – so all you people who are gathering for the World Humanist Congress in Oxford August 8th could go to this:

“How to Make Enemies and Alienate People – the Philosophy of Offensive and Inappropriate Language”

It’s hosted by our friend Bernard Hurley.

The growth of social media has given an unprecedented opportunity for those who wish to gratuitously offend to actually do so but it has also given an opportunity for those who wish to take offence at mere criticism to express such offence. It’s clear that someone who uses offensive language is doing more than just conveying information, but what exactly are they doing? The job of the philosopher is to clarify, rather than to prescribe and it seems to me that there is urgent need for clarification today. However there has been very little discussion about how offensive language fits into the Philosophy of Language. Drawing on some ideas of Michael Dummett, I shall make some suggestion about how such language might work.

This lecture is part of the 2014 Kant’s Cave Lecture series. As is usual at these lectures there will be plenty of time for discussion afterwards.

http://pfalondon.org/kant.html

Wednesday August 6 at 7:30 p.m.

Exmouth Arms, 1 Starcross Street, NW1 2HR London

I would go to that like a shot if it weren’t 6000 miles away. For many of you it’s just around the corner or a few stops on the tube.

Eg-zactly.

Via Muslim and Exmuslim Women for Secularism

That nonsense about Obama not wanting to call Boko Haram terrorists? It’s just another stupid right-wing talking point.

Aside from attacking Michelle Obama for publicly showing concern and lying about President Obama, one of the major spokes in the conservative effort to politicize the kidnapping of 284 schoolgirls in Nigeria has been to criticize the Obama administration for not designating Boko Haram (the group responsible for the abductions) a terrorist organization.

Why, then, is there all this video of President Obama calling Boko Haram a terrorist organization, long before the State Department changed its designation? [Read more…]

And Jon Stewart retorted.

Stewart tore into Boko Haram and said that #BringBackOurGirls actually proves Twitter can be more useful than you might think at pressuring people to do something. And so in reaction to Limbaugh rolling his eyes at the hashtag activism, Stewart came up with a new hashtag for people to use: #F*ckYouRush. Stewart even contrasted the people speaking out on the girls’ behalf with “that f*cking guy” Limbaugh to show what the two sides are in this argument.

I don’t know. Some people just really should get better hobbies.