Occupational hazard

Some skeptical questions that are less than useful.

  • Why should I do no harm?
  • Why should I care what other people want?
  • If it’s fun for me to make fun of fat people on the bus, why shouldn’t I go ahead and do that?
  • If I can trick people into giving me all their money to “invest” why shouldn’t I do that?
  • If I enjoy sex with children why shouldn’t I have it?
  • If I’m a priest why shouldn’t I use that as a way to get access to children to have sex with?
  • Why should I inconvenience myself to help someone else?
  • Why should I worry about the working conditions in the factory where my inexpensive Tshirt was made?
  • Why should I care about the problems of people in Bangladesh or Somalia?

There’s an infinite number of questions of that type. They’re not skeptical in the sense of taking a hard look at pseudoscience or woo or fairy tales, but they’re skeptical in the philosophical sense.

This is probably one reason organized skepticism can attract a lot of assholes. It doesn’t always happen, but it’s a hazard.

Archiocese v Girl cooties

Oh no, a girrrrrrrul wants to play a sport that’s supposed to be only for guys! This must be stopped, at least according to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

My name is Amanda. I’m a 16 year old Catholic school junior at Archbishop Ryan High School in Philadelphia. I love martial arts including wrestling, jiu jitsu, and muay thai. I want an equal opportunity to wrestle in school, but the Archdiocese of Philadelphia says no. I’m being discriminated against just because I’m a girl.

This November will be the inaugural season for our school’s wrestling team. Everyone’s excited, and I want to be part of it because I love the sport and hope to get a college scholarship for wrestling. I train twice a day most days of the week and am involved in anti-bullying programs to help empower people. It’s not fair that being a girl denies me the opportunity to compete at school despite having years of experience in mixed-martial arts.

No it’s not. The link is to a petition. You can sign it.

The fast depleting tribe of genuine human rights activists

More from Nigeria on Baba Omojola.

President Goodluck Jonathan has condoled with the government and people of Ondo State on the death of the highly respected pro-democracy activist and renowned economist, Dr. Baba Oluwide Omojola.

A press statement by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Dr Rueben Abati, said the President extends his sincere condolences to Dr. Omojola’s immediate and extended family, friends, associates and professional colleagues of the late nationalist, patriot and indefatigable advocate of good governance who dedicated his life to the pursuit of social justice and a better life for others. [Read more…]

Purity and contamination

One of the things we get accused of a lot – we feminists, we “social justice warriors,” we “#FTBullies” – is puritanism.

A new puritanism is on the march, and just as in the case of the old puritanism, its leaders are unconscionable bullies.

That’s a tweet from one of the regulars. It’s typical of the genre in its scare-mongering – note the sinister overtones of “on the march” coupled with puritanism, which is made explicit at the conclusion. [Read more…]

And give to the poor

So in Germany people are cross with the bishop of Limburg, who treated himself to a very pricey new place to live at the expense of none other than Jesus’s own Catholic church.

he €31-million bill for Franz-Tebartz Van-Elst’s residence, including €15,000 on a bath tub and €350,000 on built-in-wardrobes, has put the finances of the Catholic Church, much of which comes from taxpayers and state subsidies, into the spotlight.

Carsten Frerk, an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church in Germany, estimated its wealth at around €430 billion with about €140 billion of that in capital, the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper reported.

You’re starting to talk about real money there. [Read more…]

Comrade Baba Omojola

A giant of the Nigerian left and a beloved friend of Yemisi’s died suddenly today. From Sahara Reporters:

A renowned pro-democracy activist and prominent economist, Baba Omojola, has died in Akure, the capital of Ondo State.

Mr. Omojola, who earned a PhD, died a few hours after submitting a presentation to the National Dialogue Committee in Ondo State early today.

Baba, as he was famously known, was a prominent figure during Nigeria’s pro-democracy struggles of the late and early 1990s. [Read more…]

Daisy Coleman speaks up

Daisy Coleman is the teenage girl at the center of the Maryville rape storm, and she wants to tell the world what really happened.

She was 14. She had her best friend Paige, who was 13, over for the night to hang out and watch scary movies – and drink alcohol, against her mother’s known wishes and rules. She was texting with an older boy her brother had warned her about. Update: That looks censorious, and that’s not what I meant. I meant to summarize so as not to paste in the whole article, and to give all the relevant facts. I needed to include both the drinking alcohol and the fact that it wasn’t with parental approval.

It wasn’t until later that night that Matt, a popular senior boy, had asked to hang out. Of course, I knew my brothers wouldn’t allow this so, we had to sneak out. It was about one in the morning when my friend and I climbed out of my bedroom window.  [Read more…]