And speaking of “dissent” and “disagreement” and “people who do not share your opinion” – speaking of calling sustained frothing hatemongering “dissent” and “disagreement” and “people who do not share your opinion” – that’s all over a thread of PZ’s on the Montreal Massacre.

PZ made the point that the Montreal Massacre was a very overt example of misogyny. He made the related point that misogyny has consequences. Misogynists came along at a dead run to protest the outrage of saying that misogyny has consequences. There was a lot of bullshit about “dissent” and “disagreement” and “people who do not share your opinion” as cozy ways of describing sustained frothing misogyny. From Al Stefanelli for instance… [Read more…]

The Family Research Council thinks Uganda’s commitment to hatred of gays is just the best thing ever.

Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga has taken up the challenge of national repentance by promising passage of the “Kill the Gays” legislation as a “Christmas gift”to the people of Uganda.

Naturally, Christian conservative leaders in the U.S. are thrilled with what FRC has called an “inspirational moment for the [Ugandan] nation.” As Alvin McEwen pointed out, FRC President Tony Perkins tweeted a big, warm hug to President Museveni for “leading his nation in repentance” and thus helping to create a “nation prospered by God.” But Perkins’ tweet was an hors d’oeuvre for the main course, a November 26 email alert sent out to FRC subscribers entitled, “During Revival, Media Still Atone Deaf.” As the title suggests, one target of the longer commendation of Museveni is the mainstream media in the U.S. which, having drawn attention to violations of LGBT peoples’ human rights in Uganda, is accused of being “so threatened by religion that it refuses to leave another country alone to pursue its own views on sexuality and faith.”

Ah yes “views.” Views. That’s all it is – just views. Just opinions. Just dissent, disagreement, seeing things differently. Who could possibly object? Why do those horrible liberal people in the liberal media object to Uganda having “its own views on sexuality and faith”? Because they’re horrible-liberal.

Other Christian Right leaders and pastors have seen fertile ground for their own religious agendas and enterprises in African nations — notable among them the organization known as “the Fellowship” or “the Family,” which operates the famed “C Street house” in Washington, D.C., a residence for right-wing senators and congressmen — and they’ve often lauded the human rights violators who carry out those designs.

For its part, the Family Research Council, which has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its “demonizing lies about the LGBT community,” continues to heap praise on President Museveni’s theocratic aspirations. In its email alert, FRC quotes liberally from Museveni’s speech and notes that Uganda “has stood — often alone — for traditional values, abstinence, and families despite tremendous pressure from the West.”

They’re doing intertheocratic work.

Oh so that’s what interfaith is for – fighting secularization! There I was half-convinced it was for dialogue and bridge-building and working together to do things. Ok no I wasn’t, I wasn’t even quarter-convinced, but I was at least aware that that was the advertising slogan. But it appears that not everyone got the memo.

Well of course not. Lots of faith people don’t want secularism, after all – they want their particular dogma imposed on everyone else. And if there’s anybody who not only wants that but has the power to make it happen, it’s the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The National Catholic Register was there. [Read more…]

I mentioned meeting Mark Fournier at Eschaton. (There are surprisingly many B&W readers-and-commenters in Ottawa.) Step in the time machine and go back to 2006, and Richard Swinburne…

Remember this of Swinburne’s? The interjection is mine.

Theodicy provides good explanations of why God sometimes — for some or all of the short period of our earthly lives — allows us to suffer pain and disability.

Good? Good explanations? Good in what sense? [Read more…]

Neil deGrasse Tyson did a couple of alarming and disheartening tweets just now –

Neil deGrasse Tyson‏@neiltyson

Done with Jury Duty. I said I could not convict a person solely on eyewitness testimony. They sent me home. I’m now 0 for 4.

After hearing my skepticism of eyewitness testimony, six other jury candidates promptly agreed. And they got sent home too.

Oyyyyyyyyyy.

Eyewitness testimony is so crappy – so very unreliable and yet so trusted.

TV trains everyone to think it’s infallible, as if there were a video camera in our brains and all we have to do is roll the tape. We’re bad at noticing stuff even when it’s right in front of us, and then we’re bad all over again at remembering. Put the two together and you get a big “Huh? I dunno. I wasn’t watching.” But noooooo, cop shows always present it as Hidden Photography Inside The Head. The cops ask for detailed descriptions of the suspect, they get impatient when people don’t know, they take the lineup very seriously – as if all this were totally reliable.

 

Jesus and Mo and Moses are on the story.

Hank Fox took a bunch of nice photos at Eschaton. There’s Genie Scott, PZ, Larry Moran – and there’s Eric.

Eric and I had the opportunity for several long talks. He’s a compadre. [Read more…]

It’s a literary trope, the father who disowns or betrays a daughter. I don’t say that to make light of it, but on the contrary, to point out the way it has haunted the human imagination, which underlines how horrible it is. (This applies to all combinations of parents and children, but fathers and daughters gets noticed less than fathers and sons.)

Agamemnon, you know. He sacrificed Iphigenia – which is to say, he killed her on an “altar” – to get a wind when the attack on Troy was becalmed. Not very fatherly, as one of the Mitfords might have put it. Lucretius used it as the occasion for his famous comment, tantum religio potuit suadere malorum – religion can persuade [people to perform] such evils. [Read more…]