Not the right Atheist to ask

There is way too much shrapnel flying around today, I can’t grab a minute to write a post not nohow. So the shrapnel is going to pile up in a big pile while I grab this minute.

Becky Friedman of Ask an Atheist did a post addressed to me yesterday (but I didn’t see it until today). She started off by saying

I received a personal email from blogger Ophelia Benson around 5 pm on Tuesday:

and then after the colon she pasted in the whole personal email. Without having asked for my permission. Which would not have been forthcoming.

I pointed that out this morning.

About an hour ago Mike Gillis also of Ask an Atheist responded to the issue of posting an email without permission:

This is such a stupid pedantic distraction from Becky’s actual response.

These are not good people.

 

Eff up your effigy

I’m not going to blame religion for this, because it would be a cheap shot. It’s not religion so much as cranked-up nastiness – with a religious veneer.

The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., has hanged an effigy of President Barack Obama from a gallows on its front lawn, a move DWOC pastor Terry Jones said was in response to Obama’s recent endorsement of same-sex marriage, as well as his stance on abortion and what Jones called his “appeasing of radical Islam.”

What was that I was saying about threatoids and threat-like remarks? Hanging people in effigy is the same kind of thing. It used to be fairly common, I think, or at least not unknown…but then so did flogging and slavery and child labor. Hanging people in effigy is not an old custom that ought to be revived.

The effigy is suspended from a makeshift gallows with a noose of yellow rope, has a doll in its right hand and a rainbow-colored gay pride flag in its left.

In a telephone interview with The Huffington Post, Jones said the flag was meant to call attention to Obama’s stance on same-sex marriage and that the baby doll is there because the president is “favorable toward abortion.”

But then Obama should have an abortion in his hand, not a baby. Get your ducks in a row. Gay pride flag: something Obama approves of and Pastor Jones hates. Baby: something Obama is taken to want to see aborted before it gets to be a baby and Pastor Jones loves. See? The two don’t match. He did it wrong. It has to be: something Obama approves of and Pastor Jones hates, for both items.

People are so sloppy with these things.

Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished

The Church of England is worried and upset about government proposals to legalise gay marriage, saying these plans might come between it and its dearly beloved the state.

The church — whose supreme governor is Queen Elizabeth II — warned that it could be forced out of its traditional role of conducting weddings on behalf of the state.

Well we can’t have that. We can’t have the established church – whose top person is the monarch – being “forced” out of its traditional role. We can’t ever have anybody or any institution, however archaic and useless, forced out of a traditional role. Everybody knows that traditional roles are the best things ever, and must always be preserved and protected from change and reform.

“The Church of England’s unique place in the current marriage law of England means that the proposals will potentially have a very significant impact on our ability to serve the people of the nation as we have always done,” it added.

It said the plan “fails to take account of the fact that consummation has always been an integral part of the common understanding of marriage between church and state, with annulment possible where consummation does not occur.”

Whut? Consummation? What’s that got to do with anything? No wait, I get it – when it’s straight marriage, they can check for consummation by looking for blood on the sheet. With gay marriage that won’t work.

No, wait, that won’t work, because actually you don’t find the vicar who performed the marriage on the doorstep the next morning, ready to inspect the sheet. You used to, yes, but not any more – that’s one of those traditional roles that have faded away over time. Pause to shed a tear over another traditional role destroyed by our frivolous secular ways.

So that’s not it, so what is it? That “consummation” is a word that applies only to straight couples so that even if there’s no way to verify that a marriage has or has not been consummated, the fact that it doesn’t apply to gay couples makes the church superfluous? Is that it?

Surely not. Surely they can’t be that silly.

Can they?

 

Don’t give it to them, give it to us

A silly Twitter exchange this morning…Surly Amy reported EIGHTEEN Surly Women Grant winners for TAM 2012, and a guy replied

Must be great for all those females. The rest of us are on our own.

I said so she should send you instead? He said no, he just never understood why it’s only applicable to female skeptics. I said it’s because there are fewer of them, and that self-perpetuates. Then I added

Think of it as actually benefiting you, by spreading skepticism among women and thus the population. Benefits all of us.

Why isn’t this more accepted? Why isn’t it just obvious, and embraced?

We’re all in this together, after all. We can all vote. This is in many ways a tragedy; the least we can do is try to spread critical thinking around as opposed to trying to keep it a special little geeky enclave. If this means grants for women or blacks or any other under-represented group, why is that something to kvetch about? Surly Amy isn’t taking money out of Complaining Guy’s pocket to send more women to TAM, she’s just raising the money through her own efforts and handing it out as she chooses. Complaining Guy can still go to TAM! And there will be eighteen more people to talk to there, thanks to Surly Amy. What’s not to like?

It’s still a Christian country

Cork city councillors don’t want no stinkin’ secularism. Cork city councillors say Ireland is a Christian country so there.

A proposal to scrap a prayer at the start of a local authority meeting sparked an unholy row last night.

Cork’s city councillors voted overwhelmingly against the move after a heated debate.

Socialist Party councillor Mick Barry, an atheist, called for the deletion of a rule governing the order of council business which states that the start of the council’s public meetings should include the recitation of an opening prayer, followed by a brief period of silent reflection.

The prayer reads: “Direct, we beseech thee, O Lord, our actions by thy holy inspirations and carry them on by thy gracious assistance; that every word and work of ours may always begin from thee, and by thee be happily ended; through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

That’s a very terrible prayer. Look at it. It means that they think whatever they do has been directed by what they take to be a good and all-powerful god. It makes them think they’re infallible.

Or maybe it doesn’t, because it’s just some words, and they don’t really listen or take it in or draw the obvious conclusions. Maybe. But why trust people to ignore their own Holy Formulas? And even if they don’t decide they’re infallible because they’ve said the prayer, they probably do assume they’re better for it, and a little protected from doing Definitely Bad Things.

Cllr Joe O’Callaghan (FG) said: “If it was good enough for Connolly, then it’s good enough for me. With all its faults, I’m a Catholic and I’m proud of that. And it’s still a Christian country and long may that continue.”

See? Like that. With all its faults, he’s proud of being a Catholic. What a thing to be proud of! “With all its faults” indeed – “all its faults” are a damn good reason to leave it.

A tedious correction

One small item of housekeeping that will interest pretty much no one among regular readers here – by which I mean, people who read B&W for pleasure or interest or reasons of that kind, as opposed to reading it for ammunition against teh eevil feminazis – but that I want to do anyway because it’s been floating around for awhile and it annoys me. It’s one example of mendacity out of the many perpetrated by the anti-mangina crowd, and I want to correct it for the record. Correct it again for the record.

It appeared in a comment by John Greg on that Ask an Atheist thread.

I have yet to witness an FfTB blog commenter be banned for “encouraging” or proposing that someone be anally raped by a dead porcupine. Neither have I witnessed an FfTB blog commenter be edited, deleted, or banned for making death threats — julian’s made several over the [Read more…]