Not quite home, and almost regretting it

I’m back in the US! At least, I’m in Chicago, with a flight delay, so it’s at least another 6 or 7 hours of traveling before I pull up to my door. Unfortunately, I’m tempted to turn around and go back to Germany.

You see, I’m returning from a most excellent international atheist conference, where I learned a lot and was also very impressed with the commitment of the worldwide atheist community to more than just convincing everyone there is no god. One of the themes that came up repeatedly was the importance of women and feminism to promoting secular ideals.

So after a long flight with total internet deprivation, I land and happen to check in to the Facebook, and what’s the very first thing I see, at the very top of the page? This.

Tried this in another atheist group, got banned LOL.

Thought experiment.

Would you allow rape if it was the only means to prevent the extinction of the human species?

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There is evidence that Hume existed, at least

god

Aww, I got mentioned in a paper published in Philosophia Christi. I’m only an afterthought, brought in at the very end — the paper is primarily a criticism of Richard Dawkins — but it’s always nice to be remembered.

It is, however, a rather strange paper. Erik Wielenberg’s argument is basically that The God Delusion was not written by David Hume, and that everyone ought to go read Hume instead of Dawkins. Which is fine; Hume is devastatingly thorough. But then why am I wasting my time reading Wielenberg? Just go read Hume instead. (It’s easy, too: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is available online, and it’s shorter than The God Delusion.)

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Online Gender Workshop: Teaching Gender Attribution for Skeptics and Scientists

Online Gender Workshop, as ever, is brought to you by your friendly, neighborhood Crip Dyke.

In a recent thread, Okidemia posed a question that many parents have these days: When and how should I teach my child/ren about trans* folk?

Okidemia framed it this way:

…kids have not been told about transpeople yet, because we don’t know any. Thus an important educationnal question:
at what age would you* speak about it to kids? (certainly, you* should begin before they meet psychologically transgendering acquaintances –as opposed to biologically transitioning which certainly happens later in life.

One of the reasons this question seems so confounding is that, like many confounding questions, it is the wrong question. [Read more…]

Massimo Pigliucci doesn’t like anyone

philosopher

Except Dan Dennett, that is. Philosophers are A-OK.

But otherwise, he’s written a remarkable post, a farewell to the skeptic and atheist movement, in which he goes down the line and expresses his distaste for everyone associated with that broad group. Sam Harris seems to have triggered the latest round of dissociations, but he also takes swipes at Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael Shermer, Jerry Coyne, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. Or maybe it’s not so much that he detests them all, as that he considers himself far superior to them.

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Make plans for ReasonFest now!

reasonfest-LOGO

On 19-20 September, cool things will be going on in Winnipeg — you all should come! I’ll be there…OK, you’re unimpressed. Hector Avalos will be there! And Stephanie Zvan! Greta Christina, too! All kinds of Canadians! And it should be well before the first snow! (That is, chances of being snowed in and trapped in Manitoba for the entire winter are fairly low. Also, the polar bears don’t usually come down that far south. And just the average fraction of Canadians live in igloos there.)

This is also far enough ahead that you can tell me in the comments what I should talk about. Go ahead, anything goes.