So some celebrities had their phones hacked and very personal and private photos stolen, which certain less savory and much more piggish individuals have been happily disseminating on the internet. There is the issue of the hypocrisy of people concerned about privacy celebrating this.
Way too many clips of Thunderf00t mugging for the camera, and the conclusion staggers home with a feeble “I’m not that kind of feminist” disclaimer, but otherwise, it’s nice to see the Phil Mason School of Logical Fallacies exposed so well.
It seems strange to see people defending a game called “Hit Man”, though. You aren’t required to murder those strippers
doesn’t exactly sound like an accolade — it’s still a game where you pretend to be a professional murderer.
I made the mistake of reading some of the comments on those last youtube videos. There were some good ones, but they were also laced with the usual grunting assholes complaining about gays and “trannies” and quoting the Bible and making racist remarks about Africans. Let us pass over those contemptible arguments; there’s no dealing with them rationally. Spit and move on.
But there’s another flavor of argument that annoys me to no end: people who cite science and evolution to support their ignorant misconceptions about human nature. I want to address two, one anti-gay and the other pro-gay, both wrong.
John Oliver continues to impress. Here’s a discussion of the wretched anti-gay policies being implemented in Uganda, and the US’s role in propagating them.
I don’t understand why Scott Lively isn’t in jail — we have no laws against criminal ventures in foreign countries? Nothing about fostering foreign corruption? Can we, at the very least, take his passport away?
Oliver continues his interview with Pepe Julian Onziema, who is also very impressive. It’s kind of Uganda to send us an ambassador from the Land of Decent Human Beings.
I hadn’t listened to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie before, but wow, this is a really good talk.
This is a story to break your heart: Daniel Ashley Pierce recorded a confrontation with his family. He’s gay, and they disowned him, and kicked him out of the house.
There’s that bit in Julia Sweeney’s Letting Go of God in which she tells her mother that she’s an atheist, and her mother replies, “not believing in God is one thing, but an ATHEIST?” — it just tells you how poisoned the word “atheist” had become. It’s gotten better; we’ve been coming out, showing the world we’re just like everyone else, making arguments for a rational, secular morality, and generally working to overcome the prejudice against the label. Imagine an alternative world in which many atheists had followed a different tactic: when ever someone said something disrespectful of atheism, there’d be a mad rush to get their home address and phone number. We’d flood them with threats: if you don’t shut up, we’ll rape your mother and set fire to your house. You’re a whore. I’m going to kill you.
The stigma of atheism would worsen. Now in addition to having a reputation for godlessness (true!), we’d acquire a reputation for truly villainous behavior. People would be even more reluctant to call themselves “atheist”, and only the most vile people would embrace it, worsening the reputation.
This automatically puts me into the dudebro club, right?
Kotaku points to a couple of fascinating essays: one by Dan Golding on the End of Gamers, and the other by Leigh Alexander, saying gamers are over. They’re making similar points: not that gaming is in decline, or that all gamers are horrible people, but that the behavior of unchecked hooligans on the internet has so thoroughly fouled their identity that reasonable people are abandoning the tribe. Calling yourself a gamer has acquired the cachet of identifying as a white supremacist — it stinks.
What really worries me, though, is how much the gamer story sounds like the atheist story…only they seem to be farther along in their implosion than we are, or are imploding more rapidly. We atheists should be taking notes and telling ourselves not to go down this path. I have the feeling we aren’t.
