Female genital mutilation has medical benefits?

There is a very good question which I’m pleased to see that an expert Islamic cleric has finally seen fit to answer. Why mutilate female genitals at all? What purpose does it have? I confess to uncharitably assuming that it was all about controlling women’s sexual activity, but I was unfair. They have perfectly good reasons for chopping and hacking at little girls crotches with jagged sharp instruments.

Female circumcision has not been prescribed for no reason, rather there is wisdom behind it and it brings many benefits.

Mentioning some of these benefits, Dr. Haamid al-Ghawaabi says:

The secretions of the labia minora accumulate in uncircumcised women and turn rancid, so they develop an unpleasant odour which may lead to infections of the vagina or urethra. I have seen many cases of sickness caused by the lack of circumcision.

Circumcision reduces excessive sensitivity of the clitoris which may cause it to increase in size to 3 centimeters when aroused, which is very annoying to the husband, especially at the time of intercourse.

Another benefit of circumcision is that it prevents stimulation of the clitoris which makes it grow large in such a manner that it causes pain.

Circumcision prevents spasms of the clitoris which are a kind of inflammation.

Man, that’s all so true. Don’t you just hate it when you’re having intercourse with a woman, and she starts getting aroused? I suppose snipping off the clitoris is one way of dealing with it (the ladies really do cool down fast when you start waving a knife around), but I’ve found it more humane to keep a bucket of cold water next to the bed. As a bonus, a good cold water splashing also flushes out the strange and repulsive slippery dampness that so unpleasantly oozes out of their vaginas.

Although, come to think of it, the guy giving all that advice probably doesn’t have to worry too much about aroused women.

Of course the dog won

A while back, the Way of the Master (Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron) came out with a board game, Intelligent Design vs. Evolution. I imagine the Discovery Institute cringes in pain every time those two clowns associate themselves with their brand, which is good; but you know it has to be an awful, horrible, brain-damaging game, which is bad. I thought about picking up a copy just for the kitsch value, but just couldn’t bring myself to pay them money for it (and now it seems to have vanished from their online store).

But Chad bought it and played it against his dog (his wife was too smart to join in). Surprise! It’s as bad as I expected!

It looks boring, too. It’s an old-school board game where you march around the board by throwing dice, landing on squares that make you answer questions on cards in order to win brain tokens. Here’s a sample question, to give you a sense of what you’ll learn.

True or False? The Bible doesn’t speak of a literal place called Hell. It is merely symbolic of the grave.

ANSWER: False (see Luke 16:19-31). Your eternal salvation may depend on your understanding of this truth. If you answered incorrectly, give two brains to the opposing team.

It’s really a test of your knowledge of fundagelical interpretations of the Bible. Now I’m even happier I never wasted any money on it.

(Also on Sb)

Bishop labels file-sharing religion a ‘sham’

The Swedish government has formally recognized the Church of Kopimism, which considers information holy and uses copying as their sacrament. It’s rather silly, if you ask me, and I’d rather just get away from the nonsense of religion altogether, but it does have one virtue: it has inspired at least one crazy Christian to rage.

But Bishop Peter Ingham, head of the Catholic Diocese of Wollongong, said the move cheapens the value of ‘real’ religious organisations and labelled the group a ‘sham’.

"There should be some measuring stick against what you call religion," Bishop Ingham told ninemsn. "In my mind, if religion has nothing to do with God — or what people perceive to be God — then it’s a sham.

"It cheapens the currency of religion in general because [now] anything can be defined as a religion."

Right. I hear that there are some people who worship a dead man who they claim was a god! I hear that there are some people who think their god manifests as a cracker, so they eat him! I hear that there are some people who think that if you don’t dunk a baby’s head in a tub of water, it won’t go to heaven if it dies! Boy, there sure are a lot of silly beliefs out there that cheapen religion.

And that takes some doing. Religion is bottom-of-the-barrel garbage as it is.

And then he says this:

“It looks like it’s just a way of getting around the law of piracy and copyright. How could a religion promote illegal activity?”

Wait…isn’t it a tenet of the Christian faith that early in their history, they were intensely persecuted by the Romans? That the martyrs refused to obey the laws of the land and thus were executed? And wasn’t Jesus himself executed for his rabble-rousing disobedience? How self-unaware are these guys?

Does he consider the current events in Nigeria to be an example of a religion promoting a legal activity?

Targets

So a frat boy in Kappa Sigma at USC wrote this long letter to his brothers explaining how to treat women. I won’t quote much of it; if you bother to read it yourself, you’ll wonder about this guy’s sanity. But I thought this bit was interesting.

I will refer to females as “targets”. They aren’t actual people like us men. Consequently, giving them a certain name or distinction is pointless.

How about mother, sister, wife, daughter? Perhaps even that is too impersonal; how about Darlene, Caryn, Tomi, Lisa, Mary, Skatje?

How about friend?

Oh, I was being facetious. People who refer to women as targets don’t have friends.

(via that guy whose name I’ve just learned is pronounced “tee-bow”)

Real Spiritual Exercises for Atheists

Several years ago, I had a very strange dinner with Paul Nelson, who tried to convince me that my materialist view of biology was totally wrong and was missing all the important stuff. To do that, he performed a little demonstration for me. He flexed his arm at me.

“Look at that,” he said, “My mind is doing that.” He didn’t give me a nice spooky “woOOOoooo”, but he should have — it would have been perfectly appropriate. I don’t think he was on drugs, either.

But I’ve seen this phenomenon many times. Take some woo-inclined individual, put their brain to work on some incompletely understood process, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that they’ll come back to you utterly convinced that mundane physical events are ultimately confirming evidence for whatever metaphysical nonsense is poisonously wafting about in their heads. And now we have a wonderful example of this kind of sloppy stupid bullshit right here on freethoughtblogs.

I have no idea why Daniel Fincke is indulging this Eric Steinhart character, but he’s had a number of guest posts lately that are raving mad rationalizations for ‘spirituality’, whatever the hell that is. Here’s an example.

Spiritual exercises typically involve mental preparation for performance through visualization or emotional preparation for performance through arousal regulation. Visualization involves working with mental imagery while arousal regulation involves conscious control of physiological and emotional arousal (it involves neocortical control of the limbic system and autonomic nervous system).

Of course these are real phenomena. Like Paul Nelson bending his arm, you can consciously control many aspects of your mental state (but not all; ask anyone in the throes of depression — you can’t just will yourself out of everything), and there are behaviors and ways of thinking that you can do to shift the way your brain is working.

But that paragraph above is a perfect example of bullshitting to justify crap. Notice the scientific justification of “neocortical control of the limbic system and autonomic nervous system” — sure, that’s the core of your brain that is involved in arousal, and we know that from scientific experiments and observations. But look what he does: he calls these spiritual exercises.

They are not. They are physiological exercises. They do not manipulate “spirit”, they change the physical state of the brain. But these glib pseudoscientific quacks just love to borrow the language of science and slap the label of “spiritual” or “Wiccan” or “transcendental meditation” or “Buddhist” onto them. It’s intellectual theft, plain and simple: it’s woo-meisters doing their damnedest to appropriate natural phenomena to their cause. It’s the same thing as when Pat Robertson ascribes a natural disaster to the wrath of a divine being — he’s pointing to reality and claiming it for the kingdom of irrational supernaturalism.

I can do the same thing. Next time you encounter one of these kooks, I want you to stop and contemplate what they are doing. I want you to fan the rage, that is, channel your inner being to stimulate your amygdala. Feel the anger grow. Concentrate on your arm; make it rise. Flex the elbow (Amazing! How are you doing that?) and then…reach out and slap ’em upside the head.

If they complain, just tell them you were practicing your Myersian spiritual exercises. I think I’m going to have to start a whole school teaching these skills, so I can get paid for it.

New Hampshire has some world-class lunatics

Too bad they’re in the legislature. The latest wacky idea from a trio of Republicans is to require that all new bills reference the Magna Carta.

House Bill 1580 is the product of such a brainstorming session this summer between three freshman House Republicans: Bob Kingsbury of Laconia, Tim Twombly of Nashua and Lucien Vita of Middleton. The eyebrow-raiser, set to be introduced when the Legislature reconvenes next month, requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.

“All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived,” is the bill’s one sentence.

You might be wondering why the Magna Carta…I think the three stooges should be wondering that, too.

Vita admitted he needs to "bone up" on the content of the charter

In other words, he has no idea what’s in the Magna Carta. I’m guessing he’s also a Christian of the type that has a similar reverence for the contents of a document they’ve never read.

Santorum will tell you how and when you can have sex

He’s a very creepy man. His wife had an abortion to save her life, but he wants to criminalize your abortion. And that’s not all: sex is supposed to be procreative, so he wants to criminalize contraception. In this long painful video, he preaches against gay sex, against contraception, and says we ought to be urging families to have many more children, and thinks a tax deduction of $20,000 per child is reasonable.

So “contraception is a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to the way things are supposed to be”. Woo hoo! I love that license! I don’t think I want to vote for a guy who’d take it away.

Bonus! Santorum also thinks most scientists are amoral.

I have to say, he’s doing a terrible job of campaigning for my vote.

Nice list

I guess R. Joseph Hoffman is trolling for attention again. Joey — or is it Joe? Joseph seems so fussy. Maybe R.? — R., then, is so disappointed in those dissolute insult-mongering New Atheists that he has scribbled up another sloppy, incoherent, lazy whine in which engages in prolonged insult-mongering, nothing more. It’s an astonishing demonstration of projection and an absolute lack of self-awareness: the post is little more than a clumsy list of the atheists who piss off R., with bombastic, affected explanations for why they are so stupid. It’s a rather useful guide, though, to who’s cool in the atheist movement; I’m flattered that he despises me so, and included me in the list.

Here’s R.’s list, with his tumid awkward insults pared down to a single summary sentence:

Dawkins: Unabashed science-thumper.

Dennett: Sloppy.

Harris: Singularly incoherent.

Hitchens: The only true intellectual of the group.

Headlights:

Coyne: How can he be such a scientist when the U of Chicago has one of the most venerable divinity schools in the country?

Myers: Moral nihilist who once destroyed a cracker.

Sidelights:

Christina: Radical feminist and lesbian who sees everything as a weird sexual joke.

Benson: Runs a chat room for neo-atheist spleen.

MacDonald: Another horn in the bagpipe blown by Coyne and Myers.

Rosenhouse: Doesn’t like anything that rises an inch beyond cultural Judaism.

Now you know who to turn to for the intelligent and interesting commentary on religion. Keep in mind, though, that R. is a brilliant fellow who thinks Dawkins’ entire argument was devastated by this Terry Eagleton quote:

“What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace, or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case?”

The knob-polishers and filigree-painters of religion and theology are not at all relevant to the fundamental question of whether a god exists or not — but they make useful distractions for the pompous, pretentious buffoons who try to hide the fact that there is no elephant in the room with learned discussions about what color he paints his toenails.