Butterflies and Wheels update
Ophelia Benson
New in "Latest News"
Leo Igwe on religious law, democracy, and human rights
Religious laws are religious hatred, intolerance, discrimination and fanaticism turned into state policies. In most parts of Africa, they are a disaster.
Filed: March 29, 2012
France bars Islamist clerics from entering the country
Al-Qaradawi is widely respected throughout the Middle East and has a popular weekly TV show on Islamic law on Al-Jazeera.
Filed: March 29, 2012
Kansas House votes to protect anti-gay discrimination
With a bill called "the Preservation of Religious Freedom Act."
Filed: March 30, 2012
Rachel Maddow interviewed on Fresh Air
"My attitude toward anti-gay stuff was not to try to bring people along gently, gently, and show people by my evident humanity their callousness. I just wanted to throw something up in peoples' faces."
Filed: March 30, 2012
Forced marriage: Girl aged five among 400 minors helped
In 2011 the UK's Forced Marriage Unit helped deal with around 1,500 cases, but many more are thought to go unreported.
Filed: March 30, 2012
Shannon Rupp on a doctor’s pitch for intuitive healing
Then there's the guy selling "transnasal light therapy" -- a new gizmo that shines a light up your nostrils and promises to heal everything from diabetes to dementia.
Filed: March 30, 2012
Maryam Namazie’s talk at QED
Secularism is not an enemy of the religious; this is the propaganda of the religion industry which some secularists have bought into. Secularism is an enemy of religion in power.
Filed: April 1, 2012
US military hosts concert for atheist soldiers
"I've been an atheist pretty much my whole life, and where I was growing up in Texas, I didn't know another atheist," said Pfc. Lance Reed.
Filed: April 1, 2012
Eric MacDonald on the heathen’s manifesto
Baggini never really identifies any of these supposedly rude, self-centred, self-praising atheists, nor does he provide an example of the kind of thing that he seems to object to so much.
Filed: April 1, 2012
Anti-abortion campaigners target women at Brighton clinic
Virtually every woman, including staff, is accosted by opinionated protesters as she walks through the gates of the clinic.
Filed: April 1, 2012
Andrew Copson on getting the bishops out
The arguments for keeping them in are all terrible.
Filed: April 1, 2012
Girl, boy killed in Afghan acid attack ‘over friendship’
No one has claimed the bodies, which are still in Ghazni hospital, police said.
Filed: April 1, 2012
Priest accidentally shows naughty slides at primary school
He projected the images onto a screen during a meeting for parents preparing for First Holy Communion. They were naughty pics of [gasp] men.
Filed: April 2, 2012
Activists persecuted for promoting women’s rights
Many British Asian women report hate mail and death threats for dealing with issues such as forced marriage and honour-based violence.
Filed: April 2, 2012
India: parents ditch their newborn daughter
The couple refused to accept the girl after accidentally being given the boy, who belongs to another couple, the hospital says.
Filed: April 2, 2012
Hire a bully to end bullying
He calls himself The Scary Guy, and his price tag can run as much as $6,500 a day.
Filed: April 2, 2012
In France autism is treated with psychoanalysis
"In France it is the psychiatrists - heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis - who remain in charge. And they have shut themselves off from all the changes in our knowledge of autism."
Filed: April 2, 2012
India: historian denied visa renewal
Peter Heehs is a scholar of Sri Aurobindo, but some devotees consider his book "blasphemous" and sued to get his visa canceled.
Filed: April 2, 2012
New in "Notes and Comment Blog"
- Measuring the distance
Filed: March 29, 2012 - Tariq Ramadan explains
Filed: March 29, 2012 - Job opening in Oxymoron Studies
Filed: March 29, 2012 - The Templeton Prize
Filed: March 29, 2012 - Stay where you are
Filed: March 29, 2012 - Words
Filed: March 30, 2012 - Sliding back
Filed: March 30, 2012 - Leo in Geneva
Filed: March 30, 2012 - A confrontational mindset
Filed: March 30, 2012 - Items
Filed: March 31, 2012 - Who me?
Filed: March 31, 2012 - Her family refused to attend her funeral
Filed: March 31, 2012 - Galloway’s dog whistle
Filed: March 31, 2012 - Livingstone promises to cement London
Filed: March 31, 2012 - On second thought, let’s keep women down after all
Filed: March 31, 2012 - The Muslim Brotherhood calls it beautification
Filed: March 31, 2012 - Urban renewal
Filed: April 1, 2012 - Ecclesiastical interlude
Filed: April 1, 2012 - The entirely parochial judgment of Stanley Fish
Filed: April 1, 2012 - Another diocese heard from
Filed: April 1, 2012 - The debut of the Heresy Club
Filed: April 2, 2012 - What “everybody knows”
Filed: April 2, 2012 - Well it was dark. Ish.
Filed: April 2, 2012 - Just say a spell over them
Filed: April 2, 2012
Ophelia Benson
New in "Latest News"
Why are the French still blaming mothers for autism?
A controversial new film by French documentary filmmaker Sophie Robert reminds the world that in France these discredited and dangerous ideas still hold considerable sway.
Filed: April 3, 2012
L’Express: “The psychoanalysts fight back”
“We will resist, by continuing to strongly defend our beliefs. French psychiatry, which is admired throughout the world, must not be swept aside using evaluation criteria as the means.”
Filed: April 3, 2012
Simon Blackburn on dignity: its history and meaning
We all have a special dignity because we are all, alike, children of God and equal in His eyes. This is a divinely ordained, supernaturally guaranteed L'Oréal advertisement.
Filed: April 3, 2012
John Forrester reviews The Freud Files
"Is it convincing to claim that, shorn of the myth, the poverty or the plain ordinariness of psychoanalysis will be plain for all to see?"
Filed: April 3, 2012
Pakistan will punish parents who don’t vax children for polio
The country is one of three – along with Afghanistan and Nigeria – that have failed to eradicate the virus.
Filed: April 4, 2012
Surprise! MB candidate says sharia is the main goal
Oh, gee, didn't they say they were going to be "moderate" or something?
Filed: April 4, 2012
Obama hosts “Easter prayer breakfast”
So tough shit, people who think the state should stay out of religion.
Filed: April 5, 2012
Brendan O’Neill sneers at “the new atheists”
Wow, that dude is so contrarian!
Filed: April 5, 2012
Woman sues homeopath over sister’s cancer death
She is suing the homeopath who persuaded the cancer victim to ignore conventional treatment in favour of fighting the deadly disease with alternative medicine.
Filed: April 5, 2012
German parties play music on Good Friday shock-horror
The Frankfurt authorities responsible for public order have banned everything that needed banning.
Filed: April 5, 2012
Vatican announces silencing of Irish liberal priest
Father Tony Flannery, a Catholic priest who has been outspoken in his criticism of the abuse crisis in Ireland, has found himself under investigation by the Vatican for his liberal views.
Filed: April 7, 2012
Arvind Iyer on moving secularism forward
Do today’s freethinkers even stand a chance in correcting the courses of their regressing nations?
Filed: April 7, 2012
Hayley Stevens on why atheists care
Skeptics don't worry about spurious health claims because they're big meanies.
Filed: April 7, 2012
Navy atheist came out of the closet on Good Friday
Justin Griffith explains why this is a big, big deal.
Filed: April 7, 2012
Taslima Nasreen debuts on Freethought Blogs!
"When I am referred to as the ‘Female Rushdie’, these days I ask back, why aren’t you calling Salman Rushdie the ‘Male Nasreen’ instead?"
Filed: April 7, 2012
Nottingham: noise pollution from gospel church
According to the council, residents living near the church have been complaining about the noise levels for four years.
Filed: April 7, 2012
Catholic cardinal frets at “marginalisation” of Christianity
Says look, the pope was just here and he said religion is a good thing not a bad thing, so it must be true. Wear a cross every day.
Filed: April 7, 2012
Child labor in India
The girl was sold to an agency by her uncle. She was paid nothing; the couple barely fed her and beat her if her work did not meet expectations.
Filed: April 8, 2012
SPLC names misogynist websites and blogs
Including In Mala Fide and the subreddit Men's Rights.
Filed: April 9, 2012
Stricter sharia for Aceh?
“I don’t reject criminal bylaws, because clerics have agreed to them. I want Aceh as a model of Islamic Sharia for Indonesia and Southeast Asia,” one candidate said.
Filed: April 9, 2012
Husband considers wife liable for birth of daughter
He believed that he had to be compensated if his wife gave birth to a girl. When his wife and her parents failed to pay the Rs1 lakh he demanded, he tried to punch the baby to death.
Filed: April 9, 2012
Bangalore: father of beaten infant girl arrested
The mother has said three-month-old Afreen was beaten by her father because he was upset at having a daughter instead of a son.
Filed: April 9, 2012
John Derbyshire and the National Review
What was apparently important was not how mild he was but how mild-mannered he could present himself as being.
Filed: April 9, 2012
Popehat on Crystal Cox
Crystal Cox supports free speech for Crystal Cox, but for her own critics, Crystal Cox is a vigorous (if mostly incoherent) advocate for broad and unprincipled censorship.
Filed: April 9, 2012
Andrew Copson on religious symbols on BBC News
It's not about religious symbols, it's about getting more privilege.
Filed: April 9, 2012
Indonesia: Alex Aan indicted on three counts
The prosecutor said Alexander's atheism was against the five tenets of state ideology, especially the first tenet "Belief in one God."
Filed: April 9, 2012
New in "Notes and Comment Blog"
- Suing the messenger
Filed: April 3, 2012 - Cameron cheers the “fightback”
Filed: April 3, 2012 - Rowan pushes the pendulum
Filed: April 3, 2012 - If it’s good enough for Spock
Filed: April 4, 2012 - Blackboxing
Filed: April 4, 2012 - It’s Wednesday so…
Filed: April 4, 2012 - Get a prezzy!
Filed: April 4, 2012 - Egypt, meet sharia
Filed: April 4, 2012 - Obama to the rest of us: who cares?
Filed: April 5, 2012 -
How dare you rebel against the tyrant
Filed: April 5, 2012 -
Part deux
Filed: April 5, 2012 - A small town guy
Filed: April 6, 2012 - Rituals and coercion
Filed: April 6, 2012 - Speaking of coercion
Filed: April 6, 2012 - Defamation in absentia
Filed: April 6, 2012 - Evidence based prayer
Filed: April 7, 2012 - All your blogger are belong to us
Filed: April 7, 2012 -
Magisterium
Filed: April 7, 2012 - Why this is a big deal
Filed: April 7, 2012 - Cardinal bemoans the fate of Christians in Britain
Filed: April 7, 2012 - The epistemology of Easter
Filed: April 7, 2012 - You are the gardener
Filed: April 8, 2012 - Charge £400 for her, £200 for him
Filed: April 8, 2012 - Update on Hamza Kashgari
Filed: April 8, 2012 - Being good
Filed: April 8, 2012 - Burn it
Filed: April 9, 2012 - The girl’s screams
Filed: April 9, 2012 - A very different intellectual tide. Not.
Filed: April 9, 2012 - And the award goes to
Filed: April 9, 2012 - It’s a ploy
Filed: April 9, 2012 - Free Hamza Kashgari
Filed: April 9, 2012