Limited warranty

James Croft asked an interesting question in a public Facebook post.

Interesting question which came up at this Clergy Care Summit: what is a Humanist version of “Know that God Loves you?”

There’s a string of comments offering substitutes but they’re not fully convincing. My answer is that there isn’t one. (Ian Cromwell’s is good though – “We’re all in this together”. That has the advantage of being true, along with the disadvantage of being not nearly as comforting as the original.)

There can’t be a humanist or Humanist version of “Know that God Loves you” because people are free to project onto this imagined god the most perfect satisfying consoling love possible. They’re free to reconcile mutual impossibilities – God loves everyone infinitely, but/and God’s love for me is total and undivided and not distracted by God’s love for my siblings or my best friend or those people I hate or anyone. God doesn’t love God’s own self more than God loves me.

Humanism doesn’t work that way, so it can’t possibly offer anything equivalent to that.

It seems silly to pretend otherwise. We just can’t do the consolation thing the way religion does, because we’re constrained by reality.

 

 

This brand spanking new software

Originally a comment by Crimson Clupeidae on Quick to sneer.

Not to worry, we here at Islamo-Judeo-Xian software, Inc, LLC, GAWD, are working on an automated version of photoshop (we’re calling it Photochop, to avoid copyright issues).

This brand spanking new software will automagically edit all images in digital form (the retroactive paper version is pending tests of the new high powered laser satellite….) to not only edit out women, pigs, prophets, dogs, etc, that may offend any religious sensibilities*, but it will autodetect blogs, words, and even recipes written by women, pigs, prophets, dogs, etc. and make them appear to be written by manly burly manly men!

Our next release will offer an optional Hindu add-on package, but there is currently strong lobbying by a conflicting group of religious nutters….I mean, believers….who worship Saint Ronald of McDonald, and we are having some issues getting the software to comply with both.

*Sensibilities in this case, being those who make the loudest and most believable threats of violence, although offering more $$$ would potentially win out…..

Guest post: To the people at Liberty Counsel

Originally a comment by themadtapper on Honoring the Legacy, a press release by a right-wing group for Martin Luther King day claiming to be honoring King by promoting homophobia.

As I read over that press release, which reads like a fundie Mad Lib, I debated over what part to actually comment on.

I could comment on the inanity of comparing to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. those who seek to do the very thing that King fought against: denying goods, service, and basic dignity to a marginalized people whose only desire is to have the same opportunities of life, liberty, and happiness that white conservative Christians enjoy. [Read more…]

A groom, and a bouquet, and a set table—but no bride

The New Yorker has a piece by Ruth Margalit on the gradual disappearance of women in Israel – not disappearance as in being murdered and buried in an obscure place, but disappearance as in not being allowed to appear.

In 2008, a thirty-year-old religious woman named Rachel Azaria headed a slate of candidates for city council. Her team had arranged to mount an ad campaign on the back of buses in the city that would feature her picture. In order to finalize the details of the campaign, Azaria called Cnaan Media, the company in charge of Jerusalem bus advertisements. “We’ve already had a schedule, we picked out the bus lines, everything,” Azaria told me on the phone this week. She was about to close the deal when the company’s salesperson casually told her: “I just want to make sure you know that we don’t show women on buses in the city.” [Read more…]

Honoring the Legacy

Have a press release from the “Liberty Counsel.” (That’s really their name, but it’s so sick-making I find I can’t type it without scare quotes.)

January 19, 2015

Honoring the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

LC.org

Orlando, FL – As we remember today the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are inspired by his courage to combat injustice that had become imbedded in our culture and our law.

Writing from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. King said, “I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’”

“Marriage as the union of one man and one woman was not created by government or religion. It is rooted in natural law,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “Same-sex marriage is contrary to the natural created order of God Almighty. Laws deconstructing natural marriage and which compel people to affirm sinful sexual behavior or unions are unjust.” [Read more…]

Quick to sneer

A brilliant piece by Leigh Phillips from last week on clueless accusations that Charlie Hebdo is racist and homophobic, accusations obviously emanating from the left (the right seldom bothers accusing people of racism, much less homophobia).

In the 48 hours after the Paris massacre, much of the anglophone activist and academic left were quick to sneer at public displays of solidarity with the murdered cartoonists and journalists of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and criticized the vigils, demonstrations and editorial cartoons from other artists as siding with racists. [Read more…]

She told the midwife, “It’s fine, it’s opened”

More detail on the FGM case.

Mounting the first prosecution against someone for carrying out FGM in England and Wales, the Crown alleged that Dr Dhanuson Dharmasena, a junior registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Whittington hospital, had mutilated a 24-year-old mother by the manner in which he had sewn her up after childbirth.

The woman had undergone type 3 FGM – in which part of the labia are sewn together – as a child in Africa, and during labour the doctor had made two cuts to her vaginal opening to ensure the safe delivery of her baby. When Dharmasena sewed her up, a midwife warned him that what he had done was illegal. He asked a consultant for advice, and the more senior doctor said it would be “painful and humiliating” to remove the stitch he had made, and it remained in place, the court heard.

[Read more…]

Get thee to a church

Judicial theocracy in the UK – a judge orders a father to take his children to Catholic mass.

A judge has ordered a father to take his children to Roman Catholic mass as part of a divorce settlement, even though he is not Catholic.

The man, who can only be identified as “Steve” because of reporting restrictions on the case, faces possible contempt of court and a jail sentence if he fails to go to church when he has custody of the children. [Read more…]

The line that separates free speech from toxic talk

DeWayne Wickham at USA Today says Charlie Hebdo has gone too far with the “all is forgiven” cover. Right; forgiveness is going way too far. So extreme much fanatical.

Charlie Hebdo has gone too far.

In its first publication following the Jan. 7 attack on its Paris office, in which two Muslim gunmen massacred 12 people, the once little-known French satirical news weekly crossed the line that separates free speech from toxic talk.

[Read more…]