Poor Dr Oz

Oprah Winfrey is dumping Dr Oz’s radio show. It’s about time.

One odd thing: I missed this earlier, but Oz made a bizarre argument from type size.

Oz then also claimed that his show is not a medical one. We very purposely, on the logo, have ‘Oz’ as the middle, and the ‘Doctor’ is actually up in the little bar for a reason, he said in a TV interview. I want folks to realize that I’m a doctor, and I’m coming into their lives to be supportive of them. But it’s not a medical show.

I had to look this one up. It turns out, though, that he has a couple of versions of his logo floating around.

Oz-Logo1dr-oz-logo2

So when he uses the one with the BIG “DR”, he’s speaking as a doctor, and when he uses the little “dr”, we’re supposed to just ignore it?

Free Taslima

TaslimaNasrin

We’ve been waiting for this. After the murders of multiple secular bloggers in Bangladesh, there has been a mad behind-the-scenes (because no one wanted to alert the murderers) scramble to get our very own Taslima Nasrin, who was on the execution list for these Islamist fanatics, to a place of safety. She’s out! She’s currently in the US!

Now comes the hard part, though. She needs a long-term commitment to her safety, and CFI is setting up an emergency fund to support her and other threatened secularists. That last bit is important; Taslima is not the only one trying to survive under a death sentence.

If you want to help out, donate to the Freethought Emergency Fund.

We can do better than church

simpsonschurchwide

Molly Worthen attended Sunday Assembly, the church for atheists, and came away with the wrong idea, and a few right ones.

Is this what secular humanism — the naturalist worldview that many nonbelievers embrace and religious conservatives fear — looks like in practice? In one sense, secular humanism is a style of fellowship intended to fill the church-shaped void, but it is also a strand of the liberal intellectual tradition that attempts to answer the canard that godlessness means immorality.

There is no “church-shaped void”. I also don’t have a Jesus-shaped hole in my heart. I don’t even believe that most Christians feel that way — people aren’t sitting around pining for an opportunity to sit on a bench and go through a boring ritual for an hour or three on Sunday morning. People like connecting with other people more generally, and church has been the opportunity and obligation for that. It’s a mistake to confuse the substance of human interaction for the trappings of a particular and peculiar institution.

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These people actually exist?

thepenisisevil

A site called “Biblical Gender Roles” contains a terrible list of 8 steps to confront your wife’s sexual refusal. There are so many assumptions packed into that site, there doesn’t seem to be much point to arguing over the details — first thing to fix would be this Biblical attitude that women are chattel who must be subservient to their husband’s commands. The author is very concerned about this little problem:

How should you as a husband handle it when your wife directly refuses to have sex without a valid reason? Is there anything a Christian husband can do about this?

I wish he’d explained what a “valid reason” would be. I think “I don’t want to” is a valid reason, so maybe all of this Christian writer’s steps are irrelevant. But here’s all of his advice to control an uppity wife.

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Skepticon 8, for the novelty

skepticon

It has just been announced that you can now register for Skepticon 8. You may do so. Only…the announcement includes an ominous warning:

We know that Skepticon 8 is 6 months away, but we can hardly stand it! We want to see you all again! In the coming weeks we’re going to start announcing speakers and this year, for the first time EVER, there will be NO REPEATS!

YOU HEAR ME? NO REPEAT SPEAKERS!

Get excited! I know we are!

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Republicans and Creationists are simply wrong

IDvenn

Alex Berezow is annoyed. Slate is picking on poor Republicans and Christians for their anti-science views! How dare they! Don’t they know Democrats and atheists are just as bad?

It’s a complaint that ignores reality. We can look at the voting record of congress: it’s eerie how polarized it is, and how the Republicans line up in lockstep to vote against any policies that might combat climate change, for instance. We can look at the current slate of Republican presidential candidates, and it’s terrifying — Huckabee, Santorum, Carson, etc.? Are you really going to argue that it’s one-sided to point out that the anti-science agenda of the Republican party is blatantly in contrast to that of the Democratic party (not that I’m a big fan of Democrats or Obama or Clinton: they are lukewarm swill against the toxic, corrosive sludge of the Republicans)? Of course he thinks it is.

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