Greta Christina deservedly excoriates Sam Harris for his sexist remarks, and does a magnificent job of shredding him and his doubling down. It’s brutal.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Greta Christina deservedly excoriates Sam Harris for his sexist remarks, and does a magnificent job of shredding him and his doubling down. It’s brutal.
I’ve been writing about atheism for about 10 years now. What has driven me is a combination of awe at the amazing insights produced by science, so much deeper and more substantial than any collection of myths, and a furious rage at the lies and injustice and corruption of humanity by religion. For a while there, in the middle, there was also an ebullience at the growing success of atheism, and hope that someday we would be able to cast aside the follies of faith. The awe is still here, the rage is still burning, but the optimism is fading and is being consumed by a new anger at the incompetence and betrayal of the self-appointed atheist leadership.
There now exists a song called “Estrogen Vibe“. Lyrics below the fold, you can listen to it sung at the link.
Deepak Chopra, of all people, sent me a link to an account by a professional skeptic of an Anomalous Event That Can Shook His Skepticism to the Core, published in Scientific American. It’s embarrassingly bad, a story that would have scarcely passed muster at the old Fate magazine.
Atheists have been fighting stereotypes for as long as I’ve been one, and longer: that we’re all Communists, that we’re Vulcan robots, that we’re amoral and likely to rape small children (no, ma’am, you’ve confused us with Catholic priests), that we all think we’re so much better than everyone else. Thanks to the behavior of our Great Atheist Thinky Bigbrain Leaders, though, another one is taking currency fast: that we are all MRA-style anti-woman freaks.
Lindsay Beyerstein, who is always great, interviews Mark Oppenheimer about his misogyny piece on Point of Inquiry. It’s a good listen. I was especially amused by his comments about the slymepit — not even worth bothering with — and the faint praise for Penn Jillette — nowhere near as bad as the slymepit.
This is what I like: atheism doesn’t need Global Thinky Leaders, in which the same ol’ faces get elevated — it needs more people, deeper roots, wider distribution. Check out the Openly Secular project. Maybe you should contribute a video, too!
Stephen King has chosen to believe in God, which is fine. You can believe whatever you want, especially if you’re worth billions of dollars. But I find myself annoyed when he tries to stake his beliefs on bad evidence and stereotypes about atheists.
The story going around right now is that, in order to install iOS 8, the latest version of the operating system for iGadgets, you need to delete the Bible app.
I noticed that Ophelia referenced a paper on “institutional betrayal”. I sat up at something else: it’s from the University of Oregon, my ol’ grad school! And then…it’s out of the department of psychology, where my wife got her degree! Even before I read it, I was curious…and I discovered that it was an amazing act of prophecy, or, I guess, insight into human behavior.
Isn’t that what psychologists do?
Read the traits of institutions that feel like betrayals to their members. You’ll feel a familiar sense of deja vu.
