PolicyMic
6 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Atheists
PolicyMic
Though the number of nonbelievers in this country is on the rise, many people are still unclear as to what "atheism" truly means. Recently, I've encountered individuals on a wide variety of sites who insist they "know" certain things about atheists ...

Watch at your own peril — a tear of pity started to roll down my cheek, and I thought about becoming a columnist for A Voice For Men.

Atheist Group Attacks Professor
National Review Online (blog)
An atheist group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation has called for an investigation into the teaching of a professor at Ball State University. Apparently the group is arguing that it was unconstitutional for a physics professor to suggest ...

Truthdig
PICTURED : Teenage Syrian ' Atheist ' Reportedly Shot By Rebels
Huffington Post UK
It adds the boy had reportedly been arguing with a customer about the existence of God, and was hear to say: “Even if the Prophet Mohammad returns, I will not become a believer,” leading to speculation he was declaring himself to be an atheist ...
Syrian Rebels Allegedly Kill 'Atheist' BoyTruthdig

all 70 news articles »

Syrian Rebels Allegedly Kill 'Atheist' Boy
Truthdig
A 15-year-old boy and coffee seller was reportedly executed by gunshot to the head by Islamist rebels in Syria as an act of punishment and example-making for seeming to express disbelief in the Muslim god. As reported by the Syrian Observatory for ...

and more »

Truthdig
Syrian Rebels Allegedly Kill 'Atheist' Boy
Truthdig
A 15-year-old coffee seller was reportedly executed by gunshot to the head by Islamist rebels in Syria as an act of punishment and example-making for seeming to express disbelief in the Muslim god. As reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights ...
PICTURED : Teenage Syrian ' Atheist ' Reportedly Shot By RebelsHuffington Post UK

all 70 news articles »

I appreciate the brevity. The Discovery Institute keeps publishing long-winded vacuous books that say exactly the same thing in 900 pages.

That really is the entirety of their arguments: the fallacy that only design produces complexity, abuse of a metaphor about designers, and an incoherent mess of claims about morality. We’re done.

(via Twitter)

In a bit more than two weeks, it’ll be time for the Empowering Women Through Secularism conference in Dublin. It’s going to be excellent, you should go!

I know there has been some concern that Michael Nugent has been enabling certain abusers to mouth off, but as Ophelia mentions, we’ve been talking about it behind the scenes. We haven’t resolved all of our differences by a long shot, and there are still some substantial disagreements, but, and this is an important point of agreement, none of those differences are to be the subject of the conference, which is going to be tightly focused on women’s rights. We might be having some interesting arguments in the bar afterwards, but none of that will be on the podium.

Also, don’t forget that the conference is the work of Atheist Ireland and the always awesome Jane Donnelly, not just Michael Nugent. When Ophelia says now that she has much more confidence in the work of the conference, she has good reason. It think it’s going to be very productive and successful.

One other interesting observation. You may notice that there are men listed as speakers, including me. I think this is appropriate, since women’s issues should also be men’s issues (and vice versa). However, women clearly have priority here — and the way it’s going to work is that the men will be sprinkled throughout to provide that complementary male perspective, but in every case, women will be in the majority on all of the panels. We guys will be very careful not to talk over the women or to launch into mansplaining mode, I hope. The audience can be encouraged to fling rotten fruit at us if we do.

So if you’ve been waffling over whether to go, be reassured. It’s going to be good.

Oh, and if you’re stuck in the midwest and flying across the Atlantic is just a journey too far, don’t forget SkepchickCon, the skeptic track at CONvergence, is the weekend after Dublin. You’ll also be entertained by the spectacle of Rebecca Watson and me stumbling about jet-lagged from our European excursion.

Christian News Network
Texas Christian University Cites 'Diversity' in Recognizing Atheist Group ...
Christian News Network
FORT WORTH– The recent recognition of an atheist student organization and the public promotion of different faiths have led some to question the religious policies of Texas Christian University (TCU). As previously reported, in February, a 32-year-old ...

Lehrer has landed a new book deal. This has sparked justifiable disgust: Maria Konnikova explains why.

Lehrer is not the writer who simply made up a few Bob Dylan quotes and self-plagiarized (the way he’s portrayed in recent accounts of his latest book deal). He is the writer who got the science wrong, repeatedly, who made up facts, misrepresented information, betrayed editors, and lied, over and over and over again, for many years, in multiple venues, not just in a single book. He is, in other words, the writer and journalist who went against the basic tenets of the profession, and did so many times over. He is the surgeon who botched surgery after surgery, the lawyer who screwed up case after case, the engineer whose oh-so-pretty designs toppled after a year or two, not once, but multiple times, and on and on. Why, then, is he not seeing the consequences the way he would have necessarily done in most other professions? Why is he instead getting the equivalent of a fresh docket of cases or a new departmental job: a coveted book deal with a prominent publisher?

He’s slick. He writes with a glib authority, and is a master of superficial plausibility, able to whip out a snappy footnote with a reference just obscure enough to tickle recognition in the brains of knowledgeable readers and to wow the yahoos. He sounds smart. But there’s a real vacancy at the core.

He’s not good at the science. He’s a poor researcher. He’s not a good writer — he churns words around and knows the form, but the content isn’t there.

So now he’s going to paste together another book that will clutter the shelves and deprive better writers of support. Konnikova suggests an action we can take:

And that’s why we, the readers, are the only possible villain—that is, if we choose to be, by continuing to pay attention to Lehrer, by continuing to cover his work, by buying his new book and reviewing it and drawing attention to it. By making it possible for this book of love to be another best-seller.

So let’s make a choice. Let’s not do it. Let’s show Simon & Schuster that they backed a losing horse that has run its last. Let the book flop, not sell. Don’t buy it, resist the urge “just to see” what the fuss is all about. We make Jonah Lehrer. Without an audience, he is nothing, plain and simple.

Won’t work. She’s preaching to the choir — the people who read science blogs already know Lehrer’s reputation, and won’t be tempted in the slightest to buy yet another bit of hackwork from the guy. I have no plans to every pay a penny for that book, that’s for sure.

Lehrer has made a brilliant move, actually. He’s writing a pop psych book about love. He’s going to wave the tattered banner of his past science writing to argue that he has the authority to speak for science on a matter of everyday importance, and his precious scholarly style will add weight to that claim in the minds of his new target audience. And that audience isn’t us. His new audience will be the people who watch Oprah to learn about science.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that Oprah was part of his pitch. This is a book tailor-made for that show: the flawed writer seeking redemption (who also happens to be young and attractive), the pseudo-highbrow style, the subject matter, the “counter-intuitive” pronouncements that will actually line up well with what the audience wants to hear.

I’ll bet you that right now the publicists are thinking up copy to send to the weekday afternoon talk shows, and that by this time next year Lehrer will be working that circuit. And that he’ll make big buckets of money selling off the sad bleeding shreds of his integrity.

Some of you have noticed some buggy behavior lately: it’s because the gnomes have been tinkering. In other site news, we’re hearing promises that a new front page will roll out in about a week, and there is now a contact link so those of you who experience technical issues know where to complain.

Can a Muslim Be Atheist?
Onislam.net
There is no a Muslim atheist, as atheism, the doctrine or belief that there is no God, is totally contradicting Islam that is based on monotheism, the existence and oneness of Allah Almighty. Responding to you question, Dr. Mohammad Qatanani, Professor ...

and more »

Today is a significant anniversary: the Stemmerettsjubileet, or women’s suffrage centenary.

On 11 June 2013 it will be 100 years since Norwegian women gained the right to vote and Norway became a true democracy. Norway was the first independent country in the world to introduce universal suffrage, with women and men enjoying equal democratic rights.

It’s amazing that it’s only been a century — I can’t imagine the injustice of depriving women of the right to vote.

I know some representatives of other countries who comment here will be quick to complain that Norway wasn’t the very first—but they’ve got that covered.

Globally, Norway was a universal suffrage pioneer. It is true that three countries had already introduced universal suffrage – New Zealand in 1893, Australia in 1902 and Finland in 1906 – but they were not independent states at the time. Norway was the first sovereign state to extend the vote to all adults. The right to vote gave women a formal foundation on which to participate in democratic bodies on an equal footing with men.

You’re all pioneers, OK? Clearly there was a wave of suffrage that swept around the world at roughly the turn of the last century.

But this goes too far.

A cause championed since the French Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment had finally been won.

“Won”? Keep in mind that Ann Coulter is promoting the revocation of women’s suffrage, it’s easy to find other cranks creating petitions to repeal the 19th amendment, and it’s a common talking point on the far right. I wish the Enlightenment were won.

Maybe it’s just the United States that’s trying to roll it back.

So Microsoft released some fancy new gaming console, and showed off a bunch of games on it. Unfortunately, as Anita Sarkeesian noted, there was a casual omission.

Thanks #XboxOne #E3 press conference for revealing to us exactly zero games featuring a female protagonist for the next generation.

Oh, that’s an interesting factual observation. But go read further and notice how the mob of gentlemen responded.

Who would have thought that accurately describing reality would inspire such rage? By now, I think all of us.

I’ve heard people say versions of every single article title on that cover.

(via Nice Things For Awful People)

These are awesome. I want a swarm for a pet.

Upwards of 3 feet long and in some cases-as thick as a garden hose and have the texture of jello. There’s mucus. These things are crazy.

Key words: EAT EVERYTHING. ALIVE or DEAD. These have been fed almost everything-and they eat what’s given them: fecal pellets, starfish, dead seal meat, fish, sponges, sea anemones, worms amphipods, penguin meat, sardine meat (with tomato sauce!) and on and on….

(via The Echinoblog.)

Then do not read this story about grief and loss. If you don’t have kids, but you have a heart, don’t read it either.

OK, that covers most people. Republicans and members of the NRA, you can go ahead.

This is a flagrant lie, and I won’t hesitate to call the jerk saying it a liar.

PZ Myers, an atheist blogger who writes on the Freethought Blogs network, recently announced that he will publicly reveal the identity of anyone who leaves comments he does not like on his blog using a pseudonym.

This nonsense is being spread by the usual mythologizing twits on their blogs and forums and twitter. It’s a dishonest distortion of what I actually said in this blog post.

But there are also bad reasons to use a pseudonym on a blog. The very worst? Some people use anonymity to empower their ability to be a shithead. They snipe and sneer, they hide behind fake names, they use multiple sock puppets to generate the illusion that more people support their hatred, and also to prevent people from blocking them — they want to force you to read their venom.

Notice that nowhere do I even mention “comments I don’t like”. What I’m dealing with is a collection of nasty, obsessed characters who have been banned for egregiously bad behavior who insist on coming back under an array of pseudonyms — people who are indistinguishable from Dennis Markuze in their persistence, pointlessness, and repeatedly expressed hatred of me, commenters here, the entirety of the freethoughtblogs network, and often, of those damned feminists.

I’m up every morning between 5:30 and 6, and what’s the first thing I have to do? Comment cleanup. Cleaning out the spam trap. Adding new terms to the filter list to automate catching these twits. It’s people like Mabus (hundreds of pseudonyms, over a decade of harassment), Reap Paden (over 30 pseudonyms used to dump ungrammatical tirades), Piltdown Man (yes, he still trolls by now and then), the latest idiots like Martin Wiesner and “AndyWatson”, and the expected loons who come by with ‘clever’ pseudonyms like “FuckPZ” and pornified versions of my kids’ names.

It has gotten ridiculous, especially now that there’s a whole site full of slymers dedicated to inciting more haters. They don’t dirty their own hands anymore; it’s enough that they can work up foul-mouthed twelve year olds to do their mudflinging for them.

So yes, I’m fed up and I’ll be taking stronger action against these trolls and other assholes. But that does not in any way imply that I’m silencing disagreement…but that’s the message the trolls and assholes want to send out, to foment more harassment.

And here’s what’s incredibly annoying about it, too: I don’t ban that many people, and those that I do kick out, I try to be open about it, listing their names on the Dungeon page. Which leads to the other lie: that I’m unusually censorious. It turns out that being transparent about necessary banning actions, while just about every other goddamn blog out there just invisibly disappears objectionable junk, leads these phonies to make up more lies about policies here.

So I’m also changing something else. The Dungeon is gone. From now on, if you’re a jerk, you just get zapped and disappear forever, with no documentation, just like it’s done on the blogs of the assholes who accuse me of banning people for disagreeing with me.

It’ll save me a little work, too.

'Atheist' Syrian Boy Reportedly Executed By Rebels
Huffington Post UK
A 15-year-old atheist boy was reportedly shot in the face in a brutal execution by Syrian rebels, in a crime revealed by an anti-government monitoring group concerned about the actions of some Islamist fighters. Coffee seller Mohammad Qataa was ...

Polish your lenses again (but not dry, please) – this post announces the fifth Panda’s Thumb photography contest. We encourage entries in a single, general category, which includes pictures of just about anything of scientific interest. If we get enough entries, consistently with the rules, we may award additional prizes, presuming, of course, that we can find more prizes. We dedicate this contest to the memory of our colleague Mark Perakh. First prize will be... Matt Young http://www.mines.edu/~mmyoung