Saving Africa’s Witch Children

I am often asked, "Why do you fight against religion?" Today my answer would be best expressed by this article from the New York Times. A new documentary called "Saving Africa's Witch Children" will be airing Wednesday May 26th on HBO2. The documentary follows Gary Foxcroft...

...founder of the charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, as he travels the rural state of Akwa Ibom, rescuing children abused during horrific “exorcisms” — splashed with acid, buried alive, dipped in fire — or abandoned roadside, cast out of their villages because some itinerant preacher called them possessed.
One of the main subjects of the documentary is Helen Ukpabio.
At home in Nigeria, the Pentecostal preacher Helen Ukpabio draws thousands to her revival meetings. Last August, when she had herself consecrated Christendom’s first “lady apostle,” Nigerian politicians and Nollywood actors attended the ceremony. Her books and DVDs, which explain how Satan possesses children, are widely known. So well-known, in fact, that Ms. Ukpabio’s critics say her teachings have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children — including infants and toddlers — suspected of being witches and warlocks.
If ever there was a reason to continue to strive to undermine the authority of religion, this is it.

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It’s The Women, Stupid…redux

I have from time to time made the point that the entire debate over abortion and birth control and almost the whole edifice of what we call Fundamentalism in the world, in whatever religion, is all essentially over controlling women. Here is an article which has one of the most bizarre takes on the entire issue I've ever seen. The central premise is early on stated in 0ne sentence that defines all of this nonsense, in whatever creed you care to name. "Sexual relationships, while enacted privately, are public property." The twists in logic, never mind rationality, are among the most byzantine I've ever encountered. What is more, the writer doesn't seem to understand that this "philosophy" reduces children to little more than marks on a scorecard. The exhibition of marital health and fidelity is all that is important. The attempt to limit family size and indulge private acts privately for private purposes is reduced to an attempt to deceive the community, pure and simple. But ultimately, as in all other instances of this kind of obscene interference with the personal, it is the women who bear the costs, the burdens, and the responsibility. I suppose the next step would be to devise a kind of tracking bracelet for the penis and vagina so someone somewhere can determine when either is being used and where. I have no answer for this kind of inanity (or insanity). The fact that this makes sense to some people disturbs me no end, because it means that some people cannot see past the end of their own prurience. Yes, I said prurience, because to come up with this kind of thing, rather than demonstrating a balanced healthy appreciation for sex, shows an obsession with it that can only be described as prurient.

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What’s In A Label?

Conservative. Liberal. We act as if we know what these labels mean. Conservatives are traditionalists, fiscally opposed to anything that smacks of gambling, private, often religious, and pedantic on what they consider “appropriate” in either government or personal conduct. Liberals, on the other hand, are often taken for progressive, willing to spend social capital to repair perceived problems, tolerant, agnostic if not atheist, and overly-concerned with a definition of justice that ought to be all-encompassing rather than what they perceive as sinecure for the privileged. Well. Over on Facebook I posted a brief quote (my own) to boil down the actual underlying distinctions. Conservatives are those who don’t like what other people are doing, Liberals are those who don’t like what other people are doing to other people. It was meant to be taken as humorous. But I’m not being entirely flip here. When you look at it, and try to define the common factor in much that passes for conservative posteuring—of any country, any background, anywhere—it always comes down to one group trying to stop another group from Doing Things We Don’t Approve. I heard a news report this morning (on NPR—I unabashedly don’t pay attention to any other news source, I find them all utterly biased) from Pakistan about the university scene there, and one bit caught my attention—at a campus in Punjabi, conservative students who find men and women sitting too close together interfere and move them apart. At a game of Truth or Dare, conservative students pulled participants out and beat them. How does this apply here? Well, here’s a clip from P.Z. Meyers’ Pharyngula to illustrate: Rising Sun School in Maryland has the standard default take-it-for-granted attitude that Christianity is just fine — there’s the usual well-funded and usually teacher-promoted evangelical groups, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes — and when one student tried to form a club for non-religious students…well, you can guess what happened.

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Is the “liberal media” anti-religious?

Is the "liberal media" anti-religious? Bill Maher, who answers the question in the negative, engages in a spirited discussion with newly re-elected Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Daily Beast columnist John Avlon, and author S.E. Cupp. Topics include attempts to discern whether Barack Obama is religious (starting at about 16:00).

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How are Humans Better?

A new comment thread on an old post discusses the precept that humans are somehow "better" than all other creatures. Sure, as a member of our team, I'd like to think that we are Number One. We've even written books attributed to deities that prove that we are the reason for creation, that the octillions of stars in the universe were all put there just for our amusement. Therefore, the book and its believers maintain, we must be the best thing ever. But as an educated human raised by scientists to find first sources and question suppositions, I wonder: "How are we better?" I have posted before on some of the ways in which our Creator (to use that paradigm) has short changed us. Name any characteristic of which we are proud, and it is easy to find another creature that exceeds our ability. I can only think of one exception: Communicating in persistent symbols. Unlike cetaceans, birds, fellow primates, and others who communicate fairly precisely with sounds, gestures, or chemical signals, we can detach communication from ourselves and transport or even delay it via layers of uncomprehending media (paper, wires, illiterate couriers, etc). We can create physical objects that abstract ideas from one individual and allow the idea to be absorbed by another individual at a later time. It also allows widely separated groups to share a single culture, at least in part. This learned behavior is based on our apparently unique ability to abstract in multiple layers and to abstract to a time well beyond the immediate future. We can take an idea to a series of sounds to a series of static symbols, and back again. Our relatively modern ability to reason abstractly (math, science) evolved from our ability to abstract communications. Even Einstein couldn't hold the proof of E=MC2 in his head. But is this unique ability really sufficient to declare ourselves overall inherently "better"?

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