Chris Stedman's Blog, page 6
February 13, 2015
The New Yorker on the Chapel Hill Shootings
Philip Gourevitch at the New Yorker is skeptical about how we respond to the parking violation explanation: So there you have it. Some people are sensitive about parking. One such person stood his ground. Now three young innocents are dead, and he’s being held without bond in the county jail. A lamentable affair, but, told [Read More...]
February 12, 2015
Responses to the Chapel Hill Shooting
I’ve been following the response to Tuesday’s murder of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, NC (a short 10 mile drive from where I live). German Lopez at Vox has my favorite take: In the past, prominent figures on atheism such as Bill Maher and Sam Harris have blamed violent extremism on religions and their followers, with [Read More...]
February 11, 2015
Why Craig Hicks is our problem
Someone's nervous pic.twitter.com/vwhrMudEGa — #conтenт rεηεgαdε (@Bro_Pair) February 11, 2015 Early yesterday evening, Craig Hicks shot Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammed Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammed Abu-Salha to death inside their Chapel Hill, N.C. home. Hicks, who identifies as an anti-theist, regularly posted vitriolic anti-religious sentiment on his Facebook page. “When it comes to insults, your religion [Read More...]
How anti-theism can contribute to violence against muslims
I wrote early this year about comments Richard Dawkins made about Islamophobia and racism. I think they’re relevant today: [W]hat’s relevant [to racism] is whether something disproportionately and negatively affects racial minorities, rather than whether the target is a racial minority, per se. It seems pretty undeniable that the U.S. drug policy makes life unjustly harder for black [Read More...]
Police not ruling out hate-based motivation in Chapel Hill shooting
There are some update on the story that broke this morning of Craig Stephen Hicks, the Chapel Hill man accused of shooting three muslim students in their home. The Charlotte Observer reports: Chapel Hill police said Wednesday morning that a dispute about parking in the neighborhood of rented condominiums near Meadowmont may have led Craig Stephen Hicks to shoot [Read More...]
3 Muslim students killed by an anti-theist in Chapel Hill, NC
Three young Muslim students were killed in their homes yesterday. They were shot in the head. CNN reports: A 46-year-old man has been charged with murder in the shooting death of three Muslim students in an apartment near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus. Police haven’t said what may have compelled the accused, [Read More...]
Courage Matters: Darwin Day as a Holiday for Brave Questions
The following is a guest post by Seráh Blain. A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin published a book that blazed through the anthropocentric fog clouding our view of the universe. On the Origin of Species detailed his discovery of natural selection, and in doing so unraveled hazey superstitious tendrils lingering in modern minds from [Read More...]
February 10, 2015
Ezra Klein’s advice to young journalists
At Vox, Ezra Klein writes up what he thinks is his best guidance for aspiring journalists, and I think it’s very good. His guiding principle: You always want to be doing work that is as close as possible to the kind of work you want to be doing in your dream job. The reasoning here is simple: [Read More...]
February 9, 2015
Elite degrees don’t protect black Americans from racism
The social sciences have been showing the depth of our racial prejudice for a while now, so I’m always surprised to see that some people find concepts like “white privilege” hard to acknowledge. A new study by S. Michael Gaddis, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, goes even further to show how much [Read More...]
February 6, 2015
ISIS’s violence isn’t so unique, says Obama
I don’t know what it says about me that I’m reading Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig—a Christian leftist and newly-minted staff writer at The New Republic 2.0—more often and more eagerly than just about any atheist writer around right now. Most recently, she’s addressed President Obama’s comments putting the horrific violence of ISIS in context. During yesterday’s National [Read More...]
