ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 438

Pope: Women will be banned from priesthood forever

By John Bacon

The Catholic Church’s ban on female priests will stand forever, Pope Francis said Tuesday.

The pontiff made the declaration in response to a female reporter asking whether he thought women would one day serve as Catholic priests and bishops, noting the head of Sweden’s Lutheran Church whom Francis met on his trip there is a woman.

“St. Pope John Paul II had the last clear word on this and it stands,” Francis said during a news conference aboard the papal plane on the flight back to Rome, according to Reuters.

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Question of the Week – 11/2/16

At CSICon, Richard Dawkins talked about how he believed it was high time that a scientist won a Nobel Prize for Literature (with no offense intended against Mr. Dylan). If you were in charge of the award, what work of science writing do you think should receive the honor?

Our favorite answer wins a copy of A Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins (no repeat winners).

And please don’t forget to send in your submissions for Question of the Week! You can suggest a question by emailing us at QotW@richarddawkins.net. Please remember this is for “Question of the Week” suggestions only, and answers to the Question of the Week should be submitted through the comments section on the Question of the Week page  Thank you!

Council for Secular Humanism director: Oklahoma voters should reject SQ 790

By Tom Flynn

In “Oklahomans should vote yes on SQ 790” (Our Views, Oct. 23), The Oklahoman showed a flawed understanding of the effect of public funding on religious institutions. “SQ 790 opponents claim it will facilitate taxpayer funding for proselytizing,” the editorial declared. “Not true. That will remain illegal (and no one is proposing taxpayer funding for missionaries anyway).”

“Proselytizing” means much more than sending missionaries. If church-affiliated social service agencies compel beneficiaries of their services to listen to a sermon before receiving services, that’s proselytization. If a church has the money to expand religious programming precisely because public funding has relieved it of the need to fund the cost of its social programs, that equates to proselytization too. Money is fungible, so any grant of public funding for social service programs makes more money available for religious purposes even if the dollars received from government are spent entirely on eligible social services.

Moreover, if a given church chooses to violate that rule, detection can be very difficult, given that churches are the only variety of nonprofit organization not required to account publicly for their finances.

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These Real-Life Ghostbusters Will Help Sell Your Haunted House

By Katy McLaughlin

Lots of things can thwart a home sale—ugly décor, a bad location or an unrealistic price. But some homeowners and real-estate agents cite another reason: ghosts.

For help, there’s a cottage industry of people who advertise themselves as psychics, ghostbusters and paranormal investigators. Some charge hundreds of dollars to visit “haunted” properties—either in person, or via astral travel—and “clear” them of unwanted spirits. Others are volunteer ghostbusters who comb homes with high-tech gear to suss out paranormal activity.

Jane Phillips, a paranormal investigator and self-described clearer in Santa Fe, N.M., markets her services to real-estate agents because “it’s easier to get them to pay for something if it gets their houses sold.” Ms. Phillips, 65, was a mortgage banker for 30 years in Minneapolis, before moving to New Mexico in 2008, she said. Since then she has worked on hundreds of homes, mostly locally, charging about $350 to $400.

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The Sympathetic Atheism of Julia Sweeney

By Josh Veal

Julia Sweeney is not your typical atheist. The former SNL cast member and current mother, actor and comedian introduced her one-woman show, Letting Go of God, in 2004. For two hours, Sweeney humorously and frankly discusses her 40-year journey from Catholic to nonbeliever.

That’s why she’ll be joining fellow atheist, Richard Dawkins, on stage at Fountain Street Church on Nov. 7. While they may have atheism in common — both being “rah-rah secularists,” as Sweeney says — their ideology differs in some distinct ways. Mainly: Sweeney still believes in the value of religion, while Dawkins is colloquially considered one of the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism, an unofficial term for atheism that directly critiques religion. His most famous work is titled The God Delusion.

Revue had a lively, laugh-filled conversation with Sweeney about the duo’s upcoming event, along with why she doesn’t think religion is evil, despite hating all “the bad parts” of it as much as anyone else.

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The white left has issued its first fatwa

By Nick Cohen

I have never advised anyone to use the English libel laws. I spent years helping the campaign to reform them, and am proud of the liberalisation I and many, many others helped bring. I have to admit, though, our achievement was modest.

Libel in England remains sinister in intent – the defendant has to prove he or she was telling the truth – and oppressive in practice. Parliament and the asinine Leveson inquiry into the press failed to tackle the horrendous costs, and kept libel as the preserve of the rich and the reckless. You can risk spending £1 million before a case comes to court. Despite reform, libel courts remain the place oligarchs and charlatans go to suppress the truth.

Last night, however, I found myself advising the anti-fascist campaigner Maajid Nawaz to sue in the London courts.  I even gave him the names of lawyers who would be happy to help. The attack he is facing is so grotesque, ferocious remedies seem the only response.

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Branding Moderates as ‘Anti-Muslim’

By The Wall Street Journal Staff

As if facing down violent Islamist fanatics isn’t enough, Muslim reformers now have to dodge attacks from the American left. Consider the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision last week to brand two such reformers, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Britain’s Maajid Nawaz, as “anti-Muslim extremists.”

Founded in 1971 by civil-rights activists, the Montgomery, Alabama-based law center says it’s committed to “fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society.” That apparently doesn’t include civil rights in the Muslim world or among Muslims living in the U.S.

Ms. Hirsi Ali, who sometimes writes for these pages, is a native of Somalia who later immigrated to the Netherlands and then the U.S. She has braved death threats from jihadists for criticizing female genital mutilation, blasphemy laws, and repression of women and minorities in the Muslim world.

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I’m A Muslim Reformer. Why Am I Being Smeared as an ‘Anti-Muslim Extremist’?

By Maajid Nawaz

I am a brown, liberal, reform Muslim. I have survived violent neo-Nazi racism and served as a former War on Terror political prisoner in Egypt, witnessing torture. Yet, in a trip that takes us through the looking glass, the largely white American non-Muslim “progressive” leadership at the pro-civil liberties group Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC) has just published a “journalist’s field list” naming me as an “anti-Muslim” extremist.

Through the counter-extremism organisation Quilliam that I founded, I have spent eight years defending my Muslim communities in Europe, Pakistan  and beyond from the diktats of Islamist theocrats. I have also argued for the  of Islam today, from within. But, in a naively dangerous form of neo-Orientalism, the SPLC just arrogated to itself the decision over which debates we Muslims may have about reforming our own religion, and which are to be deemed beyond the pale.

Let us call it “Islamsplaining.”

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H.I.V. Arrived in the U.S. Long Before ‘Patient Zero’

By Donald G. McNeil Jr.

In the tortuous mythology of the AIDS epidemic, one legend never seems to die: Patient Zero, a.k.a. Gaétan Dugas, a globe-trotting, sexually insatiable French Canadian flight attendant who supposedly picked up H.I.V. in Haiti or Africa and spread it to dozens, even hundreds, of men before his death in 1984.

Mr. Dugas was once blamed for setting off the entire American AIDS epidemic, which traumatized the nation in the 1980s and has since killed more than 500,000 Americans. The New York Post even described him with the headline “The Man Who Gave Us AIDS.”

But after a new genetic analysis of stored blood samples, bolstered by some intriguing historical detective work, scientists on Wednesday declared him innocent.

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The Necessity of Secularism, pg 115

” Those who cling to the “further fact” view – that is, the view that there must be something outside of morality that provides the objective grounding for morality – are not unlike those naive economists who insist that currency has no value unless it’s based on gold or some other precious metal. Hence, we had the gold standard which for many years provided that a dollar could be exchanged for a specific quantity of gold. The gold standard reassured some that currency was based on something “objective” value. However, the whole world has moved away from the gold standard with no ill effects. Why was there no panic? Why didn’t our economic systems collapse or become wildly unstable? Because currency doesn’t need anything outside of the economic system itself to provide it with value. Money represents the value found within our economic system, which, in turn, is based on our economic relationships. “

–Ron Lindsay, The Necessity of Secularism, pg 115

Discuss!