Richard Dawkins (and the Creepy Elevator Guy) should watch MadTV

I'd somehow missed the whole "Creepy Elevator Guy" story, but my son called yesterday to bring me up to date. For those of you who don't know, women are badly underrepresented in atheist groups, and the few who do attend meetings sometimes get unwanted sexual attention, which occasionally turns into harassment. In this instance, Rebecca Watson got on the elevator headed for her hotel room at 4 AM and was propositioned by one of the male attendees. Hemant Mehta has an excellent summary of the details so I won't repeat it here.

I don't have a lot to add to what's already been said. Blag Hag had a good blog about it. PZ Myers blogged about it and got a rather disturbing letter from Richard Dawkins, and Hemant Mehta wrote a second blog that was very thoughtful (he has links).

A while ago I wrote a blog that's very relevant: Mormons and Animals: Denying our Deepest Instincts. Men can be total jerks and worse. But atheists have a huge advantage over religious people

Jews Erase Hillary Clinton from Iconic Situation-Room Photo

Are any of you modern women thinking maybe conservative Judaism is for your? Check out this story.

The ultra-orthodox publication Di Tzeitung took the famous photo of President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and their advisors, and erased Secretary Clinton and another woman from the photo! They claim that modesty prevents them from publishing pictures of women.

But wait ... isn't that censorship? Isn't that revising history? There were two women in the room. What sort of paper alters the facts when reporting a story? Oh, wait ... this is religion. I forgot, they alter facts all the time!

Muslim Women Not Allowed to Question Veils -- In Britain!

We're quick to criticize Muslim men in the Middle East for their terrible oppression of women. Women are denied educations, forced into marriages, not allowed to work, and occasionally even murdered with no consequences. In the most conservative Islamic countries, women aren't even allowed to be seen by any man but their husband.

But that's only in third-world countries far, far away, right? Surely Muslims in America and Britain don't subscribe to such sexist, oppressive nonsense. Right?

Wrong.

The Muslim Council of Britain has stated women must wear veils. Better yet, they're not even allowed to debate it. It is a "shortcoming" for a woman to show her uncovered face, and any Muslim who disagrees is rejecting Islam.

The Council cites a statement from the Holy Qur'an:

Beauty Pagents: A Spoof

For all my faithful readers, life has intervened and I don't have a blog for you today. But I'll leave you with something that's both fun and makes a really good point. Until tomorrow, here's Tom Hank at his best...

Wrestler Christian Morals Prohibit Fight With Girl ... Or is he just afraid of her?

A high-school wrestler who forfeited a state-championship match against a female competitor claimed he was following his "Christian values."

Joel Northrum, the sophomore wrestler, said,

Wrestling is a combat sport, and at times it gets violent, and you get put in moves and holds that are comprising [sic]. I just don’t believe it's right that a boy and a girl should, in this manner, wrestle.

Joel's father Jamie Northrum added,

Even though there’s no specific Scripture that addresses wrestling with girls, there is the biblical Christian principle of treating women with respect and dignity, and not looking at them as objects to be defeated on the wrestling mat to be, in some cases, groped or slammed.

This is nothing but a bunch of horse hooey if you ask me.

This is the worst sort of sexual discrimination. His opponent, Cassy Herkelman, had worked hard and competed fairly to get to the Iowa state championship. That's an impressive achievement for any student, male or female. And Ms. Herkelman had a right to be treated fairly by her opponents, to be given the a chance to win or to be defeated, just like any other competitor.

What Joel Northrum did wasn't respectful. He took away Ms. Herkelman's rights. He took away her right to be treated fairly and

Mix Government and Religion, Women Lose

There's a great article in the New York Times that once again illustrates why government and religion should never mix.

In Pakistan, anyone who advocates equal rights for women can be, and often is, accused of blasphemy. And that, my friends, is a capital crime! Gloria Steinem, watch out! You'd get the death penalty if you tried your feminism stuff in Pakistan!

Women's rights are almost nonexistent in this religion-dominated country, just as they were in America and Europe when religion was in charge. But Pakistan seems to be even worse: a woman who is raped can't go to the police because she'll be accused and convicted of infidelity.

In most countries, civil rights violations spawn citizen protests. India threw off British rule, Martin Luther King inspired America's Blacks to demand their civil rights,

Woman Preacher Gets Southern Baptist Church Expelled

It's hard to believe in these modern times that there is still overt, legal discrimination against women. But leave it to religion to be in the dark ages when everyone else has seen the light. The Druid Hills Baptist Church, a thriving Southern Baptist congregation in Atlanta, Georgia, has been declared "not a cooperating church" because its associate pastor is a woman (*gasp*!).

The official policy of the Southern Baptist Convention is that the role of pastor is "limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

Yeah, that's the right idea! Let's take the morals of a bunch of farmers, goatherds and rabbis who lived two thousand years ago, and decide that by golly, they got it right!

How to Enslave a Modern Woman

My brother-in-law posted a beautiful, inspirational video called The Invisible Woman by Nicole Johnson. It really is a very moving story ... and I despise it. It illustrates perfectly how religion is used to subjugate women.



Karl Marx got many things wrong, but he famously wrote, "Religion is the opiate of the people." The message is simple:

You work your ass off, and nobody cares. But God cares, and He sees you even if you are everyone else's invisible servant. So be a good girl, accept your fate, and get back to work.

But no woman should take this crap from anyone, much less her own husband and children. It is wrong to be treated like dirt, yet this "God cares" message is nothing more than an opiate, designed to get women to shut up and get back to their tasks.

What horrifies me about these messages is how insideous and alluring they are. A woman works sixteen hours a day, her children, husband and friends are disrespectful and uninterested, and she begins to feel worthless. But wait! There's a man, not just any man, but a kindly, loving, fatherly man, who loves her with all his heart. This man is everything her husband and children are not – appreciative, admiring, concerned, thankful, and probably handsome too. Who wouldn't want to believe this, true or not? So she goes back to her chores, happy that at least one person cares about her.

But step back for a moment, and think what might happen if women around the world rejected this opiate. Instead of feeling that inner contentment, knowing that God cares, some would surely become more depressed than ever. But maybe some would actually do something about their mistreatment.

Maybe instead of being invisible, they'd demand the respect that they deserve. And maybe they'd actually get it. Wouldn't that be novel?

Oh, the Catholics, Hate the Protestants...

Today's beautiful lesson in evolution is the question, "Why do Churches inevitably want more members?" It's a lovely illustration: The Roman Catholic Church is stealing people from the Anglican Church over the issues of gay and women's rights. They're even (*gasp*) letting married Anglican priests become Catholic priests!

Today's lesson starts with a thought experiment: Suppose you were head of a church and decided that proselytizing (getting new members) was unimportant, that you'd found the very essence of God's wisdom, and too bad for everyone else. You and your followers worship correctly, follow all of God's laws, and get the golden ticket to Heaven. Pretty cool!

But a hundred years down the road, your church will be completely gone! Some other church, one that happens to believe in "spreading the word," will still be going strong whereas your followers will all be dead and buried.

So, churches inevitably believe in expanding their memberships. It's a lot like sex for humans: We like it because every one of our ancestors did too, and the people who didn't like sex had no children. Proselytism, plain and simple, is a church's version of sex, and all successful churches inevitably have a strong proselytism meme.

So back to the Anglicans and Catholics...

The Anglicans are having a big fight because some of them want to actually give equal rights to women and gays. The Roman Catholic Church is whispering, "Hey, come over here, we're not like those wimps, we still put women and gays in their place!" And not surprisingly, these Anglicans who are still trying to cling to the evil past, the days when oppression and discrimination were tolerated, are jumping from the Anglican ship an into the open arms of the Roman Catholic Church.

This is a perfect example of the proselytism meme hard at work. The Roman Catholic Church can't help itself, any more than humans can't help liking sex. Because if they didn't continue to try, all down through history, to gain new converts and steal follows from other churches, they'd be extinct, and I'd be writing about some other church that fostered a strong proselytism meme.

It is said that 99% of all plant and animal species that ever existed are extinct, that the 1% remaining are the best of the best, the fittest that survived. The same is true of churches, what you see today are the survivors, the memeplexes (the collection of ideas) that had more appeal, better defenses, stronger proselytizing, and kept up with other changes in our culture and environment.

So when you see churches fighting over members, you don't have to ask, "Which is right? Which one is interpreting the Bible correctly?" Those questions aren't relevant from a memetic point of view. All that matters is, "Which one will survive to the next generation?" And the answer to that question has more to do with what people want to believe than what's true.

Giving a person equal rights, whether its a man or woman, gay or straight, is only relevant to a church to the extent that the church gains or loses membership. Worrying about what's right and wrong, what God or Jesus might actually say about it, is fairly irrelevant.

Just for fun, let's go out with Professor Tom Lerher's song, National Brotherhood Week...

Oh the Catholics hate the Protestants
and the Protestants hate the Catholics
and the Hindus hate the Muslims
and everybody hates the Jews!

Outrageous: Battered women have a "pre-existing medical condition"

I usually write about religious issues, but today's blog is from a colleague's email who found something so outrageous I couldn't ignore it.

"Sometimes I see things in the news that just seem so very, very incredible to me, although by this time I shouldn't be surprised by anything....but this morning I saw some stuff on CNN about this topic, and I couldn't believe it, until I looked it up on the 'net ... here's a link."

Eight states and the District of Columbia don't have laws that specifically bar insurance companies from using domestic violence as a pre-existing condition to deny health coverage, according to a study from the National Women's Law Center.

Got that? In other words, if a woman's husband beats her up, she can't get health insurance any more.

My colleague's email continues, "This is amazing to me, considering the fact that as many as one in three women have been the victim of domestic violence at some time in their life, either as a child, a spouse, a girlfriend, or a parent ... far more women than men ... and this stupid concept that women who have been victimized in these situations are somehow guilty of participating in risky lifestyles and are therefore subject to discrimination in eight states and by four major insurance companies. This is just one more nail in the coffin of today's problematic health care system.

"But worse than that, it's a sad, sad indicator that maybe women have not come all that far, if domestic violence can be used to bar women from getting medical help for themselves when they most need it.

"Hey, I know how we can make this all fair and square! ... why don't we exclude everyone who rides motorcycles, or who jumps out of airplanes, or who has gotten into a bar fight with his buddies, or who is a police officer, or a fireman ... all on the basis of engaging in risky lifestyles?? Oops, no that wouldn't work, particularly since most of the folks who engage in those behaviors are MEN ...... !#$^&*%!!!"

All I can add is, Amen!

Jimmy Carter Quits Southern Baptist Church

I've always admired former President Jimmy Carter for his genuine honesty and integrity. These seem like such simple principles, yet they are sadly lacking in so many politicians. My opinion of the man shot up even more with his announcement that, after sixty years as a member of the Southern Baptist Church, he is leaving the Southern Baptist Church because of their oppressive policies about women.

And Mr. Carter didn't just sever his ties, he did so with strong words, calling the SBC's policies oppressive, and reminding us that their Biblical justifications are the same ones used to excuse slavery, genital mutilation, violence and rape around the world.

The SBC, of course, couldn't take it gracefully, and had to do a bit of mud-slinging in an attempt to save face. They called Mr. Carter's actions "politically motivated," which is pretty funny considering that Mr. Carter has already achieved and retired from the highest office in the land. One has to wonder just how SBC thinks Jimmy Carter will further his career by speaking his mind.

P.S. Thanks to all my loyal subscribers for sticking with me through my recent hiatus from this blog. Personal events and priorities kept me away for a while, but it looks like I'm back now.