• Thursday, 23rd February (today!) – Murdoch University students – sign up with the Murdoch Atheist and Agnostics Student Society. Head down around 9.30am and be a part of Market Day!

• Friday, 24th February (this Friday!) – University of Western Australia students – sign up with the UWA Atheist and Skeptics Society during UWA’s O-Day Festival! Everything starts at 11am.

• Don’t forget that this is the week of the Perth Writers Festival, featuring Alom Shaha, Leslie Cannold, Jane Caro and Phillip Adams – these are events that you have to book for, so get your tickets from the official site.

In addition – tickets are limited for the 2012 Student Leadership Conference - which is on Friday, April 13, 2012, held before the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, Victoria. If you’re a student and planning to go, you must add this to your do-not-miss-event weekend.

Now out on the Token Skeptic podcast - Episode One Hundred and Nine – On FreeThinking Students – Rhys Morgan And Lyz Liddell.

This is with many thanks to Jason Ball of the Freethought University Alliance, Madge Carew-Hopkins and Ash Tyndall of the UWA Atheists and Skeptics Society and Felix Bloomfield of the The ANU League of Extraordinary Atheists.

In Australia, it’s the start of the University year. But is it simple to find or start a club for your atheist / secularist / skeptical / freethinking undergraduate self ? I’ve taken the challenge to find out what happens if you are a student who says “Perhaps there is no God…” Features interviews with Rhys Morgan and Lyz Liddell of the Secular Student Alliance.

“It’s that time of year again, when anti-choice group 40 Days for Life celebrate the run up to Easter by picketing abortion clinics, spreading misinformation and generally making life difficult for women using services and clinic staff.

This year, inspired by the lovely 40 Days of Treats, we have decided to use the annual protest to celebrate the right to safe, legal abortion and run our very own 40 day choice-a-thon.  Every day we’ll be posting small, positive steps that we can all take to increase awareness of abortion rights and advocate for better access to reproductive health services.”

The previously run 40 Days Of Treats was the focus of an interview, which you can check out at the Token Skeptic podcast. As the site says, they will be starting today, Wednesday 22nd February with their first pro-choice action.

You can follow them on Twitter at @40DaysofChoice and add the Pro-Choice twibbon to your avatar to show your support for the campaign.

Well, I wasn’t sent a sodding spam email, even though I’m at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention. HURT.

Actually, no. But I am counting my (non-Christian) blessings that I don’t have one more thing to delete from the in-box:

In case that isn’t too clear a picture – it’s Stella Young, who is a presenter at the Global Atheist Convention: a comedian, disability advocate and Editor of ABC’s Ramp Up, the online space for news, discussion and opinion about disability in Australia. She’s most puzzled about some unwanted correspondence.

Then, there’s a response by the equally awesome Shelley Segal, who has everyone raving about her music, particularly her newly-released “An Atheist Album”. She’s also been sent daft messages about her appearance at the convention.

[Oh, in passing - if you're thinking of attending the Dinner, you probably have only a few hours left to nab a ticket, so do so!]

What the? Well, they’ve both been bothered by some group calling themselves The Regal Standard.

…not that kind. But they are indeed the kind of people who should be taunted mercilessly by the French for their spamming:

Here’s a summary:

The Regal Standard was designed as a response to the second global atheist convention which is to be held in Melbourne. The atheist convention seeks to deny God, blame Christians for many evils in the world and discourage people from the faith. The Regal Standard acknowledges and honours God, proclaims the many great things he has done through his followers, and encourages people to follow God. The media will not be sympathetic to Christians. We need to produce our own.

As Protium has kindly written out on the AFA forum, their chief weapon is prayer!

10. Q. Are there other things we can do to complement The Regal Standard strategy?
A. Yes. Pray. Have 40 days of prayer prior to Easter. Have weekly prayer events culminating with the event. Plan special activities for the convention weekend. There will be much interest in God at this time. Extend invitations to your community and arrange special programmes, hospitality, welcoming gifts and information etc. Consider having a number of testimonies during your Sunday service or whenever, to let people see the reality of God in people’s lives.

You didn’t expect that, did you? NOBODY EXPECTS THE… hang on, they’ll come in again. Spam filter got in the way.

Of course, by the time I started writing this blog-post, my disappointment at not being sent any such spam has dissipated and I’ll instead devote my sulking-time in wearing a different atheist or secular or skeptic shirt for the Forty Days before the convention starts. Take that, elderberry-spammers!

]]> http://freethoughtblogs.com/tokenskeptic/2012/02/22/where-is-the-love-oh-silly-christian-propaganda-group-who-hate-the-atheistcon/feed/ 15 http://freethoughtblogs.com/tokenskeptic/2012/02/22/where-is-the-love-oh-silly-christian-propaganda-group-who-hate-the-atheistcon/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freethoughtblogs/tokenskeptic/~3/T7KXMLFLtM8/ http://freethoughtblogs.com/tokenskeptic/2012/02/22/sense-of-humour-and-americans-the-perth-central-institute-of-technology-henry-aaron-snap-ad/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:33:15 +0000 Kylie Sturgess http://freethoughtblogs.com/tokenskeptic/?p=1483 I blogged about this video recently – The Perth Central Institute of Technology “Snap” video – it caught my attention mostly because it’s a college I attended briefly (I did part-time intro to Sign Language there, after work twice a week when I was a young teacher at an inner-city school). I thought the video was brilliant, although gruesome, and I was really surprised and pleased to hear that it went viral – especially since it features comedians from my home town.

Warning – morbid!

Here’s one of (several out there) responses to it, primarily because it hit Reddit, Time Magazine, AdWeek and other media outlets. The Young Turks University in the USA say that ”They’re a lot more open-minded than America is… Yeah well, it’s a different culture.”

My question – is it just an “Australian” thing?

I’ve been enjoying an “Uncorrected Advance Reading Copy” of the upcoming U.S. edition of Mike McRae’s Tribal Science from Prometheus Books, which has once again put me in mind of something I think about often: the considerable bogusness of the conceit of “skeptics” versus “believers.” There is a social subculture that can be called “skepticism” and there is a niche of scholarly activity by the same name, but it’s a mistake to suppose that skeptics and believers are very different sorts of people. 

The true landscape of skepticism and belief is so complex that I can’t resist summing it up with this wonderful T-shirt slogan from Ben Goldacre: “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.” Bulldozing the complexity of human striving for understanding into tribal “skeptic” and “believer ” piles distorts reality, and makes it harder to do the already difficult work of solving mysteries and promoting science literacy.

 I remember the first time I learned about Type I and Type II errors, from another Michael – Michael Shermer. I hope that Americans will consider reading Tribal Science (available via Prometheus Books) with the same interest and enthusiasm I had when I first picked up a copy of Why We Believe Weird Things.

Michael McRae is one of the writers of this series of YouTube videos from TechNYou – the Critical Thinking Series.

Firstly – out tomorrow! I’m on the verge of releasing Token Skeptic Episode One Hundred and Nine – On FreeThinking Students:

In 2010, Rhys Morgan made headlines across the UK for discovering a disturbing and hazardous “cure all” called Miracle Medical Solution, lent his name to a libel reform claim and investigated the claims of the Burzynski clinic. On Rhys’ blog, he wrote: “If you’re involved in the skeptical and/or atheist community, it’ll have been pretty hard to miss the University College London Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society storm in which they were asked by their union to remove this image from a promotional Facebook page for their weekly pub meet because someone had found it offensive and complained.” Since that time, Rhys has also become an advocate for speaking out about supporting student groups. 

Lyz Liddell is the Director of Campus Organizing for the Secular Student Alliance, coordinating the campus organizing team to deliver the SSA’s services and resources to affiliate groups and individual students. She leads development of new resources and helps build relationships with other organizations to promote acceptance of secular students. She volunteers with her local off-campus organization, the Humanist Community of Central Ohio, and is a member of the Challenge the Gap advisory board for Foundation Beyond Belief.

Secondly – are you a student of Murdoch University? THIS Thursday, there’ll be a stall for the newly-created MASS:

This Thursday the 23rd of February, MASS (Murdoch Atheist Student Society) will be holding its first stand, during the Murdoch market day.

Are you at The University Of Western Australia? THIS Friday, there’ll be a Guild O-Day Festival (on the same day as Alom Shaha’s talks!):

2012 UWA Guild O-Day Festival - Friday, February 24 at 11:00am at UWA Student Guild. The UWA Atheist & Skeptic Society will be featuring a stall (and may even trade a cookie for your soul!)

Finally – are you also going to the Global Atheist Convention? You should be going to this.  The 2012 Student Leadership Conference Friday, April 13, 2012 from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM –  Melbourne, Victoria.

It’s by the Freethought University Alliance, The Global Atheist Convention and the Centre For Inquiry. DO head in quick, as tickets are limited!

Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions: Just Say No! from Philosophy News on Vimeo.

This presentation was given by Dr. Peter Boghossian of Portland State University on January 27, 2012. In this talk, sponsored by The Freethinkers of Portland State University and published by philosophynews.com, Dr. Boghossian argues that faith-based processes are unreliable and unlikely to lead one to the truth. Since our goal as knowers is to have more true beliefs than false ones, faith, as a process for getting to the truth, should be abandoned in favor of other, more reliable processes. The talk was followed by a question and answer session from the audience.

Therefore, it COMES WITH A WARNING THAT IT IS GRAPHIC. So, maybe not safe for work, or stomach…

Sorry if you’re reading this off RSS and got a odd link – I’ll post that later.

Additional edit – a response to the advert from a USA viewer:

“OfFred was a normal everyday woman with a career, a name, a life like all women have come to expect and take for granted in this age. When the Religious Right came into power, they began to put into practice their insane beliefs which strip women of their identity, their rights, their body, their very name. Women are to be called Of (whatever asshat they belong to), instead of, say Beatrix. Reproduction is an issue because all the toxins in the environment have rendered many women infertile. But if you are fertile, woe to you, you get to be a baby factory against your will, get promised to some jerk you don’t love or even like because someone deemed him important enough to breed. Oh, come on!

This book was written in 1986…” - Review by Stephanie on GoodReads, February 10th, 2012.

While the genre of the book is open to debate (Valerie Martin in the introduction of the 2006 Everyman’s Library edition, suggests political satire, allegory, and even “reconstructed post-print novel”), I would argue that The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood can be seen to firmly fit within the genre of science fiction, often called “speculative fiction”. This is an attempt by writers using their imagination to project themselves into a possible future.

Corporations and zygotes are not conceptually related, but, nonetheless, the extension of personhood rights to corporations may pave the way for the extension of personhood rights to zygotes. The latter action would, of course, limit the autonomy and reproductive rights of real persons, namely women. - Protect Zygotes and Corporations; Piss on Women, CFI, by Ronald A. Lindsay.

Within science fiction, you can see different kinds of novels: technology based, space, novels that explore society on earth as it might be in the future, and so on. Some of the more famous examples of speculative fiction include Huxley’s Brave New World, or Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Sociologically speculative stories usually propose an argument about what are contemporary (not fictional) issues. The Handmaid’s Tale is one of these kinds of stories; it’s the author’s creation of an imagined society which grows out of our own, and represents potential events in the world as we know it.

Appearing of MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell today, Foster Friess, the main donor to the Super PAC backing Rick Santorum’s presidential bid, dismissed the controversy surrounding President Obama’s new birth control rule by suggesting that women should just keep their legs shut. - Santorum Sugar Daddy Foster Friess Gives ‘Gals’ Contraception Advice: Put An Aspirin Between Your Knees, Alex Seitz-Wald, Think Progress.org, Feb 16, 2012.

Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison.
Who led them on? Aunt Helena beams, pleased with us.
She did. She did. She did.
Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen?
Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.
- The Handmaid’s Tale, p. 82.

The Handmaid’s Tale also falls into a sub-genre within speculative fiction, one with philosophical and literary antecedents. It is a dystopian novel: fiction that sets up for our contemplation an imagined world, not an ideal one – one in which the worst things that could happen have come to pass. Atwood does something similar to what Orwell and Huxley have done: demonstrating through her work how human society can go wrong.

The influence of earlier dystopian works like those of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels or Butler’s Erehwon, or even Huxley’s Brave New World is open to discussion (I could point out comparisons between the segregation in Gilead and Brave New World’s World State) – but it can be said that Atwood is consciously working within a generic tradition.

It’s not necessary to have read More, Huxley or Orwell to engage with The Handmaid’s Tale, but a knowledge of dystopian texts does enrich the debate of which this book is a part.

The ultrasound legislation would constitute an unprecedented government mandate to insert vaginal ultrasonic probes into women as part of a state-ordered effort to dissuade them from terminating pregnancies, legislative opponents noted.

…”We hear the same song over there. The very tragic human notes that are often touched upon involve extreme examples,” said [Todd] Gilbert, R-Shenandoah. “But in the vast majority of these cases, these are matters of lifestyle convenience.” - Virginia House getting all up in your vagina, Daily Kos, February 15th, 2012.

Religious discourse is used within the novel as a form of social conformity – marginalising women’s place in society in both subtle and overt ways – and naturalises the patriarchy. Women can also act in collusion with men against other non-privileged women, to benefit their own standing in society; Serena Joy, who worked as an Evangelical singer, promoted the very same system that eventually resulted in her being house-bound, complicit and resentful.

Offred’s atittudes reflect a woman who “had it all”, who looked complacently at the groups that represented women’s rights and sees her mother as an aging women’s rights activist whose efforts were “over the top”. The Republic of Gilead is a clear warning for complacency of such women in society to accept their independence and equality without question – as predicted by Offred’s mother and by Moira, who eventually succumbed to the Republic of Gilead as a member of the Jezabel’s club (“…What I hear in her voice is indifference, a lack of volition.” p.284)

Set in Cambridge, Massachusetts (the Wall that is used for hanging executed bodies is in Harvard University), this is the story of a destabilised country, dying from radiation poisoning, which takes drastic steps to secure the population of male genes. Women’s biological function is privileged, but as a result, women become marginalised as individuals – as the prime aim is to find healthy, fertile women who can produce children for those ruling class of men in position of power and influence.

To me, The Handmaid’s Tale is indeed a dystopian novel, a warning – if society refuses to “act upon” changes enacted by dominant groups with strong ideologies, a totalitarian state like Gilead could be the devastating result.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.
Are there any questions?
- From the partial transcript of Problems of Authentication in Reference To The Handmaid’s Tale – Professor James Darcy Pieixoto (The Handmaid’s Tale, p.324).

He has argued many landmark civil liberties cases and has acted against General Pinochet and Hastings Banda and for Salman Rushdie, Mike Tyson and Julian Assange. His recent book “The Case of The Pope” has been translated into many languages. He is author of “The Justice Game” (a memoir), The Tyrannicide Brief and “Crimes Against Humanity”. In 2011 he received The New York Bar Award Award for Distinction in International Law and Affairs.

Geoffrey Robertson Q.C will be giving the inaugural Christopher Hitchens Memorial Lecture at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention.

I now need to breathe into a paper bag to contain my excitement about seeing him present.