Pew Research puts out a big report on the rise in religiously-based harassment and hostility around the world, and we focus in on the data about the persecution of the nonreligious:
As governments, activists, and the media absorb the whole of Pew’s valuable report, it’s crucial that the plight of the nonreligious is not lost in the shuffle. The international community must rally to reverse this trend before more voices are silenced and more lives are lost.
Not only has the U.S. turned its back on the U.N. Human Rights Council, but Ambassador Nikki Haley is apparently sending nasty letters to particular NGOs to blame them for the move. Among the groups being sneered at by Haley is our frequent partner at the U.N., the IHEU, which begins its response with, “We are appalled at this bizarre rant from the United States Ambassador.”
Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, running for Chief Justice, is being quite open about his goal to send the U.S. Supreme Court cases that will wind up overturning Roe v. Wade. Justice is blind.
Mike Aus, an atheist and former pastor who started a kind of church for atheists called Houston Oasis, is accused of sexual harassment and resigns.
David Brooks assigns some pretty significant weight to the “myths” of today, giving us examples of “heroic superiority,” such as Star Wars and the Marvel universe:
Myths are moral narratives — they describe one interpretation of the moral landscape of reality and offer a model of how to be a sanctified person in that landscape. You might say that America’s Fourth Great Spiritual Awakening has come in the form of this mythic revival. … [But] they tend to give short shrift to relationships, which depend on the fragile, intimate bonds of vulnerability, trust, compassion and selfless love. They tend to see life as an eternal competition between warring tribes.
Jacob Lupfer says that Methodists looking to “spiritually sanction” Jeff Sessions over the border policy are going to regret it, writing, “Liberal [Christian]s’ new-fashioned commitment to church discipline is shortsighted and likely to backfire. The hammer you rediscover as powerful today could be in someone else’s hands tomorrow.”
School officials in Lee County, Virginia are clearly very hung up on making sure God knows we trust in him at all hours of the day, as they mandate “In God We Trust” decals (with American flags, natch) be placed on all school buses.
Sam Homola considers the merits (or lack thereof) of certification for chiropractors practicing vertebral subluxations, for which there is no evidence of any benefit.
Paging Chris Stedman, someone has stolen your book title.
Australian television asks, “Which psychic animal will get it right and predict the World Cup winner?” Just by asking the question, we know the losers will be all of us.
Quote of the Day
Charlotte Ahlin at Bustle shows us how L. Frank Baum was likely influenced by 19th-century feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage (see her Freethought Trail entry here), who also happened to be his mother-in-law:
Oz is, after all, full of magical, powerful women, both good and bad. The only male figure of any authority is the wizard, and the entire point of the wizard is that he’s a shyster, a fraud with no actual power, who simply uses his maleness and his showmanship to trick people into listening to him. Our gang of heroes are all sensitive, sweet-natured male characters, who have no qualms about following Dorothy. [. . .]
Frank clearly understood just how unfair it was to have all of these capable witches ruled by one incompetent wizard—the Oz books are not exactly consistent, but the wizard is a villainous usurper half the time and a bumbling fool the other half.
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