Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, had a recent book tour appearance in California canceled because of past insensitive remarks about Muslims. It fanned the flames of misunderstanding about ‘free speech’ as a concept. No matter how many times it’s explained, some people refuse to understand. It also doesn’t help when a freethought group tries to make some money on that misunderstanding.
I thought it was cute to get a fundraising email from the Center for Inquiry (CFI) last week complaining about Dawkins having his free speech blocked by a California radio station. It seems that the station came across some abusive comments Dawkins has made over the years about Islam. The weird neo-con/alt-right/Christian conservative/angry atheist intersection showed how easy it’s for people, including those who should know better, to get the “free speech” concept wrong.
Islamophobic Anti-Refugee Meme Debunked
A conservative friend of mine posted an Islamophobic anti-refugee Meme on Facebook the other day. The text on the image claims that the Prophet Muhammad, the Jesus of Islam, was taken in by the Jewish city of Medina and within five years he had driven out, killed, or enslaved all the Jews. The accusation sounded so ridiculous I had to try and verify it. Of course the ‘facts’ in the meme were very wrong.
A copy of the meme is to the right of this article (and a full size version is at the end of this post) but if you can’t see the image below is the full quote used:
Could Fear Of Islamophobia Lead Atheists To Overlook Religious Bigotry?
What started out as story about a soccer team invoking religious privilege, that was posted on an atheist blog, took a left turn as the author and many commenters didn’t seem to be concerned with an Islamic school soccer team forcing two Catholic girls to sit out half a match because the Muslim player’s religion wouldn’t allow them to mix with strange females. Could the fear of Islamophobia lead some atheists to overlook obvious religious bigotry? Looks like it can.
Hemant Mehta, over at Friendly Atheist, posted a story about two girls who played on a boy’s soccer team in Ontario Canada:
Thinking That Religion Is Only A Bunch Of Pretty Words Is Naive
Being a Humanist and an atheist, I get exposed to a range of views on religion. On the strict atheist side I hear about how religion should be left in the dustbin of history while on the Humanist side I tend to hear that religion is just pretty words that make people feel good. I’ve always found the idea that religion is just pretty words to be at best naive and ignores the reality in the world.
Last Wednesday, Reza Aslan, writer and scholar of religious studies, was on the Daily Show for an interview.
The Reality: Our Government Has Been Infiltrated By Radical Christians
During a recent discussion about ISIS on Bill O’Reilly’s FOX ‘news’ show, Rev. Franklin Graham was brought on for really no other reason than to give his religious bigotry perspective. He actually said the government had been infiltrated by Muslims when in reality bigoted Christians, like himself, have infiltrated the government and they are actively passing their form of Sharia law on the rest of us.