Lives in a Shoe

Hallelujah

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

Look at the alert catchers around the edges of Hinn's traveling salvation show, ready to keep the falling faithful from harm.

Doesn't it make you think of this?

"What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if

they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from

somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher

in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really

like to be. I know it's crazy." -- Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye

 

Filium Eius Unicum

Dawkins, Making Sense

He is a bloviating, preening, self-adulating asshat whose opinions glitter for some adolescents.  "For a generation of young atheists Dawkins gave disbelief a thin veneer of intellectual cachet." (Thomas D. Williams) But he makes sense here.

 

 

 

Courage: Sara Bahayi

"One day they will kill you..."

Despite a belief Islam forbids women to drive men...

Every day, she plies her trade in a business ruled by conservative men. She endures condescending looks, outright jeers, even threats to her life. Most men will not enter her taxi, believing that a woman should never drive for a man.

Yet she earns $10 (£6.50) to $20 a day, enough to provide for her 15 relatives, including her ailing mother. She relies on ferrying women shackled by traditions and fear, who vicariously live their dreams of freedom through her.

 

 

U.S. Muslims Take On ISIS's Recruiting Machine

More of this, please.

With the Islamic State in particular deploying savvy online appeals to adolescents alongside videos of horrific executions, the sense of urgency has grown. Though some Muslim leaders still resist cooperating with the government, fearing that they would be contributing to religious profiling and anti-Muslim bigotry, many have been spurred to respond as they have come into contact with religiously ardent youths who feel alienated by life in the West and admit that they have been vulnerable to the Islamic State’s invitation to help build a puritanical utopia.

Muslims willing to speak our deserve our respect and our support. The article breaks sunshine through the gloom of my pessimism.  From the NY Times.

 

 

What She Would Have Said at Brandeis...

Ayan Hirsi Ali.  Invited to receive an honorary degree and speak at Brandeis, disinvited following intimidation of university admministrators.:

"Truth Even Unto its Innermost Parts."  I'm told that is Brandeis's motto.  I want to know how one can know any truth without hearing dissent.  How do we know enough about Ms. Ali's opinions without allowing her to speak?  How do we know we disagree?  We can surmise from her actions that she is a fierce advocate for women's rights.  We can surmise from what we know of her background that she has firsthand knowledge of some truths it is uncomfortable for us, particularly feminists among us, to face.  Shout her down and close discussion, clap your hands over your ears and chant LaLaLa -- and then face it.  Brandeis is inhabited not by intellectually fearless scholars, but a congregation obedient to dogma and informed by faith alone, proudly ignorant as any cargo cult.

We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking, where all ideas are welcome and where civil debate is encouraged. I’m used to being shouted down on campuses, so I am grateful for the opportunity to address you today. I do not expect all of you to agree with me, but I very much appreciate your willingness to listen.

I stand before you as someone who is fighting for women’s and girls’ basic rights globally. And I stand before you as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions about the role of religion in that fight.

The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect.

Be Sure to Wear Clean Underwear

End of world next Saturday -- begins with earthquake in Pacific Northwest.

Well Done

ACLU gets it right.  Terry Jones cannot be denied his right to demonstrate in front of a mosque in Dearborn.  And the transit worker who burned a Quran has been reinstated after being fired for doing so.

"The fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker's opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection. For it is a central tenet of the First Amendment that the government must remain neutral in the marketplace of ideas."

Chief Justice Rehnquist, HUSTLER MAGAZINE v. FALWELL, 1988

 

Bizarro World

   Theocons and hedonistic liberals seem to be meeting somewhere in the middle for an amiable do-si-do.   Consider: 

   1.    Washington state, then the Feds, have ordered Four Loko off the market.  Why?  To protect the CHILD-ren.  Never mind that alcoholic beverages are already illegal to sell to kids or even to young adults under age twenty-one.  And never mind that a can of Red Bull and a vodka-rocks would have pretty much the same effect.  Banning a legal product for adult use on the basis that it's dangerous to children could apply to lots of things, like Happy Meals with toys inside, or fast food restaurants in poor neighborhoods.  Oh, wait...    

    2.    Pat Robertson has advocated decriminalization of marijuana.  "We're locking up people that take a couple of puffs of marijuana....We've got to take a look at what we're considering crimes... I'm not exactly for use of drugs, don't get me wrong, but I just believe criminalizing marijuana and criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot...it's costing us a fortune and it's ruining young people."

 In other news, on Planet Htrae, Bizarro Lois Lane tugged on Superman's cape and messed around with Jim.