If, in your opinion, teaching your own children that God created the universe in 6 days is “mental child abuse” I think you probably have to go so far as to say that teaching your children that there is an all-powerful God would probably be “mental child abuse” as well.

Sorry to deviate from the topic at hand, but I couldn’t get around early comment. It seems more than odd to me.

As for the Rational Response Squad and the Blasphemy Challenge, where to start? I seriously think they are a bunch of clowns. The Blasphemy Challenge was their big joke. Yes, some of the Blasphemers made good videos, but the majority (subjectivity alert!) of them were kids being kids. I was going to link to a news report done on the Blasphemy Challenge but it was removed from blasphemychallenge.com. In it two reporters were asking why kids would do this and it was easily dismissed as “kids being kids and not knowing what they’re saying.” This is the image of atheism that is going to get us respect in the media? From what I’ve seen of the RRS members, they are kids themselves. I think “anger” is a stage of atheism (like the 5 Stages of Grief) and I think it’s the stage the RRS members are stuck in.

They do tend to come off that way.

I caught the video of the Harris/Hedges debate about Religion, Politics and the End of the World.

Can that be found online someplace, Darryl? I was looking for it at one point and couldn’t find it.

What was not made explicit enough to Hedges and Sheer by Harris was the role that a particular religion and its doctrines play when its adherents are pressured by outside forces and become desperate. Harris could have taken up the examples that Hedges and Sheer raised and refuted their argument with those examples.

No attempt was made by Harris or Hedges to join their two points into a summary statement about conditions that we know exist in the real world. What we were left with was Harris making his point and Hedges making his point and the impression that the two ideas are irreconcilable.

Sheer was a biased moderator. He should have let someone else moderate. The debate turned into an opportunity for Hedges and Sheer to let Muslims off the hook for their insanity and violence by contrasting them with the dirty deeds of the Imperialist U.S. This is a fallacious argument.

Sounds like an argument the Bush administration would make.

It is. But as good a guide as that is, that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.

If someone is more concerned with a supposed afterlife than with their actual life, you’re not going to make peace with them. Luckily for us, most people (including a fair number of Islamic terrorists) aren’t thinking this way. There are other worthwhile methods to pursue, but back in the bunker we need to be keeping an eye on Plan B too.

By contrast, I appreciate Carter’s pragmatic peacemaking approach that he describes later in that same interview with Krista Tippet

It’s a good sentiment, if a little one-sided. Sometimes the problem is us. Now, we can’t just go around not doing things because the other side won’t like them (for example, bin Laden has stated that he views the intervention in the Sudanese genocide as an attack on Muslims), but we still should realize that some of their complaints actually are valid.

That said, even if stopped doing the things we shouldn’t be doing, there are going to be people paranoid enough or jingoistic enough to view our legitimate actions as unprovoked attacks. And most of these people are not going to be associated with nation-states. We can put pressure on nations, but we need to consider other tactics too in order to protect ourselves against individuals.

Some folks choose not to agree with us and instead would like to see us go down in flames. No matter how willing we might be to offer the olive branch, some folks just will not make peace with us.

Sounds like an argument the Bush administration would make.

By contrast, I appreciate Carter’s pragmatic peacemaking approach that he describes later in that same interview with Krista Tippet:

Mr. Carter: You know, [Kim Il Sung] was a leader of North Korea whom I despised because I was in the submarine force when he was creating the death of more than 50,000 of my fellow people in the service. But I saw that he was a key to that policy so I went to talk to him. And we, I went earlier, in 1989, to meet with Mengistu, who was a communist dictator of Ethiopia, and I had talks with him. And Colin Powell and Sam Nunn and I went down to Haiti to talk to General Cedras, who had overthrown an elected leader, Aristide, and so forth. But if we see that at certain person is involved in a way, we try to be courageous enough to go in and talk to that person, try to get them to see the error of their ways. And one of the positive factors in it is that that person, quite often, will respond favorably if someone from the outside world will acknowledge their existence or deal with them in an honest and respectful way. And they’ll change their ways, which Kim Il Sung did, which Cedras did, which Mengistu did. It doesn’t always work.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Mr. Carter: But if you isolate someone who’s perpetrating crimes against his own people, the likelihood is that in his isolation, he’s going to be even more abusive, to stamp out any vestige of criticism or the crying out in pain.

BTW, one of your wikipedia articles did not even meet their standards for objectivity,

I’m aware of that. It’s Wikipedia, after all. Wikipedia itself acknowledges that it isn’t a reliable source. It’s a quick source. If you want reliable, scroll down to the references and check the ones that aren’t web links. (Note also that that particular article was flagged for word choice, not for content.)

whereas the other article cited studies that have shown that circumcision has either a protective effect or at least no adverse effect on the incidence of HPV, penile cancer, and a bunch of other conditions.

I’m not denying that there are potential medical benefits. Penile cancer is the most certain one. The others seem to have studies that go in both directions (for example, there have been studies suggesting that HPV rates are higher in circumcised males, as well), so there’s not enough information to really say. There are also some specific conditions in which circumcision is a valid medical option, such as in response to severe phimosis. The problem I see comes from using it in situations in which there is not a valid reason for its use.

Compare that to the undisputed adverse effects of FGM here:

I don’t recall ever denying that FGM has adverse effects as well.

Miko, it’s been said before: the perfect can be the enemy of the good.

And the good can be the enemy of the perfect. There are a (small?) number of gay rights activists against civil unions because they see them as an impediment to acknowledging the legality of gay marriage. There’s a real threat that we’ll never get the perfect if the good unites against it. As Franklin said, “Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” (It doesn’t quite fit, but the idea is the same.) Now, my position is not as extreme, since I’m not opposed to anti-FGM work. But the fact that you only want to stop one problem is not going to stop myself or anyone else from talking about other problems as well.