Sam Harris is famous for the argument that religion, even moderate religion, does harm by teaching that faith is a virtue that should not be questioned, which encourages militant and violent strains of fundamentalism. Today, I want to talk about another way, subtle but unmistakable, that religion causes harm to human beings.

Because of its tendency to treat all the statements of its founders and sacred texts as holy truth, religion has the effect of "freezing" the prejudices in vogue at the time of that religion's founding - encouraging followers to view them not as contingent or arbitrary cultural biases, but as the received will of God. And when a community of the faithful sincerely believes this, they'll perpetuate those prejudices for decades or centuries, long after the rest of the world has made enough progress to leave them behind. These preserved opinions are like fossils, surviving remnants of a more ancient era. But unlike fossils, they're still alive and malignant and able to do harm.

Consider the belief, still all too common, that rape victims are partially to blame for being raped if they drink or dress provocatively. This is a pernicious myth that's long been used, and is still being used, by rapists to excuse their actions and discourage rape victims from reporting the crime. It springs from the ancient prejudice that men can't be expected to exercise self-control in such situations, while women who are raped must have done something to tempt or incite the man into raping her. This is the sort of vile misogyny that our society should long since have discarded - but not only is it alive and well, it's still being propped up by patriarchal, male-dominated religions. Consider this story about a religious leaflet given to a woman in Virginia:

"You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed," it begins. "Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?"

..."Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin," the leaflet states. "By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?"

This loathsome argument, though presumably from a Christian source, has much in common with the Muslim cleric who proclaimed that women who refuse to veil their faces are like "uncovered meat" that gets eaten by stray animals. Both of them justify their woman-hating, blame-the-victim attitude by passing it off as the word of God.

The same attitude is behind a new and worrying trend in American schools: religious-right legislators who've supported teaching creationism in science class are now broadening their sights to demand the teaching of "alternative views" about global warming, as well as other favorite right-wing targets. As the article notes, white evangelicals are among the least likely to accept the science behind climate change (and I've written before about similar views from both sides of the theological aisle).

It's no surprise that people who are hostile to the scientific worldview would oppose not just evolution, but other well-established scientific truths as well. A worldview founded on faith, fallacy and magical thinking is unlikely to accord scientific research the respect it deserves. (To cite another example, prominent creationists Philip Johnson and Jonathan Wells also belong to a pseudoscientific group which argues that HIV does not cause AIDS.) And since Christianity has, for the most part, become fused with the Republican Party in America, it was to be expected that there's hardly any daylight left between the political goals of those two groups. It started with Christians infiltrating and taking over the Republican Party platform, but it's fascinating to see how this connection now runs in the other direction as well - how the corporatist, social-Darwinian agenda of the GOP has become fossilized as the de facto position of evangelical Christianity.

The harm done by fossilized opinions is most obvious in Islam, where the status of women has scarcely advanced in fourteen hundred years. Laws still in force throughout the Muslim world allow men to take multiple wives, forbid women from getting an education or traveling outside the home without a male relative, devalue their testimony in court, and more. Just a few weeks ago, Muslim tribal elders in Bangladesh ordered the flogging of a rape victim - and Bangladesh is relatively advanced when it comes to women's rights, at least when compared to most other Islamic countries.

The next time you hear some mealy-mouthed accommodationist denouncing atheists for claiming "intellectual superiority" over believers, remind them of facts like these. If atheists' opinions are better, truer, more valuable than religious opinions, it's not because we're intrinsically smarter - it's because we are willing to change our minds when new evidence presents itself. Millions of religious believers' minds are mired centuries in the past, clinging to beliefs that we now know to be false and moral tenets that we now know to be atrocities. We have every right to feel superior to people who still hold such fossilized opinions.

By Sarah Braasch

Rayhana, a French-Algerian playwright and actress, was attacked last week in front of the theater in Paris where she is performing her provocative play, "At My Age, I Still Hide My Smoking". Rayhana speaks out against Islamism and obscurantism and the Muslim culture of female oppression in Algeria. Her play takes place in a hammam in Algeria and portrays nine women sitting together and discussing their daily lives. The two men who attacked Rayhana grabbed her from behind, forcing her to the ground, and poured gasoline over her head and in her face, momentarily blinding her, and then attempted to set her on fire by throwing a lit cigarette on top of her head. Prior to this incident, Rayhana had been harassed verbally. Despite the attack and the threats of violence, Rayhana is determined to continue performing her play. She has received many offers to stage performances from theaters throughout France, in response to this outrageous criminal act.

Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives), a French women's rights organization that condemns cultural relativism and fights for women's rights as universal human rights without compromise, organized a protest to support Rayhana on Saturday afternoon, January 16th. A huge crowd assembled in front of the theater, la Maison des Métallos, where Rayhana is performing her play. The crowd included women's rights activists, government officials and representatives from some of France's political parties. Sihem Habchi, the President of Ni Putes Ni Soumises, condemned the attack on Rayhana and proclaimed, "It is her job to be in the theater and our job to be in the streets."

[Editor's Note: Sarah provided some pictures of the protest, several of which are reproduced below.]

Summary: An outstanding book, broad in its sweep and compelling in its use of fascinating detail, that paints a clear picture of the international forces opposing women's rights - and what's at stake in the fight against them.

I've said in the past that I believe all feminists should be atheists, the better to deny power and legitimacy to the religious belief systems that have treated women unjustly throughout history. But after reading Michelle Goldberg's outstanding new book The Means of Reproduction, I'm convinced that the converse is also true: all atheists should be feminists, in recognition of how many of the goals of religious fundamentalists entail the subjugation of women, and how effectively we can defeat them at home and around the world by working to uphold gender equality.

Goldberg's book examines the state of women's rights throughout the world and explores how the inevitable clashes with fundamentalist religion and traditionalist culture play out in the lives of millions of women. It's not, as I had assumed, primarily about the culture wars in the U.S. over abortion - although both abortion and American culture war politics do play a central role. But the legal and cultural equilibrium in this country hasn't changed much in the past several decades, and as Goldberg brilliantly shows, by far the most consequential impact of America's shifting political winds isn't felt at home, but abroad.

The opening chapters of the book offer a historical perspective on this fight by showing how, ironically, the U.S. was once the biggest provider of contraception and abortion services to developing countries worldwide. This happened during the Cold War era, when Malthusian fears of overpopulation were intertwined with concerns over the spread of communism in impoverished countries. The ways that American politicians lined up to combat this seem bizarre to anyone used to today's ideological battle lines. (One of many great tidbits is that former president George H.W. Bush, when he served in Congress, was so zealous an advocate of contraception that he was nicknamed "Rubbers".) By fighting overpopulation, politicians hoped to check the spread of Marxism - and so the U.S. in its heyday spent millions of dollars to launch family-planning clinics and distribute birth control pills around the world.

But these programs, in many cases, were victims of their own success. Most of them focused only on preventing births, while doing little or nothing else to help or empower the poor and disenfranchised women who most needed them. As a result, the growing international conservative movement, which took off during the Reagan administration, was able to frame them as Western racism and cultural imperialism - a charge that was not always without merit. Today, the worldwide feminist movement is opposed by a bizarre, but equally transnational, coalition of Christian and Islamic conservatives who join together in defense of patriarchy - often working hand-in-hand at the U.N. even as they denounce each other at home.

Goldberg next traces the origins of the international conservative movement. At the root of this bitter tree stands the Roman Catholic church, which was and is the staunchest opponent of women's rights in the world - as she points out, even Islamic theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Iran have a more permissive view of abortion than the Vatican. There are some truly amazing details here: I was startled to learn that a papal commission in the 1960s actually recommended that the Catholic ban on birth control be lifted - but Pope Paul VI overruled his own commission's advice and issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, reiterating the church's absolute ban on contraception. Several prominent bishops explained at the time that the pope had to do this, because anything else would have been a tacit admission that the church's prior beliefs were wrong and that can never be permitted, regardless of the consequences.

But the Catholic church alone was largely ineffective in stemming the tide of women's rights, until it was joined by conservative Christians from other denominations. Goldberg argues that, contrary to popular belief, it wasn't Roe v. Wade that galvanized Protestant evangelicals into entering politics, but the rise of the feminist movement that threatened traditional notions of the patriarchal family and the subservient wife. This reactionary movement, which began mostly in America, has been exported abroad in recent decades. The effects can be seen in Latin American countries like El Salvador, where pro-life groups have triumphed. In these countries, women who come to the hospital hemorrhaging from a miscarriage are handcuffed to their hospital beds until they can be examined by forensic vagina inspectors, to ensure they didn't obtain an illegal abortion; other women die horribly from ruptured Fallopian tubes because their country's laws don't permit abortion even in the case of an ectopic pregnancy.

However, not all anti-woman practices come from religion. In Africa, we learn of a few incredibly brave activists fighting the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, a tribal custom which predates Islam but has been perpetuated by many Islamic societies. In even the mildest versions of FGM, the woman's clitoris is sliced off with crude instruments like scissors or razors, without anesthetic. (This is the practice that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was subjected to as a child.) But there are even more extreme versions, such as infibulation, in which the woman's clitoris is cut off and her vagina is sewn shut, leaving only a tiny hole to urinate - on her wedding night, her husband must literally rip her open. Bizarrely, this practice is still defended by some women - even well-educated, cosmopolitan women - who argue that it's an ineradicable part of their culture and a necessary step of womanhood.

As the FGM controversy shows, feminist issues don't always play out along familiar ideological lines. In India, Goldberg discusses the rampant practice of sex-selective abortion, which has led to dramatically skewed sex ratios - in some areas, as imbalanced as 700 women to every 1000 men. The resulting demand for wives not only encourages human trafficking and sexual slavery, but poses a threat to societal stability from the millions of angry, frustrated, unmarriageable young men.

Yet India is a clear example of the principle Goldberg repeatedly returns to: the root problem isn't the availability of birth control, but the need for female emancipation. She describes how India's growing wealth has encouraged an explosion of ever-more exorbitant demands for dowry, making daughters more and more of a financial drain on their families and increasing the pressure to have sons. Shockingly, in some places, dowry has become not just a one-time payment but a steady stream of demands from the groom's family - and if the woman's parents refuse to pay, their daughter may be beaten or murdered by her own husband and in-laws. The depth of the problem is summed up in a local saying she quotes: "Having a daughter is like watering your neighbor's garden."

But despite all the horrible sexism that Goldberg chronicles, all the discrimination and oppression she details, her conclusions are not wholly pessimistic. The cause of women's rights is advancing, albeit frustratingly slowly and haltingly, but advancing nevertheless.

One of her arguments that came as a revelation to me is that the United Nations does a lot more good than most people are aware of. Its treaties and resolutions on the rights of women, so often disparaged as powerless symbolism, have had major, concrete effects in reforming the legal systems of many countries and establishing reproductive choice as a human right before national and international judicial bodies.

Second, as I mentioned earlier, Goldberg argues convincingly that the greatest effects of American politics are felt abroad rather than at home. Abortion politics in the U.S. have settled into an uneasy but stable equilibrium, one that changes little regardless of which party is in power. But in the developing world, it makes a huge difference whether and to whom the U.S. provides aid. The most infamous example is the "global gag rule", which forbids family planning groups that receive any federal aid from providing, or even acknowledging the existence of, abortion. This rule, which has been repeatedly canceled by Democratic presidents and reinstated by Republican presidents, makes all the difference in developing countries whose only source of family planning aid is the U.S. When in effect, it's forced the closure of countless clinics that provide not just contraception or abortion, but also prenatal care, checkups, vaccinations, and other help for new mothers and families.

There's even more in this book that I haven't mentioned, but I've written enough to support the conclusions from my opening words. Goldberg makes a clear and compelling case that all the evils she mentions, all the battles that feminist groups are fighting, all of this stems from the same source: the refusal to recognize women as full human beings with equal rights, including autonomy over their own bodies and the right to decide for themselves when and whether to have children. This pervasive sexism is still entrenched throughout the world, and although religion isn't solely to blame for this, it has always been the strongest and most enduring friend to patriarchy. Only when its malignant influence is defeated will women truly be free. And conversely, by freeing women, we take one of the most effective steps to roll back religion's power and influence.

I've written in the past about religion's harm to women, and the way modern sexism is aided and abetted by ancient religious prejudices that still survive today. Every major holy book has sexist verses, but some of the most misogynistic and the most virulent can be found in the books referred to by Christians as the Old Testament. Since this text is the foundation for religions that comprise over half the population of the world, it's small wonder that oppressive, sexist ideas still have so much power.

This ancient misogyny is on full display in this article about a group of pious Jewish women who want to pray at the Wailing Wall, the holiest site of Judaism. They're obviously seeking to perpetuate the faith, not rebel against it, and you might think that would earn them respect from their peers. But instead, they've faced insults, taunting, and even arrest, all from ultra-Orthodox men who demand that women be kept separate, silenced, and subordinate:

Men sporting the black coats and wheel-shaped fur hats that identify ultra-Orthodox Jews shouted at the women, calling them "Nazis," and telling them to "go to church".

...Their adversaries, including the rabbi of the wall, say that the women have no business wearing such religious garments as yarmulkes and prayer shawls, or carrying the Torah, the Jewish holy book.

Such things, the ultra-Orthodox Jews say, are reserved for men.

Whatever religious blindness has afflicted these men, I trust that we as atheists can agree that this kind of sexism is unacceptable. This kind of disgusting bigotry should be intolerable in an enlightened world. We, both men and women, have every reason to cooperate in stamping it out wherever it rears its head, and to work for its total eradication.

But one of the biggest mistakes we could make would be to assume that misogyny only manifests itself in obvious ways: as ultra-Orthodox men cursing and spitting at women on the streets, or Muslims committing honor killings against female relatives, or Roman Catholics arguing that abortion should be forbidden even to women with life-threatening ectopic pregnancies. Those are the most visible manifestations, but sexism can take on more subtle forms as well, more difficult to notice and therefore to oppose.

I bring this up because of an appalling editorial published on Comment is Free by Nancy Graham Holm, writing about the ax attack on Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard by a Muslim fanatic. The title of her article was - no joke - "Prejudiced Danes provoke fanaticism", and its argument was that Danish writers and artists are to blame for any violence they suffer as a result of offending the religious sensibilities of Muslims, who demand the right to be exempt from criticism or satire.

This cowardly nonsense was capably dissected by Ophelia Benson, the author of Butterflies and Wheels (and also a columnist for Comment is Free). Holm's article also caught the attention of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, and there, too, most of the commenters on the site's forum responded with appropriate criticism. But there were a few who couldn't stop there - including one whose reaction was to attack Holm as a "stupid bitch".

Ophelia stopped by to point out the inappropriateness of this, and she was met by several commenters who insisted that this was a perfectly acceptable way to criticize a woman, that it wasn't at all sexist, and even if it was, women are just as sexist as men so it's hypocritical to complain about it. Here are a few shining examples:

If you really want to cast a gender in the role of servants or slaves, then a case could be made that MEN have been the servants...

One half of humanity [that would be the male half —Ebonmuse] does not get a say in whether language is sexist?

Ophelia needs to recognize not only that "words change" in general, but that these particular words -- slang terms like bitch -- have changed and acquired a non-sexist sense.

These commenters argued that the word "bitch" is defensible as long as it's being used only against one specific person and not a slur against all women, and if it wasn't meant as sexist by the person who said it, then it wasn't sexist.

While I don't think this kind of attitude poses a threat to the atheist movement as a whole, I do think it's extremely important to ensure that everyone feels welcome among us, regardless of race or gender. That's a goal that the atheist movement still needs to devote more effort to accomplishing, and comments like these don't help. (Several commenters referred to the "locker-room atmosphere" of the comments at the largely unmoderated RD.net forums - although to his credit, Richard Dawkins himself did step in to put a stop to the flame war.)

To begin, let me pose a question to anyone who thinks that "bitch" is an appropriate term to use in reference to any woman. If you strongly disagreed with an essay written by a gay person, would you write a critique calling them a faggot? If it was a black person, would you express your disapproval by calling them a nigger? If these slurs are unacceptable, as they obviously are, then why is it any different to criticize a woman with an epithet that implicitly demeans all members of her gender? The word, after all, has historically been used to insult any tough, confident or assertive woman by implying that she doesn't "know her place".

To assume that any word can be used in a vacuum, stripped of all its past connotations, simply by willing it to be so is ludicrous. A word's meaning is not wholly determined by context - individual speakers can use words in new and unique ways - but neither is it wholly determined by individual intent - else we wouldn't ever be able to communicate with each other. Even if you use that word with no sexist intent whatsoever - a highly dubious proposition, considering the way we're all influenced by culture - it's hardly reasonable to expect the recipient of your message to understand your pure heart. They're much more likely to see that word as coming with all the sexist and misogynist context that has always been attached to it, understandably so. And condescendingly telling a person that they should just ignore all that and let you decide for them when they should be offended is only going to make things worse.

There are plenty of bad ideas out there that deserve criticism. But when we criticize them, we shouldn't do it in a way that cedes the moral high ground, or that insults or alienates people whose sympathies were already with us. Nor should we tolerate others who do these things. Even the gentlest declaration of atheism is going to anger many irrational people, which is unavoidable and is no reason for us not to speak out. But we shouldn't compound that offense unnecessarily if we want atheism as a movement to flourish and succeed.

For the holiday season, some goodies this weekend:

• First up, some music for the season: the blogger Lirone, of Words That Sing, in collaboration with William Morris, composer in residence at the British Humanist Association (did you know the British Humanist Association had a composer in residence? me neither!), has written a humanist carol, Gathering Round the Fire. It's 99 cents on iTunes, and all profits will go to the BHA. I downloaded and listened to it, and I enjoyed it greatly. Check it out, support a good cause, and lend a little bit of humanist cheer to your holiday gathering!

• Next, CNN has a surprisingly sympathetic interview with Richard Dawkins on evolution and atheist advocacy.

• The Daily Mail's Andrew Alexander offers a "heartfelt plea for atheism", an eloquent essay only slightly marred by an ignorant passage about climate change.

• Hanna Rosin asks whether the prosperity gospel contributed to the economic crash.

• On Daily Kos, it's a shameful day for the Irish Catholic Church, as a long-awaited report is released about the complicity of the bishops in sex abuse by predator priests.

• And finally, from Time, an unsparing essay about the subjugation and abuse of women in Islamic countries. (Did you know a Saudi Arabian woman has no legal proof of her existence besides her name on her husband's ID card? I didn't.) This is the kind of thing that the New Atheists get called "shrill" and "strident" when we write.

Also, you may have noticed that posts on Daylight Atheism are now classified by tag in addition to the six major categories (also, there's a tag cloud). I implemented this as a result of suggestions in the reader feedback thread, and I've been working my way backwards tagging older posts. Before I go further with that, I'm interested if people have any opinions on it. Too many tags? Too few? Are some missing that you'd like to see included? Personally, I'm still considering whether to add the "Science" tag to the posts on Lee Strobel.

By Sikivu Hutchinson

Taking its "life begins at conception" charade from State Legislature to State Legislature, one of the most dangerous political forces in the U.S. is stepping up its crusade for the "rights" of the unborn. Backed by an organization called Personhood USA, the latest offensive from the Religious Right involves a renewed movement to amend state constitutions to establish human rights and personhood status for fertilized eggs. Ever immune to morality, reason, church-state separation precedents and an understanding of the basic laws of biology, the most flat earth reactionary segment of the so-called pro-life movement wants to circumvent constitutional protections for abortion by conferring personhood on fertilized eggs. This would eviscerate the premise that women have a sovereign and singular right to control their bodies by designating rights even before implantation and a clinically viable pregnancy has been determined. For those who have any elementary grasp of the human reproductive process, conception does not automatically result in pregnancy and the majority of fertilized eggs never implant in the uterus. Yet if the egg crusade zealots had their way, these new edicts would potentially criminalize any woman attempting to use birth control pills or IUDs, and jeopardize in vitro fertilization procedures and stem cell research.

Though the egg crusade has failed to gain the imprimatur of the National Right to Life Committee, those who would dismiss such a campaign as too extreme to gain traction do so at their peril. According to the L.A. Times, earlier this year the egg crusaders were able to convince the North Dakota House of Representatives to pass a constitutional amendment on personhood, although it was later vetoed by the State Senate. Colorado voters also rejected a similar ballot initiative 73% to 27%. Yet in California the egg crusaders are collecting signatures and whipping up support for an amendment insidiously dubbed the California Human Rights Amendment.

One of the most reprehensible arguments that the egg crusaders make to bolster their cause is a comparison between their movement and the movement to abolish slavery. Their website cites Joshua Giddings, a 19th century American anti-slavery legislator who held that "God" as "author" of all life grants the inalienable right to life to every being. Following this argument it is unclear who is exactly "enslaving" pre-implanted fertilized eggs. Is it potential mothers who arrogantly lay claim to their own bodies? Is it the state for failing to protect the right of pre-implanted fertilized eggs to implantation? By cloaking its propaganda in the rhetoric of civil and human rights, the egg crusaders avoid delineation of the real life consequences for women, once again reducing them to vessels with no agency, right to privacy or control over their own bodies.

The website does not specify what rights un-implanted eggs would be conferred with other than, presumably, the right to progress to the implantation stage, fetal development and then birth. There are no details about who or what could act on the behalf of the un-implanted egg as person if the host carrier (formerly known as mother) of the egg were to determine that she should receive medical treatment. There was no information on who would legally be empowered to intervene or act on behalf of the un-implanted egg as person (the state perhaps?) to object to any stance that the mother might take. It stands to reason that if contraception were used to prevent the inalienable right of the egg as "person" to implant, then host carriers who did so would be criminalized and prosecuted for murder. As a preventive measure, potentially offending host carriers could perhaps be fitted with special ankle bracelets or encoded with state monitored electronic microchips to preclude violations.

The Catholic and fundamentalist Christian activists at the forefront of the egg crusade are curiously silent on these small details. In true schizoid fashion they push for special faith-based government entitlements and yet scream about government interference, rallying big government to run roughshod over women's fundamental right to privacy through a new regime of policing. And indeed, their own "family planning" policies have proven an abysmal failure, as evidenced by the exploding teen birth rates in Bible Belt states like Alabama and Mississippi in comparison to lower rates in the relatively godless Northeast and Northwest (abstinence-only sex education programs and fundamentalist Christian propaganda against fornication outside marriage would seem to be a source of cognitive dissonance for Southern teens).

The decidedly anti-human rights egg crusade would take this national obscenity one step further by deepening the region's poverty and straining its already overburdened, single parent-averse social welfare net. The fervor of this "new" brand of anti-abortion activism only underscores the need for a vigorous secular defense against the continued incursions of the Religious Right. It's either that or get ready for the ankle bracelets.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a commentator for Some of Us Are Brave KPFK 90.7 FM. This is an excerpt from her book Scarlet Letters on race/gender politics, atheism and secular belief in America.

By Sikivu Hutchinson

Recently on a popular Black Entertainment Network talk show, R&B singer Monica pitched her new reality show and extolled the virtues of prayer. Suited up in hip-high boots like an emissary from God's army, she credited God with guiding her through life and imbuing her with purpose. His word was her marching order, she proclaimed, as the rapt studio audience nodded in approval, giving credence to surveys that indicate African Americans are more religious, more likely to subscribe to Creationism and more apt to break out the Bible for guidance and counsel than any other group in the U.S.

Yet not since the Great Awakening of the 18th Century has "God" spoken through so many American public figures so unequivocally. The medievalist Sarah Palin has risen to cult status touting her personal speed dial to the Lord. The Old Testament God has become the kamikaze co-pilot of the Republican Party. And President Barack Obama frequently invokes both God as an adjudicating figure and prayer as an antidote to tragedy.

Prayer has become the national bromide for generalized suffering. If it can't be sanitized, domesticated and defanged by prayer then it isn't worth experiencing. Now, in the midst of the healthcare reform morass, prayer healing "therapy" may become a legitimate form of government subsidized medical treatment. According to the Los Angeles Times, a "little known" provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would authorize coverage for Christian Science prayer as a medical expense. The provision is sponsored by the ultra-conservative Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and the liberal Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. This strange bedfellow pairing is part ideology and part political expedience. Hatch is a notorious Mormon ideologue and Kerry's state is the Christian Science Church's base. Despite several high profile cases in which religious fanatic parents have been convicted for using prayer healing to "treat" their terminally ill children rather than seek medical treatment, the Senate healthcare provision would sanction this practice.

In a nation in which millions go bankrupt and/or die from not having health care insurance the decision to include prayer healing into the insidiously partisan healthcare deliberations is an outrage. Increasingly, prayer has wormed its way into the most mundane of American moments. Moments of prayer or "silence" have become more commonplace during local government meetings, schools, social functions and games. A recent AOL poll surveying site users about a Southern school's decision to post a message to God received overwhelming support. A majority of users agreed that reverence for God is part of "our" nation's heritage. As more and more Americans shrug in apathy at the leaky wall separating church and state, those who abstain from or question these mass spiritual entreaties are viewed as curmudgeon naysayers at best and un-American public enemies at worst. The explosion of public prayer—exemplified by the near manic drive to enshrine the most simple of pursuits with Godly sanction—seems to bespeak some deep-seated crisis of American selfhood which afflicts all classes and ethnicities.

According to the Christian Science Church, a faith healing internship takes the form of an "'intensive' two-week class instruction in Christian Science healing" after which practitioners "may take patients." Treatment "may rely on passages of the Bible...or may simply be a period of silent communion. There is no formula and 'treatment' can be given in absentia by telephone or email." Since Christian Science practitioners can hang up their virtual shingles after a two-week crash course why can't apostles of Frodo or oracles of Pan be similarly credentialed? Ethnocentric bias has apparently banished Pentecostal snakes, Santeria chants, Wiccan spells and animist rituals from consideration as insurable faith treatments. However, the Senate provision would ultimately provide protection for so-called religious and spiritual healthcare, opening the gate to all manner of medically dangerous, clinically unproven treatments.

Few on the Left have raised concerns about the contradiction between conservatives' draconian attempts to eliminate coverage for abortion (a medically established and lifesaving practice) in the healthcare overhaul and this obscure provision for government subsidized Christian Science hocus pocus. The House of Representatives' deliberations on its version of the healthcare bill are being stalled by endless wrangling over toughening restrictions on abortion coverage from private healthcare companies that participate in a government public option insurance "exchange." Under the current language these private plans could be purchased by poor subscribers with the aid of government subsidies. Yet anti-abortion legislators are jockeying to prevent private insurers that offer abortion coverage from even being included in the public option.

Perhaps poor women seeking reproductive healthcare would be advised to submit an email request for God's intervention to their nearest Christian Science provider, courtesy of the federal government. In the only democratic nation in the postindustrial world that doesn't have equitable government healthcare the watchwords will be "let them have prayer."

Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a commentator for KPFK 90.7 FM.

Here are a few edifying, inspiring, or (alas) infuriating stories that are making the rounds this week:

• First up, this truly outstanding piece from Wired on the anti-vaccination movement, An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All. This is what journalism is supposed to do: listen to the experts, survey the facts and adjudicate the truth, without the false-equivalency tactics that are the breath of life to kooks and advocates of pseudoscience. Here are a few samples:

In the center of the fray is Paul Offit. "People describe me as a vaccine advocate," he says. "I see myself as a science advocate." But in this battle — and make no mistake, he says, it's a pitched and heated battle — "science alone isn't enough ... People are getting hurt. The parent who reads what Jenny McCarthy says and thinks, 'Well, maybe I shouldn't get this vaccine,' and their child dies of Hib meningitis," he says, shaking his head. "It's such a fundamental failure on our part that we haven't convinced that parent."

To be clear, there is no credible evidence to indicate that any of this is true. None. Twelve epidemiological studies have found no data that links the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine to autism; six studies have found no trace of an association between thimerosal (a preservative containing ethylmercury that has largely been removed from vaccines since 2001) and autism, and three other studies have found no indication that thimerosal causes even subtle neurological problems.

...Kaiser Permanente reported that unvaccinated children were 23 times more likely to get pertussis, a highly contagious bacterial disease that causes violent coughing and is potentially lethal to infants. In the June issue of the journal Pediatrics, Jason Glanz, an epidemiologist at Kaiser's Institute for Health Research, revealed that the number of reported pertussis cases jumped from 1,000 in 1976 to 26,000 in 2004. A disease that vaccines made rare, in other words, is making a comeback.

• From the Times, an article on how cancerous tumors can spontaneously disappear, for reasons that are not yet fully understood. Think of this one the next time a faith-healing zealot claims that supernatural fetishism cured them of an incurable disease.

• Also, this superb editorial from the normally mediocre Maureen Dowd about the Vatican's increasingly archaic and misogynist attitude toward nuns (and women in general).

• And lastly, check out this piece from the Financial Times about the degree to which Muslim immigrants are assimilating into European society. Sarah Braasch, Daylight Atheism's correspondent from France (she actually lives in the area described by the article) tells me that some of this is overly optimistic and doesn't fully do justice to the serious problems of abuse and subjugation that some immigrants, especially women, still face. On the other hand, the doomsday "Islamofascists are taking over Europe!" scenarios so often pushed by right-wingers go too far in the opposite direction, ignoring relevant facts (such as the plunging birthrate among increasingly well-educated immigrant families) that tend to undermine their scare tactics.

By Sikivu Hutchinson

In mainstream media, public conversation about the intersection between atheism and what I will loosely term third world feminism is as rare as Halley's Comet. In the corporate media universe, the groundbreaking work of feminists of African descent like bell hooks, Angela Davis and Patricia Hill Collins remains largely unknown, relegated to academe. Feminism, when invoked at all in mainstream media, is framed as the province of white women, a vestige of a less "enlightened" phase of American civil society.

The phenomenon of world renowned atheist feminist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, however, would seem to defy this pattern. In a recent Los Angeles Times interview entitled "Feminism's Freedom Fighter," the Somalian-born Ali proclaimed women's rights the human rights issue of the 21st century. An outspoken critic of Islam, Ali is a controversial and uncompromising figure with a compelling personal story of triumph over adversity. A victim of clitoral mutilation in her youth, she has dedicated her life to challenging institutional sexism and patriarchy in Muslim societies. Her activism against gender-based terrorism and repression of Muslim women has been influential in the West, generating international accolades as well as death threats from Muslim extremists. Rising to prominence in the post 9/11 anti-Muslim hysteria of the Bush era, Ali has elicited controversy for her perceived Muslim-bashing, garnering a plum position at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and morphing into a champion of Israel.

Much of Ali's feminist ideology is based on the contrast between the violent repression of women under Islam and the liberal humanist traditions that supposedly shape women's rights in the West. In her writings and public discourse she is fond of making sweeping pronouncements deriding the cultures of Muslim societies, valorizing the West in ways that downplay its cultural hierarchies. In a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine she waxed, "Western civilization is a celebration of life... everybody's life, even the life of your enemy." Of course, in many Muslim societies feminism is still a dangerously radical concept. For many Muslim feminists, the very notion of women's personal freedom is a space of epic struggle. Yet Ali's totalizing assessments set up a false dichotomy between the West and Muslim societies. By portraying feminism as a battle that the West has already won, she absolves bourgeois democracies like the United States of their schizoid relationship to women rights and human rights, a relationship in which rape and domestic violence are part of the national "democratic" currency. And by ignoring the historical context of the "third world within the first world," she ignores the very real socioeconomic differences that exist between American women of color and white women.

For Ali, white supremacy is no longer a credible threat or motivation for feminist struggle. In the Times interview she rightly criticized men of color for their perpetuation of sexist beliefs and practices, calling for heightened focus on the "internal" politics and tyrannies of misogyny in "third world" communities. Addressing the subject of President Obama's recent trip to Cairo she stated, "It would have been fantastic if...Obama had said, we have taught the white man that bigotry is bad and he has given it up, at least most of it. Now bigotry is committed in the name of the black man, the brown man, the yellow man." Ali's apparent unwillingness to engage the connection between white supremacy, imperialism and sexism is a critical blind spot. Her failure to acknowledge the persistence of institutionalized segregation and its relationship to the disenfranchisement of women of color is problematic. These biases, and her paternalistic stance on Islam, explain why she has been such a darling of the European American conservative elite.

Certainly when one assesses women's socialization into and investment in organized religion there are many commonalities between Muslim and Christian systems of patriarchy. Granted Western women are not subject to some of the more overtly terroristic and repressive social prohibitions that Muslim women are. Clitoridectomies and honor killings are not part of Western cultural practices (nor, as many critics of Ali have pointed out, do they occur in all Muslim societies, and in fact derive from tribal not Islamic law). And granted men of color are responsible for the very intimate interpersonal violations of the lives and bodies of women of color. However, legacies of colonialism and racist beliefs about the sexuality of women of color continue to limit equitable access to health care and social welfare in the U.S. Women of color in Western societies are still subjugated by the dictates of Judeo Christian culture masquerading as secularized society. Puritanical prohibitions on women's sexuality and mobility inform institutionalized sexual and domestic violence against women. Rising rates of sexually transmitted disease and (in many highly religious white fundamentalist Christian and Latino Catholic communities) compulsory pregnancy due to failed abstinence-only sex education policies continue to imperil life conditions for women. Staggeringly high HIV/AIDS contraction rates, infant mortality rates and intimate partner homicide rates among African American women bespeak unequal access to health and social services in communities of color. Epidemic rates of sexual assault among Native American women reflect not only patriarchal control but the invisibility of Native communities vis-à-vis federal health public policy.

Thus Ali's contention that the West has "adjusted" its cultural and institutional structures to redress the hierarchies of Judeo Christian ideology is short sighted. Indeed, one need look no further than the wide cultural berth given to the Religious Right to see that it is one of the most powerful contemporary threats to civil rights and civil liberty in American history. The white Christian fundamentalist movement's assault upon human rights, women's rights and reproductive justice have the potential to reverse gains women have made in the U.S. over the past few decades. In the aftermath of decades of abortion clinic vandalism, bombings and murders of practitioners there is still no international outcry over the insurgent white Christian fundamentalist terrorist movement in the U.S.

From an atheist feminist of color perspective it is problematic to espouse reductive critiques of non-Western religions through the lens of a Western or American exceptionalism; particularly when these paradigms are based on the othering of people of color. The West has xenophobically demonized Muslim societies for their backwardness while "whitewashing" its own anti-democratic traditions and human rights transgressions. Ali's perspectives unfortunately reinforce this propaganda.

As an atheist woman of African descent Ali's life narrative and struggle for gender justice is a powerful example for women under the yoke of traditional Islam. Yet her analysis of the path to liberation has been severely clouded by superstar patronage from the very forces that would undermine the human rights mission of feminism.

In my last post on the religious right view of marriage, some commenters took me to task for painting with too broad a brush. In this post, I'll consider how widely held such views are.

It's a fair point that not all conservative Christians hold views as extreme as those I criticized. Nevertheless, the views treated in that post are just one end of a spectrum that encompasses nearly the entire religious right. Almost all of them argue that men should always wield the authority in a home and that women be obedient and subservient, and whether they intend it or not, this belief inevitably results in more women suffering unnecessarily from domestic violence and spousal abuse.

The preeminent example is the Southern Baptist Convention, which in 1998 revised their official statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message, to say that a wife is expected to "submit herself graciously" to the commands of her husband. (Two years later, they revised it again to clarify that women were not permitted to be pastors either.) Over a hundred prominent evangelicals, including Franklin Graham, Charles Colson, Bill Bright and Mike Huckabee, later signed a statement praising the SBC for its sexism.

A common corollary to this belief is that, even in cases of abuse, divorce is not biblically permitted. Saddleback Church pastor Tom Holladay, for instance, says that the Bible only condones divorce for two reasons, adultery and abandonment, but adds "I wish there were a third" for domestic abuse (thus demonstrating that he recognizes the immorality of the biblical teaching on divorce, and would probably be a better person if he didn't feel bound by this cruel religion). Holladay added, "There is something in me that wishes there were a Bible verse that says, 'If they abuse you in this-and-such kind of way, then you have a right to leave them'" (source).

The most common teaching in "mainstream" churches like Saddleback is that spousal abuse can be solved by separation, so long as the woman is willing to forgive her abuser and move back in with him if he apologizes and promises to seek Christian counseling. This may sound like a reasonable compromise, but in reality it's anything but. Since it doesn't permit women to unilaterally end the marriage - to decide that enough is enough - it's an open invitation for endless cycles of abuse and violence. As any domestic-abuse expert knows, it's very common for an abuser to plead remorse, to apologize and pledge to make things better, only for the abuse to start again as soon as the woman is back in his power.

This viewpoint has been preached by powerful evangelical leaders such as James Dobson and John MacArthur, according to author and domestic-abuse survivor Jocelyn Anderson:

"We do see some very big-name evangelical leaders blaming the battered woman for the abuse," Andersen explained. "You know, talking about how she may provoke her husband into doing it; or that her poor, non-communicative husband can't handle maybe what she's trying to communicate to him and he lashes out and hits her -- [that] shifts the blame right off him and to her."

...In her book, Andersen cites an incident in which a battered wife wrote to Dobson telling him that "the violence within her marriage was escalating in both frequency and intensity and that she feared for her life." Dobson "replied that her goal should be to change her husband's behavior--not to get a divorce..."

...According to a tape titled Bible Questions and Answers Part 16, a member of Grace Community Church asked MacArthur how a Christian woman should react "and deal with being a battered wife."

MacArthur's answer contained "some very dangerous advice to battered wives. He said divorce is not an option to a battered wife, because the Bible doesn't permit it... He warned wives to be very careful that they were not provoking the abusive situations. Because, he said, that was very often the problem."

In another article, Andersen expands on this argument. Though a Christian herself, she blames "church teachings of wifely submission and male headship" for creating an epidemic of domestic violence within the church, by teaching women that leaving abusive relationships is not an option and that it is their wifely duty to obey their husbands.

Some authorities among the religious right go so far as to blame the victim, teaching that domestic abuse is the woman's fault for not submitting enough. This was the exact viewpoint advocated by Bruce Ware, a theology professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who said in 2008 that women often provoke their husbands to violence by rebelling against their God-given role of obedience. Ware described this view as "what Southern Seminary as a whole represents".

The twin views that women are expected to submit to men and that divorce is not an acceptable response to abuse are widespread in the religious right, advocated by major church denominations and influential evangelical leaders. Even when they don't explicitly defend domestic violence and abuse, these views go a long way toward establishing the conditions that make it more likely to happen.