"high levels of organic atheism [not government coerced] are strongly correlated with high levels of societal health, such as low homicide rates, low poverty rates, low infant mortality rates, and low illiteracy rates, as well as high levels of educational attainment, per capita income, and gender equality."
Interestingly, the US is 4-5 times more religious than Israel.
Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns
The excellent One Good Move beats everyone to the punch with a clip of Dawkins on OReilly. Except there were no punches and the whole thing was rushed along as if it were a Gong Show skit.
onegoodmove: Richard Dawkins - Bill O'Reilly
Last week a real saint died.
Abbe Pierre, was the type of Christian who was in direct opposition to Fox News watching, Christian abortion that is the evangelical right. In other words, he was not the type of person who was more interested in protecting a particular brand of western suburban lifestyle from anyone different, rather than actually helping the unfortunate.
After saving the lives of thousands of Jews and political refugees, working with the French Resistance during WWII, he dedicated his life, as a Catholic priest, to helping the homeless, when he found a destitute, pregnant woman, lying on the mud floor of a shelter in Paris, with two dead children next to her.
He admitted breaking his vows on more than one occasion, saying that the hardest thing to resist was the tenderness of a woman. He survived both a plane crash and a shipwreck.
As an atheist, Abbe Pierre is something I can worship, a real human being.
Abbé Pierre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A pastor in the UK who mentally abused children, accusing them of witchcraft and praying for them to die, cannot be charged, after a 10 month investigation by police, since the law that covers child abuse does not cover mental abuse.
This is the same as the situtation in the US, and is a perfect illustration of why laws against mental abuse of children are needed, to challenge the excesses of extreme religion which specifically target children.
Telegraph | News | Child "witches" case dropped
I watched a very disturbing film last night. It was a film about child abuse, about the kind of child abuse that leaves mental scars that take far longer to heal than physical abuse. And this abuse is both legal and widely encouraged, because there are many good people taken in by it.
We have a natural revulsion towards seeing children being forced to act like adults, in that most adult of traits, sexuality. At first I couldn't understand what it was that bothered me most about the interviews with the children of fundamentalist evangelical Christians in the documentary, Jesus Camp then I realized.
They did not sound like children at all, but were spouting off rehearsed indoctrination with adult vocabulary, opinions and mannerisms.
Levi: At five I got saved...
Becky Fischer: Yeah?
Levi: ...because I just wanted more of life.
This is like a line from a world weary reformed drunk in a film noir, not an innocent child.
Their innocence had been removed and they looked either somewhat cold and insincere, or were overcome with emotion, sobbing in a way that you wanted to help these poor kids escape this torture. Only occasionally did their real childish innocence and playfullness shine through.
And if anyone thinks I'm over-reacting, that indoctrinating a child to be an, M16 rifle carrying, fundamentalist Christian radical, is not like indoctrinating a child to be an AK47 rifle carrying, fundamentalist Muslim radical, for example. That this is not child abuse. Then consider this.
Jesus Camp is a film about pre-teen children at a religious summer camp, with no footage of anything that the children themselves weren't exposed to and yet it carries a certificate 13 - it is not considered fit for young children.
An animated map of the Spread of religion.
One thing it suggests to me is that Judaism and subsequently the other Abrahamic religions are actually based on Hinduism.
After all, Krishna was crucified and rose again and was referred to as Kris (Christ).
[Thanks Keith.]
Rev. Haggard:
"There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life."
Unfortunately he is not referring to the part of his life that extorts money to brainwash people into following a obscenely twisted form of Christianity, via sermons that have been compared to the Nuremberg Rallies?
Haggard confesses to 'lifelong' sexual problem - CNN.com
The Richard Dawkins foundation is accepting donations.
If you are a tolerant, reasonable person that opposes religious persecution, perhaps you might accept that:
1. Faith, the opposite of reason - is unreasonable.
2. Tolerating the intolerance which exists in all major religions - is intolerant.
3. Allowing a child to be automatically given its parents' religion (often irreversably reducing the capacity for freedom of thought, religious or otherwise, as an adult) - is religious persecution.
In which case I recommend you give this 'reason based initiative' lots of tax deductable money.
You will be contributing to truly reasonable and tolerant cause, making a stand against religious persecution - in a way that only atheists can.
(At last RDF means something useful!)
RichardDawkins.net - The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
CNN.com - Rep. Harris: Church-state separation 'a lie' - Aug 28, 2006
"Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws."
Why are Americans putting up with this crap? Katherine Harris is exactly what they fought the war in 1776 to escape.
War-Torn Middle East Seeks Solace In Religion
Percentage of Americans who identified themseves as 'church members':
1776: 17%
1990: 62%
The statistics for Britain now (10%) and at the height of Empire (possibly 70%), are similar. It is possible that Christianity in America today is a form of nationalism rather than spiritualism, rather like Victorian Britain.
Jonathan Miller's: A Brief History of Disbelief Pt. 1
"God is an essence we know nothing of, until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world."
John Adams US President 1797 - 1801
"The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes - and they believe rightly."
Thomas Jefferson US President 1801 - 1809
"I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion."
James Buchanan US President 1857 - 1861
"My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation have become clearer and stronger with advancing years."
Abraham Lincoln US President 1861 - 1865
One Nation under God, upholding democracy and the principals of the Ten Commandments? -
Actually no, America was founded on the opposite, and was all the better for it.
Which country has a constitution which declares 'one nation under God', America or Iran?
Iran
Were the majority of the people on the Mayflower fleeing religious persecution?
No. (Most people who fled to America were fleeing persecution FROM religious people. By 1776 America was a secular as modern Europe, while Europe was as religious as current day America.)
Does American law contradict the Ten Commandments?
Yes, capitalism is based upon the idea that coveting things is not that bad after all.
Did the American Constitution mention God?
No
Is the American Constitution based upon purely democratic principles (i.e. majority rule)?
No, it specifically protects minorities from majority voted laws which persecute.
Is America a Christian Nation?
I never wanted to be your stupid governor anyway! » The Allen Almanac:
"No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State [Arkansas] , nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court."
Hah. Time to go on the offensive:
1. Any person that is an atheist will be more likely to get a job from me. On the grounds that they display better skills of reason - a principal job requirement.
2. Any person that agrees with the Arkansas Constitution will not be eligible to work for me on the grounds of their religious discrimination.
Would capsules of pig fat in plane seats deter an Islamic Fundamentalist suicide bomber?
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Rumors of War (Pershing the Thought)
The logic of an irrational deterrent, such as pig fat, which is really an imaginary weapon unless god is a nasty piece of work himself, seems at first glance to be less of a moral dilemma to me than other inevitable anti-muslim stereotyping and encroachment on civil liberty that a less stable society brings with it.
However, I suspect that, because religious beliefs are irrational, they are actually based often on subconscious convenience.
In other words, if being covered in pig fat prevented you from being a martyr, the belief system of people who conveniently distort the very nature of a loving god by killing in his name would evolve around this inconvenient fact and it would only be a deterrent against the majority of moderate muslims - who would be the recipients of prejudice.
According to the results of this 14,000 person study about how much all of the various Abrahamic sects hate each other in various parts of the world, there is a little reported fact due to the focus on Muslim vs Christian relations.
86% of French view Jews favorably (almost exactly the same number as view Christians favorably: 87%) much more than in the US, UK or, in particular, Spain which would appear to be the place to look objectively for signs of the fastest growing anti-semitism.
There is also less difference in absolute percentage terms between how favorably people view Jews vs Christians in Germany than in the US.
Not what squarely unbalanced Fox News would have us believe.
Survey highlights Islam-West rift
'The Da Vinci Code': Is it worthy?
"Experts can't figure out how Dan Brown's so-so writing has produced such a blockbuster."
The success of the Da Vinci Code has nothing to do with the writing, but the fact that it is a mutation of a very successful and ancient meme.
There is another book that is inexplicably successful, depite being an incoherent mishmash of styles, often not that well written and full of plot inconsistencies and contradictions - the Bible.
Of all the possible stories that resonate with the human mind, the Bible does so very successfully, giving the appearance of its success being testament to its truth, something that is obviously very helpful for a book based on teleological argument. To suggest that the Bible is the truth because it is so successful, however, is the result of looking the wrong way down the funnel of time.
The fact that one thing may be more successful than others over time is what makes the selfish gene appear selfish and the Bible appear deliberate. Instead it is merely the archetypal story that fits a pre-existing niche in our consciousness.
That niche has been previously inhabited by other stories, from Amun Ra to Zeus, but more interestingly a weaker but persistent species of christianity has been around for half a millennium and the Da Vinci Code is its latest mutant, pop culture variety.
Umberto Eco pointed out that this species includes myths surrounding the Rosicrucians and the Masons - and more disturbingly, by the lie that is the 'Protocol of the Elders of Zion'. They are variants not of the same story but the same meme, the exact plot or details, being analogous to the relation between genotype and phenotype.
The Da Vinci code is a work of fiction, its a story about these memes rather than one of them itself. In practice, however, with powerful memes, there is no distinction and this is something that the Catholic church knows, because its in the business. Some people have a tendency to actually start to believe some types of pure fiction.
If you take the Da Vinci Code as the latest mutation of the Rosicrucian Myth then it is a strain which attacks the core nervous system of Christianity and in particular the Catholic variety.
Catholicism has a very successful infrastructure, because it is based upon geometric accrual of money and mindshare distributed to and via and arithmetic number of proselytizers. It does this through an a sexual priesthood and infrastructure.
This asexuality is justified, or at least sanctified, because the Christian Idol - Jesus, doesn't marry or have kids. (In fact he even manages to de-sexualize the Pagan Easter fertility rite, eggs and all, with asexual birth through resurrection.)
Here, in a so-so piece of pulp fiction the type you might pick up at an airport, you have the same religious idea that appealed to the masses, being used to undermine one of the core tenets of that original idea. The Da Vinci Code is more of a threat to the Catholic church, than Gallileo or the truth ever was because it can infect minds that are already closed to the truth.
Of course the Da Vinci Code will probably not amount to much, but the Vatican is not so dumb in its seemingly alarmist assessment.
On the subway yesterday there was a guy preaching love in the name of Jesus, at the top of his voice. He seemed pretty angry - but he was preaching 'gods love' so I guess that was supposed to be OK.
Then he started talking about what should happen if a woman were to lie down with another woman etc. (i.e. encouraging people to murder gays) as it says in the nasty, brutish book that people call the holy bible.
I don't tolerate this kind of aggressive religious intolerance - so I told him to shut up. This made things very uncomfortable, nearly everyone in the carriage now looked at me as the devil incarnate and rallied in support of the preacher - saying amen after everything he said.
If I mentioned that it was in Harlem and on a Sunday, and that therefore the whitey in a very religious area should probably have kept his mouth shut, does that change anything? It only changes things if you are guilty of the silent, patronizing kind of racism, that the white middle class think is the opposite - and anyway, I was on a pilgrimage to celebrate the Devil's music itself, Jazz, and its glorious Harlem heritage.
Anyway, note to self - do not tell a preacher to shut up on a crowded carriage, unless you are also dressed as a preacher and carrying a bible - in which case you can be as aggressive as you want and everyone will think you are nice.
Douglas Rushkoff has an excellent post today on why its a dangerous thing to tolerate all religion.
:: Douglas Rushkoff - Weblog ::
When I got home this evening, my wife was all happy because she had made a CD for a work colleague's parents. They had to be conferenced in on a call so they could play a sample to find out who a song was by, they liked it so much. Whereas I had been writing the misanthropic anti-religious rant below. Sometimes I am such a miserable git. So I've put a strike through the post - and am listening to the CD, and its making me happy.
When others do stupid things in computing people say RTFM - read the fucking manual. For some people the bible is their manual but they clearly haven't read it.
CNN has a piece on mutual funds run by religious extremists which pose as 'socially conscious investing' a phenomenon which originated with anti-Apartheid groups.
These funds, such as the Timothy Plan, have strange priorities. In a world where progress in recognition of minorities is overshadowed by irreversible damage to the environment and Malthusian population problems and where an entire continent, Africa, is dying, what does the Timothy plan do?
It boycotts Amazon for having a gay employees group, protests against a breast cancer scanner being donated to a Planned Parenthood group and describes Cosmopolitan as "one of the most blatantly aggressive soft porn magazines". The fund has no problem with companies who destroy the environment or make weapons, however
I find much of the Bible immoral, by today's standards, and don't subscribe to its message any more than that of Amun-Ra. But reading it, the one overriding aspect of the New Testament is that it its fairly anti-violence and very socialist.
To pretend to be a Christian and decide to become a mutual funds manager, is slightly amusing in an ironic way. To donate to the Timothy Fund means that you have missed the entire essence of the message of Christiany and are perverting it to your own ends. In short, you need to RTFB - read the fucking bible.
More on the Timothy fund on Terry Toledo:
Religious Right Discovers Investment Activism
More evidence that religion in America is a potentially dangerous disease:
"Today's atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society"
"From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry."
Atheists identified as Americas most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study
"Haderer published a 40-page book titled, The Life of Jesus. The book contained a cartoon of Jesus, depicting him as
...a binge-drinking friend of Jimi Hendrix and naked surfer high on cannabis.
Unbeknownst to him, the book was published in Greece. He found out when he received a summons to appear in court in Athens in January, having been charged with blasphemy."
Of course there is absolutely no resemblance between Jesus and a pot smoking hippy.
Cartoonist Faces Jail in Greece Over Jesus Cartoon - TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime
There is a difference between blasphemy and the worship of false prophets. Islam fobids images of Muhammad, lest the images themselves become icons, taking away from the real person or idea. The religion supports iconoclasm by definition. A cartoon is designed to be just that, an iconoclastic image, so it is hardly likely to encourage worship of false prophets.
The cartoon issue is blasphemy enhanced by a general taboo of figurative images. A similar kind of taboo, for example, would mean that if you were brought up in a 'Judeo-Christian' environment the idea of a manual depicting someone like Moses or Jesus performing various sex acts, which would be acceptable in less prudish Asian religions, would shock you. In fact it may even make reading the above statement slightly irritate you. I suspect that the irritation that is felt by people who inherit the Muslim meme is the same but much larger.
The equivalent situation to the outrage over the prophet cartoons in a secular society would be if it were considered a similar affront to be messing around with an image that represents a country i.e. flag burning - and in many countries that is illegal.
Image:Jyllands-Posten Muhammad drawings.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The UK is trying to enact a very stupid and logically farcical law, which guarantees to increase religious hatred by outlawing it.
The problem is that religion is not without its own hatred.
Religion is also not based upon the same logic as the secular law, being based upon belief rather than reason, so good people ignore the passages in religious texts that include incitement to hatred. The law would prevent this loose interpretation.
Under the proposed law almost any practitioner of any of the word's major religions could be charged with religious hatred, either for threatening infidels with the ultimate torture, an eternity of hellfire, or for explicit threats within respective texts.
Laws within a tolerant society are based upon logically consistent arguments, such as the existing UK laws against race hatred, which protect groups such as Sikhs and Jews not because of their ideology or belief, but because of who they are.
Changes to the proposed law include making it illegal to explicitly threaten violence against religion, which begs the question what has religion got to do with this? Current laws against violent acts protect society from what people do, there may an argument for extending this to what they threaten to do.
A law that protects religion would have to define what constituted a religion:
If a religion is a 'commonly held belief system', then potentially any type of belief system or ideology like Nazism could potentially be protected by law.
If it isn't all commonly held belief systems, then the law is discriminatory itself.
If it is any commonly held belief system that doesn't itself promote discrimination, then Judaism, Christianity and Islam would be excluded, if tested under current legal arguments.
In other words, you get both Christians and Nazis or a law which manages to break itself. A candidate for the legal equivalent of the Darwin awards.
The reality of this sleepwalk into chaos is that the reason people tolerate each other, who have different beliefs, is often by finding common ground and empathy while ignoring the logical inconsistencies between their beliefs. These inconsistencies are not obscure theological arcana, but whopping great Fuck Yous - such as be ne of us or go to hell. This law will bring these 'inconsistencies' to the surface and result in inevitable persecution.
The best thing to do about religion is to ignore it and focus on good. The best thing to do about this future law in the UK is to provoke a showdown by taking religion itself to court.
BBC NEWS | Politics | Religious hatred plan is defended
We wait till people reach maturity before we allow them to choose their political affinity and vote based upon it. As Dawkins points out, labelling a small child a neo-marxist is absurd. So why don't we let people choose their own religion when they grow up?
Religion is traditionally passed from adults to children.
The second part of Dawkin's documentary on religion was shown in the UK last night - thankfully torrent files are already available.
This tackled the dirty little secret of all religion - that it requires people in a vulnerable state of mind to infect. Of course the best place to find vulnerable minds, as a matter of course, among the healthy is in schools. The program suggested, perfectly reasonably, that religious teaching in schools is a form of child abuse.
In the UK:
"The number of faith schools is increasing. More than half the Government's proposed City Academies will be run by religious organisations and there's a growing number of private evangelical Christian schools. ACE: Accelerated Christian Education has developed a curriculum which includes a mention of God or Jesus on every page of its science text book."
For people who would like to see a world of both reason and understanding, then the best thing to do is to teach young children to have an open mind, to enjoy mysteries and fiction but to question and discover the wonder of the world around them - to teach children atheism, as I will teach my children.
Channel 4 - Can you believe it? - The Real Exorcists
Channel 4 - The Root of All Evil
Evolution fight puts suburb in spotlight
Evolution controversy in this comfortable Atlanta suburb began with one boy's fascination with dinosaurs.
"He was really into 'Jurassic Park'", his mother recalled. The trouble was, "we kept reading over and over that 'millions and millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed the Earth", Marjorie Rogers continued. "And that's where I said, 'Hmm -- wait a second".
Like others who adhere to a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, Rogers, a lawyer, believes that the Earth is several thousand years old.
I find it hard to find decent videos on the open web, so have been drilling through sites like Youtube and Google Video with a view to providing a wists list of good stuff to stream.
Youtube is 99.9% crap and 0.1% memes that have been around for years, or commercials.
Google Video is also mostly crap snippets, but I did manage to find some good programming - stuff on Evolution, and Science and interviews with good people like John Maynard Smith and Steven Pinker.
After searching for practically every architecture, design and science name I know, I kept getting the same content so realized that there is hardly anything in Google video longer than 3 minutes.
When I actually looked at the science stuff, something strange became obvious - a large percentage of it was funded by Intelligent Design groups or religious organizations.
If people are frightened about young people's minds being corrupted by porn on the Internet, they should also check out what the god squad are pushing.
Perhaps the Internet is for all the things you shouldn't talk about over dinner, after all - sex, politics and religion.
Sam Harris' Atheist Manifesto.
Most of what he says is reasonable, however, the editor suggests that Harris argues that religious toleration is a menace - this is not a defensible argument since it empirically leads to persecution.
Its true that there is not a single ideology that is truly tolerant of other ideologies, therefore an anti-ideology like atheism can be more tolerant by making no absolute claims of its own but adaptable guidelines based upon evidence and reason.
One should not be intolerant of belief itself but unreasonable acts based upon it. However, since ideological dogma, of which religious dogma is a subset, is not based upon reason - its acts are very often unreasonable and intolerant.
A consistent maxim for an atheist would be to be tolerant of religious faith, but intolerant of intolerance itself.
This is not a nihilist view, but a defense of moral relativism. Its also the basis of American democracy. What makes the constitution its foundation is that, unlike the bible, the teachings of Chairman Mao or the divine mandate of an unelected monarch, it is allowed to be challenged and amended.
Surely on this basis, one could argue that anyone who is against moral relativism is against constitutional amendment and therefore un-American? This charge, however, is usually the other way around.
All of this may be missing the point. The central problem with Sam Harris' atheist manifesto or any atheist manifesto, or anything I write here is that reason may be a vaccine against blind faith but it is not a cure, and it is not clear what is.
In Worldnet Daily's 'lets rape unfaithful women' OpEd is the following sentence:
"There may be a genuine moral argument against rape to be made outside of the Judeo-Christian ethic, but I have yet to hear it."
- how very deaf you must be.
I've noticed increasing reference to the so called 'Judeo-Christian' tradition. This lumping of Judaism with Christianity together with the claims of Millennium Christian radicals is an insult that could possibly lead to injury, since historical precedent suggests that jews will eventually get the blame.
Given that there are three religious sects that worship the same deity and find common ancestry in Abraham: Judaism, Islam and Christianity, reference to the Judeo-Islamo-Christian, or, more elegantly, 'Abrahamic', tradition makes some sense.
The permutation: 'Judeo-Christian tradition' stems, obviously, from the fact that Christianity supersizes the Torah into its own edition, whereas Islam rewrites it.
But what of the other alternatives:
Given that Jews come from the same region and lived peacably with Arabs (even with a community in Mecca) while Christians tended to persecute Jews as outsiders, reference to a Judeo-Islamic tradition would have made sense historically.
Given that Muslims and Christians believe Jesus was a prophet and have religions that are far closer in date of origin than Judaism, then perhaps an Islamo-Christian tradition makes sense.
Judeo-Christian is a term used to sound inclusive, when in fact it conpicuously excludes Islam while including Judaism as a possibly reluctant and vulnerable ally.
It is a politically incorrect attempt to be politically corrrect, by those who complain about political correctness.
WorldNetDaily: The morality of rape
"if a woman consents to extramarital sex, she is committing a moral offense which is equal to that committed by the man who engages in consensual sex with her, or by the man who, in the absence of such consent, rapes her. Christianity knows no hierarchy of sins. Since only the woman who is not entertaining the possibility of sex with a man and is subsequently raped can truly be considered a wholly innocent victim under this ethic"
I'll paraphrase this nonsense because the writing is so bad:
'A woman who considers, for a second, the possibility of sex outside of marriage is no better than a man who actually rapes her.'
This is what some people who call themselves Christians actually believe. As an aside, the guy who wrote the article describes himself as a Christian Libertarian (i.e. someone who both rejects and blindly worships authority).
Here are some other advertisers who appear on the Worldnet article, feel free to contact them, ditch their products or drain their bank accounts by clicking on some of their Google ads and not buying:
Netflix, Tickle, Shutterfly, Apartmentguide.
WorldNetDaily: The morality of rape
"No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future."
"Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have."
I believe - that atheists like Jillette tend to be nicer people because they don't have to pretend to be nicer.
The myth:
"religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society."
The reality:
“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies."
Societies worse off when they have God on their side - Times Online
"It is a powerful, highly addictive drug openly peddled on street corners and in purpose-made buildings across the country. Suicide bombers get high on it and governments encourage its use. It can be hallucinogenic, destroys lives and, in its strongest doses, start wars."
Independent Online Edition >Is Gerin Oil the root of all evil?
Christian Exodus is a weird new bunch of religious extremists whose idea is to turn South Carolina into something that sounds like Wahabist Saudi Arabia. The leader of the cult has a blog
"ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government... The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-introduce the Christian principles once so predominant in America to a sovereign State like South Carolina."
Christian Exodus :: Come Out of Her, My People
Joshua Marshall on how out of step fundamentalist evangelicals are with both a modern society and the vast majority of other religions.
"Most mainstream religious groups have long since made their peace with evolutionary theory. As in, most Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church, Judaism in its Conservative, Reform, and most Orthodox groups."
And as one of his readers points out, Nasa's current focus is the search for life:
"The creation vs science question has a major bearing on a rather visible government program:
Isn't the primary rationale for most of the space program to learn more about the origins of life? Some would say that exploration of Mars and the moons of Saturn will help us shed light on these eternal mysteries. Others would point out that all we need to know can be found in the book that's available in every hotel room."
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: July 31, 2005 - August 06, 2005 Archives
If someone asks you to debate Evolution over Intelligent Design, scientifically - don't.
If you lose on technical grounds, then you probably shouldn't be out unsupervised, and if you win you will get some variant of this:
"You are too scientific and rational, one day you'll understand the true nature of the importance of being spiritual".
The counter argument to this, makes a much better opening move:
Believer: "If evolution is true and birds are descended from dinosaurs, can you tell me why there was a maintenance of hepatic-piston diaphragmatic lung ventilation in theropods throughout the Mesozoic?"
Atheist: "No".
Atheist: "Why do the insides of evangelical churches look like Donald Trump's bathroom?"
Believer: "Its what happens in a religious building that matters, not the architecture, think of all the music".
Atheist: "What, like the Osmonds, all the stuff Cat Stephens did when he converted to Islam or Uncle Harry's Bar Mitzvah Band?"
Believer: "No - like gospel".
Atheist: "Ray Charles improved gospel no end - when he took it out of the church."
Believer: "See, you can only make fun of things, is nothing sacred?"
Atheist: "No, nothing at all is sacred, I like it that way, fundamentalist stand up comics are not what they used to be."
Believer: "Unless you believe you will never be able to appreciate the beauty of things".
Atheist: "I specifically don't need something to be believable for it to be beautiful, when I read Orwell's 1984, I don't like what he describes, I don't literally think it happened, but its a work of art. If I read Harry Potter, I don't have to convert to paganism, I don't think its a great work of art, but its a good read. When I read the Bible I see a bunch of stories that contradict each other but that's not a problem, I just think, who edited this?"
Believer: "The bible is the ultimate beauty, because it is the truth".
Atheist: "You are too scientific, you cannot appreciate the bible on its artistic merits without believing it to be fact".
How to debate creationists without being boring (part 1.)
"As MPs vote on whether to go ahead with a Bill that could outlaw religious jokes, we celebrate comedy's finest at their blasphemous best"
I always think that a society's toleration of jokes about anything, is a fine sign of its level of being benign.
My favorite is the Emo Philips one:
"I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: 'Stop. Don't do it.'
'Why shouldn't I?' he asked. 'Well, there's so much to live for!' 'Like what?' 'Are you religious?'
He said: 'Yes.' I said. 'Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?' 'Christian.' 'Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?' 'Protestant.' 'Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?' 'Baptist.' 'Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?' 'Baptist Church of God.' 'Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?' 'Reformed Baptist Church of God.' 'Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?' He said: 'Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915.'
I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off."
Reading through accounts of Christian protests of Harry Potter came upon this classic:
"Maine: A group of Christians in Lewiston, ME, the Jesus Party had planned to hold a book burning in a local park on 2001-NOV-15. However, they were denied a fire permit by the Fire Department. So they held a "book cutting" instead. "
The Harry Potter books: Charming stories or demonic plot?
Reuters: Indian government reverses a crippling fine imposed by a Hindu temple, on a family whose baby pee-ed while its mother was praying.
Salman Rushdie attacks an article in the Guardian by Dylan Evans which proposes a moderate atheist stance.
The problem with the moderate stance is that there is no compromise between belief and non-belief in the context of religion – if you say: I believe what there is evidence for then you don’t have faith.
Evans’ proposal is that religion be treated as “kind of art, which only a child could mistake for reality and which only a child would reject for being false”. This is a description of fiction and no self-respecting believer would accept that.
Salman Rushdie knows all about fiction and faith, he was sentenced to death, without trial for publishing a work of fiction which was incompatible with the Koran. And, as people have recently died in protests over allegations that the Koran was desecrated in Guantanamo, a man was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for owning a Bible. This week, R. Albert Mohler for the Christian Post writes: “One of the most venerable and valuable axioms of warfare is this: "Know your enemy." Naturalistic evolution and the materialist worldview represent the most threatening enemies Christianity now faces in the Western world.” In India, right-wing Hindus have resurrected the outlawed tradition of burning widows.
There are, as Rushdie points out, dead religions, whose texts live on as fiction, due their artistic merit, such as Greek or Norse mythology.
In between are the texts which are frozen and unmaleable, but still hold enough relevance to be venerated. At our point in history, the most militant of these (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are variations of the monotheistic Abrahamic sect and contain a morality based on a world view, which, although anachronistic, has enough overlap with today to seem superficially believable.
Then there are the texts that are being written, through debate and scientific and cultural interpretation.
At the point where these texts are frozen and no longer open to challenge, compromise or debate, cease to be science or art and often become the focal point for nascent religions or cults. The problem is that a compromise view of religion would mean adopting the unfrozen, adaptable texts and people are prepared to murder each other over the hair-splitting differences of various existing texts rather than adopt new ones, let alone the obvious problems with challenging the 'word of God'.
You cannot be both a Muslim and a Christian, but to define yourself as one or the other means that you are taking a stance that is far more extreme and specific than adopting something as radically different as a view of the world that is open to ideas outside of any existing religious text.
The way essentially good and moderate people deal with this is of course - to not think too hard about it, to have faith and not to question. Unfortunately in this instance, the extremists and the stupid will always win, they will see independent thought as a threat which provokes an intellectual inferiority complex and this will harden the resolve to pass the buck for reason, empathy and guidance to an abstract authority - God.
In a world governed by both God and the second law of thermodynamics, extremists will always do more damage than good people. Religion is the framework that allows the extremists to win over the moderates.
Byron LaMasters reports on the Stem Cell debate in Congress.
Bush has threatened to Veto on the grounds that:
He opposes that which "destroys life in order to save life".
By logical extension, this means that Bush is opposed to most defense spending.
Great account by David Corn of his Fox news confrontation with the Family Research Council, an Unchristian Wrong lobby group: Fighting the Family Research Council in the Religious War.
It includes a tragi-comic description of government funded contraception group that not only believes that sex is dirty but that you can only practice abstinence if you believe in Jesus - otherwise you will, apparently, burn in hell, forever. (Off Fuck and Die?)
The FRC are one of the main lobby groups pushing for no compromise in the 1.5% of judicial nominations that couldn't get through, thus causing the current constitutional mess.
It is easy to blame the standoff on the executive branch and Jeff blames it on the Senate, but the real problem is that the marginal extremists are throwing such a hissy fit that the government is being bullied by them. Moderate Republicans are being bitch slapped by the Right.
You might reasonably ask what the hell a Brit cares about all this anyway - well, it seems to me that a lot of what I really like about America, principally that it is modern, is really at stake here, just because a minority of people seem to have boundless energy and blinkered vision.
I didn't move to the States to live like the Amish or the Seventh Day Adventists or the People's Liberation Front of Judea or the Stepford Wives love Falwell Association.
I like the bright lights and neon and the science, cullture and understanding that made progress possible.
"...hundreds of thousands of young Americans are now patrolling and guarding hazardous frontiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Is there a single thinking person who does not hope that secular forces arise in both countries, and who does not realize that the success of our cause depends on a wall of separation, in Islamic society, between church and state? How can we maintain this cause abroad and subvert it at home?"
The piece is by Hitchens who skillfully tears a bunch of arseholes a new bunch of arseholes. While I sometimes wonder about Hitchen's integrity - he does seem to now be digging himself out of the pit he has created for himself over the last 2 years, by supporting secular libertarianism, which is surely the future for US politics.
Hitchens is a good writer, his pen as dangerous a weapon when he was on the left as on the right. Hopefully he is finding a middle ground that will be constructive.
You often hear the term 'moral relativism' used pejoratively compared to the continued use of the morality of 2000 years ago.
What this needs is a new term - much like the use of the positive word gay instead of homosexual or pro-life instead of anti-abortion.
Moral relativism means is that your notion of morality changes over time - but like the arrow of time itself it always moves forward - moral relativism means moral progress, as compared with the static and eventually obsolete morality endorsed by all religions.
"Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. ... Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards."
Indeed it is, and moral progress is better by definition.
Home schooling has traditionally been given to kids whose parents are on the extreme fringes of society, hippes on the left and bible bashers on the right.
Because of the growth in religious extremism, there has been a similar growth in home schooling, meaning that some schools have had their budgets cut as they lose pupils and per pupil funding.
To woo pupils back, a school in Oregon is changing its curriculum to include creationism in science classes and biblical texts in English literature classes, leading to a crappy science and boring, one-dimensional art education for everyone.
So for those that do point out that the US is by and large moderate, here is a concrete example of how the passion of a mindless minority over the apathy of the majority leads to an undemocratic situation where the minority view is enforced rather than tolerated.
Oregon District Aims to Woo Home-Schoolers
Great post by Ryan at 'You Know what Part' that shreds my last post on the US becoming a theocracy. You Know What Part: Religion, politics and my ticket to Hell
Things that Ryan is right about:
1. I did invoke Godwin's law. Godwin's law is useful when ranting.
2. The US is not really becoming a theocracy. In actual fact as the Economist pointed out, most people have centrist, moderate beliefs and politics, but the margins are where elections are won.
3. Progressive circles have their fair share of hypocracy and there is something even more irritating about liberal self-righteousness - because they should know better.
4. As my friend Alex pointed out - as a founder of an Internet genealogy company, I have a vested interest in the Earth being older than Biblical claims.
But... There are a bunch of religious nutters whose voice tipped the margins in an election and who don't exactly refrain from invoking Godwin's law either. And they are trying to mess up what I get to watch on telly.
My main problem with the religious right is not that they are unscientific; it's that they are so inartistic, unspiritual - I can't think of anything less soulful than modern Christian music, and protestant church architecture has reduced cathedral splendor to the monotony of suburban track housing.
The Toronto star carries an edited version of a Financial Times editorial on the threat of Creationism:TheStar.com - Creationism's assault on science
The article points out a valid analogy. There is overwhelming evidence that the Holocaust was real, yet a minority of ideologically driven historians still deny it.
The consensus amongst historians as to the reality of the Holocaust is statistically equivalent to the consensus amongst scientists in support of evolution, yet a particular sect of militant protestant Christianity, which is popular in the US and Brazil is enforcing the irrational belief of the minority on the majority.
Sure, it can be argued that it is part of the scientific process to encourage debate and look at alternate theories, but some theories are better than others. Suspicion should be aroused when theories are in fact hypotheses masking as theories and when those hypotheses are things that are driven not by minds open to alternate theories but minds which are only open to theories that match a particular ideology. There is a point where it doesn't make sense to consider theories with no merit.
That point was reached between Christians and scientists many years ago regarding the earth revolving around the sun, yet the debate was decided by killing people with opposing views to the church. More recently, some people have challenged the evidence regarding the wanton destruction of 6 million lives. Make no mistake, creationism is about lack of debate and closed minds.
To deny the fact of evolution and deprive people an education because of a particular belief not shared by everybody, is equivalent to the shameful historical revisionism by anti-Semites who wish to rewrite history because of their own ideological agenda.
Despite this, for a number of reasons, the views of evangelical Christians are treated with respect, such that the President of a first world democracy is able to state 'the jury is still out on evolution'.
Imagine if that statement had been: 'the jury is still out as to whether the Holocaust happened'.
Eppur si muove.
A leader:
who was not elected democratically, but by a group of unelected barons
who was elected for life with no need for re-election
of a country where :
there is no separation of church and state, where the state is the church
dies.
And most politicians of modern democracies eulogise him, because the idolizing of this leader is such that many citizens of these modern democracies will do whatever this foreign, undemocratically elected leader says, despite the fact that idolitary is forbidden for the followers of this leader.
Because people will naturally worship stars like the Pope and Britney Spears emotions may run wild when we criticise them, but exactly because the Pope was a leader, and particularly because he wasn't democratically elected then his actions should not be above scrutiny or criticism .
The late pope was objectively damn good at what he did, but despite the images of a gentle old man towards the end of his life, he was a tough guy. In fighting communism, he was good, in reinforcing outdated catholic attitudes to the modern world he was bad.
Dawkins on when not to beleive:
"Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing in it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are the old men with beards called ayatollahs. Lots of Muslims in this country are prepared to commit murder, purely because the ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.
When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary's body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950, the pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The pope said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that that pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good reason why, just because he was the pope, you should believe everything he said any more than you believe everything that other people say. The present pope ( 1995 ) has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If people follow this authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be terrible famines, diseases, and wars, caused by overcrowding."
I have nothing against the notion of pro-life, I am an atheist liberal who is pro-choice, who admired Mother Theresa.
Mother Theresa practiced what she preached. She said that she would personally look after any child brought to her that would have been aborted.
I would not ask everyone who is anti-abortion to become Mother Theresa, however I would say that they are immoral if they do not also support raised taxes and a larger welfare budget. You cannot be a Republican and pro-life.
Sadly, issues promoted by most pro-lifers cause more people to die.
Pro-life means 'erring on the side of life', unless it means killing people guilty of pre-meditated killing - by means of pre-meditated killing.
Pro-life means no abortion, but it does not mean raising taxes and providing welfare to keep abandoned or neglected children alive.
Pro-life means spending money to keep people alive using a feeding tube but it doesn't mean spending money feeding helpless millions.
Pro-life means supporting missionaries migrating to South America to urge against contraception but it does not mean supporting immigration to North America when resources are no longer enough to support large populations.
"Even if we expanded our domain at the speed of light - a pretty safe theoretical upper limit - and managed to colonize all available stars and planets within a sphere expanding at light speed, then, increasing our population at 2 percent per year, we will still run out of room and perish in our own wastes within the next millennium."
I was watching a Christian debate an atheist on TV recently. The Christian was against contraception on the grounds that it says in the bible 'that we should fill the earth with all God's glory'. Unfortunately the result of the attempt would either be an extinct earth filled with filth, or continuous war. Perhaps that's what a glory hole is.
Make love with condoms, not war.
From Lonely Planets : The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life
An eloquent argument for US style free speech over European style regulation from Blackadder comedian, Rowan Atkinson.
Current laws prevent 'Incitement of Racial Hatred' it is proposed that they be extended to prevent 'Incitement of Racial or Religious Hatred'
Rowan Atkinson says:
"race and religion are fundamentally different concepts, requiring completely different treatment under the law. To criticise people for their race is manifestly irrational but to criticise their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticise ideas - any ideas"
"I question the inarguable nature of the phrase "religious hatred", afforded by the use of the highly emotive word "hatred". So I thought I would modify the name of the proposed measure, by changing the terminology but retaining the meaning and use the dictionary definition of the word hatred, which is: intense dislike.
Incitment of Religious Intense Dislike. Isn’t it strange how that small change makes it seem a much less desirable or necessary measure?...
What is wrong with encouraging intense dislike of a religion? Why shouldn’t you do that, if the beliefs of that religion or the activities perpetrated in its name deserve to be intensely disliked?
What if the teaching or beliefs of the religion are so out-moded, hypocritical and hateful that not expressing criticism of them would be perverse?
The government claim that one would be allowed to say what you like about beliefs because the measure is not intended to defend beliefs but believers. But I don’t see how you can distinguish between them.
Beliefs are only invested with life and meaning by believers. If you attack beliefs, you are automatically attacking those who believe the beliefs. You wouldn’t need to criticise the beliefs if no-one believed them."
Officials at Catholic University are allowing Newt Gingrich to speak. Gingrich is a strong proponent of the death penalty, which is opposed by the Vatican. Actor-director, Stanley Tucci, on the other hand, was turned down because he supported family planning.
It constantly amazes me that many people who purport to be part of a religion centered around someone who faced the death penalty, have more compassion for semen than human beings facing the same punishment as the person they worship.
Gingrich Speech at CU Opposed (washingtonpost.com)
"A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered a Georgia school district to remove stickers challenging the theory of evolution from its textbooks on the grounds that they violated the U.S. Constitution."
The creationist/ID folks will be up in arms about this, however to defend their case they would have had to show that their agenda is not religious.
How many non-religious creationists are there.
None.
Slate: Send a Message to God - He has gone too far this time. By Heather Mac Donald
Heather argues for a boycott of God in the wake of the Tsunami, on the grounds that he gets credit for the good but none of the blame for the bad, despite being omnipotent.
“Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is fond of thanking God for keeping America safe since 9/11; Ashcroft never asks why, if God has fended off terrorist strikes since 9/11, he let the hijackers on the planes on the day itself… The Most Rev. Gabino Zavala from the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese rejects any suggestion that God forsook the tsunami victims, according to the Los Angeles Times, but he credits God with the subsequent charity: "You can see God in the people's response—how they're reaching out."
Richard Dawkins nailed the problem more accurately, pointing out that because the tsunami disaster could have been avoided by an early warning system, rather than prevention of the earthquake itself, if God is not responsible then he is neither omnipotent nor omniscient.
Of course, it is preposterous to believe that a god of love would do this thing, and there is a way that god can remain omnipotent and good - the Devil.
The above paradox disappears if the Tsunami and 911 were the work of the Devil and this in fact would have been the automatic conclusion until the 20th century. The problem is that more people now believe in the existence of God than the existence of the Devil. People don’t want mediaeval religion anymore, the one that says that you are most likely to burn forever in hell if you are rich, for example. More specifically, people are more likely to take God as being real and his work as literal, but the Devil and descriptions of him as being metaphorical.
In short, people tend to believe what is convenient for themselves, as witnessed by the fact that belief in the devil and hell declines rapidly the older you get (the closer you are to going to heaven or hell), but not the belief in God and heaven. Belief in God ironically tends to put oneself at the center of the universe.
[A national poll, conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corporation shows an 86 percent majority of adults between the ages of 18 to 34 believe in hell, but that drops to 68 percent for those over age 70]
The refusal to accept the existence of the bad, is the result of life being, for the large part, comfortable. The mediaeval world was undoubtedly more brutal for the most part than most parts of, say, Ohio, and the fact that most of our ideas of hell are based upon outdated, mediaeval depictions of it are testament to the fact that fire and brimstone are no longer fashionable for many religious Christians.
The problem with this sanitized, white bread, version of religion is that it chooses the bits of religion that are convenient in the short term. The ancients had it worked out, the devil, is a viable way out of the disaster paradox. By getting rid of the devil, the case for an omnipotent god is actually weakened.
If, on the other hand, you do indeed find the idea of the devil as a bit much - that the idea of people being tortured for ever and ever for such religious crimes as suicide, a cancer sufferer ending life prematurely to avoid torture in this life, is unacceptably cruel irony - then believing in a God that is either not omnipotent or allows millions of innocent people to die is conveniently sanitary day to day but a theological mess in times of disaster.
I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, that my fiancé is adorable and that ‘Little Britain’ is hilarious – but I can’t ‘prove' it.
Edge's annual question asks what people believe in. 120 of the worlds most famous thinkers answer. Well worth a read.
Unfortunately, I suspect that answers to this question will be misconstrued as acknowledgement of religious belief. The question is misleading in this regard. If the question had been: 'What do you believe is true even though there is absolutely no evidence for it?' then this would indeed be a question of belief in the religious sense.
Rather like the creationist slight of hand against Darwinism, confusing use of the scientific term theory with the popular everyday use of the term which normally refers to a hypothesis, everyday use of the term belief is very different from religious belief.
Some people believe in a God or Gods despite the fact that there is and has never been any evidence of his or her or their existence or non-existence for that matter. This is different from believing that the sun will rise tomorrow.
I am currently mulling over the sheer generosity and heartfelt sentiment from the goose-stepping Ayn Rand Institute: U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims
The argument being that all money should come from individual donations. Only there is no donation box for Tsunami victims on the Rand website. Tsunami victims are presumably from 'primitive nations' where 'the mere fact that they needed help should not have created a claim 'as simultaneously Isolationist and Jingoist Ed Locke says of Vietnam, in another classic muddle headed Rand Institute Op Ed.
By extension, should all Iraq rebuilding money come from donations from those who were in favor of invasion? Should the invasion itself have been funded from donations? It's a nice thought, perhaps the Iraq war would have never happened if people had to put their money where their mouth is. But democracy ain't like that, you can't hold a referendum for everything.
Society is a flawed but necessary and emergent phenomenon. If there were enough followers of Rand, presumably they could declare independence and avoid taxes. But it wouldn't be long before the donation system failed and Randyland started to raise taxes. The creed of extreme libertarianism will always fail by reductio ad absurdum.
My main problem with Randys is that they like to think of themselves as members of an elite club of successful rationalists, promoting charity and voluntary donation over tax, not a cult for self-righteous, mediocre people with uncharitable instincts - a 'banality' of evil.
In a reverse form of ambulance chasing, when Moreover received $22M in funding, I received an invitation to join the Ayn Rand Institute and give them all my supposed money - which I declined graciously ('you and your cryptofascist friends can shove your invitation up your shrunken sphincters').
The Ayn Rand institute is ironic because it follows exactly the same trajectory as the appropriation of Nietzsche by Hitler (only Rand was decidedly B league as a philosopher). Like Nietzche, Rand was an atheist, or more specifically, like myself, she was an anti-theist.
Rand in Playboy: "in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason".
More ironic is that an anti-theist institute should bear all the hallmarks of a religion or ideology. Belief systems may inevitably lead to wicked people failing to have to justify their actions, but foundations such as the Rand institute, which are supposedly based upon 'reason', should surely fare better.
Apparently not. It seems that the human instinct to idolize is so strong that even a society formed around an atheist amateur philosopher will become a cult.
By deifying its leader and sanctifying its texts, bitter, intellectually challenged Rand devotees such as David Holcberg are freed to write with misanthropy terrifyingly reminiscent of Nazism.
In response to the millions of people suffering as a result of the Indonesian earthquake, David Holcberg writes:
"Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it"
Happy Holidays Mr. Holcberg.
BBC - BBC Four Documentaries - Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Disbelief
"In this first ever television history of disbelief, Jonathan Miller leads viewers on a personal journey exploring the origins of his own lack of belief and uncovering the hidden story of atheism."
via Blackbeltjones' delicious
I am going to be using this blog to collect notes for a book, so postings may sometimes seem a bit random.
The book will be about faith - a defense of atheism and an attack on ideology and blind faith, from religion to secular political doctrine and cults.
This comes at a time when the US has suffered terribly from attacks justified entirely by faith, while at the same time becoming more religious than any other developed nation.
The book will not beat about the bush, I aim to put forward the argument that faith is necessarily bad, something to be tolerated where it is itself tolerant but not to be respected.
The aim is still to write something positive, something that contains not just an argument for science over superstition, but also argues for a richer culture based upon appreciating art without having to literally believe it.
What is astounding about the Gallup poll of belief in evolution is not that, as they conclude in the headline: "Third of Americans Say Evidence Has Supported Darwin's Evolution Theory" it is that two thirds think that it has not or don't know.
Suppose the same poll were run about a theory that has a similar amount of evidence supporting it, namely that the earth revolves around the sun, and the results were the same.
A news headline reporting a Gallup poll on the 'theory' of solar orbiting would reflect what would be strange and newsworthy - namely that educating people about a fact (not a theory) has been so manipulated by religious fascists, that a terrifying situation has been created where in an otherwise developed country, the majority of people still hold Bronze Age beliefs.
via Kottke
Letter From America, The pledge of allegiance
"...such was the fear of the time that from Moscow to Asia "godless Communism" might prevail.
President Eisenhower, many public men and women, used that phrase over and over.
And it was by executive order on Flag Day 1954 that President Eisenhower ordered the pledge now to read 'I pledge allegiance to the flag' and so on, 'and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God indivisible.'"
I am an atheist, and pro-choice, but unlike Hitchens, Mother Theresa is a personal heroine of mine and her views on abortion had integrity.
Despite being a non-Christian, I voyeuristically attended a church service in the Tenderloin this Sunday where the sermon was on the subject of making actions out of your convictions. This church spends $25,000 feeding poor people each week. I don't think I need to believe in god for this to make sense. The singing was also a whole lot better than other places of worship I've been to.
Because I don't believe that there is a spiritual moment of conception I think you have to choose at what point a life is a life and until birth the interests of the person carrying a child are paramount. The necessity to let women choose seems sensible to me.
Two weeks ago the House approved a partial anti-abortion bill again, something I personally don't think is a good thing. But the difference between conservative politics and Mother Theresa is that she said that she would personally look after any unwanted child that was brought to her - and the evidence is that she would have acted on her conviction.
Right or wrong, Mother Theresa had integrity. A political stance that is anti-abortion and does not provide a welfare state to support unwanted children, has no integrity, right or wrong.
Michael Savage:
"... whether people accept it or not, I am in touch with God all day long."
FOXNews.com - The O'Reilly Factor - Interview - Radio Talk Show Host Michael Savage
Via Boingboing: The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus from Al Franken's latest broadside.
I wonder how Bill O'Reilly would treat Jesus if he showed up on Fox:
Modern Jesus: "I you are rich you won't get into heaven."
Bill O'Reilly: "You are an insult to Christianity"
Modern Jesus: "I will turn the other cheek to that remark"
Bill O'Reilly: "Turn the other cheek? Fight like a man you tree-hugger"
Modern Jesus: "I forgive you"
Bill O'Reilly: "Yeah, well I don't forgive you, with a name like Jesus you must be a wetback, go home"
Modern Jesus: "I will return from whence I came"
Bill O'Reilly: "Well you won't be coming on my show again"
Sound of microphone being ripped off....
As an atheist who believes that religion, on balance, creates more evil than good, I was interested in 'The Brights'. A Bright is defined as someone whose "worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements", and the word is designed to sound more positive than atheist. I signed up, but now I am having second thoughts.
Being an atheist who rejects supernatural religious belief does not answer the fact that the principal crimes of the twentieth century, Stalinism, the Khmer Rouge and Nazism, were secular. What they all have in common with religion is a code based upon belief - ideology.
A ' brights' naturalist worldview would reject God and the Tooth Fairy. An anti-ideological, 'adaptivist', worldview would reject religious doctrine and Stalinism.
I still think a naturalist wordview is also healthy, but I can live with the Tooth Fairy.
Today's Guardian runs an apologist piece on science and religion. Why is it that people pick a few scientists who are religious and draw the conclusion that this is the norm and that because some scientists are religious this helps the case for religion?
1. Most scientists are not religious. Those that are not "constitute 60% of American scientists, and a stunning 93% of those scientists good enough to be elected to the elite National Academy of Sciences".
2. This Guardian article argues that the religiousness of scientists adds credibility to religious belief. Therefore, if you buy the article's premise and look at the facts, the proven lack of religious belief amongst the majority of scientists actually reduces its credibility.
3. An alternative premise is that scientists who are religious don't help the case for religion one way or another. People are irrational beings with an innate susceptibility to superstition.
4. The reverse premise is much more interesting. What if the resistance to adoption of proven scientific ideas is higher amongst those who are religious? Such resistance would be easy to measure if it manifested itself in, say, physical violence, persecution. This is hardly contentious, people continue to die every day, because of 'religious persecution' (persecution 'by' and not just 'of' those who have blind faith in an ideology) of those who share scientific ideas which do not require faith, but have evidence to back them up and can make accurate predictions.
Mr. quite contrary, Hitchens, has a go at the 10 commandments:
"I wonder what would happen if secularists were now to insist that the verses of the Bible that actually recommend enslavement, mutilation, stoning, and mass murder of civilians be incised on the walls of, say, public libraries?"
Anil Dash's quip about the Talabamaban is more economical: 'protestors decry removal of golden calf monument'.
There goes commandment number 2.
Oh, and now that some (toothless, banjo-playing?) politicians in Mississipi want the two tons of bad art, I guess that'll be breaking the last commandment.
The Commandments and immorality
A new Report warns of political interference in science to justify conservative views on abortion, genetic research, energy and the environment.
Distortion of science requires ongoing effort, is a hallmark of inflexible political ideology and should ring alarm bells in a democratic society because there is empirical evidence that it is very dangerous.
The mistake made by Stalinists of associating similarity with equality created an ideological preference to scientific findings which proved that traits were acquired and not inherited. In order to tackle massive food shortages, Lysencho, who's rejection of genetics in favor of acquired traits fitted Soviet ideology, was recruited to provide a solution. The result of this single example, amongst many similar, is that several hundred thousand people died.
The separation of church and state is an idea founded on the realization that and inflexible belief system does not gel with sound politics. According to opinion polls, it is an idea shared by both Democrats and Republicans. An administration that distorts scientific findings to fit with conservative religious beliefs, has combined the two inexorably.
Conservative Anglican activist, David Virtue, has caused an investigation into gay bishop-elect Gene Robinson because he was "affiliated with a youth Web site that had a link to pornography". However, applying David Virtue's criteria to his own site shows that he also links to porn.
Read the small print:
"The link is on an unaffiliated site that had resources for gay youth. That page provided resources for bisexuals that, a few links away, provided access to porn."
A 'few links away'.
OK lets look at the accusers website:
http://www.orthodoxanglican.org/Virtuosity/headlines.html
links to:
click:
http://pppp.net/links/news/NA.html
then:
http://pppp.net/links/news/NA.CurrentIssues-Gay_Lesbian.html
which links to:
http://www.multicom.org/gerbil/gerbil.htm - a hardcore porn site (a straight one).
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fconnected%2Fgraphics%2F2003%2F03%2F19%2Fecfgod119.jpg)
"So confident is he that God is all in the mind, or the brain at least, that Dr Persinger claims he can induce mystical feelings in a majority of those willing to don his Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator.
So the BBC Science series Horizon took up the challenge by putting his hat to the ultimate test: could he get arch-sceptic and militant atheist Prof Richard Dawkins to start believing in God by electrically massaging his temporal lobes?"
Telegraph | Connected | Holy visions elude scientists
Here is an experiment to do at home.
1. Take 150 words either written by or about Derrida.
2. Using AltaVista's Babel fish, Translate them from English to French, then from French to German, then back to English.
3. What comes back is no more or less complete gibberish than what you started with. Clearly the translation service is better than it used to be.
Before:
"Derrida seeks to destabilize these inherited assumptions. We think, therefore we question, he counters. Even Plato's own thinking contains such challenges to it's own theses."
After:
"The research work of Derrida déstabilisent these inherited demands. We think, therefore we, it ask repel. The own thought of Plato even contains such challenges to their must theses possess"
See, complete bollocks. QED.
Derrida - 'The Movie'! Groan.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fau.edu%2Fdivdept%2Fhist%2Fmarybakereddy3.jpg)
I am an atheist - not an agnostic but a rabid, dogmatic, anti-believer. It is for this very reason that one of the newspapers that I regularly read, online, is the Christian Science Monitor.
In a country where money is tantamount to a religion, where corporations vote twice to fund both the GOP and the Democrats to ensure their interests are 'marketed' to the voters, the CSMonitor often provides a secular balance to the belief in free markets as the saviour of all.
The CSMonitor was founded by a Mary Baker Eddy in 1908 - before women had the vote. After being hounded by Joseph Pulitzer's (who later endowed the Pulitzer prize) New York World as being unfit to manage her own affairs at 86, she decided to form a newspaper that would injur no 'man' and be a truly independent voice not controlled by "commercial and political monopolists."
The anti-Pulitzer paper has now won 6 of the eponymous prizes.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uni-muenster.de%2FStudentenmission%2Fimages%2Fjesus-inside.jpg)
When the body of Czar Nicholas II was discovered, a blood sample was taken from the Queen's husband, Prince Phillip, (being one of the closest living relatives) to authenticate the find.
Maculate concept:
It is possible that the recently discovered Ossuary once contained Jesus' brother's bones. Imagine that DNA from James' remains could be retrieved from the box.
Imagine also that this DNA could be used to authenticate one or more of the morbid collection of religious relics claiming to be Jesus' toe-nail clippings or whatever. In fact a positive result would somewhat authenticate both the Ossuary and the relic(s), since it would be somewhat co-incidental that two fakes would contain remains of relatives.
Imagine further that an intact cell from an authenticated relic could be used to create a clone.
Then a lot of people like these would be dissappointed because, according to recent research, Jesus was short and unattractive. Although, judging from their graphic design sensibilities, looks aren't everything for the Clone Jesus movement.
New book says Jesus was short, unattractive
Israel: Scholars Disagree Over Reported Ossuary Of Jesus' Brother, James
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