It takes a lot to get me angry. But if I look for it on the Internet, I can find it. When reading about Lisa McPherson – who died as a result of Scientology – my blood boils and my fists contract. When I read a website that documents “3,254 people killed, 235,558 injured and over $455,070,000 in economic damages” from quack medicine, frauds and snake-oil merchants who are simply there to make a quick buck, I am ready to burst.
I want to address the question of being involved in sceptical circles, in being (a kind of) social critic. Why do it? “Why do you care about these things?”
I don’t care who you are, dear reader.
I don’t care what your religion, culture, nation or background is. I don’t care what you think of atheism, secularism. I do, however, care about you as a human being. I do care that we try to live as a respectable species, fighting for knowledge, fighting for equality everywhere – all the time. Make no mistake, I want to see past the barriers of incredulity, set up by trenches of ancient ideologies and barbed-wires of recent quackery.
I raise this, to raise your eyes. To raise your voice. I want you to speak out. If you value others’ lives, if you value the gift of reason, if you want to see some peace filter through the nonsense, I am calling upon you to raise your voice. Be it in any words of any format: Through keyboards, microphones or telephones. Be it in talks, conferences, papers, radio-shows.
I am angry and I want you to be angry. We shouldn’t have to settle for 130 children dying each year because their parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses. We should fight, shout and keep kicking as we hear about Muslim women being killed for leaving abusive husbands, when we hear that “[m]ore than 25 … “honor killings” have been confirmed in Britain’s Muslim community in recent years”. We should raise our fists against the retardation of sensibility when reading:
In Saudi Arabia, the Islamic police prevented schoolgirls from leaving a burning building because they were not wearing headscarves and abayas; 15 of the girls died in the inferno.
[Or] The president of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, a renowned center of Islamic learning, described the proper method of wife-beating in a television interview: “It’s not really beating,” Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tayyeb explained on Egyptian television. “It’s more like punching.”
Why should we remain silent about these things? No longer should people have to die from this. No longer should Muslim women have to face charges of death, stoning or flogging for being raped.
Words can be bullets, no less than ideas can be foundations for change. I don’t care who you are, at this moment, and I ask you to not care who I am either. In this time, we must be able to recognise idiocy, lunacy and the proud march of unreason that parades through our streets, in our backyards, crushing whoever so steps in its path.
And there is little way to stop it, as it contorts into something new. My own president caused undue harm in denying the link between HIV and AIDs. He was supported by the ever-horrid Minister of Health who stated eating fresh fruit and vegetables could prevent AIDS.
Reason comes in fits and spurts, it seems. Dominating every aspect of our lives is a fertile ground for unreason, some parts in full bloom others already seeded. There’s a great deal of it to be torn down, so that we are able to not only lead lives, but actually save them. It is time to start being more aware of the nonsense out there. Please, help us fight this. We may be fighting against certain people and their very bad ideas, but we are also fighting for every single human being to live as a fully-fledged individual, regardless of race, creed, culture.
I don’t care who you are, but if you have fingers or a voice, you can start changing the tide today.
EDIT – The question remains: Why do I care and why should you? Am I pessimistic, negative or cynical?
No! On the contrary: My reason for raising these points of retarded lecherous thinking is to show that we can do better. I believe, quite strongly, that we are better than these things. We are capable of greater good and greater kindness. Instead a lot of people are more worried about other people’s dress-sense, sexual relations, and other vicarious interferences, than they are about happiness, fulfilment and basic respect.
We need to connect on what we know (we are all humans with similar loves, hates, desires) rather than kill each other on what we can not know (god, the afterlife, and paradise). We can do better, I really believe we can. That is why I care and so should you.
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These are all great examples about how faith beliefs can and do routinely cause serious harm.
I find it hard to believe that those policemen would have allowed those little girls to burn if not for Muslim dogma on the hijab. There may be countless Muslims who find this reprehensible, but that does not mean Islamic dogma did not have an important role in this tragedy.
The stuff about wife-beating is just more reason that I am beginning to believe that faith is a negative feedback against modernity.
True.
However, my aim is the notion of unreason and its various contortions. Be it faith, be it quackery. I view it as a dangerous. but more importantly I am trying to show: We can do better! I really believe we can – I’m optimistic that way. I actually think I didn’t answer the question completely. I’m going to edit the post now to include this new part. It will be short, but thanks for bringing it to my attention.
[...] READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY AT “EDGER” [...]
Though not the main thrust of your post, you’ve seen fit to include Jehovah’s Witnesses among those who you feel do great damage to society. To me, reason would indicate that things should be kept in proportion. For the sake of argument, I’ll assume that your 130 figure is correct:
“We shouldn’t have to settle for 130 children dying each year because their parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Do atheists ever smoke? We shouldn’t have to settle for x number of atheists dying each year from smoking.
Do atheists ever do drugs? We shouldn’t have to settle for x number of atheists dying each year from overdose.
Do atheists ever go to war? We shouldn’t have to settle for x number of atheists dying each year as combatants.
Do atheists ever do risky sexual behavior/drugs/blood transfusions? We shouldn’t have to settle for x number of atheists dying each year from HIV.
Jehovah’s Witnesses do none of these unsafe things. As tragic as 130 deaths may be, surely you must be more incensed about the millions of non-Witnesses who die each year from these very preventable causes.
Of course the point is that these children have no choice when it comes to medical care, whereas people choose to smoke, drugs, and war.
I have no idea how the comparison of choice, drugs, alcohol smoking, has anything to do with children dying from being denied blood transfusion. It is pathetic parenting and a worse excuse for human sensbility.
Just because Jehova’s Witnesses don’t smoke, means nothing. I really couldn’t care less about their preferred method of drug. I’m more concerned for the kids. I would like you to tell me how you can compare these things, sir.
You have a point.
On the other hand, choices we make as adults are largely influenced by values instilled/not instilled in us as children. If the all the world lived as Jehovah’s Witnesses, the number of deaths in which transfusion refusal may have been a factor would be offset a thousand fold by those not dying from these other causes. Surely that should figure into your equation somewhere.
Literally millions of children die each year from malnutrition and other entirely preventable causes….all unwilling victims of failed adult policies. Not to mention those claimed as war victims. In fact, how many additional millions will die worldwide through poverty conditions induced by collapse of today’s worldwide economy? In view of these staggering numbers, It seems a little silly to harp on 130 just because you don’t believe in God. More than 130 children die annually of almost anything….and almost always through someone else’s error, irresponsibility, or negligence.
Moreover, one might even question that 130 figure (though I already granted it to you for purposes of argument) or at least acknowledge that the JW stand has spurred the development of bloodless surgery, which saves countless more lives than those lost by members of a relatively tiny religious group that adhered to its principles.
http://tinyurl.com/6n9lvx
(My apologies for my terrible spelling and grammar in my first reply to you. I have been in the middle of studies)
I grant it to you, if we are instilled and behaved exactly like the Amish for example, you might find a case. The point though is that it is still an infringment on choice and freedom to deny what could arise regardless of what could have been, what is nice to think of, and not looking at the world it is now. As we are now, this is quite detrimental thinking (yes the children dying, but also reasoning simply because a book says so).
And whether or not something good arises from that faith, means nothing to its truth-claims, its negative impact on those who have no choice, etc. I for one will not tolerate *people being harmed* for the sake of, when you come right down to it, religious quackery.
You do raise an interesting point regarding malnutrition etc.. However, I would stress that whereas we are actually able to change the decisions to kill girls for revealing their faces (by saving the girls, not allowing them to stay in such a place, raising public awarenss of such atrocities) – whereas drastic policies regarding nutrition and housing and water and everything I’ve seen in the townships dotted around and within my city, is not something that can be changed by a decisive action right now.
I’m not saying that we can permanently alter fundementalsts view of women, but I want you to consider this scenario:
We see homeless people on the street, sometimes kids, no doubt suffering from malnutrition all the time. Most of us help as often as we are able and give to good charities. Thats a regular and somewhat different (and dodgy?) instance to what I’m speaking of.
We see a little girl surrounded by men who are calling for her blood. A child, no older than eight, being accused for adultery or some nonsense (i’ve heard it from muslim men i know), I would actively do something about it then. I’m not special or brave, because I know most people reading this would do something. My appeal here is that I don’t care whether you believe in god, but whether you belief in respect, humanity and dignity.
You said “It seems a little silly to harp on 130 just because you don’t believe in God. More than 130 children die annually of almost anything….” – I must say that’s a bit unfair, since I only wrote it once! And I then responded to your comment. I dont think I was harping on about it, I simply raised and referenced it as part of the point. I do not deny the latter part of your statement, but this whole reply can be seen as to why I think we CAN do something about certain parts of human eradication of reason.
I am interested in your connection to bloodless surgery. But somehow I doubt it was solely because of Jehovas Witnesses denying blood transfusion that resulted in this medical “miracle”. I shall consult my medical expert (my father), but I’m hoping someone who reads this can also enlighten me on this. I may be wrong however