*sigh*…the year in review.
Archive for December, 2008
Where is the case for optimism?
Monday, December 29th, 2008Atheists=Trolls?
Sunday, December 28th, 2008
Atheists Should Be Treated Like Trolls – FOX NEWS
Wow. Just wow.
I shouldn’t even look at anything from Fox News because this is so typical. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen a news story with logic this flawed. As the video explains, there was an atheist sign near a nativity scene that was stolen, and the owners of the sign now want to replace the old one with a “thou shall not steal sign”. Fox makes it sound like that by doing this, the atheists are hypocrites. It’s definitely ironic, that’s for sure, but apparently not for reasons anyone at Fox realizes.
Michelle Malkin goes on to complain about atheists a little bit. She suggests that atheists are just being attention whores with all these “christmas wars”, “outbursts”, and “tantrums” (apparently a sign qualifies waging war on Christmas.)
She then says that atheists are so radical, soon they’ll be saying they’re indispensable.
I don’t know about you, but I find atheists pretty useful. A good majority of the world’s most influential and intelligent scientists are atheists. I’ve never thought about it before, but I realized that, yeah, if every atheist in the world were to just suddnely disappear, there would be problems, especially because so many intellectuals are atheists. Malkin suggests, however, that if every atheist alive just suddenly died… well, it would be no skin off her back.
But get ready, because she’s about to say the most horrible, meaningless, overdone remark you can imagine. Ugh. I hate this, hate this, HATE this line. I hear it in discussions, debates, you name it. People think it’s a valid thing to say. They think that it gives them extra points and automatic credibility. And I’m sure you guys know what I’m talking about.
Immediately following her last comment, Michelle Malkin says:
“Now, some of my best friends are atheists.”
What?! Does she hear the things she’s saying about “some of her best friends”?
A minute later she says atheists “just can’t leave well enough alone and let people enjoy the season.”
So someone who had their property vandalized should just let it go because it’s Christmas? I mean really. She relates the sign to “making a nusence in the town square.”
And THEN… oh boy, this is good… that blonde news anchor from the beginning of the video says that if this kind of thing doesn’t stop… Christianity will DISAPPEAR.
And now for the biggest joke of all.
The solution? Treat atheists like trolls. Mock them. They’re just attention seekers anyway.
FFRF to sue Colorado school district in religious case
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is suing the Cherry Creek School District of Colorado on behalf of three parents of children who attend schools in the district. The suit is taking place over an item in the district’s “40 Developmental Assets” list. #19 is the one in question, which urges that children spend at least an hour a week in a religious institution. A notice on the FFRF website states that, “this Asset is prominently posted in Cherry Creek public schools alongside the photo of a young child with her hands clasped as though in prayer under the title ‘Faith Community.’ ” (Note that the text of the photo is not verbatim to the actual asset listed in the CCSD’s development guide, this seems more harmless.)
Now I’m not personally one to promote lawsuits for every minute little thing, but how schools let this kind of thing happen is still beyond me. From experience, I know that Colorado is not a particularly religious state. My brief time in the Cherry Creek School District when I was younger was pleasant and looking back on it, I would say the experience was fairly secular. So when a friend told me about this case I was pretty surprised. I’m not sure that a lawsuit is the right solution to this problem, exactly, but that’s not really for me to decide. However I would say that this problem is kind of major, considering that the district is saying that religion is an asset to a child’s development.
On that note, if you know a child or a parent of a child who attends a school in the Cherry Creek School district, the FFRF urges you to pass this official statement on:
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has a very important challenge regarding the separation of church and state in the Cherry Creek School District in Denver. The lawsuit challenges the District adoption of the “40 Developmental Assets,” of which number 19 is a recommendation of a “religious community” for children. The school district is recommending that children spend at least an hour a week in a church or other religious setting.
In a document specifically written for children, the endorsement reads: “I spend time with my religion.” A poster of a praying child next to this wording is displayed in various ways. The asset appears on a master calendar at the District website and various District documents.
FFRF has uncovered a religious agenda of the “40 Developmental Assets” program (in which the Lutheran Brotherhood, which developed it, cites bible verses which inspire each “asset,” even the secular-sounding assets).
Due to a child of a plaintiff graduating, FFRF is down to a single plaintiff. We are requesting anyone having a child in the school system who supports the separation of church and state to join the suit.
If you have a child in the Cherry Creek School system (or sympathetic friends or relatives with children in the District) and you might be interested in joining our action against this establishment of religion by the school district, then please let me know. Plaintiffs must have children who use the Cherry Creek public schools.
If we are to add additional plaintiffs, they need to be added before 2009. There is no cost involved and very little time required, and you would be helping to ensure we can challenge a violation that is occurring nationwide. The Court has a protective order which keeps parent (and child) names out of the court documents and newspapers. If interested contact me ASAP
Tim Bailey 303.921.0641
Tcsgrv@mindspring.com
Humanists of Colorado
Cheers
From Afar…
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008From afar, our planet is tiny, blue and fragile, held in a fistful of darkness. Pockmarked by light emitted from surrounding stars, some of which have travelled billions of years to reach us. The silence of space eclipses the spinning globe, as a sun growls in the distance. The beauty of the earth’s blue and green face is veiled like a bride by white clouds. Its fragility quivers with a sense of surrounded silence, surrounded darkness and spiralling away from fellow planets. Utterly alone, it sinks like full-stop at the end of a muted sentence.
And its future is held within the palms of beings who could be bacteria: ourselves. Palms which have developed poor thumbs, bodies with over-sized adrenal glands and decaying eyesight. These are the creatures within this pale-blue beauty that will decide her future. Already fragile and temperate, it is us, her children, her keepers, her creatures who will decide her impact. In 6 billion years, that growling dog of a star will be let loose from its chain and devour the planet. Those same creatures, we with the poor digestive systems, will not be here. Those creature whose eyes will hold the exploding sun will be as different from us, as the first eukaryote from our evolutionary past. But our impact this century, in our lifetimes, can make our planet into an exclamation mark on the unending sentence, or the tapering off into ellipses…
The great philosopher AC Grayling poses a problem we all should contemplate. Suppose there is only one species in the whole universe which has advanced consciousness, to realise its presence, its future, its past. Suppose there is only one such advanced species: it would have to be us. This means, according to our view of happiness, we decide the happiness of this universe. We will decide how much happiness, fulfilment and liberty is accorded throughout the universe. The sentence is undeterred, the universe is indifferent and indifference is popularly known as the opposite of love. Even if the universe hated us – which, at times to our egotistical selves, seems to be the case – at least it means acknowledging us. Such is not the case. Therefore, we have the entire responsibility of the universe in our hands. How much happiness are we going to bring, how much of an exclamation mark can we make our existence into the quiet, cold universe? Are we to render our bride, our mother and our planet into a place of decay, madness and violence? Are we to view her as a necessary stepping-stone to “something better”, as many religious fanatics would have it?
Even if she is a stepping-stone, what a stone she is. A man himself is but paltry next to the unfathomable beauty on the earth upon which all men were born and all will die. King Henry the Fifth, in the Shakespeare play of the same name, says: “A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn to white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow, but a good heart, Kate, is the sun … for it shines a bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.” Even on this stepping-stone, which is to be our gravestone, nothing should detract us from loving our planet. Nothing should stop us from caring for it.
The maddening fact of life is that we are in it. The sobering fact of life is that we are on this great planet. Yet it takes a simple click of a button, or the turning of a page, to see her as no one before has. The simple fact is that we are part of the first group of humans to see the planet upon which we make our home. And what a home it is. If ever we feel ourselves consumed with rage, anger or absolute love or passion, we must simply remember: Spinning, slowly, calmly, held in a fist of darkness, surrounded by blinking eyes of stars, standing before a growling star, is a pale-blue dot we call home, veiled in white and awaiting the final placement by the actions of tiny creatures on its surface.
Al Franken to Win Senate Seat?
Monday, December 22nd, 2008Former SNL comedian and Air America radio host Al Franken is likely to become Minnesota’s next senator. For those of you out of the loop, Franken trailed Coleman by 215 votes on Nov. 4th after all the ballots were counted – a difference of 0.01% – triggering an automatic recount. However, Franken seems to be gaining more votes from the recount than Coleman, and Intrade has his chances of winning at 85%. Why is Al Franken so awesome? I refer you to the Gospel of Supply-Side Jesus:
Visions & Mind-Reading
Sunday, December 21st, 2008My doctor (who happens to be my father) gave me a cold stare: He gave that infamous doctor’s look of being thoroughly unimpressed with my self-maintenance. His folded arms mimicked his frown. “If you want to have less headaches,” he said, “you have to read less!”
Read less? Why not ask me to severe my right leg, too? To be denied reading and comprehension would be my worst handicap. If that happens, I would start parking in the “disabled zone” and pushing myself around in a wheelchair.
Our bodies are our only access into the physical or phenomenal world around us, though they may simply be carriers for future progeny. Beside that, taking care of it is important. But one can’t help that when one is obsessed with words.
There are two things I always carry with me, as much as possible: A bottle of water and a paperback. I believe this is one thing that if everyone did, we would live in a world of less suffering. It would be healthy physically and mentally. As Rousseau said in his Confessions: “We are so little formed for happiness in this world, that of necessity the soul or the body must suffer, when they do not suffer together, and a happy condition of the one nearly always injures the other.” Healthy people, then, means a clarity for good thought to flourish This is just my opinion but one I find reasonable. However, there does seem to be the downside to reading copiously: A rising headache-rate.
Consider your eyes: Light hits an object and is projected, by criss-cross intercessory pathways, into your eyes. The light is caught by the retina; an appropriate name since retina is derived from rete, ‘net’ in Latin. In contrast to insects’ compound eyes, which are incredibly sensitive and able to take in a great amount of the environment onto the smallest number of cells (therefore without the creature moving its head), human eyes are bulbous and accord greater ‘resolution’. The images travels through all parts of the eye, like the cornea, lens, etc. only to be upside down. It is then ‘flipped’ – an incredible array of neural activity occurs during this time. Our knowledge into vision gives us great insight by manipulation. Us social scientists, especially psychologists, are famous for our conjuring tricks to discover a part of human processes.
The psychologist Peter Wason had a test, which I would like you to look at. And what’s interesting is that this test is mostly not about vision at all. But have a look:
You are given four cards. The cards have a number on the one side and a letter on the other. Two of the cards facing you have a letter facing; the other two have the number facing. The cards you see are:
[D] [F] [3] [7]
You are given a rule: “If a card has [D] one the one side, it has a [3] on the other.” A simple if-then statement, if you will. The question is this: Which cards would you turn over to see if the rule is true? Have a think, then read on.
Wason found that most people choose simply [D]. Or perhaps [D] and [3]. The correct answer is to turn both [D] and [7]. If you turn [7] around, it would falsify the proof if you found [D] on its reverse. This is where the great Karl Popper’s influence shows, in this test.
What has this to do with vision? Aside from the nauseatingly obvious answer that you looked at the cards (nothing stops the test from also using other senses!), it reminds one of the development in children. We are not psychics, we have no extended vision wafting like ethereal pipelines to journey through space and time. For most of us, the most important position of according possible psychic abilities would be with other people: What they are thinking, what they are going to do, what matters to them, etc. We imagine that the ‘psychic’ thoughts would be like hearing our own thoughts. Or perhaps your ‘reader’s voice’ that you have whilst reading this article.
Yet, everyone has this ability!
A child, for example, learns to mimic the actions of mouths, hands, eyes, words. It notices the tongue and the light changes. As we grow, this is where ‘reading’ people comes from: Our vision. It is a pity that such a beautiful word is sometimes usurped by the demagogic legion of superstitious quacks. We learn about people from their nonverbal communication – it’s why people move their arms, even when talking on the phone. It helps clarify the visual ideas into a physical format: the vibrations from their vocal chords and movement of limbs. When giving people directions, we point with our fingers, we wind them through pathways unseen. When people greet each other, we can tell a lot from their nonverbal gestures: Consider two men in business suits, shaking hands. Now, consider a casually dressed man and a casually dressed woman embracing, holding each other for a long time, caressing each others’ backs. Now, consider a suited man shaking hands with a casually dressed woman, perhaps pecking her on the cheek. There are many inferences you can make, no doubt you are doing it automatically right now.
We are incredible creatures, learning and knowing intricate details from simply watching. From the use of our eyes. The stimulation accorded to the fluctuations of light, bouncing off the skin of other humans, as their bodies fluctuate to the dictates of their brains is the most important form of learning we garner. Being psychic is a cop-out; learning to read people, to heighten their experience of social interaction, is a true gift. Don’t fold your arms, don’t look away to often, lock their eyes and blink every few seconds – occasionally glance away when you speak. These are pieces of advice many body-language consultants give and they can enhance our interactions. But it all comes from watching, from being alert and from vision.
So, no. We do not have ‘psychic abilities’ but we can achieve the same results: We can infer from their appearance, their disposition, their body-language. And then we can just simply ‘ask’. The information is transferred, as we lock gazes and inquire as to the well-being of a fellow human. No psychic additives or preservatives needed to maintain a conversation or interest.
And this is why I read. My vision extends further, I feel my empathy expand upon contemplation of even fictional characters. My knowledge of our beautiful planet and our troubled species is minuscule – and it will always be so. One can not be aware of the extent of one’s ignorance but one can be aware of ignorance itself. This surely is a virtue. Books humble us, as words slide into our eyes. The feel of a soft page turning, as our brains are nourished. These are important. And it is a sad fact that my headaches will continue because I just can not stop reading.
“You read too much,” people tell me, with a kind of accusatory stare. How much is too much? What does that even mean? Life is short, Milan Kundera wrote, reading is long: the paradox is that I will never be able to read everything I want. Confound mortality for that and that alone. Perhaps my own Mephistopheles will arise from the ashes of my forsworn hellish domain to proffer a bargain. If so, I need to do some reading now to make sure I don’t sign anything too valuable away.
How interesting: Apparently, you only need one kidney….
Mutiny on a Chromosome
Saturday, December 20th, 2008In Darwin’s time, it was believed that selection occurs at the level of an individual – that an entire creature is either selected or not. But as we learn more about what we are made of, we realize that the entire concept of an individual is somewhat illusory. Every macro-creature is not a stand-alone individual but rather a construction of millions of smaller transitory creatures that use its body as a vessel. The only way in which these creatures are working towards a common goal is in protecting this body from foreign invaders. The genes, the true residents of the body, are here only to make it to the next generation. They don’t necessarily care if other genes on parallel loci make it with them or not; they simply care about themselves.
To accomplish their goal, they network with each other in a complex hierarchy. We can compare the workings of this network to that of a corporation. Just like companies have CEOs, executives, managers, and workers to look after their daily operations, the body has various genes working at different levels of control. This hierarchy in the body is called its pleiotropy. The senior genes have the power to shut down, change, suspend, or accelerate operations based on the needs of the body. This system allows the “critical stages” of development as discussed in a previous article.
In corporations, several people work together to accomplish something an individual cannot accomplish by themselves. These genes in our bodies are doing the same thing. By working in a network, the composite bodies of these genes accomplish seemingly magical tasks – such as thought and communication. On a broad scale, all bodies involved in the network affect the workings of all other bodies surrounding them, quite intimately.
The nucleus of all somatic cells in the body contain two pairs of genes – they are diploid. One pair from the father and one from the mother. The only cells in the body that are haploid (one set of genes) are the sex cells. Textbooks teach that the genes that make it to these cells are there by “random selection”. But of course we know that is not how it works. In reality, every gene is fighting for its place on a chromosome. This is called it’s ‘meiotic drive’ – it’s drive to be included in the process of meiosis.
The fight can rise to such dramatic proportions that some genes could even take a position that is damaging to other genes, or even the rest of the cell. In “The Extended Phenotype”, Richard Dawkins calls such genes ‘outlaws’ (not his term originally). It is in the interest of the rest of the genes of the cell to subdue this outlaw. So here, we see a collective effort emerge between genes at other loci to make sure that the outlaw is not selected. But on the other hand, any outlaw that can somehow beat the system is greatly increasing its chances of making it to the next generation, so selection would certainly favour it greatly.
Things become more interesting however when outlaws appear on sex chromosomes. Any driving gene on an X or Y chromosome, could easily alter sex ratios drastically and hence even lead a population to it’s demise. If a Y-driving gene is successful enough, the next generation will see only males being born (in mammals for example) leaving them no one to mate with. This method has also been tested as a weapon against pests. In labs and simulations, the introduction of an intentional outlaw driving towards a particular sex, destroyed the entire population in as few as four generations.
The workings in nature of one such outlaw have been witnessed in mud-daubing wasps. The females of this species build their own nests, lay a prey in it for their new-borns to feed upon, lay their eggs on the already dead or dying prey, seal the nest, and then begin the cycle again. As opposed to most other wasps, the males here are also present at the laying and in fact, during it, force the female into a strange ritual dubbed ‘holding’. The whole process begins when the female, having already laid the prey in her nest, goes head first into it with her abdomen facing outside. The male, who is outside, then copulates with her in this position. Then the female turns around, pops her head outwards from the nest and faces her abdomen inside it. She feels for the prey with the tip of her abdomen as if about to lay her egg. At this point, the male grabs her head with his forelegs and proceeds to pull her antennae outwards for about half a minute, to prevent the lady from dropping her egg just yet. Then the female again turns around and copulates with the male, only to turn around again and make another attempt to lay her egg. The male does the same thing. This repeats several times until the female finally gets to lay her egg.
It is hypothesized that the male here is trying to influence the sex of the egg. In Hymenoptera, unfertilized eggs usually result in males and fertilized ones in females. So perhaps by not letting the female lay her egg immediately, the male is trying the make sure it has time to fertilize in the oviduct, or perhaps he is trying to overflow her internal tracts with sperm, so the egg has more of a chance of fertilizing. Both of these actions would lead to a greater chance of new born being a female, giving the male more mating opportunities. Of course, the resistance of the female is necessary, not only because more unfertilized eggs mean more males for her, but also because without it, the entire population might perish.
In ways like these, outlaw genes and other interesting types (segregation distorters, other germ-line replicatiors) cause strange behaviours in our world, and make evolution seem even more implausible. But as always, there are breakthroughs and paradigm-shifts in Science that show us the way. “The Extended Phenotype” is a brilliant book, and deals with several such cases, and all in all, gives one a wonderful perspective of genetics. Dawkins had said before that he considers this book to be his best work; I don’t know if he still considers that true, but if you’re looking to do some interesting reading on evolution, there is no better book I could recommend than this.
Pat Buchanan’s Culture War Speech
Saturday, December 20th, 2008Beneath this print is a transcript of Pat Buchanan’s speech to the 1992 GOP convention, where he defined his idea of culture war, before any discussion can proceed, I ask that all concerned parties read this speech:
Well, we took the long way home, but we finally got here.
And I want to congratulate President Bush, and remove any doubt about where we stand: The primaries are over, the heart is strong again, and the Buchanan brigades are enlisted–all the way to a great comeback victory in November.
Like many of you last month, I watched that giant masquerade ball at Madison Square Garden–where 20,000 radicals and liberals came dressed up as moderates and centrists–in the greatest single exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history.
One by one, the prophets of doom appeared at the podium. The Reagan decade, they moaned, was a terrible time in America; and the only way to prevent even worse times, they said, is to entrust our nation’s fate and future to the party that gave us McGovern, Mondale, Carter and Michael Dukakis.
No way, my friends. The American people are not going to buy back into the failed liberalism of the 1960s and ’70s–no matter how slick the package in 1992.
The malcontents of Madison Square Garden notwithstanding, the 1980s were not terrible years. They were great years. You know it. I know it. And the only people who don’t know it are the carping critics who sat on the sidelines of history, jeering at ine of the great statesmen of modern time.
Out of Jimmy Carter’s days of malaise, Ronald Reagan crafted the longest peacetime recovery in US history–3 million new businesses created, and 20 million new jobs.
Under the Reagan Doctrine, one by one, the communist dominos began to fall. First, Grenada was liberated, by US troops. Then, the Red Army was run out of Afghanistan, by US weapons. In Nicaragua, the Marxist regime was forced to hold free elections–by Ronald Reagan’s contra army–and the communists were thrown out of power.
Have they forgotten? It was under our party that the Berlin Wall came down, and Europe was reunited. It was under our party that the Soviet Empire collapsed, and the captive nations broke free.
It is said that each president will be recalled by posterity–with but a single sentence. George Washington was the father of our country. Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union. And Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. And it is time my old colleagues, the columnists and commentators, looking down on us tonight from their anchor booths and sky boxes, gave Ronald Reagan the credit he deserves–for leading America to victory in the Cold War.
Most of all, Ronald Reagan made us proud to be Americans again. We never felt better about our country; and we never stood taller in the eyes of the world.
But we are here, not only to celebrate, but to nominate. And an American president has many, many roles.
He is our first diplomat, the architect of American foreign policy. And which of these two men is more qualified for that role? George Bush has been UN ambassador, CIA director, envoy to China. As vice president, he co-authored the policies that won the Cold War. As president, George Bush presided over the liberation of Eastern Europe and the termination of the Warsaw Pact. And Mr. Clinton? Well, Bill Clinton couldn’t find 150 words to discuss foreign policy in an acceptance speech that lasted an hour. As was said of an earlier Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton’s foreign policy experience is pretty much confined to having had breakfast once at the Intl. House of Pancakes.
The presidency is also America’s bully pulpit, what Mr Truman called, “preeminently a place of moral leadership.” George Bush is a defender of right-to-life, and lifelong champion of the Judeo-Christian values and beliefs upon which this nation was built.
Mr Clinton, however, has a different agenda.
At its top is unrestricted abortion on demand. When the Irish-Catholic governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Casey, asked to say a few words on behalf of the 25 million unborn children destroyed since Roe v Wade, he was told there was no place for him at the podium of Bill Clinton’s convention, no room at the inn.
Yet a militant leader of the homosexual rights movement could rise at that convention and exult: “Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the most pro-lesbian and pro-gay ticket in history.” And so they do.
Bill Clinton supports school choice–but only for state-run schools. Parents who send their children to Christian schools, or Catholic schools, need not apply.
Elect me, and you get two for the price of one, Mr Clinton says of his lawyer-spouse. And what does Hillary believe? Well, Hillary believes that 12-year-olds should have a right to sue their parents, and she has compared marriage as an institution to slavery–and life on an Indian reservation.
Well, speak for yourself, Hillary.
Friends, this is radical feminism. The agenda Clinton & Clinton would impose on America–abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat–that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God’s country.
A president is also commander in chief, the man we empower to send sons and brothers, fathers and friends, to war.
George Bush was 17 when they bombed Pearl Harbor. He left his high school class, walked down to the recruiting office, and signed up to become the youngest fighter pilot in the Pacific war. And Mr Clinton? When Bill Clinton’s turn came in Vietnam, he sat up in a dormitory in Oxford, England, and figured out how to dodge the draft.
Which of these two men has won the moral authority to call on Americans to put their lives at risk? I suggest, respectfully, it is the patriot and war hero, Navy Lieutenant J. G. George Herbert Walker Bush.
My friends, this campaign is about philosophy, and it is about character; and George Bush wins on both counts–going away; and it is time all of us came home and stood beside him.
As running mate, Mr Clinton chose Albert Gore. And just how moderate is Prince Albert? Well, according to the Taxpayers Union, Al Gore beat out Teddy Kennedy, two straight years, for the title of biggest spender in the Senate.
And Teddy Kennedy isn’t moderate about anything.
In New York, Mr Gore made a startling declaration. Henceforth, he said, the “central organizing principle” of all governments must be: the environment.
Wrong, Albert!
The central organizing principle of this republic is freedom. And from the ancient forests of Oregon, to the Inland Empire of California, America’s great middle class has got to start standing up to the environmental extremists who put insects, rats and birds ahead of families, workers and jobs.
One year ago, my friends, I could not have dreamt I would be here. I was then still just one of many panelists on what President Bush calls “those crazy Sunday talk shows.”
But I disagreed with the president; and so we challenged the president in the Republican primaries and fought as best we could. From February to June, he won 33 primaries. I can’t recall exactly how many we won.
But tonight I want to talk to the 3 million Americans who voted for me. I will never forget you, nor the great honor you have done me. But I do believe, deep in my heart, that the right place for us to be now–in this presidential campaign–is right beside George Bush. The party is our home; this party is where we belong. And don’t let anyone tell you any different.
Yes, we disagreed with President Bush, but we stand with him for freedom to choice religious schools, and we stand with him against the amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women.
We stand with President Bush for right-to-life, and for voluntary prayer in the public schools, and against putting American women in combat. And we stand with President Bush in favor of the right of small towns and communities to control the raw sewage of pornography that pollutes our popular culture.
We stand with President Bush in favor of federal judges who interpret the law as written, and against Supreme Court justices who think they have a mandate to rewrite our Constitution.
My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him.
My friends, in those 6 months, from Concord to California, I came to know our country better than ever before in my life, and I collected memories that will be with me always.
There was that day long ride through the great state of Georgia in a bus Vice President Bush himself had used in 1988–a bus they called Asphalt One. The ride ended with a 9:00 PM speech in front of a magnificent southern mansion, in a town called Fitzgerald.
There were the workers at the James River Paper Mill, in the frozen North Country of New Hampshire–hard, tough men, one of whom was silent, until I shook his hand. Then he looked up in my eyes and said, “Save our jobs!” There was the legal secretary at the Manchester airport on Christmas Day who told me she was going to vote for me, then broke down crying, saying, “I’ve lost my job, I don’t have any money; they’ve going to take away my daughter. What am I going to do?”
My friends, even in tough times, these people are with us. They don’t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they came from the same schoolyards and playgrounds and towns as we did. They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart.
They are our people. And we need to reconnect with them. We need to let them know we know they’re hurting. They don’t expect miracles, but they need to know we care.
There were the people of Hayfork, the tiny town high up in California’s Trinity Alps, a town that is now under a sentence of death because a federal judge has set aside 9 million acres for the habitat of the spotted owl–forgetting about the habitat of the men and women who live and work in Hay fork. And there were the brave people of Koreatown who took the worst of the LA riots, but still live the family values we treasure, and who still believe deeply in the American dream.
Friends, in those wonderful 25 weeks, the saddest days were the days of the bloody riot in LA, the worst in our history. But even out of that awful tragedy can come a message of hope.
Hours after the violence ended I visited the Army compound in south LA, where an officer of the 18th Cavalry, that had come to rescue the city, introduced me to two of his troopers. They could not have been 20 years old. He told them to recount their story.
They had come into LA late on the 2nd day, and they walked up a dark street, where the mob had looted and burned every building but one, a convalescent home for the aged. The mob was heading in, to ransack and loot the apartments of the terrified old men and women. When the troopers arrived, M-16s at the ready, the mob threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated. It had met the one thing that could stop it: force, rooted in justice, backed by courage.
Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. Here were 19-year-old boys ready to lay down their lives to stop a mob from molesting old people they did not even know. And as they took back the streets of LA, block by block, so we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country.
God bless you, and God bless America.
Presto! Your belief is…
Friday, December 19th, 2008There are many, many people out there who are just plain confused about religion. Personally, I know a lot of people (and I’m sure you’ll realize that you do, too) who have an idea of where they stand on individual issues (like reincarnation or satan or karma) but are intimidated when it comes to the big picture because they do not know what to call themselves.
I think there is a bizarre parallel between religions and music genres. Let me explain. There are quite a lot of people (you may be one of them) who enjoy music but aren’t passionate about it and have no extreme preference in what they listen to. One of these people would probably claim they listen to everything, even though it’s not like they sincerely enjoy every piece of music that goes through their ears. There are similar types of people when it comes to religion. The equivalent would be those who may know vaguely what they think but consider many matters unimportant, and then give themselves a label like agnostic (or not at all) and then attatch, “but I respect all beliefs”. But can they honestly say that they respect all beliefs? If they thought about it, probably not. On the extreme end there are also music fanatics who will just be plain OCD about their music generes. Have you ever been listening to a friend’s song on their iPod, and you ask what it is, and they’ll reply, “oh, that’s post-industrial tranceacid rapcore,” or, “that would be popharmonics jazz fusion.” Unfortunately, I think the same thing is happening to religion, and so many labels are popping up these days that I can understand how it would be hard to distinguish them without some good research. Lately I’ve heard people describe themselves as “christian wicca”, “naturalized deist”, and “environment-oriented theist” (I think they might have been trying to say pantheist) among some others.
All of this is to prove a point about people these days. An overwhelming amount of them just lose track of what they think. This is often either because they just don’t know what to call themselves, or because they get confused by the myriad of (now becoming) interchangable beliefs that eventually become meaningless if they’re mixed up too much.
To a point, I have a solution for these people.
I’m actually not kidding about this. It’s an astonishingly accurate quiz made up of about 20 really precise questions. I really think that many people are intimidated by, or just don’t feel like doing, the research it takes to be knowledgable about their faith. I think that this simple online quiz is surprisingly effective and non-hoaxy, as opposed to basically every other “what are you” quiz on the internet these days.
Even if you are quite clear on what you are, you should go on over to beliefnet and take a look, because you’re probably skeptical (and I know you want to). The quiz takes about 5-10 minutes and is so right it will surprise you.
Cheers
Another family destroyed by religion
Thursday, December 18th, 2008If you are familiar at all with the usual arguments of the faithful for their religion, you would be well versed with the way they whine about how religion brings families together, helps people be moral, yada yada yada.
This article shows another side of religion that the theists don’t like to mention.
To make a long story short: A Hindu priest rapes a woman, is arrested, and confessed to the crime. The woman’s son refuses to believe that the priest did it (because men of god don’t do bad things ever, right?), and now refuses to visit his mother in hospital.
This is utterly despicable, not only on the part of the so-called holy man who used his position to commit monstrous crimes; but also on the part of people who are so deluded religious leaders that they would rather be split from their families than believe that a man of god could have done something wrong.
When religion is concerned, it seems that everything suddenly becomes AWWRIGHT. Children dying because their parents refuse medical care – it’s AWWRIGHT! Families split because of religion – it’s AWWRIGHT! Science education messed up because of religion – it’s AWWRIGHT!
[appeaser-speak]What makes it AWWRIGHT, you ask? Why, because it is religion, of course! Religion should not be criticized because it is RELIGION, and we need to show some respect here. Respect religion because it is religion! Don’t you see the logic here? You might offend someone, and that is bad![/appeaser speak]
See the problem with that approach? When situations such as the above happen, most appeasers are quick to denounce the practice as ‘extremism’ and the like, without realizing that their actions then make them exactly like the so-called ‘militant atheists’ they abhor…because, we all know that speaking out against religion makes us militants.
Militants. Serious business.
So… How does one take over a culture?
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008Culture War.
The struggle for dominance by secular progressives against religious conservatives.
We have all heard this term, and many of us reject it outright.
My buddy Cooper who is a bit of a political mentor of mine says that religiosity in the United States seems to follow a pattern of rise and decline. He says that because of this pattern there is no Culture War.
I take his word for the facts, but how do we know that spotlighting secularism the way we are doing right now wont prevent or increase religiosity in the next wave? I think it will.
Another popular argument against the notion of Culture War is that the center is largely disinterested in these issues. The average person is too worried about paying the bills to really lose any sleep over gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution.
There is another angle to this, there is much argument for what is known as the Elite Theory of History, which is a thesis stating that it is the famous and infamous, wealthy, and powerful who shape civilization. However one feels about the finer points of these issues, in the U.S. the names of the founding Fathers are invoked with reverence in every political cycle. In the science enthusiast culture we name drop like its going out of style, hell my podcast was really all based on interviewing famous science advocates. I believe that if it is important to the elites its important to the world.
Even the great populist movements are known mostly by their charismatic leaders, we speak of Guevara, Marx, Trotsky, Abbey Hoffman, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and eternally Noam Chomsky.
There is no shame in taking pride in the best of our species.
And there is also no avoiding it.
So, if its not obvious by now, I am a believer in the Culture War.
I am not just a believer, I am actively engaged.
I want gay marriage and the teaching of evolution to be far from peoples minds because it is common place and uncontroversial. I want the United States to cease being so anti-intellectual, and be known for its collective intellect. As Athens once was, as Florence, as Rome, as Paris, as Vienna, as so many places which will always be honored for their contributions to human knowledge and understanding.
I want a humanist ethic to be dominant, which guarantees all the personal freedom one needs to self-actualize, and guarantees a great mutual tolerance so that everyone who disagrees with humanism can still be free to pursue their own ethical inquiry.
I want a world thats too smart for violence, too smart for poverty, and too smart for religion.
Is this really too much to ask?
Leaving College
Monday, December 15th, 2008This is a post I have been waiting to write.
This week I will take two finals, which I am confident I will pass, and then I am finished.
I am graduating from college.
My approach to college, like most things in my life, has been unorthodox.
I started college at 25, unlike most college graduates, who begin at 18 or 19.
I dropped out of high school.
After I dropped out of high school I worked a phone job for a year, and then worked as a tattoo artist for several years.
During that time period I did things which would be unwise to disclose in detail in a blog written under my real name.
I also became a born again, charismatic, Sarah Palin-style Christian.
Christianity saved my life in hindsight. If I could disclose all the details I think everyone would agree it was an improvement, but it did not take long for Christianity to present me with its own problems.
I took my religion incredibly seriously, all of it. Including the magical thinking, more popular with Charismatics than anyone. I spoke in tongues, I believed God healed people with my prayers. I also believed the best thing in life was to persuade others to join my in a magical adventure in adoring Christ.
However this clashed with my own background in the punk-rock subculture, and its cynical and existentialist leanings.
I was beginning to feel Christianity had a low ceiling for me. The virtues it rewarded were not my strengths.
In time I became a radical leftist, though I persisted to do so in the name of my religion.
I traveled the US, and found myself active in the leftist youth culture of Santa Cruz, California, where I first got a real taste for politics first hand. Including some very proud actions against the Iraq War.
I returned to Lubbock from my beloved adventures in Santa Cruz ready to start the revolution, which would naturally result in Lubbock, TX. being a tofu eating, recycling utopia, of tolerance and independent bookstores.
It was in my aims to try to politicize Lubbock that I started a lawn business with my buddy Nick Simmons and started trying to organize meetings. A girl I had always known peripherally became my partner in political organizing, and we fell in love. I later married this girl.
My girlfriends mom told me that I was too broke to keep my girl long term. She suggested college. I took her advice.
I started at Texas Tech University as a Psychology major just a few months later. It was then that I began to learn about scientific thinking in my psychology classes. Particularly from Dr. Jeff T. Larsen. I couldn’t get enough.
In less than a year I was accepted into the HHMI Undegraduate Research Fellows program, where we were paid and trained to do professional level primary biological research. It was also the first time that I was in a culture of science, where all of the other HHMI fellows were very forward thinking scientifically informed individuals. I loved my peers in this program and have not felt the same as I did around them until I went to a CFI Leadership conference this summer.
Inspired by a new found love for biology I changed my major to neuroscience, and moved to Dallas with my wife who was getting a graduate degree in neuroscience.
It was shortly after this that both my wife and I read Richard Dawkins The God Delusion and I was persuaded that God did not exist. My wife came around a few months later.
College was an essential part of me coming to the ideas which now guide my life.
The love of inquiry.
A desire for humanity to have a greater cultivation of love for inquiry.
The idea that humanism should replace supernaturalism as the dominant ethics in culture.
The belief that science should have a strong voice in politics.
College was an incredibly positive experience for me. I suspect that most people who don’t go to college shortly after high school never do. I got to do a lot of interesting things in my life, and I count my weird days as a fundamentalist christian among those things. I have tattooed countless people, I sang in bands, I self published comic books, I traveled the country, but I still found great joy in the halls of the academy. It has enriched my life.
How much goat’s blood do I have to gargle in order to get a little recognition around here?
Friday, December 12th, 2008Note from the editor: Edger columnist Chris Ray is on unpaid leave this month pending the results of an investigation into allegations of defamation of religion. His columns for December will be written by guest contributer Rev. Thor M’Glarven Krandok, high priest of the Dark Dungeons Coven in Sasquatutcha, Maine.
My my my, what’s all this to-do in Washington State then? Seems as though religionists of all stripes are getting in on this game of turning public property into the personal playgrounds of Papists and pulpiteers of all stripes. First this Solstice-stealing Christ cult got its little “nativity” scene, complete with its glorification of spoiling your brats with material goods (way to go, Wise Men, now he’ll think he’s God for the rest of his life), then those un-Covened materialists like Dan Barker and his anti-Fraega “Freedom From Religion Foundation” got their smarmy little anti-mythology placard (promptly exorcised by the Jesusites), and now yet another competing orthodoxy of these Christonians wants in on the game. Jumping judicial review, it looks like the Washington State Capitol building is as crowded as Ted Haggard’s asshole these days!
I have spent too many years completing online geomancy correspondence courses just to let an opportunity like this slip away again. I missed the Dot-Com bubble, the real estate bubble, and even the World of Warcraft gold-farming bubble, but by Aleister Crowley’s ridiculous necromancer costume I am sure as shaggoth not missing the Everybody Gets to Fuck with Washington State’s Free Exercise Statutes bubble. That’s right: I, the Reverend Thor M.G. Krandok, high priest of the Dark Dungeons Coven of Sasquatutcha, Maine, am officially getting in on this business of making Washington State into my personal religious battleground.
How? By doing what apparently everybody else in this damn un-Covened nation does: requesting that the Governor of Washington, Chris Gregoire, personally set aside a space for my favorite provincial tribalism:
Getting the government to pay attention to us traditional-values pre-Christian pagans has always been something of an uphill battle, and I hoped that it wouldn’t have to come down to riding the coattails of a bunch of squabbling anti-witchcraft bullies, but hey, I’m tired of trying to get attention just by ritually gargling goat’s blood to curry the favor of Thor Himself. The message reads: “I’m writing on behalf of all of the long-oppressed pagans, witches, warlocks, and orthodox System of a Down fans of America to request space for a donated Solstice sign on the Washington State Capitol. Our placard will read: “Drink-sodden orgy: the reason for the season.” Please reply to the above mailing address.”
That’ll rattle their Elune-rejecting, anti-Solstice bigoted Christ-cult asses, sure enough. And of course, if we don’t get what we want, we’ll do what any self-respecting spurned practicing pagan master of the dark arts with additional competency in Word and Excel would do: hex the living shit out of them.
On the 60th Annivesary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008The word “human” sends out shockwaves; reverberations that quiver with expectations and disappointments. “To err is human,” Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Criticism, “to forgive divine.” But just before this often (mis)quoted line, Pope says more fully:
To what base Ends, and by what abject Ways,
Are Mortals urg’d thro’ Sacred Lust of praise!
Ah ne’er so dire a Thirst of Glory boast,
Nor in the Critick let the Man be lost!
Good-Nature and Good-Sense must ever join;
To err is Human; to Forgive, Divine.
Pope could not have been more wrong. It is not “divine” to forgive – there is no celestial force needed to warrant forgiveness. To err and forgive are both human and only human. Of course, in this context Pope was referring to the great power of forgiveness, as “great power” could be synonymous with “divine”. It is in this way, and only this way, that forgiveness receives the mantle of divinity. And nowhere is this “great power” of human interaction and fraternity so boldly put forward, so beautifully contended, and so carefully laid out than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHH).
Today is its 60th birthday and seems as good a time as any to reflect on its articles, its implications and its necessity for living. This is worthy of a book and the great AC Grayling* has done just that (for most of his publishing career). It is a sad reflection that people do not have or know the UDHH. Of course, we all know of it, but how many realise its importance? As a suggestion, I would ask all those to follow the links I’ve given above and print out the UDHH, stick on the wall and to quietly reflect on it.
Let us briefly see why it is important. The Preamble begins in the steadfast gleam against the bullying of divine and political tyrannies from our past:
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Humans first before words, ideas and opinions. There is no propitiation toward a totalitarian dictatorship in the sky; there is no grovelling at the feet of men or gods or statues; there is no discrimination or rejection of these rights to others, based on colour, creed or country. “All members of the human family” only stresses everyone and the inherent fraternity of human beings (and scientifically provable relation of all living things to a common ancestor).
Here’s the beautiful thing: These Articles can be contested (Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”; Article 3: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”). These are not resolute, divinely given rights – they are, by definition, human rights. We may contend on each article, we may perhaps find some ambiguous – perhaps we may not fully condone others.
For example, Part 3, of Article 26 states: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” Yet, when we consider the resolute poison that can be fed to children, given their credulity and trust in elders; when we see the damage done to those who suffer from psychological disorders from “hell” and neuroses passed down from the Bronze-Age; when we consider, for example, that private schools can teach that “Evolution is just a theory” or “Evolution is wrong!”, does this Article really sound appropriate? Should this Article really be adopted universally? In Africa, children are still taught to see witches and to be viewed as witches (and then murdered out of fear). Thus, in this light we may question and be sceptical.
Indeed, my hope is that we scan this document for ideas we find unsuitable. Taking this example of Article 26, Part 3, there may be good and bad reasons for employing it. We may discuss and debate, be open to change of policies. This seems perfectly reasonable and at least we can all agree on this process, if not the Article’s stipulation itself. (A good case could be made, using the other Articles to justify Article 26. For example, the right of every individual to be free from oppression.) The beautiful thing is just this: It is a human declaration and we all know it. By being human, we easily sit with it and can shift the gates of appraisal, when Articles find favour or dismissal.
By contrast, a declaration given by a god, numbering only 10 is not amenable to change. The 10 Commandments, or Decalogue, is found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy (of the “stone the non-virgin on her wedding night” fame). There are sometimes noted to be more than 10 but that is beside the point. The 10 Commandments demand the worship of this god, Yahweh. This command to worship and grovelling takes up large parts of the commandments:
1. I am the Lord your God
2. You shall have no other gods before me
3. You shall not make for yourself an idol
4. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God
Correctly described by Christopher Hitchens as the “throat clearing” part of the commandments, it then launches into a self-righteous expose on the idiocy of human sensibility. As if to say, “by the way, murder is wrong”, “by the way, stealing is wrong”, “by the way, respect your parents.” There is nothing incredible, beautiful or revolutionary in the Decalogue and, nowadays, quite insulting to the majority of people. Yet, it finds its place in many important arenas and public places. Nowhere in the Decalogue, by the way, is there any mention of compassion or respect (I’m not focusing on the New Testament in this article and using the Decalogue simply as a contrast to the UDHH. I expect critics will mention Jesus and his lovely message).
One list, from a random desert god, from a pantheon of others, who chose a group of people, who weren’t in Egypt, to escape from Egypt, demanding to worship “Him” who helped them escape from a land they were never captive in the first place. It seems perfectly silly to me. Yet it is “divine”, it is not “human” and – instead of being rejected or, at least, changed – it is held to be perfect because it is divine. This is backwards and illogical. It seems no fault that the Decalogue is exactly what Joseph Kony’s The Lord’s Resistance Army uses as its basis for child-soldiers and zombie factories; its disgusting affront to human rights.
Kony is of course a soft target. But think of a scenario where someone using the UDHH, the basis of which stems from the writings of Jefferson, Paine, the intense fraternity explained by Russell, Kurtz and Mandela and Desmond Tutu, is going to turn tyrannical and bloodthirsty. It is not impossible, but it seems unlikely. Why then this paradox: the blatantly human declaration receives openness to change, discussions, and dismissals but finds little to no acceptance amongst tyrants – But one that is “divine” from a “loving god” can easily be imagined in the hands of any raging warlord (as the examples of any theocratic regime show).
It is the acceptance of humanity, first and forthright, that is important now. It is more important than whose theology is more correct or can prove the existence of a god. First, let us establish the peace we all want. Let the world allow the ash of war to settle. Let us help our fellow men and women (and especially children), wherever they are, to liberate them from oppression. It is not charities that will help, but the charitable spirit that keeps charities alive. But that spirit must be fostered into organisations and movements that will actualise the human behind the beggar, that will liberate the human from the “untouchable” he or she is. This, and not giving them money or constant supplies of food, will help more (indeed, charities are needed for the basic living but the long term goal of human restoration will be alongside and not despite charitable organisations. Just in case the reader thinks me too sceptical of charity!).
Russell said “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” And this ghost smiles over the echoes of UDHH. It is a sense of hope, a sense of gratitude that we gaze onto the lines of UDHH. Six decades has passed since its appearance and still we are nowhere close to liberating our fellow man. But I am optimistic it will happen: We are, by our very nature, compassionate beings, I sincerely believe that. We must begin by allowing us to channel such reserves of hope and love and compassion as we have, into arenas which are barren of such qualities. Guided by knowledge, we will get there and with the spur of, if not love, then empathy. Even if there is a god, it seems he would be more proud of us creating a “brotherhood of man” for the sake of them being fellow beings than forcing them into the shadow of worship.
On both levels, every one wins. And it is this notion of the liberated human that is the undercurrent for longstanding Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
* – Grayling has a beautiful series of blogs, concerning the different articles of the UDHH, avalaible at The Guardian.
Once an Etiology: a short rant on the Tree of Life
Monday, December 8th, 2008I have always thought of the Tree of Life and the fall of man as a metaphor for maturing. A child is innocent and does not know right or wrong - or about its own death – but a child learns from its mistakes and about its fallibility. It learns what is right and what is wrong, mostly from an authority figure. A parent or guardian is like a covenant writer; they set up the rules for their children to obey.
A child’s life is easy. They don’t have to work, but instead are given everything, like God gave Adam everything in the garden of Eden. But there comes a time when a child needs to grow up, work to live, and take responsibility for actions. The Tree of Life, and man’s fall from it, is a nifty symbol for maturing. John Peter Lange goes so far as to say that taking responsibility for ones own actions is the central theme of Genesis 2-3. “It was designed to bring out the necessary self-determination of a creature choosing freely, either for or against God, either for the God-willed good or the possible evil – and so to make perfect its independence” (206 Lange). The ability for Adam and Eve to take responsibility for their own actions signals the death of innocence and birth into a world of free-will in which actions are judged by their consequences and justice is done to those who disobey.
It is because of the impact of this story on western civilization that I think it fails as an adequate and sustainable etiology for contemporary thought. First of all, it has remained static as an etiology. Society and its morals evolve as it needs to adapt to new circumstances. It tries to explain the origin of the cultural norms of the time it was written. For example, man blames woman for the fall, and God states that man would hold domain over woman. Science has given us testable etiologies – real stories of where we came from and why we are the way we are. Michael Shermer, in his short story “Genesis Revisited: a Scientific Creation Story” cleverly provides a more scientifically accurate creation account. For example, “And God created the pongidids and hominids with 98 percent genetic similarity, naming two of them Adam and Eve, who were anatomically fully modern humans” (MichaelShermer.com). There is still beauty in Genesis 2-3, but it can no longer be looked at as an etiology…as they are supposed to explain the way things are and came to be. Since science has been more successful at explaining these things, the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Life has been relegated to the ranks of myth. “A narrative expressing a profound psychological or religious truth that cannot be verified by historical inquiry or other scientific means” (G-30 Harris/Platzner). To “J” the Yahwist Genesis 2-3 was an etiology, but to contemporary eyes it is a myth.
“Behold, it was very good.”
Saturday, December 6th, 2008“God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” —Genesis 1:31
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” —Romans 1:20
Creationists often claim that the ‘beauty of creation’ tells us something about the nature of their god; and that we atheists are ‘without excuse’ for not believing in god after looking at the world around us. The closet creationists, the IDists, also claim that such wonderful design in the universe is proof of a designer, which to them is the Christian god.
Now, let us take a look at a beautiful organism that must have been created by god. The evidence for special creation of this organism is so convincing that I am seriously doubting my acceptance of evolution.
This wonderful organism, Cymothoa exigua, simply must have been created by a loving creator! This cute little tongue-eating isopod causes degeneration of the tongue of its host fish, the rose snapper, Lutjanus guttatus, and it then attaches to the remaining tongue stub and floor of the fish’s mouth by hook-like pereopods. In this position the isopod acts as a replacement to the fish’s missing tongue, and in a marvel of god’s sheer ingenuity, gets the first opportunity to devour incoming meals.
Praise god for creating such a wonderful organism! Through this, we see that god loves parasites, is sadistic, might have been on pot, should not be messed around with, and…oh…according to Christians, must be worshiped. If you don’t worship this sadistic god, he will damn you to hell, and considering his amazing creations such as the above, this is a threat that we should seriously consider! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord for being a loving and sadistic god at the same time! Praise the Lord for giving us such awesome creatures that helps us marvel at the beauty of his creation!
Praise our Father in heaven, the loving Creator of gruesome organisms! Amen.
The End of Privacy
Saturday, December 6th, 2008This post is taken from my old blog, and its a couple of years old.
But it came up with a friend who is aware of this blog, and I thought everyone might enjoy the discussion.
So here goes, with a little editing:
THE END OF PRIVACY
My friend Mazyar showed me his iPhone the other day. The one feature he was impressed with the most is the way the iPhone can show you where you are on a map at any given time. I suspect this is G.P.S. technology. Which means it is very hard for iPhone owners to stay lost.
I know there are cameras all over my school. There are cameras on the stoplights on the way home. There are cameras in all the stores I shop at. Even places like state parks, which are supposed to provide isolation, require payment and thus detection for patrons of the park. With Google Earth anyone with a computer can watch your house.
If you are on myspace you already provide a lot of information about yourself that would allow any person who closely monitors your page to decipher a great deal about you. You may have security features on your page, but hackers exist, and some work for industry and governments.
So what’s next.
We can still engage within certain activities in our own homes without anyone knowing about it. Can’t we?
What about drug tests at many jobs?
What about drug tests required by workman’s comp if you get injured on the job?
Well at least our sexual activities are still mostly hidden.
Well that’s true if you don’t use the internet for sexual activity. If you look at Suicide Girls on your computer, anyone trained in psychology could accurately discern a lot about your sexual fetishes and predispositions. And I’m told its not hard to decipher to which websites a computer has gone to. If I am not misinformed, that’s precisely the reason why we all need a firewall since autonomous computer programs designed to harass us with advertisement based on our web-browsing history.
Well your sexual behavior is private if you don’t look at internet porn. Isn’t it?
Not if you have ever purchased sex toys or lingerie with plastic.
I think the ladies who read my blog will agree that it says a lot about a girl’s sexuality if she buys her lingerie at Victoria’s Secret vs. Fredrick’s of Hollywood vs. a lesser known lingerie outlet (which always have the trashiest stuff).
Let’s just say I personally need no less than a Fredrick’s of Hollywood girl, I think I would scare a Victoria’s Secret girl.
What about our private social relationships.
Well social relationships have never been very private. They are often only private to the extent that they are boring. If you are doing something worth talking about, and if you’ve talked about it, you can be pretty sure somebody you haven’t told is talking about it.
I saw on PBS’s show Frontline that the phone companies revealed that they have assisted the federal government in recording vast quantities of phone calls. In general I reject conspiracy theories, but this one has been fessed up to by the phone companies. Our phones are really, really, easy to tap. If it hasn’t happened to you its only because no one has wanted to.
My final word on this blog is simply this. Technology is only getting more sophisticated.
The Barbarism of Islam
Friday, December 5th, 2008This is the third part in an ongoing espousing on the rejection of Islam and why it outrages reason to ascribe to this brand of faith.
It is no simple matter.
Forged by steel and moulded by conquest, the once conquered lands of Islam are not easily bracketed off into obscurity. As much as apologists want, we know a great deal about them. The rosy-speckled history the apologists paint of dhimmis is not true: The conquered ahl al-kitab (Christians and Jews) were not bedfellows of Muslims; nor on friendly terms with their Muslim overlords. A casual glance through any history of Constantinople, Iran, Iraq, and so on will reveal cultures already in place; cultures that were thriving, accentuating their identities. Islam has made of itself a new garb of pride – that before its installation into the minds of its bloodthirsty warlords, the peoples were “godless pagans”. Any Imam will tell his flock these people were barbarous, “naked”, murderous, mad and unforgiving. I have heard this from pulpits and daises from many mosques. It is patently wrong and arrogant that without Islam people were (or are!) unforgiving tyrants of puritanical evil.
However, one of the many the many trenches between reason and ignorance, was (and is) dug from Islam’s condemnation of anything pre-Islamic. Muslims are taught to relish in how powerful the Islamic warriors were: unstoppable, unthinking, conquering machines. Indeed, we may be in awe at their power and might but by today’s standards we do not unflinchingly appraise such crass abandonment of human rights. No “Briton” that I know is proud of the many colonised lands that Britain managed to usurp; I hardly think colonial powers today are proud of their forefathers inclination to make the rest of the world fall under their dominance. We look, we relent and we learn. Why not so for Islam, then? It is nothing to be proud of and quite shocking to love such carnage from that time.
Most readers who are not Muslim will not understand the previous point. But it is a serious one: Islam really teaches its followers to be proud of its conquering mindset, its history of brutality, its dismissal of “pagans” and their idols, because they did not worship the “true god”. Yes, we can point the finger also at other theisms, but the level of pride that is thrust toward Muslims, like a crown of thorns, is one that would make anyone else flinch when grabbing – yet Muslims’ hands would bleed with eagerness to clutch such thorny accomplishments. The easy dismissal in the Quran of pagans is horrid to contemplate: these were humans, worthy of respect and rights. The crass dismissal to hellfire, under the solitarist “pagan” approach, is horrid to contemplate and quite sickening.
There is nothing Muslims can be proud of in their history of war. There is nothing any of us should be proud of in our cultures’ histories of war. That may be for another argument, but at no time can I see advocating bloodshed as good, as a source of pride.
My reasons for raising the history of Islam are twofold: It needs to be understood and it leads me to my second point.
The Quran (or at least the one we have now, chosen from amongst others and out of arrogance by Uthman) is said to be eternal, perfect, the “Word of God”, unalterable, unchanging and unchanged through the centuries. It apparently holds all the truths of the world inside it: Science, politics, ethics, prophecy. People truly believe this to be a “magic book”, to use the great Sam Harris’ phrase. Yet when you point out any of this to Muslims, they will reply with the horrid doctrine of “abrogation” or it was “part of the times”. Yet, if god’s word is eternal how can it be part of “those times”? And why did this god need abrogation (i.e. when a verse trumps what a previous verse says, as it is now no longer applicable), and not simply give the better command in the first place? Either he is stupid, or he is imperfect, or he is not omnipotent.
Nonetheless, Muslims can not escape the fact that their past is made of bloody conquests, in the name of their god. But it is now time to realise, this is not something a normal human being would lay their pride in.
The slaughter and massacring, the acquisition of slaves, the destruction of temples, idols and all forms of a culture’s identity were and are thrust into the darkness of oncoming faith. Those who are fans of Allah, no doubt feel some great passion and love and equate the two in the conquering of lands.
No doubt they praised god when they won and cursed their enemies when they lost. In contemplating this two-fold notion of love, projected onto a person or idea (or deity), WB Yeats wrote a series of poems giving the Blakean notion of the Rose. Many critics have called William Blake’s poem The Serpent & The Rose the most “perfect” poem, as it encapsulates all ideas and every story we will tell as a species. But in understanding this passion, this parallel of ensconced ideas, twirled together like a self-eating serpent, Yeats gave a cry which no doubt echoes many extremist Muslims:
… I, too, await,
The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
- The Secret Rose
The relations of smithy and fires to terrorist bombings should be ignored to a certain degree: But truly, this could be the dying words of any martyr for Islam. Perhaps not so eloquently, but in its eloquence I hope it conveys the two-fold passion of love for something powerful.
Underlying the arrogant notion that the Divine loves you, cares about you and answers your prayers, there is the idea of reciprocity. The amount of passion shown and the desire for that beloved god’s hour to finally arise, underpins all atrocities committed in his name. This might be linked to the “death wish” or “death instinct” or thanatos identified by Freud – along with eros.
The bonus of arriving in paradise or Heaven to be greeted by many virgins (or, as recently translated, raisins!), seems to encapsulate the reciprocated love of any relationship. God just happens to be the most beloved of all things, above and beyond any “mere mortal” or, worse, “woman”. How are we meant to step between something which is regarded as “above and beyond” normal human reasoning; how are we to step in-between the Rose (that has become of Allah) and the twirled serpent of extremist Muslims, curled and licking the leaves of this bronze-aged myth?
I call that serpent “faith” and I call that rose “religious belief”. That serpent will suck on the old, dry leaves, it will taste the bitter crackle of stale ideas. It will feel the thorns of humanity that plague every man-made thing; that serpent can not ignore the sharp-points as it coils lovingly around this concept of god. That rose is long dead and we critics, we ex-Muslims, are calling it for what it is: Unnecessary, unhelpful, untrue. We want all these serpents to release the hold of that rose, to let it fall softly to the ground and gaze above the long grass of obscurity. “Above and beyond” should not be applied to human reasoning, but to human superstitions! Above and beyond all notions lies the plain mortality and humanity and sequestered fallibility that repudiates all concepts of perfection!
The sun still shines and the dew will come again. We hope that all humans might lower their hands and touch that dripping dew. We hope that you raise your eyes to the bearning sun and relish in the dimming of clouds. To look up, beyond the dying rose of old ideas. This must be humanity’s hour, come ‘round at last, slouching away from Bethlehem to be born.
Driven to Prayer
Friday, December 5th, 2008As I come to the final 12 days of my undergraduate degree, I strangely find myself thinking a great deal of my Christan past. Perhaps not so strangely. Even though I have As and Bs in all my classes I could still screw up by not studying enough, and in some cases make a bad enough grade to fail. Some of my finals are very heavily weighted.
So I hear a familiar call in my mind, “Oh God! Please help me.”
WTF?
I don’t believe in God anymore why am I even having that thought?
I think its because to a certain extent, I wish God existed.
At least the kind of God who would help me ace all my finals.
Its kind of like a wish granting sky-genie.
This is a real step down from the way I actually believed in God, which was always as some kind of transcendental being that in addition to granting my wishes, would also help me be a better person, a person who was as the bible says, “in this world, but not of it.”
I guess being an atheist has made my schemas about prayer shallow.
When I was a Christian I prayed for things like a greater capacity for love, compassion, patience.
Now I call out for good grades and then I feel like a douchebag, because I don’t even believe in God.
Its like some sort of strange reflex I have yet to lose.
I find myself using this strange behavior if I have a hard enough time finding the remote or my keys as well.
I don’t know.
I just hope it gets a laugh.
What’s happening in Canada?
Thursday, December 4th, 2008I’m not sure if the news has penetrated the USA, but I feel like I need to provide a summary of the events that have led up to the temporary time-out of our government. Also, I feel these events need to be hotly debated and approached with skepticism. Anything from spin to downright lies are coming out of every media outlet and politician in Canada right now, so I’m going to try to downplay the spin, but definitely encourage everyone to challenge anything I say (especially Canadians).
First, my disclaimer: I’m a member of the social democratic New Democratic Party of Canada, and am thus partisan on all the issues I’m going to talk about. I’ll try to stay neutral, but I make no promises. If you’ve followed me on Facebook at all, my rants and arguments have been littering everywhere for about five days now.
So now some background:
Canada is a technically a constitutional monarchy, which means our head of state is the Queen of England, and her representative the Governor General. The monarchy has little to no influence over this country, but the Governor General does need to be consulted for certain events. Our current Governor General is Michaelle Jean. Typically her role is ceremonial, but in certain instances she can use her discretion to look out for Canada.
Canada has five main political parties, and four with seats in our parliament. They are (from oldest to newest); the Liberal Party (centrist policies), the New Democratic Party (or NDP, social democrats), the Bloc Quebecois (website in French; a party for the “protection of Quebec’s interests on a federal level as well as the promotion of its sovereignty” [Wikipedia]), the Green Party (environmentalist party with centre-right economic policies, they have no seats presently), and the Conservative Party (right wing). In comparison to American politics, the Liberals follow the general policies of the Democrats (with a less charismatic leader) and the Conservatives are similar to the Republicans (and even share an evangelical support base – but the Canadian wing is less overt about it).
Finally to introduce the topic, Canada operates as a representative parliamentary democracy. Rather than have three separate branches of government like the USA (legislative, executive and judicial), Canada has a weird blend. When Canadians vote in federal elections, we choose an member of parliament (through a single member plurality or first-past-the-post system, i.e. the most votes wins) who represents us and our constituency in Ottawa (the nation’s capital). Typically, the party with the most seats “wins” the election and the Governor General gives the opportunity to govern to that party. The leader of the winning party becomes the Prime Minister, who chooses his or her cabinet to form the executive branch of government. Contrary to some belief, Canadians do not elect a government or prime minister, we elect representatives who are supposed to do that for us. Usually this system works fine, as the winning party has more than half of the seats in the House of Commons, thereby halving a majority and the ability to pass laws without consulting the opposition.
During the 1990s, Canada was lead by Jean Chretien and the Liberals. They typically received popular votes in the 40%-50% range, while getting a majority of the seats (prompting many calls for alternative electoral systems, but thats another post on its own). In 2003 he stepped down, and his long-time Finance Minister, Paul Martin, took over as Prime Minister. However, a number of scandals overran the Liberals at this time and his government held only a minority of the seats after Chretien left, and eventually fell after the right was united by Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper won a minority of seats for his Conservative party in 2006. He has governed as Prime Minister since.
One of the laws Stephen Harper introduced was a fixed election date law. Citing that the parliament had become dysfunctional, in September 2008 he requested that the Governor General to call an election an entire year early (had his government been defeated by the opposition there would be a required election). Typically in minority governments in Canada, elections occur after a vote of non-confidence occurs. This means that the majority of the members of parliament vote against the government on a bill of confidence. The Speech from the Throne (the first thing read in any session of parliament that outlines the government’s goals for the term), budgets, any finance bills, and any other bills the government puts forth as confidence motions are all votes of confidence. Between 2006 and 2008 the Conservatives used many confidence bills to force the Liberals, still weak and poor since Chretien left, to vote for the government (often the Liberals would fail to show up in parliament as a way to abstain from voting).
After the election on October 14, 2008, Stephen Harper and his Conservatives received a slightly stronger minority government, despite having what many consider a lame-duck leader of the Liberals, Stephane Dion, as their chief opponent. Dion and his Green Shift Carbon Tax were so unpopular with Canadians that the Liberals received their lowest popular vote since the confederation of the country in 1867. With his weakest opposition ever, Harper still couldn’t convince many Canadians to support his party. In fact his party only received a popular vote of 37%. It would seem Canadians are still uncomfortable with Harper and his policies.
Since the election, Harper presented a Throne Speech, which passed with support of the Liberals. The Throne Speech is usually vague enough that most oppositions parties pass it.
On Thursday, November 27 (only a week ago), Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister, presented an economic update, that the Conservatives promised to use to tackle the economic crisis and recession. To the opposition parties dismay the update contained a removal of the rights of civil servants to strike for three years, removed the guarantee for equal pay for equal work that protected women’s salaries, no promises for bailout or stimulus packages, no conditions for bank bailouts, no money for small or medium sized business, and to top it off, removed the government subsidy to political parties.
This subsidy grants $1.95 to each party for each vote they get in a federal election. It was introduced by Chretien to replace corporate and union donations to political parties, as well as caps on individual donations. Since then the Greens and NDP rely on the fund for half of their budget, the Liberals for two-thirds, the Bloc for 86% and the Conservatives for only a third. The government claimed that this represented each party “tightening their belts” during the hard times to come, and that they would stand to lose the most money (since they received the most votes). However, the disproportionate hit that some parties would take (it is common knowledge that the Conservatives are “swimming” in cash and can afford to run campaigns nearly all year long, while elections have fixed campaign spending limits) along with the extreme right-wing nature of many of the points in the update seemed to signal a strategic partisan attack on the rival parties.
Immediately after the release of this update, all three opposition parties slammed it. By the next day the Liberals and the NDP had recruited Ed Broadbent (leader of the NDP in the 1980s who brought them to their most successful showing) and Jean Chretien to spend the weekend discussing a coalition that could bring down the Harper Conservatives. The update, being a fiscal bill, was scheduled to be tabled on Monday, December 1, along with what’s known as opposition day (when the opposition parties get to table bills). By the end of Friday, the Liberals let out that they were potentially tabling a motion that said the House of Commons had lost confidence in the current government and that a new government could be formed within the current house, as well, fearing heating rhetoric, Harper delayed the votes by a week, postponing any non-confidence motions until December 8.
By the end of Saturday, Harper and Flaherty had removed the party funding aspect of the update, as well as the removal of the right to strike. However, it seemed too late to slow the momentum of the budding coalition.
Also over the weekend, a member of the Prime Minister’s Office released a tape recording of an NDP caucus teleconference where they discussed past attempts to work with the Bloc to topple the Conservatives. In Canada, recording a conversation is legal so long as one party involved in the conversation is aware of the recording. It is unclear whether the tape was recorded legally, so the NDP are calling for a criminal investigation. The Conservatives maintain that an invitation was mistakenly sent to one of their employees who recorded the conversation.
On Monday afternoon, the leaders of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc signed an agreement stating that the Liberals and NDP would enter into a coalition, supported on confidence votes by the Bloc, and sought to replace the Conservatives at the earliest possibility. The coalition promised that a Liberal government would take control, but would give a quarter of the cabinet seats to NDP MPs. This would represent the first coalition government in Canada since the First World War. While the Liberals and NDP combined have less seats then the Conservatives, with the support of the Bloc they represent a majority of the House and a majority of the popular vote from the past election.
Now, one of the options the Governor General has when the government loses a confidence motion is to ask if anyone else feels they can govern with the confidence of the House. This has only happened once in Canadian history.
On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday parliament was in session and denigrated quickly into shouting matches and harsh allegations. While Dion and the coalition challenged Harper to face a confidence vote, the Conservatives called the coalition “traitors” for working with the “separatists” of the Bloc. The Conservatives further attacked the coalition calling it “undemocratic” and forged in “back room deals.” Quickly it was found that in 2004 the Harper Conservatives had attempted a situation almost exactly the same to attempt to oust then Prime Minister Paul Martin. Further, in 2000, the Canadian Alliance (the precursor to the Conservatives) attempted to form a coalition with the Bloc and Progressive Conservatives to oust the government.
On Tuesday the Conservatives launched radio ads attacking the coalition and on Wednesday Harper took to national television for a five minute speech in which he chastised the opposition as undemocratic and wrong for Canada. He refused to use the word “separatist” in the French translation, opting instead for the less divisive word “sovereigntist.” After his speech, which provided no new information, Stephane Dion gave a rebuttal, which suffered from low quality, arriving late to the networks and Dion’s weak English.
On Thursday (today) morning, Harper visited the Governor General, who ended her European trip early, to request to prorogue parliament. To prorogue parliament essentially means to take a time out. Everything is put on pause for a break. Typically it occurs when a government needs a bit of wind down time for the year end or summer break. No Prime Minister has ever requested to prorogue to prevent a vote of non-confidence. While being generally symbolic, it would have been within the rights of Ms. Jean to deny Mr. Harper the request and instead ask him to face the music. However, setting precedence, the request was granted and parliament was closed until January 26. The government is still able to spend money and operate, however no new bills will be presented and any spending to occur should be approved when parliament resumes.
Had the request been denied, Harper’s government would have fallen on Monday, and he would be visiting the Governor General to request an election (the second within as many months). She would then have the ability to deny that request and allow the coalition to govern.
Harper has promised to present a budget as soon as parliament resumes, the earliest a budget has ever been presented. However, the coalition claims that without “monumental changes” they will bring down the governing party at first chance.
If the government falls in January, it may be more reasonable for the Governor General to call an election, since, although they haven’t done anything yet, it will have been a longer period of time since the past election.
Current polls show little support for either the coalition of a continuance of Mr. Harper’s government. At this point, the likely consensus of Canadians is that the government should settle down and get to work. The problem lies in the best way to accomplish that, be it by coalition or a more cooperative Conservative Party. Also, rumblings have been heard from within the Conservative Party that it may be time to replace Stephen Harper as their leader.
The biggest cog so far for the coalition has been Stephane Dion. Still few people like Mr. Dion, and he has pledged to step down in May when the Liberals choose a new leader (one of Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, or Dominic LeBlanc). Canadians are also very inexperienced with coalitions as compared to their European counterparts, where coalitions are the norm in government. Many see a coalition between ideologically different parties as disastrous and they question if it will even survive until January.
So now, until January 26 Canada will be under a PR war between the Conservatives and the Coalition. Both will claim to stand for Canada and democracy. Both will launch extensive ad campaigns, and fight for the hearts of Canadians, even if the key decision lies with Mr. Harper, his cabinet, and the Governor General.
It is time to restore the original meaning of Christmas!
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008Note from the editor: Edger columnist Chris Ray is on unpaid leave this month pending the results of an investigation into allegations of defamation of religion. His columns for December will be written by guest contributer Rev. Thor M’Glarven Krandok, high priest of the Dark Dungeons Coven in Sasquatutcha, Maine.
What has become of our beloved Yuletide, my friends and fellows? By the Gods and Lesser Demons, I say, I didn’t spend three years completing an online correspondence course in geomancy just to watch these “Christians” take our beloved solstice-day from us!
Back when I was a young soul, Christmas really meant something- the communal slaughter of cattle, the unbridled indulgence in drink-sodden orgy, the tying of the ol’ family sunpost to prevent our beloved Sol from escaping during the winter months. Why, even Sol Invictus himself seems evicted from his own favorite feast day by these bawling bandits of Beiwe, all in the name of “political correctness” and “Jesus” and all that!
Poppycock and paganism, I say!
No longer can we use mistletoe for ritual magic. Never again will we be allowed to brutally sacrifice our most buxom daughters in the Festival of the Wild Women. No, now all we use mistletoe for is some prudish parody of the genuinely lustrous celebrations of old. And human sacrifice? Forget it! Now they only let us kill the occasional puttering peon at Wal-Mart when he gets in the way of our Solstice Shopping Spree. Tell me, if you were the divine superintelligence watching over the spring crop yield, would you be appeased by the sneaker-stamped skull of some toothless old greeter from down at the local consumatorium? I think not!
Who will help the widow’s son, you ask? Not these Christians, by Glasya-Labolas! No, all they want is “Merry Christmas” in our shops and “Nativity scenes” on our town halls. Not satisfied with merely stealing our holiday, ruthlessly suppressing our cultural heritage, and trying to burn to cinders every reference to our ancient ways, they want to add insult to Inquisition by telling us that Christmas is all about their kitschy Mithra knockoff-in-chief Jesus Christ!
This “political correctness” fad has to come to an end. The original, true, authentic Christmas was a time of delirious merrymaking for nearly every civilization in recorded history. It wasn’t about this madman exorcist wandering the desert spouting nonsense about the end of days, it was about getting so drunk you go blind and having sex with your daughter! It wasn’t about Persian kings giving gifts to some spoiled brat in a manger in Bethlehem (or was that Nazareth?), it was about sending your favored local god a hefty sacrifice and fellating the high priest for good luck!
This newfangled Christian cult has stolen our heritage from us, and they’re getting so cranky in their vigilante merrymaking that they’ll try to whitewash us True Christmasers from history. Don’t let that trampled Wal-Mart stooge’s dying breath be “Merry Christmas,” let it be “Happy Holidays”- the original Christmas was for everyone, not just the descendants of a wretched tribe of squabbling Nicean bishops. Don’t waste your money buying nice things for your good-looking children and sexually attractive wife- sacrifice them to Ba’al!
I’m declaring a War for Christmas, and I say- join me, or abandon our most sacred traditions to the hands of these modernists!
Satanic Verses II – Starring author Sherry Jones
Monday, December 1st, 2008Here we go again…
Some of you may have been following the development of Sherry Jone’s book The Jewel of Medina. Here’s a quotation from the book’s official website:
A’isha bint Abi Bakr is the daughter of a rich merchant from Mecca in the harsh, exotic world of seventh-century Arabia at the time of the foundation of Islam. When she is married to the Prophet Muhammad at the age of nine, she must rely on her wits, her courage, and even her sword in a struggle to control her own destiny and carve out a place for herself in the community, fighting religious persecution, jealous sister-wives, political rivals, and her own temptations. As she grows to love her kind, generous husband, her ingenuity and devotion make her an indispensable advisor to Muhammad. Ultimately, she becomes one of the most important women in Islam, and a fierce protector of her husband’s words and legacy.
Not exactly one I’m quivering to buy. But, as I highlighted in another article, I don’t have to like Mickey Mouse to defend him from a mullah’s fatwa.
Jones studied Arabic, Islamic history from early sources and was inspired to write on Aisha. This is a wonderful reason to write and she received a contract from none other than Random House. In an effort at obtaining endorsements, Random House sent out pre-pub copies to a number of scholars. One of these was Denise Spellberg, a respected scholar and whose book Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of ‘A’isha Bint Abi Bakr, Jones read. Because of Jones’ liking for Spellberg’s book, she put the scholar on the list for Random House.
However, as the Wall Street Journal reported:
Spellberg wasn’t a fan of Ms. Jones’s book. On April 30, Shahed Amanullah, a guest lecturer in Ms. Spellberg’s classes and the editor of a popular Muslim Web site, got a frantic call from her. “She was upset,” Mr. Amanullah recalls. He says Ms. Spellberg told him the novel “made fun of Muslims and their history,” and asked him to warn Muslims.
Excuse me? “Warn Muslims”? There is a reason why this article in the WSJ is entitled “You Still Can’t Write About Muhamma”. Spellberg is again adopting the position of the parent preventing the younger, “not as intelligent” or “not old enough” child from experiencing a book. Are Muslims not adults? Can they not judge for themselves?
In fact, this same Shahed Amanullah – the editor-in-chief for altmuslim.com – wrote an article entitled “Muslims have nothing to fear from this book” in The Guardian. This can be seen as a dismissal of Spellberg’s “warning” to Muslims. In this article, he highlights what occurred behind the scenes.
As you may have figured, Random House “decided to pull The Jewel of Medina”. The reasons?
[D]eputy publisher Thomas Perry said the company was advised that the publication might be offensive to Muslims, and that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.
And thanks to Amanullah’s article, we have a further understanding of it. The flames are doused, wood is thrown and the fires of intolerance are pointed to. Yet the firestarters themselves are to blame, not Sherry Jones. And the fear of Random House is legion. Salman Rushdie wrote a scathing attack against Random House’s decision especially when their reasoning was: “We don’t want another Satanic Verses“.
Naturally, Jones was devastated by Random House’s decision. Says Jones:
[A]fter being told that her book would not be published, [she said]: “I wanted to honour Aisha and all the wives of Muhammad by giving voice to them, remarkable women whose crucial roles in the shaping of Islam have so often been ignored — silenced — by historians.”
Naturally many Muslims are against “Western” writers, or people using “Western techniques” to analyse their history. Accordingly, this “sacred history” is impenetrable to normal sceptical, scientific scrutiny. Reza Aslan in No God but God writes very beautifully about this elastic, vaporous faith that has little hold in the real world. But why? Shouldn’t we be viewing Muslims and their history in the grown-up, real-world context just as we view other “grown-up” things, like politics, philosophy, history and science? I believe this is less patronising to Muslims then constantly attempting to shield them from things that might hurt their feelings. Why treat them like children? I treat them like adults, and so should we all. They are not better or worse, but my equal and I will treat their ideas as such. I will not attempt to demean, mock or dismiss them – but I will certainly not hold the same respect for their ideas.
My friend, Maryam Namazie and the great Paul Kurtz, constantly remind us that: Rights and respect belong to people not ideas! It is in this spirit we progress, not by shielded ignorance and forced dismissal.
Yet, what are we to make of this? Amanullah writes in that same article:
In this case, however, that pattern has been broken. There have been no actual threats of violence from Muslims to date, nor has there been any organised effort by Muslims to stop the publication of the book. The author herself – unlike others who have sought to intentionally provoke and insult – has insisted that her book was written with a profound respect and admiration of the central characters. And the Muslims she has engaged with so far (in three sites online) have treated her respectfully, allowing her to clarify her intentions without censorship.
This was written on the September 9 2008. But consider the events of just 20 days later.
Three men have been charged after the office of the British publisher of the controversial novel The Jewel of Medina was firebombed Saturday.
Luckily no one was injured. We are uncertain about the reasons behind it or whether the men were acting out of Islamic duty*. Yet I have trouble seeing other reasons for the firebombing of a not-particularly famous publishing house – maybe it was jealous lovers of an employee, maybe it was the wrong address. Sure, we can’t dismiss other reasoning but how likely is that? If evidence were to surface, I would immediately retract this statement and apologise. But as yet, I can think of no reason for doing so.
To add blood to the wound, my own country is not allowing the distribution of the book. The article, on a popular Muslims radio-station’s website, states:
A controversial book by American journalist turned novelist, Sherry Jones entitled Jewel of Medina, has been banned from being distributed in South Africa. This comes as the Johannesburg High Court ruled on Wednesday that the contents were found to be blasphemous.
I have emailed the popular radio-station which deals with Muslim-views, but I highly doubt I will receive a reply. “Blasphemous”? I am particularly averse to this claim. Some people’s feelings will be hurt because of a fictional book. Have we not been through this before. Can anyone say: Satanic Verses?
But it is easy to mock the High Court ruling and the banning of this book. I do not doubt the intelligence of these people, but the problem is this: They are catering for those violent, dangerous men by banning it. They are catering for it in two polarised ways.
1. As Indicative of Violence
By banning it, these extremists have something to be angry about. Anyone who has been to Mosques and heard sermons by mullahs and imams, will know how easy it is to gain coherence through anger. Consider how many books are out there that offend to the greatest degree the Islamic or any faith: The God Delusion, God is Not Great, Why I am Not a Muslim, Why I am Not a Christian, even the novels of Salman Rushdie and Tariq Ali. Some of these books are written with the deliberate intent of mocking and blaspheming against the core tenets of religious belief. Yet they remain on the shelves. So far, no one I know has been hurt because they bought any of these books.
But a novel – a piece of art – a fictional story based on historic events, set to glorify Muhammad and especially his wives – is dubbed blasphemous. No doubt the reasoning would be easy to disclose: It attacks ideas that would hurt the feelings of grown-up Muslims (talk about treating them like children, how patronising). But if they are going to ban a fictional book, written with the intention of respecting the ideas of Islam (mostly), then they must ban the non-fiction, intentionally insulting books of Hitchens, Ibn Warraq and Russell. Otherwise, as is the case at the moment, it is a double-standard.
(JM Coetzee remarks that the truly nauseating aspect on book-banning is the licence to say “art is offensive”. Who is judging art this way?)
2. Protecting the Innocent
And here’s where I struggle. Somehow, I do not see it completely in the light of Orwellian paranoia. I can’t bring myself to be too angry at the fact that someone else is deciding what I can and can not read. Yes, I am upset. Yet, I can not help wonder if they are simply trying to do the right thing. We’ve seen that these extremists will kill and destroy, if they feel someone is upsetting their ideas. We’ve seen that the reason patronising ghouls like Denise Spellberg will “warn” adult Muslims that their feelings will be hurt by a fictional novel – is nothing but a pandering to how extremists want to be treated. Extremist Muslims have shown, in their child-like but horrible responses, how they take fictional books talking about their faith: death, violence, carnage. Extremist Muslims have told us with gunshots as fullstops and death as exclamation marks, how we must treat them.
It is strange that it must be the critics of religion who say “Let us treat them like adults”. I have little respect for the so-called moderate voices in Islam. But the case-in-point remains: Is the High Court ruling attempting to actually protect its citizens from the religious bullies of Islam?
In this case, I think yes. They are doing what they can, but in so doing, are unconsciously pandering to the spoilt brat crying in the corner, that has become extremist Islam. And they keep using it! They will keep on using it if books get banned, if cartoons are not shown, if we are afraid of them.
I believe the solution is to begin treating them as adults and ignore the brats. Sure, we can not engage in discussions when the dialogue uses bullets instead of words, but a way can be reached. How we find that balance I am making my life’s work. And I hope that it will be part of your lives too.
Lets find the human behind the human-bomb, and ignore the child screaming for attention.
* – if anyone has further info, regarding these men’s reasoning please email me.
Conservation-ing
Monday, December 1st, 2008A while back, we featured Dr. Terese Hart – environmentalist – on the site. She was in the States at the time on a break from her work in the Congo. Ever since, she and her husband Dr. John Hart are back at their work on the new TL2 project.
Terese Hart maintains a blog www.bonoboincongo.com where she posts updates of their project and other interesting happenings (and there are many!). A lot has happened since she went back, and though there is no way I can surmise it here, I have put up some of what I think are the most striking pictures from the past 2-3 weeks. If you enjoy conservation, jungle life, or even simply adventure, check out her blog for sure. And if nothing else, please have a look at the last picture here.
Traveling through the jungles is done mostly on motorbikes along known trails (of which there are no guarantees). But sometimes you have to get creative.
Bust meat hunting is a hot button issue. While the village locals do not do this in epidemics, the demand for bush meat from bigger cities is causing a major problem.
Improvised weapons such as this are now widespread, and allow people to carelessly overhunt.
Some police officers who were questioning the team (who were later arrested and released) being given a tour of a Dell laptop, GPS and other such devices.
The village ‘nurse’ giving kids a quick lesson in math.
A forest elephant – a target for poachers – in a dreamy scene
CITES is holding the massively controversial one-off ivory stock pile sale these few months. Here is a picture from the sale in Namibia (Oct 2008)
Perhaps the most striking of all these images – an ANR agent taking a bribe of in the form of a Duiker
(ANR = Alliance pour une nouvelle République. Apparently a force equivalent to the FBI in the US)
Secular Humanists Should Be Vegetarians
Monday, December 1st, 2008Contributed by John Xu
One thing we atheists seem to pride ourselves more and more these days over religious folks is our sense of morality – if we do good without the need for a supreme supernatural overseer to tell us to, then we must be morally superior. Is this really so I wonder? For starters, do atheists donate more to charity than the religious? Do we offer up our seats to the elderly more often? Do we treat our neighbours better, or contribute more to our communities? More often than not, I think, we would find that the answers to those questions would be a no. Of course, I am not in any way insinuating that atheism leads to immorality. Instead, I am trying to point out that if we want to claim to be morally superior, we have to put our money where our mouths are. Since this website is supposedly also advocating secular humanism, I should think these ideas aren’t very contentious. But what does vegetarianism have to do with anything? Well, here are some facts about the meat we eat everyday:
The Waste of Meat-Eating
Most of the meat we eat in North America come from factory farms, which are inherently extremely wasteful and inefficient. Consider that when we grow grains to feed the animals that in turn feed us, most of the energy in those grains go towards growing bones, skins, and self-repair mechanisms of the animals. In fact, it takes over 10kg of grain to raise 1kg of beef. How does it look like for other animals? Well…
Producing livestock requires a large amount of resources in terms of water and land on which to build farms and facilities. It also necessitates the use of even more land in order to grow the food to with the animals with. To put it into perspective, 1 hectare of land can feed 1 person per year if it produced beef, while it can feed 22 if it grew potatoes. The land used to produce meat would be several times more efficiently employed if used to grow soybeans, rice, corn, or wheat, both in terms of calories and proteins.
Growing meat, as it happens, also takes a huge amount of fresh water – a commodity the world is starting to seriously lack these days. Here is a chart showing exactly how much water that steaming juicy steak on your plate last night costs:
The world, as a whole, cannot sustain such a great strain on freshwater. This is especially true when the freshwater used for irrigation depletes rivers or underground aquifers faster than they are being replenished, as is happening in many parts of the world.
Really, eating meat is like driving a car to your next door neighbour’s for dinner – it makes no sense.
The Environmental Costs of Eating Meat
Cow vs Car
When asked about what the main contributors to global warming are, an average person would probably never pause to think about meat-eating. It would be pretty shocking then to find out that growing meat is actually one of the greatest producers of green house gases. This is because CO2 is produced when fossil fuels are burnt to produce fertilizers used to produce feed; methane is released from the breakdown of fertilizers and manure; fossil fuels are used during feed and animal production, and the transport of processed and refrigerated animal products.
A study in the New Scientist found that if an average American changed from eating meat to being vegan, he/she would manage to produce 1.5 tons less of CO2 per year, while changing to a hybrid fuel-efficient car would only save 1 ton per year.
Farm animals also produce methane and nitrous oxide, which, respectively, have 23 and 296 times the greenhouse effects of carbon dioxide. The decomposition of fertilizers and manure is responsible for 80 percent of agricultural methane emissions and about 35-40 percent of total anthropogenic methane emissions; and as for nitrous oxide, livestock produces 65 percent of the total anthropogenic emissions. Animal farming is thus one of the greatest contributors of global warming.
The Threat of Meat to Rainforests
Thanks to globalization and the reduction of trade barriers, the world is increasingly becoming a single market. This means that a global increase in meat consumption causes forests in other countries to be cut down to grow food for feeding animals. In Brazil, for example, vast areas of forest are being destroyed each year in order to grow soybeans that are exported to the US and Europe for feeding livestock. In 2002, 25,500 km of rainforest – an area the size of Belgium – was cleared, with the main reason being soyabean cultivation. All of this forest clearing then releases tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, while decreasing the amount of trees that soak up carbon dioxide.
The Ethical Dimensions
What Happens in Factory Farms
The chickens you buy in supermarkets are raised in very large sheds that hold tens of thousands of chickens, with each chicken given about an average of 96 square inches of room – the size of a standard 8.5 inch x 11 inch page of printing paper. In these sheds, chickens are unable to move without pushing through each other, unable to stretch their wings at will, or to flee aggressive birds.
These chickens suffer from a large variety of problems ranging from blindness, respiratory diseases, sores, and severe tearing caused by a build-up of feces, to chronic bone pain caused by having a growth rate many times the speed of normal chickens from selective breeding. As a side-effect of the selective breeding, these chickens have an enormous appetite, which if satisfied, will cause them to grow grotesquely large and die before reaching sexual maturity, and as a result, are consistently fed 60-80 percent less than their appetites desire.
Cattles, on the other hand, in order to be fattened as quickly and efficiently as possible, are kept on a diet of high-energy grains and corn instead of the roughage they eat normally. However, cattle’s digestive system evolved to break down grass, and when they do not eat it, a great amount of lactic acid accumulates in their rumens, causing gas problems so severe that cattle could suffocate from it. Liver abscesses are also another consequence of this. Giving cattle only corn to eat is equivalent to feeding humans with candy bars; and to prevent them from getting sick and dying before they can be slaughtered, they are injected with huge amounts of antibiotics.
So What?
As secular humanists, we should be cognizant of the ethical implications of our actions. It isn’t good enough to point out the moral sinkholes of bronze-age superstitions – we have to show the world that we can do better. It is frighteningly obvious that eating meat is a luxury for us living in the developed world, contributes to climate change, and is on highly shaky ethical grounds. So why wait? Do the right thing.
Sources and Further Reading
John Robbins, The Food Revolution, Conari Press, 2001
CAST (Council for Agricultural Science and Technology), 1999. Contribution of Animal Agriculture to Meeting Global Human Food Demand.
Livestock Revolution. Implications for Rural Poverty, the Environment, and Global Food Security, World Bank Report 23241, November 2001
D.Pimentel et al, “Water resources: agriculture, the environment, and Society,” BioScience, vol. 47 (1997), pp. 97-106.
J.L.Beckett and J.W.Oltjen, “Estimation of the Water Requirements for Beef Production in the United States,” Journal of Animal Science, vol.71 (1993) pp.818-826
D.Pimentel et al, “Water resources: Agricultural and Environmental Issues” BioScience, vol. 54 (2004), pp. 909-918.
Eshel, Gidon and Pamela Martin, “Diet, Energy and Global Warming,” Earth Interactions, May 2005
“Challenge to Fishing: Keep Unwanted Species Out of Its Huge Nets,” Otto Pohl, The New York Times, July 29, 2003
Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd edition, New York: Avon Books, 1990
J. Mason and P. Singer, The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, Rodale
Obama and Rick Warren: My Take
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008Rick Warren is giving the preacher talk at Obama’s inaguration.
Warren sucks. He is a homophobic, fundamentalist, who believes that the purpose of life is to have the magic voice of Jesus inside your head tell you what to do.
This is, no doubt, frustrating.
I am of the school of thought that religion is usually harmful, and that evangelical Christians are a dangerous political force in the U.S.
I am of the opinion that Christianity, in its mainstream practice, should be resisted and that we must write and make creative and artistic efforts to decrease its influence and popularity.
But I am 100% calm about Obama and Rick Warren.
When Obama came into politics in Illinois in the 90s he identified as an agnostic.
When he realized that the political deal making in his district happened in the black churches he conveniently converted to Christianity. These details were reported in the July, 2008 issue of The New Yorker.
Now, I know some of you are appalled at this.
I would argue that Obama is merely performing a political necessity that has been true for thousands of years. Most Americans are Christian, and believe Christianity is essential to good leadership. It is the easiest of things to appease.
See watch, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.” Pay no attention to the fingers crossed behind my back.
Machiavelli wrote, centuries ago, “in all matters appear to be religious, indeed be religious,” in The Prince.
The famous secularist legal scholar Eddie Tabash points out that Clinton pontificated on the virtues of school prayer when he was on the campaign trail, and convinced the electorate that school prayer was something he believed in strongly.
But when he was elected he appointed Judges that struck it down at every turn, and those same judges held up separation of church and state.
Tabash says we can be confident Obama will appoint secularist judges. Judges who uphold separation of church and state.
I would like to close with this:
It is our job, the job of secularists, to shift the zeitgeist so that religion is not so powerful that all American presidents have to pander to it, or sacrifice their ability to be re-elected.
But instead it seems to me that secularists get bent out of shape when a politician does pander to the religious, and at the same time finds the whole idea of us trying to promote secularism among the religious to be the most abhorrent strategy in the world.
We have a mentality that is destined to fail, and as long as we are so cowardly about our ideas we can expect more and more pandering from politicians to people like Rick Warren.
We should be grateful that politicians who have secularist sympathies, as Obama has expressed on several occasions, has the shrewdness to do what must be done.
The president appoints judges people, that is how separation of church and state is ultimately protected.
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