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License

2010-07-21T07:15:00.000-07:00

Abhorrent as is the practice of spreading fiction as some sort of “truth”, persuading people to invest themselves in a widely imagined deity, etc, it is within the rights of free people both to promulgate these ideas and to embrace them. A moral line is crossed, however, when such teachings issue in effect a license to violate others’ rights, to do harm to others, to murder, or to diminish in any way, the humanity, rights, and freedoms of others. Inducement to kill or do mayhem in the name of some set of religious ideas amounts to nothing less than a relinquishment of the rights of the perpetrators, and makes them a legitimate target for whatever measures are necessary to protect the rights and freedoms of the population at large from the threat they represent. There must be no confusion on this point. Hiding behind claims of religion and charity does not absolve the perpetrators of the responsibility for their crimes. A crime is a crime whether perpetrated in pursuit of personal gain or in the guise of some religious imperative. Moreover, anyone who supports, even tacitly or passively, the perpetrators of these acts carries on his or her shoulders some responsibility, some guilt for the deeds themselves.

Religion is already dead - it just doesn't know it yet

2009-09-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

Like the cartoon character that steps off a cliff yet falls only after looking down, religion has already taken its first tentative steps off the cliff. Religious practitioners and congregants alike may have yet to consciously acknowledge it but many if not most are all too well aware of the preposterousness of the central stories underlying their shared dogmas, clinging to them and desperately pretending that they don’t see the elephant in the room; professing to believe even as they privately and in some cases only subconsciously recognize those ideas for the nonsense that they are.

People living in the real world are continually faced with the contradictions between the biblical stories to which they’ve been indoctrinated on the one hand, and their own direct observations of the world on the other, augmented of course by the enormous and continually growing body of scientifically explored and documented evidence. Even as they are exposed to the false controversies promulgated by those with an agenda to perpetuate religious ideas, attempting to present science’s inherent strengths, significantly the necessity to discard or refine earlier theories to explain new evidence, as though these were some sort of weakness – a lack of certainty, of strength of belief, held as a virtue by the religious but in fact a recipe for ignorance and stagnation – most people at some level recognize the basic flaw in the religious thinking and partition their own minds to try and accommodate both the religious ideas and their own limited understanding of reality. While the average citizen’s understanding of science and the scientific method is quite limited and most religious people’s scientific understanding is muddier still, the practical results of scientific examination of the world are real and have enabled great accomplishments that cannot be ignored. Faced with this contradiction, many will take refuge in their religious teachings, publically insisting on their “truth” while privately knowing that this position is untenable, incompatible with reality. Even (perhaps especially) clergy members, steeped in religious teachings and traditions, must be exerting considerable energy to shield their religious ideas from the onslaught of the obvious.

The battle of course is not between religion and science. Science is merely the most effective means we have yet developed to investigate reality, challenge and verify what is discovered, to discard whatever does not withstand the scrutiny, and document and disseminate the resulting information. Science is the messenger. The message is what the world really is, exposed through science to ever increasingly fine resolution and accuracy. Unable to provide substantive arguments against the message, many who have a vested interest in perpetuating existing religious establishments and the ideas they represent and the power they wield over the masses, instead target the messenger, treating science as though it were their enemy.

In order to survive, religion must keep its adherents ignorant. Until relatively recently this was much easier, but with the advent of the modern media and the growth over the past decade of the Internet and the World Wide Web, cultivating ignorance requires inoculating the ‘faithful’ against the torrent of information so widely available today, and tainting that information to whatever extent possible with ‘alternative’ interpretations, no matter how silly. To that end, they actively and deliberately misrepresent what science is and what it can teach us, in the various media including the Web, and in many cases try, in effect, to vandalize the teaching of science by attempting to insert religious nonsense into the curriculum. This tactic, at best disingenuous, ultimately cannot succeed. Reality is what it is. Insisting it is otherwise is an enormous waste of resources that would be better spent learning. Actively damaging our educational system threatens the very future of our civilization.

Even people who outwardly profess strong religious beliefs are privately driven to question the veracity of those beliefs as they struggle to reconcile them with their own experiences. Often they consult their clergy and others they’ve been raised to believe are knowledgeable in such matters. This of course serves to reinforce the ideas that underlie the conflict they seek to resolve. Others cling on moral grounds*. Left to their own devices, without professional reinforcers, most would eventually reject the religious ideas, contradicted as they are by nearly everything in their actual experience, their insistence otherwise notwithstanding. As human society becomes farther and farther removed from the days when the religious texts were written, they become progressively more difficult to apply to modern reality.

Even as religion seeks to survive and adapts and evolves to that end, its obsolescence is upon us and well entrenched. Religious beliefs become increasingly marginalized as their relevance to day-to-day reality becomes harder and harder to find. Already today, in many circles, religions survive merely as familiar and comfortable traditions, but even their leaders and practitioners no longer accept their teachings as truth. Though there are movements that expend considerable resources attempting to combat this, the trend is clearly toward diminishing acceptance of religious teachings as anything more than comfortable traditions, some of which may indeed be worthy of preservation in that capacity but not as a substitute for reality. Short of a catastrophic development, this steady erosion will eventually cause current religious beliefs to dissolve into the background of history much as did beliefs in other ancient god systems. Though it may take generations before mainstream religion is finally buried, it is pretty much already dead in the minds of people in modern societies. As modern technologies and communication capabilities increasingly penetrate developing societies, the pressure to modernize becomes irresistible. These societies too will eventually follow suit, though it may take further generations

* Religion as a vehicle for teaching moral values has shown itself to be flawed at best. As has been pointed out far more eloquently elsewhere, people pick and choose from among the various teachings, attempting to adhere to those that seem applicable and appropriate in their lives while discarding those based on obviously outdated contexts. The ability to do so demonstrates an innate capacity for moral judgment independent of religious guidance. While moral choices should probably be guided in early child development, the ability to do so doesn’t rely on religion and indeed many of its metaphors are so far removed from the experience of a child as to be of little or no instructive value.

British former Commander Richard Kemp on IDF Tactics

2009-07-07T06:20:00.000-07:00

The videos speak for themselves.

Introspection

2009-06-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

From HuffPo:

... I am so shocked and dismayed over the debilitating pathology that has gripped much of the organized Jewish community today--particularly those of my friends who proudly call themselves "pro-Israel."
What was once a proud, smart, intelligent, nuanced, and diverse movement has devolved into a combination cult-booster club championed by a handful of amazing people who lead a throng of angry, paranoid, one-issue folks with tunnel vision who often blur the difference between being a player and a fan.
(full article)

Obama tones down National Day of Prayer observance

2009-05-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

From CNN.COM:

(CNN) -- For the past eight years, the White House recognized the National Day of Prayer with a service in the East Room, but this year, President Obama decided against holding a public ceremony.

"Prayer is something that the president does everyday," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday, noting that Obama will sign a proclamation to recognize the day, as many administrations in the past have done.
Asked if Obama thought his predecessor's ceremonies were politicized, Gibbs said, "No, I'm not going to get into that again.
"I think the president understands, in his own life and in his family's life, the role that prayer plays."
The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance for people of all faiths.
(full article)

Bravo Mr. Obama. Prayer by public officials should always be a private matter. Even the appearance of promoting a particular religion or religion in general is a tacit violation of the separation of church and state.

Bullshit in the service of atheism?

2009-03-30T07:11:00.000-07:00

From The Jerusalem Post:

This past Shabbat my family and I hosted Rabbi and Mrs. Nachman Holtzberg, parents of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, the head of Chabad in Mumbai who was brutally murdered with his wife Rivkah. You'd think that a family that watched their son and daughter-in-law slaughtered on TV by Islamic terrorists would feel hatred and a desire for revenge. But what this saintly father asked of our many guests was simply their participation in rebuilding Chabad of Mumbai so that his son's selfless work would continue.

What a shame Christopher Hitchens did not join us. It might have dissuaded him from penning yet another ignorant and slanderous article about the murderous intent of Orthodox Jews. To read Hitchens these days is to be transported to an alternate universe where religious Jews are often terrorists inspired by racist Jewish ideology that is fomented by their rabbis. Of course, those who live in the real world and who never read about Orthodox Jews setting off bombs in Bali and Baghdad might be a trifle confused by Hitchens' regular rants against Judaism.
You should be. Most of the time he is simply fabricating, like this famous quote taken from his 2007 book God Is Not Great. "Dr. Baruch Goldstein... killed 27 worshipers... While serving as a physician in the Israeli army he had announced that he would not treat non-Jewish patients, such as Israeli Arabs, especially on the Sabbath. As it happens, he was obeying rabbinic law in declining to do this, as many Israeli religious courts have confirmed."
For this particular blood libel against Jewish courts Hitchens relied on a well-known hoax perpetrated by writer Israel Shahak, which was exposed as a fraud more than 40 years ago by Lord Immanuel Jakobovitz, chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth. This is the same Israel Shahak who once accused Jews of worshipping Satan. When I challenged Hitchens about his use of a well-known forgery, and when he could not cite a single other religious court to have ever ruled that a non-Jewish life could not be saved on the Sabbath, he wrote to me and agreed to amend the item in the next edition of his book.
He did not.
(read full article)

Mr. Hitchens:

I've read some of your writings and generally agree with most of the basic points you make; however we as atheists must hold ourselves to a higher standard of truth than our ideological opponents, lest our arguments be as easily dismissed. Quoting from dubious sources, much less sources that have been widely discredited, only serves to undermine your credibility specifically and damages the credibility of other atheists by inference.

When attacking the foundational beliefs on which most of the major religious systems are predicated, stick to the facts, check your facts, and agressively seek to correct errors you may have made in the past. That the whole premise of a supernatural being objectively makes no sense and is self-inconsistent is a position strongly supported by the facts. But if you wish to engage in comparisons between the complex belief systems built on these dubious foundations, and the actions historically and in the present of the practitioners and supporters thereof, you clearly need to get your facts straight.

While there have certainly been examples throughout history of terrible things being perpetrated in the name of virtually all major religions, an examination of the underlying reasons and of how the practitioners and leaders of each such religion grapple with these issues is instructive. In particular, and all too often lost in modern discourse, whether deliberately or through abject ignorance, it is of critical importance to distinguish honestly between conquest and defense; between violence for its own sake and efforts to contain action to what is necessary to achieve a specific military objective, minimizing "collateral damage" as much as possible; between deliberately placing civilians at risk to take advantage of the other side's revulsion at the prospect of harming "innocents" and being that other side, struggling to protect itself while doing as little harm as possible; between deliberately targeting random civilian noncombatants with the goal of harming as many as possible and earnest efforts to avoid civilian casualties despite the counter-tactics of the other side. It is also critical to distinguish the open and heated debate on one side from the widespread support of random terrorist violence on the other.

In any military conflict, no side has completely clean hands. This is just an unavoidable reality of war. But holding one side to unrealistic standards, tying their hands from doing what any of other country would consider its right and responsibility in its defense, while tolerating, ignoring and even denying the egregious behavior of the other only serves to deepen the divide and prolong and exacerbate the conflict.

So, Mr. Hitchens, I would hope that you could publicly acknowledge your errors and in the future, stick to the facts. Argue the fallacy of the foundational beliefs underlying all these religious systems. Argue against the blood spilled in defense of these beliefs. Argue against acetic practices and denial of our nature and our most basic needs. Argue the obsolescence of using supernatural explanations as a substitute for legitimate scientific inquiry and learning. Argue against religious dogma. Argue against nonsense like "intelligent design", and efforts to undermine our educational system by injecting such garbage into our curriculum. But when taking on the details of the more complex ethical systems bult upon these clearly faulty foundations, don't start with a premise and seek "evidence" however weak, to support your conclusions. Instead examine the facts and draw conclusions from those facts. And when something worthwhile has arisen from a religious context despite its foundational fallacies, acknowledge that too, and move on.

Above all, please don't rely on bullshit in support of your arguments. Let's leave that to the religious.

Catholic Church Consolidation

2009-03-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

From CNN.COM:

(CNN) -- Along the Rust Belt and in cities dotting the Northeast and Upper Midwest, Catholic communities are mourning the loss of parishes. It's a five-year trend of sweeping church closures that most recently hit Cleveland, Ohio.

Wally Martens, a Cleveland native, can look out his kitchen window and see the spiritual home that has served his family for five generations. St. Ignatius of Antioch has been with him and his loved ones through life and death.

"It's the place where most of us were baptized, most of us got married, most of us graduated from grade school and some of us were buried," Martens, 68, said of the west side urban parish that serves 1,200 households. To find out that the building is set to be shuttered is "like losing somebody in your family."

Earlier this month, Bishop Richard G. Lennon of the Diocese of Cleveland, which serves more than 750,000 Catholics, announced that 29 parishes will close and 41 others will merge. The reconfiguration plan, which will effectively cut 52 parishes in the current tally of 224, is scheduled to go into effect by June 30, 2010.

(full article)

Roland S. Martin: Pope wrong on condoms

2009-03-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

From CNN.COM:

(CNN) -- The African-American religious community deserves considerable praise for taking leadership of the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century.

But there is no doubt that toward the end of the 20th century, the black church, primarily because of its opposition to homosexuality, has abdicated its responsibility and totally disregarded the human toll that HIV/AIDS has had on the members it largely serves. It only has been recently that pastors have opted not to turn a blind eye to what is clearly a state of emergency.

Unfortunately, we are seeing the same kind of ignorance of reality from the Catholic Church and its leader, Pope Benedict XVI.

The church has long been opposed to the use of condoms and other forms of birth control because it strongly believes the only purpose for sex is procreation. But for the church to continue to ignore the definitive research that condoms play a huge role in decreasing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases is mind-boggling.

(please read full piece at CNN.COM)

Sure, sex is only for procreation; food is only for sustenance; play is only for exercise; song is only to aid memory; stage is only for communication... and anyone would want to live such a life... why?

America becoming less Christian, survey finds

2009-03-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

From CNN.COM:

(CNN) -- America is a less Christian nation than it was 20 years ago, and Christianity is not losing out to other religions, but primarily to a rejection of religion altogether, a survey published Monday found.

Three out of four Americans call themselves Christian, according to the American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1990, the figure was closer to nine out of 10 -- 86 percent.

At the same time there has been an increase in the number of people expressing no religious affiliation.

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The rise in evangelical Christianity is contributing to the rejection of religion altogether by some Americans, said Mark Silk of Trinity College.

(full article)

Well, it's not much ... yet ... but it's progress. Someday perhaps a majority of Americans can remove the blinders and look at the world as it actually is instead of through the filter of fairy tales.

Good Cognitive Citizenship

2009-01-28T21:06:00.000-08:00

From: Bloggingheads.tv - diavlogs:

Will Wilkinson: … there's a lot of other things that I think people would call values that I think imply epistemic laziness. So the value for conformism, for example: people don't think of the value as being conformism, people think of it as” I want to fit into my local community. I want to have the access to the sources of meaning that all the people around me draw from him and if I actually learn about logic or decision theory and deploy it in my everyday thinking then I might end up alienating myself from the things I really do care about that really are values to me.”

So it might be the case that a certain kind of conformity which implies not thinking very hard...I mean not thinking very hard might be instrumental to being able to maintain your commitment to whatever the local norms are. So by saying to people that, “you have a responsibility to be a good cognitive citizen,” that has implications that if you are a good cognitive citizen you might have to give up some of the sources of meaning that, you think, make your life worthwhile.

Eliezer Yudkowsky: Well to be sure rationalists, pardon me: someone undergoing the transition to rationality from a supernaturalist – or non-naturalist base is going to lose some of what they thought were their sources of meaning. The question is, “do they get it back and is it better afterward?”

…So, to put it bluntly: someone who believes that morality comes from God is going to lose their god and get back an improved morality…

Disgraced pastor Haggard facing new sex allegations

2009-01-26T18:28:00.000-08:00

From CNN.COM:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) -- A megachurch paid a 20-year-old man to keep silent about a sexual relationship he had with disgraced evangelical pastor Ted Haggard, a senior church pastor said.

Haggard, who was fired amid allegations that he used drugs and patronized a male prostitute in 2006, had a sexual relationship with a second man -- a 20-year-old volunteer at his megachurch, the Rev. Brady Boyd, a senior pastor at the church, said Monday.

The church agreed to pay the man in exchange for his pledges not to talk publicly about the relationship, Boyd said, referring to a settlement reached by the man's lawyer and the church's insurance company. Under the settlement, the church provided the man money to pay his college tuition, moving expenses and counseling, Boyd said.

(full article)

The monumental hypocrisy of Haggard is only one facet of this story, and it's certainly a big one, particularly as it reflects on communities of repressive religions generally. Another important facet is the hypocrisy of the Christian community at large, supposedly a compassionate bunch, shunning and ostracizing this man they once purported to revere, not for his hypocrisy but for his "immoral behavior". That's it. They're really that shallow. Imagine how conflicted, how self-consumed this guy Haggard must have been all this time, to say nothing of what he must be going through now that the truth about him is on display before the world; yet that's the best the "compassionate" Christans can come up with. In their eyes, his terrible sin is having had homosexual relationships. Pathetic. The hush money was, ostensibly at least, meant to help the young man to move beyond this experience, but the net effect and clear intent was to try and shut him up, to sweep under the rug, to the extent possible, the fact that this incident happened at all.

Goodbye and Good Riddance

2009-01-20T06:55:00.000-08:00

Olbermann: Bush Presidency in retrospect - Finally!

“God” is the problem

2009-01-13T08:12:00.000-08:00

In the never-ending conflicts in the middle east, violence is not the problem; territory is not the problem; history is not the problem; anger is not the problem; even corruption is not the problem. These are all symptoms of the problem. The problem is “God”. All parties to the conflict believe this mystical, magical, supposedly omnipotent, merciful, caring, benevolent, yet somehow always conspicuously absent, particularly in times of strife (are there any other kinds?), is allied with their views. Were it not for this insane belief, perhaps the parties could examine the reality on the ground and conclude that there are other actions each can take for the mutual benefit of all instead of striving for mutual annihilation.

Lawsuit seeks to take 'so help me God' out of inaugural

2008-12-31T11:35:00.000-08:00

From CNN.COM:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A number of atheists and non-religious organizations want Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony to leave out all references to God and religion.

(full article)

Young Jordanians rebel, embracing conservative Islam - Be careful what you wish for

2008-12-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

From the International Hearald Tribune:

AMMAN, Jordan: Muhammad Fawaz is a very serious college junior with a stern gaze and a reluctant smile that barely cloaks suppressed anger. He never wanted to attend Jordan University. He hates spending hours each day commuting.

As a high school student, Fawaz, 20, had dreamed of earning a scholarship to study abroad. But that was impossible, he said, because he did not have a "wasta," or connection. In Jordan, connections are seen as essential for advancement and the wasta system is routinely cited by young people as their primary grievance with their country.

So Fawaz decided to rebel. He adopted the serene, disciplined demeanor of an Islamic activist. In his sophomore year he was accepted into the student group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Jordan's largest, most influential religious, social and political movement, one that would ultimately like to see the state governed by Islamic law, or Shariah. Now he works to recruit other students to the cause.
(Full Article)

To our young friends in the region: be careful what you wish for, and be sure to study what has happened to those who've gone before you in places like Iran. By all means stand up, rebel, shake up the status quo, change the government, but make positive changes. When religion becomes the government and the government becomes religion, corruption doesn't abate. If anything, it tends to become even more entrenched.

Secular government may seem anathema to Islam, but when a religious establishment must coexist with a secular government, each helps to keep the other from being hijacked by a corrupt few. When the two become one, there is no such balance. Each benefits from the existence of the other.

Under the George W. Bush presidency, the US (and the world) got a taste of what can happen when religion and government start to become entangled in a context where this is explicitly prohibited. The global reverberations will likely continue for a generation.

Also worth considering is the utter vacuum of evidentiary support for the foundational beliefs underlying religion. As university students, you are young and intelligent, and curious. Never let anything suppress your mind or misdirect your thinking.

Barack Obama, Rick Warren, and Invocations at Presidential Inaugurations

2008-12-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

We've all been bombarded by the controversy over Barack Obama's unfortunate choice of pastor Rick Warren to give "the invocation" as part of the presidential inauguration ceremony. We needn't review the details of that controversy here.

A question the so-called mainstream media has utterly failed to raise is why in a secular government, constitutionally separated from religion, an "invocation" is allowed to be part of the inaugural festivities at all. While that same constitution guarantees freedom of religion for individual citizens (and by inference, freedom from religion for those who do not subscribe to ancient myth), whether or not serving in public office, conflating personal religous beliefs with official governmental functions, be it the inauguration of a new president, the opening and/or closing of governmental proceedings such as congress, or whatever, stands as an abject violation of the principle of separation of church and state; an endorsement of religion in general, and an at least tacit endorsement of the specific religious denomination of the participants, by official sanction.

By focusing on the controversial nature of the particular selection of the pastor, the mainstream press has once again missed the point and failed in its duty to keep the politicians in line. Even the chatter on much of the atheist blogosphere seems to miss the point but for a few of the comments.

Wake up, people. Notwithstanding protestations to the contrary by the christian "right", the United States of America is not a christian nation; it is a pluralistic society, populated with believers of every major religion and many minor ones, and with believers in reality as well. The atheist community's apparent willingness to accept the notion that some sort of religious invocation is a regular part of a presidential inauguration is disturbing. Granted, not every battle can be fought at once, but if we're going to concern ourselves with this issue at all, we should take it on as the affront it is to the separation of church and state, regardless of the particular pastor involved and his archaic social positions.

"Fake" Christians?

2008-11-24T13:15:00.000-08:00

From newsvine.com:

What is killing the Republican Party? Well, for one thing, Pretend Christians

The Accused:
Supreme Conservative Republican Evangelical American Moralizers -- S.C.R.E.A.M.

The "Christian" War President
"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."
"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
"This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while."
--George W. Bush
(read full article)

And what about "real" Christians? Where are they in all this?

Small sect gives U.S. Supreme Court a lot to consider

2008-11-11T12:57:00.000-08:00

From International Herald Tribune:

PLEASANT GROVE CITY, Utah: Across the street from the city hall here sits a small park with about a dozen donated buildings and objects - a wishing well, a millstone from the city's first flour mill and an imposing red granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

Thirty miles, or 48 kilometers, to the north, adherents of a religion called Summum gather in a wood-and-metal pyramid by Interstate 15 in Salt Lake City. Followers of Summum meditate on their Seven Aphorisms, fortified by an alcoholic sacramental nectar they produce and surrounded by mummified animals.

In 2003, the president of the Summum church wrote to the mayor here with a proposal: the church wanted to erect a monument inscribed with the Seven Aphorisms in the city park, "similar in size and nature" to the one devoted to the Ten Commandments.

(read full article)

On California Proposition 8, Marriage, and Government

2008-11-05T23:29:00.000-08:00

Many have been following the battle over so-called gay marriage as exemplified by initiatives like California's proposition 8 that seeks to amend the state constitution to define marriage specifically as the union of precisely one man and one woman. Each side presents its arguments similarly to the abortion controversy, not 180 degrees out of phase but at odd angles to each other in such a way as to obscure the central issue and make the debate unwinnable by either party. This is at best a disingenuous tactic; at worst something far more sinister, but in any case it can lead only to more of the same. No side of either issue will be satisfied by any supposed resolution of the argument, whether judicial or by referendum.

Moving beyond the argument in its present form, examining the question of marriage in modern society, several things quickly become apparent:

Marriage, though related to the institution from which it descends, has drifted in its ceremonial and legal implications into territory that can be very difficult to navigate, particularly when dealing with marital difficulties and divorce.
Government and court involvement in the administration and dissolution of marriages is mostly detrimental to all parties concerned.
Religious implications make this a hot-button issue making it much more difficult to address the parties' needs more pragmatically.

These and other observations suggest the following seemingly radical proposition: separation of church and state should extend to the primarily ceremonial institution of marriage - that is, get the government out of the marriage business entirely, and eliminate the legal significance of marriage, replacing it with a newer structure designed specifically to address the needs of people today.

Marriage would revert to the domain of religious and secular social institutions. Ceremonies could be performed by whatever figure the parties respect for this purpose, and would carry only ceremonial significance.

Legal implications of today's concept of marriage would be supplanted by a new structure: a family corporation, separate and distinct from the ceremonial notion of marriage. This special class of corporation would have to be designed specifically for its purpose. It would be required to set forth bylaws for the operation of the family corporation, procedures for how a party would terminate his or her relationship to the family corporation, procedures for total dissolution of the corporation, financial and other responsibilities of the parties, and rules for amendment of these bylaws. In effect, the law would require the equivalent of today's notion of a prenuptial agreement, though it would not take precisely that form.

It would be beyond the reach of law to specify the structure of a family corporation, the gender of its parties, or even the number of its parties. Financial and tax ramifications would have to be worked out, as would the tax status of this class of corporation. Boiler-plate articles of incorporation would become available that could be used as-is, fine-tuned, or modified wholesale, to reflect the needs and desires of the parties, but could in any case serve as a guide to the structure for such arrangements.

This would do nothing to inhibit government from exercising some regulatory function to ensure against abuses and neglect, of children or adult parties to the family corporation. Legal statute would continue to specify the age of majority when children become independent entities.

Such a system has many implications, including:

Issues like gay marriage, polygamy, adoption, etc., are taken completely out of public debate and away from those who would seek to impose their ideologies on the public at large. They become, as they properly should be, a private matter between the parties involved.
Government is once and for all removed from the bedroom.
Church and State separation is strengthened and enhanced.
The existing legal baggage and prejudice surrounding the current notion of divorce would be supplanted by clearly-stated procedures for what happens if it doesn't work out.
No longer would the wage-earning spouse be inherently at tremendous disadvantage because of the current imbalance in this area.
Tyranny of a non-responsible, non-wage-earning party over a responsible wage-earning party through blackmail threats to disrupt the marriage with ruinous consequences to the other would finally be ended.
Legal responsibility would be contained between the parties and explicitly framed in the articles of incorporation.
Matters of custody would be specified in advance in the articles of incorporation and bylaws.

Managing the transition from existing traditions and procedures presents a challenge but not a terrible one. A standard family corporation could be considered to come into effect to embody existing marriages. At any time the parties could amend this corporation as necessary by mutual agreement, subject to procedures as specified in the corporate articles and bylaws.

Marriages originating in other countries where this is not (yet?) the tradition would have to be respected in some legal structure as well, but if the parties moved to the US, the transition process would apply to them for US purposes.

Finally, this would work best if implemented on the federal level, superseding all relevant state laws and regulations, however it could be pioneered by one or more states until wider acceptance could come about.

Though somewhat radical in nature, this kind of approach is much more in line with the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to which we are supposedly entitled.

Such an approach has the advantage of enabling existing traditions to continue, supporting freedom of and from religion, while at the same time preventing the imposition of any marital ideology over those who do not share it. This is inherently fair and decent, but because of its explicit protections, it will likely meet with opposition from precisely those who would impose their beliefs on others - the very reason why it is so critical to implement protections of this kind.

It will not be easy to bring about this sort of social change, but it would solve a great many problems, while creating relatively few. It is not reasonable to expect quick change to something so radical, but it is reasonable to have the discussion and raise the issues this proposal attempts to address and discuss this proposal as a possible way of addressing them.

[In the interest of full disclosure here, it should be noted that the author does not support either side of this argument and is not a California voter, but would have voted against Proposition 8 on other principles]

Awakening

2008-11-05T06:41:00.000-08:00

This morning we awaken to a new hope. President-Elect Obama is staged to replace the Moron-in-chief and build what we can all hope will be a competent administration, staffed with intelligent, curious, thinking, learning folks with goals and priorities aimed at repairing the tremendous damage done over the past eight years.

None of this would have been possible without the awakening of our population from its long apathetic (and pathetic) slumber. It is reassuring that this eventually happened, but should we ever manage to get another incompetent administration in power, we must not sleep through eight years of it ever again. The price is too high. Convenient as it is to blame the Bush administration, we all share responsibility, particularly for the second term. We the American Public must continually remain on guard against further attempts, and they will occur, to transform this great nation into anything less than what we are meant to be. Leanings toward fascism such as the past 7-8 years have witnessed have no place certainly in this country and arguably in the world. If we cannot lead by example then we cannot lead at all.

Much work remains to be done. We must collectively repudiate the corrupt ways of so many entrenched politicians in DC and in our home states, counties, cities, etc. We must stand against bigotry and ignorance and promote education, investigation, learning, and sharing of knowledge. We must re-establish and strengthen separation of powers and separation of church and state. We have an opportunity here for a transformational period in American history during which we can regain and exceed our past leadership.

Carpe diem, people. Carpe diem.

God is Hate

2008-11-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

From Living the Scientific Life:

Even if I was stupid enough to be religious, this one letter to the editor would challenge everything I held dear because it openly advocates hatred of anyone who doesn't believe in gawd -- in the name of gawd. I was always raught that "god is love" but after reading this letter, I realize I am not ready for this sort of love, nor for the other sorts of love that all you so-called "religious people" embrace, including pedophilia, female genital mutilation and genocide, just to name a few of the aacts you have engaged in. Even though I don't believe in gawd or any of the cruel and hateful actions that a "supreme being" represents, I will say this: I hope all you so-called religious wingnuts burn in hellfire for all eternity.

Creation Museum Claims Big Crowds

2008-10-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

From LiveScience:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The museum exhibits are taken from the Old Testament, but the special effects are pure Hollywood: a state-of-the-art planetarium, animatronics and a massive model of Noah's Ark, all intended to explain the origins of the universe from a biblical viewpoint.

The Creation Museum, which teaches life's beginnings through a literal interpretation of the Bible, is claiming attendance figures that would make it an unexpectedly strong draw less than a year and a half after it debuted. More than a half-million people have toured the Kentucky attraction since its May 2007 opening, museum officials said.

For creationists — Christians who believe the Bible's first chapter of Genesis is the literal telling of the universe's start — the museum is a godsend. Many have returned with family and friends, some from faraway states arguing it's one of the few with a Christian worldview.

(read full article)

This is a profoundly disturbing trend. The effect on this country's global political influence, economic viability, and national security is threatened by the collective dumbing-down effect of such self-delusionary belief systems. External threats notwithstanding, our greatest challenge most probably comes from the inside, from institutionalized promotion of ignorance, intellectual terrorists that threaten the very fabric of American life.

Sarah Six-pack Needs To Put Country First by Stepping Down

2008-10-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

From From The Huffington Post:

Mike Judge, the creator of King of the Hill and Beavis & Butthead, once told a story on Letterman about how, one day, his Joe Six-pack next-door neighbor was inexplicably removing the back windshield from a 1978 Chevy Nova. So Judge walked out to the parking lot of his apartment building and asked the neighbor, "What are you doing?" And the neighbor gleefully answered, "Huh-huh-huh! Huh-huh! Now it's like a truck!"
In the freakishly hamfisted world of Sarah Palin, Mike Judge's neighbor is qualified to be vice president of the United States.

Yesterday, Palin said the following to talk radio wingnut Hugh Hewitt:

"Oh, I think they're just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying you know what? It's time that a normal Joe Six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that's kind of taken some people off guard, and they're out of sorts, and they're ticked off about it."

There's so much awfulness in this quote, it's difficult to know where to begin. Out of sorts? Ticked off? Oh you betcha.

(read the full piece)

Sam Harris on Sarah Palin

2008-10-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

From Newsweek:

Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer who—being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy—could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.

Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortune—and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.

The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story—but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.

The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.

I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex—and dangerous—with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.

Read full article

Mexico: Supreme Court Upholds Mexico City Abortion Law

2008-08-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

They're learning...

From Human Rights Watch via Reuters AlertNet:

29 Aug 2008 16:46:50 GMT

Source: Human Rights Watch

(Mexico City, August 28, 2008) - In a historic decision today, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that Mexico City's law decriminalizing abortion during the first 12 weeks of gestation is constitutional. In a publicly broadcast proceeding, the court voted 8-to-3 in favor of upholding the Mexico City law, which came into force in 2007. A written decision is expected from the court within days. "This decision ensures Mexico is observing fundamental human rights law," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "Decriminalizing abortion saves women's lives and respects their equality and autonomy. We applaud the court's decision, and hope governments around Latin America take notice." According to figures from the Federal District, more than 12,000 women have availed themselves of safe and legal abortion services in Mexico City since the law entered into force in April 2007. In many places in the world where abortion is prohibited or legally restricted, women often seek abortions in clandestine and unsafe conditions, contributing to maternal disability and mortality. Mexico's Supreme Court decision will help to ensure that women in the nation's most populated city have access to this basic health care service and do not have to resort to unsafe and potentially life-threatening procedures.

YouTube - Larry King: Bill Maher On His Movie Religulous

2008-08-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

Survey: Many believe in divine intervention

2008-08-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

From AP via CNN.COM:

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans.

An eye-opening survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors "need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle."

(full article)

'It's raining nutcase rabbis on the holy land'

2008-07-28T12:37:00.000-07:00

From Haaretz.com:

'It's raining nutcase rabbis on the holy land'
By Anthony Weiss, The Forward

Picking up the phone at 4:30 in the afternoon, Shmarya Rosenberg answered in a voice still bleary from sleep. He explained that he was just napping after having blogged the whole night, and most of the morning.

"It's hard to do one of these blogs," Rosenberg said. "It owns you. It's terrible. If I had any idea four years ago that it was going to do this, I don't think I could've started it."

(full article)

Bush Administration Tries to Redefine Contraception as Abortion

2008-07-17T17:33:00.000-07:00

From The Gavel:

The New York Times reports that the Bush Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is drafting a rule that would place new restrictions on domestic family planning programs. While current law allows health care providers and professionals to refuse to provide abortions based on their religious beliefs, this provision would threaten the funding of organizations and health facilities if they do not hire people who would refuse to provide birth control and defines abortion so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception.

Speaker Pelosi released the following statement on the Administration’s draft proposal:

If the Administration goes through with this draft proposal, it will launch a dangerous assault on women’s health.

The majority of Americans oppose this out of touch position that redefines contraception as abortion and represents a sustained pattern of the Bush Administration to reject medical and sound science in favor of a misguided ideology that has no place in our government.

I urge the President to reject this policy and join with Democrats to focus on preventing unintended pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion through increasing access to family planning services and access to affordable birth control.

From Congresswoman Lois Capps, Chair of the Democratic Women’s Working Group:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today Congresswoman Lois Capps called on the Bush Administration to stop its misguided effort to restrict access to basic family planning services. According to press reports, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is drafting new rules that would severely restrict women’s health care options while undermining the ability of health care providers to secure funding and provide essential services. It would require all recipients of federal health care funding to sign a written certification that they will not “discriminate” against health care entities who refuse to provide patients with abortions or even birth control.

“Once again, the Bush Administration is carelessly playing partisan politics with women’s health care,” said Capps, a nurse and Vice-Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health. “Time and again this Administration has jeopardized women’s access to essential family planning services for purely ideological reasons. Sound science and responsible public health practices should never be trumped by political ideology. This proposal is unnecessary and would be harmful to women’s health.”

Federal law already protects individuals who prefer to not participate in abortion services and many states have refusal clauses for either individuals or institutions that object to providing or participating in abortions. The Bush Administration proposal goes far beyond those measures and attempts to define abortion services so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception and emergency contraception. Capps and several of her House colleagues will be sending a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services objecting to the draft rule and urging the Administration to reconsider its position.

Capps has worked in the past to stop other efforts by the Bush Administration to restrict access to family planning services and contraception. She was part of the successful efforts to allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B emergency contraception and also to prevent attempts to restrict funding from certain health providers who provide comprehensive family planning services.

Once again the Bush Administration panders to the Christian "right" at the expense of freedom in America. This is truly obscene.

Think about it ... think about it...

2008-06-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

From International Herald Tribune:

JIBLA, Yemen: One morning last month, Arwa Abdu Muhammad Ali walked out of her husband's house here and ran to a local hospital, where she complained that he had been beating and sexually abusing her for eight months.

That alone would be surprising in Yemen, a deeply conservative Arab society where family disputes tend to be solved privately. What made it even more unusual was that Arwa was 9 years old.

Within days, Arwa - a tiny, delicate-featured girl - had become a celebrity in Yemen, where child marriage is common but has rarely been exposed in public. She was the second child bride to come forward in less than a month; in April, a 10-year-old named Nujood Ali had gone by herself to a courthouse to demand a divorce, generating a landmark legal case.
(please read the full article)

George Carlin - Religion is Bullshit

2008-06-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

George Carlin, dead at 71 - he will be missed.

(originally posted 12/15/2007)

“When it comes to bullshit, big time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. No contest. Religion. Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do every minute of the day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever ’til the end of time!”

... and here's another one ...

Ben Stein's Expelled Exposed

2008-06-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

From Scientific American: (cross-posted on Just Whacked)

“Should I be worried about the Crips and the Bloods up here?” These were the first words out of the mouth of Ben Stein as he entered my office at Skeptic magazine, located in the racially mixed neighborhood of Altadena, Calif. I cringed and hoped that the two African-American women in my employ were out of earshot of what was perhaps merely Stein’s ham-handed attempt at humor before he began interviewing me for what I was told was a film on the intersection of science and religion entitled Crossroads.

That is not what the interview was about. And neither is the film, now called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The subtitle exposes its motif—intelligent design has been expelled from classrooms and culture, and Ben Stein sees a sinister conspiracy at work. This supercilious financial columnist and ersatz actor and game show host proceeded to grill me on whether or not I think someone should be fired for expressing dissenting views. My answer: it depends. Who is being fired for what, when and where? People are usually fired for reasons having to do with budgetary constraints, incompetence or failure to fulfill the terms of a contract. If you are hired to teach biology according to the curriculum standards of your school district but instead spend the semester telling students that science has no definitive explanation for DNA, wings, eyes, brains and that mystery of mysteries—bacteria flagella—then, yes, you should be fired posthaste. But I know of no instance in which this has happened, and the film’s examples of such alleged abuses have reasonable explanations detailed at www.expelledexposed.com, where Eugenie Scott and her tireless crew at the National Center for Science Education have tracked down the specifics of each case.

(read full article)

UK Teen Cited For Calling Scientology a "Cult"

2008-05-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

From Slashdot:

"A 15-year-old in the UK is facing prosecution for using the word 'cult' to describe the Church of Scientology at an anti-Scientology demonstration in London earlier this month. According to the City of London police at the scene, the teen was violating the Public Order Act, which 'prohibits signs which have representations or words which are threatening, abusive or insulting.' There's a video of the teen receiving the summons from the City of London police at the demonstration (starting about 1 munite in), and now he's asking for advice on how to handle the court case."

(full post)

What's wrong with this picture?

Starbucks' mermaid's makeover draws a response

2008-05-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

From MSNBC.COM:

Starbucks Corp. has a new more revealing logo of its trademark mermaid. The logo — which offers a more revealing look at the coffee chain's mermaid symbol and goes with brown instead of green as its color — is getting mixed reviews from marketing and public relations experts.

The logo features a bare-chested mermaid with her tail fin split in half. The previous green logo showed less of the mermaid.

The new logo is actually a nod to the coffee giant's past. When the Seattle-based coffee company was founded in 1971, its logo was of similar design. Since 1971, the logo has been gone through various alterations.

A Christian group in San Diego called The Resistance is offended by the new logo and wants consumers to boycott or complain to the Seattle-based coffee chain

(read full article)

Seriously - These self-appointed guardians of some twisted idea of morality need to just shut up. Can't they think of anything more important to do? Perhaps performing some public services that would have an actual benefit somewhere?

Einstein letter dismissing 'childish' religion sells for 200,000 pounds

2008-05-16T07:48:00.000-07:00

From AP via HaAretz.com:

A letter in which Albert Einstein dismissed the idea of God as the product of human weakness and the Bible as "pretty childish" has sold at auction for more than 200,000 pounds ($400,000).

This extraordinary letter seemed to strike a chord, and it gave a deep personal insight one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Powell said.

The letter was written to philosopher Eric Gutkind in January 1954, a year before Einstein's death. In it, the Einstein said that "the word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

Einstein also said he saw nothing "chosen" about the Jews, and that they were no better than other peoples "although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power."

(full article)

Ummm. yup.

Reality Check: Science has worked so well that superstition now reigns supreme

2008-05-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

From SteverRobbins.com:

I grew up in the era of the Apollo moon launches. One of my earliest memories is traveling to Cape Canaveral and watching from the beach as one of the missions was launched towards the moon. It was pretty incredible.

Despite frequent moves and attending six schools between elementary school and college, science was in the air. I got a firm grounding in how to think critically, how to use data, and how to observe the physical world around me in pursuit of Doing Great Things. Whether my school was in a failing Pennsylvania steel town or in a full-on major city, science was present.
Science has given us great things. And therein lies the problem.

(full article)

Sex, Drugs, and the Pope

2008-05-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

From The Associated Press via CNN.COM:

Pope: Sex can become 'like a drug'

VATICAN CITY, Italy (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged Saturday that the Vatican's teaching against birth control was difficult as he praised a 1968 Church document that condemned contraception.

In a speech marking the 40th anniversary of the document, Benedict reiterated the Church's ban against artificial birth control as well as more recent teaching against using artificial procreation methods.

(full story)

This from a man who has, ostensibly at least, never experienced sex, or presumably recreational drugs. Hmmm. What's wrong with this picture?

Florida lawmakers debate offering a Christian license plate

2008-04-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

From The Associated Press:

MIAMI (AP) -- Florida drivers can order more than 100 specialty license plates celebrating everything from manatees to the Miami Heat, but one now under consideration would be the first in the nation to explicitly promote a specific religion.

The Florida Legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a Christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words "I Believe."

Rep. Edward Bullard, the plate's sponsor, said people who "believe in their college or university" or "believe in their football team" already have license plates they can buy. The new design is a chance for others to put a tag on their cars with "something they believe in," he said.

If the plate is approved, Florida would become the first state to have a license plate featuring a religious symbol that's not part of a college logo. Approval would almost certainly face a court challenge.
(read full article)

This clearly violates the separation of church and state. If drivers want to advertise to the world that they're brainwashed, they already have the freedom to place stickers and other emblems on their vehicles. There is nothing for lawmakers to debate. The state government has no role in the support and promotion of any religion for any reason. Period.

Update: It appears that this is unlikely to come to pass in Florida; however a similar measure in South Carolina may have a chance (more from Atheist Revolution).

Ex-sect members escape polygamy, but not pain

2008-04-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

From CNN.COM:

(CNN) -- Long after she escaped a polygamist Colorado City, Arizona, community in 1986, Flora Jessop found another way to escape -- cocaine.
"It killed the pain. It killed the hurt," she said. "I didn't have to hurt so bad because I missed everything I knew."
Once she fled the fundamentalist Mormon sect, she was an apostate. She believed God hated her. Her parents and siblings thought she was wicked. Worst of all, she knew she was damned to hell, Jessop said.

Religion -- the reason these women say they stay -- is also used to validate the brainwashing, and in some cases, physical abuse employed to keep women and children submissive, said Marci Hamilton, author of "Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect its Children."

(full article)

Clinton, Obama put politics aside to discuss faith

2008-04-14T06:03:00.000-07:00

From CNN.COM:

(CNN) -- On Sunday, after a tumultuous campaign season where religion -- both rumor and reality -- has had a starring role, the two remaining Democratic White House hopefuls, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, again ventured onto terrain that has been dominated by Republican candidates.

It was a risk-filled journey for both: social issues like abortion and gay marriage have long been sticking points for Democrats in their efforts to reach some religious voters.

On a day when her campaign released a new ad talking about her struggles to "climb the mountain," Clinton told CNN's Campbell Brown and Newsweek's Jon Meacham. "I don't think that I could have made my life's journey without being anchored in God's grace and without having that, you know, sense of forgiveness and unconditional love.
"And I am not going to point to one or another matter. I mean, some of my struggles and challenges have been extremely public," Clinton said. "And I have talked about how I have been both guided and supported through those, trying to find my own way through, because, for me, my faith has given me the confidence to make decisions that were right for me, whether anybody else agreed with me or not."
Obama said that to him, "religion is a bulwark, a foundation when other things aren't going well. That's true in my own life, through trials and tribulations. ..."
Obama later added: "I am a devout Christian ... I started my work working with churches in the shadow of steel plants that had closed on the south side of Chicago ..."
(more)

Sad that in this modern time of supposed enlightenment, it's still necessary for candidates for public office to declare their faith and allegiance to an imaginary super-being and the archaic superstitions surrounding that idea in order to garner the trust of an electorate riddled with such beliefs. Frightening that these candidates may in fact hold these beliefs and may be influenced by them into making critical decisions perhaps less rationally. Frightening indeed.

Nun Too Soon

2008-04-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

From The Associated Press:

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- A Roman Catholic nun accused of stealing from the Omaha Archdiocese and gambling much of the money away has pleaded guilty to theft.

An attorney says Sister Barbara Markey pleaded Monday to theft of more than $1,500. Defense attorney J. William Gallup says she also agreed to pay $125,000 in restitution.
(more)

The Audacity of Reason

2008-03-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

From Sam Harris via The Huffington Post:

Barack Obama delivered a truly brilliant and inspiring speech this week. There were a few things, however, that he did not and could not (and, indeed, should not) say.

(read on)

Disturbing ad Placement

2008-03-23T08:08:00.000-07:00

Do you find this ad and its placement in Science News as disturbing as I do?

click on the image for a larger view.

Dr. Wafa Sultan

2008-03-09T09:15:00.000-07:00

"The al-Jazeera network deeply apologizes for the fact that one of its programs' participants degraded Islam and the monotheistic faiths on her own initiative. The channel extends its apology to all its viewers for the offensive remarks and has canceled both reruns of the program"

And with this unfortunate apology, Al Jazeera demonstrates for all to see, the corrupt and repressive environment in which it has to operate. Whether means to make an earnest effort toward unbiased journalism or whether the mission of the news station is purely propaganda may be academic - they evidently have no choice but to pander to Muslim extremist pressure.

Transcript of the full debate courtesy of Aqoul.

Better (very) Late than Never

2008-03-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

From TimesOnline:

Vatican recants with a statue of Galileo
Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the great scientist by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls.
The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
(more)

... and I suppose this is expected to make it all better now? Token repentance four centuries after the crime? Now that's setting a great example, isn't it?

The church still routinely takes irrational stands in the face of reality, often with devastating human and environmental consequences. Unless it is somehow able to relinquish its self-claimed monopoly on "truth", step into the present day, and begin to remodel itself in light of the world as it actually is, not as people millenia ago imagined it to be, the church will continue its slow, pathetic descent into irrelevancy.

Survey: US religious landscape in flux

2008-02-25T13:06:00.000-08:00

From The Associated Press:

The U.S. religious marketplace is extremely volatile, with nearly half of American adults leaving the faith tradition of their upbringing to either switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether, a new survey finds.

(more)

On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace

2008-02-23T18:23:00.000-08:00

I came across this and felt it deserves to be seen by more people. This is an earnest effort by people on both sides of the Gaza / Israel border - common folk, not religious zealots or political power-brokers, to talk peace; to think and dream about what a 'normal' life might be like; to share those dreams between real people.

Please take a look at http://gaza-sderot.blogspot.com/ to get a different and more human perspective on the conflict in the region.

Note to readers: I have shamelessly borrowed the title of a paper, now somewhat famous in the Internet development community, if a bit dated, addressing a very technical topic of concern during the formative days of the technology that led to this Internet on which we blog today. Though not directly relevant to this topic, I link to it here out of respect for the original author, ironically, an Israeli named Danny Cohen who made significant contributions to the development of the Internet..

Be careful what you wish for...

2008-02-22T18:40:00.000-08:00

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is playing with fire... again. Perhaps he shouldn't be so quick to count on Israel's restraint this time around, or that of the United States.

To Israel Nasrallah said in his latest diatribe:

"Your army would collapse at the feet of Imad Mughniyeh. I swear that we would fight you like you never experienced. Your army would be destroyed in south Lebanon"

He added "The Israeli air force is not capable of winning a war and Israel has no alternative but launching an overland offensive . We are ready to achieve victory and no one can protect all of Israel from our rockets"

Nasrallah predicted that Israel will cease to exist , because the "The Arab opposition, including Syria will eliminate Israel"

It is clear from his remarks that he underestimates Israel's resolve and its capabilities. By making remarks threatening their very existence, he provides unambiguous justification for any steps Israel may feel it needs to take. Its characteristic restraint, ignored in the popular press and denied in the Arab media, will not be a factor in a battle in which its existence is seriously threatened.

Isreal will as always make every effort to avoid or minimize civilian casualties, a standard to which its attackers are never held, but in the end there will be much blood and death. Southern Lebanon will be laid waste. The practice of hiding weapons and ammunition amidst civilians, a typical tactic of Hizballah, the various Palastinian militant groups, and others who attack Israel will result in unavoidable civilian bloodshed nonetheless. The death toll will likely reach into the tens of thousands, and though Israel will surely feel the pain, the vast majority of the carnage will be north of the border.

And if Israel is found to be in serious jeopardy, the involvement of the US becomes a serious possibility. It's unclear what form such involvement would take, but the political landscape in the region would not likely resemble its present condition afterward.

Religious delusions on all sides are ultimately responsible for this entire conflict. If suddenly the veil of religious fervor could be lifted, the parties would have much to gain from cooperation.

Related stories:

Gorge Bush's Fascist States of America

2008-02-16T18:50:00.000-08:00

So after watching Olbermann's latest eloquent rant in which he calls Bush to task for being a fascist, I got to thinking - obviously he's not the first to consider this idea - let's see what other material has been written on the subject. A quick search of the internet turned up a number of sites presenting different views on the subject. I've provided links to some below.

The search also turned up a few feeble attempts to attack Olbermann, but these looked more like preaching to the Bush choir, singing the familiar refrains of their usual hymns, than any substantive argument. As such, I didn't bother to include them here.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess I only skimmed these postings - didn't have time to read them in full - but they seemed to be of possible interest. As is typical of internet sites, their quality runs the gamut but they have much to say.

For further reading, I encourage you to do your own search usng your favorite search engine/s. There're lots more out there than the few I posted here.

Olbermann on FISA & Lessig on Barack vs. Hillary

2008-02-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

While not specifically atheistic, two videos worth watching here: one, Keith Olbermann's latest eloquent rant against our erstwhile fascist in chief; the other a reasoned presentation by Lawrence Lessig on the important differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

A veto of the FISA bill endangers Americans
Olbermann: The president is demanding immunity for the telecoms yet, he can’t confirm they did anything for which they need to be cleared

Olbermann Special Comment

Lessig on Obama & Clinton

A 'shmita' miracle? Miracle Shmiracle.

2008-02-08T08:53:00.000-08:00

Harmful or not harmful superstition? In any case, good for a laugh...

From The Jerusalem Post:

In what some potato farmers in the Negev are taking as a sign from God, the recent frost that ravaged produce across the nation selectively passed over some crops - as if guided, they say, by a divine hand.

Potatoes planted in the Negev before the beginning of the shmita (sabbatical) year, in accordance with the biblical prohibition against plowing, sowing and many other field chores, were spared the damages caused by sharp drops in temperature last week.

In contrast, potatoes that were planted during the shmita year - which began at nightfall on September 13, the first day of the Jewish year of 5768 - were decimated.

(full story)

Vatican rejects criticism of new prayer for Jewish conversion

2008-02-07T07:01:00.000-08:00

From HaHaretz:

The top Vatican cardinal in charge of relations with Jews on Thursday denied that a new prayer for their conversion was offensive and said Catholics had the right to pray as they wish.

The Vatican had come under fire from Jewish groups in recent days for changing its Good Friday service to include a prayer urging God to let Jews "recognize Jesus Christ as savior of all men."

Earlier this week, Pope Benedict ordered changes to a Latin prayer for Jews at traditionalist Good Friday services, deleting a reference to their "blindness" over Christ.

Cardinal Walter Kasper spoke in an interview in a leading Italian newspaper a day after world Jewish leaders said the new prayer could set back inter-religious dialogue by decades.

(full article)

What’s So Bad About Religion?

2008-01-27T10:21:00.000-08:00

From An Apostate's Chapel:

The first problem that I have with religious beliefs is that [...] acting on the basis of false beliefs can lead to ill-conceived, even harmful, behavior and decisions.

The second problem I have with religious belief is that believers do not live in vacuums. Their religious beliefs are not always private and those beliefs do affect others [...] in numerous ways.

The third problem I have with religious beliefs is the persistent entreaty that I respect religious beliefs simply because they are religious.

(read the full article)

Teaching Lies Jeopardizes America's Future

2008-01-27T10:08:00.000-08:00

Came across this recent post on Atheist Revolution, while reading a particularly brilliantly written item, the subject of my next post. This article makes several very important points. Well worth reading.

My son is about to enter college. He is studying history and secondary education with an eye toward becoming a high school teacher. I have begun paying a little more attention to the subject of education and have become more than a little bit concerned. My concern is more about "Christian" education (home, parochial or ‘bible’ schools) and the possible damage this education (or lack thereof) may be doing to the future of America. This potential damage comes on more than one level: social, economic, and political.

(full post)

"Love Bomb" Misses the Mark

2008-01-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

From Deconversion Bible, a new Atheist blog:

This post was inspired by vjack's article on Christian Culture.

I don't know how many atheists are intimately familiar with the evangelical and cultist tactic called a love bombing. I saw an article about it on Truthdig. The article discusses overt, sinister examples of the tactic where evangelical leaders consciously direct the group members to carry this out. I think sometimes it's just a little more subtle and love bombing is far more extensive than what we give it credit for. I'd like to broaden the applicability of love bombing here because I think it gives valuable insight into a whole set of Christian behavior.

I've always been aware of many Christian behaviors that are built into and thought of as the Christian lifestyle itself. The group members themselves often aren't even meant to be aware of the reasons for their own actions. And often, the group members are so well conditioned into this lifestyle that the group can carry out sophisticated coordinated efforts even with no leader at their center. It's automatic.

I don't think there's a single atheist who hasn't heard Christian leaders calling on their churches to go out into their cities and treat everyone in a loving, caring manner. They always stress the homeless, prostitutes, and even those "inner city" people. Churches then encourage their members to put together friend-making activities such as progressive dinner parties for new recruits. And smaller groups are encouraged to voluntarily go off the deep end with things such as cuddle parties or "ice breaker games" such as this. Christians are obsessed with inventing or adopting superficial friend-making activities.

(Full post)

The full post is well worth reading, along with vjack's Christian Culture post that inspired it and in turn How do you escape a cult when it's all around you? posted by layla on exchristian.net to which vjack responds.

On Genies (and other irrational beliefs)

2008-01-25T08:54:00.001-08:00

A husband took his wife for her first game of golf. The wife promptly hacked her first shot right through the window of the biggest house adjacent to the course. The husband cringed, "I warned you to be careful! Now we'll have to go up there, find the owner, apologize and see how much your lousy drive is going to cost us."

So the couple walked up to the house and knocked on the door. A warm voice said, "Come on in." When they opened the door they saw the damage that was done: glass was all over the place, and a broken antique bottle was lying on its side near the pieces of window glass.

A man reclining on the couch asked, "Are you the people that broke my window?"

"Uh...yeah, sir. We're sure sorry about that," the husband replied.

"Oh, no apology is necessary...! Actually I want to thank you. You see, I'm a genie, and I've been trapped in that bottle for a thousand years. Now that you've released me, I'm allowed to grant three wishes. I'll give you each one wish, but if you don't mind, I'll keep the last one for myself."

"Wow, that's great!" the husband said. He pondered a moment and blurted out, "I'd like a million dollars a year for the rest of my life."

"No problem," said the genie. "You've got it, it's the least I can do. And I'll guarantee you a long, healthy life!"

"And now you, young lady, what do you want?" the genie asked.

"I'd like to own a gorgeous home complete with servants in every country in the world," she said.

"Consider it done," the genie said. "And your homes will always be safe from fire, burglary and natural disasters!"

"And now," the couple asked in unison, "what's your wish, genie?"

"Well, since I've been trapped in that bottle, and haven't been with a woman in more than a thousand years, my wish is to have sex with your wife."

The husband looked at his wife and said, "Gee, honey, you know we both now have a fortune, and all those houses. What do you think?"

She mulled it over for a few moments and said, "You know, you're right. Considering our good fortune, I guess I wouldn't mind, but what about you, honey?"

"You know I love you sweetheart," said the husband. I'd do the same for you!"

So the genie and the woman went upstairs where they spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying each other. The genie was insatiable.

After about three hours of non-stop sex, the genie rolled over and looked directly into her eyes and asked, "How old are you and your husband?"

"Why, we're both 35," she responded breathlessly.

"No Kidding," he said. "Thirty-five years old and both of you still believe in genies?????"

Doubting Your Faith?

2008-01-17T09:27:00.001-08:00

From Atheist Revolution:

This is for the Christians out there who find yourselves doubting your faith. You are going to receive a lot of advice from your fellow Christians about how doubt will strengthen your faith and may even bring you closer to your god. I'm not here to argue with that or to tell you that such a perspective is necessarily wrong. I just want to point out that there is another possibility you should at least consider. What if the doubt you are experiencing is a healthy sign that your rational mind is trying to break free from a tradition of superstition?

(full article)

The Enemy Within

2008-01-16T11:00:00.000-08:00

This Man Has No Business Being President

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And thats what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”
--Mike Huckabee

Hello so-called mainstream media? Are you listening? Why is the coverage of this story so sparse on the major networks? Granted, this guy will not likely be elected and granted changing the constitution is very difficult indeed - this is a good example of the reasons for that - but this is an indication of this guy's mindset.

Reactions:

Keith Olberman on MSNBC:

The single greatest threat to church-state separation in America is the movement known as the Religious Right. Organizations and leaders representing this religio-political crusade seek to impose a fundamentalist Christian viewpoint on all Americans through government action.
--Americans United for Separation of Church and State

The goal of undermining this foundational principle of our nation poses nothing less than an existential threat to our most basic rights and freedoms, and to the United States of America itself. Does this constitute treason?

The United States of America was founded for the very specific purpose of protecting its citizens at large from the religious leanings of a subset of society. To weaken or eliminate such separation quite literally destroys the very freedoms the United States stands for and the purpose for and meaning of its existence as a nation.

Evolutionary Politics: Why we should care what candidates think about biological evolution

2008-01-14T06:41:00.000-08:00

From reasononline:

Biological evolution became a hot topic in the presidential campaign last May when Republican presidential hopefuls were asked during a debate if "there was anybody on the stage that does not agree, believe in evolution?" Three held up their hands, Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.), Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.) and former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.). Evolution deniers Brownback and Tancredo have now dropped out of the race. So what do all the remaining candidates—Republican and Democratic—think about biological evolution? And does it matter?

(full article)

We can beat Iran - but not by fighting

2008-01-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

From the International Herald Tribune:

We can beat Iran - but not by fighting

Interesting perspective. Worth reading.

George W. Bush: The Frank Burns of Modern Politics

2008-01-09T08:37:00.000-08:00

I came across this little tidbit while searching for something else (of course) but one line from it caught my attention:

"George W. Bush is the Frank Burns of modern politics."

This analogy is right on target and the post, though a few years old now, is still worth a quick read.

Straight Talk from Bill Maher on Conan

2008-01-06T09:53:00.000-08:00

"You can't be a rational person six days a week…and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you're drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god."

Holiday Cheer and Murder

2007-12-29T19:22:00.000-08:00

Two Charged in Washington Holiday Killings
(From the Associated Press via Yahoo! News)

SEATTLE - After slaughtering their parents, Joseph McEnroe apologized to his girlfriend's young niece and nephew before shooting both in the head to end a Christmas Eve massacre, prosecutors alleged Friday.

But even as they filed aggravated first-degree murder charges against McEnroe and Michele Anderson, prosecutors could not say what might have driven the couple in the violent killing spree.

(read the complete article)

Believer bitter over 'prosperity' preachings

2007-12-27T21:24:00.000-08:00

(From the Associated Press via CNN.COM) -- The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor's living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

(read the complete article)

This "53-year-old accountant" is old enough to know better, schooled in the skills of financial accounting, yet somehow gullible enough to buy into this kind of scam? It's difficult to be very sympathetic to her plight. Nobody forced her squander her money on this nonsense.

Historian: First English Bible Fueled First Fundamentalists

2007-12-11T18:31:00.000-08:00

From LiveScience:

"The translation of the Bible into English marked the birth of religious fundamentalism in medieval times, as well as the persecution that often comes with radical adherence in any era, according to a new book."

(more)

Romney: 'Freedom requires religion'

2007-12-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

[Commentary below]

(CNN) -- White House hopeful Mitt Romney said religious liberty "is fundamental to America's greatness," in his Thursday address on faith in America.

Romney, seeking to become the first Mormon president, explained how his faith would affect his presidency in his speech at former President George H. W. Bush's presidential library at Texas A&M University.
"There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders," Romney said.
"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone," he said.

"I believe in my Mormon faith [LDS church-Wikipedia] and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers -- I will be true to them and to my beliefs," he said, adding that if his faith hurts his candidacy, "so be it."

Romney said he thought some have taken the idea of separation of church and state beyond its original meaning by trying to remove any acknowledgment of God from the public arena.
"It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America -- the religion of secularism. They are wrong," he said.

(full article)

Commentary

The idea that all the candidates profess some level of religious belief, whether sincerely or as a political expedient is troubling enough, but I have grave concerns about the positions and opinions expressed by this candidate (and similar sentiments voiced by others).

It is as though he believes that the underlying assumption of the existence of a god or gods, common to essentially all religions, is somehow separate from religion and that all people, regardless of the particular version of the story to which they subscribe, implicitly accept the god notion. This exposes that in his thinking, Atheists either don't exist or at least don't matter. We are outside his sphere of awareness - outside his universe if you will. How can such a person be the president of all the citizens when he fails to acknowledge many of them from the start?

He states that "freedom requires religion". I suppose in a humorous sense this can be true - what, afterall, would "freedom from religion" mean if there were no religion from which to be free? But seriously, true freedom cannot be realized in a dogma-laden context. Religion poses the greatest challenge to our rights and freedoms, in many cases seeking to specifically and explicitly abridge them.

Romney also conflates the concepts of religion and world-view when he refers to "the religion of secularism". While religion may encompass world-view, the reverse is not necessarily true. What he refers to as 'secularism' is quite simply the greatest strength of our nation as set forth by its founders; yet he dismisses this as some sort of misconception. These kinds of muddled thought are the most insidious threat to the vital separation of church and state that has made possible the very freedom he so quickly twists up with his religious thinking.

Though it is not inconceivable that such a man, should be be elected, could in the final analysis be shown to have had a net-positive effect on the country, his beliefs, not unlike many professed by the current disastrous president, are, to borrow his phrase, "at odds with" the principles on which this nation is founded. As such, I, for one, could not in good conscience even consider casting a vote for him.

Papal encyclical attacks atheism, lauds hope

2007-11-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, in an encyclical released on Friday, said atheism was responsible for some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" in history.

(more)

Religious scholars mull Flying Spaghetti Monster

2007-11-16T09:37:00.000-08:00

(AP [via CNN]) -- When some of the world's leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They'll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.

(more)

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

2007-11-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I read a book titled The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a collection of ramblings by Richard Feynman. This man's mind was brilliant and insightful, and this book captures something of that insight and of his inquisitive yet whimsical personality.

I see that it is now available on GoogleBooks. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is well worth reading. It can also be found on Amazon.com for a reasonable price.

Below is an excerpt:

p. 110-111

"I believe that we should demand that people try in their own minds to obtain for themselves a more consistent picture of their own world; that they not permit themselves the luxury of having their brain cut in four pieces or two pieces even, and on one side they believe this and on the other side they believe that, but never try to compare the two points of view.

Because we have learned that, by trying to put the points of view that we have in our head together and comparing one to the other, we make some progress in understanding and appreciating where we are and what we are. And I believe that science has remained irrelevant because we wait until somebody asks us questions or until we are invited to give a speech on Einstein's theory to people who don't understand Newtonian mechanics, but we never are invited to give an attack on faith healing, or on astrology-on what is the scientific view of astrology today.

I think that we must mainly write some articles. Now what would happen? The person who believes in astrology will have to learn some astronomy. The person who believes in faith healing may have to learn some medicine, because of the arguments going back and forth; and some biology. In other words, it will be necessary that science become relevant. The remark which I read somewhere, that science is all right so long as it doesn't attack religion, was the clue that I needed to understand the problem.

As long as it doesn't attack religion it need not be paid attention to and nobody has to learn anything. So it can be cut off from modern society except for its applications, and thus be isolated. And then we have this terrible struggle to try to explain things to people who have no reason to want to know. But if they want to defend their own point of view, they will have to learn what yours is a little bit.

So I suggest, maybe incorrectly and perhaps wrongly, that we are too polite. There was in the past an era of conversation on these matters. It was felt by the church that Galileo's views attacked the Church. It is not felt by the Church today that the scientific views attack the Church. Nobody is worrying about it. Nobody attacks; I mean, nobody writes trying to explain the inconsistencies between theological views and the scientific views held by different people today-or even the inconsistencies sometimes held by the same scientists between his religious and scientific beliefs.

Now the next subject, and the last main subject that I want to talk about, is the one I really consider the most important and the most serious. And that has to do with the question of uncertainty and doubt. A scientist is never certain. We all know that. We know that all our statements are approximate statements with different degrees of certainty; that when a statement is made, the question is not whether it is true or false but rather how likely it is to be true or false.
"Does God exist?" "When put in the questional form, how likely is it?" It makes such a terrifying transformation of the religious point of view, and that is why the religious point of view is unscientific. We must discuss each question within the uncertainties that are allowed. And as evidence grows it increases the probability perhaps that some idea is right, or decreases it. But it never makes absolutely certain one way or the other. Now we have found that this is of paramount importance in order to progress. We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And the question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty."

The Legacy of Intolerance

2007-10-18T13:57:00.001-07:00

This came in a forwarded email and I thought it poignant enough to be worth posting here.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russian Peoples looking the other way!

Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be " a myth" it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

Scientific American: Searching for God in the Brain

2007-10-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

From Scientific American: Searching for God in the Brain

Researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith

By David Biello

The doughnut-shaped machine swallows the nun, who is outfitted in a plain T-shirt and loose hospital pants rather than her usual brown habit and long veil. She wears earplugs and rests her head on foam cushions to dampen the device’s roar, as loud as a jet engine. Supercooled giant magnets generate intense fields around the nun’s head in a high-tech attempt to read her mind as she communes with her deity.
.
.
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(Full Text)

Science vs. Religion

2007-10-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

Science begins with a question and the foundation of the accumulated knowledge of past scientific work, always aware that future work may call any of that past knowledge into question. Answers are sought through contemplation and experiment, examining what can be observed and devising ways to test and clarify our understanding. It is by nature a process of successive approximation, gradually, continually improving and refining what we understand. While it may never lead to a complete understanding of everything, it is the only path we know to revealing reality, tantalizing glimpse by tantalizing glimpse.

Religion, on the other hand, begins with the premise that all answers can be found in an ancient book. This premise stands in contradiction to the whole enterprise of scientific investigation and ultimately of meaningful education. Without the external pressures of modern society, religious “education” consists mainly of rote memorization of the scriptures and some limited exploration of their interpretation according to whichever leaders were involved. This can be seen today in areas dominated by fundamentalists. Religion actively impedes the learning process, even going so far as to declare some ideas as heretical, off limits to even private thought.

Religion is an insult to the individual and collective intelligence not only of our own species but all species. Even as it purports to hallow nature as creations of its god or gods, it denies the magnificence of nature and the processes underlying it, seeking instead to project the notion that it all is the product of the grand design of some mythical, mystical consciousness, the origin of which remains obscure, but, despite its putative ability to create the entire universe, somehow it is unfulfilled without human worship.

Science and the Islamic world—The quest for rapprochement

2007-10-03T11:20:00.000-07:00

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy
Physics Today Online

"Internal causes led to the decline of Islam's scientific greatness long before the era of mercantile imperialism. To contribute once again, Muslims must be introspective and ask what went wrong."

(article)

Human Seasonal Celebration

2007-09-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Severe storms in the Pacific Northwest knocked out power for a time last winter. Having been out of town when this occurred, I returned to the area some days later to find the main roads cleared but the power still down and recovery very much underway and incomplete. I fired up a backup generator, heated the house, and set about the cleanup tasks, discarding spoiled food, cutting up downed trees, filing insurance claims, etc.

During a break in the weather, I took a walk around the neighborhood, inspecting the damage and contemplating the situation. It was then that I began to think about the gathering and giving spirit of this time of year. It probably has its origins far earlier than the various contemporary religious traditions to which it is commonly attributed, and probably played a crucial role in the survival of the human species to the present era.

At this time of year, when the weather often can be harsh, it was almost certainly a cooperative effort just to survive the season. People were together during these trying times much more closely and must have traded supplies as well as physical warmth, huddling together, bundling up in whatever skin blankets, tents, huts, and shelters were available. No doubt this sharing of body heat resulted in significant numbers of pregnancies.

Relief from having survived the harsh season of winter (and no longer having to huddle in such close quarters with others who by that time were no doubt starting to get on each others’ nerves) and the increasing visibility of the resulting pregnancies almost certainly is the foundation for the exuberant fertility festivals of the spring season.

A bountiful harvest, whether by hunter-gatherers, herders, or farmers, was a major factor in whether or not there would be sufficient food to survive the coming winter; hence the harvest celebrations of the autumn season. Plentiful food meant feasts during which, not unlike our kin species in the wild, people indulged, thus packing on fat reserves for the coming harsh season. What wasn’t consumed was preserved as best they knew how, to provide rations through the winter. And so the cycle continued.

Gift giving probably evolved from necessary trade between people pooling their resources during the huddle. Good will in the form of proffered foodstuffs, skin blankets, etc., was reciprocated in kind. Concern also developed on the part of those with more, to assist those who may have been unable to store adequate supplies for their own survival, an early form of a community safety net, helping some in one year and others in the next.

Coming together for survival was also an opportunity for reunion between family and friends who may have traveled separately during the rest of the year. The cheer of the time no doubt stemmed from the joy of these reunions and the comfort and security of being with the group. At night, around the fire, stories would be told, sharing the experiences of the past year, fears, triumphs; no doubt exaggerated with each telling. Many cultures devised proto-religious spiritual embellishments to help explain their experiences.

Tens of thousands of years after those ancient times of continuous survival pressure, many forms of festive seasonal traditions persist in nearly every human culture, having evolved through many twists and turns along with the religious concepts and contexts that came to surround them, to the holidays we know today. Evolution is ceaseless; certainly these traditions continue to change and adjust in light of changing reality and our ever-expanding understanding of the world around us. We are long overdue to shake off the primitive religious baggage we have carried forward to the present. Reality offers more than enough reason to celebrate without the need for a fantastical veneer of spiritual nonsense to dampen our exuberance.

The George W. Bush Memorial: A Monument to Ignorance

2007-09-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

The George W. Bush Memorial: A Monument to Ignorance

By Mohammed J. Christiansen

WASHINGTON, DC - September 11, 2101

Today we take a moment out of our busy schedules to pause and remember the terrible events that took place on this day in 2001, a century ago. Few are alive today who still remember that day, whether they were in the area of any of the attacks and witnessed them personally, or lost loved ones, or just watched in horror via the various news media.

Today not only marks the anniversary of those tragedies and the tragic loss of life, but the opening salvo in a U.S. Presidency gone terribly wrong. George W. Bush was ushered into office by a Supreme Court decision after an election resulting in a near tie with Democratic candidate Al Gore, amid strong allegations of election tampering in several states and major counting problems in Florida in particular, where Bush’s brother was governor at the time. His presidency began in what appears to have been one of, if not the most corrupted elections in the history of the United States of America. How exactly he was able to remain in office for a second term has been the subject of much conjecture and accusation ever since.

George W. Bush defined himself as a man of Christian “Faith”. True to form, he immediately began working to weaken the separation of church and state, so vital to a strong democratic society. President Bush used his “faith” in lieu of intelligence and reason in making vital decisions that would affect not only the United States but the world at large, thereby dramatically weakening the standing of the United States among other nations, seriously undermining its moral and political leadership. Lacking in basic intelligence and common sense, he surrounded himself with smarter people; yet failed miserably to heed their advice, or worse, pressured them to alter their advice to conform to his “faith-based” agenda. A few who recognized his intellectual frailty, appealed to his “faith” to forward their own pernicious agendas; notably his vice president, the aptly named Dick Cheney.

Mr. Bush was not well read, preferring instead to spend time on his Texas ranch land, “clearing brush”, chain saw in hand. On the international front, his interactions with other world leaders were often juvenile; his ability to distinguish friend from potential foe, dubious at best. Cheney was widely recognized as the intelligence behind his administration; though that intelligence was seldom applied in the best interests of the United States or its people. The incompetence and ineptitude of this administration as a whole is legendary still today.

George W. Bush was often referred to deservedly disrespectfully as “W” (to differentiate him from the prior president and his father, George H. W. Bush), or as “Dubya”, pronouncing the “W” with an imitated Texas accent, or as George Shrub, or George Bush “the lesser”.

Following the events of September 11th, 2001, when it was determined that a radical Islamic group operating under the name Al Qaida was responsible, its leader, Osama bin Laden, once supported by covert US operations in Afghanistan, but since recognized as a terrorist enemy of the west, was identified as the prime target for a response. An Islamic extremist group known as the Taliban was oppressively ruling Afghanistan at the time and, not surprisingly, refused to extradite bin Laden. After token negotiations in the United Nations, a well-intentioned, if largely ineffective international diplomatic organization, the decision was made to declare war on Afghanistan and remove the Taliban from power, paving the way, ostensibly at least, to capturing or killing bin Laden. This initial incursion was carried off relatively smoothly by a “coalition” consisting primarily of US forces but with some token international support. The Taliban was effectively neutralized, and a puppet government installed. Residual Taliban continued to pose a threat, trying to reconstitute their opressive rule. US and multinational forces would remain in theater for years in an effort to combat these extremist forces and maintain some semblance of civil order.

Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding out in rugged territory straddling the border between Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, controlled not by either country, but by tribal forces ensconced there. Bush appealed to the then leader of Pakistan, President, General Pervez Musharraf and hastily forged an alliance in which Pakistani forces were enlisted to try and corral bin Laden and possibly capture him. Pakistan, immersed in a territorial dispute with neighboring India that saw both experimenting with nuclear weapons, now found itself in an important negotiating position with the US and was quick to cooperate or at least present the appearance of cooperation in order that it might gain some leverage. It wasn't until years later, under the administration of Barack Obama, the first US president of African descent, who followed George W. Bush in office, when US forces finally caught up with bin Laden in living in relative comfort inside Pakistan; a confrontation that resulted in his death.

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush, after pressuring the intelligence community to produce what later was exposed as pathetic “evidence” that Saddam Hussein in nearby Iraq had been tangentially involved in the terrorist attacks against the US and was producing so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), ostensibly in preparation for a full-on attack on the United States and/or its interests abroad; the same Saddam Hussein against whom an earlier president, Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush had fought a war and prevailed but failed to “finish the job” and remove him from power, presented that “evidence” to the United Nations through one Colin Powell, who up to that point had been widely viewed as a man of great personal integrity by most of the American public and much of the world for that matter. After deliberations and under great pressure from the Bush administration, the UN eventually issued resolutions making demands of Hussein. Ultimately, this was used as pretext for a war in Iraq, carried off by another “coalition” consisting again predominantly of US forces, with grudging token support from other nations.

Hussein, while certainly no angel, was not the perpetrator of the September 11th attacks and by all accounts, was not in any way involved in them, directly or indirectly. Though he was removed from power and eventually tried in a hastily reconstituted Iraqi court, ostensibly of, by, and on behalf of Iraqis, convicted, and hanged for his crimes against Iraq, Hussein, through his certainly destructive program of cash “reward” payments made to the families of suicide bombers killing innocent civilians in Israel, was only a relatively minor player in the global terrorism threat on which was founded Bush’s new doctrine of preemptive action. The Iraq war, primarily a realization of the personal agendas of Bush and his Vice President Cheney, was a tremendous drain on the US national budget and cost thousands of American lives – more in fact than the September 11th attack, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, most of whom were probably innocent civilians.

Bush invoked and far exceeded constitutional wartime powers to expand the power of the Executive branch, much to the detriment of the strength of the Constitution and of the United States’ form of constitutional democracy itself. During his tenure, he installed members of the Supreme Court, including a Chief Justice, tipping the balance from a progressive and rationally minded court to one with strong Christian “conservative” leanings. The damage to the American way of life resulting from this change alone is still being tallied. Wherever he had the opportunity, Bush used his religious beliefs as an excuse to undo decades of progress in civil rights and freedoms, medical research, and other areas. The Bush administration regularly interfered with the due course of scientific research, and pressured various governmental agencies to alter their reports away from reality in support of his beliefs. He and his administration effectively vandalized the United States of America, its government and its constitution, undermining the very foundations of what had been the greatest national experiment in the history of human society. The republican party suffered as well, allowing its right-wing religious constituency to influence run amok, fielding more than a few rank idiots as vice presidential and presidential candidates, and generally showing itself to be misaligned with the interests of the nation at large. Not that the democrats had it right either, but they were at least not so inflexible and dogmatic.

It is not, however, merely the ignorance of this failed president that makes his uncharacteristically modest if well maintained memorial a monument to ignorance; nor is it just the crimes and misdoings of his administration. It is the ignorance, intolerance, and bigotry of the religious multitudes, Christian and Muslim in particular, so focused on their myths and dogma. It is the ignorance of a huge portion of the American public, religious and otherwise, so complacent in the supposed checks and balances designed to protect against just such a criminal administration as to somehow overlook the fact that with the republican-dominated congress and hand picked Supreme Court, the administration in its first term had nearly completely dismantled those very safeguards and twisted the knife in the wound during the early part of its second. Only midway through his second term did the American public finally dislodge the republican congressional majority, and then only by the narrowest of margins.

American citizens’ direct and continual involvement in the public discourse, not merely in the electoral process, an essential ingredient of the American System, had been abdicated by the citizenry at large, probably beginning with the growth of the broadcast media into the position of dominant source of public information, effectively turning the great democratic conversation into a one-way presentation, excluding the input of the citizenry at large. Direct citizen involvement, the safeguard of first and last resort, was critical to the healthy pursuit of American Democracy. This involvement had already almost completely evaporated by the time of the George W. Bush Administration; yet this alarming situation was hardly even recognized by the public at large, lured into complacency by a media and political status quo that had by then been reduced to little more than a marketing campaign, selling politicians much the way of any other product: clothing, hygiene products, food.

Ignorant Americans stood by and watched their very way of life systematically undermined by a presidential administration reminiscent of nothing so much as the early days of the Third Reich, but in America, where such things were not supposed to happen. This was the administration that the founding fathers feared. This was the administration against which the various safeguards were installed in the first place, all those many years ago. Yet Ignorant Americans stood by and let it happen.

Ignorant Muslims world wide said nothing when extremists from among their ranks perpetrated horrible crimes against humanity, usually aimed deliberately at innocent civilians including children, under the aegis of the dogma of their supposedly peaceful religion.

Ignorant Christians the world over, but in the United States in particular, reveled in the delusion that events were unfolding that looked eerily similar to events they’d been brainwashed to expect leading up to the “second coming” of their imagined messiah.

None of these prophesied events came to pass of course. After years of brutal and bloody war, reasonable minds began to emerge, publishing in traditional media such as books, and new electronic media such as the Internet, the first global electronic information network, an omnidirectional medium in which everyone could participate worldwide. Eventually, the jumpstarted conversation resumed, this time with input not only from within the United States, but worldwide, from all sides of the issues. Eventually, reason reasserted itself, leading in time to a more rational and more peaceful public discourse and society as a whole began to heal.

On this hundredth anniversary of the tragedy that served as the trigger for this sad chain of events, it is for all the citizens of the Planet Earth to remember and study this and other atrocities throughout our history; to recognize in ourselves the tendency toward, and actively and aggressively work to prevent another one; to combat the forces of dogma wherever they may show their faces; to teach our children the time-tested methods of critical thinking, analysis, and introspection, and the imperative to apply them; to work for the strength of our society for the benefit of all the inhabitants of this tiny blue planet we call home.

Mohammed Judas Christiansen is Managing editor of the Jerusalem Global News System. His commentaries are featured regularly in this forum.

Scientology Faces Criminal Charges

2007-09-06T09:09:00.000-07:00

"BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — A Belgian prosecutor on Tuesday recommended that the U.S.-based Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10-year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization."
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The German government considers Scientology a commercial enterprise that takes advantage of vulnerable people.

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Perhaps Germany should also take them to court. Why stop with Scientology? Perhaps they should take all the 'commercial enterprises taking advantage of vulnerable people' to court. There are many such enterprises far more well established than Scientology that collectively have done far more harm throughout the millennia.

Believing the Unbelievable

2007-07-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

Believing the Unvelievable: The Clash Between Faith and Reason in the Modern World
Sam Harris [wikipedia] speaks at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Science Not the Cause of Non-Religious Scientists

2007-06-29T16:55:00.000-07:00

From LiveScience:

Scientists are less religious than the general population, a new study shows, but the reason has little to do with their study of science or academic pressures.

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I'm not sure how to interpret these results or if they're even credible.

So why are scientists less religious? The data indicate that being raised in a religious home is the best predictor of how religious someone will be—scientist or member of the general population.

Perhaps they should have examined whether the data suggest that being raised in a free-thinking non-religious home is a predictor of taking up a scientific career path?

Some interesting items from the article:

52 percent of scientists surveyed said they had no religious affiliation, compared with only 14 percent of the general population.
Of the religious scientists, however, 15 percent identified themselves as Jewish compared to 2 percent of the religious general population.
14 percent of the general population described themselves as "evangelical" or "fundamentalist.” Less than 2 percent of scientists, however, identified themselves as either of these.

Well, Judaism promotes questioning and arguing, unlike many of the Christian dogmas. Jewish culture strongly promotes education as well. That might explain the disproportionate representation of scientists who identify themselves as Jewish. How many of those scientists accept the central proposition of the existence of a god would have been another interesting question for the survey.

Curiously, younger scientists were more likely to believe in God and attend religious services than older scientists.

If these young and religious scientists continue to stay religious, Ecklund said, "it could indicate an overall shift in attitudes toward religion among those in the academy."

Perhaps the longer one applies the scientific method to the study of life, the harder it is to accept religious ideas. Indeed it would be interesting to follow this up in perhaps 30 years to see how many of the currently young and religious scientists in the survey remain so later in life, and of those, how many continued their scientific pursuits. Moreover, it would be very interesting to interview them now and in the future to learn how they reconcile their scientific studies with their religious beliefs, and whether and how that may have changed over the years.

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One footnote-- the original article title is "Science Not to Blame for Non-Religious Scientists" [emphasis mine]. This is a curiously slanted title for a supposedly scientific journal. Use of the word Blame implies the judgment that lack of religiosity among scientists (or any other group, I suppose) is a bad thing for which it is necessary to assign blame. A supposedly impartial scientific presentation should have chosen a title more similar to mine, making no qualitative judgment about the study results.

Ethnic Hatred

2007-06-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

From the Terrorism Awareness Project, a slide show about the history of the Middle East in general and Israel in particular. This site and its materials have the feel of pure propaganda slanted in favor of Israel and will quickly be dismissed as such by those with opposing agendas.

But is it really just propaganda when it also happens to be historical fact? Do your own research, not of opinions on any side, but of the historical facts. Dig down and find the truth. Visit the region. Observe the social structures, group and individual behaviors, attitudes, achievements, and prosperity of people there. Draw your own conclusions.

The sad story of the Middle East exemplifies the legacy of religion in our world. This story -- this madness -- continues today as you read this. The double-standard applied to the sides in this conflict and throughout the history of Israel is real. Where does it come from? Why does the rest of the world stand idly by and let it happen, or worse, accept it in our own thinking? Why are the nations of the middle east so intensely focused on deadly and costly conflict that gains them nothing when all stand to gain so very much from cooperation? What the hell is wrong with these people?!? Religion.

Confessions of a Former Christian

2007-06-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

From Agnostic Atheism:

Watch this video (5:04) by a self-described Atheist, former Christian, discussing his limited understanding of reality as a Christian, and the freedom he now embraces as an Atheist.

Pornography, Alcohol, and Children

2007-06-14T06:11:00.000-07:00

Pornography is a popular topic for religious attack. Not entirely by coincidence, what is commonly called pornography is ubiquitous on the Internet. But why should erotic depictions of human beings engaged in various sexual activities be frowned upon in the first place? We are sexual beings. Sex is a basic fact of our very existence, not some deviant behavior reserved to perversely twisted members of our population. A very basic aspect of our being is that sexual stimulation is pleasurable.

Sexual repression promulgated by religion might have its roots in a plague of sexually transmitted diseases long ago, either as a direct reaction to the conscious realization that sex led to the diseases, or as an institutional effort to bring the problem under control, or perhaps both.

Today we understand sexually transmitted diseases, their transmission mechanisms, and precautions we can take against them. As informed adults, whether or not disease originated it, why should we continue to carry this sexually repressive baggage?

The notion of “protecting our children” from explicit sexual depictions, or even of any knowledge of sex at all until they reach a certain magical age, after which they’re suddenly expected to be ready for this knowledge, also is ludicrous. Children naturally develop sexual feelings at a fairly early age and begin to act on them. Somehow many forget this by the time they reach adulthood and don’t recognize this in their own children. They often react in disbelief and anger when they learn that their children explore and experiment sexually, usually with themselves and/or others in their own age group, often well before puberty. But this is actually normal and healthy human behavior that would be far better served if parents communicated with their children about it, educating and equipping them for responsible conduct in that area; rather than living as so many seem to, in denial of it, or believing that it’s somehow a “sin”. While it might not be appropriate to actively encourage sexual experimentation by their children, neither is it appropriate to saddle them with shame and guilt over it, as they will carry this forward into adulthood.

Similarly, absolute prohibition against restaurants serving wine or beer to anyone under some magical age, even when their parents are present, probably does more harm than good. As a result, when kids do become “of age”, they often end up engaging in drinking orgies to indulge in what has been denied them up to that time, sometimes with dire consequences. If instead they were introduced to wine and beer as a normal part of their upbringing, along with appropriate guidance for responsible consumption and behavior with respect to alcoholic beverages generally, by the time they reached adulthood, it would be no big deal – just part of life, and they’d likely be better equipped to handle it responsibly.

Childhood is the time when our foundational understanding of our world develops. The vast majority of us are born with a burning, passionate intelligence and curiosity about our world and incredible abilities to absorb and categorize information. The conduct of the parents in response to this curiosity and the questions that arise from it is critical at this stage. It can promote the healthy development of an intelligent mind, or it can damage that intelligence irreparably.

Some parents actively discourage their children from “asking too many questions” or “thinking too much”. Frankly, this practice is stupid, and can do tremendous harm to the child’s social and intellectual development. Some parents feel threatened if their child asks a question to which they don’t know the answer, and may lash out in response. This is an abusive parental behavior.

Effective parents, faced with a question to which they don’t know the answer, readily acknowledge their own ignorance on the matter. They’re more likely to respond with something like “I don’t know, let’s find out”, and proceed to research the question together with the child, subject of course to that child’s attention span. The result is that not only has the question been answered, both the parent and child having learned something in the process; but also the child has been shown several important things: that parents don’t know everything and shouldn’t be expected to, that it’s reasonable and proper to admit to not knowing something, and perhaps most importantly, how to find information. In today’s Internet environment, such research can be conducted quickly and conveniently.

Many of the ideas presented in this blog are outside of many people’s accepted world view, but despite this (or perhaps because of it), they merit serious consideration, particularly by those very people. We can better ourselves if we frequently examine our own ideas and behaviors, try to step outside of our usual frame of reference, ask ourselves honestly whether these ideas make objective sense to us or whether they should be discarded or adjusted; whether we are happy with our behaviors or whether we need to alter our habits, and work to make the necessary changes. As an ethical guideline, introspection is primary. Teaching this to our children, by example and explanation, helps them to be better people as well.

On Prohibition of Internet Gambling

2007-06-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

From Reason Online:

Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko testified before the House Financial Services Committee on June 8, 2007 on the issue of Internet gambling (transcript of his prepared testimony) (pdf).

Yet another infringement of our rights and freedoms motivated, no doubt by right-wing Christian influences in our federal government. Personally, I don't care much about poker, but the principle of the thing - that this group of people infiltrates our federal government disproportionately to their representation in the population at large and proceeds to try at every opportunity to impose their perverse values on the rest of us with such arrogant impunity, despite their own abysmal moral track record - is an affront to the very liberty on which the United States is founded.

Anger Fuels Better Decisions

2007-06-11T21:57:00.000-07:00

From Live Science:

The next time you are plagued with indecision and need a clear way out, it might help to get angry, according to a surprising new study.

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Maybe this sheds a different light on the notion of the Angry Atheist.

Could this possibly also be suggesting that deliberately antagonizing religious types might actually have a value beyond the perverse pleasure of watching them squirm and further trumpet their ignorance?

Media Negligence: Paris Hilton is Not Newsworthy

2007-06-10T14:04:00.000-07:00

From Atheist Revolution:

"Where is the media? They are covering Paris Hilton."

Why does anyone care about the misbehavior of this spoiled brat? Is this just another manifestation of some kind of inherent fascination people have with nonsense?

Star Trek's Borg: A Metaphor for the Christian Bible's Heaven?

2007-06-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

From Ain't Christian:

I can't imagine a more frightening story than that of the Bible's heaven. Unfortunately most Christians believe heaven as a pleasant eternal vista for which their souls reside as one with their God, forever. Oh, but what they have misconstrued. According to the bible, heaven is a 1500 mile cube city, and its inhabitants have little freedom of expression.

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Testing the Supernatural

2007-06-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

From The Athiest Experience:

One criticism that is often applied to intelligent design is that it is fundamentally untestable and hence can never be scientific. But is this really true?
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[T]here are so many different implausible things for me to imagine, that there's very little point in treating any of them as true without evidence.

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Without a Doubt

2007-06-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

The title might suggest overconfidence. This is about just the opposite.

Without doubt, there is no learning.
Without doubt, there is no knowledge.
Without doubt, there is no wisdom.
Without doubt, there is no future.
Without doubt, there is no hope.
Without doubt, there is no peace.
Without doubt, there is only stagnation.

Absolute certainty is absolute ignorance.

The Republicans Still Don’t Get It

2007-06-06T07:23:00.000-07:00

From FriendlyAtheist.com:

During the first Republican presidential debate, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, and Mike Huckabee all said they did not believe in evolution.

Brownback later displayed further ignorance about evolution when writing a pathetic op-ed for the New York Times.

So perhaps you thought those candidates learned their lesson before last night’s Republican debate? Not so much.
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This is the field from which we have to choose. It's hard to imagine a worse president than George W. Bush but the ever-faithful GOP, it seems, is working overtime to provide just such a candidate. If one of these guys gets elected on the heels of the current disastrous administration, the America we have worked so hard to build and advance is in serious jeopardy.

Religion for Dummies?

2007-06-05T13:13:00.001-07:00

Saw this in a local bookstore and couldn't resist snapping a picture.

Prayer

2007-06-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

I came across two similarly titled pieces examining the practice of prayer: What’s the Point with Prayer? and Prayer: What’s the point? Both identify pretty much the same self-defeating issues with Prayer and call into question the reasons for it and expectations of the people doing it. To my knowledge, neither inspired the other, at least not directly. Over the years, I've often had similar thoughts but hadn't gotten around to writing about them. I recommend reading both.

At this point, my suspicion is that to pray individually is roughly equivalent to talking to yourself. When you actually hear your voice verbalizing your thoughts, it seems to help focus on those thoughts and it stores them differently, perhaps redundantly. It may be a crude way to enhance the communication between the brain hemispheres or something on that order. In any case, many people find it useful to some degree to talk to themselves.

Praying as a group seems to serve an entirely different function, a social one, that of demonstrating conformance to a group standard in an effort to better fit into that group.

The Golden Mean

2007-05-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

From Daylight Atheism:

When the history of our era is written, there is much that will be said about the failures of traditional, mainstream media organizations. One of the most disappointing is the media's ritualized exaltation of "balance", which in practice means giving equal time and attention to both sides of a debate regardless of whether one side's views are more in agreement with the facts. I wrote about the harmful effects of this ignorant and lazy practice last year, in "The Illusion of Balance".

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Islam, Muslims & the World - a brief, paradigmatic analysis

2007-05-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

An atheist ex-muslim speaks out. Very well written and well worth reading.

Social Institutions

2007-05-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Religion, for all its misguided ideas and misdirected energy, has provided the context in which our entire society has evolved. For better or worse, this is where we are. Each of us is a product of our religious heritage. Even as we open our eyes to the realities of the world around us, we still harbor deep inside, ideas of religious origin, many of which have no relationship to reality. Some of these we can identify and expunge, while others won't be so easy to shake off. They will remain with us in some form and we'll need to reach an accommodation with them.

A great many of our social institutions and traditions to which we all are to some extent inured, trace their roots directly or indirectly to our religious past. We depend to a significant degree on many of these. If it were somehow possible to suddenly remove religion from our society beginning on a date certain, the result would be an unmitigated disaster, as much or all of our social order would rapidly collapse in the resulting cultural vacuum. This is how deeply entangled we are with religion today - even those of us who consider ourselves atheists, having outgrown the core religious beliefs.

Perhaps fortunately, societies don't change instantly. Change has a way of setting its own pace. Individuals can exercise some influence over that pace by actively promoting their ideas, but it will unavoidably take time for religion to finally dissipate. I would guess that the most optimistic plausible estimate in the face of a well orchestrated effort would be 3-4 generations, but more realistically, given the large and complex human population, it could easily take more than 10 generations.

In some ways this is a depressing thought - none of us will live to see a world free of religion and the strife it brings. We are condemned to live out our lives surrounded by religious institutions and traditions with people blindly following.

What we can do in our time and in each generation that follows is to actively promote the values of critical thinking, of introspection, self examination and self improvement, of acting to improve the world, each in our own small way. We can take some satisfaction when we see that our contribution has made a difference, however subtle it may be. The goal here is not to promulgate yet another dogma - on the contrary, it's to help equip others to think for themselves, draw their own conclusions, and join the discourse.

We can work to apply pressure to educational institutions to include critical thinking in every aspect of their curriculum. We can aggressively work to debunk religious dogma. And we can help nurture the garden of social institutions and traditions that, over time, should evolve to provide better alternatives to religious ones. These will not gain acceptance if they feel contrived. They must evolve naturally if they are to feel natural.

Many existing traditions now associated with religion may survive in some form; the seasonal festivals being a likely example. Instead of "Christmas", some kind of winter festival might survive. Some quickly dismiss these as "pagan" rituals; but why not celebrate the changing of the seasons in and of itself? Season change is a beautiful part of nature without superimposing any mystical or supernatural nonsense.

Internet social activities probably represent several good examples of new social institutions and associated traditions. Activities like Instant Messaging, "Chat rooms", Blogging, participation in various message boards, multiplayer online games - these are evolving rapidly; their own traditions and language are taking shape.

The coffee house is an increasingly popular gathering place where people go to socialize, study, work, or just get out of the office or the house. Other kinds of retail establishments are starting to participate in this phenomenon as well. Book stores led the way, often in conjunction with coffee houses. Increasingly other kinds of businesses are reconfiguring themselves to accommodate social gatherings of various forms on the theory that the more time people spend in their stores, the more likely they'll buy something. The commercial motivation in no way detracts from the social value of these experiences. This parallels the practice of paying membership dues or a tithe, or stuffing a collection plate, in order to fund religious institutions.

Present-day religious institutions and traditions are the product of a long and continuing evolution of human society and culture; a process that should be more than strong enough to eventually lead us beyond religion, beyond divisiveness, to an increasingly widespread philosophy of life that fosters mutual respect among individuals and allows intercultural suspicion and hostility to fade. So too, new social functions and traditions evolve over time and will continue to do so. More will come into existence. Some will fade away; others will grow.

Whatever form these new traditions take, what matters is that they provide a comfortable forum for social interaction in which people will actually participate, not out of some sense of obligation, but because they want to; and in turn will benefit from the participation, gaining knowledge, perspective, and a sense of community. Perhaps these kinds of inclusive interactions and shared discourse can eventually lead us to more effective means of reconciling or at least learning to manage our disagreements without resorting to factionalism and violence as has all too often been our way throughout our history.

Bad Decision-Makers Lack Reasoning Skills

2007-05-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

From LiveScience:

People who are walking disaster areas-the types who bounce checks monthly, miss flights and vomit on the boss at the company picnic-are the same people who have poor reasoning skills, new research shows.

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Atheist Blogroll

2007-05-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

Å has now joined the Atheist Blogroll. Thanks to Mojoey of Deep Thoughts for organizing this service.

Evolution vs. Creation?

2007-05-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

A battle rages on between the proponents of what has come to be called Creationism, essentially an attempt at literal interpretation of the fanciful biblical story of how everything came to exist in general, and in particular, where we humans came from; and adherents to scientific explanations of the origins of the universe in general, with particular emphasis on the evolutionary process that Charles Darwin is credited with first observing and describing, explaining the origins of our and other species residing on our little planet.

At times in the past and in recent years as well, this battle has become rather emotional with both “sides” hastening to “prove” their assertions, engaging in public “debates”.

It would be very amusing to watch this play out but for the dreadful implications.

Reality is whatever it is regardless of whether or not it pleases us; regardless of whether or not we recognize it or are ignorant of it.

In this “debate”, the “creationists” argue vehemently and try to muster public opinion as though consensus could somehow determine what is true. They proceed on the absurd assumption that if the other “side” looses, then their fanciful explanation must be correct. They employ all the cheap tactics ever tried on the high-school debate team but have no meaningful substance to their argument as it is based not on fossilized bones and geologic analysis, but on what amounts to a fossilized opinion in the form of ancient writings, and semantic “analysis” thereof. Consensus is a straw man – a distraction from the real issues. It’s not even remotely relevant to the subject of the discussion.

If genuine evidence were ever to surface that suggested the current theories of evolution are off the mark or even completely wrong, this would force the reevaluation of those ideas in light of that new evidence. If the evidence itself suggested a specific other explanation, that then would become the subject of the ongoing investigative quest to learn what processes are really responsible for making things as we find them. Such evidence, however, would say absolutely nothing about the creation story unless that evidence specifically and verifiably supported that explanation.

In other words, even if current theories of evolution somehow collapsed despite mountains of supporting evidence, there would still be no evidence to support the creation story. We’d be left with a blank slate and basically have to start over looking for a genuine explanation for the process.

Creationism vs. Evolution is a false choice, a false battle, and a tremendous waste of our collective intellect.

Christianity's Sins Against Science

2007-05-18T17:45:00.000-07:00

From Pharyngula:

Well worth reading.

Christianity's twelve top sins against science:

Theft.
Literalism.
Authoritarianism.
Hierarchies.
Dominion.
Predestination.
Miracles.
Credulity.
Inflexibility.
Blasphemy.
Supernaturalism.
Faith.

Details in the full post.

Christians Demand Right to Hate

2007-05-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

From Atheist Revolution:

Christians Demand Right to Hate

Goodbye and Good Riddance

2007-05-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

From CNN.COM:

Rev. Jerry Falwell dead at 73

Christianity: A Means to Manage Uncertainty

2007-05-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

From Debunking Christianity:

A gentle but firm treatment of Christian ways by a former Christian

"Christians try to use god as a way to eliminate uncertainty in their lives. A blessing or a prayer is a way to implore to god to change things in favor of ones wishes."