Five Public Opinions: the Blogger Years

Vale this blog

2007-12-07T22:49:00.000+09:00

And hello Wordpress. Five Public Opinions has moved here. Please update your links & c. & c..

I've had it!!

2007-12-07T16:35:00.000+09:00

Fuck you, Blogger. I'm moving to Wordpess!

And here is the rest of it.

Now this is magical thinking I can respect!

2007-12-07T16:07:00.000+09:00

Indigenous Australians pay their respects to the former member for Bennelong. (Via Oz Atheist)

Howard vs. Aboriginal Australians

Some random, not very well-thought-out thoughts . . .

2007-12-06T10:05:00.000+09:00

On blasphemy laws

A reasonable test of a nation's commitment to liberal democracy is the existence or otherwise of a blasphemy law on its statutes.

A reasonable test of an individual or organisation's commitment to liberal democracy is their willingness to bring a blasphemy suit against another individual or organisation.

On Foucault

I think the validity of Foucault’s work depends to a great degree upon how you approach it. Foucauldian theory as science? Category mistake. Foucauldian theory as a way–but certainly not the only way–of storytelling/interpreting history and culture? Far more valuable.

On Plato

What assumptions do I have about Plato? Not being very knowledgeable about him, just this one: his concept of Forms constitutes maybe the greatest blind alley in the history of Western philosophy, and has been an absolute boon to magical/dogmatic thinking for millennia.

(UPDATE) On the mall shooting

I blame secularism. Not for any good reason, mind you--I just wanted to get in ahead of the conservapundits. (Or have I already been beaten to the punch?)

The Simpsons and Philosophy

Sesame Street and Philosophy

Monty Python and Philosophy

Ben Folds and Philosophy

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXXV

2007-12-05T21:12:00.000+09:00

The week in fundie . . .

The Unintentional Irony award goes to the opponents of the International Baccalaureate curriculum at a high school in Upper St Clair, Pennsylvania, who appear to be of the view that it comes straight from Chairman Mao:
"The IB program is anti-American. It does not teach the basic patriotic values of the United States," said Judy Brown, 64, a retired merchandising and sales representative who has a daughter that attended Upper St. Clair schools. "It's almost like brainwashing."
A hostile board member was heard to utter:
"Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie;" and, "Jesus Christ as the redeemer of man is the center and purpose of human history. That is why all authentically religious tradition must be allowed to manifest their own identity publicly, free from any pressure to hide or disguise it."
Got that? Not forcing Jeebus and flag-waving patriotism down the throats of students constitutes "brainwashing." (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
A Catholic bishop in Chicago is seeking legal changes that would shield Church institutions from having to pay out "excessive damages" in sex abuse lawsuits, on the grounds that they "jeopardize the mission of the church" and hence "place an excessive burden on the free exercise of religion for American Catholics." Oh, please. If the Catholic church wishes to minimise the damages resulting from sex abuse lawsuits, the answer is absurdly simple: it needs to stop engaging in or sheltering the perpetrators of sexual abuse. (Chicago Tribune, via the Atheist Experience)
Sherri Shepherd, who is proving herself to be someone you want in your corner should you ever find yourself playing team Trivial Pursuit, opines: "I don't think anything predated Christians." The Greeks? The Romans? "Jesus came before them." Shepherd is quite the polymath: not only is she full-bottle on world history, she's also formidable on the earth sciences. (The Huffington Post, via Pharyngula)
Florida's Palm Beach Community College refuses to provide health benefits to same-sex partners of its employees. It is more than willing, however, "to offer workers insurance for their pets." (365Gay.com, via Morons.org)
A Saudi appeals court judge has threatened to sentence a rape victim to death if she appeals against her current sentence of 200 lashes and six months in prison for "illegal mingling" with an unrelated male. (via Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)

Just to make it worth your while . . .

Pat Condell on Catholic morality

The videos of this year's Beyond Belief conference are now available online.

Subversive Muse's "Short Critique of Science" series

2007-12-04T21:23:00.000+09:00

Just quickly--Rae at Subversive Muse has written a series of posts "from a critical left-wing perspective" on atheism, science and religion. I've expressed my objections to Rae's arguments--I think they basically misrepresent science (it is taken as axiomatic in this series of posts that science is "an ideology," whereas I think this needs to be argued for/demonstrated) and critique a strawman definition of atheism--and I know Bruce (who is more well-versed on this topic than I am) is preparing a response at his blog. Brian at Primordial Blog has written a thoughtful response as well.

Just to make it worth your while (and Rae, I'm not lumping you in with these guys!), here are some Youtube dispatches from the war on science:

"The Evangelical War on Science"

"The Republican War on Science"

Highlights from the comments at Catch the Fire (before they're disappeared)

2007-12-04T13:28:00.001+09:00

Catch The Fire has been getting a lot of traffic, it appears, since it became apparent to all and sundry that God/Pastor Nalliah backed the wrong horse in the recent Federal Election. The administrators appear to have relaxed their unstated ban on critical comments, for now, and you can find some of those at the end of this post. But most of the following extracts of comments are from true believers, responding to Nalliah's "explanation" for the miserable failure of his pre-election prophecy. I've separated them into categories . . .

Why, God? Why?

Many people from a number of Churches were gathering over a period of time and praying taht “God’s will would be done at this election”.

Does God not place any value on our prayers? (Richard--who I suspect might be one of ours)

Stock-standard lunacy

Apparently a psychic predicted a Rudd win. That alone tells me what Rudd is about and that I don’t want to be on side with these occult voices. (Aurora)

We were spoken to through Judges 20 in that there must be determination that the battle must continue, regardless of the defeats, for in this passage the Lord says go up, but they were slaughtered – and yet they came together as one nation – almost – at the time. Later you find they were not all together – there were still those who were not with them in chapter 21. But God gave them victory regardless – the third time. We also had a dream of 3 snakes which looked fierce but were easily destroyed. So, we continue to pray the prayers we were supplied with before the election, but must now pray them in the context of what the Lord will do. He is the God of miracles. (Ken & Adrianne)

I agree with what you have said, and I must admit when I heard the news of Labor’s victory, I was led to read from Lamentations. I believe God was grieving as I was. (Trisha)

Lawyering for Jesus

Some people may not be aware that prophecy is conditional: upon both prayer and obedience.(Pastor Marilyn McKenny)

I noted that when you declared what the Lord had told you, you included the word “IF”. While some would see this as a disclaimer for you to dodge criticism should the prophetic word not come to pass – the “IF” is meant to be an encouragement & motivation to the Church. 2 Chron 7:14 is an example of this type of condition. “IF my people….. etc”. Obviously, the condition was not met.(Pastor Bob Cotton, another Lawyer for Jesus)

We have had situations the same , where God made his will known but it went the other way because no one was listening or prophecies were misinterpreted through poor theology, or prayer was weak . (Des & Christine Gibson)

…. you did not get it wrong….. we the body of Christ did - oh for ears that will listen. (Allen Moore)

Thankyou O servant of the Most High God.
I don’t believe you got it wrong. I’ve never heard God say “oops”. (Robyn)

A while ago, before I knew of your election prophecy I had a vision of John Howard standing defeated he was a broken man in my vision weeping and worn out. It then troubled me because of what your prophecy had declared, I thought how could 2 opposite things come from the same source of eternal truth?

After you had pointed out that the lack of unity in the Body was the cause for Labor’s win (and many other problems we are facing) it brought a sense of peace(knowing that this vision was correct and from our Lord) and sadness too for I had wanted the Liberal party to win also. (Andrew, on how the power of Christ can resolve glaring contradictions)

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt

The people have demanded a king and God has given us one (I Sam 8) . You, the prophet, has faithfully warned the nation, but God is preparing David, even while Saul is in power. (Jill)

As to your question did I vote them in no I personally didn’t, I advised people who would listen and my children to vote family first so as not to go down the road of lust and lies in human nature so called…. My children listened but most others didn’t, while handing out how to vote cards for family first only over a period of 2 hours 2 people only asked for family first the rest graciously took all information handed to them.
Sadly we now have a party that tends to sway against biblical values and advise, but like the good book says it is our job as believers to continue to pray for the government elect and let the Lord God Jesus stir their waters and relies their ways, not to implement change that will bring the Christians
Down as God the Almighty will not allow this to happen and bad times will fall upon them in sickness and decease (Argument from consequences from Sharon)

The Lord said to me the problem is the state of the hearts & the sin of His people who are blinded and have voted foolishly, so the Lord will have to allow the people to learn the hard way & to actually have to wake up by personal suffering & experience….
I too and many ohters I have spoken to suffered greatly on that first night really struggling with the Lord…and on Sunday night, the Lord lead me to Jn 11 and the Lazarus story, yet again (Emphasis and hyperlink added. Very cheeky, Hilary)

Praise the Lord and pass the tinfoil

I think we actually are going to experience some things that we need not have endured… ( like the 40 years in the wilderness.. due to the idolitary etc.. .. reminds me too ” oh foolish Galations.. who has bewitched you”…)
I also really feel deeply for John Howard,. (Me too, Marg. Me too.)

Very well written - couldn’t agree more; this nation is headed straight toward end times and has joined the ranks - need we have been surprised? (John & Louise)

I could hardly sleep last Saturday night for anguish as to what was happening in the election. I saw the jubilation from the Labor camp as releasing a demonic flow over the country, a vicious rabble that had been waiting, scrapping behind the starting barriers, to burst out upon their legal release: the announcement of Labor victory. They knew they were about to get freedom. They had already cornered and achieved confusion in Howard who, not having enough knowledge or power through the Holy Spirit, had crumbled on some major as well as minor issues, providing further fuel for the blind amongst Christian brothers and sisters to vote against him.(Clare)

Some months before the election I talked with a spirit-filled pastor who has a lot of contact with parliamentarians in Canberra. Not long beforehand he had been phoned up by Kevin Rudd asking for prayer. It wasn’t my place to ask more, but the pastor volunteered that Kevin Rudd was unequally yoked to Julia Gillard. She represents the socialist left wing of the Labour Party. While not electable in her own right as a Prime Minister, I expect she will use her anti-Christian influence as Jezebel did through Ahab. (Malcolm McCaskill)

Your reference to “wolves in sheep’s clothing” is particularly appropriate as this is the tactic used by the Fabian Society in the world and Australia - to subtly infiltrate the key areas of society and gain social change and power. I understand that the Fabian Society’s original symbol was a wolf in sheep’s clothing but was changed as this was too obvious to what they were on about. The Fabian Society has a long history of anti-Christian activity (including shocking acceptance of depraved sexual practices), and I understand that the current membership of the Australian branch is composed of Gough Whitlam (president) and a number of former Labor prime ministers. The Fabian Society’s links and debt to Lenin is alive and well, and their influence on the Labor spirit is also alive and well.

The Labor Party is actually not a political party at all - it masquerades as one. It is a religious party with its doctrine being humanism, atheism, and naturalism, and its god is man (that is, the glorification of man to solve all problems in the world and society to the blasphemous exclusion of its Creator - God). (David)

Theocracy

The Father did not ask His Children for much, not as much as His has asked of others; He did not ask us to be imprisoned for this election/He did not ask us to give our life for this election/No, all He asked was that we follow His Will (He wasn’t taking our freedom of choice He would never do that, He gave us a choice: Follow His Will/Don’t follow His Will)…it was all very simple what He was asking His people.

We as the Father’s Children were meant to stand in the gap for those who don’t know Him. (Cindy. That's chilling.)

But I wonder how long the following comments will last . . .

Thank you for the explaination. But why are you so frightened by the ALP win?

I am a Christian - and I don’t believe I have to be Right-Wing to be so. I probably did not vote the way you did. Does this mean, in your mind, that I am not a listening, committed Christian.

I have close connections with your home country Sri Lanka. And I have seen what awful things happen in that nation when the Buddhists try to be involved in politics.

You claim that your prophecy regarding John Howard being elected was stymied by the Christians who did not agree with you. Were they not listening to God?

It is right that we test prophecy. I am sure you agree. Do you know that many Christians and Christian leaders in this nation were praying for an end to dishonest government and trusted that God would work through Kevin Rudd, another Christian?

Are we wrong and you are right? Have you seriously searched your heart about this? (Bryan)

I thought the correct answer was YES I did get it wrong!!!

However you won’t publish any comments that differ from your point of view.

Thank God that His wisdom is greater than your’s. I will pray for you. (Rod)

Danny,
I know the Lord has plans for good for all who follow his word and accept his son Jesus. You spoke at my church and I believe your prophesy extended to Peter Costello. Could you please comment.

Also you published on your website a prophesy of Kenneth Copeland:

“God’s man in Australia stood up and publicly declared Australia a Christian nation! ‘If you want to come here and join us in our Christian faith you are welcome here but don’t think you can come in here and try and force some other religion here on us and don’t think you are going to tell us how to believe God and who we are going to worship.’ He publicly did that,

now this is no time for that man to be defeated. Well he’s not going to be. Amen.

He is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He is Lord over Australia! It has been announced! Amen.”

It would appear this prophesy was false? Could you please comment. (Brendan Willis)

Commenter James Garth published his "Open Letter to Pastor Nalliah" on his own blog.

Pope Benedict's reductio ad Hitlerum

2007-12-03T21:40:00.000+09:00

I understand that there are historical reasons why when the Pope holds forth on a given topic, the world's media bends over backwards to report it. After all, his predecessors were once upon a time the most powerful leaders in the world. And yet it still bothers me that his banal brand of magical thinking is deemed newsworthy.

His latest encyclical, Spe Salvi, is being represented by many media outlets as a scathing attack on atheism, in response to the success of recent atheism-themed books by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. Talk about being hit with a wet newspaper . . .

The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested.

Do we not hear in these words the echo of a thousand online "concern troll" theists? "I understand: you're an atheist because you're angry at God. It can't possibly be because of the lack of evidence that a God exists. So it must be the anger thing."

Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope.

No, Benedict: a world which has to create its own justice--and is aware of that fact--is a world that has finally weaned itself off the teat of religious dogma, cast aside the security blanket, and grown up. The cruelty and violations of which you speak--namely those caused by totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century--are simply the fruits of one set of dogmas being replaced with another. I'll say that again so that it might sink in. The cruelty and violations of which you speak are the fruits of dogma, not atheism. Your mistake is in your severe tunnel-vision, which is such that you cannot begin to countenance the thought that we might cast aside dogmatic thought altogether.

Vale Dogma Free America

2007-12-03T05:35:00.000+09:00

Sad news on the atheism/freethought podcasting front: Dogma Free America is no more. It celebrated its fiftieth and final episode on November 22nd, with producer and host Rich Orman claiming that the podcast was taking up too much of his time. DFA's shows weren't theme-based or guest-based like Freethought Radio and The Non-Prophets, and mainly consisted on commentary on the latest news concerning magical thinking and theocracy. DFA also canvassed more international (read: non-US) news than other podcasts, and often ran stories on religious violence in sub-Saharan Africa (usually perpetrated against individuals suspected of "witchcraft"), as well as atrocities perpetrated by theocracies in the Islamic world. Hence, Christian listeners might (I imagine) have found it more even-handed than other non-theist podcasts.

For mine, however, the pick of the podcasts is still The Atheist Experience, which is actually a live cable access TV program screening in Austin, Texas. The Atheist Experience, as the site indicates, is "geared at a non-atheist audience," with a view to clearing up misconceptions about atheism as well as countering religious apologetics (current host Matt Dillahunty is an ex-fundie and his Biblical knowledge is very effective in this regard), addressing church-state separation issues and commenting on the latest in fundamentalist idiocy. Very entertaining--especially when the presenters engage with religious callers.

In which Pastor Nalliah 'splains hisself.

2007-11-29T20:13:00.000+09:00

God: Attorney At Law

Pastor Nalliah's first post-election contribution to the Catch a Fire blog is titled:

Election 2007 - Did I get it wrong?

Yes, you did, Danny. Yes, you did.

Ordinarily you would expect someone who has been as comprehensively embarrassed by the facts as Nalliah to pack up his revival tent and slither away quietly into the night with what remains of the smoking ruins of his credibility. But Nalliah still has gallons of snake-oil to sell, and legions of gullible halfwits who are simply gagging for the stuff. And so he returns to "help you in better understanding the results of the Election 2007."

He opens with persecution mania and an appeal to pity. In spite of "the fiery storm of accusation, criticism and persecution," [INSERT BIBLE VERSE HERE], God has given Danny broad enough shoulders "to cop quite a bit of flak." Nonetheless, "the weekend of the election was one of the worst weekends in my life." Why? Because God's anointed vessel John Howard had just suffered a massive defeat in the polls, and to top things off, Nalliah's father-in-law in Sri Lanka had taken seriously ill. "Bible believing Christians struggle not against flesh and blood, but wrestle against principalities and powers of spiritual darkness," and Satan--the fucker--had just delivered the Nalliahs a double-whammy.

Immediately I said, “Lord, what’s happening?? How can I even rise up and preach Your Word?” But praise Almighty God, as we prayed together for my father-in-law, the Spirit of the Lord strengthened me to rise up and preach the Word of God. That night he miraculously recovered and is now doing very well. Glory to God!

After ministering to the people of God on Saturday night, I struggled to fall asleep in my motel room in Albany, Western Australia, as I was all alone, in tears and feeling very sad for most of the night. I kept asking the Lord, “DID I GET IT WRONG???”

Enter God to account for making Nalliah look like the Fuckwit Australian of the Year.

I said, “Lord, why is it when the Body of Christ comes together to pray for rain, You answer our prayers so quickly?” The words from the Lord came to me, “For My people are united when they pray for rain.” At this moment I felt so prompted to read the prophetic word from the Lord regarding the election that I released on 11th August 2007.

As I begin reading the prophetic word from the Lord, I was greatly stirred in my spirit to read the following words that I had stated, “I will boldly declare that PM John Howard will be re-elected in the Nov election – ‘IF THE BODY OF CHRIST UNITES IN PRAYER AND ACTION.’
Again I heard the voice of the Lord, “For My people were not united in prayer and action for this election. If they were, they would have experienced spiritual revival under My freedom reigning in this nation, but now My people have chosen another way. They have not voted for My will, but for self gain and personal change.”

The fine print, people! Always, always read the fine print! That's why Nalliah's prophecy didn't come to pass. Because not enough voters got with God's program and voted for Howard. Apparently, that's how this "democracy" thing works! Well, knock me down with a Chick Tract.

The level of disunity in the Body of Christ was very clear to me closing in on election day. I received emails and messages from many professing Christians who were voting for Labor and the Greens. I just could not understand how they could do that, as their vote could be a vote to change existing laws to give greater rights to same sex-couples, legalise Abortion on demand (up to birth), introduce Federal Vilification Laws (eliminating freedom of speech), stop Prayer in Parliament, force Christian schools to employ homosexual teachers under Anti-Discrimination Laws, and the list goes on and on.

It's not Nalliah's fault he got it so wrong. It's the fault of those Muslim-loving mealy-mouthed wishy-washy bleeding-heart liberal Christians who weren't willing to defend Biblical values (among which are included the denial of women's reproductive rights, discrimination against sexual minorities in employment and in law, and sectarianism in Parliament) by backing John Howard, God's choice for PM. And it's your fault, too:

Just for your information, the Labor Government refused to preference the Family First Party, and did all its preferences with the Greens. Now both Labor and the Greens are in bed together. DID YOU VOTE THEM IN????

They're in bed together, people!! And probably doing TEH GAY with each other.

But seriously: how can a church be so blatantly partisan--to the point where it is practically labelling as apostate those of its followers who didn't vote for John Howard on Saturday--and still maintain a membership? This is essentially what the good pastor is (or was) saying to his sheeple: You're not a true Christian unless you vote for Howard. Surely there are some among his flock who have taken that hint and told Nalliah (albeit perhaps in politer terms) to kindly go fuck himself? Maybe that explains the deleted comments on the Catch the Fire website.

All of this raises an interesting question. With Howard and Costello both out of the picture, which of the Liberals (because it could only be a Liberal) is God now backing to lead Australia to Christopia? Brendan Nelson? He did, after all, endorse the teaching of intelligent design. Tony Abbott? Silas?

Stay tuned until the next idiot rolls around the floor babbling in tongues to find out.

On the subject of the dearly departed (from politics), the final Search for a Scapegoat:

Either God or the Pastor has some 'splaining to do

2007-11-28T21:54:00.000+09:00

Grods has blogged on this already, so I thought I'd take a look at the Catch the Fire website to see what Danny Nalliah's ~~sheeple~~ followers make of the outcome of his prediction--made on the highest of authorities, no less--of a Howard victory.

And . . . wait . . . oh, for fuck's sake! They've gone and erased the comments to this post, of which there were about seven the last time I looked. Fortunately Karen Hetherington's prophecies are still up, and as she assures her readers, "every dream God has given me regarding political matters in Australia and other nations has come to pass." Karen (via God) had Howard pegged as "God's chosen vessel to lead Australia as PM" as early as 1990, she tells us, though one gets the impression reading her that God was more firmly in the Costello camp: "And when on 30.7.07 I was driving past Mt. Beerwah in Queensland (aboriginal legend a mother mountain with womb) the Spirit of God suddenly moved me to cry out in the loud aboriginal like tongue followed by the shouting our several times of ‘The Honorable Peter Costello, Prime Minister elect of Australia’." (The amount of crazy Hetherington manages to cram into her post is truly astounding. Full marks!)

So how do the sheeple respond to the failure of these prophecies? Some go into denial:

TA Mark: We have failed Him. The Godless have been elected. We did not pray with enough self-sacrifice and fervour. . . . I feel now that this is His will, His challange to us. Over the coming years we must be strong and continue to spread the word of His Love.

Others (some of you will be familiar with this commenter's website) go into denial:

Dear Pastor Danny, although the election was not won, we will continue to trust God that He knows more than we know. Though we are all extremely disappointed, we have to fix our eyes on Jesus. The Bible tells us that we are going to face hard times and that the Antichrist is permitted to ‘overcome the saints’ for a time. Now is the time to hold on and pray that we are able to stand firm.

And others? Well, I guess they just disappear down the memory hole. Seriously, these people are so deluded that, even when they know they've been lied to, they happily pull the wool over their own eyes even further.

Enjoy some Colbert:

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXXIV

2007-11-27T22:06:00.000+09:00

The week in fundie . . .

The Opus Dei wing of the Liberal Party is being blamed by moderates for the fall of the Howard Government. (While they're at it, they might also throw some blame at Howard himself for backing Silas in Mitchell.) (Sydney Morning Herald)
The Australian Christian bookstore chain Koorong (along with other Christian book retailers) has indicated that it will be unlikely to stock a new Bible study guide challenging the notion that the Bible excludes same-sex relationships. (The Age)
A British primary school teacher in the Sudan faces a maximum of 40 lashes, six months in jail and a fine for the dastardly crime of "allegedly insulting Islam's prophet by allowing children to call a teddy bear Mohammed." You have got to be fucking kidding me. (AFP; see also Pharyngula)
I'll let this grab from a Cutting Edge radio transcript speak for itself:
The demons of Satan's army will soon physically manifest themselves as Aliens, arriving in armadas of space ships which we have heretofore called UFO's. The plan calls for them to suddenly appear at many places on Earth simultaneously. Some will appear at the White House to confer with the President; some will appear at the United Nations; other aliens will appear at key governmental buildings all over the globe. Aliens will appear in some people's homes or on their front yards. The world's peoples will literally be shocked out of their minds. This is the Plan. This may occur before the worldwide Rapture of the Church; we must be prepared to deal wisely with this planned phenomenon.
(Via Fundies Say the Darndest Things)
"Nice soul you have here. Awful shame if something were to happen to it." More standover tactics by Catholic clergy (obviously from the Pell wing) in the US. (The story comes via Fundies Say the Darndest Things. The mobster reference should be credited to Denis Loubet of the Non-Prophets)
I just had a look at the Australian Christian Lobby's list of what it considers are the strengths and weaknesses of the Australian Greens' policies. Among the "weaknesses" the Lobby identifies are the Greens' support for a Bill of Rights, and their support for the extension of anti-discrimination legislation to (partially-taxpayer-funded) private schools as well as public schools--a reminder, if any were required, of how the ACL and the Religious Right in Australia generally are no friends of liberal democracy.

UPDATE: Off-topic, but Phillip Adams really sums up why Labor's victory is so sweet.

Humor via Atheist Media:

Just when you thought the Liberal Party couldn't be any more unelectable . . .

2007-11-26T21:14:00.000+09:00

The Opus Dei wing of the party has won a seat in Federal Parliament.

The new member for Mitchell

The electorate of Mitchell lies smack-bang in the middle of Jesusland (a.k.a. the Hills district of north-western Sydney) and is thus safe Liberal territory*. In 2006, Alex Hawke--who believes moderate Liberals should instead join the Greens--branch-stacked and bully-boyed his way into the Liberal candidacy. In what might someday come to be known as the "Hawke-Clarke hijack," Hawke and David "The Teacher" Clarke have extended the influence of the uber-Christian Right over the Liberal Party in NSW and the Young Liberals nationally.

And I say more power to them. The more lunar and extremist the Liberals appear, the further they will fade into the electoral wilderness where they belong.

(P.S. Super Simmo has returned to the blogosphere!)

(*Admittedly, there was a 9.6% swing to the ALP in Mitchell.)

More YouTube gold from Swannysback:

Don't let the door hit you on your way out

2007-11-25T20:46:00.000+09:00

Image source: Lance W. Clayton

And so expires the term of one of the most hostile governments to liberal democracy in recent memory. I celebrated with some damn fine Japanese malt beer: the convenience store didn't carry chardonnay. How did you celebrate?

(P.S. Good effort, Jen!)

Howard's concession speech. Highly remiss of him, don't you think, not to acknowledge the staunch support of the Murdoch press throughout his reign (despite their recommending a vote for Rudd this time around).

Rudd's victory speech. Shorter Rudd:

I heartily concur!

UPDATE: OK, I can't resist posting more Keating in top-flight . . .

And this from a time when the term "One Nation" meant something entirely different in Australian politics . . .

Lying for Howard

2007-11-21T21:21:00.000+09:00

In the previous post I alerted you to the existence (well, once upon a time) of the giant sea scorpion. In this post I present you with the giant Australian rightwing cockroach, which--alas--is not extinct, but alive and well in the Liberal Party. (Actually, that's a slur on giant cockroaches. Sorry, guys.)
From the ABC:

The Liberal Party has expelled two members and notified the Electoral Commission of an incident involving election campaign workers distributing material it says is false and offensive.

The party says around five people were handing out the flyers last night in the seat of Lindsay in Sydney's west, when they were caught in the act by Labor Party members.

The ABC understands one of the people involved in the distribution of the offending material is Garry Clark, the husband of the retiring member, Jackie Kelly.

The flyer purports to be from the Islamic Federation of Australia, a group which does not exist, advocating a vote for Labor.

The Liberal Party's state director Graham Jaeschke says the material was unauthorised and made without the knowledge of the Party's head office.

"This is unacceptable behaviour. We've acted very quickly to fix this issue," he said.

"We've referred it on to the Australian Electoral Commission and we'll let the Australian Electoral Commission do their job."

Mr Jaeschke says the party does not condone the behaviour.

"It was undertaken without any authorisation or knowledge of the Liberal Party," he said.

Party behind in the polls a week out from the election? Here's what you do:

Invent an organisation with "Islamic" in the title, knowing how likely this adjective is to set off big flashing red warning lights in too many xenophobic outer-suburban Sydney brains.

Print a flyer, purporting to be a publication of said phony "Islamic" organisation, advocating a vote for your opponent

Reap the electoral rewards.

Oh, I know what you're going to say. You're going to tell me to give the Liberal Party credit for expelling the racist arseclowns behind this stunt. Well, I'm not going to. Because if the Liberal Party can attract into its fold individuals who consider this kind of behaviour conscionable, then that speaks volumes about what the modern Liberal Party has become.

See also: The Age

I don't have a lot of time to write a blog post today . . .

2007-11-21T12:56:00.000+09:00

. . . so here's a picture of an extinct giant sea scorpion.
From Science Daily:

The discovery of a giant fossilised claw from an ancient sea scorpion indicates that when alive it would have been about two and a half meters long, much taller than the average man.

This find, from rocks 390 million years old, suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought.

Dr Simon Braddy from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, co-author of an article about the find, said, 'This is an amazing discovery. We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realised, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were.'

The claw was discovered by one of Dr Braddy's co-authors*, Markus Poschmann, in a quarry near Prüm in Germany.

Apparently gigantism in ancient insects and other creatures that tend to the bite-sized nowadays has something to do with a richer oxygen supply in those times.

Here's Meganura monyi, the largest insect that ever lived:

Courtesy of Staab Studios

I see now What's So Great About Christianity

2007-11-20T09:07:00.000+09:00

Rightwing pundits keep trying to tell me What's So Great About Christianity. Well, I think I understand where they're coming from, now.

In the remote Penza region of Russia, a group of Orthodox Christians has barricaded itself inside an underground bunker to await the Apocalypse, which it believes will come to pass in May next year. Better still, the group contains in its number four children, including an eighteen-month-old baby, who are obliged to await the Apocalypse in temperatures dropping to minus 10 degrees Celsius.

The group has nothing in the way of sound empirical evidence to support the claim that the world will end in May 2008. But that's OK, because "While reason helps us to discover things about experience, faith helps us discover things that transcend experience."

And yes, the leader of the cult--under whose orders the Penza group are sitting out the end of the world in an icy cave--may be currently undergoing evaluation in a psychiatric facility, but surely all this means is that he now sees "in color what we previously saw in black and white." And isn't this whole episode a demonstration of the fact that "Christianity makes of life a moral drama in which we play a starring role and in which the most ordinary events take on a grand significance?"

And sure, you could always make the argument that these cultists have an ethical duty to look after the welfare of the children in their care--and that this duty involves not indoctrinating them and holding them hostage in below-freezing conditions. But Christians, you see, live sub specie aeternitatis. And isn't it "better [for those kids] to suffer wrong than to do wrong?" And if the kids die of exposure out there, why should we worry? "The secular person thinks there are two stages for humans: life and death. For the Christian, there are three: life, death, and the life to come. This is why, for the Christian, death is not so terrifying."

Face it, heathens. The people in that cave in Russia are "pursuing [their] higher destiny as human beings. [They] are becoming what [they] were meant to be," because Christianity "not only makes us aspire to be better, but it also shows us how to be better." By barricading oneself in a remote cave to await an event one has no reliable evidence will come to pass, stockpiling weapons, holding children against their will in below-freezing conditions, and threatening to blow oneself and one's fellows up if anyone tries to intervene.

Tinfoil site of the week

2007-11-19T23:36:00.000+09:00

Family Security Matters is a US conservative front group for a neo-con think-tank. The following headline pretty much sums up the level of sanity on which this outfit operates:

How the Leftist/Marxist/Islamist Alliance Will Accomplish a One Religion/One-world Government

(Part One of Five)

David J. Jonsson

One might ask why it is important to understand the relation between the Leftist/Marxist/Islamist Alliance and the Emerging Movement among Churches and Mosques. It is because it indicates the movement of a historically conservative church and other organizations into the fold. These Emerging Church and Mosque Movements are the elephants in the pew. The Radical Islamist Movement has realized that the tactical weapons of terrorism and suicide bombing may not be achieving their goal for world domination, and that seduction, economics and political action are more effective in winning the war. In this essay, I address how the Leftist/Marxist/Islamist Alliance is approaching the goal of achieving a one religion/one-world government.

The public failure of the Soviet Union in 1991 interred Lenin’s theory of social causation in his Red Square casket, although, like Dracula, the monster occasionally climbs out of its casket and wanders through American college campuses and churches, seeking whom it may devour.

There you have it, folks. A "CABAL (sic)" of radical Islamists, Marxists and liberal Christians all plotting to achieve a one religion SLASH one world government. Reds under the bed and elephants in the pew. Does this guy ghost-write the editorials in The Australian?

Jonsson claims that
the Emerging Church movement is like a gateway drug to Islam, and only US fundies like him stand between Islam and global domination. No evidence is presented in support of this, of course, unless you count Revelations as "evidence".

Elsewhere on the site, we learn how teachers are "Teaching Terror in American Schools" and that America is "facing a liberal-Islamist alliance." The site also accuses American college students of "empty patriotism."

The Wonderful World of Magical Thnking XXXIII

2007-11-18T23:06:00.000+09:00

The week in fundie . . .

God hearts Howard's policies: Howard. (Sydney Morning Herald)
Nothing restores my faith in the intersection of faith and politics than another heartwarming story from Saudi Arabia. Last week an appeals court increased the punishment meted out to a gang-rape victim (perfectly understandable, of course: she was in a car with males who were not her relatives) to 200 lashes and six months in prison. (via Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
And nothing restores my faith in the willingness of certain Christians to follow the example of the central figure of their religion than the openness and tolerance displayed by the North Carolina Baptist State Convention, which last week expelled a congregation for welcoming gays and lesbians. Fundies. If they're not lying for Jesus, they're hating for him. (via Morons.org)
Meanwhile in Britain, women are queuing up for a kind of cosmetic surgery known as "virginity repair" to appease their future spouses and in-laws. All in the name of Islamic fundamentalism. All taxpayer-funded. (Daily India)
The response to PBS' Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial is worth the price of admission (so to speak). (via Pharyngula)

Secular Believers:

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

2007-11-17T00:21:00.001+09:00

How many of you are old enough to remember this?

More ABC nostalgia:

A blogger's "maiden speech"

2007-11-16T15:50:00.000+09:00

I have a feeling that Subversive Muse will become a favoured double-click of mine. There are many--obviously including myself--who can learn something from what he has to say here:

It's noble to start a blog with intentions of changing people's opinions. That kind of idealism is something beautiful but unfortunately, rather deluded. It is in the nature of the reader to seek out information that reaffirms their beliefs, not challenges them. Aldous Huxley said that we live in a sea of island universes, perpetually separated from the experiences of others. We can share something with another person but we cannot truly place ourselves in their shoes. Still, despite our isolation, most of us are comfortable enough within ourselves and particularly, with our own personalised view of reality.

Within this view of reality, we are inherently informed about right and wrong, good and evil and beauty and ugliness. Each event in our lives moulds us into who we are and shapes what we believe. Our attitudes and values towards the world, other people and other beings all struggle to maintain their integrity. Although our lives are in a constant state of transition, we resist it. Apathy becomes the easiest option. We lose any sense of self determination, yielding to the whims of sloth, losing that childlike ability to accept things as they are, yet working to change them.

Accepting this notion, as a writer especially, is difficult. A writer, or anyone who expresses themselves through a craft, would like to believe that they act not only out of love for that craft, but out of the ability to inspire others to behave or think in a way that is out of the norm. Art is an egocentric process only in the sense that artistic work should have an impact on the world and not remain locked in a vacuum, only to be looked upon by the person who created it. So to accept that people are conservative by nature, that they will always resist your images and words, is rather depressing. It makes the author question their sense of identity, and moreover, their sense of purpose.

Merely reaffirming a reader's views is a hollow practice, in spite of the sense of camaraderie that it may foster. It's like reading books with the same plot structure over and over again. We begin to accept that a certain structure is more valid than others and then begin to get comfortable with it, forsaking everything new. Authors want to illuminate, to click with something in the reader's mind that was previously inactive and neglected. The human mind needs constant stimulus, as nothing quite compares to that little jolt of euphoria you experience when you've learned something completely and utterly new.

My earliest clear and distinct memory meme

2007-11-15T22:10:00.000+09:00

Bruce has sent me a toughie. I have to:

Describe my earliest memory where the memory is clear, and where "clear" means I can depict at least three details.
Give an estimate of my age at the time.
Tag five other bloggers with this meme.

When I was very young I used to share a bedroom with my younger sister. It was an upstairs bedroom in a two-storey house, and where we join the action I was lying on the upper bunk or our bunk bed. I can remember the curtains in the room, which I liked, even if--for reasons unknown--I found them a little scary. (They depicted schooners and ships.) I remember looking beyond the curtains and across the road to where a vacant lot stood. It was just bushland surrounded by houses, and there was a large rock in the middle of the lot which, if you were looking at it from my angle and vantage point, resembled a human face.

I guess that was the first time I noticed it--my sister and I would often remark upon it for years afterwards, until the lot was eventually bought and developed. I think we even tried to locate it once.

Oh great. My earliest memory turns out to be a case of pareidolia.

(By the way--I think I was about three at the time.)

I, in turn, tag Sean, Lucy, Madd McColl, Backyard Missionary and Ninglun.

Dan Dennett on the meme:

Blatant Darwin Award

2007-11-14T09:52:00.000+09:00

Man discovered dead in girlfriend's cat door
Wednesday Nov 14 10:00 AEDT

By ninemsn staff

A US man has been discovered dead in his girlfriend's cat door, leaving authorities confused about his exact manner of death.

The man, Charles Tucker Junior, was using the animal entry to gain access to his girlfriend's home on Sunday morning when he became stuck, News4Jax reported.

Officials said his girlfriend made the bizarre discovery only hours after she ordered him out of her house.

Speaking of Darwin, the PBS Nova special about the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial," will be available for viewing online from November 16.

Worth listening to is a collection of audio clips from a range of scientists and philosophers explaining what does and does not count as science.

The Reality-Based Community online

2007-11-13T23:59:00.000+09:00

Via Pharyngula

This is probably not a good thing . . .

2007-11-13T18:33:00.000+09:00

According to The Blog Readability Test:

Via Ozatheist.

PBS Nova special: "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial"

2007-11-12T21:59:00.000+09:00

I can't promise anything, but docos like these "accidentally" happen to find their way onto Google Video from time to time, and you can often find out about them at onegoodmove.

The Discovery Institute has already produced a video response, labelling PBS the "Propaganda Broadcasting System" and claiming that the documentary will not be "fair and balanced." The DI's video-whine also juxtaposes black-and-white images of "anti-ID propagandist Barbara Forrest" and "Darwinian Activist Eugenie Scott" with what I can only assume is supposed to be Third Reich-era German folk music. (Because supporters of science and reason are Nazis who just want to persecute ~~Christian Fundamentalists~~ ID advocates.)

Ah, the Discovery Institute. Long on ad hominems and plaintive whiny rhetoric. Short on research and evidence.

BTW: I found this 2003 transcript of a Science Show interview with Eugenie Scott discussing ID/creationism and "Project Steve."

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXXII

2007-11-11T22:51:00.000+09:00

The week in fundie . . .

David Attenborough on God

A US Federal judge has ordered an anti-abortionist to remove Web site postings that "exhorted readers to kill an abortion provider by shooting her in the head" and featured the provider's name, photo and address. (via Fundies Say the Darndest Things)

Who would Jesus child-traffick?: A UK-based Christian evangelical preacher, who promised infertile Kenyan couples "miracle babies," convinced them that they were pregnant when they were not, and led them to believe that they had given birth in backstreet clinics, will be extradited back to Kenya to face five counts of child stealing. (via Fundies Say the Darndest Things)

The AP has a report on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Maldives, which in late September culminated in a nailbomb attack in a park in the capital of Male popular with tourists.

A school board in California has approved a plan to put posters declaring "In God We Trust" in every classroom. Why? Because "we need to promote patriotism and promote it in our schools. We can't just assume that the younger generations are going to have that strong love for God and their country the way the older generations do." The $12,000 that it will cost to purchase the posters will come out of that portion of the school's budget reserved for the purchase of instructional materials. Why? Because Christian proselytism and flag-waving patriotism are far more important than education. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Professional whiners The Catholic League have issued a warning that the film The Golden Compass could "cause unsuspecting parents to get the [His Dark Materials] books for their children. OH NOES!!! (via Pharyngula)

A schoolgirl in Illinois was given detention for hugging two of her friends. Hugging is verboten in her school because, according to school policy, it "is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the school and to the persons involved." (via Morons.org )

I wonder if this is the kind of collaboration that is being urged by some members of the Right blogosphere. Anti-gay activist Paul Cameron, whose "research" is often cited by fundamentalist groups, recently addressed a front organisation of the British Nationalist Party. (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)

BBC Profile: Richard Dawkins

My cricket drought

2007-11-11T16:09:00.000+09:00

(No "Thunder Down Under" for me this year . . .)

It was always going to be difficult to follow the cricket from a country in which it is only a very minor sport (most people you ask have never heard of it), but upon attempting to access the ABC Grandstand live stream today I was informed that the stream is unavailable to listeners outside Australia.

So I will unfortunately be unable to enjoy Jim Maxwell and gang call what should be yet another easy Australian victory, as the Aussies prepare to penetrate the Sri Lankan tail (that just sounds wrong) in their second innings. (Sri Lanka are currently 5 wickets down and 122 runs behind Australia's first innings total of 4/551.)

In any case, it is good to hear that Michael Hussey (133) is coming back into form.

Seeing as you've taken enough interest in this post to click the "Read more" link, here are some more cricket-related YouTubes:

CNNNN: Australian Cricket Sledging Academy

The Underarm Incident

Christian marriage advice

2007-11-10T01:37:00.000+09:00

Wherein the fundie troll from this thread at Matt's Notepad deliberates upon the True Christian (TM) idea of how to build a stronger relationship between husband and wife. Basically it involves bitches getting back into kitchens.

And for a family to live harmoniously, the wife must learn to submit herself to her husband. If you want to buy a refrigerator, consult your husband first. In the first place, he is the breadwinner. If he gives his consent, then, go ahead. You may buy one. If that is the case, do you think they will still quarrel? Not anymore, because he has given her his consent. The husband is the head in the household; he is the president. If the president has approved something, the vice president also approves it. Who is the president? Ephesians 5:23—

“For the husband is the head of the wife.”

The husband is the head of his wife. Therefore, if you are the husband, but you are just the vice president in the house, that means, you do not believe in God. In a marital relationship, the husband is the head, and his wife must be under his subjection. And if a wife submits herself under the subjection of her husband, there will never be any quarrel between the two of them. If you want to visit your parents, you seek for the permission of your husband. If he consents, even if you go home late, he will not be angry with you. Who knows, he might even fetch you there. Because he loves you and because you understand each other, he might even fetch you from your parents’ house.

Just get her a burka and be done with it, FFS!

I'm reminded of this scary group, truly a testament to Christianity's sexual egalitarian bent if ever there was one. (To give you some idea of how batshit insane this outfit is, they describe secularism, humanism, liberalism and anti-Christian ideology as "the extreme left.")

The Blanket of Faith?

2007-11-08T23:14:00.000+09:00

(With sincere apologies to Chris)

Chris from A Churchless Faith has a great post wherein he reflects upon the debate between atheism and theism (and his own fatigue with it).

Most people don't have a problem with people who believe that aliens landed in area 51 or that the moon landing was staged because it doesn't actually impact on the way they treat other people. The big problems with religious people, as I see it, is when religious people do evil things because they believe it is what God wants. That evil stretches the spectrum from genocide to indoctrinating children in their own faith with out giving them a choice about it or denying the rights of scientists to do science.

Quite. The atheism vs. theism debate can be enlightening philosophically, but I think the struggle between critical and magical thinking is more pressing, and the struggle between theocracy and democracy more urgent still.

I did wonder about this passage, however:

I also think it is worth Xns conceding that science has more to say to faith than faith has to say to science. Faith is about a general whole of life perspective, science is about specific measurable things. Faith is like a big blanket and Science is like a knife, hitting only specific areas of the blanket. It may cut a hole in the creationism part of the blanket, but the blanket is still there, it may cut so many holes that many people consider the blanket is no longer a blanket.

This seems to me to be a rather unfortunate metaphor. If faith is like a big blanket, what purpose is the blanket supposed to serve? Is it a security blanket?

Speaking of theocracy versus democracy, Wednesday's Religion Report ran a show (which I haven't listened to yet) on "Australia's Christian Vote," featuring Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby, Fred Nile of the Christian Democrats, and Christine Milne of the Australian Greens. And this Sunday, The Spirit of Things will feature Ian Bryce, Senate candidate for the Secular Party, who will join a discussion on the societal benefits of secularism.

Could this be creationism's latest gambit?

2007-11-08T06:13:00.000+09:00

The Discovery Institute has issued a press release challenging the constitutionality of the "Educator's Briefing Packet" for the PBS NOVA doco Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial.

"The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," says Dr. John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs with Discovery Institute.

"The teaching guide is riddled with factual errors that misrepresent both the standard definition of intelligent design and the beliefs of those scientists and scholars who support the theory," adds West.

The Institute has sent the PBS teaching guide out to 16 attorneys and legal scholars for review and analysis of its constitutionality.

I don't like their chances. Have a look at the packet in question: it talks about
what science is, why biological evolution counts as science and why creationism/ID does not. It also discusses why teaching creationism/ID in the science classroom has been ruled unconstitutional time and time again. And--I suspect this is the real sticking point for the fundies who are the most vocal supporters of ID--it discusses how one can accept evolution without jettisoning one's religious beliefs.

None of this constitutes an injection of religion into the science classroom. Sorry.

BTW: How long will it be until this is blamed on us evilutionist atheists?

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXXI

2007-11-05T12:12:00.000+09:00

The week in fundie:

(Digitalfreethought's Atheism 101 Part 1 of 6)

Roman Catholic Archbishop George Pell argues (in an article that is just begging to be fisked) that "Christianity is vital to democracy's future" (Sydney Morning Herald). Elsewhere, he whines:
Democracy does not need to be secular. The secularist reading of religious freedom places Christians (at least) in the position of a barely tolerated minority (even when they are the majority) whose rights must always yield to the secular agenda, although I don’t think other religious minorities will be treated the same way.
Ben Jacobsen, candidate for Family First--which is calling for the banning of internet pornography in Australia--has admitted to having downloaded porn in the past. (But he never inhaled.) (The Australian)
Opus Dei: the "other" Exclusive Brethren. A former member has released a book in which she reveals the misogynistic and cultish nature of this Vatican-endorsed Roman Catholic sect, and tells of one conference at which a senior member declared women to be the equals of dogs. (Let's call said senior member the "other" Sheik Hilaly.) Opus Dei, incidentally, won preselection for the Federal seat of Mitchell earlier this year. (Telegraph)
Another death-knell for secular democracy in the United States: triumphalist fundies rally across the country as Washington Governor Chris Gregoire proclaims it "Christian Heritage Week."
A Christian military boot camp for troubled teens is being investigated for homicide after the 2004 death of a student who had spent no more than two weeks at the facility. It is alleged that the boy was "punished for being too weak to exercise," and "forced to wear a 20-pound sandbag around his neck." When the student "vomited, defecated and urinated on himself" for several days after an oozing bump was discovered on his arm on the second day of his training, he was merely accused of being rebellious. Allowing a boy to die in his own shit, piss and vomit. It's what Jesus would do. (via Morons.org)
Hollywood continues to persecute that most oppressed and hard-done-by of religious minorities: Christians. Oh, woe. (via Effect Measure)

(Digitalfreethought's Atheism 101 Part 2 of 6)

(Digitalfreethought's Atheism 101 Part 3 of 6)

(Digitalfreethought's Atheism 101 Part 4 of 6)

(Digitalfreethought's Atheism 101 Part 5 of 6)

(Digitalfreethought's Atheism 101 Part 6 of 6)

Remember Sammy Jankis?

2007-11-05T11:33:00.000+09:00

That's Sammy Jankis of Smogblot fame. He has a new blog now, and like many others has opted to migrate from Blogger to Wordpress. Which means its time for me to pose the following question to my readers, especially if you have converted from Blogger to Wordpress:

Can you name at least five advantages Wordpress has over Blogger?

P.S. There has been no word on if/when SuperSimmo plans to fire up his new blog.

Saturday morning music videos

2007-11-03T07:55:00.000+09:00

Marty Robbins: "El Paso"

Marty Robbins - El Paso - Music Video via Noolmusic.com

Get Video Code For Marty Robbins - El Paso - Music Video

Jimmy Dean: "Big Bad John"

Dana Lyons: "Cows With Guns"

Ween: "Waving My Dick In the Wind"

Glenn Campbell: "Wichita Lineman"

Surprise, fucking surprise

2007-11-01T13:24:00.000+09:00

Family First is demanding that all Federal candidates declare whether they are now, or ever have been TEH GAY:

The Family First candidate in the far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt says voters have a right to know the sexual preference of all candidates contesting the federal election.

A report in today's Courier-Mail newspaper says Family First's Ben Jacobsen demanded that the Liberal candidate Charlie McKillop declare if she is gay.

Mr Jacobsen, who is against gay relationships, says he was not targeting Ms McKillop, but speaking generally about every candidate.

"Look I think this is a public office, this is a person that's going to represent Leichhardt in our House of Representatives," he said.

"I think the public have a right to know the values that you're going to pursue in Parliament." (ABC)

And everybody knows that gay values aren't Australian values, non? Everybody knows that as soon as you let one of those into Parliament, they'll immediately proceed to infect our beloved Christian democracy with TEH GAY. Santorum spreading everywhere. Before you know it, your 15-year old son is being sodomised with the rough end of a heroin-laced outcomes-based education, while being forced to watch lesbian witch porn on the Internet.

Fundies First: the gift that keeps on giving.

UPDATE: The backpedalling has begun already.

Celebrate Halloween with some old-style evangelical ad baculums

2007-10-31T21:24:00.000+09:00

Nobody does the appeal to firey and brimstoney consequences like the fundies. Enjoy!

Via Pharyngula.

More below the fold . . .

Remember "Hell House," featured in The Root of All Evil?" . . .

In the spirit of Halloween and True Christianity (TM), here are a couple of excerpts from a documentary on the Hell House phenomenon:

Dramatised abortions, rapes and domestic violence. Let's just call this for what it is: Christian porn.

Election '07: Whither the religious moderates?

2007-10-30T21:40:00.000+09:00

"The centre needs to be reaffirmed," says Alister McGrath. "I want to make it clear, I have no doubt there are some very weird religious people who might well be dangerous, but those of us who believe in God, know that, and we're doing all we can to try and minimise their influence." I seriously doubt it. All I seem to hear from religious moderates nowadays is bitching and moaning about how the mean and nasty atheists--sorry--"new atheists"--don't understand religion and how wonderful it is. (There are exceptions, of course). Even McGrath is "doing all he can" to minimise the influence of the religious nutjobs: he's in Australia "helping evangelicals brush up on their arguments against The God Delusion" (emphasis added).

Meanwhile, the loudest and most influential voices in Australian Christendom belong to the Religious Right. You don't believe me? Back in August the Australian Christian Lobby was able to organise a National Press Club event, broadcast live across the country, in which both John Howard and Kevin Rudd addressed 200 church figures. That's influence.

Whither the religious moderates when this was taking place?

Want more evidence? Try this one on: it is actually possible, in a secular liberal democracy such as Australia, for someone who advocates the teaching of faith-based pseudoscience in the science classrooms of public schools, and who considers homosexuality to be a "perversion," to gain preselection as a candidate in a major political party. Instead of laughing and mocking him all the way back to his megachurch, enough party members consider him a suitable representative of their political organisation.

Whither the religious moderates in the Liberal Party, and why aren't they doing all they can to minimise the influence of this breed of nutjob, not to mention his supporters?

Now the Australian Christian Lobby has set its sights on Labor. Kevin Rudd wears his love for Baby Jesus on his sleeve, so the ACL is seeking to wedge him on the issues that should be closest to the heart of any Christian. No, not poverty. No, not the environment. I mean the really important stuff, like "family values"--which basically translates as gay marriage, abortion, porn on the intertubes and gay marriage. The Religious Right was able to wedge Labor on the gay marriage issue back in 2004, and Labor of course dropped its pants, bent over, stuffed the ball gag into its mouth and willingly submitted. Will it happen again? Probably.

Whither the religious moderates in the Labor Party? Kevin Rudd marked his ascendancy to the leadership of the Labor Party with a Monthly essay that, with its emphasis on the social-gospel element of Christianity, threatened to pull out the rug from beneath the Religious Right. He had the cojones to stick it to the fundies back then; does he still possess them now, or will he be reduced to shameless pandering? The ACL certainly hopes so.

Meanwhile, Australia's foremost member of the Spanish Inquisition has offered an apologia for the continued legal discrimination against gays. "Same-sex marriage and adoption changes the meaning of marriage, family, parenting and childhood for everyone, not just for homosexual couples," says Cardinal Pell, without offering any supporting evidence. His comments have the support, naturally, of the ACL's Jim Wallace, who says:

[Discrimination] is not something that is necessarily a bad concept, [. . .] I think what we're talking about here is making sure that while we remove unfair discrimination, that we do not allow a very small part of the population to force their model for relationships to be adopted as the community norm, when it isn't.

OH NOES!!! Ending discrimination against gays = MANDATORY BUGGERY!!!

[Wallace] says the problem is that equal rights for gay families complicate the definition of family.

"It confuses children and it's suggested that this is a normal and healthy alternative," he said.

OH NOES!! Ending discrimination against gay familes = LITTLE CHILDREN BEING SEDUCED INTO A LIFETIME OF BUGGERY!!!

Whither the religious moderates on this issue? Why aren't they doing all they can to minimise the influence of this Bronze-Age model of morality?

No, I guess it's easier to whine about the mean and nasty atheists not understanding religion and how wonderful it can be. Meanwhile, the Religious Right's two-pronged (Protestant-fundie, and Catholic-fundie) assault on secular liberal democracy continues unabated. I've said it before, and I'll say it now: we need people in Australian politics who are willing to speak up for the Enlightenment constituency (and religious moderates, frankly, can't be trusted to do it). We think, and we vote.

P.S. I wasn't the only one unimpressed with the recent Religion Report interview with Alister McGrath. It is being roundly panned on the ABC Guestbook.

The Religion Pander: Stephen Crittenden and Alister McGrath

2007-10-27T16:27:00.000+08:00

This week's Religion Report featured an interview with Christian apologist Alister McGrath on Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. McGrath has debated Dawkins on several occasions, as well as Christopher Hitchens, and on such occasions has always had his arse handed to him. So it was with great disappointment that I listened to presenter Stephen Crittenden treat McGrath's arguments with kid gloves in this interview.

The format of the programme was ridiculously one-sided, for starters:

Crittenden plays a grab of Dawkins from an Oxford University debate (with McGrath),
Crittenden elicits from McGrath a long-winded criticism of Dawkins--invariably prefaced by his signature phrase "I think what I'd want to say . . ."--and then eagerly joins in,
Crittenden fails to submit McGrath's claims to the same level of scrutiny.

Crittenden was positively testy with Sam Harris when he appeared on TRR in December last year, and on an earlier show had opined that "people like Dawkins are just as fundamentalist as any southern Baptist, just as ignorant about religion as your southern Baptist is about science, and perhaps guilty of promoting, fuelling movements like Intelligent Design, because of their fundamentalism." But he could at least, in his capacity as a journalist, have tried to play the Devil's Advocate with McGrath.

Instead--having himself remarked that "Dawkins makes so little of Islam, even when he's writing about religious violence. He's really focusing much of this book on Christianity, isn't he?"--he allows McGrath to get away with pearlers like these:

Well he is, and I think that in many ways Dawkins finds that he can't criticise Islam directly because that would be politically really quite dangerous, and therefore he prefers to concentrate on soft targets, and there's no softer target than Christianity, so he and these other writers seem to be focusing on Christianity as being the easy target. It's really been very well received in certain parts of the public, because there is this very deep sense of alienation from what the Christian church has been saying.

Dawkins doesn't criticise Islam? Did McGrath really just say that? On pages 24-27 of The God Delusion Dawkins attacks the "incitement to mayhem" throughout the Muslim world (which he also describes as "hysterical") arising from the Danish cartoon controversy--he notes that "if you don't take [Islam] seriously and accord it proper respect you are physically threatened, on a scale that no other religion has aspired to since the Middle Ages." Elsewhere in the book he attacks blasphemy and apostasy laws in Muslim countries (he cites the case of Abdul Rahman, sentenced to death in Afghanistan in 2006 for converting to Christianity, and who is now in hiding in Italy), and the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. He suggests Ibn Warraq's Why I Am Not a Muslim could be retitled The Myth of Moderate Islam. Regarding the London bombings, he approvingly cites another author's suggestion "that the young men who committed suicide were neither on the fringes of Muslim society in Britain, nor following an eccentric and extremist interpretation of their faith, but rather that they came from the very core of the Muslim community and were motivated by a mainstream interpretation of Islam." Shall I go on? In 2001, four days after Sept. 11, he remarked: "testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next."

Why might Dawkins pay more attention to Christianity than to Islam in The God Delusion? "Unless otherwise stated, I shall have Christianity mostly in mind, but only because it is the version with which I happen to be most familiar. For my purposes the differences [between the Abrahamic religions] matter less than the similarities." Simple as that.

Next, Crittenden and McGrath tackle Dawkins' claim that there is a real conflict between science and religion:

Stephen Crittenden: Indeed, is that one of the biggest weaknesses in Dawkins' book, that he doesn't acknowledge the role of the churches and religious believers in the history of science: the Jesuits in astronomy and seismology, and medicine, for instance; or the fact that the Big Bang theory was first proposed by a Belgian priest. And of course the general public doesn't know all that much about this history either.

Alister E. McGrath: Well that's right. I mean Dawkins has this very simplistic idea that science and religion have always been at war with each other, and he says only one can win, and let's face it, it's going to be science. But the history just doesn't take into that place. The history suggests that at times there has been conflict, but at times there has been great synergy between science and religion and many would say that at this moment, there are some very exciting things happening in the dialogue between science and religion. What Dawkins is offering is a very simplistic, slick spin on a very complex phenomenon. It's one that clearly he expects to appeal to his readers, but the reality is simply not like that at all.

I'm not sure that there is too much to get excited about in the dialogue between science and religion. Endeavours to demonstrate the efficacy of prayer in the science lab have invariably led up blind alleys. On the other hand, the emerging science of neurotheology suggests that the capacity for religious belief may be hardwired into our brains.

While it is possible to oversimplify the historical relationship between religion and science, the role played by religion in suppressing science is undeniable. But McGrath misses Dawkins' point, as articulated in a 1997 article:

Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical of doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars of virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint of scientists.

That is the crux of the issue between science and religion.

Crittenden continues:

Stephen Crittenden: There's one particularly outrageous moment in his book where he talks about the great scientist Gregor Mendel, and suggests that he became an Augustinian monk in order to support his scientific research. I'm not sure how he could know that.

Alister E. McGrath: I think this is Dawkins' rewriting of history to suit his own agendas, to be frank.

Rewriting history--really? Dawkins actually says (on p.99): "Mendel, of course, was a religious man, an Augustinian monk; but that was in the nineteenth century, when becoming a monk was the easiest way for the young Mendel to pursue his science. For him, it was the equivalent of a research grant." Which is true: Mendel, the second son of peasant farmers, was a brilliant student in his youth, but his parents lacked the means to pay for his higher education. So he entered an Augustinian monastery. Dawkins isn't "rewriting" anything here.

Stephen Crittenden: It seems obvious, on the other hand, that religion - I mean this is almost too obvious to say - that religion has indeed been in retreat before science, as science has answered more and more questions about the physical world.

Alister E. McGrath: Well I would certainly agree with that. And I think one of the issues we have here is that in the past, religious people have very often overplayed their hand, and said in effect, 'Look, we can tell you everything'. And then science has begun to encroach on that, and they had to retreat. What I'd want to say is - and I think many would agree with this - that science is wonderful when it comes to explaining the relationships we observe in the material world. But there are bigger questions of meaning and value. In other words, why are we here? What's the purpose of life? And I'd want to say very clearly that science actually can't answer those questions, and in fact if science does answer those questions, it's gone way beyond its legitimate sphere of authority.

The implication here is that if such questions do not fall within the "legitimate sphere of authority" of science, then they must be assumed to fall within the "legitimate sphere of authority" of religion. I'll let Dawkins speak for himself on this one:

It is a tedious cliche (and, unlike many cliches, it isn't even true) that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions. What on Earth is a why question? Not every English sentence beginning with the word 'why' is a legitimate question. Why are unicorns hollow? Some questions simply do not deserve an answer. What is the colour of abstraction? What is the smell of hope? The fact that a question can be phrased in a grammatically correct English sentence doesn't make it meaningful, or entitle it to our serious attention. Nor, even if the question is a real one, does the fact that science cannot answer it imply that religion can. (p.56)

But it is, as I said, rather disappointing that Crittenden didn't challenge McGrath on this point.

We then hear a grab of what is perhaps the most well-known argument advanced in The God Delusion: "There's a chapter on children, and what I regard as the abuse of children, which is the assumption, without the child's consent, that the child inherits the religion of its parents, and I've described that as a form of child abuse." Rather than address this argument directly, Crittenden suggests that Dawkins lacks "a theory of culture," and thus

Dawkins doesn't really understand the ethical and sociological dimension of religion. I'm talking about his idea that belief in God arises from a meme. That's a sort of anti-culture idea, a sort of biological theory of culture. I'm also thinking of his view that bringing up children in a religious tradition is a form of child abuse. That almost sounds like culture is something alien.

Alister E. McGrath: Well that's certainly a very fair point, and indeed one of the major criticisms I'd make of 'The God Delusion' is that he doesn't seem to be able to distinguish between belief in God, religion, world views and culture. These are very important distinctions to make, and certainly you mentioned this idea of the meme, which plays a very significant role in Dawkins' book The God Delusion, and really the key point here is that Dawkins seems to think that his idea of the meme explains away belief in God, that somehow you can give a biological explanation of why people believe in God and that shows it is wrong, it can be disposed of. And of course the point you've made is a good one. Actually there are very important cultural reasons why people believe in God, because there's a cultural mandate to think about these things, to begin to evaluate the evidence for belief in God and then if there is a God to begin to express that belief in certain cultural ways. For example, ways of behaviour, rituals, actions and so forth. And again, I don't see Dawkins really engaging with that, which gives I think his critique of religion a real vulnerability at that point

Of course there are sociological explanations, cultural explanations, for why people not only believe in God but choose to raise their children with such a belief. That doesn't go anywhere near addressing the idea that children ought not to be labelled and coerced in this way, and that they ought instead be allowed to develop their own ideas regarding religion--just as they are permitted to do when it comes to political ideologies or political parties. McGrath makes no attempt to justify, to say why it is right that children be referred to as "Catholic children" or "Protestant children;" he is either stupidly confusing an "is" with an "ought," or arrogantly doing so.

Stephen Crittenden: Now one of the most interesting areas in his book I think is the section in his book that deals with the links between religion and violence. Because after all, if you're right, and 9/11 was the trigger for the book in the first place, this really gets to the heart of the matter.

Alister E. McGrath: Yes, there's no doubt that the most persuasive part of the book is where Dawkins argues that religion seems to have this innate propensity to lead to violence. In other words, if you believe in God, you are much more likely to be a violent person than if you don't believe in God. And I think personally, that's one of the reasons why the book has had such an impact in Australia because you are nervous about violence, nervous about extremism, and Dawkins offers an extremely simplistic answer to those concerns: it's caused by religion, get rid of religion and these things go away.

Actually, Dawkins acknowledges (p. 259) that "Religion is a label of in-group/out-group enmity and vendetta, not necessarily worse than other labels such as skin colour, language or preferred football team, but often available when other labels are not." For Dawkins, though, religion is particularly problematic for three reasons:

Labelling of children. Children are described as 'Catholic children' or 'Protestant children' etc. from an early age, and certainly far too early for them to have made up their own minds on what they think about religion
Segregated schools. Children are educated, again often from a very early age, with members of a religious in-group and separately from children whose families adhere to other religions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the troubles in Northern Ireland would disappear in a generation if segregated schooling were abolished.
Taboos against 'marrying out'. This perpetuates hereditary feuds and vendettas by preventing the mingling of feuding groups. Intermarriage, if it were permitted, would naturally tend to mollify enmities.

Dawkins is only claiming that religious labelling exacerbates our propensity to violence; he is not claiming that if you get rid of religion, violence will disappear.

Stephen Crittenden: It's interesting that in Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene from the mid-1970s which is the book where he coins the term 'meme', we get Dawkins the social Darwinist, who suggests that selfishness and violence comes from our biology, and yet here he is in this book blaming it all on religion. It seems like an interesting contradiction.

Except he's not "blaming it all on religion." Shoddy journalism, Stephen. And here's where Alister McGrath makes one of his most outrageous statements:

Alister E. McGrath: Well it's an intriguing transition and certainly in the book The Selfish Gene he seems to say all these things are genetically programmed. But then right at the end of the book he says, 'Well somehow we can rise above this'. But I'd want to challenge him at this point I think and say Look, I have no doubt that some people who are religious, have done some very bad things, but I'd want to make a counterpoint very forcibly. And that is, this is not typical of religion. This is the fringes being presented as though they're the mainstream. And we saw that in his television program, The Root of All Evil, which many of your listeners may have seen, where he presented some extremists as if they were mainliners, and I think that's a very serious misrepresentation. I want to make it clear, I have no doubt there are some very weird religious people who might well be dangerous, but those of us who believe in God, know that, and we're doing all we can to try and minimise their influence. The centre needs to be reaffirmed, and Dawkins does not help us do that at all.

What an astonishing ignorance of history this man has, if he thinks the Crusades or the Inquisition were the work of "fringe" elements and not mainstream Christianity. What an astonishing ignorance of current events this man has, if in the wake of countless sexual abuse scandals in the Church--not least of which has been the Church's complicity in attempting to sweep it all under the carpet--he can talk about "fringes being presented as the mainstream" and keep a straight face. You can't get more mainstream than the Catholic Church, a denomination comprising one sixth of the world's population.

Stephen Crittenden: No. On the other hand, it's true isn't it, that there's a very strong powerful view in popular culture about the churches, and their history. It may be a caricatured view that starts with the Inquisition and includes the Crusades and so on, it's a very one-sided view of course, but it's very, very deep in the culture.

Alister E. McGrath: That's right. And Dawkins is able to point to this narrative of violence, the Crusades, the Inquisition.

Stephen Crittenden: What can the churches do about that?

Alister E. McGrath: Well I think there are two things they can do. One is they can make sure the other side of the story is told. They can talk about the narrative of violence in atheism in the 20th century, for example in the Soviet Union, where there were a whole series of absolutely abominable events, which again reflected the imposition of atheism on a fundamentally religious people, and that needs to be said.

Tu quoque. And wrong: Stalin's purges were not a logical consequence of the official atheist stance of the Soviet state. The prevailing dogma in the Soviet Union was not atheism--it was Stalinism. Christopher Hitchens has a great answer to the kind of canard being peddled by McGrath:

Wiener: The final killer argument of your critics is that Hitler and Stalin were not religious. The worst crimes of the 20th century did not have a religious basis. They came from political ideology.

Hitchens: That’s easy. Hitler never abandoned Christianity and recommends Catholicism quite highly in “Mein Kampf.” Fascism, as distinct from National Socialism, was in effect a Catholic movement.

Wiener: What about Stalin? He wasn’t religious.

Hitchens: Stalin—easier still. For hundreds of years, millions of Russians had been told the head of state should be a man close to God, the czar, who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as absolute despot. If you’re Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business if you can’t exploit the pool of servility and docility that’s ready-made for you. The task of atheists is to raise people above that level of servility and credulity. No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine.

In short, for McGrath's Stalin analogy to work, he would need to show how the atheism mapped out in The God Delusion--an agnostic atheism grounded in the virtues of critical thinking, skepticism, and free inquiry--leads inexorably to the atrocities perpetrated under Mao and Stalin.

McGrath continues:

But against that, we need to make this point, that does not mean that all atheists are evil, it certainly doesn't. Just as the fact that some religious people do violent things, does not mean that all people who believe in God do these things.

Strawman: nobody is suggesting that all people believe in God do violent things.

We finally come to the end of the interview, where the following excerpt from Dawkins is played . . .

Given that right and wrong is a very difficult question anyway, once again what on earth makes you trust religion to tell you what's right and wrong? I mean if you do trust religion, where are you going to get it from? For goodness' sake don't get it from the Bible, at least not from the Old Testament, and certainly aspects of the New Testament have very agreeable vibes for us today, but how do we decide which of those are agreeable and which are not? It is the case that since we are all 21st century people, we all subscribe to a pretty widespread consensus of what's right and what's wrong. Nowadays we don't believe in slavery any more, we don't believe in child labour, we don't believe in physical violence in the home, there are all sorts of things that people used to believe in and no longer do, and that is a general consensus which we all share to a greater or lesser extent, whether or not we are religious.

Now if you look at the Bible, either the Old or New Testament, you can pick and choose verses of the Bible which chime in with that decent moral consensus that we all share, and you can say Oh well, this comes from the Bible; this comes from the Bible. But of course you'll find plenty of other bits in the Bible which are simply horrendous by today's standards. So something other than religion is giving us this general moral consensus, and I haven't time to go into what I think it is, but whatever else it is, it's not religion. And if you try to cherrypick your Bible or your Qu'ran, your Holy Book, whatever it is, you can find good bits and you can throw out bad bits, but the criterion by which you do that cherrypicking has nothing to do with religion.

. . . which is studiously ignored by Crittenden and McGrath. The obvious question to put to McGrath would be: do you think we get our morals from the Bible, and if so, why? Crittenden, however, prefers to ask:

Alister the church seems more on the back foot than ever on this point of where values comes from. It sometimes seems to me that part of what's going on is that this is a very vibrant time for biology in particular, and we're seeing the kind of youthful exuberance of a new biological paradigm, as the biotech revolution gets under way. And religion creates a lot of problems for science at this particular time. It seems to me that one of the things that perhaps we've allowed scientists to get away with is the idea that science creates value.

Alister E. McGrath: I think that's a very important point. And actually Dawkins and I, I think, agree at one point on this. Because Dawkins is very, very clear that rightly, science cannot tell us what is right or wrong. In other words, that those who science creates a system of values are misunderstanding what science is all about. And I think we do need to challenge science at this point and say Look, the fact that something can be done, doesn't make that good in itself, that by doing something new, we very often open the door to possibilities that cannot be changed, that might actually be destructive. There's a real concern there. And certainly I want to affirm that science offers us many very good things. For example, better medical procedures. But we all know the dark side, that science is able to make available new methods of mass destruction that really can be enormously dangerous for humanity. So I think we need to be deadly realistic about what we're talking about here.

That's nice, but Dawkins was making a specific point which you have failed to address: wherever we get our morals from, it can't be from the Bible. He's not saying we get them from science--you acknowledge this yourself. So why not address his actual point?

Stephen Crittenden: Are the churches also perhaps on the back foot here? We've been through a period where there's been so much debate particularly about sexual politics and sexual morality, people are less inclined than ever to take their values from what the churches say.

Alister E. McGrath: I think the real difficulty is that we need values at this time more than ever. And the churches perhaps are feeling discouraged about trying to get their values heard in this secular culture. And very often the problem for the churches is that their values are simply heard to be No, to this, No, to that. That we need to really present Christian values in a positive, engaging way and say Look, it's not about negation, don't do that, it's trying to say Look, here is an understanding of who we are as human beings, but what our role is here on earth and in the light of that there are certain things we should be doing, and certain other things we need to be much more critical of. And we need to sell this big picture, not just individual Nos to this, that and the other, but rather a powerful, persuasive, compelling view of human identity, which enables us to show that there are certain things we should be doing, and certain things also that we should not.

Based on what evidence? What evidence is there to support this "powerful, compelling view of human identity" that you refuse to sketch out? What is our "role" here on Earth, and how do you know that it is our role, or that we indeed have a "role?" At some point McGrath needs to peel himself out of his comfortable armchair, desist with the hand-waving, and actually explain why he thinks Christianity is a good source of morality, rather than assume that it is.

Well, it all goes pear-shaped from here, I'm afraid, because even after McGrath has acknowledged Dawkins affirmation that science cannot tell us what is right and what is wrong, Crittenden introduces the dread strawman TEH DARWINIAN WORLDVIEW, upon which McGrath seizes with gusto:

Look, Darwinism presents us with a narrative which is about the strongest winning out. Can we transfer that to society as a whole, and say Look, let's let the strong win. And you can see that Darwinism does pose a challenge, not simply to some Christian values, but to some values that are deeply embedded in civilisation as a whole. And the real question is this. Do we just say Well Darwinism may help us understand what's happening in nature, but that does not have an impact on the way we ought to behave, either as Christians or simply as good citizens. And that certainly to me is a very important point. Darwinism is articulating a value system which if it were to be applied rigorously, would I think lead to the weak being marginalised, set to one side, so that the strong can simply overwhelm everyone else.

Strawman. Strawman. Strawman. (Or perhaps Projection, projection, projection.) There really is no better way of putting it. Who's articulating this "Darwinist value system," and advocating that the weak be marginalised, and the strong overwhelm everyone else? Certainly not Dawkins. And it is not a belief--as you yourself acknowledge--that follows from the acceptance of Darwinian evolutionary biology. So why introduce this red herring into the discussion at all?

Stephen Crittenden: A last question, Professor McGrath, is there a sense perhaps in which you and Dawkins share the same premises? You both come out of an English empirical philosophical tradition. Perhaps you as an Evangelical are just as caught up with propositions and proof as he is?

Alister E. McGrath: Well Dawkins and I are both men of faith. We both believe certain things to be true, and we know we can't prove them. Dawkins I think has perhaps an exaggerated sense of what he can show, but certainly when you look at him rigorously, he is a man of faith who believes certain things, that cannot actually be demonstrably so. And he and I both believe that we are telling the truth, and we both believe also that if we are right, this has a major implication for the way people live their lives.

Except that Dawkins is able to offer evidence in support of what he believes is true, while you, McGrath, refuse to do so, and Crittenden refuses to challenge you on this. That's poor journalism on Crittenden's part, and poor apologetics* on yours.

(*This is especially so considering that McGrath is currently in Australia, so the Religion Report tells us, to help evangelicals counter Dawkins arguments. Given that McGrath's brand of apologetics consists largely of obfuscations, misrepresentations, and logical fallacies galore, my advice to Australian evangelicals is: ask someone else.

And would someone please pin McGrath down on why he became a Christian? McGrath tells us "First, Christianity made a lot of sense. It gave me a new way of seeing and understanding the world, above all, the natural sciences." You can get the same effect from any number of exotic substances, not all of them legal. So what? Why does McGrath think Christianity--not just theism, but Christianity--make more sense than atheism? "Second, I discovered Christianity actually worked: it brought purpose and dignity to life." There's a lump in my throat. Really. So Christianity makes you feel better about yourself: you once woz lost but now iz found. Are you suggesting that atheists in general lack purpose and dignity in their lives, just because you feel you did when you were an atheist? Hasty generalisation fallacy.

You're an evangelical, McGrath. Who could you possibly hope to convert with such feeble reasoning?)

UPDATE: When he has been pressed on his reasons for believing in God (as he is in the Oxford University debate referred to in The Religion Report, his answers are not surprising. Fallacious, certainly, but not surprising:

. . . the very strong sense that this world is ordered, and that this ordering is something both excellent and beautiful in itself, but also that it needs to be accounted for. [Argument from design.] And again it seemed to me that one of the strong points of the Christian faith was this postulation of an ordered universe created by God, which we could begin to investigate and uncover. [Begging the question.] Second, there is a whole range of things to do with human experience, experience with our own lives, of culture, which very often involves, for example, this very unusual sensation of a longing for transcendence [wishful thinking]: in other words, an idea you find in writers like Iris Murdoch, or even John Dewey [little Johnnyism], that there's something beyond us, which somehow brings legitimacy to some of our core notions both of morality and general philosophical ideas [argument from ignorance].

It's so tempting to transcribe the discussion as it proceeds from here. Dawkins presses McGrath on whether he--as a man of science--believes in miracles such as the Virgin Birth, and McGrath waffles on about ". . . different levels of explanation." It's beautiful.

Cross-posted at Punditocracy Watch.

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXX

2007-10-27T13:52:00.000+08:00

The week in fundie:

There's been plenty of chatter on Oz blogs regarding the Family First "I can't believe it's not a Christian political party" Christian political party:
About time there was some scrutiny of "Family" First (Mr Lefty)
Family First home movies (Grods)
Family First stifles free speech (Grods)
Absolutely no connection between Family First and the church at all (Grods)
“Right-Wing” Christian Australia’s War on Liberal Democracy (Thinker's Podium)
Southern Baptist seminary course teaches women students to "graciously submit to their husbands' leadership." Students learn "how to set tables, sew buttons and sustain lively dinnertime conversation." (via The Atheist Experience)

More over the fold . . .

Pope Benedict on faith-based schools: "It is incumbent upon governments to afford parents the opportunity to send their children to religious schools by facilitating the establishment and financing of such institutions."(via Dogma Free America)

In case you missed it, Tuesday October 23 was the Earth's birthday. 6010 years young. "Why was she born so beautiful, why was she born at all? . . ." (via The Atheist Experience)

From a creationist lesson plan:

Evaluation: Students will be monitored by teacher observation during the classroom discussion, group work and answering the appropriate questions. Reflection paragraphs will be collected. The teacher will try to determine the students’ new courage and ability to defend their belief in the Creator.

How's that for academic freedom? (via Pharyngula)

According to Pravda, Melbourne University biologists have discovered that dolphins descended from the human inhabitants of Atlantis. (via Pharyngula)

Re-closeted gay fundie James Hartline's explanation for the recent fires in California:

They shook their fists at God and said, “We don't care what the Bible says, We want the California school children indoctrinated into homosexuality!” And then Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law the heinous SB777 which bans the use of “mom” and “dad” in the text books and promotes homosexuality to all school children in California.

And then the wildfires of Southern California engulfed the land like a raging judgment against the radicalized anti-christian California rebels.

(via Pharyngula)

"Security Moms": there is a new conservative group in the US (actually a front group for a conservative Washington think-tank) that agitprops in favour of the Bush Administration's national security and foreign policies. Family Security Matters has advocated that Bush make himself President-for-Life (in the tinpot dictator sense), and ranks universities and colleges (all of them) #2 in its list of the "Ten Most Dangerous Organizations in America" (behind Media Matters). (via Kazim's Korner)

Banning Harry Potter: it's not just for Protestant fundies anymore. (Boston Globe)

Evangelical Christian UK Army Chief of Staff declares that "Christian leaders and chaplains in the Army [are] needed to equip soldiers for" life after death. (via Dogma Free America)

Return of the Scapegoat

2007-10-25T17:57:00.000+08:00

The long-awaited latest episode of "Search for a Scapegoat" is here:

Episodes 1-3 over the fold . . .

Stay tuned for more here.

Channel Nine nostalgia

2007-10-24T18:50:00.000+08:00

Nobody who grew up in Perth in the 80s would fail to recognise these community service announcements from Channel Nine Perth:

Gold!

There was one about dental hygiene as well, but I can't track it down. You'll just have to settle for this . . .

Did the Christian Dark Ages hamstring science?

2007-10-24T10:47:00.000+08:00

Null presents us with an interesting graphic today:

Discuss.

The graph was produced by NoBeliefs.com, in a (rather ranty) article challenging the claim advanced by some apologists that "without Christianity, we would not have modern science, medicine or hospitals."

The Christian Dark Ages represents the only time in the history of Europe where scientific advancement not only halted but went backwards. The hole left by the Dark Ages bears the imprint of scientific intolerance. Imagine where scientific advancement would stand today if not for the scars left by Christianity.

During the Age of Enlightenment, people began to wake up. Many freethinkers and scientists rejected orthodox religion and replaced it with unitarianism, deism, or non-theistic philosophy. During the 1800s and after, scientists no longer had to fear religious persecution in any form. As never before in the history of mankind, scientists began to reject theocracy entirely. And what happened as a result of the freedom from Christian influence? Science literally exploded with new discoveries! Since the early 1900s, the majority of the world's productive scientists held no theological beliefs, and the percentage of nonbelievers continued to rise every decade.

The idea that Christianity founded modern science and medicine comes from pure arrogant myth. Christianity, by its very biblical nature, represents the antithesis of science.

Five Public Opinions: Rated PG

2007-10-23T21:54:00.000+08:00

I don't get it. A few weeks ago, the Gematriculator rated my blog as "70% Good," and now I've been rated "PG":

PG!! Apparently it's because my blog contains two mentions of the word "abortion," and one of the word "torture." I guess images such as this or this are now kosher.

(Via Chris, who managed to score an "R" rating.)

This ought to fix it:

Keeping up with the Grodses

2007-10-22T21:23:00.000+08:00

This post is chiefly inspired by sour grapes on my part: I pride myself on bringing you the latest in matters fundie/theocratic, and GrodsCorp up and steals the march on me. Twice.

Maybe I’m the last guy in Australia to know about this [nope, second last -- AV] but the Gloria Jeans coffee shop franchise is co-owned by two men with close links to the Pentecostal Hillsong Church. In addition to this, Gloria Jeans is a major corporate sponsor of Mercy Ministries which “is a non-profit organization for young women who face life-controlling issues such as eating disorders, self-harm, drug and alcohol addictions, depression and unplanned pregnancy.” Mercy Ministries is strongly anti-abortion and views “lesbianism as a sin that their residential program assists girls to ‘walk in freedom from.’”

It probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that an icon of materialism (I'm not talking about the philosophical kind; I'm talking about the praise-Jesus-and-pass-the-remote-to-the-plasma-TV-in-my-theatre-room kind) such as Gloria Jeans has such strong links to Hillsong (which, like many evangelical churches, preaches the prosperity gospel) and the religious right.

Close to a decade ago, my sister was involved with Amway and invited me to a meeting. At the time I wasn't aware of its affiliations, but the loungeroom seminar did feel strangely like my sister had invited Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses into her house to give a presentation. (Later my parents, who (being parents) had attended a few of these meetings, described the atmosphere as "cultish.") The quasi-religious ambience was no accident. In the US, Amway (founded by Rick DeVos) has been a major supporter of conservative politics (see also this article by Bill Berkowitz), disgraced private armies, and religious right causes. From Scoop:

Eric is a good example of this kind of conversion. Before he came into Amway, politics had never been an issue with him, and he was not a deeply religious person. But he soon came to believe that he was dealing with people of great faith and integrity, in part because the tapes he was instructed to listen to.

Unbeknownst to Eric, an educational process had begun that would eventually alter and control nearly all of his values and beliefs. As part of that process, he was instructed to (1) attend choreographed Amway rallies where it delivers its message, often over 2 or three days; (2) read politically charged books; (3) listen to hours of politically slanted audiotapes and voicemail messages; and (4) pay large amounts of money to listen to Right Wing Religious and Republican spokespersons at seminars around the nation.

While attending these seminars, Eric began to learn about the supposed evils of liberalism and the Democratic Party and how the liberals wanted to take from the hardworking, honest people and give to the nonproductive members of society, who were only poor because they were lazy.

I've always thought of evangelicalism as one big pyramid scheme anyway.

OT: What do these two clips have in common?

Shorter cruelty in the Bible: Steve Wells' She-bear challenge

2007-10-22T06:26:00.000+08:00

Skeptics Annotated Bible provides a long list and a short list of cruelties in the Bible.

Steve Wells of Dwindling in Unbelief has issued a bit of challenge to his Bible-believing readers, and I thought I'd reproduce it here.

And he [Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. 2 Kings 2:23-24
Are there any Bible believers that are not bothered by this story? If so, I'd like to hear from them.

Well?

The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy: Joseph Massad

2007-10-21T09:02:00.000+08:00

Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, has published a book in which he argues that

there are no homosexuals in the entire Arab world, except for a few who have been brainwashed into believing they have a homosexual identity by an aggressive Western homosexual missionizing movement he calls "Gay International." [. . .] According to the author, "It is the very discourse of the Gay International which produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist" (emphasis added).

The claim is advanced in the third chapter of Desiring Arabs, based upon an earlier paper of his (“Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World”).

TEH GAY AGENDA is a familiar Christian Right meme, and
the idea that gays and lesbians do not exist in the Middle East has most recently been put by one Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Massad simply presents the homophobic ravings of Christian and Muslim fundies and expresses them in the idiom of postcolonial studies. As former Guardian Middle East correspondent Brian Whitaker observes in a review of Desiring Arabs,

Massad talks of a “missionary” campaign orchestrated by what he calls the “Gay International”. Its inspiration, he says, came partly from “the white western women’s movement, which had sought to universalise its issues through imposing its own colonial feminism on the women’s movements in the non-western world”, but he also links its origins to the Carter administration’s use of human rights to “campaign against the Soviet Union and Third World enemies”.

Like the major US- and European-based human rights organisations (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) and following the line taken up by white western women's organisations and publications, the Gay International was to reserve a special place for the Muslim countries in its discourse as well as its advocacy. The orientalist impulse … continues to guide all branches of the human rights community. (p 161)

Oddly, since this is central to his argument, Massad offers no evidence to substantiate his claim. There are plenty of reasons other than an “orientalist impulse” why gay rights activists might justifiably pay attention to Muslim countries (punishments for same-sex acts, for instance, tend to be heavier there, on paper if not always in practice, and the only countries in the world where the death penalty for sodomy still applies justify it on the basis of Islamic law) but that is not the same as reserving “a special place” for them in the discourse.

Then again, I suppose the demand that extraordinary claims of the kind Massad advances be supported by empirical evidence may be written off as another manifestation of Western imperialism. It gets worse:

State repression against gay people happens on a frequent basis across the Middle East. Massad, however, who claims to be a supporter of sexual freedom per se, is oddly impassive when confronted with the vast catalogue of anti-gay state violence in the Muslim world. Massad, unlike Ahmadinejad, does acknowledge that "gay-identified" people exist in the Middle East, but he views them with derision. Take, for instance, his description of the Queen Boat victims as "westernized, Egyptian, gay-identified men" who consort with European and American tourists. A simple "gay" would have sufficed. He smears efforts to free the men by writing of the "openly gay and anti-Palestinian Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank" and the "anti-Arab and anti-Egyptian [Congressman] Tom Lantos" who circulated a petition amongst their colleagues to cut off U.S. funding to Egypt unless the men were released. He then goes onto belittle not just gay activists (one of whom, a founder of the Gay and Lesbian Arabic Society, referred to the Queen Boat affair as "our own Stonewall," in reference to the 1969 Stonewall riot when a group of patrons at a New York City gay bar resisted arrest, a moment credited with sparking the American gay rights movement) but the persecuted men themselves. The Queen Boat cannot be Stonewall, Massad insists, because the "drag Queens at the Stonewall bar" embraced their homosexual identity, whereas the Egyptian men "not only" did "not seek publicity for their alleged homosexuality, they resisted the very publicity of the events by the media by covering their faces in order to hide from the cameras and from hysterical public scrutiny." Massad does not pause to consider that perhaps the reason why these men covered their faces was because of the brutal consequences they would endure if their identities became public, repercussions far worse than anything the rioters at Stonewall experienced. "These are hardly manifestations of gay pride or gay liberation," Massad sneers.

Joseph Massad: you are a disgrace to academia. Your brand of unscholarly and unsubstantiated rubbish feeds the hysterical paranoiac fantasies of the Horowitz crowd and their puppets in the Republican party--people who seek to restrict academic freedom and stifle the views of those with whom they disagree, and are just salivating for a cause celebre like yourself. Furthermore, it gives a free pass to the persecution of gays and lesbians in the Arab world, by coding any criticism of such persecution as "Western imperialism." Lift your game.

More Unconvincing Arguments for God: Little Johnnyism

2007-10-20T19:40:00.000+08:00

Little Johnnyism is a variant of the argument to authority with which I am sure we are all familiar. When we were kids, Little Johnny was that boy down the street that our parents were convinced we all wanted to emulate. “Little Johnny does the dishes,” “Little Johnny keeps his room clean,” “Little Johnny mows his parents’ lawn,” and so on. The idea is that since we have some attribute in common with Little Johnny—that of being little--we are more likely to be impressed by the moral examples he sets than by those of an older person.

Apologists use Little Johnnyism when they rattle off names of celebrated ex-atheists who have found Jesus and/or God--e.g. Lee Strobel or Anthony Flew—reasoning that, since all atheists obviously think alike, they are equally likely to be impressed by such conversion stories. Some apologists, like Kirk Cameron, will even cite (or, as I suspect, manufacture) their own atheist pre-history and subsequent conversion tale—call it “Little Kirkism”—and then claim to know what all atheists think (and presume to tell atheists what atheists think).

My correspondent Trey himself uses Little Johnnyism when he rattles off a list of scientists—I mean, atheists are bound to be impressed by scientists, right?--who have made affirmative pronouncements on the existence of God/the supernatural.

Robert Jastrow, an astrophysicist, says this in talking about the Big Bang theory and its implications, “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.” In another interview he says, “Astronomers no find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover…That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.” Arthur Eddington, a contemporary of Albert Einstein, said, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”

Sorry, Trey, but this proves nothing—other than the fact that even scientists are as prone to the argument from ignorance fallacy as the rest of us. And how does Jastrow know that the Big Bang was an act of creation? He doesn’t provide any evidence to support his claim—he simply asserts it. Creation implies a Creator. Add begging the question to that list of logical fallacies to which scientists might also be prone—particularly when they are speaking on matters that lie outside the purview of science, such as the supernatural. (Incidentally, it turns out that Jastrow also speculated that “the Big Bang may have been one of a series of cosmic explosions that alternate with cosmic collapses.” Ah, the pitfalls of quote-mining!) Trey goes on:

What they are talking about observing is that the universe and cosmos have a definite beginning. The Law of Causality tells us that everything that had a beginning has a cause. The cosmos have a beginning; therefore, it must have a cause. That cause must be eternal, timeless, infinitely powerful, etc. to have done this, which are characteristics remarkably like theistic God.

Firstly, while the Big Bang theory may suggest that the universe had a beginning, the cosmos is a different matter—google “multiverse theory.” Secondly, how does Trey know that whatever caused the cosmos did not itself have a beginning? How does he know that whatever caused whatever caused the cosmos did not itself have a beginning? And so on. Trey offers more scientists offering arguments from ignorance/incredulity:

Astrophysicist Hugh Ross took into account all the constants that are necessary to sustain life as it does not on earth, 122 in all, and what we know of the number of planets in existence, 10^22, and found that probability to be 1 IN 10^138. There are an estimated 10^70 atoms in the universe, so that number is absurdly high. Given that the universe is not eternal and did have a beginning, there is zero chance that natural nomena could explain existence. Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias said, “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.” To which you say and many atheists would say, “Nu-uh, that event happened. Shutup, science!” and I and my theists buddies would say, “Good work science. Seems reasonable to me.” However, the fact that that event cannot be recreated means that we will never know exhaustively what happened. This means that, regardless of how much support we get, there will be a need for some amount of faith in any conclusions.

Astrophysicist Hugh Ross--note the Little Johnnyist marker-- is an old earth creationist, and a detailed critique of his ideas on fine-tuning can be found here (see also this post by P Z Myers), but he’s basically making a “God of the Gaps” argument (“I can’t explain it, therefore goddidit”), as is the Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias. Nothing to see here, people. Of course in science we will never know exhaustively what happened with regard to past events such as the origin of the Earth, the solar system, or the Universe—the best we can do is arrive at sound models based upon the evidence we have. Isn’t that better than simply throwing our hands in the air and proclaiming “we don’t know . . . therefore goddidit”?

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXIX

2007-10-19T18:30:00.000+08:00

The week in fundie:

Chris Hedges: "American Fascism"

(Part 2 over the fold)

Creationism 1, Evolution 0: Russian Orthodox Christians burn a toy monkey in effigy. Now that's how you do science. (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy has officially become Harry Potter for whinging conservative Catholics, such as the Catholic League., who call it "atheism for kids." (Whereas indoctrinating kids with religious dogma is perfectly acceptable.) (Monsters and Critics)
In that apogee of human civilisation, Saudi Arabia, two men have received 7000 lashes for sodomy. (via Dogma Free America)
Still in Enlightenment Central, a maid has been arrested by religious police (religious police, people) for allegedly casting a spell on her employer, after a complaint by his wife. The wife had noticed that her husband always "fiercely defended the maid from criticism every time she neglected her work," and reached the parsimonious conclusion that witchcraft was involved. (via Dogma Free America)
More on US soldiers being force-fed Christianity. (Alternet)
WingNutDaily releases its "Christmas-defense kit." Now you too can vanquish the heathen atheist commie pinko evilutionist homersexual grinches with magnets and bumper stickers, and then make like a whiny fundie with a persecution complex.

Chris Hedges, Part 2

Here's Joan Bokaer of Cornell University's TheocracyWatch. (Ignore the blatant turtleneck.)

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

Smelling salts! Stat!

2007-10-18T07:50:00.000+08:00

OH NOES!! The Chaser boys have offended some people again with a song that appears to take the piss out of dead celebrities, including Steve Irwin, Princess Di, Kerry Packer and Stan Zemanek (but is really just commenting on the hypocrisy of eulogizing those whom we found cause to dislike when they were still breathing).

Cue the hyperventilating . . .

"CHASERS WAR ON GOOD TASTE" wails Ninemsn. "To disrespect people have passed [sic] is cruel!" moans Deb of Adelaide, in the Ninemsn forum on the topic. On the ABC's own message board (and according to News.com, "Irate viewers rang the ABC switchboard to complain about the song after it aired and talkback radio hosts were inundated with comments about its content"), habbo1 whines: "A long time fan of Chaser, great dissapointment in the cringe factor that was last night 'dead celebrity bashing.' Juvenile, pathetic humour that we are to expect from Commercial TV's attempt to be 'controversial.'" I'm certain there's more to come. (UPDATE: And I was right.)

What a bunch of tightarse, whinging fuckpigs (as Billy Connolly would say).

This reminds me of when Sean Hannity was sooking about what a big meanie Christopher Hitchens was for the latter's criticisms of the late Jerry Falwell:

Some more election resources

2007-10-17T22:23:00.000+08:00

The Daily Kos Guide to the Federal Election (via Election '07 Norg)

The aforementioned Election '07 Norg (via Larvatus Prodeo)

The 730 Report with Kevin Rudd

Chaser: Labor ad

Clarke and Dawe: Kevin Rudd

We need one of these things for the Australian federal election

2007-10-17T08:46:00.000+08:00

The Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, a collaboration between five leading US universities, has created an interactive tool for gauging the role played by religion in the 2008 Presidential Election campaign.

The following is an interactive matrix examining the intersection of faith and politics on the stump as presidential hopefuls line up for their chance to win the White House in 2008. Issues range from abortion and public education to religious history and gay rights. Every candidate so far declared for office has been thoroughly researched for any mention of faith and its impact on their decision to reach a particular stance. Use the following matrix to explore how faith has been invoked as a part of their respective campaigns.

(You'll have to go to the site to open the tool.)

It would be extremely handy, don't you agree, if a similar tool was made available for Australian election campaigns.

Actually, those of you who are familiar with the website Political Compass will be interested to learn that a chart has been made for the 2007 Federal Election:

The extent to which the political centre of gravity is sinking deeper and deeper into the right-wing authoritarian quadrant is truly disturbing. Looking at the party's website (which basically resembles one long angry Letter to the Editor from Joe Incontinence Pad), I can understand how difficult it must have been for the Political Compass guys to place One Nation. They are undoubtedly authoritarian--well, let's just come right out and say it: they're protofascist--but in terms of economic policy they can be both left-wing and right-wing. (For instance, they're stridently anti-corporate: they even link to the Outfoxed website!) By the way, secularist potential One Nation voters be warned: your party advocates the teaching of Scripture and "Christian values" (whatever they are supposed to be) in public schools. And oil is--and this must be said in ALL CAPS, just like it is on the One Nation website--A RENEWABLE AND ABIOTIC FUEL."

In other news, I've submitted Five Public Opinions to Blogotariat, a political blog aggregator. Bruce, Mikey, Jeremy, the Editor . . . all the cool kids are doing it.

More unconvincing arguments for God: Pareidolia

2007-10-16T20:34:00.000+08:00

Here's an interesting photo taken recently in Poland . . .

AND UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE OTHERWISE, THE DEFAULT EXPLANATION IS THAT POPE JOHN PAUL II HAS INCARNATED HIMSELF IN A BONFIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

While credulous theists the world over are once again basking in their own insipidness, a new voice of reason has emerged on the Australian political landscape. I mentioned it in passing on Sunday, but the Secular Party of Australia will be fielding candidates for the Senate in this year's federal election. Jen of Unsane and Safe fame will be running, which is good news, because I vote below the line. I wish her the best of luck: Ganbatte!, as they say in Japan.

As for the party's policies, there is very little that I disagree with, except this one: "We stand against . . . The wearing of religious attire in schools." As long as no one is compelled to wear religious attire, and as long as the wearing of such attire does not hinder the wearer's ability to participate in classroom activities, I don't see how it infringes anybody else's rights. (And the Party does claim, elsewhere on the site, to "believe that people should be free to indulge their beliefs, provided they do not infringe the rights of others.") Indeed, banning the wearing of religious garb, I believe, is just as anti-democratic as enforcing religious observance. (You might say that it amounts to the state overstepping the boundary between church and state.) I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of a representative of the Secular Party on this issue.

Animal Meme

2007-10-16T20:02:00.000+08:00

I've seen this one floating around for the past few days, and now Bruce has tagged me with it . . .

An interesting animal I had

Back when I was in primary school, my sister and I found a bullant, kept it in a jar and fed it sugar.

Well, it died.

An interesting animal I ate

Since coming to Japan I've eaten eel and octopus--I know that sounds pretty mundane but they're not easy foods to come by in Australia. I've also eaten chicken hearts and meat from the head of a bluefin tuna--though that isn't nearly as hardcore as the Japanese teacher who sat nearby me and ate the eye.

An interesting thing I did with or to an animal

Can't think of anything for this one. As kids we would sometimes race snails--but we've all done that.

An interesting animal at the museum

I've seen blue whale skeletons twice--once at the Western Australian Museum, and once in a museum in Eden, NSW.

An interesting animal in its natural habitat

I was twelve years old and riding bikes with my cousin when I came across a paralysed huntsman spider being dragged along by a spider wasp. Said wasp was none too pleased with me when I pushed my front wheel onto her prey; we shat ourselves and hightailed it out of there.

Oh, yeah: I tag Clay, Hourann, and Lucy.

Soon it will be safe to sip chardonnay again . . .

2007-10-15T20:32:00.000+08:00

(UPDATE: Post for Sunday, Oct. 14 added)
If you have an hour or so to spare, I highly recommend a recent edition of Australia Talks (ABC Radio National) featuring presentations by Hugh Mackay, Clive Hamilton and David Marr on the role of the public intellectual in Australia. Although, as Mackay notes, the highest selling book in Australia last year was Spotless, all three suggest that Australians are slowly emerging from their "relaxed and comfortable" stupor, and are ready to grapple with big ideas and big questions. (For instance, Marr compares the outrage over David Hicks and Mohammed Haneef with the almighty shrug of the shoulders paid but a few years ago to the AWB scandal.) This, it is claimed, is fertile territory for the public intellectual. And let's face it: anti-intellectualism of the kind fomented by the Howard Government and its cheerleaders over the past decade has not been good for democracy in this country, and it is to be hoped that if/when Australia finally scrapes the dog turd that is the Federal Coalition off the sole of its boot come November, it will also shake off Howard-era antipathy to reasoned debate.

Other resources:
Google Australia's 2007 Election Channel
Crikey: Election 2007

More Unconvincing Arguments for God: "Reason is just another kind of faith"

2007-10-15T20:03:00.000+08:00

Many of the entries in my “More Unconvincing Arguments for God” series, while certainly inspired by the list at Friendly Atheist, are partly based upon email correspondence with Trey, a commenter at Unorthodox Atheism. (And I do wish to emphasise that not all of the arguments I am critiquing are those which Trey would necessarily endorse.)

I find that many of Trey’s arguments are based upon appeals to ignorance/incredulity--“I can’t explain how x happened, therefore God caused x (therefore God exists)” or “I find it very hard to believe that x can be explained naturally, therefore God caused x (therefore God exists)—-and I think I’ve pointed this out to him on several occasions, along with other logical fallacies in his argument. In response, Trey has sought to undermine the very notion of rational critique by defining reason as another kind of “faith”:

You use reason, correct? How do you know reason works? A circular argument would be that reason tells you reason works, which is insufficient. So how do you know? Could it be that you have faith in reason? In logic? How much of your own sentiments do you see mirrored in those of the scientists that “detest” the idea of God? Doesn’t that give you pause and make you at least think that you stance is not as founded on reason and logic as you would like to think?

Trey replied thus after I had endeavoured to explain to him the grounds of my atheism: “I'm an atheist because, there being no evidence of the existence of deities, there is no reason to believe in them.” Elsewhere, he has argued to the effect that I only demand evidence of God’s existence because I have naturalist “presuppositions”, and therefore I have no grounds to critique his presuppositionalism. (This, by the way, is an example of a tu quoque fallacy—but then fallacies are part of the vocabulary of reason and reason is just another kind of faith. Rinse. Repeat.) But let me respond to some of his comments above.

First, how do I know reason works? Well, it depends upon what I think reason is capable of. Can reason prove or disprove the existence of God? No. Reason is a method, not a doctrine or dogma—which is why it has routinely been used by theists and non-theists alike. Its purpose is not to prove the capital T Truth of a given claim, but to evaluate the arguments advanced in support of or against the claim. And if we posit the scientific method as reason/critical thinking par excellence, the history of modern science demonstrates that reason works very well, thankyou. Every Christian who opts to consult a physician, as opposed to a faith healer or shaman, when he or she is feeling unwell, is affirming the reliability of reason. (Whether or not he or she realizes it.)

Second, by attempting to undermine reason, Trey is shooting himself in the foot. He claims that reason doesn’t work because “a circular argument would be that reason tells you reason works, which is insufficient.” But if reason is unreliable as Trey is trying to show, then so too is the notion of a circular argument, non? In other words, he’s trying to demonstrate the unreasonableness of reason . . . using reason! So even Trey believes that reason works. Moreover, argument itself depends upon the idea that reason works—that reason is a reliable method for separating (in this case, theological/philosophical) wheat from chaff—and elsewhere Trey has cited some of the traditional arguments for God’s existence (very poor arguments though they may be) in support of his own beliefs. The point is this. If you enter into the kind of debate Trey and I are having, you make a tacit agreement to submit your arguments to rational critique. Some bloggers I have encountered take this kind of critique as a personal attack, but Trey, to his credit, has not. But I do think his attack on reason is little more than an attempt to avoid addressing some of the flaws/fallacies in his arguments.

(Trey might respond as many an apologist has done: he can use logic and reason because God invented logic and reason. But if such is the case, then square circles are possible. Why? Because if God invented logic, then he is not bound by its rules, and therefore has the ability to make square circles, which are logically impossible. Other apologists have argued that God’s omnipotence means only that he can do all that it is logically possible to do; and since square circles are not logically possible, God can’t make them. But on this view, God is bound by the rules of logic, and therefore cannot have invented logic. Quite the conundrum.)

Election '07: What's in it for secular democracy?

2007-10-14T22:34:00.000+08:00

You will be aware by now that a federal election has been called for November 24th--an election anticipated with a faint whiff of hope by those of us on the latte left, and undoubtedly with dread by those on the Nescafe right. (A recent poll indicates that Labor has an eighteen-point start on the Coalition.)

Now, the reasons for voting out the Coalition government are manifold: Workchoices, the underfunding of public education, teacher-bashing, material support for the Burmese military junta's repression of pro-democracy groups, homophobic marriage laws (and opposition to civil partnership legislation), its disgusting treatment of asylum seekers, its equally disgusting policy on African refugees, the politicisation of the public service, the injustices meted out to David Hicks and Mohammed Haneef, the AWB scandal, and the intimidation and attempted silencing of its critics. By no means is that list exhaustive--I'm sure you can think of more reasons.Actually, I can. There can be no doubt that the Howard years have been--to say the least--detrimental to the health of liberal democracy in Australia. And one the main vehicles of the Howard Government's assault on liberal democracy has been its alliance with the religious right--modelled, surely, on a similar alliance between the GOP and the (Christian) religious right in the US that, until the 2006 Congressional elections, proved to be a successful formula. The alliance has manifested itself overtly at times: Government figures falling over themselves to address megachurch congregations and endorse Christian Right initiatives like the National Day of Thanksgiving. (Sadly, Labor figures have also jumped on the bandwagon.) At other times, the religion-baiting has been more subtle: witness the "values debate" regarding public schools, for instance, or the school chaplaincy programme. Furthermore, the Howard Government has not been above backroom deals with sects at the more extreme and ultraconservative ends of the Catholic and Protestant spectra: Opus Dei and the Exclusive Brethren.

Surely, for the secularist, there can be no question regarding who not to vote for on November 24th. But how secular-friendly--and therefore how democracy-friendly--are some of the other parties?

Labor: On various issues--most notably the 2004 Federal ban on same-sex marriage--Labor has marched in lockstep with the Howard Government, and has been--probably for reasons of political expediency (though Labor still got its arse handed to it on a plate in the 2004 election)--equally keen to kowtow to Christian fundamentalists. Kevin Rudd, however, has sought to reposition, or perhaps re-emphasise Labor as a party of the religious left: his Monthly article "Faith and Politics", besides marking his own entrance onto the main stage of the Australian political scene, brilliantly undermined the dominance of conservative voices in Australian Christianity by reminding Christians of the social-justice traditions of their faith. (And in retrospect, his appearance at the Australian Christian Lobby's Fundython in August probably needs to be seen in that light.) If The Australian's Paul Kelly is to be believed, a Rudd Labour government--given the willingness of its leader to wear his Christianity on his sleeve--does not bode well for secularism in Australia. But I don't know. I daresay that, on the whole, the religious left is certainly more secular-friendly than the religious right--despite the boneheaded remarks of Jim Wallis--and Rudd's brand of religio-politics would surely be an improvement over the Howard model (and a damn sight more cerebral).

The Greens . . . well, it is difficult to find much on the Greens wrt secularism, and that is probably a good sign. They are strongly in favour of abortion rights, stem cell research, and LGBT rights, for starters, and as a consequence have found themselves the subject of attacks by the Christian Democratic Party, Family First , the Catholic magazine AD2000, Sydney Anglicans and the Exclusive Brethren. Their education policies in particular are--on the whole--sensible and fair, but I'm especially impressed by their call to "extend to private schools the anti-discrimination measures that apply in public schools." Two thumbs up.

The Australian Democrats: Of the "major" minor parties, the Australian Democrats stand alone in openly advocating the separation of church and state. They have also called for a Bill of Rights. Therefore: three thumbs up, since on many other issues that have some bearing on secularism or the relationship between religion and politics, their policies are very similar to the Greens'.

Family First: Erm . . . how did they get in there?

One Nation: What the hey?

I should also give a shout-out to the Secular Party of Australia, which will be running for Senate election in the upcoming election.

Fun fact: A 2006 study found that "Less than half Australia’s young people say they believe in a god, and many believe there is little truth in religion."

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVIII

2007-10-13T06:57:00.000+08:00

The week in fundie . . .

Ann Coulter wants "Jews to be perfected." (Via Pharyngula)
Air America adds ex-evangelical Christian Dan Barker's Freethought Radio to its line-up, and FOX News screams "GODLESS PROGRAMMING!!" (Via Pharyngula)
Under Christian and Muslim pressure, UK teachers are becoming reluctant to teach evolution and are being urged to teach creationism.
Left Behind Games: Criticise our sad excuse for a computer game, and we'll sue! (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
Kent Hovind talks to God. And God talks back. Yessireebob!
US Department of Defence greenlights fundamentalist Christian proselytism in the military. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
Catch the Fire: Baby Jesus told Pastor Nalliah that he wants John Howard to win the election (Alan Matheson)

Ann Coulter: Anti-Semite

PZ Myers' mutating genre meme

2007-10-12T20:38:00.000+08:00

Here are the instructions:

The Pharyngula mutating genre meme

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

You can leave them exactly as is.
You can delete any one question.
You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…" to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is…", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…".
You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…".

You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My parent is: Pharyngula.

1. The best time travel novel in Magical Realism is…

The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco.

2. The best romantic movie in historical fiction is…

Cold Mountain.

3. The best sexy song in industrial rock is…

Closer, by Nine Inch Nails

I shall attempt to disseminate my seed of a meme to:
Mikey Capital
Ninglun
The Thinker's Podium
A Churchless Faith
Unorthodox Atheism

Via Nullifidian, Kent Hovind getting pwned on the Infidel Guy. . .

Funny stuff. God himself now talks to this guy in his prison cell.

I Can Has Jeebus

2007-10-10T13:25:00.000+08:00

The Holy Bible: New LOLcat Translation, via Friendly Atheist. (See over the fold for comments by the site's creator.)

Hey,

I’m the owner of the Lolcat Bible Translation website. Thought I’d share a bit about why I did it.

Essentially, the idea of the wiki was merely a whim of mine when I saw a picture floating around with a page of Genesis translated into the LOLCat pidgin. I thought it would be prudent to undertake the entire work.

The most common reaction so far is “Wow, that is awesome!” The most negative is “What a waste of time.”

I am here to confirm that I do indeed have far too much time on my hands. I am also here to confirm that it is probably blasphemous, but being pretty atheist I’m not too worried about the “Ceiling Cat” striking me down anytime soon.

I would not be surprised if this is more accurate than some “normal” translations out there. Also, I hate to break it to many people, but lolcat is not exactly how kids talk online. In fact, it takes effort to write in lolcat. it’s not very easy at all.

Most of all, I just find it funny. Let’s face it, the Bible is quite dreary, violent, and insane. I imagine we are softening it up, if anything. Sex becomes “PENIS GOES Z WHEAR?” and violence becomes “stealin mah cheezburgerz.” I’d recommend this version over the current KJV or NIV for your children.

On a slightly more serious note… I think the willingness to laugh at what is in the Bible, even in a different form, may show just how silly the whole book is. People died for this book. When you find it in this form one can’t help but wonder, “They died… for this?” I think the time has come to poke a little fun at things. Shake up the system so to speak.

On a quick final note, I saw a Christian forum linking to my site and talking about how “blasphemous” it is. Needless to say, I think they missed the point entirely.

Anyways, sorry to be so loquacious, just thought I’d share my thoughts.

Martin

The Rebel Alliance has way too much time on its hands . . .

2007-10-09T20:46:00.000+08:00

Star Wars nerds everywhere, be prepared to cream your Ewok boxer shorts. A Californian team has built, and flown (well, gotten airborne would be more precise) a working X-Wing!!

Don't believe me?

That is why you fail.

(Via Pharyngula)

See over the fold for previews of a fan-made edit of the Star Wars movies, in the style of Godfather II.

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVII

2007-10-05T19:00:00.000+08:00

The week in fundie . . .

Texas law, with the Orwellian title "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act," allows evangelical students to proselytise to captive audiences at public school assemblies. (Alternet)
Fundies--of both the Protestant and Catholic varieties--call for the shutting down of a San Francisco gay and lesbian festival and for the boycott of sponsor Miller's. (As one liberal pastor observes, a conservative Christian boycott of alcohol--isn't that a little like Hindus boycotting beef?) (The Bay Area Reporter)
Archbishop declares he would refuse communion to Rudy Giuliani. (via Morons.org)
The Red Mass: where Catholic archbishops have the annual opportunity to instruct the members of the US Supreme Court on how to vote on constitutional matters. (via TheocracyWatch)
God-fearing evangelical Christians--default moral exemplars to us all--gay-bash an Indian man to death in Sacramento. Apparently "God has 'made an injection' of high numbers of anti-gay Slavic evangelicals into traditionally liberal West Coast cities," according to the host of a Russian-language anti-gay radio show in Sacramento. "'In those places where the disease is progressing, God made a divine penicillin,'" he said. The murderers belong to a Latvian Pentecostal church linked to anti-gay activist Scott Lively, who in the 90s wrote a book comparing gay rights activists to Nazis. (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
William Dembski: evil atheist materialist scientists unfairly try to rationalise away the existence of angels (which Dembski insists are as real as rocks and plants and animals) with reason and science and whatnot. Evil atheist materialist scientists!

Religion as Child Abuse

The Liberal Party's secret weapon

2007-10-05T17:07:00.000+08:00

"Junglebunnies want to give your daughter aids [sic]."

Given that the Liberal Party likes its racism subtle and just-below-the-surface--right where it can be plausibly denied--Legohead can't be happy with this Adelaide Advertiser headline:

Africans drink and fight: Andrews

Ouch.

Or this.

Double ouch.

The Chaser does Pauline Hanson

Shutting the door on darkies: it's what Jesus would do.

2007-10-03T23:14:00.000+08:00

Image via the Jim Crow Museum

When he isn't bearing false witness on his CV, right-wing Catholic Federal Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews is declaring no more room at the inn for Sudanese refugees--you know, those people who are fleeing from a situation in which they run the constant risk of being raped or murdered by Janjaweed and Sudanese government forces--because he thinks they "have been slow to integrate with the wider community." The evidence for this claim--evidence that African refugees are less able to "integrate" (whatever that means anyway) into the Australian community than refugees from the Middle East or Asia--is for Cabinet's eyes only, so you'll just have to trust him. The Victorian police say he's spouting nonsense: "young African men accounted for less than 1per cent of the state's crime statistics and did not present a major difficulty for law enforcement," according to the Police Commissioner. But they're just "in denial," retorts Kev, who claims "anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise." Anecdotal evidence, you see, trumps statistical evidence. Textbook magical thinking. Kev missed his calling in life: instead of falsely claiming to co-author other people's books, he could be making a fortune writing his own books on Christian apologetics.

As even the folks at the Government Gazette are forced to conclude . . . Dog: meet whistle.

More at Mikey's.
Andrews on Mohammed Haneef

Blog Against Theocracy: Atheists in private schools

2007-10-01T20:26:00.000+08:00

This post has been inspired by recent events involving an acquaintance of mine whose contract as a teacher at a religious private school was terminated when it was discovered (I assume via that most cherished of pastimes in John Howard's Australia: dobbing) that said teacher operated a blog containing views contrary to the religious doctrines of the school. The teacher had not made any reference to the school on the blog, nor had students or teachers been made aware of the blog's existence by its author. (Truth be told: I'm not even aware of the sacked teacher's religious affiliation.)

The OUT Campaign, drawing inspiration from gay and lesbian liberation movements, urges atheists to "come out of the closet"--to demonstrate to a theistic world that we are not the horned and scaly demons we are imagined to be. We are your fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. We are your local firefighters or policemen, or doctors, or community workers. We may even be your teachers. & c. & c. Therein lies a slight problem (one doubtless recognised by OUT Campaign organisers): there are some careers in which it is more difficult and dangerous to be an "out" atheist or non-theist than others.

For example, I am an English teacher by trade and an atheist. But given the proportion of private to public schools in Australia, it is clearly against my professional interests to be an "out" atheist, because it would significantly decrease my employment opportunities. This is despite the fact that (a) being an atheist makes no difference whatsoever to my ability to teach English well, any more than if I were a teacher of mathematics, science, economics or history (Christians--apart from a select few who hold that pi=3--don't do mathematics differently than non-Christians, for instance); and (b) being an atheist makes no difference whatsoever to my ability to support the "ethos" of the school--unless, that is, someone wishes to meet Christopher Hitchens' challenge and point to a moral action that a believer could perform but which could not possibly be performed by a non-believer. Should I secure employment with such a school, it would also be against my professional interests to discuss my atheism with my colleagues--even in private over a few beers--because, as my friend's experience demonstrates, it is the kind of thing that could be used against me.

This isn't paranoia--it happened. It is curiously ironic that, in a supposedly modern, enlightened mature liberal democracy such as Australia, one is best advised to adopt a pseudonym if one wishes to speak one's mind freely--particularly on matters religious or political. But there it is: if you are a non-theist, have a blog, teach in a religious private school and wish to keep your job, anonymity is the best policy. That, and being extremely careful about who you share your blog address with.

It may be objected that private schools are just that--private--and therefore have the right to determine their own hiring policies. Furthermore, nobody is forced to seek employment there. Private schools, however, comprise a significant proportion of the education sector, and one of the main reasons for this is that for many years they have received federal funding. Lamentably, private schools overall tend also to provide better teaching and learning environments (e.g. facilities, behaviour management, etc.) than public schools. In other words, money which might have been directed to public schools, and which might have helped improve conditions there, has instead been used to promote the growth of private education. And given that private schools are permitted to discriminate on the basis of religious belief or non-belief, whereas public schools are not, the federal government is effectively endorsing discrimination against non-theists with taxpayer's money by funding private schools. That's not to say that I oppose federal funding of private schools. But I do think certain conditions should apply, and one of these is that schools receiving taxpayer funds in a secular liberal democracy should not have hiring policies that discriminate on the basis of religious belief or non-belief. Does that sound so unreasonable? Furthermore, is it really fair or just that teachers are locked out of a substantial proportion of schools merely by virtue of the fact that they are non-believers?

But I digress. I think much of the systemic discrimination against non-theists in private schools stems largely from their invisibility--were it to be more generally acknowledged that non-believers are just as "normal" and moral as any believer, such discrimination might not be so much of a problem. And this can most effectively be achieved if atheists are prepared to "out" themselves. Even if attitudes don't shift so quickly at the level of the schools themselves, there might develop greater legal and governmental advocacy and support for atheists if they were more visible. On the other hand, atheists who "out" themselves do so at potentially great personal, or at least financial risk. That alone is enough to discourage me from outing myself, and I think there would be many atheists in the same boat.

Kudos, however, to those atheists who do have the courage to stand up and be counted, both here and and in the US.

Unconvincing argument for God #12 revisited: "Without God, your life is meaningless. (smug smile)"

2007-09-30T16:57:00.000+08:00

Short answer: Define "meaning."

For the long answer, look no further than this excellent post by Bad.

Short story: "The Stare" by John Wyndham

2007-09-30T15:07:00.000+08:00

From the archive at SciFi.com--well worth exploring.

The Stare
by John Wyndham

"A most objectionable habit," declared the Major emphatically.

"I always say," ventured Rodgers, "that the only way to deal with a man who stares persistently is to stare back at him."

The Major looked at him unkindly.

"You would. And if he 'always says' the same thing, I suppose you continue to glare at one another for hours on end."

White joined in the conversation.

"It's not," he said, "the plain, straight-in-the-face stare which troubles me as much as the oblique method—I mean the kind of stare which looks firmly on to your tie or shoes and stays there. All I can do when I meet it is to wriggle unhappily and wonder whether anything has come adrift."

"Men don't like being stared at, but women don't like not being stared at," said Rodgers with the air of one making a contribution to philosophy.

· · · · ·

The Major groaned. "There can be few men with such a fund of generalizations, but this time I'm bound to admit that there's something in it."

"Undoubtedly most women prefer molestation to indifference," White agreed.

Berridge's lazy voice drifted into their talk.

"I know a number of women who don't care for being stared at, and one who can't stand it—in fact, she definitely hates it."

"Of course, there are exceptions," admitted the Major, "or we should be in the unthinkable position of having Rodgers always right. But you can hardly call this lady normal."

"Well, if you call hurt pride an abnormality—"

"Let's have the story," White suggested.

"It dates from an evening six or seven years ago.The place was New York, and her name is Mary," Berridge began in his quiet manner.

"She had been to the theatre and to supper with friends. Since her destination was not the same as theirs, she decided to go home alone on the subway—as they call the New York Underground.

"By day the subway is a mass of men and women all apparently ten minutes behind time, but late at night it echoes with a dreary desolation, and the trains seem to rattle and crash indecently through a world more than half dead."

· · · · ·

"Mary, her mind still full of an indigestible play, could preserve an indifference to the mere sordidness of her surroundings, but she did notice that there were depressingly few travellers scattered around the car she boarded. At each stop there followed a further depopulation until, four of five stations later, she realized suddenly that she was alone save for three men who sat facing her. The middle member of this trio was staring in a fixed manner.

"Now, though Mary was well used to stares and chose to take them as compliments, yet, on this occasion, she was not flattered. The starer was a flashy production, striped hat-band to chrome yellow shoes. His lips hung slightly apart and gave to his whole countenance an unattractive vacancy. But his eyes were piercing. Pupil and iris had combined into a bright blackness to glare out at her from vivid whites.

"Mary hummed a tuneless little tune and tried to find something interesting to look at, but her eyes were drawn back to the man opposite. She assumed a forbidding expression of indignation, which failed to have any effect. Her distaste began to give way to neutral discomfort—she felt somehow as though she were being mentally undressed. His eyes cut into her, and through her. Without a quiver they out-stared her."

· · · · ·

"The man's two companions seemed unaware of his rudeness. They sat beside him, each with an arm firmly linked in his, only turning to exchange an occasional word behind his unmoving head. Mary's decision to alight at the next station was postponed by the entry of a man and a woman, bringing her a new supply of courage. They sat down beside her, and the train continued; so did the stare.

"A minute or two later she became aware that the newcomer was addressing her.

"'Perhaps,' he suggested, 'you would like to look at the evening paper?'

"'Thank you,' she replied gratefully. It was a kind thought; a screen from the stare. Not until she raised it did she notice scrawled pencil marks across the columns. The writing was jerky by reason of the trains' motion, but with difficulty she managed to read:

"'I think you had better get out with us at the next stop.'

"She looked questioningly at her neighbour, and he gave a slight nod.

"There was apologetic explanation in his tone as they stood on the platform and watched the train recede.

"'I'm sorry if I alarmed you,' he said, 'but my reason was the man opposite to us. Did you notice him?'

"'Notice him? Why, the creature had been staring at me in a loathsome, horrible way ever since I got in.'

"The man looked at her and shook his head.

"'No, I'm afraid you are wrong there. You see, I'm a doctor, and I assure you that the man was not staring at you—as a matter of fact, he was stone dead.'"

Berridge paused for a moment, then he added:

"Such a wound in one's pride is hard to heal—Mary still feels a little foolish when anyone stares at her."

The End

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVI

2007-09-29T09:27:00.000+08:00

The week in fundie . . .

An article in the Washington Post surveys McCarthyism across the Islamic world. In one example, three Saudi Arabian democracy activists were thrown into prison on charges of using such "unIslamic terminology" as 'democracy' and 'human rights'.
Republican presidential hopeful John McCain declares America a Christian Nation. Quote
"But I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, 'Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?'"
unquote. (Beliefnet)
Producers of intelligent design documentary Expelled lied (for Jesus) to various interviewees, including PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, in order to secure their involvement. (via Pharyngula)
Catholic archbishop: condoms from Europe are deliberately infected with HIV in order to wipe out Africans. (via Pharyngula)
The MySpace page of Major Freddy Wellborn, who lied (for Jesus) his way into a meeting of atheists and freethinkers among US military serving in Iraq and then shut it down. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
UPDATE: Chicago dentist orders employees to recite Scientology formulas in order to get their paychecks, and learn about Scientology in order to keep their jobs. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Ben Stein's Expelled

Vale Super Simmo?

2007-09-28T08:32:00.000+08:00

Super Simmo apologises for this break in transmission.

Super Simmo is one of the few bloggers on my sidebar that I know personally. He's a teacher in Perth who regularly posts on politics (and rugby union, and games) with passion and conviction.

Now it appears that he has deleted his blog; at least, it seems so: Blogger displays in Japanese characters over here. He did mention starting a new blog, ~~but I no longer have the link~~. (UPDATE: I do now, and I've amended my blogroll accordingly.)

Simmo--if you're reading this, let me know what's going on.

Anyway, this is for you, Simmo:

And in the light of recent events . . .

I demand a recount!

2007-09-26T10:52:00.000+08:00

Last time I submitted my blog to the Gematriculator I was way, way more eviller!

Speaking of evil, here's Christopher Hitchens on "The Morals of an Atheist"

And Hitchens on "The Moral Necessity of Atheism"

More unconvincing arguments for God: The Gospels as "eyewitness accounts."

2007-09-26T09:15:00.000+08:00

Actually, this is more of an extension of #1 and #2 from the existing list, but the argument runs thus: The Gospels constitute eyewitness accounts of the events they describe (the Virgin Birth, miracles, the Resurrection, etc.), and just as juries are able give credence to eyewitness testimony in a modern court of law, so we ought to give credence to the "eyewitness testimonies" of the writers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The answer to this argument, of course, is that it presents a false analogy. Eyewitness testimony is never (or should never be) taken at face value in a court of law until the credibility of the eyewitness has been satisfactorily established. This is far easier to accomplish with eyewitnesses who are still alive, and whose existence is itself a demonstrable matter of record, than with those who are either millennia-dead or who may not have existed at all. Moreover, the reliability of the Gospels themselves as documents of historical fact is dubious in the extreme.

Another problem with the argument is that it gives undue credence to what is actually a very weak standard of evidence. As Austin Cline points out, "Juries place a lot of weight on eyewitness testimony, but this is because people place a lot more emphasis on personal stories than impersonal scientific data as a general rule. It’s unfortunate that people can be convicted solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony and without any corroborating evidence, but it has happened." Carl Sagan is famous for the maxim, Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence--a kind of corollary to Ockham's Razor and Hume's argument against miracles --and eyewitness testimony just doesn't cut the mustard. It can't, otherwise we would have to accept as fact a myriad of claims based on personal testimony, including alien abductions, UFO sightings, astral travelling, ghost sightings, tarot reading and so forth.

HT: Friendly Atheist--"18 Unconvincing Arguments for God"

2007-09-24T08:18:00.000+08:00

This post brought to you by . . .

BIBLEMAN: A FIGHT FOR FAITH*

(UPDATE: List now expanded to 21 unconvincing arguments)

How did I miss this? (I know: it's because I wasn't reading Friendly Atheist when he posted it.) The following, generated by August Berkshire of Minnesota Atheists and Atheist Alliance International, is a list of 18 unconvincing arguments for theism, along with their refutations.

(1) Holy Books - Just because something is written down does not make it true. This goes for the Bible, the Qu’ran, and any other holy book. People who believe the holy book of their religion usually disbelieve the holy books of other religions.

(2) “Revelations” - All religions claim to be revealed, usually to people called “prophets.” But a revelation is a personal experience. Even if the revelations really did come from a god, there is no way we could prove it. As Thomas Paine said, it is a revelation only to the first person, after that it is hearsay. People of one religion usually disbelieve the revelations of other religions.

(3) Personal Testimony / Feelings - This is when you are personally having the revelation or feeling that a god exists. Though you may be sincere, and even if a god really does exist, a feeling is not proof, either for you or for someone else.

(4) The “God Part” of the Brain - Some religious people argue that a god must exist, or why else would we have a part of our brain that can “recognize” a god? What use would that part of our brain be otherwise?

However, imagination is important for us to be able to predict the future, and thus aids our survival. We can imagine all kinds of things that aren’t true. It is a byproduct of being able to imagine things that might be true.

As a matter of fact, scientists have begun to study why some people have religious beliefs and others don’t, from a biological perspective. They have identified certain naturally occurring chemicals in our brains that can give us religious experiences.

In studies of religion and the brain, a new field called neurotheology, they have identified the temporal lobe as a place in the brain that can generate religious experiences.

Another part of the brain that regulates a person’s sense of “self” can be consciously shut down during meditation, giving the meditator (who loses his or her sense of personal boundaries) a feeling of “oneness” with the universe.

(5) “Open Heart” - It will do no good to ask atheists to “open our hearts and accept Jesus” (or any other deity). If we were to set aside our skepticism, we might indeed have an inspirational experience. But this would be an emotional experience and, like a revelation, we’d have no way to verify if a god was really speaking to us or if we were just hallucinating.

(6) Unverifiable “Miracles” / Resurrection Stories - Many religions have miracle stories. And just as people who believe in one religion are usually skeptical towards miracle stories of other religions, atheists are skeptical toward all miracle stories.

Good magicians can perform acts that seem like miracles. Things can be mismeasured and misinterpreted. A “medical miracle” can simply be attributed to our lack of knowledge of how the human body works. Why are there never any indisputable miracles, such as an amputated arm regenerating?

Regarding resurrections, atheists will not find a story of someone resurrecting from the dead to be convincing. There are many such legends in ancient literature and, again, most religious people reject the resurrection stories of other religions.

Modern resurrection stories always seem to occur in Third World countries under unscientific conditions. However, there have been thousands of people in modern hospitals hooked up to machines that verified their deaths when they died. Why didn’t any of them ever resurrect?

(7) Fear of Death / “Heaven” - Atheists don’t like the fact that we’re all going to die any more than religious people do. However, this fear does not prove there is an afterlife – only that we wish there was an afterlife. But wishing doesn’t make it so.

There is no reason to believe our consciousness survives the death of our brains. The mind is not something separate from the body. Chemical alteration and physical damage to our brains can change our thoughts.

Some people get Alzheimer’s disease at the end of their lives. The irreversible damage to their brains can be detected by brain scans. These people lose their ability to think, yet they are still alive. How, one second after these people die, does their thinking return (in a “soul”)?

(8) Fear of Hell - The idea of hell strikes atheists as a scam – an attempt to get people to believe through fear what they cannot believe through reason and evidence.

The only way to approach this “logically” is to find the religion that punishes you the worst for disbelief, and then believe that religion. Okay, you will have saved yourself from the worst punishment that exists – if that religion is the “true” religion.

But if that religion (with its punishment) is not the true religion – if the religion that has the second or third worst punishment for disbelief is the true religion – then you have saved yourself nothing.

So, which religion’s hell is the true hell. Without evidence, we can never know.

(9) “Pascal’s Wager” / Faith - In short, Pascal’s Wager states that we have everything to gain (an eternity in heaven) and nothing to lose by believing in a god. On the other hand, disbelief can lead to a loss of heaven (i.e. hell).

We’ve already noted that heaven is wishful thinking and that hell is a scam, so let’s address the issue of faith.

Pascal’s Wager assumes a person can will himself or herself into having faith. This is simply not the case, at least not for an atheist. So atheists would have to pretend to believe. But according to most definitions of God, wouldn’t God know we were lying to hedge our bets? Would a god reward this?

Part of Pascal’s Wager states that you “lose nothing” by believing. But an atheist would disagree. By believing under these conditions, you’re acknowledging that you’re willing to accept some things on faith. In other words, you’re saying you’re willing to abandon evidence as your standard for judging reality. Faith doesn’t sound so appealing when it’s phrased that way, does it?

(10) Blaming the Victim - Many religions punish people for disbelief. However, belief requires faith, and some people, such as atheists, are incapable of faith. Their minds are only receptive to evidence. Therefore, are atheists to be blamed for not believing when “God” provides insufficient evidence?

(11) The End of the World - Like the concept of hell, this strikes atheists as a scare tactic to get people to believe through fear what they can’t believe through reason and evidence. There have been predictions that the world was going to end for centuries now. The question you might want to ask yourselves, if you’re basing your religious beliefs on this, is how long you’re willing to wait – what amount of time will convince you that the world is not going to end?

(12) Meaning in Life - This is the idea that, without belief in a god, life would be meaningless. Even if this were true, it would only prove we wanted a god to exist to give meaning to our lives, not that a god actually does exist. But the very fact that atheists can find meaning in their lives without a belief in a god shows that god belief is not necessary.

(13) “God is Intangible, Like Love” - Love is not intangible. We can define love both as a type of feeling and as demonstrated by certain types of actions.

Unlike “God,” love is a physical thing. We know the chemicals responsible for the feeling of love.

Also, love depends upon brain structure – a person with a lobotomy or other type of brain damage cannot feel love.

Furthermore, if love were not physical, it would not be confined to our physical brains. We would expect to be able to detect an entity or force called “love” floating around in the air.

(14) Morality/Ethics - This is the idea that without a god we’d have no basis for morality. However, a secular moral code existed before the Bible: the Code of Hammurabi.

In Plato’s dialogue called Euthyphro, Socrates asks a man named Euthyphro whether something is good because God says it is, or does God announce something to be good because it has intrinsic goodness?

If something is good because God says it is, then God might change his mind about what is good. Thus, there would be no absolute morality.

If God merely announces something to be good because it has intrinsic goodness, then we might be able to discover this intrinsic goodness ourselves, without the need for god belief.

Christians can’t even agree among themselves what’s moral when it comes to things like masturbation, premarital sex, homosexuality, divorce, contraception, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, and the death penalty.

Christians reject some of the moral laws found in the Bible, such as killing disobedient children or people who work on the sabbath. Therefore, Christians must be applying their own ethical standards from outside the Bible to be able to recognize that these commandments in the Bible are unethical.

Other animals exhibit kindness toward one another and a sense of justice. Morality is something that evolved from us being social beings. It’s based on the selfish advantage we get from cooperation, and on consequences.

(15) Altruism - People sometimes say that without a god there would be no altruism, that evolution only rewards selfish behavior.

However, it can be argued that there is no such thing as altruism, that people always do what they want to do. If they are only faced with bad choices, then people choose the thing they hate the least.

Our choices are based on what gives us (our genes) the best advantage for survival, including raising our reputation in society.

“Altruism” towards family members benefits people who share our genes. “Altruism” towards friends benefits people who may someday return the favor.

Even “altruism” towards strangers has a basis in evolution. This behavior first evolved in small tribes, where everyone knew each other and a good reputation enhanced one’s survival. It is now hard-wired in our brains as a general mode of conduct.

(16) Free Will - Some people argue that without a god there would be no free will, that we would live in a deterministic universe of cause and effect and that we would be mere “robots.”

Actually, there is far less free will than most people think there is. Our conditioning (our biological desire to survive and prosper, combined with our experiences) make certain “choices” far more likely than others. How else can we explain our ability, in many cases, to predict human behavior?

Experiments have shown that our brain makes a “decision” to take action before we become conscious of it!

Some believe that the only free will we have is to exercise a conscious veto over actions suggested by our thoughts.

Most atheists have no problem admitting that free will may be an illusion.

This issue also brings up a conundrum: If a god who created us knows the future, how can we have free will?

In the end, if we are enjoying our lives, does it matter if free will is real or an illusion? Isn’t it only our ego – our healthy self-esteem that is beneficial for survival – that has been conditioned to believe that real free will is somehow better than imaginary free will?

(17) Difficulties of Religion - It has sometimes been argued that because certain religious practices are difficult to follow, nobody would do them if a god didn’t exist. However, it is the belief in the existence of a god that is motivating people. A god doesn’t really have to exist for this to happen.

Difficulties can serve as an initiation rite of passage into being counted one of the “select few.” After all, if just anybody could be “saved,” there might be no point in having a religion.

Finally, the reward for obedience promised by most religions – a heaven – far outweighs any difficulties religion imposes.

(18) False Dichotomies - This is being presented with a false “either/or” proposition, where you’re only given two alternatives when, in fact, there are more possibilities.

Here’s one that many Christians are familiar with: “Either Jesus was insane or he was god. Since Jesus said some wise things, he wasn’t insane. Therefore, he must be God, like he said he was.” But those are not the only two possibilities.

A third option is that, yes, it is possible to say some wise things and be deluded that you are a god.

A fourth possibility is that Jesus didn’t say everything that is attributed to him in the Bible. Maybe he didn’t actually say all those wise things, but the writers of the Bible said he did. Or maybe he never claimed to be God, but the writers turned him into a god after he died.

A fifth possibility is that Jesus is a fictional character and so everything was invented by the authors.

Here’s another example of a false dichotomy: “No one would die for a lie. The early Christians died for Christianity. Therefore, Christianity must be true.”

What’s left out of this is that there is no evidence that anyone who ever personally knew Jesus (if he even existed) was ever martyred. We only have stories of martyrdom.

Another explanation is that the followers had been fooled, intentionally or unintentionally, into thinking Jesus was God, and so they were willing to die for a lie (that they thought was true.)

Another point is that if you believe you’ll end up in a heaven after to die, then martyrdom is no big deal.

Finally, does the fact that the 9/11 bombers were willing to die for their faith make Islam true?

(19) God-of-the-Gaps (Medicine, Life, Universe, etc.) - The god-of-the-gaps argument says that if we don’t currently know the scientific answer to something, then “God did it.”

God-of-the-gaps is used in many areas, but I’ll focus on the three main ones: medicine, life, and the universe. You’ll notice that God never has to prove himself in these arguments. It is always assumed that he gets to win by default.

Here’s a medical example: A person experiences a cure for a disease that science can’t explain. Therefore, “God did it.”

But this assumes we know everything about the human body, so that a natural explanation is impossible. But the fact is, we don’t have complete medical knowledge. Why don’t we ever see something that would be a true miracle, like an amputated arm instantaneously regenerating?

Several studies of prayer, where the patients didn’t know whether or not they were being prayed for, including a study by the Mayo Clinic, have shown prayer to have no effect on healing.

(This raises the question of why we would have to beg an all-powerful, all-loving god to be healed in the first place. It seems ironic, to say the least, to pray to a god to be cured from diseases and the effects of natural disasters that he himself created. It also raises the Problem of Evil: If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why does evil exist in the first place?)

An example of god-of-the-gaps as it applies to life is creationism and “intelligent design.” It says we don’t know everything about evolution, therefore “God did it.” This ignores the fossil and genetic evidence and also fails to explain the many poor and sub-optimal “designs” we find in nature. Is “God” an incompetent or sloppy designer?

The final and most popular example of god-of-the-gaps is the universe. But to say we don’t know the origins of the universe – if the universe even had an ultimate beginning – does not mean that “God did it.”

And, of course, it begs the question: Who created God? If complex things need a creator to explain their existence, then “God,” who by the traditional definition is far more complex than the universe, and is even more in need of a creator.

(20) “Fine-tuning” of the Earth - Some religious people argue that the Earth is positioned “just right” in the solar system (not too hot, not too cold, etc.) for life to exist. Furthermore, the elements on Earth (carbon, oxygen, etc.) are also “just right.” These people claim that this couldn’t have happened “by accident,” so a god must exist to have done the positioning and chemistry.

We should be able to recognize a god-of-the-gaps argument here. But an even better rebuttal exists. If Earth was the only planet in the universe, then it would indeed be remarkable that our conditions turned out to be “just right.”

But most religious people acknowledge that there are probably thousands, if not millions, of other planets in the universe. (Our own solar system has eight planets.) Therefore, by chance, at least one of those planets will have conditions that will produce some kind of life.

We can imagine religious purple creatures with four eyes and breathing carbon dioxide on another planet also falsely believing that their planet is “fine-tuned” and that a creator god exists in their image.

(21) "Fine-tuning” of the Universe - Some religious people argue that the six physical constants of the universe (which control such things as the strength of gravity) can only exist within a very narrow range to produce a universe capable of sustaining life. Therefore, since this couldn’t have happened “by accident,” a god must have done it.

Again, this is a god-of-the-gaps argument. But beyond that, this argument assumes that we know everything about astrophysics – a field in which new discoveries are made on almost a daily basis. We may discover that our universe is not so “fine tuned” after all.

However, the best rebuttal is that there may exist multiple universes – either separately or as “bubble universes” within a single universe. Each of these universes could have its own set of constants. Given enough universes, by chance it is likely that at least one will produce and sustain life.

We know it is possible for at least one universe to exist – we are in it. If one can exist, why not many? On the other hand, we have no evidence that it is possible for even one god to exist.

Conclusion - Religious people have a tough, if not impossible task to try to prove a god exists, let alone that their particular religion is true. If any religion had objective standards, wouldn’t everyone be flocking to the same “true” religion? Instead we find that people tend to believe, to varying degrees, the religion in which they were indoctrinated. Or they are atheists.

*Yes, Bibleman is legit. HT: Outchurched.

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXV

2007-09-23T07:22:00.000+08:00

1. An atheist US soldier serving in Iraq organises the first ever meeting of that country's chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, having dotted all the necessary 'i's and crossed all the necessary 't's. Of the four soldiers who attend this meeting, one turns out to be a Fundamentalist Christian army major, posing as a "freethinker." Said fundie proceeds to verbally harangue the other attendees--after he has ordered them to stand to attention--for "plotting against Christians" and "being disrespectful to other soldiers," and then shuts the meeting down. This actually happened.

Well, the organiser has since filed a lawsuit, and for his troubles has been threatened with fragging by good Christian soldiers (good purely by virtue of being Christian, of course) in his own unit. Fragging non-theists: it's what Jesus would do. (Austin Cline/No God Blog)

2. A Muslim dentist in Britain has been accused of demanding that a female patient cover her head with a scarf in traditional Muslim fashion before he would treat her. (Austin Cline)

3. Police catch youths who spraypainted images of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on various buildings in a Canadian town. (Is this a hoax?)

4. In Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party is pushing for the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in schools. (Pharyngula)

From OneGoodMove, Bill Maher spells out The New Rules. You have been schooled, my friends.

UPDATE re: the atheist soldier in Iraq. I've been reading the discussion forum at the Military Religious Freedom Association website. A commenter writes:

I don't know if there has been any coercion on the part of officers in the military. It may have occurred on occasion - I just don't know. However, if only one soul were saved as a result of the activities in the military, wouldn't it be worth it? All the wealth in the world isn't worth the value of a single soul. My point to Mr. Weinstein was this: Is he actually doing what God wants Him to do? Maybe the persons involved in the military are doing what God has asked them to do.

Browbeating and threatening non-theists: it is what Jesus would do!

Do atheists have a burden of proof?

2007-09-21T21:42:00.000+08:00

Being away from the blogosphere for so long (relatively speaking) has put me at some remove from current debates regarding atheism, and I am only just beginning to catch up. I will mention in passing one trend that appears to have developed as The God Delusion, God Is Not Great, The End of Faith, Breaking the Spell and others have gained in popularity and notoriety--and, it seems, atheism with them. It seems that all one needs to do nowadays to refute atheism is to put the modifier "militant" in front of it--and hey presto! the argument is won. Darwin's Beagle has noted this very trend:

As an experiment, I decided to do a search of Google news using a variety of search terms that included "militant" in their name and comparing what "militant" meant when applied as a modifier to other groups. There was no hits for the search terms "militant Christian", "militant Jew", "militant Judaism", or "militant fundamentalism". There was one hit for "militant Christianity", three hits for "militant fundamentlist", 137 hits for "militant Islam", 90 hits for "militant Islamist", and 15 hits for "militant Muslim". There were 6 hits for "militant atheism" and 5 hits for "militant atheist".
So Islam and its derivatives swamp the number of news articles in which the term "militant" is used. Browsing through the articles, I could not find a single one where the adjective "militant" was used to refer to an Islamist that argued passionately for the acceptance of Islam. Every article dealt with factions of Islam that openly advocated killing Americans, infidels, non-believers, or was in some way or another connected with terrorism.

I myself have been labeled a "Militant Fundamentalist Atheist," even though I am in possession of no bombs or weaponry, have had no military or paramilitary training or experience, and cannot for the life of me see what there is in atheism (particularly the agnostic atheism I espouse) to be "fundamentalist" about. FSM forbid that an actual argument could be allowed to elbow its way past the ad hominems.

What I'd like to do, however, is direct you to the blog of Matt McCormick, from the Philosophy department of California State University, who is teaching that university's first ever seminar on atheism. What I want to draw your attention to, though, are two posts of his where he suggests that, in a predominantly Christian epistemic context such as that which prevails in the US, "the lion’s share of the burden of proof" will be on atheists. That is, in a culture in which God-belief is the prevailing belief,

You can’t just opt to believe otherwise at will and be epistemically inculpable. Even if everyone around you believes something completely mistaken like “The sun orbits the earth,” their believing it, and so many of them believing it, puts an tremendous burden of proof on you if you are going to break ranks and form a contrary opinion.

In case you were thinking otherwise, McCormick is not engaging in Christian apologetics, or at least he is not trying to. (I think.) As a coherentist, his point is that we are justified in believing that which is coherent with prevailing beliefs, and if our beliefs do not cohere with prevailing beliefs, the onus is on us to show how the prevailing beliefs are wrong. To the objection that we should check that our beliefs correspond with objective reality, McCormick replies:

Evidence, for the most part, is what a person takes it to be. Evidence doesn’t just exist out there on its own. Some phenomena only becomes evidence in virtue of being taken to be indicative of some conclusion by some person. And obviously, different people can take the same phenomena as evidence to contradictory conclusions. Or they can appear to be observing the very same phenomena, but they are actually taking note of very different details and drawing the same or different conclusions from it.

In other words, McCormick is arguing that it really won't do for the atheist to simply declare that, in the absence of evidence for the existence of a god, there is no reason to believe that god exists. This merely raises two questions: (i) what would the atheist count as evidence of god's existence?, and (ii) since many theists do believe evidence exists for the existence of god, why should the atheist's interpretation of the evidence trump the theists'? Everything turns, then, on the justification and coherence of one's beliefs. It is up to atheists to show how atheism is more coherent than theism as a worldview.

What do you make of McCormick's argument? My own response is mixed. On the one hand, to return to McCormick's geocentrism example--in which one would be justified in believing that the sun orbits the earth if that is the prevailing belief of one's culture--can we really be justified in believing a falsehood? And I don't accept the claim that even in a god-fearing milieu the atheist bears the lion's share of the burden of proof. The lion's share rests with the party advancing a positive knowledge-claim: this certainly applies to the theist, and it also applies to the strong atheist. It doesn't apply to the weak/agnostic atheist, who lacks belief in gods because there is no evidence that gods exist. Sure, he or she would not be able to say definitively what such evidence would look like, but here's the thing: neither could the theist.

On the other hand, I agree with McCormick that it is not enough for atheists to simply rest on their laurels and expect theists to do all the argumentative leg-work. For one thing, they won't, given that (in societies where theism predominates) they consider theirs to be the default position. Furthermore, to demand reflexiveness on the part of theists whilst neglecting to practice such reflexiveness ourselves is a double-standard. If we have a compelling justification for our position, as McCormick maintains we do, we ought to be out there advancing it.

Yes, as I was saying: I've been away, so how about filling me in?

2007-09-19T09:14:00.000+08:00

Japanese toilets: Kenny was right.

I've been feeling a little cut off from the rest of the world these past few week sans internet. It's been difficult enough keeping up with goings on in Japan, given my workload and my inability to read or understand the language, and nigh-on impossible to keep up with happenings at home. I've been missing my mornings with Fran (of Radio National Breakfast fame)--in a platonic sense, you understand--which makes it all the more wonderful to finally have an internet connection and to be able to enjoy streaming audio. (I've been surviving off my collection of podcasts all this time--"life in the fast lane," I know.)

Life in Japan has many advantages, of course. Two which spring immediately to mind are that I don't care that the Eagles have been eliminated from the finals, and I don't really care that Australia looks likely to be eliminated from the Twenty20 World Cup. It all just seems so trivial--and probably should have seemed as trivial when I was back in Australia.

Of course, living in Japan also means that I am living outside the Abrahamosphere. Japan is a religious country in its own way, and that is a topic I intend to investigate while I am living here, because I know so little about it. It's just that the Japanese (yes, I know I'm generalising) don't seem to feel as if they need to wear their faith on their sleeves; and--get this--their society manages to hold itself together, quite successfully I might add, in the absence of Jesus. Japan held a federal election last year, but to my knowledge there existed no Japanese Buddhist or Shinto Lobby that deemed itself (by virtue of its very religiosity) qualified to vet the ethical credentials of the contending parties' leaders on national television. And it is actually possible to gaze from a lofty height across the skyline of a Japanese city and not see a single spire, cross, or minaret--and yet somehow, amazingly, the citizens manage to make it through a single day, even many single days, without raping and killing each other!!! Go figure.

Needless to say (but I'll say it nonetheless), it sounds like paradise to me. (The intolerable summer heat and humidity is quite another matter.) But I do have a favour to ask. During my sojourn in the land of adzuki bean-flavoured frappacinos, I fear that I've become quite ignorant of matters religious, political, politico-religious and religio-political in Australia, the US and elsewhere. What's been happening?

Well, I'm back

2007-09-16T06:12:00.000+08:00

As Sam Gamgee famously puts it in the closing lines of Lord of the Rings, "Well, I'm back." How's Japan, I hear you ask? Japan is a wonderful country: friendly, sophisticated, and so much more "alive" than Australia (or at least the Ben Cousins-obsessed corner of Australia from which you humble servant hails). Who would have thought it in a country full of heathens? But Japan is also hot: insufferably hot. I really should have done my homework on that one: I was expecting to arrive in a mild European-style clime and wound up landing in a steam bath. The heat wave, which has continued pretty-much unabated since the beginning of August, has claimed more than 50 lives, apparently. But not me--my apartment has an air conditioner.

I've been away for quite a few weeks now, and evidently I have a lot of catching up to do regarding the topics of magical thinking and church-state separation, which as you know I like to write about from time to time. I have running internet in my home now, so I should be back in the swing of things soon enough, if not as frequently as when I was back in Australia. After all, I'm living in Japan, and I have touristy-stuff to do.

So this morning I would simply like to plug a magnificent post by Balneus--a critique of a Quadrant article by Cardinal George Pell in which he mounts an apologia for theocracy by way of a hagiography of Emperor Constantine.

If you peeked over the fold, I wanted to post more episodes of the "Search for a Scapegoat" series, but no more seem to have been made. A pity.

So here's Daniel Dennett on ants, terrorism and memes:

Still looking down from above . . .

2007-09-11T09:26:00.000+08:00

Hello all. I just wanted to let those of you who still care know that I am still around, and waiting for a working internet connection in my apartment, before I rejoin the fray.

In the meantime, please enjoy some Richard Dawkins. (You know you want to.) (I should warn you that the audio is not the best.)

AV is being raptured . . . .

2007-07-20T07:39:00.000+08:00

. . . so this blog is going into semi-hiatus for a while. ("Semi"--in the sense that it will be still be updated, only much less frequently.)

I'm moving to Japan and my access to the interwebs will be limited--at least until I set myself up with (much, much faster) broadband in my new location.

See you soon!

AV

Anti-Howard propaganda on YouTube

2007-07-17T22:26:00.000+08:00

The "Search for a Scapegoat" series is brilliant:

Episode 1

Episodes 2 and 3 over the fold . . .

Episode 2

Episode 3

Stay tuned for further episodes.

Also:

John Howard Asleep on Climate Change (ALP ad)

The Complete Walks of John Howard (The Chaser)

John Howard on Climate Change and Global Warming (Clarke and Dawe)

The Umpteenth Online Debate About Whether Atheists Have Morals

2007-07-17T21:22:00.001+08:00

This debate at Friendly Atheist has been interesting, but it seems to be going nowhere fast. The primary areas of contention is whether there are non-atheist methods for determining right and wrong, what these might look like, and whether they provide viable alternatives to theistic morality.

Some background reading:

Atheism and Morality (South Sea Republic)
An Atheist Responds (Christopher Hitchens in the Washington Post)
Atheism, Morality and Religion (Infidels.org)
Godless Moral Values (Austin Cline)
Michael Gerson: Asking Questions about Atheists--Answering them for Atheists (Rank Atheism)

Just to make it worth your while: Root of All Evil, parts 1 and 2

Atheism and Morals Part 1: The evolution of morality

Part 2

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXIV

2007-07-16T22:23:00.000+08:00

The week in fundie:

God orders fundie to kill gay man. (via Pharyngula)
Fundies disrupt Hindu man praying in the Senate. (via Pharyngula)
Fundie mother tries to ban books from school library. (Friendly Atheist)
Trailer park bans HIV-positive 2-year old from swimming pool. (via Morons.org)
Former US Surgeon-General gagged by Bush administration. (via Morons.org)

(More of my thoughts about Jesus Camp over the fold . . .)

Watching the opening scenes of Jesus Camp, in which Pastor Becky Fisher whips up her pre-pubescent flock into a frenzy of flailing limbs and glossolalia, I had a passing thought. Imagine if these kids were encouraged to get passionate about the things that matter--politics, ethics, science, literature, philosophy--instead of rolling around the floor like mindless ululating idiots. Imagine if they could be encouraged to actually use their brains rather than surrendering them to fundamentalist dogma. That's the real travesty of this glimpse into the parallel universe that is Bible Belt USA: a generation of kids--smart kids--whose potential is being squandered in the cause of that politico-religious hybrid known as the Christian Right. A generation of kids whose intellectual development is being corrupted by the pseudoscientific and pseudohistorical claptrap that constitutes the Christian homeschooling curriculum. A generation of kids who are being raised to consider themselves, by virtue of their religious affiliation, as their nation's ruling class--who are urged by the likes of Fisher to Christianise the US, not by the use of reasoned debate and discussion, but by gradually seizing control of its institutions. I stand by my comment in the previous post. This is child abuse, pure and simple.

It would be easy to write this documentary off as a stereotypical representation of fundie America: creation science homeschooling, speaking in tongues, worshipping the image of President Bush, the family pledging allegiance to the Christian flag. It can't be real, can it?

But then you have only to consider the Dover ID case, the Creation Museum, the Left Behind videogame, "Paul Hill Days," the War on Harry Potter, "erototoxins," Paul Cameron, abstinence education, "fundagenics," the War on Science, Conservapedia, David Paskiewicz, Purity Balls, Idiot Pete, the War On Contraception, Christian Exodus, anti-Semitism, Pensacola Christian College . . . .

Jesus Camp, however disturbing, was not without its funny moments. In one scene, Fisher's young charges visit New Life Church, Colorado, to hear Pastor Ted Haggard preach against homosexuality.

Jesus Camp: one sentence review

2007-07-15T23:43:00.000+08:00

This is child abuse.

Jesus Camp

2007-07-14T23:50:00.000+08:00

My girlfriend and I will be seeing it tomorrow night.

UPDATE: The whole thing (with Italian subtitles) is available on Google Video.

Friday the 13th Superstition Bash

2007-07-13T17:35:00.000+08:00

This being Friday the 13th, the Harvard Secular Society is holding a "Superstition Bash":

"We're going to have the grand, four-foot mirror breaking under a ladder, in a circle of salt," said Christopher M. Kirchhoff '01, public relations director for HSS. "It's going to be a great time."

Members of the Lampoon, a semi-secret Bow Street organization which used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, said yesterday that they were planning a prank for today.

"We have 13 black cats, and the plan right now is to glue them to trees in the Yard, but I can't tell you where--that would ruin it," said Matthew J.T. Murray '99, the Lampoon president.

"When people pass them, then they'll have bad luck. We hope we get a lot of people," Murray added.

I went to a Catholic high school, so of course I used to cover my homework diary and files with pentagrams and Satanic imagery (I mean, come on, it's tradition in Catholic schools). I guess I thought it would piss off the staff, but I doubt many of them really cared--except, perhaps, for the science teacher who told me I would be struck down by lightning for not believing in God. Anyway, I've been inspired to contribute to this "superstition bash" by having a bash at a particular piece of magical thinking I recall from my Catholic school days: the superstition that if you recite the Lord's Prayer backwards you will summon Satan . . .

(That ought to boost my emo readership significantly . . .)

Back in the 70s and 80s, the Religious Right accused various artists of "backmasking" subliminal Satanic messages into their songs in order the corrupt TEH CHILDREN. (Backmasking involves the backwards recording of a sound or message on a track that is meant to be played forwards.) Apparently if you play "Stairway to Heaven" backwards, you'll hear the message "Here's to my sweet Satan." While artists such as the Beatles have used backmasking as an audio effect, and while some have deliberately inserted Satanic messages into their music in order to piss off the reason-challenged, in most cases allegations of such backmasked evil messages can be sheeted home to pareidolia.

Here's Madonna apparently declaring her love for Satan on "Justify My Love."

And here's Britney Spears allegedly beckoning listeners to "Sleep with me--I'm not too young" on "Baby One More Time." (From Backmask Online)

Via Friendly Atheist.

"We have to kill them over here so I don't have to kill them back in Colorado"

2007-07-12T13:20:00.001+08:00

The Nation is carrying a very disturbing report by Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian on the brutality of US forces towards Iraqi civilians, and the effect this is having on some US soldiers once they return home and reflect on what they have seen and done.

In Iraq, Specialist Middleton said, "a lot of guys really supported that whole concept that, you know, if they don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human as us, so we can do what we want."

According to some US vets, this involved the indiscriminate shooting of civilians, running civilian vehicles off the road and running down pedestrians, including children, firing on civilian cars and families at checkpoints and planting IEDs on civilian dead to make it look as if they were combatants. A soldier described a riot at Abu Ghraib prison:

Nine prisoners were killed and three wounded after soldiers opened fire during the riot, and Specialist Delgado's fellow soldiers returned with photographs of the events. The images, disturbingly similar to the incident described by Sergeant Mejía, shocked him. "It was very graphic," he said. "A head split open. One of them was of two soldiers in the back of the truck. They open the body bags of these prisoners that were shot in the head and [one soldier has] got an MRE spoon. He's reaching in to scoop out some of his brain, looking at the camera and he's smiling. And I said, 'These are some of our soldiers desecrating somebody's body. Something is seriously amiss.' I became convinced that this was excessive force, and this was brutality."

See also:
Haditha massacre (Wikipedia)

US Soldier Atrocities in Iraq (CNN)

Fun with spam

2007-07-11T20:31:00.000+08:00

I received the following from a David Coube Larry in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, and fuck me if it didn't half move me to tears. Even now, as I type these very words, I feel the lump rising in my throat . . .

Dearest Beloved

Assistance in migrating to your country for adoption and partnership in a wise investment in your country. I am David Coube Larry I would like you to permit me to apply through this medium for your co-operation and to secure an opportunity to Invest and do joint relationship business with you in your country. Sorry for the manner by which we crave your indulgence. Am from Ivory Coast. My parents are late. I'm 24years old and the only Son of my late parents MR and MRS COUBE LARRY, my late father was a highly reputable business merchant as (a cocoa dealer) who operated in the capital of Ivory Coast during his days. It is so sad to say that my late father was poisoned an he passed away mysteriously. Though his Sudden death was linked or rather suspected to have been masterminded by an uncle , who traveled with him at that time.

Now I've seen everything: an email scam based on the plot of Hamlet (or is it The Lion King?). Actually, that sounds like a brilliant idea for a meme: compose a scam email based on the plot of a play by Shakespeare. Any takers?

But only God knows the truth! My mother died when I was just 4 years old, and since then my father took me so special. Before the death of my father, He secretly called me an let me know that he has a sum of (US$6.000.000.00,(Six Million United States Dollars) left in a suspense account in a prime bank in London , My father told me that he put my name as his only Son as the next of kin on the day of the deposit.

A suspense account.

My father let me understand in the hospital that it was because of this wealth that he was poisoned, my father give me an advised that I should seek for a foreign partner in any country of my choice where i will have to transfer the total amount to the country of my choice and move on to the country and set up a good and wise investment.

I want to use your assistance to migrate into your country to continue my education and most importantly to help receive my inheritance fund involved (US$6.000.000.00,(Six Million United States Dollars) This money is an inheritance fund from my late father. I have all the necessary documents, I have suffered all form of humiliation both from my late father痴 families and the society in general. Consider an orphan with no assistance this is why I cry to you for help and assistance. Please contact me immediately you receive my mail for more details and explanation if possible.

This money is legitimately acquired by my late father from sales of cocoa-coffee and diamond dealings.

I will be looking forward to your prompt response. This is my Private E-mail:

Thanks and God bless

David .

OK, "David," explain this. You've just told us how you suffered all kinds of humiliations at the hands of your father, yet in paragraph 2 of your email you said that your father treated you "special." Your evil uncle Claudius and the whole kingdom of Denmark has taken a giant shit on you, so you complain, yet you'll happily trust your $6 million inheritance to a total fucking stranger!Who would you expect to be taken in by such tortured logic who isn't already selling Amway, practising Scientology or reading theology?

I know, I know. The whole point of these scam emails is to ensnare the gullible, the credulous and the insufferably stupid. But then how much more credulous or stupid are they than the family planning doctor in the UK who prescribed an exorcism for a patient during a routine examination (thanks Null), or the public primary school teacher who refused to allow a student to read from Harry Potter in class--on the grounds that "The Holy Bible gives express instruction against some of the practices contained in the book, and I therefore objected to the child reading this book to me," or the 67% of Americans who are either definitely certain or fairly certain that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years?" (Perhaps the "God Bless" is an indication that "David" knows his target audience well.)

I mean, consider Pascal's Wager--the suggestion, as Sam Harris describes it, "that religious believers are simply taking the wiser of two bets: if a believer is wrong about God, there is not much harm to him or to anyone else, and if he is right, he wins eternal happiness; if an atheist is wrong, however, he is destined for hell. Put this way, atheism seems the very picture of reckless stupidity." Like the scam email I received, there is the promise of great reward if one complies, and the threat of unpleasant consequences if one refuses to comply. (After all, you don't want to see a poor abandoned orphan deprived of his inheritance, do you?)

Pascal's Wager: the Nigerian email scam of religious apologetics.

P.S. While email scams can be good for a laugh, they also constitute fraud. If you find yourself on the receiving end, report the scammer to Scamwatch (if you are in Australia) or visit The 419 Coalition Website.

AV does shameless Simpsons Movie plugging just to get a cool avatar

2007-07-11T07:47:00.000+08:00

It was worth selling my soul (proverbially speaking, of course) to make up my own Simpsons avatar . . .

Via Null.

The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy: Cyrus Brooks and the Church of Scientology

2007-07-10T20:30:00.000+08:00

The latest Bill Muehlenberg gong is awarded to Cyrus Brooks, vice-president of the Australian Church of Scientology, for taking advantage of a recent double-murder, involving a Sydney woman who stabbed her father and sister to death, to proselytise to the nation his faith-based objections to psychiatry, arguing on ABC radio that "modern psychiatry used many methods that were largely 'unproven' and psychiatric assumptions - such as chemical imbalances in the brain - simply did not exist." The murder suspect is a woman suffering psychosis who was denied psychiatric treatment because of her parents' Scientologist beliefs. Brooks' claims were immediately rebutted by Sydney University psychiatrist Chris Tennant:

It's so sad to hear the Flat-Earthers getting on the radio. The amount of research in terms of both treatment of depression and psychosis is as strong as any other medical of treatment--be it cancer, be it heart disease, be it whatever--it's the same methods, the same technologies are used in these sorts of studies. There are hundreds of studies that show the effectiveness of these drugs not only in curing symptoms, [. . .] but also in reducing the social impact including, dare I say it, issues of violence and things like assault and homicide when patients with psychosis are treated.

The Sydney case mirrors the 2003 murder of Ellie Perkins at the hands of her son Jeremy, who suffered from schizophrenia: a psychiatric condition the Church of Scientology asserts does not exist. Jeremy's condition was untreated because his parents--both Scientologists--believed that psychiatrists are evil and psychiatric medicine is poison. According to a website devoted to the case, the church promptly attempted to cover up its connections to the murder.

And yet again we have a clear demonstration of the dangers of magical thinking--of what can go wrong when one checks one's brains at the door of the "Free Personality Test" booth and embraces religious dogma at the expense of reason and evidence.

What is even more disconcerting is the fact that Scientology appears to be giving the Christian Right a run for its money regarding its theocratic ambitions. A 2005 Salon article documents the church's attempts to get anti-psychiatry legislation passed in various US states, and its anti-medication dogma taught in US public schools (see also this San Francisco Chronicle article). According to Salon,

you don't have to rely on critics to show that Scientology's attack on psychiatry is part of the church's crusade to rule society. In 1995, David Miscavige, the church's current leader, addressed the International Association of Scientologists in Copenhagen. He told the faithful that the church had two goals as the new millennium approached, dutifully noted by International Scientology News: "Objective one - place Scientology at the absolute center of society. Objective two - eliminate psychiatry in all its forms."

Wedge Strategy, anyone?

Meanwhile, a California man languishes in a solitary jail cell. His crime? Protesting Scientology. (More on Keith Henson here.)

South Park on what Scientologists believe:

See also: Pharyngula
, Operation Clambake, Lisa McPherson Memorial Page