More Dawkins

Dawkins responding to the clip of Ted Haggard cautioning him to avoid arrogance..."There actually is something that's worth being withering about"

Fatwa Pronounced Against Fashion Magazine Staff

“The managers of this magazine deserve to die”, Maulana Abdul Aziz said at Friday prayers on 15 June at the radical Lal Masjid or Red Mosque after the magazine carried a series of photos in its June edition captioned “Adam and Eve, the bone of contention”.

Heh! Heh!

Bone.

a malignant tumour

A lot of the time my reaction to faith groups sticking their oar into issues just results in a tired sigh, a roll of the eyes and something muttered under my breath.

But this one really makes me genuinely proper angry. Hackles up, I can feel those adrenal glands working away they're prehistoric magic... preparing me to run like stink or kick off a fight.

As I'm sure all you well-read people know, a vaccination has been developed that has a 100% efficacy combating human papilloma virus (HPV), responsible for most cervical cancer cases. Cervical cancer kills 274,000 women annually - including 1,120 in the UK.

Fantastic news!

HPV is sexually transmitted. So for a vaccination programme to work well (with it's amazing 100% efficacy) we'll need to innoculate girls before they become sexually active. So far so obvious eh? I mean it's a simple principle isn't it.

Apparently not...

Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice (UK), said today:

'The best way of not getting cervical cancer and genital warts is to stay a virgin and marry a virgin. Why don't these officials want young people to do that? Why don't we raise their expectations and ours and treat them with some respect?'

'I expect school health outreach workers from Primary Care Trusts and the like will be giving Gardasil to young girls behind their parents' backs. Since the vaccine works best before the onset of sexual activity, they will be treating these girls, to put it bluntly, like tarts, saying they are sexually incontinent, lacking in self-respect and the basic morality required to keep their virginity.

'The message is one of despair, disrespect and low expectations. Anyone giving this drug to a girl is telling her: "I think you are a slag".

Holy fucking shit! I don't have the text formatting available to communicate how angry I am. Never mind the willful ignorant dismissal of how vaccination works. The grotesque ignorance, guilt and fear over sexual function. He'd rather condemn countless future women to cervical cancer than entertain the idea that girls eventually become women.

Naturally there are groups like the Family Research Council spouting the same drivel in the States. Well if you are determined to live in the Dark Ages. Fuck off and live there you twunts. You can give back your internet and your reading glasses whilst you're at it and the internal combustion engine too. Gaahhh!

Are we not men?

Not terribly shocked, but still...

According to a new Gallup poll, the majority of U.S. Republicans doubt the theory of evolution. I wish this were a slam dunk, but only 60% of Dems and Independents affirm an understanding and agreement of the scientific theory of evolution. Note, I will not use the term "believe in evolution". I think using the word "belief" is a semantic trap, which gives the creationists more footing. "You believe, so you have faith. I do, to. I just believe in different things."

The idea of equating scientific proof and faith is loathsome to me. One expects - demands - proof. The other demands unquestioning acceptance.

Grand Canyon? Noah's flood

Click here for an extensive flickr slideshow, outlining a trip to the creation museum. Your intrepid explorers manage to photograph a fair bit of the accompanying text, so it gives a fascinating glimpse into the museum policy.

There are too many examples of straight-out of idiocy to start listing them here, I suggest you take a couple of deep calming breaths and take a look for yourself.

When the people behind this project started out on their 'the Bible is literal truth' jaunt they can't have imagined the kind of insane convoluted positions they'd need to take to make their ideas hang together... carnivores didn't exist before Adam's sin apparently.

This 'museum' is an insult. Not to rational atheists - I think we kinda had their number from the start. This 'museum' is an insult to decent god-fearing people who have allowed their faith to be hijacked by morons, pimps and hustlers. christians who allow it to proselytize in this manner and turn a blind eye should be ashamed of themselves.

I want to hear the people who profess to be rational normal christian folk lobbying their pastors, priests, senators and MP's to say "this isn't us. This is downright wrong, and we're not gonna stand for it" so far, the silence has been deafening.

Blasphemy!

This is wrong for so many reasons.

Fear and loathing

Synchronicity is a curious thing. WBB and I were reflecting on Dawkins being nicknamed 'Darwin's Rottweiler' when the only clips we've seen show him once more patiently setting out his case often to aggressive opposition. And now I discover reading Hunter S. Thompson's collected correspondence that the good Doctor had a Doberman called Darwin. Coincidence? I think not.

As big a fan of Thompson as I am, I was never completely clear where he stood on matters theological. The following pointed letter in reply to a fan of his book on Hell's Angels asking about christianity amongst bikers is typically brutal yet enigmatic.

April 21 1968
Woody Creek, Co

Dear Mr. Schultz...

...in response to your query about the Hell's Angels and Christianity - which I note you spelled with a capital "C". In that context, I'd have to say that the Hell's Angels have no attitude at all toward Christianity; this is one of the few redeeming facets of their collective personality. Through no fault of their own, they have been spared the millstone of one of history's greatest lies.
...the answer to your second question should be self-evident by now: the notion that capital C christianity might reach anybody who's in touch with the reality of this world strikes me as a hopeless joke. Those bastards have done enough damage with their hypocrital, dues-paying, soul-rotting cage of a mean religion. If any one of those swine had a decent impulse in him, he'd get the hell out of the way and make room for some christians.
I trust this answers your question.

Sincerely
Hunter S, Thompson

Deviled Eggs and Ham

Peter Mlakar is chief theologian and philosopher of NSK State, a Situationist enclave in Slovenia that has no borders but issues passports. A well-known Slovenian Catholic philosopher apparently once remarked that his work "cannot be opposed with counter-argument, but only with prayer and fasting."

Judge for yourselves; here are excerpts from his seminal WAT speech on CUM:

"Dear friends, highly respected guests, believers and non-believers, brothers and sisters,

Before the male part greases its moustache and the women soak their red lips into the glass of spirit, I would like to greet heartly all present here. But I would also like to tell you some other things, so that we in that way still pour oil on our general wild dancing. [...]

Time [is] a cruel history of human suffering, but history is an omelette which the alive egg is broken for. The both are the complete indifference, but do they therefore serve to Satan? Here we would at first conclude that the evil can be an abolishment for the higher aim. An omelette or a smoked ham, when a swine was slaughtered, it's not bad. But we make the devil lose his nerves, when we think ourselves as a property, as an element of his total Contradiction, as Non-world. For a real good is more than a world. [...]

Dear friends, the eternity is definitely the first and the ultimate and we are of it. I see our life as a purpose of the Abolute, where there is no danger. Beer is running and running through our throats, we will pinch the girls for asses forever, maybe they will pull our nails the equal length of time but at God neither fuck nor woe are by our shoe size."

Mayberry Bible Study Series

"...United Methodist Church...bible study series...Andy Griffith show...relate to God's word..."



"The episode Opie the Birdman shows us the importance of taking responsibility for our actions, and how just saying "I’m sorry" doesn’t automatically fix everything."




Wait. I thought the main idea of Christianity...oh, never mind..

Life of Pi

During my final teaching internship I got to read Life of Pi three times. I have never enjoyed a book or been so thoroughly rewarded for my immediate rereading as I was with this book.

So why would all of you in our little space find this book interesting? It has the most compelling argument for freedom of (and from) religion I have ever read.

The story is about a boy named Piscine Patel, a teenager from India who survives in the Pacific Ocean for 227 days in a life boat with a Bengal tiger. Pi's life is also interesting because he is a practicing Hindu, Muslim and Christian who claims he is so because he "simply wants to love God". While the book provides a great insight into the effect religion can have on a person, it is ultimately about choice and the need of many people to believe there is a power greater than us.

Pi not only chooses to believe in three religions but he also provides his reader with the option of two different accounts of his time on the boat and while he does not demand that you believe any particular version, he is explicit that your choice will not affect his beliefs.

If you are looking for a good read this summer (I will warn you it is a little slow) then pick it up, or let me know and I will lend you my copy.

Oh! The douchebaggery!

Honestly, I can't even respond. Just read it.

Pimp Your Pope

The cover of this week's edition of Der Spiegel reads "It's All God's Fault!" — The Crusade of the New Atheists. It's a very unfavorable take on Dawkins, Hitchens, and other proponents of "New Atheism". In a nutshell: New Atheists are the New Fundamentalists, intolerant Enlightenment warriors who are going to drive moderate Muslims into the "Islamist" camp and erode the moral foundation of the Occident.

Germany is a pretty secular country; one third of Germans are not formally affiliated with any religion. But now that one of them is Pope, they're in no hurry to flush their newly found political capital down the toilet. What really seems to bug Der Spiegel about the New Atheists is, of all things, their irrationality. That's right: they find the New Atheism insufficiently scientific, a charge they neglect to level at the Vatican (and other) theologians they quote at length. So while it at first seems like Der Spiegel is trying to take the religion "debate" back two-hundred years, when the Jacobins were stringing up priests by their own entrails, they're actually taking it back to the Middle Ages, back in the good old days when God and Reason were One.

It is, in short, one god-awful excuse for journalism.