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When the religious compare their dogma of choice to science it is almost always a grand misrepresentation of what science actually is. One can break it down for them categorically for instance:
religion – requires a belief in magic and the supernatural
science – requires a dedication to finding the evidence and testable facts about our existence.
As a person who is solidly in the second camp let me assure you, I have no need to “believe” in science. One cannot believe in science as one does religion, it is a false equivocation from the outset. My belief in gravity has no effect on whether gravity applies to me or not, and as hard as I might pray to the gravity gods, I will still be attracted toward the center of the Earth(this works for religious prayer to as well in terms of efficacy).
But what would happen if science was actually a religion. Dr.Dawkins investigates this premise in this video
The world wide atheist community has stood up for Damon Fowler. Providing over 20, 000 dollars toward his post-secondary education. What heinous crime has Mr.Fowler committed that resulted in threats to his person, public defamation by his teachers and being kicked out of the family house? Expressing his rights, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, to have his school free of the perversity know as the christian religion. Greta Christina writes about the entire sordid incident, I recommend you read the entire article. I post an excerpt here to illustrate how deeply ingrained the religious rot is in the United States.
“Damon Fowler, an atheist student at Bastrop High School in Louisiana, was about to graduate. His public school was planning to have a prayer as part of the graduation ceremony: as they traditionally did, as so many public schools around the country do every year. But Fowler — knowing that government-sponsored prayer in the public schools is unconstitutional and legally forbidden — contacted the school superintendent to let him know that he opposed the prayer, and would be contacting the ACLU if it happened. The school — at first, anyway — agreed, and canceled the prayer.
Then Fowler’s name, and his role in this incident, was leaked. As a direct result:
1) Fowler has been hounded, pilloried, and ostracized by his community.
2) One of Fowler’s teachers has publicly demeaned him.
3) Fowler has been physically threatened. Students have threatened to “jump him” at graduation practice, and he has received multiple threats of bodily harm, and even death threats.
4) Fowler’s parents have cut off his financial support, kicked him out of the house, and thrown his belongings onto the front porch.
Oh, and by the way? They went ahead and had the graduation prayer anyway.”
Good Times to be had down south. I’ve just wondered though, why isn’t the Tea Party all over this? I mean, this is the US CONSTITUTION that is being violated here, where is the uproar?
**Update: Check out Darkmatter’s video on the subject as well.
Snipped from a Pharyngula Thread –cowalker says:
“It has long been one of my patented rants that all the poor menz who are out there weeping over aborted embryos and picketing women’s clinics should instead be policing their brother’s dicks. All this time they’ve been whining about the perfidy of women, the solution has been within their power.
Why don’t they start a movement to get all men everywhere to stop having sex with women who won’t carry any resulting babies to term? It wouldn’t be difficult. All a guy has to do is spend months and months getting to know a woman’s character and ethical beliefs, her family and friends, her plans for the future and her reactions under stress. Then he can be sure how she will react if he goes ahead and has sex with her. If she wouldn’t have the baby, he can end the relationship.
Or he can just get a vasectomy.
Abortion problem solved.
Any men who behave otherwise should be shunned by other men instead of lauded as “players.” Shoot, they’ve already got a role model in Edward, in the “Twilight” series.”
Ah yes, as the shoe is now on the other foot, will the pro-life hordes pour their energies to contain the men? It might encroach a bit on the Patriarchy, but I’m sure that Pro-life Men for the Sake of the CHILDREN would make this sacrifice….
Its so frakking funny it hurts.
Religion is one of the factors that constantly works against civilization and the values of the Enlightenment. Belief in magic and the supernatural, a wish to return to the Dark Ages is remarkable exercise in puerile wish-fulfillment. Strong argumentation, relentless morality and ridicule are the only answers to the plague of religion. The purulent immorality of religion, the suppurating chest wound of humanity, must be expunged.
Christopher Hitchens stands against religion, and in this video shows what must be done, and redone to combat the forces of the anti-rational.
Ahh, a small break in the studies allows me to do some sweet sweet blogging.
The Canadian Supreme Court as just managed to find its ass with, get this, not just one, but BOTH of it hands. The wisdom and judicial prudence has been flowing as of late, but let us scry into the dense legal jargon and decipher this weighty codex:
“A woman cannot give advance consent to sexual activity while unconscious, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday.”
How they get the creamy filling into the chocolate bars is next on this braintrust’s todo list. One problem at a time though…
“If the complainant is unconscious during the sexual activity, she has no real way of knowing what happened and whether her partner exceeded the bounds of her consent,” the ruling said.
The definition of consent is an ongoing state of mind where individuals can ask their partner to stop, McLachlin wrote.
“Any sexual activity with an individual who is incapable of consciously evaluating whether she is consenting is therefore not consensual within the meaning of the Criminal Code,” she wrote.
Why we need such clarity is because in 2007 a couple engaged in mutual erotic asphyxiation and of course, the dude while his partner was out did stuff to her that was above and beyond the terms of their agreement. Okay, that was speculation on my part, this is what the article says:
“The case goes back to a particular episode in 2007 when the woman, who cannot be named because of a publication ban, complained to police about what her partner did to her after she passed out. At trial, the man was found guilty of sexual assault but his conviction was overturned on appeal.”
Ah, says the rights crowd, she had it coming then as she had already agreed to take part in sexual activity. Yes, she did to the initial act, but she did not give consent for x, y, and z that came after when she was unconscious and correctly this dudes appeal was overturn and he went to prison.
“The Ottawa man served 18 months in jail after his conviction in 2008 on the sexual assault charge.”
And justly so, because there was a point, before committing x,y,z on her body, he had the choice. There was a threshold, a line of ambivalence that needed to be consciously crossed before he continued with the sexual assault and he did so. Consent is everything in an intimate relationship, especially one that pushes boundaries with racy sexual activities, and the dude in question made a conscious decision to go beyond the reasonable expectations of their relationship.
Three Justices dissented from this ruling –
“In the dissenting opinion written by Justice Morris Fish, the judges said Friday’s ruling would deprive women “of their freedom to engage by choice in sexual adventures that involve no proven harm to them or to others.”
They also expressed concern about the criminalization of normal sexual relations between spouses.
“The approach advocated by the Chief Justice would also result in the criminalization of a broad range of conduct that Parliament cannot have intended to capture in its definition of the offense of sexual assault. Notably, it would criminalize kissing or caressing a sleeping partner, however gently and affectionately.”
I’m guessing that the x,y,z that our friendly dude perpetrated against our victim was a little more that caressing or kissing. The dissent relies on a less than reasonable interpretation of the law.
“Elizabeth Sheehy, a lawyer for the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, which intervened in this case, dismissed the dissenting opinion. She called the majority ruling a major victory for women.
“The most important message that the court is communicating is that unconscious women are not sexually available,” she said.”
Hurrah for that.
I follow the news at the Guttmacher Institute. I have reprinted many of their articles here at DWR because of they are factual, easy to comprehend and generally reflect my views about the reproductive rights of women and their bodies. They recently produced a video about abortion in the US, take careful note about what they identify as the root cause of many of the problems women in the US face today, they identify,correctly, inequality as the culprit. Address that and so many of societies problems are lessened or even solved. The first step, of course, is making taxation progressive so we all contribute our fair share toward the overall benefit of society.
I cringe a little on the inside when I put up abortion posts because it is a dog whistle for all sorts for the anti-choice cranks who seem to regard the female as a secondary player in the reproductive process. C’est la vie. :)
The Sunday Disservice today looks at what it might be like to be a believer, to see world through the beer goggles of religion and maybe get a glance at how the world looks from the point of view of the deluded. Stay with our sheepy protagonist as she encounters the world through the eyes of a believer and the patterns of attribution necessary to keep the whole illusion consistent.
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