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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.
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.
First, to any and all Christians who claim to believe the world is ending tomorrow, I don’t believe you for a second. I invite you to prove me wrong. Spend the rest of today donating every single penny and asset you have accumulated over you life to charity. Give up your house, your life savings, everything you own (maybe pack yourself a lunch) to the underprivileged. You won’t need it anyway, and the charity will look good on your resume when pining for positions in heaven. What’s the matter? Not enough faith? I thought not.
But before the second coming of christ (giggety giggety) we have another very important event: today is Draw Mohammad Day! Here is my 2011 contribution, a fine display of microsoft paint skills, if I do say so myself.
If you have no idea what this post is all about, here is a great vid from one of my youTube favs, Thunderf00t, explaining everything.
Just a small update today, and in light of our world ending I figure I would say a few things… first a pox on Statistics Canada for sending me a nasty census reminder to participate and secondly, promptly arranging to have the online census form bork out and be unavailable when I finally clear time to actually do the damn thing.
However, if the world is ending on the 21st, then I have it made in the shade!
“According to evangelical Christian leader Harold Camping, the world will come to an end this Saturday.
Camping, the 89-year-old leader of Family Radio Worldwide, predicts that the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur on May 21. Camping claims that those who have accepted Christ as their savior will rise into the air and join him in the sky before proceeding on to heaven, an event known in evangelical circles as “the rapture.”
Once the rapture occurs, those left behind will experience the wrath of God until the world is completely destroyed by fire on Oct. 21, 2011.”
Sounds like a bad deal except for the whole rapture part because then we will have less religious inanity to deal with for awhile.
“What is the inspiration for such unquestioning faith? Camping claims his prediction was derived from a mathematical analysis of the Bible. His doomsday calculus is the square of the product of 5 (which represents “atonement”), 10 (which represents “completeness”) and 17 (which represents “heaven”). That number — 722,500 — is equal to the number of days between Christ’s crucifixion and his return to judge the earth. According to Camping, Jesus is scheduled to arrive on May 21, 2011, 6 p.m. local time.
I guess it should have been obvious.
However, this isn’t the first time Camping has made such a prediction. Two decades ago, his mathematical gymnastics resulted in the prediction that the world would end in September 1994. When the world did not cease to be, Camping blamed it on a miscalculation, but the experience wasn’t a complete failure: the publicity he generated led to increased donations and book sales.”
Damn, he’s only been wrong once, and of course it was a ‘miscalculation’. Some days I think it would nice just to start my own cult and prey on the stupid to make money and live like a sultan for the rest of my days. (Yes I am watching the sock-gnome cult thread developing and taking careful notes, stay tuned).
Sorry for the late post folks, there was some serious singing to do today, at a church…never fear we went into the belly of beast and returned triumphant at the cost of the Sunday Disservice being late. Oh the things we do for our art. :) Enjoy.
Farming out the business of the Sunday Disservice can be trying at times as so much good material exists and is being freshly created here in the interwebs. This small snippit is from a commenter on Pharyngula and describes quite nicely the flaming hoops you have to jump through just to keep everyone’s favorite Zombie story consistent and clear.
1. There is no credible evidence that anyone named “Jesus” ever existed. The myths retold in the book called the “bible” were written decades to a century after the purported events by people who were not there (seriously, just look at Luke 1:1 for confirmation — he claims right there that he’s an historian, not an eyewitness). In addition, no contemporary historian seems to have noticed anything having to do with such a person. So, the evidence suggests that Jesus is nothing more than a mythological creature to start. (Hint: Josephus, Origen, and all the rest you’re going to quote were born quite a number of years after the alleged events.)
2. Any belief in the divinity of Jesus begins and ends with miracles. Without miracles, Jesus is just another nutjob who got whacked for mouthing off to the authorities. Only by virtue of miracles can the divinity of Jesus be claimed. Now, I’m not going to say that miracles are impossible — after all, they wouldn’t be miracles if they weren’t impossible.
Instead, I’m saying that the so-called miracles of the NT are stupid. The amount of power inherent in such acts is enormous — and yet, the god of everything who knows everything could not see fit to leave the slightest shred of proof behind that these “miracles” actually happened. What we do get is “the dog ate my homework” miracles.
* Where’s the wine? We drank it.
* Loaves and fishes? Eaten.
* The healed sick? Dead.
* Lazarus? Dead again. (Really? If I were a god and I raised someone from the dead, they would good and well stay un-dead.)
* The risen Jesus? Invisible in heaven.
Seriously, these are the stories that you MUST believe in order to credibly believe in the divinity of Jesus. And my 6-year-old could make up more-believable stories.
You don’t have a problem of faith – you have a problem of credibility.
The radical form of Islam being preached in Afghanistan (and other places) is a symptom of the upheaval and chaos that is endemic of the region. With no security, no law and no justice, it is who has the biggest gun makes the rules. Currently the radical followers of islam occupy that role and the repression of women is the cornerstone of their particularly warped take on the religion of “peace”.
We recently received a comment on a similar post about the insane ass-backwardness of Islam, and religion in general, decrying the lack of respect and tolerance for religion and religious practices.
“While I have little respect for religion I have too much respect for the people that do practice it to support a Draw Mohammad Day, or for that matter a Piss on a Crucifix Day. It just seems like another opportunity for otherwise sane progressive people to join with the far right in attacking Muslims.”
This seems to be a fairly mainstream progressive opinion. Fairly wrong as well, but wrongness aside, the comment lends insight to one of obstacles progressive thinking needs to overcome when arguing the issues. Our opponents, usually people who sponsor socially regressive policies (pro-death penalty, anti-abortion, anti-socialism etc), decry progressive positions (for a myriad of BS reasons but I’m making a point here about cultural relativity and ‘tolerance’) because of the lack of an absolute moral position. Because progressives usually are not as xenophobic, racist or intolerant as regressive voices the progressive position is framed as being a moral willy-nilly free for all that permits all behaviour because it is believed that morality and the behaviour that stems from said behaviour is based on the society and culture being viewed.
Cultural Relativism (CR). CR is great in small doses, but should not be used as a basis for moral judgments because human societies are capable of cruel despicable laws/customs that by deontological standards, are atrocious. Allow me to cut off the boilerplate religious response to my admission that CR is heavily flawed when it comes to making moral judgments by saying that a supreme being in any form is not necessary for the formation of a moral system. We can make moral judgments without divine guidance or literacy in irrelevant ancient texts by using our reason and intuitions alone (see Utilitarianism and Deontological Moral systems).
In the video included in this post women, housed in their burka cloth prisons, are risking their lives for the simple act of attempting to become literate. They face persecution and death simply because they wish to free themselves from the torpid ignorance which is religiosity. So can one simply say that the cultural practice of cloistering and oppressing half the population merely because they have the double XX chromosome is a good one because we must only judge societies by their own intrinsic standards?
The argument is a gross simplification of what CR is, but some progressives seem to endorse the idea that tolerance means we have to condone the reprehensible actions of others because it is “OK” in their society. Basing your morality on any one system is a recipe for moral failure as all systems have inherent flaws that can amplify human suffering if taken as gospel.
The problem with morality is that, by nature, it is inherently complex and comes with many layers of conflicting values and ideas that must be judiciously weighed before coming to an (often unsatisfactory) answer. Regressives have little time for complexity and depth of thought and often adumbrate easy moral solutions based on unrealistic binary models.
So, to address the issue raised in the video clip, yes it is morally and functionally wrong to prevent women from becoming literate and educated. One must look at the problem not only through the prism of the CR analysis but also Utilitarian and Deontological moral systems. If all societies were to adopt the fundamental tenets of Islam would people be better off? Does the system promote great amount of utility for individuals and society? When cast in the light of a multifaceted moral analysis a moral stance can be taken that is nuanced and guided by rational thought (rather than musty rules from a magic a book). The system (delusional religious belief) that encourages such egregious misogynistic cultural practices must therefore be criticized for promoting such a view of women.
It is nice when you can find some who speaks so clearly on a topic. I recommend you read the entire article by Greta Christina, but these are her concluding words. Her post is a response to William Lane Craig an educated religious apologist who in his writing and debates defends the christian religion against rationality and reality.
“It’s funny. One of the most common pieces of bigotry aimed at atheism is that it doesn’t provide any basis for morality. It’s widely assumed that without religion — without moral teachings from religious traditions, and without fear of eternal punishment and desire for eternal reward — people would behave entirely selfishly, with no concern for others. And atheists are commonly accused of moral relativism: of thinking that there are no fundamental moral principles, and that all morality can be adapted to suit the needs of the moment.
But it isn’t atheists who are saying, “Well, sure, genocide seems wrong… but under some circumstances, it actually makes a certain amount of sense.” It isn’t atheists who are saying, “Well, sure, infanticide seems wrong… but looked at in a certain light, it really isn’t all that bad.” It isn’t atheists who are prioritizing an attachment to an ancient ideology over the clearest moral principles one can imagine: the principle that entire races ought not to be systematically exterminated, and the principle that children ought not to be slaughtered.
Human beings have intrinsic compassion. We have a sense of justice. We have feelings of revulsion and rage when we see others harmed. We have a desire to help create a livable world. We have a willingness to make personal sacrifices — sometimes great sacrifices — to help others in need. And contrary to what Craig and many other Christians think, these moral emotions don’t derive from the Bible, and don’t require belief in God. They’re taught by virtually every religion and every society, and atheists feel them every bit as much as believers. Humans are a social species, and these emotions and principles evolved because they help members of a social species survive and reproduce. (Other social species seem to have some or all of these moral emotions as well.)
But our compassion and justice, our altruism and moral revulsion, can be twisted. They can be stunted. They can be denied, ignored, shoved to the back burner, rationalized away. They can be contorted to the point where we’re saying that black is white, war is peace, and the most blatant evil is actually goodness if you squint your eyes just right. They can be contorted to the point where we’re saying that genocide is okay because everyone gets what they deserve in the afterlife, and that infanticide is morally necessary to teach a lesson about the evils of murdering children.
And religion is Exhibit A in how this can happen.”
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