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Can you even fathom the stupid coming out of Ireland these days? The pious seem to have hijacked rationality, sprinkled it with magic jebus dust and cranked out this perfidious little gem of proposed legislation.
What is outrageous is the lengths so called rational legislators go to ‘make happy’ with the delusional segments of their constituencies.
There is a prevailing view within the “progressive” community that religious tolerance (RT) is a virtue necessary for a just, egalitarian society. This is preposterous. Not only does RT have horrific implications, it is an “ideal” that I seriously doubt is actually held by its proponents. To begin with, lets take a look at what its advocates would like you to think RT means. RT means people are allowed to have whatever faith they want without fear of prosecution, persecution, or any other undesirable ‘ution’ and thus, RT would result in less hate crimes, violence, and a whole bunch of other nasty stuff we would rather be without.
The very first thing I’d like to point out is that all that nasty stuff that RT proponents say they’re trying to reduce can be dealt with much more efficiently. Instead of saying, “You’re not allowed to lynch someone or burn down their house just because they hold to a faith that differs from yours,” it would be much better to simply say, “You’re not allowed to lynch someone or burn down their house at all, for any reason”. The former of these maxims can be interpreted to mean that there are some circumstances which would allow one to lynch another, its just that differences in faith isn’t one of them. The second, however, makes things pretty clear. So this first short bit is just to show that basic protection laws make the common perception of RT irrelevant; if not a markedly inferior approach and a step in the wrong direction. That is just examining the possible benefits of RT. Let us analyze the completely ignored and adverse ramifications of RT.
RT would be a restriction on society, but not on individuals. This is very different from other egalitarian movements and why RT is dangerous. For example, tolerance of alternative sexual orientations is a two way street. Simply speaking, straight people are OK with gay people and gay people are OK with straight people. If it was only a one way street, then the ideal of the freedom to be with the consenting adult of your choice, regardless of their physiology, would be undermined.
RT, however, can only be one way. The community must accommodate the beliefs of the individual, but not the other way around. If one is allowed to adhere to any faith one wants to (as RT says one is) then if someones faith does not include RT, then that feature must be allowed and respected as well. Because RT is presented as a freedom of beliefs/values, and RT is itself a belief/value, proponents of RT cannot enforce RT on anyone without going back on the basic principles of RT.
So lets look at three people, each with very different faiths…
The things people do to avoid the secular school system.
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If there is a standard I aspire to, it would be to the level of Pharyngula. A quote from one of his posts on Ken Ham and Creationists…
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/06/a_little_sympathy_for_the_snoo.php
“I sympathize with all their secular neighbors most of all. What will happen? They will live in a country where their schools are third-rate, because the creationists will suppress education not just for their own kids, but for everyone else’s, too. They will see their school boards populated with the products of such fare as the Creation “Museum”, and they will get to vote in elections where their options are Insane-Fundie-Wackjob vs. Slightly-Less-Crazy-God-Botherer. And the lesser-of-two-evils won’t always win, because their neighbors all think the fundier, the better.
I sympathize because they are all missing the awesomeness of reality for the awfulness of some narrow Bronze Age theocratic bullshit.
But there are also some for whom I have no sympathy at all.
I have zero sympathy for intelligent people who stand before a grandiose monument to lies, an institution that is anti-scientific, anti-rational, and ultimately anti-human, in a place where children are being actively miseducated, an edifice dedicated to an abiding intellectual evil, and choose to complain about how those ghastly atheists are ruining everything.
Those people can just fuck off.”
Thank you PZ. :)
This post has to do with god and how the concept is framed by the concept of evil. Epicurus stated the problem elegantly with this argument.
- If a perfectly good god exists, then there is no evil in the world.
- There is evil in the world.
- Therefore, a perfectly good god does not exist.
Another conclusion that can be drawn from this is that god is either impotent or uncaring as this video from FFreethinker so brilliantly points out – its called God’s Divine Plan.
I wanted to mention the case of Joseph and Elisabeth Fritzl. This is the case in the media of the Austrian Father who held his daughter as a prisoner/sex slave for 24 years until she finally escaped.
Many religions claim there is a god watching over us, listening to us, and answering our prayers. My question is this, where the frack
was god for Elisabeth Fritzl? What greater good could come of someone being incestuously assaulted for 24 years? The god people worship stood back, with arms crossed, for almost a quarter century and did absolutely NOTHING.
Why would you hold such a being as holy? How perfectly monstrous. We can talk of his inaction when it comes to rape, genocide, murder etc. Why would a being that supposedly cares for us allow evil of this sort to exist.
The answer is that he is fictitious, a man made construct, built to keep the gullible in line. Endorse this delusion at your own peril.
One cannot teach biology without teaching evolution. It would be like trying to teach physical education, with no running allowed. Our enlightened government though is going to put that assertion to the test. This bill was put forward with the publically stated intention of enshrining the protection same sex couples. In reality, Bill 44 gives parents the option to remove their children from any course material that contains sexual or religious content. Furthermore, teachers must notify parents in writing when such a contentious issue will be discussed in class. (Thankfully the amended bill allows for unplanned anecdotal mentions of religion and sexuality).
What is wrong with Bill 44 is the unconscious reinforcement of the heterogendered ideal.
Homosexuality is just as normal as heterosexual behaviour in nature. It just seems that the alleged creator (see also the magic sky fairy) of the entire UNIVERSE has real problems with whom and how we have intimate relationships with. It says so in the same book that slavery is great and contends unabashedly that pi is 3. (Three cheers for biblical accuracy and morality!) If you wish to arm your children with 2000 year old “wisdom” please, be my guest (feel free to not believe in germ theory as well). Just do not expect your delusions to be catered to in the public secular school system. There are many religious schooling options available to addle your children with mystical buffoonery.
There is not a ‘happy medium’ when in comes to the evolution/creation debate. We must not equivocate when it comes to rational thought versus religious codswallop. If we are to teach fact, then we must teach evolution. If we want to teach myth then we can look to religion. The two topics have nothing to do with each other and vary on the key point that one is based on testable, proven fact; the other on the stories that semi-literate shepherds cooked up in the hot sun of the Middle East 2000 years ago.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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