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We can be good without consulting the godhead of your choice. Qualia Soup makes an engaging look at morality and religion.
Welcome to the 21st century. A time where demonic possessions, cursed spirits, and other such notions of the supernatural manifestations have been gratefully laughed into the tabloids where no sane person, and certainly no judiciary body, would give them anything other than scorn and ridicule. Oh wait….it seems some courts haven’t learned much since the Dark Ages. Fuck… Today’s disservice comes from an article from yesterday’s Journal.
Two decades ago, in a Jewish court in Jerusalem, a secular lawyer was sentenced for insulting the court. I’m not sure, but I think the penalty for contempt of court around these parts is a fine, maybe a short jail term. I welcome any clarification on this point, as law is no speciality of mine. Whatever it is, it’s nothing like what the courts hand out in the “holy land”. The offending lawyer was cursed by the courts, that his soul would be reincarnated into the body of an impure dog.
That’s right. They cursed him.
If that was all there was to this story, we could just laugh at the silly religious nutbags who think they can curse/condemn/bless people because of their elite status with whatever deity, but alas no. As it has happened countless times before, the ludicrous notions of believers resulted in events much too horrible to be laughed off. Fast forward two decades and the court is interrupted by a dog who will not leave.
Well, says one of the judges, this must be that lawyer we cursed all those years ago. Seems he still hasn’t learned his lesson. Therefore, the good, just, and sane thing to do is sentence this dog to death. But a quick death is too good for him, thus we order the method of execution to be stoning! Praise be to our invisible sky-daddy!
A court, a judicial body, societal elites who are law experts, cursed one man and sentenced a dog to die by stoning. I am rebounding between incredulity at how ludicrous this is and disgust at how appalling this is. Mistreatment of animals is a grievous evil and being stoned to death is a horrifying fate, undeserved by even histories worst criminals. But it gets worse. The court decided that the stoning was to be carried out by local children. Children! I can only imagine what the psychological ramifications of having to not only witness, but take part in such a brutal and savage atrocity would do to an impressionable youth. I can’t even imagine what it would do to me. In one fell swoop, this court orders a barbaric act of animal cruelty and an unforgivable act of child abuse. Why? Because of their faith in the supernatural, and the arrogance that people can affect said supernatural through curses and blessings.
Fortunately, this double dose of monstrous infamy was ultimately thwarted. Not by reason, of course. The religious are impervious to logic when it comes to their faith. No, the dog somehow managed to escape on its own. I would like to think that someone there, anyone, saw the horror of the intended sentence and made it so the dog could get away. I would like to think that a seed of doubt took just enough root to drive someone into action against the ‘holy court’, even if only to anonymously save a dog. A wild hope, I know, but at present, wild hopes are all I that I can muster for the religiously controlled areas of the world.
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.
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.
Finding contemptible religious people saying horrible things on youtube is not a difficult task. This particular individual is all over his Sky-daddy allah and how women need to be beaten so they can quickly learn their place and proper behaviour within Islamic religious society.
We can dispense with any notion of Islam (christianity, judiasm etc.) being the religion of peace and harmony. Oh certainly this man may be a crank and not represent the “true faith” but does this lessen the horror of what he is saying? We have our share of absolute cranks here in North American, but we are protected from their delusional insanity because of the secular tenets of our society.
In countries that do not share the same dedication(?) to rationality the damage these people can do is significantly multiplied.
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