This bill is going nowhere, so it's not something anyone needs to be particularly excited or upset about. I did scowl slightly at one quote from it, though.

"This doesn't have anything to do with Christianity," [Rep. Brown] said in an interview with POLITICO. Rather, he says, it seeks to recognize that the Bible played an integral role in the building of the United States, including providing the basis for our freedom of religion that allows Muslims, Hindus and even atheists to vocalize their own beliefs.

I've always had a sneaking suspicion that the people who ascribe claims of benevolence and unconditional love and traditional humanist values to the Bible are people who have not actually read it ("read" here meaning the entire Bible, and not just individual passages relating to a sermon). Because in reality, the Bible is not a very nice book. It openly condones slavery, the status of women as property and the concept of punishing innocent people for transgressions committed by their ancestors, just to touch the most egregious concepts our society has rejected, and most certainly does *not* provide the basis for freedom of religion. In fact, it's filled with passages where, if God himself isn't doing the slaughtering of nonbelievers, he's setting out detailed instructions on which nonbelievers to punish or kill. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" is just the tip of the iceberg. For a more concrete sample, look up Deuteronomy 13:5-10, which provides explicit instructions on your obligation to stone to death your own family members (including your children) for any attempt to convince you to switch religions. Contrary to common claims, there is no framework for personal rights or democracy or civil liberty or freedom of anything (speech, religion, assembly, etc.) in the Bible. We have the Ancient Greeks and the Enlightenment philosophers to thank for those concepts.

Labels: politics, religion and atheism

Granted I don't spend a lot of time perusing the salvos from the various sides of the religious culture wars, but regardless I've never seen a book receive almost entirely "best possible" or "worst possible" ratings from readers. It's not particularly surprising, given the almost total polarization among those who would want to read a book like this, but it's still amusing.



Also amusing is this book apparently uses the "banana is proof of God" argument I've seen pop up recently in various media. The general argument as put forth in its original source is that the banana has a number of characteristics that show it was designed for human consumption (it fits the human hand perfectly, it has a tab for easy opening, it's naturally color-coded to indicate when it can be consumed, it's nutritious, etc.). The easy retort to this is that the bananas we know are the result of a few thousand years of human-directed selective breeding (not unlike how our species took the timber wolf and selectively bred it into the poodle) and uncultivated bananas show no more "human-specific design" than any other edible seed pod. (It also begs the question of how the pineapple and the coconut fit in, given how difficult those fruits are to eat without tools of some sort.)

Labels: amusement, religion and atheism

Pope Benedict XVI has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids, as he makes his first visit to Africa as pontiff.

Speaking en route to Cameroon, he said distribution of condoms "increases the problem". The Vatican urges abstinence.

Of course it does. Despite the fact that abstinence-only education is condemned as ineffective and, in some studies, even counter-productive by multiple peer-reviewed scientific institutions, the Vatican doesn't have another answer. Better to tell people the wrong thing than to admit you don't know the answer, right?

Labels: religion and atheism, science

Just to clarify.

Sins that any priest can forgive: genocide and mass murder
Sins that only the Pope can forgive because they're so heinous local priests and bishops are unqualified: spitting out Communion wafers

Gotcha.

Labels: religion and atheism

I finished Discover's Einstein-dedicated March issue a few months ago. It included numerous articles about his life, his learning years, his teaching environment, his family and his children. It did not, however, contain anything like this:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this . . . For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.

Labels: humanism, religion and atheism, science, social commentary

Lane and I settled comfortably into cushioned seats, with overpriced snacks in hand, to watch "The Golden Compass" yesterday. And were horribly disappointed. As fans of the intricately and brilliantly crafted world portrayed in the books, we were dismayed at watered down and missing themes, clumsily rewritten characters and plot hooks, arbitrarily rewritten chronology, a complete lack of character development for even the big name actors (with the exception of Nicole Kidman), and, most egregious, the complete excision of the ending (despite foreshadowing of the final plot twist; Lane and I both said "Wait, that's it?" when the movie just ended during the journey to what is the climactic finale in the book). The armored bears were impressive (and Ian McKellen makes an excellent bear's voice), and much of the CGI and visible world were excellent, but it hardly makes up for such a poorly edited adaptation.

The ending of the movie, mangling, as it does, the ending of the book, is a clumsy hook into the second book, but the studio has already indicated that whether future movies are made will depend on box office numbers for this movie, so it's entirely possible the movie never will be "finished." To be honest, I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

For those curious about the real world controversy, the religious themes of the book were watered down so far as to be unrecognizable. Only the briefest of mentions of Dust being related to original sin and an across-the-board shift of the theme of questioning religious authority to questioning authority.

Labels: entertainment, religion and atheism

I have no problem whatsoever with people drawing strength from their faith or using it to help make sense out of complex emotional events. I make it a point not to criticize personal belief or interfere in private affairs.

Publicly extrapolating your belief out to real world events, on the other hand, makes you fair game.

Yesterday the security guard who killed the gunman in the recent Colorado church shootings said she was "given an assignment" from God to stop the gunman and that God protected her during the exchange in order to end the ordeal. An ordeal in which four people had already been killed. This raises a number of questions that flow naturally from her belief. Did God decide the four people who had already died weren't deserving of the same protection? Was he unable to protect them? Were there some politics going on?

I think it's great she was in a position to stop the gunman (and save a great number of additional lives). But if her belief is correct and God intervened to stop the shooting, couldn't he have done it with a lightning bolt before the shooting started? A traffic accident in front of a police cruiser while the gunman was on the way to the church? All the gunman's firearms jamming the first time he tried to fire them? There's a logical gap in the idea that God was there and did a very positive thing after very negative things had already happened. This leads directly into the Problem of Evil, which has been argued and discussed for several thousand years, and likely won't be resolved today.

Labels: religion and atheism

Blame it on planetary alignment, or perhaps karma (or, more realistically, random chance), but my last half hour has been a veritable foray into the dark jungles of insularity and wall-building. The normally lyrical offerings of my radio on the way to work were temporarily replaced, due to a misclick, by the perennial favorite of my family proper, Rush Limbaugh, who was in the midst of a rather frenzied diatribe on the idiocy of liberal democrats. I have no idea what the particular issue was, but the actual phrasing was something in line with "Liberal democrats are the root cause of all the problems we're having; I'm not talking about their intentions, but the blundering way they mismanage things. Conservatives can't win a confidence election? My god, democrats couldn't even *spell* "confidence" if their lives depended on it." It's a sad commentary that I understand why this sort of "us vs. them, we're smart and they're stupid" rhetoric resonates with so many people, but it provides *no* avenues to compromise or communication.

(Amusingly, he segued directly into selling Brazilian hardwood flooring, something he never did when I was in high school and subjected to my father's listening preferences; I wonder if the smaller market share has led to some compromises.)

(And for the record, I'm perfectly capable of spelling "confidence." Please.)

My arrival at work was greeted with a Yahoo article on the Pope's condemnation of atheism as the source of some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" in history that has left behind "a trail of appalling destruction." The encyclical (the second-highest "public statement" in the Catholic canon, just behind the rare-and-uber-important apostolic constitution) is rife with oversimplifications and logical fallacies. The most notable equates atheism with Marxism (an association fallacy) and then blames atheism for the injustices done by Marxists, completely ignoring the fact that atheism is a very large umbrella that encompasses any ideology that does not believe in the existence of supernatural deities (regardless of its stance on any other issues). That definition includes Marxism and Communism. It *also* includes the diametric opposites (Ayn Rand's Objectivism is about as far from Marxism/Communism as you can get, and incorporates atheism as one of its tenets).

The deeper point again, though, is the lack of consensus building, or any route to cooperation with non-militant atheists. It seems human nature to attack other groups, regardless of how "enlightened" we feel we are. That, above all else, will eventually be our downfall.

Labels: religion and atheism, social commentary

A Time article today considers the question of the traditional interpretation of the rules of divorce in Christianity, which included the following line:

Instone-Brewer radically reinterprets the first passage using, of all things, quotation marks. The Greek of the New Testament didn't always contain them, and scholars agree that sometimes they must be added in to make sense of it.

That the Bible is a collection of assorted works written by various (and often anonymous) authors over a series of several centuries is uncontested (and in fact the exact number and arrangement of the books were the subject of lengthy proceedings that didn't end until the 16th century, and which resulted in at least four different "official" Bibles, depending on faction; the Council of Trent, for example, finalized the Catholic version, which differs from the Protestant version by about 14 books). Quotes like the above, however, remind me of one of the first theological problems I had with my (at the time) religion, namely, how can I depend unquestioningly on "divine instructions" that have been filtered through dozens or hundreds of humans (introducing errors, mistranslations or outright fabrications)? Taken from that angle, there is nothing unique, in comparison to the other ancient religious texts of the world, in the Word of God. A divine instruction that requires multiple successive interpretations and a large bureaucracy (of people who were once also unfamiliar with it) to explain to me what it means is far from the most efficient way of distributing something as vital as the rules that are supposed to govern this and all other states of existence. At the time this occurred to me (sometime in middle high school), I'd envisioned an alternative method of divine revelation involving a Bible that automatically translated itself into the language of the reader and was impervious to alteration. Of course, that solution has its own problems that I didn't see at the time (it makes believing on faith alone, one of the tenets of Christianity, rather difficult, and as Arthur C. Clarke would point out that feat wouldn't be beyond the capabilities of a sufficiently advanced alien species). Still, if a correct reading is absolutely vital to the eternal consequences of your soul, I would think at the very least an enlightened deity would provide clear, concrete instructions.

Labels: religion and atheism, social commentary

The Catholic League today called for a boycott of the upcoming release of "The Golden Compass," citing it as a pro-atheist, anti-religious movie ("It's selling the virtues of atheism," as the president of the league put it). Their fear, as I understand it, is that children will see the movie and then, *gasp*, want to read the trilogy.

Two brief comments. First, there's a certain sense of irony in this, since the books portray (and are openly critical of) a ruling religious order demanding conformity and suppressing independent thought in the fictional worlds the plot inhabits. Life imitates art, no?

Second, the League's main concern is that children *not even be exposed* to the concepts of the books (which, by the way, have won multiple awards in the children's literature categories from various independent and prestigious groups, so we're not talking about an "out-of-nowhere" source here), which, if reversed (say, an atheist group calling for a boycott of "Veggie Tales" or even "The Chronicles of Narnia" in order to "protect children"), would be quickly labeled intolerant. More importantly, though, I have to wonder how solid a religion's base is if the leaders feel they must shield their charges from other points of view in order to keep them in the flock. I have little respect for any meme (whether theological, cultural, political or social) that can't sway people on its own merits and resorts to censoring outside influence and isolating its membership.

Labels: religion and atheism

I had some time this weekend to catch up on some reading, which prompted a rather lengthy diatribe on atheists (not atheism, but those who fall under its umbrella). I decided it deserved its own entry in the Essays section.

Labels: religion and atheism, social commentary

To contrast with the monstrosity of the post antecedent to this one, I present a tidy collection of random events, each as special as a tinfoil-wrapped chocolate egg, minus the whole tooth-decay thing . . .

- I received my baby sister's graduation announcement. Family jokes aside, there was of course never any question about whether she would graduate, but I do find it amusing that their "class song" is Bon Jovi's "It's My Life," a song that was initially released when she was 11. I will refrain from further examination, however, as (a) it's not a country song and (b) if I remember correctly, I suggested Queen's "Princes of the Universe" when I was a senior and was shot down in flames (my proposal to use the "Imperial March" in lieu of "Pomp and Circumstance" was likewise dismissed with rolling eyes).

- Apple has officially postponed Leopard, and hence my iMac purchase, to October. Stupid iPhone.

- It's hard to be a crimefighter in the days of caller ID.

- I read a couple of science articles over the last couple of days that are, to me, at least, very interesting. The first is about a quark-gluon plasma generated at Brookhaven National Laboratory that has the same mathematical signature as five-dimension microscopic black holes. The other involves the hendecatope, which I don't fully understand so I'm not even going to try to explain it. Let's just say it's really interesting.

- The latest abstinence education study, commissioned this time by Congress, has found that they're completely ineffectual. To be fair, they also don't increase the rate of unprotected sex, as some critics have maintained. But that's really not a good reason to keep funding them.

- I snapped a photo of the billboard I mentioned in the previous post. In the process (which involved some swearing as I'm not familiar with that part of town, especially after dark), I noticed that the backside of that billboard has the other billboard that has made my blog lately; I thought they'd taken it down, but it turns out they just moved it (both billboards are together in this composite picture). I'm curious if there was coordination of if they ended up together by chance.

- Being third in the nation on the list of music piracy means you should just expect the lawsuits.

- I've been meaning to link to this page for awhile. There's some good stuff there. This is my favorite.

I hope everyone had a good weekend. :)

Labels: amusement, funny, miscellany, quantum mechanics, religion and atheism

Lisa pointed out this article in the Saturday World-Herald, which corresponds with a billboard I saw two weekends ago advertising the same event. There is much to criticize here, and the science on the subject is only the most accessible; the idea that one can change orientation through desire ignores the commonly accepted biological stance that orientation is, at least partially, genetic (evidenced by numerous twin studies and the observation of homosexuality in hundreds of animal species). One might as well desire to be taller. What this program (and others like it) calls a "cure" is in reality nothing more than suppression, as evidenced by the program proponent's own words: "Over time [30+ years], Opp said, his same-sex attractions faded, although they have not gone completely." There is a willful ignorance of biology, genetics and psychology present that colors their program for anyone with any knowledge of the topic.

Once their core beliefs are exposed as little more than wishful thinking, the major topic becomes the method to their madness, the (perhaps even unintentional) insult they level at an entire group of people who take umbrage at being called "inherently flawed." An understanding of how faith works (even if I lack it myself) makes it easy to see how the progenitors of the program believe they are doing the right thing and helping lost souls avoid the pits of hellfire, and thus they are spared the ire reserved for the intentionally antagonistic, but in the end if "doing God's work" requires you to identify a group of people as inferior you should expect to be considered intolerant and summarily dismissed as unreasonable. "Good intentions," the pavement stones of the familiar phrase, are not a sufficient justification for telling a person they are "broken" without solicitation. A similar conference about how Christians are inherently flawed and will burn in hell unless they abandon their faith would be met with equal disdain and perhaps even outrage.

The nitpicks come fast and furious with even a casual reading of the article. "'If you read the Bible literally, it doesn't allow any immorality, homosexual or heterosexual,' he said." True. And if you read the Bible literally, eating shellfish is a sin, handicapped people are not allowed in church and unmarried rape victims must marry their rapists. It's pretty clear that even literal readers are picking and choosing their verses.

"For the next four years, he said, he had a lot of one-night stands. He met men in bars and in parks. He had a lot of short-term relationships . . . He said he came to realize that he was unhappy with the same-sex relationships he had been having because they were inherently flawed." 'Cause, you know, straight people never have one-night stands and short-term relationships and gay people never have steady, monogamous, happy relationships. I think this would qualify as an association fallacy.

"Opp met the woman who would become his wife. He said they became friends, and he was honest with her. 'When I started my journey, I was 100 percent attracted only to men, not to women at all,' he said. The two decided to wed." This isn't really a criticism of his position, but wow what a bad decision. I'm glad it worked out for them, but really, people, don't decide to marry someone who says he/she isn't attracted to your entire gender . . .

And finally, "The typical audience for the conference is families and friends of gay people . . ." I find this horribly sad. Being gay and coming out is extremely difficult and the last thing people in this situation need is family members and friends saying "I went to this seminar; let's go fix you 'cause you're broken." At best you end up with people like the quoted speaker who manage to suppress their orientation, but in most cases you end up with alienation between the family members and a great deal of resentment. At worst, you have homosexuals who really *want* to change due to their faith but are unable to do so and end up miserable with low self-esteem and depression, rather than accepting and embracing their difference.

Although I think the program is wrong on so many levels, one positive influence it has had is to remind me to renew my PFLAG membership. Probably not its intention, but it works for me.

Labels: annoyance, religion and atheism, social commentary

I noticed last week that this billboard is now gone (replaced with an ad for a jewelry store). I assumed the run for the series of boards was done. But last night I saw another one (with a different message) that was still up. I don't know if they have an offset schedule or if this one was taken down because it's really creepy, but I have a suspicion it's the latter.

Labels: religion and atheism, social commentary

Pat Robertson has predicted some sort of mass killing in the U.S. in 2007, passing on the latest word he has received from God. He also noted that he has "a relatively good track record" and only "sometimes" misses (such as predicting a tsunami hitting the coast of the U.S. in 2006).

Here's the problem. If you're getting your info directly from God, and you're *still* not hitting 100%, either you're not really listening to God or he's messing with you. I'm not sure which I would prefer.

Labels: religion and atheism

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison of Minnesota (the U.S.'s first Muslim congressman) took the ethical high ground by not calling Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia names for his recent comments about Muslims being elected to public office. Others haven't been so kind. If you want to write a letter expressing the belief that "if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office" and then co-sponsor legislation to end a visa program for people "not from European countries," expect suggestions of bigotry and racism to follow.

Labels: politics, religion and atheism, social commentary

I knew that God was a voyeur (why else create naked humans?), but now we find out he's a stalker, too. That's just creepy and wrong.

Labels: funny, religion and atheism

I've noted before, to the accompanying chorus of others with the same experience, that the buffet of radio stations in much of the midwest is somewhat unbalanced (heavy on country and religious programming and devoid of much else). I can usually manage to listen to about an hour of religious programming just to see if there's anything interesting in the content (and often there is), but almost inevitably I have to plug in the iPod when the program wanders from peace and goodwill (things I admire about Christianity) into judgment (something I find slightly less palatable).

Yesterday I listened to about 45 minutes of a show on "how to debate with a Muslim," which was at least politically timely, and some of the show was interesting (a comparison of some of the differences between the religions, etc.). Then they lost me. Upon returning from a break the topic abruptly shifted to how to convince a Muslim that Islam is wrong; the show's recommended method is to note that even though Islam recognizes Jesus as a religious and divine figure, it does not believe that Jesus was crucified, and therefore all one must do is show the scriptural evidence that Jesus was in fact crucified and voila, one converted Muslim.

Wait, what?

The two hosts also repeatedly mentioned the "archeological evidence" for the Crucifixion but didn't say what it was (I'd be interested in hearing it). In any case, I'm pretty sure their method is going to have somewhere around a 0% success rate. It's one of the hazards of trying to change a faith using a different faith, evidenced by the fact that I can't think of a single one of my Christian family or friends who would suddenly convert to Islam based on one conversation about the Koran; these beliefs go much deeper than that, leaving us with no "magic solutions" to the problems of global religious conflict.

The other thing that caught my attention was the hosts' joking attitude about how the Koran was not only wrong but also bad while the Bible was obviously divine, emphasized by one of the host's continuous chuckles regarding one of his Muslim friends who, he said, really shouldn't be his friend because the Koran instructs its followers not to befriend nonbelievers, despite the Bible's numerous instructions to the same effect (1, 2, 3, 4). I found it hard to give them credibility when they insisted that the Koran was a flawed work full of intolerance while the Bible was a divine work that contained no contradictions or problematic teachings. There are good things in the Bible; much of Jesus's teachings are humanistic in nature (feed the hungry, heal the sick, love your enemy, etc.). There are also good things in the Koran ("Be kind to parents, relatives, orphans, the needy, neighbors, and travelers."; "Value justice, for both poor and rich, even when it adversely affects you or your family's interests."; etc.). It's just a trick of picking out the good stuff and discarding the rest.

Addendum: I remembered today one other point of their broadcast that struck me (it's difficult to write things down while driving . . .). The hosts suggested that the Koran was not inspired by the Archangel Gabriel (as the Koran holds) but rather by Lucifer who disguised himself in order to lead people away from Christianity. This is a particularly dangerous claim and one Christians should be wary of making, because, whether true or false, it opens a very large door to other, similar claims (for example, that Jesus never existed and it was Lucifer who disguised himself and faked the Crucifixion in order to lead people away from Judaism . . .).

Labels: religion and atheism, social commentary