Quite Random

Venomous spouting

Adrianne’s fighting Weenies. Dough’s commenting on the area he lives in, and fighting a rear guard action against his tyrannical employers. Wascally Weasal is getting in to the history of Malta. Mum’s contemplating the prospect of an afterlife. Blogs are wonderfully diverse things. I’m getting tired of ranting about religion however, because as Dough points out, it’s almost a complete waste of time. Arguing with the devoutly religious is like shouting at a brick wall, and I sometimes do feel bad about attacking the religion which is shared by people I know and like – moderate religious friends of mine will agree with me about the lunacy of the neo-conservative Christian right in the US, faith schools, or the wearing of burqas, so in the end, the divide may not be between believers and disbelievers, simply between rational people and fundamentalists. Most of us, at least in this country, do seem to agree on the important things – at least the ones who have bothered to think about it. The people who really deserve a kick up the arse are all the intellectually lazy, conceited Weenies that would sooner die than use their brains, form an opinion, express it and argue it. Apathy will kill us all.

The argument for ranting against ‘dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads’ (as Richards Dawkins has put it in about a million interviews recently) is that their energy for coersion, manipulation, indoctrination, lobbying, fundraising, killing, terrorising and generally fucking up the world in multivarious other ways is almost without limits, and there has to be a balance. That’s why I will carry on, but try and achieve my own balance. Talk about religion maybe, but only if I can find something constructive to offer as an alternative.

As an afterthought, it appears the birds in St James’ Park are turning cannibal, where a Pelican has just swallowed a pigeon. Poor pigeon maybe - but is this a new, rather surreal form of pest control?

Take the veil

Aishah Azmi’s insistence upon wearing the veil in front of male colleagues would be regarded as the behaviour of a mentally unstable person, if it were not for the fact that she is Muslim. The behaviour of a great many religious people is somehow excused on the grounds of their religiosity, and we might say that is beside the point, but there is only so much crap you can put up with. Most religions are evil, hypocritical, pernicious, unjust and irrational – why not tackle them head on?

The absurdity of wearing the veil is obvious, and moderate Muslims should be the first to agree with that – it is about subjugating women. The holy trinity of Judaism and its offshoots Christianity and Islam have all been hijacked by men, the scriptures being twisted and misinterpreted with one objective – to screw women over and keep them down. The Qur’an teaches that women should lower their gaze, it is true – in the same breath as it tells men to do exactly the same thing. That obviously didn’t get through to the Muslim men who walk in front of their Burqa-adorned women, wearing jeans and shirts, not a veil in sight. The hypocrisy is sickening.

The Qur’an passage that is causing all the stink is this one:

Qur’an 24:30-31
Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty:
That will make for greater purity for them:
And Allah is well acquainted with all that they do.
And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty;
That they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof;
That they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty
Except to their husbands their fathers their husbands’ fathers
Their sons their husbands’ sons
Their brothers or their brothers’ sons or
Their sisters’ sons or their women or
The slaves whom their right hands possess or
Male servants free of physical needs or
Small children who have no sense of the shame of sex;
And that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments.
And O ye Believers! turn ye all together towards Allah that ye may attain Bliss.

So the passage above says that men should lower their gaze and guard their modesty, and then goes a bit further to say that women should, basically, cover up their bosoms. There’s no mention of covering their faces, but scripture is all about interpretation isn’t it?

The Taliban continue to fight coalition forces in Afghanistan, and would happily come back, reinstate Sharia law, and bury adulterous men and women up to their waists before stoning them to death. And these stupid women still want to wear the veil? Do they support death by stoning, or another Muslim punishment, twenty-five lashes of the whip and a year’s solitary confinement?

So, it’s back to the mental instability question, because if you wear the veil, you surely have to believe in stoning and lashes – and who in their right mind would?

Don’t masturbate during Ramadan…

Deliberate masturbation during the month of Ramadan renders a fast invalid, Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini has ruled.

Khameini, who is Iran’s most powerful political and religious figure, was asked on his website : “If somebody masturbates during the month of Ramadan but without any discharge, is his fasting invalidated?”

Khameini: Don’t masturbate during Ramadan - News from Israel, Ynetnews.

I’d highly recommend reading this article, especially for the detailed breakdown of whether discharge of fluids while deliberately masturbating represents a break in the Ramadan fast, and the query about what to do with the bits of food stuck between your teeth.

Islam is hilarious!

Jesus Camp

Be afraid… be very afraid.

If you can’t see the video above, see the film website.

According to an interviewee in this trailer, there are two kinds of people in the world… people who love Jesus, and people who don’t. The co-ordinators of the ‘Kids on Fire’ evangelical summer camp, who insist that “we have the truth”, want to see Christian children as radicalised as the Muslim children they imagine with grenades strapped to their bodies - assuming that all children are, or should be, radicalised in the first place. There is no third way mentioned – presumably the atheists and Humanists of this world fit in to the category of people who don’t love Jesus, and therefore are considered enemies, their children lost. The children in this film are described as born again, one boy saying he was ‘saved’ at the age of five. Apparently it’s never too early to start saving souls.

You can anticipate the reaction to a film like this before it has even hit the cinemas – most reactions being formed without people even having seen the film (and, no, I haven’t). Radical Christians may believe that their words have been misinterpreted, taken out of context or distorted, to suit the ends of the film makers (though the film has mostly been described as a balanced portrayal). Less ‘extreme’ Christians may claim that these loonies have nothing to do with them, and that the themes of the film don’t apply to their own faith. Atheists and Humanists may describe this film as a worrying spectacle of young children being manipulated and indoctrinated by neo-conservative zealots who are no less of a worry than radical Imams.

This all serves as a reminder that religion just isn’t as simple as wearing a badge, any more than declaring yourself an atheist, Humanist or anything else provides a precise breakdown of your own personal credo. We really are all atheists – when it comes to other religions, or other interpretations of religion, faith, personal spirituality, whatever you want to call it. Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise have both fallen from favour with the movie-going public for being too assertive with their respective beliefs, the common reaction being along the lines of ‘entertain me, just don’t talk about your religion, it makes me uncomfortable’.

In many workplaces, even in social circles, conversations about religion are taboo – no-one can open their mouth without offending someone, and Muslims, Hindus, Christians and everyone else demand that their religion be treated respectfully, lest their human rights be violated. I don’t think that my atheism earns me any special treatment, and I don’t expect to have to extend any to anyone else, regardless of their religion. Being asked to lay off criticising religious people has always felt to me like being asked not to mock the afflicted. If you have a faith, you should be prepared to defend it.

Jesus Camp appears to demonstrate that the US has no less of a crisis of identity on its hands than Islam – well-organised radicalism against liberalism. Rational people don’t have the luxury of being able to say that we’re all stuck in the middle while this schizophrenic wrangling plays itself out around us.

Reply to a Christian

Since the publication of my first book, The End of Faith, I have received thousands of letters and e-mails from religious believers insisting that I am wrong not to believe in God. Invariably, the most unpleasant of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally believe that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. Please accept this for what it is: the testimony of a man who is in a position to observe how people behave when their faith is challenged. Many who claim to have been transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism. While you may ascribe this to human nature, it is clear that the hatred these people feel comes directly from the Bible. How do I know this? Because the most deranged of my correspondents always cite chapter and verse.

Link: Council for Secular Humanism

This piece by Sam Harris mostly makes perfect sense, though the argument about the inability of the Bible to predict the arrival of the Internet is a little wide of the mark. The problem is, pieces like this don’t persuade anyone. They don’t persuade atheists because atheists don’t need persuading and agreed with it in the first place, and they don’t persuade Christians because they won’t be persuaded. Christians often see atheists as being sick, immoral people who are struggling to deny the god-shaped hole in their lives, just as most atheists simply cannot understand how Christians, or any faith groups, can subscribe to such lunacy.

Not here but there

I’ve added a roundup of good atheist web content from the last week to the Suffolk Humanists site… go there and waste some time.

Dummies

Fun if you’re bored…