701. Comic in US 'hate speech' row

Comment #44653 by _J_ on May 25, 2007 at 6:32 am

Well, it's not the most hilarious stand-up routine ever and sure, it'll upset some people, but 'hate speech'? Mildly amusing, pleasantly delivered, deliberately offensive in the way that comedians usually are. So what? It's sort of ironic that he actually talks about the issue of religious respect and hate speech in the monologue.

Can you really have 'hate speech' that ends with a man smiling and saying 'Peace - and I mean that most sincerely.'?

702. Atheists: Get off of our country!

Comment #44552 by _J_ on May 25, 2007 at 4:22 am

I think you should do it. I'm sure we in the rest of the world would be very happy to accomodate your freethinking scientific elite. I'd quite like to see how America would get by minus it's 30 million non-religious people.

I'd give it maybe a couple of months, or until the lightbulbs in the traffic signals need changing.

703. Beyond Belief 2006 Videos

Comment #39994 by _J_ on May 12, 2007 at 2:59 pm

55. Comment #10231 by Craig J. Hawkins on November 27, 2006 at 2:13 pm

I just want to comment on Melvin Konner... What a vile anti-lfe speech. It made me feel physically sick.

Really? He seemed quite interesting to me. I even Photoshopped his four slides listing solid objections to religion together for handy use against Jehovah's Witnesses. He had quite an annoying nervous cough but I guess that's not what you mean.

I was a bit disappointed that the video ended while he was still talking, though. The Beyond Belief site suggests a post-show discussion with some interesting people involved. I take it everyone else has also experienced this problem (the equally likely alternative being that one of the operational priciples of information technology is to punish and infuriate me specifically)?

704. Is Christianity Good for the World?

Comment #39708 by _J_ on May 11, 2007 at 4:54 pm

I've not been keeping up or paying attention.

22. Comment #39201 by Toivo on May 10, 2007 at 6:50 am

Thank you – very sensible and thought-provoking response. I may have been a bit over-eager, unclear and naively idealistic in my post.

Being altogether too fond of the sound of my own typing, I've written quite a lot in response. But, having re-read your post, I've ditched it all upon realising that you've essentially said it all for me:

I think you may possibly perhaps mean to say that when people become atheists, they realise (not as a consequence of atheism, but as a consequence of all their other knowledge, finally freed from the tyranny of religion), that there is no afterlife and we only have this life, which tends to make people value their current lives more. Since people naturally have empathy and value the lives of others, and atheists see that other people have only one life, the atheists would realise the "fragility" and the one-off nature of life and feel perhaps "closer" (as in: we're in the same boat together) to the rest of humanity and be more willing to respect the lives of others. I don't know how to phrase it beautifully, but I hope you get my point.

But, that's not a logical consequence of atheism; it's just what people do, usually (perhaps, I'm mainly guessing here), after they become atheists.

Yes, really, I agree. But, whilst I agree that this sort of universal regard for life doesn't follow logically from atheism (in the sense of following automatically, like cheers follow Prime Ministerial resignations), I do, nevertheless, think that it does follow from a logical search for a moral basis within an atheistic world view.

Through such a search we identify life as the medium through which we experience literally everything that we do experience, such that, subjectively, one's life is synonymous with the universe. This is not to say that we might not choose, A Tale of Two Cities-style, to sacrifice our lives for some kind of greater good – and here lies the other thing you mention: that common empathy. We do have innate empathy, we do have what psychologists seem to call a 'theory of mind', we habitually attribute the nature of our own existence to others – and we can also sit down for a cup of tea with them to check if we're getting it right.

Furthermore, we can consolidate our conclusion that lives are equivalent and of equal value through our attempts, through science, to appreciate more objectively what life is for all of us. Again, in search of a moral basis without making appeals to 'transcendent', supernatural authorities, this appears to be the logical path.

But you are of course right that it is not right to pretend that everyone who becomes an atheist logically makes the effort to follow this line of thought to this conclusion. And it is also not necessarily so that even reaching this conclusion will conclusively conquer our instinctive regard for our own lives as paramount and those of the people who are nearest and dearest to us as – well, nearest and dearest.

This is, as I've tiresomely bleated elsewhere, where I think we have something to learn from the religious. Having founded and established a morality, we can't assume that we will all thereby become paragons of moral perfection unless we make a regular effort to beat that morality through our own thick skulls.

So, whilst I do in fact rationally regard the lives of other people as being equally as important as my own, I do not, of course, instinctively feel or behave that way. I think it is worth our borrowing from the religious, therefore, the model of finding an effective (ideally enjoyable) way of constantly reminding ourselves of what our values are. Because they are not the same as our instincts.

By the way (I expect this has been long-since posted by now) Hitchens vs Wilson Part 2 is up at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/comments/allreviews.html?id=44990 now. Amazing line from Wilson, expressing his scepticism about the possibility of a common ethical standard for atheists: 'what book did it come from?'. Ah, yes, our ethics must necessarily derive from books, of course. And the older and more heavily translated and inconsistent the better, I suppose?

705. Apocalypse Of The Honeybees

Comment #39234 by _J_ on May 10, 2007 at 7:57 am

Incidentally, with reference to the news again, Charlotte Jones got it right a few years ago (www.channel4.com/culture/media/T/tptt/scene.doc):

Mercy A heavenly host! A heavenly host of bee-keepers, stroke astronauts. I like it. (Mercy glances anxiously towards the house. She sees Flora approaching). Please let's go in now.

Felix Or an apocalypse. An apocalypse of bee-keepers.

Humble Boy by Charlotte Jones

706. Apocalypse Of The Honeybees

Comment #39228 by _J_ on May 10, 2007 at 7:50 am

1. Comment #39218 by deviljelly on May 10 and 2. Comment #39219 by BaronOchs on May 10 - the video

Grar, that's enraging viewing. 'Now, in praise of our loving god, let us sneer at what some people said on their deathbeds.' If there were a god, I'm sure He'd be delighted to be defended thus.

707. Apocalypse Of The Honeybees

Comment #39221 by _J_ on May 10, 2007 at 7:39 am

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

And a snigger. And a snigger.

708. Is Christianity Good for the World?

Comment #39164 by _J_ on May 10, 2007 at 5:44 am

Somehow I was looking forward to something a little more thought-provoking from Wilson. Alas, what disappointment. A succession of false dichotomies, misrepresentation, wrongly constructed analogies and, most of all, the usual bleating assumption that 'WITHOUT GOD WE'RE NOTHING'!

I do wonder how it escapes such theists' attention that the 30M non-religious Americans are not spending their days running wailing through the streets, flapping their arms above their heads in nihilistic despair.

I mean, honestly, what's this all about?:

Given your atheism, what account are you able to give that would require us to respect the individual?

Well, a much better one than can be constructed through theism! How about the obvious conclusion that if life is all we have and if all humans are equal in this regard, then life is necessarily the most precious thing we know and every person's life is necessarily as precious as our own. Respect actually follows as an inescapable logical consequence of atheism – it needs no order from authority.

His hypothetical 'Israelite during the conquest of Canaan, doing every bad thing that you say was occurring back then.' (correction, please – every bad thing that the Old Testament, in its numbing litany of slaughter, says was occurring back then) ought indeed to reflect for a second on the doubts of atheism. And why? Well – even politely ignoring the primary point that it was apparently Yahweh himself who ordered the Israelite's genocidal adventures in the promised land – to entertain an atheistic doubt isn't to spontaneously develop a self-conscious fear of the historians of the future. It's to suddenly realise that the limbs you are chopping off are even as your own, the lives you are ending a precise equivalent of yours, that to kill another person is to destroy their world and leave them nothing, just as to die yourself, knowing there to be no god, would be. Does Wilson suppose that it is preferable instead to continue operating according to a privately-held fantasy of supernatural authority which legitimises the slaughter of infidels?

An Israelite who, upon such atheistic reflection, concluded with Wilson that 'if there is no God, this disapproval will certainly not disturb my oblivion. On with the rapine and slaughter!' is, literally, a psychopath. I wonder whether a meaningful debate can be held with someone who regards the only alternative to Christianity to be psychopathic insensitivity.

Still, I expect Hitchens will be sharpening his teeth for the purpose. I'd rather like to have a go myself.

709. Fortune-telling no longer in the cards in Philly

Comment #38984 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 5:11 pm

5. Comment #38983 by Stephen on May 9

Hey, give him/her a fair chance. Think about it for a day first and see if they get the message...

710. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #38981 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 5:05 pm

3. Comment #38975 by Bonzai on May 9:

Instead of pointing fingers at sex between consenting adults the Church can single handedly remove a lot of "sexual corruption" in the world by stop covering up for child molesting priests.

Absolutely - but to my mind even that pales alongside encouraging the AIDS-blighted nations of Africa to cast aside their condoms. Sexual immorality? Well, at least the Cardinal is sticking to his church's specialist subject.

711. Cardinal: homosexuality a form of prostitution

Comment #38978 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 5:01 pm

He also uses a report from 243 Latvian doctors as proof that homosexuality is an illness.

I say, I say, I say: how many Latvian doctors does it take to fabricate a Catholic-appeasing conclusion on homosexuality? Wow, the Latvian medical establishment must have a serious interest in gay sex...

Anyway [clears throat]: I hereby, devoutly and faithfully (experiencing a brief but convenient relapse into Christianity) call upon God to present His argument against gaiety in His divine person to the massed ranks of the 'sexually perverted' at this year's Manchester mardi gras (http://www.manchesterpride.com/) and to dispute the point with any counterarguments that should emerge. Both sides are encouraged to employ demonstrations as appropriate. (In accordance with normal sporting rules, if either side fails to show, they will be deemed to have lost the match.)

It'll be nice to have this settled once and for all this year.

712. Intellectual Diversity or Intellectual Insult?

Comment #38971 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 4:44 pm

I've scanread this a bit, so please forgive me if I'm off-target, but:

...biology professors who teach evolution as more than just a theory competing with creationism may find themselves having to defend themselves against charges brought against them by complaining students.

Well, this question has already been settled to all reasonable satisfaction in a federal court, a year and a half ago, surely. Dear me, another opportunity to demonstrate the wretched evidential poverty of creationistic 'alternatives' to evolution. How will science manage?

"People assume I know and understand certain things, including evolution," Bradley said. "If they couldn't assume that, that would really damage the credibility of my degree."

Any assumption worth holding is held in confidence that taking the time to probe the evidence would prove the assumption correct. The evidence does show evolution to be correct, and it will in court if tested (again). Bradley can sleep soundly at night. This is the sort of battle that science ought to win every time.

(On the other sort: when do we hear from the RRS vs Bananamen fight?)

713. Fortune-telling no longer in the cards in Philly

Comment #38965 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 4:33 pm

Ah good. An old law worth keeping. (Still can't make my mind up about the one that lets you shoot Welsh people in Chester with a crossbow after dark.)

2. Comment #38959 by Donald - good point. If only the crime were more precisely defined. 'Charging money or demanding acceptance of services based upon assumptions defying observable evidence' might come closer to doing the full job.

714. Hamas 'Mickey Mouse' calls for Muslim domination on kids' show

Comment #38962 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 4:24 pm

[Sorry. Must keep being reasonable. Mustn't let rampant religious insanity and disregard for life in favour of arbitrary fantasy get me down.

Bring on the Infected.

Sorry.]

715. Hamas 'Mickey Mouse' calls for Muslim domination on kids' show

Comment #38961 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 4:23 pm

Bomb everything. Bomb me. I don't want to live here anymore.

Ah well. 28 Weeks Later is out in two days. What would I do without sunshiney cinematic escapism?

716. The torture of the grave Islam and the afterlife

Comment #38922 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 1:52 pm

...the grave is transformed into an oppressive, constricting space.

Gosh, there's no arguing with transformative powers like that. Powerful, these angels, powerful.

717. Better God-fearing than sneering

Comment #38807 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 8:14 am

60. Comment #38797 by Jopses on May 9, 2007 at 7:58 am

Thanks for the recommendations!

718. Better God-fearing than sneering

Comment #38805 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 8:13 am

52. Comment #38762 by Peacebeuponme on May 9

…reading all that right now would be taking to piss a bit!

Yeah, so was writing it! ;)

I agree with your remarks, and can also quite believe the adjustment added by 54. Comment #38767 by John Phillips on May 9 – which news I'm very pleased to read.

But I really think, even before reaching the praiseworthy level of actually volunteering for community work, just the basic motions of daily life and the attitudes we carry with us can be very positively affected by something like a good church (though of course I still maintain it's a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, and that's something that wants changing). However…

56. Comment #38773 by newatheist on May 9

...atheistic church - what a utopia!

Yes – and I am tempted to agree with you in subscribing to a literal reading of 'utopia' here: such a church might seem a bit of a no-place.

Here's a hope, though. A while ago, I was trying to encourage people to sign an overlong (and now rather irrelevant) letter to Ted Haggard that I'd co-written with another evangelical atheist (www.letter2ted.org – one of the least popular of the spate of such letters that appeared last autumn). One of the signatories wanted to clarify with me that, whilst she agreed with the letter, she wasn't really an atheist. In the conversation, I gave some rough sketch of the sort of secular 'church' that I think might be a nice idea. She then described the church she goes to. The minister (or pastor, or whatever) read not only from the Bible but from other holy books, and often talked subjects outside the field of religion. Neatly summing up the attitude of the place was a patchwork celebration of spirituality they'd been knocking together lately to hang on the church wall. Every patch represented a different religion and – best of all – they'd left one blank: 'for things we don't know yet'. My signatory was sorely tempted to stitch the Flying Spaghetti Monster in there but she, like me, regarded this sort of openness and acceptance of fallibility as just about the best thing to be found in a modern-day church.

So, anyway, I'm hopeful, though I do agree with you that the notion that There is A God and An Afterlife is probably what drives people to church. Perhaps, without god, 'churches' necessarily fragment, and the secular 'equivalent' will be found in a batch of numerous different provisions – smaller groups for those who are motivated, better education in science and rational thinking, copies of The Demon-Haunted World in every home and so on…

I think Stephanie Merrit should think about what people would do to comfort others if there was no church…I think there's plenty of evidence we'd do just fine.

Yes, quite so. Though I wonder whether we'd have created some kind of equivalent, and whether the creation of that equivalent would have a rational foundation or a more intuitive one…leading simply to different kinds of religion. Hmm…

Still, yes. The idea that comfort comes uniquely from church reminds me of the other myth that atheism makes people angry. Well, sure, atheists often are angry, but not because they're atheists – because they can see theism for the life-twisting fabrication that it is. It's religion that causes the anger of atheists, just as SUVs often enrage other road users – but rarely the people driving the SUVs.

57. Comment #38777 by severalspeciesof

"it is only the people of religious faith bound within a society of like minded people which bother to comfort the lonely and the dying...") I can then see how quickly many non-religious/atheistic people can take offence.

Me, too. Absolutely. And I've been at some excellent civil weddings and (sadly) a very moving Humanist funeral service lately. But churches are about formalising this, and about seeing the importance of making regular, communal effort to maintain happiness and morality. Sort of akin to going for a daily jog rather than waiting for palpitations and beta blockers.

What I find nice, from a Christian friend who is about to train to become a vicar, is the revelation that a core part of Doing The Faith Properly is apparently taking care of all people and of (God's) world itself, irrespective of their faith (or lack of it). Which (sort of) removes (or blurs) the 'bound within a society of like minded people' element. I take this at least to be a good thing.

It seems to me that liberal churches like my friend's lag a little way behind what Dawkins has been calling the moral zeitgeist, but do a good job of reinforcing the morality that they espouse. This is progress in the right direction and may, in the best cases, lead to the establishment of churches like the one I described above (with the patchwork wall hanging) and even beyond. Perhaps some religions can gradually evolve out of their supernaturalism. But it does seem that in every denomination, there lies the risk that at some point the interpretation of scripture is permitted to take no further bending, heels are dug in and the attitude changes to 'This far and no further'. Whether this is at sexual equality, homosexuality or stem cell research varies, and denominations fall by the wayside in the race to keep up with the moral times. Sadly, we don't seem to see whole denominations jumping ship when this happens.

53. Comment #38766 by Russell Blackford

It's marvellous how concisely the limerick form can sum up all the salient points.

[Applause.] Publish!

719. Better God-fearing than sneering

Comment #38759 by _J_ on May 9, 2007 at 5:51 am

Here's my tuppence-worth.

Obviously the article does nothing to address the basic factual foundation of atheism, which is that there really, really, really just doesn't seem to be a god, irrespective of how psychologically inoculated a born-again Christian might be against seeing that Christ has the same claim on reality as Zeus' legless unicycle-riding transvestite auntie Susan, whom I have just made up. (Less, really, since at least you can be confident that my claims for Susan haven't been mistranslated from 2000-year-old Arabic or Hebrew hearsay – but I digress.)

And, equally obviously, 'God-fearing vs sneering', as a presentation of the available options, is a false dichotomy (regardless of how much fun sneering can sometimes be). And it's by no means apparent that God-fearing actually is preferable to sneering (in spite of the axiomatic virtuousness of being 'God-fearing') or that those who fear gods are actually themselves above sneering (or sending hate mail, or picketing funerals, or attacking fearers of other gods).

But, at the risk of burning my bridges with a loose community of atheists with whom I overwhelmingly agree, I think Ms Merritt actually makes a point that's very worth paying attention to when she concludes:

too often, it is only the churches which bother to comfort the lonely and the dying; part of their attraction is that there is too little kindness in the world.

Yes, as another poster observed, sometimes religious folk do, to a greater or lesser degree, find opportunities to indoctrinate the vulnerable. This is, I think, a hard-to-remove side-effect of the fact that the fundamental basis of churches is, once again, all wrong: there really does not appear to be a god.

But, in spite of that ropey premise, the churches that I have visited, as an agnostic, then as a Christian and then as an atheist, have done an exceptionally good job of encouraging the congregation to reflect on the way they live their lives and to consider their moral responsibilities to one another. Week in and week out, attendance of a good church can help a person to think about their priorities, set goals for themselves, recognise themselves to be part of their community, be honest with themselves about their own weaknesses and find a positive attitude to carry with them into another week in an often quite dismaying world.

Once again, I'm quite convinced that there's no god. And, once again, the fact that all of this worthwhile moral, social and psychological good work being done in our more progressive churches is nevertheless tied into a dangerously wrong conception of what's important in life (ie willing subservience to an imagined superior rather than life itself) does bother me. And yes, we do see the harmful effects of this screwed-up foundation, even in many of the most welcoming and relaxed houses of god, in (for example) their behind-the-times confusion about homosexuality.

But here at this Clear-Thinking Oasis, I think we owe it to ourselves to look at all the facts that are relevant to the subject – not just 'Is there a god?' (apparently not) and 'Is religious harmful?' (obviously, yes). When studies show that religious children are happier, or that religious people seem to live longer or recover better from illness or whatever, we shouldn't find such results worrying or even all that surprising. I seem to recall studies that make similar claims for people who just have a positive, optimistic view of life. It's no great stretch to suppose that faith and church attendance could promote optimism and positivity. A religion that survives in spite of being fundamentally glaringly wrong is doing so by catering for the needs of its adherents.

Believers tend to be confused about the nature of the benefits they reap from their faith. They experience joy when singing in celebration of life and pledging to give themselves to a greater cause whilst in a community of supportive folks who share their beliefs, and attribute this very real emotion to being filled with the joy of god – but, quite obviously, there need be no actual god to explain such a feeling. Aspects of the same feeling can be gained at rock concerts and blood donation sessions. Churches provide a format for experiencing a wonderful cocktail of life-enhancing emotions, and for anyone who's spent any time reading Dawkins' books it's not a difficult imaginative task to see that the churches that do this best are likely to have spread over the years. (Has anyone written an 'evolutionary' history of religious practice? I'd be interested.)

Meanwhile, atheists, often with plenty to be cross, annoyed or worried about in religions that have lied to them about the nature of reality, that threaten them with damnation and that give rise to cycles of violence that rightly reduce us to tears, find it all too easy to associate all elements of churches with badness and wrongness. It's very easy to see sermons as all about insidiously spreading a lie and funeral services as about indoctrinating the vulnerable. But I think this is a cart-before-the-horse interpretation. Good, modern, progressive, liberal churches work wonders in helping people to live happier, more responsible lives, in spite of the handicap of being based on a preposterous delusion of what life's all about.

So, again, I think Ms Merritt is quite right to suggest that 'too often, it is only the churches which bother' to put in the sheer, week in, week out effort to take us by the hand and encourage us to think about our place in the world and in the community, and to seek to do better. But it's not only the religious who feel that there is 'too little kindness in the world', as a couple of minutes spent on the 'The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death' thread will help any non-believer appreciate.

Taking a rational view to coming up with a solution that would not only be more factually correct but also more all-round desirable challenges us to be honest about what's good in religion and to find a way to sustain that good whilst excising the bad. Like harvesting edible fungus from a dead and rotten tree that threatens to fall on our house - simply burning the tree will leave us hungry, but leaving it standing risks disaster. We fell the tree and we take the fungus and encourage it to grow somewhere else.

We've got an excellent 'somewhere else' within the secular understanding of science. We've a worldview that puts every living being on an equal footing, that makes every person a cousin of every other. How's that for a joyous conception of life? An atheistic church could fill out a lifetime with sermons exploring the wonders of science, the examples of history, the achievements of literature and even the teachings of holy scriptures – from all the different religions.

A lot of people won't jump from the ship of religion just because we point out to them that its hold is on fire and it's heading for a whirlpool. They need to see a bigger, better ship that's equally capable of supporting them through their lives and making them happy, caring, positive-minded people. Like Indiana Jones (this is so high-brow) snatching the gemstone at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark, we need something else to put on the plinth if we don't want to be squashed by the boulder (and, evidently, we need to make a better job of it than he did).

And, for myself, quite aside from the issue of helping people out of their psychological addiction to faith, I rather think that it might do a lot of atheists good. Of course, many atheists aren't the sorts of people who like or need anything remotely like a church to be happy, morally upstanding people. (This is of course true of some religious people, too.) But some of us are atheists simply because we followed the facts and this is where they led us. It's worth taking the effort to avoid being so snobbish as to suppose that, once you're an atheist, you're too grown-up to benefit from methods that have been refined in progressive churches by a couple of thousand years of competition with other faiths. Becoming an atheist may put a person in touch with the only justifiable basis for morality, but it doesn't, in itself, do anything to help or encourage a person to live as a happy and moral person, and to continue doing so.

So, we recognise that the supernaturalistic religions got it wrong at the most basic, fundamental, crucial level. Let's also recognise that in spite of that inauspicious start, and in spite of a lot of crushing mistakes that follow from it, they've still managed to get a lot of other things right, albeit ostensibly for the wrong reasons. We should not be above stealing (or, if you prefer, learning) these things from them.

That was more than a tuppence-worth. No extra charge.

720. Unholy row at clergy soccer game

Comment #38128 by _J_ on May 7, 2007 at 4:14 am

It's just as well, really. A mixed Islamic team would have been at a hideous disadvantage. You can't make an effective tackle in a burka.

And imagine the sort of cynical fouls that would be encouraged by knowing your opponent is a hellbound infidel...

I agree with Kell, though, about the issue behind the farce. Maybe they should start with something simpler. An interfaith piss-up in a brewery, perhaps?

721. Martin Amis reviews The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Hussain

Comment #38031 by _J_ on May 6, 2007 at 6:47 pm

Robert: your new avatar (as was your old one) is brilliant.

722. Martin Amis reviews The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Hussain

Comment #38030 by _J_ on May 6, 2007 at 6:44 pm

39. Comment #37980 by knox on May 6, 2007 at 2:49 pm

Hello David,

[It's taken a while to write this and I'm aware the discussion may have moved on. But there's no way I'm checking and editing it – it's 2.30 am already. Sorry!]

---'I would also add to the reasons why people do not believe – bad experience of religion when a child; misunderstanding of who God is; hatred for God; and the adoption of a naturalistic philosophy.'---

Good job on the first three points. And then what happens? 'The adoption of a naturalistic philosophy'? That appears to be a baggy statement which loosely means 'becoming an atheist'. That's not a cause. That's a result. And a huge, cop-out catch all of a result at that.

I used to be a Christian but now I'm an atheist. None of the first three of your reasons apply to me, so I suppose I must have become an atheist. Thanks for the explanation.

---'I myself have experienced atheists who have called me a Christian Bastard etc and threatened to kick my head in. Of course they could have been lying about their motivation but why should I not take them at their word?'---

I am very angry that someone said this to you. People shouldn't behave like this and that's that. Of course, I know nothing of the context and it would be unwise of me to speculate. I wonder, though: in your honest opinion, were they people who might equally have said something like 'I'll kick your head in, you shortarse bastard/ginger bastard/Celtic-supporting bastard/[just plain] bastard'? (And, for my own personal interest, did they happen to shout 'In the name of atheism!' at all?) It's a familiar experience for many teenagers to be attacked 'for' 'looking at' someone or giving an undesirable response to a request for a cigarette. The fight has nothing to do with cigarettes or stray glances. But a casual beating isn't the same thing as the gang murder of a lone, defenceless woman, or the suicide bombing of a train.

---'Actually making a sandwich is a Christian act – although admittedly making a 'damn' one may be a secular act.'---

Making a sandwich is a Christian act?! I'm delighted – please explain! (I guess that, in spite of my atheism, I've been inadvertently buying into Pascal's Wager every lunchtime. Now if only I could turn breakfast into a celebration of Allah…)

---'And all of a sudden Stalinism is not atheism. Despite what Stalin said. And how do our friendly 'nice' atheists come to this conclusion? Elementary my dear Watson. It's logical. Atheists are reasonable and nice – having evolved to a higher consciousness and not having nasty religions to make them bad. Stalin was bad and did bad things. Therefore he cannot have been an atheist. In fact he was really religious!'---

Come now, David; this is beneath you. You make a lot of good arguments but this is not one of them. Sure, Stalinism incorporates atheism, but that does not make it synonymous with atheism. I am an atheist. I am not a Stalinist. Your argument here is a syllogism of the following type:

1 – All dogs have four legs.
2 - All dogs are mammals
3 - All mammals have four legs.

Sure, an atheist could become a Stalinist, just as a mammal could have four legs. But to pick out Stalinism as an example of an ideology and object that therefore atheism is an ideology because 'Stalinism is atheism' just doesn't follow. You know this. But we all get excited and make bad arguments sometimes.

---'The fact that you really believe that your ideology is not an ideology is really worrying.'---

I do believe it, though I also believe myself to be constantly sliding a bit towards this ideology and a bit towards that one. People say things and facts emerged and I am swayed. I am foolish and easily led. Hey, no one's perfect.

But, some of my favourite experiences in life have been the moments when someone I had hitherto completely disagreed with said something that made me stop, think my position over, and realise that I had spent some time being utterly wrong. This feeling of learning something new and seeing things afresh is something that we humans are very fortunate to be able to do (I reckon). If you, or any Christian or other theist, can argue me back into belief, then you've earned the scalp. Fine. But I haven't seen a convincing argument yet.

Now, maybe I'm being lazy with my definition of ideology. And maybe you're making a mistake that I often make myself and objecting to a detail in an argument that really you have neither grounds nor need to dispute. There is sufficient common ground in our opinions for us to reach working agreement. We both, after all, recognise the theoretical possibility of fundamentalist atheistic ideologies. I don't think I hold one, and I don't think straightforward atheism-plus-nothing could be described as one. It's a result rather than a cause. In so far as that a really basic politically non-aligned rationalistically inspired atheist is, so far as I can see, *by definition* not a subscriber to any ideology, what is there to object to here? (I can see that you might call rationalism an ideology, but this is something I would dispute simply in terms of practical, live-your-life, what-actually-works experience.)

If your usage of ideology differs from mine (which, I acknowledge, may be imperfect) try dogma.

As a point of interest – and in case I'm just getting hopelessely entangled in misused words – can you think of a position that is not within an ideology? Your answer here may help to establish a discourse in which we know what each other are trying to say.

---'I cannot conceive of any circumstances where it would be justified for me to kill in the name of Christ.'---

This doesn't surprise me, but I am nevertheless pleased to hear it. The type of Christianity to which I understand you to belong is - taking a nice long historical view - progressive and very close to what an atheist would consider decent moral behaviour in our society. (If I am assuming too much here, I apologise.) Doubtless you have the Golden Rule and Jesus' many wise and progressive improvisations around it very thoroughly in mind, and I am sure (in complete sincerity) that this has done you good. My point, therefore, is near academic in the case of you and members of your church – but very much less so for others in other churches. I worry about the confusion of priorities at the core level. Where the observable world is rendered secondary in value to a supposed other world, the potential for grave wrongness exists. Where you are always dealing with others who share your particular confusion of priorities all shall (in the words of Julian of Norwich) be well. But as for the rest of us – as for people as a whole – holders of such faiths have no right (in my opinion) to view us in such terms. It's dangerous. Less so when heavily bound by centuries of moral progress, as in your particular flavour of faith, admittedly. But the potential, to a greater or lesser degree, remains.

---'What damage? It's just another bunch of chemicals gone to a non-existence to which they were going to anyway? Why should you as an atheist be bothered at all?'---

I get the impression you're responding before reading ahead – understandable as you're taking on a lot. Perhaps arrogantly, I'm going ignore remarks (such as this one) that I think I've already dealt with after the detail you're responding to. But it does upset me and strike me as important that your view of life is that, without god, we'd all be valueless, directionless, empty, depressed, apathetic mutual abusers. I'm sure you can see that this gives you a strong instinctive bias against entertaining the possibility of being wrong on any serious level. Meanwhile, I'd be quite happy to find I was wrong about god. Rather surprised and a bit embarrassed, maybe (and I'd have a few serious questions to ask Him…), but otherwise quite happy. When you're pointing fingers towards supposed ideologies, you may wish to bear this difference in mind.

---'Ain't my society. The vast majority of people grow up in a secular society and are soaked and indoctrinated with atheist presuppositions.'---

I rather suspect this is a difference of vantage point: the mountaineer looks down at the hills; the valley dweller peers up to them. Our society is indeed very secular in many respects, but faith nevertheless quietly abounds and is still strongly associated with respectable moral, cultural and traditional virtues and values. And I'd be an idiot to suggest I can speak for everyone's individual experience of 'society' – so I won't.

---' Forgive me from quoting from my own book'---

First: generally well done for writing a book at all. I'm childishly envious.

Anyway: yes, nice quote from Bertrand Russell. But, once again, you and I both know that you are not such a simpleton that you can't appreciate a bit of enlightening emphasis for rhetorical and educational effect without getting all literalistic about it. I mean, if I quoted Jesus' 'seeds on stony ground' parable to you and said 'Your Messiah said we're just seeds! Nothing more than crappy little seeds!' you would legitimately complain that I am an idiot. You are not an idiot. Please cease the impression.

(By the way, even if Bertrand Russell said something like 'All atheists believe in machine-gunning believers: fact', you and I both know that quoting him would achieve nothing. I would continue to agree with sensible things that Bertrand Russell said and would strongly disagree with him where he was being an utter maniac. 'Someone who shares belief X with you also said Y, which is bad, therefore you're wrong' is another syllogism, and you know it.)

---'Yeah right. Like when I die a universe dies!'---

Yes: when you die, a universe dies. Okay, I am of course messing about with the joy of subjectivity, here. But what are the sun and the moon to a blind person? One of the wisest sayings I have ever heard, which has stuck with me for years (since my pre-atheist, pre-Christian, agnostic days) was originally introduced to me as coming from Islam, and it was words to the effect that anyone who saves a single person's life saves the world.

Before binning this as poetic garbage, give it a moment's thought. Yes, when Hitler 'was executed' (thought he killed himself…?) a universe died: his universe. And yes, he was responsible for extinguishing millions of universes. Of course, they were all perspectives on the actual, objective, atoms-and-stars universe that we're all a part of. But indulge for a moment in the luxury of seeing this from a different, but meaningful, perspective.

You see, once you're an atheist, this world-view gathers meaning. At least, that's what I find. If there's no god, no pre-packaged, shrink-wrapped, all-inclusive, one-size-fits-all heaven to go to, then life is what you've got. This universe. And this universe will always be your experience of it. The universe you recognise is only (and gobsmackingly) your own brain's interpretation of the external, 'real' universe. In a very meaningful sense, each single person *is* the universe. Okay, this attitude will not secure you a Nobel prize for physics, but it's not facile pseudo-poetic claptrap, either. I think it's an enlightening perspective on existence that follows quite sensibly from how the universe and the human mind work.

So: don't sell yourself short. When you're dangling from a clifftop and I'm straining to hold on to the rope (not a threat), I won't be thinking 'Ah, bollocks to it: he's going to heaven anyway'. I'll be thinking 'This is a unique record of experience of the universe every bit as great as the whole of my entire life, and something that – even if I spent the rest of my life trying to understand him – I would never be able to wholly appreciate.' (Or, more likely, 'I wish I had spent more time in the gym.')

---'I prefer the grandeur of truth.'---

I'm sure it is not a wholly unanticipated irony if I appropriate this remark as rightly belonging to my own position. If you object, I will be happy to meet you at an intermediate location (perhaps Newcastle?) for an armwrestle.

Cheers.

PS Someone teach me some HTML so I can stop writing such boring-looking posts.

723. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37958 by _J_ on May 6, 2007 at 1:12 pm

Everybody,

David wasn't kidding when he said:

---'You are very welcome. Come to www.freechurch.org and click on the Forum and join in the Dawkins section.'---

His church's site is indeed explicit in welcoming non church members and the faithless.

Whilst some here may find some of David's apparently immovable opinions a mite frustrating, a lot of us respect his dedication to returning time and again to state his case to the heathens. I guess Christianity wouldn't have got so far without that sort of patient bloodymindedness.

If anyone feels inspired by Brian's YouTubing exploits to attempt a little atheistic evangelism, you need a forum with an audience that needs persuading. David's site is an open door to such an audience. His letters to Dawkins, in their pre-book form, are available for reading and response.

To adapt a piece of wisdom from Ignatius Loyola (I think): 'Go in by the other man's website to come out by your own...'

Cheers.

724. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37927 by _J_ on May 6, 2007 at 10:09 am

87. Comment #37922 by knox on May 6

We do actually agree on so much!

But - forgive me - I can't resist this:

---'"...world depresses the crap out of me more often than I truly care for. "

I guess you need the hope of the Good News!'---

Absolutely! And the Good News is we're all humans, there are *no* divisions between *any* of us worth killing for, and we live in a time when this understanding, and our greater understanding of who we are and what this world we're in is, are advancing magnificently. (We also have some older Good Stories which represent earlier attempts to grasp the truth, which make good background reading, so long as you don't fall for their own hype.)

Thanks for the link to your site, David.

725. Martin Amis reviews The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Hussain

Comment #37919 by _J_ on May 6, 2007 at 9:22 am

25. Comment #37826 by knox on May 5, 2007 at 10:59 pm

Spoilsport. I was having fun with facetious soundbites, but now I suppose I'll have to talk like a grown-up. Warning: it'll be somewhat less snappy.

Before we leave the childishness, though: you wrote:

---' It will certainly have the believers here in spasms of delight at your wit and wisdom! Such simplistic formulations always do.'---

Thank you for noticing the various kind responses that had been posted well before yours. Word of advice: retrospective prophecy impresses no one.

Now then. I was not 'forgetting several things'. I was simply concentrating on one thing – the absurd notion that sheer atheism can positively motivate murder in the same way that Islam or Protestantism or Stalinism can. You have shifted to a broader perspective in a rhetorical attempt to imply that my deliberately narrow one was flawed. Well done, you. I'm prepared to broaden my scope for you.

Yes, you're right, 'the first two cries could be false'. So what? So could the third. The point remains that cries 1 and 2 *could* be genuine (and very often clearly are, as Robert Maynard has discussed above) whilst cry 3 is patently ridiculous. We are not discussing a particular crime, but the *potential* within ideologies for motivating crime. Objection overruled.

Next: you suggest that 'the third cry could be "I am going to kill you because I think you deserve to die"'. Yes, this too is true. But 'I personally hate you/am angry with you/am jealous of you/have no regard for you/think you deserve to die' is a different type of motivation. This isn't 'My ideology wants me to kill you' but '*I* want to kill you'. As a special treat for you, I shall now labour to adapt my 'snappy and simplistic' formulation to reflect this type of crime. The new murder-cries are:

Theist: 'I want to kill you!'
Political Ideologue: 'I want to kill you!'
Atheist: 'I want to kill you!'

Yes, all of us are capable of having malign thoughts and doing bad things to each other. But, clearly, 'I want to kill you' is not a sentiment unique to atheists – anyone of any creed can feel personally motivated to atrocity. My original point was just that a simple atheist, by definition, cannot be prompted into atrocity by their ideology, because they don't hold one.

Before I respond to the next part of your answer, there's a third permutation of the above soundbite that I want to share. It's not just about ideologically motivated crimes, you see – it's also about ideologically *justified* ones. We can see how this works by adding a couple of extra words to the murder-cries:

Theist: 'I want to kill you and it's alright with God if I do.'
Political Ideologue: 'I want to kill you and it's alright with The Leader if I do.'
(you know what's coming, of course)
Atheist: 'I want to kill you and it's alright with precisely no one if I do.'

Again, Robert has been over this above. There is no framework in atheism into which to dissipate, and absolve oneself of, responsibility. If I have just bludgeoned you to death, I cannot appeal to my conviction that 'There is something greater than life' and find a way of making things okay on this assumed super-level. As an atheist, I'm stuck with the fact that I've killed another person and there's no way of undoing the damage. I can't tweely imagine the dead person is off to heaven, or that it's all essentially fine because it's within God's plan, or that it's not as important as the 'real' issue, which is whether or not I'm prepared to apologise to Jesus and ask him to take over my life and make me a better (hopefully less murderous) person. I am a murderer and I can't wangle out of it.

Now I want to continue with your comment. I'm grateful to you here, because this is the clearest expression I've seen you give of what worries you about 'atheist ideology'. I think one part of it is really worth talking about:

---'because you are infected with the religious virus and we must, for the sake of humanity, stamp it out. You have refused to be 'reeducated' so in the name of humanity and for the good of the human race you have to go.'---

Unfashionably, I agree that this is a risk. This sentiment is latent in all of us, I think. Go to the thread with the video of the poor 17 year old girl being stoned. A lot of strong gut reactions to that story. Atheists and religious people alike share, I think, an instinctive urge to strike back at the group responsible. This urge isn't to do with the religion (or lack of religion) of the person doing the instinctive responding, but it does seize upon the religion (or culture, or other grouping) of the hated party (the mob of men with the rocks in this case) as its target.

I find it quite possible to imagine an atheistic ideology that denounces all religion as necessarily evil and deserving of destruction. But please note that this is not atheism per se; it is introducing a discrete ideology into atheism. It is atheism plus the ideological position that 'Religions are bad and must be destroyed, even if that means killing people'. This is murderously extreme antitheism. As the weak minded, peer-led bunch we humans are, we must be wary of sliding into ideologies and we should be aware that this sort of antitheistic ideology is a potential pitfall that we must avoid. But hold this thought, because I'll be coming back to it in a second.

You then say:

---'Besides which as their is no God to whom I am accountable and no judgement, it does not matter if I get it wrong. Anyway you are just a lump of carbon floating round in a meaningless universe, what does it matter if I kill you anyway?'---

Here it is: The Fear. This is a view of atheism which is only held by non-atheists. When I was a woolly agnostic, I felt (like most woolly agnostics I know) that it would be nice for there to be a god. I hoped there was one, because life was 'obviously' cold and empty without one. Then I was a Christian, and I 'knew' that life without God was, by definition, hell – all wailing and gnashing of teeth. Now I'm an atheist and I can see that that is all absolute nonsense. That sort of nihilistic terror stems not from atheism but from the psychological addiction to religious faith that our theistically drenched society has imbued us with. Getting out of a religion does indeed face a person with conquering these negative feelings – much as recovering from substance abuse or the rejection of a long-time lover does. But cold turkey doesn't last forever (though it can seem that way in the last week of December). You are not 'just a lump or carbon' – you are a living human being, the most astonishing and valuable thing we know of, an entire universe's worth of subjective experience every bit as precious as my own. What does it matter if I kill you? The same as it matters if you kill me: a universe is snuffed out; and my experience of grieving equips me to understand the horrendous psychological fall-out for your friends and relatives. It does not matter that there is no god to be accountable to: I am accountable to you, to the society of living creatures I interact with, and to myself. And death does not give a second chance: when there is no spiritual safety-net in the sky, the stakes are so much higher.

This, you see, is why atheism proper is itself resistant to the kind of theocidal extremism that you are worried about. The core of rationalistic atheism is to stick to the facts and value the observable. Consequently, life becomes paramount. An ideology that suggested that, actually, the destruction of religion is *more important* than life would be overthrown by atheists as readily as theists, for, like theism, it is grounded on the dangerous misconception that there's something, anything, that is simply held without proof to be more valuable than life itself.

And this is why a theism (or other ideology) that holds at its heart a claim that god and heaven (or whatever else) are *the most important things*, always - regardless of the strength and value of its moral teachings and the warm and fulfilling world-view it supplies – always provides a basis for interpretations that motivate or justify atrocities in a way that atheism alone simply cannot.

An atheist killing in the name of the most important thing s/he believed in would be shouting something like 'I kill you in the name of life!' or 'I want you dead because I want you to live!', or just 'Life is great!' Still not an ideal war cry, I fear.

726. Martin Amis reviews The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Hussain

Comment #37902 by _J_ on May 6, 2007 at 7:40 am

@ 31. Comment #37853 by Robert Maynard

Wow.

727. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37901 by _J_ on May 6, 2007 at 7:29 am

Stuart Paul Wood, Roger Stanyard and Dr Benway,

I suppose it's up to each person whether to watch something like this and I understand both the reasons given for not wanting to and for recommending careful forethought before viewing it. I didn't 'want' to, as such, and I spent a few minutes trying to find an excuse not to. But…

Personally, I felt oddly as though I had a responsibility to watch it. This is the sort of atrocity that I confidently make strong moral denunciations about. It's not just a matter of abstract morality. It's not an academic issue. It's real, dirt and rocks and shoes and bones and blood and lives. And it feels to me as though I ought to take any chance there is to rub that hard in my own face so I don't forget it.

The fact that someone stood there filming it without doing something isn't a comfortable one. Perhaps they were scared of the mob and thought this was the only way to get the message out; perhaps they were a sadistic voyeur. Either way, the resultant video is valuable as a piece of – and I think we're all very familiar with this idea, now - consciousness raising. Yes, it's a horrifying, enraging spectacle. Necessarily so. We're being made conscious of the reality of brutal gang murder. This is not a subject to be wrapped in cotton wool.

Nevertheless, I sympathise with the decision not to watch. But I think there are valid reasons for choosing to see it – needing to see it, almost - too.

728. God Exists. A Formula Proves it.

Comment #37791 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 5:46 pm

49. Comment #37787 by MelM on May 5, 2007 at 5:24 pm

---'Yet another reason to believe. We're finished folks; we can't beat this.'---

You're right, but I'm laughing so much I'm finding it hard to type agreement.

729. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37776 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 4:40 pm

Shadow,

I'm being rude, here, by butting in on something you've said to someone else. But, just three minor points:

---'If you feel that strongly about it, go sign up to fight buddy.'---

Oh? There's a fight to wipe out Islam? And you can sign up for it? *Surely* not the Iraq war? I don't remember it being advertised as a crusade against Islam, but perhaps I slept through that particular flight of your fancy.

Second, there's a bit of a difference between 'wip[ing] Islam from existence' and wiping everyone who is currently a Muslim from existence. If this distinction escapes you, it lies in the detail that only one of the two necessarily involves killing millions of people.

Third and finally: a lot of gut reactions to this video are undertstandably emotional, and a lot of the comments are consequently not as level-headed as they might be. So take a deep breath before you start barging people into the corner and intimidating them, eh?

(Rudeness ends; apologies as appropriate.)

730. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37762 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 4:20 pm

I see the video has now been removed from YouTube for a 'terms of use violation'.

Whilst I felt as uneasy about watching it as anyone, I think this is a shame. Events like this are horrific and some kind of glimpse of them, some kind of confrontation that rams home how silencingly, freezingly horrendous they are is very valuable. Shocking events should not be rendered unable to shock.

Is anyone familiar enough with YouTube to know how to query this bit of apparent censorship?

731. God Exists. A Formula Proves it.

Comment #37759 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 4:09 pm

39. Comment #37734 by Beth on May 5, 2007 at 2:49 pm

Thanks for the link.

Wow! So Tipler has in fact written (badly) a science fiction novel and marketed it as a verification of religion.

Bet he's annoyed that L. Ron Hubbard got there first.

732. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37752 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 3:41 pm

34. Comment #37726 by HappyPrimate

That's really terrible. I do genuinely feel sorry for you. But keep it up. Due to its context, your atheism is clearly more needed (in a sense) than mine.

A friend of mine is a lovely lady and a devout Christian. She is about to enter into three years of theological training in order to become a Church of England vicar. She'll be wonderful at it and will doubtless do all sorts of social and emotional good along the way.

I'm lucky. She's still my friend. She just feels a bit sad that I no longer accept Jesus and am thus damned. I feel a bit sad that she has based all of her wonderful qualities (of concern for other people and so forth) on a totally fallacious world view that she simply won't allow herself to see.

But I can still have lunch with her if I want to. I feel sorry for you. But I think I feel sorry for your Christian friends even more. You actually have something to say that they could do with hearing.

733. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37749 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 3:32 pm

37. Comment #37742 by knox

Hello David,

I agree that what you have written isn't trolling and I don't see why it should be blocked either.

I don't know a whole lot about honour killings. And, honour aside, it's true that religion is far from the only thing that motivates people to beat other people to death. Greed, revenge - sheer sadism, even. Here in England there was a horrific incident a few months ago in which a man was beaten to death by teenagers who didn't know him, apparently purely for the 'pleasure' of recording the incident on a mobile phone. It wasn't even a theft.

I also agree that, whilst I don't overall agree with your position on 'atheist fundamentalism', there is always a danger of the discussion on a site like this spiralling into in-group back-clapping. If this site is really about taking a scientific view of things, we ought to be challenging our hypotheses as standard practice. So I find it useful to read posts that require me to think twice about my opinions.

I nevertheless regard religions as fundamentally dangerous in so far as that they tend to provide an available moral framework for even disgusting acts like the one here. If a person subscribes to the belief that there is something more important than life itself, then it is a small step of logic to damaging or ending lives in the service of that thing. Whether it be a religious or political ideology, any faith that requires people to hold something unproveable to be more important than the lives of the people they share their existence with is a faith to worry about. Even if its central teaching is cuddling old folks and patting children on the head, it has a dangerous misunderstanding of reality at its core.

Certainly, the motivation to do enormous evil may not come from religion and may be common to us all. But where a religion supplies a rationalisation for acting upon that evil - 'do it for god and it's okay' - that religion is in grievous error. Such potential outweighs any amount of morally-sound detail within the doctrine of the religion. This possibility lies within every religion which claims access to a truth that is greater than mortal (ie observable) life itself.

734. Martin Amis reviews The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Hussain

Comment #37738 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 3:01 pm

...and PS,

@ Robert Maynard - like Brian Coughlan, I thought your response (5. Comment #37624) was exceptionally clear and correct. Very nicely, and patiently, put.

735. Martin Amis reviews The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Hussain

Comment #37737 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 2:56 pm

[ @ briancoughlanworldcitizen:

---'thats a fairly cryptic moniker'---

Yeah, sorry. Nothing covert (I'm Jonathan Higgs of Manchester, England) - just 'J' is quick to type and my old log-in ID (which was just J) has died of neglect.

I do like your videos, by the way. Good luck with whatever others you should make. ]

736. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37715 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 2:13 pm

Hey, Happy Primate,

Notwithstanding what I've just written above, at least Jesus gave us 'Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.'

Whilst selective interpretation is a necessary skill for the consistent FundaMentalist, you have to admit that the New Testament pulls off some really laudable moral coups.

737. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37714 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 2:11 pm

23. Comment #37683 by Fanusi Khiyal, and 25. Comment #37687 by Logicel

I've watched the video now. I really, viscerally, didn't want to, but I had this feeling that I *had* to, as it had happened whether I chose to face it or not.

Fanusi, I share your gut response, but I feel as Logicel said that the vicious circle can and will be broken. The ray of hope is that Iraq isn't only full of morally vacant men: it's also home to the religion-blind young lovers that they victimise, and to the other men that offer them shelter. And, whilst a few years ago, the only witnesses to this crime would have been the criminals themselves, today it finds an audience of millions who can recognise it for the humanity-defying abomination it is.

We progress by recognising and facing up to the what is wrong. The crime is old but recognition on this scale is new. In face of it all, that, at least, is encouraging.

On a different note, also to Fanusi: yes, the vast majority of Christian fundamentalists would find this as shocking as you or I. And yet it is still possible to be beaten to death in America (and probably Britain) for 'having the wrong boyfriend' - if a fundamentalist Christian reckons you ought to have a *girlfriend*. It is possible not only to have this happen to you, but then to have your funeral picketed by more FundaMentalists who have shown up to assure your family that God Hated you for being a Fag.

Beating to death is beating to death, in Iraq or in the West, and religiously motivated murder is exactly that, irrespective of how cuddly the religion is 'most of the time'.

Anything that tells people that there's something more important than the lives of the people around them is, essentially, evil. Even if the vast majority of adherents would balk at events like the murder depicted here, such faiths nevertheless provide a 'moral' framework to rationalise such killings.

They *have* to go.

738. Martin Amis reviews The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left by Ed Hussain

Comment #37706 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 1:51 pm

To weefree:

I know you've heard this point made abundantly, both in repetition and in clarity, but just as an extra way of putting it, I offer the magic of paraphraseology.

Suppose three people are about to commit some form of murder: a theist, an adherent to a non-theistic political ideology, and a person who subscribes to no ideologies - a straightforward, vanilla, non-aligned atheist. Given your attitude in your letter, we can expect three triumphant murder-cries:

Theist: 'In the name of God!'
Political Ideologue: 'In the name of The Leader!'
and
Atheist: 'In the name of atheism!'

Without entering into any argument at all, perhaps a simple paraphrase will point out the absurdity of this. Three entirely synonymous equivalents would be:

'God wants me to kill you!'
'The Leader wants me to kill you!'
and
'No one wants me to kill you!'

Is the idea sounding a bit silly, yet?

739. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37680 by _J_ on May 5, 2007 at 12:58 pm

I can't process this at all. Just not the sort of thing that can be thought about calmly.

The Old Testament response - as in the case of the raped and subsequently dismembered concubine - would be to slaughter all the men of Iraq, so as to be sure you got 'em all. Which, right at this second, I could vote for.

Which is exactly why we don't rely on religions that appeal to our bloodlust for our laws anymore.

If only everybody would agree on that.

I don't know what sort rationalisation has to go on in a person's head for them to be able to do this and then go home to their family, still thinking of themselves as a righteous and moral person. Makes me despair.

740. Your favorite book in the last 25 years?

Comment #37285 by _J_ on May 4, 2007 at 1:58 am

So pleased to see other people cheering for The Demon-Haunted World. That book really took the lead in guiding me out of fuzzy theism and into a brighter, better lit universe.

The Blind Watchmaker has a special place in my heart, too.

And the posthumous collection of Douglas Adams' brilliance that is The Salmon of Doubt. His speech 'Is there an Artificial God?' makes points that I still haven't heard bettered.

Lastly, if plays can count as books once they've been published, then: Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard. Science, literature, love and history entwined in an astonishing and finally heartbreaking insight into everything. (Sort of hard to summarize, in fact.)

741. Why the Gods Are Not Winning

Comment #36433 by _J_ on May 1, 2007 at 5:25 am

25. Comment #36421 by briancoughlanworldcitizen

---Hopefully my Dogma video will straighten you out...---

Nice video!

By the way, I wonder if your 'smoking gun' of a Japanese man-god Emperor can be backed up with a whole smoking arsenal of (perhaps weaker) precedents. Isn't this pretty much what The Divine Right of Kings was all about? Sure, The State was a messier, less unified entity in the pre-industrialised world, making personality cults and general mass-dogma propagation much less achievable. But the monarch as God's representative was the figurehead to hang the state together. When he called muster to invade France, you had to be there crying God for England, Harry and St George...

742. Army to EO Reps: 'Discrimination Against Atheists OK'

Comment #36422 by _J_ on May 1, 2007 at 4:56 am

I agree: well done, Mr Adkins.

I'm no expert and have none of the first-hand experience that several posters here have, but to theorise for a second: reading across from the logic of the 'Why the Gods are not winning' article, you'd *expect* the military to be vigorously religious. It's a group in which members are faced with the risk of death and dismemberment, and may be charged with visiting the same upon others. Compared with this, the anxiety of keeping up with the Joneses in modern-day civilian USA pales into nothingness. An atheistic regard for mortal life as the most valuable (indeed the only) thing we have might be considered above-averagely subversive in such a context.

Needless to say, none of this justifies the apparent discrimination against atheists, and Mr Adkins is once again to be applauded. Particularly so, in fact: I'm quite keen for the people with the guns to have a clear-eyed, rational understanding of what life is worth. But you can imagine why this discrimination is more likely to thrive here than elsewhere. I suspect there'll be chaplains in the armed forces as long as there's even a dying breath of religion in the world at large.

743. Why the Gods Are Not Winning

Comment #36416 by _J_ on May 1, 2007 at 4:36 am

I was brought up with Star Trek, in which a culturally diverse gang of optimistic atheists from a state that provides universal healthcare and has even (improbably) done away with money itself spends its time discovering humanity in science, exploration and prosthetic foreheads.

As this was supposed to be the future, I've found the apparent resurgence of religiosity very disheartening. It's nice to read the above article and find that not only is secularity coming along nicely, but that Gene Roddenberry got his associations right after all.

Scottishgeologist and others: my experience of church in Britain also reveals it to abound with ladies. It does indeed seem that Men are from Mohamed, Women are from Jesus. Perhaps a marriage and a relocation to the suburbs is in order. Apparently Gliese 581c is nice at this time of year.

744. Convention ends with Satan and immigrants

Comment #36395 by _J_ on May 1, 2007 at 3:28 am

Wall around Utah?

Old technology (ask the Romans and the Chinese), pretty simple to construct, less side-effects and moral complications than thermonuclear option. Simplest ideas often best. Just a thought.

745. Pundit Christopher Hitchens picks a fight in book, 'God is Not Great'

Comment #35951 by _J_ on April 29, 2007 at 1:06 pm

I know everybody's basically been addressing this angle of the above article, but still:

--'But what is the point of writing such a book? Surely, it will change no minds.'--

This, whenever it crops up, is a non-point. Take a second: can anyone imagine a book that gives a convincing argument against religion that *wouldn't* attract this criticism? If the book is strident and robust then it's deemed insensitive and alienating. If it's soft spoken and sympathetic, then it's woolly and indirect. If it's scientific it's inaccessible; if it isn't, then it's 'just as unscientific as faith'. The same 'rebuttal' works (or fails to work) every time: 'it will change no minds'.

Honestly, 'it will change no minds' is a non-argument and suitable only for being ignored. It tells us only about those unchangeable minds, those people who are fundamentally wedded to their chosen fantasies - nothing at all about the article actually being criticised, be it Hitchens' book or whatever. Desperate, last ditch, straw-grasping, fingers-in-the ears, wishful-thinking-as-criticism. Ignore it as standard.

746. Mormonism: A Racket Becomes a Religion

Comment #35564 by _J_ on April 27, 2007 at 3:53 pm

16. Comment #35562 by carnitine

Damn: no shortcuts, then! Fair enough. Ta for the insight, though.

747. Evolution Booklet

Comment #35563 by _J_ on April 27, 2007 at 3:51 pm

Like phasmagigas I haven't read all through this, but I think it looks great. I may be proved wrong by a thorough reading, but the breadth of discussion and level of detail entered into seem very impressive. And the cartoons are brilliant.

I accepted evolution all through high school because I'm a passive, trusting sort who does what he's told. But I always had woolly questions about how things *know* how to evolve this way or that way. I didn't really grasp how it works until I eventually read The Blind Watchmaker. By then I was 23. I think a pamphlet like this one could have set me straight eight years earlier.

748. Mormonism: A Racket Becomes a Religion

Comment #35556 by _J_ on April 27, 2007 at 3:35 pm

13. Comment #35544 by carnitine

I'm interested. Some of those discrepancies you describe aren't just typos. Can you suggest a convenient source of a more accurate history of Mormon origins?

On the article in general: I really agree with 10. Comment #35528 by ghostbuster. Throughout the latter half of that article I was quietly repeating to myself 'Scientology, scientology, scientology...'.

This depresses me. It's like having your wallet stolen, then having the thief come back, show you how he did it, smile and shake your hand, and then steal your shoes. I have an urge to shake six billion people and shout 'Wake up!'.

Perhaps a mug of Horlicks will deal with it.

749. Mormonism: A Racket Becomes a Religion

Comment #35552 by _J_ on April 27, 2007 at 3:28 pm

Last summer I met a lady from Utah. In idle conversation with her and others, I recounted a few bizarre details about Mormonism that another new friend (who was absent at the time) had produced a few nights earlier to the great mirth of those who had been present. The lady from Utah was rather cross and said that my friend was clearly an idiot.

If I had then been in posession of the above history and had recounted it (with no other convenient source to attribute it to), I doubt she would have been able to find pejoratives strong enough for me. An opportunity missed.

750. New Planet Could Be Earthlike, Scientists Say

Comment #35218 by _J_ on April 26, 2007 at 3:42 pm

2. Comment #35212 by plexer

Hmm, Gliese 581c (snappy) sounds a bit warmer than Earth with one side possibly always facing its sun. This may be god's holiday spot. Perhaps the Glieseans make good margaritas? He is going to be almightily pissed off if our next generation of telescopes bust his 2000 year holiday by revealing Him basking in His swim shorts. (Perhaps this, in fact, is what Revelations is all about...)