Caution: The pope is coming

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Michael

But there’s more!

Hugh Dallas, head of referee development for the Scottish Football Association has been sacked because he passed on, by eMail, a joke about the pope. His dismissal was called for by a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland. This nasty little weasel is called Peter Kearney, Director of the Scottish Catholic Media Office. His details, in case you feel like sending him a message, are as follows:

Peter Kearney, Director, Scottish Catholic Media Office, St George’s Buildings, 5 St Vincent Place, Glasgow G1 2DH
eMail: mail@scmo.org

Similarly, the Chief Executive of the Scottish Football Association, responsible for this craven giving-in to Catholic censorship is Stewart Regan. The address of this coward is Scottish Football Association, Hampden Park, Glasgow G42 9AY
eMail info@scottishfa.co.uk

It would seem, from the YouTube video posted here, that the joke concerned is the one that heads this page, warning children of the approach of the pope. The caption was censored, but it isn’t difficult to find the original. It is at http://www.hollow-hill.com/sabina/images/caution-pope.jpg

My suggestion is that we should do our best to make this joke go viral, beginning by sending hundreds of copies of it to these two addresses:
mail@scmo.org
info@scottishfa.co.uk

But there are probably funnier jokes along the same lines, and I would encourage you to send as many as you can find.

Richard

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Double undue respect

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Michael

We give undue respect to religion every single time we give a stand to a religious figure who prattles on about something when the reality is that that figure has no qualifications in the given matter. For example, virtually every time the pope opens his mouth there is no reason we ought to be consulting him, yet millions of people still listen to him as if he has something to add to any conversation. This latest incident is no different.

Pope Benedict XVI called Saturday for politicians, the media and world leaders to show more respect for human life at its earliest stages, saying embryos aren’t just biological material but dynamic, autonomous individuals.

Now on top of the undue respect we already give him, the pope is encouraging everyone to respect a bunch of nothing cells. There is no scientific basis for offering respect to embryos. There is no reason we ought to be listening to the pope on this. For instance, he says embryos constitute autonomous individuals (it’s unclear how they might exercise any autonomy), but does anyone for a moment believe he is aware that twinning can occur several days after an embryo initially forms? Does he still want to say that embryo was one individual? Or was it two? Or was it one and then it became two? If that is the case, then did it always have two souls or did a second soul find its way into the process post-twinning? And most importantly, how does the pope know any of this? How does he know he might be wrong? What method is he using to know? Can anyone else consult this method? Are there ways to verify this method?

Cellular potential is not a definition of being a human, the pope has no basis -nor any qualification – for saying otherwise, and we ought not give him any sort of respect on this or any other important issue.

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Hitchens-Blair debate

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Michael

There is a YouTube channel devoted specifically to the recent debate between Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair. I’ve yet to watch it, but I find both men to be quite intelligent. (Update: I have watched it.) Hitchens’ intelligence is crashingly obvious; I’ve never seen him lose a debate point. And I absolutely love how he will routinely bend over backwards to grant as much as possible to his opponent just so he can point out that he still has the point won. Anyone who saw that awful creationist movie with Ben Stein should be familiar with this tactic: In the Richard Dawkins interview, Dawkins granted that it’s possible that we could have been designed by aliens, but even if that were so, we would still need to appeal to evolution in order to explain their existence. Stein, unsurprisingly, takes the dishonest route of claiming that Richard Dawkins is only against intelligent design when it involves a god. This was rather expected since the creators of the movie lied to every biologist involved, not to mention the fundamental dishonesty behind creationism intelligent design. But I digress. Blair’s intelligence is clear enough, but I think perhaps some of my perception of it comes from the contrast of it with Dubya’s lack of smarts.

Anyway. Watch the debate. (Skip the first video if you just want to get to the meat of the debate.)

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Religions | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Agnostic? Then you shouldn’t have children.

Posted on November 23, 2010 by Michael

An Indiana judge has issued a ruling stripping a father of joint custody of his three children. One of the reasons cited by the judge was the lack of religion of the father.

[Judge] Pancol’s order says [Craig] Scarberry “did not participate in the same religious training that the (mother) exercised and that (Scarberry) was agnostic.” Scarberry has until Dec. 1 to appeal the ruling, which has reduced his custody to visitation with his children four hours per week and on alternating weekends.

Watch this short news report.

Of course, there’s certainly more to the story, but all that’s out there right now is that Scarberry’s lack of Christianity is a contributing factor in why he is not allowed to retain joint custody of his children. There is no evidence of neglect or abuse, nor any accusations of any sort of thing.

The main issue for the ruling (and then affirming) judge is this:

The order severing joint custody was issued by Pancol on Nov. 1 and affirmed by Newman on Nov. 8. It said that when Scarberry had been a Christian, “the parties were able to communicate relatively effectively.”

So why give benefit to the mother? Both parents were given joint custody; that communication is difficult due to religious differences does not mean the Christian therefore wins the legal battle. There is no reason to presume the Christian is better – in any way – than the agnostic. Besides, the ruling is blatantly unconstitutional.

A secondary issue in all this is the right of the father to have a fair hearing in these cases. In the past, the father was considered the bread winner and there were financial and practical reasons for granting more rights to the mother. Except we aren’t living in a dysfunctional episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show anymore. For that reason, Scarberry has this planned:

A Navy veteran and health-care worker, Scarberry has obtained a permit for a demonstration in support of fathers’ rights for Dec. 16 at the Madison County Courthouse.

Scarberry, of course, will also be addressing his (non)religious liberty, or lack thereof. His case is a good one and his fight is for all the right reasons. I’m just worried about all the inherent and undeserved respect religion is getting in all this.

“I wasn’t interfering in their right to be brought up in a Christian environment,” [Scarberry] said, noting that the children still attend Christian school and church services as they have done in the four years that he has had joint custody.

It’s bad enough that both the ruling and affirming judges are letting their personal and cultural biases seep into the court room, but Scarberry doesn’t need to do it too. Or maybe he does. After all, the man is fighting for his children; what it takes, it takes. But ideally, he should not need to let undue respect squeeze its way in: children don’t have a “right” to be brought up in a particular religious environment. That sort of right goes to the parent. There is no such thing as a Christian (or Muslim or Jewish or…) child, much less one that wants to exercise its right to be brought up in a particular religion. Saying otherwise is like saying there are Democratic and Republican children. There aren’t. And to compound the whole mess, Scarberry cites the attendance of a Christian school and church services by his children. Again, the man is fighting for the children, so he has no higher concern, but the indoctrination of his children should not be looked upon as a good thing.

Maybe if the judges just read the first and final chapter of The God Delusion, they would get it.

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Vatican shifts on condoms

Posted on November 23, 2010 by Michael

The Vatican has finally started to move in the right direction concerning condom use.

In a seismic shift on one of the most profound — and profoundly contentious — Roman Catholic teachings, the Vatican said Tuesday that condoms are the lesser of two evils when used to curb the spread of AIDS, even if their use prevents a pregnancy.

The position was an acknowledgment that the church’s long-held anti-birth control stance against condoms doesn’t justify putting lives at risk.

“This is a game-changer,” declared the Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit writer and editor.

The new stance was staked out as the Vatican explained Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on condoms and HIV in a book that came out Tuesday based on his interview with a German journalist.

The Vatican still holds that condom use is immoral and that church doctrine forbidding artificial birth control remains unchanged. Still, the reassessment on condom use to help prevent disease carries profound significance, particularly in Africa where AIDS is rampant.

It would be nice if the next time I go to Africa, my travel doctor doesn’t specifically tell me, “Don’t have sex with the locals.” That’s a long way from happening, but at least the Vatican is doing less to make that dream stay so distant.

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

Update: faux concern

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Michael

I continue to receive emails due to some random person with faux concern for my well-being signing me up all over the place. If it interests anyone, I got this message at the bottom of one email.

This message has been sent to you because the email address forthesakeofscience@gmail.com entered by the individual at 216.176.60.80 was used for a subscription request to Pure Life Unchained! E-News. If you did not subscribe to Pure Life Unchained! E-News then do nothing, and the subscription shall not be activated.

The IP address doesn’t show up when I search it for comments here, but I did use my mad 1337 skillz to find that it is based in Toronto. Not that that really means much, but it’s what I’ve got.

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

Pastor: Stay away from Facebook, married couples

Posted on November 20, 2010 by Michael

A nobody pastor from New Jersey has told married members of his congregation to stop using Facebook. He says the site too often leads to marital trouble.

‘I’ve been in extended counseling with couples with marital problems because of Facebook for the last year and a half.

‘What happens is someone from yesterday surfaces, it leads to conversations and there have been physical meet-ups. The temptation is just too great.’

It isn’t that surprising that religious leaders are struggling with change. It virtually always is religion that stands in the way or at least in opposition to progress. And every time, people eventually realize the strength of change and just brush past religion.

The fact is, Facebook is one of the most important creations of the past decade. It has contributed to the fundamental change in how we interact with each other, and I think it has done so for the overall good. While one of its drawbacks happens to be the use of the system by inept older people, this is also one of its strengths. But take note: when I say “older people”, I’m not simply referring to age. I’m talking about an “old person mindset”. That’s a mindset that dismisses new facts for old tradition. If anything does that, it’s religion. Facebook and other social media have the ability to bring people with old, obsolete perspectives into reality.

But two more points: First, it’s a load of garbage that this nobody has gotten so much attention. Provided that he has no formal training and is merely a Reverend goes to the point Gnu Atheists are always making: we give undue respect to people based upon religion. This guy appears to have absolutely no qualifications for giving marital advice any more than any random scrub does. I want a reason why I should listen to him, not an appeal to unearned respect.

Second, there’s a follow-up story about this nobody pastor.

The Rev. Cedric Miller didn’t need Facebook to be part of an extramarital affair. The pastor who banned Facebook had three-way sex affair.

Miller, 48, who gained national attention this week when he banned his church’s leadership from using Facebook because he said it is a portal to infidelity, had himself engaged in a three-way relationship with his wife and a man a decade ago, according to testimony he gave in a criminal case.

While entertaining, who gives a shit? If there’s anything I despise, it’s this persistent fallacy of dismissing arguments from people who are hypocritical. We have plenty of reasons to dismiss Miller’s points about Facebook. We don’t need to try to ignore his arguments by attacking him personally. Unless we have a reason to think he’s just making it all up and lying, Miller is irrelevant to the strength of the points being made.

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Why, thank you for the faux concern

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Michael

Christopher Hitchens has been talking about his cancer, what he’s going through, the response he has been getting, etc. One of the questions that interviewers always ask is how he feels about people who say they will pray for him. Hitchens responds that the sentiment is touching, but he clearly is not appreciative when the motivation is to appease some god. If the person doing the praying is genuine and would like to see Hitchens regain full health, that’s wonderful. But if the person only hopes to convert him out of a sense of blind duty to some god, then that’s just petty and silly.

With that in mind, I would like to thank whoever sent out emails to Need Him Ministries and First Baptist Church of Covington. I received 9 emails today which were either subscriptions to religious newsletters from these groups (or their affiliates) or were direct responses from a few individuals. It looks like all the subscriptions came from one of the responding individuals signing me up for them, not from whoever sent the original emails, but I’m not entirely sure. At any rate, the basis for the emails was this post.

I’m still waiting for someone, anyone!, to offer me even some evidence for God.

I’m still waiting.

The person who signed up the email account attached to this site (it isn’t my regular email, in case anyone bothered to wonder) apparently went online and got my address and phone number to send to these people as well. That raises a few issues. First, I don’t live at that address anymore. Second, that address doesn’t actually exist anymore. Third, the phone number is to a land line I don’t think even exists anymore. But I think my favorite issue here is that whoever sent the emails sent them to at least two organizations: Need Him Ministries and First Baptists Church of Covington. The first group appears to be directed towards reaching anyone it can. But the second group is specifically based out of Augusta…Augusta, Georgia. That’s close to my hometown of Augusta – only about 1100 miles off.

It doesn’t really matter if I get spam sent to my email; it isn’t hard to delete or block unwanted junk. But I do feel somewhat bad. I had to send an apology to one person for her time being wasted. Granted, she believes in superstitious nonsense and time away from that is probably time well spent, but that doesn’t mean I want to waste her time.

But what I don’t feel bad about is the 1400+ word response I got from David Shelton. It was, of course, filled with nonsense and logical fallacies, but that isn’t the worst of it. It was all just canned bullshit. How do I know? Well, this.

Although a brain injury and resulting dementia has taken David off the stage, we are encouraged to hear how his ministry still blesses others.

Yeah, somehow I don’t think the email was personalized.

But I know you’re all dying to get a look at some of the bullshit.

I can see that you are struggling with the whole concept of God, yet I know that in your mind you struggle with who is God, yet you have a keen awareness that there is a God who created all the order and intelligence, since the very existence of such knowledge reveals that a higher being must exist.

I have a pretty clear concept of God based upon how believers define him – that is, how they define him until someone bothers to ask any question. Then it’s just evade, evade, evade! Perhaps it is believers who need to get through their struggles with the whole concept of God. And order and intelligence? Those two facts reveal that 1) there are physical laws and 2) the power of evolution.

Now evidence for God exists everywhere, even evidence that this God is the very God spoken of in the Bible. If I had the time I could write multiple text books on this matter. As a matter of fact many people already have, yet most who don’t really want to discover God but continue on with their heads in the sand denying the truths of God which are plain and simple to them.

Ah, this ol’ chestnut. If someone doesn’t believe in God, it’s because of a desire not to discover. And why wouldn’t someone want to discover God?

Yet for one who doesn’t want to know God, because of their fears of not wanting any being to put any kind of demands upon their lives, they will never know God, or truly follow Him. Cowardice and pride is the greatest enemy of most who claim to be atheists or agnostics, because they truly do not like even the idea of God, much less are they willing to look at the evidence without reservation with an open mind….and heart.

Yes, yes, of course. Atheists just don’t want to feel like they have any holy obligations. Of course, this whole argument is premised on the idea that it is plausible that God might exist and for that reason we think, oh boy, we better stick our heads in the sand. Except the whole idea behind being an atheist is that most of us don’t think God is plausible. We aren’t rejecting God because we don’t like what he has to say; that suggests atheists secretly believe in God but just prefer a more hedonistic and selfish path. In fact, we don’t believe in God, we don’t believe in God, we don’t believe in God.

Try this. Seriously pray and say to God. “God, I don’t know if you exist or if Jesus was who he claimed to be, your Son who died for us, but if you are real and if this is true, will you please help me to see you and to come to know you. Reveal yourself to me while I read, study and seek you and help me to overcome my doubts.”

This is my favorite. The magic-believer asks the rational person to pray…and be serious! The hope here is that the rational person will fall for the trick and actually start believing; it would be the only way to satisfy the request. Of course, if the person really is rational, then none of this is going to happen.

I omitted quite a bit of the email since it is quite long, but there are several times when it is claimed that there is good evidence for belief in God. At no point is a single shred presented. No, no, of course not. Instead, it is hoped that veiled threats of being away from good and near evil will persuade me. Unfortunately for desperate believers, I see anyone who tries to get people to believe something based upon the threat of eternal punishment to be perpetuating evil themselves.

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

On Adam and Eve

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Michael

Some Christians believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. In fact, over 40% of Americans believe the Universe is less than 10,000 years old. (We can presume the majority of those people derive their erroneous belief from the Bible.) This means a huge swath of people in the U.S. have beliefs that are inconsistent with science – and the reason is religion. However, we can at least give these people some credit. Their belief that the Bible is inerrant practically demands that they believe in a young Universe; they’re consistent. But there’s a more important reason for their beliefs: Adam and Eve.

Christianity is based upon Jesus dying for our sins as brought about by Adam and Eve (especially that dirty, filthy, sub-human woman Eve, amirite?). Without Adam and Eve, Christianity falls apart at the seams. Couple that with extreme ignorance, and you’ve got creationists. But what about the Christians who ‘accept’ evolution? We know they don’t really accept it, but they at least superficially claim they do. So what about them? They are necessarily rejecting the idea that Adam and Eve literally existed. Without these two, The Fall didn’t happen and Jesus was not necessary. In this view of Christianity, God created people as disobedient to him. Not only does this make God all the more twisted and weird, but it further compounds the Problem of Evil that Christianity is unable to answer.

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

On the conflict between science and religion

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Michael

It’s often said, ‘Sure, other people’s religion conflicts with science, but they aren’t representative of the majority. Besides, my religion isn’t in conflict with science!”

Here’s a simple test to find out if your religion conflicts with science:

1) Do you believe in miracles?
2) Do you believe in a creator who directed evolution?
3) Do you believe prayers work? (And why doesn’t your god heal amputees?)
4) Do you think faith is a virtue?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these, and you derive your answer(s) from your religion, then your religion does conflict with science. Let me explain.

1) A miracle is a suspension or interruption of a physical law or constant. The whole idea in science is that physical laws and constants are true at all times and in all places. If you believe they can be arbitrarily interrupted, your belief is in conflict with science; science does not allow for the interruption of, say, the speed of light in a vacuum. You can believe that the speed of light in a vacuum can be changed by your god, but (aside from having no evidence for such a claim) your belief is one that is anti-scientific.

2) Evolution is a natural process that is based upon the changing of allelic frequencies within a population over time. It happens as a result of genetic change and interaction with the environment. It is a natural process that is contingent upon a long series of chance happening and natural selection; under the same environmental conditions, a re-running of the history of life would give different results. You can believe your god made it so humans (or any other animal) would be inevitable, but your belief is anti-scientific.

3) The science is in and prayer does not work. You can still believe it does, but your belief is anti-scientific.

4) Science is a valuing of reason, experiment, and, ultimately, evidence. Faith is the anti-thesis of this. You can still believe faith is a good thing, but your belief is anti-scientific; it is not a belief that is found within science.

Bonus conflict: Philosophy

Do you believe in the philosophical reasoning of the First Cause? This is the argument that says everything has a cause and thus the Universe has a cause. (And then it is randomly declared that God is eternal.) This goes against science because Newton told us that everything which has a force has an opposite and equal force. This is dependent upon observations made within the Universe. Your philosophy goes beyond this evidence and makes a conclusion which is independent of the sort of reasoning Newton used. In other words, if you say the Universe has a cause because everything else has a cause, you aren’t making sense. Everything within the Universe has a cause. That’s all science tells us. We can presume a reason for the Universe since it, well, exists, but we cannot use the scientific reasoning used by Newton; he was talking about forces within the Universe.

Filed under: Religions, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

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