There seem to be a thousand and one uses for The Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up,” which is hardly surprising, given that it was one of the best dance tunes of the 1990s, from one of the best dance albums of the 1990s.
Prodigy Vs. Enya
Prodigy Vs. Kylie Minogue
More “Smack My Bitch Up” mash-ups over the fold . . .
Prodigy Vs. Dirty Old Anne
Prodigy Vs. Lady Sovereign
What the NSW Government is doing to liberal democracy in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Mutaween is a generic term for religious police in Islamic countries. They’re the guys (and of course they tend to be guys) who go around arresting, beating, flogging and even killing ordinary citizens who flout religious laws. In countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, women tend to find themselves the victims of the sadistic dogma-enforcers (see this Amnesty report from 2000), who on one occasion prevented schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building “because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress.” (15 of the schoolgirls subsequently died, having been beaten back into the blaze by the police.) We in the modern, enlightened West like to pride ourselves on our difference from sickeningly backward societies like the theocracies of the Islamic world. We value religious freedom, and are not so cognitively immature that we require the repressive apparatus of the state to artificially prop up religious faith and deliver us from reality. Certainly nothing could be more alien to the liberal democratic values we cherish than the idea of religious police, right?
Wrong. As you are doubtless already aware, the NSW Government has deemed it necessary to outsource the Sydney constabulary (as well as emergency services) as rent-a-cops for the Spanish Inquisition, and they have already proceeded to heavy potential critics:
Lapsed Catholic Luke Roberts is a homosexual activist and performer who goes by the stage name Pope Alice, a character best described as a celestial being of indeterminate gender. Along with Pope Benedict, Pope Alice will also be in Sydney during World Youth Day, hosting a “kiss-in” along Oxford Street in Darlinghurst.
“I want to see Pope Alice express herself as a focal point for anybody - gays, lesbians, transgender, queers, bisexuals, heterosexuals, anyone who has an open mind and wants to say, ‘We’ve had enough of the medieval religions that keep the world backwards,’” Mr Roberts said.
The performer has made no secret of the proposed kiss-in.
“You’re having your thing and we are having ours,” he said. “This is one of the gay capitals of the world.”
Yesterday, it appeared the NSW Police got wind of the plans. Mr Roberts received a call in Brisbane from a detective who identified himself as being from the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice World Youth Day Investigation Squad. He was then asked a series of questions. (ABC News Online)
Despite firm denials by the Minister for World Youth Day, the Sydney Morning Herald has revealed that police have informed protesters that “they need to have placards, banners and T-shirts pre-approved or risk losing their protest “rights” - even those groups representing victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests.”
And there may be, as Bruce and jim the lesser (a commenter at Matt’s Notepad) suggest, another angle to this. The State Government regulations also prohibit the distribution of “religious items” without the approval of the World Youth Day Co-ordination Authority: “for example, rosary beads, candles, candle holders, prayer tokens and prayer cards.” Jim suggests that
The regulations have little to do with protesters; rather they are designed to protect the “official merchandises” but more importantly, to prevent church groups, who are not conservative enough for the Sydney Cardinal and the Opus Dei senior echelons of the World Youth Day Committee, from distributing any material which is not orthodox enough for them.
So it may turn out that we have a situation where the state is not merely privileging a particular religion, nor a particular denomination within that religion, but a specific faction within that denomination. Which is a very good reason to favour secularism and the separation of church and state, is it not?
There are those who will bristle at the comparison being made between the religious police in Islamic theocracies such as Saudi Arabia, and the (albeit temporary) religious police that will pound the streets during the World Youth Day festivities. Said bristlers are, in my view, simply invoking the “NABA defense“. Of course, protesters in Sydney don’t have to fear anything like the kind of savage brutality to which the citizens of the aforementioned theocracies are subject at the hands of state-sponsored sharia-enforcers; the worst a gay rights or Broken Rites protester can potentially expect is a $5,500 fine. That is not the point. The point is that in a mature liberal democracy that cherishes freedom of religion, freedom and speech and the marketplace of ideas, the state has no business using police powers to shield members of a particular faith from protest and criticism.
Ninglun blogs on the same topic here. Catholic priest Frank Brennan has condemned the laws, and the Council for Civil Liberties is preparing a court challenge.
On this website you can watch a woman in a bikini plummeting endlessly over, past and through silver spheres. If she comes to a halt, don’t worry: you can just use your mouse to pick her up and set her on her way again.
Enjoy.
While we’re Stumbling around the intertubes, you may care to have a look at:
Here’s my “Stump the Yoo” question. Would the President endorse US military interrogators adopting Chinese Communist interrogation methods used to extract confessions, mainly false, from American prisoners during the Korean War?
Apparently, yes.
In fact, military trainers in Guantanamo Bay based an entire class on the Sadean techniques outlined in a 1957 Air Force document based on the accounts of US prisoners returning from North Korea, “some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.” The US military at the time (i.e. the 50s) wasn’t buying the so-called confessions, which it deemed the result of “brainwashing,” and used the Air Force document to develop a training program, SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), aimed at stiffening the resolve of military personnel, should they be captured, by exposing them to the harsh methods of the enemy. There is even a SERE course built into America’s Army: Special Forces, the first person shooter distributed for free by the US military as a recruitment tool.
In 2002, a chart copied verbatim from the 1957 Air Force report became a source of interrogation methods adopted by the military and the CIA, with the only change being the removal of the original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.” Communist techniques used in Guantanamo (which, as the New York Times article notes, were long recognised by the US as torture) have included forcing prisoners to stand for excessively long periods of time, exposure to extreme cold, stress positions, and waterboarding. President Bush has given these torture methods (after all, that’s what Americans were happy to call them when the Communists were using them) the thumbs up, claiming that “they helped provide critical intelligence and prevented new terrorist attacks.” Because torturing people using techniques that have not proven to yield reliable confessions is what Jesus would do.
Via the commenter “minimalist” at Pharyngula.
John Yoo is a Berkeley law professor and one of the architects of the PATRIOT Act and the Bush Administration’s torture policies. Much is being made of an exchange with John Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee, in which Yoo refuses to delimit the possibilities of what a president could do to a suspect, or give a straight answer to a simple question: “Could the president order a suspect to be buried alive?” This has prompted a rather amusing game of “Stump the Yoo” at Pharyngula.
The inventor of that game, Gary Farber of Amygdala, alerts us to a previous interchange with Yoo in which he explained that the president had the right to order the testicles of a suspect’s child to be crushed:
Transcript:
Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
In January 2002 Yoo, working for the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, co-authored a memo declaring that the Geneva Conventions and other international laws did not apply to members of al-Qaeda. This prompted a quarter of the graduating class at Yoo’s law school to wear red armbands at their 2003 graduation ceremony in protest of the memo. Earlier this year, a much more comprehensive 2003 document co-penned by Yoo was brought to light in the form of a legal brief authorising the use of extreme interrogation methods, and arguing that wartime powers exempted interrogators from laws banning harsh treatment, and that many American and international laws would be inapplicable to interrogations conducted overseas.
The Australian and international blogosphere is abuzz with news of New South Wales’ antidemocratic laws protecting Catholicism from criticism during the World Youth Day festivities:
EXTRAORDINARY new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance” to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today.
The laws, which operate until the end of July, have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music, critics say.
Police and volunteers from the State Emergency Service and Rural Fire Service will be able to direct people to cease engaging in conduct that “causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event”.
People who fail to comply will be subject to a $5500 fine.
The Church itself has denied requesting the regulations. You can read more at Pharyngula, The Thinker’s Podium and An Onymous Lefty.
An organisation by the name of the No To Pope Coalition is prepared to take the $5500 challenge. Which brings to mind recent police crackdowns on anti-Scientology protests in London and Glasgow, as well as the arrest last week of a Gold Coast teenager for wearing a T-shirt deemed “blasphemous.” Having our delicate religious sensibilities offended, it appears, is something we want the police and the government to protect us against.
But what do you think? Do the religious have a right not to be offended?
Machine Gun Keyboard’s take on World Youth Day
The week in fundie . . .
It has been a while since I’ve posted one of these. “Before The Law” comprises part of the penultimate chapter of The Trial, though an extant form was published during Kafka’s lifetime. It is said that Kafka used to laugh hysterically when reading The Trial to his friends, and this makes me wonder whether “Before The Law” inspired the great Seinfeld episode “The Chinese Restaurant.” In both cases, for example, the protagonists are being denied access to a place they are completely free not to attempt to enter; when they inquire as to whether it is possible to enter, Kafka’s gatekeeper replies “It is possible [. . .] but not now,” while Seinfeld’s maître d’ repeatedly assures them they will be waiting “5, 10 minutes,” regardless of how much time has actually passed; and both protagonists try unsuccessfully to bribe the gatekeeper/maître d’, though their gifts are accepted. Read the story, watch “The Chinese Restaurant” (if you have it on DVD/VHS) and see what you think.
The following translation is courtesy of Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, British Columbia:
Before the Law
Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” At the moment the gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud, later, as he grows old, he still mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”
Because this one (via Bruce) has been in circulation for months. Turn to page 123 of the book nearest to you and write out the 5th sentence. Repeat this instruction to any forwardees, should you choose to participate.
The closest book at this point in time is Franz Kafka: The Complete Novels. And here’s p. 123, sentence 5:
But the doorkeeper is bound to his post by his very office, he does not dare strike out into the country, nor apparently may he go into the interior of the Law, even should he wish to.
That’s from the gatekeeper parable that the priest relates to K in the penultimate chapter of The Trial. An extant form of the parable was published as a short story, “Before the Law.” Mikey should appreciate it, given his line of work. 
I’m a little reluctant to forward this meme, given how long it has been floating around, but I tag The Lazy Aussie and Clare.
Clare linked to me from a post in which she had some interesting things to say about skepticism, and about which I’ll say a bit more shortly. But she has a far more pressing and harrowing tale to tell about her experiences as a victim of clergy sexual abuse, experiences which have not caused her to reject theism, but which have heightened her awareness of the dark places that religion mixed with authoritarianism can lead. I encourage you to read it.
Towards the end of her narrative, Clare mentioned coming “from a long line of family with psychic ability,” and that might explain her position on skepticism. She divides skeptics into two camps: “There are those who debunk claims of the “miraculous” by finding and offering a rational scientific explanation, and there are those who debunk any claim they don’t understand and/or that hasn’t been proven.” A truly enquiring mind, she argues, “will go looking for evidence both ways rather than either a) debunking or b) sitting back waiting for the proof to be handed to them.” Well, strictly-speaking the word debunking, a transitive verb meaning “to expose the sham or falseness of,” would only apply to the first kind of skepticism. I’m not sure that many the majority of skeptics would fall into the second camp (just as I doubt that the majority of atheists would be strong atheists), but I gather Clare either has had, or believes she has had experience of such individuals.
I don’t think that there is much Clare says in this post or in the comment thread that I would disagree with. I agreed with her that if we are presented with a phenomena and a claim of supernatural causation for said phenomena, we ought not to dismiss the phenomena out of hand. (I think I’ve heard Joe Nickell, a skeptical investigator of the paranormal, express a similar view on the Point of Inquiry podcast.) But we are under no obligation to accept the claim of supernatural causation if the claimant has not provided sufficient supporting evidence.
Anyway, have a look at what Clare has to say about skepticism yourself. As for you, Clare, welcome to my blogroll.
According to John Stear of No Answers in Genesis, Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries International has claimed that his organisation is in possession of an 8-page draft of the Apology to the Stolen Generations tabled in Parliament by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In an article in which he also lauds the denialism of Andrew Bolt on this issue, Wieland claims that the draft contains the following paragraph, excised from the final version of the speech:
‘Prior to 1861, missionaries were prepared to accept according to the principles of their religions, that Aboriginal people were every bit as capable as Europeans. But with the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origins [sic] of the Species in 1859, a new theory starts to take hold and the conception that Aboriginal people are a “disappearing race” starts to take hold in Australian public life. This had equally catastrophic consequences for Aboriginal people and communities.’
Wieland celebrates this passage as supporting the Biblical view that “we are all made in God’s image,” against the “Darwinist” view that “some [humans] must be more ‘highly evolved’ than others.” But he also bemoans, for obvious reasons, a reference to “over 50,000 years of Aboriginal wisdom and knowledge that has never been properly acknowledged or understood by Australian governments,” describing this statement as “inherent[ly] racis[t].” He asserts:
A biblical framework of history, where Australia’s indigenous population arrived here a relatively short time ago, having lost some ‘know-how’ due to the dispersion at Babel and the resulting migration/dispersal, makes more sense of the facts while at the same time intrinsically assigning greater dignity to indigenous peoples.
Wieland then goes on to tell lies about evolution and those who accept it . . .
Whereas the eugenic/racist viewpoint is not only consistent with a Darwinian history of man, it is its logical corollary. So where modern Darwinists shy away from racist views, it is in spite of their Darwinism, not because of it.
. . . and says that he is “grateful that the draft apology at least recognized the role that Darwin had to play in causing much suffering.”
So, what does a YEC account of Aboriginal history look like? Stear quotes Ken Ham:
… let us apply a Biblical perspective on history to the Australian Aborigines (hopefully with sensitivity). Their ancestor Noah had the knowledge of the true God. He also had ship building technology, farming ability, knew how to work alloys, etc. Remnants of this true knowledge of God, of creation and of Noah, can still be seen in their mythology, e.g. they have many legends of a world wide flood. All of which means that somewhere in their history, this knowledge has been forgotten, lost, or deliberately discarded. The culture Captain Cook discovered was spiritist. They did not have the knowledge of the true God and only had a ’stone age’ culture. [. . .] Someone, somewhere in their history, has turned away from the true God, devised their own religion and successfully persuaded their fellow Aborigines to accept it. They have suffered the consequences of this…
From this unsubstantiated garbage, Stear notes, Ham derives his opposition to indigenous land rights:
It should be obvious that unless you have a correct view of the Aborigines’ history— you will be unlikely to have a correct view about land rights.For instance, on the basis of a literal Biblical view of world history, aborigines have been in Australia less than 4,000 years (not 40,000). Many want land rights so that Aboriginal sacred or religious sites can be kept. Is this valid? Again, before we can decide, we must have a correct view of why they want sacred sites preserved. Is it that they want to preserve all things associated with their religion? If this is the case then to understand their religion, you have to understand their true history. Isn’t their religion anti-God? Shouldn’t Christians rather be telling the aborigines [sic] they need to turn to the true God of history and turn their back on pagan worship?
The concept of ‘land rights’ (or ownership of land) is not known in traditional Aboriginal culture. It is a terminology introduced from European materialistic culture and imposed upon the Aborigines.
Back to Wieland’s claims about being in possession of the draft: as Stear points out, if that is the case, Creation Ministries International should produce it so that its allegations about missing pro-creationist paragraphs may be verified. Stear also mentions that he wrote to the Prime Minister on behalf of Australian Skeptics seeking verification of CMI’s claims, and remarks that the reply was “less than helpful”: denying that a draft version of the speech was released prior to its delivery in Parliament, but saying nothing about whether the paragraph cited by Wieland had been purposely edited out.
Via NRT in the comments at Pharyngula.
The week in fundie . . .
distributed a brochure to all students that approvingly quotes the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ blames Freemasons and Zionists for the world wars, and claims that they control U.S. and British policy and the global financial system.
(Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion)
Okay, I’ll bite. The man is a liar and a blowhard. A strawman-builder from the get-go:
“Though the atheists claim to represent the side of reason,” he asserts in his book, “their arguments more often than not are ideological rather than rational.”
Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods. Period. If that’s all it takes to constitute an ideology, then not collecting stamps is an ideology. (Aphilatelism?)
Williams has joined the ranks of fleas with an anti-atheist tome entitled Greater Than You Think: A Theologian Answers the Atheists About God. Why does the world need this book? (That is, in addition to the plethora of recent releases with the same Christian apologist/anti-atheist agenda?) Because there has been a “surge in neo-atheist literature” in recent times, with books by Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens making the best-seller list, and as a consequence:
most people only hear one side of the story. They become indoctrinated with the atheistic arguments without ever hearing a reasoned response.
You have to ask yourself what parallel universe this guy is inhabiting, because he’s certainly absent from this one if he can utter the phrase “most people only hear one side of the story” with a straight face, given that he means “the ‘atheist’ side.” Actually, the problem is that, regarding belief and especially regarding non-belief, most people do only hear one side: and that is precisely what is prompting individual atheists, prominent and not-so-prominent, to speak out. Williams’ ridiculous statement reminds me of British Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor’s call for Christianity to be given unopposed air time on the BBC–anything less would be “Christophobic,” according to the Cardinal. Both men are either completely disconnected from reality, or telling lies.
As for the “indoctrination” charge: your side of the debate is familiar to everyone, Williams. Apologists keep telling us how your religion is the bedrock of Western civilisation. Being exposed to dissenting and critical voices does not constitute indoctrination, unless you have an idiosyncratic interpretation of that term that have neglected to share with us.
He continues:
Just to name a few, atheists claim that religion is inimical to science, and that the Christian Church in particular sought to stamp out scientific research. They charge that “religion kills” and has been responsible for most of our wars and social ills. They say that religious belief requires the renunciation of reason and the embrace of willful blindness. They assert that religion does not contribute to moral improvement, and that it makes people sour and sad, rather than joyful.
It bears repeating: atheism is simply the lack of belief in gods. Nothing more, nothing less. What individual atheists think about religion is a separate matter, and you will find among atheists varying degrees of agreement and disagreement with the claims above, none of which are necessary to the definition of atheism. So when you assert that “atheists claim x” and “atheists claim y,” and provide no evidence that atheists (all of them) make such claims in unison, you are making a strawman argument. You are telling lies, and nobody is obliged to dignify your mendacity with a response. That’s part of the reason why I’m not going to defend Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris or Dennett against your blather: to do so would be to give your strawman undue credit.
There is one thing, however, that simply cannot be passed over in silence, and that is Williams’ historical revision regarding the history of science and the Church. Williams actually says the following:
Science grew out of the fertile humus of Christian culture. The Catholic Church, in particular, was at the forefront of scientific investigation and sponsored scientific research the way it patronized the arts. Some of history’s greatest scientists — Newton, Pasteur, Galileo, Lavoisier, Kepler, Copernicus, Faraday, Maxwell, Bernard, and Heisenberg –were all Christians, and Gregor Mendel — the father of modern genetics — was a Catholic priest. The Jesuit order in particular spearheaded much scientific study.
“Science grew out of the fertile humus of Christian culture.” Tell that to Hypatia of Alexandria, who was seized by a Christian mob during Lent, at the urging of Saint Cyril, stripped naked, and had the flesh torn from her bones with roof tiles. Tell that to Giordano Bruno, burnt at the stake for heresy. (And if it is objected that we don’t really know whether Bruno was declared heretic on the grounds of his Copernicanism, because his file is missing, ask how a culture that foments the burning of people at the stake for heresy could possibly be conducive to the flourishing of scientific inquiry.) Tell it to Galileo, who was fortunate enough to evade being burnt for his beliefs, but was placed under house arrest by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (in those days known as the Inquisition) for printing his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. There is no single atheist position on the relationship between religion and science, of course. Some see little conflict. Some, like Richard Feynman, see fundamental conflict . . . or at least incompatibility. Feynman addresses the charge that science=atheism=communism as follows:
I would like to remark, in passing, since the word “atheism” is so closely connected with “communism,” that the communist views are the antithesis of the scientific, in the sense that in communism the answers are given to all the questions–political questions as well as moral ones–without discussion and without doubt. The scientific viewpoint is the exact opposite of this; that is, all questions must be doubted and discussed; we must argue everything out–observe things, check them, and so change them.
For this individual atheist (i.e. yours truly), dogmatic religion–particularly a dogmatic religion that punishes heresy–is the antithesis of scientific inquiry and not its stimulus. To say that a religious culture in which the answers to all questions are determined in advanced, and any dissent is punished, provides “fertile humus” for a mode of thinking in which all questions must be doubted and discussed is a contradiction.
I’m looking forward to Mojoey’s review of Greater Than You Think, if he can be bothered wasting his time.
Bruce and Mojoey are among those (I assume there are more) who have been contacted by publishers Hachette Group and offered the chance to review their anti-atheist book Greater Than You Think, by the Vatican’s Father Thomas D. Williams. There is an interview with Williams at Zenit.com. I’ll leave Bruce and Mojoey to look at it for now, though what it reveals is that what Mojoey, who has agreed to review the book, can expect is another dishonest exercise in broad-brush-stroking about atheists, based on a beef the author has with a certain Four Horsemen whose arguments he represents as standing in synecdochically for the beliefs of all atheists.
Any book which makes grandiose claims about “debunking” the “common fallacies perpetuated by atheism” needs to be read with a huge dose of salt, and that dose of salt is as follows. Atheism is a single position on a single question: “Do you believe in a god/gods?” (The atheist answer being “No.”) Any other claim about what all atheists believe, or what atheists in general believe, or what the majority of atheists believe, is likely to be a strawman, and should be treated like the dishonest rhetoric it plainly is. Unless, of course, the individual making the claim is prepared to substantiate it with sufficient evidence. If said individual is neither willing nor able to do so, he or she is a liar and a blowhard. Those aren’t simply ad hominems, by the way: they’re descriptive statements of fact. Furthermore, if the individual wielding strawmen happens to be a Roman Catholic priest, don’t be afraid to use that against him. Commandment number 8 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church reads as follows: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” The Catechism continues: “The Lord denounces lying as the work of the devil: ‘You are of your father the devil, . . . there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.’”
Textbook disclaimer stickers from the biology department at Swarthmore College:
In Wayland High School, Michigan, two 14-year old girls viciously beat a third girl because, as they told police, the girl was an advocate for gay rights and “was trying to in their words ‘impose her views on them.’” A third girl captured the assault on film (and the video was subsequently posted to several Internet sites), suggesting, as police suspect, that the attack was pre-meditated. Because of the age of the perpetrators, the FBI has stated that it will not be investigating potential hate crime violations; and the state of Michigan does not have any hate crimes based on sexual orientation.
Melissa Pope, a spokesperson for local GLBT advocacy group Triangle Foundation, argues that the attack underlines the urgency for the Michigan legislature to pass “Matt’s Law,” an anti-bullying and hate crimes bill:
Matt’s Safe Schools Law [is] a law that would require every school district in Michigan to have a bullying policy in place to protect all children. The bill has been passed by the House and sits in the Senate Education Committee awaiting a hearing.
The chair of the Committee, Republican Wayne Kuipers, opposes the bill in its current form.
The notion that in a healthy, functioning liberal democracy (and whether the US meets the criteria is another matter) you ought to be able to attend an educational institution without being physically assaulted by those who disagree with your views or sexual preferences, should be a no-brainer. But “refcoach,” a commenter at The Grand Rapids Press, disagrees. In his view, the bitch had it coming:
Well its obvious that if your a loud mouth little girl and your always in somebody else’s face all the time its going to come back to haunt you.
Yes you have the right to free speech, but you also have the right to having consequences for your actions. If this girl treated others with a bit more respect she would have not had this happen.
Hat to say, but she got what she deserved.
For refcoach, then, liberal democracy is a boot stamping on the faces of those with whom you disagree, forever. And I doubt very much that he “hats” to say it.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the perpetrators are facing expulsion. As for “Karol,” the victim:
she says she’s not angry about the fight.”Sure my bumps and bruises will go away, but they’re going to get expelled… they’re in trouble with the courts… whose the real loser.”, said Karol.
(Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)
The week in fundie:
The young are often the targets. In early May, Vumilia Makoye, 17, was eating dinner with her family in their hut in western Tanzania when two men showed up with long knives.Vumilia was like many other Africans with albinism. She had dropped out of school because of severe near-sightedness, a common problem for albinos, whose eyes develop abnormally and who often have to hold things like books or cellphones two inches away to see them. She could not find a job because no one would hire her. She sold peanuts in the market, making $2 a week while her delicate skin was seared by the sun.
When Vumilia’s mother, Jeme, saw the men with knives, she tried to barricade the door of their hut. But the men overpowered her and burst in.
“They cut my daughter quickly,” she said, making hacking motions with her hands.
The men sawed off Vumilia’s legs above the knee and ran away with the stumps. Vumilia died.
The article also refers to the murder in Kenya of an albino woman, whose eyes, tongues and breasts were gouged out. This is where magical thinking can lead, people. It can lead to superstitious thugs breaking down the door of your house and hacking your children to death. (HT: Dogma Free America. See also The Standard.)
Assorted David Bowie clips, in chronological order.
1968: “When I’m Five” (from the short film Love You Til Tuesday)
1969: “Space Oddity” (David Bowie)
1970: “The Man Who Sold the World” (The Man Who Sold the World)
1971: “Changes” (Hunky Dory)
1972: “Starman” (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars)
1973: “The Jean Genie” (Aladdin Sane)
1974: “Rebel Rebel” (Diamond Dogs)
1975: “Fame” (Young Americans)
1975: “Golden Years” (Station to Station)
1977: “Sound and Vision” (Low)
1977: “‘Heroes’” (“Heroes”)
1980: “Ashes to Ashes” (Scary Monsters (and Scary Creeps)) (I had to throw this one in)
1983: “Modern Love” (Let’s Dance)
1984: “Blue Jean” (Tonight)
1986: “Absolute Beginners” (from the soundtrack to Absolute Beginners)
1993: “Jump They Say” (Black Tie, White Noise)
1995: “Hallo Spaceboy” (Outside)
