It looks like Obama has picked Sanjay Gupta to be surgeon general. He seems a bit of a lightweight, to me — he's mainly known as a congenial talking head on television news. He's also an apologist for US health care, which does not give me any confidence that we can expect the slightest effort towards health care reform. I suspect Obama has just picked a pleasant smiling face to act as a placeholder, and that disappoints me.
We'll have to see how that ol' conservative, Orac, reacts to this news.
Read the comments on this post...Rev Ewen Souter, the vicar at St John’s Church in Horsham, West Sussex removed a creepy looking sculpture of Jesus because it was frightening children.
“The crucifix expressed suffering, torment, pain and anguish. It was a scary image, particularly for children. Parents didn’t want to walk past it with their kids, because they found it so horrifying. It wasn’t a suitable image for the outside of a church wanting to welcome worshippers. In fact, it was a real put-off. We’re all about hope, encouragement and the joy of the Christian faith. We want to communicate good news, not bad news, so we need a more uplifting and inspiring symbol than execution on a cross.”
George Carlin and Kevin Smith called it years ago, but none of us believed it would ever happen:
Christians love whining and crying about how they’re “second-class citizens” who are constantly “oppressed”.
They are, in fact, the overwhelming majority of the population and the government and they essentially have complete control of all of our lives. It is only by the grace of the moderate Christians (still Christians) that the Constitution has not yet been used as tinder in the First Annual Fag Drag Fire Pyre. (That’s where they grab all the gays they can find and drag them from the back of their pick-up truck to the middle of the Mall in D.C. and light them ablaze on a large pile of human rights legislation. We do it all the time here in the South.) The Christians in this nation control everything and want control over even more. American Christians calling themselves second-class citizens is like Warren Buffett calling himself a pauper or the Royal Family calling themselves relevant: It’s exactly the opposite of what they really are and it makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
What makes me throw up in my mouth a lot is when Christians not-quite-ironically use an instance of a battle they won against a minority that they wanted to suppress (dictionary definition of “not second-class citizen”) to show that they are truly second-class.
The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission just issued its top-10 list of worst “Christian bashing” incidents in 2008. And what was #1? What was the most sinister event in the bashing of Christians in 2008?
And finally, the #1 Christian Bashing Instance in America for 2008…
INSTANCE #1: Radical Homosexuals Assault Prop 8 Marriage Supporters in California
During and after the November campaign stories flooded in of pro-Prop 8 signs being taken, people verbally and physically assaulted, church property and private automobiles vandalized, and person’s jobs and pastor’s lives threatened simply for exercising their right to campaign and vote in support of traditional marriage.
So… when gay people get upset because they finally got their deserved rights in one tiny corner of the country but the Christians rip those rights out from under them, that’s Christian-bashing?
Christians, in order to prove to themselves and their invited pity party that they are indeed second-class citizens, turned an actual minority of people into second-class citizens.
If I made a top-10 list of anti-gay bigotry in 2008, each number would be another murder, several of them mass-murders. An event as benign as PZ Myers putting a gay pride flag in a garbage can (the Christian list includes Crackergate) would probably not even make the top 1000 after I factor in every murder, rape or torture of gay people around the world.
Worse things have happened to me, personally, this past year than what appears on that whining list.
I think Christians have forgotten what bashing means.
Why don’t we show them some bashing and remind them what it’s like. As for me, I’m going to invest in lions.
Posted in Gay Rights, Religion
The atheist bus campaign has been a great success, and now it's about to expand, with godless signs going up all over. This is good news for reason — so many people are appalled at the blind faith of their neighbors, but since they don't know anyone who shares their views, they are reluctant to speak up. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes more rationalists aware that they are not alone, and that they can speak out.
Read the comments on this post...A word of advice to religious people:
When a woman on a dating website has a profile that mentions her atheism, please, please, please do not respond to her like this guy did to a friend of mine:
My God, what’s the world coming to when girls with angelic countenances like yours turn out to be atheists? Me, I still believe that there’s good and evil, and since those concepts are rendered meaningless in an atheistic framework, I’m not willing to make that tremendous leap of faith, especially into such a pessimistic world view. (Not to mention, it kind of ruins Christmas — and why would anyone choose to believe something that ruins Christmas? That just seems so needlessly cruel to oneself.)
Oh well — take care, best wishes in your life, and you’ve got great cheekbones.respectfully,
Jack
The guy’s profile also included his wish for the type of girl he’d like to meet:
Someone who knows how to curtsey. A companion / muse / charming, village servant girl who will cater to, and endure, my moods and needs… you don’t have to promise to always be a good little girl (a little mischief is expected), but you do have to promise to at least be willing to sit up all hours of the night… and still make coffee in the morning.
Right…
She is *so* not going to bear his children anytime soon…
Anyone else think she should go ahead and meet the guy just for our future amusement?
No?
Just me?
Damn.
Has your atheism ever hurt your dating life before it even began?
I don't make this stuff up.Anaheim clergyman videotaped himself molesting 13-year-old girl in church office, then delivering sermon on blasphemy.
An Anaheim pastor, who had videotaped himself molesting a 13-year-old parishioner in a church office, cried and clutched a Bible behind his back Monday as he was led from a courtroom in handcuffs after pleading guilty to 34 felony sex counts.
Raul Rosas Hernandez, 44, was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno to 90 years in prison after he admitted molesting four girls and one boy over a 10-year span beginning in 1996.
Hernandez cried and clutched a bible... What a hypocrite. The bible is not going to save you now. 90 years is essentially life in prison. For a pedophile, 90 years is a death sentence, or at least he will wish he were dead.
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THE Church of England has published a new prayer for the growing ranks of the unemployed to help them through troubled times.
The prayer has been written to offer comfort to those who have been sacked as the economy heads into recession, by recognising their fears and suggesting that belief in God can help them cope, according to today’s Telegraph.
The Church has written a second prayer from the viewpoint of someone who has kept their job while others in the same office or factory have lost theirs, describing their feelings of sadness, guilt and worries about the future.
The two prayers have been published on the Church of England’s website and are also being printed in a leaflet to be handed out in churches.
The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, the Rt Rev John Packer, said the prayers show that the Church is there for people in times of crisis.
The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
Here’s the prayer in full:
Redundant’ – the word says it all -
‘useless,
unnecessary,
without purpose,
surplus to requirements.’
Thank you, Heavenly Father, that in the middle of
the sadness,
the anger,
the uncertainty,
the pain,
I can talk to you.
Hear me as I cry out in confusion,
help me to think clearly,
and calm my soul.
As life carries on,
may I know your presence with me
each and every day.
And as I look to the future,
help me to look for fresh opportunities, for new directions.
Guide me by your Spirit,
and show me your path,
through Jesus, the way, the truth and the life. Amen.
...it seems to be down, though there is a mirror site at toarchive.org. The Talk Origins Archive has frequently (and not surprisingly) been the target of creationist malice over the years. It's faced numerous DDOS attacks; someone hacked it and placed some code on it forwarding visitors to a pornographic site, which got TO delisted from Google for a while; you name it. No idea what's going on this time, though, but at least the site is still online in its complete form, just at a different URL. Adjust your bookmarks accordingly.
Egypt doesn't want Gaza back. Jordan doesn't want the West Bank (and if you're pissed at the Israelis, you'd be really pissed at how Jordan dealt with Palestinian terrorists: by killing suicide bombers' families after the bombing). And the Palestinians sure as hell don't want to be governed by anyone other than themselves.
One would expect a former ambassador to the United Nations who is paid to pontificate on international relations to, I don't know, actually know things about international relations.
Via Andrew Sullivan, Joe Carter does a tidy batch of bizarre anti-gay marriage arguments. Yes, the incest and polygamy analogies are in there. But I’m more interested in the fact that Carter, like so many conservatives these days, has given up on arguing over issues of substance and is ready to say “Okay, the gays can have whatever they want, except that they don’t get to call it marriage.” Actually, that’s not right, because Carter seems to want a civil union law far more radical in real legal impact than what proponents of gay marriage want–something I personally reject on the traditionalist grounds Carter uses to reject gay marriage. If it’s not broke, don’t’ fix it, and while we do have good reason to institute gay marriage, it’s not clear why anyone would want Carter-style civil unions, aside from as a ploy in the marriage debate.
But where it really gets juicy is this remark:
…for Sullivan, et al., it is not about benefits but about forcing the acceptance of gay sex as “normal” and equal to heterosexual sex. This is an absurd reason and nothing the government should be involved in.
This is the sort of obvious lie that shows the speaker isn’t thinking about what he’s saying. No proposal for gay marriage anywhere (at least, none getting serious discussion) involves forcing any individual to feel any particular way about gay sex. But I think this betrays what it is Carter, and the countless Evangelicals who’ve made similar paranoid accusations (Rick Warren, anyone?) are afraid of. If we make it legally easy for gay people to live normal lives–unclosetted, in stable relationships, raising some adopted kids–then lots of gay people are going to live normal lives. And people will see it, and have a hard time understanding why gay people shouldn’t be accepted. Opposition to gay marriage comes out of fear of acceptance–not forced acceptance, but acceptance earned by living a full life, free from government discrimination.
At least one Evangelical has more or less admitted this. And they’re right to be afraid. For, er, Christssake, they’re trying to base their lives around a book that says gays should be killed just for being gay, when nobody really believes that. They need to fear anything that would bring clarity to the issue.
That's the message of a bunch of London atheists who have begun a massive ad campaign in response to a silly "Jesus Said" ad campaign already underway:
Today, thanks to many Cif readers, the overall total raised for the Atheist Bus Campaign stands at a truly overwhelming £135,000, breaking our original target of £5,500 by over 2400%. Given this unexpected amount, I'm very excited to tell you that 800 buses – instead of the 30 we were initially aiming for – are now rolling out across the UK with the slogan, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life", in locations all over England, Scotland and Wales, including Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, Cardiff, Devon, Leeds, Bristol and Aberdeen.
From today's launch, two hundred of the buses will run in London, because the campaign was originally started as a positive counter-response to the Jesus Said ads running on London buses in June 2008. These ads displayed the URL of a website which stated that non-Christians "will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell … Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire prepared for the devil". Our rational slogan will hopefully reassure anyone who has been scared by this kind of evangelism.
The Gideon Bible.
Long before cable television, spa treatments and eco-friendly soaps and shampoos became staples in hotel rooms, there was the Bible — the Gideon Bible.
And the book with the familiar two-handled pitcher and torch on its cover that most guests find inside hotel nightstands doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.
Gideons International is celebrating its 100th anniversary distributing Bibles and has begun efforts to hand out more Scriptures in the U.S. to boost a distribution rate that’s remained relatively flat in recent years.
How are you celebrating the occasion?
(via The Daily Profaner)
The contradictions at work in this story are wonderful – the vicar of a church in Sussex has ordered the removal of a statue of the crucifixion on the following grounds:"The crucifix expressed suffering, torment, pain and anguish. It was a scary image, particularly for children. Parents didn't want to walk past it with their kids, because they found it so horrifying. It wasn't a suitable image for the outside of a church wanting to welcome worshippers. In fact, it was a real put-off. We're all about hope, encouragement and the joy of the Christian faith. We want to communicate good news, not bad news, so we need a more uplifting and inspiring symbol than execution on a cross."The words of Rev Ewen Souter of St John's Church in Horsham, a vicar in a religious movement which centres on the execution of its key prophet in exactly the manner represented in that statue, and whose internationally-recognised logo is a minuature version of that particularly brutal method of execution. Oh, and did I mention that they pretend to drink that prophet's blood in Church on Sundays (in this case it's definitely pretend, even to them, as St John's is Anglican)? Now that's really something to scare the kids with.
You may watch video of the shooting here (NSFW).
Two things are made very clear in the video: 1) That police officer clearly intended to use his taser on an unarmed individual surrounded by multiple police who, according to other eyewitness reports, was begging him not to. 2) That cop was too stupid in the heat of the moment to realize that he was holding his sidearm and not a taser. Either should disqualify him from service.
I think it's also clear by the expression on his face that he had no idea what he was doing and did not intend to shoot Mr. Grant. That is no excuse. The officer, who is unidentified, is given enormous power within our social contract. He and his fellows -- who were also acting egregiously -- have the responsibility to behave in a restrained and responsible manner.
I understand working with dangerous individuals. Since 2003, I have taught response methodologies to professionals working with volatile and often physically dangerous mentally ill and developmentally delayed people. These methods can be used anywhere. While I teach methods that require two or more people before "hands-on" techniques can be applied, there are versions (that I do not agree with) that teach single-professional interventions. Two police officers would have been sufficient to restrain Mr. Grant safely and without harm using any one of those techniques.
Did you know the Catholic church was established by Satan? You would if you read Chick comics. We also get the communion ritual explained for us.
You know what will happen if he doesn't. He will burn in hell for all eternity!
I do rather like the idea of an itty-bitty Jesus taking a dive off a cloud to land in a cracker, though. Wham!
Read the comments on this post...You know you're looking at a right-leaning site when the consistently awful comic strip, Day By Day, is doing well. But the Best Comic Strip category in the 2008 Weblog Awards does have two great entries: Jesus and Mo, and xkcd. If there is any justice in the universe, one of those two must win!
Read the comments on this post...
I'm just back from the launch of the Atheist Bus Campaign, which took place this lunchtime in a heated marquee beside London's Albert Memorial. As you can see from our picture, an Atheist Bus (or, more accurately, a bus displaying the campaign's ad) was parked by the marquee and, along with Richard Dawkins (seen here posing with aforementioned bus), speakers included campaign creator Ariane Sherine, BHA president Polly Toynbee, Father Ted writer Graham Linehan, philosopher AC Grayling and comedian Robin Ince.As Ariane explained at the launch, the campaign was originally only intended for London buses, but the incredible £135,000-plus raised on the JustGiving site means the campaign has been rolled out across the UK – 200 bendy buses in London, 600 buses in other UK cities, 1,000 panels on London Tube trains and two LCD video screens on Oxford Street will carry the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The Tube panels have an added surprise, featuring quotes from Emily Dickinson, Albert Einstein, Katharine Hepburn (see that one here) and Douglas Adams. Richard Dawkins unveiled the ad with the Adams quote, which is of course also featured in The God Delusion:
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
Atheist buses have already been spotted on the streets of London, and now many more sightings will occur around the UK. Do let us know if you've seen one by commenting on this post.
Those Brits keep showing us up by unashamedly trumpeting good science on television and radio. The BBC has a whole collection of media on Darwin right now, most of it good.
Most. One thing I simply do not get is the infatuation with the idea that evolution has stopped for humans. I am baffled at how anyone can take such an idea seriously, yet there's Steven Jones again making this peculiar claim.
Read the comments on this post...
I haven’t seen the film yet-waiting for the DVD. But Bill Maher is RIGHT ON THE MONEY.
I’ve put this off for far too long, so I’ll be sending the following away in the mail some time soon, solving my printer-cable issues just to fire off this one letter in the mail.
How to save on membership fees.
Dear South Australian Labor Party,
I’ve been a rank and file member of the ALP now for a good part of my life now. Not out of any kind of personal ambition, but simply to support the party with the most ties to the tradition of the Australian Union movement, and out of some degree of hope that the party would at least engage in a meaningful philosophical dialogue amongst its members.
My political activity has always been somewhat informal and thus never caring to leave my mark, I’m largely unknown in the party. Like most members.
I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve never needed to tie myself down to do what I want to do, and familiarity with the more Machiavellian parts of the party culture is best avoided especially if one can manage to do so without compromise.
A balance between compromise and reaching political objectives to our own favour, as an approach is at worst pragmatic. It needn’t be a cynical exercise at all and I think it’s what I find in common with the better nature of the party.
And that’s why I’m writing this resignation from the Australian Labor Party. Less and less have I had to operate within the party and more and more it seems obvious that the network I have within the party will persist even if I do resign. More to the point, I’m deeply compromised by the party.
Increasingly, my political activity involves my writing. Indeed, this open resignation is being published on my blog so I can openly sever my ties to the party. I’m wondering how many people will read it. Last federal election, I got to a lot more people with my piece entitled ‘The Myth of the economic credibility of the Liberal Party‘ than I ever would have handing out how-to-vote cards or letter-boxing.
I’ve been compromised and embarrassed by a number of things the ALP has stood for, accepted or otherwise involved itself in.
- Confusing the separation of church and state at a Federal level (where sect. 116 of the Commonwealth Constitution is all that holds the Government back) and outright violating the separation on a state level (where there are no constitutional barriers).
- Doing senate preference deals with candidates with no dedication to (or even understanding) of liberal democracy.
- Young Labor idiocy, which has become more Machiavellian than ever and also almost entirely intellectually threadbare. Not that I ever got involved back when I was young enough (it was bad enough then) but some experience with the current crop has been less than encouraging!
- The party’s treatment of Phil Palmer and the ambos that he watches out for (I really do hope that the Rann Government learnt something from the last exchange).
I could go on at length with more examples, but there is one example that has been the proverbial straw. One more example that I can’t chalk up to real politik.
Stephen Conroy with his unworkable, expensive and dangerously undemocratic filtering schema, and the disgusting lengths he goes to in order to silence dissent (further demonstrating that he is a willing opponent of liberal democracy) cause me the worst of compromises that I’ve experienced from the ALP.
The “clean feed” fails by its own standards as testing has found, although it would still be an adequate obstacle to free speech. You need only a few harmful sites to get through to invalidate the filter, but you only need to block a few harmless sites to violate democratic discourse.
Industry experts (i.e. people Conroy should be listening to) predict that the terms of the filter could be broadened at a whim to buy the passage of bills through the upper house; a concern validated by Senator Fielding and Senator Xenaphon’s expressions of interest in the technology (to place adult content and gambling on the mandatory block-list respectively).
If good old Brian Harradine was still in and had the balance of power, euthanasia advocates would have something to worry about, no doubt. If a rabid Hansonite gets the balance, look out Islam and anything possibly (spuriously) associated with eco-terrorism.
The federal government has taken the right tact in regard to UN moves that could stifle the ability for people to criticise religion. But then the UN doesn’t have a senate seat.
The real problem is one of child welfare, but that’s not what the policy is about. It’s about externalising consequences onto the breadth of Internet users, the consequences of something that is a matter of individual responsibility - parental responsibility at that.
The Internet isn’t, nor was it ever a babysitter. The failure of the Internet to perform as such isn’t a failure of the Internet, it’s a failure of parenting. It is child neglect. All Internet sessions need supervision by a responsible adult.
The fact that Conroy hasn’t the political cajones to front up to the public and tell it like it is, that he overlooks this child neglect, makes his “protect the children” line of rhetoric utterly vapid. Why is it always about sexual content and pedophiles? The former raises uncomfortable questions for some parents and the latter wouldn’t even be mildly inhibited by the proposed filter even if it worked. Why is there a disproportionately small amount of time given to textbook horror cases like the televised, uncensored, visceral Bud Dwyer suicide?
It’s because Conroy and his supporters are being insincere.
But the insincerity isn’t the worst of it. It’s Conroy’s attack on Mark Newton of Internode that I’m talking about.
I’m an acquaintance of Mark’s through the local open source community. As someone with only one subject to go in a science degree that will make me an IT professional, I’m happy to know there are colleagues like Mark out there. He makes articulate, valid points based on fact, acquired though experience and an inquisitive mind. Much more so than what I’ve witnessed from the bulk of ALP members, which isn’t an insult - Mark is quite good. I’m a happy customer of the ISP he works for and I’d be an unhappy one if they were to do anything silly like firing him.
Encouraging an industry professional body to have a concerned talk with Mark’s employer (i.e. to threaten his employment) was a stupid idea executed with bumbling form by one of Conroy’s over-eager apparatchik. So bumbling that it could be traced back.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the party disciplined Conroy and made him pull his head in. But no, he’s had a pat on the head and shows no sign of pulling out.
Sure, the policy isn’t being supported by NSW Young Labor, which gives some hope, but what of the man’s conduct? I can’t reconcile it with my own politics, nor can I reconcile the apparent lack of control the Prime Minister has over him.
Yes, this is some time ago now, but I’ve been intent on formally resigning ever since. Consider my complacency a comment on the priority I place on the party.
Now I’ve probably spend far too many words on a letter that will likely just be discarded. At least, discarded by whoever is processing my membership. I gather, or rather I hope at least some of my readership will find interest in it.
I’ve said my piece, so I hereby resign from the Australian Labor Party!
~ Bruce Everett (Member #20631).
I am going over a set of questions that I have been sent regarding my basic moral philosophy. Currently, I am addressing the question of whether one position I defend - Objective Moral Relativism - is the same as another view that I defend - Desire Utilitarianism. In my previous post I described desire utilitarianism. So, in this post, I will look at objective moral relativism.
The short answer is that objective moral relativism is not the same as desire utilitarianism. However, the two claims do not conflict, so they both are true.
Objective moral relativism is a term that I use to confront the popular (and hugely mistaken) assumption that for moral values to be objective they must be some sort of property that is intrinsic to actions or states of affairs that somehow signal to us that the action ought (or ought not) to be done or the state ought (or ought not) to be realized.
Consequently, a moral objectivist must assert the existence of such entities. Those who deny their existence are moral relativists, who hold that morality is nothing more than the unfounded whim of the person making the moral claim.
The idea that one must choose between intrinsic properties or subjective properties is simply false. Science claims are considered objective. However, there are very few if any scientific claims that refer to intrinsic properties. Most scientific claims describe relationships between things. Yet, this fact does not, in any way, threaten the objectivity of science.
My paradigm example of objective relativism is location. I challenge you, the reader, to describe the location of anything in absolute terms. All location claims describe relationships. They point out where one thing is by describing its relationship to another thing. The keys are on the table. Denver is in Colorado. I am at home.
Yet, scientific research papers are filled with location claims.
Surprisingly, nobody ever thinks to assert that scientific research isn’t real science if it contains a location claim.
Another fact about location claims is that the decision as to what to describe an object’s location relative to is a matter of whim. We give the location of many things on Earth relative to an imaginary line drawn between the north and south pole through Greenwich, England. But why Greenwich England? Can any researcher, anywhere in the world, provide me with a scientific argument proving that Greenwich, England is the one and only correct place to use for zero degrees longitude? Or is it the case that this reflects a substantially arbitrary choice by a bunch of men who simply agreed to use this line?
Yet, even with this arbitrary, unfounded decision to use Greenwich, England as the point for zero degrees longitude, we still do not have an objection to the claim that a statement in a scientific paper giving the location of an object in terms of latitude and longitude is an objective scientific claim.
My claim is that moral statements, like location statements, represent a type of objective relativism. Moral statements, like location statements, describe relationships between real things in the universe. Specifically, moral statements describe relationships between malleable desires (those desires that can be molded through social forces such as praise and condemnation) and other desires. They are not statements about mysterious properties that are somehow intrinsic to objects of evaluation that tell us whether or not the object of evaluation should be realized or not.
Furthermore, these relationships are perfectly fit subjects for scientific study – as fit as relationships between objects in space and time. They exist as a part of the real world. Nobody has the power to alter these relationships simply by changing their mind about them, any more than they have the power to move a star trillions of miles through space simply by changing their mind on where the star is at, or to move their keys to their coat pocket simply by believing, "My keys are in my coat pocket."
The next objection usually to come up asks on what basis I am justified in calling these particular relationships 'morality'. My answer is: Call them what you want, it does not matter in the end. In just the same way that choosing Greenwich, England as the starting point for latitude and longitude has no relevance to the objective location of things on the Earth what we choose to call morality has no relevance what is and is not true about relationships between desires and states of affairs.
If X is a desire that people generally have reason to promote or to inhibit through social forces such as praise and condemnation, then X remains a desire that people generally have reason to promote or to inhibit, regardless of what we call it. Just as the longitudinal distance from Greenwich, England to Denver, Colorado, remains the same regardless of what location one arbitrarily decides to call "zero degrees longitude".
So, in short, Objective Moral Relativism says that moral statements do not refer to intrinsic moral properties. Instead, they refer to relationships that exist in the real world that allow moral claims to be objectively true or false. Desire utilitarianism holds that the specific relationships in question are those between maleable desires (desires that can be molded through social forces) and other desires.
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