Tag Archives: Fundamentalist

CofE apology to Darwin

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Despite it being so late as to seem silly for the Church of England to apologise to Darwin for not believing in evolution, it’s still a good idea, given the efforts by creationists to hijack their religion.

There’s nothing on the Church of England’s website and it won’t let me in to the testbed area but The Times, the unpleasant Daily Mail and even more deeply unpleasant Conservapedia think the CofE is about to launch a pro-Darwin site.

Or as the morons at conservapedia – who think this is “socialist Britain” 🙂 and that Christian Voice is a “leading Christian organisation” – say:

The Church of England sides with the Darwinists, misrepresenting biblical creationists in the process.(from conservapedia)

Anglican leaders fear that “noisy” advocates of a literal interpretation of the Bible – especially in the United States, where even the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, is a vocal supporter – are infecting the perception of Christianity worldwide. (from the Times)

Nice one, Church of England. Bravo. The same goes for the Roman Catholic Church where it has spoken out for science. Both major Christian denominations recognise that the Enlightenment happened. They also claim the adherence of most of the Christians on the planet, mercifully.

It’s one thing to have to disagree with their philosophies about the nature of the universe and the ultimate ground of being. Let a million flowers bloom, etc… It’s another thing altogether when religious institutions that underpin many people’s beliefs about the world give themselves over to arrant anti-scientific nonsense, like the disturbing stuff from fundamentalists.

Another “Christian” (head)case

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A registrar who claimed she was discriminated against for her Christian beliefs because she wouldn’t officiate in civil partnerships has won an employment tribunal case.

The ruling appears to place the religious “conscience” of registrars above their legal duty to carry out parliament’s legislation. If it is not overturned on appeal, and it sets a precedent, where could it lead? (Terry Sanderson in the Guardian)

Indeed. The implications are disturbing. Could a Jain vegetarian doctor refuse to deal with your food poisoning case because you’d eaten meat? Might an orthodox Jewish nurse’s aide refuse to make beds if the sheets are made of mixed fibres? Could a barista who believes in Russell’s flying teapot refuse to collude in the serving of coffee?

The idea that playing the “religious conscience” card can somehow get you out of doing work you are paid to do – and even get you compensation at the same time – is so enticing. I am sorely tempted to form a religion that directly proscribes any unenjoyable part of my daily work. That’s my work day sorted out. And a sweet little compensation claim on the way, without the usual trouble of having to fake a whiplash injury

I am bit confused here, anyway. I have only a cursory knowledge of the bible, but I would be truly amazed to find that the New Testament mentioned civil partnerships, let alone forbade believers from officiating at them.

Naturally, the Christian Institute, which bankrolled this case, is cock-a-hoop. This is a result that they and other Christian activists have been trying to achieve for some time now. It will provide the platform they’ve needed to build their dream of a theocratic Britain. (from the Guardian)

Well, blow me down with a feather. How surprised am I to find that the good old Christian Institute is behind this? They put up the money. Again. (It’s not as if there were anything better they could so with their seemingly bottomless resource pit. I dunno, like feed the hungry and that sort of unchristian stuff. I think it’s called “charity” or something.)

The Christian Institute have a gloating list of references to the media coverage. For example the Daily Mail called it “A victory for Britain’s quiet majority”

I could only assume this is a new and counter-intuitive use of the words “quiet” and “majority.” I think it’s pretty clear that the Christian fundamentalists and the Daily Mail are neither humbly self-effacing nor a majority. I would probably have a lot of trouble sleeping at night if I thought these extremist bigots people had become a majority.

The Mail editorial managed to express its trademark depths of hypocrisy by phrasing the article in such a way as to imply “She’s black and she’s a bigot just like us. Did we mention she’s black? Well here’s a picture. This proves we aren’t bigots ourselves here at the Mail because we are agreeing with the multicultural society. See. We like black people when they hate gays.”

Two small points:

  • If not performing civil partnerships is really a crucial part of Christian belief, why haven’t the mainstream Christians made it into some sort of sin? In fact, why haven’t they made wearing a crucifix and/or or a promise bracelet an obligation?These are the topics of the pro-Christian court cases that these zealots are happy to fund. So where are the Christian rules about them? I’m all for thinking for yourself and challenging authority and that, but I thought these fundy sects were all against it.

    And now, here they are, redefining Christianity, not just in the face of those tiresome old sermon-on-the-mount beliefs, but in the face of pretty well all the established church hierarchies.

    I can be a moralistic bitch. Can I get some association of non-believers to fund my own personal morality campaigns?

    Lots of things offend me. I would quite appreciate being compensated for a whole range of things – from newspapers promoting being a footballer’s famous wife as the only reasonable life goal to young girls, to the increasing acceptance of torture. (Passing through almost any major social evil or minor irritation you can think of)

  • The guy who sued the BBC for Jerry Springer the Opera and lost then whined that the BBC should pay his costs for suing them (!!!) may have set a precedent for the litigation-hungry Christians. Surely – in a spirit of fairness and decency similar to that demanded from the BBC by Green – Lilian Adele can just offer to let Islington council off with the compensation they are going to have to pay her…… Now how likely isn’t that?

Comic Christian Death Cult

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A recent link on Pharyngula took me to a site that would be a perfect home for the Terry Pratchett character “Visit-The-Ungodly-With- Explanatory-Pamphlets.”

Despite the evidence of the senses, Chick.com seems not to be a spoof site, but some of these “tracts” defy belief. I’ll gloss over the bizarre claims in the adult tracts – such as the Pope having invented Islam.

Look, instead, at the comics aimed at children. The new “classic” one Phayngula linked to is about evolution. “Evolution” is by definition racist, in this bizarre interpretation, serving to make a blond-haired blue-eyed selfish child think he can be god…. Rejects friend’s message about Jesus. Godless evolution-influenced child dies and gets sent to eternal damnation.

Death is a pretty huge theme in the tracts aimed at children. Here’s a sample The Little Princess

Story line: dying girl goes trick-or-treating on Halloween, dressed as a princess – it’s her dying wish. Meets couple who pray for her. Whole family gets converted. She dies. But that’s well worth it because she goes to heaven and her family become “Christians”….

After the girl dies

I am forced to refer to Oscar Wilde’s remark about the death of a Dickens character:

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

But, then, I’m not a child subject to a style of brainwashing that owes so much to the manipulative powers of Victorian melodrama. And I am a bit disturbed by the juxtaposition of a smiling child holding out flowers and the explicit death threat.

You might think that this sort of thing (Catholic plots, eternal damnation, Armaggedon fears) appeals to only a tiny subset of the population – the truly mentally-challenged, So, the number of unfortunates who are subject to it might be counted in Westboro Baptist numbers.

Not so, according to its claims. The website claims that Chick has sold 700 million tracts worldwide. Let me momentarily assume this isn’t bearing false witness (because it’s on the Internet which is – like television – not allowed to lie.) That suggests at least seven hundred people have bought a Bumper Million Pack of the things. And that’s an issue for global deforestation in itself.

A whole list of “tracts” is here. I was going to count how many of these contained death threats or rants against other religions. But that would be more or less all of them. Here’s a few quotes from the blurbs:

They thought he was dead, but he woke up screaming, “I’ve got to get saved! I saw hell! I never want to see it again!” Dramatic!

Suicide…The subject is common among teens today. But when Lance decides it is the only way out of his troubles, he discovers that hell is not the party place described in popular songs

Here is a description of the horrible times the Bible says are coming in the future. There is no one to turn to for help but Jesus. He is the only hope.

When this Catholic dies, he learns that his church couldn’t save him

Bob was mean and didn’t need God, until he nearly died in jail.

Time was running out for Ashley. Drugs would soon kill her. But a praying grandmother made the difference.

This soldier learns that it’s not what you know that gets you into heaven. It’s WHO you know… Jesus

A young man goofs when he is talked out of receiving Jesus as Saviour. Adapted for Black audiences.

Danny is dying of cancer. The man in the bed next to him tries to win him to Jesus. A compelling story with a happy ending.

When the collapsing roof dumped him into the flames, Fred thought he had seen hell. But the real hell is much worse.

And so on, ad nauseam..

More atheist footstamping

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For those who do not have the regular, erm, pleasure of reading through the Comment is Free blogs on the Guardian websites, there is an interesting one there from yesterday by AC Grayling titled “A force for evil.”

The post makes interesting reading, but as you can imagine the most humour can be found in the comments. Most are pretty unoriginal and just what you expect when ever someone says religion is bad. You can largely group the comments into categories: (with kudos to jackoba who did this before me!)

  1. The ones that say religion is not all bad, look at all the good things it has done.
  2. The ones that say Atheism is worse than religion and point to Hitler (a catholic), Stalin, Pol Pot et al. as examples of evil atheists. (Prime example is the comment by powerday with an ironic twist by longsword later on where he seems to be saying Hitler was an Atheist because he seems to have believed in a Teutonic god rather than the current mainstream Christian god…)
  3. The atheists who complain about atheists criticising theists and suggest we all go back to hiding under the table. (waltzingmatilda1 provides an example of this – and without wishing to be rude, I find this sort of argument very weak and almost cowardly, basically this comment says that because “outspoken” atheists draw negative comments from theists, they should shut up and behave themselves… Blimey…)
  4. People who have no idea what they are talking about, but need to talk (often conflating atheism with a religion or making massive logical fallacy leaps – sadly there are lots of examples of this, but for now I will leave it with mckgus)
  5. People who like to post about how repetitive the argument is. ( 🙂 )

I am teetering towards the last group at the moment. Sadly, even though there are some intelligent, educated, people writing articles about atheism now, there is a strong sense of repetition there. It is a good sign of the times that so many news portals carry atheist posts now, and this probably reflects the greater divide between theists and atheists. In the UK at least, a generation ago most people were apathetic enough towards religion as to make the distinction meaningless – even the faithful over here were not rabid enough to get worked up about. Now, though, things are quite different. It is interesting that an apparent British person writes this at the end of their comment:

Also, since humanism tends towards strict individualism, autonomy of the self, reason, independent thought etc, on its own grounds, it features a very spurious supernatural being (in the way he can escape from nature), the human of humanism, the self. Not only this, but the underlying liberalistic logic of evolutionary psychology and humanism (competing individuals where co-operation is a secondary and indeed undergirded by self-interest) is doubtless an easy way at an ideological level inwhich to further shure up capitalism, and I cannot help but think that this logic (though not humanism solely, but capitalism) will ulitimately kill more than ‘religion’ ever has, once the seas begin to boil and the world begins to throw out its selfish stewards.

Heavy on the big, long words but light on the sense and logic. (He began his comment with “Where to to begin with the stupidity of what AC Grayling is saying here?” so you got a sign it was going to be good!)

The problem is, as is often the case where something is either right or wrong, the argument eventually gets bogged down. It has been some time since I read a properly “new” article on the topic. Theists as normal, are often the worst spewing out the same tired, boring, reasons why people should believe in god. Graylings article in the Comment is Free, while interesting and well written does not really open any new ground and is unlikely to convert any theists.

With this in mind, I will endeavour to find some examples of mainstream media which has “new” arguments on the pro-/anti- invisible people debate. Personally, I cant think of any new arguments so finding them will be exciting and interesting (and therefore they will get looked at here!).

Looking for a silver lining on the Comment is Free, there are very good comments from olching. F101voodoo and especially jonwaring, but my personal favourite came from sidc:

The only interesting thing about these religion/atheism threads is that the atheists can spell better than the religious nutters.

Well said! 🙂

(footnote: the title comes from a comment, not something I thought up myself! )

[tags]Atheism, Theism, Religion, AC Grayling, Belief, Religious Nutters, Beliefs, Belief, Nutcases, Fundamentalist, Society, Culture, Logic, Understanding, Guardian, Nazi, God Delusion[/tags]

My bad ..

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Sorry. I wrote the Chuck Norris post without realising there was link to a really good rant on Nullifidian’s site.

This leads to the original article on the Institute for Humanist Studies It is really funny. And it has pictures that show the nature of the man better than any words could.

Self-styled “most-hated family” earning the title

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In among the news on disturbing world events, with frightening implications, (captured sailors in Iran, carnage in Iraq, and any number of other things….. ) the BBC has this little gem on its magazine page.

It refers to Louis Theroux’s programme on the Phelps, who he calls the “most extreme people” he’s ever met. Now, this is a man who’s interviewed Eugene Terrblanche, normally considered one of the most extreme people on the face of the planet.

Obviously Theroux just normally interviews people who are extreme only in terms of their uniqueness or silliness or publicity-hungriness, or any combination thereof, like the Hamiltons. He adopts a self-mocking uber-English diffidence but he’s really taking the piss out of most of them, letting them react to his apparent naivety. This can be so funny it chokes the breath out of you or dull and predictable depending on who he’s interviewing.

The Phelps must be in class of their own.

They call themselves the most hated family in the US and they picket funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.

In case you think this means they are just oddly insensitive anti-war activists, think again.

They picket these funerals to draw attention to what they see as God’s punishment on America for tolerating homosexuality.

You may have guessed it, they are the Westboro Baptist Church.

Louis Theroux claims to find them perplexing. He says they are pleasant, normal people outside of their picketing. He says they started out “moderate” – only picketing places where gay people meet, Gya Pride events and so on – and didn’t use words like “fags”.
(I’m not 100% convinced that this constitutes moderate or normal.)

Apparently, they just accumulated extremeness as they went about it.

Louis Theroux says that they are basically a model family (hmm, that not 100% convinced thig is rearing its head again) that really care about each other, just dominated by an evil Gramps. He seems to have ended up seeing the Church as some sort of genetically related cult.

It shows you what strange avenues the religious impulse can take you down. I think another part of the answer is that parts of the Christian Bible are pretty weird. There’s a lot of weird stuff in there and when you take that and you add this angry, domineering kind of a father figure, which is Gramps, and you add that he has sort of separated them off from other people, other families and driven them to achieve a lot, and he was kind of a charismatic guy, and still is up to a point.

I still can’t dissipate the image of being at a funeral that is being picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church. In the most frivolous terms, I think it’s partly because it brings to mind the phrase “You wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry”.

More seriously, it’s quite difficult to think of many legal activities that could be more vile than turning up at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq to harry the grief-stricken with bigoted anti-gay propaganda. You’d have to be a hell of a lot more than averagely nice and normal in the rest of your life to balance out that level of wickedness.

Theistic Follow Up

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Previously I made a post which examined the logic (or lack thereof) in a post made on parabiodox. Today I see there has been a follow up post that addresses some of the “issues” I made, so I think it is only fair that I (in turn) address some of the new comments.

First off, I have to say “thank you” to parabiodox for his reasonable, and generally kind comments. I am flattered. The blog post begins:

This is a very readable, calm and intelligent response to a rather bombastic blog entry from me.
Of course the only reason I wrote it was I was hoping that someone would come along and write the kind of response that Why Dont You Blog? has provided.
Myself I do indulge in a bit of calm and measured article writing once in a while, but what’s wrong with a bit of mud-slinging as well ? Variety is the spice of life I think.

I couldn’t agree with the sentiment here more. There is nothing wrong with a bit of mud-slinging and, to me, the reason people blog is to get issues of their chest. At least this way no one gets hurt (unless they are very thin skinned..). Blogs would be boring places indeed if people did not rant, rave and froth every now and then.

Talking of mud-slinging I did detect a bit of it in the article Theistic Logic, the implication being that this is the way all theists think, of course as I know only too well it definately isn’t.

This, I am not to sure about. Where ever possible I try to avoid stereotyping people into a particular school of thought, and I certainly pounce on it when people try to do it to me, so I hope this is an interpretation issue more than anything else. Looking back on the previous post, the closest example I can find is when I begin “Sadly this is an infuriating example of the theistic line of logic.”

Now, that was never intended to mean it was the way all “theists” think – but it is a common fallacy which is used in many, many, blog posts where theists refer to atheists. Parabiodox continues:

The blog entry was parabiodox thinking, and there’s only one member of that particular philosophy to date.

While that is reassuring, ( 🙂 ) it is not completely accurate. IMHO most blog posts only speak for the line of thought adopted by the person who made the post, however this is a line of thought which is echoed across dozens of blogs (and is often found in the comments section on atheist blogs). While parabiodox does indeed seem to follow a unique philosophy, the fallacies in this particular post are reasonably common.

Theistic Logic

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(or lack thereof). The joys of Technorati have brought me to a post on parabiodox today, titled “Moderate Christians, Fundamentalists and Atheists (where’s the connection?)”

Sadly this is an infuriating example of the theistic line of logic. Obviously when I say logic, I mean fallacies…

The post (in full) reads:

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Ignorant and Proud Labels: rants

“One does not have to be a fundamentalist to put a Jesus fish on one’s car. Some of those who do so are certainly fundamentalists, but many more would better be described as moderate Christians. And yet, they share at least something with the fundamentalists – some degree of pride in their faith (i.e., their belief of something without evidence).”

Also shared with the Atheist faith of course, if you accept the author’s premise.

But of course there’s a lot more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for the non-existence of God.

Now, for so little words there is so much “illogic.” Starting with the first sentence: There is no such thing as the “Atheist faith.” It is meaningless. Any argument surrounding such comments is crying out to be accused of woo.

The second sentence is interesting – mainly in the way it is constructed. I actually know people called Jesus so I agree there is a lot of evidence that Jesus exists. If we are talking about a Jewish carpenter, 2000 years ago then I am also happy to accept that Jesus existed. The important issue is: Was this Jesus the Son of God (while being God at the same time)?

Now here the evidence retreats to the land of woo. What “evidence” is there that this Jesus is the son of God?

In addition to this, the argument uses a fairly blatant form of fallacy (False Dilemma). It tries to present the existence of Jesus and the non-existence of God as the two opposing sides with the implication that proving the existence of Jesus falsifies claims of the non-existence of God. This is nonsense.

There is more evidence for the existence of Reindeer than for the non-existence of Santa, therefore there is a Santa Clause. Evidence for the non-existence of something which doesn’t exist is notoriously hard to come by (what evidence is there that the tooth fairy, unicorns, floating teapots etc dont exist?). In general terms, what is required is evidence that something exists. The more fantastic the claim, the stronger the supporting evidence has to be for it to be accepted. Unless of course you are a devout theist, when no evidence is required for belief…

[tags]Religion, Theist, Theism, Christian, Christianity, Belief, Philosophy, Logic, Logical fallacies, Rants, Society, Culture, Atheism, Atheist, Evidence, Faith, Jesus Christ, God, Fundamentalist, Santa Claus[/tags]