So, I was reading the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer (Volume 31, Number 2; March/April 2007), and within it there was a story entitled A Free-for-All on Science and Religion, by George Johnson. It was about a conference last November in San Diego, on the topic of decreasing the role of religion in society. Many familiar names were in attendance, including Professor Richard Dawkins.

As is nearly always the case when Professor Dawkins speaks in a public forum, there were calls – even, notably, from his fellow atheists – that he was too strident, too aggressive, too insulting, and that he risked alienating the very people who he sought to convince. Anyone familiar with his work will understand where these complaints come from. Indeed, I myself have friends who I’ve needed to have this conversation with a number of times. But ultimately, what I have to say on the topic is this:

Bullshit.

Professor Dawkins is saying exactly what we all know, in our heart of hearts, but are too timid (some of us, at least!) to say aloud. Religion is a mental illness, and inflicting it upon children is a form of child abuse. Really, is there any atheist who does not, in their heart of hearts, know this to be the case? I very much doubt it. If we were as used to complete sincerity and earnestness as I would like for us to be, none of us would ever think to look askance at such discourse. The problem is that we live in a society which trains us to be insincere and disingenuous. All of us have heard christians tell us "I’ll pray for you", and known full well – FULL WELL – that the christian saying it was being dishonest in his intent. It’s passive-aggressive nonsense. What makes it that much worse is the fact that they MEAN for it to be taken as an insult, we KNOW it for an insult… and yet the FORM must be respected. We must not be honest. We must not be earnest. We must hide our intentions underneath layers of bullshit and dishonesty. The truth CAN be shown, but only through the filtering haze of lies.

This, it seems to me, is what people want from Professor Dawkins and those like him.

No. I say, let’s put it right out there. Let’s be entirely up-front, direct and sincere. If someone is going to be SO offended at us calling religion for what we really see it for being… that someone is unlikely to be swayed by reason and logic anyways. This person is an emotional thinker, swayed by their passions and wants, not by facts and by science. We lose nothing by alienating someone who is predisposed towards being our enemy for life anyways. We may, however, gain some support from people who are capable of admiring and appreciating honesty and straightforwardness. And really, isn’t that sort of person to be preferred as an ally anyways?

The complaint against him, from the likes of those who would call him – self-contradictorily - an ‘atheist fundamentalist’ stems from something deeper than a distaste for what he is saying and doing per se. It stems from a distaste for direct discourse, honesty in discussion, and the willingness to confront conventional wisdom head-on when appeasement and conniving are possible. I find this trait to be nearly as loathsome as I find religion itself, and I for one will have nothing to do with it.

In his day, Galileo was imprisoned in his home for the final decades of his life not for his heretical belief that the world was round; he was imprisoned for his willingness to say so to the faces of the people who didn’t want to hear it. In the end, though, history vindicated him, and we hold him to be one of the great heroes and visionaries of the past thousand years. The atheists today who speak so vitriolically against Professor Dawkins are the very same people who, those centuries ago, would have advised Galileo to just be quiet about his heresy, pretend that the world is flat, and try not to rock the boat too much. After all, you’ll only make enemies of the chistians by doing something foolish like telling them that they’re demonstrably wrong. Would it not be better to allow them that there’s room for both flat-Earth thinking and round-Earth thinking, instead of being so unspeakably RUDE as to confront them with the proof that their claims are manifestly incorrect?

No. No appeasement. No retreat. History will vindicate us, and people like Professor Dawkins will be remembered not as rude and obnoxious, but as courageous and bold. Backing down now will only embolden enemies of logic and science who need little enough prompting to be emboldened as it is. The stakes are too high to grant them even this small victory.

Thisi s pretty interesting. 

It's no secret that this October has been a pretty bad month for the US Occupation forces in Iraq. It's also no secret that they low-ball their fatality figures by a significant margin. This, though, seems like it might be a rather exceptional case of both. 

Apparantly, on ctober 10th, there was a major, major attack on a US army base near Baghdad, called Camp Falcon. A number of international news agencies reported on it, but the US media scarcely touched it at all. And when I say major, I mean major. Apparantly this was the US forces' most important ammunition depot in Iraq, and a location where literally thousands of troops were stationed. While the US military doesn't deny the attack took place, it claims there were "no injuries or deaths", and that it was "of no tactical importance". 

Watch the following video and tell me if either of these claims seem likely. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjEnTlN7cjk

That massive, blinding flash of white light which illuminates the entire sky for many miles around... what was that? There are reports that the US forces were keeping a nuclear device in there, and that what we're seeing is the detonation of this device. Certainly, the staggering magnitude of the explosion would seem to indicate this is a possibility. 

In the hours after the attack, there were reports of plane loads of casualties being removed from the area. And then... nothing. No reports of any injuries or deaths. No coverage of any kind. No downplaying it as a few isolated casualties. Just... nothing. A blanket denial that it had any impact whatsoever. 

I've found quite a ew sites out there asking questions; what the hell happened that day? Here's a good archive I located : http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MEY20061023&articleId=3577

Now, if this was as bad and as important a hit as it looked, I can't honestly say I blame the US occupational forces for keeping it quiet; they don't want their enemies to know that the Iraqi resistance has scored a major hit. Also, more cynically, I'm betting the Republican party really, really doesn't want their public to know about this, so close to a major national election. 

Still, it is cause to wonder. The video is chilling to watch, and the dead silence on the topic from the US establishment is fucking chilling.

I just read this article on the Guardian online. This sounds really, really pleasing to me. It sounds like a genuine effort to bring an entire generation online. One line, near the end, which I found entirely heartwarming, was this: 

"Our goal is to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves. Laptops are both a window and a tool: a window into the world and a tool with which to think."

This is the sort of broad-scale, well-intentioned and forward-thinking bits of social engineering which I wish more world leaders would institute. Bravo to Libya, I say.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1920033,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1

So I heard this morning that Joe “Pope Benedict 16” Ratzinger visited Auschwitz yesterday to commemorate the horrors of the holocaust. Given the complicity of the Catholic church in this most terrible denial and abnegation of civilization, I could understand this event in principle. An apology is certainly in order. Indeed, tens of millions of apologies are in order, to each of the survivors and all of their families. What old man Joe had in mind, though, was a little bit different.

“How could god allow this to happen”, he mused to the crowd. The moment I heard this, I was filled with a seething contempt and rage. You don’t get to ask that question, Joe. You don’t have the moral authority to do so. Your church encouraged and enabled the nazis to do this. The organization which you embody at the moment wanted it to happen. Your organization states that that which the pope wants, god wants. Therefore, given the then-pope’s endorsement of these events, god – your god, whose will you purportedly represent – was plainly quite happy to see all those Jews dead. Don’t beseech a god who apparently endorses a genocide for moral clarity with regards to that very act of genocide. You would do as well to ask a psychopath to explain the morality behind his own murders.  

But it goes deeper than that. God doesn’t exist. As far that catholic church goes, he’s nothing more than an anthropomorphism of their own political agenda. But Joe, personally, doesn’t get to ask this question, because he’s responsible personally for the holocaust. No, not just because he’s a German. Because he was a nazi soldier. He was drafted into the German army and agreed to serve during WW2. He, like so many of his generation, put their well-being and security before any kind of morality or principles. I have heard the argument that he had no choice but to serve. I say bullshit. A man who feels that a person who claims to have no moral choice has no right whatsoever to lead any kind of spiritual movement or organization. I have heard the argument that he – a single anti-arcraft gunner – being absent from the war would have made no difference. I say bullshit. If herr Hitler had started his war and all of his soldiers had set down their guns, refusing to fight, there would have been no war. Each and every nazi soldier is exactly equally culpable with every other one for the war, and all of its consequences. He is precisely as guilty for every atrocity which occurred in that war as every other soldier who agreed to fight in it.

So, Joe, if you want to know how your fucking imaginary god allowed this to happen, allow me to provide you with an answer: It was allowed to happen because you and people like you were cowardly, inhuman monsters, with no sense of moral responsibility to your fellow human beings. It was allowed to happen because you soft and craven worms felt it was better to place the authority for all moral judgements in the hands of a psychopath than it was to use your own fucking brains to make the right and necessary judgements yourself. It was allowed to happen because you and people like you lacked the strength of character to prevent it from happening.

You don’t get to ask that question, Joe. And you know why? Because you’re asking it sixty fucking years too late. If you – and people like you - had asked it sixty years ago, then maybe it wouldn’t have happened, and then we wouldn’t now be in a position to demand the very same question of you that you would have us ask your imaginary friend. When Jeffy, in Family Circus, points at his imaginary friend “Not Me”, to place blame upon when he has himself has done, it’s amusing and juvenile. When you do the same with your make-believe god, it’s sickening. So don’t even bother to ask the question unless you get down on your fucking bloodstained hands and knees and beg the world for forgiveness when you answer your own question by begging the world’s forgiveness for having the moral paucity to have caused it to have happened.

You did this. You. Your generation. Your culture. Your religion. Your entire way of life. Your willingness to abrogate your moral responsibility to others. You cowardly, weak, spineless, amoral, idiotic, tyrant-pandering, genocide-enabling monsters. 

Question answered.

Tangentially, it has occurred to me, while writing this, that precisely the same argument applies to each and every American soldier who is participating in the current Iraq war. The information existed, prior to the war, that Bush’s pretenses were just that. Tens of millions of people who marched against the war in the months leading up to it knew. The presumably hundreds of millions more who supported us but, for whatever reason, did not march, also knew. You cannot plead ignorance. Ignorance only denotes your irresponsibility in failing to seek out information pertaining to the act you were about to perform, and irresponsibility does not dispel responsibility. Quite the contrary, it demonstrates your poor moral character. When you are about to take the life of another, you had damned well be certain be sure that your decision to do so is the right one. The information was free to be had. Your failure to learn it or act upon it is no more an excuse than a plea of “I was only following orders”, which, as you may recall, did not shield the nazis in the Nuremberg trials either. The only distinction I can see is that those soldiers who followed orders so as to retain their freedom until the moment they came home to begin working to end the war, through politics and civil actions, and only this because America is still putatively a democracy today, where Germany was not, as of WW2. Every American soldier who has joined the military since the information pertaining to Bush’s lies became available, and every one who has not acted to end this immoral war is exactly as guilty for every single atrocity in Iraq as Bush and Rumsfeld themselves.

A second tangent: While writing this, this logic occurred to me: Christianity precludes true morality, because it entails abrogating your moral responsibility to a tyrannical god. The fact that this god does not exist except as an anthropomorphism of christians’ own desire to be treated as children, with all the lack of responsibility this entails, is meaningless. Moral abrogation is moral abrogation, regardless of whether or not you put a bearded human face on it.   

So it seems there's this poor kid in Iraq who looks entirely too much like George W. Bush for his own good. He gets teased and taunted about it continuously, and he wishes to see an end to it, not least of all for the perfectly valid reason that "he has killed many children in Iraq."

More here

I just hope for this kid's sake he's an eraly bloomer and can get to work on growing a beard by his early teens. Regardless of what his father says, I think that Bush is going to be remembered with fury and hatred for decades to come out there (and, you know, basically everywhere else, too).