One thing which made me tired of the New Atheist movement was the unrelenting tendency to equate Christianity with fundamentalism, Islam with ISIS, etc.
And, as I've mentioned before on this blog, there's the very unfortunate combination of constantly talking about religions with not knowing very much about them, not studying their history, which pretty much amounts to not studying human history in general. Again last night on "Real Time," Bill Maher -- who is not all bad, and who started off the show in a very knowledge-based way, talking to an environmentalist and saying, quite accurately, that climate change is the world's #1 political issue at the present time, because if we don't deal with it it will kill us all -- said not for the first time that Islam needs a Reformation.
Spoken like a New Atheist who knows squat both about Islam and about the Western Christian Reformation. (Western Christian: the Orthodox and Syriac and Armenian and Coptic and Ethiopic Churches weren't involved in the Reformation. It all happened among Catholics.) For one thing, there is no one thing which Islam needs because Islam is very far from being one unified entity. (Although I'm sure that one thing most Muslims would appreciate is if people like Maher would learn more about them and pontificate about them less.)
For another thing, an atheist who calls for a religious Reformation knows squat about the Reformation. The leaders of the Reformation, Jan Huss, Martin Luther, Jean Calvin, were much more pious and rigidly literalist and grimly fanatical than the Catholic Church around them, not less. Hus wore a hair shirt and trembled his whole life at the memory of how as a youth he had had a couple sips of wine and played a few games of dice. Before he invented Lutheranism, the Catholic monk Luther traveled to Rome and was outraged by how secular and worldly and non-Biblical the Church in Rome had become. And when some peasants misunderstood Luther's break from the Catholic Church as a call for them to rise up and free themselves from their feudal masters, Luther wrote to those masters and urged them to kill the rebellious peasants like dogs, which they did. Jean Calvin, besides giving the world the doctrine of predestination, was also an avid hunter and burner of witches, and the Puritans who hung and crushed dozens of witches in Salem in the 1690's were largely Protestant in their theology.
That was the Reformation: the hardcore nuts among the Catholics breaking away from the main Church because it wasn't hardcore enough. Protestantism has changed quite a lot since it began, and diversified so much that it's difficult to define the entire group of Protestants in any meaningful way, and there have been some ironic changes, such as that way that the Congregationalist Church, which used to be the witch-hunting Puritans, is now one of the most liberal and free-thinking of Christian denominations. But that was the Reformation.
What does Islam need? Well, different Muslims need all sorts of different things. One thing which I think would benefit all people, Muslims, Christians, atheists and others, is if history were more intensively and rigorously studied. That would tend to decrease the frequency with which people said clueless, unhelpful things, like Bill Maher saying that Islam needs a Reformation.
Showing posts with label islamophobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label islamophobia. Show all posts
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Richard Dawkins Claims He's 'Not Allowed' To Criticize Islam
Which of course is absurd. He hasn't been imprisoned or fined yet for his comments on Islam, his books containing comments on Islam continue to sell by the cargo ship-load, he continues to be invited onto popular TV and radio shows where he continues to be encouraged to speak his mind.
Perhaps what's actually bothering him is that little pissants like me ARE allowed to comment on what he says, ARE allowed to point out that he continues to write and speak about Islam as if all Muslims were extremists, ARE allowed to point out the opposition of most of the world's Muslims to extremism, ARE allowed to point out that most of the soldiers fighting ISIL have been Muslims sent by majority-Muslim countries, etc.
We're allowed to point out the achievements in art, literature, philosophy and whatever else, which have been made over the course of the past 1500 years by some of the billions of people who've happened to have been Muslims. We're free to point out passages from the Koran which we think are nice. We can continue to mock Dawkins for still not having read the Koran, obsessed with Islam as he seems to be.
Maybe it really sticks in Dawkins' craw that a little autistic nobody and general failure in life such as myself is allowed to publicly speculate that maybe what is up Richard's bum is not Islam at all, but... What? More dark-skinned people on the streets and in the classrooms and faculty lounges of Oxford and Cambridge and Canterbury and London than he likes?
I'm only speculating. I'm allowed to do so. And Dawkins' rants about Islam can't be explained by rational thought on his part. The explanation must lie elsewhere.
*sigh* He was so good at biology.
Perhaps what's actually bothering him is that little pissants like me ARE allowed to comment on what he says, ARE allowed to point out that he continues to write and speak about Islam as if all Muslims were extremists, ARE allowed to point out the opposition of most of the world's Muslims to extremism, ARE allowed to point out that most of the soldiers fighting ISIL have been Muslims sent by majority-Muslim countries, etc.
We're allowed to point out the achievements in art, literature, philosophy and whatever else, which have been made over the course of the past 1500 years by some of the billions of people who've happened to have been Muslims. We're free to point out passages from the Koran which we think are nice. We can continue to mock Dawkins for still not having read the Koran, obsessed with Islam as he seems to be.
Maybe it really sticks in Dawkins' craw that a little autistic nobody and general failure in life such as myself is allowed to publicly speculate that maybe what is up Richard's bum is not Islam at all, but... What? More dark-skinned people on the streets and in the classrooms and faculty lounges of Oxford and Cambridge and Canterbury and London than he likes?
I'm only speculating. I'm allowed to do so. And Dawkins' rants about Islam can't be explained by rational thought on his part. The explanation must lie elsewhere.
*sigh* He was so good at biology.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Enough With This Bullshit About How Atheists Have Never Hurt Anyone
Someone or some group who calls him- or herself or call themselves The Witty Liberal sez or say:
"Muslim terrorists are killing people. Christian terrorists are killing people. Atheist terrorists are posting science articles online."
No. Not so witty. Not after I've read pretty much the same joke 10,000 times and had years to think it over. Dawkins and Harris don't kill people, they just spew hatred, fear and ignorance and support Western governments who kill people for them. Dawkins has written hardly a thing about science since 2004, which is a real shame since he used to be quite good at writing about science.
And the kind of malarkey Harris is writing and trying to pass off as science, talking about how ethics and morality can be scientifically determined, ought to alarm anyone at all sophisticated in his or her understanding of either science or ethics who sees Harris selling millions of books.
The Western democracies remain in contention for the title of world-champion killers, and Dawkins and Harris and Myers say, and Hitch said, that they're not doing enough. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the war since 2003. Since 2001 tens of thousands of Afghani civilians have been killed and tens of thousands more wounded.
In some atheist groups, many of the comments about Muslims are pretty much indistinguishable from comments made by white supremacists. Comments which say that Muslims -- or, interchangeably, Arabs, despite Harris' absurd assertions about how Islamophobia doesn't exist and if it did there wouldn't be anything racist about it since Islam isn't a race -- are donkey-fuckers and pedophiles, comments which claim that the majority of Muslims support terrorism.
And again, as I've said often already in this blog: most of the people who have been fighting and dying against the terrorist threat which currently tends to frighten Westerners the most, ISIL -- most of them are Muslims.
"Muslim terrorists are killing people. Christian terrorists are killing people. Atheist terrorists are posting science articles online."
No. Not so witty. Not after I've read pretty much the same joke 10,000 times and had years to think it over. Dawkins and Harris don't kill people, they just spew hatred, fear and ignorance and support Western governments who kill people for them. Dawkins has written hardly a thing about science since 2004, which is a real shame since he used to be quite good at writing about science.
And the kind of malarkey Harris is writing and trying to pass off as science, talking about how ethics and morality can be scientifically determined, ought to alarm anyone at all sophisticated in his or her understanding of either science or ethics who sees Harris selling millions of books.
The Western democracies remain in contention for the title of world-champion killers, and Dawkins and Harris and Myers say, and Hitch said, that they're not doing enough. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the war since 2003. Since 2001 tens of thousands of Afghani civilians have been killed and tens of thousands more wounded.
In some atheist groups, many of the comments about Muslims are pretty much indistinguishable from comments made by white supremacists. Comments which say that Muslims -- or, interchangeably, Arabs, despite Harris' absurd assertions about how Islamophobia doesn't exist and if it did there wouldn't be anything racist about it since Islam isn't a race -- are donkey-fuckers and pedophiles, comments which claim that the majority of Muslims support terrorism.
And again, as I've said often already in this blog: most of the people who have been fighting and dying against the terrorist threat which currently tends to frighten Westerners the most, ISIL -- most of them are Muslims.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Saying That There Are No Peaceful Muslims Is As Stupid As Saying That There Are No Violent Christians
Or no Jews who eat shellfish. Or no Hindus who eat beef. Or no Buddhists who don't meditate.
It's pretty freakin' stupid.
And -- I've said this before but it bears repeating -- making ISIL's actions about Islam as a whole is pretty insulting to Muslims in general, and especially insulting to most of the people who are actually in combat against ISIL. Most of those people are, of course, Muslims.
Bill Maher asks, "Why do they hate us?" without bothering to be specific about who "they" and "we" are. Lots of people are always trying to tell Bill why some Muslims hate some Christians, but Bill's not listening. If it's not about Islam as a whole, then to Bill, we're naive liberals.
What do I, an autistic American atheist raised in a Protestant Christian family, have in common with the vast majority of those of the world's Muslims who know who Maher is? I've never opposed the fight against ISIL in any way, and Bill Maher frequently pisses me off.
It's pretty freakin' stupid.
And -- I've said this before but it bears repeating -- making ISIL's actions about Islam as a whole is pretty insulting to Muslims in general, and especially insulting to most of the people who are actually in combat against ISIL. Most of those people are, of course, Muslims.
Bill Maher asks, "Why do they hate us?" without bothering to be specific about who "they" and "we" are. Lots of people are always trying to tell Bill why some Muslims hate some Christians, but Bill's not listening. If it's not about Islam as a whole, then to Bill, we're naive liberals.
What do I, an autistic American atheist raised in a Protestant Christian family, have in common with the vast majority of those of the world's Muslims who know who Maher is? I've never opposed the fight against ISIL in any way, and Bill Maher frequently pisses me off.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
The Shape Of The Earth And Of New Atheism
"The world is a sphere can only be colored in so many ways."
Have you heard it colored this way? If the New Atheists were even slightly acquainted with Hebrew and Greek, they'd know that those Bible passages mentioning the shape of the Earth can be understood to refer to various shapes including spheres. In other words, although New Atheists love to insist that the authors of the Bible all believed that the Earth was flat, it's far from clear that this is the case. And that's one way -- one of many -- that we who are familiar with ancient languages and have gone round and round with Dawkins & Co on subjects like the Biblical descriptions of the Earth know that the New Atheists not only aren't familiar with ancient languages, they don't want to become familiar with them.
If they learned a little Hebrew and Greek and Latin and Coptic and Aramaic, they might learn some new things. And they definitely don't seem interested in learning new things when it comes to Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their holy books. They know everything they feel they need to know. They're set. They're done.
They're stupid.
Luke Savage knows what I'm talking about. Here are a few tidbits from his recent and delicious takedown of New Atheism's Islamophobia :
"[...]it is a crude, reductive, and highly selective critique[...]Its leading exponents wear a variety of ideological garbs, but their espoused politics range from those of right-leaning liberals to proto-fascist demagogues of the European far-right[...]The title of Hitchens’s bestselling book tells us something about the priorities and focus of the New Atheist movement ('God is Not Great' is clearly intended to be a facetious inversion of the common Arabic phrase Allahu Akbar, which translates as 'God is Great,' something which he no doubt thought was both hilarious and iconoclastic). Without exception, an overwhelming preoccupation with Islam infuses the whole discourse, even as it posits itself as a disinterested scientific critique of religion as such[...]Sam Harris’s much-discussed October appearance on 'Real Time with Bill Maher' — a crude spectacle in which he pigeonholed most Muslims as 'jihadists,' 'Islamists, or 'conservatives' — merely complements a lengthy record of Islamic demonology from him and other leading figures in the New Atheist movement[...]For the New Atheists, then, all religions are equally bad — but Islam is more equally bad[...]The excessive focus on Islam as something at once monolithic and exceptionally bad, whose backwards followers need to have their rights in democratic societies suppressed and their home countries subjected to a Western-led civilizing process, cannot be called anything other than racist[...]
I highly recommend the entire article. And I would just add that the crudity and ignorance which New Atheists apply to Islam, they apply to most of the rest of the world as well. (It's amazing to me that several of the leading New Atheists are competent or brilliant biologists -- how can they be so sensible, so informed, and so eager to learn about one scientific discipline, and about absolutely nothing else?)
I don't highly recommend this absurdly over-optimistic piece in the Spectator declaring that Richard Dawkins has lost. But if you despise the New Atheists and want to comfort yourself with a daydream that they're about to blow away like dry leaves, then by all means read it.
I, on the other hand, am cursed with an aversion to illusion. We're going to be dealing with these chumps for a while.
I also don't like that the Spectator refers to the atheists who are done with the New Atheists as New New Atheists, rather than Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists.
Have you heard it colored this way? If the New Atheists were even slightly acquainted with Hebrew and Greek, they'd know that those Bible passages mentioning the shape of the Earth can be understood to refer to various shapes including spheres. In other words, although New Atheists love to insist that the authors of the Bible all believed that the Earth was flat, it's far from clear that this is the case. And that's one way -- one of many -- that we who are familiar with ancient languages and have gone round and round with Dawkins & Co on subjects like the Biblical descriptions of the Earth know that the New Atheists not only aren't familiar with ancient languages, they don't want to become familiar with them.
If they learned a little Hebrew and Greek and Latin and Coptic and Aramaic, they might learn some new things. And they definitely don't seem interested in learning new things when it comes to Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their holy books. They know everything they feel they need to know. They're set. They're done.
They're stupid.
Luke Savage knows what I'm talking about. Here are a few tidbits from his recent and delicious takedown of New Atheism's Islamophobia :
"[...]it is a crude, reductive, and highly selective critique[...]Its leading exponents wear a variety of ideological garbs, but their espoused politics range from those of right-leaning liberals to proto-fascist demagogues of the European far-right[...]The title of Hitchens’s bestselling book tells us something about the priorities and focus of the New Atheist movement ('God is Not Great' is clearly intended to be a facetious inversion of the common Arabic phrase Allahu Akbar, which translates as 'God is Great,' something which he no doubt thought was both hilarious and iconoclastic). Without exception, an overwhelming preoccupation with Islam infuses the whole discourse, even as it posits itself as a disinterested scientific critique of religion as such[...]Sam Harris’s much-discussed October appearance on 'Real Time with Bill Maher' — a crude spectacle in which he pigeonholed most Muslims as 'jihadists,' 'Islamists, or 'conservatives' — merely complements a lengthy record of Islamic demonology from him and other leading figures in the New Atheist movement[...]For the New Atheists, then, all religions are equally bad — but Islam is more equally bad[...]The excessive focus on Islam as something at once monolithic and exceptionally bad, whose backwards followers need to have their rights in democratic societies suppressed and their home countries subjected to a Western-led civilizing process, cannot be called anything other than racist[...]
I highly recommend the entire article. And I would just add that the crudity and ignorance which New Atheists apply to Islam, they apply to most of the rest of the world as well. (It's amazing to me that several of the leading New Atheists are competent or brilliant biologists -- how can they be so sensible, so informed, and so eager to learn about one scientific discipline, and about absolutely nothing else?)
I don't highly recommend this absurdly over-optimistic piece in the Spectator declaring that Richard Dawkins has lost. But if you despise the New Atheists and want to comfort yourself with a daydream that they're about to blow away like dry leaves, then by all means read it.
I, on the other hand, am cursed with an aversion to illusion. We're going to be dealing with these chumps for a while.
I also don't like that the Spectator refers to the atheists who are done with the New Atheists as New New Atheists, rather than Steven Bollinger Can Haz Nobel Atheists.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Dialogue With An Unhelpful Person
NEW ATHEIST: I'm an atheist.
ME: Me too! High-five!
NEW ATHEIST: I don't believe God exists.
ME: It's an absurd idea. May not have been so absurd 5000 years ago, but we keep learning. In the light of new information, it's absurd.
NEW ATHEST: Muslims support terrorism.
ME: What?! No! Studies show that Muslims feel just about the same way about terrorism as people in general do: it's extremely unpopular among them. And they keep saying so, but the Western media tend not to --
NEW ATHEIST: Islam is the greatest danger in the world today.
ME: Islam isn't even one unified entity. I know: Muslims are always talking about how the aim of their religion is to unify all of mankind -- one God, one religion, one humanity -- but in reality, that's sort of like Christians saying that their religion is about turning the other cheek: that is too say, it's not the reality. The reality is that Muslims are not unified.
NEW ATHEIST: Muslims are lying when they say that Islam is a religion of peace.
ME: No -- you ignore peaceful Muslims, and when someone finally manages to force you to take notice of them for a moment, you shrug them off with a "those aren't real Muslims" and go straight back to your fearmongering. There is no more striking example of No True Scotsman than your descriptions of Muslims: according to you, if it's bad, it's authentically Muslim; if it's good, it has dick-all to do with Islam. And --
NEW ATHEIST: You don't see a lot of Buddhist suicide bombers --
ME: Dude! THEY WERE CALLED KAMIKAZES! Thousands of them died in suicide bombing runs in WWII! You don't see what you refuse to see!
ME: Me too! High-five!
NEW ATHEIST: I don't believe God exists.
ME: It's an absurd idea. May not have been so absurd 5000 years ago, but we keep learning. In the light of new information, it's absurd.
NEW ATHEST: Muslims support terrorism.
ME: What?! No! Studies show that Muslims feel just about the same way about terrorism as people in general do: it's extremely unpopular among them. And they keep saying so, but the Western media tend not to --
NEW ATHEIST: Islam is the greatest danger in the world today.
ME: Islam isn't even one unified entity. I know: Muslims are always talking about how the aim of their religion is to unify all of mankind -- one God, one religion, one humanity -- but in reality, that's sort of like Christians saying that their religion is about turning the other cheek: that is too say, it's not the reality. The reality is that Muslims are not unified.
NEW ATHEIST: Muslims are lying when they say that Islam is a religion of peace.
ME: No -- you ignore peaceful Muslims, and when someone finally manages to force you to take notice of them for a moment, you shrug them off with a "those aren't real Muslims" and go straight back to your fearmongering. There is no more striking example of No True Scotsman than your descriptions of Muslims: according to you, if it's bad, it's authentically Muslim; if it's good, it has dick-all to do with Islam. And --
NEW ATHEIST: You don't see a lot of Buddhist suicide bombers --
ME: Dude! THEY WERE CALLED KAMIKAZES! Thousands of them died in suicide bombing runs in WWII! You don't see what you refuse to see!
Islam Doesn't Do Anything
Because Islam is not a unified entity. You don't have to be paying very close attention at all to have noticed that Shia Muslims always seem to be in conflict with Sunni Muslims. It doesn't take excruciatingly long and difficult research to discover that the Shia-Sunni split goes back to within a few decades of Muhammed's death. Muslims haven't all agreed about anything since the 7th century. If you've gone from a horrified rejection of any examination of Islam to a casual interest in it, you can also see that even though one individual is a Shiite and another is a Sunni, they often will get along just fine. The way there's nothing at all strange about a Catholic and a Protestant being friends.
The same way that there's nothing at all strange about a Catholic and a Protestant and an Orthodox Christian and a Copt and a Shiite and a Sunni and a Hindu and a Sikh and a Buddhist and a Druze and a Bahá'í and an atheist all being good friends with each other and getting along just fine, although many of those individuals, perhaps even every single one of such a circle of friends, might unfortunately know people who share his or her religion or lack of it and think that it's not fine at all to be mingling with those others. But most people in each one of those groups don't want to kill over the differences between the groups.
I'd like to think that the great majority of people belonging to each one of those religious or non-religious groups feels a stronger identification with the entire group of humans than with their own individual group, and thinks of the people in the other groups as people like them, who get happy and sad and hungry and sleepy and have friends and families and quirks and senses of humor and hopes about putting ethnic and religious hatreds behind us once and for all, the sooner the better!
Let's compare the tensions over religion which are obsessing some people so much these days with ethnic tensions. There have been some terrible atrocities committed against non-white people by white people, horrible deeds committed in the name of white people. Nevertheless, white people are not a hate group. Why? Because the people who have done those horrible things, although they claimed to be acting on behalf of all white people, did not have the approval or backing of all white people. In the case of the Nazis in WWII, many of the people, probably most of the people, who fought against them and finally defeated them were white people. You didn't have to be non-white to vehemently hate everything the Nazis stood for.
In just the same way, most of the people fighting against ISIS today are Muslims. That's no secret, there hasn't been any official media black-out of that information in the West as far as I can see, and yet, many people act as if it would be news to them. As if Islam were one unified group which was coming to get us. The same way that some Muslims -- ISIS, for example -- talk about the West as if the West were one unified group which was coming to get them.
Imagine if in the midst of the Thirty Years' War, some Muslims in Egypt or Persia talked about how the Christians thought of nothing day and night except how they were going to crush Islam. Some Christian idiots were pre- occupied with such thoughts then, just as some Christian and New Atheist idiots think of little else today. Others were much too busy with the mostly Catholic-against-Protestant conflict in Europe to give much thought to Muslims.
Then as now, the biggest problem facing humanity was not one religious or ethnic group against another, but many different groups of idiots, large groups and smaller ones, each group against pretty much the entire rest of the world.
The same way that there's nothing at all strange about a Catholic and a Protestant and an Orthodox Christian and a Copt and a Shiite and a Sunni and a Hindu and a Sikh and a Buddhist and a Druze and a Bahá'í and an atheist all being good friends with each other and getting along just fine, although many of those individuals, perhaps even every single one of such a circle of friends, might unfortunately know people who share his or her religion or lack of it and think that it's not fine at all to be mingling with those others. But most people in each one of those groups don't want to kill over the differences between the groups.
I'd like to think that the great majority of people belonging to each one of those religious or non-religious groups feels a stronger identification with the entire group of humans than with their own individual group, and thinks of the people in the other groups as people like them, who get happy and sad and hungry and sleepy and have friends and families and quirks and senses of humor and hopes about putting ethnic and religious hatreds behind us once and for all, the sooner the better!
Let's compare the tensions over religion which are obsessing some people so much these days with ethnic tensions. There have been some terrible atrocities committed against non-white people by white people, horrible deeds committed in the name of white people. Nevertheless, white people are not a hate group. Why? Because the people who have done those horrible things, although they claimed to be acting on behalf of all white people, did not have the approval or backing of all white people. In the case of the Nazis in WWII, many of the people, probably most of the people, who fought against them and finally defeated them were white people. You didn't have to be non-white to vehemently hate everything the Nazis stood for.
In just the same way, most of the people fighting against ISIS today are Muslims. That's no secret, there hasn't been any official media black-out of that information in the West as far as I can see, and yet, many people act as if it would be news to them. As if Islam were one unified group which was coming to get us. The same way that some Muslims -- ISIS, for example -- talk about the West as if the West were one unified group which was coming to get them.
Imagine if in the midst of the Thirty Years' War, some Muslims in Egypt or Persia talked about how the Christians thought of nothing day and night except how they were going to crush Islam. Some Christian idiots were pre- occupied with such thoughts then, just as some Christian and New Atheist idiots think of little else today. Others were much too busy with the mostly Catholic-against-Protestant conflict in Europe to give much thought to Muslims.
Then as now, the biggest problem facing humanity was not one religious or ethnic group against another, but many different groups of idiots, large groups and smaller ones, each group against pretty much the entire rest of the world.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Someone Suggested That We "Ban The Cross"
The more I think about that rallying cry, "Let's ban the cross!" the more aggravated I get.
Unless the dude was just satirizing things like "Let's ban burkas," in which case, good one, he got me! Or if he means that crucifixion should be banned. I'm down with that, because crucifixion is a particularly cruel method of execution. But I don't think that's what he means.
I'm afraid this guy really meant it, but what exactly does he have in mind -- confiscating things, smashing them up because they don't coincide with his world view? I'm assuming that this, unfortunately, isn't a joke. New Atheists, not all of them, but a few of the more excitable ones, do say things like this now and then. When the Taliban or ISIS actually do things like that, they're first in line to denounce it, but they rarely if ever seem to see how much their words have in common with some of the deeds they denounce.
And they're also first in line, whenever Islamist extremist make headlines, to demand things like "banning Islam," which of course is about as stupid as trying to "ban the cross."
Are we talking about crosses on government property, or everywhere? I assume the crosses on rosaries would be included -- how many millions of those crosses are there? Plus all the non-rosary crucifixes on necklaces, earrings, bracelets, etc.
does this maniac want to destroy only 3-D crosses, or is he also going after depictions of crosses in paintings, and in books about art which have reproductions of those paintings?
I can't imagine that this guy has thought this through.
It's clear that I'm against the suggestion of banning the cross, right? I think it's a completely cuckoo-bananas idea. And even most New Atheists, I believe, would not go along with it.
Well -- maybe most of them would. It's not as if they ever do anything practical or meaningful, in their capacities as New Atheists.
There are pictures of crosses on this blog, does this bozo want to come after my blog? You know what, there's a picture of a cross in one of his online avatars as well. I wonder whether he'd make an exception for satirical and/or obscene or scatological anti-religious pictures. If not, he'd not only have to destroy his own avatar somehow, he'd have to go after a lot of images made by and for other New Atheists.
When someone suggests destroying every copy of the Koran, New Atheists don't generally get upset and say Sit down and shut up you idiot. As a matter a fact, although, obviously, they're incapable of destroying every Koran, they have destroyed a few, and acted very proud of themselves, like they think they accomplished something. At least one of the leaders of New Atheism, PZ Myers, piled garbage and excrement onto a copy of the Koran and took pictures of it and put them on the Internet.
Often New Atheists claim that they're against all religions equally, and that may actually be true in some cases. Often they'll come right out and say that they're more against Islam than any other religion. Typically, they'll add that Islamophobia doesn't exist.
And, they often look at public opinion polls saying so-and-so-many percent of Amurrkins would never vote for an atheist for President, and they wonder why. The atheists who are currently most famous for being atheists are fanatically, stupidly Islamophobic, and generally crude and clueless on other religions too. They don't go around demanding that the cross be banned, but they're not that far from such stupid public statements either. They've bred the subculture where a call to ban the cross generates hardly a batted eye or a Hey what do you mean you moron. They don't denounce stupid anti-religious statements, they make constant excuses for them. And they are, for worse, for much worse, currently the public face of atheism. Vote for Myers or Sam Harris for President? Neither one could get elected dog-catcher of Portland. If either of them ran against a jihadist for POTUS, the jihadist's chances would be good.
Atheists who aren't idiots need to stand up to the idiots. For our own good. Having the answer to one question in common with them isn't enough to overlook their stupid, hare-filled fanaticism.
Unless the dude was just satirizing things like "Let's ban burkas," in which case, good one, he got me! Or if he means that crucifixion should be banned. I'm down with that, because crucifixion is a particularly cruel method of execution. But I don't think that's what he means.
I'm afraid this guy really meant it, but what exactly does he have in mind -- confiscating things, smashing them up because they don't coincide with his world view? I'm assuming that this, unfortunately, isn't a joke. New Atheists, not all of them, but a few of the more excitable ones, do say things like this now and then. When the Taliban or ISIS actually do things like that, they're first in line to denounce it, but they rarely if ever seem to see how much their words have in common with some of the deeds they denounce.
And they're also first in line, whenever Islamist extremist make headlines, to demand things like "banning Islam," which of course is about as stupid as trying to "ban the cross."
Are we talking about crosses on government property, or everywhere? I assume the crosses on rosaries would be included -- how many millions of those crosses are there? Plus all the non-rosary crucifixes on necklaces, earrings, bracelets, etc.
does this maniac want to destroy only 3-D crosses, or is he also going after depictions of crosses in paintings, and in books about art which have reproductions of those paintings?
I can't imagine that this guy has thought this through.
It's clear that I'm against the suggestion of banning the cross, right? I think it's a completely cuckoo-bananas idea. And even most New Atheists, I believe, would not go along with it.
Well -- maybe most of them would. It's not as if they ever do anything practical or meaningful, in their capacities as New Atheists.
There are pictures of crosses on this blog, does this bozo want to come after my blog? You know what, there's a picture of a cross in one of his online avatars as well. I wonder whether he'd make an exception for satirical and/or obscene or scatological anti-religious pictures. If not, he'd not only have to destroy his own avatar somehow, he'd have to go after a lot of images made by and for other New Atheists.
When someone suggests destroying every copy of the Koran, New Atheists don't generally get upset and say Sit down and shut up you idiot. As a matter a fact, although, obviously, they're incapable of destroying every Koran, they have destroyed a few, and acted very proud of themselves, like they think they accomplished something. At least one of the leaders of New Atheism, PZ Myers, piled garbage and excrement onto a copy of the Koran and took pictures of it and put them on the Internet.
Often New Atheists claim that they're against all religions equally, and that may actually be true in some cases. Often they'll come right out and say that they're more against Islam than any other religion. Typically, they'll add that Islamophobia doesn't exist.
And, they often look at public opinion polls saying so-and-so-many percent of Amurrkins would never vote for an atheist for President, and they wonder why. The atheists who are currently most famous for being atheists are fanatically, stupidly Islamophobic, and generally crude and clueless on other religions too. They don't go around demanding that the cross be banned, but they're not that far from such stupid public statements either. They've bred the subculture where a call to ban the cross generates hardly a batted eye or a Hey what do you mean you moron. They don't denounce stupid anti-religious statements, they make constant excuses for them. And they are, for worse, for much worse, currently the public face of atheism. Vote for Myers or Sam Harris for President? Neither one could get elected dog-catcher of Portland. If either of them ran against a jihadist for POTUS, the jihadist's chances would be good.
Atheists who aren't idiots need to stand up to the idiots. For our own good. Having the answer to one question in common with them isn't enough to overlook their stupid, hare-filled fanaticism.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Atheist Islamophobes Sound Exactly Like Conservative Christian Ones
The anti-Muslim protest in Phoenix last night is an example of why I've been dropping out of atheist groups lately: there are far too many anti-Muslim fanatics in those groups, saying things exactly like those armed bozos in Phoenix, and not nearly enough people standing up to them. I would imagine that most of the anti-Muslim protesters in Phoenix last night were conservative Christians, but when the subject is Islam, often these days conservative Christians and atheists sound exactly the same. Right down to "Everybody be sure to bring your guns." And that sucks. The atheism I want to be a part of is not a hate group.
Washingtonpost.com's coverage of the anti-Muslim protest in Phoenix.
Washingtonpost.com's coverage of the anti-Muslim protest in Phoenix.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Open Letter To Bill Maher
Hey, Bill. Last night on Jimmy Kimmel, you said:
"We have to stop saying when something like this that happened in Paris today, we have to stop saying, well, we should not insult a great religion. First of all, there are no great religions. They're all stupid and dangerous. And we should insult them, and we should be able to insult whatever we want. That is what free speech is like."
And here is some more of what free speech is like:
It's very depressing, but not at all surprising, that you jumped on the opportunity of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy to make one horrible thing seem to be all about Islam, you stupid islamophobic fuck. What you and Harris and Dawkins and all your dopey fans don't get is that Muslims are horrified by this massacre, the same way that anybody is horrified by any atrocity. They're kinda like people that way. They're speaking out against this horrible deed and saying that it was not done in their name, and you don't give a flying fuck. The same way that you make ISIS all about Islam and don't give a flying fuck that most of the people that ISIS have tyrannized and displaced and tortured and executed, and most of the people bleeding and dying fighting ISIS, are Muslims, and pay no attention to all of the majority-Muslims states who have denounced ISIS.
I agree with you that all religions are stupid primitive nonsense, and that the sooner they become history the better it will be for mankind. That's not rocket science, you don't need to spend so much time patting yourself on the back for having figured out something that simple. I'm not a believer attacking you for disrespecting religion, I'm an atheist attempting to point out to you that you and your nitwit New Atheist buddies are making atheism seem repulsive to most people. You're not helping.
Religions aren't the only form of stupid primitive nonsense currently plaguing mankind. Bigotry is stupid primitive nonsense, and it can be 100% religion-free, as you and the New Atheists constantly demonstrate by constantly holding billions of Muslims accountable for the deeds of a few psychopaths. What would it have been, if atheists, back in the 20th century, had reacted to every one of the atrocities of the KKK by saying: "See? This is what Christianity is like!"
One of the things that would have been is, unhelpful. The same way that it's unhelpful for you yahoos to insist that Islam is barbaric or "Medieval" and that Christianity has become more civilized than that, at the very same time that so many Muslim civilians are collaterally killed and maimed by the militaries of majority-Christian countries, countries which often enough pick the very unfortunate name of "crusade" to describe the military efforts in which those civilians are being killed and maimed.
You've figured out that religions are nonsense. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. You're right, they are. To quote William Goldman: "Give the genius a box of fucking Mars bars." Now, what are we going to do about that in a world where most people still are religious? Are your words and actions helpful? Or are you mostly just irritating, like some math-wiz Poindexter in elementary school who constantly rubs it in to everybody else that he can solve problems they can't solve, and never helps anybody with their assignments, and in general more than utterly fails to make math more sexy to the other students?
Most of the people you and I have to live with are religious, and aren't going to suddenly drop their religion and exclaim, "You're right! Thank you, Bill!" just because you insult them. Just try to keep that in mind. I don't think you should stop criticizing religion. I'm not going to stop criticizing religion. I'm not going to stop criticizing atheists when they're stupid and obnoxious for no damn reason, either, and I'm not going to stop telling comedians when they're not funny. We have to live with these people, these believers. I'm not trying to tell you what to say or do, I'm just saying that I don't think you're particularly funny when you talk about religion. Extremely monotonous, but not very funny, not full of the extraordinary insights which make for truly funny jokes. You're very funny most of the time, but when you get on religion, it's time to channel-surf for a minute because we've all already heard you say what you're about to say 100 times and get some fucking new material about it for the love of Jesus, so to speak! I'm not asking you to shut up, I'm begging you, on behalf of millions of fans who are getting more and more bored, to wise up. I believe in free speech just as much as you do, and I'm just as strongly opposed to people being killed over writing magazine articles and drawing cartoons as you and 99.9%+ of the rest of the people on this planet are, you stupid ugly fat-faced fuck.
Your pal,
Steven
"We have to stop saying when something like this that happened in Paris today, we have to stop saying, well, we should not insult a great religion. First of all, there are no great religions. They're all stupid and dangerous. And we should insult them, and we should be able to insult whatever we want. That is what free speech is like."
And here is some more of what free speech is like:
It's very depressing, but not at all surprising, that you jumped on the opportunity of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy to make one horrible thing seem to be all about Islam, you stupid islamophobic fuck. What you and Harris and Dawkins and all your dopey fans don't get is that Muslims are horrified by this massacre, the same way that anybody is horrified by any atrocity. They're kinda like people that way. They're speaking out against this horrible deed and saying that it was not done in their name, and you don't give a flying fuck. The same way that you make ISIS all about Islam and don't give a flying fuck that most of the people that ISIS have tyrannized and displaced and tortured and executed, and most of the people bleeding and dying fighting ISIS, are Muslims, and pay no attention to all of the majority-Muslims states who have denounced ISIS.
I agree with you that all religions are stupid primitive nonsense, and that the sooner they become history the better it will be for mankind. That's not rocket science, you don't need to spend so much time patting yourself on the back for having figured out something that simple. I'm not a believer attacking you for disrespecting religion, I'm an atheist attempting to point out to you that you and your nitwit New Atheist buddies are making atheism seem repulsive to most people. You're not helping.
Religions aren't the only form of stupid primitive nonsense currently plaguing mankind. Bigotry is stupid primitive nonsense, and it can be 100% religion-free, as you and the New Atheists constantly demonstrate by constantly holding billions of Muslims accountable for the deeds of a few psychopaths. What would it have been, if atheists, back in the 20th century, had reacted to every one of the atrocities of the KKK by saying: "See? This is what Christianity is like!"
One of the things that would have been is, unhelpful. The same way that it's unhelpful for you yahoos to insist that Islam is barbaric or "Medieval" and that Christianity has become more civilized than that, at the very same time that so many Muslim civilians are collaterally killed and maimed by the militaries of majority-Christian countries, countries which often enough pick the very unfortunate name of "crusade" to describe the military efforts in which those civilians are being killed and maimed.
You've figured out that religions are nonsense. Whoop-de-fucking-doo. You're right, they are. To quote William Goldman: "Give the genius a box of fucking Mars bars." Now, what are we going to do about that in a world where most people still are religious? Are your words and actions helpful? Or are you mostly just irritating, like some math-wiz Poindexter in elementary school who constantly rubs it in to everybody else that he can solve problems they can't solve, and never helps anybody with their assignments, and in general more than utterly fails to make math more sexy to the other students?
Most of the people you and I have to live with are religious, and aren't going to suddenly drop their religion and exclaim, "You're right! Thank you, Bill!" just because you insult them. Just try to keep that in mind. I don't think you should stop criticizing religion. I'm not going to stop criticizing religion. I'm not going to stop criticizing atheists when they're stupid and obnoxious for no damn reason, either, and I'm not going to stop telling comedians when they're not funny. We have to live with these people, these believers. I'm not trying to tell you what to say or do, I'm just saying that I don't think you're particularly funny when you talk about religion. Extremely monotonous, but not very funny, not full of the extraordinary insights which make for truly funny jokes. You're very funny most of the time, but when you get on religion, it's time to channel-surf for a minute because we've all already heard you say what you're about to say 100 times and get some fucking new material about it for the love of Jesus, so to speak! I'm not asking you to shut up, I'm begging you, on behalf of millions of fans who are getting more and more bored, to wise up. I believe in free speech just as much as you do, and I'm just as strongly opposed to people being killed over writing magazine articles and drawing cartoons as you and 99.9%+ of the rest of the people on this planet are, you stupid ugly fat-faced fuck.
Your pal,
Steven
Sunday, October 26, 2014
How New Atheists Can Make Even Someone Like Reza Aslan Look Bright By Comparison
You heard me, pardner: there's a feud a goin' on between Reza Aslan and the New Atheists, and I must take Aslan's side.
A lot of people, probably most of them Christians, heard about that awful woman who reads the diatribes posing as news on Fox News ask Aslan how he as a non-Christian could dare to write a book about Jesus, and naturally took Aslan's side. Maybe some of them first actually read something by Aslan after that interview and said, Hm, this guy isn't much of a writer, but still, between him and that lady on Fox, I'm totally on his side.
In a not dissimilar way, I and some other atheists have seen the Harris-vs-Aslan shitstorm gathering force, and been terribly unimpressed by Aslan, but still side with him immediately and unconditionally on topics of religion if it's a choice between him and Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins.
Aslan has become famous with a supposedly nonfictional book about Jesus which is just as fictional as most supposedly nonfictional books about Jesus are. Like the authors of most of these books, Aslan has created a Jesus in his own image, or in the image of what he flatters himself to be. There's so little we actually know about Jesus that whoever writes an entire book about him, or even a book which long sections about him, has to make stuff up. Some of us, like me and Kazantzakis and Gore Vidal, have been honest enough with ourselves and the world to call these books what they are: novels. (And Kazantzakis' novel about Jesus, for one, is effin brilliant. Basically, he told the story of the Gospel of Judas decades before the Gospel of Judas was discovered.)
Aslan is no Kazantzakis and no Ehrman, but he's making a decent effort. Sam Harris is making a spectacle of himself. Aslan said that there is no relationship between religious texts and the lives of religious believers, and that was very silly, of course, but instead of acknowledging that of course he couldn't literally have meant that, the New Atheists have seized upon it and gone on an on and on about how ridiculous Aslan's statement is.
As opposed to making the slightest effort to understand what Aslan meant, which is that there are a wide variety of interpretations of the Koran, and a wide variety of beliefs and political positions among Muslims. Exactly the same way that they obsess on the few verses from the Koran or the Bible which cast Islam or Judaism or Christianity in the worst possible light, and ignore the rest of those books. (Let me take the opportunity to once again call BULLSHIT on the vast majority of New Atheists who claim to've read the Koran and Bible cover-to-cover.) Or the way that some of them reacted to Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist? by going on and on about some drawing of a bird in the Vatican and how that drawing supposedly exposed Ehrman as a fraud. That was bizarre, the way they went on about that drawing. I wish I could say it was atypical.
Aslan is attempting to point out the diversity in the actual lives of the actual more than one billion Muslims in the world, over the din of the New Atheists saying Oh there's some horrible stuff here in the Koran, Oh we've got to watch out for these Muslims, Oh, be very, very afraid -- a din which of course fits in very nicely with the islamophobic rhetoric of people like the aforementioned Fox News correspondent who asked Aslan how he got the nerve to write about Jesus without even being a Christian.
Of course Aslan pointed it out in a very unfortunate and clumsy way when he said that there is NO connection between the lives of believers and the texts of the holy books of those believers. Still, his point was against prejudice -- against assigning characteristic to Muslims because they are Muslims instead of looking closer and regarding them as the individual human beings they are. And that is a point which urgently needs to be made in our society which still suffers from so much prejudice against and fear of Muslims. Between Aslan's attempt to counter this prejudice and fear, and the New Atheists stirring it up, there's no question that any and every intelligent atheist must side with Aslan. In spite of the frequent facepalms over the clumsy way Aslan expresses himself, the message he expresses is far the wiser one. Stemming the tide of violence is far more urgent than whether or not someone believes in God. Identifying with and supporting Muslims fighting against extremism and Christians countering prejudice and fear is far more important than critiquing ancient texts.
And once again, New Atheists, if you're going to critique those texts, read the whole texts first. That's a bare minimum to have a chance not to look like fanatical fools. Don't keep telling me you already have -- like I keep telling you: I don't believe you. Show me you have, by saying something intelligent about the entire Koran or the entire Bible.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Sam Harris On Lawrence O'Donnell
Sam Harris is a dingbat. So is Lawrence O'Donnell. But I have something important in common with each of them: Harris and I are both atheists, and O'Donnell and I are both Democrats. If the one dingbat hadn't been on the other's show last night (MSNBC fired Olbermann and gave O'Donnell a nightly show. Paranoid Democrats should be forgiven if they occasionally wonder whether MSNBC is a fiendishly clever right-wing scheme to destroy the Democratic Party), I probably wouldn't have anything to say about him right now, just as I wouldn't have had anything to say about Michael Paulkovich if Free Inquiry hadn't published his piece on the 126.
But Harris was on O'Donnell's show last night, and the two of them were discussing Islam as if it were just like Christianity, except 700 years earlier. Harris said, for example, "It‘s as though we‘re encountering the Christians of the 14th century, armed with 21st century weapons."
Well, no, it's not like that, ya freakin dingbat. Christianity and Islam are not going through similar courses of development. And I'm going to concentrate on the development of Western Christianity here because it's clear that's what he had in mind, and not clear if he knows as many as 4 facts about Byzantium. And Islam actually began more like 600 years after Christianity did.
Let's run a while with this thesis that Islam is taking a course similar to Christianity's. 500 years after it began, (Western) Christianity was smack dab in the dark of the Dark Ages. (I'm using the term Dark Ages to mean, not the entirety of the Middle Ages between Antiquity and the Renaissance, but the period between the middle of the 5th century and the end of the 8th, which even compared to the Middle ages in general was dark.) We're talking about a welter of war, chaos, plague, illiteracy, superstition to the stage of rampant mass hallicination, etc.
500 years after Islam began it was maintaining many elements of the Golden Islam of Islam, leading the world in math, chemistry, medicine, astronomy, physics, architecture, etc, while holding off the beginnings of those barbarian invasions which we know as the Crusades. Not so much already with the parallel courses of development.
What does Harris envision with this parallax view when he thinks of Islam 400 years from now: Islam colonizing Christendom the way Christendon colonized Islam in the 19th and 20th centuries?
Okay, enough for right now about Harris and his notions, let's summarize the mess with ISIS, the so-called "Islamic State," which, let's face it, is the only reason Harris and his Islamophobic fear-mongering got onto the other dingbat's show last night: it has perhaps as many as 35,000 troops currently, and its stated ambition is to bring all of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world under its control. It's currently fighting against Iraqi and Syrian Muslims and against Kurds, who have no state of their own and are mostly Muslims, and whom Turkey is not supporting because of longstanding ethnic hostilities between (Islamic) Turks and Kurds, and also because Turkey hopes that ISIS will destabilize or even topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad (a Muslim) in Syria; however, some of the (Muslim) Syrian rebels who also oppose Assad are fighting alongside the Kurds against ISIS. And a few non-Islamic Westerners have gotten caught in the fray. Yes, it's horrible the way ISIS has been beheading Westerners, but they're only a tiny fraction of the casualties in the conflict between these extremists nuts and most of the rest of the world, which is what it comes down to, just as it would be if it came down to it with most extremist nuts, whatever their metaphysical beliefs or lack of them: the extremists versus all the rest of us. Most of the people in the world oppose extremism, and say so, but Harris is too busy cherry-picking books for justifications for his fear to raise his head and look around a bit and see that the world is much more complicated than how he's trying to tell us it is.
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