As the reaction to the anti-Islamic film, Innocence of Muslims, continues the leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, has called for international blasphemy laws to protect the sensibilities of the faithful. He wants these laws to apply to the big three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; to protect all the Major Prophets from criticism and defamation. These calls are a reaction to the realization that, outside of the Muslim world, no actual laws have been broken; calling for the prosecution of the filmmakers is futile as America’s freedom of speech laws clearly protect them.
No doubt the producers considered this before embarking on the project to cover themselves in the event of the predictable shit-storm that would erupt after the film came to light.
Innocence of Muslims is clearly a cynical attempt to inflame Muslim sensibilities, and it has worked; protests are raging all over the world and these are being seized upon, if not organized, by extremists to push their own political agendas. It isn’t a coincidence that American flags are being burnt on the streets in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan; it is no coincidence that the first protests started in Egypt, a country that is drifting towards theocracy day by day; and it is no coincidence that the American embassy was attacked and the ambassador murdered in Libya. Religion is being used as a political vehicle for self-interest and the perpetrators are hiding behind an affront to their faith.
This excuse has been gifted to the extremist by a bitchy bit of religious infighting; although the origins of the filmmakers haven’t completely come to light it is starting to seem that the makers of the Innocence of Muslims are a consortium of Egyptian Christians and Israeli Jews. The film has been made to deliberately cause offence and ignite the Middle East, what they hoped to achieve by this other than show that Muslims are incredibly sensitive isn’t obvious to the casual observer. The film is, almost, hysterically bad; an amateur Carry On film; it would be funny if the consequences hadn’t been violence and murder.
Enter Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, yesterday he called for ‘peaceful’ protests on behalf of the religion and the Prophet; he stressed that Muslims not attack Christians because the only people that were at fault were the filmmakers, the people who supported them and, rather cryptically, the people who refused to prosecute them. In essence he was saying if your not with us, you’re against us. Condemning the film as cynical and inflammatory isn’t enough; Nasrallah wants secular governments to move to prosecute the makers. This, obviously, isn’t going to happen. The film isn’t, strictly speaking, hate speech; modern Muslims aren’t being criticized, their Prophet is being mocked. They aren’t being attacked as a people, their beliefs are being insulted. Therefore as it stands no law is being broken in the West and Nasrallah knows it; as it stands only international blasphemy laws would be of use in this case and hence the leader of Hezbollah, today, calls for them.
Instigating blasphemy laws on this scale would be a terrible mistake. It would open the very real possibility of extradition to Islamic theocracies of Westerners for things they have said, for intellectual criticism of Islam. Nasrallah has sweetened the pill by calling for Christianity and Judaism to also be protected, but this is a bluff; he knows that the ‘Christian West’ and Israel won’t be nearly as touchy at a state level. He is using the situation to make Islam intellectually untouchable, to put it above criticism. Giving it this status will be intolerable philosophically; clerics would be in a position to decide what is blasphemous and what isn’t, and in the internet, social media world this power will be abused. I’m not being paranoid, this year Malaysia extradited Saudi writer Hamza Kashgari back to Saudi Arabia for two tweets that were deemed to criticize Mohamed and Allah. This is Islamic blasphemy law in action, prosecution for tweeting. He is expected to get two years.
Even this month the World Council of Churches has called for international examination of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Non Muslims in the country live in ‘a state of terror’, lynchings are common and are often carried out on rumour alone. This year a young Christian girl was arrested after it was alleged that she had burnt a Koran, the penalty being death. Thankfully it was proved that the allegations weren’t true, but the possibility of execution, of a child, was very real.
In the event of a world wide law it is feasible that Muslim states would demand extradition for similar offences and carry out similar punishments. We can not accept this in the West. It is one thing to respect figures from the past, it is something completely different to demand we honour them and enforce that in law.
If such a law ever did come in to existence we would all be living in an Islamic theocracy
Monday, 17 September 2012
Sunday, 16 September 2012
Same Sex Marriages and The Church
Nick Clegg got into trouble this week by calling a group of bigots; bigots. It transpired that bigots don’t appreciate having their bigotry pointed out to them. Furor ensued and Clegg was forced to back down and withdraw the offending word, but it was already too late; the offended were still offended and Clegg looked weak to those on the opposing side.
The Church and Christians are going to great lengths to justify their prejudices as examples of religious freedom. They argue that their stance on same sex marriages (SSM) isn’t one of bigotry but an expression of faith; a moral stance rather than a prejudicial one. They argue that it is actually they who are being discriminated against, their adherence to Biblical teaching dismissed in favour of a liberal, politically correct, agenda.
Ironically Clegg’s climb down itself was a result of this political PC position. Rather than stick his guns, instead he tried to placate the feelings of Christians; unfortunately in this debate what ever side you’re on you’re going to offend someone. Thus by trying to be everyone’s friend Clegg ended up as no-ones friend; supporters of SSM’s, encouraged by the strength of the original statement, found themselves left cold by the climb-down; Christians didn’t accept the removal of the word ‘bigot’ because it had already increased their feelings of persecution and the cat was out of the bag, Clegg’s feelings had been made clear and an apology didn’t change that.
It has to be said at this point that Clegg has form, he doesn’t believe in God yet goes to Sunday Mass every week. Here, however, it seems playing both sides hasn’t worked out for him.
Attributing your prejudices to God doesn’t stop them being prejudices. This is what rankled so much with the faithful when Clegg cack-handedly attempted to call a spade a spade. The notion that they are actually bigots offended because they probably don’t think of themselves that way. One would assume that they truly believe that they are compassionate thoughtful individuals taking a courageous stand against secular modernity. They are merely following the word of God and the teachings of the Church. So an issue of equality switches, in their heads, to one of religious freedom; the right to prevent an immoral practice sullying their Churches rather than equality under the law. The fact that it might just be a case of law-abiding tax payers wanting the same rights as everyone else escapes them.
The prohibition of homosexuality appears several times in the Bible, however there are no such prohibitions for paedophilia or slavery. The Bible implies that the act is one a choice, sin is always a choice; the sinner has chosen the sin not been born with the desire for that sin; this would imply that the homosexual desire had been implanted by God and make all the subsequent damnations of it rather tricky philosophically.
It’s very clear that it is the act the Biblical authors didn’t like and the modern Church carries on with this tradition, homosexual thoughts are alright if the ‘sufferer’ actively tries to overcome them. It is the actual homosexual act that gets ordained knickers in a twist; it is the sex that preoccupies them.
It’s this thought process that leads to surreal statements made by evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic of their own homosexual feelings and fantasies that they had experienced in adolescence. The argument being that these desires can be, and indeed were, overcome. To the non-believing, secular, ear statements like this sound a lot like admissions of repressed homosexual tendencies; by and large straight people don’t have gay fantasies, such fantasies are the preserve of gay people. Occasionally there are slip ups and recitative behaviors and a Pastor is caught in a compromising position with another man; luckily this gives them an opportunity to blame them Devil and a round of Christian forgiveness ensues. The Pastor’s wife stands by him and he gets back to the job of being straight.
This philosophy has lead to the murky practice of attempting to cure homosexuality; young Christian are coerced into ‘treatment’ programmes resulting in self loathing or at the very least lives lived as lies; socially acceptable masks and loveless marriages, self denial in order to keep God happy or to prevent their ostracization from the religious community.
Homophobia, like all prejudices, is learnt. The fact that in this case it is learnt, even taught, in Church doesn’t stop it being a form of bigotry. Attributing it to God no more validates the mindset than attributing it to any other environment. One can no more quote the Bible as justification anymore than say, Marlowe’s Edward II. Just because it is written down in an ancient book no more validates the prejudice than picking it up off of intolerant parents.
Arguments of preserving the sanctity of marriage fall rather flat as well; SSM will not devalue heterosexual marriage. Heterosexuals have been busy devaluing their own marriages since divorce became easily accessible. No one can reduce your marriage but you. Claims that the inability to reproduce negates the need for SSM also appear tenuous when scrutinized. If this was what the institution of marriage was all about then the Church would turn down straight couples for reasons of fertility and age. Children are born in and out of marriage; the union isn’t a prerequisite to siring offspring, it is merely the romantic idealized norm.
The case against SSM is often packaged as one of morality; the homosexual act being an immoral one. Social commentators such as Peter Hitchens, the brother of the late great Christopher Hitchens, bemoan the destruction of the family and religious bedrock of this country; the devaluation of the heterosexual union, life long commitment and that secure environment for raising children. Hitchens is very much stuck in the past and conjures up imagery of the modern world as an Orwellian dystopia ruled by a corrupt liberal elite. Ironically he engages in a double-speak of his own when citing that liberal equalitarian values are actually an enforcement of a form of thought crime. He hints that he can’t express his own homophobia for fear of the liberal backlash. He is denied the freedom to air his opinions by a politically correct Big Brother state; religious middle England is silenced beneath the jack-boot of modernism and multiculturalism.
The actuality is that Hitchens can say what he likes, whether or not that will allow him to carry on his work at a national daily newspaper is another matter. One can only imagine the extremity of his actual unedited views. He argues that the role of the Church has been destroyed by fifty years of liberal modernism. Immorality has flourished by the acceptance of alternative lifestyles; he claims that Christians are persecuted and Muslims are appeased; multiculturalism crushing the indigenous and pussy footing around the alien. The whole country is going down hill and this can be attributed to the populous leaving the Church. Homosexuality, rising crime, drug abuse, depression and absent fathers are all a result of people turning away from the faith. Secularism and liberalism are the golden calves of the modern world out to destroy the Church.
Hitchens’ fears are unfounded. Secularism doesn’t go far enough to challenge the Church. In the same way Islam is appeased with the approval of Sharia courts, Christian sensibilities are coddled. Their beliefs are still given preferential treatment and respect.
The actual fact of the matter is the institution of marriage is a wholly secular institution. The Church can not marry you without the intervention of the state. The marriage wouldn’t be legal if it did. If your registrar isn't your priest you will need a state registrar present to be legally married. All unions are by definition civil unions. A state representative has to hear you accept your partner as your husband or wife for the union to stand. The contract will be equally binding whether the setting for it is within a Church or simply in a hotel. It is only convention that has made this a religious affair. The Church doesn’t hold the right to this decision, in a very real sense you are never married before God but before the state. It is the state that awards you all your rights thereafter, not God and not the Church.
The Church enjoys a tax-free status so it can not complain when it is asked to adhere to the secular social norms of the society that indirectly funds it by giving it this special status. It doesn’t have the right to moralize given its set up.
If the religious elite feel that this policy compromises them then they should give it up and start paying taxes. They would then be, to all intents and purposes, a private club; they would be detached completely from the workings of the state and could make their own decisions concerning who they married. However as things stand they do not possess the luxury of this autonomy and have to comply with social norms.
Nick Clegg had the opportunity to stick by a principle this week but backed away from it through cowardice. It was the perfect opportunity for a secular representative to make a stand and tell the Church exactly where it stood. Evidently that day hasn’t come yet.
The Church and Christians are going to great lengths to justify their prejudices as examples of religious freedom. They argue that their stance on same sex marriages (SSM) isn’t one of bigotry but an expression of faith; a moral stance rather than a prejudicial one. They argue that it is actually they who are being discriminated against, their adherence to Biblical teaching dismissed in favour of a liberal, politically correct, agenda.
Ironically Clegg’s climb down itself was a result of this political PC position. Rather than stick his guns, instead he tried to placate the feelings of Christians; unfortunately in this debate what ever side you’re on you’re going to offend someone. Thus by trying to be everyone’s friend Clegg ended up as no-ones friend; supporters of SSM’s, encouraged by the strength of the original statement, found themselves left cold by the climb-down; Christians didn’t accept the removal of the word ‘bigot’ because it had already increased their feelings of persecution and the cat was out of the bag, Clegg’s feelings had been made clear and an apology didn’t change that.
It has to be said at this point that Clegg has form, he doesn’t believe in God yet goes to Sunday Mass every week. Here, however, it seems playing both sides hasn’t worked out for him.
Attributing your prejudices to God doesn’t stop them being prejudices. This is what rankled so much with the faithful when Clegg cack-handedly attempted to call a spade a spade. The notion that they are actually bigots offended because they probably don’t think of themselves that way. One would assume that they truly believe that they are compassionate thoughtful individuals taking a courageous stand against secular modernity. They are merely following the word of God and the teachings of the Church. So an issue of equality switches, in their heads, to one of religious freedom; the right to prevent an immoral practice sullying their Churches rather than equality under the law. The fact that it might just be a case of law-abiding tax payers wanting the same rights as everyone else escapes them.
The prohibition of homosexuality appears several times in the Bible, however there are no such prohibitions for paedophilia or slavery. The Bible implies that the act is one a choice, sin is always a choice; the sinner has chosen the sin not been born with the desire for that sin; this would imply that the homosexual desire had been implanted by God and make all the subsequent damnations of it rather tricky philosophically.
It’s very clear that it is the act the Biblical authors didn’t like and the modern Church carries on with this tradition, homosexual thoughts are alright if the ‘sufferer’ actively tries to overcome them. It is the actual homosexual act that gets ordained knickers in a twist; it is the sex that preoccupies them.
It’s this thought process that leads to surreal statements made by evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic of their own homosexual feelings and fantasies that they had experienced in adolescence. The argument being that these desires can be, and indeed were, overcome. To the non-believing, secular, ear statements like this sound a lot like admissions of repressed homosexual tendencies; by and large straight people don’t have gay fantasies, such fantasies are the preserve of gay people. Occasionally there are slip ups and recitative behaviors and a Pastor is caught in a compromising position with another man; luckily this gives them an opportunity to blame them Devil and a round of Christian forgiveness ensues. The Pastor’s wife stands by him and he gets back to the job of being straight.
This philosophy has lead to the murky practice of attempting to cure homosexuality; young Christian are coerced into ‘treatment’ programmes resulting in self loathing or at the very least lives lived as lies; socially acceptable masks and loveless marriages, self denial in order to keep God happy or to prevent their ostracization from the religious community.
Homophobia, like all prejudices, is learnt. The fact that in this case it is learnt, even taught, in Church doesn’t stop it being a form of bigotry. Attributing it to God no more validates the mindset than attributing it to any other environment. One can no more quote the Bible as justification anymore than say, Marlowe’s Edward II. Just because it is written down in an ancient book no more validates the prejudice than picking it up off of intolerant parents.
Arguments of preserving the sanctity of marriage fall rather flat as well; SSM will not devalue heterosexual marriage. Heterosexuals have been busy devaluing their own marriages since divorce became easily accessible. No one can reduce your marriage but you. Claims that the inability to reproduce negates the need for SSM also appear tenuous when scrutinized. If this was what the institution of marriage was all about then the Church would turn down straight couples for reasons of fertility and age. Children are born in and out of marriage; the union isn’t a prerequisite to siring offspring, it is merely the romantic idealized norm.
The case against SSM is often packaged as one of morality; the homosexual act being an immoral one. Social commentators such as Peter Hitchens, the brother of the late great Christopher Hitchens, bemoan the destruction of the family and religious bedrock of this country; the devaluation of the heterosexual union, life long commitment and that secure environment for raising children. Hitchens is very much stuck in the past and conjures up imagery of the modern world as an Orwellian dystopia ruled by a corrupt liberal elite. Ironically he engages in a double-speak of his own when citing that liberal equalitarian values are actually an enforcement of a form of thought crime. He hints that he can’t express his own homophobia for fear of the liberal backlash. He is denied the freedom to air his opinions by a politically correct Big Brother state; religious middle England is silenced beneath the jack-boot of modernism and multiculturalism.
The actuality is that Hitchens can say what he likes, whether or not that will allow him to carry on his work at a national daily newspaper is another matter. One can only imagine the extremity of his actual unedited views. He argues that the role of the Church has been destroyed by fifty years of liberal modernism. Immorality has flourished by the acceptance of alternative lifestyles; he claims that Christians are persecuted and Muslims are appeased; multiculturalism crushing the indigenous and pussy footing around the alien. The whole country is going down hill and this can be attributed to the populous leaving the Church. Homosexuality, rising crime, drug abuse, depression and absent fathers are all a result of people turning away from the faith. Secularism and liberalism are the golden calves of the modern world out to destroy the Church.
Hitchens’ fears are unfounded. Secularism doesn’t go far enough to challenge the Church. In the same way Islam is appeased with the approval of Sharia courts, Christian sensibilities are coddled. Their beliefs are still given preferential treatment and respect.
The actual fact of the matter is the institution of marriage is a wholly secular institution. The Church can not marry you without the intervention of the state. The marriage wouldn’t be legal if it did. If your registrar isn't your priest you will need a state registrar present to be legally married. All unions are by definition civil unions. A state representative has to hear you accept your partner as your husband or wife for the union to stand. The contract will be equally binding whether the setting for it is within a Church or simply in a hotel. It is only convention that has made this a religious affair. The Church doesn’t hold the right to this decision, in a very real sense you are never married before God but before the state. It is the state that awards you all your rights thereafter, not God and not the Church.
The Church enjoys a tax-free status so it can not complain when it is asked to adhere to the secular social norms of the society that indirectly funds it by giving it this special status. It doesn’t have the right to moralize given its set up.
If the religious elite feel that this policy compromises them then they should give it up and start paying taxes. They would then be, to all intents and purposes, a private club; they would be detached completely from the workings of the state and could make their own decisions concerning who they married. However as things stand they do not possess the luxury of this autonomy and have to comply with social norms.
Nick Clegg had the opportunity to stick by a principle this week but backed away from it through cowardice. It was the perfect opportunity for a secular representative to make a stand and tell the Church exactly where it stood. Evidently that day hasn’t come yet.
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
Revelation
Revelation is intrinsic to religious belief. Without this concept all religions would have died a death in the last century as scientific advances pushed the need for God further and further into the dark recesses of human affairs. In the early days of humanity the simple fact of the universe’s existence was proof enough of God. With no understanding of evolution or cosmological history the fact that we were actually here in the first place proved that we had been created by some higher power. All creation myths start with nothingness or chaos before order is brought about by the benevolence of some Deity or another. Humanity is fashioned, then favoured and a clockwork universe installed for its benefit and comfort.
When approached from the mindset of the ancients this makes perfect philosophical sense. Something can’t possibly come from nothing; the world appears ordered and constant and, crucially, designed. Everything around you is a reminder of the kindness of your God and, more to the point, a reminder for you not to forget your duties to them.Within this framework revelation becomes an important part of a two way communication with the Creator. You must have been created for a reason; the Deity, therefore, has a plan for you or he/she wouldn't have bothered making you in the first place. Through these revelations information is passed on to the community, God’s desires are manifested and the whole tribe can get on the same page. The tribe reciprocates with prayer and the circuit is complete.
How these revelations come about, and how each is assigned validity, for the most part largely depends on the community. For instance, can only certain castes pick up these revelations? Do the receivers have to be specifically trained or purified to receive God’s, or the Gods’, messages? Are there any cultural or political restrictions to prevent someone from communicating with the Almighty or the Almighties? The Delphic oracles had to be women; no man could be trusted with such an important link to the other world. A man with prophetic abilities would become all powerful and inevitably overthrow the rulers of ancient Hellas. Women were perfectly safe; prophetic or not women were just women and therefore of no threat.
Does the communicator have to undergo some physical or perceptual change in order to open up the spiritual connection? Do hallucinatory drugs have to be taken; does the subject have to be starved in order to make them better receivers of divine knowledge? Central American shamen do both to aid the crossover to other realms. What ever the method or who ever the supplicant a belief in a higher power necessitates the need for messages and information to be gathered from that power. Without religious revelation a God would soon fall out of favour; it would have little use as it became too distant and remote; humanity would soon need to search out a new God; a user friendly, hands on, God that was more inclined to pass on decrees and judgments to keep the populous in check.
The God of the Bible, Yahweh, the Abrahamic God, took revelation to a whole new level; this God chose who he spoke to. With Yahweh there was no need for incantations, volcanic gasses or hallucinogenic drugs, he simply contacted whoever he wanted to directly. Yahweh shows up, angels in tow, to have dinner with Abraham; this Deity is so ‘hands on’ he is willing to break bread with the man he has chosen. Moses, on the other hand, doesn’t get a personal appearance; he has to be content with a talking, flaming bush; but he does get to hear the voice of God. Here revelation is direct and personal; God searches out his favourites and commands them to obey. There is no choice for either Abraham or Moses; they are chosen. The Delphic oracles and the shamen actively tried to acquire information; in the case of the Biblical prophets information is thrust upon them, God has revealed himself and the choice is taken out of their hands.
This type of divine intervention would become the norm in Jewish, Christian and Islamic circles. God reveals himself, hence the word revelation. The bond between worshiper and the worshiped becomes incredibly personal because of this. The receiver has a unique and intimate relationship with their God; a direct line to their creator without any need of an intermediary. By definition the information they get can not be questioned, it is perfect because it has come directly from God. There is no second opinion and of course that’s where all the trouble starts.
As I said at the start of this blog science has pushed God into the dark dank corners of our ignorance. Existence can be explained or at least theorized at. We now know that we didn't just pop into being fully formed at the whim of some father figure dwelling in the heavens. We know that are development was slow and laborious and due more to luck than anything else; the evolution of mankind owes more to the emergence of the Himalayas and the resulting African savannah than any Deity we subsequently invented to explain ourselves to ourselves. However this doesn't overpower the power of revelation over people. This comforting, personal link to God still dominates the psyche of the religious and it has become apparent that no amount of scientific or historical knowledge can shake them free of it.
No religious speaker with any intelligence will try to argue their point with facts anymore. Facts are the apologist’s Achilles heel. Science has all the facts and proofs and arguments currently available and the apologists know this. Religious speakers warn their flocks to steer clear of facts when debating Atheists as they realise any battle will be lost with this approach.
Luckily, for bored Atheists worldwide, some will still try to argue against knowledge. The Creationist world view prevails in some quarters and these believers still attempt to pull apart scientific discoveries and fail miserably. They have yet to acknowledge that using pseudo-science to discredit real-science is a lost cause. The futility of trying to prove that the Bible is historically accurate or arguing that man is more closely related to dust than chimpanzees only serves to strengthen the Atheist movement. Reading debates between Atheists and Creationists is like watching a cat toying with a mouse until it chooses to put it out of its misery.
The only weapon that religious have remaining in their arsenal is revelation; the deep personal connection to God by which God passes on his instruction. It’s telling that no Christians I've spoken to have actually described the form this instruction takes. Whether it a voice in their head, a vision or just a gut feeling they don’t seem to want to tell me, I can’t think why. Many Christians have pleaded with me, out of genuine concern for my soul, to engage in this dialogue with the Almighty. In order to be saved, in order for The Lord to give me proof of his existence, I have to open myself to his revelation; I have to give myself, without question, into his hands and I will, at last, know him.
However, to do this, I would have to ignore all the knowledge that I've amassed over my lifetime. In order to be saved I will have to abandon everything I know and respect about humanity, all the glorious social advances and scientific discoveries. It seems God only reveals himself to people who are prepared to switch off their minds and block out all contradictory arguments. In effect, in order to hear the voice of God one first has to cover ones ears to silence out the rest of reality; reality has an unwavering habit of undermining religious argument and to acknowledge any contradictory arguments to your faith will upset God and he stops talking to you.
God’s revealed truth therefore comes at a cost. To get that assurance of his existence you first have to believe wholeheartedly in his existence. The whole argument for revelation is circulatory and self contained. The belief has to be in place before the proof is revealed, and by definition any proof you receive will be informed by the initial belief. So in scientific terms revelation is no proof what so ever merely an expression of the original belief system.
It is comforting that the professionally religious only have divine revelation left; a scientifically unfalsifiable argument to justify their beliefs. What used to be an important part of tribal life, an early expression of man getting to grips with philosophy, has now been relegated to nothing more than a stubborn, childish argument.
‘I know because I know, so there!’
When approached from the mindset of the ancients this makes perfect philosophical sense. Something can’t possibly come from nothing; the world appears ordered and constant and, crucially, designed. Everything around you is a reminder of the kindness of your God and, more to the point, a reminder for you not to forget your duties to them.Within this framework revelation becomes an important part of a two way communication with the Creator. You must have been created for a reason; the Deity, therefore, has a plan for you or he/she wouldn't have bothered making you in the first place. Through these revelations information is passed on to the community, God’s desires are manifested and the whole tribe can get on the same page. The tribe reciprocates with prayer and the circuit is complete.
How these revelations come about, and how each is assigned validity, for the most part largely depends on the community. For instance, can only certain castes pick up these revelations? Do the receivers have to be specifically trained or purified to receive God’s, or the Gods’, messages? Are there any cultural or political restrictions to prevent someone from communicating with the Almighty or the Almighties? The Delphic oracles had to be women; no man could be trusted with such an important link to the other world. A man with prophetic abilities would become all powerful and inevitably overthrow the rulers of ancient Hellas. Women were perfectly safe; prophetic or not women were just women and therefore of no threat.
Does the communicator have to undergo some physical or perceptual change in order to open up the spiritual connection? Do hallucinatory drugs have to be taken; does the subject have to be starved in order to make them better receivers of divine knowledge? Central American shamen do both to aid the crossover to other realms. What ever the method or who ever the supplicant a belief in a higher power necessitates the need for messages and information to be gathered from that power. Without religious revelation a God would soon fall out of favour; it would have little use as it became too distant and remote; humanity would soon need to search out a new God; a user friendly, hands on, God that was more inclined to pass on decrees and judgments to keep the populous in check.
The God of the Bible, Yahweh, the Abrahamic God, took revelation to a whole new level; this God chose who he spoke to. With Yahweh there was no need for incantations, volcanic gasses or hallucinogenic drugs, he simply contacted whoever he wanted to directly. Yahweh shows up, angels in tow, to have dinner with Abraham; this Deity is so ‘hands on’ he is willing to break bread with the man he has chosen. Moses, on the other hand, doesn’t get a personal appearance; he has to be content with a talking, flaming bush; but he does get to hear the voice of God. Here revelation is direct and personal; God searches out his favourites and commands them to obey. There is no choice for either Abraham or Moses; they are chosen. The Delphic oracles and the shamen actively tried to acquire information; in the case of the Biblical prophets information is thrust upon them, God has revealed himself and the choice is taken out of their hands.
This type of divine intervention would become the norm in Jewish, Christian and Islamic circles. God reveals himself, hence the word revelation. The bond between worshiper and the worshiped becomes incredibly personal because of this. The receiver has a unique and intimate relationship with their God; a direct line to their creator without any need of an intermediary. By definition the information they get can not be questioned, it is perfect because it has come directly from God. There is no second opinion and of course that’s where all the trouble starts.
As I said at the start of this blog science has pushed God into the dark dank corners of our ignorance. Existence can be explained or at least theorized at. We now know that we didn't just pop into being fully formed at the whim of some father figure dwelling in the heavens. We know that are development was slow and laborious and due more to luck than anything else; the evolution of mankind owes more to the emergence of the Himalayas and the resulting African savannah than any Deity we subsequently invented to explain ourselves to ourselves. However this doesn't overpower the power of revelation over people. This comforting, personal link to God still dominates the psyche of the religious and it has become apparent that no amount of scientific or historical knowledge can shake them free of it.
No religious speaker with any intelligence will try to argue their point with facts anymore. Facts are the apologist’s Achilles heel. Science has all the facts and proofs and arguments currently available and the apologists know this. Religious speakers warn their flocks to steer clear of facts when debating Atheists as they realise any battle will be lost with this approach.
Luckily, for bored Atheists worldwide, some will still try to argue against knowledge. The Creationist world view prevails in some quarters and these believers still attempt to pull apart scientific discoveries and fail miserably. They have yet to acknowledge that using pseudo-science to discredit real-science is a lost cause. The futility of trying to prove that the Bible is historically accurate or arguing that man is more closely related to dust than chimpanzees only serves to strengthen the Atheist movement. Reading debates between Atheists and Creationists is like watching a cat toying with a mouse until it chooses to put it out of its misery.
The only weapon that religious have remaining in their arsenal is revelation; the deep personal connection to God by which God passes on his instruction. It’s telling that no Christians I've spoken to have actually described the form this instruction takes. Whether it a voice in their head, a vision or just a gut feeling they don’t seem to want to tell me, I can’t think why. Many Christians have pleaded with me, out of genuine concern for my soul, to engage in this dialogue with the Almighty. In order to be saved, in order for The Lord to give me proof of his existence, I have to open myself to his revelation; I have to give myself, without question, into his hands and I will, at last, know him.
However, to do this, I would have to ignore all the knowledge that I've amassed over my lifetime. In order to be saved I will have to abandon everything I know and respect about humanity, all the glorious social advances and scientific discoveries. It seems God only reveals himself to people who are prepared to switch off their minds and block out all contradictory arguments. In effect, in order to hear the voice of God one first has to cover ones ears to silence out the rest of reality; reality has an unwavering habit of undermining religious argument and to acknowledge any contradictory arguments to your faith will upset God and he stops talking to you.
God’s revealed truth therefore comes at a cost. To get that assurance of his existence you first have to believe wholeheartedly in his existence. The whole argument for revelation is circulatory and self contained. The belief has to be in place before the proof is revealed, and by definition any proof you receive will be informed by the initial belief. So in scientific terms revelation is no proof what so ever merely an expression of the original belief system.
It is comforting that the professionally religious only have divine revelation left; a scientifically unfalsifiable argument to justify their beliefs. What used to be an important part of tribal life, an early expression of man getting to grips with philosophy, has now been relegated to nothing more than a stubborn, childish argument.
‘I know because I know, so there!’
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Atheism
In Tennessee they are trying to pass the ‘Monkey Bill’. This is a piece of anti-evolution, creationist legislation which will allow science teachers to teach intelligent design rather than evolution. In effect children will be taught that evolution isn’t proven and the Bible’s version of creation is, therefore, equally valid. The Tennessee legislators want to make teaching lies legal. All this is being done in the name of religious freedom.
No one would argue that the freedom to practice your chosen religion should be curtailed, and the American constitution protects this freedom expressly, but what course of action should be taken when the faithful want to leave the realm of spirituality and philosophy and work towards undermining scientific advancement? Should religious freedom allow officials to limit the education of a generation of young Tennesseans? I would propose that faith based legislation of this kind is actually an attack on secularism. To push a religious standpoint in education, even when historical, paleontological, archeological and genetic evidence contradicts it, is both arrogant and dangerous. If this bill is passed Tennessee will enter an educational dark age. Schools will be teaching junk science and a generation of scientists will be lost.
No one becomes an Atheist. You discover you are one. The realization can be instant or, as in my case, in can be a slow process of awakening. Day by day week by week you become aware you have lost your faith. Slowly the inconsistencies and absurdities of religion reveal themselves and you wonder how you ever believed them in the first place.
Twenty years ago this would have been a simple, personal issue and that would be that. I wouldn’t have been overly concerned with the beliefs of others; their beliefs would be their business. Unfortunately the modern world has become more and more faith driven. What was a personal matter of conscious is now political. When the faiths transgress the boundaries of science and politics believers and un-believers alike should be very concerned.
If you believe that God created Adam in his image that is up to you, but when you use your power and influence to teach that to my children AS A FACT it very much becomes my problem. Teaching the Bible’s creation story as historical fact means throwing out all the scientific discoveries that academics have painstakingly worked on throughout human history. You are discarding all the other books in favour of one.
My sticking point was abiogenesis, pre-life. How do you get from non organic matter, all the rocks, gasses and chemicals, all the stuff that makes up the universe to self replicating organisms? How do you go from a primordial soup to something as complex as a cell and then on to us? I had no problem with evolution, just that first initial spark. I was quite comfortable with the three billion year journey from cell to man but God for me existed in that first cell bursting into life.
The God of the gaps, but I was scientifically astute enough to know this was an exceptionally big gap. Rocks don’t reproduce. They don’t convert nutrients into energy or reconstitute them and reproduce. But in recent years discoveries have been made with organic fatty acids that, tantalizingly, behave like cells. This is not life, but these fatty acids can absorb nutrients and split like cells. They are plentiful and occur everywhere, in space and on this planet, given enough time it can be hypothesized that maybe these acids evolved into self replicating cells. By ‘enough time’ I’m talking in the region of a billion years. To put this into perspective it has taken a little over a billion years to get from the first multicellular life to us. It took half that time for animals and plants to move from the sea to land.
I realized that I had been doing what religions had been doing from the moment of their conception, cramming God into any gap in human understanding. God was the answer to the blind spots in our knowledge. So, subsequently, as scientific knowledge grew God was pushed into smaller and smaller gaps. We used to worship the Sun, it seemed magical until we came to understand it was a result of physical laws. Gravity, pressure and finally ignited by nuclear fusion. What was mystical has now become wonderful through our understanding.
It would seem that the writers of the Bible were acutely aware that education and knowledge were a threat to their power right from the start. In the opening chapters of Genesis Adam and Eve are warned by God not to eat from the tree of life. Knowledge is forbidden right there in that first book of the Torah, man is ordered not to get above his station and is punished for eating the fruit and opening his eyes. When humanity tries to build the first skyscraper in Babel God loses his mind at the cheek of it, the presumption that men can advance themselves beyond their physical and historical limitations. The message of the Bible is clear, don’t strive to better yourselves; know your place and obey God.
Modern Christians are still threatened by this fear of learning. Hence the Tennessee bill, hence Rick Santorum explaining that the Devil started undermining American society through the universities. He postulated that Satan used the intellectual arrogance of academia to make professors and students alike believe their modern secular ideas were actually their own. Any new philosophical anti-religious strains of thought were actually a clever ruse by Beelzebub to trick the country’s intellectual elite away from God. It’s a clever statement; if you’re losing the intellectual argument then you argue the argument itself is corrupt. You take pride in your holy ignorance and you can do this, by definition, without any evidence what so ever.
This sort of argument isn’t new. Catholicism’s guidelines on weakness of faith throw the fault straight back at the doubter. God is infallible therefore your doubts are your fault, if you can’t make head nor tail out of the faith’s inconsistencies it is your limited understanding and intellectual failings. In other words the church doesn’t have to explain itself, you have to prey harder and ignore your own conscious.
So we find ourselves in a strange absurdist reality now where the American religious elite are proud of their ignorance. They are more interested in revelation than hard facts, unless the facts in question bolster their agenda. So when scientists speak of a theory they interpret this as a doubt. They see micro evolution everywhere, in their breeds of dogs for example, but because the driving force of macro evolution has yet to be established they throw the whole thing out. Elevating the gaps and, ironically, calling a belief in evolution a religion in itself in order to discredit it, yet never seeing the irony in that statement.
These people want to run America, they want executive power. Personally I don’t want a world super power led by people who believe the prophesies of the Book of Revelation, and believe Armageddon will result in their own rapture. Actually believing they will be carried up bodily to heaven before the world ends to live with God. American Christians even travel to Israel to help Jews establish themselves in Palestinian lands because one of the prerequisites of the apocalypse is the Jews returning to the Promised Land. We should call this exactly what it is, a death cult. In the early days of the faith Christians went gladly to their deaths, emulating Christ, in order to secure salvation; the belief in the rapture takes this a step further and drags the rest of the world into the delusion. You would think wanting to usher in the end of the world in order to fulfill the two thousand year old rantings of a troubled mind would prevent you from attaining office, yet it seems that such beliefs now hold political weight in America.
This should scare you.
Over here we are more sedate, we don’t have the fundamentalist mind set of America and for the most part England is a very secular country. Most people don’t attend church and any belief in God is normally personal and kept to oneself. But Christianity has begun to feel threatened over here. Christians don’t feel they can express their faith and feel persecuted by what they refer to as militant secularism. Currently this is an attack on their institutionalized homophobia. But recently other manifestations of the faith have been questioned. A nurse was suspended for taking her beliefs to work and offering to pray for patients. The right wing press championed her cause and many people saw this as a harmless expression of her Christianity.
But let’s examine this; this woman was being employed as a medical professional, her training is scientific and she was being called upon to use her scientific knowledge to help people. Why would her superstitions be needed here? Why offer to pray for the recovery of a little girl’s broken leg, which is what she got reported for, when the application of a cast and nature would take care of it? Why offer to pray at all, why was permission needed for her to ask her God for a speedy recovery? It was not in her remit to offer spiritual help in this case, her job was to check on the leg and apply the skills that had been developed for that purpose. Too many people prayer often seems like a last resort, so what confidence would it have given the girl’s mother when it was offered. Very little I think.
European Christians complain that they get a bum deal compared to Islam and in a lot of respects they are right. In a multicultural society efforts are made to accommodate immigrants and foreign cultures. Unfortunately when it comes to Islam the rights of the religious culture have superseded the rights of Muslim individuals, namely women.
Islam hates women more than Christianity does. The misogynistic verses still exist in the Bible but by and large modern Christians have forgotten them. The Renaissance allowed Christianity to absorb Humanist ideals of morality and then, over time, pass them off as its own. The Church is still happy to stick its nose into everyone’s uterus but by and large has stopped stoning and burning women. Islam hasn’t, but Sharia law is lifted almost word for word from the Bible.
The Quran’s similarity to the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, is no accident. In Mohammed’s time Jerusalem was the centre of the universe. I mean this literally, the earth was the centre of the cosmos and Jerusalem was the hub that the whole world revolved around. To give Islam credibility The Prophet had to connect the faith to the Holy Land. As Mohammed never set foot in Jerusalem this could only be done through revelation. We always hear that the three big faiths have a claim to the Holy City and this is where all the trouble stems from, but it is Islam’s claim that shows the persuasive power of revelation on the faithful. The Jews built the city and their great temple, the centre of the centre of the universe if you will; Christ died and was resurrected there. But what of Islam’s claim?
It is said one night Mohammed was carried there on a winged horse from Medina; he flew to the site of the temple and from there ascended into heaven to lead the prophets of the Bible in praise of God. Let me reiterate, Mohammed went to bed in his tent one night then the next morning claimed he had flown to Jerusalem on a horse and was raised into heaven. Muslim scholars debate whether or not this was a physical event or a God given revelation but either way it is irrelevant, this is Islam’s claim to Jerusalem. War and invasion would solidify it after the Prophet’s death but the initial claim originates from a dream, a vision, possibly an epileptic fit or just a convenient lie that Mohammed told one morning.
This wasn’t unusual for Mohammed; his life was filled with convenient revelations. After a humiliating defeat in battle against his enemies from Mecca God came to him and explained he shouldn’t worry as this was part of the master plan. Luckily for Mohammed history would prove this right, or it at least gave him a second chance to get it right. God came to him again and told him it was perfectly fine for him to marry the six year old daughter of a friend that he had his eye on. This gave him a valuable alliance and he had the decency to wait for the girl to turn nine before her consummated the marriage.
It is this marriage that modern Muslims find so hard to explain away. Pedophilia isn’t prohibited in any of the Holy books mainly because the concept was alien to the ancient mindset. When a girl started menstruating she was ready for marriage and sex. Whether she was ten or thirteen was irrelevant, life was short and hard and daughters where married off young and expected to bare children. Islam’s philosophical problem with this is that it claims that the Quran is the most perfect book ever written, superseding any book before or after. Its writer, The Prophet, is the perfect ideal of manhood. He is the ideal man and should be emulated; his actions can not be questioned. Any perceived disrespect of Mohammed in Islamic theocracies is punishable by death. Here lies the problem. Modern Muslims can pass off the marriage to Aisha as a reasonable match for the time and the culture that Mohammed grew up in, but that makes him just a man of the sixth century, not the perfect example for humanity. If sleeping with a 9 year old is wrong then Mohammed was wrong and this undermines all the tenants of Islam; if The Prophet is the perfect example of a servant of God then sleeping with a child is perfectly fine.
This is just one aspect of Islam’s misogyny. At the heart of the religion lies the concept that men are absolved of responsibility for their lust. Women have to be covered in order to stop men desiring them and pursuing them or possibly even raping them. It is taken as a given that men cannot control themselves, the mere sight of female flesh will distract them from the true path. For the same reason alcohol is prohibited. The individual doesn’t need to take responsibility for their actions. Temptation is perceived as all powerful so every precaution has to be taken to prevent that temptation. The idea that the responsibility is on the individual to control themselves is lost.
So Muslim women claim the right to cover themselves head to foot, for fearing that being desired will instigating some horrendous act. Muslim men cover their wives so they cannot be coveted; all trust in human control is gone after a lifetime of religious socialization.
The Atheist has to take responsibility for himself; his actions are his own. It is telling that over ninety percent of American prisoners believe in a God. This makes perfect sense. If you believe the Devil can control your actions then your crimes aren’t really yours. Couple this with the belief that Jesus will forgive you anyway, and you have a perfect storm and can abandon any personal responsibility.
Atheism as a movement is in its infancy. It has always been there in the background but it has started to emerge in the last decade as a philosophical force. Social media is allowing American and Arabic Atheists and Agnostics to network and exchange ideas, something that would have been fraught with risk just a few years ago. Many Atheists fear that they will be ostracized by their communities if they publically ‘came out’. In Middle Eastern theocracies, where scientists still quote the Quran as the inspiration for a break-through, the punishments can be severe. To respect someone’s right to hold a faith doesn’t mean you have to respect the faith. Just a few months on twitter has opened my eyes to the religious delusion out there. The faithful really can be hateful.
Everyday the world seems to be slipping back into theocracy. All over the globe the secularism that we took for granted in the seventies and eighties is under threat. All the Republicans standing in the primaries consider themselves devout Christians. The men that wish to become the President purport to believing in the power of prayer. They openly admit to talking to God and that this actually has the power to change the physical world. They believe the God of Abraham, the God that told Noah to build the Ark thousands of years before that technology even existed, is on their side. These men want to stop women getting contraception because of a verse in a two thousand year old book. They believe that it should be a right to teach children that the world is only six thousand years old and that dinosaur bones were buried by the Devil to test their faith. They believe they are good and there is evil in the world trying to undermine American Christian purity. This is so entrenched in American society that when a radicalized Christian tries to blow up an abortion clinic it is never referred to as terrorism.
Religion is trying to take over the world again. If these people get their way we WILL enter an intellectual dark age. Humanity can only move forward scientifically and sociologically if it chooses to. Do not take it as a given that we can’t move backwards as a species and embrace superstition over reason. It can happen and in some places in the world it is happening. Catholic missionaries are preventing the distribution of condoms in AIDS ridden Africa. Anti woman ‘pro-family’ legislation is being passed in America.
Atheist numbers are swelling, over the next few years this intellectual battle will play out. Reason has to win it. It took six hundred years for the Renaissance to pick up where the Roman Empire left off. The world is too precarious a place now to allow another dark age to descend.
No one would argue that the freedom to practice your chosen religion should be curtailed, and the American constitution protects this freedom expressly, but what course of action should be taken when the faithful want to leave the realm of spirituality and philosophy and work towards undermining scientific advancement? Should religious freedom allow officials to limit the education of a generation of young Tennesseans? I would propose that faith based legislation of this kind is actually an attack on secularism. To push a religious standpoint in education, even when historical, paleontological, archeological and genetic evidence contradicts it, is both arrogant and dangerous. If this bill is passed Tennessee will enter an educational dark age. Schools will be teaching junk science and a generation of scientists will be lost.
No one becomes an Atheist. You discover you are one. The realization can be instant or, as in my case, in can be a slow process of awakening. Day by day week by week you become aware you have lost your faith. Slowly the inconsistencies and absurdities of religion reveal themselves and you wonder how you ever believed them in the first place.
Twenty years ago this would have been a simple, personal issue and that would be that. I wouldn’t have been overly concerned with the beliefs of others; their beliefs would be their business. Unfortunately the modern world has become more and more faith driven. What was a personal matter of conscious is now political. When the faiths transgress the boundaries of science and politics believers and un-believers alike should be very concerned.
If you believe that God created Adam in his image that is up to you, but when you use your power and influence to teach that to my children AS A FACT it very much becomes my problem. Teaching the Bible’s creation story as historical fact means throwing out all the scientific discoveries that academics have painstakingly worked on throughout human history. You are discarding all the other books in favour of one.
My sticking point was abiogenesis, pre-life. How do you get from non organic matter, all the rocks, gasses and chemicals, all the stuff that makes up the universe to self replicating organisms? How do you go from a primordial soup to something as complex as a cell and then on to us? I had no problem with evolution, just that first initial spark. I was quite comfortable with the three billion year journey from cell to man but God for me existed in that first cell bursting into life.
The God of the gaps, but I was scientifically astute enough to know this was an exceptionally big gap. Rocks don’t reproduce. They don’t convert nutrients into energy or reconstitute them and reproduce. But in recent years discoveries have been made with organic fatty acids that, tantalizingly, behave like cells. This is not life, but these fatty acids can absorb nutrients and split like cells. They are plentiful and occur everywhere, in space and on this planet, given enough time it can be hypothesized that maybe these acids evolved into self replicating cells. By ‘enough time’ I’m talking in the region of a billion years. To put this into perspective it has taken a little over a billion years to get from the first multicellular life to us. It took half that time for animals and plants to move from the sea to land.
I realized that I had been doing what religions had been doing from the moment of their conception, cramming God into any gap in human understanding. God was the answer to the blind spots in our knowledge. So, subsequently, as scientific knowledge grew God was pushed into smaller and smaller gaps. We used to worship the Sun, it seemed magical until we came to understand it was a result of physical laws. Gravity, pressure and finally ignited by nuclear fusion. What was mystical has now become wonderful through our understanding.
It would seem that the writers of the Bible were acutely aware that education and knowledge were a threat to their power right from the start. In the opening chapters of Genesis Adam and Eve are warned by God not to eat from the tree of life. Knowledge is forbidden right there in that first book of the Torah, man is ordered not to get above his station and is punished for eating the fruit and opening his eyes. When humanity tries to build the first skyscraper in Babel God loses his mind at the cheek of it, the presumption that men can advance themselves beyond their physical and historical limitations. The message of the Bible is clear, don’t strive to better yourselves; know your place and obey God.
Modern Christians are still threatened by this fear of learning. Hence the Tennessee bill, hence Rick Santorum explaining that the Devil started undermining American society through the universities. He postulated that Satan used the intellectual arrogance of academia to make professors and students alike believe their modern secular ideas were actually their own. Any new philosophical anti-religious strains of thought were actually a clever ruse by Beelzebub to trick the country’s intellectual elite away from God. It’s a clever statement; if you’re losing the intellectual argument then you argue the argument itself is corrupt. You take pride in your holy ignorance and you can do this, by definition, without any evidence what so ever.
This sort of argument isn’t new. Catholicism’s guidelines on weakness of faith throw the fault straight back at the doubter. God is infallible therefore your doubts are your fault, if you can’t make head nor tail out of the faith’s inconsistencies it is your limited understanding and intellectual failings. In other words the church doesn’t have to explain itself, you have to prey harder and ignore your own conscious.
So we find ourselves in a strange absurdist reality now where the American religious elite are proud of their ignorance. They are more interested in revelation than hard facts, unless the facts in question bolster their agenda. So when scientists speak of a theory they interpret this as a doubt. They see micro evolution everywhere, in their breeds of dogs for example, but because the driving force of macro evolution has yet to be established they throw the whole thing out. Elevating the gaps and, ironically, calling a belief in evolution a religion in itself in order to discredit it, yet never seeing the irony in that statement.
These people want to run America, they want executive power. Personally I don’t want a world super power led by people who believe the prophesies of the Book of Revelation, and believe Armageddon will result in their own rapture. Actually believing they will be carried up bodily to heaven before the world ends to live with God. American Christians even travel to Israel to help Jews establish themselves in Palestinian lands because one of the prerequisites of the apocalypse is the Jews returning to the Promised Land. We should call this exactly what it is, a death cult. In the early days of the faith Christians went gladly to their deaths, emulating Christ, in order to secure salvation; the belief in the rapture takes this a step further and drags the rest of the world into the delusion. You would think wanting to usher in the end of the world in order to fulfill the two thousand year old rantings of a troubled mind would prevent you from attaining office, yet it seems that such beliefs now hold political weight in America.
This should scare you.
Over here we are more sedate, we don’t have the fundamentalist mind set of America and for the most part England is a very secular country. Most people don’t attend church and any belief in God is normally personal and kept to oneself. But Christianity has begun to feel threatened over here. Christians don’t feel they can express their faith and feel persecuted by what they refer to as militant secularism. Currently this is an attack on their institutionalized homophobia. But recently other manifestations of the faith have been questioned. A nurse was suspended for taking her beliefs to work and offering to pray for patients. The right wing press championed her cause and many people saw this as a harmless expression of her Christianity.
But let’s examine this; this woman was being employed as a medical professional, her training is scientific and she was being called upon to use her scientific knowledge to help people. Why would her superstitions be needed here? Why offer to pray for the recovery of a little girl’s broken leg, which is what she got reported for, when the application of a cast and nature would take care of it? Why offer to pray at all, why was permission needed for her to ask her God for a speedy recovery? It was not in her remit to offer spiritual help in this case, her job was to check on the leg and apply the skills that had been developed for that purpose. Too many people prayer often seems like a last resort, so what confidence would it have given the girl’s mother when it was offered. Very little I think.
European Christians complain that they get a bum deal compared to Islam and in a lot of respects they are right. In a multicultural society efforts are made to accommodate immigrants and foreign cultures. Unfortunately when it comes to Islam the rights of the religious culture have superseded the rights of Muslim individuals, namely women.
Islam hates women more than Christianity does. The misogynistic verses still exist in the Bible but by and large modern Christians have forgotten them. The Renaissance allowed Christianity to absorb Humanist ideals of morality and then, over time, pass them off as its own. The Church is still happy to stick its nose into everyone’s uterus but by and large has stopped stoning and burning women. Islam hasn’t, but Sharia law is lifted almost word for word from the Bible.
The Quran’s similarity to the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, is no accident. In Mohammed’s time Jerusalem was the centre of the universe. I mean this literally, the earth was the centre of the cosmos and Jerusalem was the hub that the whole world revolved around. To give Islam credibility The Prophet had to connect the faith to the Holy Land. As Mohammed never set foot in Jerusalem this could only be done through revelation. We always hear that the three big faiths have a claim to the Holy City and this is where all the trouble stems from, but it is Islam’s claim that shows the persuasive power of revelation on the faithful. The Jews built the city and their great temple, the centre of the centre of the universe if you will; Christ died and was resurrected there. But what of Islam’s claim?
It is said one night Mohammed was carried there on a winged horse from Medina; he flew to the site of the temple and from there ascended into heaven to lead the prophets of the Bible in praise of God. Let me reiterate, Mohammed went to bed in his tent one night then the next morning claimed he had flown to Jerusalem on a horse and was raised into heaven. Muslim scholars debate whether or not this was a physical event or a God given revelation but either way it is irrelevant, this is Islam’s claim to Jerusalem. War and invasion would solidify it after the Prophet’s death but the initial claim originates from a dream, a vision, possibly an epileptic fit or just a convenient lie that Mohammed told one morning.
This wasn’t unusual for Mohammed; his life was filled with convenient revelations. After a humiliating defeat in battle against his enemies from Mecca God came to him and explained he shouldn’t worry as this was part of the master plan. Luckily for Mohammed history would prove this right, or it at least gave him a second chance to get it right. God came to him again and told him it was perfectly fine for him to marry the six year old daughter of a friend that he had his eye on. This gave him a valuable alliance and he had the decency to wait for the girl to turn nine before her consummated the marriage.
It is this marriage that modern Muslims find so hard to explain away. Pedophilia isn’t prohibited in any of the Holy books mainly because the concept was alien to the ancient mindset. When a girl started menstruating she was ready for marriage and sex. Whether she was ten or thirteen was irrelevant, life was short and hard and daughters where married off young and expected to bare children. Islam’s philosophical problem with this is that it claims that the Quran is the most perfect book ever written, superseding any book before or after. Its writer, The Prophet, is the perfect ideal of manhood. He is the ideal man and should be emulated; his actions can not be questioned. Any perceived disrespect of Mohammed in Islamic theocracies is punishable by death. Here lies the problem. Modern Muslims can pass off the marriage to Aisha as a reasonable match for the time and the culture that Mohammed grew up in, but that makes him just a man of the sixth century, not the perfect example for humanity. If sleeping with a 9 year old is wrong then Mohammed was wrong and this undermines all the tenants of Islam; if The Prophet is the perfect example of a servant of God then sleeping with a child is perfectly fine.
This is just one aspect of Islam’s misogyny. At the heart of the religion lies the concept that men are absolved of responsibility for their lust. Women have to be covered in order to stop men desiring them and pursuing them or possibly even raping them. It is taken as a given that men cannot control themselves, the mere sight of female flesh will distract them from the true path. For the same reason alcohol is prohibited. The individual doesn’t need to take responsibility for their actions. Temptation is perceived as all powerful so every precaution has to be taken to prevent that temptation. The idea that the responsibility is on the individual to control themselves is lost.
So Muslim women claim the right to cover themselves head to foot, for fearing that being desired will instigating some horrendous act. Muslim men cover their wives so they cannot be coveted; all trust in human control is gone after a lifetime of religious socialization.
The Atheist has to take responsibility for himself; his actions are his own. It is telling that over ninety percent of American prisoners believe in a God. This makes perfect sense. If you believe the Devil can control your actions then your crimes aren’t really yours. Couple this with the belief that Jesus will forgive you anyway, and you have a perfect storm and can abandon any personal responsibility.
Atheism as a movement is in its infancy. It has always been there in the background but it has started to emerge in the last decade as a philosophical force. Social media is allowing American and Arabic Atheists and Agnostics to network and exchange ideas, something that would have been fraught with risk just a few years ago. Many Atheists fear that they will be ostracized by their communities if they publically ‘came out’. In Middle Eastern theocracies, where scientists still quote the Quran as the inspiration for a break-through, the punishments can be severe. To respect someone’s right to hold a faith doesn’t mean you have to respect the faith. Just a few months on twitter has opened my eyes to the religious delusion out there. The faithful really can be hateful.
Everyday the world seems to be slipping back into theocracy. All over the globe the secularism that we took for granted in the seventies and eighties is under threat. All the Republicans standing in the primaries consider themselves devout Christians. The men that wish to become the President purport to believing in the power of prayer. They openly admit to talking to God and that this actually has the power to change the physical world. They believe the God of Abraham, the God that told Noah to build the Ark thousands of years before that technology even existed, is on their side. These men want to stop women getting contraception because of a verse in a two thousand year old book. They believe that it should be a right to teach children that the world is only six thousand years old and that dinosaur bones were buried by the Devil to test their faith. They believe they are good and there is evil in the world trying to undermine American Christian purity. This is so entrenched in American society that when a radicalized Christian tries to blow up an abortion clinic it is never referred to as terrorism.
Religion is trying to take over the world again. If these people get their way we WILL enter an intellectual dark age. Humanity can only move forward scientifically and sociologically if it chooses to. Do not take it as a given that we can’t move backwards as a species and embrace superstition over reason. It can happen and in some places in the world it is happening. Catholic missionaries are preventing the distribution of condoms in AIDS ridden Africa. Anti woman ‘pro-family’ legislation is being passed in America.
Atheist numbers are swelling, over the next few years this intellectual battle will play out. Reason has to win it. It took six hundred years for the Renaissance to pick up where the Roman Empire left off. The world is too precarious a place now to allow another dark age to descend.
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Fuck England
Fuck England. No really, fuck England. I have spent my whole life getting excited with the approach of every major international football tournament, and every time they’ve let me down.
I’ve persevered; I’ve kept faith when everyone around me has lost theirs. I’ve dared to believe, even in the face of insurmountable logic, in the face of irrefutable reality. I remember Sol Campbell’s goal, back before we hated him, the winning goal; or at least it was until the replay showed Shearer elbow dropping the goal keeper. I was on my feet screaming with all the rest, but my heart was swelling with pride because that goal… had been scored by a Yid.
Judas cunt.
Then there was Gazza, an inch away from the extra time Golden Goal, a goal that would send Germany out of Euro ’96 and England into a winnable final. Another, albeit former, Tottenham player; playing under a former Tottenham manager.
So close, so very, very close.
Everyone was on their feet again; everyone but that cute Helen off of the Technical degree; posh and bemused, but thoroughly enjoying slumming it with me in a Manchester pub. Do you remember Euro ’96? It was only thirty years of hurt back then. It’s close to fifty now, fifty years without winning a major tournament. Winning a major tournament? Winning any tournament! We only get to play major tournaments. Major tournaments are just tournaments!
Forty six years. Forty six, fucking, years.
I got sucked in by all that Golden Generation hype. All those Chelsea and Liverpool and Man U players we had to put our faith in. We all scratched our heads as to why they couldn’t deliver for their country, why their form dropped when they weren’t surrounded by all those world class foreign professionals; the same world class foreign professionals that made them look good, week in week out, when they played for their clubs. What could it be?
It was because… England are shit. We’ve always been shit. There was that time in the nineties when we were ALRIGHT, but if you trace the national team’s history back to 1966 the running theme is disappointment. Forty six years of disappointment spiced with brief moments of elation, when we were very nearly good enough to reach a final.
1970, two nil up against West Germany, coasting; bang bang; then in extra time banged in the ass.
Then there was Maradona in 1986 with his Hand of God; our bitterness is still blinding us to his second, the greatest World Cup goal of all time.
In 1994 Greece proved you didn’t even need to be especially skilled to win a tournament, and we limped home pathetically early. In 1998 we got taken out by a combination of Rooney and Ronaldo.
Manc cunts. You can’t ever escape the Manc cunts.
So here we are now, Capello has failed. It seems he believed his own hype but he hadn’t contended with our inability to blame the quality of the players. He didn’t realize he was being paid handsomely to be the scapegoat when it all went wrong. He went to South Africa thinking he was dealing with men, not whiney little boys who missed their girls and wanted him to pat them on the head so they’d do their jobs properly.
Capello hadn’t contended with our willingness to fuck ourselves over before every major outing. He didn’t contend with the Media’s enthusiasm for throwing spanners into the works just as we had to get serious. He didn’t care who Terry was fucking then; he doesn’t care what Terry said this time around. He’s had enough, we’ve been talking about sacking since South Africa and now he’s sacked us. The man’s sick of us and we’re acting like we’ve been vindicated. Like a crap girlfriend who’s been dumped but is coming out all on top because 'she can do better'.
All this finally brings me to Harry Redknapp. All of a sudden the whole country is clamoring for Harry to bring England glory. A nation of Mancs and Gooners and dirty Scousers, who would have quite happily seen the man locked up yesterday just to get one over on Tottenham. Today they want him to lead them to success and isn’t it just a crying shame that we will be the collateral damage.
This is our best season in a generation; a real generation mind, not a footballing one. It’s the first time that we have the upper hand on our rivals since the Premier league started, the first time in my life we aren’t trundling in a poor second to the Arsenals and Liverpools and Chelseas; and now they rub their hands together at the prospect of it being taken away from us as the groundswell of public opinion screams out for Harry to take his 'rightful place' as the nation’s Messiah.
I disagree… I say… Fuck England. We’ve built to this point; we deserve to be where we are. The Jol era, finishing fifth; all those seasons a cunt hair away from the Champions League. Those years watching our best players fuck off to Manchester United, all those lasagna taunts. We have had to endure shitty City suddenly being showered with gold and turning into a contender over night. Manchester City taking the top four spot THAT WE’VE WORKED FOR!
We deserve to be where we are. We’ve earnt it. And now, just as we’re getting somewhere, everyone wants to knock us back down; they want to destabilize us. They want to fill Harry’s head full of national glory and thoughts of achieving the unachievable, and poor old Tottenham will be set back another season or two while the new manager establishes himself, City strengthens and the Scouse get back into the swing of things.
So I say fuck England. Harry’s fabled arm around the shoulders isn’t going to improve our chances against Spain and Germany. We’ll still be a quarter final team, no matter how t’riffic he makes the players feel. We’ll always be outclassed by class and a mediocre side punching above its weight will inevitably be found out. No amount of amusing after match interviews will change that.
In the end the only thing that will come of Harry Redknapp managing England will be yet another set back for Tottenham. Everyone will laugh at us again, they’ve already started. I hope to God Harry will see some sense; I hope he sees beyond the hype and realizes he could be a Tottenham legend instead of another England also-ran.
I’ve persevered; I’ve kept faith when everyone around me has lost theirs. I’ve dared to believe, even in the face of insurmountable logic, in the face of irrefutable reality. I remember Sol Campbell’s goal, back before we hated him, the winning goal; or at least it was until the replay showed Shearer elbow dropping the goal keeper. I was on my feet screaming with all the rest, but my heart was swelling with pride because that goal… had been scored by a Yid.
Judas cunt.
Then there was Gazza, an inch away from the extra time Golden Goal, a goal that would send Germany out of Euro ’96 and England into a winnable final. Another, albeit former, Tottenham player; playing under a former Tottenham manager.
So close, so very, very close.
Everyone was on their feet again; everyone but that cute Helen off of the Technical degree; posh and bemused, but thoroughly enjoying slumming it with me in a Manchester pub. Do you remember Euro ’96? It was only thirty years of hurt back then. It’s close to fifty now, fifty years without winning a major tournament. Winning a major tournament? Winning any tournament! We only get to play major tournaments. Major tournaments are just tournaments!
Forty six years. Forty six, fucking, years.
I got sucked in by all that Golden Generation hype. All those Chelsea and Liverpool and Man U players we had to put our faith in. We all scratched our heads as to why they couldn’t deliver for their country, why their form dropped when they weren’t surrounded by all those world class foreign professionals; the same world class foreign professionals that made them look good, week in week out, when they played for their clubs. What could it be?
It was because… England are shit. We’ve always been shit. There was that time in the nineties when we were ALRIGHT, but if you trace the national team’s history back to 1966 the running theme is disappointment. Forty six years of disappointment spiced with brief moments of elation, when we were very nearly good enough to reach a final.
1970, two nil up against West Germany, coasting; bang bang; then in extra time banged in the ass.
Then there was Maradona in 1986 with his Hand of God; our bitterness is still blinding us to his second, the greatest World Cup goal of all time.
In 1994 Greece proved you didn’t even need to be especially skilled to win a tournament, and we limped home pathetically early. In 1998 we got taken out by a combination of Rooney and Ronaldo.
Manc cunts. You can’t ever escape the Manc cunts.
So here we are now, Capello has failed. It seems he believed his own hype but he hadn’t contended with our inability to blame the quality of the players. He didn’t realize he was being paid handsomely to be the scapegoat when it all went wrong. He went to South Africa thinking he was dealing with men, not whiney little boys who missed their girls and wanted him to pat them on the head so they’d do their jobs properly.
Capello hadn’t contended with our willingness to fuck ourselves over before every major outing. He didn’t contend with the Media’s enthusiasm for throwing spanners into the works just as we had to get serious. He didn’t care who Terry was fucking then; he doesn’t care what Terry said this time around. He’s had enough, we’ve been talking about sacking since South Africa and now he’s sacked us. The man’s sick of us and we’re acting like we’ve been vindicated. Like a crap girlfriend who’s been dumped but is coming out all on top because 'she can do better'.
All this finally brings me to Harry Redknapp. All of a sudden the whole country is clamoring for Harry to bring England glory. A nation of Mancs and Gooners and dirty Scousers, who would have quite happily seen the man locked up yesterday just to get one over on Tottenham. Today they want him to lead them to success and isn’t it just a crying shame that we will be the collateral damage.
This is our best season in a generation; a real generation mind, not a footballing one. It’s the first time that we have the upper hand on our rivals since the Premier league started, the first time in my life we aren’t trundling in a poor second to the Arsenals and Liverpools and Chelseas; and now they rub their hands together at the prospect of it being taken away from us as the groundswell of public opinion screams out for Harry to take his 'rightful place' as the nation’s Messiah.
I disagree… I say… Fuck England. We’ve built to this point; we deserve to be where we are. The Jol era, finishing fifth; all those seasons a cunt hair away from the Champions League. Those years watching our best players fuck off to Manchester United, all those lasagna taunts. We have had to endure shitty City suddenly being showered with gold and turning into a contender over night. Manchester City taking the top four spot THAT WE’VE WORKED FOR!
We deserve to be where we are. We’ve earnt it. And now, just as we’re getting somewhere, everyone wants to knock us back down; they want to destabilize us. They want to fill Harry’s head full of national glory and thoughts of achieving the unachievable, and poor old Tottenham will be set back another season or two while the new manager establishes himself, City strengthens and the Scouse get back into the swing of things.
So I say fuck England. Harry’s fabled arm around the shoulders isn’t going to improve our chances against Spain and Germany. We’ll still be a quarter final team, no matter how t’riffic he makes the players feel. We’ll always be outclassed by class and a mediocre side punching above its weight will inevitably be found out. No amount of amusing after match interviews will change that.
In the end the only thing that will come of Harry Redknapp managing England will be yet another set back for Tottenham. Everyone will laugh at us again, they’ve already started. I hope to God Harry will see some sense; I hope he sees beyond the hype and realizes he could be a Tottenham legend instead of another England also-ran.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Wedding plans
It‘s been a long time since I’ve written anything. I’ve been busy, planning weddings and what-not; settling into the settled life of a responsible adult. It’s been the usual grind of work and commitments and the general running’s of a house. It’s been good. We’ve even had the priest around for food. I’ve felt like a proper adult and upstanding member of the community.
I don’t know why I haven’t blogged, there’s been plenty going on, mostly football; a veritable title challenge, but for some reason I haven’t sat down in front of the computer and ranted. My rants have been face to face, all of them localized.
And believe me, there has been plenty to rant about. The Eldest started college, quit, started another college course and is now talking about going back to the original college course.
The Youngest entered secondary school and is under the impression she has suddenly turned twenty one, at least you’d think that to listen to her. This week she acquired herself a boyfriend. Being twelve this employed a third party. A friend approached the boy and enquired if he’d consider going out with her. He said he’d think about it. Later in the day he approached the friend and confirmed that, yes, he would consider going out with her.
This led to feigned furor in the house; the Girlf fumed, realistically, and I threatened to batter the boy, convincingly, if he stepped out of line.
Much chuckling was had behind collective hands.
All this ended abruptly today when the Youngest informed us that the love affair was over. The cad had sent an intermediary over to tell our Princess she’d been dumped. This was conveyed to us by the Youngest with the detached insouciance of some one who’d lost a Twitter follower. Ever being the hands on, sensitive, step-parent I enquired if she was alright. My reply was a shrug. Delving deeper, I asked if she’d actually spoken to the lad, face to face, over the twenty four hour duration of the relationship.
She said no.
The Eldest has been ‘following her dreams’ for approximately two months. She ditched her A-levels to become a dancer, much to the distain of the Girlf. Now, after two months of hard graft the allure of the profession has begun to wane. There are two reasons for this; firstly, it turns out dancers are pretty thick and shallow, and secondly; the wake up call of a professional audition she’d managed to blag herself into. It turns out that professional dancers, no matter how talented, spend a lot of their time doing shitty jobs and being skint. Being skint has never been an option the Eldest has seriously considered. There has been considerable talk of rich husbands and jaunts to New York. The prospect of being a penniless, jobbing, performer has made her sit up and reconsider. It appears a career in law has more appeal.
The Girlf has been intensively wedding planning since September. We have a wedding list, soul searchingly and painfully finalized; and we have a seating plan, cobbled together as best we could, aided by the fact there aren’t too many blood feuds amongst our guests; and we have a date.
We also have a priest.
The Rev is a curiosity. Growing up, all priests were very Greek and very old. The Rev is different, he is barely older than me; a peer if you will. He reminds me of Chekov’s eternal student from Uncle Vanya. He has three degrees; one in maths, one in law and of course one in theology. The man is a scientist, very geeky and, if you’ll pardon the phrase, very white for a Greek Orthodox priest. A Pentecostal Kiwi convert if you please!
The Rev comes from a monastical background and, subsequently, is rather devote for it. There is no moving the Rev on matters of dogma. All the certainties I was brought up with appear to be merely Cypriot custom. The Rev cares not for custom; the Rev’s concern is for the integrity of the service.
Slowly we have chiseled out a compromise; the Eldest can be the maid of honor, despite of the fact she isn’t Orthodox. The Rev is quite happy for her to stand there and look pretty, as long as she doesn’t play any part in the proceedings.
He is prepared to marry us, but only in a truncated ceremony. The sticking points have been the Girlf’s lack of Orthodoxy and my Agnosticism. The Rev isn’t comfortable bonding us together in the presence of God because she isn’t Greek Orthodox and I’m not devout enough.
This is all good for me. We’ve been honest with the guy, brought him into our strange little home and fed him. We’ve let the girls annoy him and pester him with stupid questions and even feed him their home economics school work. He knows we’re good people, albeit unconventional, and is prepared to meet us half way.
We have an unconventional family and an unconventional priest. I think it’s all rather fitting.
I don’t know why I haven’t blogged, there’s been plenty going on, mostly football; a veritable title challenge, but for some reason I haven’t sat down in front of the computer and ranted. My rants have been face to face, all of them localized.
And believe me, there has been plenty to rant about. The Eldest started college, quit, started another college course and is now talking about going back to the original college course.
The Youngest entered secondary school and is under the impression she has suddenly turned twenty one, at least you’d think that to listen to her. This week she acquired herself a boyfriend. Being twelve this employed a third party. A friend approached the boy and enquired if he’d consider going out with her. He said he’d think about it. Later in the day he approached the friend and confirmed that, yes, he would consider going out with her.
This led to feigned furor in the house; the Girlf fumed, realistically, and I threatened to batter the boy, convincingly, if he stepped out of line.
Much chuckling was had behind collective hands.
All this ended abruptly today when the Youngest informed us that the love affair was over. The cad had sent an intermediary over to tell our Princess she’d been dumped. This was conveyed to us by the Youngest with the detached insouciance of some one who’d lost a Twitter follower. Ever being the hands on, sensitive, step-parent I enquired if she was alright. My reply was a shrug. Delving deeper, I asked if she’d actually spoken to the lad, face to face, over the twenty four hour duration of the relationship.
She said no.
The Eldest has been ‘following her dreams’ for approximately two months. She ditched her A-levels to become a dancer, much to the distain of the Girlf. Now, after two months of hard graft the allure of the profession has begun to wane. There are two reasons for this; firstly, it turns out dancers are pretty thick and shallow, and secondly; the wake up call of a professional audition she’d managed to blag herself into. It turns out that professional dancers, no matter how talented, spend a lot of their time doing shitty jobs and being skint. Being skint has never been an option the Eldest has seriously considered. There has been considerable talk of rich husbands and jaunts to New York. The prospect of being a penniless, jobbing, performer has made her sit up and reconsider. It appears a career in law has more appeal.
The Girlf has been intensively wedding planning since September. We have a wedding list, soul searchingly and painfully finalized; and we have a seating plan, cobbled together as best we could, aided by the fact there aren’t too many blood feuds amongst our guests; and we have a date.
We also have a priest.
The Rev is a curiosity. Growing up, all priests were very Greek and very old. The Rev is different, he is barely older than me; a peer if you will. He reminds me of Chekov’s eternal student from Uncle Vanya. He has three degrees; one in maths, one in law and of course one in theology. The man is a scientist, very geeky and, if you’ll pardon the phrase, very white for a Greek Orthodox priest. A Pentecostal Kiwi convert if you please!
The Rev comes from a monastical background and, subsequently, is rather devote for it. There is no moving the Rev on matters of dogma. All the certainties I was brought up with appear to be merely Cypriot custom. The Rev cares not for custom; the Rev’s concern is for the integrity of the service.
Slowly we have chiseled out a compromise; the Eldest can be the maid of honor, despite of the fact she isn’t Orthodox. The Rev is quite happy for her to stand there and look pretty, as long as she doesn’t play any part in the proceedings.
He is prepared to marry us, but only in a truncated ceremony. The sticking points have been the Girlf’s lack of Orthodoxy and my Agnosticism. The Rev isn’t comfortable bonding us together in the presence of God because she isn’t Greek Orthodox and I’m not devout enough.
This is all good for me. We’ve been honest with the guy, brought him into our strange little home and fed him. We’ve let the girls annoy him and pester him with stupid questions and even feed him their home economics school work. He knows we’re good people, albeit unconventional, and is prepared to meet us half way.
We have an unconventional family and an unconventional priest. I think it’s all rather fitting.
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