Category Archives: Religion

Education Kills God!

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From the Department Of Bloody Obvious comes another confirmation of what even Martin Luther knew in 1520: the more you know, the less silly superstitions you have. This was also indicated by a study a few months ago which concluded that better internet access leads to less religiosity (the headlines then screamed ‘The Internet Kills God!!!!!’), and is now (unsurprisingly) confirmed by a study conducted by the Louisiana State University:

The study finds that more education, in the form of more years of formal schooling, has “consistently large negative effects” on an individual’s likelihood of attending religious services, as well as their likelihood of praying frequently. More schooling also makes people less likely to harbor superstitious beliefs, like belief in the protective power of lucky charms (rabbit’s feet, four leaf clovers), or a tendency to take horoscopes seriously.

Strange phrasing (really? not attending a superstitious gathering is a large negative effect?) and questionable differentiation (luck charms are superstitious, but belief in gods isn’t?) aside, we see once again what motivates Boko Haram, IS and Taliban, and what Luther wrote about in the middle ages:

Reason is […] the greatest enemy that faith has

It’s only a matter of time until we can openly say what is blatantly obvious: smart, educated people don’t believe in gods, fairies or magic. Stupid people serve their priesthood.

Erdoğan’s America

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Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – not particularly known for his intelligence – wants to set the record straight. As the Guardian and other outlets report, Erdoğan maintains that muslim sailors reached the Americas more than 300 years before Christopher Columbus did:

Muslim sailors reached the American continent 314 years before Columbus, in 1178

More interesting than the question whether this is true, though, is the question why anyone would want to say something like this. So some people say that Columbus ‘discovered’ the Americas. But is this really something to be proud of considering the fact that

  • Columbus’ (re)discovery ultimately led to immense suffering and death – the indigenous population was almost wiped out both intentionally and accidentally. Why would you want to claim responsibility for that? Even US Americans are finally clueing in to the fact that celebrating Columbus Day is like celebrating the Huns’ arrival at the Gates of Rome.
  • Why is the religion of the discoverer relevant? If you do want to put your God in the spotlight this way, you’ll have to explain why so many more discoveries were made outside your religion. 
  • It’s common knowledge that the Vikings made multiple landfalls on the american continent before 1000 AD; the Polynesians very likely reached South America more than 1500 years before the first Northmen set foot on Newfoundland – yet you don’t see either of them running around trumpeting that fact. Why would they?
  • More to the point, the original discoverers of the Americas are the indigenous people that the Johnny Come-Latelys killed: the Americas were originally settled 16’000 – 20’000 years ago, most probably via a land bridge from Asia. They almost certainly were superstitious, but they definitely didn’t adhere to Islam, Christianity or any other religion we know today. 

If there is one thing I wouldn’t obsess about is the question who really discovered the Americas and what deities they believed in.

So what can we learn about this silly claim?

If you feel that your religion has some kind of penis envy versus some other religion and that you must stake a claim for your religion, make sure it’s about something worthwhile.

Selling Islam

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Expressing indignation over Sam Harris’ and Bill Maher’s ‘sweeping generalizations’ about Islam, Reza Aslan, in an interview with CNN went on record stating [at the 5:38 mark] that

In [muslim] Indonesia, women are absolutely 100 percent equal to men

Now, taking into account that Aslan is a professional apologist, that statement still is a jaw-droppingly brazen lie. It is impossible for someone like him to not know about the Sharia law-regulated Aceh province of Indonesia. Sharia law, especially in criminal cases, is synonymous with gender inequality, and violates fundamental human rights – especially women’s – something that Aslan, a scholar of religious studies, doubtlessly knows.

Today, Time and other news outlets report that women in Indonesia who want to become policewomen must demonstrate their virginity, and that married women are not eligible to join the police force (in case you wondered: men do not have to prove their virginity, and married men are accepted into the police).

Which makes you wonder what ‘absolutely 100 percent equal’ means in Aslan’s universe. It casts a dim light on his other arguments – especially the one where he calls FGM an ‘African problem’, when it is common knowledge that this vile practice is also prevalent in Indonesia (surprise!), Malaysia, Pakistan and India, none of which can in any way be called African countries. Aslan should know better, and I’m quite sure he does.

What is it that makes intelligent people like Aslan be untruthful on behalf of their God – when they know that sooner rather than later their religious brothers will do their worst to help us catch them in their lies?

When public dishonesty becomes the best approach to selling your religion, it says a lot about the product.

Hijab vs. Bible

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A couple of weeks ago, a colleague noticed my discomfort and point-blank asked what bothered me about her Hijab. Regrettably, I had no immediate response other than ‘it doesn’t feel right’. She was gracious enough to accepted this non-reason.

So what is it that I find so offensive about a Hijab, Niqab or Burka? At least the Hijab can be a fashion statement, can’t it?

Yes.

It’s the original purpose, the idea behind a head- or body veil that disturbs me: the sentiment that a woman’s beauty is just for her husband to enjoy. Only her husband (who does not reciprocate) can see her beauty, making it his exclusive property – and by extension, her as well. The hijab is nothing else but a reminder to society that every woman is some man’s property. That is making me uncomfortable: the idea that women wear the very symbol of their subjugation as fashion.

If you are a Christian nodding at these lines, don’t get too comfortable, though. The Ten Commandments list wives (yup, plural) as a man’s possessions. They are listed among other property such as slaves, house and cattle. And yet, Christian women happily recite the 10th Commandment, just like many muslim women willingly wear a Hijab. That’s why I also feel uncomfortable each time an otherwise intelligent Christian woman praises the Ten Commandments.

Also – have you never wondered about the eerie similarities between a Burka and a Christian nun’s Habit?

Do you really think that’s coincidence?

The Bible, I swear!

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It happens in every court-room drama. A person places their hand on a book and invokes an incantation like So I swear or So help me God. It also happens in reality in many countries during the swearing-in ceremonies of leaders.

People place their hand on a book, and with a straight face proclaim that they will do good. And they believe that placing their hand on a book documents their sincerity.

A book that condones slavery, misogyny, and genocide.

Am I the only one worried by this? I mean, I understand if followers of IS or Taliban do something like this. They mean business. But I feel that if you swear on the Bible or Quran, you might as well place your right hand on the hilt of the blood-dripping sword that just decapitated the last free woman. Actually, that would be a step up.

So it must be religious thing. Which has me a bit stumped – at least for Christians: swearing on the Bible is ostensibly one of the least Christian things you can do: Matthew 5:34-37 and James 5:12 pretty much say that you must not swear:

“Above all, my brothers, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else.”

Well I guess it’s another one of those Christian ticks: believing you are doing right by the book you didn’t read.

If you ask me, people shouldn’t be swearing on or by the bible.

They should swear at it.

The 90% Minority

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The BBC reports that yesterday, in the Punjab province in Pakistan, a couple was killed by an angry mob for blasphemy.

“Yesterday an incident of desecration of the holy Koran took place in the area and today the mob first beat the couple and later set their bodies on fire at a brick kiln,” local police station official Bin Yameen told the AFP news agency.

A security official told the BBC that local police had tried to save the couple, but they were outnumbered and attacked by the angry crowd.

The majority of these people believe that it perfectly all right to barbarically beat two people to death because they may have done something unsavory to a religious book.

I would love to hear Ben Affleck explain why that isn’t a bad idea – or how this local-police-overwhelming mob is a minority.

Ark Park Snark

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Ken Ham, professional dimwit and owner of Creation Museum, a.k.a. the palace where reason goes to die, is in hot water as reported by Slate. After accepting tax payer’s money to build his next great attraction, the Ark Park (guess what that one’s about), the world-famous (if not notorious) non-thinker may have forgotten that any business that accepts state money also has to play by state rules. And – surprise! – state rules forbid that you discriminate against employees with regards to religion or sexual orientation. Which Ken’s new ‘attraction’ does: his employee requirements state that you must not be gay, and must be a Christian who believes the Earth is 6000 years old – and follow all the other nutty Christian Taliban claptrap these crackpots believe in.

So the state withdraws the funding money, and Ken Ham – irrational person he is – now thinks that hate crime is a god-given right, and that this is the perfect opportunity to make a stand. Hilarity will ensue once he (predictably, and no thanks to SCOTUS) publicly claims that discriminating against gays and other religions is a right granted by the constitution.

Ok, so Ken is an idiot – what else is new? The real scandal, however, was only mentioned in an aside: in the US you can discriminate legally against religion, sex and sexual orientation of your employees as long you are a ministry.

As you can in most European country. And these dimwits do discriminate on a daily basis, shouting hate at the top of their lungs – while maintaining that they are moral leaders.

Ok, so Ken is also not alone.

I’m godlike!

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The Intelligencer published a new entry written by David Bereck today that makes you really question the ‘Intelligence’ bit. Titled ‘So you think you are an atheist…’, the article trots out some of the silliest and, well, stupidest arguments against atheism. If I didn’t know better I thought the author was trolling.

Do the people who practice atheism actually know what they are putting their faith into? I hope that more atheists take an interest in learning more about what they think they believe.

Can you be any further off the mark? Of course you don’t understand atheism if you think of it in terms of a religion. People don’t practice atheism. Atheism is absence of practicing religion. It’s like the idea of a vacuum that some people can’t get their head around: how can there be nothing – there has to be something. David seems to be having similar difficulties with the idea that not believing in gods really does mean that the concept of gods vanishes from our thoughts. That it’s become a non-issue.

David’s understanding of atheism in other people is influenced by things he himself believes to exists. He believes a God exists, hence he concludes that not believing in the existence of Gods is also a belief. But it makes no sense to try and enumerate the infinite number of things that we believe do not exist. Let’s instead look at what we believe that does exist. What differentiates you, David, from us is that in addition to the many beliefs we share, you also have a belief in gods. From that perspective it becomes understandable why the term ‘practicing atheism’ becomes a non sequitur. One can’t do things by not doing them.

Some atheists will not even know they have to use a lot of faith just to believe that from nothing … came something.

Perhaps it does require some faith. Yet somehow believers fail to grasp that it takes even more faith to believe essentially the same plus the existence of a magical all-powerful creature. But I think it’s important to point out that most atheists merely say ‘well, I don’t know what happened. Let’s see what the scientists can come up with’. ‘I don’t know’ is a much better, and more honest, answer than ‘I know that God did it’.

The other point of common sense is that chaos doesn’t result in order. If someone were to put all the parts of a Lamborghini in a garage and then threw a bomb into the garage, you wouldn’t expect to find a perfectly designed Lamborghini to drive away.

Yup, the good old 747 ‘Jumbo’ Jet analogy. So David probably read a Creationist book. Yes David, you are correct – except no-one ever said they believed that they would. What we actually believe is more likely by orders of magnitude than ‘God did it’, and it doesn’t require any magic at all. Perhaps you should invest some time to actually understand what scientists have to say about this.

The second point that chaos doesn’t result in order proves that even if I was wrong about the Big Bang Theory, there is no possible way an explosion (chaos) would ever be able to create a universe with such tremendous order.

No, David. It merely proves that you do not understand the laws of thermodynamics, and probably fail to grasp the scale of what you are talking about. It’s not as if it’s not understood how galaxies condense (order from chaos). It’s readily observable even today. There is no faith involved in believing something that elementary. It seems you are questioning not just the Big Bang, but matter accretion and other fundamental, well understood processes. That would be unwise.

I encourage people to question atheism because when you really look at the details from a different perspective, you have a much wider range of understanding.

And yet, strangely, you propose a much, much simpler solution: all this was created by a god. Complexity? God did it. Life? God did it. Universe, Stars, Planets? God did it. Your understanding is much narrower than a worldview that allows ‘I don’t know – let’s find out’ for an answer. You are not proposing that people open their minds – you advocate credulity in millennia-old superstition. It’s not a perspective that is difficult to understand, nor does it enrich understanding. It’s a bit like the Santa Claus myth. Everyone understands where it comes from. But it will in no way broaden our understanding of the world if we believed they were true.

David closes with

Personally, I am glad to be artistically created in the image of an awesome God rather than being the cousin of some slimy thing that crawled out of the ocean.

And that’s pretty much it – David prefers to think of himself as an image of a God who has a special purpose for him – rather than facing the possibility that his existence is mere happenstance, and that he is of no consequence at all. His belief, it seems, serves to elevate his self-esteem.

Judge ‘Dredd’ Mac

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Montgomery County, TX Justice of the Peace Wayne Mack is opening his courtroom sessions by first reading from the Bible, followed by a prayer. He thinks there is nothing wrong with this because he starts the religious part of his public service with the following remark:

We are going to say a prayer. If any of you are offended by that you can leave into the hallway and your case will not be affected.

Naturally, this has brought him a complaint from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which requested he stop this practice.

Mac replied that he will respond to their demand at his October 23 prayer breakfast. He added that

I am not seeking the potential controversy, as I will have to respond to these groups as well. We are on strong moral and legal ground.

Well, you wouldn’t state that you are on strong legal grounds if you weren’t seeking controversy, now, would you? Can we please have a little bit more honesty, Justice?

Mac added that

I want to make a statement to show […] that not only is it acceptable to our community, but […] that God has a place in all aspects of our lives and public service.

First of all, we need to recall that in Texas, anyone, regardless of their fitness for that purpose, can be elected Justice of the Peace. This could explain why Mac seemingly doesn’t know what the foundation of the law he presides over has to say about this: the Constitution strictly forbids state-sponsored religious public service, the Establishment Clause states that government may not in any way promote, advance or otherwise endorse religion.

It does not bode well for his past rulings that his knowledge of law is so tenuous that he gets even the essentials wrong.

Once thing is for certain, though: his assertion that people may leave his court room and that this would not affect their case is blatantly, provably wrong. After all, he openly stated that he holds the moral high ground, that performing a religious ceremony is a morally superior thing. Anyone who expresses their dissent by leaving would in his eyes be morally corrupt. In a justice for peace ruling that usually means you have lost your case. What Mac is doing is that he sets up a religious Litmus test before beginning his ruling; his decisions can therefore be seen as religious law. Do we really need Christian Sharia courts? I think not.

I really hate to have to quote to these zealots from their magic book: During the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus flat out commands that you should not pray ostentatiously but only demurely in your own inner chamber (Matthew 6:5-7). OK – I admit: I love to do that.

Why is it always that religious dimwits like Mac know less of their own scripture than your average atheist?

Moroccan Motherlode

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A couple of days ago, a major brouhaha erupted over a remark that Bill Maher and Sam Harris made on Maher’s show Real Time. Maher and Harris contended that the majority of Muslims entertain morally unacceptable beliefs. Ben Affleck, another guest at the show, became hostile, and accused Maher and Harris of being prejudiced and racists.

Yet, they were merely stating a fact, and Affleck seems to have fallen prey to hyper-politically correctness. When you say that the majority of US Republicans is religious and believes that Jesus died on the cross, that is a provable fact. It is also a provable fact that the majority of Muslims believe that the appropriate punishment for apostasy is death. Not a few freaks – the majority. And that is a morally unacceptable tenet.

Yesterday, the Guardian reported the story of a british subject, Ray Cole, who was arrested and illegally detained in Morocco on grounds of being gay.

As Cole recounts:

At the police station, although still not under arrest, Cole knew why they had been taken. “Straight away [there was] the insinuation that we were homosexual,” says Cole, “They said, ‘We’ve got religion here. You’re filth and scum.’ They did their best to humiliate us.”

These homophobes are not fundamentalists – they are everyday (and probably otherwise kind and upstanding) Moroccan citizen. Their problem: they adhere to a deeply homophobic ideology. Our problem: these believers are the majority in Morocco.

[edit Oct-19]
Last Thursday, the Pakistani High court dismissed Aasiya Bibi Noreen’s appeal and upheld her death sentence. Her crime: Blasphemy against Alla. In Pakistan their High Court is convinced that the appropriate punishment for blasphemy is death.

Maher and Harris nailed it. The majority of Muslims hold immoral tenets. It is high time we stop this PC bullshit and look the problem squarely in the face. Stop making allowances where none should be made.