I’m with stupid

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If there is one expression that makes me gag in disbelief at the sheer amount of pompous, delusional self-aggrandizement then it would be

having a personal relationship with god.

First, what should we think of a person who claims to have a relationship with a deity? Doesn’t that immediately disqualify them from any further discourse? If someone in earnestly tells you a god is their personal friend, they are conceited jackasses, or are playing with only half a deck of cards. Probably both.

Just what goes through the mind of someone who feels they have to tell you something like this? It’s the ultimate name-dropping – is it even possible to appear more desperate in seeking attention? Just by itself, personal relationship with god is such a cringe-inducing, pathetic statement that I have difficulties hiding my contempt, and I usually have to avert my eyes.

Have you ever paused to think what this person, in all honesty is trying to tell you – what they have convinced themselves of, and what they want you to believe: that they regularly converse with a super-being; that this being not only exists, but that it takes their moronic views [Note: if you are a super being, all human thoughts are moronic by default – its intelligence would see past all our petty self interests and there would be nothing interesting we could contribute in an exchange of ideas with it] serious – and that this being offers personal insight, solace, and advice.

It gets worse: if we were to allow for all this to be true, we’d have to contend with the fact that even though these people regularly converse with a super-being, all advice and information they receive is stupid, ordinary, and banal: not one believer with a personal relationship to their god has ever shown to have supernatural understanding of, or brilliant insight into anything. So this super-being is either not very smart, or deliberately feeding its counterpart bad information. Which means that you have a personal relationship with an über-prankster, a being that continually has jokes on your account.

So, just by looking at the record we know that bragging about a personal relationship with gods is a sure way to get you and your god ridiculed – for good, documented reason.

Yet that is only half of what makes the expression so fundamentally stupid. Let’s say that we agree that the person claiming to have a relationship with god is not stark raving mad. This means that they tacitly agree that it’s more likely to have a relationship with a pet rock than an entity that nobody ever saw or could be proven to exist. A pet rock you can at least hold in your hand – but it would never answer to any kind of interaction. Yet, any sane relationship requires interaction from both sides. What would you think about a person who earnestly tells you they have a relationship with a rock? Wouldn’t you think them at least a bit pitiful?

What, then, would you think of a person who tells you that they have a relationship with a pet rock that you can’t see, touch, feel or otherwise detect?

But it’s the personal bit, the utter ridiculousness of the insinuation that the relationship is based on personal exchange that makes it such a tragically pathetic proposition, so impossible to accept. Because, let’s face it, it’s not personal until the object of your relationship responds to your individual communication, in ways curtailed to you. Everyone knows that when gods talk to you, you have gone mad. So again, there is tacit agreement that, clinical cases aside, in this ‘personal relationship’ the other side has never, ever, responded. And yet these people call it a personal relationship.

So why are they doing it? Pompous self-importance perhaps. Trying to impress the easily impressed probably. In many cases, they have been told this idiocy by other believers – and repeat it now in vain hope that if they say it often enough they would someday believe it themselves.

Just sad.

Funky old Medina

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Fundamental religion and science don’t mix well, as anyone who has listened to Ken ‘Creationist Museum’ Ham can attest. Now news reports reach us now from the holy city of Medina where cleric Sheik Bandar al-Khaibari ‘proved’ to an astonished audience that the earth doesn’t rotate at all.
Galileo Galilei, who, incidentally, was born on the exact same day a couple of hundred years ago, could have emphasized – he has had his share of trouble with religious scientific ignoramuses (he was sentenced to life long imprisonment for discovering the fact that the earth rotates by christian fundamentalists).

It seems the Sheik is very religious – meaning his grasp on reality is tenuous at best. Reportedly, he is also doubting the moon landings, putting him not only with the religious idiots, but squarely with the conspiracy nuts.

Maybe he’s also Ken Ham’s long-lost brother?

Clueless

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They simply don’t get it. Barely four weeks after Islamist gunmen stormed the offices of French satirical ‘Charlie Hebdo’ and murdered twelve unarmed artists in the name of Mohammed, Muslims in London have nothing better to do than to take to the streets and protest against Hebdo’s depictions of their religious idol. I find this deeply disturbing for a number of reasons

  • No matter how much they profess to distance themselves from the murders, their protest lends some legitimacy to the terrible, murderous deed of Islamists. They complain about what the artists got killed for: freedom of expression – and at the same time insist they feel offended?
  • Somehow these Muslims seem to have completely overlooked the fact that the mass publication of Hebdo’s drawings are a direct reaction to the barbaric deed done in the name of Islam. They are not doing their religion a favor by openly showing a complete lack of appreciation for how societies respond to evil.
  • Some of these people held up signs saying we love Prophet Muhammad more than our lives. Don’t these Muslims understand that statements like these merely serve to underline just how ethically underdeveloped they are? Valuing human life beneath that of an ideology is always a sign that something is wrong with that ideology.
  • These people feel offended by drawings – that’s OK. But somehow, they also feel that being offended entitles them to something. Their protest shows a remarkable lack of understanding what constitutes freedom. If something written offends you, don’t read it! That is the extend of your freedom. If you want someone else to do something based on your religion: get stuffed. You have no right to impose your beliefs on others. Deal with it.
  • Bonus: the child holding up a sign Insult my mum and I will punch you – Pope Francis. Bravo, Francis! You really did the world a favor when Islamist hardliners quote you to justify their actions.

Most disturbing of all: these people complain that their religion is not getting the respect it allegedly deserves – shortly after followers of that religion just demonstrated their disrespect for life, and after the protesters themselves expressed a remarkable lack of respect for the sanctity of life by telling us that they ‘love Prophet Muhammad more than their lives’. Respect isn’t owed, people – it has to be earned. Otherwise, Nazis would demand the same respect for their disgusting ideology.

Islam must earn respect. So far, however, all these protesters have shown is a complete lack of understanding what ethics are, and that their ideology definitely does not deserve respect.

Shadow Sharia

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People have opined that shadow laws that run parallel to normal jurisdiction like Sharia are bad. I agree – it must be one law for all. Introducing a competing law for one part of the population is an incredibly stupid idea. Judging a person by two different set of rules undermines everyone’s belief in justice: if the same deed results in more than one possible sanctions, something is wrong with your system. If everything results in the same, they are the same system, and no second set of laws is required.

What bugs me most, though, is that the most vocal proponents of shadow sharia law are really advocating something else: They want one law for believers, one for infidels, and none for themselves.

Priestly dilemma

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Here’s a strange dilemma: Every once in a while I read a report or see a brief video clip of priests from different religions meeting. Of course, I think it is always good when people meet in a friendly way. However, while watching priests smile and greet each other, I can’t help but wonder what they are thinking of the other guy.

After all, if each priest truly believes what they preach their flock, they must be equally confident that their opposite is full of it. In that case, their friendly face is nothing but an empty front; no-one ever agreed to something meaningful while talking to an idiot.

But perhaps these priests have legitimate doubts with regards to their gods and the veracity of their scripture. In this case, a meaningful and intelligent conversation is possible with exponents of other religions that are equally unsure. The problem here is that the priests then go back to their flock and pretend that their faith in gods was absolute.

Of course a third alternative remains: both sides know they are con artists, and afford their opposites all the courtesies of professional charlatans.

Humble Belief?

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You should be more humble.

It’s really convincing when Christians play that card – usually after they humbly assert that their faith is the only true one, that their god created the entire universe, that I’ll be going to hell because I don’t love that god, and that I’m arrogant for not believing their preposterous scripture.

But tell me – who is the humble one here: He who admits that ‘I don’t know if there is a god’ – or the person who states that ‘I know for fact that this is god, and he wants you to exactly do that‘?

Tell me, dear Christian: when was the last time you heard your priest say ‘maybe there is a god’ or ‘perhaps Jesus wants you to love thine neighbor’? I certainly never did when I went to church. All I ever heard were assertions: god did this, said that, performed this miracle, and made people go there. None of that was ever accompanied by a cautionary ‘maybe’ or humble ‘perhaps’. It was always stated as fact. Do you really think being that arrogant qualifies as being humble? Then why are you accusing atheists, who are doing none of the above, as being arrogant?

Ricky Gervais once observed that it is revealing that atheists are never accosted by ‘hateful satanists’ for not believing in their demon. It’s always the ‘loving Christians’ who insult me for not believing in their god.

Because, seemingly, being insulting is the new humble.

Pope Dumbass

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Many catholics are proud of their pope. Catholicism, they say, has come a long way – from the days when the catholic church ruled in Europe – a period we today justly call the Dark Age – to today. They say that the despotic, terrible organization of blind faith has turned into a kind, loving brotherhood of moderate belief. And when pope Francis stepped up to replace Benedict (who, somewhat disaffectionately, was also known as Gods’ Rottweiler), people thought that finally kinder heads had prevailed.

In the wake of the Charlie Habdo massacre, though, Pope Francis showed that hopes for a better, more humane catholic church are premature. Instead of flat-out denouncing violence as an answer to words, God’s representative on Earth told the world that in his view, violence is a viable response to verbal provocation.

As the AP reports Pope Francis stated:

If my good friend Dr. Gasbarri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others. […]

There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others. They are provocateurs. And what happens to them is what would happen to Dr. Gasbarri if he says a curse word against my mother. There is a limit.

This is from the guy who runs the organization that used to burn people at the stake, broke them on the rack, or incarcerated them for disagreeing with their faith, let alone ridiculing it. Ask Galileo Galilei how much fun it is to be found guilty of disagreeing with false beliefs (Galileo proved that the earth moves around the sun, and for his discovery was sentenced to life imprisonment by Popes Paul V and Urban VIII). What an ass.

Being a learned man, Francis wouldn’t think twice about ridiculing the Flat-Earth Society. Yet it is a fact that there is more evidence for a flat earth than there is for gods. It’s therefore more likely to be true than religion – but Francis in all honesty wants to force us to treat with dignity an idea that is more ridiculous than a flat earth?

We must be able to ridicule any idea; stupid ideas deserve to be ridiculed. We should ridicule those who, for example, believe that the white race is somehow superior, or that women exist to serve men. Why is the idea that you must worship an invisible being that controls lightning and earthquakes any different? Special pleading for religious ideas has no merit, and is merely a result of undeserved entitlement. If the idea of a particular religion stands on its own, those who ridicule will eventually be proven wrong, and in due course become the object of ridicule themselves. If they don’t – well…

Pope Francis’ mentality of ‘criticize anything except religion’ is dangerously wrong and an unwelcome reminder of the Dark Ages, where narrow-minded bigots killed their critics with impunity.

Intelligent?

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Reuters’s John Lloyd does exactly what I hoped that journalists would not do in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre: tip-toeing around the issue that Islam extremism represents. In Unintelligent, but constitutionally protected, Lloyd quotes the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius:

freedom of expression must not be infringed … but is it pertinent, is it intelligent, in this context to pour oil on the fire. The answer is no.

Unfortunately, ‘is it intelligent’ is not the important question to ask here.

[…] the publication of a series of cartoons of Mohammad in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, showed Mohammad in various nude poses. Whatever their quality, they do not just make waves – they make deaths. We can no longer pretend otherwise. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses taught us too much.

The aftermath of Rushdie’s book did indeed teach us a lot, but in a very different way than Lloyd means. Lloyd, so it appears, thinks that since provoking retribution is unwise if you want to stay alive, it is also unintelligent under any circumstances to make any waves. In short: you should not speak up if your life is in danger.

LLoyd quotes Stephane Charbonnie, publishing director of Charlie Hebdo on why they publish controversial content, and then comments:

In Charbonnier’s argument, radical Islamists are special only because they threaten random violence, as well as targeted violence against those who don’t consider them special.

That is an astute observation, and it would have been a great article had Lloyd agreed and left it at that. Unfortunately, he believes that somehow all media must always restraint themselves as to not provoke. Quoting Onora O’Neill he continues:

“freedom of the press does not require a licence to deceive”, she writes. Where there is clear deception, or worse, clear provocation, the media also acquire a license to kill.

Except that Charlie Hebdo is not doing the killing, they were being killed. This notion that the media is responsible for death is completely wrong – it’s like saying that you ‘force the kidnappers to kill your son if you don’t give in to their demands’. No, Charlie Hebdo is intentionally provoking the bully that is Islamist Extremism. The problem is not the provocation – it’s the bully .

In the past years, the press, and much of the establishment, have bent over backwards to appease this bully. Is that intelligent? Appeasement always encourages and emboldens the bully.

After Rushdie, we cannot say we don’t know the costs of provocation. Was it intelligent to rack them up again?

Let me be blunt: This is the reasoning of a coward. Rushdie paid a high price, and instead of rushing to his defense, people have started to appease the Islamists.

We know enough about our societies to understand that the margins contribute much, sometimes most, to our freedoms. The […] cartoon publishers are not in line with these groups. They’re not fighting for a great cause. They’re sticking it to the radical Islamists, and watching them howl.

Lloyd couldn’t be more wrong. The cartoon publishers are fighting for a higher cause – and they stood very, very alone. It’s disappointing that Lloyd does not see this: the islamists are the ones who are dealing out violence to those who speak up. The press has censored itself in the past – it was why the original Mohammed cartoons were published in the first place! The press is afraid of the bully, and regularly hands over their proverbial lunch money in exchange for not being beaten up. Charlie Hebdo, on the other hand, has gone out of its way to ridicule the bully.

So you may ask if it is intelligent to provoke the bully. No, not unless you want to get injured. But that is not the pertinent question.

Much, much more important is this question:

Is it necessary?

The artists at Charlie Hebdo have paid with their lives to us show just how much it is.

Mental Drivers

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In Russia, you now can’t drive a car if you are a ‘sexual deviant’. In Russia, that of course includes being LGBT. The ‘reason’ behind this is that being sexually deviant (e.g. gay) is classified as a mental disorder, and people with mental disorders are banned from driving to make the road safer.

Of course, obvious mental disorders – like the delusion that there is a god that watches your every move – do not bar you from driving.

Only in Russia.

Of Unicorns

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Many Christians are somewhat irritated when atheists bring up Unicorns. Atheists do that mostly to show that in general, logic can’t prove a negative: the fact that atheists can’t disprove god’s existence is not proof of his existence; the way to show this to the believer is to ask them to disprove the existence of unicorns.

Because everyone knows that unicorns don’t exist.

Except that Isaiah 34:7 does mention unicorns.

Well, believers usually don’t know that fact either.