chanson

Afghan ‘blasphemy’ death sentence, BBC News:

Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, was arrested in 2007 after downloading material from the internet relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.

A primary court in Balkh province said that Kambakhsh had confessed to blasphemy and had to be punished.

The court also threatened to arrest any reporters who protested against Kambakhsh's sentence.

Kambakhsh, a student at Balkh University and a journalist for Jahan-e Naw (New World), was arrested in October 2007 after material he downloaded was deemed to be offensive to Islam.

So let me get this straight. In 2001, the United States and Britain invaded Afghanistan to liberate its people from the Taliban — a group of religious thugs that the we had helped acquire power in the first place — and put in place an actual representative government with a modern constitution and structure.

And this is the kind of shit they pull.

Tell me again why we even bothered? Oh yeah, Osama bin Laden. Whatever happened to him, anyway?

This is a pretty clear sign that we've failed in our mission in Afghanistan, and probably need to take back administration and actually impose a real, modern constitution on the country like we did on Japan and Germany after World War II. Theocracy is a crime against humanity, and a clear indicator of a failed state that the modern world needs to intervene in.

I've gotten two responses now to my previous post Fucking barbaric about how awful Saudi Arabia is about human rights that try to take me to task for being an American and speaking out about some other country's abuses.

What the fuck?!

It's not as though the United States is perfect. Hell, the direction the United States is heading in terrifies me — we're sliding quickly towards a system like that in the Soviet Union. So I write my Representatives and Senators. I talk to everyone I can who has any influence on the process, whether as a voter or bureaucrat. I write in opposition of it (not always in ways that you can read, for example, in private mail to specific people or groups). I don't just sit idly by.

And none of that has anything to do with whether what happens to a woman who was raped in Saudi Arabia is medieval and barbaric. Just because the United States is not perfect does not mean that the horrors of Saudi Arabia are beneath mention — in fact, part of why the United States has the problems it does is because it has a history of engaging with illegitimate nations like Saudi Arabia in the names of political and economic expedience.

As a human being I have a strong interest in people everywhere being able to be free and openly participate in the global society in whatever way they wish. Don't you fucking dare try to tell me I can't have that interest just because I don't directly set US foreign or domestic policy.

Via CNN, Saudi lawyer in rape victim plea:

Story Highlights

• Woman sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail under Islamic law
• Judge more than doubled 19-year-old's sentence for speaking to the media
• Woman's lawyer loses law license for speaking to Saudi-controlled media
• Human rights group: Lawyer faces three-year suspension and disbarment

Woman was abducted and gang-raped. So of course she's going to be lashed and go to prison. And her lawyer is being disbarred for having the gall to speak out against this.

It's disgusting that the civilized world will have anything to do with such a medieval theocracy. Any nation where such medievalism is officially sanctioned automatically forfeits any pretense at legitimate statehood, and should be treated as a collapsed state by the international community. And women of Saudi Arabia? Take to the streets, throw off your chadour, and demand that your nation join the civilized world of the twenty-first century. You have more power than you think, if you work together — that's why they keep you subjugated.

I propose a new tradition! For dinner every Friday, us atheists should strive to eat a big, juicy bacon cheeseburger. Be sure to eat it while it's twilight, so you finish it after dark. That way it will be maximally offensive to the widest variety of superstitions.

Really, the bacon cheeseburger is the perfect rationalist food, given just how many different varieties of superstition it violates: It has bacon, which Islam and Judaism disallow; a bun (leavened bread), which Judaism disallows leading up to Passover; beef, which Hinduism disallows; meat at all, which Buddhism disallows; beef and cheese made from cow milk, which at least Judaism and possibly also Islam won't let you mix; non-fish meat, which some Christian denominations won't eat on a Friday during Lent; and eating before dark during Ramadan is also disallowed by Islam. Oh, be sure to turn a light on once it's too dark — you'll be using electricity during the Jewish Sabbath, too.

Atheist Bacon Cheeseburger Friday: Mmm, sacrilicious...

People sometimes suggest that I should go to church if I want to meet women. Some people even say I should go despite not being superstitious. But I've sometimes wondered — what should stop me from getting into the superstition racket myself?

So, are there any how-to guides or handbooks I could read that would help me get started, come up with a convincing messianic narrative, grow my initial flock of believers, and so on?

I'm thinking of something like Edward Luttwak's Coup d'Etat (1979, Harvard University Press) but for superstitious movements. Surely somebody who's done it has taken notes and turned them into a how-to guide.

Matt Arnold, Why Not to Attend Pensacola Christian College [via Pharyngula, A busy day]:

The PCC administration, and many of the parents of the students, practice a mild home-grown American version of fascism based not on racist or nationalistic chauvinism but on religious chauvinism.

Looking through some the Pensacola Christian College Rules as reported by The Student Voice (a non-PCC site), I'm inclined to agree. How can anyone take these kinds of barbarically superstitious freaks seriously, let alone give them money with which to start something claiming to be a college or voluntarily submit to their medievalist lifestyle.

I had a couple of quite smart but extremely superstitious friends among the underclassmen in high school. Both of them told me that they wanted to go on to a religious college or seminary, and nobody seemed to understand why I thought this was one of the stupidest things I'd ever heard. Now all I have to do is point to the above pages.

I wonder how many people I could convince to attend — or invest in — a hypothetical "St. Nicholas College" whose teachings and enforced lifestyle focus on the Revealed Word of Saint Nicholas the Merry as recorded by Charles Dickens and other scribes. It would be just as rational as any other superstitious school or madrasa, perhaps even moreso! After all, many Western parents work hard to provide evidence with which to back up the superstitious beliefs they inculcate their children with. To a first-order approximation, that's infinitely more evidence than there is supporting most widely-accepted superstitions. (And no, a self-referential "It's true because this book says so!" argument isn't evidence. It's delusion.)

The Christian Science Monitor, In dorms, men and women now room together:

Some 20 universities and colleges have decided to allow undergraduates of the opposite sex to share an on-campus room. Most quietly made the move in the past five years, with Clark University in Worcester, Mass., deciding this month. It's the final frontier in the decades-long march away from gender separation in college dorms, hallways, and even bathrooms.

What the hell is the big deal that The Christian Science Monitor feels a need to write an article about this? For a hint, search for the following words in the article: adult, parent, child.

The bigger deal should be that some schools are so archaic that they still have silly "visitation policies" for people who are legal adults. That's right: You can choose to (or be chosen to) die for your country, you can vote, you can star in a porno, but you can't live with or — at many schools — even visit a member of the opposite sex after certain hours. This kind of infantilization of grown men and women is yet another example of the negative impact outdated superstitions have on our culture.

At least most schools aren't as bad as Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois (near where I used to live). It's a superstitious school where they enforce a superstition-centered lifestyle on their students. Their big deal in the past few years was that they were going to (gasp) have a dance! On campus! Evidently they must have started allowing music a few years previous, because what else could have led to dancing?

PZ Myers has a perfect summary of the pro-religious arguments against Dawkin's The God Delusion: The Courtier's Reply

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all.

Yes, he is equating the question of divinity's existence with that of the Emperor's New Clothes, and he's right to do so.

I saw an interesting book at Borders: A History of God At first I thought it was going to be lame-ass feelgood bullshit about how Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the "same God" and can't we all just get along? But no, it was actual scholarship and talks about how the religions evolved from earlier faiths — such as how the Israelites' religion came out of the Babylonians' via the Caananites, and how monotheism is an ahistorical retcon.

Of course the people who need to read it most — religious bigots who try to force society into the mold of their faith — won't read it, or if they do, they'll just argue against it using the same circular logic that they use to support their faith, their actions, and their arguments against critics like Dawkins, Harris, and Myers. Maybe if we had a better educational system that didn't tiptoe around issues like the actual history of the Middle East (for fear, of course, of offending these same bigots) this would stop being an issue.

After all, if you're exposed to the rules of logic and evidence at a young age, and are taught the truth of the archeological and anthropological evidence, which would you choose to believe: The word of scientists backed up by careful interpretation of extensive evidence, or the word of a book composed by an inconsistent bunch of random nobodies a couple thousand years ago and translated by numerous groups with their own agendas whose sole basis for "truth" is based on its own claim of truth.

On the other hand, it does mean that if I ever decide to start a religion, I can just make up any damn practices, rules, and beliefs I want, write them down, and claim them to be true purely because my writings are divinely-inspired and say themselves that they're true. It looks like there are plenty of people around who would be ready to follow me.

Update: Dan writes in the comments to Myers' post:

Theology and all of its attendant literature reminds me of nothing so much as Star Wars fan fiction.

The analogy is perfect. Theology is religious fanfic. Pass the meme.

Like many other people, Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of my favorite anime series. Unlike many, I understood it on the first viewing because I got the references.

As a teenager, I read The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Shea & Wilson. It was a fun trip, and it also led to a research interest in secret societies and various mystical traditions (which are often interrelated). By chasing references, I picked up a lot of random bits of knowledge about the Kabbalah, Freemasonry and related orders, and some of the odder bits of Christian mythology and Eschatology that Evangelion was built on. I grokked the Lance of Longinus. I recognized the lamb with seven eyes. I had seen a Tree of Life and Sephiroth. So I was hooked from the start.

I recently started watching RahXephon and, just as I'd heard, the similarities to Evangelion are striking. By "striking" I mean they're the same damn show. Only, well, not. In pretty much the same way as Andromeda is and isn't Star Trek.

For one thing, RahXephon is a couple years more recent than Evangelion, and it shows in the technical quality of the show. I haven't seen any of the latest remastered versions of Eva, but I think it's due to the increased use of computerized production. Furthermore, many of the themes of the show are similar but are explored in different ways: Evangelion deals with technology-enhanced mysticism, RahXephon deals with mysticism-enhanced technology. Both put heavy emphasis on music, though it's given a much more central place in RahXephon.

The single most noticeable difference, though, is in the mystical basis. Evangelion is ultimately based on a combination of Kabbalah and Christian eschatology. RahXephon on the other hand is based on Aztec, Maya and other Mesoamerican religions. This gives it even more of a familiar-unfamiliar feeling than Eva, to good effect.

If you enjoy the genre, check it out. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Reuters, Woman loses stoning death appeal (CNN.com) FUNTUA, Nigeria (Reuters) -- An Islamic court in northern Nigeria ruled on Monday that a young woman must face death by stoning according to Muslim law for having a child outside marriage.

Oh, but Sharia only applies to Muslims! If she was a Christian, she wouldn't be stoned! Except if she tries to convert to Christianity to escape death, because Sharia doesn't recognize any conversion away from Islam and attempting to do so is punishable by death!

It's the fucking twenty first century already. Let's eliminate the very concept of "religious law" from human thought, excise it like the malignancy that it is. Relegate it to the dustbin of history. That goes for Islamic religious law. That goes for Christian religious law. That goes for Jewish religious law. That goes for Buddhist religious law. That goes for Hindu religious law. That goes for all religious law, everywhere, for all fucking time.

Religion has no place in public life. Whether religion has any place in private life is and should always be up to the individual. And nobody, anywhere, should have ever have whether they live or die determined by their beliefs again.