Thou shalt not bear false witness

From a few days ago, the same old dreck – the priest George Pitcher calls Richard Dawkins “shrill.”

First there’s the usual boring empty non-argument –

The narrow and rather meaningless argument to which Dawkins confines himself is the incessant charge that there is no “evidence” for God. And evidence, of course, is defined only within the strictures of his own empirical scientism. The problem is that faith isn’t primarily evidential, as he demands it to be, but revelatory – and we would claim no less true for all that in explaining the human condition. [Read more…]

Oh if only

I get envious of people in other countries quite often. The other day on the CBC’s The National I saw an item about a politician suggesting that certain criminals should be given a rope, so that they could decide to hang themselves if they liked. There was outrage from all parties. Here in the US the outrage is all for people who want to get rid of the death penalty.

And in the UK – the Advertising Standards Authority has told a Christian group it can’t tell people God will heal them.

The ASA said the leaflet read: “Need Healing? God can heal today! Do you suffer from Back Pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction … Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness?

“We’d love to pray for your healing right now!

“We’re Christian from churches in Bath and we pray in the name of Jesus. We believe that God loves you and can heal you from any sickness.” [Read more…]

Atheism in America

Well at least Julian now realizes that we Murkan atheists haven’t been exaggerating about the level of hostility to atheism and atheists there is in the US. He took an evidence-gathering trip here last year, and a long article in the FT talks about what he found.

As I found out when I travelled across the US last year, atheists live in isolation and secrecy all over the country. In a nation that celebrates freedom of religion like no other, freedom not to be religious at all can be as hard to exercise as the right to swim the Atlantic…The issue is somewhat neglected because it’s not usually perceptible on the coasts and in the larger cities, but the almost complete absence of overt atheism is striking at all levels of US public life, even in cosmopolitan areas. [Read more…]

Justin gets a megaphone!

Wo! The BBC has done a huge long feature article about our man Justin Griffith and Rock Beyond Belief.

As an active-duty sergeant in the US Army, he’s leading the charge to get atheists more respect in the armed forces. In the process he is earning attention, both positive and negative, from around the world.

Mr Griffith’s most ambitious project is Rock Beyond Belief, a day-long event on the military base Fort Bragg, North Carolina, complete with children’s activities, rock concerts and a lecture by atheism’s most visible proponent, author and scientist Richard Dawkins….

Scheduled for 31 March, Rock Beyond Belief comes two years after another controversial concert at Fort Bragg, “Rock The Fort”. Sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, Rock the Fort was billed as an “evangelical event” with Christian bands, family activities, and an emphasis on spreading the gospel to the entire community.

Just what the world doesn’t need: another evangelical military. Hence the need for Justin Griffith.

Military culture is full of religious ideology and symbolism, says Griffith. For instance, he cites the traditional flag-folding ceremony, which cites faith in God in multiple instances.

“These things have been here for years. It’s tradition,” he says. “How do we go about getting them out?”

Prior to planning the concert, he registered his complaints against the army’s spiritual fitness test, a campaign that he continues. That test, implemented last year as part of a wider resiliency and suicide-prevention program, rates servicemembers on the strength of their spiritual life.

He’s also working to ensure that servicemembers can have “atheist” listed on their official military records. “It took me a year and a half to get my records changed to atheist. When I told them I was atheist, they put ‘no religious preference’,” he says. “I told them that’s unacceptable. I do have a preference, and that’s atheism.”

Similar to my view of god. It’s not just that I don’t believe in god, I also dislike god.

Through his efforts, Mr Griffith has become a figurehead within the atheist movement. His blog gets around 100,000 hits a month and he says he puts in about 40 hours a week of activism on top of his military duties. In July, he was appointed the military director of American Atheists.

“I definitely have a bigger microphone now,” he says.

BBC links to FTB! I think that might be a first.

Don’t protest the thing you are protesting

There was an extraordinary discussion on the Rally for Free Expression Facebook page a couple of days ago. The rally, of course, is a project of One Law for All and Maryam. The discussion started when a KCL student asked, “Whose idea was it to use a Jesus and Mo picture to advertise this rally?” and when told it was One Law for All’s, said, “Bad move. Very bad move.”

Uh. Seriously? But that was the whole point – to say that Jesus and Mo is not the kind of thing that should be banned or bullied into silence or concealment.

Maryam replied, sardonically,

I decided to use it. I couldn’t find a photo of us kneeling down in submission and agreeing not to offend but that also showed a demand for free expression. I guess that’s because it doesn’t exist… Jesus and Mo is the point. [Read more…]

Tragic failure of education

Via the LSESU ASH Facebook page and later via Alex Gabriel, a poster advertising an event put on by the LSE Socialist Worker Student Society. It reads:

Religious discrimination is irrefutably on the rise at LSE. Both the Atheist Society’s efforts to publish inflammatory “satirical” cartoons in a deliberate attempt to offend Muslims, and the ‘Nazi themed’ drinking games serve to highlight a festering undercurrent of racism. [Read more…]

“Open to all” does not mean “pleasing to all”

The LSESU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society issued a statement yesterday.

It starts with thanks for support from various groups (including One Law for All) and a chronology of the exciting events of the last couple of weeks, the first being an invitation from the SU to come in for a chat.

Friday 20th

In the meeting, the LSESU advanced that we were not providing a safe space for Muslim students to interact, as the pictures on our Facebook page were offending Muslims.

But again – why is an Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society expected to provide a safe space for Muslim students to interact? Why is that an issue? Are all student societies expected to provide a safe space for their own opposites to interact? Wouldn’t such an expectation render all student societies utterly meaningless and void? Or is it only the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society that is expected to do that? But in that case…why the fuck?

On the 25th the SU clarified this point somewhat:

When activity comes under the banner of the Student’s Union it should be open to all members…….. The images which are posted there present a clear barrier to entry for a large number of students at LSE……. the cartoons has caused not only reflects negatively on the LSE SU brand but more importantly has caused significance offence to our members.

So there we have the fundamental confusion: the confusion of being open with having no “barriers” when barriers are understood as “anything some students might dislike.” The activity is open to all members, but that doesn’t require it to be attractive to all members. At that rate there could be no musical society, because some people dislike music; there could be no socialist society, because socialism would “present a clear barrier” to free-market libertarians; there could be no feminist society, for reasons which there’s no need to spell out.

ASH made the same point crisply in response to the SU:

Disagreeing and even being offended by some of the contents of a social space do not represent a barrier to entry.

It must be dispiriting to be at university with people who have to be told that.

January 30th

We asked the SU to “cite the relevant literature that shows conclusively that “Muslim students cannot look at pictures of the prophet Muhammad”.” No answers received.

The LSESU Socialist Workers Society posted the posters on campus that included the following statement:

“The Atheist Society’s efforts to publish inflammatory “satirical” cartoons in a deliberate attempt to offend Muslims serve to highlight a festering undercurrent of racism.”

Budding George Galloways, all of them.

…we have now changed the name of the Facebook group back to “LSESU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society”.

During the two weeks of the on-going investigation, the LSESU has not been able to justify their request to remove the ‘Jesus and Mo’ cartoons from our website and their request to change the name of our Facebook group with reference to the LSESU constitution or bye-laws.

The SU answered our letter, but was still unable to state explicitly the effective and binding bye-laws on which their request has been based. Therefore, we are back to our old name, and will stay with our name until the SU can prove to us that we are in violation of any of their regulations or bye-laws.

We await further developments.

 

Unhand that banker, you filthy cad

Brendan O’Neill is hilarious, in an irritating way. His one trick is Defending the Indefensible. The only surprise he offers is what obviously bad exploitative ruthless item or person he can next find to claim as a victim of the mob.

This week it’s bankers. Yes bankers, who are so hard done by, being allowed to trash the global economy for the sake of stuffing their own wallets and then allowed to keep their wallet-stuffing jobs and continue getting gigantic bonuses to reward them for trashing the global economy in order to stuff their own wallets. Naturally they need defending by the fearless non-conformist quirky gang at Spiked.

The mad pursuit of Fred Goodwin and his ill-gotten knighthood confirms that bankers are the new paedophiles. Bank bosses are to posh commentators what paedos were to hacks at the News of the World – wicked creatures one can rail against in order to feel puffed-up and Good.

Pffffffff. One could just as easily say the same of O’Neill. He doesn’t know that that’s why people “rail against” Fred Goodwin, any more than I know that he writes this kind of coat-trailing shite in order to feel clever and Savvy.

Of course, the difference between the old tabloid wars against paedos and the current moralistic hounding of bankers is that the latter has been sanctioned by the influential chattering classes, giving it a reach and clout the News of the World‘s crusade against paedos never achieved.

Brilliant; he sounds like Terry Eagleton heaping scorn on “Islington man” from whatever blighted slum he would live in if only he hadn’t become so prosperous over the years.

There’s lots more of this formulaic bullshit; read it all if you like that kind of thing.