Islamophobia exists

So I am lucky to share the FTB platform with two titans of free thought: Ophelia Benson and Maryam Namazie. I was fans of both of these women long before I ever even dreamed about being counted among their colleagues. And because of the level of fearspect I have for both of them, I am really quite hesitant to disagree with them, so I haven’t so far.

What I am talking about is their seeming denial of the existence of Islamophobia:

That’s what the term is there for – to protect Islam – from prejudice, not Muslims. Given the havoc Islamism (and its banner, Islam) are wreaking worldwide, a criticism is not just a right but a historical task and duty.

…

Yes but even though there is such a thing as stupid blanket hatred of a meaningless collective noun called “Muslims,” it still shouldn’t be called “Islamophobia.”

In all fairness, and to hopefully safeguard against accusations that I am straw-manning their argument, I think they object to the word ‘Islamophobia’ on more or less the same grounds that I object to the term ‘reverse racism‘. It is a political phrase, built on a foundation of false equivalence and poor argument. It is used almost exclusively to describe any criticism, no matter how valid, of Islam as a religion, or the activities of extremist Muslim groups (or the complicit silence of moderate Muslim groups in the face of extremism). By throwing up accusations of intolerance every time someone makes disparaging comments about a particular religion, you create a smokescreen to deflect attention from real problems. It is a trap to bait arch-liberals, who refuse to distinguish between criticism and bigotry, into attacking secular arguments for reasons of misdirection rather than actual flaw.

If the argument started and ended there, then I strongly suspect that Ophelia, Maryam and I would be all pulling in the same direction. However, I cannot join them on their blanket dismissal of the word Islamophobia, or their statements that seem to indicate belief that the word is purely fiction, created as an obfuscatory countermeasure by Islamists to discredit anyone who criticizes Islam. The fact is that there is irrational fear and hatred directed toward Muslims because they are Muslims, and not for any other reason. To wit: [Read more…]

Petition: Make stupid American school stop being morons

COMMENTER UPDATE: The preamble now says (presumably an update):

“I’d like to thank everyone for their support. I never imagined that the petition would gain so much attention. However, this whole situation has been a large misunderstanding between myself and the administration. I never meant to shed Paradise Valley in a negative light. PV is an accepting community of diverse students and staff. I have met with my principal and this situation has been resolved. The misunderstanding was completely on my end of things. Again, thank you all for your activism and support.”

That doesn’t sound coerced at all, but whatever.

Ugh. I know how incredibly awful it is to say that someone is “asking for it”, in light of how often that canard is used to excuse horrible violence against women, but really… these guys are asking for it.

The administration at Paradise Valley High School in Arizona has apparently asked students wanting to start a secular club to get signatures in support before they’ll allow the club.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/allow-the-secular-student-alliance-at-paradise-valley-h.html

This is, of course, illegal as all hell.  Under the Equal Access Act, if your school is an open forum (a status achieved by having a single non-academic club) you must allow all clubs.  The signatures are irrelevant.

So fly, my moderate number of minions! Sign the petition and teach the administrators what it means to fuck with the godless. Show them that young atheists seeking to organize have a shit-ton of backup, even if they live in Arizona. Show them that this kind of stuff can’t be swept under the rug anymore.

Dear Arizona: We see you.
Signed, people you DON’T want to fuck with

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Religious tolerance

We are led to believe that religion makes people better. That following the moral instructions laid out in this holy book or that one will provide us all with the information necessary to live decent, ethical lives. We are even told – most of the time through blind assertion – that the existence of any kind of human morality requires a deity. That without religious instruction, the world would quickly descend into amoral anarchy full of murder and sex acts so bizarre, Rick Santorum would need 5 or 6 additional surnames just to describe them all.

We also know that racism is fundamentally wrong. Prejudice based on something as arbitrary and biologically meaningless as socially-constructed ethnic groups is part of a dark chapter of the human experience that we are all working feverishly to finish and close forever.  Thanks to great strides we have made as a society, we can be confident that anyone can recognize the simple moral truth of the need to treat each other as equals, regardless of their heritage.

As a result, we might have a tough time explaining this: [Read more…]

#SOPA/#PIPA blackout post no. 3

In solidarity with the sites (including FTB) that are down for the day, I will not be providing original content today. I encourage you to poke around the archives. There’s nearly 2 years of quality posts to rummage through. Instead of writing myself, I have compiled a few interesting articles that I think you should read. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

God’s far from dead in the global South

What’s the fastest-growing religion in the world today? It’s Christianity. You can be excused if you guessed wrong. For the past decade, the Western world’s attention has been transfixed by Islam. But in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, it’s Christianity that’s on the march. Today, Christianity claims 2.18 billion believers – a third of the world’s population. By 2050, Christians will outnumber Muslims 3 to 2, according to author Philip Jenkins.

A more detailed look at where Christianity is growing can be found in a comprehensive new report on global Christianity from the Pew Research Center. It found that, while Christianity is on the wane in the global North, it’s exploding in the global South. Nigeria now has more than twice as many Protestants (60 million) as Germany, the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation. Brazil has more than twice as many Catholics (130 million) as Italy. The biggest Christian congregation in London draws 12,000 people every week; it’s mainly West African, and its pastor is Nigerian.

Read the rest of the article, leave your comments here.

Like this article? Call your senator, call your congressperson, tell them that you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and that ze should too. Not American? Neither am I.

 

Why people don’t like to answer theistic questions…

To readers who prefer short posts, I’d like to apologise in advance: this is not a short post. Unforunately, the nature of this extended argument is such that there’s no easy way to break it into 2 or 3 posts without killing the flow.

In a discussion I’ve been having recently with one particular believer, some ideas have repeatedly surfaced. This is not, however, the first time I’ve come across these particular notions. I want to take some time to fully address these ideas and the problems that are imbedded in the ideas. First I’ll simply quote the statements as written, as a group, break down the problematic/vague parts, then address them individually.

  1. “Can one expect human logic to understand the supernatural realm as easily as it does the natural realm?”
  2. “Are you saying that you reject the existence of the supernatural because people around you can’t agree on the exact nature of God, or of the Creative miracles?”
  3. “My fear, for those who choose that route, is that due to the acceptance of methodological naturalism as the defining limitation to science (defining only what can be proven from within nature itself), those that limit themselves in this way and trust that nature itself is “all there is”, will never have the chance to find out if the supernatural actually exists.”
  4. “Does methodological naturalism include or exclude God?”

[Read more…]

Oh-so-phisticated

One of the most common complaints that “moderate” believers have about anti-theists is that we are criticizing a version of god that nobody actually believes in. The kind of sky-dwelling patriarch that visits wrath on his own imperfect creation is a convenient target for derision, but it is a straw deity argument. Theology has developed, through careful examination of the scripture (and, presumably, guidance from the holy spirit), a much more ‘sophisticated’ and nuanced understanding of what YahwAlladdha actually is. Atheists should be criticizing this new and supremely amorphous deity, since that’s what people are praying to for a cancer cure.

There is no shortage of reasons why this argument is completely false. First of all, outside the hallowed halls of theological academies, the average person is not taught, and does not believe in, a quasi-deistic benevolent creator who is an embodiment (but not a corporeal one) of all that is good in the universe. While people are quick to jump on the bandwagon of “I don’t recognize that god” whenever an atheist criticizes belief in the bloodthirsty Canaanite war god (an act that is amusingly similar to the apostle Peter), they are oddly ignorant of the legions of neo-Calvinist churches crowing with triumph every time an earthquake or a tsunami destroys some gay heathen mecca.

The list of reasons why the “sophisticated god” argument is nonsense abounds, but what doesn’t seem to filter into the discussion at all is how self-defeating it is. It is an argument that, if followed through to its logical conclusion, proves itself to be either false or insulting to the deity it is supposedly defending. [Read more…]

Two sides to national superstition

Religious adherents seem to particularly resent having their deeply-held beliefs described by the word “superstition”. After all, superstition is the belief in things that are totally illogical, that have no foundation in science, that are based on old wives’ tales and pre-scientific nonsense. Religion isn’t based on superstition. Perish the thought! Religion is based on faith!

Of course, atheists have long known that faith is just superstition’s Tyler Durden. Faith looks the way superstition wants to look, talks like it wants to talk, and fucks like it wants to fuck. This may be the reason why religious folks get all bent out of shape whenever this comparison is made – they see the uncanny resemblance and don’t want to admit the truth of the charge. Well, maybe they’ll start paying attention when it starts blowing up skyscrapers. Oh… never mind.

Faith, or religion, or superstition, or whatever synonym you prefer can motivate people to do impressive things. Mozart wrote some of the most beautiful music the world has ever known, and devoted it to God. One can argue about painters like Michaelangelo and Raphael (and the other turtles as well), but the fact is that there is a lot of art created in the service of superstition. But for every example of artistic inspiration, there’s an example of something else entirely: [Read more…]

Movie Friday: How to debate an atheist child

Here’s a movie from the exact opposite of my upbringing:

For too many children, the idea of the gods is not one that can be treated like any other idea. It cannot be debated, it cannot be rejected, it cannot be tested using evidence; it must simply be believed. In the video above, this belief is enforced by violence.

My childhood was not like this in any way. Despite growing up in a practicing Catholic household, I was always encouraged to challenge authority figures and ask questions (I’m sure dad regrets giving me that advice). Sure, dad was a former priest, and we attended church every Sunday and I sang in the choir and was valedictorian of my confirmation class and taught Sunday school… but no idea was ever too taboo to discuss. I remember a long car ride wherein the merit of group practice was debated, and where I first encountered the argument from popularity as a justification for faith.

To my credit, I was a skeptic even when I was a believer. I simply made the mistake of assuming that there were good answers that I just hadn’t found yet.

I have a younger cousin who is reaching the age I was when I first began to question religion. Instead of the usual toy or game that I usually buy him, this year I bought him an illustrated anniversary edition of Bill Bryson’s excellent science book A Short History of Nearly Everything. I received this book as a gift in my teenage years, and it was probably the best “how do we know this” book I’ve ever read. Bryson walks the reader through what was known, and how that story developed into what we know now. As a skeptic “how do you know that” is now my bread and butter. I have Bryson’s book to thank for that, at least in part.

I wrote this inside the cover:

To N_____: Your mind is the most powerful weapon you have, and questions are its most potent ammunition. No question is more powerful than this: ‘how do you know that?’

Be always wary of the easy answer, and never be afraid to challenge authority. The truth is usually found after digging it out from among many falsehoods, and science is the best tool we have for that task.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did, and I hope it fills you with many questions.

If he’s not an atheist by the time he’s 20, I will consider myself a failure.

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Dictatorship in utero

They’re so adorable when they’re little:

The Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh has told the BBC that he will rule for “one billion years”, if God wills. He said critics who accused him of winning last month’s elections through intimidation and fraud could “go to hell”. The West African regional body Ecowas said the electorate had been “cowed by repression”.

Mr Jammeh, who took power in a coup in 1994, was re-elected with 72% of the figures, official figures show. The 46 year old said he did not fear a fate similar to Egypt’s ousted President Hosni Mubarak or killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. “My fate is in the hands of almighty Allah,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

I am reminded of a true story involving a star NHL goalie, a blood alcohol level over the legal limit, and a highly-amused police officer. It seems that the goalie, when pulled over and informed that he was under arrest for drunk driving, slurred to the cop “do you know who I am?” When the officer responded in the negative, the goalie said “I’m ________, and if you let me go, I’ll give you a billion dollars.” The judge would later rule that this drunken offer did not constitute attempted bribery, as the hockey player did not in fact have a billion dollars to offer. If he had instead offered a million, well that would be quite a different story. The extravagance of the boast was all that kept the man from serving a much larger sentence.

While this story is funny in an awkward, dark sort of way, it’s actually nighmarish for the poor people of The Gambia who are forced to deal with a political leader who is both powerful and insane. The interesting thing about Mubarak and Gaddafi is that neither of those guys thought they’d be overthrown, and both lavished praise upon the exact same Allah who would undoubtedly preserve their respective legacies. Of course, the important point has to be made here that they believed in Allah as a symbol of human compassion and well-being, not in an actual intervening entity of any kind </ridiculous faitheist apologist nonsense>.

So how do we spot a developing dictator? Well the first sign is invariably extreme intolerance of any kind of political opposition or criticism from the media. Let’s see how President “Billion Years” Jammeh stacks up:

In 2004, the editor of the privately owned The Point newspaper, Deyda Hydara, was gunned down, but no-one has been charged over his murder. In the BBC interview, Mr Jammeh denied that the government’s security agents had killed him.

“Listen to me: Is he the only Gambian who died? Is he better than Gambians who die in accidents, Gambians who die at sea, Gambians who die on their way to Europe?” Mr Jammeh asked. “Other people have also died in this country. So why is Deyda Hydara so special?”

Not bad, not bad. Defiant with more than just a touch of crazy. Bonus points for not actually answering the charge, but instead pivoting to “shit happens, what are you gonna do?” Of course, for full marks President “Drunken Boast” Jammeh would have had to deny any involvement, while simultaneously saying that any other critical journalists would meet an identical fate.

The next sure sign of a burgeoning dictator is the process by which the leader becomes an embodiment of the state, appointed to that position by (usually) the almighty or some ‘not based on statistics’ view of the wishes of ‘the people’. Mr. Jammeh?

Mr Jammeh said he was not bothered by the criticism of human rights groups. “I will not bow down before anybody, except the almighty Allah and if they don’t like that they can go to hell,” he said.

Once again, not big-league, but an admirable showing. For full marks, Mr. Jammeh would have had to invoke the entire arc of history as leading up to his glorious ascension as the truly appointed leader. Maybe he should get on the horn to Newt Gingrich for some lessons in megalomania.

Give him another decade or so, and I think Mr. Jammeh will have become a household name. At the very least, he’ll qualify for an invitation to dinner with ol’ Pigfucker.

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It’s a special day for another reason

I almost forgot to mark this, as anniversaries don’t really mean much to me, but it was December 25th, 2007 when I finally ‘came out’ to myself as an atheist. I had been a de facto atheist for a few years before that, but it was during Christmas mass, seated next to my still-Catholic parents, that I finally turned that corner in my mind and said that, in all likelihood, there were no gods.

I’ve talked about this in greater detail previously.

I still attend Christmas mass with my family – an event that fills me with dread in the weeks leading up to it, and angry nausea for the 90 or so minutes I am actually forced to sit in a church without the option of saying the word “bullshit”. Every time I attend is worse than the last. The latest assault to the sensibility was the new hyper-cultish language in the Catholic service. That, coupled with the homily (“do you allow God to be bigger than yourself? Can you live a God-centred life?”) raised every skeptical hackle I possess – I definitely pulled my David Silverman face more than once:

 

It is, I suppose, a sign that the skeptical arguments are persuasive – I cannot participate in, or even be present for, a Christian worship service without seeing a brainwashing death cult. It casts an appalling light on the earnestness and gaiety with which young people participate in the readings and hymns; my mind immediately bemoans that fact that this energy and enthusiasm is being wasted in the service of an imaginary friend. Imagine if that hour spent verbally jerking Yahweh off (in the hope of being splashed with a droplet of his divine spunk after we face our own ‘happy ending’), was instead spent by every person in that church doing something nice for a friend or neighbour – what a Christmas that would be!

If there is any similarity between theist paradise and church worship, YahwAlladdha could not devise a better hell for me than sending me to heaven – I can’t help but imagine that this is indeed “a boot stamping on a human face – forever”. Now that I am free of these obligations (my annual Christmas attendance notwithstanding), I revel in and savour my atheism as it has put me securely in the driver’s seat of my own life, free of the cloying spectre of clergical busybodies attempting to insert their cold fingers into every private inch of my thoughts.

I am now the maximum number of days away from having to go back to church that I will be for the whole year. That is a tiding that brings me both comfort and joy. Hoping that this day, and all the ones to come, are merry and bright.

Rawwwwr!

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