The Moral Compass Ceded; or, Argument By Snape

A comment from my previous post:

Criticizing God for not doing anything about suffering and evil right now is like reading half a novel and criticizing the author for not resolving the plot. God will bring accountability at the right time.

Besides, he HAS done something already, His name is Jesus – no greater suffering and death has the world witnessed as that God himself had to bear on the cross for our sake. He knows what pain is…, so I trust him on this.

The book is only halfway read;
The final page turn’d in Heaven,
When Hitler’s good is finally shown
Like Severus Snape in book seven. [Read more…]

“Why Me?” — Four Bad Answers

In the case of a shooting, or flooding, or cancer,
The question arises, “why me?”
We tend to get four different species of answer;
Our wishes distort what we’ll see.

Since you won’t get an answer directly from God
You might think of asking a pastor—
For the problem of evil, it strikes me as odd
That his answer is such a disaster. [Read more…]

25+ Years For ‘Honor’ Killing Of Daughter

She wants a western life—for shame! For shame!
Rejecting our beliefs, she wants to fly;
How dare she bring dishonor to our name.

Correcting her delusion soon became
Our sacred task—I can’t imagine why
She wants a western life—for shame! For shame!

But western news reports held us to blame,
And forced us to dissemble and deny!
How dare she bring dishonor to our name!

A daughter should be ours, to break or tame,
But no, she claims her rights—she dares to cry
“I want a western life”—for shame! For shame!

If her beliefs and ours are not the same
She is not fit to live, in Allah’s eye—
How dare she bring dishonor to our name.

Our honor was at stake! Such was our aim,
We had no other choice—she had to die.
She wanted western life—for shame! For shame!
How dare she bring dishonor to our name

British court convicts parents in ‘honor’ murder

The parents of a 17-year-old girl will spend at least 25 years in a British prison for the death of their daughter after the couple’s conviction Friday for killing her over her desire to live a Westernized lifestyle and become an attorney, a court spokeswoman said Friday.
Chester Crown Court Judge Roderick Evans sentenced Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed to life in prison. He said the couple, who were originally from Pakistan, must be imprisoned for at least 25 years before being eligible for parole.
The sentence came hours after the court found them guilty of murder in the death of Shafilea Ahmed. The girl’s dismembered body was found on a riverbank in February 2004, months after she disappeared in 2003.

Go read the whole thing. I don’t think I can report it here and stay coherent.

Absolute Truth(s)

It’s fun* sometimes, to look at what other people think atheists must think. I saw an example of this recently:

Atheists love to tell Christians we’re just about as atheistic as they are. We’re atheistic about millions of gods; they’re atheistic about millions plus one more.

Okay, it’s silly, but I’ll address it one more time.

If God exists, then God is an atheist toward all gods but himself. Therefore God, if he exists, is very nearly (within mere thousandths of a percent!) as atheistic as atheists are.

That’s where their logic goes. The mind reels.

[Read more…]

One Year At Freethought Blogs

Today marks The Digital Cuttlefish’s one year anniversary here at Freethought Blogs–my first post here went up July 21st of 2011, a few days before the network went public. Thanks, Ed and PZ, for creating this space and populating it with these people. And thank you, readers and commenters, for the reactions that keep me addicted to writing here.

From one year ago: [Read more…]

On Open- And Closed-Mindedness

They’re calling us “closed minded”, cos we say we don’t expect
Any evidence for god to come along
Their sycophants agree with them, or did last time I checked,
But their use of “open-mindedness” is wrong

The odds are very small that there is evidence to find
That would make a non-believer come around
What they ought to ask, instead, is “will a Dawkins change his mind
When the evidence he asks for has been found?”

Context, after the jump: [Read more…]

My Religion

My religion’s “not believing”
Cos I don’t believe in god
As religions go, I have to say
That mine’s a little odd

Since I don’t believe in Odin
And I don’t believe in Thor
Is that one, or two, religions?
Cos, you see, I’ve got some more!

See, I don’t believe in Isis
Or Athena, or Nabu,
And I wonder if the Christians
Have these same religions too

Do they all deny Apollo?
Do they not believe in Kon?
Are these multiple religions?
Is it one, and mine alone?

There are thousands of religions—
Some are young, and some are old
My religion is the disbelief
In all of them, I’m told.

I’ve no synagogue, nor chapel
No cathedral, mosque, nor church
So it’s clear you’ll find my holy places
Everywhere you search

“Non-belief” is my religion,
And it’s just like theirs, you see…
(Could you pretty-please explain it?
Cos it makes no sense to me!)

Along the lines of “it takes more faith to be an atheist”, I also see the odd construction of “not believing in god is a religion, too”–which raises the question of whether, say, Christians are actually polytheists, because they “do believe” in Yahweh, and “don’t believe” (which, by their* argument, is a form of belief) in, say, Bahloo. Or Novensides. Or Mextli. Or Pangu.

It must take terrible effort to actively disbelieve in so many gods. And yet, by this strange logic, every one of us has the same number of religions–either believing or not-believing in thousands of deities.

Or maybe the whole notion is just silly.