The Irish amendment of the Copenhagen Declaration

I posted the Copenhagen Declaration here a while back. Atheist Ireland has done the right thing by taking it as a starting point and producing a simpler, and they hope clearer version. This is exactly what the motley hordes of the godless need to do: don’t expect one document to encompass everything exactly as everyone wants, because that will never happen. Tweak it so it fits your ideals.

We support this amended version of the Copenhagen Declaration on Religion in Public Life. We invite other people and groups to also support it.

Personal Freedoms

  • Freedom of conscience, religion and belief are unlimited. Freedom to practice religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights of others.
  • All people should be free to participate equally in public life, and should be treated equally before the law and in the democratic process.
  • Freedom of expression should be limited only as prescribed in international law. All blasphemy laws should be repealed.

Secular Democracy

  • Society should be based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Public policy should be formed by applying reason to evidence.
  • Government should be secular. The state should be strictly neutral in matters of religion, favoring none and discriminating against none.
  • Religions should have no special financial consideration in public life, such as tax-free status for religious activities, or grants to promote religion or run faith schools.

Secular Education

  • State education should be secular. Children should be taught about the diversity of religious beliefs in an objective manner, with no faith formation in school hours.
  • Children should be educated in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge. Science should be taught free from religious interference.

One Law For All

  • There should be one law for all, democratically decided and evenly enforced, with no jurisdiction for religious courts to settle civil matters or family disputes.
  • The law should not criminalize private conduct that respects the rights of others because the doctrine of any religion deems such conduct to be immoral.
  • Employers or social service providers with religious beliefs should not be allowed to discriminate on any grounds not essential to the job in question.

If you’ve got a great big fancy expensive machine, you’ve got to use it

I’m sure it was a moment of epiphany. Person in charge of an MRI takes avantage of an idle moment in the parade of patients to have lunch. Pulls a banana out of a brown paper bag. Looks at banana. Looks at MRI. Looks at banana. Looks at MRI. And the rest is history.

Give it time to load, and if you’ve got a slow connection, you might not want to bother; these are all animated images of 2-D slices scanned through MRIs of fruit and vegetables. The artichoke is my favorite.

Another theocrat for Kansas

Maybe somebody from Kansas can say whether this crazy woman has a chance. Joan Farr Heffington is running for governor, and she has a few priorities.

  • Require that a Biblical and Constitutional reason exist for the passage of any new laws

  • Allow teaching of Christianity vs. evolution in schools

I guess there won’t be any laws regulating GMO crops in Kansas, or prohibiting stem cell research, or funding the creation of any wind farms. Anything more recent than the 18th century is going to have to be neglected, along with anything not mentioned in the Constitution.

At least she’s upfront about the conflict between Christianity and evolution.

Quick, somebody reassure me that she’s a fringe candidate without a prayer of getting into office. Please. It’s Monday, the day is painful enough.

Pick your comic book gods

Is anyone going to Comic-Con? You’ve probably heard that the Phelps gang will be picketing it (IMPORTANT: you know Phelps is a litigious con-man who baits people so he can sue them, right?), so you may have to pick a god to annoy them. Here’s a list of appropriate comic book gods and goddesses. Praise Thor, piss off Phelps.

Although I would think being an atheist would be even more effective. For that, here’s a list of atheist comic book characters. It’s short, and unfortunately, most of them aren’t very memorable.

There is, apparently, a comic book called The Atheist. I’ve never seen it, but it sounds…interesting.

The storyline revolves around present day humans that are having their bodies being “possessed” by the souls from Hell similar to the possessions in the fifties horror movie “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. The souls from Hell then begin an extremely hedonistic and malicious lifestyle that includes raves, drugs, self mutilation, murder, and other violence. The possessed bodies then start congregating in Winnipeg, Canada.

That’s not very atheistic. But, yeah, it sounds exactly like Winnipeg.

Of course! It’s HuffPo!

Once again, the Huffington Post features front page quackery. In this case, it’s a ridiculous article that accuses dermatology of being a conspiracy to make doctors rich; you know that stuff about UV damage to the skin inducing melanoma? It’s all made up by doctors who are in the pocket of the vast sunscreen industry.

I don’t link to Huffington Post anymore, so you’ll have to settle for Peter Lipson’s deconstruction.

I have been objectified!

Here is a list, with photos, of 15 sexy scientists. It has a little excuse for some obvious bias in the choices:

(Why no men? Because I unavoidably find women more sexy, of course!)

Which is forthright and honest and all that…but then I got a look at #15. I’m very disturbed now. I had no idea that my awesome sexual charisma was overwhelming even heterosexual men nowadays.

I’m also bothered by the premise. I think it’s an excellent idea to promote the idea that scientists can be sexy, and women who are comfortable with that should be able to proudly present themselves as sexual beings. But the important concept is that women should have the choice, and their decisions should be respected. Men do not get the privilege of having the roving eye, of being able to pick individual women out of the crowd to tell them that here, they get to be object of sexual interest, especially not if they’re going to then publicly display them as clever eye candy.

The worst possible way to handle this is to search the internet for photos of women scientists and make superficial decisions about who the male eye would find sexy. There’s a process of judgment that went on behind the scenes, where many women scientists had to have been rejected because they were insufficiently ‘hot’, and then many of the women dragged into the spotlight had their “scientist” qualifications completely ignored for their literally biological qualifications. It’s a reiteration of the same inappropriate judgmental attitude that pretty much every woman scientist suffers through.

Promoting 15 sexy scientists is a fine idea, if the choices are entirely voluntary, and if the qualifications are more than a photo. Common Sense Atheism should have asked first, and found something a little more interesting than appearances to explain why they’re sexy. Or better yet, have the women explain what it means to be sexy, because men tend to be very poor judges of such phenomena.

I know, it would have been harder for me to make the cut if I’d had to qualify for my mind instead of my smokin’ hot body, but I can make that sacrifice.