ABC The Drum - Free speech reserved for the chosen ones

ABC The Drum - Free speech reserved for the chosen ones

Anyone who dislikes Fielding is OK by me.

Here Be Dragons - 41 Min

ABC The Drum Unleashed - A return to wowserism in the name of politics

ABC The Drum Unleashed - A return to wowserism in the name of politics

Radical Islamists attack World Cup Soccer fans in Somalia

Radical Islamists attack World Cup Soccer fans in Somalia:

"According to the BBC, 'Somali militants have threatened football fans they will be publicly flogged - or worse - if they are caught watching the World Cup on TV.' Two have, in fact, already been killed on Saturday when militants stormed a house where they were watching a game on satellite television."

I don't really like soccer but killing people would be a bit much... but I don't have an invisible magic sky friend who whispers "kill people who like soccer, it's the only moral thing to do".

Our online family portrait: slightly paranoid

Our online family portrait: slightly paranoid

Kids:
. we are overprotective compared to other countries.
. they lie to adults because they think they'll get in trouble or that their internet will be limited or filtered.
. we wont turn parental controls on
. they surf less and have more rules.

So, the fear campaign has worked. Parents are frightened of the net so their kids, not able to fathom why the adults are in such a tizz, are protecting them from the worst of it.

Fallacies of Ambiguity: The No True Scotsman Fallacy

Fallacies of Ambiguity: The No True Scotsman Fallacy:

"This is actually a combination of several fallacies, but since it rests ultimately on shifting the meaning of terms — a form of equivocation — and begging the question, it receives special attention.

The name “No True Scotsman” comes from an odd example involving Scotsmen:

1. Suppose I assert that no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge. You counter this by pointing out that your friend Angus likes sugar with his porridge. I then say “Ah, yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”
Obviously the original assertion about Scotsmen has been challenged quite well, but in attempting to shore it up the speaker uses an ad hoc change combined with a shifted meaning of the words from the original."

In discussions with theists, being able to pull them up on logical fallacies is important. If done gently, it can coax them towards a more logical, critical, skeptical world view.

If done roughly it can win a point in an argument but it will only strengthen their determination to be religious... that would be winning the battle but losing the war.


More logical fallacies on atheism.about.com:

Third Reich Christianity: Nazi Germany as Implementation of a Christian Agenda - How Was Nazi Germany an Example of Christian Nationalism & Power?

Hitler and the Nazis are often cited as an example of the horrible crimes which atheists have committed in the 20th century. They are only assumed to be atheists, though, because people can't imagine Christians doing such things; in reality, Hitler explicitly appealed to Christianity on a regular basis and this was part of why he was popular. Not every Christian supported the Nazis, of course, but he was most popular with conservative Christians seeking a restoration of traditional values.

Third Reich Christianity: Nazi Germany as Implementation of a Christian Agenda - How Was Nazi Germany an Example of Christian Nationalism and Power?:

"In a speech celebrating Germany’s exit from the League of Nations, Hitler again maintained that the Third Reich was actively implementing a Christian agenda: “Along with the fight for a purer morality we have taken upon ourselves the struggle against the decomposition of our religion. We have therefore taken up the struggle against the Godless movement, and not just with a few theoretical declarations; we have stamped it out."

Make it Count | Rudd & Abbott address Christian Voters ::

Make it Count | Rudd and Abbott address Christian Voters ::

Invitation only god-fest with Australia's leading politicians.

Hitchens answers Pascal's Wager:

Hitchens sums up Blaise Pascal's wager with this memorable imagery:
"Religious hucksterism of the cheapest, vulgarest, nastiest kind it's possible to imagine. He says, 'What have you got to lose? I've got a good offer for you. Come into my used car lot. Come on baby, just lie a little, and you never know!' No, don't talk to me like that, and don't call it piety when you do, or be prepared to have piety despised."

Hitchens and Fry vs. Ann Widdecombe on The Ten Commandments

Good until about 3:15 Widdecombe shows that she hadn't listened to either of them:


Which ten commandments are we talking about here? These ones? Is it really that important not to boil a kid in its mother's milk. Is that really one of the basis for modern morality?

Exodus 34:11-34:27

11 Observe what I command you today. See, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 12Take care not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, or it will become a snare among you. 13You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles* 14(for you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God). 15You shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to their gods, someone among them will invite you, and you will eat of the sacrifice. 16And you will take wives from among their daughters for your sons, and their daughters who prostitute themselves to their gods will make your sons also prostitute themselves to their gods.

17 You shall not make cast idols.

18 You shall keep the festival of unleavened bread. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.

19 All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male* livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. 20The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem.

No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

21 For six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in ploughing time and in harvest time you shall rest. 22You shall observe the festival of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the turn of the year. 23Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. 24For I will cast out nations before you, and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year.

25 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, and the sacrifice of the festival of the passover shall not be left until the morning.

26 The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God.

You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

27 The Lord said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.

Don't call me an Islamophobe : Johann Hari

Don't call me an Islamophobe : Johann Hari:

People who believe in opposing hatred of gay people everywhere – in Teheran as much as Tunbridge Wells, in Kingston, Jamaica as much as Kingston-Upon-Thames – are being subjected to a bizarre counter-campaign. As so often, Peter Tatchell is facing the most abusive backlash on our behalf. Tatchell believes all people are equal, regardless of their pigmentation. He does not see a difference between the white far-right preacher Jerry Falwell calling gay people diseased, and the Muslim leader Sir Iqbal Sacranie doing the same. He does not see the difference between gay teenagers being lynched to death in Jamaica and murderous gay-bashings on Clapham Common. He reacts to them in exactly the same way – by fighting to stop them.

Theists play the victim card at the drop of a hat. Here we are told of people pleading "But it's my religion" while they are advocating the lashing and stoning of gay people.

Gay people are not trying to force their beliefs onto other people. If adults want to have consenting sex with each other it is none of my business.

Sure, doing it in missionary position only, with the woman unable to say 'no', while praying to an invisible friend, is pretty weird but if that's the way two (or more) adults consent to sex than their weirdness is none of my concern.

Draw Mohammed

League of Reason

Saudi Clerics Advocate Adult Breast-Feeding

Saudi Clerics Advocate Adult Breast-Feeding:

Women in Saudi Arabia should give their breast milk to male colleagues and acquaintances in order to avoid breaking strict Islamic law forbidding mixing between the sexes, two powerful Saudi clerics have said. They are at odds, however, over precisely how the milk should be conveyed.

A fatwa issued recently about adult breast-feeding to establish 'maternal relations' and preclude the possibility of sexual contact has resulted in a week's worth of newspaper headlines in Saudi Arabia. Some have found the debate so bizarre that they're calling for stricter regulations about how and when fatwas should be issued.

The bit I like here is the last sentence. They are asking for secular laws to control the issue of fatwas. This fatwa shows that the process can generate some very strange results.

Women and Pornography | BYU Women's Services

Women and Pornography | BYU Women's Services: "Like visual pornography, such literature presents a warped view of sexuality and is arousing and addictive."

Wanna see a warped view on sexuality? Take a long hard look at your bible with Lot fucking his daughters, armies taking female children as sexual slaves from defeated cities and God sneaking up on Mary, sex without consent is called rape.

When your moral system has sorted out its sexual hangups, then you can try to propagate it to the whole world.

Sour old men have new plan to capture the love of Ireland : Pharyngula

Sour old men have new plan to capture the love of Ireland : Pharyngula:
"We all know the Catholic Church has a serious public relations problem right now — they're hidebound, they're insensitive to the human needs of their congregations, and, well, sheltering an evil bunch of child-rapers that they shuttle about among unknowing parishes like a buggerymobile or a penis-on-wheels program doesn't help."

PZ Myres is not happy with the Catholic Church's attempts to re-assert their control over Ireland's hearts and minds... and sex lives.

Church of the Smashing Orangey Bit

Church of the Smashing Orangey Bit

The Atheist Blogger � Church of the Smashing Orangey Bit Responds to Atheist & Christian Billboards

The Atheist Blogger � Church of the Smashing Orangey Bit Responds to Atheist & Christian Billboards: "Christians have recently begun putting billboards up claiming that the separation of church and state is not what the Founding Fathers wanted for America. This is actually quite true, since it is a well established fact in the Church of the Smashing Orangey Bit that both George Washington & Thomas Jefferson were devout Jaffalots. Far from wanting a separation of church and state, the Founding Fathers wanted a joining of the “state and cake” to honour McVities forever."

The Atheist Blogger � Questions Atheists CAN Answer

The Atheist Blogger � Questions Atheists CAN Answer: "Ray Comfort has another hilarious post containing 10 questions atheists apparently cannot answer. Here to disprove him yet again, I give some possible answers."

Threats to expose brothel clients | QLD News | Breaking News in Queensland | Toowoomba Chronicle

Threats to expose brothel clients | QLD News | Breaking News in Queensland | Toowoomba Chronicle

A comment:

Typical. The prudes weren't able to win their petty fight against the brothel opening so they are trying to force their twisted hatred of sex and fun onto everyone else. This is school yard bullying at its worst.

I hope all the sensible, liberal minded people in Toowoomba all take up visiting the brothel, whether they partake of their services of not, to give the law abiding patrons cover from the bigotry of the self-appointed moral police.

So the religious right (I'm assuming it's them - if it quacks like a duck...) have taken up blackmailing law abiding citizens to try to force everyone into their sexual dysfunction.

Catholic sex abuse cases

Wikipedia entry on RICO legislation being used to charge Catholic priests:

Stephen Hawking BT Commercial

Synthetic life form accuses God of ‘playing science’

The world’s first artificially created life form has accused God of ‘playing science’ and ‘meddling with things He cannot possibly understand.’

The single celled organism, created by Dr Craig Venter and his team, was said to be ‘outraged’ when it discovered that a supernatural being, not subject to any form of regulatory control, was still involved in the creation of life.

Link:

Heroic or Quixotic? The High Court Challenge against Australia’s National School Chaplaincy Program � Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear

Heroic or Quixotic? The High Court Challenge against Australia’s National School Chaplaincy Program � Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear

The Atheist Book

You want to know what the bible and the koran say about women, homosexuals, non-believers... You want to understand why religions generate intolerance and obscurantism... You want to know more about the different faiths...You will find answers to these questions in "the atheist book".

Link:

Jamiewrites: The Global Atheist Conference

Jamiewrites: The Global Atheist Conference

A roundup of the Australian Atheist Convention held March 2010

We were really quite nervous for this one. Our first ever interview, and we had, had about 6 hours sleep in 3 days between us.

Pretentious Makes Perfect.
In this episode we interviewed the lovely Leslie Cannold a Bio-ethicist, Lecturer and Colomunist for The Age.

We were really quite nervous for this one. Our first ever interview, and we had, had about 6 hours sleep in 3 days between us.

The interview was a little clunky in places but Leslie Cannold was allowed to shine. :)

Why women in particular should be atheists.

Have you ever noticed that God is still thought of as male? Jesus is definitely male; Christmas is not really about Mary the mother but about the baby; all the paintings of God show a man (think Michelangelo); everyone prays to Him. There are a few who try to make him asexual or even female but they are thought of as odd by Christians etc. Further, most of god's rules favour men - the old testament, much of the new testament, especially by Paul, favours men; all of the Qu'ran favours men although there is some talk of protecting women - a bit like property. The entire bible has no lead characters who were women and until recently, 99% of ministers and preachers were men. The Judeo-Christian society we live in and also the Muslim society is definitely patriarchal.
So why would women want to be Religious? Why would they want to believe that they are inferior?

Continue reading: Why women in particular should be atheists.:

I never can understand why women are going for religion. They really lose out, as far as I can see. They are treated as second class at every turn. Their bodies become church property. They are discouraged from thinking, working, any independence... it goes on and on. It gets worse as we go back though history or into countries where Islam has hold.

Fox fails at discrediting atheism.

Fox fails at discrediting atheism.



These people should stick to sucking at news, this is just embarrassingly bad, even for them.

News from The Associated Press

The future Pope Benedict XVI refused to defrock an American priest who confessed to molesting numerous children and even served prison time for it, simply because the cleric wouldn't agree to the discipline. The case provides the latest evidence of how changes in church law under Pope John Paul II frustrated and hamstrung U.S. bishops struggling with an abuse crisis that would eventually explode.

News from The Associated Press:

The Pope is busily pretending to be concerned about communicating with atheists (Link). I can speak for exactly one atheist. Make amends to the people who you and your organisation harmed before you try to tell atheists how to live.