Green thought, in a green shade,
Green views
The Watermelon Blog 
Green on the outside, social justice inside
"We can do better" (Kennedy)
Richest fluency
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
The Goodies
good television
good movies
good books
good poetry
more good books
good songs
good children
good boys
good people
good leaders
Try a lucky dip:
"Well it looks to me as if the whole heaven of the world is on fire now."
"landscape that had been farmed for 2000 years or more but had retained some biodiversity and variety."
"So now there are calls for children in schools to be only taught that nuclear power is good for you."
"One of those human-animal hybrids reared its head again the other day and said "Moooo"."
"If you want people to be always under control then simply abolish the concept of "private", and it will get rid of those silly philosophical arguments between teenagers on the meaning of life and the concept of identity."
"if you had to choose one person who is most responsible for the failure of governments, particularly the American and Australian governments, to act over the last critical ten years, Rupert Murdoch is your man."
"Now, for the first time we have a literally Earth-changing event, the effects of CO2 increase on the climate of the whole planet."
"The falseness of this argument is easy to spot because it is proposed by people who have never ever conceded that anything else Aborigines did was of any value."
"Lesser humans may look on aghast, as elections are fixed, opposition parties destroyed one way or another, lies told, courts and the boards of public bodies stacked with zealots, the media starved of information, laws broken, constitutions ignored, democracy trashed."
"In protests everywhere young people literally hug trees, believing, it seems, that there is some quality to a tree which allows a mystical connection with humans."
"Wow, I thought, Peter Costello has looked up from his "tax breaks for the rich spreadsheet" for a moment and smelled the carbon dioxide."
"the inability to do a Google search and instantly find an answer to a question you are pretending doesn't have an answer sure makes even a simple country boy put one flagellum with another flagellum to make three flagellae."
"these religious fundamentalists who spread the enormously damaging creationist propaganda, inflicting a kind of mental terrorism on schools, should also be on "no fly lists"."
"While most of us saw the dangers ahead for the only planet we can live on, representatives of the nuclear power industry, and their tame scientists, saw only a marketing opportunity."
"The ones who could express that love of country through creating art were lucky, but the others who came along to see it were part of that same community spirit."
"I wonder if John Howard has phoned any of his old high school teachers to say thank you for an Australian education?"
"The problem does not lie with the Iraqi people but with the fact that they have been invaded and occupied."
"before you can say "red sky at night, shepherd's delight", there will be the usual nonsensical calls for more and more dams to be built, or for rivers to be turned inland."
"I was again struck with the reality of how badly served are farmers by the leaders of the farmers' organisations."
"They are people who saw Orwells "1984" not as a warning but as a manual."
"Such approaches would certainly be much more productive, and much less damaging than a mistaken belief in the value and benign nature of "prescribed burning"."
"The strong element of belief is dangerous in science as in religion because it prevents people seeing things."
"Will the minister be happy when only 15 percent of Australians accept that humans evolved on this planet, or does he have a still lower figure in mind?"
"well, someone is going to make money out of the destruction of the planet and it might as well be me."
"The combination of course let Pauline Hanson and her shadowy backers and wacky supporters off the leash and the rest is history."
"It would be hard to see any politician arguing against the need for big business to be more accountable to the community that supports it."
"Add into the mix the shockjocks on radio and television shamelessly promoting prejudice and whipping up emotions."
"brown snake bodies wrapped around them."
"Grasslands grow where they do because of combinations such as poor soils, flat lands, high temperatures and low rainfall, they are not areas where Aboriginal burning removed forests."
"It is also often claimed that Australian ecosystems are adapted to fire. This is a bit like saying that lawns are adapted to lawnmowers."
"The business community, with the governments help, is about to send us back to those horse and buggy days of employers ruling the world."
"All care will be taken, they promise, qualified pharmacists running them."
"How could you let them subsume the economy and international interests of Australia into the interests of the Republican Party of the USA"
"but where are my slippers"
"then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies."
"I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators."
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey"
"a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party."
"the evening star is coming."
"You might at least try to avoid the proposition that if there is a perceived conflict between business and "the environment" that there is no question but that the thing which goes is the environment."
"There may well be people who have a spiritual dimension to their feelings about forests, just as there are people who have a spiritual dimension to feelings about V8 cars or Collingwood football."
" the only thing the market is good at, the only thing it is really for, is taking care of business, and it does that very well."
" let us not go rushing into this religious stuff until we see if there is anything science can't explain."
" Remember Iraq. Remember the flowers that weren't strewn on the streets for the invading armies."
"
" we have to work with the effects of the "progress" that has been made since Ned Ludd and his merry band were smashing the new fangled weaving machines. Go Ned, I want to say."
" Hard to tell how long the eruptions of the religion plague will last, and what damage they will do."
" Greenhouse temperature rise is a massive refutation of the proposition that the world should be run by businessmen for businessmen."
" We are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants."
" People in areas prone to bushfires are usually advised to develop an escape plan or action plan which includes having, in easily transportable form, the core possessions you want to survive."
" most of our members were probably Methodists, it being as hard to imagine teetotal Catholics and Anglicans as it was to imagine a drunken Methodist."
" he is playing , like the grasshopper, in the warm sun of high resource prices and plenty of tourists, what happens when the prices collapse and winter comes and the tourists do not?"
" as after walking all that way I think I am capable of looking after myself."
" They can be brought out onto the streets to have some rather odd laws three thousand years old put into their courthouses."
Strange
Bedfellows
John Howard
Kevin Rudd
Al Gore
George Bush
Malcolm Turnbull
Leon Trotsky
Thomas Huxley
Oliver Goldsmith
Kurt Vonnegut
Tony Blair
Samuel Pepys
Winston Churchill
Peter Costello
Joan of Arc
Fidel Castro
Sarah Williams
Peter Beattie
Ned Ludd
De-Anne Kelly
Barack Obama
Kylie Minogue
Tony Abbott
Alexander Downer
Barbaro
Sam Kekovich
Alan Bennett
Osama bin Laden
Rupert Murdoch
George Lakoff
Bjorn Lomborg
Adolf Hitler
Ayn Rand
George Orwell
Julia Butterfly Hill
Saddam Hussein
James Carville
Charles Darwin
Philip Cooney
Jacky Kelly
Irshad Manji
James Lovelock
Bob Hawke
Brendon Nelson
Barnaby Joyce
Robert Menzies
Robert Tressell
Slim Dusty
Noel Coward
Samuel Johnson
Walt Whitman
Edmund Hillary
Robert Byrd
Phillip Adams
Alisa Camplin
Arnold Schwarzeneger
Blogger's Cut
Best slices from the watermelon
Future to the back
Ox power
Whacko Texas
Ticked off
Inhaling the Sixties
God unwilling
Bakers Oven 5
Game over
All change for
Dog bites man
Whale tears
Flowers for bosses
Curtin spinning
Gotta love it
Dodgy intelligence
A glass darkly
Truth and consequences
Media-ocrity
Cant get me Im part of the society
Growing like woody weeds in the nanny state
Between the idea and the reality
The delusions of the religious are so all-pervasive these days, perhaps more so than they have been in several hundred years, that we seek explanations, and metaphors, for how our lovely Enlightenment, not to mention our irreligious Sixties, was stolen from us. And we seek explanations for other retrogressions of the 21st Century. How is it that wars are becoming more frequent and popular? Have we really brought back torture? Monarchy, whether the British real one or the Hollywood pretend one, more popular than ever? Still burning coal for energy? Jailing and executing people because of mob pressure? A belief in the creationism that Darwin banished 150 years ago? Belief in witchcraft and exorcism? Still a war on drugs? The list, depressingly, goes on and on. And a particularly worrying member of the list is a turning away from modern medicine and a return to quack medicine pushed by salesmen some of whose whose ancestors probably once sold snake oil in travelling circuses.Hey presto, a metaphor, and an explanation. Let us take homeopathy. The fundamental proposition is that less is better. A scientist would say that if a substance is good for treating something (having been tested and proved) then its effect (obviously within limits) will be proportional to the amount. Homeopaths believe the reverse, that if something is good for you (and these benefits are never tested) then the less of it you have the better the effect will be. Not only are ingredients diluted well beyond the point where they could possibly have an effect, but they are diluted to the point where they are not actually present at all. The only possible "benefit" could come from being told firmly by someone that there is a benefit, that faith is necessary, and that the greater the dilution the greater the needed faith; and having a disease or condition that can respond to the placebo effect.
Why would people fall for something so obviously unrelated to reality? Well, firstly they are being told that it is true, firmly and confidently, by people who they think they can trust (because they speak firmly and confidently). And second, there is a problem with scientific modern medicine - certainty of cure carries the corollary of certainty of failure. If I say to you I can cure A with penicillin, B with chemotherapy, and fix C with an operation; I am also saying that if you have X, Y, or Z, you are out of luck, can't help you, get your affairs in order, write speeches for your friends to give at your wake.
Much better to have someone say "Look, I know it sounds strange, but trust me on this, just sip the medicine twice a day for the next year and I guarantee to not only cure A, B, C, X, Y and Z, but all of the diseases in between. Guaranteed. If you have faith, of course, and follow instructions TO THE LETTER. Any failures, we find, are caused by either lack of faith or patient error". Well, you can see where this metaphor is going, can't you? Doesn't homeopathy sound just like religion (no, not A religion, though it may be that as well)?
And for the same reasons - science deals in reality, the whole reality, and nothing but reality. Science tells you there is no imaginary friend in the sky, that we evolved like all other organisms on the planet, and that life has no meaning beyond what we choose to ascribe to it. If such reality sends you to an early grave, or makes you poor, or stops you achieving anything you desire, then you are likely to reject science and turn to religion. And of course there will be any number of snake oil salesmen telling you that you have made just the right decision, they guarantee supernatural help in your everyday life, and, just as a bonus, make the right financial investment in snake oil and you get a second life, white robes, harps, grapes and all.
We, those of us to whom reality has a liberal bias, thought that people, all people, could deal with reality. But we were wrong - reality? They can't handle reality. And so they turn to religion, and homeopathy.
Nothing but reality on The Watermelon Blog.
alternative medicine
9 January 2010
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
You guys - get a life
Having read about the growing evangelical influence in American sports (players dropping to knees to pray after a touchdown, "prayer circles" on the 50 yard line, every team having a chaplain, a "Fellowship of Christian Athletes") I wonder if there are any areas of American life that are not infused with religion? Sport, politics, education, law, media, science, health, welfare - there seems to be no institution or activity not bent and twisted by evangelists. Given that America already seems a society raddled with religion, as much if not more so than any fundamentalist regime in the Middle East or Africa, one wonders how bad it would be if there wasn't a supposed separation of church and state.But having read about the athletes - one said "his Christianity is part of who he is, and he can't separate it from his life as an athlete", another that there was "no intent to alienate people, only to share Biblical truth", another that "when athletes publicly talk about Christianity, it's often just a reflection of the joy of the faith" - another thought came to me. Not new, necessarily, but revisited. And that is what extraordinarily limited minds the fundamentalists have.
When Shakespeare said "There are more things in heaven and earth ... than are dreamt of in your philosophy" he might have had American fundamentalists in mind. There seems to be just one tiny part of their brain, the god particle, that has been programmed to think and speak in a particular way, and ... and, well, nothing. That's all there is. No curiosity it seems about life, the universe, and everything; about art and literature; history and geography; politics and society; different cultures, different ideas.
I mean, so much for this great big brain, evolved over millions of years to be much better than the Chimpanzee's brain at thinking and analysing and discovering and debating and creating. And these people don't use it. Bit like having hundreds of functions on a DVD player and all you do is play pre-recorded discs.
Normally chimp's brain capacities are compared to those of scientists and atheists (a tautology of course), and Chimps don't do very well, once you get past painting and communicating, and opening ant nests with sticks, and nuts with stone tools. But I reckon if you put a chimp against an evangelical it would be a near run thing. Would the evangelical succeed in getting the nut open? I think the answer is clear.
What a waste of a brain in Homo sapiens almost as big as that of Neanderthal man. Time these athletes stopped praying, in a circle or otherwise, started thinking. Got a life.
Reading the Watermelon Blog would be a good start.
Oh, and happy Xmas.
atheism
21 December 2009
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Book of miracles
We pay, occasionally, as do the Americans, lip service to the idea that in Australia church and state are separate, render unto Caesar and all that. And we raise a good glass of red wine in a toast every time a new survey emerges showing church attendance falling or the number of people writing "Atheist" on the census rising. But the phrase "false sense of security" comes to mind here. Just the other day the attempt by the ACT government to buy a hospital run by a church group was being blocked by the local Catholic bishop in consultation with the Vatican. And the influence of the Catholic Archbishop, as well as Anglican and evangelical and Salvation Army leaders on government, and their involvement in social activities, education, health, drug laws, censorship of media, and their obtaining financial support for religious gatherings, is obvious to anyone who looks. As is the presence of a group of fundamentalist Christian parliamentarians conducting prayer meetings in parliament house. And our current prime minister, like our previous one, attends church as ostentatiously as any American political leader, and offers, gratuitously, to pray for anyone, anywhere, anytime.But there is an even more subtle process going on in which every day language is being religised. And we seem well on our way back to the Middle Ages, when the language of home and tavern and street constantly evoked the threats of evil and demons and the need for the protection of a god.
It began, I think, with sports reporting, this infusion of religious language into the media, with the linking of sports crowds to religious ones, and we had the faithful, the true believers, making pilgrimages to shrines of football, sacred sites, watching games played on hallowed turf, seeing miracles achieved, or complaining of hoodoos and jinxes. And then some reporter, somewhere, achieved anonymous fame by being the first to use the word "redemption" instead of, say, revenge, or improvement, or returning to form. And then they were all at it, couldn't have a sports report without some individual player, or whole team, seeking "redemption" for some previous loss or bad play. And then we had the newspaper headline "Father Son and Jarryd Hayne" making obvious the worship of a particular player (first noted when Gary Ablett was said to be able to "walk on water") by the fans. And finally came the Paramatta church service solely for the congregation to explicitly pray for victory for one team.
Just as sports reporting has taken over the first third of news bulletins as well as the last third recently, so has this religious language spread into all reporting. Miracles happen daily, almost hourly, in the media these days. Miracles happen in sport, in hospitals, in everyday life. It is a miracle when a team wins, when a goal is kicked, and when there is a miraculous comeback. Modern medicine provides miracles when someone survives a heart attack with a heart transplant, someone is born through IVF. If a car crashes into your house and, miraculously, you are sitting in another room, then it is a miracle you have survived. Long lost dogs return home by miracle, long lost children likewise. One person survives a plane crash by a miracle (the others don't), one plane lands safely by a miracle (another doesn't) in the "Miracle on the Hudson". Apparently simple train or plane trips turn out to have been, in retrospect, doomed or ill-fated. One person survives, by a miracle, being washed down a drain ("Miraculous survival as Queensland storm hit"), his companion doesn't. Some crew on a yacht have a "miraculous survival" others die. Churches miraculously survive tsunamis, others burn to the ground after lightning strikes. There are even miracle kitchens (fast to assemble, apparently). Just one report on the Sumatran earthquakes was introduced with the headline "praying for miracles" and the report itself featured "miracle rescues". We have just had, apparently, a miraculous recovery from a financial crisis, and a miracle baby who survived being hit by a train ("pram miracle").
And the result of all this resulted in me hearing something the other day I never thought I would hear in the 21st century. Serious interviews on tv discussing "miracles" and "sainthood". And a prime minister of Australia visiting the Pope to push for sainthood for Mary McKillop. The religious hate the idea of random events - every event has meaning - either you are being rewarded for being religious, or being punished for not being. So if you, a religious person, escape some event where many others were killed, or where you might have been, your escape is not just chance or luck, but the sign of intervention by the fellow in the sky. A miracle. And humans were meant to be here, so they couldn't have evolved "by chance", there must have been intervention. But in using "miracle" instead of "chance" or "random", we are encouraging the people who believe there are genuine qualifications for sainthood, believe that children with cancer should be treated by faith healers not doctors, believe that species were created not evolved.
There is a new style of television news reporting that involves the proposition that, since any event could be "serious" if it happened differently, all events can be given the drama associated with the way the event would have proceeded if it had happened differently. This is indeed parallel universe material. A car crashes into the front of a house - no one was home at the time, but if they had been things would have been serious. A plane crashes into a river, but had it crashed into the city things would have been devastating. A fire burns down an empty building, which, had it been full of people, would have resulted in many deaths. Every news item then can potentially be a disaster, to add to fear in the population. And to add to the number of miracles - if it is a "miracle" that no one was home, or at school, or sleeping in a particular room, then our whole world is, once again as in mediaeval times, suffused with miracles.
And it gets worse. Snow's two cultures, Science and Arts, has become two cultures, Science and Non-Science (UFOs; ghosts, crystals; visions; the paranormal; homeopathy; images of the "Virgin Mary" on toast, cement, fence posts; astrology; mind-reading; numerology; psychics; herbal remedies; tarot). And whereas the media treats hard science on climate change, environmental degradation, pollution, cancer, as just so much hot air, and allows a study by an experienced scientist to be dismissed by a grinning radio shock jock or newspaper columnist, delighted to be on television, it treats the dross of Non-Science very seriously indeed. Practitioners of the paranormal or "alternative therapies", or self-proclaimed observers of ghosts or UFOs, or "faith healers", or exorcists, will be given serious interviews, allowed to make the most outrageous unsupported claims with no dispute at all.
In this the media are more Catholic than the Pope. It was recently announced that Catholics who claim they have seen the Virgin Mary will be forced to remain silent about the "apparitions" until a team of psychologists, theologians, priests and exorcists have fully investigated their claims under new Vatican guidelines aimed at stamping out false claims of miracles ("false claims of miracles" being, of course, a tautology). But they ruined it - "If the visionary is considered credible they will ultimately be questioned by one or more demonologists and exorcists to exclude the possibility that Satan is hiding behind the apparitions in order to deceive the faithful."
And so an increasingly credulous public, fed a diet of nonsense on the one hand, and having scientific facts dismissed out of hand on the other, will believe nothing and everything. And be softened up to accept the sainthood of Mary McKillop as a good thing for Australia, accept the ever growing, but behind closed doors, influence and involvement of religious groups on politicians who conversely refuse to see conservationists, or refugee advocates, or secular representatives of disadvantaged groups, or unions. See it as natural that an ostensibly secular society has turbulent priests working with government. See it as so natural that an open theocracy could come into being with barely a murmur of opposition.
I think if we can get back to a truly secular society in Australia (America being already a lost cause), a society of true unbelievers, it will be a miracle.
Cross-Posted at ABC Unleashed.
7 December 2009
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Thank god I am an atheist
From time to time some religious leader, somewhere, seeking to be provocative, will announce, smugly, that of course all morality comes from religion and therefore atheists, those scum of the Earth, have no morality.Let's leave aside for the moment, the fact that not only is there absolutely no truth in this proposition but the reality is in fact the diametric opposite. The most immoral people on Earth are, always have been, religious, while all atheists are extremely moral people. Let's also leave aside the obvious remark that if it were true then the more extremely religious you were the more moral you would be, and this would make members of Al Quaeda, say, or the people who blow up abortion clinics, extremely virtuous.
So, let us behave as the climate change deniers do and set aside the real world. Let us pretend, just for the moment, that morality did come from religion. This would mean, would it not, that the only reason some people have for being moral, the only reason that stops the average citizen of, say, Kansas or Waziristan, from murdering and raping and robbing and blowing things up and being really nasty to contestants in reality shows, is a belief in an imaginary being.
These people have to have an imaginary friend tell them what's right and wrong?
Thank god I'm an atheist.
atheism
31 October 2009
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Foxhole for atheists
Well, at last I am all booked in for The 2010 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, Australia, March 12 - 14, 2010. They had, amazingly, already sold out of gold passes, so you had better get in quick. I hope many of my readers will see me there, oh, as well as checking out Dawkins and a number of others on a star-studded program.
atheism
13 October 2009
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Sh-t happens
The day after the Samoan tsunami I heard a tv reporter, after recounting the death and destruction and misery and coming plagues, say "their Christian faith will comfort them". It's the kind of thing you say on these occasions of course, and people nod wisely. Ah yes indeed, wouldn't do for me, but if you are a believer it must be a comfort. Sort of like the "no atheists in foxholes" nonsense.But having nodded wisely I stopped to think. Never a good move with religious mythology. And I said to myself "why?" Let me see if I understand the options. First there might be a big unfeeling brute of a god who when he gets bored, or has a hangover or something, pulls the Earth's crust in such a manner as to set off a tidal wave just near some beaches occupied by one of the most inoffensive and nicest people on the planet, the Samoans. As a result these nice people, men women and children, old and young, have their lives taken, families taken, suffer horrible injuries, have their homes smashed to pieces, their animals killed. I'm not sure where Christian faith manages to comfort them for believing in such a creature.
The second option might be that there is an omnipotent but somewhat nicer creature, who, although he could stop the natural event of earthquake and tsunami (even though they are going to hit some of the most religious and god-fearing people on the planet), chooses not to. Instead, in a kind of video game, he decides to randomly save a few of the people who might otherwise have died etc. And they, believing that their faith saved them (though why it didn't save their equally true-believing neighbours must be a mystery), might take comfort in that.
Or third, they might believe in some sort of distant figure in the sky, who neither starts disasters nor plucks a few survivors from their path, but, having noticed that some humans (and animals) have been killed on a planet he purportedly created for them, takes them up, 2 year olds and 82 year olds alike, and gives them another life in some distant part of the universe as yet unseen by the Hubble telescope. In that case, I suppose, survivors, believing in a god not powerful enough to prevent disaster in general, nor enough to save extremely religious people, instead believe in one that removes people from their families for no apparent reason and takes them somewhere out of reach to their loved ones left behind.
And the final option, I suppose, might be a kind of combination of the three. That is, whatever the hell god is up to with his earthquakes and tsunamis and random deaths and theoretical second life believers trust that if you just knew enough it would kind of make sense. And therefore they believe something that may have been said by someone who may have once lived who was a self-proclaimed god translator who thought that yes indeedy it did all make sense. All reminiscent of public attitudes to the war in Iraq, or to banking deregulation. At least one Samoan could be heard on a television report saying something like "help me christ to believe that this is all for the best" or words to that effect.
Look, I don't know about you, but I think my atheist religion would be of much more use to me than any of that self-contradictory rubbish. I think I would accept that the movement of tectonic plates in the Pacific rim triggers earthquakes, and these in turn can trigger tsunamis. And that on low Pacific islands, or even high ones where people, naturally, live on beaches, there are going to be high mortality rates and great loss of property as a result. No pattern to it, no one to blame, no get-out-of-disaster free cards being issued, just a big wave with your number on it. As an atheist then I would make sure that scientists came up with the best possible tsunami and earthquake warning systems. I would try to make sure that infastructure and planning and building codes in seaside villages were of a high standard, and I would try to build appropriate refuges. And I would make sure that disaster planning and response was of the highest order to rescue and treat people (and animals) and then to rebuild. I wouldn't waste time looking for answers in the sky to a question that has no meaning. Not feeling obliged to do that would be a great comfort to me. What about you?
atheism
6 October 2009
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Not enough reality
Caught up recently with the announcement of a world meeting of atheists in Melbourne, Australia, in March next year. I'm very tempted to go, not just because of the calibre of speakers (including Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer) but just because it is a big assembly of rational human beings all in one place, and atheists don't often get to experience that.Got me thinking. The advantage of the big cathedrals and megachurches to the religious is obvious. You sit down (I speak hypothetically in my case), and looking all around you see people who share the same delusion. Must be right then, you think, all these people can't be wrong. I suppose, though I've never done this either, that it must be the same feeling you get as one of a large number of people on stage at a hypnotism show, all barking like dogs, or eating soap. Must be right, they think, all the others are eating this lovely yellow cake too.
So I think Richard Dawkins could do the world an even greater service than he has already by funding places of atheist non-worship in all the countries afflicted by religion. I would call them Reality Domes, but he might have other ideas.
And there we could all sit, and looking around could be reassured that we were not alone, that there were, in spite of all the religious madness we see on the news, day after day, other rational people in the world. More, perhaps, than we think.
I suppose I could change the name of The Watermelon Blog to the Reality Dome, to signal the start of brave new day.
20 August 2009
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Suicide is painful
Look the war on terror isn't winning the war on terror. Everyone knows that, in fact the more you go to war on terror the more terror you create, one way or another. And the major reason that we find it so hard to counteract terrorism is the suicide bomber. As has often been said, if someone is happy to die in the attempt to kill people, then it is almost impossible to stop them doing so.And why are so many people happy happy to die in the attempt? Strap belts loaded with explosive and nails and bolts and ball-nearings around their body and push a button that will cut them in half leaving only a head to identify. Or drive a truck, similarly loaded, into the middle of a crowd and press a button that will not even leave a head to identify. Or open fire with an automatic weapon in a crowded station knowing they will be cut down by police or army. Well, because they have been told, firmly and definitely, that there is life after death. Yes, rewards of various kinds in heaven/paradise, but fundamentally the reward is that you get to live again.
But easy to fix. All that needs to happen is that all religious leaders combine to solve the problem - declare, in unison, that there is no life after death. Make whatever excuses they are comfortable with. Sorry, bit of a mis-reading of an ancient parchment; sorry, bit of a mis-hearing of an imaginary voice. Sorry, we really thought it was the case, but it's obvious by now that after all this time there would have been some kind of evidence for a second life. And several hundred years of biological research, let alone common sense and common observation of every life form on Earth, including the strangely deluded Homo sapiens, tells us that life after death is just a fairy story, a tale to get you through the night.
Don't get us wrong, the elderly men dressed in various colored robes and funny hats would say, we still think religion is a jolly good thing. Makes people act ethically. Makes them docile citizens. Makes them contented with their lot and unlikely to embrace socialism. Maintains harmony in society. Inspires art and music and architecture and supports the wedding industry. OK? So don't stop coming to church, donating money to support your local religious leaders, but just forget about the after death business. You blow yourself up you stay dead.
And we would appreciate it if the media would stop their mealy-mouthed pussy-footing around the issue. We appreciate that they didn't want to offend anyone, but we are over that now. So, people don't "pass" or "pass away", they are not "laid to rest" and don't "rest in peace", we won't see them on "the other side" (there is no other side), there are no pearly gates, no virgins, no nothin, dead is dead. People just die.
Now, call me naive, but I reckon that after a statement like that the makers of bomb belts would experience a sharp global financial crisis. I reckon the next time some charismatic terrorist leader told a young man, or woman, to go and blow themselves up in the cause, they might get told to blow themselves up if they were so keen on ending their lives. Oh and people might start putting a bit more care and effort into life on Earth, knowing that they only get one go at it.
And there will be more people like Sergeant Asch "I'm not going to die for this sort of Germany", and Lance-Corporal Kowalski "Man, perhaps one day there'll even be a Germany which is worth living for!"
Not much to ask, surely?
suicide
29 July 2009
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
The moving keyboard writes
Hardly a day goes by, it seems, without, somewhere in the world, some wild-eyed, or cold-eyed, religious fanatic imposing his (yes, his) will on someone slightly less wild-eyed in the cause of the one true religion worshipping the one true god. And if imposing his will, when it comes to dress codes, or hair styles, or which sexual relationships people choose to have, means killing people, then, without thought or compunction, or the slightest hint of empathy, people are killed as casually as an AK-47 is filled with bullets.And the reason for this determination to kill or maim or torture or jail or exile? Words on a page. These people have been driven mad by words on a page. The moving finger writes, and whether the finger belongs to a psychopath, a misogynist, a madman, a well-meaning fool, a drug addict, a control freak, the words stay written. Stay written and read and used in exactly the same form over hundreds even thousands of years. In non-literate times contributions to the fund of knowledge might well come from some of the same motley crew, but their words, seen to do damage to society or individual, could be quietly modified, perhaps totally lost over time as wiser heads prevailed, circumstances changed, knowledge was acquired.
Like science really. Words on a page, whether written by genius or fool, by friend or foe, man or woman, old or young, are not engraved in stone, but are there only until some newcomer can disprove, modify, add to them, as knowledge is acquired, circumstances change. Not so in the Bad Books, where power and glory come not from challenging authority, changing words, but from unswerving attention to every last unchanging syllable.
So, all in all, a pity writing was invented. Oh there are pluses. No blogging without words on a screen, although, come to think of it, such words are as ephemeral as the flickering shadows on a cave wall and tales of the mammoth who got away. And certainly the depth of scientific records enables us to be warned about the coming catastrophe of global warming.
But most science, and certainly most aspects of everyday life could be conducted (indeed are conducted on radio and television and film) in a society as non-literate as those of the ice age caves of southern France, or previously in the deserts of central Australia.
The religious have always been in favor of burning books that didn't agree with the one book they held in their hands. So they shouldn't object if we take that further (rather in the way that an atheist believes in one less god than the evangelist) and actually just burn all books, clean sweep, no more unchangeable words on the holy pages.
Oh I would miss my first edition of Pickwick Papers, but a small price to pay for undermining religious fanatacism in the world. And in a generation or two the exact words once revered will become less exact, as in a game of chinese whispers. And people will have to get on with their lives using their own minds and hearts. But without the risk of someone killing them for a word written in blood.
The moving finger keeps writing at The Watermelon Blog, but the number of watermelon fanatics remains disappointingly small (well, none really).
29 April 2009
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
The good that men do
I was watching a feel good story the other day in a feel good current affairs program on a feel good television channel (so, no clues there). It was about one of these wonderful people who spend their lives doing good deeds, looking after the poor, the homeless, the alcoholics, the runaway children, the victims of disaster. A jolly good fellow. Much was made of the fact that he was a catholic priest, and had "heard the call" in his mid teens and that was that - stuck with superstition and celibacy for life, poor fellow.And much is always made, on the rare occasions when I say something slightly critical of religion and its noxious effect on human well-being, of the fact that there are people, from Mother Theresa on down, who are religious and who do good deeds. I am intended to feel guilty, though I don't, for ignoring these good people. And I am intended to feel stupid, ditto, for not having understood that religion is therefore not just a force for good in the world. but indeed the only force for good, that without religion the homeless and sick and abandoned would live lives that were nasty, brutish, and short.
But it is a very odd argument indeed, reminding me of the debate about whether smoking marijuana makes you mentally ill, or whether you smoke marijuana because you are mentally ill. And another question - do rich philanthropists only make donations for the tax benefits?Take my good priest. Is he good because he is a priest, or is he a priest because he was initially good? Are we arguing that he is doing good, in the religious context, because he gets some reward? Does he set out on his life's work, having done a cost-benefit analysis that confirms that 100 homeless children rescued equals 100 years in paradise? If he does, the values represented by him are not those I taught my children.
But I don't think he did do that (though I have no doubt that precisely that sort of analysis underpins much religious good work). Instead I think he would have been a good man whether he had finished up a Christian or Muslim, Jew or Hindu - or a non-believer. The goodness is incidental to the religion, not dependent on it. In fact this is another one of those tautologies (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/95768/Soul_brother.html) that bedevil religion - people who want to do good join religions because they think they do good. A cost benefit analysis though would show that the bad stuff done in religion's name far outweighs the good stuff, and whereas the good stuff would get done anyway, by good people, the bad stuff almost always results from the religious impulse, not in spite of it.
So next time you catch me being rude about religion, in spite of whatever resolutions I might make (the road to hell being notoriously paved with good intentions), don't bother telling me again that Mother Theresa and my priest were good because they were religious. Applaud goodness all you like, I'll join in with you, but don't use it as a religious alibi. That's just an indulgence.
I will keep trying to do good on The Watermelon Blog, though I expect it will be interred with my bones.
philanthropy
5 February 2009
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
From sir, with love
Saw an item the other day about a school teacher who had been sacked because she had admitted, when asked, that Santa Claus wasn't real. On the other hand I saw another article about a fundamentalist christian school teacher who wasn't sacked even though, in a class supposedly about evolution, he had referred the students to scripture. And someone else who had prepared a dvd for use in schools which tells children that global warming isn't happening (and ends with a gun-toting teacher chasing a cartoon Al Gore from the classroom).Got me to wondering. What would happen if a teacher honestly answered the question, when asked "Please Miss, is god real?", with the answer "No Johnny, no more real than Santa Claus. Some children do believe in god because their parents want them to, but when they grow up they realise it was just a make-believe story about a man with a big beard who gives them presents if they are good".
Call me naive if you must, but I see a teacher's role as being the central truth-teller in a child's life. Children can't rely on their parents, who have been indoctrinated in various political, social, and religious ways, and need an independent oracle who can supply them with whatever doses of reality are absent from their upbringing. What the child does with the truth is up to them, and it may well be later knocked out of them by a local pastor, or shock jock radio hater, or the Fox tv network, but at least they have had equal opportunity to start life without a head full of rubbish.
So encourage your teacher to explain to children that creationism is a bunch of scientifically illiterate nonsense, last taken seriously in the real world 200 years ago; that global warming is real and gathering speed and that their world is going to be inconceivably worse as a result; and that religion is based on the totally imaginary concept of "god", first used to keep women and peasants in their places, and explain thunder, about four thousand years ago.
Or you could just refer them to the Watermelon Blog where these topics, among others, are often touched on.
creationism
14 December 2008
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Just a little jab, won't hurt
I see Ian Fraser, who developed the vaccine against cervical cancer, is now working on one for a form of skin cancer. What next I wondered.Remember the fuss about the cervical cancer vaccine? The religious fundamentalists were outraged that a scientist was attempting to remove one bit of the "wages of sin is death" mentality. So they were refusing to let their daughters be vaccinated because then they (the daughters) might be tempted to engage in S.E.X. without realising that if they did they would die, horribly. God intended them to die horribly, I guess, by creating cervical cancer in the first place.
Wonder what they will say about a skin cancer vaccine? Refuse to allow their children to have it because god intended that if they went in the sun too much they should also die horribly? Can't have scientists playing god of course, that is the job of religious fundamentalists.
I think someone should work on an anti-religion vaccine.
See I think that, just as no one realised that some cancers were caused by infectious agents, no one has properly understood that religion is not just a metaphorical disease, but an actual one. I think that a few thousand years ago the Earth happened to pass through a cloud containing a particularly virulent and infectious organism. The dust rained down on the planet (which explains why all religions have a belief in some kind of "heaven" "up there" in the sky) and the plague began. Passed on from parents and community elders to children. Doesn't take much, especially if the child can be infected at a very young age, but usually much harder in adults who have developed some immunity.
Shouldn't be too hard to develop a vaccine. Religion, like influenza, does come in a few different varieties, but they share a lot of common features, and finding the common core of the virus and producing general immunity all over the world should be relatively straightforward.
Once everyone was immunised then scientists could get back to developing vaccines and cures for other nasty diseases which have evolved in humans, knowing that they would no longer be rejected by sufferers of religious immune deficiency syndrome, their brains scrambled by irrational beliefs.
And the side effects of a world immune to religion would be not inconsiderable. One of those win-win solutions. I think I might volunteer to do some work to help the development. I'm sure some of you will join me.
I know many fundamentalists like to frighten themselves by peeping into the atheist world, rather in the way others might watch a horror movie, or take a scary ride in a fun park. All are welcome to have a peep at the terrifying atheism of The Watermelon Blog.
atheism
23 November 2008
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Soul brother?
You know the old saying - there is no such thing as "alternative medicine", only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work. Here is a new one - there is no such thing as "spirituality", just rational brain function and irrational brain function.Where did that come from? Well I grow weary of being told by the religiously inclined that atheism is irrational because it doesn't take into account spirituality or the soul. Then they will sit back, satisfied smile briefly playing around their lips, content to have proved, yet again, that they are rational human beings. And that atheists are lunatics who should be at best excluded from all public office and at worst simply lined up against the wall and shot.
Problem is the proposition is simply a tautology signifying nothing. Why do we have religion? Because people have spiritual needs. How do we know they have spiritual needs? Because they have religion. So there. We have religion because we have religion.
There is no separate entity called a soul, nor a separate human attribute which can be labelled as spirituality. Both are just the sum total of all our mental processes and the inputs into them over the course of our lives. It is just another example of the old mind-body debate. What is the mind - it is the brain, what else would it be, the liver? Once upon a time of course it was assumed that human essence was in the heart - which retains its popular status as the seat of love. Does anyone seriously still believe that your love for someone is a function of heart activity?
And yet we go on, mindlessly claiming that there is some separate and invisible human organ called the soul which expresses something never measured called spirituality. And we use these invisible features to pretend that they prove that an equally invisible feature of the world called "god" also exists. God created humans with souls. How do we know that? Because we are spiritual beings. How do we know that? Because we follow religions that believe there is a god. Why do we do that? Because we have souls. Oh and by the way, when all the actual human organs have stopped functioning, the soul beats on. An invisible organ life in an invisible life after death.
Really you couldn't invent this stuff. Oh, they already did?
Only rational thought on The Watermelon Blog.
15 August 2008
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
I see dead people
There I was, nearly having a near death experience the other day. Became intimately acquainted with intimations of mortality. They say there are no atheists on operating tables, but there I was, putting my trust in a competent surgeon and hundreds of years of science and medical technology rather than the spaghetti monster, and I seemed to get by alright. No bolt of lightning plunging the room into darkness or anything like that.But it got me thinking about thinking about death. A little while ago I had read one of those articles, the kind I must have read a thousand times, in which the punch line was "of course humans are the only animals that know about their own death" or words to that effect. But there, in a room that was a much less pleasant (and scarier) version of the Starship Enterprise bridge, I began to question this truism.
Humans the only animals that know about their own death? How do we know that? Not elephants, or whales, or gorillas, or dolphins, or chimps, or bears, or pigs? Are we sure? Mourning (including dogs for their human owners) by birds and mammals for lost or dead young ones, lost friends, is a sure sign of awareness of death and its completeness. How do we know that the understanding of death as loss does not extend to the individual elephant or gorilla being aware that its time must come? Why would it not?
No, I think this is yet another attempt by humans to assert their own superiority, their own separateness from the rest of the animal kingdom from which some are so reluctant to understand we evolved. At various times humans have been said to be different to animals (that is, all animals) because of tool-using, the presence of two brain hemispheres, the ability to feel pain, an opposable thumb, language use. None of these hold up after further study (even chickens, it has been found, have separate brain hemispheres) and so the religious among us now come down to just the knowledge that the bell tolls for all of us as proof of our superiority. More wishful thinking.
In fact it seems to me that knowledge of death is more advanced among animal species. The behavior exhibited by many animal species when a member of their family group dies or is killed suggests that they know for a fact that death has a sting, that it is forever, and that the bones that are eventually all that remains of a once loved mother or baby are indeed all that remains.
Religious humans, on the other hand, don't understand that they will die. They refuse to use the word die, but speak of someone "passing", of being "reunited" with previously dead family members, of being resurrected (whatever that might mean). We don't pass, by the way, we D.I.E, and we won't be seeing anyone over the other side - I'm sure the animals know that. So perhaps that is the ultimate difference between animals and humans. All animals know that death is final. Some humans fool themselves with talk of life after death. Needs a bit more evolution, old Homo sapiens, to start seeing the world as it really is - a matter of life and death.
Some people think the Watermelon Blog is a matter of life and death, but it's much more serious than that.
death
30 July 2008
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Bring on the secular advisers
I see that Kevin Rudd seems to have acquired another "spiritual adviser". Seems to me that given that this Labor government is even more infused with religiosity than the Howard government was (and there is a sentence I never thought I would be writing), the last thing Kevin needs is a "spiritual adviser". No, what he needs is a secular adviser. Someone who could tell him to ease back when he is about to make his third fulsome speech to the Pope. Someone to explain why the public shouldn't be funding religious schools. Someone to tell him that all virtue doesn't stem from religious teaching. Someone to explain that the concept of "god" is ancient mythology, not reality.We now have the most ostentatiously religious leader this country has ever seen. Kevin's church attendance is on a par with that of George Bush and Tony Blair. In both those cases, and that of the Howard government, we have seen a potent mix of ideology and religiosity applied to policy, with outcomes that have not been to the benefit of the three countries concerned. It would be good if Australia didn't keep on down that route, but reverted to a secular country in which science and rational decision making prevailed.
I'm happy to volunteer to be Kevin's secular adviser. I see it as something like the role of the Court Jester or "Fool" in courts who were the only ones allowed to tell the King the truth. To whisper in his ear when he was getting above himself. To provide a cold dose of sanity to people who tought they were god's representatives on Earth. I could wear motley, if desired, for the right price.
spiritual
27 July 2008
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Just Imagine More
I have been inspired this week by the Pope's visit and World Youth Day with its "pilgrims" (any ladies from Bath among them I wonder, and where is our Geoffrey Chaucer?) and his renaming of Australia as the "Great Southern Land of the Holy Spirit" (going to take a miracle to fit that on to a coin or stamp). But most of all I have been inspired by the Federal and State governments coughing up $200 million for this event and not even asking for a cut of the profits from the tee shirts and other tasteful tourist souvenirs. So I have gone into full scale planning for World Atheist Day to be held in Canberra 25 July 2010 (Xmas in July, in the year of the ETS, take that Dr Pell), and have renamed the country Terra Incognita in anticipation. Having made those announcements I can sit back at my keyboard and wait (I already have a cat to comfort me), confidently assuming that Kevin and Morris will have put my cheques in the mail and I can get on with booking the plane for Richard Dawkins who will be coming to run the event (and hopefully rename the country back to Terra Australis), and get tee shirts with the Great Spaghetti Monster on them made in China.I also confidently assume that while all the happy smiling young atheists, guitars slung over their shoulders in case they want to spontaneously burst into the singing of "Imagine" are here, laws will be passed banning any display of religiosity anywhere in Canberra. No religious clothing, no religious singing in the centre of town, no passing out of pamphlets, no churches with silly slogans on notice boards, no use of the word "redemption" in sporting broadcasts. I get annoyed by these things, and I expect not to get annoyed during World Atheist Day. Or someone is going to pay for it - I want fines consisting of a tithe of all the money made by the church in WYD. A sort of Religiosity Tax on Pellamisms, which should work, hopefully, like a Carbon Tax on emissions.
The event planning is under way. I see it as a kind of Unbelievers Olympics. The initial event might be the race to cast the first stone. Followed by the "populate or perish" three legged race for mixed doubles (wearing uniforms with the slogan - "kiss me I'm an atheist"). There would be a "describe the McKillop miracle" competition for imaginative writing, and the fast eating competition - by candlelight. Catering would be no problem - my pilgrims will be fed carp, enough carp to feed five thousand, on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.
My only worry is that I can't seem to tie Mr Rudd down to a firm date on which to begin casting out superstition from Australia as fast as snakes were cast out from Ireland. I told him about the photo op when Richard Dawkins arrives at the airport accompanied only (he is a modest man, Saint Richard, once a member of the boy scouts, practically compulsory in England in his youth, apparently) by an entourage of one of Dr Who's assistants, but he muttered something about the religious vote, and someone called Fielding. He also apparently can't see why we need to cast out superstitions quite so quickly - half by 2050 he thought was enough, and in any case, most of them could just be buried rather than removed entirely.
So the way ahead looks stony and hard, like the bed of the Murray River after global warming, but am I down-hearted, not me. There were those who thought that John Howard would rule as long as Robert Menzies, and that we would never sign the Kyoto Protocols, never again have a prime minister who wasn't an honorary member of the exclusive brethren, never again have television screens or streets free of Big Brother. But I know that faith can move mountains of coal, and that somewhere in the desert is a bush that can burn forever without consuming itself, constantly being renewed. Must be a metaphor in there somewhere.
But I digress. Back to the planning. The catholics seem not to have thought of this, but then they seem to be a bit set in their ways, seem to believe they are infallible or something. I think it's important not just to have teenagers involved in the great joy that is atheism, but to get the very young involved. World Atheist Day will have a special section for the Under Sevens, we could call them Dawkin's Youth. I always say if you give me a child until he is seven he will be an atheist for life. It might seem young, but I think you are never too young to learn to think for yourself, whatever the Young Liberals might say.
So all you atheists out there (the silent majority, I like to call you) start saving your Peter's Pence and booking your transport (fishing boats, I'm afraid, you won't be able to afford air fares by then, and it's not as if you have some rich organisation behind you). And if your mothers weep, and tell you not to go off on the crusade, tell them it's a bit like getting married where you are gaining a daughter not losing a son. In this case the movement of the atheists of the world to Canberra will see a great fall in the average IQ in cities around the world, and a great increase in the average IQ of Canberra. There may not be a big increase in financial wealth in Canberra as a result of World Atheist Day (though poor atheists, it is well known, having taken a vow of poverty, will inherit the Earth), but there will certainly be a huge increase in brain power. Mr Rudd could put them to work on global warming - could lead to a renewal of faith in renewables.
Note to readers - this is an extended version of the earlier post, written as a letter to a newspaper. For that purpose the essay need to be both short and rest on a single analogy. By contrast a 1000 word version for a blog can't get away with just piling on more and more detail about the analogy - "we get it already, boring, boring". So I had to extend it by adding another layer of meaning with a metaphor, helped by Cardinal Pell's climate change denialism and his demand for more and more children to be produced, which had come out just after I wrote the short version. Instead of replacing the earlier version with this Director's Cut I thought I would include both so that readers can compare the two approaches, and see, in this case at least, how an idea can develop.
religion
16 July 2008
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Just imagine
I have been inspired by the Pope's visit and World Youth Day with its "pilgrims" (where is our Geoffrey Chaucer?) and his renaming of Australia as the "Great Southern Land of the Holy Spirit" (going to take a miracle to fit that on to a coin or stamp). But most of all I have been inspired by the Federal and State governments coughing up $200 million for this event and not even asking for a cut of the profits from the tee shirts and other tasteful tourist souvenirs. So I have gone into full scale planning for World Atheist Day to be held in Canberra 25 July 2010 (Xmas in July). Having made that announcement I can confidently assume that Kevin and Morris will have put my cheques in the mail and I can get on with booking the plane for Richard Dawkins who will be coming to run the event (and hopefully rename the country back to Terra Australis), and get tee shirts with the Great Spaghetti Monster on them. I also confidently assume that while all the happy smiling young atheists, guitars slung over their shoulders in case they want to spontaneously burst into the singing of "Imagine" are here, laws will be passed banning any display of religiosity anywhere in Canberra. No religious clothing, no religious singing in the centre of town, no passing out of pamphlets, no churches with silly slogans on notice boards, no use of the word "redemption" in sporting broadcasts. I get annoyed by these things, and I expect not to get ignored during World Atheist Day.
Religion
13 July 2008
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
What would Jesus do ... ?
When the subprime crisis began in America and people began to lose their homes, I was stunned by the reactions to any suggestion that the government might come to their financial rescue in any way. Indeed might consider any kind of regulatory response to try to reduce the chances of such financial predator-prey interaction happening in future.As best I could tell, the reaction from those who hadn't lost their homes towards those who had was a kind of an old testament judgment that they had it coming. Or perhaps the kind of glee that sees the performer you most dislike booted off American Idol in the most humiliating way. In the familiar expressions it seemed to be evidence that "a fool and his money are soon parted" and "there's a sucker born every minute".
I was amazed by the vicious comments on blogs that anyone who had lost home and money should be left to rot. It was quite clear that significant numbers of people thought that anyone who had succumbed to the massive advertising and peer pressure, by corporations using all psychological techniques refined in the 50 years since "The Hidden Persuaders" should get no sympathy at all. Not so much three strikes and you're in, but one strike and you're out.
Everything that happens to you in life is a matter of personal responsibility, it seems. No room for errors, failures of intellect, failures of education, family circumstances, personality quirks, or bad luck. No, if you have fallen victim to the shonky business practices of the subprime world you are to be left in the gutter.
Perhaps as an example to others? But how would that work? And how can it possibly benefit society to let families go to the wall, rot in the gutter? And how many families must be allowed to do this, as a sign that personal responsibility is the only value that matters? Are we prepared to let the subpoor increase in numbers until cities become unlivable, society suffers a complete breakdown, the economy heads towards another Great Depression? Does the expression cutting off your nose to spite your face ring a bell?
And why does the same attitude not attach to the CEOs of companies that go broke for whatever reason? When was the last time that a CEO jumped from a Wall Street window without a golden parachute? When was the last time one of these people, far more culpable, far more personally responsible than the average Joe Public, took personal responsibility and refused to take the golden handout?
Whenever someone like, oh well, me, writes about the baneful influence of religion in society, I will inevitably be attacked by someone claiming that atheists like me believe in evolution, nature red in tooth and claw, believe that humans who fall by the way side should be culled for the good of the race. The Nazis will be mentioned, eugenics, Social Darwinism perhaps, all in contrast to those societies like the American in which religion plays an increasingly dominant role. Where religion rules, it will be implied, human beings are valued as god's children, suffer the little children, no sparrow falling, lilies of the field and all that.
But the reaction to the subprime victims shows this for the hypocrisy it is. Here is an atheist calling for safety nets, public housing, social support, and there are non-atheists (if that is a word) demanding that there be no room on the life boat for the drowning. Religious people seeing the subprime crisis as a way of selecting out the subhumans (a bit like Katrina). Happy to see the least of these not valued but persecuted. Happy it seems to see the possession of money as a sign of adaptive fitness, and the lack of money as a sign that someone is the weakest link in the gene pool. Have I missed some religious revision? Has the new testament been rewritten to say that all poor people are going to hell, straight to hell, do not pass go, do not collect government handout? Can the poor not pass through the eye of a needle while the rich get their own heavenly mansion (in the ultimate gated community)?
Look, you all know that, while I might have moments of bitterness I don't cling to guns and god. But you guys, well, some of you guys, do. So what I want to know is - what would Jesus do about the victims of the subprime mortgage crisis? I mean, he was a sink or swim kind of guy, right?
Check out the rest of the Watermelon Blog for moments of bitterness interspersed with the sheer exhilaration of a life free of religious dogma.
subprime
29 April 2008
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Different Strokes
In Russia they have a custom of diving into the river in the middle of winter, ice blocks floating, and then jumping out and rolling in the snow. In Sweden, the sauna experience involves sitting in a small hut shoulder to shoulder with naked sweaty men, pouring water on to red hot rocks, lashing yourself with pine branches, and then running outside to roll in the snow.There are tribes who knock out teeth for initiation, others who carve delicate pieces from the body or tattoo other pieces. There are teenagers, not far from here, who pierce bits of metal through all kinds of body parts. There are men who will happily sit in a stuffy room smoking large cigars with other men.
None of it would do for me I'm afraid. Nor climbing mountains, diving in deep cave lakes, or jumping off cliffs with a rubber band tied to my ankles. Different strokes for different folks, right?
So I don't have any problem, either, with groups of people banding together in stuffy halls, singing dopy songs, being harangued by often apparently certifiably insane men about imaginary beings imaginary life after death and imaginary punishments, and paying big chunks of money for the privilege. Hell, if people pay money to go bungee jumping, who am I to say they shouldn't pay money to religious charlatans (a tautology of course)?
All fine by me then - atheists are inevitably easy going about the huge diversity of often whacky beliefs that go to make up human conversation on this dying planet of ours. But we do get pardonably a little testy about one thing, compulsion.
No one is trying to make me roll naked in the snow, or leap from a tall building, or shove sharp metal objects through my most delicate body parts. But the groups of people who gather in large buildings to be harangued by preachers are trying to make me do stuff. They are trying to change laws to affect the way everyone lives, reduce freedoms to see and hear things, damage science, determine foreign policy, make sure that elected officials will obey their wishes. Make sure, in fact that only true believers can be elected.
And, worst of all, they are trying to ensure that their children, everyone's children, will be brainwashed to become true believers in turn. The children of bungee jumpers may or may not decide to follow the lunatic example set by their parents. The children of evangelicals will have a hell of a time breaking away, and will almost inevitably find it psychologically impossible.
So there you have it. I'll happily walk to church with you, and wave goodbye cheerfully as you go inside the door. I'll wait for you to come out and we can resume our friendship. Hell, I will even go Christmas shopping (though secretly viewing it as a pagan midwinter festival with a very long history) and pretend to enjoy Christmas carols.
But please, don't start a political war in favor of your version of Christmas, or your version of the good life. That's when my famous tolerance of diversity comes to a grinding halt, and I man the secular barricades shoulder to shoulder with Richard and Sam and Daniel and even Christopher. The five musketeers, one for all and all for one.
religious beliefs
30 March 2008
Category Religion
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Evolving evangelicals
We often try to give examples of evolution occurring right now, in order to answer the proposition from creationists that no one ever saw evolution happening. The commonest example we give is the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. However I recently saw a comment on a blog as follows: The blogger had taught a group of medical students that MRSA came about because of evolution in response to the selection pressures of antibiotic use, when a member of the group stood up and said 'That's a lie!' I asked her how she thought MRSA happened - 'It is a punishment from god'.A better example might be within the ranks of evangelicals themselves (as the above story suggests). Intuitively it seems that the evangelicals are getting stupider and stupider, and evolutionary theory can certainly explain why this is happening. If you started off with a group of, say, 1000 people, who were suddenly converted to some new religion. If the group had the usual bell-shaped curve of intelligence (and I realize that this is a big if, but stay with me) then evolution within the group would begin almost immediately. The smarter members of the group would very soon realize that what they were being told about golden tablets or beings from another world was completely crazy, and they would leave. The average IQ of the group would then fall.
The dumbest members of the group would start believing crazier and crazier things - virgins in heaven, spaceships behind comets - and as a result some of the now smartest ones would leave. Conversely, as the beliefs became more and more mad-brained, new members from outside would inevitably be dumber and dumber.
Round and round the feedback cycle would go, the religious would become more and more addlepated, more resistant to any kind of rational thinking from outside, the intelligent would become atheists.
Just a theory of course, but it seems to fit the facts does it not?
evolution
2 March 2008
Category Religion
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Superagnosticman III: Dark matter
Given the excellent response (on the Huffington Post) to my two recent posts suggesting that agnosticism in religion was not an intellectually defensible position, but that an examination of what being agnostic means (in various contexts) is revealing as to what it means to believe something, or to know something, or be certain about something, a part three beckoned. I don't want to individually respond to points that were made, in what has been an enthusiastic and a very thoughtful, and fruitful, debate, but rather develop a couple of the themes.In the first place it is worth noting that the "atheism as a religion" misunderstanding is alive and well. I was accused of demanding that people believed exactly what I believed, and therefore was no better than a religious leader like Falwell. I want to respond to this not in order, as it were, to clear my good name, but to make a more general point. While in many countries in the world I would be killed for being an atheist, and in others I would be ostracized, and in many more I would either legally or practically be prevented from running for political office, the reverse is not true. I don't care what personal beliefs people have, and I have friends with a spectrum of beliefs that we agree to disagree on. Now it is true that I think the world would be a better place if all 6 billion of us were atheists, but it is clear that I can't make that happen anytime in this millennium. Note that I don't think that the world would be a perfect place, or even a good place, human beings would still fight as a result of economics, or culture, or history, or skin color, or psychology, or nationalism, but at least the lack of religion among the mix would make for a slightly more rational approach to social and political questions. Listen to fundamentalists of all religions talking these days, and you will find yourself listening to psychotic thought processes that would get them put into a Cuckoo's Nest if they didn't have the get-out-of-the-asylum-free card of religion.
In the second place I am not suggesting that science knows everything. Even making such a suggestion reveals a misunderstanding of science, which can never know everything, by its very nature. But to say something like, well, science has only just discovered dark matter, so how do you know god isn't out there too, beyond the reach, either temporarily or permanently, of Earth-bound science, is to misunderstand again the nature of science and, indeed, the nature of religion. It is a commonplace that early societies on every continent, while understanding much about the natural world around them, nevertheless were completely mystified by phenomena such as thunder and lightning, the seasons, earthquakes, tides, madness, comets, life, death. In addition, because they knew, and knew they knew, so little of the world geographically, there was a great deal of unknown world where dragons might exist, and cannibals certainly did. Out of all these known unknowns came religion, and I don't think we have to look any further at religion as an evolutionary product, or hard wired into human psychology (though some aspects of it for individuals are certainly genetic).
Now what science has done in the last few hundred years (following on from much older work by Greeks and Arabs) is to work out, sometimes in broad terms, often in very fine detail, how our world (in the widest sense) functions. The whole framework is in place, through the work of scientists in all of the disciplines of astronomy, physics, biology, chemistry, geology and so on. It is certainly the case that new discoveries are being made all the time, and in the case of astronomy and physics, big discoveries. Big questions like is string theory the explanation of the structure of matter for example, and how did matter come into being during the Big Bang, and is the universe infinite, as well as smaller questions about the exact nature of particular stars and galaxies or the history of Mars and Venus. But that doesn't mean that if we manage to make an even bigger and better telescope we will suddenly discover god lurking behind some dark matter, or sitting on a quasar just beyond the reach of current telescopes. I thought we had gone well beyond the concept of heaven being "up there" beyond the stars, but it seems not when you read some comments from religious people. Science could have discovered "god" but not by building bigger telescopes. I'll come back to that, but first a bit of a digression.
It has been said that there is no such thing as medicine and "alternative medicine" there is simply medicine that works. That is if there is anything among all the crazy beliefs about homeopathy, and naturopathy, and iridology, and Chinese herbs, and reflexology, and crystals, then it will, when demonstrated to be effective, be adopted by mainstream medicine. This stuff isn't rejected because of stubbornness, but because in order to know whether a treatment is effective it has to be scientifically tested. Mere belief doesn't cut it when it comes to cures for cancer, or making the lame walk. Similarly, one of my respondents noted that there is really no such thing as the supernatural. There is the natural world, and then if something appeared from beyond the natural world, as it were, it would be incorporated into an enlargement of our understanding of the limits of the natural world (this is essentially the case with dark matter, for example).
Now we can return to the question of scientists finding god (so to speak - I don't, by the way, believe that you can be both religious and a scientist, but that's just one of my many prejudices). What 300 or so years of science has given us is not just an understanding of how individual parts of our world work - how the brain functions, how the solar system was formed, the history of the Grand Canyon, the chemistry of our bodies, gravitational forces, and so on - but how all of these individual studies fit together. When science began it began as a single subject - natural philosophy (as distinct from religion). Over time it was split into more and more subjects as the amount of knowledge became far too much for any one brain to handle, and people became more and more specialized. But these different subjects, astronomy, biology, physics and the rest don't operate in isolation to each other. Nor do they contradict each other. They are, quite clearly, all reporting back on the same universe. Nothing uncovered by the geologist contradicts what the biologist is working on; the chemist is unsurprised by theories on the composition and function of distant stars; the physicist has no quarrel with the climatologist; the psychologist and physiologist are comfortable dinner companions; the botanist and archeologist can lie down together in an excavation.
Now, in a god-driven universe none of that could be true. By now cracks would be appearing as tens of thousands of scientists work away at finer and finer details. At some point someone would have said - "Just a minute, this experiment isn't working, there is some unknown factor coming into play". At some point a biologist would find a species with no evolutionary history; a doctor would find a miraculous recovery; a geologist would find that the Earth was only 6000 years old; a chemist would find a mixture of chemicals that behaved in some inexplicable way. In short the supernatural would begin to appear, as the whole natural structure described by science was revealed as being affected by some outside agency. And then the Jerry Falwells of this world (if he was to come back to life) could say "I told you so", and the scientists would eagerly set about trying to uncover the nature of this mysterious outside agency that had previously only revealed itself to Mr Falwell.
Hasn't happened of course, and we are at least 100 years beyond it happening. It ain't going to happen now. The last gasp of an attempt to find it is the phony science of "Intelligent Design", and the craziness of the young Grand Canyon and the humans with dinosaurs on Noah's Ark. These are people who are pretending to be scientists who have found evidences of christianity, processes that don't fit with the mainstream scientific body of knowledge. Just like the homeopathists, who pretend to have found cures that are beyond mainstream medicine. But there is no such thing as alternative medicine, and no such thing as alternative science, only science that can be tested and proved.
So, to come back to the main point of this series. There is no alternative body of learning which points to a god of any kind - there really is just the natural world. There is therefore nowhere for religious agnostics to hang their hats.
And finally, as something of an afterthought, just as I pointed out that one could be agnostic about UFOs visiting Earth as a subset of being agnostic about life elsewhere in the universe (or you could believe in life elsewhere and be agnostic about visits), so you could be agnostic about the existence of Christ as a real person as a subset of atheism about god. The evidence in favor of Christ being a real person is very poor, but evidence against is also thin. I'm probably agnostic on this topic, but I can understand being convinced for or against.
I promise this is the last in the series, and I hope you have all enjoyed the debate the exploration has created.
Thomas Huxley asked "If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?" Why, on the Watermelon Blog, of course Thomas.
agnostic
12 February 2008
Category Religion
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Agnostics for Obama
My recent post on the proposition that agnostics were about as much use to the world as a bicycle to a fish created the usual dichotomy of response (one responder suggesting it was people like me who gave atheism a bad name). I thought it was worth following up with a somewhat more expansive explanation.There are many things in life about which we can be absolutely certain - gravity comes to mind, and the evolution of the Galapagos finches, and the circulation of blood, and the importance of gun control. Nobody could fail to believe in these things, and someone who was "agnostic" about them might well find themselves flying from a tall building or being shot in a dark alley.
On the other hand there are many things that no one could believe in - George Bush as a great President, a 6000 year old Earth, the Earth balanced on the back of a tortoise, Fox News as a fair and balanced place for political debate. So, no room for agnosticism about any of those, or you might start thinking there were WMD in Iraq, or find yourself up to your eyebrows in turtle poo.
But there are many things one could be agnostic about. Here is an example. Would Barack Obama be a progressive or a conservative (with a small c) President? There are people who passionately believe that Barack is the re-incarnated JFK and would govern in the same enlightened and liberal way as that great man. There are others who equally passionately believe that Obama differs from Hilary Clinton only in being black and male, and would be just as much a creature of the corporations and the DLC as she would. Both beliefs are passionately held, both can draw on much evidence for both conclusions, both have been vigorously argued by some of my fellow HuffPo bloggers. But neither proposition can be proved, and the third belief one could hold (which I hold), is an agnostic one that we don't have enough evidence either way to be sure, and that we won't really know until he is well into his first term as President.
Another poster gives an example of agnosticism in relation to whether there is life elsewhere in the universe. And this is interesting but as a kind of reverse of the situation with religion. Let us look at it. There is no direct evidence that life exists elsewhere in the universe. You could then simply deny that there is any other life, or you could believe there is and that the evidence will be found sooner or later. Or you could say: We know life arose once on this remarkably unremarkable planet. We now know that other stars do indeed have planets. And we even know that there are stars with planets that are potentially Earth-like in size and position relative to their own star. Since we can observe very few planets, we can deduce that there would be many billions more of such Earth-potential planets. An agnostic might say "well, chances are, that means there is highly likely to be life on other planets". "On the other hand" our astronomical agnostic might say "it could be that the chances of life evolving on Earth were very small, and therefore by chance it may never have arisen elsewhere". So you could certainly be genuinely agnostic about the chances of life elsewhere in the universe (just as, in a closely related topic, you could be agnostic about whether UFOs have visited Earth).
But there is simply no comparable position in relation to a "god". No equally balanced sets of data, no probabilities to be evaluated. There is, simply, no evidence of any kind, for a "god". Indeed the total lack of evidence is seen by religions as a plus, because the less evidence there is, and the sillier the beliefs, the more faith is required. And faith, they think, trumps rational thought. Only in sheep, say I.
That is, to be an agnostic about anything requires evidence both for and against a proposition, with the agnostic balanced equally between the two. This doesn't mean a balance between "there might be, prove there isn't" and "there isn't, you prove there is", those are mutually exclusive ways of looking at the world. This whole debate about agnosticism is interesting not because of agnostics themselves, but because of the insights it can give into how we know about things, why we believe in things.
The scientist starts with the strongest belief of those things for which there is the most data, gained from experiment or observation, and as he or she moves down through subjects with less and less data, so the scientist accepts them less and less. The religious follower on the other hand has the strongest belief for things for which there is no evidence, and as he approaches subjects with strong scientific backing, utterly rejects them. Those who say they are agnostic about religion, need to think about which of those scales they belong on.
So keep your agnosticism for politics, where it is healthy (I don't think a passionate faith in any politician is good for democracy). But in relation to religion? Either come into the church or stay out, but don't stand in the doorway or block up the halls.
atheism
9 February 2008
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
and melancholy" (Tynan)
Agnostics are nowhere men
If you understand that there is no evidence, absolutely no evidence, no evidence of any kind, not even a scintilla of a suggestion that there might be some evidence if we only knew where to look, for the existence of anything you might call god (or indeed anything of any supernatural kind) then you are an atheist, not an agnostic. And if you think there is such evidence, then you are a theist, not an agnostic. Let's see, that means the place for agnostics is ... nowhere.Being agnostic is a bit like voting for the Iraq war and then saying later that you only did so because of the dodgy intelligence. Knowing all along, that you could have known at the time, that there wasn't dodgy intelligence, there was in fact no intelligence, the war was going to happen because of the beliefs of the PNAC crowd. Or like pretending that there was no difference between Gore and Bush. Or like being a little bit pregnant.
Either you believe that something supernatural called god exists, or you don't. There isn't any half way house in this element of human culture. There is no spectrum of proof for the existence of a supernatural being ranging from no proof, through sort of more or less suggestive proofs, through to strong hard evidence. If there was such a spectrum, then an atheist would be one who believed that none of the proofs were any good, a theist thought all the proofs were really believable, and an agnostic didn't think there was hard evidence, but thought that some of the suggested proofs had some merit. But there isn't. Accepting any of the so-called proofs for the existence of god makes someone religious, not agnostic, and accepting none of them makes someone atheist, not agnostic.
So no room for agnostics, and it's time they declared themselves - are you with us or against us (now who said that before)? If you are not on the side of the atheist angels then you are on the side of the evangelical devils. And there is a battle coming for the soul of the Enlightenment, for rationalism, and humanism, and a return to secular societies. If you are not on the side of the humanists, then you are on the side of the people who strapped remote-controlled explosives to two women with Down's syndrome and exploded them in a crowded market place. Or on the side of the woman protesting at the SAG awards, holding up placards saying Heath in Hell, and Death to Faggots.
So come on, you "agnostics", which way are you going to jump from the fence, and which side of the barricades are you going to land on? There are only two sides, not three, to the question of religion, and if you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem. Come on down.
Or as Thomas Otway in 1683, and the Watermelon Blog in 2008 say - "These are rogues that pretend to be of religion now! Well, all I say is, honest atheism for my money."
agnostic
7 February 2008
Category Religion
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No evangelicals in foxholes
Strange the mentality of religious believers who refer to atheism as a "religion". It is akin to the same people who refer to evolutionary theory as "Darwinism" and who talk about a "belief" in evolution, and evolution as religion (but more of that another day).So why is it so? Well, because the religious believers cannot conceive of people who have no religious belief. If atheism itself is a religion then that is understandable - after all they accept that there are a number of religions (although only one of them, their own, is actually true). They think indeed that the proposition that all humans believe is a validation of their own religious beliefs. But if they understood that atheists simply don't believe then this might throw into doubt their whole basis for belief. Rather in the way that Chavez and Castro have to be rejected because capitalism is the only possible economic belief.
But more, if they fully understood that atheism means "no god(s)" then the belief in a particular god or gods stands exposed as a willfully blind acceptance of a set of beliefs for which there is no evidence. Why, in a world chock full of facts, would you choose to base your life on something which is fact free?
And the charge is a sign of the effectiveness of Dawkins and Dennett, Harris and Horton, in combating the unfounded belief system that is religion. If we atheists just have a different belief system, if atheism is a "religion" (merely to write the phrase shows the absurdity), then, as the schoolyard chant goes, "You're an idiot", "You are and you don't know you are, so there".
So atheism is a religion? No, Im afraid not, no more than being completely healthy is just another kind of disease. But believing it is so must be a comfort in a foxhole, or in the cold hours of doubt at 3am. And the evangelicals would rather vote for someone with the screwy set of beliefs that is Mormonism (can Tom Cruise, seeing Mitt's success, be far from a political career?) than for an atheist.
Like Shelley, the Watermelon Blog believes "The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting on the cause".
atheism
29 December 2007
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
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Hobby horse
You got a hobby? Stamps? Quilts? Ferrets? Choirs? Giant pumpkins? Watching sports? Making pottery? V8 cars? Antiques? Boy Scouts?Whatever your hobby, it is an important part of your life, relieves stress, lets you interact with a different group of friends, caters to your creativity. So important that it probably indicates something significant about your personality and character. But it is, however much you enjoy it, just a hobby. Not likely that you will say, if your house was on fire, "just a moment, got to finish this quilt before I can leave the house". Not likely your boss will give you time to make pottery at work, or your wife will recognize watching sport as an excuse for not doing repairs around the home. And not likely you will kill someone who has a bigger pumpkin than you.
Don't know if you saw it recently, but Ripley's recognized a world record for the most number of statues of a Hindu god made in one day. Yes, I will repeat that, a world record for the most number of statues of a Hindu god made in one day, The Indian woman concerned used to make the statues privately in her home but then a voice told her she should make them in public, she made dozens of them in one day, and hey presto, there she is in Ripley's. Talk about gods moving in mysterious ways. I think she is now trying for the world record of the number made in one year, or while blind folded, or with one hand tied behind her back - you know the sort of thing.
Just a harmless hobby, making statues of Ganesha, I suppose. Except it wasn't. She believed she had a religious obligation, an instruction issued from wherever it is that Hindu gods issue instructions, to make statues, more and more statues (a bit like the brooms in Fantasia).
Got me thinking, as I saw this poor woman obsessively making yet another clay statue, her hands and fingers never still, about how much time the human race has wasted in religious observance over the last 20,000 years or so. From the cave men making the carved stones and cave paintings of the Pleistocene, to the Stepford-wives-like congregations of the evangelical mega-churches singing in ecstasy for hours on end and robotically saying Amen to the preacher, time has been wasted in millions of man-years (and woman-years). Praying many times a day, shutting yourself away in monasteries and convents, wasting education time in religious schools everywhere, pretending to heal people, developing outrage about which sexual organs people are rubbing together, perverting the democratic process. All wasted time.
If people had only used the time they spent pleasing imaginary friends and put it instead towards productive pursuits we could have dealt with global warming and environmental destruction, got rid of war, eliminated poverty, cured major illnesses. And still had time left over for some non-destructive hobbies like stamp collecting, quilting, keeping ferrets ....
On The Watermelon Blog Virgil and I both say "Oh if only Jupiter would give me back my past years"
religion
4 October 2007
Category Religion
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"Be light, stinging, insolent
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