Well, we knew it wasn’t just the Abra­hamic reli­gions, and here’s a case in point. Abori­ginal lead­ers in Aus­tralia have called for a book to be scrapped because it teaches girls to play a musical instru­ment.

Depress­ingly Harper Collins have apo­lo­gised, when what they should have said was “um… it’s the 21^st cen­tury; you don’t get to be both respec­ted and a sex­ist any more.”

I know people tend to think “they’re an ancient cul­ture, we have no right to judge their val­ues,” but I call bull­shit. In this case their val­ues are sex­ist and they’re wrong, and we shouldn’t be afraid to say as much. Sex­ism isn’t sud­denly OK once a cul­ture has been doing it for a cer­tain length of time, and their own inab­il­ity to move on shouldn’t give them a free pass to try to impose their back­wards ideas on others.

Thank­fully it looks like Harper Collins have no inten­tion of pulling the book, and the big­ots are going to have to learn to live with it.

This made me chuckle.

I par­tic­u­larly liked the line

Crit­ics have dis­missed the gath­er­ing as a pro­pa­ganda gim­mick by the Saudis who, they say, are not best placed to host a meet­ing on reli­gious tolerance.

Which might just be the under­state­ment of the week.

Wow. Just… wow.

I don’t know where to begin.

A few days ago, a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Cent­ral Flor­ida atten­ded mass at his Church. Dur­ing com­mu­nion, when the wafer was placed into his mouth, instead of eat­ing it, he took it and walked out. Cath­ol­ics went nuts; even after he gave it back, the Cath­olic League (more on them in a moment,) said

We don’t know 100% what Mr. Cooks motiv­a­tion was. How­ever, if any­thing were to qual­ify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.

We just expect the Uni­ver­sity to take this ser­i­ously. To send a mes­sage to not just Mr. Cook but the whole com­munity that this kind of really com­plete sac­ri­lege will not be tolerated.

Over­re­act­ing much? Actu­ally, that kind of sac­ri­lege will be tol­er­ated, espe­cially in Amer­ica, where free­dom of reli­gion (and from reli­gious per­se­cu­tion) is guar­an­teed by the con­sti­tu­tion. Of course, the fan­at­ics don’t quite see it that way, and the poor kid has been get­ting death threats. Because that’s what turn­ing the other cheek means in America.

Oh, and just so we’re clear: steal­ing a cracker is a hate crime, but send­ing death threats? Oh, that’s per­fectly accept­able, rational beha­viour. If you don’t like the per­son. And if he’s stolen your magic lunch.

Enter PZ Myers, who, as usual, wrote about it the way it is, in a piece entitled It’s a Frackin’ Cracker. As usual, he pulled no punches in describ­ing the mob as what they are: well… a mob. He also offered to desec­rate a com­mu­nion wafer, if any­one would send him one. Cue a rapid switch of tar­get on the part of the Cath­olic League; they’re now engaged in a full-​​on offens­ive on PZ. Not for any­thing he’s done, but for some­thing he said he’d do. To a cracker. Appar­ently con­spir­acy to wound a bis­cuit is a car­dinal sin if you’re an insane Cath­olic — and Bill Dono­hue, the leader of the Cath­olic League, cer­tainly counts.

So — to get to the point — the Cath­olic League are try­ing to stir up a good ol’ fash­ioned witch hunt, and are inund­at­ing PZ with hate mail and death threats, and his employer with demands that he be fired. This is, to be frank, unac­cept­able. All PZ has done is exer­cise his right to free­dom of expres­sion, and he’s being tar­geted by a hate cam­paign. So what to do? Start up a sup­port cam­paign, that’s what.

PZ is ask­ing that people write a short note of sup­port to Pres­id­ent Robert Bru­ininks of his Uni­ver­sity — the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota, Mor­ris — and I second his request. PZ is one of the more out­spoken voices of reason on the inter­net, and it would be a shame if he were made to suf­fer unduly for some­thing as simple as express­ing his opin­ion. If you’re a rational per­son, even if you’re reli­gious, and don’t agree with PZ, please con­sider writ­ing a note in sup­port of his right to express him­self without fear of being victimised.

I already have. Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Sir,

I’d like to take this chance to add a note to the prob­ably hun­dreds you’ve already received in sup­port of PZ. He’s a great writer, a great edu­cator, and a credit to your institution.

It’s true that he’s out­spoken, and that he pulls no punches in express­ing his opin­ions. That is not a crime, and if Bill Dono­hue and his sup­port­ers restrained them­selves to respond­ing in kind then there would be no prob­lem. The fact that they have not, that they have resor­ted to a cam­paign of mass har­ass­ment, of death threats, and try­ing to cost PZ his job — in short, a cam­paign of ter­ror­ism — merely under­lines why it is so import­ant that we have people like PZ who are unafraid to call these people out on their hypo­crisy, and to cri­ti­cise their unac­cept­able beha­viour in public.

I hope that the inco­her­ent scream­ing of the mob will not pre­ju­dice you against PZ in any way, and that he will be allowed to con­tinue to bring credit to your insti­tu­tion amongst free-​​thinkers and ration­al­ists across the globe.

Sin­cerely,

Will Gor­ing,
Read­ing,
United Kingdom.

A week or so ago, I blogged about Richard Lenski and his long-​​term research into Evol­u­tion of e.coli cul­tures in the lab, that cul­min­ated in the evol­u­tion of a novel and bene­fi­cial trait in one of those cul­tures. Moreover, that evol­u­tion was repro­du­cible from an earlier cul­ture that had a spe­cific muta­tion but did not exhibit the trait, but not from other cul­tures without that muta­tion.  It’s really inter­est­ing research, and has the poten­tial to tell us a lot about the mech­an­isms of evolution.

Of course, because it also, more or less as a side effect, demon­strates quite clearly that evol­u­tion hap­pens, the cre­ation­ists have been all over it, try­ing to dis­credit Lenski, his team, and any­one who has any­thing nice to say about his work. I’m sure there are cre­ation­ists some who are approach­ing it at a sci­entific level, and try­ing to falsify his find­ings. I expect that they’ll fail, but I sup­port their attempt. There are oth­ers, how­ever, spe­cific­ally the anti-​​scientific mob at Con­ser­va­pe­dia, who have been pre­dict­ably foam­ing at the mouth and rant­ing, lev­el­ling all sorts of unfoun­ded cri­ti­cisms at Lenski (he’s biased, he’s a hack, it’s a fraud or a hoax or a lie.)

Even­tu­ally, one of them got up the cour­age to put his money where his mouth is and chal­lenge Lenski to defend his find­ings, and … well it’s worth read­ing it your­self.

I have to say, I wouldn’t nor­mally link to the Tel­graph, but this is just too good (and sur­pris­ingly on-​​the-​​ball for the Tory­graph.) I mean, obvi­ously, it doesn’t qual­ify as news per-​​se, but it’s good to see the concept is sink­ing in.

PalMD has writ­ten a great piece over at Deni­al­ism, which echoes a lot of the sen­ti­ments I’ve pos­ted about here over the years.

It’s well writ­ten, true, and I liked it, so I’m link­ing to it.

I would love someone to have stood up dur­ing Tom Wright’s ser­mon and called him on Godwin’s Law.

Oh look, Church lead­ers are up in arms about some new piece of legis­la­tion. Are we really sur­prised? After so many thou­sands of years of them pro­claim­ing that any­thing which makes them, per­son­ally, feel uncom­fort­able is evil, how can we be any­thing but bored when they keep at it in the present time? Last year it was equal rights for homo­sexu­als, this year it’s advanced research into human genet­ics. Before long it’ll be arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, neur­os­cience, or some other thing which chal­lenges, and advances, our view of ourselves.

Oh, and of course the cries are going to be led by the Cath­olic Church this time; they’re the ones with a huge theo­lo­gical invest­ment in the sub­ject. We’re talk­ing about a cult whose insane super­sti­tions about human genetic mater­ial lead them to declare male mas­turb­a­tion a “sin against God”, and to deduce that tens of mil­lions of people in the third world dying of AIDS and hun­dreds of mil­lions more liv­ing in miser­able, starving poverty due to over­pop­u­la­tion is prob­ably OK com­pared to the much greater sin of let­ting them use con­doms. These are people whose core val­ues are utterly incom­pat­ible with the human rights and human dig­nity they claim to be the guard­i­ans of, and our response to their claims of being some sort of author­ity on eth­ics (espe­cially bioeth­ics) should be to laugh dis­dain­fully and get on with try­ing to make the world a bet­ter place.

There’s a fas­cin­at­ing post over at Terra Nova today, pos­it­ing that reli­gions might qual­ify as vir­tual worlds. It raises some inter­est­ing points, and is cer­tainly thought pro­vok­ing, but I don’t think I’m quite convinced.

Cer­tainly, there are sim­il­ar­it­ies, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that because two things tap into the same human desire for easy suc­cess accord­ing to clearly defined rules of pro­gress, that they must be the same kind of thing. Even if we allow that a reli­gion is false, and thus has a “fic­tional his­tory” and attend­ant cast of fic­tional char­ac­ters, and that it offers a sense of achieve­ment and reward for oth­er­wise mean­ing­less actions, it still lacks what is, in my mind, the fun­da­mental defin­ing char­ac­ter­istic of a vir­tual world, which is, well, a vir­tual world.

believ­ers do not inhabit, or have access to, some other vir­tual realm, reserved for people of faith. They oper­ate entirely within the same world as the rest of us. They may inter­pret that world dif­fer­ently, even incor­rectly, but if you argue that being wrong is the same as being in a vir­tual world, then we have to describe every­one as being in one at all times.

I gather this isn’t exactly news, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it.

The Lords have just approved the change, by a sig­ni­fic­ant major­ity. I couldn’t be hap­pier; blas­phemy is a ridicu­lous, archaic offence that has no place being enshrined in the law of a civ­il­ised nation. In fact I’ll call it the first good news about the Brit­ish legal sys­tem I’ve heard in a long time.

Next Page »