Wednesday, August 29, 2007
I refuse to use the label "atheist" for myself, a label that feels like an anachronistic sign of undue acknowledgement for credences - residues of barbaric, tribal times - that are more and more overcome by ridicule and absurdity.
The idea of God is not even worth a privative prefix.
The idea of God is not even worth a privative prefix.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Free mp3.
You can find some free audiobooks in mp3 format at WritersMugs.com.
The authors are:
Unfortunately the recordings are made with a computer-generated voice, however they are faily clear, and for the purpose of going over the texts while, for instance, walking in the park or sitting in the train, they are pretty good.
The text relevant to the files can also be read in the relevant pages.
I suggest you start with Bertrand Russell's "Why I am not a Christian". Then you could perhaps listen to Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Antichrist" for some further, sharp criticism of religion.
For the lovers of fairy tales, you can listen to St. Thomas Aquinas' "Catena Aurea". However, as I suspect it might be a bit boring, just go to Epicurus' "Principal Doctrines".
Other audiobooks, but human-read, can be found at ThoughtAudio.com.
You can find some free audiobooks in mp3 format at WritersMugs.com.
The authors are:
Unfortunately the recordings are made with a computer-generated voice, however they are faily clear, and for the purpose of going over the texts while, for instance, walking in the park or sitting in the train, they are pretty good.
The text relevant to the files can also be read in the relevant pages.
I suggest you start with Bertrand Russell's "Why I am not a Christian". Then you could perhaps listen to Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Antichrist" for some further, sharp criticism of religion.
For the lovers of fairy tales, you can listen to St. Thomas Aquinas' "Catena Aurea". However, as I suspect it might be a bit boring, just go to Epicurus' "Principal Doctrines".
Other audiobooks, but human-read, can be found at ThoughtAudio.com.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
From IslamInEurope.blogspot.com:
Italy: Court discriminates against Muslim girls
Apparently, if you're a Moroccan in Italy you don't have the same rights as ethnic Italians.
The Italian supreme court recently rejected an appeal by the prosecution in the case of a Moroccan girl who had been beaten by her family, her parents and her brother. The appeal was rejected on the grounds that it was for her own good and for her non-conformity with their culture, she had gone out with a friend and her life style was not accepted by her parents. [...]
[Read the whole post here]
The Italian supreme court recently rejected an appeal by the prosecution in the case of a Moroccan girl who had been beaten by her family, her parents and her brother. The appeal was rejected on the grounds that it was for her own good and for her non-conformity with their culture, she had gone out with a friend and her life style was not accepted by her parents. [...]
[Read the whole post here]
Assolti islamici che picchiavano la figlia ribelle
Cassazione: violenze non abituali e per il suo bene
Una ragazza magrebina, Fatima R., picchiata e segregata da madre, padre e fratello di fede islamica «per la sua frequentazione di un amico e, più in generale, per il suo stile di vita, non conforme alla loro cultura».
Ma i genitori sono stati assolti.
Una sentenza che evidenza delle sacche di medioevo anche in Italia.
E i diritti della ragazza? Ne ha di diritti la ragazza secondo i giudici?
D'ora in poi è possibile pestare i propri figli e legarli "per il loro bene"?
Non dovrebbe la legge tutelare il più debole? Sconcertante e vergognoso.
E un anno fa veniva uccisa Hina Salem, a Brescia (ITALIA), dal padre pachistano, colpevole secondo lui di seguire uno stile di vita non appropriato.
Cassazione: violenze non abituali e per il suo bene
Una ragazza magrebina, Fatima R., picchiata e segregata da madre, padre e fratello di fede islamica «per la sua frequentazione di un amico e, più in generale, per il suo stile di vita, non conforme alla loro cultura».
Ma i genitori sono stati assolti.
Una sentenza che evidenza delle sacche di medioevo anche in Italia.
E i diritti della ragazza? Ne ha di diritti la ragazza secondo i giudici?
D'ora in poi è possibile pestare i propri figli e legarli "per il loro bene"?
Non dovrebbe la legge tutelare il più debole? Sconcertante e vergognoso.
E un anno fa veniva uccisa Hina Salem, a Brescia (ITALIA), dal padre pachistano, colpevole secondo lui di seguire uno stile di vita non appropriato.
From adnkronos.com
Iran: Search for lost dog leads to arrest
Tehran, 3 August (AKI) - A young Iranian who was searching for his lost puppy in a Tehran neighborhood has been arrested and ordered to stand trial for 'moral corruption'.
According to the Tehran daily, Etemad Melli, the young man was caught while putting up a notice in which he was promising a reward to anyone who found his dog.
"Looking for a lost dog indicates the spread of a corrupt culture, which indirectly popularises keeping a dog at home, something that is completely foreign to the culture and Islamic tradition," said Tehran police spokesman, Mehdi Ahmadi.
"In arresting this young man, we wanted to send a very clear message to our young people, you need to steer away from the corrupt culture imported from the west."
*
All religions are absurd
by Joe London
The above shows religious arbitrariness and intolerance at work.
It would be wrong to shake one's head and shrug off the above as "the usual manifestation of the nonsensical Islam vs. Christian faith"
All religions have their huge share of nonsense, in fact they are base on a lack of sense and evidence, elevated to dogma and absolute. Just read the Old Testament, so dear to many evangelicals, and you will find entire pages of prohibitions.
Some examples from Old Testament (Leviticus):
"And the hare, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. And the swine, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you."
"Everything in the waters that has not fins and scales is an abomination to you."
"You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it."
"You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard."
"For every one who curses his father or his mother shall be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his blood is upon him."
"You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD."
"If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them."
"And he shall take a wife in her virginity. A widow, or one divorced, or a woman who has been defiled, or a harlot, these he shall not marry; but he shall take to wife a virgin of his own people, that he may not profane his children among his people"
"He who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him; the sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death."
Strictly speaking, it would seem that a pious evangelical who thinks the Bible is the "word of the Lord" should not eat shellfish, pork, should not cut his hair and beard, should not get tattooed, and should enforce the authority of parents with violence. But I am sure the large majority do not follow all this.
Fortunately for our Western societies, many prescriptions of the Bible, result of times of utter ignorance and tribalism, are generally counterbalanced by science, cultural progress and ridicule. Other prescriptions, equally arbitrary, still remain popular amongst pious people, for instance regarding sex and homosexuality. The religious always fails to convincingly explain the logic behind the cherry-picking attitude in accepting certain rules while ignoring others. Many religious people are either not even aware of this or are content to sheepishly acquiesce to the contingent historically-connotated expression of a religious tradition.
But the point I wanted to raise is really that no religion is innocent of intolerance and violence, and unwarranted, absurd prohibitions, whether Islam, Christianity or Judaism or others.
Is prohibiting entering a house "wherein there is a dog" ["I heard Allah's Apostle saying; 'Angels (of Mercy) do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or a picture of a living creature (a human being or an animal)'"] so different than prohibiting haircuts or considering women impure during menstruation, or considering masturbation a disorder?
All religions perpetuate a mindset by which people are expected to respect and follow ancient human-made rules embellished with a cheap and ridiculous gilded "godly" coat, even when they patently clash against what we now know about the human being and reality.
Religions claim to be privileged receivers and custodians of a divine revelation and to have thereafter the right to divide the whole humanity between sinners and non-sinners, saved and non saved, infidels and pious, moral and immoral, in short the right to apply their own arbitrary perspective (and consequent much appreciated power) on others, without obligation to provide evidence for their pretensions (thus spreading a dangerous attitude to superstition). Much like any obsessed witchdoctor in some remote forest, their representatives might even theatrically raise their fingers to the sky, threating eternal damnation if their rules are not followed, and they expect a special treatment and respect for their fabrications as if their theologies were substancially different from the shams and frauds of any glass reader.
Many conflicts of the past and of the present, their most horrible manifestations of brutality, violence, intolerance and racism, often spring out of the core of arbitrariness and blind, dogged pretensions of religions.
According to the Tehran daily, Etemad Melli, the young man was caught while putting up a notice in which he was promising a reward to anyone who found his dog.
"Looking for a lost dog indicates the spread of a corrupt culture, which indirectly popularises keeping a dog at home, something that is completely foreign to the culture and Islamic tradition," said Tehran police spokesman, Mehdi Ahmadi.
"In arresting this young man, we wanted to send a very clear message to our young people, you need to steer away from the corrupt culture imported from the west."
*
All religions are absurd
by Joe London
The above shows religious arbitrariness and intolerance at work.
It would be wrong to shake one's head and shrug off the above as "the usual manifestation of the nonsensical Islam vs. Christian faith"
All religions have their huge share of nonsense, in fact they are base on a lack of sense and evidence, elevated to dogma and absolute. Just read the Old Testament, so dear to many evangelicals, and you will find entire pages of prohibitions.
Some examples from Old Testament (Leviticus):
"And the hare, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. And the swine, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you."
"Everything in the waters that has not fins and scales is an abomination to you."
"You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it."
"You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard."
"For every one who curses his father or his mother shall be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his blood is upon him."
"You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD."
"If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them."
"And he shall take a wife in her virginity. A widow, or one divorced, or a woman who has been defiled, or a harlot, these he shall not marry; but he shall take to wife a virgin of his own people, that he may not profane his children among his people"
"He who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him; the sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death."
Strictly speaking, it would seem that a pious evangelical who thinks the Bible is the "word of the Lord" should not eat shellfish, pork, should not cut his hair and beard, should not get tattooed, and should enforce the authority of parents with violence. But I am sure the large majority do not follow all this.
Fortunately for our Western societies, many prescriptions of the Bible, result of times of utter ignorance and tribalism, are generally counterbalanced by science, cultural progress and ridicule. Other prescriptions, equally arbitrary, still remain popular amongst pious people, for instance regarding sex and homosexuality. The religious always fails to convincingly explain the logic behind the cherry-picking attitude in accepting certain rules while ignoring others. Many religious people are either not even aware of this or are content to sheepishly acquiesce to the contingent historically-connotated expression of a religious tradition.
But the point I wanted to raise is really that no religion is innocent of intolerance and violence, and unwarranted, absurd prohibitions, whether Islam, Christianity or Judaism or others.
Is prohibiting entering a house "wherein there is a dog" ["I heard Allah's Apostle saying; 'Angels (of Mercy) do not enter a house wherein there is a dog or a picture of a living creature (a human being or an animal)'"] so different than prohibiting haircuts or considering women impure during menstruation, or considering masturbation a disorder?
All religions perpetuate a mindset by which people are expected to respect and follow ancient human-made rules embellished with a cheap and ridiculous gilded "godly" coat, even when they patently clash against what we now know about the human being and reality.
Religions claim to be privileged receivers and custodians of a divine revelation and to have thereafter the right to divide the whole humanity between sinners and non-sinners, saved and non saved, infidels and pious, moral and immoral, in short the right to apply their own arbitrary perspective (and consequent much appreciated power) on others, without obligation to provide evidence for their pretensions (thus spreading a dangerous attitude to superstition). Much like any obsessed witchdoctor in some remote forest, their representatives might even theatrically raise their fingers to the sky, threating eternal damnation if their rules are not followed, and they expect a special treatment and respect for their fabrications as if their theologies were substancially different from the shams and frauds of any glass reader.
Many conflicts of the past and of the present, their most horrible manifestations of brutality, violence, intolerance and racism, often spring out of the core of arbitrariness and blind, dogged pretensions of religions.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The axe of evil
by Joe London
by Joe London
You may have read about an ad that was censored in New York, because it was showing some innocent derrieres (read the article of Sewell Chan here, from which the photos and captions below were taken).
New ad: This billboard is on display at 51st Street and Broadway. (Photo: Kitra Cahana/The New York Times)
Old ad: This is the version that the Times Square Church had gone to court to block from going up.
What do I think?
Impurity is the eye of the beholder.
The non-arbitrary exhibition of a part of the body (and this ad is not arbitrary, given the product promoted) should not raise any objection.
But it seems that some puritan / fundamentalist / sex-obsessesed American people have problems with simple parts of the body (while REAL bad taste, or worse, floods TV, cinema and... politics).
The Victorian compulsive rejection of the body is pathological and surely sends wrong messages to people, telling them they should feel shame for something natural. THAT is wrong.
I think the majority of people in America, or elsewhere for that matter, do not have problems with pure derrieres, and would rather not be ruled by 'pious' fundamentalists, who see evil everywhere (perhaps that's the second meaning of "axe of evil" in the States?).
Recently Iran authorities seem to have a problem with women riding bycicles. Some Iranian engineers are now working on the design of bycicles covered in the lower part.
Then you read of innocent ads in America being censored or of Attorney General John Ashcroft ordering to cover two partially nude statues in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice. (On this, read here).
Perhaps the USA is not that much different than Iran? Perhaps some serious thinking should be done on the pathogenic effect of religion, any religion, on people and societies, whether Western or Eastern.
Freaking religious lunatics
The corpses of the sisters of Stefania Tupputi are taken away by the Italian Police (picture from La Repubblica)
Repubblica online reports on Stefania Tupputi, a 70 year old Italian woman, who has lived for at least one and a half years with the corpses of her dead sisters.
The article says that Police found over 500 pages of a diary (from 1984 to 2007) giving an account of a life of "lucid madness with visions and religious fanaticism" (the women had been followers of a priest who was preaching about the "immediate resurrection of bodies"), but also of the illness and agony of the woman's sisters.
From the diary, 8 July 2006:
"I see Mary [My note: The Mary here is Jesus' mother] ever more clearly. She is marvellous. For some days I have been seeing Jesus only. The Madonna is in front of Father Pio who implores her. I am sitting on the bed and Mary, the Madonna, has sat too. Her hair was moving forward, mine was moving backward. In the meanwhile that white rain was falling. I saw God and then Jesus a bit higher than the face of his father".
*
Who knows, had this woman been born about 2000 years ago, now we would call her a Saint!
Religious stories are full of account regarding visions, miracles and so forth. Nowadays, if someone claims to be Napoleon he is considered delusional, but let him utter the word God and he might still have a chance to get away with it. Which gives a hint of how religions originated thousands of years ago, in times of ignorance and superstition
The propensity to, or shall we say the inherited germ of, superstition and delusion are so inculcated that a folkloristic figure like Joseph Smith, treasure-hunter and glass looker (as well as convicted in a court after "an alleged admission to being a 'disorderly person' and an 'impostor'"), managed to start his Mormon religion (a name that sounds a hidden joke) in the 19th century, after stating he had met God and received some "golden plates" from an angel!
But others religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism and so forth), cannot surely smirk with satisfaction for a presumed superiority. They are not less irrational and ridiculous, possibly worse for the capacity they have shown to drive crowds of people to the most bloodthirsty, barbarian and cruel behaviours.
Saints or madmen: a matter of chance, luck and quality/structure of the delusion. But the substance is the same. Surely religious education, embued with "supernatural stories" can be a factor in the transmission of delusional thinking.
The corpses of the sisters of Stefania Tupputi are taken away by the Italian Police (picture from La Repubblica)
Repubblica online reports on Stefania Tupputi, a 70 year old Italian woman, who has lived for at least one and a half years with the corpses of her dead sisters.
The article says that Police found over 500 pages of a diary (from 1984 to 2007) giving an account of a life of "lucid madness with visions and religious fanaticism" (the women had been followers of a priest who was preaching about the "immediate resurrection of bodies"), but also of the illness and agony of the woman's sisters.
From the diary, 8 July 2006:
"I see Mary [My note: The Mary here is Jesus' mother] ever more clearly. She is marvellous. For some days I have been seeing Jesus only. The Madonna is in front of Father Pio who implores her. I am sitting on the bed and Mary, the Madonna, has sat too. Her hair was moving forward, mine was moving backward. In the meanwhile that white rain was falling. I saw God and then Jesus a bit higher than the face of his father".
*
Who knows, had this woman been born about 2000 years ago, now we would call her a Saint!
Religious stories are full of account regarding visions, miracles and so forth. Nowadays, if someone claims to be Napoleon he is considered delusional, but let him utter the word God and he might still have a chance to get away with it. Which gives a hint of how religions originated thousands of years ago, in times of ignorance and superstition
The propensity to, or shall we say the inherited germ of, superstition and delusion are so inculcated that a folkloristic figure like Joseph Smith, treasure-hunter and glass looker (as well as convicted in a court after "an alleged admission to being a 'disorderly person' and an 'impostor'"), managed to start his Mormon religion (a name that sounds a hidden joke) in the 19th century, after stating he had met God and received some "golden plates" from an angel!
But others religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism and so forth), cannot surely smirk with satisfaction for a presumed superiority. They are not less irrational and ridiculous, possibly worse for the capacity they have shown to drive crowds of people to the most bloodthirsty, barbarian and cruel behaviours.
Saints or madmen: a matter of chance, luck and quality/structure of the delusion. But the substance is the same. Surely religious education, embued with "supernatural stories" can be a factor in the transmission of delusional thinking.
"The God of the Christians is a father who is a great deal more concerned about his apples than he is about his children."
-- Diderot, French writer, philosopher (1713-1784), Addition aux Pensees philosophiques, c. 1762
-- Diderot, French writer, philosopher (1713-1784), Addition aux Pensees philosophiques, c. 1762
Monday, August 06, 2007
"Wow, a miracle!"
Not really
The picture below is of a very rare atmospheric phenomenon that took place in Langkawi, Malaysia, during the Langkawi International Dialogue Summit.
It is a circular rainbow or, technically, parhelion. It is cause by the sun refracting on tiny particles of water suspended in the air (another picture here).
Now, if a phenomenon like the parhelion, or circular rainbow, has the power to strike us with awe, even if we know how it originates, can you imagine the intense feelings of awe and terror people who lived in times of utmost ignorance (when religions started) might have felt in presence of similar phenomena?
As their notions would not succour them in properly understanding what was going on, and assuming that were some utterly powerful, and easily irated, gods that were "sending a sign", they would organise sacrifices, rituals and the like, to ingratiate the (supposed) powerful being.
Of course, the individuals equipped with strong verbal and theatre skills and imagination (shamans and the like, later "priests"), would construct the internally logical, circular nonsense (later called "theology"), to soothe the anxiety of ignorance and the perception of vulnerability of simple-minded people (later, the "flock of faithful"). And thus getting a pretty good position or power with their solemnly uttered fabrications.
Not really
The picture below is of a very rare atmospheric phenomenon that took place in Langkawi, Malaysia, during the Langkawi International Dialogue Summit.
It is a circular rainbow or, technically, parhelion. It is cause by the sun refracting on tiny particles of water suspended in the air (another picture here).
Now, if a phenomenon like the parhelion, or circular rainbow, has the power to strike us with awe, even if we know how it originates, can you imagine the intense feelings of awe and terror people who lived in times of utmost ignorance (when religions started) might have felt in presence of similar phenomena?
As their notions would not succour them in properly understanding what was going on, and assuming that were some utterly powerful, and easily irated, gods that were "sending a sign", they would organise sacrifices, rituals and the like, to ingratiate the (supposed) powerful being.
Of course, the individuals equipped with strong verbal and theatre skills and imagination (shamans and the like, later "priests"), would construct the internally logical, circular nonsense (later called "theology"), to soothe the anxiety of ignorance and the perception of vulnerability of simple-minded people (later, the "flock of faithful"). And thus getting a pretty good position or power with their solemnly uttered fabrications.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
From Federico Fellini's "Roma"
Catholic Clergy on the catwalk
