The Sorcerer in California with Marriage Infedility...

A few quickies for today, just for the chuckles of it all.

First, a completely straight article about magic in Islam. Now, the more secular or not-believing-in-magic among you, or those of you who just happen to think that religions other than your own are a little kooky, will probably find this somewhat humorous. I'll admit, I do too. I can't help myself. But there is an interesting point to take away from it. Note the descriptions of 1) the rituals performed by the magic-sellers and 2) the rituals performed by the religion-sellers, or, in this case, sheiks. Not so different, eh? Well, actually, that's to be expected. Traditionally there has been a very thin line between "magic" rituals and "religious" rituals. The difference, in some views, is only the kind of person performing the ceremony. You see, to both these people, the magic is real. The sheiks are just on the "good" side and will break a curse for a nominal fee. The "sorcerers" are on the "bad" side and may make or break a curse, for the right price. The rituals are nearly identical, it's just one guy gets to wear a funny robe or hat and claim ultimate divine authority, and the other guy wears a funny robe or hat and claims (usually) some lesser or personal authority. Now, for those of you who want to claim that we are too civilized for that kind of thing, need I remind you there are groups in this country who still practice and believe in faith healing, in praying for more rain or less rain, spiritual anointing, that prayers protect people, and that God may give you what you want if you ask and believe hard enough. A very, very thin line.

Secondly, this article about a recent study. It would seem that, on average, one out of every thirty-three women who regularly attend worship services have had sexual advances made by religious leaders. So, on average, for everyone 100 women in a congregation, 3 have been advanced upon by a religious leader. And two of those three were probably married at the time. Ahh...see, this is what I've tried to tell you before - watch the people who protest the loudest that they are the most moral. They're the ones typically hiding something. See, once you have it so ingrained in your head that you are the morally superior one, you can start writing off discrepancies, because you ARE moral, or God forgives those few discrepancies, and anyway, you're still much better than the rest of THOSE sinners, they must be ten times as worse. It's called cognitive dissonance, and it's one of the oldest tricks in the book. So, to be clear, I'm not saying "moral people aren't moral," I'm saying "people who CLAIM THE HARDEST to moral often are not." It just so happens that religions and religious people like to hold high that particular banner, and so there is a biased population there. Lest we forget Ted Haggard, who only recently has discovered (after years of fire-and-brimstone preaching against gays and divorcees, etc) that his sexuality is "complex" and will take time to resolve, after snorting meth with a gay prostitute...right. Lest we forget California Assemblyman Michael Duvall, who loves having affairs with "really hot" women, enjoys a bit of spanking, and...oh, is so totally against allowing gays the right to marriage in California and is a strong promoter of "traditional family values." Lest we forget all those Catholic priests who...well, you get the idea. This isn't commentary on religion directly, although anyone who knows me knows I have my beef with organized religion, especially when it tries to wiggle its way into policy, but it is something to be noted. Keep a careful eye on those moral vanguard, lest you be disappointed when you find out just how much of con men they are.

Lastly, a straight-faced sarcastic proposal to make divorce illegal in California. I think he's very good. A little obvious with the sarcasm of it all, but very good overall. I've always wondered exactly what people meant by "traditional marriage." It's sort of a moving target. People throw up other words like "Biblical marriage" or "faith-based marriage," but that's really just another place-holder, like "Intelligent Designer" or "God" is for "we don't yet know how this happened." I mean, it would seem to me that polygamy was allowed for quite a few people in the Bible, so long as you were wealthy enough...and there were all sorts of bride-prices, dowries, sacrifices, and feasts that had to go on. I don't see too many people selling slaves along with their daughters, but...maybe that's just me. I also don't see too many Christians basing their marriages off of the Talmudic traditions, but, I guess as much as they like to claim we are a Judeo-Christian nation, there aren't too many Judeo-Christians out there.

The problem is even worse if we try to take an archeological perspective of what a "traditional marriage" would be. It'd be like gathering together a human, sheep, pig, cat, dog, rabbit, horse, ox, bear, dolphin, and mouse and asking "which one is the mammal?" Oh, you can pick one and say it's your favorite, but, as you can maybe guess, the answer's not quite right. So, really, all we have again is a group of people who want everyone else to follow their favorite system, to make everyone adhere to their laws. Now, in a federal sense, an certain bit of this is understood - you obey the traffic laws, giving up some bit of your own freedom, to enjoy the benefit of a mass transportation system. When you get married, there are certain legalities you have to get through, and you pay a tax to enjoy some benefits of the state. Okay, that's fine. But when a particular group, religious or otherwise, wants to legalize its own way of living, and only its own way, there's a bit of a problem. Imagine, if you are Christian, that a Jewish group wants to mandate that only Kosher food can be eaten from now on. Goodbye cheeseburgers, shrimp, and a helluva lot more. They're just protecting the sanctity of food preparation, and doing it in a very tradition-minded way. Do you have a problem with it? God decreed it, lest you forget as you munch on those shrimp cocktails. Now, Paul did indeed say it was okay to break Kosher, but also note that he said you shouldn't do it if it would offend those with whom you were dining. Well, well, if it's going to offend some of the more tradition-minded Jews, you'd probably better stop.

Or imagine if a Muslim group wanted to U.S. to adhere to Sharia law. Would you have a problem with it? What if, just imagine, they were the majority in this country? Would you have a problem with it then? Would you feel that your rights as a group of people are being trampled on? That some religious group is forcing their view of things onto the public through legislation?

There is a solution, though. It's not a perfect one - few are. It's cobbled together and frail, sometimes barely hanging on. It offends a great deal of people, but it allows society to work, however hobbling it may go. The solution is brilliantly simple - no religion, no philosophy, no particular group, even the majority, gets special treatment or free reign in legislation. You are free to practice your own religion, or lack thereof. However, just the same, I am free to practice my own, however different they may be. So long as they do not interfere with each others private rights, there is no problem (I can't kill you because my god told me to. I can refuse to eat cheeseburgers though). So, why don't we take a hint from the Constitution, you police your own religious community, I'll eat some shrimp scampi, and we extend the right of marriage to everyone, regardless of what particular bits of flesh they possess where (legislate only the minimum necessary - need for consent, proof of stability and support if needed, minimum age requirement, and maximum relatedness if-you-so-desire), and we all go home happy.

That's just my two-cents anyway.

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Marching in the Moral Vanguard

I know, I'm an atheist. I'm supposed to be immoral, evil, wretched, etc. I suppose I should be on board for whenever people lie or say completely horrible things, or are utter hypocrites. I feel like that's the expectation for my "moral station."

Well, sorry to disappoint. I mean, granted, my evil-o-meter is a little different from many of my religious friends', in that I don't see anything inherently wrong with "blasphemy," nor eatting shellfish, nor disobeying some pretty strict commandments to stone people for various offenses. I mean, sorry. I don't like stoning people, and I don't think it should be done.

So, here are three examples of things that I find morally reprehensible, in all my atheistic-baseness, below the fold. Take it for what you will.

First, a recently re-instated, un-excommunicated priest:


Yes. Indeed. Some Jews may have died, but none were gassed, no, never. There was no Holocaust. Just stories that got exaggerated. Funny, no? Especially since the Catholic Church would never have anything to do with that, or refuse to excommunicate any Nazi leaders. This is one of the same strategies that we see across all denialism - admit to the reasonableness of some part of a position, and then declare the rest as mere exaggeration and fantasy. We'll call it the "strength and weaknesses" approach.

"Well, microevolution, sure. We can observe that. No one in their right mind would doubt it. But macroevolution? Speciation? Clearly just exaggeration. Plus Darwinism leads to the Holocaust." (sorry, also a reductio ad Hitlerum there).

"Well, sure, some Jews died during the war, sure. Maybe a lot. But not millions! That's ridiculous! And gassing them? No, the Nazis never gassed anyone. Why would they?"

"Well, vaccines may have reduced some occurences of disease, but they contain mercury, which casues autism!....Oh, wait, you mean thimeresol isn't the same kind of mercury...like, it breaks down in the body? Oh, and it hasn't been in most vaccines for years? ...Huh. Well, it must be the vaccine itself that causes autism!" (never mind that we're beginning to have serious outbreaks of otherwise preventable diseases...and, you know...children dying, for the sake of Jenny McCarthy's "mommy-instincts.")

"Well, sure the temperature has showed a steady increase, but it can't have anything to do with humans!"

It's all the same. The trends in denialism run rampant and obvious.

Via PZ at Pharyngula.

Second, it's apparently alright for 10-year old girls to be married. Yeah, funny story, it's actually those of us who think that marriage should be reserved for consenting adults that have been acting immorally all this time and going against the will of God. Well, damn. Look at that turn-around. It's sort of like saying "You know, murder is probably wrong," and having someone come back with "Well, maybe those who don't murder are the ones who are wrong. God tells us to murder all the time!"

As much as you expect it, you still never see it coming.

Tip o' the blogging pen to Tiny Frog.

Lastly, Mr. Ted Haggard. He's...well...just watch:



Ah...your sexuality is complicated. It's not in a box. Well. If only you had realized that, you know, before you starting decrying the evils of homosexual behavior and demanding that everyone fit neatly into the heterosexual, wait-until-marriage, monogomous, marry-your-high-school-sweetheart box...See, that's why we call hypocrite. I'd say it's nice to see that you've had a breakthrough, but you really haven't. You're just giving yourself more slack. And it disgusts me.

So, there you have it. Three things that caught my eye that, as an atheist, I am morally upset about. And the day started off so well.

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The Impossibility of Religious Morality

Let me relate to you a little story. It's terrible. It's horrifying. It will ruin your day. I'm really not kidding about any of this. I'm going to put it below the jump, because, well, if you're having a wonderful day and really, really don't want to wreck it, this time I'm going to give you an out.

Still here?

Here's the story. A girl is raped by three men. Instead of being comforted and helped to try to put her life back together, she is taken before a court of law and made to confess to adultery. Since she confessed, she is liable to sentencing and the full penalty of law. Which, in this case, happens to be death. By stoning. In which she was buried up to her neck while men cast stones at her head until she was dead.

Now, I know, I've talked about things like this before. Each time it's tragic. Every time I feel the urge to throw up. I cannot describe to you the rage that I experience against my fellow human beings in these moments. That we could do this to one another is one of the most terrible things in the world. That we could feel justified in doing so is even worse. I wish I had a poet on hand to put into language just how horrendous this is...but for now, you'll have to deal with the cold rage that I'm feeling.

This story is a little different from the others that I've mentioned before. This is not to put them in any less tragic of a light - none of them should ever have happened. But this one...

First of all, initial reports were that the girl was 23. We now know that that was wrong. She was 13. Thirteen. Sit down and think about that for a moment. Someone's daughter, some tiny girl, was raped by three men and then made to confess to adultery. This of course is where religion comes into the mess. Of course, this all has to do with sexual purity laws. Sharia. This all happened in Somalia, where fundamentalists have a pretty strong hold.

The jaw-dropper though...the moment where I did nearly throw up over myself, was when I heard that this was a public execution. It took place in a football stadium and was attended by about 1,000 people.

Let that sink in. Let it sink in real deep.

One thousand people. One thousand human beings watched a young girl being stoned to death by 50 men. Some few grumbled that it was the wrong thing to do (because she was too young, note...not because it was wrong), but no one raised a hand or a voice to stop it. No one. Now, you can argue about power structures - the people carrying out the murder had guns. That's true. We can link this to the bystander-effect, just like what happened with Kitty Genovese. You can link to simple self-preservation instinct. Those are all nice words. They maybe dull the sting a little.

But it doesn't stop this kind of thing from happening.

It doesn't stop the very structure that makes this sort of thing acceptable in the eyes of people. Am I going to blame this on religion? Oh, yes. But the deeper point is authoritarian dogma/ideology. It's religion's par-excellence, but a totalitarian state is capable of the same thing. Of course, if you agree with scholars like Durkheim, there isn't an analytically significant difference between a religion and a powerful/nationalistic state. The problem, at heart, may be institutionalized power.

But here's the thing - religions arise out of a certain context - historical, sociological, socio-economic. It's no accident that the monotheist world religions are typically very male-dominated. The societies in which they arose had a similar distribution of power. But institutionalized structures like this have a tendency to perpetuate themselves. And not only that, but they justify themselves by reference to a higher authority. So, a religion can self-replicate, perpetuate, and justify itself internally...which leads to all sorts of abuses of power. It provides a logical pathway from "Murder is wrong" to "Murder is quite justified, because God wills it." (To link back to the totalitarian/state argument, likewise, the state can provide a logical pathway to "Just following orders.")

So, ask yourself...at what point do you think that you could lose all sense of basic human dignity and compassion? What would it take to make you lay down whatever sympathy you may have for your fellow man and murder a 13 year old girl, who was guilty only of being raped by men who apparently got off scot-free?

How about "We will do what Allah has instructed us"?

Is that enough? Apparently, for a great deal of people, it is.

To make this even worse, if that's possible...at some point during the stoning, she was exhumed from the ground (apparently her murders thought they had finished the job) and checked by two nurses, who pronounced her still living. So they buried her again.

They buried her again and continued to stone her.

I don't know if you've ever seen someone die of cerebral hemorrhaging. It's not a pretty sight. It's not a good way to go. I cannot imagine the pain and agony that this girl went through in her last few hours of life.

And no one tried to stop them.

You see, this is why I would argue that it is impossible for a religious person to be truly committed to their faith and moral in any sense that we in the modern world would recognize. How could they be? If you go through their "holy" books, what possible example could you offer up to show why this was wrong? Let's be honest - God commands a lot of deaths. God's pretty cavalier about killing people himself. Basically anyone that offends God (morally or otherwise) gets the axe, often in pretty brutal ways. And he's really indiscriminate and imprecise with his rage. He's not against killing an entire city to wipe out a few "evil" doers.

Now, when I say to you "You should not murder someone who offends you. Even if they have offended your moral sense," I would hope that most people would say "Yeah...I might be angry, I would probably argue with them. I might even get in a fight if I were totally drunk...but murder? No, that's too far." But then I look at the religious fundamentalists. They have managed to completely subdue that internal switch. "We will do what Allah has instructed us." In the face of a young girl who had been brutally raped and was begging for her life...they are willing to follow their God and his excuses to commit a cowardly murder.

Now, I can already hear some people howling "But religion also promotes good!" Well...maybe. I'd argue that it's not so much religious indoctrinate, but a self-interested assessment of choices in light of the belief of a moral authority watching over us. Big Brother would promote basically the same ends, towards whatever "morality" he happened to hold. Likewise with religion - it promotes "good," however it chooses to define it.

Here's an interesting observation. I have never opened a newspaper and seen a headline of "Militant Atheists Fly Plane into Building," or "Militant Atheists Storm Capital Building," or "Militant Atheists Seek to Deny Religious Marriages." A related observation - the Bible-belt was also synonymous with the lynching-belt. The more religiously committed an area becomes, the more violence that seems to be perpetrated there. For all of the crazy boogie-man that religions have portrayed us as, atheists really don't do that much. We tend to confine ourselves to books and blogs. Granted, there is a large number of very angry teenagers and kids who have finally had enough of being abused by religion, or being terrified all the time, and become enraged enough to leave. And for a time, they probably carry around a lot of anger, rage, and frustration. I cannot fault them for this. It's probably a natural part of the healing process. Almost all of them grow out of that phase, and most of them become quite sensitive to human needs and suffering.

Now that I think about it, maybe we should be opening papers and seeing headlines about atheists marching. Maybe we should take to the streets and say, finally, "We've had enough. We aren't going to take this any longer. We are not going to allow these things to happen, and we are not going to allow the silence of the world because it interferes with someone's dogma. We are tired of watching fellow human beings being discriminated against and killed because some invisible sky-god, some cultural construct that self-justifies itself, has 'told' his followers to murder someone. It has gone on too long."

We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it any more. (Quick edit - this is in no way a call to violence. That would really be against the whole point I'm driving for.)

Here's the story, via the BBC. That's where I saw it, but I'm giving a definite hat tip to PZ over at Pharyngula for this treatment. I completely agree with his last paragraph.

Before you get all cocky and assume that this is just the Islamic world, or that this post is focused on Islam...it isn't. Christianity does not have any better track record. The most salient historical example is, of course, the Salem Witch Trials. The difference between Somalia and modern "Christian" nations is that religion does not have absolute power in the West any more. Democracy has, hopefully, irreversibly altered religion itself to force it into a position of at least toleration. But having spoken with and read the writings of many religious people, I don't really have much doubt on how it'd all turn out if Christianity took total control again. There's a hell of a lot of "fatwah envy" going around in evangelical circles these days. And let's not forget Prop 8.

To paraphrase PZ, your stones may have become more sophisticated, but every ballot vote "yes" was another stone cast against those who offended your "moral" and religious sense of propriety. We have not escaped this impulse.

Finally, for a bit of levity, strongly needed at this point:

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