Dawkins and Holloway

Last night some of us at the Humanist Society went to an event at the Edinburgh Science Festival, where Richard Dawkins and Richard Holloway sat and had a conversation with each other about God, Religion and Spirituality, at George Square Lecture Theatre here at Edinburgh University. It was a great event, and afterwards Richard Dawkins signed my copy of Unweaving the Rainbow.

Anyway it was really interesting because they didn’t really disagree on anything. The event was all filmed, so I’m sure you’ll be able to see it soon enough, either on YouTube, RichardDawkins.net, or at the Edinburgh Science Festival website.

What I want to discuss mostly here is Richard Holloway’s views about God and religion. If you don’t know much about him, he was formerly the Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church, but he must be the most liberal Christian you’ll ever meet. The funny thing is, he doesn’t actually believe what the Bible says, he doesn’t believe God exists, or in the virgin birth, or that Jesus of Nazareth was Christ, the Son of God. What he does believe is that Jesus was “an extraordinary man”, by which I assume he means a great teacher, with huge moral authority, and that the Church does a lot of good. Indeed Richard Dawkins then compared Jesus with other moral figures of our day such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Mahatma Gandhi, but we don’t claim there is anything supernatural about these people. In short, as much as I don’t like labelling people, in this case it is useful, and I would describe Richard Holloway as an agnostic/pantheist.

The two men spent some time discussing the Bible stories as “beautiful myths” that can teach us a lot, whether or not they are true. Dawkins correctly noted that you could say exactly the same about the aboriginal myths about the Dreamtime, or Polynesian myths, or any other set of myths in the world, and yet Holloway specifically chooses the Christian myths, what’s that about? And furthermore, he picks and chooses which parts of the myth are useful for teaching morals, it’s not the myth itself which tells us what is moral, we put our own subjective judgement on it and decide for ourselves. So why bother with the myth?! Why not just jump straight to the morals?

So in what sense is Richard Holloway a Christian? I would say he’s not at all because he doesn’t believe in God or what I call “the mythical Jesus” (as opposed to the historical Jesus), but he defends his position saying that he still calls himself a Christian because he still associates himself with the community that has had such an influence on his life, and because he still sees the good work that the church does and the good moral teachings of the church. But then if I was living at home, I could say that as well, and it doesn’t make me a Christian. A question I wanted to ask would have gone like this: Just as there are good points about the Christian religion, so there are also very negative points. How can you justify to yourself continuing to associate yourself with a religion which is misgynistic, homophobic, and continues to condemn people to death in AIDS-ridden Africa through its condemnation of contraceptive use? Admittedly most of that is the work of the Catholics, but it gives Christianity as a whole a bad name.

I suspect the answer would have incorporated the facts that he thinks religion does more good than it does bad, and that the church is gradually changing. But I can’t help thinking that there is no good act that a Christian can do that an atheist cannot also do, but someone’s religious beliefs can make them cause a lot of damage, which an atheist would not do.

Anyway, a great event, look out for the video.

Death and beyond

Today’s humanist society meeting was very interesting. We had a man with us who’d never been before, and he soon told us that he’d had a pretty bad time and that he’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he’d been going to all different religious organisations, and now he was looking at humanism for answers. He asked some really good questions and brought up some issues that I want to discuss here a little. It’s going to be a brief one because I’m due in work fairly soon.

Anywho this man (let’s call him John for anonymity’s sake) was scared, quite frankly, by the humanist viewpoint that there’s nothing after death, it’s just oblivion. David, our rather blunt philosopher-in-residence, replied that there’s nothing you will experience that is oblivion because you won’t be there, so it’s not that bad.

Personally I gave my own slant on the issue, which I’ve probably mentioned somewhere on here before. For me, although there is nothing physical or “spiritual” after death (Tim at the Friendly Humanist would probably not like me using the word ’spiritual’ in this way, contributing to religion’s monopoly on it), you live on in people’s memories of you and the
legacy that you leave on the world and on people around you. You would hope that these memories and your influence would be a positive one, but maybe not.

The conversation took many twists and turns (including a hell of a lot about brain surgery, can’t imagine why), but somewhere along the way we got onto the topic of the meaning of life, or to quote exactly from John, “why am I here?” Again, humanists don’t agree on everything, but I’m sure a lot of them would agree with me that since there’s no creator, noone has sat down and made a purpose for each one of us to live, or given a reason for life more generally. So your reason for living can be whatever you think is important, and we agreed that “making people’s lives better”, as we put it, was a very good start. John was a healthcare worker so I’m sure he’s done this in many ways.

John asked if we thought it was necessary to have children in order to leave a positive legacy on the world, and each one of us replied with an emphatic ‘no’. Although in purely scientific circles the reason each one of us lives is because of a long line of predecessors, and so it could be argued that our purpose in life is to continue the species and to “live on” through them, personally I think it has less to do with the continuation of your DNA, and more to do with how you’ve influenced people, regardless of whether they’re of your bloodline or not (or to put it in Dennettite language, “less to do with genes and more with memes”).

I’m glad we had this discussion. It showed us that although the humanist worldview is perfectly capable of providing comfort and guidance to someone in quite a difficult position, so far organised humanism has found it difficult to replace the community feeling that religion benefits from. It’s my vision that in the future this will change.

To finish this off, I’d like to quote Richard Dawkins from the opening lines of his book Unweaving The Rainbow, which are very meaningful for me, and I’m sure a good number of other humanists feel the same way.

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could be here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, who are here.”

I think I’ll leave it at that for today.

An “oath” of allegiance

The former attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, has suggested that people (particularly school children) should be encouraged to take an oath of allegiance. Read the story here in The Times or on BBC online.

Now of course the discussion online has largely been to the line of “I’m not swearing allegiance to that bloody Queen”, and I agree 100%, how in a modern liberal democracy can we justify someone being born into such institutional wealth, power and influence?

But my objection goes further than that. If I’m going to swear something, it’ll be something that I believe in, and I’ll say it in my own way. Having millions of drones saying the same thing will reduce any “oath” to mere words without meaning. What happened to independent thinking? It’s dogma in its highest form.

There’s something a little more sinister as well. The BBC article mentions towards the end that:

“Young people who volunteer could receive a reduction in tuition fees, while others who work in the community could be given a small council tax rebate.”

I personally find this disgusting, and self-defeating. Not only do I think it’s wrong to effectively punish people just because they have an ounce of integrity and won’t recite something they don’t believe in, but I think this paves the way to differentiate between “truly” British people and the rest, which is a very bad idea, and will only lead to further division of society, possibly fuelling extremism and pseudo-apartheid states. Furthermore, bribing the public into taking an oath will make it meaningless. I’d swear an oath to Satan if it meant my student debt was reduced, because it doesn’t mean anything to me whatsoever!

I read up a little on the topic, and was very surprised to see that Canada, that bastion of common sense, already has one! It reads:

“I, ……………, do Solemnly swear (affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors according to law, forever. So help me God.”

I’m glad that the part at the end about God is optional, but at the same time, this oath must be made by some certain judges, the armed forces, mounted police, the Queen’s Privy council, and most importantly, by MP’s. Indeed MP’s who refuse to take it are not allowed to sit in the house! Disgusting!

Reverse Eugenics

I’ve just been made aware of this story which is doing the rounds on the web at the moment. A deaf couple are claiming the right to choose a deaf child, over a hearing child, through IVF screening, in the face of a new law which will say that once the embryos have been screened, the most healthy one must be chosen.

Mr Lichy says that being deaf is a core part of his culture and identity, and (quoting the BBC article), “it is those who are able to hear who are at a disadvantage in a world of deaf plays, deaf poetry, and deaf jokes.”

I’m going to discuss this part for a little while. Although I don’t deny that deaf culture is both distinct and fascinating, and that I wish I could do sign language, being deaf isn’t a prerequisite for being a part of that culture. They could easily teach a hearing child sign language, which makes them able to take part in the deaf culture. Indeed I’m sure a child brought up in a deaf family would have a very rich culture; being bilingual with English and sign language isn’t very common at all, and I’d love to have had that opportunity.

So I dispute the assertion that hearing people have a disadvantage. Deafness IS a disability, no matter what the Lichy’s want to think. It is an inability to hear which presents all sorts of practical problems and disadvantages, and although a lot of positive aspects (not least deaf culture) have sprung from it, and it’s easier than ever to live with, that doesn’t mean it’s not a disability. I think that choosing a deaf child, just so they can relate to it a bit easier, is very selfish, and they really don’t have the child’s best intentions at heart.

That said, this is only a very narrow part of a much wider issue. The Lichy’s argument is against the new bill which says that once they’re screened, the most healthy embryo must be selected. But, if they choose not to screen the embryos, then they can take their chances, which means they might get a deaf child and they might not. What they’re saying is that the new bill basically implies that deaf or otherwise disabled people aren’t as valid as hearing people (incidentally a commonly used Spanish word for disabled is minusvalido, literally meaning “less valid”. Imagine that in today’s world of political correctness).

To a certain extent I agree with them, but I think their argument is a bit skewed. Just as the law implies that disabled people are less valid than ‘normal’ people (for lack of a better word), so does their selection process of choosing deaf embryos over hearing embryos imply that normal people are less valid than disabled people, which is just as untrue.

What I think the Lichy’s should be campaigning against is IVF screening in its entirety. But then again I’m unsure where I stand on this issue as well, mainly because what little I know about IVF, I learned in religious studies classes at school. The way I see it, there are practical reasons for screening embryos; some may have been damaged by the IVF process, for example. For me the most ethical thing to do would be to screen embryos for damage, but then how do you differentiate between damage done through the process and a disability that would have occurred naturally anyway? I have no idea if it’s possible. I know that at the moment you can choose not to have them screened, but does this result in a higher level of disabled children born compared to non-IVF methods or not? I don’t know.

The fact that it’s commonly done, however, leads me to believe that it’s not too dangerous, so I think the most ethical way to avoid eugenics, either the conventional type or the reverse type we can see here, is not to screen IVF embryos at all, depending on my assumption that it isn’t a big cause of disability.

Christians on the March

I’ve been meaning to blog this for a few days now but I’ve been writing essays. It’s become clear that the evangelical wing of Christianity is becoming much more active in the UK. Before, Christianity was something you could choose to partake in, or to ignore, but more and more I’ve noticed people going out trying to convert people.

Take Thursday, for example. I was eating my lunch in the Student Union, minding my own business, when 2 people came up to me asking if they could talk to me about “spirituality”, as they put it. “Sure,” I thought, “but it’ll be the biggest grilling you ever get”. The 2 Canadian students were from an organisation called Agape, associated with the Christian Union somehow (incidentally the CU have also had a marquis up in the Meadows to try and get Christianity out there a bit more).

They started off by asking about me personally, trying to get me to like them so they look like the nice guys. Then all of a sudden it turned to religion. “So,” he said, “do you have any kind of spirituality?” I replied with my position that I’m a humanist, which I had to explain, and then that basically I don’t believe anything unless I have a good reason to believe it, and evolution explains my existence (as an aside, this guy said he studied biology, but I had to explain macro-evolution to him) so I don’t need to invoke a creator God. “You believe you’re here because of chance?” Argh! Just because there’s no intelligent force behind it, doesn’t mean it’s chance!

“But if God exists” -big if - “do you think he loves us all?”. Well if he does he’s got a funny way of showing it, there are good innocent people in Africa living hellish lives, and the world is full of evil, so I don’t see how he can possibly love us all.

Quickly moving on, the guy (can’t remember his name for the life of me), then explained that there’s a big gap between God and us, and that gap is because of sin, and we are all sinful. I told him that I have a problem with thinking of myself as “sinful”, just because I’m not perfect; generally speaking I’m quite a good person.

Again , pretty much ignoring what I said, he went on to say that Jesus is the only way to bridge the gap between man and God, and it doesn’t matter how good we are on our own, without Jesus there is no way to bridge the gap, as it says in John 14:6 (John seemed to be a particular favourite of his). I asked one of my old favourite questions, how can you be sure that you are right, but the Muslims at the mosque down the road are wrong? For every quotation from the Bible that you have supporting your worldview, they have another from the Koran which supports theirs.

“Well the thing is,” he said, “Jesus is just so perfect that he must be right, and he died in our place.” I had issues with the Jesus being perfect thing but my main point was, how do you know that Jesus died in our place? How do you know he didn’t just… well die?  Because he believes in the Bible, was his answer. I explained to him just how unreliable the gospels are, that they were written a long time after Jesus died (Mark was the first written, and that was 30 years after Jesus died, all the others were much longer after that, and most of those were based on Mark’s account). “But wouldn’t you prefer to have an eyewitness account?” he replied. Yeah I would, but unfortunately that’s not what we have in the Bible. This guy seemed totally unaware that the gospels were not written by the apostles themselves and I pointed out that there are many parts where Jesus is alone, so how do we know what he did? None of the apostles were there when he was born, for example, or when he was in the desert, and in Luke’s account of the ascension it specifically says that it’s not an eyewitness account. So the only written record we have of Jesus’ ministry is a collection of myths, legends and hearsay.

The next part was almost pitiful. He brought up CS Lewis’ argument that Jesus was either lunatic, liar or Lord. Again, I’ve shot this down so many times, but my theory is that he was actually none of these, but was merely a normal man who did exist, a great teacher, but he was lied about in order to make him fulfil the Old Testament prophecies. It’s entirely appropriate, the Jews needed the Messiah to free them from slavery, and some of them were getting desperate.

“But the Bible is historical fact!” he replied. Apparently they found some books in an old library (at least that’s what he claimed), which verified the whole story. Then when he started to make sense, he said that biographies of kings at the time, for example, mention that Jesus was around. But that doesn’t make him the Son of God. Let’s look at it from another view, using the same argument. The gospel account says that Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead. If this actually happened, do you not think that the news would spread like wildfire across Palestine? Do you not think that historians of the day would think it worthy of putting it into their journals, that a man was raised from the dead? And yet there is no record of it outside the Bible. Hmm…
So I had a problem with pretty much everything he said, and I asked him questions that he’d obviously never even considered before. He was just a young guy that didn’t really know what he was talking about, he approached converting me just as he would have an on-the-fence agnostic who’d never really thought about it, and I’m sure that if he thought about his beliefs objectively, he’d be an agnostic. The only way he managed to get through our conversation with his beliefs intact was by ignoring my arguments.

I know this isn’t very constructive, but it’s just so frustrating when people come to you with half arsed arguments that haven’t been thought through, with smug moral attitude. At one point he actually said “if only you knew what I know”. Come back when you’re willing to have an open-minded conversation.

Age Discrimination

Whenever we hear about ageism, it’s always because people past about 50 find it difficult to find a job, because they’re going to be retiring fairly soon and the company considering hiring them wants somebody more long-term. But this is only one very small part of it.

I always used to be fairly active promoting young people’s rights. Every week you’d see headlines in the newspapers and Tory scaremongering propaganda on TV showing the world being destroyed by “hoodies” and “gangs of youths”. More and more, older people are getting intimidated by young people on the streets, even though they personally haven’t been on the receiving end of an attack by them, nor have they probably even seen it happen to someone else. In all likeliness the ‘kids on the streets’ (as if that’s a crime or something) are just hanging out with their friends. It’s all in their heads because of images in the media. The division between people of different ages has never been higher in this country.

Now in response to this, shopkeepers have started taking precautions against youth crime. Signs outside shops saying things like “only 2 under-18’s in the shop at a time” are commonplace, and some (admittedly very few) places even ban all young people altogether! Now I wonder, if we substituted “young people” with “black people” in this situation, would it not be considered discriminatory? I’m sure it would by almost everyone.

Now in the last couple of years, a new “weapon” against youth crime has been unveiled, which is being called the ‘Mosquito‘. It’s basically a box on a wall which emits a high frequency noise which only under-25’s can hear, so loud that it forces them to leave the area. This is blatant discrimination. It does not differentiate between young people who are causing trouble and other young people who may just happen to be in the area. Again, if a similar device were made which did the same kind of thing to black people, or women, would there not be uproar? Yes there undoubtedly would.

I’m not denying that there’s a problem with youth crime, but the way to tackle it is not to discriminate against all young people. Remember when institutionalised racism was commonplace in the 70’s and 80’s, things like the ‘sus laws‘ (which they basically want to bring back against young people with the ’stop and search’ powers given to the police) and other discriminatory methods of crime reduction were totally ineffective, and just increased crime in the black communities as they became disillusioned with society, leading to the 1981 riots. This is exactly what will happen if we continue to treat our young people like criminals, just for being young.

Humanist Ethics

Last night, the Humanist Society held its Big Event of the Semester (BEotS), a panel discussion on Humanist Ethics in the 21st Century, with:

• Roger Redondo, a neuroscientist and president of the Humanist Society
• Sue England, a human rights lawyer and women’s rights expert
• Patrick Harvie MSP, a humanist member of the Scottish Greens Parliamentary Party
• June Maxwell, leader of the Humanist Academy, who stepped in at the eleventh hour to replace another speaker who fell ill

Each of the speakers made a 20 minute talk or so taking their own spin on the question, “why do we need evolving humanist ethics in the 21st Century?” Roger concentrated on how we know that morality is wired into each of our brains genetically. There is evidence of a sense of justice in chimpanzees, and the ‘Trolley Problems‘ show us that morals are to a large extent universal, regardless of social conditioning.

The other speakers spoke more about humanist ethics in action. Sue England’s talk was particularly interesting because she led with the statement that religious discrimination is nothing whatsoever like other types of discrimination, in that you can’t easily change your sex or your race or get rid of a disability, but you can very easily change your religion or get rid of it completely. She then went on to show how religious organisations are gaining ground and getting privileged consultation in the EU, exemption from taxation and widely in Europe in such places as Germany, the Church gets money directly from pay packets like a second “voluntary” income tax. She also claimed that the European Convention on Human Rights mentions nothing about religion, but the Human Rights Act 1998 had section 13 put into it by Blair, which means courts have to respect the rights of a person to freedom of thought and religion. I’ve since been and checked this out, and article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights does outline freedom of thought and religion, so I think she must have got her wires crossed there.

Patrick Harvie’s talk was also very interesting. He concentrated on his time as the shadow for the Communities Portfolio, during which he was lobbied by all kinds of religious groups, and how religious groups get privileged in all kinds of ways in politics as well as in law. It tied in quite well with what Sue was saying. He finished by saying emphatically that a fixed moral worldview can’t adapt to new ethical problems such as stem cell research, abortion and climate change. We can’t just look in the Bible and ask “what did Jesus say about nanotechnology?”

June Maxwell’s talk was understandably a little less well jointed, since she had no time to prepare it. She concentrated on education, and how an evolving humanist ethic taught in schools would encourage children to be more responsible, and to think more about their actions rather than just not doing something because they’ve been told to.

She also claimed that Abraham, Moses and even Jesus never existed, which was more than a little controversial with 2 of the members of the Edinburgh Creation Group who came along for the show, missing their own event which was happening at the same time. She justified this by saying that the pagan gods that were celebrated on the 25th of December bore startling resemblances with Jesus, citing Attis, Osiris, Dionysus and Mithras as examples. I’ve checked a few of these out and the theory doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. Mithras was worshipped after Jesus died, so if anything he was a copy of Jesus, and I can only find very tenuous similarities between Jesus and Dionysus. Lots of people know the links between Osiris and Christianity, but since the legend of Osiris is so old (about 2400 BC), I think it’s more likely to have affected the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah than the legends surrounding Jesus himself. I think it’s more likely that he did exist as a person, but that he was exaggerated and lied about by his followers in order to fulfil the OT prophecies. I’ve heard a theory on my local radio phone-in show that Jesus was a drug dealer (I am from Liverpool), but I’ll leave that for now.

There was also a lot of controversy during the Q&A session when someone raised the issue of faith schools. The question-asker said that she’d been to a faith secondary school and she was always taught to be open minded, and she was taught about other faiths as well. June then replied (very passionately, I might add, she was almost shouting by the time she finished) by taking the example of the story of Abraham, which teaches obedience, but says nothing about the right of his son to live. I don’t know when June was last in a faith school, but I spent 14 years in the faith school system and I only ever learned about that story when I read the Bible in my own time, it wasn’t taught as part of the curriculum. Generally speaking my school was very liberal, it taught evolution and everyone I know believed in it, and I came out with a good sense of morals and a good education. There were certain problems which I won’t go into, but it certainly wasn’t the brainwashing zombie-factory June seems to think they are.

This entry’s getting far too long and I’ve had nothing to eat yet today (in my Chinese oral exam this morning I apparently told the examiner that my dad’s a professional socialist, instead of a social worker), so I’ll wrap it up with a comment. I was a little disappointed. I was hoping this would be something I could point to in the future and say “look, humanism isn’t just about bashing religion”, but religion was a topic which came up far too much throughout the evening. Sue England’s talk was not much more than arguing against religious practices in Europe, and the only talk that didn’t have religion at its centre was Roger’s, who I’m pretty sure didn’t talk about it at all.

All in all though, it was a good event and I’m glad I went, even if it did mean I didn’t do enough revision for my Chinese exam.

Rowan Williams and Sharia Law

There are 2 things I’d like to blog on today but I think I’ll do the other one tomorrow. I’m on a reading week in 2 of my subjects so I’ll have a bit of time.

Anyway there’s been a lot of controversy across the UK this week because the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has said that Sharia Law is ‘unavoidable‘ in Britain, and that he would encourage parts of it to be incorporated into British Law in order to aid social cohesion. This is rather difficult for me because I’m going to defend his position from the attacks I’ve heard most commonly on online forums discussing the issue.

First of all, a lot of people have been saying things like “why should we follow Sharia Law when it oppresses women and has lots of other human rights issues associated with it?” That’s the very definition of straw-man argument. Dr Williams hasn’t said that we should oppress women or cut off people’s hands or whatever, he’s merely suggested incorporating certain aspects of it. Presumably that would mean taking the good bits rather than the bad, so we shouldn’t think about what he’s asking for as bringing Sharia Law, intact, to Britain.

The next one I’ve noticed is something like “if they want to come to this country they should stop trying to change Britain and abide by British Law”. There is a general widespread assumption which associates Islam with a geographical region in the Middle East. There are plenty of Muslims who are British, they’re not all immigrants. Just because Sharia Law might be active in places in the Middle East, doesn’t mean that British Muslims have all come here from there. To take this thinking further, now that it’s clear that many Muslims are British, would people who make this assertion also deny British people of other ethnic or social groups the right to request changes in legislation?

For example, last year gay people in Britain won the right to civil partnerships. Was this wrong? Should they have just accepted their lot and “abided by British Law”, and stopped trying to change Britain? No, I don’t think so. Just as British homosexuals have the right to request changes in legislation to accommodate themselves better, so do British Muslims have the right to request legislation to accommodate themselves better. If everyone stopped trying to change Britain, then we’d still be in an absolute monarchy stuck with slavery and strict blasphemy laws, and only landowners would have the vote.

When I first heard the news, my first concern was for the rule of law, and I’ve heard many people making similar statements. You can’t have one system of law for some people and another for others. Everyone within British jurisdiction should live by the same laws, otherwise the system becomes unworkable. 2 legal systems would also fail to aid social cohesion, because it could only be a divisive force. I think I was remembering the similar situation they have in Ontario, Canada, whereby in order to save on court time, two individuals may agree to arbitrate a civil dispute using any form of authority that they both recognise, most commonly religious law.

But we’re being unfair here. Dr Williams has said nothing about having 2 parallel systems of law, merely incorporating aspects of Sharia Law into our own system. There would be no such problem and the rule of law would remain intact. Our law is fluid and it would just be a change in legislation, just like any other.

So it sounds like I’m all for it, doesn’t it? Not exactly, I just think the arguments that are being used against him are characteristic of editorials in The Sun and really 2 dimensional. I have no objection to what he’s saying, but I don’t see the point in suggesting it. Surely the aspects of Sharia Law that would be desirable in our system are things that we’ve already thought of and are already part of our law? So we’re either taking positive aspects that we’ve already got legislation on, or we’re taking negative aspects that are undesirable.

The way he thinks it would aid social cohesion tells me that he thinks the mere fact that it would be taken from Sharia would tell Muslims that we’re listening to them, so in effect all he’s suggesting is that we take our existing laws and point a big arrow at it, saying “look, this is the same as this in Sharia Law! We value our Muslim citizens”, thereby Islamifying our laws to make them look more appealing. Which isn’t really doing anything, so why’s he suggesting it?

In any case I think he was pretty stupid to bring this up. He’s fully aware how many racists and xenophobes there are in this country, and he’s bringing a giant hammer down on his own head. The suggestion is just going to fuel hatred for Muslims in anti-Muslim groups, and possibly allow them to gain support. It was a stupid thing to say.

Afterthought: As a related aside, I’d like to make it clear that just because a piece of moral guidance comes from a religious source, doesn’t mean that I’m going to disagree with it. I personally agree with many of the teachings of Jesus, and I’m sure I would with many of Mohammed’s if I took the time to read them, but I will make up my own mind in each individual instance and won’t take guidance merely on authority.

Scientology Protest

Well, I was there, were you?

It was actually a really good turnout, we had about 150 people which was about as many as we could fit along the side of the road without blocking the pavement. The police were there to keep order and in case we decided to do anything stupid, but to be honest I don’t think anyone had any intentions of doing anything like that. One ironic thing was that one of my friends who turned up to protest has told me in the past that she’s a creationist Christian. She claims to hate scientology because it’s obviously a load of rubbish and it takes advantage of depressed people… bit strange really.

We noticed about 5 or 6 different people inside the building. They were photographing and videoing us, so we’ll see what becomes of that. All it’ll show is a big group of people standing there, singing and cheering when cars beep support. Nothing illegal there.

Although I don’t think it’s the most important or controversial topic at the moment, it was good to get noticed and have more people on board with the issue. Scientology is a cult, there’s no doubt about it. It takes people into it, separates them from their friends and family, takes their money away from them and resists letting them leave. It’s extremely secretive and exclusive, and they’re very hostile to people who oppose it.

Anyway I’m going to see if I can figure out how to upload the pictures. There are some great ones.

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Knowledge is Free

Lolcats

War on Scientology

It’s been called a ‘cult’ by a judge in the US Supreme Court and the Germans won’t have anything to do with it. The more I hear about it, the more I’m starting to realise just how messed up Scientology is. As if the Tom Cruise video wasn’t enough to get me going (”When you’re a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one who can really help…”), the fact that the “Church” managed to get it taken off YouTube really peeved me off.

Why people believe in this bollocks is beyond me. It was written by a SCIENCE FICTION WRITER! It’s obviously a cartload of rotten tripe! I don’t understand why someone would believe in this rubbish when they know it was just written by some guy.

Further to this are the allegations that Scientologists were responsible for the death of Lisa McPherson. After she had a car crash and a mental breakdown, they took her out of psychiatric care to look after her themselves, which led to her death, basically through neglect. They have untrained people practicing medicine without licenses, which is downright dangerous.

Anywho I heard today that all this controversy has led to the birth of an internet group known as Anonymous, which has declared war on Scientology. So far this has been by hacking their website and shutting it down, sending them pizzas, and (my personal favourite) sending them black faxes to waste the ink in their fax machines, but this Sunday it will go one step further with a global peaceful protest outside the many Churches of Scientology.

One of these is in Edinburgh, near the Tron in Hunter Square at 11am (and there was me thinking computer geeks slept all through the day). I’ll be there, and I’ll be sure to take some pictures and try and get them up here. I urge anyone else who wants a giggle to come along too. Apparently there are Facebook groups and events but I’ve yet to find one for the Edinburgh Protest.

Listening to: Pink Floyd - Astronomy Domine