Pat Condell:
Religion is now completely out of control. It’s already got it’s hands around the throat of the United Nations and it’s pushing for a world-wide blasphemy law to protect people from hearing words that might crowbar their tiny minds out of the stone age.
Click through for the video.
I’ve been following a debate between Sam Harris and Philip Ball, in which Harris takes Ball and Nature magazine to task over their capitulations to religion. In one passage I was reminded of one of many discussions I’ve had over the years with my mother about religion. In this particular discussion she became very distressed and responded to my irreligiousness thus:
But how can you not want to be with me after our time on Earth?
I wish I’d had Sam Harris’ words to quote at the time. This is for my mother:
I’m sure many people … hope that there is a God; they hope that they will see their friends and loved ones after death; they hope that their lives are aligned with some larger cosmic purpose; and they are disposed to make much of this hope — to celebrate it, and to gather with others who hope for these same things. [They] might say that this hope has enriched their lives or has in some way become indispensable to their functioning in the world. But if [they] are really religious — that is, really conforming to the doctrine of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. — they will have taken a further step toward delusion and mistaken this hope for a form of knowledge. They may have yanked their bootstraps this way: “How could I find this hope so consoling if it were not, in fact, well founded? Perhaps this feeling of hopefulness itself attests to the truth of thing hoped for… Praise be to God!” Of course there are many other ways to chase one’s tail under the aegis of religion. … It should be abundantly clear, however, that mere hope does not constitute knowledge, no matter how lovingly one tends it and props it up in the wind.
The Reason Project, co-founded by Sam Harris, launched today:
The Reason Project is a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The foundation draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.
Jonathan Cook on Dr. Shlomo Sand’s new book:
Dr. Shlomo Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation — whose need for a safe haven was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel — is a myth invented little more than a century ago.
In addition, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, that most of today’s Jews have no historical connection to the land called Israel and that the only political solution to the country’s conflict with the Palestinians is to abolish the Jewish state.
… he predicted a rough ride from the pro-Israel lobby when the book is launched … in the United States next year.
In contrast, he said Israelis had been, if not exactly supportive, at least curious about his argument.
Outgoing Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, recently quoted as saying:
(I am saying) what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: we should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, in response:
We wish we had heard this personal opinion … (before) he resigned.
No shit. But this all pre-supposes the dead end that is the two-state solution. As Ghada Karmi wrote last week in The Guardian:
A unitary state is inevitable. Establishing an exclusive state defined along ethnic-religious lines and excluding its previous inhabitants was unjust and ultimately unsustainable. No political acrobatics will alter this. The sooner the UN, which unwisely created Israel in the first place, takes charge of the consequences, the better it will be for Palestinians, for Israelis and for the region as a whole.
Today I watched a bus driver in London half pull up to a bus stop and then pull away before stopping when he saw the only person waving him down. She happened to be a little old lady with dark skin and a head scarf. There were murmurs of distaste from the two people standing nearby her but she dismissed the problem with a wave of her hand and walked off.
There seems to have been a noticeable uptick in this sort of thing over the past few months.
Speaking of Survival International, they’ve posted a video on their website of gunmen hired by farmers to attack a Makuxi Indian village in Brazil, part of a brutal attempt at an Indian land grab.
The correlation between this and Daniel Quinn’s alternative theory of the story of Cain and Abel is quite stark.