Quotulatiousness

August 11, 2012

Kidnapping children to “save them” from gay parents

Filed under: Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:19

Words sometimes fail me, as when I first heard of this notion some religious nutbars are pushing to set up a 21st century underground railroad to “rescue” children from gay and lesbian parents:

As has been widely reported, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association asserted in a tweet Wednesday that “we need an Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households.” Lest anyone imagine he was speaking merely in metaphor, a second tweet from him linked to a Chicago Tribune story about the impending trial of a Mennonite clergyman “charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping of Isabella Miller-Jenkins, now 10,” who was spirited out of the country so as to evade court orders mandating visitation with Janet Jenkins, who had helped raise Isabella as part of a same-sex couple. Fischer’s summary: “Head of Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households goes on trial.”

Fischer and his American Family Association, it should be noted, are clownish figures whose extremism is a turn-off even to many true believers on the social right. (It can nonetheless be interesting to observe who deems them respectable enough to associate with; for example, the Values Voter Summit, which draws major political figures like Eric Cantor, Jim DeMint, and Ted Cruz, considers Fischer a suitable speaker and AFA a suitable prominent sponsor.) Anyway, Fischer thrives on outraged publicity from his adversaries, so enough about him. What’s worth rather more attention (and provides some insight into the mounting campaign against gay parenting from some quarters) are the two articles he tweeted.

If you’re not familiar with the epic Miller-Jenkins custody-kidnapping case, it’s worth catching up by way of The New York Times‘ account the other day. (Jenkins’ lawyers at GLAD have posted many of the documents, and I’ve been covering it off and on for years at my Overlawyered blog.) While nothing short of tragic for the individuals involved (the little girl is now growing up in a strange country and for many years has not seen Janet Jenkins, who helped raise her), I concluded a few years ago that its greatest significance as a social turning point was in revealing the new willingness of many in organized religious conservatism, “even the lawyers among them, to applaud and defend the defiance of court orders.” Since then, important sections of the social right have evolved further toward a position on lawbreaking more often historically associated with those well to their left.

August 4, 2012

George Jonas: Israel is essential … to keeping Arab regimes in power

Filed under: Middle East, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:48

George Jonas in the National Post explains that Israel is essential to the dictators, strongmen, and demagogues of the many Arab and Muslim states that surround it:

An increase in hostility was predictable. Hatred against Israel, kept on a low boil, is the organizing principle of the Middle East. It’s the region’s main fuel of governance; often its only fuel. Some ruling regimes — kings, dictators, whatever — may have oil wells and sandy beaches, but other than hating Israel (and looking after their families and tribes) they have few if any ideas. If they do, chances are it’s to hate some other group in addition to Israel.

In the Middle East a country’s national purpose often amounts to little more than a list of its enemies. A feeling of being ill-done by dominates the consciousness of groups and individuals. Since it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s not necessarily baseless: The easiest way to have an enemy is to be one.

The centrality of hatred to the culture is remarkable. The Cartesian idea is “I hate, therefore I am.” Self-righteousness is overwhelming: each desire thwarted becomes an example of justice denied. It’s not a pretty place, but millions call it home.

[. . .]

We won’t understand much about the Arab Spring as long as we persist in looking at it through Western eyes. We see popular uprisings against dictatorships as moves in the direction of Western-style democracy. If they happened here, they probably would be. Where they’re actually happening they’re taking their societies in the opposite direction.

The Arab Spring is an attempt to return the region to its roots. It’s not to Westernize the Middle East and make it more democratic; it’s to Easternize it and make it more Islamic. If the early 20th century was about the East trying to join what it couldn’t lick, the early 21st may be about the East trying to lick what it hasn’t been able to join.

August 2, 2012

England: land of history … and archaic laws that still can bite

Filed under: Britain, History, Law, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:50

Do you live in England? Do you live near an old church? Brace yourself for possible bills to repair that lovely old pile of crumbling stone:

Because of the way land was carved after the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, the owners of many houses sited near historic churches have a legal obligation to contribute to repairs.

People living in more than 5,000 parishes in England are subject to the historic “chancel repair liabilities”, which affect properties built on former monastic land.

Most take out a form of insurance against the liability but many so-called “lay rectors” are entirely unaware of the obligation as it is rarely enforced.

But now, after an attempt by the last Government to tidy up the law in the wake of a high profile court case, parishes have been ordered to trawl through land records dating back hundreds of years to clarify exactly who is liable.

A 10-year legal deadline imposed by the last Government is due to expire next year and local parish bodies have been warned they could be legally responsible if they fail to comply.

July 19, 2012

Multiculturalism and suttee in the Raj

Filed under: Britain, History, India, Law, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

ESR on a famous incident in British India in the 1840s:

The first lesson is for the various sorts who call themselves “multiculturalists” and “moral relativists”. Napier showed us that these ostensibly liberating doctrines actually translate into “might makes right” — that, in the absence of a common normative ethical framework, disputes about “custom” will be won by the tribe with the most ability and will to use force.

The second lesson is for people who, having noticed than relativism and multiculturism are a road to ruination and blood, then argue that we must fall back on religion as the only possible source of truly universal ethical norms (If God is dead, is anything permissible?). Notice that the would-be widow-burners are priests? The “custom” they are arguing for is exactly their bid in the game of if-you-accept-my-religious-premises.

Napier, in promising those priests a hanging, says nothing of any religious counter-conviction of his own. And it would make no difference to the lesson if he had — except, perhaps, to underline the point that religion is just another form of tribal particularism and thus fundamentally unable to lift us away from the bloody muck of might-makes-right.

July 7, 2012

Genuine iconoclasm in Mali

Filed under: Africa, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:57

Robert Fulford on the religious strife in Mali:

In the modern West, an iconoclast is someone who criticizes cherished beliefs. The people we call iconoclasts deal in nothing more dangerous than opinion. But in regions dominated by Islamists that term becomes painfully literal.

It means breaking icons — destroying sculpture and desecrating tombs for the purpose of religious purity. It means gangs of thugs with axes and dynamite and the need to impose their beliefs on others.

This week the world learned that iconoclasm has found a new home in the wretched African state of Mali. A landlocked, geographically misshapen nation of 14.5 million, Mali has borders with seven other countries. At the moment, Malian refugees are crossing three of those borders (Mauritania’s, Niger’s and Burkina Faso’s) to escape the results of the Islamist rebellion that overturned their national government in March.

The dominant rebels belong to Ansar Dine, which means “Defenders of the Faith.” They are Sunnis allied with al-Qaeda. They now control northern Mali and they have put the destruction of graves and monuments at the top of their agenda.

In the last week or so they have destroyed six graves of ancient Sufi saints. At a 15th-century mosque in Timbuktu they took their axes to an entrance considered sacred. According to local belief, it was expected the door would remain closed till the world ended.

This is a Muslim vs. Muslim conflict. A spokesman for Ansar Dine summarized the party line on venerating Sufi shrines: It’s un-Islamic. “What doesn’t correspond to Islam, we are going to correct.” It’s what must be done to defend the faith.

May 15, 2012

Israel and the draft dodgers

Filed under: Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:21

Israel’s growing ultra-orthodox community are exempt from the military draft, and even those who choose to join the military are demanding changes in the way the military operates. Strategy Page explains:

Israeli police have declared open season on young men and women who refuse to serve in the armed forces. Last year 2,700 Israeli men and over a thousand women illegally avoided military service. That’s fifty percent more than in 2010. This trend is partly in response to the growing number of Jewish Israelis claiming religious exemptions. Government efforts to placate the religious conservatives have not worked. This perceived unfairness is making it difficult to maintain morale and high standards in its armed forces.

The most obvious sign of this declining morale is the growing number of young men and women who are avoiding service (draft dodgers, in U.S. parlance). The Israeli armed forces has about 175,000 people on active duty, about 60 percent of those are draftees (men serving for 36 months, women for 21 months) and a third are women (who can serve in 90 percent of military jobs). There are another 450,000 reservists (those who have already completed their active service). You get drafted at 18, unless you have a deferment. Currently about a quarter of men and nearly half the women get some kind of deferment.

The military expects this deferment rate to keep increasing. In an effort to get more young men with a religious deferment to volunteer, the army is giving in to conservative Jewish sects that demand unmarried men and women remain separated while in the military. At first, this meant smaller (company and battalion size) units containing only “religious” (actually, very religious) Jews. But when these units came together for operations or ceremonies, the religious Jews demanded that female soldiers be segregated from the men. They also demanded that women soldiers not sing (Israeli soldiers sing a lot) when religious male soldiers are around. In general, female soldiers were increasingly not allowed to mingle with male soldiers if there are religious soldiers present. All this sort of thing has been bad for morale, angered the female soldiers and caused a public uproar over the issue.

[. . .]

But the most contentious problem is, ironically, the religious one. Israeli women know very well how women are mistreated in Moslem countries and they see ultra-religious Jews as a local version of that. The ultra-orthodox (Haredi) Jews are becoming more aggressive in imposing their rules on others. Violence by religious extremists is becoming more common. The most conservative religious Jews have increasingly used violence in Jerusalem. For example, they oppose the government allowing cars to park near Haredi neighborhoods on Saturday (the Sabbath). They also oppose billboard ads that feature women anywhere near where Haredi live, and segregate women on buses in their neighborhoods. Now they want to segregate the military as well, in addition to keeping most of their young men and women out, and that has aroused a lot of public opposition.

May 5, 2012

We have always been at war with Oceania

Filed under: Asia, Middle East, Military, Religion, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Strategy Page on the western wishful thinking that contrasts with attitudes in Islamic countries:

The senior commander in the U.S. military recently ordered a course taught at a staff school for the last eight years to be revised to eliminate any mention of a war between Islam and the West. The course (“Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism”) pointed out that Islam, at least according to many Islamic clerics, is at war with the West. The U.S. has officially denied that since shortly after September 11, 2001, despite the fact that many Islamic clerics and government officials in Moslem nations agree with the “Islam is at war with the West” idea. But many Western leaders prefer to believe that by insisting that such hostile attitudes are not widespread in Moslem countries, the hostility will diminish. To that end the U.S. government has, for years, been removing any reference to “Islam” and “terrorism” in official documents. This comes as a shock to military or civilian personnel who have spent time in Moslem countries. The “Islam is at war with the West” angle is alive and well among Moslems.

There is plenty of evidence. For example, twenty nations account for over 95 percent of terrorism activity in the world. Of these twenty (Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Uganda, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Palestinian Territories, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Colombia, Algeria, Thailand, Philippines, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Burundi, India, Nigeria, and Israel) all but four of them (Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Colombia, and Burundi) involve Islamic terrorism. In terms of terrorism fatalities the top four nations (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia) accounted for 75 percent of the world total of terrorism related deaths. All of these were the result of Islamic radicalism, often directed at other Moslems and not just non-Moslems (“infidels”).

This has been the case for decades, and the Moslem world does not like to dwell on this fact. Many Moslem leaders admit that there is a lot of Islamic terrorism but insist that it’s all the fault of Infidels who are making war on Islam, so some Moslems feel compelled to fight back. The catch-phrase Moslem leaders like to repeat is that Islam is the “religion of peace.” It is not, and the historical record makes that very clear.

April 16, 2012

Member of the House of Lords offers £10 Million bounty for capturing Barack Obama and George Bush

Filed under: Britain, Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:11

I’m not sure what they’re putting in the drinking water in the House of Lords, but whatever it is, it must be powerful:

During a recent visit to Pakistan, Lord Nazir Ahmed, a member of the British House of Lords who originally hails from Pakistani Kashmir, announced he was putting up a bounty of £10 million for the capture of U.S. President Barack Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush. The announcement, made at a conference held in the Pakistani town of Haripur, came in response to a recent U.S. announcement offering a $10 million reward to anyone providing information leading to the capture of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of the Pakistani jihadi organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and emir of LeT’s charity arm, Jamaatud Dawa.[1]

Stressing the seriousness of his offer, Lord Ahmed said he would back the bounty at any cost, even if it meant selling his house. Qazi Muhammad Asad, minister for education in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government, was among those present at the conference at which the announcement was made.

Yes, it’s likely a fake story, but it’s too funny to check before running it.

Update: Oh, perhaps it’s a real story after all:

Lord Ahmed suspended from Labour Party after ‘offering £10m bounty for capture of Obama and Bush’

Lord Nazir Ahmed, 53, who in 1998 became the first Muslim life peer, was reported to have made the comments at a conference in Haripur in Pakistan.

A Labour Party spokesman said: “We have suspended Lord Ahmed pending investigation. If these comments are accurate we utterly condemn these remarks which are totally unacceptable.”

[. . .]

But Lord Ahmed complained that party chiefs had not spoken to him before announcing the move and challenged the party to produce evidence against him.

He had told the meeting that Mr Bush and ex-Labour prime minister Tony Blair should be prosecuted for war crimes however, he added, speaking from Pakistan.

[. . .]

Asked about the reported comments, he said: “I never said those words.

“I did not offer a bounty. I said that there have been war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan and those people who have got strong allegations against them — George W Bush and Tony Blair have been involved in illegal wars and should be brought to justice.

“I do not think there’s anything wrong with that,” he said — adding that he was equally concerned that anyone suspected of terrorism should face justice as well.

April 12, 2012

QotD: Atheists in America

Filed under: Liberty, Quotations, Religion, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

This ongoing conflict between sectarianism and secularism is the raison d’etre for a non-theist movement, and it is why categorical disrespect for godlessness matters. The assumption that religious belief is essential to morality advances mistrust of secular governance. Of course, religious people have a right to their biases, and the irreligious have a right to challenge them. Non-theists can always voice their opinions individually, but, like other ideological and demographic minorities, they need a movement to amplify their voices. And regardless of their individual psychic needs for recognition (which do not interest me), non-theists have a collective political need for a movement that encourages openness about disbelief: The more godlessness is normalised, the less it will seem inherently immoral, the more likely the perspectives of non-theists will be considered, instead of reflexively condemned.

What should they bring to the church/state debates? As a small, disrespected, irreligious minority, non-theists should appreciate freedom of conscience. Non-theism is often associated with hostility toward religion, thanks partly to the prominence of a few ‘New Atheists’, but it can and should promote respect for religious liberty. People who believe in no religions are not apt to privilege any one of them: evangelicals tend to be wary of Mormonism, as the Republican primaries have demonstrated, but to an atheist or agnostic, belief in the resurrection is no more or less worthy of respect than belief in the Angel Moroni.

Scepticism is a great leveller; it favours extending equal speech and religious rights to all orthodoxies, which is the essence of civil liberty. Freedom of conscience doesn’t distinguish between new, outré religions derided as cults and traditional mainstream faiths, as former American Civil Liberties Union executive director Ira Glasser tried explaining to an interviewer years ago. He was asked about the chanting, saffron-robed Hare Krishnas, who commanded little popular respect. They were ‘weird’, the interviewer remarked to Glasser. ‘I don’t know’, he replied. ‘Have you taken a look at the College of Cardinals?’

Wendy Kaminer “In America, atheists are still in the closet”, Spiked!, 2012-04-11

April 3, 2012

How Galloway’s win in the “Bradford Spring” caught the media completely by surprise

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

Mick Hume tries to dissect the actual results of the Bradford by-election, rather than what the London media is trying to say about it:

It was, they tell us, ‘a one-off’. Top pundits have tried to put the shock victory of Respect candidate George Galloway in the Bradford West parliamentary by-election down to the ‘unique’ personal appeal of the new member of parliament, to suggest it has limited relevance for wider UK politics.

[. . .]

In his victory speech the ever-modest Galloway hailed his remarkable triumph as a ‘Bradford Spring’, a popular uprising on the Arab model. What this result really demonstrated was the depth of the autumn-style decay in mainstream British politics, where all of the parliamentary parties have shed their distinctive political foliage and been reduced to a dull, indistinguishable mulch.

[. . .]

Respect ran an ‘Islamicised’ campaign, appealing to the area’s many Muslim voters on the basis of divisive and insular communal politics. This included a remarkable leaflet, signed in Galloway’s name, which assured them ‘God KNOWS who is a Muslim. And he KNOWS who is not… I, George Galloway, do not drink alcohol and never have… I, George Galloway, have fought for the Muslims at home and abroad all my life…And with your support, and if God wills it, I want to give my remaining days in service of all the people — Muslims, Pakistanis, and everyone in Bradford West’, and much more in a similarly ‘socialist’ vein.

[. . .]

At a national level, the most striking thing about the Bradford West result was how it took the political and media elite almost completely by surprise. There they were at Westminster last week, happily musing about how the fuel panic and ‘pastygate’ might damage David Cameron’s Tory-Lib Dem Coalition government, and confidently predicting that Ed Miliband’s opposition Labour Party was ‘well placed’ to clean up in the polls. Then suddenly, on another planet called Bradford West, an alien breed known as ‘ordinary voters’ stunned the entire Westminster village.

It was a graphic illustration of how detached and isolated from the populus the political and media elites have become. The immediate responses to the result rather reinforced the point. According to one neighbouring Labour MP, Galloway’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother a few years ago had been ‘a very significant factor’ in persuading local people to vote for him rather than the Labour candidate. Leave aside for a moment the small fact that Galloway’s risible appearance on CBB, crawling around the floor in a red catsuit unflattering to the fuller figure, was widely considered to spell the end of his political career. And leave aside also the question of who introduced ‘personality’ and celebrity politics as a substitute for principles. The idea that people are sheeple who will vote for whoever they see on reality TV summed up the mixture of incomprehension and contempt with which the elite views the masses today. They have not got a clue what any of us is thinking.

March 24, 2012

Rex Murphy on Islamophobia

Filed under: Media, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

He’s against coining new “-phobia” memes:

It is far too late to protest what I see as the false coinage of “phobia” words — not that I will let that stop me.

We have (from some time back) francophobia; somewhat more recently, homophobia; and, most volatile and recent of them all, Islamophobia. All of these, in one form or other, are founded on a loose analogy with the genuine phobias — arachnophobia, agoraphobia or hydrophobia, for example, which speak to a morbid and irrational dread of — in the case of these terms — spiders, open spaces and water. But the new phobia words are more terms of art, than clinical descriptions.

Islamophobia is meant to be a blanket term that refers to unthinking hostility to Islam and Muslims. There is no doubt that such prejudice exists. But there is no doubt, too, that cries of “Islamophobia” are issued to suffocate argument, to deflect or deter analysis of some behaviour that is factually related to Islam. There is no doubt either that some Muslims have acted as terrorists, either singly, or in association with various Islamist groups. To point this out is not a phobia, but a simple respect for reality.

[. . .]

Bin Laden’s declared purpose, his “war” on the West, and his overt linkage of his cause with a fundamentalist version of Islam, are the primary drivers of our non-phobic — which is to say, very rational — fear of, and hostility to, manifestations of Islamic fanaticism. When post-9/11 successor attacks took place, taking off from Bin Laden’s example or direction — such as in Madrid, London or Bali — it was not Islamophobia when some immediately assumed these were al Qaeda, or Islamist-inspired. It was just a natural first response, the acknowledgement of a pattern. In most cases, that first response proved correct. In fewer cases, such as Norway, it was not.

We should be clear on such matters. The too-energetic effort to fall outside the shadow of prejudice has served to distort the response of investigators. Looking for everybody else except the most “likely” suspects first, wastes time and resources. In France, for instance, the yearning for the villain to be a “far-right neo-Nazi” clouded the initial response of police. Blindness as a form of social or ethnic courtesy is never good policy.

March 22, 2012

Syria is a “nation made up of little pieces, and they all are about to fall to the floor”

Filed under: History, Middle East, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

Geoffrey Clarfield on the history of Syria and the possible future of the region:

From outside Syria, it appears that a government is waging war against citizens who are demanding change and democracy. That is certainly how many media outlets are reporting the ongoing violence in that country. But as many Syrians know, this war is about something else entirely. Something much larger.

A century ago, Syria was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Although the administrative sub-districts of what is now called Syria changed many times under the Turks, by the early 20th century they comprised a number of distinct administrative units that centred around key cities, such as Damascus and Aleppo. Beginning in 1874, they also included the areas around Jerusalem (which had a Jewish majority). The British called the area “the Levant.”

The area was, and still is, made up of a number of occasionally co-operating, occasionally competing ethnic groups: Sunni Arabs, Maronite Christians, Arabic-speaking Greek Orthodox Christians, Aramaic-speaking Christians, Arabic-speaking Alawis, Muslim Gypsies, Armenians, Jews, Yezidis, Kurdish-speaking Sunnis and nomadic Sunni Bedouin — each with their own distinctive history, loyalties and competing interests.

[. . .]

As the Sunni Arab elites of Aleppo and Damascus clamoured for independence from the French, they became enamored with three overlapping ideologies. The first was that of Pan-Islam, which many rejected because it was seen as too similar as that of the defunct and discredited Ottoman Empire. The second was Pan Arabism, which held that the Arab world was once one country, and was destined to become one again. (This school of thought would survive until Nasser’s era in the 1950s and 1960s, but no one talks about it anymore.)

The third was “Greater Syria.” This theory held that the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean were all members of one unit — including present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and southwestern Turkey. Extreme versions of the “Greater Syria” ideology include Cyprus and the Sinai desert. In none of these worldviews is there any room for an independent Jewish homeland, a Christian Lebanon or, in the masimalist cases, even a Greek Orthodox Cyprus. Unlike Pan Arabism, the ideology of Greater Syria still has some resonance in the region.

March 11, 2012

Tim Worstall on “Protestant” and “Catholic” laws

Filed under: History, Law, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:41

No, not the differing flavours of Christianity themselves, but more their different approaches to understanding and interpreting the law:

The Protestant revolution was, in part (it never does to strain these analogy/simile things too much) that the Bible, when in the vernacular, as clear an outline of God’s will as any should need. Intervention was not needed, a man could commune directly with the Word and the Will of God.

On the matter of the law I am a Protestant. As rigid and unyielding as any Puritan, Lutheran or Calvinist. With a twist of course: the law must be written so that it can be understood directly, without that intervention of the priestly caste of lawyers, accountants, diversity advisors or bureaucrat’s helplines.

If you cannot write a law with the clarity of “thou shalt not kill” then go away and think through what it is that you’re trying to enact, the language that you are using to do so until you can, with clarity, tell us what it is that we must not do at fear of time in pokey.

That modern society is complex is no excuse. If you cannot write simple and simply understood laws then better that we have fewer laws.

That the Puritans went gargantuanly off the rails by using their new found revelations of God’s Will to tell everyone else what to do is true. But I do find it interesting that our new would be ruling class, the nomenklatura, are adopting such a Catholic view of the law. We’ll make it all so complex that no individual can understand it and thus there is the necessity of that nomenklatura to tell people what to do in detail by “interpreting” it.

March 10, 2012

“[A]theists and theists […] are quacking and waddling in the same way in different ponds”

Filed under: Media, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:19

Kennedy expresses the idea that atheism is a religion and becomes “a minor celebrity and a major troll” to her social media circles:

I didn’t know what fire and brimstone was until I made a throwaway claim recently during an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher. It seemed pretty unaudacious at the time, but by dropping the simple sentence “Atheism is a religion,” I opened a biblical floodgate of ridicule, name-calling, and abuse.

My Twitter feed and Facebook page became engorged with angry responses. “Your adherence into adulthood to what is usually an adolescent phase (Libertarianism), speaks volumes about your confirmation bias levels,” wrote Kernan. Touchstone Supertramp added; “Damn girl you got a big forehead.” A guy named Kevin and about 70 other people shared this bumper-sticker nugget: “‎If atheism is a religion, then off is a TV channel.” Liz wrote, “Kennedy, is that if atheism constitutes a religious belief than anorexia is whenever you don’t eat.” Michael wrote: “re·li·gion /riˈlijən/ Noun: 1. Whatever Kennedy says it is.” That was awesome. Beth called me a minor celebrity and a major troll—and it was also awesome to have somebody think I’m a celebrity.

[. . .]

Newberg and his late partner Eugene D’Aquili mapped various parts of the brain showing activation in specific areas when people were undergoing certain religious rituals or experiences, such as a shaman being in a trance or a Buddhist entering a mystical state. Regardless of the religion, the brain function was the same. Something was happening when these people experienced their version of religious phenomena, and the scans lit up like Robert Redford’s suit in The Electric Horseman.

This does not prove God exists, but it does show humans are wired or biologically predisposed to believe in something. When I interviewed him for this article, Newberg said his research demonstrates that “we are wired to have these beliefs about the world, to get at the fundamental stuff the universe is about. For many people, it includes God and for some it doesn’t. Your brain is doing its best to understand the world and construct beliefs to understand it, and from an epistemological perspective there is no fundamental difference.”

[. . .]

When atheists rail against theists (as many did on my Facebook page), they are using the same fervor the religious use when making their claims against a secular society. By calling atheism a religion, I am not trying to craft terms or apply them out of convenience. I just see theists and atheists behaving in the same manner, approaching from opposite ends of the runway. The entire discourse about religion stems from those who think they know more than the other guy. But what we really know is that we don’t know much. And we seem to share the same mechanism in our brains that drives us to make claims of faith and rationalism as a way of making sense of the great unknown.

You can call atheism a belief system, which Newberg guardedly does, or you can make a stronger assertion and say that atheists and theists, who have conveniently developed hate-tinged froth and vitriol for one another, are quacking and waddling in the same way in different ponds. Either way, they are ducks and atheism is a religion. At least it is in the hands of those who are so religious about their disbelief that they place the weight of the argument on the feathery shoulders of their believing brothers and sisters.

March 1, 2012

American involvement in Afghanistan: the pessimistic view

Filed under: Asia, Military, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:07

Steve Chapman recounts the arguments against staying the course in Afghanistan:

When Afghans erupted in rage over the careless burning of Korans at Bagram Airbase, the upheaval was not just about Muslim holy books. It was also about the grossly dysfunctional relationship between us and them — a product of the huge cultural gulf, our outsized ambitions and the irritant of our presence.

Afghanistan is a medieval country that we can barely begin to understand. Yet we presume that with all our money, technology, weaponry and wisdom, we can mold it like soft clay.

Things don’t work so well in practice. Only one out of every 10 Afghans who sign up to join the army or national police can read and write. The military’s desertion rate, an American general acknowledged last year, approaches a staggering 30 percent.

Many if not most Afghans have never heard of the 9/11 attacks. Even the deputy chairman of the government’s High Peace Council told The Wall Street Journal he doesn’t believe al-Qaida destroyed the World Trade Center.

So what can we expect ordinary people to think when they see the country overrun with armed foreigners who sometimes kill and injure innocent civilians? Or when they hear that those infidels are burning Korans?

The war in Afghanistan is now the longest in American history, and if hawks have their way, we’ll be there for years to come. Alas, we have demonstrated the force of two things we already knew: Some mistakes can’t be undone no matter how you try, and every guest eventually wears out his welcome.

In Afghanistan, we originally failed to make the needed commitment to destroy the enemy, because President George W. Bush was distracted by his eagerness to invade Iraq. As a result, the Taliban survived and eventually mounted a major comeback. Barack Obama decided to pour in troops and funds, but by that time, Afghan patience was nearing exhaustion.

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