The Atheist Blogger

According to the BBC, Birmingham City Council have decided to ban websites about atheism, witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy, and criminal activity. Every other site is allowed (especially Christian, Islamic, Hindu sites) but the new system has effectively outlawed any sites relating to satanism or the occult, which apparently now includes atheism. Strangely there is one section of the Birmingham Councils software description that stands out.

or any other form of mysticism

Hold on a sec. Mysticism is defined as “a direct, intimate union of the soul with God through contemplation or ecstasy”^[1], and as “the pursuit of achieving communion, identity with, or conscious awareness of ultimate reality, the Other, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, or insight”.^[2]

It seems that every single religion practices this. Prayer, whether it is Christian or Muslim, is a “pursuit” of some form of communication between God / Allah and the believer. So already all Christian and Islamic websites which advocate prayer should be out of the loop. So should all evangelical websites that call for believers to have a “personal relationship” with Jesus. The last time I checked, a personal relationship is a union of sorts, but is definitely a direct experience. Indeed, many Christian denominations have a mystical theology called theosis, and the Muslims have a similar one known as Irfan.

In fact the Wikipedia page lists a few mystical practices for both Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as one for Jainism. If this software is really meant to block any other form of mysticism, then it should rightly block every religious site on the web.

I’m fully in support of atheist sites being banned from work, as well as Wiccan or Satanistic sites. The National Secular Society are considering legal action to let atheist sites be viewable, but they have the entire thing backwards. They should instead be harassing the council to block all religion based sites, or even better, block the entire web from work altogether.

The council issued this statement about the value of internet access for staff:

The aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business reasons.

I can think of something that would be easier to manage internet access. Instead of having a blacklist, have a whitelist (like China). Instead of banning sites that have certain keywords or names, block every single site and then start compiling a list of allowed websites. When a staff member needs to view a specific website, simply add it to the list. It would take literally two minutes at most to do, and you would get staff actually working instead of logging into MySpace and Facebook all day.

Thanks to The Amiable Atheist for the link!

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