Archive for the ‘morality’ Category
Hitchens: Waterboarding is Torture
Well known atheist author Christopher Hitchens agreed to be waterboarded by the U.S Military in an effort to see if it constituted as torture or not. Waterboarding is used in interrogation and is effective because it “simulates” drowning and forces a gag reflex on the victim. It involves having layers of towel placed over the head, and the entire body restrained. The towel is held down firmly and water poured over it, which seeps through and enters the nasal passages of the victim.
Christopher Hitchens described the entire experience in his article for Vanity Fair:
The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.
Christianity doesn’t work as advertised
An interesting collection of articles showing that:
- “Abstinence Only” doesn’t work.
- Christianity corrupts good morals unlike their claim that they created them.
- Too much religion is dangerous.
- Christian divorce rates are much higher than Atheist ones.
- 75% of born again Christians are regular liars.
- People’s lives aren’t transformed by Christianity.
A question of morality?
Due to recent discussions on my blog post Answering “ed”, I’ve felt it necessary to clarify a few of the points I made when responding to the comments made by ed. A lot of the things I wrote were not explained well enough since I hadn’t had the time to sit down and think out my words properly. Before I do this though, I should add this simple “disclaimer”:
I am not, in any way (academically or otherwise) a sociologist and I have never studied sociology. I am however, a freethinker, and as such have formed by ideas on the origins of morality merely on what I have read, combined with my own reasoned thinking. As a freethinker, I invite anyone to criticize and even disprove my points, as long as you have decent enough evidence to suggest otherwise.
Now I’ve got that out the way, I’ll begin.
Christians love to claim that the Bible brought morality into the world, and that without God, we would all be treacherous murdering bastards (to use the term lightly). This is simply not the case, and if it were, we simply wouldn’t be here today. Can you imagine a world without morality? People would kill people simply for the fun of it, we would steal, insult, rape, and torture. Not just certain individuals…but everyone. The outcome? Extinction.
Yet supposedly this world already existed, and not too long ago either. In fact, if we go back about 2000 years, we should find ourselves in the middle of a civil war between every member of the human race. What we do find however, is a relatively peaceful society, prone to the occasional conflict, but on the whole quite sophisticated both socially and technologically. The Bible will not be seen for at least another 200 years or so (in its current format), and yet we see murderers being executed along with thieves. Some form of morality is in place here, so where does it come from?
