The Atheist Blogger » catholicism

YouTube Thursday – Clifford Stoll, Dave Gorman, & Eddie Izzard

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:00:10 +0000

What I would have given to have had Clifford Stoll as a science teacher back when I was at school! The man seems to bask in his hyperactive mind, constantly switching from subject to subject in this 18 minute presentation he gave at TED a few years ago. The whole thing is bizarrely easy to follow given the format (or should that be non-format), and is highly entertaining.

Dave Gorman is a British comedian who rose to fame after he travelled the world looking for people who shared his name (literally asking people “Are you Dave Gorman?”). This video is from a show he did covering another wacky idea of his, where he went in search for various Googlewacks (a two word search term that returns only one result). In it, he recants how he got a rather unusual tattoo after a night out drinking in Austin, Texas.

Finally, two videos from Eddie Izzard, a famous comedian and atheist. Parodying religion is a regular occurrence in his shows, and in my opinion he is second only to the great George Carlin at this. The first video covers religion in general, especially the formation of the Church of England.

The second video is a hilarious take on the Genesis story, starring James Mason as God, and Sean Connery as Noah.

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March for a Secular Europe

Adrian Hayter — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:02:05 +0000

On Valentine’s day, I took 3 of my student group up to London in order to protest the Vatican’s interfering in Italian politics, and their general views on women and homosexuality. It was a great day out, and we managed to attact quite a few protestors for the march, which started at the Natural History Museum, and ended at the Italian Embassy. It was great to meet some famous people there, like the political activist Peter Tatchell (who performed a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe twice), and the President of the National Secular Society, Terry Sanderson.

As promised, I took loads of photos, and those of you who have me on Facebook can simply view the two albums there. For those who don’t use Facebook or haven’t added me, I have installed a cool plugin for the blog that makes my facebook albums available through a special gallery. If you wait for the entire page to finish loading before clicking on anything, each picture should appear in a nifty JavaScript viewer which you can use the arrow keys to move through.

Album 1 (60 photos)

Album 2 (22 photos)

My student group is currently planning a trip to the Darwin Exhibition at the Natural History Museum, which we will hopefully do next weekend, although tickets are selling out faster than we originally thought, so we may have to do it in early March.

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Crackergate Continues: FSMdude Interrogated

Adrian Hayter — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:42:21 +0000

Apparently there is no limit to how low Catholics will sink to defend their crackers. After PZ Myers desecrated a cracker back in July, he received numerous emails expressing hate, including some death threats. Then, when a Canadian guy started posting videos of Eucharist desecration under the name “fsmdude” on YouTube, he received the same sort of thing. A Catholic also found out where he lived, and wrote a letter to his father, prompting him to take down his videos.

Crackergate continued though, and police showed up at fsmdude’s house one night. They had received reports that fsmdude might have a gun and was planning to murder children at a local school. fsmdude has a series of 3 videos re-enacting the talk he had to have with the police, which included him having to explain what “FSM” meant, and why Pastafarianism wasn’t a dangerous cult.

Seriously though, if Catholics want to defend their God, I have no problems with that. Just don’t make up blatent lies that accuse someone of being a terrorist. That is so low it’s actually sickening.

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When Are Scientists Not True Scientists?

Adrian Hayter — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:18:14 +0000

I had an interesting conversation with an atheist friend on mine over IM the other day. They were arguing that scientists who had religious beliefs couldn’t be “full” scientists because of their irrational belief systems. I pointed out that this accusation was bordering on the “No True Scotsman” logical fallacy, because it doesn’t properly consider the definitions involved.

Firstly, a scientist is someone who furthers human knowledge by experimentation and observation. Of course this definition does not quite cover it, as it can also mean someone who uses the scientific method (observing, forming hypothesis, testing, forming theories etc.). The question remains is how some people can fit religion into this picture.

I argued that the majority of theistic scientists find ways to separate their religious beliefs from their science. They understand that their work reflects the observable world, and maintain that their religion reflects the unobservable. Others hold that without their religious beliefs, none of what they do would make any sense. They claim that the world just makes more sense with a God in the picture. I can understand this viewpoint, although obviously I disagree with them.

My friend countered that there were also scientists who did not fit in the above category. People like Michael Behe or Guillermo Gonzalez certainly do not hide their religious beliefs, even if they try desperately to in order to force I.D into public schools in America. However, even in these cricumstances I would say Behe and Gonzalez are “true” scientists. Sure, they might contribute some wacky ideas to the scientific community, but they have in the past contributed some good ideas (in order to get to where they are in the first place). Anyway, the whole point of science is to separate the wrong ideas from the right ones. Of course both Behe and Gonzalez are very unscientific in their denial that I.D is all but dead and buried in terms of actual scientific accuracy.

In the end, we agreed to disagree on the subject. My friend couldn’t see how scientists can be so rational at work and so irrational in their own time, but I guess you’d have to ask a theistic scientist that. I know Ken Miller is a Roman Catholic, so I guess that means he thinks God sent his son down in the form of the most advanced species on Earth. To me (and all atheists I presume) this makes absolutely no logical sense, but it does make for interesting conversation.

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The UK Is Not A Secular Nation

Adrian Hayter — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 22:00:08 +0000

I get tired of Americans always claiming that we have it “so good” over here because we are such a secular country. In reality however, I think America is more secular. Your constitution restricts the government from making a national religion^[1]; in essence calling for a separation of church and state (the definition of secularism). We have no such ruling.

Many would argue that the words “In God We Trust” on money and “One Nation Under God” on the Pledge of Allegiance are not things you would find in a secular nation, and this is true. The difference being that in the USA, you could take your case to the Supreme Court and get these words taken off (in principle, although for other reasons this might not happen). In the United Kingdom, the government could decide to put “God” everywhere and we wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.

So both countries are not truly secular (I doubt there are many countries that are), but to say that the UK is predominantly more secular is false.

National Religion

For one thing, the United Kingdom has a national religion, Christianity. It’s called “The Church of England”^[2] (CofE), and is headed by the monarchy, our head of state. The head of state, currently Queen Elizabeth II, has to swear to protect the religion of the UK at their coronation. When asked,

Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolable the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?^[3]

Liz replied,

All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God.

Who was doing the question asking? Why, only the person prevailing over the coronation: The Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest position to hold in The Church Of England. In a truly secular nation, the Queen would have been crowned by the Prime Minister, and would have vowed to protect the laws of the nation, not the laws of God.

Government

House Of Lords

The church has infiltrated the very heart of government though, and 26 members of the clergy are always elected to the House of Lords to sit as the Lords Spiritual^[4]. The House of Lords are overseers of the House of Commons, which holds the government as elected by the people. Whilst their power is restricted by parliamentary acts, they are able to delay certain bills.

Not only are clergy sat in the House of Lords, but a prayer is said before chamber sessions even begin^[5]. Both the House of Lords and House of Commons participate in prayer, which although voluntary, is still an anti-secular event.

Additionally, the blasphemy laws that plagued our nation since their 17th century induction into the common law system were only abolished on May 8th, 2008^[6]. That’s 6 months ago to-the-day. It’s a step in the right direction, but the long road to secularism is miles long.

Education

I know full well how much religion impacts on education. Over 25% of primary schools (ages 5-11) are CofE Schools, and just under 6% of secondary schools (11-16) share this attribute^[7]. These are government funded schools, and these figures are for one church. There are many Roman Catholic schools that receive funding from the government too.

I went to two primary schools, both CofE, and both situated next to churches. We had prayers twice a day, and when we left, we were given a Bible as a present (I threw mine away). My secondary school was founded and named after Bishop John Wordsworth^[8] and is situated next to Salisbury Cathedral, following the CofE faith. We also had prayers daily, but luckily when I left I had something useful…namely an education.

Now I’m attending Royal Holloway, a university that is connected to the monarchy in some bizarre way, and therefore still connected to the Church of England.

So please, the next time you consider how much “better” it is over here, why not consider how much worse it is too?

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Atheism And Amorality: Are The Consequences Of Adopting Atheism “Unlivable”?

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:00:11 +0000

Today’s article was written by Luis Dias, a blog subscriber.

Christians and other religious people often use the moral argument not only as evidence of a deity, but also as a philosophical weapon against atheism, and the argument, though never made explicit, implicitly goes as follows:

God is the Creator of Morals
Atheists deny existence of God, therefore
The atheists’ utopia is an amoral society

They obviously cite Stalin and Pol Pot’s example to strengthen this idiocy. Further more, they say, without a divine reference, an infinite guardian of values of right and wrong, atheists are left dumbfounded and such a godless society eventually recedes to the stone age, and this is where they even bring the 2nd law of thermodynamics and equate it to the theology of the original sin (!)

Apart from the implicit circular reasoning of it which could be teleported to any kind of silly argument, like for instance:

God is the Creator of milk
Atheists deny the existence of God, therefore
There’s nothing stopping “milk” of degenerating to a poison. (remember the 2nd law!!)
Milk isn’t poison, therefore God exists, QED.

It’s a very popular fallacy. I’ll generalize it to make the mistake even clearer:

God is the sole structure of all things
Atheists deny the existence of God
Absent the sole structure, the cosmos collapses instantly

This would only be true if, and only if, there wouldn’t be any other structure lying around unknown or just plainly ignored by theists that make sure that things don’t fall apart, but rather, thrive and evolve. In fact, there is nothing but hearsay to prove that God is indeed such structure.

In the fairy tale world, morals would exist apart from humans, eternally defined by God, and humans would only discover (not invent) a few bits about it from now and then because of God’s good will. Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever to the existence of these morals outside of human existence. It’s only perfectly reasonable to affirm that morals are man’s made, just like potatoes, lemons and cows are. The key word to all this is of course Evolution. There’s a reason why Dawkins is constantly evoking Darwin’s work as the most extraordinary idea ever made, and that’s because it works on almost every process that has time to generate new iterations and death to kill the bad ones. This is true in life’s evolution, it’s true on the artificial selection of the animals and vegetables that were evolved to fit our own tastes and biological needs, but it is also true in the ideas that mankind evolved.

Morality is among these ideas. The only ingredients you’ll ever need to generate morals are:

A somewhat intelligent species
Time
Death

Natural Selection does the rest. It probably begins when people realize other people’s death and suffering and are able to understand that it isn’t exactly the kind of thing they desire for themselves. If they see a murder or a theft, they are able to think “what if it was against me?”, and the Golden Rule begins to generate and evolve by itself. People don’t kill because they recognize other’s as equals to them and don’t like the idea of being killed. Same as theft, treating others well, lying, etc. A society that foster these ideas thrives, the ones who don’t end up collapsing on their own.

Usually, people admire how well the world is aligned according to our needs, but the real reason isn’t obvious, due to our limited lifespan, which is that We live upon the shoulders of our ancestors’ hard work and struggle to build the structures of our world, and upon the failures of those seeking destruction, greed, and malice.

Natural Selection isn’t perfect and it won’t always choose the best option. It will choose what survives. No wonder then that irrational beliefs are just as common as the Golden Rule. One common trait is to define a certain “characteristic” of the perpetrator and generalize that people who share these characteristics are certainly just as bad, as in “The murderer killed because he was black, let’s get rid of blacks”. We can all recognize this racism, “This society suffers in the hands of the Jews”, or more subtle examples, as in “That for a nation which has attained maturity, morality is essentially dependent on the religious sanction, and that when this is rejected, morality will soon decay.”, from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The underlying message is clear, either you people bow down to God or you are eventually bound to become manic psychopaths.

Fortunately though, there is another idea that tries to really discern what’s better and what’s worse faster than Natural Selection or Religion will ever do. It’s called Reason. It dispenses with all the fairy tales and all the myths of our history. It fuels itself out of reality, to observe what is going on, to measure it, to hypothesize, test and conclude. It fuels itself from debate, battle of ideas, and a passion to discover the truth, humility and patience.

As a bonus, I leave you with other very interesting lines from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which I am sure will provoke a healthy discussion ;).

“We may see this wherever the great revolt from Christianity, which began in the eighteenth century, and which is so potent a factor today, has spread. It is naturally in France, where the revolt began, that the movement has attained its fullest development. There its effects are not disputed. The birth-rate has shrunk until the population, were it not for the immigration of Flemings and Italians, would be a diminishing quantity; Christian family life is disappearing; the number of divorces and of suicides multiplies annually; while one of the most ominous of all symptoms is the alarming increase of juvenile crime.”
“Without God, an absolute duty is inconceivable, because there is nobody to impose obligation. I cannot oblige myself, because I cannot be my own superior; still less can I oblige the whole human race, and yet I feel myself obliged to many things, and cannot but feel myself absolutely obliged as man, and hence cannot but regard all those who share human nature with me as obliged likewise.”
“Thus the Greeks of classical times were in moral questions influenced rather by non-religious conceptions such as that of aidos (natural shame) than by fear of the gods; while one great religious system, namely Buddhism, explicitly taught the entire independence of the moral code from any belief in God. To these arguments we reply, first: that the savages of today are not primitives, but degenerates. It is the merest superstition to suppose that these degraded races can enlighten us as to what were the beliefs of man in his primitive state. It is among civilized races, where man has developed normally, that we must seek for knowledge as to what is natural to man.”
“that for a nation which has attained maturity, morality is essentially dependent on the religious sanction, and that when this is rejected, morality will soon decay.”
“We may see this wherever the great revolt from Christianity, which began in the eighteenth century, and which is so potent a factor today, has spread. It is naturally in France, where the revolt began, that the movement has attained its fullest development. There its effects are not disputed. The birth-rate has shrunk until the population, were it not for the immigration of Flemings and Italians, would be a diminishing quantity; Christian family life is disappearing; the number of divorces and of suicides multiplies annually; while one of the most ominous of all symptoms is the alarming increase of juvenile crime.”
“Without God, an absolute duty is inconceivable, because there is nobody to impose obligation. I cannot oblige myself, because I cannot be my own superior; still less can I oblige the whole human race, and yet I feel myself obliged to many things, and cannot but feel myself absolutely obliged as man, and hence cannot but regard all those who share human nature with me as obliged likewise.”

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How Many Ways Can You Desecrate The Eucharist?

Adrian Hayter — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:00:30 +0000

I can personally think of about…7 different ways off the top of my head before I start getting bored and have to go play video games. A Canadian YouTube user who goes by the name fsmdude (his noodliness be praised) is trying to find out just that. So far, his video series has seen 20 desecrations, including

Desecration by Frying Pan (plus whipped cream for a tasty fried snack)
Desecration by Toilet
Desecration by Glue-gun
Desecration by Magnifying glass (plus the good ol’ Sun)

My personal favourite (because it is so cute) is video #15, Desecration by Groundhog:

Great work, PZ Myers would be proud!

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Ballooning Brazilian Priest Gets Darwin Award

Adrian Hayter — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:18:21 +0000

As reported earlier this week, 41 year old Brazilian Roman Catholic priest Adelir Antonio di Carli was confirmed dead after his ballooning attempt when badly wrong. The priest was trying to beat a record 19 hour flight, attached only to helium balloons. A day after he made an emergency call to say he was crashing into the ocean, a mass of balloons were found in shark infested water.

Now, the priest has been entered into the 2008 Darwin Awards for removing himself from the gene pool. The great thing is, since Roman Catholic priests enter vows of celibacy, he had already removed himself from the gene pool, resulting in the first “double Darwin” award.

A lesson should be learnt from all this. If you are attempting to do some kind of world record balloon trip, at least learn to use your GPS before you set off!

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Crackergate Aftermath

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:43:17 +0000

A week ago PZ Myers asked everyone to email the president of UCF to complain / voice concerns over the handling of students Webster Cook and Benjamin Collard. I sent a short email, along with a few other hundred people. Today I received this response:

Thank you for your e-mail.

Laws regarding student privacy prevent us from commenting about
individual UCF students. But, in general terms, when a student allegedly
violates student rules of conduct, his or her student account is placed
on hold.

The student is notified of this action and informed that the hold will
not prevent registration for classes. A student is allowed to register
after making a request to release the hold. The Office of Student
Conduct follows this procedure for any student who is referred to it.

More information about the entire Golden Rule and the student conduct
process is available on our Web site, www.ucf.edu. Please be assured
that UCF is committed to following its standard procedures to ensure
fair outcomes in all student conduct review cases.

Additionally, it is the university’s policy to treat all people with
dignity and respect, without regard to race, creed, color, national
origin, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual
orientation, veteran status, or political opinions and affiliations.

Amy J. Barnickel
Senior Executive Assistant to the President

From Promise to Prominence:
Celebrating 40 Years

Of course its the standard copy/paste response that was probably sent to everyone, but it’s the last paragraph that confuses me. Firstly I’m happy that Cook and Collard are not going to suffer any setbacks in their education because of this, but the so called “policy” outlined in the last paragraph clearly states

“without regard to race, creed, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran status, or political opinions and affiliations.”

Clearly the university is going against its own policy by regarding the religion of others over the individual. If the policy actually counted for anything, this whole issue would have been brushed aside as “free expression”, the same as any political statement or opinion. The UCF need to stop bowing to demands of evil religious organisations and start thinking of their students.

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Atheist Strike + Eucharist Desecrated

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:15:22 +0000

Who says atheists cannot organize themselves? A group of atheist bloggers who debunk everything Ray Comfort says (Raytractors) have organized a strike of his blog. I’ve joined their group as a contributor, so hopefully there will be some posts debunking Ray from me as well, after all I have done them in the past.

Ray Comfort rules his blog like a dictator. Every comment goes through a moderation phase before being displayed, and any comment that contains vulgar language or doesn’t capitalize “god” and “jesus” is removed. Repeat offenders are blocked. He calls his website “Atheist Central”

Due to this behaviour, and Ray’s continual ignorance in science, Raytractors has declared a strike for all atheist commentators of the blog. The aim of the strike is to see what happens to the blog when it is pretty much devoid of all life, since it is evident that Ray has more atheist “followers” than theist ones, mainly because of the absurdities of his beliefs. The rules of the strike are quite simple. You can visit Ray’s blog as many times as you want, but you cannot post a comment. Instead, why not write your comment as a blog post if you have a blog, or send in your comment to an atheist blog you read. I would be willing to post any comments you want to make about Ray Comfort right here.

The strike has no official end, although the words “2 weeks” have been thrown around. Keep up to date with the Raytractors blog though, and you will know when it actually happens. If you see an atheist commenting on Ray’s blog despite the strike, be nice and inform them of it.

Eucharist Desecrated

Sorry to bind two posts into one, but moving house is taking all the time out of my life. I’ve already spent the day helping carry boxes upstairs, cleaning out the shed, and ordering a telephone line. The other main news today is PZ Myers eventual desecration of the Eucharist.

Bowing to popular demand, Myers nailed a rusty nail through the “cracker” and into some pages torn out of the Koran, as well as some torn out of The God Delusion, simply to prove that at the end of the day, they are just paper. There is no need to treat any of them with respect.

This picture will be sent around the interwebs like wildfire:

Cracker, Qu'ran, and The God Delusion with a good helping of coffee and banana

So, “Crackergate” is over…or has it just begun? Bill Donahue of the Catholic League has already released a press announcement over the issue calling for the immediate dismissal of Myers by his university. I can see this going on for a very long time.

To keep you entertained, here are some pictures of the new house I took whilst moving in. One of which is of my housemate Hiren and I whilst relaxing in the lounge with our laptops. Before you point it out in the comments, yes my laptop is really that big (19″ with a full keyboard), and yes it is far too reflective for its own good.