I’m sick and tired of reading about ‘militant’ atheists. I’ve never heard of atheists trying to advance their goals through violence, but ardent atheists are almost always yoked with this adjective, even when they receive largely favourable press coverage, as in this Economist article. Needless to say, there are plenty of religions out there with militant adherents, so why don’t we all agree to save the term for them until atheists start murdering abortion doctors or flying airplanes into buildings?

I saw this video on Gavin’s blog and I’m reposting it here because I think it’s important that people see it. I felt sick watching it.

I’ve never been keen on religion, but I’m genuinely shocked by just how downright evil the people running religious institutions in Ireland were/still are. These swine are worse than Nazis, and yet hordes of fools still go to mass in this country every week and queue up for bread that they’re supposed to believe is Jesus and then give money to one of the richest organisations in the world via the collection plate. If you believe in God, fine, but don’t go to some church to hear some depraved paedophile-rapist lecture you on morality.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that there should be a law against blasphemy, and I believe that the existence of any such law would dull public discourse and free expression. The very possibility of prosecution would cause editors to hold back from publishing any material that some nutjob religious fundy could claim to take offence to, and so I don’t see how this law could be anything but extremely harmful. Let’s just tweak the constitution with a referendum the next time an election swings round.

Update: There’s a more learned take on the matter over at The Jackanory, and as usual Twenty Major’s perspective is well worth reading (“This is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s like saying you can be fined for libelling Santa Claus or the fucking Tooth Fairy…”).

If the Pakistani state can’t control parts of its territory 100 km from the capital, then how can it be safely relied upon to keep its nuclear arsenal out of the Taliban’s reach?

Something I stumbled across on YouTube. It’s pretty striking, seeing a camera track a falling body as it flails and spins. I’d forgotten just how wretched the whole event was.

I’ve posted this before, but I think you’ll agree that it bears reposting. It’s probably a little too kind to religion though. I wouldn’t despise it so much if religion was limited to just worshiping imaginary gods, but instead they almost all contain prescriptions (or, more usually, proscriptions) on how to live your life, because the all-powerful being that created the universe is obviously deeply concerned with the minutiae of everyone’s life, right down to your diet and your dick. I’d rather worship McDonald’s, and I don’t even like their food.

Christopher Hitchens speaking in Toronto in November 2006 on the motion “Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate.”

Lulz all-round.

There’s a few things to be said about this. Firstly, the tone of “Fitna” is reportedly so over the top and hysterical that no sensible person would be swayed by whatever arguments it tries to make. Therefore, having it out in the public domain isn’t doing anyone any harm. You shouldn’t ban things just because some people, or even most people, don’t like them. As John Stuart Mill explained in On Liberty, it’s better to have incorrect views aired publicly, where they can be evaluated and rejected by society at large, rather than try to stifle their expression, and in the process create a kind of cult following around them.

Of course the problem here is not that “Fitna” was banned by a government, which would be an outrage, but that it was pulled by a website because of security concerns. Thus, yet again, intimidation has carried the day, as it did back 2005/2006 when newspaper editors across Europe caved into fear and refused to publish offensive-yet-newsworthy cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. It is of course understandable that LiveLeak would remove the video after its staff receiving death threats and so on, but their decision is still disappointing.

However, the real villains of this piece are obviously not the LiveLeak management but the people behind the campaign of intimidation itself. Although their thuggery is remarkable, the most outstanding feature of these clowns is their stupidity. Through their crazed threats of violence they’ve managed to spin the news cycle 180º and have turned a minor news item about a scaremongering Dutch film into another major free speech issue in which the entire media establishment will be arrayed against them and not Geert Wilders. In fact, Wilders and his juvenile film are now likely morph from a minor and derided curiosity into a cause célèbre for the media, in which almost all of the political right and a good deal of the left will end up backing Wilders by default.

By strangling the release of “Fitna”, these enemies of free expression are only going to encourage more people to believe that maybe Geert Wilders has a point when he claims that Islam and Liberalism are incompatible. They’re making Wilders’ argument better than he could ever have, had he been allowed to speak.

On the basis of these highly selective out-of-context clips he really does appear to be a complete douche bag.

This video is funny too, especially the last line.

“The Golden Compass” is what Northern Lights was retitled for its release in America. It’s a smashing book, and so I had high hopes when I read that a film was in production. However, it seems that the people at New Line Cinema have opted to bowdlerize Philip Pullman’s story by stripping away all the anti-religious sentiment that characterized his His Dark Materials trilogy in an attempt to make it more palatable to religious parents worried that little Johnny will stop believing in God if he sees this film. The Atlantic has an excellent piece on the subject here (subscription unfortunately required).

I’m undecided as to whether I’ll go to see it. On the one hand, given I know that the production company has rode roughshod over the objections of the book’s fans and discarded a huge chunk of the book’s character in order to maximise ticket sales, then paying to see it only plays into their cold, number-crunching claws. On the other hand, I’m interested to see how they depict the book’s settings, the casting seems pretty solid (notice the cowboy from the Big Lebowski, Sam Elliot, as Lee Scoresby in the trailer), and Iorek Byrnison (the armoured polar bear in the trailer) is one of the greatest characters ever (although I never imagined that he’d speak like Ian ‘Gandalf’ McKellen).

Even if it turns out that the film is an utter sell-out of the book’s values, maybe some good will still come of it. In that Atlantic article someone representing Christian group frets that this movie, even shorn of the book’s anti-religious slant, is a form of “atheism through the back door”. They worry that children will read the books (the horror!) having seen the film, and thus claim that the film still serves the atheist agenda. If this does happen then it can only be a good thing in my view; maybe if religious children read these books and wrestle with objections to religion when they are young then perhaps when they grow up they’ll have better responses to atheism than censorship. Also, having a polar bear centre stage can’t do the cause of global warming any harm.

I just hope that they at least have the good taste to refer to the Alethiometer by its name most of the time. “The golden compass” sounds moronic in my opinion.

A chara,

A letter from Ivana Bacik (September 27th) concludes as follows: “It is time for religion to be left outside the school door”.
She need have little fear. The weakening of religious practice inside and outside the school door is a major reason for the spate of shootings, murders, rape, abortions and other crimes in our country today.
We know where the great remedy is and it is up to us to apply it.

Is Mise,

(Fr) Tom Ingoldsby SDB,
Salesian College,
Pallaskenry,
Co Limerick.

I don’t know where to begin. I mean, few if any abortions are carried out in Ireland, since women have to travel to Britain in order to safely avail of what is an unfettered right in less benighted European states. Also, who are priests to talk about sexual abuse, save for in legal statements of contrition? And what difference would teaching children about Christianity make to murder rates? Let’s see some statistics, you smug, sanctimonious swine. Good luck with your attempt to yoke modern Ireland, backward as it is, with your craven “great remedy” of slavish devotion to a long-outmoded belief system. And what the hell does “SDB” stand for? It’s not in my dictionary, so I’m guessing its meaning is understood only to initiates of your kooky, dwindling cult.

I’m finishing up now because this is only getting childish.