The latest Carnival of the Godless #101 is up at the Lay Scientist. The Lay Scientist has a competition with his Carnival, you have to work out what the numbers are, I have no clue.
DB0 is holding the next one and he has set his sights fairly high. He’s planning on listing them within a story with the theme of Impossibilities. Good luck DB0. Lets all make DB0’s life hard and send him lots of submissions 🙂
Filed under Carnival of the Godless
Republican White House hopeful John McCain has announced he will suspend his presidential campaign to focus on the financial turmoil which has rocked Wall Street and global markets. from abc.net.au
Filed under politics
Image via Wikipedia
I found this fascinating quote today:
It is undeniable that atheist activism is desperately needed. It is also clear that we can make an important difference through even a minimal investment of time. So why aren’t more atheists engaging in activism? It occurs to me that it might be useful to address some of the obstacles to atheist activism. This post examines black-and-white thinking as one such barrier to activism.Vjack, Atheist Revolution: Obstacles to Activism: Black-and-White Thinking, Sep 2008
You should read the whole article.
First use of Zemanta Reblog
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News from UK. A British jury acquitted environmental activists who damaged a coal-fired power station. The Court cleared the six activists of criminal damage, accepting they had a “lawful excuse” to damage the Kingsnorth property to try to prevent the even greater damage of climate change.
The defence of “lawful excuse” under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage — such as breaking down the door of a burning building to put out the fire.
As the article in The Australian says “[this] will send chills down corporate spines across Britain”. This is the second time Greenpeace activists have successfully used the “lawful excuse” defence.
I wonder if this law could be used against churches? I can see the defence case now:
The damage caused to the minds of young children is far worse than the damages we caused writing “God is a Delusion” on the church walls.
So how about it? Anyone got some spray paint tins?
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Abortion prevents emergency care.
That’s right you heard it here first, if the Victorian government legalises abortion (hopefully the Upper house will pass the bill soon) then Catholic hospitals could be forced to close emergency departments. So says Melbourne’s Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart, who also says relaxed abortion laws amount to an attack on religious freedom.
No Archbishop, relaxed abortion laws give rights to women, to allow women to be in control of their own bodies. It allows women to feel less guilt about having an abortion. I understand some women feel guilt, remorse, or upset about getting an abortion; making it legal is one less obstacle in their way, one less worry for them.
The Archbishop thinks it’s contrary to Catholic ethical codes, all I can say is the Catholic church needs to reconsider their ethics.
Close emergency and maternity wards thus putting possibly hundreds of lives in danger just because you think ‘every sperm is sacred’ doesn’t cut very good moral codes with me. What do you think?
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Ahoy there me Hearties, it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day. Why not join in ya’ scurvy dogs?
Filed under pirate
The observant amongst you will notice the new header picture. It is a shot of Cronulla Beach taken from one of the rock pools (baths). Just visited there yesterday, for the first ever time, to catch up with relatives who were also visiting there. Here’s another photo, of the famous/infamous beach.
Cronulla North Beach
Filed under atheism
Compass … this time we focus on Christian schools. How do Roman Catholic and other Christian schools teach values and religion? How do ‘Christian’ values inform teaching across the curricula? A fascinating look at what goes on in a variety of Christian schools in this country today.
What makes them Christian, and are they all the same? To find out, Compass visited four independent schools across three states.
First up they visit Community Christian Academy, Launceston Tasmania. I’ll be honest and brutal here, the first part of this show had me in both fits of laughter and utter disbelief (at the outright, in my opinion, craziness). From the opening line by Alan Greenwood, the principal:
So the bible is the manual and the ultimate truth, wisdom, guide for the staff and for the students and that’s where we get our absolutes from.
This guy should have a real good read of the bible if he thinks it’s the ultimate truth. I know some apologetics are going to visit here and say the bible is the “ultimate truth and wisdom”, but rather than try and explain here I recommend they read these sites:
Next they visit Chairo Christian School (CCA), Drouin Victoria which is not quite as fervently religious as the first one. I thought Rob Bray‘s statement
People choose Chairo Christian School because of their perceptions about a value system that they’re looking for.
was interesting, particularly in the use of the word “perception”. Though I’m not sure how he plans to do this:
… the bible needs to be able to be demonstrated to be relevant to where people are at today …
Relevant? Let’s pick a verse at random, how about Exodus 35:2
Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.
Someone’s going to be damn busy putting to death the millions of people who work on the ‘sabbath’ these days. I could pick a whole lot more from both the old and new testaments, but lets see how many my readers can find.
Next Compass visits St Aloysius College (Catholic), Sydney NSW, a much larger and older Christian school, with much higher fees. I must say the attitude of this school was a lot more enlightened than the previous two (more on this later), as shown in this statement by Chris Middleton:
Essentially I think we encourage our students to question, and we don’t see questioning of faith as a bad thing.
A quick cut to to introduce the next school St Andrews Cathedral School (Anglican), also in Sydney NSW. Originally opened in 1885 to educate choir boys. Tim Bowden‘s opening statements were typical religious rhetoric, but statements later on were not quite so typical.
Christian education has to do with understanding this world as being god’s world, understanding people it’s created in the image of god and tragically fallen.
As far as I’m concerned the world is the world, humans weren’t ‘created’, and I may have done a few bad things in my past but I’ve never “tragically fallen”
St Andrews has a fairly ‘open door’ policy on who it enrolls, they estimate only about a third are actually Anglicans. Unlike St Aloysius which has about 95% Catholics and the students have to pass a test of Catholicism.
Like the Muslim schools, discussed in last weeks post, most of the Christian schools also have some sort of religious devotions as part of school life.
Chairo holds parent prayer groups, staff devotions each morning in which they sing and pray, followed by student devotions. All the staff at Chairo and CCA are Christians and many are “called” to teach at those schools.
As with many exemptions for the religious (why religions should get special attention and be allowed to have exemptions for anything is beyond me, but that’s another matter) the Narrator pointed out:
Laws in Australia allow independent schools to take religion into account when choosing staff. Even so, some, like Sydney’s St Aloysius don’t insist that teachers share their faith.
As the narration pointed out, no matter what other things a school teaches it still has to teach to the state curricula. However, all these schools have some form of religious teachings, some more so than others. Tim Bowden’s statement:
… to challenge the ideas that we’re putting out there and to learn how they will respond when it comes to issues of ethics and lifestyle and matters of value and purpose.
Sounds very noble, but to me it just sounded like “we are teaching them how to be good apologetics”. All these schools made an emphasis on how all the teachings had a religious point of view (much like the Muslim school did). As Tim Bowden said:
There’s a sense in which the Christian worldview is not compartmentalised as a discreet stand-alone component of our education. It’s rather something that permeates everything we do.
Which then goes on to permeate the rest of society. hmmph
The CCA teaches using a method they call Accelerated Christian Education (ACE).
*** Warning to all atheists *** This section of the show contains the words science and creationism in the one sentence. 😆
The ACE system has a bible verse at the start of each subject, and in science it teaches creationism.
“Hold on, Hold on” “WTF” “Guffaw Guffaw” where the exclamations coming out of my mouth at this part of the show. There is no scientific basis for creationism, how can it be part of a science class??? But wait there’s more absurdity:
Alan Greenwood
In the Academy we don’t waver from what the bible says. We believe that there is plenty of scientific evidence which backs up creation. So we don’t see the bible as being just a bunch of myths and fables. We in fact see it as being a scientific text book.
I believe that if you were to say to a six year old, do you believe that we originated from a soup somewhere deep out there in the jungle, or do you believe that an almighty god created us, to me the second suggestion is far more logical than the first.
OK Alan, and anyone else up to the challenge, show me one piece of evidence that backs up creation…. I’m waiting…..
A scientific text book? Going to be tricky to do some of that math with Pi = 3 instead of 3.14159265 etc. The Bible also claims that rabbits chew the cud, that the pattern of goats’ coats can be changed by what their parents look at while copulating. There are many more inaccuracies, I’m not going to go into them all here. Some people will find some things in the bible that are reasonably scientific, hardly surprising, even some Sci-Fi novels have some level of scientific accuracy. However if you really want to teach science you use a recognised science book, not a Sci-Fi novel of a book of myths like the bible.
I’m not going to repeat Bronwyn’s (a teacher at CCA) words here, but if you can handle the sheer absurdity of it then check the link below and look for the section that starts: “Bronwyn Eastley The scientists have worked out… ” you have been warned. At least she finishes her statement correctly “That’s my view”, that’s about the only true thing she says.
At least the two large Christian schools have got it mostly right.
Evolution is taught as science. Creationist ideas are saved for religion classes.
Though this must surely cause some conflict for the students?
Both Chris and Tim have in some ways quite secular views which is encouraging. As Chris says:
… we have no problems with teaching evolution as the accepted general theory for explaining how we got here.
and Tim has similar views about science:
… the bible is our final authority on all matters of faith and practice. It is not the final authority on matters to do with geology, matters to do with maths, matters to do with economics.
Though as you can see both temper their views, and therefore the teachings within the schools as having an overall biblical backing and viewpoint.
The program then discussed the morals and values taught within these schools. Abstinence and ‘institute of marriage’ play a fairly large role, I just hope they also teach all the other aspects of sexual education. I agree that teaching children to respect each other and form healthy relationships is a good thing. I also think teaching children not to jump into bed with every Tom, Dick and Harry, is a good thing. But teaching abstinence only hardly ever works, children also need to be taught safe sex practices.
The schools also promote evangelising, even though they didn’t exactly call it that. Peer pressure at schools is very dominant and I’d have to be very skeptical about any evangelising at schools, even religious schools.
Finally I’ll leave you with Chris’s final quote, where he is saying that for some students the school is their only exposure to religion:
School is their most fundamental experience of church. And while that’s not perfect it’s better to my mind than simply losing a generation.
How very telling, the bottom line is that it’s all about getting and keeping more followers, more sheepple.
As seen on Compass Sunday 14 Sep 08 (repeated on ABC 2, Friday 6pm). The transcript of A Christian Education is available online.
update:
Just noticed Sean has also blogged about this, but focussed on the two schools which, as he says:
frankly scared the hell out of me
He has some good information and critique, particularly on CCA and their ACE program.
Filed under christian, Compass, religion, religious school
just thought it was fucking hilarious.
Watching Rockwiz just a few moments ago and one of the guests’ (Abbe May) special subject was “Lucille Bogan”. Abbe May mentioned this song and spoke the first two lines, she suggested we look it up on the ‘net’ and I did. So, for your listening pleasure here it is, with the lyrics below so you can all sing along.
Lyrics courtesy of Delta Haze Corporation:
SHAVE ‘EM DRY (unexpurgated version)
I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb,
I got somethin’ between my legs’ll make a dead man come,
Oh daddy, baby won’t you shave ’em dry?
Aside: Now, draw it out!
Want you to grind me baby, grind me until I cry.
(Roland: Uh, huh.)
Say I fucked all night, and all the night before baby,
And I feel just like I wanna, fuck some more,
Oh great God daddy,
(Roland: Say you gonna get it. You need it.)
Grind me honey and shave me dry,
And when you hear me holler baby, want you to shave it dry.
I got nipples on my titties, big as the end of my thumb,
Daddy you say that’s the kind of ’em you want, and you can make ’em come,
Oh, daddy shave me dry,
(Roland: She ain’t gonna work for it.)
And I’ll give you somethin’ baby, swear it’ll make you cry.
I’m gon’ turn back my mattress, and let you oil my springs,
I want you to grind me daddy, ’til the bell do ring,
Oh daddy, want you to shave ’em dry,
Oh great God daddy, if you can’t shave ’em baby won’t you try?
Now if fuckin’ was the thing, that would take me to heaven,
I’d be fuckin’ in the studio, till the clock strike eleven,
Oh daddy, daddy shave ’em dry,
I would fuck you baby, honey I’d make you cry.
Now your nuts hang down like a damn bell sapper,
And your dick stands up like a steeple,
Your goddam ass-hole stands open like a church door,
And the crabs walks in like people.
Aside: Ow, shit!
(Roland: Aah, sure enough, shave ’em dry?)
Aside: Ooh! Baby, won’t you shave ’em dry
A big sow gets fat from eatin’ corn,
And a pig gets fat from suckin’,
Reason you see this whore, fat like I am,
Great God, I got fat from fuckin’.
Aside: Eeeeh! Shave ’em dry
(Roland: Aah, shake it, don’t break it)
My back is made of whalebone,
And my cock is made of brass,
And my fuckin’ is made for workin’ men’s two dollars,
Great God, round to kiss my ass.
Aside: Oh! Whoo, daddy, shave ’em dry
Filed under Abbe May, Lucille Bogan, Rcokwiz
I received two long comments from Muslims on my ‘A Muslim Education’ post. The comments from lwtc247 required more than a simple response from me in the comments section, hence this post.
I suggest you first read lwtc247’s comment at the ‘A Muslim Education’ post, then come back and read this response. I will quote some of lwtc247’s comment here, but for brevity not all of it.
lwtc247: You misunderstood what was meant by “They can’t escape who they are”. It means they are Muslim no matter where they go; …
I understand they can’t switch their ‘Muslimness’ off, what I was trying to say was – why do they have to be Muslim in the first place? Why can’t children be allowed to grow up without being indoctrinated in any religion. As Dawkins says "why do we have to identify children by their religion?"
Yes I do use the word indoctrination because that’s what I, and many others, see it as. From wikipedia:
Indoctrination is the process of inculcating ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or a professional methodology. It is often distinguished from education by the fact that the indoctrinated person is expected not to question or critically examine the doctrine they have learned. (emphasis mine)
The emphasis is the main difference, between religious instruction (as lwtc247 calls it) and religious indoctrination. Teaching people religion, covering all forms of religion, in a historical, philosophical manner can be called religious instruction or education. However forcing (not the best word, but you get my point) children, to pray, wear specific clothing, disallow them from socialising with the opposite sex, and the hundreds of other rituals, dogmas and ideologies (which have no basis in reality) is indoctrination. Calling it anything else is just using "weasel words".
As the wikipedia entry goes on to say:
Most religious groups instruct new members in the principles of the religion; this is usually not referred to as indoctrination, because of the negative connotations the word has acquired.
"usually not referred to", mostly by the same religious people doing it, strange that!
lwtc247: I think your wider point is about apostasy. Yes, many Muslims look very dimly on apostates, …
Apostasy in any form is just plain wrong, from killing people because they are apostates to just shunning them (all of which occur in all religions to some extent somewhere in the world). I acquaint it as a form of racism, "because they aren’t like me I will shun or punish them". How is that a reasonable thing to do, how can anyone justify it?
lwtc247 then goes on to discuss the penalty for treason, amongst other things, and questions if the punishment is the death penalty. lwtc247 quite rightly points out the complicit nature of Australia assisting in providing evidence they knew "would contribute towards the proclamation of the death penalty for suspects in Indonesia." I agree that this is quite a grey area, in which we denounce the death penalty at home but aid in someone getting the death penalty in another country. I’m open to suggestions here.
As far as the death penalty for treason, that possibly still exists in the UK, however it doesn’t mean it justifies people being killed just because they don’t follow the same religion! In Australia the punishment for treason is life imprisonment.
lwtc247 then asks for my personal opinion: What’s your personal view on the death penalty, … What if someone tortured then murdered members of your family? Would you not wish reciprocation?
Personally I don’t agree with the death penalty, sure, if someone close to me was tortured and murdered I would probably wish to do the same to them. BUT that doesn’t mean I would do it, or that the government or legal system should do it for me. Again there’s a vast difference between blowing innocent people up and leaving your religion! Either way the death penalty is not my choice of punishment.
lwtc247 then gets back to the topic of the original post, but first throws this line in: It seems you really dislike religion (inc Islam), Yes which is your choice, Correct but your dislike of it makes you jump to rather hasty conclusions. Disagree (my answers in red, non-italic)
lwtc247 tries a little math to show that the school is actually subsidising the government.
Epic Fail. I’ve heard this excuse hundreds of times, usually along the lines ‘if the private schools ceased to exist the government would have to pay for the whole lot and wouldn’t be able to afford it’, But that’s never going to happen because the private schools (vast majority of which are religious schools) will still want to exist. So what ever happened to "user pays"? If you want your child to go to a non-government school then you should be prepared to pay for the whole thing yourself. I’m happy for my taxes to pay for schooling, just not happy for it to be paying for segregated religious schooling.
lwtc247: I can imagine why Muslim parents may not be so happy about it because, rightly or wrongly, they feel the secular life will mean their kids are exposed to things which put them in conflict with Islam and hence they seek avoidance of that possibility.
Same could be said about any religious school. Though it shows a huge measure of insecurity that they would be worried about their children being exposed to things that conflict with their faith. Is their faith that flimsy? Anyway what’s the problem with children realising their faith is wrong? There are thousands of different faiths on this planet, who’s to say which one is right? Perhaps none of them are, have you ever considered that? Have these children been able to consider this?
lwtc247: You claim to reject dogma, but seem to have accepted it as you give no reason why you agree with the Secular Party of Australia’s statement on integration.
I do reject dogma, particularly religious dogma, and I don’t see how putting a quote from the SPA demonstrates I am accepting their dogma. The SPA quote was simply a question asking how the school could justify segregation. A question I considered myself but I thought John’s wording was more eloquent. Nothing more nothing less. I can even agree with some things some religious people say (ie lwtc247’s question on Australia’s involvement leading to a death penalty) this doesn’t mean I’m going to follow any of their dogmas.
lwtc247 then asks what seems like a valid question: If Muslims should integrate and show tolerance and respect for secular and atheist views, why cant atheists and religious secularists accept Muslim opinions with regards to their faith too?
There are quite a few reasons why, I’ll only cover a few, I hope other readers will fill in the rest. This goes for all religions not just Muslim: 1) There is no evidence for what you believe in. 2) Things said and done in the name of your religion are divisive and dangerous. 3) Religious practices negatively impact on the wider community. 4) It costs me money.
If you are asking if I should "respect" your religion, then I suggest you read this article. (only because it saves me the time typing out my own similar views, not because I’m following someone else’s dogma)
lwtc247 trots out the old "we’re not all mad" line: Please don’t underestimate the tolerance Muslims show for non-Muslim religious secular and atheistic practices conducted not just in Oz, but across the globe.
Obviously lwtc247 didn’t watch Foreign Correspondent the other night!
lwtc247: There are reportedly over a billion Muslims world wide and the vast majority live in relative peace with their neighbours. People just want to get on in life and be happy with with their fellow man and surroundings.
I tend to agree with these statements particularly the second one. My only concern has been put much better by others than I could ever do. Tolerant religionists indirectly support the radical religionists. Marcus Brigstocke puts it rather well.
Without the audience to prop it up … fundamentalist religious fanaticism goes away.
I highly recommend all my readers to watch Marcus’ video (about 7 minutes) he argues a few of these questions and my points very well.
Finally I’d like to say that I will make an effort to watch the video lwtc247 recommended. I would also like to point out that lwtc247 you are probably wrong when you state: It’s the kind of information you’re not usually invited to see in secular or areligious indoctrination.
Many religious people would be surprised how much religious material atheists devour. The thing is unless you have both sides of the story it’s more difficult to make an argument against it. I have recently been concentrating on reading secular and atheist literature, but have also read more of the bible than I did even when I did bible study many years ago. I’ve read some portions of the Quran and frequent a few religious blogs to get their side of the story. I watch both religious and non-religious documentaries, in fact I’ve probably watched more religious documentaries than non-religious ones. I will be happy to watch "An Islamic History of Europe", apart from the religious aspect of it, I find history interesting anyway.
Finally I don’t know how you can use "secular or areligious" and "indoctrination" in the same sentence. As I have already pointed out, the difference is; in the religious community you are not expected "to question or critically examine". On the other hand in the atheist, skeptical and secular community questioning and critically examining is de-rigueur, it’s expected.
I’m sure I will get "called on" with some of the things I say, that’s one of the interesting things about writing this blog. If I say something I have to be willing to defend what I’ve said, or if proved wrong be willing to accept the new fact(s). I endeavour to do both to the best of my abilities. Occasionally we may just have to agree to disagree.
Anyone is free to leave comments here, and I welcome all points of view, as long as they are mostly on-topic and not outright defamatory. As often as possible I will reply to those comments; though not always this in-depth. 🙂
Cheers
Oz
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