Six Things Meme

I got tagged by (((Billy))) for the six random things about myself meme. Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you (I did).
2. Post the rules on your blog (I did).
3. Write six random arbitrary things about yourself (see below).
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them (see below – suckers).
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog (doing now).
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. (back at you (((Billy)))).

Six Random Things About Me:

1. I’ve cut my head open twice in bed related incidents.
2. I’m allergic to bee stings. Or at least I was last time I got stung (about 30 years ago) I may not be allergic to them any more according to medical opinion, but I’m not game to risk it. I’ve tried very hard to avoid bees since the last time I got stung. “Is that a balloon in your hand?” “No, it is my hand.”
3. I’ve appeared on TV at least twice. Once in an ABC current affairs program, and once broadcast live from an event at the Adelaide Festival Theatre.
4. My older sister and I have something in common that my younger sister and brother don’t.  (bonus point as this also reveals how many siblings I have)
5. I wear a lot of Polo shirts, but none by Lacoste. I don’t know what that says about me?
6. I like teasing people with half hinted at statements.  (as Fiery would say) ***snerk***

I’m tagging the following six people, however as this meme spreads it’s getting harder to find people who haven’t already been tagged. So if you have already  been tagged, or done this meme, just drop a link in my comments. If you don’t have a blog and want to get involved just leave your 6 random things about yourself in my comments.

Atheist Blogger (because we have something in common)

Atheist Revolution

Phoenix Rising (aka Fiery)

Green-Eyed Momster

Thump Thump Eyes

The Thinkers Podium (because we have something in common)

I’ve rushed this out since I’ve finally realised I’d been tagged (hadn’t checked my own blog for 2 days!) to try and beat others to my taggees. Don’t forget to have a look at the other post today about  abortion, censorship and  the atheist bus advertising campaign.

Aussie Atheist Bus Campaign – an update

A couple of days ago it came to my attention that the AFA’s Atheist Bus Campaign has hit another snag. From the transcript of the Religion Report radio broadcast the other day:

… the Atheist Foundation of Australia, who have been refused permission to buy advertising space on public transport.

You might have read in recent weeks that the British Humanist Association, assisted by crusading atheist Richard Dawkins, have been raising money to put their message on London buses. The ads, planned for January, will read, ‘There’s probably no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’

And in Washington, buses are already trundling around with a Christmas message from the American Humanist Association: ‘Why believe in a god? Just be good, for goodness’ sake’.

Well the Atheist Foundation of Australia wants to mount its own campaign, and says that its members and supporters have pledged $16,000 to fund advertisements on buses in Australia. So they’ve approached APN Outdoor, the company that manages public transport advertising in most Australian capitals.

According to the Atheist Foundation’s president, David Nicholls, APN Outdoor said that they had problems with the wording of the proposed message. But then after the Foundation made two sets of changes to the wording, APN Outdoor said they simply weren’t able to accommodate them.

WHY? Just because. David speculates that APN has rejected any and all atheist bus slogans because of the cultural belief that religion has some sort of privileged status. Even mild criticism of religion is shunned.

I suggest you have a read of the transcript or listen to the podcast, it’s quite interesting, After the host finsishes talking to David he contunes the discussion with Greg Clarke, Director of the Macquarie Christian Studies Institute who is open to allowing the atheist bus slogans “as long as it’s done with a level of civility”, which it was.

The radio show continues with a discussion about a new book, ‘In Your Shoes: Interfaith Education for Australian Religious Educators’, which provides advice for teaching students about different religious traditions. Some interesting comments from the author.

Back to APN censoring advertising, it appears that it’s not just atheist slogans they refuse to advertise. APN has also refused to carry the Catholic’s Respect Life Office (RLO) anti-abortion adverts which were going to display graphic pictures [to scare women into not having abortions]. Whilst I think the idea of showing graphic pictures and trying to scare women into not having an abortion is not very productive and amounts to not much more than psycological warfare against women at a time they can be very vulnerable, I’m not sure it’s really up to the advertisers to be censors? Or is it? Who should be ultimately responsible for what gets advertised?

In the article about the RLO’s advertising ban, I thought it was ironic that the RLO are worried about women’s mental health following an abortion. According to them:

Many women seeking help had experienced substance abuse, anxiety, sleep disorders, suicidal thoughts, psychiatric illness, risk-taking behaviour and relationship problems as a result of their abortion.

Well I’ve heard the same thing about women who had found out they were pregnant and didn’t want the child. I’ve also heard of womens lives that have been completely ruined because they were coerced into having a child they didn’t really want, some of these women have experienced the exact same symptoms the RLO described. So who is right and who is wrong? Should abortion be banned because some women feel bad afterwards? NO, I don’t think so, in fact I think if abortion wasn’t so stigmatised, especially by the religious, and women were provided with non-judgemental guidance before, and afterwards if required, a lot less women would have psychological problems with abortion. What do you think?

One more Bus advert banned by APN, ‘The Chasers War on Everything’ DVD release was going to carry the slogan:

“The only good thing to come out of APEC.”

with pictures of their APEC stunt. However APN has banned the advert for being “too political”.

I’m starting to wonder how APN makes any money, as they seem to not want to advertise anything even remotely political or anti-religious.

Who said churches were safe?

In rather sad news comes these two reports:

Gunman shoots three in church

A gunman opened fire during a church service in New Jersey on Sunday, wounding three people, one of them critically, authorities said.

A law enforcement official said the shooting may be the result of domestic violence.

Swordsman shot dead at Scientology building

A security guard has shot and killed a man wielding a sword on the grounds of a Scientology building in Hollywood.

Well that’s three posts today, that should catch me up for the weekend I spent offline entertaining guests instead of the internets.

Jackson converts to Islam

In more entertainment news:

Michael Jackson has converted to Islam and changed his name to Mikaeel, according to reports.
The LOLjacko on the Sun website is quite funny.

“Wacko Jacko” gets a little bit more “wacko” everyday.

All is forgiven John

The Vatican has semi-officially forgiven John Lennon for his remark that “the Beatles were bigger than Jesus”. As Tony Eastley on ABC’s AM show said today:

John Lennon’s old comment that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus caused such a stir at the time that some religious leaders called for the group’s albums to be burned and concerts boycotted. And in some places people were silly enough to do it. Forty years later though, it appears all is forgiven.

An editorial in a semi-official Vatican newspaper says Lennon’s remarks about Jesus were nothing more than the youthful joke of a working class man.

The church does take itself rather too seriusly sometimes.

report from abc.net.au/am

fun and game

Yes I know I said I was going to take a break from writing blogs for a couple of days, and I have spent some time catching up on other’s blogs, but sometimes you just need to pop bubblewrap, or hurl a haggis.

Thanks very much to Wineymomma for these links.

Random Findings

Here’s a bunch of things that have come my way the last few days:

God Trumps playing cards – very funny

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Internet Filter prophesy

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And speaking of the Internet Filter. There is a new political party here, the Australian Sex Party (I kid you not) due to commence it’s campaign this weekend in Melbourne at Sexpo (hey Sean didn’t you have some involvement with this). The sex industry is launching the new political party to counter the increasing influence of religious groups in politics and government, in particular the ridiculous Internet Filter (see No Clean feed in side bar). Reported a few days ago here.

Some more stuff on the Internet Filter. If Conroy and his loony buddies want to filter sex, violence, rape, murder, etc; then shouldn’t they also be filtering all references to the Bible on the internet, one of the most violent books ever written? Jack Marx thinks so in this excellent opinion piece, and if you have some spare time there’s over 400 comments to read. Watch the fundies get eviscerated. The bottom line is; if you don’t like it don’t read it, same goes with everything on the Interwebs (so Conroy don’t filter the thing, we ain’t China, Iran or North Korea).

update

Came across another great site called libertus.net with plenty of resource material on censorship in general, net censorship, and the mandatory ISP filtering plan. I’ve placed a link in the No Clean Feed section in the side bar.

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From the dispute on whether the New Testament trumps the Old Testament (mentioned in the comments from above). No it doesn’t. Jesus believed that the Old Testament was divinely inspired, the veritable Word of God.

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Monday night TV, two different shows, two different people said “I’m an atheist”. The Hack Half Hour had a discussion on Sex and Sin, interesting in and of itself, but nice to see someone openly say they are an atheist on National TV. If you missed this show I highly recommend you watch it via the HackHalfHour website. (I’m going to download it so I can re-watch it later). The other show Good News Week and the host Paul McDermott (well known atheist and religious shit-stirrer) openly states he’s an atheist. Maybe there is some hope for Australia if we can announce on prime time TV that we are atheists, and people still love us.

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Well that’s all for now, I’ve been in a blogging frenzy lately, I may take a break for a day or two. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff to keep you busy here and in all my recent posts.

Technorati Tags: internet filter,porn,sex,jesus,old testament,new testament,atheist,atheism,Good News Week,Hack Half Hour,Bible

My name is Atheist, Oz Atheist

Oh noes, my secret identity has been revealed.

Thanks to one of my nice friends, Fiery, for mocking this up and sending it to me.

How come so many of my nice friends are into LOLcats? Oh that’s right, it’s probably due to my secret identity.

So here’s a LOLbunny to all the nice women I know.

Actually I don’t know that many women, especially in the biblical sense.  😆

and I don’t even play World of Warcraft!

Technorati Tags: atheist,Oz,Oz Atheist,LOLcat,James Bond

I’m taking my bat and going home

The Independent Schools Coucil of Australia (ISCA) has threatened to close private schools if the schools funding bill is not passed by Federal Parliament by the end of this year. This is just a scare tactic by the ISCA to bully the government in to handing over money to predominately religious bodies and to try to avoid being properly accounatble for it.

Not surprisingly the ISCA is not happy about having to reveal their funding sources.

“We consider this to be intrusive and unnecessary and will almost certainly lead to a divisive public debate,”  (from abc.net.au/news)

How is it any more intrusive for other money making companies that have to reveal their sources of funding and submit fully audited records? If you want my tax dollars I want to know your financial affairs.

What is so wrong about a public debate on public spending to private schools anyway? Yes it might be divisive when people finally have the blinds removed from their eyes and see how much taxpayers dollars are being spent in order to further religious dogmas. It might be divisive when people wake up and realise that the very rich religious organisations put very little of their own money into their schools. I think the only reason the ISCA are woried about the “divisive public debate” is because they might lose their golden goose.

The Charter for Compassion

Image via Wikipedia

A global campaign to apply religion’s "golden rule" — treat others as you would like them to treat you — has been launched by Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Religion’s “golden rule”? More on that later.

The campaigners, claiming that compassion is at the heart of most religions, have launched an online Charter of Compassion and invited atheists and others to join them.

EVEN invited the atheists, how noble of them.

Karen Armstrong, …, says many people associate religion with violence, intolerance and dogma rather than compassion.

Surprising that.

Because compassion is not confined to religious people, the charter’s founders hope that atheists and agnostics will help work for a more compassionate world rather than berate religion. [emphasis mine]

Ah, now the real reason they want is involved.

(quotes from The Age.com.au)

The organisers of the charter want people from all over the world of all faiths, or lack thereof, to participate and have their input into the final document.

The Charter for Compassion is divided into four segments as follows, each open to public input at various stages over the next four weeks:

• Preamble – open for comment now
• Affirmations – open for comment Nov 20
• Actions – open for comment Nov 27
• Final Declaration – open for comment Dec 04

So sign in now, have a look at the sample wordings and have your say.

The following is the first sentence of the suggested preamble:

Compassion is a key and universal value in all faiths.

I will be recommending that be changed to the following:

Compassion is a key and universal value.

A simple but vital change, don’t you think?

From their about page:

… the Charter seeks to remind the world that while all faiths are not the same, they all share the core principle of compassion and the Golden Rule.

Problem being that deep down none of these faiths really have any compassion for the other faiths. Go read some literature on what Islam really thinks of other faiths and non-believers then come back and tell me if they really have compassion and can share this “dream” with other faiths. Don’t think the other religions are any better either.

Now back to the Golden Rule.

As John Perkins from the SPA said in his letter to the editor:

The fact that all religions may agree on the Golden Rule does not make it a religious ethic, as Barney Zwartz maintains (18/11). It is actually a universal and secular ethical rule.

As John, the Wikipedia entry and my FAQ 1 state, the Golden Rule, or the Ethic of Reciprocity, has been around for a long time before modern Christianity. It has also been mentioned in many ancient eastern religions and philosophies. It has to be apparent to anyone that thinks about it that this “Golden Rule” is no divine religious imperative, but rather just a humanitarian imperative.

Hence any world-wide “Charter of Compassion” should be based on secular humanist foundations for all humankind, with no religious undertones or overtones.

Compassion, Honesty, Fairness and Tolerance – all part of any “Golden Rule”. All principles able to be conducted by anyone, without need of any influence from some sort of deity.

John Perkins has drafted a “Universal Statement of Moral Obligations” which expounds further on a secular version of the “Charter for Compassion”.

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One has to wonder WHY religious faiths have to make a point of writing a “charter for compassion” in the first place. Isn’t religion ‘supposed’ to be compassionate? Is it perhaps that the recent critical review of religions, and horrific events carried out in the name of religion, have made sane, critical thinking, right minded, people question the role of religion in modern society?

What do you think of this Charter? Are you going to provide input to it? What are your thoughts on the “Golden Rule”, especially that it’s “religions ethic”?

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