My letter to Michael Hodgman about a proposed therapeutic cloning bill which he is opposing because of his religious views. While it's true I voted Liberal in the last state election, I should confess that it was for hopes of a hung parliament (and I voted Greens 1, Liberals 2, Labor 3, Family first 4). I would never vote Liberal federally. Michael doesn't need to know this :P

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Dear Mr Hodgman,

I am member of your electorate and voted for you in the last state election. I'm unsure if you'll be running again next election, but if so I wanted to know that you've completely lost my vote. I didn't vote for you because of my religious beliefs, indeed I have no religious beliefs.

I read with much horror, your comments about the cloning bill, as if religious views had anything to do with it. I am shocked that you don't care about my religious views at all. I can see many reasons to support or to oppose the cloning bill, but I do not think it is just or fair that my elected representatives make decisions essentially enforcing their religious views on to me. You are not forced to give your eggs or DNA material to the therapeutic cloning process. You are not forced to receive any treatments derived from the process. If your religious views oppose such science, you can choose to have nothing to do with it. Why should I be forced not to be able to take part in the research or reap the benefits of the research because of your religious beliefs? Why can't I make the same choice that you're free to make?

I don't believe being an atheist makes me a bad person; I work for a charity, and give money to it, and many others as well. I'm involved in a number of community activities and volunteer my time to help the community. I pay my taxes, I abide by the law, I'm passionate about this country and this state and I hope one day I can give more back to it. I don't understand how you can you support the suppression of my beliefs solely because of your religious beliefs. What kind of religion do you follow, that not only asks people to behave to a moral code, but also that they enforce that same moral code on everybody, regardless of their culture or religious beliefs?

I've always thought the Liberal party was about liberty and a freedom to choose. A freedom to choose if I belong to a union or not, a freedom to choose if my kids attend a private school or a public school, a freedom to choose where I shop, and who I buy my phones from. It seems that on the question of science, and my freedom to reap the benefits from science if I chose to, or not, if it's against my beliefs, I don't have that choice or that freedom.

I despise the current Labor government. Paul Lennon is the worst Premier of any state that I can ever remember. Next state election I hope that he suffers a defeat, or at least receives a strong indication of the growing opposition to his philosophy on politics. I certainly won't be voting Labor at the top of my vote, but neither will your name be there. I hope your colleagues are less inclined to force their religious views upon me than you are.

Thank you for your time,

Kind Regards,

PZ Myers vs Sam Harris

PZ Myers responds to Sam Harris

Oops

A link that works :P

The Problem With Atheism

Sam Harris; So Good!

Just a quick post to give you this link, and say that Sam Harris is So Good. Like the pie in Spiderman 3 - That good!

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sam_harris/2007/10/the_problem_with_atheism.html

I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced, I'm going to need to give it more thought and see some other opinions on it, but he puts forward such a good argument (about why we should abandon the term "atheist," I'm even less sure about his spiritualism).

The reason I'm less sure is; how do we know that we'll ever find anything? What if this nirvana or whatever you want to call it doesn't actually exist? How do we know that sitting around doing nothing is the best way to find it? I'm not really prepared to spend 18 years of my life in a cave until I've seen some evidence that it will be worth my while. I'm not saying it's rubbish, just that I'm not convinced.

Religious people are "special"

I’ve been doing a first aid course for work over the last few days. It’s great fun, and pretty cool to feel like I know what to do when somebody has a epileptic fit or whatever. I told the people at work that they should come see me when they have a cardiac arrest and I’ll fix them up.

Anyway one of the things covered was how you need to be sensitive to different religious cultures etc. The presenter gave the example of a couple of guys a few weeks ago who came in for a course, then at a particular time had to go into a little room for an hour to pray. I’m presuming they were Muslims, but who really knows these days; I’m probably just going to make up my own religion to get out of things.

So why is religion accepted as a way of getting out of things? Why should these people get to pass a course when they didn’t attend the whole thing? Shouldn’t they have to do the same thing as everybody else? As an atheist, could I get out of a couple of hours of the course without penalty if I asked to be excused so I could go study evolution?

How far does special treatment for religious people extend? Religious belief means you’re allowed to do drugs that the rest of the country isn’t; if you’re a Rastafarian, apparently weed is legal? Could I tell the court that my branch of atheism was enhanced by smoking weed and get away with it? Of course I couldn’t.

So what is it about religion that means you can get away with shit?

I apologise for my rhetorical questions; of course the answer is obvious. Religion is beyond question. You’re allowed free speech and to question everything, except a person’s religious beliefs; these we must respect no matter what. Of course only beliefs with enough followers are considered religions, so I can’t just make up some religion that means I get paid for an hour at work that I spend masturbating in some room by myself praising Jeebus. However people aren’t asked to prove their religious beliefs, so the option seems to be that atheists should start lying about their religion.

Next time a police woman tells me not to ride my bike on the grass, instead of making her clothes fall off, I’ll just tell her I’m a Buddhist and she’ll have to apologise for disrespecting my religious beliefs.

How about, instead of that, we stop giving special dispensation to religious beliefs and treat everybody the same? If you enrol in a course, and you have something important during the time that course is on, choose which is more important to you; the course or whatever your personal thing is. When a friend wants me to go out and have a few drinks, but I’m working, I don’t take a few hours off to drink beer; I make a sacrifice.

Is it asking too much to expect religious people to either sacrifice their superstitious rituals or to not commit to things that they can’t actually commit to? When I tell people my opinions on religion, they tell me I should be more tolerant and accepting. If that’s the case, why can’t I get away with the same things religion gets away with? If religious people want me to respect their religion or them, they’ll accept the same standards and rules that I have to accept. So long as people are treated in their own special way because of their ludicrous beliefs, I will oppose religion.

Religion and religious apologist are far less tolerant than I am. They readily support particular people getting special treatment that nobody else gets. All I support is equality for everybody and everything.

Religion Gets Fucked By Facebook

Recently there has been some religious controversy on the social networking website facebook. Somebody going by the name of “Variable Variable” created two facebook groups called “Fuck Christianity” and “Fuck Islam” (and also a third group called “Fuck All Religion”). Obviously such titles are bound to cause a fuss, and they did. There are now over 20 groups dedicated to opposing “Fuck Islam” representing at least 70,000 people. Pretty dramatic response considering there are probably only about 100 people in the “Fuck Islam” group who aren’t members so that they can post death threats to the members.

The “Fuck Christianity” group has just over 100 members, and the group demanding that that group be shut down has over 24,000. Apparantly Christians don’t quite care as much as Muslims, despite being more significantly represented in facebook. Islam is a religion that is attacked a great deal; probably disproportionally given that it’s not really any worse than any other religion, so it’s not really that suprising that they feel defensive.

Of course people who belong to the same religion are still different people, and these groups make that quite clear. Somebody will join one of the groups and post a long message about how their chosen religion is a peaceful and tolerant religion, and the members of the group should extend the same tolerance. This will be followed by another person of that same religion who will post about how he is going to kill the creator and his whole family because of the name of the group.

Of course the thing about facebook groups, is that you only see them if your friends join them, or if you actively look for the group. A search for Islam brings up “Fuck Islam” after over 300 other groups. In no way are these groups expressing themselves to people of the religion they’re attacking because people of those religions won’t see them unless they’re friends join them or they start looking for groups attacking their religion. So these people complaining about being offended had to actively look for the offensive material before they could be offended.

Shockingly nobody has complained about the various “Fuck Atheism” groups, presumably because atheists don’t care.

It’s a bit of an issue of free speach as well. Here is a group, that like all facebook groups is not pushing itself onto anybody, expressing an opinion about religion. It’s an opinion many people agree with and although the language is strong, religion kills millions of people, so perhaps strong language best expresses how rational people feel about going to war because of imaginary friends. Religious people are free to express their beliefs in whatever way they feel, and it doesn’t take much searching to find groups claiming that atheists are immoral and should be executed. Why does nobody try to have those opinions censored yet they try to have anti-religious opinions censored?

Why is religion such a taboo from criticism?

If religious people want to attack my beliefs, I say bring it on! Why can’t I express my own religious beliefs? I’m not going into people’s churches, I’m not standing on the street, or knocking on doors; I’m putting my beliefs in a place where people can only see them if they want to see them. If they don’t want to see them, they’re under no obligation to look for them and under no obligation to read them.

They choose to read my opinions and then claim that they should be censored.

One person described belonging to a group that only people who wanted to read could see as “moronic” and “close minded.” He refused to explain why that was, but if you’re going to criticise religion you can expect personal attacks, perhaps because religious people lack the skills to debate on the actual issue.

Unlike this person, I don’t support needlessly insulting people, but if people want to look for insults, I don’t know who else you can blame when they find those insults.

I’ve got a lot out of those “fuck groups,” I’ve had a number of great discussions with Muslims about their beliefs and my right to express my own beliefs. Because I don’t go out of my way to read other people’s beliefs, those debates would never have occured; and despite our religous differences, I’m now friends with one of those Muslims.

Discussion of issues, especially important issues is good. If people have good social skills those discussions can be civil and positive, even if you completely disagree.

I don’t hate religious people, I hate religion, and I believe I have as much right to express that belief as a religous person has to express their beliefs. If you don’t agree, I’d love to discuss that with you.

Music Is Just A Theory Too

G’day and welcome to the first post of my new blog. I’m a self proclaimed New Atheist, whatever that means. It seems strange that the idea that religion has a negative effect on society, and should be opposed is considered a “new” idea, since people have been arguing against religion for hundreds of years. It’s not even like the arguments of the “New Atheists” are arguments that have only been put forward recently. I guess people always like to feel that what’s going on now is the most important or newest development in the world. Of course sometimes that’s no doubt true, but I’d like to think that today’s religious debates are really just the slow and gradual progression of the old debates. Sure the environment has changed, and the debate has adapted to meet that change. We’ve seen some faster change at times and “arms races” in the development of the debate, but we certainly haven’t seen a new debate created out of nothing in the last few years.

On the other hand, the scientific understanding of religion has been changing dramatically over the last few decades. One only needs to read Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell) or Lewis Wolpert (Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast) to see the advances in our understanding. Of course it’s not all clear cut. There is still a lot of debate going on about the details, but we definitely know a lot more now than we did 50 years ago.

I find it hilariously ironic that we can now generally explain why people are religious from an evolutionary perspective; given the only people who criticise evolution are religious people.

It’s often argued by religious apologists that science and religion are separate and not really in conflict at all. Science is about understanding the physical nature of the world, while religion is about our own personal spirituality and how we feel about ourselves and others. Such an argument ignores the fact that religion often makes claims about the physical nature of the world. According to a Gallup poll from this year, the majority of Americans believe that the world was created by God less than 10,000 years ago. I’m a little sceptical about that poll, but even if only 10% of Americans believe that, it’s still pretty significant, given we have so much corroborating evidence from different fields of science that demonstrate beyond doubt that the world is a great deal older than 10,000 years.

I think I’d be perfectly happy to tolerate religion if it really were separate, and had no effect on society or our knowledge at all. If religion really was internal and personal, why would anybody oppose it? It’s the expression of religion on people who do not share the same beliefs that is what people are opposing.

I should say that when I talk about my lack of “tolerance” for religion, I’m not using that word in the same context as politicians use it when they introduce “zero tolerance on drugs.” You can be rest assured that whenever you express opinions on religion, there will be some religious people that will deliberately misinterpret the meaning of words to attack you. Just as they claim that “evolution is only a theory,” (using that logic, music is “only a theory” too), so too they will not doubt claim that being “intolerant” of religion makes me a Nazi.

Actually from that perspective I’m very tolerant of religion. If I’m at a friends place for dinner and they want to say grace, I’m happy to hold hands and say amen at the end. If I’m having a discussion with evangelical preachers at the local market and they want to pray (or is that prey?) for my soul, I’m happy to join in. I’m a pacifist and I would certainly oppose the banning of religion or the burning of churches.

The only way I don’t “tolerate” religion is that I express my disgust and opposition to religion whenever the situation is appropriate. I believe, as I’m sure most new atheists believe, that the answer to religion lies in education. I’d like to believe that given enough time eventually the world’s population will turn away from religion based purely on the fact that the rational arguments of atheism are stronger than the arguments of religion.

Religious apologists love to jump on sentences like that last one, and bring up the fact that I “believe” things, and that my atheism is really just another religious belief. This is another word game. The reality is that I base my beliefs on the evidence that I’ve seen, not on any amount of “faith.” If I see more evidence then I’m always willing to change my beliefs to accommodate that new evidence. It’s important to realise that science is not the same as mathematics. We can’t empirically prove many of the claims of science. We can only look at all the evidence we have, and draw the conclusion that fits that best. If new evidence appears, we have to re-evaluate that evidence. Of course religion cannot prove anything empirically either, but the evidence supporting it is non existent. Any rational person would have to side with atheism over religion.

If looking at the evidence and then making a decision based on that evidence is a demonstration of “faith” and makes me religious, then I guess I’m religious. I tend to also believe that the point of words is communication, and that it’s easier to communicate when we’re all using the same definitions for words. Religion tends not be defined as “examining the evidence and making a conclusion consistent with that evidence.”

The reality is that it doesn’t matter if you label new atheism a religion, a hobby, a political view, or a new style of dance. The only way that calling new atheism a religion would make the arguments of new atheism any less valid is if you’re happy to admit that all the arguments of religion are also invalid; which would be to say that the new atheists are right! If that’s the case, I would be happy to start attending the New Atheist church tomorrow!