Dogma

A lot of people that have a naturalistic worldview still want to have rituals or spiritual congregations or other aspects that are found in religion. "Atheism" suggests a belief system. In fact it is the absence of one. I don't "Believe" in atheism. I disbelieve in religion.

I find the bias here and elsewhere in favour of "Faith" absurd, offensive and just plain wrong. Over the centuries, and still today, Religion has been responsible for more evil than any other phenomenon. The idea, propagated so often, that to believe in religion - any religion - is more desirable and commendable than not to believe is preposterous. Mr Jonathan Sacks says "Nor do I believe that you have to be religious to be moral". I would put it otherwise. It is possible, maybe, for a devout believer in a Religion to be moral - but the chances are that such a believer will not be. Because it is Amoral as well as intellectually unsupportable to believe in dogma. A dogma that disallows for no logical modern reason the consumption of certain foods. A dogma that forbids the consumption of Alcohol. A dogma that removes the foreskin of newly born male children or the clitoris of young girls. A dogma that pretends that a wafer and a glass of wine turn into tissue and blood. A dogma that forbids the cutting of your hair. A dogma that declares that those who lose their faith should be hunted down and punished. A dogma that turns stories for which their is no scientific evidence into fictitious real events that are supposed to guide or instruct us. A dogma that denies the scientific evidence of evolution. Or prohibits abortion. Or contraception. Or allows (or disallows) polygamy. Above all a dogma that holds out that in the afterlife you will go to Heaven, if you are good, and Hell if you are bad. And that in that heaven virgins await you or in that hell flames.

Man does not need mumbo-jumbo to know how to behave. The secular ethic requires us to think freely about what is right. Not to turn to some ancient tome for guidance. Man has it within him to live a good life of his own volition. And, as Christopher Hitchens put it:

“We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tale of the holy books.”

Science and Islam

"Islamic Science" is an oxymoron much like "Mongolian Civilization".

In both cases, it is one group described by the former, conquering many groups described by the later, thereby acquiring the later's attribute without processing it in the first place.

One only has to look at the Islamic center of learning to see this. Baghdad and Cairo were respectively Persian and Byzantium before their conquest. The fact that they were the centers of learning was in spite of Islam instead of because of it. On the other hand, if we were to look at the historic home of Islam, Saudi Arabia, we can see almost no scientific output.

The relation between Islam and science is best described by the great Islamic scientist and historian Ibn Khaldun in his seminal work the Muqaddimah:

"The Arabs dominate only of the plains, because they are, by their savage nature, people of pillage and corruption. They pillage everything that they can take without fighting or taking risks, then flee to their refuge in the wilderness, and do not stand and do battle unless in self-defense. So when they encounter any difficulty or obstacle, they leave it alone and look for easier prey. And tribes well-fortified against them on the slopes of the hills escape their corruption and destruction, because they prefer not to climb hills, nor expend effort, nor take risks. In that connection, "non-Arab" meant non-Arab by descent. Such non-Arabs had a long (history of) sedentary culture which, as we have established, causes cultivation of the crafts and habits, including the sciences. This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and the Persian countries, the 'Iraq, Khurasan, and Transoxania, retained their sedentary culture. But when those cities fell into ruins, sedentary culture, which God has devised for the attainment of sciences and crafts, disappeared from them. Along with it, scholarship altogether disappeared from among the non-Arabs (Persians), who were (now) engulfed by the desert attitude. Scholarship was restricted to cities with an abundant sedentary culture."

The lack of Islamic scientists cannot only be explained by stinginess of their governments. The Russian and Indian governments aren't known for their generosity in that field either, but these countries produce many scientist anyhow. Also, the fact that Israel spends so much on research is inherent to the Jewish culture that values learning, so it has backing among the people.

The success of Islam in the "Middle Ages" was due to the fact that the Islamic warriors conquered many high civilizations in a short time. From the Jews they learned writing and encoding scriptures, from the (then Christian) Egyptians architecture and agriculture, from the (Christian) Syrians state organization, from the late (Manicheistic) Mespotamians astronomy, astrology and geometry, from the (late classic and Christian) Greeks philosophy, logic and scientific thinking, from the Mazdaist Persians medicine and hygiene (Jundishapur), and from the Hindu's mathematics (algebra was an Indian invention).

Many of these scientist were forced to become Muslim in order to survive. That's why the world knows them as "Muslim" savants. But due to religious dogma, that vast wealth of knowledge was suffocated after 1200. It's significant, that of the two big 'Muslim' minds of that time, Ibn Rushd was of Jewish ancestry, and Ibn Sina of Manicheist Persian. After 1200, when the religious pressure increased, Greek, Armenian and Jewish scholars fled to Europe, and helped develop the Renaissance. There was a reason why they chose to move to Europe.

The concept that Europe was in the "Dark Ages" before that time is, in fact outdated.
Even in the "Middle Ages" many monasteries and convents were places of active learning and research. How could Thomas of Aquino have been allowed to declare the search for a synthesis between Christianity and Arestotelian logic? Could Copernicus, Galilei, Da Vinci and many others, in spite of being banned by the Church, have been able to develop their scientific research if they came right out of the Dark Ages? The reason is, that although the Church has shown its ugly side many times, Christianity as such, as well as Judaism, allow for independent thinking. However, Islam does not.

Saartjie Baartman

The life story of Saartjie Baartman, the African slave who was displayed in Europe in the early 19th century, contains so many layers of oppression to sort through that author Rachel Holmes begins by trying to untangle her name. In “African Queen: the Real Life of the Hottentot Venus,” Holmes concedes that Saartjie (pronounced “Saar-key,” meaning “little Sara”) might not even be the name she was born with, calling the -tjie diminutive suffix a “racist speech act.” Colonialist roots and all, it “was her name in life as she lived it.”

Baartman was born into the Eastern Cape Khoisan, the indigenous herding tribe that once populated part of South Africa. As a teenager, she was orphaned after her father and fianci were both murdered in a colonial war, and sold to a trader, Pieter Willem Cesars. He took her to Cape Town, where she worked for his brother as a nursemaid. Around 1810, once the family started experiencing economic difficulties, they looked to Baartman as their next source of income, figuring that in Europe, where curiosity about the Dark Continent ran rampant, “a pretty maidservant with notable buttocks and a spotty giraffe skin were a winning combination on which to stake their future.”

They settled in late Georgian London, where freak shows touting “the ne plus ultra of hideousness” or “the greatest deformity in the world” lined Piccadilly. As Holmes points out, England was transitioning from a sentimental primitivism — the noble savage — to the popular Victorian notion of ethnology. With the slave trade being abolished just a few years before and the black population of London at about 20,000, their challenge was to make the investment — Baartman — conform to stereotypes and yet also seem like a novelty. They marketed her as a kind of “scantily clad totem goddess,” the Hottentot Venus, sex incarnate. Hottentots, what European traders called the native Khoisan for the clicking sound of their language, “signified all that was strange, disturbing, alien, and possibly, sexually deviant.”

She was objectified in the most literal sense, put on display in front of gaping crowds six days a week, doing suggestive “native” dancing and playing African instruments. Her costume was a flesh-colored silk sheath deliberately cut like a second skin, with copious jewelry at the seams to conceal the fact that she wasn’t technically naked. They also fashioned her a kind of female codpiece, “the effect of its soft folds, fur fringes, and pendulous extensions was to imply that its purpose was to modestly conceal the supposedly elongated labia of a Hottentot woman” — a subject of great interest and speculation among the gawking masses. She became an instant sensation, a subject of countless life drawings (many of which are included in the book), editorials and political cartoons. The London Morning Post wrote, of her body, that “her contour and formation certainly surpass any thing [sic] of the kind ever seen in Europe, or perhaps ever produced on Earth.”

Holmes is so clearly besotted with her subject that her writing can tend toward the florid when describing her (“to behold the figure of Venus, or to hear her name was to be prompted to think about lust, or love”). Baartman physically exists in the story — the narrative is entirely devoted to her — and yet, since she was unable to read or write, very little exists in her own voice. As her story progresses, that absence becomes more and more notable. But perhaps that’s Holmes’ point: As a slave and as a woman, Baartman never did have any kind of agency in her own life. “Economically, sexually, and racially,” Holmes writes, “she was unfree.”

Her supposed liberation at the hands of abolitionists, who initiated a lawsuit to win her freedom, feels like further commodification from a party interested not in her ultimate well-being, but in drumming up publicity for their own cause. It did earn her a contract, read to her twice in Afrikaans, that covered standard demands like medical treatment, warmer clothes, profit sharing and the promise that she would eventually be sent home. “She was not seen as a sympathetic victim,” writes Holmes, who tries unsuccessfully at this point to sell Baartman as a cunning businesswoman who had “outmaneuvered her managers and made herself attractive to eligible bachelors as a woman of means.”

And while there are a few years in England where she managed to escape the probing public — she was rumored to have gotten married or had a baby, though there is no record of either — the arguably most grim period of her life came after this so-called freedom. In 1814, she and Cesars moved to Paris at the end of the Napoleonic era, where she was examined for three days by scientists at the Museum of Natural History, developed an addiction to alcohol, and, at some point, became a prostitute. She died in Paris of either a respiratory disease or syphilis — the records aren’t clear — at the age of 26. Her death didn’t bring her any dignity, either; her body was cast and dissected and became the property of the Museum of Natural History. Her brain and genitals were kept in bell jars just outside one creepy scientist’s private chambers.

Holmes devotes the last chapter to Nelson Mandela’s campaign to have Baartman’s remains returned to South Africa. It’s a reverent coda to the book, but Holmes’ own take on Baartman’s legacy might have made a more compelling end to her story. Holmes never deviates from narrating the story, which she does capably, but her reluctance to write about why she’s so moved by Baartman’s life is ultimately our loss. It never moves beyond a hagiography, and therefore doesn’t really add anything new or particularly timely. We’re left to speculate about Holmes’ motives — her bio says she divides her time between London and Cape Town, and the book is steeped in feminist theory, take your pick — but we’re left with no explanation of why she felt so drawn to this project.

She does hint at a post-Baartman world, briefly quoting Josephine Baker — “When it comes to blacks, the imagination of white folks is something else” — and she mentions the popularity of the bustle among fashionable Victorians. Holmes imagines Baartman would have laughed at buttock augmentation, the fastest-growing cosmetic surgery in the U.S. and U.K. But what does she have to say about Queen’s “Fat Bottom Girls” or Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious”? Now we can scoff at the clueless Valley Girls in the intro to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s asstastic “Baby Got Back” (“I mean, her butt, is just so big. I can’t believe it’s just so round, it’s like, out there, I mean — gross. Look! She’s just so … black!”), but does it mean that we’ve come a long way? In the simultaneous lasciviousness and curiosity we’ve lavished on Jennifer Lopez’s posterior, have we never stopped searching for that scantily clad totem goddess after all? We can pat ourselves on the back and feel disgusted by the story, and yet what made people leer at Baartman has the same effect on us today.

Atheism in America

USA is of course not a homogeneous Christian country. There are countless of denominations of different shapes and sizes. But the great majority of all Christians in USA are protestants and the far biggest group of protestants are evangelicals. About a quarter of the whole population according to one study from 2009 (link). Hence, from a purely theological perspective Christians in USA should very much resemble Christians in Northern Europe. But, they surely do not!

They base their religious beliefs on the same religious scriptures, but still they differ so vastly to the extent that one could easily mistake them for separate religions all together. And why is that? Well, of course because the culture is so very different. It's actually quite understandable. In order for new nations to survive they have to unite the people under one banner. Most of the old European countries have a long history and ancient mythological roots that bind them together. This was no easy task for the founding fathers. USA is a very big and heterogeneous country. Basically they only had two things in common. The fact that most of them had left Europe (often due to religious and political persecution) and were Christians. This is probably one of the big reasons the government was declared secular.

Atheist often like to point out that many of the founding fathers were non-believers or deists. That of course contributed to how the constitution was formed. But, frankly that was also the only way to unite such a heterogeneous group of people of whom many had been persecuted by the governments in their former countries that did not tolerate religious dissidents.

But, most Americans were devout believers. In many ways much more so than people in Europe. So here we have Christians of a large number of different denomination sharing one fate. It's not very surprising that this new idea of USA as the new holy land became very popular. The constitution became almost like a new religious document that I'm sure many Christians considered divine and probably inspired by god himself. Hence, when you talk about Christianity in USA you can't separate it from nationalism and patriotism. They are deeply intertwined and dependant on each other.

I think that's why atheists are so despised in USA. They are not only seen as ungodly. They are seen as a direct threat against the very soul and soil of their nation. How can an atheist possibly be a good citizen of USA when Christianity is the very heart and soul of USA. This also explains why Christians in America are so egocentrical. When they evangelize they don't spread Christianity in the sense that perhaps most Christians from Europe do. They promote the American way of life. Because to them the American way of life. The love of the American soil is Christianity. You can't separate the American culture and politics from Christianity when you talk about USA no more than you can separate nationalism from the culture or politics. I think this is what many here don't seem to get. Christians in America don't regard atheists just as non-believers. They are a threat to the American way of life. A threat to their beloved nation. Their holy land.

So what about the issue of left/right wing politics. Well, I think it has a lot to do with the cold war. Socialism and communism were considered the big threats to USA for half a century. I think this legacy is still very much alive in the minds of most Americans. A half century of fierce propaganda is not all that easy to revise. Hence, liberalism is still seen as a threat to USA. And as such also something unchristian and unpatriotic. Hence liberals can't possibly be true Christians. They have to be atheists or in some other ways deranged individuals. Common quotes like "green on the outside, but red on the inside" demonstrates this perfectly well. Hence, the idea of USA as a capitalistic society became a vital part of the national identity and also a vital part of people's religious identity. Of course USA is not for te moment being a free market in any way. But, the delusion lives on. The market is never to be blamed for the financial situation. It can't be. Because capitalism is what makes USA so great. And as such it also becomes a vital part of people's religious beliefs. As said before you can't separate these from each other. And if the market can't be blamed then of course it has to be the government.

My point is that you can only understand Christianity in USA if you regard it as a inherent part of the cultural and political fabric of the American society. Many people make fun of the fact that many Americans are so individualistic, for the right to carry guns, warmongerers, etc. when it clearly has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. But, when you realize that Christianity in USA is to a great extent an extension of a national identity then it makes perfect sense.

Islam Is A Religion Of Peace?

I hope we are not now supposed to accept that all religions are equally bad, as seems to be the implication. I at least cannot forget the history of jihad that has brought us to the situation we are now in. And that will repeat itself if we are not very vigilant. If we are to consider the Crusades, then we must also consider the bloody jihad conflicts leading up to the Crusades.

When the UN authorised the formation of the nation of Israel, it was not just in recognition of recent genocide in Europe, but also the past history of the Jewish people in the mideast and their oppression since the time of the Romans. Remember that Jewish tribes were numerous in the region, including the Arabian Peninsular, until Mohammed ordered that they all be eradicated from the whole of that land, which was achieved within a few years of the death of the prophet. It took a uniquely hateful creed to drive and motivate the Arab Muslims to wipe out all traces of others so piously over such a long period of history, albeit not continuously. The decline of Christians and Zoroastrians and other faiths as well as Jews was a merciless process which will only be complete after the destruction of Israel, and what is left of Lebanon.

According to Hugh Fitzgerald: When speaking of the Middle East, liberal elites in the West like to speak of “root causes.” There is nothing wrong with that, except that the root causes they seize upon are a product of Arab propaganda – a fact of which people like Clinton, Blair and Obama are probably not even aware.

Where this propaganda has achieved its greatest success is in the reversal of the “root cause” of the conflict: instead of an Israeli David beset by vast, oil-rich Arab potentates, the narrative is now of an Israeli Goliath oppressing a tiny, embattled, never before heard of “Palestinian people”.

What is needed is a public education campaign to reverse the Arab reversal and set things in their proper light. It was once readily apparent that the reason for the Arab-Israel conflict was Arab intransigence; the Moslem world’s backward belief that the entire Middle East somehow belongs to them and that non-Moslems have no right to be there, except as second-class citizens willing to submit to the Islamic boot.

Shmuel spelled out the real root cause in his monograph “No Solution to the Arab-Palestinian Problem” (Dawn Publishing Co., 1985):

The correct definition of the root of the conflict over the Land of Israel or, in current phraseology, the “heart of the problem” is the determination of the entire Arab nation, under the inspiration of Islam, to rule over the whole area from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean and from the southern border of Turkey to the southern border of the Sudan. This was why they launched a war against the embryonic state, dispatching a vanguard of forces to abort its birth. The Arab states were going to wreak death and destruction in Palestine as the Mongols had in the 13th century, as Azzam Pasha, the secretary of the Arab League, declared at the time.

The perfectly simple fact — though its ramifications are hard and bitter — is that the failure of the attempt to strangle the nascent state did not weaken by one iota the Arabs’ liquidationist design. That design is rooted in Arab history and woven into the very fabric of the Islamic faith. The contemporary Arab objective is not the result of twentieth-century covetousness alone. The Arabs feeling of lordship over all these vast domains derives from memories of the past or, more precisely, from an imaginary notion of past glory, and it is fed by a desire for vengeance against the Western world. In the Arabs’ view, they were humiliated for hundreds of years, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, by the Western Christian powers — even though they, as Muslims, are the bearers of a superior religion.

When the Muslims dominated immense stretches of the world, the Jews and the Christians under their rule had a debased and inferior status: they were second-class citizens. By the grace of the Muslim ruler they were granted the status of dhimmis, or a subject minority, of protege citizens whom the ruler protected at will — and they paid special taxes.

The myth of the Palestinian People has reversed the true understanding of the conflict, making the local Arabs the supposed underdogs against the mighty Jews. It is time to reverse the reversal. What, are we supposed to support 56 Muslim states in the region and tut at the existence of one Jewish state? When that one Jewish state gives full rights to it's Arab Muslim citizens while the Muslim states have driven out most of their Jews, or made life intolerable for them? When Israel is the most advanced and democratic nation in the region? Once again, it is important to point out that the jihad did not begin in September 2001, and it is not aimed solely, or even mostly, at Christians in North America and Europe. The jihad has nothing to do with the existence of the state of modern Israel, or the existence of the United States of America. Jihad is the 1,350 year war of conquest by Muslims against non-Muslims (and fellow Muslims), to impose sharia law on all persons in all places. Victories in those battles of conquest are marked by the desecration of the houses of worship of non-Muslims, and the murder, enslavement, and humiliation of conquered non-Muslims.

The Trouble with Atheism

Rod Liddle's whole approach seemed to be based around the belief, that if you criticize religion your being arrogant. What's the big deal about religion that you cannot criticize it, even aggressively?

The whole program came across as an attack on atheists for attacking religious dogmatism, with the claim that the atheists are being just as dogmatic. Well, if religion were not as destructive in the World today, as it so clearly is, then Liddle may have had a point. As it is, his claim "rings hollow". Is it so surprising that atheists are so strident, when religion is causing so much violence in the World? I don't think so.

One of the most annoying claims that Liddle made, is that atheism is synonymous with communism. But, I agree with Richard Dawkins, it is incidental to it.

Communism itself, I would say is a form of religion secular yes, atheistic no; there is a difference. It is a dogmatic belief system, which is detached from reality, as is the belief in a personal God. Both theistic religion and communism are dogmatic belief systems, without objectively identifiable evidence of their validity.

Atheism, is not a dogmatic belief system, it is simply the none acceptance of God, based on improbability.

Liddle then goes on to do the same annoying thing with Darwinism, implying that Darwinism and atheism are synonyms (they are not of course, Darwinism is not an atheist Bible). It is true that an acceptance of Darwinism may weaken an individuals religious convictions. But, the fact that it does is not the primary fundamental of Darwinism again, it is incidental. Rod Liddle does not seem to be able to tell the difference between fundamental primaries and incidental coincidences. Why did liddle fail to mention that many Christians do accept evolution? Would that have weakened his argument?

I found it all rather one sided, with Liddle being far too nice to religion. The time for being nice to religion is up. Look where being too nice and too politically correct, in the name of not upsetting religious sensibilities has got us. It is this wishy-washy attitude to religion, that has allowed religious extremism to fester and spread like an untreated cancer.

It is aggressive ridicule of religion (including through the power of humour) that is necessary, to deflate its "untouchable status".

There was also a comment made, not by Liddle himself (though he didn't dispute it), that without Darwinism there doesn't seem to be any grounds for atheism. This is absurd, it suggests all atheists are Darwinist's and without Darwin atheism is not possible. And why does Liddle use phrases like "part of the atheist project" when referring to Darwinism, is he suggesting that Darwinism is part of an atheist plot to overthrow religion? Some kind of mass atheist conspiracy? (perhaps the overthrow of the geocentric view of the universe is part of the same plot). Notice, that not even once does he call Darwinism a scientific theory.

Then Liddle goes on to say that Darwin took on the religious establishment. No he did not, that is exactly what Darwin did not do, again it is purely incidental that Darwin's scientific identifications, where in conflict with religion. From what Liddle says it gives the impression that Darwin's purpose in discovering his theory, was done for the primary purpose of attacking religion. But Darwin was extremely sensitive to the religious beliefs of others and the last thing he wanted to do, was "rock the boat". Virtually every point Liddle makes throughout the whole program is just plain wrong.

Rod Liddle's absolutely absurd claim that "Marxism was a utopia based on reason" Marxism was not a system of reasonableness and it was not born out of reasonable thinking; but its antithesis. There was no reason to be found, that is why it was so inhumane. He is doing the same thing that he has done, throughout the whole program, linking atheism with a dogmatic belief system and making a wild claim that they can be coupled together as synonyms.

The One State Utopia

The term "one state solution" is a kind of nom de guerre for the destruction of the Jewish state by other means.

It will lead to a duplication of the sectarian bloody violence between Christians and Moslems and between Shia and Sunni, that has rocked Lebanon for more than three decades. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the Palestinians need a state of their own and the Jews need a state of their own. If for some readers, the two-state solution seems bad, then it is the least bad solution. With a one-state encompassing Israel/Palestine Jews will very quickly become a minority. They will likely be treated the way minorities often get treated in the Arab and Muslim world - just take a look at the Copts in Egypt or the current inter-ethnic bloodshed in Syria or the exodus of Christians from Iraq, the oppression of the Bahais in Iran and the brutality meted against the Kurds in Turkey. Jews will inevitably emigrate from this new one-state utopia. The Arabs are using fancy sounding diplomatic jargon to try to accomplish what decades of war and terrorism could not accomplish.

Modern historians estimate that more than ½ million Ethnic-German died as a result of their forced expulsions from Central and Eastern Europe. Once over the border, the Sudeten Germans were crammed into filthy refugee camps, some of which had previously served as concentration camps for enemies of the Nazi state. It was a brutal and awful time for the Sudeten Germans. But there had been a war. Their ‘people’ lost. And that’s what happens in wars.

Imagine if Germans were like Arabs. Instead of the German population striving to settle the Sudeten German refugees into their cities and assimilate them into their society, they would have kept them deliberately impoverished in refugee camps. They would point across the Czech border, and tell their wretched ‘refugees’ that Slavs they had ‘stolen’ their lands and must be blamed for their misery. The children of Sudeten Germans would grow up in overcrowded shanties, filled with hate and dreaming of blowing up Slavs in a Prague cafe.

Germans everywhere would demand the ‘right’ for all descendants of Sudeten Germans to ‘return’ to the Czech lands, to ensure the demographic dominance of ethnic Germans.

But European culture isn’t Arabic culture. Europeans look to the future. They thrive and prosper. Today, you can drive from the Czech Republic into Germany without even realising you’ve done so.

At the end of World War II 3 million Sudeten Germans were expelled from the former Czechoslovakia, where their communities had lived since the 13th century. Their homes, lands and businesses were taken from them and they were allowed to take only the belongings they could carry on their backs before being marched, at gun-point, across the German border. History happens. Borders change. Some people lose. Some people win. It was the way for thousands of years and in some cases, it still is.

And the irony is that throughout history Arab and Muslim peoples have been no strangers to changing the borders and demographics of the lands they’ve conquered.

There is absolutely no point whatsoever in engaging in a debate about the rights or wrongs or historical detail of the Israel/Palestine situation. The facts are that Israel exists. The clock can’t be turned back. Neither Arabs nor Muslims have a very good track record of coexisting with Jews. The only way forward is to recognise these facts and try to make the best of the situation.