Religion’s Double Bind

All religions are caught in a bind. A bind none can escape and dooms them whichever option they chose. The bind is at the core of all practicing religions and cannot be ignored. The bind is over the unignorable question of what to do about non-believers. How should churches view those who do not agree with them? It is considered cruel to threaten them with Hell yet if they do not they are implying their rules do not matter. There is no third option that is both compassionate while maintaining the integrity of the church. Either way, religion loses.

Non-believers were traditionally persecuted and it was assumed they were all going to Hell. Apparently punishment in the next life was not enough, so people who did not match the ruler’s religion were persecuted and suppressed. Christians persecuted Muslims, Muslims persecuted Christians and everyone persecuted the Jews. The history of the Middle Ages until the Age of Enlightenment is essentially a history of religious wars. It is for this reason that most countries had only one religion. The Inquisition is the most famous example of the suppression of non-believers with public burnings, but there are countless others.

From the 19th century or so onwards, the persecution eased up and moved to less violent forms of repression. Laws were still based on the dominant religions teachings and minority religions often had fewer rights. To be a non-believer justified poor treatment, harassment and second class citizenship. Even into the middle of the 20th century, Catholics were still told that Protestants were going to Hell for not belonging to the “One True Church”. This is still believed by many fundamentalists of all religions and persecution is still rife in many parts of the world.

At this point many religious people may object, saying I am relying on the common Atheist tactic of focusing of the extremes. They argue that while the Church in the past could be brutal and repressive, the modern Church kind and tolerant, willing to embrace all walks of life. This modern religion claims love as its central doctrine. It holds little against Muslims or Jews anymore and instead embraces diversity. Many priests now say that God loves all people and even people from other religions can go to Heaven. Pope Francis even went as far as to say that Atheists can go to Heaven if they are good people.

However, this causes a serious problem for religion. You see the whole point of organised religion is that interprets holy books and provides rules for people that supposedly came from God. If being a member of that religion is not important, than you are implying that its rules are not important. If someone who isn’t Catholic can still go to Heaven and enjoy all the same benefits in the afterlife, then what is the point of the Catholic Church? Surely you can then disregard everything the priests say and ignore all the rules without being any worse off. If being a good person is the only requirement for entry to Heaven, then religion is obsolete.

Of course, a religious person would contest this and argue that it is necessary to obey at least some of the rules. They would believe their church plays some necessary role that requires some obedience. However, to do this we must then assume that non-Catholics (or whichever religion) cannot enter Heaven or at least not on equal terms. For organised religion to have any validity there must be some degree of exclusion.

Of course this is grossly unfair (as most religious people would agree). Religion is like nationality, it is almost never chosen but rather inherited from your parents and based on where you live. People are Catholic or Muslim or Hindu, not because they have examined all the religions of the world and found one that best suits their worldview, but because they were born in Colombia or Libya or India. Most people know next to nothing about other religions and thus it would be exceedingly cruel to punish them for something they never encountered. To say everyone who is not a member of your religion will go to Hell, is equivalent to condemning 85% of the world to eternal suffering just due to where they happened to be born.

So religion is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It would be horrendously cruel and intolerant to condemn all those of different religions to Hell due to the luck of birth, yet to fail to do so undermines the sacredness of their rules and teachings. Religion must be exclusive or meaningless. Either intolerant or irrelevant. Religious readers, take your pick.

Evelyn McHale: A Beautiful Death on 33rd Street

by keithyorkcity

The Empire State Building shortly after its completion in 1931.

When the Empire State Building officially opened in 1931, it was an engineering marvel: by far the tallest structure on the planet, and built in just 16 months during the depths of the Great Depression. Though the weak economy caused it to sit almost empty for many of its earlier years, the building’s lofty observation deck drew crowds in immense numbers. In fact, the building’s owners made roughly as much in observation deck ticket sales during its first operational year as it collected from office rentals in the tower itself.

Women on the Empire State Building’s 86th floor observation deck in the 1940s. Note the low guard rail.

The observation decks on the 86th and 103rd floors were an instant hit. Tourists and locals alike happily took rides in the building’s sleek high-speed elevators hundreds of feet above the street to absorb the breathtaking views, which on clear days, stretched all the way to Connecticut.

NY Times, November 5, 1932

But the building also became rather quickly known for something far more tragic. One by one, people in their darkest moments ascended to its upper decks, climbed over the railing, and threw themselves to the ground far below. Many ended up landing on the roof of one of the building’s many setbacks on their way down. At least one woman was actually blown back onto the observation deck by a strong gust of wind, and survived. But some cleared the building completely and sailed all the way down to the pavement, more than 1,000 feet away.

Evelyn Francis McHale

Evelyn Francis McHale was born in Berkeley, California, on September 20, 1923, the 6th of 7 children born to Vincent and Helen McHale. In 1930, the family moved to Washington D.C. for Vincent’s job, but within a few years, Helen moved out of the house for unknown reasons. Vincent retained custody of their 7 children, and later moved with them to Tuckahoe, New York, where Evelyn attended high school.

After graduation, Evelyn joined the Women’s Army Corps, and was stationed in Jefferson, Missouri. It was reported by friends that when she left the Corps, she burned her uniform. She moved to Baldwin, New York, on Long Island, where she lived with her brother and his wife, and she got a job as a bookkeeper at the Kitab Engraving Company on Pearl Street in the Financial District of Manhattan.

During this time, Evelyn met a young former Airman by the name of Barry Rhodes, who was a student at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, about 90 minutes west of New York. The two were soon engaged, but a shadow seemed to hang over Evelyn. In the Spring of 1946, she served as a bridesmaid in Barry’s brother’s wedding. After the ceremony, she ripped off her dress, declaring, “I never want to see this again,” and burned it like she had done with her A.W.C. uniform.

On April 30, 1947, Evelyn took the train from New York to Easton to visit Barry for his 24th birthday. All seemed well between the couple, and the next day, Barry kissed his fiance goodbye as she boarded the 7:00 AM train to Penn Station. “When I kissed her goodbye, she was happy and as normal as any girl about to be married.” Their wedding was set to be held at Barry’s brother’s home in Troy, New York, that June.

The Hotel Governor Clinton, ca 1932
(Columbia University Library)

What was really running through Evelyn’s mind that morning, no one will likely ever know. Upon arriving in Manhattan, she left Penn Station and walked across the street to the Governor Clinton Hotel at 31st Street and 7th Avenue. She obtained a room, and set about writing a note. It read (strike-throughs included), “I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family – don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me. My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me.  Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”

She folded her note, and tucked it into her small purse along with a few dollars, her make-up, and some family photos. At 10:30 AM, she walked to the Empire State Building, and purchased a ticket to its famous 86th-floor observatory. She slipped off her coat and placed it along with her pocketbook on the floor against the railing. And she jumped.

The entrance of the Empire State Building, 1931
(NYPL)

That morning, Patrolman John Morrissey was directing traffic at 34th Street and 5th Avenue. At 10:40 AM, he noticed a white scarf fluttering down from the upper reaches of the tower. Just a moment later, the day’s serenity was interrupted by a terrific crash that sounded like an “explosion.” A crowd formed on 33rd Street beneath the building as pedestrians swarmed to see what had happened.

Robert C Wiles

Lying on her back, clutching a strand of pearls at her neck, Evelyn looked to be resting peacefully. Were it not for the fact that she was nestled snugly into the crushed roof of a United Nations Assembly Cadillac, she could even be mistaken for being asleep. But the poor woman, just 23 years old, was dead. A young photography student by the name of Robert C. Wiles happened to be across the street at the time of her demise. Stunned by her beauty, even in death, he snapped a photo of her just 4 minutes after her crash. Almost overnight, she became a pop culture icon: a symbol of tragic beauty.

Evelyn incorrectly labeled as 20 years old.
NY Times, May 2, 1947

Evelyn’s sister, Helen , fulfilled the task of identifying her body. Per her wishes, she was cremated and there is no grave dedicated to her. But she lives on through that iconic photo of her final moment. First published in the May, 1947 issue of LIFE Magazine, it has been discussed and reproduced for decades. Even Andy Warhol produced a series of pieces inspired by Robert C. Wiles’ photo of Evelyn.

Andy Warhol, from his “Death and Disaster Series,” 1962-67

Evelyn was the 5th suicide or attempt from the Empire State Building within a 3-week period in 1947. In response to her death and its publicity, the building erected a much taller fence to deter would-be jumpers, and they now train security guards to recognize the signs of a potential suicide case attempting to climb the building. Despite everything, more than 30 people have ended their lives in this way since the tower’s construction, including one distraught construction worker.

It seems that Evelyn’s wish for there to be “no remembrance” of her is never to be fulfilled. The romance of her story and her morbid glamor live on in the imaginations of generations who, perhaps, see a little bit of themselves in this tragic bride-to-be.

Evelyn’s photo in LIFE Magazine, May, 1947

How Did All The Animals Fit On Noah’s Ark?

If anyone ever claims the Bible is completely true and a book to be taken seriously, I’ll point to the story of Noah’s Ark. This story demolishes any claims Christians may have that the Bible is true, that God is just or religion makes any sense. It is a ridiculous and preposterous tale that is almost too easy to knock down. But it shouldn’t be. Christians aren’t idiots they should recognise how little sense the story makes and drop it. We shouldn’t teach children this daft story based on the extermination of humanity. We shouldn’t blindly accept the story, but instead question it and ask, how did all the animals fit on Noah’s Ark?

The story begins on a strange note that sets the scene. Apparantly the “Sons of God” married the “daughters of men” and also “there were giants in the Earth in those days.” I’m sorry but no story involving people marrying giants or angels or whoever the sons of God are (isn’t Christianity based on the belief that Jesus is the only son of God?) can possibly be taken seriously. This apparently meant everyone on Earth was evil and doing wicked things (no explanation was given of what these things were so we can only guess). God decided that the only way to solve this vague problem was to kill every living thing on Earth! Talk about over reaction. Could he not simply have given them a talking to? After all this was supposedly before the time of Moses and Abraham so God hadn’t given any rules or commandments. Was genocide really the only solution?

It should be obvious that not every single person on Earth was evil. Were the children and babies evil? Did they deserve to die? How can you look at an entire people and declare them all evil? Isn’t that what Hitler did? He decided that all the Jews were evil and had to be exterminated. So did God. Not only that but all the animals who obviously weren’t evil would also die. Surely he could have destroyed people in a less crude way then a flood? Surely it would be less barbaric to simply convince people of the error of their ways than exterminate all life? Who thought this would be a good story for children?

God made an exception and decided that Noah and his family would be spared if they built an Ark and took two of every animal on board. (This is complicated by the fact that the Bible contradicts itself and says that he brought seven of each clean animal and seven of each bird, forgetting that God hadn’t yet distinguished between clean and unclean animals.) Now it should be obvious that are some problems with this story, namely that there isn’t a boat big enough to fit all the animals of the world on board. First of all how did all these animals reach Noah’s Ark? How did the penguins or the kangaroos (who can’t swim) arrive? Christians claim that all the animals came to Noah through some God given migration instinct. But how did they survive the journey? Animals have specific diets, so if they moved location they probably would not have access to it and starve. Travelling the length of the globe is a journey few animals could make, they simply don’t have the endurance. They would have to travel through foreign climates and expose themselves to diseases and animals that they had no defence mechanism against. Surely it’s obvious to point out that having the entire animal kingdom converge on a single spot is going to cause lots of problems?

How did all the animals fit on board? Scientists have named almost 2 million species, but all agree that this is only a tiny fraction of the true amount as there could be between 5 and 30 million species. Obviously they couldn’t all fit on the boat, especially when we know how big it actually was. How were the animals stored, after all many animals eat each other and therefore would have to be kept separate? What about the vast quantities of food that would have to be stored to feed them. What about the carnivores who will only eat fresh meat? Some snakes only eat living animals, was there a stock of live mice on board as food? What about herbivores who only eat plants, how was there food kept fresh for the entire year they were at sea? What was to prevent food from spoiling? What about cleaning up after the animals, how could only 8 people tend to thousands of animals when zoos have staffs of hundreds to deal with smaller numbers? What about ventilation and sunlight? Thousands of animals tightly packed into a confined space is a situation rife for disease. Few animals are able to adjust to captivity even where it mimics their natural life. How could they survive in dark, cramped conditions? How were animals from incredibly cold climates stored together with animals from incredibly hot climates? If a single animal died, that entire specie would go extinct. If the margin of error is zero, what happens if something goes wrong?

Christians try to get around this by claiming that insects were not brought on board (as most species are insects this greatly reduces the number). However, if they weren’t on board then they would have drowned and we wouldn’t have any insects today. They claim that the animals were infants when they were brought on board, therefore taking up less space. But infants need their parents to mind them and teach them how to survive. How else will they know what food to eat and how to avoid predators? Infants are also the most likely to catch disease and be the victim of predators, so are not the best choice for the future of a species. Christians also argue that not every animal was on board but rather one from each family group. So instead of the hundreds of different varieties of snakes, there was simply two snakes. In order to believe this you must believe evolution can occur in an extremely short space of time, only a few thousand years in this case. Evolutionary scientists know this is impossible which is why it is strange to hear creationists argue evolution didn’t happen, except in this case.

Another pseudo-scientific argument is based on comparing how many sheep you can fit into a rail carriage. The author fails to realise that not all animals are sheep. Sheep are docile and do not fight even when in confined spaces. Most animals are not like this and will probably fight. The necessity of separating animals means you cannot squash them together. While you can compact sheep for short journeys, you cannot keep them like that for a year. Animals need to move around, have fresh air, and sunlight or they will die. A year of no movement, possibly in the dark, would leave them in a greatly weakened state and prone to disease.

There are various other problems. For example, it is claimed that sea life would be fine as they would not be affected by a flood. This ignores the obvious fact that some fish live in fresh water and others live in salt water. A giant flood would upset this balance and kill a great many of the fish. The rising ocean level would also significantly change marine life’s environment and cause great disturbance. Life that bases itself in shallow water would also probably be destroyed. What about bacteria? Most bacteria cannot survive under water so it must have been on the ark. Likewise for disease, many of which require a human host. Noah and his family must have been riddled with disease.

Wooden boats are not that resilient and sunk quite easily by modern standards. What are the chances that a wooden boat built by a single family who may not have had any experience could survive the greatest flood in history? The Bible says that the flood covered even the highest mountain. If the Ark was higher than Mount Everest, then no one on board would be able to breath as the air is too thin. They would also freeze to death (ever wonder why there’s also snow on top of mountains? It’s extremely cold up there). Where did all the rain come from? The Bible says the window of Heaven was opened, but what does that mean? After the flood where did the water go? Enough water to cover Mount Everest could hardly just soak into the ground or evaporate. (There is also a scientific point that that much water would completely mess up the atmosphere and make it impossible to breathe).

What happened after the flood? When the animals were released, how did they know where to go? How did they get from Mesopotamia to the Amazon? What did they eat considering all the plant life would be dead after a year under water? What did the carnivores eat if killing a single animal would cause that species to go extinct? How could anything grow if the entire Earth is covered in sediment? There would have been no fresh water anywhere on Earth so all life would have died. Scientists reckon that any species that contains less than 20 members will go extinct, so how did only 2 animals in each species repopulate the Earth? Surely this would have required mass inbreeding that would genetically destroy a species? If Noah’s family were the only humans left, did they have to commit generation of incest to repopulate the Earth?

The best creationist response I could find was that the Earth was very different back then. They argue that there was only one continent and one climate that allowed easy migration. Or that animals had different features back then, so sloths may have actually have been fast at migrating (otherwise it would have taken generations for them to reach the Ark). Animals that have very specific diets now could have had broader palates. There is a lot of preposterous nonsense like the claim that kangaroos could have already been living in Mesopotamia. There is a strong hint of desperation and clutching at straws.

There is one possible answer to this. God could have used magic. He could have used magic to bring all the animals to the Ark, magic to make them fit on the Ark, magic to keep them alive for the duration, magic to feed them and magic to help them repopulate the Earth. The problem is that if every single step of the story requires magic, isn’t it more likely that the story didn’t happen? If he is going to use magic why build an Ark? Why not create a force field around what he wants to save and then kill the rest, instead of waiting a year? Why not just give all the evil people a heart attack and save the trouble? If everything has to die, why not recreate it afresh?

The story ends with Noah sacrificing some animals to God (what was the point of keeping them for a year). God then decides that exterminating all humanity in the world’s greatest genocide isn’t such a good idea and promises not to do again. As a reminder he creates the rainbow. This might have made sense to whoever wrote the Bible, but scientists know that rainbows come from the refraction of sunlight, if before the Flood, light didn’t refract sight would be impossible as that is how we see.

So there we have it. The most ridiculous and preposterous story that cannot possibly be taken seriously. It is a silly story about genocide and mass extermination that for some reason some people still take seriously. It didn’t happen. The Bible is not true. If this story isn’t true, then there is a good chance a lot of the other stories aren’t either. If God commits genocide he probably isn’t a loving being. It’s time to face facts, Noah’s Ark wasn’t real.

If you want to see more creationists attempts (and failings) to explain the flood see Answers in Genesis and Creation.com. For the most detailed and through criticism of every aspect of the story of Noah’s Ark see Problems With A Global Flood, while Atheism wikia is also good.

God Did Not Create Earth For Us

It is often stated by religious people that Earth is so wonderful and well suited to human inhabitation that it must have been created by God. However, this is only plausible if viewed from the human level looking up. Were we to look from the universal level downwards, we would see this argument doesn’t hold. It is not through divine guidance that humankind has thrived but through natural selection. If the Earth had been designed it would be an unrecognisably different place, without the flaws and difficulties that it has in reality.

The first and most obvious hole in the divine design argument is the fact that three-quarters of the Earth is covered in water. Now if a God wanted humans to live on Earth why would he cover it with a substance that humans cannot live on? If anything it implies that Earth is designed for marine life, with land life being a small sideline affair. Furthermore, not only is Earth covered in uninhabitable (to humans) water, but it is not even the water we need for life. It is almost as though someone was trying their best to prevent humans from living on Earth when they filled the ocean with saltwater.

Even the remaining landmass is not entirely welcoming to humans. There is the uninhabitable North of ice and snow, the rocky mountains where little grows and the vast and empty deserts devoid of life. Even the flat land is not safe as it is full of disease and wild animals that preyed on early humans. If God created Earth for us, why did he fill it with so much land that we cannot live on? Why are there so many diseases that serve no purpose but to kill us? Would a loving God not cover the planet with arable green land that would allow us to prosper, rather than harsh extremes where nothing can live?

A cursory examination of humans will show that in no sense were we intelligently designed. Some might think that the surprising fact our bodies function is proof of God, but if a God were to create a master species (as religion claims we are), they would not resemble humans. First of all, why do humans need so much sleep? A species that must spend between half and one third of its existence resting seems to be suffering from a major design flaw. Imagine how much we could achieve if this was not necessary, a point a supposedly intelligent designer would quickly spot. Likewise, why must we spend so much time eating? This requirement is so arduous that early humans did little but eat and sleep. The necessity of eating three times a day is a serious design flaw as is the fact that so many die for failing to meet this requirement. Why are there so many foods that will poison us and make us sick? Why would the supposed all-knowing, all-loving designer not create a food containing all the nutrition we need and fill the Earth with it? Combining a constant need for food with a planet that seems to be designed as to not produce much food suggests either a cruel God who does not want us to grow or one that does not exist.

The human body itself is full of flaws that mitigate it being intelligently designed. We eat and breathe through the same pipe which greatly increases the chance of choking. Sex which is necessary to reproduction is also prone to disease and childbirth has a very high death rate (until advances in modern medicine). What God would make such necessary activities so dangerous? We have an appendix, an organ with no use or purpose whatsoever that can randomly explode and kill us. Was that placed there as some sort of joke? Knee joints are not designed to withstand much use as any sports player can tell you. The spine is not designed for vertical movement and as a result most people suffer severe back pain in their life. We are easily susceptible to diseases and our bodies decline rapidly. We are weaker and slower than animals our own size and only a few would last in the wild. There is an endless list of ridiculous design flaws in humans and most animals that exclude the possibility of intelligent design. However, the one final and definitive proof that we were not designed by God is the simple fact that men have nipples.

The most famous argument for intelligent design was made by Ray Comfort with a banana. He claimed a banana was proof that God designed the world for us as it was the right shape, texture and was nutritional. This is almost of a parody of the Voltaire quote that claiming the Earth was designed for us is like claiming the nose was designed to fit your glasses. If a soft banana is proof of God, then what is a hard pineapple proof of? The Earth was not designed for us; rather we have adopted to suit it. Through natural selection, humans die out in harsh climates and thrive in hospitable ones. Likewise we are masters at changing our surroundings to suit ourselves, after all, Europe was covered entirely in forests until humans arrived and cut them down. Most foods such as wheat and bananas are inedible and even poisonous in the wild; it is only after long periods of selective breeding that they adjusted to the modern edible and nutritious forms. Bananas in the wild were small, black, oval and hard to eat. Foods that are uncomfortable or awkward to hold and eat are discarded while easy ones like bananas are chosen and grown specifically.

Religious people used to believe that the Earth was the only planet or at least the centre of the universe. In a way, this was logical. If God created humans specifically and we were all that mattered (holy books making no mention of other species or planets) then the Earth must be the most important planet. However, advances in astronomy have ridiculed this belief. We are by no means the most important planet, but rather a tiny speck in a universe beyond comprehension. We are but one of trillions of planets and millions of galaxies that form, grow and explode before we even learn of their existence. How can any believer look at this and still claim that the universe was created by God? If humans are so special, why do we only live on one tiny and insignificant planet? How can the universe be designed for us if huge parts of it are created and destroyed before we can explore it? In fact we may never reach capabilities to explore the universe, mocking the notion that it was built for us. We are but grains of sand in the larger scheme of the cosmos and it is absurd to claim we are the masters of the universe.

Claiming God created Earth for us is merely wishful thinking. People want to believe they are important and special. They focus too narrowly on their immediate surroundings and fail to see the larger picture. When stand back and look at the whole Earth with its vast inhospitable areas, the many flaws of the human body and difficulty of merely surviving, there is no way but to conclude that Earth was not designed. Once we acknowledge this fact, then we can fully appreciate the amazing effect of evolution, natural selection and the universe.

The Secularists Playbook: Part 1, Time

Let’s be honest, without substantive action this thing called (New) Atheism is just a

fart in an elevator. Sure, it infuriates the more obnoxious of theists but it’s otherwise perfectly harmless. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m glad (New) Atheism offends religious fundamentalists. I’m glad this rationalist, deeply humanist movement exists. I’m glad it’s the proverbial snowball with an inertia I can’t see being stunted. I’m glad it openly challenges preposterous beliefs born of fairytales dreamed up by Iron Age goat herders unable to explain lightning, let alone clouds. I’m glad it calls BS on ludicrous claims that the Abrahamic religions are some sort of societal moral standard bearer. I’m glad scripture is being turned around and used against theists to demonstrate the absurdity and contradictions in their Good Books. I’m glad apologists are made to look like amateur circus clowns stumbling about on stage trying to find their god in the ever decreasing gaps of cosmology. I’m glad for all these things, but it’s a sideshow. So (New) Atheism offends bible thumping, Jihadi fundamentalist. So what? I’m offended by many things but that doesn’t give me any special powers or privileges. I’m offended by the tax exempt status of churches. I’m offended by military budgets that outweigh any and all possible threats. I’m offended teachers aren’t paid more than CEO’s. I’m offended creationist try to have their childish silliness taught in schools. I’m offended research scientists have to beg for money. I’m offended theoretical physicists aren’t given tickertape parades. I’m offended we haven’t stepped foot on Mars. I’m offended we still use glorified waterwheels to generate electricity. I’m offended by the U.S House Republican’s on the Congressional Science Committee.

Muslim Head FuckI’m offended there isn’t a five-meter high marble statue of the Vedic grammarian, Yāska, in every town square. I’m offended we celebrate the supposed birth of metafictional character on the 25th of December and not the real birth of Sir Isaac Newton. I’m offended every school doesn’t have a planetarium. I’m offended Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ever fell out of the yearly Top Ten best seller list. I’m offended that Muslims get offended by cartoons. So fucking what! Here’s another one. I hope it offends you! It’s meant to by pointing out the arcane contradictions in your belief system. Harden up, princess.

So sure, I’m offended by all these things (and more) but my being offended means very little. Nothing is physically altered, and without substantive action (New) Atheism is likewise little more than an intellectual cocktail party. The real cultural ground fight is in secularism, and that is so important it deserves an entirely new category here: The Secularists Playbook. This category will be a To Do list of sorts; a collection of achievable secular objectives which organisations with greater resources (and youth) than I should pursue, and the opening salvo in this dance has to be redressing a mistake made 261 years ago. The opening salvo must be resetting time itself.

In 1752 the esteemed members of the Royal Society (the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence) made a colossal error. At the stroke of midnight on Wednesday the 2nd of September they adopted the Gregorian calendar and by doing so missed their 18th Century Enlightenment chance to push unjustified religious interference in secular societies back that little bit further into obscurity. Now let’s be frank, the Gregorian calendar is offensive to 5 in 7 people on the planet. It’s as offensive to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus as much as it is offensive to Agnostics, Humanists and Atheists alike. It’s offensive because it partitions human civilisation using a Christian measuring stick: B.C, Before Christ, A.D, Anno Domini (Latin: In the year of the Lord, or more commonly known today as, After Death). Granted, efforts to replace these Christian references with B.C.E (Before Current Era), and C.E (Current Era) might be a move in the right direction but I see it as little more than simple window dressing; an inadequate band aid that does nothing to rectify the root of the problem. Christianity has to be removed from the calendar, and to do this we must reset our fundamental measure of it. It’s not impossible. It’s not even difficult. We got rid of Pluto in this century so the very least organisations like the Antiquarian Horological Society and the Universal Postal Union can do is petition UNESCO to re-set calendar time to better reflect human reality. It might seem like a small thing but as Marshall McLuhan so aptly put it, “the medium is the message,” meaning the medium (the calendar itself) influences how the message (human history) is perceived. In no small way this entirely painless recalibration would fundamentally shift the very way we naked apes look at our history, and if you change that then you alter the very way we look at ourselves regardless of borders, culture or belief systems… and that, my friend, is priceless.

Now let’s get dirty. It’s patently ludicrous to even suggest the Current Era began 2,013 years ago. Nothing happened in or around this time which marks even a minor shift in human civilisation. It’s a meaningless date to the vast majority of humans and should be discarded without debate. Even the concept of Current Era should be thrown out or else our newly recalibrated calendar would begin with John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton. No, we need a commencement date for our calendar that marks the opening movements of civilisation. We need a date upon which some curious naked ape first looked up and with a measure of proto-scientific detail wrestled some order from the celestial chaos passing overhead. That is to say, our calendar should begin at the moment we clever little naked apes started measuring time.

For this purpose 5,500 year old Egyptian obelisks might be a fair starting point for any debate but it is possible the Sumerians had similar shadow casting time devises even earlier. We do know with a great deal of certainty that it was the Babylonians who truly nailed down the first accurate measure of time in their Saros Cycle, but the Nebra disk pre-dates this, and the even older Antikythera mechanism pushes that moment back even further. The extremely cool sounding Jericho tower would move the start of our new calendar to 10,000 years ago which on the face of it sounds like a ridiculously neat date to choose, but the problem here is that Göbekli Tepe in modern day Turkey pre-dates it by perhaps 2,000 years. For sure, Göbekli Tepe certainly sounds promising, particularly given its just 30km from Mount Karaca Dağ where DNA evidence shows wheat was first domesticated, but the problem with the site is the jury is still out on whether or not the structure had some dual astronomical purpose. Thaïs bone_1
No such doubt however exists about the Thaïs bone

which UNESCO credits as being “the most complex and elaborate time-factored sequence currently known within the corpus of Palaeolithic mobile art.” This inscribed rib bone (measuring 87mm × 27mm) is dated from around 15,000 years ago and the etched sequences on its faces are a record of day-by-day lunar and solar observations undertaken by some patient, magnificent son of a bitch over a 3½ year period. The Thaïs bone is evidence someone was looking up and recording what they were seeing. The Thaïs bone is evidence of science.

Now possibly even older finds like the Wurdi Youang site in Australia might push this date back even further, and there is very good cause to perhaps use art, not science, as our calendars starting point, but for my purposes here I do believe we have a winner. The Thaïs bone should mark the moment the human calendar begins (or at least this debate does), meaning today is the October 20th, 15013. Think about that for a second. Savor the date. Let it sink in. Notice how your perception of human history is instantly reformed?

How It Explains The Rise Of New Atheism.

We all know the story of President George. W. Bush implementing measures in 2001 which essentially ended U.S. Stem Cell research and put American medical science a decade behind the rest of the world for no other reason than his religion got in the way of the public good. Alone this is a standout example of why this thing called New Atheism (a vocal, rational rebuttal to unjustified religious interference in secular societies) exists, but there is a better, much lesser known Bush story which paints an even clearer picture, and to get there we must first go through this unlikely chap:

Meet Elwood P. Dowd; a softly spoken, gently mannered, entirely likeable man who had – he said – an invisible six-foot, three-and-one-half-inch tall rabbit friend named, Harvey. Granted, it’s an odd admission for a grown man but in forty-seven year old Elwood’s defence Harvey was in fact a Púca, the Gaelic word for Goblin, who just so happened to resemble a very tall rabbit.

In Mary Chase’s 1944 play, Harvey, the goodhearted bachelor Elwood is regarded as a harmless eccentric in the small town in which he lives. He buys tickets in two’s, always carry’s a spare hat and coat for Harvey, and is forever seen chatting away with nothing at all as if it were the most natural thing to do. When his sister and niece arrive to live with him things inevitably change. Fearing for his mental health his sister, Veta, attempts to have Elwood committed to Chumley’s Rest, a mental hospital whose staff accidently have her committed instead and only after the mistake is recognised does a mad, comedy-prone search ensue for her brother and his invisible companion. As the story unfolds Elwood’s delusion has a peculiarly warming influence on the sanitariums employees including the strict Dr. Chumley, and only just before Elwood is to be given an injection of the ominously named Formula 977 that will make him into a “perfectly normal human being” does Veta realise she’d rather have Elwood the same as he’s always been – carefree and kind – even if it meant living with Harvey.

“One of the delights of the season,” wrote New York Times critic, Louis Nichols, at the time. An interesting choice of words and clearly so ‘delightful’ that the play won the 1944 Pulitzer for Drama. It was awarded this accolade not because Chase bravely tore open the fabric of our elaborate belief systems and challenged our collective and consecrated delusions but rather because it was a ‘delightful’ departure from the harsh realities of a world at war.

Now, regretfully, Mary Chase died in 1981 so I cannot ask her if she was attempting something more detailed or even mischievous with her work, but I think I already know the answer. If she had been she certainly never spoke of it in any public forum that I’m aware of. She was a Catholic, a devout Irish Catholic to be more accurate, with a love of Celtic myth and folklore: one in the same thing to an atheist but to an ardent theist belonging to two completely different desert carts travelling in two completely different directions at entirely different speeds. Still, accidents do occur, be they genetic or of the mind, and Mary Chases Harvey appears to be just that: a magnificent, truthful accident.

Is Elwood delusional? Of course he is. Should we challenge him? Not on your fucking life! That would mean challenging ourselves, and that’s a bridge few people are willing to cross. It’s easier not to. The perception is that Elwood’s delusion is harmless, and just as long as it is we can ignore it because it offends no one. It’s a paper tiger, non-toxic, and the message presented is that the world is just better with the delusion running. Formula 977 – rationalism, logic, and common sense – has no place in this world. Guiltless things are, after all, perfectly innocent.

That, quite obviously, is an outrageous falsehood.

There was nothing at all harmless or innocent about Dena Schlosser who while listening to church hymns in 2004 cut off the arms of her 11 month year old baby girl because she claimed God had wanted her to do it as “an offering” before the apocalypse. There was nothing guiltless about Deanna Lajune LeNay who in 2003 bludgeoned her two boys to death because “God was testing her faith.” There was nothing inoffensive about Andrea Yates who in 2001 drowned her five children because “Satan had possessed her” and she wanted to “save them from Hell.” There was nothing savoury, excuse the pun, about Otty Sanchez who in May, 2012, beheaded her three week old son and ate part of his brain because Satan told her to. And there was nothing at all childlike about Julia Lovemore who in June, 2012, killed her 6 week old daughter by shoving pages of the bible down the child’s throat because she wanted her to ‘absorb’ the books message of love.

As repulsive as each of these religiously-inspired behavioural malfunctions are they are not the example which I choose to make my point here. Recent history has been furnished by another even more grotesquely malformed Elwood P. Dowd incident, and that story is told by this man:

Meet Thomas Römer; professor at the University of Lausanne who in the winter of 2003

found himself on the end of what was conceivably one of the most bizarre series of calls ever made in the history of telephony.

The inbound caller identified herself as the head of Biblical Services for the Protestant Federation of France and had what seemed at first to be a mildly odd but otherwise perfectly innocuous question: who the hell are Gog and Magog?

Unfortunately for Römer, an authority on the Old Testament, there was no straightforward answer. He explained that depending on different translations of the Bible one can read, “Gog and Magog,” “Gog from Magog,” “Gog, in the land of Magog,” or even “Gog, prince of Magog.” The short answer was however that Gog and Magog were two creatures, Römer said, that appear in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis and in two ferociously obscure chapters in the Book of Ezekiel where the author saw in a vision these embodiments of evil – perhaps lands, perhaps kings, perhaps demons – bringing total war to Israel. Complicating matters even more, in the New Testaments’ Book of Revelations Gog and Magog resurface and are seen as being rallied by Satan to battle in the prophesized ‘end times.’

Baffled, the caller pressed Römer asking more specifically, how would Gog and Magog apply to an American evangelical Christian? This was a question more easily answered. Evangelicals, he outlined, believe Gog and Magog to be powerful demons who are harbingers of God’s Final Battle prophesized in apocalyptic Judaic texts.

The story of this call might have ended here had it not been that the enquiry had originated from the highest office of French politics. Then President, Jacques Chirac, had reached out to the Protestant Federation of France (who in turn had reached out to Römer who confirmed the story in a 2007 article in the University of Lausanne’s magazine, Allez savoir) so as to get some urgent clarification following one of the most bewildering calls in its own right ever placed to the Elysée Palace. That particular call had been dialled-in from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C. by U.S. President George W. Bush in a failed attempt to broaden his “Coalition of the Willing” in the build up to the invasion of Iraq; the greatest strategic blunder since Lord Cardigan arrived at a less-than brilliant idea on the morning of the 25th of October, 1854, and decided to take his Light Horse Brigade out for a ride at the Battle of Balaclava.

In an interview with French journalist, Jean-Claude Maurice for his book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny it), Chirac spoke of being “boggled” at the words he was hearing, and for very good reason. “Gog and Magog are loose in the Middle East, and the biblical prophecies are being fulfilled,” Bush informed his French counterpart recounting the conversation. “This confrontation is willed by God who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This little publicized event – a story Andrew Brown of The Guardian rightly observed “we should all be ashamed of missing” – is a disturbing insight into the workings of a religiously deluded mind; a mind which belonged to a man who claimed God spoke to him on a daily basis (Sharm el-Sheikh, August, 2003) and whose decisions led to the deaths of some 5,300 American and coalition soldiers, the irreversible maiming of some 50,000 others, the killing and maiming of perhaps as many as 500,000 perfectly innocent Iraqi civilians, and the displacement of 4 million refugees. A decade of wanton carnage and destruction made possible in-part or in-whole because in the early stages of this century the President of the United States believed two wildly ambiguous demons had leapt from the pages of an Iron Age fairytale.

Such wild and frankly bizarre imaginings were however far from Bush’s alone. Influential American evangelical preachers such as John C. Hagee, Benny Hinn, George Morrison, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell were all equally obsessed with the hobgoblins contained in the Book of Revelations and had been whipping audiences up with fiery dispensationalist sermons for years before Iraq; speeches often littered with prophetic fatalism and calls for all-out war in the Middle East so as to bring forth the apocalypse and hasten the 2nd coming of Jesus. In 2001 such talk among evangelicals had become the rule, not the exception, and after the events of the 11th of September the conditions were in place for a Christian Fundamentalist’s hoedown from hell.

Now precisely how much of this fatalistic religious longing for the destruction of the world affected George W. Bush’s thinking only he can say. What we do know with a great deal of certainty via Chirac and Römer is that such biblical end time prophecies were without doubt on his mind in the lead up to the invasion. Yes, the original justification – the public face – for the unprovoked, pre-emptive war was the ‘certain’ presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the imminent threat of “mushroom clouds over U.S cities;” fantastically erroneous claims which have since been blamed on a series of colossal miscalculations in Intelligence and interpretation. Unquestionably, there was a series of monumental miscalculations in Intelligence and interpretation but it wasn’t just Bush Administration officials in the centre of the delusional clusterfuck. Gog and Magog were in there too, and in this version of Mary Chase’s Harvey, Elwood P. Dowd had command of the world’s largest army.

Volumes have of course already been written on the more pragmatic geopolitical, oil-centric motivations that shaped this shameful and bloody event, but entire libraries could and should be written on what has amounted to be one of the greatest misadventures outside the bounds of rational human thought and action. I’m loath to say it but such libraries will however probably fail to materialize. It’s not in our nature at this time to challenge ourselves that way. Not at least in popular culture. It’s uncomfortable, desperately awkward, fabulously embarrassing, and in the end it’s just easier for most of our neighbours to play Veta.

Not playing Veta is however what best describes this thing called, New Atheism. It’s a noise that has grown in volume since 2001 and is at its very core a reaction to the outward manifestation of dangerous religious hogwash exerting unjustified influence on society. It’s a noise that says, “No, not anymore. We’ve had enough of this adult fantasy absurdity.” It’s a noise that says, “Evidence for your god now, or shut up.” To our neighbours it’s a noise that says, “This is Formula 977… I’m going to hurt you with the truth, not comfort you with a lie.” It’s a noise that says, “Keep your 6ft tall invisible rabbits out of our schools, our politics, our science, our military, and off our streets… and don’t try to convince me that that rabbit ordered you to kill.”

Christian Taliban

Don’t let the seemingly harmless grandfatherly appearance of this man fool you. Gary North is not someone you want anywhere near your enemies, let alone your family. North publishes Christian Reconstructionist and homeschooling books, is the founder of the Institute for Christian Economics, is an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is presently writing an education curriculum for Congressman Ron Paul, owns Dominion Educational Ministries Inc. (which operates day care centers), and believes children should be put to death by stoning in public squares for cursing their parents.

“When people [children] curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime. The son or daughter is under the lawful jurisdiction of the family. The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death.”

Gary North is a face of the American Taliban; a leading member of the Christian Reconstructionists; a Dominionism (or Dominion Theology) movement which advocates nothing short of supplanting secular western governments with “Biblical theocratic republics in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God’s law” (David Barton, Reconstructionist theologian). Or as Gary North put it:

“The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and Holy Communion–must be denied citizenship.”

In North’s mind pluralism is heresy and zero tolerance should be afforded to gays, blasphemers, atheists, agnostics, secularists, apostates, adulterers, unchaste women, and just about everyone else who isn’t a homeschooled Reconstructionist; all of whom North believes should be put to death, and always, he insists, by way of public stoning, as detailed in chapter 6 of his book, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments

Why stoning? There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost. Second, no one blow can be traced to any person. In other words, no one citizen can regard himself as “the executioner,” the sole cause of another man’s death. Psychologically, this is important; it relieves potential guilt problems in the mind of a sensitive person. Those who abstain from the “dirty business” of enforcing God’s law have a tendency to elevate their behavior as being more moral than the executioner’s, where in point of fact such abstention is itself immoral. Executions are community projects–not with spectators who watch a professional executioner do `his’ duty, but rather with actual participants.

According to Gary North western civilization’s rejection of public stoning is the product of “God-hating humanistic concepts of justice” which have replaced “the infallible Old Testament;” progressive ideas, he says, that have redefined religiously inspired mob violence as somehow “sinister.”

That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the re-introduction of stoning for capital crimes indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christians. If humanistic concepts of punishment have persuaded Christians that there was something sinister about the Old Testament’s specified mode of execution, then we should not be surprised to discover that humanistic concepts of justice, including economic justice, have also become influential in the thinking of Christians. Christians have voluntarily transferred their allegiance from the infallible Old Testament to contemporary God-hating and God-denying criminologists and economists.

I could go on and fill the next ten pages with psychotic, unbalanced quotes from this man and his deranged Dominionism brethren, but I won’t. Gary North is a mentally sick, emotionally diseased human being and simply isn’t worth the time of day. I will, however, say this: if there is to be any public stoning it should probably start with the hypocrite Gary North himself as the computer into which he writes his demented thoughts was invented by a atheist (Alan Turing), runs software inspired by either Bill Gates (atheist) or Steve Jobs (atheist), and is powered by electrical generation and transmission technologies set forth by Nikola Tesla (atheist) and Thomas Edison (apostate/deist)… all soiled men deserving of public execution in the eyes of this Christian lunatic.