Legal case against God dismissed

[from www.bbc.co.uk/news]

A US judge has thrown out a case against God, ruling that because the defendant has no address, legal papers cannot be served.
The suit was launched by Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers, who said he might appeal against the ruling.
He sought a permanent injunction to prevent the "death, destruction and terrorisation" caused by God.
Judge Marlon Polk said in his ruling that a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a case to proceed.
"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Judge Polk wrote in his ruling.
Mr Chambers cannot refile the suit but may appeal.
'God knows everything'
Mr Chambers sued God last year. He said God had threatened him and the people of Nebraska and had inflicted "widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants".
He said he would carefully consider Judge Polk's ruling before deciding whether to appeal.
The court, Mr Chambers said, had acknowledged the existence of God and "a consequence of that acknowledgement is a recognition of God's omniscience".
"Since God knows everything," he reasoned, "God has notice of this lawsuit."
Mr Chambers, a state senator for 38 years, said he filed the suit to make the point that "anyone can sue anyone else, even God".

The Fine Art of Baloney Detection

CARL SAGAN'S BALONEY DETECTION KIT
Based on the book The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments:

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts
Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").
Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.
Quantify, wherever possible.
If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.
"Occam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.
Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result? Additional issues are
Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.
Check for confounding factors - separate the variables. Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric
Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
Argument from "authority".
Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable" decision).
Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)
Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").
Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
Confusion of correlation and causation.
Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..
Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"
Above all - read the book!

Do they really think the Earth is flat ?

[By Brendan O'Neill - www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine/]

In the 21st Century, the term "flat-earther" is used to describe someone who is spectacularly - and seemingly wilfully - ignorant. But there is a group of people who claim they believe the planet really is flat. Are they really out there or is it all an elaborate prank?
Nasa is celebrating its 50th birthday with much fanfare and pictures of past glories. But in half a century of extraordinary images of space, one stands out.

WORLD VIEW
330 BC Aristotle provides evidence of spherical earth
240 BC Eratosthenes of Cyrene accurately calculates circumference of globe
8th Century AD work by Bede shows acceptance of sphere idea

On 24 December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission took a photo now known as Earthrise. To many, this beautiful blue sphere viewed from the moon's orbit is a perfect visual summary of why it is right to strive to go into space.
Not to everybody though. There are people who say they think this image is fake - part of a worldwide conspiracy by space agencies, governments and scientists.
Welcome to the world of the flat-earther.
Our attitude towards those who once upon a time believed in the flatness of the earth is apparent in a new Microsoft advert.

Photos such as this one are deemed fakes by flat-earthers
Depicting an olden-days ship sailing on rough seas, presumably heading towards the "edge of the world", the advert is part of a $300m campaign aimed at rescuing the reputation of Windows Vista by comparing its critics to flat-earthers.
Satellite era
But are there any genuine flat-earthers left? Surely in our era of space exploration - where satellites take photos of our blue and clearly globular planet from space, and robots send back info about soil and water from Mars - no one can seriously still believe that the Earth is flat?
Wrong.
Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the "conspiracy" that the Earth is round.
"People are definitely prejudiced against flat-earthers," says John Davis, a flat earth theorist based in Tennessee, reacting to the new Microsoft commercial.
"Many use the term 'flat-earther' as a term of abuse, and with connotations that imply blind faith, ignorance or even anti-intellectualism."
Mr Davis, a 25-year-old computer scientist originally from Canada, first became interested in flat earth theory after "coming across some literature from the Flat Earth Society a few years ago".
"I came to realise how much we take at face value," he says. "We humans seem to be pleased with just accepting what we are told, no matter how much it goes against our senses."
Mr Davis now believes "the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite - it stretches horizontally forever".
"And it is at least 9,000 kilometres deep", he adds.
James McIntyre, a British-based moderator of a Flat Earth Society discussion website, has a slightly different take. "The Earth is, more or less, a disc," he states. "Obviously it isn't perfectly flat thanks to geological phenomena like hills and valleys. It is around 24,900 miles in diameter."
Mr McIntyre, who describes himself as having been "raised a globularist in the British state school system", says the reactions of his friends and family to his new beliefs vary from "sheer incredulity to the conviction that it's all just an elaborate joke".
So how many flat-earthers are around today? Neither Mr Davis nor Mr McIntyre can say.
Disappearing ships
Mr McIntyre estimates "there are thousands", but "without a platform for communication, a head-count is almost impossible", he says. Mr Davis says he is currently creating an "online information repository" to help to bring together local Flat Earth communities into a "global community".
"If you will forgive my use of the term 'global'", he says.
And for the casual observer, it is hard to accept that all of this is not some bizarre 21st Century jape. After all, most schoolchildren know that ships can disappear over the horizon, that satellites orbit the earth and that if you head along the equator you will eventually come back on yourself.
What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Earth is round? "The space agencies of the world are involved in an international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit," says Mr McIntyre.
John Davis also says "these photos are fake".
And what about the fact that no one has ever fallen off the edge of our supposedly disc-shaped world?
Mr McIntyre laughs. "This is perhaps one of the most commonly asked questions," he says. "A cursory examination of a flat earth map fairly well explains the reason - the North Pole is central, and Antarctica comprises the entire circumference of the Earth. Circumnavigation is a case of travelling in a very broad circle across the surface of the Earth."
Ultimate conspiracy
Mr Davis says that being a flat-earther doesn't have an impact on how one lives every day. "As a rule of thumb, we don't have any fears of aircraft or other modes of transportation," he says.
Christine Garwood, author of Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, is not surprised that flat-earthers simply write off the evidence that our planet is globular.
"Flat earth theory is one of the ultimate conspiracy theories," she says.
"Naturally, flat earth believers think that the moon landings were faked, as were the photographs of earth from space."
When Columbus sailed, it was known the world was not flat
Perhaps one of the most surprising things in Garwood's book is her revelation that flat earth theory is a relatively modern phenomenon.
Ms Garwood says it is an "historic fallacy" that everyone from ancient times to the Dark Ages believed the earth to be flat, and were only disabused of this "mad idea" once Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to America without "falling off the edge of the world".
In fact, people have known since at least the 4th century BC that the earth is round, and the pseudo-scientific conviction that we actually live on a disc didn't emerge until Victorian times.
Theories about the earth being flat really came to the fore in 19th Century England. With the rise and rise of scientific rationalism, which seemed to undermine Biblical authority, some Christian thinkers decided to launch an attack on established science.
Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884) assumed the pseudonym of "Parallax" and founded a new school of "Zetetic astronomy". He toured England arguing that the Earth was a stationary disc and the Sun was only 400 miles away.
In the 1870s, Christian polemicist John Hampden wrote numerous works about the Earth being flat, and described Isaac Newton as "in liquor or insane".
And the spirit of these attacks lives on to the present day. The flat-earth myth remains the outlandish king in the realm of the conspiracy theorist.
And while we all respect a degree of scepticism towards the authorities, says Ms Garwood, the flat-earthers show things can go too far.
"It is always good to question 'how we know what we know', but it is also good to have the ability to accept compelling evidence - such as the photographs of Earth from space."

Imagine No Religion

[by Richard Dawkins http://richarddawkins.net/]

Imagine, sang John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Kashmir dispute, no Indo/Pakistan partition, no Israel/Palestine wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no Northern Ireland 'troubles'. Imagine no Taliban blowing up ancient statues, lashing women for showing an inch of skin, or publicly beheading blasphemers and apostates. Imagine no persecutions of the Jews - no Jews to persecute indeed, for without religion they would long ago have intermarried with the surrounding populations.Of course today's religious killings and persecutions are not motivated by theological disputes. IRA gunmen don't kill Protestants (or vice versa) over disagreements about transubstantiation. The motive is more likely to be tribal vengeance. It was one of 'them' killed one of 'us'. 'They' drove 'our' great grandfathers out of our ancestral lands. The grievances are economic and political, not religious, and the vendettas stretch back a long way.But although the tribal disagreements themselves have nothing to do with religion, the fact that there are two tribes at all has everything to do with religion. There are, no doubt, tribal distinctions of genetic or linguistic origin, but in Northern Ireland what else is there but religion? The same applies to Indo-Pakistan, Serbo-Croatia, and various regions of Indonesia and Africa. Religion is the world's most divisive label of group identity and hostility. If a social engineer set out to devise a system for perpetuating today's most vicious enmities, he could not come up with a better formula than sectarian education. Faith schools that taught all religions comparatively might do some good. But the whole point of faith schools is that the children of 'our' tribe must be taught 'their own' religion. Since the children of the other tribe are simultaneously being taught the rival religion with, of course, the rival version of the vendetta-riven history, the prognosis is all too predictable.What can it mean to speak of a child's 'own' religion? Imagine a world in which it was normal to speak of a Keynesian child, a Hayekian child, or a Marxist child. Or imagine a proposal to pour government money into separate primary schools for Labour children, Tory children, LibDem children and Monster Raving Loony children? Everyone agrees that small children are too young to know whether they are Keynesian or Monetarist, Labour or Tory, too young to bear the burden of such labels. Why, then, is our entire society happy to slap a label like Catholic or Protestant, Muslim or Jew, on a tiny child? Isn't that, when you think about it, a kind of mental child abuse?I once made that very point in a broadcast debate with a Roman Catholic spokeswoman. I've forgotten her name but she was probably some kind of agony aunt, and a stalwart of Thought for the Day. When I said that a primary school child was too young to know whether it was a Catholic child or a Protestant child, she bristled: "Just come and talk to some of the children in our local Catholic school! I can assure you they know very well that they are Catholic children." Well yes, I believe it only too well. The Jesuit boast - "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man" - is no less sinister for being familiar (in various versions) to the point of clich?. But, you may ask, what if religion is true? (What if my particular religion is true, you should rather say, for mutually contradictory beliefs can't all be true.) Surely sectarian indoctrination would not be child abuse if it saved the child's immortal soul? Despite its smug presumptuousness, I can see how you might take that view if you sincerely believed you had the God-given truth. Let me, then, be ambitious if not presumptuous, and try to persuade you that you do not have the truth. Your confidence in your God is simply wrong!Why do you believe in your God? Because he talks to you inside your head? That is surely not a reliable argument. The Yorkshire Ripper's murders were ordered by the perceived voice of Jesus inside his head. The human brain is a consummate hallucinator, and hallucinations are not good grounds for beliefs about the real world. Perhaps you believe in God because life would be intolerable without him. That's an even weaker argument. Maybe life just is intolerable. Tough! All sorts of things are intolerable, but it doesn't make them untrue. It may be intolerable that you are starving, but you won't make a stone edible by believing - no matter how passionately and sincerely - that it is made of cheese. By far the favourite reason for believing in God is the argument from improbability. Eyes and skeletons, hearts and nerve cells are too improbable to have come about by chance. Man-made machines are improbable too, and they are designed by engineers for a purpose. Surely any fool can see that kidneys and wings, ears and blood corpuscles must also be designed for a purpose, by a master Engineer? Well, maybe any fool can see it, but let's stop playing the fool and grow up. It is 146 years since Charles Darwin gave us what is arguably the cleverest idea ever to occur to a human mind. He demonstrated a working process whereby natural forces, with no design whatsoever, can by slow, gradual degrees generate an elegant illusion of design, to almost limitless levels of complexity.I have written books on the subject and I obviously can't repeat the whole argument in a short article. Let me give just two guidelines to understanding. First, the commonest fallacy about natural selection is that it is a theory of chance. If natural selection really were a chance process, it is entirely obvious that it could not explain the illusion of design. But natural selection, properly understood, is the antithesis of chance. Second, it is often said that natural selection makes God unnecessary, but leaves his existence an entirely open possibility. I think we can go further. The argument from improbability, which traditionally is deployed in God's favour, turns out to be, when you think it through, the strongest argument against him.The beauty of Darwinian evolution is that it explains the very improbable, by gradual degrees. It starts from primeval simplicity (relatively easy to understand) and works up, by plausibly small steps, to complex entities which, by any non-gradual process, would be too improbable for serious contemplation. Design is a real alternative, but only if the designer is himself the product of an escalatory process such as evolution by natural selection, either on this planet or another. There may be alien life forms so advanced that we would worship them as gods. But they too must be ultimately explained by gradual escalation. Gods that exist ab initio are ruled out by the Argument from Improbability, even more surely than are spontaneously erupting eyes or elbow joints.Religious faith is not only a major force for evil in the world. Its very foundations are undermined and denied by scientific logic. Imagine a world where nobody is afraid to follow such thoughts wherever they may lead.

Some good quotes ...

"It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science." [Darwin]

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." [Voltaire]

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." [Einstein]

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]

"I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end." [Edison]

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Lincoln]

"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" [Arthur C. Clarke]

"Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies." [Thomas Jefferson]

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." [Kurt Vonnegut]

"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." [Bertrand Russell]

Saudi king appeals for tolerance

[from www.bbc.co.uk]

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called on followers of the world's main religions to turn away from extremism and embrace a spirit of reconciliation.
The king was opening a conference in Madrid which brings together Muslims, Christians, Jews and Buddhists.
He said the great conflicts of history were not caused by religion, but by the misinterpretation of religion.
King Juan Carlos of Spain, the co-host, said Spain had always sought to promote international dialogue.
Critics have dismissed the gathering as a propaganda gimmick by the Saudis who, they say, are not best placed to host a meeting on religious tolerance.
Wahhabism, the strain of Sunni Islam that is officially practiced in Saudi Arabia, is considered one of the religion's most conservative and intolerant forms.
"My brothers, we must tell the world that differences don't need to lead to disputes," King Abdullah said.
"The tragedies we have experienced throughout history were not the fault of religion but because of the extremism that has been adopted by some followers of all the religions, and of all political systems."
Correspondents say King Abdullah has made reaching out to other faiths a hallmark of his rule since becoming king in 2005. He is the first reigning Saudi monarch to meet the Pope, for example.
In June, Abdullah held a religious conference in Mecca in which participants pledged improved relations between Islam's two main branches, Sunni and Shia Islam.
The conference is sponsored by Saudi Arabia and is billed as a strictly religious, non-political affair. It is off limits to journalists apart from the inaugural session.

Hari on science versus religion

[Posted by cabalamat on 2008-Jul-09]
Johann Hari warns against the dangers of religion:

Does anybody else find it depressing that as science teaching declines in our schools, we do more than ever to push the sterile fictions of religion on children? As a direct result of government policy, Physics and Chemistry are withering while the enforced study of religion – in faith schools – is swelling.
Hari is right to be concerned about this. Science has a direct effect on Britain’s prosperity. Bad science teaching, or no science teaching, will make us materially poorer than we would be otherwise. It will also make us spiritually poorer, because it’ll replace the true awe and wonder at the natural world with the trite and silly fantasies of religion.
Despite the claims of woolly-headed kum-by-ya multiculturalists, there is a fundamental conflict between science and religion. Science offers a natural explanation of the world, based on empirical observation and reason. Religion offers a supernatural explanation of the world, based on ‘divine revelation’ – in other words, hallucination.
These two roads lead in different directions. Empirically observing the world will never lead you to conclude that (say) the Archangel Gabriel inseminated a virgin and she produced a Messiah who could produce infinite amounts of fish from a basket.
The more we explore the world with science, the more we find it is not as described in the Holy Books. Their maps, their explanations, their histories – all are empirically false. So the religious can either scramble rather pitifully to deny the facts, as creationists do, or they can turn more and more of their faith into gaseous metaphor, with their ‘God’ reduced to a distant First Cause.
In terms of policy the solution to these problems of science and religion is fairly obvious:
1. science should be taught as a compulsory subject in all schools; and taught in an interesting way.
2. religion should also be a compulsory subject. The purpose of religious education should be to innoculate children against religious belief, so that future generations can grow up free from religion.
3. there would be no faith superstition schools
4. independent schools would be required to follow the same policies as state schools regarding the above

Absolutely Right !!!

Keith Allen will burn in hell

[First shown on Channel 4 in June 2007 - from http://www.channel4.com/]

Keith Allen discovers an unnerving mixture of hatred, fanaticism and fun when he investigates one of the USA’s most extreme fundamentalist churches.
The members of Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, which preaches that every word in the Bible is literally true, are some of America's most fanatical Christian fundamentalists. Bearing ‘God Hates Fags’ and ‘God Hates America’ placards, they cheerfully picket the funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq, and delight in provoking outrage among both liberals and patriots.
Programme-makers in America and Britain have repeatedly tried to expose their beliefs as anti-Christian, but these attempts have failed. In Channel 4’s investigation, Keith Allen takes a smarter, more streetwise approach. During three extraordinary days at Westboro, Keith reveals more about the church than other television programmes have unearthed in three months.
In interviews that are hilarious, infuriating and compelling, he forensically exposes the curious mixture of hatred and jollity that underpins their faith. Using all his journalistic skills and instincts, he scavenges for information in local bars and discovers a secret about the church's chief spokesperson, Shirley Phelps-Roper. Shirley confesses her ‘sin’ on camera, making a memorable climax to a programme that exposes the hypocrisy of this bizarre, fundamentalist sect.
Find out more
There’s lots more information about Christian fundamentalists in the USA in other parts of the Faith and Belief website.
God's Next ArmyConservative evangelical Christians hold key positions in the US Government, and now they're training the next generation to take power.
Make Me A VirginWhen filmmaker and ex-evangelical Christian Jamie Campbell is asked to make a video promoting sexual abstinence, he discovers some unexpected agendas at work in the ‘no sex before marriage’ movement.
Putting the Fun Into FundamentalPresenter Elliott Gerner travels around the world meeting different religious groups, from Christian fundamentalists in America's Bible Belt to an obscure Hindu goddess in India.
Texas Teenage VirginsIn the town of Lubbock in Texas, where a lot of people take the Bible literally, the church is powerful enough to ensure that teenagers receive no education about sex, while the Christian radio stations and preachers tell them that condoms don’t work, that sex brings disease and that abstinence is the only option.
The Doomsday CodeTony Robinson investigates the people with powerful political friends in the White House, who are trying to bring about the end of the world.
The FundamentalistsMark Dowd finds that there are fundamentalists of all religious persuasions across the world – Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and, unexpectedly, Buddhists.
The New FundamentalistsRod Liddle investigates the evangelical Christians who tell teenagers that contraception won't protect them and that homosexuality is wrong.
Turning Muslim in TexasIn the state of Texas, the Bible Belt is transferring its allegiance to the Qur’an because, for many erstwhile Christians, believe it or not, the church is too liberal.
With God on Our SideA detailed and fascinating exploration of American Christian fundamentalism, the intentions and implications of the separation of church and state, and a round-up of evangelicals.

Ben Stein 1, Yoko Ono 0 in "Expelled" copyright spat

[from www.arstechnica.com/news.ars/ by Timothy B. Lee, June 2, 2008]

A New York judge today dealt a serious blow to the widow and children of John Lennon, who are seeking to force the removal of the John Lennon song "Imagine" from a controversial film about intelligent design, creationism's PR-savvy cousin. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed argues that advocates of the theory of intelligent design face persecution in the academy. Judge Sidney H. Stein rejected the plaintiff's request for an injunction against further distribution of the film, finding that the makers of Expelled were likely to prevail in their argument that the use of "Imagine" was fair use under copyright law.
The controversy centers around a segment about an hour into the film. Science advocate P.Z.Myers argues that greater science literacy would "lead to the erosion of religion," and expresses the hope that religion would "slowly fade away." The narrator, Ben Stein, asserts that Myers' ideas aren't original. Rather, he is "merely lifting a page out of John Lennon's songbook."
The viewer is then treated to a clip from John Lennon's "Imagine," with the lyrics "Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too." The music is accompanied by black-and-white footage "of a military parade, which gives way to a close up of Joseph Stalin waving." Next, the film cuts to a guest who argues that there is a connection between "transcendental values" and "what human beings permit themselves to do one to the other." Evidently, religion is the only thing standing between us and Stalinist dictatorship.
Judge Stein's task wasn't to critique the dubious logic of this segment, but to evaluate the narrower question of whether the film's use of "Imagine" is fair under copyright law. He noted that the film was focused on a subject of public interest, and that the film was commenting on Lennon's anti-religious message. The excerpting of copyrighted works for purpose of "comment and criticism" is explicitly protected by the Copyright Act, and Judge Stein ruled that this provision applied in this case.
Imagine there's no Fair Use
The decision quotes extensively from Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley, a 2006 decision that allowed the reprinting of reduced-size versions of several historical posters used in a coffee-table book about the Grateful Dead. In that case, as in this one, the alleged infringers had used the works in a commercial product, but the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that "courts are more willing to find a secondary use fair when it produces a value that benefits the broader public interest." Whatever the merits of its argument, Expelled is clearly commentary on an issue of public concern, and the use of "Imagine" was central to its argument. Those facts weighed heavily in favor of a finding of fair use.
Stein and company were defended by lawyers from Stanford's Fair Use Project. In a blog post announcing their decision to take the case, executive director Anthony Falzone wrote that "The right to quote from copyrighted works in order to criticize them and discuss the views they represent lies at the heart of the fair use doctrine," and argued that Ono's actions threaten free speech.
We've noted before that intelligent design is not a scientific theory so much as an attempt to create the appearance of controversy using flashy PR tactics. Indeed, the advocates of intelligent design theory have explicitely advocated that schools "teach the controversy," which gives schoolchildren the mistaken impression that there is widespread controversy regarding the merits of evolution within the academy. Expelled in particular has advanced this narrative by featuring scientists who supposedly faced retaliation for their support of intelligent design. (The film greatly exaggerates the persecution of intelligent design advocates)
It is, therefore, unfortunate that Lennon's heirs sought to use copyright law to squelch criticism of Lennon's lyrics. No matter how dishonest Stein and company's arguments may be, they have the right to make them, and copyright must give way to the First Amendment. Ono's aggressive tactics will give Stein and company an undeserved PR victory, allowing them to play the beleaguered underdogs fighting the "Darwinist" establishment. The way to counter Expelled is with logic and evidence, of which there's an ample supply. Overzealous application of copyright law is counterproductive.

While it is regretable that John Lennon's classic song has been used for what is quite clearly a cynical and unoriginal Christian apologist propaganda movie, it is clear that there is no law being broken. John Lennon was an atheist who understood that religion and belief in the afterlife cause great suffering. He explicity stated that he did not believe in Jesus, the Bible or any other form of religion and this is reflected in the line "nothing to kill or die for and no religion too". The Ben Stein movie uses the clip from Imagine followed by images of Stalinist Russia to imply that a nation without religion inevitably turns into a brutal totalitarian regime. This is an old argument used by apologists who having failed to convince us that their religion has any basis in reality, resort to the argument that religion (generally Christianity) produces a better and more compassionate society than atheism. This argument is of course intellectually poor and strongly one sided, but could still be convincing to impressionable and poorly educated individuals and this, I feel certain, is exactly what it sets out to do!

Interestingly the movie sets out to argue the case for the concept of intelligent design as opposed to accepted evolutionary theory. However evidently it is unable to do so adequately and is forced to fall back on the old "without Christianity people wouldn't be nice to each other" argument, which has nothing to do with the intelligent design vs evolution debate. After all even if that were true it would prove the theory of evolution is faulty.

It is a great shame that the work of a brilliant and enlightened individual like John Lennon should be used in this way. We shouldn't be too surprized though, after all part of the motivation for his murder were his anti-religious and anti-Christian views. But that wasn't enough, now they want to offend his memory, his fans and his family by using his work for a dishonest and ill-conceived project that he would have totally disapproved of.

God is a concept by which we can measure our pain

"God is a concept by which we can measure our pain. I’ll say it again, God is a concept by which we can measure our pain.

I don’t believe in magic, I don’t believe in I-ching, I don’t believe in bible, I don’t believe in tarot, I don’t believe in Hitler, I don’t believe in Jesus, I don’t believe in Kennedy, I don’t believe in Buddha, I don’t believe in mantra, I don’t believe in Gita, I don’t believe in yoga, I don’t believe in kings, I don’t believe in Elvis, I don’t believe in Zimmerman, I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.

The dream is over, What can I say? The dream is over. Yesterday I was dreamweaver but now I’m reborn. I was the walrus but now I’m John. And so dear friends you just have to carry on. The dream is over."

- God, John Lennon

Pakistani boy killed by teacher

[from www.bbc.co.uk]

A student of a religious seminary in Pakistan's Punjab province has died after he was punished by his teacher, police say. Atif, seven, was hung upside down from a ceiling fan by Maulvi Ziauddin for not memorising his Koran lessons, his fellow students told the police.
Atif's condition deteriorated quickly and he died in the teacher's room. Maulvi Ziauddin has been arrested. Human rights organisation say Pakistani children are often exposed to abuse.
Arrested
The students told the police in the town of Vehari that Atif was punished on Wednesday by Maulvi Ziauddin who left him hanging from the fan for some time. The son of a farm labourer, Atif lived in the seminary with about 20 other students, including a cousin.
"When his cousin did not see Atif on Wednesday night or the next morning, he informed the family," a Vehari police official, Mohammad Afzal, told the BBC. "Members of the family found Atif's body in Maulvi Ziauddin's room, but the cleric himself was missing," he said.
He was arrested from a nearby village later on Thursday.
The police said they would file formal charges after an autopsy report is issued by the local hospital. In a report published in January, Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA) - an organisation which monitors and compiles cases of child abuse and kidnapping - said children in Pakistan were increasingly exposed to abuse, kidnapping and violence.
The number of reported cases involving children has more than doubled from 617 in 2006 to 1,595 last year, the report said. It blamed poor law enforcement and old social attitudes towards children's rights as some of the reasons for the problem.

What is Karma ?

[from The Magazine, www.bbc.co.uk]

Sharon Stone claims the earthquake in China is the result of bad karma for its treatment of Tibetans. Is her definition - "when you are not nice, bad things happen to you" - correct?

THE ANSWER:

Law of Karma holds that actions have consequences.

Ethical intention behind an action affects outcome.

Other factors also come into play.

And Sharon Stone, a convert to Buddhism, has claimed - to much criticism - that the earthquake that killed at least 68,000 people in China was bad karma for Beijing policy in Tibet. "I thought, is that karma - when you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?" she mused at the Cannes Film Festival.
Karma is an important concept for Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs. Translated from the Sanskrit, it means simply "action". Because karma is used in a number of ways and contexts - even among different branches of Buddhism - this can be confusing.
Dhammadassin, a teacher at the London Buddhist Centre, says that Stone's take on karma is common - glossed over as an outcome that is the result of something done in the past - or even a past life. "This reduces the enormously complex matter of causes and their effects to a question of retribution meted out for unspecified previous actions," she says.
But the law of karma states that it's the motive behind one's actions that affects the outcome of that particular act.
"So an intentionally ethical action - for example to promote kindness, generosity, contentment - is more likely to have positive, beneficial consequences. An intentionally unethical one - to promote self-aggrandisement or greed - will be more likely to have unhelpful, even harmful consequences. Unhelpful, that is, for the positive well-being of either the doer or the recipient or both."
In a complex world, it's too simplistic to expect that a positive intention will always have a positive outcome as many factors are involved, she says.

Poetic justice

The idea of moral causation has long been held in India, but the doctrine of karma was formulated and explained by the Buddha, a spiritual teacher thought to have lived about 2,500 years ago. Some believe that he was a human who became enlightened; others that he was a god.
His teachings hold that whatever comes into existence does so in response to the conditions at the time, and in turn affects what comes after it.
Sangharakshita, the Briton who founded the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in 1967, explains this with the following example in his book Who Is The Buddha? "Rainfall, sunshine, and the nourishing earth are the conditions from which arises the oak tree, whose fallen leaves rot and form the rich humus from which the bluebell grows."
Dhammadassin says that despite its simplicity, this example reflects the inter-connectedness of our world, "in which our views, attitudes, opinions and intentions all have a part to play in creating our actions and their consequences". And what many call karma is actually closer to the idea of poetic justice, she says.

Nor do Buddhists believe karma is the only cause - others are:

• inorganic or environmental factors, such as the weather << China Earthquake !
• organic or biological factors, like bacteria or viruses
• psychological factors such as stress
• and transcendental or spiritual factors (such as the sometimes powerful galvanizing effect of spiritual practice)

"The earthquake in China or the cyclone in Burma have much to do with environmental factors," says Dhammadassin. "To invoke karma is more to do with our desire to nail things down and find someone to blame. But that's not ours to do."

---

Some comments on this story, using the form below.

Sharon Stone's comment is the idiotic New Age equivalent of fundamentalist Christians' ignorant statements that Aids is God's retribution for homosexuality and pre-marital sex.
Ben, Edinburgh

It's worth noting that the earthquake affected areas heavily populated by Tibetans as well as Chinese. As a supporter of the Tibetan cause I find it unconscionable that the deaths of innocent Chinese people could be attributed to negative karma. These people are not complicit in the actions of the Chinese government and do not deserve hardship and suffering any more than the Tibetan people. Whilst I commend Sharon Stone for her concern, her comments are ill-judged and insensitive. I'm afraid she has a poor grasp on the concept of karma as well as the demographics of the region affected by the earthquake. My thoughts go to all the Tibetan and Chinese families in the region affected by this tragedy.
Terry Bettger, London

People are always entitled to their opinion, but opinions, particularly religious ones that have no evidence to back them up, are often dangerous or offensive to people. It's no more provable than if I claimed it rained yesterday because the Invisible Flying Spaghetti Monster was angry with me because I didn't finish all of my pasta-based dinner.
Ryan Hawthorne, Brighton

Sharon Stone is now an authority on Eastern philosophy? As Socrates said: "I am the wisest man in Athens not because I know anything but because I know that I know nothing." Success in one field automatically makes people assume that they should be an expert in another. I like Tiger Woods who, when asked the (yawn) question about representing his race, said "I am a golfer". I suspect that his dignity and intelligence is not copied often enough by other (bigger yawn) celebs.
Mark G, Brussels, Belgium

The remarks made by Sharon Stone apart from being very offensive demonstrate a complete lack of logical thought and reason plus a large amount of ignorance, predjudice and stupidity. It is sad that a person who is famous chiefly for flashing her genitalia in a second rate movie twenty years ago is paid the slightest bit of attention by the media when making moronic comments like these on a subject about which she clearly knows very very little and understands even less. It is a logical fallacy to assume that all Chinese people are responsible for the injustices and oppression perpetrated by the Chinese government in Tibet. Probably only a small proportion of those who died or lost their homes in the recent earthquake in China had any connection or involvement in Tibet, whilst many others in the Chinese government and military who are directly involved escaped harm. It is foolish in the extreme to consider over a Billion Chinese people as being a single entity with the entire population being responsible for the actions of a few post-Maoist hard liners in the government and the inevitable paid thugs who support them. Sharon Stone evidently does not understand the concept of Karma and seems to be confusing it with some infantile notion of divine retribution. This is not what Karma means in Buddhism or Hinduism and her conversion to Buddhism looks like a superficial and affected publicity stunt as was her meeting and photo opportunity with the Dalai Lama who I'm absolutely certain would totally disagree with her comments.

We should feel compassion for the poor unfortunate victims of the earthquake in China instead of saying they got what they deserved! What a abysmal lack of humanity and compassion!

Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are

In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?

by Irshad Manji [from Times Online, June 21, 2007]

Growing up in Vancouver, I attended an Islamic school every Saturday. There, I learned that Jews cannot be trusted because they worship “moolah, not Allah,” meaning money, not God. According to my teacher, every last Jew is consumed with business.
But looking around my neighbourhood, I noticed that most of the new business signs featured Asian languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Punjabi and plenty of Urdu. Not Hebrew. Urdu, which is spoken throughout Pakistan.
That reality check made me ask: What if my religious school is not educating me? What if it is indoctrinating me?
I am reminded of this question thanks to the news that Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses and ten other works of fiction, will be knighted by the Queen of England. On Monday, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister said that in light of how Rushdie has blasphemed Islam with provocative literature, it is understandable why angry Muslims would commit suicide bombings over his knighthood.
Members of Parliament, as well as the Pakistani government, amplified the condemnation of Britain, feeding cries of offense to Muslim sensibilities from Europe to Asia.
As a Muslim, you better believe I am offended – by these absurd reactions.
I am offended that it is not the first time honours from the West have met with vitriol and violence. In 1979, Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam became the first Muslim to win the Nobel Prize in science. He began his acceptance speech with a verse from the Quran.
Salam’s country ought to have celebrated him. Instead, rioters tried to prevent him from re-entering the country. Parliament even declared him a “non-Muslim” because he belonged to a religious minority. His name continues to be controversial, invoked by state authorities in hushed tones.
I am offended that every year, there are more women killed in Pakistan for allegedly violating their family’s honour than there are detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Muslims have rightly denounced the mistreatment of Guantanamo prisoners. But where is our outrage over the murder of many more Muslims at the hands of our own?
I am offended that in April, mullahs at an extreme mosque in Pakistan issued a fatwa against hugging. The country’s female tourism minister had embraced – or, depending on the account you follow, accepted a congratulatory pat from – her skydiving instructor after she successfully jumped in a French fundraiser for the victims of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. Clerics announced her act of touching another man to be “a great sin.” They demanded she be fired.
I am offended by their fatwa proclaiming that women should stay at home and remain covered at all times. I am offended that they have bullied music store owners and video vendors into closing shop. I am offended that the government tiptoes around their craziness because these clerics threaten suicide attacks if confronted.
I am offended that on Sunday, at least 35 Muslims in Kabul were blown to bits by other Muslims and on Tuesday, 87 more in Baghdad by Islamic “insurgents”, with no official statement from Pakistan to deplore these assaults on fellow believers. I am offended that amid the internecine carnage, a professed atheist named Salman Rushdie tops the to-do list.
Above all, I am offended that so many other Muslims are not offended enough to demonstrate widely against God’s self-appointed ambassadors. We complain to the world that Islam is being exploited by fundamentalists, yet when reckoning with the opportunity to resist their clamour en masse, we fall curiously silent. In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?
I am not saying that standing up to intimidation is easy. This past spring, the Muslim world made it that much more difficult. A 56-member council of Islamic countries pushed the UN Human Rights Council to adopt a resolution against the “defamation of religion”. Pakistan led the charge. Focused on Islam rather than on faith in general, the resolution allows repressive regimes to squelch freedom of conscience further – and to do so in the guise of international law.
On occasion, though, the people of Pakistan show that they do not have to be muzzled by clerics and politicians. Last year, civil society groups vocally challenged a set of anti-female laws, three decades old and supposedly based on the Quran. Their religiously respectful approach prompted even mullahs to hint that these laws are man-made, not God-given.
This month, too, Pakistanis forced their government to lift restrictions on the press. No wonder my own book, translated into Urdu and posted on my website, is being downloaded in droves. Religious authorities will not let it be sold in the markets. But they cannot stop Pakistanis – or other Muslims – from satiating a genuine hunger for ideas.
In that spirit, it is high time to “ban” hypocrisy under the banner of Islam. Salman Rushdie is not the problem. Muslims are.
After all, the very first bounty on Rushdie's head was worth £1 million. It increased to £1.25 million; then higher. The chief benefactor, Iran's government, claimed to have profitably invested the principal. Hence the rising value of the reward. Looks like Jews are not the only people handy at business.
A Senior Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy, Irshad Manji is creator of the new documentary Faith Without Fear and author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change

Einstein: Religion is Childish Superstition

[by Peter Winkler, Valley Village, California (Blogger)]

One of the argumentative ploys used by Dennis Prager in trying to trap atheists is to ask them if belief in God is stupid and therefore a sign of stupidity among believers. If Prager's respondent says "Yes," Prager then asks them if they think Einstein was stupid, because Einstein said, "God does not play dice with the universe." This is supposed to prove that highly intelligent people can also believe in God.Well, today we have a nice story that will deprive Prager of his Einstein proof.
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper."For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said.Previously the great scientist's comments on religion -- such as "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" -- have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up arguments in favour of faith.

I'm sure most atheists are too intelligent to be caught out by such an obvious argument! Firstly Dennis Prager should clarify what he means by "God". Is he refering to the Judeo-Christian God the he apparently believes in or the God that Einstein refered to, which was no more than a personification of the physical and mathematical laws of the universe. Einstein did not believe in religion and it is dishonest of Prager to try to pretend that he did. Hopefully the above quote will help to clarify Einstein's real views and prevent apologists from trying similar silly arguments based on misrepresentation in the future.

However Prager is correct that highly intelligent people can also believe in God and there are many such examples. Such people frequently come up with very deep philosophical and complex arguments to support their beliefs. If examined carefully under the layers of amiguity, sophistry and complicated word usage there always seems to be a flaw in such arguments. Einstein however was not one of these people.

Vatican says aliens could exist

[By David Willey, BBC News, Rome]

The Pope's chief astronomer says that life on Mars cannot be ruled out.
Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.
Father Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, is a respected scientist who collaborates with universities around the world.
The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God.
The official Vatican newspaper headlines his article 'Aliens Are My Brother'.
'Free from sin'
Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God. And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.
Asked about the Catholic Church's condemnation four centuries ago of the Italian astronomer and physicist, Galileo, Father Funes diplomatically says mistakes were made, but it is time to turn the page and look towards the future.
Science and religion need each other, and many astronomers believe in God, he assures readers.
To strengthen its scientific credentials, the Vatican is organising a conference next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author of the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin.

Now that space research has discovered that extra terrestrial life is almost certain to exist and it is only a matter of time before we find it, the Catholic church scrambles to incorporate the idea into their belief system. Now they are busy inventing ways to tie aliens in to the Christian world view. They are so obviously worried that discovery of alien life will lead to the loss of more and more adherents to their faith as people gradually realize that Christianity is based on an outdated and very narrow vision of the universe. Science does not need religion as claimed by Father Funes and in fact religion has generally held back scientific advancement when new discoveries showed that religious claims about the nature of existence were incorrect. After all religions and Christianity certainly being no exception, are made up with the purpose of attracting followers that will do whatever the leaders of that religion wish them to do for example; give them money, have sex with them, provide them with lives of luxury while the rest live in poverty etc

The Catholic church has only ever supported science as a means of prolonging its own survival by attempting to attain credibility as a forward thinking organization. It is not! It is oppressive and continues to perpertrate beliefs that cause huge damage and suffering in the world such as it's stance on use of condoms. Do not be taken in by the Catholic churches pretence of support for scientific research. It is a self serving lie!

When theology is not black and white

Barack Obama has now dissociated himself from Dr Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, after Dr Wright's most recent public appearance, a speech to the National Press Club. Senator Obama said, 'Obviously whatever relationship I have had with the Rev Wright has changed. I don't think he showed much concern for me or what we are trying to do with this campaign or for the American people.' The impact of the Jeremiah Wright affair on Obama's bid for the Democratic nomination is difficult to assess at this point, but it could still prove fatal. If Obama's former pastor scuttles his chances of becoming the Unites States' first black president, it would be a tragedy of Greek proportions. Needless to day, Hillary Clinton has been making hay -- she has even appeared on the right-wing O'Reilly Factor, on Fox News, to say, repeatedly, that she would not have remained in any church pastored by Jeremiah Wright (in other words, either Obama's judgment is suspect or he secretly agrees with Jeremiah Wright).
Jeremiah Wright claims that attacks on his sermons are in fact attacks on the black church. I've no doubt that many white Americans are struggling to understand the theology and practice of black Christianity. But I am equally sure that many are simply outraged at Dr Wright's claims that America was to blame for the 9/11 attacks, his praise for the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who is regarded by many as an anti-Semite, and his bizarre allegation that the US government created the Aids virus in order to infect black people.

Here's a primer on Jeremiah Wright and black theology:
TIME profile of Jeremiah Wright.
Wright interviewed by Bill Moyers.
Wright addresses National Press Club.
A journalistic visit to Barack Obama's church.
James Cone, a leading black theologian, explains black theology.

William Crawley

Reverend Wright is a total idiot! He preaches lies and nonsense in his attempts to stir up hatred and resentment amongst his Africal American congregregation. He is also doing everything possible to damage Barack Obama's campaign. His five minutes of fame must be more important to him than supporting Obama. He has nothing intelligent to say and should be ignored. I feel sure his sermons are full of devisive comments and factual inaccuracies. No one is attacking the black church they are rightly criticising Reverend Wright alone for his outrageous and ridiculous comments. I hear he retired recently which is best for all concerned.

Now let the media stop paying attention to this moron and move on!

"Respect atheists", says Cardinal

[from http://www.bbc.co.uk/]

The Archbishop of Westminster has urged Christians to treat atheists and agnostics with "deep esteem". Believers may be partly responsible for the decline in faith by losing sense of the mystery and treating God as a "fact in the world", he said in a lecture.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor called for more understanding and appreciation between believers and non-believers.
The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales said that a "hidden God" was active in everyone's life. The Cardinal's lecture at Westminster Cathedral comes after a spate of public clashes over issues such as stem-cell research, gay adoption and faith schools. He expressed concern about the increasing unpopularity of the Christian voice in public life, saying: "Our life together in Britain cannot be a God-free zone and we must not allow Britain to become a world devoid of religious faith and its powerful contribution to the common good."
Proper talk about God is always difficult, always tentative. Last year, he complained of a "new secularist intolerance of religion" and the state's "increasing acceptance" of anti-religious views.
To stem this tide, he said Christians must understand they have something in common with those who do not believe.
God is not a "fact in the world" as though God could be treated as "one thing among other things to be empirically investigated" and affirmed or denied on the "basis of observation", said Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor. "If Christians really believed in the mystery of God, we would realise that proper talk about God is always difficult, always tentative. "I want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe.

Of course Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor encouraging Christians to respect those who don't share their beliefs is admirable and he makes a very good point that Christians tend to talk about God as if his existence is an indisputable fact as opposed to a belief. In fact one can say that God clearly does exist in some form even if only as a manifestation of the Human psyche but the problem with Christians is that they claim to know God and God's nature. As we all know they go further to claim that a man was the literal son of God who was resurrected from death. These beliefs when considered rationally seem to say the least extremely improbable.
The implausibility of the Christian belief system is the most likely reason for the "decline in faith " that the Cardinal refers to. As science and technology become ever more advanced and the general population gain greater knowledge of the universe and our place in it, less and less of them continue to be convinced by religious teaching. It becomes more and more apparent that Christianity and other religions are man made for the purpose of manipulation and control.
It seems ridiculous that the Cardinal should complain about secularist intolerance of religion and the increasing unpopularity of the Christian voice in public life. Christianity lacks serious credibility and should certainly not be tolerated as a source of authority in matters of government and law. It is a personal belief that individuals may choose to follow as a means of enabling their spiritual development and no more than that. In my view the spiritual journey can be better advanced through secularist means and through Buddhism than by theism.
Hopefully the days of Church influencing State are coming to an end.

Militias 'recruit child bombers'

Insurgent groups in Iraq are recruiting children as suicide bombers, according to a United Nations official. The findings of the UN special representative for children and armed conflict echo concerns expressed by the US military about insurgent tactics.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN envoy, made her comments at the end of a week-long fact-finding visit to Iraq. Last month, the US released footage of what it said was al-Qaeda propaganda showing children being trained. The US says children are being taught how to use guns and carry out kidnappings in addition to other terrorist activities.
Ms Coomaraswamy told a news conference in the Jordanian capital of Amman that the use of children in the ongoing violence is "intolerable". "Since 2004, an increasing number of children have been recruited into various militias and insurgent groups, including as suicide bombers," Ms Coomaraswamy said, adding that children were the silent victims in Iraq.
"Many of them no longer go to school, many are recruited for violent activities or detained in custody, they lack access to the most basic services and manifest a wide range of psychological symptoms from the violence in their everyday lives."
She said approximately 1,500 children are also "known to be held in detention facilities".
Ms Coomaraswamy found that only 50% of primary school children are attending school, down from 80% in 2005 and only 40% have access to clean drinking water and there is a continuing possibility of outbreaks of cholera.
She called on religious, political, military and community leaders to send one clear message to Iraqi children: "Stay out of violence and go back to school."
Ms Coomaraswamy strongly urged all parties to the conflict in Iraq "to strictly adhere to international humanitarian standards for the protection of children and to immediately release any children under the age of 18 years who are associated with their forces in any way"
[from www.news.bbc.co.uk]

Another example here of how religion is being misused as a tool to motivate impressionable young people into carrying out suicide bombings. Now this is being extended to children who should be in school. No doubt they have been indoctrinated by promises of eternal paradise in the afterlife. I have often wondered why suicide bombers never seem to be over 40 years old and are usually a lot younger that that! I have reached the conclusion that individuals who reach 40 tend be much more aware of their own mortality and to value life much more than the young. When we are young it seems that death too far away to concern us. The middle aged have grown wise enough to know that promises of the afterlife are by no means a certainty and that nobody really knows what will happen when they die. Knowing this they value what life is left to them. Even among the most fanatical Islamic extremists and their supporters we seldom if ever see an old suicide bomber!
You might think that as these older jihadists have less life left to them they would be more willing to sacrifice themselves rather than to encourage young people to do it, but this is not the case.

Religion, science and the third way

Last night American philosopher Dan Dennett came together with Robert Winston to debate the motion that 'religion is the greatest threat to scientific progress and rationality today'. Richard Denton reports on the final debate in the Guardian's Rethink series.
[from EducationGuardian.co.uk]

In any debate about science and religion, the American philosopher Dan Dennett has the advantage of looking uncannily like Charles Darwin. The good Lord Robert Winston, on the other hand, has the advantage of being a national treasure. They came together in the last debate in the Rethink series mounted by the Guardian and the think tank Agora to debate the motion that "religion is the greatest threat to scientific progress and rationality today".
In the light of the controversy about hybrid embryos, it seemed like a winning idea. It's pretty clear, in this case, that religion wants to be a restraining force on scientific research. Winston, although a religious man, is on the side of science in that debate: he is, after all, a doctor, and an expert in human fertility issues. However, that he is with the scientists on stem cell research doesn't prove the premise of the debate wrong. If anything, it proves the reverse: there wouldn't be so much controversy about this research without the religious lobby. The fact that Winston opposes the religious lobby on these occasions just proves that it needs opposing; and the fact that a religious man opposes the religious position in this debate demonstrates the blurred lines of the issue.
However, the experience was rather strange. Winston's debating skills have been honed at Westminster and, perhaps wisely, he managed more or less to avoid the whole issue of religion. Dennett, however, is a deep-thinking philosopher who clearly needed more than the eight minutes allotted to advance his initial thesis.
It began well. Dennett was introduced as an atheist, though as a "good cop" in comparison to Richard Dawkins' "bad cop". The audience seemed to be satisfyingly split: 25% for the motion, 25% against and a healthy bunch who were undecided in the middle. Dennett began by claiming that science is a rational and systematic search for truth, whereas religion sets up a barrier beyond which nothing can be questioned without risking blasphemy. He wondered if religion is the "greatest" threat to rationality, suggesting that while other things - such as alcohol, TV and computer games - may disable our rationality, only religion "honours the disability". He was just warming to this theme when his eight minutes were up.
Winston replied by accepting that religious excess is damaging, but claimed it was no more so than - and no different from - any other excess. His point seemed to be that "certainty" is the enemy of rationality - and science portrays itself as certain. He added that scientists "peddle it as truth with no moral dimensions". He then went on the characterise religion as the "expression of uncertainty".
Dennett may have found it hard to recognise that description of religion. After all, he comes from the US, a country where half the population rejects the theory of evolution and - for largely religious reasons - says it is "certain" that humans only appeared on this planet in the past few thousand years, and by direct intervention of the divine.
Dennett also rejected the idea that science is certain about anything - except the method it uses to pursue the truth. For Dennett, it is science that expresses uncertainty and religion that plays "the faith card when rationality is no longer on its side".
It is religion that lets people hide behind "the certainty and sincerity of their passions to do something inexcusable", he said. But before long it became clear that on some issues there is not much to choose between their positions.
It was Winston, not Dennett, who has in the row about hybrid embryos attacked Cardinal O'Brien as "a liar". In this debate Winston described the Catholic church as a "just a minority view with a very powerful a voice". By contrast, it was Dennett, not Winston, who said that "people become religious because they want to be good and they recognise that they need help". Both, however, were appalled by people who seek to impose their certainties on others.
Winston to me sounded as though he was representing the "God-Lite" approach to religion: an unthreatening and more-or-less rational - and private - approach. It's hard to object to that: practised in this way, religion is unthreatening and benign.
If all religious people took the "God-Lite" approach, there would be no problem; a conclusion that seemed convincing enough for the audience. The motion was roundly defeated.
I entered the chamber as an atheist and therefore was not likely to be convinced that religion really is a benign and progressive force. And so I voted for the motion - but less as a result of what Dennett said and rather more as a result of what Robert Winston has done.
Let's face it, if religion is not the greatest threat, what other threat could have caused someone as agreeable, polite and diplomatic Winston to denounce a Roman Catholic Cardinal as "a liar"?

Terrorism and Other Harms of Believing in an Afterlife

Encourages Suicide
Religions cause a lot of harm telling people a life after death awaits them. In all probability, many terrorist attacks and other tragedies would not occur in the absence of that belief.
The 9/11 terrorists were convinced that Allah approved of their suicidal acts and they would be eternally rewarded as martyrs. In a letter discovered after the attacks, their ringleader told them they would soon be in paradise "with beautiful angels" who have "put on their most beautiful dresses." He also urged them on by saying, "The virgins are calling you."
The Koran supports this belief by describing the rewards awaiting Muslims after death. "But for the God-fearing is a blissful abode, enclosed gardens and vineyards; and damsels with swelling breasts for companions; and a full cup." This is where "reclining on beds they will ask for abundant fruit and exquisite drinks, all the while next to them will be blushing virgins as companions."
Terrorist leaders use these promised rewards to recruit the young and impressionable and motivate them to commit murder-suicides. However this method of inciting terrorism would be much less effective if the targets of the recruiting didn't believe in an afterlife. It is true however that there the tactic of suicide bombing has also been and continues to be used by those motivated by political fanaticism such as the Tamil Tigers though it seems likely that they also believe in an afterlife.
Richard Dawkins says belief in an afterlife has immunized not only Middle Eastern terrorists against fear of death but also countless other warriors in history. The promised heavenly rewards made death in battle appear quite attractive. Bertrand Russell makes a similar observation: "At a certain stage of development, as the Mohammedans first proved, belief in Paradise has considerable military value as reinforcing natural pugnacity." In the Middle Ages, rewards of eternal bliss in heaven were also promised to Christians who joined the Crusades against Islam.
Religion has often been used throughout history as an extremely effective political tool to control the population. In fact the general pattern seems to be that a cult is formed by a small group of fanatics with a charismatic but probably mentally unbalanced leader. After a while the cult attracts enough followers to become useful at which time it is adopted for political use. For example Christianity was adopted by the Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century CE as a means of attracting support and consolidating his rule. Most cults of course die out and only a few survive and grow into religions.
In the 1980s assurances of heavenly rewards motivated many Iranian boys between 9 and 16 years old to give their lives in the Iran Iraq war. They agreed to run through mine fields to clear the way for advancing Iranian soldiers. The promised rewards caused parents all over Iran to encourage their sons to participate in these "human wave attacks." Robin Wright, who witnessed the boys' actions, wrote in Sacred Rage that "wearing white headbands to signify the embracing of death, and shouting 'Shahid! Shahid! (Martyr! Martyr!),' they literally blew their way into heaven." Or perhaps they were really blown into non-existence. I'm sure we will all be happy when we die if we discover the afterlife is real but it is extremely foolish to throw one's life away just because some else told us the afterlife is real.
If people realized there is no evidence for an afterlife and that no scripture is really the word of God, the thought of dying a warrior's death would be less appealing to them. Instead of welcoming death or viewing it casually, they would realize that life is precious.

Promotes Murder
Believing in an afterlife can also lead to murder. The Humanist philosopher Corliss Lamont reports that some ancient societies killed their aging members before they reached a state of decrepitude. It was thought that this enabled the victims to spend the afterlife in a relatively healthy body.
A more modern example is the case of John List, a New Jersey accountant and Sunday school teacher who killed his wife and three children in 1971. When finally captured many years later, List explained that his wife was drifting away from Christianity and his children might do the same when faced with worldly temptations. So he decided to kill them while they were still Christians, thereby ensuring they would go to heaven instead of hell.
A lesser-known case occurred in Baytown, Texas, in the mid-1980s. A 31-year-old mother killed three of her children with a knife, while a fourth child survived the attack. The mother had written she wanted to send her children to Jesus.
The same motivation existed in the infamous case of Andrea Yates, the devoutly religious Texas housewife who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001. According to Newsweek, Yates told a jail psychologist that her bad mothering had made the children "not righteous," which would cause them to "perish in the fires of hell." She explained that because she had killed them while they were young, God would be merciful to their souls and "take them up" to heaven.
Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her two young sons in 1994, likewise believed in an afterlife. While parked on a boat ramp and deciding whether to send her car into a lake while the toddlers were strapped in their car seats, Smith thought the boys would go to a happy existence with Jesus immediately after death. As she sits in prison, she still believes that's where they are.
Northeastern University criminologist James Fox states that belief in a better world beyond the grave is not unusual among parents who kill their children and themselves. "Frequently, the parent thinks this life is miserable and rationalizes that the family will be happily reunited in the hereafter," he reports.

These motives for murder couldn't exist without belief in an afterlife.

Not only terrorist suicide attacks and murder-suicides within families, but also other types of suicide can result from the notion of a heavenly abode. Corliss Lamont gives an example from the 1930s.
It involved a U.S. congressman who killed himself shortly after his wife died. The man explained in a suicide note that his wife had been calling him to join her and their young son in heaven.
His act was not an isolated incident. Lamont says there are "numerous cases on record of people killing themselves to preclude being parted from the beloved dead."
Belief in an afterlife caused the mass suicide of the religious group known as the People's Temple. Their leader, Rev. Jim Jones, relocated the group from the U.S. to Jonestown, Guyana, in the mid-1970s. Jones believed that he and his followers would eventually die together and go to a place of eternal bliss, and they practiced for mass suicide.
In 1978, after his security guards had killed a visiting congressman and several others, Jones feared retaliation and decided the time had come for the group to do the real thing. So he led them in a mass suicide, resulting in his own death and the death of 913 of his followers, including nearly 300 children.
Beliefs about an afterlife produced the 1998 mass suicide in the Heaven's Gate religious group in southern California. The group thought the Hale-Bopp Comet was accompanied by a spaceship that would take them to a higher realm of existence. So 39 members killed themselves, believing that by shedding their earthly bodies they would be transported to the spaceship.

Rejecting the idea of an afterlife would eliminate these motives for suicide.

In the Catholic Church, considerable emphasis has been placed on prayers and masses for the deceased. These practices have been a source of immense income for the church. So have the indulgences the church sold supposedly for improving the well-being of people's souls in an afterlife.

Mormons spend an enormous amount of time and money studying genealogical records in order to baptize deceased relatives, ancestors, and others into the Mormon Church. The founder of this church, Joseph Smith, taught that departed souls can accept what is done for them on earth.

Remove such beliefs in an afterlife and the efforts being expended on behalf of the dead could be redirected to improve the conditions of the living.

Distracts Attention from the World's Problems

Some orthodox Christians, says Edmund D. Cohen, are so preoccupied with thoughts of an afterlife that they devalue and ignore many important matters in this life.
Cohen states that for these persons, "all but a few aspects of earthly life are reduced to unimportance, and the next life is 'where the action is.'" It's hard to imagine an attitude less conducive to solving the world's problems.
In fact, the "powers-that-be" in this world are usually more than happy to see people focused on an afterlife. So they often encourage it. They know that people engrossed with thoughts of other worlds are less likely to notice or care about exploitation and abuse on earth.
As Kevin Phillips writes in his 2006 book American Theocracy: "Economic conservatives often warm to sects in which a preoccupation with personal salvation turns lower-income persons away from distracting visions of economic and social reform." He says that as a result of such preoccupation in the U.S., "the corporate and financial agenda not only prevails but often runs riot." Moreover, when people believe that injustices will be punished in another world, they aren't so concerned about stopping evil or seeing that wrongdoers face justice in this world. Their attitudes make it much easier for the wicked to prosper and escape punishment.
In summarizing these problems, Corliss Lamont states: "As long . . . as a future life is conceived to exist, people will devote to the thought of it much time and attention that could be used for earthly enterprises."

Conclusion
The belief in an afterlife leads to much unnecessary harm and it's irrational: there's no more evidence for believing that humans are immortal than for believing that trees and insects are. If people realized this, much evil could be avoided and more attention placed on improving the world. Of course, believing in an afterlife is a source of consolation for many. The pain caused by the loss of loved ones can be alleviated by thinking that everyone will be reunited in the hereafter. But the serious harms caused by this idea seem to far outweigh the benefits.
Today, the terrorism that the belief produces - particularly if the terrorists obtain nuclear weapons - is a threat to the lives of millions around the world and to the continued existence of the United States and Western civilization.
For those who cannot bear the thought of the final extinction of themselves and their loved ones, the hope for an afterlife - as opposed to the belief in one - can be a harmless source of consolation. As Robert Ingersoll stated, "Hope is the consolation of the world."
In the nineteenth century, the agnostic Thomas H. Huxley seemed to leave room for this hope by saying: "I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it."
Simply hoping for an afterlife, rather than presuming to know it exists, brings solace and need not result in a devaluation of this life. People who employ a scientific outlook and have that hope know it's very possible, or even highly probable, this is their one and only life. They will not, therefore, throw it away or think little of throwing away the lives of others.
The hope for an afterlife was even held by great humanistic thinkers such as Robert Ingersoll and Thomas Paine.
It's important, though, to prevent this hope from developing into a belief. In addition to the many harms the belief has caused throughout history, the results of the belief today could be catastrophic on an unthinkable scale.
Those who cannot give up the idea of an afterlife would be wise to follow Cicero's advice. He said a future state is "to be hoped for rather than believed."

[Original material from www.humanismbyjoe.com website by Joseph C. Sommer some minor edits and additional comments added by me]

Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Prof Daniel Dennett and Lord Winston present their arguments ahead of tonight's public debate Daniel Dennett and Robert Winston, Tuesday April 22, 2008 The Guardian

Yes, says Prof Daniel Dennett
If religion isn't the greatest threat to rationality and scientific progress, what is? Perhaps alcohol, or television, or addictive video games. But although each of these scourges - mixed blessings, in fact - has the power to overwhelm our best judgment and cloud our critical faculties, religion has a feature of that none of them can boast: it doesn't just disable, it honours the disability. People are revered for their capacity to live in a dream world, to shield their minds from factual knowledge and make the major decisions of their lives by consulting voices in their heads that they call forth by rituals designed to intoxicate them.
It used to be the case that we tended to excuse drunk drivers when they crashed because they weren't entirely in control of their faculties at the time, but now we have wisely inverted that judgment, holding drunk drivers doubly culpable for putting themselves in that irresponsible position in the first place. It is high time we inverted the public attitude about religion as well, finding all socially destructive acts of religious passion shameful, not honourable, and holding those who abet them - the preachers and other apologists for religious zeal - as culpable as the bartenders and negligent hosts who usher dangerous drivers on to the highways. Our motto should be: Friends don't let friends steer their lives by religion.
Right now, Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, a young student, resides on death row in Afghanistan, sentenced to execution for committing blasphemy. Imagine! We're living in the 21st century, and in "liberated" Afghanistan (not Taliban Afghanistan) blasphemy is still a capital crime. Most of the rest of the world is tongue-tied, unwilling to tell those bent on carrying out this barbaric sentence that they are simply wrong, and should not thus humiliate themselves and their traditions. Where are the peaceful demonstrations of protest? Are people unwilling to hurt the feelings of Muslims? We are quick to condemn other outrages, but religious passion, genuine or feigned, shields people from the moral judgments of their fellow human beings, judgments to which we should all alike be subject.
There is an unbalance in the framing of this resolution, and Robert Winston has the worst of it. He must try to allay a host of concerns, an unending task, while - as everyone knows all too well - in a single cataclysmic day my side could be proven by one fanatical act, not that anyone would be left to cheer my victory. Not just rationality and scientific progress, but just about everything else we hold dear could be laid waste by a single massively deluded "sacramental" act. True, you don't have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don't have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense in order to do massively crazy things. And - this is the worst of it - religious faith can give people a sort of hyperbolic confidence, an utter unconcern about whether they might be making a mistake, that enables acts of inhumanity that would otherwise be unthinkable.
This imperviousness to reason is, I think, the property that we should most fear in religion. Other institutions or traditions may encourage a certain amount of irrationality - think of the wild abandon that is often appreciated in sports or art - but only religion demands it as a sacred duty. This might not matter if the activities that composed religion were somewhat insulated from the rest of the world the way they are in sports and art. Then we could treat religious allegiances the way we treat differences in taste: if you have a taste for kick boxing or heavy metal bands, that's your business. Knock yourself out, as we say, it's only a game. Not so with religion. Its arena includes not just the participants but all of life on the planet. Given that, it's troubling to note how avidly some people engage in deliberate make-believe in order to execute the prescribed duties.
The better is enemy of the best: religion may make many people better, but it is preventing them from being as good as they could be. If only we could transfer all that respect, loyalty and intense devotion from an imaginary being - God - to something real: the wonderful world of goodness we and our ancestors have made, and of which we are now the stewards.
· Professor Daniel Dennett is director of the Centre for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University

No, says Lord Winston
Daniel Dennett would be unlikely to place a stake alongside Blaise Pascal, whose famous wager runs: "You cannot lose by professing belief in God - if He does not exist you lose nothing, and if He does exist, you will be rewarded in the afterlife." Dennett argues that it is better to live as if there is no God, attempting to make the world a rational and better place. He points out that it is costly building cathedrals and that churchgoing is a massive waste of time. An atheist will lose nothing if God does not exist - his or her memorial will be good deeds. And if there is a benevolent God, Dennett will find himself judged by the Almighty on his merits, not because of the disbelief he professes.
The problem with his interesting views of the possible evolutionary basis of religious belief is that he seems unable to treat the beliefs and feelings of believers seriously. Might not God disapprove of this much more? Like many evangelical preachers, he repeatedly seems to claim to be open to the sincerely held views of others. Yet, in Dennett's world, humans are divided into "brights" or believers - and if you are not a "bright", you disagree with his point of view because you are intellectually inferior, closed-minded or too scared.
To some extent, he falls into a similar trap to Dawkins. He feels he knows about religions but seems to have done too little research; a number of his points - for example, about Jewish attitudes or Muslim practices - seem to show a lack of serious scholarship.
Dennett, like Dawkins, is affronted by the "fact" that moderate religious people have done little to curb the excesses of the extremists of their own traditions. Who does he define as an extremist? If, as a Jew, I decide to adhere to totally irrational dietary laws or bizarrely not travel on a bus on Saturday, does that make me an extremist? If I go further and wear a kippa on my head and build an eruv around the part of London in which I live, is that an unacceptable excess? Or is he arguing against dangerous violence, which is condemned by every responsible religious Jew?
Religion is built into human consciousness and there is plentiful evidence of it being a cohesive force. Apart from the survival of our prehistoric ancestors, in recent times there are powerful examples of how a notion of the transcendental has spurred humans on in desperate situations. Viktor Frankl, in the midst of the extreme deprivation, dehumanisation and despair of Auschwitz observes how, in his assessment, only those with some spirituality - not necessarily a belief in God - survived the depravity of the camp.
Dennett seems to believe science is "the truth". Like many of my brilliant scientific colleagues, he conveys the notion that science is about a kind of certainty. For example, in his book Breaking the Spell, he quotes Eva Jablonka in support of his views on memes. He forgets that she challenges the very essence of Dawkins's view of evolution - a view Dennett obviously passionately supports.
Perhaps he might care to re-read the book of Job. Throughout most of this deeply mysterious and spiritual book, Job patiently suffers but essentially is steadfast in his faith in God's justice. But finally beyond provocation, he rails against the irrationality of God's punishment. At the very end of the story, God appears out of the whirlwind saying: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" God asks Job where he was when He laid the foundations of the Earth? Do we understand where we come from, where we are going, or what lies beyond our planet?
The problem is that scientists now too frequently believe we have the answers to these questions, and hence the mysteries of life. But, oddly, the more we use science to explore nature, the more we find things we do not understand and cannot explain. In reality, both religion and science are expressions of man's uncertainty. Perhaps the paradox is that certainty, whether it be in science or religion, is dangerous. The danger of Dennett's relatively gentle brand of certainty is that it increases polarisation in our society. With inflexible positions on both sides, certainty surely is the biggest threat to rationality, and to science.
· Lord Winston is emeritus professor of fertility studies, Imperial College London
· The debate on religion versus science will take place tonight at the British Council. This is the finale in the Rethink education public debate series, hosted by the thinktank Agora and Education Guardian. For details go to www.agora-education.org

While Daniel Dennett's ideas are no doubt controversial and unproven, they do seem on the whole to make a lot of sense. Lord Winston clearly takes exception to these ideas however and begins his rebuttal by criticizing Dennett for not have enough detailed knowledge about specific religions. This same transparent and ineffective tactic was used by Professor Alistair McGrath in his own rebuttal of Richard Dawkins' bestseller the The God Delusion. Since Winston apparently has no rational argument to counter Dennett, he immediately resorts to a personal attack and accusation of Dennett's work lacking serious scholarship. This makes no sense at all since a detailed knowledge of the specifics of religion is not necessary in order to be able to understand the basics of religion. In own my experience the majority (though not all) religious devotees know less about their religion than those who have rejected those religions.
Winston goes on to claim that religion has had a very positive influence in history, an argument used in debates by Dinesh D'Souza among others. This proposition is by no means certain and the opposite has also been quite convincingly argued by many atheist intellectuals, such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. The argument that religion is a good influence in any case is a fall back position taken by apologists when unable to produce convincing arguements that their religious beliefs are actually true.
Next Winston questions whether science is in fact any more true than religion and suggests that science is in fact another belief system. This is absolute nonsense and he knows it! Science is based on defined a methodology of hypothesis, experimentation and theory with the aim of discovering knowledge, not a system of invented mythology and sophistry. Neither is science unlike religion used as a tool for political control. It is ludicrous and dishonest to imply that science is an "expression of man's uncertainty". Of course science raises as many questions as it answers, which is a good thing and leads to progress. After all if we knew everything there wouldn't be any need for science. Mankind is learning and growing as a species and may eventually outgrow the need for religion.
Winston finishes with a reference to the book of Job, which seems irrelevant to the debate. The point he seems to be making is that Job (who probably never actually existed) should not have questioned God (whose existence is not proven) because he (Job) wasn't there when God (supposedly) created the universe. Job doesn't know enough about the origins of life, the universe and so on to have the right to question God who by definition knows everything.
Winston asks if we understand where we came from, where we are going and what lies beyond our planet. Well the answer is, Yes we do understand a lot about these things. Much more than humans did in the past and through science we are learning more and more. Religion on the other has invented answers to these questions based on wishful thinking rather than solid facts. Answers which are now being gradually discarded.
It seems that Lord Winston is another religious intellectual who uses the only arguments available to him however poor to support his beliefs. Perhaps he is relying on his eminent position and respectability to gain him credibility and support where his shaky arguments fail. After all you don't have to be right to win a debate.