Athée Canadien
Joe
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Posts by Joe
What the fatwa?
Feb 4th
The other day in the pub…we were talking about cannibalism.
Now, I’m generally against eating the flesh of other human beings, mostly because there are so few volunteers… but also, given my own reluctance to be eaten, it seems like a good place to draw the line. From a strictly rational perspective, one source of sustenance is as good as another, but society needs rules, and I think many people would see eating any human flesh as either repugnant, largely due to cultural norms, or at least wrong due to that slippery slope… to carnage.
If we were starving in a life boat, and I died, eat me.
If we were starving in a life boat, and you died, I’m probably gonna eat you. Permission or not.
If we were starving in a life boat, and you were near death… hmmm …would I hasten your departure into the void? Well, that’s one of those questions I think can only be answered in a lifeboat.
Being in a lifeboat is important here, because when its just you, or you and me, we’re not really bound by the ‘what’s best for society in the long run’ talk, and we can get down to what we would do… without such constraints.
There are of course other ethical arguments… does respect for human dignity includes dead bodies? Most people won’t even send their pets to the landfill… let alone granny. That said, I can’t honestly care about what is done with my own corpse, apart from thinking it would be good if some nice doctor cut it up and used the pieces in a transplant.
Having said all that, I do live in a society where you have to treat corpses with respect. And although I can understand it on a emotional level, it still seems somewhat strange. We are social animals, societal norms are important, and even living in a democracy, we don’t always get to decide what those norms are. I’m a proud canadian citizen, but I don’t agree with every law, nor do I view my passport as a straightjacket when it comes to disagreeing with the status quo. Disagreement is good, it forces people to think.
This is why I don’t think we can hold every religious person responsible for the acts of every other religious person, or even those who claim the same affiliation.
I don’t hold all Muslims guilty for 9/11, nor do I think all Catholics are responsible for the child molesters in their midst. What I do is give credit, or discredit, where it is due.
And the following is worthy of recognition.
A Calgary imam will take the bold step of issuing a fatwa — an official religious edict pronounced by a scholar of the Muslim faith — against honour killings and domestic abuse on Saturday.Imam Syed Soharwardy, who is head imam at the Al-Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre as well as the founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, will deliver the fatwa at a mosque in Mississauga, Ont. He will be backed by more than 30 imams and Muslim scholars from across North America who want to send a strong message to other members of their faith.
Honour killing is murder, and abusing a spouse, male or female, is a shitty thing to do, and we should punish the perpetrators of these crimes. We should also support those who stand up against such things.
Woman sues Ontario over Catholic school funding.
Jan 14th
Awesome. I’m going to give the OSSN a plug here.
And, I should probably say more about this article, but there is so much secular goodness in it, you should just read it yourself.
Canadian courts, she argued, have consistently said that legal decisions that limit charter rights must be interpreted narrowly.The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled already that Sect. 93 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which guarantees Catholic school funding in Ontario, is immune from charter challenges. (The charter specifically exempts from review all rights guaranteed in the constitution.)
In Landau’s application, filed in the Superior Court of Justice, Landau asks for an order that eliminates all government aid for Catholic schools from Grades 9 to 12.
She also seeks an order that limits the funding of Grades 1 to 8 to “only that aid available in 1867, that is, only property taxes from Catholics who declare themselves to be separate school supporters and who live within three miles of a separate school, and property taxes from wholly Catholic-owned businesses.”
Update: Toronto Star is covering this too.
Meanwhile, in Sweden
Jan 12th
I’m an atheist, but I sometimes partake in whorship… I mean worship of such divine entities as the flying spaghetti monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorn… and of course Hail Eris!
Never really felt the need to identify as a Jedi, I guess I’m more sithy, but whatever floats your boat.
This, however, is a religion I think I could actually get behind.
Registering the Church of Kopimism is a way to avoid “persecution,” said the website of the group, which was given official recognition by the Swedish state last month.Kopimism’s name is derived from the words “copy me” and as its website makes clear it strongly supports all forms of downloading and uploading files and sees copyright laws as violating freedom of information.
ctrl+c foeva1
Observing Reddit and Embracing Uranus
Jan 4th
Just thought I’d do a recap of the recent “fun” on reddit, for those who may have missed out on the festivities. The atheist blogosphere has had another feminist apocalypse. (Oh come on, lighten up, those two words are fun together)
So what happened? Going to try and make this newsy, staying away from editorializing. (Ok… I’ll try, anyway) People seem to have done that to death already anyway.
Reddit.com, for those who don’t know is a social media site, where people can post links to pictures, and news items, and then other users can comment on them, much in the same way you might comment on a blog. They also have a voting system so commenters can vote the stuff they like ‘up’ so that it is more prominent on the site.
There is a section of the site devoted to atheism and recently a 15 year old girl posted a picture of herself holding a book she recieved from her religious mother. The book in question was Carl Sagan’s: ‘Demon haunted World’ (sounds like reddit, actually).
It was intended as feel-good story, but things took a turn for the worse, quickly.
One of the commenters posted this:
“Brace yourself, the compliments are coming.”
Its fairly common on reddit for women posting photos to get awkward compliments, as one might expect on a somewhat nerd dominated forum. The girl’s response was equally congenial… but still, reading it made me cringe…
“bracin’ mah anus”
Now, its somewhat clear from the context, she was making an ‘asskissing’ comment, but as happens elsewhere on the internet, things tend to reduce to the lowest common denominator, and so the seedier members of the group(I guess in line with the less than impressive online-gamer mentality of using rape jokes like: owning your ass, when they win against an opponent) translated this into a rape joke. What followed wasn’t pretty.
To be fair to atheist group, the way reddit works, posts are not limited to the atheist group. If they get enough ‘up votes’ they can end up on the main page of reddit, which means a much wider audience, and of course there are plenty of trolls, as in any unmoderated online forum. But still… ugh.
Bad enough? But wait, it gets worse.
Rebecca Watson, from Skepchick, waded into the fray and posted this on the skepchick blog: Reddit makes me hate atheists. If you read it, she backpedals a bit on the ‘hating atheists’ part, but with a title like that… well, many people were less than pleased with her.
Basically it was like pouring gasoline on a fire, and resulted in things like this.
As to the original girl in question, she appears to have handled it all fairly well, rising above the nastiness, and with the exception of her ‘anus’ comment seems more mature than many older people, who should really know better.
“I’m sorry I didn’t realize I should have to wear a burka on r/atheism.”
Excellent.
Crossing the line from intolerance to assault
Nov 28th
We often hear people saying that moderate muslims should publicly stand up against the extremism that can be done in the name of Islam. I think this is fair request, although, it can also be dangerous to do so, depending where you live. The danger to secularists in Egypt right now with a military in charge and Islamists trying to gain power is also a good example.
But stupid dangerous stuff happens here too, stuff that I feel WE need to condemn, even though I don’t know the religion of the perpetrator.
Inas Kadri was shopping at a Mississauga mall with her two small children when a woman she had never seen before came “out of nowhere” and assaulted her, pulling off her niqab.“She was swearing at my religion, she was swearing at my (head) cover, she was swearing at my presence here in Canada,” Kadri says.
On Friday, her attacker, Rosemarie Creswell, was sentenced by a Brampton judge for the assault, which occurred in August 2010 at the Sheridan Centre. Creswell, 66, pleaded guilty after seeing video evidence captured by a mall surveillance camera.
This is unacceptable. People should not have to fear being attacked simply for expressing themselves in public. Sadly, many do, and for good reason.
Secular Theodicy
Nov 16th
Atheists love evil, or rather, ‘the problem of evil’ is one of those things that believers struggle with, and atheists tend to view as a slam-dunk type argument against your generic monotheistic god.
The problem of evil, though, is probably better described as the problem of suffering. Suffering exists in the world, and so if you are going to claim to have the answers, you need to address this.
The standard christian responses tend to be along the lines of ‘freedom of choice’ leads to it, and they often rely on characterizing suffering as necessary, or part of the plan. No pain, not gain; for your soul. However, its not just a christian issue, the karma cycle of Hinduism is based around an understanding suffering, and Buddha claimed to know the way to escape suffering, via his middle way.
What if you don’t believe in gods? Then, isn’t suffering just a fact of life, maybe something to be avoided and minimized, in the utilitarian sense, but of little consequence otherwise.
That’s the thing though, while not a law in the sense of physics, suffering is pervasive in our world, so if we are going to claim to derive meaning from the world, then the existence of suffering means something, even in a godless universe.
This becomes more clear when you consider the problem of suffering, not just in the day to day #firstworldproblems sense of the word, but especially when it comes to end of life issues.
Most of us, quite happily, don’t know what it really means to suffer, but suffering and discomfort is one of those things that waits most of us as we age and die. And when it comes to death, its really up to each of us to decide how much suffering is too much, how much of this world, is too much.
But it also goes further than that, as we consider whether or not to reproduce, or even continue our own lives. If suffering is so pervasive in life, not just in the human context, but elsewhere as well, are we just kidding ourselves with ideas of ‘minimizing it’, and reducing harm? What does it say about life, that there is so much suffering, and what does it say about us, that we are products of it?
Sorry, if this sounds all emo, but if we are going to criticize others for ignoring the implications of suffering within their belief systems, I think we need to seriously address it within our own.
Good stuff from the tubes
Nov 12th
First, a tribute to Christopher Hitchens… speaks for itself. Go Hitch!
And the full PBS documentary on the Dover trial. Just watched it, it is pretty thorough, with lots of evolutiony goodness.
A grain of Sault
Nov 10th
While I’m always disappointed to hear people taking creationism/intelligent design seriously, it does represent an opportunity to challenge ignorance masquerading as open-mindedness.
A biophysicist and controversial proponent of intelligent design will speak at Algoma University next week.
Kirk Durston, a Canadian academic who heads a Christian group called the New Scholars Society, will present a pair of lectures Tuesday.
So if you’re in the Sault next week, and you have the time, there will be a question period… hopefully someone will ask some good questions.
Coyne v. Haught
Nov 3rd
Debates are always such fun, but sometimes people get their noses out of joint and it ends badly. This is what seems to have occurred between Jerry Coyne and John Haught
First there was the debate. Then after the debate, Haught refused to let the video of the debate be released. Coyne made a stink about this, and this led to public outrage. Now the video has been released. Haught says he agreed to the filming, but not to releasing it on the internet, and he accuses Coyne of ad hominem attacks.
While I don’t agree with Coyne’s position (I’m a happy accommodater and I think Coyne oversimplifies not only theology but also science’s reliance on falsification) I’m also somewhat at a loss to explain what set Haught off.
It may be that he views Coyne’s directness and bluntness as improper somehow, but after viewing the debate my only assessment is that both seem to be by numbers, with their arguments.
Ho hum, tempest in a teacup… what do you think?
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