How Christians Lie To Children

Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander

For sheer repugnant nauseatingly mawkish sentimentality and the grotesque sentiments it explicitly advocates, this Anglican hymn probably takes some beating - though I am open to persuasion on that point if you can find an even more repugnant one...

It is still sung in primary schools and Sunday schools, though there have been attempts to ban the third verse from state schools.

Refrain
1. All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

2. Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

Refrain...

3. The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Refrain...

4. The purple headed mountain,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning,
That brightens up the sky;−

Refrain...

It trolls on for another three equally odious verses but readers may like to read that third verse again...

It was written by Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander (nee Humphreys), who was born in Dublin, the third child and second daughter of Major John Humphreys (of Norfolk, land-agent to 4th Earl of Wicklow and later to the second Marquess of Abercorn) and wife of William Alexander, later Bishop of Armargh and Anglican primate of Ireland.

It was written especially for children whom Mrs Alexander felt needed to be reminded not only what a lovely little planet God had provided for them but how he had thoughtfully provided them with a neat social order with the rich in their castles and the lowly at their gate.

Skibbereen, Ireland, 1847

This charming little piece of unashamed combined social and anti-science propaganda was written in Ireland in 1848, the third and most devastating years of the Great Famine when upwards of 500,000 'lowly' Irish men, women and children were starving to death outside the gates, whilst their wealthy land owners in their castles were exporting food.

Meanwhile the English gentry parliament in London was refusing to distribute relief supplies for fear it would destabilise the laws of supply and demand which God had also thoughtfully provided to help ensure the social order was maintained and the rich continued to get richer by living off the labours of the lower orders. What did a few hundred thousand dead Irish matter when there were plenty more where they came from?

Particularly pleasing is the way it sets impressionable little children up with a twee little rhyme about flowers and little birds, before equating them with a rigid and god-given class system so these lucky little children would know their place and understand why they should stay in it.

Of course, this was a sincere eulogy to God and had nothing at all to do with the French Revolution of February 1848, the publication if the Communist Manifesto in the same month, workers uprisings throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a massive Chartist rally in London, audaciously demanding universal adult male suffrage and paid MPs so you didn't need to be rich to represent people in parliament, all within a few weeks of one another; events which had simultaneously concentrated the minds and slackened the bowels of the English ruling class.

How fortunate we were to have such a thoughtful ruling class to explain these things to us simple plebeians and such a kind, caring Anglican Church to promulgate it down to the lower orders and ensure we got the lesson early in life.

Apropos of nothing in particular, our present government is led by the rich son of an aristocrat. Most of his senior ministers have similar backgrounds. Their political party is known colloquially as 'The Nasty Party'. Some of their families still own castles although many of them were thrown out of Ireland by a curiously ungrateful people almost a hundred years ago. I don't suppose we'll ever really understand why.

[Edit] The day after writing this, the Old Etonian with aristocratic connections and relative of former Tory grandee Richard Austen (RAB) Butler, Justin Welby, was confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury (pastoral head of the Anglican church) by UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, an Old Etonian with aristocratic connections.

It is not clear whether either of their aristocratic families still live in castles but it's reassuring to see how the English class system so beloved of the Anglican Church of 1848 is still very much alive and kicking, even if almost no one now takes any notice of the church and its vicars spout their weekly sanctimonious snobbery at almost empty pews in return for their wages.

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A Big Welcome To New Atheists

So you've finally admitted to yourself that you're an Atheist!

The first thing to understand is that you're not alone; you are part of a very rapidly growing world-wide 'community' of Atheists. I use the term 'community' loosely here because Atheism is not an organised movement. It doesn't commit you to believing in anything in place of gods so there are no dogmas, axioms or tenets of faith (how could there be?). Atheism is not an alternative faith. Atheism is an alternative to faith. It has been said that the only certainty is that there are no certainties.

God's Nob

Justin Welby - Old Etoniam, super-rich former oil magnate

Justin Welby
Next Archbishop of Canterbury

BBC News - Justin Welby 'to be named as new Archbishop of Canterbury':

Exciting news that Justin Welby, a rich Old Etonian with aristocratic connections and a relative of former Tory grandee Richard Austen (Rab) Butler, is to be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, by rich Old Etonian with aristocratic connections and current Tory grandee, Prime Minister David Cameron.

Justin Welby is current Bishop of Durham, a post he has held for less than a year.

In case anyone was under any illusions that the Anglican Church has any hint of democracy about it, it is worth looking at how this widely leaked decision was made.

Are All Governments God's Governments?

Here's a lovely little passage from the Bible that, for some reason, you hardly ever hear Christians quoting these days. It's almost as though they don't agree with it, and yet it was written by the major founding father of their religion - St Paul, supposedly directly inspired by God.

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. [my emphasis] Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.

Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

Romans 13:1-7

During the recent US presidential election campaign, you'd have expected Christians to have gone on endlessly about how all governments are ordained by God and how we should all pay our taxes because governments only do good and fight evil.

Very strange.

But of course, this passage, if you believe it, means that all government, everywhere and for all time, not only Barack Obama's, are, according to St Paul, ordained by God and all are doing nothing but God's work and fighting evil.

All governments, mark you! Not just modern Christian ones, or the first century CE Roman one. And every soul is subject to their rule. No geographical, political, religious or time constraints. The passages is unambiguous and unequivocal. All powers are of God and ordained by Him, and every soul is subject to them.

That means the governments of Saddam Hussain in Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Hozni Mubarak in Egypt, the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the Communist governments of Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Joseph Stalin and the governments of the Soviet client states of Eastern Europe, were all ordained by God and doing God's work.

It also means the Sandanista government in Nicaragua, the Allende government in Chile, the segregationist state governments in Alabama, Georgia and Arkansas of the 1950s and 1960s were, just as the latter three claimed, doing God's work, as is the Chávez government in Venezuela.

In fact, every government in history; the German Nazis, the Mongol hoards of Ghengis Khan; the Early Medieval Muslim conquerors of the Holy Lands, North Africa and Spain, all doing god's work, according to the Bible. And of course, if you believe the Bible, you'll believe the colonial government of George III of England was entirely legitimate and should never have been overthrown in the Americas, least of all over the issue of taxation.

According to St.Paul, every citizen of every nation enjoys God's protection against evil from His government, and every citizen of every country should pay taxes so their government can afford to carry out God's work, as God ordained.

Strange then that the fundamentalist Christian supporters of the tax evading Mitt Romney were urging the overthrow of God's ordained president and are in favour of intervention to destabilise and over-throw so many of God's foreign governments.

Unless they think the Bible is wrong, of course.

More Loopy Religious Cults

Continuing with the series on religious cults, (see The Heavenly Peace of Jesus and Top Five Christian Cults), this blog looks at a few more religious cults from history.

A band of Thuggee

The Thuggee

The Thuggee cult, from which we get the English word 'thug' was an Indian Hindu cult devoted to the goddess Kali the consort of Shiva (The Destroyer).

The cult was first mentioned around 1356. Their speciality was joining bands of travellers and gradually gaining their confidence until the place and time were right, then they would ritually murder them by garotting them with a silk handkerchief, after which their bodies were robbed and buried.

The cult seems to have been put down by the British by 1870 having killed an estimated 2,000,000 Indian travellers.

Hassan-i-Sabbah

Assassins of Alamut

The Islamic cult that gave us the word 'assassin' for someone who carries out a political or contract killing. The name was originally a term of abuse derived from the Arabic 'Hashishin', for 'user of hashish'.

The cults origins are obscure but it was taken over by its legendary first grand master, Hassan-i Sabbah, a Persian Ismaili Muslim missionary of the Nizari order, to defend his mountain stronghold at Alamut in about 1091, in response to the First Crusade and the political turmoil this had caused in Persia.

The cult leaders gave their followers hashish, which they told them gave a glimpse of Heaven, so they could be persuaded not to fear death. They then sent them out to carry out political killings for clients. Often, the assassination took place in full public view to increase the kudos, and hence the price, of the cult but the Assassins were usually careful not to kill innocent bystanders as they believed this would discredit the order and lead to civil strife.

As they grew in strength, the cult expanded into Syria and at one point reputedly considered converting to Christianity so they could benefit from lower taxes then paid to the King of Jerusalem, Amalric I. Ironically, this plan came to nothing when the Assassin negotiators were assassinated by Christian knights.

The Alamut fortress was eventually overrun and by Mongols in 1256 and it's library completely destroyed, hence the obscurity of the order's origins. The Syrian stronghold was occupied by the Mamluk Turk, Sultan Beibers I in about 1265, though the Mamluks continued to make use of their services for a while.

Mokichi Okada

Church Of World Messianity

The Church of World Messianity is a Japanese cult, with offshoots in the Japanese community in Brazil, which was started by a Tokyo jeweller, Mokichi Okada in 1935.

Okada, a former member of the Shinto Oomoto sect, claimed he had received a special revelation from God in 1926 telling him about the healing power of divine light, or Johrei. He soon branched out into the quack medicine business opening a clinic for healing with divine light. Believers hold out their arm towards a sick person with their palm open. 'Divine light' flows down their arm and into the patient, allegedly healing them. It can't be seen or otherwise detected in any way known to science. The origin of this 'divine light' is a paper scroll with some writing by Mokichi Okada on it.

The clinic was closed down by Japanese authorities a year later as it violated Medical Practitioners' Law. Not forgetting his jewellery business, he required cult members to wear a pendant, bought from the cult, naturally. No scientific evidence for the efficacy of this treatment is known to exist.

Mokichi Okada soon became a multimillionaire and amassed a large private art collection, now housed in the private Mokichi Okada Association Corporation's Museum of Art in Atami, Japan.

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Intelligently Designed With Love?

Look at this beautiful little jewel of a wasp (Ampulex compressa). Any Creationist 'scientist' worth his/her salt would point at this and assert that it must have been designed, and hope you'll just gaze in wonder at the exquisite skill of such a marvellous designer who could intelligently design such a thing, and then hopefully you'll buy his books, visit his museum and give him lots of money to help spread the good news.

What you won't be told however, is what this lovely little insect actually does; and there is a very good reason for this. Appearances can be deceptive, and the Creationist 'scientist' will understandably be sensitive in this respect. Like him, the deceptive little thing is a parasite, and a particularly nasty one at that.

This little wasp hunts down cockroaches.

"And what's wrong with that?", you might ask. "Who wants cockroaches around?"

Well, cockroaches do for a start, and, if you believe in an intelligent designer, or even a designer who is not particularly bright, you surely must believe it intended cockroaches to be around too.

But it's what the wasp does to cockroaches which should at least make you wince, if not question the entire basis of your 'faith'.

As early as the 1940s it was reported that female wasps of this species sting a roach (specifically a Periplaneta americana,Periplaneta australasiae or Nauphoeta rhombifolia)^[1] twice, delivering venom. A 2003 study^[2] using radioactive labeling demonstrated that the wasp stings precisely into specific ganglia of the roach. It delivers an initial sting to a thoracic ganglion and injects venom to mildly and reversibly paralyze the front legs of its victim. The biochemical basis of this transient paralysis is discussed in a 2006 paper.^[3] Temporary loss of mobility in the roach facilitates the second venomous sting at a precise spot in the victim's head ganglia (brain), in the section that controls the escape reflex. As a result of this sting, the roach will first groom extensively, and then become sluggish and fail to show normal escape responses.^[4] In 2007 it was reported that the venom of the wasp blocks receptors for the neurotransmitter octopamine.^[5]

The wasp proceeds to chew off half of each of the roach's antennae.^[1] Researchers believe that the wasp chews off the antenna to replenish fluids or possibly to regulate the amount of venom because too much could kill and too little would let the victim recover before the larva has grown. The wasp, which is too small to carry the roach, then leads the victim to the wasp's burrow, by pulling one of the roach's antennae in a manner similar to a leash. Once they reach the burrow, the wasp lays a white egg, about 2 mm long, on the roach's abdomen. It then exits and proceeds to fill in the burrow entrance with pebbles, more to keep other predators out than to keep the roach in.

With its escape reflex disabled, the stung roach will simply rest in the burrow as the wasp's egg hatches after about three days. The hatched larva lives and feeds for 4–5 days on the roach, then chews its way into its abdomen and proceeds to live as an endoparasitoid. Over a period of eight days, the wasp larva consumes the roach's internal organs in an order which maximizes the likelihood that the roach will stay alive, at least until the larva enters the pupal stage and forms a cocoon inside the roach's body. Eventually the fully grown wasp emerges from the roach's body to begin its adult life. Development is faster in the warm season.

Adults live for several months. Mating takes about one minute, and only one mating is necessary for a female wasp to successfully parasitize several dozen roaches.

While a number of venomous animals paralyze prey as live food for their young, Ampulex compressa is different in that it initially leaves the roach mobile and modifies its behavior in a unique way. Several other species of the genus Ampulex show a similar behavior of preying on cockroaches.^[1] The wasp's predation appears only to affect the cockroach's escape responses. Research has shown that while a stung roach exhibits drastically reduced survival instincts (such as swimming, or avoiding pain) for approximately 72 hours, motor abilities like flight or flipping over are unimpaired.^[6][7]

Source: Wikipedia - Emerald Cockroach Wasp

Which is all very well, if you're an emerald cockroach wasp; not so good if you're a cockroach.

What gruesome intelligence could come up with such a plan? Why on earth would an intelligent designer design cockroaches and equip them with all the paraphernalia needed to be a cockroach, then think up something so malignantly horrific as our exquisite little wasp, which seems to have no other purpose in life but to make cockroaches die slowly and helplessly by having their internal organs eaten?

Of course, as intelligent design, and especially intelligent design by an omni-benevolent designer, emerald cockroach wasps make no sense at all. Neither do cockroaches in a world intelligently designed for humans, for that matter.

As the products of a thoughtless, unemotional, undirected process, where the only thing that matters is what gives more living, breeding descendants, they make perfect sense. The emerald cockroach wasp does what it does because evolution has pushed it in that direction by naturally selecting for whatever produces most reproducing emerald cockroach wasps. There is no need for an explanation more complicated than that.

And of course, a similar process is currently pushing parasitic Creationista pseudo-scientificus in the direction of evolving more and more ways to exploit the susceptibility to mind-control that religion has produced in their victims - those who have been stung into senselessness by religion and now allow themselves to be led by the nose and to be fed on and used by self-seeking Creationist pseudo-scientists, preachers and right-wing politicians, having been stripped of their ability to think for themselves.

And these sad little mind-controlled zombies actually think it gives their lives meaning to try to produce even more potential victims for these nasty little parasites - and I'm not talking about wasps. Wasps have a nobility and elegance which cannot be granted to human 'religious' parasites. Unlike these humans, they can be forgiven, for they know not what they do.

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The 2012 Darwin Creationist Twit - Result!

The coveted Darwin Creationist Twit Award for 2012 Results:

In third place with

athiest u are such idiots. u believe intellgent desine by monkys but notGod ??

— josh (@jtrubo) October 12, 2012

is @jtrubo

Well done to @jtrubo for doing so well with what was a really late entry, only just making the deadline.

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In second place with two candidate entries:

@RosaRubicondior Incorrect. Many interpret the fact that the universe is shaped like an atom as (cont) tl.gd/iapb9r

—Absird Charles (@Absird) July 14, 2012

@VorianK @RosaRubicondior which? A galaxy or Boron? twitter.com/Absird/status/…

—Absird Charles (@Absird) July 14, 2012

is @Absird.

Very well done, @Absird. A valiant effort which I thought would take some beating for its pompous idiocy. Two very good candidate tweets there.

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However, the clear winner with:

@scouse_dot but how do you grow an ear if you don't know there is anything to hear?

— Mr Duck (@loadsofducks) July 17, 2012

is @loadsofduck with an entry so moronic that it proved impossible to beat for it's sheer ignorant stupidity, even by the exceptionally strong entries from @Absird.

Well done, @loadsofduck,DCT for being the 2012 Darwin Creationist Twit of The Year. Don't forget to impress your friends and followers by putting those much sought after letters after your name.

Apologists' Glossary

In recognition of the frequent need of religious apologists to re-define everyday words to make their arguments appear to work and look logical, I have produced this handy glossary. It can also be used by normal people to decode apologetics and turn it from gibberish into normal English.

Allegory

Anything in a holy book which science has now shown not to be true and which no one in their right mind would now believe was ever meant to be taken literally. Allegories do not need to be for anything; they just need to be too silly to be taken literally now we know better.

Big Bang

1. Silly idea that nothing went bang and made everything, so the evidence for it can be ignored.
2. Not as sensible as the idea that a magic man made from nothing made everything from nothing so he would have somewhere to create me.

Climate Change

Something which isn't happening and which has nothing to do with the different weather we are having. Anyway, God will take care of it and it doesn't matter anyway because Jesus will come back soon.

Disproved.

1. Any scientific idea about which there may be the slightest uncertainty or which is not completely understood in absolute detail, or which any person claiming to be a scientist has ever questioned at any time in recorded history, if it casts doubt on a religious dogma.
2. Anything which contradicts the holy book of the religion being defended.

Evidence.

1. Something which can safely be assumed to exist if it would support the religious idea being defended.
2. Something which arrogant, elitist scientists keep going on about.

Evolution.

1. The belief that chimpanzees have human babies, invented by Stephen Dawkins who is friend of Karl Marx.
2. A scientific process which is impossible because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
3. An old idea that everyone knows has been disproved.
4. The scientific explanation for how all the different species evolved from two of each kind in just 4,000 years after Noah's flood.

Fact.

Anything presented without supporting evidence in support of religious dogma. May be given addition power by being appended with an exclamation mark and used at the end of a sentence.

False.

1. Pertaining to anything tending to disprove a religious dogma, no matter how well supported with evidence or reason.
2. Anything which contradicts the holy book of the religion being defended.

False Witnessing.

1. Telling lies - something forbidden by one of the Ten Commandments, so no Christian would ever do it.
2. Definitely not claiming to have evidence for a god when there is none, or making claims for which there is no evidential support.
3. Also, definitely not accusing people who you don't agree with of doing things they haven't done.

Faith.

1. How to tell that all other faiths are false.
2. Believing things for which there is definitely really good evidence which convinced the people who told me what to believe. No doubts about that at all. Honestly! Anyway, I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't true. Why can't other people see that?

Fool.

Anyone who doesn't agree with a religious dogma.

Foolish.

Any claim, fact or logical argument which tends to falsify the religious dogma or argument currently being used.

Good.

1. Pertaining to any act called for in a holy book, regardless of its effects on other people.
2. Pertaining to people who claim to be members of the religious sect being promoted, regardless of their behaviour.

I know it to be so.

Cf. Fact!

Just a theory.

1. A guess with no supporting evidence.
2. Description of any body of science together with the supporting evidence, research findings and consensus of opinion of experts in the field, which contradicts anything in the holy book or religious dogma being promoted or defended.

Let's agree to disagree.

I've run out of arguments and can't refute anything you've said but I'm not going to admit I've lost because I might have to change my opinion.

Literal Word Of God.

1. Everything written in the holy book being promoted. Utterly beyond dispute.
2. Unless it's just too absurd to be believed, or embarrassing, then it is allegorical - but still literally true, obviously.

Love.

The passive-aggressive act of condescending to people who disagree with you in an attempt to intimidate them.

Lying For Jesus/Allah

The paradox of religious apologists denying doing it when caught in the act.

Metaphor.

See Allegory. Normally applies to a instruction in a holy book which, if done today, would be socially unacceptable or even criminal. What it is a metaphor for is often an ineffable mystery which only devout people can understand.

Moral.

1. Pertaining to anything done in the name of the god being defended or called for in a holy book, regardless of the effect it has on other people, especially non-believers.
2. Pertaining to any act done to promote the sect being promoted, including deception, misrepresentation, false-witnessing and violence, threatened or actual.

Real.

Pertaining to something which can't be demonstrated to exist but which would need to exist for a religious dogma to be true.

Reason.

1. Not to be trusted if it gives the wrong answer. What St Paul and Martin Luther warned us not to use but didn't say why.
2. What people who don't trust God use.
3. What William Lane Craig and other religious apologists brilliantly prove God is real with.

Saved.

Pertaining to Christians who believe they have been saved from their god because they believe it exists.

Science.

1. When contradicting a religious dogma, an unreliable philosophy depending on an unproven materialist view of the universe, which never produces anything worthwhile in terms of knowledge, understanding or progress.
2. When believed to support a religious dogma, indisputable and infallible method for proving what's true.

Scientist.

1. When agreeing with the religion being promoted, brilliant and indisputable authority.
2. When disagreeing with the religion being promoted, mad, elitist, fraud who thinks he knows more than God/Allah. Probably a Communist, rapist and devil-worshipper.
3. Anyone with letters after his/her name, even if not qualified in a science subject, especially if called 'doctor'.
4. A Creationist who has watched the Discovery Channel or who owns a science book.

Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Science which makes Evolution impossible.

Sinner.

Everyone. If Catholic, someone who has sinned since they were last let off by a priest. Some people are obviously sinner than others.

True.

Pertaining to anything which would support religious dogma if it were so, especially in the absence of any supporting evidence.

Witnessing.

The act of saying anything at all which might, if believed, persuade another person to join the religious sect being promoted.

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Top Five Christian Cults

Within religious circles, one man's cult is another man's mainstream religion, but a few things seem to characterise modern 'New Age Religion' cults, apart from mysticism and rituals:

• Autocratic rule. Often claimed by 'divine right'. Usually dominated by one charismatic man regarded as the font of all 'wisdom' and frequently claiming direct divine guidance and instructions.
• Women play a subordinate role. Women are expected to be at the disposal of the senior men.
• Many cults are apocalyptic, believing some great disaster is about to befall the world, or the Second Coming of Jesus is imminent, and their leader is a prophet sent to prepare the world for it or to provide an elite who are to survive the apocalypse.
• Fundraising is a major preoccupation, with members either required to raise money by begging or selling the cult's produce, or to donate a large proportion, even all, of their income.
• Extremely rich leaders.

In fact, in many ways, the social structure of religious cults closely resembles the social structure of gorillas and the common chimpanzee groups.

Top Five Reasons People Are Leaving Faith

These are my top five reasons why there is such a massive increase in agnosticism and outright disbelief in gods at present.

You may of course have different ones...

Behaviour of believers.

• Access to news

has shown people how religion gives excuses to believers to act in ways which could not be excused any other way. Religion is behind most regional conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Sudan, the Middle East, India/Pakistan, the Philippines and the developing religious tension in parts of Western Europe. International terrorism is now almost entirely religiously.

Law For Creationists

A great deal of Creationism depends on people misunderstanding simple words, which is why the most lucrative market for those who peddle creationism for a living is to be found in the less well educated parts of the world, and why the creationist package includes a mistrust of education and an admiration for ignorance as part of the deal.

An example of this can be found daily in the social media where the term 'theory' is assiduously and carefully 'misunderstood' in it's scientific context and given it's lay meaning. This helps creationists dismiss science as merely guesswork and claim wrongly that the Theory of Evolution therefore does not have any supporting evidence.

Why Religion Is For Bird Brains

If you're wondering why religious people love rituals, the answer can be found in an experiment involving birds - pigeons to be exact.

The great Harvard Professor of Psychology, B.F.Skinner showed how pigeons become religious when given random rewards that have nothing to do with their behaviour.

This was a spin-off from the experiments on 'operant conditioning' where he showed how pigeons can be trained to carry out an action by associating it with a reward. For example, pigeons can be trained to peck a green light if they get a pellet of food every time they do so. Skinner wondered what would happen if the reward was completely dissociated from their actions.

Religion Kills [Updated]

Massacre of the Innocence, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565

One of the great lies religious people tell is that religion is a force for peace; that without religion there would be no morality and nothing to stop people rushing around killing one another. Like so many other claims made by religious people the facts directly contradict the claim.

Here is a list of religion-inspired massacres, i.e. a single event of mass killing inspired by religion or specifically of followers of a different religion, often merely a different sect of the same religion as the killers.

This is a work in progress, and probably always will be, as there will probably never cease to be excuses for religious massacres.

The Birth Of Jesus - Southern Version

This is interesting. There seem to be three different accounts of the impregnation of Mary and the birth of Jesus; two Christian ones in the Bible and a Muslim one in the Qur'an. The weird thing is, the then recently-converted Christian King of Abyssinia thought the Muslim one was the authentic version!

What's maybe even more weird is that none of them bear more than a passing resemblance to one another.

First, the Bible versions:

Version 1

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

The Heavenly Peace Of Jesus

Hong Xiuquan

An interesting BBC Radio 4 program a couple of days ago on the "Taiping Rebellion" in Southern China, 1850-1864. What made my ears prick up was the fact that this rebellion was lead by a fundamentalist Christian zealot.

I'll come on to him later; first a little background:

At the time of the rebellion, China was ruled by the Manchurian Quing Dynasty which was regarded as foreign by the Han Chinese. The Manchus had invaded China from the north east in 1644 taking advantage of the disarray following the collapse of the Ming Dynasty during a peasants' revolt in Beijing.

China, under the Qing Dynasty in the mid-19th century, suffered a series of natural disasters, economic problems and defeats at the hands of the Western powers; in particular, the humiliating defeat in 1842 by the United Kingdom in the First Opium War. The Qing government, led by ethnic Manchus, were seen by much of the Chinese population, who were mainly Han Chinese, as an ineffective and corrupt foreign regime. Anti-Manchu sentiment was strongest in the south among the laboring classes and it was these disaffected who flocked to join the charismatic leader Hong Xiuquan, a member of the Hakka community, a Han-Chinese sub-group that inhabited southern China but traced their ancestries back to northerners in the Song Dynasty. Having arrived too late to acquire the best land, they were engaged in constant conflicts.⁵ Among these serious problems were the prevalence of female infanticide, creating massive imbalances with shortages of women being worst in the primary Taiping centers.

Wikipedia - Taiping Rebellion

Why Science Is Right And Religions Are Wrong

Interesting Huffington Post poll out today. More Believe In Space Aliens Than In God According To U.K. Survey.

Some of the reason given for belief in aliens were absurd, of course, but, in contrast to a belief in gods, there is sound logical argument for thinking that life, and thereby possibly intelligent life, would exist elsewhere in the universe.

The maths is relatively simple: leaving aside Earth, there are so many, maybe half a trillion, galaxies in the universe, each with somewhere around a trillion stars, that the probability of several, maybe very many, stars having a planet on which life evolved approaches certainty.

Even Christians Have To Obey The Law.

Excellent news today from Reading Crown Court where a Christian couple have been ordered to pay compensation to a gay couple whom they had discriminated against in 2010, using their superstition as the pretext for their bullying and denial of basic human rights by refusing to supply them with hotel services on the grounds of their sexuality. See BBC News - Gay couple win Berkshire B&B refusal case.

This case follows an almost identical one in Bristol which resulted in damages being awarded to a gay couple who had been similarly victimised by the Christian owners of a Bed & Breakfast Hotel in Marazion, Cornwall, in 2008. The case was upheld by the Court of Appeal last February. The message from these landmark cases should be crystal clear to Christians, and indeed any other religious minorities seeking to impose their bigotry on the rest of us.

What God Thinks Of Disabled People

Are you disabled in any way? Do you have even the smallest blemish? A mole or a birthmark maybe? Do you know anyone who is? A friend or relative? That girl or boy down the street with a squint? Even just a little bit disabled? How about that lame man or that woman with a harelip or someone needing to wear spectacles?

In fact, given that no one is perfect, doesn't everyone have a defect of some sort?

Here's what the Christian god thinks of imperfect people:

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God.

For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken;

No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.

He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy, and of the holy. Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries: for I the Lord do sanctify them.

And Moses told it unto Aaron, and to his sons, and unto all the children of Israel.

Leviticus 21:16-24

Unintelligently Designed Creationists

You have to pity Creationists. If only they would (or should that be 'could'?) think things through!

I blame the leaders of this money-making industry and right-wing political control cult; people like Ken Ham, Duane Gish, Kent Hovind, Michael Behe and William Dembski who feed off these unfortunate victims in return for worthless pseudo-scientific pap, and so release them ill-prepared in terms of reasoning ability and facts, onto the Internet to try to push their lost cause to people who actually understand biological science, as though that was ever going to be remotely possible. It almost constitutes child abuse, even for the chronologically adult Creationist children.

How Christians Lie To Us - Fact And Fiction

This is the second and last blog dealing with Christopher Hitchens' book "The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice". In the first ("How Christians Lie To Us - Birth Of A Myth") I used Hitch's description of how Malcolm Muggeridge invented the Mother Teresa of Calcutta myth almost out of thin air to illustrate how (mythical) sanctity and 'miracles' can be created almost at will for a credulous audience eager for such things.

In this one, I'll use the testimonies of those who witnessed Mother Teresa and her 'Missionaries of Charity' at work to contrast the reality with the myth of tender, loving care for the needs of the sick and dying which the Catholic Church and much of the uncritical media have assiduously manufactured.

How Christians Lie To Us - Birth Of A Myth

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu
Fake Saint

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Reading Christopher Hitchins' book, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice I came across this wonderful example of how both the myth of a miracle and the myth of sainthood are produced by cynical self-interest and a cavalier approach to truth, honesty and intellectual integrity.

The origin of the Mother Teresa of Calcutta myth can be traced back to a 1969 TV documentary and a 1971 book, both entitled Something Beautiful For God by Malcolm Muggeridge, a pseudo-intellectual convert to Catholicism. Muggeridge had started out as a left of centre satirist but had moved later in life to be a right wing fundamentalist moraliser who, as part of Mary Whitehouse's self-appointed cabal of Christian bigots, had tried to get banned, amongst many other things, The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour on the grounds that it contained the words "Pornographic priestess; boy, you've been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down".

As we said at the time, Muggeridge was all for a liberal attitude to sex - until he got too old for it.

Time To Vote For The Darwin Creationist Twit Award

So the final list of candidates is now complete, albeit with one late entry which was too good to be left out.

Vote by commenting below. By all means canvass for your candidate but only one person, one vote please.

Note to candidates: You should not vote as your vote will not count for yourself but trying to do so might well improve your chances of winning by showing people you think the award is an honour.

Remember, folks, the award if for the best candidate who by a tweet so outstandingly moronic that it helps to reduce the meme of creationism in the human meme pool.

There are 20 outstanding candidates:

Christians! Should You Be Reading This?

From a true-believing Christian's point of view, reading and learning about anything but the Bible is to be avoided. The problem is, it can lead to 'knowledge', the acquisition of which was the original sin for which Christians say we all need to beg God's forgiveness and for which he supposedly sacrificed his son in a bizarre, barbaric blood sacrifice ritual which no one at the time seems to have noticed and of which no one now seems to be able to explain the mechanism.

This time it's mostly in the New Testaments where the Bible shows it's real hostility towards learning and the acquisition of wisdom. Paul particularly, and perhaps understandably so, seems especially worried in his epistles that people are going to learn stuff which might make them question rather than just accept his authority on things.

Do You Agree With God About Slavery?

If you're a humanist and/or an atheist you'll have no doubt at all: abolition of slavery was one of the great social advances and righted a monstrous and hideous wrong. But, if you're a Christian who looks to the Bible for your morals, and you agree with us that slavery was wrong, perhaps you should think again. You either have to believe you have higher moral standards that the people who wrote the Bible, or you believe there is nothing wrong with slavery.

The first thing to point out is, there is not a hint of condemnation of slavery anywhere in the Bible. Throughout the Old and New Testaments there is nothing but acceptance of slavery as a perfectly normal part of everyday life; something that doesn't raise the slightest concern or a hint of a moral qualm. There are even instructions on how to treat slaves, when and how to kill or beat them, who you can own, etc.

In the Bible, slaves are not even regarded as human beings. Take these two passages:

So You Think You're A Christian?

Bible warning sticker.

It's a constant source of amazement and amusement how so many people claim to be Christians whilst acting like anything but a Christian. For example, in Women. Are You Free Or Christian? I showed Christian women should see themselves and behave according to the Bible and the founding fathers of their religion. In this blog, let's look at the way good Christian parents should be treating their children, again according to the Bible and some well-known apologists for Christianity.

Firstly, a warning. Almost all of what the Bible tells you to do to and with your children is very probably illegal, especially if you live in a civilised society. Under no circumstances should you do the things the Bible tells a good Christian parent to do in respect of your children. The least you could expect would be to have them taken into care.

Here goes:

Women. Are You Free Or Christian?

For some reason, good Christian women seem to be abandoning their faith in droves. In fact, it's hard nowadays to find a woman who still holds to her proclaimed Christian faith. Even nuns would probably recoil in horror at the suggestion that they should still believe what their faith tells them they should believe.

The problem is, they're either too afraid to admit they've left their faith, or they don't actually realise they've done so, probably because so few of them read the Bible and no preacher is going to tell them the truth, least of all a male one.

Here's a short list of what Christian women are supposed to believe. Let's see how many actually do believe it. Shout out in the comments section if you're a Christian woman and actually believe any of the following, which I've numbered for ease of reference:

Whatever Possesses Religious People?

Firstly, religion isn't possession. That idea comes from old superstitions which had demons everywhere, taking over people's bodies and even giving them strange magical powers. Thankfully, all but the most primitive religions no longer seem to push that aspect of their faith even though their holy book may be full of it.

The better question is: what motivates religious people? What are the psychological causes of religion and religiosity?

A few days ago I showed in "Why Religious People Are So Atheistic" how, for the most part, religious people behave exactly like perfectly normal Atheists save for a small over-head of additional effort, a little delay for praying here and there before acting, maybe a trip to a special place of collective worship on special days or times according to the particular superstition being subscribed to, and all for no appreciable tangible benefits in terms of normal, everyday living.

Come On! The Bible's Forgers Weren't THAT Bad.

I have to take issue here with an unjustified criticism of Christian fundamentalism. As regular readers will know, I am always scrupulously fair on Creationists.

I found this unwarranted parody of Christian Creationist belief by Tom Weller, author of Science Made Stupid: How to Discomprehend the World Around Us, winner of the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book. It was quoted in The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound by Jack Huberman.

An Easy One For Christians & Muslims

This should be an easy one for Christians and Muslims who both believe in a Hell where Satan lives and gets our souls to torture for eternity in unimaginably horribly ways.

The story goes that God, ever the narcissist, created angels so they could worship and adore him, but, so that they could do so in all sincerity and not just as pre-programmed automatons, he gave them free will too.

For some reason, Satan wasn't convinced by his creator's majesty and perfection and, like an up and coming young ape, or a young would-be tribal leader of Bronze Age hunter-gatherers, he challenged the old silver-backed alpha male, lost, and so was chucked out of Heaven for eternity. It's not clear why he wasn't convinced by a perfect god or why this god created him in the first place when, being omniscient, he knew all along what was going to happen. Nor is it at all clear why this god can't forgive Satan and so end evil, but let's run with the story and not get bogged down too much by its absurdities.

All Arguments For God Refute God

You have to pity religious people who get their religion from a book.

Consider the following statements:

All the evidence for [favourite god] is in [favourite holy book] which is the word of [favourite god].

Well, that isn't much good because no holy book has ever managed to convince anything like a majority of people so it can't have been written by an omniscient god. Besides, it should be manifestly obvious to anyone that no book or mere piece of writing can be proof of its own truth, not even when it claims it is, otherwise anyone could create truth merely by writing it down and saying it's true. For example, this blog is all true because I said so and I should know, I created it. Convinced?

So, no holy book alone can be proof of a god.

Why Religious People Behave Like Atheists

In just about every way that matters in everyday life, religious people behave just the way Atheists do. To watch them, you would be hard-pressed to know if they are real Atheists or not.

Take, for instance, crossing a road. You will never see a religious person standing at the roadside praying for the road to be clear, then just stepping out into the traffic secure in the knowledge that their god has stopped the traffic and made it safe for them to cross. Instead, they behave exactly like an Atheist would.

They check first and wait for a safe gap, or wait for the lights to change. They even behave like Atheists and bet their life on the absence of evidence being evidence of absence just as Atheists do with cars and gods - which is why Pascal's Wager fails to work on people who aren't already afraid of a god.

YES! YES! YES!

Some pieces of writing are so powerful, so right, so full of air-punchingly 'YES!'.

I warn you now not to read Christopher Hitchens', "God Is Not Great" in public because people will think you're strange when you shout out and punch the air!

And I warn you now not to read this piece by Ayaan Hirsi Ali entitled "How (and Why) I Became an Infidel". She wrote it especially for Christopher Hitchens' book, "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer".

First a little background on Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Born in Somalia she witnessed first hand female genital mutilation, clerical cruelty, and religion-inspired barbarism. After escaping to Holland she watched as her colleague Theo Van Gogh was murdered by Islamic extremists for satirizing Islamic repression of women and was told she was to be their next victim. She had initially believed that Islam could be reformed but soon realised that it's 'faith' itself which is the problem.

When I finally admitted to myself that I was an unbeliever, it was because I simply couldn’t pretend any longer that I believed. Leaving Allah was a long and painful process for me, and I tried to resist it for as long as I could. All my life I had wanted to be a good daughter of my clan, and that meant above all that I should be a good Muslim woman, who had learned to submit to God — which in practice meant the rule of my brother, my father, and later my husband.

When I was a child, I had a child’s revulsion against injustice. I could not understand why Allah, if he were truly merciful and all-powerful, would tolerate and indeed require that I stand behind my brother at prayer and obey his whims, or that the courts should consider my statements to be inherently less valid than his. But shame and obedience had been drilled into me from my earliest years. I obeyed my parents, my clan, and my religious teachers, and I felt ashamed that by my questioning I seemed to be betraying them.

As I became a teenager, my rebellion grew. It was not yet a revolt against Islam. Who was I to contest Allah? But I did feel constricted by my family and our Somali clan, where family honor was the overriding value, and seemed principally to reside in the control, sale, and transfer of girls’ virginity. Reading Western books—even trashy romance novels—gave me a vision of an astounding alternative universe where girls had choices.

Still, I struggled to conform. I voluntarily robed in a black hijab that covered my body from head to toe. I tried to pray five times a day and to obey the countless strictures of the Koran and the Hidith. I did so mostly because I was afraid of Hell. The Koran lists Hell’s torments in vivid detail: sores, boiling water, peeling skin, burning flesh, dissolving bowels. An everlasting fire burns you forever for as your flesh chars and your juices boil, you form a new skin. Every preacher I encountered hammered more mesmerizing details onto his nightmarish tableau. It was genuinely terrifying.

Ultimately, I think, it was books, and boys, that saved me. No matter how hard I tried to submit to Allah’s will, I still felt desire — sexual desire, urgent and real, which even the vision of Hellfire could not suppress. It made me ashamed to feel that way, but when my father told me he was marrying me off to a stranger, I realized that I could not accept being locked forever into the bed of a man who left me cold.

I escaped. I ended up in Holland. With the help of many benevolent Dutch people, I managed to gain confidence that I had a future outside my clan. I decided to study political science, to discover why Muslim societies — Allah’s societies — were poor and violent, while the countries of the despised infidels were wealthy and peaceful. I was still a Muslim in those days. I had no intention of criticizing Allah’s will, only to discover what had gone so very wrong.

It was at university that I gradually lost my faith. The ideas and the facts that I encountered there were thrilling and powerful, but they also clashed horribly with the vision of the world with which I had grown up. At first, when the cognitive dissonance became too strong, I would try to shove these issues to the back of my mind. The ideas of Spinoza and Freud, Darwin and Locke and Mill, were indisputably true, but so was the Koran; and I vowed to one day resolve these differences. In the meantime, I could not make myself stop reading. I knew the argument was a weak one, but I told myself that Allah is in favor of knowledge.

The pleasures and anonymity of life in the clan-less West were almost as beguiling as the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers. Quite soon after I arrived in Holland, I replaced my Muslim dress with jeans. I avoided socializing with other Somalis first, and then with other Muslims — they preached to me about fear of the Hereafter and warned that I was damned. Years later, I drank my first glass of wine and had a boyfriend. No bolt of Hellfire burned me; chaos did not ensue. To pacify my mind, I adopted an attitude of “negotiating” with Allah: I told myself these were small sins, which hurt no one; surely God would not mind too much.

Then the Twin Towers were toppled in the name of Allah and his prophet, and I felt that I must choose sides. Osama bin Laden’s justification of the attacks was more consistent with the content of the Koran and the Sunna than the chorus of Muslim officials and Western wishful thinkers who denied every link between the bloodshed and Islam. Did I, as a Muslim, support bin Laden’s act of “worship”? Did I feel it was what God commanded? And if not, was I a Muslim?

I picked up a book — The Atheist Manifesto by Herman Philipse, who later became a great friend. I began reading it, marvelling at the clarity and naughtiness of its author. But I really didn’t have to. Just looking at it, just wanting to read it—that already meant I doubted. Before I’d read four pages, I realized that I had left Allah behind years ago. I was an atheist. An apostate. An infidel. I looked in a mirror and said out loud, in Somali, “I don’t believe in God.”

I felt relief. There was no pain but a real clarity. The long process of seeing the flaws in my belief structure, and carefully tip-toeing around the frayed edges as parts of it were torn out piece by piece—all that was over. The ever-present prospect of Hellfire lifted, and my horizon seemed broader. God, Satan, angels: these were all figments of human imagination, mechanisms to impose the will of the powerful on the weak. From now on I could step firmly on the ground that was under my feet and navigate based on my own reason and self-respect. My moral compass was within myself, not in the pages of a sacred book.

In the next few months, I began going to museums. I needed to see ruins and mummies and old dead people, to look at the reality of the bones and to absorb the realization that, when I die, I will become just a bunch of bones. Some of them were five hundred million years old, I noted; if it took Allah longer than that to raise the dead, the prospect of his retribution for my lifetime of enjoyment seemed distinctly less plausible.

I was on a psychological mission to accept living without a God, which means accepting that I give my life its own meaning. I was looking for a deeper sense of morality. In Islam you are Allah’s slave; you submit, which means that ideally you are devoid of personal will. You are not a free individual. You behave well because you fear Hell, which is really a form of blackmail — you have no personal ethic.

Now I told myself that we, as human individuals, are our own guides to good and evil. We must think for ourselves; we are responsible for our own morality. I arrived at the conclusion that I couldn’t be honest with others unless I was honest with myself. I wanted to comply with the goals of religion — which are to be a better and more generous person — without suppressing my will and forcing it to obey an intricate and inhumanly detailed web of rules. I had lied many times in my life, but now, I told myself, that was over: I had had enough of lying.

After I wrote my memoir, Infidel (published in the United States in 2007), I did a book tour in the United States. I found that interviewers from the Heart-land often asked if I had considered adopting the message of Jesus Christ. The idea seems to be that I should shop for a better, more humane religion than Islam, rather than taking refuge in unbelief. A religion of talking serpents and heavenly gardens? I usually respond that I suffer from hayfever. The Christian take on Hellfire seems less dramatic than the Muslim vision, which I grew up with, but Christian magical thinking appeals to me no more than my grandmother’s angels and djinns.

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali - How (and Why) I Became an Infidel
From Hitchens, Christopher (2007-12-10).
The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (pp. 477-480).
Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

copyright © 2007 by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

YES! YES! YES!

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More Einstein On Religion

If there is a scientist who religious apologists love to claim agreed with them it's Albert Einstein. Not only has Einstein become, in the popular imagination, the archetype of what the scientifically illiterate imagine to be a scientist (dishevelled, a little bit scatty, even slightly mad (which he wasn't) and absent-minded (again, not true)), but he is acknowledged as one of the all-time greats; a genius by any standard who showed us that reality can be decidedly counter-intuitive. But he has one outstanding quality from a religious apologists point of view: he is dead and so can't refute the claims they make about him and his views on religion.

Fortunately though, he was never shy to state his views when asked and did record them for posterity.

I have previously blogged about this with Albert Einstein On Religion but here is a much more extensive collection of Einstein's recorded religious views. I originally came across this collection in Chapter 22 of Christopher Hitchen's book "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever", compiled by Miguel Chavez, however the list is almost identical, save for the final two quotes, to one on "The Unofficial Stephen J Gould Archive", to which the bulk of the credit must go.

The list is numbered and tagged for ease of reference. To reference any one of these quotes, simply add a hash (#) followed by the appropriate number (e.g. #22) to the url of this page.

1. "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."