Sometimes in depth conversation is just not going to happen.

After David Cameron made a speech, in February, in which he offered deference to millions of peaceful Muslims, before making the point that UK resident Muslims should accept “British” values, pointing to tolerance and acceptance of non-belief, other belief, and of UK culture, like to encompass rights for women and LGBT people, no doubt many social media debates happened.

Deference to an audience that may feel threatened by criticisms of certain ideas associated with a broader superset of ideas in which they may be emotionally invested is appropriate, if for no other reason than not be heavily criticised in turn for making sweeping generalisations encompassing many who already agree that such a subset of ideas are worthy of criticism. Not doing so, some say, would lead to Cameron being called racist, but in any case would be counter productive.

One conversation I participated in went as well as any drunken brawl in a bar in that part of town where the police never go.

In early July, After a friend shared an article about Cameron's speech from the Telegraph. A mutual acquaintance (Q) made the statement that they would rather Islamic values than British “imperialistic” values. Apparently “values” of other groups means different things to different people and is subject to selection bias, which was evident in Q's remark.

To make a counter point I replied with an uncommented link to a Patheos page containing passages from the Tahir by Ayatollah Komeini. A description is bad enough, but to be truly disgusted you really have to read it. Caution – keep a barf bag handy.

The response that came back was disturbingly angry. And included an accusation of racism among “white atheists”. Q's response fit criticisms of leftists bowing to Islam for the sake of multiculturalism in to comments made by Pat Condell. I doubt Pat's critiques are representative of the left generally., but it would be a cheap-shot to use Pat's comment's as a retort. He does make the point that tolerance of the intolerant positions of Islam is inappropriate, and since the three of us all have gay friends the four major schools of though present a huge problem for people we care about. See Wiki.

A little stunned by the angry reply, I chose to point out how nice it was to have a reasoned discussion without name calling and ad hominem and left it at that. But, there were some big holes in Q's response.

Islam, of course, is not a race and history tells it is not indigenous to Iran, Nor is it entirely a necessary part of being Iranian, as Iranian atheists do exist as well as other faith groups including Ba'hai, and are vocal in social media. While the Tahir appeared in the context of Iran's Islamic Revolution. It is important to note many Iranians, who are mostly ethnically Persian, reject passages in the Tahir referenced above. Now a racist would saying thing about Persian physiognomy and cognition however that would be pointless, as the science suggest that there is little variation across ethnic groups, and indeed there is more variation within ethic groups.

People are good, not because of their religion, but often in spite of it, as Iranians themselves have shown by rejecting both the Tahir and the Hijab.

What's this about the hijab? Check out My Stealthy Freedom on facebook. Iranian women are photographing themselves without the head scarf required by the mullahs. Apparently, the regime is losing the culture war in Iran, Younger Iranians do not support their government, and many even despised the current regime. The old guard of the Islamic revolution is on borrowed time as it is being replaced by political and social progressives.

I highly recommend Bread and Roses, on Youtube. The show is hosted by Mariam Namazie from the UK based Council of Ex-Muslims. The will hope fully be aired on bootleg satellite TV so that it is available to Iranians looking for more information to help them understand what else is going on other than what the mullahs are saying.

You can have peace, over conservatism's cold dead corpse.

Dear Oprah

We atheists get awe, we always got awe, our experience is as diverse and rich as any other people. It is full of the simultaneous beauty, hideousness, complexity, simplicity, horror, the vast macro scale, the intricate and counter intuitive nanoscale, and everyday midi scale with human nurturing, care, and cruelty, insanity, humour and consideration of our experience is the human experience.

It needs no gods, no ancient writings of savage civilizations, no poetically twisted language of science offered to sell books.

Humans are by nature emotional creatures, it was true yesterday, it is true today and it will be true tomorrow. We are also capable of reason and through reason we find no evidence of god in the traditional sense. Powerful and profound emotional experiences are just that. They can be beautiful uplifting or devastating. If they happen to be the former there is no reason to call them God, it simply demonstrates that the word does not mean what you think it means. The word god has  meaning referring to an all knowing superpower so what ever you call awe, be it yugen or amazement or joie de vivre, the one thing it is not is god. If you are going to torture the English language, have the decency to do it out of public view, like the CIA.

And while your at it knock off the "The Secret" stuff. because when things don't work out like people hope it just leaves them frustrated and depressed and being led to believe that there lives suck because they haven't a strong enough imagination to overcome their reality which is that trickle down economics is a scam designed to extract money from the working poor an middle class and give it to the rich.

Traditionally the word soul referred to living person there was no supernatural element to this word until the Catholics started chewing on their own dictionaries and the lead in the ink affect their brains. It was all good though it filled the coffers nicely. All the priests had to say was "Nice soul you have their, wouldn't want anything to happen to it." And the gullible and poorly educated peasants would respond to this empty threat, and fill the golden platter with contribution for the godfather tithe to the church. Like the traditional concept of God, the concept of the eternal or extra-corporeal soul has no evidential support.

Props to Diana Nyad for being straight up and showing that people don't need god to be extraordinary.



In case you were still wondering what Atheism is, Take 5 minutes to let Bill Maher explain it to you...

The surprising allies in the struggle towards enlightenment.

There are two ways to draw people towards a given proposition, show why that proposition is superior to the alternatives. Which Carl Sagan did poetically, bring awe and understanding to the origins of everything putting in perspective great human struggles showing them to be miniscule in relation to the universe we live in.

The other technique, is rather difficult to pull off without looking biased unless you're on the inside. And that technique is the technique of making to competition appear foolish, insane, bigoted and unreasonable.

For an atheist like myself  to say religion is foolishly superstitious, may appear to some be arrogance or sour grapes, but no one can sell the message like Pat Robertson:

Pat Robertson On How To Handle Demons In Your Home: 'If It Was Me, I'd Burn The House Down'

When we say religion is judgemental, we just hate Christians. Even though none of us seriously would consider rounding Christians behind an electrified barbed wire fence. However Charles Worley can really bring home the message that religion is a hateful enterprise:



If I were to say religion is dehumanizing, I might be accused of saying religious people are less worthy of respect or dignity than atheists, but Linda Harvey can really push the message of intolerance in religion across and still be held in high esteem by other Christians.



Harvey's critics have noted that there are no christian children and that they have to be taught to be Christian. and are not legal persons under constitution. Behaviours that civilizations and society have said a big "no" to cannot be endorsed in law. For example...



We atheists like to defend the rights of all people to fair treatment regardless of sex, wealth, gender, nationality or religion. Indeed we abhor domestic violence, but here we have someone saying wife beating is ok, and exactly to how do it. As described, such behaviour may not cause overt physical harm but still results in psychological harm and distress for this reason and the implied infantilism of women many this see this as unacceptable...



This might look like beating up on Muslims, it is not check out this Catholic.... And bear in mind some fundamentalist Christians have defended right to the beating of wives by husbands to "get the demons out". The Bible also contains verses the say no amount beating is worse than hell so children can be beaten as much as the parents like.(Proverbs 23:13-14)



We all know abusing children is bad, but for some Christians it is a business model...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/dec/09/tracymcveigh.theobserver

from The Daily Telegraph

The millennial generation are seeing religion more for what it is and abandoning it at a rate that has not been seen before. Without the tireless invocations of bigotry, hatred and abuse, they might easily be lead to believe religion was a good thing. We know many have tried over generations to convey that impression.

Now you might describe Pat Robertson, Linda Harvey, Charles Worley and countless others as ass-hats and witch hunters as evil child abusers. However there tireless self sacrifice means institutional religions will follow their reputations into the long drop of history. And for that we can be truly thankful.

So thanks guys for the help, we could not make ancient superpositions look any worse than it already is, and there is really no point in trying.

See Also
   The Friendly Atheist on CNN about why Millennials are losing their religion.

'Atheists and humanists are the most discriminated groups in the country'

The religiously unaffiliated in the US is the fastest growing segment in the US and already number 20%.
Many see the lies, scaremongering, social manipulation, moral hypocrisy, and money hungry preachers and are repulsed.

Even though some US studies put atheists in a position of being less trusted than sex offenders, the religious right is organised and holds veto power of one of the two major political parties in the US. It's somewhat bizarre, because at the same time they respect Brad Pitts' work in Katrina recovery, George Clooney's ambassadorial works for human rights and are big fans of Daniel Radcliffe and Ian McKellan, not to mention the huge support for the Star Trek franchise - created by atheist Gene Roddenbury. Gene, Leonard Nimoy (raised in Jewish tradition) and two others wrote the Undiscovered Country after his acceptance of the atheist position. The script has Captain Kirk asking "What does God need of a star ship?". This is a parody of a Christian parable.


In New Zealand, the religiously unaffiliated number about 35%, but we have a similar problem to the US; as we have not yet organized a potent political force to counter the regressive politics of rightwing religious fundamentalists. It is time for secular people in America, New Zealand and elsewhere to organise. Todd Stiefel is doing his part and helped organise the Reason Rally 2012 that brought 20-30,000 secular people together on the Washington Mall. America's secular voters wielded surprising power in last year's presidential vote.

Here in New Zealand, The New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists and the Humanist Society of New Zealand are working at the vanguard of bringing together secular New Zealanders. Recently, these groups worked together to bring a series of public seminars highlighting the encroachment of religious fundamentalism in our public schools. New Zealand prides itself on being an inclusive society. Religious fundamentalism is often unabashedly exclusive; this is an anathema to our Kiwi values. The failed push back for marriage equality is just one example, the vast majority of the opposition to Louisa Wall's bill was from religious groups. Too often, they offered vile arguments, scaremongering with predictions of criminal behaviour, and in at least one case blamed the drought on the discussions and push for marriage equality.

It may seem easy to dismiss these ludicrous contributions to the debate as just the product of the minds of random cranks, but the fact is they are not. The fact is too many unsceptical minds accept these assertions without question. Note that today the Bob McCroskrie's facebook group Protect Marriage NZ has over 7800 likes and sometimes posting material from the American Family Association which is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Centre as a hate group. Here is a sample from Bob himself:

When I checked today, I did not see any posts on that page by anyone other than "Protect Marriage NZ", primarily shares of statuses and blogposts by Bob McCroskrie. It sort of looks like the modern equivalent of the 1970's kook with a mimeograph in the basement. Though that appearance may be administrative because overtime an intolerance of tolerance grew in the way they handled dissenting posts.

Such intolerance of dissenting opinion is common among primarily fundamentalist groups. It seems they habitually take demonstrably wrong positions and can't stand their ideas being shown up as unsupported by anything more than sky hooks, or that the ideas they are pushing are flat out counterfactual. It creates an echo chamber effect which was so clearly demonstrated in the genuine shock of the GOP at the last US Presidential election.