In order to illustrate that, below are two pictures of the odious David Barker – aspirational federal member for bigotry and ignorance.

Someone feed that man

Casting calls for Star Wars 7

Barker has been disendorsed – and rightly so – by the Liberal party as a direct result of his bigoted comments about atheists and Muslims.

http://www.news.com.au/features/federal-election/revealed-liberal-candidate-david-barkers-anti-muslim-campaign/story-fn5taogy-1225896534232

The disgraceful Barker describes himself as a “man of strong Christian faith”, and, in a state of apparent psychotic delusion suggested that he was “going to win this seat… claim it as mine and when I get in I will give my votes all of them to God who is on the side of the Liberal Right”.

He then went on to accuse non-Christians of “worshipping a false god”, attacking Julia Gillard for being an “atheist” and his opponent Ed Husic, for being a  “strong Moslem”.

At the same time, he described federal Liberal leader, Tony Abbott as “God’s mouthpiece in politics” before going on to say “I don’t believe God would have called me to run in this seat if he didn’t expect me to win,”

Clearly this man is delusional, a clear case for atheism if I have ever seen one. Perhaps he isn’t to blame however, he looks like he is merely half a chromosome away from being burdened with Down Syndrome.

It is hard to take someone seriously when they mention an Invisible Sky Monkey at the best of times, but when someone then goes on to say things like:

“I vote for freedom of worship if the worship is of Jesus Christ or The Jewish God anyone else well they are worshipping a false god anyway so who cares.”

“Voting should only be voluntary for Liberal and National voters the rest can not bother since with every vote they bring the nation closer to the brink of disaster and closer to the hands of a (sic)muslim country.”

“Someone get me into parliament … and watch me go. They will see my talent as the voice of … God himself.”

… it is obvious that there is something not quite right in the rats nest of synapses that they call a “brain”.

To summarise what this clown has said:

• An Invisible Sky Monkey speaks to him
• His Invisible Sky Monkey is the only real Invisible Sky Monkey
• Freedom is ok, so long as it is the kind of freedom that he approves of
• Only people who subscribe to his extreme views should be allowed to vote

It is scary that such a warped, delusional and bigoted individual was ever endorsed by a major political party in the first place. I could understand those twisted clowns at Family First or the CDP running with such an ignorant candidate, even putting him up on a pedestal and plastering Australia with posters of his deluded visage – but the Liberals?

A cynic might suggest that this kind of bottom feeding, disgusting individual; is exactly the kind of person who appeals to the traditional “aspirational” Liberal heartland (those inherent racists who don’t make enough money to be a Liberal voter though have delusions of grandeur and hope to one day be able to afford a bottle, not a cask of wine) – though one must give kudos to the “muscular Catholic”, the “mad monk”, Tony Abbott for the swift punishment that he dished out to the detestable Barker.

He was disendorsed and Abbot said: he is “gone, he’s finished”. “Attacks on people based on their religion have no place in this election campaign,”

A reasonably brave move given that he is running against an atheist and risks alienating the Christian right… actually, what the fuck am I saying, the Christian right are rusted on conservative voters come hell or high water. Still, I have to give credit where it is due, and Abbott is either maturing as a leader and a human being during this campaign or has some very talented advisors grooming him 24×7.

At the heart of the issue though is something that the slug like Barker himself raised:

‘But I don’t know if we want at this stage in Australian politics a Muslim in the parliament and an atheist running the government.’

Of course, a fundamentalist Christian is in a much better position to tell us what we can and can’t do in both our public and private life, because the one true god speaks to him and is on his side.

Religion has no place in politics, be it Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism, Scientology or any other kind of paranormal whackiness. Politics should always be based on pragmatism, logic and reason – what is best for the people no matter what their creed.

Odious, bigoted, ignorant, detestable cretins like David Barker have no place in our political landscape (or in civilised society) and we, one and all, atheist, Christian, Muslim, Jew, humanist, Hindu, Sikh, worshipper of the Flying Spaghetti Monster alike; should unite to ensure that these vile human beings are never afforded a position of power in our society.

Recently, a tweet caught my eye.

Posted by @mmaryannwright - it was a link to a story about two couples who were suing a hospital for failing to detect that their children were carrying the condition Trisomy 21

The allegation is that ante-natal testing was negligent and failed to detect the presence of the condition.

The parents claim that had they been made aware of the presence of the condition that they would have terminated their respective pregnancies.

The couples are suing for the depression, shock and anxiety that they have suffered as a result of having believed that they were to have a healthy child, free from defect; only to discover that they in fact were presented with a child with a chromosomal disorder.

They are also seeking compensation for the continuing costs of raising a child with such a disorder.

One of the children also suffers heart, kidney and thyroid problems and can’t walk.

The tweet that accompanied the link was:

These kind of people make me sick

That is her opinion, that is fine. I don’t know her personal circumstance, whether or not she has raised a disabled child or has a disabled sibling and as such, it would be wrong of me to form an opinion about her as a result of her tweet.

What struck me though was that in saying what she did – that they made her “sick”, she appeared to show absolutely no empathy for what the couples in question experienced.

To declare my hand (I am not going to say “pro choice” – such a misnomer) – I believe that people have the right to make an informed choice about matters which have the potential to impact their lives, adversely or otherwise.

I replied and the conversation want this way:

What I took issue with was the arrogance implicit in what this person was saying.

“These kind of people” make her “sick”.

No explanation as to why, just a judgement, no explanation as to whether or not she had walked a kilometre in their shoes, just a scathing character assessment that throughout the fragmented Twitter conversation, appeared to show a complete inability of this individual to empathise with four distressed human beings.

In her final comment to me; she said “I hope for your sake you’re trolling.”

The supreme arrogance of such a statement, along with this persons willingness to condemn people for being so terrible as to be desirous of having a choice; tells me a lot about her character, values and morals.

I will leave you to make your own assessment of this person – without knowing her personal circumstances, it would be wrong of me to perform an analysis of her character.

What I will say however is that nobody has the right to judge a fellow human being without knowing what that person has experienced, what their personal circumstances are.

Unfortunately a driving force behind the judgement of the actions of others is religion.

To suggest that abortion is wrong, that same sex relationships are abhorrent, that an unmarried woman is unfit to be the leader of a nation, that women are inferior to men – these are the constructs of religion.

Interestingly, and I am not suggesting that the person who tweeted the original tweet is religious, not for one moment – but the religious who condemn things such as abortion, homosexuality and the like forget that in their sacred text, it says:

Leviticus 21:

16 Then the Lord said to Moses,
17 “Give the following instructions to Aaron: In all future generations, none of your descendants who has any defect will qualify to offer food to his God.
18 No one who has a defect qualifies, whether he is blind, lame, disfigured, deformed,
19 or has a broken foot or arm,
20 or is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or has a defective eye, or skin sores or scabs, or damaged testicles.
21 No descendant of Aaron who has a defect may approach the altar to present special gifts to the Lord. Since he has a defect, he may not approach the altar to offer food to his God.
22 However, he may eat from the food offered to God, including the holy offerings and the most holy offerings.
23 Yet because of his physical defect, he may not enter the room behind the inner curtain or approach the altar, for this would defile my holy places. I am the Lord who makes them holy.”

For mine, this is the “sacred book” of the Christians vigorously promoting abortion.

Of course they had to get the “testicles” in there didn’t they? Jesus Christ – why are they all so obsessed with sex?!

As such, no true Christian can condemn abortion for “theraputic” reasons if they wish to claim that they honour the word of their god.

UPDATE

After I posted this, the tweets from the individual in question were (read from bottom up) somewhat amusing. I didn’t bite back and was quite nice to her, providing my email address should she wish to discuss the matter and offering her an unfettered, unedited right of reply on this page.

To date, she hasn’t accepted.

Defamation?

Acts 9:11:

And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth

Praise be to the superstitious peasants that wrote it and those re-wrote it all those years later in one of the earliest recorded examples of censorship.

This is clearly evidence of a prophecy of some kind and I must devote myself to investigating just why this ancient tome was able to predetermine the existence of both the internets and my cat so many many years ago.

Actually, no I shan’t, I shall just deify my cat and claim tax exempt status for my website and associated costs  and then I shall go about ignoring the rest of the sacred text because it doesn’t suit me.

Hmm, I like this whole religious idea…

I prefer direct evidence, logic and reason.

It is interesting to note though, that in the past 48 hours, there seems to have been a pattern of what appears to be a deliberate attempt to silence critical opposition to reason.

Firstly there was the sustained and continuing DDoS attack on the atheist convention website http://www.atheistconvention.org.au/.

Due to the technical nature of what has happened here, with the attacks moving to the IP after the domain name was null routed and then the new IP being subsequently attacked, one could make the assertion that this was a targetted attack on logic, reason and freedom of thought by those who feared it in some way.

There is an article in The Age on the attack on the atheist convention website.

Today, we have seen the twitter trending topic “no god” suddenly disappear and be replaced with “know god”.

The “no god” topic, started by a theist http://www.examiner.com/x-8776-Boston-Atheism-Examiner~y2009m10d20-No-God-war-raging-on-Twitter seemed to backfire when rationalists, humanists, secularists, atheists and free thinkers decided to have a bit of fun.

Religious types became somewhat outraged by this, though in their outrage, assisted the topic in trending by repeating the phrase and adding the #nogod hashtag.

A war waged, with the theists becoming increasingly upset and leading many people to speculate that twitter had censored the “no god” topic due to pressure by religious organisations for fear that they may offend them.

As we know, one is not supposed to question “faith”, it just isn’t polite to suggest that a grown adult has conversations with themselves inside their own mind (unless of course they have a certificate).

Perhaps it wasn’t due to pressure by the theists, perhaps it was just due to “operational reasons” and the amount of fail whales that began to appear as the topic trended, but both of the aforementioned events raise an interesting point:

Why do religious types feel so threatened by people advocating logic and reason and daring to question their unsubstantiated “faith”?

The DDoS attack on the atheist convention website is clearly the work of persons or groups who are offended or outraged by the thought of a viewpoint that differs to their own and, instead of engaging in robust debate in a supposedly free society, they seek to silence any opposition to their view.

Perhaps they have gnawing self doubts and are terrified that and exposure to critical thinking, reason and logic will disrupt their blissful ignorance or perhaps they are just conforming to the theistic stereotype that makes a wonderful argument for the “slippery slope” that leads to such wonderful things as theocracy.

The outpouring of outrage by theists when “no god” was trending is another example of this. Instead of engaging critically, there was, to paraphrase the Nazarene; “much wailing and gnashing of teeth”.

Typical of the “very christian” sentiment espoused is this lovely piece:

“@PrttyBella All #nogod supporters shouldve been ABORTED & im against it but ima have 2 do an exception #GOODISGOOD!!!!!!!!!! ( #No God )”

One does wonder why a group, so convinced by their beliefs and “faith” that some of them are willing to die for it (and all of them are content to abdicate reason) would need to behave in such a manner that seeks to silence their opposition, rather than one that seeks to prove their postulations.

One possible reason could be that they know that their position is untenable, and, like a petulant child that covers its ears and screams out “lalalalalalalala” when faced with a request that they wish to ignore; have chosen to create white noise and interference instead.

It is sad that human nature has yet to evolve to the point whereby we can all engage critically and without fear; and that some people use the technology that science has bequeathed us with to engage in modern day crusades.

An evaluation of the trending topics in this debate can be seen here:

http://religionlulz.blogspot.com/2009/10/twitter-censorship.html

Footnote: It seems as if the “Know god” trending topic has now been given the ability to search for either “no god” or “know god” from twitter’s website:

http://twitter.com/search?q=”Know+God”+OR+”no+god”

The topic name as represented on the site however has been changed from “no god” to “know god”

Conspiracy theories aside, that seems somewhat suspicious.

Without digressing too much into matters of my mental state however, I shall forge on with the train of thought that I briefly alluded to a mere paragraph ago.

I watched an old episode of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit” last night from season three. It was called “family values” and the objective was to lay to rest the notion that the “traditionally accepted” nuclear family comprising of one man, one woman and offspring; was the only acceptable form of a family.

In their own inimitable way, they did a wonderful job of laying waste to the conservatives of our world have touted as being the only acceptable kind of family unit.

It would be surprising if anyone with a differing viewpoint was swayed, however compassionate and compelling the evidence though…

They canvassed various scenarios:

• a lesbian couple raising children
• two married couples who cohabited and had an all encompassing communal love
• “normal” marriage
• a “gay converter” (who apparently used to be gay – and in reality still is, he wasn’t foolig anyone)

They took views from people on both sides of the fence, and for mine, it did more than just highlight that we are a society that consists of many varied lifestyles, choices, beliefs, relationships, creeds and sexualities; it gave rise to some feelings of deep anger.

The anger was borne of the extrapolated consequence of the fact that there are some sections of society who deem it appropriate to discriminate against people based upon their sexuality.

Fear not dear reader, this isn’t going to turn into a gay bashers bashing rant, though that will form a pivotal point of the hypothesis that I will eventually meander around to.

I am straight (much to the disbelief of people in some of the establishments I frequent) and would probably class myself as being around 0.5 on the Kinsey Scale – the only reason that I wouldn’t be a 1 is because the thought of homosexuality is just a little too messy for me to get off on it (that and a lack of sexual attraction to men) though the notion of balls slapping together during double penetration has some kind of drunken kinky appeal – but enough of that.

Even though I personally find the thought of sucking another mans cock unappealing, does it mean that I should be outraged at the thought of two consenting male adults to whom it does appeal; offensive?

Of course it doesn’t.

Fuck me, I am kind of envious that it is something that doesn’t appeal to me – imagine those nights on the piss with your mates when none of you picked up and all ended up back at someones house playing Playstation or Euchre or just dribbling shit into the wee hours.

How much better would it be if you were all bi and could just fuck one another before retiring?

Anyway, that isn’t my point.

My point centres on two issues:

• hypocrisy
• intolerance

I will make some assertions here:

- I have never met an atheist who:

• is homophobic
• opposes polygamy
• believes that morality is defined by sexuality

- Conversely, a large percentage of the Christians I know:

• are homophobic (thank you Leviticus)
• oppose polygamy (except for the Mormons if they count as Christians)
• believe that morality is defined by a sun god and a dusty old book

To wander off for a moment…

The primary issue I have with organised religion is not the concept of an old bearded man who sits up there in the sky:

• casting judgement
• exhorting his followers to commit acts of vileness
• demanding obedience and obsequiousness
• sanctioning bigotry
• encouraging the abdication of responsibility
• giving his minions the desire to attempt to cast scientific though back thousands of years
• threatening all those who use reason to disbelieve with an eternity of sodomy in hades

… and everything else that one could argue a deity encourages in feeble of mind…

My primary issue with organised religion is that; without question; it engenders hypocrisy.

This has always been my foremost concern – probably because I was raised a Catholic, but that is a tale for another day.

Without meandering too much further, this hypocrisy can be illustrated in no better way than in the issue of tolerance/intolerance.

The push to repress homosexual men and women does not come from the secular portion of society, it comes from the theistic portion.

It is based not upon the teachings of “Jesus” with whom many of them (men included) claim to have a “personal relationship“, nor on any of the “teachings” of the new testament, rather it is based on the anachronistic diatribe of the old testament, particularly Leviticus.

I wont go into it here, @Monicks has already posted a superb article on it here – but the point is that the outrage shown by modern day Christians toward same sex attrition and unions is based upon the ramblings of uneducated, superstitious peasants.

It isn’t because these supposedly moral people who follow the teachings of a man who paradoxically said advised both:

“If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also” (Luke)

and

“I come not in peace, but to bring a sword” (Matthew)

… choose to discriminate based upon sexuality, or indeed discriminate at all:

It is because they bleat constantly about tolerance of their beliefs, their “faith”, their religious views and how terrible it is that they aren’t allowed, in a secular society, to foist them without restraint upon others; yet refuse to offer other people the same sanctity that they themselves seek.

They demand “religious tolerance”, so long as it refers only to their particular flavour of fairytale.

Whilst we live in a supposedly secular society, you can’t buy take away alcohol in some states in Australia on “Good Friday” because the Christians want us all to sacrifice something for their beliefs.

Every year, we hear some Christian religious leader on television and radio bleating about how “Christ has been taken out of Xmas”.

We hear Christian political leaders droning on and on about how marriage is the “sacred union between a man and a woman and needs to be respected”.

The leader of the Catholic church in Australia, a certified bigot, Cardinal George Pell refuses to give communion to gay Catholics and yet demands respect for the “Christian traditions” of Easter and Xmas (despite the fact that they were plagiarised from the pagans) by secular and non Christian society…

Is there a pattern here?

Do unto others only as I wish to do unto them, so long as it fits in with my rigid and antiquated, arcane belief structure and doesn’t contravene the contradictory teachings of superstitious peasants from many thousands of years ago, despite what we now know about morality and science.

It annoys me greatly that people are capable of demanding respect for their “faith” – something that they have chosen to immerse themselves in despite all logical evidence to the contrary, yet refuse to respect people based upon the sexuality that they were born with; and to play devil’s advocate; that their god created them with.

It is the “do as I say, not as I do” mentality, the inherent hypocrisy of so many religious types that annoys me more than their illogical belief structure, their fear of their own mortality.

What annoys me more though, is the damage that this hypocrisy has on innocent, moral, decent people who are merely living out a life in accordance with the way that genetics and evolution designed them.

My final word on the matter is:

If religious types want secular society to respect and tolerate their beliefs (which it has been for hundreds of years), then they need to reciprocate and begin tolerating others.

They could do a lot worse than following the example of @FatherBob.

“So what star sign are you?”

My answer is always the same:

“I don’t have one”.

This answer produces a myriad of reactions – from amusement to incomprehension to indignance. If I haven’t already made up my mind about someone prior to them asking such an inane question, their response to my answer certainly seals the deal.

To some, astrology may be “fun to think about”, but to me it is a ludicrous pseudo science with the potential to cause harm in much the same way as religion if taken too seriously.

I believe that there are two types of adherents to astrology – casual newspaper readers and “sun sign” devotees. The boundaries between them can tend to blur however.

Before I forge on however, I will declare my hand.

I became an atheist at about age eight, yet I held on to astrology for some reason for another four or five years. I am not quite sure why that was, religion and astrology share so many common factors:

• neither are backed up by any form of logic, science or rationality
• both involve worship of the sun or suns (as a god or some kind of influential factor)
• both were ideas framed by superstitious peasants not fortunate enough to have access to the reasoning that science has provided us with
• both make assertions that are highly improbable and require a leap of “faith”
• both fill holes in vacuous minds
• both give “hope” to the weak and fragile

There are many more commonalities, but I think that you get the drift.

I fell into the casual newspaper reader category for a short while before exploring it further and even as a young teenager, knew that it even were one to become a devotee, the premise behind it was flawed. Why I didn’t desert it as soon as I became an atheist, I am not quite sure. I suppose that it was “nice to think about”.

The simple fact of the matter is that this pseudo science was created over 4000 years ago, prior to most of the planets and stars we now know exist having been discovered. The “charts” that are used to plot ones life path, “destiny”, future are flawed and incomplete.

Even if there was any rationality behind this trickery, the premise would be flawed for that reason, but also due the fact that the light from the stars upon which this court jestery is based comes to us from several million years past.

Withholding disbelief for a moment, say for example that astrology carries any kind of weight, are you going to tell me that simply because of where some celestial bodies were at the moment I was born, the path of my life has been preordained?

If that is the case, why on earth do we have any crime/misfortune/famine/disease/war etc etc in the world? Surely if this pseudo science had any merit, there would be teams of astrologers working away with the birth records of every one of the 200,000+ children born every single day, plotting their charts and making recommendations of infanticide to the appropriate authorities in various regions throughout the world.

You see were astrology in any way, shape or form; real – it wouldn’t suffer from the paradox of free will and omniscience/omnipotence in the same way that religion does.

Its proponents claim that based upon the date, hour and minute of your birth; your nature can be explicitly defined, with no room for error.

If you are this sign, you are stubborn, if you are that sign, you are loyal, if you are another, you are sexual… fuck me, we are human beings, each subject to completely unique experiences, born with unique abilities and moulded by our unique environments – a person with a modicum of intelligence may just give a moderate amount more weight to such things than the position of the stars and planets when one is born…

What really concerns me though, is the amount of atheists that I have met who continue to afford this charlatanry any kind of credence.

Three of the most devout devotees to astrology I have met were also devout atheists. One would think that their atheism would engender rationality. Sadly, attempting to have a discussion with them about astrology was met with the same kind of response as one would encounter when discussing relgion with a fundamentalist theist. ’twas most perplexing to me to say the least.

I know that that is hardly a scientific sample size, but to me, it illustrated humankinds irrational desire to seek a higher purpose, something other than themselves; almost as if we have an innate desire to abdicate responsibility for our own choices and the path that our life takes.

To me, this makes astrology potentially as dangerous as religion when in the wrong hands and I sincerely believe that the slippery slope principle applies equally.

The only difference is that there is no vengeful deity who will smite you, should you choose not to worship the stars.

Perhaps that is what makes it comforting for “weak” atheists – they want to believe in something, just not an angry bearded guy in the sky who will smite them if they disobey…