Draw Muhammad Day

Let's open this with Thunderf00t:



Just over a week ago, Swedish artist Lars Vilks gave a lecture on free speech. Vilks had gained infamy as one of the 12 cartoonists who drew depictions of the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad, in 2007. The lecture theatre was packed with Muslims, and as he showed a film about Islam and homosexuality, they attacked him:

A few days later, arsonists attempted to burn his house down. Fortunately he was not home, and the attempt was unsuccessful.

That video underscores the clash between the cultures. On one side, we have civilisation - a man making his point with words. On the other side we have savagery - I don't like what you're saying, so I'm going to stop you however I can.

Freedom of religion is an important thing, it really is. But it's not unconditional: you cannot impose your religion on others, and it doesn't take precedence over other freedoms, such as freedom of speech. It may be a little rude to draw Muhammad, but it absolutely must be our right to do so. Blasphemy cannot be a crime in a modern society.

Remember also, the final words of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, as he lay dying on the street after being shot by an Islamic lunatic. "Can't we just talk?"

I'm not much of an artist, but I drew a little something on MS Paint for today. It's called "Muhhamad, Prophet of Islam." Blasphemy is a victimless crime. Those who take offence at blasphemy are victims of their own indoctrination, not of someone's words. I will not submit to someone else's beliefs; and as long as there are many people in the world who would actively try to force their beliefs on artists, the media, and entire nations, I shall blaspheme against their beliefs. Here is my ridiculously poorly drawn Muhammad:

Happy Draw Muhammad day.

A typically feeble defence of religion

A Christchurch minister, Rev Martin Stewart, wrote this piece in the opinion pages.

There's nothing particularly wrong with anything he says. Clearly, Rev Stewart represents a perfectly respectable, moderate church. Evolution doesn't contradict Creation, he says. Very nice, and all that.

But, for a piece titled "What's right with the church," he doesn't say very much about what's right with the church. These two (consecutive) paragraphs vaguely mention things:

Despite the flaws, the church is still among us. Sometimes strong and often weak, the church is still here. Indeed, the story of most of our communities is also a story of the contribution the church has made to the social cohesiveness of our neighbourhoods: child and youth activities supporting young people as they find their way in life; quiet but generous acts of kindness towards those struggling with life; the provision of a framework for understanding who we are and what it means to be a good neighbour; a means of marking the special transition times in life - birth, marriage, and death; a place for the very real spiritual impulses within us to find form and meaning; and sometimes a prophetic word to jolt us out of our comfort zones.

I'm part of a proud church tradition that fosters things like good education, caring for people who struggle, and helping elderly people negotiate their last years with dignity. Armed with a lively thinking faith, I have constantly been encouraged to do something with all that I have been given - a call to heed the two-sided teachings of Jesus and the great Jewish tradition - to love God and to lovingly serve my neighbours.

The first paragraph is basically factual. Churches undoubtedly have had a major influence in our societies - because a great deal of people have gone to them. They have marked births, deaths, marriages, because such ceremonies have been done by churches. This says nothing about "what's right with the church" - it is simply the function which churches have served. (And less so in modern times. At least the last two weddings, and the only funeral, I have been to, weren't in churches. We don't actually need churches for these things.)

The second paragraph - again, it's mostly factual. Churches have been involved in education. Whip-dee-doo! That doesn't mean they have to be, or they are better at it than anyone else. This, and caring for the disabled and elderly, are things that have historically been associated with religion - because historically, the good people who have set up such institutions have, like most people in what was after all a religious society - believed that religion is the source of morality. Then there's a vague spiel about Jesus and God and all that whatever.

There's very little of an argument, just a bunch of things we already know. Religion is involved with these things. Nobody is denying that, it is clear to anyone that a lot of schools are religious. What is being said is that religion has done a bad job of it - molesting children it's been educating, and the like.

It's a very, very, insubstantial defence of religion. (A good chunk of it, is directed not to the critics, but back to the flock: "Amid the noise and clatter that criticises and dismisses, I want to express a few words of gratitude to the people of our churches. Good on you! Keep at it! Don't lose heart!"




I have two more comments to make about this feeble argument.


1) The fact that most Christians are moderate excuses nothing. Nobody, I repeat, nobody, thinks that "all Christians must be paedophile loop-fruits, with wacky ideas who don't live on planet reality like the rest of us." I agree that "most Christian people they are kind of normal - even average." The problem is that these normal Christians are merely embarrassed by the excesses of their religion, and the issue is uncomfortable. This is not good enough. History shows a million instances of large swathes of a population embarrassed by the excesses of their bretheren - large swathes of Germans under Hitler were uncomfortable with what went on, plenty of white Americans in the southern states of the U.S. disliked the racism in their society. But just because most Germans weren't Hitlers, and many white Americans were uncomfortable with segregation, does not excuse the huge flaws in those societies. The heroes were the people who stood up and said, this is wrong, often risking their lives. By the same token, good, moderate Christians are not standing up enough to say, this is wrong. (And nobody's life is at stake in any scenario here)


This is the reason that Dawkins, Hitchens, and such are being heard with regards to the abuse scandal. They speak loud, but proud atheists are vastly outnumbered by proud Catholics. The voices of atheism speaking out on the scandals in the Catholic Church should be outnumbered, outshouted, by the collective outrage of good, moderate, Catholics. I have seen one story about an outraged Catholic priest in America. Where are the rest?


Enough timidity. The appropriate response to this is vocal anger. These are probably among the worst crimes mainstream religion has committed in the West in the last century. The timid, defensive response of moderate Christianity is ammunition for atheism - better ammunition than the crimes themselves (after all, Christianity admits the existence of sin anyway, it can perhaps at the very least somewhat rationalize the crimes).




2) Christians are average? This is a largely unrelated point, but there's something the Reverend said in his meaningless waffle that was a bit weird.

They [most Christian people] try to be good and do good - but are usually pretty average at doing that when it comes down to it.

 Well that's a bit stupid, then isn't it? I always thought that morality was, allegedly, something that only makes sense with regards to religion. Hence you'd expect religious people to be a bit gooder than the heathens. But apparently, Christians are just ordinary people - just average at trying to do good and doing good. Makes it all seem a bit pointless. So what we could say is, purely on account of things said by this religious apologist, extremist religion is bad, and moderate religion is pointless.


Looks like atheism is a good choice, then.

Faith

Now, I would like to preface this by saying: this is me thinking aloud, this is me wondering, this is me stretching my limits.

Faith. The word. Some smart-ass once said, and it is often repeated "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." If that's the definition of faith then it's an awful, awful concept - self deception. The usual definition that a religious type will give when you ask them what faith might be more like "believing something in the absence of actual evidence for it." It basically seems to be "there's no proof, so I'm allowed to believe it."

That is, perhaps, an ineloquent definition, but never mind. It's not what I'm wanting to talk about. It is something which I can make little sense of, and I think that's because there is no sense in it. If there is sense in the idea of faith - and that is what I am wondering aloud here - it does not lie in the narrow religious/mystical excuse for believing without evidence. There are times when we use the word "faith" and it makes sense.

This is, I guess, taking a little inspiration from Sam Harris. In the final chapter of The End of Faith, Harris discusses spirituality. He argues that spirituality is an idea that has been hijacked by the dogma of religion and the supernatural; that spirituality can be rational. He says:

The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil's masterpiece.

My issue, and that quote that I just found from Wikipedia illustrates it perfectly, is that faith doesn't fit on that second list. I am sorry, Mr Harris, your book is fantastic, I agree with what you say, but I cannot see the word faith as a negative word. Yes, the meaning that it takes in that religious context - the meaning that you are discussing, blind, unconditional faith - is awful, but the word faith, just like the word spirituality, means more to us than that.

I got thinking - and this is where this whole post comes from - about the word "faithful" as a description of a husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend etc. In this context, it means sticking with, loving, a person. We are faithful not only to our partners, but to our families and our friends. Faith is sort of like loyalty or trust perhaps; but somehow those words are too empty and cold. Faith is what allows us to have long term relationships with our loved ones, it gets us through the bad times when they annoy us, allowing us to reach the good times when we see again how beautiful or funny they are. I cannot think of a better word to describe all this than "faith."

It is easy to see why we'd have this faith. It helps us stay stable. There's clear advantages to stability in our relationships. The idea can be expanded beyond relationships. We have faith in ourselves - our abilities and character - it's the optimism that, yes, I can go out and face the world today. This faith in one's self might lead to, for example, a scientist having faith in, and thus trying very hard to defend, his pet theory, even though he sees that it faces severe difficulties.

That last point - the faith the scientist has in his pet theory - is an important idea. By now a religious reader might well be protesting (although this may be optimism on my part) that this is exactly the same as religious faith. I agree that it is. I have more to say on it. Consider the scientist and his pet theory. His faith can clearly only go so far before it becomes stubbornness. Or the lovers - it's all right to have a little faith when your partner's a bit moody or something, but if your partner is beating you regularly, maybe what's stopping you from leaving them is fear rather than faith. Faith can take you so far, but there is a point at which it stops being faith and becomes something bad.

And so, this conception of faith, it is a sort of optimism. It is an optimism that you attach to your thinking, about people, ideas, yourself, basically an optimism that allows you to think you're right just that little bit more than you really are. I said that it was similar to "loyalty" and "trust," but that those words didn't seem right; perhaps it is loyalty with optimism tagged on, or loyalty and trust with optimism.

Directing my attention back at religion: faith is a poor justification for your beliefs and definitely no reason for anybody else to join you in them. If someone asks that scientist with his pet theory "Why do you think your theory is so good?" the answer "because I have faith in my idea," although it may be true, does not help; the asker of the question can probably see that already, they want actual reasons, evidence or whatever. And if the question is "Why should I believe your theory?" the answer "Faith" is even worse; the questioner wants evidence, reasons. Faith does not answer the question.

I do not feel that I have been redefining the word "faith" here in the way some words are deliberately redefined ("gay" for example). I believe that what I have been saying is what faith actually already means. It is a positive word, a positive idea. Faith is the force that holds us back just that little bit from making changes we cannot easily go back on. It allows us to investigate ideas thoroughly, giving us every chance to find subtle insights, and when it is not enough - when we give up our pet scientific theory, when we lose our religion, when we split from our lover - it is the fact that we have had faith, that we have given it every chance it had , that our decision was thought out and not hasty - that gives us confidence that our decision was, indeed, correct.

Sharing a few things

Now, allow me to take the opportunity to share a few links. Firstly, a few blogs I follow:

Pharyngula is the exceptionally popular blog of Minnesota biology professor P.Z.Myers. P.Z. is famed as an outspoken and vicious critic of all kinds of quackery, especially (as he is a biologist) creationism. He offers no olive leaf to the moderate religious folk, either, and is utterly scathing to the non-religious types who think we should tread carefully where religion is concerned. He deserves his popularity; he is fantastic, and I thoroughly recommend his blog.

Starts With a Bang is the blog of Ethan Siegel, a theoretical astrophysicist. Ethan mostly posts about what's happening in physics and astronomy. I've learned a fair amount from him, he is good at explaining things.

Finally, Bad Astronomy is the blog of Phil Plait, "astronomer, lecturer, and author." Phil is infectiously enthusiastic about astronomy. He is also a noted sceptic, his biggest opponent being anti-vaccination types.


That's blogs; now I just want to link to a couple of YouTube videos that I liked. Firstly, Tim Minchin. I only discovered him a few weeks ago, and it would be fair to say I fell in love. He is a comedic musician. Probably his best song is his Christmas song, "White Wine in the Sun" which starts funny and then becomes quite sentimental -and the lyrics reverberate with me, because I have a sister on the other side of the world right now.




Secondly, this is a wonderful video. It's called "Instruction Manual For Life," and I'll let it do the talking.




Thirdly, if you haven't seen/heard Symphony of Science, you're missing out. A guy called John Boswell has created some autotuned songs from certain science documentaries such as Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Most of them have Sagan, other scientists such as Hawking, Tyson, Feynman, and Dawkins make appearances. His page is here. I'll link to the first video on YouTube, "A Glorious Dawn," featuring Sagan and with an appearance from Hawking.





That's all for now.