By now, we’ve all heard of cases where religion has tried to insert its alternative, often deleterious, truths into science classrooms and textbooks in the US. If this hasn’t confused students about the facts, it certainly has presented a perplexing message about how to uncover truths. On the side of evolution, we find an appeal to relentless observation and questioning, whereas on the side of creationism, we find an appeal to ignorance (ex: Life is so complex, how can we possibly understand its origins without introducing a supernatural cause?). However, this time around, religion is rearing a different, quite divisive head in the UK.

Unlike what is transpiring in America, the topic of History is now the latest member of the list of things we can’t talk about civilly due to a dire need to appease all religions at once. According to Daily Mail, a recent government report uncovered a group of high-school teachers who instituted a self imposed ban on classroom discussions of the Holocaust of WWII, and the crusades of the 11th Century. The decision was motivated out of fear that certain Muslim students would continue to, or begin expressing strong anti-Semitic views, potentially offending other students. These two topics were expressly omitted because they “would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques,” said the report.

It’s never a surprise when a religion interprets history in a way that portrays its faithful in a more favorable light than non-followers. Some would call it a perk to joining the club. But should a religious interpretation of events really override a secular discussion of the facts in a public classroom? For a school to stand down, sweeping these truly world-shaping events under the carpet, it does everyone an enormous disservice. Not only will these teens be more likely to harbor aggressive world views into adulthood, never quite working out their differences during their formative years, but being taught by a teacher who was afraid to share these important lessons will likely doom them, and perhaps many of us, to repeat history.

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A comment appeared in one of my stories which deserves some attention, and I would like to take the opportunity not only to make my position clearer on the matter, but also to address many of the points brought up in his arguments. I thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss what my opinions are concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, lest my audience assume I am one sided on the issue.

We’ll begin by the letter itself, which reads: “

“One side of the story isn’t it [referring to the comment I wrote on the video featuring “Mickey Mouse” enticing children to violence]? The Israelis have their own programs that put out propaganda against the Arabs, Muslim or non [sic]. In areas of Palestine, where the Jews have illegally “claimed” possession of land, Jewish children are to go to school before Palestinian kids, and when the Palestinian kids head off to school, they and their families get ridiculed and have rocks thrown at them by the Jews living there.

They live through this every day, IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY! The UN has put out many resolutions and many documents that ask for the removal of the Israelis from Palestinian territory, but it hasn’t happened in decades… DECADES! From 1955 to 1991 alone, there have been more than 60 UN resolutions against Israel due to it’s [sic] treatment of Palestinians and their territory. So much violence! Even the small things that Israel does, is unimaginable! The Palestinians get stuck in traffic for hours if Israelis want to move and use the roads. The Palestinians have to pay fees and fines to use their own roads and streets and this right to use part of their own infrastructure is determined by ISRAELI soldiers! They have to have papers and permits to travel, live, worship and shop in their OWN COUNTRY…

People need to realize who owns the news and what restrictions are on the news that is being fed to the mainstream public. The diplomats that go into Palestine come out shocked and once they try to shed light on what is really going on, they are declared anti-Semitic, and have to work hard to remove that association from themselves and just quietly back down from the issue. When Israel invaded Lebanon, just some months ago, and bombed innocent civilians and residential areas and UN buildings with their PRECISION MISSILES, what in the world were you people watching?! They precisely hit the right targets. There was a documentary on PBS not too long ago that claimed that the propaganda, Jews against Arabs and Arabs against Jews, was being taught to kids and there were shows out there trying to reduce this. When are people going to realize that when people in that country live in so much poverty and chaos and daily violence and disruption, why would these citizens have attacks and more violence on their minds, rather than keeping their kids and families safe and trying to live out each day at a time?

If everything was peachy keen in their own lives, why would anyone go against a peaceful neighbor? Why would they risk retaliations on themselves, from a much, much more powerful, organized and well equipped Israeli military force, if everything was fine? Palestine doesn’t have an army. Who would go mess with someone much more advanced and powerful and definitely economically richer, when they have families to think of? Some people, who’s families have been lost and died in this chaotic, nonsensical violence, get really angry. They want to retaliate, because they have nothing to lose anymore. That’s a hard thing to understand. These children’s programs against one group or the other are everywhere in that region; in Israel, as well as Palestine.

Don’t just believe that there is only one side to the news you hear about the middle east. Most of it people don’t get to hear. Surely, everyone who thinks critically can understand and respect that. You hear of one Israeli death and it’s publicized with as much sympathy as possible. Name the person or soldiers and their family members. Showing their family members on national news… Showing their grief. When several Palestinians die, each day due to conflict with Israeli soldiers – these are just civilians I am talking about – they are mention briefly and told in a way that no one remembers or cares. In fact, more often than not, it leaves the viewer with the message that somehow, it was the fault of the civilians… everytime… everyday?”

Obviously, Ash here is very passionate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He brings up a few points that I would like to address, particularly in regards to the propaganda he was referring to. First, I would like to indicate that Ash did not condemn the video itself, and jumped straight to the fact that Israel has its own children’s program that indoctrinates them against Muslims. Even if that were true, it does not diminish the sheer horror and vileness of the program itself. The children’s show was designed not only to create Anti-Semitism, but to entice the very young to violence. I feel sympathy to anyone that has such restrictions placed upon them. No doubt Palestinians must feel like second class citizens within their own home. But their struggle does not justify the brainwashing of little children, nor should anyone believe for an instant that the violent assaults made on Israeli citizens is somehow justified as a consequence. Violence is never the answer, and the impoverished and desperate conditions of the Palestinian people will never be advanced by such actions.

(more…)

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Tensions are running high between the Islamic world and the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI. In order to avoid further alienation, and to improve relations between the two faiths, the Pope has re-instated the Vatican’s Islam department, according to BBCNEWS.com. The move means that everyone can breathe a sigh of relief, since he will now have a little more perspective as to the “sensibilities” and grievances of the fragile and easily offended Islamic faith.

Although I do applaud the move for its sheer strategic purposes, I can’t help but feel that the department itself is a testament to the need to placate a faith that has become dangerously reactive. It seems these days that everyone is walking on eggshells, lest we invoke the ire and anger of the Muslim world. The realities of such actions are clear and obvious; many fundamentalists are not afraid to resort to extreme violence at any provocation, and as such the Vatican has re-instated the one department that has the power to directly advise the Pope on the matter (probably reminding him that the two faiths have been at each others throats for a long time, and that quoting any manuscripts from past eras is bound to contain anti-Muslim rhetoric).

Why can religions make the privileged claim that their philosophies and beliefs are beyond questioning and reproach? Why are we all muzzled or browbeaten when any word of protest is uttered? Are religions really that frightened of opposition? You would think that their own aspirations to being that ultimate and universal truth would make them immune from the cries of others. Why should they care what we think if they alone hold a privileged place in heaven?

On the other hand, the Pope should be the last person to throw rocks, considering he lives in the world’s biggest glass house. Perhaps he has recognized that the last thing the fractured and continually waning power of his institution needs is a long drawn out religious fight. In either case, let us hope the department can keep Ratzinger from putting his holy foot in his saintly mouth…

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Last week I wrote an article featuring the completion of the Creation Museum in Petersberg Kentucky, which is opening today. However, there is another museum, in Roswell, New Mexico that ranks perhaps as the second most credulous institution in America, and a recent article on CBC.ca prompted me to write a little bit about it.

As far as mythology is concerned, it’s hard to beat the Rowsell story. In 1947, a farmer claimed to have discovered a crash site containing “odd looking metal fragments”. The government announced that the craft was indeed an unidentified flying object, but soon retracted their statement, explaining instead that the craft had been a weather balloon. Adding to the conspiracy, 8 years later the US military established an airbase nearby, fueling claims that some sort of cover-up was occurring.

Roswell has since become a huge tourist attraction, centered almost entirely on the mythology of an alien crash-landing. In 1992, the rather silly “International UFO Museum and Research Center” opened to the general public. The museum, soft on facts and heavy on theory, features a messy array of “artist rendered” paintings and drawing and testimonials of UFO sightings. Anyone who has not bought the conspiracy theory is therefore instantly bored, as they are introduced to sketches of pale gray humanoids with almond shaped eyes; a vision so paltry and tired one wonders how much imagination went into such a creation.

The fact that a museum of a non-event exists in the first place is a sad testament to our credulity, and shows that it is not only religion that can hold sway to our irrational impulses. Even if an alien craft had landed, what sort of proof can the museum offer that is of any scientific merit? Their only research is into testimonials of abductees, all of which recount a cookie-cutter story of alien incompetence and obsession with sexual probing.

With the future opening of a theme park, Roswell’s tourist industry will no doubt boom, attracting more droves to the silly and laughably unscientific museum. Although admittedly it may cause no real harm to visit such a place, I shudder at the fact that human beings allow themselves to be fooled so easily. Even if an alien vessel had landed there, how much information on the event could this place really report? What lessons can it hope to inculcate? Anyone interested in the least educational tour possible, once they are finished visiting the museum of lies, should make a stop here. Otherwise, stay clear.

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Debating God is tough work. For starters, in most circumstances, the audience is not on your side. Agnostics and Atheists are the minority in a country where the population describes itself as either religious or very religious. Secondly, anyone debating against the existence of God seems to have the difficult task of trying to disprove the idea, rather then rightly asking any of the claimants for proof. Finally, the last difficulty is the fact that as a general concept, “God” is so loosely defined that any theist can easily wiggle out of tough theological question.

The Audience is Not on Your Side

Any sports team will tell you how helpful it is to have home field advantage. There’s a palpable feeling in the air, a raw energy that can be drawn from it. So, undoubtedly, having the audience on your side is a great help. Sadly, the support for the views of atheism is placid at best, hostile at its worst. Though most Americans are taught that religious tolerance is a hallmark of good citizenry, it seems that the same attitude does not apply when having no religious feelings whatsoever. In fact, when asked who they would least likely vote for as electoral candidates, atheists finished dead last in terms of minorities. Clearly, we aren’t wanted.

Although I won’t try and make any excuses for poor debaters having been unable to defend their points accurately, there is nevertheless a sense of hostility in the air as one tries to debate against the existence of a higher power. One gets the feeling such ideas are not very welcome, and such a debater is not a likely to win any popularity contest. As a result, although there may be many individuals capable of defending the views of atheism, the reality is that the expression of such views can often make one terribly unpopular; even despised.

The Difficulties in Proving a Negative

Anyone with a scientific background will tell you that any attempt to disprove a negative is a futile effort, not only because of the infinite amount of things that would need disproving, but also because the claim does not first offer the possibility of falsifiability. If I make a claim that an invisible, weightless dragon is in my garage (a favorite example from the late Carl Sagan), any attempts to disprove its existence will be met not only be resistance on my part, but also by the implacable and insoluble nature of my claim. Any claim made without evidence is baseless, and should be disproved without evidence. Unfortunately, with ideas as old and entrenched as gods, the weight of evidence is not physical, but rather historical; we’ve believed in gods for a long time, therefore, the argument follows, surely we couldn’t have been wrong for so long, could we?

Yes, surely we have been wrong about a lot of things throughout our comparatively short stint here on Earth. Historical claims, at best, demonstrate that there is an odd tendency for humans to be religious, and at worst demonstrates that, like old theories on what “stuff” was made of, or how the Cosmos operated, they almost always start out by being terribly wrong.

Theologians Use Ever Varying Concepts of God

Luckily, in most circumstances, most of the time, debates remain fairly civil, and unless dealing with a radical, can be very constructive. But in general the three problems outlined above make debating God an often futile effort; in particular, the broad and all-encompassing definition of “God” makes the act of debate seem pointless. If I am engaging in an argument over the existence of God with a Christian, just who’s god are we debating anyway? Am i debating with God the all loving Creator, the God turned Man, or a “Prime Mover”? Is it possible that perhaps my opponent is himself unsure?

Let us suppose for instance that a debate was going on. I would begin by making a case that the illusion of design is primarily responsible for our idea of God. We are easily fooled by the apparent intricacies of the human eye, or the vastness of the Cosmos, and attribute these to be the work of some divine planner. We’ve been doing this for some time; long before we had any real way of understanding complex forces without the use of an outside influence. If nature can satisfactorily be explained without a designer, then there is no need to include one in our hypothesis about how the Universe operates. Even if we do run into problems, or gaps in our information (such as the origin of life or the Universe itself), we cannot infer that it is appropriate to interject a “God in the gaps” to satisfy our incomplete view. The notion that the Universe could have begun (and this is a tricky word, since time itself is not a constant, and as such, the idea of a beginning is not the adequate picture) without an outside cause works based on the information we already have at hand. Even if it did not, our inability to comprehend why there should be a Universe instead of nothing does not imply a creator.

My opponent might at this point argue that although it may not prove the existence of a creator, it is certainly not completely negated either. Fair enough. I would be on shaky ground if I tried to argue that the Universe functioning without the need for interference from a God instantaneously disproves the hypothesis. The “God” that atheists will always be incapable of disproving is isolable, immune to any testing or verification specifically because the concept demands that “He” is. Such a deity is outside of reality and the Universe, and as such, is not a relevant player in it. Although the theologians, apologetics and other religious defenders argue in favor of such a concept, they do so out of the necessity to first possess a concept of God that is irrefutable to their own selective concepts upon. However, theologians are not interested in a God that is completely outside the Universe; they require a deity that interferes with human affairs, that takes sides, that offers rewards, that can produce a son, or offer divine revelation to the few that can hear them. This God is not insoluble, since we can at least measure the impact “He” supposedly has in human affairs.

Regardless of his tactic to prove that the Universe could contain a God of some kind, why would my opponent think that the concept he has outlined in any way resembles the God he believes in? Why is it that apologetics engaged in heated discussions about the existance of Go fail to argue properly in the God as they so effortlessly define Him as being Omnipresent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent? Of course I cannot prove the non-existance of God as an entity that exists completely outside our realm of experience, but so what? That definition in no way resembles God as he is described in The Bible, or the Koran, or any other “holy” book for that matter.

The recent debate of Sharpton vs Hitchens is a good example of this; Reverand Sharpton argued that Hitchens did not disprove God in his book, “God is not Great”, but rather mentioned only the evil and wrong-doings of organized religion. What does Al Sharpton believe? Well, his comment about Mitt Romney (tongue in cheek of course), who is a Mormon, not believing in the right God obviously demonstrates that he has a solid idea of what this God is, and certainly this God is the one contained within the texts that Hitchens so venomously attacks.

Sharpton, like all religious people, relies on the insoluble God to debate with atheists, even though, when the debate is broken down, the real argument is rather about a anthropomorphizes and active God then the improvable one. We can measure such a God, and we can certainly refute it. The simple fact is that prayer, for instance, has been shown to absolutely nothing in double blind studies (in fact, people who were sick and knew they were being prayed for did worst). However, so long as any debater falls back on the insoluble concept of God (related more to deism then to theism), then the atheist is effectively wasting his time. He will never be able to disprove this idea, anymore than he can disprove fairies or goblins.

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If you’re unfamiliar with Ken Ham, the relatively famous (or is it infamous) creationist, you will be soon enough. Ham is part creator and director of a new Mecca for young earth creationists, a 27 million dollar facility designed by Patrick Marsh, who’s visual flair helped engineer the Jaws and King Kong attractions at Universal theme park. The museum hopes to attract a quarter million visitors each year, and the sophistication and glitz of the place promises to attract droves of faithful to witness the serene and strange sights of animatronic humans gleefully living side by side with lumbering, fresh faced dinosaurs.The site is a testament to the unyielding efforts of creationists to spread the notion that the Bible is THE authoritative book on everything, including ancient history, cosmology, and (as this museum tries to show) pre-history. But the museum does more than simply assert the age of the earth as a paltry 6000 years; as visitors take a tour of the history of mankind, from its fall from Eden, to Noah’s flood, they finally come upon the modern age, displayed as a decadent secular world that has abandoned the values of God and church. The final image is that of a young man leering over his computer, supposedly looking at pornography (the ultimate decadence it seems if one is Christian).

What strikes one as odd is the dichotomous nature of the museum, which seems to be both disdainful of science and progress while simultaneously passing itself off as scientific. Alternative explanations to evolution are everywhere: the Chameleon does not change color as a function of natural selection; instead, it does so to apparently communicate with others, and to show off its mood. The museum even endorces its own highly specific version of evolution, arguing that animals are evolutionary offshoots of the animals rescued in Noah’s flood.

But the museum’s sometimes dazzling displays and sophistication gloss over the shallow and highly misleading interpretation of historical events by creationists. Gone are the rigors of scientific inquiry in favor of biblical pandering. Unlike a real museum, which houses researchers espoused to uncovering the truths about the natural world, this new Biblical literalist “Mecca” ensconces religious propagandists intent on dismantling history and science as we know it.

There has been a great deal of protest in the US over the opening of the museum, which has somewhat delayed the previous scheduled opening. Alas, the effort is both in vain and counter-productive; regardless of the protestations of scientist and secularists, creationists simply refuse to accept any theory that undermines their religious convictions. Strong opposition only enforces the idea that they are being unfairly prosecuted by intellectual “fascism”. The museum is not the cause of scientific ignorance in America; rather it is a symptom of it. Attempting to shut it down is tantamount to putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound.

As creationists further remove themselves from the inconvenience of reality, they will continue to build whatever institutions they can to house their antiquated beliefs. A museum is perhaps only the start for them. Their ambitions extend far further. But the intellectual havoc they create is not impossible to combat, nor is it necessarily permanent. The will of the general American public has to push strongly for scientific education.. Sadly, the average citizen is interested less in the pursuit of truth and more in the pursuit of happiness, which the museum undoubtedly fulfills for some. The way to fight this museum will therefore come not from protest, or even boycott, but from a campaign on the part of secularists of equal and greater vigor to ensure that we do not become complacent and uncaring about the importance of science and reason, lest it become hijacked by those concerned less with the truth of the natural world, but rather by Bronze age myths.

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I was both amused and stunned at the news this morning of a hen spontaneously changing sex into a rooster in Calcutta, India. The owner claims that the chicken had been laying eggs but for a few days ago, when it suddenly stopped and began displaying male physiques. The University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Science wrote a report in 2000 about how such changes can sometimes occur in nature, albeit rarely.

What makes this story all the more funny is that the owner, one Haziruddin Mohammad, has refused to hand the bird over for study, claiming that the change is a miracle. Well, anyone who owns a piece of a supposed miracle is not to part with such a prize, especially in India, where a man can do quite well for himself in terms of finances and respect for owning such a unique animal. Still, you have to be somewhat unimpressed if this feat was somehow meant as a display of God’s “awesome” powers; if he’s so omnipotent, couldn’t he make a mountain turn into a giant pencil or something equally outrageous? Instead, we get a roster that used to be a hen. All that means is that the poor owner now has to look elsewhere for a good breakfast!

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I’m no fan of tyrannical dictators, particularly men like Saddam Hussein, but I can’t help but feel a certain regret that Iraq is now far worst in his absence. A scary story appeared on CNN.com today concerning the growing trend of violent rhetoric being expressed by Kindergarteners in Iraqi schools. One child was quoted as saying “I’m going to bomb, bomb, bomb the school with everybody in it,” while another claimed her father had given her an machine gun and had inducted her in the liberation army.
The problem is not merely that the Bush Administration horribly mismanaged the war; the very fact that the conflict started in the first place only demonstrates how obviously distorted the perception of war in America is compared to its gruesome reality. For many Americans, they see conflict as the act of renewal; their very nation was founded on the principle of decent and revolution. But the war that lead to their independence was nothing like modern wars, fought not on battlefields but in streets, libraries and playgrounds. The children born and raised in this turbulent and violent environment become corrupted by it.

The victims of war, when they grow up, become the perpetrators of the same violence inflicted upon them. The option of peaceful coexistence is a concept lost amongst the sound of gunfire and smoke. Although it isn’t too late to turn the tide in this conflict, it seems that as Americans increasingly demand to pull out of the mess they created, the opportunity to rectify their error becomes completely lost. What matters now is not whether the war was justified or not; the children of Iraq do not need vitriolic polemics. Instead, what they need now more then ever is the support of the very nation that has embarked them down this dark path. The question remains: will Americans own up to their mistake and fix it, or retreat, leaving these poor children to face the prospect of death before naptime?

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More trouble in Pakistan, as Islamic fundamentalists kidnapped two police officers and are holding them hostage in a mosque in Islamabad, asking that the government impose “Islamic rule” in the country. The standoff continues, as the military is hesitant to take any action for fear of creating a volatile situation in a country that seems poised to become another fundamentalist state.

The rhetoric that spews out of the poorly educated mouths of these so-called students is an obvious sign that negotiations are not going well; they claim no responsibility for the crime of kidnapping, and instead accuse the government of being kidnappers themselves. How they see the logic in this is beyond me. It only illustrates that the act of negotiation is a useless endeavor with fundamentalists; they are interested only in the Islamification of Pakistan (and eventually the world), and any successful negotiation is simply a tactic on their part to allow more time for them to consolidate their power and plan their next move.

Pakistan is in a bad situation. On one side, if they intervene with the military, it may create even more attention and support to the cause of Islamic fundamentalists (which is highly undesirable for a nation with the Atom Bomb), on the other they cannot hope to meet any demand on the part of the kidnappers. It’s next to impossible to negotiate with individuals so deluded that they believe that the kidnapping and (most likely eventual) murder of two innocent men is but a few broken eggshells on the way to heaven.

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TED.com is a website devoted to sharing ideas and concepts. On it you’ll find tons of videos about all sorts of ideas, amongst them varying viewpoints on religion. This particular video is a 30 minute video lecture by Richard Dawkins recorded in April 2002:

The session was titled “The Design of Life,” and the TED audience was probably expecting remarks about evolution’s role in our history from biologist Richard Dawkins. Instead, he launched into a full-on appeal for atheists to make public their beliefs and to aggressively fight the incursion of religion into politics and education. Scientists and intellectuals hold very different beliefs about God from the American public, he says, yet they are cowed by the overall political environment. Dawkins’ scornful tone drew strongly mixed reactions from the audience; some stood and applauded his courage. Others wondered whether his strident approach could do more harm than good. Dawkins went on to publish The God Delusion and become perhaps the world’s best-known atheist.

I encourage you to take a look at TED.com’s list of speakers and check out some of their lectures. Not only can you watch them for free, but you can download the audio for your MP3 player. Other notable lectures on this always-updating site include Dan Dennett on our consciousness, Jane Goodall on what separates us from the apes, and Michael Shermer on believing strange things.

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