This month saw the release of a new Dawkins related documentary called “The Genius of Charles Darwin” – you can read more about it here or just download the torrents here. My criticism of Dawkins has always been that he’s so hardcore about his disdain for religion that it turns off a lot of religious fence sitters who might be more receptive to a more moderate atheist message. Yeah, I know the whole ‘moderate atheism will be the death of us all’ tack, but all I’m saying is some people need to get into the pool at their own pace rather than getting shoved in.

Anyways, here’s a review of the documentary from another atheist who isn’t quite sold on Dawkin’s style. One interesting passage from his review:

 He appears slightly ill at ease around children, though. He visited a school to spread the word about Darwin. Before he entered the classroom there was a puzzling shot, which lasted several seconds, of Dawkins peering through the window in the door at the oblivious pupils, as if they were some mysterious new species.

When he did get around to addressing them, he was either stiffly earnest or unconvincingly pally, like some brilliant but remote uncle you might find in a Narnia book. Although, of course, you couldn’t put Dawkins in a Narnia book or he’d be forever lecturing the Pevensie children about the non-existence of Aslan.

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More ‘No love for Atheists in today’s Democratic party’ articles! But this one includes an interesting anecdote from the early days of America’s history, when atheist presidential candidates roamed the earth:

And if Senator Obama, a committed Christian, were ever attacked for something so minute as, say, making space on a dais for a Humanist clergyperson? He could successfully take a page from the presidential election of 1800, pitting the irreligious Thomas Jefferson against incumbent John Adams in the first case of a Presidential candidate Swiftboated for his religion.

Alexander Hamilton, playing a Karl Rove-like role on Adams’s campaign, ran this ad for the Federalists:

THE GRAND QUESTION STATED At the present solemn and momentous epoch, the only question to be asked
by every American, laying his hand on his heart, is
“Shall I continue in allegiance to

GOD–AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT;

Or impiously declare for
Jefferson–and no god!!!”

Jefferson turned the tables, portraying his opponents as reactionary Presbyterians, taking advantage of most of the era’s non-mainstream religious groups’ fear that Presbyterians (the 1800 equivalent of today’s Christian Right) sought to roll back or reverse religious freedom. Reflecting on defeat, Adams wrote years later, “With the Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, and Moravians, as well as the Dutch and German Lutherans and Calvinists, it had an immense effect, and turned them in such numbers as decided the election. They said, let us have an Atheist or Deist or any thing rather than an establishment of Presbyterianism.”

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From the Washington Post:

At various times in years past, women, blacks, Jews and gays were the political outcasts in one or both parties. Now it seems the only group of untouchables are the atheists.

This year, the Democrats have chosen a black man as their presidential candidate and they nearly chose a woman. In 2000, a Jewish man was on the ticket as a vice presidential candidate. Gays have won the right to be married in several states and the Democrats now openly endorse civil unions.

Can you imagine an atheist running for or even being considered for President? Even Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church, an open-minded and inclusive evangelical, told Larry King that he could not vote for an atheist.

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Apparently in Northern Ireland, it’s slightly harder than you’d imagine to get a simple non-religious burial. I personally got a kick out of the end, it’s practically a punchline.

A Donegal atheist had to be buried in Londonderry because the county has no facilities for non-religious burials.

Journalist Roy Greenslade’s mother was buried in Ballyowen cemetery in Derry on Tuesday after a humanist service.

He said he was told atheists could not be buried in Donegal because the graveyards are church-owned.

“Therefore unless one is willing to compromise one’s beliefs by agreeing to a religious service, it is impossible to be buried,” he said.

“There is a degree of black comedy about this, and my mother, who had a fantastic sense of humour, would certainly have laughed.

“When I rang up and asked Derry City Council’s cemeteries department if it was possible to bury an atheist in a municipal cemetery they said it was possible because there were different sections for Catholics, Protestants and Muslims.

“My wife asked if it meant they were going to start an atheist section and the woman said, ‘oh no, she can go in with the Protestants’.”

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Here’s an interesting article that traces the history of messed up religious rituals from Muslim self flagellation to the Christian “mortification of the flesh” to the sado-masochistic rituals of the Church of Body Modification. The conclusion? Sexuality and religion share a common thread: what you do to yourself is your own business, just don’t drag children into the equation.

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We’ve come a long way over the past 100 years, but do you ever feel like we’re slowly starting to slide backwards when you hear about stuff like this?

Leading academics, authors and scientists are launching a campaign to stop state-funded faith schools from discriminating against students and teachers on the grounds of religion.

From Monday, such schools will be allowed to include faith as a selection criterion for teaching and non-teaching posts, reserving more places for people from the same religious background.

In some schools this will expand to include the headteacher while in others this would apply to non-teaching jobs, such as classroom assistants and cooks.

In 2006 faith schools were handed new powers to discriminate when Lord Adonis, the schools minister, brought forward an amendment to the education bill allowing them to favour members of the same religion when choosing support staff. Shortly afterwards the education secretary, Alan Johnson, said he would no longer try to force faith schools to accept up to a quarter of their pupils from other faiths or with no religion. The climbdown infuriated those who claim single faith schools fuel ethnic, religious and social segregation.

Earlier this year the National Union of Teachers unveiled plans to rival faith schools, proposing that all schools should become practising multi-faith institutions. Headteachers would bring in imams, rabbis and priests to instruct religious pupils as part of the curriculum in an attempt to satisfy parental demand for religion in schools.

Why is there a push to include more faith in schools? Leave faith to families and education to the educators.

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You’re probably going to be seeing a lot more posts relating to religion and American politics, since the two seem to have become hopelessly tangled together lately. Welton Gaddy explains some of the base rules surrounding religion and elections, and talks about the importance of keeping things separate:

The leader we choose may have a faith of his own, but he must lead members of all faiths present in the nation – as well as those with no faith at all. The Constitution forbids the legal enshrinement of anyone’s religious beliefs, so voters need to know how candidates are prepared to translate their beliefs into policy statements based on universal values.

Those of us who speak of electoral guidelines and advocate adherence to boundaries between institutional religion and partisan politics do so not as stuffy legalists wishing to mute all religious language or pour cold water on the white hot excitement of devotees of a particular candidate.

We call for attentiveness to the proper role of religion in campaigns as thankful citizens who know the importance of religion in a society and recognize in democracy our best hope as a nation.

Insistence on the proper role of religion in the life of the nation is essential–a non-negotiable–for the good of religion, for the constitutional protection of non-religious people, and for the vitality of democracy.

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Republicans aren’t the only ones dragging faith and religion deeper into the American political landscape. Here’s DNC head Howard Dean talking about the Democratic party’s attempt to “increase its displays of religiosity”:

“Faith is faith,” he exclaimed. “Faith in God is something that is common to human beings.”

He was quick to acknowledge that secular people in the Democratic Party “still have values.”

Dean suggested that the diversity of the Democratic Party is one reason it does not address faith in the same way as Republicans, whom he accused of talking about a “mono-religious country.”

“In this party, we have other values that matter to us. We talk about respecting everybody’s faith,” he asserted.

“Jews and Muslims matter a lot in our party.”

He also said that all religions could overcome their differences to support a broader American vision.

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Here’s Richard Dawkins reading some of the love letters he gets from religious people.

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Wow, who could have forseen this one. From the AFP:

DHAKA (AFP) – A crocodile killed and devoured a 25-year-old man in Bangladesh who waded into a pond next to a shrine hoping to be blessed by the animal, police said Thursday.

Inspector Humayun Kabir told AFP that Rubel Sheikh and his mother travelled 50 kilometres (30 miles) from their home to visit the Muslim Khan Jahan Ali shrine, where the attack happened.

Kabir said hundreds of people visit the shrine every day to offer hens and goats to the five crocodiles living in the pond. Part of the ritual also involves bathing in the water.

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