Krauss finds something in nothing from ASU News on Vimeo.

I love Laurence. He’s enthusiastic about his work, and his lectures have always been a lot of fun. He’s now making the rounds to promote his new book.
If anyone is feeling particularly generous, I’d love a copy of Laurence Krauss’ new book “A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing“.

I’m a Kindle whore, by the way.

Spread the outrage

If you’re not British, you might not really care what Tony Blair is up to. After all, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we regard the man as nothing more than a puppet of the Bush administration (Nelson Mandela famously described him as “the US foreign minister“). Most Brits tend to believe that his actions and policies granted more police powers and eroded their civil liberties. Everyone I’ve ever talked to unanimously agreed that he’s a giant dick.

Like most retired politicians, he’s in legacy mode, and wants people to remember him as more than just Dubya’s puppet. He’s started an organization called “The Tony Blair Faith Foundation”, who’s mandate is to:

…promote respect and understanding about the world’s major religions and show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world.

Even if Tony has good intentions with this foundation, he’s completely out of his depth here. All he can do is attract religious institutions that are already interested in peaceful dialog, and nothing more. Blair’s history in the Middle East is a liability more than it’s an asset. How are Muslims in Bagdad supposed to react to Blair’s words of peace when they have tasted so much of his sword?

In any case, if they truly want peace they will have to do more than appeal to people’s “faith”. Not every religion takes a kind attitude of tolerance towards other teachings. Most religions tend to have bloody conflicts over even the most minute doctrinal differences.

The National Secular Society seems to agree with me, and stated that Blair is “profoundly wrong” in imagining that religion is a peacemaking tool. If it was, we’d have a very different type of world right now. If we want human beings to see one another in the same way, we need to discourage people from believing in things without evidence. We live in a world with so many interesting and fascinating answers, and yet there are still people who kill one another over their genocidal mythologies (if you want to read someone squirming to explain away genocide, read this article).

Tony, the best thing you can do for world peace is to find a place to lay low for the next 30-40 years. Is there any nice way to tell this douche to get the fuck out of our faces?

Spread the outrage

Your average, moderately religious person is deadly afraid of cults. It’s not the brainwashing they are afraid of, but rather the type of brainwashing that is used. After all, the most distinguishing characteristics of cults is that they usually take a very literal approach to their religion, and this uncomfortable reality often reminds the faithful that there is a dark side to their own belief system.

Consider the following case in Baltimore: a mother denies her 16 month old son food and water because he did not say “Amen” at mealtimes. This of course may seem harsh by modern ethical standards, but in most old world religion, this type of stuff happened all the time. It’s not uncommon for parents to commit filicide (murdering your own child has a name, so you know it happens quite a bit), and the Bible has special rules about disobedient children that demand they be stoned to death.

If this was the end of the craziness, it would be only another sad tragedy brought to you by religion, but this case is special: The mother along with other congregants of the “One Mind Ministries” prayed over the boy’s body for days thinking they could resurrect him. The court psychiatrist concluded before the trial that the mother was not insane since she was following religious doctrine, and her beliefs were shared by others who also participated in the neglect of the child (see, if one person believes they are Napoleon, he’s crazy. If 20 people agree with him, he’s a prophet). If this sounds like a massive cop out, consider what their “expert” psychiatrist said before the trial:

Although an inability to think critically can be a sign of brainwashing, experts said, the line between that and some religious beliefs can be difficult to discern.

“At times there can be an overlap between extreme religious conviction and delusion,” said Robert Jay Lifton, a cult expert and psychiatrist who lectures at Harvard Medical School. “It’s a difficult area for psychiatry and the legal system.”

It’s only difficult because we refuse to admit that all religious convictions are a form of delusion. Most of the time these delusions are benign, but when books like the Bible are suddenly taken literally, the result is often sad, tragic and terrible. To some degree or another, a religions are cultist in nature; how much devotion and uncritical thinking they encourage will determine whether or not they can coexist with society. Personally, I find them all equally revolting, but for vastly different reasons.

Another sad death caused by religious stupidity, gullibility, and the unenlightened words of the Bible. Why are we still reading this fucking book in the 21st century? If it’s any comfort, the woman in this story agreed to cooperate, but asked that the sentence be reduced if her son is resurrected during her incarceration. Yep, totally sane woman here, doc.

Spread the outrage

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.

Spread the outrage