God is a jackrabbit

From an image recently released by a team working with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes probing the center of our galaxy:

As you can see, the very center of our galaxy is inhabited by a giant spectral jackrabbit, who I have no choice but to assume is the ruler of the universe. Fortunately I happen to have been born in a 兔年, 1987, according the Chinese zodiac, so I can hope for a great deal of power and influence in the future.

On Rick Warren

Mass behavior is a very interesting phenomenon and one interesting manifestation of it was the liberal reaction to the announcement that Rick Warren would be on the program for Barack Obama’s inaugeration.  For a sample, here is an arbitrary list of the reactions from several high traffic liberalish/Obama-supporting blogs and sites:

Balloon Juice
Pharyngula
Michelle Goldberg
Current top recommended diary on DailyKos
Matthew Yglesias
Ezra Klein

The list could go on.

The Biggest Difference…

…between Santa Claus and the Christian God is that no one has been burnt alive for denying the triune nature of Santa.

Paraphrased from a comment at Pharyngula

Deference to Religion

This Thanksgiving, I was given a reminder of how differently many people see the world than I do.  I spent the Thanksgiving weekend with one of my maternal uncles’ family, who live in Shakopee, which is a suburb located to the southwest of Minneapolis.

Now, my uncle and his family are very comfortable around people of other cultures and views.  His wife is a Hindu of Indian descent from Guyana and among the family friends we visited on Thanksgiving day were an Iranian-American husband with a European-American wife and we ate dinner at the home of a couple who were from different Caribbean islands and had moved to the area after living some time in Winnipeg, Canada.

However, when my aunt brought up the fact that I am an atheist, there was an interesting tone to the discussion.  Our host proclaimed that I was not really an atheist and that I would come around to a more theistic way of thinking as I matured, my aunt stressed that there were multiple types of knowledge, using “scientific knowledge” and “religious knowledge” as the examples, while my uncle made a God of the gaps-type argument and hinted at the maturity argument made by our host.

Now, the discussion didn’t go too far, mainly because I didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving dinner assaulting my relatives and their friends’ deeply held beliefs, but there was enough of a discussion to pick up an edge to their framing of their thoughts on the matter that didn’t reflect the type of discussion that I would normally expect were the topic different.

Now, that discussion immediately came to mind when I read the following sentence in this BBC article:

Pullman’s His Dark Materials books have been controversial with some Christian groups who have accused Pullman of using them to promote his atheist beliefs, a claim he has denied.

Obama leaves Trinity

Here’s some news that caught me by surprise.  Today, Obama announced that he was withdrawing his membership from his long-time church, Trinity United Church of Christ.

I have mixed feelings about this.  On one hand, I’m not one who particularly cares about religion in politics, so long as it doesn’t interfere with policy.  A politician’s religion is his or her prerogative, not the business of the public unless it interferes with his or her decision making.  Most of our Representatives are Christian of one sort or another, overrepresenting the United States’ religious majority of which I am not a part.

On the other hand, I was a bit saddened by the news.  A church represents part of a person’s social circle, and Obama and his family have been attending Trinity for quite some time now.  In withdrawing their membership, they are weakening some of their social bonds and the sad part is that this comes about for political reasons.

Now, I have watched Obama’s comments on this topic and while I agree that it was probably the best decision to make given the news coverage of every controversial remark made from the pulpit and the undue attention paid to church members, who are probably seeing Obama’s candidacy as much as a curse as they would see it as a blessing.

Of course, this brings me to another problem.  Whatever church Obama chooses to join next may suffer under the same curse that’s plaguing Trinity: overeager reporters looking to get a scoop on the most controversial part of the Obama candidacy so far:  his religious life.

In the end, this comes full circle, with an increased interest in the religious aspect of the race, I feel that I might get a bit irritated this election cycle as both an atheist and a secularist.  I can hope that this won’t be a big issue, but I doubt that my wishes will come true here.

Atheists are entitled to petition the government too.

via Pharyngula

Recently, in the Illinois legislature, there was a disturbing exchange made between Representative Monique Davis, a Democrat who represents Illinois’s 27th house district (in Chicago), and atheist activist Rob Sherman over a plan by the governor to direct $1 million to the Loop Lab private school, which was renting space from a Pilgrim Baptist Church, to repair the church’s roof, which was damaged in a fire.

Here is a sound clip of the exchange, courtesy of Eric Zorn at The Chicago Tribune,  Transcript and commentary after the break.

Disgusting sentiment from Huckabee

I was perusing through election-related news when I came upon this clip of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee answering a question:

You can see a full transcript after the break.

This video disturbed me.  Basically, Huckabee gets a question about why he’s surging in the polls, and answers that it’s because of the power of God, emphasizing that he was serious when he said it.  Now, if you don’t find this disturbing, let me explain why I did.

This is not merely a function of me being an atheist.  I know that every one of the candidates in this race professes to believe in God and that Jesus is the Messiah.  That doesn’t bother me.  What bothers me is the sheer hubris of believing that God is manipulating an election on your behalf.

Now, it does take an egomaniac to run for President…that’s true, but when you lay claim to God’s endorsement, you are on another plain entirely.  I do not want another President who has convictions and arrogance that preclude him from changing his mind in the face of new evidence, and I also don’t want a President who believes that he is enacting God’s divine will, as that will likely influence policy in a negative way.

Of course, drawing negative reactions from people like me doesn’t hurt Huckabee much, as I wasn’t going to vote for him anyway, but I would at least hope that others that were paying attention would realize the sheer hubris of thinking that not only are you most fit to be President, but that God thinks so too and that He is actively working to ensure that you win and be deterred.

Because, surely as a minister, Huckabee knows that Christians believe that no human can truly know or understand the will of God.  To attribute his recent poll numbers to supernatural meddling as opposed to a surge in positive stories about him in combination with the withdrawal of Senator Brownback from the race and the realization among evangelicals that none of the top-tier candidates are ideal, suggests that not only does he has great arrogance, but also that he is out of touch with reality.  And that is not what I want in a President.

The Military and Religion

Via The Questionable Authority

For an atheist in America, I have it pretty easy.  I live on a college campus where a significant minority if not a majority of the students are non-religious and I have parents who are willing to accept that their children may not share their religious views.  As such, I am pretty free to express my views, though I don’t usually make an issue of it.

Some don’t have it so lucky.  One such person would be SPC Jeremy Hall, a U.S. soldier currently stationed in Iraq who happens to be an atheist.  When he tried to form a meeting of non-Christian, the meeting was allegedly interrupted by a superior officer.

According to the court filing made by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation:

On August 7, 2007, plaintiff Hall attempted to conduct and participate in a meeting of individuals who consider themselves atheists, freethinkers, or adherents to non-Christian religions. With permission from an army chaplain, plaintiff Hall posted flyers around COB Speicher [an Army base located near Tikrit, Iraq] announcing the meeting. The meeting attendees included plaintiff Hall, other military personnel and nonmilitary personnel.

During the course of the meeting, defendant Welborne confronted the attendees, disrupted the meeting and interfered with the plaintiff Hall’s and the other attendees’ rights to discuss topics of their interests. During the confrontation, and because of plaintiff’s actions in organizing the meeting, defendant Welborne threatened plaintiff Hall with an action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and further threatened to prevent plaintiff Hall’s reenlistment in the United States Army.

This is a sad reminder that our country still has issues of tolerance to work through.  Obviously we are not as bad as some Muslim states where apostasy is punishable by death, but for a country that was founded in part upon the idea of religious freedom, instances like this one are disappointing.

Mother Teresa

via Cosmic Variance

Mother Teresa is a name that has become synonymous with saintliness in popular culture where criticizing her is almost unthinkable.  That is not to say that she doesn’t have her critics; Aroup Chatterjee and Christopher Hitchens certainly do criticize her, but for the vast majority, she is a symbol of a selfless life devoted to service.

So, I think it will come as a surprise to some that Mother Teresa had serious doubts about her faith to the point where she stopped praying.  According to CBS News a collection of letters that she had written is about to be released in the form of a book and these letters have strong strains of doubt:

“Where is my faith?” she wrote. “Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness… If there be God — please forgive me.”

Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith.

“Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal,” she said.

As her fame increased, her faith refused to return. Her smile, she said, was a mask.

“What do I labor for?” she asked in one letter. “If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.

Of course it is difficult to tell exactly how far this doubt went without full context, but it will be interesting to see how public sentiment of Mother Teresa changes with this additional information or if she has since passed to the back of the public consciousness.

Time will tell.

Of flushing Qur’ans and hate crime

via Pharyngula

Recently, a man was arrested for flushing two Qur’ans in the public restrooms at Pace University for hate crimes. Apparently, after the first Qur’an was found in the toilet on October 13 last year, Pace University officials called it vandalism, but after pressure from Muslim student groups referred it the NYPD hate crimes unit, which made the recent arrest.

Personally, I think that University officials were correct to call the incident vandalism, because that’s what it is. Media reports have not directly stated whether or not the Qur’ans were his property or whether they belonged to someone else, though from this report:

He was busted after cops discovered a surveillance camera that filmed him leaving the meditation room where the Korans had been kept before the vandalism.

It does seem like the books were stolen. If that is indeed the case, the student, Stanislav Shmulevich, should be held responsible for stealing, destruction of property, and clogging the toilets, which are public property, but he should not be charged with hate crimes.

Before I continue with why this is, I’m going to bring forth the reason that desecration of the Qur’an is being considered a hate crime. In Islam, the Qur’an is held as sacred and its desecration represents a violation of Islamic law. This makes the desecration of the Qur’an, at least in principle, more insulting to Muslims than an equivalent act of desecration performed on the Bible would be to Christians. This is why Muslim groups including CAIR, which was involved in this case, have pushed for this to be considered a hate crime.

So why is this not a hate crime? The answer is simple: it was not a crime against an individual but a crime against property. Flushing the Qur’an is powerful statement, akin to burning an American flag, which has caused many to seek legal prevention of those acts but the fact of the matter remains that it is a political expression, which is protected by the Constitution.

The First Amendment was intended especially to protect the most provocative forms of expression, not just those that the majority find most comfortable. The whole point was to avoid a tyranny of the majority (or of any vocal minority for that matter). We United States citizens are protected from legal suppression of opinions by the laws to which we are subject, which do not include the laws put forth in the Qur’an.

So to restate, Stanislav Shmulevich should be held responsible for the stealing, destruction of property, and vandalism of the public restrooms. This is clear. But holding him responsible for hate crimes is a precedent that should not be set anywhere in the United States of America.