May Day or, as we call it in America, the National Day of Prayer

In much of the rest of the world, today is May Day or the International Workers Day. It's what the rest of the world has instead of Labor Day. It has socialist and communist roots, so Americans don't celebrate it - instead we were given Labor Day. I don't like Labor Day. I do like May Day. It won't be until workers unite that we'll have any real chance of changing the world.

For a long time, May Day was nothing in America. Most Americans didn't, and still don't, even know that this is a big worker's holiday in most of the rest of the world. But recently it's become the US National Day of Prayer.

It's one of those holidays that really twists in my gut. First, it does that thing that happens when religious folks get defensive about religion - it lumps them all together. Sorta forgetting that virtually every religious person in the world is condemning people of other religious fates to a variety of horrible events, mostly in the form of eternal punishment. But for little get togethers like this, the first thing that everyone pretends to do is forget that folks in those different religions hate each other's guts, too. But I guess they hate and fear atheists more, which is absurd, because atheists aren't the people going door to door or standing outside of churches trying to convert people to their cause.

The second thing that is actually happening is that the National Day of Prayer is being hijacked by fundamentalist Christians. PZ Myers had a link on his website that linked to this little article about how the multi-faith NDP celebrations have been taken over by the fundies in the form of Shirley Dobson. Which is what people with brains in America knew would happen from the outset. One of the things I repeat again and again in religious discussions with moderates is that the face of religion in America is fundamentalism - because moderates spend all their time trying to convince atheists that they're not like those nutjobs, they aren't spending too much time trying to convince their co-religionists to stop being nutjobs (which would be a more effective way of getting us atheists to shut up, if religious people had the guts to clean their own house, by the way). Tho' I guess that makes sense, too. Fundies are crazy. Us atheists might be adamant, but there's not any chance we'll burn your house down or kill you, which isn't a guarantee with fundie nutjobs.

Still, I obviously loathe everything about the "National Day of Prayer". It was founded in bad faith and intellectual deceit and has been taken over by stupid reactionary religious fundamentalists.

Religious child abuse in Wisconsin

Recently, I blogged about a family that prayed while their daughter died. It appears that, now, the parents are going to charged with second degree reckless homicide.

You idiots, the "Lord" was not "testing your faith". Your little girl had diabetes. God doesn't cure amputees and also not diabetes! The family said, according to the police report, that they do not believe in modern medicine. When her parents noticed that her legs were "skinny and blue" they decided it was a "spiritual attack" and "prayed nonstop". Even as their daughter was completely uncommunicative, semi-comotose and refusing to take even liquid, one of their friends urged the parents to get her to a physician but the father remained "steadfast and confident" that prayer would work.

Interestingly, the Wisconsin DA that's pressing ahead with the case is making a stand. For some bizarre reason, Wisconsin has a law that protects child abusers if their child abuse is religious in origin. To put it like the newspaper did: "Wisconsin state law appears to allow an exemption from child abuse charges for parents who engage in treatment by spiritual means through prayer." An exemption from child abuse? The DA says that law doesn't apply to murder. I'm disgusted that it applies to child abuse.

For some time now, on this blog, I've been saying that it is normal for American religions - and many religions worldwide - to abuse children. What with all that hell business. I have opined that society protects religious child abusers in a way that they would not protect anyone else. Even I had not been cynical enough to look for actual laws that protect religious child abuse. I would apparently be wrong. In Wisconsin, it's on the books that if you deny a child medical treatment it isn't child abuse - who cares if the child writhes in agony with shattered limbs or whatever. Wouldn't want to infringe on the parent's religion!

Still, I hope the Wisconsin DA in this case overcomes that legal hurdle and smashes this law and ends the very idea that religion can be a defense, on any level, for child abuse.

Another "theological" argument I really hate - "it's because of free will"

Man, when religious people make the free will argument, I about want to scream. I think that if humans have free will, we only really have a tiny amount of it. Not only are we limited in the things we can actually do (say, we can't kill with our minds or travel backwards in time or whatever it is that flips your switch), now imagine all the things you'd like to do but are prevented doing and if you can muster it try to imagine how many more things there are to do that you can't imagine (it's easier to imagine all the things a person considerably dumber than you can't imagine, and then imagine how much more things a person that much smarter than you could imagine for you, hehe). I mean, at any given time, our options are pretty few. I think they're getting bigger because of education and technology. Cave men simply didn't have the option to play video games, for instance, or work on magnetohydrodyamnics. So, human will (if it exists at all in some larger sense) is nevertheless limited by our biology (what we are physically capable of doing), our technology (the number of additional options our big brains and opposable thumbs give us) and our imaginations (discovering new ways to use our biology and technology). I think that if people really think about it, they'll find this to be true concerning free will - we don't have a lot of it, really.

But all the time, Christians will use the free will argument. "Why is there evil?" "Because god doesn't want to interfere with human free will."

It makes me think of force. One person can force another to do it. I don't even mean hold a gun to their head and give them a choice. I mean grab them and drag them away. Or I can just kill someone. They might not want to die, their free choice is screaming for life, but the minute I chop off their head - that doesn't mean anything. So, obviously, humans don't have unlimited free will. People are physically forced to do things all the time - they're beaten, raped, killed, kidnapped, arrested, imprisoned, the list goes on and on. Most of the time, it's terrible when it happens. But it does happen. But I'm supposed to believe that god really cares about human free will - that he cares so much that he doesn't interfere with it . . . but has created the world where other people can interfere with my free will.

Ah, ha, the religious person will say, all of that can happen because god doesn't want to interfere with their free will, either! They will argue that if the god interfered with people's ability to hurt one another. We're free to do whatever we biologically and technologically can do, even to other people and even if it violates their free will.

This is such a vapid argument that I find it terribly embarrassing when people make it - but it gets made all the time. The reason it's vapid is because we are already limited in our ability to violate the free will of others. You can't kill someone with your mind. You can't go back in time and kill their grandfather. If religious people are right, their own god has innumerably limited their ability to violate another person's free will. How would a few more rules, not moral rules, but physical ones that prevent people from hurting each other with their bodies be any different than all the rules that prevent us from hurting other people with our thoughts? We're already so massively limited, what would a few more limitations - limitations that would enhance expression of free will - really hurt? And, of course, some people can't even hurt people with their bodies. Say, people born without limbs. Sometimes, their god does choose to deny some people the ability to even hurt other people - do those people not have free will? The argument is preposterous. Before you know it, you've got so many exceptions and caveats that it's obvious that free will, as religious people describe it, is a chimera.

The other thing I hate about free will is that "will", generally, can't be demonstrated to exist. I know people who will study up a storm, but won't eat right and exercise (indeed, it is true that I am one of them, hehe). I know athletes who will look after their bodies, but can't read about the sixth grade level. Heck, how many pro-athletes have the "willpower" to become top athletes, but then can't control their spending? How many people go to work, work hard, and then cheat on their spouses? So, what is this general quality called "will", anyway? Can you show me where it exists, what it really does, who has it and who doesn't? No, you can't. No one can. It, like many aspects that apertain to describe a mental state actually just describe the biases of the people or culture who invented and use the term.

I can't think of any good arguments involving human will or free will. People should feel free to try to come up with some. ;)

John Freshwater teaching creationism in an Ohio school, and Pharyngula's bizarre reaction

Recently, PZ Myers of Pharyngula brought up the case of John Freshwater. He's a science teacher who keeps a Bible on his desk.

He also, "When Freshwater taught students about electrical current, he used a device to leave a red mark in the shape of a cross on the forearms of some students". He used electricity to do what?!

Some parents describe the "red mark" in a little more detail:

The News received a fax Tuesday from attorney Jessica Philemond of the law firm Isaac, Brant, Ledman & Teetor, who issued a statement from her clients, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of their child being retaliated against.

The fax stated, “We are religious people, but we were offended when Mr. Freshwater burned a cross onto the arm of our child. This was done in science class in December 2007, where an electric shock machine was used to burn our child. The burn was severe enough that our child awoke that night with severe pain, and the cross remained there for several weeks. ... We have tried to keep this a private matter and hesitate to tell the whole story to the media for fear that we will be retaliated against.”

That "make a red mark" on the child's arm was a burn. This sonofabitch was burning children. That he was doing it with the cross is adding insult to injury, but PZ Myers, the Columbus Dispatch and the Mount Vernon News are focusing on the religious implications of this and they're sort passing by that students were intentionally burned by this teacher!

If this guy was puffing on a cigarette and asking kids over and snubbing it out on their arm, that would be the story. The story would be about how this guy is a child abuser who snuffs out cigarettes on student's arms. But because he uses a gadget to brand children with the cross, it's about . . . religion?!

I have said before that most religions are systemized child abuse. I have said before that religion gets a free pass in our religion to abuse children. I have said that even atheists still believe that religion is somehow exceptional and should be held to different standards than other beliefs and organizations. That not even PZ Myers can see that this is child abuse and that child abuse is way more important than the church and state religion, and the fact that seemingly everyone else is missing the fact this guy is branding students I think amply displays all of this.

C'mon, guys, this is about the child abuse!

Fight fight fight at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre!

Sometime I'm amused, hehe. Apparently, last night my time, there was a fight in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Orthodox Palm Sunday.

See, first, "Israeli police had to break up a fist fight that erupted between Greek and Armenian Orthodox clergymen at one of Christianity's holiest sites." And then "an Armenian priest forcibly ejected a Greek priest from an area near the tomb of Jesus. They say the attacker felt the Greek priest had spent too long at the tomb."

Here is the best part EVAR: "When police arrived to break up the fight, some were reportedly beaten back by worshipers using palm fronds."

Apparently, as the article relates, the rivalries between the churches that control the site date back to the "aftermath of the Crusades". Wikipedia reports that the six churches that control the Holy Sepulchre (Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Roman Catholic, Ethiopian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox) were basically played off against each other by the Sublime Porte during Ottoman Imperial days. I guess that's what the BBC referred to as the "aftermath of the Crusades".

Interestingly, the doors of the church is in the hands of two Muslim families, dating from 627 CE.

So intense is the rivalry between churches that control the Holy Sepulchre that the rivalry "often leads to the neglect of badly needed repairs when the communities cannot come to an agreement among themselves about the final shape of a project. Just such a disagreement has delayed the renovation of the edicule, where the need is now dire, but also where any change in the structure might result in a change to the status quo disagreeable to one or more of the communities."

I couldn't help but find myself thinking that this is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is the tomb of Jesus and one of the chief sites of Christian pilgrimages since ancient days, since at least the third century of the common era. The people who control this, one would hope, would be amongst the holiest of people that their respective churches could find.

But despite all of that, they can't come to accommodations. Fist fights are common occurrences. Rivalries prevent needed repairs from being done. They have a cycle of abuse about one of the holiest sites of their religion.

I mean, for crying out loud, it'd be like France and England still bugging out over what happened during the Hundred Years War! Could you imagine the French President saying to the British PM, "Because of the cruel fashion that your people engaged in the Black Prince's horse raids, we decided to not repair the Channel Tunnel on our end"? Or the various people at the United Nations using centuries old conflict to let parts of the UN building in New York crumble into decay?

It's insane. Religious people are so jealous - I mean, isn't that a sin? isn't pride like that a sin?! - of their special privileges that they can't even agree to keep Jesus' tomb tidy! They can't figure out a way to refrain from fist fights at the site of the resurrection!

Though I did find the bit with the cops being attacked by palm frond waving Christians to be comedy gold, hehe.

Spiritualist fraud in England and God is for Suckers

Great Britain is enacting a law that makes it possible to sue "spiritualists" for fraudlent claims that they make by allowing consumers to sue psychics under currently existing consumer protection laws. Psychics and mediums, of course, are freaking out that they might have to prove that they can do what they claim to do, or at least be very clear that they're purely entertainers or clearly state that their results are unreliable. Also unsurprisingly, they're not trying to claim protection as a religion.

I, myself, am all for this. I don't think that religions should be given special protection. A law is a law, and fraud is fraud regardless of the religion or spirituality of the fraud. If I whip up some snake oil in my kitchen and claim it cures all ills, I'd be arrested and put in prison. Why should a faith healer be able to make similar miraculous claims? I think it's silly for them to claim that we should ignore that they lie to gullible people because their con has a religious gloss to it.

And if we should find that religion, itself, is fraudulent . . . well, I think that's a very good question. I largely do think religion is fraudulent with people making a lot of money manipulating the needy, credulous and gullible for their own personal gain. If anyone doubts that religious people can live like kings, look at where the Pope lives - his huge palace is supported by supernatural claims that take money, often from the world's poorest people. I think that this should be gotten out into the open.

But that's not really the thrust of this post. What strikes me as odd is that, at first blush, most atheists do not take this position. Over at God is for Suckers there's a post about these people being subject to consumer protection laws. Oddly, the original poster and most of the comments are . . . pro-religious.

Stardust says, "As much as I would love to see a rational and secular world, I am just not sure if this is the right way to go about it. Obviously, if spiritualists do such a booming business, it is just giving the public something that it wants to pay for." What a bizarre line of argument. I find myself wondering at Stardust's opinion of heroin - the public wants that, too. Or other consumer protection laws - should snake oil salesmen once more be allowed to sharp people? Should despicable people be allowed to take advantage of people in serious illness to make money because "they want it"?

In the comments section: "You can’t legislate morality. And you can’t legislate to prevent humans from acting stupidly. Buyer beware." That's from Old Viking.

And newsamus says, "Why should we care what kooks want to spend their money on?"

Tony Dee says: "This law smacks of 'Big Brotherism' and that scares me. As they say a sucker is born every day and we can’t change that. Can we!"

Then roger ramjett says, "Don’t care if someone wants to pay for advice. They can get it for free from me though. It is entertainment and shouldn’t be banned."

I mean, these people are supposed to be atheists! But time and again they seem to be saying that it's okay for these "spiritualists" to commit fraud.

This is a larger problem, generally, with atheists. It's pretty hard, for instance, to find an atheist - even an atheist - who'll say that Jesus was an idiot. That he made no goddamn sense, that the very few nifty things he said are completely swallowed by bile against women, condemnations against people who wouldn't suck his proverbial cock and frivolous battles with the Pharisees, inane stories and the like. That he said nothing particularly original and didn't even say it in a particularly original way. It is my experience that almost all atheists will struggle with great energy to find reasons to praise the person of Jesus.

Likewise, atheists will be abstractly anti-religious but often have trouble leveling specific critiques against specific religions. Most atheists would rather keep the discussion on the fairly abstract level - in my experience, most discussions about atheists and religious folks are almost totally decontextualized of specific religious content. They'll talk about how the science behind the big bang theory is better than creation mythology, or deconstruct the god of the gaps, or argue that intelligent design is not true. What they won't do is confront religious people who argue with them about their own religion. They won't say, "Sorry, I'm not going to let you weasel out of talking about the details of your faith" and then attack the specific ways their specific religion is racist, sexist, classist, makes mystical claims waaaaay behind anything that can be hidden in the god of the gaps (like how this guy was brutally executed and stayed dead for three days and got up - that's not intelligent design hiding behind irreducible complexity, that's just silly and impossible and not any god of the gaps business). But discussions about religion almost never go in that direction.

Indeed, it is my experience when asking a person what their religion is in a religious discussion, I'm almost always questioned why I feel that's important. Which in addition to being a silly question (it's like getting into a political discussion and hiding what party you're in - why would anyone even want to do that?), it seems to me to demonstrate how taboo specific critiques against religion are - the question itself is odd. (For what it is worth, moving the discussion to the person's particular religion is a very powerful tool for advancing an atheist's point - it's much easier to discuss why the Bible is absurd than to say why metaphysical uncertainty about the origin of life or the cosmos is not justification for belief in an abstract god.)

I feel that the reluctance of a good portion of atheists over at God is for Suckers to be of a piece with that. While being personally atheist, they nevertheless still want to give religious people special treatment. Because there is a vaguely religious component to spiritualism and mediums and astrologers and faith healers, they should be treated differently than secular frauds. Religion, in the minds of many atheists, is still special.

For my own part, I'd like to see that attitude done away with at all levels of society. Religion is just a thing that people do. It is not a special thing. So long as it is a special thing, protected by society and laws in a number of ways, they will continue to do terrible things because they'll be able to get away with it. Like the Catholic Church's official position on pedophilia inside the Church to hide it, to cover it up, and obstruct justice - or faith healers discouraging ill people to seek real medical treatment while picking their pockets. This is real stuff that they get away with, and it hurts real people. It hurts little kids and cancer patients - and that's not even hyperbole! End special treatment for religions today!

The the award to the new big social evil goes to . . .

Religion! According to a poll taking in Great Britain by Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a Quaker institution that in 1904 created a list of the biggest social evils (at the time, slavery was on top of the list) decided to update it. Nowadays? The biggest social evil, as seen by the 3500 Britons who participated in their poll, is religion.

"The researchers found that the 'dominant opinion' was that religion was a social evil'. Many participants said religion divided society, fueled intolerance and spawned 'irrational' educational and other policies." And, "A poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation uncovered a widespread belief that faith - not just in its extreme form - was intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution."

Obviously, I think that's true. I mean, right now, Europe is going through a new phase of religious intolerance. Right wing forces are aligning to introduce new immigration policies, including making it harder for foreign residents to gain citizenship, in large measure because of fears that Muslims are going to trash the country. The response is strongest in European fundamentalist religious circles (often leeches on big business, of course - that's the traditional fascist methodology in Europe) against this "Muslim threat". Or, rather, again, we have religion tearing apart society. Who knew? And it isn't like the US' war in Iraq doesn't have powerful religious components, and obviously 911 was primarily a religious act, and it isn't like anti-Semitism has gone anywhere.

Still, it's interesting to see England - a country that still has an official Christian religion - basically just going, "Yeah, religion is a problem." I approve, I approve.