So we’re going to have this event called the Reason Rally next month.
The opposition is beginning to stir, weakly and ineffectually, with a contribution from a creationist fool.
I have already commented on it here, but I will also note that they are calling this rally of people who profess to support "reason," "science," and "secularism" the "largest gathering of its kind in history." I guess they forgot about the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Maybe they should add "history" to their list of emphases.
No word yet on whether national park officials will allow them to operate a guillotine on the Mall.
There will, of course, be no Bastille to storm, but will we be doing this the same way we’ve done large-scale atheist projects before? Will we consider women "passive citizens" who were denied the vote because they didn’t have "the moral and physical qualities" to exercise political rights? Will we deny the égalité in "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" to non-whites?
No wonder we can’t get any decent intellectual progress in this country: we contain idiots who hear the words “reason”, “science”, and “secularism” and leap to the conclusion that we’re talking about guillotines. I guess that’s why they’re so anti-science and anti-reason — they’ve made some maddeningly stupid associations with the words.
And why should Martin Cothran leap to this bizarre scenario of atheists going all 18th century and discriminating against women and minorities? That’s more of a 21st century obsession of religious fundamentalists.
But then, he’s not even being creative. This is Rick Santorum’s line that equates science, social justice, and secularism with chopping people’s heads off. No one is advocating tyranny or revolution here, and decapitation is a signature move of terrorist extremists nowadays…so how can anyone take seriously a trembling nitwit who screams bloody murder because Richard Dawkins or Taslima Nasrin or Lawrence Krauss or Hemant Mehta or Jamila Bey or Greta Christina talk about liberty and equality without gods or priests?
There will be no guillotines on the mall unless the religious right brings them. We cannot be responsible for the imaginary terrors the stupid and ignorant conjure up when confronted with knowledge and good sense and a dismissal of superstition.
Wait…NO guillotines? Not even one little one…
…anyone got room for several, erm, “large cigar cutters”?
Louis
P.S. I do love the overblown rhetoric of the “oh so persecuted privileged religionist”. Mild criticism = bigotry, moderate criticism = violence, severe criticism = genocidal oppression, mockery = murderous rampage including baby slaughter. Always good to know we’re dealing with rational opponents…
Ignore it if you will PZ, but the PROOOF IS IN THE PUDDING!! Practically every science organization uses the metric system. Even NASA is so fanatical about the metric system as to have thrown away two multi-million dollar probes rather than use the BIBLICAL feet and inches of REAL AMERICA!
What
Would
Robespierre
Do?
Oh. Sorry. I’m not helping here, am I? :)
Louis @ 1;
Xians do seem to want so very badly to be oppressed, just without the actual pain, suffering and loss of civil rights part. They will define almost anything as oppression if they get the chance. Words suddenly become violence in their minds when it suits their collective martyrdom complex.
At the end of the day, the simple fact that they are not living in a totalitarian theocracy run by their own xian sect is sufficient in their eyes to amount to persecution.
And baby cook-offs. It just wouldn’t do to forget the roast baby feasts. At least we atheists aren’t wasteful; after every baby-slaughter we all get a square meal*…
—————————————————————-
* For any pearl-clutchers who may be reading, this is something that the non-delusional call a ‘joke’. we don’t really eat babies…
… at least not without proper seasoning and preparation. And not all that often either. Little blighters are fattening…
Another one for the Persecution Files. Poor little Christians, they want the power to institute inquisitions and torture so very badly, they’re doing one hell of a lot of projecting.
Damn, I wish I could go. I’m not into crowds much, but for this I would suck it up and have a great time.
I say again, damn.
LightningRose@3,
There were atheists in the French Revolution, particularly the Hébertist faction, and among the sans-culottes (urban working-class radicals), but the Hébertist “Cult of Reason”,which did lead to violent excesses as well as entirely necessary attacks on the power and wealth of the Church, was officially repudiated in early 1794 as Robespierre gained power. He persecuted atheists, instituting the “Cult of the Supreme Being”, which proclaimed the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.
Thank God reason wasn’t of any interest to the American founding fathers. Otherwise there’d have been a bloodbath in the US. Jefferson, Madison, Paine, all were wonderfully anti-reason.
Or…were they? We may never know.
Glen Davidson
No guillotine? Guess Alice Cooper won’t be there :(
Further to #7,
Interestingly, if the “Cult of Reason” crew resemble any modern atheists, it’s the likes of Alain de Botton, who thinks atheists need to copy the temples and rituals of religion – not that he would in any way endorse the violence of the Hébertists, of course.
Didn’t one of the GOP candidates just make almost exactly the same association? Liberals = guillotine?
This is not original. This comment is, basically, cribbing Sanrorum. Or Gingrich. Or Romney. Or whichever batshit-crazy GOP candidate it was.
And now I see that the OP links to the phrase in question. Never mend.
someone should tell them that the vast majority of Frenchmen were Roman Catholics in those days. Atheists were a dwindling minority and largely excoriated by Robespierre.
What was that, Religious Zealot ? Oh yeah… we Atheists are so
notup on our history. Too bad you haven’t got a bloody clue. Perhaps your Homeschooling didn’t include the actual facts of the French Revolution?It’s not enough that they get biology, geology, physics, math, and astronomy wrong, now they have to muck up history too ?
PS: while this instance is about Christians, Muslims have a good heavy dose of “Stop Persecuting Me!” as well. It’s odd, how they demand not to be persecuted while simultaneously demanding that huge swaths of the American population be persecuted.
You know, vanishingly small minorities like women, gays, non-christians, atheists. . .
{watches Santorum on linked video}
The guillotine was designed to kill people quickly, efficiently and humanely (the methods of the ancien regime before the revolution where pretty fucked up). Rather painless compared to what godfappers like Santorum look forward to happening to all of us for eternity. What is these guys’ point?
1. It should be noted that the First french Republic did extend the franchise to blacks living in the French possessions in the Caribbean, as well as ending slavery.
2. I recall in a chick tract that must have published at least 30 years ago, a scenario in which the anti-Christ converted the highway patrol into a special unit equipped with mobile guillotines on the backs of golf carts to go around to supermarkets and execute anyone who tried to buy or sell without the number of the beast. This must be some ind of weird masturbation fantasy for thumpers.
It’s interesting that these zealots who claim the US is a Christian nation completely ignore the rather obvious fact that there are very different ideas about what it means to be a Christian. If a decision was made to send all of us free-thinkers off to Canada or Antarctica or some shit, the Catholics and Mormons and Baptists and Methodists and Lutherans would probably all end up butchering each other in the streets within a few years over whether or not the host actually turns into the body of Christ or not, or some other equally pointless theological argument.
It was the best of wingnuttery, it was the worst of wingnuttery.
Meanwhile Rick Santorum is lying about euthanasia in the Netherlands (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yn-eejMcmuA).
He claims that half of the elderly that end up in a hospital and are euthanized, have that done to them against their will. There are those that wear bracelets saying “Please don’t euthanize”. Also many go to a hospital in another country as they are afraid they may not leave a Dutch hospital alive.
For the record, this is ludicrous. It is a blatant lie and libelous as far as I can judge.
There is no limit to the lies these cretins will spill is there?
I can only hope the Netherlands isn’t shitting their pants too much to take action and call on Santorum for a formal apology.
To think in actuality how hard it is to receive euthanasia, even when in agonizing pain, even over several days or weeks, as I have witnessed on several occasions in my family, one could only wish it was more easy.
It must be easy to come up with lies and believe it is all for the greater good when the way you have been brought up has been by indoctrination to believe in fictional stories as if they were the truth.
/rant
petejohn @ 16;
At the last count, roughly 30,000 different flavours of xianity, all of which claim to be the ‘true faith’.
I can just imagine future historians recording the vast numbers killed in the brutal, several centuries long internecine religious war between the ten-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin-ists and the eleven-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin-ists, known as the “decs” and the “‘levens” respectively in the slang of the period, though everyone had forgotten the original significance of the names after the first hundred years or so…
Religion – helping humans to find stupid reasons to kill one another since the dawn of civilisation.
It would seem to me that the religionists equating this rally to the French revolution, is a sign of the fear of demise of the stranglehold of religion on the “hearts and minds of men and women”. The ones who hold onto the religious nonsense, in the face of all evidence and reason to the contrary, have something of an “idiocy gene”, and so thinking it involves guillotines, or any other crazy thing is not so unexpected.
I don’t know if Pharyngulites have heard, but here in Canada, the Supreme Court has upheld the ruling that parents cannot remove their children from an “ethics and religious culture program” that the Quebec education system has put in place (http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2012/02/should-parents-be-allowed-to-refuse-religious-education-for-their-children.html). It was also on the T.V. news, with, “boo-hoo”, the religionists (Catholics) claiming that it “promotes a non-religious world-view”, and “trivializes faith”.
What it really means is that the Catholic power structure and deluded Catholic parents, have lost their stranglehold on the “hearts and minds” of impressionable children, and now their nonsense ideas have to compete head-to-head with other nonsense ideas, and, presumably, a dose of reason and reality. So sad, so sad, what’s this world coming to!?
One can only hope that this reason rally starts to have the same effect, and that one day religious nonsense, and the brutality and damage it inflicts, will be relegated to the dustbin of history. Go reason, go!
Even if you do credit the French Revolution to atheists, you still have to stack that against pretty much the entire rest of European history and the endless holy wars therein.
True. The latest example is Rick Santorum. He claimed in a recent speech that the mainline Protestants were a “shambles” and “gone from xianity”. It’s always nice that the Catholics haven’t forgotten those heretical Protestants. With any luck they can restart the Reformation wars again. It’s all amusing in a Dark Ages sort of way.
The response from mainline Protestants was predictable. They didn’t even come out their coma long enough to notice it.
I wouldn’t want someone who claimed my religion had been taken over by satan to be my president.
Guillotines? No, no, we’re far more creative than that.
Speaking of which, how’s working coming on that twelve-ton gilded pope hat?
What!? No guillotines!? Damn, I was going to bring my knitting.
By the way, perhaps the solar tornado is causing the right-wing religious nuts to go completely bonkers. Some of these fruitcakes are attacking Richard Dawkins because his ancestors owned slaves:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/19/richard-dawkins-disbelief-slave-trade-ancestor
I’ve noticed that some sensible people have started to hijack the comment section of Cothran’s article.
You meant for that to happen didn’t you PZ?
You sneaky little
monkeyHominoidea.Heck, we’re not the ones with an execution device as a holy symbol.
I am so bringing a guillotine now.
It’s interesting that this has just surfaced. I suspect Mitt had a hand in it – but will it work?
Well obviously, his atheism retrospectively caused their slaveowning: the atheons given off by books like TGD travel backwards in time and cause disasters whenever they land up.
Are you going to say that the Southern Baptists were actually atheists?
janine@29,
No, obviously not, but the atheons interfered with reception and stopped the messages from Jesus getting through, saying he’d decided slaveowning was naughty sometime in the last couple of millennia.
Damned Dawkins, so powerful he can fuck up even well meaning christians.
We would never view something so violent and brutal as a guillotine to be a reasonable solution for anything…………unless Santorum becomes president.
I’m confused. I was taught that the French Revolution was a class struggle. I wasn’t aware that religion was a significant factor. Of course, I was educated in a US public school, so take that for what it’s worth.
@30 KG
That makes a lot of sense.
After all, his wife is a friend of Dr. Who.
I used to wonder where all these references to the French Revolution, aka. the birth of modern democracy, being a bad thing suddenly came from. Then it dawned on me. From the modern aristocracy. Now while I can’t imagine the Koch brothers being genuinely afraid of being dragged into the streets and publicly beheaded, that they’re the ones bringing up the idea, is deliciously ironic.
Also the French Revolution was largely inspired by the American Revolution. Oh I see. This is about copyright infringement, isn’t it?
A slight correction, nemothederv, she was a Time Lord who was married to a Time Lord.
Well, that and the facts. It started out really quite well, but ran into various difficulties, including foreign intrusions and mob anarchy, and the Reign of Terror ensued. It may even have been necessary, but it was definitely bloody and often unjust. Sinking boatloads of priests, that kind of thing, were the reports.
Then Robespierre made a fatal mistake–he said he had a new list of enemies (the revolution did eat its own), but he gave no indication of the people on the list. So everyone with power was afraid, and decided maybe Robespierre should be the next to meet with the blade’s close shave.
Sadly, the revolution then looked like it was getting back on track to democracy, and then Napoleon staged his coup. If he hadn’t, it wouldn’t be surprising if someone else would have. But anyway, the terror was a pretty bad thing, but it hardly constitutes the whole of the revolution, and it might have produced a decent government if it hadn’t been so prone to being taken over by a strongman.
Could have happened in America, too, but it didn’t, partly because Washington seems to have been a pretty decent guy in most respects (not that his slaves would think so, but blind spots and all–did free them at his death, but would he have if he’d had an heir then?).
It’s not just an upper class myth, though, that the French Revolution had some rather horrifying moments, even though the number of victims is low by 20th century standards (and at least a good portion likely were fairly guilty).
Glen Davidson
@ #14
That was going to be my point but you beat me to it. The guillotine was a quick and relatively painless method of execution. What the French had prior to that was ‘Breaking on the wheel’ This involved tying the victim to a large spoked wheel and then breaking their arms and legs with an iron bar. After a suitable amount of time, the victim would be dispatched by beating them with the bar over the chest presumably until they became unable to breath or drowned in their own blood.
Prior to the revolution, the monarchy, in cohoots with the Catholic Church presided over this kind of thing while supporting a society that had a pretty obscene gap between rich and poor. It is hardly surprising that once this order had been usurped that there was a fair bit of bloodletting, people had very good reasons to be a bit pissed off.
Are there any enterprising people out there who could produce guillotine neck chains in time for this bash? Could it be done using a 3D printer? It would be an excellent way of poking fun at the kind of people who like to wear execution devices aroung their necks.
@36 Janine
Then she has would have a tardis of her own, right?
Screw guillotines. Imagine getting video footage circa 0 A.C.E.
“So you claim Christ rose from the dead? Let’s play the tape and see.”
No, she traveled with the Doctor. Perhaps she had one but I am not that well versed on the back story.
@40 Janine
It’s been awhile for me as well.
It just goes to show that there is a rich living history that can be tapped into.
Douglas Adams did some work for Dr. Who(the show), who both Lalla and Richard were friends with. The Larger Atheist/Skeptical community was formed around seemingly chance meetings and connections like this.
Viewing the reason ralley as peasantry reaching the boiling point and going on a murder spree is silly. It’s insulting to both the history of the French Revolution and the recent history still in the making.
Hey, what’s with all the guillotines?
Are those in style again? All of the fundies seems to think that as an atheist I should own one.
Sylvester McCoy is also an open atheist. I remember learning this because he was surprisingly candid about it in an interview to a podcast.
No. IIRC not all Time Lords have their own TARDIS. It’s not standard issue. Time Lords can pilot a TARDIS but not all have their own. ((And it seems Time Lords can more easily pilot a TARDIS than others…since they’re alive they recognize Time Lords as pilots: Example The Master and River were recognized by the Doctor’s TARDIS and allowed to pilot it accurately while with others it might be cantankerous…but to be fair it’s not known if that’s because the TARDIS “likes” them or if they just know how to pilot it) It’s like a car…as a Time Lord you can own one, but not everyone does.
The Doctor stole his.
Listening to some of Santorum’s recent diatribes, I wish I could calmly explain a few things to him:
“Defining natural rights by the criteria of your church’s dogma and ordering American society to live accordingly is elitist, as well as theocratic.”
“The French Revolutionaries did believe in natural rights, and wrote about them in the Rights of Man.”
“The Catholic Church has a much more violent history than what happened during the Reign of Terror in France, and Robespierre was not an atheist.”
“The American Revolution was also quite violent.”
“The progressive view of social justice is closer to the Catholic position than your platform.”
“Secularism is the basis of religious freedom, not the opponent of it.”
“The American Revolution was a secular Revolution and the United States already is a secular nation, which is what the Founders intended.”
“You are the biggest promoter of big government in either party.”
“How can someone be skeptical enough to be unconvinced by the evidence for global warming but naive enough to believe in the Gospels?”
“How the hell can we revive the nation’s economy by voting for you and reinstating Bush era economic policies?”
“Your name is an insult to fecal matter.”
But the problem is not Santorum, for the most part he is like most politicians and will say whatever will play to his base. The problem is his base. This is why they oppose education, which is the antidote to many of the tenants of modern American conservatism.
Oh my FSM, Dawkins is married to Lalla Ward? I had no idea until I read these extremely confusing comments. I have a soft spot for Mary Tamm though. She wasn’t quite so cheeky, but she still knew how to put the Doctor in his place.
The guillotine has particular meaning for fundies since it was Nicolae Carpathia’s, the laughable antichrist of the lLeft Behind novels, preferred method of executing Christians.
This fucker knows his audience.
@KG #28 — Actually a reporter called Dawkins and first read him something from the Bible…Dawkins hung up. The reporter called back (jeez!) and suggested that Dawkins ‘may have inherited a “slave supporting” gene from his distant relative.’ So, no magic influence on past time (which would be cool), just stupidity about the way genetics works.
…people for whom giving head is only a fantasy?
What!? No guillotines!? Damn, I was going to bring my knitting.
A great performance art piece would be for our atheist knitters to get together and sit close to the stage en masse, knitting away. Maybe they could knit a large banner that says something useful, like, “The poor widdle christards are terrified someone will kill them before they can kill us! Poor diddums!”
This does make a demented sort of twisted sense once you realize the fundies’ very simplistic understanding of history. Certain developments lead to certain other developments or events. Complexity tends to escape them.
So, the Enlightenment led to the French Revolution,
The French Revolution led to the Reign of Terror
The Enlightenment caused the Reign of Terror.
That makes the enlightenment bad.
Hey! This is fun. Let’s try another one:
1 or more Jewish heretics challenged the prevailing doctrines and power structure of their religion, The Romans executed one, some or all of them. Which led to
Saul of Tarsus founded a new religion called Christianity based on the teachings of 1 or more Jewish heretics which led to
From the Arian controversy to Northern Ireland disagreements between Christians or attacks by Christians against non-Christians directly or indirectly caused millions of violent deaths.
1 or more Jewish heretics who lived 2000 years ago, one of whom is called Jesus, caused millions of deaths.
That makes Jesus bad
Hey PZ, sorry if this is a little off topic but I was wondering if you’ll be making any statements about this day of rememberance for Executive Order 9066. http://www.allegiancemusical.com/video/never-forget-never-again
De-lurking in order to say, “Hooray, a thing mentioned on Pharyngula that I get to go to!” Can we at least bring guillotine related literature? I have some pamphlets printed up.
So, will “our” guillotine be Occam’s National Razor?
At least he didn’t blame us for Hitler this time.
Meanwhile, look at this:
http://rr-bb.com/showthread.php?173205-Atheists-to-hold-quot-massive-quot-rally-in-D-C-in-March
bcskeptic, that’s great to hear. I’ve always been a huge supporter of that idea ever since I’ve heard it from Dan Dennett lecture.
sc..@45:
Well said, with great examples.
The list could go on, taking aim at Gingrich and Romney as well for what has spewed from their pieholes (especially Gingrich –‘Mr. History’–and his characterization and critique of college and university faculty and students as virtual hot-beds of progressive radicalism and secularism, hinting at them as sources (among others) of America’s problems. (I, for one, could only wish it was the case, as a recent short piece on PBS’s ‘Need to Know’ had reported.)
sc-b @ 45:
“How can someone be skeptical enough to be unconvinced by the evidence for global warming but naive enough to believe in the Gospels?”–sc-b…….
Particularly love the statement above that you wrote.
Hitting the nail directly on the head here. So many great hypocritical statements to chose from,… so little time.