Keep Sanal Edamaruku out of jail

The Catholic church is up to their old tricks again, this time in India. They’re trying to get a skeptic imprisoned for exposing a phony “miracle”.

Sanal Edamaruku, President of the Indian Rationalist Association, has for decades been a tireless campaigner for science and against superstition. He is widely known for his exposure of the tricks used by self-professed ‘God-Men’ and gurus and has often been on Indian television explaining the everyday science behind supposed miracles.

After one such exposure – he pointed out that the “blood” oozing from a statue of Christ at the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Velan kanni in Vile Parle, Mumbai was in fact water from a leaky pipe – the Catholic Church of Mumbai made a formal complaint about him to the Mumbai police. He stands accused of “deliberately hurting religious feelings and attempting malicious acts intended to outrage the religious sentiments of any class or community”, an offence under Section 295(a) of the Indian Penal Code. No arrest warrant has been issued but the case is "cognisable" meaning the police can arrest without warrant at any time. He is being harassed daily by the Mumbai authorities who, under pressure from Catholic groups, are insisting that he turn himself in. His petition for “anticipatory bail” was turned down on 3 June 2012 on the bizarre grounds that he would be safer in custody. If he is arrested he will therefore most likely be detained in jail until court proceedings are concluded, which could take several years. Fearing arrest, he dares not stay long at home or work.

Go sign the petition.

Atheism should be science and social justice, not science vs. social justice

I have received a couple of complaints about Sikivu Hutchinson, complaints that were also cc’ed to a number of big names in the atheist movement, which is weird. Why complain to me? Apparently my correspondent wants me to write a rebuttal to some remarks she made in the May issue of International Humanist News. Here are the offensive comments:

Engaging in science fetishism without a social justice lens merely reproduces the white supremacist logic of the New Atheist Movement.

If much of the New Atheist fervor springs from the endless culture war over evolution and church/state separation, contemporary black humanist ideology emerges from a social justice lens.

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Why I am an atheist – Rod Chlebek

Religion didn’t seem to be very important in my earliest years. We didn’t pray or go to church except for maybe twice a year and then whenever someone died or got married. Strangely, I ended up in Catechism in preparation for First Communion. Somehow I botched that up and didn’t attend when I was expected but I got another chance at it when I hit 4th grade. That was the year I started to attend Catholic School. It was totally voluntary. I wanted to go because my neighborhood friends went there. I made it through First Communion that year being very skeptical about the whole body and blood thing. We were taught that “amen” means “I believe” and that when you receive Communion you are expected to reply “amen”. What bothered me more would have been being the only student who didn’t go through with this. Everyone else did it and believed. I must have been doing something wrong.

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Distilled, condensed, conflagrating stupid

Here’s the most evil thing I’ve ever done: it’s a recording from Trinity Broadcast Network (you are already recoiling) featuring Hugh Ross, Eric Hovind, Ken Ham, Ray Comfort, and a couple of other guys talking about evolution. Seriously, you will lose brain cells watching this. If you try to sit through the whole two hours (!), you will be reduced to a mindless zombie with a craving for human flesh. So I may be triggering the Zombie Apocalypse by posting this. But, you know, atheist, so what do I care?

I skipped through most of it. Somewhere in the middle, Ross and Ham really get into it over the age of the earth. Unfortunately, it’s mostly the two of them citing bible verses at each other.

I wonder why they didn’t have an atheist or two in the conversation?

GET OUT OF LOUISIANA WHILE YOU STILL CAN!

You’re doomed, all doomed. The state is about to privatize their “public” education system, turning it all into voucher-based chaos…and the Christians are looking forward to feasting on the shambles.

At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains “what God made” on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.

“We try to stay away from all those things that might confuse our children,” Carrier said.

Other schools approved for state-funded vouchers use social studies texts warning that liberals threaten global prosperity; Bible-based math books that don’t cover modern concepts such as set theory; and biology texts built around refuting evolution.

They’re building idiocracy down on the bayou, I guess. It may be the place where the Mississippi drains, but they don’t have to take it literally and turn the place into the sphincter of the nation.

American Atheists is hiring a Public Relations Director

That’s good news. Dave Silverman gives them the aggressive edge, but someone to shape the message more effectively would be a valuable asset. Check out the qualifications, maybe this is a job for you.

Oh, wait. You’re reading Pharyngula? Maybe you aren’t the cooperative diplomatic type they need.

I also notice the description doesn’t specify long-term association with the radical right wing of the Republican party and a complete absence of prior affiliation with the secular/atheist movement. That’s a good start.

Why I am an atheist – Justin Francart

As a youngster, my main charge levied against religion was that it was simply boring. I suffered through Sunday school until I was confirmed and bemoaned the fact that I was dragged to church on Christmas when all I wanted to do was stay home and play with my new dinosaur toys. Religion was a nuisance, but nothing more.

It wasn’t until middle and high school that I took a long look at Catholicism with a critical eye and realized that it absolutely did not jive with my blossoming world-view. I began to see it as sexist, homophobic, and backwards. It was then that the term “organized religion” developed its negative association. I also worked at the local Long John Silvers in a town with a large percentage of Catholics, and that didn’t help. Working during Lent was excruciating and further drove a wedge between myself and those silly rules. Belief in god was fine and dandy, but I wasn’t so much down with the rigid structure imposed by “organized religion” after that.

I suppose I was a deist in college, but never really gave it much thought. I remember distinct conversations I had with friends where they revealed that they were atheists, but I was neither appalled nor converted on the spot.

“So you don’t believe in god then?”

“Nope.”

“What do you think happens when you die?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh, interesting.”

Sometimes the exchange would be deeper, the conversation longer, and I’d maybe even think on it a bit later, but I’d usually walk away pretty unaffected. So it was to my great surprise that I randomly stumbled across something on the internet a couple years later that made me second guess everything.
I was a year or two out of college, and I read a letter entitled IN CONTEMPLATION OF MY INEVITABLE DEMISE (found here), written by Forrest J. Ackerman (Uncle Forry, the Ackermonster himself) and given to a friend to be published upon his death. Forry wrote about his atheism and I read the things that were said to me before, but this time it just stuck. I couldn’t shake the thought of god’s nonexistence out of my head, and a couple days later I made the turn and never looked back.

I would be remiss if I neglected to mention my upbringing further. My parents were wonderful, encouraging and indulging my interest in dinosaurs and paleontology with frequent trips to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, taped television specials, and tons of books. They fostered an environment that allowed me to explore our natural world through science, and I dove in head first because it was fun and interesting (subsequently the exact opposite of how I felt about church). I was raised very “loose Catholic,” and aside from the odd Catholic totem around the house, god was largely nonexistent in our home life.

And that’s how the stage was set for me to whittle away any vestige of religion in my life through successive chance encounters and exposure to new ideas. Today I acknowledge that we live in a godless universe, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m surrounded by loving friends and family, and find myself in constant awe of the grandeur and complexity of the natural world around me.

My well-intentioned mother will eventually google-search me and find this, and I’ll get a phone call explaining that the internet is forever and that I might put off some potential future employers by expressing these views in a public forum, but I can deal with that. I wouldn’t want to work for anyone who wouldn’t hire me because of this anyway, and maybe, just maybe, someone somewhere will stumble across this like I did Forry’s letter and come away with the same conclusions.

Justin Francart

Why I am an atheist – MD

I had been an atheist for over a decade but hadn’t realized it. It took a child to make me see that. My own child. He asked me one day why I didn’t go to church like others in our family. All these reasons flew through my head in a matter of seconds, but they all boiled down to one. “Because I don’t believe in it,” I answered him. “Me neither,” he said.

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