Teapots

According to evangelists in Kenya, anyhow.

The full quote:

"I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it," says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of the country's 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims has around 10 million followers. "These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."

Go stick your head in the sand... see how much good it does you. If I were Mr Adoyo, I would have died of irony poisoning already.

Religious leaders are apparently calling upon their followers to 'boycott' the exhibit. Of course, by 'boycott', they actually mean 'smash'.... you just wait and see as the priceless historical record is destroyed by fear and ignorance. For the sake of history, I hope what the museum puts out are reproductions.

This one's a gem, too:

He's calling on his flock to boycott the exhibition and has demanded the museum relegate the fossil collection to a back room -- carrying some kind of warning that evolution is not a fact but merely one of a number of theories.

And what theories would those be? Spontaneous Generation? Young-Earth creationism?

I saw this today:

My reaction was sudden, but not unexpected:

Ha!

It even has a website

It takes them a while to catch on to a parody, but when they do, they respond back with all the love they can give. Some choice quotes:

• I must admit though iit takes some guts to want this imagination of darkness of yours which can never be proved to ever come into the light. -- Oh, the irony. Proof indeed.
• If I was your creator and you mocked me in this manner I couldn't think of a hell hot enough for you. - What was that again? Oh yes, 'thou shalt have no other gods....'.
• the Bible is 100% true- it says so in the Bible. - They're getting worse: I hope author of this quip was joking...
• And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet [are], and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Rev. 20:10 -- Another classic X-ian curse, I'm told.

From an article about the trial of Afganistani guilty of converting to Christianity:

Some Islamic clerics had called for his execution, saying Rahman would face danger from his countrymen if he were released..

Oh boy, what a nice reason for capital punishment. It's not that he's a heritic or a danger to society, but his countrymen might kill him.

Oh, what a world we live in.

Let's see. Islam is supposed to be a religion of peace, or so it's supporters say, right?

Given the events of the past few days, I think that we can completely refute this claim. There are violent mobs burning embassies in the middle east, crowds yelling Death to France and Death to Denmark, and the intentional murders of people seem to have only just begun.

So what's up with this?

It's one thing to claim to be peaceful. It's another thing to acknowledge your inner violence, and to use it or to fight against it. But, as I've mentioned before, this is all about control. Or loss of it: one way or the other.

It would be ideal to let the events speak for themselves. There's little need to say that lots of people in western nations now think that every muslim is a violent psychopath obsessed with killing every non-muslim in the land.

Brilliant, guys. Just brilliant.

But, scary as this is, I've always held little fear of death, knowing full well that there are things far worse than that. What scares me more is that the peaceful protestors here in Canada are actually in favour of censoring people and prohibiting them from speaking their minds. That is why I feel so strongly for this issue.

I can tell you this: what will eventually happen is that every time someone criticises Islam, hoardes of islamic protestors will storm the streets demanding that anyone doing the criticism be censored, or worse.

The irony is, of course, that the peaceful protesters go here unmolested, whereas if society were interested in censoring them they would not get a third word out. The best solution to this mess is probably to let them yell until they give up, for all the good it will do.

I'm thankful that the French and the Danes don't seem to think so. There's a tremendous danger in letting anyone decide what we should read. I could say it a dozen ways, but I'll let Fahrenheit 451 (the premier novel about censorship, and one of the most censored books anywhere) speak for me:

"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters.
...
There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.

Especially given this monologue, it's rather ironic that this book is censored in schools and protested as a part of library collections for the use of the phrase God damn. This is what the book is about.

That's right: ideas are dangerous. They're dangerous because they can challenge tyrants and make people think: people have the power to rise up and tear down the strictures of power, and that's what tyrants fear the most.

I spent a lot of time thinking what bothered me most about these 'protests'. After long and careful consideration, this is the reason:

It's important to remember that in the Islamic world, the only depictions of Muhammad that are permitted are the ones that are officially sanctioned. From my perspective as an outsider, at first glance, it might just seem that Muslims are protesting *visual* depictions of Muhammad, but some people would disagree. Apparently all the Islamic literature describing their prophet doesn't count.

That's why. The Islamic so-called scholars don't follow their own rules. Every religion I've seen contains many aspects of control... it's that some aspects disturb me more than others.

What puts the icing on the cake is that the cartoons in question were printed as a publicity stunt, and as a commentary on how difficult it is to criticise Islam.

I'll leave with another quip:

Beware he who seeks to deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

Responsibility, as all sane people should expect, is a two-way street. Yet, some people think otherise. I should have suspected that the columnist in question was a religionist when I hit the word 'righteous', but the website confirms it.

Praytell, Mr. Coren, how exactly do we tell what authority is 'righteous', or even right? Because they say so? If that's the case then every fool on the street corner would be the authority on everything. Because they are commanded by god? No, that one's out: there are many religious books and sources, all of them conflicting.

Besides, if we had a God, there wouldn't be a thing as free will, and we wouldn't need to worry about rights nor responsibilities.

So exactly how do we decide again? Oh yes, that's right. Have it imposed upon us from above. Mr. Coren seems so caught up in the questions of responsibilities that he forgets that authority figures have responsiblity too, and if they don't, it's our responsibility to kick them out and find someone that does. But no, wait, that would mean that we the people might have a right. Whoops.

The opening to the article is more disturbing, perhaps, describing a man who, suspected of being a terrorist, was ordered at gunpoint to strip naked. Mr. Coren questions the wisdom of allowing someone suspected of "terrorism" (whatever that means) rights at all. But wait, don't the police have the responsibility to attempt to discern whether this person is actually a terrorist.

No, apparently I'm wrong there too, because obviously we've got to live in fear and assume that every arabic-in-appearance person is named M[o|u]hammed and walks around with bombs strapped to his|her chest and a detanator in hand.

A very one-sided article, Mr. Coren, but you seem to have forgotten to think about what responsibility means.

But that's what I expect from religionists. And authoritarians too, which seems to include most of all religionists. I'll quote ESR here: "Authoritarianism must be fought whereever it is found, lest it smother you and other hackers".

Despite the fact that in the next decade half the African population could have HIV/AIDS, the Catholic church still opposes distribution of condoms.

I thought they were supposed to be compassionate. I guess this must be the 'we must kill them to save them' religious thing again.

The main problem with educating for abstinence instead of any other sex ed is that people are going to have sex. Either you accept this simple fact or you will be unable to solve the real problem.