Science vs Norse mythology
Science vs Norse mythology
Click to embiggen.
/hattip: yottaparsec in The Atheist Experience’s Ustream chatroom
Edit: from The Pain
You lying sacks of shit
Bullshit christian propaganda
Read about more bullshit christian propaganda here.
Take your loathsome hypocritical self-serving fictional misinformation, fold it until it’s all sharp corners and then shove it up your fetid arses, you misanthropic [British English] cunts [Note: if you're in the USA or other places where 'cunt' is considered misogynistic, please replace it with your own locale's strongest non-gender specific epithet].
/hattip Bligbi
Fasting fail
see more pwn and owned pictures
Evolution on Planet Urf
How evolution happened on Urf:
Aspects of the evolution of Urfling animals:
More from Planet Urf.
The truth about Ben Stein (and ‘Expelled’)
Courtesy of the Rant Puppets.
/hattip to Pharyngula for making me aware of this site.
Pearl clutcher
Bligbi has brought to my attention an absolutely fantastic idiom that I was previously unaware of: ‘pearl clutcher‘. From Urban Dictionary:
An uptight person, usually but not always female, usually but not always of conservative mores, who reacts with shock, feigned or otherwise, at other people’s violations of decorum, propriety, morality, and so forth.
For those of you who know of and remember the insane old biddy, I think Mary Whitehouse epitomises this term to a T.
The People vs Scientology
The UK Government today has responded to two scientology related petitions on the number10.gov.uk web site.
The first petition asked the government to stop the “church” of scientology calling itself such (“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to rename The ‘Church’ of Scientology under section 32 of the Companies Act”) received the following response from the government:
Legislation deems some words to be “sensitive” in the context of company names. A company wishing to use such a word in its name must satisfy certain conditions. The word “church” is not deemed to be a sensitive word and its use in a company name is therefore not subject to any particular controls. Indeed, it is used in many company names which appear on the Register.
Section 32(1) of the Act states that a direction may be issued where, in the Secretary of State’s opinion, a company’s registered name gives so misleading an indication of the nature of its activities as to be likely to cause harm to the public. It is not the company’s activities themselves that are under scrutiny. The name needs to: (i) give an indication of the company’s activities; and (ii) that indication must be so misleading as to cause harm to the public. A company’s registered name means the company’s name as a whole, not one word considered in isolation. It is the name “Church of Scientology (England and Wales)” that is under consideration, not just the word “Church”. .
As the Company is called the “Church of Scientology (England and Wales)” and its main activity is the promotion of Scientology there does not seem to be any attempt to mislead. A person dealing with the Company might not have a comprehensive understanding of what Scientology is, but he or she should be aware that the company’s “trade” is Scientology, therefore there is no basis for the Secretary of State to issue a direction.
So, no win there.
The second petition, to stop the scientology-based Narcanon drug “treatment” programme from inveigling its way into UK prisons and schools (“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ban the usage of Narconon in any publicly funded orgianisation”) had the following response from the government:
The Government is clear that the commissioning of drug treatment services such as Narconon, is the responsibility of local drug partnerships. Such partnerships are best placed to know the needs and priorities of their clients and how well particular drug treatment services can meet these needs and priorities. We have produced a number of pieces of evidence based guidance to support commissioners and providers in ensuring the drug treatment services that they commission and deliver are of a high quality. This guidance is available on the Department of Health website.
Narconon courses are not run in prisons, but they are delivered via correspondence and there is no legal basis on which to deny prisoners access to Narconon letters. The National Offender Management Service does, however, encourage staff to refer misusing offenders that receive correspondence from Narconon into accredited interventions.
In schools, teachers should be the main providers of drug education and maintain responsibility for the overall drug education programme. External contributors can be used where they add to the drug education programme a dimension that teachers alone cannot deliver. It is for schools and local authorities, however, to decide whether to use the services of an external contributor to assist with their drug education programme, and if so who this should be. The Government’s guidance on drugs, Drugs:Guidance for Schools (DfES 2004) http://www.teachernet.gov,uk/wholeschool/behaviour/drugs/ encourages schools to liaise with their local authority and local Healthy Schools Programmes on the range of individuals and agencies who can support drug education programmes.
This reads like a partial success to me.
As Tony Curtis might have said, you can’t win ‘em all.
We don’t have it here, but…
Happy thanksgiving thingy to all of you on the other side of the big pond.
Enjoy your turkey/tofurkey or whatever else you enjoy at this time of year.1
- Frankly, it all sounds a bit like a pre-christmas warm up… ;-) [↩]
Breaking news: atheist sees nothing in toast!
Nothing to see here!
More (and slightly less self-deprecating) images after the fold.
Another christian not quite getting it
While trawling the interwebtubes, I came across MadPriest’s blog, who has a post about the recent BHA “atheist bus”1 affair.
MadPriest, as he likes to be known, seems to be a relatively liberal type of christian (as most UK anglicans are), but seems to take some exception to the actions of the BHA and its supporters after reading this article in The Telegraph:
I fully understand atheism and possibly spend more time considering it for myself than most agnostics. But these so-called humanists I just don’t get. They are just so destructive - they always campaign for the negative whatever they say about themselves. If they truly were “people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs” they would just STFU and live and let live.
I guess about 5% of the English population is part of the”established church.” The bravest we ever get nowadays is to lecture people about spending too much money at Christmas and to make comments like “the rich are responsible for the rest of us being poor.” In other words, bog-standard humanist beliefs. Our church schools are exactly the same as any 100% state school in respect of the curriculum. They may have very bland and wishy-washy Christian assemblies, but any student can opt out them (although even the Muslim students don’t tend to).
We are not financed by the state. We have one privilege - the right of a few bishops to sit in the non-legislative house of parliament and nobody, except the bishops, give a toss about that. In return our old ladies pay for the upkeep of most of our country’s architectural treasures.
So what are these English humanists after?
Do they think that if they get rid of the Christians their enemy will disappear along with them?
I don’t think so - he’ll just change his name to Allah and then they will have something to complain about.
I won’t comment on the £35k grant given to the BHA for their research as his comment doesn’t deal with it and, besides, eight other organisations were given similar grants for the same purpose, but I did comment on his comment, where I wanted to clear up a few “details”, and which was as follows:
The Telegraph wrote: ‘The BHA says it is dedicated to bringing about “a world without religious privilege or discrimination” and represents “people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs”.
You wrote: ‘But these so-called humanists I just don’t get. They are just so destructive - they always campaign for the negative whatever they say about themselves. If they truly were “people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs” they would just STFU and live and let live.’
It’s rather amusing that you copy (but seemingly didn’t read) the motives of the BHA, but extrapolate their own definition of themselves to create a strawman. Let’s see those two original quotes together:
“[P]eople who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs”… seeking “a world without religious privilege or discrimination”.
Please, just think about that for a moment.
If anything, they campaign is to remove the “negative”: discrimination over the parts of the population by promotion of religion over non-religion, discrimination over the rest of the population by the promotion of your religion over other religions, the ability for the heads of your religion (unelected by the rest of the population) to assume a right to represent/browbeat same, etc.
You’re wrong that “nobody, except the bishops, give a toss about” their being in the HoL; there are plenty of us that don’t care for the church’s special privileges in this regard. Admittedly there are also many of us that don’t care for the unelectedness of the HoL at all, but that’s a separate issue.
As for state finance, churches can, under certain circumstances, receive public money, and of course the CoE has either a reduced of or exemption from taxation (depending on the mode of the finance in question). This can make a huge difference to fundraising. If it doesn’t, I guess the church would happily abrogate its tax privileges, no?
If the “architectural treasures” truly belong to the country as you claim, then why not have the church donate them to the country (i.e. an organisation like The National Trust) and then have the tax-payer provide for their upkeep in the standard way such things are done? I suspect, the church wants to keep these as part of their £5.67 billion portfolio of property and other investments. Considering this sanction of gambling (sorry, how impolitic of me, “good stewardship of assets aligned neatly with the Parable of the Talents”) somehow I don’t think it’s just a bunch of concerned tea-drinking little old ladies keeping the church in eucharist goblets and stained glass. I’ll say nothing of the church’s approbation for lottery funds (PDF) or funding for church schools.
I’m sure the BHA and others of that ilk will happily “just STFU and live and let live” when those of church choose to do the same. Perhaps you could give Slee, Williams, Sentamu and the rest of the talking heads a nod in this direction?
You wrote: “So what are these English humanists after?
“Do they think that if they get rid of the Christians their enemy will disappear along with them?
“I don’t think so - he’ll just change his name to Allah and then they will have something to complain about.”
It’s just occured to me: I don’t think I’ve ever seen passive-aggressive fatwa-envy before. Should I give you props for that?
I’ll mention it again seeing as it doesn’t appear to have registered: “a world without religious privilege or discrimination”. This is hardly the same thing as “a world without religion”. Christians are not their enemy, christian (and other religious) privilege is what’s of concern.
By the way, they’re the British Humanist Association. And, if they really are a bona fide “religion” (in which case they should receive the same privileges as other religions, should they not? Either that, or denigrating humanism as “just another religion” as some of a theistic bent are wont to do on occasion [as exemplified in some of the comments here] simply undermines the assumed supercilious position of their own religion) then please direct me to their articles of faith, their scriptures, their dogmas and diktats, their traditions, their places of worship, their high priests and all of the other trappings of religiosity. I’ve obviously missed them in my travels.
Hopefully he’ll think about this a little and reconsider his attitude towards the BHA and other secular organisations. He seems otherwise like a rather reasonable christian.
- how I dislike that term [↩]
Chemists reclaiming chemicals for £1m
From a press release of from The Royal Society of Chemistry:
The Royal Society of Chemistry is today reclaiming the word chemical from the advertising and marketing industries.
It has been misappropriated and maligned as synonymous with “poison”. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) recently defended an advert which perpetuated the myth that natural compounds are free of chemicals.
The truth, as any right-minded person will say, is that everything we eat, drink, drive, play with and live in is made of chemicals - both natural and synthetic chemicals are essential for life as we know it.
The RSC is offering a £1m bounty to anyone that can provide evidence of something—anything—that is “100% chemical free”.
Dr Neville Reed, a director of the RSC, said today: “I’d be happy to give a million pounds to the first member of the public who could place in my hands any material I consider 100% chemical free.
Finally, someone standing up to the purveyors of woo and their fantastic1 claims.
- in the original sense [↩]
Prawn again
Note: this post was originally written in January 2007 and for some reason was held as a draft (I seem not to have noticed…)
MediaWatchWatch has an article about how the ASA has ruled that an ad placed in a grocer’s magazine featuring a prawn in a manger with the tagline ‘A KING IS BORN’ ORDER NOW TO ENSURE A CHRISTMAS DELIVERY
didn’t breach the CAP code.
Read the full ASA adjudication.
While this is, on the face of it, rather amusing, one might note that there is a larger issue here in that the CAP code lists ‘religion’ as a reason that complainants can cite for offence caused.
For the sake of argument, if we consider religion homologous with, say, a political viewpoint, we could rewrite the code thus:
5.1 Marketing communications should contain nothing that is likely to cause serious or widespread offence. Particular care should be taken to avoid causing offence on the grounds of race, political viewpoint, sex, sexual orientation or disability. Compliance with the Code will be judged on the context, medium, audience, product and prevailing standards of decency.
Now, that just seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? Political parties have been slagging each other off for years, but nobody seems to mind the odd ad hominem when it’s directed at the ideas of someone who spends most of their day sitting on an uncomfortable-looking bench in the House of Commons.
We could similarly assume that religion is comparable to other ideas — ideas like mythology — like Odin or Zeus or Santa (for which there is just as much evidence). We could then say:
5.1 Marketing communications should contain nothing that is likely to cause serious or widespread offence. Particular care should be taken to avoid causing offence on the grounds of race, mythology, sex, sexual orientation or disability. Compliance with the Code will be judged on the context, medium, audience, product and prevailing standards of decency.
This also seems ridiculous. However, because there are lots and lots of people who have the same mythical ideas (even though most of them don’t agree on the details) they’re afforded protection in law from criticism and lampoonery. Why does religion get this special treatment? It’s the only element in that list that’s based squarely in the realm of thought and ideas, yet is taboo in our culture. Any other form of ideas are open to ridicule, but not religion.
It seems ironic that the (allegedly) most powerful being ever requires protection from, at the very most, name-calling.
-
Twitter
nullifidian @athinkingman: well, if they want a "war on christmas"... ;-)
-
Feeds
-
Readers
-
Recent Comments
-
Recent Posts
- Happy appropriated pagan holiday!
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- What “secular” means (redux)
- Oh No! Six random things meme
- WordPress 2.7 upgrade
- Checklist
- It’s *still* a fucking cracker, or how some catholics are just fucking arseholes
- A review (not mine) of the Alpha Course
- Another quote of the day
- Quote of the day
-
Tags
- advertising
- anti-science
- argument
- atheism
- bad argument
- BBC
- BBC News
- bible
- bigotry
- bishop
- blasphemy
- blog
- books
- cartoon
- catholic
- Charles Darwin
- chart
- christian
- christianity
- Christian Voice
- Christopher Hitchens
- complete and utter stupidity
- creationism
- culture
- Edinburgh
- education
- employment
- entertainment
- evidence
- evolution
- evolution denial
- faith
- fallacy
- funny
- government
- healthcare
- history
- homophobia
- humanism
- humour
- image
- intelligent design
- islam
- Jerry Springer:The Opera
- Kent Hovind
- legal
- letters
- literalism
- London
- lying for Jesus
- magical thinking
- media
- medicine
- meetup
- Mohammed
- muslim
- news
- nullifidian.net
- offense
- opinion
- parody
- personal
- petition
- photo
- Photoshop
- politics
- question
- quote
- reality
- reality check
- reason
- religion
- respect
- response
- Richard Dawkins
- Sam Harris
- satire
- science
- Scotland
- scripture
- secularism
- special treatment
- Stephen "Dogshit" Green
- superstition
- taking the piss
- technology
- television
- The Guardian
- The Independent
- theocracy
- The Telegraph
- The Times
- thought
- UK
- USA
- video
- web
- wingnut
- woo
- wow
-
Archives
