Cross-posted to atheism

The latest video from Pat Condell makes use of typical Daily Mail prejudice. The topic? Not only that we should ban the burkha, but that women are doing an injustice to women's rights by failing to decry a woman's right to wear it. Pat Condell takes up the mantle of liberator of women both now and in the ever-precious future through his insistence that we demand that it be illegal to wear it.

Pat Condell is the so-called "comedian" who is often found advertised on Richard Dawkins' website. I've actually known people to be surprised to hear that he isn't a celebrity here in Britain. He's gained a following amongst atheists who fancy a laugh at the expense of uptight religious fanatics. Unfortunately he's not anything like in the same league as John Safran or as subtle (yes, I'm serious).

Perhaps the oddest thing about Pat's video is his claim that the problem is women deciding to disguise themselves. If we were sure that women only ever wore the burkha through their own free will rather than being pressured into doing so by oppressive patriarchy then I don't quite see how it would be a problem (and I certainly cannot see how it would be the women's fault). As for the idea that is mentioned later that the burkha should not be allowed to be worn in banks, I've never heard anything so ridiculous. As Pat is keen to remind us, wearing the burkha is like wearing "a mobile tent". Now imagine a bank robber trying to make a getaway carrying their bag of swag while wearing it. They'd be lucky not to fall straight onto their (covered) face.

Worrying too is Pat's use of emphasis for effect. It often seems quite hostile, but more importantly it can give a very dodgy (and supposedly unintentional) meaning to his words:
"Some women" eh? So much for the feminist champion Pat claims to be later on in the video. If the whole point of this rant is to victimise some women suffering from neuroses, it doesn't fit with the supposedly noble cause Pat claims to be calling for by the end.

Apparently, according to Pat, a more healthy society where everyone is honest would not require this ban because everybody's reaction to unfamiliar styles of dress would be ridicule and condescension. Sadly, what he is describing is not far from the actual situation and it's only thanks to those of us with simple human decency that it isn't even more of an issue for Muslims in Britain.

If we were a more honest society, and therefore a more healthy society, there’d be no need to ban this ridiculous outfit because it would already have been ridiculed out of existence.

What the heck? I can't be the only person wondering how Pat's thought processes are working at this stage. He fully admits that there are Muslims for whom his argument is unreasonable and that there are enough of them to make them worth addressing. Yet for some reason his complete recognition that what he is posing is an unfair stereotype doesn't stop him from carrying on with it unashamedly.

Islam is responsible for the terrorist threat in the same way that Christianity is responsible for the death of Dr. Tiller. Yes, there's a link. No one is doubting that. But it's not a simple 1:1 relationship. Religions have a huge degree of internal diversity and even overlap with one another. Terms like "Christianity" and "Islam" bracket together similar kinds of religious devotion, however their expression will depend greatly on the culture and location in which you find them. Daniel Maguire is a Roman Catholic Christian and he strongly believes in his faith and the tradition of his Church. Nevertheless, he isn't going to condemn a man for performing abortions. Similarly just because someone follows the religion of Islam doesn't mean they're in favour of the burkah either. People's views about religion will differ. Nevertheless, plenty of people actually are talking about the burkha being a security threat. It's mentioned all over the place. What we could do with is a little more respect for the women who are actually wearing the damn thing and Pat does not feel inclined to contribute to this since it would conflict with the "healthy and honest" world he wants us to live in.

Pat has the audacity to claim that women who wear the burkha are condoning the oppression it is often used to achieve. That they are enablers. But what is Pat enabling? It wasn't so long ago that there was a big hoo hah over politician Jack Straw insisting that women uncover their faces when they speak to him. It was rightly pointed out in Straw's defence that he was not insisting that women do away with the burkha or nikab, but rather that within certain scenarios it might be necessary to remove it for pragmatic reasons. He certainly wasn't insisting that we forcibly unveil Muslim women, but unfortunately that was the sentiment that developed. This, it seems to me, is where the other side of the coin really comes into play. If you ban the burkha isn't this just another example of women having their rights limited by a patriarchal over-zealous authority? In the end shouldn't this be about choice. In Iran they have seen both sides of this coin, going from being forcibly unveiled to forcibly veiled and the debate today in Iran is much over personal freedom than this nonsensical issue in France of whether the burkha should be banned or not. (And let's not forget that in France there is a lot of racial tension in regards to those with Algerian roots which might influence the debate there.)

Pat also asks why feminists aren't talking about this. Clearly he hasn't bothered to look. Feminists are talking about this all over the place. Some will agree, some will disagree and most will recognise that the debate is far more complicated than he is making it out to be. In any case, Pat's criticism isn't really over silence but inaction. If we don't agree with Pat and actively campaign for the burkha to be banned we are morally culpable. It's at this point where my conspiracy theory alert starts ringing:


ZOMG THE MUSLIMS ARE TAKING OVER!

Seriously, allowing women the right to wear the burkha is not wearing down women's rights. We are still going to strongly criticise people being forced to wear clothing against their will and the chances of the burkha causing bad effects for anyone outside the religion of Islam is around about nil. There is an issue of the burkha being forced on Muslim women against their will and there is an issue of the burkha as a negative result of indoctrination. Nevertheless, to insist that this will have consequences for the daughters of 'western women' is pure shock tactics. This whole idea that Islamic ideas are going to take over the country and undermine our liberties is nonsense. The labour government is in a much better position to do that than any Muslim....


x-posted to atheist snark
x-posted to atheism
(sorry to those who subscribe to both. This must be getting really dull now.)

Okay, this is going to be a bit of a weird list because I am not the sort of person who generally likes horror movies. I don't really watch a movie on the basis of "how much is this going to freak me out?" As A.A. Gill once said,  I think of movies as my friends and I don't tend to look for friends who scare me.

It seems to me that movies like Aliens don't really count as horror. Alien might, but Aliens is much more of an action movie than a horror movie. As much as it might have freaked me out as a child, movies which involve blowing up monsters with guns need have a lot more suspense and a lot less gunfire to count as 'horror'.

As such the following will not be going on the list:

Aliens (1986)
John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)
Planet Terror (2007)
Versus (2000)
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
The Faculty (1998)

Nevertheless, a few movies on the list below are going to come as a surprise. That said, they shouldn't come as too much of a surprise as I'm going to explain why each movie is in the list. (Though if the surprise is that I think it's a good movie I'm afraid the only answer is going to be "yes, I have bad taste".) Those movies are one's which involve "real" horror. Now technically such a movie should be called a 'thriller', but I'm afraid I have trouble distinguishing the two sometimes (and not because of the famous music video from the late Michael Jackson).

Basically the reason I find thrillers and horror somewhat connected is, in a nutshell, the movie "From Dusk Til Dawn". The movie begins with George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino on the run from the police. Tarantino's character has busted Clooney's character out of prison and they are on their way to Mexico to start a new life. The problem is that while Clooney's character is a seasoned criminal, Tarantino's character is a complete psychopath and you are never quite sure what sh*t he is going to do next. That character really freaked me out and both he and Rodriguez (director of From Dusk Til Dawn and Planet Terror) felt no shame in admitting that Tarantino plays pretty much the exact same character in his cameo in Planet Terror. Now, I don't consider it a spoiler to say the following since I think it is only fair that anyone who watches the movie know this in advance, however if you don't want to know skip the next sentence in italics...
In Mexico they find themselves in a trucker bar which turns out to be filled with vampires.

From that point on the movie has thoroughly turned into a horror movie. Admittedly it's more of a horror movie in the sense of the action-horror which I am not including, but that's the whole point. The 'real' horror of the criminals on the run taking hostages and occasionally pumping people full of bullets along with a particularly sick and twisted psychopath amongst those holding the guns, is actually really scary. Much more scary, in fact, than some of the more typical 'horror' scenarios.

So without more ado, here is my list. Some quick points though:
1. I haven't seen the original "King Kong". I really must change that.
2. I haven't included "The Shining" for the simple reason that I think it is hugely overrated and I don't like it.
3. This post is actually inspired by my recent watching of a TV series called Apparitions, written and directed by the creator of the fantastic vampire tv series Ultraviolet. Apparitions is about a priest who performs exorcisms, though the writer is an atheist so the plot can take some pretty clever twists as a result. (Joss Whedon, Russell T. Davies, Garth Ennis, Seth McFarlane, Terry Prattchett, and now Joe Ahearne. So many awesome athiest writers making their atheist views a central part of their work. Okay perhaps we should scratches Davies from that list...) Sadly neither of these could be in the list because they aren't movies, but I felt the need to mention them anyway.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473705/

Sorry, but this is absurd. This is a remake of a fantastic British tv series starring Bill Nighy, John Simm, David Morrisey, Philip Glenister, James McAvoy, Kelly MacDonald, Polly Walker, Marc Warren and Benedict Wong. The TV series was a two-parter and was gripping from beginning to end. It simply could not be improved upon. Seemingly the most sensible option for a remake would be to re-shoot the whole thing with the same awesome actors and actresses and better quality camera work.

Actually, to be honest I heard about this a long time ago when the only cast member mentioned on the imdb page was Brad Pitt. I was somewhat concerned, but slightly intrigued. In the right film Brad Pitt can be pretty good and this seemed like the right kind of film for him. Later on it looked like the project had been abandoned. However, now it's back and apparently already released in cinemas I really have to ask: Who in the hell decided that it was a good idea to put Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck in the leading roles? Are they absolutely blooming crazy?

So anyway, let's just recap on things there.

British TV series (as I write this the imdb rating is 8.7):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362192/

( Summary of the cast... )

-- Yeah, the remake is so very doomed to be a dissapointment.

Here's a trailer for the original tv series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL9AMuVvqMI

Now check out the trailer for the movie remake:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH6SAvCD_kM

If you fancy it, look at this clip from the original tv series (don't worry about spoilers, it's all actually fairly early on in the story and it's actually being used by the BBC as an advert for the DVD):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-4U4AFLCmo

What do you think?

Y'know, I feel really silly quoting Family Guy as if it's profound or something, but this part really appealed to me:

Meg: "But Brian I just want you to feel the joy that I feel. I mean the Church makes me feel accepted and safe and part of something bigger than myself."

Brian: "But Meg, you don't need an outside voice to feel those feelings. They're inside of you. What you call God is inside you, in all of us. I just hate to see people hating and killing each other over their own interpretation of what they're not smart enough to understand."

(x-posted to atheism)

A lecturer at my old university (University of Nottingham) called Conor Cunningham is presenting a programme called "Did Darwin Kill God?" on BBC2 in the UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/darwin/?tab=20

Here's a link to an interview with him. (I discuss my own views on it further down):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/articles/2009/02/10/dr_conor_cunningham_darwin_feature.shtml

While I was at the university, Conor Cunningham did a course on Darwinism in the theology department. It actually seemed like a smart idea at the time since he was keen to note that intelligent design and creationism are both dodgy. Unfortunately he also has this strange idea that the majority of Christians never actually had a problem with evolution in the first place.

I'd first noticed that he had some odd ideas when he insisted during a seminar from an outside speaker that anthropology is not prepared to look at itself in the same way that it looks at other social conventions. He suggested that medicine, for example, was not looked at with the same rigour as religion. That night one of my mutually-geeky PhD anthropology friends was talking to me over a drink after the science fiction society meeting and explained that actually anthropology of medicine was a major topic. Considering that Conor Cunningham is the research assistant for John Milbank (leader of the very orthodox and not terribly radical movement in theology known as "Radical Orthodoxy") I was surprised that he wasn't better informed.

Anyway, having heard this podcast my respect for the man has slumped spectacularly. He says that most people who criticised evolution did not do so for religious reasons (heaven forbid!), but because of a threat to the legitimacy of the aristocracy. How does he come to that conclusion? Well, from the sounds of it he mainly just takes it for granted.

There's a much longer interview here. I'm not sure it improves his argument, though at least he's not a nutcase:
http://wirksworthii.nottingham.ac.uk/Podcasts/files/rmg/public/culture/conor.mp3
Oh wait, as it nears the 8 minute mark he refers to eugenics as "the social consequence of Darwinism" and apparently the only countries which never passed eugenic laws were "Catholic countries" (guess what Mr. Cunningham's religion is...). *groan!*

While previously all you could find were four short clips on youtube, the entirity of the finished 'Sita Sings The Blues' is now available here:
http://www.thirteen.org/sites/reel13/indies/indie-sita-sings-the-blues/241/

The actual animation doesn't start until about 6 minutes in. The story of Ramayana doesn't begin until 7 munutes and that's where it starts getting fun (though the intro does look damn shiny too).

As you can imagine from the title, the point of this animation is to emphasis Sita's part of the story, since she is normally seen as a bit player and rather undermined. 11 minutes in the awesome animation you might know from Youtube starts up. Oh my goodness it's so cool!

So anyway, I understand that this is only online for a limited time - so check it out now you fool!

Just looked at an interesting post where someone was claiming not to be a liberal. (I'm not interested in going into that since it's quite irrelevant to this post.) I've always had a problem with the term 'liberal' myself, especially in online conversations with more politically right-wing Americans who seem to use it as a term equivalent to 'scum'. The kinds of things they claim to be 'liberal' are often things which all three political parties in the UK would accept as common sense. Anyway, the point is that you need to know what you a term like 'liberal' means before you can affirm or deny holding to it.

This made me think about the whole atheism/agnosticism thingy.

( Yes, this is where you click to read the rest of my pointless rant. )

Especially Doctor Who ones - YAY!

Libby Purves from the Times has decided to have a rant on this and while there are many reasons to agree, her article doesn't touch on any of them:

"These perverted items have been around in the US since 1958 and in Britain from a decade later; but even 25 years ago they were not as universal as they are today: the Archbishop of Canterbury himself has casually said that “the Advent calendar means daily sweets and chocolates”. Now we see a few still being faintly religious yet calorific, and innumerable others offering chocolate Simpsons, Barbies, Star Wars, footballers, anything. Charities do them enthusiastically, and there are posh Belgian-choc ones for emotionally retarded adults.

"And they are all disgusting. Especially for small children, who are not yet corrupted into thinking that all wonder, all hope, all tradition and culture must be translated into cheap confectionery before it is worth having. Nothing against chocolate: it is the conflation with Advent that repels."

Oh dear Libby! Whatever will we do when religious events are being cheapened by chocolate. Hang on a minute! What blooming Christian festival isn't based around chocolate? What about Christmas ffs? Or how about *gasp* Easter?!?!!

Seriously, the argument that the meaning is taken out of religious festivals when you add chocolate to them, in the Christian tradition of all religious traditions, is wholly ludicrous!

And even if we look at other religions, let's take a glance at Sikhism where people are initiated by drinking Amrit (water with sugar dissolved in it) and regularly eat Karah Prahshad (a sugary food) at every service? For Sikhs the sweet food reminds them of the sweetness of God. Sweet foods are also a regular feature in Hinduism.

No, the argument against chocolate advent cards I would employ would be that it's very bad for young children to be given chocolate sweets every single day and, as Libby notes in her article, their are some obnoxious brats out there who are liable to ignore the tradition and scoff the lot. Certainly there are children who will open more than one door of the advent calendar, but they quickly learn that all the fun is gone if you open all the doors at once. Not so when your advent calendar is basically a sweetie tin within easy reach. So yes, you need to use a bit more discipline than normal to get children to respect the advent tradition and you might worry that it's a little unhealthy. But for some families it could still work in spite of this and who the hell is Libby to criticise?

Libby ends her article by saying:
I'd like to contrast this now with the words of a welsh minister:
Damn right! :)

Okay, I've just randomly run into this article by Giles Fraser, a vicar who writes for The Guardian and he has just revealed something which I had suspected but hadn't been sure on until now.

Several months ago, I was working in a Register Office. There I discovered that there is a strict ban, not only within civil marriages but the building as a whole, on anything religious. The whole area is strictly secular. I found myself wondering what the point of this was, since surely the British Humanist Association hadn't campaigned for this and why would anyone want to limit the freedom of expression within non-religious marriages?

The actual rule is as follows:
"The law will not permit the use of any wording, readings or music which may have religious connotations at a civil marriage."

( Read more... )

Yes, we are all very bored with this now, I know.

In any case, to read in your own time here are some interesting comments about the odd one-sidedness to the criticism in this election.

First an article by Tim Wise on "white privilege". If you haven't read it CHECK IT OUT NOW as it is a very interesting and compelling piece of writing:
http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege-updated

On the other hand, here's an article about the more specific issue of anti-semitism:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/sep/26/sarah.palin.religion.jews

I don't think any commentary on these articles is really necessary. Like I said before, I really don't understand the trends in American politics whereby this kind of inconsistency appears to go unnoticed...

A new article from Mark Lawson on recent events related to science and religion, but he really hasn't done his homework....

"The possibility of an afterlife may now be proved by looking down towards the ground. Doctors at Southampton University are placing pictures in resuscitation areas that can only be seen from the ceiling."

Yeah, except that the people running the research project are actually not expecting any such proof to come out of these tests:

"It is unlikely that we will find many cases where this happens, but we have to be open-minded.

"And if no one sees the pictures, it shows these experiences are illusions or false memories.

"This is a mystery that we can now subject to scientific study."

( More nonsense below the cut... )

Jennifer Howze in The Times explains that there is a simple explanation for opposition to sex education:

It seems obvious to me. What so-called family campaigners' want to teach children about their bodies and sex is shame. Shame explains the thinking that there's something inappropriate and "wrong" for a child to know the correct word to describe a part of their body. That knowing the correct words indoctrinates an attitude of free and easy sexuality. That it sullies their pure souls to know how babies are made and to explain what they can see the cow and the bull doing in the field.

A few years ago I wrote a piece for Seventeen magazine called Vagina 101 that answered the real questions young girls had about their bodies: what should I look like? Should I shave my hair? What's a clitoris and where is it?

It was refreshing to interview highly respected doctors who robustly argued that girls and parents should get over their phobias. "The vagina is no different from an ear or a nostril. It's just a place that's part of us," one said.

The piece won an award, but one chain of grocery stores pulled it from the shelves. Some parents had complained about the "graphic" nature of the medical illustrations and descriptions. They likened it to pornography. One mother of a 17-year-old told a local reporter, "It's dirty. It's dirty."

http://timesonline.typepad.com/alphamummy/2008/09/sex-education-s.html

 ( More absurdity under the cut... )

Quick note before I begin. Shoxore, you should really watch the vid below!

Okay, I was just reading Pharyngula's blog and, for once, the blog entry wasn't about religion, atheism, or biology. Instead he was talking about police tactics against protesters in Minneapolis. The main focus of the article was on the arrest of peace-activist Amy Goodman for conspiracy to incite a riot.

Click here to read Pharyngula's article:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/09/thugs_at_work.php

The thing which really surprised and shocked me, however, was this video of a protester holding a flower. Watch what happens:




Yuck!

A long time ago I listened to an mp3 of a radio programme about Radical Orthodoxy. The highly verbose and well-researched lecturer John Milbank had arrived at the university just as I was considering taking a masters there and all the seminars with visiting speakers during my MA course seemed to have this odd new theology movement hanging over them. I had always been very annoyed by the way the clearly intelligent lecturers seemed to keep making reference to this movement and making highly counter-intuitive assertions I felt I had no right to contest. So I decided, even having finished my masters, to take advantage of the opportunity of hearing a bite-sized view of Radical Orthodoxy meant for ordinary radio listeners.

All I knew so far was that:
(i) Radical Orthodoxy considers modern secular society to be overrun with nihilism and seemingly blamed this on the lack of religious belief.
(ii) It felt the need to consider Christianity from a pre-modern perspective (using post-modern philosophy as a justification for this).
(iii) John Milbank appears to hold a socialist political stance.
(iv) The movement opposes both secularism and theological liberalism.

Anyway after a very dull radio programme I eventually found this definition of 'transcendence' voiced and claimed to be the main idea of what modern society is missing. Transcendence also seemed like a pretty sketchy term at the best of times, but this is really completely incomprehensible. This is actually stated by the Radical Orthodoxy proponent Catherine Pickstock:

"Transcendence is a word to describe the reality which is beyond all categories. It's beyond all dichotomies. Beyond all understanding of 'thing' which we have. So, for example, where we see a thing as having boundaries, as having a place, as having a certain kind of temporality, transcendence is beyond all of those things. It's beyond here and there, near and far, limit and unlimitedness.

"Transcendence is simply beyond every definition. Which isn't to say it's formless, or like a big mess. It is unity itself, but unity conceived of as beyond being. I think 'beyond being' is perhaps the most useful way of thinking of it, although one could also say, as Plato said of the good, that it's unsayable. It simply can't be reached in words.

"So if you think of reality as a kind of hierarchy for a moment and you put transcendence at the top of the hierarchy; and you have on the lower rungs of the hierachy all forms of reality right down to ants and ants' legs and so forth. Although transcendence, according to this picture, is right at the top, equally it is just as present to the ants' legs as it is to the angels and priests and the bishops and so forth. It's both at the top and at the bottom. There simply isn't a place where transcendence cannot be, because it is transcendent; it is beyond all limit, and yet works in and through every limit that we have."

If you want to see if that makes any more sense in the context of the radio programme the link is here:
http://www.theologyphilosophycentre.co.uk/docs/mp3/ideas_20070604_2421.mp3

Personally, I've never heard so much rubbish in all my life.

John Milbank also claims that if priests cannot give an account of angels as real beings they shouldn't be ordained. Oh dear.....

This monk was converted to Heavy Metal by a Metallica gig. He's a fully believing Roman Catholic, but he doesn't see his gigs as a means of converting people to Christianity, but simply "converting them to life". Also, he's not afraid of using the metal horns.

I have to say, this stuff sounds really really good! :)



( Another vid after cut )