Da eish*

Generals gathered in their masses,
Just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
Sorcerer of death’s construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
As the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
Poisoning their brainwashed minds.
Oh lord yeah!

Not exactly the kind of way to kick off the week, but the world’s pretty messed up 24/7, so what the hell.

And one of the biggest contributors in recent years to this messed-up world is ISIS. Otherwise known as Daesh. It sounds so innocuous doesn’t it, but can mean anything from “trample down and crush,” to “a bigot who imposes his view on others.”

It’s being reported today that Daesh have blown up the ancient temple of Baal Shamin in Palmyra, Syria. This temple had been standing mostly intact since 17AD, until these cretins came along to wage their religious war on mankind. Just last week, these retarded bastards beheaded the 82-year-old retired chief archaeologist of Palmyra, who apparently refused to cooperate with them.

Many newspapers report that ISIS/Daesh follow or practice a harsh version of Islam, but I don’t buy that. There is only one version of every religion, which unfortunately has been perverted over time by idiots like these. Off course religion generally, does not help its cause by being so bloody ambiguous. Which to my mind is one of the clearest signs that the whole thing is just man-made.

As far as the song is concerned: Black Sabbath may have composed War Pigs as an anti-war song, but it works well as an anti-ideology song too. And ISIS propagate a religious ideology that’s about as ghastly as it can get.

*eish. A South African word originating from the Xhosa language to express exasperation or disbelief.

Power, freedom and other less-noteworthy stuff

The power utility Eskom, had a further mishap at one of their plants yesterday which resulted in a blackout that lasted nearly four hours where I live. That was time in which I meant to download all the photographs from the two cameras I had taken on my recent road trip around the country.

Luckily it was only four hours, which meant I could catch up on the latest news following the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris by what is believed to be Muslim fundamentalists. Looking around the interwebs, it is disconcerting to note the scale of hatred being directed at ordinary Muslims and Islam. This is pretty unfair as they are as much victims as the rest of us. The whole of Islam cannot be blamed for the misguided actions of a minority of fundamentalist idiots.

I managed to get in a post yesterday which was meant to show my solidarity with the victims and also my stance on freedom of speech which should of course be inviolable. It must be recognized that yesterday’s outrageous attack on Charlie Hebdo, was an attack on our freedoms.

On to other less important things…

I’m back at work and it sucks after such a long vacation. This week has been draining. It seems as if there was a conspiracy to hold back completion of all projects for me to return and take care of them.

Today I managed to download all my photos and will start cropping etc. The one above is one of them taken while driving, as we descended from the majestic Karoo down to the Eastern coastline of George.

I hope to start posting some of them here soon. Until then…

Write For Rights – Free Raif Badawi

Saudi Arabia may have lots of oil and sand, but is seriously lacking in humanity.

Life is fleeting and precious, so it should be an imperative for humans to look out for each other. But religious madness more often than not demands that the poorly interpreted decrees of an invisible deity be held in higher reverence than human well-being and life itself. Such is life under Saudi Sharia law.

Raif Badawi, A Saudi national was sentenced in May to 10 years in prison and a thousand lashes. His crime – “daring to create a public forum for discussion and peacefully exercising the right to freedom of expression.” And according to the authorities, he is guilty of one other crime, one that is considered – no declared – an act of terrorism in Saudi Arabia; he is an atheist.

Badawi started a website writing blogs that called for religious tolerance and women’s rights. However the kingdom, no doubt spurred on by demented fundamentalist religious leaders hell-bent on perpetuating the inhuman Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam, declared this act (one all rational people would call noble) to be insulting to Islam.

As part of a campaign to raise awareness about the gross human rights violations perpetrated by despotic rulers (no doubt religion is a very useful tool), which includes a petition to free Badawi, Amnesty International released this moving clip of his daughter writing to him in prison.

For further reading on the despicable system of justice in Saudi Arabia, look no further than Wikipedia.

An Apostates Experience

I seem to have caught the tail end of a new phenomenon sweeping the world right now –  people who have left or disowned their religions are posting their reasons on Twitter. It’s been tagged as #AnApostatesExperience.

Apostasy – a defection or revolt is the formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person. One who commits apostasy (or who apostatizes) is known as an apostate.

Apostasy is not necessarily confined to the abandonment of the worship of deities; it could also apply to political beliefs or any form of ideology or ideological belief. While all these forms of disaffiliation is extremely desirable and to be commended, religious apostasy seems to cause the most consternation, with certain faiths (well one in particular) disturbingly outlawing such a practice, on pain of death in some parts of the world.

When I visited the #AnApostatesExperience Twitter page, I realised that most if not all the posts were in reference to Islam. That’s not surprising because when you hear the term apostate, it’s usually with reference to the Islamic faith. People of other faiths have been leaving entirely or converting to other religions for thousands of years, and it does not so much as raise an eyebrow (these days at any rate).

I abandoned my faith many years ago, and ever since have been abandoning one form of belief or the other as evidence surfaces to prove what a load of claptrap it was. I have never been threatened with death; ridiculed and questioned yes, but there was never a hint of a threat. Why does this have to be the case with religion? Why do the apologists for religion demand special attention?

Religion thrives on fear, and that is probably the worst of its many failings. Hence I encourage all my fellow apostates to abandon without fear but with pride.

The Debate That Wasn’t

Easing into Sunday evening watching a debate found accidentally on YouTube, has left me with some things to carp about.

I am posting the YouTube video here, so if you’ve got two hours to throw away, knock yourself out. The debate was between well-known cosmologist Professor Lawrence Krauss and Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, who is styled as an author, lecturer and intellectual activist. The topic of debate was Islam or Atheism – Which Makes More Sense?

Need I point out who represented what point of view?

The points raised on both sides during the debate were not that important – I, and I’m sure those of you who listen to these kinds of debates will have heard them before in some form or the other. What really sustained my attention for two hours was the manner in which the debate was conducted, some of the strategies used, the seeming inability of the adjudicator Timothy Yusuf Chambers (a former Irish Catholic priest, converted to Islam) to affect any sort of control over the two protagonists, and an amusing event involving an outraged Muslim woman during the Q&A session, which I’ll come back to later.

While Hamza Tzortzis came clearly prepared with a lengthy written opening remark which he was at pains to point out was based on deductive logic, it was absolute rubbish. No doubt Lawrence thought so too and made it quite plain in his opening address. Deductive logic is all well and good, but if your conclusions are based on faulty premises, then it’s all just bullshit.

Professor Krauss on the other hand just winged his way through his opening statement, and chose to engage frequently with Tzortzis in and off the cuff manner. There was something I found disturbing about this though; Krauss often came across as rude, near-insulting and somewhat arrogant. But everything he said, made sense and was scientifically correct. To his credit, Tzortzis in the face of this onslaught of scientific reasoning tinged with rudeness, held it together remarkably well.

Krauss’s approach to the debate was of importance, and he even clarified that he preferred discourse to the strict and limiting formal debate format. The term he used was “chat,”  because he explained that it allows more room for people to explore, and gain knowledge, rather than just throwing rigid ideas at each other. There is much merit in this.

After watching this and other debates, it has dawned on me how debate about such opposing ideas as atheism and religion have improved over the years. It used to be that religious apologists would simply quote from religious text and other dogmatic theological literature and demand that it be accepted as unadulterated truth. And it used to be that simply asserting things without having to provide proof or evidence was common. Now, apologists prepare more thoroughly using logic and even science. Alas, logic and science used incorrectly, even disingenuously, will never trump the scientific method.

And now we come to that amusing incident. During the Q&A session a clearly irate, albeit foolish woman decided to use the opportunity to complain about some guy who had entered the debate late, and decided to sit at the rear of the hall next to a group of girls of which the complainant was a member. She was quite adamant that her values as a Muslim woman was violated by this latecomer who according to her, should have chosen to sit elsewhere with other men, because she had clearly distanced herself from the men in the audience as was required of her belief system.

Krauss pointed out quite nonchalantly that the debate was clearly advertised as a non-segregated event, and she should have chosen to watch the debate on YouTube, rather than demand deference to her quaint beliefs.

Quite so, Professor Krauss, quite so.

And so who was the winner? I’ll leave you to decide, but for me, science always wins.

New Year already tainted by religious madness

We’re barely into the second week of 2013 and already people who are inspired by religion (men usually) are showing how utterly insane it all is.

A mayor from Aceh, Indonesia is proposing a ban on women straddling bicycles and motorcycles when riding pillion. The idiot from Lhokseumawe by the name of Suaidi Yahya believes that it will save [*cough] the virtue of women and prevent them from breaking Islamic Sharia law [*grrrrrr]. This asshole still thinks that woman are “delicate creatures,” and require protection from the men, religious one’s off course.

In 2009, the neanderthals from Aceh also banned woman from wearing jeans and tight trousers. What a bunch of silly tossers, defending archaic religious laws pulled out their ass by other silly tossers.

Staying on this silly side of the world, another religiously inspired cretin, a self-styled Indian guru from India caused an uproar when he made a statement partly blaming the young female student who was gang-raped, for the atrocious incident. The imbecilic guru who goes by the name of Bapu, believes that the drunken bastards who raped this woman, would not have gone through with it, if the woman had begged for mercy and pleaded with god [*Bapu’s personal flavour of god no doubt] for help.

If that is not the most patriarchal, misogynist, religiously vile claptrap I have ever heard, I don’t know what is. Bapu should be put on trial with rest of the male scum who perpetrated this vile act on the woman, who eventually succumbed to the horrendous wounds she received.

And while the murderous madness involving religious groups continues in Africa with the Malian Ansar Dine, the Nigerian Boko Haram, and al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab and Ansar al-Sharia of Somalia, there was a faint glimmer of hope from Cameroon, with the release of two men who spent a year in jail after being convicted of homosexuality. Apparently they were convicted on appalling evidence: they were seen wearing women’s clothes and make-up.

Yeah, only someone inspired by antiquated religious texts could condemn another human being for something so utterly trivial.

I wonder what these pious prats have in store for us for the rest of the year.

Utterly disgusting, especially as it seems that the common denominator in these attacks on women, is religious fundamentalism.

Abaya urrrrgghhh!

It was pretty hot today. The climate control in my car was at full tilt.  It was therefore a little disconcerting, gazing in my rear-view mirror at two women in those black tent-like outfits, riding in an older-model car that obviously did not have the same comforts.

I could not tell if they were comfortable or happy; all I could see were their eyes through a rectangular slit cut in the headdress which formed part of the ensemble known as an abaya, traditionally worn by Moslem women.

I resisted thinking about what they had on underneath and failed. I hope it was nothing because perhaps that would have made them slightly less hot. I really don’t know; I have never tried wearing a shapeless tent-like outfit before.

At this point, I know there will be those who will accuse me of being disrespectful towards the Islamic religion. Well…. I’m being no more insolent towards Islam, than I’m towards every other religion; I have the same loathing for all religions. Don’t take it personally.

This is not about your religion; well not entirely. It’s about the women who are affected by it. Maybe I’m presumptuous, but I can’t imagine any women willingly dressing up in tent-like outfits on a hot day. I’m not saying it does not have practical applications in some parts of the world; it just seems so impractical and silly on a hot day in this part of the world.

Women would have to be absolutely terrified of the maker of such a dehumanizing religious law, not to mention the cruel earthly guardians self-appointed to enforce it. That would be about the only reason for dressing up like that, apart from dementia and a bad case of self-loathing.

Women’s beauty is meant to be shown off and celebrated. It’s meant to be enjoyed by both men and women alike. I just can’t abide any archaic law that prevents me from savouring the beauty and form that makes up a women.

Women have a right to live with freedom and dignity. She should not tolerate any god or man who would take that away from her, lest she be prepared to live in mental and physical slavery for the rest of her life.

Kosher nail polish and lascivious Barbie dolls

Image via Wikipedia

Two online articles left me in stitches this afternoon, both of which point to the sheer absurdity of clerical interference in religion.

I don’t need to convince you that religion on its own can be amazingly daft in its prescriptions to mankind, but clerical interpretations over the centuries, and the concomitant add-on’s from them pushes them [religions] to lethally farcical limits. It also leaves non-believers pulling their hair out, despairing for the future of the human race.

The first post was about plain old nail polish. Up to now I thought they only came in different colours and made women’s fingers and toes look weird. I had no idea they came in halaal [kosher] and illicit [non-kosher] varieties too. I also had no idea that Muslim women were not allowed to adorn the non-kosher kind because it prevents water from touching the actual finger nail. It seems that this is a requirement before engaging in prayer. Should a Muslim women put on non-halaal nail polish, it would force her to use a removing agent, and then re-apply the varnish up to five times a day, to engage in the other requirement of this faith.

That’s all well and good, but I don’t for one minute believe that the Islamic faith has such a requirement. There’s ample reason to believe however, that a patriarchal shit-for-brains cleric introduced these requirements at some point in time during the often violent history of the Islamic faith. I really can’t imagine a god requiring water to touch your nails before you worshipped his tyrannical ass. That would be far too perverse, even for a god.

Image via Wikipedia

In the second post, the interference and dumb-fuckery of religious clerics is plainly stated. In Iran [quite possibly in other fascist Islamic countries too], the common Barbie doll is considered a destructive social and cultural influence and is banned. The only permitted dolls for children are supposed to be drab chunks of plastic, kitted out in “loose-fitting” clothing that covers it from head to toe. Exposed plastic would be an insult to the gods, if not to the retarded religious fuck’s who make up these asinine rules. They’re expecting their children to believe that every girl in the decadent West grows up to become a murderous slut.

Can you imagine a god who would prefer a young girl to have an AK47 instead of a Barbie doll? The clerics can. That’s why they make up this ridiculous shit.

Who’s to say that the clerics in Iran won’t start compelling young girls to paint only halaal nail polish on their dorky dolls in future?

The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions: A Secular History of the “One True Faiths” by William Hopper

Right off the bat, this book is not a scholarly work on comparative religion; not by a long shot. It was never meant to be such. If you’re looking for a serious [and quite frankly, tedious] history of the world’s major religions, look elsewhere.

The light-hearted, often highly hilarious approach to the heavy subject matter earns this book my recommendation. Even the sub-title is ingenious.

As I mentioned earlier, the book is pretty hilarious, especially the treatment of Judaism and Christianity. Be warned though, that some of the humour will offend, maybe not the atheists [who no doubt will find a great deal to enthuse over], but those who still harbour delusions about religion, and off course the mother grundies.

I was a tad disappointed though that Hopper did not give Islam in particular, a good what-for, but tended to approach it with a good deal of circumspection. To be fair to him though, he did declare upfront that he did not have the budget for personal protection that author Salman Rushdie has at his disposal. And to be fairer still, perhaps this declaration in itself tells us all we need to know about the religion of Islam.

I also felt that he rushed through the history of Hinduism and Buddhism, but again, to be honest, I really did not want to read too deeply about the 330 million gods of Hinduism and the non-religious status of Buddhism.

Overall though, the book presents enough information to satisfy both the casual reader and those curious about the other major religions, enough crude humour for the atheist, and a lot to think about for the religious.

My favorite passages from the book:

In the beginning, we humans lived in the wild and ate whatever was slower or stupider than we were. At this time, we invented a thing called a “god.” The god was made from the mightiest elements mankind could see: fire, thunder, lightning… all the big scary stuff we didn’t understand but knew was powerful.

Abraham did indeed have seven sons. At least that’s what his wife Sarah, told him. The fact that he was way too old to be fathering children at the time didn’t seem to hinder him. I figure he was either naive as hell about his wife’s activities or he had something in his diet that the Ovaltine people would love to get their hands on.

The thing is, the Ark’s not lost. Never has been. About the only people who ever thought it lost were those that only looked to the Bible for information, ignoring the fact that there’s a whole planet full of books out there that also recorded history.

The idea of kosher foods had existed before this, but Jabna was where the Rabbis set it in stone and made for damned sure that every generation of Jews from then to now were subjected to boiled dough and potato pancakes. (it’s amazing what people will eat when you tell them it’ll get them into Heaven.)

History shows quite clearly that wealth sustains a people a hell of a lot better than a god does. The Intifida.

So, for those Christian readers who have not yet thrown this book into the garbage, here we go: the Gospel According to Will. The absolutely non-authoritative, non-inspired account of the life of JC. (Gospel, by the way, is Greek for “good news.” The original gospels were the “good news” given by the disciples to the Christians in places like Rome, Carthage, etc. My gospel is good news too. It’s just not good news for the Christians.)

And the power of Yahweh did go into her and did make her pregnant outside of wedlock. Her fiancée at the time did see this and did think “She did screw around on me, the stupid little trollop.” But then an angel of God did come to him, saying “Joseph, don’t worry about it. It was God who made her pregnant.” And Joseph accepted this, thinking “Oh great, I get to marry this women and for the rest of our lives I have to live with the fact that her first lover was Yahweh. Even if I do really well in bed and I think she’s really enjoying it, she’s going to be screaming “Oh God, Oh God! and I’ll never know if it’s me of Him that she’s yelling about.”

Martin Luther was born in 1483. He graduated from Erfurt University in 1505 with both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree. He had no major, and his education ran the gamut of courses: math, philosophy, languages, that sort of thing. He was raised, like the rest of Europe at the time, as a good Catholic. This meant he never saw the Bible.

Now, as near as we can figure, these original Indus Valley folks were an easy-going lot that farmed and honored all things. They weren’t war-like, and had no ideas of conquest or domination. Instead, they lived quiet lives that genuinely reflected a willingness to get along and care for the people and land around them. Naturally then, they were slaughtered mercilessly and wiped off the face of the Earth.

Here we get around to the Bhagavad Gita. It’s a really long, drawn out poetic epic that I highly recommend you never read. The plot sucks and frankly so do the characters, Krishna included.

The Dali Lama was born in Tibet. And China. And Korea. Before that he was born in India and, some think, Atlantis. The guy gets around.

In the end, despite the books flaws, I enjoyed it so much so that I’m going to get Hopper’s other book in this series “The Heathen’s Guide to Christmas,” just in time for the silly season.