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Alternative Thought for the Day |
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"The
so-called New Atheists are responding to a
provocation, not mounting an arbitrary and
uncalled-for attack. Instead of turning a politely
blind eye to religion as we all did until recently
(when those with religion had the good taste, mainly,
to keep quiet about it in return), we have chosen to
speak out against the absurdities, distortions and
even dangers that the presence of religion in our
societies cause. For nearly twenty centuries the
religionists have had it their way: what a squealing
they put up now that half a dozen "New Atheists" have
argued back" |
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Who Loves Designer Vaginas? Science and nature are mocking America's fickle God. Please, no screaming. Mark Morford SF Gate Columnist Wed June 20, 2007 What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about the fact that Mother Nature once again appears to be thwarting and mocking and then grinning like a wicked divine trickster at every cute rigid godly idea of how humans and animals are supposed to move and hump and lick and behave, as loosely and, yes, rather bitterly delineated in the Bible and by the Bush administration and Focus on the Family and every other uptight sexually confounded person you have ever known, et al. and ad nauseam? What, furthermore, are you gonna do about human knowledge? About how science insists on marching hell-bent forward with such astonishing speed and with such incredible dexterity toward some glorious otherworldly nightmare dreamscape of anima manipulation, a land where we can effortlessly rescramble our genetic code and reconfigure this none-too-solid flesh as we "play God" in so many bewildering ways the Christian right can't even figure out where to aim its hollow, horrified indignation? Here is the thing you must know: It is all changing with incredible, butt-tingling speed. It is all fast becoming more than we ever imagined, with ramifications we are only beginning to fully taste. There is no stopping it. There is little that can slow it down. There is only the single, looming question: How will you respond? Will you recoil and gag and spit, or will you gurgle and swallow and smile? Example: We are on the cusp of being able choose, should you so desire, the exact size and length and speed and eye color and specific pleasing fur markings of ... your dog. And your cat. And your baby (well, minus the fur). And by the way, we have also invented new drugs to eliminate menstruation and we can now grow designer vaginas in the lab and plastic surgery is more common than bad sacrum tattoos and it's becoming increasingly obvious that males of many species -- including our own -- are largely unnecessary for procreation (but not, say, parallel parking, the lifting of heavy things or buying you a nice postcoital breakfast). Fascinating, that last thing. Have you heard? Scientists are discovering more and more creatures, from sharks to bees to ants to turkeys to Komodo dragons to turtles to sea bass, that can reproduce via parthenogenesis (i.e., virgin birth; i.e., no father) either by actually switching sexes so as to fertilize themselves, or via storing sperm for years for later use, or because they're hermaphrodites, or by way of undertaking all manner of clever unholy gender trickery so as to circumvent their own extinction and confound creationists and ensure that all humans everywhere will continue to look around and blink furiously and go, Wait wait wait, didn't we have some of this figured out already? What the hell happened? Wait, did I say designer vaginas? Indeed I did. Doctors can now grow new vaginal tissue in a lab, from the original stem cells, for eventual replanting (not to be confused with the hot trend in cosmetic vaginoplasty, by the way, which is an entirely different fascination and has to do with reshaping the labia for improved aesthetics and, you know, functionality. God bless America). Fabulous news for victims of birth defects and cancer and rare vaginal disorders? You bet. Intriguing implications for all sorts of cosmetic applications, not to mention what it might mean for transsexuals, not to mention how close we are to doing the same thing with other organs -- and even, eventually, entire limbs? One guess. It is, we can all agree, a lot to take in. It is a great deal to attempt to process in one tiny and oh-so-fleeting lifetime. The notion of human eugenics alone is, for many, overwhelming enough, the idea that new parents will soon have some sort of checklist at the gynecologist's office wherein, when docs go in to tweak your fetus' DNA to eliminate diseases, you can also easily choose not only its sex, but also the skin tone and hair color and eye tint and muscle dexterity and 0-60 acceleration and number of cupholders and overall genetic propensity toward an IQ that may or may not lead to voting for aw-shucks warmongering neocon imbecile politicians. Neat! Or, you know, not. They are, quite obviously, the sort of advances that open so many cans of ethical and spiritual worms it shakes us to the very core of what we believe, of who we think we are and where we fit in and What It All Means. You know, the good questions. At the same time, it's really nothing new. It's little different than previous periods of explosive growth in human knowledge that both titillated and terrified the populace, such as, say, when Galileo pointed out (much to the church's quivering rage) that not only is man's little spinning blue spaceship not at the center of the universe, but we're actually so far out on the fringes, so minute and insignificant in our Copernican swirlings that we're really nothing more than a wisp of belly-button lint in the giant laundry hamper of the gods. Talk about your existential angst. Hence, religion. This (at least partially) explains why so many are so eager to cling to religious dogma, to some sort of immovable, reliable framework of understanding, something that can help make sense of it all, even if making sense of it all involves shutting off your brain and killing your divine intuition and soaking up giant gobs of blind faith so you don't have to actually swim in those bloody murky confusing pools of ethics and meaning and actually thinking for yourself. Mmm, numb groupthink. It's what's for dinner. There are only two real options. One is to hold tight to the leaky life raft of inflexible ideology (hello, organized religion), to rules and laws and codes of conduct written by the fearful, for the fearful, to live in constant low-level dread of all the extraordinary changes and radical rethinkings of what it means to be human or animal or male or female or hetero or homo or any other swell little label you thought was solid and trustworthy but which is increasingly proven to be blurry and unpredictable and just a little dangerous. There is another option. You can choose nimbleness, lightness, a sly and knowing grin to go with your wine and your vibrator and your never-ending thirst for more and deeper information. It's possible. You can refuse to let your brain, your soul lock down into one way of looking at the world as you see all the science and genetic manipulation and designer vaginas, all the insane, incredible possibility as merely more evidence that we are, in the end, just one big karmic science experiment. Is this latter choice frustrating and brutally difficult and will it challenge every notion of self you hold dear? Hell yes. Is it the only way to enjoy this bizarre circus of a planet without grabbing a gun and cowering in the corner with your homophobia and your flag and your Army of Christ brochure, dead certain the terrorists and gays and hippies are coming to eat your soul for breakfast? Well, probably. Because, baby, the changes are coming, harder and faster than ever, with all sorts of juicy, terrifying, delightful implications. Really now, what are you gonna do about it? |
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What religion and the religious fear
most of all is ridicule because what they believe is absurd. Deep down they
all know that. We give far too much credence to 'the mirthless cretins of
jihad'. Much better to point and laugh at all such fundamentalists of
whatever creed. They feed and thrive on our pusillanimous silence and
respect for their beliefs |
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Do Christians, Jews and Muslims imagine
that before Moses received the Ten Commandments, he thought murder and theft
were good ideas? |
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"Secularism
is the constitutional brick and mortar for free religious expression, not
its downfall, |
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KNOW THYSELF (An Agnostic on Mortality) |
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| Faith's last gasp Despite superficial appearances of a resurgence in religious belief, we are actually witnessing the death throes of faith by AC Grayling (professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London) Prospect Magazine Nov 2006 On the basis of apparently incontrovertible evidence, commentators of various persuasions, among them Eric Kaufmann in the last issue of Prospect, John Gray, writing recently in the New Statesman, and Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege (Doubleday) are convinced that we are witnessing an upsurge in religious observance and influence. Kaufmann relies on the weak argument that demographic trends will turn Europe into a predominantly religious place, John Gray seems to hope that this will be so, and Damon Linker is convinced that a theocon conspiracy has so successfully captured Washington that the US has become a de facto theocracythe home of faith-based politics, faith-based science (creationism), faith-based medicine ("pro-life"), faith-based foreign policy (conducting jihad for American/Baptist values) and faith-based attacks on civil liberties. Add this to the all too obvious fact of political IslamIslamismand the case seems made. But I see the same evidence as yielding the opposite conclusion. What we are witnessing is not the resurgence of religion, but its death throes. Two considerations support this claim. One is that there are close and instructive historical precedents for what is happening now. The second comes from an analysis of the nature of contemporary religious politics. If a given interest group turns up the volume, it is usually reacting to provocation. We view the Victorian era as a sanctimonious period of improving movements such as self-help, temperance and university missions to city slums. But prudishness and do-goodery existed precisely because their contrariespoverty, drunkenness, godlessness and indecencywere endemic: some streets of Victorian London swarmed with child prostitutes, and were too dangerous to walk at night. In the same way, todays religious upsurge is a reaction to the prevalence of its opposite. In fact, it is a reaction to defeat, in a war that it cannot win even if it succeeds in a few battles on the way down. Here is what is happening. Over the last half-century, sections of the Muslim world have become increasingly affronted by the globalisation of western and especially American culture and values, which appears arrogantly to disdain their traditions. Yet latterly, some of these same sections of Islam have been emboldened by the victory of warriors of the faith over a superpower (Afghanistans mujahedin over Soviet Russia); the combination encourages them to assert their opposition to the engulfing encroachment of western modernity, even by taking up arms. When a climate of heightened tension such as this prompts activists in one religious group to become more assertive, to push their way forward in the public domain to demand more attention, more respect, more public funds (faith-based schools are one example), other religious groups, not wishing to be left behind, follow suit. In Britain, Muslim activism has been quickly mimicked by othersby Sikhs demonstrating about a play, Christian evangelicals demonstrating about an opera, and all of them leaping on the funding bandwagon for faith and interfaith initiatives. To placate them, politicians lend an ear; the media report it; immediately these minorities of interest have an amplifier for their presence. The effect is that suddenly it seems as if there are religious devotees everywhere, and the spurious magnification of their importance further promotes their confidence. As a result they make some gains, as the faith schools example shows. Yet the fact is that only 10 per cent of the British population attend church, mosque, synagogue or temple every week, and this figure is declining in all but immigrant communities. This is hardly the stuff of religious resurgence. Yes, over half the population claim vaguely to believe in Something, which includes feng shui and crystals, and they may be C of E in the sense of Christmas and Easter, but they are functionally secularist and would be horrified if asked to live according to the letter of (say) Christian morality: giving all ones possessions to the poor, taking no thought for the morrow and so impracticably forth. Not even Christian clerics follow these injunctions. This picture is repeated everywhere in the west except the US, and there too the religious base is eroding. The historical precedent of the counter-Reformation is instructive. For over a century after Luther nailed his theses to Wittenbergs church door, Europe was engulfed in ferocious religious strife, because the church was losing its hitherto hegemonic grip and had no intention of doing so without a fight. Millions died, and Catholicism won some battles even as it lost the war. We are witnessing a repeat today, this time with Islamism resisting the encroachment of a way of life that threatens it, and as other religious groups join them in a (strictly temporary, given the exclusivity of faith) alliance for the cause of religion in general. As before, the grinding of historical tectonic plates will be painful and protracted. But the outcome is not in doubt. As private observance, religion will of course survive among minorities; as a factor in public and international affairs it is having what might be its lastcharacteristically bloodyfling. |
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| We thought this a
good antidote to the increasingly crackpot Thought for the Day slot.
It is from Matthew Parriss notebook in The Times: A VICAR who came to stay told me he was shortly to go on a retreat. I suggested he try an "advance". Why do people go on retreats? What is there to retreat from? Many of ones friends would benefit more from a rocket under them than from moping dreamily around in a meditation centre for a week. People should be encouraged to go on regular advances, where we would be urged to rise with the lark, take freezing showers, make whooping noises and bayonet sacks of straw. But religion of both the old and the new kind seems to want us to view the world, and life, as some kind of a problem a howling chaos from which we need to retreat; a troublesome interlude between birth and death, to be got over somehow. At a church service last week I noted the hymn: Drop Thy still dews of quietness Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress . . . What drivelling nonsense. Why should all our strivings cease? Why dont people stop whining about how stressed they are, get up half an hour earlier and tackle the unfinished jobs that stress them? Hide me O my Saviour hide Till the storm of life is past . . . Storm of life? Look out of your window, my friend, at the blue skies, at the trees, the hills, the children playing and spare us this whimpering. Religion peddles consolation when most of us dont need consolation, we need a good kick up the backside. |
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| Swedes trust Ikea more than the church
Swedes have more faith in their local Ikea store than in the church. Ananova 26 Nov 2006 According to a survey by Dagens Industri, eighty per cent of Swedes said they trusted the furniture chain. And though four-fifths of all Swedes claim to be members of the protestant Swedish Church only 46 per cent of those polled said they trusted the religious group. People also trust Volvo (69 percent), Ericsson (59), Saab (57) and even pharmaceutical giant Astra Zeneca (47) more than the Church. |
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