“how america’s death penalty murders innocents”

by David A. Love

 

The US criminal justice system is a broken machine that wrongfully convicts innocent people, sentencing thousands of people to prison or to death for the crimes of others, as a new study reveals. The University of Michigan law school and Northwestern University have compiled a new National Registry of Exonerations – a database of over 2,000 prisoners exonerated between 1989 and the present day, when DNA evidence has been widely used to clear the names of innocent people convicted of rape and murder. Of these, 885 have profiles developed for the registry’s website, exonerationregistry.org.

 

The details are shocking. Death row inmates were exonerated nine times more frequently than others convicted of murder. One-fourth of those exonerated of murder had received a death sentence, while half of those who had been wrongfully convicted of rape or murder faced death or a life behind bars. Ten of the inmates went to their grave before their names were cleared.

 

The leading causes of wrongful convictions include perjury, flawed eyewitness identification and prosecutorial misconduct. For those who have placed unequivocal faith in the US criminal justice system and believe that all condemned prisoners are guilty of the crime of which they were convicted, the data must make for a rude awakening.

 

“The most important thing we know about false convictions is that they happen and on a regular basis … Most false convictions never see the light of the day,” said University of Michigan law professors Samuel Gross and Michael Shaffer, who wrote the study.

 

“Nobody had an inkling of the serious problem of false confessions until we had this data,” said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.

 

The unveiling of the exoneration registry comes days after a groundbreaking study from Columbia law school Professor James Liebman and 12 students. Published in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, the study describes how Texas executed an innocent man named Carlos DeLuna in 1989. DeLuna was put to death for the 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez, a young woman, at a gas station. Carlos Hernandez, who bragged about committing the murder and bore a striking resemblance to DeLuna, was named at trial by DeLuna’s defence team as the actual perpetrator of the crime. But DeLuna’s false conviction is merely the tip of the iceberg, as the database suggests.

 

Recently also, Charlie Baird, a Texas judge, was prepared to issue an order posthumously exonerating Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for the 1991 arson-related deaths of his three young daughters. Based upon “overwhelming, credible and reliable evidence”, Baird concluded Willingham had been wrongfully convicted; this in addition to a jailhouse witness who recanted his testimony, and scientists who challenged the evidence at trial that the fire that destroyed the Willingham home was caused by arson. Baird was blocked by a state appeals court from issuing the order before he left the bench to pursue private practice.

 

And again in Texas, lawyers for Kerry Max Cook, a former death row prisoner who was wrongfully convicted of a 1977 murder in East Texas, claim that the district attorney in the case withheld in his possession the murder weapon and biological evidence in the case.

 

In 2012, the American death penalty has reached a crossroads. Public support for executions has decreased over the years, with capital punishment critics citing its high cost, failure to deter crime, and the fact that the practice places the nation out of step with international human rights norms. Last year, the US ranked fifth in the world in executions, a member of a select club of nations that includes China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. Further, in the US states that have repealed the death penalty in recent years – including New Mexico, New Jersey, Illinois and, most recently, Connecticut – the killing of the innocent has been cited as a pivotal factor in favor of abolition.

 

Meanwhile, thanks to an EU embargo on lethal injection drugs to the US, states that practice capital punishment are faced with a shortage of poison to execute prisoners. Some have resorted to purchasing unapproved drug supplies on the black market, or using different chemicals altogether. For example, Ohio has abandoned its three-drug protocol for executions in favor of a single drug called pentobarbital, a barbiturate used to euthanize animals. And Missouri has decided to execute prisoners using propofol, a surgical anesthetic implicated in Michael Jackson’s death.

 

Apparently desperate and lacking in options to kill, these states would be better-served by joining the civilized world and devoting their efforts to end the death penalty, rather than find new methods to satisfy their bloodlust – which, as the new evidence makes abundantly clear, cannot but cause them to execute innocent citizens. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 140 men and women have been released from death row since 1973 due to innocence. That death row inmates are exonerated much more often than other categories of prisoner – even when a person’s life is at stake – should shatter anyone’s faith in the presumed infallibility of the court system.

 

It is now transparent to the public that, at best, the application of the death penalty is rife with human error and incompetence. At worst, we know there is prosecutorial misconduct: that the courts shelter and nurture officials who are rewarded for gaming the system by career advancement, rather than determining true guilt or innocence and ensuring that justice is done.

(source)

 

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middle-kingdom horrors

 

(source)

 

This image, which first appeared in a China-based discussion forum, has since influenza-sneezed itself into the worldwide web. It tells the marutan story of how the Chinese authorities hunt down a pregnant woman and tear the bawling nine-month-old (full-term!) foetus out of her womb. The doctors then threw the still-crying and kicking baby into a pail of water.

 

The mother bled her life dry.

 

All this happened because she already has a child and the Communists are simply doing their job in enforcing their infamous one-child policy.

 

While I am theoretically in favour of an attenboroughesque control of the global population and the empowerment of women to have a choice over their own wombs, I cannot and will not allow the terminations of otherwise healthy full-term pregnancies, let alone FORCED ones at that!!?

 

It lowblows the gut when evangelical christians exploit this horror story for their no-abortion (but ironically yes-death penalty) crusade.  (The Shocking Face of China’s Brutal One-Child Policy)

 

*******

 

 

“from faith to facts: theology to atheism”

by Catherine Dunphy

 

When I was a practicing Catholic, I often stretched my imagination by visioning my church not as a global oppressor of women but as a segmented community, “a church with in a church”, that derived its mandate not from the pulpit in Rome but from the roots of liberation theology. I spent many years at the altar of feminist theologians, honoring their articulation of the liberated experience.

 

Yet despite the appeal of feminist theology I now identify as a secular humanist. So what happened? To put it shortly and succinctly; I could no longer reconcile myself to belief. Instead I embraced the sentiment that I was not losing faith, but gaining reason. Since that time, I have spent many an unfettered hour thinking about religion, its function as a building block of society and how and when it will be retired as product of a bygone era.

 

Which brings me to this article. Despite religion’s best efforts, things are changing, particularly in the West; with the influence of science a new world of possibilities, free from religion have come into focus. But there is also, in my opinion, another unknowing contributor – theology.

 

The study and development of theology has become one of the main architects of internal schisms in the Roman Church. Most people in this day and age don’t take notice of who the Vatican is excommunicating or whose book has been banned. In most instances, the person in question is a theologian. Recent examples of theological thinking that has gotten the Church in a tither include the splinter group “Roman Catholic Womanpriest”, an international union of women priests ordained in the apostolic tradition. Also, since the 1970‘s the church has spoken against liberation theologies that it feels focus too much on the emancipate communities of disenfranchised persons seeking justice in areas of political, social, economic and ecological oppression. One of the most vocal of these groups include feminists.

 

Rosemary Radford Ruether is one of the most influential feminist liberation theologians. Dr. Ruether has written numerous books on women and the church, including Sexism and God Talk: Towards a Feminist Theology. She currently teaches at Claremount School of Theology. She agreed to speak with me in preparation for this article.

 

The recognition of sexism as wrong, evil and sinful brings about the total collapse of the myths of female evil… more than that, women have to suspect that the entire symbolic universe that surrounds them, which has socialized them to their roles, is deeply tainted by hostility to their humanity.

 

Before I spoke with Dr. Ruether I knew that she would have a perspective that was contrary to official church teaching. In a very frank discussion she said that catholicism is not about the papacy, and “if you identify the hierarchy as the church, then you might as well forget about it (church).”

 

When I asked Dr. Ruether to provide more information about what she meant by “church” she explained that her experience of it, “has some relationship to Christ, specifically as an inspiration for justice, but that church is mostly a community committed to an ecumenical and interfaith dialogue about liberation and social justice”, of which feminism is part of that tradition.

 

When it comes to Ruether’s theology, the idea of church does seem “out of focus” with the general consensus of what it is to be a Christian and Catholic.

 

Many would be surprised that most reputable theological schools are places where a convergence of similar ideas occurs; everything from the feminist perspectives of Ruether and Daly to biblical scholarship that includes the detailed study of pseudepigraphic texts as well as metaphorical concepts of god as mother or as the manifestation of love in the universe.

 

Yet despite these differing views at the academic level, very little transcends to the pew.

 

Rome continues to dictate the rules and obligations for millions of Catholics as it is the recognized church on the world stage. I have given a lot of thought to this conundrum, therefore it should not be surprising that theological students like myself, would find themselves trapped by doctrine when working in parishes, schools and hospitals.

 

Concerning this topic, Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola authored a recent study in Evolutionary Psychology, Preachers Who Are Not Believers, that clearly outlines what appears to be an emerging phenomenon.

 

The loneliness of non-believing pastors is extreme. They have no trusted confidantes to reassure them, to reflect their own musings back to them, to provide reality checks. As their profiles reveal, even their spouses are often unaware of their turmoil. They are caught in a trap, cunningly designed to harness both their best intentions and their basest fears to the task of immobilizing them in their predicament.

 

Inspired by this research, I spoke with a friend and former student of theology. She was aware that I had left the church but this was the first time that we had discussed it.

 

Ever since John Stuart Mill, the liberal tradition has been wary of democracy and its potential for the tyranny of the majority and the oppression of individuals or minorities. As I have argued at length, what is disturbing about Strauss is that his cures for the ills of democracy exacerbate its fascistic hazards. Encouraging a secretive elite to justify all manner of dirty tricks, lies, deceptions, and an assortment of unethical and illegal tactics cannot “save” the world from the dangers of democracy. Equally misguided is the promotion of a religious and nationalist militancy.

 

Though our meeting was conversational and at ease, I was struck by her relief at speaking with someone else about her evolving beliefs. Most notably she spoke in detail about the lack of solace or spiritual nourishment she found from her position as a school chaplain and her continued attendance at church. In fact, she indicated that she most often found it to undermine her happiness, resulting in frustration. She did say these frustrations contributed to her decision to leave her job as a chaplain and to pursue other career options.

 

When I asked her about her beliefs now, she identified “god as the manifestation of love in the universe”, not a particularly canonical view, especially since she admitted to feeling like a heretic since she stopped believing in the virgin birth and the divinity of Jesus.

 

I left our meeting feeling like I was on the tip of an iceberg. It seems to me now that the process of completing a degree in theology is directly related to changes in belief and for at least a percentage of people, loss of faith.

 

So where do we go from here? Without a doubt, religion has played an important part in the human story. It once provided answers to questions about the world we live in and purported to reveal the meaning of life. As science ebbs ever closer to answering the crucial facts of existence, believers will continue to be challenged to let go of the ramblings of a bygone era.

(source)

 

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“religious students have fewer interracial friends”

by Tomas Rees

 

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Freshmen (NLSF), Julie Park, an educationalist at the University of Maryland, has investigated how inter-racial friendships and religious affiliation interact. The NLSF was an annual survey of White, Black, Latino, and Asian American students from 28 selective institutions that ran from 1999 to 2004.

During their fourth year of college, students were asked to “think of the four people at [your college] with whom you have been closest during your college years.” They were also asked to list the race/ethnicity of each of the friends.

What she found was that the most religious students (based on self-reported religiosity, their frequency of religious service attendance, and their religious observance) also had the fewest friends from other races.

What’s more, Protestant or Jewish (but not Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist) students also had the fewest mixed-race friendships. That’s probably because these are the two major religious groups.

These two effects were independent – so the most mono-cultural people were the most religious Protestants and Jews. This held even after controlling for a bunch of other factors, including the racial diversity of the college, the diversity of their previous school, and the race of the student.

And on top of all this, belonging to a religious club reduced the chances of inter-racial friendship still further! That wasn’t the case with other clubs (except explicitly ethnic clubs – and even here the effect was smaller than for religious clubs).

Now, the interesting thing about these three factors – religiosity, religious denomination, and membership of a religious club – isn’t that they weren’t highly correlated. That means that they seem to have independent, additive effects. Park concludes that:

While all of these dimensions certainly overlap and are difficult to disentangle, there are likely distinct facets of each one that may contribute to a student being less likely to form close interracial friendships during college … It appears that there is no single reason why religion appears to lower the probability of interracial friendship during college, but a combination of affiliation, involvement, and specific involvement in religious peer environments lowers the likelihood of close interracial friendship.

Park has a positive message for university administrators. While the linkage between racial division and religion is problematic, it reflects wider society – and so there is an opportunity here for universities to break the cycle:

University educators are in a prime position to challenge students to harness the elements of religion that “unmake” prejudice or students’ hesitation to cross racial/ethnic boundaries. They can partner with those who often have closer contact with students’ religious lives during college—campus ministry staff and local houses of worship—to discuss possible linkages between race and faith during the college years.

When they see racially homogeneous religious student organizations, they can inquire into whether a specific purpose exists in the demographic composition of the group (such as supporting students’ ethnic identity development) or whether the demography is more a byproduct of a group’s hesitation to address race.

Finally, given that many students of different races may share a particular religious faith, they can consider how faith can be used to unite students across racial/ethnic lines instead of divide them. Religion may be the most racially divided arena of life in the U.S., but the university is a rare opportunity to break the cycle of segregation in America.

 

(source)

 

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“why i support the abolition of the death penalty”

by Paul Bettany

 

In the UK, it’s the human rights violation that it’s still socially acceptable to support: the death penalty. You can be pro-capital punishment and not get ejected from a dinner party. It’s probably not going to cause outrage if a social gathering throws out a “we need a strong deterrent” line, or if someone says “it’s what they deserve, an eye for eye.”

 

Which, in a sense, is slightly strange. It’s nearly 50 years since there was capital punishment in Britain and knowledge of it is increasingly filtered mainly through films like Let Him Have It, or Pierrepoint, or 10 Rillington Place. As it happens, these films, plus others like Dead Man Walking, hardly present an unproblematic view of the penalty, so why do people – quite a few, according to opinion polls – still hanker after the black cap, the noose and the trapdoor?

 

Basically, I think that – notwithstanding the occasional film or TV programme – if people are pro-death penalty, it’s because time and distance have blurred the issue. Aside from specialists working for human rights organisations, almost no one in the UK has actually confronted the reality of a system that invests judges with the power of life and death.

 

For several years I’ve been living in the US, and here there’s a strange attitude to capital punishment. In New York, my home, it doesn’t exist and it’s not much talked about. Meanwhile, in the “death penalty states”, mostly in the south, it’s widely supported. As a Brit abroad, you trundle along, not agreeing with everything but not necessarily speaking out about things in your adopted country. Then, last year, an old friend sent me an email about Troy Davis, a man facing execution in the US state of Georgia. For me, this sparked off a whole new wave of revulsion against capital punishment.

 

The case is now infamous. No forensic evidence linked him to the crime, seven out of nine of the prosecution witnesses recanted their evidence, another prime suspect who was identified by numerous witnesses was never properly investigated. And yet, the authorities still killed this man by lethal injection on 21 September 2011. It was abhorrent and a real shock when this happened. Even at the last minute, it somehow seemed the execution would be halted, that there’d be further appeals and he’d eventually be exonerated (like scores of others in the US in recent years). But no.

 

Since then, I’ve decided it’s not quite enough to be vaguely against something as disgusting as cold-bloodedly killing another human being in the name of justice and I’ve become involved with Amnesty’s death penalty work. Actors and causes don’t always make for comfortable bedfellows, but why should life always be comfortable?

 

As a father of three, an argument I sometimes hear is: “What if your children had been murdered? Wouldn’t you want their murderer to pay with their lives?” And, to be frank, you’re tempted to say: “Yes! Of course.” Which is why, in that awful situation, I strongly believe you need an impartial justice system that acts in the interests of the victims and society at large, and acts not out of raw emotion or in a vengeful way.

 

Actually, providing the voice of the Iranian death penalty lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei for a new Guardian film about his work has been quite emotional for me. And it was certainly a privilege. This man has risked his own life try to save the lives of scores of people in Iran. Through his dogged and fearless legal work, he’s managed to avert hanging for about 50 clients, no mean feat in Iran’s notoriously unfair legal system. His most famous case was Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s, but it’s his work trying to help juvenile offenders that most sticks in the mind. Eighteen have been saved because of his advocacy. Tragically, many have not, including the subject of the film, Behnoud Shojaee.

 

Iran’s brutal use of the death penalty – it executes hundreds every year – is a reminder to the UK’s and the US’s pro-hanging fraternities of what it means to support capital punishment. It means being lumped in with the few remaining death penalty states (headed by China, then Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and, yes, the US). It means either the ultra-rough justice of coerced evidence and unfair trials (one case in Iran that Amnesty International is campaigning on involved a trial that reportedly lasted all of five minutes). Or if your country tries to provide for proper appeals, the result could be like California, where each execution costs an average of $308m and the authorities spend hundreds of millions of dollars more every year than they would if death row prisoners were serving life imprisonment.

 

No. Getting acquainted with the facts on the death penalty will, I guarantee, give any pro-capital punishment people out there plenty to worry about. I don’t particularly want to shout about my role here: I’m an actor, a professional voice. But also a sentient being with a conscience and views. My Mostafaei voiceover was deliberately quiet and measured because this matches the calm dignity of the man. I might occasionally play a hero, but Mohammad Mostafaei and others like him are the real-life heroes.

(source)

 

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do the loving ourselves

 

“IT IS ironic that with the days off for maids, employers with young children and the elderly must now have to work even harder (‘Weekly day off for maids a must from next year’; Tuesday).

Otherwise, who will do the chores and look after the children and the elderly when the maids are enjoying their days off?

My annual leave allocation will not increase, so if no one does the chores, it will only mean that the maid will have to do double the amount of work the day after her day off.”

- Chew Kum Chung (source)

 

Many foreign domestic workers are abused by Singaporeans. In order to ensure their nuts’ worth every month, the job scope of a foreign maid, more like slave, reads somewhat like this:

 

• Lick the house clean, until it is dust-free, every day. We have young children in the house.
• Prepare breakfast for, bathe and clothe the children for school. Put on their shoes too. We have to prepare and rush to the office.
• Prepare dinner for, bathe and clothe the children when they come home. Help them with their pyjamas, please.
• Fetch the children to and from school every day. Please carry the outrageously heavy school bags for them – they are only kids.
• When the son reaches the age to fulfil his military obligations, please help him carry his field bag too – poor child has a tender back.
• Sorry, we have no vacant rooms or beds for you. You have to sleep in the store room.
• Please have your meals only after the WHOLE family has finished so that you can serve us when we are having ours.
• You are not welcome to join us for trips to the cinema. When we dine in restaurants, you are welcome to feast on the leftovers. Help us feed the baby and please, keep the children in order. You know we are incompetent in looking after our own children.
• We also go for weekly dates as a couple – so please keep the children in order! Get them to do their homework! We love our weekly pleasures and do not want the parental responsibilities to get in the way.
• Oh for goodness’ sake, no mobile phones please. We will confiscate them if we catch you using it when you are supposed to do the chores.
• By the way, there is no day’s off for you. We don’t want you to have a break so that you can go shopping with your friends and maybe even hook a boyfriend. We don’t want to pay for your syphillis treatment, or your abortion.
• Remember, we are your boss. We paid peanuts for your work and we expect no monkey business!

 

Shame on Singaporeans and the very system that violates the UN Declaration of Human Rights by detaining people without trial, its fabulously totalitarian defamation laws and its maniacal tendency to criminalise people for publishing books and opinions that criticises the autocracy. Shame on the great Yale University for collaborating with the National University of Singapore to start the shamelessly named Yale-NUS liberal arts college. Liberal Arts? Are the academics and students allowed to discuss and criticise any subject under the sun, which includes the ruling regime of PAP and religion?

 

Shame on Singaporean parents. I have three very young children – and I do not employ a domestic helper. I clean my youngest boy when he poops. I bathe my two darlings every night and adore my eldest five-year-old for showering himself. All three put on their own shoes before I fetch them to the childcare. When we eat out, all three will eat by themselves, including the two-year-old who uses the spoon relatively well.

 

We enjoy company with our friends regularly. We bring our children along, yes, we DO NOT conveniently discard them at our parents’. Besides, we are simple hedonists who delight in conversation, coffee and the occasional wine at the verandah or the coffeeclub with our friends. We read, talk with each other (and with friends) and watch films instead of shopping, swinging and dancing insanely to noise for therapy. We fuck like rabbits before the children come back and have quickies after they are asleep.

 

She is my best friend and mate.

 

We, and not someone else, mother our own children, feeding, showering, clothing and loving them. Parents do not just coin up the family coffers. We are also not Clausian incarnates who conjure up iPads and iPhones at the winter solstice and then disappear until the next year. We are not PAP-taught pragmatists who pay and blame others to do the loving.

 

We do the loving ourselves.

 

Besides, Singaporeans are working their domestic workers like lonely and starved bitches on spiked leashes while they themselves whine like castrated swine about being overworked and underpaid.

 

A rabble of hypocrites and hooligans are what these middle-incomed, middle-kingdomed scrooges really are.

 

*******

 

article 19

 

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

- Article 19, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

 

 

is this the way to go?

 

“Our long-term goal is to prohibit smoking in all public places except in designated smoking areas…our aim, in collaboration with the Health Promotion Board, is to work towards a future where Singaporeans consider smoking not only detrimental to health, but also socially unacceptable.”

- Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State, Singapore

 

I am scared. Urinating-in-my-trousers scared.

 

I am fearful that a time will come in Singapore when not only the subjects of religion and the People’s Action Party are exempt from intellectual criticism (in the name of religious harmony and autocratic pseudo-democracy respectively); but also civil and social morality, which would be force-fed to the man on the street through devious propaganda and emotionalistic advertising.

 

The State cannot and should not behave like the orwellian Big Brother, dictating to its citizens what is right and wrong, moral or immoral, socially acceptable or not. To play the health card on smoking is one thing, to enforce its abstinence is another. It no longer takes the highbrow, in 21st century Singapore, to know of smoking’s deleterious health effects. Nor does it take a President’s Scholar to know the bad effects of massive caffeine consumption on the nervous system, or alcohol on the liver, or bad cholesterol on the heart.

 

It is hypocrisy to demonise tobacco while there are more Singaporeans under the addiction of Char Kway Teow, Roti Prata, Laksa and Nasi Lemak, not to mention KFC, McDonald’s and Burger King. What about alcohol, which many supposedly mature adults consume, to their mental and emotional demise?

 

Some might argue that while alcohol, caffeine and cholesterol-laden foods might harm the addicted glutton, cigarette smoke harms not only the smoker but the innocent angel who happens to be close by. It appears idiotic to notice passive smoking while blind to the numerous incidents of domestic violence, exacerbated by alcohol abuse? Or the emotional abuse of family members due to a loved one’s poor health caused by gluttony? Or for that matter – the addicted gambler who now has more opportunities to commit his dirty deed in Singapore?

 

Or even the Taoist practice of burning “hell money” incessantly during the yearly “ghost” month, which pollutes the environment (and we still talk about going eco-friendly) as well as irritates the respirary systems of many? We choose to keep silent because it is “religion” – and religion somehow escapes any form of criticism even if it harms the environment.

 

Singapore might as well ban alcohol and casinoes and all forms of fatty dishes and fast food from its shores. And even the nose-tickling and lung-churning practice of burning fake money for imaginary dead people.

 

I do not smoke. I dislike gambling. But I am addicted to coffee, and a self-professed lover of sinful Singaporean cuisine. I love lots of sex too – and fantasize about fucking multiple women in multiple exotic positions. But since I love children, and got married as a result, decadent orgies and wanton adultery will never be my portion. Sexual faithfulness to my wife was part of our marriage vows, anyhow.

 

And I reckon many Singaporeans are guilty of the same vices, and would do well not to cast the first stone by demonising smoking into something more than just an unhealthy habit.

 

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mediacorp’s pathetic version

 

 

Ignore the fancy name Mediacorp. As a state-controlled broadcaster, it does better if it retains its original Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) – the propaganda arm of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP). It is governed not only by its fear of the ruling regime, impotent to offer any feature film, drama series or documentary which appears to be remotely criticising anything from the pseudo-democracy of Singapore, the founding members of its old guard (think of Lee Kuan Yew, Toh Chin Chye and Goh Keng Swee, etc) or the death penalty; but the puritanism of its religious public as well.

 

As one of the more exciting programmes shown on free-to-air Channel 5, Spartacus: Blood and Sand is a pathetic offering that pales in contrast to its original version shown in other countries. Mediacorp scissors away scenes like the above and below, apparently censoring much of the gore, brutality and sex. The general plot notwithstanding, it is the barbarism, gratuitous gore and amoral sexuality which gives the series its power. It aims to depict the society as it was in ancient Rome, and it scores by showing the viewer a very sinister side to a seemingly civilised ancient world, where citizens delight in watching fellow human beings kill one another for entertainment and have views on sex that has nothing to do with a morality that stems from prudish christianity more than civilised humanism.

 

 

Its people indulge themselves in group and homosexual sex as much as they enjoy their food and blood sport. Sex was recreation instead of marital and procreative responsibility. Nudity was common. Such was the moral fabric of ancient Roman society – but you don’t see that in Singapore’s pussy-licking version.

 

 

Many Singaporeans will wince in disgust at how romans love to watch slaves copulating with one another (above: a gladiator was made to fuck a fellow slave for the viewing pleasure of roman nobles) as well as fucking one themselves (below: a gladiator owner fucking his slave).

 

 

But that is what the series is about! It displays, in almost gratuitous fashion, roman society. Disgusting for some, lecherous delight for others, and simply apathy for the enlightened few.

 

Blood and Sand airs in Singapore at the 10 p.m slot, probably to capitalise viewership ratings. That is probably the reason why the meddlesome scissors of the censors had to come in.

 

Then again, maybe it is time to rethink censorship and morality as a whole.

 

If societal mores are anything to go by, Singapore is still far from being a first world country. 

 

 

*******

 

orwellian evil

 

Lad magazines are rare, if not extinct, in Singapore’s officially prudish and ruling party-controlled newstands. Even the lustier ones like For Him Magazine (FHM) and Maxim are controlled by Big Brother – anything resembling the genitalia or the tits are opined as pornographic – which more than anything reveals the clerical immaturity of the authorities.

 

And the citizens. Remember the commercial walls of Orchard Road and their beautifully depicted male modeled muscled abbominals? Many among the public were pontificating about its abdominal obscenity, oblivious to the enlightened snickers of the discerningly educated few who are scratching our heads, wondering what the fucking fuss it was all about.

 

The perpretators of such ignorance are often the religiously motivated, drugged by a peculiar moral logic which rests on ancient texts instead of science and reason. Yes, primarily the ancient and thus very ignorant books of the monotheistic trinity of religions.

 

It baffles the common sense when any subject from politics (anywhere in the world except Singapore and the idiotic Asian lands) to football to Greek mythology can be slaughtered in the abbatoir of public discourse but NOT religion. The people “of the book” seem to be one very schizophrenic mob who would wince and weep at any jibe, profane or not, at their icons.

 

It is totalitarian, to say the least. It is the epitome of the orwellian vision of dystopia. It is evil.

 

Three days ago, the National Council of Churches of Singapore (NCCS) squealed like a hurt flesh of infant swine against two articles published in the latest edition of FHM. I didn’t know the council reads FHM. Godless and evil men like me do not even read FHM. I read the King James Bible. Really.

 

FHM pulled off shelves, editor apologises

 

The NCCS statement claimed that the articles “make fun of the Lord Jesus Christ” and “…hurt the sensitivities of the Christian community.”

 

Hmm. Does Bishop Dr Robert Solomon, president of the NCCS, who with three other leading clerics signed the statement, really know what he is talking about? HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR ARTICLES IN FHM TO HURT THE FEELINGS OF CHRISTIANS? UNLESS CHRISTIANS READ FHM.

 

Oh, I must be very ignorant then. I didn’t realise the godly christians in Singapore read FHM. There must be some good holy stuff there which I am not aware of which edifies my christian brethren. Must be the beauties of God’s creation.

 

Ungodly men like me only read the theology journals and Rowan Williams. And Marcus Borg. And John Spong. And George Orwell. And Evelyn Waugh. And Charles Dickens. And Ian Mcewan. Sigh.

 

Apart from the two blasphemous articles, perhaps I should start reading FHM. NCCS thinks it influences the christian community.

 

*******

 

no need to “thank god”

 

For the first time in what appears to be for ever, I wake up to the cozy rainbows of dawn greeting my eyelids with tickles instead of thorns. Yes! My right peeper does not sting anymore, and I silently thank the evolutionary marvels of the human body to heal and recuperate with the help of modern medicine and the passage of time.

 

Although it is one of the most painful ordeals of conjunctivitis I ever experienced, it is one which I faced with moral courage, without the usual incessant pleas to an imaginary Santa Claus to quicken the healing process. It is very common for free thinkers, especially those who are recovering from a religious disorder, to revert to prayer more as a psychological crutch than a return to faith.

 

If there is any one to thank, I should thank my wife for admonishing me to apply the eyedrops regularly and for the children’s grandparents who lent their help whenever they could. It is our fellow human beings whom we should often and persistently thank and be grateful to as we will NEVER come this way again.

 

Contrary to any wishful thinking on my part, I will never be able to see my maternal grandmother, whom I called Ah Ma, ever again and especially so when I die. Death erases everything. And when the time comes, I will also have to say goodbye, a truly final farewell, to my own parents. I will not see them in heaven, nor will they be there, despite what they believe now. All consciousness will just end. Period.

 

There is so much at stake in the here and now. It is a miracle we even begin to exist as tiny creatures of stardust in this vast space of empty nothingness and it would be a miracle if we can come this way again if the clock is rewound. So we need to cherish our time with our loved ones and learn to appreciate them.

 

Stop thanking an imaginary bloke whom there is no evidence to account for and start thanking and appreciating the people whom and the things which we can feel, touch and hold!

 

*******

 

morality for the here and now

by Andrew Copson

 

Against faith schools, against worship in schools, against confessional RE in schools – sometimes humanist views on education are portrayed in entirely negative terms. In fact, any humanist taking action on these issues is doing so for positive reasons, being in favour of integrated schools without discrimination, inclusive assemblies that bring a school together, and objective, fair and balanced education about beliefs. But more than that, humanists have originated powerful educational thinking of their own down the centuries.

 

One of the most prominent contributions has been in moral education. Seeing morality not as a set of rules derived from a transcendent deity but as an organised attempt to reinforce human social impulses in the here and now has a clear effect on how you seek to develop morality in children.

 

“Morality…is an organised attempt to reinforce human social impulses in the here and now…”

 

Sixty years ago the humanist educational psychologist Margaret Knight caused a national moral panic when she suggested on the BBC that moral education could usefully be uncoupled from religious education. She said moral training should be an independent effort, not just involving the passing on of principles and ways of thinking but having an emotional basis too. “Warm-hearted and generous natures are developed not primarily by training and discipline, important though these are in other ways, but by love,” she said. Today, not least because of humanist educators like Harold Blackham (who founded the still-running Journal of Moral Education) and James Hemming, these ideas are near to mainstream.

 

Development of reason and scientific and critical thinking is another concern of humanists in education. “The humanist is a rationalist, one who puts reason first … stresses the open mind, dedication to a disinterested search for truth,” said Blackham. Beyond the search for truth that motivates in a subject like science, humanists in education have prioritised the development of critical thinking and a rational spirit for its social consequences in the formation of democratic citizens. This was a lifelong concern for the humanist political thinker Bernard Crick, responsible for the introduction of citizenship education. In case this still seems too coldly utilitarian, we have the humanist idea that the ability to reason and inquire freely is personally fulfilling too: “I appeal to you to be rational, critical, inspired with the spirit of enquiry … You shall never be free on this earth so long as you remain a voluntary subject to forces unknown and unknowable,” said the Indian humanist MN Roy.

 

If you believe death is the end of our personal existence, the individual cannot achieve their full flourishing in some world to come. So personal fulfilment, if achieved at all, can only be achieved in this life. Education on this view kickstarts this lifelong journey of personal development, and the study of art, literature, philosophy, religions, science, history and so on is not just a process of acquiring knowledge but of making a life for oneself that is meaningful and fulfilling. This is a third area when humanist views have an enormous impact on educational thinking.

 

It’s unlikely there would ever be a “humanist school” as there are religious schools – if humanist organisations ever did run schools they would surely be secular ones, run along inclusive lines and encouraging open-minded autonomy among pupils. But humanist thinking on education can help teachers, parents and others to reflect on how our values shape this most important endeavour.

(source)

 

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the affirmations of humanism

 

1. We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.

2. We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.

3. We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.

4. We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.

5. We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.

6. We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.

7. We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.

8. We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.

9. We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.

10. We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.

11. We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.

12. We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.

13. We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.

14. We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.

15. We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.

16. We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.

17. We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.

18. We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.

19. We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.

20. We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.

21. We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

(source)

 

*******

 

“common sense” and naturalism

 

Every single human life is precious because biological life is precious. It is the one natural miracle which need not occur in a universe that is hardly fine-tuned for organic life at all, let alone the very selfishly theistic notion that the universe was “created” for the very purpose of producing and serving human life.

 

The marvels of human consciousness is an accident of evolution which may not come around if we turn back the pages of prehistory. So we should treasure this opportunity to exist and experience, to live and let live, as this life is all there is. Theistic critics often accuse this position of leading to immoral and selfish living since we would all be trying to accummulate the most toys before we die. Yet it is precisely because of the brevity of life that we are not callous and careless about it. We will fight for the right to live, for ourselves and for others. Morality becomes innate because we want to help our fellow human beings because we are all there is – and we better help one another if we wish to see our species thrive.

 

Tertiary training in philosophy aside, I am one of the many who value the empirical powers of “common sense”, which in my experience almost invalidates me as a credible reasoner in philosophical circles. Yes, folks in philosophy spurn common sense – otherwise they wouldn’t be in the business of conjuring semantic and linguistic gymnastics – in the name of logic and hardnosed thinking. But in the vein of Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins, empirical observation and experimentation is perhaps the most reliable way to find the truth about the natural world.

 

Everything else is extraneous. Irrelevant.

 

While scientists have advanced our world and our societies in so many progressive ways, philosophers have advanced nothing but regurgitate old debates over and over again. I have often thought that the materialistic (or naturalistic) view of existence, that matter is all there is, is common sense since there is no evidence to support otherwise; but it isn’t common sense to the philosopher. There are still eccentrics who hold to the primacy of the immaterial over the material.

 

In the case of homo sapiens, these eccentrics, as do most monotheists as well as polytheists, posit the existence of a human soul or spirit which exists apart from the physical body.

 

And many claim that this “soul” or “spirit” is the real you, the real person. Your body is but a shell, a facade, a house in which the real you lives, your soul.

 

And this soul, according to evangelical christians and muslims, is specially and uniquely created by god.

 

Yet it seems very odd why god, if he has already a purpose for each and every individual human soul he created, happens to be fickle-minded when he changes a person’s character or personality in the case of a person having parts of the brain damaged due to physical trauma from an accident. There are numerous cases of individuals who exhibit completely different personalities and temperaments after having their frontal lobes damaged. They seem to become different people.

 

And in the tragic case of one man in Singapore who injured his head when he fell down a flight of stairs, he transformed into a very impulsive and violent man who eventually killed his own wife.

 

It is so obvious that there is a causal link between the physical brain and human consciousness – any changes to the organ will lead to changes in the human experience. Doesn’t this fact refute the existence of an immaterial soul? Doesn’t this fact lead to another fact that human consciousness will simply extinguish when the brain ceases to function?

 

For evangelical christians, muslims and some jews, it does not. And for materialist philosophers, they would have nothing to say if they use neuroscience to refute their idealist counterparts.

 

And so they would have to make up all those rationalistic mumbo jumbo to riddle their way against the idealists, who would in turn appeal to another set of mumbo jumbo. As well as religion. As well as superstition.

 

Sigh.

 

*******

 

 

the problem with evangelical morality

It is often said how the evangelical christian religion provides the basis to be and do good, having set the stage for an elaborate worldview for the follower. It is also often mentioned, by some of my friends, how they would choose to live self-centred and self-focused lives if not for the “fact” of heaven, or for that matter, a life beyond death.

 

If this life is all there is, then why would one bother doing good to one’s fellow man? Why would altruism even matter, since one should proceed to live to the fullest, for one’s own sake?

 

Besides, didn’t Charles Darwin himself advocate the very selfish notion of “survival of the fittest”?

 

Apart from the obvious ignorance of darwinian evolution, the remark makes mockery of human decency and human solidarity. We do good because it is the right thing to do, full stop. We help our kin and more not because we wish to proselytise or convert them to our religion, not because our sacred texts say so, not because our gods dictate them and not because we want to feel good about it. We do good simply because doing good is the right thing to do. It benefits our species if we help one another, it contributes to the overall progress of the human race.

 

The phrase “survival of the fittest” is an unfortunate coinage as it seems to imply that nature favours the STRONG and the MIGHTY. And thus the weak, the infirmed and the elderly becomes the discarded of a darwinian society. No – one does not apply darwinian evolution this way. Natural selection allows the genes that are most adaptable to any given situation to survive and thus it appears that those genes are the “fittest”.

 

It is best to use an example:

 

Imagine a territory in the African savannahs where elephants are hunted for their long tusks. Over a period of time, the population of long-tusked elephants will decrease. Those which manage to survive will probably be the ones with shorter or stumpy tusks. And it would be these which will eventually procreate, resulting in future elephants with short or stumpy tusks. In this case, the “fittest” would be the elephants that manage to survive due to the particular circumstances of elephant-hunting by humans over a period of time. This is what it means for the fittest or most adaptable genes to continue.

 

Doing good, helping others, doing the right thing, are thus like the short tusks. It apparently helped us survive and thrive as social african apes in the past whereas the long tusks of harming our fellow homo sapiens did not.

 

Moral it is not if one does good out of punitive fear of a celestial dictator. Moral it is not if one helps another so as to convert him/her to one’s religion. It is emotional blackmail and it is vile.

 

It is my personal opinion that if a society is to mature, its people has to move beyond punitive morality inherited from a premodern and pre-enlightenment era to a humanism which is libertarian and autonomous, its dictates binding only to the individual conscience and for the advancement of humankind. As such, there is no such thing as sexual deviance, only preference and orientation. The death penalty is inhumane, regardless of the crime. State censorship of the press and media is antithetical to our inalienable right to free speech and expression. Discrimination based on race, nationality, sexual orientation, gender and religion or non-religion are universal evils that should be spurned and eradicated.

 

Idealistic? Definitely. Utopian? Perhaps. Lennonish? I hope so.

 

*******

 

islam’s war on the cross

 

The story of the Coptic Christian community in Egypt is one depressing case of persecution and oppression all throughout its 2000-year history. And if muslims are to continue to oppress this religious minority in Egypt, they will go down in history as one of the world’s most violent and evil religions of all time, apart from Catholic christianity in the middle ages.

 

Islam’s War on the Cross: Egypt’s move to democracy under threat after latest attack on Coptic community

 

*******

state murders in 2010

 

It was World Day against the Death Penalty two days ago on the 10th of October, and such a day brings awareness to human societies all over the world of the barbarity and inhumanity of the death penalty, which akin to beheading, stoning or dismemberment of limbs, is a punishment that is primitive and which belongs to a bygone age.

 

Of course, in the case of Singapore, with its very pragmatic and utilitarian view of many things, sees the death penalty as an effective deterrent for “serious” crimes such as drug trafficking and murder. Why not adopt the islamic penal system then of dismembering limbs for theft or stoning for extra or pre-marital sex? In this way it might “deter” more theft and fornication in our midst?

 

Anyhow, thank goodness for a nation that has one of the most draconian laws in the industrialised world, we did not perform any execution in the past year. In fact, the top 5 monsters in this regard, according to Amnesty International, are as such:

 

1. China

Yes, no surprise here. It is no wonder I feel ashamed to be an ethnic chinese, a descendent of one of the most barbarous nations in the world – no matter what many chinese chauvinists might proclaim about China being an economic powerhouse in recent times, having conquered the Olympics in 2008 and a history that spanned a few thousand years. So what?? Statistically, there were about 2000 executions performed in 2010 – but of course, this ruled out hundreds or even thousands more that were not reported officially. What is ridiculous is that even white collar crimes like fraud and embezzlement can sometimes warrant a death penalty.

 

2. Iran

Another no-brainer. In this god-forsaken place, even by being what Allah made you to be, a homosexual, can carry a death penalty, not forgetting non-violent criticisms of Islam and its paedophilic and epileptic lunatic of a prophet. Even private physical liaisons between consenting adults would cause you to be murdered by the authorities.

 

3. North Korea

This reclusive communist state loves to murder its own citizens for petty crimes like withholding information from the authorities, alleged blasphemy against the state (treason), disrespecting its monster of a founding father, etc. Sounds like fundamentalist religion to me.

 

4. Yemen

Another theocratic lunatic of a nation from the Arabic lands who have even executed juveniles as well as mentally ill people. 57 people were executed in 2010 by shooting.

 

5. USA

Congratulations yankees, for being the only so-called liberal democracy in the top five. Thank goodness USA is still decent enough to reserve the death penalty only for murder and not non-issues like homosexuality and non-violent crimes like fraud, embezzlement and drug trafficking. Anyhow, it is no surprise that the states which support the murder of murderers are predominantly evangelical christian. Hillbilly Texas topped the states with 17 executions out of the total 47 in the whole of the country in 2010.  

 

*******

 

religious discrimination once again

 

Privately owned Wyndgate Country Club, located in Rochester Hills in Michigan, apart from its members, also opens its facilities “to the public” for special occasions and events, like talks, conferences, meetings, etc.

 

And according to the laws of the US state, “open to the public” includes ALL persons of the public, without discrimination or segregation on the grounds of race, colour, religion or national origin.

 

But it seems that religious people in the country have the tendency to be biased against people of no religious affiliation for reasons only their idiotic brains know. The management of the Wyndgate actually agreed to allow the Center for Inquiry, USA to use its facilities for an event that featured keynote speaker, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. But after realising that Dawkins is an atheist through an interview on the extremely idiotic Bill O’ Reilly programme on the telly, the owner of the club decided to terminate the agreement.

 

Richard Dawkins Event banned by Michigan country club

 

This is discrimination pure and sweet. Businesses that offer its services to the public should never discriminate potential customers and clients based on religious grounds – and that includes owners of B&Bs in the UK who sometimes refuse gay couples on the grounds that their christian beliefs prohibit gay sex.

 

If you wish to stand by your archaic, primitive and barbaric beliefs, you are entitled to do so – but please, don’t be a General Practitioner, hotel or B&B owner, government-funded social services or any service provider that is open to the public. Otherwise, be prepared to offer services like abortion, accommodation for gay couples, relationship-counseling for gay couples, etc.

 

*******

 

iranian actress gets 90 lashes in prison

 

 

Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr, who starred in the politically provocative Australian film My Tehran for Sale, was arrested in July by the Iranian authorities and would be spending one year in prison on top of getting flogged 90 times.

 

Actor in Australian Film sentenced to 90 lashes

 

Although the exact reason for the sentence is yet unknown, it is rather obvious to many as to the reason of her arrest and sentence as the Iranian government has banned her work as an actress and anti-islamic activist.

 

How much more evidence of this sort do we need before we realise that indeed, such religious fundamentalism is dangerous and need to be eliminated before the very foundations of modern civilisation is in tatters?

 

*******

 

thank goodness we’ve separated

 

Thank goodness we had parted ways with our neighbour Malaysia in 1965, to become the sovereign Republic of Singapore, who has thus far out-performed and outclassed our bigoted, islamic fascist and racist idiot of a neighbour.

 

In order to attract tourists to the nation, its spin doctors often attempt to deceive the world into believing Malaysia is a pluralistic and modern city nation like Singapore. But unlike Singapore, which is a genuine secular state that promotes equality for every religion and race, Malaysia is a malay-dominated racist nation that favours the native malays over every other race, even though it is obvious to the world that the chinese and indians there are way above the malays in academic performance and eventual affluence. Where is meritocracy?

 

And what about religious pluralism? Its brand of Islam is ridiculously backward (but thankfully not as idiotic as its Saudi Arabian counterparts) and insecure, having the legal sanction to convert people of other faiths whereas its own are prohibited from conversion.

 

Malaysia muslims gets counseling after church meet

 

The recent paranoia and insecurity expressed by the authorities in Selangor over a charitable dinner event held in a Methodist church just made me sick to the stomach. There were muslims at the dinner, and thus the authorities feared that “there were attempts to subvert the faith and belief of muslims”.

 

And so they decided to “counsel” the muslims at the dinner, to “restore their belief and faith”.

 

Gosh, if the islamic religion is all that great and dandy, how can a single night of dinner in a christian church affect one’s faith? Buddhists are not all that bothered by luncheons and dinners held by organisations affiliated to other religions. Same with Hindus and even Christians.

 

Malaysia is but an islamic theocracy that clearly discriminates against non-muslims and their religious beliefs. A “moderate” muslim country?

 

All the existing islamic theocracies today are paramount examples of what a country will become when religion is in power. Only a truly secular, nonreligious government will ensure real peace and prosperity in a country. Has Islam really made a country more moral than the “decadent” West? I contend that Islam has in fact demonised almost every country in which it has power over – crimes against humanity abound in countries that are supposed to be on a higher moral ground than atheist Europe.

 

It is sad that the muslim world are so blinded by the irrationality that is part and parcel of the religious mindset that they fail to see reality as it really is. Which are the most peaceful and stable countries in the world?

 

Definitely NOT the religious countries.

 

Thank the mighty gods of Zeus and Jupiter, Jesus and Buddha, Vishnu and Shiva that I was not born in Malaysia and that we Singaporeans are FREE from the idiocy and primitive silliness of islamic fundamentalism.

 

*******

 

i am chinese but my “native” language is english!

 

Our senior statesman, the grandfather of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, was at a dialogue last Friday with some 4000 Chinese entrepreneurs when he commented that chinese Singaporeans should speak Mandarin to their children at home so as not to allow the future generations lose touch with their ethnic tongue. He also revealed as to how he made efforts to speak to his grandchildren in Mandarin all the time. Besides, in the context of Singapore, children will learn English in schools anyway.

 

Lee Kuan Yew: Mistake to Lose Mandarin at Home

 

His remarks reminded me of my former employer, whose eldest and third children were raised with Mandarin at home and apparently this affected their Mandarin competence in a very positive way – both excelled in Mandarin as well as English in school! Their second son however, was raised in an English-speaking environment and alas, he grew up disliking the Mandarin language.

 

Such a method might work for some families but not all. Human beings are not born with equal intellectual and linguistic capacities – there are some who would be able to be masterfully literate in more than one language but the majority of humankind would probably master only one. And in this sense I am refering not to a practical ability to converse and read minimally which among most chinese in Singapore would never be a problem, but a genuine MASTERY of the language in both speech and word. Such an endeavour would be very difficult indeed as one has to be able to “switch” modes of thought in multiple languages.

 

My wife came from a Hokkien-Mandarin speaking family (as would a majority of people in those days) and learnt English only in school. But although she can converse in both languages fairly well, I wouldn’t label her as literate in either English or Mandarin! She cannot write Mandarin competently nor can she write in the English language without more than a couple of grammatical, syntactical and structural mistakes. So – is she competently able in both languages?

 

And I contend that most Singaporeans would be like my wife – average in both English and their second language – and not like my employer’s children. Many would also be university-educated (as was my wife), but cannot speak or write competent and excellent English. And this is NOT good in my books. I would rather be a MASTER in one language than a Jack of two.

 

Anyhow, what about families akin to my own? My native language is English, full stop. Although ethnically chinese, I was only exposed to the Mandarin language from primary 1 onwards – both my parents have always been English-speaking, with my father conversant only in English, Hokkien and Malay. This runs contrarian to whatever talk Singaporeans have on mother or native tongues. Besides, as a fourth generation Singaporean, it is illogical to equate my cultural and societal roots with China whatsoever.

 

Take for example the contemporary black community in the US or the UK. They are ethnically African and are probably descended from African slaves or immigrants either a century or several decades back. But do many of them speak their “ethnic” tongue? Of course not. It would be illogical and irrational to expect them to do so.

 

Similarly, much of the caucasian population in the US are not of “pure American stock”, if there is such a word. The only pure Americans would be the native American indians. Many of the whites would probably be of European descent, may it be Italian, Dutch, Scandinavian, Russian, Czech, Irish, Scottish, etc. But do any of them speak in their ethnic tongues? Unless they personally decide to learn their ancestral tongue, most would only speak the American language and probably Spanish as a second language, of any at all.

 

No European or African would blame an American or Briton if he/she has no clue about their ancestral language. No one would expect them to do so anyway. So what’s the difference here in Singapore? Why all the irrational fuss about our “mother tongues”, as though our native language has to do anything at all with the race which we were born with – as though we had a choice in it.

 

I have no choice in my being an ethnic Chinese with Peranakan roots. But since I am four generations away from China – and Malacca - why would I be expected to know Mandarin??! Is it immoral if I can’t utter a single word of Mandarin as a British African would not his african tongue?

 

Come off it, you chinese chauvinists in Singapore. Anyway, this applies to the other races as well. We are all Singaporean first, not Chinese, Malay, Indian or what-have-you. Quit playing the race game as though it is something morally important in this globalised 21st century world. This is Singapore – and you should be expected to be literate in ENGLISH competently, more than your Mandarin, Bahasa Malay or Tamil or Hindi.

 

*******

 

is this not evidence enough…

 

…that fundamentalist religion can make otherwise good people do evil things?

 

Jerry Pittman Jr and his boyfriend Dustin Lee were trying to attend a church service one Sunday morning at Grace Fellowship Church in Fruitland, Tennessee when they were physically assaulted by homophobic hooligans.

 

Assault Complaints filed after Incident at Church

 

The young men were pushed and punched in the face, chest and back while still in their car. The thugs were also shouting derogatory homosexual slurs at the men, even when the police arrived at the scene.

 

Who in the name of goodness would be evil enough to beat up innocent people just because they happen to have a different sexual orientation than themselves?

 

Definitely not atheists and humanists. We are too rational for that.

 

Yes, you guess it. They were evangelical christians. If the incident was in Malaysia, Indonesia or any of the countries in the Middle East, it would probably be the muslims. In fact, they were CHURCH LEADERS and they did the cruel deed on orders from their big boss, the senior pastor!!

 

Yes, the senior pastor.

 

And this pastor also happened to be the father of one of the victims. So it seems that there is more to it than meets the eye. This is a family squabble, a case of a religious father who cannot accept his homosexual son.

 

This is not only so sad but also damn infuriating. Please OPEN your FUCKING EYES, all of you evangelical christians out there. There is SO MUCH EVIDENCE out on the streets to prove that somehow god-fearing people are more evil and morally corrupt than ordinary non-religious folks like me. And thus it is bullshit to keep claiming that there can be no morality without god or religion.

 

Who are the purveyors of homophobia but the religious? Who are the purveyors of crass racism and slavery in the past but the religious? Who are the cause of so much war and bloodshed in the past and present BUT the religious? Who would shoot abortion doctors BUT the religiously insane? Who believes that non-muslims are damned for hellfire but the islamically deluded? Who would want to eradicate all casinoes, brothels and nightclubs but the crazy christians and muslims in our midst?

 

The world will be a lovelier place without these monsters.

 

*******

 

common words that singaporeans often mispronounce

 

In light of the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM), here are some of the more common English words which Singaporeans often mispronounce.

 

Anonymity (adjective: anonymous)

Although the adjective is read as “uh-NOH-nuh-mas”, the noun should be rendered properly as “AN-nuh-NI-muh-ti” instead of “uh-noh-NI-muh-ti”. There have been occasions when our own local radio DJs have mispronounced the word.

 

Abacus 

Most parents of pre to primary schooling children should be aware of this word, on which a common arithmetic enrichment class is based. It is often pronounced as “uh-bay-cus” when it should be “Abba-cus”, where the stress is on the first syllable and that the first two syllables rhyme with the popular Swedish pop band in the 1970s.

 

Tuition

Primary school students are having so many tuition classes these days on so many subjects that I wonder if the parents are human at all. Anyway, with so many of these, they should be able to pronounce the word accurately. But alas, even the English-speaking parents are sometimes clueless. It is NEVER “tiu-shun” but “tuh-WEE-shun”, with three syllables instead of two.

 

Duh…and it is NOT “tuition teacher” but “tutor”, for goodness’ sake!

 

Competent

Most Singaporeans read this as “com-pee-tun”, perhaps revealing their incompetence at English, anyway. It should be “COM-puh-tuhnt”, with the stress on the first syllable and thus a schwa sound on the second. And remember to enunciate the “t” at the end.

 

Comparable

Although the first two syllables of the words compare and comparison rhyme with each other, that is not the case with comparable. This is just one of the many peculiarities of the English language we just have to accept. Sickening right?

 

It should be read as “COM-puh-ruh-bl”. The stress is on the first syllable and the second and third syllables are rendered rather quickly.

 

Informative

This is one word which many Singaporeans have butchered, especially in the numerous post-seminar interviews on the telly. It is an “in-FOR-muh-tiv” seminar and NOT “in-fuh-may-tiv” seminar. Bah!

 

Birmingham

This is a place word and is somewhat tricky. It is “BUH-ming-ham” when it is in the US but becomes “BUH-ming-um” in the UK, with a silent “h”. As with all places that have the “ham” syllable at the back, it is always a silent “h” in the UK.

 

Thames

Similarly, it is the river “tams” (rhyme with dams) and not the “thaymes” river (rhyme with dames).

 

Demonstrable

Oh dear, this is one of those. Singaporeans often pronounce the first two syllables of this word to rhyme with the first two syllables of the verb demonstrate. Nope, it should be “duh-MONS-struh-bl” where the stress is on the second syllable and a schwa sound on the first.

 

Often

Well meaning Singaporeans love to enunciate the “t” in this word, whereas the “proper” way to read it is “OF-fuhn”, without the “t” sound. Strange, huh?

 

Merry/Marry

The words merry (merry christmas) and marry (marry someone) DO NOT rhyme. I don’t really know how to delineate the difference via the written word but here goes. The proper way to render the words merry and marry should be akin to rendering words like bet and bat.

 

*******

 

There are many more that should be on the list and I should be adding more in the future.

 

*******

 

 

steve jobs (1955-2011)

 

 

Steven Paul Jobs passed away yesterday at the tender age of 56 after a long fight with pancreatic cancer.

 

Steve Jobs, Apple’s Visionary, dies at 56

 

Steve Jobs dies at 56

 

He lived a full life, having founded the now phenomenal computer company, Apple, in 1976 along with two other fellow geeks, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. His other corporate achievements including founding NeXT Computer as well as buying over The Graphics Group, which later became the wildly successful animation company, Pixar.

 

Although I admittedly has never used any of his innovations like the Iphone, the Ipod and the Ipad; no human being on this planet can ignore the immense influence on the IT world this bloke wielded in his short life. He had revolutionalised how we view the Notebook, entertainment and mobile communications.

 

It would be futile to wish him well now, or to bid him to rest in peace, for as far as biological life is concerned, he no longer exists and would not be able to listen to any of our condolences. His consciousness has died along with his brain and body, ravaged by cancer.

 

But in a sense he still lives on, whenever you play that game on the Ipad or the Iphone, whenever you switch on that MacBook, whenever you await with trepidation the next delicious offering by Apple.

 

That, is “life” after death, the “eternal life” that an abundant and well-lived human life brings.

 

*******

 

stupid quotations by christian apologist

 

Here are some idiotic remarks made by a so-called christian apologist named Kyle Butt in a recent debate he had against Blair Scott, the communications director for American Atheists at the University of North Alabama.

 

“If atheism is true and there is no god, then there is nothing that can’t be wrong. You and I know that some things are right and some things are wrong.”

 

Why do christians always come up with this inane idea that there can be no objective moral values without god? There are moral values that almost any decent human being will accept as proper and appropriate, NOT because a god has placed it there but because of our evolutionary history.

 

“Everything that begins to exist must have a cause”

 

Butt must be either ignorant or really daft to be so unaware that the cosmological argument for the existence of god has become a lot weaker due to the scientific discoveries of modern cosmology and quantum mechanics. Most modern cosmologists now realise that the universe as we know it did not begin to exist at the Big Bang as such, and that nothing did not become something at that moment but that something always existed. This almost eliminates the necessity of having a cause at all. Listen to physicists like Victor Stenger and Lawrence Krauss.

 

The Christian Post seems to suggest that Kyle Butt won the debate hands down. Perhaps he did – which proves that the debate format is NEVER a level playing field for intellectual discourse, as William Lane Craig suggested. The better debater and speaker always win, regardless of the truthfulness or falsehood of his position.

 

*******

 

some thoughts on atheist activism in the US and UK

 

There are times I wonder if all that effort by atheists, free thinkers and humanists, mainly in the US and the UK, to eradicate religious expression in the public space, is all that good and beneficial to the cause.

 

Organisations like Freedom from Religion Foundation in the US and the British Humanist Association in the UK have often been in the political frontlines of trying to get all forms of religious expression out of the public arena like government schools, in parliament, in areas of public service, etc. Although one can indeed make a case in the US by appealing to the secular nature of the constitution, even as a freethinker myself I don’t really see what all the fuss is about when a student attempts to pray in school or when some form of religious expression is attempted.

 

Despite what these atheists and freethinkers say about respecting democratic liberalism and pluralism; they continually give me the impression that they are atheist fascists, attempting to get rid of all forms of religion in society. Is this the kind of impression you want to give to the religious community, that atheists themselves have this “evil” agenda of eliminating religion at all costs?

 

The only form of religious expression that I think should be eradicated is religious fundamentalism, in all of its evangelical, wahabi and hasidic varieties. These are definitely dangerous to humanity and human progress. But what about theraveda buddhism? What about pluralistic hinduism? What about benign attempts by sincere christians to want to pray in school?

 

I contend that such expressions are harmless and REAL humanists should never force their secularist views, however moderate or extreme, on such really innocent folks.

 

The situation in Singapore is somewhat different from the US or the UK. As a secular country, religion is almost nonexistent in any form of civil, government and public discourse, although it is mightily prevalent in our culture and society. It is almost ingrained in every Singaporean that one has no right to force his personal religious beliefs on another and thus proselytisation is almost a taboo and a no-no in Singaporean society.

 

But this does not mean that Singapore is like Sweden or Norway where citizens are mostly non-religious. Singapore is VERY religious, a melting pot of buddhism, taoism, hinduism, jainism, christianity, islam and what-have-you all in one place. But we live and let live – we simply mind our own business and allow others to practise what they want, as long as their beliefs are not dangerous to society, such as scientology or the Jehovah’s Witnesses (their opposition to military conscription and to bear arms goes against our policy of mandatory military service of every male citizen upon reaching the age of 18), which are banned in Singapore.

 

BUT…no decent Singaporean will mind if a teacher attempts to bring up his religious views in a classroom, of course, in a civilised and respectful way. It is often okay to offer exposition on one’s religious views but always in a way that DOES NOT put down another view that is contrary to oneself’s.

 

We also have our fair share of “faith” schools, schools that are affiliated with religious institutions such as the Anglican and Methodist schools as well as the Buddhist schools and the Madrasahs. With the exception of the Madrasahs which I contend could be quite dodgy in terms of their educational curriculum, all of our christian and buddhist schools are absolutely HARMLESS. All of them accept nonreligious students into their cohort and although there are chaplains and chapel services, proselytisation is a no-no without the nonreligious student’s consent.

 

There might be a prayer or two during Monday gatherings, but then again, who cares? Nonreligious students simply ignore them. There is no coercion by anybody to believe or practise the faith of the school.

 

So I suppose this is very unlike the faith schools in the UK, that are somewhat more religiously aggressive.

 

Hmm.

 

But of course, there are also many things about Singapore that is unhealthy and should be changed, like its draconian censorship laws, views on capital punishment, criminalisation of homosexuality, and its unwritten prohibition against any form of derogatory criticism of religion and religious views in public discourse.

 

But what the hell, people still have the right to practise and believe what they want, however ridiculous, erroneous and idiotic (which they are), as long as they do not force others to do the same.

 

This, I think, is what the atheists in the US and UK are doing wrong.

 

*******

 

the humanist approach to dying and death

 

Death needs courage. It is so overwhelmingly final that it fills our lives with dread and anxious fear. When it arrives at the end of a long and happy life it is never welcome, yet not deeply resented. But when it comes too soon, invading young lives, disrupting hopes and dreams, it adds anger to our fear. We cry out at the injustice of destiny and wait for answers that never seem to come.

 

Courage is the power to confront a world that is not always fair. It is the refusal to beg for what will never be given. It is the willingness to accept what cannot be changed. Courage is loving life, even in the face of death. It is sharing our strength with others even when we feel weak. It is embracing our family and friends even when we fear to love them. It is opening ourselves to love, even for the last time.

 

Courage is self esteem. It prefers quiet determination to whining. It prefers doing to waiting. It affirms that exits, like entrances, have their own dignity.

 

- Sherwin Wine

 

This is real courage in death, knowing full well that there is nothing beyond the grave – not the pseudo-bravery of theists whose beliefs in the afterlife provide a false sense of hope so as to soothe their pain of knowing that their self existence will soon be naught.

 

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this is immoral, religious style

 

The following is a link to an account of how a new student organisation in a relatively conservative US university became the butt of discrimination and mockery, just because the organisation is ATHEIST.

 

 

 

The babe in the picture is Kimberly Danner, the cofounder and vice president of that new student society. The article is actually a guest post at the Friendly Atheist blog.

 

Atheists at Oakland University

 

It is ironic how evangelical christians almost NEVER attempt to “love their enemies”, despite how central this ethos was to the teachings of Jesus.

 

In fact, evangelical christians, just like their conservative muslim counterparts, love to exterminate their enemies – heretics, atheists, agnostics, humanists, liberal christians, homosexuals, practising jews, muslims, people of other faiths, etc – by either executing them literally (in the past) or assassinating them figuratively today by discrimination, criminalisation, legal process, verbal diatribe, etc.

 

Shame on them.

 

And if Jesus was alive today, he would definitely cuss them all the way to hell, just like he did with the evangelicals of his time – the pharisees and sadducees.

 

*******

 

why ac grayling is not a believer

 

It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

- Bertrand Russell

 

We have many nonreligious beliefs, but what distinguishes them from the beliefs that amount to religious faith is the kind of grounds on which we hold them and the nature of what they are about.

 

From this it will in turn be obvious that by religion I mean the standard thing and its offshoots: a set of beliefs in one or more (generally personal) supernatural agencies, typically a deity or set of deities, together with the values and practices taken to be entailed by the existence of any such agency, such as worship of it, submission and obedience to its supposed commands or requirements, and so son.

 

In its focal and standard sense, religion not only denotes a metaphysical commitment to the existence of something non-natural in, or somehow outside but connected to, the universe, but further that this something’s relation to the universe is in some way significant - centrally, by being some or all of the universe’s creator, ruler and moral instructor. The meanings of these remarks is of course only notional – as with a lot of theological and religious discourse, it is hard to attach a literal sense to what is claimed, which votaries defend by appealing to the ineffability of religious “truths” and the finitude of our minds in comparison – but they vaguely indicate what religious people claim to believe.

 

One has to say something along the foregoing lines when discussing religion because religious apologists are inveterately apt to defend criticism or refutation by saying, “That is not what I mean by religion” and “I don’t recognise that caricature of what I believe.” Part of the sleight of hand at work here becomes obvious when one notes the great difference between what ordinary votaries of a religion believe and what their theologians and high priests say.

 

Likewise, the fact that mythologies antedating Christianity are full of stories of gods impregnating mortal maids who give birth to heroic figures, not a few of them of whom go down into the underworld and return – think of Zeus and his dalliances with at least 27 recorded mortal women – makes it puzzling why anyone should think that the God-Mary-Jesus story is out of the ordinary instead of what it is: merely an obvious borrowing and adaptation. Viewed in this light, and extended to religion in general, one sees that it is a function of historical accident that some people should today think they are consuming the body and blood of a god, some literally and some metaphorically, rather than slitting the throats of bulls and making libations to mountain-dwelling deities rather than heaven-dwelling ones.

 

I do not accept the metaphysics of religious belief, and what follows explains why. The explanation I give is of why I reject claims to the effect that there are, or might be, supernatural aspects to the universe. It is not an explanation of why I reject as mere tales and myths the Olympian gods, the gods of Babylon, the Hindu pantheon, and so endlessly on, for as the foregoing remarks imply, it is just plainly obvious that all the historical religions are a hangover from the less knowledgeable and more superstitious infancy of humankind, or at least from that chapter of it in which what had been early science and technology – explanation of natural phenomena by appeal to the actions of purposive agents in nature, plus a “technology” of prayer, sacrifice, and taboo to influence these agencies – had begun to be abstracted into belief in mountain or sky deities as a result of the increase in knowledge which had pushed those earlier proto-scientific efforts at explanation beyond the horizon. That religion as thus shaped survives is a well-recorded result of priesthoods and temporal powers needing and supporting each other in order to control majority populations; the institutionalisation of religion and the indoctrination of children into its tenets, are jointly among the main reasons why it persists.

 

The fact that the major religions contradict and indeed blaspheme one another, a fact not lost on our forebears who went to war over it frequently, is however, not taken by the faithful to disprove all of them – “it only disproves all of the others, not mine”.

 

But in any event, the particular religions – the incoherent mass of more than a few thousand christian sects between them believing an almost as large number of absurdities, the simple-minded and equally absurd beliefs of the dozen sects of Islam, the fairytale legends and stories of Hinduism, and so on – would none of them recommend themselves to an ordinarily intelligent adult if he were first presented with them without having first been influenced in childhood by society and schooling. Asked to believe that they are true and important, and to base his life upon them, such an adult would almost certainly feel one of two things: very amused or very insulted.

 

And since all this is so, what follows is not about any particular historical religion, but the basis of religious belief as such. It is though tiresome that one has to undertake the task at all, given that religion, whose infantilisms, absurdities and obvious inheritance from a superstitious and ignorant remote past should surely be enough to make the conversation unnecessary.

 

The essential point for me is the rationality of belief. A principal mark of rationality is reliance on evidence, conformity with relevant experience and respect for associated knowledge and theory.

 

The views and practices that emerge from common sense, practicality and science form a general picture of a law-like realm in which we know what is rational to believe and do, and what is not. We know, for example, that it is rational to expect that we can light and heat a house by installing the right kinds of appliances in it and connecting them to a power source such as an electricity grid, and at the same time we know that it is irrational to believe that we light and heat it by prayer alone, or by sacrificing a white heifer and dancing around its entrails. This is precisely and exactly why it is rational to believe the deliverances of common sense, practicality and science, and irrational to believe religious claims: the former are based on evidence massively gathered and confirmed by experience, whereas the various etiolated fancies constituting the latter are untestable, inconsistent with each other, internally contradictory, and in conflict with the deliverances of common sense and science.

 

Some would try to give room for two “magisteria” repudiate the last remark made, arguing for a form of mutual consistency by construing religion and science as incommensurable discourses which address and operate in wholly disjoint spheres. That is heroic, but will not wash: the religions make existential claims about what is in or attached to the universe and putatively makes a huge difference to it – claims that are unverifiable by, and at odds with, science and common sense. In fact, religion and science are competitors for the truth about such things as the origins of the universe, the nature of humankind, and the ways that the laws of nature can be locally and temporarily suspended.

 

Efforts to arrange a test that would adjudicate between these competing claims will always be won by science, but the votaries of the faiths will always have a convenient escape clause such as “god will not be tested” and the like.

 

It is surely fruitless to press this aspect of the matter, once one has said: contrast the current state of geology and evolutionary biology with commitment to belief in a six-day creation that occurred less than 10,000 years ago. This single example of the staring difference between disciplined rationality and what is nothing short of pathological irrationality ought to be enough, in its generalisation to all religious belief, to settle the matter – and among other thing, to outlaw the abuse of children by allowing them to be taught religious dogma and tradition as fact rather than one of the often tragic aspects of history.

 

But one ought always to conclude this aspect of the discussion by invoking the shade of Karl Popper, whose remark that a theory which explains everything explains nothing should be the rationalist mantra. Religious claims are irrefutable because they are untestable; nothing will be accepted as counter-evidence of the faithful – neither the existence of natural and moral evil, nor the deliverances of science and reason; there is always an excuse or an explanation, or the last scoundrely resort to claims about the ineffability or mystery of divinity, so that even the grossest conflicts with the facts or logic can be explained away or discounted.

 

The main key to the survival of all religions is their proselytisation of the young, For good evolutionary reasons, children are highly credulous, believing in everything the adults in their circle tell them to believe in. But whereas the tooth fairy and santa claus soon enough leave the scene along with fairies and trolls, gods remain, reinforced by parental, educational and social institutionalisation. That this is a form of child abuse is unquestionable, not least because most of those who abandon religious faith later have a psychological and sometimes social struggle in doing so, often painful; and beforehand they may suffer agonies of apprehension and doubt because of their sexual feelings and consciousness of “sin” in respect of all sorts of things that are natural and acceptable except in the eyes of the faith.

 

The distorted lives of the victims of religion are plain to see from the Bible Belt of the US to the veiled and shrouded women of Saudi Arabia; genital mutilation, honour killings, forced marriages, and dozens of other abuses are perpetuated in the name of religion and tradition and contrary to rationality and humanity; the toll is great, and constitutes an indictment of religion as by far one of the least happy inventions of human ingenuity.

 

In more secular parts of the world, where religions are on the back foot, their votaries assume a smiling face and an innocent posture. The christian churches in the Western world no longer murder their opponents at the stake or in crusading massacres, but offer the Kiss of friendship to new members during church services. They concentrate on charity, peace and goodwill – a far cry from their past blood-soaked efforts to force everyone into obedience and submission. But this only applies when they are weak; where they are strong they are not so kid-gloved. The Taliban in Afghanistan offer an example of what all religions everywhere tend toward when given the opportunity: control, and imposition of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. This is not a merely rhetorical claim: the christianity of the inquisition, the Calvinists, and the Puritans is no different in practical effect from the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia or the Taliban of Afghanistan.

 

The contrast is with pluralism, individual liberty, consensual institutions, regimes of law, and rights – in short, Enlightenment dispensations, in which it is not a crime but an obligation to think for oneself, be informed, allow disagreement, encourage debate, and tolerate differences. That is not religion’s historical way, or its present way when it has the option. Just as science and religion are in direct competition for factual truth, so Enlightenment and religion are in direct competition when it comes to the contrasting kinds of society they envisage and promote.

 

This scratches the surface of why I not only reject the claims of religion, but think religion ought to be opposed and contested because it consists of falsehood and distortion, and is harmful to humanity.

 

If there is one practical move I would advocate toward diminishing the place of religion in human affairs, it is shriving education of it: that is the key to a better future.

 

*******

 

This article is written by professor Anthony C. Grayling, then professor of Philosophy ar Birkbeck College, University of London.

 

*******

 

speak proper english

 

The Speak Good English Movement Singapore was at it again, launching its theme for the year 2011/2012 a few weeks ago with the slogan, How You Speak Makes a Difference.

 

It has always been a delicate balancing act for the educational powers that be in Singapore, in their efforts to brush up the speaking habits of their fellow countrymen. Not wanting to go into the details regarding the history of the English language as spoken in Singapore, it is quite enough to mention that without a fairly homogenous ethnic mix, any working language used here would soon evolve into localised versions or adulterations.

 

Proper English speech, first of all, presupposes some rules of convention, which in our case, is standard British English. But pedants have to be reminded that standards of right and wrong are but mores of convention, rules of convenience, so to speak. A cursory study of the history of the English language reveals this fact. Much of what is termed “proper” English is often what is accepted as the prevalent form of usage among the educated and elite classes, and there is no REAL standard as to judge the “correctness” of English, unlike languages like French and Spanish, of which there are institutional academies that act as arbiters of the language.

 

And then again, when the SGEM speaks of grammatically sound English, are we refering to prescriptivist forms or descriptivist forms? Do we still abide by the archaic rules such as the prohibition of the split infinitive? Or do we all agree that current usage is right usage? And with the prevalence of American English in our media, there is the confusion of American grammar, which is indeed quite different from what we are used to in our schools. What about Canadian English? Or Australian English?

 

Grammar aside, pronunciation is also another messy matter, contrary to what SGEM might attempt to “educate” the public. English pronunciation is not just about regurgitating sounds of singular words phonically. It is also about the “melody” of the language and in the case of English, its nature of being a stress-timed and NOT syllable-timed language. This has often been overlooked and thus the erroneous excuse that one can pronounce English properly with a Singaporean accent.

 

This is an oxymoron. The Singaporean accent is inherently syllable-timed, whereby each and every syllable is rendered with the same stress. For example, the word example would be rendered as “ex-ahm-pel” instead of the proper “ex-AHM-pel”, where the stress is on the second syllable.

 

Correct pronunciation does not only refer to the sounds of the syllables but also to the stress of the syllables, along with the stress patterns of whole paragraphs of sentences as well. Thus to speak in proper sounding English, one will invariably sound “affected” with some sort of non-Singaporean accent, possibly a Singaporean-flavoured Received Pronunciation (the standard British model of pronunciation), like that of Lee Kuan Yew in his younger years and Lee Hsien Loong, our current PM.

 

Thus there goes the conflict with some of the younger educated generation who are simply phonetically challenged but dare not admit it and thus shift the accusation on people like me who “speaks with an accent”. Come on…all of us speak with accents, one form or the other. And as I’ve contended, to pronounce properly is to radically shift away from the Singaporean habit of syllable-timed speech. That in itself, will alter the way one sounds.

 

BUT…yes, a huge but…

 

It is very important to note that one cannot simply attempt to imitate accents from what we hear in the media. In the case of British English, many are not aware that the pronunciation model that we learn is a form that is perceived by over 95% of the British public as quaint and archaic. Modern forms of British English are manifold, and they can sound from the utterly strange (to our asian ears, that is) to the beautifully elegant, which is awfully rare these days.

 

The modern form of British English as spoken in London is not very “proper” by my standards, although I admit it is just MY standards. Many no longer enunciate their “t”s and their “l”s, sounding horribly like the British comedians Ricky Gervais and Russell Brand as well as the celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver. 

 

A more elegant form of English would be that of Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean), Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins.

 

But alas, more and more yearn to sound like the vulgar sounding American pop stars, which is a moral evil by my book.

 

But what can I say? These are but linguistic preferences, whether one goes by General American or Received Pronunciation, the Webster’s Dictionary or Oxford’s, American grammar or standard British grammar.

 

And in the unique case of Singapore, some still adamantly choose to speak in that unique staccato style that is more than just Singlish.

 

It is Engrish.

 

Bah!

 

*******

 

 

the golden rule

 

Hinduism:

“This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.”

- Mahabharata, 5, 1517

 

Buddhism:

“Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”

- Udana Varga 5, 18

 

Confucianism:

“Is there one maxim which ought to be acted upon throughout one’s whole life? Surely it is the maxim of lovingkindness: Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.”

- Analects 15, 23

 

Taoism:

“Regard your neighbour’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbour’s loss as your own loss.”

- Tiai Shang Kan Ying Pien

 

Judaism:

” What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the entire law; all the rest is commentary.”

- Talmud, Shabbat 31d

 

Christianity:

“All things whatsoever ye would that man should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”

- Matthew 7:12

 

Islam:

“No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.”

- Sunnah

 

*******

  

And so bang goes the theory that in any one particular religious tradition, divine truth resides solely therein. Even in Hinduism which predates Judaism and Christianity, the supposedly golden rule had already been expressed. In fact, it is human evolution that gave rise to the simple ethic of not harming another fellow human being.

 

*******

 

exception to the rule

 

Women indeed have a lot to explain about their irrational and ridiculous spending habits on bags, shoes, sartorial accessories and apparel. Why the need for so many bags when perhaps a bag or two suffice for the office and the playground? Why the need for so many shoes when perhaps two to three pairs may be enough for work and play? Why the need to splurge on so much superfluity?

 

And instead of reasoning it out logically, some decide to play the blame game by accusing us men of committing similar crimes of fiscal irresponsibility.

 

Top 5 Things Men Spend Money On

 

And the crimes we men are supposed to be guilty of?

 

1. Electronics

Haha…what electronics? Other than the old-fashioned CC television which my father bought for me as a wedding gift several years ago, I don’t own a flat-screen plasma television just because it is the “in” thing these days. I own only ONE mobile phone and it is NOT an Iphone. Mobile phones are for verbal communication, period. I do not own an Ipad or an Ipod or any of the superfluous gadgetry that deceive people into wasting their money.

 

2. Alcohol

The only times I consume any form of alcoholic beverage, beer or wine, are during wedding dinners and when offered by friends and relatives on special occasions. Alcohol is rather detrimental to the liver anyway.

 

3. Cars

I can’t drive and am as lousy a navigator as a blind mouse in a church. Besides, cars are for civilian transport, period.

 

4. Gambling

I don’t gamble. Unlike most men, I do not like to take risks, especially on things that do not have a high probability for good returns.

 

5. Sports

Other than watching the occasional football game which involves Singapore on the telly, I have no interest in any sports, individual or team.

 

Apart from the necessities of day-to-day living (commute, food, etc), books are the only other luxury which I spend on.

 

…which makes me all the more qualified to take potshots at the silly spending habits of women.

 

*******

 

singapore’s obsession with sex

 

 

What the fuck is wrong with Singaporeans these days? The public seems to be so obsessed with sex that they are seeing phalluses and pussies all over the place where there is none.

 

In the wake of the Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement, some Singaporeans are suggesting that the above advertisement is even more vulgar.

 

So, which ad is more indecent?

 

What the…? Although I realise where the company in question, which specialises in brazilian waxing, is driving at; the notion of vulgarity is ALL IN THE MIND. Such advertisements make life all the more exciting and interesting – playing on images, suggestions, euphemisms and the like to get important messages across.

 

It is really ridiculous to label such attempts at creativity in today’s world as vulgar or lewd when there is already so much sexuality on display in the media. Who are you trying to fool?

 

The people who would detect the so-called “vulgarity and lewdness” of such advertising would be mature adults in the first place, and what are the chances that these very adults would be so influenced by such advertising that they would become sexual psychopaths? Would we become molestors and rapists over night by being exposed to such advertising?

 

Let me suggest that there is more explicit sexuality on television these days of which children have exposure to than any advertisement in shopping centres or on Orchard Road could ever do. So shouldn’t MDA do something about it, like banning “sex” scenes even on Channel 5′s The Pupil or any of Channel 8′s drama series? Although these “sex” scenarios are never erotically explicit, children who watch such programmes with their parents can “get the idea” rather quickly – far more easily than advertisements like the above poster!

 

I wonder if any primary school child would be able to decipher what the above poster suggests, other than a fur bag that is opened?

 

Come on.

 

Sometimes I wonder if it really requires a lewd mind to interpret and suggest lewdness in an image.

 

The people who think that these advertisements are vulgar are probably vulgar themselves, sexually repressed individuals who have no way of expressing their sexual energy due to their misguided notions of an archaic morality that should have been discarded a long time ago.

 

We should be civil and logical in our discussion about sexuality in society. As mature adults, we should be able to handle a variety of sexual expressions in society, may it be erotic advertising, sexually suggestive images or prose, or simply creative eroticism at work. None of these are sexist, racist or homophobic to say the least. Whether it is the male or the female body – the human form is beautiful and sensual. Visual expressions of such beauty is art and should never be perceived as degrading to either the female or the male.

 

*******

 

international blasphemy rights day

 

Today is International Blasphemy Rights Day.

 

This initiative was started by the Center for Inquiry in the United States to support the basic human right for freedom of speech, and in this case, the freedom to criticise religion not for its own sake but for the sake of science, reason, freedom of inquiry and humanist values.

 

I concur totally. Why must religion be in a privileged position of being invulnerable to criticism, debate and rational analysis? Why must Islam be the only religion to be so ”sensitive” to criticism that any comment that seem to be even a little critical of it be labeled as blasphemous and offensive? Why must the Danish cartoonists be objects of death threats by “peaceful” muslims just because they speak their own minds about Islam? Why must Salman Rushdie be threatened with death for writing a novel which muslims themselves never even read in the first place?

 

For an ideology to be worthy of mention in the public square, it must be able to withstand and tolerate the criticisms and judgements of its alternative viewpoints. And to be civil about it.

 

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the epitome of islamic idiocy

 

What is FUCKING wrong with Saudi Arabia??!

 

It was only very recently that the current King made a public proclamation that Saudi women are able to vote in the country’s elections.

 

And yet they are still banned from driving. And are not allowed to go out of their homes without a male chaperon. And are coerced by law to cover up themselves like silly blanket ghosts.

 

Saudi Arabia is also one of the very very few countries in the 21st century who still practises beheading and stoning for crimes like murder, armed robbery, frequent drug use, adultery, “witchcraft” and conversion to another religion. There is also no freedom of religion in the country, where the only religion that is allowed to be practised is Islam, and their own interpretation of it at that. No churches or temples are allowed to be erected in the nation.

 

And muslims still complain about “discrimination” in secular Europe. My goodness…it is precisely because of the goodness of Europe that muslim immigrants could even build mosques and worshp in them!

 

It is high time muslims appreciate the secularism and humanism that is represented by Europe, one that is much more civilised, humane and truly enlightened than even moderate forms of Islam could ever aspire to be.

 

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teenager suffocated to death by father

 

One of the tragedies of the religious mindset is reenacted all over again via the recent case of a mentally ill 13-year-old Japanese girl who died of suffocation during a supposed exorcism ritual conducted by a buddhist monk and her father.

 

Teenager died from ‘suffocation’ in exorcism

 

She probably died from “drowning” as she was actually placed face-up underneath a water pump for five minutes in a buddhist “church” in Kumamoto, Japan; all the while being bound to a chair by a belt and being chanted sutras to by the monk.

 

Although one might be appalled by the apparent “water boarding” likeness of the silly exorcism ritual, many in the West are also guilty of such idiocy when the mentally ill are often misdiagnosed by well-meaning religious friends and family members as being demon-possessed. And instead of bringing these poor souls to seek professional help from psychiatrists, pastors and priests are called in instead.

 

It is sheer mental and psychological abuse to be called names like “Satan”, “Beelzebul” and “Devil” so many times in such rituals that supposedly attempt to cast such malign spirits out of the victim.

 

The more loony ones among the evangelical christians would even label issues like short temper, anger, lust and gluttony as “spirits” which have to be cast out via deliverance (the evangelical term for exorcism).

 

I could still remember the time when one of the pastors in my previous church (the independent charismatic church) told my parents that I had a “spirit of doubt and rebellion” in me. I was actually just being critical of the many excesses and practices of the charismatic movement then. Sheesh.

 

That is the real tragedy of the Japanese case. The father should have known better than to trust religion to cure his daughter. He should have sought psychiatric help instead of a buddhist monk, and a strange one at that. Buddhism in Japan has deviated so much from its purely philosophical roots whereby living in the here and now was its sole priority.

 

Sigh. The evils of religion.

 

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common misconception of our kind

 

 

Episode 8 of the Million Dollar Money Drop Singapore Edition was aired last night on Channel 5. Three pairs of contestants were featured, out of which the first pair were two brothers from the previous week and the subsequent two fresh new contestants.

 

The new contestants featured in last night’s episode were two good mates, Ratna and Del, the former being a S-league footballer and a father-to-be. There was a question which was posed to them regarding the gestation period of four species of animals, focusing on which having the shortest period. Del, being the more vivacious and vocal of the two, commented jokingly that they were not animals and so it would be tough for them to know much about these species.

 

Apparently it was that comment that triggered quite a reaction in my mind. We ARE animals, and it is a FACT. Homo sapiens are part of the genus homo and mammalian group primates, of which the chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang utans are our closest cousins.

 

It could be out of ignorance that Del made that comment. But I reckon it is reflective of something more sinister, more unbecoming of the society and culture in which we live. Our primary and secondary school students were never taught darwinian evolution. Not even in A-levels biology, I would reckon. The subject of human origins has been tactically dismissed in much of our science curriculum, which then leaves room for the mythological nonsense of religious creation stories to permeate the consciousness of how we came to be.

 

It is thus no wonder that Del made such a comment, probably influenced by his muslim upbringing which perpetuates the falsehood of humans being “created” by a supernatural and divine Being, endowed with an inherent worth and honour that is not accorded to other species.

 

Anyhow, is the theory of evolution via natural selection really so difficult that it is only taught in undergraduate level biology? Is the basic idea of gradual change over long periods of time that incomprehensible to ten to seventeen-year-olds?

 

Or is it due to some other political reason of not wanting to offend the sensibilities of a multi-religious society that has many of its religious adherents still holding on to a bygone myth?

 

The truth is that human beings are but part of the animal kingdom and would be headed for extinction like any other species on our planet. We might have highly evolved brains that give us this illusion of self-consciousness and great intelligence, but we are nonetheless an evolved species.

 

And the sooner we realise this, the better for humankind and human flourishing.

 

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some pointers on the bible

 

1. Historical criticism has effectively undermined the validity of the great majority of Old Testament citations by the authors of the New Testament.

 

Indeed, it is seldom possible even to imagine that Old Testament writers can have had in mind the persons and events that New Testament writers claimed they did. The oft-proposed thesis that this issue cannot be resolved either negatively or positively does not hold.

 

The long and short of it is that New Testament authors have systematically mistaken or distorted the meaning of Old Testament texts in the service of polemical and doctrinal agendas. Matthew’s five citations of prophecy in his nativity account are among the best-known examples of the practice, and perhaps the most comically inapposite.

 

In the interest of honesty and better communication with the public, academic theology needs to demonstrate the same kind and degree of intellectual honesty that long ago led natural science to disavow the Ptolemaic world picture.

 

2. From the standpoint of critical scholarship, Israel first entered history not during the Patriarchal period, nor that of the Judges, but with the establishment of the Davidic kingdom.

 

This political dynasty saw the slow emergence of monotheism from Israelite polytheism and competing forms of Yahwism, culminating after the shock of the Exile (587–539 BCE) in the exclusive veneration of Yahweh.

 

The narrative combination of “Yahweh alone” with the legends of Moses and the Exodus constitutes a projection of the belief system of a subjugated Israel of Persian and Hellenistic times onto the beginnings of Israel more than 700 years earlier. Historically speaking, the Old Testament is not so much the literature of ancient Israel as it is the Jewish Bible of Persian and Hellenistic times.

 

3. Broad sections of the Old Testament are understood as historical reports to whose factual nature their pious and revered narrators attested.

 

Where cultic, legal, or wisdom traditions did not involve historical narratives, Jewish theologians nevertheless anchored them within the historical framework of Israel and looked on them as the authentic words and deeds of Old Testament persons.

 

As a result, the historical value of the Old Testament for events and persons preceding the time of the Babylonian Exile is actually slight.

 

4. Biblical tradition has to be rejected because of research into biblical criticism.

 

None of the books of Moses come from Moses; none of David’s psalms from David; none of Solomon’s sayings from Solomon; none of Daniel’s visions from Daniel. Only a very few words of the Prophets stem from prophets whose names grace those books. There was no Exodus out of Egypt, no revelation in the Sinai, and no handing down of the Ten Commandments.

 

Abraham, Isaac, Moses and Joshua are mere names; Jericho was never captured. These statements cannot be repeated often enough, for they are necessary correctives to a fallacious sacred story that allowed church functionaries and collaborating politicians to maintain power for almost 2000 years.

 

5. Within the theological faculties of German universities the primary (if not the only) validation of the Old Testament is its testimonial support of the divinity of Jesus Christ.

 

But since many Old Testament scholars consider Christological exegesis of the Old Testament to be scientifically unsupportable, they no longer belong to the confessional Christian faculty.

 

One would think that in the interests of intellectual honesty they ought to speak openly about their confessional dilemma. For colleagues from other areas of the theological faculty, this might serve as a salutary challenge to collaborate on both curricular and confessional reforms, to loosen the chains of doctrinal bondage, and thus advance the cause of academic and scientific freedom.

 

6. When the relation of the Old to the New Testaments is assessed using objective criteria alone, one cannot rationally understand the New as the fulfilment of the Old nor the Old as the preview of the New.

 

Rather, the New Testament must be seen as an independent body of writings, and the “Old Testament” – more accurately termed the Hebrew Bible – as an anthology belonging first and foremost (though perhaps not exclusively) to Judaism. This recognition will throw light on the fact that from its beginning the Christian Mission met with little success in most Jewish communities. The missionaries quite understandably encountered both a lack of understanding and resentment at their misappropriation of the holy scriptures of those they sought to convert.

 

7. Statements central to Christian theology such as “God brought his people Israel out of Egypt” or “God raised Jesus from the dead” are untenable.

 

In the first case, the Israelites were not driven out of Egypt, and in the second Jesus’ physical resuscitation never took place. Failure to acknowledge these and other crucial errors of fact continues to eat at the heart of Christian doctrine – at the belief system of a Church that has always understood itself to be part of the 2000-year-old story of God acting in history.

 

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This article is based on Gerd Ludemann’s Altes Testament und christliche Kirche: Versuch der Aufklarung (2006).

 

 

heaven and hell, yin and yang

 

My wife and I are as different as heaven and hell, yin and yang, white and black, good and evil, god and satan, saint and sinner.

 

Really.

 

My wife is a sanguine-choleric at work, domineering at times, very assertive, very task-oriented and a competent organiser while I am very melancholic-phlegmatic – I am a perfectionist in what I do best while prefering to work at my own time and schedule without engaging in all the petty office politicking that is so rife when working with people. One of my fantasies in life would be to become an academic.

 

She is also a social butterfly who loves the outdoors, the beach, swimming, jogging and watching the telly while I am the introverted social recluse who loves reading, the libraries and bookshops, writing, and you guess it, more writing. As my interests are rather solitary, I am someone who loves personal space and private contemplation whereas my wife loves to do things “together as a couple”. This is also one of the main sources of conflict between us – even a trip to the grocer would require me to accompany her just for the sake of “couplehood” or “family time” whereas I would prefer the more efficient method of doing it myself.

 

She was raised in a chinese-mandarin speaking home while the only language I uttered from birth was English. She has six other siblings whereas I have only two. She loves watching taiwanese variety programmes and hong kong drama serials and films while the only drama series I probably watch would be Criminal Minds, CSI and Dexter. While she often laughs at all the silly shenanigans of the taiwanese, she couldn’t, for the life of her, comprehend how I could go crazy over The Blackadder, Not the Nine O’Clock News and Mind Your Language.

 

She does read, but with the sole purpose of receiving information about practical issues like housing matters, Singapore politics, healthcare, furniture and electronics sales, and anything associated with her professional life. I read for pleasure, full stop. Although I read lots of non-fiction, they focus primarily on philosophy, science, history and theology, sadly, issues that do not make me a better citizen or a better husband or father. For practical information I would rather listen from friends and relatives.

 

She is also the handyman around our house, competent enough to dismantle and fix things whereas I am totally clueless about such things (which I am sometimes ashamed of). Similarly, she reads maps very well and has an excellent sense of direction whereas maps are like sanskrit to me and I could even get lost in my hometown once in a while. When I chat with her, I want only a listening ear that empathises whereas she would always be trying to offer me solutions.

 

Sometimes I wonder if I am indeed a “real man” when I share many traits and characteristics with my woman friends. The only clue that I am still a bloke is perhaps my physical strength as compared to my wife’s and the way I have sex most of the time – a rough fuck in doggystyle position with my wife moaning and screaming for more. Then again, it seems that my wife has a stronger libido than me these days. Could it be due to the hypertensive and anti-psychotic drugs I am taking? Hmm.

 

Our thinking processes are also different. Although she is more competent in the sciences than I ever was and am (perhaps that is why she is thus in the medical profession) whereas I love and adore the arts and humanities, my wife views the world more like a religious individual than a scientist – leaning a lot on faith, intuition and tradition. She might insist on proper evidence when we discuss issues about medicine and healthcare, but she thinks like a dodo when it comes to everything else.

 

As for myself, I demand empirical evidence and sound reasoning for everything – I would not subscribe to or accept anything that has no evidence to show for and this includes tradition and customs, religion and morality. I am utterly disgusted when someone appeals to the authority of a sacred text when discussing morality. And this includes my wife, at times.

 

With all these differences, how on earth did we get along all these years? And to result in three offspring as well?

 

But we complete each other, I suppose. We rub on each other and lean on each other’s strengths. And it also helps that some of our friends are in the same heaven and hell situation.

 

*******

 

 

gods inside

 

Belief in gods is a human universal.

 

Gods are everywhere. In every culture and throughout every historical period, a central feature of human existence is the presence of a god or gods. Where humans exist, some people have religious experiences, feel the pangs of conscience and suffer for their moral values. There are no cultures without any form of spiritual life. This fact must be taken seriously as a scientific phenomenon. Why do so many people genuinely experience contact with a spiritual realm inhabited by one or more identifiable entities, sometimes malign, more often benign?

 

There are people who claim to know nothing of spirituality. Likewise, some people have never been in love, even though some people of all cultures have such an experience. So, too, there are people who feel little or no interest in having children, having sex, or listening to music. Religious experiences are not known to all people of all ages. Still, religious experiences and ideas are common to all human societies, and for some – perhaps most – members of all human societies these experiences are prominent parts of their lives.

 

Humans have evolved infinitely flexible behaviours.

 

Human universals cannot be explained by culture alone. Neither can behavioural traits seen among other animal species or newborn babies. Instead, like the human interests in food or sex, and like the human institutions of marriage or property, such ubiquitous human behaviours must have their roots in fundamental features of our evolutionary biology.

 

Unlike territoriality or marriage, however, there no ubiquitous antecedents of human religious experience among animal species. We are not supposing that chimpanzees or gorillas are without some intimations of the divine. But there is no evidence that such experiences are common among animal species.

 

If there is some evolutionary basis to human religious experience, it is not one shared commonly among other species. This leads to the corollary that there is something special in hominids’ evolution that led to the development of religious experience.

 

Humans patently have not been selected for innate knowledge of the particular skirt heights or automobiles appropriate to sexual conquest. Nor is our behaviour entirely arbitrary or entirely controllable by simple fixed action patterns. Instead, the great expansion of our learning capacity has undermined such genetic rigidity. So how do we respond appropriately in each of the many, wildly varied, social and ecological situations in which we find ourselves? We seem to have evolved a general calculating capacity that improvises a wide repertoire of appropriate behaviour.

 

Homo sapiens exhibits truly distinctive elaborations of tool use, to such an extent that we are now virtually surrounded by its artifacts. Coupled with this rampant tool-use is a degree of behaviourial plasticity that is unique, evolutionarily. No other organism on this planet comes close to our staggering potential for novel behaviour. In a phrase, we have evolved free will.

 

To protect our fitness from free will, unconscious darwinian regulators evolved.

 

Darwinian evolution has given us remarkable flexibility. But extreme plasticity is dangerous from the perspective of evolutionary fitness. This evolutionary gift of free will – for we are the product of our evolution, not its director – comes with the little noticed liability. Wrong choices can take us far from fulfilling the darwinian mission to reproduce. With our remarkable capacity to invent novel behaviours, what stops us from going awry?

 

One rejoinder might be that many do go awry. Some people choose never to reproduce. This fact might be taken as evidence that we are now free of that pesky darwinian heritage. With lifelong celibacy arising from religious vows, perhaps there is no issue here at all.

 

This manoeuvre isn’t promising. Many members of other species also do not reproduce, or do not survive into adulthood. Incidental failures of survival or reproduction, however, do not show that evolution by natural selection is not working. Indeed, the deeper evolutionary theory predicts that such failures must happen. If they never did, then an interventionist god would be a more likely theory for life than darwin’s.

 

If we are no more darwinian screw-ups than other species, how is our behavour kept in check, given our amazing behavioural flexiblity? There are three basic solutions.

 

First, it may be that our perceived free will is only that, a perception, and that we are still genetically nudged to specific behavioural patterns ensuring that we will seek, and often achieve, outcomes that increase our darwinian fitness. Leaving aside ideological distaste, human behaviour simply does not show the stereotypical, or even predictable, features to the extent seen among other species. Therefore we reject this idea.

 

Second, a few biologists have argued that we calculate the consequences of our behaviour for our fitness, and choose accordingly. The problem with this idea is that we do not obviously – and here the word obviously takes on critical importance – consciously deliberate over darwinian calculations. Sally does not consciously think over the fitness effects of choosing Jack rather than Robert when picking a date, or even a fiancee.

 

Third, perhaps we humans do make strategic decisions about the consequences of our behaviour for our darwinian fitness, but we do so unconsciously. We propose that strategic darwinian calculations are performed primarily in the frontal lobes of our brains, with the results guiding us subconsciously. We may be consciously unaware that these calculations are being made, believing instead that our decisions are guided by an innate understanding of “the right thing to do”. Neurobiological gods built by darwinian evolution rein in our behaviour.

 

Our unconscious darwinian regulators give rise to religious and moral experience.

 

We propose that god(s) evolved as one of our brain functions in the same sense that vision evolved as a means of processing stimuli arising from photons stimulating neural tissue. That is, god(s) are located within the brain where, we propose, their evolved function nudges us toward darwinian ends. This “god function” is neither trivial nor dysfunctional. Instead, it is integral to the effective functioning of the human brain as an organ shaped by natural selection. With this in mind, we dissect the evolutionary biology of religious experience from the standpoint of our theory.

 

The human brain operates bicamerally on our hypothesis, with a bicameral structure that has been sustained by evolution. So who, or what, is the “self” that we subjectively experience? We propose that the brain operations that constitute our subjective selves constitute only one of two major suites of integrating brain functions. Our experienced selves are thus the immediate tactical coordination centres for our behaviour. To use a metaphor, our conscious minds are like the pilot on the bridge of a ship. But the pilot is not in command. The pilot takes orders from the captain. We are not in fact free to choose the meaning of our lives.

 

How does this happen? We suggest that our subjective self is directed, constrained and shaped by means of sustained affect, directed perception and long-term fixations. In other words, our selves are the immediate operators of our bodies, but not the source of coherence and direction in our lives. Does this mean that there is another “person” inside our brains? Not exactly. But there is another mind in our brains, one very different from the mind we experience ourselves to be from moment to moment.

 

We have no fixed opinion about the degree of unity that this other mind possesses. That might vary from person to person. However, in psychiatrically normal individuals who are not in a temporarily “altered state”, our guess is that the other mind has a degree of coherence. In some respects, it may possess more coherence, persistence and focus than our conscious selves possess. After all, our basic theoretical position is that this other mind is the guarantor, the master controller, of our conscious self, keeping us entrained to darwinian ends, despite our free will.

 

Since any biological organ can malfunction, some people must, and do, lack gods as components of their brain function.

 

If god(s) is (are) strictly endogenous, with no existence outisde our nervous systems, then there must be some individuals who lack god(s) in the sense of lacking a strategic darwinian focus to their behaviour. Such individuals, on our analysis, should be devoid of strategic organisation of their lives. They may have workable intelligence and all immediate biological drives and reactions may be intact. That is, their conscious selves can be functional even when the god function is absent or destroyed.

 

Such isolated dysfunction must sometimes occur because all biological functions can be abrogated. It is only in a truly supernatural world that every sentient person could share the same experience of a deity(s).

 

It is well known in clinical psychology that there are individuals who congenitally lack social restraint or conscience. These individuals have been variously placed in such diagnostic categories as “morally insane”, “psychopath”, “sociopath” and “anti-social personality disorder”.

 

It is a hallmark of sociopathy that afflicted individuals experience neither genuine guilt nor remorse. Indeed, such individuals are the very model of existential heroes: rootless, unconstrained and autonomous, at least in the medium to long term. In the short run, they can feign any kind of behaviour that they find convenient. That is, sociopaths do not have what is called a conscience in everyday English. They lack a profound connection to their god(s).

 

Lesions to the frontal part of the cerebral cortex, as well as underlying focal tissue, lead to large-scale disruptions in the organisation of behaviour. We believe that conscience is instilled in us by the successful functioning of our frontal lobes. An individual who exhibited congenital sociopatthy was found to lack fully developed frontal lobes, presumably also a congenital defect. However, it is not necessary to entirely lose a brain area to lack the function associated with the area.

 

Thus the godless exist, and their dysfunction probably involves failures of frontal lobe function. Conversely, in the vast majority of individuals the god function is apparently a part of how our brains normally work.

 

Because gods are fundamental to human brain function, we must, and do, have direct experiences of them under some conditions.

 

It is common for people to experience “the hand of god”. It is common, that is, for individuals undergoing severe physical stresses as shock, starvation or fever to experience such things. In fact, some of the best evidence for the authenticity of religious experiences comes from humans in altered states of consciousness.

 

In the state referred to as psychosis by modern psychiatry, people lose the ability to distinguish between hallucinations and everyday reality. In psychotic states, patients show a kind of “scrambled” experience of the world. Paranoia is a commonplace feature of psychosis, though not invariable. Grandiosity also occurs, although it is less common, in both schizophrenics and manics. Inappriopriate and sometimes extreme interest in sex, violence and excreta are also common. Psychotic states are not usually completely irrelevant to the everyday concerns of people in normal states, though. Rather, they tend to reflect radical distortions of such concerns.

 

Among the prominent features of psychosis are religious hallucinations and delusions. Delusions of being specially chosen and religious hallucinations are common features of cinematic and fictional renderings of psychosis and they are quite common among the case reports of psychiatric patients.

 

Similarly, in drug-induced altered states of consciousness, reports of “seeing god” or hearing “the voice of god” are common.

 

Why are such experiences so commonplace when the normal limits of cognition are transgressed? Our interpretation is that such experiences reflect a breakdown in the blockade that normally forestalls the direct experience of the gods inside our brains. In other words, we propose that hypertrophied religious experience during delirium, intoxication and psychosis is a more overt, though less functional, manifestation of our endogenous controller. That controller is the actual source of all genuine religious experience.

 

Religions reconcile our experience of gods with our rational suspicion that they are absurd.

 

If you knew nothing whatsoever about the subjective nature or meaning of religious experience, you would still notice that humans spend a great deal of time imploring invisible entities. Buildings are erected because of this concern. People kneel and bow toward invisible beings, or toward statues of people or creatures that do not seem to exist in their everyday lives.

 

Our interpretation is that conventional religious experience revolves around the culture-dependent interaction between the god-function located in our frontal lobes and the conscious portions of the cerebral cortex. That is, religion is an intercession between our consciousness and our godly unconscious controller. If our hypothesis is correct, and we do have a god-function embodied primarily in our frontal lobes, then practices that modulate, ameliorate or otherwise enhance this function – religious practices – should exist.

 

We do not wish to argue that religion is necessarily good, nor that it is always beneficial to our darwinian fitness. Rather, we should say that religion arises from an “itch” that we “scratch” during religious practices, just as sex drives generate a wide range of behaviours and cultural practices that are related to sex, many of which have little to do with actual reproduction.

 

Gods are neither fictional nor materially powerful; we must live with the fact that they dwell within us and help define our lives.

 

It might be supposed that the argument sketched here leads us to the view that organised and ad hoc religious practices should be exposed as some type of fraud. But we have no such view. Instead, we see religious experience as about valid or usefeul as erotica. It too stimulates an important function, one that is part of the behavioural substratum underlying evolutionarily appropriate human conduct. Like erotica, religon may become extreme or dysfunctional in some cases. Also like erotica, there is some variation in religious practice, not all of it is worthy of either condemnation or praise.

 

Religous experience is not divine in origin. Instead, it is an evolved part of the human way of life, one that is abrogated or dismissed only at some peril. Gods are real, and important. But they are neither transcendental nor all-powerful, and their origins are decidedly material.

 

These gods no more deserve our worship or awe than our livers do, though the liver really is a pretty impressive organ.

 

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This article is written by Michael Rose and John Phelan, both evolutionary psychologists.

 

 

secular is the best way to go

 

If history and current events have anything to teach us, it is that secularism, in theory as well as actual governance, is indeed the best way to run a country.

 

Contrary to what the christian right in the United States and the islamic theocracies of the middle east want the whole world to believe, having a “god-ordained”, “christian” or “islamic” government that is runned by christian or islamic principles is NOT A GOOD thing. On the other hand, please note that although the United States is in theory (via its constitution) a secular nation, it is in all practical terms a nation filled with a powerful christian majority that is attempting to control the government. It often engages in wishful thinking, dreaming to place “christian” leaders in office.

 

On the other side of the coin, the United Kingdom might be a “christian” nation in name, with much of the House of Lords filled with former bishops and archbishops of the Church of England, but in all practical terms, it is run more like a secular nation with its many rules and laws against religious proselytisation and zealotry.

 

Alas, both governments are not ideal. Perhaps a more genuine secular nation would be that of nations like Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Japan – where not only are the governments “secular” in theory, but where the population themselves are predominantly non-religious.

 

Compare these countries with the religious nations like the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia (although secular in name, the vast majority are muslim), the Philippines and Nigeria, etc. Every now and then one would read and hear of news of street clashes, bombings, fights, scuffles, death threats, etc all in the name of religion. Every now and then one would read and hear of silly policies (usually religiously inspired) being made that would often impede and hinder human progress and development, all in the name of “protecting the morality” of the people. Laws against contraception and abortion, laws against LGBT sex, laws against same-sex marriage, laws against alchohol consumption and distribution, laws against nightclubs, brothels and night life in general, laws against pornography, etc.

 

Although the religious person might applaud such laws, he/she doesn’t realise that such prohibitions often backfire. It is not a generalisation to claim that one of the horniest men on the planet are men living in islamic theocratic nations. And although countries like Denmark and the Netherlands have rather liberal policies about sex and pornography, they have one of the lowest rates of teenage pregnancies and rapes - unlike the United States and Malaysia. And besides, there is no evidence that children of same-sex parents are more dysfunctional and less emotionally and psychologically healthy than children of heterosexual parents.

 

And once in a while, when another church gets bombed by some crazy idiot of a muslim in Indonesia (homemade bomb found after suicide attack, Indonesia’s religious harmony tested by bomb attack in worship place), it makes me all the more sick to the stomach that religion is indeed the poison and evil of modern society.

 

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the “outsider test for faith” (OTF)

 

This is a deceptively simple yet should I say a devastatingly rational “apologetic” for the falsehood of traditional christianity as interpreted by evangelical-fundamental adherents.

 

It is credited to John Loftus, a former American evangelical christian turned atheist (like Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation). He apparently trained under that dodgy debater, Dr William Lane Craig more than two decades ago! He is also the owner of the prolific blog, Debunking Christianity.

 

The Outsider Test for Faith is basically as such:

 

An evangelical would often attempt to refute another faith system, such as Islam or Taoism, by using empiricism, rational analysis and science.

 

One would perhaps point to the schizophrenic or epileptic origins of Muhammad’s visions, or the barbarous manner in which Islam was propagated in its infancy, or the way Islam “copies” much of christianity, etc. One would perhaps also point to the very mythological aspect of Taoism, having a plethora of gods and goddesses, legendary monkey gods and pig-faced (literally) heroes; and parallel such a system to that of any of the ancient Roman or Greek myths.

 

The premise that the evangelical/fundamentalist would hold at the beginning of every intellectual engagement would be the human origins of the sacred texts in question. As John Loftus puts it, “believers do this when rejecting other faiths…So the OTF simply asks believers to be…consistent.”

 

The OTF demands a reason as to why evangelical christians often operate on a double standard. If they use reason, logic and science to reject other faiths, they should be using the same means to defend/reject their own.

 

This has been my bone of contention, really, even when I became “born again” or got “saved” as a charismatic christian more than twenty years ago (I made the “decision” to became a Christian in my teens after a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting in college even though I was raised as an evangelical christian at home)!

 

As an individual who respects critical thinking and rational analysis, I have often tried to be as critically fair as possible, applying the same objections to other faiths and worldviews as well as my own. The hindrance I had in my early years as a christian was lack of intellectual resources – I wasn’t exposed to as much biblical literature as I would have liked – and availed myself only to resources such as Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Norman Geisler’s When Skeptics Ask, Grant Jeffrey’s The Signature of God, and such. Only much later did I realise as to the dubious nature of such apologetics work – a lot of dishonest scholarship.

 

Anyhow, the challenge to every evangelical who truly believes that christianity is the absolute truth and the only way is this:

 

1. Do not engage in circular reasoning by assuming the inerrancy and inspiration of the bible. For the sake of argument, simply assume that the bible is like any other ancient book, whether it is the quran, bhagavad gita, lotus sutra, the tao te ching, etc. Assume yourself to be a seeking agnostic – you don’t know anything about god or religion or truth – but you want to see for yourself if the bible is really written by a supernatural god.

 

2. With that in mind, investigate the claims of the bible like any other ancient text. Investigate the claims of the Genesis creation accounts – do they differ from modern cosmology and evolutionary biology and why? Investigate the stories in Genesis, Exodus, the four Gospels and Acts - do they have any corroboration in modern archaeology or history? Investigate the authorship process and “historical background” of the biblical books – who really wrote those biblical books and how? Investigate the alleged inconsistencies and contradictions of the biblical texts – try not to explain them away – but take a good hard look at them. If the bible is inspired and written by god, it should be perfect and accurate.

 

3. If you claim a special mystical experience with Jesus as the reason for truth in christianity, then use this same standard on other worldviews – what about the special mystical experiences of Allah by other muslims? Or the real experiences of mystical union with the universe by buddhists? If you denounce those experiences as demonic deceptions and such, why can’t the muslims and buddhists use the same argument against your own?

 

In other words, do all the necessary background check which you would normally do to any other ancient text which claimed to be sacred and divine. Ask all the questions about christianity the same way you would ask to another faith tradition or worldview. Any objection you have against another worldview should be used against christianity as well.

 

And after all is said and done, see if traditional evangelical christianity still stands.

 

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much about nothing

 

The following is just one of the many trivial things religious people get upset over, especially those of the monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. In this case, it is christianity.

 

Apparently, the Australian government has decided to drop the dating terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) in the national curriculum for schools in favour of the more neutral BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era). And this decision has caused an uproar and a fury among the christians in Australia.

 

Australia gets PC and drops BC from curriculum

 

To BC or BCE?

 

Christian bigshot Peter Jensen, the archbishop of Sydney, condemned the decision as “an intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of history”.

 

Now now, my dear Pete, how can a fictional god-man be anything but OUT of history? A real historical person or not, he is definitely NOT the Son of God – like Zeus and all the rest – in history.

 

Besides, BCE and CE are terms that have been used for several decades in the academia already. Most academic writers, for many many years, have already used BCE and CE to designate time periods instead of the more sectarian BC and AD.

 

Hey, at least the secular government did not try to adopt alternative dating calendars like the Lunar systems of the chinese or the muslims.

 

That – would be a moral sin indeed.

 

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general practitioner speaks about religion to patient

 

A General Practitioner (GP) in the UK was recently embroiled in a disciplinary fracas with the General Medical Council (GMC) for speaking to a suicidal patient about Christianity. Dr Richard Scott was forced to attend the hearing because he refused to accept a mere official warning over the incident (served him right).

 

Christian GP told Vulnerable Patient to turn to Jesus

 

After reading the above news report among many others, I am reminded of the medical community here in Singapore. Although the majority of sensible GPs here do not mix religious fiction with medical science, there are instances of christian GPs who would every now and then speak about how Jesus could “heal” their patients and perhaps even “pray for them” if they willingly avail themselves. Some would even encourage their patients to attend “miracle services” organised by churches like Lighthouse Evangelism to get healed.

 

Such GPs are treading on a very fine line here. Most would not even think of speaking such things to their muslim patients (there is an obvious civil disparity here) – somehow muslims are the ones who seem to be more touchy than others about religious proselytisation – but would not think twice of sharing Jesus with patients of buddhist, taoist or hindu faiths.

 

And most of the time in such cases, patients of these religious faiths (apart from muslims) are rather nice and would not bother about complaining to the authorities that they were forcefed christianity.

 

I contend that we should. It is incredibly offensive to my sensibilities to be offered religious fiction when all I should be offered are options in medical science. In terms of cases like suicide or depression, a proper psychiatric treatment should be recommended by the GP.

 

Religion can only be shared by the GP in situations where the patient shares a similar faith. As such, the blind would only be leading the blind. No harm done to other enlightened individuals.

 

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this is how REAL scholars do it

 

Here is an insightful brief commentary by religious scholar Dr Robert Cargill of the University of Iowa on how proper scholars deal with supposedly new and radical discoveries:

 

a note on how “new” discoveries should be announced to the public

 

The points to note are that most credible and competent scholars, upon finding a new discovery, would open up their findings to other scholars for critique and peer review, even before thinking of approaching the press or the media. They would be in a constant mood of scepticism, even towards their own research methods and conclusions.

 

This is so unlike the pseudo-scholars of evangelical archaeology or “apologetics” who are often so quick to make pro-biblical conclusions and make “documentaries” of their alleged discoveries so as to buttress their already hoped for conclusions that the bible is “true”.

 

And secondly, real scholars will report their findings with an ABUNDANCE of CAUTION. No sensationalism. No hype.

 

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prison or jail – let the convicted decide

 

In what seemed like a very charitable move by the authorities in Bay Minette, Alabama; people convicted of non-violent crimes in that area would now be able to choose between a jail term plus a monetary fine or to attend a church of his/her choice every Sunday for about a year – after which the offender’s case would be dismissed.

 

Serve time in Jail…or in Church?

 

Although the Bay Minette police authorities claim that such a move does not violate any issues regarding the secularity of the constitution, it is still questionable as to the choice given only to “churches”. This would exclude non-violent offenders who are atheists, non-religious or of other religious affiliations like buddhists, hindus, muslims, etc.

 

If the temptation of a “lighter” sentence is too great, I suspect many would just bite the bullet and sit at the back of a church located near their homes, sleeping with their eyes open during those dull and silly sermons for a year.

 

If the objective is to proselytise these offenders, I don’t think it would work.

 

Besides, such a move seem to presuppose that a stint in church would do these offenders a whole lot of good. False! Humanism would be a much better option – these offenders should be sent to humanist meetings instead!

 

It is just one of those things an American evangelical state would think of. Silly.

 

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why morality doesn’t need religion

 

The bible tells us that God gave the ten commandments to Moses. A Babylonian column, preserved in the Louvre Museum in Paris, shows the sun-god Shamash presenting the code of laws to Hammurabi. Such traditions are common, and imply an equally common conclusion: morality must have a divine creator.

 

Independently of which origin story one recounts, religion has consistently been used as a support for morality. But the converse is also true: it is often argued that we should not deny the truth of religion, for if we do, then morality collapse – and none of us would want that. Religion constrains human nature’s vices. Either it gives us a moral compass for travelling the road to virtue, or it provides the whip that keeps us willing to go in that direction at all.

 

Yet problems abound for the view that morality comes from god, or any divine entity. One is that we cannot, without lapsing into tautology, simultaneously say that god is good, and that he gave us our sense of good and bad. For then we are simply saying that god is in accordance with god’s standards.

 

Related to this is the problem Plato pointed to in the Euthyphro: does god command us to do something because it is good, or is it good because god commands it? If we choose the former, then there must be a standard for something being “good” that is independent of being “commanded by god”. If on the other hand, something is only good because god commands it, then if god had commanded us to torture babies and forbidden us to feed the hungry, it would have been right to torture babies and wrong to feed the hungry. On that view, god seems to be an arbitrary tyrant.

 

A third problem for the theory that morality has a religious origin is that there are no moral principles shared by all religious people but not by agnostics and atheists. This observation leads to a further problem: atheists and agnostics do not behave less morally than religious believers, even if their virtuous acts are mediated by different principles. They often have as strong and sound a sense of right and wrong as anyone, and have been involved in many progressive reform movements that we now acknowledge were ahead of their time. Thus even if agnostics and atheists never received a moral compass from the divine creator, they nonetheless managed to find a moral course.

 

We can observe this today if we compare more religious and more secular societies. Among industrialised nations, the obvious comparison is between the United States, which is unusually religious for an industrialised nation, and Europe, which over the past century has become increasingly secular. As far as we can tell, European morality does not appear to be on the verge of collapse. Indeed, Europe is, by many measures, a morally better society than the more religious United States.

 

The murder rate is much lower, as is the number of people in prison. Although Jesus is reported as saying that god will save those who have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty and clothed the naked, if you are weak and vulnerable, you will be fortunate if you are in Europe, with its much better safety net and systems of universal healthcare, than in the United States. When it comes to helping the world’s poorest people, the record of almost all of the European nations is far better than that of the United States. Sweden gives more than four times as large a proportion of its gross national income to foreign aid as the United States. In fact, putting aside the former communist nations, which are still much less prosperous than their European neighbours, Greece is the only country in Europe to give as small a proportion of its national income for foreign aid as the United States.

 

If there is no evidence that religion generally makes people more likely to do the right thing, there is ample evidence that religion has led people to commit a long litany of horrendous crimes. Starting with god’s command to Moses to slaughter the midianites – men, women, boys and non-virginal girls – and continuing through to the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Thirty Years war, and innumerable conflicts between Sunni and Shiite muslims, we arrive in the present with one of the greatest threats to peace: religious fanatics who blow themselves up, based on the confident belief that this will assure then a place in paradise.

 

Lest we charge them with a blinkered view of the world, atheists have also committed their fair share of heinous crimes, including Stalin’s slaughter of millions of people in the USSR, and Pol Pot’s creation of the killing fields in which more than a million Cambodians were murdered. Putting these threads together, the conclusion is clear: neither religion nor atheism has a monopoly on the use of criminal violence.

 

The fourth difficulty for the view that morality has its origin in religion is that moral attitudes and practices appear more universal than one would expect, given the sharp doctrinal differences between the world’s major religions. Even when we compare religious cultures as a whole with more secular ones like ancient China, where philosophical outlooks such as Confucianism have been more influential than religious beliefs, we find significant common elements in morality across these distinct cultures. How can this be explained?

 

It is possible, we suppose, that a divine creator handed our ancestors the universal elements of morality at the moment of creation, and they survived intact despite cultural and religious divergence. An alternative view, consistent with the facts of biology and geology, is that we have evolved, over millions of years, a moral faculty that generates intuitions about right and wrong. The good news is that for the first time, research in the cognitive sciences, building on theoretical arguments emerging from moral philosophy, has made it possible to resolve this ancient dispute about the origin and nature of morality.

 

Further highlighting the role of biological factors in guiding moral judgements are studies using brain imaging and patients with selective lesions. Specifically, when healthy research participants respond to moral dilemmas in a scanner, areas of the brain involved in emotional processing, intentional analysis and outcome-based reasoning are active, and if a conflict emerges between these processes, a different area becomes active and then shuts off once the conflict if resolved and a moral judgement delivered. In addition, when there is damage to an area of the brain linking decision-making and emotional experience – the ventromedial prefrontal cortex – these participants show normal patterns of judgement for most moral problems, but, for a small set of dilemmas, are more likely to answer the dilemma along utilitarian lines.

 

These studies begin to provide empirical support for the idea that we are endowed with a moral faculty that guides our intuitive judgements for right and wrong, not unlike other psychological faculties of the mind, including language and mathematics. The moral faculty is universal, but interacts in interesting ways with local cultures. These intuitions reflect the outcome of millions of years in which our ancestors lived as social mammals, and are part of our common inheritance, as much as our opposable thumbs are. It is difficult to reconcile these facts with the story of divine creation.

 

Our evolved intuitions do not necessarily give us the right or consistent answers to moral dilemmas. What was good for our ancestors may not be good for human beings as a whole today, let alone for our planet and all the other beings living on it. It is significant that over the past century, many of the insights into the changing moral landscape that have been taken up and widely regarded as desirable changes have not come from religion, but from careful reflection on humanity and what we consider a life well lived. Examples include greater concern for animal welfare, liberal abortion laws, the rights of terminally ill patients to refuse further medical treatment, and, increasingly, the right to a physician’s assistance in dying.

 

In this respect, it is important for us to be aware of the universal set of moral intuitions so that we reflect on them, know that they will influence us, understand how they can potentially be used against us, and if we choose, deliberately act contrary to them. We can do this without blasphemy, because it is our own nature, not god, that is the source of our species morality. But we should not fall into the opposite trap, of believing that because our moral intuitions come from nature, we should follow them because to do something different would be unnatural.

 

Understanding the origins of morality, therefore, frees us from two putative masters, god and nature. We inherit from our ancestors a set of moral intuitions that, presumably, contributed to their survival over the millions of years in which they were evolving as social mammals. Some of them, no doubt, still serve us well, but others may be poorly adapted to our rapidly changing world. It is our task to work out which of them need to be changed.

 

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This is an article written by Peter Singer and Marc Hauser.

 

 

jesus camp in singapore!?!

 

 

The above is the image of the flyer that advertised about a young teens’ retreat in Johor Bahru, organised by Bethany Church Singapore and faciliated by the guest speaker, the infamous Becky Fischer, of JESUS CAMP notoriety!

 

Yes, the same Becky Fischer who was featured in the award-winning documentary about religious indoctrination of children in the US.

 

It is all thanks to the New Nation blog, from which the above flyer is taken, that I realised how stubborn this bitch is in attempting to force her bigoted religious beliefs on others.

 

Here are some youtube clips on the alleged events:

 

Jesus Camp Singapore pt 1

Jesus Camp Singapore pt 2

 

It is also revealing as to the nature of christianity in Singapore. Although some people would like the public to believe that christianity in Singapore is not as crazy as that in the US, the truth is indeed as crazy as it sounds.

 

Apart from political power, christianity in Singapore is largely influenced by Pentecostalism and Charismatism – just look at the largest churches in Singapore – all of them are either pentecostal or independent charismatic congregations. And charismatic christianity is reputed for its extreme ideas about exorcism, demonic spirits, speaking in tongues, faith healing, and the paranormal.

 

Even if one ignores charismatism for the sake of argument, one of the most fundamental doctrines in traditional christianity is the doctrine of salvation in jesus alone. This makes all practising and believing christians in Singapore fundamentally opposed to religious pluralism in theory. Of course, because of the government’s firm stance on religious tolerance, christians in Singapore are pussyfooting in their statements whenever cornered by the media.

 

This does not at all excuse christians from being a very dangerous group of people in a modern secular society.

 

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objective truths exist – a supernatural deity does not

 

If there is no God to create truth, then on what grounds do atheists have to believe in the existence of truth or that their beliefs are true?

- Irreligious Blog

 

The owner of the blog, Irreligious, posted an entry recently last month, asserting the idea that there can be no objective truth without god.

 

I don’t know if the blogger is aware of it, but he is simply presenting the antiquated TAG argument, made famous by the late christian apologist Greg Bahnsen and often used by advocates of the presuppositional school of christian apologetics. I define TAG as the Transcendental Argument for God.

 

This argument in its simplest form asserts that one can never have any basis in believing in objective truth (which almost all atheists accept) without a belief in the existence of god, namely a supernatural Being that exists outside of the universe – outside space and time.

 

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it seems to hinge on the flawed idea that “truth” is some metaphysical “grand idea” in the sky that is as equally ineffable and inscrutable as god. Otherwise why would Irreligious make the comment that:

 

If we believe in truth, then we have to believe that there is some sort of entity to create and enforce the notion of truth

 

Something is amiss in his line of reasoning. Why must I believe in “some sort of entity to create that truth” in order to believe in truth?

 

Now, I define truth as simply bodies or systems of thought that correspond to empirical reality. I know that the idea that the earth is elliptical is true because there is empirical evidence for it. I know that quantum mechanics is true because the theory has led to accurate predictions. I know that darwinian evolution is true because there is so much evidence for it. I know that gravitational theory is true because it corresponds to empirical reality!

 

I do not need to ground myself in a belief in a supernatural Being in order to accept these objective truths. I can simply engage in the observation and experimentation of the world around me to see if things were true or not.

 

Naive theists would then quip as to how these “laws of science” come about. Surely there must be a supernatural agent that created those “laws” in the first place?

 

Come on. I am neither a physicist nor a cosmologist – but modern cosmology has thus refuted the misguided theist notion that the universe needs a first cause to start it all. It is quite a remarkable fact that the majority of cosmologists and astrophysicists today are atheists. One wonders if they have ever thought about questions such as first cause and first mover? Of course they have! But physicists have long realised that in the very complicated field of astrophysics and quantum theory, there is no such thing as “nothing”. There is always “something” and that “something” has always existed for infinity. And thus there is no need to postulate an infinite agent to “create” that “something” out of “nothing” since there is no “nothing” to begin with!

 

Now, of course the scientific method also thrives on disputation and refutation. With the advent of new research and new facts and findings, old ways of looking at the world may change. But this does not negate the idea that such is the way in which our world is. Our knowledge of the world may not be absolute, but we are constantly in pursuit of it – via observation, experimentation and rational analysis.

 

But it would be absurd to always insist on postulating an imaginary supernatural parent in the sky as the basis of every thing that we do not know or yet understand. For the sake of argument, even if such an agent exists – it would NEVER be the tribal deity of the Canaanites’ El of which the Israelites borrowed and made it their own, renaming it Yahweh.

 

Of which most christian theists assume. In order to adequately defend their belief in the personal god of the bible, they cannot resort to the classical arguments for god such as the cosmological, ontological or teleological, for such arguments only go so far as to defend deism at best, which is remotely dissimilar from the personal Being of Yahweh of the bible.

 

After all is said and done, there is nothing theists can offer in defence of a delusion but their own subjective experiences of “salvation” that are nothing more than experiences created in their physical brains.

 

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student did nothing wrong

 

Dakota Ary is a first-year student at Western Hills High School in Fort Worth, Texas. He was attending a German language class a few days ago when the lesson suddenly turned to a discussion on religion whereby one of his classmates asked what the USA’s views were on homosexuality.

 

Ary replied, as a response to his classmate’s query, that he himself opined that homosexuality was wrong as he was a christian.

 

And his apparently irate German teacher applied for a suspension for the boy.

 

Freshman Suspended for Speaking Out against Homosexuality

 

Western Hills student’s Suspension for Denouncing Homosexuality reversed

 

Although the principal of the school reversed the suspension, some damage is already done. Yes, the boy’s view might be bigoted and ignorant at best; but in the context of a classroom, one should be able to express one’s views on any issue openly and lucidly without fear of any reprisal. Besides, Ary did not do any of the appalling things that some christian fundies might do, like picketing on the funerals of gay people or bullying and taunting his gay schoolmates. Such actions would then deserve punishment from the authorities.

 

The German teacher was a tad bit extreme in punishing someone for just expressing his views on a subject.

 

But I can’t guarantee that I myself would not react the same way if I were the teacher.

 

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