So, why do people give him so much credit where it’s clearly not due?¹ The other day, Pope Benedict XVI accepted British Bishop Richard Williamson back into the church without any hesitation or penalty, despite the fact that the bishop openly denied the Holocaust. Then, after a furor of complaints, the Vatican yesterday demanded that the bishop recant.

Bishop Williamson infamously stated that “[t]he historical evidence… is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers.”

Papers are saying that the reaction is a sign of how much the Vatican had misread the public mood.

The public mood? Since when was the voice of God swayed not by God’s will, but by public mood?

What we have here is a failure to treat people like unelected politicians when that is all they are. The Pope, the Reverend Whatever, the Grand Poobah, Thomas Monson, Benny Hinn, whoever, should be treated with the same deference and respect given to people of the same caliber, like Charles Manson, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and other highly influential people who claimed to have some greater insight into the supernatural than everyone else, but who are, to the rational observer, merely mortal men prone to greed, hatred, racism, sexism, and self-righteousness.

UPDATE: More evidence and support of my notion that people rely way too heavily (which is any at all) on what the Vatican has to say has been cited by PZ Myers on Pharyngula:
Eluana Englaro has been in a vegetative state for 17 years, and her family has finally won the battle to take her off life support. Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi consulted with the Vatican to impose an emergency decree blocking the suspension of life support, based on the excuse that she is “in the condition to have babies.”

This is a great example of why religion should not be respected by law, and how people still view the Vatican and Pope as some supreme authority on morality and other issues.

Get the podcast: If the Pope Changes His Mind…, narrated by Hyperkubus!

UPDATE 2: Pope declares that condom use increases AIDS problem.

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

That’s a classic Pope line. Even John Paul II thought similarly about sex. But what really pisses me off is that the richest church in the world, to which its members tithe 10% of their income, has this to say about the economic difficulties facing those members:

The pope also said Tuesday that he intends to make an appeal for “international solidarity” for Africa in the face of the global economic downturn.

He said that while the church does not propose specific economic solutions, it can give “spiritual and moral” suggestions.

Describing the current crisis as the consequence of “a deficit of ethics in economic structures,” the pope said: “It is here that the church can make a contribution.”

Fucking bullshit.

1. Take a look at claims of ultramontanism and papal infallibility, as well as reactions to the Pope’s declarations about morality, this brief note about how Pope John Paul II was a divider, not a uniter, and what Christopher Hitchens had to say about Jon Paul II.

In Britain, opponents are arguing that the comic book industry would be destroyed by such laws, because even mainstream comics like Batman, Judge Dredd, and much of Japanese Manga would fall under the ambiguous and overly harsh blanket censorship. The British government apparently defines an “extreme image” as any “grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise … obscene” moving or still depiction of someone any “reasonable person” would think real being sexually injured or engaging in sexual activity with an animal or corpse. (Because, you know, fictional corpses have rights, too!)

If you live in Britain, you might want to protest against this outrageous invasion of privacy, this blatant oppression and censorship based on religious extremism and fear.

In my August article, Intolerable Tolerance, I chastised the British government for allowing itself to be further perverted by religious-based law, all in the name of tolerance. I guess the Brits just don’t listen to the rational. Heck, let’s ban all the rationals!

Here’s the Pat Condell banned video:

Please also sign (if you’re British or live in Britain) the petition against Sharia law in Britain (not that it’ll do any good, but perhaps it’ll make some of us feel better about democracy or something).

Deadline for signing is October 4.

(by the way, Pat Condell is officially a State of Protest Hero)

Now can we get a petition to ban American nutters like Sarah Palin?

I’ll tell you what’s going on, Mr. Vine. The UK is certainly struggling, but not struggling to overcome the taint of atheism, as you so blatantly suggest. The poll results are a sign of the reasonable people of the UK struggling to overcome thousands of years of oppression and dogma forced upon the people by various churches and religions throughout history. The U.S. could learn a thing or two from the British in that regard (although its government is less noteworthy).

And Mr. Vine, perhaps, can learn a thing or two from Jonathan Miller, a British opera director and non-believer, when the host asks Mr. Miller, in the second video, “The very very big feature of our poll is that there is a huge majority for God. How do you feel about that as an atheist?”⁴

Although Miller rejects the badge and label of atheist, it seems for reasons of simplification, he ultimately accepts it (perhaps as a cultural necessity to distinguish him from believers), and he indicates that no [religion] had gotten to him before his “cognitive immune system got working.”

Vine then insisted on referring back to the polls, that they suggest that most people believe in God, and thus obviously a result of a massive collapse in the immune system Miller referred to.

Miller puts Vine in his place, “First of all, I don’t trust these sorts of media-driven polls.⁵ They always ask extremely simple-minded questions and get simple-minded answers. It’s never a way to really find out what the distribution of thoughts and opinions really is.” I agree with Miller. Our polling is killing our intellect. I don’t care how careful and unbiased a pollster is allegedly being, asking 10,000 people out of a country of over 50 million is not and cannot be a true representation of that country. Perhaps polling worked better when people were not so mobile or Internet-ready, or when, in a city of 10,000, you poll 100 (that’d be 1%), but polling 10,000⁶ out of a population of 50,000,000 is polling .02%. That’s not 2%! It’s two hundredths of a percent! It’s the equivalent of walking into a town of 5,000 inhabitants, asking the first person you see, “Do you believe in God?” and then asserting that all 4,999 residents of the town believe the same thing as that one person polled.

Regardless of the fact that Vine is one of the few openly Christian British television commentators, setting up a program to espouse his personal views while pretending to appeal to a neutral analysis of God-belief, using some of the most biased polls I’ve ever seen, is heinous and unprofessional, and BBC should be heavily criticized (or criticised, as the case may be) for airing such crap.⁷

Of course, not to be unfair, the U.S. has Fox News.⁸

—

Just for the fun of it, here’s what BBC posted of the poll:

Britain is one of the most secular nations in the world, a new poll in 10 countries finds

Levels of religious belief and activity in the UK are far lower than in almost all other countries surveyed across the globe in a special poll undertaken for the BBC.

The ICM poll of 10,000 people in the USA, UK, Israel, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Mexico and Lebanon was carried out for What the World Thinks of God – BBC TWO, Thursday 26 February, 9.00pm.

It reveals that only 46% of respondents in the UK said they have always believed in God – 27% less than the average.

Only Russia (42%) and South Korea (28%) were lower.

Furthermore just 52% of UK respondents believed God (or a Higher Power) created the universe, compared to 85% in the USA, 83% in Mexico, 99% in Indonesia and 96% in Lebanon.

The highest levels of belief are found in the poorer nations of Nigeria (98%), India (92%) and Indonesia (97%).

However, the USA – the richest nation polled – has a very high level of belief.

Only 13% of those polled in America said they found it hard to believe in God (a Higher power) when there was so much suffering in the world.

Yet this compares to more than half (52%) of those polled in the UK – the highest of all the countries – and more than twice the average. The figures for Lebanon were 2% and Nigeria 12%.

The survey found that only 19% of those in the UK said they would die for their God/beliefs.

This compares to 37% in Israel, 90% of those polled in Indonesia and Nigeria, and 71% in the USA and Lebanon.

A staggering 78% of those polled in the USA claimed to have studied religious texts, by far the largest figure, followed by 51% in Nigeria and 42% in the UK. This compares to an average of 33%.

The poll also looked at the place of religion in the world.

Almost a third (29%) of people in the UK believe that the world would be a more peaceful place without beliefs in God but very few people in other countries agreed.

Just 6% of those polled in America agreed with this view, 11% in Israel and 9% in India. The average across all ten countries was 10%.

Only 15% of those polled in America blamed people of other religions for much of the trouble in the world compared with more than a third (37%) in the UK and 33% in Israel.

This figure fell to 8% of those polled in Indonesia, 24% in Lebanon and 17% in India.

The poll also looked at levels of attendance at organised religious services in the UK compared to the rest of the world.

Across the ten countries, an average of 46% regularly attend a religious service but the figure was 21% in the UK, the second lowest behind Russia (7%).

The highest figure was 91% for Nigerians, with 54% in the USA.

Furthermore just 29% of UK respondents said they had been encouraged to believe in God by someone outside their family, compared with 57% in the USA.

With regards to prayer, a total of 95% of Nigerians polled said they prayed regularly as did 67% of those polled in the USA with further numbers praying occasionally at times of crisis.

28% in the UK said they prayed regularly and 41% in Israel.

However 25% of people in the UK and 29% of people in Israel said they never prayed.

The poll did reveal however that nearly 30% of all atheists polled admitted they prayed sometimes.

Asked whether a belief in a God/higher power makes for a better human being, well over 80% of people in most countries agreed, but by far the lowest figure was in the UK with just 56%.

Furthermore, just 42% of UK respondents believed God (or a higher power) judges their actions and the way they lived their lives compared to 76% in America, 72% in Israel, 81% in Nigeria and an average of 70%.

Exploring the issue of tolerance of different religions the poll found that more than 90% of all respondents in Nigeria, Indonesia and Lebanon believed their God was the only true God.

This compares to 70% in Israel and just 31% in the UK.

The majority of those polled when asked if they believed death was the end disagreed.

This was the case for more than half of the UK respondents (51%), 79% of those polled in Nigeria, 75% in Lebanon and 74% in the USA.

Looking at how attitudes change across different religions, the poll found that while 85% of Hindus and 83% of Muslims said they prayed regularly, only 65% of Christians did and barely a third (38%) of Jews.

When asked if their God was the only true God, 95% of Muslims said yes, compared with 68% of Christians and 66% of Jews.

But when asked if other religions were to blame for the troubles in the world, 34% of Jews agreed, while only 24% of Christians, 18% of Hindus and 14% of Muslims agreed.⁹

1. What the World Thinks of God, BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/wtwtgod/default.stm
2. According to Wikipedia, “Vine is one of the most prominent openly Christian broadcasters in the UK and has also presented numerous religious-themed programmes for the BBC.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Vine
3. The poll questions start at about 6:45 in the first video.
4. At about 3:15.
5. Note the smirk on Vine’s face as they cut to him after that reply. Brilliant!
6. Interestingly enough, the poll doesn’t state specifically whether they polled 10,000 people in total, or 10,000 people per nation. If the former, that would be even more embarrassing of a statistic. If the latter, still an unrealistic and biased, useless bit of trivia, not fact.
7. Either now, or in 2004, when this program was first presented.
8. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outfoxed; and also see http://www.newshounds.us/
9. BBC TWO’s What The World Thinks of God. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/02_february/26/world_god.shtml

You can scale the relative level of activism in most atheists similarly. Starting off as a believer, or at least a follower, we are quite often sure of ourselves. Perhaps we haven’t encountered any opposing points of view. Perhaps we’re stubborn. Perhaps we’re overwhelmed by the religious beliefs and practices of our families. Whatever the case, many of us start off on the theist end of the spectrum, and are quite often advocates of that way of life and belief.

Then we’re hit with some sort of doubt. Bart Erhman, for instance, was awestruck by the fact that the icon of his belief system, the Holy Bible, was severely flawed with contradictions, rewrites, and surreptitiously inserted new passages. How could the bible be inerrant, how could a real god endorse such a mishmash of not only contradictory but also violent and cruel edicts? Doubting is the catalyst that causes us to self-reflect, and to analyze all that we know about what we’ve been told. It’s required for the next stage of development – agnosticism.

Perhaps I’ve intentionally skipped a few minor middle steps, but the phase between doubt and disbelief encompasses a variety of positions, depending on the individual, from confusion to agnosticism to denial to relapse. I like to call this phase the “I don’t know” phase, which is why I associate it with agnosticism.

Eventually, hopefully, we reach a point at which we question why we’re even bothering with the question of “is there a god?” We realize that, since there’s no empirical evidence of the existence of, at minimum, the divine beings alluded to in every god myth, we narrow our scope of world view to two main areas:

First, the area of spirituality. This isn’t to say that spirituality exists or it doesn’t. It’s a concept, and there comes a time where most of us in some way address whether it has meaning to us. When a loved one dies, do you think he or she “goes to a better place?” How do you fit that into your world view? Do you think there is something invisible that is greater than you? Do you think there is destiny, fate, karma? These are things that even agnostics question, even after having rejected their former god of choice, and it’s something that, until all our questions are satisfactorily answered by science, we will be inclined to address.

What matters about that area of interest is that it may help determine your level of acceptance of certain types of activism, because even without a god or doctrine to guide you morally, you may reach for a more metaphysical state of moral choice based on your concepts of spirituality. Hardline skeptics and atheists tend to eschew this point of view, but they cannot deny that people are habitually, if not naturally, sentimental toward the supernatural and spiritual potential in the world.

Second, the area of society. This is not what you think, but how you deal with what others think, and how they deal with what you think, and the acts based upon such thought. This is your relationship with, essentially, the rest of the world. More specifically, it’s what’s mutually tangible. What kinds of laws, regulations, taboos, etc., affect you, and what kind of effect you can have. On our scale of development, this is often a stopping point (or sometimes a starting point for those who were never theists to begin with). It’s a plateau representing a static world view, with no inclination to have that world view affect society.

Beyond that plateau, there is a minority of skeptics, rationals, atheists who attempt to influence society in a variety of ways. The extent to which one is active is often based on the extent to which one has rejected religion. So, there are varying degrees of activism (degrees of intensity) and varying methods of activism. And there’s at least one person or group of people out there in the world opposed to every single type. Surprisingly, many are from the set of non-believers.

The degrees of intensity can be described in another abridged scale: start with the “closet” atheists, who, although in their own minds are atheists, either deny that fact to others, or try to hide it, lest they be reprimanded, punished, or shunned by family, work, friends, or others. Sometimes these closet atheists end up creating alternate identities for use on the Internet, a place in which they can freely express opinions without coming under personal attack. The next level is the avowed atheist — someone who isn’t afraid to tell others, but who doesn’t necessarily seek out others in order to tell them. Next is the conversational atheist — someone who actively tells others, perhaps seeking them out, in order to tell them about non-belief. That category can be split between those who seek just to converse and share ideas, and those who are on the fringes of being active deconverters.

Proactive deconversion is the next level, and it shares its spot with proactive lobbying — efforts either to convert believers into non-believers, or efforts to create a society where law, the government, and public places are secular. My opinion is that this is where most non-believers choose to draw the line. Beyond that line lies anti-religious activism. This is an activist state that actively attempts to purge society of all (or most) things religious. This category can be split between targeting only religious activities that cause specific harm, and targeting all religious activities, regardless of perceived harm (with the idea that all aspects of religion are harmful, because they’re religious).

An example of the latter point of view is where, recently, the Swedish government is making it illegal for any school, public or private, to teach religion as if it were true.¹

There are two more primary levels of activism. Next is targeting everyone, treating religion as a disease, in a sense, and trying to disinfect everyone, even parents who want to teach their children about religion. In 2001, Richard Dawkins wrote a letter to the British secretary of state, asking that the faith status of existing schools be removed, allowing children to choose for themselves what to believe, in a non-religious school environment.² Essentially, wipe away religious schooling institutions, and eliminate faith-based labeling for children, despite parental wishes. This is a step further in the direction of activism because, unlike Sweden’s attempt to eliminate teaching of religion “as if it were true,” Dawkins (at least then) advocates eliminating religion as a label of any sort — no religious institutions at all, no parental force-feeding of religion, and especially no state-based advocacy of religious belief.

Christopher Hitchens is even a more ardent supporter of this “no religion” point of view. Even from the title of his best selling book “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” one can infer that Hitchens decries all things religious, and would probably, if in a position to do so, wipe the world clean of religious practice (but for the sake of scholarship, not religious history, I’m sure). Some would call this “militant atheism.” My view is that that term is misused, and should apply only to the final niche in the spectrum of activism.

Real militant atheism is literally taking up a weapon and fighting those who support religion, and in some cases those who merely don’t support real militant atheism. Consider the Crusades. Real militant atheism is similar. It’s a purge of religion, similar to what Hitchens seems to desire, but instead of doing so through legal means, it’s doing so with violence. Have we seen much of this? Hardly. Perhaps none at all, at least in what’s commonly displayed on the news. There are countries, though, that will torture and kill some believers.³ There are also, assuredly, individuals and factions worldwide who, like their religious counterparts, would take up arms in order to fight for what they consider to be freedom from religion (especially if they think that a purported secular government has overly mingled its affairs with religion, effectively creating a theocracy).

Inevitably, those who fall somewhere on the active side of the scale will be directly or indirectly criticized for such activism by those who believe they are the targets. Here’s a fine, succinct, example of what I mean, thanks to Atheist Eve:

To be an activist at any level, one must expect some criticism. My analysis here isn’t about criticism, however, it’s more about ethics. Obviously, the more advanced on the activism scale, the more criticism, but is there a point on the scale that clearly goes too far?

One potential way to analyze what’s an appropriate level of activism is to consider what “the other side” is doing or has done to promote religion. Religious groups have been spending centuries sending missionaries all over the world, establishing churches, shrines, meeting places. They’ve been creating supposed charitable organizations and activities, hospitals, (and in Mother Theresa’s case, places to go suffer and die), youth organizations, private schools, camps, heavily funded lobbying groups, and more. They’ve started and perpetuated military campaigns, sometimes backed by governments, sometimes by radical militants outside of the government. Entire nations currently sway with the religious breezes blown by zealots on both sides. What hasn’t been done in the name of religion? If we are to take the religious as examples of anything, it’s that they have overwhelmingly dotted the landscape of history and the world with religious activism spanning the entire scale. Therefore, citing what the religious are doing or have done is not a good way to measure the ethicalness of our own activist behavior.

Another way to think about where we should fall on the scale is from the consequentialist point of view. Let’s not think too much about what we’re doing on the small scale (whether it be handing out atheist pamphlets or assassinating religious zealot leaders), but what we’re trying to accomplish for the sake of humanity. This point of view may require the activist not only to believe that religion is wrong, but also that religion is so harmful that it must be eliminated by any means necessary. However, that is not the only side one can take as a consequentialist. It could be believed that a well-balanced world is, in the long run, more beneficial for humanity, and that the actions that must be taken should be limited to those which would ultimately treat religion and non-religion as essentially equal. There are those who already think this is the case, and there are those who think that we have a long way to go to accomplish something even close to a balance. Consequentialism, is, then, too ambiguous and subjective to use as a guideline. The same could probably be said of any utilitarian theory — they’re all quite subjective, and goal-oriented.

Let’s just say that I carried on with an analysis of every ethical theory that I could come up with. I don’t think I would find a satisfactory answer to my query. The reason? I don’t know all there is to know. I don’t know and I cannot know what’s in store for humanity. I only know what I’ve seen, what’s occurring right now, and what has apparently occurred in the past, with regard to the rife between secularism and religion, and the firm grasp that religious groups have on so many aspects of the world today. I’m not advocating violence or war on behalf of non-religion. What I’m saying is that I’m not quite sure that it’s unethical, depending on the situation, and from whose point of view it is making the decision.

Most assuredly, though, if the religious zealots of my nation stood up in arms and attempted to create a theocracy by force, I would retaliate in kind. I think that’s essentially happening in some parts of the world today. What’s happening here is that the religious have infused themselves into the government and essential positions in society in order to perpetuate that hold on power and control, and we, as rationals, as skeptics, as atheists, need to do at least the minimum of what it takes to reverse that trend and keep it reversed, regardless of any criticism from any source. I just can’t tell you exactly how that’s to be done, and how far we need to go in order to get it done.

1. God’s Honest Truth, Andrew Brown, Guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/oct/18/godshonesttruth
2. Children must choose their own beliefs, Richard Dawkins, Guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2001/dec/30/schools.religion
3. China, among others, has had a blemished history of military-backed opposition to religion.

British citizens have raised a ruckus over the idea that the Muslim women who wear veils are segregating themselves and causing strife, while the Muslim women defend their right to wear the garments on the basis of faith and solidarity. Some argue that Britain has been too tolerant. Others argue it has not done enough to establish tolerance and multiculturalism. The problem is not whether Britain has been tolerant enough. The problem is that Britain and others have mangled the idea of what the concepts of tolerance and multiculturalism ought to mean, and in doing so, have sacrificed freedoms in the name of a god in whom they do not believe, and have established a dangerous precedent that threatens to mingle Islamic law with British law, creating an acceptance of cultural and religious customs that demean women and hold religious ideals higher than anything else.

If a third of British Muslims believe it is justified to kill in the name of religion, in order to defend that religion,⁵ what does that say about the Muslim respect for secular law?

Tolerance is not blind acceptance of all the characteristics of others. Tolerance is, or should be, accepting the cultural characteristics that do not create a material harm or potential harm to others. I don’t include “being offended” as a harm. If you’re an attorney, and you cannot do your job because your religious-based garb is getting in your way, it’s perfectly justifiable for a judge to tell you that you cannot continue in that state. If a raging drunk attorney tried to practice law, and had an honest and fervent belief that Dionysus was his personal god, would it be tolerable for a judge to allow him to continue?

Tolerance should be based on observable evidence of this potential to cause harm. In the blind acceptance of the acts and desires of the religious, there is a tacit acceptance that the unsupported claims of the religious are true and that anything that their deities “approve” of should be considered “good.”

However, on the flip side, we should not reject others for their choice of outerwear if it doesn’t have an actual, tangible, negative effect. Certainly, people will speculate and gossip about how the wearing of the burqa is an affront to our western way of life. But that’s pretty much how, fifty years ago, the dissenters in America saw Elvis, and in Britain saw The Beatles. Now those rockers are icons. Instead of just accepting what can be accepted, and rejecting what should be rejected (e.g., any form of law that is established based on a belief that a higher power created and imposed such law, or any inhumane treatment of women or others based on that law or culture), Britain is accepting everything, lest it appear intolerant, and establishing a state of paranoia and a culture of fear.

One might argue that it is the nature of our society to mingle religious and secular law, so why specifically target Islam as an undesirable influence? Although it is arguable that some Abrahamic religious ideals have been infused into western law by zealous religious lawmakers, that does not justify further deviation from secular government in the name of tolerance. We are slowly uprooting those “blue” laws, and the benefits of doing so reach across multiple beliefs as well as non-belief (because those laws tend to favor one narrow-minded point of view). We cannot blindly accept all religious opinions, lest we create impossible situations when two claims of “divine rightness” clash. Which “belief” will prevail? Tossing more religious-based law into the pot is counter-intuitive. We should, instead, worry about filtering out religion from our existing laws.

UPDATE:

Muslim quits over bare arm policy

A Muslim radiographer has resigned from a Berkshire hospital over the NHS’s “bare below the elbows” hygiene policy.

The unnamed agency worker claimed she was being discriminated against over her religious beliefs by the policies at Reading’s Royal Berkshire Hospital.

This included the Islamic teaching that women should cover the body in public.

The NHS dress code was introduced in January to combat superbugs such as MRSA. The trust said the policy was explained when she first began work.⁶

UPDATE II:

Banning of Geert Wilders from the UK is another example of blind tolerance.

A member of the Dutch Parliament who has compared the Koran to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and blamed Islamic texts for inciting the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and other terrorist atrocities was detained by immigration officials at London Heathrow Airport on Thursday and forced within hours to board a return flight to Holland.

His deportation had been ordered by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on the grounds that his presence in Britain would be a danger to public safety.

The lawmaker, Geert Wilders, 45, had been invited to a showing at the House of Lords later Thursday of his 17-minute film, “Fitna,” which caused outrage in wide areas of the Muslim world last year after it appeared on the Internet.

[Article written by Procrustes and Velkyn]

1. Sharia law is spreading as authority wanes, Telegraph.co.uk. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1535478/ Sharia-law-is-spreading-as-authority-wanes.html
2. Sharia law in UK is ‘unavoidable’, BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7232661.stm
3. Muslims’ Veils Test Limits of Britain’s Tolerance, The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/world/europe/22veil.html
4. Atheist Richard Dawkins blames Muslims for ‘importing creationism’ into classrooms, Fiona Macrae, Daily Mail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1041089/Atheist-Richard-Dawkins-blames-Muslims-importing-creationism-classrooms.html
5. One third of British Muslim Students: Killing in the name of Islam is acceptable, Religion News Blog. http://www.religionnewsblog.com/21867/one-third-of -british-muslim-students-killing-in-the-name-of-islam-is-acceptable
6. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/7593827.stm

“Today’s East-West dynamic began when Europe first invaded the Holy Land.”

That was the sub-heading for this article in the U.S. News and World Report. I found this set the tone for the rest of the article, which essentially set out to prove that Muslims are filled with hate and distorting reality in drawing comparisons between the Crusades and modern events.

The author states, “In the Arab and Muslim world, the Crusades have made an unfortunate rhetorical comeback.” He posits that their views have been “distorted almost beyond recognition by rhetoric and misunderstanding.” He accuses “angry Muslim nationalists” of adopting the Crusades as a “convenient metaphor.” He quotes historian Jonathan Riley-Smith, who claims the Muslims “turned the Western memory of the Crusades on its head and demonized it.” But what of the West? What of today’s Christians? After September 11^th, George W. Bush told the nation, “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile.”¹ When Jerusalem was captured from the Turks in 1917, British general Sir Edmund Allenby² proclaimed, “today the wars of the Crusades are completed.” Surely the author would have similar criticism for statements such as these? No, instead he insists, “Undoubtedly, George W. Bush had a different sense of the term in mind.” And as for Sir Allenby? Well, it was understandable, since the colonial powers considered the Crusaders to be their “ideological forebears.” Besides, according to the author, the Crusades weren’t very important to the Muslims before Sir Allenby’s time: “Before Europe’s colonial expansion into the Middle East, Muslim chroniclers paid little attention to the Crusades.” I see little reason to believe that anyone, from East or West, cannot plainly understand the horrible atrocities committed by Christians during the Crusades, yet according to this article, the East is primarily to blame for “demonizing” our conception of them.

The article refers to the Crusaders as “faithful,” “united under the cross” and “motivated by genuine religious feeling.” Riley-Smith is again quoted: “West European Catholics believed they could aid their salvation by fighting the infidel in the East. [Crusading is] as much a penance as fasting on bread and water.” In researching Jonathan Riley-Smith I found, unsurprisingly, that his views are greatly at odds with many other scholarly perceptions of the Crusades. He believes the Crusades were primarily a response to the aggression of Islam, and that the Crusaders were sincere and pious and demonstrated great personal sacrifice.³ The author obviously agrees when he refers to knights Godfrey of Bouillon and Tancred as “deeply religious.” He claims the belief that Crusaders may have been motivated by greed or land has been overturned. Yet, the history itself tells another story.

In 1095, the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, sent his ambassadors to Pope Urban II to request help in taking Asia Minor from the Seljuk Turks. The Pope then called for the Council of Clermont, and there preached the First Crusade. Alexios met each leader personally to secure an oath that any conquered lands would be handed over to the Byzantine Empire.⁴ Yet, not one of these leaders intended on keeping their oath to Alexios. One by one, they each took the captured territories for themselves, and many of them became the leaders of these territories. Tancred actually refused to take the oath at all. So, were these knights “deeply religious” as U.S. News claims? Probably. But was their faith a replacement for greed? Absolutely not.

In one final jab at the Muslims, U.S. News purports that the industry, education, and culture that the Europeans gained as a result of their contact with the Arab world actually overshadows the atrocities they committed. He quotes Georgetown University’s John Voll: “Violent interactions were paralleled by economic and conceptual exchanges. In some ways the Crusades’ positive intellectual dimensions outweigh the negative impact.” He then quotes author Janet Abu-Lughod: “The Crusades…did integrate European travelers and traders into an ongoing world system. By stimulating an interest in the goods of the East, they had a double-back effect on the development of European economics.” U.S. News even takes these two comments a step further: “Even the Europeans’ increasing sophistication did little to redeem them in the eyes of the Muslims whose land they occupied and controlled.” I can’t think of a single reason why it should. Their families had been murdered, their holy sites destroyed, their land and homes stolen, but the author expects them to have been in awe of the Christians’ increasing “sophistication”? It’s hard for me to believe that U.S. News cannot recognize that the only people positively impacted in any way by the Crusades were the Christians, not the Muslims. For the East, the negative most certainly outweighs the positive, but that is not being considered in this article. I would implore anyone to consider the bias displayed here before giving any type of support to the U.S. News and World Report.

-Laura

1. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html
2. http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/allenby.htm
3. http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/jonathanrileysmith.html
4. A History of the Byzantine State and Society by Warren Treadgold, Stanford University Press, 1997

The film highlights a number of fossil milestones that mark various points along the 3 million year procession from ape-like creature to human-like protoman. It also unearths the controversies faced by those that made the discoveries, and the social climate at the time of their introduction into the scientific world. The first fossil is discovered in 1856 by a limestone harvesting crew in a cave in the Neander Valley, Germany. What is originally thought to be a piece of skull of a modern day murder victim is brought to the foreman’s attention, and is, amazingly enough, almost discarded. At the last minute, though, he instead decides to show it to a teacher friend of his he believes might have some interest in the item. The “murder victim” turns out to be a 40,000 year old skull of the hominin that is later named (you guessed it!) Neanderthal.

The interesting part is the initial hesitance on the part of the Victorian scientific community to identify this find as a new species of man. The skull is, at first, thought to belong to a barbarian that fought the Roman legions, the victim of an unknown congenital deformity, even a lost Russian Cossack. The high school anatomy teacher that retrieved the skull fragment is the first to suggest it is an ancestor to man. To most of the population at the time, this idea was absurd. Three years later, Darwin’s “Origin of Species” is published, and popular opinion regarding Neanderthal begins to change. We begin also to attempt to flesh out our family tree, and the race is on to become the first scientist to discover the “missing link,” an animal more exactly between ape and man.

That is not to say human obstinance does not play its own part in hindering the scientific process… The desire to place this “missing link” in Europe leads to one of the biggest blunders of all time in the search for our true ancestor. Piltdown man, presented before the Royal Geographical Society in 1912 by Charles Dawson, was the ideal candidate for such a creature. Its brain was large, like a human being’s, and its jaw was primitive like that of an ape. Aside from that, it was discovered in England, which is what seems to have primarily cemented its place in history. This meant our origins could be traced back to Europe, not Asia, as was previously thought, and therefore appealed to the British scientific minds of the time. Because the find was so popular, little digging was done to verify its authenticity. Decades pass before the truth is realized.

When a true contender to the throne, Taung child (or Australopithecus africanus) from South Africa was discovered by Australian anatomist Raymond Dart in 1924, it nearly devastated his career. The initial introduction of the first human ancestor to come from Africa known at the time (and earliest, at over 2,000,000 years old,) was met with much opposition. The small brain and fine teeth of Taung did not fit the mold of what scientists wanted. One London scientist who reviewed Dart’s find placed it in the same family as gorillas without having actually seen the fossil for himself. 25 years pass until Dart and his fossil gain the recognition they deserve.

In 1953, 40 years after Pildown’s ascension to the role of “missing link,” the fossil is examined scientifically for the first time. It is finally proven to be the hoax that it has been all along. The celebrated jawbone, is, indeed from a modern ape that has simple had its teeth filed down.

The tale told of our rich history (both ancient and modern) in this film is both fascinating and, well, humorous! It goes to show that even in the face of some our greatest discoveries, human selfishness has the ability to be one of our greatest downfalls. Even the most scientifically inclined among us fall victim to this kind of behavior. We are reluctant to change, we don’t like to have our conventional beliefs challenged, and we are afraid of what we don’t know. We often favor our ideas even if they aren’t the best idea going, and we don’t appreciate someone else trying to steal our thunder. What evolutionary need there is for these traits remains to be speculated. To the author, though, it’s an endearing, if annoying aspect of all of us. Perhaps one day we shall, as a species, overcome these feelings, and embrace the truth more readily, just as our ancestors overcame their fears in order to harness the power of fire. Or maybe that sort of thing will have to be up to the next species that springs from our primitive loins.

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Ape To Man for purchase

Neanderthal man

Raymond Dart on Wikipedia

Hubbard’s father was in the Navy, which allowed the family to travel often. Hubbard loved to share the stories of his travels, particularly of his time spent in the Far East between 1927 and 1929. His followers would later repeat, “Among other wonders, Ron told of watching monks meditate for weeks on end, contemplating higher truths … he befriended … a thoroughly insightful Beijing magician … Old Mayo was well versed in China’s ancient wisdom that had been handed down from generation to generation. Ron passed many evenings in the company of such wise men, eagerly absorbing their words … he closely examined the surrounding culture. … he spent time with nomadic bandits originally from Mongolia … [t]hese sojourns in Asia and the Pacific islands had a profound effect, giving Ron a subjective understanding of Eastern philosophy … the world itself was his classroom, and he studied in it voraciously, recording what he saw and learned in his ever-present diaries…”¹

These stories paint a picture of an open-minded young man, eagerly absorbing culture and philosophy, but his “ever-present diaries” tell a very different story. They make no mention of Old Mayo the Beijing magician or nomad bandits, and they contain no reflection on Eastern philosophy. Instead, there are entries such as: “As a Chinaman can not live up to a thing, he always drags it down.” and “They smell of all the baths they didnt [sic] take. The trouble with China is, there are too many chinks here.” He described the Tibetan Buddhist temples as “very odd and heathenish … miserably cold and very shabby … The people worshiping have voices like bull-frogs and beat a drum and play a brass horn to accompany their singing…”²

In 1933, Hubbard married Margaret “Polly” Grub, with whom he fathered two children. It was around this time that he began his career in writing, quickly becoming well-known in the science fiction, fantasy, and pulp fiction genres. In 1938, he wrote a letter to Polly reading, “I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form, even if all the books are destroyed. That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned.” After serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II, during which he was the subject of several negative reports,³ Hubbard abandoned his wife and children and married Sara Northrup. This was an act of bigamy, as he did not divorce his first wife for more than a year after he had remarried.⁴ Both women claim Hubbard physically abused them. When Sara filed for divorce in 1950, she accused Hubbard of kidnapping their baby daughter Alexis, and of “systematic torture, beatings, strangulations and scientific torture experiments.”⁵ Hubbard later disowned Alexis, claiming she was the child of his friend, Jack Parsons.

Jack Parsons was an aeronautics professor and an associate of British occultist Aleister Crowley. Hubbard and Parsons allegedly attempted to summon a goddess or “moonchild” in 1946 by practicing sex magic rituals called the Babalon Working. Hubbard later claimed he was on a mission to end Parsons’ practices in ritual magick and to “rescue” a girl being used in the rituals, who happened to be Sara Northrup, Hubbard’s second wife. Crowley’s notes at this time indicate that he considered Hubbard a “lout” who made off with Parsons’ money and girlfriend in an “ordinary confidence trick.”⁶

After his second divorce, Hubbard threw himself into his writings and in 1952, the same year he expanded Dianetics into Scientology, he married Mary Sue Whipp. They had four children together and remained married until Hubbard’s death in 1986, although they separated in the early 1970s. As Scientology grew in both numbers and controversy, Hubbard began to distance himself from the unwanted attention. In 1967, he resigned as executive director of the church and declared himself “Commodore” of a small fleet of ships, appointing a crew of Scientologists known as the “Sea Org.” He spent the next eight years sailing the Mediterranean Sea and being attended by teenage girls dressed in white hot pants, known as the “Commodore’s Messengers.” He was said to have had frequent screaming tantrums, and errant crew members were punished brutally through incarceration in the ship’s chain-locker for weeks at a time or through “overboarding,” in which they would be bound, blindfolded, and thrown into the sea. In a letter home to Mary Sue, he wrote, “I’m drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys…”⁷

After returning home and being weaned off a diet consisting almost entirely of drugs, he began to run into many legal difficulties, including accusations of espionage, conspiracy against the U.S. Federal government, and fraud through skimming millions of dollars from church accounts. In the mid-1970s Hubbard decided to end his life at sea, but covertly returned to the United States. He later retired to a ranch in California, where he began writing science fiction again in the 1980s. He died on his ranch at age 74, reportedly from a stroke. The official announcement of the Church of Scientology was that Hubbard had deliberately discarded his body to do “higher level spiritual research,” and was now living “on a planet a galaxy away.”⁸

-Laura

1. 1923-1929: On the road to discovery, L. Ron Hubbard: Shaping the 21st Century with Solutions for a Better World 1-2.
2. Miller, Russell. Bare-faced messiah: The true story of L. Ron Hubbard, 1987
3. Sappell, Joel; Welkos, Robert W.. “The Mind Behind The Religion“, Los Angeles Times
4. Atack, Jon (1990). A Piece of Blue Sky. New York, NY: Carol Publishing Group
5. Lattin, Don. “Scientology Founder’s Family Life Far From What He Preached”, San Francisco Chronicle, 2001
6. Scientology: A new light on Crowley, Sunday Times, December 28, 1969
7. L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? Corydon
8. “The Making of L. Ron Hubbard,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1990