Atheism Corner

Humanity in Progress

Diplomacy and Cartoons Don’t Mix

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A couple of days ago I saw this news item about someone in UNESCO being angry with the Israeli representative to that organization because a newspaper in Israel had published a cartoon that mentions something about bombing a UNESCO office in Ramallah, these kind of news do not really grab attention because someone being angry on Israel for being a democratic and free state is almost a daily thing in our world, however I saw a second mention of the same thing in another site, and now it seemed more interesting to report.

The News on Ha'aretz Israeli Newspaper

So what we have here is someone with a very poor sense of humor, and on top of it a complete lack of understanding of the Israeli free press, the paper that published this cartoon is a left wing, pro Palestine daily newspaper which is famous for its critic of the Israeli prime minister, who is the star of this cartoon. This cartoon mocks Netanyahu, presenting him as eager to attack Iran nuclear facilities and telling the combat pilots to attack a UNESCO office on the way back as response to UNESCO letting the Palestinians into their club.

The Cartoon

Now this makes headlines over the world, but Huffington Post went a step further, with a headline that shouts something about UNESCO angry on a cartoon showing Israeli planes bombing UNESCO office (that’s the cartoon above, right here).

This whole thing combines into a nice mash of anti Israeli sentiments in the UN and over the press, making it look like even the mentioning of the state of Israel to UNESCO officials brings out an aggressive attitude, and mentioning it to the press imminently brings about thoughts of ultra aggressive military behavior. One thing is clear, keep this up and the Israelis will just abandon any diplomatic efforts of any kind.

Add to all of this the cartoon releated events in the last couple of years and you will find this to be the smallest of problems, when people got killed, UNESCO offices burned and personal murdered as well as the recent torching of a Paris based cartoon publisher and you should wonder how biased we have become.

Huffington Post gets lost in translation

The 20th Duggar Baby

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The Duggars

Some people seem to think that if they put God in the drivers seat everything will just work out great. You can also assume that putting a fictional and non responsive deity in charge would end in disaster, even those who are hard line believers would not step into their car and say “I am letting God decide when to break, I am in his hands now”, because they realize no one will hit the breaks and they would just slam into a wall.

However it is not the same when thanking God for anything, giving credit it seems is the one thing God is actually useful for, instead of saying how lucky you got to win the lottery or how well trained you have become to score in the Superbowl you just hand the credit over to God (or Jesus) in sign of your true modesty and humbleness.

But with babies it works differently, first because you might have not wished for a child and when the news breaks you need to put the responsibility on someone, or you are just blindly walking through life and irresponsibly carrying other people with you, and you do that in the name of God.

The news tell us that Michelle Duggar, mother of 19 children, and 45 years old, is now expecting yet another baby, “I was not thinking that god will give us another one…” she is quoted saying, well, its not god that gave you the baby, its your husband and your utter lack of awareness. Lets just start from the beginning, we humans, like all mammals, need time to get our babies to a stage in which they can start to take care of themselves, it usually take 3 years for a young child to to be able to walk and even ran properly.

In ancient times mothers would carry their babies until an even later age, also breastfeeding them longer, meaning that the time a human mother had to invest in a baby was considerably long, which restricted that number of babies a human mother would produce. So if any creator would have any target number of children for a human mother it would be around 4 or maybe 5, not much more, because humans also died at the age of 30-40, meaning that they would have only two decades of reproductive ability.

Even with these numbers we need to remember the hardship of ancient lives, the disease, the lack of proper medicine and treatment, no understanding of inflammations and how to fight them, wild animals, natural disasters etc.

But science came along, increase the average life span, invented medical treatments that caused decreased rates of death at delivery, and it was suddenly possible to have much more babies than before. It was not God that came along and made changes, but humans trying to better life. It was humans blocking the creator plan to kill as much as 30% of women who delivered babies.

It is also this modern, men made, health and technological improvements that make sure that Ms. Duggar has all her babies alive and well, because 1,000 years ago she might have looked at a much smaller family. So it is not god she needs to thank, but modern science, because that is what enabled her to have 19 kids and be pregnant at 45, if God is doing anything here is to trying to kill her at birth, or do the same to her baby.

Who’s Dragging Who Into the Next War?

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Scary title, ha?

Though many in this West do not want to see any new war on the horizon (energy costs, stock markets and failing economies are the main and only reasons, not human suffering and death) a confrontation is becoming a real possibility these days. It has been years since the Iranian nuclear effort has been in the global public eye, the statements made by Iranians in reference to their plans were very aggressive and promised anyone who will try to stop them much harm, they were (and still are) very happy to reference Israel as one of those who will want to stop them as many times as possible.

And so we learned that the head of army in Iran, as well as almost any cabinet minister there (including the president of course) believes that Israel will be wiped out of the map eventually, and to add a “catch 22” theme to the whole thing that Iranians also promised the Israelis to destroy their country if they will try and stop the Iranian nuclear program, basically meaning you are dead if you do and you are dead if you don’t, pretty clever.

Now, with the last report on Iran’s nuclear program being published it looks like we are very quickly heading into a physical confrontation between the two countries, as the West looks on and does nothing. Of course Washington has something to do with it, the failed system of punishments on Iran has not done anything to decrease its will or ability to get Nuclear capability, because when you got the Russians and Chinese in your market the U.S. does not seem to make a strong impression.

This next war will not be about money or natural resources, it will be a religious war, a war driven and delivered in the name of god, between Islam on one side and Judaism/Christianity on the other side but also within Islam, between the Shiite Iran to its Muslim Sunni countries.

In this probable scenario Israel will try and strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, in it own defense, since many Iranian officials have promised to destroy Israel over the years, however Israel is not fighting any holy war here, its just trying to survive a lethal development. Israel’s next war is anything but a religious war, its 1.5 million Muslim citizens and many other ethnic minorities, the damage will not sort out religious and believers when it strikes, and almost any nuclear device activation in any part of this small country will inflict damage on many different faiths, which is much more than you can say about the helpless people of Iran who are shoved into this conflicted by religious mad leaders.

Surprised? Really?

2011 Personal Daily Journal From the Stone Age

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While surfing the net yesterday I saw something that really caught my attention, and even though it is not my habit to pick on innocent bystanders but this one really shows the chains of religion on (what seems like) a young man who is trying to understand what is the right thing to do. When you read and understand this you will also understand how it is very possible for believers to murder babies in the name of god, since even their own mother will not escape the harsh religious and cultural sentence.

A link got me to a site called “turn to Islam”, a forum with people discussing many things, but this one looked special, check it out

Haram, My Mom is going to get Stoned

There is no information about this young man, but from the way he uses English I think its a safe bet to say that he is living in the West (“Blow off steam”), and it also seems like his mother has been divorced for a very long time, without it being a huge deal, also an indication that this post is not coming from someone living in Arabia. Even if this person is not living in the West it is still a testimony for the terrible problems that religions causes, in this case Islam, but to be honest it could have easily been any other religion.

“Zina” is a very strong word, it does not translate well into English and it carries with it very strong meaning of fornication and adultery, the punishment for this “crime” is death in some Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran (who knew, right?) and can also be imprisonment and lashing (separately or a combo), the normal procedure in the Arab world is stoning the couple.

This might be a good time to say that views differ on the subject of the punishment, and that it is much more a cultural thing then the actual word of God in the book, however it is done in the name of religion, and in the case before us it is very easy to understand that the writer is above all in a state of overwhelming fear that his mother will be stoned.

Let’s think for a moment about how this could play itself in a modern secular family. A young adult has a reason to believe that his mother is having sex with a guy who he know is still married, he could be concerned about the future, the guy’s intentions, his mother’s feelings etc. He might be brave enough to ask his mother to have a serious talk with him, and he might discover that the guy is getting a divorce, that his wife is actually cheating on him for years, or any other thing that would make the situation look differently. Our believing writer here does not have a chance.

He is torn between fear and the need to show solid evidence against his own mother so that his brothers and sisters come to his help in removing the sex offender from their home and lives, the whole part of him thinking about placing a hidden camera in his mother’s bedroom so he can film her having sex (!) only to show it to all his siblings and go after her with the proof he so desperately needs to save her from stoning.

The totalitarian nature of religion removes that thought of the individual, even of the group, we can see how he has no concern for his mother’s feelings and sexual needs, to the guy’s family or to anyone in this situation, he is obsessed with following the religious process and stamping his mother guilty.

Scroll down and you will see the sound advice other believers give him, “get your brothers and kick him out” is basically it, no one stands to protect that mother, no one gives pause to any kind of human feeling, its all God’s prescribed movements that they are taking, and we should all be very concerned that in November of 2011 this kind of robotic behavior is displayed, because if they care not for their own mothers that will not care for our children.

We Are the 99%

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It does not matter if like it or not, you stand 99% to be one of the 99%.

Actually you are much more likely to be in the 99% than its actual number. I can safely assume that if you are reading this you are the 99%, because the 1% are not interested in what we got to say, what we do and how we do it.

Did 99% of us just realize that its all about the money? Not only in the U.S. but all around the world? Can it be that we live in a world that is so money driven that it has forgotten its humanity?, the answers to all of these are a big fat yes.

The one difference I hope these good people will make is that it will signal the people on the political top that there is going to be a price for preferring money to people, it will start with losing political power and it could end by being removed from power. It means that you can not just decide that you are going to give banks whatever they want without the people getting up and saying what they think, and it also means that we are still a world of human beings – not of bankers and numbers.

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