Atheism Corner — Humanity in Progress

No Yarmulke in Super Hero Land

September 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Title should actually read – “no Yarmulke in super hero land – without royalties”.

Looks like Marvel, the company who owns the creative rights for the Spiderman super hero character is going after a Kippa shop in Jerusalem, looks like the Yarmulke maker went too far and created yarmulkes for kids baring the Spiderman trademark on them.

Besides this being the funny post of the day (when other subjects are Islamists trying to force limitations on freedom of speech in the U.S.) it does make one wonder about how modern a religion can be and not be – in the same time.

It is clear that some parents want to please their children and buy them an animated Kippa, just like the T-shirts and the shoes, this piece of clothing also joins in on the consumer marketing fiesta, however it seems very strange that with all this modern day openness for super heroes the same religion would be again organ transplants, a thing that did not exist in the ancient world (just like a Spiderman kippa) but could be much more useful.

Religious Jewish parents would let their boy put on a Kippa with a picture of a super hero, who has incredible spider power given to him by a scientific mistake he made in the lab, but would not let that same child go to a Yoga class because there is a chance he would be introduced to teachings of Buddhism.

Screen Shot 2012-09-13 at 12.48.27 PM — Marvel’s Spiderman V The Kippa Maker of Jerusalem

The Ignorance of Middle East Muslims

September 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Things are heating up, as they always do following the believers of Islam going wild over one insult or another. The news can been seen as trivial and banal, same old anger over the same old topics, some can see it as intended aggravation of a group of people known for being easily angered over anything to do with their religion, others might see it as yet another attempt to force the West into giving up its core values – “or else”.

This morning some news channels set up a live stream broadcast of “demonstrations” in Cairo, I’m no expert but all I could see were small groups of what seemed to be like young men throwing things at a group of armored vehicles and police. Attacking Egyptian police over a movie produced in the U.S. is as ridicules as attacking an American embassy over that same movie.

The only real excuse for attacking people who are clearly not related in any way to a production of a movie that angers them, Muslims can only say that they do not know (or realize) that people in the West are free to create and produce whatever they want as long as they do not infringe on the rights of other people. If Muslims actually think that the whole of the U.S. with its vast population is under continuous authority scrutiny and that any creative process is a result of permission and not basic liberty than they might have a real argument in going against the US embassy in Cairo.

This exposes these Muslim thugs for what they are, ignorant and without any idea of what real democracy means. Here is a short quotation from yesterday’s news “if your freedom of expression is without limits you must accept our freedom of action”.

Muslim thugs try Limiting freedom of speech — A Clear Threat – With No Understanding of Democracy

This sentence alone shows how ignorant these people are. A clear threat is made and it puts two very different things on the different sides of the equation, one the one side freedom of speech and on the other violence and aggression on whatever whim it may be.

Freedom of expression is without limits because it directly follows thought, the idea behind the freedom to speak your mind is that ideas can be let out into the world without fear, this is what makes this current civilization great – the free and fast exchange of ideas, the adoption of some of them and the ridicule of others, but nonetheless free and constant exchange of thoughts which are expressed by speech. To claim that if you “force” freedom of speech (on people in Cairo – from a film produced in California U.S.A. mind you) the other side can literally force physical damage upon the speaker is outrageous and dangerous.

And this is how these people think and how they act. There is no difference between murdering someone who thinks differently to you to that same person expressing his mind about that topic, in the end it all means that same thing, Muslims do not accept the freedom of speech and much worst than that they actively search for things that may insult them in lands far, far away from their own to orchestrate murderous festivals.

Who Made the Muhammed Movie – and Why?

September 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Its appears that a man named Sam Bacile is the writer-producer-director of the film that set Egypt and Libya on fire yesterday, even though the film’s teaser was uploaded to YouTube 2 months ago – took them so long to find out? or was it just a certain day was preferred for the “protests”?

Anyway, Bacile told a few sources (link to some of the info here) that he got the money for the film from “Jewish” investors and that he managed to get $5 million for it. It seems safe to say that anyone over 12 years old who watches this “teaser” can say that this aint no $5 million movie, it is a good amateur theater club production no doubt, with no known actors, no professional acting, no real camera movement and no professional sound (you can easily see how sound has been edited on this short 15 min clip) one has to wonder if this produced knows how to count (money, that is).

Furthermore, Sam Bacile told the press he was an Israeli Jew who had family in Egypt, which is borderline fiction since all Egyptian Jews who live in Israel have been there for many years already and left no one behind. What adds to the notion that this person is in fact Egyptian is that the begging of the teaser shows current day Egypt with Muslims storming Copts (or Christians in general) and the police doing nothing about it.

No need to say that hiding the truth at this point only makes the makers of this rather poor and vulgar teaser look even less respectable than they looked at the start of this thing, however it is important to note that in a normal world no one would have heard about this man or his “film” and that this thing would have been left to dry on the Youtube servers with 12 views.

As usual the issue here is not the quality of a film but the right of anyone to express an opinion, vulgar as it may be it does not pose any threat to anyone out there, you can simply ignore it and go on with your life, the freedom of expression is not just about expression but about freedom of thought, and this is the one single thing that brought Western civilization to enlightenment, let us not forget this.

The Muhammad Movie Producer enigma — Do You Believe This Thing Cost $5 Million? We Don’t

* Update (September 14th)

Nakoula Basseley seems to be the real name of the producer of this movie, which started under a working title “Desert Warriors” and ended up being much more about the Islamic faith. The produced is not Israeli or Jewish (as was suggested before) but an Egyptian Christian Copt.

Actors in the movie say that they did not know anything about it being so tied to religion, that they were told that this is a movie about old time in Egypt, some claim that a voiceover was edited onto their lines in post production.

It seems that as more is discovered about the maker of this film the more it looks like one religious believer defaming another religion, and even though this is something that is not elegant it kind of makes sense that an Egyptian copts would have very strong feelings against Muslims in light of the past year’s violence against the Christian Copts in Egypt.

US Ambassador to Libya Killed – No One Knows Exactly Why

September 12, 2012 by 3 Comments

It looks like someone in the Muslim/Arab world decided that the US needed reminding of how its religion members react and what they do, however no one is really sure WHY hundreds (or thousands) of angry bloodthirsty Muslim mobs stormed the US Cairo embassy and the Benghazi consulate, to an innocent reader it might seem a strange coincidence that this falls just on the 11th memorial day of September 11th.

There is much more to just the very troubling and tragic news this day, and more will follow as we discover more facts.

US ambassador Libya killed — Murder without relevant reason; A new trademark?

Muslims: The Predictable Story

September 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

In “Islam: The Untold Story” (UK channel 4) Tom Holland, the famous historian and writer presents something that should have been explosive in nature to most people in the West (and the East) today; the notion that Islam was invented (or rather – created) to serve the geopolitical changes in the world at the time of the Arab military expansion. In this documentary one does have the feeling that while this is some kind of common standard notion regarding Islam in the historical academic circles the wider audience had not been introduced to this idea yet.

Tom Holland is a fantastic writer, he delivers historical facts about the ancient world like a very small selected group of writers, and has the ability – and the knowledge – to present to his reader the world as it was thousands of years ago. He is a sharp and intelligent writer, a passionate historian of the best kind – the one who does not let go until he gets satisfying facts, and his criticizers should know that they are confronting a scholar that has nothing in mind but the search for the truth, he is no Islamophobic hate monger or a Saudi backed academic.

It is almost amazing that such an educated man would not know what kind of storm would follow his suggestion, it is virtually impossible to criticize Islam in any way, in any form and on any platform, the rage and death threats that follow each publication of any notion about Islam that is out of the conventional is a testimony to that. It must have been clear to Holland that such anger would follow, and it looks like he prepared for it by interviewing Dr Seyyed Hossein Nasr (professor of Islamic studies, George Washington University) who quickly and in a dry manner slaughters any of Holland’s ideas (this is roughly 5 minutes into the documentary) by saying no non Muslim can understand the historical roots of the religion, end of story. Holland gets back to good Dr Seyyed to get his blessing just before the program closes, and asks how should he present his arguments to the public, to which he gets a fluffy, foggy, “honesty is good” type of answer.

And indeed, once the show was on it got it fair share of rage and anger, as anything Islam related does, with the regular and boring “outrage” believers feel when confronted with a thoughtful and deep research presented by a scholar who knows much more about their origins than themselves. The foundation of faith are not to be shaken, even if those foundations might be built on political lies and deception 1,400 years old.