Atheism Corner

Humanity in Progress

Sometimes, What You Believe Can Get You Killed

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Most people will not understand what rattlesnakes have got to do with faith, or god or Christianity. It is very strange indeed that some people connect these deadly reptiles with anything that is spiritually based, but not a complete shocker that some people found a way to incorporate snakes into their belief system.

In one of his brilliant talks Sam Harris talks about the power of faith and belief and how stupid it is of us to “respect” people who believe – or rather the belief itself. Not everything anyone believes is worth respect, in some cases it is worth nothing more then ridicule, and in the case before us it deserved (past tense) a stern warning that simply was not there – probably due, in part, to the fact that people are too careful not to criticize beliefs of other people.

This is the sad and tragic story of pastor Mack Wolford, better known as the “Serpent pastor” for his belief that people should play with deadly snakes as a way to test their faith, a kind of a faith-o-meter that has got to have you on your toes at all time, because if your faith diminishes for any kind of reason you could very quickly die of a snake bite. There are many things I can doubt, but I have little doubt about the very high level of Mack Wolford’s belief, it will be safe to guess that it was as high as it can be in any person of faith.

But faith did not save Mack, and if you read carefully you will also come under the impression that he was in no great rush to save himself once bitten, because faith should not only work as a shield to protect form bites (which it failed to do) but faith would also heal the bite by itself, without needing those crazy hospital things.

Lets put things right and proper right here, there is in no way an attempt to laugh at this case, because the man had died of a snake bite. What was already a completely not normal situation in the fist place – having deadly snakes around, became an even more serious situation when the person got bitten, only to slowly get himself to a medical facility. Faith does not do that to people – Religion does.

Religion feeds this monster and keeps it alive, these non sensical interpretations of what the bible tells us to do, what god wants us to do, how we should do it – gets people all kind of ideas, and since the big man is never around to make clear what exactly he wants us to do, well, these things just grow into these type of situations.

Is it crazy that a man died because of a bite of snake that he had as a pet because he believed that god wanted him to do that? yes it is. Is it immoral for a 44 year old man to have this kind of belief without anyone in the church around him stopping him from literally killing himself on these basis – we guess not, because it seems to be more difficult to tell someone what he believes is nuts than to face and and say the truth.

The Honest Atheist

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The Jerry DeWitt Story

It is moving to learn about people who need to force their way to the light, to break out of an old mold and bravely build themselves a new philosophical cornerstone. Not everyone is born an atheist, or gets to grow up with parents or siblings who are not believers and who regard religion as something that is best kept for spare time as a hobby (at best), for those who are born into this world with parents and a whole community of believers it is unbelievably difficult to break the mold and step forward.

It take a lot of courage, but even more than that it takes an honest person to reveal him or herself as a non-believer to a community that has never accepted anything but believers – who are formed in their own shape. The honesty is a vital component here because it seems easy enough to not say anything to anyone and only to be a non-believer at heart, the story of Jerry DeWitt is not one of “closet” atheist but of a person who found out he does not believe any longer and when confronted with the every day stuff religious people deal with his honesty took over.

This article about Jerry DeWitt (NY Times) is well worth a read, to remind many of us that there are still plenty of people in this world who face extraordinary difficulties in expressing their own belief in public and who need to pay a dear price for it, and also remind us that  our conscience and beliefs change – and that we should accept changes in others as we wish to have them accept those changes in us (almost sounds religious – does it not?).

And what is it exactly that is moving in this story? the fact that a pastor drops out of his faith or the fact that this step is met with so much resistance and anger, fear and hostility?, we should hope that in the very near future people who live in Western countries (such as the U.S.) could make steps that correlate with their moral compass without fear of becoming a community outcast, or getting fired from work, or losing all your friends.

Religion has formed itself on cases like these, it has been doing that for hundreds and thousands of years, it is no mistake that a former pastor turned atheist gets to do this walk of shame, because religions have gotten used to systematically bully free thinkers out of stepping forward, and at the same time to fiercely preach for being true and honest. The community in this case follows the old golden rules, “it its not like you – treat it badly”. That is the only way religion knows how to survive, and this will change only when the balance of power will turn and religions will be outnumbered by non believers.

Still, this pastor is somewhat lucky, for if he was living under Islam he would have lost much more.

Pakistan’s Ruthless Religion Sensitivities

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An 11 years old girl is about to receive sentence for her serious crime of walking down the street with a basket containing a couple of burned papers, sounds peculiar? not if the street you happen to be walking in is located in Pakistan and not if the papers happen to be pages out of the koran. Is this such a capital offense?, well, a thousand years ago it was, when Islam was fighting its way to the religious mainstream, and made sure that no one could disrespect its holy book. Did we mention that the 11 year old girl is a Christian, who happen to live in a Christian neighborhood of Islamabad?.

Jewish and Christian believes also hold the “holy” books as something sacred, however you will be hard pressed to find anything even remotely close to this piece of news from both religions in the last couple of hundreds of years.

What is really going on in Pakistan? well, no one can say for sure, but the trend seems to be that nothing but Islam is accepted, and what traditionally follows is that only the exclusive local interpretation of Islam will be left in this country. Hindus are already leaving Pakistan by the thousands, because they can not deal with the constant harassment and the actual – real danger to their lives in this country. Christians, obviously, have been targeted as well, in this war of local Islam to simply rid the country of any other religions, and anyone who does not follow Islam.

Pakistan was once a well established country, with respect for democracy and enough power to cause a major problem in the world, now turns quickly into a radical Islamist country in which time is turned back and the population is held hostage to stone age beliefs, the falling apart partnership with the US is clearly at its final stage, and from the moment that this country starts to get what it wants – which is clearly segregation of religion and radicalization of its political systems, we will have to deal with a new extreme force in the world under the chains of religion.

Human Suffering in Syria 2012

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This video is short, violent and raw, it is probably the best description of what Syria has been reduced to – after months of interior riots and fighting, this is the face of religious tribal war in the Muslim world, it has been going on for centuries and it does not look like it plans to stop now.

Whatever these people have done, to see them marched to death and paraded as the blood crazed mob chants “alla ho akbar” – the pagan cry of believers dedicating a murder to their always blood thirsty god, this is no way for Syrians to rebuild their country, this is no way to step out of Assad’s tyranny into democracy, this is only about the religon tearing apart yet another part of the world.

 

Tahrir Square Is Rape Square

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Natasha Smith did not read about Tahrir Square recent sexual history

Once again the famous square in Cairo has celebration mixed with violent sexual assault that starts as rape and quickly turns into what all its victims see as an attempted murder, only to be saved by few brave souls that realized that the scene will end in bloody death if they do not intervene.

Natasha Smith, a journalism student, found herself being crowd raped by the happy attendants of the celebration of Egypt’s new leader lawful election and its official change into a strict Islamic country with low levels of tolerance of any other ideology or faith. It is of no surprise that this thing happens – once again, in this square with this population, which considers an unmarried single non-muslim as free for all – up to the point that killing her is no big deal, because this had happened before, and now one really starts to wonder just how much of these things actually get out and published, it is very possible that we in the west get only a fraction of the rape and murder by frantic crowds numbers in Egypt or other Muslim countries.

With all the exposure the previous attack on female journalists in Tahrir square and the attack on Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda el Mahdi in that same square, as well as the Caroline Sinz, a French report attacked at the same place you might expect a student of journalism to be aware of the dangers of such a place and especially in this state of mind, but this journalist decided that she should cover the Egyptian scene and, unfortunately, ended up like a few of her journalist friends.

It is a shame that Egypt can not step out of this darkness into the light, and that instead of marching forward is actually stepping back in time to embrace a fanatical religious identity, all that we can do is observe the deterioration of this society and execute caution when we get closer to it.