Category Archives: Culture

Culture, News, Religion

But your Honour, it’s funny

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So have you heard this story? Harry Taylor, a 59-year-old philosophy tutor and “militant” atheist, has been arrested and charged with three counts of religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress under the Crime and Disorder Act. His crime? Leaving humorous cartoons poking fun at various religions in the prayer room of John Lennon airport in Liverpool. In court the cartoons were described to the jury as being “sexually abusive and sexually unpleasant” but for the life of me I can’t see where they are getting this from based upon the description of the cartoons listed in the Telegraph.

 

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Culture, News, Philosophy, Reason, Religion

Moral Castles Made Of Sand

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Here’s a riddle for you.*

Is it better to have flexible, socially contextual morals that may dip below what many people view as laudable behaviour as a result of free will and personal choice . . . or is it better to have a uniformly high moral standard followed, in part or even in whole, as a result of fearing the perceived consequences of not following it?

Of course, you might say that I’ve used Wordification to bias the issue somewhat – and because I have no higher power to feel accountable to I’m perfectly happy to lie, and say that I didn’t bias the point in the slightest.

The question, I suppose, is how worthy or altruistic can a high moral standard be truly taken to be when it’s prescribed rather than acquired? It becomes little more than Utilitarianism if your moral compass is constantly aware that behaving immorally will result in hell, or a few lost brownie-heaven points from God. You’re not acting morally, you’re just protecting your own skin – which is exactly what I would do, of course.

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Culture, Entertainment

Movie Review: Legion (2010)

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My favorite genre, or perhaps second favorite, is religious horror. Essentially, those horror movies where people die but the bad guys are demons or something and the whole movie follows sort of Biblical plot. It’s the intersection between pointless violence and horror… I mean, pointless violence and the Bible (little joke there.)

The Omen(1976) was good. The Exorcist (1973). The Prophecy(1995).

Legion(2010), for the record, is certainly not a shameful entry into the genre, but it’s certainly not going to be the standard by any stretch of the imagination. It involves a supposed second “flood,” but this one, carried out by angels. An extermination of the human race. Unlike Noah, there is no family earmarked for repopulating the planet and this second destruction of the earth also coincides with the birth of child. This child, incidentally, makes no sense. Is he the second coming? Why would God destroy the earth moments before the second coming? Seems bizarre.

There are far less cool angel scenes and a lot of the violence is just trite, ordinary zombie-like violence. The whole world is being destroyed and our vision is limited to a few small miles of desert boredom – unsatisfying.

The movie does, however, make one interesting stab at Christian fundamentalism, whether they realize it not. The main good guy in the movie is the Archangel Michael and he has been ordered by God to lead the extermination of mankind and kill the child… whoever the child really is. Michael searches his conscience and refuses the order, instead joining the humans and protecting the child. You would have gotten that from the trailer so don’t be too mad!

Gabriel, the equally bronzed archangel who takes over after Michael’s departure, is less sensitive to sympathy but argues that following orders is what really matters. Obviously, sympathy wins over blind obedience in the end, but certain parallels to the story of Abraham and Isaac and the Nazis, of course, are somewhat transparent. Sometimes I can understand Abraham’s decisions; sometimes I can’t. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t kill Isaac, but would that be because I had placed sympathy over obedience as an act of courage or because generally I was scared shitless.

For my part, I’m glad that somewhere in cinema “God told me to do it” isn’t a good reason.

★★★☆☆ If you have the time, go have a little fun. But, if you miss it, you didn’t miss anything.

Culture, News, Reason, Religion

Ah, The Hypocrisy Of It All

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I know it’s Christmas, but I’m going to have to bring you down. Maybe you can cheer yourself with the knowledge that something like this will almost certainly never happen to you or anyone you know.

In summary: the host of a TV show has been sentenced to death for sorcery, because he would occasionally predict the future for his callers. And where was he sentenced? Funland, of course, colloquially known as Saudi Arabia.

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Culture, News, Religion

Balls To The Wall Against Faith Schools

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Ed Balls, who just has a funny goddamn name, could be striking sparks of new hope from the tarnished steel of faith schools.

Balls.

BALLS.

His name is BALLS.

Anyway.

Take a minute to read this recent article. Essentially, the gist is this: A Jewish faith school in the London borough of Brent – which, for any potential murderers, is where I live – got owned in the Torahbox. It was ruled by the Supreme Court that JFS, which selects Orthodox Jews, broke the race relations act by refusing to admit a 12 year old boy – deeming him not properly Jewish, or at least not properly Orthodox Jewish, in the eyes of the Chief Rabbi.

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Culture, Philosophy, Reason, Religion, Science

If Science Is A Conspiracy, Why Does This Computer Work? And Other Stories

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Believers.

Why can’t I just leave them alone, eh? Why can’t I keep my mouth shut?

Ok . . . because some of them think I’m going to hell, think I have no morals, and think my life is meaningless until I open my heart/wallet to Jesus/Allah. I find that fundamentally impolite. It’s hard to say who casts the first stone in these cases, but since I tend not to take issue with the fuzzy sort of believers – y’know, the nice ones who believe in love and redemption rather than bigotry and scientific wank – I only ever attack someone as a result of something they’ve said.

Then the issue was raised of “who’s to say who is right? Creationists take things on faith, atheists take things on scientific proof. Who’s right?”

It’s generally about this point that my brains start to drop out of my ears. Science is right. It has even been suggested to me that, since I haven’t analysed the data myself, scientists are feeding everyone bullshit.

Two words. Peer review.

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Culture, Entertainment, News

It’s just a game people

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For a long time now the claim that violent video games cause people to commit real world acts of violence has been floating around the planets collective consciousness, without any really supporting evidence to my mind, but now it seems that things are going one step further. A recent study into games carried out by two Swiss human rights organisations, Trial and Pro Juventute, investigated a number of recently released games to see which of them allowed their players to break humanitarian laws with regards to war crimes. The study focused on how games treat civilians, combatants who surrender and “protected objects” such as churches and mosques, looking for violations of the Geneva Conventions and its Additional Protocols.

Twenty games were scrutinised to see if the conflicts they portrayed and what players can do in the virtual theatres of war were subject to the same limits as in the real world.

 

“The practically complete absence of rules or sanctions is… astonishing,” said the study.

 

…

 

The games were analysed to see “whether certain scenes and acts committed by players would constitute violations of international law if they were real, rather than virtual”.

 

Unsurprisingly they found that many games violated the rules of war with reckless abandon. But what exactly is the problem with this and what do they want games designers to do about it?

 

It said games were sending an “erroneous” message that conflicts were waged without limits or that anything was acceptable in counter-terrorism operations.

 

“This is especially problematic in view of today’s reality,” said the study.

 

In particular, it said, few games it studied reflected the fact that those who “violate international humanitarian law end up as war criminals, not as winners”.

 

The authors said they did not wish to make games less violent, instead, they wrote: “[We] call upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games.”

 

Ok seriously, we are talking about computer games here right? The games they looked at included Far Cry 2, Metal Gear Solid and 24: The Game. Does anyone think that these games have anything to do with reality? Do they really think that playing a game like Army of Two will cause people to go out and commit real life war crimes? Just as playing Doom doesn’t cause people to go on a homicidal rampage, playing war games doesn’t turn you into Hitler or Stalin. Computer games are a form of escapism and as such should, first and foremost, be entertaining and fun. Sometimes after a hard day at work there is nothing more relaxing than loading up your favourite game and taking out your frustration on a few innocent civilians. This doesn’t mean for a second that I would ever do the same thing in real life and no matter how realistic the blood spatter or how convincing the cries of pain I, and the vast majority of games, are intelligent enough to remember that it is, at the end of the day, only a game.

 

This just strikes me as yet another pop at gamers from a group of people who neither understand them nor the games they play.

Culture, Philosophy

…about that last bit

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I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now and today a number of tangentially related posts over on the excellent Pharyngula blog reminded me that I hadn’t, plus they also gave me some great up to date examples to use as ammunition when making my case. A few weeks ago now I had to attend a mandatory Equality and Diversity training course at the place where I work. Even before it started I knew that I was going to find some of the things they said objectionable. After all I live in the UK, that great fortress of “multiculturalism” and all the subtle racist undertones that idea incorporates. In this country we are told that outright de facto respect for all beliefs and opinions is more important than rationally evaluating those beliefs to see if they are beneficial or harmful to the society in which we live. As such I was not at all surprised when, early in the training, a slide was put up that gave the following description of how the company views diversity (emphasis original):

 

Diversity is about recognising, accepting and valuing difference. It is an appreciation that while we are all part of a single nation with shared rights and responsibilities we are also individuals with our own talents, ambitions and priorities.

 

Reading that my hand immediately went up with a question. Why, I asked, had they applied special emphasis to the word “valuing“? I continued by stating that I had no problem with recognising and even accepting the fact that other people hold different views and beliefs to me but why was I expect to value those different beliefs, especially if said beliefs were in direct opposition to beliefs I myself hold? A look of mild horror crossed the face of the lady doing the training and I got the feeling that no one had ever questioned her on this before. Somewhat reluctantly she explained that she didn’t know why the word “valuing” had been singled out like that and that they were not really expecting us to value beliefs that directly conflicted with our own. Now if she had left it there I might have, begrudgingly, let her get away with it. However she continued with this wonderful sentence.

 

“By valuing what we mean is that we expect you to be tolerant of the beliefs of others.”

 

You can bet my hand shot up with more questions about that one.

 

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Culture, News

The Naked Truth

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I thought I would do a quick post to get your take on this issue. Manchester Airport are currently trialling a new security scanner that produces full body scans of a person and which is designed to quickly highlight any concealed weapons or explosives. That’s all well and good, however:

 

…the full body scans will also show up breast enlargements, body piercings and a clear black-and-white outline of passengers’ genitals.

 

The airport has stressed that the images are not pornographic and will be destroyed straight away.

 

Ok so the pictures will not be saved and they don’t class them as pornographic and yet strangely that doesn’t make me any more inclined to let strangers look at pictures of my junk. Sarah Barrett, head of customer experience at the airport, goes on to stress these points.

 

Ms Barrett said: “This scanner completely takes away the hassle of needing to undress.”

 

Ms Barrett said the black-and-white image would only be seen by one officer in a remote location before it was deleted.

 

“The images are not erotic or pornographic and they cannot be stored or captured in any way,” she said.

 

Now we are all internet users here and so we all know that anything, no matter how bizarre or out there, can be considered “erotic or pornographic” by someone. Let me give you a hypothetical example but one that I don’t think is beyond the realm of possibility. A female team for some sport of another is passing through security at Manchester Airport. Somewhere in a “remote location” security officer Billy Bob is watching a parade of shapely female forms, complete with “body piercings and a clear black-and-white outline of passengers’ genitals“, pass one by one across the screen in front of him. Are they seriously trying to tell us that Billy Bob is not going to really enjoy his job that day?

 

As for the claim that the pictures could not be saved in anyway I have to wonder about that too. Let’s say this scanner shows someone has a weapon strapped to his chest. As the security personnel move in he manages to discard it from his person. The weapon is found but the suspect denies that it is his. Now the only evidence you have that he had the weapon on him is the picture take by the scanner. Again I find it hard to believe that the ability to save an image is completely absent in this system even if it is not something that is done routinely. If these things do become common place how long do you think it will be before an image of some starlet of the week passing through security appears on the internet?

 

Ok so I know I have taken things a bit far there but this whole thing strikes me as wrong. Also it is true that currently people can refuse to be scanned but that of course does assume that they know in advance the sort of image the scanner is going to produce. We live in a world where the threat of a terrorist attack is very real and yet I can’t help thinking this is a step too far. Are we not entitled to some level of privacy, at least to the point where we are not required to let strangers see our naked bodies before we are allowed to get on a plane?

 

Sorry that was a bit off topic but I would be interested to know how you guys feel about this.

Culture, News, Reason

No, don’t ask Barry!

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I just want to give my quick two pence worth about this article on the Telegraph Website that is a great example of why taking the “balanced” approach to a story always results in credulous information, the illusion of controversy where none actually exists and just plain bad journalism reporting. These days it seems that no matter how one sided a topic may be reporters will do their damnest to find that one crackpot who holds an opposite point of view so that they can presents a “balanced” article that highlights the “controversy” raging between the “experts”. I think Dara Ó Briain put it best. When interviewing a NASA scientist about their plans for a new space station you don’t also have to interview a guy who thinks that the sky is a giant carpet painted by God in order to present a “balanced” view of the issue. Some times one side is really is right and the other side is just plain wrong. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you lot this but when it comes right down to it creationists really are on the same level as geocentrists, flat earthers and that guy who thinks the sky is a carpet. Plus if this article really contains the 5 best arguments for creation then I don’t think that those of us who live in a little place I like to call “reality” have anything to worry about. Anyway that’s all I have to say on the matter. I’d be interested to know your thoughts on this.

 

Oh and sorry about the excessive use of quote marks, I got kind of “carried away”.