Do you celebrate anything at this time of year? How about just get together with friends and family?
Whatever you’re up to, I hope you have a good one and continue to stop by at League of Reason in 2011.
Clear skies!
P.S. Don’t forget to swing by The Official Xmas Thread!
I’ve been asked by AndromedasWake to say a few words on the entire 9/11 Ground Zero debate and give a New Yorker’s perspective. I thought it would be appropriate to wait until time has passed since the Ground Zero anniversary, considering the content of this blog post.
I have lived through a decade of Ground Zero controversy. From the moment the dust settled, individuals and groups with political agendas descended on the wounded carcass of lower Manhattan, cutting out and dishing up great slabs of suffering to serve at the gluttonous feast of their ambitions.
“All of Ground Zero should be declared hallowed ground’, “The memorial in light should remain until the towers are rebuilt’, “it should be called the Freedom Tower’, “THIS tower design is a better memorial than that one’, “A design contest will show the true spirit of American freedom’, “The stairway to heaven can’t be moved, it would be disrespectful!’, “The beams that form a cross cannot be moved, God placed them there!’
It has gone on and on, year after year. Continue reading A NYr’s reflections on 9/11
At the end of last month, the notorious YouTube creationist and geocentrist, NephilimFree, posted an open invitation to debate any other user. DonExodus2, author of many popular videos detailing evidences for evolution, accepted the challenge, and they began to establish the debate rules. It was all agreed over Skype, and I myself was privy to some of the conversation and chat between them.
The initial debate subject was Creation and Evolution. Of course, that’s not actually a debate, it’s just the teams. The debate requires a proposition (for example, “Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world?”) for which one party can argue in favour, and one against. Without such a statement, NephilimFree’s proposal was akin to establishing a game called Chelsea and Manchester United, and then refusing to further specify what game they are actually playing. Without establishing that they are playing football (or soccer to my American friends) we have no rules in place to determine how the game can actually be won or lost. Likewise, Creation and Evolution (and the long list of other subjects NephilimFree listed he wanted to discuss) is not a debate; it’s just two nouns.
For a couple of days a debate question was established and agreed upon by both parties, as was the issue with moderators. It was shortly after that NephilimFree insisted on returning to his original proposition (despite being thoroughly educated about why it was not a debate) and began accusing DonExodus2 of backing out. I wish to make my it clear that from my position as a third person, it is NephilimFree who I think is being unreasonable, and rejecting previously accepted terms without giving good reasons.
Due to the conflict of understanding, the debate as originally planned will certainly not be going ahead, but perhaps that’s a good thing after all. On Friday, Thunderf00t posted a video detailing the first ever League of Reason Show. It’s an idea that myself and others have been considering for a long time, and since NephilimFree won’t be showing up to BlogTV (by his own admission) we have a good excuse to kick it off this weekend.
The format is quite simple; we will be using Skype and BlogTV to broadcast a group discussion, and taking questions live from creationists, or those of a theistic position who feel they can back up their claims. In order to do this, we have created a LoR Skype account (LeagueOfReason) which must be added before a question can be submitted, and a new BlogTV channel.
The show will last 2 hours, giving everyone time to pop over to watch The Atheist Experience on ustream. We won’t deny that our show is flagrantly derivative of their own, we just hope there’s room for one more. To further rip them off, we will also be uploading clips to our YouTube channel and they should be available on Monday for most people. We are not yet sure how regularly this show will take place, but dependent on the turnout, we would like to make it a weekly affair.
The show starts at 3pm EST, which is 8pm BST. This is 7pm GMT, but remember to take Summer Time into account. In any case, I recommend turning up early of course, and I hope to see you all there in the chat!
Most of you will have realised that I get the vast majority of my newsing from free London rag The Metro, distributed around the Underground every morning in order to allow bleary-eyed businessmen to further realise that the world is falling gracelessly towards the sun. I don’t think the Metro is a bad little paper, really; the quality of writing is generally good, and it catches stories earlier than other papers you might come across in the day. And you’ll find articles of comparable quality on the same subjects in “real” newspapers.
However, you develop an unfair bias of a newspaper when you peruse it mainly to find new nonsense to write about in your blog. You ignore all rational articles about politics\current affairs\crossbows to the face and concentrate only on articles that guarantee a spout of vitriol frothy enough to incur a transparent sense of self-righteousness. And as a result, your perception is that the chosen paper exists only to print stories about religion, druids and the supernatural. Unfair, since the Metro regularly dishes out reasonably informative articles about modern science and astronomy.
Picture the scene. It’s brisk, but not quite chilly, at 7:15 on Saturday the 3rd of October 2009, and I’m clutching at my little pot of warm, brown liquid that tastes almost like coffee. Seven-fifteen. It’s a bloody awful time for me. Too late to do any observing and too early for’¦ well, just about anything else. To make matters worse, the previous night I managed approximately one hour of sleep. Even for an astronomer, that’s pretty bad, and waking myself up onerously at 5 to catch the bus resulted in a graceless ballet of a start. Yet here I am, sipping at my faux café and grinning. Grinning like a twat. Because today I’m in London at the Mermaid Conference Centre and something very special is about to happen.
Perhaps more than anything else in recent years, it is in light of the introduction of The Amaz!ng Meeting in Europe that no one can deny the rising tide of scepticism around the globe.
It goes like this:
[Item] or [practice] nullifies or negates the effects, presence, activity or consequences of [entity], [energy], or [phenomenon]. How can you tell? Because absolutely nothing is happening, and so the [item] or [practice] is a legitimate success. This stone keeps away bears. You can tell because you don’t see any bears around here . . . yes, this stone IS for sale. How expensive? Completely. Continue reading Lisa, I Would Like To Buy Your Rock
Seen this? A few days late with it, but I’m blithely unconcerned.
A Muslim woman has been fined for wearing a burka in a post office in Novara, Italy, after the mayor passed a law forbidding face-covering garb inside public buildings. Mayor Massimo Giordano could maybe be described as an Islamophobe, but as far as I’m concerned that’s like calling someone a murderophobe or a rapistophobe. It’s entirely rational to dislike or fear Islam, which makes it not a phobia but a very sensible intellectual stance.
Continue reading If Men Look At My Wife The Universe Will Fold In On Itself
I can’t really apologise enough for that title.
As I anticipated would happen, Rabbitpirate beat me to laying the first League blogstone on the subject of Simon Singh and his sudden victory. Since I’m not a petty man/as good as Rabbitpirate, I’d love to see him do a longer musing on the subject without the dilution that my opinions would create. However I just wanted to highlight one thing.
Quoting from the BCA’s press release, “The BCA has considered seeking leave to take this matter to the Supreme Court and has been advised there are strong grounds for appeal against the Court of Appeal judgment. However, while it was right to bring this claim at the outset, the BCA now feels that the time is right for the matter to draw to a close. ”
Isn’t that beautiful? The legal equivalent of saying “I could smash your face in, I could . . . any time I wanted . . . only I’m not going to. Any time. But now I’m going home.” For “been advised there are strong grounds for appeal” read “quick, save face ANY WAY WE GODDAMN CAN.” And what’s the best way to save face? Lie. If there were truly strong grounds for appeal the BCA, an organisation that has happily made a decent, genuine, intelligent and (I’m fortunate to know this from personal experience) really lovely man suffer tremendously for years, would without hesitation appeal to continue. Of course they would. Singh said mean*, hurtful** and unfortunately absolutely true things about them so they responded with petty legality. If there was the slightest chance the case could be pursued, don’t you think the BCA would go for it? Just to hurt Simon?
I love seeing people forced to back down after attempting to use laws to censor dissenting voices. We’ve all had our run-ins with DMCAs on Youtube, but Singh has become the poster boy for hope and reason against the odds. And as the BCA sidles grumbling into the shadows, we can only hope that libel laws everywhere face a swift dissolution.
Rabbitpirate? Over to you, sir.
* “You are all frauds”
** “Your mothers are ladies of questionable moral integrity”
I imagine it’s likely that Rabbitpirate is even now putting the finishing touches on a significantly better article on this subject. But hey, I’m a Leaguer – it’s my oft-shirked duty to expose the belly-white viscera of religious arse wherever it may show.
I’d hoped that childishly ripping on Gabriele Amorth, Righteous Exorcist 1st Class Of The Holy Vatican, might be the last slur I cast in the direction of Catholicism. My hope was in vain. Continue reading God Love ‘Em, Because Someone Has To
You’ve really got to admire Catholicism sometimes. I mean, really admire that thing. Not in a pretty way, of course. No. Not in the way that sunsets or elderly couples or kittens on springs or rubber corsets might be admired. More in the sense that I might admire, with horrified fascination, a trembling knot of worms drawn reluctantly from their gastric nest. Or a giant centipede blindly destroying a mouse. Or a botfly larva emerging from the withered husk of its host. I mean, none of us could profess a liking for Hitler but damn, did he get shit done.