The Clockwork Chartophylax Outsourced Memory and Topical Fulminations for the Money-Got Mechanic Age

This story is…well, words fail.

It’s about an Iraqi man who beat his daughter to death because he found out she’d developed an (unconsummated) infatuation with a British soldier. And he’s not one bit sorry, because, of course, he has God on his side.

'Death was the least she deserved,' said Abdel-Qader. 'I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,' he said.

'I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,' he said, his voice swelling with pride. 'My sons are by my side, and they were men enough to help me finish the life of someone who just brought shame to ours.'

Now the girl’s mother is in hiding, after divorcing the man, though not before he beat her as well, breaking her arm.

It’s unfair to blame this entirely on religion. This barbarism (and I refuse to call it anything else) is cultural. In his interview, Abdel-Qader talks repeatedly about honour and the rightness of honour killing. Again, I’m reminded of the story of General Sir Charles Napier (who was brought up in Celbridge, Co. Kildare), who when some of the local dignitaries complained that sati, which had been banned by the British, was a custom of their land, replied:

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will ...” Tagged as atheism, fulmination, religion | 1 Comment » | Continue

And on cue, here’s one of the torture god’s chief supporters getting frantic about how people in Britain appear to be turning their back on his creed. The article is a goldmine of either clueless irony or the most hypocritical mendacity.

[Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales]…has attacked the caricature of the Catholic Church as "some heartless, insular institution that wants to deny people their freedom"…

Which is ironic, given this from farther down the same article:

Last month, in an interview with the Guardian, he hit out at the representatives of an "aggressive secularism" he said was gaining ground in the UK, defended the church's role in the debate over "hybrid" embryos, and argued that Christian leaders should hold a privileged position over the leaders of other faiths when it came to their input into public policy in Britain.

(Emphasis mine).

So it’s not really about faith per se for Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor. It’s about his faith, his god, his place at the high table of public policy.

And the Catholic Church doesn’t deny people freedom? Oh really?

So that’s why they’re campaigning to reduce the term limits for abortions from 24 to 20 weeks then, in defiance of medical research (because what are facts when faith is the most important thing in your life)? Or why they’re fundamentally opposed to contraception, sex before marriage, homosexuality, and at the bottom of it all, any faith other than their own.

I’m old enough to remember the time when the Catholic Church practically ran Ireland from its bully pulpit, a time when given a place at the table of public policy, it denied people basic freedoms like contraception and divorce. And that was when its power was on the wane. ...” Tagged as Britain, atheism, religion | No Comments » | Continue

And while we’re on myth and superstition, I came across (via PZ Myers’s Pharyngula) a blog post that pointed out something about Christianity that’s very obvious, but which I hadn’t really thought through fully.

Hell is really bad.

No – not the place itself, there’s no evidence that it exists, so we don’t have to worry about that. What’s really bad about it is that the Christian god seems to think that it’s a necessary part of his plan for his creation. As Bill Hicks put it, “eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love”.

It’s the eternal bit that the blog post picks up on. Eternal is a short word for something unimaginably long. Compared to eternity, a lifetime of three score and ten is mathematically nothing. Yet according to Christians, their god will judge what happens to you for all eternity based on what you do in a speck of time so small that words can’t express it meaningfully. You will be punished and tormented forever for essentially nothing.

And this is from a just and loving god? Is it just to mete out a punishment that is so out of proportion with the supposed crime? Is it loving to inflict eternal torment on a being just because they express disbelief in the existence of a god for which there is no convincing evidence? And as Sid Schwab asks, how is it that Christians seem to have no issue with this? And not just this – but the flaws with an omnipotent loving god thrown up by the Epicurian Paradox or the psychotically vengeful behaviour of the god depicted in the Bible:

And the LORD said unto Moses, Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you; that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of ...” Tagged as atheism, religion | No Comments » | Continue

Were I more apocalyptically minded, I might be getting myself ready for the end of the Long Slumber of the Great Cthulhu or deciding what to do with all the cool stuff that fundamentalist Christians will leave behind when they get Raptured. Maybe both.

Luckily, rational chap that I am, I can stand back (well back) and appreciate the 100 billion hotdog awesomeness of nature – consistently trumping myth and superstition in the SFX (and every other) department for the last 15 billion years.

National Geographic via Ectoplasmosis.