Sunday School

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

I have great news to start the New Year with! Atheist Ireland have become the first national-level atheist organization in the world to be granted special consultative status at the United Nations. Well done to all those who worked and fought so hard over the last number of years!!

The Freedom from Religion Foundation continues to celebrate reality.

Religious role in honor abuse must be tackled wherever we find it.

A high school coach joked about preaching Satanism. Then he got fired.

State lawsuits defend abortion access with religious freedom.

Despite ample evidence, Christian nationalism is mostly absent from final Jan. 6 report.

World of Woo: Misinformation is Censorship.

Environment: The deep Anthropocene.

Fourteen discoveries made about Human Evolution in 2022.

How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation.

The magic of mRNA will push medical advances for everyone.

You don’t need to fear a world of 8 billion humans.

Long Reads: Ukraine war: Putin has redrawn the world – but not the way he wanted. Two weeks of shootings data around the Uvalde attack shows the scale of the issue. Kafka warned us: surveillance turns the watched into watchers. Before we challenge conventions, we must understand and master them.

Podcast: Science Matters: How the Universe made your Holiday Gifts.

Sunday Book Club: Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Some photographs taken last week.  Some more from 2022.

While you are waiting for the kettle to boil……

Coffee Break Video:  The surprising dark side of empathy. Marlon Brando – The Hollow Men – How Cultures Die – T S Eliot. When and why did consciousness evolve on Earth? The Atheist Experience Year End Top 5. What is Cosmology?

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Happy New Year everyone and have a great week!

[StregaModerator]

Thanks, Reg!!  Happy new year to you!

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Before we challenge conventions, we must understand and master them.

I agree with this article, it’s intuitively true that to be able to criticise something, we have to understand it, even be fluent in it.  At the same time, if one is coming up with new ideas, one is not obligated to understand the old ones if they appear to be “not even wrong” and stupid and tiresome.  But then, if someone was going to criticise the old ideas, then of course they would have to understand them.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

Congratulations to Atheist Ireland for getting front-row seats at The Let’s-Hate-America-Israel-and-The-West-In-General-Club.

While I’m sure Atheist Ireland has much wise counsel, I wouldn’t expect any of it to get heeded or practiced. The Islamic Bloc, Orthodox Russia, Kim Trinity-worshipping North Korea, and African Witch Doctors don’t want their buzz on Mysticism harshed by a bunch of Western up-starts.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling. I using a dumb smartphone

[DavisModerator]

Congratulations to Atheist Ireland for getting front-row seats at The Let’s-Hate-America-Israel-and-The-West-In-General-Club.

Could we try and tone down the hyperbole in 2023? The UN, despite its many faults, is an enormous organisation that does more than squabble and (often justly) criticise the unspeakable self-service atrocious things developed countries do. It is nothing short of a miracle that an international frame work exists for things like alleviating poverty, protecting cultural customs and treasures, irradiating diseases and environmental initiatives like ensuring we actually have an ozone.

This kind of use of language like reducing a massive phenomena to a description of a few things they do you dislike is toxic. I congratulate Atheist Ireland for gaining this status at all, and for being part of an organisation that achieves amazing things (despite its numerous numerous numerous numerous extreme flaws).

• This reply was modified 2 months, 3 weeks ago by  Davis.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Not all of the ‘The Islamic Bloc’ will be upset to see us having representation at the UN. We will champion and support the human rights of all peoples irrespective of any religion they belong to. But any attempts at promoting any one religion over another will be given no quarter. The same goes for the abuse of individual human rights because of Blasphemy Laws (which Atheist Ireland have had overturned here). We hold that ‘People have Rights but their beliefs do not’ so we will respond when religious people continue to imprison or kill atheists when they perceive we have insulted their imaginary gods.

Of those who will not be upset at the presence of Atheist Ireland at the UN are the Evangelical Alliance and Ahmadi Muslims who, like atheists, are being persecuted by Catholic privilege here in Ireland. We have supported and petitioned for them on an equal basis for several years now.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

We are still waiting for Raif Badawi to be allowed to fly home even though he has been freed from prison.

I have the words ‘I am Raif Badawi’ tattooed in Arabic on my arm to represent all prisoners of conscience.

[_Robert_Participant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

We are still waiting for Raif Badawi to be allowed to fly home even though he has been freed from prison. I have the words ‘I am Raif Badawi’ tattooed in Arabic on my arm to represent all prisoners of conscience.

He better watch his back, especially if he starts blogging against big Mo. Look what happened to Hitch’s buddy, Salman Rushdie.

[Belle RoseParticipant]

@Reg

“to represent all prisoners of conscience.”

whst is a prisoner of conscience?

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

I fully trust Atheist Ireland will take a proper stand on Individual Human Rights.

What I’m trying to say is that Individual Human Rights are not within the wheel-house of Islam or the governments run by Islam, not even the Individual Human Rights of fellow Muslims.

When The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan back in 1979 and was doing things like rigging explosives to air-dropped children’s toys, not one member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned the invasion and it’s atrocities and two members–IIRC Algeria and Tunisia–actually supported the invasion.

The OIC also hasn’t condemned Red China’s enslavement and attempted genocide against the Uighur Muslim minority. Predictably, the oil-producing OIC members don’t want to lose their biggest buyer.

And, of course, the OIC has no words of condemnation against Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine and Russian Muslims are all on board.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Chechen and Azeri volunteers for Ukraine are using the war as a way to dress-rehearse for bringing Jihad and Sha’ria to the Baltic Region, with Ukraine serving like Lebanon during it’s Civil War in the 70s.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

I first heard the term ‘prisoner of conscience’ in relation to some work I did with Amnesty International many years ago. More here with some downloadable pdf’s worth reading.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@theencogitationer – I agree with what you say. I would like to hear stronger condemnation of the Saudi regime but too many Western governments are afraid to ever bare their teeth at MBS. He is the hand that feeds them and they will keep taking his coin.  It is no better than Qatar.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@_Robert_ “Raif Badawi is an important voice for all of us to hear“– Salman Rushdie

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Fellow Unbelievers,

The Sky News piece on Uvalde failed to point out a few things:

* Over 83 million U.S. Citizens own over 400 million firearms (and there over 1 billion pies of small arms when you count things like machine guns, grenades, grenade launchers, mortars, mines, etc.). Simple division means that only a tiny fraction of a single percent of all firearms owners and their firearms are involved in the 19,895 firearms homicides mentioned in the piece.

Gun Ownership Statistics

How Many Guns are in the US? (Gun Ownership Statistics)

Also missing from this piece is the fact that in Uvalde, several groups of law enforcers who take an oath to uphold the law and the Constitution and The Bill of Rights and who are paid to run towards gunfire stood by and did nothing like flat-footed human donut disposals for 40 minutes while children in Robb Elementary were being slaughtered and indeed arrested parents who attempted to rescue their children.

This factoid alone renders the whole notion that only police and military should have firearms both intellectually and morally bankrupt.

Finally, the Home Office in England records murders very differently that in the U.S. In the U.S., any death that is not suicidal or accidental with evidence of foul play is recorded as a murder. In England, as of 1967, a death is not recorded as a murder until someone is convicted. This mean the gun-free Utopia of “England’s mountains green” may be more violent than previously supposed and, per Capita, possibly more dangerous than the United States.

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