by cameron | Jan 5, 2008 | Atheism, science
As you know, over the last year I’ve been working on a book about religion. During this time, while I’ve been debating the subject with people on the show and in person, one of the common arguments I’ve heard for keeping religion is “people need something to believe in”. I used to scoff at this statement. I certainly don’t feel that need. I’m happy with my own assessments of what’s right, what’s wrong, what is true and what is false. However, it struck me recently that perhaps other people aren’t like me. Perhaps they do need help figuring answers to the big questions. Perhaps they would like a place to gather on a regular basis with like-minded people to discuss the subjects of life, the universe and everything. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons religion continues to survive in the 21st century.
Atheism doesn’t have such a place. As an atheist, I don’t have a place where I can gather with other atheists to discuss “the big questions”. And, while this isn’t a problem for me, I got to thinking that perhaps it might be a hurdle for the new atheists, the people who are reading Dawkins and Hitchens and are preparing themselves to let go of superstition and mythology to embrace critical thinking and logic.
Scientific literature, and working scientists, rarely seem to attempt to play the role of answering the big questions either. There are exceptions, such as Carl Sagan, but these are truly the exceptions to the rule. Scientists provide us with the best information they have about how it all works and they leave it up to us to decide what that means to our individual lives.
So… I’ve decided to start a new religion which I’m calling
THE CHURCH OF LOTU.
“LOTU” stands for the “Laws Of The Universe”. The idea is that this religion, this church, will be fully based in science and critical thinking. It will not worship any mythological deity but will respect, and try to interpret, the laws of the universe as delivered to us by the latest scientific research. LOTU will also endorse the United Nations Charter on Human Rights. Unlike every other religion on the planet today, LOTU will not condemn people who do not agree with us to an eternity of torture and vilification. LOTU doesn’t care what you believe. LOTU respects your right to believe whatever makes you feel good. We may disagree with you. We may debate you vigorously. We may even chide you for believing in bronze age mythologies in the 21st century. We will also, however, fight for your right to believe whatever you want.
Yes, I know that the words “religion” and “church” seem to be incongruent with atheism but they need not. Wikipedia define ‘religion’ as:
“A religion is a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience. The term “religion” refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.”
LOTU may well have all of those things. Note there is no mention of a supernatural deity in that description.
Wikipedia defines ‘church’ as:
“A church is an association of people with a common belief system, especially one that is based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.”
LOTU is definitely the first but also, obviously, NOT the second. Christians have always been fond of stealing ideas from older traditions (Easter, Christians, monotheism… hell, even the Jesus story is a rip-off of Mithra), so I feel quite comfortable stealing one of their words.
At the moment, I’m working on writing the “scripture” for LOTU but, as I’ve leaked word of it to a few people over the last week, I thought I should throw the doors open and let those of you who wish to join me in the creation of the first new religion for the 21st century. This is Religion 2.0.
To start with, I’ve created a Facebook group (I know, BOO! HISS!) for us to discuss the idea. I hope a few of you will join me.
by cameron | Dec 30, 2007 | Uncategorized
This post “I Don’t Respect Your Religion” by Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks is right on the money.
Here’s an excerpt:
Read the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. They are all full of violent, bloody fantasies that teach you over and over to kill your enemies. Christians love to think they are the exception to this rule. They’ll say the Old Testament doesn’t really apply anymore because the New Testament overruled all the gory, masochistic violence of the earlier book. So, then I guess Genesis isn’t true either since that’s in the Old Testament? Oops.
Then, you’ll get the excuse that Jesus was the Prince of Peace. Yeah, I know, that’s why in Matthew 10:34 he says, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Sounds down right Christian of him.
But even if you can make up pathetic excuses for this obvious blood-lust and call to violence, it doesn’t matter. Because in the end Jesus murders almost all of us anyway. Jesus doesn’t just kill the “liars” and the “sexually immoral” and the eight other categories of people who get thrown in “fiery lake of burning sulfur.” He kills all of the “unbelieving” folks as well. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you get the lake of fire! What a swell guy.
Personally, though, I’m not convinced that Bhutto’s assassination had anything to do with religious fundamentalism. It seems to me to be a clean hit. I am amazed, though, at this video of her interview with Sir David Frost in early November, where, around the 6 minute mark, she clearly says that Osama Bin Laden was murdered, names his murderer, and Frost doesn’t even ask her to clarify the statement. She mentions it almost in passing. But then, according to Wikipedia, a week later, when she was placed under house arrest, she asked one of the policeman “Shouldn’t you be looking for Osama bin Laden?”
I’ve also been reading about the list of corruption charges again her and her husband on Wikipedia. Were they trumped up? Why did Musharraf drop the charges upon her recent return to the country? I would love to get some decent analysis of the situation.
Al-qaida has supposedly claimed responsibility for the assassination but it still isn’t clear to me WHO is behind Al-qaida. We know for a fact that the Afghani mujahideen were armed, trained and funded by the USA in the 80s. Hell, evenRambo liked them. It isn’t clear to me if or when the USA actually stopped funding them. And if it isn’t the USA, then what is the involvement of the USA’s ally, Pakistan and the Pakistani Taliban?
The only thing I know is that when I read simplistic descriptions of her assassination thrown about in the media with the propaganda words “terrorism” and “al-qaida” I am drawn into looking deeper. Superficial explanations don’t seem to do her or her legacy justice.
UPDATE 31 December, 2007: There are now reports that the BBC edited out Bhutto’s comments about Bin Laden’s murder. What I don’t understand though is where the original video, the one where Bhutto names the murderer, comes from if the BBC edited it out before broadcast?
by cameron | Dec 13, 2007 | environment, Uncategorized
So I launched the idea of Twittories late last week while suffering from a creative outburst fuelled by rage and caffeine. We actually started the first story, “The Darkness Inside” on Tuesday this week, and since then I’ve been fascinated by how people are moving the story along and the sense of anticipation that I feel and, judging by some of the things I’m seeing written on Twitter, others are feeling as well.
I wrote the first line of the story but I have no idea (or control) what it is even going to be about? Since my first line we’ve already seen the introduction and murder (perhaps? he isn’t dead yet, just poisoned) of a second character. And we’re only up to submission #16!
Duncan wrote about Twittories on TechCrunch yesterday and it got the usual bullshit TechCrunch criticisms in the comments. It makes me laugh how many people are the living embodiment of Comic Book Guy. Anyway, it was hopefully great exposure for us. Most of the TC criticism tends to come from two angles: it isn’t original and it isn’t “literature”.
I think both of these are worth exploring further because they are what I expected the doubters to say. Duncan, as he usually does, also wrote some profoundness about the idea which made me think about it in more detail.
“It isn’t original.” Mitts Kane sez “People have been doing this kind of round robin story forever, both on and off the internet, so I guess this is interesting just because it’s Twitter? And just as I am one of those who never got the point of Twitter… I don’t get this either.” The point, Mitts, is that we have 140 people contributing to a story as a form of entertainment. I had a terrible time trying to write the first line, it was very daunting. I don’t know if the other authors have felt the same kind of pressure to write something that not only needs to take the story somewhere, but is going to do so in a very public environment. I’m also enjoying the tension waiting to see where the story will go next. What genre will it be? Already we seem to be veering from Hammet to Asimov to Stross and back again to Hammet. Will the story deteriorate into complete crap? Perhaps. Many might say it already has. But I’m enjoying it a lot. Getting back to originality… writing books isn’t original either Mitts. If I wrote a book today, would you diss it because someone did it before? Being a cheap critic isn’t original either but you seem happy in the role.
“It isn’t literature.” On TechCrunch, Marc wrote: “Besides the fact that this was invented years ago by the surrealist group in Paris under the nice knickname of “cadavres exquisâ€, it also is a very nice way to ban litterature from the end result. Just figure out that with Proust for example, you wouldn’t even have reach the main verb with 140 digits. It is SMS style logorrhea, and definitively not writing. Sorry.”
According to Wikipedia (tranlated from French into English),:
It was invented in the house of 54 rue du Château inhabited Marcel Duhamel, Jacques Prévert and Yves Tanguy. It has changed from a fun activity, according to André Breton: “Although, as a defense, sometimes, this activity has been called, by us,” experimental “, we are looking for first and foremost entertainment. What we have been able to discover valuable in relation to the knowledge no one came then. “(Medium No. 2, 1954)
Entertainment! Aha! Literature my ass. Bite me, Marc. “Definitely not writing”. Jesus, what a dickhead.
Anyway, as David Lee Roth once said “If you stick your head above the crowd, someone’s going to throw a rotten tomato at it.” I love getting my philosophy of life from DLR. He da man.
SO what are the normal people from around the world saying about Twittories? Here’s a few snaps from across Twitter:
descentintomael in love with twittories.wikispaces.com
chrisvdberge zijn er mensen hier die meedoen met Twittories?
nickellis Meu post sobre o Twittories…
plivings Interesting to view the Twittories history because it reflects time zones – hoping I’m awake when it comes around!
genarobardy check twittory très drôle
JBO Historias Twitter – http://twittories.com – Realidad o ficcion 140 caracteres a la vez
Pixites bekijkt http://twittories.wikispaces.com/ ideetje om roman (netje?) te schrijven
Kodo glad i didnt sign up for twittories, no way i couldkeep up the high standard being set
dpn is it just me or has twittories increased everyones tpm rate? (twits per minute) Everyone seems to just be hanging around on twitter.
jjprojects @Warlach Added quite a few of the Twittory participants who I weren’t following – many have reciprocated.
thadeum e os filhotes de twitter continuam a surgir: http://twittories.wikispaces.com/
I like this post by Josh Spear as well:
It was only a matter of time before someone started leveraging the phenomenon that is Twitter for something more creative than a branded RSS feed of daily specials. That someone is Twittories, and despite their decidedly lo-fi look, the idea behind the project is awesome. Think of it as the SMS version of those stories you had to write in English class, where you’d write for two minutes and then pass the paper on to someone else. Twittories is the same thing, only it happens 140 characters at a time. And each person is only allowed to make one entry per story. A story is finished when it reaches 140 entries (just to keep the numbers nice and round). The first Twittory is called The Darkness Inside, and it’s started off pretttttttty interesting. There’s already talk of killing a man…
The whole Twittories thing exposure, combined with the general explosion of Twitter over the last couple of days with Jeremiah’s post hitting Techmeme, has pushed me up the in the Tweeterboard rankings. It won’t last, trust me. I’m not that popular.
And if I needed reminding of that fact, some gutless wonder is using TwitSecret to say I’m up myself. All I have to say to gutless is… fuck, you are so gutless. If you want to bag me out, put your name on it, chickenshit. Do it to my face. Fucking punk-ass bitch. I’ll rip your half-empty achondroplasian head off and stick it up your ass. And then we can BOTH be up ourselves.
by cameron | Oct 12, 2007 | technology
Okay geeks and nerds, time once again to make yourself useful.
I was a lucky birthday boy and got myself an XBOX 360 for my birthday this week. As I’m used to using my old chipped XBOX as a media center, I was looking forward to using the new one in the same way (while I move the old box to my bedroom). I want to stream music and video from my PC down to the XBOX. I’ve got music working okay but video is a no go. The XBOX can find the PC, can see the video directory, can see the folders underneath it, but can’t see the actual files.
Then I read that the 360 will only stream WMV videos. Jesus H Christ. Of course, everything I want to stream down is in DIVX or XVID. So I heard about this app called Tversity which will transcode DIVX into WMV on the fly. I’ve got it installed and the 360 can see it okay, it’s streaming music via Tversity okay, but the 360 says it can’t find any videos still.
Last night in SL a few people told me it might be because Vista Business doesn’t have Windows Media Center and I’ll need to upgrade to Ultimate, but if that’s the case, why can the 360 stream my music okay? Doesn’t make sense to me.
Anyway… any ideas? Prove to me your geek mad skillz.
Oh and… should I get it chipped? Or not? Thoughts?
by cameron | Sep 4, 2007 | Atheism, Podcast, science vs religion
While recording a new episode of the Advaita Show podcast today, my co-host Steve mentioned the recent book that has been published with Mother Teresa’s letters to her spiritual mentors which point out what a big bloody faker she was.
Check it:
Yet no sooner did Teresa start her work in the slums of Calcutta than she began to feel the intense absence of Jesus—a state that lasted until her death, according to her letters.
“The paradox is that for her to be a light, she was to be in darkness,” Kolodiejchuk said.
In a letter estimated to be from 1961, Teresa wrote: “Darkness is such that I really do not see – neither with my mind nor with my reason – the place of God in my soul is blank “There is no God in me” when the pain of longing is so great” I just long & long for God. The torture and pain I can’t explain.”
And this:
“Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The child of your love—and now become as the most hated one. You have thrown away as unwanted unloved So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them because of the blasphemy If there be a God please forgive me I am told that God loves me, and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.
Note: “If there be a God…”
And this:
The whole time smiling sisters and people pass such remarks they think my faith, trust and love are filling my very being. … Could they but know and how my cheerfulness is the cloak by which I cover the emptiness and misery, she wrote.
What a big bloody faker. All the time pretending she was spiritually “with it”, and yet underneath she was a mess.
But… I hear you say… what does it matter? Look at the good she did?
Did she? By lying? By faking? By pretending? By letting the world believe her good works were inspired by her belief when really she was devoid of belief?
Imagine, instead, how much good she might have done had she had the courage to be honest and forthright about her lack of belief, and yet had continued to do her good works regardless??
We’ve seen it before – the bigger the poseur, the bigger the fake. Remember that lesson kids.
