Mid-June Rehash: Dolphin/cephalopod copulation, divine search warrants, and criminalizing atheism!

I'm hopefully getting back in the swing of this blogging thing again.  This time I'm shooting for making mid-month rehashes of stories from around the internet a regular feature.  Let's do this.

Is that an octopus on your genitals, or are you just ha... wait, what?

So, in case any of you haven't seen it yet, this image started going viral yesterday:

Photo credit: Joan Gonzalvo

Best comment I've seen so far: "That's gotta suck."

(via Ed Yong)

Mid-month absurdity: Divine revelation is now probable cause?

Last year, a self-proclaimed psychic told the Sheriff's Office of Liberty County, Texas, that a local couple had 25 to 30 dismembered children buried on their property.  This prompted a raid on their home by deputies and put the couple in the media spotlight internationally (largely because the Sheriff's Office tipped off the media before executing the search warrant).

As it turns out, the couple weren't really serial killers and didn't even have one dismembered child buried in their yard, let alone 25 to 30 of them.  Now they're (rightfully) suing the Liberty County Sheriff's Office for defaming them and ransacking their home on the word of a charlatan.

The charlatan in question had this to say for herself:

“They up front asked me how I got the information, and I am a reverend. I am a prophet and I get my information from Jesus and the angels, and I told them that I had 32 angels with me and they were giving me the information and then it went from there,” she said.

Jesus and 32 angels told her about it? Must be legit.

(via Ken at Popehat)

Atheism gets you 2 1/2 years in prison in Indonesia

I hope by now that all of you who love freedom have heard of what's happening to Alexander Aan of Indonesia.  If not, go read up on it.

He's going to prison and will spend the next 2 and a half years locked up with dangerous criminals for asserting God's non-existence on an atheist group page on Facebook.  He also has to pay a fine of roughly $10,600 US.

Islamic extremists, however, seem to think that the sentence is too lenient; some of them feel that he's committed a capital crime.

“These atheists should be beheaded, that’s what they deserve,” wrote a man who identified himself as Putra Tama, a Muslim from neighboring Jambi province.

The Islamic Society Forum (FUI), an umbrella group for several hard-line groups, said that a five-year jail term for Aan would not suffice.

“He deserves the death penalty, even if he decides to repent. What he has done cannot be tolerated,” said Muhammad al-Khaththath, FUI’s secretary-general.

“It is important to prevent this group from spreading atheism in this country,” he added.

That doesn't bode well for him; how many Islamic extremists are going to be sharing a cell block with him?  It's morbid, but I wouldn't be surprised some righteous zealot sticks him with a shiv in the name of God.


At any rate, it isn't even legal to be an atheist in Indonesia.  You can choose from a laundry list of state-approved religions, but "none of the above" isn't an option.

Note to self: don't go to Indonesia.

If you're interested, the Atheist Alliance International is collecting donations for a legal fund to help Aan fight this ridiculous conviction.  If you want to contribute to that specific fund, make sure you tick the appropriate box before donating.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Atheism gets you jail time in the UK, too?

Indonesia doesn't exactly have the world's most permissive religious freedom laws, but surely nothing like that would happen in a bastion of liberty like a Western nation, right?

Yeah.  Wrong.

John Richards, an elderly man living in Boston (a small town on the eastern coast of England), has a sign hanging in his window proclaiming religion as fairy tales for adults.

Recently, the local police informed him that he could be arrested for it if it offends anybody and he refuses to take it down.

Unlike in Indonesia, I highly doubt an arrest in this case would result in any kind of conviction.  I hope.

(also via Friendly Atheist)

Recommended Reading: The Merely Real

I may have linked to her old blog as recommended reading last year, but Chana Messinger has a new blog that she updates frequently, writing about all sorts of interesting topics like feminism, skepticism, and occasionally food.  Go check it out.

[Weekly Recap] Atheism in the news, Atheist Ethicist, exoplanets, more blasphemy cases, and trolling!

I'm probably not going to have a lot of time to devote to blogging until December, so posting will be sparse until then.  I have to remind myself that I write on here for fun, so I shouldn't feel like I have to balance it with my responsibilities IRL.  These Weekly Recap posts will be on hiatus for the time being, replaced by me posting whenever the heck I feel like it.  An exciting new development, to be sure.

Don't worry, loyal readers: I've still got a handful of posts in draft that will be going up as soon as they're presentable, and I'll still occasionally be struck by inspiration for a spontaneous rant about something or other.

I might still have a few nights like this. (comic from xkcd)

Without further ado, here's the last Weekly Recap you'll ever see until I decide to start doing them again.

Atheism in the news

Journalists are talking about atheists more and more as time goes on, and it isn't always about lawsuits anymore.  Christians are freaking out that godlessness is becoming so popular in America.  We're being blamed (or credited?) for the rise of polarizing Religious Right political candidates like Perry and Bachmann.  The Houston Chronicle spotlighted local atheists in the Texas city for the good they do in the community.

It gives me hope that American culture is approaching a tipping point, after which being an "out" atheist will no longer be anything new, exciting, or scary in this country.

Hipster Hubble: "I was detecting exoplanets before you even knew how to look for them."

"HR 8799 c, d, and b? You've probably never heard of them."

It appears that the Hubble Space Telescope took some shots in 1998 which, processed using modern techniques, revealed planets orbiting other stars.  Have a look at Phil Plait's post about it at Bad Astronomy.

Each new planet we detect is another chance of finding one in its star's "Goldilocks Zone" capable of supporting life as we know it.

Saturday Spotlight: Atheist Ethicist

I link to Alonzo Fyfe's posts often enough that he really deserves a mention in this section.  Theists and atheists alike might benefit from his perspectives on controversial issues, which he addresses using facts and logic rather than ideology and emotional appeals.  He'll sometimes spice it up with a bit of sarcasm.

If you're looking for convenient answers, you might be disappointed; more often, you're left with inconvenient questions that you should have been asking yourself all along

Go read his blog, Atheist Ethicist, and see why I've become a persistent lurker there.  You might learn something, or your head might explode.

Trolling for Billboards

The infamous Blonde Nonbeliever gave me a good laugh this evening.  Ever get tired of those "You're going to hell!" billboards on the sides of Midwestern highways?  Her friend decided to prank call the phone number on one such billboard spotted on a road trip.  Hilarity ensues.

Godless Quote of the Week

"Arguing about religion strips religion of its special privileged status as the one idea that can never be questioned. And that helps all the goals we're working towards -- ending anti-atheist bigotry, separation of church and state, [ending] special legal exemptions for religious organizations.  Arguing about religion helps re-frame religion as an idea rather than an identity -- which makes believers more open to listening to our ideas."

- Greta Christina, in her talk at the Secular Student Alliance conference earlier this year.

Weekly Absurdity: Blasphemous cartoonist arrested in Turkey

Turkish cartoonist Bahadir Baruter might spend a year in prison for drawing this:

The area circled in red apparently contains a hidden message, proclaiming something to the effect of "There is no God and religion is a sham."  It might offend people, sure.  But is it a crime?

In Turkey it is.  As I said last week, don't take freedom of speech for granted.

Blasphemy Rights Day - don't take freedom of speech for granted

(Cross-posted to Skeptic Freethought)

As I mentioned earlier in my Weekly Recap, September 30th is International Blasphemy Rights day, as designated by the Center for Inquiry.  It used to be called Blasphemy Day; the word "Rights" was inserted to more accurately represent the purpose behind it.

It's not about infidels and apostates having a day to antagonize people who still hold religious beliefs.  It's not about members of a mainstream religion ritualistically taunting and harassing people of a minority faith.  It's not about goading religious extremists into a murderous rage.

It's about people who value freedom of speech raising awareness of how easily that freedom can be trampled upon.  It's about recognizing that as another set of claims in the marketplace of ideas, religion should not be immune from the same scrutiny, criticism, and satire that we freely apply to other forms of speech.  It's about believing that offending someone's religious sensibilities is not a crime.

Chances are that right now as you read this, you are committing blasphemy against someone's religion.  It might be the clothes or jewelry you're wearing.  It might be a symbol or phrase you have tattooed on your skin.  It might be the person you are in a relationship with or are attracted to.  It might be the "unclean" food digesting in your stomach right now.

Forbidden food AND irreverence to a revered tale!  It's sacrilicious!

It might be the lighthearted joke you made about a traditional practice.  It might be the way you celebrate a certain holiday.  It might be the particular translation of your religion's holy book that you read.  It might be a recent (or centuries old) scientific discovery that you now know as fact.

It might be the fact that you find a particular supernatural claim so absurd that you snicker at the very idea of it.

His Merriness will not be mocked!

The bottom line is that someone somewhere believes that their god hates what you're doing right now, and that person would be deeply offended to know that you're doing it so brazenly.  In some parts of the world, that makes you a criminal who deserves fines, imprisonment, torture, or the death penalty.

If you live in a country where treating religion with anything short of veneration is legal, consider yourself lucky.  Don't take freedom of speech for granted.

Weekly Recap: Censorship, Banned Books, and Blasphemy Rights!

What's this, a dissenting idea?  KILL IT WITH FIRE.

This is a big week for the defense of free speech.  Banned Books Week has begun!  It's time to celebrate those subversive works of the written word that have escaped the eternal memory hole despite a history of censorship.

I still find it amazing that some people are so deathly afraid of words on a page that they feel the need to quarantine (or even incinerate) them like biohazard waste.  Novels, erotica, scientific publications, religious texts, you name it - someone out there is so angry that it exists that they don't want you to be allowed to read it either.

Belated Weekly Recap: Strange Matter, evolution book ban, and honor killings in the UK?

I've been a bit busier than expected for the past week.  To tell the truth, I've mostly been out enjoying the fresh air with my wife and our dog, and just haven't had much time or energy left over to spend at the computer.  Blogging has consequently been on the back burner until now.

Posts going up within the week sometime in the near future (I swear upon Russell's Teapot):

You can't prove it's not there!

• a retrospective post about ten years of September Elevenths and the War on Terror
• a statement of my political principles as a left-libertarian centrist (partly a response to The Heathen Republican)
• a fun post in which I make up completely absurd claims and conspiracy theories
• possibly a Skeptic Freethought post as well, if I think I've come up with something worthy

At least I'm only 24 hours late on my Weekly Recap.  Let's do this.

A Supreme Court victory against censorship

Via my brother, Josh:

Video games qualify for First Amendment protection.  Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium.  And “the basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary” with a new and different communication medium.

Today, the US Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 vote that California's law against selling or renting violent video games to minors is unconstitutional.  I'm personally glad to see this decisive blow to the bipartisan Nanny State proponents who think that government, rather than parents or the entertainment industry itself, should restrict what material children are allowed to access.

This article about the ruling from Fox Business touches on an important point made by Justice Scalia:

"Certainly the books we give children to read--or read to them when they are younger--contain no shortage of gore," Scalia said. "Cinderella's evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves. And Hansel and Gretel (children!) kill their captor by baking her in an oven."

I personally find it interesting that they didn't mention another particular book containing no shortage of gore that our society values giving to children, in which people are mauled by bears, castrated, stoned to death, and crucified... 

Unfair censorship, or upholding secular decorum?

Damon Fowler's fight against school-imposed graduation prayer sparked a firestorm of controversy, and it's understandable that other high schools with similar traditions might be rethinking them now.

Another high school decided to play it safe and censor its valedictorian's speech because the student wanted to talk about his Christian faith.

I have mixed feelings about the school principal's decision and the discussion surrounding it.

It really infuriates me that people in this country can't find a happy medium between hateful traditionalist chauvinism and spineless PC-obsessive expurgation.  Having an exclusionary Christian prayer as part of the graduation ceremony in a public school is a violation of the non-Christian students' rights; forbidding a student speaker to mention the effect his religion has had on his life is a violation of his rights.

On the Drawing of Self-Proclaimed Prophets

Islam was founded in the early 7th century by a mortal man who we know today as Muhammad. The fact that his religion fundamentally shaped the history of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and that some 1.5 billion people alive today revere him as a prophet (whether through genuine faith or at the point of a sword), arguably makes him an important historical figure.


Unlike other historical figures (and indeed even other religious figures), there is an explicit prohibition against drawing a caricature or even a benign depiction of him in most of the Islamic world, and an implicit prohibition against it in much of the rest of the world.

The explicit prohibition in the Islamic world is due to theocratic rule and its criminal (sometimes capital) penalties for blasphemy.  The right to draw a picture of a particular man is the least of your worries when the separation of mosque and state is nonexistent.

The implicit prohibition in the rest of the world is due to two distinct fears: an altruistic fear of being seen as a bigot by cloying multiculturalists, and a practical fear of violent retaliation by fanatical Muslim hardliners.  We thus see Raptor Jesus become an amusing internet meme, boxing nun puppets on sale in the checkout aisles of stores, and corpulent Laughing Buddha statuettes serving as paperweights and lawn ornaments, yet any depiction whatsoever of an influential 7th century self-proclaimed prophet gets you lumped in with the likes of Terry Jones and simultaneously puts you in some extremist's crosshairs.

Facepalm of the Month: "To Kill A Mockingbird" Censored

2011 has been an interesting year for cases of idiotic censorship.


In a classic episode of missing the point, a school superintendent in our great state has banned a stage production of To Kill A Mockingbird, adapted from Harper Lee's famous novel.  The reason?  It's not because of the violence or the fact that the crux of the plot is a rape trial.  No, the play was cancelled because, true to its profound indictment of the irrationality of racism, it features characters who utter racial slurs, and that's not school appropriate.

Seriously.  We might as well ban George Orwell's 1984 because Ingsoc's propaganda could be seen as pro-Communist.  Oh, wait, that's been done.

I suppose this is to be expected in an age when a prominent scholar censors the same slur out of the dialogue of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (The late Mr. Clemens would be bashing his head on his keyboard in Hell right now if there were an afterlife).  Apparently we can depict black slaves being savagely beaten, treated like subhuman beasts, and deprived of every opportunity in life, and that's perfectly fine - but if we candidly depict their tormentors calling them "niggers" it makes too many people uncomfortable.


Censoring the ugliness of our past hinders future generations from learning from their ancestors' stupidity and from preventing history from repeating itself.  When we take the sting out of human cruelty by censoring the nasty words, we're left with only statistics about death and disenfranchisement.  We're left without a moral lesson to derive from the way humans have used language to dehumanize one another, and without such poignant depictions in literature, we're left without a way to empathize with the victims of injustice.

Free Speech and Defamation of Islam

Andrew Stuttaford's recent post over at Secular Right has brought it to my attention that the infamous Pastor Terry Jones is under arrest in Michigan for planning to protest outside a mosque.  Apparently the notion of a "stern talking to" about his bigotry toward Muslims isn't enough for the authorities in Dearborn; they're willing to throw the Constitution down the sewer if it means keeping him from saying something offensive.


There are a few issues on which I have strong opinions, but none that I hold nearly as staunchly as I do my stance against censorship.  Jones is a despicable cur for his Muslim-baiting antics, but he has every legal right to do what he's doing, whether he's burning a book or protesting in front of a building.  We as a free society have no moral authority to stop him.  We can and should criticize him and his message, but he's free to speak his mind.


To be fair, the city does have to concern itself with the practical matter of preventing riots.  Dearborn has a large population of Muslims, both immigrants and natural-born Americans, and a brazen anti-Islam display such as Pastor Jones' usual fare could trigger a violent response among the less sophisticated members of the Muslim community.  I understand their desire to dissuade him from disturbing the peace, just as I might not want someone prodding a wasp nest with a stick if I happened to be standing next to it.


Then again, wasps can't help themselves but to sting anything near them when provoked; humans, regardless of what crazy delusions they believe, are sentient beings capable of rational thought.  We should expect better of the people of Dearborn, as they should be smart enough to know that the best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them.  Let Pastor Jones and his toadies be the lunatics standing on the sidewalk shouting drivel; if he doesn't get the response he's looking for, he might well pack up and go home, just like Fred Phelps has done when some of his recent protests turned out to be duds.


Here's hoping that he's promptly cleared of whatever bogus criminal case the local prosecutor is making against him, and that no one gets violent in response to the venom he spews.