‘this pathetic bleating for shelter from skepticism’

Dec 10, 2009 | Australian Values, Religious Values, Values

‘this pathetic bleating for shelter from skepticism’

Atheists need a little woman to calm them down

 

Yes, we know it is a bit late in the day to be discovering Pharyngula but we did and there is nothing to be done but fall down and worship. No, we mean sit down and learn.

PZ Myers is a prolific, deservedly famous and notorious biologist, evolutionist and atheist.

“In 2006 the journal Nature listed Myers’s Pharyngula as the top-ranked blog by a scientist based on popularity. Myers received the American Humanist Association’s 2009 Humanist of the Year award.” 

Today amongst his many gems there are a couple of matching diamonds.

One,

about so-called ‘Atheism 3.0’, decries the tendency of conflict-averse atheists to seek refuge in niceness and conciliation, a sort of “don’t upset the nice godbotherers; give them the benefit of the doubt”.

The full-of-faith agree, of course. “Don’t be nasty to us! Respect our faith!”

(Why? And no!)

As PZ MYers says, “religion should be strong enough to stand against academic rudeness and mockery without this pathetic bleating for shelter from skepticism.”

“ We don’t care if you think religion is good for you, or if you love your faith, or if you think rituals are lovely, or if believers have done good in history, or if a lack of praise for Jesus irritates the Baptists. That’s not the issue. The central, fundamental question is whether anyone has any reasonable evidence for the existence of any gods, especially the gods that everyone is so busy propitiating. You haven’t got any? Then we’ll continue pointing out that you’re chasing leprechauns, no matter how annoying you find it. It’s the truth. Argue against that with evidence — anything else is fluff and noise.

The other,

‘we macho atheists need a little woman to calm us down’, is in response to an article decrying the lack of soft, less confrontationist, maybe less threatening, perhaps easier-to-dismiss, women atheists to counteract the nasty, hard men like Dawkins, Hitchens and Sam Harris (and we suppose Myers).

The nakedly sexist nature of the article has caused something of a furore and Myers has tagged strident, combative atheist, Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon, to take Stephen Prothero on.

In doing this she has made, with this one paragraph, the clearest and cleanest case we have ever read against the believers and their simpering, atheist apologists:

“ Look, I think believers and atheists should practice tolerance and get along. Of course I do. But practicing tolerance doesn’t mean that you have to pretend that a truth claim isn’t a truth claim. As believers feel free to make claims about the way the universe works, then they should be challenged on it. That’s what happens when you make truth claims. That your claims are hard to back up is unfortunate, but that isn’t the fault of atheists, and calling atheists mean because this is true doesn’t change that. Having your arguments disproven isn’t assault, and using terms like “pummel” implies coercion that is not going on. You’re free to believe that the moon is made out of green cheese, but being free to believe that doesn’t require that other people coddle that delusion.

Hear, hear.

Lolcats With a Vengeance

Nov 17, 2009 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Global Warming, Immigration, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Religious Values, Science Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

Lolcats With a Vengeance

Sir Roger is despondent

 

After all the hard work of so many people Australian politics is looking like Howard Lite, iSuck 2.0 déjà vu all over again. Boat people – “Aaaaarrrggghh! Foreigners! Tough on Queue-jumpers [but not on the causes of queue-jumpers]”.

“Let’s pretend to be doing something about climate change. We have to do something. We have to do something. I know! Let’s play tiddlywinks! That’s “something”. Hey, youse guys, the world is going to burn to a cinder unless we do something about it! So what we’re doing is, we’re playing tiddlywinks. If you don’t play tiddlywinks too, the world is going to burn to a cinder.”

“Okay, well, um … wait on … we don’t believe in tiddlywinks but we’ll play if Johnno and Wayne don’t have to play but you promise they will win.”

“But if Johnno and Wayne don’t play the world will burn to a crisp! No-one will win!”

“Okay, well…well…well get fuckin’ stuffed then! Let the world burn for all we fuckin’ care! … Fuckin’ lower class upstarts! Fuckin’ fairy eggheads!”

Palestine.
Israel.
Obama (what a fucking disappointment).
Russia.
Burma.
Sri Lanka.
China,
Tibet.

Fucking arrogant, corrupt and criminally-incompetent Indonesian politicians, bureaucrats, police and judges.

Walls everywhere.
Hatred.
Religious madmen in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia.

And the United States, which is terminally fucked in the collective head.

Democracy movements being crushed everywhere.

Freedoms, rights and privacy being shredded even – especially – by the good old Brits, eh, what?

Stupid global refusal to listen, based on creaking, long-ago-discredited, Industrial-Revolution-era social-political-religious theories that date back – even in their most recent versions – more than 200 years in the West, and on 4000-year-old, crazy, murderous, hate-filled, tribalist, racist, desert-engendered cruel religious fantasies in the rest of the world.

The hopes of “peace and love” from the last five decades crumbling like the naïve hallucinations they so pitiably were.

Young people who will “look after” things in a few years unable to think or care about anything but how some fake and shallow, talentless celebrity flashed her cunt, and what eyeshadow to wear …

And the people who actually care. the people with answers, who could possibly do something about it all, are sneered at and ridiculed.

It’s enough to make you want to just give up and forget it all and look at some funny cat video.

 

“Visa Bob”‘s Dept Ruins Yet Another Life

Oct 4, 2009 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Immigration, Legal, OzPol Values, Values

“Visa Bob”‘s Dept Ruins Yet Another Life

Oh Dear … DIC’s ‘Very Bad Event’. Again

Mr Bob Correll,

Deputy Secretary,
Department of Immigration, Citizenship and Wrongful Detention

Shit, Bob,

(You don’t mind me calling you ‘Shit’, do you Bob?)

You and I go way back, Bob, and I know this will seem out of character to you but … I know it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t. But unlovely as it is, Bob, I can’t help this feeling of smug superiority (you know, that feeling you always have, Bob, when it comes to other people).

Yet another “very bad event, a serious administrative error and a terrible circumstance,” according to Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith; the wrongful detention of Van Phuc Nguyen, a permanent resident who was detained in 2002 and held in Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre for more than three years. Immigration officials – your officials, Bob – at Sydney airport did not recognise his visa – your visa, Bob.

How “holier than thou” are you feeling at the moment, Bob?

The longest term of wrongful detention in recent history according to the Ombudsman?

Yet another appalling miscarriage of justice perpetrated by your department and brought to light

  • not through the transparency of your department
  • not through your department’s decency or its ethical standards
  • not through the exemplary corporate behaviour you are expected to display
  • or the exemplary legal behaviour you are required to display as a government department
  • but only through the persistence of the aggrieved man and the efforts of an overworked Ombudsman.

Indeed, far from pursuing the decent and ethical thing to do – let alone the right and the humane action to take – according to the Ombudsman your department engaged instead in (typical-public-service-arse-covering) legal debate about your options.

And so poorly does your department understand moral standards that still it offers only a pittance in compensation for your department’s incompetence – $70,000 for the theft of three years of an innocent person’s life (less $12,000 for the government’s own legal costs, of course).

How much do you earn get paid, Bob? How much does the DIC head, Andrew Metcalf, earn? [About a quarter of it, as the joke goes?] It’s hard to find out but certainly more than $200,000 and probably in at least the $300,000 vicinity.

Do you recall telling me smugly about “the important business managed by the Department”?

Do you recall telling me in your patronising way about your deep concern for “Australia’s reputation overseas“?

I certainly recall your telling me that you considered my website “offensive”. And how can I ever forget your bullying threats of legal action under Sections 53 (c) (d) and (eb) of the Trade Practices Act 1974, Section 68 of the Crimes Act 1914 and Section 39(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1995.

Well, Bob, so much for the Important Business Managed By Your Department.

It wasn’t managed at all, was it?

So much for Australia’s Reputation Overseas, or your department’s reputation at home.

And Bob? I find your department’s clearly-evidenced inhumane, incompetent, arrogant attitude towards human beings far more offensive than you could ever find my website.

I am not a lawyer Bob, and neither, clearly, are you, but Joe Public – not to mention Van Phuc Nguyen – is entitled to question your department’s capacity to carry out its duties. He is entitled to question the justification of departmental officials to their juicy salaries. He might well ask,

“If the department has so comprehensively, so frequently and so predictably failed to manage its responsibilities, are departmental officials, or the department itself, represented by its senior executives, therefore subject to legal action for misfeasance1? And might mandamus2 be sought against the Department because of the department’s incompetence? If the Ombudsman has determined that Nguyen’s detention was “wrongful” then shouldn’t Nguyen, rather than being offered some insultingly token compensation by the department, be awarded punitive damages by a court?”

You gave a speech in 2007, Bob, in which you said,

… on our website, the department currently lists ‘seven important things you should do as soon as possible after arriving in Australia’:
1. Apply for a Tax File Number (TFN)
2. Register with Medicare
3. Open a bank account
4. Register with Centrelink
5. Register for English Classes
6. Enrol Your Children in School
7. Apply for a Driver’s Licence

You should have added:

8. Apply for release from Villawood.

 

Hey Bob? Why don’t you resign?

  

 

1 When a party fails to perform at all, it is nonfeasance. When a party performs the duty inadequately or poorly, it is misfeasance. …The terms misfeasance and nonfeasance are most often used…with reference to the discharge of…statutory obligations; and it is an established rule that an action lies in favour of persons injured by misfeasance, i.e. by negligence in discharge of the duty…The courts can find evidence of carelessness in the discharge of public duties and on that basis award damages to individuals who have suffered thereby.

2“Mandamus is provided for by Section 75(v) of the Australian Constitution. The duty sought to be enforced must have two qualities: It must be a duty of public nature and the duty must be imperative and should not be discretionary.”

Richard Glover Lacks Sense of Humour About Atheists

Oct 2, 2009 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Humour, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Values

Richard Glover Lacks Sense of Humour About Atheists

Brilliant French comedy: St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of French Protestants by Catholics,  1572  /  François Dubois

Hahahahahaha!

 

Yesterday on Richard Glover’s Drive (ABC local radio, Sydney), according to sources, Glover — who has built his considerable celebrity on unfunny puns and predictable punchlines — testily exhorted atheists to “get a sense of humour”.

How true!

Your Common or Lesser Spotted Godbotherer is such a hoot, after all.

Who can forget the hilarity of the Spanish Inquisition? Or the Taliban’s side-splitting public executions of women in the Kabul soccer stadium? Or al Qaeda’s laugh-a-minute comedy, 9/11 , with its follow-ups, World’s Craziest Suicide Bombings Parts I, II, III … (N) … directed by Allahu Akbar?

George W. Bush’s Iraq War II, of course, was a comedic tour de force in the grand tradition of The Great Crusades: Episodes I to IX.

And that girl being stoned to death for “adultery” should have been caught on Somalia’s Funniest Home Videos! (After all, the girl being merely whipped for leaving home without a male escort made it onto Paki-Standup-TV, didn’t she?)

Yes, the religious are so much more relaxed and chilled out and ready to laugh.

 

 

The Mohammedans, for example, were significantly more giggle-ready when they saw those atheistic Danish cartoons than any of your straight-laced, po-faced atheists would ever be if confronted with a satirical image of their own atheist god, Charles Darwin.

Chuckling behind his bushy pantomime beard, Groucho Marx eyebrows and silly dress-up turban, Ayatollah Khomeini was virtually doubled-over with mirth as he delivered his sidesplitting fatwa on Salman Rushdie.

Thanks, Richard, for the depth of your wisdom, for your fair and balanced advice, and for not letting your personal opinion get in the way of your deadpan public pontifications.

And for being a real chucklehead we can look up to. 

 

 

 

Bundy Rum 2011 NSW Election

Sep 22, 2009 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Humour, OzPol Values, Values, War

Bundy Rum 2011 NSW Election

 

Swine Flu, brought to you by SPAM 

 

It’s all the rage these days. Not so long ago, as we were basking in the great spiritual joy of the Wetchex World Youth Day, we reflected also on the overwhelming success of the then recent Crown Casino Anzac Day Marches throughout Australia. It all seemed such a long way from the heady days of the shocking and awe-inspiring overture to the News Corp Iraq War.

We look forward to the 2010 Mercedes Benz Anzac Day celebrations with the planned ceremonies at the Coca Cola Cenotaph. We ourselves hope to be able to take our seats in the Fosters Stand at the Qantas Commemorative Site for the Toshiba Dawn Service where the highlight for us will, of course, be the sounding of the Acme Funeral Services Reveille.

We now call on Marvel Comics to do the right thing and become a corporate sponsor of the Australian War Memorial so that each evening at sunset we can hear the Daily Bugle Last Post.