Émile Zola

Jun 14, 2012 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

Émile Zola

 

“ It is a crime to lie to the public ”

 

So in the Cimitière Montmartre Sir Roger found one of his heroes.

Émile Zola

That is to say, he found the memorial. He (Zola that is) is interred at the Panthéon.

Why a hero? Amongst his many writings Émile Zola wrote this, which is as relevant today in our political discourse and climate as it was on the cusp of the 20ième siècle, almost exactly — and only — 50 years before Sir Roger’s birth:

“ Ah, what a cesspool of folly and foolishness, what preposterous fantasies, what corrupt police tactics, what inquisitorial, tyrannical practices! What petty whims of a few higher-ups trampling the nation under their boots, ramming back down their throats the people’s cries for truth and justice, with the travesty of state security as a pretext.

 

It is a crime that those people who wish to see a generous France take her place as leader of all the free and just nations are being accused of fomenting turmoil in the country, denounced by the very plotters who are conniving so shamelessly to foist this miscarriage of justice on the entire world. It is a crime to lie to the public, to twist public opinion to insane lengths in the service of the vilest death-dealing machinations. It is a crime to poison the minds of the meek and the humble, to stoke the passions of reactionism and intolerance, by appealing to that odious anti-Semitism that, unchecked, will destroy the freedom-loving France of the Rights of Man. It is a crime to exploit patriotism in the service of hatred, and it is, finally, a crime to ensconce the sword as the modern god, whereas all science is toiling to achieve the coming era of truth and justice.

 

Truth and justice, so ardently longed for! How terrible it is to see them trampled, unrecognized and ignored!
[ … ]
I said it before and I repeat it now: when truth is buried underground, it grows and it builds up so much force that the day it explodes it blasts everything with it. We shall see whether we have been setting ourselves up for the most resounding of disasters, yet to come.

Just insert, for example, Abbott, or Howard, or Liberal Party, or Hockey, or Jones, or Bolt; strike out anti-semitism and replace it with asylum seekers, or global warming, or in earlier days Iraq, wherever they seem appropriate to you.

The French, Sir Roger is convinced, are serious about and cherish and are vigilant about their hard-won democracy, their Rights of Man, their “liberté, égalité, fraternité”.

Do Australians, in contrast, tend to think “she’ll be right”?

Will she?

David Hume

May 7, 2011 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Education, Freedom of Speech, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

David Hume

. . . and so to the democracy that we enjoy today

David Hume, hero of the Enlightenment, father of skepticism, linchpin of democracy and human rights and freedoms,

Happy 300th Birthday! 

 

Sir Roger has some slight understanding of how Hume felt when he said this:

“ Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies — except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”

Although the great Hume had many antecessors and successors his work in its clarity, rigour and accessibility was crucial to the flourishing of the Scottish Enlightenment and therefore to the rights and freedoms, to the political and social foundations – and so to the democracy – that we enjoy today.

Our system is not obvious and it is not “natural”. It is better than any other so far tested but it could disappear in a moment if we take our eye off it, if we do not cherish it and care for it and fight for it. As they say in another context, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.

“ Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

In fact, the price of freedom is internal vigilance.

There are those who dream of its collapse – not only those who want a caliphate but also those who wish to arrogate power to themselves, those who arrogantly believe they have greater wisdom and greater value than others, those who feel entitled to rule . . .

“ It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received. But, if the liberty of the press ever be lost, it must be lost at once. The general laws against sedition and libelling are at present as strong as they possibly can be made. Nothing can impose a farther restraint, but either the clapping an Imprimatur upon the press, or the giving to the court very large discretionary powers to punish whatever displeases them. But these concessions would be such a bare-faced violation of liberty, that they will probably be the last efforts of a despotic government.

. . . and those (some in one of our mainstream political parties) who dream of a latterday christian theocracy. It is these people, invariably committed christians and most often “practising catholics”, whom you will hear increasingly – and chillingly – talking about the “failure of the Enlightenment” and the “failed ‘experiment’ of democracy”.

Hume, prophetically, has something to say about them as well.

“ In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.
…

Survey most nations and most ages. Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are any thing but sick men’s dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as the playsome whimsies of monkies in human shape, than the serious, positive, dogmatical asseverations of a being, who dignifies himself with the name of rational.
…

Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them.

And so Sir Roger recommends the following on David Hume’s 300th birthday:

“ Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous…A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
…

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Happy Birthday, and thank you, David Hume!

 

A Brief History of Dog

Sep 4, 2010 | Arts, Australian Values, Cultural Values, Media Values, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

A Brief History of Dog

 

Clever Brainiac Shorthand

 

The (£1-a-day) Times has released excerpts of Stephen Hawking’s soon to be released new book, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design.

“ The universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he says. “Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

The press are all over Hawking for this, claiming that Hawking used to believe in a god somehow. (You know, they love a good backflip.) The Guardian says:

“ In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text … he said new theories showed a creator is “not necessary”.

What Hawking said in 1988 was,

“ If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.”

“Had seemed to accept“? Sir Roger can understand this conclusion if, as is so often the case with journalists, the writer knows nothing about science or scientists and never actually read the original book. The line about “the mind of God” was the last sentence in the book and very few people got that far. Sir Roger may be one of the few who actually tackled the world’s smallest ever, and least read, coffee table book.

Many journalists are overworked, if not really lazy, and they have to get a readable story out quickly and so they grasp at angles, thoughts, probably get a bit of an idea from something like Wikipedia or their own archives and rush the story through. But when it comes to god stuff they really ought to be a bit more careful.

Scientists are stupid, of course, which is strange because intellectually they tend to be on the smarter side and like to make jokes. They make up clever brainiac shorthand. Remember the University of East Anglia emails and the “trick of adding in the real temps to each series”?

Well, the silly atheist scientists keep talking about gods. The Higgs Boson or “God particle”. Einstein’s “God does not play dice wth the universe”. And Hawking’s “then we should know the mind of God”.

Don’t bloody say that stuff! It just confuses stupid people (and journalists after an angle with an angel). And god-botherers.

So let’s be clear.

Einstein didn’t believe in any god the way other people define it. Higgs is an atheist. Hawking is an atheist (although he may at some stage have been an agnostic deist) and he never meant you to take that last line literally. It was an analogy. Smart scientist shorthand. Okay?

Meanwhile, chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, criticised Hawking’s book. Having complained that science and religion are different (“Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation”) he went on,

“ The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the universe came into being.”

Beg pardon? What was all that stuff in Genesis about? Genesis I, Chapter 1, Verse 1? you know, where god creates the universe? The only part of the Bible that creationists care about??

1    In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2   And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3   And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Explain that again about how the Bible isn’t interested in how the universe came into being?

 

 

What Science Knows (& Business Ignores)

Jun 14, 2010 | Australian Values, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Global Warming, Lifestyle & Life, Science Values, Values

What Science Knows (& Business Ignores)

Tell the boss!

Tell the world!

Revolution!!!!

 

Two excellent talks that will give you good feelings and even hope! From the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce

The truth about financial incentives:

How our human super power can save the planet:  

 

You’re welcome  

 

Why NOT Benny Condoms?

Jun 1, 2010 | Australian Values, Corruption, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, PedoPriests, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

Why NOT Benny Condoms?

 

Okay, it can’t be avoided.

 

Sir Roger wrote this in a fit a few weeks ago and he was in a variety of minds as to whether he ought to publish it. Was it intemperate? Of course. It was Sir Roger. Anything else? Was it wrong? Sir Roger, on reviewing it, has determined that he does not resile from its sentiments and so directs its publication. Here then is his response to the

Foreign Office Pope Flap …

Someone at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office made what appears to be a joke memo about what the Pope could do when he visits Britain and before he gets arrested.

The FCO is wishing it had a hole to jump into. The Government doesn’t know where to look. The poor author of the memo has been “assigned to other duties”. And the “Vatican” is effecting to be deeply mortified by the “insult”.

Really?

The true obscenity is that while many of the suggestions are, in an enlightened world, actually rational and reasonable, they are characterised by the FCO as “far-fetched”. Commentators are calling them “astonishing”, “foolish”, “clearly ill-judged, naive and disrespectful”. A Catholic Bishop says, “This is appalling”, “outlandish” and “outrageous”.

So what were the abominations that the poor little 20-something Oxbridge Foreign Office boy proposed?

[ Be careful. You may go to hell just for reading this list.]

It includes:

• Launch ‘Benedict’ condoms

• Review vatican attitude to condom use

• Bless a civil partnership

• Reverse policy on women bishops

• Ordain a woman

• Open an abortion ward

• Training course for all bishops on child abuse allegations

• Announce sacking of dodgy bishops

• Vatican sponsorship of AIDS clinics

• Launch helpline for abused children

So all of these things are done by other religions and/or secular groups in advanced 21st Century society around the world. Done by grown-ups, by rational, thoughtful people, by mature, socially-concerned human beings dealing with actual problems in the real world.

Nevertheless, the “Vatican” (whatever that is a metaphor for) is not part of 21st Century society. nor is it any of those other things. It is anchored in 6000 year-old anxieties of desert tribal culture, was hijacked into a militaristic system by a mad emperor in the 4th Century who appropriated it to his imperial service and decided its beliefs, and for millennia has been so wrapped in archaic, cannibalistic, irrelevant ritual that it has lost even the vaguest connection to the “true” orgins of the cult.

If Christ were to return today it is the Catholic Church which would most vehemently be clamouring for his murder – because he would threaten to collapse their cosy, now entirely temporal, globally-tentacled, fear-mongering, parasitic apparatus, emasculate their power structure and reduce the fraudulent façade of their unctuous piety to rubble.

What the “Vatican” is doing now, must do and always does do is to desperately try to prop up the flimsy cardboard and canvas of the awful illusion they call their “authority”; patch it, stitch it, retouch it. And scream obscenities at – and, as they have so frequently done, kill – those who too clearly see their fakery and their flagrant lies and refuse to pretend it is real.

The more the church screams injustice and victimhood the more you know they are lying and afraid and protecting their livelihood whatever the cost to the real people in the world.

Because that is the problem; the catholic church through its pope is literally – and I mean literally – responsible for the deaths of millions in Africa, millions who are dying right now.

The catholic church is harming lives around the world. It is causing endless misery on a daily and hourly basis with its so-called “beliefs”. The pope’s “beliefs” are not merely irrational, illogical, deeply stupid and pathologically detached from reality; they are caustic, toxic, savage and inhumane. They are putrid, repugnant and rotten. They are fundamentally anti-life.

The catholic church for at least 1700 years has been, in its deepest nature, dishonest and utterly debauched. The establishment — which supposedly honours a simple, plain man who blessed the poor and the downtrodden — smells like a brothel and is painted up like a cheap, toothless harlot. (Metaphorically.) It remains debauched, like a syphilis-ridden hag, because those who have attached themselves like crabs into its stinking knickers don’t understand that they cannot continue to get away with what their predecessors have done for so very, very long.

 

Here endeth the lesson.

 

 

Millennial Jubilation

Apr 13, 2010 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Fame, Freedom of Speech, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Science Values, USPol, Values

Millennial Jubilation

 

 1,000

 

 

Today, Sir Roger celebrates his 1,000th post in 1277 days – or exactly 3½ years – since the inaugural, ungainly, embarrassing post – Minister von Rock Opens Australian Refujesus Exhibition – on 15 October 2006. Since then he has improved marginally, been mentioned in the Press and on numerous websites, and been included in the top 40 blog posts for 2007 at On Line Opinion.

He’s been #1 on Google for over three years and, better than that, he’s consistently beaten out the #2, his arch enemy immi.gov.

He won the Australian election, unseating the sitting Prime Minister in the process, and caused a landslide in the US Presidential elections. Perhaps more importantly he got rid of Mick Keelty.

He’s been congratulated by some of the people he most respects including Richard Neville, Stephen Poole and Club Troppo collectively.

He’s been threatened with the big government stick of the Crimes Act by silly old Immigration Dept clown, Bob Correll, and survived. In fact possibly Sir Roger’s proudest moment was his reply to Bob and the response that received, especially from Ken Parish who Sir Roger likes to think still had his marbles when he called it “quite possibly the best piece of passionate, angry polemic I’ve ever read, certainly on a blog. ‘Roger Migently’ is roused to extraordinary heights of eloquence.”

Ah, the olden, golden days …

Sir Roger has attracted 127,838 spam comments, some of which he has celebrated. (Sorry, 127,839 127,840 127,841 127,842 . . . . )

And it all happened because Howard and Beazley were in a race to the bottom to hijack Australian values from the people who really own them.
Us.
And the giant Sir Roger was roused to fight.

 

So Sir Roger has waited a few days since Post #999, hoping for inspiration befitting the global significance of this occasion, wishing once again to elevate himself to the heights of grandiloquence of which he was once capable.

And then, you know, he realised that self-aggrandisement was out of place.

Instead, his deeply-felt gratitude, especially to his readers, yearns for expression.

It is simple, open, soul-bearing transparency that is called for.

And so he has chosen to mark this special moment in an understated way with a simple yet gloriously compelling message which quietly expresses his beliefs. This is the sauce of Sir Roger’s strength, his balm and succor:

Produced by TheThinkingAtheist.com

 

 

May the Sauce be with you and may His Noodly Appendage be upon you and guide you safely through pirate-infested waters.

RAmen!