In search of the marxist child

Part of an interview with popular scientist and clear thinker Richard Dawkins, author of - amongst others - The God Delusion.

Some say that his views are just another brand of 'faith' - that atheism is a belief system like christianity. Judge for yourself...

Welcome to Saudi Britain

This video was recently banned and then reinstated by Youtube. Apparently lots of muslims find it offensive. I think the fact that some people say they are 'offended' by something is never a good reason for censoring it. Indeed, if you listen to what this guy has to say, it's actually quite scary - and something that I wouldn't like to see happen where I live.

The definition of light-hearted

According to the Reverend Dr Peter Mullen, homosexuality is "clearly unnatural, a perversion and corruption of natural instincts and affections, and because it is a cause of fatal disease".

Mullen, who is rector of St Michael's Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City, and looks suspiciously like actor Steve Pemberton from The League of Gentlemen, blogged these words the other day.

"Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals," he went on to write, "to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS."

The rector, who has also written for The Torygraph, insists that he meant no harm: "I wrote some satirical things on my blog and anybody with an ounce of sense of humour or any understanding of the tradition of English satire would immediately assume that they're light-hearted jokes."

Light-hearted indeed. The very definition of, if you ask me.

Free speech for the dumb

In the spirit of healthy debate and "teaching the controversy", a Turkish court has banned internet users from viewing the official Richard Dawkins website after a Muslim creationist claimed its contents were defamatory and blasphemous.

It's amazing how people like this can exist in the modern world.

I guess Dawkins must get called blasphemous a lot, considering his somewhat radical views and reputation as Darwin's enforcer. But I don't think he'd ever advocate banning, gagging or silencing his critics.

In reality though it seems that Adnan Oktar thinks that Dawkins has insulted him in comments made on forums and blogs. Check out Dawkins' "insults".

Istanbul's second criminal court of peace banned the site earlier this month on the grounds that it "violated" Oktar's personality. I've had a look at the story and subsequent comments and I'm not really sure about the allegations.

True, a lot of people mention how Oktar has been found guilty of creating an illegal organisation, and a lot of people speculate about the actions of that organisation, including rape and extortion. He is appealing the verdict. Does this mean he should be treated as innocent until proven guilty, or is he just doing what everyone does when convicted - appeal to slow down the legal process?

Oktar, a household name in Turkey, has used hundreds of books, pamphlets and DVDS to contest Darwin's theory of evolution.

In 2006 his publishers sent out 10,000 copies of the Atlas of Creation, a lavish 800-page rejection of evolution.

Dawkins, one of the recipients, described the book as "preposterous". On his website the British biologist and popular science writer said he was at "a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the 'breathtaking inanity' of the content."

It is the third time Oktar and his associates have succeeded in blocking sites in Turkey.

In August 2007 Oktar persuaded a court to block access to WordPress.com. His lawyers argued that blogs on WordPress.com contained libelous material that the company was unwilling to remove.

Last April, he made a libel complaint about Google Groups, which was subsequently blocked.

He failed to ban Dawkins' book The God Delusion in Turkey after a court rejected his claims that it insulted religion.

So, free speech for the dumb anyone?

Is it a dolphin? Is it a crocodile? No, it's the Virgin Mary!

Thanks to globalisation and the Internet, news travels fast these days. But that's not always necessarily a good thing, is it? There are thousands of pointless non-stories out there that are reprinted or replicated ceaslessly by a whole plethora of channels, blogs and sites - this site being no exception.

Indeed, I've probably been guilty of adding to the useless information overload by giving publicity to the kind of bollocks that should be consigned to the computer trash can - and just so I can make some lame joke, or cutting comment about it.

Hell, I'm not proud.

The Torygraph yesterday reported something else I found mildly amusing. Yes, another apparition of the Virgin Mary - this time in Canada. I'm sure that before the days of the Internet nobody outside of Toronto would have seen this piece of news, as it surely wouldn't have been picked up by anyone apart from the local rag. But now it seems that everybody publishes everything so I'm jumping on the bandwagon here as well.

Basically somebody cut the branch off a tree in a garden in a leafy suburb of Toronto and a drunk guy thought it looked like the Virgin Mary. His mother-in-law cried and said it was a "blessing" and the owner of the garden in which the tree lives says she doesn't want people trampling on her garden when they come to look at the "virgin".

What news!

Whatever next? A decade-old toasted cheese sandwich will be said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary and be sold on eBay for $28,000? Oh hang on....

A disgusting piece of trash

'A disgusting piece of trash' is probably quite close to the truth when describing the Catholic church.

The ever-progressive Pope is once again in the news as he battles to have a modern art sculpture in Nothern Italy banned.

Pope Benedict has called the work blasphemous in a letter to Regional president Franz Pahl.

Pahl is working hard to get the sculpture removed. "Surely this is not a work of art but a blashphemy and a disgusting piece of trash that upsets many people," he said.

Clearly unpursuaded by his own arguments, Pahl went on hunger strike and had to be hospitalised in his efforts to get his views heeded - and the work of art removed from the Museion museum in Bolzano.

The wooden sculpture, called Zuerst die Fuesse, is by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger and depicts a 4-foot high frog about nailed to a brown cross and holding a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in another.

It wears a green loin cloth and is nailed through the hands and the feet in the manner of Jesus Christ. Its green tongue hangs out of its mouth.

I'm not much for it myself. I much prefer the Dead Kennedys album cover of In God We Trust, Inc., which features Jesus Christ crucified on a cross made of dollar bills.

Kippenberger's work has been shown at the Tate Modern and the Saatchi Gallery in London and at the Venice Biennale, and retrospectives are planned in Los Angeles and New York.

Freedom of expression, anyone?

The perils of crucifixion

The Philippines government issued an Easter public heath warning - on the dangers of crucifixion.

Did it read, Don’t do it, it’s nuts?

Did it fuck.

Instead of warning people against self-harm in the name of the Catholic church, it simply advised them to get a tetanus jab first and "use clean nails."

Well fuck me, I think rusty ones would be better for people with the (lack of) brains to crucify themselves. In a kind of Darwin Awards way, it’d give them more chance of removing themselves from the gene pool.

It’s good to see corporate social responsibility alive and well and living in the Catholic world too. The crucifixions in San Fernando City – where 23 people, including two women, were nailed to crosses at three improvised Golgothas – were sponsored by Coca-Cola.

Ahem.

Moses on drugs

Moses was high on Mount Sinai when God spoke to him. Literally, according to a story in The Guardian.

An Israeli researcher claims the prophet may have been stoned when he set the Ten Commandments in stone.

Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.

Concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

"The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness," says Sharon.

He adds: "In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings."

According to the researcher, references in the Bible where people see sounds, is another "classic phenomenon", similar to religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to see music.

And Sharon should know about this - he's tried it more than 150 times. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," he said.

He also thinks Moses was high on mind-altering drugs when he saw the "burning bush".

No shit.

Here's my question. How many other great works of fiction are a result of the consumption of mind-altering substances?