Italian atheists are launching their own bus ads.
Translation: “The bad news is that God doesn’t exist. The good news is that you don’t need him.”
Nice. But is it bad news that there’s no god? At least you don’t have to spend eternity worshipping someone who created you for that purpose.
Dang it, I’m envious! Australian bus ads have been blocked, so everybody else is getting all the fun.
UPDATE: Kibosh-ëd! Oh the infamy…
Via Snowqueen: A very nice Thought for the Afternoon from atheist bus organiser Ariane Sherine. The Thoughts are usually religious, but non-believers are sometimes asked to speak. This clip aired on BBC Radio last week. I’ve captured it and placed it here because the broadcasts disappear from the site after a while.
If you can’t get the recording to work, I’ll summarise it for you: We all have a lot in common, even though we come from different backgrounds and have different beliefs. As for us atheists, we believe in enjoying things, taking care of our children, and living happy and safe lives. Could you muckheads please not spoil it for the rest of us by arguing over your beliefs, even though you like them? kthxbai
All right, she’s a lot more positive than I would be. Note to the BBC: Never ask me to give the Thought for the Afternoon.
I’m late on this story, but I’m going with it anyway, just because as an American-Australian I think it’s nice to remember that anglophones aren’t the only ones with transnational spelling issues.
This time it’s lusophones. That is, speakers of Portuguese.
Brazilians start 2009 facing the task of learning new spelling rules that have just come into effect.
The spelling reforms have been agreed by Portuguese-speaking nations, but the language seems set to have different written forms for some time to come.
In Portugal, there has been fierce resistance in some quarters to the changes because many of the changes are to spell words the Brazilian way.
Isn’t that always the way? The European colonisers get alarmed by these American upstarts taking over the language.
Any language with an alphabetic writing system will eventually have this kind of trouble because every language undergoes sound change, making old spellings archaic. And when dialects of a language diverge, there are bound to be struggles over whose dialect gets represented in the writing system.
So what are the changes?
As a linguist, I usually think of language change as slow, like two tectonic plates sliding past each other. And usually it is. But, as with land masses, when the language gets locked into place in the form of writing, we can expect periodic earthquakes. This is one of those cases.
UPDATE: If you’re curious about this issue, here’s a nutty little article about it, written in ‘Simplified Spelling’ English. It’s cute. You can imagine yourself as a citizen of Parallel England, or you can imagine that you’re hanging out with Simplified English advocates like George Bernard Shaw and Mark Twain. And here’s a challenge — try reading it aloud without unconsciously affecting a dopey overbite accent, like Cousin Floyd from the country. It’s harder than you’d think.
How are we going to defend ourselves against terrorism if we’re not allowed to discriminate against different-looking people with weird writing on their shirts?
An air passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded a payout of $240,000 (£163,000), his lawyers say.
Two Transportation Security Authority officials and JetBlue Airways will be forced to make the payout.
Raed Jarrar, a US resident, had accused them of illegally discriminating against him based on his ethnicity and the Arabic writing on his T-shirt.
The payout is the largest of its kind since the 9/11 terror attacks.
Okay, I have to admit that this is not the least threatening t-shirt I have ever seen in an airport. Vaguely militant slogan plus Arabic script. I would probably think twice about wearing that for a flight.
And yet, isn’t that the lesson of this whole thing? These officials are in the business of creating a security state. It’s hard to monitor everyone all the time, so it’s useful to them if they can get individuals to do a lot of self-monitoring — to make lots of little decisions not to wear this, or not to say that, to censor themselves in a hundred ways just so they won’t fall afoul of some arbitrary and unwritten code of conduct.
And so Raed’s question that day was very appropriate:
I once again asked the three of them : “How come you are asking me to change my t-shirt? Isn’t this my constitutional right to wear it? I am ready to change it if you tell me why I should. Do you have an order against Arabic t-shirts? Is there such a law against Arabic script?”
No, there is not. The good guys won this time.
The atheist buses are out!
An atheist advertising campaign has been launched on buses across Britain.
A fund-raising drive for the promotion, carrying the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”, raised more than £140,000.
The campaign, which will also feature on the Tube, is backed by the British Humanist Association and prominent atheist, Professor Richard Dawkins.
And there’s a t-shirt to match. Perth will soon see me rocking the “Probably No God” t-shirt,
but I don’t think I’ll carry it off as well as Ariane Sherine.
Interestingly, the C of E felt a desire to comment.
The Church of England said Christian faith allowed people to put their life into a “proper perspective”.
A spokesman said: “We would defend the right of any group representing a religious or philosophical position to be able to promote that view through appropriate channels.
“However, Christian belief is not about worrying or not enjoying life.”
Well, I can tell you that spending Sunday mornings lounging about with Ms Perfect is much more conducive to enjoying life than spending 3 hours in church hearing stuff like this:
2:25 And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth…
2:33 For behold, there is a wo pronounced upon him who listeth to obey that [evil] spirit; for if he listeth to obey him, and remaineth and dieth in his sins, the same drinketh damnation to his own soul; for he receiveth for his wages an everlasting punishment, having transgressed the law of God contrary to his own knowledge.
12:17 Then is the time when their torments shall be as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever; and then is the time that they shall be chained down to an everlasting destruction, according to the power and captivity of Satan, he having subjected them according to his will.
If this were true, wouldn’t the idea of getting tormented for eternity cause you some worry? Wouldn’t it mitigate your enjoyment of life just a tad if you were occasionally told that you were worse than dirt?
Time to spread the Good News, which is that the punishment forewarned by religions is most likely fictional. You are free. Now enjoy your life.
Blind people use facial expressions in the same way as sighted people do, including those strained smiles you use when you’re not really happy. This provides more evidence that facial expressions are innate and not learned.
Where do you think love comes from, Mr Atheist? Can’t see love in your microscope, can you? Actually, you can, if you’re doing brain scans. And what they find is that some people still feel twittery about each other after 20 years, instead of the 18 months most of us get. They call these couples ‘swans’, but that’s not a good name. Swans are cranky critters. But I think Ms Perfect and I will still be swanning about, still coursing with dopamine in each other’s presence, even after 20 blissful years.
Fear the hammer of Thor! A man dressed as the God of War after a costume party frightened off a burglar. Maybe the burglar was a philosophical theist who realised that you can’t discriminate between two supernatural claims — it doesn’t matter whether the god is Christian or Norse, you’d better book. Personally, I’d be much more frightened of Thor than of Jesus. People in sandals are easier to outrun. On the other hand, if Jesus has come as that psychopathic Old Testament god, then all bets are off. Best to run first and ask theological questions later.
Christian lawmaker and serial pest Fred Nile is at it again, doing his best to turn Australia into a nation of prudes. Apparently, women’s breasts make him feel funny, so he wants to ban them on beaches.
Arguing that the sight of women without bikini tops is offensive, Reverend Fred Nile, a conservative lawmaker of the Christian Democrats, has won backing from key politicians in the state of New South Wales to tighten existing laws covering nude sunbathing.
Nile has drafted a bill to be introduced in the legislature to ban topless sunbathing in the eastern Australian state.
“The law should be clear. It must say exposure of women’s breasts on beaches will be prohibited,” he was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph.
What’s the compelling reason here?
“If we don’t, we could have people saying ‘I’m not nude. I can walk (topless) down (Sydney’s main street),” he said.
One lawmaker has considered the possibilities, perhaps a bit too much.
“If you’re on the beach do you want somebody with big knockers next to you when you’re there with the kids?” asked Labour government MP Paul Gibson.
Well, um, exactly how big are we talking about here?
It’s difficult to imagine just how disconnected someone like Nile is. These are our bodies. Babies see breasts every day. Any normal person would just look away if they didn’t like them, but Nile wants to get the law involved because of his sense of disgust for the body and his desire to control others — not an atypical mix in Christianity. Has he not considered that restricting mammary visualisation will just drive kids to porn?
For those interested in preserving the cause of liberty, certain forms of protest spring easily to the imagination.
Michael Newdow is trying to get “so help me God” out of the Presidential swearing-in ceremony. Do I think it will succeed? No. Do I think it’s kind of annoying and crazy? Yes. But I’m happy to see him try. He’s doing the work for us, pushing the Overton Window, and making all us other atheists look nice and sensible. Good on him. The state shouldn’t be taking sides — promoting either religion or atheism — in this debate, and references to a god counts as ‘taking sides’.
But there’s a bit of confusion about what promoting atheism looks like. The confusion is coming from the Peter Sprig, of the Family Research Council. Given the source, I have to assume that this is manufactured confusion, which we also call ‘dishonesty’. Anyhow, here’s part of a back-and-forth, starting with Dan Barker, one of the plaintiffs and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
And we’re also challenging Chief Justice Roberts for overstepping his authority in inserting the phrase, “So help me God” into the presidential oath which is in the Constitution. That is un-American. It is unfair. It marginalizes. It makes those of us good Americans who don’t believe in God second-class citizens. It’s unfair.
Good so far. Now the other side from Sprig.
But ironically, if a lawsuit like this were to succeed, we would be in effect establishing atheism as the national religion by barring any mention of God or any allusion to religion in any public ceremony.
No, this is wrong. And it’s not just because atheism is not a religion.
I hear this all the time from Christians, who say, “They’re trying to make our [ schools | government | restaurants ] atheistic by removing all references to God.” The problem here is that having no particular mention of religion or god does not constitute de facto atheism. It’s just a normal, default position.
Let me show you what ‘promoting atheism’ looks like. If Mr Obama were to invite me to give a speech at his inauguration in which I would explain to everyone why there’s probably no god, talk about the damage that religion can do on a societal and personal level, and encourage everyone to leave their religions — then that would be promoting atheism. If, on the other hand, Mr Obama invites some religious loon to give a speech exhorting some god to favour the nation with blessings (oh, wait, that did happen), then that would be promoting religion. Either one would be taking sides, and would be inappropriate.
Having neither of us give a speech or a prayer would not be promoting religion or atheism. It would just be normal.
I present this as a public service to my over-anxious religious readers. Now you know what ‘promotion of atheism’ looks like, so you can recognise it in case you ever see it for once in your life.
UPDATE: Noticed this article, in which Barker says it better than I:
Asked if prayer is excluded, wouldn’t that mean government is choosing atheists as the winner, Barker replied, “There is a difference between neutrality and hostility.
“If the government were to invite me as a national atheist leader to get up and give an invocation that curses the name of God and that encourages people to stop believing and stop being so childish and divisive then that would be wrong because the government would be taking a pro-atheist position,” he said.
We already knew that abstinence doesn’t work, and virginity pledges are particularly ineffective. There’s a new study that bears out this result, but it highlights a new problem: kids who take virginity pledges are even less likely to use birth control and condoms. So abstinence education is not just useless, it’s worse than useless.
Why might this be? One idea going around:
Virginity pledgers may be less likely to use condoms and contraception because many abstinence programs cause participants to develop negative attitudes about their effectiveness.
Maybe program leaders are saying this, but I don’t think we need to resort to this idea to explain what’s going on. My experience as a horny teen in the Mormon Church has provided me with a hypothesis.
When you do something wrong, you need to pray for forgiveness from your sin, right? And Mormons regard sexual sin as particularly grievous. Consider:
• Mormons think that doing the horizontal mambo with anyone other than your husband or wife (or wives) is the worst thing you can do, second only to “the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost“.
Oh, wait. I knew there was something I forgot to do today.
I deny the Holy Ghost.
That’s better.
• An LDS General Authority (can’t find which one — someone help me here) told a story of his father seeing him off at the train station for a mission, and telling him that he’d rather the boy come back in a coffin than having had sex. And get this — my own father told me that story approvingly when I went off to BYU. He’d have preferred me dead than to have made a mistake. Then again, maybe I could have come home at the end of the year on a Greyhound Bus — alive — but in an actual coffin. It’d be a fun way to break the news.
But seriously, folks: this is a fact worth repeating. As with all authoritarian movements, Mormons hate sex. No, they don’t. They are willing to put up with sex, as long as it makes more little Mormons. Let’s just say that Mormons love sex, but they don’t like anyone else having any. Which makes perfect evolutionary sense. If you have sex, but repress everyone else from having any, there’s less competition for your genes.
Anyway, the main point here: Mormons regard unhallowed bonking as Very Serious. It involves prayer and contrition, as well as confession to The Bishop, which is very embarrassing because he’s just another guy in the community.
So Mormon youth, when faced with temptation, are unlikely to buy condoms or use birth control. That’s premeditated! That’s like planning to sin! How are you going to be forgiven from a sin you’ve been planning to do? What they do, since they’re Good Kids, is try to Be Good and abstain. But hormones being what they are, it frequently fails, and then you get pregnant teenagers.
(I don’t know if this line of thinking holds outside of Mormondom, but I bet it does. Non-Mormons: does this match your experience?)
The take-away here is that having stupid starting assumptions (a god wants you to abstain) leads to unwanted outcomes (riskier sex than normal). A better starting assumption would be: some kids are going to do it, and you can’t watch your kids 24 hours a day. Parents can encourage them to have sexual relations responsibly, if they must. Better to be immoral than to be immoral and pregnant.
Bonnie is an orangutan who has learned how to whistle from humans. Article plus video here.
The 140-pound (63.5-kilometer) orangutan at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., has been whistling for about two decades.
Now a new study suggests that the sounds she makes could hold clues about the origins of human language.
“The assumption is that someone was whistling and she probably picked it up from them,” said animal keeper and study co-auther Erin Stromberg.
Lisa Stevens, the zoo’s curator for great apes and giant pandas, said the key point is that the orangutan was not trained to whistle.
While orangutans can be taught new sounds with extensive training, Bonnie is the first indication that the animals can independently pick up the sounds from other species.
“It’s something she spontaneously developed,” Stevens said. “It wasn’t a trick.”
How does this relate to human language? Some linguists are interested in how language might have arisen in primates. In particular, Michael Arbib’s ‘Mirror Hypothesis‘ suggests that the ability to recognise and imitate the actions of others (both gestures and vocalisation) may have played a key role. Communication prepared the evolving brain for more complex cognition, and more complex cognition led to more involved communication.
With that in mind, it’s interesting that an ape would be able to imitate such an oral (if not vocal) behaviour. I was kind of surprised, however, that an orangutan was doing the imitating. As I remember, orangutans are rather solitary, and communication is social behaviour. Evidently the wiring for this kind of imitation goes pretty deep.
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