Category Archives: Secularism and Atheism
At Least Dawkins is Speaking The Truth about islam…It is Full of Barbarians and Ignorant Savages
Atheist Professor Richard Dawkins Slams Jihadists Destroying Priceless Manuscripts In Timbuktu As “Islamic Barbarians” . . . Outrage Enues…
Because jihadists have feelings too.
Via Daily Mail:
Atheist Richard Dawkins has outraged Muslims after describing looters who destroyed manuscripts in Mali as ‘Islamic barbarians’.
The 71-year-old author of The God Delusion was referring to the severe damage caused by Islamist extremists to a sacred library in Timbuktu but his remarks were seen as insulting to all Muslims.
Oxford University academic Professor Dawkins told his 600,000 Twitter followers on Tuesday: ‘Like Alexandria, like Bamiyan, Timbuktu’s priceless manuscript heritage destroyed by Islamic barbarians.
But his comments were criticised, with some followers claiming he was unjustly attacking Islam and others saying he should be considering vandalism committed by Christians, reported the Daily Telegraph.
Muslim Twitter user ‘Shawa5i Al Nasseri’ from the United Arab Emirates said: ‘You call us barbarians, truly no respect’, before later adding: ‘How do you explain this “destroyed by Islamic barbarians?”’
From Weasel Zippers:
Our Founding Fathers Were Nothing But Genocidal Nazis…Really?
A Moonbat’s Conception of Thanksgiving
Hopefully you didn’t enjoy yourself too much on Thanksgiving. After all, it is a white supremacist holiday, as Robert Jensen reminded us at the George Soros–fundedmoonbat soapbox AlterNet on Thanksgiving Eve:
One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.
Use of the term “moral progress” by a liberal is a signal to place a bucket within easy reach in case the moonbattery gets the better of your stomach.
[R]eluctance to acknowledge our original sin — the genocide of indigenous people — is of special importance [on Thanksgiving, which] is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.
He goes on to denounce Washington, Jefferson, and even the progressive Teddy Roosevelt for failing to indulge modern liberal fantasies regarding the nature of the Stone Age savages who sparsely populated North America before its discovery by the Europeans who used the previously wasted resources to create unprecedented prosperity.
Achieving an apoplexy of liberalism, Jensen shrieks that the great men who founded America held “moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis.”
It has reached the point where the roaches don’t scuttle for crevices when you turn on the kitchen light. Instead they stand atop the toaster, wiggling their antennae belligerently. Jensen openly admits that “exactly what I would hope to achieve” is to “humble our proud nation” and “undermine young people’s faith in our country.”
As CNS News points out, “Jensen has a long career in both … journalism and academia.” From the point of view of our ruling class, his attitudes are impeccably correct.
The national self-hatred preached by vermin like Jensen and brought to a climax with the reelection of Obama is literally killing America.
On tips from Stormfax, F.D.R. in Hell, Dean D, and Bob Roberts.
From Moonbattery: http://moonbattery.com/
America Ain’t Kansas – It’s Sodom and Sinking Lower
LIBERAL AMERICA—THE SODOM THAT PRETENDS IT’S KANSAS
“In America,” Jim Kalb recently remarked, “everything is normal”—meaning that no matter how radical, extreme, and perverted things become in our society, they are and must be seen as ordinary, traditional, and unthreatening.
The result is the peculiar phenomenon that I have described as the “radical mainstream.” On one hand, liberals and their mainstream-conservative enablers boast of America’s transformational progress since the mid-twentieth century; on the other hand, they claim that we haven’t changed at all. The fact that all kinds of moral and constitutional norms have been shattered, and that nihilism, gross sexual libertinism, and statism are the new norm, is never allowed into public consciousness. The liberals suppress the ugly truth of what America has become, in order to maintain the legitimacy of liberal society; and the conservatives join in the suppression, because their goal is to keep their place at the liberal table; they know that anyone who speaks the truth about the radical transformation of America will no longer be welcome…. — AmNation
From American Digest: http://americandigest.org/
Whatever You Do on a College Campus – Do NOT Name Your Pineapple Mohammed – The Crazy mooslims Will Go Nuts
University atheist society ordered out of freshers’ fair for displaying ‘blasphemous’ pineapple called Mohammed
- Reading union staff claimed fruit caused ‘distress and upset’ to other students
- University accused of ‘pandering to the hurt feelings of the devout’
Offending fruit: An atheist society at Reading University were ejected from the freshers’ fair after displaying a pineapple labelled with the name of the Prophet Mohammed
A group of atheist students were thrown out of their freshers’ fair because they included a pineapple labelled ‘Mohammed’ on their stall.
The Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society (RAHS) said they wanted to celebrate free speech and promote their upcoming debate ‘Should we respect religion?’
But they were ordered to remove the offending fruit by union staff who said their actions were causing ‘upset and distress’ to a number of Muslim students and other societies.
RAHS refused, citing that they had labelled the pineapple after the Islamic prophet to ‘encourage discussion about blasphemy, religion, and liberty’.
A spokesman said: ‘We wanted to celebrate the fact that we live in a country in which free speech is protected and where it is lawful to call a pineapple by whatever name one chooses.’
They claimed the union then issued them with the ultimatum: ‘Either the pineapple goes or you do.’
According to RAHS, a group of students surrounded their stall and removed the pineapple’s name tag before the society was ‘forced to leave the venue’ accompanied by security, it was reported in the Huffington Post.
Rupert Sutton, who blogs on Student Rights, a website which claims to ‘tackle extremism on campuses’, said the student union was wrong to censor the society.
More…
He said: ‘Extremes of free speech should be limited to ensure that they do not become hate speech.
‘However, students do not have the right to impose their religious sensibilities on others and they must accept that they may be offended by those who do not share their convictions.
‘Whilst this action by the RAHS may have been provocative, they should have every right to do it.
‘Instead of closing down debate, Reading University Student Union (RUSU) should be encouraging students to interact with one another rather than pandering to the hurt feelings of the devout.’
Issued ultimatum: Student Union staff claimed a number of people had been left ‘upset and distressed’ by the pineapple
In a statement given to Student Rights, RUSU said: ‘The RAHS were asked to leave the Freshers’ Fayre after receiving complaints from individual students about a display they had on their stall.
‘They were initially asked to remove the display and after refusal were asked to leave. Our Freshers’ Fayre is an inclusive event for all students.
‘As the society’s actions were causing upset and distress to a number of individual students and other societies attending we took the decision to ask them to leave.’
Yesterday’s incident comes after a row erupted at a top London University when an atheist society posted a cartoon sketch featuring the prophet Muhammed having a drink with Jesus on its Facebook page.
The president of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society at the prestigious University College London (UCL), Robbie Yellon, stepped down over the controversy earlier this year.
Last year, it was reported Muslim students, including trainee doctors on one of the university’s medical courses began walking out of lectures on evolution claiming it conflicts with creationist ideas established in the Koran.
The portrayal of the prophet in a U.S.-made anti-Islam video have also sparked violent demonstrations around the world in recent weeks.
Today’ Secular Religion…Talk About Faith…It Takes a Lot of Faith to Swallow This Crap
Photo from Poretto @ Bastion of Liberty
This image in this morning’s email brought this meditation from 2006 to mind:
To the secular, nothing is sacred. Then again, why should it be? They’re “secular.”
Back in 2006 National Geographic and other media echo chambers thought enough of this “discovery” to headline it, Jesus May Have Walked on Ice, Not Water, Scientists Say . I’m not nearly so objective. After I read the story, I thought it could more reasonably be headlined, Scientist Confirms Popular Theory That Most Scientists Are Atheistic Asses with Too Much Time and Money on their Hands, Sensible People Say
The New Testament says that Jesus walked on water, but a Florida university professor believes there could be a less miraculous explanation — he walked on a floating piece of ice….
Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, said on Tuesday that his study found an unusual combination of water and atmospheric conditions in what is now northern Israel could have led to ice formation on the Sea of Galilee…..
“If you ask me if I believe someone walked on water, no, I don’t,” Nof said. “Maybe somebody walked on the ice, I don’t know. I believe that something natural was there that explains it.”
“We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account.”
We leave to others the question of whether or not this research is worth diddly-squat. What is of broader interest is the present state of the secular mindset to all things religious.
Religious in the Christian sense, that is, since the current global climate of “Fear of Muslims” seems to have created a shortage of “scientific research” into the various miracles and powers assigned to Allah in the Koran. Indeed, given the reaction to a drawing of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, it is not hard to imagine that even if a “scientist” were to notice “something natural that explains” Allah, his next thought would be something on the order of “Why should I put my head on the chopping block?” Jesus, being a more forgiving God, is safer game.
Of course, it is, as scientists are wont to say, ‘only a theory.’ This is used in two ways.
When it comes to a central tenet of modern science, Darwinism for example, the word “theory” is used in a manner that merges forcefully into the word “fact,” and a great deal of effort is put into why “The Theory of Evolution” really means “The Absolute and Forever Established Fact of How the World and Life and Everything Else Came to Be and Everyone Else Can Just Shut UP and Sit Down.”
Nof opts for the Non-Denial Denial use of “Theory” in his paper. The Non-concluding Conclusion to his paper, “Is there a paleolimnological explanation for ‘walking on water’ in the Sea of Galilee,” reads:
We hesitate to draw any conclusion regarding the implications of this study to the actual events that took place at Tabgha during the last few (or several) thousand years. Our springs ice calculation may or may not be related to the origin of the account of Christ walking on water. The whole story may have originated in local ancient folklore which happened to be told best in the Christian Bible. It is hoped, however, that archeologists, religion scholars, anthropologists and believers will examine such implications in detail.
Translation: “I just pulled the pin and threw the grenade in the building. Can’t blame me. I was just the hand grenade’s messenger. And, by the way, you may cower and abase yourself when you note the insertion of the word “paleolimnnological” in the title. Makes it sound real solid scientific, don’t it?”
Of course, when Nof gets a little attention from a supportive and loving media, he phrases it a bit differently, “If you ask me if I believe someone walked on water, no, I don’t,” Nof said. “Maybe somebody walked on the ice, I don’t know. I believe that something natural was there that explains it.”
Nof’s entitled to his ‘belief’ in “something natural.” That belief system is not only the foundation of his career, but of his self-limited life itself. It is, in a very real sense, his religion.
As far as the whole “Jesus walked on the water” issue goes, my own belief is: “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I can’t seem to find the weather report from that day online. And there’s no video tape that I’m aware of. Just some eye witnesses, with all that implies.”
I’m also aware of another theory that holds that the Star of Bethlehem was a supernova that just happened to show up in the sky at Christ’s birth. Arthur C. Clarke used this to good effect in his short story “The Star.” T.S. Eliot used it earlier in “The Journey of the Magi.” In a much less distinguished manner, I’ve even used it myself in Sunday Meditation: The Star @ AMERICAN DIGEST where I noted, in passing,
In time stronger sciences would rise upon the structures of the proto-sciences of astrology and alchemy. These sciences would push the first sciences into the realm of myth, speculation, and popular fantasy. The new sciences, you see, were much, much more about Reality. They would never be tossed aside in their time as so many playthings of mankind’s youth. The authority of astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry and others was certain. Unlike astrology and alchemy, they would never be questioned. We had the evidence. There was no doubt. They were as eternal and as fixed in the truth as… well, as astrology was in 5 B.C.
All of which gets us back to pretty much where we are today where Christ is revealed to have been, at the very least, pretty good at ice-skating. And, with a supernova at birth and a frozen lake near the end, you would have to say, even as a secular scientist, that Jesus had a great sense of timing as well as a way with words.
Nof seems to have a sense of timing and a way with words as well. I’m sure there are nods of approval and various other high fives pinging into his email today from other true believers world-wide. After all, it seems that the only thing that makes a bigger splash in Science these days than a cure for cancer is some bit of “cutting-edge research” (almost always with the aid of computer modeling) that either warms the globe or disparages religion.
Why? Because it is a central tenet of faith, of pure faith, in the Secular Religion, that traditional Christianity is the “Anti-Darwin” to that faith. Strange when you consider that, in terms of actual dogma and actual acts, Islam is far more hostile to all the core tenets of science, but — as I noted above — it really isn’t very safe to take too close a look at that collection of ergot-derived insights out of the desert. Those adherents are a bit more lethal when it comes to accepting slights on their religion. But then Christianity is the dominant religion of the First World and that’s what we’re discussing here — not which faith is right, but which faith is to be master. It seems that for Science to triumph as the new religion, Christ has to die again — and this time he’s got to stay dead.
There are fundamentalist Christians who hold that everything in the Bible is as the Bible says it is. And there are fundamentalist Scientists, like Nof, who hold that nothing in the Bible is as it says it is.
My very small puppy in this fight says that there is a lot in Science that lets all of us live longer and better lives while there is a lot in Christianity that lets us live deeper and more meaningful lives.
I don’t look to Christianity to bring me the weather reports for tomorrow. At the same time I don’t look to Science to ever, in its widest dreams, reveal the core of the miracle and mystery of being a conscious entity who has been granted the gift of being able, in my better moments, to witness — even for an inch of time — the wonder of Creation.
I know that there are many zealots of the Secular Faith who will think the less of me for not being “tough minded” enough just to face up to the fact that everything really is “purposeless matter hovering in the dark.” I know that habit of mind well. I wore it like a pre-fab Medal of Honor for many years. Then one day I had had enough of Nothingness and I sent it back.
I guess you could say that being a Secular Atheist started to feel like trying to walk on thin ice.
Two Pieces of Steel Have a Crazy Affect on Atheists…Wow…Who Knew…
Militant Atheists Declare War on Ground Zero Cross
In a country run by moonbats, to impose your will on others you have to present yourself as a victim, even if you are the one doing the victimizing. For example:
A lawsuit that challenges the placement of the cross at the site of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center alleges atheist plaintiffs have suffered serious physical and mental illness because the religious symbol has made them feel excluded. …
American Atheists … contends the placement of the 17-foot-tall symbol at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum is making some atheists unbearably sick.
“The plaintiffs, and each of them, are suffering, and will continue to suffer damages, both physical and emotional, from the existence of the challenged cross,” the lawsuit American Atheists v. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey states. “Named plaintiffs have suffered … dyspepsia, symptoms of depression, headaches, anxiety, and mental pain and anguish from the knowledge that they are made to feel officially excluded from the ranks of citizens who were directly injured by the 9/11 attack.”
If you don’t believe that the site of the Holy Cross can have this effect on moonbats, just watch what happens when Peter Cushing presents one to Christopher Lee in old Hammer movies.
Militant moonbats don’t need to see the cross in person to be affected:
The suit explains the named plaintiffs “have seen the cross, either in person or on television, are being subjected to, and injured in consequence.”
They want the cross removed completely, but there is a fallback demand in case they don’t get their way: erecting something next to the cross to cancel it out. Reports Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice:
“They even make a bizarre suggestion about erecting a ‘17-foot-high A for Atheists’ to promote their non-beliefs at the site.”
Or is that A for A-holes?
The group has been filing harassment suits against everyone in sight over the cross, including Friar Brian Jordan, who is being sued for having blessed it.
David Silverman explains his group’s behavior:
“As president of the American Atheists organization, I promise to make sure that everyone, even those who are indifferent to our cause … will hate us.”
If that’s his goal, Silverman knows what he’s doing.
On a tip from Jimbo.
By Dave Blount at Moonbattery: http://moonbattery.com/
The Media Are the Enemy – They Deliberately Lie and Distort All Truth, All The Time. They Are the Lowest Scum of Humanity for they Have Directly Contributed to The Decline of Western Civilization.
Breitbart Is Right
As might you, I remember exactly where I was, and what I was doing when I heard about the Aurora massacre.
I was driving to work, like many a man who has not suffered an unimaginable tragedy. On the radio there came a brief mention — the true magnitude of how many had died was not yet known — of the massacre.
It was only two sentences. The second sentence was a denial that any “overseas” (that was the euphemism used) terrorists groups were involved.
That immediately tickled my suspicions. I used to work for a newspaper, as a writer and as an editor. It takes time to do policework, to check credit card records, to check if a suspect had been overseas, to get warrants, to read his old mail, to talk to neighbors. There is no way, no possible way, any responsible police agency could have investigated between midnight (when the crime occurred) and morning (when I heard the news) when all the businesses were closed and announced that it had ruled out anything.
The newsman was not reporting an official announcement: he was merely making the literally true but deliberately deceptive statement that no evidence had yet emerged of any link to overseas terror. There was also no evidence to a link to Ethiopia, to Elocutionists, to Eggplants, or to Ecumenism, because six hours is too soon for any confirmed evidence of any kind. So why single out terrorists for exculpation?
Parking my car a few minutes later, I walked into my work. I have a dayjob, working for a military subcontractor. As all military facilities in which I have ever worked, there is a television tuned 24/7 to the mainstream news channels in the break room. Why US Military ordains that Orwellian viewscreens should be tuned constantly to channels that disseminate anti-Military agitprop, I cannot guess. As I walked past the break room door, I heard the massacre being discussed by the news entertainment heads.
I only heard two sentences yet again. The first mentioned the location and time of the shooting. The second sentence was speculation that the shooter was a rightwing extremist or a neo-Nazi.
The next thing I heard about it was not the numbers of the victims, nor the heroism of those who threw themselves in harm’s way to save sisters and girlfriends, and not the little twelve year old girl who tried to give CPR to a six year old who died under her hands.
No. The next thing I heard about was Brian Ross, who had announced on ABC news that the shooter was a member of the Tea Party.
I did not see or hear civilized and sane voices calling for prayer, for silence, or for dignity until much later in the week, or, as we measure time now, much later in the newscycle.
That was not where the emphasis was. We live in a Dark Age, where civility, piety, decency and honesty are not praised nor prized.
No, instead, the headlines of the radio and television news, the first thing I heard before I heard any details, was those two assertions being hammered home: the attacker was not a Muslim terrorist. The Right was to blame.
(As of the time of this writing, Mr Ross has not been fired, or even censured, for this slander presented as news to a trusting and nationwide audience. If he has issued an official apology, I am unaware of it.)
Of my other thoughts, I will be silent. But I will add my voice to the choir of condemnation against the mainstream media:
You are vermin.
I mean this in the literal sense: a vermin is an animal that destroys livestock and must be put down for human life to be successful.
You could have been newsmen and told the truth as you knew it.
You could have been gentlemen and told the truth without a sick and sadistic desire to fatten yourselves on the blood of the slain, and then spew out that blood, mixed with bile, into to faces of your political rivals in the game of power. You could have been polite, and civil, and honest, and sane.
You could have been human.
But no. The most vicious town gossip who seeks ever to destroy the reputation and blacken the character of an enemy never launched so quickly and so immediately a campaign to stir up slander, hate, and malice against an innocent foe.
You were running on autopilot, dear newsmen.
The autopilot of ideology charts only one course: when there is a gun-massacre or an act of terror, you blame your political rivals as long as possible and as often as possible because that is what the simplistic fairy tale of your world view demands. You immediately, long before any evidence is in, exculpate your allies, because this is also what your simplistic fairy tale demands.
George Zimmerman, a registered Democrat, is reported as being a “white Hispanic” because Caucasians shooting Negroes in cold blood fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
When Dr. Amy Bishop shot and killed three colleagues at a faculty meeting, the Left speculated that she was a Tea Partier because that fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale. In fact, she was lifelong Democrat and Obama donor.
James Lee, 43, took three hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Maryland. The media speculation was that Lee a “climate-change denier” who’d resorted to violence. . That fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale. In fact, he was a radical environmentalist who viewed humans as parasites on the Earth
The census-taker Bill Sparkman in rural Kentucky was supposedly hanged by extremist anti-tax Tea Partiers. Such insanely murderous acts by the peaceful protesters (who clean up after themselves when they gather in public areas) fits the fairy tale. In fact, he hanged himself. The facts do not fit the fairy tale
Mayor Bloomberg immediately speculated that the bomber was someone upset about the president’s new health-care law. The media trumpeted the idea that crazed conservatives had turned to violence. In fact, the perpetrator was Faisal Shahzad, jihadist terrorist. The facts do not fit the fairy tale.
Joe Stack who flew his plane into the IRS in Texas was supposedly a Tea Partier, because according to the fairy tale the ordinary Americans in the Tea Party are insane murdering scum. In fact, he quoted from the Communist Manifesto in his suicide note. But the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
Amidst the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque, Michael Enright stabbed a Muslim cab driver in the neck. It was immediately dubbed an “anti-Muslim stabbing,” with “rising Islamophobia” on the political right to blame. Because the fairy tale is that the Tea Party commit acts of random violence for political ends. In fact, Enright, a left-leaning art student, had worked with a firm that produced a pro-mosque statement.
John Patrick Bedell shot two Pentagon security officers at close range. The media went wild with speculation that a right-wing extremist had reached the end of his rope. Bedell turned out to be a registered Democrat and 9/11 Truther. The facts do not fit the fairy tale.
The Fort Hood shooting is reported as being unrelated to the religious affiliation of the gunman because this fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
When Congresswoman Giffords was shot, even though this was done by a deranged man with (as far as we know) Leftwing political views, the rhetoric of the Right was blamed by Paul Krugman, and Sarah Palin was blamed. By what torturous line of Palin-Derangement-Syndrome suffering stream-of-consciousness the Senator from Alaska is blamed for a shooting in Arizona, I leave for psychiatrists to explain.
But I know the explanation for the slander, and all these slanders. It fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
Friends, who you hear of some enormity or ghastly crime, is your first thought to speculate that your political rivals and the game of seeking popular political power resorted to random atrocities? Do you think everything is politics? Is it the only lens through which you view the world, the only tale that you ever tell, the only tale you ever believe? Then you believe in fairy tales.
I was in the newspaper business not so very long ago. I never saw anything of this magnitude. I never saw such pure malice, such reckless disregard for and hatred of the truth, such pure propaganda. And I was in the muckraking yellow-journalism side of the business.
Can you imagine if someone in your neighborhood did this? Suppose every crime committed in the neighborhood was blamed by your next door neighbor’s wife on you. Each time, there is no evidence. Nor has the young man ever done anything wrong. Each time the accusation is immediate, utterly baseless, and it does not matter what the crime is. Purse snatched? You get blamed. Power line down? You get blamed. Car stolen? You get blamed. How long would it take before you became convinced that your neighbor’s wife was a lunatic with no ability to control herself, no ability to tell the truth, a nutcase in a delirium? Five times? I have listed more than that right here.
And what if your lunatic neighbor’s wife was getting paid for her ability to report the facts honestly and fairly. It is how she makes her money. What then? At what point would you become convinced she was your deadly enemy?
The mainstream media are the enemy. Andrew Breitbart was right about that.
It is not the Democrat party, not the socialists, not the activist Judges or lunatic University academics who poison the minds of millions and slander all that is godly, good, wholesome and sane. These are side effects, mere epiphenomena.
The media are the enemy.
They are vermin, dangerous beasts, parasites and maggots. They must be abolished, hounded by the public square, harassed by the law, scourged by the intolerance of the righteous, driven into the fringes of society, exiled. We trusted them; they betrayed us. They betrayed the truth, and betray the nation, and betray humanity itself.
They must be broken. The media are the enemy.
From John C. Wright: http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/07/breitbart-is-right/
Occupy Movement – Of Course It Is…
Confirmed: ‘Occupy’ Movement Is a Wretched Hive of Villainous Scum
Posted on | July 11, 2012
“Jew-haters, commies, psychotics, rapists — the Occupy movement is like a roach-motel for scum.”
– Robert Stacy McCain, Nov. 25, 2011
One of the things you learn if you study crime long enough is that criminality tends to be a general trait. Criminals do not limit themselves to specialties. The car thief is often also a small-time dope dealer, and the dope-dealing car thief doesn’t have much compunction about committing the occasional rape or aggravated assault.
This is part of the reason the “broken windows” approach to law enforcement works: When police start paying attention to seemingly minor infractions of the law, the people they bring under scrutiny necessarily include a certain number of career criminals. Pull over a car for failing to signal a left turn, run the driver’s ID through the computer system and — surprise! — he’s got a warrant for a probation violation. Search his car, find a dime bag of dope or a pistol, and it’s back to prison for the habitual offender.
Crime tends to cluster. It’s a pattern, rooted in an attitude, a worldview, a belief system involving a selfish disrespect for the social order.
What happens, then, when a political movement arises which celebrates the anti-social attitudes commonly held by criminals? Naturally, such a movement becomes a magnet for punks, hoodlums and thugs, and the crime wave associated with the “Occupy” protests wasn’t surprising. All of which is preamble to today’s not-so-shocking news:
Officials have linked forensic evidence from the 2004 murder scene of a 21-year-old Juilliard student to the scene of a recent Occupy Wall Street subway protest, NBC 4 New York has learned.
DNA evidence from the scene of Sarah Fox’s murder in Inwood Hill Park eight years ago has been connected to DNA from a chain left in a subway station by Occupy protesters in March, NBC 4 New York first reported Tuesday.
Fox was found nude and strangled in the park in May 2004, days after she disappeared during a daytime jog. Investigators recovered her pink CD player in the woods just yards from her body.
Sources said Tuesday the DNA found on the CD player matches DNA found on a chain left by Occupy Wall Street protesters at the Beverly Road subway station in East Flatbush on March 28, 2012.
Via Memeorandum, which also has the New York Times version of the story. It should be emphasized that this DNA match doesn’t necessarily solve the crime. Police say it is possible that the DNA on Sarah Fox’s CD player was from one of her friends, and not from her killer.
However, if this DNA found at the scene of an Occupy protest does belong to Fox’s killer, it is hardly “a bizarre turn” in the case.
The Occupy movement is organized on the principle of lawless hostility to private property. And you know what they call lawless people who are hostile to private property? Criminals.
UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who points out that the post title is a near-miss of a line in Star Wars by Obi-Wan Kenobi, who describes the space-port town of Mos Eisley as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy.” The implied comparison to the patrons of the Mos Eisley Cantina is probably too flattering to the Occupy scum who attempted to storm the AFP Summit in D.C. last fall.
People Still Have A Belief System – They Have Just Changed What They Believe In.
(Highlights by ZTW)
Athiest hedonism: Their poster campaign on London buses in 2009 was supported by Richard Dawkins (right). Its fatuous slogan gets to the heart of why people have turned away from biblical religion — not because it is irrational but because it puts constraints on their behaviour
To judge from what we are reading and hearing almost every day at the moment, it would seem Britain is in the throes of a war of religion. A war, that is, between religion and atheism. Professor Richard Dawkins, the Savanarola of atheism, regularly hurls his thunderbolts at believers. Christianity, says the church, is under siege. Christians are being prevented from wearing the crucifix at work, being barred from adoption panels. Even Delia Smith has now brought her rolling pin to the fight to defend the faith.
At the heart of this great argument lies the assumption on the part of the anti-religion camp that this is a battle between reason and obscurantism, between rationality on the one hand and knuckle-dragging ignorance and prejudice on the other. And of course, that anti-religion camp is on the side of reason, and thus of intelligence, science, progress and freedom; whereas religious believers would undo the Enlightenment and take us all back to the dark ages of credulity, superstition and the shackling of the mind.
This assumption is based on a further given: that in the West this is the age of reason. And we think this, in large measure, because we have put religion, or faith, in a box labelled in very large letters, “Un-reason”. Faith and reason, religion and science are supposedly inimical to each other. There is no overlap. They knock each other out.
So it follows that people who are intelligent can have no religious faith; those who are religious are either imbeciles or insane. Not only that, religious people are narrow, dogmatic, intolerant and unpleasant. Those with no religious faith are broad-minded, open, liberal and thoroughly splendid people whom you’d be delighted to meet at a dinner party. Little casts a chill over a fashionable table more than the disclosure that a guest believes in God.
I have a rather different take on this great division of our age. My view is that while we may be in a post-biblical — and post-moral — age, we have not disposed of belief. Far from it. We have just changed what we believe in. Our society may have junked the Judaeo-Christian foundations of the West for secularism. But this has given rise to a set of other religions. Secular religions. Anti-religion religions.
These are also based on a set of dogmas. They proselytise. They involve faith. But unlike the Judaeo-Christian thinking they usurp, these secular anti-religions suspend truth and reason. What’s more, I would say that it was the Judaic foundations of the West which, far from denying reason, gave the world both reason and science in the first place.
God has been pronounced dead, and in his place have come man-made ideologies — in which people worship not a divine presence but an idea.
These ideas, which brook no dissent, give rise inescapably to intolerance and indeed to tyranny. Indeed, they are far more tyrannical in their effect than the God of the Hebrew Bible who gets such a bad press for being so authoritarian. In fact, he has a truly terrible time getting his way. His people are always complaining, refusing to do what he tells them, blaming him for everything and always, always arguing with him. But ideologies which represent the will of man bend everything to the governing idea, which cannot be gainsaid. There can be no argument with them.
Rather than being rational, I suggest these are irrational; not tolerant at all, but deeply illiberal; not open to other ideas, but as dogmatic as any medieval pope. Indeed, these atheistic ideologies are reminiscent not just of religion but of medieval persecutions, witch-hunts and inquisitions.
Read the rest at Standpoint Magazine: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/4411/full
Found at American Power Blog: http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/