Certains idiots croient au Suaire de Turin

Dans un monde où la science aborde des challenges inimaginables (génétique et physique surtout), de nombreux idiots persistent à imaginer que le Suaire de Turin aurait été enroulé autour du corps d’un homme magique, Jésus. Ces gens gagneraint la loterie, ils croiraient que c’est grâce à leurs prières à Marie.

L’homme moderne peut être parfois incroyablement archaïque, comme si le Bon Dieu est tombé un beau jour dans la pluie. ll n’y a rien à faire. L’étoffe en question a été manipulée beaucoup, mais elle est tellement protégée par l’Eglise qu’une analyse scientifique en profondeur est impensable. On reste donc, et l’on restera sûrement longtemps, dans le royaume de la bêtise humaine, de l’incrédulité… où les aveugles mènent les aveugles, les fous expliquent la raison aux fous. La force de la connerie est de faire garder le sanctuaire par une armée de cons. Plus il y a de cons, et plus leurs systèmes de protection exploitent la force de la connerie humaine, plus ils résistent effectivement à l’intelligence, la raison, la science, la vérité. Quand un con ne souhaite rien entendre, il parvient aisément à bloquer ses oreilles. Il ne veut pas discuter avec des athées ; il remplit sa gorge d’eau bénite. Il ne veut rien voir ; il entoure son crâne du Suaire. Il ne veut même pas réfléchir ; il prie plutôt que de penser. Ces idiots-là ont eu des siècles pour tester leurs conneries. Et ça marche ! On les trouve d’ailleurs sur l’Internet, ICI.

Quand le cerveau d’Homo sapiens s’est créé, le vieux singe n’avait pas encore les moyens de s’approcher de la réalité. Son organe cérébral allait faire pourtant des merveilles sur le plan intellectuel. Conçu d'abord pour se reproduire, il a fini par parler, aimer et finalement penser. Mais ce pauvre petit cerveau avait du mal à se libérer de toutes les opérations primitives associées à son ère initiale, quand il est apparu parmi ce que Vonnegut appelait “the as-yet-unborn […] innocent wisps of un-differentiated nothingness”. Certains bébés naissent, vivent et meurent sans jamais ouvrir leurs yeux.

Good life

Elections don't affect God's inexistence

Thank Goodness God can't be elected in or out !

Healthy ecumenical breakfast food

from Think Atheist

Salamanders smarter than God

I disagree with Sam Harris when he says that he finds it interesting that

people of faith only tend to pray for
conditions that are self-limiting.

Personally, I don't find that information in the least bit "interesting".

Eternal silence

Frequently on French TV, several times a week, exceptional movies describe the universe, just above the horizon. Without such splendid reminders, I would surely shrink up and die.

Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie.
— Blaise Pascal

Children speak the language of Pascal, but differently.

And a tweet from Bold Atheism transmits that language.
Through the Cosmos ? Yes, forever.

Allah should get off the bus

Observers are going to say that, in a city whose new mayor is Muslim, it's nice to find Allah moving around on the celebrated red buses. I disagree. God is ugly and disgusting, because he's a harmful falsehood, no matter how he travels around. May he remain hidden. It's time for a change. Let the light of atheism move in, to replace religious stupidity!

Could God be looked upon as a dangerous assassin ?

To commemorate the terrible slaughter on 7 January 2015 at Charlie Hebdo, the resuscitated weekly will be using the following cover:

It reads: "A year later, the assassin is still on the run." And we see a blood-stained God Almighty with a Kalashnikov strapped to his back, racing madly away. The message is clear. Behind the human assassins who perpetrated the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, the ghastly cause was absurdly fanatical religious belief.

Is the assassin really still on the run? Yes, and this will remain true for as long as religious fanaticism infiltrates our societies. And that's surely for a long, long time. As we used to say in my childhood Australia: Up until the cows come home...

Must change my thinking

In a split second of intense revelation, I was stunned by an amazing video produced by Infinite Circularity Ministries. It convinced me that I must change my thinking.

It’s a fabulous package deal. Every New Believer gets a wonderful free gift: a lovely colorful image of Saraswati (hope I've got the name right).

The message reached me in the nick of time (thanks to a tweet from Richard Dawkins). Up until then, funnily enough, I had been thinking seriously about contacting my Canadian cousins to ask them how I might become a Freemason.

Click to enlarge

I’m still not quite sure about whether we’re allowed to mix together all of this stuff... but I would imagine that it's feasible, mystically speaking.

Amazing science

There's a new atheist kid on the YouTube block: Jaclyn Glenn.

Here's her profile:

Jaclyn Glenn was born March 25, 1988, and lives in Florida, US. She is currently going to medical school and uploads regularly. It is believed that she was married in 2010, but her current relationship status is unknown. Her success on youtube is with the channel "JaclynGlenn", where she discusses topics such as religion, atheism, animal rights, politics, masturbation, and many other issues in a serious yet comical fashion. She has recently admitted to being an atheist and skeptic, but does not have an abrasive personality like many other atheist vloggers on the site.

In that final sentence, the term "vloggers" designates video bloggers: that's to say, individuals who submit regular blog posts in video form. Jaclyn Glenn's video creations can be found here. Countless Americans will be shocked by her following moving version of a sacred anthem:

Needless to say, Richard Dawkins was an instant fan of Jaclyn.

Two careers of Richard Dawkins

I would imagine that most people have heard, by now, of the English intellectual Richard Dawkins.

But it's unlikely that they've all made an effort to read Dawkins's books. Besides, those on the technical aspects of evolutionary biology can be quite difficult. The following short video makes it clear that Dawkins has had two careers, as it were: first, as a celebrated scientist, and later as an advocate for a world without gods.

Dawkins attempts to attenuate this "two careers" interpretation of his work by suggesting that the germs of his atheism could be found in his earlier books on biology. While this was certainly the case, such an explanation is likely to go above the heads of those observers who see the outspoken professor primarily as a strident atheist. Consider, for example, an amazing specimen of big-mouthed ignorance: George Pell, an Australian cardinal. Judging from the applause during his recent debate with Dawkins, the Catholic chief has a certain number of numbskull supporters.

[That's not the extract of the Dawkins/Pell encounter that I had hoped to include, but I don't have the courage to search through all the cardinal's rubbish in the hope of finding his statement about Neanderthals.]

I would like to make a naive confession. There are two aspects of the professor's behavior that I've never clearly understood. First, why does Dawkins waste his time taking part in an alleged "debate" with a religious guy who's so stupid that he would dare to place atheists in the category of monsters such as Stalin and Hitler? A guy who's so ignorant at the level of contemporary knowledge that he imagines that people like Dawkins think that Homo sapiens descends from Neanderthals? My second question is closely associated with the first one. What rare quality prevents Dawkins from ever exploding in anger when confronted with the ineptitude of a guy as dumb as Pell? How come that the professor can remain so calm and polite, and retain even a few fleeting smiles?

I suspect that Dawkins senses the existence of some kind of underlying long-term vocation or mission that gets him through all these constant challenges of dealing with ignorant numbskulls. I guess it's something akin to the talents, that in other walks of life, enable certain gifted individuals to operate ceaselessly as physicians, psychologists, judges, etc. In fact, it's an admirable expression of humanism and an outlook that might be described as intellectual democracy: the belief that every individual you meet up with has the right to be listened to, no matter how silly he or she might be. Dawkins seems to exhibit quite naturally a splendid kind of Christian charity... which is weird, to say the least.

Speaking solely for myself, I've never possessed this rare talent... but that's neither here nor there.

US women encouraged to quit the Church

On the occasion of International Women's Day, the US Freedom from Religion Foundation placed a full-page ad in the New York Times encouraging women to escape "from incense-fogged ritual, from ideas uttered long ago by ignorant men, from blind obedience to an illusory religious authority".

Click here to access a jpeg image of the ad (which you must enlarge to read). It ends with an entreaty: "Please, exit en mass."

NOTE: The play on words in the expression "en mass" is amusing and no doubt catchy, but etymologically unfounded. The French words masse (physical mass) and messe (religious ritual) have quite unconnected origins.

Unbaptism ceremony

Bill Maher is in great form here:

Religions are thriving… and so is atheism

For me, ever since my first stay at Tinos in August 1964 [see my French-language web page], I've always recalled today's Christian feast day through its name in Demotic Greek. They simply refer to this hallowed day as the 15th August (phonetically, to thekapende ahvgusto), as if no fitting words could be found to refer to the marvels that once took place at this date. Indeed, this feast day celebrates a totally crazy alleged happening. The mother of Jesus suddenly drifted up into the clouds, like a hot-air balloon, and disappeared forever. The terms used in English to designate this event are somewhat comical. The Roman church uses the word Assumption, as if believers are expected to assume that things happened as described. The Orthodox church uses the word Dormition, which sounds like an official term for "lights out" in a school dormitory.

Apparently, at Lourdes this morning, 30,000 pilgrims attended a mass celebrated conjointly by 200 priests. Last Saturday, at that same place, the theatrical director Robert Hossein staged a holy play, A Woman Named Mary, for an audience of 25,000.

In another corner of south-west France, the Dalai Lama has arrived in Toulouse for a three-day visit, and thousands of people have booked seats at his seminars on "the stages of meditation" and "the art of happiness".

In the USA, religion has been getting a lot of publicity these days through a disturbing clone of George W Bush: the Republican governor of Texas Rick Perry.

He's the loony who once isued an official proclamation summoning the citizens of his drought-ridden state to pray for rain. More recently, this same nincompoop—who could theoretically become the next US president—organized a prayer day intended to shepherd the American nation out of its financial crisis.

Islam, when it seeks to right wrongs, resorts to harsher methods than prayer. In the charming Provençal town of Miramas (which I visited, a year ago, with Christine), a devout Muslim wasn't happy with a 17-year-old member of his family who was not respecting the fast of Ramadan. So, the young fellow was thrashed and then tied up… until his screaming caused neighbors to call the police and fire brigade.

Now, the funny thing is that, behind these various religious manifestations, it's hard to imagine the presence and guiding force of a single god. On the surface, it would seem that every religious body on the planet must surely believe in the existence of its own unique god. And clearly, this situation is ridiculous.

The truth is considerably simpler: there are no gods whatsoever, not a single fucking god anywhere in the Cosmos! In other words, all the above-mentioned folk (to whom we must add Jews, Mormons, Pastafarians, etc) believe in magic stuff and fairytale things that simply do not exist. Today, every lucidly intelligent individual knows perfectly well that all religions are total bullshit!

Now, if you've got a spare moment, and you want to see what a hundred renowned intellectuals (from all walks of life) think about religions, I invite you to watch these two amazing and inspiring videos from the Richard Dawkins Foundation:

— 50 famous academics and scientists talk about god

— another 50 renowned academics speaking about god

And here's a third collection of reactions:

— similar video, from Canada, with lots of ordinary folk

Insulting religion

When he criticizes religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), this 61-year-old English comedian, Pat Condell, expresses himself in a beautifully clear and persuasive manner:

He's definitely a healthy and explicit no-bullshit artist (you can Google his credentials, which include six years working as a logger in Canada), described by Richard Dawkins in the following terms: "Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he is on our side."

Atheism in Australia

Here's some sound advice concerning the forthcoming census in Australia:
Through their numbers and their well-organized stance, Australian atheists are making a fine name for themselves on the international scene. Needless to say, that situation makes me happy.

Belief in an afterlife is a substitute for wisdom

I've just been watching an interesting video of a debate on a Jewish TV network on the subject of an alleged afterlife. The celebrated atheists Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris converse with two US rabbis, David Wolpe and Bradley Artson Shavit.

[Click the portraits to access the video.]

Not surprisingly, within the group of four, the star was Hitchens. He really is a brilliant thinker and speaker. As for the rabbis, they come across as friendly guys, and far removed from familiar caricatures of crazed and biased religious fanatics. But their superficial friendliness doesn't make them one iota more credible at the level of their beliefs.

I've always felt that the historical and cultural foundations of Judaism (which have always interested me enormously, and still do) are so rich and dense that it must be difficult—well nigh impossible—to ditch them overboard, even in the name of common sense and/or science. For a goy (such as me), on the other hand, brought up in a typical Christian environment, it's much easier to rid oneself of all religious beliefs, mainly because many of the fairy-tale tenets of Christian theology (virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, Heaven and Hell, etc) are frankly ridiculous, and much of Christian ecclesiastic history (handling heretics, conflicts with non-Christians, crusades against infidels, immorality of the clergy, pomp and vanity of the Catholic church, conflicts between different branches of Christianity, sects, etc) is quite nasty, and best forgotten. A Jew who turns to atheism might say to himself: "Am I committing an irreparable error is abandoning my great family?" A Christian, devoid of nostalgia, is likely to exclaim: "Thank God I've been able to move away, at last, from that ugly mindless herd!"

Checkup

Many years ago, back in Paris, one of my former employers told his assembled staff: "The challenge of becoming rich involves two aspects. On the one hand, you have to earn as much money as possible. On the other hand, you must spend as little as possible."

I've often thought that our health situation is similar. On the one hand, you must have access to top-quality medical services… including, above all, an excellent GP (general practitioner). On the other hand, you have to avoid running into health problems. Elementary, my dear Watson. (Apparently Sherlock Holmes never pronounced this apocryphal phrase in any of the sixty detective novels written by Arthur Conan Doyle.) I consider myself fortunate in the sense that, in my personal case, both these conditions appear to prevail.

I drop in at the GP's rooms in Pont-en-Royans once every three months for a renewal of the prescription for three or four pills that I've been taking over the last six years. The ritual is always the same. The GP tries to imagine what kind of medical tests he might be able to impose upon me, through his specialist colleagues in the nearby cities of Valence and Romans. Since my prostate has been removed, and since I perform regular checks for colon cancer, I've become a relatively dull candidate for tests… but I'm sure my GP will think of something one of these days.

A long time ago, he informed me that my cervical vertebra resembled worn-out parts in an aging automobile, and that this could well bring about fits of vestibular giddiness. Back at the time the GP said that, I didn't really believe his diagnosis. On the one hand, I never have a stiff or painful neck (in spite of sitting upright in front of a computer screen for hours on end, seated on a hard wooden chair). On the other hand, if I felt giddy at times, particularly when I looked skywards, I imagined this as the first symptoms of some terrible form of cerebral decay. Maybe I had inherited it from my ancestor Charles Walker, innkeeper on the Braidwood goldfields, who used to drink too much of a beverage invented by a Scotsman named Johnnie Walker who, I believe, was his brother. If Charles had died in 1860 of delirium tremens, and if his great-great-grandson felt giddy from time to time when he was wandering around on the slopes with his dogs at Choranche, it's clear that this had nothing to do with neck bones; it was the inherited fault of bad neurons.

Reluctantly, however, I was obliged to admit to my GP that, one morning a month or so ago, I woke up with both a sore neck and a bit of giddiness. Later on in the morning, just to see whether or not it might work, I performed energetic exercises with my arms, neck and shoulders. By midday, both the pain in the neck and the giddiness had totally disappeared. So, that certainly proved something… and my GP agreed! I did have the impression, however, that he looked at me with a puzzled expression when I was telling him this story, as if I might indeed have decaying whisky-soaked neurons in my inner brain.

The GP's test for blood pressure always follows a similar ritual. Lying on my back, I tend to forget that he's busy trying to determine my blood pressure, and I carry on talking, in anything but a relaxed state. He frowns because his reading is lower than expected. At that stage, he always asks me the same question: "Do you check your blood pressure regularly at home?" And I always tell him that I wouldn't have the faintest idea about how to perform such an operation. By that time, I'm standing up, and my body is no longer tense. And, in this position, the GP's new reading of my blood pressure reverts to its normal value, which seems to please him greatly.

After that incident, the GP sets his computer in action, so that it prints out a new copy of my regular prescription. He functions in multi-processing mode by simultaneously recording my payment, signing my prescription and talking on the phone with his wife. Besides, this red-blooded lady's man seems to be amused when I say that this kind of aptitude is generally strictly feminine.

At that point in my visit to the GP, the serious part of our encounter can get under way. I'm talking of our regular conversations about books, science, the Internet, etc. The other day, the GP set the ball rolling.

GP: "I bought the two Dawkins books you mentioned, and found them highly interesting."

Knowing nothing of the quality of French translations of books by Richard Dawkins, I had nevertheless recommended that he might read The God Delusion and The Greatest Show on Earth. Parts of the first book, on atheism, had apparently impressed my GP greatly. In particular, he liked the explanations about the plasticity of the minds of tender children, who can be made to believe anything they're told. Meanwhile, the overall American situation was news to him.

GP: "I was amazed to learn that declaring oneself an atheist in the USA prevents you from being considered as a decent citizen, capable of becoming an elected politician."

William: "At least it's not like that in France."

GP: "It's the opposite here. Politicians like to make themselves out to be free-thinking Republicans, liberated with respect to religious bias. But, as soon as one of their leaders dies, they all flock along to the cathedral of Notre-Dame to pray for the soul of their dead companion."

Talking of believers and non-believers, an interesting Harris poll has just been conducted here in France, where we imagine that the faithful continue to flock to Sunday Mass, albeit in dwindling numbers.

Roughly a third of the population say they're believers, and a third, atheists. The remaining third is characterized by the fact that they simply don't know whether or not God exists. Among them, most people feel that this question is interesting, whereas others say it's not. Those results are unsurprising. What amused me greatly, on the other hand, is the fact that a third of the religious folk who said they were Catholics went on to reveal that they nevertheless don't really believe in the existence of God. Now, I like that approach! That's the kind of Catholic I myself might be, if I set my mind to it. Besides God, the Devil and the Holy Ghost, though, I would also refuse to believe in popes, saints, miracles, priests and all the rest of the ugly rubbish, including relics.

Queensland calamity

As an Australian, moved by the legendary toughness of our northern cousins, I find it intellectually embarrassing that a dimwitted 59-year-old Queenslander named Ken Ham should be making a name for himself in God's Own Country (he would be better off shoveling mud in his homeland) by his promotion of Creationist bullshit of the worst idiotic kind.

Intelligent citizens of the world might be asking: Is that kind of juvenile fucked-up brain an endemic thing in Australia? I answer emphatically: No! No! No! Ken Ham is a sick mutant. Few Australians follow this fellow. We're all happy he found his way to the USA. Take care of him, feed him if you like, be kind to him, and keep the bastard, please! We don't want him back. We won't even ask for a refund… Shit, there's no use in spending millions to promote great Aussie themes about our dynamic land and open-minded cultures when a crackpot like Ham can instill overnight the idea that we might all be crazy Down Under.

But are we? Or aren't we? I'm not sure. Good questions…

I'm wondering whether we could launch some kind of international process (maybe with technical help from Julian Assange) aimed at "disowning" Ken Ham. You know, like parents who don't want to bequeath their heritage to a wayward offspring. Meanwhile, here's a good article about why our Ham is all pigshit.

Seriously, this Ham guy needs to be neutralized. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm talking of logic, not gunfire. For Christ's sake, don't shoot the silly bastard; he would surely be canonized overnight by Silly Benny. Saint Fucking Ham! Worse than Frankenstein's monster. What a horrible unending nightmare… Maybe there's some kind of cockroach powder than might work on Ham. Fellow embarrassed Aussies, let's put our heads together and decide what might be done.

Is religion a force for good in the world?

The Toronto organizers of this debate between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens had no trouble selling their 2,700 tickets, which seems to prove that questions of faith versus godliness are a popular topic today. Indeed, the Guardian article reveals that tickets were grabbed up weeks ago, and were recently being sold for several times their cost price on eBay.

[Click the photo to access the Guardian article.]

A poll conducted upon people emerging from the hall where the debate had taken place suggested that the cancer-stricken author of the atheist best-seller God is Not Great was more convincing than the former UK prime minister, who argued in a wishy-washy style.

While I quite like the general idea of public debates of this kind, I prefer personally to snuggle down in front of my fireplace and simply read the relevant books by Dawkins, Hitchens and others. The truth of the matter is that the absurdity of religious beliefs is an outcome of objective thinking based upon science, logic and reason in general. So, to my mind, there can no longer be any debate… because science, logic and reason have ceased to be debatable questions. So, the only imaginable pleasure I can derive from a debate of this kind consists of watching the religious guy get tangled up in his words, and make a fool of himself. But, in that case, I prefer to watch an outright comic sketch. I soon get bored and annoyed by the spectacle of self-righteous and pompous brain-damaged believers sermonizing fuzzily about their immaculate faith. Worse, if the organizers of such a debate can usually succeed in roping in a lukewarm charismatic Christian to represent the believers, it remains practically unthinkable that a genuine debate of this kind could involve a Jewish or a Muslim representative.

Today, we can still witness all kinds of old-fashioned half-baked antics designed to give the impression that hordes of intelligent youth are enthusiastic advocates of Judaism, Christianity or Islam. But it's highly unlikely, if not unthinkable, that an articulate writer and speaker such as Dawkins or Hitchens could emerge in modern society as a popular spokesman for religious thinking. That would be like imagining that jet aircraft could be confronted by a spectacular new kind of hot-air balloon. It just ain't thinkable. So, why bother wasting time debating with lesser individuals about whether or not miraculous things could come to pass today? If my attitude sounds elitist, well, yes, it is. I belong to the vast elite of humans whose thinking is based exclusively upon science, logic and reason... and I no longer suffer fools gladly.