Today my wife told me apologetically that she asked our three month old boy to pray for me. How should I react?
Anger, because we have this solemn agreement between us that our son will grow up without any religious affiliation and will be free to choose his path when he turns 18? And prayer is a part of religion, all of them (and especially hers) and by teaching him to pray she is teaching him a fundamental religious concept. One which has been proven to be completely ineffective and thus untrue.
Gratitude, to learn that she cares about me so much and wishes for my well-being so strongly to direct her best weapon to my side in my times of trouble and/or difficulties and make it doubly effective by involving our infant son in the exercise?
Or fear that our son may have his vision always clouded by these delusions and never see the truth due to being constantly bombarded by religion from all well-meaning quarters except this one?
Son, if I did believe in prayer and could pray, I would pray that your eyes always be open, your mind always be free and that your heart always be big. The rest is a given.
An Indonesian civil servant who posted “God does not exist” on his Facebook page has been taken into police custody for his own protection after he was badly beaten.
The man, identified as Alexander, 31, now faces the prospect of losing his job, or even being jailed, if he fails to repent and accept one of six official state religions.
The Indonesian state’s founding principles of Pancasila or the five principles are all very noble and beautiful, except the first one which makes belief in god mandatory, a regressive and backward and more importantly, discriminatory ideal. But the irony is this, a notorious, religious extremist group belonging to the majority, flout the other four brazenly whilst propagating violence and destruction without even a rap on the knuckles and this brave, unfortunate man is going to be demonized and hounded and ruined for violating one as a matter of personal belief. It may be argued that he brought his personal belief into the public sphere via his social media group and his comment/s on it. But the fact of the matter is that he was still just expressing a personal belief without prejudice to anyone who did not subscribe to his opinion. He was not preaching or inciting or spreading violence.
Indonesian Christians believe allah of the Muslims is a false god and only Jesus and their lord are true while Indonesian Muslims say the Christian god and lord are haram and only allah is the true god. So how is Alex wrong when all that he says is that both allah and god are false? Prosecute all Indonesian Christians and Muslims then for violating Pancasila’s first principle.
Are the believers of this world so insecure in their false beliefs to be offended by the mere presence of someone who do not subscribe to their delusions?
Modern libertarianism is the disguise adopted by those who wish to exploit without restraint. It pretends that only the state intrudes on our liberties. It ignores the role of banks, corporations and the rich in making us less free. It denies the need for the state to curb them in order to protect the freedoms of weaker people. This bastardised, one-eyed philosophy is a con trick, whose promoters attempt to wrongfoot justice by pitching it against liberty. By this means they have turned “freedom” into an instrument of oppression.
Twenty years ago, roughly around this time, Linus Benedict Torvalds had just finished coding something which turned out to be an operating system kernel. He was just doing it as a hobby and he didn’t expect it to be “big and professional” and he didn’t expect it to “support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have”.
I happened to stumble upon his original posting to the comp.os.minix newsgroup and I had a strange feeling of looking at the humble beginnings of something very powerful, very legendary. And of course I was. I was looking at the beginnings of something which now runs everything from supercomputers to mobile phones to servers to household & automobile gadgets to the humble desktop PC to most of the Internet.
It’s called Linux and it’s everywhere. I am proud to be a very, very, VERY small part of this wonderful thing! Happy birthday Tux!
Facundo Cabral, an Argentine singer-songwriter who was one of the most eloquent voices of protest against military dictatorships in Latin America from the 1970s onward, died on Saturday, shot to death while on tour in Guatemala.
I never knew about you while you were alive but a casual glance at a news headline about your death and now I am one amongst the millions all over the world who mourn your passing. You were born in dire poverty, you struggled through life, you suffered the pain of losing early those dearest to you and yet you survived, and yet you sang of hope, of beauty and wonder, of justice. But in the end you had to die a violent death, one you wouldn’t wish for even for your bitter enemies, mowed down by cowardly bullets. Oh, this wretched, wretched world! Adios amigo…
“Never allow yourself to be confused by a handful of killers, because good predominates. A bomb makes more noise than a caress, but for each bomb that destroys, there are millions of caresses that nourish life.”
“I always ask God, ‘Why have you given me so much?’ You’ve given me misery, hunger, happiness, struggle, enlightenment … I’ve seen everything. I know there’s cancer, syphilis and springtime, and fried apple dumplings”
“I love life so much because it cost me so much to enjoy it.”
His most famous song, No Soy de Aquí, ni Soy de Allá (I am not from here, I am not from there) has been covered by such luminaries as Neil Diamond and Julio Iglesias, apart from many others in the Latin music world. This song was originally improvised by him during a concert (video above) and differs slightly in its lyrics from subsequent versions. The translation below is from the live version’s lyrics.
I love the sun, Alicia, and the doves A good cigar, a Spanish guitar Jumping walls and opening windows And when a woman cries
I love wine as much as the flowers And rabbits, but not tractors, Homemade bread and Dolores’ voice And the sea wetting my feet
I am not from here, I am not from there I have no age, I have no future And Happiness is the color Of my identity
I love to always be lying on the sand And chasing Manuela on a bicycle And all the time to see the stars With Maria in the wheatfield
I am not from here, I am not from there I have no age, I have no future And Happiness is the color Of my identity
Just 10 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Rais Bhuiyan was working at a gas station in Dallas when he was shot in the face by a man named Mark Stroman. Stroman was on a shooting spree, targeting people who appeared to be Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent. Stroman is due to be executed July 20; Bhuiyan, the only survivor of the attacks, is fighting to save his life.
The global war on drugs has “failed” according to a new report by a group of politicians and former world leaders.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy report calls for the legalisation of some drugs and an end to the criminalisation of drug users.
The panel includes former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the former leaders of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, and the entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.
…
The 19-member commission includes Mexico’s former President Ernesto Zedillo, Brazil’s ex-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, as well as the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and the current Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou.
The panel also features prominent Latin American writers Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, the EU’s former foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and George Schultz, a former US secretary of state.
In 1959 Bertrand Russell was interviewed by John Freeman for his programme Face to Face on BBC. Lord Russell was almost 87 years old then but still in great shape. As the presenter remarks,
“But far from being a frail old gentleman, he appeared before the camera as spry, mischievous and articulate as the public had ever known him throughout a long career as a campaigner for various causes at odds with the establishment.”
The interview is in 3 parts on YouTube but I have combined them together in a playlist for easy viewing. It is a very entertaining interview and Lord Russell is a treat to watch and listen to. But the part that stays with you is right at the end – his last words. The interviewer asks him for some parting words addressed to a future generation and this is what he says,
“I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only “What are the facts? And what is the truth that the facts bear out?” Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only and solely at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.
The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple. I should say: Love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely inter-connected we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way and if we are to live together and not die together we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”
Prophetic words these! Unfortunately we have still not learnt this simple lesson.
As might be evident from my ramblings, I do not subscribe to any faith other than the faith in the human spirit of free inquiry and skepticism. But I understand the importance of this one day of the year in the lives of a large number of my fellow human beings, amongst whose ranks my wife and her family count themselves. But then there are my other fellow human beings who, by virtue of being members of a different cult, have completely desensitized themselves to the needs of others which are not that much different from their own. I am not taking sides here and I do not believe nor am I suggesting that one is in any way better than the other, but I believe in the rights of human beings to delude themselves in any manner they please as long as that delusion does not harm or hinder another who doesn’t subscribe to the same delusion as them. In other words, I am drawn once more to these immortal words of Voltaire,
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it.”
I guess Indonesia might as well make it all official now – throw away the Pancasila, throw away Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, ban all religions except Islam, proclaim Shariah and finalize the degeneration of a great and diverse nation to an Islamic state.
Where are all the “moderate Muslims” when you need them?
