My freedom, my choice

And to all the peaceful progressive Muslims in nice cozy wealthy countries like Canada and the US who enjoy all the freedoms that this country grants us while whimpering about how people shouldn’t generalize all Muslims by the actions of a few in other poorer countries… Sure fair enough. But where is the outcry from western Muslims against the blatant abuse, cruelty, and murders that are currently being justified by YOUR religion in other countries?

Especially western Muslim women, do you have any idea what you would have to suffer through if you weren’t fortunate enough to live in Canada? Have your clitoris cut off, forced to marry a middle aged man when you’re twelve years old, illiterate, little to no access to health-care, possibly dying in childbirth in your twenties, plus many other atrocities your follow Muslim women are suffering from RIGHT NOW. The veil controversy pales in comparison to these problems! If you don’t want to be grouped up with the crazy people who want to oppress women then SPEAK UP AGAINST THEM. Separate yourself from them publicly! Don’t be angry at me for criticizing Islam, be angry at the assholes who are giving your religion a bad name. If Islam is really a peaceful religion, then prove it and stand up for what you believe Islam really is, against those who would use it to oppress you if you were unlucky enough to be born in… say, Iran.

I say the same thing to Christians who don’t want to be seen as homophobic because of a few other Christians who are. Kudos to Christians for gay rights.

This VERY sexy girl pretty much sums up my position:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvG0Es41ZeM

So many people misunderstand science.

Yes, Bro Tim, there is bad science out there… science that is corrupted by politics, religious agendas, corporate agendas, or just bad science reporting in general. This bad science isn’t actually science, it’s non-scientists using the authority and guise of science, to make dubious claims to further an agenda. There’s actually a very good blog and a book called “Bad Science” written by Dr Ben Goldacre who, a scientist, specifically goes out of his way to call bullshit on all the bad science and science reporting that is muddling up the public’s understanding of what good science really is. The scientific community has no agenda besides seeking the fundamental truths about the world, they actively fight against bad science all the time as it is almost always used to scam and hurt people.

What IS good science? Science is a way of observing the world and drawing truths from those observations after rigorous testing and retesting. Once a scientist has an idea he has to try to falsify it, to basically try to prove his own idea wrong. His experiments must be properly done, there is such a thing as bad misleading experiments. For example some bad experiments do not have control groups to compare the findings against, or they may not have been run enough times to rule out the possibility of chance etc. If the scientist makes any of these mistakes he’s going to be ripped apart during the peer review process and lose his credibility damaging his career. Anyway… If he CAN falsify his hypothesis then it’s wrong and he must throw it away completely and try something else. But if he cannot falsify it, it MIGHT be true. Further more in depth testing if required before he can publish it in a scientific journal and make it public. Once it’s public, it needs to be retested some more by OTHER scientists who have NO AFFILIATION with the first scientist. I they are also able to reproduce his findings in their own labs then there is a good chance that it’s true. But even after all that, the idea is still up in the air to be shot down, scientists try to disprove each others’ findings all the time, they welcome the scrutiny and debate, peer review keeps the bullshitters out. This is how proper science is done. The only agenda it has is to find out what is true through this excruciating process.

So if, when you say, “What’s worse believing in God or some crap coming out of a scientist mouth.” you are implying that scientists just make shit up, you’re sorely mistaken. Science is a bottom up philosophy, you look at what you can see around you and use it to gradually build a body of knowledge that some day will be large enough to explain the big questions, how was the universe created? But religion is a top down philosophy. You start with the answer, God, and then use the assumption of God to explain everything around you. Which is better? Science is better.

The fact that we do not presently know the exact physics behind the Big Bang is NOT evidence against science because of it’s bottom up nature I previously described. If we knew everything, science wouldn’t exist in the first place. Just a short while ago people thought God made the stars shine simply because they didn’t have a better a better explanation. Now we have a much better explanation. As science progresses it continues to explain the natural world with more elegance and awe than the “God did it” explanation ever could, and religion keeps having to grudgingly accept it. Someday we will be able to contemplate the greatest mysteries of the universe through science. But besides all this there IS some evidence for the big bang, being ignorant of evidence is not a good argument against it.

To be honest, I’m more afraid of religious leaders and politicians being in league than I’m worried about scientists. But I’m not even getting into that because it’s a futile argument. You can say scientists created the atomic bomb thus science is evil and I can say science created penicillin, increased our life span by 30 years, decreased infant mortality etc thus science is good. You can point to religious charity and I can point to the crusades, it goes on and on and on like that.

But while on the topic of science I’ll recommend a good book to anyone who is interested in the debate about whether morality is possible without religion. “A Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.” by Sam Harris. This is the most annoyingly common misunderstandings religious people use to make atheists look evil… but I’ll stop right there because I could keep typing forever about this stuff.

Here’s brief preview of the book in video form:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww

Hey , I never said anything against “Anything humans are involved in will get fucked up” However, I’m not sure what we have to compare humans against, because humans are involved in everything. Humans as opposed to what? Nothing lol.

I’m just pointing out that “bad science” is not actually science and has no respect in the scientific community. Although it seems like bad religion is still respected or at the very least not fought against by the majority of good religious people… There’s tons of smart, progressive, modern Christians Muslims etc out there… they need to wake up and start joining the criticism against their fundamentalist counterparts.

But let’s clarify that as an atheist I do throw religion away. I do think that religion as we know it is inherently dangerous because it requires people to not think critically and to follow without question. I support critical thinking which is in direct conflict to the religious mindset. I would celebrate if tomorrow everyone on earth decided to be an atheist because I truly believe that the world would be a better place if it was devoid of religion by individual personal CHOICE. Or at the very least a skeptic or critical thinker. I’d even settle for fence sitting Agnosticism. However, I believe in freedom of religion just as strongly as I believe in freedom from religion. And that requires me to put up with the nonsense that is organized religion but only so far as it’s not overstepping basic human rights. And now I’ve gone off on a tangent and I don’t remember what the original point of this comment was.

God Damn.