The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

It's not often these days that I could be bothered to pick up a book with the word "Jesus" in great big gold lettering plastered all over the cover but I found myself compelled to make an exception when I spied the name of the author, no less than one of my favourite heretics, Philip Pullman. Even more intriguing, perhaps, was the back of the book, on which was printed in large friendly letters:

THIS IS
a
STORY.

And nothing else. No summary, no praise for His Dark Materials, just those words and the little publisher's logo and UPC bar code modestly tucked away at the bottom. That pretty much said it all, really. A retelling of the life of Jesus in a manner that will most undoubtedly draw a deluge of stiff letters from pious, God-fearing people who'd never actually consider reading this book, and who'd need to be told repeatedly to at the very least pay attention to the four little words on the back.

It's written in a very simple style, similar to the NIV Bible itself, with short, unembellished sentences collected in a series of bite-size chapters. For the most part, it adheres to the story as told in the New Testament, with a very significant difference, being that here Mary gave birth to twins, named Jesus and Christ.

The stark simplicity of the text leaves much room for the reader to colour it with his own interpretation. Being as atheist as I am, I see in this book the story of Jesus as an outspoken, simple man of lofty principles and good intentions and his brother Christ, timid, scholarly and full of love for his brother, and how the story of their lives were raised far beyond the reality by a mixture of the hopes of the people around them, Chinese whispers and careful manipulation of history.

Having witnessed any number of silver-tongued individuals attain positions of power with little more than the gift of the gab and a sufficiently ignorant, unquestioning audience, this book tells quite a lot of how gods, prophets and messiahs are constructed out of a dash of good intentions, a truckload of false hope and a pinch of deception. I read it and I see an old story repeated, one of good intentions, born of the noblest part of the human spirit, twisted and corrupted into something far beyond the expectations of the initiator, both in the best and worst possible ways. It is much akin to planting a mysterious seed in a garden in the hope it will bear fruit or flowers, then finding the garden overrun with vicious, thorny creepers punctuated with stunningly beautiful blossoms.

That aside, there is much food for thought to be found in certain chapters, such as Christ posing the questions (usually attributed to Satan in the New Testament) to Jesus in the wilderness, and Jesus' confrontation (With God? Or his own faith?) in the Garden of Gethsemane. Here's an excerpt from Jesus' time in the garden:

'You're not listening,' he whispered. 'I've been speaking to you all my life and all I've heard back is silence. Where are you? Are you busy making another world, perhaps, because you're sick of this one? You've gone away, haven't you, you've abandoned us.

'You're making a liar out of me, you realise that. I don't want to tell lies. I try to tell the truth. But I tell them you're a loving father watching over them all, and you're not; you're blind as well as deaf, as far as I can tell. You can't see, or you just don't want to look? Which is it?'

And so on and so forth. Go on, guess who shows up after that... If the Dark Materials trilogy is any indication, Pullman also makes known his opinion of organized religion during the Gethsemane monologue.

Anyway, I won't spoil it for you. It is not a long book, easily wolfed down in a single sitting and it does what any good piece of writing should do, which is make the reader think. I sense it is as likely to offend as it is to enlighten, depending on the mind reading it, but whatever the case may be, perhaps the most important thing to bear in mind is what has been written on the back cover: This is a STORY.

Wish I had a Pokeball...

... so I could stick this guy in it:



... then send him to battle against, I dunno, something with lotsa spikes. Seriously, how utterly pathetic do you have to be to preach the immorality of Pikachu, based on your own code of morality derived from what is essentially the Bronze Age equivalent of Pokemon?

"Thor! I choose you!"

"Jesus! I choose you!"

"Thor! Hammer attack!"

"Oh, shi-..."
Hammer attack is super effective!

Far too true...

Dredged from the diabolical depths of t3h intertoobs, I bring you heretical win:


Because if you can't laugh derisively at people who consider faith a virtue...

Akakkubi Ryu Kenjutsu*?! Is nothing sacred?!

Rhetorical question, of course. I, and no doubt many other jaded infidels around the world, am perfectly aware that the very concept of 'sacred' is just another convenient human delusion. But I do love martial arts and am especially partial to anything to do with kendo, i.e. anything to do with the arts of Japanese swordsmanship.

I love the history and culture behind the sword, the atmosphere of the dojo, the practical wisdom bought in countless duels and battlefields, the rush of crossing swords with strong opponents... And I love the fact that a Japanese dojo is a bastion of quiet**, graceful, secular spirituality in an increasingly stupid world.

As such, I do sympathize with the Japanese masters when they lament the corruption of their fighting arts as they spread overseas. Those who have observed the tides of cultural evolution will shrug and say that this is an inevitability, like the spawning of well over 300 styles of kung fu (wushu? Never was too clear on that point...) in China, some of which, to be brutally honest, have as much practical use as a knife made out of yoghurt. The fighting arts, and the accompanying code of ethics, become warped into new forms as they are passed from one person to the next. Without the crucible of combat to separate the chaff from the wheat, even the most freakishly absurd mutations of the original forms are allowed to survive, when ordinarily they shouldn't.

The days of storming dojos and bellowing challenges to rival masters are long gone, but the Japanese obsession with doing things properly (aizuchi) ensures the general purity and integrity of their martial arts and the accompanying philosophy. However, it seems that outside of Japan, karate has turned into something else. Once upon a time, kata was an austere, physically demanding form of moving meditation, a way to polish up technique and concentration.



Seems to me that in certain quarters, the focus has shifted somewhat:



Frankly, I'm not sure if this is karate. Wearing the pyjamas and the belt does not make the karateka. I enjoy seeing good tricks and hats off to them for such displays of skill, strength and agility and all but, I'm not sure this is karate.

Call me naive, but I came to the conclusion years ago that the only reason of merit to learn how to fight is so one never has to fight. In the arduous journey of learning the rigours of combat, one should come to understand that fighting is not a real solution to this world's problems, and that the very worst adversary you will ever face, the one who will defeat you before you've even raised a fist or sword, the one who will hound you, mock you, poison your mind, cripple you with doubt, whither you with apathy, tear at you constantly until your dying day is yourself.

I find many Eastern martial arts take great pains to teach this harsh and valuable lesson, hence I do feel a wee twinge of irritation at the sight of a McDojo. Even more so when said McDojo doesn't even bother making any effort towards authenticity, as evidenced by some so-called "karateka" who cannot even pronounce 'katana' or 'bokken' presuming to teach how to use a katana, which for some odd reason is missing it's tsuba (hand guard).





This charming practitioner of the ancient art of posing with a sword not only tries to pass off his antics as a genuine martial art, but does so in the name of a certain Jewish zombie king. It's also more than a bit telling that he doesn't even know the difference between a bokken and a shinai. For those of you who don't already know this, observe. This is a shinai (lit: Bamboo blade):

And these are bokken*** (Lit: Wooden sword):

Apparently, his school is called 'Yeshuas Ryu Karate'. The age old theist pastime of lying for [insert messiah of choice here] opens a new front. I think I'd rather stick to my name for it - Akakkubi Ryu Karate. If nothing else, at least the name is honest and gives a true and fair indication of exactly what these people are about.

Oh, and as an added slap in the face for people like me, Redneck-san up there has a whole series of videos all on Expert Village. Suffice it to say, I no longer trust a damn word from Expert Village.

Tres Tew, ah facepalm at yew...

* Literally:- Redneck Style Sword Technique. No that's not what they call themselves, I just made that one up. I think it kinda fits.

** Not literally, of course...

*** I got the white one for my birthday. Isn't it pretty? ^-^

The Tottenham Ayatollah's daughter

Those who have read any significant portion of this blog will know that I do love a good laugh at the expense of religion. Alas, for the most part, it is a bitter laughter, the kind that blurts forth when you see the cancerous tumour in your head has formed an amusing shape. This is because there is really no quick cure for religion at the level of society as a whole, such is the seductive power of mass, organized stupidity. So one laughs, and draws what little pleasure one can from the screeching, howling, gibbering abyss that religion has plunged so many otherwise sane people into.

Take this asshole. An embodiment of intolerance, an avatar of blind, foaming, raging hatred, one of the ugliest faces of modern Islam, it's hard to see how one can derive any form of laughter from his existence. Now take his daugher:

Hell, I just have to laugh at the fact that Omar Bakri Mohammed is the reason for the kinkiest picture ever to grace this blog. Apparently she's a pole dancer. And daddy paid for those kahunas. More details here, and never to be outdone in the publicization of the tasteless and sordid, New of the World has tales of her sex life.

Ah, sweet irony...

On getting someone else to stare into the Abyss

I've had a healthy respect and awe for science ever since I was able to utter the word 'science'. In nigh 3 decades on this Earth, I've come to know enough of it's history and methods to understand that the universe holds far more wonders than any human could possibly imagine, and that science is the only (reliable) way to uncovering these wonders.

Now, it took many years and no small amount of books in various fields to build up my present understanding. A MSci in Physics certainly didn't hurt, and, after a hell of a lot more reading after receiving my degree, I'm very much accustomed to living this life based on logic and evidence.

In every theist I've encountered, religion is truly a crutch. God is thanked for every good thing that happens in this life, and every bad thing (including, of course, conversations with people like me) is a test of faith. Prayers are made, regardless of known success rates or lack thereof. Life and death are accepted with a certain kind of shallow forebearance, as they continue to tell themselves that loved ones long since past their expiry date are "in a better place"*.

All these little lies they tell themselves, just to draw a pretty pink curtain between them and the abyss of existential angst. They want, with all their hearts, to believe that there's a point to it all, that beyond the cold touch of death, someone will love them. Anyone acquainted with a smidgeon of history or philosophy** (or the finances of the Vatican) is well aware how such desires can be twisted to suit the purposes of those who seek power over others. But that is not the focus of this entry.

What I'd like to call your attention to is the more down-to-earth breed of believer. I suppose we atheists would call them 'moderates' - you know, the quiet ones who just try hard to live well and do the right thing, and are generally either sensible enough or just brainwashed to ignore the more insane parts of whatever scripture they happen to be following. And what I think about whenever I meet such people is:

How does one remove the parasite without injuring the host?

A situation not unlike this comes to mind:

Assume for a moment that I've just had a long talk with one of these moderates and struck a killing blow to her faith and the whole system of self-supporting myths in her head comes tumbling down. What then? Many of the moderates I encounter are scientifically illiterate working professionals who, over the course of their lives, filled in pretty much all the gaps in their knowledge with God. I have likened religion to a crutch, and, in the cases of many adherents I meet, the crutch has been in use for so long, I really don't know anymore if they can do without it.

*Somewhere around here I had about 3 paragraphs of what I felt was rather good stuff. Then Windows decided to install some updates and restart and send what I thought were some fairly inspired words right down the crapper. What follows is my heartbroken and hamfisted attempt to recreate what was lost.*

How could I possibly impart my solution to my existential angst in it's entirety to a former adherent? It seems to me like trying to fill a dump truck with a teaspoon! I have no simple solution, and the answer that I am ultimately satisfied with is a large array of interconnected truths I have come to realize over many years. Like a sword forged with my own hands, my answer is mine alone, and I cannot quite share it in it's entirety with anyone else even if I wanted to, simply because I am me, and no one else is.

What I suppose I can try to do is lay out some of the basics. I could say something about the ways of empiricism, which are simple enough. I could state with great confidence that our minds are immensely powerful, yet so very limited, and try as we might, we may only ever take a small sip out of a boundless sea of information. I could try to point out that life is both utterly meaningless and singularly significant. Your mind makes it as important as you choose to make it. By the very same token, our very existence is both with and without purpose, miraculous, yet inevitable. Such attributes are simply constructs of the human mind, illusions that we choose to make real, like good, evil, justice, duty...

All these little truths I mention are woven together to form the core of the mental (spiritual?) machinery that keeps me running. None will stand alone by themselves. All have thus far held up under scrutiny to my satisfaction for nigh 30 years, where many other "truths" have since withered away.

So how can I go up to one of the innumerable vapid, consumerist believers that populate our planet, kill their god in front of their face, and fill the yawning void left behind? To break through wall after wall of denial, hubris and ignorance to tear down the delusion is one thing, but it seems to me to be insufficient to leave it at that. It seems to me that among the more insidious side effects of the theist delusion is a lingering scorn for intellectual pursuits. This is a problem which I sense has not quite been addressed adequately by the atheist camp, though not for lack of effort.

I can't claim to have a solution, but I write this now to lay out what I can of the problem as I percieve it. The modern atheist is stuck with either preaching to the crowd or, at best, winning over those who are already wavering in their faith. The die-hard faithful will forever hate us, and, by association, anything even vaguely related to science, but they are not an issue, being as they are the dim end of the bell curve. What I'm interested in is the bulk of believers, who just quietly get on with it, the ones you don't see in the papers, the ones who, ultimately, must be turned in order for religion to finally be put in its proper place.

* And, as George Carlin points out, not for an instant do they entertain the possibility that dead loved ones may well have been doing the wrong thing all their lives and hence ended up in, say, Niflheim or wading through serpents in the Sanzu River.

** And I mean philosophy, not metaphysical mucking about.

Religulous and the atheist's dilemma

I just managed to get my grubby paws on Bill Maher's Religulous and to be honest, my opinion of it is... meh.

I have to state up front that (as anyone who's read my longer posts would know) I've been atheist for quite a while, so, really, there's nothing new in Religulous that I haven't seen stated before in far greater depth by the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, Krauss, Harris, Hitchens, Sagan, etc, etc, etc. Bill Maher tackles the problem as a stand-up comedian would, and this isn't a bad thing! Most of the more famous stand-up comedians are tremendously intelligent, articulate, witty people and, of course, they reach out to a far wider audience than the more intellectual breed of atheist, who tend to be demonized by insecure anti-intellectualists as stuffy, soulless old boffins with a tenuous grip on reality.

Religulous tackles the theistic delusion in a very Socratic manner, with Maher going up to various believers and simply asking them those fiddly little questions that would usually cause cognitive dissonance in sane people but draw a peculiar breed of blank stare from believers. e.g.:

- What was the Holocaust? Why was that good? (Re: God's Divine Plan)

- What do you think it says about religion and how serious it is if you can be a minister when you're 10? (Re: Teddy Pendergrass, in an interview with "Dr" Jeremiah Cummings)

- Why isn't the Virgin Birth mentioned in 2 out of the 4 gospels?

And of course the matter of evolution did turn up, together with a quick tour of Ken Ham's Creation Museum. With a model of Protoceratops, with a saddle and a diorama featuring Velociraptors and Brontosauri frolicking with Mowgli-esque children. Lovely. Keep an eye out for the anti-Zionist Orthodox Jew (wtf??). Crazy as a sack of rats...

I think I'm being fair in saying that Maher does not paint these people as fools but simply asks honest, important questions and then leaves these people to show us how profoundly stupid they are. One's a US senator, mind you. And of course, he's got to be funny, he's a comedian, it's what he does. So the whole movie is peppered with cute little clips here and there to grab a couple of laughs and drive a point home.

There was nothing new in Religulous for anyone who has read any works by the 4 Horsemen. No interesting new refutations, no rebuttals to the usual Creationist silliness, no serious dissection of theology or anything of the sort. What Religulous does is highlight the absurdity the religion leads to and the dangers of allowing it to permeate through so much of our* society. A US SENATOR, for crying out loud! And he's a Democrat!

Maher concludes the movie with a brief statement that could be summarized as follows: The only sensible position towards the big questions is militant agnosticism - I don't know, and you don't either**. Theism is simply delusional and dangerous. And though he doesn't explicitly say so, he does lean towards the empiricist stance, i.e. evidence first.

So, while Religulous didn't really have anything to directly offer grumpy atheists like me apart from a couple of good laughs, it did have me thinking about the atheist's struggle, that is, the matter of actually communicating the message. Our foundation is reason. The theist's foundation is faith. In my dealings with theists whom I know personally, there is a yawning void in their minds where reason goes in and... nothing happens. You'll get back blank stares and empty platitudes, sometimes anger, mostly denial. They are ignorant and they LOVE IT. They take tremendous pride in proclaiming their unwavering, whole-hearted belief in something for which there is no evidence whatsoever. In fact, the less evidence there is, the purer their faith.

How does one combat this? If you were to present evidence that undermined, say, Newton's Laws of Motion, and the evidence held up under scientific scrutiny, then GREAT! Bye-bye Newton, hello special relativity. Our perception of the world changes, and we're stronger for it.

But when you subject religion to the same kind of intellectual rigour required of any of the sciences, it all falls apart spectacularly. And the believer takes such pride in ignoring this. How does one have a rational conversation with such people? How does one help these people to free their minds? What works, exactly?

We know from bitter experience that Reason is spurned as heresy. Is Maher's approach any more efficacious? I would suspect that pointing out the absurdity of religion would simply make theists withdraw further into their shell. And, naturally, they love to portray themselves as victims. "Stop oppressing me for my beliefs!", they cry, to which the exasperated atheist throws up his hands and says "Why should I? Your beliefs are pretty fucking stupid and detrimental to the well-being of our species and look, here's why..." And here's the bit where the believer sticks his fingers in his ears and retorts, "Ican'thearyoulalalalalala!"

It just wears me down a bit, logging in to Facebook and seeing, oh, some couple I barely know (yes, I sometimes add people I don't know just for Mob Wars, too) all happy-happy joy-joy over baptising their baby, the poor little sot. Or some otherwise sensible, working adult, happily proclaiming she's just been inducted into the Catholic faith. *facepalm*

Sometimes, it really feels like building a sandcastle with a pair of tweezers and hearing the tide rolling in. It's a very ugly piece of math - the cancer of religion spreads quickly, and the cure is reason, but it is slow, and sometimes doesn't work at all. Ain't hard to see where this leads.

But, fuck it. If there's one irrationality I will allow myself to draw from the tenets of Bushido and watching way, way too many Akira Kurosawa movies, it is this: Though the battle appears to be lost, I will stand firm. I will speak and write and reason against the taint wherever I can, because in this instance, endeavour is its own reward. And sod knows, there's few enough of us as it is...

P.S. :- 10-q, daemun, for your feedback. Will try to get back to it at some point. And you're a bit wrong about Malaysia leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. It has, in fact, nigh killed my tastebuds outright, such is the horror of seeing past the bullshit and into the truth of the festering, pus-filled, gangrenous wound on this Earth that is Malaysia. But hey, it could be worse... *nods in direction of violent neighbours to the north* Come see the pretty beaches and jungles while they last!

* And by "our" I mean humans as a whole.

** An interesting take on militant agnosticism can be found in Buck Godot, where the Slag-Blah priests, rather than not believing in anything, opt to believe in everything, with each religion gaining absolute dominance for one day each year, meaning that a Slag-Blah year is 7,823 days long.

Short and sharp

I don't think I'm mistaken in saying that the greatest challenge to the empiricist today is getting through to the people who've never really paid any attention to the way scientific progress is made. And, of course, one of the first, biggest hurdles to get past is the great lie that is religion. Here's a brief argument against the Abrahamic god that popped into my head last night, while I was in that place between sleep and consciousness, no thanks to my cats' insistence on playing tag under my blanket.

Take the Israel-Palestine conflict. You'll be hard pressed to find believers more devoted than the ones you find killing each other over there. Now let's assume God exists. Don't you think by now he'd have said something? Perhaps a little "Hi! Actually, you're both worshipping the same guy - Me! So kindly stop killing each other and play nice, ok?" How many prayers do you suppose are going unanswered over there, hmm? I mean, he wasn't exactly shy with the miracles in the Bible, was he? You say he's all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful, but somehow, something doesn't quite fit. Epicurus phrased it very well:

God is all-powerful.
God is perfectly good.
Evil exists.
If God exists, there would be no evil.
Therefore God does not exist.
-- Epicurus

Though in the interests of keeping an open mind, I think it's only fair to include the possibility that God exists, but does not know of the foolishness that occurs in His name (so all-knowing is out) or He simply does not care (so all-loving is out). If we discarded the "perfectly good" clause, then that could go some way towards explaining the present state of the Middle East: He LIKES people killing each other in His name! But, of course, this raises the question of who on Earth would be stupid enough to go about bowing and praying to a nasty little sod like that.

Hence, the stance of the atheist:

Either a theist God does not exist or he does not give a shit.

And if you keep your eyes open and pay some attention when you look at our world, you will find the atheists are right: God is a fiction, concocted to play security blanket because ignorance is kinda scary and people too dumb to think for themselves needed to fill the vast empty gulfs in their knowledge with something nice and comforting. One thing led to another, and here we are now, with huge chunks of humanity still trying to talk to imaginary friends.

Bugger. I read that again and it came out a little harsher than I'd intended. So much for being gentle...

Spectrum of Desire, and a pinch of memes

I came across the title phrase in We Think, Therefore We Are, a fun little collection of AI-related sci fi. In the story in which it was mentioned, we have a tale of a future in which huge trucks haul their loads across continent-spanning highways, driven, of course, by AI. An interesting feature of said AI is that they're supposed to have free will, which is held in check by their spectrum of desire.

The AIs love the open road. Nothing makes them happier than to haul cargo from one place to another. They feel duty-bound to protect human life to the best of their abilities. They follow a Highway Code, which is much like Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, adapted for use by robots whose sole purpose is to haul cargo on huge roads. These AIs are so advanced, they need to have other robots designed to handle their neuroses. Here's a few words from the robopsychologist:

"You have free will, just as humans do. In matters of moral decision, you have the option of not doing the right thing. That's a fundamental corollary of self-awareness. If the programmers could make it absolutely compulsory for you to obey the Highway Code, they would, but they'd have to make you into an automaton - and we know from long and bitter experience that the open road is no place from automata incapable of caring whether they crash or not. In order for free will to operate at all, it has to be contextualized by a spectrum of of desire; in that respect, robots, like humans, don't have very much option at all. What makes us so much better than humans, in a moral sense, is not that we can't disobey the fundamental structures of our programming - the Highway Code, in your case - but that we never want to."

This struck me as odd. Does this state of affairs not simply make the truck AIs automata anyway? Slaves to their desires? Those desires were put in their programming as surely as any other line of code, were they not? And what about us? Are we not automata, too, programmed by our own spectrum of desire?

In our physical forms, we find the raw materials of our dreams - pain, pleasure, lust, hunger... These desires were put there - selected for - by the needs of savannah-dwelling primates. These raw materials, forged by genetic evolution, are given their present, more refined shapes by our cultural evolution - art and avarice, I suppose, but do bear with me, I'm largely writing off the top of my head here.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before somewhere on this blog, but it's worth reiterating that the key to wrapping one's head round evolution, especially in humans, is timescale. The worthiness of traits determined by genes is decided over the lifetimes of organisms, but the worthiness of ideas is decided, by comparison, in the blink of an eye. Fads come and go, knowledge builds upon knowledge, histories are written and rewritten, thinkers think, doers do - and our bodies, our scruffy, hairy, frail bodies, not really very good for anything, other than walking on two legs and some manual dexterity, have barely changed at all. With our bodies alone, we are next to nothing. An insignificant blob of biomass, prone to engaging in much inter and intra-species violence. But paired with the Leviathan that is our culture and science, the fate of this 3rd (rather wet) rock from the sun is in our hands.

130,000 years. That's what it took for us to get from poking stuff with sticks to quantum physics. To a floor trader, it's simply an inconcievable span of time. To an accountant, it's enough working papers to smother a continent. To a historian, that's all of recorded history and a fair bit more. To an evolutionary biologist, a chapter in a lenghty book. To a geologist, a comma in the story of Earth. To a cosmologist, it is nothing, nothing at all.

I once met someone who called himself an atheist, yet didn't believe in evolution. Perhaps he thought he was being prudent by occupying a middle ground between the Creation Vs Evolution "debate". I will state here, flatly and honestly, that no, that is NOT a middle ground. That's not even in the same ball park. That is somewhere way out in the parking lot of Ignorance. But don't worry, ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of, as long as you don't try to delude yourself into thinking it's a good thing.

Anyway, the reason for his doubt lay in a common Creotard question: "How come intelligence only evolved in humans?" Fair enough, but this was followed shortly by another popular Creotard statement: "When I see chimpanzees evolve human intelligence, then I'll believe in evolution." I try very hard to keep a clear head at all times, but, faced with a statement of such mind-numbing stupidity, pronounced in the flesh with such an air of smugness that I've only ever seen summoned forth by the most wilfully ignorant of televangelists*, I could not maintain sufficient composure to answer his question, but stood agog at this epic failure of reason.

So, I'll answer it here, and I'll try to keep it simple. It takes a truly staggering coincidence for 2 completely separate, genetically incompatible (i.e. can't make half-breed kids together) species to stumble on the same trait at more or less the same time. In this case, the key trait is a neurological one - the ability to copy behaviour. This is the cornerstone of what, genetically, gives us our supremacy. With the arrival of this little tweak, along with the right confluence of hardware to use it, our ancestors now had access to the world of memetic evolution, i.e. culture, which would accelerate our evolution to a ludicrous pace, not unlike giving someone running in a footrace a Harley halfway through. Neanderthals came close, but alas, they simply weren't as advanced, and were wiped out. Similarly, if you gave someone else a Harley in said footrace, even 10 seconds later after the first, the 2nd guy is simply not going to catch up. Humans being humans, we can barely tolerate living with each other, let alone another species exhibiting similar intelligence, and thus posing a possible threat. Tracing the fossil record we observe a sudden acceleration in brain size increasing in our ancestors, a clear indication that something was exerting some sort of evolutionary pressure to select for greater brain power. This pressure, from memetic evolution**, pushed our genetic evolution in our current direction to where we are today, a physically unimpressive primate with a mental capacity completely disproportionate to our bodies, as compared with other animals.

Now, it took just over 3 million years to get from Lucy to us. And our self-professed doubting atheist is waiting for a chimp to spontaneously develop intelligence in his lifetime. So now you know the sheer magnitude of how stupid such expectations are.

Anyway, I'm done here for now. If there's anyone out there who's managed to read up to this point, do tell if I'm missing something in my brief explanation of meme-augmented evolution in early humans. I've got to chase my nephew away from the cat food...

* Or, if you frequent Youtube, VenomfangX, who is clearly living proof that modern man is obviously descended from some sort of primitive ancestor.

** Covered in detail in Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine.

Ramblings of a White Witch sympathizer

I never liked C S Lewis. I think his books are rubbish, especially Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. While I will freely concede that he is indeed a skilled writer with a talent for creating immersive fantasy worlds you can lose yourself in for a few hours, I am not in the slightest bit impressed with his sense of narrative structure, and found the whole business of "have faith, and the Lion will come and save everybody on a minor technicality which was conveniently overlooked by an apparently inept (though rather hawt in the movie) nemesis" sorely lacking in storytelling skillz. I don't know about you, but I find something deeply unsatisfying about an epic struggle between good and evil where victory is won against all odds by the better rules lawyer, bolstered by a dose of that most convenient of all deus ex machina devices, magic.

Another thing really ticks me off about C S Lewis - his role as Christian apologist. At the age of 30, he gave up on rational thought and turned from atheism to the Church of England and has been a favourite poster boy ever since. I attended the Alpha Course while in university to satisfy my curiousity re: Christianity. It's very telling of the intellectual bankruptcy of Christianity if the best they can do is shove C S Lewis' lack of resolve in my face. Even more so if the best argument he could come up with is the argument from morality.

I had just gotten acquainted with C S Lewis' Universal Morality last night, over a pint in the pub (which, as we know, is the only real way to discuss philosophy) which appeared to me to be trying bang a fifth wheel onto a car. For those who don't know about it, Lewis basically argues that the apparent manifestation of certain "universal" moral traits suggests that a higher being is behind the creation of said traits. In his own words:

These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

Oh, the pomposity... The moment this argument was laid out to me, I was led to doubt. Call me a cynic, but I catch a whiff of bullshit anytime anyone talks about a "Law of Nature" from anything other than the standpoint of mathematics and/or the physical sciences. For the sake of my being able to keep my lunch down, we'll stop abusing the phrase "Law of Nature" in this childish manner and stick to calling it by it's appropriately fanciful name, universal morality.

Now, there's any number of ways to rip this silly idea to shreds*, I went with Occam's Razor, looking at the development of our social norms from the evolutionary standpoint to show that there's simply no need for the concept of a universal morality to create the illusion of it's existence.

Think of these social norms, these unwritten rules of behaviour, as memes. Just like genes, what it takes for memes to survive and prosper, the three magic words, fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Does it not follow that, of the possible rules and rituals for a society to live by, there is a small subset of rules that serve to help said society survive and prosper? Other rules don't do so well or simply do not really serve the greater good of the societies in which they are practiced, e.g. Female circumcision, polygamy/polyandry**, use of phallocarps***, ferret legging, etc. As such, such practices, though they still exist, are viewed as bizarre or downright wrong by the rest of us, who haven't been held back wasting time and resources on them.

As history takes it's course, we find that, of the original set of societies, each with their own sets of memes governing behaviour, some will rise, some will fall, and a few will prosper. Those that prosper will have the memes accepted as "right" by the largest number of people - the utilitarian ideal given form by the forces of evolution by natural selection. The unquestioning masses living by these memes will have their sense of morality defined by these memes. Many individuals will become those gormless conservatives who will tell you that certain things are morally wrong "because it's just wrong". Be that as it may, we see here that what we take for granted as right or wrong are simply illusions. What is real is that what we call right or wrong are simply the right mix of memes governing behaviour that allow a society to be stable enough to survive and prosper. And at no point is it ever necessary for a sky fairy to plant such notions, i.e. universal morality, into our heads.

Consider the anthropic principle. Take a dozen men, have them each pray to their own deities, then shoot them all in the heads with a dozen guns but only eleven bullets. Somebody's going to feel he was obviously praying to the right god, but the fact of the matter is that the praying had sodall to do with his survival. In the same way, the notion of a universal morality, while cute and , in a way, appealing to simple-minded, insecure people who fear the cold touch of existential angst, is a completely unnecessary fiction.

Now, the brevity of my argument here is owed to the assumption that whoever reads it has some measure of understanding of the mechanism of evolution by natural selection and, of course, a little about memes. Alas, the bloke I was discussing this with last night, does not. So meh. This is just me recording my thoughts on the matter for my own benefit, because I'm rather pleased that I managed to come up with this on a gut full of awesome Thai food, Carlsberg and Hoegaarden. So much for getting my chubby arse back under 82kg.... :-(

Addendum: I just read that again and realised I'm being a bit harsh to Mr Lewis. Public understanding of evolutionary biology has made leaps and bounds (well, except among Republicans, of course) since C S Lewis' time, and his position, while still wrong, is based upon an ignorance of matters scientific quite typical of the period. The point still stands, though, so I'm not bothering with editing the above post more I already have.

* Here's a nice one that Google popped up pretty quick.

** Not really a good idea with a species equipped with all the biological hardware to produce males and females in more or less even numbers.

*** Go on, Google it. You know you want to.

Travels on the Net

I often tell people I mostly live on the Net, and sometimes they ask what on earth is it I do there*. So here, I'm-a bring you a wee slice of what I wolf down each day:

Chun Li cures melanoma! I kid. The researcher's name is known by civilized people (that is, those who actually know where a Chinese surname is supposed to go) as Li Chun. What actually caught my eye was the bit about using targeted nanoparticles, which is always exciting.

Bill Gates unleashes mosquito swarm into crowd! Hokay, perhaps an exaggeration. It was a wee jar. And they were clean, i.e. no interesting diseases on them. I'm sorry, I'm Malaysian, skeetoes are a fact of life round here, I snap 'em out of the air with chopsticks and, as such, am not impressed in the slightest by such a gesture. Still, props to the guy for chucking USD169 million towards a good cause. Epic win.

Try my kung fu! I've been teaching myself how to use sai off Youtube, mostly from this chap here. Yep, I know, it's not even vaguely the same as learning from the dojo but exercise is exercise. I'm not going to pretend for even a moment that I'm a capable combatant with sai, but hey, I find performing the kata relaxing, and a good workout. Each of those things weigh about as much as my heaviest bokken so this is proving most useful for building up the strength and stamina I need for my eventual return to kendo. If you like the look of sai, do check this out for supreme sai l33tness. I personally like it better in hakama. As for self defense, you want self defense? Here's your self-defense.

Don't try his kung fu! In the search for nice kata to copy and practice, one also finds a fair number of deviants. And by deviants I mean facepalmingly pretentious little goits who take a perfectly decent martial art, stick in some cute but utterly meaningless flourishes and then try to sell it as a martial art. Like Ultimate Fail over here. However, there's something to be said for guys who actually do have the mad skills and decide to break the mold to take a martial art and make a performing art out of it. The results are kinda pretty, actually.

Happy birthday to Darwin... but fuck the Associated Press for having the gall to suggest that evolution is "in controversy" anywhere other than in the deluded little minds of Creotards.

Malaysian politics = epic fail! In case you didn't know already. On 8 March 2008, the Opposition finally made it's voice known, breaking the ruling party's 2/3 majority in the Dewan Rakyat. w00t. Still, I'll say that I presently feel more than a bit vindicated for not voting. Why? Because democracy in this country (indeed in many countries) is a fucking joke, the simple reason being that democracy being what it is, it serves the utilitarian ideal of maximum happiness for the maximum number of people if and only if the voting populace is reasonably enlightened and well informed enough to choose in favour of what serves the greater good. If, however, the greater bulk of the voting populace are selfish, petty and gullible** then democracy simply becomes shorthand for tyranny of the masses, with power going to the best salesman. In Malaysia, democracy means trying to choose between the least of all evils. Thanks to Malaysian politics, our newspapers are borderline worthless rags, fit only to wrap up the morning's nasi lemak. So, where to go for decent news?

Malaysia Today is pretty much as good as it gets, really. RPK's for the most part neutral, unbiased and has a sense of justice which I mostly agree with. The only point of contention in which I seriously oppose RPK is his stance as a Muslim apologist. Most of my regular readers (all three of them) know by now that, like many who bear the 'A' on their blogs, I view all the Abrahamic religions as a cancer that needs to be eradicated. Of course, one could do worse than to look to a decent historian for political commentary. My uncles inform me that the political blogs also make for good reading. I'm not convinced. Some of those bloggers might do well to act their age for a bit.

Whatever the case may be, recent events have shown that the 8 March victory has achieved nothing other than to take the mudslinging to new depths. Meanwhile, over at the KLSE...


Oh, yes, I do indeed think that certain people have better things to do than fuck about over who gets to wear the big hat in the state next door. Petty little bastards.

And when it all gets too much, one would do well to remember that, no matter how dire things look, no matter how much this world gets you down, there exist a good number of reasons to smile and hope. Here's one:



And that's it from me for now. That cat's starting to harass the Roomba again...

* And by there I mean here. Um.

** e.g. Republicans, anyone who takes the Star's political commentary seriously and 90% of those who commented on this article posted in Malaysia Today, among others. To their credit, at least Republicans for the most part have the decency to stfu and deal with it until the next election.

Erections aren't that scary, really

That's what the local Islamist party, PAS, ought to realize one of these days, anyway. Seems the scripture crazed muppets are at it again, this time trying to ban Rihanna's concert, scheduled for 13 Feb. Their arguments against her performing summarized below:

- "...akin to insulting eastern culture, belittling local artistes, intentionally causing losses to the country's economy and supporting Israel's war policy, which is supported by America."

- "... unsuitable because she often performed suggestively and wore skimpy, sexy outfits."

- "Whether Rihanna realizes it or not, we know that the taxes she paid also contributed to the war in Gaza."

Wait, wha...?

Happily enough, Malaysia is still very much free from the truly batshit insane breed of worshipper. Seems the local nutters are quite happy to satisfy themselves trying to jiahd against their hormones. Unfortunately, serious, intellectually valid criticism of Islam at its most fundamental level is still haram round these here parts, so I'm going to leave it to those courageous people with the mad skillz to raise valid points against them and manage not to get killed for their opinions. Here's Pat Condell, giving his tuppence:



Do bear in mind that Comrade Condell lives in the same country as these fine specimens, so I daresay his position is very much justified indeed.

Faith vs Modern Medicine: More epic fail from the Bible Belt

Back when I visited RDF more regularly, I recall catching glimpses of stories like this one every so often. And then suddenly I don't feel quite so bad about giving harsh advice against prayer (see two posts down).

I did take a peep at the helptheneumanns site, and truth be told, I did find it quite useful, that is, it points out all the bits of Wisconsin law that support the Neumanns' actions in choosing prayer over medicine and hence are in obvious need of amendment. Among other things, it also had links to press releases from the Neumanns' delusion dispensers of choice, Unleavened Bread Ministries. They begin with:

"We at UBM would like to clear up some misconceptions from what we know, which is little."

Well, at least they're honest about one thing. However, I didn't think having this plastered across the top of their page did much for their credibility:

This kind of silliness should be very familiar among those of you keeping an eye on the culture war. For the benefit of those who aren't, this is a common strategy among religious institutions to maintain their hold on the flock: Fearmongering.

In the ancient art of demagoguery, the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the preacher man is fear. That's what Hell was created for. Of course, Heaven and Hell are light years away, that is, on the other side of life and death. So, the preacher man has to come up with other boogiemen to keep the sheeple fearful: The End of Days, demons, witches, foreigners, abortion, contraception, other religions, the lack of religion, video games, the internet, science, Richard Dawkins... With skill, a preacher can set up boogiemen in so many places that his flock's worldview gets narrower and narrower until the preacher becomes the sole beacon of truth in their hapless little lives.

Take a look at this quote from another luckless victim of faith-induced glaucoma:

"... we knew that once we went to the doctor, we'd be cut off from God."

That's from a former Christian Scientist whose 16 month old son expired after she'd postponed taking the poor lad to the hospital a wee bit too long.

Anyway, the rest of the UBM site was a silly mess of scripture-quoting, infantile platitudes and saccharine testimonials. I, and no doubt many atheists, are very much immune to such tripe, but I really wonder sometimes, how utterly warped does a mind have to be to actually take such silliness seriously? How can those who stand on the side of reason reach out to the poor sots whose idea of truth is "the [insert scripture of choice here] says so, so it must be true?" Anyone who has tried to explain evolution to a fundie will have felt the same exasperation I've felt so many times before. Have they truly fallen so far? Are they really below our reach? Well, this atheist won't stop trying.

Where do I stand on the Neumanns? Frankly, I most certainly do think they deserve to be punished for the manslaughter of their child. However, I do think 25 years each seems a bit much. Who do you really suppose is at fault here? The sheep or the shepherd? I think this David Eells joker has a LOT to answer for.

I need...

... to learn how to exercise more self-control. I really do.

An Insult to Reason: Creationists

I've been away from the blog for a while, largely due to the acquisition of a pair of sai (or zai, to be precise) which I've been obsessing over and training with until my arms turned to jelly, rendering me incapable of actually typing at a keyboard for prolonged periods of time. Having recovered the use of my arms, I came across two little things that renewed my interest in the reason I bear the atheist 'A' upon my blog, the first is this video:



Please bear with comrade Thunderf00t's apparent tone of exasperated superciliousness - this is the 27th video in the series and, as this video shows (and I've pointed out somewhere on this blog before) there's no logical limit to the amount of comforting fiction a true religious bigot will fabricate in order to justify his beliefs.

The second is this essay at Talk.Origins which dealt with the exceedingly common Creationist claim: "Evolution is just a theory, so it's not necessarily true."

Now, it was on encountering these two little things that I was harshly reminded of the sheer mind-numbing obscenity of the Creationist stance. No, I really don't think I'm exaggerating here and here's why.

There is, quite literally, more evidence in favour of evolution than one can shake a stick at. There is more documentation on it than you'd find in an audit firm (accountants out there will nod sadly and knowingly at the forests that have died for their profession), fossil evidence to fill natural history museums across continents, it is manifest in every aspect of life from behaviourial science to bacteriological warfare. It is the mighty bastion upon which our understanding of life on earth has come to be based on, yet it is so very fragile, for all it takes is for one little piece of fossil evidence to turn up in the wrong place and time, one aberration outside of the tree of life to send it all crashing down and have biologists scratching their heads for years to come. As yet, that has not happened nor is there any reason to believe it will any time soon.

Evolution IS. Like Mt Everest, it IS. But just as we can know that Mt Everest is, yet not quite know the precise location of every nook and cranny or the number of snowflakes adorning it, there are of course unexplored realms to evolution that are yet to be revealed, minute details that need fleshing out, but the overarching theory holds fast: That living organisms can and will evolve over time, changing minutely to better suit their environments, with the overall effect over many, many generations turning out descendants radically different from the ancestors.

Yet, in the face of these simple truths, the Creationist chooses to reject the physical evidence! The egotism of their God, which really is a proxy for their own egotism, simply doesn't allow the possibility that life could exist without divine intervention. In the sciences, you do get die-hard radicals who defy the prevailing theory and set off on their own path, and as long as their search is ,voluntarily or not, empirically honest and strikes close to the truth, a new truth will reveal itself, and science is stronger for it.

I understand that in France, there is a certain turn of phrase to describe something difficult to digest which translates: "So hard they could choke a Christian." In defense of a fictitious entity, they will do anything, believe anything. The oppurtunistic will churn out any amount of drivel for their flock to swallow, and the flock remain, grunting and and pawing about in the abyssmal darkness of their chosen ignorance, shying away from the light of reason like dwellers in deep caverns who have never seen the sun.

This is the darker half of modern religion. Behind the facade of faith, hope and charity is a world of empty promises, false hopes, exclusivism and wilfully perpetuated ignorance. If you're a believer in human dignity* one may well be inclined to ask why we continue to tolerate this absurd state of affairs any longer.

But, this is not about dignity, it's about the cancer afflicting untold millions of human minds that should know better. It about their delusions impeding scientific progress. It is their flawed logic that leads to a greater number of inferior decisions. It is their blind adoration for a fairy tale wasting insane amounts of time and money better spent on eradicating poverty or researching green technologies.

And it is on this front, this so-called Evolution vs Creation "debate" that the truly delusional make themselves known. Here, clear as day, we see the ridiculous affront to reason that is religion. I for one am offended by the continued existence of religion, especially the Abrahamic ones, and you should be, too.

By the way, note I choose "Creationists" as opposed to "Creationism" in my title. This is because Creationism is simply an idea, a fiction, like unicorns, Optimus Prime or Harry Potter. Fantasies are of great entertainment value. It's the Creationists, those who deny evolution and put forth silly fantasies as truth that are the true insults to human reason.

* I'm not sure I am, actually. Almost all of us came into this world getting pushed screaming out of a punani so I don't quite see what there is to be all dignified about.

Rays of hope! Huzzah!

Just heard about this from Pharyngula. Frankly, I think it's absolutely awesome, and I fervently hope something like it can be pulled off in the US Bible Belt, or even here, in Malaysia. Go infidels!

On a vaguely related note, I just witnessed Rule 34 on Richard Dawkins in South Park.


I know, I'm a bit late, but verily, I am scarred. What did Dawkins have to say?

"I wouldn’t have minded so much if only it had been in the service of some serious point, but if there was a serious point in there I couldn’t discern it. And then there’s the matter of the accent they gave me. Now, if only I could be offered a cameo role in The Simpsons, I could show that actor how to do a real British accent."

Honestly, I think South Park does, at times, raise serious points and it certainly did in this episode. That having been said, I'm doubt the good Prof Dawkins is accustomed to seeing the joys of science and reason being packaged together with the likes of, say, Mrs/Mr Garrison...

The Atheist's work is never done

Here's a question I saw on Yahoo! Answers:

Do people and their pets reincarnate together into different lives?

Just thought of this lol do you think like, with people and their pets, that in every or some lives they reincarnate together. Like a person has a dog, is the person and the dog likely to meet eachother again somehow in the next life?

Of course, I felt obliged to give my most diplomatic, not-at-all-contemptuous retort:

As an atheist, I'd think it wiser to go on the assumption that there is no afterlife. Make the most of this life, chill out, be groovy, live well. When death eventually comes, you or your dog won't be in a position to object.

So, yeah, 2 points for me. I peeped at it a while later to find another answer:

Yes, this absolutely is the case, people ALWAYS reincarnate with their pets. However what generally tends to happen is that because of the karmic relationship between the person and his or her pets, the roles are almost always reversed in the next life. So your pet will become your owner, and you will become the pet - or, depending on how poorly you treated your pet, you may instead end up being reincarnated as the feeder animal that gets fed to your previous-life pet's new pet - who, in all likelihood will be the reincarnation of one of your other previous-life pets or a smaller animal that you fed to them (as in the case of a feeder mouse, cricket, or feeder goldfish). Hope this clears things up for you!

Patrick Stewart, help me out here...

Infidel Xmas

Heisei banzai! Well, it was Emperor Akihito's birthday yesterday... And so we come once again to the birthday of the man with the mullet himself, Jesus H Christ, who shares, among other things, his birthday with Mithra.

Look, tell you what, I'll skip out on the dissection of the life and times of the zombie king for now. There's plenty of that all over the net, and I'm in no mood to vent atheist's frustration* right now, because my kittens are happily dozing together not 2 meters from me. Good vibes, right there.

So, what's a heathen devil like me (and no doubt many others) to celebrate at a time like this? What have I to look forward to at a time like this, I, who simply am not convinced of the existence of a theistic God, for whom this day is of no greater significance than, say, Thor's birthday?

Plenty, I suppose. This time of year, perhaps more than any other, is a point in the year where everyone, regardless of race, colour or creed, are that little bit more likely to be nice to each other. I concede that this little spurt of altruism is, indeed, inspired by the God delusion, but it's my own, perhaps overly optimistic little hope, that every year, perhaps one or two more people will realise that all humans are in the game of life together, and we don't need a date of religious significance to simply be nice to each other.

Xmas, for some reason, always makes me think of the famous Christmas Truce, in which German and British troops in the trench-hells of the First World War unofficially decided on a cease-fire and just live-and-let-live for a bit. For a brief few days, soldiers, young men with orders from some unfathomable political force to kill one another, on two sides of a fool's war, ceased to be soldiers and were just people again - people in a tough spot trying to help each other to get by. In a crucible of blood, bullets and barbed-wire, the imaginary lines dividing men were melted away to give birth to the collective realization:

It doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to kill each other.

Such an epiphany is sorely needed in many parts of the world today.

So, while I don't celebrate the birthday of Jesus/Mithra, what I do celebrate is one more excuse for people to be nice to each other. One more justification to reach out to the other side, not to strike them down, nor to turn them from their beliefs, nor to take what is their right, but to just simply be together and not fight, just for a while, and realize the true enemies are not the people under a different flag or even worshipping a different god. The true enemies are found in the delusions that make people divide the world into Us and Them.

* Atheist's frustration = the exasperation felt by atheists and secular humanists everywhere at the continued existence of religiously inspired absurdity.

When Money is the New God...

... and the new God ain't working, it's time to scurry back to old Gods. That's the impression I got from this IHT article. I can't quite recall who it was who said the real measure of a man makes itself known in times of adversity, or words to that effect, only wittier and catchier. Evidently the credit crunch has revealed a great many people for the spineless, money-grubbing, irresponsible little weeds that they are.

Despite my best efforts, many acquaintances of mine maintain a terribly naive view of human nature, resolutely believing that humans are, in their heart of hearts, strong and good and kind and similar saccharine tripe courtesy of Chicken Soup for the Gullible Soul. Take a good look now. Like a toddler who's tripped and fallen, these people run crying for the security blanket of an imaginary friend, finding shallow solace* for shallow minds in the empty promises of the master conmen who dress themselves up with titles like "reverend", "pastor" and "father".

It is tempting to simply pour scorn on these poor fools blindly chasing their childish delusion and leave it at that, sparing them no more thought than one would the expiry of another Happy Tree Friend. I for one take this as a clear indication that those who would speak in defense of science and reason are not doing enough, though for the life of me, I know not what more we can do. There's nothing quite as exasperating as the combination of wilful ignorance, smugness and in certain cases (Dinesh D'Souza and Deepak Chopra come to mind) small-minded spite that one encounters in trying to reason with died-in-the-wool theists.

But, heathen comrades, keep your chin up and do not despair! We, the infidels of the world have truth on our side and empirically verifiable evidence to back it up, which is infinitely more than the delusional hordes can or ever will offer. The Age of Reason will come, but it won't just turn up by itself, like certain poor fools are wont to believe about their "messiahs". It will take work, perseverance and the patience of mountains. And when patience runs out, then at the very least some creative stress relief in between.

So, for your consideration here's Chris Cocker, of "Leave Britney alone!" fame for you to annihilate at your leisure with a blender. And a gerbil, just in case.

By the way, if you haven't already, do watch Bill Maher's Religulous. Maher does strike me as a bit smarmy at times, but it's good to see religion put in it's proper place, i.e. a collection of silly old myths for sane people to look back and laugh at. To the atheist, this movie is a light-hearted reminder of what the conflict between faith and reason is about. To the agnostic, it is a wake-up call. To the theist, a mirror and a well-deserved smack in the face, that is, if a theist has the stones to actually watch it. Go see!

* Just had to mention: I just watched Quantum of Solace. Bond sans cool gadgets? Boo!

Just how true IS this?

From this week's edition of the lurvely, intelligent webcomic, Subnormality:

For the life of me, I can't remember where I found Subnormality, but I was hooked the day I saw this. For the benefit of those of you blissfully unaware of the culture war, the Horsemen are:

Science = Richard Dawkins
Progress = Daniel Dennett
Reason = Sam Harris
Equality = Christopher Hitchens

Every one of them leading authors of books speaking out against religion. I recommend Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation for newbies.