eChurch Blog

Excellent analysis as usual from Professor Barry Rubin, don’t forget to hop over to his blog and sign up for updates:-

One of the most perplexing paradoxes of the media is the battle of facts versus context. We want the media to be as objective as possible—“Just the facts, ma’am,” as police sergeant Joe Friday famously said on the Dragnet American television series of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet on the other hand we want some reasonable degree of context without which the “facts” are not only confusing but misleading.

Nowadays the problem is much more with the “context” than with the “facts.” Newspaper articles, and even more television news, are full of what is called “analysis,” which means the reporter’s own opinion. Since almost all the journalists seem to think along pretty similar lines this intensifies the problem.

And on top of that still another contemporary problem is the self-censorship of the journalists since they want to direct your thinking toward things they believe to be “good” and away from what they consider to be “bad.”

Aside from personal bias is the desire to be perceived by others as holding the “proper” opinions combined with the fact that journalists know they will no longer be punished for crossing the line in slanting stories—no matter how outrageous they do it as long as they stop short of provable plagiarism. (I was going to add outright fabrication, too, but even that is almost always successful.)

While total objectivity is impossible to obtain, if there was such a thing as a scientific Objectivity Meter its level in the Western media would have been going steadily downward.

The fact that bias has now become conscious and deliberate makes matters far worse.

Two of the most common examples I’ve seen—and I’ve actually heard journalists and academics admit that they lied “in a good cause” here—are the following. First, deliberately understating the misdeeds and extremism of Iraq and later of Iran “so as not to give [George W.] Bush an excuse to attack them.” Second, they have deliberately understating the misdeeds and extremism of the Palestinian leadership or groups so as to “help” the cause of peace. I call this: the Lying for Peace movement.

Yet sometimes stories, too, cry out for more context. True, these two reporters should be praised for doing their job in presenting the facts plus a limited reasonably accurate context and balance. Still, the reader must learn how to do his or her own analysis. So I have selected two relatively banal pieces to illustrate this point.

Philadelphia Inquirer, October 25: “Palestinian elections scheduled” by Ben Hubbard, Associated Press:

“”Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday that his government would hold presidential and parliamentary elections on January 24, regardless of whether it reaches a power-sharing deal with the extremist group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.”

Really? On January 24 are we going to be watching the elections? Of course not. As long as the Palestinian Authority (PA) doesn’t control the Gaza Strip it will never hold elections. And the problem is that the way things are going it will never control the Gaza Strip which will remain in Hamas’s hands.

As an aside, it is truly amazing that the world seems set on consolidating Hamas’s control over that territory even though it is a Taliban-like, terrorist, and openly antisemitic regime whose policies will leads repeatedly to violence and block any hope of there being peace. Condemnations of Israel for defending itself, the appropriation of massive amounts of money for reconstruction, and other steps protect and preserve a regime which is up there with Libya and North Korea on the scale of repression.

“Hamas criticized the announcement, deepening the rift between the Islamic group and Abbas’ secular Fatah movement, which have led dueling governments in Gaza and the West Bank for the last two years.” Later the article does say: “Hamas seized by force in 2007.”

Well, actually Hamas seized power by violence. You will hear over and over again that they won the elections. They did, made a government coalition, and then seized total power, wiping out all opposition. Consequently, the regime in Gaza did not come to power by elections.

The article correctly states—and this is perhaps the context most needed—that this is “a vote that many see as unlikely to happen, given Hamas opposition.”

Then, too, the article notes:

“The latest round of Egyptian-brokered reconciliation talks fell apart…when Hamas refused to sign a reconciliation agreement after Fatah accepted it.”

So the burden for the failure is put on Hamas. Yet is this something in the Palestinian Authority’s favor? As I have often noted—and as the PA continually demonstrates—the PA is far more interested in making a deal with Hamas than with Israel, and it is impossible to have both.

The second article is “Jerusalem rocked by clashes: Israeli police fought Palestinian protesters near the Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City,” by Richard Boudreaux, October 26, originally appearing in the Los Angeles Times:

“Israeli police stormed the grounds of Al-Aqsa mosque yesterday, using clubs and stun grenades to subdue stone-throwing Palestinians in the worst clashes in a month of unrest in and around Jerusalem’s Old City.”

But then the article does, what happens so often, a false balance at the cost of misstating the facts by saying:

“The rioting…sprang from rising tensions stoked by Jewish and Islamic extremists that could keep Jerusalem and its contested holy sites on edge for weeks.”

In the history of the conflict—with its many riots in Jerusalem—there has never been one that has less to do with any Jewish action. The riots were called for by the PA’s ruling party, Fatah; Hamas, Hizb al-Tahrir, and the radical Islamic movement among Israeli Arabs. These statements were made publicly.

So what part did Jewish extremists play? Well, there was a group of French (not Israeli and probably not even Jewish) tourists who were taken on a tour of the Temple Mount. Radical groups spread the false story that these were Jewish extremists trying to pray there and this was used to trigger riots.

By the way, Fatah and the PA needed riots to “prove” their militant credentials after they committed the unforgivable sin, in the eyes of the radicals who dominate the Palestinian movement, of accepting President Barack Obama’s request to let others take the lead in pushing an anti-Israel report at the UN.

Oh, did I say that false rumors were spread by Fatah, Hamas, Hizb al-Tahrir, and the Islamic Movement? I should have added that false rumors are also being spread by the Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In fact, it endorses the following slanders:

“It is also expected to keep Israel on the defensive against international criticism like that registered yesterday by Egypt, Jordan, and the Arab League over what they called Israeli provocations at Islam’s third-holiest shrine.”

Well, sure Israel will be kept on the defensive if you join in the chorus of falsehoods.

Kindly, the article adds, “Israel denied starting yesterday’s trouble.” Since you have no facts whatsoever to the contrary you perhaps should attest to the accuracy of that denial.

Again, these are small routine articles, but they are just a small part of the daily waterboarding of Israel in all too much of the Western media in all too many stories.

It’s no wonder that people in the West don’t understand the Middle East very well.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

He’s a pretty savvy Pope this one…

(CNA).- Addressing the full Pontifical Council for Social Communications today, Benedict XVI urged its members to help communicate the teachings of the Church on the “digital continent” of the ever-changing technological landscape.

Reflecting on the role of social networking and increasingly real-time electronic communication, Pope Benedict XVI said on Thursday that “modern culture is established, even before its content, in the very fact of the existence of new forms of communication that use new languages; they use new technologies and create new psychological attitudes.”

“Effectively,” he continued, the advent of new technology “supposes a challenge for the Church, which is called to announce the Gospel to persons in the third millennium, maintaining its content unaltered but making it understandable.”

Quoting John Paul II’s encyclical “Redemptoris Missio” that affirms: “Involvement in the mass media, however, is not meant merely to strengthen the preaching of the Gospel. There is a deeper reality involved here: since the very evangelization of modern culture depends to a great extent on the influence of the media.”

“It is not enough to use the media simply to spread the Christian message and the Church’s authentic teaching. It is also necessary to integrate that message into the ‘new culture’ created by modern communications,” the Holy Father asserted.

Read Entire Article

It’s so  good to read of the courage of this man, who’s cartoons came to represent the struggle to maintain freedom of speech in the West, even in the face of the fact that Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet Mohammad.

It’s just a shame that Yale press were so cowardly:-

Why Did Yale Censor the Danish Cartoons?

Yale University Press has been accused of cowardice and self-censorship after deciding not to reproduce Danish cartoons of Mohammed in an academic book for fear of violent reprisals. The publisher also removed all other images of the Islamic prophet, including artwork illustrating historical depictions of Mohammed in Ottoman and Persian art.

We all have to suffer offence in this world and there will never be such a thing as a world free from offence, no matter how hard they try to legislate for ‘hate crimes’, it simply doesn’t work. We all have to be grown up about it, secure in our own identity and beliefs and get on with life frankly.

The Associated Press by Jan M. Olsen

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – A few pen strokes thrust Kurt Westergaard into the midst of an international crisis, exposing him to death threats and an alleged assassination plot.

Terror charges brought against two Chicago men this week show the 74-year-old Dane remains a potential target for extremists, four years after he drew a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

“I am an old man so I am not so afraid anymore,” Westergaard said Tuesday in an interview with Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published his drawing in September 2005 along with 11 other cartoons of Muhammad.

The drawings triggered an uproar a few months later when Danish and other Western embassies in several Muslim countries were torched by angry protesters who felt the cartoons had profoundly insulted Islam.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favourable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

Westergaard has said it took him 45 minutes to make the drawing, considered by many Muslims to be the most offensive of the 12 cartoons. He has rejected calls to apologize to Muslims, saying poking fun at religious symbols is protected by Denmark’s freedom of speech.

The drawing was meant to illustrate that extremists draw “spiritual ammunition from Islam,” but not criticize the religion as a whole, he told broadcaster DR in February 2008 after Danish police uncovered an alleged plot to kill him.

“I realize that when issues of religion are involved emotions run high, and all religions have their symbols, which possess great importance,” he said. “But when you live in a secularized society, it’s clear that religion can’t demand some sort of special status. … “I have a problem with the fact that we have people from another culture who don’t accept that we use religious elements in a drawing.”

The cartoon uproar forced Westergaard underground, living under the protection of Denmark’s intelligence agency, PET.

Read Entire Article

It’s good to see the Pope speaking on the Iranian / Christian issue. It is especially treacherous for Islamic converts to Christianity, just have a quick gander on this link to get an idea:-

Praise God – Washington Times Covers the story of the Iranian Christian Girls (Maryam Rostampour, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad, 30) Jailed for Converting to Christianity

Jerusalem Post

In comments to Iran’s new ambassador to the Holy See, Benedict also urged Teheran to improve the situation of all Christian minorities so they are better integrated into society.
Pope Benedict XVI urged Iranian authorities on Thursday to let Catholics have the priests and churches they need to freely practice their faith in the country.

Good to see the Pope mention “all Christian minorities” and not just mention Catholics.

The ambassador also complained to the pope about what he said was the increasing spread of “Islamophobia” in the West and boasted that Iran’s presidential elections – sharply criticized internationally – showed that it embraced the principles of democracy.

Forgive me for being brutal, but for the Iranian ambassador to bemoan the fact that the West doesn’t seem to respect their ‘democracy’, may be something to do with the fact that the election is widely believed to have been rigged and then dissenters ruthlessly brutalised.

As for Islamophobia? Well perhaps he will have a case, when Islamic nations offer the reciprocal freedoms to Christians, that is extended to Muslims in the West. But until that day….

Related Internet Link:-

In a meeting today with Iran’s new ambassador to the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI called on Iran to begin a new era of international cooperation and to guarantee religious freedom to Catholics in the country.

Pope urges Iran to boost religious freedom

Previous related post

New UN Report Pushes Gender as a Social Construct not Based in Nature

Nations Rap UN “Gender- as-Social-Construct” Rapporteur

By Piero A. Tozzi, J.D.

(NEW YORK – C-FAM)  A host of nations lined up this week to criticize a special report on “gender-based human rights abuses in counterterrorism measures” for pushing a notion of gender as a fluid social construct and advancing a United Nations (UN) “gay rights” document known as the Yogyakarta Principles rather than focusing on the assigned task of examining the abuse of women caught up in the global “war on terror.”

Dubbed an “interactive discussion” with UN Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin, criticism from the Organization of Islamic Countries and the African Group, delivered by Malaysia and Tanzania, respectively, rapped Scheinin for exceeding his mandate in violation of the Human Rights Council’s Code of Conduct. According to the African Group, Scheinin misused his position to advance the controversial Yogyakarta Principles, a statement purporting to “reflect the existing state of human rights law” concerning “sexual orientation and gender identity.” Scheinin was one of about thirty self-selected “experts” who crafted the Yogyakarta Principles in 2007.

In response, Scheinin defended his use of the Yogyakarta Principles as “fully legitimate,” calling it a “soft law” document that “enriches” ones understanding of binding human rights norms. One delegate, in remarks to the Friday Fax, discounted the “soft law” claim, pointing out that there is no international consensus on sexual orientation as a non-discrimination category and no binding legal obligation.

A statement by the Caribbean nation of Saint Lucia took Scheinin to task for departing from the agreed-upon definition of gender in the Beijing Platform for Action and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, both of which affirm the traditional understanding of the term. The United States (US) delegation, signaling continuity with Bush Administration policy, also supported the Beijing usage, while adding that the US was interested in the effect counterterrorism efforts had on the “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.” The Rome Statute defines gender as “the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society,” and the Beijing document affirms the “ordinary, generally accepted usage” of the term.

The Holy See restated that “gender is grounded in biological sexual identity, male or female,” and rejected “the notion that sexual identity can be adopted indefinitely.” India, which seldom speaks on such divisive social issues, faulted the Special Rapporteur for redefining “gender perspective,” and for taking the committee into an “academic” debate removed from his mandate.

Scheinin had his defenders as well, particularly among European nations and certain Latin American countries such as Uruguay and Chile. Norway expressed “full support” for the report and welcomed Scheinin’s elastic gender construct. Switzerland scolded those nations who attacked the special rapporteur because they did not agree with his submission, adding that they must comply with any subsequent resolutions based on his report.

One delegate critical of the “arrogance” of Scheinin and his European supporters summed up the exchange by saying “Basically, they are allowed to criticize us, but we are not allowed to criticize them. They are gods.”

Yet another attack on the institution of marriage from the liberal ‘elite’.

By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor – Telegraph

The Law Commission wants to end rules dating back more than 80 years and give most partners who do not marry the same rights as bereaved spouses.

The body admitted the proposal will be “controversial” but insisted current laws “reflect some of the social conditions and attitudes of a different era” and need to be in line with “modern families”.

But the plans will reignite concerns that the significance of traditional families is being weakened.

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The consultation suggests those who lived together for at least five years should have equal rights to those of a spouse while those who were together for between two and five years should receive half of what a spouse would.

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The document, Intestacy And Family Provision Claims On Death, said: “While some may find this idea controversial, research indicates that it would match public expectations and attitudes.”

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The proposals will fuel concerns that the importance of marriage is being undermined.

A report by Civitas, the think tank, warned in January that married couples are thousands of pounds worse off than parents who do not live together under the tax and benefits system.

And last year a senior high court judge said family life in Britain is in “meltdown” on an epidemic scale.

Mr Justice Coleridge said traditional family life no longer exists and attacked the large number of single mothers where fathers take no part in their children’s lives.

Read Entire Article

Ed West offers some good commentary as usual:-

Rich liberal judges push for inheritance rights for unmarried couples

Blog post from John Piper

How Willingly Do People Go to Hell? Does Anyone Standing by the Lake of Fire Jump In?

C.S. Lewis is one of the top 5 dead people who have shaped the way I see and respond to the world. But he is not a reliable guide on a number of important theological matters. Hell is one of them. His stress is relentlessly that people are not “sent” to hell but become their own hell. His emphasis is that we should think of “a bad man’s perdition not as a sentence imposed on him but as the mere fact of being what he is.” (For all the relevant quotes, see Martindale and Root, The Quotable Lewis, 288-295.)

This inclines him to say, “All that are in hell choose it.” And this leads some who follow Lewis in this emphasis to say things like, “All God does in the end with people is give them what they most want.”

I come from the words of Jesus to this way of talking and find myself in a different world of discourse and sentiment. I think it is misleading to say that hell is giving people what they most want. I’m not saying you can’t find a meaning for that statement that’s true, perhaps in Romans 1:24-28. I’m saying that it’s not a meaning that most people would give to it in light of what hell really is. I’m saying that the way Lewis deals with hell and the way Jesus deals with it are very different. And we would do well to follow Jesus.

The misery of hell will be so great that no one will want to be there. They will be weeping and gnashing their teeth (Matthew 8:12). Between their sobs, they will not speak the words, “I want this.” They will not be able to say amid the flames of the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14), “I want this.” “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night” (Revelation 14:11). No one wants this.

When there are only two choices, and you choose against one, it does not mean that you want the other, if you are ignorant of the outcome of both. Unbelieving people know neither God nor hell. This ignorance is not innocent. Apart from regenerating grace, all people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).

The person who rejects God does not know the real horrors of hell. This may be because he does not believe hell exists, or it may be because he convinces himself that it would be tolerably preferable to heaven.

But whatever he believes or does not believe, when he chooses against God, he is wrong about God and about hell. He is not, at that point, preferring the real hell over the real God. He is blind to both. He does not perceive the true glories of God, and he does not perceive the true horrors of hell.

So when a person chooses against God and, therefore, de facto chooses hell—or when he jokes about preferring hell with his friends over heaven with boring religious people—he does not know what he is doing. What he rejects is not the real heaven (nobody will be boring in heaven), and what he “wants” is not the real hell, but the tolerable hell of his imagination.

When he dies, he will be shocked beyond words. The miseries are so great he would do anything in his power to escape. That it is not in his power to repent does not mean he wants to be there. Esau wept bitterly that he could not repent (Hebrew 12:17). The hell he was entering into he found to be totally miserable, and he wanted out. The meaning of hell is the scream: “I hate this, and I want out.”

What sinners want is not hell but sin. That hell is the inevitable consequence of unforgiven sin does not make the consequence desirable. It is not what people want—certainly not what they “most want.” Wanting sin is no more equal to wanting hell than wanting chocolate is equal to wanting obesity. Or wanting cigarettes is equal to wanting cancer.

Beneath this misleading emphasis on hell being what people “most want” is the notion that God does not “send” people to hell. But this is simply unbiblical. God certainly does send people to hell. He does pass sentence, and he executes it. Indeed, worse than that. God does not just “send,” he “throws.” “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown (Greek eblethe) into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15; cf. Mark 9:47; Matthew 13:42; 25:30).

The reason the Bible speaks of people being “thrown” into hell is that no one will willingly go there, once they see what it really is. No one standing on the shore of the lake of fire jumps in. They do not choose it, and they will not want it. They have chosen sin. They have wanted sin. They do not want the punishment. When they come to the shore of this fiery lake, they must be thrown in.

When someone says that no one is in hell who doesn’t want to be there, they give the false impression that hell is within the limits of what humans can tolerate. It inevitably gives the impression that hell is less horrible than Jesus says it is.

We should ask: How did Jesus expect his audience to think and feel about the way he spoke of hell? The words he chose were not chosen to soften the horror by being accommodating to cultural sensibilities. He spoke of a “fiery furnace” (Matthew 13:42), and “weeping and gnashing teeth” (Luke 13:28), and “outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30), and “their worm [that] does not die” (Mark 9:48), and “eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46), and “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), and being “cut in pieces” (Matthew 24:51).

These words are chosen to portray hell as an eternal, conscious experience that no one would or could ever “want” if they knew what they were choosing. Therefore, if someone is going to emphasize that people freely “choose” hell, or that no one is there who doesn’t “want” to be there, surely he should make every effort to clarify that, when they get there, they will not want this.

Surely the pattern of Jesus—who used blazing words to blast the hell-bent blindness out of everyone— should be followed. Surely, we will grope for words that show no one, no one, no one will want to be in hell when they experience what it really is. Surely everyone who desires to save people from hell will not mainly stress that it is “wantable” or “chooseable,” but that it is horrible beyond description—weeping, gnashing teeth, darkness, worm-eaten, fiery, furnace-like, dismembering, eternal, punishment, “an abhorrence to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24).

I thank God, as a hell-deserving sinner, for Jesus Christ my Savior, who became a curse for me and suffered hellish pain that he might deliver me from the wrath to come. While there is time, he will do that for anyone who turns from sin and treasures him and his work above all.

Trembling before such realities, and trusting Jesus,

Oh no, here we go again! This report in the Telegraph follows hot on the heels of Father Tomlinson’s comments recently on funerals, comments like:-

“I have stood at the crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with ‘I Did It My Way’ blaring out across the speakers!”

Fr Tomlinson went on to question the quality of funeral for non-believers, commenting that while Christians still had the liturgy of the requiem mass to look forward to, the best secularists could hope for was “a poem from nan combined with a saccharine message from a pop star before being popped in the oven with no hope of resurrection”.

Classic stuff and I personally love the honesty and frankly it’s all true! I wonder if the new comments from Geoff Stickland will create the same degree of media frenzy and controversy as Father Tomlinson’s comments above (poor fellow had the paparazzi camped outside his home)? Folks really took exception to Tomlinson’s comments, especially about Nana’s poems . I went to a funeral once of an local elderly chap (Knobby) and Frank Sinatra’s ‘I did it my way’ was pumped out as he was ‘popped in the oven’.

From a Christian perspective, non-Christians couldn’t pick a more apt song, in other words, you did it your way, rather than God’s way and so you will spend eternity ‘doing it your way’ separated from God, which is what you opted for in this life, namely, existence without God. Brutal, but true.

Here is some of the article from the Telgraph by By Andrew Hough

The 68-year-old, from the St James Church, in Quedgeley, Gloucs, blamed the practice on the “outpouring of unbelievable emotion” at the Princesses’ funeral in 1997.

He said said modern culture then changed in such way he found “incredibly hard to accept” where mourners thought it normal to play pop music at funerals.

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Speaking in support of Mr Tomlinson, Mr Stickland said it was “not right” to play of pop songs at funerals and has since banned the practice at his parish.

“It all seems to date back to Princess Diana’s death, when there was an outpouring of unbelievable emotion,” he said.

“The utter devotion was impressive, but since then it has all changed.

“We have changed to a culture that I find incredibly hard to accept.”

He added: “I am 68, have been a priest for 44 years, and do not want to change.

“To stand at the door of the church and hear Frank Sinatra singing My Way as the coffin is carried in, and then to hear Grandad playing as they file out is not right.”

While he had “a great deal sympathy” for mourners, Mr Stickland, who has been at the parish since 1982, admitted the new culture did not “agree with mine”.

He said the people living in Victoria times had an “immense conviction in the promise of eternal life” and when there was a funeral there was a “promise of Heaven for the deceased”.

“Now, without that theology any more, people have to look back and pick personal moments, it is all just incredibly emotional,” he said.

He said while his parishioners were “decent people, hard working and trying to make a good life for themselves”, not all were religious.

“Despite that, when any momentous event happens in their lives, such as a funeral, they want us to perform in their culture,” he said

“I have a great deal of sympathy with those dealing with a bereavement, but this is now a theological issue.”

Read Entire Article

I can already imagine the fallout from these comments

Oh and Princess Diana’s death and consequent media coverage and national outpouring of ‘grief’ was the height of hypocrisy. the media had spent years slating her and then all of a sudden she was the nations saint. It was a dangerous pursuit to point this out at the time of her death, for fear of being lynched.  A prime and scary example of the media informing folk how they should feel and act.

The below link is an excellent article written by John Piper, which speaks on the issue of ‘choossing hell’ and ‘rejecting God’.  Well worth a read:-

How Willingly Do People Go to Hell? Does Anyone Standing by the Lake of Fire Jump In?

FURTHER INTERNET LINK

OUTCRY AS VICAR BLAMES DIANA FOR POP FUNERALS – A VICAR who banned pop songs at funerals after blaming the “Princess Diana” effect faced a backlash of criticism yesterday.

As I have said before, I rather like reading informative and insightful articles about humanism and atheism. I think it is prudent once in a while to visit their worldview and note their struggles, internal divisions, worries and contradictions. All is not as rosy for them as it would first appear.

Religion Dispatches

Meet the latest critics of the new atheists: the old humanists. It is not enough, they say, to take a stand against religion—we must stand up something in its place. Humanists are right to think that there is more to life than atheism but wrong to think that they are the ones to provide it.

Just to show you how serious I am, I’ve christened a new fallacy to give a name to this mistake in thinking: I call it the fallacy of decomposition. The fallacy of decomposition is the mistake of supposing that as the estate of religion collapses there must be a single new institution that to arises to serve the same social functions it served—that the social space vacated by religion must be filled by a religion-shaped object. Instead, it could be that in the lot once occupied by faith there springs up a variegated garden, a patchwork of independent institutions, each of which fulfills one of those functions. Out of one, many.

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Let me be clear. I am not criticizing humanists for getting together to fight for the ideals of a secular, open society. For the better part of a decade, I proudly worked for an organization—the Center for Inquiry, publisher of Free Inquiry magazine—that does just that. But even there, I encountered tension between those of us who saw the Center primarily as a think tank and advocate addressing the general public in the marketplace of ideas, and those who saw it primarily as a congregation whose purpose is to gather up all the self-identifying refugees of traditional religion and offer them a secular alternative to everything it did for them. Compare: you might support Medecin San Frontieres because you believe in their work, but you wouldn’t expect them to officiate your wedding. I always maintained that the point should be to make the mainstream culture more secular and humanistic, not to create a new secular humanist subculture.

Neither am I arguing against disorganized secular humanism, of which I am both perpetual student and ardent lover. For disorganized secular humanism is practically identical to the ethos of modern, liberal democracy. Here lies the real embarrassment of the fallacy of decomposition. When humanism is equated with organized humanism, an entire civilization is reduced to a fringe group of dyspeptic rationalists who gather once a year in hotel ballrooms (as Sam Harris observed a few years ago before a group of dyspeptic rationalists gathered in a hotel ballroom). According to this impoverished self-concept, humanist “literature” does not embrace the better part of all letters but instead only the relatively few writers like Kurt Vonnegut or Isaac Asimov who have turned up at conferences of the American Humanist Association to accept awards.

Apparently, in thinking about what might come after religion, it is hard for humanists to see beyond a kind of telecom model, in which a conglomerate bundles together all of these services, so that the same people who put us in touch with metaphysical truth also provide us with community and morality.

It is all the more ironic that this model itself is an invention of religion, a sort of meta-dogma. It is a vestige of the contingent historical fact that after giving up its dreams of theocratic control, Western Christianity contented itself with claiming for its territory everything that fell outside of the civil sphere of government and politics and the commercial sphere of market activity. Why else would learning, art, food, sex and the meaning of life all be handled by the same religious monopoly?

Read entire article

By Amil Imani – American Thinker

October 29th has been designated the International Day of Cyrus the Great, a matchless King of Persia and pioneer in the proclamation of human rights. Commemorating Cyrus the Great is synonymous with honoring the glorious ancient Iranians and Iranians’ way of life. Palpable reminders to Iranians and all liberty-loving people of the world of this just king’s reign stand in the field of Pasargad.

The International Committee to Save the Archeological Sites of Pasargad has the undying gratitude of the diverse people of the Greater Iran for its work in safeguarding these magnificent symbols of Iran’s luminous past, which serve as beacons for all people in their quest for freedom and dignity.

The arduous task undertaken by the Committee to Save the Archeological Sites of Pasargadis all the more difficult in the face of the present Islamic regime’s relentless attempts to wipe out any and all vestiges of Iran’s proud and praiseworthy pre-Islamic cultural heritage. To these barbaric Islamists, any ideals or symbols representing humanity’s non-Islamic enlightenment is good only for the fire of their bigotry.

A seminal achievement of Cyrus the Great is his pioneer work in the promotion of human rights. Using the power of his office to good effect, he decreed a universal charter for human rights for all people. The king’s edict for equality of rights served in advancing the social and cultural precepts of the diverse people throughout the vast expanse of his empire. Although ethnically Persian, the benevolent king considered himself a trustee of the diverse nationalities of his kingdom. Parochialism and ethnocentrism were alien to this visionary monarch.

An illustration of the benevolent beliefs and practices launched by this great historical visionary is his landmark action in 539 B.C. Having conquered Babylon, the benevolent King Cyrus freed the Jews from captivity and empowered them to return to the Promised Land to build their temple.

For his acts of kindness, Cyrus the Great is immortalized in the Bible in several passages and is called “the anointed of the Lord.” Throughout recorded history, the Jews looked to Cyrus’s people, the Iranians, as their friends and protectors against oppressors such as the Seleucids and the Romans.

Cyrus the Great is deeply revered for his great tolerance and just treatment of the conquered nations in his vast empire. He is celebrated to this day by the generality of mankind for enshrining fundamental human rights in his Cylinder as the standard for his time and for all times.

In the same way that Cyrus the Great considered all people members of the same human family, the human family of today esteems the great trailblazer of human rights as one of its own. The vast plateau that is presently Iran’s heartland has been inhabited by the most diverse people of any region of the planet. Yet, in adherence to the Cyrus’s lofty principles, these people found unity in diversity. They have remained loyal to their own unique heritage and successfully linked it to a larger loyalty. The present Iran is a living testimony to this remarkable togetherness where ethnic Persians, Turkic, Kurds, Lurs, Turkmen, Baluchis, Arabs, and others live as one people: a great template for the entire world to emulate.

For some 1,400 years, the viral disease of Islamism has devoured the very fabric of our nation and identity. Millions and generations of our people have paid dearly, often with their lives, for this affliction visited upon us. Yet millions and generations have bravely managed to retain the identity and values that make us proud to be Cyrus’s descendants.

As Iranians, it is propitious at this time to take stock of our condition and renew our resolve to do everything in our power to rescue Iran from the suffocating quagmire of Islamism. We must return our nation to its rightful historic place as the vanguard of a civilized world where justice and liberty rule supreme for all humanity.