UB Freethinkers

From South Africa:

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A South African weekly on Friday published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad complaining that his followers lack a sense of humor, angering Muslims and raising fear of reprisal attacks during next month’s World Cup.

[...] The Mail & Guardian newspaper published a sketch by renowned South African cartoonist Zapiro after a court rejected an overnight bid by Muslim advocacy groups for an injunction to prevent the newspaper from printing the cartoon.

[...] South Africa’s Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) said it would meet to discuss the cartoon, which it deemed highly offensive to the religious sensibilities of Muslims.

Ahh yes, those “religious sensibilities”.  Believe it or not, they don’t bleed, and you’ll be just fine after they’ve been offended.  Treatment involves: ignoring that which offends you.

Happy “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!”

Cheers!

“Submission” A short film by Theo van Gogh:

And the 2005 Muhammad cartoons (excepting the one included above):

We’ll be tinkering with the site for a bit.  If it looks like crap, it’s probably because of something we did.

Just to make the point once more, here’s our stock “Spite Islam” post.

To quote one of our members, “I would have apologized for the cartoons being not funny and not inflammatory enough.”

Cheers!

“Submission” A short film by Theo van Gogh:

And the 2005 Muhammad cartoons (excepting the one included above):

Somewhere, Occam is laughing.

Closing churches has been a source of angst and anger in the historically Catholic-rich city of Lockport for more than two years.

Now, though, the planned Easter Sunday opening of an evangelical Christian church has heightened the sensitivities of some Catholics.

The Chapel at CrossPoint, an Amherst megachurch, will launch a satellite campus in April, using the Palace Theatre and a former post office, both on Main Street in the heart of Lockport.

At least one Catholic priest views the move as an effort to scoop up disenfranchised Catholics in the community, and he’s warned his parishioners about it.

“They practice a very heavy-handed form of proselytizing and have targeted mostly Catholic Lockport at a time when people are still upset about the Journey in Faith and Grace,” the Rev. James Waite, pastor of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, commented in a recent church bulletin.

Kudos to the CPAC-ers who actually boo’ed this mongrel.

I’ll even steal a conservative line:  ”Don’t like America, buddy?  Then get out.”

Try Uganda.

From the conversation developing over here…

I say again: It wasn’t necessarily about the calls to prayer.  We secularists are used to those — whatever.  It was about selfish theological concerns being broached barely an hour into a prospective crisis, and the eager tone taken in the assumptions made about the situation.

I quote:

3. Pray that God will be glorified and seen on this campus because of this event.

Likewise, based on the rest of the email, the writer seemed to assume that there was likely a gunman, and there might be victims.

To illustrate as simply as possible:

During or after a crisis, or a possible crisis, I’ve never heard an atheist say to their fellows, “let’s hope this possibly horrific situation drives people away from their gods!”

I suppose we just don’t have that theological, cosmic impetus.

Here’s the full article.  I’ll leave the rest up to Roger’s beautiful prose:

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a journal entry titled “Go Gently into That Good Night.” I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

[...]  I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

So things were a bit exciting here at UB today, with mistaken reports of a gunman in Lockwood Library paralyzing campus for a short while.  Initial word of the situation came in around 4:45pm.

Not ones to miss a chance to capitalize on a crisis, the following was sent out on the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship mailing list at 5:58pm, shortly after news of the possible gunman broke city-wide. For a shining example of shameless Christian opportunism in a crisis, see #3:

Hello all, I hope this e-mail finds you safe and well.  Please be praying for the situation in Lockwood.

1. Pray for the safety of everyone involved.
2. Pray for the gunmen, as he is obviously broken and lost.
3. Pray that God will be glorified and seen on this campus because of this event.
4. Pray about ways we as the body of Christ can respond to this event in the days to come.

If you need prayer or just need to talk, feel free to contact any of us. At your service,

IV E-board

Even with #3 set aside, the overall tone of the email still feels distasteful.  It almost seems, well, eager about what was possibly transpiring, and the subsequent opportunity to proselytize in its wake.

More-so, given that by 5:58pm to most observers the situation on campus had proven itself most likely benign, one could almost go so far as to call the email by IVCF a bit irresponsible, from its rather large assumptions about the situation (that there was a gunman, etc.), to the automatic, instinctual foresight towards how their own selfish theological concerns might be served by it.

Were they telegraphing their own subconscious desire for a crisis to wallow in?  Did a slight bit of sick hope allow for those wanton assumptions?  Inquiring minds should never stop asking.

EDIT I: Removed “giddy” where used to describe the assumptions in IV’s email.  It wasn’t the word I was looking for, and it came off poorly.  ”Eager” works well enough.  My apologies.

EDIT II: For those of you from Mark Shea’s blog, I just want to add a comment here.

I’ll admit, they could have sent out something worse. The offering up of counseling to one another is thoughtful, yes. However, on #1 and #2, prayer does nothing. Don’t act like that is even a worthwhile action during a possibly violent situation. It’s an abdication.  The only real action they seemed to be thinking of taking was some opportunistic proselytization.

What’s sad is that religious, theological concerns and dogmas keep some Christians from seeing the things that are wrong with the email. Language like this might seem pretty at times (which is why people are aghast when it’s criticized), but there’s a cold, selfish heart to things like this.

When, barely an hour into a possibly violent crisis, you’re already measuring just how well the situation might help you to sell your god, expect to have your humanity questioned.

EDIT III: It wasn’t the prayer, it was the marketing!

My problem with the email wasn’t necessarily the calls for prayer. Whatever — it’s what the religious do, we secularists are used to it. Well-wishes aren’t necessarily a bad thing, even if there’s no actual effect. I only criticize those (#1 and #2) because some religious people will use them as an excuse to say the email “isn’t that bad”.

My problem — what disgusted me about the email — was mostly #3. As I said, barely an hour into a possibly violent crisis, they were already thinking about how the situation would help them to sell their god.

I find that disgusting, and illustrative of certain evangelical, proselytization-oriented religious mindsets that see everything with a silver lining and/or through rose-colored theological glasses.

At least the prayer holds some concern for people. #3 is a cold concern for marketing in a crisis.

Also, given the presumptive tone of the email (there was a gunman, violence had occurred, etc.), I thought it sounded just a bit too eager for a crisis, given that by 5:58 it seemed more-so that the situation was benign.

EDIT IV: Does this help illustrate my point?

In light of the recent loss of our friend, this January 4th article by the philosopher Austin Dacey carries a bit more weight.  Here he writes after the death of his friend and fellow secularist:

Believers in the beyond often ask unbelievers how they can accept the prospect that death is the end. Some even confess they are motivated to believe by their wish to vanquish the grave. It is true that the atheist has nowhere to go in death but to the “mankind making/Bird beast and flower/Fathering and all humbling darkness,” as Dylan Thomas puts it in his astonishing poem to end all eulogies, “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, Of a Child in London.”

This non-destination makes every death an infinitely greater loss, and makes unmitigated grief the only appropriate response. In this, only the secular way of death fully honors the dead, where “better place” platitudes betray him. Thomas’ paradoxically titled “Refusal to Mourn” is in fact the refusal to mitigate grief, to paper over the universe’s forever-loss of singular person in guaze-promises of eternity: “I shall not murder/The mankind of her going with a grave truth.”

Yes, dying may be harder for the atheist. But what I cannot understand, and reject totally, is the further claim that the life stopped short of eternity is thereby robbed of sense or worth: If it all comes to an end, what’s it all for? The first thing to observe about this existential anxiety is that we can’t resolve it just by postulating an eternal afterlife. Consider the sorts of good things that might possibly await us in paradise: knowing and loving other persons (including God), being known and loved, apprehending truth, experiencing beauty (and, in the afterlife of some, fine food, drink, and other sensual delights). These goods worth wanting in the next world are goods that we already have in this one—things like love, knowledge, beauty, and pleasure (even praising an Almighty!). If a life there is worth having, then a life here is worth having. Every treasure laid up in heaven has been stolen from Earth, and the joys of paradise are parasitic on the joys of the world.

Yes, having more joy is better than having less, all else being equal. And that is why death is a loss. It takes away the possibility of participating in any goods whatever. But that is not the same as showing them to have never been goods at all. When our participation in a good is cut short, we may wish it could go on, but the wishing is a sign that it was worth pursuing after all.

Amen.

Photo courtesy of The Spectrum

(Edit:  Since we’re drawing heavy traffic from search engine queries for Nick’s name, we’re including this link to the Buffalo News Article about the accident, for anyone looking for more information)

Early this morning, our SISH council coordinator, supporter, and friend Nicholas Orrange died in a car accident in Amherst.  He was a self-proclaimed existentialist and agnostic, and he lived his life proudly as such.

Nick was an incredibly generous and helpful representative and friend to us, a selfless person who you could always so clearly see — every single time you spoke with him — was thrilled simply to be a human being among human beings.  The look on his face alone always expressed an exuberance for life and for other people — an outlook we would all do well to learn from.

He’ll be missed, that’s for certain.

Comments and condolences can be left over at The Spectrum, and will be shared with his family.

Now go hug somebody.  Tell someone you love them.  This is a short, sweet trip we’re all on.  Enjoy it together.

It’s not about peace.  It’s about patriarchy and power — and demanding submission to it.

British woman ‘arrested in Dubai after being raped’

The woman, a Muslim of Pakistani descent, was celebrating her engagement to her 44-year-old boyfriend, and was allegedly attacked when she passed out in a hotel lavatory.

Despite approaching police about the attack, she was arrested after admitting to “illegal drinking” outside licensed premises as well as having sexual intercourse outside marriage. Her fiancé was also charged with the same offences.

The couple from London are now reportedly on bail and understood to be awaiting trial after having their passports confiscated. Should they be found guilty, they could face up to six years in jail.

The woman, who is said to have accepted her boyfriend’s marriage proposal during a three-day break, admitted drinking too much alcohol as they celebrated at Dubai Marina’s Address Hotel. The waiter is then said to have followed her into the toilets and raped her while she was in a state of semi-consciousness.

After her fiancé found out about the attack, they contacted police, but they were questioned about breaking the country’s strict rules, which contain elements of Sharia law.

Don’t forget: Every time you fill up your car, you’re funding this — in Dubai and elsewhere. (Not to mention actual, modern-day slavery as well.)

In case you hadn’t heard about the recent horrific attacks, you can read about them here:

Buffalo Woman Stabbed In Eye In Gay-Bashing Incident

and

Attackers At Galleria Accused of Hate Crime

A “Take Back The Night” is being organized on Friday, January 15th by our friends at OUTspoken for Equality (who we joined up with in February of last year to chase off the Westboro Baptist Church). Join the Facebook Event Page if you’d like, the event is starting at 7pm in Days Park, between Allen and Cottage streets.  Here’s the info:

Two well-publicized homophobic attacks occurred on New Years. Others go unreported or under-reported far too often.

Enough is enough. We are encouraging as many as possible to rally at Days Park on Friday, January 15 at 7 PM to take back our city from bigots.

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?ftid=0x89d3125482388e47:0xda3a0e71a44b483b&q=days+park+buffalo+ny&hl=en&ei=j09HS5qBJ6CMNZ_riY4E&sll=42.898454,-78.880119&sspn=0.003875,0.006695&ie=UTF8&ll=42.901614,-78.883467&spn=0,0&t=h&z=17&iwloc=near

We might then march along the sidewalks of Allen Street to Main Street depending on how many people are involved.

If you are able, please bring candles, and if you are also willing, please wear rainbow and/or hot pink items. We want to be as noticeable as possible.

More details will come soon.
http://www.outspokenforequality.org/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/OUTspoken-for-Equality/26659417042

If you can at all possibly make it, I encourage all of our members to attend.  Crimes like this simply don’t go unanswered in Buffalo.  RSVP at UBFreethinkers (at) gmail (dot) com or on Facebook if you’d like, we’ll all meet up beforehand.