Chilean miners' rescue roundup

Bit late with this one, meant to write about this one yesterday, but I still need to get it off my chest.

The rescue of the trapped miners in Chile was fantastic news. Not only in the fact of their rescue, but also in the strength and solidarity of the miners and their loved ones, and the ingenuity shown by those in charge of the rescue operation. It's a story of human courage and tenacity, and deserves to be celebrated.

However, some people seem to think there were other forces at work. Bel Mooney, in the Daily Mail (for those outside the UK, Middle Britain's hate-organ of choice) writes that 

God and the Devil were in that mine. But it was God - and the human spirit - that triumphed.

Um, sorry? I think it was fairly well documented that there were 33 miners trapped. I think someone would have noticed if two supernatural beings had been hanging around ghoulishly as well. Actually, according to Mooney, someone did.

One of the miners said: ‘I was with God and the Devil. They fought. God won.’ We may feel remote from the simple, deeply held beliefs of that region, but you do not have to believe in God to be moved by such a powerful statement of the universal struggle.

This not only demonstrates the false consciousness of the religious, believing that God and the Devil were actually present down there, but Mooney's patronising ideas about the far-flung corners of the world where civilisation, so she believes has yet to penetrate. She even finds time to have a little chuckle at the natives' mating habits.

How many men, all over the world, will have shared a rueful fellow feeling with those San Jose miners who have been a little  -what shall I say? - careless with their love lives?

Even the most virtuous of husbands might have read of wives and mistresses, ignorant of each other’s existence, turning up at Camp Hope with assorted offspring and thought: ‘Oops, mate, now you’ll be in trouble’. Maybe a little ‘there but for fortune’ there, too!

Hang on - so there were adulterers down there too? What on earth was God thinking, allowing such blatant sinners to survive? Surely this was the ideal opportunity to show the world exactly what happens to those who disobey the Ten Commandments?

And has she stopped to consider why God was present for this accident, rather than the accidents which claim 34 lives a year, on average, in the mines of Chile since the year 2000? Truly, this God is a capricious and vengeful god, picking and choosing those he wishes to save.

Maybe Bel should register her opinion on this site, where you can vote in a poll to determine who really saved the miners, God or man. Guess who my money's on? (Thanks to Pharyngula for the link.)

Clapham South's Insight of the Day

Looks like somebody's not been getting what they want out of a relationship. Hey, build a bridge and get over it!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Rollin', rollin', rollin'...

Found this really good demonstration of diving rolls on YouTube. It'll be a while before I scale those heights, I think.

Malawi atheists fight against superstition

Hats off to The Association of Secular Humanism in Malawi, which is fighting for the release of 

dozens of women jailed on allegations of practising witchcraft. The Association of Secular Humanism wants President Bingu wa Mutharika to order the immediate release of 80 women, many of them elderly, sentenced to up to six years imprisonment with hard labour. Most of them were accused of teaching witchcraft to children.

Witchcraft is not currently a crime under Malawian law, however, the government has set up a committee to investigate criminalising the practice.

Recently, Mr Mutharika pardoned Malawi's first openly gay couple after previously sentencing them to 14 years' imprisonment.

That last sentence shows the kind of man the President is. In pardoning the offending couple, President Mutharika said

In all aspects of reasoning, in all aspects of human understanding, these two gay boys were wrong - totally wrong.

However, now that they have been sentenced, I as the president of this country have the powers to pronounce on them and therefore, I have decided that with effect from today, they are pardoned and they will be released.

It's fairly clear from Mutharika's tone, and the hints in the article, that he only let the two go after pressure from countries like the UK and the US, whose aid budgets keep Malawi going, and also keep Mutharika flying to

Canada, Zambia, Namibia, Swaziland, Germany, China, U.S., Cuba and Iran. The president is scheduled to travel to India and Britain before the end of the year.

While the president gallivants around the world on spurious trips, his country suffers fuel rationing, with many businesses suspending operations.

Good luck to the atheists in Malawi, but I hold out little hope for lasting success with figureheads like that.

Nick Clegg looks at a Catholic school for his son

It's crap being an atheist in the public eye. Even your choice of school for your children is used as a stick to beat you with.

Mind you, Nick Clegg hasn't decided to send his son to the London Oratory. At least, not yet. But it's hardly surprising that the Daily Mail want to take every opportunity to criticise him.

What most annoys me about Clegg's atheism is that he doesn't seem to have the courage of his convictions.

‘I’m married to a Catholic and am committed to bringing up my children as Catholics.
‘However, I am not myself an active believer, but the last thing I would do when talking or thinking about religion is approach it with a closed heart or a closed mind.’

So you're an atheist, but you want your children brought up as Catholics and you're still open to the idea of religion? I suspect there's a lot of electoral calculation going on here. I think Clegg really is an atheist, but is playing the game of being open enough to appeal to religious voters. The great British public can't handle too much truth. And that's why he's the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Evan Harris lost his seat.

Never mind all that. Parents of children in Catholic schools are required to attend church, I believe, and presumably to take Holy Communion. How's that 2,000-year-old corpse tasting, Nick? Need some divine blood to wash it down?

Religion can't handle human sexuality

Found this article in the Washington post, on the relationship between religion and sexuality. If the bible's position on homosexuality is

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

No liberal Christian will convince me that God has created human sexuality and desires as a gift to us all.

People I know personally who believe in gibberish

Talking to some work colleagues the other night, the conversation turned to the supernatural, and I was struck by how much superstition was actually present in  their heads.

Of the four of us, I'm an atheist. One other is a practising Catholic, although mostly for the purpose of getting his kids into the local Catholic school, which is one of the best in the area (best for indoctrinating small children into a hateful ideology? I didn't pursue this point). Another revealed himself to be a believer in all sorts of "spiritual" mumbo-jumbo, and the third related the story of his grandad dying, somehow, to coincide with some other family members' birthdays.

So, of the four of us, that made 25% atheist, and 75% nonsense. This got me thinking - what are the proportions in Britain as a whole? How much twaddle is swimming around in the heads of people we work or socialise with?

I found this survey from the British Humanist Association, which isn't as scary to read as I thought it might be. Just to cherry pick some stats:

•  63% of people say they are not religious (compared to 33% that do) from the Guardian
• 36% of people in the 18-34 age group in Britain define themselves as atheist or agnostic, from the Catholic weekly the Tablet
• Overall 62% of the population never attend any form of service, fromthe British Social Attitudes Survey
• 65% of young people are not religious. Though religious belief amongst the young has declined by 10% in less than 10 years, moral attitudes have not and fewer young people are racially prejudiced, from a report for the Department for Education.
• According to the 26th report of the British Social Attitudes Survey published in 2010, 71% of religious people and 92% non-religious (82% in total) believe that a doctor should be allowed to end the life of a patient with an incurable disease.

So, fairly cool. But, according to this article in the Guardian,

Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design to explain how the world came about, according to a survey.

Still a long way to go, then. But I'm a glass half-full man, anyway.