The Deal

I have the right to disrespect your religion, just as you have the right to disrespect my conviction of not believing supernatural. I have the right to mock your religion, just as the right you have to mock Science and Atheism. Drawing Charles Darwin as a Chimpanzee, or mocking Richard Dawkins as a pig do not offend me at all, I expect drawing your prophet in funny ways should not offend you either. In your case I know you are not trying to offend me personally, in my case you should know I don’t intend to offend you personally. Regardless of your faith I may like or dislike you for the things you do as a human, similarly you should judge me for the things I do as a human. I think this is a fair deal.
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The Stick

Tolerance is a stick with two ends

Majority of population in Western countries are disillusioned by the fact that Muslim population living in their country are mostly secular, peaceful people who do not harm others. Being a minority minding their business, they gain natural sympathy of the majority. This is acceptable and nothing is wrong with that, however it reflects a partial truth.

When numbers are reversed, and muslims become majority, they become part of political power granted by their religion. One good example to support this argument is Turkey. In the past decade or so the Islamist political party in power started to challenge and erode secularism, established a police state with biased judiciary and began to jail or intimidate seculars. Islam is a political ideology as well as a religion, therefore this shouldn't surprise us.

However this view also explains why non-religious populations, who were trapped in those countries are worried. Lets be clear, we cannot call this Islamophobia, as this is not an irrational fear we can mock.

If you are a non-religious person, living in a religious country is demoralising and degrading to say the least, because you will be oppressed one way or another if you choose to express yourself.

If you express your disinterest in religion and don’t abide by its restrictions in ways to draw attention, you can be intimidated or punished by mobs, you could even be prosecuted for that. This is true for countries such as Sauidi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. Penalties are different but principles are the same.

Majority in religious countries show less tolerance to you than we show to them in the West where they are in minority. Numbers matter.

Ultimately this is the bit Western liberals are missing, they have partial perspective because either they don't have first hand experience of living in a religious society or they lack deeper knowledge on history and on the nature of religions, or they don't push their intellectual capacity hard enough to see the big picture, because they focus on their lives in the West.

Liberty In The Age of Terror

In his book, Liberty In the Age of Terror, “Our societies are under attack”, says A.C. Grayling, “not only from the threat of terrorism, but also from our governments’ attempts to fight that threat by reducing freedom in our own societies- think the 42-day detention controversy, CCTV surveillance, increasing invasion of privacy, ID Cards, …”

Freedom to criticise or ridicule religions remains in governments’ or media’s watch list.

In the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo massacre, many news outlets shy away from publishing the controversial images of the paper’s satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Joining the bandwagon, we see progressive apologists, some of them being non-religious, claiming religion based terror is nothing to do with religions, but caused by “environment”, “discrimination” or “mind loss” therefore we should continue to respect religions.

Any criticism against religions, particularly Islam, is sneered upon with “Islamophobia” or “hate speech” suspicion. The issue has almost become a taboo, and the architect of this taboo is nobody but us.

We became victims of our own fears, in the end we let hard-won liberties our ancestors built with centuries long struggle demolished. Is this really who we are?

I hope Humanity regains its sanity and remembers the idea that matters most, freedom of expression. Loosing that would mean loosing everything.

Now grab your pen, and show the world, people who sacrificed their lives for Liberty mattered.

Je Suis Charlie

A day of awakening

If I need to pick up just one day, among others; mother's day, father's day, valentine's day and so on, it would be the women's day.

Women’s day calls for action, a reminder for humankind, as it points to a shame we all share.

Hundreds of millions of women are oppressed around the world, deprived of freedom to shape their life. They are physically and mentally abused.

Everything we achieved on our planet so far in the name of “civilisation” will be meaningless, unless the other half of our species is treated equally.

Therefore this is not a day to celebrate. Not yet. It must be a day of awakening.

Mitterand's Death

Former French president François Mitterand’s death was assisted suicide, a book claims, despite the fact he was a staunch opponent of euthanasia.

A new book by French journalists Denis Demonpion and Laurent Leger claims Mitterrand was given a fatal injection to end his suffering at his request.

Mitterrand died in 1996 after suffering from cancer for 15 years, but his illness was a secret when he was alive.

If these allegations are true then one has to wonder why Mitterrand chose to hide his planned death, provided that he had opportunity to disclose so.

By reversing his conviction about euthanasia he would have damaged his political integrity one might argue. But at the same time he could have made himself an example for a wider policy change desperately needed by thousands of sufferers.

Whether Mitterrand had been in immense pain to make a healthy judgement, or he refused to conflict himself we may never know.

It is not pleasant to speculate after a dead man, but I think there is a lesson we should all learn from this.

No one, absolutely no one should be entitled to take a moral position against euthanasia based on assumptions about the degree of suffering one has to go through before taking the grave decision to end their lives.

 The EXIT euthanasia blog

Faith vs Religion

Let me be clear, this is not about faith.

Forget about me being an Atheist I am concerned as a human being.

The distinction needs to be made between personal belief and organized religion.

First of all I see organized religions as fear mongering mobs that brought misery to human lives and setback to Reason throughout history.

Humans can live better lives, they can have peace with others without artificial segregation created by religions, they can focus better on world problems like climate change, they can put their energy into useful work, they will be better off without religions.

Again I am not saying they should leave their faith, it is up to them to believe or not to believe anything I am not going to mock them. I don’t feel superior to them because I don’t share their beliefs. I have no problem with personal beliefs and with people who are peaceful and keep it personal.

But I won’t keep quiet when the matter is Religions because I see organized religions as threat to Reason. Reason makes us human; we are born with Reason not with Religion. Religion is the enemy of Reason.

Therefore as a human being I feel that it is my responsibility to speak out, ridicule and weaken religious sentiments whenever and wherever I can.

We suffered so much and too long for this. It is time to change and put Reason back into our lives.

It is time to pay tribute to our first ancestor who made fire useful, not the one who feared from the lightning and transformed that fear into a religion.

Does God have a meaning?

 Lets discuss in epistemological terms to begin with.

First and foremost comes the Semantics. Semantics is the study of meaning. If we say, “this is a window” it would mean that the window has a “meaning” associated with it. We can then talk about its “existence” and discuss whether we “know” that “this is a window”. In other words, a word should have at least a semantic “meaning” before we can even talk about its “existence” and speculate about our “knowledge” of it thereafter.

If there is a window within my reach and I am not blind, I may claim in great certainty that “I know this is a window”. Or if I am not certain, I may say things like “I am not sure if that bright thing on that tower 2 km. from here is a window reflecting the sun, or a mirror’”. Hence we can speculate about observable things on their meaning and sometimes test our knowledge later even if our knowledge was not full beforehand. We could do so because we associated a “meaning” to a “window” to begin with.

So a word alone, such as “XYZ” does not mean anything, the word “God” included. Therefore God needs a meaning just like other words in our native tongue. If we can’t associate a “meaning” to God the discussion is over.

Even “un-knowableness” requires a “meaning” of, what we don’t know. Hence without a meaning associable to God, we cannot even begin a discussion whether “Joe is an agnostic”.

Lets now discuss the notion of whether we can find God in quantum realm.

I am assuming we all have sufficient knowledge of Quantum Physics. In a nutshell quantum realm is currently beyond our directly observable and measurable Universe. Quantum Physics is the science of studying “very small” particles or strings that fluctuate and make other particles. What we know about them is we can’t measure their position or momentum at the same time and they fluctuate. Also when we make an observation on them their wave function collapses (more on wave function is a little later). But the good news is we can indirectly confirm our assumptions about quanta. We developed technologies such as Laser beam, and MRI based on Quantum Mechanics.

You see, quanta moves around and change their position and can even appear to co-exist in two places at the same time (see double-slit experiment, entanglement). We know these by indirect observations. So each quantum has a wave function, a probabilistic wave that defines probabilistically where about it can or it is likely to be going as a path in space-time fabric. When an observation is made the wave function collapses, i.e. one of the harmonics of the wave becomes reality and we cannot say with certainty which one beforehand. This knowledge depends on overall probability profile of the wave-function and how all harmonics of the probability wave for different paths overlapped to form the resultant wave function in space-time (see Feynman’s sum of histories).

Considering that we are all quanta implies that there is a finite (non-zero) probability that all of my particles, my atoms, protons, neutrons, quarks, etc. can go through that solid wall in front of me (don’t try this at home). According to Quantum Physics even if it is miniscule there is a finite probability that this can happen. But the fact is, and this point is critical for religious to understand, if that happens the wave function still has to collapse.

In other words we should have the sensation that we are going through the wall. Macroscopically we shall be intact, it was just the coincidence that all of our particles agreed to collapse on this weird wave function at a particular point in the history of our Universe. We still have “meaning”, because our information making us was preserved during our weird voyage through the wall. It is weird because it had tiny probability to happen, but it was not impossible, never.

It is important to note that quantum does not bear information. We have information only when a quantum’s wave function collapses and all the information about a foam of quanta is smeared onto the fabric of reality. We observe this as a macroscopic matter or as a form of energy (both often lead to the same). Or if information falls inside a black-hole some speculated that it could have been smeared onto its event horizon, Hawking predicted and confirmed with observation that information may even leak from it (Hawking radiation). Lets not drift too much.

So if God is an entity residing in the quantum realm it does not and cannot have information/orderness therefore it cannot have intelligence, since information is a necessary (but not sufficient condition) for intelligence. I am not sure if this idea would appeal to anyone.

If on the other hand God has information and/or intelligence then this requires that its wave function must have collapsed already, it is “already outside” the quantum realm.

If God is outside then we are entitled to ask these questions:

• God is outside our observable Universe.
• God is somewhere in our observable Universe but we haven’t observed it yet. 
• We have observed God but we haven’t qualified it as God.
• God does not exist.

The problem with the first three is, either way we need the assistance of semantics in order to qualify say Andromeda galaxy as God or even what we haven't observed is God.

We know that for instance Andromeda has finite set of matter and energy that are measurable to a degree of certainty. We also know that Andromeda is a galaxy hence has a meaning based on properties common to other galaxies. But unless we know what God's meaning is, we cannot be sure if Andromeda is in fact God.

This leaves us with the third option.

Say NO to Indoctrination

Please don't indoctrinate me with religion. Teach me to think for myself.

I would like to draw your attention to the word indoctrinate. Indoctrination is filling a child’s mind with one-sided subjective opinions that do not rely on facts. I guess we may reach an agreement to qualify those opinions and where they originate from as non-factual, mystical, spiritual or supernatural. I don’t mean necessarily they are bad or evil please note.

Influencing someone with non-factual opinions may not always be harmful. If someone believes fairies that glow at night in their backyard, or they believe star signs, or they believe a soul, or a spirit to grant everlasting life these seem pretty harmless and we should tolerate them.

Also if someone takes only peaceful messages from a religion and ignores the evil parts such as disrespecting or killing others, then perhaps pains religions inflicted in human beings throughout history may be set aside; we then may consider such benign realisations as cultural nuances, embrace those individuals, say “good for you”, and move on.

But it is one thing that a child believes in Santa Claus, it is another thing if you teach them other religions are evil and he should one day blow himself up and kill as many as possible from the other side for reserving a good seat in heaven.

Or it is one thing to teach peaceful attributes of a religion and respect for others and it is another thing to inflict hostility in the heart of an innocent child by labelling all other religions as fake and their believers inferior.

Or it could be another thing to teach a child all religions and atheism in the context of ethics and objective history along with science and theory of evolution, and eventually let them decide whichever religion to believe or not to believe anything at all.

The issue here is not about legislating how parents should raise their kids but whether world nations should any longer endorse religious indoctrination through publicly or privately funded faith schools.

In Britain recently the UK Government passed a law to abolish public funding of faith schools. This is an important step if we want to build peaceful democratic societies.

This is also a clear message from a Western government on the dangers of sponsoring faiths schools, which often singlehandedly indoctrinate kids with hatred and cause painful segregation inside the larger civil society they breed within.

Hence this is in my opinion the way the message on the billboard should be read.

Children are pillars of our future. Can we afford to let them be raised in intolerance?

Put another way do we need to tolerate the intolerant?

Just as we don’t indoctrinate children with racism and holocaust denial we should not indoctrinate them with subjective one-sided religious thinking, fear mongering, bigotry and hatred for others.

It is wrong.

I think anyone with common sense, religious or non-religious alike, would see merits of these arguments.

Aquarium

The impression I get from Turkish public is:

“We vote in general elections every 4 years; the elected pro-Islamic government may do whatever they wish as they see fit during their term; including imprisonment of over 80 journalists without trial. Everything goes as they have mandate from the people.”

Turkish public is on the verge of forgetting about what democracy meant and should mean for a civilised society. In essence popular opinion over the last decade or so reflects wide-scale public ignorance on the necessity of executing democratic rights and responsibilities of individuals between elections, not just during elections. Citizens to a large extent lack democratic consciousness regarding fundamental human rights and individual liberties. 

The current AKP (Justice and Development Party) government exploits what has always been lurking in Turkish population like an epidemic, a reminiscent of Ottoman legacy: “do not challenge authority”. 

I am sitting in a pub, listening to rock music, and having a glass of cold dark beer. I see myself sitting before a laboratory. You have an aquarium in front of you and there is a red button with 1984 printed on it. 

True. What I hear are stories. I may not have journalistic wisdom nor hard evidence. I sometimes don’t have patience. But overall I am not too bad in predicting what is about to come.

I left the country I was born 22 years ago. I knew what was coming. I knew what today was going to look like.

There was a guy whom I worked together in TEK some 30+ years ago (a government office I worked once). He was quite intelligent, an engineer, like me he graduated from the same school that captured top 0.01% of high school graduates. 

He was a devout Muslim who knew Shiatsu massage and who also regularly swallowed books in NY libraries during his Master's programme. As an Atheist generally I consider talking to Muslims on divine matters, a hopeless endeavor.  Nevertheless I found him interesting and pleasant to have conversation with. It still puzzles me why and how on earth a person as intelligent as him became a follower of a religion full of Abrahamic bullshit. Surely it appeared he had great deal of grey material. I remember we had a long discussion about whether good art may emerge from Islam. I questioned him about lack of asymmetry in Islamic Art and esthetical problems associated with it. He seemed to be quite convinced that you would not need to go beyond symmetry. You know, all those boring hypnotising Islamic tile designs, carpet designs and so on. That’s what I was talking about. For me asymmetry is a fundamental cognitive element that makes art interesting and pleasant.  

Anyway, he told us (people in the office) at the time we were all missing the point and Turkey would one day become an Islamic Republic. We went outside for lunch, and later I saw him leaning forward in Namaz position prostrating himself against a God he cannot see nor anyone has seen evidence of on a narrow pavement in a busy street near the office at the back of other prayers stretching from a mock Mosque built inside a small shopping centre.

How naïve I was. I laughed about this. But at the same time I had an eerie feeling about it. There were indications already. The military quo of September 1980 largely favoured the Right; during my military service I was ordered to escort one of my former uni classmates, who was a communist, to prison who was later tortured among others in a civil prison. I heard his story later when I met him during a business conference in 1986.

I am now sitting in Kuğulu Park trying to come around.  There we go; we see evidence of Darwinian Evolution here as well. The pigeons grew in number and adapted to grey surroundings of cityscape thanks to men who sell grains to satisfy people who believe they are feeding animals for the good. Most interestingly these pigeons are shameless. They evolved to ignore my attempts to scare them off. I step firmly on the ground; they don’t seem to bother; they take one or two small steps and come back to pick stuff from the gaps of cobblestones. 30 years ago they used to keep away or fly away farther.

85% of Turkish people think that humans have evolved from Adam and Eve. 

Gray pigeons adapted to favourable conditions grain salesmen and park dwellers created. It is so obvious. People would like to feel good about themselves, perhaps a DNA reminiscent of their gatherer ancestors who cultivated land and breed animals. So they are inclined to feed pigeons that are in reality slightly more dignified than rats and only in appearance. Home Sapiens salesmen appeared in the city to exploit such a weakness. They started to sell grain to park-dwellers.  In the end the most aggressive and shameless pigeons evolved to breed in high numbers and managed to disturb my peace. I now escaped to Gloria Jeans across the road.

It is not easy to understand why a larger proportion of a human population cannot see Darwinian evolution in action. The definition of stupid has always been a puzzling concept for me.  Are these people simply stupid not to see vast evidence for Darwinian Evolution that is taking place, or should we blame the education system or powerful memes of Islamic traditions that deluded them?

Anyway I am too little too less to change this. I elect to remain outside the aquarium. 

Dublin Declaration on Secularism and the Place of Religion in Public Life

By MICHAEL NUGENT


On Sunday 5 June 2011, the World Atheist Convention in Dublin discussed and adopted the following declaration on secularism and the place of religion in public life. Please discuss and promote it with your friends and colleagues, and if you are a a member of an atheist, humanist or secular group, please discuss and promote it with your fellow members, and with the media and politicians.

1. Personal Freedoms
(a) Freedom of conscience, religion and belief are private and unlimited. Freedom to practice religion should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others.
(b) All people should be free to participate equally in the democratic process.
(c) Freedom of expression should be limited only by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others. There should be no right ‘not to be offended’ in law. All blasphemy laws, whether explicit or implicit, should be repealed and should not be enacted.

2. Secular Democracy
(a) The sovereignty of the State is derived from the people and not from any god or gods.
(b) The only reference in the constitution to religion should be an assertion that the State is secular.
(c) The State should be based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Public policy should be formed by applying reason, and not religious faith, to evidence.
(d) Government should be secular. The state should be strictly neutral in matters of religion and its absence, favouring none and discriminating against none.
(e) Religions should have no special financial consideration in public life, such as tax-free status for religious activities, or grants to promote religion or run faith schools.
(f) Membership of a religion should not be a basis for appointing a person to any State position.
(g) The law should neither grant nor refuse any right, privilege, power or immunity, on the basis of faith or religion or the absence of either.

3. Secular Education
(a) State education should be secular. Religious education, if it happens, should be limited to education about religion and its absence.
(b) Children should be taught about the diversity of religious and nonreligious philosophical beliefs in an objective manner, with no faith formation in school hours.
(c) Children should be educated in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge. Science should be taught free from religious interference.

4. One Law For All
(a) There should be one secular law for all, democratically decided and evenly enforced, with no jurisdiction for religious courts to settle civil matters or family disputes.
(b) The law should not criminalise private conduct because the doctrine of any religion deems such conduct to be immoral, if that private conduct respects the rights and freedoms of others.
(c) Employers or social service providers with religious beliefs should not be allowed to discriminate on any grounds not essential to the job in question.

Reference:
Dublin Declaration on Secularism and the Place of Religion in Public Life

The Why Question and Arrow of Time

I have a mechanical engineer friend who is often called to diagnose and deal with problems at various sites across the country. He works for a recycling company which has plants in various locations. I am on the other hand a software engineer. We are both experienced folks who have some quarter a century experience in our pockets. We often have lunch together and exchange stories about engineering.

The business my friend works for is specialised to process scrap material obtained from breaking vehicles (cars, trucks etc) into pieces. They have sophisticated equipment to separate and sort scrap material according to their type (aluminum, steel, plastic) and weight.

Recently I have realised emergence of a remarkable pattern between his stories and mine. My friend mentioned he had been called on to diagnose a problem which was about a conveyor belt malfunction. Apparently the conveyor belt in question had excessive dirt cumulated on it. The foreman and workers rather than investigating the origins of the problem (why excessive dirt appeared at the first place), devise instead patch up solutions to clean up the dirt and this caused other structural problems on the belt.

In software engineering too when we have a tough problem, a crash without a stack trace, or an odd looking problem such as identical pointers appearing twice in a hash table thereby causing an infinite loop, some engineers cannot just wander off from their conventional comfort zones but instead remain stuck in the area where they first observed the problem. They automatically think an infinite loop is indicative of a problem right there. Similar to conveyor belt problem adjusting the hash algorithm to detect identical objects and handling the error at that point will not fix the originating problem. This approach will also make the algorithm needlessly complex and perform poorly.

Patch up fixes without understanding the root cause often result in expensive technical debt to cumulate which will cause more problems down the track.

Lateral thinking is a mindset, it is about asking the question ‘why’ and it is about the courage and ability to reverse the arrow of time.

The problem with the conveyor belt is not the dirt cumulated it is ‘why’ the dirt cumulated.

The problem with two identical pointers stored in a hash table is not an error with hash algorithm, it is ‘why’ the same object stored twice further back in history.

Lateral thinking is about going back in the history (time) and locality (belt’s location, program’s stack trace) and replaying cause and effect game in reverse direction.

Perhaps going back against the arrow of time is counter intuitive for most. Perhaps humans have evolved to go along with the arrow of time for pragmatically solving immediate problems with high survival value and only few have capability to rewind their thoughts back in history.

Could this be the fundamental reason why so many people find it hard to understand evolution. Reluctance, lack of resilience or inability to ask and track back the ‘why’ question.

Conjecture

In recent years a new breed of urban muslim prototype emerged who sometimes call themselves “purists” (eg. “only-koran” movement in Turkey). They refuse late day interpretations of Koran (hadis-i sherif), claim Koran is highly metaphoric and shouldn’t be taken literally in today’s terms.

Rather than questioning validity of their own religious belief system they conjecture and henceforth seek wider acceptance in intellectual and academic circles of urban societies they are part of. Elbow to elbow with intelligent design movement in the West, their retrofitting of god and religions on the facts of evolution should be seen as last minute desperation of saving what has already been lost, religions' credibility.

Living species evolve not as a result of design but via natural selection on random (probabilistic) variations. It does not make sense for a deity to press the button in a stochastic process.

Every human being starts their life with approximately 50 of 3-billion base pairs in their genome mutated randomly. It is preposterous to think that an intelligence could have foreseen, and controlled evolution of 3-billion base pairs of human genome from its single cell origins over billions of years and over entire generations of species they evolved from.

Even if you insist that there lies a super computer that designed "evolution", you should philosophically ask "what for?", "is it you say in order to create us, carbon-obsessed species which emerged from single cell organisms eventually falling into each other's throat for they can't agree on which one of them deserves the never-seen super computer's attention?". And undoubtedly your next question should be "who designed the super computer and why?"

There is nothing remotely special about us humans nor there is a universal reality we can attach our existence onto. There is no evidence that there is more to our physical existence. Believing that we have 'soul' beyond our physical capacity is nothing more than wishful thinking. Our consciousness evolved to make different models, in order to make sense of what is surrounding us. We have not one but many models and related definitions of realities. At times human beings made models of presumed realities -fantasies- that do not exist or cannot exist.

Whereas many of our scientific models, the theory of evolution, special relativity, gravity, quantum mechanics are working, supported and tested by evidence i.e. they allow us to make useful predictions about respective realities, religious models do not propose testable realities but instead they conjecture our existence upon insensible fantasies including the delusion that they can be compatible with science.

Patchwork

Human body is full of evidence indicating it is not an elaborate form of design by a supernatural force but more of a jumbled patchwork shaped by evolution.

Vestiges are structures, anatomical configurations that has lost or nearly lost its primary function. If it has any current function, it is either a persisting secondary function, or a function gained sometime after the loss of primary one. This process is called exaptation or co-opting.

Examples of vestiges are plenty.

The middle ear bones of mammals are derived from former jaw-bones (Shubin 2007).

Early tetrapod limbs were modified from lobe-fins and probably functioned in pushing through aquatic vegetation; at some point, they became sufficiently modified to allow movement on to land (Shubin et al. 2006).

The vestigial hind limbs of boid snakes are now used in mating (Hall 2003).

But the most impressive of all, my personal favourite, is evolution of gonads –a gonad is an organ that produces gametes; a testis or ovary-.

The gonads of sharks, other fish, and even humans develop in same place, the chest. This works well for sharks, since they stay there, but in human males, as the embryo grows the gonads need to travel all the way down into the scrotum to keep cool. This causes an unnecessary looping of the spermatic cord, which causes a weakness in the body wall, leaving them prone to developing a hernia (Shubin, 2009). This is consistent with descend with modification from an ancestor we share with modern fish.

Click to enlarge

Evolution presents countless examples of co-opting. Whether you like it or not the theory of evolution is strongly supported by empirical evidence and scientific studies including DNA analysis that weren’t known in Darwin’s time.

There is mountain of strong evidence for evolution, and each day research laboratories around the world conduce more. At the same time the case for designer god is weakening.

The next question to ask is if it wasn’t design what is god for?

Resources:


Original Scientific American article by Neil H. Shubin (PDF):
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/2009/english/SA_old_bodyShubin.pdf

Vestigial evidence:
http://www.evolutionarymodel.com/vestigialevidence.htm

Arab uprise

What does democracy mean to ordinary Egyptians?

As mobs fall into each other’s throat, looters ransack shops and houses; democracy and freedom resonate in the air. Sure, get rid of Mubarak the dictator yes, but then what?

Neither Egypt nor any other Arab state has democratic traditions. Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party movement has governed most, a degenerated socialist club established in the Soviet era that quickly turned into ugly and corrupt dictatorships, anything but socialist. Of course they had to start one way another you would think, a democratic process just like French did in 1789.

Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party emblem

But there is one crucial difference between French revolution and the Arab uprise. Powerful secular elite designed political process and drove the French Revolution by enormous intellectual vigour despite turmoil and violence. Evolving towards democracy wasn’t easy as they suffered the eras of Terror and Napoleonic Dictatorship but in the end intellectual throttle paid off.

Whereas today’s Arab uprise in the Middle East lacks genuinely pluralistic and sufficiently organised democratic ideas backed by a powerful yet non-existent middle class. They simply don’t have it. The only organised political power watching and waiting on its prey seems to be radical Islam, and therefore radical Islam will have the greatest chance to seize power subject to US intervention.

US, the architect state of ‘moderate Islam’ policy against radicalism is now caught aghast in premature timing of events and unprecedented ripple effect of Arab uprising. The chaos opens a large window of opportunity for radical Islam to exploit. After Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, why not Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? It is no longer a distant prospect. An enormous power vacuum is rapidly sweeping the region that surely enough traditionally sound, legitimate yet feeble democratic institutions will not be able to fill.

Economic downturn, endless war in Afghanistan, endless violence in Iraq, rise of fundamentalism in Pakistan, nuclear-ambitious Iran, and now the Arab uprise. The West and US in particular is in real trouble in terms of their crippled capacity to intervene not to mention even if they do given their track record it would unlikely produce results. Yet now that oil reserves are at greater risk and Israeli-Arab peace deal in jeopardy they simply can’t ignore the turmoil. The West needs to get on top of the situation despite their limited ability to engage.

Drinks

This is a warning for secular friends who still think there is such a thing called 'moderate Islam' and therefore Islamic lifestyle can be tolerated in a modern democratic society.

Saturday night.

We watched “Black Swan” in the Dendy cinema theatre near Opera House. Then we walked up to harbour banks where Opera Bar stands.

This is probably one of the best places on Earth to have a drink in late afternoon or at night. Lean your back casually on inclined stone chairs, facing the Sydney City skyline, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Harbour Bridge, or the Opera House in opposite direction.

http://www.operabar.com.au/

Beautiful women and men at almost any age, tourists, hundreds of people enjoying their drinks, gently rocking, dancing, laughing, chatting. Nobody is disturbing anyone, no one feels intimidated, a pleasant, peaceful atmosphere.

My eyes caught a couple, a semi bearded man and a woman wearing a headscarf watching the bubbly crowd below from a terrace with expressionless dim eyes.

What were they thinking? 

Islam bans drinking alcohol and restricts women to express their sexual identity. To them the crowd must be committing a mortal sin punishable by burning in Hell. 

During the last decade or so Turkey, the country I was born has been under the rule of pro-Islamic governments formed by AKP (The Justice and Development Party). Since they came to power in 2002 AKP partizans have been busy gradually transforming country’s secular traditions towards an Islamic lifestyle.

AKP and followers call themselves ‘moderate Islamist’. 

Recently the AKP government declared that they are going to ban alcoholic beverages served in restaurants or in social gatherings such as art exhibitions, wedding ceremonies and so forth. A person until the age of 24 will not be entitled to buy or drink alcohol, and if such a person is present in a social occasion, for instance in a wedding ceremony no one in that gathering will be able to drink regardless of their age. Yes you heard that right, no one.

And they call this ‘moderate Islam’, leaving a tiny window of freedom and tolerance for secular lifestyle (ie. you can still buy or drink alcohol on your own if you are older than 24, at least for now), whereas religious lifestyle is promoted and allowed in its full right.

For the record Islam by definition cannot be moderate (ironically this is the only point I agree with Islamic fundamentalists). Islam is a collection of static unchangeable decrees descendent from God. You are not allowed to alter them or apply them conditionally. 

So in a secular democracy Islam either needs to be kept in people’s personal spheres strictly outside of politics, or else it may gradually evolve towards forming medieval-style theocratic governances like in Iran, Afghanistan.

Anything in between is sheer hypocrisy, a painful, discriminatory and blunt lie. But evidence suggests that AKP has an agenda. Instead of an abrupt Islamic revolution like Iranians did, they would gradually transform the country towards a totalitarian religious regime. 

To a great majority of people living in Australia or In the West where Islamists are a tiny minority 'moderate Islam' myth might seem like a plausible argument. 

The presumption of 'we shall respect them' and in return 'they shall respect us'. 

Well it all depends on numbers.

Orhan Pamuk and his oriental melancholia

Turkish author Orhan Pamuk wrote an article in the New York Review of Books named The Fading Dream of Europe.

This is what I posted in response:

Historical events should be evaluated in their circumstantial context in order to understand their true nature and intent, only then we might be able to make a fair judgement about their implications. Pamuk’s article unfortunately lacks that, it is a one-sided, narrow, cynical and grossly melancholic interpretation of history partly influenced by his Orientalist views we are familiar to see in his novels and partly his resentment towards the backlash of an alleged Nationalist plot against his political views.

I don’t agree that Turkish people were called upon to embrace and even imitate a rosy-pink European dream just for the purpose of legitimizing Atatürk’s reforms. Such a limited view demands us to believe that these reforms were hollow imitations, lacking substance and vigor, however nothing can be further than the truth.

Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 on the wrecks of Ottoman Empire and Atatürk’s reforms were derived from the newly born state’s secular constitution. At the centre of these reforms we see Secularism as its core value and a desire to establish an egalitarian society in which women and men have equal rights including the right to vote and the right for being elected as representatives of the state.

It didn't matter whether the Secularism was born in Europe or elsewhere. Whereas the circumstances in which it was born and its context mattered for Atatürk.

Secularism is a product of the Age of Enlightenment in which reason was advocated as the primary source of legitimacy and authority. At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals, and a strong reliance in rationality and science.

Enlightenment had been a natural movement evolved in the dialectical context of European history, it didn’t drop from the sky like a meteoroid. You can not point to a single historical event as its sole source. French Revolution happened to be its most dramatic and well know realization.

The central issue Pamuk is circumventing is the clash of Islam and Secularism we see today. Islam contradicts Enlightenment values by proposing a political, social and judicial ideology of its own relying solely on divine authority as opposed to reason.

To a large extent Muslim migrant populations in Europe while enjoying and taking advantage of freedom and tolerance European democracies provide, don’t show similar levels of tolerance or respect to the values of greater society they live in.

In the name of multiculturalism most Muslims continue to live within enclosed ghettos. Their realisation of truth is determined by Imams who teach them intolerance towards views who oppose or don’t share their absolute divine rhetoric written in the Koran.

Religious rhetoric dictates men use their power to suppress women and undermine their role they could otherwise play in the society. Such gender power imbalance had been centerpiece of Atatürk’s reforms to confront.

Atatürk and liberated women of the secular Turkish Republic

The irony of Liberty is letting intolerance to breed despite not endorsing it. This is the puzzle the West has to solve without undermining core values of Enlightenment.

For the past eight years the Turkish Republic is governed by a pro-Islamic populist political party (AKP) who concealed their true intent behind a ‘Moderate Islam’ mask, slowly but surely marching towards their ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic presidential state. There are strong indications that this is the case. The AKP Government now controls judiciary system, put intellectuals, journalist, and politicians who oppose them in prison for three years without sufficient evidence to prosecute them.

Unfortunately what Pamuk is saying here is not so different to populist and anti-secular rhetoric of AKP.

I advise Mr. Pamuk to return to what he does, writing novels.

No one is born with a religion

We are about to fly to the country I was born. It is a long and torturous journey, about twenty-four hours, in a cramped airbus seat.

Life is beautiful and cruel at the same time. Somehow before long flights I review my life. Our genes strive to leave a legacy of some form. What would be my legacy.. In case..

At this point in my life I am happy and content. Thanks to my ability to reason and my early realisation that you should not expect too much from life.

In fact this is almost what you really need in life as a precondition of everything else. A ‘reasoning’ mind. A ‘conscious’, ‘skeptical’, ‘inquisitive’ mind free from delusions.

My political identity is shaped by fairness, enlightenment values, and atheism.

I don’t have any problem with people who believe in a deity (or deities) and who express a peaceful, tolerant and humanistic interpretation of their religion.

This sort of personal engagement, equivalent to believing star signs or fortune telling does not irritate me so long as tolerance remains mutual even though I find the basis of their faith irrational.

My problem is with religious indoctrination of children. But before making my point we need to look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) Article 18 and 19.

Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

No one is born with a religion.

Religion is a byproduct of human mind probably emerged early in human evolution. Our brains are wired to misinterpret natural phenomena we don’t understand in order to classify ‘the unknown and dangerous’. Humans developed rituals in the hope of controlling natural catastrophes. The Gods or the God emerged as the focal point of such misinterpretations. ‘The God’ became a black hole for everything that cannot be understood.

The core Enlightenment values that started to emerge in the 17th century have been questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals, and establishing a strong belief in rationality and science.

Today religions, their arcane and narrow view towards human condition, their pathetic deficiency in quest to understand and explain the rules of the Universe and the origins of Life on our planet have made them largely outdated and irrelevant in everyday life.

Besides their diminished role religions continue to remain however powerful and overly protected by identity politics in developed and developing nations alike.

No one is born with a religion.

Yet children all over the world are indoctrinated and brain washed from infancy.

Be it a Taliban run Madrasa in Afghanistan or a so called Faith school in a Western Democracy children are systematically brain washed in little or no regard of historical, social and scientific contexts and with complete disregard of other religions, faiths or the Theory of Evolution to explain the origins of life and nature. I see this in the lightest of terms a form of ‘child abuse’.

UDHR Article 18 warrants the ticket to ‘teach’ religion. But Article 19 at the same time warrants the right to freedom of opinion. Therefore no one should have the right to take away freedom of opinion from children.

In my view in the core of our moral responsibility lies our obligation to teach our children ‘the complete picture’.

And the complete picture will not be ‘complete’ without objectively teaching other religions, their history, their legacy, Atheism and the Theory of Evolution so that children can have their opportunity to compare one to another and perhaps learn to tolerate each other’s views in due process.

My legacy is ‘freedom of choice for our children’.

No one is born with a religion.

I ask you to stand by me and get my message across to stop abuse of our children with subjective religious indoctrination.

For peace and for a better world.

Church and State

Australian Democrats nailed it. They have the most comprehensive policy to ensure separation of Church and State, I wonder where Greens stand:

"The Australian Constitution prohibits the Commonwealth from making any law for establishing religion, imposing religious observance or using religion as a test for office. However this has not guaranteed a secular state and boundaries between church and state have become increasingly blurred.

The Howard Government shaped its response to refugees in terms of Australian values which it said were Christian. Exclusively religious chaplains were funded in government schools and all states give as of rights to religious instruction in school hours. Schools are prohibited from providing meaningful activity for those who opt out.

MPs, including prime ministers, have openly declared their religious allegiances and parliaments around the country still pray before each sitting that their deliberations are overseen by God for ‘...the advancement of Thy glory’.

Organised religion is exempt from taxes for their commercial businesses. Earnings for the 10 biggest religious groups were estimated at $23.3b in 2005, costing taxpayers untold sums in lost revenue that might otherwise be spent on services."

The following is my wish list and all seem to be endorsed in Australian Democrats' policy:

We need constitutional reform to ensure separation of Church and State. 

We need tax system reform to remove exemptions for church organisations for profits made from purely commercial operations.

We need replacing prayers in Federal Parliament with period of reflection on the importance of ethical practice.

We need obliging church organizations providing publicly funded services such as hospitals and employment placement to not discriminate on religious grounds in the services they deliver or the people they serve and employ.

We need abolishing grants for proselytising such as the $8m for Catholic World Youth Day.

We need adherence to the fundamental principle that children should not be inculcated in religion before they are mature enough to make judgements on particular belief systems.

We need confining religious instruction or education in government schools to after school hours, changing parent permission to opt in rather than opt out and encouraging ethics education in schools.

We need  the principle that government should be policy neutral when it comes to religion – between different religions and with those of no religion.

For more info refer to: http://www.democrats.org.au/policies/

Death of an Atheist

The following post from the Freethinker web site is distressing.

"A young muslim, who had been investigated by his employers at Male International Airport in the Maldives for apostasy, was found hanged from the airport’s control tower yesterday (14 July 2010).

In two emails sent to an international humanitarian organisation on June 23 and 25, Ismail admitted he was an atheist and desperately requested assistance for a UK asylum application. He claimed to have received several anonymous threats on June  22.

In the emails, he said:

“I foolishly admitted my stance on religion to work colleagues, word of which had “spread like wildfire.” A lot of my close friends and girlfriend have been prohibited from seeing me by their parents. I have even received a couple of anonymous phone calls threatening violence if I do not repent and start practicing Islam … I cannot bring myself to pretend to be I am something I am not, as I am a staunch believer in human rights. I am afraid for my life here and know no one inside the country who can help me."

This sad news brings back the question of how much religious fundamentalism should be tolerated in secular societies.

In secular democratic societies people with strong religious convictions enjoy and share the freedom of expression and civil rights with other citizens who may not necessarily share their faith.

Islamists cried for 'freedom of expression' when French banned 'burka' recently, but when they have the numbers religious fundamentalists act like monsters who would not tolerate opinions other than the bigoted preaching dictated by their faith.


Source: The Freethinker