Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men

Tis the season, both political and religious. And it seems to be bringing out a nasty streak of intolerance in the name of religious tolerance. So, apologies for this disjointed compendium, but I need to clear a backlog of disturbing bookmarks. Some of this ground has been well trodden by others, but it’s worth an aggregated view just for the benefit of facilitating pattern recognition.

On 27 November 2007, presidential wannabe Mitt Romney, quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, confessed his embrace of religious quotas and his apparent bigotry.

He answered, “…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”

Somebody, please, send the good Governor a copy of the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey or the recent Barna survey that indicates 7% of Americans are atheist, agnostic or without faith. But, before we lay claim to a cabinet position, we should heed Mr. Romney’s remarks today, while seeking to allay concerns that his Mormonism could be somehow at odds with right-wing fundamental protestantism. As reported on the Washington Post web site:

Romney praised the practices of many faiths and underscored repeatedly the religious heritage that was at the heart of the Founding Father’s vision of the new country. He called for public acknowledgment of the Creator on currency, in the pledge and said nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in the public square… I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from ‘the God who gave us liberty.’”

Oh. So, he favors freedom of religion. Pick an ideology. Any Judeo-Christian ideology.

Of course, the world is now well-familiar (and suitably disgusted) with the story (e.g. here and here) of Gillian Gibbons, the British school teacher working in Sudan who faced prison, fines, and 40 lashes for blasphemously permitting her seven-year-old pupils to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.” Following her conviction, Ms. Gibbons was pardoned by the Sudanese president. Such leniency could not be tolerated by some citizens in Sudan.

The teacher, Gillian Gibbons, was sentenced to 15 days in jail last week for insulting Islam and was to be released next Monday. Under Sudanese law, Ms. Gibbons could have received 40 lashes and been jailed for six months. On Friday, hundreds of Sudanese in Khartoum, the capital, protested what they considered a lenient punishment and called for her to be put to death.

On 29 November 2007, the Austin American Statesman reported that Chris Comer, the Texas Education Agency’s director of science curriculum for more than nine years, tendered her resignation under pressure after being accursed of creating bias against the teaching of intelligent design.

Comer was put on 30 days paid administrative leave shortly after she forwarded an e-mail in late October announcing a presentation being given by Barbara Forrest, author of “Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse,” a book that says creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Forrest was also a key witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case concerning the introduction of intelligent design in a Pennsylvania school district. Comer sent the e-mail to several individuals and a few online communities, saying, “FYI.”

As noted at Panda’s Thumb:

Apparently, not being a team player in the The Republican War on Science is a firing offense at the TEA. Why forwarding an announcement concerning a talk whose topic is highly relevant to the conduct of science education by an internationally recognized speaker should cause TEA administrators a problem escapes me. One is forced to wonder whether Ms. Comer would be looking for a new job if instead she were forwarding emails announcing talks by DI fellows about “intelligent design” creationism.

This issue is also well-treated at Pharyngula and The Austringer. Details on the story may be found at the web site for Texas Citizens for Science.

On 30 November 2007, The Independent reports that the Turkish publisher of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion may be subject to imprisonment on the basis of increasingly frequent application of laws restricting freedom of expression.

Erol Karaaslan, the founder of the small publishing house Kuzey Publications, could face between six months and a year in jail for “inciting hatred and enmity” if Istanbul prosecutors decide to press charges over the book, which has sold 6000 copies in Turkey since it was published this summer.

See additional stories here and here.

On 3 December 2007 the Guardian reported on continued protests against humanist author and activist Taslima Nasrin, who announced several days ago her intent to remove supposedly offending passages from her autobiography.

But the offer to remove the paragraphs from new printings of the bestseller was not enough for Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the chief cleric of New Delhi’s Jama Masjid mosque, who suggested earlier today that Indian Muslims should “not tolerate the infamous authoress Taslima Nasrin on the Indian soil” unless she offered a written apology for what he called her “anti-Islamic publications”.

“The apology must bear her assurance that in future she will desist from repeating such venomous writing that may have any inkling of blasphemy,” he said in a statement.

“India is a democratic nation and the constitution here neither does permit any citizen nor allow any foreign national to be irreverent to the tenets of any religion,” the cleric continued.

On 4 December 2007, The Rational Response Squad reported on the encyclical letter Spe Salvi promulgated by the Vatican on 30 November 2007, noting that the Pope has chosen to villify atheists by attributing to them some of the great moral lapses of the recent past.

The attempt to correlate atheism with violence, hatred, and genocide is the faithful fall-back argument for theists looking for a scapegoat. As in many other situations, their best defense for their beliefs and the resulting atrocities throughout history is something like, “Atheists did it, too! Just look at Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. You’re just like us!” Well, I beg to differ. Those three well-worn examples did not commit those crimes because of their lack of god-belief. That is where the fundamental difference lies.

The encyclical letter Spe Salvi itself, while not as inflammatory in its rhetoric as the above implies, says:

Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world’s suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope.

Of course, reasonable people might disagree. Those who rely on reason over faith certainly will.

On 4 December 2007, A Thinking Man pointed out the cries of blasphemy regarding a Red Bull commercial that aired in Italy (see also the New Humanist Blog).

Father Marco Damanti, from Sicily, wrote to the makers of the caffeinated energy drink denouncing their commercial as “a blasphemous act” and said yesterday he had received a prompt reply promising to remove it from Italian television. The advert depicted four wise men, instead of three, visiting Mary and the Baby Jesus in Bethlehem. The fourth wise man bore a can of the soft drink.

Even those challenged at recognizing patterns can glimpse this growing and paradoxical trend in which free speech is squelched in the name of religious sensitivity and tolerance, while overt discrimination against and rampant disrespect of atheists continues unabated.

Situation normal.