The Invisible Library

With the seventh Harry Potter book and fifth movie about to premier, there’s no shortage of Harry Potter Hysteria (HPH) to be had. This is baffling to us librarians, Harry Potter fans, or anyone with two brain cells to rub together as HPH clearly just so much Satanic Panic with a new coat of paint. So, the claims of witchcraft and Satanic initiation are clearly a cock and bull story, but what is the real motivation behind banning Harry Potter books? It could be part of the Evangelical movement’s more general disregard for worldly knowledge, book learning and anything fun. But I think it’s more specific than that. I think there is a real threat to the religious worldview in the Harry Potter books, it just isn’t Satanic in nature but secular.*

While His Dark Materials and even the Lord of The Rings are also on the Evangelical shit list, Harry Potter has become the whipping boy for their fears of a secular culture. The Harry Potter Books and films show how one can fight evil without resorting to superstitious rituals or relying on religious authority. It’s just a boy and his friends, learning to develop their inborn talents (sometimes doing so against the wishes of authority figures) to save the world. And that scares the shit out of the Religious Right. No wonder they don’t want their kids to read these books, as they will grow up to think that they can fight evil and change the world for the better without appeals to higher powers or relying on a daddy figure (because he’s dead, after all), but just by invoking the magic of hard work, friendship and cooperation and sometimes breaking the rules. Harry Potter encourages children to be rebellious, self reliant and to distrust elders, because they may not have their best interests in mind. Which is why they will go down in history as the best books, ever.

I come not to praise Jerry Falwell, but to bury him, quickly, before he starts to stink up the place:

The Rev Jerry Falwell, whose evangelical convictions and organisational abilities, including as a founder in1979 of the Moral Majority movement, did much to place religious conservatives in a role of great influence in American politics, died on Tuesday in Lynchburg, Virginia, of apparent heart failure at the age of 73.He was a figure of immense controversy over the last 40 years, outspoken to the point that his apologies appeared almost as regularly as his thundering denunciations. To him the three great scourges afflicting his country were “atheism, secularism and humanism,” and nothing would deter him from defeating his evil trinity.

Most notoriously, he laid the blame for the terrorist attacks of September11 2001, at the feet of his domestic opponents. “I really believe,” he said at the time, “that the pagans, the abortionists and the lesbians …and all those who have tried to secularise America helped this happen.”His subsequent recantation attracted less attention.

Few people have been as outspoken in their intolerance and hatred– all in the name of religion– as Jerry Falwell. He never met a racist he didn’t like, a bigot he couldn’t find common ground with (so long as they were rich, white and as arrogant as he was– sorry Dr. Farrakhan) or a decent human being he couldn’t tar and feather as enemies incarnate to his withered and archaic ideals. With him gone, there is one less roadblock to making this a just and humanistic society.

I’d like to say that I’m not pleased by the news of this spiteful old coot’s passing but part of me is. I can admit that. I never wish anyone harm but neither do I shy away from the fact that some people far outlive the age into which they were born, lingering on well past their prime to embarrass their descendants with creaking paroxysms of outmoded bigotry. In Falwell’s case, they are sometimes born well past the age they would have been happier in. Alas, Jerry was just too medieval for these wild and woolly modern times. But now he’s gone home to the void and we can be just a little more at peace.

Some of old Jerry’s more memorable quotes from the Huffington Post.

Boing Boing has more.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere of late as to weather or not “mean” atheists like Richard Dawkins are helping the cause of atheism and the spread of free thought or hurting it. Some people say that of course, they are, we need our agitators. Others say we should just keep our mouthes shut. Because being polite is just how slavery was ended and women got the vote. Some even think Atheists aren’t really persecuted and shouldn’t include ourselves among those fighting for our liberties. Afer all, it’s not as if atheists are being physically attacked for their beliefs:

In what appears to be the first violent hate crime against an atheist, Justin Trottier, Director of the Center for Inquiry Ontario and President of the Freethought Association of Canada (a national body composed of secularist student groups including the UofT Secular Alliance and the Freethinker’s Association of Ryerson) was attacked around midnight on March 27 on the campus of Ryerson University. Ryerson security is treating this as a hate crime.

Mr. Trottier and his colleague Peter Aruja were placing posters for upcoming events at Ryerson University and the University of Toronto, featuring physicist Victor Stenger, author of the New York Time’s Best Seller “God: The Failed Hypothesis”, set to take place on April 5. While postering, two assailants took offense to the religious implications of the posters advertising for Stenger’s book. About fifteen minutes later when Trottier and Aruja were in a more secluded area of the university the two reappeared and initiated a verbal argument.

According to Mr. Trottier “The first individual smacked me in the face twice and said “watch your smart mouth.” I said “don’t touch me” at which point he head butted me hard in the face, causing my nose to bleed profusely.”

The attack targeting an individual for his beliefs clearly represents a hate crime and is being treated as such by Ryerson security. This also represents a disturbing trend of targeting individuals who visibly question the legitimacy of religious dogma. Just last week Toronto Police were involved in the highly publicized threats against Mr. Fatah and Mrs. Hassan of the Muslim Canadian Congress. Here the anonymous individual swore to “slaughter” the two MCC members, in the name of god, for belonging to an “apostate” organization.

The Humanist Association of Canada spokesperson, Pat O’Brien, responded to this shameful incident: “Atheists have never been accorded the same respect as those with religious beliefs even though our position originates in logic and reason, not myth and superstition. This escalation of a systemic, although till now hidden, discrimination is very troubling.”

I’ve only heard of this Dinesh D’Souza fellow once before, when he was on the Colbert report, selling his shitty book about how progressives and free thinkers were responsible for 9/11 and the only way we’re going to defeat The Terrorists is by passing Sharia laws and becoming more like them. So, I wasn’t expecting clearheadedness from him when I read his little rant about the Virginia Tech shootings, in which he went off on a tangent, wondering aloud to his navel where all the atheists were about now and why wasn’t Richard Dawkins invited to speak at the memorial service.

That last little non sequiter there is the result of D’Souza not knowing the names of an other prominent atheists, ones who maybe live in the US rather than England. But apparently Mr. D’Souza thinks that Dr. Dawkins has nothing better to do than to fly half way around the world, calling press conferences to comment on tragedies that he has no personal connection with.

Setting aside the idiocy of this part of the argument, he goes on to make some ludicrous pronouncements about the character of people who do not share his belief in the grief counseling power of fairy tales:

Several atheists–who haven’t yet lost their fundamentalist habit of reading–took this sarcastic statement literally. “So what? The Pope hasn’t been invited either!” My point was that atheism has nothing to offer in the face of tragedy except C’est la vie. Deal with it. Get over it. This is why the ceremonies were suffused with religious rhetoric. Only the language of religion seems appropriate to the magnitude of tragedy. Only God seems to have the power to heal hearts in such circumstances. If someone started to read from Dawkins on why there is no good and no evil in the universe, people would start vomiting or leaving.One clever writer informs me that atheists don’t deny meaning, they simply insist that meaning is not inherent in the universe, it is created by us. Okay, pal, here’s the Virginia Tech situation. Go create some meaning and share it with the rest of us Give us that atheist sermon with you in the pulpit of the campus chapel. I’m not being facetious here. I really want to hear what the atheist would tell the grieving mothers.

First off, atheists don’t give sermons. We don’t tell other people what they should think and feel and then condescend to them when they have a different reaction than us. In the face of tragedy, some people cry, while others laugh or simply stare into space and wonder. We all react differently to grief but I have to wonder if telling the bereaved fairy tales about the dead playing volleyball in Cloud Cuckooland will really make anything better.

Secondly, as a number of people have pointed out, your God wasn’t exactly falling all over himself to stop the bullets or change the shooter’s mind. Just like Jesus didn’t use his super wood carving powers to build an unbreakable levy in New Orleans and Moses didn’t part the South Seas to stop the tsunami. But D’Souza has this one covered:

But perhaps God’s purpose in the world (I am only thinking aloud here) is to draw his creatures to him. And you have to admit that tragedies like this one at Virginia Tech help to do that!

Nice, huh? God lets bad things happen in order for us to become emotionally dependent on his stingy love and murderous whims. D’Souza thinks that not only is humanity suffering from a massive case of Battered Spouse Syndrome but that this is somehow a good thing.

Hat tip to PZ Myers.

Jesus made of food is bad but Jesus as food is… holy? No wonder I don’t get religion:

NEW YORK (AP) — A planned Holy Week exhibition of a nude, anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled Friday amid complaints from Catholics, including Cardinal Edward Egan.

The “My Sweet Lord” display was shut down by the hotel that houses the Lab Gallery in Manhattan, said Matt Semler, the gallery’s creative director. Semler said he resigned after officials at the Roger Smith Hotel shut down the show.

The artwork was created from more than 200 pounds of milk chocolate and features Christ with his arms outstretched as if on an invisible cross. Unlike the typical religious portrayal of Christ, the artwork does not include a loincloth.

The 6-foot sculpture was the victim of “a strong-arming from people who haven’t seen the show, seen what we’re doing,” Semler said. “They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions.”

But word of the confectionary Christ infuriated Catholics, including Egan, who described it as “a sickening display.” Bill Donohue, head of the watchdog Catholic League, said it was “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.”

I’d think that something like the President’s response to Hurricane Katrina or Abu Ghraib would be a worse assault on Christian sensibilities, not a fucking sculpture made of chocolate. But then, I’m not a giant pick like Bill Donohue.*

Via Boing Boing.

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*Who now will call me anti-Catholic for calling him a prick.

This BBC headline is brilliant: Gay Sex Immoral Says US General

And war, of course, is family values, good as apple pie and kittens. Please General Pace, Sir, lecture me some on what is Right and Honorable:

“As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behaviour] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else’s wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behaviour,” he said.

Just to clarify: your job, sir, is to fucking kill people. And seeing as how you’ve attained the lofty rank of General in these, our armed forces, you’re pretty well versed in the methods and tactics of your butchery. But, oh, the thought of two men in passionate embrace turns your delicate stomach. In what twisted version of reality did I wake up in to find a fucking hired killer lecturing the world at large on what is and is not moral? General Pace claims to be a Christian, though he receives a paycheck for violating a major commandment of his religion, while simultaneously arguing for the enforcement of some obscure prohibition, one concocted in the dim mists of antiquity, when the wise men of the day declared that the sun turned about the Earth and shrimp were an abomination in the eyes if their imaginary friend.

General Pace, Sir, get a fucking grip. Homosexuals were loving one another long before you came about and will be doing so, in and out of uniform, far after your delicate sensibilities have turned to dust. I know you have a lot of free time on your hands, now that you’re no longer in charge of torturing people in Iraq, but can’t you maybe find something slightly more constructive to do unto King George calls on you to take your professional services to Iran? Maybe there’s a baby somewhere itching to inspect your bayonet.

One more reason why I need to get the fuck out of Georgia:

The one-page memorandum, marked “From: Representative Ben Bridges,” [R, GA] declared that “tax-supported evolution science” was based on religion and therefore unlawful under the United States Constitution.

It continued, “Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called secular evolution science is the Big Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion.”

“This scenario,” the memorandum stated, “is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings on the mystic ‘holy book’ kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”

It’s a neat little package, anti-science wrapped up in dingbattery with a pretty little anti-semitic bow on top. It takes a certain, highly sophisticated type of mind to craft this kind of nonsense. One steeped in old timey Southern bigotry, enculturated ignorance and the complete disregard for tact to be found only in your most privelaged of upper class Gentleman. The sort of fellow who feels free to write this to his staff members without thinking it might be repeated somehow. Because why would the loyal servants ever repeat the talk of their social betters?

Link via Bob Harris.

Archy gives us a great review of Ken Ham’s Creationist Museum, focusing on the story of the Ark:

Ever since the book of Genesis became known to a broad audience, some twenty-four centuries ago, skeptics have questioned the possibility of fitting two of all species of land animals into a single boat. In the early days of the Church, apologists made a careful count of the number of species in the world (arriving at a laughably low number*), made the largest possible estimate of the size of the ark**, and carefully arranged the animals into that space along with enough food for a year and Noah’s family. These methods were sufficient to satisfy the faithful until the Renaissance, when sailors began bumping into entire continents with hundreds, even thousands, of new species. Then scientists began finding hundreds of very large, extinct species. How did they fit into the story?

The Ark story is one of my favorites, as it very concisely illustrates the one legitimate concern that Creationists have: that science will eventually undermine faith by pointing out how idiotic Biblical literalism really is. We simply know too many solid facts about history, biology, anthropology, archeology, history and physics to take these stories at face value. There is no way all the species of the world could fit in an ark that wouldn’t be the size of Cuba. Then their are the dinosaurs:

Dinosaurs, and other extinct animals known only by fossils, create a special problem. Not only do fossils multiply the number of animals that need to fit onto the ark; many of those fossil animals are very large. Some Biblical literalists chose simply to deny that they really existed. Others have suggested that fossils are the remains of a couple of practice creation that God did before making us. That idea has fallen out of favor, because it breaks the rules of taking the Bible at its word. No, the only real answer must be that dinosaurs were on the ark. This is the solution that Ken Ham embraces for his Creation Museum.

He wins point s for imagination, I’ll give him that. But Museums aren’t just  about imagination, and they most definitely aren’t about affirming outmoded beliefs just to quiet those pesky doubts caused by encountering facts.

Today is the 198th birthday of arguably the most important human to have ever lived, Charles Darwin, who’s work changed the world for the better by providing us with the language and theoretical models to understand the origin of life in the universe. Think about that for a moment. Before Darwin, there were evolutionary theories but none of them were grounded in science and all were hindered by their subservience to religious dogma and superstition. Darwin was the first person to describe how we evolved and continue to do so. The Theory of evolution by natural selection has resulted in numerous fields of scientific advancement, from genetics to history and even geology. No longer do we have to sift through the bones of our ancestors, looking for giants and dragons and shoehorning them into the fairy tale models described by our primitive ancestors. We have access to the truth. And it’s all because of the work of one man.

Seems our old pal, Harun Yahya is back with another book. This one sounds like a winner:

PARIS (AFP) - Tens of thousands of French schools and universities have received copies of a Turkish book refuting Darwin’s theory of evolution and describing it as “the true source of terrorism.”

The education ministry said Friday that it had warned school and university directors that the textbook is not in line with the recognized curriculum and that they should disregard it.

Entitled “The Atlas of Creation,” the 770-page book by Turkish author Harun Yahya quotes several passages from the Koran and asserts that “human beings did not evolve (from another species) but were indeed created.”

[…] The book features a photograph of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center with the caption: “Those who perpetuate terror in the world are in fact Darwinists. Darwinism is the only philosophy that values and incites conflict.”

The theories of Charles Darwin are “the true source of terrorism,” it said.

Well, I’m convinced. I mean, the book is 770 pages long! Anything that long must be well researched. I bet it’s just bursting at the seems with well constructed and irrefutable truth.I wonder what other pieces of fine literature these schools have been gifted with?

The official said that the Church of Scientology had also embarked on a mass distribution of literature to schools a few years ago.

Via PZ Myers.