Brights News Feed

A budding editor at Clare College, Cambridge (UK) has faced harsh disciplinary action over re-publishing a Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoon in his college newspaper, Clareification. The cartoon was used to illustrate a special issue on religious satire. The National Secular Society respond:

We are shocked that the staff and even the students union at this supposedly liberal college have joined the attack on this student because he had the temerity to poke fun at religion. Free expression is such a precious commodity and is under such ferocious attack at present from religious interests that it is disgraceful that no-one is standing up for this young man’s right to be rude about religion – even about Islam.

(Also see MediaWatchWatch.) GagWatch also points out that from France there is some:

good news. The state prosecutor has called for the dismissal of the court case brought by two French Muslim groups against satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, saying that the cartoons denounce terrorists’ use of the Muslim faith but do not damage Islam. A verdict was expected March 15.

Schools across France have received several thousand unsolicited copies of an “atlas” which advocates Islamic creationism theories, according to the Education Ministry. Stuff.co.nz says:

The lavishly illustrated Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya, a shadowy figure who runs a large Islamic publishing operation from Istanbul, was sent to schools and universities over the past 10 days. The Turkish original of the 768-page book, which rejects evolution, first appeared in Turkey late last year when it was also sent unsolicited to schools. It sees Charles Darwin’s theory of the “survival of the fittest” as the root of many of today’s ills, including modern terrorism.

The large-format, lavishly illustrated book, is meant to show that current animal species look exactly like the fossils of their ancestors. It appears to have been mailed from Turkey and Germany to schools all around France, a project of Harun Yahya, otherwise known as the Islamic teacher Adnan Oktar.

The Atlas of Creation puts an Islamic twist on criticism of the theory of evolution, a cause usually associated with conservative Christians in the United States.

Robert Redecker, the French teacher of philosophy who was threatened with death after heavily criticising the content of the Qu’ran and modern Islam, has now resigned from teaching. The resignation comes despite the arrest of two suspects. His criticisms were originally published in Le Figaro, September last year. Although his views are more extreme than many mainstream thinkers usually find comfortable, the French intellectual community has rallied around Redecker in defence of free expression.

(See DNA. Via.)

From the nation that brought us the Enlightenment, the French edition of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? features an astonishing display of scientific ignorance en masse. For €1,500 the question is “Qu’est-ce qui gravite autor de la Terre?” — “Which of these is in orbit around the Earth?” Is it A, the Moon; B, the Sun; C, Mars; or D, Venus?

Not only does the contestant not know the answer, he uses his “Ask the audience” lifeline… with astonishing results.

See the YouTube. (Only limited French required to follow it.) (Via Perlocutionary.)

On a wave of recent high-profile secular publishing, France’s best-selling philosopher, Michel Onfray, is to have a translation of his 2005 tract, Traité d’athéologie, published in the new year as Atheist Manifesto. Traité d’athéologie has sold 230,000 copies in France alone.

The self-described hedonist, atheist, libertarian, and left-wing anarchist has received death threats for his view that religious beliefs are “children’s stories for comfort”. And in the book he rallies:

Against the rabbis, the preachers, the imams, ayatollahs and mullahs, I persist in preferring the philosopher. They are the ones that know there is only one world and that any promotion of an otherworld makes us lose the use and benefit of the only one that really exists. A truly deadly sin…

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September 19, Robert Redecker, French philosopher and philosophy teacher in a high school near Toulouse, received emailed death threats on the same day his article about Islam was published in Le Figaro, a leading, Conservative French daily newspaper. He has since been put under protection by the police, forcing him to stop giving lectures. The French minister of education self-consciously declares to sympathize with the philosopher.

“Merciless warrior, pillager, murderer of Jews and polygamist that is how Mohammad portrays himself in the Koran … Hatred and violence live in the book by which every Muslim is educated, the Koran,” Redeker wrote in his post, entitled “Confronted to Islamist intimidation, what can the free world do ?”. He draws a parallel with the cold war, stating Islam, as communism was, is an alternative to the occident.

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A report commanded by N. Sarkozy, Frances’ second Minister of the state, responsible for homeland security and Minister for religion, clearly advocates that public institutions should be allowed to fund places of worship in various ways. Currently, any direct funding from public money at any level is explicitly forbidden, and indirect fundings are made difficult. The report threatens this.

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