In a possible indication that this PledgeBank pledge (reported previously) has proved highly successful, it is reported today that The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is the most popular holiday read for the UK’s Labour party MPs this summer. The popular tract is also in second place for the Liberal Democrats (ahead even of Harry Potter!) and second place overall.
Richard Dawkins, Enthusiastic Bright, author of The God Delusion and now of Richard Dawkins Foundation fame has a guest contributor spot in the Times of London today.
Objectively judged, the language of The God Delusion is less shrill than we regularly hear from political commentators or from theatre, art, book or restaurant critics. The illusion of intemperance flows from the unspoken convention that faith is uniquely privileged: off limits to attack. In a criticism of religion, even clarity ceases to be a virtue and begins to sound like aggressive hostility.
More here: “How dare you call me a fundamentalist“
Former Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, the renowned science-fiction novelist Kurt Vonnegut, died yesterday. He was 84.
His most famous books include Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle.
Vonnegut is reported to have referred to the AHA Honourary President position as “that totally functionless capacity”. He replaced Isaac Asimov in the role.
(Cory Doctorow mourns his passing. Also see this Rolling Stone feature on Vonnegut from August 2006.)
As announced yesterday, the Humanist Society of Scotland has used Darwin Day to launch Humanist Thought for the Day, at www.ThinkHumanist.org (RSS). To start things off, A. C. Grayling talks about the Paradox of Tolerance. The HSS will be encouraging humanists from around the world to voice their own “thoughts for the day”. To that end you can get in touch with them, or subscribe to receive the podcasts by email, here.
As announced in the most recent Bulletin from “Brights Central”, a collaboration at the official Brights Forums have designed and produced a naturalistically themed calendar for 2007, from which profits go to the Brights Net. You can purchase the first ever Brights calendar here. (It’s only February, and maybe it will have souvenir value!) A 2008 calendar is also in the planning.
But what to do this year?
The Richard Dawkins Foundation (RDF) has drawn special attention to a PledgeBank pledge aiming to send a copy of Dawkins’ The God Delusion to every Member of Parliament in the UK. The pledge author is also maintaining the list of MPs to avoid duplication.
Kent “Doctor Dino” Hovind was sentenced to ten years in prison last Friday. He was the controversial leader of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry and owned Pensacola Florida’s Dinosaur Adventure Land, a creationist theme park which “documents” the days when humans and dinosaurs lived side by side. Hovind was found guilty in November on many and various charges of financial wrongdoing. (His wife is due to be sentenced in March, probably much more leniently.)
Hovind had claimed that there are no laws that tax “God’s” property or work. The judge said the case was nothing to do with religion, but insisted that churches are not exempt from all forms of taxation. Hovind’s business empire must now pay hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to the government, which may put Dinosaur Adventure Land itself in peril. Not as much peril as people would have been in if they lived with dinosaurs, though.
The US National Center for Science Education has a good short summary of events, and relays local Pensacola press responses to the sentencing, which are scornful of this minister who is now a convicted criminal. (Via. Image source.)
Days after TheSpoof.com satirically speculated that footballer David Beckham might be joining the Church of Scientology — adding that wife Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham “wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole” — it has been non-satirically suggested that the reverse is in fact the case.
Following David Beckham’s expensive signing to soccer team LA Galaxy, questionable British newspaper the Daily Express mulls over the friendship that the Beckhams share with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (who are both infamously members of the Church). The article drudges over rumours that Victoria Beckham “spent time getting to know” David Miscavige (Cruise’s best man and the head of the Church) at the Cruise-Holmes wedding. Victoria Beckham is also quoted as saying: “I’ve spoken to Tom about Scientology. I’m quite inquisitive but I don’t know anything about it. They do what they do and they’re cool.”
Comedian Stewart Lee discusses the popular interpretation of comic pieces like Borat, Little Britain, and The Office, in today’s Guardian: “Guilt-free pleasures“. He argues that such output is pervasively misrepresented, citing comments such as “Borat raises an index finger to political correctness and all its exponents”. In reality, he says:
There’s a vast difference between the casual, inadvertent offence prevalent in my childhood and the choices made today by performers and writers of my generation, operating in a post-PC world, where they are aware of the power and meaning of the taboos they choose to break. […] I am a great fan of political correctness, even though, as one of the writers of Jerry Springer the Opera, I was routinely praised for apparently attacking it[…]
Yesterday, infamous US television evangelist Pat Robertson made predictions based on messages from God received at a recent prayer retreat. He foretold that late in 2007, terrorists would cause a “mass killing” of US citizens in an attack which would “not necessarily” be nuclear.
A report due to the published by The Department of Homeland Security today will claim that only four big U.S. cities have emergency communications sufficient to handle a major crisis, that possible terror targets like New York City and Chicago were not among those cities, and that the lack of interoperability could lead to mistakes like those that lead to the deaths of emergency service workers on 9/11.
