Monthly Archives: July 2022

The case of Nigerian humanist, Mubarak Bala has made it necessary to reflect on the situation of atheism in Nigeria. It is imperative to examine how religious minds have demonized atheism and tyrannized the lives of nonbelievers.

Irreligiosity is not a phenomenon that is often linked to the African continent. But in recent times things have started to change. The religious landscape is undergoing significant shifts and transformations. Despite the growing visibility of religion on the continent, irreligious individuals are becoming active.

Groups of nonbelievers are emerging and organizing. There is a need to explore the link between atheist activism and liberation, especially the liberation of nonreligious persons in Africa. It is in investigating this connection that efforts and actions by atheists and humanists to free themselves and society from religious bondage could better be understood. Such an exploration would situate initiatives by godless and faithless individuals to bring about social change and transformation.

Atheist activism has been misrepresented by pious minds and in pious scholarship. And in consequence, atheist assertiveness has largely been misunderstood and mischaracterized. Atheist activism is designated as militant, fundamentalist, and in some cases, Islamophobic. Nonbelief in religious gods, deities, and dogmas has been presented in the negative sense; as an 'antiestablishment' sentiment, a deviation from the norm, a violation of the sociopolitical order, an epitome of intellectual, or moral debauchery and deserving of suppression and repression.

Little attention has been paid to the notion that religious faiths encapsulate theologies of oppression, persecution, and marginalization. The god idea has become an epithet for dictatorship, a pretext to perpetrate heinous crimes and abuse. The name of Allah has been used to justify bloodletting, savagery, genocide, physical and structuralviolence, and other atrocities. Religions make absolute claims to knowledge, truth, power, and morality. Supernatural faiths do not countenance opposition and disputation. They are totalitarian. Faith groups maintain and strive to control to the minutest details the lives and actions of individuals and societies. Religions sanction socio-economic oppression and political subjugation of others, the religious and non-religious others.

The case of Mubarak Bala shows that misrepresentation of atheism is entrenched, and serves the cause of religious tyranny and despotism in Nigeria. Theocratic governments politicize mischaracterization of atheism to justify denial and erosion of irreligious liberties, violation of the humanity of atheists, the sanctification of impunity, as in the notion of holy war or jihad, and cruel and unjust treatment.

This presentation focuses on two main weapons of religious oppression, apostasy, and blasphemy. It explains the actions taken by Bala to undo these oppressive mechanisms and further his freedom. I argue that atheists' assertion of their rights and liberties are not transgressions but an exercise in social, political, and economic liberation from religious oppression.

Bala came out as an ex-Muslim in 2014. Take note of the expression, 'came out. The profession of Islam is like being locked away in a room and prevented from leaving. Bala might have ditched Islam much earlier than 2014 but the hostage and antagonistic climate did not permit him to go open and public with his non-belief. As I was told, persons who are born into Muslim families are automatically Muslims. Born into an Islamic home, there is no option of choice to belong or not to belong.

One cannot decide not to be a Muslim. Once a Muslim always as a Muslim. One cannot leave or renounce the religion because abandoning Islam is a dishonor to the family and an offense against the Islamic state and community.

But apostasy is not an infraction in any way. It is a right. However, Muslims made it a violation of Islam. As a transgression, apostasy attracts heavy penalties: ex-communication, banishment, honor killing, execution, or extrajudicial killing by nonstate Islamic actors. Thus ittakes a lot of courage to renounce Islam, to scale the religious prison walls. Many who are unable to leave or escape this religious bondage resign to fate; they continue to pay lip service to the religion. They continue to identify as Muslims even when they are not. Many observe the teachings of Islam even when they think and believe otherwise. Simply put, Islamic faith holds its confessors and members captive.

To free himself from this social prison and mental hostage, Bala left Islam. He could not continue to deceive himself. He could no longer pretend to be a Muslim when he was not. More importantly, Bala found the teachings and practices of the religion objectionable, harmful, and incompatible with a reasoned outlook. He discovered that Islam as practiced was outdated, incompatible with human rights, and an improper moral guide to happy and meaningful living in this 21st century.

Bala's renunciation of Islam came at an enormous cost because Islamic gatekeepers put a heavy price on freedom, freethought, free speech, and free assembly. Islamic prison guards placed a price, the supreme priceon liberty which many of its prisoners cannot afford to pay. In the case of Bala, he decided to bite the bullet. He resolved to free himself. But his quest for freedom led to the severance of family ties. Relatives consigned him to a mental hospital where he was shackled and treated as a psychiatric patient. His family regarded his renunciation of Islam as a form of mental illness. They thought he must be out of his mind to leave or to contemplate leaving Islam. They took him to a state hospital for rehabilitation. The family wanted to cure him of apostasy so that he could regain his sanity and return to the Islamic faith.

Bala escaped from the hospital and continued to live, identify and conduct himself as an apostate. In 2020, police arrested Bala for making some Facebook posts. Some Islamists claimed that the posts insulted their prophet and offended their religious sensibilities. One way that Muslims have tried to hold people hostage is to make a violation of their sensibilities an offense, a punishable infraction for other Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Meanwhile, nobody punishes Muslims for offending other religious and irreligious sentiments and sensibilities. Nobody penalizes the Islamicfaithful for casting aspersions on non-Muslims and nonbelievers. Again, Bala refused to be caged or gagged. He continued to speak freely and express his thoughts and ideas about religions and their prophets. Of course, it was not for a long time. After two years of incarceration, Islamic theocrats prosecuted and jailed him.

As the case of Mubarak Bala has shown, Islam has become an oppressive ideology, and a device to hold any real or imagined nonbelievers hostage. Atheist activism tries to undo the oppression and subjugation of infidels and other religious nonbelievers. Atheists in Africa are human beings and have equal rights. Atheists want to be free and to exercise their liberty like religious believers. But theocrats undermine this process of liberation and progressive emancipation. Atheists want to live in a society where people freely embrace, renounce or change their beliefs. But the religious establishment is opposed to freedom and equality of all and for all. Atheists want to live in an environment where individuals are free to say or write whatever they think about anyreligion or prophet. Religious tyrants loathe freethought and free expression. Early in this 21st century, atheist activism has become a liberation struggle against religious tyranny and totalitarianism.

Atheist activists have become freedom fighters, social, political, and intellectual liberators of Africa and Africans. Atheist activists have become awakeners of Africa and Africans from religiously induced slumber, oppression and mental slavery.

Read more here:
Mubarak Bala: Atheist Activism And Liberation From Religious Oppression In Nigeria By Leo Igwe - SaharaReporters.com

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

If the Christian is to be consistent, he cannot say that freedom is absolute, for the consequences of that are atheism. If the liberal is to be consistent, he must say that mans essence is freedom or else he gives up his position.

Many rich men dabble in philosophy, once their wealth is of the sort that largely takes care of itself. But a few students of philosophy have even become rich, in part thanks to their love of wisdom. Thales of Miletus anticipated a bumper crop of olives when others expected a bad harvest, and so leased the citys presses as a monopolist. Before he broke the Bank of England, George Soros studied under Karl Popper at the London School of Economics. And Peter Thiel has credited the mimetic thought of his teacher Ren Girard with prompting him to place a very profitable bet on Facebook.

Thiel has continued his studies of philosophy, at the University of Chicago, teaching courses at Stanford, and supporting various intellectual programs besides his fellowships for college dropouts. The incisive British essayist Mary Harringtona contributing editor at UnHerd and probably the good feminist to TAC readers andthat transphobe to otherswas recently on faculty with Thiel for a seminar in Palo Alto put on by the Zephyr Institute. She sat down with Thiel for an on-the-record chat. The conversation was wide ranging and reviewed many now classic observations from the Zero to One author. I encourage you to read all of Harringtons suggestive reflections on it, but one dichotomy or theme in particular stood out to me: what, when we consider the question of technology, is the relationship between nature and grace?

After raising the feardistilled in the 1930s and 40s by figures like Aldous Huxley, C.S. Lewis, and Romano Guardinithat technology has and will continue to outstrip nature, in particular human nature, Harrington writes of Thiel:

He seems to view this as a largely academic question, and not really in keeping with his understanding of Christian civilisation as fundamentally oriented toward the future. I think of Christianity as deeply historical. Some sense of a certain type of progress of history is a deep part of Christianity. And from this perspective, the notion that there exists an unchanging human nature doesnt really fit with the Christian outlook, but belongs as he puts it more in the classical than the Christian tradition.

The word nature does not occur once in the Old Testament, he tells me, while the concept of nature as something thats eternal and unchanging isnt a Christian one either. It seems to me that the Christian concepts are more things like grace or original sin. From this perspective, Thiel argues, the problem with transhumanism isnt that it seeks to remake humanity, but that it isnt ambitious enough in this regard: the Christian critique of transhumanism should be that its not radical enough, because its only seeking to transform our bodies and not our souls. It appears, in other words, that while Thiel is unflinchingly realistic about whats immediately achievable, he doesnt see any given or self-evident limits to what we could set our sights on.

The observation that the philosophers account of naturecosmos as an indivisible whole with no starting point or destinationwas not derived from scripture is a provocative, under-discussed one, and obviously correct. Whether as a self-sustaining chain of fixed natures or being in endless flux, nature in this sense of Western reason is an object of human subjectivity opposed to revelation. But there appears to me to be a missing Christian concept here, in addition to grace or original sin, from both the Old and New Testaments, namely that of creation. As Paul writes in Romans, For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. And in this sense of creation much of the Christian skepticism for what is called transhumanism retains all its force, for while recognizing the becoming implied in a linear sense of history, its teleology of beginning and final judgment retains the possibility of essences: acorns becoming oak trees and human beings becoming more fully human in new creation.

Thiel has almost certainly thought through all of this, and I expect it was covered in discussion at the seminar, but in his conversation with Harrington, and in much of his public writing, he brings the conversation away from postmillenial anticipation back down to earth. Indeed, in an oblique response to this line of objection, he told her, And maybe science and technology arent that much, but I would say if we stop believing in the teleology of science and technology its not that we go back to some Thomistic or medieval concept of teleology. We become fully epicurean. In a historical moment past faith in grace perfecting nature, we are perhaps left as a post-Christian culture with a choice between the secularized providence of hard technology and the profound pessimism of eternal passing away.

Up to this conversation, perhaps the most distilled account of Thiels thoughts on our present technological malaise was a 2015 essay by the futurist for First Things, entitled Against Edenism. The problem, as he sees it, in brief: Technology means doing more with less. In the absence of technological progress, we end up with a zero-sum world, in which there must be a loser for every winner. It is not clear whether a capitalistic economic system could function without growth; and it is unlikely that a representative democracy, which requires the give-and-take of win-win compromise, would continue to function. That is to say, we do not live in a time when technological progress as such has overcome the bounds of human control, but rather when the digitalthe transcending of time and space by manipulation and recording of informationhas outstripped all material developments; the world of atoms and physical engineering stalled somewhere in the 1970s. The promise of a post-scarcity world remains unkept.

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And this is an insight that can be retained with as orthodox a theology of creation as I can claim (whatever that is). For its focus is the act of dominion mandated to humanity after original sin, and the sweat of our brow, far before it questions whether we must indeed unto dust return. In the twentieth-century tradition of political theology, Thiel makes a grace of growth, but surely there is a grace in growth if we understand it to be the human beings capacity to join Goda city-builderas a subcreator, a namer of animals.

Indeed, in our current-day fight between degrowth proponents demanding that Americans, for the sake of nature, learn to live degraded lives and men like Thiel, who remain hopeful that human ingenuity and spirit can construct a better use of the material weve been given, I am reminded of nothing as much as Christs parable of the talents:

For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents. And likewise he who had received two gained two more also. But he who had received one went and dug in the ground, and hid his lords money. After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them.

So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, "Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them." His lord said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord." He also who had received two talents came and said, "Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them." His lord said to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord."

Then he who had received the one talent came and said, "Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours."

But his lord answered and said to him, "You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents."

"For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

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Between Grace and Nature - The American Conservative

1. In the present systematic review and meta-analysis, high religious and spiritual (RS) practices were negatively associated with the prevalence of symptoms of anxiety and depression.

2. Furthermore, there was a positive association between RS practices and life satisfaction, meaning in life, social relations, and psychological well-being.

Evidence Rating Level: 1 (Excellent)

It is expected that one in five seniors will experience some form of mental illness (e.g. depression, anxiety) late in life. An increasing number of studies support the finding that involvement in RS activities enhance mental health status; however, a specific pooled analysis of reviews on the older population is still needed. As a result, the objective of the present systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies was to investigate the association between RS and the prevalence, severity, and incidence of mental health conditions in older adults.

Of 44 180 identified studies, 62 were included in the final meta-analysis from inception to July 2021. Studies that evaluated the association between RS and mental health in people aged >60 years old were included. Studies were excluded if they compared the prevalence of mental health parameters among different religious affiliations without a comparison to no religious identification or atheism. The risk of bias was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale (NOS). A random effects model and sensitivity analysis was performed.

Results demonstrated that high religious and spiritual (RS) practices were negatively associated with the prevalence of symptoms of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, there was a positive association between RS practices and life satisfaction, meaning in life, social relations, and psychological well-being. However, the present study was limited by the inclusion of mostly cross-sectional studies, thereby limiting inferences of causality. Nonetheles, the studys results provide further support for the utility of RS in enhancing the mental health of older adults.

Click to read the study in Frontiers in Medicine

Image: PD

2022 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved. No works may be reproduced without expressed written consent from 2 Minute Medicine, Inc. Inquire about licensing here. No article should be construed as medical advice and is not intended as such by the authors or by 2 Minute Medicine, Inc.

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Religious and spiritual practices may improve mental health in older adults - 2 Minute Medicine

The Garden of Earthly Delights

AMERICAN NEWSApr 21, 2021 8:47 PM EST

AHA strips Richard Dawkins of Humanist of the Year award after famed author criticizes transgenderism

It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue."

Too late.

American Humanist Association Board Statement Withdrawing Honor from Richard Dawkins

He isalso a bigot.Who would ever suggest such a thing?! (Smug Arrogant Look) Im not going to post his vile, bigoted remarks here. Read them for yourself.

KPFA cancels Richard Dawkins speech because of his tweets about Islam

Well of course he does. Bigots are usually the last people to find out they are bigots.

Ive beensaying this in the last 2 or 3 diaries. I wasexcoriatied and subjected to abusefrom some ignorant individuals,not everyone, just those who believe Dawkins is a legitimate scientist. I get the sense themajority of the commenters here might preferto keep their personal beliefs to themselves, and no wonder, if the vile rancor I was subjected to is any metric, after being beaten down and ridiculed for merely stating an actual fact:Atheism is just another unsubstantiated belief, nothing more, andIm just an agnostic, who wouldnt?

Im no stranger to it.Ive worked with convicted felons, gangbangers and people with severe substance use disorders.I can handleinternet trolls. Idont believe I must condemn all beliefs of others that I dont share, which is apparently what one must do to be a Good Militant Anti-Theist. Again, Im just an agnostic, and I dont know any more than anyone else. Gnosis. Look it up.This is the agnostic position, just like Socrates. Any view you happen to holdis a belief, unless you can back it up with proof.And I really dont care forbelief. It is a very low level of consciousness. You either know something or you dont. I know I dont know about the existence or non-existence of any such spiritual beliefs - and I have never read Dawkins until now, and now that I have, Im shocked how accurate my take on this crackpot was.And of course the bigot never thinks hes a bigot. Dawkins is nothing more than what I said, a bigot and a quack. Pseudoscience and theories that are controversial and border on Junk science for the ignorant public

When giants likeE.O. Wilson and Steven Jay Gould ripyou a new one, stick a fork in yourself, youredone, as far as serious science is concerned. And E.O. Wilson is Serious Evolution Science and natural selection is a very complex operation: Game theory.

Scientists, plural, dont like him, and they just volunteered their opinions, very unusual for scientists and academics. I certainly have no inhibition about ripping Dawkins as a fraud and a crackpot, and bigot, because he is, and I studied Wilson. And there may be one or two things Dawkins gets right, thats not enough. I agree with the T-shirt but thats nothing new. 40 years ago this was obvious as DNA came into its own and Mitochondrial DNA was first as evidence in a trial. EVIDENCE

I realize this might cause all kinds of pearl-clutching and gnashing of the teeth. What a shame, the truth often hurts. John Maynard Smith never heard of Sayres Law. And he was British.Academic politics makes real politics look like a tea party.This is true, and Ive experienced it many times but academics are loathe to allow the public to see this side of it.

Sayres Law: Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.

The late British biologist John Maynard Smith (1920-2004) is famous for applying game theory to the study of natural selection. In 1973 Maynard Smith formalised a central concept in game theory called the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). His ideas, presented in books such as 'Evolution and the Theory of Games', were enormously influential and led to a more rigorous scientific analysis and understanding of interactions between living things.[Listener: Richard Dawkins; date recorded: 1997]TRANSCRIPT: I think that the... the article in the Science of the People... sorry, by the Science for the People, people in, I think, the New York Review of Books, of which I think both [Richard] Lewontin and [Stephen Jay] Gould were signatures of this, was disgraceful, because it didn't... the point is, you can disagree with people, you can disagree with your colleagues as passionately as you like, but you can't go around calling them Fascists and enemies and so on. You have to treat it as an intellectual disagreement. And so I think that the whole of that business, leading up to pouring water over him at the... at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I think all this was... was ridiculous. But it was predictable.

British scientists don't like Richard Dawkins, finds study that didn't even ask questions about Richard Dawkins

Most British scientists cited in study feel Richard Dawkins' work misrepresents science

Although the researchers did not ask questions about Dawkins, 48 scientists mentioned him during in-depth interviews without prompting, and nearly 80 percent of those scientists believe that he misrepresents science and scientists in his books and public engagements. This group included 23 nonreligious scientists and 15 religious scientists.

Elaine Howard Ecklund, the study's principal investigator and the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences at Rice, said that some scientists, independent of their religious beliefs, do not view Dawkins as a good representative because they believe he conveys "the wrong impression about the borders of scientific inquiry."

"Scientists differ in their view of where such borders rest," said David Johnson, an assistant professor at the University of Nevada in Reno and the paper's lead author. "And they may even view belief in a deity as irrational, but they do not view questions related to the existence of deities or 'the sacred' as within the scope of science."

The investigation into science's public image didn't even ask about the atheist professor, but it got an answer anyway. Very unusual. Academics eschew controversy.

I had never looked into Dawkins before this because I dont do Junk Science.And thats all Dawkins does. Any so called scientist who is that certain of his own bullshit is never right about anything. A charlatan.

Its the publish or die rule, and sometimes all they can publish is bullshit.I never needed him to tell me that Intelligent Design was anything more than what it was:Bullshit. But his response to that Bullshit was more bullshit of his own. And no one cares now anyway.Hitchens was not a clown. His anti-theism was never anything that impressed me, but at least he had an excuse: Hewasan actual journalist, and alcoholic, and a very unhappy man. Punching down is just not something agood person does,and attacking Mother Theresa, what an embarrassment. My opinion of Dawkins was always less than zero. Now Im feeling less kindly about Hitchens, but let the poor man rest in peace. We know hes not in heaven, or hell. The Jews dont even believe in the whackHeaven and Hell the earlyChristian Church sold after Jesus was allegedly crucified.I doubt Jesus did, if he even was a historical person. No one knows. Thats why they call it faith, and belief. You can disagree, youre wrong. So is your God, Dickie Dawkins. Hofstadfter once told the class, when asked about the speed of light: To a photon, space is infinitely thin. Ametaphor, but thats not what Dawkins is doing. Some clowns like the implications but its just a piss poor theory.Gene-centric evolution? Horseshit. Dawkins has no understanding of natural selection, or Darwin.

I expect few here have familiarity with the subject, and sadly, your PhD does not impress. Jordan Petersen has a PhD. So does David Duke. Im just a High School dropout with a GED, likeMike Perry. He did alright for a drop out with a GED. One of the smartest people I know, and I only know smart people, people who can learnand understand the nature of knowledge and understanding.Tolerant people with lots of experience.Lots of experience. Neurodiversity.

The gene-centric view has been opposed by Ernst Mayr, Stephen Jay Gould, David Sloan Wilson, and philosopher Elliott Sober. An alternative, multilevel selection (MLS), has been advocated by E. O. Wilson, David Sloan Wilson, Sober, Richard E. Michod,[31] and Samir Okasha.[31]

Writing in the New York Review of Books, Gould has characterized the gene-centered perspective as confusing book-keeping with causality. Gould views selection as working on many levels, and has called attention to a hierarchical perspective of selection. Gould also called the claims of Selfish Gene "strict adaptationism", "ultra-Darwinism", and "Darwinian fundamentalism", describing them as excessively "reductionist". He saw the theory as leading to a simplistic "algorithmic" theory of evolution, or even to the re-introduction of a teleological principle.[32] Mayr went so far as to say "Dawkins' basic theory of the gene being the object of evolution is totally non-Darwinian."[33]

Gould also addressed the issue of selfish genes in his essay "Caring groups and selfish genes".[34] Gould acknowledged that Dawkins was not imputing conscious action to genes, but simply using a shorthand metaphor commonly found in evolutionary writings. To Gould, the fatal flaw was that "no matter how much power Dawkins wishes to assign to genes, there is one thing that he cannot give them direct visibility to natural selection."[34] Rather, the unit of selection is the phenotype, not the genotype, because it is phenotypes that interact with the environment at the natural-selection interface. So, in Kim Sterelny's summation of Gould's view, "gene differences do not cause evolutionary changes in populations, they register those changes."[35] Richard Dawkins replied to this criticism in a later book, The Extended Phenotype, that Gould confused particulate genetics with particulate embryology, stating that genes do "blend", as far as their effects on developing phenotypes are concerned, but that they do not blend as they replicate and recombine down the generations.[11]

Since Gould's death in 2002, Niles Eldredge has continued with counter-arguments to gene-centered natural selection.[36]Eldredge notes that in Dawkins' book A Devil's Chaplain, which was published just before Eldredge's book, "Richard Dawkins comments on what he sees as the main difference between his position and that of the late Stephen Jay Gould. He concludes that it is his own vision that genes play a causal role in evolution," while Gould (and Eldredge) "sees genes as passive recorders of what worked better than what".[37]

Selecting Richard Dawkins as your personal fountain of truth is a religion with an ideology of intolerance.

Like Dawkins theory

I see no reason to stop exposing this charlatan, and I dont believe in much. Less than any atheist at least, and Im not hostile to any religions, or other ridiculous beliefs. Buddhism isnt religion. Academics can disagree about a great many things, but definitions are the one thing that must be reached by consensus. Definition of terms and classification ARE how science is done. science. Euglena may not be definable, is it an animal or a vegetable? But the rest of it is pretty well defined, or it aint science. Its religion.

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If You Meet Richard Dawkins On The Road... - Daily Kos