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BS proof of God's existence
Argument From Persecution (II)
Consider this
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. Richard Francis Burton
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The more I look at religion, the more I dislike it and what it does to the world and its people. This blog will help you understand why religion is something you shouldn't accept as a good thing in our lives. Above all, don't respect religious beliefs when their practitioners refuse to respect you.
Abram goes on a mission, but at his age it's anyone's guess if he'll finish it before having a stroke. In the end it's his wife Sarai who pulls it off, with strokes of a different kind. DIY Coffin Dodgers Gettin Jiggy Wit Da Pharaoh Genesis 12 - Flat pack furniture and geriatric sex in the ancient world
If there's one thing that God really fucking hates, it's old people. In fact he can't stand the wrinkly, saggy-arsed little bastards. Just when they think they're on the road to retirement, they've paid off the mortgage on the tent, and managed to accumulate all the goats they can slaughter, God jumps in and says, "Oy! You! I've got a fucking job for ya!" So when a manky old coffin dodger called Abram thought he could look forward to a life of creaky joints, bad teeth and pissing the bed twice a night, God decided to send him on a bit of an expedition. "Look Abram, me old mate, you've got no kids, no prospects, and let's face it your wife's downbelow bits are about as appealing as a squashed meat pie. If you do a job for me, I'll see to it that she has more children than you can shake a shitty stick at. And I'll give her bigger tits as a bonus." Abram was 75 years old and he'd thought his days of spearing the bearded clam were over, so he jumped at the chance. Well, he did his best - his arthritis was giving him some trouble, so he just farted and passed out. When he woke up again he asked, "What do I have to do, O God?" "Simple. Just get off your fat, lazy backside and bugger off to Canaan. And I'll tell you all about it when you get there." "O God, I must go now," said Abram. "Well there's no hurry, I'll give you time to pack your tent and rent some long distance camels." "O God, I need to go now," said Abram, more urgently this time. God frowned. "It's good that you're keen but..." "O God..." "What the fuck's up with you, man?" Abram looked away. "I told you I needed to go. It's too late now, I've shit myself. I've been doing a lot of that lately. It's my age. You couldn't sort something out for me before I set off could you? Just a tiny miracle, nothing major." God held his nose and nodded. And lo, Abram's incontinence was no longer a problem. For God did conjure up a year's supply of rubber underwear and a rough sponge on a pointy stick. A few days later they were all ready to go. As well as Abram and his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot was tagging along because he wanted to sell some of his old music at the market. It was a compilation album called "Now That's What I Call Psalms 26", so they had to find room for fourteen temple singers and a band of chanting hermits. When they got to Canaan God was waiting for them, and Abram was keen to get started. "What's the job, God? Dost thou command me to found a city in thy name and fill the land with my progeny, that they might praise thy Holy word, O Lord?" But it was nothing like that. God pointed to several boxes on the ground nearby. "That is your great task, Abram. Built me an altar." For yea and verily and lo, and lots of other Old English words of exclamation... within the sacred boxes God had delivered unto Abram was some flat-pack, self-assembly furniture. God shrugged. "I've had a look at the instructions and it might as well be written in fucking Swedish for all I know. I may be Supreme Lord of the Universe, but I'm fucked if I know how to build an altar from 27 pieces of laminated chipboard and a bag of assorted screws and metal fittings. Build that and I'll make your wife look like Britney Spears before she went mental. No hold on, I'm getting my dates mixed up. She'll look like Eve without the fig leaves, and her fruit will be ripe and juicy, not saggy like a couple of wet paper bags. Abram got down to work. 157 days later the flat-pack altar was finished, and Abram had enough spare parts to make a couple of book-ends and a novelty toilet roll holder. It was all looking good, so he did a test run, but when he tried to sacrifice a goat on the altar, the back fell off, one of the hinges came loose, and Abram realised he'd put the drainage channel for the blood on backwards, so it went all over his nice new sandals. When God saw the mess he was furious, and ordered Abram and his family to roam around the countryside for years, putting up more flat-pack altars all over the place until he got it right. And of course he never did. Abram's wife was being a total bitch because she still had no ovaries and was stuck with a vagina as loose an empty leather bucket. And Lot didn't help because he'd traded his Psalms album in for some Arabian Emo music, which meant that they were now sharing the tent with 5 men in black robes, singing about the end of the world and cutting themselves to get more attention. "We need a holiday," said Abram. "Sarai, pack your sun cream, we're going to Egypt." And so they travelled to the land of the Pharaohs, who were already onto their TWELFTH Dynasty, having somehow managed to build the pyramids AND, totally amazingly, survive God's Great Flood, which had covered the whole world but for some reason missed them altogether. Their excuse was: nobody had seen the memo so it didn't affect them. And do you really think that people who could build pyramids from millions of tons of stone couldn't build boats or umbrellas? Sarai thought the beauty of her wizened old body might push the Pharaoh's lust buttons, but Abram thought she didn't need to worry, mainly because she had a face like a box of smashed crabs, her skin looked as if it had been used as an exercise mat for a team of Middle Eastern wrestlers, and nobody would be interested in the contents of her knickers unless they wanted something to scare off a family of marauding crocodiles. However, worried about the future safety of his shrivelled old testicles if he mentioned all of this to her, Abram just told Sarai to pretend to be his sister. "That way if they molest you, at least they won't kill me first," he said, while secretly thinking, "and at least I won't have to tongue kiss your gummy old mouth in public." Unfortunately the Egyptians also lived for hundreds of years and the Pharoah was a grey old bag of bones himself, so anything with a pulse was likely to give him a stiffy. Sarai fell for his shiny bald head and the promise of all the milk she could syphon from his royal ass, and pretty soon all you could hear from the palace was the sound of Pharoah and Sarai banging away at each other like a couple of leathery old saddle bags. But when God realised what was happening he was livid, mainly because he'd missed all the hot geriatric sex action and had forgotten to record it on his VCR. Quicker than you can say "incontinence gets me all wet", God inflicted a terrible plague on Egypt, giving everyone boils and blisters so big that the only cure was to jump into the river to cool down. Many years later nobody could believe that the plague was actually as bad as they said it was, but maybe that was because they were all in denial.
Proof that there are no bigger nuts than religious nuts is that the occupants of Reeves, Louisiana, have for years been desperately trying to have the prefix 666 removed from their phone numbers. After lobbying from both of their state senators finally succeeded in bringing about a change from 666 to 749, the Mayor of the town made the ridiculous statement that the phone company's decision was 'divine intervention'. No, you dipshit, it was the people who asked the phone company over and over and over which made the phone company change its mind. No God required. And no brains required either, by the looks of things. It's just a number. Get over it.
Although this happened a few weeks ago, the news that Tony Blair, Britain's former Prime Minister, converted to Catholicism, is described in the following particularly interesting article from the Chicago Tribune: Britain groans as Blair convertsThe article gives some insight into the differences between Britain's general apathy with religion (only 8% church attendance) and the USA's far less secular position (44% church attendance). It still amazes me that a country with separation of church and state embodied into its constitution is far, far more religious than my own, which has an official state religion. It just shows that having that separation of church and state is not actually the cure (or the cause) of religious intolerance in any given country. One of the other points of note is that although the UK's state religion is Anglican, more Catholics than Anglicans now attend church in the UK. But still, on the whole, we just don't 'do' religion here. Which suits me just fine, thanks very much.
I'm getting a little tired of Christians asking atheists, 'If you don't believe in God, what do you believe in?' At other times many Christians will actively claim that 'atheists believe in nothing'. This is utterly incorrect, but it's just more arguing for the sake of argument, and it's pretty pointless to respond to questions and statements like this. Would it in fact matter if atheists believed in nothing? Because that is what the question implies, that somehow believing in nothing is a really, really bad thing, and that atheists should be viewed in negative light for believing 'nothing'. Why do Christians assume that because atheists don't believe in God, they don't believe anything else either? What Christians are doing when they ask, 'Do you believe in nothing?' is equating 'faith' with 'belief' and/or 'trust'. This is entirely wrong. These things are not the same, not at all. Let's take a closer look at these terms: I believe my car is red. I believe it is red because the last time I saw it it was red. I'm not expecting any change to that, so I can tell you that I believe my car is red and be fairly certain that this statement is true. Is that faith? No, because faith is the act of believing in something without evidence. Christians believe in God even though they've never actually seen God. I've seen my car, there is no faith involved. It's red. Do you believe my car is red? I just said it is, but you haven't seen it for yourself, so, if you believe me, is that faith? Again, no. If you believe me you are merely trusting my word. Trust is not faith. You could still check that my car is red by coming round to my house and taking a look - the evidence can be verified. For this reason, belief in such things as complex science, which we ourselves may not understand, is based on trust, rather than faith. If I see a documentary about gene therapy, I have to trust that the people speaking about it know what they are talking about, and the fact that I, or anyone else, could check those facts makes this something to believe, not something to have faith in. There are of course things we cannot see or measure. Love is a good one. Christians will ask if you believe in love, as if believing in the existence of love which, just like God, cannot be seen, is proof that God exists (the doorstep evangelists like that approach for some reason). If you believe in love, why can't you believe in God? Once again, the two are not remotely similar. I personally cannot describe what love is, but I know what it feels like (trapped! Christians will respond: we know what God feels like), and have seen the effects of loving someone and the effects of losing that love. I also know that biologists can go some way towards explaining the complex changes in body chemistry and brain impulses which are set off when 'love' happens. Do I believe in love? I do, because I have experienced love. Do I believe in God? No, because if we are equating the two then I need to experience God to believe in God, or be shown evidence that God exists. That has not happened as yet. So I don't believe in God. By the way, this is why you will be asked by Christians if you believe in love: it's an intellectual trap. Unless you think about your answer and word it just so, you are going to fall into that trap when they equate belief in God with belief in love. If you say 'we can see the effects of love on other people' they will say, 'well, God has affected me too, so isn't that the same?' If you say, 'I just know when I feel love for someone' that is giving them the opportunity to respond with, 'I just know that God exists'. Don't fall into this trap and if you do, ask them for other evidence for God's existence - after all, we know that air exists even if we can't see it, but we can also measure it in other ways: weigh it, discover its chemical properties, and so on. The same applies for love. We can analyse the body's reaction when a loved one walks into a room, and compare it with what happens when a stranger walks in. That is evidence of love. But what other evidence is there for God? How can we scientifically measure God's existence? Of course, we can't. But let's turn around around the original statement, where Christians assert that atheists don't believe in anything. Let's ask Christians a similar question: 'Other than those beliefs attached to your religion, do you believe in nothing?' They will of course say they believe in all kinds of things. Things which have nothing to do with God, nothing at all. Why do they believe those things if they are not related to God? Ask them. Is it a silly question to ask why they have non-religious beliefs? I think it is, but it is the very question they are asking atheists. What do I believe in? I believe in the same kind of things Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and all kinds of religious people believe in. Their belief in the supernatural is something I do not share, but equally I also don't share the beliefs of those who think that pink is the best colour in the world. I believe in all kinds of things, and share those beliefs with some people of all religions and with some atheists. Some, not all. We can all say that about different things, can't we? Do any atheists believe in nothing? Of course not. But why should that answer have any bearing on whether or not we believe in God? And if it doesn't, why ask the question at all? Added Later: Actually Christians do ask some pretty tough questions sometimes. Take this question: 'Do you believe that life exists on other planets somewhere in the universe?' Okay, assuming that you do, you're in immediate hot water with theists because of course we can't verify this belief in any way. This would have to be true faith, right? If you can believe in extra-terrestrial life without proof, why can't you believe in God? First, let's just get one thing straight. We are not comparing like with like here. Christians believe in something super-natural, ie 'outside of space and time'. Believing that life on other planets exists is simply an extension of what science has taught us about life on our own planet, coupled with what astronomy tells us about the likely number of planets in the universe. Planets are common - we've found hundreds of exo-planets (ones orbiting suns other than our own) and are finding more and more all the time. These are all stars within our own galaxy - other galaxies are too distant to examine the stars for the existence of planets, but we should assume that other galaxies are similar, and there are millions of known galaxies. Statistically, therefore, life is likely to exist on at least one other planet in the universe in some form. God, meanwhile, is outside the known. We cannot extrapolate from our own natural world and say, 'xyz exists here so God must exist there'. This is not like for like. There is no evidence for the existence of god. None. That's why theists need faith, because there is no proof. There is evidence for the existence of life on at least one planet - we see life all around us on our planet, Earth, so we know it exists. We know that other planets exist, and that they are in fact fairly common, so can assume that there are millions, if not billions of planets in the universe. As yet we are unable to prove that life exists on any of those planets, but we can say that the likelihood of life existing on at least one other planet, given that so many planets are out there, is statistically very high. We can base a belief on that kind of probability. But this is still not the same as belief in God, which requires faith because nothing we can see or measure leads us to believe that God exists. More to the point, whether or not we have the belief does not change our whole outlook on life. Belief in God does, because believing in the Christian God or the Muslim God has a huge amount of baggage attached to it. If you believe in extra-terrestrials it in unlikely to make you want to knock on people's doors and tell them about it, for instance. Religion stands apart from all other beliefs. Religion is a way of life, a way of changing rational people's behaviour, sometimes to the detriment of the believers themselves, often to the detriment of non-believers, or even those holding similar beliefs but different denominations. Nothing I believe in makes me want to invade another country because that belief system told me to do it. Nothing I believe in leads me to conclude that homosexuality is an abomination. Nothing I believe will ever make me blow myself up in a crowd of people who do not share my beliefs. Only theists will ever argue, for example, that someone who believes in evolution therefore has a religion. Let's stop pretending that 'belief in a god' is in any way comparable to any other kind of belief. It simply is not. When someone asks, 'do you believe in anything?', simply ask them what they mean by 'belief', and pretty soon they will have to separate religious belief from other, more easily defined beliefs. Or to be awkward just say, 'No, I don't believe in anything.' That should shut them up for all of, oh, ten seconds... just enough time to make a quick exit!
Words of wisdom (mostly), courtesy of Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Robert G Ingersoll, Frank Zappa, Philip K Dick, Carl Sagan, Denis Diderot, G K Chesterson, Arthur C Clarke, Thomas Jefferson, Bertrand Russell and one other.
Did smile and dimly make their claims All flimsy were their arguments And their dumb book was lame "Beware the Christian, my son! The lies they spread, the truth they twist They quote the Bible verse, and shun The rational atheist" He took his science book in hand Long time by logic he was taught Rejected he Christianity A danger to free thought And in their guise of moral good The Christians, with sin and shame Came preaching that he really should Praise God or burn in flame One, two! One, two! That's just not true The science evidence did stack Debate they fled, and gave instead Ad hominem attack "And, has thou changed the Christian? When all his lies thou did destroy?" "O pointless day! Their minds are clay! With them you'll have no joy" 'Twas YouTube and the Christians Did smile and dimly make their claims All flimsy were their arguments And their dumb book was lame
It would never happen in the United States, but the third party in British politics, the Liberal Democrats, has now elected itself a new leader, Nick Clegg, who, when asked the simple question, "Do you believe in God?" gave a one word answer: "No." Clegg 'does not believe in God' I'll re-iterate that for you: the leader of a major political party in the UK is an atheist. Would that ever happen in your country? The world could learn a lot from Britain's attitude to religion (or absence of religion). I wouldn't want to live anywhere else!
I've just added a new video section to the site, called Spoken Word. I've been recording several speeches, poems and stories and adding them to YouTube, so although some of them are not atheist-related (I have other interests too!) I now have enough to put them in their own place on this site. If I make MP3 versions of the audio available, I will link to those MP3s from the video details, and vice versa. Enjoy!
An excellent letter here from TimesDaily.com. How to avoid atheists Again, this reinforces my assertion that the only unforgivable sin in Christianity is that of not believing in God:In her Dec. 7 letter, "Beware of book," Kathy Momic tells us that children should be protected against atheism. She probably isn't acquainted with an atheist but "knows" that atheists are possessed by the devil, don't know right from wrong and don't believe in anything. There are certain precautions she can take to protect herself and her children from these agents of Lucifer. She could join an organization that does not admit atheists, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan, the Mafia, Christian militia groups. She could join a God-fearing terrorist group that blows up abortion clinics and high-rise buildings (Oklahoma City, World Trade Center); or she could restrict her friends to those spewing venomous hate upon individuals the Bible says should be put to death, e.g., non-believers and homosexuals. To be on the safe side, there are havens of atheism that she should avoid: Ivy League universities; the Nobel laureate laden National Academy of Sciences; organizations concerned with the environment or civil rights; and Scandinavia, where the percentage of atheists is at least three times that of the United States. She should stay in the Bible Belt with the highest religiosity (and highest violent crime rate) in the country. The absurdity of religious myopia was exemplified after the 1997 school shootings in Paducha, Ky. In defense of the young killer who somebody called "godless," his pastor at the Lutheran Church said, "Michael Carnael is a Christian. He's a sinner, yes, but not an atheist." I wonder if that made his victims less dead or the crime less wrong. David N. Miles Orange Beach
Crime & Punishment: A Lesson in Christian Morality Links: Original article: How to avoid atheists Kathy Momic's letter: Beware of book
I wrote at the end of June 2007 about the problems atheists have when we try to defend our position as atheists, in the face of these facts: Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, all atheists, have together been responsible for the deaths of more people than all the religiously-motivated conflicts in history. It's indefensible of course. We cannot and do not deny that these things happened, and can only seek to explain what led to these regimes, and why atheism, in and of itself, was not in fact the motivating factor behind these evil men's search for power and control over their people. But still, they were atheists, and they were evil men, and some non-atheists will put the two together and decide that atheists are all inherently bad, even evil, people. So today, checking the comments on some of my YouTube videos, it was no surprise when I encountered a Christian following the same path: name the 'big three' of 'evil atheism' - Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot - and imply that atheists are the worst people in history. This time, however, I finally realised something that had not occurred to me before. That is, an atheist's position, and his/her attitude to such atrocities, is entirely different from a Christian's. Because when I pointed out that the Christian's own God had, in percentage terms, killed far more people - 99.9% of the world's human AND animal populations - he actually defended such an act. Here's how part of the relatively short exchange went:
I don't defend genocide. Those who defend God's actions do. And that is why I told that Christian that he was 'all that is bad about religion' and that 'I don't want the stink of your rotten, obscene, immoral crap on my channel'. That really sums up my opinion of those who think of the Biblical flood as some kind of wonderful 'cleansing' of the planet by God. Genocide is genocide. There are no excuses, and it should never be defended. Except, apparently, by Christians. Footnote: After some checking, I found that the world's population during the lives of the three men was substantially less than 5 billion, perhaps even half that at times, but changing the percentage from 2% to 4% would have made exactly the same point. And of course I was at no time suggesting that murdering 100 million people is to be taken lightly simply because more people were left alive.
In the 9th chapter of the Holy Fucking Bible (or the 11th chapter of some other book of ancient myths) three little gods huffed and puffed, and the towers all came down. 9/11 - The Triple Towers of Bullshit Genesis 11 - God shows his dislike of large, well co-ordinated civil engineering projects
Many, many years ago, but not so many that Creationists couldn't fuck up all the numbers and get a really stoopid answer, there were three little gods. The first god was an only child and he didn't know who his parents were, so that probably had something to do with him ending up being a sadistic, psychopathic old bastard with a fetish for knocking up virgins and spying on people having sex. His first name was Omy, but we'll just call him God. The middle god was called Jesus H Fucking Christ and he would grow up to be a full-time fishmonger and stage magician, but in the old days he just sat around smoking pot, talking crap, and behaving like a hippy. The youngest god was called Allah, and he was a bit shy and didn't like having his picture taken, so he spent all his time making virgin dolls out of easy to wash rubber, because he realised there was going to be a big demand for them from his followers, many thousands of years later. Although there were three gods there was really only one god, and he was called God too, which was a bit confusing, but the three little gods didn't let logic stand between them and some lucrative book publishing deals. Of course books hadn't been invented yet, so there was no Bible and no Qur'an, and without them there must have been absolutely no morals at all. Without the written word of God, obviously nobody knew how to behave themselves and they all raped and killed and had unprotected sex with reptiles - all the kind of things that people do when they don't have a Holy Book to teach them about morality. At least that's what the three little gods were expecting to find when they looked down at the Earth. But funnily enough, that isn't what it was like. Everyone was happy and contented, there were plenty of jobs, and everybody was working together for the common good. In fact the economic prospects for the human race were looking pretty fucking promising all round. Rather than killing each other, all the people had decided to co-operate and build an enormous tower, just so they could show God how good they were at working together. Okay, there were a few teething problems. For one thing it was a Friday afternoon and they were a bit over-tired, so somehow they'd managed to start building the tower out of straw. But still, it was a team effort, and at least they weren't fighting over petty religious laws like what kind of sausages you can eat when it rains on a Tuesday, or how many times you can beat a woman with a stick before she's no longer unclean and is allowed to wash her feet in the presence of a priest with a mustache. Of course, when the three little gods saw how everybody was getting along with each other they were furious. "What's the point of us being here at all if the humans aren't going to fight each other?" said God. "Allah, go and sort the little fuckers out." And yea, Allah did fold up a huge sheet of paper into a bird-like shape, and flew this paper aeroplane into the side of the tower and made it collapse. And the three little gods did give each other high fives and in heaven there was much celebrating, with cake and balloons and virgins all round the office. But the people were not disheartened when the tower of straw fell down, for they had by this time wised up a bit and realised that straw wasn't such a good idea for a multi-story skyscraper after all. So instead, they decided to make a new tower, this time out of wood. Much stronger. And the human race again worked in peace and harmony and together they built up the wooden tower until it grew 18 stories high. But again God looked down and saw that nobody was fighting or killing or eating children, and this was making a total mockery out of the vengeance part of his job description. So God did pull one of the wooden blocks out of the tower so that it might fall. But it did not fall. Then Allah also pulled out one of the wooden blocks, but still the tower did not fall. Nor did it fall when Jesus removed yet another of the blocks. But lo, after many more blocks were removed from the tower and it became very wobbly indeed, Jesus H Fucking Christ pulled out a block from the tower and this time it did fall. And lo, Jesus did get the sale and distribution rights to this new game, for the H in Jesus H Fucking Christ was revealed to all as 'Hasbro', and from that day the fallen building became known as the Tower of Jenga. The people of Earth were getting a bit pissed off with all this interference from the three invisible sky daddies, but decided to build a new tower, a third tower, this time from bricks of clay. Someone thought of adding little studs to the bricks so they would all fit together much more easily, but he was way ahead of his time, so they ignored him and just piled them up one on top of the other. When God saw that for a third time everyone was working together, he went completely fucking bananas. "The bastards are at it again! Right you little fuckers, let's see what you think of this then!" and he twirled his magic god staff around his head three times, like some psychotic, bearded, marching band reject, and pointed it down to Earth. At first it looked like nothing had happened, but pretty soon people realised that they couldn't understand each other, and everything they said came out sounding weird and unintelligible. The people started to shout and fight, and still nobody could work out what anyone else was saying. For it is written that God had given mankind the curse of alcohol. And forever more their words would be incomprehensible, and a war-like nature would be upon them. They forgot about building their tower of clay and instead built a new tower, which legend tells us was made of beer cans and empty bottles, known to us as the Tower of Brewski. And though their speech was slurred, in those long-ago days there was but one language, which God himself had given to his people, and this language was called Bullshit. God spoke Bullshit, all his followers spoke Bullshit, and the word of God was 100% Bullshit. And although the Bible is translated into many languages, we can still trace it back to the original Bullshit scriptures from thousands of years ago, and the followers of God can speak fluent Bullshit even to this day.
The Lessons of the Tower of Babel
Once upon a time there was a little bear and this little bear was called Muhammad. Muhammad was a kind little bear and he travelled to a poor country where people needed help, and he taught other little bears how to read and write in a little school there, because some of the little bears had no other teachers of their own. One day Muhammad the bear had an exciting idea for the class. He took a toy doll into school and asked all the little bears in the class if they would like to give it a name. The little bears were very excited because the doll was a very nice little doll indeed. Muhammad the bear asked them what name they would like to give to the doll, and the other bears all had their favourites but they decided that 'Gillian' was the nicest name they could think of. And so they called the toy doll Gillian, and Muhammad the bear taught the class all about lots of other exciting things, and the little bears in the class had a wonderful time with their kind teacher. The very next day, one of the other teaching bears discovered that Muhammad the bear had given the toy doll a name, and he was taken away by the police, put into prison and charged with insulting their religion, inciting hatred, and showing contempt for religious beliefs. Muhammad could have been given 40 lashes and six months in prison if found guilty on all the charges, but in the end he was sentenced to 15 days in prison and deported back to his own country. The prisons in that country were so horrible that I can't even tell you how bad it would be to stay there. All because he let the bears in his class give the doll the name 'Gillian'. Meanwhile thousands of other bears marched in protest all over the country. Did they want to save Muhammad the bear? No they didn't. They were all holding up signs calling for a tougher sentence, and some of them said Muhammad the bear should be given the death sentence. These were all religious people, and their religion was the same religion which tries to convince us that theirs is a religion of peace. Do we think this a religion of peace, children? No of course we don't. In late November 2007 Gillian Gibbons, a British schoolteacher helping to educate poor children in Sudan, made a single mistake by allowing her class of Sudanese children to give a name of their choice to a toy bear, in a class where they were learning all about animals. The class chose the name Muhammad, because of course Muhammad is a favourite name of Muslim children. As a result, Gillian Gibbons was reported for this 'crime', arrested, charged, and sentenced to 15 days in a Sudanese jail, and would afterwards be deported and never allowed to teach in the country again. Crowds of people marched in the streets of Sudan calling for her to be put to death. Put to death for giving a toy bear a name. Islamic laws were responsible for putting a woman in prison for the ridiculous crime of giving a bear the same name as their so-called prophet. But I don't live in a country which is ruled by Islamic law. This is my bear, and I choose to give my bear the name 'Muhammad'. This is Muhammad the bear. My challenge to you is to do something as simple as that. Give a bear a name, a particular name. Call your bear Muhammad and show how ridiculous these religious beliefs and laws really are. We'll call it 'The Blasphemy Bear Challenge'. So make a video response and show me your bear called Muhammad. I'd love to see it. |
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