Saturday, July 28, 2007
Hey, love it or leave it, buddy
And they say liberals hate America? Check out (if you have a cast-iron stomach) this page of "patriotic songs" from Phred Felps and those inbred neanderthals at Westover Baptist Church. Here's a sample (to the tune of "America the Beautiful"):
O filthy land of sodomitesThey're also condemning Tammy Faye Bakker to hell on their main page - I guess she's the target of the current two-minute hate, just because she became a cult figure among gays in her later years.
You sit in Satan's lap
The US flag belongs in flames
It's great for wiping crap!
This is what you get when you treat religion with kid gloves and declare it off limits to scrutiny and honest criticism (to say nothing of taxes). Just like children take advantage when their parents indulge their tantrums, religions take advantage of the special privileged position of god-belief in our society to get away with some outrageous stunts that wouldn't be tolerated for a second if coming from a secular source.
The Phelpsoids represent dogmatic religion taken to its logical extreme, where all instinctive human empathy has been squeezed out and replaced with rigid closed-mindedness and tribal hatred.
If "God hates America", then America should make it mutual and hate any god that inspires such ignorance, backwardness and pettiness. To hell with Phred Felps and the god he rode in on!
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Welcome to the Deathly Hallows...
Today is the day when the Dark Lord finally reveals his evil plans for world domination. That's right, President of Vice Dick Cthulhu Cheney becomes acting president for a day while surgeons look up George Bush Junior's ass. Maybe they'll find the WMD's there, along with the heads of John McCain and Joe Liebershit.
Think Cheney will meekly hand back the reins of power afterwards? Yeah, and I have a bridge in Alaska I'd like to sell you for a billion dollars. In the last few days, Severus Bush the Half-Wit Prince has been laying the groundwork for destroying what is left of the Constitution and any notion of presidential accountability. Torture has been given the stamp of chimperial approval and the regime has shown its total contempt for Congress by announcing that Congress has no power to bring contempt charges against it or its death-eater underlings. Oh, and anyone who criticizes Monkeynut's appallingly incompetent handling of the war against Iraq can have all his or her assets confiscated. See you in the poorhouse!
Speaking of incompetent warmongering, the US is now cutting deals and shaking hands with insurgents who were blowing the troops up with IED's yesterday. And "bad apples" among the troops who kidnap, rape and murder are getting off Scot free. And Junior accuses the Dems of playing politics because they want to get us out of this cluster-cheney of a never-ending nightmare.
It's official: the world has gone stark raving mad. I'm off on vacation. See you in a week's time, if Lord Cheneymort doesn't have other plans. "I have just signed legislation which outlaws Iran forever. Bombing begins in five minutes."
On Death Marches and Dying: a programmer's guide to surviving project grief
[Update: Yikes! Ed Yourdon himself has taken note of my silly scribbling and linked to it from his website. Welcome to anyone who surfed here from there, and many thanks to Prof. Yourdon for the link. This is mainly a blog about politics and church-state separation, but here is another geek-oriented post that may be of interest: I ain't your code monkey!]
Okay, here's another of those posts which will only be of interest to a handful of geeks. I work for a large engineering company which is a subsystem prime contractor on a high-profile project. For obvious reasons I will not name names just yet. Suffice it to say that I've been in this game long enough to recognize a death march project, and to know that when you find yourself in such a project, the sooner you can get out of it, the better.
In this particular case, management has suddenly realized it needs to come up with 27 bazillion engineer-hours of software development effort in the next four weeks. I can't imagine why they didn't see this coming and plan to ramp up for it, instead of being taken by surprise in the closing months of the project. Anyway, every time I come in to work or get up for a cup of what passes for coffee here, I now have to dodge frantic managers running down the corridors with their hair on fire. It's all so familiar and predictable, I thought I would write down the five stages of a death march project, for those who have to deal with the grief that management piles on them.
Denial
Management sees that the project is in danger of slipping a crucial milestone, but doesn't want to do anything meaningful in case the customer finds out about the situation and loses confidence in the company. It feels sure that a few well-timed pep talks will be enough to fire the coolies up with zeal to work late nights and weekends, and get the schedule back on track. Developers have to spend valuable time listening to some pointy-haired boss telling them how important the project is.
Result: the project falls further behind schedule.
Anger
The schedule problem becomes too great to ignore. Management berates the developers for not working hard enough. It brings in an army of contractors with the idea of throwing manpower at the project and beating it into submission. Productivity plummets as the old hands have to spend time bringing the new people up to speed.
Result: the project falls further behind schedule.
Bargaining
Management cancels all vacations and introduces mandatory overtime and shift work. "It's just for the next few weeks," the managers promise. "And those working after midnight get all the Mountain Dew they can drink."
Result: the project falls further behind schedule.
Depression
The death march drags on with no end in sight. People forget what their spouses and children look like, and haven't seen daylight in a month. Managers continue to run around like headless chickens, and demand detailed and time-consuming status reports every day. Productivity falls even lower as programmers burn out and introduce bugs faster than they fix them.
Result: the project falls further behind schedule.
Acceptance
The brightest and most experienced developers go to a better place - a new job which isn't yet in death march mode. Those left behind have to take on the duties of the dear departed as well as their own.
Result: death. The project is finally cancelled and many engineers are laid off. Management drowns its sorrows in its year-end bonus, while vowing to learn its lessons and handle the next project better.
Go to Step 1 and repeat.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Harry Reid and the Half-Wit Prince
In Phoenix, even the oldies radio stations are right-wing. I was driving to work this morning and listening to KOOL FM, when the DJ's started talking about Harry Reid's plan to keep the Senate in session all night to force a straight vote on the Levin-Reed proposal to begin withdrawing from Iraq. The DJ's on this station generally do the news breaks themselves rather than using a professional newsreader, and there is usually a lot of editorializing and rather juvenile right-wing snarking in the process. This morning, the DJ's reached (or sunk to) almost Coulterish levels of venom as they sniggered at this grumpy old man (Reid) throwing a tantrum, keeping the kids in detention and what not.
What's actually going on is of course very different. Harry Reid has belatedly realized that when he plays nice with the rethugs, tries to achieve consensus with them and generously grants them infinitely more latitude than they did when they controlled the Senate, they kick him (and the country) in the face every time with their knee-jerk partisan obstructionism. Now he is finally calling their bluff and forcing them to put their money where their collective mouth is. In other words, he, according to McClatchy, is organizing a "faux filibuster."
This illustrates the problem Dems have in (sigh) "framing the issue." Reid may be an expert in parliamentary maneuvering, but when it comes to getting his message across to the public, he, like all other Dems, is a babe in the woods without even the instinct for self preservation. Time and time again, the 'thugs get away with their crap despite being egregiously on the wrong side of every issue. The reason is that although they totally suck at running a country, or a war, or a one-car parade, they are geniuses at taking complex issues and dumbing them down into moronic soundbites which can be pre-digested and spoon-fed to slobus vulgaris americanus for mindless absorption and regurgitation.
Of course, Reid is to a large extent damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Take the recent "comprehensive immigration reform" bill which went down in flames. Although I disagreed with much of the bill's content, I thought it was masterful how Reid stroked George Bush Junior's vanity, getting him to revive the bill after it was first defeated. But look at how the "liberal media" treated the issue - they poured scorn on Reid for calling the legislation "the President's bill", but when Junior threw his weight behind the bill and rescued it temporarily, the same media was twittering about what a victory this was for Junior, how it demonstrated his firm manly resolve and all the rest of it. Then when the bill was finally buried, suddenly Junior retroactively had nothing to do with it as far as the media was concerned; it was Reid's failure, Reid's embarrassment, Reid's humiliation and so on.
So it is with Iraq. The much-touted "defections" by several Republicans over Junior's increasingly disastrous pet war are nothing but posturing. Talk is cheap, and when the chips are down, the 'thugs continue to march in lockstep behind their failed president, voting to prolong his cluster-cheney of a war, giving him cover, and refusing to allow debate on how he screwed up so badly, and where to go from here. They've been able to have it both ways, distancing themselves from the war while preening for the cameras, but perpetuating it with their votes, their filibusters and their petty sabotage and obstructions that go unreported in the news. No more of this shit! It's time for them to face the consequences of their duplicity. And it's way overdue that the Dems called them on their immature behavior and used some of their soundbites (like "up or down vote") against them. The time for timid politeness is over!
(By the way, continuing the Harry Potter theme from the headline, it seems Harry Potter has run afoul of a bunch of dementors - you know the black-robed creatures that want to suck all enjoyment out of life - also known as ultra-orthodox rabbis. More here.)
Sunday, July 15, 2007
What conservatards say when they think liberals aren't listening...
Astonishing and sickening stuff. Perfectly ordinary Americans, sweet little old ladies and what not want to massacre billions and send me to the gas chamber. Whatever they may bluster in public, the truth is that they are racists and fascists who hate the poor, hate foreigners, hate anyone who isn't a mouth-foaming christofascist fundie lunatic-right extremist.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Not all the crazies are on the right...
This guy is pretty weird, but I will cut him some slack because he hates organized religion and the English monarchy, and he's funny in places.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Son of Reichstag Fire
Oh shit... this is very scary. The US Senate just gave George Bush Junior and his evil neonazi-con puppetmasters a blank check to wage war against Iran, when the war against Iraq has damn near destroyed our military. Needless to say, Joe Liebershit is playing a pivotal role in enabling Junior's massive delusion, while McCain still has his head up the Boy Blunder's ass.
As you may know -- unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course -- yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to.No wonder Michael "Fu Manchu" Chertoff has a gut feeling... he's planning another major terrorist incident right now. Meanwhile Karl Rove and Fux News are putting the finishing touches on a massive propaganda campaign to make Iran retroactively the evildoer behind 9/11.
There's no way we'll survive until January 2009 with those evil psychotic assholes in power. We have to impeach every last one of them NOW!
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Rethugs make me sick to my gut
US intelligence chiefs held a White House summit yesterday to discuss a classified report that concluded that al-Qaeda is now stronger than at any time since September 11, 2001.Well, mission accomplished, yessirree Bob! Hmmm, let's see... an urgent Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Al-Qaeda better positioned to strike the West"... sure sounds like the Vacationer-in-Chief's cue to high-tail it down to Crawford. Brush never sleeps! Gotta keep clearin' that stuff!
Details of the five-page document, entitled "Al-Qaeda better positioned to strike the West", were leaked amid growing signs that America is nervous about the prospect of another terrorist attack.
Meanwhile, Ming the Merciless, I mean Michael Chertoff, reveals that he has a highly sensitive and well-calibrated instrument to detect imminent terrorist attacks - his belly. Jesus friggin' wept... these clowns get more deranged every day. Even Tony Fratboy realizes this is a bit too obviously incompetent and is furiously backpedalling and trying to contain the damage.
The Decider Guy in Chief, however is still talking out of the orifice at the lower end of his gut. "Yeah, okay, so someone in my administration betrayed a covert CIA agent and I said I would fire them, but I had my fingers crossed so it don't count. Heh heh heh."
I must admit, I too have a gut feeling that there will be a major terrorist attack - but not this summer. It will happen right before the 2008 election. I'm sure Richard Nixon's useful idiot Fred Thompson is already practising standing on a pile of corpses and bellowing into a bullhorn. After all, he had a minor role on a TV series called Law and Order, so that proves he's a law and order guy who can defend us from the Islamo-fasho-terrists. (Hey, it's not as if any of the other 'thug candidates have exactly stellar credentials. And Thompson would actually be a step up from Junior.)
The message is clear. If you want endless war and endless Watergate, if you want a president who will continue gutting this country, vote rethug!
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The Chimpranos
The Tony Soprano presidency is going down in flames as we speak. It's ruthlessly ordering its hit men and women to blow off congressional subpoenas, which is a felony. The corrupt criminal traitors who have hijacked this country have nothing but contempt for the Constitution, and know only one law, the code of omerta.
And to think that repellant toadie Harriet Miers would be on the Supreme Court now, if Junior had his way. Does anything more need to be said about the utter arrogance and contempt of those loathsome thugs for the Constitution, the law, everything the US once stood for.
Let's stop beating around the bush - it's long past time that we took off the kid gloves. Drag Miers to Congress in handcuffs, and waterboard the wrinkled old prune until she sings - after all, Habeus Corpus and prohibitions on torture are quaint and obsolete, thanks to Torquemada Gonzales. Then when we have the goods on Junior, let him take the fifth - or perhaps he'll take a fifth and get blind roaring drunk, or end his days like Al Pacino in Scarface, face down in a massive pile of blow.
The stupid thing is, if Junior had an ounce of restraint or a single functional neuron, he could ride this thing out - just let the legal proceedings drag on until he was leaving office and could pardon himself and the whole Texas Mafia. But no, he is such an immature feces-flinging little chimp, he has to jump up and down, pound his chest, and dare the grown-ups to bring it on. The despicable little snot is practically begging us to chimpeach his bony ass.
Be careful what you wish for, 26% Boy! Even your most sycophantic rats are deserting the sinking ship as they see that you are cheneying up their re-election prospects. As you stumble down the darkened White House corridors at night, trying to pick fights with portraits of dead presidents, I know how the demons emerge from that bottle of Jack Daniels to haunt and terrify you. The media may be fooled by your amiable dolt demeanor, but I'm not. You just want it over, don't you? You want it to end. You want peace. But you won't find it in a bottle. Try putting the barrel of a gun in your mouth instead. Just squeeze the trigger a little, and it will all be quick and painless - the screen will just go blank. Have a little consideration for others - we don't want to have to come over there and whack you, and make a mess on the carpet.
"Don't stop believing'..."
Impeach Cheney first
Let's get rid of the organ grinder, then taking out the monkey will be child's play.
Go here to watch the video and sign the petition.
Arizona Conservative Idiot of the Week: Doug MacEachern
Of all the no-talent, tenth-rate partisan hacks at the Arizona Repulsive, Doug MacEachern is the worst and most annoying. I've blogged about him too many times to list here, but suffice it to say that he is a pompous ass suffused with a visceral hatred of all things Democratic and liberal, and not overly concerned with facts if they get in the way of his personal crusade. In fact he seems to think you can cut and paste every half-baked mouth-foaming rant from the extreme right hate blogs, dump it into print with zero fact checking, and call yourself a journalist. What a total pillock.
MacEachern's most despicable trait is his jaw-droppingly blatant hypocrisy and double standards. Everything a Bushie does, not matter how downright criminal and/or incompetent, is something to be praised to the skies while everything a liberal does is proof that all liberals are evil and insane. Look up "hypocrisy" in a dictionary and you will see MacEachern's smug, smirking, pasty-white face.
Let's take a little trip into MacEachern World.
When a Republican gets caught cheating on his wife, it's a silly scandal and a "sin" (in quotes), i.e. no big deal.
When a Democrat is caught: The sky is falling! Impeach! Impeach!
When a Republican lies under oath and obstructs justice in a matter of national security, it's nothing but a liberal witch-hunt.
When a Democrat is evasive over a private scandal: The sky is falling! Impeach! Impeach!
When a Republican president lies us into a quagmire war that has destroyed our national security, solvency and world standing, that just makes him a manly, resolute leader.
When Socks the Cat coughs up a hairball: The sky is falling! Impeach! Impeach!
Oh, and Android Coulter is just misunderstood, and never said any of the mean things those nasty librulls accuse her of. Did I mention that MacEachern is a pillock?
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Rethug crime family values
Another rethug mucky-muck has been caught with his hand - or rather, some other part of his anatomy - in the cookie jar. What a shocker!
When will the useful idiots of the mouth-foaming "base" cop on? All rethugs are hypocrites and whited sepulchers. The harder they thump their bibles, the louder they bray about how holy, moral and family-valued they are, and the more fervently they seek to control other people's sex lives, the more certain you can be that they are fooling around on the side.
Newt Gangrene, Mark Pedo-pholey, Tim "Crystal Meth-odist" Haggard, and now David Vitter - what do they have in common? All of them are bloated gasbags who love telling adults what they should and shouldn't do, and who to do it with, in the privacy of their own homes. Meanwhile, Gingrich was having an affair with an intern while impeaching Clinton for doing the same, and having his goons serve divorce papers on his wife as she lay in a hospital bed, suffering from cancer. Foley was propositioning underage boys, Holy Haggard was junking up with a male prostitute... the list goes on and on.
And of course rethugs are always big on law and order, throw the book at them, zero tolerance, one strike and you're out, no mercy... until they're the ones who get caught. Then suddenly they start pleading tearfully for the prayers and understanding of the religious-right constituents they've been lying and pandering to. And if it's a question of criminal charges, they either get a chimperial pardon or else a couple of months in some Republican country-club prison for rich white pasty-faced guys. Accountability is only for the little people.
I'd love to see Vitter's wife follow through on her 2000 statement (see the second link above):
I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me.There's an idea... circumcision with extreme prejudice! We should do it to all rethugs. After all, friends don't let friends vote rethug, and friends don't let rethugs breed, and we've all been screwed too much by rethugs already.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Do ya feel lucky, punk?
It vaguely registered with me that Saturday was 07/07/07. My response is a big yawn. First of all, it happens every century, not once in a millennium as the mediots (media idiots) are breathlessly twittering. Secondly, the Western calendar, like all calendars, is arbitrary anyway. (The funniest proof of God's existence I ever heard went something like, "This is the year 2007. 2007 years after what? Something major happened 2007 years ago, so major that it changed the calendar. Therefore Jesus exists and every word in the buybull is true.")
Anyway, what kills me is that the local snotrag, the aptly nicknamed Arizona Repulsive, reported yesterday on the lucky-number-seven superstition that drove hundreds of people to the nearest Indian casino (they surround Phoenix like a besieging army) to squander their hard-earned money. Especially since on Saturday, the Repulsive was talking up the superstition and basically saying, "Today may be your lucky day! Why not have a flutter?" I wonder if they get a kickback from the casinos?
I'm glad I don't have any compulsion to gamble. I am the unluckiest man alive and would lose my shirt in two minutes flat. Plus, the one and only time I was in Las Vegas (for a conference), it struck me as the tenth circle of Hell, absolutely the most garish and ghastly place imaginable. The gamblers who sat morosely in front of roulette tables, one-armed bandits or whatever, perfectly motionless except for the mechanical, repetitive motions of inserting more and more coins down a rat hole, looked like the souls of the damned, consigned to an eternity of zombie-like oblivion.
Anyway, I think of casinos as prisons for stupid people. The system always wins because the game is rigged against ordinary people. Which, come to think of it, is a good metaphor for US society generally. We are all gambling whether we like it or not - gambling that we won't have a serious illness or accident only to find that our HMO arbitrarily refuses our claim, because they make more profit if we die. Gambling that we won't lose our jobs or have our identities stolen. Gambling that we won't be hit by random gunfire from some member of the well-regulated militia.
Well, do you feel lucky?
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
It's time for a Second American Revolution
I've always agreed with a saying (possibly mis-)attributed to Thomas Jefferson: dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Ever since I started this blog four years ago (on July 5th, to be exact), I've marked every July 4th with a dissenting post. Here are the previous entries in the series: Today's thought: what is freedom? Is it just another word? As Tom Rawles said, are we more interested in protecting the symbols of freedom in this country than the freedoms themselves? Does it make any difference whether we are subjects of an English King George or an American King George?
A lot of people seem to think freedom is just a synonym for mindless American rah-rah-rah jingoism. Freedom means mom, apple pie and baseball. For the religious extreme right, freedom means the right to impose their narrow cult on the entire country. "Freedom for me but not for thee."
For the rest of us, freedom has been steadily eroding since Junior ascended to the throne. With blanket warrantless snooping and Total Information Awareness, privacy - one of the most important rights - is a thing of the past. Freedom to travel, to assemble peacefully, to petition the government for redress of grievances, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment (i.e. torture) - all quaint and obsolete.
I haven't seen Sicko yet, but I plan to do so at the first opportunity. But ask yourself: am I truly free if I'm only one paycheck, one accident or one illness away from living on the street? Or read this and ask, am I free if the police are at liberty to invade my home, confiscate it and shoot me dead, even if I've never so much as jaywalked? Am I not rather a serf in a new mega-corporate feudalism? I can't speak out, I can't work to improve the system, because the system can destroy me and my family without any effort or hesitation.
What started out as "We the People" is now a system called "We the Mega-corporations." What should be "government of the people, by the people, for the people" is now "government of the people, by manipulating the religious lunatics, for the benefit of the wealthiest 1%."
It's time for a Second American Revolution. I very much hope it can be achieved peacefully, using what's left of the shredded Constitution and cobweb-draped, rusty and unoiled machinery of democracy. But if our hereditary absolute king continues to flout the law, arbitrarily setting aside criminal convictions of his cronies and recognizing no limits whatever on his chimperial powers, while our craven, cowardly, quisling representatives refuse to do their duty, then what options are left? Let's hear from Thomas Jefferson again: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
The consent of the governed just got revoked. Impeach!
I'm still beside myself (that's a strange phrase, isn't it) with anger and disgust at "activist judge" George Bush Junior's sleazy, corrupt, self-serving and cowardly over-ruling of Scooter Libby's well deserved jail time, so I will let Keith Olberman and Dan Froomkin speak for me. They are much more articulate than I am capable of being right now.
Froomkin points out that for a president to abuse his pardon power in order to obstruct an investigation into his own wrongdoings is almost certainly an impeachable offense. Quoting James Madison:
"[I]f the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds [to] believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty. . . .The Junior Junta is a criminal gang that is out of control. If the current situation, on top of the last six and a half years of nightmare, is not grounds for impeachment, nothing is.
"Madison went on to [say] contrary to his position in the Philadelphia convention, that the President could be suspended when suspected, and his powers would devolve on the Vice President, who could likewise be suspended until impeached and convicted, if he were also suspected."
Chimpeach with extreme prejudice!
I beg your pardon???
I'm so disgusted to learn that George Bush Junior has bailed Scooter Libby out of jail and refuses to rule out a full pardon. Could it be any clearer that this corrupt, criminal and treasonous misadministration has nothing but contempt for law, due process and integrity?
This travesty and act of despicable moral cowardice on Junior's part is as predictable as the sun rising in the east, but none the less disgusting and despair-inducing. Especially considering that the conservatards will be even more insufferable than usual for the next few weeks, as they crow about how this sleazy action by Bush (motivated only by saving his own ass) "proves" that there was "no underlying crime."
All we can do is look for the humor in the situation, and hope that more eyes will be opened to the utter criminality and lawlessness of the Junior Junta. The petulant little frat boy who executed a record number of people in Texas, while mocking them as they died, lets his rich white rethug friends get away with treason in a time of war - because they know, literally, where the bodies are buried. The most insidious of traitors may have dodged justice for now, but neither he nor his even more criminal, contemptible and petty Boy Chimperor can escape their well-deserved fate forever.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Atheists and doubters
I find it a little ironic that Maha uses the headline "The Wisdom of Doubt" to attack atheists, specifically Christopher Hitchens who is the latest "fundamentalist atheist" to be piled on by the religious left. I've previously blogged about the disproportionate backlash by the religious left (to say nothing of the right) against those uppity atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris etc. who have the temerity to criticize religion and stand up for the validity of atheism, after decades of being shut out of the debate.
First of all, a little context. I've known people in various parts of the US (not just the Deep South) who've had one or more of the following happen to them: cars keyed; pets tortured and/or killed; house windows broken; fired from their jobs; hate mail; death threats; beatings - just because they happen to be atheists. They weren't trying to convert anyone, just trying to mind their own business and get on with their lives, but apparently their mere existence is enough to provoke fear, hatred, loathing and threatened or actual violence by believers. Then of course there's the discriminatory laws, the forcible conversions, the car bombings, suicide bombings, mosque bombings, health clinic bombings and similar atrocities in every day's headlines. It's pretty clear to me which side the fundamentalism is on.
Are there atheists who are a little too certain that the supernatural doesn't exist, and/or are personally obnoxious? Certainly. That doesn't invalidate atheism as a philosophical position. Likewise, the horrific acts of believers doesn't invalidate religious belief - except, and to the extent that, religion directly commands those horrific acts.
Here we get to the heart of the difference between religion and atheism. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in the supernatural. It doesn't tell you what you should believe, or how you should act. It certainly doesn't tell you to kill believers. (Please don't bother bringing up the old canard about Hitler and Stalin killing millions in the name of atheism. Hitler was a devout Christian, and embraced as such by the Catholic church, until the end of his days. Stalin was a paranoid megalomaniac who killed anyone he felt threatened his power, and he benefited from a long Russian tradition of autocratic and theocratic emperors who were the head of both church and state.)
Religion, by contrast, frequently does advocate violence and killing - depending on whose interpretation you believe. Taking Islam for example, for every quote supporting the proposition that it is a religion of peace, you can find another one explicitly commanding death to infidels. Likewise, Jesus preaches peace and love, but also says: "I came not to send peace, but a sword." Which interpretation are you to believe? There is no rational basis for choosing between them - it's a matter of faith, i.e. an arbitrary choice. Which is precisely why religious wars are always the bloodiest, because there is no objective way of settling the differences that inspire them.
People often say that atheism is "just another religion" whose practitioners have faith in reason and science. Yeah, and health is just another disease. Speaking for myself, I don't have faith in reason or science; I have confidence in them, based on their track record. Let's put it this way. I don't have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, I have confidence that it will, because it always has in the past. Besides, I can't think of a physical process that would reduce the earth's angular momentum to zero overnight without sending everyone flying into space and probably splitting the planet apart. Okay, so I'm way over-analyzing the analogy, but I hope you see my point.
Similarly, I have confidence in reason and science because of what they have accomplished so far, as opposed to blind "faith" in the absence of evidence or in the face of evidence against one's position. When you get right down to it, reason and science are all we have. Without them, we would still be living in caves and worshiping tree spirits, rain spirits and what have you. Reason and science allow us to reach consensus, with disputes being settled peacefully because one side eventually admits that the evidence is against them, and adopts the other position. Reason and science thrive on doubt and skepticism, with assumptions being examined, evidence being weighed, and the strongest theory prevailing.
Reason and science allow us to accumulate knowledge and build on our progress with more progress. Religion allows no such progress, no such peaceful resolution of disputes, because as I mentioned above, there is simply no objective basis for choosing one sacred scroll over another.
Religion has to be about faith rather than confidence, because there is no evidence - just assertions and arguments from authority - and no track record of increasing our knowledge and improving our technology. In fact, religion makes a virtue of faith in the absence of evidence - believing the unbelievable makes you a virtuous person. In any other sphere of human activity, we call this gullibility.
Part of Maha's argument is that it is counterproductive for atheists to criticize religion, and she gets quite defensive, snippy and condescending with her commenters when they venture down this path. My feeling is that religion is a human construct, and it is fair game for scrutiny, criticism, and even ridicule if warranted, just like any other human construct. The polite and cautious convention that we should never criticize someone else's religious beliefs, however bizarre and deluded they may be, only allows ignorance and fanaticism to fester.
Every parent knows that if you reward a child's tantrums, you'll get more tantrums. The predictable convulsions of outrage and violence which wrack religious communities worldwide, whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian, at some real or perceived slight to their beliefs, are nothing but large-scale tantrums. So what if someone draws a cartoon of Mohammed or sculpts a chocolate Jesus? As Thomas Jefferson would say, it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket. People choose to take offense at some act that has absolutely no effect on them, and if we had to censor ourselves every time we were about to speak, write, or act, lest we hurt someone's delicate religious sensibilities, we might as well lie down and die. We would have a far healthier society, in my view, if religionists simply grew up and learned to shrug off the opinions of those who believe differently. (And if you want to criticize my atheism, knock yourself out - I'll be impressed if you can come up with anything I haven't seen and refuted a hundred times before.)
Religion deserves, in fact needs, to be criticized because it dissuades believers from thinking for themselves and encourages them to blindly swallow some package deal of beliefs and knee-jerk prejudices. As Voltaire wrote, he who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Let religion's assumptions be exposed to the light of day, let them be critically examined - if a religion is worth its salt, it has nothing to fear from such a process. And with the world getting smaller and more interconnected by the day, we cannot afford dogmatic and intolerant religions that preach or encourage violence in any way - not that we ever could.
So at heart I agree with Maha - doubt is a good thing, absolute certainty in your position is undesirable and often dangerous. One should always question one's assumptions and revise them in the light of new facts. That's what scientists do every day. Yes, Christopher Hitchens may be arrogant and closed-minded in some areas, but balance him in the scales against centuries of religious certitude and the bloodshed and suffering it has led to - it's no contest. True, he seems to be emotionally invested in attacking religion, just as Maha seems emotionally invested in defending it. I don't necessarily consider him the best spokesman for atheism.
But the "new atheists" (a rather condescending title, in my opinion, since atheists have been around for centuries - it's only in the last few years that they've started to get a word in edgeways) are simply saying, if I read them correctly (and to borrow Lucy's admirably succinct summary): "Let's try to look at this thing objectively, as we would at science, without all this reverence that's expected." This is NOT necessarily the same as hostility to religion. Do they want to abolish religion from the world, or think it's even possible? That's not what I take from their writings. They're just saying there are legitimate grounds for criticizing religion. It's up to religionists how they choose to respond. If they react defensively and shoot the messenger, then their religion hardens and fossilizes. If they can take deserved criticism on board, then their religion can become more humane and more relevant to the changing society they live in. This is merely the continuation of a process that has been going on for centuries. As someone once said, religion doesn't make people better so much as people make religion better.
I'd better call a halt or I will go on writing all night. If there are any religionists who have made it this far, here's a word of advice: it's not the end of the world if someone criticizes your beliefs. The criticism may or may not be valid - don't automatically assume that it isn't. And don't kill the messenger - that's not the best way of answering criticism that your religion is intolerant. Just sayin'.
