Thought of the day

Don’t delete your spam before checking whether it was legit or not.

I think Scientology is a religion.  In terms of what is a religion and what isn’t a religion, I can’t distinguish one set of nonsense from another. I’d define a religion as any collective belief system that involves a supernatural belief in the spirit.  Scientology may charge huge sums of money.  But there’s people that believe in it.  The money they charge doesn’t invalidate it as a belief system.  Imagine taking the potential earnings of Jesuit monks. There’s some very clever Jesuits.  Scientology is no more stupid than any other religion.  But it still deserves criticism.

The ways ‘they’ (I’ll get back to they) have pursued people with litigation, and their attitude towards critics have not given Scientology a good track record.  I say ‘they’ because, I imagine, your average Scientologist has as much to do with litigation, smear campaigns and the like, as your average Catholic has to do with sodomising choir boys, or your average Muslim has to do with suicide bombing.  I.e. Nothing at all.  It is unrealistic to think of Scientology as an homogeneous organisation.  It no doubt it has its sects and its bad apples.

With regards of ‘fair-game’: I would not like to clash with certain sects from any religion.  If anyone takes their religious book seriously, you’re in a fuck load of trouble if you cross them. One thinks of the Amalekites, or extreme Islamic sects that regard outsiders as Kafir, or interpretations of the Bible in the Middle Ages, or the way Christians regarded Jews.  Many of those things are in the past for mainstream religions.  But, like Scientology,  mainstream faiths should not be thought of as homogeneous organisations.  There are sects and individuals from widely recognised religions that have views that are utterly vile.  Mel Gibson’s father is a good example of Catholicism gone wrong.

So, are people right to protest Scientology?  Absolutely. The record of litigation against opponents of Scientology is something they should be ashamed of.  In purely practical, amoral terms, it doesn’t seem to have worked.  If anything it has made the situation worse.  And the money they charge is a valid thing to criticise.  Their attitude towards the media, specifically removing clips of Tom Cruise, was anti-free speech, and should be criticised.  Abuse of things like the DMCA and asymmetrical litigation through attrition are problems of our age.  People with loads of money, suing people with little money, until they give up.

The bad things that have happened within Scientology are an emotionally charged issue.  I cannot rationally say that any of the things that have happened within Scientology (notably the Lisa McPherson case) are any better or worse than things that have happened within mainstream religions.  Even limiting the scope of inquiry to the Twentieth Century.  In mainstream religions there have been deaths, suicides, exorcisms, child abuse, extremism, racism, financial irregularities and more. 

So lets not, for a second, think that mainstream religions are any better. But two wrongs do not make a right.  The behaviour of other religions doesn’t justify the things Scientology stands accused of.

Fundamentally speaking, I’m a wimp.  I can’t bring myself to be anti-religious - people have a right to make up their own mind.  My belief is that all religion is wrong.  That’s my choice.  Other people have theirs.  It’s not my place to be evangelical about my beliefs or to tell others what they can and can’t believe.  The thing that pisses me off about religion is when it steps outside of its domain.  Interfering with politics, science, and law. That is as bad as atheists expecting a say in theology or giving advice on the ’spirit’ (whatever the fuck that is). 

I don’t think anonymous is anti-religious either. 

People have as much right to criticise religion as religion has to criticise atheism.  Free speech is the way it should be.  I think we live in a better world if there is critical dialogue between people who disagree.

The best thing that Scientology can do in response to anonymous is to prove everyone wrong by not attacking well meaning people in masks.  If they attack ‘anonymous’ they are proving all of their critics right. Scientologists have a right to practice their faith and people have a right to peacefully protest.

I am going to take pictures and to lurk.  In real life anonymous is new shit and therefore interesting. If anyone wants to meet up, or is going, or wants to go, drop me an email.   I’ll be lurking around all day. 

Links:

London Lulz.

If you’ve ever been to a country that has a problem with feral dogs, you’ll know that dealing with wild dogs can be a total pain in the arse because they’re unpredictable. They’re mostly scared of people, because, as scavengers, they’re chased away with sticks and shouts. Other times, with children, or if they feel threatened, they’ll bite, and in packs they can attack. They can carry rabies and present a public health issue. Under Saddam Hussein the infrastructure in Iraq was held together with bubblegum, duct tape, and tyranny. After the invasion, the coalition political leaders, those so keen on war, had no decent plan, at all, to deal with the aftermath. Rather depressingly, it’s been repeated by politicians calling for a pull-out of Iraq; with no detailed plans to deal with what happens next.

During the invasion, and its aftermath, all of the pest control, public services, and public service infrastructure, were destroyed, looted, or both, here’s what Donald Rumsfeld had to say at the time:

“Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things … stuff happens”

The destruction of public services was allowed to happen. Simple things like pest control were looted out of existence - and worse was to come. The people who dealt with practical things, the people running ministries, what was left of them, emigrated to neighbouring states like Jordan and Syria, or were fired in the de-Baathification of the Iraqi state. As a result wild dogs are a bigger problem in Iraq today, than they were prior to the invasion. And they were a problem prior to the invasion. Tossing a puppy off a cliff isn’t the best form of pest control, but placed in context, it’s different from someone buying a puppy in a pet-shop specifically to toss it off a cliff. It’s still cruel and it’s still wrong, but given the situation soldiers are in, dealing with the arse-end of geopolitics, it is, to my mind, forgivable. Many people seem to be more incensed at a soldier tossing a dog off a cliff than they are about the situation soldiers have been left to clean up.

Thought of the day

Would your webhost fuck you over?

28 gun crimes committed in UK every day

and

The shocking truth

The paradox of cracking down on certain crimes is that they rise - it’s a bit obvious that one.  If you crack down on drugs, recorded drug crimes rise, if you crack down on guns, gun crime rises. Note - deaths from gun crime are down and injuries were up so insignificantly the Telegraph doesn’t quote them.  Even as a context free percentage.  I wonder sometimes whether people are thick or whether they want to scare people into conforming to whatever politics of the day they follow (see also the Independent re: recession (not going to be catastrophic in Europe or Asia) or catastrophic global warming (yes, global warming is a major problem, but no it’s not like the movies)).  Maybe they’re just desperately trying to conform to whichever readership they chase.  It’s all very 20th Century.  The Independent is right in this case though.  And people being scared of crime is scary.  It diverts public money irrationally, it creates fear, it demonises people (see The Daily Mail/The Daily Express on Romanians today) and it creates a situation where people cannot debate based on evidence.  Only beliefs and feelings.  Not good. 

See also:

 Risk of becoming a victim of crime at 27 year low

Thought for the day

If you don’t pay attention you can forget to put hyphen’s in people’s names.  Or get syphilis.  Among other things.  Like stubbing your toe, or answering the wrong question.  Or forget your dogs birthday.  Also, things like, one sock conundrums, forgotten birthdays, inappropriate humour in dire situations, hell, nice weather, the smell of water, six freshly plumped pillows, and all the stars in the sky.  This is a necessarily incomplete list for reasons of brevity. 

Thought for the day

Don’t photo cranes or architecture that has reflective bits.  There is no point.  They are there already.

Listen to David Icke and Russell Brand here.

I think one of the great downsides to generation gaps, real or perceived,  is that they can lead to indiscriminate scepticism.  The broad scepticism towards politics and ‘the system’ during the 1960s and 1970s gave rise to many good things. It also gave rise to much irrationalism and muddy thinking.  I believe a similar situation exists today.  There is a generation gap forming under the nose of a political and media establishment that is still firmly rooted in the 20th Century.  Among many young people there is a broad scepticism towards government, politics, and the media.  Much of this is positive.  Many young people seem willing and able to Google and get information from multiple sources.  And savagely mock the absurd.

Scepticism without critical thinking can be dangerous.   Because in those circumstances a rejection of the mainstream can lead to unqualified acceptance of  any ideas regardless of their logical consistency or evidence.  Conspiracy theories - for instance.   People accept them because they do not have critical thinking skills. They don’t have critical thinking skills because our society does not encourage critical thinking outside of fields where it is required.   They’re not stupid people.  There is a paradoxical situation in which people can be deeply sceptical and lack the critical thinking skills to distinguish the things they should be sceptical about.  It’s a real shame.  People that believe in conspiracy theories are seeking answers, which is something that should be applauded, but unfortunately they’re barking up the wrong tree.

An example of this is the rise of David Icke.  He is more popular than ever. I quite like David Icke.  Really.  I don’t think he’s a bad person, but I think his theories are wrong.   Even a cursory examination of what constitutes evidence for many of his theories, parsing his arguments, leads to rejection of them on the grounds of consistency and lack of evidence.  But there exists a situation today whereby those with undeveloped ideas of what constitutes evidence, and lacking critical thinking skills, are led to David Icke and his kind.   Many young people with legitimate scepticism of government post-Iraq/post-Blair/post-Bush  are ambling into the hands of 9/11 conspiracy theories, people like David Icke.  Much in the same way many hippies were led down blind alleys by religion, drug culture, and ill thought out ideologies.

In an ideal world books like Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World and Darrell Huff’s How to Lie With Statistics would be mandatory secondary school reading material.  If I had the free cash I would by a few thousand copies of each and  give them away.   A basic understanding of statistics and basic critical thinking skills are essential for understanding the modern world and essential for positive changes.  Otherwise people act with scant regard to evidence which, as has been proven time and time again, leads to very bad things indeed.  In an ideal world the revolution would be everyone being able to think critically.  Scepticism minus critical thinking equals wasted energy.

Celebrity news is thought to attract viewers.  Does it represent a net gain in viewers, or temporary gains?    How loyal is an audience attracted by the saga of Britney Spears?  Can main-stream news channels compete with dedicated celebrity news outlets?  Has diversification in the name of popularity increased or decreased viewing figures for all channels that have gone down that route?  Is there an niche for news channels that  provide quality analysis of important news?  Is it possible to diversify to the point that what distinguishes a news channel is gone?  Do Perez Hilton and TMZ do a better job at covering the minutiae of celebrity news than CNN or the BBC?  What happens when they, and entities like Heat Magazine, get their own digital television channels?