Tag: religion

The dumbest platform yet

i don’t usually link to articles about the latest crazy in US politics (not enough signal), but this is well written, funny and disturbing all at once.

Let me be clear. The opinions and analysis of this all-white, moralistic, American Taliban have no purchase in the land of black folk. It’s not like the Official Committee Of Black Folk (I’m a rotating co-chair for the Northeast Directorate) sits around wondering what THE FAMiLY LEADER thinks about our family situation, but still, to invoke slavery in “defense” of marriage exposes a complete lack of historical understanding and common sense, much less sensitivity.

30% Future Shock

My working hypothesis to explain the 21st century is that the Tofflers underestimated how pervasive future shock would be. I think somewhere in the range from 15-30% of our fellow hairless primates are currently in the grip of future shock, to some degree. Symptoms include despair, anxiety, depression, disorientation, paranoia, and a desperate search for certainty in lives that are experiencing unpleasant and uninvited change. It’s no surprise that anyone who can offer dogmatic absolute answers is popular, or that the paranoid style is again ascendant in American politics, or that religious certainty is more attractive to many than the nuanced complexities of scientific debate. Climate change is an exceptionally potent trigger for future shock insofar as it promises an unpleasant and unpredictable dose of upcoming instability in the years ahead; denial is an emotionally satisfying response to the threat, if not a sustainable one in the longer term.

all the hysteria and religious nonsense means we are in profound future shock.

Stoning Explained

Stoning in Iran is a political tool in the hands of an Islamic regime to oppress the society as a whole in one of the most savage ways. The overwhelming majority of the victims of stoning are women. Stoning in Iran is therefore a tool, among many such religious, oppressive tools, for keeping women in their place.”


this is the sort of thing that brings expeditionary forces with a mandate for democracy.

Ultra-christian hobos

If you’re a geriatric, hobo-wizard, Jesus freak with a dirty mop-head hanging from your chin, it’s probably not the best idea to be too critical of others. But that doesn’t stop WinterBand’s namesake, Steve Winter, from attacking Catholics, Muslims, democrats, women and countless others for the intolerable sin of being outside his confusing comfort zone.

Zuckerberg Blasphemy

Mark Zuckerberg is being investigated by Pakistani police under a section of the penal code that makes blasphemy against Muhammad punishable by death. Petitioner Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque is waiting for the police to contact Interpol about making arrangements for the arrest of Facebook’s owners and “Andy”. Pakistan’s United Nations representative has asked to escalate the issue in the UN General Assembly.

isn’t religion cute? such angst! such inadequacy! such insecurity!

Göbekli Tepe

Carbon dating shows that the complex is 12 ka old. Stonehenge was built around 2000–2500 BC. Gobekli Tepe hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.

There is no doubt gobekli tepe is an enormously important archaeological discovery: at 12 ka, it is far far older than any other advanced manmade structure. together with evidence that the first grains are from the same area, this may well be the birth of civilization.

Göbekli Tepe suggests a reversal of that scenario: The construction of a massive temple by a group of foragers is evidence that organized religion could have come before the rise of agriculture and other aspects of civilization. It suggests that the human impulse to gather for sacred rituals arose as humans shifted from seeing themselves as part of the natural world to seeking mastery over it. When foragers began settling down in villages, they unavoidably created a divide between the human realm—a fixed huddle of homes with 100s of inhabitants—and the dangerous land beyond the campfire, populated by lethal beasts.

2022-05-20: The area might be even older and is far more widespread:

Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey are digging up a wild, grand, artistically coherent, implausibly strange, hitherto-unknown-to-us religious civilization, which has been buried in Mesopotamia for 10 ka. And it was all buried deliberately. Karahan Tepe is stupefyingly big. ‘So far We have dug up maybe 1% of the site. That’s probably another megalith right there, waiting to be excavated. I reckon there are probably 1000s more of them, all around us. We are only at the beginning. And there could be 10s more Tas Tepeler we have not yet found, spread over 100s of kilometres.’