How "unfettered"?

Oh dear. It seems that my Singapore doesn't seem to see the difference between criticism and hate speech.

Channel News Asia has this article:

SINGAPORE: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Teo Chee Hean said freedom of expression does not mean that one has unfettered rights to insult and denigrate another's religion or race.

Rather, this freedom must be safeguarded through mutual respect of the views and beliefs of others.

Commenting on the film "Innocence of Muslims", Mr Teo said in a statement that it is also wrong and counterproductive to respond to this inflammatory and offensive film with violence.

Mr Teo said he is confident that Singaporeans will react to this film in the same rational and calm manner as they have done previously.

He added that "we should not let events overseas undermine the peaceful and harmonious relationships built up over the years in Singapore". 

I'm pretty sure I disagree (the comment on freedom of expression).

See the following two statements:

"Religious group X are human garbage / should all be shot dead / do not deserve equal rights."

"Religious group Y beliefs are factually wrong / evidentially unsupported / just ridiculous."

The law might justifiably come down against the former sort of statements. However, the latter should be "unfettered". It's the difference between hate speech and criticism -- and freedom of religion does not exempt one from criticism. You do not have the right to not be offended.

Ideally, sane people would never go so far as to riot and kill over being "offended". Yet, religious people do. The right thing to do is to jail the rioters -- not impinge on freedom of expression. Offensive speech would be regulated at a social level -- not legally.

Secularism

Brilliant video on secularism by QualiaSoup.

The Reason Rally

The Reason Rally was held on 24th March 2012 and promoted as the largest gathering of non-believers in the USA to date. Here's a video by TheThinkingAtheist with footage from the event.

And if you wish to be amused by AronRa debating Christian/Creationists on the street at the event, check out the following 32 minute video!

Indonesian beaten and faces jail for his atheism

Once again, bigots in Indonesia and its government are exercising their religious intolerance. An Indonesian civil servant, who created a Facebook page where he discusses his disbelief with other like minded people, was beaten by a mob for posting "God doesn't exist" and now faces jail for "blasphemy".

MSNBC reports:

PADANG, Indonesia -- A 30-year-old Indonesian civil servant who was viciously attacked by a mob after posting on Facebook that "God doesn't exist" is now threatened with jail time for blasphemy.

“He has triggered unrest among local residents," Dharmasraya Police Chief Chairul Aziz told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

The man, identified as Alexander, was arrested Friday on charges of blasphemy for his writings on his Facebook page. He had created a Facebook fan page titled Ateis Minang (Minang Atheist) and gained more than 1,238 Facebook "likes" before it was taken down from the social network site, according to the Post.

On his page, Alexander wrote about his Muslim upbringing, how he didn't believe in angels, demons, heaven or hell and how he stopped practicing his faith in 2008, according to media reports. He posted comments regarding the Islamic faith, including "God doesn't exist" and "If God exists, why do bad things happen? There should only be good things if God is merciful."
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Aziz said Indonesia's Council of Ulema, the ruling Islamic authority, charged Alexander with defiling Islam by using passages from the Quran to denounce God, The Telegraph reported on Friday.

If convicted of blasphemy, Alexander could face up to five years in prison.

Dozens of residents in his hometown in Pulau Punjung, West Sumatra province, stormed into Alexander's office on Wednesday and carried on their heated debate over religion, police said. Alexander was beaten, including by some of his colleagues.

Dharmasraya Regent Adi Gunawan told the Jakarta Post Alexander he has not taken any action to remove the man from his job on the planning board.

“I will await the legal process and decide later about his employment status,” Adi told the newspaper.

Firstly, this demonstrates one of the reasons for needing a separation of church (in this case, mosque) and state. There should be no laws that discriminate against religious or non-religious persons. The "blasphemy" law is utter nonsense -- an infringement on basic freedom of speech -- wherein blaspheming literally harms no one.

Secondly, this also shows that those bigots worship a little god. Their version of Allah is so helpless that its followers must intervene on his behalf to punish persons who dare use their brain in a skeptical manner. Blasphemy laws do not demonstrate a glorious deity -- they demonstrate a little vain one.

Thirdly, the fact that a mob actually bashed a civil servant for expressing his disbelief on an FB page for atheists is just ludicrous. The intolerance, while expected from a country like Indonesia, is still nonetheless breathtaking. Actually, I'm using the word wrong: It's not intolerance, it's discrimination. Beating someone and legally imprisoning someone for differences in opinion is active discrimination.

This is yet another demonstration why atheists will not ever settle for silence again.

There is NO god. Grow up.

Clash of Church and State in the Philippines

Once again, the sex obsessed Catholic Church is rearing its ugly head, this time in the Philippines over the Reproductive Health (RH) bill.

The Independent reports in its news article, Church and State clash over sex and condoms in the Philippines:

A 13-year battle between church and state in the Philippines, one of the world's most devoutly Catholic nations, has come to a head over government plans to provide free condoms and sex education. Catholic bishops have threatened to excommunicate President Benigno Aquino over a reproductive health bill introduced into the Congress yesterday.

......

The aim of the bill is to control population growth, reduce HIV infection rates and eradicate the need for women to seek backstreet abortions. Mr Aquino, who is determined to see it become law, is prepared to be banished from the church, if necessary. "I have been taught in school, which was a Catholic institution, that the final arbiter really is our conscience," he said yesterday.

But the church, which has enormous clout in the Philippines, is not about to give way. Since 1998, it has quashed several previous versions of the bill. "Sex is not a game that should be taught to children, along with the use of condoms, supposedly to avoid disease," the Archbishop of Manila, Gaudencio Rosales, told an anti-contraception rally in the capital two months ago.

I appreciate the president of the Philippines for, effectively, holding the wall between Church and State. While I am not a Filipino, it is nice to see politicians do the right thing despite opposition from religious lobbies instead of succumbing to them.

But as usual, there are always some politicians happy to smear their religious beliefs all over their politics.

As well as the powerful church, Mr Aquino is opposed by one of the most popular figures in the Philippines, the world champion boxer turned congressman Manny Pacquiao.

Mr Pacquiao said this week that he would never have been born, or become a champion, if his parents had used contraception. "God said go forth and multiply," he declared. "He did not say just go and have one or two children."

What a vacuous statement. If your parents were doing ANYTHING other than fucking at that moment when they did have sex to produce you, you wouldn't exist. So? What's your point?

And may I ask why anyone is obliged to care what you believe your god said in an ancient book of inconclusive authorship? Thankfully, there is still sane people in their government to put this nutter in place. According to ABS-CBN news,

She (Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago) also criticized his use of the biblical quote, "Go forth and multiply."

"The Bible does not say, 'Go out to the world.' It sounds very much like God is encouraging us to go out and copulate in public. God said in the Bible, "Go forth and multiply." That meant that God wanted man, not necessarily to literally multiply, but to go out to work with the rest of the human beings of this planet and to apply the stewardship theory. Meaning to say, taking care of each other, who are all in the planet living together.

"I would like to say if this is going to be a debate of biblical quotes, then I will counter with a quote: 'The devil can cite scripture for its purposes,'" she said.

She also called on Pacquiao not to read and interpret the Bible to literally, pointing out that the Bible was not even written by God himself.

"It is very dangerous to be a fundamentalist. Apparently that's what Pacquiao is. He reads the Bible literally. The Bible was not written by God ... Nobody has a monopoly of the thoughts of God," she told Senate reporters.

Nice. More public figures should state that publicly, thank you -- 'cause it seems like nobody bloody knows that. She also said,

She also said the separation of church and state should be maintained.

"Because the principle of church and state, while we respect the freedom of speech of people of every persuasion across religious boundaries, still we have to stand up for the principle in democratic governance that the church cannot dictate to the state. So the State must always argue in favor of free speech and free conscience, that is why I call this a freedom of conscience issue," she added.

Here's another politician with his head screwed on right --  voicing the core reason for defending the separation of Church and State here as reported by Sun.Star Davao newspaper:

Duterte said the Catholics who believe in the stand of the Church and the warnings of the priests can do so, however, he said the Philippines cannot be ruled by the Roman Catholic Church.

"Iba-iba naman ang relihiyon. As I said, within this country, there are people who believe in God, and there are those who do not believe in God," Duterte explained.

The Church cannot speak on behalf of everyone, he added.

I'm not going to comment much about the Church's stance here -- it suffice to say that the Church's morals are "biblical", as in centuries behind on moral progress.

Secularism, what is that really?

Okay, let me put it upfront that the article I'll be referring to is old news, really old news, like 2009 old news. Unfortunately, the nonsense in the article is not unnecessarily old. It does seem that Christians in Singapore are importing American Evangelical nonsense. I will use this opportunity to clarify what secularism is and is not.

There seems to be few sources that have the interview of Thio Li-Ann archived. So I'll be using this one archived by AWARE. It should be sufficient for my purposes since I'm not going to be deconstructing the whole interview. If you want that, then I would recommend this other blog's post - it's quite well done I think.

Historically, ‘secularism’ originates from the Latin ‘saeculum’, meaning ‘temporal’, worldly affairs, rather than ‘spiritual’, other-worldly matters. The word ‘secular’ is an emblem of intense historical conflict.

Today, in some circles, ‘secularism’ connotes systematic hostility towards religion, as a synonym for a politicised form of ideological atheism whose creed is that humanity is destined to wholly shed religious conviction. The atheistic word was made flesh in the atheistic state produced by the Russian Revolution of 1917, devoted to Marx’s assumption that religion stupefies the masses and must be eradicated to bring forth the new Communist Man.

......

In 1989, Foreign Minister George Yeo observed the Government was ‘secular but it is certainly not atheistic’. This evinces a rejection of a thick, atheistic version of secularism.

Here is a truncated quote from the interview. Notice the attempt to confuse and conflate atheism and secularism?

Guess what? Secularism and atheism are two completely different things. This attempt to confuse the issue is a dishonest ploy to evoke feelings of opposition to secularism from religious folks.

For the record, if the state/government endorses atheism or antitheism, it is by definition, NOT secular. As such, there is NO such thing as an "atheistic version of secularism". Secularity of the government only means that the government just remain neutral in matters pertaining to the religious beliefs of its citizens.

Secular humanism, which posits a morality independent of God, is a comprehensive anti-theistic world view. Some courts recognise it as a religion. It dogmatically asserts the absence of God, without any empirical evidence. We know from elementary logic that it is impossible to prove a universal negative. Whether God exists or not cannot be proved or disproved by evidence or logic.

It takes faith to believe or not to believe in God or gods. A lot of faith is needed to believe there is no divine. As Turkish journalist Mustafa Akyol wrote: ‘It is the atheist’s opium to regard that unsubstantiated faith as established fact.’ Thick secularism is thus an anti-religion religion.

Again, an attempt to conflate secularism with atheism, this time, as well as Secular Humanism.

It's important to go through this point by point to clarify the confusion about Secular Humanism.

Secular humanism, which posits a morality independent of God, is a comprehensive anti-theistic world view.

Secular Humanism is atheistic in nature though not necessarily antitheistic.

Here is the Minimum Statement on Humanism:

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.

Secular Humanists themselves may be antitheistic but it is not a dogmatic requirement of the stance. In fact, Secular Humanism rejects dogmas.

Some courts recognise it as a religion.

The recognition of Secular Humanism as a "religion" is for functional reasons in the eyes of the law.

It dogmatically asserts the absence of God, without any empirical evidence.

No, it doesn't. That has it ass backwards.

Precisely because there is no empirical evidence FOR the existence of god(s), Secular Humanists do not believe there is/are god(s). The distinction between "do not believe in the existence of god" and "believe there are no gods" is subtle but still important! We simply do not pretend there is one (or more gods) - instead we believe only we, humans, can help ourselves (hence the humanist aspect).

We know from elementary logic that it is impossible to prove a universal negative. Whether God exists or not cannot be proved or disproved by evidence or logic.

Gee, except that's not what we're claiming - we haven't disproved god nor can we.

While we can't prove (in correct usage of the word) the existence of god(s), we should be able to demonstrate IF he/she/it exist. But we haven't; Still waiting for those people with the burden of proof to bring in the evidence.

And now we'll move onto the rest of the nonsense.

Secular democracies should be neutral not only between traditional religions but also regarding modern religions with atheistic foundations.

What in the world is "modern religions with atheistic foundations"? Some forms of Buddhism is atheistic but that sure isn't modern.

Again, it seems that this is yet another attempt to claim that atheism somehow constitutes a religion. Well, it isn't. Being an atheist effectively means having no religion. Lacking belief in god makes you an atheist; No rational atheist asserts that god(s) do not exist and even those who do make that assertion are not organising a religion!

But let's move straight to most important part, the biggest "misunderstanding",

Thus, Singapore secularism is 'agnostic' and 'thin'. The Government does not favour or disfavour any particular religion. We practise 'accommodative secularism' described by the Court of Appeal as removing restrictions to one's choice of religious belief. Religious values do have a role in public debate.

Agnostic secularism of this sort is a virtue; it is a 'framework' which facilitates the peaceful co-existence of religions.

Conversely, militant secularism is an illiberal and undemocratic vice in seeking to gag religious views in the public square and so to privilege its atheistic values, as in communist states.

Secular fundamentalists are oppressive where they seek to mute religiously informed convictions in public debate, by demonising a view as religious.

The distinction between "accommodative" and "millitant" secularism is fucking nonsense.

Okay, I won't be quoting anymore. Here on is my explanation for secularism.

Secularism is one of the constitutional devices that sought to protect the people from the state (government) and vice versa, in this case, from religious discrimination. It means that the state must remain neutral towards religion, that is, the state cannot endorse any religions (no preferential treatment, no favorite or state religion) and cannot discriminate against any religion. This guarantees freedom of religion (as well as from religion).

Maybe it would be clearer if I used hypothetical examples.

It means the government cannot come out tomorrow and announce that Buddhism is the state religion of Singapore and its temples will now enjoy tax free status that other religions are not entitled.

It means the state cannot proclaim that we have amended the Singapore Pledge and it will now read:

We, the citizens of Singapore,
accept our Lord Jesus Christ as our one and only savior,
regardless of race, language or gender,

It means we cannot write into our law that all pork and pig related products shall be banned and no non-halal stalls will ever be permitted.

It means the Prime Minister cannot proclaim that we will now endorse state atheism and will now print "One Nation under No Gods" on our dollar bills.

Clearer now?

Secularism also means that members of the government cannot inject their religion into our constitution, our laws or anything endorsed by the government.

We may not inject Creationism into our national Science curriculum at our public schools.

We may not criminalized abortion on the basis of any religious doctrine.

We may not discriminate against homosexuals on the basis of any holy text.

We may not allow state-led prayer in our Parliament or public schools.

And yes, those examples come from America where religious nuts are trying to destroy the secularity of the USA.

To put it simply, secularism means you cannot impose your religious views on others via the government but neither can the government tell you what you can or cannot believe/do because of someone else's religion.

I hope you can see that that's a good thing, otherwise, you might be a bigot or possibly a theocrat... just guessing...

Violating Secularity, not actually

Sorry, this is old news. Not even news actually. But I thought I should voice my opinion because it's an atheist in Singapore who seem to think that the secularity of his school was violated.

Here's the relevant excerpts from the letter:

I feel uncomfortable in TJC because I witnessed a violation of secularism in TJC.

A few months ago, around May, the 32nd Student Council of TJC stood down and hand over to the 33rd SC. On the day, the President of the 32nd Student Council addressed the cohort. At the end of her address, she close with the phrase of “God Bless”

The ministry might think that the fault lies in the individual. But I am very surprise that the college did not make any clarification to the address. which I take it as they agree with the phrase. When the speech included the phrase “God Bless”, I believed that a Secular school like TJC would have clarified without any one complaing or enquring in the first place. But the lack of action of TJC with regards to this violation of secularism in school is rather shocking.

I really don't think this qualifies as a violation of secularism.

Firstly, does the president of the student council represent the (government) school and its official position? I doubt it.

Secondly, "God bless" has become a generic phrase similar to "Oh my god!" where the speaker may not actually be invoking their deity but simply wishing the audience well.

She is, in fact, allowed to voice her religious opinions although she may have come across as being distasteful to some atheists and possibly polytheists. But then again, she's allowed, to some degree, be distasteful if she wants to.

But in this case, she merely made a possibly religiously charged well wishing. She wasn't declaring that her religion is the one and only true religion. She wasn't telling her audience that deserved to burn in hell. She was neither promoting her religion over any others nor denigrating any.

So this letter sounds a lot like making a mountain out of, not a molehill, nothing to me.