The word religiosity means “excessively religious”. I would like to coin the term secularocity, a companion word that means “excessively secular”.

Now you might wonder why a secularist, agnostic and sceptic like myself is coining words that arguably have a negative connotation regarding secularism?

It is a good question, and I think the answer is balance. 

I have a theme – explored a bit in my post on The Orthosphere - about the role of religion in society (the beneficial role) and my dislike of radical atheism. 

Just like David Sloan Wilson and Alan De Botton,  I think that religion and religious thinking have contributed immense good to humanity. I think that religious thinking is inexorable or perhaps inalienable from the human mind, it is an emergent property of the way in which our brains evolved. I think religions have tremendous power to organise society, more often than not for the good. The author Aldous Huxley explores this very same in his book XXX about a post-nuclear California with the church is now entirely satanic but just as it was in the dark ages, it is the guardian of knowledge and in its own twisted way, civilisation.

As a non-theist I still have tremendous respect for my religious fellows. I genuinely enjoy watching and listening as moderate religious people address the important questions in life. 

Just as one should read newspapers that do not share your political outlook I think it is wise to expose oneself to philosophies and beliefs that I disagree with you or in which you do not believe.

I have absolutely no time for radicals and extremists, be they Islamists, the Christian far right or radical atheists.  I do however thoroughly enjoy hearing, seeing and talking to religious moderates.

My strongest religious sympathies lie with Buddhism. It is the least supernatural of the major religions, it is open to science and its practices like meditation are proven to be mentally and physically beneficial.

That said, the more I learn about religion and philosophy, the more I see that many of the distinctions are false distinctions.

Ultimately I am devoting of the perennial philosophy.

There seem to be threads of truth that bind all of these religions. Aldous Huxley again in his eponymous book “The Perennial Philosophy“, does a masterful job of showing the themes and essential truth as promulgated by the major religions are all pretty much identical. Even Norse mythology and African animist beliefs map against the perennial philosophy.

For any atheists, agnostics, non-theists or otherwise anti-religious people out there may I recommend some sources of religious thought and discussion where I think you might learn a lot from our religious brothers and sisters?

Misc 

• On Being Podcast - http://www.onbeing.org
• Alan Watts lectures - https://www.youtube.com/user/AlanWattsLectures

• Zencast podcast - http://www.zencast.org

An extremely worthwhile campaign to reform the UK’s insane laws against insulting people. Used mostly to suppress free speech now.

Reform Section 5 – Feel free to insult me

Surprisingly important skill that most of us are bad at. In a nutshell:

• Don’t ramble on—terminate the sentence at the question mark.
• Get comfortable with silence.
• Start with “who, what, when, where, how, or why” for more meaningful answers.
• Don’t fish for the answer you want.
• Stop nodding if you don’t understand—ask a follow-up instead.
• If you get a non-answer, approach it again from a different angle.
• Rephrase the answer in your own words.
• Don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions.

Read on: http://www.fastcompany.com/3003945/one-conversational-tool-will-make-you-better-absolutely-everything 

Fascinating article on fraud and data manipulation in the social sciences, and one man’s quest to expose it.

From Denmark comes this grim story of a father driven to commit desperate and illegal acts to kidnap back his son, awarded to him by the Danish courts, from his mother in Austria. 

Yet another case of fathers driven to desperation by biased courts. 

A court in the Austrian city of Graz has halted the trial of a Danish man accused of kidnapping his son from his estranged wife after he failed to show up for the court hearing yesterday morning. According to Austrian news bureau APA, the case cannot be completed while he remains absent.

Thomas Sørensen’s lawyers had expected him to turn up for the case but told the presiding judge that he was concerned about the possibility he would be sentenced to prison. Sørensen was given a one-year suspended sentence last year for unlawful imprisonment, child abduction and serious assault for going to Austria and taking his son, Oliver, who was five at the time, out of the car belonging to his Austrian mother, Marion Weilharter, while she was dropping the boy off at kindergarten. A co-conspirator held Weilharter down while Sørensen grabbed Oliver and subsequently drove him back to Denmark.

…The Danish courts have already ruled in favour of Sørensen and consider the case closed, but the courts in Austria gave sole custody to Oliver’s mother Marion Weilharter.

Facing kidnapping charge, father stays away from Austrian trial | The Copenhagen Post | The Danish News in English

Nick Cohen, one of my favourite journalists, has tackled one of the issues I have often wondered about: Why are feminists so coy about Islamism?

One would have thought that instead of underclass middle aged white men with metabolic syndrome “fighting” Islamism, we would have the fight led by the liberated women of the west. 

It starts…

No group is better than liberal academics at illustrating how racist anti-racism has become. As liberals, they ought to respect individual rights and oppose reactionary attempts to corral and control. As academics, they ought to look for evidence that shakes comfortable opinions. As it is, they do neither.

In human rights organisations, leftish political parties, liberal newspapers and, above all, in the universities, committed and morally earnest people would rather die than admit that radical Islam is a murderous and oppressive movement. The effect of their evasion is to promote the racism they say they oppose, while denying their supposed allies in “Muslim lands” and immigrant communities the same rights as they enjoy. Hypocrisy is too meagre a word to cover their behaviour.

Go and read it. Long but excellent:  Feminism Or Islamism: Which Side Are You On? | Standpoint: “”

Also see Theodore Dalrymple’s article “Silence of the Feminists” from the Dec 2012 edition of City Journal where he explores a similar theme.

“Far too many sweeping claims about “human nature” are drawn exclusively from samples of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies.”

Just watched an extraordinary program on DR2 (Denmark). 

Reality TV star Thomas Blachman (of X Factor fame) has launched a new series to raise awareness of the feminization of society, what he characterised as “the dickies society”. 

The format is somewhat unconventional: 

Blackman and his guest sit on a couch in a black room, and a series of female models present themselves to them, disrobe, and stand there stark naked whilst Blackman and his guest discuss them, their bodies, lust, society etc. 

I did not really understand most of it, but my wife tells me the discussion was very interesting and not sexist at all. Quite the opposite, Blackman and his guest were thoughtful, open about their own vulnerabilities, and very respectful to the models. 

None the less, it has all gone off in Denmark. They are debating the show on the local equivalent of “Panorama”. 

More:

http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Blachman

http://cphpost.dk/who/who-thomas-blachman

Inside his cross by Mon of the Loin (Creative Commons)

Even though I am not a believer myself I have a tremendous respect for religions and religious people. For example, I absolutely love the spiritually themed On Being radio show.

I have noticed an upsurge in interest on the theme of the “positives” of religion,  beyond those of faith and avoiding hell.

David Sloan Wilson, for example, has long argued that religion plays an important role in social organising and other eusocial matters. His book Darwin’s Cathedral was a fascinating exploration of this topic.

I recently heard an interview with Alan De Botton on the On Being radio show. He has an organisation called “school for atheists”. The idea is to take the very best of religion and make it available to the non-religious. I like this idea. I used to complain to my wife that I wished there were a secular church, somewhere I could go on a Sunday morning to sing hymns speak to like-minded people and enjoy all the benefits of a community of faith – but without the faith. My father, who was a lifelong atheist, used to regularly attend church because he loved the hymns and he loved the people who went to church, Even though he did not believe in the articles of faith or in god.

 Like father like son I suppose?

Maybe this is why I don’t like the militant atheists like Richard Dawkins. They fervour is as repulsive to me as the zeal of the religious bigot.  There is something frothy and unseemly about Mr Dawkins anti religious diatribes.

Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no time for religious bigotry in any form. But if you do give any year to religious folks, you will be very surprised to find that the vast majority have very well thought out positions that are consistent with having a considered life and, I suppose, faith.

 There is also something refreshing about the sincerity that I so often see in the writings and speaking from religious people. They make no apology for believing what they believe. There is a quality of knowing what you’re getting.  Okay this all sounds deeply patronising and in some ways obviously ludicrous. Perhaps I should modify what I’m saying to apply not to “religious people”, but to the religious people that I tend to encounter on my travels both across the Internet and in real life.

This post actually started out as an entirely different post. I was going to write about The Orthosphere, but that  was sidelined by my long-winded pean for  for the faithful.

What is the The Orthosphere?

Whilst the world is wringing its hands about the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, today is the grim anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

The illegal bombing was a crucial precedent that enabled the Iraq war 4 years later. 

From B92, Serbia marks 14th anniversary of NATO bombing :

Today marks the 14th anniversary since the start of the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, i.e. the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ).

The bombing lasted 79 days and resulted in at least 2,500 deaths and more than 12,500 injuries. The attacks on Serbia started on March 24, 1999, and the last one took place near Kosovska Kamenica on June 10 at 13:15 CET.

The death toll among the military and police forces reached 1,008, including 659 soldiers and 349 policemen.

Around 6,000 civilians were injured, including 2,700 children.

The total damage was estimated at dozens of billions of dollars. NATO has never disclosed its losses.

‘The NATO forces killed 631 members of the Serbian Armed Forces, while 28 went missing, which means that the total number is 659, including 72 officers, 41 noncommissioned officers, 18 contract soldiers, 191 conscripts, 245 reservists, 60 military volunteers and three civilians in the army,’ Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vučić stated in the Serbian parliament on February 11, 2013.

According to earlier data, 5,173 soldiers and policemen were injured.

The decision to attack Yugoslavia was the first in history to be made without the approval of the UN Security Council, and the order was given to U.S. General Wesley Clark, the allied commander at the time, by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.

Later on, in his book ‘Waging Modern War’, Clark revealed that the plans for the air strikes against Yugoslavia were well under way in mid-June 1998 and completed in late August that year. Yugoslavia was attacked under the pretext of failure of the talks on the future status of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, held in Rambouillet and Paris.

After the decision on non-acceptance of foreign troops was ratified by the Serbian parliament, which proposed the UN forces to monitor a peaceful resolution of conflicts in Kosovo, NATO launched air raids on March 24, 1999 at 19:45 CET.

The 19-member Alliance launched projectiles from ships in the Adriatic Sea and four military bases in Italy, all with the support of strategic operators who took off from the basis in Western Europe and latter in the U.S.

The first targets were barracks and air defense forces in Batajnica, Mladenovac, Priština and other locations.

There is practically no city in Yugoslavia which was not targeted on a number of occasions during the 11-week campaign.

The bombing caused damage to 25,000 houses and apartment buildings and destroyed 470 kilometers of roads and 595 kilometers of railway tracks.

A total of 14 airports were damaged, as well as 19 hospitals, 20 healthcare centers, 18 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments and 44 bridges, while 38 more were completely destroyed.”

Shame on you NATO.