Music Album review - Shelley Segal - An Atheist Album
I recently discovered Shelley Segal whilst listening to a podcast called the Bar Room Atheist. It's a good listen, Bill and Suzy are great people and I'd particularly recommend their Bible segment on each show.
Shelley Segal is a young Australian singer-songwriter who has released an album of atheistic songs. I bought it and it is fantastic. Here is the iTunes review I posted for it:
*
Absolutely Wonderful
Don't let the title of this record put you off.
The beautifully constructed "An Atheist Album", whilst containing songs about atheism, freethought, women's rights and scathing criticism of the dangers of dogma , manages to retain a wonderfully positive message of how freethinking people can live happily working for a better world (as in "Apocalyptic Love Song").
The clever, cutting lyrics of "Saved" will leave anyone who has "escaped" from oppressive religious influences thinking "I couldn't have put it better". In all the tracks Shelley brings up some of the seemingly insurmountable logical problems of religion which are commonly among the reasons people de-convert.
As a non-believer myself this album brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it. Each and every track is brilliant - there are no fillers. About the only criticisms you could level at this record would be that at just 8 tracks, it's a bit short, but you do get quality over quantity.
Overall it's a beautifully crafted album from a very talented singer/songwriter which is bound to resonate strongly with non-believers. It's also worth listening to for religious people, just for the gorgeous tunes alone, even if they don't agree with the sentiments.
*
Please buy the album on iTunes or on Amazon here:
-
Malala Yousafzai
The inspiring young Afghan girl Malala is back in the news again. If you recall she was blogging/reporting on her education in Afghanistan, when the Taliban carried out a cowardly attack on a bus and shot her in the head. She then came over to Britain for life-saving surgery and now lives in Birmingham. This is a great summary article of her whole story so far if you need a reminder.
Even though she is a Muslim, I find it hard to find anything bad about what she is doing, in trying to promote education for girls. I've mentioned this before in a previous post, but it bears repeating. Education should be a basic right for everybody, and is key to improving the world in almost any way we may care to. The fact that the Taliban are opposed to education tells me all I need to know about them, even if they didn't go around shooting schoolchildren in the head.
Such a terrible thing happened to Malala - and everybody, literally, everybody (except the Taliban) knows it was wrong in the most basic and inherent way. There is no possible Universe in which using brutal violence in trying to stop young people learning can ever be justified. To hell with relativism here.
This is why the bravery of Malala will always triumph over the barbaric cruelty of Islamic dogma taken to the extreme.
There are now 2 notable positives for Afghanistan amidst all the awful things that country suffers - Malala and also the Afghan cricket team, who have reached the next World Cup competition against all odds.
Supporting Afghan cricket is worthwhile, since the cricketers are among the more moderate, progressive and least extreme followers of Islam in the country. Again, the fact that the Taliban are against Afghan cricket should be reason enough to support it. I will be cheering for the Afghan team (after England of course) when the competition starts proper in 2015.
If only we could get an Afghan women's cricket team together and playing International women's cricket, that would be a real sign of progress! Something tells me there is a little way to go yet, although I'd like to imagine the thought may be passing through the minds of the most liberal Afghan sports fans...
I'd like to see some of their faces when they finally realise that women are capable of playing sport to a very respectable standard even at non-professional level, and that their women, so long castigated and demeaned into uneducated lives of worship and ceaseless childbearing, can compete against and beat some established teams, bringing pride to the nation. It will happen one day.
And I'll say "Yep, I told you so".
-
Sexual Assault allegations in the Atheist / Skeptic community
The plot thickens in the ongoing saga of self-destruction that is the eternal battle amongst feminists in the skeptic community. I've twisted and turned, looked one way and another in recent months but have ultimately decided on a couple of basic principles in trying to best determine who may be more in the right in any given circumstance.
1) Whoever is being most reasonable, listening to others' concerns and not casting aspersions against those with conflicting opinions instead of discussing those opinions.
2) Whoever is using more critical thinking and not being unduly dogmatic
I've come to trust people like Atheist Mel who blogs at http://reasonlogicreality.wordpress.com/
She is a wonderful person and really great example of how to be an individual standing up for equality on her own terms. I will not accept ad-homs and unfounded accusations of misogyny against her and the great bunch of fellow atheists that are around on twitter at the moment. We want equality and we can't rule men out of the equation in trying to get that.
On the other hand I still like Rebecca Watson, PZ Myers and the Freethought Blogs guys, although I now see a few of the problems they sometimes have. I want to quickly bring up the now-infamous PZ rape-accusation episode that happened back in August.
I don't think that publishing the rape allegations on his blog was the most responsible thing to do.
The point has been made that the cases of systemic rape of children by members of the Catholic clergy were often broken on blogs. Although this may be true, all it really tells us is that this was a means to an end. The fact that these individual cases turned out to be the tip of a particularly vile iceberg, overshadowed the method of exposure. The sheer horror of the magnitude of the abuse that had been going on, when more and more victims found the bravery to came forward, excused the dubious way in which some of the initial allegations may have surfaced and been brought to the public's attention.
I'm not saying that one should never use blogs as an exposee to others' disgraceful behaviour, just that it is inadvisable, and hardly ideal. In the case of the skeptic community, the notion that the scope of the sexual abuse scandal would be of the same order of magnitude as the Catholic church abuse cases, is patently absurd. No doubt there may have been quite a few incidents over the years, but I can't imagine it would be the same "epic" magnitude. The validity of blog post accusations is therefore reduced.
What we really need to rail on about here is police and conference organisers not taking accusations of wrongdoing seriously enough.
1) It is entirely unacceptable for police to not thoroughly, independently and open-mindedly investigate all reports of sexual abuse and rape. This kind of incident warrants scene of crime studies and meticulous interviews with all concerned. Findings and chances of prosecution must be brought to criminal court authorities quickly and efficiently. Failure to do this is clearly contributing to impressions of a "rape culture".
2) It is entirely unacceptable for conference organisers to a priori dismiss accusations of inappropriate behaviour or worse at their events. The stories that they might try and intercept police and try and persuade them to not investigate the incident are utterly outrageous if true. They have no right to interfere in matters of criminal investigation.
These people responsible in this case should be investigated for their clear shortcomings, and if possible, be charged with obstructing the course of justice.
What we really need is a system where the consequences of being accused of rape are less severe than they currently appear to be in the interim period leading up to court - but the chances of being convicted, and punishments, are greater. It is too easy at the moment for a man accused of rape to be sacked or dropped from the organisations he is associated with, before the case is finished and a verdict reached.
Maybe suspensions to the accused are reasonable, but going punitively overboard before he is proven guilty is also leading to problems of victim blaming, reprisals and is playing into MRA's hands - with the idea that there could be reasons to falsely accuse someone - if the consequences for merely being accused were less severe, the reasons to falsely accuse evaporate. I'm not saying that false accusations are common, by the way. They're pretty rare. But the current arrangement of the victim being kept anonymous whilst the accused is named is the best approach in my view.
