God, Justice and the Vybz Kartel Verdict

As if by clockwork, God himself, the alleged architect of the entire universe, has been implicated in a murder trial of a Jamaican Dancehall artiste. This shouldn't come as a surprise in the least, since there have been ample accusations that Kartel was in league with the crown prince of evil, none other than Lucifer himself, and these accusations would find eager acceptance by the scores of superstitious Jamaicans who believe the Dancehall cultural space is a hotbed of "demonic" activity. Despite Kartel's own invocation of "Jah Jah" blessings in a number of his songs, the writing was on the wall ever since his rise to fame as the head of the "Gaza" empire - Kartel's music represented an insidious form of evil which had to be divinely expunged before it lead to the destruction of the entire nation. The recent murder trial, hailed by some as a "triumph" of Jamaica's justice system (I'll come back to this in a minute) was of course also a victory for the kingdom of Heaven as one enthusiastic teacher put it:

And here again from a respondent to the Gleaner newspaper article announcing the guilty verdict, with the characteristic excessive use of caps lock expected from those drunk on religion:

No doubt, amidst the multitude of prayers going up to ensure that Kartel was locked away in the Jamaican penal system, a pitstop on the way to the final destination, Hell, there were obviously prayers flooding Heaven petitioning the opposite outcome. That was certainly the case during the Buju Banton trial - an overwhelming outpour of prayer's asking for freedom, as opposed to the more neutral request of justice. You see, what Banton had in his favour was that for many he represented the good old Jamaican defiance against bowing to homosexuality as embodied in his hit song "Boom Bye Bye" (notwithstanding the fact that his conversion to Rastafari also mellowed him somewhat and endeared new followers to his music). To make matters worse, his trial took place in the US, a country notorious for "persecuting" Dancehall artistes for their condemnation of gays. It was easier to rally around Banton and send up prayers on his behalf for this very reason. The prayers went up, and the verdict came down - guilty.

Kartel however demonstrated just how polarizing the class system can be in Jamaican society - Gaza supporters felt that his trial was yet again another attempt by "Babylon system" to end the career of another ghetto yute, while his detractors felt it was necessary to rescue Jamaica from further ghettoization and moral turmoil at the hands of this degenerate. Nevertheless, international rap artiste Busta Rhymes managed to invoke "peace and prosperity" in his comments on the trial:



 And a few other supporters are a bit more direct, calling specifically on Yahweh (spelt "Yahway") to intervene:

Well, as it turns out, the detractors would have their moment as God, in his divine wisdom, took time off from answering the prayers of the impoverished, and ensured that a guilty verdict was returned. Somewhere through the fog of circumstantial evidence, the 11 member jury was able to arrive at a near unanimous verdict in roughly four hours. The praise for the justice system might be a little premature however, since it was only a little under 4 years ago that 70 residents were gunned down by the security forces in an inner city community in an attempt to ferret out a drug lord. The year before that, in 2009, 7 girls died in a fire in a state run place of "safety" after a security guard discharged a tear gas canister inside their holding cell. Both incidents resulted in commissions of enquiry, recommending compensation to the families and survivors, the results of which could be summed up in one word - fuckall.

The Kartel trial hasn't arrived at it's final chapter yet. The sentence is yet to be decided on, the defence team has already registered its intent to appeal the verdict, one juror has been arrested for attempting to bribe the jury foreman, and the sister of the murder victim has gone into protective custody owing to threats issued to her. Prayer warriors on both sides are gearing up for the final spiritual showdown. Whether God gives a shit about this whole melodrama isn't even a question worth asking at this stage, it's a foregone conclusion. The prayer department in Heaven had better get ready for yet another stream of contradictory requests on Kartel's behalf over the next few months as this saga unfolds in the media, and the courts, and on bended knees.


Cool Dude.

Secularists Are Winning - Will We Be Better

We tend not to treat minority groups well.  In Jamaica, although Christians have always controlled nearly all institutions - political, educational, social - the minority Rastafarian population was made to suffer repeated humiliations and violations of their constitutional rights just so the majority could exercise their sense of superiority.  Rastas were expelled from schools, men were forcibly trimmed or shaved and discrimination in employment and accessing services was routine.

“Respect” for Christianity? Not a backside…

To the mind of a secular humanist, Christianity has to rank as one of the most irrational and immoral belief systems every conceived of by humankind.  Almost any act of human depravity – including rape, genocide, slavery, and human sacrifice is deemed to be perfectly legitimate if sanctioned by the Christian god. Christianity venerates the worst qualities of humanity; yet, Christians expect, nay, demand that all bow down and "respect" it. 

 As one popular meme puts it:

Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

According to Christian doctrine, if you don’t believe in this nonsense, an eternal consignment to hell awaits you upon your transition from this plane of existence.

Now it’s one thing if people hold these beliefs privately as an exercise of freedom of religion.  But no, this is not the deal with Christianity – which historically has ALWAYS sought to enact its noxious doctrines into law, or incorporate them into public policy.   While the Age of Reason has had a tempering effect on Christianity, countries like Jamaica still suffer from Christian intrusion into law and public policy.  A prime example of this is Jamaica’s 2011 Charter of Rights, which blatantly enacts Christian discrimination against the LGBT community, offering no protection against discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation.  This Charter blocks Jamaicans from challenging any law relating to sexual offences (read buggery), abortion, obscene publications, or marriage.   These incursions on human rights were championed by the Lawyers Christian Fellowship and enacted by a parliament more interested in genuflecting to religious irrationality than upholding the rule of law.   It’s this same parliament that rejected secular advocacy for the inclusion of sexual orientation, disability, and language as grounds of discrimination in the Charter of Rights.

Given the foregoing, I get really steamed when Christians demand “respect” for their beliefs, when indeed, what they’re really demanding for their beliefs is immunity from criticism and challenge.  Let’s say, for argument’s sake that they are really only asking for respect for their beliefs. Since when is a belief, per se, worthy of respect?  So if a man believes that he has the right to rape a woman, am I obliged to “respect” that?    Am I similarly obliged to respect a belief in stoning homosexuals simply because it’s part of some religious holy book of beliefs?    Christians are so accustomed to exercising cultural hegemony over others that any challenge, no matter how diplomatic is seen as an unforgiveable affront to their beliefs.  I call bullshit.   Sorry Christians, we’re no longer in medieval times when heretics and apostates could be burned at the stake for failure to conform to religious absolutes.    We no longer live under theocracies, but democracies, where, theoretically, all ideas contend, with none being privileged over others.   

So here’s the deal.  I really couldn’t give a rat’s ass if you’re offended by criticism or mockery of your religion.   If you can’t defend your beliefs on the ground of rationality, then they deserve to be criticized or mocked, and I certainly claim my right to do so.   Oh, and being criticized or mocked doesn’t make you a victim.  I’m so sick and tired of Christians pulling the victim card whenever they get pushback on their irrational faith claims.   On the one hand they claim the right to proclaim their delusions to the world, but then object when rationalists point out that they are, indeed, delusions…I can’t believe that big-ass people will still tell you with a straight face that Adam and Eve once cavorted in the Garden of Eve, and that the theory of evolution is some sort of evil conspiracy to derail Christianity…. These delusions usually get ramped up whenever the subject turns to sex and sexuality, where Christians are quite happy to ignore all available biological evidence to pronounce on the “sinfulness” of any sexual act outside of heterosexual marriage.   Now if Christians want to live by their silly sin code when it comes to sex, fine by me – that’s their right.  But the problem with Christians is that they want to impose this nonsense on non-believers as part of some delusional edict to carry out the “will” of their mythical deity.   Any resistance to such an imposition is seen as an unforgiveable act of lèse-majesté, punishable by invocations of hell and damnation.

At the end of the day, I respect the right of people to believe whatever they want to. That’s a given regardless of how I might personally feel about the person who holds a given belief.   However, for me to respect that the content of belief – that’s something that has to be earned, not demanded.   When it comes to religious beliefs, and their veneration of irrationality, you can be damn sure that I will NEVER respect the content of such beliefs.   Not a backside…

Firebreather

Movie Review: "Questioning Darwin"

Title: Questioning Darwin
Producer: HBO
Length: 58 minutes
Rating: 4/5 stars

Recently, about a week or so ago, I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the HBO Documentary “Questioning Darwin.” I own a few books on the theory of evolution including a digital copy of Darwin’s own “Origin of Species” and fancy myself as someone with enough knowledge to explain at least the basic concept behind Darwin’s idea of common descent via natural selection. A part of me wishes that evolutionists could’ve done a better job of educating the general public sufficiently enough to the point where evolution was “common sense”, which is why I rather enjoy documentaries of the sort geared towards doing just that. Or so I thought. “Questioning Darwin” is neither an exposé on the science behind evolution, nor the “scientific” dissenting views; in fact none of the objections to evolution in the documentary could be regarded as scientific. This entire film is really about how the mind of fundamentalist evangelical Christians work.

The documentary starts off at the ground zero of all zany creationist ideas – the Creation Museum. We see an audience completely captivated by a high resolution depiction of how God fashioned man from dirt and put him to live in the Garden of Eden, and prior to that a classroom of children going through their daily indoctrination of the Hebrew creation myth. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the Creation Museum, it is a multimillion dollar facility (which happens to be bleeding money), erected for the sole purpose of giving its attendees a high quality visual depiction of what life would've looked like 6000 years ago when God created the entire universe, complete with humans walking around in Eden with vegetarian T-Rex. This portion of the film was interspersed throughout with commentary from celebrity creationists like Ken Ham, CEO of the Creation Museum, as well as a few others who were more interested in putting forward their own personal incredulity and ignorance as an objection towards evolution. It is clear that in the mind of creationists, the theory of evolution was devised as a method to lure people away from the church and ultimately turn their backs on God. The core fundamentalist mindset could best be summed up by Pastor Peter LaRuff's quote in the picture above. It is at once the most honest and sincere depiction of how closely guarded the faith belief is, as well as at the same time a frightening testament to the extent to which creationism can impact one mentally. I've encountered scores of fundamentalists like Pastor LaRuff, but he was the first I've seen to so plainly declare that he really couldn't care less about what actually exists in nature if the Bible's depiction of reality is contrary. 

Thankfully, the producers didn't allow the fundamentalists to completely frustrate the audience with their mindless Godspeak for the entire film, and by 12 minutes into the feature we are at sea with young Darwin on the HMS Beagle. Most who are familiar with the story of how Darwin devised the theory of evolution would know that his voyage to the Galapagos Islands would be THE definitive moment in his entire academic career. What is usually left out of that story is how Darwin, a man brought up in the Anglican church and destined for the clergy at one point, was bursting with curiosity and exuberance and eager to set out to see to "find himself." We also learn of Darwin's own internal struggle with cognitive dissonance as he had to face the cold hard reality that the origin of life tale he had been force-fed since birth just wasn't true. The filmmakers went to great lengths to show just how serious Darwin was about getting to the truth, but more important than how serious he was, was the extreme caution which he exercised. We learn that Darwin spent over two decades collecting fossils and animal specimens from all over the world, constantly checking and cross-checking his findings with other leading scientists in their respective fields, and sending out staggering amounts of correspondence to associates and colleagues with questions about his research. Had the producers spent a little more time unpacking this thrilling detective adventure, I would've easily granted the full 5/5 stars.

But, as I said earlier, this documentary wasn't really about Darwin. It was instead about the most vocal dissenters to evolutionary theory and how this particular scientific fact completely upsets their psychological comfort. In the latter portions of the film questions about the source of morality, the existence of evil and human worth make their appearance as they often do when evolution is being discussed. In some ways, it's understandable if one does indeed feel a sense of sympathy, if not pity, for these evangelicals. Questions about the origin of life and humanity, and the implications the answers have for the value we place on the human experience, are easily the most troubling questions for mankind. And in the absence of proper tools to address these questions, all that remains is a reliance on intuition, guesswork, and mythology. Questioning Darwin, despite its shortfall in failing to educate the public on the nuances behind evolution, manages instead to show exactly why such a task isn't a straightforward undertaking. With a whopping 46% of the American population believing in a literal Genesis account (and possibly higher in less scientifically developed countries), and fundamentalism and it's harmful sociopolitical impact spreading like wildfire globally, it might indeed be hard to focus on a biology lesson about natural selection and random mutation. Especially when it just won't "feel" right to the persons who need that information the most.

If you haven't checked it out this documentary as yet, do so when you get the chance. The team at Yardie Skeptics highly recommends it.

Cool Dude.