Is Islamaphobia a real thing?

I like to think contentious thoughts, trust me I am writing some other blog posts that are rather contentious of my own beliefs. "In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted." - Bertrand Russell

Well this one is on Islamaphobia. Or the perceived racism that people get accused of when questioning Islam.

There is no doubt that humans stereotype, and perform irrational prejudice based decisions. Even the most rational of us will still check for our wallet if we are bumped by a person in a train who looks like they had seen better days. This is simply mistrust, something that served us well when we had to mistrust a strange looking creature for example that could kill us, if we mistrusted it and ran we survived either way, if we didn't and the creature was deadly then we wouldn't have passed on our trusting genes.

The common argument is that Islam is not a race, so it can't be racism. The joke that ran rife on Twitter post the Ben Affleck V Sam Harris debate was along the lines of: Tomorrow I am going to convert to Chinese. Which does make a good point, you can convert to Islam so it is not a race, anymore than Christianity is... or Judaism. But you can be an anti-Semite if you attack a Jew for wearing a yarmulke, just as you can be anti-Muslim if you simply attack a person for wearing a Hijab or Bisht. There are ill-informed prejudging people in the world, information is the only thing that can fix this.

Ah but you can't really convert to Judaism, see here and here. So maybe that is why Judaism gets that get out of insult card. But then really, Judaism is just a belief system, and beliefs can and should  be criticized. Peoples should never be as this is a generalization, this is prejudging someone based on their appearance and is fallacious. As Christopher Hitchens once eloquently put it "Hate the religion, not the religious".

Then again to break apart the word, Islamaphobia. Firstly my dictionary thinks it is not a word, homophobia it has no problem with, racism either. But anyway.
Islamaphobia seems to allude to the fear of Islam. Homophobia is not really the fear of homosexuals. I doubt many straight people fear that a homosexual is going to take away their rights, homophobia is more a disgust that homophobes have at the idea of same-sex relations. I heard it best put as you aren't afraid, you're just an arsehole.
So maybe it is the similar kind of unfounded fear here of Islam as homophobes have of homosexuals, don't get me wrong there are definitely some people out there who have unfounded fear of Islam, and will simply prejudge any Muslim they see as a member of Isis/Suicide bomber or whatever their culture has taught them. This is wrong and should stop now.
The points however that Sam Harris and Bill Maher make are fair and do allow for maybe a founded fear of some Muslims. There is a larger percentage of Jews who decry Israel's war on Palestine over Muslims who decry ISIL, with two different Jewish groups against the state itself.

Onto Indonesia which was mentioned as a shining light in the Muslim world. Indonesia is not that great, especially if you are an Ahmadiyya (a branch of Islam)... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Ahmadis#Indonesia you also are in trouble if you question your faith; http://inewp.com/outrageous-indonesian-atheist-in-danger-because-of-blasphemy/
I think what Reza Aslan on the panel was trying to say has been said very well by Steven Weinberg; "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/05/reza-aslan-is-wrong-about-islam-and-this-is-why/


So maybe that is it, reverse the percentage of Muslims that believe in death for apostasy, reverse the number of Muslim countries that are anti-Jewish, anti-homosexual and  then you can complain when people try and use reason to attack your faith and attrocities attributed to it. Affleck was right in one of the last things he said, you don't criticize the people, you criticize the acts, and that is all I believe I and others are doing.

Maybe a reverse-ISIL should form, that fights to end capital punishment in Muslim countries, that ends imprisonment for apostasy/homosexuality and expression of art, science and sexuality, you know fights for peace. Til then there is no such thing as Islamaphobia from people who know the numbers Sam Harris talked about, that is now probably a tens of millions of people thanks to the internet and the reach of Realtime with Bill Maher.

Update: Interesting article here similar to my own thoughts.

Muslim paedophilia Slur

Atheism a road to paedophilia?
Yep, that is the bow that was drawn at a recent debate between Sydney atheists and Sydney's Muslim students association. The debaters on our side as I am sure I would have been where flabbergasted by this, or simply missed it amongst the barrage of other non-sequiturs and logical fallacies.

Let’s get to the crux of it. Their argument is that basically, atheists have no moral arbitrator so thus anything is eventually acceptable. Why they didn't use some less heinous crime is beyond me, may be a psychologist can weigh in on why they would deem this as an action they would take if they felt there was no divine policemen to keep them in check.
OK so if there is no moral enforcer, no God(s) who can define moral law then moral law needs to be defined as we go along. This comes back to Euthyphros dilemma; Is something good because God deems it so, or does God do things that are only good. If you pick the first then God could arbitrarily change the rules, could all of a sudden decide that killing your own child is morally good... don't laugh he did this to Abraham, Jephthah, the 42 children that God kills with bears and his own son, if you believe the bible.
If you take the second option, then Morality is over and above God, and God is not omnipotent (all powerful) and omnibenevolent (all good) as he is deemed by some, all-be-it not by some Muslims.

So you either are worshipping a being that deems murder is good on its whim, or cannot change morality and thus morality arises independently of this being.

Let’s look where the atheist view gets us, independently arisen morality.
I will state first up I believe that morality is objective, meaning that the same morality doesn't necessarily hold for all situations. For example I think murder is abhorrent and wrong... but if I was thrust into combat I would fight and kill to save me and my families lives.
I think rape is wrong (actually above murder, but that is personal disgust), but can see that the Angler fish in which the male effectively rapes the female as the only means of perpetuating their species is not morally as wrong as letting the species die out.
I think you get the picture, morality in life is a grey area, you need to think about things a bit and not be moraly lazy, besides who wouldn't steal a loaf of bread to feed their starving family.

Society, to work in cohesion develops rules however. We don't need to rape to survive as a species, so it is outlawed, leniency is shown the thief doing so out of necessity, killing in self-defence is also shown leniency. These rules have been built up over time in secular legal systems all over the world, independently of each other, and often times independently of religion.

Now to the argument of paedophilia. Most societies deem sex between consenting individuals as OK, if there is no consent then it is simply rape.
I believe every country has an age of consent, and this is deemed by their legal institution as the age at which a child can make possible life changing decisions, such as moving out on their own, or consenting to sexual intercourse, this varies country to country which is a little odd, but interestingly averages around 16 years of age.
This makes sense as children are naive, they are overly trusting and they are easily influenced/ picking an age that allows for mental maturation in a majority of children, allows for these decisions to be made with greater foresight. If they can't consent then it is against their will and thus rape, where paedophilia is just rape of a minor.
So for our society paedophilia is rightly outlawed.

But let’s create a hypothetical world, one where a disease causes all males of the intelligent species inhabiting this world to be sterile shortly after they first become sterile, long before mental maturation, lets also say IVF for whatever reason is not discovered or doesn't work.
A law maybe passed that enforces these young boys to continue the species is it wrong, in our eyes, yes. In this species eyes they wouldn't exist without it.

This post was mirrored from sydneyatheists.org

Argument from morality

We have been invited to debate in the coming months, below are my arguments against the Christian standard argument from morality that I used in our mock debate.

Christians and other religious people will often argue that without religion how can you be moral? Where do you get your morality from if not from God above? I am here to argue that not only do we get our morals from elsewhere, but that being moral without God is actually a higher good.

It is said we get our morals from the bible, but this is patently not true. The bible endorses slavery, (Leviticus 25,45, Exodus 21, NT: Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1-2), murder (http://www.evilbible.com/Murder.htm) and all of the so called seven deadly sins. Even where it makes moral judgements they are not moral. Of the Ten Commandments, only 2 are actually against the law, and these are only punishable by the civil gaol time in Australia, not the death sentence that most of the commandments call for.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, is a nice thought and a damn site better than the 10 commandments, but it has a huge flaw. What if the person living by this law is a sadomasochist deriving pleasure from others pain, or even enjoying pain being inflicted on themselves? I don’t want to be cut and tortured but they wouldn’t be breaking this golden rule. The better version of this rule; do unto other as they would have you do unto them.

What about turn the other cheek, again excellent sentiment. But something that wouldn’t get you far if you practised it against an invading force.

Love your neighbour as yourself, is lovely as well. But it devalues your own worth, and doesn’t cover the aforementioned issue of an invading force made up of people you may consider your neighbours. It also doesn’t put more emphasis on kin, is it moral to save your 20 year old fit and healthy neighbour from a house fire over your helpless 6month old child or invalid parent? Regardless who would begrudge a person saving their wife or child over a stranger?

Evolutionary psychologists will say that morals developed so that we could survive as a species that lived in communities. If you criminal and everyone knows you are a criminal, then come winter when you and your children are hungry, your neighbours are less likely to give you some of their food and thus you are less likely for your possibly criminal genes to pass on. This can be seen as moral actions can be performed by animals of lesser intelligence than us. Dogs are known to defend and tolerate children's rough behaviour. Dogs have also been seen to risk their own life to rescue a dog or person they don’t even know. Piranhas one of the most vicious of fish, even during a feeding frenzy will not attack other piranhas. Ducks that sometimes eat fish have been known to feed them a share of their bread or grain. All these are animals, according to Christian religions not imbued with a soul and not capable of determining right from wrong. Yet somehow they act kindly and morally.

There are some cases were being amoral are of benefit though. Look at the Mongol hoards, or early warring tribes. If you lacked empathy the very definition of a psychopath then you would do very well in one of these cases, thus having a likelihood of passing on your genes. But society now frowns upon violence and crime, we have built up laws to defend the weak and punish the criminal. Psychopaths still exist though and have been shown to show no empathy for their actions to another human being, only seeing them as barriers to getting what they want, these place a challenge for the argument of morality coming from God as Psychopaths can be shown from birth to lack empathy and thus have no moral compass that one would imagine should be imbued by the divine. David Koresh (Waco TX), Timothy McVeigh (OK Bombing) and Marshall Applewhite (Heavens Gate) are all examples of people that have been posthumously claimed as having Psychopathy and using religion to further their goals.

Morality that has been built up over time can be seen in our current legal system here in Australia and similarly in most developed countries. Guidelines such as innocent until proven guilty, the right to a fair trial, evidence beyond reasonable doubt. All of these guidelines have been built up through trial and error, developed from earlier legal systems. These tried cases then build up our body of law, if an event occurs that is not illegal and brought to a court of law and tried and found to fail the test of law then a precedent is set and it can only be repealed through further cases to prove the act was not immoral.

There is a famous dilemma called Euthyphro’s dilemma. Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? Either answer has issues; if God can change what is Good then all of a sudden he can deem infanticide good, as he did with Abraham before reneging and Jephthah (Judges 11:30-40) where he followed through. If God only does good because it is good, then morality and good are outside of God and there is morality above and beyond God.

Let’s take the example of two young Children. One knows his parent is watching and is gentle and kind, sharing their toys with their younger sibling, oh how sweet you say. The other child doesn’t know their parent is watching and is sweet and kind to their sibling in the same way. I put it to you that the greater good is the child who does good while no one is watching, with no possibility of reward or fear of reprisal. So it is with non-believers who don’t believe there is anyone on high watching them and keeping score as they work in their community to make the world a better place, volunteer their time and money to educate or help people with their lives.

So I say we are moral not because of religion but despite it.

This post was mirrored from sydneyatheists.org