Faith propaganda: "Forgiveness has God on its side"

"People who believe in God or a new-age spiritual force are less likely to hold a grudge, a study of Australians has found.

A survey of almost 500 people has confirmed what many always suspected - faith helps believers forgive where secular people continue to hold onto their blame."

[...]

"The results showed that it doesn't matter what you believe in, but if you believe in something, have faith in something, it means you're more likely to forgive," said researcher Adam Fox, who led the study overseen by professor of psychology Trang Thomas.

"That indicates that there's something in the system of thought connected to spirituality that helps people to accept others and their actions."
The researchers were unable to compare individual religions due to "ethical considerations", but said there was only "slight differences" between each."

The Age, Australia, February 12, 2008

Now, this isn't surprising at all when you see what kind of moral dilemmas the participants were presented with. (Scroll down to Transgression Narrative Test of Forgiveness (TNTF))

The five moral dilemmas were "secular" dilemmas, that is, dilemmas were people from all sorts of backgrounds would feel pretty much the same, like being betrayed. And apparently, the religious were able to forgive the transgressions better than their secular counterparts. Bummer.

But if they're going to measure whether or not religious people are more forgiving overall, then why not ask about moral dilemmas with a religious touch too?

Say, dilemmas like this:

6. "Your daughter leaves your family to live with an Atheist with a pierced nose. They do not marry."

7. "You ask your son if he won't marry soon, and he avoids the question. The next day, you see him kissing a male friend in the park."

8. "After countless episodes of violence, a Danish cartoonist decides to measure your tolerance by mocking something you hold very dear. He draws the Prophet Muhammed with a bomb."

9. "Being an Orthodox Jew, you have a servant to take care of things on the Sabbath, since you're too holy to even make yourself dinner. However, on this particular Sabbath, the servant does not show up, so you can't eat until the Sabbath is over."
10. "Are you still mad about the Jews who killed Jesus 2000 years ago?"
11. "You're tricked into drinking alcohol, and get rather tipsy and are tricked into eating pork or non-kosher food as well."

OK, I could go on forever. But the point is: what is being betrayed by someone compared to breaking a religious taboo? A taboo that for an Atheist is not even worth considering? Atheists have preferences as anyone else, and we don't necessarily believe in forgiveness at any cost. But the taboos are few and far between, and that means that there's very little chance that you offend an Atheist ∞. Atheists have less toes that can be stepped on, and if you do step on an Atheist's toes, you don't simultaneously step on God's toes thereby damning you both to Hell.

Now, I could be forgiving, thinking that it's the reporter who didn't get it right(it happens all the time), but notice that they couldn't compare individual religions because of "ethical considerations". But they could use a survey to lie about how forgiving religious people are compared to infidels?
It has to be said, that this survey's goal seems to have been to learn about various religious groups, while the secular group was merely a control group. But I guess once the results were in showing how unforgiving the secular group were, they were too good not to be published, despite not being true.

Whom should I contact if I have any questions?
Please contact Professor Trang Thomas in the first instance on -. If your require support for any issue that may have resulted from your participation, you may approach any one of the following contacts below that can assist you in finding a support service appropriate to addressing your needs:

* Islamic Council of Victoria: Rowan Gould (Chief Executive Officer), -
* Kollel Menachem Lubavitch: Rabbi Groner (Rabbi), -
* Swanston Street Church of Christ: Alan Baker (Associate Pastor), -
* City Life Church: Ask for ‘Pastor on duty', -
* Crossway Baptist Church: Ask for ‘Pastor on duty', -
[* Surprise, no Godless infidel on duty]

Yours sincerely

Adam Fox B. App. Sci. Hon. (Psychology)
Trang Thomas Professor of Psychology

The Rise of Islamic Creationism

"Overall, this means that creationism is likely to remain strong in Muslim populations. The prospects for a western-style accommodation between science and religion, where each has their separate sphere, are doubtful. Culturally and politically, conservative interpretations of Islam are very strong, and conservative Muslims see little reason to back off from the ideal of religion regulating all aspects of life."

Tanis Erdis, International Humanist and Ethical Union, 7 August, 2007

This would mean that pushing Atheism is a better choice than waiting endlessly for them to moderate themselves. It's not like we have the whole medieval age to wait for them to enter this century.

Religious Education gives distorted view

"A major new report from Ofsted, the schools inspection body, says that the Religious Education guidelines published in 2004 have failed to make the subject relevant to modern life and don't properly explore the issues. The report says that pupils should be given a more sophisticated understanding of religion's role in the world. Teaching should take a "warts and all" approach that acknowledges that religion can be a force for evil as well as good. "Pupils should be taught that religion is complex," says the report, "and should be given the opportunity to explore that ambiguity."
The report, Making Sense of Religion, found the teaching of Christianity was "often much less rigorous and more fragmented" than carefully sequenced units of work on other faiths. "Work on specific aspects of Christianity, such as the life of Jesus or the Bible, is isolated from an investigation of the religion itself." GCSE syllabuses paid little attention to issues related to religion's role and significance in contemporary Britain.

[...]

When the guidelines were first published by the QCA, the NSS condemned them as "a charter for indoctrination". We said at the time that they did not explore all sides of religious influence in the world, bad and good, but were more like a tool for proselytisers in schools. Now it seems Ofsted has come to the same conclusion."

secularism.org.uk Fri, 29 Jun 2007

Goebbels on Atheism

"The European Crisis
[...]
Behind the Soviet leadership's pious phrases, we detect the grotesque face of Bolshevist atheism. It has not been liquidated, but rather it is only waiting to begin again its own work of liquidation, completing its work of extermination in the European states that it began with hundreds of thousands of priests in the Soviet Union. Only then, perhaps, will the Christian churches learn what combative enmity to religion really means.

Goebbels, Das Reich, 28 February 1943


"Make Way for Young Germany
[...]
No, the Marxist traitors were the ones who betrayed socialism, and the church was betrayed by those who claimed to defend Christianity but in reality made coalitions with God-denying atheists, thus destroying the foundations of national and Christian morality.
We have two Marxist parties for the workers. Are things going well for workers?
We have two Catholic parties. Has Catholicism been saved? No, the opposite is true. Ever since the Marxist parties in Germany began their fevered games, the workers have lost their jobs and their prosperity, and since the Christian-Catholic parties have joined with Marxism, God-denying atheism has gone about its work unhindered. These parties are the cause of the misery of the German people; the best thing for Germany is to kick this dead system's fat hacks in the rear."

Goebbels, speech 31 July 1932

"Communism with the Mask Off
In Germany we have religious controversies which arise from profound questions of conscience but have nothing whatsoever to do with a denial of religion. These controversies are exploited sometimes by harmless and sometimes malicious critics and a parallel is drawn between them and the absolutely dogmatic atheism of the Bolshevic International."

Goebbels, speech 13 September 1935.

Am I the only one who thinks the rhetoric of Goebbels sounds uncannily familiar to the run of the mill American evangelical?

Lenin warns against "bald Atheist propaganda"

In the struggle for World Atheism we are sometimes met with the age old communist strawman. Most likely it is a result from McCarthy-era propaganda that was produced with a largely Christian USA in mind. But it is looking more and more stupid in European countries where Atheism quickly is becoming the norm without there being any gulags. (It would be inappropriate to mention Guantanamo here, because they don't have to work.)

Anyway, strawman and McCarthyism aside, here's a very interesting comment by Lenin himself:

"It is the duty of a Marxist to place the success of the strike movement above everything else, vigorously to counteract the division of the workers in this struggle into atheists and Christians, vigorously to oppose any such division. Atheist propaganda in such circumstances may be both unnecessary and harmful—not from the philistine fear of scaring away the backward sections, of losing a seat in the elections, and so on, but out of consideration for the real progress of the class struggle, which in the conditions of modern capitalist society will convert Christian workers to Social-Democracy and to atheism a hundred times better than bald atheist propaganda."

V. I. Lenin, The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion, Proletary, No. 45, May 13 (26), 1900. (The text was provided by Marxists.org)

Is this news? Not to anyone with a minimum of knowledge about communism, but for people with less than minimum - people who swallow the bald evangelical propaganda that "Atheism equals Communism" - it is most likely big news. Lenin was still an Atheist (feel free to read the entire text), just that he was more into Communism:

"Why does religion retain its hold on the backward sections of the town proletariat, on broad sections of the semi-proletariat, and on the mass of the peasantry? Because of the ignorance of the people, replies the bourgeois progressist, the radical or the bourgeois materialist. And so: "Down with religion and long live atheism; the dissemination of atheist views is our chief task!" The Marxist says that this is not true, that it is a superficial view, the view of narrow bourgeois uplifters."

Not being a communist I shall continue to indulge myself in bald atheist propaganda - contrary to Lenin's advice! Atheists of the world unite!

Btw. if you want to search the archives at marxists.org (they have a lot) just use Google like this: site:marxists.org/archive/lenin/ bald

Turkey: Scientists face off against creationists

"A geneticist at Istanbul University, Haluk Ertan, sums up the situation succinctly. "Turkey," he says, "is the headquarters of creationism in the Middle East."

"Not just the Middle East, the world", insists Tarkan Yavas, the dapper, youthful director of the Istanbul-based Foundation for Scientific Research (BAV). The 15-year-old institute had generated a prodigious amount of information, publishing hundreds of titles.

Headed by a charismatic preacher, Adnan Oktar, BAV’s latest production is the 770-page "Atlas of Creation" which it sent free of charge to scientists and schools in Britain, Scandinavia, France and Turkey this February.

[...]

The claims may sound outrageous, but it is part of a formidably effective propaganda machine. A survey in 2006 showed that only 25 percent of Turks fully accepted the principle of evolution. According to another poll in 2005, 50 percent of biology teachers questioned or rejected evolution."

Eurasianet.org, 5/24/07

See also this booklet on Evolution if you need it.