Afghan leader accused of bid to ‘legalise rape’: UN and women MPs say Karzai bowed to Islamic fundamentalists before poll

Afghanistan’s President, Hamid Karzai, has signed a law which “legalises” rape, women’s groups and the United Nations warn. Critics claim the president helped rush the bill through parliament in a bid to appease Islamic fundamentalists ahead of elections in August. In a massive blow for women’s rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman’s right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent. [...] The most controversial parts of the law deal explicitly with sexual relations. Article 132 requires women to obey their husband’s sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least “once every four nights” when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court. A report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Unifem, warned: “Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband”.

Ah yes, because we all know that having a dick and scrotum automatically puts one in God’s favor…

Praise Be! Glory!

U.N. body adopts resolution on religious defamation

GENEVA (Reuters) – A United Nations forum on Thursday passed a resolution condemning “defamation of religion” as a human rights violation, despite wide concerns that it could be used to justify curbs on free speech in Muslim countries. The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted the non-binding text, proposed by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic states, with a vote of 23 states in favor and 11 against, with 13 abstentions. [...] Pakistan, speaking for the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said a “delicate balance” had to be struck between freedom of expression and respect for religions. The resolution said Muslim minorities had faced intolerance, discrimination and acts of violence since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, including laws and administrative procedures that stigmatize religious followers. “Defamation of religious is a serious affront to human dignity leading to a restriction on the freedom of their adherents and incitement to religious violence,” the adopted text read, adding that “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.”

Do I want Muslims to be discriminated against? Of course not. Do I want places of worship to be desecrated and destroyed? Of course not — unless it’s by the believers themselves after seeing how stupid their beliefs were.

But this resolution obviously makes no sense. It would in effect make this blog illegal — which in one sense would be JAMES-DEAN-TOTALLY-FUCKING-COOL-FUCKING-GODLESS-REBELS, but in another sense would be completely stupid.

And just to show you how dumbasses even infect my profession, just take a look at some bullshit written by some guy from Pasadena City College:

[T]he most important thing to know about the belief that God exists is not that most citizens happen (for now anyway) to share it, that it tends to uphold public morality, and so forth. The most important thing to know about it is that it is true, and demonstrably so. Similarly, the most important thing to know about “same-sex marriage” is not that it has been lawlessly imposed by certain courts even though a majority of citizens happen (again, for now anyway) to oppose it. The most important thing to know about it is that the very idea is a metaphysical absurdity and a moral abomination, and (again) demonstrably so. It is no more up to the courts or “the people” to “define” marriage or to decide whether religion is a good thing than it is up to them to “define” whether the Pythagorean Theorem is true of right triangles, or whether water has the chemical structure H2O. In each case, what is at issue is a matter of objective fact that it is the business of reason to discover rather than democratic procedure to stipulate.

Just can’t for the life of me believe that this idiot’s at the front of a classroom teaching Philosophy. Did stupid just get into the water supply? [*sigh*]

There was a really smart colleague of mine (I’m sure he’s still around…somewhere) who once said, “If you’re a believer, then you shouldn’t be at the front of a Philosophy classroom. Call it ‘theology’ if you want to, but don’t call it Philosophy.”

Christ, this Pasadena guy’s just embarrassing…UGH…

In this day and age, the trademark of an evangelist who’s bitten the dust AKA ‘gone astray’ seems to be a modern phenomenon. Names such as Jimmy Swaggert, Ted Haggard, and James Bakker are very much household words. However, much like serial killers, there is a long history of these shepherds gone astray. One such was Aimee McPherson, staunch preacherette and anti-evolutionist.

[snip]

McPherson was born Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy on October 9, 1890, on a farm near the town of Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. Her father, James Kennedy, was a farmer, and her mother, Mildred, called Minnie, worked for the Salvation Army.Little is written about McPherson’s father, and it is unclear what impact James Kennedy had on his daughter. It was through her mother that McPherson got her first exposure to religious exercise, which would have an impact on her later evangelical crusades. Mrs. Kennedy’s work with the Salvation Army included providing for people through soup kitchens. This reflected her idea of bringing faith to the people, which was reflected in Aimee’s later work in spreading the Gospel.

Historian Matthew Avery Sutton in his biography of McPherson documents that as a child, one of McPherson’s favorite games was to play Salvation Army with her classmates, and at home she would create a congregation out of her dolls and would give them a sermon. Yet as a teenager, McPherson would stray from the teachings of her mother. She started to read novels and attend movies and dances, all things the Salvation Army disapproved of at the time. Even more shattering to her faith, McPherson while in high school was introduced to the teachings of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

McPherson was deeply confused and wrestled with her conscience over who was right: her mother’s faith or her high school geology teacher. McPherson began to quiz local pastors over the relationship between faith and science. None of the pastors were able to give her the answer she was looking for.In frustration, McPherson sent a letter to a national Canadian newspaper, the Family Herald and Weekly Star, asking why taxpayers supported public schools that taught evolution. Later, while still in high school, she began a crusade against evolution, which would remain a life-long passion for her. This crusade also brought the teenager her first taste of celebrity as her letter brought responses from all over North America, according to Sutton.

[snip]

After the birth of her son, McPherson suffered from postpartum depression and several serious health issues. She tried to settle into a quieter home-life, but her personal call to Christian service remained. While in her sickbed after her second operation within two years, she recommitted herself to what she felt was God’s call. Soon thereafter, her health improved. After this near-death experience in 1913, she embarked upon a preaching career in Canada and the United States. In keeping with the promise to God made in her illness, she left home by June 1915 and began evangelizing and holding tent revivals, first by traveling up and down the eastern part of the United States, then expanding to other parts of the country.

Her revivals were often standing room only; on one occasion she met in a boxing ring, but had to hold her meeting before and after the boxing match. According to the PBS-TV American Experience documentary "Sister Aimee," she did, however, walk around during the match with a sign inviting the crowd to attend her service after the match and "knock out the Devil". On one occasion in San Diego, the National Guard had to be brought in to control the crowd of over 30,000 people. People often stood in line to wait many hours for the next service to begin in order to be assured a seat. McPherson was committed to saving as many people as possible and did what she could to ensure the message she was providing was reaching as many as it could. Aimee had practiced tongue speaking, although she rarely emphasized it the way the majority of Pentecostals had previously. She also had been considered a great faith healer, with numerous claims of physical healing taking place, although this is something that became less important as her fame increased over the years.

She was a study in contrast: she reached out to both the KKK as well as immigrant workers.

I shall skip to the more irritating content:

Aimee Semple McPherson was very opposed to teaching evolution and became a big supporter of William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes Trial. In 1925 John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution in a Tennessee school, which was illegal at the time. Bryan and McPherson had worked together in the Angelus Temple on numerous occasions (Sutton 52). They both found the social implications as much as the theological ramifications of evolution troubling and they believed that social Darwinism had undermined students’ morality (Sutton 52). According to McPherson, as was quoted by the New Yorker, evolution "is the greatest triumph of Satanic intelligence in 5,931 years of devilish warfare, against the Hosts of Heaven. It is poisoning the minds of the children of the nation" (Sutton 52). When William Jennings Bryan was involved with the Scopes trial she sent him a telegram which said, "Ten thousand members of Angelus temple with her millions of radio church membership send grateful appreciation of your lion hearted championship of the Bible against evolution and throw our hats in the ring with you . In order to celebrate the epic struggle that Bryan was facing she organized "an all night prayer service, a massive church meeting preceded by a Bible parade through Los Angeles". According to Marrow, Mayo declared that no city had followed the "monkey trial" with more emotional fervor than Los Angeles. No people shouted more loudly than the Angelenos for William Jennings Bryan to scotch the Devil. With the help of McPherson, Bryan gained support from numerous people.

And yet, despite all the collective ‘prayer’, despite her life-long battle, evolution is still in our schools. Why? Because it’s reality-based. It’s fairly apparent this woman wasn’t living in the here and now. The photo of her ‘battling the gorilla of evolution’ really epitomizes her woeful ignorance of the matter.

And of course, the essential ‘fall from grace’ followed (this is better than any modern soap opera):

On May 18, 1926, McPherson went to Ocean Park Beach, north of Venice Beach, with her secretary, to go swimming. Soon after arrival, McPherson disappeared. It was generally assumed at the time that she had drowned.

According to the PBS American Experience segment "Sister Aimee", which aired 7 April 2007, McPherson was scheduled to hold a service on the very day she vanished. McPherson’s mother appeared and preached at the service in her place, and at the end announced, "Sister is with Jesus," sending parishioners into a tearful frenzy. Mourners crowded Venice Beach, and the commotion sparked days-long media coverage of the event, fueled in part by William Randolph Hearst’s Los Angeles Examiner, and even including a poem by Upton Sinclair commemorating the "tragedy". Daily updates appeared in newspapers across the country, and parishioners held day-and-night seaside vigils. A futile search for the body resulted in one parishioner drowning and another diver dying from exposure.

At about the same time, Kenneth G. Ormiston, engineer for KFSG, also disappeared. According to American Experience, some believed McPherson and Ormiston, a married man with whom McPherson had developed a close friendship and had been having an affair, had run off together. About a month after the disappearance, McPherson’s mother, Minnie Kennedy, received a ransom note, signed by "The Avengers", which demanded a half million dollars to ensure kidnappers would not sell McPherson into "white slavery". Kennedy later said she tossed the letter away, believing her daughter to be dead.

On June 23, 35 days after her disappearance, McPherson stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, Sonora, a Mexican town just across the border from Douglas, Arizona. She claimed that she had been kidnapped, drugged, tortured, and held for ransom in a shack in Mexico, then had escaped and walked through the desert for about 13 hours to freedom.

Several problems were found with McPherson’s story. Her shoes showed no evidence of a 13-hour walk– indeed, they had grass stains on them after a supposed walk through the desert. The shack could not be found. McPherson showed up fully dressed while having disappeared wearing a bathing suit, and was wearing a wrist watch given to her by her mother, which she had not taken on her swimming trip. A grand jury convened on July 8 to investigate the matter, but adjourned 12 days later citing lack of evidence to proceed. However, several witnesses then came forward stating that they had seen McPherson and Ormiston at various hotels over the 32-day period.

Wow. Just, wow.

But wait! There’s more juicy bits!

McPherson continued her ministry after the controversy over the alleged abduction diminished, but she fell out of favor with the press. While she and her ministry still received a good deal of publicity, most of it was bad. Additionally, she became involved in power struggles for the church with her mother and daughter. McPherson suffered a nervous breakdown in August 1930.

On September 13, 1931, McPherson married again, this time to an actor and musician, David Hutton. The marriage got off to a rocky start: two days after the wedding, Hutton was sued for alienation of affection by a woman, Hazel St. Pierre, whom he claimed never to have met. He eventually settled the case by paying $5,000 to St. Pierre. While McPherson was away in Europe, she was incensed to discover Hutton was billing himself as "Aimee’s man" in his cabaret singing act. The marriage also caused an uproar within the church. The tenets of Foursquare Gospel, established by McPherson, stated that one should not remarry while their previous spouse was still alive (which Harold McPherson was at the time). McPherson and Hutton separated in 1933, and divorced on March 1, 1934.

And of course, the piece-de-resistance: having an affair with Milton Berle!

In Milton Berle’s autobiography, Milton Berle: An Autobiography he described a brief affair with McPherson in 1930. Supposedly he met McPherson while at the RKO Hill Street Theater in Los Angeles where he was doing a charity show. After his performance, he states that he waited for her backstage and she invited him to see the Angelus Temple. Berle states that they never made it there.

Instead of going to Angelus Temple, Berle asserts the two of them went to lunch, then to an apartment of hers so that McPherson could change into something "cooler". While Berle was waiting for McPherson in her apartment, she supposedly reappeared from her room wearing "a very thin, pale blue negligee". Berle could see that she was wearing nothing underneath and "’Come in’ was all she said." Berle supposedly met with her on one other occasion at her apartment a few days later for sexual relations a second and final time. In Milton Berle: An Autobiography Berle recalled their second and final rendezvous: "This time, she just sent the chauffeur for me to bring me straight to the apartment. We didn’t even bother with lunch. When I was dressing to leave, she stuck out her hand. "Good luck with your show, Milton". What the hell. I couldn’t resist it. "Good luck with yours, Aimee." I never saw or heard from Aimee Semple McPherson again.”

She overdosed on medication – ruled accidental.

Here then, is the cautionary tale – and a premium example of how religion is a horrendous waste of time. Aimee was a bright, strong, charismatic woman who very well could have done marvelous, incredible things for our species. But she was misled by this delusion of the supernatural, that caused her to shut out reality, that led her down a path that ran contrary to her own natural inclinations. A horrible waste of time and life. How many more people must walk the road of the unreal, and find that nothing lay at the end of that road but a dead-end? It is to weep, sometimes.

Till the next post then.

Here is something for you to make fun of:

Crash pilot who paused to pray is convicted

PALERMO (Reuters) – A Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16 people, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot.

The 2005 crash at sea off Sicily left survivors swimming for their lives, some clinging to a piece of the fuselage that remained floating after the ATR turbo-prop aircraft splintered upon impact.

A fuel-gauge malfunction was partly to blame but prosecutors also said the pilot succumbed to panic, praying out loud instead of following emergency procedures and then opting to crash-land the plane instead trying to reach a nearby airport.

Another five employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to between eight and nine years in jail by the court, in a verdict handed down Monday.

The seven accused, who were not in court, will not spend time in jail until the appeals process has been exhausted.

Yet another instance where this god doesn’t show up. When will the sheeple ever get it. All those people died because of the religious bullshit belief of a delusional pilot.

The ACLU has championed the case of Swiss Muslim Tariq Ramadan, an Oxford University professor and a vocal critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, who has been barred first by the Bush Administration from entering the United States on the grounds national security concerns, and that decision has now been upheld by the Obama administration.

I am undecided as to where I stand on this issue when looking at it from a national security viewpoint. While I was expecting a clean break from the Bush administration’s failed policies, Obama still clings certain policies from the previous administration, as we have discussed here a few times concerning Bush’s faith-based programs that Obama plans to continue, as well as policies involving our national security.

Obama lawyer sticks to ban on Muslim scholar

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A lawyer arguing on behalf of the Obama administration on Tuesday echoed Bush administration policies to back a decision to deny one of Europe’s leading Muslim intellectuals entry to the United States.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Jones told a U.S. federal appeals court panel that they should uphold a decision to bar Swiss Muslim Tariq Ramadan, an Oxford University professor and a vocal critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, from entering the United States.

Civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, had hoped Tuesday’s arguments would see a reversal of Bush administration policies that they argue exclude foreign scholars from visiting the United States due to their political beliefs.

“Consular decisions are not subject to litigation,” Jones told the three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, broadly arguing the courts have no power to examine visa denials. The ACLU argued against a judge’s ruling in late 2007 that upheld Ramadan’s ban.

Ramadan is the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, an Islamist thinker and activist who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood, which opposed secular and Western ideas.

The ACLU has championed Ramadan’s case as part of a larger pattern of scholars and writers being excluded due to unwarranted or unspecified U.S. national security grounds.

*snip*

The ACLU argued the government was using the provision more broadly to deny entry to people whose political views they did not approve of.

My immediate reaction, while remembering what happened on September 11, 2001, is to say fuck this terrorist sympathizer and America hater. On the other hand, is it right to ban people from coming here simply because of their political viewpoints? Is this a dangerous anti-American instigator who should be kept out of this country for security reasons, or should he be allowed a visa to enter and exercise his freedom of speech?

Christianity is just a spin-off of many mythologies before it which were based on the movement of the sun. The sun worshipers were closer to the truth about what we should be giving credit to for our existence. The sun is what gives us life, we cannot live without the sun. Our world cannot survive without the sun. Our solar system cannot survive without the sun.

Throughout the ages, “sun” turned into “son” in various religions and humans assigned human representations for natural events. While some may exaggerate the connections between the similarities between Jesus and others, as Uruk said in a comment at my blog, “The similarities are there, nonetheless and really point to the idea that religion comes from the mind of humanity, and not from god(s) above.”

The following series points out the many astrological references in the Bible, as well as gives an overview of the ways various natural events have been into people’s superstitions and belief systems.

About the videos below:

This revealing documentary is part of the piece called Zeitgeist. This segment deals with the Ancient African origins of the Christ story based upon the story of Heru (Horus), Auset (Isis) and Ausar (Osiris). Even though the documentary says the story occurs around 3,000 B.C. It actually goes back to about 8,000 B.C.

This documentary shows in clear cut manner shows the similarities between Heru, the other crucified saviors and Jesus the Christ. It is all based on the journey of the Sun through out the 12 signs of the Zodiac. The Astro Theology has been put into literal form and taught as Theology. This is inaccurate.

A few of the similarities are between Heru and Jesus are:

1) The Virgin Birth
2) The Annuniciation
3) The Crucifixtion
4) Resurrection
5) 12 Disiciples
6) Birth on December 25th
7) Healing the sick
Raising the Dead
9) A Star in the East
10) Three Kings or Wise Men
11) Started teaching at age 12
12) Was dead for 3 days

Watch the videos HERE:

Part One


Part Two:


Part Three

Editor’s note: For all those fundamentalist skeptics out there, I and other mods here at GifS are not “endorsing” Zeitgeist. I merely used the videos to provoke discussion, which indeed they have, thus far.

Theodicy is defined as follows:

Argument for the justification of God, concerned with reconciling God’s goodness and justice with the observable facts of evil and suffering in the world. Most such arguments are a necessary component of theism. Under polytheism, the problem is solved by attributing evil to a conflict of wills between deities. The solution is less simple in monotheism, and it can take several forms. In some approaches, the perfect world created by God was spoiled by human disobedience or sin. In others, God withdrew after creating the world, which then fell into decay.

I overheard this ridiculous conversation a few weeks back. There’s this store called East Meets West in Mountain View. It’s what anyone would call a New Age nook. I wander around in there sometimes – it has a lot of pretty knick-knacks, the place smells wonderful, and it has the occasional good Tai Chi book (plus I occasionally buy incense, my sense of smell has come back gangbusters since I quit smoking).

So I pass this fellow, who’s dressed all in black, white hair, white mustache, chin pubes, my guess is he fancies himself some kind of wizard (the clothes are modern, it’s just the image projected). A few minutes later, I overhear this woman talking about how she’s from Columbia. Then she tells Mr. Wizard that somehow, the universe wanted her to move to the US. I bite my tongue and move on, thinking, “Geez, yeah, YOU’RE not a little self-involved.”

So my old HS buddy, the Young Earth creationist/bible literalist, is in town. I shoot over to Pleasanton to go visit. As I’m leaving to go home, I repeat the eavesdrop. Sure as shitting, he starts in about how he’s convinced that there’s someone out THERE (point-to-sky is inferred) who’s interested in every single human being that lives on this planet.

So I bring up the eye-worm topic. He starts waffling about how ‘Man hasn’t fixed that yet.’ I rolled my eyes at him. So I told him: look, I can understand a little suffering, I can understand some pain, but this? I mean, why the fuck does this deity let tiny children starve to death, but runs interference in the lives of the folks who aren’t in any kind of hazard?

He whips out the Free Will card. It’s one of those ridiculous pieces of apologetics. It’s not been resolved in all the centuries of belief. Responses vary anywhere from ‘Gee, gob don’t want zombies to buddy with him up there,” to “hey, it’s all our fault”, as well as “hey, why ask why?”

My favorite response from the other side is this (from John Howard Yoder):

• Where do you get the criteria by which you evaluate God? Why are the criteria you use the right ones?
• Why [do] you think you are qualified for the business of accrediting Gods?
• If you think you are qualified for that business, how does the adjudication proceed? [W]hat are the lexical rules?

Which just smacks of presuppositionalism. It basically boils down to the old Job/Gob response: “Where were you when I created the world?” (The book of Job, incidentally, used to be my favorite bit of whimsy when I was a gob-hugger, but rational evaluation has since relegated it to a position of utter horror.) Difficult indeed it is, to evaluate something that is so manifestly absent, is it not?

I think I’m with Hume on this topic:

Hume, along with Thomas Hobbes, is cited as a classical compatibilist about the notions of freedom and determinism. The thesis of compatibilism seeks to reconcile human freedom with the fact that human beings are part of a deterministic universe, whose happenings are governed by the laws of physics.

Hume argued that the dispute about the compatibility of freedom and determinism has been kept afloat by ambiguous terminology:

From this circumstance alone, that a controversy has been long kept on foot… we may presume, that there is some ambiguity in the expression.

Hume defines the concepts of "necessity" and "liberty" as follows:

Necessity: "the uniformity, observable in the operations of nature; where similar objects are constantly conjoined together…"

Liberty: "a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will…"

Hume then argues that, according to these definitions, not only are the two compatible, but Liberty requires Necessity. For if our actions were not necessitated in the above sense, they would "have so little in connexion [sic] with motives, inclinations and circumstances, that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other". But if our actions are not thus hooked up to the will, then our actions can never be free: they would be matters of "chance; which is universally allowed not to exist."

Moreover, Hume goes on to argue that in order to be held morally responsible, it is required that our behaviour be caused, i.e. necessitated, for

Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil."

This argument has inspired modern day commentators. However, it has been argued that the issue of whether or not we hold one another morally responsible does not ultimately depend on the truth or falsity of a metaphysical thesis such as determinism, for our so holding one another is a non-rational human sentiment that is not predicated on such theses. For this influential argument, which is still made in a Humean vein, see P. F. Strawson’s essay, Freedom and Resentment.

But my response to theodicy is this: you will need to bring some actual meat to the table, prove that there IS indeed a benevolent omniscient creator. THEN we can discuss why this critter has been absent lo these many years.

Till the next post, then.

A major reason so many people congregate at churches on Sunday mornings is for the social aspects and sense of community of being together with other people. While many of us atheists, agnostics, and humanists, reject anything that resembles organized religion, there are many who like the idea and humanist and atheist “churches” are growing in numbers all across the nation like this one in Cambridge, MA.

God-less ‘congregations’ planned for humanists

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The monthly schedule is church-like, with its parenting classes, guest speakers and small group meetings to hash out shared beliefs. But God isn’t part of this Cambridge congregation.

Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University, is building a God-free model of community that he hopes helps humanists increase in numbers and influence.

Epstein sees potential in research showing that there are more people with no religion. In the latest American Religious Identification Survey, released this month, 15 percent of respondents in 2008 said they had no religion, compared to 8.2 percent in 1990. Epstein believes that group includes large numbers of people who are humanist, but have never identified themselves that way and can be reached.

At the same time, there is broader acceptance of those with no faith, as indicated by President Barack Obama’s mention of “nonbelievers” in his inaugural address, Epstein said.

*snip*

“This is a new mission field, if you will, but are those vineyards ripe for the picking?” Edwords said. “I haven’t seen sufficient evidence of it.”

Still, both men agree that more humanist communities are needed, for mutual support and to offset isolation humanists often feel.

I never feel isolated. I’m just a person living among millions of other people who just has no god beliefs. I really don’t need the support group, which in my opinion is what these “churches” resemble. I feel that these folks just can’t let go of the whole church routine that many of us atheists have freed ourselves from. Many will be turned off by these gathering places.

But he said he doubts humanism can sustain itself in the local congregations Epstein envisions because community is not a natural part of humanism, where the individual is the ultimate source of meaning. If humanism becomes concerned with the “greater good,” and a sort of natural moral order that implies, it starts to resemble religion and humanists will back away, he said.

What is your opinion?