Parliamentary Prayer

[Bruce Long]

[What is it - a speech. I don't know, but I mean it...]
[The 1st year foundational logic lesson for the PM and caucas is at about paragraph 16. It has the spaghetti monster in it. Just in case the whole thing is just too much to bear reading... I feel better anyway]

The aggressive and domineering nature of prayer in public spaces - where Christians and other theists verbally subsume everyone else to their nonsense fictions on other people's time using other people's finances and with a complete arrogant and wanton disrespect for other people's desire not to be subjected to such nonsense - has to be stopped.

Theists don't like other people to swear in public - especially if it involves what they call blasphemy. Why should we tolerate them praying on the basis of their demeaning, condescending and derogatory (certainly about unbelievers, and about human beings in general) doctrines in public? The god-fictions they pray to come from doctrines that unremittingly belittle, malign, devalue, denigrate and demonise non-belief and non-believers (the offer of some kooky salvation from a sin we don't believe in is just a further insult - and is intended that way).

Atheists should not have to suffer being represented as being subject to vile proxy characters (proxies for theist people's anger, revulsion, and hatred) as constructed and misrepresented as real in nonsense-filled theist fictional narratives. This certainly shouldn’t happen with the validation of parliament in a putatively secular parliamentary setting.

I don't mind faithists criticising afaithists and non-believers in parliament. That leaves them open to a rational debate involving scientific reason. However, faithist's subjecting non-believers to faithist rituals and practises like prayer in a secular institution: that's absolutely not acceptable. This is especially unacceptable when those practices by their definition involve implicating me in, and co-opting me into, a worldview and narrative that I reject as both dangerous, ridiculous and anti-humanistic, and doing so against my wishes, and at the level of government.

If weekly devotions to the Egyptive Luciferian icon of freethinking 'on behalf of the entire nation' were offered, then theists would have a collective conniption fit. No amount of holy water or slayings in the spirit would console them. Apparently – the government would cave in like a soufflé.

It's not out of any religious devotion - even to nature or the Egyptive Lucifer (the latter was as I understand it really just a metaphor for freethinking and individualism, and is a construct I simply find interesting) - but I deeply resent that parliament is treated like a church. It is supposed to be a secular institution not a theist or Christian one (or a Muslim or a Jewish one, or a Judeo-Christian one).

If Christian, Jewish and Muslim (or Buddhist or Zoroastrian for that matter) MPs want to pray - let them go to a church, synagogue or mosque. The nation is multicultural and has many varieties of faithists. It does not follow that the many non-believers, atheists, freethinkers and afaithists that live here should be subjected to and expected to tolerate the religionisation of parliament. We especially should not be expected to tolerate the commensurate implicit and explicit subjection of our persons to the dominance of a theist and faithist worldview that despises atheists at its core.

This is what is indicated by parlimentary prayers for all citizens. Remember dearest PM - without the convoluted strawman saviour nonsense and the duplicitous and hopelessly metaphysically confused "for god so loved the world" rubbish which just adds insult to injury, the Christian god character is going to burn us, and hates unbelief and unbelievers. This is indicated by the basis of Judeo-Christian doctrines – not on the basis of the assertions of unbelievers. We understand that the god-ficiton is a constructed fictional proxy for the attitudes of those that pray despite their misrepresentations. Why then should we be expected to tolerate it? We shouldn’t.

In case it hasn’t been clear… Do I mind if theists pray for me? In public - yes. Especially in parliament. Do I find any offer of prayer from them to be rude and arrogant - yes. That is because, whether they admit or understand it or not (and I submit that they usually do), it is a statement of their disrespect for my rejection of their faith and ideas, and moreover both an overt and a passive aggressive statement of their anger at said rejection. That said, I think that the patience of most atheists under these circumstances has traditionally been greater than that which theists would have if we offered to pray to nature or to Egyptive Lucifer for them.

In a public parliamentary setting prayer is a bullying and oppressive statement of dominance over, and disrespect for, my non-belief. It says that what I think doesn't matter - theists are going to make me the subject of their religious ritual in secular parliament no matter how I feel about it. Not good enough, Prime Minister. Not good enough - labor caucus.

The objective of prayer for the wicked (we unbelievers) is not like the prospectively meritorious heaping of burning coals on our heads with 'kindness' (Proverbs 25:22: personally if my enemy was suffering badly, I would feel compelled to just have mercy on them anyway - no burning coals required. The golden rule should be enough here).

Still, strangely, there's no material evidence of any prime mover. There's certainly none for any specific theist god character taken as real and let alone any causal link between putative being and the material world. Moreover, there is no intention to have the basic intellectual and interpersonal integrity to provide any such evidence. Yet, this utterly arrogant and domineering and condescending public prayer behaviour – of which said fictive until proven otherwise being is the object - continues. There is certainly nothing like the evidence that is demanded for say – climate change or evolution by natural selection.

Nonsense about ID theory being scientific and not question begging aside - by many theists' (certainly Christians’) own lights: with real evidence there could be no faith. So faith becomes the evidence: how very convenient? Not really - the deception and flaw is (at minimum) in the statement "evidence of things unseen" (and ‘substance’ of things hoped for if you want to google the entire thing). This is just a very dumb begging of the question about the existence of the things claimed to be unseen in the first place. This kind of thinking is supposed to be below the leaders of a first world scientifically literate democracy. Said ‘leaders’ shouldn’t condescend to such 'thinking'.
Praying for non-believers in public isn't just stubborn and an expression of faith. It's simply openly arrogant and condescending, and a statement of willful oppression and neglect. That it's an expression of faith is not a validation of the accompanying motivating condescension and denigration of non-believers. If I want to live in a full-fledged theocracy, I'll either get in a time machine or move to Iran or Indonesia. Unfortunately it is looking as though I will be able to stay right here and/or travel forwards in time and find such circumstances.

Ms Gillard's caucus and cabinet are largely ignoring atheists and afaithists, and I think that we should return the favour. I think that Labor derives a lot of confidence from the fact that there is apparently only one alternative to Ms Gillard in our two conservative-religionist party de-facto theocratic system (although I'm sure that syncretists would like to think they have it all under control). The working assumption is perhaps that atheists will choose Labor over the Catholic alternative. This assumption would take into account that if there is one thing that will unite Catholics and even Anabaptist and anti-Papist protestants – it’s the 'evil' of non-belief in theist nonsense and fictions. However, such an assumption may be wrong. I suspect that most protestants would be driven to vote for protestant parties with Liberal preferences (my Baptipentacostal former spouse voted for Fred Nile every election for 14 years at least, as far as I know, although they probably switched to the abject genius of Family First long ago).

What does one do if one is a socialist atheist, I wonder? Vote green perhaps? Maybe a better alternative would be to really deliver a shock to the entire system and just avoid any party that gives preferences to labor or liberal parties. Perhaps atheists need their own high-powered independent candidate? The danger is that this would make us seem to be a fringe minority. However, at least we might have some seats that we can appeal to exert some real influence. The Communist party may be worth a try? Or the secular party?

It looks like the only alternative we are being given - if we want to stop the openly arrogant, demeaning and derogatory act of allowing theist prayer in parliament - is to establish our own Reason party. Religious faith and faithism absolutely are part of our problems and not part of any solution to anything. I have lost count of the number of times people have done lousy things to me on a pre-meditated basis because their faith gave them license and scope to behave as such with no concern for me.

I know that the current fashion is to retort that religious faith is not irrational so long as it is consistent with the cultural background and internally consistent for the believer. Neither of the latter properties occur in my experience, but to cover the fallacies, I offer the following.

Dear PM Gillard and labour caucus, just because a set of beliefs is internally consistent (which most sets of theist beliefs are not anyway - and certainly not between faiths or even denominations), it does not logically follow that they are therefore rational, nor that the believer in them is somehow rational. Consistency is not the only component of rationality and reasonability - certainly not of scientifically respectable rationality: the consistent beliefs have to have content that involves real things that make sense. Science gave us everything of value in this nation - including the parliament building and the military, medical and engineering devices that keep us with electricity, and modern hospitals and keep us away from the plagues of the dark ages.

If I believed that the world was created by a flying spaghetti monster (with all the magic spiritual spaghetti sauce in my heart) - I would not be rational nor sane no matter how 'internally consistent' my belief was. I would have to provide some pretty strong material evidence of such a being, and of any causal link between such being and the material world: especially if I wanted to pray to them on behalf of the nation and subsume you to that prayer ritual. This would be even more the case if the spaghetti monster said bad things about you and your children in my doctrine, and I required you to be devoted to the Holy SM to be acceptable to it and to me as a moral citizen. In that context without some really good evidence – in fact without a personal appearance from HSM - frankly, I should shut up and leave you alone. I certainly shouldn’t expect you to tolerate prayer to the Holy SM in your government’s parliament when it co-opts you into a validation of my utterly kooky belief system.

Just in case this is a bit too hard, dear PM and labour caucas, in logic a technically valid argument (internally consistent and not internally contradictory) is not necessarily a factually coherent or meaningful argument: it may not be what logicians call a sound argument. My responding to you by saying that you can't disprove something I can't prove would give you no reason to validate my argument about the spaghetti monster.

I know that rationality is not a requisite for enfranchisement, but perhaps that's because a truly rational population/public is not really desirable to parliament?

Millions of adults believing in spaghetti monsters, or Santa-Clauses, or Sky-patriarchs , and then subscribing to, worshiping and praying to such as a life guide and in all of their decision making: that's an indication of an abject and willful failure of the education system and education policies, and a lack of will to see real good come about for all individual citizens.

It's also an indication that politicians are still in thrall to monarchs and religious power-bases and haven't grown out of the same social engineering techniques that were applied in The Roman Empire and in Ancient Egypt. Those Pharaohs built some mighty pyramids. It didn't cost the Pharaohs much at all. (After all, they're only the unwashed ignorant masses and nothing will ever change that - right? You can't help what happens by nature and fate?) What's that you say - we have social security and public education for all? Let's keep it that way, and not let the un-reason of the dark ages into our public schools. What - the church says that "the poor you will always have with you"? Gee - I wonder why they would say that? Perhaps we should stop listening to them - hmm?

In closing…

I demand that religious prayers be removed from parliament. This will remove the explicit statement of the subjugation and suppression of my free-thought and afaithist character, and involuntary subjection of my person to religious doctrinal stances through prayer rituals.

The tyranny of the majority should not extend to convergence upon or concessions to theocracy. Parliamentary prayers are an overt statement of faith on behalf of those that have none in spite of their objections to its validity and what it implies about the way the nation regards them. Parliamentary prayers are overt sign of sanctioned theocratic faithism in government. This is fundamentally against secular principles and precepts, and renders the state dangerously close to religious and faithist in both tone and action.

Take all funds and tax exemptions currently directed at religious institutions and their upkeep (paying them off?) and direct those funds at medical research into diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease, AIDS and genetic therapies for the same. That is, if you really care about Australians including faithist Australians. Science has a good track record of healing people. Sky-fairies, not so much. Replace parliamentary prayer with parliamentary science education. Science is an intellectual and investigative forensic toolkit – not a faith. Only faithists confuse the two. No one prays to science. It is wholly unnecessary, and would be ridiculous.

[Bruce Long]

On a related but important topic. We have to get Alexander Aan out of prison. (There must be a discussion about this in the forums somewhere. I'm to lazy to look right now.)

Does anyone perhaps know a lawyer who knows a lawyer who has has done work with international jurisprudence or the commission for human rights?

Recently the CFI failed to get a US petition of the ground apparently due to confusion about the on line process. I suggested that an international petition to the UN might help? Does anyone know how to do this?

[Bruce Long]

I need to edit a couple of bits of the above. Let's call it a draft.

[Bruce Long]

Here is a good article from Alternet:


Inspiration from the fight against theocracy in the US

[Bruce Long]

I tried to delete it. Go ahead and do so. Did you feel the 'speech' was remiss?

[Bruce Long]

I suggest the thread title:

"Parliamentary Prayers are a Theocratic Practice"

I don't know where to put it.

[The man who created God]

Hi Buddles,

I agree that praying - to a non-existent father who is not in an imaginary heaven, who is no more holy than any person or animal that I know, who has no kingdom, who as a non existent being could gives no edicts, with no possibility of anything being done on earth as in a non-existent heaven - is rather inane and insane.

The concept belittles our politicians. Some might argue that their credibility is suspect for as long as they tolerate the Lord's prayer, and I couldn't agree more. It begs the question as to whether they are really that gullible. If they are not gullible, then they would seem to be hypocritical to go along with the charade.

Your well pronounced tirade in a shortened form, sent to all politicians would be a good start. A campaign that would launch thousands of such letters might be more effective. On the basis of my visiting my own Federal member (a self declared Christian who seemingly couldn't give a stuff about anyone else), I wish you luck as you will probably get fobbed off.

I sent a letter to our dear Prime Minister with my views on Chaplaincy clearly spelt out, only to receive a standard reply that assumed that I was FOR the chaplaincy. The religious vote is too numerically and financially valuable for spineless politicians to mess with.

Our mission should be to increase the number of non fantasy-believers as much as possible so that the politicians take notice of OUR opinions.

BTW, I would caution you against any atheist assumptions of voting either to the left or the right. There are right and left wing atheists, and so it should be.

[Atheos]

Originally Posted by The man who created God

Hi Buddles,
BTW, I would caution you against any atheist assumptions of voting either to the left or the right. There are right and left wing atheists, and so it should be.

I'm struggling to think of an openly atheist lnp politician, federal or state, if there is one or a couple, they're very quiet.

[DanDare]

Lets not get rid of the prayer but rotate it:

xtian one
muslim call to prayer
taoist intonation
sevral hindu and siekh prayers
and my favorite

Yesterday apon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish that man would go away.

I think that would set the tone nicely.

[Glob]

Some good points made HERE, although I don't really like the last sentence of the proposed replacement for the prayer...

As a first draft, then, and with all due modesty, we propose that, at the beginning of each sitting, the Speaker should read as follows:

‘All stand. We, the members of this House, humbly recognise the solemn responsibility placed upon us by the sovereign people of Australia to work together for the peace, order and good government of this Commonwealth, and we resolve to perform our duty with honour and integrity. I now ask all members to remain standing and, in silence, to pray or reflect on our responsibilities to the people of Australia.’

I wouldn't want to ask politicians to pray with their responsibilities in mind, since prayer entails absolving oneself of responsibilities.