Music For Atheists: The Dear Hunter – No God

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100th episode of the Imaginary Friends Show Podcast is up!

I finally got together with the Imaginary Friends Show podcast guys, Jake Farr-Wharton and Gregg Savage, and took part in destroying the 100th episode with crass atheist and non-atheist related humour.

So if you’ve a spare 60 or so minutes to kill and honestly have nothing going on, what better way to waste an hour of your life than listening to the 100th ep!

Here it is! Stream it online or download it.

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Indonesia: A Moderate Islamic Country?

So I thought I’d write up a little piece about my experiences as an unashamedly open atheist in Indonesia to give anyone who reads this stuff an idea of what religion was like there. Here’s the first instalment.

Indonesia: A Moderate Islamic Country?

I jumped off the plane in Java expecting the worst. I’d heard something like 90% of Indonesians were muslim, and the rest were some other form of religion. I’d read and blogged about the treatment of an Indonesian atheist who posted a few Facebook statuses that upset his town and he was subsequently bashed and had his business place smashed up. So right from the start as I walked into the international terminal I was getting ready to shut my mouth for the coming month.

As I lined up at immigration I suddenly became aware of, and somewhat surprised at, the number of middle eastern muslims in the queue with us. Young men in their 20s and 30s were all hanging out chatting loudly whilst next to each of them stood their lesser half, donning the dark black burka from head to toe with barely a 2cm slit for their eyes.

I was with two others, Jane and Bill, who were from the museum and scientists like myself out here for fieldwork. Jane bumped into one of the younger men waiting in line as the queue moved forward. He turned and looked her up and down, and left his gaze on her chest as he grinned salaciously. Creeped the hell out of her, as it did Bill and I. As this happened another middle eastern man walked up to where we were standing in line and bent down under all the ropes as one of the immigration officers became vacant. Several Italian men at the front of the line became enraged, and one of them started shouting at him in english asking why he did that. The middle eastern man pretty much just brushed it off and said “It’s ok, I’ve been here before”. Man these guys were just oozing with self-entitlement and chauvinism!

Eventually we made our way through immigration and into the baggage collection area. I got my first real glimpse at a room full of Indonesian people. There were many women in the head veils, and men wearing their islamic caps, however there were also quite a few men and women not wearing any religious garment. We picked up our luggage and left the airport whilst getting quite a few stares from people, as ‘bules’ (pronounced ‘buley’, meaning Westerner or white person) weren’t that common in this country I quickly found out.

We were picked up by an Indonesian man who worked at the museum in Bogor, with which we were collaborating on this project (all research has to be done in collaboration with Indonesian scientists nowadays or it’s impossible to do fieldwork there). We crammed into his car and some of the first things I noticed were the arabic writing on islamic decorations in the car. I prepared myself for a long, awkward, silent trip to the hotel, but was incredibly surprised, and had to stop myself from giggling, as the man turned the radio on and out came blasting the latest album from the Indonesian Idol winner. Not the sort of music I picked for an islamic man (turns out Indonesians are obsessed with the worst kind of pop-music, and especially love Karaoke). This guy seemed already, and my first impressions of him were that he was a really nice, boisterous, eccentric, kung-fu Panda in appearance (seriously he had this look down pat), and happy man. Not the sort of adjectives I had expected to be throwing his way, but it was a nice surprise. The call to prayer sounded as we were driving, and kept getting softer then louder as we passed by the numerous mosques along the highway. I asked the man what does he do with regards to praying if he’s driving. He told me he never really bothered with it. I was shocked yet again…!

My first few weeks had me meeting some of the nicest people I’ve ever met, at least as a tourist in a foreign country. Everyone in the street wanted to say hello to you, wanted to speak to you, wanted to know your name and where you were going (never worked out why that was such an important question for them? “Hello Mister! Where you going?”). Within the first day I was approached by two groups of Indonesian girls, all wearing hijabs, who wanted photos with me and/or wanted to practice english with me. I was so surprised these girls were even acknowledging my presence, from previous experiences with islamic girls in Melbourne, Australia, let alone them looking me in the eye, smiling, laughing, wanting to speak to me. And pretty quickly it became obvious that this would be a repeated pattern all throughout our travels in Java and Sulawesi. No matter where you went, everyone smiled, everyone acknowledged you and pretty much treated you like a close mate, although sometimes too close…

Looking awkward during the first of 100s of photos I was asked to be in with locals

It had me questioning my previously staunch anti-islam beliefs. How could such nice, friendly, open people, despite being islamic, be so bad? They seemed like any other average person from Australia, just often wearing an islamic cap or hijab. I’d expected it to be like walking off the plane into Yemen or Iran when I’d gotten to Indonesia, after learning it was the country with the most muslims in it in the world. Maybe I was wrong, maybe these guys weren’t that bad…?

For the first week or so I felt somewhat ashamed that I had had such a negative preconceived idea of these people, solely based on religious grounds, prior to coming to this country. I had wanted to dislike anyone, thing or idea even remotely related to the religion of islam prior to coming here, but it felt like perhaps these guys weren’t as bad as the muslims of the middle east. I had always thought there was no such thing as a moderate muslim. That to be islamic meant you wanted death to all unbelievers, and for islam to spread and take over the world. But could I have been wrong? Could there be ‘moderate islamic’ country after all? Could it be Indonesia?

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Sam Harris – Death and the Present Moment

This was filmed at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne

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Global Atheist Convention days 2 and 3

Unfortunately I was out partying all night with my dear friends after the Gala Dinner, and only arrived home at 4am so was unable to write up day 2 prior to going to sleep. It was an awesome day with speakers including Peter Singer, Leslie Cannold, Dan Barker, Dan Dennett, AC Grayling, Lawrence Krauss, Geoffrey Roberts, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Richard Dawkins and many more. Needless to say, they all did the day and the convention justice. I won’t go too deeply into what they each discussed as I won’t really be able to do it justice, and the DVD of the talks will be out in a few months anyway!

The Gala Dinner went off too, with comedy from MC Simon Taylor, Brian Dalton (Mr Diety), Tom Ballard and Catherine Deveny, and some beautiful inspiring atheistic tunes from the talented sensational secular singer Shelley Segal!

Day 3 also went off, although I missed Eugenie Scott’s lecture but for the questions at the end as a result of the previous nights escapades. It was great to hear Tanya Smith from the Freedom From Religion Foundation speak, as well as Sam Harris, Jason Ball (President of the Freethought Student Alliance), and PZ Myers who gave a smashing lecture of which I’m hoping to see over many times on YouTube in the future!

The tribute to Christopher Hitchens definitely did the recently fallen horseman of atheism justice, and it was evident just how much he was missed by everyone, audience and speakers alike.

Richard Dawkins speaking about his late friend Christopher Hitchens.

The panel at the end with the remaining three horsemen, Dennett, Dawkins and Harris, alongside Ayaan Hirsi Ali wasn’t too bad either. Although they didn’t cover as much as I would have liked I still enjoyed it, and question time was one of the better ones of the conference.

Massive thanks to the Atheist Foundation of Australia and all their volunteers for putting all this together and running it so smoothly. They definitely did an amazing job!

I might leave you with a few funny pictures from the Christian and Muslim protestors that appeared outside the conference.

My dear friends Michael and Greg giving some love back to the Muslim protestors at lunchtime on Day 3

Muslims arrived on the Polly Woodside vessel and started sharing the love of Islam with us unbelievers...

The atheists didn't take too kindly to the bearded believers. One somehow acquired a megaphone and stood in front of them yelling back into their faces. At one point between all the laughter and sniggering the crowd began to chant "where are your women?". Their replies were restricted to "Allah o'ackbar" and "Burn in hell".

PZ Myers and other atheists taking the piss out of the fruitloop Christian protestors

The following are a bunch of Christian chalk sentences, checked for spelling and punctation by my fellow atheists at the convention!

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Imaginary Friends Show: Atheism and depression

Here’s the latest podcast from the Imaginary Friends Show with Jake Farr-Wharton, Jerry DeWitt, from RecoveringFromReligion.org, and myself speaking on the possible link between atheism and depression. Causation? Correlation?

It can be streamed from the above link or downloaded here.

I also recently did another ScienceGasm podcast episode with Jake regarding the latest astronomical news in the area of telescopes and exoplanets.

It can be streamed from this link or downloaded here.

Enjoy! Jake’s podcast is the bomb!

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Is Britain a Christian Country?

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Music for atheists: Emptyself – The Postulate

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A touching sentiment

Click here to see the enlarged image

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How I felt at my religious high school

I went to a relatively religious high school back in the day. Their poison of choice was Anglican Christianity, so it wasn’t too bad I guess, compared to other surrounding Catholic schools that were a great deal more pious and hardcore. That said, every week we’d have assemblies where everyone would be singing hymns, praying, giving speeches about the Christian work down by the Chaplain or other school groups.

The below picture exemplifies how I felt all too often during these rituals. I’d often get noticed, and a few times got myself in to trouble, for refusing to stand, sing, and close my eyes during the prayer. I look back proud of my younger self for being so obstinate.

Real heroes, like this man pictured below, are those who refuse to conform to bad ideals even in the face of extreme pressure. I wonder what happened to this man.

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