Malaysia bans 'tomboys...'

[Stogie]

The story is HERE!

Clerics have issued an edict banning tomboys in Muslim-majority Malaysia, saying that girls who act like boys violate the tenets of Islam.

Under the 'fatwa', girls are forbidden to have short hair and dress like boys.

Harussani Idris Zakaria, who attended the meeting of the National Fatwa Council, said an increasing number of Malaysian girls behave like tomboys, and some of them engage in homosexuality.

He said the council's ruling was not legally binding because it has not been passed into law, but that tomboys should be banned because they are 'sinful'.

He said: 'It doesn't matter if it's a law or not. When it's wrong, it's wrong.

'God created them as girls, they must act like girls.'

The story is HERE!

Why is the world going backwards?

[andre459]

Religion .

When you taking your rules from a book that's 2000 years out of date and with no chance of a revision then there will never be progress. They can't accept change because once people start to question and think for themselves where does it stop.

I don't know much about the situation in Malaysia but considering it's tough anti gay laws I can only imagine how it must be for ladyboys.

Not that Australia is any more progressive it's only been 10 years since sodomy was decriminalised in Tasmania. The problem is that each state sets it's own laws rather then having a national guideline.

Has anyone seen the film by Bill Maher called Religulous looks like it could be OK.

[Tomcat]

yes indeed, the world is going backwards...

Richard Dawkins has just financed the posters on London buses stating " there probably is no God, enjoy yourself"....he is also left Oxford to concentrate on  writing a book for kids telling them not listen to stupid ideas that have no substance...

I just read his book " The God Delusion". Even a hardened athiest like me was surprised at the extent of the bullshit foisterd on humanity by all the Abrahamic religeons.

just read the old Testament and see the kind of morality it offers.... child sacrifice, war, slaughter of other sects, genocide and so on...

OMG

[andre459]

A new Danish stout .... Gudeløs (Godless).

Part of the sales go to the Danish Atheist Society.
http://www.djaevlebryg.dk/produktereng.php

I'm currently reading Bertrand Russell on God and Religion which is a collection of his writings on religion, so far I have only read the first essay Why I Am Not A Christian. Russell is quite thorough in his reasoning as he examines each aspect of faith and states why he rejects it. I haven't read a lot of philosophy but Russell writes in a manner that is easy to understand and not too heavy. I like Russell's rational approach and it's good to read the thoughts of someone who is a lot smarter and more eloquent then me (although that's not hard).
It makes me angry that Christians fight to have Creationism taught in science as an alternative when it has nothing to do with science. In Australia we have religion classes in schools (basically Christian indoctrination) and books like Russell's and Dawkin's (The God Delusion) should be taught as an alternative.You could imagine the uproar if this happened.


Some good quotes from Bertrand Russell :

A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."

[Tomcat]

Russell is one of the modern Philosophers who had his feet firmly on the ground along with DDennett and A.C Grayling. Unfortunately many others live in cloud cuckoo land.

I noticed a copy of Philosophy for Dummies at the airport and upon flicking through it i realized that the guy who wrote it was a Theologian who bleats on about life after death for half the book with no rational insight offerd.. what a con... im going to write to the publishers and tell them that the book is only good for use as an anal sanitorial accessory and that the author is in fact a cunt

anyway
What is amazing is that Socrates was questioning false beliefs 300 years before Christ was even born.

Anyone for a dose of hemlock!

[seamus]

I must be gay cause that Tom boy is as cute as a button, I would

[robbo]

yes that ole chesnut religion, aint it grand,but all the arguments against it have allready been stated..........and still it will remain................if religon had won the day by now then man would no longer exist. any belief in a religon is a mental disorder.......as simple as that. without treatment or extermination like any disease it will remain.

[dummy_plug]

The cleric also banned ladyboys too!

[BAM]

That's GI Jane... good they banned that Movie!

[mirimark]

What a sad story, by the way, I find her very attractive. She could be a tomBoy and come climb my tree anytime.