Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Another Goddamned Podcast #34:
October 9, 2008


THIS WEEK - Should Atheist Issues Take a Backseat?



Original audio source

What's happened to half of The Herd? Are they deep undercover somewhere? Choose your Conspiracy in the poll.

With all of the issues going on in the news about the US election and economic crisis, should atheist issues be put on the back burner? Philly and OG weigh in on why the religious crazies haven't been making news and Chappy reminds us why activism is still important. (00:00)

Who's afraid of the big, bad Atheist? Why, Elizabeth Dole is. The Herd weighs in on her smear campaign against Kay Hagan and why she's been able to get away with it so far. (13:44)

After spending most of the podcast on US-centric news The Herd turns its attention to the UK. Are they completely capitulating to religious wackos? And are their religious crazies worse than ours or do we both have something to worry about? (31:30)

Find out the poll results from last week and what's been going on with one of our listeners from down under. Also, has Chappy mastered Evo Mathematics? (42:15)

Opening Music [00:00]: excerpt from "Another Goddamned Draft"
Bridge Music [12:46:]: excerpt from "Latin Down the Hatches"
Bridge Music [30:19]: excerpt from "Crouching Christian Hidden Atheist"
Bridge Music [41:56]: excerpt from "Arkansas Traveler"
Bridge and Closing Music [44:44]: excerpt from "As Jazzy as I Get"
(All music: copyright 2008 by Rachel Murie)


This Week's Goddamned Links
Palin's Protection from Witchcraft
Times Online on Palin
Elizabeth Dole's Ugly Campaign
Crazy Calvinists

7 comments:

Sean Wright said...

Thank f*ck you're back.

PhillyChief said...

Yeah, Fuck is very persuasive.

Sean Wright said...

I liked the podcast, thought OG did very well heading up he discussion. Evo must have been laughing too hard to the Jenny Talia song I sent him.

As to should you take a back seat on atheist issues - hell no! Its in times of crisis when the religious roll out the comfort wagon and target the poor. You don't hear them saying,

"No keep you tithe so you can keep your home"

And as for that Dole woman, what an ignorant %TV%R%5wr!!!

Nomen Publicus said...

I think you are getting some crazy ideas about the "sharia courts" in the UK.

All that has been done is to make any decision legally enforceable so long as a) both sides agreed to the mediation being performed to sharia principles, b) the decision must be acceptable under UK law and c) the matter would normally be dealt with as a civil case.

This happened because the jewish equivalent had been recognised for many years and the law could have been changed either to remove the recognition of the jewish courts or recognise the sharia courts.

Obviously the correct thing to do would be to remove recognition from the jewish courts. After all just a few months ago the last blasphemy law was repealed. But politicians find it difficult to be consistent.

PhillyChief said...

I doubt very much whether the Jewish community has the same dominance over its female members as the Muslim community; therefore, the "both sides agreed to the mediation" part is a sham.

Unknown said...

Sean: Thank you. Hopefully I didn't come off as self-conscious as I felt.

Nomen: I think that civil agreements can be made outside of courts and often it is a benefit to do so. I'm not sure though that the government should sanction these systems though. As Philly said, there is a high probability that coercion will lead to unfair rulings.

I know that the UK doesn't have any clause for separation of church and state, but I think in both cases (Jewish and Sharia courts) religion is holding too much sway over what should be civil, secular rulings.

So I agree that neither should be recognized by the government, but I still think there's a place for private arbitration, as long as both parties have the option of seeking help from a secular court if the ruling doesn't address their grievances.

Venjanz said...

Not bad guys, I thought you did well.