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Peacefulplanet — Sat, 24 May 2008 04:48:59 CDT

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We have project to finish, and this site is a central point to keep track of our goals, our work in progress. Add pages as necessary, brainstorm on the wiki "whiteboard" page, and use the person-to-person messaging feature to keep in touch with team members.

My Nose, My Brain, My Faith, by: DAVID VAN BIEMA
By DAVID VAN BIEMA
Jan. 10, 2008 Your nose is one of the less complicated parts of your body, and yet we credit it with considerable intelligence in the area of truth vs. falsehood. We “sniff out a lie.” We say “something smells fishy.” Now studies suggest that something more than metaphor may be at work here--specifically, brain science. The same research may also shed unexpected light on religious faith. [More]

Political prisoner double trialed for "insulting Islamic scared s"

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Paint Splatters

Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks
by: Sam Harris
Geert Wilders, conservative Dutch politician and provocateur, has become the latest projectile in the world's most important culture war: the zero-sum conflict between civil society and traditional Islam. Wilders, who lives under perpetual armed guard due to death threats, recently released a 15 minute film entitled Fitna ("strife" in Arabic) over the internet. More

Are You Going to hell? by: Louis Bayard

By Louis Bayard This phenomenon of religious experience is one of the oldest in our documented history as a species. And so, rather than simply say, “There is no God, end of story, everyone who believes that is an idiot or deluded or weak-minded,” I wanted to go out and embrace the idea that religious experience is a real and valuable part of existence—regardless of whether you believe in God. [More] Louis Bayard's Website

A brief response to Irreducible complexity,
By: Arash Daklan

The idea of irreducible complexity, in my point of view, is suffering from a very strong presupposition. For an example see Michael Behe (1996)[i] and also Minnish and Meyer (2004)[ii]. Behe uses a mouse trap as an example to show that there are some organisms which cannot have functions without each one of its parts. This approach is flawed for two reasons. At first, it is not important that a mouse trap has not its function, unless it is completed. More

A Neurology of Belief, by: American Neurological Association

The notion that all mental acts, all mental processes and dispositions have specific neural correlates has become much easier to explore in the past 15 years with the development of PET scanning and especially functional MRI. We can now, for example, demonstrate activity in the visual cortex when a subject views a test object, and we can pick up similar activity if we ask the subject to imagine or make a mental picture of what the object looks like. Functional brain imagery has also been used in relation to more complex mental processes, such as those involved in economic decisions. There have, however, been no comparable studies addressed to the neural correlates of belief in general until Harris, Sheth, and Cohen’s pioneering article in the present issue of Annals of Neurology. [More]

Political prisoner double trialed for "insulting Islamic scared s"

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 24 May 2008 04:47:18 CDT

Political prisoner double trialed for "insulting Islamic scared s"

Hamidreza Mohammadi, who has been sentenced to 6 years imprisonment by the 13th Branch of the so called revolutionary courts on 20 June 2006 , is sentenced to another 5 years.
His second court was held to prosecute him on charges of "insulting Islamic sacreds" for an extra 5 year imprisonment.
Mr.Mohammadi was charged to have stamped the word "Invalidated", on all pages of the 7 editions of the Koran and having sent them to Islamic institutes.
Prior to this, Mr.Mohammadi had been charged with membership in a group called the Iranian kingship association for 6 years imprisonment.
Mr. Mohammadi declares that he has been charged and sentenced twice for one case, without the presence of a lawyer.
In the begging of his arrest he had spent 6 months in the 209 section and then was transferred to the public ward of Evin prison. Government agents had arrested his family at the time of his arrest.
Mr.Mohammadi has committed suicide twice, not withstanding psychological and physical pressures in 209.

List Of the News

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 17 May 2008 08:50:38 CDT

Six Bahá'í leaders arrested in Iran New

Unjust trail for three Kurdish students

Prison sentence of Amirkabir University students confirmed

1- Sharia Delusions in Canterbury: by Mona Eltahawy

2- A Pragmatist and a Lobbyist on Atheism, by Samuel G. Freedman

3-Iran violently suppresses its opposition and critics, but there are those whose struggle is still aflame.

Six Bahá'í leaders arrested in Iran

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 17 May 2008 08:41:02 CDT

Six Bahá'í leaders arrested in Iran

Six Bahá'í leaders in Iran were arrested and taken to the notorious Evin prison yesterday in a sweep that is ominously similar to episodes in the 1980s when scores of Iranian Bahá'í leaders were summarily rounded up and killed. It seems the six are held in the notorious Evin 209 section and are undergoing interrogations.

The International Bahaii press agency announced that The six men and women, all members of the national-level group that helped see to the minimum needs of Bahá'ís in Iran, were in their homes Wednesday morning when government intelligence agents entered and spent up to five hours searching each home, before taking them away.
The seventh member of the national coordinating group was arrested in early March in Mashhad after being summoned by the Ministry of Intelligence office there on an ostensibly trivial matter.
Ms.Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Bahá'í International Community to the United Nations. condemned the detention of the Bahaiis and has said that their only crime is practicing the Bahá'í Faith.
"Especially disturbing is how this latest sweep recalls the wholesale arrest or abduction of the members of two national Iranian Bahá'í governing councils in the early 1980s -- which led to the disappearance or execution of 17 individuals," she said.
"The early morning raids on the homes of these prominent Bahá'ís were well coordinated, and it is clear they represent a high-level effort to strike again at the Bahá'ís and to intimidate the Iranian Bahá'í community at large," said Ms. Dugal.
Arrested yesterday were: Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm. All live in Tehran. Mrs. Kamalabadi, Mr. Khanjani, and Mr. Tavakkoli have been previously arrested and then released after periods ranging from five days to four months.
Arrested in Mashhad on 5 March 2008 was Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, who also resides in Tehran. Mrs. Sabet was summoned to Mashhad by the Ministry of Intelligence, ostensibly on the grounds that she was required to answer questions related to the burial of an individual in the Bahá'í cemetery in that city.
On 21 August 1980, all nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Iran were abducted and disappeared without a trace. It is certain that they were killed.
The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Iran was reconstituted soon after that but was again ravaged by the execution of eight of its members on 27 December 1981.
The International Bahaii press agency announced that a number of members of local Bahá'í governing councils, known as local Spiritual Assemblies, were also arrested and executed in the early 1980s, before an international outcry forced the government to slow its execution of Bahá'ís. Since 1979, more than 200 Bahá'ís have been killed or executed in Iran, although none have been executed since 1998.
In 1983, the government outlawed all formal Bahá'í administrative institutions and the Iranian Bahá'í community responded by disbanding its National Spiritual Assembly, which is an elected governing council, along with some 400 local level elected governing councils. Bahá'ís throughout Iran also suspended nearly all of their regular organizational activity.

From: http://iranppa.blogspot.com

Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

Peacefulplanet — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:53:48 CDT

Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks
Sam Harris
Geert Wilders, conservative Dutch politician and provocateur, has become the latest projectile in the world's most important culture war: the zero-sum conflict between civil society and traditional Islam. Wilders, who lives under perpetual armed guard due to death threats, recently released a 15 minute film entitled Fitna ("strife" in Arabic) over the internet. The film has been deemed offensive because it juxtaposes images of Muslim violence with passages from the Qur'an. Given that the perpetrators of such violence regularly cite these same passages as justification for their actions, merely depicting this connection in a film would seem uncontroversial. Controversial or not, one surely would expect politicians and journalists in every free society to strenuously defend Wilders' right to make such a film. But then one would be living on another planet, a planet where people do not happily repudiate their most basic freedoms in the name of "religious sensitivity." Witness the free world's response to Fitna: The Dutch government sought to ban the film outright, and European Union foreign ministers publicly condemned it, as did UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Dutch television refused to air Fitna unedited. When Wilders declared his intention to release the film over the internet, his U.S. web-host, Network Solutions, took his website offline. Into the breach stepped Liveleak, a British video-sharing website, which finally aired the film on March 27th. It received over 3 million views in the first 24 hours. The next day, however, Liveleak removed Fitna from its servers, having been terrorized into self-censorship by threats to its staff. But the film had spread too far on the internet to be suppressed (and Liveleak, after taking further security measures, has since reinstated it on its site as well). Of course, there were immediate calls for a boycott of Dutch products throughout the Muslim world. In response, Dutch corporations placed ads in countries like Indonesia, denouncing the film in self-defense. Several Muslim countries blocked YouTube and other video-sharing sites in an effort to keep Wilders' blasphemy from penetrating the minds of their citizens. There have also been isolated protests and attacks on embassies, and ubiquitous demands for Wilders' murder. In Afghanistan, women in burqas could be seen burning the Dutch flag; the Taliban carried out at least two revenge attacks on Dutch troops, resulting in five Dutch casualties; and security concerns have caused the Netherlands to close its embassy in Kabul. It must be said, however, that nothing has yet occurred to rival the ferocious response to the Danish cartoons. Meanwhile Kurt Westergaard, one of the Danish cartoonists, threatened to sue Wilders for copyright infringement, as Wilders used his drawing of a bomb-laden Muhammad without permission. Westergaard has lived in hiding since 2006 due to death threats of his own, so the Danish Union of Journalists volunteered to file this lawsuit on his behalf. Admittedly, there is something amusing about one hunted man, unable to venture out in public for fear of being killed by religious lunatics, threatening to sue another man in the same predicament over a copyright violation. But it is understandable that Westergaard wouldn't want to be repeatedly hurled at the enemy without his consent. Westergaard is an extraordinarily courageous man whose life has been ruined both by religious fanaticism and the free world's submission to it. In February, the Danish government arrested three Muslims who seemed poised to murder him. Other Danes unfortunate enough to have been born with the name "Kurt Westergaard" have had to take steps to escape being murdered in his place. (Wilder's has since removed the cartoon from the official version of Fitna.) Wilders, like Westergaard and the other Danish cartoonists, has been widely vilified for "seeking to inflame" the Muslim community. Even if this had been his intention, this criticism represents an almost supernatural coincidence of moral blindness and political imprudence. The point is not (and will never be) that some free person spoke, or wrote, or illustrated in such a manner as to inflame the Muslim community. The point is that only the Muslim community is combustible in this way. The controversy over Fitna, like all such controversies, renders one fact about our world especially salient: Muslims appear to be far more concerned about perceived slights to their religion than about the atrocities committed daily in its name. Our accommodation of this psychopathic skewing of priorities has, more and more, taken the form of craven and blinkered acquiescence. There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for "racism" and "Islamophobia." Our capitulations in the face of these threats have had what is often called "a chilling effect" on our exercise of free speech. I have, in my own small way, experienced this chill first hand. First, and most important, my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali happens to be among the hunted. Because of the failure of Western governments to make it safe for people to speak openly about the problem of Islam, I and others must raise a mountain of private funds to help pay for her round-the-clock protection. The problem is not, as is often alleged, that governments cannot afford to protect every person who speaks out against Muslim intolerance. The problem is that so few people do speak out. If there were ten thousand Ayaan Hirsi Ali's, the risk to each would be radically reduced. As for infringements of my own speech, my first book, The End of Faith, almost did not get published for fear of offending the sensibilities of (probably non-reading) religious fanatics. W.W. Norton, which did publish the book, was widely seen as taking a risk--one probably attenuated by the fact that I am an equal-opportunity offender critical of all religious faith. However, when it came time to make final edits to the galleys of The End of Faith, many of the people I had thanked by name in my acknowledgments (including my agent at the time and my editor at Norton) independently asked to have their names removed from the book. Their concerns were explicitly for their personal safety. Given our shamefully ineffectual response to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, their concerns were perfectly understandable. Nature, arguably the most influential scientific journal on the planet, recently published a lengthy whitewash of Islam (Z. Sardar "Beyond the troubled relationship." Nature 448, 131-133; 2007). The author began, as though atop a minaret, by simply declaring the religion of Islam to be "intrinsically rational." He then went on to argue, amid a highly idiosyncratic reading of history and theology, that this rational religion's current wallowing in the violent depths of unreason can be fully ascribed to the legacy of colonialism. After some negotiation, Nature also agreed to publish a brief response from me. What readers of my letter to the editor could not know, however, was that it was only published after perfectly factual sentences deemed offensive to Islam were expunged. I understood the editors' concerns at the time: not only did they have Britain's suffocating libel laws to worry about, but Muslim physicians and engineers in the UK had just revealed a penchant for suicide bombing. I was grateful that Nature published my letter at all. In a thrillingly ironic turn of events, a shorter version of the very essay you are now reading was originally commissioned by the opinion page of Washington Post and then rejected because it was deemed too critical of Islam. Please note, this essay was destined for the opinion page of the paper, which had solicited my response to the controversy over Wilders' film. The irony of its rejection seemed entirely lost on the Post, which responded to my subsequent expression of amazement by offering to pay me a "kill fee." I declined. I could list other examples of encounters with editors and publishers, as can many writers, all illustrating a single fact: While it remains taboo to criticize religious faith in general, it is considered especially unwise to criticize Islam. Only Muslims hound and hunt and murder their apostates, infidels, and critics in the 21st century. There are, to be sure, reasons why this is so. Some of these reasons have to do with accidents of history and geopolitics, but others can be directly traced to doctrines sanctifying violence which are unique to Islam. A point of comparison: The controversy of over Fitna was immediately followed by ubiquitous media coverage of a scandal involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). In Texas, police raided an FLDS compound and took hundreds of women and underage girls into custody to spare them the continued, sacramental predations of their menfolk. While mainstream Mormonism is now granted the deference accorded to all major religions in the United States, its fundamentalist branch, with its commitment to polygamy, spousal abuse, forced marriage, child brides (and, therefore, child rape) is often portrayed in the press as a depraved cult. But one could easily argue that Islam, considered both in the aggregate and in terms of its most negative instances, is far more despicable than fundamentalist Mormonism. The Muslim world can match the FLDS sin for sin--Muslims commonly practice polygamy, forced-marriage (often between underage girls and older men), and wife-beating--but add to these indiscretions the surpassing evils of honor killing, female "circumcision," widespread support for terrorism, a pornographic fascination with videos showing the butchery of infidels and apostates, a vibrant form of anti-semitism that is explicitly genocidal in its aspirations, and an aptitude for producing children's books and television programs which exalt suicide-bombing and depict Jews as "apes and pigs." Any honest comparison between these two faiths reveals a bizarre double standard in our treatment of religion. We can openly celebrate the marginalization of FLDS men and the rescue of their women and children. But, leaving aside the practical and political impossibility of doing so, could we even allow ourselves to contemplate liberating the women and children of traditional Islam? What about all the civil, freedom-loving, moderate Muslims who are just as appalled by Muslim intolerance as I am? No doubt millions of men and women fit this description, but vocal moderates are very difficult to find. Wherever "moderate Islam" does announce itself, one often discovers frank Islamism lurking just a euphemism or two beneath the surface. The subterfuge is rendered all but invisible to the general public by political correctness, wishful thinking, and "white guilt." This is where we find sinister people successfully posing as "moderates"--people like Tariq Ramadan who, while lionized by liberal Europeans as the epitome of cosmopolitan Islam, cannot bring himself to actually condemn honor killing in round terms (he recommends that the practice be suspended, pending further study). Moderation is also attributed to groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist public relations firm posing as a civil-rights lobby. Even when one finds a true voice of Muslim moderation, it often seems distinguished by a lack of candor above all things. Take someone like Reza Aslan, author of No God But God: I debated Aslan for Book TV on the general subject of religion and modernity. During the course of our debate, I had a few unkind words to say about the Muslim Brotherhood. While admitting that there is a difference between the Brotherhood and a full-blown jihadist organization like al Qaeda, I said that their ideology was "close enough" to be of concern. Aslan responded with a grandiose, ad hominem attack saying, "that indicates the profound unsophistication that you have about this region. You could not be more wrong" and claiming that I'd taken my view of Islam from "Fox News." Such maneuvers, coming from a polished, Iranian-born scholar of Islam carry the weight of authority, especially in front of an audience of people who are desperate to believe the threat of Islam has been grossly exaggerated. The problem, however, is that the credo of the Muslim Brotherhood actually happens to be "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." The connection between the doctrine of Islam and Islamist violence is simply not open to dispute. It's not that critics of religion like myself speculate that such a connection might exist: the point is that Islamists themselves acknowledge and demonstrate this connection at every opportunity and to deny it is to retreat within a fantasy world of political correctness and religious apology. Many western scholars, like the much admired Karen Armstrong, appear to live in just such a place. All of their talk about how benign Islam "really" is, and about how the problem of fundamentalism exists in all religions, only obfuscates what may be the most pressing issue of our time: Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world's Muslims, is antithetical to civil society. A recent poll showed that thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) believe that a person should be killed for leaving the faith. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should have been brought to justice. And these are British Muslims. Occasionally, however, a lone voice can be heard acknowledging the obvious. Hassan Butt wrote in the Guardian:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

It is astounding how infrequently one hears such candor among the public voices of "moderate" Islam. This is what we owe the true moderates of the Muslim world: we must hold their co-religionists to the same standards of civility and reasonableness that we take for granted in all other people. Only our willingness to openly criticize Islam for its all-too-obvious failings can make it safe for Muslim moderates, secularists, apostates--and, indeed, women--to rise up and reform their faith. And if anyone in this debate can be credibly accused of racism, it is the western apologists and "multiculturalists" who deem Arabs and Muslims too immature to shoulder the responsibilities of civil discourse. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali has pointed out, there is a calamitous form of "affirmative action" at work, especially in western Europe, where Muslim immigrants are systematically exempted from western standards of moral order in the name of paying "respect" to the glaring pathologies in their culture. Hirsi Ali has also observed that there is a quasi-racist double-think on display whenever western powers trumpet that "Islam is peace," all the while taking heroic measures to guard against the next occasion when the barbarians run amok in response to a film, cartoon, opera, novel, beauty pageant--or the mere naming of a teddy bear. Have you seen the Danish cartoons that so roiled the Muslim world? Probably not, as their publication was suppressed by almost every newspaper, magazine, and television station in the United States. Given their volcanic reception--hundreds of thousands of Muslims rioted, hundreds of people were killed--their sheer banality should have rendered these drawings extraordinarily newsworthy. One magazine which did print them, Free Inquiry (for which I am proud to have written), had its stock banned from every Borders and Waldenbooks in the country. These are precisely the sorts of capitulations that we must avoid in the future. The lesson we should draw from the Fitna controversy is that we need more criticism of Islam, not less. Let it come down in such torrents that not even the most deluded Islamist could conceive of containing it. As Ibn Warraq, author of the revelatory Why I Am Not a Muslim, said in response to recent events: It is perverse for the western media to lament the lack of an Islamic reformation and willfully ignore works such as Wilders' film, Fitna. How do they think reformation will come about if not with criticism? There is no such right as 'the right not to be offended; indeed, I am deeply offended by the contents of the Koran, with its overt hatred of Christians, Jews, apostates, non-believers, homosexuals but cannot demand its suppression. It is time we recognized that those who claim the "right not to be offended" have also announced their hatred of civil society.

refrence: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/losing-our-spines-to-save_b_100132.html

Unjust trail for three Kurdish students

peacefulplanet1 — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:50:27 CDT

Three Kurdish students; Sabah Nassiri, Hedayat Ghazali and Yasser Gholi, have been detained and are facing torture and interrogation.

Two of these students: Sabah Nassir and Hedayat Ghazali have been held illegally for the past eleven months.

They were transferred mysteriously from the 209 section of Evin prison to the so called court, in which they underwent a summary trial without the presence of a lawyer. They have apparently been held, interrogated and trialed in relation to activities of a student news bulletin called "Rozhameh", No detail of their trial is available.

Prior to the new developments, Sabah Nassiri, Hedayat Ghazali had both asked to be trialed officially in an open court with their attorney present.

The two activists had been arrested eleven months prior to this and were charged with delivering a speech in a meeting held to support "Educating the mother tongue". They were arrested by the Intelligence Ministry and held in Sanandaj intelligence detention centre, west of Iran, and eventually, transferred to 209 section of Tehran.

Sabah Nassiri is the head director of "Rozhameh" in Tehran University, and Hedayat Ghazali is a member of the editorial board of the news bulletin.

At the same time another court in Sanandaj, has announced a destined trial of Yasser Goli to be held in the western city of Iran, on charges of threatening National security, and that Yassers' mother is to be tailed along her son.

Mrs.Goli has been, herself a civil right activist on women's' issues. She had been arrested on a different occasion by the Ministry, but had managed to bail out.

source:http://iranppa.blogspot.com/2008/04/unjust-trail-for-three-kurdish-students.html

Prison sentence of Amirkabir University students confirmed

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 05:45:02 CDT

Prison sentence of Amirkabir University students confirmed

Kianoosh Sanjari

Prosecutor of the 44th Branch of the appeals court, Mr.Saedi, confirmed prison sentence of the Three disputed Amir Kabir Students; Majid Tavakoli, Ahmad Ghassaban, and Ehsan Mansouri.

The 6th Branch of the so called revolution court sentenced the three students each, three, two and two years prison sentences respectively. The given verdict is non-appeal able.
It is reported that the Appeal court has disputed the charges under the pressure of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry and the General Prosecutors office of Tehran.
Prior to this, the Public court had violated the 6th branch courts' verdict, which had acquitted the three students and ordered their release on bail.
It is evident that the public court had been influence by the Intelligence ministry, specifically the personal persistence of deputy General prosecutor "Hadad",(Known by the prisoners as the butcher of political prisoners). The three students have been in prison since February 2007.
They have been under constant torture and pressure of the Intelligence Ministry to provide fake interviews and accept their charges.
At the beginning they faced charges of insulting "sacred values" of the Islamic Republic, by printing leaflets with insulting images of the religious leader. They denied the charges categorically, saying the publications had been faked.
The public Court had acquitted the students of all charges, namely: Insulting sacred religious values, insulting kins to all Moslems (a term usually associated with relatives of the prophet , in this case, the country's appointed religious leader), insulting the people of Ghom city, Insulting hejabed women, young believers, insulting the Presidency of the state and other officials including the science and technology Minister, and officials of Amirkabir University.

Student arrested in 1999 unrest, freed

After 8 years and nine months detention, Mehrdad Lohrasbi , who was arrested in 1999 has been released.
Mr.Lohrasbi, was arrested in relation to the 1999 student unrest and sent to "Tohid" and the notorious "209" section of Evin prison. There he was subjected to brutal torture.
The 6th branch of the so called revolution court, charged him with threatening National security and propagating against the State, and sentenced him to death by hanging.
Later, an appeal court revised his prison sentence along with others arrested during the same unrest, to long prison sentences.
Mr Lohrasbi, was only allowed to under go medical treatment twice during his detention.
He had been transferred from Evin prison to Rajaei shahr, under the supervision of the Intelligence Ministry.

Iran: Resistance continues

Peacefulplanet — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 07:07:47 CDT

Iran: Resistance continues

Iran violently suppresses its opposition and critics, but there are those whose struggle is still aflame. Rain water has accumulated in front of the Parliament in Eidsvolls plass. Kianoosh Sanjari is holding a microphone in his Norwegian gloved hands, while covering himself with un umbrella next to a bench. Little after his arrival to Norway he managed to gather Iranians with different political tendencies in front of the Parliament. Leaders of these groups do not enjoy a favorable relation with each other. But 2008 began with a wave of executions and widespread arrests of students and this has been a factor to make the stand with each other on a common cause; to express defiance over the increase of suppression in Iran. Sanjari: The Iranian authorities regard their autocracy as an Island separate from the rest of the International community. Tehran, a day in 2006 He does not remember how long he had been sitting in this small cell of one to two meters in dimension. It could be weeks, months or perhaps even years. As he remembers, there was no contact with the out side world in that cell. Neither his family nor his attorney. His prison guards continuously pressured him though lies about his mothers' health or arrest of his family members or even telling him his friends have been confessing against him. Although he did not believe them but the truth is that as time passed, those prison walls, lifted all distance between the truth and what the prison guards were creating. Sanjari: At these times it is like as if there is continuous battle between the mind and the body. Being in total solitude in a prison cell is the worst torture one could face. In Iran, "white torture" is used to keep prisoners in total solitude (in solitary confinement). This kind of torture of course leaves no trace of torture but crushes the prisoners will and control. The victim loses his personality and would practically confess to almost anything. This torture is used in prisons which are more special, such as the notorious Evin 209 section in Tehran, against opposition activists and critic journalists. Open voice Kianoosh Sanjari is 25, but till now he has managed to be a fierce defender of Human Rights. His combat has been in courts, solitary confinements, political protests, Newspapers and foreign media and now in his blog. Recently he has been spokesperson for a group of students believing in secularism. He is persistently writing about arrest of political activists, inhuman situation of prisons and unjust court sessions in his blog. International Humanitarian organization in defense of Human Rights around the world and Iranians worldwide are following his situation. Ali Saki a political refugee living in Norway says Kianoosh has been for years a crucial voice of the Iranian regime. Saki: He is brave and his activities place him under constant danger. I had asked him once to stay at home and not participate in demonstrators in support of his imprisoned friends. Sanjari has been arrested seven times during the past eight years. The first time of his arrest he was only 17. He spent 9 months in solitary confinement. Sanjari : They did all they could to break me down. I was interrogated 24 hours around. Where does all the money go? The interrogation process changed a lot when rumors appeared of the US officials financing the Democracy movement in Iran. Interrogations took a new air; Sanjari was slapped under blindfolds to make him confess to having connections with US political figures. They asked him "where does the money go to? and who are the benefactors?". After relations between Iran and the west darkened over the nuclear controversy, Iranian officials declared the Democracy movement to be part of the threat from the West. Movement activists were accused of having direct contact with for example US officials. A researcher in Theology in Oslo University believes that the notion of the US financing the Democracy Movement has created an atmosphere of mistrust amongst the opposition. At the moment there is an International move to financially proscribe Iran. The embargo only paves way for the black forces. Mrs. Kari Vogt, believes Iran is like other countries such as Saudi Arabia, and hangs as much, and uses the same kind of violent methods as the others, but is especially being criticized more by the West. She believes that the West should act like Amnesty International and condemn human right violations and stop all embargos. But in the Democracy movement there are many who believe that putting pressure on the regime is absolutely necessary. Sanjari: Effective economic sanctions can pressure the Iranian regime to stop its nuclear venture and end arrests of dissidents, torture political prisoners and hangings. When his interrogators discovered AIs' International campaign for his release, they slapped him more. Dangerous escape In March 2007, Kianoosh reached a conclusion that staying in Iran would be very dangerous for him. In January that year he bailed out, while he was told not to interview foreign press and not to write about his court and torture during his captivity. This time they have harassed and pressured his mother to force her son stop all activities in defense of Human Rights in Iran. Every arrest had brought a lot of pain for his mother who spent hours endeavoring to see his son. The court had ordered Sanjari to write a negative article against a dissident cleric named Boroujerdi, or else face consequences. He had refused to accept this "order". A few days later he realized he was being watched and followed by a couple of Intelligence Ministry agents. He hid himself till dark. After saying farewell to his mother he started off towards the western boarder of Iran trying to get to Iraq. While camouflaging himself amongst a group of Kurdish laborers, he managed to pass the boarder into Iraqi territory. There in the new territory he took refuge with a dissident Kurdish group named "koumaleh", in the North of Iraq, not far from Soleimanieh. Sanjari could not speak Kurdish, and his face would have given away his true identity. For this reason, once again, but this time in a dissident camp of Koumaleh, he was forced to bound himself to a little room. During this time he continues his revelations through his blog. Iranian outside and political activists followed up with his horrendous escape through his blogs. His where-abouts was gradually discovered by the Iranian regime and conditions became dangerous. He then wrote a letter explaining the situation to Drewery Dyke, Iran desk of Amnesty International in London. Consequently Mr. Dyke writes a letter to the UNHCR explaining the threat of kianooshs' kidnapping or death by the Iranian sent agents. Following this and after several painful months of waiting, Kianoosh receives his political status and is then transferred to Norway on 31 October. Friends arrested January; A juvenile would soon be hanged. 18 January: A student dies mysteriously in detention. 26 January: Students are forced to confess under torture 31 January: 17 people are arrested because of their Bahaii faith. These are news he receives daily in his email from organizations, activists outside Iran, and also the media. Witnessing daily arrests of activists including his friends, it is very difficult for M. Kianoosh Sanjari , to continue his combat for Democracy from Norway. Sanjari: But I am happy to see that the movement is a live. Our struggle for Human rights is not bound to one person; it is a popular movement with new recruits each day.

List Of the Articles

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 08:02:27 CST

1- My Nose, My Brain, My Faith, by: DAVID VAN BIEMA

2- Are You Going to hell? by: Louis Bayard

3- A Neurology of Belief, by: American Neurological Association

4- A brief response to Irreducible complexity, By: Arash Daklan

5- A brief on Mind-Body Problem, By: Arash Daklan

A brief on “Mind-Body” Problem

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 07:56:49 CST

By: Arash Daklan

I will base my discussions on one of the most important feature of dualism-supporters; David j. Chalmers. In “Consciousness and its Place in Nature”[i] he introduces three types of materialism. All of them are being discussed by the idea of some kind of metaphysical possibility of “Zombies”. Though in some articles he says that he hasn’t based his argumentation on this possibility, for example in Chalmers (2006), the idea of zombies has two deep problems. The first one is the very conceivability that has a great problem. He says “Many people hold that zombies are conceivable in principle”. (2005) Now suppose a very weak criticism against this claim. In the medieval ages there were many people who “held that the earth is the centre of the universe”. However, my criticism is about the problems that we have with conceivability. What does it mean that something is conceivable? It is clear that every conceivable phenomenon is logically coherent; this means that every conceivable idea is logically possible. Then here raise a very important question: are any logically possible phenomenon conceivable? If yes, then we can infer that conceivability is the very logical possibility. All Chalmers’ endeavor in his unpublished work “The Two Dimensional Argument Against Materialism”[ii] to define the relation between conceivability and possibility under the title of “varieties of conceivability”, it seems to me, is made to escape from this idea and I think that it is not successful. Henceforth, when we say that every conceivable matter is metaphysically possible then we are saying also that every logically possible matter is metaphysically possible. However, if it is right then we should accept that every metaphysically necessary phenomenon is logically necessary. It is evidently against Kripke. Kripke in his famous book “Naming and Necessity” has identified a posteriori necessity. If we accept that every conceivable phenomenon is metaphysically possible then we lose the notion of metaphysical necessity. I will discuss about this matter elsewhere.
One may oppose that every conceivable matter is logically possible, but it is not right that every logically possible matter is conceivable. In this way he can prevent me from the above argumentation. However, this idea cannot help. They should answer to very important questions; "why they are not conceivable?", "If they are not conceivable how do we know that they are logically possible?" It seems to me that this idea is suffering from the same kind of vagueness that the idea of “Universal set” is. Aside from this matter, for the sake of argumentation I can dismiss these problems, but I have another question. How do we know that “Zombies” are not some kind of “Logically incoherent idea” in the logical spheres that we cannot conceive them?[iii] Another problem with this argument is that it is conceivable for example that 125897/125=258, but it is not logically possible. We can find so many examples. These examples are discussed by Chalmers in his mentioned unpublished work.
However, the second matter is a very deadly problem about Chalmers’ idea in all of his articles and books. To clarify the weak point I point out one of his methodologies that it is repeated in approximately each one of his works. He has used always some thought-experiment. However, there is a very big obstacle against thought-experiment that nobody is paying attention to. To show the fault in these experiments let suppose Turing Test. Why Turing has said that we should use an ignorant judge to evaluate the outcome? That is very clear. Knowing what is going on in so many situations prevents us to explore the idea. We are addicted to use introspection. In Turing Test we use an ignorant judge to eliminate this referring to introspection. This means that you should design an experiment and the others who are ignorant about the experiment methodology should evaluate it, but in thought-experiment everybody who is demanded to evaluate it is aware of the methodology then it cannot be a good experiment to base our theories on, unless we use formal computational method. For example Ned Block[iv], who is a Type-B Materialist in Chalmers’ point of view, has represented a Homunculi-Headed Robot by imagining;
… a body externally like a human body…but internally quiet different. The neurons from sensory organs are connected to a bank of light in a hallow cavity in the head. … Inside the cavity resides a group of little men. (p.238)
All the function of a human being is going to be done by this Homunculi-Headed Robot. He goes on to say that
What makes the homunculi -headed system (count the two systems as variants of a single system) just described a prima facie counterexample to (machine) functionalism is that there is prima facie doubt whether it has any mental states at all- especially whether it has what philosophers have variously called "qualitative states," "raw feels", or "immediate phenomenological qualities." (p.241)[v]
To show what the problem with these kinds of thought-experiment is, I quote Chalmers. He says
Many people also hold that we can conceive of an inverted world: one that is physically identical to ours, but in which some conscious states differ from the corresponding states in our world.” (2006)
Let examine Putnam’s twin earth thought-experiment to see what “My zombie twin” (Chalmers, 2006) means. Suppose our earth has two twins, the both of them are molecule for molecule similar to us. Also suppose that we know that one of them is inhabited by our real twins and the other one is resides by our zombie twins; we have no other information. How can we understand that which one of them is our zombie twin? Suppose a more realistic question. In Chalmers’ idea zombies are possible. Then we can infer that it is possible to find a planet with some people, let suppose they are not some odd fearsome ugly creatures who we see in science fiction films, but they are much like us however with some difference. Suppose their difference is like white skin and red skin difference. By the light of Chalmers it is possible that they are zombies, though it is not impossible for them to have a very civilized society. By the light of Julian Jaynes[vi] at least we can be agree with Chalmers that civilization can be produced independent of consciousness. Suppose we have travelled to a new planet of this kind and we do not know that these are zombies or conscious people like us? What should we do to understand? It seems that there are no philosophical arguments to answer the question. Usually we try to contact with them, speak with them, to see their behavior, and to gather some biological information about them. In contrast to Harris and Calvert (2003, p.555) who say
…naturalism has been unsuccessful in explaining several crucial ‘natural’ phenomena: the origin of the universe, the origin of universal laws and constants, the origin of life, and the origin of irreducible complexity.
we can just rely on this naturalistic arguments. If they are not enough to answer the mentioned question of mine then the only option that we have is to accept that there is nothing as “Consciousness” or maybe we conclude that we should re-define this notion in a new way to be able to explore it by these naturalistic methodology. When Chalmers is saying that we can conceive zombies he should say us what is the difference between us and zombies. To say that they are like us but the lack consciousness is not enough. This answer begs the question. It presupposes the meaning of consciousness, the very thing that we want to know. We need to know how Chalmers discerns a creature is conscious or not? Suppose we make a very high quality robot that it does everything that humankind does, and completely similar to a humankind, but Chalmers and other anti-physicalists do not know anything about that. Suppose we have sent one of these robots to his university to work with him as a colleague. How can he understand that? This is the big challenge that all anti-physicalists should be confronted with. How they understand that a creature is conscious or not, if they know nothing about its artificiality? In this way it seems that Block’s problem has been solved also. I have answered that in the endnote No. V.

[i] - David J. Chalmers, Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap, In (T. Alter & S. Walter, eds) Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism. Oxford University Press, 2006. Consciousness and its Place in Nature, In (S. Stich & F., Warfield, eds) Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind. Blackwell, 2003. Also in (D. Chalmers, ed) Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings (Oxford University Press, 2002). Reprinted (abridged) in ( W. Lycan & J. Prinz, eds) Mind and Cognition: A Reader (Blackwell, 2007). (His articles are available on his homepage: http://consc.net/papers.html)

[ii] - This Unpublished work is Available on website: http://consc.net/papers/2dargument.html

[iii] - I will discuss about epistemological problems with accepting the idea of “inconceivability of some logical possible state of affairs” elsewhere.

[iv] - Ned Block, Troubles with Functionalisms. In Readings in philosophy and Cognitive Science, By Alvin A. Goldman. MIT Press, 1993.

[v] - I am not comparing Block and Chalmers. But there are some kinds of problems that Block has referred to them regarding functionalism. I think that some of them are not the problem of functionalism at all. For example in page 241 of the mentioned book he replies to the objection that the mentioned system works so slowly, by saying “it is hard to see why the systems’ time scale should matter…” Aftermath he has given an example to support his idea, but unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, his example opposes his conclusion; “When we observe the creatures, they seem almost inanimate. But when we view the time-lapse movies… .” Does not it mean that we are observing the functions and behavior? We think that a creature is animate if and only if we observe the function of an animate creature.

[vi] - Julian Jaynes, 1990. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of Bicameral Mind, Houghton Milfflin Co., Boston.

A brief Response to Irreducible complexity

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 07:13:15 CST

By: Arash Daklan

The idea of irreducible complexity, in my point of view, is suffering from a very strong presupposition. For an example see Michael Behe (1996)[i] and also Minnish and Meyer (2004)[ii]. Behe uses a mouse trap as an example to show that there are some organisms which cannot have functions without each one of its parts. This approach is flawed for two reasons. At first, it is not important that a mouse trap has not its function, unless it is completed. The function is the sort of things that are important for us and not for the nature itself, then if you put aside the teleological interpretation it will not be important that the organism has any function or not, even it is not important that the organism as a whole is dead or alive. There is a way that dead organisms can develop to live ones. Minnish and Meyer in their mentioned essay say that “The data from Y. pestis presented here seems to indicate that loss of one constituent in the system leads to the gradual loss of others.” In the previous sentence they have confessed that “Contrary to popular belief, we have no detailed account for the evolution of any molecular machine.” However, they have resulted in their article that “Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity.” The second matter is that the meaning of “Gradual loss of others” in Minnish and Meyer means that we are thinking about the living cell. Let see how it is possible to develop a complete living cell by a very short life-time cells. Suppose the below code:

It is shaped by two different strings, A and B. This is the DNA code of a living cell. Every box is a sequence of Adenine, Temin, Cytosine, and Guanine. Suppose that it is the DNA code of a very unstable form of a living cell; a DNA-like code[iii], maybe. It will die very soon. Additionally, perhaps it cannot duplicate itself. After its death the string will be collapsed from the weakest part that is indicted by a dark line:

Each of these strings can be divided into two strings:

They can make new compounds as below:

And they can shape each one of the below forms:

This schema can show us that it is very natural to think that life can emerge from non-living matter by passing through the middle stages as living-like organisms; the organisms which could not duplicate themselves and die very soon. In this way if we accept that the cell organism is reducible to its DNA and its genetic codes then we can find that it can go through the same way that Darwin says in his Origin of species. By using Darwin’s Famous claim in the sixth chapter of his book:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.
Behe wants to show that he has found this kind of organism. I refer to Dawkins (1986)[iv] for answer to his claim. According to DNA codes, I say that it is possible for an organism to improve itself step by step in DNA code levels because of biochemical causes. The events in chemical level may be deemed to be an emergent phenomenon in organism levels. I mean that even if we confront a gap in the evolution steps in organisms we cannot suddenly infer that Darwin’s idea is flawed. We do not know so many things about the biochemical realities in the beginning era of life. For example we think that the life forms have emerged after composing of atmosphere. However, it is possible that it can be started before that. If we pay attention that in those eras the measure of background radiation resulting from uranium decaying was more than nowadays; just 3 billions years ago it was 1.75 times the contemporary measure, then it is very natural to think that the probability of mutation was much more than nowadays, especially when we see that these mutations are very easier to occur in the simpler strings of the DNA-like codes. There are so many things that we do not know. Reductionism is not the solution as the same way that irreducibility is. I mean, if you think that some complexity is not reducible you are not obliged to do more, but if you say that you can reduce something to something else then you are obliged to explain “How”. If an ir-reductionst is obliged to do more either –as I will show later, he will fall in reductionism or they will produce questions which cannot be answered by science. Such as “Who is the designer and what is the designer's purpose?” This is the idea of TOR that I explained above; you should choose the one which enforces you to do more researches because your system of beliefs is never complete; because of GIT. I do not accept Millstein’s idea that one can say that we are wasting time[v]. Who can say that which action is time-wasting and which one is not, if we remember that it took about 1700 years for us to solve Zeno’s paradoxes, or it took, at least, about 2000 years for us to make an instrument for flying. Just suppose that if we had believed Lord Kevin’s foresight we could not make airplane. Science does not ask that “Is something possible or not?” It also does not hear any person who says that something is impossible. It just asks a question “How it is possible to do something?” There is no example in the history of science that you can find that it has been failed to find a way to complete its mission.

[i] - Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, New York: Free
Press, 1996.

[ii] - Scott A. Minnich and Stephen C. Meyer, 2004. Genetic analysis of coordinate flagellar and type III regulatory circuits in pathogenic bacteria, Available on website (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=389)

[iii] - This DNA like code, I think, maybe is the ancestor of the both DNA and RNA. That is not surprising that we haven’t found it, because it is very likely that after the era of DNA and RNA these living-like cells may be disappeared. Maybe they have been eaten by the first DNA-armed cell as food.
[iv] - Richard Dawkins, 1986. The Blind Watchmaker. Harlow, Longman.
[v] - Robert L. Millstein, 2003. HOW NOT TO ARGUE FOR THE INDETERMINISM OF EVOLUTION: A LOOK AT TWO RECENT ATTEMPTS TO SETTLE THE ISSUE. Andreas Hüttemann, (ed.), Determinism in Physics and Biology, Paderborn: Mentis, 91-107. (Available on website: http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/millstein/papers/millstein_indeterminism.pdf )

Links

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:36:09 CST

1- Think again

About Stanley Fish - Think Again
Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 10 books. His new book on higher education, "Save the World On Your Own Time," will be published in 2008.

2- Contribute on Reason project: http://www.samharris.org/site/the_reason_project/

3- Faith In Public Life

Are you going to hell?

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:07:53 CST

A Pragmatist and a Lobbyist on Atheism

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:49:06 CST

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN February 23, 2008 ALBANY The atheist lobby, in the blond, pregnant person of Jennifer Lange, waited with diminishing patience for the elevator in the Legislative Office Building. Ms. Lange checked her watch one last time, then rounded a corner into the corridor and skipped down four flights of stairs. The back way to Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky’s office was just one of those useful things she knew about the inner workings of Albany. More on New York Times

A Neurology of Belief

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:45:25 CST

The notion that all mental acts, all mental processes and dispositions have specific neural correlates has become much easier to explore in the past 15 years with the development of PET scanning and especially functional MRI. We can now, for example, demonstrate activity in the visual cortex when a subject views a test object, and we can pick up similar activity if we ask the subject to imagine or make a mental picture of what the object looks like. Functional brain imagery has also been used in relation to more complex mental processes, such as those involved in economic decisions. There have, however, been no comparable studies addressed to the neural correlates of belief in general until Harris, Sheth, and Cohen’s pioneering article in the present issue of Annals of Neurology. [More]

My Nose, My Brain, My Faith

Peacefulplanet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:37:39 CST

By DAVID VAN BIEMA
Jan. 10, 2008 Your nose is one of the less complicated parts of your body, and yet we credit it with considerable intelligence in the area of truth vs. falsehood. We “sniff out a lie.” We say “something smells fishy.” Now studies suggest that something more than metaphor may be at work here--specifically, brain science. The same research may also shed unexpected light on religious faith. [More]

Brainstorming

Peacefulplanet — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:21:49 CST

Our Wiki Whiteboard

This page is where we can collect ideas from everyone in the group. Please send your ideas via: Pofp.articles@gmail.com

You also can click here to participate in our Discussion Forum.

First Topic:

Donald Davidson in his Book Problems of Rrationality asks an important question:"How then can we explain, or even tolerate as possible, irrational thoughts, actions, or emotions?" (p.170)Can we tolerate irrational ideas, actions, and emotions? To what extent we can tolerate them?

Team Members

Peacefulplanet — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:26:01 CST

Name	Email	Phone Number	Role
Aso Salih	aso.salih@gmail.com		Adminstrator of Website
Narin Mohammadi	Narin.kurd@gmail.com		Administrator
ArashDaklan	arash.daklan@gmail.com	+964 (0)750 751 1467	Project Manager

See also: Get Involved | Our Activities | Brainstorming|

Submit your Articles

Peacefulplanet — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:12:13 CST

Send us Articles, News, Reports, Photos, Paintings, Book reviews, and … For sending Articles, News, and any material that is supposed to be published on website please use the below E-Mail:Pofp.Articles@gmail.com

Please send your complete C.V and one photo of yourself with the matter you mail.

About Us

Peacefulplanet — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:10:19 CST

We are a group of social activists with different backgrounds in science, philosophy, art, humanitarians, and the like who want to get involved in the development of civil society in the Middle East. We are trying to gather a complete data base about the latest scientific discoveries and also the related philosophical discussions, and disseminate it among Middle Eastern thinkers. In this way we hope that we can help the development of the Middle Eastern societies to Secularism, Tolerance, and Liberalism.Also we are determined to disseminate the modern education system in the region based on scientific thinking. We need some people to cooperate us.

We have started our project by three members:

1- Aso Saleh: Electronic Engineer, member of reporters without borders, Stockholm, Swedish.

2- Narin Mohammadi: Free Journalist, Photographer, Women Rights Activist and writer. Iraq.

3- Arash Daklan: BSc Degree in Physics and Master Degree in Philosophy of science, writer, Civic Activist.Iraq.

Be a member

See also: Brainstorming | Our Activities | List of The articles | Team Members