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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the give-thanks-to-those-who-speak-out-for-freedom dept.

A gang armed with machetes has hacked a secular blogger to death at his home in Dhaka in the fourth such murder in Bangladesh since the start of the year, an activist group and police have said.

Niloy Chatterjee, who used the pen-name Niloy Neel, was murdered on Friday after the men broke into his flat in the capital's Goran neighbourhood, according to the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network, which was alerted to the attack by a witness.

"They entered his room in the fifth floor and shoved his friend aside and then hacked him to death. He was a listed target of the Islamist militants," the network's head Imran H Sarker, told the AFP news agency.

Chatterjee, 40, was a critic of religious extremism that led to bombings in mosques and the killing of numerous civilians, Sarker said.

First found here: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/fourth-secular-bangladesh-blogger-hacked-death-150807102408712.html
Search led to these sites: http://www.itv.com/news/2015-08-07/machete-wielding-gang-kill-blogger-in-his-home/
http://www.firstpost.com/world/dhakas-secular-claims-get-increasingly-blood-soaked-as-another-bangladeshi-blogger-is-killed-2383420.html
http://www.nirapadnews.com/english/2015/08/07/news-id:29841/


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  • (Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Saturday August 08 2015, @11:12PM

    by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Saturday August 08 2015, @11:12PM (#220037) Homepage

    Ah. Either a militant agnostic or a True Believer in a sorry joke of an attempt to intimidate atheists into shutting up and going back to where they belong at the back of the bus.

    First, are you agnostic with respect to Bigfoot, or leprechauns, or Zeus? Considering that the definitive text that serves as "evidence" for the existence of YHWH and his pantheon opens with a faery tale about an enchanted garden with talking animals and an angry wizard, might you not accept that agnosticism with respect to the Abrahamic religions is as childish a position as agnosticism with respect to Quetzalcoatl?

    Humans have searched for the divine for millennia and failed to even agree upon the most basic facts relating to the gods. Are there many, or just one? If one, which one? Do gods actually manifest in crackers and wine on the verbal command of certain shamans, or do they have blue skin and thousands of arms?

    In stark contrast to religion and its dependence on revelation, tradition, and faith, science has discovered previously-unimaginable facts about the Universe. And everything we've learned about through science practically screams that the gods simply couldn't do the things claimed for them. Are we supposed to remain agnostic about a man born of a virgin who becaume a zombie who beamed up to the mothership, but have confidence in the evolutionary and molecular biology as well as physics that tells us it's all childish bullshit?

    Once you understand the true nature of the gods, agnosticism is a laughable position. And that true nature is most obvious: the gods are a stock character in a certain class of fiction whose sole purpose is to provide an unquestionably authoritative voice for the authors of the fiction. Within the story, the gods establish their authority by doing that which is truly impossible; having thus demonstrated their bona fides, the gods go on to parrot whatever the conman getting the revelation wants them to say. And it is obvious and essential that the gods do that which truly is impossible and not the merely impressive, else some other conman might come along and actually perform the feat and thus usurp the power of the gods and the original conman.

    If it's extremist to laugh in the face of the priests, then call me extreme. But humanity remains chained so long as we fail to give the priests and their lackeys and dupes the complete and utter lack of respect they so desperately deserve.

    I mean, seriously? A talking plant gives magic wand lessons to the reluctant hero, or the triumphant hero rides a flying horse into the sunset, and we're not supposed to laugh?

    Cheers,

    b&

    --
    All but God can prove this sentence true.
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 09 2015, @02:14AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 09 2015, @02:14AM (#220105) Journal

    Either a militant agnostic or a True Believer in a sorry joke of an attempt to intimidate atheists into shutting up and going back to where they belong at the back of the bus.

    Do you know anyone who can be cowed by moderately bad poetry? I don't think it was an attempt at intimidation.

    And everything we've learned about through science practically screams that the gods simply couldn't do the things claimed for them.

    No, it doesn't. If your philosophy is based on things which can be observed, then by the foundation, it has nothing to say about stuff that can't be observed. But this sort of thing contains one of the more well-known cases of cognitive dissonance in religion. It is routinely claimed that whatever supernatural beings we're supposed to believe in make themselves known to us. But at the same time, they don't. The being who reveals and hides at the same time has to be part of the most annoying religious argument of all time, namely, that you known the truth, but refuse to acknowledge it.

    • (Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Sunday August 09 2015, @02:28AM

      by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Sunday August 09 2015, @02:28AM (#220111) Homepage

      If your philosophy is based on things which can be observed, then by the foundation, it has nothing to say about stuff that can't be observed.

      A wise man once remarked that the unobservable and nonexistent are indistinguishable. Sure, there might be an invisible dragon in your garage that breaths heatless flames...but until it actually interacts with something else in the Cosmos it might as well not be there at all.

      b&

      --
      All but God can prove this sentence true.