Vatican: The Viagra Pope

The deal raised a storm in Italy. Negotiations were top secret, but the reputed financial paper „Milano Finanza“ broke the news: Pope Benedict XVi is going to buy the Pfizer Viagra manufacturing plant in Nerviano near Milano. The deal will be done in the name of the venerable brotherhood "Figli dell'Immacolata Concezione" (children of the immaculate conception). The order tries to present the takeover as a good dead. It may save 300 jobs as Pfizer considered to close down the Milano plant despite the protest of trade unions, say the brethren, who are already running Pfizer´s medical research centre in Nerviano since three years.

The Vatican keeps mum about the holy father´s reach for the blue pill. An anonymous insider, asked by the Swiss paper “Blick”, tried to play the story down, proposing that the factory may shift to less controversial products once in immaculate hands. But there are other representatives of the Catholic Church like archbishop Arrieta (Spain) who openly recommend Viagra to brighten the sex life of the faithful - of course only those living in heterosexual marriages. “The faithful can take Viagra”, Arrieta said recently. "Married couples have the right to experience the sexual act."

Behind the closed doors of the Vatican, "Viagra della Papa” is the talk of the town. It is expected that it may soon be roaring business and bing some sexappeal to the fading attraction of Catholicism, too.

New Honorary Associates

Rationalist International is pleased to welcome three new Honorary Associates.

Maryam Namazie

Maryam Namazie lives in London. She was born in Iran. Namazie is a prominent human rights activist, author and broadcaster and has been leading campaigns against stonings and executions in Islamic societies, opposing the veiling of children, opposing Sharia or religious laws, defending the banning of religious symbols from schools and public institutions, calling for secularism, de-religionisation of society and fpr freedom of expression. Previously, Namazie was the elected Executive Director of the International Federation of Iranian Refugee, a refugee run organisation with 60 branches in 20 countries worldwide for seven years. As director of the organisation, she campaigned on behalf of thousands of Iranian asylum seekers and refugees having intervened successfully on many cases. In 2005 she was awarded "Secularist of the Year" by National Secular Society, a prominent freethought organisation in the UK.

Jocelyn Bézecourt

Jocelyn Bézecourt lives in Paris. He won his PhD in astrophysics in the Toulouse Observatory on Evolution of Galaxies and Gravitational Lensing. He is an active and vocal atheist who has presented his positions in conferences, articles and books. 2006 appeared: Against Benedict XVI; The Vatican against liberties" (French), co-written with Gérard Da Silva.

Pekka Elo

Pekka Elo lives in Helsinki. He has worked for rationalism, humanism and philosophy in Finland since 1970's. He is a long time president of the Finnish Humanist Union and editor of the Finnish Humanist Journal. Elo works in the Finnish National Board of Education and is responsible for the secular ethical and philosophy instruction. He is also a member of the National Matriculation Examination Board. He also has international activities as a governing board member of AIPPh (Association Internationale des Professeurs de Philosophie). He is responsible for UNESCO World Heritage Education and ASP-Schools in Finland. Pekka Elo has lectured in various international conferences and he has published over 150 books and articles.

Beware of holy scriptures!

Reading of God-sanctioned violence makes aggressive, prove researchers

Not only action films and killer computer games can increase aggressive behavior. New research proves: literary texts do the same, especially those offering divine justification for acts of violence. And their influence is not limited to religious extremists. Scientists of the reputed Institute for Social Research (ISR) at Michigan University (USA) found that reading about violence in the name of God provokes aggression in average believers and even non-believers. “It's important to note that we obtained evidence supporting this hypothesis in samples of university students who were, in our estimation, not typical of the terrorists who blow up civilians," wrote Brad Bushman, professor of psychology and communication at ISR. "Even among our participants who were not religiously devout, exposure to God-sanctioned violence increased subsequent aggression. That the effect was found in such a sample may attest to the insidious power of exposure to literary scriptural violence."

Prof. Bradman and his colleagues conducted two independent studies with students from Brigham Young University (USA) and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands) and published the results in the magazine Psycholocal Science (Volume 18, No.3, "When God Sanctions Killing. Effects of Scriptural Violence on Aggression"). After reporting their religious affiliations and beliefs (USA: 99 percent of participants believed in God and the Bible; Netherlands: 50 percent believed in God and 27 percent in the Bible), both groups were given the same text for reading. It was an adaptation of a passage from the King James Bible that discribed the brutal rape and murder of a woman and her husband´s call for revenge on her attackers (Old Testament). Half of the participants of each group read a version that included a sentence in which God commanded his followers to take arms against others, half got a version without this sentence. Half were told the text came from the Old Testament, half were made believe it came from some ancient scroll discovered by archologists. After reading the text, the test persons participated in a simple reaction test, each of them competing with a partner from outside the groups. The winner, they were told, would be able to "blast" the losing partner with noise as loud as fire alarm (about 105 decibels) - a common experimental measure of aggression. The researchers found that both the religious and non-religious students blasted their partners with louder noise, when told that the text they read came from the Bible. Aggressive responses also increased with participants who had read the text including the direct reference to God calling for violence. However, the increased level of aggression was always greater among believers than among non-believers. "Our results further confirm previous research showing that exposure to violent media causes people to behave more aggressively if they identify with the violent characters than if they do not," Prof. Bushman said.

Established in 1948, the ISR is one of the world´s leading institutes for development and application of social science methodology and collaborates with social scientists in more than 60 nations.

India: Art student arrested for 'obscene' depiction of Hindu gods

Chandra Mohan Srilamantula (22), final year student in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) in Vadodara (Gujarat), has been arrested on 12th May 2007 from the premises of the university for painting what Hindu radicals considered obscene. Under the pressure of public protest, he has been released on bail after four days imprisonment. But at MSU, one of India`s best known art colleges, freedom of expression and freedom of art are still under siege.

Chandra Mohan is a bachelor in fine arts from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University and received the Lalit Kala National Akademi Award for his work. As part of his final examination, along with other students, he exhibited his graphics in the faculty building. Though the exhibition was not public, but meant for internal assesment of the art students only, Hindu fundamentalists barged into the Fine Arts faculty and vandalised art exhibits of gods and goddesses. The artist was personally attacked and beaten up.

Chandra Mohan Srilamantula on a protest poster

Called by the university authorities, police entered the campus. However, they did not stop the attackers, but arrested the victim. Chandra Mohan is being charged under sections 153A, 114, and 295 of the Penal Code for “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race etc, commiting acts prejudicial to the harmony of the public” He was denied bail and transferred to Central Jail. Emboldened by this, BJP is demanding that all faculty and students in the department be suspended or expelled. The pro- radical Hindu Hindu Vice-Chancellor has suspended Dean Shivji Panikker who publicly backed Chandra Mohan and refused to close the controversial exhibition.

Students and teachers of MSU are agitating since the arrest of their colleague. The University Teachers Association accuses the Vice Chancellor of allowing the fundamentalist mob to enter the campus and suspending the Dean. They also demand the arrest of VHP goon Neeraj Jain, who was captured on camera roughing up Chandra Mohan during his arrest. Jain, who later openly threatened “action” against the university, if the art student and the Dean were not thrown out, is still at large, and no FIR has been registered against him.

Indian Rationalist Association and the Rationalist Renaissance Forum "Navodhan Vedi" condemned the attack on the artist and strongly defended freedom of expression. In a meeting held at New Delhi on 13th May with Sanal Edamaruku on the chair, a resolution moved by poet Sachidanandan against the arrest of Chandra Mohan and the scandalous events in the MSU was passed unanimously. In Mumbai, veteran painter Tyeb Mehta joined in a protest outside Jehangir Art Gallery. At Delhi, actress Nandita Das spoke at a protest demonstration.

This is not the first attempt of fundamentalists in Gujarat to strangulate freedom of art. Internationally renowned artist M F Hussain and his works has been suffering several physical and legal attacks for allegedly “obscene” presentation of Hindu gods.