White Cliffs of Dover
You've probably heard of the White Cliffs of Dover, England. Today, we look at a guy who likes to hike naked around the White Cliffs. He calls himself Muddy Toes.
The path above is called the Zigzag Path or Langdon Stairs, a steep and narrow path ascending from the beach at Langdon Bay to the top of the cliffs.
Muddy Toes showing us another view of himself on the Zigzag Path.
On the top of the cliffs, you can hike on a path called the North Downs Way.
Above, Muddy Toes walking along the North Downs Way. The port of Dover is in the distance.
Dover is also the site of historic Dover Castle, dating from the 12th century.
Muddy Toes above the port of Dover. The stairs behind him are part of a path called the Dame Vera Lynn Way that ascends from the port to a viewpoint at the top of the cliffs.
Muddy Toes at the viewpoint above the port of Dover. Dover is one of the worlds's busiest ports for maritime passengers, with over 11 million passengers a year passing though it.
Along the way, our hiker stopped into the St. Margaret of Antioch Church. Is he bending down to pray? No, it looks like he has something else in mind.
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We end with an earlier photo of Muddy Toes, taken in 2009 at a park in Kent. The sign says "Riding by permit only." Muddy Toes invited viewers to contact him to obtain a permit to ride.
11 comments:
Not a fan of people who disrespect houses of faith.
As usual this was interesting. I really liked that last picture of him with his erect penis!
@Anon - I believe organized religion and all its manifestations should be mocked and ridiculed, because all religions are false. The only reason that people believe them is childhood indoctrination. Example: half the population of the Earth thinks that after death, your soul goes to Heaven or Hell, and the other half thinks that you get reincarnated. Both are matters of “faith”, meaning there’s no evidence to prove it (I’m talking evidence strong enough to convince the other half of the Earth’s population, not some anecdote about seeing the light while dying). With no evidence, the obvious conclusion is that both are false.
So, since all organized religions are false, then all houses of faith are evil, and I am a fan of people who disrespect them.
P.S. I can admire houses of faith for their beauty – the stained glass of Chartres Cathedral, the glorious dome of Hagia Sophia, the columns of the Parthenon – but I don’t believe the faith that inspired Chartres any more than I believe the faith in the goddess Athena that inspired the Parthenon.
This man seems less unashamed and more like someone with a mental health issue that needs treatment.
I almost dread asking, but are you less rigid on the subject of dis- or un-organized religions? And is it necessary, is it even in the best interest of the position you put forward here, to make the huge leap from disbelief to disrespect? From people believing in something you don't believe in to insisting that those people believe in something evil? I, too, adore Chartres. Do you consider that the people who made it, carved its portals and created its glass, were doing what they did in ignorance, in fact in the service of evil? That seems like a lot to take on. Thank you for listening.
@Anon - I think I've stirred up a hornet's nest. Yes, I think it is intellectually necessary to make the leap from disbelief to disrespect. Disbelief is the only honest, rational position, given the total lack of evidence for belief. Then how can I respect dishonest, irrational institutions that propagate lies (and that profit from doing so)?
I should have been more clear in my use of the term "evil". To me, people's beliefs are not evil per se. Many traditional religious beliefs are noble and beautiful (although they're not true). What is evil is indoctrinating people, especially children, into these false beliefs. (By the way, indoctrinating children is necessary for the continued existence of every organized religion. If they had to rely on converting skeptical adults, the religion would quickly die out.)
So when I said that houses of faith are evil, I meant that at least part of what goes on in them, namely the continued propagation of lies, is evil. Other things that go on in houses of faith may not be evil. They may sing beautiful music. They may support charities. But what brings them together is based on a foundation of lies.
My tirade is against organized religion. If a person, or a small group of people, make up their own religion, then I consider them to be deluded but harmless as long as they’re not spreading their delusional beliefs to other people.
Disgusting.
But if they hadn't believed, would there be a Chartres? And is the claim of the atheist (and atheists are as multifarious and subjective as believers) to determine the criterion for judging reality the only claim? Not a hornets' nest, more a human puzzle, and any one perspective that seeks to define reality for others or all is oppressive. Unashamedly showing your bare ass in a Christian church seems unnecessarily rude, and "in the end", merely silly and desperately offensive. And it does nothing at all for the victims of false inculcation, least of all for the underaged.
@Anon - You say “atheists are as multifarious and subjective as believers.” Not true. There are multifarious types of believers: belief in the Christian god, belief in the Hindu gods, belief in the ancient Greek gods, belief in voodoo, etc. There is one type of unbelief: belief in none of the above. Belief is based on subjective claims. Unbelief is very objective. It is based on the lack of objective evidence supporting religion.
You say “any one perspective that seeks to define reality for others or all is oppressive.” I disagree. Science is the best tool that humans have developed to define reality. It is objective, not subjective, and its conclusions are the result of rigorous testing, not somebody’s opinion or some mystical sacred book. Insisting that what science has discovered and tested is true is not oppressive. Of course, if it contradicts your religious beliefs (like the overwhelming evidence for evolution contradicts the Bible’s fairy-tale story of creation), then you might feel oppressed, but you’re not being oppressed, you’re simply wrong. Just like if you believe the moon is made of green cheese, and you’re told that we have evidence that it’s not (moon rocks returned by astronauts), you’re not being oppressed, you’re simply wrong.
If the builders of Chartres hadn’t believed, would there be a Chartres? No, I’m afraid there wouldn’t be, and that would be a shame. But they might have created something else. Frank Lloyd Wright was an atheist (“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature”) and look what he created.
I don't want to distract you from your primary concern here, unashamed males, but at the risk of belaboring an ancient and inexhaustibly belaborable subject, I would like to explain that when I said that "atheists are as multifarious and subjective as believers" I was speaking not only in reference to belief, but to the infinite variety of all human perspectives and ways of interpreting the world. History, which is as elusive as any god, or--at least so far--any lasting or complete scientific explanation of reality, nevertheless provides plenty of examples of individuals who happily occupy less rigid poles on the spectrum between absolute faith in the unseen and absolute rejection of faith in anything unseen ("unseen" meaning currently unverifiable or scientifically projected to be impossible to verify). And the history of humans on earth, like the life history of any individual, shows that belief, like science and its methods and standards, are (if not in its essence, often in its conclusions and applications) fluid and subject to change (an example of the latter might be the decision of the scientific community in the US in the '70s to remove homosexuality from the list of medical illnesses). My point is only that the widest berth for human interpretation, like being open to the widest range of sources of inspiration and being tolerant of the widest range of human speculation and interpretation of experience (engaging mind and brain) makes for a richer experience...
I love so much of Frank Lloyd Wright's work, but his pantheism is neither original nor atheism. I love Michelangelo (who, as I've commented before, was a great lover of the unashamed male), and I wouldn't want to temper or tag his greatness with the reminder that he was a Christian; that is, in science and religion, which many people professionally active in one or the other sphere do not find incompatible, time has taught us that the living are wiser not to judge--much less edit--too harshly, the dead. I judge the image of a man choosing to comment on Christianity by mooning in church not too harshly, but neither do I rank him very high when it comes to the creative discourse, always more constructive and persuasive when it's engaged in with respect.
One final question: isn't it always smarter to look beyond "what you're told", whether the subject be the presence of dairy products in the composition of the moon or even higher things? Shouldn't you start by asking who is doing the telling, and what is the purpose of the telling, and what are things really made of? That's just science.
Thanks, unashamedmale, for spurring me to say something on this topic. I haven't been this worked up about it since I read The God Delusion, by one of my favorite writers, Richard Dawkins, also inspiring, I'm sure you agree.
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