BLASPHEMY - APPROBATION

I hate the fact that I'm publishing so little original content lately, though I assure you I'm still generating it (mostly on post-it notes) regularly enough. Some day, I'll kick out another SATIETY, just... not in the foreseeable future. I worked for about 30 consecutive days last month, which makes a handy excuse for why I'm not blogging much.

The biggest contributor to my delinquency, however, is my recent decision to sign up for a Twitter account.

Keeping true to my past tendencies, I was plenty late to this latest incarnation of the social networking game... but once I tried it on for size, I found it to be a wonderous utility. Much like how I praised this very blog for encouraging me to improve my own creative writing, Twitter has reinvigorated this languishing hobby of mine. And it does so in a more accessible way. The problem with blogging is that it requires a pretty significant chunk of my time to write up an essay or article that I'm willing to unleash upon the public. It requires a good bit of revision and an even better bit of staring at my monitor like an idiot while I wait for yet-unspoken sentence fragments to clink into place.

Twitter, microblogging in essence, at once minimizes this time requirement and also introduces a new challenge by imposing its 140-character limit. It is much easier to write a 140-character tweet than a 500 word post, and yet it is much harder to get something entertaining and worth reading to fit into 140 characters than it is to barf out 500 words, hoping a few stick in the mind of the casual reader.

Twitter has made blogging fun again. It's encouraged me to share more of the dozens of interesting and weird things I encounter every day, and coupled with the raw communicative capabilities of my new jesusPhone 3GS, it's never been easier to share those experiences with a sentence, a picture, or a sound bite.

Follow me at @RITmusic2k Wink.

To take a more blasphemous turn, I just wanted to give a shout out to the wonderful Evolution 101 podcast, by Dr. Zack Moore. Newly liberated by my jesusPhone 3GS, I've taken to listening to music and podcasts at work, and I'm making my way through the archives of Evolution 101 again; I never forgot how informative and accessible the material was, but I knew that I'd forgotten much of the material itself, so it was a good time to listen to them once more.

It's easily found on iTunes, and also has a presence on the web:

Evolution 101

If you want to learn more about evolution and molecular biology than you ever thought you'd enjoy learning, try Dr. Zack on for size and thank me later for the recommendation. You'll find me over at #robotpickuplines.

BLASPHEMY - PARTIALITY

Gay civil marriages ruin the sanctity of religious marriage to the same extent that gays eating crackers ruins the sanctity of communion. That is to say, inside the religious congregation it has no effect, and outside the religious congregation it has absolutely no effect.

While California is temporarily shading its eyes from the Enlightenment that has proven no trouble for the likes of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa, I believe it won't be long before the California State constitution gets reamended* and every person previously denied the privilege will be able to wed the person they love.

There is a certain tack I'd like to see the state take in doing this. One of the biggest talking points of the Prop 8 scum** was that their churches would be obligated to recognize and marry gay couples if gay marriage were legalized. Nevermind the fact that this isn't remotely close to the truth, let's make sure that when we finally and permanently legalize gay marriage in California, we explicitly state the difference between civil marriage and religious marriage. Let's emphasize that churches will retain the right to refuse service to anyone not wearing a shirt, shoes, or who prefers genitalia that match their own.

We need to encourage them to disallow same-sex relationships within their congregations, and this is why:

Make them wear their bigotry on their sleeves. The more publicly their distasteful behaviors are presented, the sooner society will choke them off.

Let's hope that brave gay couples who want a religious wedding can stand up for themselves and leave congregations that won't support them, and move to more progressive and forward-thinking churches, or better yet, away from churches in general. Politically active religious groups feed on people, and need to be starved into submission and out of relevance.

* - unamended? remended? remedied? repealed? remodeled? role-modeled? Something like that.

** - a kinder word than I really wanted to type.

BLASPHEMY - REBUKE

Aaaaaaaaand another post!

There's sort of a trend here... while my blog post scratch pad still exists (call it a rough idea repository, perhaps), I'm not drawing from it lately.  To do so requires a concerted effort and time commitment to Write A Blog Post.  I'm generally busier than what would allow this on a regular basis.

But, I do still take time to read other blogs on related topics, and often enough I find a post or comment that gets my gears turning, and before I realize it I've penned an elaborate response.  A few seconds after I realize I've done it again, I say to myself, "Self, this belongs on Prose Justice."

The original thread was over at Homosecular Gaytheist.

And so it gets pasted here.  Oh well.  It's not mine from scratch, but it's CADAVER.

Here's the comment:

Some helpful clarification in the discussion:

1. Generally, Christians differentiate between Creator and creation. The latter would necessarily have a Creator, while the same would not be said for the former. This would explain why atheists who don’t accept this argument tend to cite the same argument ad nauseum (”Your creator must have been created too! PWN’D!) and why a lot of Christians, rather than showing a little forethought and knowledge of their argument, sit slack-jawed wondering what just happened.

The argument is not stuff comes from other stuff, until you get to the biggest stuffer ever. That is dumb. The argument is simply to highlight the distinction between creation and creator and show that creation highly implies a creator.

2. The second objection is actually one of the most honest objections that I find atheists make in various forms to religion and to God, which is just that in their eyes God is cruel, so why serve him. Christopher Hitchens was never more honest than when he said in his most recent book, that even if God existed, Hitchens would be a part of the devil’s party. And looking at the world and seeing that as how things were designed by God, I can’t say that I disagree with that conclusion, except for one little thing…

My religion, Christianity, teaches that the world is not as it is supposed to be. It is screwed up. People are screwed up. Relationships are screwed up. That is pretty much conceded, though there is some disagreement to the degree that sin has affected the world and not just people. The two views being either we (people) are the problem and the world would be “perfect” without us in the equation, and the view that we are the biggest problem, but sin has affected everything in creation as well (I would put myself in the second camp, by the way). So, the good news is that both atheists and Christians should find some agreement in saying, “Something ain’t right!”

That leads to the second issue in that objection, which is that God is therefore culpable for the misery that is in the world. The good news for believers is that the Bible does have an answer. The bad news is that it really is sin is our fault and not God’s, even though he is all-powerful. If you read the Bible, that is actually what it teaches - man is responsible, God is sovereign. Believe me when I say, Mr. Atheist, I feel your pain. That is a tough pill to swallow, and any sincere Christian should be the first to admit that that is a difficult teaching. It has actually led some to fashion an understanding of God that he is not all-powerful or that man is not a responsible agent, but ultimately the Bible teaches both.

So Christianity is not without its difficulties, but let me say this final thing: taking God out of the equation doesn’t make the situation any better. You still have a screwed up world, you still have evil and violence, but now there is no real solution. That is just the way the world is. At least with God, you have some hope that things will be fixed one day, while without him, you really have no reason to expect things to be any different or better ever. Why should you? Plus, it makes the idea of “better” a moving target, which is a problem in and of itself.

I am not even toying with the idea that this will satisfy everyone, but I do hope it at least allows people on both sides to understand the other a little better.

And here's my reply:

Trey, I'd like to address a couple points you brought up: "The argument is not stuff comes from other stuff, until you get to the biggest stuffer ever. That is dumb. The argument is simply to highlight the distinction between creation and creator and show that creation highly implies a creator." You've probably heard atheists disregard the 'creation requires a creator' argument as tautological and/or circular, but even besides that is the greater issue that when an atheist looks at your analogy and at the world, they conclude that what you call 'creation' most definitely does *not* imply a conscious creator. We can all see the fingerprint of a house's maker in a house because we all have great knowledge of houses, and we can see them being built by people. One can appreciate that houses are logically planned out. When you look at a planet, however, or a body, all the mechanisms at work that yield those end products are documented and understandable, and they show no real signs of intelligent planning. I wear glasses because my eyes are not perfect. People get cancer because their bodies are not perfect. Almost all planets are uninhabitable because their orbits are not perfect. So on and so forth. There's a very clear trail of evidence that explains this... basically everything about us, everything about our solar system is cobbled together by mechanisms that worked just well enough to persist... exactly as science verifies, and exactly not what a perfect creator being would have created. Your answer to this, is sin. But if this entire universe was created by your god, then sin is either a direct manifestation of his, or a creation of one of his creations. I can envision a more perfect god than yours: one that did not allow for imperfection in his creation. Your god is either unable or unwilling. If man is responsible for sin, then God is responsible for creating man with the ability to ruin all God created. That's a pretty complicated and convoluted explanation for the imperfection we all acknowledge as existing in the world. Science does a better job explaining it in far fewer steps, and without requiring any mental acrobatics. In response to your last point, "taking God out of the equation doesn’t make the situation any better. You still have a screwed up world, you still have evil and violence, but now there is no real solution. That is just the way the world is. At least with God, you have some hope that things will be fixed one day" We think it does make things better, because it removes the sense of complacency people have with suffering. Christians may sit around waiting for someone else to fix the problem, or they convince themselves that the problem is unfixable, and simply wait for their heavenly reward where nothing is ever going to go wrong. We atheists realize that there's nobody out there to take care of our problems for us, so it is up to us to do it. We have no overbearing force telling us not to bother. It's only up to us to learn enough about our problems that we can in turn solve them. Rational inquiry, not faith, is the mechanism responsible for every advancement of our society. It gets us 100 year lifespans and air travel and the ability to communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere. It operates far better on far simpler rules. Perhaps most importantly, it makes no such atrocious claim that there is something inherently wrong with being human. We don't waste any time or energy apologizing for ourselves, which leaves us able to spend that time and energy improving the lives of real people all around us, people who just would not survive on faith alone.

BLASPHEMY - COGNITION II

When it rains, it pours.  Or in my case, drizzles... but it's a drizzle in a drought, so don't complain :)

I just read Jerry Coyne's latest article lambasting the National Academy of Sciences and the National Centers for Science Education for their accomodationist standpoints with regard to the harmony of evolutionary theory and religious faith (he must've gotten the idea from me), and I gave myself another opportunity to think about the issue.  Here was my reponse:

I tend to see the posturing of the NAS and the NCSE as more of a logistical matter than anything else; these organizations need money to function, and they have to be sure not to alienate potential sources of funding. But then there's a side issue: they don't need to pander to us as naturalists/rationalists/atheists, because we're already on the same side of the fence. The people for whom those statements were written are those who might be *on* the fence. And the surest way to knock them back to their side is to require them to abandon a component of their belief system before we grant them admission. If a theist comes to the NCSE or NAS website, they're looking for encouraging words, not challenging ones. We should give them to them and let the merits of the science itself argue its cause. The NCSE and NAS have a tough enough job just promoting evolution in this religiously saturated country. But if you want them to take a hard line stance, then you're effectively asking them to incorporate the inordinately larger task of debunking religion. In our non-ideal world, they have to pick their battles. It might offend me that they have to speak disingenuously to do so, but I'm going to have to live with that.

So, I don't like it any more than I disliked it before*... but I acknowledge the rock to their left and the hard place to their right, and will let them play at this mild little version of fighting dirty** to gain a little ground on our tiring uphill battle.

* - I think that's a valid sentence

** - I mean, they're totally lying to their audience.  It's a classic bait-and-switch.

Silly Popes and Slippery Slopes

The last two months have seen me get a year older, get even busier at work, move into a new house, and spend even more time on the car.  Hence, the 'not blogging' thing I've been trying out.  I just wanted to post this link in case it hasn't been seen yet...

http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNewsMolt/idUKTRE53L5QM20090422

If I afford myself some time between projects at the new place, I'll follow up with a critique.

Thanks for your patience!

And, I feel like I owe an apology for not making a 'BLASPHEMY - BIG WORD' title for this post.  It had to happen sooner or later.

BLASPHEMY - RENDERING

My contribution from the bus slogan generator webpage:

That is all.

EDIT:  Dude!  I just realized that there's a real synergy between the contents of the bottom line and the colors used to render them - 'turn off that red light' is written in red, and 'kneel before superman' is rendered in yellow... like the light of the strength-enhancing YELLOW SUN?  Oh yeah.

  

BLASPHEMY - EDICT

A moderate Christian named Lyn posted a comment on a blog post at irrelgion.org earlier today, and the reply I gave deserves a space at Prose Justice, so I'm reproducing it here.  The original post features a youtube clip of President Obama being particularly level-headed* regarding the role of religious thinking in public policy.  It's worth a quick view.

So, without further ado:

Lyn Says:

February 24th, 2009 at 10:51am

I have a question, why do athiest need to form groups and organizations just so they can say they don’t believe in something? If in your opinion God doesn’t exist, then why this site? Why spend so much time fighting something you don’t believe in? Why fight a God and his followers if he is nothing more than a figment of believers imaginations? I know if I don’t believe in something I am not going to waste time fighting it. I myself believe in God and I saw on this site a little sketch about the earth being only 6,000 years old and we all know that can not be true. There is nothing in the Bible that confirms that. In fact it reveals quite the opposite in Genesis. But people, epecially ‘Bible Beating’ Christians never take the time to see what is actually being said and they also fail to understand that the Bible was translated from greek to english. This means that the meanings they have for word and phrases are different. For example, in the greek ’serpent’ meant ‘Shining One’ not snake as it means in english. Who is referred to in the Bible as the ‘Shining One’, Satan. Another thing that I saw was a comment on the Sabbath Day. The Sabbath day can be any day of the week. I usually take mine on a Friday because I am free all day, no school or work for me. When people continually work everyday, all day they become shell of human beings. No one can function correctly unless they take a break. People will actually work themselves to death. They sentence themselves to death, just like drug addicts, alcoholics, etc. Is God doing this or are people doing it to themselves? I tend to go with the latter. As far as the war that is going on in the middle east, that itself can be traced back to the Bible. Ishmael and Isaac are still fighting til this day over their fathers land. They are feuding brothers who most likely will never be at peace. Like yourselves I am also irritated with some ‘Christians’. Irritated because they don’t take the time to actually examine the Bible and research it before they shoot their mouths off and say something that is not accurate. Feel free to hit me back with a response.

And my reply:

Lyn, 

As you surmised yourself, we aren't spending any time attacking a deity we don't believe in. 

But when a majority population of Americans behaves as if a deity exists and has prescribed a particular standard of living, their actions and beliefs have a real and significant effect on all of us. That's what we're spending all this effort fighting. When the legal system and social architecture that govern over all of us is subjected to the massive influence of the religiously-minded majority, much of it succumbs and becomes compliant with (or at least tolerant of) religious dogma, and that scares the hell out of us. 

The words attributed to your particular deity have been successfully used to justify atrocious prejudices and to glorify willful ignorance in a time when it is very dangerous to do so. 

This is no longer a world in which a small tribe may only have to worry about a land quarrel against another almost indistinguishable small tribe around the corner. It is instead a world in which one high-ranking government official can make a single decision that ultimately results in the destruction of the entire surface of the planet in a matter of minutes. 

This society won't do well to live according to outdated and rudimentary ethical codes when thousands of years' refinement have given us much more effective and informative tools. We have to live with a level of responsibility, rationality and maturity that no ethical theistic religion can provide. We're fighting for our wellbeing on the personal scale, and for all our lives on a global scale. 

Religion's public influence is an impediment to that goal.

As I reread Lyn's statement, I realize that I just latched onto the first few sentences of it, and that's squarely where I aimed my entire reply.  I think I should go back there and address the remaining content; if anything, I'll have to thank her for her honest inquiry and clearly good-intentioned followup.


* - That's not to say that this level-headedness is atypical of President Obama.  Just atypical of a president.

BLASPHEMY - REPARTEE

Hmm.

This place seems familiar.  Like I've been here before...  long ago.

I need to get this out of the way first:

Happy New Year, readers!*

...and also...

I'm sorry I don't blog much anymore!**

There is a medley of reasons why I'm not posting frequently these days.  A promotion at work bestowed upon me a whole new set of responsibilities, and I'm left with much less time at work to type as I ponder the greater mysteries and ideas.  

I got another new car, this time an even more special one to me, and I'm spending much of my free time scouring the enthusiast forums and other associated corners of the web for information I can use to keep her at her absolutely thrilling best.  Saab 9-3 Viggen, by the way.  Still gushing over it, so please pardon the enthusiasm.

But that's not why I'm here today.  I'm here to give you guys some CADAVER.

Believe it or not, I didn't stop posting because I ran out of ideas.  I actually still have a cache of essay stubs ready to turn into posts, and I've been jotting notes down feverishly in odd spurts; I have a pile of stuck-together post-it notes waiting to be rendered coherent.  It'll happen eventually.  I just ask, again and with a little shame, for your patience.

While I do have a handful of pieces of timeless VAP and vibrant atheist insight kicking around in the ol' noggin, I was inspired to post today by something that just happened to me.

I'm a facebooker, and a former Catholic.  That combination got me involved in a survey for present and former Catholics... probably for some college student's sociology class or something.  The questionaire asked a handful of questions about my opinions of the church, how much of my life is still influenced by it, and so on.  At the end I had the opportunity to write a statement in the 'comments' form, and as I filled it out, I realized it'd be a nice thing to share here.  So, reproduced from the survey, here's my closing statement.  Much of it is similar to things I've already written here, though it may be cast in a new light.  Check it, yo:

As a child of a family closely involved in and even employed by my parish, the church significantly influenced me during my formative years.

Unfortunately, I have to regard it as a trial by fire, rather than as an upbringing.  Discrimination against my mother by our pastor and other parish faculty resulted in a quite literal excommunication of both of us.  While the church as an intangible entity has always been good-intentioned in my mind, the engine driving the people who wield it as a tool has always been flawed.  I learned this after my experiences prompted me to take a more honest and critical look at Catholicism and competing spiritualities of all flavors.  

After years of inspection and introspection, I resolved upon the understanding that all the good times, all the learning experiences, all the camaraderie and education, and all the moral qualities I assimilated came at the hands of good people, not of church doctrine.  The people responsible for the positive aspects of my catholic upbringing would have been equally valuable to me without catholicism guiding them, and in fact the only times that people around me failed in their basic goodness was when a misunderstood or outdated christian ideal nudged them away from their natural compassion, in order to conform to obscure ethical confinements, and in some cases pardoning them for unfortunate biases.

This awareness, bolstered by a hard-earned scientific understanding of the mechanisms of this remarkable universe, affords me the ability to revere and respect humankind and all life on this planet without appealing to the double-edged sword of a deity who both created us and constantly hinders our ability to grow into a mature global family.

At the end of the day, I find that the church is simply a bad means of being good; one that gets in the way of its goals, and one that our species would be bettered by casting off its vestigial traditions and confinements.  Only after we grow out of religion can we achieve our true potential.

So yeah.  I think there were a couple sentences in there that hit points I've missed in the past.  And this little bit of sharing has stoked the fires a bit...  I can't say that I'm gonna make it back to weekly blogging, but I'm still here.  Still don't believe in God.

* - All three of you know who you are.

** - though the reasons I'm not blogging much are that I'm very busy enjoying some very fine times in my life.  So I'm not that sorry. 

BLASPHEMY - REJOINDER II

Hemant Mehta asks:

How serious do you take your atheism?

Let’s find out.

Copy and paste the list below on your own site, boldfacing the things you’ve done. (Feel free to add your own elaboration and commentary to each item!)

My comments are in that burnt-orange color that's such a favorite of mine.

1. Participated in the Blasphemy Challenge.
2. Met at least one of the “Four Horsemen” (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) in person.
3. Created an atheist blog. Duh.
4. Used the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a religious debate with someone.
5. Gotten offended when someone called you an agnostic. Not offended, per se, but I corrected them.
6. Been unable to watch Growing Pains reruns because of Kirk Cameron.
7. Own more Bibles than most Christians you know.
8. Have at least one Bible with your personal annotations regarding contradictions, disturbing parts, etc. I don't have a hard copy, simply because I use the skeptic's annotated bible.
9. Have come out as an atheist to your family.
10. Attended a campus or off-campus atheist gathering.
11. Are a member of an organized atheist/Humanist/etc. organization.
12. Had a Humanist wedding ceremony.
13. Donated money to an atheist organization.
14. Have a bookshelf dedicated solely to Richard Dawkins. Not solely to Dawkins.  There's room for Sam and Chris (haven't gotten around to buying Dennet yet).
15. Lost the friendship of someone you know because of your non-theism.
16. Tried to argue or have a discussion with someone who stopped you on the street to proselytize.
17. Hid your atheist beliefs on a first date because you didn’t want to scare him/her away.
18. Own a stockpile of atheist paraphernalia (bumper stickers, buttons, shirts, etc).
19. Attended a protest that involved religion.
20. Attended an atheist conference.
21. Subscribe to Pat Condell’s YouTube channel.
22. Started an atheist group in your area or school.
23. Successfully “de-converted” someone to atheism.
24. Have already made plans to donate your body to science after you die.
25. Told someone you’re an atheist only because you wanted to see the person’s reaction.
26. Had to think twice before screaming “Oh God!” during sex. Or you said something else in its place.
27. Lost a job because of your atheism.
28. Formed a bond with someone specifically because of your mutual atheism (meeting this person at a local gathering or conference doesn’t count).
29. Have crossed “In God We Trust” off of — or put a pro-church-state-separation stamp on — dollar bills.
30. Refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. 
31. Said “Gesundheit!” (or nothing at all) after someone sneezed because you didn’t want to say “Bless you!”
32. Have ever chosen not to clasp your hands together out of fear someone might think you’re praying.
33. Have turned on Christian TV because you need something entertaining to watch.
34. Are a 2^nd or 3^rd (or more) generation atheist.
35. Have “atheism” listed on your Facebook or dating profile — and not a euphemistic variant.
36. Attended an atheist’s funeral (i.e. a non-religious service).
37. Subscribe to an freethought magazine (e.g. Free Inquiry, Skeptic)
38. Have been interviewed by a reporter because of your atheism.
39. Written a letter-to-the-editor about an issue related to your non-belief in God.
40. Gave a friend or acquaintance a New Atheist book as a gift.
41. Wear pro-atheist clothing in public.
42. Have invited Mormons/Jehovah’s Witnesses into your house specifically becauseyou wanted to argue with them.
43. Have been physically threatened (or beaten up) because you didn’t believe in God.
44. Receive Google Alerts on “atheism” (or variants).
45. Received fewer Christmas presents than expected because people assumed you didn’t celebrate it.
46. Visited The Creation Museum or saw Ben Stein’s Expelled just so you could keep tabs on the “enemy.”
47. Refuse to tell anyone what your “sign” is… because it doesn’t matter at all.
48. Are on a mailing list for a Christian organization just so you can see what they’re up to…
49. Have kept your eyes open while you watched others around you pray.
50. Avoid even Unitarian churches because they’re too close to religion for you.

So I'm a solid 22.  There are more that were kinda... 'close to target' but not quite, so I left them off.  Some items I left off, and having done so could be considered more hardcore atheist than doing the thing listed.  Anyway, it's all good in the 'hood.

Catch you guys again next month!

BLASPHEMY - GELASTIC

Um....

BWAHAHAHHAHAHAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH!!!

BLASPHEMY - EXECRABLE

I saw this on the news last night. It's all over the internet today.

To most it's a tragic tale about the economy.

But I can't help thinking it's a tragic tale about religion.

Father kills family and himself, despondent over financial losses

Karthik Rajaram murdered his entire family because he ran out of money. This was not a knee-jerk emotional reaction to shocking news, either. He indicated in one of his several suicide notes that he'd been planning the atrocity for months. He, and I am paraphrasing here, went back and forth between the options of just killing himself or killing himself and his family. In the end he decided that killing the whole family was the more honorable thing to do.

I try to step into the mind of the person I'm reading about; I really try hard. But I cannot do it in this case. I simply cannot make any kind of sense or detect any kind of rationality in this persons apparent thought process... until I insert religion.

I'm not a parent. But I've known a few in my day; the only thing he could have been motivated by was the desire to spare his family the misery of living poor. So if I were he, my options would be:

(1) deal with living poor.

(2) kill myself and leave my family to deal with the pain of losing their father/husband, but maybe they get to cash in on my life insurance policy.

(3) kill everyone. Inflict upon all of us a brief but unimaginably horrible physical and psychological pain followed by nonexistence.

Obviously the only rational choice is #1. Who knows, after all, what opportunities might come down the road? Why deny yourself the chance to recover? Unless, of course, #3 is reworded to "Inflict upon all of us a brief but unimaginably horrible physical and psychological pain... followed by the next life and a chance to start over."

You see, Mr. Rajaram and his family were Hindu. His children were named after Hindu gods and mythical warriors. It is a safe bet to assume that at least he, if not his entire family, believed in reincarnation. With that belief thrown into the mix, it is finally possible to comprehend how the treacherous idea of murdering six people can be seen as not just tolerable, but downright noble.

And it makes me physically sick to realize it. I don't need to punctuate the story with a somber note about how irrationality needs to be purged from our global family; the article states it clearly enough to those who are paying attention.

And the hits just keep on coming, though this one has no ostensible religious or economic motivation:

Cops: Ky. Woman killed daughters, self

Sorry to leave things on such a sour note. Watch the debate tonight, everyone. It's really important.

BLASPHEMY - ASSEVERATION

Still here.

Still don't believe in God.

Just been incredibly busy at work, which is the only time I blog. Incredibly busier outside of work.

But I'm not done writing, and I'm certainly not done philosophizing my way across the vast landscape of modern American atheism.

Still here...

BLASPHEMY - CREDULITY

For the last couple weeks, I've been concurrently writing a loose collection of thoughts and reading through the series of threads and comments on Stephen Law's blog involving the notorious Sye Tenb of Sinner Ministries' "Proof of the existence of God" website. The latter, by the way, is a tedious yet fascinating deconstruction of the presuppositionalist mind. If you have an interest in learning the basic language and processes of philosophy and have a few hours to kill,* I can't recommend strongly enough that you go over and read it yourself. After you read my entire archive of brilliance, of course**.

Anyway, I wanted to make mention of the Stephen Law bit before I tried to assemble the aforementioned thoughts of mine into a more coherent piece of Vicious Atheist Propaganda***. I'll probably be back to talk about Sye after I'm done trudging through the last couple entries. Which might still take a couple days.

Regardless, here's the latest outpouring. It takes the form of a letter to a believer. The filter is off; if I can't find a good place to insert a tidbit, I'll just stick it at the end on its own. I don't want to mold this one too much:

The Latest Outpouring

I say "According to what I've studied, and based upon the information available to me, the world works in such a way that indicates there is no god, instead of a god or gods," to which you may say, "Well, explain it to me, then." And alas, I basically can't.

I can't explain it to you for the same reason a high school student can't ask his teacher to explain how her education enabled her to get a job teaching, and then turn around and get hired himself... I cannot do your learning for you; if we could, basic education would not take as long as it does.

The best I can do is show you the high standard (and rigor) against which my beliefs are tested, and tell you that the information that convinced me is indeed available to you. In essence, and not without irony, I want you to take it on faith. Not my conclusion, mind you... just the fact that the information that formed my conclusion is there. If you truly want to put your beliefs to the test, even in an effort to strengthen your own conclusions, I'll show you how, and I'll go a step further and point out a few places to start you along your search.

But if you actively refuse the information, you must know that you are denying yourself, and are therefore lying to yourself for the comfort of maintaining a framework that goes unchallenged, which is not a victory in any context. It is a forfeit. And if you do make the effort, you may still conclude that you were not wrong. Furthermore, you will have that much more confidence in your own position... which I can respect even if I believe you should've been convinced otherwise.

I know that for many, it is painful and difficult to be informed that they're wrong, especially regarding their highest beliefs, and even moreso the longer those beliefs have been held. My own first and greatest challenge along this learning path, and now one of my greatest strengths, was divorcing myself from that reactionary tendency. That I can not only accept, but indeed look forward to, being proven wrong only sharpens my own ability to reflect upon and challenge and refine the conclusions I do maintain, such that the opportunity for others to prove me wrong is diminished; for I have done much of their work myself.

And yet I surprisingly find that those who cannot bear to have their beliefs challenged are so often the same who adopt new beliefs so easily, without hesitation or scrutiny of any kind. Why would people give themselves so eagerly to beliefs that would utterly crush them to discover were wrong? Do people know themselves that poorly? The asymmetry of their overcredulous nature is fascinating, but is also disheartening.

The magnitude of their credulity is matched only by their incredulity toward arguments made against their positions once they adopt them. Where was that spirit of disbelief in the first place? It seems to me that their willingness to believe scales rather directly with their emotional investment into those ideas. They walk in easily with no attachments, then attach themselves firecely. When refuting evidence comes into the picture, the quality of that evidence is secondary to their own lack of attachment to that evidence, and thus it doesn't sway them.

So maybe the issue is that they throw themselves to passionately and fully into an idea once they believe it. We skeptics will not hesitate to throw an idea to the curb once a better one comes along.

A believer's beliefs are a marriage, 'till death do they part. A skeptic's are a one-night-stand. No wonder we're having more fun.



* - and you're a glutton for punishment
** - Made you look!
*** - Do I feel another acronym coming on? Oh yeah, baby.

BLASPHEMY - SPECIFICITY

I'm constantly bothered by the incorrect juxtaposition of atheism and nihilism that I see all over the internet. Had to blurt this out.

***Preemptive Disambiguation***

'believe' (I believe that...): "I have good reason to think that..."
'believe in' (I believe in ____ ): "I support or subscribe to _____ as an idea or as an ideal."
'faith' (I have faith that... / I have faith in... ): "I am hopeful that... / I trust that..."
'atheism': absence of belief in a god or gods. More universally, 'naturalism' - absence of belief in any form of the supernatural.
'nihilism': belief that there is no purpose or point to anything; extrapolated: nothing is worth believing in and nothing means anything. Nothing has value.


***Post-Emptive Missive***

Atheism is not nihilism. ATHEISM IS NOT NIHILISM. I believe in many things, many ideals. And there is a difference between the abstract/intangible and the supernatural. I can believe in human decency, in democracy, in my local baseball team, in the scientific method, and in vanilla ice cream, among other things. I can have faith that my true love is out there somewhere*. None of these things require an appeal to something outside of nature to gain validity. One behavior that may be uniquely human is our remarkable ability to reason abstractly and think symbolically. We can wrap our heads quite comfortably around things that are not physically presentable 'things'. We can understand honor though we cannot touch or taste it.

When it comes to experiencing matters of the abstract, of passion and of emotion, we're just as allowed as the next person. So stop telling us we aren't, and STOP TELLING US WE SHOULDN'T HAVE A REASON TO CARE THAT YOU'RE DOING THINGS THAT OFFEND US IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR.

Okay, I feel a little better now.


* - This is not to imply that I haven't found her; it was just an example. At present, she's sleeping in on her day off. Lucky bitch.

BLASPHEMY - ONUS

I consider myself a privileged individual for many reasons, not the least of which being the fact that I get to live in Southern California.

A small part of that privilege is having access to some excellent radio stations. I am a daily listener to 95.5 KLOS, the classic rock station in these parts,* and I am a rabid fan of the Mark and Brian show, their daily morning talk/variety show. These guys are smart and funny, and responsible for some wonderful events and charities in these parts.**

This morning, the hot topic was the recent court ruling in favor of gay marriage. The call-in response was largely in support of the movement (it is a liberal-leaning show and listenership, after all), but in the midst of it one obviously Christian lady called in and presented the idiotic 'slippery-slope' argument: "Well if a man can choose to marry another man today, what will he be allowed to choose tomorrow? What if he chooses to marry a little boy tomorrow?"

I'm not going to spend any time refuting Pedophile Lady's argument; my issue is with the way her comment was handled. Brian (1/2 of the show's namesake) quite appropriately dispatched her with a rebuttal and an "I'm ashamed and disappointed that this is your opinion", but he qualified it first with, "this is your opinion and I cannot tell you to change it."





...pardon me while I wrestle this soapbox into position...





Okay. Well, I have an opinion about this, and I most definitely wish I could change his.


Right after I heard the exchange, I sent the show a quick TXT message (a great feature, by the way), something to the effect of, "Brian, maybe some of these people SHOULDN'T be entitled to their opinion when it's based on bad/damaging information."


Well, the coolest thing happened shortly afterward: during a commercial break, Brian called me to talk about my message!*** He was really curious and wanted me to elaborate on my message, so he could get a better feel for the point I was trying to make. He admitted that he personally agrees with me (Another atheist! WOOHOO!), but insisted that he couldn't tell her she was wrong because it would make him a hypocrite. I tried to give an argument against that, but didn't have my thinking cap on (read: coffee in my stomach) and didn't give him the most effective one.

So... he had to get back to the show; we exchanged our gratitudes and compliments, and hung up.

But right after we concluded our session, the brilliance started pouring out. Of course. I went to the show's website to take advantage of the extended format of an e-mail response, and penned this follow-up, which I'd like to share with you all:

This is a follow-up to a TXT message I sent earlier today; Brian called me back and we talked briefly about my statement that some peoples' opinions shouldn't be honored if they're based on bad information:

Brian, I (of course) couldn't think of the best language to convey my point right away when you asked me to clarify... but I want to take another stab at it.

My point is that you are *not* automatically a hypocrite when you present a firm opposition to someone else's opinion... because in some cases their opinion can be objectively incorrect.

To object to an uninformed opinion with an equally uninformed counter-opinion would be hypocritical, sure... but just because an idea is wrapped up in the context of 'Opinion' doesn't mean it should be afforded automatic protection from scrutiny.

It is possible to objectively measure the quality or validity of an opinion - It could be my opinion that Mark is a moron (sorry, Mark), and all you'd have to do is show me the results of his IQ test to prove that my opinion is completely incorrect. I appreciate your compassion if you don't want to offend me by pointing out that I'm wrong (and I think that's a big part of your stance - I won't argue with your being courteous to callers), but this is a relatively harmless example.

But what if there were such a thing as a harmful example? Pedophile Lady makes a claim that is founded by what she believes to be an irrefutable and perfectly correct source - her church, clergy and bible. When the bible was written, it was correct according to the best info we had at the time. But today, we know objectively that there are physiological explanations for the occurrence of homosexuality. We actually know better, now, than to think that homosexuality is a choice. It has been confirmed time and again with the same scientific rigor that has successfully given us 80-year life expectancies, air travel, radio talk shows, and every other miraculous achievement of modern society.

But, Pedophile Lady's opinion is incredibly prevalent right now...

...and simply because these incorrect ideas about homosexuality are encapsulated in the Protection of Opinion, we're allowing countless real people to suffer lives of forced compliance, and relegating them to a form of second-class restricted citizenship.

All for the sake of politeness.

At some point we need to see that we're allowing a greater evil to thrive, because we're unwilling to perpetrate the evil of telling people when they're wrong.

~Kevin

It's about civic duty. We should be able and willing to stamp out harmful ideas and the acts they promote, especially when the cost of doing so (offending christians) is so feeble compared to the cost of doing nothing. It's time to bring a little obligatory rudeness into our arsenal.



* - I'm not going to tell you, but here's a hint: KLOS is named for Los (something).
** - See footnote above.
*** - This dude is a bonafide CELEBRITY. Of course I'm excited.

BLASPHEMY - AVARICE

WHAT THE F%$#?*

Website emails your personal message to unbelieving friends after you're swept up in the rapture!

(Not a direct link - I always link through geekologie when they're my source)

Am I the only one that thinks that the people running this service are handily exempting themselves from the celestial self-checkout line by charging their customers $40 a year? Sure, it's not as much as an xbox live membership**... but they're essentially saying, "We're not getting into paradise anytime soon; we might as well get comfy while we wait".

Greed is one of those killer sins, after all.

And let's face it, most of those letters are going to be a variation on the "I fucking told you so" riff. ***

Also, I think they cribbed their delivery mechanism from Lost.


* - FUCK
** - but it's also slightly less fulfilling, unless the peace of mind of having the last word is THAT important to you.
*** - Hell, they already made it through the gate, what's the harm in a little harsh language... especially when it's directed a heathens aplenty?

BLASPHEMY - VEXATION

I took part in the hardest debate I've had in ages yesterday evening. The funny thing about it is, it was not a debate with a believer, it was with an atheistic agnostic.

This opponent of mine is a good buddy; he's just really tough to argue with. He spends so much time aggressively nitpicking semantics and other details that the person speaking to him never gets to present a coherent statement.

It's like door-to-door salesmen trying to sell their respective encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners to each other, only the vacuum cleaner salesman's pitch consists of knocking his opponent's encyclopedias out of his hands.

Anyway, the primary point of contention boiled down to this: I'm a naturalist, and he's a scientifically-minded nonbeliever who insists on reserving space for the supernatural.

Here's the argument that came to me in the shower this morning.*

Everything that has ever been believed to be supernatural, has remained supernatural right up to the point at which it became scientifically understood. Sounds almost too simple to need to be put into words. The point is, we've never once found anything in nature that, once we learned a certain amount about it, determined that it was actually a supernatural phenomenon. It just doesn't work that way. The progression, for every phenomenon in recorded human history, has been from supernatural to natural... never the other way. So, why is it reasonable to keep insisting that something truly supernatural must still be out there? Isn't it more likely that it's all 'apparently supernatural' phenomena that just haven't been understood yet?

If the 'supernatural' set has been diminishing since its inception, and nothing has ever transitioned into it, don't you just take a step back and say, "Okay, this isn't a sound hypothesis after all."?


I see a string of zeros trillions long, and I make the presumably safe assumption that it's probably more zeros to come. He looks at it and says, "well there's gotta be a 1 at some point..."

He says that looking at the information out there and defaulting toward the negative "there's nothing supernatural" is equally as ignorant as any believer of any specific faith arguing for the existence of their god.

But when the score is Natural: Countless to Supernatural: 0, how much more evidence does one need before a natural assumption is seen as the more appropriate conclusion?


* - Just in time to be a day late... nice work there, Kev.

BLASPHEMY - FELICITOUS

While not explicitly atheist in nature, it's a topic that runs in a similar vein; something worth rejoicing over in the net news today -

http://www.physorg.com/news129616516.html

An accomplished physicist is making a career change; he's running for public office. His motivation is to be part of a movement to restore evidence-based decision making to the political system.

I've been a fan of the idea of technocracy for some time now, but I never thought I'd hear about the apparently active and healthy political movement advocating it. As a scientist might say, "Cool beans!"*

* - not an instruction to reduce the kinetic energy of a legume sample.

BLASPHEMY - COGNITION

"As Science, Evolution, and Creationism makes clear, the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith. Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world. Needlessly placing them in opposition reduces the potential of each to contribute to a better future."
-Science, Evolution, and Creationism (2008), National Academy of Sciences (NAS)


I'm reading this study, a page at a time, between bouts of doing my actual job today. This excerpt is from the preface to the report, and I had to shake my head a little after reading it. It's that middle sentence: "Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world."

That sentence jarred me.

Now, I know the authors (who represent the entire NAS) have to perform a little political soft-shoe in their introduction, since there is unfortunately a real and significant deference to faith among our political representatives who would eventually be reading it... but that sentence was dishonest.


Let me be clear about this:

Science and religion are different ways of understanding the world like German and burping are different ways of speaking to Germans.


Science and religion are certainly different ways of thinking about the world. But religion does not help us understand anything.* In fact, religion actively hinders our understanding.


That said, I don't expect to read any more politically cautious statements in the remainer of the report; its purpose, after all, is to politely dispatch any and all faith-based concepts that might try to find their way into a public classroom. I'll write commentary on the report after I finish reading it.

Meanwhile, why don't you take some time to read my archived BLASPHEMY posts... I'm totally awesome at atheism.**


* - Well, it does help us understand one of the ways that people are susceptible to dramatic alterations of their personality and of their means of processing information ... but that's only after the application of science. Okay, fine... so I should've said 'religion helps us understand the effects of religion on the human mind.'
** - Does it come across as false modesty when I make a disclaimer about my use of false hubris?

BLASPHEMY - BLASPHEMY

I can't believe it took me this long to think of posting an article with this title.*

No original content from me today; instead I'm going to showcase some of the other goodies out there. Without much more ado, here's a collection of some of my favorite blasphemies on the web, unimaginatively titled, 'My Favorite Blasphemies on the Web':


My Favorite Blasphemies on the Web


Reserve a Spot in Heaven
The reason I didn't link the site directly is because (A.) They are where I discovered the site originally, and (B.) Geekologie is a tremendously funny blog, the writing staff of which deserve mad props**.


xkcd - The Drake Equation
While not specifically an anti-theistic message (which he does make from time to time), this is a reminder of why it's important to think rationally and require evidence before lending any credence to mere speculation. Be sure to read the alt text over the comic image. His entire archive is like this, and usually adds an extra dimension of funny. Warning - you need to know a lot of mathematics, computer science, and general geeklore to appreciate many of this guy's cartoons. Having said that, enjoy!


Cectic - Mostly Cannot Know
One of many greats. Cectic fires most of his rounds toward generic human gullibility, but that makes for some great antireligious humor.


Russell's Teapot - Irreducible Complexity
The Crown Jewel of atheist webcomics, Russell's teapot is a deliciously funny (while sharp and insightful) look at christianity. The protagonist is a six-year-old named Russell. Read from the beginning and don't leave your computer 'till you're caught up.


Shortpacked! - Bus Stop
This comic is about a toy store and the geeks who work there, but occasionally a movie comes along that grabs the artist's attention. This one was fun. On a related note, I have no idea how The Golden Compass stands up as a movie, but I just finished the book last night and thought it was phenomenal. I'm making my way through the rest of the trilogy now.


* - Really, that's the sort of thing I find tremendously funny. I need to get out more.
* - No, not angry propellers... and not mentally unstable support beams either. The latter of which would be tragic in all its oxymoronic being.