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 repealed?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 - IMPOSTURE

I'm making my way through another blog out there, entitled 'The Everything Else Atheist'.  I was intrigued by her series of posts about the use of placebo, and had a thing or two to say in response to a couple comments left on her thread.

The original articles:

I Believe in Placebos, Part 1

I Believe in Placebos, Part 2

You may want to read the comments over at T.E.E.A. before proceeding.  Or, you can just take my word for it that what follows is my brilliantly-concocted and unassailable argument* against a commenter who disagrees with the use of placebo in modern medicine:

I'm going to chime in as a proponent of the use of placebo here. For one thing, treatment should not be judged or valued solely on chemical efficacy. Determine its validity by its results, not by its ingredients...

Otherwise, what do you suggest we do about all the therapists out there alleviating peoples' emotional (and in some cases physiological) problems just by *talking to them*? Both work by closely-related mechanisms, where the patient's own mentality is the primary vehicle behind their recovery. In one case it's a controlled activity: developing a trusting bond based in conversation with a trained professional, whose coaxing can yield significant results. In the other case, it's a trained professional engaging in the controlled activity of administering a physical remedy that takes advantage of the well-documented power of placebo.

I don't see a downside here, since at the absolute worst, it will provide no benefit. And it might cost some money. But if the idea of paying for sugar pills is what's so unappetizing, then the costs of their administration can be bundled with some form of therapeutic treatment, much in line with the author's suggestions above. You pay for treatment and it gets you sessions with your doctor and a pill, both of which work in concert.

The way I see it, the placebo effect is one of a thousand quirky evolutionary byproducts we've gathered up over time, in rank and file right along with such hits as the female orgasm... if it's a good thing, and it's ours, why deny ourselves of it?

The refusal to wield a useful and beneficial tool over thin moralistic quibbles is just one of the reasons we all rail against organized religion, after all. Let's not fall prey to the same tendencies.

* - I mean, I drew a link between medicine and orgasms, for Christ's sake... how can you argue against that?

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 - 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 - 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 - FOIBLE

It's 2008! And I present you with: More of The Same Stuff!!!

To the atheist, the fundamental problem with prayer is that even at its most noble (praying for the benefit of another, as opposed to praying for direct personal reward), it still only gives an individual the undeserved satisfaction of helping when they haven't lifted a finger.*

But even for the theist, there is a fundamental problem with prayer.

(In the following section, I intend the word 'answer' to mean "an answer of 'yes'".)

An answered prayer cannot ever be in contrast to God's will... so, either he will answer the prayer and perform the task, or he will not. And if he will, is he really waiting for the prayer to happen first before he does it? He already knows whether the person in question will end up praying, and he already knows what he is going to do about it... so what purpose does the prayer serve? And to those who might counter that an answer of 'no' is just as valid an answer... you have come up against what is the actual fundamental flaw of prayer: The best reason I've ever heard for justification of unanswered prayers is that they serve a greater purpose in God's plan, perhaps to teach a lesson and build character in the person praying, so he will learn to take disappointment in stride and be strong enough to remain stable in the face of denial of his desires.



FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG.



...See, only in an imperfect world would we ever be denied something we want. Perhaps more ominously, only in an imperfect world would it be in our nature to want things that we cannot have.

Such a scenario can only make sense outside of the framework of a universe designed by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity. And that's the god's honest truth.

* - Except for the ten they point toward God while praying, of course.

BLASPHEMY - STOCHASTIC

I was gonna save this for much later, but reading a recent series of posts and commentary on Possummomma's blog, I had to sound off on it...

I've read through dozens of debates between theists and atheists over the last year or two, and over the course of doing so, I noticed a recurring phenomenon that seems to be the single most common reason why these debates often end in a flaming wreck.

The Christians who fight tooth and nail against the most solid reasoning, the ones who unfailingly and effortlessly have a response and excuse for every monumental counterpoint, the ones who inevitably turn into violent and aggressive animals once their best attacks are parried, all seem to inhabit the same trait: they can't "turn off" the existence of God.

In other words...

A lot of these Christians seem unable to take the cognitive leap into someone else's perspective. They try to wade through all our arguments under the pretense that God still exists, instead of looking at it under the assumption that he does not.

It is the ability to do this very thing that allows us atheists to be so solid in our conclusions about the world... when weighing the theistic arguments, we can and do look at things under the pretense that God exists.

And when we do that, what we observe simply doesn't jibe with that presumption.

There will always be the problem of theistic blindness to the reality that the world does not behave as it undoubtedly would if God existed. Christian gamblers have their prayers answered exactly as often as non-Christians who don't pray and end up winning. God only heals those who have the exact conditions that we as humans know how to cure with our own learned scientific skills. God might actually exist and be doing these things.

Well if that's the case, then God's trying awfully hard to remain indistinguishable from 'nothing at all'. And in that case, then... what in the world is the difference?

BLASPHEMY - EXPLICATION

The truth value of a scientific principle is nothing more than the measure of its predictability. If you test it, you get a result. Next time you test it, how likely will it be that you get the same result? The more precise the results, the 'truer' the principle.

Imagine you've never seen a calculator before. Someone shows you how to use it. You type in 2+2. It provides an answer: 4. You try it again. It answers 4 again. You try other equations, and they all return correct answers. After enough repeated attempts you become comfortable with the expectation that the calculator will return a correct answer, ergo, "the calculator knows math." This is your principle, which has been experimentally proven true.

Note that this is not axiomatically true; all calculators have a known bit-error-rate. Let's say, one in ten million calculations, you can type in 2 + 2 and it will answer, I dunno... twelve. Does this make the principle invalid? NO. It just makes it imperfect and still remarkably useful.

If you want to investigate why the calculator works, you might start with the hypothesis, "math elves live inside the calculator, awaiting your instructions. They then construct the answer and display it on the screen." Repeatedly using the calculator suggests that the elves do in fact come up with correct answers. But if you investigate further and take the cover off the calculator, it becomes apparent that there are no elves inside it. All you find is plastic and metal. You throw out the math elf hypothesis and form a new one regarding the materials you did observe. Let's say you eventually discover that the circuit board operates on the manipulation of electricity and the individual components behave consistently when voltage is applied to certain contacts.


The scientific method has a failure rate of zero. Not very small, not miniscule... ZERO.

How can I claim this when history documents all sorts of naive and incorrect scientific theories (i.e., phlogiston, ether, Lamarckian evolution)? Because the scientific method has nothing to do with identifying absolute truths.

It's about obtaining the most accurate model possible.

Functionally true according to the best information available at the time.

I can say the scientific method has a failure rate of zero simply because no scientific theory has ever been replaced by a competing theory that didn't fit the data as well.


Now imagine somebody comes up to you and proposes that it's not electrical interaction between the calculator's components, but that the calculator is actually a container that holds the mathematical spirit of the universe. All your electrical experiments still work. Is there any reason at all to throw those away in favor of a generic and vague explanation that ignores your data and has no explanatory power of its own?


Food for thought.

BLASPHEMY - DESIDERATUM II

What if we were all secular humanists?

Imagine a world where every human being understood that there is no afterlife. Every single one of the six-billion-plus of us realized that this life is the only one we get. And moreso, we also realize that there are people suffering. There are the unfortunate who are still lacking the comforts and givens of the developed world.

Assuming a comparable* number of good-willed and proactive people populating this imaginary world, they would all be involved in a universal and dedicated effort to improve the quality of life for as many of the world's neediest people as possible; there would be no nobler cause to support. We would all work as hard as we could to help. Imagine how much we could accomplish if after taking care of our personal needs, we all labored cooperatively toward creating a greater world for humanity.

There is no need to fear the old-fashioned bogeyman of communism, in which I know many will detect a similarity to my scenario. Notice I said 'after taking care of our personal needs'. By 'personal needs' I mean every last thing that we choose to make important, whether it be feeding and clothing ourselves and our dependents, or if it's planning an expensive vacation to Hawaii. We can still be as capitalist and self-serving as we want to be. But many of us will have resources leftover after taking care of our personal interests.

So all I'm saying is: with the time and resources that the fortunate have leftover, what if they all applied them toward providing basic needs to the most needy of our global family? Eventually clean water, adequate shelter and sufficient food would be provided to everyone on the planet who lacked it before.

And then a remarkable thing happens: the most needy people on the planet will no longer be defined in terms of the hardships of starvation and general poverty; instead they will be defined by a lesser need. Perhaps lack of educational infrastructure. So, what if the fortunate peoples of the world didn't stop giving? Eventually everyone in the world would have a reliable education at their fingertips.

As the progression continues, the needs of the neediest will one by one be eliminated according to their severity, until those remaining needs slowly come to resemble the desires of the average. Allow the trend to continue long enough, and we approach the goal that more and more of our needs are accommodated for, and more and more of us can spend more time striving toward experiencing the luxuries of life. As more people ascend to lifestyles that allow them to yield their own surplus, the resource-base for charity expands exponentially. Needs eventually become extinct and the worldwide population comes as close we ever have to experiencing heaven on earth. A real paradise the human family can experience together.

Now, imagine that one-tenth of the people in this scenario had an additional drain on their resources. Something that took a significant portion of their time and money, and wasted it on an empty promise of a better life than could ever be experienced on this world.

This has a twofold effect: 10% of the population automatically has less time and money available to contribute to bettering the world, and that same 10% come to develop a complacency toward wanting to better the world. "Why bother working on this one when the REAL prize is in the world to come?" Those 10% are no longer working as hard as they can toward bettering the world. Now, all of the sudden it takes 10% longer to achieve paradise on the planet.


In our world, it is not one-tenth of the population afflicted by this misconception. In our world, most of us... in fact enough to be able to say almost all of us... behave like the 10% in my scenario above. Most of the people on the planet are complacent about suffering on earth... to some degree their own suffering, and to a much greater degree that of others far removed from them. Most people don't give a damn and don't give a dime to make the world better because they're not too worried about it; there's heaven to prepare for.

So in our world, how long will it take, how many lifetimes when it's only 10 percent fighting the unrelenting tide of majority? How many generations will continue to suffer while the dismal minority are the only ones left trying our hardest to move toward heaven on earth?


And on a totally unrelated note - It bothers the hell out of me that 'sub-par' and 'under par' have opposite meanings.


* - to this world

BLASPHEMY - ESPIAL

Found on the Blogroll*:

Matt McCormick, author of Atheism: Proving the Negative, has written some really nice articles addressing, among other things, some of the difficulties of atheism we don't often think about, what with all the 'disproving Christianity' that keeps us busy.

This particular article of his caught my attention. It stopped me dead in my tracks, since at the time, the idea he presented had never once crossed my mind.

The idea came from recent studies that suggested religious people were generally happier and healthier than their nonreligious counterparts, and really amounts to "Okay, we know religion is not true... but if it turns out that being religious really is good for us, then what do we atheists DO with that information?"

After some vigorous pondering, here's what I came up with:

The first thing we have to do is analyze the merits of the statement above. As Mr. McCormick noted, most atheists would jump to the conclusion that the studies were not properly constructed or were otherwise compromised so as to provide some degree of bias in their results. Off the cuff, I think that's true.

But I'd like to frame my response without having to invoke a flaw in these studies themselves**, and instead appeal to general knowledge about studies of this nature, and what we can infer when we think critically about them:

Studies like this often fall victim to 'tunnel vision' wherein the item they're focusing on (in this case, religiosity) is inadvertently credited for all deviations and contrasts between the subjects of the study, when other influential factors are undoubtedly present. Religiosity is often accompanied by complimentary*** behaviors and/or belief structures that may be nonreligious in and of themselves, and which may influence the subject just as strongly.

An example of this phenomenon is that Muslims are less likely than Christians to be killed in automobile accidents****. When worded this way, it implies that Islam makes one a better driver than does Christianity. But it's much more likely that since Muslims generally don't drink, Muslims drive drunk far less frequently than Christians do, resulting in fewer enough drunk-driving fatalities to skew the results.

As it pertains to the studies above, I'd be shocked not to discover the same kind of effect taking place.

But... that's not the only mitigating factor in my assessment. If we disregard my argument above and assume that the studies were constructed to eliminate those external factors, and that they accurately measured a difference in wellbeing based solely on religiosity, there is this to consider:

These studies are essentially positing religion as a giant placebo. This is actually a great explanation of religion - A placebo is an inert substance/operation that has a positive physical effect on the subject; it literally 'hacks' the brain into generating relief because the subject believes he has received a genuine***** treatment. As you might expect, placebo can be effective... but genuine medicine is usually much more effective. Similarly, there are probably many other things in life that can be more beneficial than religion. Real things. It is naïve to think that religion's placebo effect is singular among all we can experience. Remove religion from a population and replace it with something rational and real (like higher education, for example) and what benefits were lost in removing religiosity may be replaced or restored.

Of course, there is probably a cumulative effect of these benefits, and it's fair to say, in following my example, "Well, if we have higher education and religion, then we'll be even happier!" I admit I do not have an argument against this. I will say though, that there are probably dozens if not hundreds of distinct rational alternatives that many of us to not yet employ in our lives****** that hold similar potential benefit without all the negatives that inherently accompany religion*******. All we have to do is pick one. That shouldn't be too hard.




But wait!! There's more!




Finally, there's the dilemma of disbelief itself. Again, we'll disregard my arguments above, and now assume that the studies are definitely correct. Religious people are better off than nonreligious people. Okay. But we still run into an issue.

Like the placebo I mentioned before, religion only has its assuaging powers when people believe in them. Atheists cannot will themselves to benefit from religion when they are aware that it is not true. Thus, you can only cross the line from belief into disbelief. Atheism is a one-way ticket; once we know better, we are no longer capable of experiencing the benefits of religiosity.

With this in mind, the question at hand no longer applies to atheists. Now it applies exclusively to atheists' behavior toward believers.

And the question is not whether we should keep dragging people across the line from belief into disbelief... it's whether we are obligated to keeping others from crossing on their own.

Thinking rationally about such a dilemma, it becomes a matter of Ignorance versus Bliss. I believe the conclusion we'd inevitably come to is that the benefit of removing that bit of ignorance would not outweigh the benefit of leaving said ignorance intact. Would we ever have a reason to tell a patient that the medicine we gave him shouldn't have worked??

The least course of action that would be morally acceptable would be to swear one's self to secrecy. To actively promote the greater good, atheists would actually have to shoulder the burden of maintaining belief in the masses.

Think about that. We would literally become the shepherds to the flock. Ergo, atheists would be destined to become the new clergy.

How wild is that?********


* - (Atheist)
** - especially since I'm not privy to the details of how the studies were done. No unsubstantiated allegations coming from this mouth.
*** - as in, 'complementing each other,' not 'free of charge.' Because the latter wouldn't make any sense.
**** - This is a fabricated assertion. I have no idea whether it's true or not, but it is a great model for what I'm trying to explain.
***** - In this sense, I mean 'genuine' to indicate an active medicine rather than an inert one. Many doctors will attest that placebo are a genuine treatment, since they do provide a measurable benefit when properly implemented.
****** - Yoga comes to mind for some reason. I offer no explanation.
******* - I guess I do have an argument against it, then, don't I?
******** - This post definitely holds my personal record for most footnotes.

BLASPHEMY - ANTIPHON

Andrew Sullivan (one of the more intelligent and sensible believers I've stumbled upon during my daily internet-scouring) had some interesting things to say during his online debate with my junior-hero*, Sam Harris. The full text of their back-and-forth has been posted all over the atheist corner of the internet, and I highly recommend you take the time to read it. Here it is:

Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan Debate


As I was making my way through the piece, all doe-eyed with my man-crush on Sam Harris and his elegant prose, I got caught up in a game of "how would I respond to some of these things?" What follows is one example.


Andrew wrote:

"Is this sense of an after-life an illusion? We cannot know for sure. But death isn't an illusion. And when death is nearest, faith emerges most strongly. You can either see this as a reason to pity people of faith - they're too weak to look mortality in the face and deal with it. Or you can see this as part of the wisdom of people of faith: we know what we are, and we have reached a way of dealing with it as humans, full humans, not just arguments without minds and bodies. Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

But I believe this position misses the point. He seems to think atheism only comes into play at the moment before death**. It implies that his understanding amounts to, "atheists think believers aren't brave enough to admit that when you die, you cease."

But... no! That's not what we're saying!

We're not saying, "if you're a brave and smart atheist like me, you can deal with death being the end." In point of fact, we're saying, "It looks very likely that death is the end, so RIGHT NOW and the remainder of our lives until death are the most cherishable, and the most perishable things we have. They ought not be wasted. All opportunity costs must be considered. Spending even an ounce of effort on plans for yourself after death takes at least an equal (and likely larger) amount away from the only life you are guaranteed to have.

That is why it's such an important goal to fight the desire of the eternal***.


* - I know what you're thinking... and the answer of course is Dawkins.
** - maybe because that's the moment that the majority of the believer's life is spent looking forward to?
*** - At least, we should try to fight it on the spiritual plane. I'm all for promoting the desire of the eternal through technological innovation.

BLASPHEMY - DESIDERATUM

It's time to start 'playing God'.



Any sufficiently radical scientific study engenders passionate outcries from the religious: "We must stop playing God before it's too late!" 'Playing God' to them is inherently bad; my guess is because of its violation of some deadly sin or another. Pride, vanity, hubris. Whatever it is... we can't puff ourselves up and presume to know what we're doing. We can't take God's place. We're violating natural order.

Nevermind that all technology 'violates natural order' once we separate 'the advent of technology' from 'that which occurs naturally'*. By this rationale, every time a monkey picks up a stick to scratch his back, he's playing god. If you don't subscribe to the aforementioned line of reasoning, perhaps you might consider that advancing our technology is simply a byproduct of our intelligent nature?

It wasn't until our technology began yielding godlike capabilities that the religious got squeamish about it all. The displacement between humanity and deity has been reduced to a stone's throw. In some aspects, we've exceeded him. God needed 40 days of rain to wipe out the population of the earth. We could do it in a drastically more populated world with a few 40 megaton blasts... in a few minutes, no less. I'm not proud of that fact, but it's a relevant point to make.

Removing all religious stigma from the term, scientists 'playing god' is no less benign than children 'playing house'. Nobody accuses the child of tempting wrath and parental retribution. If anything, it shows a desire on the child's part to want to grow up, to be as mature as his parents; it is a better endeavor than playing 'bank robbers'.

'Playing God' should be an aspiration of ours, not a warning to us. We, like the children playing house, are practicing and preparing ourselves for a future when we will be in charge. With godlike capabilities, we can practice benevolence on a global scale. We can take responsibility for those who need our care. We can make the world a better place.

We've finally reached the level of scientific maturity that we can start doing something about it.

We're finally ready to start playing god.


* - And my whole point here is that the advent of technology should be thought of as something that occurs naturally.

BLASPHEMY - REJOINDER

My responses to the FriendlyAtheist short-answer project:

• Why do you not believe in God?

The 'supernatural' is undefined... kinda like 'divide by zero'; it's a concept we can label, but there's nothing we can actually put into that category. The entire universe is natural, and within it there's only the already-known and the unknown.

• Where do your morals come from?

I am comfortable with certain things happening to me (good) and uncomfortable with other things happening to me (bad). I recognize that all other living things behave similarly to me, so it's easy enough to assume that if I don't like it, you probably won't either.

• What is the meaning of life?

'Life' is a word that describes "the behavior living things exhibit before they die". Oh, what is the purpose of life? I don't think there is a single pre-intended purpose of life that we can identify... but I highly respect people who choose to apply a purpose to their lives, especially if the purpose is a positive one.

• Is atheism a religion?

Only as much as total darkness is a color.

• If you don’t pray, what do you do during troubling times?

I do my best to find a way to gain strength from the ordeal so I can better face it the next time I endure it. If it's too much to bear on my own, then I draw strength from the support of my friends and loved ones who are there for me during troubling times. If it's someone close to me enduring troubling times, then I do everything in my power to help them through it.

• Should atheists be trying to convince others to stop believing in God?

I believe so; I think humans should have an interest in helping humanity as a whole. If you're spending any time at all worshiping a deity, then you're not helping humanity as much as you could be.

• Weren’t some of the worst atrocities in the 20th century committed by atheists?

That's an irrelevant statistic. Some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century were committed by people who had dark hair, but we don't campaign against that. A more appropriate statistic would be the ratio of atheism-motivated vs. religiously-motivated perpetration of atrocities in all of recorded history. The number would be small enough to illustrate that this is an absolutely stupid argument against atheism.

• How could billions of people be wrong when it comes to belief in God?

There was definitely a value in believing in a higher power when primitive humans were fighting each other for survival. This religious tendency is a residual trait that was never extinguished, since up until the last century or two we didn't have the capability to answer the biggest questions we were able to ask. Now our eyes are opened wider.

• Why does the universe exist?

I don't believe that is an answerable question. I also don't believe it needs to be answered. Interestingly, the fact that the universe exists is a source of unspeakable awe and 'reverence' to me. It drives me to never stop learning. This is the kind of awe the religious could only dream of experiencing.

• How did life originate?

I personally don't know. But some of the best minds out there are working on further refining the very solid theories that we have. Once we find out for sure, it will promote a whole new category of capabilities that we will be able to use to vastly improve the state of humanity and of the world as a whole.

• Is all religion harmful?

No, assuming we apply a broad definition of 'religion'. The Eastern spiritualities do nothing to stifle our inherent benevolence. In some cases they actually promote it. The harmful religions are those of ethical theism; the ones that have codes dictating behavior.

• What’s so bad about religious moderates?

They're not bad in and of themselves. But their existence enables fundamentalism to thrive. They make a case for being complacent about religion, which is actually a very dangerous thing.

• Is there anything redeeming about religion?

Good things can come out of religious motivation... but to be redeeming I'd have to find an instance of something that religion provides more effectively than does rationalism (which is naturalistic in nature). For every good thing religion does well, there is a natural and rational thing that does it better.

• What if you’re wrong about God (and He does exist)?

Then everyone who did believe in and everyone who didn't believe in the particular god that does exist (and it's not necessarily Yahweh) will be subject to the rules (if there are any) established by that god. If it ends up that Yahweh exists, then I will be undeservedly punished for eternity. If the actual god is one that values rationality and abhors blind faith, then I'll be handsomely rewarded for passing the test of religion. The god that does exist might not care at all what I did while alive, and he might not even have made us for everlasting life. We might still just die.

• Shouldn’t all religious beliefs be respected?

Only the ones worthy of respect... but chances are, the aspects of those beliefs that deserve the respect predate and are independent of the religion itself ("Do unto others as you would have done unto you," et cetera). Rather: whether a belief is to be respected has nothing to do with the fact that it's religious.

• Are atheists smarter than theists?

Not on account of their atheism, no. But smarter people are more likely to be atheist than theist.

• How do you deal with the historical Jesus if you don’t believe in his divinity?

I assume you're talking about Yeshua ben Joseph, a man who was a small political/spiritual leadership candidate (and thus given the title 'Jesus', as such candidates were all given) of a growing sect of a monastic society in the middle east a few thousand years ago. With my understanding of the vernacular and the culture of the people who wrote what surviving historical documents we have, he never said he was divine. Other people did, much later. People all throughout history have been calling themselves and other people divine, and as far as I can tell they've all been wrong.

• Would the world be better off without any religion?

I believe so, and I'm doing everything I can so that someday we can find out for sure.

• What happens when we die?

We permanently lose consciousness; it is not unlike before we were born. Of course, there is the possibility of developing technology that will allow a person to live indefinitely; but that's a whole other can of worms.

EVOLUTION

It had to happen eventually.

I've been blogging to myself ever since I brought this page out of hibernation; my readership has dwindled to, well... me, and I have had trouble finding things I could write passionately about.

That is, with one exception. I've mentioned a couple times now that I've been working on an essay that was very important to me. I couldn't blog, but I could add to the essay. The overwhelming majority of my creative energies have been directed into it. It's been eight months now that I've been revising and editing the piece. The time has just about arrived for me to reveal it. With the posting of this document, there are bound to be changes to the blog itself. That's what this post is announcing.

I'm going to start with my essay, then continue expounding on the ideas essential to its theme. I'm expecting to observe a general drift toward relevance in the blogosphere as I make my presence more accessible.


It had to happen eventually: I finally figured out what this blog, what blogging, is for.


I'll add that this is a very precisely named post. It's not only a description of the changes happening at Prose Justice, but it also alludes to a good chunk of the content that's coming in the days ahead. Incidentally, due to the changes occurring, it will be the last post (for a long time, at least) to follow my 'single million-dollar-word' naming scheme.

There will be interesting times ahead, my friends.

EFFABLE

I know, I said I wasn't going to do this while I'm in the middle of scriptwriting, but I had to get this out on electron-excited phosphors*.



Time again for Semantical Paradoxy with Riker:


"Ineffable."

There's a word we needed, right up until it existed.

Yes, it is completely logical and expected over the course of the development of a language to come up with a word that means 'incapable of being expressed in words'. It's just that once that word exists, nothing is ineffable. All you have to do is call it ineffable and you're done. It's weird, because the word is simultaneously necessary and meaningless. If you don't have a word for indescribable things, then they remain indescribable. Once you have a word for them, they no longer exist within the category of indescribable, so what good is the word?

It's a word that has validity purely by needing to be defined in the first place, yet at the same time its validity renders it logically false. It is both valid, and invalid by the sake of its validity. WHAT????



As an afterthought, This is why I believe the English language is the best suited to writing poetry. Opera can keep Italian for its phonetically pleasing aspects and Asian languages can keep their discrete-symbol-for-every-little-thing precision, but the fact of the matter is that English just has so many words, and I'm pretty sure it's the only language that has more exceptions to its rules than it has rules. This leaves a tremendous amount of leeway to be clever with the palette of words available.

Let's say something is ineffable due to its rarity or its beauty. The best way to describe such a thing is to use a novel and insightful combination of words and language techniques which, when taken as a whole, are as beautiful and/or as rare themselves as the thing being described. It is obviously easier to achieve this when you have an unending supply of obscure, interesting, and confounding elements**.


* - or LCDs. My monitor at work happens to be a CRT. Plus 'electron-excited phosphors' sounds WAY cooler.
** - Admit it, that's English in a nutshell.

BLASPHEMY - MODICUM

Ahem...


In reference to post-previous, I'm working on an essay that is quickly growing into an exposition of my personal belief structure... an affirmation, more accurately. So, I've been in a philosophical mindset lately. The essay is far from complete, but I still have an urge to put something out there. I remembered writing an e-mail to myself (as I often do when I don't want to forget something; let Google sort 'em out) on a topic that is loosely related to the single thing that's been occupying my creative time over the last few months... not counting the band, of course*.

Anyway, I figured I'd post it here, as sort of a small sample of what I'm preparing. Like I said, it's not the same topic, but it's somewhat related; it's to whet the appetites of anyone curious to see what I'm concocting behind the scenes. Enjoy!


An Email To Myself

When the religious organizations lobby for teaching of intelligent design in schools, they often accompany this with a statement encouraging students to be cautionary in their thoughts toward evolution. They remind us that evolution is 'just a theory', and science should be approached with an open mind, leaving room for alternate theories**.

They're masking their weighted statements under the guise of skepticism, so as to appear more scientific. The truth is, however, that they are requesting a one-sided skepticism. To be truly scientific, they should request equal skepticism for both arguments. But they do not. They request skepticism on evolution's part, and implicitly request faith in intelligent design's merit to stand against evolution. It's asking for a fight, and asking evolution to tie one hand behind its back first.

This statement of theirs plays another trick as well: they request that the student approach evolution skeptically, as if to imply to the student that evolution has not yet been subject to such scrutiny. Their use of words would suggest to the reader that evolution hasn't been standing up to scrutiny and skepticism for over a hundred years. They are singlehandedly taking out of mind the fact that evolution was met with the fiercest of opposition in the scientific community upon its unveiling, and has withstood the tests of time and scrutiny by virtue of the mountain of evidence gathered in its support. Evolution has been subject to testing and skepticism for long enough, and has emerged in well enough condition, that for now, we are confident in the solidity of its foundations. It is by this series of trials over such a long period that it has earned the status of scientific theory, a weighty title indeed. Intelligent Design has passed none of these tests. It is treated so casually by the scientific community because it fails immediately under the most gentle questioning, and is therefore dismissed with relative ease.

* - Shelby Three and the Harmony are playing from 4pm to 8pm tomorrow, St. Patrick's Day at the Irish Mist. BE THERE!

** - equivocation at it's most blatant. They are banking on the fact that the general public may not be aware that there is a difference between the common-usage definition of the word 'theory' and the scientific definition. They want you to believe then, that when scientists refer to evolution as a theory, they do so because they are not yet sure of its validity. They want you to think 'theory' means 'unsubstantiated guess'. 'Hypothesis'. This is the colloquial definition of theory: "I lose my keys every Sunday; my theory is that I'm doing something different on Sunday that causes me to lose my keys."

In truth, the word 'theory' in the scientific community is a very powerful one, and the fact that evolution is considered a theory is a *very* strong argument in its support. A scientific theory is one step removed from scientific law: fundamental forces, gravity, magnetism, etc., are examples of ideas that have more support than evolution. They are universally observed, and for all intents and purposes, there is no deviation between observation whenever or wherever that observation takes place. Evolution is a theory because there is a massive amount of evidence gathered for it, to the extent that the scientific community regards it as fact that evolution has occurred; it is not a law, however, because there is still an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms behind the fact of evolution. In science, this room is left because of the revisionist and skeptical nature of science as a practice. We know that we do not know everything about evolution yet, therefore it is not a law. It is 'only a theory'. But not knowing 'everything about a subject' is far from enough to claim that one knows nothing about it. Not knowing everything does not exclude knowing a great deal. Evolution is on the same level of verification and refinement as is Einstein's theory of general relativity. If the proponents of ID want to be skeptical about evolution because it is just a 'theory', they should be raising as much opposition to relativity as well. But the religious community has no quarrel with relativity, because they do not believe support of relativity is equal to a renunciation of God.

OFFICIOUSNESS

Here's something that started bothering me this morning, for no apparent reason:

Dictionaries have entries for the word 'dictionary'. Now, this in and of itself does not bother me. It's obvious that the word does not need to be there*, as the person reading the dictionary clearly already understands its function; it would be a poor choice, however, to selectively omit entries based on recursive/redundant representation. That would just provoke some idiot to come along and prove that it did need to be there. And I don't want to endure the shame of being proven wrong by an idiot.

Here is where my problem lies - Assume that a person unfamiliar with the word 'dictionary' encounters it for the first time. How can he learn, without assistance, what it means? For all intents and purposes, a dictionary has no practical ability to define itself. The person in question needs an a priori understanding of a dictionary in order to know where to look it up. That right there, is a real-world paradox. No time travel and patricide required. Thank you very much.

Here's another quickie; it's not a bothersome one, I just want to know the answer:

If you were to fill the passenger compartment of a Boeing 747 with pennies, would it be enough money to buy said airplane? My gut (which is very well fed read) tells me that it would be enough to buy several. It also reminds me that if you had the means to perform such an experiment, you can probably afford all the airplanes you want... and would probably just pay by check.

*I realize the benefit of a dictionary entry extends beyond defining a word. For example, someone may not know the spelling of the word 'dictionary'. But in counterpoint, I'll remark that opening up a dictionary and searching for it in an alphabetical list is far less efficient than, for example, reading it off the fucking cover.

REDUNDANT

My man, Andrey Hardy 3000, had a great little idea recently. He 's making an interactive group-participation entry over at his blog. He asks a question, and readers are encouraged to post their answers.

I so enjoyed this idea, and so enjoyed answering his first question (and so don't feel like expending the energy to write something different), that I decided to reproduce it here.

What follows is his entry:

Group Participation

This is the first of what will be a series of questions designed for reader feedback. I have anonymous posting enabled, so even the lazy people who wouldn't want to register don't have an excuse. ;-)


If you had it [it being some defining moment in your life] to do over again, would you? If so, what would you change?

Another thought and subsequent question: Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?

And my response: Hmm. My firm belief that everything happens for a reason (though it's completely impossible to present evidence to prove this claim) Nicely answers your second question and sets the scope for my answer to your first:

I believe that each experience we have in life, good or bad, imparts a subtle influence onto our persona. Thus, we need both the good and bad experiences to define who we are today based on who we've been and what we've been through; it is largely due to these environmental extremes that weather away the parts of us that they do, that we became ourselves.

My point is as follows: Given the opportunity to change a pivotal moment in my past, I and everyone else presented with this chance, will obviously wish to change something that had a negative outcome. Nobody is going to go back and remove a good thing from their past. And so, what would I have condemned myself to, if I were to remove a bad thing which may have taught me how to cope with bad things? Maybe the next time in my life I encounter something bad, I won't have the skillset to overcome it as easily. Result? The more recent experience weighs in as a more substantial negative than it would have had I not changed the incident in my past. Then maybe THAT negative experience would impart on me the influence that should have come from the first one I removed. And as such, what did I accomplish? Nothing more than delay the learning of a life lesson. And in the end, it would be no different to me where I stand today.

I think it's a self-regulating process. The bad things are like a sandstorm that blasts away at your weaknesses, which encapsulate you. If a particular weakness is not demolished by the sandstorm early in life, then it will protrude from you, which makes it more likely to be blasted off during the next sandstorm. No matter which storm removed it first, though, after you've weathered both storms you can be sure that you will have the same fewer weaknesses.

Despite all this, I must admit that I have a terrible desire to go back and tweak little things that I'm sure wouldn't have a macroscopic affect on the outcome of my life. Namely, I wish I could sneak back in time and whisper into my ear the perfect retort when someone said something mean or rude to me. I was never quick enough to think of snappy comebacks as a child in school. And having had the rest of my life to think about it, I've finally come up with some real zingers. I don't want to go ahead and make the change that would have given me more balls to do this on my own in grade school and highschool, because I don't think I was ready to have those balls yet. But wouldn't it be harmless to nudge younger me in the right direction, so I could have one or two more moral victories than I actually had?

VEXED

Ahem.

I must apologize for my rudeness in the preceding blog entry. I was rather irked (by the way, if there was a word related to 'irked' that defined one who performed irking, that word might be 'irker', which, I should point out, consists of the exact same letters used in 'Riker'. Coincidence? I think so) by the abrupt and inconvenient mood swing my computer chose to subject me to. But, after a long and busy set of days, or quite possibly weeks, I've regrouped and will attempt, to the best of my ability, to recreate this entry, and perhaps to garnish it with a little more than you'd have bargained for had you seen the original.

Here goes.

I have officially received my job offer from Axis New York, validating the prophecy that I will indeed triumph over Hellabitch (see CIRCUITOUS). But despite this much welcome (and modestly overdue) good news, I am still overwhelmed by my issues at home. To bring all the uninitiated up to speed in the least unsettling terms possible, my father is continuing his difficult battle with cancer, and the battle is about to end. For a plethora of reasons, I was unable to involve my father in, and in extreme cases, even inform him of, some of the largest affairs of my life, such as the purchase of my home, due to my reluctance to impart upon him any more food for stress. I refused to tell him anything that I knew would make him fearful and worried sick at a time when he had nothing to face but the worry and fear.

This was all remedied last week when I delivered to him a letter that took me the better part of a month to compose, that presented him with every detail of everything he deserved to know, up to and including my deep disturbance regarding the circumstances by which Cathie (Spouse 2.0) would have control over the assets my father chose to leave me in his will. It was a very rocky affair, delivering this letter, especially since at a time when I wanted nothing more than to make new wonderful memories with him, I was forced to discuss so trivial a thing as money. But, being a homeowner now, I have to look at things differently today. Everything is about security. I have to write my own will. But I digress. The long and the short of it is, so many people close to me have stressed that even though I did not have the heart to put this on my father at this time, it was something I honestly had to do. As you might imagine, Cathie had a thing or two to say about this, and she and I ended up going at it for a couple rounds of attacks and defense of each other's position. In the end, she understood that I had no reservations about her as a person, just about the lack of legal cement between the building blocks of my father's greater goals and intentions. In the end, Cathie and I were able to part ways respecting each other, and understanding a little better the view from the opposite side of the fence. But it's far from resolved, all the same.

And the bills keep rollin' in, to add crap icing to the shit cake. I will probably be on a leave of absence from Old Navy and push back my starting date for Axis long enough to make a difference back here in Elmira (in light of that 'irked' train of thought earlier, I believe I could validly define a new verb derived from my name, similar to the relationship between 'irked' and 'irker'. In other words, I'm going to start using the word 'Riked' to describe an instance in which I have a certain effect upon someone or something, as in, "You've just been Riked! Ooohhh!". Of course, I am the only person who would have the capability to Rike someone; for everyone else, 'Riked' is only something that could happen to them; This does not mean that I cannot be Riked myself. Just that no one else can Rike me. Oh, yeah, and the proper usage would dictate that in print you'd have to capitalize it regardless of where it appears in a sentence... just because I feel like being a dick about it. I still don't know whether it should be used to describe a positive or negative effect. Perhaps it could universally describe both positive AND negative , like the popular racial slur/title of 'cool' status, 'Nigga.') , which means I don't expect to return until after every project is done and every obligation is fulfilled. I just gotta hold out for the new job scenario of October, in which I'll be posting 40 hours a week in overnight shifts renovating the store. I'll also be ramping up on (daytime) hours at Axis during the same period, but it is unclear whether I will still be traveling to Elmira as often as I have been.

In the worst case scenario, I'll have to bid a temporary adieu to the social nightlife to which I am so accustomed. But hell, if Jesus can sit there in Heaven and have to listen to 10 billion motherfuckers practicing on their harps every day*, then I can certainly hold down 2 jobs and travel for a few weeks. The music might have to stop for a spell, as well, as gigs definitely occupy a great deal of time and energy. But, if you can sit where you are and not have to listen to me play for a month, then all the better for you.

On a lighter note, I recently purchased a new keyboard and mouse, both of which are wireless and snazzy like the Fonz. I am infatuated with them. Yes, it is true that I am one of those for whom 'nerd' can be a verb. Further happiness is as follows: I am still, despite not having seen this girl in weeks, smitten by her. I am confident that the relationship between us will advance soon. I know this by subtle intuition, though it might also be that I've been blinded by foolhardy optimism. Soon enough, I'll know.

Next entry will most likely chronicle my musical endeavors as of late, including, but not limited to, the Smuttfest Concert, my recent studio experiences, and maybe even a little surprise link, like this one to Riker's Media Repository.

*I'd like to extend credit to Richard Pryor for the Jesus joke.

EXPEDIENT

Time again for "you had to be there", except that I bring 'there' here, so you can get the gist of it regardless. This evening's episode comes from yet another conversation between my man Andrey and me. It appears unedited for spelling and/or grammar, and is unabridged.

KnightM3: yo'
RITmusic2k: hey boss
KnightM3: how goes?
RITmusic2k: oh my god
RITmusic2k: crazy weekend
KnightM3: do tell
RITmusic2k: I've been inextricably sneezy for the last few days...
RITmusic2k: turns out I had a common cold lurking somewhere beneath the sheen of the rockstar lifestyle
KnightM3: lol
RITmusic2k: Been running myself ragged lately,
RITmusic2k: haven't been getting enough sleep
KnightM3: taking vittles?
RITmusic2k: multivittles
RITmusic2k: ;-)
KnightM3: good good
RITmusic2k: anyway,
KnightM3: [do tell more kind sir, i shall brb]
RITmusic2k: the itinerary since friday was as such:
RITmusic2k: had a bunch of friends from work join me at my house for a gather-together evening. Had fun, played beer pong 'till three or so, since we didn't get out of work until after 10pm
RITmusic2k: everyone had a great time
RITmusic2k: and there were hot chicks aplenty
RITmusic2k: though not the one I wanted
RITmusic2k: she was occupied with some late dinner hosted by her teacher at school
RITmusic2k: but she called me while we were partying
RITmusic2k: which was nice
RITmusic2k: anywya,
RITmusic2k: one of my friends was waiting for a ride to come pick her up,
RITmusic2k: but this guy was terrible with directions, and the phone he was on was dying, so we only got incomplete directions to him
RITmusic2k: consequently,
RITmusic2k: I had to drive her home, to north winton
KnightM3: [back]
KnightM3: eww
RITmusic2k: didn't get to bed until 4:15 am
RITmusic2k: worked 9am-1pm the next day, of course
KnightM3: of course;-)
RITmusic2k: had a little chill time with a friend, then hightailed it down to Pennsylvania for a saturday night gig with Farnsworth
RITmusic2k: by this time, cold is fully set in
RITmusic2k: so I'm thinking I'm really gonna suck it up tonight when we play
RITmusic2k: fortunately, everything worked out fine
RITmusic2k: one of the best sounding shows we've played
KnightM3: niiiice
RITmusic2k: we each killed a bottle of jagermeister during the show,
RITmusic2k: which was 9:30pm-1am
RITmusic2k: so we were having plenty of fun
RITmusic2k: people bought us shots as well,
RITmusic2k: and tipped us nicely
RITmusic2k: my favorite quote from the gig:

RITmusic2k: "Remember, every time you throw a dollar in out tip jar, a priest gets a venerial disease."
RITmusic2k: (our tip jar)
KnightM3: LOL
RITmusic2k: so, we get to bed by 3:30am,
RITmusic2k: and I was planning to get up early and drive back to rochester by lunch time to meet with Paige's dad and help him finish off the party house
RITmusic2k: well,
RITmusic2k: that didn't quite happen since my sickness had regrouped and dealt me a hefty blow
RITmusic2k: I barely made it home in time to nap an hour before heading into work at 6pm for our remodeling night
RITmusic2k: overnight shift
RITmusic2k: had an absolute blast
RITmusic2k: worked until 3:15am
KnightM3: holy crap
RITmusic2k: and the ten of us who were there played a mean game of parking lot football during our "lunch" break
RITmusic2k: well, the second half of it, at least,
RITmusic2k: first half was spent downing henrietta hots plates
RITmusic2k: my ladylove knocked me upside the head as I was attempting to intercept a pass to her (by the way, she's got hands like flypaper on the football field)
RITmusic2k: got me a cute little black spot under my eye from that one
RITmusic2k: and I successfully bend the shit out of my glasses four times tonight
RITmusic2k: sometimes from working, sometimes from roughhousing,
RITmusic2k: and once from the football game
RITmusic2k: it was such a memorable night
KnightM3: LOL
KnightM3: sounds like a day in the life of Riker.
RITmusic2k: we had so much fun together
KnightM3: but more importantly, how do you feel now? physically?
RITmusic2k: dude, I loved every minute of it
RITmusic2k: but I'm broken
RITmusic2k: of, one more thing
RITmusic2k: I was wearing slippers at first during football,
KnightM3: hahaha you're asking for it;-)
RITmusic2k: but I doffed them in favor of socks for maneuverability
RITmusic2k: well, I didn't realize this at the time,
RITmusic2k: but I ripped the bottoms of the socks to shreds
RITmusic2k: after the game we were al inside,
RITmusic2k: people were like, "oh man, those are dirty."
RITmusic2k: so I picked my foot up to see how bad it loked at the bottom, and all I saw was the tar-blackened ball of my foot
RITmusic2k: funniest shit of the night
KnightM3: lol
KnightM3: no injury to the feet?
RITmusic2k: wish I had my camera
RITmusic2k: well, heel's a little sore from impact
RITmusic2k: but that's all
RITmusic2k: no scraps
RITmusic2k: um,
RITmusic2k: scrapes
RITmusic2k: the asphalt was very recently re-tarred,
RITmusic2k: so there was not a single loose stone onm the surface
RITmusic2k: but yeah,
RITmusic2k: been nose-runny and cough-y all night
RITmusic2k: plus I'm losing my voice
RITmusic2k: which is a bad thing... I have a gig this friday
RITmusic2k: in brockport
RITmusic2k: at the Java Junction coffee house on main st. in brockport
RITmusic2k: in fact, you should be there if you're free
RITmusic2k: it'll be an evening show, I'm sure
RITmusic2k: something like 8pm
RITmusic2k: but yeah
KnightM3: i'm working all night friday:-RITmusic2k: okay man, no troubles
RITmusic2k: anyway,
KnightM3: oh
KnightM3: oh
KnightM3: your CD-ROM
RITmusic2k: ooh, yes
RITmusic2k: one sec
RITmusic2k: CD Lite-On LTN486S48x MAX
RITmusic2k: that's the one that burned out
RITmusic2k: all I'd be looking for is a basic inexpensive comparable drive
RITmusic2k: 48x
KnightM3: burner?
RITmusic2k: pretty much the only criterion to match
RITmusic2k: nope,
RITmusic2k: it's to replace the player in a two-drive setup
KnightM3: I'll check my price, but retail it's like 40-50 bucks
RITmusic2k: he has one reader, one burner
KnightM3: we might get another 10 off
RITmusic2k: well, if that's cool for you, the tewn bucks off will be worth it to him
RITmusic2k: so we'll have to meet up sometime so I can give you cash
RITmusic2k: okay?
KnightM3: yeah, I'll just have to keep the receipt.
KnightM3: just in case;-)
RITmusic2k: okay man
RITmusic2k: no prob
KnightM3: :-)
RITmusic2k: well, I have to give in to gravity and common sense,
KnightM3: ok
RITmusic2k: so it's time to sign off
KnightM3: so you doing ok dude?
RITmusic2k: yes, I think I am
KnightM3: ok good. as always, you know the number:-)
RITmusic2k: there are more and more things to deal with every time I turn around though,
RITmusic2k: Did you hear about Mary's brother?
KnightM3: yes
RITmusic2k: so, you understand...
KnightM3: yes
RITmusic2k: there's always soemthing else to be thinking of
RITmusic2k: I hope she can help him through this without suffering too much herself
KnightM3: she has a good support network, she will be fine
RITmusic2k: true
RITmusic2k: one of the best
KnightM3: exactly
RITmusic2k: so yeah
RITmusic2k: anyway
RITmusic2k: I shall be singing off at the moment
KnightM3: ok sire
RITmusic2k: good chattin with ya
KnightM3: you too buddy
KnightM3: lookin' forward to your next blog;-)
RITmusic2k: but even a rockstar needs his sleep :-P
RITmusic2k: actually,
KnightM3: so they say
RITmusic2k: you just read it