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 repealed?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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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.

BLASPHEMY - SODALITY

And the hits just keep on comin'!

Prose Justice has just been added to the Atheist Blogroll. This is a big step for me, since, well... other people will be visiting this page. That hasn't happened for a long time.

In preparation for the potential influx of readers, I've done a little upkeep here to make the site more manageable for people that are here to read what interests them. This site will still be my personal journal, and my archives consist of the better part of a hundred posts that have nothing to do with atheism, and due to my inconvenient post-titling scheme it'd be tough to discern which of my posts have anything interesting to say at all... so if you want the good stuff about my new favorite A-word, click the link at the top of the page.

That's all for now. I'll finish with a link to post-previous, the one that represents the bulk of my creative outpourings of the last eight months, and the post that got me on the blogroll in the first place.

Okay, really finishing this time. Thanks to Mojoey for creating the blogroll. You're putting your money where your mouth is. Thanks for setting the example and providing a platform for the rest of us to follow suit!

BLASPHEMY - SATIETY

Started 11/3/06, completed 8/8/07

SATIETY

I read an interesting theory about life, in which it is hypothetically supposed that humans are not so much a lifeform, but a byproduct of a lifeform... that DNA itself is the real animal, the defined living being. The means by which it found the solution to its survival is clumping together in a massive swarm that spends a period of time advancing through stages which ultimately allow it to combine with another swarm of DNA which will allow the new generation to propagate...

Life itself is, when conceptually condensed for the sake of the argument, simply the persistence of information: the significant pattern arranged in a (relatively or even arbitrarily) meaningful way. In the case of humans, it is their DNA and all its associated emergent attributes.

When viewing a homologous sample population of a particular sect of any organized religion, the same type of pattern is identifiable in the higher-order philosophical arguments and belief systems... to that end, some have called religion a 'virus of the mind'.

In recent years, I found myself coming to that realization on my own. Seeing religion itself as a 3rd order sociological lifeform: Self-sustaining, reproducing, and adaptive; whereas humans are constructed in a tangible medium of molecules... religion is a swarm entity literally made of the intangible stuff of mob mentality, cemented together by vestigial fight-or-flight instincts. Fear. Anger. What's especially interesting to me is that this 3rd order lifeform exhibits evolutionary footprints itself. It conforms to the broad definition of life, and even follows rules out of the same playbook we do. A virus of the mind. There is a pointedness to that description... not many viruses are known to benefit their hosts.

A Roman Catholic born and raised, I believed in what I was taught from the beginning. I didn't always have the presence of mind, however, to be aware that I never felt the presence of God. Eventually, I grew more self-aware, and noticed at least in the background, that I never felt this thing I believed in. But time passes, and experience hones the ability to process data like these. Inevitably my Catholicism fell by the wayside. If you asked me about religion, I'd likely reply, "I'm not into organized religion, but I'm one of the most spiritual people you'll ever meet." And yet, I wasn't done with organized religion. I was compelled to study it. Not just Christianity, either. I had developed a ravenous appetite for theological materials. I would study it and get into deep conversations about it. Something in me wouldn't let me leave religion alone.

For a long time, I studied it. For a long time, I exhausted myself trying to define my place along the spectrum of faith. For a long time I firmly planted myself within the boundary of agnosticism, but something still wasn't right. Agnostic. It really worked well publicly, but it didn't describe me. There was something truer than that, but it was a scary word indeed. It was another A-word. Luckily, a matter of semantics reconcile an inadequacy of a definition...

The religious and the agnostics draw a circle, within which is the natural and explainable, outside of which lies the supernatural. The religious populate this external region with God. The agnostics don't populate it with anything, but they make sure the space is reserved in case anything does occupy it. The problem with this is that they've fixed the proportions. I draw my circle, and if something comes into my experience that falls outside that circle, I have the liberty of drawing a larger circle to accommodate it. The religious drew their circle and it has a fixed area. More accurately, someone drew the circle for them, in a time when there was not much known about the universe. The circle was very small indeed. They managed to cram most of our modern knowledge into that fixed space, which only makes it easier for them to imagine the 'rest of it/the undiscovered' in the supernatural space outside the circle. The circle to them is a point-of-no-further-investigation. But I can just keep drawing my circle bigger and bigger. There is no limit to the canvas of a scientific mind.

Something new became apparent to me here. Not only am I not religious, I am not agnostic. The larger and larger my circle gets, the more magnificent the entire universe becomes to me. The larger circle has no stigma attached, no dogma applied, no means to induce fear or doubt. The larger circle is that of an atheist. My current assessment then, is that the term 'atheism' accounts for this sense of wonderment quite adequately.

More concisely: if something is proven/explained that was previously regarded in terms of the supernatural, then by the fact of its discovery it is obviously a part of this universe, and is therefore part of nature. This is consistent through all of recorded history. Thus, something as of yet unexplained is likely to be a part of nature that we haven't yet mastered... but a part of nature nonetheless.

I'd take this perspective so far as to say if the anthropomorphic God of ethical monotheism walked out of a cloud and announced his existence irrefutably to the world, then the only logical conclusion I could make is that there is this 'god aspect' of nature heretofore undiscovered, with its own fundamental properties. There'd be a whole new category of physics to learn about: God physics. How he reads minds and can be everywhere at once and how he exists on his (or apart from all) timescales. Those would be exciting times for scientists!

Going back to my 'circle' analogy, it seems rather arbitrary and unnecessary to draw the circle once we realize that there are things yet to be discovered in the natural universe. Why then do we feel that we need to draw a line that separates the unknown of the natural universe and the 'supernatural'? What value is a border if the things on either side of it are identical? That's all we're doing: going into the already unknown (which is obviously the worst place to start concocting firm assertations) and draw a line, saying, "...and past this line is the more unknown." If it's even more unknown than the unknown, how can we possibly know enough about it to conclude that it is definitely unknowable? In truth, the only responsible position is to avail oneself to the idea that time is a powerful tool and say, "it is not yet understood." No deadlines, no goals. Just the humility to admit that we cannot understand it, but someday, somebody better might come along.

It's a paradox, or perhaps is ironic, to consider that the hardiest argument for god is the "incalculable complexity" of the world we live in. They look at what science has presented and call it too cumbersome to be taken seriously. They say that it's foolish to try to explain it with intricate theories. They say the simplest answer is usually the correct answer. In that statement, I agree with them completely. To shake a leaf out of their own tree for a moment: You know what's the most complex thing in the universe? God. Their 'simple answer', by their own definition, is in fact something so complex as to be considered unknowable.

Whereas evolution is about simple beginnings that lead to more developed ends, looking back from the religious perspective means you end up looking at something more complicated than what you're struggling to justify here and now. What makes more logical sense: tracing back from today's complexity to ever simpler iterations the further back you go, or tracing back to something that gets more complicated the further back you look, all the way to the conceptual limits of an infinitely complex god who's been around an infinitely long time? And let's say that the latter strikes you, for some reason, as the more logical of the two. Then I shall ask a better question. Which of those two scenarios does a better job of addressing the actual question: how do I explain the complexity around us now? If your answer is "it was more complex in the past", then you've shot yourself in the foot with a rather large bullet. Because if it was worth it to you to ask about the universe's complexity, wouldn't it be more worth it to ask about God's greater complexity? That's only a rhetorical question because the religious would never dare to ask that. In the meantime, Remember that simple beginnings are easy to explain. Unfathomable complexity, on the other hand, should have no part in any sentence with the word 'answer' in it. The complexity of the world around us was slightly simpler yesterday. It was simpler still the day before. And you know what? There are enough yesterdays to follow that progression back to the very beginning. And a trillion or so to spare.


But the faithful want to save me. They say, "All you have to do is obey God's rules and you will be rewarded with entrance into heaven." So, you want me to take part in an experiment that will occupy me for the REST OF MY LIFE, and it turns out that I'm right, I won't know until I'm dead, which is another way of saying I'll never get to know. Those are awfully high stakes to play with. Awfully high stakes for a pretty peculiar reward: my sincere difficulty with this is that their intentions are based upon the notion that there is the magnificent gift of heaven ahead of us all. But that argument would only seem to hold water if there wasn't this massively rewarding life I'm living right here and now. Even to tally up all the joy I've experienced in my relatively short 26 years of life is a tremendous amount of evidence for this life being rewarding enough - that they fail to notice this is what astounds me. Their tunnel vision is incomparable; it's something akin to using a microscope to view the room you're sitting in.


This also brings about stunning implications: I spoke of the apparent invalidity of the heavenly-reward concept as evidenced by how rewarding life on earth was. That sentence may have sounded to you as subjective and terribly shortsighted. I could have worded my statement more precisely, instead saying that there were examples of how rewarding life on earth could be. I admit that I have had a fortunate life, and I therefore represent a painfully small fraction of the human population. There are hundreds of millions (and I sadly suspect more than a billion) of people alive today who will not be alive for long. Their short lives will have consisted of only hardship, suffering, and despair. While I was, in a way, 'for' the end of religion as we know it, I had previously decided that I would not be militantly so. I understood that there are people out there (like those I described above), a great many, in fact, for whom religious belief is a wholly positive influence on their lives; a refuge from a life of physical and emotional starvation. But it's simply not good enough to let them have their faith at the cost of letting them die tragic deaths for lack of intervention. As such I now realize that I am militantly 'for' the end of organized religion. I say so without remorse because I acknowledge a very real problem that invalidates the "But what about all the good things the Church does for people?" argument. No church spends all their money for good works. They may spend a large portion, but there is ALWAYS a portion that is spent on sustaining itself and on gaining new members. That money spent harvesting believers represents a significant opportunity cost. With equal funding, a nonreligious organization will always have the capacity to care for and to improve the lives of more people than the religious one whose true intent is to make people religious before making them well. If we reach the understanding that this life is indeed the only one we are privileged enough to experience, and we also see that not all of us (and in fact most of us) desperately need more help than even the most dedicated and capable can provide, then there is only one conclusion: it is in our hands; we must decide to make this Earth into our collective heaven or let it be hell for them. We have to stop wasting money on organizations that cannibalize our good will.

Consider that. The pyramids were, with the obvious exception of their geometry, pointless. How many hours, how much raw material, how many lives were consumed in the building of these religious monuments? They serve well as a poignant example of the resource-sapping by the religious that occurs even today, though to a thankfully less drastic extent.

For the record, I used the term 'militantly' tongue-in-cheek. I don't want to firebomb a church or support the violent overthrow of any religious organization. I could never advocate sacrificing them for the benefit of the rest of mankind, even if there would be a morbid symmetry to the whole thing. I suppose the more accurate term would be 'vigorously'. That's it.

I am vigorously advocating the end of organized religion as we know it.

So that leaves me with few options. The best one I can fathom is to be a part of the grassroots effort to show a public and unafraid face to the world. There are more atheists out there than have been counted, and the best thing for them to see is that it's getting easier to admit it. The only way to topple the tower is to weaken the foundation, and that means that we have to spread the word bottom-up. Don't think that I don't realize that I'm describing a Mission. It pains me that we have to play that same game with the same people. Spiritual ping pong. But it's the only tool we have and if we're serious about wanting to change the world for the better, it's a tool we must use.

Why am I so confident that theism is incorrect? Because I can satisfactorily explain why 95% of the world's population can be wrong about their belief.

Yahweh, for example, was a small and petty tribal god. In his ten commandments (of which there are more like 20-30, most of which are grotesque, unethical, or just plain obtuse), he identifies himself as 'the one true god', which is not to say that he is the only supernatural being in the universe. Rather, it serves to validate the idea that other gods did exist, but Yahweh's own people would get into some serious trouble if they were to take any time to worship them. He says, 'do not honor other gods than me'... now why would he say that unless there were other gods vying for their reverence? He should've said 'there are no other gods than me'.

...but I digress.

So what was the value in a tribe believing in their tribal god? Survival value. Small tribes get into wars with other small tribes. Survival then was a luxury, not a right as it is becoming in present times. You'd better believe there was a value to a tribal warrior about to go into battle, knowing that there was a power greater than his own who was going into battle with him. Who is the more effective warrior, the one who knows only of his own muscle and agility, or the one who has a divine protection? Which one is more aggressive? Which one, statistically speaking, is more likely to deal a crippling blow to an adversary? Which of the two, at the end of the day, is more likely not just to have survived, but to have survived as a member of the victorious tribe, the one to whom all the land is now bestowed? Those who found a resourcefulness in supernatural belief survived and populated the planet.


One thing I want to address: I've been reading some books lately by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and have been scouring countless atheist web pages... but nobody "taught" me atheism. It was a conclusion I came to along the way while growing up. But that is not to say that there was a defining moment in which a switch was flipped and I said, "okay, I'm atheist now." It's a description that I gradually came closer and closer to resembling as I matured and resolved my ideologies with greater and greater precision. The closest I could come to pointing out the defining moment was the reconciled definition I spoke of earlier in this essay. Not a single thing about who I was or what I believed changed in the slightest. Only the language I used to describe it was eschewed in lieu of something more accurate, and if I may go so far as to say, more 'confident'.

People claim to use the god concept to answer fundamental questions. But there is a difference between answers and excuses. Especially considering that it's always only one excuse. "This thing we don't understand? Well, it's because of God." Pardon me for preferring answers. I don't need to know everything right now. Is that the only reason we need a be-all-end-all answer? Because we're not comfy unless we can account for everything? Is that why people need God so much? To be a shortcut to the comfort of having everything accounted for? I promise that I will get to know much, much more, by pacing myself... by accepting that I don't need to have an answer for everything right now... the answers will come as soon as we become 'enough' to be capable of understanding them. Meanwhile, I'm not sweating. I'm just busy learning more. And I could not be more fulfilled.

This essay is my public affirmation of rationality. I am atheist. Society isn't content to let that go by so quietly the way they would if I were to say "I am left-handed". They want it to be my title, like it defines me as opposed to defining one of my attributes. They label me an atheist.

Fine. If you give me a badge, then I'm going to wear it. I am an atheist. I'm joining the ranks of those who will speak out in defense of those who are misunderstood and persecuted for their lack of religious beliefs. I am just about finished with the word 'supernatural'.

For me, from now on, the word supernatural will only have one purpose. It will define an empty-set. It is a reminder to me that, according to my rules, nothing shall ever occupy that space. It's a rather dualistic thing in itself, really. It is the hard-line boundary I have set to the universe, and it is by being so, the thing that enables the borders of the 'natural' to expand indefinitely so long as we find new things to put there. It reminds me that there is not a single shred of evidence uncovered in the collective history of mankind that would suggest that we cannot eventually understand a mysterious thing we've encountered. There is no reason to think any less of ourselves.

---------------------------------------------
Thanks for bearing with me on that; I know that was a long read.


And, thus begins the new incarnation of Prose Justice. While there will still appear the occasional 'personal journal' entry, the primary purpose of this blog will be to share my thoughts on the atheists' uphill battle to carve out a safe space to exist in the United States and on the internet. My dream is to help make that place a place from which we may concert our efforts toward making the world a safer and better place for all humankind. There is a lot more to come.

**
This essay was, believe it or not, much longer at one point. A byproduct of the fact that I spent eight months writing it was that the piece jumped around from topic to topic. Before publishing it, I pruned it down until it focused mainly on my deconversion and my justification of atheism. The rest of the chunks have been kept as individually-packaged snippets, and will be published here at a rate of one every couple days or so. At present there are about thirty of these posts waiting in the wings. I am continuing to write new ones on a pretty regular basis as well. So, this blog will become much more active than it has ever been.
**
I will also point out, tongue in cheek, that I made good on my promise to stop using a one-word post-titling scheme in order to make it easier for readers to find articles of interest to them. I am now using (for all atheism-related posts) a two-word titling scheme, the first word always being 'BLASPHEMY'.

I crack myself up.

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.

AVERMENT

Shamefully, I show my face again, after a three-month hiatus from posting.

But I promise that I have been writing a lot in the meantime. I just haven't posted any of it.

The explanation is simple: I've spent the last few months rounding out some writings which began as typical blog fodder (random thoughts collected into some pseudo-coherent musing), but quickly evolved beyond into a full-fledged thesis. The punchline is that I've taken what started as a little blurb and expounded upon it until it's become something between an essay and, due to its nature, a manifesto of sorts.

Those of you who know me know that I have an underground passion for philosophizing. I'll just say that the essay I'm working on is a real doozie, and I'll be laying it out for all to read as soon as I get some time to finish arranging all the little paragraphs in an easier-to-follow order.

Meanwhile, I hope I can muster the gumption to multi-task enough to keep filling archive pages even while I polish off my masterpiece.

~Riker

P.S. I just found out that I love flautas.

MEMORIAM

James Arthur Riker
March 31 1950 - October 3 2004

James Riker, like all memorable men, was many things to many people. He served the role of husband, brother, uncle, and friend, and in each capacity he served with love and devotion. But as I stand here, it occurs to me that of all the people in the world, he was the only one who could serve the role he served to me, and of all the people in the world, I am the only one who knows how it felt to have him serve that role: the role of fatherhood. As such, it is in this regard that I choose to celebrate him with you now.

My father's defining characteristic, as anyone could confirm, was that he was a creator, a builder. In every aspect of his life in which he had a passion, he used that passion to bring forth good things. It was intrinsic to him. He made it his career and he made it his hobbies; in each thing he created, he poured a little part of himself into it.

My father was also wise. He naturally assumed the role of 'elder' and of 'mentor'. You hear the ubiquitous claim from many young children, "My daddy knows everything!", and so it was with me at that stage of my life. But the remarkable thing was, as I grew older and wiser, as I opened larger eyes to a larger universe so vast in scope and so full of uncertainty, he still had all the answers. Even into my young adult life, I could come to him with any unanswerable question, and as always, my dad knew everything. That was a rare and remarkable gift.

He led by example, and as such, the one most important lesson he bestowed upon me is one that I will not fully comprehend the importance of until I have my own children: he taught me about fatherhood itself. He taught me exactly what kind of father to be and perhaps even more importantly, exactly what kind of father not to be.

Like all the things he created as a builder, my father put a part of himself into me, and I dare say he put more into me than into anything else he was responsible for. There is quite a lot of my father within me. I believe this puts me in a unique position to carry his legacy forward, and to take on the massive burden of that responsibility, because he was such a big person. If I can make myself as successful in life as possible, and do great things in my life, and become that mentor and that elder, and to lead by example as he did, then I will have fulfilled my duty to that legacy.

My goal is to become the greatest thing my father ever created.

Before I finish, I want to remind everyone here that while we all possess our own private and internal suffering, a suffering that is unique to each person and will remain until its purpose is served, we all as well shared in a greater outward suffering for the sake of my father's own suffering. But I will say this: whatever true suffering he endured, that suffering of his is past and gone, and so too should be the outward suffering that we extended to him. I submit that in its place we should present something positive. If my father left his mark upon you, if he impressed something of himself onto you that you feel, then I charge you: please nurture it, cultivate it, acknowledge it, and do not deny it; do not feel guilty that you have something of him that makes you feel happy, despite the loss of the man himself.

If all of you who care for him and have his mark upon you can join with me, and celebrate that part of him he left with you, then he will be with us forever.

-taken from the eulogy I gave at my father's funeral service on October 5, 2004

BEGRUDGING

If I could be rid of one emotion, it would be envy, the source of so much acute pain, and of absolutely no joy. Envy is the one emotion from which no positive influence could ever be derived. Why do we have it, except to provide evidence of the weakness and fallibility of humankind?