Anything But Theist

Wednesday Word: Repercussionist

2012-02-01T09:54:00.002-05:00

Repercussionist: a neighbor who plays the drums when you piss them off

The Curious Case of Questioning Faith

2012-01-31T23:37:00.000-05:00

When I stop and think about it, there are so many reasons to stop being religious that it’s sad so few do.

I find that how someone becomes an atheist tends to happen one of two ways: either you learn about atheism and find it appealing, or you learn about religion and find it appalling. I personally took the latter route, losing faith well before I ever found atheism. However, I suspect that both paths to atheism are lined with questions.

I found that religion hates when believers ask questions – or at least certain questions. Sure, they like some questions… like those that assume the basic premises of the faith are true. However, if you start asking questions that religion cannot truly answer, you will get a brush-off reply that means nothing, essentially amounting to an appeal to “take it on faith.” I even compiled a list of some responses given by Christians when they don’t know, but would like to appear like they do.

If I had to pin down one question that really shook my faith, it would be: “Where did God come from?” It’s a question for which theologians have many responses, but no answers. Meanwhile, atheism answers this question quite simply and succinctly: our imagination.

But I can’t point to that question and say, “That is why I became an atheist.” It’s not my “proof,” by any means. Rather, it leads to other questions based on the responses given by believers (e.g. if “god” can simply be, why can’t the universe?). Questioning in general exposes the deficiencies in religion, so I can understand why religion discourages curiosity.

And yet, I have found no shortage of religious folks who want to try to answer my questions now that I’m an atheist. When you’re a believer, questioning is evil, but when you’re an atheist, it’s not only expected, it’s almost like any question on my part is an invitation to proselytize.

Many religious people just like to represent their faith, because you are never more sure of your religion as when you’re defending it from the outside. A fellow believer with doubt is disconcerting, but confronting a non-believer is basically an opportunity.

I also notice a very different stance in how what I say now as an atheist is interpreted versus if I said it as a believer.

No believer I ever met since becoming an atheist is open to my ideas, at all. I’m not saying believers ignore me or don’t really listen to me, but they keep me at a distance and don’t take what I say seriously. They see what I say as either a joke or an attack (at least I understand why it might be seen as a bad joke, coming from me). When I was a believer (or when I read blogs and comments between believers), those same concerns are empathized with, and we are reassured, “That’s normal, everyone has those questions and concerns.”

It’s quite a situation, no question about it.

Top Ten: Favorite, Least Favorite, and Not Quite -ist’s

2012-01-31T15:50:00.004-05:00

Top Ten: Favorite -ist’s

10. Nudist
9. Artist
8. Feminist
7. Altruist
6. Guitarist
5. Humorist
4. Nonconformist
3. Pragmatist
2. Absurdist
1. Suffragist

Top Ten: Least Favorite -ist’s

10. Creationist
9. Exorcist
8. Racist
7. Arsonist
6. Chauvinist
5. Extremist
4. Dentist
3. Rapist
2. Fascist
1. Lobbyist

Top Ten: Not Quite -ist’s

10. Foist
9. Exist
8. Waist
7. Hoist
6. Twist
5. Heist
4. List
3. Antichrist
2. Moist
1. Poltergeist

The Fourth Branch of Government

2012-01-30T13:04:00.001-05:00

When I was in school, I learned how the government works. As it turns out, the government doesn’t work, and I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the parts of government I was never told about as a child.

As far as I can tell, the main thing I was never taught was that there is a fourth branch of government, called the Lobby. They play an important role in how America doesn’t work.

For one thing, the Lobby writes the laws. I used to think the Legislation did this, but as it turns out, they don’t. Writing laws is work, and legislators aren’t paid enough to actually care. So, they have lobbyists do this job for them. So really, the Lobby writes the laws, and then the Legislation votes on whether to enact that law.

Except… if there’s one thing harder than writing, it’s thinking. So, to save the Legislation from having to think, lobbyists tell legislators how to vote. This is done based on a complex system of “donations” (known in other industries as “bribes”).

At this point, you might be thinking to yourself, “We need to elect people who will represent us, not lobbyists!” You adorable, stupid little citizen. No matter who you elect, they will be bought, and if they somehow can’t be bought, their opponent in the next election will magically find the financial support necessary to destroy anyone who might follow the wishes of voters over lobbyists.

In fact, the whole election system is very much dependent upon lobbyists and the wealthy interests behind them. Every elected official depends upon the millions of dollars of support from private, wealthy individuals, because wealthy people matter more than the rest of us and what they have to say matters more. Rich people are just better than we are… that’s why they’re rich. We should all just shut up and do whatever they want, because it will be much easier for all of us if we just play along.

Even those who have no need for re-election still rely upon the Lobby. The Supreme Court is a life appointment, so they should be free from this corruption… except, Supreme Court Justices are still people, and people love money. Money talks, and justice is blind, not deaf. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of parties with direct financial connections to various Justices in the past, and it won’t stop anytime soon.

So, what can you do? Make money. Make lots and lots of money. No one cares how you get it… it could be from bootlegging, or selling defective medical equipment for premature babies, or stuffing poisonous insulation into every public school… don’t worry about how you become rich, the important thing is being rich.

Once you have amassed millions, then you too can make a difference. Show up to meals that cost $20,000 a plate and let you shake hands with the President. Give a few insider tips on how you plan to tank your company so that some important Senators can short-sell your stock and make a fortune, then have them bail you out with taxpayer money for the privilege. Give the wives of some federal judges a job on your board of directors (now your board even meets “diversity” standards!).

The world really opens up for you when you’re rich, and the only person holding you back from all this success is you… and your morals, and your lack of connections, and your pathetic pedigree, and that faint smell of feet that follows you everywhere. Know your place, plebian.

America truly has the best government that money can buy.

Monday Rule: Hard Work

2012-01-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

Some wealthy people acquire their money through hard work, though never their own. No one becomes successful until they get a job that credits them for the hard work of others. Those who have worked hard for everything they have are all poor. Hard work isn’t a bad thing, it’s just that the best that you can hope for from working hard is to acquire an easy job that pays well.

Two Dudes: Ex

2012-01-29T12:57:00.002-05:00

Snippet: Libertarians

2012-01-28T23:35:00.000-05:00

A libertarian doesn’t believe in absolute freedom, like they claim. They believe you can have as much freedom as you can personally afford.

Saturday Reflection #66

2012-01-28T10:56:00.001-05:00

All people are guided by reason and logic, so long as they have had time for their emotions to make a decision and their minds to justify it.

Ten Rules to Live By

2012-01-27T23:12:00.002-05:00

I think one of the great pastimes of creative atheists is rewriting religious ideology, and there’s probably no other single religious dogma that gets more attention in Western culture than the Ten Commandments.

This isn’t to say there aren’t other horrible sets of rules in the Bible, or that other religions don’t have other sets of rules which beg to be altered. The Ten Commandments just stand out for us. Both Christians and Jews claim to honor them, though they can’t seem to agree on how to number them, and Muslims are pretty fond of them, as well.

Atheists and non-monotheists, however, will see many of the Ten Commandments as being… well… dumb.

I’ll be using the Augustinian numbering, since I was raised Catholic.

Commandments 1-3 are some of the most ignorant trash in the whole Bible. It’s full of crap, like: punishing people of the third and fourth generation of someone who worships another God; don’t misuse magical words; don’t work on the Sabbath… and don’t let your animals do anything, and the same goes for any visitors to your town.

It’s not until Command 4 (or the 5th, if you go by the numbering of most Protestants and Jews) that you have a rule that makes any sense at all. It’s a solid rule: honor your father and mother so that you can maintain your inheritance. That’s a pretty good rule, and so rarely do you see a Commandment justify why you should.

I wouldn’t say it’s one of the top ten most important rules… but it’s not a bad rule. Obviously there are plenty of examples where you may have to escape the clutches of abusive parents, but it’s still generally a good commandment for most people.

You shall not kill… more accurately rendered sometimes as “don’t murder,” which takes care of legal caveats we have placed on the rule, like exceptions for self-defense and obviously war. Another good commandment, so we’re 2/5

With number 6, it’s a little bit fuzzier. Again, there are exceptions, and they hold up. I assume if you’re in an open relationship, or you and your spouse are mutually interested in swinging or swapping or whatever the kids are doing these days… it’s not technically adultery, since there is no deception or betrayal.

But what I think makes the adultery commandment so unfair is that, by Biblical standards, if you get divorced and remarry, you are a de facto adulterer. I’m not a fan of divorce, but sometimes it’s just necessary. It’s often better for everyone involved to separate than for a couple to stay together. To demonize people who lose love and look for it elsewhere is just pathetic. This rule is written by jilted wife-beaters, I have no doubt about it.

Stealing is wrong. Not much more to say, another good commandment (I’m calling it 3.5/7)

Again, #8 is a good one. It’s really bad to bear false witness against your neighbor. Today, we call this perjury, but most people extrapolate that honesty is a good policy based on this commandment, and I suppose it’s generally true, but not enough to be a good rule. Still, I’ll give it to the Bible on this one, since the commandment doesn’t say, “Don’t lie.”

Commandments 9 and 10 are not good at all. For one thing, I’m surprised Christianity can be followed by capitalists, since it’s coveting that drives capitalism. I see nothing wrong with coveting. What is bad is if you kill your neighbor to steal his stuff and his wife… but we covered all of those acts already with #5, #6 and #7.

Total score: 4.5/10

Basically, the Ten Commandments don’t even score a D- with a 14 point curve. That’s pretty bad.

I’d like to think that if I put together a list of ten rules, I could get at least a C- (or 7/10). In fact… if I were God and I got to make these rules, I would only want about 7/10 to be good rules. I get why some of the rules aren’t all that great, I really do, but I wouldn’t waste the opportunity by aggrandizing myself.

So, here it goes… completely off the top of my head…

1. Don’t rape anyone. Rape includes forcing someone into any sexual act against their will, having sex with someone who is unconscious, or having sex with someone younger 16, unless they are older than half your age plus seven (the half+7 rule).

2. Don’t murder anyone. Abortion is never murder, nor is it murder if you kill a home intruder… but that isn’t an invitation to drag them down to your rape dungeon, which I hope you only have for consensual use.

3. While you’re not murdering people, don’t hurt people, either. Don’t punch people, don’t kick people, don’t slap, smack or spank people… unless it’s part of some weird sex thing, don’t hurt other people. Can I just point out at this point that perverts are really screwing up some of these rules?

4. Try not to be such a pervert. Save something for when you’re older, otherwise you’re going to end up hanging from a scarf dead in your closet with your pants around your ankles before someone you know finds you and has to stage it like a suicide. I’m not saying, “Don’t be a pervert,” but show some fucking restraint, literally.

5. Don’t steal.

6. Don’t damage other people’s things. If you damage someone else’s property, you should pay to fix it or replace it.

7. Do not make false accusations of criminal activity against someone.

8. Sometimes it’s easier to skip asking for permission and just ask for forgiveness. Smile, nod, then do what you want. Don’t break any of the prior rules in the process.

9. Encourage others to take the high road. It reduces traffic on the low road.

10. If you believe everything you read, it would be better for you to be illiterate.

Discussion: Republican Racism

2012-01-27T15:41:00.002-05:00

Are Republican politicians as racist as they appear to be, or are they just courting the bigot vote out of desperation?

Snippet: Republicans

2012-01-26T23:56:00.002-05:00

I was going to write a piece on the Republican debate tonight, but what’s the point? Criticizing Republicans is easier than shooting fish in a barrel. It’s easier than noticing fish in a barrel. It’s even easier than being near a barrel, since when was the last time you saw a barrel?

You ever…

2012-01-26T18:09:00.002-05:00

You ever have a dream where you’re driving your car from the back seat?

Wednesday Word: Crassinine

2012-01-25T21:55:00.003-05:00

Crassinine: to be obtusely stupid

The Atheist Community, aka “The Bubble”

2012-01-25T17:17:00.000-05:00

There is a strange phenomenon among atheists, wherein many of them seem to think it’s either a good idea or even downright important that we form an “atheist community.”

Now… I see the appeal, and I even understand the need for a community to combat problems caused by religions… but I think it’s a foolish idea.

First off, I think John Loftus hit the nail on the head when he said, “[T]here is no atheist community. There are only atheist communities.” This astute observation actually solves one problem immediately, and I wonder if perhaps it comes from his Christian background. After all, there is no “Christian community,” only Christian communities.

I like the idea of many atheist communities much more than I like the idea of a monolithic concept like “The Atheist Community™.” It seems safer and it promotes island thinking, whereby different ideas can grow in isolation, resulting in a more robust ideology than can be achieved through a more centralized, all-inclusive group.

Plus… and I’m just being honest here… I don’t want anything to do with a lot of you. Yes, you. Please take offense, because it’s very personal. I just don’t like you as people. Maybe if I hadn’t gotten to know some of you so well, it might have worked out, but here we are. What I’m saying is… I liked some of you more when you were strangers. I’m sure that for some of you, the feeling is mutual (maybe more so, now that you know how I really feel).

My biggest problem with people wanting to be part of an atheist community is based on a little concept I hold near and dear to my heart. I think people who live in a bubble end up really warped. If you surround yourself with like-minded individuals who generally agree with you, you will turn into an intolerable asshole who is utterly out of touch with reality. I’m already an enormous douchebag, so I can’t afford to get any worse.

I call this problem “intellectual incest.” If you primarily engage in discourse with people who are all just like you, you will end up with anemic ideas that have hooves. Trust me on this. It’s just bad practice to indulge in such “comfort.” That’s often one of the reasons I see given for why communities are formed: comfort. Don’t ever get comfortable. I’m always on my toes; it makes me look taller.

The real reason to form a community is because you want to change something. The problem with most atheist communities I see is that they do nothing but sit around complaining about what religious people do. On a slow news day, they’ll bitch about absolutely anything.

I remember being blown away at the righteous indignation of atheists at a certain blog that found out a college had a “faith night,” where people got discount tickets to a basketball game if they shared what church they attended. Of all the problems facing the world today…

If I had been there and I wanted to go to that game at a discounted rate, I would have looked them in the eye and said, “I worship at the Jedi Academy,” or, “I have a shrine to Kurt Cobain in my closet,” or even, “I take Biology Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in room 204.” While I can’t test my theory, I’m willing to bet that I would have gotten the discount with any of those. No one wants to cause a scene, and if they make it a big deal, maybe then you can act upset (but realistically, it’s just a damn basketball game, it’s not the campus bookstore giving out a discount to Christians only or something).

Basically, atheists in these communities don’t care about actually living as an atheist, they just want to bitch. They want to sit around and wallow in their victimhood, moaning to all those who will listen, whining, “Woe is me.” They don’t want answers, they want to obsess about every possible problem they can imagine. And you wonder why I want nothing to do with a lot of you bastards…

But we do need watchdogs monitoring religion. Atheist communities can perform this function, but so can anyone who supports a secular society. That’s my goal; I don’t advocate on behalf of atheism, I support secularism. Secularism doesn’t exclude believers, and many religious people support secularism, because a religious society can ultimately only cater to one faith to the exclusion of others. The only people who support theocracies are people who are both convinced their religion will prevail and who are selfish pricks.

I want nothing to do with the atheist bubble. I read more blogs by religious people than I read of atheists. In fact, I come away from reading most religious blogs feeling like I learned something, whereas I come away from a lot of atheist blogs wishing there was a button on my keyboard that could give them an electric shock. I’ve been banned from two atheist blogs (for ideological differences, not for use of language), but never from a Christian one (and I’ve cursed at many Christians).

Ugh, and the reading lists of some of these atheists… it’s pathetic. How can you read that many books by Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and whoever else is a trendy atheist author these days? What could you possibly get out of someone who already agrees with you explaining why they think the same way you do? Seriously, I want to know. Are you unsure? Do you have questions about atheism? Did a Christian stump you? What is driving atheists to read that crap? Is it just because it’s there, and you feel obliged? Someone please tell me.

I lack this desire to be surrounded by a self-affirming culture that always agrees with me. That was what I was trying to avoid in religion, this insulated society apart from the whole that saw itself as superior. I don’t want any part of that atheism. I don’t believe in gods… and I don’t see why that means I should have to join something or buy a particular book.

And it’s not that I’m an individual, either. It’s not about doing my own thing, or being better than anyone. I certainly don’t feel left out. Again… I just really hate a lot of you. I cannot overemphasize how much contempt I have for most atheists.

Atheism isn’t enough by itself. It’s not even enough to believe an atheist community can fulfill you. Atheism isn’t a religion, but it is certainly as empty as one. You shouldn’t be tricked into thinking atheism is more than it is, because chances are, whoever says they want you to join them really just wants you to attend their meeting and maybe make a donation, or to buy their book.

Don’t try to form a community, form a cause. A community can sit around doing nothing for decades while entirely engrossed in itself, but a cause exists only to achieve something. You are better off chasing change than you are reclining in the familiar.

Response to a Comment on Homosexuality and Choice

2012-01-25T14:19:00.002-05:00

I did a post recently about homosexuality and choice, and I got some interesting feedback. First, thanks to The Nerd for some support and corrections, since I certainly need it on this kind of topic. I’m pretty boring sexually, so it’s really reaching on my part when I try to write on this topic. I rely on the ideas of others on this matter, and the best I can do is synthesize all the opinions I have heard, so my personal ignorance creeps in frequently.

One comment I want to address in detail, and I figured I could do a whole post on it. The comment was left by Andrew, and is reproduced in whole below:

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this.

As a man who is homosexual, I would certainly say that it does matter a great deal whether or not sexual identity and sexual preferences are genetic, hormonal, or chosen. I don't think it should matter in culture and morality, particularly not in Western Culture where freedom of choice is highly valued, but I can assure you that the knowledge that there exists very real evidence for a genetic influence on homosexuality offers me and many others a sense of relief. I feel better knowing that there isn't something I or anyone else did to make me turn out this way. Settled in that fact I feel more free to go about living my life as I choose. As far as being perceived as diseased, I see that as a non-issue. I will believe that homosexuality is a disease when being a redhead becomes classified as a disease.

If you will forgive my being so presumptuous, it seems to me that your (justified) hesitancy to embrace labeling people because of the harm that it does is causing you to outright reject the possibility that homosexuality might actually be a condition that people are predisposed to. Yes, culture has a very strong effect on how people perceive their own sexuality and how they act it out, but I doubt its effect on peoples' innate sexual desires. With regards to the claimants of chosen sexuality, an application of Occam's razor with my knowledge of culture and sexuality would suggest that these individuals are just bisexuals who have been repressed or otherwise neglected a portion of their sexuality.

I don't really know how to end this... so, um, I would love to hear your comments, thanks.

First off, thanks for the comment. Hopefully nothing I said upset you, because that’s wasn’t my intent. Also, I hope I didn’t appear to be claiming “all” people who identify as gay are a certain way. My intent was more to point out some concerns I have with the dogmatic nature of one particular claim coming from the gay community.

Let me be clear: I’m pretty confident in saying that most people who consider themselves gay don’t choose to be attracted to people of the same gender. I also would not be surprised if many people who have same-gender attraction wish they could stop (these are the ones I feel most sorry for of all). Hopefully it was clear that I’m not accusing gay people of a massive conspiratorial cover-up regarding homosexuality and choice.

Now, onto the actual concerns Andrew brought up…

I’ve stated so before (if I wasn’t so lazy, I would find the post), but I think the genetic defense argument is weak on many grounds. My principle concern is, suppose I was attracted to children. I didn’t choose to have that attraction, but acting on it is immoral. Or, I could be inclined to want to chop up women into little pieces and lay in a bathtub full of body parts.

The point isn’t that gay people are like pedophiles or serial killers, the point is that a lot of urges might not be choices, but if society thinks they’re wrong, we’re expected to suppress them. Homosexuality is harmless, unlike those other inclinations, so it’s okay to give in to those urges (at least, in my view). However, saying “I was born this way” is not justification for a behavior. It simply isn’t, I’m sorry. It’s a piss-poor, weak argument which has no place in public discourse.

Now that I have you thinking I compare gay people to child molesters… clearly I have endeared you to my side and I can continue.

I don’t know if there is or is not a link between homosexuality and genetics. It’s possible, I suppose, though I find it highly unlikely. Sexual attraction is a very complex emotional response to a whole host of chemical, visual and cultural stimuli. I don’t think genetics can code for whether I would prefer to play the guitar over the bass, or whether I will like beef more than pork. Then again, some people are genetically pre-disposed to be disgusted by the taste of cilantro, so I can see how the concept is possible.

I think it’s more likely (and most scientific research I have read on the matter seems to confirm) that things like sexuality may be heavily affected by hormones, especially the levels of those in the mother during pregnancy. Still, I would hate for this to be the case…

While many gay people say they take comfort in knowing it’s genetic or hormonal, I think it’s borderline scary. Suppose we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that homosexuality is caused by genetics or hormones. What then? Will Christian parents abort their gay babies, or treat hormonal imbalances to ensure straight children? While you write off gay people being considered sick as a non-issue to you, it was a major problem for previous generations when homosexuality literally was defined and treated like a disease.

It’s not about whether you believe homosexuality is a disease, my friend. They don’t drag you off for shock treatment because you think you’re sick. I know you aren’t, but certain individuals who enjoy kneeling down in front of a scantily clad man with six-pack abs and arms outstretched just might.

I openly embrace the fact that people are often predisposed to homosexuality. Any amount of time studying biology will reinforce that fact, because no species I have ever heard of exhibits purely heterosexual tendencies. From apes to zebras, there are critters that prefer sexual relationships with members of their own gender across the whole animal kingdom. When people claim “homosexuality isn’t natural,” I’m very quick to point out how wrong they are. It’s 100% natural… I just question whether we can (or should) pin it all on genetics or hormones.

If I may be so bold, while you claim that certain types of people who choose to be gay are bisexual, I believe that everyone is bisexual. I have zero doubt that there is the potential in everyone to be attracted to the other sex. Certain cultures have ubiquitous homosexuality practiced by the entire population. In my eyes, that proves that there simply are no “straight” people. We as a culture make people straight.

My “straightness” is largely a condition of socialization. I have no doubt that if I was raised around more images of two men kissing, I wouldn’t be uncomfortable around it. I liken it to the way I reacted around a man and woman kissing when I was five. My perception of male-male sexuality is essentially stunted by a culture that does not depict such things, except in the context of humor, and in truth… I often laugh more than any other single response when presented with the image of two men kissing. It’s not socially acceptable to do that in some cases, so I might look away to prevent myself from giggling like a little child.

Why don’t I have the same stigma about female-female sexuality? Come on… do I have to spell it out for you? Our culture depicts lesbians as sexy. There’s nothing hotter than two chicks going at it… except maybe having them invite me in at the end (I only need 30 seconds, I swear).

Oy… this came out much more crudely than I intended.

Maybe that cleared things up. If not, feel free to call me out on my ignorance and I’ll give it another whirl.

Soundtrack to the 2012 Presidential Race

2012-01-25T11:33:00.002-05:00

Ron Paul: Pink Floyd – Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2

Herman Cain: Dion – The Wanderer

Jon Huntsman: Roy Orbison – Only the Lonely

Rick Perry: 2pac – Me and My Girlfrend

Michele Bachmann: Heart – Crazy

Newt Gingrich: Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird

Mitt Romney: Monster Magnet – Powertrip

Barack Obama: War – Why Can’t We Be Friends?

Snippet: Film Industry Pirates

2012-01-25T02:49:00.003-05:00

The movie industry is upset about online piracy. Yep, the people who charge 15 dollars for two sodas and a popcorn are accusing the internet of theft.

Top Ten: Reasons for Supporting Ron Paul

2012-01-24T12:20:00.003-05:00

10. He’s the only real Christian Republican candidate (Did you know Santorum and Gingrich are Catholic?!).

9. His interpretation of the First Amendment; he read, “Congress shall make no law,” and stopped.

8. Something, something, Federal Reserve, something…

7. Because fuck the environment.

6. I’m tired of eating in restaurants next to some coon.

5. I like his tax plan, because it saves me enough money to buy another private island.

4. A stray cat said Ron Paul will rescue me from the aliens in my fingernails.

3. *sound of water bubbling* What was the question, again, man? *cough*

2. All the guys in my frat like him.

1. I should be allowed to jerk off on my roof. It’s my roof, and if they have a problem with it, they should move the school.

Homosexuality and Choice: A Clandestine Relationship

2012-01-24T08:26:00.004-05:00

I love the gay community, and I feel very comfortable saying so. Yet, I write this blog post to point out one of the things the gay community is totally wrong about: choice.

One of the cornerstone fallacies of the gay community for the last decade or two has been this idea that homosexuality is genetic. It’s actually one of the more unfortunate results of a hate campaign against homosexuality waged by conservatives for centuries, a sort of semi-harmless reaction to a very harmful prejudice.

No one is born homosexual. A lot of people may disagree, but I assure you that no child is born sexual at all, either homosexual or heterosexual. Sex doesn’t even enter into the mind of a newborn. You have to think in very Freudian terms in order to twist reality to the point of injecting sexuality into the life of a young child, and it doesn’t in any way truly resemble what we have come to think of as sexuality.

The biggest problem with homosexuality is that it is a completely invented term. Homosexuality was a disease thought up by 19th century psychologists, and it’s not real. Homosexuality is not a real thing, and it’s only use is in differentiating types of relationships for the purposes of morally judging them against the standards of religious bigotry.

I imagine it may seem trivializing, but I liken heterosexuality to vegetarianism. They’re very similar, in many ways. I see both as matters of taste. If you are raised to think meat is bad, or simply came to that conclusion on your own, then you may feel repulsed by someone eating a plate of steak next to you. I’m honest enough to admit I am a bit off-put by two men kissing, but I think their right to do so trumps my right to feel comfortable in all settings. If it is really bothering me, I generally just solve the “problem” by looking away (oh, the horror).

Sexuality is very heavily influenced by culture. Many cultures have practiced near universal homosexuality (like the ancient Greeks). However, taking the Greeks as our prime example, it’s not that they encouraged people to “be gay.” They didn’t think of sexuality in those terms, because they did not see homosexual acts as fundamentally immoral. Sure, some men of that time preferred the company of other men, but most had wives and children while also having had (and often continuing to have) homosexuality relationships.

It would have been not only uncommon, but strange for a young man to forgo taking an older male lover during his adolescence. These men you see yelling about the evils of homosexuality in protests and in political debates today would have all fooled around with an older guy in their youths, and would take a young lover or two or three in their adult lives, had they been born in Greece, circa 400 BCE.

Every single one of them would have, I can be sure of it, because the same men who defended the institution of pederasty in Greece are the exact same types of men who demonize homosexuality today: defenders of tradition. Most people are helpless against the forces of social norms, and sex is no different. If your sexuality is this dependent upon the culture you grew up in, then I hate to say it, but… it’s not your sexuality.

It’s a tough situation. “Gay” people have been coached for years now to really own their sexual identity, but I think it’s pointless (or possibly even foolish) to do so. You should feel confident and free to choose to be with whoever you want, but I don’t believe in “gay” or “straight” people. I would prefer to think only of relationships as gay or straight; I don’t like identifying people by something as frivolous as their sexual proclivities.

If we’re just labeling people based on highly personal sexual preferences, I guess you can consider me a cowgirlist, though I usually finish as a doggy-stylist… and that’s why I don’t like defining people based on sexual details: way too much information.

I have this feeling that in the heat of battling all those who hate homosexuality, people supporting sexual tolerance have latched onto this fallacy that homosexuality must be genetic. It almost makes sense; who you are attracted to is not under your conscious control… so it must be genes. No one would ever “choose” to be gay, not with all the prejudice they face, right?

Except, some do. You can’t deny these people their sexuality by defining it for them based on some group’s political needs.

In fact, from my scientific understanding, homosexuality is not “genetic” at all, but may be hormonally influenced in some cases. I’m more inclined to just assume it is an “accident,” or a “fluke,” or some other less-offensive sounding term for “it just fucking happened, get over it already.”

Part of why I don’t like the propagation of the fallacy of homosexual genetics is because it paints a false picture of sexuality. The idea that people are “born gay” (or “born straight”) ignores several truths, like that some people change their preference as they get older, or that many people are attracted to both men and women.

Then you have the problem of gender not being as black and white as we imagine. Am I gay or straight if I’m attracted to someone who is a hermaphrodite? What about if I was born a man, but I feel like a woman, so I get surgery and hormone therapy to change my gender, and then, in the end, I’m attracted to women? Am I a lesbian, or just a straight man with tits?

Another problem with linking homosexuality to genetics is that it makes homosexuality look like some sort of genetic disease or hormonal imbalance. Is that what the gay community wants, to be once again minimized to the level of “disease” or “genetic disorder?” I imagine not, and yet they seem to see no way forward in the fight for equal rights, except by sticking to the story that they were “born this way.”

Homosexuality is not wrong, and it doesn’t matter one iota whether a person chose to enter into a homosexual relationship or not. It doesn’t matter whether a person’s preferences are the result of an accident of birth or culture, or if it is a conscious choice.

The reason homosexuality should be acceptable is because it’s harmless, and that’s really all there is to it.

Snippet: Political Outsider

2012-01-24T01:19:00.003-05:00

Republicans have a strange obsession with supporting people who sell themselves as “political outsiders,” especially ones who hate government and think it can’t achieve anything.

I wouldn’t hire a plumber who says he’s “not really sold on the idea of indoor plumbing,” or buy meat from a butcher who says he can’t stand “the burden of industry regulations.”

Monday Rule: Political Debates

2012-01-23T23:36:00.001-05:00

During a political debate, every time a candidate says something that isn’t true, they should have to take a drink.

Pithy News 1/23/12

2012-01-23T14:36:00.003-05:00

Jay Leno has upset Sikhs and the Indian government by joking that Mitt’s summer home is the Golden Temple. They reportedly find it offensive to be associated in any way with “some freak in a polygamist cult.”

Websites including Wikipedia and Reddit went dark on Wednesday in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Teachers and Professors are reporting a record number of properly researched papers being turned in on Thursday.

Voters in South Carolina shocked the nation by voting Gingrich the winner of their primary. When asked why he was losing support, Romney said his reasoning changes day to day.

Mitt Romney has caved to pressure and will release his tax records for 2010 and estimates for 2011. As for why he opposed doing so initially, he said it wouldn’t support his message that the rich are taxed too much.

Interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke, Part 4

2012-01-22T18:03:00.001-05:00

[Continued interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke of Camels with Hammers from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3]

BRET: Would you say you were a Christian if you would be killed otherwise?

DAN: Depends on the circumstances. If there were a way I could code my ideas into acceptable symbolic language and influence people better than by being dead, then there might be something to it.

BRET: Gun to your head right now. And you know the answer they’re looking for.

DAN: You say what gunmen want you to say, unless there are awful consequences. If the guns are not in the room, if there are just death threats, then you don’t say anything they want.

BRET: Is there any circumstance where you would die specifically for atheism?

DAN: Sure.

BRET: Really?

DAN: Yes. If it meant defending the right to free speech, the right to blaspheme, etc. Then it would be necessary to fight that kind of authoritarianism. So if they said, “Stop blogging or we’ll kill you,” I’d keep blogging.

BRET: But is being put to death fighting it?

DAN: Now, if they show up and are in the room with me, I’ll say whatever they want to stay alive! But if I ever get back to my blog... I’m just being honest here.

BRET: I wouldn’t even take a paper cut for atheism.

DAN: Speech acts with potential murderers are not under the same rules. But what you say to the world matters. The right to freedom of conscience is one of the few things worth dying for.

BRET: Does it?

DAN: Yes, it does.

BRET: I think it’s worth fighting for, but not really dying for.

DAN: Nietzsche has a wonderful line that I’ll paraphrase, “Die for our opinions? No, we do not hold them that strongly. Die for our right to them? Perhaps...” I think that’s the best combination of principle and honesty. It’s not atheism itself that’s worth dying for. It’s the right to freedom of conscience.

BRET: Right, but I think you’re analyzing an additional situations I wasn’t thinking about.

DAN: But “dying for” is different than “dying on account of.”

BRET: I wouldn’t just be a martyr for something, but I would fight with a chance of dying. But I see those as very different.

DAN: If I were in an oppressive country where they’d kill me for saying I was an atheist, I wouldn’t just futilely get myself killed.

BRET: I imagine not.

DAN: But I’d fight with the risk of death or speak out in ways that could be effectual in changing things, even if it meant possible death. In other words, there’s no point in dying just for the principle, there is a point in dying in a way that has hope of changing things.

BRET: I sometimes wonder if atheism needs a Jesus, someone they can point to as a paragon of self-sacrifice and principle.

DAN: We have one, it’s Socrates.

BRET: Psssh.

DAN: He predates Jesus even.

BRET: I don’t have a daemon inside me, so I can’t relate.

DAN: Philosophers for centuries have appealed to his model. It’s no small thing that he died for iconoclastic, dialectical, gadfly truth-telling, and except for the dialectical part, atheists are part of this tradition.

BRET: He didn’t even die for a noble principle, he died because he decided to adhere to the social contract.

DAN: Well, he was sentenced on principle. He antagonized the jury and refused to pander, even after being sentenced.

BRET: Right, but there were means of him escaping such injustice.

DAN: Yes, that was just the icing on top. Not only would he stand up in public for what was right, he would adhere to it privately to his own disadvantage. It solidified his unwavering commitment to principle. At least as he is heroized for us.

BRET: I dunno... I always took away from my reading of the Apology (assuming those are not just Plato’s ascribed words and ideas) that Socrates ultimately was adhering to the idea that he was a member of society and must abide by society’s laws. I see no such merit in just obeying. Sure, his words were those of a rebel, but he acted as a pawn.

DAN: Well, it’s the principle we cannot simply pick and choose which laws to follow.

BRET: We can though. We most certainly can, and people do. And some people are better for it.

DAN: Yes, it’s a problem with deontological thinking, but I wouldn’t accuse the deontologists for pawns.

BRET: By Socrates’ logic, Rosa Parks is a malcontent. I’ll side with Parks.

DAN: No, she’s a gadfly. The whole point of civil disobedience was to be willing to accept jail to break the laws, but not break the social order. The genius is that it showed the violence of the law, these peaceful people doing peaceful things being beaten and jailed---it made vivid the insane injustice of how the law was already treating them with its constraints on peaceful activities based on their color. The law was already beating them up and jailing them just without it looking like that, so they forced the law to do it explicitly and people came to realize those laws were unjust.

Also remember Martin Luther King Jr. was following a deontological view of Aquinas and Augustine that an unjust law was not a law. They could disobey an unjust law because it wasn’t really a law. But then they also accepted the penalties of the existing law. So they lived in the middle. They acted in accord with real law. But they accepted the punishments of the claimed law. It was a triumph of philosophy. It exposed the dissonance between real law and perverse law in a world-altering way. It’s moral genius.

BRET: These actions don’t exist in a vacuum, though. You need other factors at play.

DAN: Sure.

BRET: Like a way to disseminate information.

DAN: You need TV.

BRET: Right. If you don’t have a group behind you to publicize you, then any sacrifice you make is just... like a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it.

DAN: Right, there would be no sound.

BRET: Oh there would be. Physics assures us.

DAN: There would be sound waves.

BRET: But we wouldn’t know, yeah.

DAN: No noises.

BRET: Who would win in a fight, Jesus or Mohammed, assuming they’re both human and the same age?

DAN: Mohammed. No context [typo on “contest,” but left due to serendipity].

BRET: Why’s that?

DAN: Because he was a conquering type, whereas Jesus only got rough with accountants.

BRET: True. We also would have accepted, “Because I don’t want death threats.”

DAN: (laughs) On second thought, Jesus.

BRET: Judges? We’ll accept it.

Would you rather heaven or hell be real? Only get to choose one. But not everyone goes there.

DAN: Heaven. Where does everyone else go?

BRET: Everyone else just disappears.

DAN: Heaven.

BRET: Aww. So no justice for Hitler.

DAN: There wouldn’t be justice in either case.

BRET: No?

DAN: Hell is disproportionate punishment even for Hitler. It’s insanity. Oblivion is just fine for him.

BRET: If you say so... I think it can’t be worse than private schools. I bet you get used to it after a while. Like a hot tub.

DAN: Then it wouldn’t be hell, conceptually speaking.

BRET: I thought hell was just the absence of God? That just means hell is like my normal life.

DAN: So how is that justice for Hitler?

BRET: Well he was really religious. He would probably hate that. Plus we’ll put him in next to a few Jews.

DAN: (laughs) Next question!

BRET: If the world were proven to be ending in 2012 (let’s say a star was on a collision course and would eradicate everything), what would you do this year? We’ll say it happens in late December. So you have all year basically, though nothing you do will really matter...

DAN: I would do everything I already do. I’d just spend some more time with friends, but I’d still blog, I’d still teach.

BRET: Maybe cash-out your retirement?

DAN: My what?

BRET: Hehehe. Oh you poor educators.

DAN: I’d spend the last month with my parents

BRET: For the free food and laundry?

DAN: (laughs) Yes, for the free food and laundry.

BRET: Which would make a better series of movies, the Bible or the works of Homer? Obviously the Bible would be much longer, but still.

DAN: Having never read Homer it’s hard to say.

BRET: Okay scratch that then. What other mythology have you read?

DAN: Not much, just a few Greek myths. They are way better than anything in the Bible.

BRET: You’re breakin’ my balls. Okay then, New or Old Testament?

DAN: Morally, New. For the stories, Old.

BRET: You know I think Peter Jackson is directing a Noah movie. After the Hobbit, I believe.

DAN: Wasn’t Steve Carell in that?

BRET: Ha

DAN: After I saw that movie I woke up with this thought in my head that there must be a movie made called “There Will Be Flood.” Seriously I was certain of this for a few minutes.

BRET: Pick any person, living or dead, to be God.

DAN: Stephen Colbert.

BRET: The real Stephen or TV Stephen?

DAN: The real one.

BRET: Risky move... I don’t even know what he’s like.

DAN: He would be a benevolent, rational, and mischievous ruler

BRET: Would you rather choose someone you loved to live forever, or someone you hate to die?

DAN: Someone I loved to live forever. I’m not a hater.

BRET: Yeah, but what if living forever is horrible. And this would be a great way to finally just get rid of someone like Cheney. He’s so close anyway.

DAN: Then make someone I hate live forever.

BRET: Ha, perfect. Just be sure when you make the wish to claim you love that person. Or it might not work.

DAN: I’ll have my lawyer work out the details before I sign anything

BRET: Which religion currently being practiced do you think will disappear first?

DAN: It’s probably one none of us have ever heard of. Those we know are sticking around a while.

BRET: Well you have to pick one you have heard of. And Scientology is too easy.

DAN: Yeah. I think the Amish may not be able to hang on forever.

BRET: So true.

DAN: Sorry for your kids.

BRET: Do you think Amish people will be using iPads in 200 years? And sagging their pants? Or will they always be trapped in 1800?

DAN: They’ll just be integrated with everyone else. I don’t know, I have a gut feeling in the future it will be impossible to be trapped in 1800. I think technology is going to change life in ways we can’t yet cognize.

BRET: I dunno, I can imagine being a ball of energy.

DAN: But I don’t know what that means.

BRET: It’s like being a teen all over again.

DAN: Besides that, no one will be Amish anymore.

BRET: Last question, why do cartoon characters who never wear pants put on swimming trunks at the beach?

DAN: The same reason people who do wear pants put on swimming trunks instead at the beach. Why do normal people who wear shorts wear swimming suits instead? Whatever that answer is, is the answer.

BRET: Because they won’t let us swim naked?

DAN: And the same goes for cartoon characters.

BRET: Well the real reason we have to wear swimsuits is the netting. So our pubes don’t fill the pool. But cartoon characters are often covered in hair... and are at a beach, not a pool.

DAN: So all the MORE reason to wear swimming suits! Okay, my Chinese food is here.

BRET: Nice talking to you.

DAN: You too, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for indulging me all afternoon.

BRET: Enjoy your Chinese.

Two Dudes: Diabetes

2012-01-22T14:18:00.003-05:00

Discussion: Pray For Me?

2012-01-21T15:37:00.000-05:00

If someone tells you they’ll “pray for you,” when they know you’re an atheist, does it bother you, make no difference, or make you feel good?

Saturday Reflection #65

2012-01-21T11:29:00.003-05:00

Freud said a joke is the death of an emotion, but I have a feeling he just had bad timing.

Interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke, Part 3

2012-01-20T20:43:00.000-05:00

[Continued interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke of Camels with Hammers from Part 1 and part 1 and Part 2]

BRET: I sometimes wonder if atheism should go corporate and adopt an iPad strategy. Basically, atheists should not let new atheists join for a while, make it exclusive, because what makes religion appealing to people is that they see it as cool, quite often. It’s still too easy for people to claim they’re an atheist.

DAN: I think natural selection has made it that way already.

BRET: There’s still too many atheists embarrassing the rest of us.

DAN: I don’t think you’re making any sense. It’s pretty hard to identify as an atheist and no one thinks religion is cool.

BRET: Not really.

DAN: Not even religious people. Religion is clearly the anti-cool. And it reaches its height of anti-cool when it tries to be cool.

BRET: No, no, no... okay I see the problem. You’re listening to religion like they aren’t lying. Religion is the cool thing, everywhere, especially for young kids. The kids who feel left out in high school aren’t Christians who all hang out at church together.

DAN: Maybe it’s popular but that’s different than cool!

BRET: It’s the one Jewish kid and the handful of Catholic kids and the vaguely eastern kid who are left out and feel uncool.

DAN: Well that’s a different thing than cool.

BRET: I dunno... if religion isn’t cool, then Tim Tebow should be a loser.

DAN: That’s a matter of in-group and out-group.

BRET: But the in-group is always cool, the out-group is always not.

DAN: Cool is too much about an understated, defiant independence.

BRET: Maybe in the 1950s.

DAN: Cool people wouldn’t be caught dead being religious.

BRET: Are you kidding? Religious people smoke cigarettes and ride motorcycles, too. The guys on the football team are not a bunch of atheists. The cheerleaders aren’t atheists.

DAN: Yeah and then they start talking Jesus and become completely uncool.

BRET: Well, I’m not saying you be Ned Flanders religious.

DAN: So there is conformity cool.

BRET: But there’s that cool level of religious. Right.

DAN: And there’s non-conformity cool. I only see non-conformity cool as really cool. Conformity cool is simply popularity. But that’s semantics.

BRET: You don’t see any value in popularity?

DAN: Popularity because you’re non-conforming cool is awesome.

BRET: Sometimes...

DAN: Popularity because you’re conforming cool is corrupt.

BRET: It may be corrupt, but the world is run by popular, corrupt people.

DAN: Right. That doesn’t make it good.

BRET: I guess it depends what you rebel against.

DAN: Yes, we should conform to true virtues and to many normal social standards that have good reasoning behind them. If you want to call that “conformity,” okay. But we shouldn’t conform as conformists.

BRET: Right, you’re a philosopher, you care about what’s good or right. I’m more of a pragmatist.

DAN: We should conform as cool people who know why the right is right and who don’t conform otherwise.

BRET: But most people are too dumb for that... I’m talking about manufactured scarcity which increases demand. Like a club that only lets in a few people, and pretty soon it’s the coolest place to be.

DAN: Right.

BRET: I know it’s impractical and impossible. But I like the idea.

DAN: Yes, I am not interested in atheism becoming popular at all costs.

BRET: Not popular, per se... maybe just 51% of the population.

DAN: Either it’s because people are developing rationalistic virtues or other virtues, or it’s not making anything better that they’re atheists.

BRET: True, there’s nothing inherently better about being atheist.

DAN: Not at all.

BRET: That’s sort of the rub.

DAN: Yeah.

BRET: But if there are going to be dumb people in the world, I still would like them on my side. You know, to send out in the front line.

DAN: (laughs) But the problem is that being an atheist does not mean they will be on your side on much else. There are some anti-social atheists like Ayn Rand.

BRET: Only some?

DAN: Right.

BRET: I’ll add Hitchens to that, since he thinks nothing of going to war, so long as we are only slaughtering Muslims.

DAN: I prefer a pro-social theist who refrains from chatting me up about Jesus to an anti-social atheist who won’t shut up about how selfish he’s entitled to be. Hitchens is a tough case. He helped me go full lion as an atheist. It’s hard for me to accept his hyena tendencies.

BRET: I know atheists have a boner for him, but that one issue is a huge turn off for me.

DAN: Yes, I understand.

BRET: I have the same feelings on Carlin.

DAN: I’ve never much liked Carlin. Back to my religious days when I thought he was an acerbic jerk. Now I see him as too cynical.

BRET: He’s the source of my least favorite atheist meme, that religion starts all wars.

DAN: He says some profound stuff and a lot of cynical, cry baby, anti-pragmatic, misanthropic stuff. I really hate misanthropes. In fact, I almost wrote about this but shelved the post. When you wrote that post attacking me over interfering with your “rowdy kids” table.

BRET: (laughs)

DAN: With all my “don’t call religious people stupid” stuff.

BRET: I wrote about rowdy kids tables and not calling religious people stupid? On your blog or mine?

DAN: Something like that. Hold on.

BRET: I can see not calling religious people stupid... but a religious person I might call stupid.

DAN: Link

BRET: “Religious people are stupid.” Verbatim. Right in the middle of the post.

DAN: So you were explaining why it was fine for me to be all philosophical but I shouldn’t pick on people like you who had a place by picking food fights or something. Apparently you didn’t use that phrase.

BRET: I did a find for “food.” Okay, I found it now.

DAN: You wrote, “But maybe you, and all other atheists who deign to bless the atheist blogosphere with your intelligent discourse, may come to see those of us eating at the rowdy table as valuable allies, every bit as important as you are. Not more, not less, just equally important for the role we play, for we have different skills, and we apply them in ways I doubt you could even stomach.”

BRET: I’m sure that week I was sick of atheists acting high and mighty.

DAN: I was the atheist in question! But it’s alright because I absolutely loved the post because throughout it, you assiduously called me Dr. Fincke.

BRET: My wife would kill me if I didn’t [she has a PhD].

DAN: You probably wrote that as much as anyone has in the first year and a half since I got the degree. And people calling me Mr. Fincke had me all pouty just weeks before. And so you proved my point. People will be much more open to criticism if you pay them that respect.

BRET: My wife would be like, “He didn’t finish his PhD for you to insult him and not call him doctor.”

DAN: You know, when you said your wife had a PhD I realized that might have been the root of your respect.

BRET: I interviewed a guy who wanted me to call him “Your Lordship The Gun-Toting Atheist,” and I was happy to do it. So I’m fine with titles.

DAN: (laughs) One time I started a criticism of a religious friend by saying, “Look, man, you’re a savvy guy…

BRET: But...

DAN: …in fact, I bet if both of us were buying cars, you’d be far shrewder and more skeptical and do a better job of not getting ripped off…

BRET: But...

DAN: …so why don’t you see what I’m saying about taking that shrewdness to all your beliefs.” And that conversation went a long way from there. He was more than willing to play.

BRET: Hehehe. People are so easily flattered.

DAN: They are! And they like you when you do it, as long as you don’t make it too obvious.

BRET: When I hear flattery, I hold my wallet tightly.

DAN: But we’re talking about dissuading the credulous, not the cynical. So, why not appeal to the religious’ virtues and their highest conception of themselves? And if you find contradictions in that, you threaten their vanity in a far deeper way than telling them what they already know---that their beliefs sound silly to outsiders.

BRET: I think they relish in that. Both the silliness and the criticism.

DAN: Sometimes. Any defense mechanism in a storm.

BRET: They see it as “their cross.”

DAN: Right. I’m not saying to be disingenuous, mind you, but look on the bright side of the person you’re engaging.

BRET: I think the best way to engage a religious person is to quote their holy book. They eat that shit up.

DAN: I think you need to actually be more dialectical than that. Just ask questions; why this? Why that? What does that mean? Oh I see, but then wouldn’t that mean this?

Internal contradictions are much harder to just dismiss, and it is a good strategy to focus first on non-controversial stuff, like skepticism in general and interesting philosophical questions, before applying skepticism and hard philosophy to the beliefs they have irrational, religious attachments to.

BRET: You would probably know more than I, since I don’t think anyone became an atheist because of me since high school. But man, I cleaned up back then. I got the guy who walked me down the aisle as my sponsor for Confirmation.

DAN: (laughs)

BRET: I just peaked early.

DAN: Well I have no idea if anyone’s become an atheist through my influence. I take that back, I’ve gotten a couple e-mails, but really it’s hard to know what to take credit for.

BRET: Jealousy becomes me...

DAN: And frankly, I wouldn’t want to take credit for things like that.

BRET: Take credit for all of it, who cares. You’re too kind, sir.

DAN: I’m all for taking credit for things, but not for how someone thinks. That’s creepy. I just want to know I helped someone think. I don’t want to think I made them think anything, if that makes sense.

BRET: Can someone make someone think something? I get what you’re saying, though. I just question if it’s possible.

DAN: Sure it is.

BRET: If you open a door and they walk through, then... you didn’t make then enter.

DAN: Right, that’s what I want to do.

BRET: But if the door was locked before, you can take credit for letting them in.

DAN: I want people to see me as an awesome door opener to ideas, but that the ideas convince them.

BRET: I suppose.

DAN: I guess I don’t like when people change their mind because of the personality of their conveyor.

BRET: You have to invite atheism into your heart, right? Only you can do so...

DAN: Ugh. (laughs)

BRET: Hehehe. Is it just me, or do charismatic Christian leaders have more success than charismatic atheists?

DAN: There are charismatic atheists?

BRET: I hear Hitchens was one.

DAN: That’s one, you used the plural.

BRET: Maybe Dawkins or Harris or one of the others I don’t know about. Honestly, I don’t know many, because I don’t read their stuff, so I wouldn’t know if they’re “charismatic.” But they have a larger than average following.

DAN: Seriously, it’s apples and oranges.

BRET: Okay, so why do Christians corner the market on apples when some people clearly don’t like oranges? Why isn’t there a red-faced, screaming atheist?

DAN: I think Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Myers have an understanding of how to “activate” atheists. It’s like the atheists have all the pieces in their minds already. Or a certain kind of person that could be an atheist. And there is just something in the way they put it together that just flips the switch and suddenly they have a consciousness of the evils of religions. They just get it.

Nietzsche flipped that switch for me, or he flipped a different switch that made me an atheist. Then Harris and Hitchens flipped another switch that made me a New Atheist. It’s hard to spell this out in my case, because I was already the guy fighting with everyone about religion but I felt no support and had no atheist community and was probably more philosophical and more willing to be deferent to religious people in certain ways. I knew cognitively I was right but still felt the need to justify to Christians why I had foresaken the faith.

That’s the thing the New Atheists crushed in me. They crushed that last emotional delusion.

BRET: Do I want to know what “New Atheism” is? I have heard of it obviously but...

DAN: That’s a word coined in a 2006 article (I think in Wired) to describe the brand of atheism of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett when they all came out with hit books on atheism in a short span of time. It’s expanded to be a word for atheists who have no intellectual tolerance for religiously derived ideas.

BRET: I know it’s associated with at least the first three of those names. Is it like grunge, where there’s no real cohesion, just an accident of timing?

DAN: It was a ground up movement, I think. But it’s gaining coherence.

BRET: I don’t read much atheist stuff because it drains me. I come away from a lot of atheist blogs wondering if I want to be an atheist, whereas when I read anything religion related, I come away very much confident of atheism. I used to wonder if I was just contrary, but I find pro-atheist snippets here or there that make me think, “Damn, that is brilliant.”

DAN: I know my temperament is always to look for a better question so I can make a new distinction. When I’m reading atheists, it’s their stuff that I want to add qualifications to.

BRET: Because we make so many damn errors...

DAN: It’s not about being contrarian for the sake of contrarianism. Not for me. But it’s about being persistently dialectical. Everyone — whether atheist, theist, or whoever else - is always too simple. There’s always another dialectical move to make. The best thinkers don’t let us stop thinking, they just move the ball so that our own thinking can pick up further down the field.

But it’s up to us no matter what we read to then figure out its antithesis and go there and then to find the synthesis and then the next antithesis. This is how we think best, both on our own and in community. So when I’m immersed in atheist blogs and atheist comments on my site, I start fighting with atheists. It’s healthy. And I can be a good atheist blogger because I love atheists and want atheism to succeed.

BRET: Hmm... it’s almost Godlike. You love them, so you must smite them. Or parentlike.

DAN: Not at all. I’m one of them. I just mean that no matter how critical I might be towards things atheists do I am delighted to be on their team.

BRET: Ugh, but I don’t want to imagine being on the same team as these people.

DAN: It’s a central identity thing for me. I mean, like I said, a given atheist could be as off putting as anyone else. And I prefer a theist who is a good person to an atheist who is a bad person. But in general, my group affiliations are with fellow atheists. I feel a kinship. And so if it’s an awful theist and an awful atheist, I’ll like the awful atheist a little more.

BRET: Fair enough. I somehow managed to be an atheist for about 15 years now without ever feeling like part of a group.

DAN: Yes. That’s very normal.

BRET: So the idea of atheism as a cohesive unit both excites and terrifies me. On one hand, WOO, on the other hand, MAO.

DAN: I never knew it was possible either until the internet. In fact, I was using the internet a long time before it ever dawned on me to find other atheists. Only when I decided to start a blog and finally dispel all the ignorance in the world did I discover that there was already this whole community on the case. It was like, “Oh.”

BRET: Hehehe

DAN: That was as recent as June 2009! My prior blogging was much less ambitious and much less frequent. In 2009 I decided I wanted to write a widely read blog and get serious about doing that.

BRET: I think I started then too... unless you count 7 posts from July of 2007 through December. I feel like blogging was on the decline by then. [Note: my actual first full year: 2008, not 2009]

DAN: Depends on how epic those posts were.

BRET: Not very. Some goodbye to Carlin and then probably half of the rest was fiction, since I used to write fiction.

DAN: Yeah, Class of ‘09. It’s a good class. Jen McCreight started that year, too. A lot of blogs seem to have started then. Any given year I guess most blogs will seem to have come from the last couple years since few people really stick with it.

[Part 4]

Black March

2012-01-20T12:35:00.001-05:00

Truth, Justice, and the Atheist Way

2012-01-20T02:07:00.002-05:00

My talk with Dr. Daniel Fincke had me thinking about Nietzsche, truth, justice and Superman.

Superman was one of my favorite heroes when I was a little kid. I had Superman pajames, and I mean the good kind: the kind that look like Superman’s costume, not the kind that just have pictures of Superman on them. I really internalized his tagline: “fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.” I never much understood what “the American way” was, and I’m still not sure I know, but I have always been more interested in truth and justice.

Atheists seem to love truth, or at least get very offended by the misuse of the term. I see a lot of criticism coming from atheists about how religion is inaccurate, nonfactual, mythical, unverified, full of lies, and basically wrong. I suppose this is fair, but it doesn’t much matter to religious people. Still, the veracity of a statement is very important to a lot of atheists… just not me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against truth, but there is a fundamental difference between truth and justice. Truth is essentially a matter of knowledge, but justice is a matter of action. If I were forced to pick one over the other, I would pick justice every time. I know that what drove me away from religion was not that it was untrue, but that it was unfair.

Unlike truth, justice is something we are all capable of determining. Truth is tricky; the truth is a narrow road, the narrowest imaginable. It is like a two dimensional line, and it has no leeway. The truth is subject to an unforgiving paradox: anything you add to the truth will also subtract from it.

Justice, however, is very forgiving. Justice has a lot of leeway. Justice can be defined any way we choose, and each of us has our own slightly nuanced view. Justice is a concept malleable enough to be purely subjective, and yet we all acknowledge its existence. It’s very similar to beauty, in this respect.

In fact, we’re all born with an innate sense of justice. Every little kid has whined, “That’s not fair,” usually because they wanted something. Luckily, most of us develop beyond this simplistic, egotistical view of justice.

I personally believe all laws, morality, and religion derive from our innate desire for justice. Even when the actual application of this concept results in laws, morals or religions that are clearly unjust, one can be sure that it seemed fair to someone for some reason at some point.

This is sort of where truth comes in. By my estimation, justice is often impossible without the truth. Then again, truth is often pointless without justice. In some ways, justice is truth in action.

If truth is the god of atheism, then justice would be the religion. But truth makes for a horrible god. For one thing… truth exists. Sure, we can’t always detect it, or even feel it there, but we know that logically, there must be truth, because truth is little more than what is. Truth doesn’t care about us, nor does it feel anything for us. And despite what you’ve heard, the truth will not set you free, nor will it save you (really, the truth can only reveal the chains that bind you; truth merely reveals the extent to which you are not free, and it is up to you to free yourself).

Justice makes a much better god. Justice sort of resides in each one of us, and we all know justice differently. Justice concerns itself with the activities of the gods, like judgment and doing what is right. People have faith in justice. Justice makes us feel good (unless you’re on the receiving end). When was the last time the truth made you feel good?

Justice makes for a much better god, or if you would prefer not to use the term “god,” pick one of the following: spirit, idol, goal, ideal, principle, imperative, or ethos. Justice should be at the center of everything we do, even when we don’t have the whole truth.

Sometimes, the only just thing for us to do is admit we don’t have the truth. In many ways, I value doubt more than truth. I would obviously much rather have truth than doubt, but I would rather have doubt than be wrong.

I can’t say I see many atheists talking about truth itself, at least in the affirmative. On a great many things, I can find a literal army of atheists willing to attack certain things as being untrue, but trying to find consensus among atheists is futile. Atheists have not come together under truth, but under doubt.

If you never studied Nietzsche, you’re not alone. I mean… I have, but I know there are a lot of you unread philistines out there who have “lives” and “friends.” Perhaps one of the most recognized ideas of Nietzsche (besides the idea that “God is dead”) is that of the Superman, or Übermensch.

Quite unlike the comic book Superman, the Übermensch doesn’t come from a distant planet. The Übermensch comes from us, and is the realization of our potential as human beings to surpass humanity. The Übermensch is not held back by traditional human failings, and is a sort of romanticized ideal which has yet to be achieved.

The concept of the Übermensch has a very religious path through history. Like any good religion, it was taken out of context and used to justify horrible atrocities. The eugenic practices of the Nazis were influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche.

Even the original comic depiction was sinister. The first mention of Superman was as a villain in 1933’s “The Reign of the Superman.” Even when the character was re-imagined as a hero, he had questionable morals. Over time, he evolved into the paragon of morality we know today. I think Nietzsche would have been proud.

One of the more strange questions I get quite frequently from theists pertains to how I can live without believing in something greater than myself. The truth is, I believe in many things greater than myself…

I believe in truth. I believe in justice, which is even more important than truth. But most importantly, I believe in humanity. Certainly not all of it, but I’d like to think I believe in enough of it, and I most certainly believe in our collective potential to do great things.

To me, that’s the atheist way, because there’s no God to judge us and set everything right after we die. We can’t blame god and demons as atheists; we have to assume responsibility. Superman isn’t going to save the day. It’s up to us to be the heroes we need.

Today Has Been Weird

2012-01-19T18:53:00.002-05:00

Today has been a weird animal day. First, on my way to get breakfast this morning, I saw a dog hit by a car. It ran into the road and got hit right in the head, then it spun like a top. I turned around as fast as I could and went back to look for it, and I found it dead on the side of the road. It had a collar with tags.

She was a charcoal pit bull with a white belly. Her name was Pepper, and I waited by her body until the owner came. He lifted her body up, kissed her, and put her in the front seat of his truck. We both started crying. I’m crying again, remembering it.

So that was a depressing way to start my day.

Then, less dramatically, my dogs cornered a feral cat in our backyard. This isn’t too uncommon. The cat got away unscathed, as usual, but my coonhound, Max (not the one pictured in my avatar), got scratched on the muzzle a few times. He just needed a wiping down with a wet paper towel and he was ready to go again, though. He’s had the cat holed up under our shed since then.

Today has been a rough day to be a dog, I guess.

How to Actually Protest Something

2012-01-18T13:46:00.002-05:00

Since someone decided to make today the day to protest SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and internet censorship in general, I felt like I should do something… but I’m not going along with the “blackout.”

For one thing, the way to get the word out isn’t to remain silent for a day (or even loud for a day). Seriously… think for just a second about what people are proposing: there is a problem, and they think the solution is to stop using tools that spread information for a day…

No, that’s not how you get things done, my fellow freedom of speech advocates. It’s an amusing gesture, and hopefully it works well as a PR stunt, but a voluntary blackout won’t change much.

I support all forms of free speech, even screaming “Fire” in a crowded theater (we ought to be able to civilly evacuate without trampling people like animals… plus, with online piracy, theaters aren’t that crowded anymore). However, people should fight this sort of thing by speaking up, not silencing certain corners of the internet for a day (and too be fair, many are).

I think the best way to fight this is to boycott products by companies who support censorship. I’ve done this for years regarding many issues, including free speech, and I have a long list of places I won’t shop (like Wal-Mart) or brands I won’t buy (like Dixie Cups or Brawny paper towels) because I don’t want my money to going to certain types of people. It’s really my own personal thing, and I’m not going to advocate on behalf of my own choices, but where you spend your money matters, and if people did this in a large group over a period of time, you would be surprised at the effect.

If you really want to hit censors where it hurts, you need to aim for their wallet. For example, here is a list of the 358 companies who support SOPA. If you actually want to send a message that we don’t want censorship, you need to send that message to the censors by hurting their bottom line and not buying their products.

Personally, I’m not worried. On all issues of alarmism, I am an optimist. I find it to be a very tenable position to take against all those who run around like Chickenlittle, clucking about how the sky is falling. Catastrophe is rarely right around the corner, and when a large group of people think they see it coming, I can be almost assured that it is not. Disaster almost always comes quietly and unannounced, usually disguised as an old friend.

The freedom we have come to know and love on the internet is not going to disappear, that much I know. It may become illegal, it may move underground, but it will always be there, lurking in the deepest recesses of non-US servers. Just as the drug war has not made drugs disappear, no censorship bill will make free speech a thing of the past.

There will be more innocent victims of a misused legal system than there already are if bills like SOPA pass, and that’s really what I oppose in these sorts of things. However, there’s no real danger of a blacked out internet. Even those in China have found numerous ways around their nation’s Great Firewall, a measure I don’t expect in America. You just have to ask yourself: do you honestly think people won’t be able to outsmart the government?

I hope none of this bullshit legislation passes, but when something like it does one day (and I’m confident it will, eventually… there’s too much money behind it to go ignored), know that there will be plenty of time to attack and remove a harmful measure before the whole world crumbles around us.

I will say this in support of the events today: I like this spirit of anti-censorship. While I doubt this protest will accomplish anything in its own right, I really hope it brings the issue to the attention of those who will act.

Interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke, Part 2

2012-01-18T09:46:00.001-05:00

[Continued interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke of Camels with Hammers from Part 1]

BRET: I remember you did a post a while ago asking if atheists “worshiped” truth, at least as much as you can worship such a thing. Did you come away agreeing with that?

DAN: No, Eric Steinhart wrote that post.

BRET: I am horrible at checking by-lines.

DAN: I think the question should be framed differently than he did to get atheists not to reflexively reject the proposition without thinking. I think the real question is this:

If empirically it were demonstrable that certain falsehoods are necessary for certain people and the societies in which they live to optimally function, would we accept that those falsehoods were for the best for those people?

Or do we prioritize truth as such an intrinsic good that we’d rather let the world burn or the alcoholic who’s got an iron grip on his higher power die than let him have his fiction undisturbed?

And if we do hold truth to be valuable even where it hurts human happiness or (worse, to me) human flourishing, then it seems like we are treating it as more sacred and more valuable than is rationally warranted and you know what the word for THAT is...

BRET: Oh, right, religion. Almost missed my cue.

DAN: And a related question is whether atheists have faith in truthfulness, (do we have more belief than evidence warrants?) that truthfulness is itself a greater good than other competing values in every sphere of life.

Obviously it’s better in science and so creationists need to be fought. I think I have good reasons it is better philosophically. And we Identity-Atheists tend to be bound up with valuing truth passionately and feeling it to be the highest moral priority in all personal and philosophical matters.

So, is that tantamount to having faith in it, to holding it sacred, to being irrationally hostile to other virtues when they rival it and closed minded to any empirical facts that might threaten our belief in its wonder working powers?

Those are hard questions. I think those were what Eric was asking. It’s what Nietzsche asks a lot.

BRET: It seems short sighted to focus only on truth, especially when a lie may help the truth. And I don’t mean lying to appear correct when you know you’re right, or telling your wife she doesn’t look fat. I mean, maybe religion is a good thing for a discipline like science.

It gives people a place to go to be religious; could you imagine if religion just disappeared? Science would be overrun by dogmatic fools. Religion can almost serve as an adult day-care.

DAN: (laughs) Your ideas always surprise me, Bret.

BRET: Religion keeps those who might ruin science out.

DAN: Or it makes capable minds scientifically illiterate.

BRET: No doubt, but it also gives us a sort of Plato’s cave for the best and brightest to escape.

DAN: That’s true, and I wouldn’t be who I am without first escaping a cave. Nietzsche himself muses in an unpublished note that it might be best to give kids a religious training when they’re young because the rigor is good and the process of apostasy would be good for them. I’m not sure what in that is Nietzsche and what is just my interpretation, but that’s close.

BRET: And that’s why I’m raising my kids Amish.

DAN: Let’s look at three hypothetical people:

Let’s say that each has an equally full life of pleasure and personal flourishing in all the ‘secular” areas of life. Family, money, power, respect, physical and intellectual accomplishments, friends, etc.

So you have these three equally pleased and flourishing people.

BRET: Do they have to be pleased, or can they be equally depressed?

DAN: All that matters is their pleasure total is the same, whether low or high.

BRET: Okay.

DAN: Now let’s say that one of these three people has a practically delusional, ecstatic religious life that does not interfere with his pleasure and flourishing in any of the other areas. He is as ethical, as humane, as shrewd in business, as creative in artistic endeavors, as great a friend and family member, etc. as the other two. He just has this sphere of his life where he gets a surge of extra pleasure from his delusions.

BRET: Are they all equally pleasant to be around?

DAN: Yes

BRET: Okay.

DAN: So, the same way someone can keep their escapes into movies and novels and other fantasies totally separate from interfering with life functioning, let’s say this person keeps their religious delusions and superstitions equally tidily contained. All they lack is truth in one area of life. In the rest of life, they have as much truth as anyone and the net gain is immense pleasure and sense of identity, etc. Now, let’s say there is an atheist who has everything the same but instead of faith-based delusions some truthful endeavor (or fictions known to be fictions) fill the same role the religious delusions play for the religious person. In those two cases, I think the atheist wins because the pleasures are equal AND the bonus is truth.

BRET: This third person better be a heroin addict or something.

But, yeah, let’s take an atheist who is flourishing and pleased in all those areas but the pain of seeing the truth makes that side of him miserable and so even though he’s as pleased as the others in all these other areas of his life, there’s also this dragging net loss that could only be more pleasant if he could only believe.

Now, assuming a lot---that the delusional beliefs don’t have a net negative beyond himself---is he better off than our ecstatically delusional, but utterly functional believer?

BRET: Does a person’s happiness matter?

DAN: That’s the question. Can happiness trump truth in our values ever? For me, I believe that we should aim towards maximal human flourishing, not maximal human pleasure. I’m willing to bite the bullet and say we should all prefer truth even with less pleasure. That’s a really high priority for either truth or, in my case, human perfection.

That came out wrong, I didn’t mean to suggest in my case that I’m perfect! I meant I prioritize total human power as the highest good, not any specific virtue. So for me enough other virtues taken together might make one person without the truth a better person than another who has less virtues.

If someone found the immersion in the delusion made it all the more effective at enhancing his life without detracting from real world functionality, is that for him a fantastic accomplishment of self-hypnotism and balancing competing goods and getting the most out of them?

It’s like taking a drug if it does not damage your overall functioning, it’s just a pleasure boost. Drugs are lies. Our pleasures should track goods.

BRET: Drugs aren’t lies...

DAN: The drug tells you you’re ecstatic when there’s no good reason to be ecstatic. So it makes you ecstatic in a way that does not help you navigate truth.

BRET: There’s a damn good reason you’re ecstatic---you took a drug. That’s classic cause and effect.

DAN: Right, but our brains are set up to reward us for success. If we can short circuit that and just feel good by manipulating our brain chemistry, we cheat.

BRET: Drugs don’t enter the body and whisper, “Hey, you got a promotion, feel good.”

DAN: But if it does not hurt overall functioning or make us less inclined to pursue worthier pleasures from worthier accomplishments then why not add the extra pleasure? So what happens if you swap out “drug” for “god”?

BRET: Opiate of the masses, eh?

DAN: Sure. Sports, too. My ecstasies over some baseball games are comparable to religious ecstasies.

BRET: You know... every mean thing they say about religion you can apply to sports.

DAN: Exactly.

BRET: And in many cases sports are worse. I never heard of a Baptist hooligan riot.

DAN: (laughs) It’s vicarious. You feel like you’ve won something great when you’ve done nothing but sit on the couch getting fat.

BRET: Or lost. I don’t know which is harder on a city, to win or lose.

DAN: So there are pleasures which distract us from developing our virtues or which reward us when we didn’t do anything that merited reward.

BRET: But why even value truth in that way? Truth doesn’t need us, truth exists whether we even exist or not.

DAN: Right. That’s the question. Why value truth more than it is actually conducive to our pleasure and/or flourishing?

BRET: Well, I wouldn’t make that comparison. I don’t think truth is what makes people sad, or happy.

DAN: Why treat it as a good in itself when it might mean rebuking yourself for taking baseball games seriously or being fooled by movies emotionally or by drugs, etc.? The idea is that if you take “Truthfulness” to an extreme it does interfere with other things in life. That’s Nietzsche’s point. There’s a bit of “falsity” in everything. How fanatical must we be in rooting it out?

BRET: I think the missing link is Justice. The emphasis is being put on truth, but truth is only valuable as it pertains to fairness.

DAN: Well we can talk about the justice of pleasures, no?

BRET: I suppose, but I don’t know anything about the justice of pleasure. I know about the pleasure of justice... but not the other way around.

DAN: I mean pleasures should justly track merit and displeasure demerit. If we’re being formal and anal. I do something great and you do something lousy, but you take a drug and we both feel great tonight. How’s that fair?

BRET: Hey, did you see the guy I had to go to in order to get that drug? Serious risk involved.

DAN: (laughs)

BRET: Plus, most drug addicts I have met are shamelessly harmless. They weren’t out robbing people, they just never left their couch.

DAN: Then they’re unjust to themselves! They fail themselves.

BRET: What if them leaving the house had resulted in them hurting people? If you’re a danger to others, then please... sit at home stoned all day long, I beg of you. And maybe the guy who got a promotion and achieved so much isn’t really doing the world any favors.

Suppose he makes boxes, which people need, right? And he increases his profits by convincing people they need another box inside the outer box, doubling his sales. He succeeded, right? Until one day he drives by a landfill and he realizes it’s filled with all his boxes.

And he kills himself.

DAN: I had not considered the possible tragic consequences of what I was saying.

BRET: So few do...

DAN: (laughs) So none of this is to advocate against truthfulness. I only think atheists need to be scrupulous about not letting their truthfulness on this point--one on which the majority are such astonishing self-deceivers--lead them to thinking this makes them by default, generally more virtuous or even generally more honest people.

Things are more complicated than that and the temptation towards self-flattery is great in all of us. And I will say this too and this is an important qualification: often sometimes people want to attack atheists for being too interested in truthfulness in areas that themselves require truthfulness. And that’s unfair. In the public discussion of ideas to attack one side for caring too much about truth is perverse.

BRET: I fear the emphasis on truth and logic in atheism makes atheists more blind than some theists, because at least many theists acknowledge a difference between knowledge and faith. For atheists, they see themselves literally aligned with truth. As if it is a companion who follows them everywhere.

DAN: Yes, at least the religious admit that some of what they say is bullshit. And because they’re comfortable with faith (though they shouldn’t be) some of them are more comfortable with degrees of belief and degrees of uncertainty also in cases where that’s a good thing. It’s not as all or nothing. Fundamentalists on both sides risk being absolutist.

Atheists need to embrace what Nietzsche described as perspectivism, the constant shifting of perspectives for the sake of new truths. One has to not only consider more evidence but consider it with different feelings and from different social and political dispositions.

BRET: Feelings? Atheists don’t have those...

DAN: (laughs) Right, it’s that conception of perfectly detached truthfulness that Nietzsche thinks is self-deluded. Yes, science is about detachment. But most of our thinking does not involve double blind tests or quantitative analysis.

A lot of it--and especially when discussing philosophy and religion and ethics and practical choices--involves emotions and social and political dispositions. And there is no way to think void of emotions and in Nietzsche’s view to successfully do so would actually be to neuter reason. Our emotions make our reasoning about some things potentially more virile, as long as we feel things from multiple perspectives rather than with one prejudicial feeling and learn the most honest ways to rank the importance of what we learn from each feeling perspective we take on.

This perspectivist approach to knowledge is what led to recent shifts in my thinking and blogging. I was writing totally in lion mode at first. Then one day I decided to adopt the perspective of those who talk about “True Religion” about religions they don’t believe in. Like George W. Bush saying there is a “True Islam”. What could that POSSIBLY mean? I got into his possible perspective and feelings and it illuminated a range of truths for me that I couldn’t see when my only way of feeling religion was as an apostate atheist obsessed with the virtue of truth. I convinced myself of some of the merits of moderate religion in a way that its advocates never could for me.

I did that in the midst of writing a blog post that was an open ended exercise in perspective taking.

BRET: I’m not sure I could ever see things from W’s perspective. I don’t think there’s room up his ass for both of our heads.

DAN: (laughs)

BRET: Feelings are sort of an atheist corollary to the devil. The greatest trick your feelings ever pulled was to get you to deny you have them. The atheists who pretend they have no emotions... boy do they get emotional. Usually anger, but also sometimes pride.

DAN: Right, whenever anyone is viscerally committed to denying they do some particular thing, watch out because the dangers of projection and hypocrisy and self-deception go way up.

BRET: So, you’re saying don’t bend over in front of Rick Santorum.

DAN: (laughs)

BRET: What is that about? How did atheists get religious hypocrisy? We supposedly don’t have a book which instills us with views counter to reality...

DAN: Most religions don’t. Part of our problem is we keep saying “religion” as though it means only “Abrahamic monotheism.”

BRET: You don’t think it’s a little hypocritical that Buddhists claim to want to destroy the self, and yet they meditate alone in their own thoughts for hours?

DAN: Never thought of that.

BRET: I criticize all religions, I even got material on Jains. Like, should a Jain even floss? They’re killing millions of bacteria.

DAN: I think the issue is that religion is any interconnected set of ways of believing, valuing, ordering one’s life, ordering communities, developing rituals and celebrations, and forming identities, in which each of these things is mutually determinative of the others. That’s what it is. It’s not any one set of beliefs.

BRET: I was always taught in philosophy that religion is ritual.

DAN: Well you can have ritual without religion but ritual is often a key component in making other things become religious. Ritual helps make the religious link between things you can have apart from religion.

BRET: Well, right, you can have ritual without religoin, but you can’t have religion without ritual. Which is why atheism can’t be a religion. It may have charismatic leaders, it may cut family ties, it may take donations... but that’s a cult, not a religion.

DAN: I don’t think you can boil anything down to one secret ingredient like that.

BRET: I’m sure not.

DAN: Or even say any human community is devoid of rituals. Sure, disconnected atheists with nothing in common and no organized groups would have few if any rituals.

BRET: Of course not, but what makes a ritual religious is the reasoning behind it, not the act of ritual.

DAN: But the more we interconnect with each other and form a shared identity, it naturally starts to happen. Like listening to the way some atheists say “atheism is not a belief, it’s a lack of belief just as bald is not a hair color” it starts to sound like a recitation of a creed. A really ironic recitation of a creed. And it’s not that what they’re saying is false. It comes off sounding like the brain has been stimulated to recite the right response.

BRET: Too true. But they don’t say that because they think it pleases Atheismo, the great and powerful.

DAN: No, but you can argue that neither is that what makes religious people recite their creeds. They recite creeds as affirmations of group membership—to view it from an external, sociological point of view, irrespective of what they consciously are thinking and saying.

BRET: Are creeds even part of religion though? I see politics and religion as being hard to separate, but that might be the line. If you do something to be part of a group, it’s political.

DAN: Sure, the Apostle’s Creed, for example.

BRET: Oh no, I know of creeds. I was raised Catholic for Christ’s sake.

DAN: This is something Eric Steinhart and I have talked a lot about. When we are dealing with our students and talking to them about God and trying to get them to open up the question as simply a philosophical issue and they say, “Well, I believe because I’m a Catholic.” They have not given a reason they’re making an identity statement.

BRET: Sure they did.

DAN: Right.

BRET: Because they popped out of a Catholic vagina. What more could you want?

DAN: But they are not even cognizing seriously that this is a question of truths about the world. Or if they are, what’s driving what they say is identity, not philosophy. So when atheists attack people’s religious ideas, so many people think we’re attacking their identities. Implicitly, that’s what they hear. And in part, we are, and we need to figure out what to do about that.

BRET: Especially when they get specific, like “white Christian males.”

DAN: Because their identities are intertwined with very false ideas and irrationalistic habits of thought. To address this we need to take seriously how religions function on the non-cognitive level. We can’t just say, “Oh it’s a set of propositions. Look, they’re false! Now you can stop being religious. You’re welcome.”

This works only on those capable of thinking like a rationalist or a scientist or a philosopher. The rest look at us like we have three heads and no idea of what religion is. This is not to say that they don’t have beliefs. Especially the Abrahamic faiths have beliefs. And they take them very seriously.

But the key is to understand that they take them religiously seriously and this is a distinct way of thinking things, or a range of distinct ways of thinking things. But where were we? What was the question?

BRET: There was a question?

DAN: Did I answer it?

BRET: Who cares, this sounds good to me.

DAN: Okay. Me too.

BRET: Staying on topic is for suckers.

[Part 3, Part 4]

Animal Metaphors

2012-01-17T10:54:00.002-05:00

One of the things that came up in my talk with Dr. Daniel Fincke was a concept of Nietzsche regarding types of people. I like these sort of models, but I feel I have to disagree with Nietzsche on some key points.

I’m sure he has great reasons for it, but I don’t much like the Camel/Lion/Child model. It’s eloquent in a way, because people move back and forth between stages as they intellectually develop, but there’s a few problems with it.

My first minor beef is with the choice of animals. I don’t think any of them make any sense. When I think of loyal and obedient, I have to say… camels don’t even cross my mind, perhaps because my mind is not a desert. I also don’t really imagine lions as being unmoved nay-sayers (lion tamers, anyone?), nor do I think of children as being constructive. I imagine Nietzsche never had children, or he would have realized children say, “No” all the time, especially at certain ages (there are two distinct “No” phases, once as toddlers and again as adolescents).

Based on the same model as Nietzsche, I would have gone with dogs, cats and ants. Dogs are loyal and obedient, cats do their own thing, and ants are builders who work well with others.

My biggest concern, however, is that not everyone has the same points of reference or overall attitudes. I believe in a model that exhibits more diversity through parallelism, which acknowledges many people develop in a similar manner, while not adopting the exact same traits.

I would prefer to think of people as being very different animals who change into different forms of that same animal. We all change through life, but there is almost always a set of characteristics which we maintain as constant and which shape how we exhibit our outlook.

For example, I see myself as a dog. It took a while to get to the point of being a dog again. See, I figure I was born a dog (or a puppy, I guess). I learned some tricks and I was loyal and obedient. Then, sometime in my teens, I became a wolf. I didn’t become a radically different animal all together, I just became a more feral version of what I was before.

But I ended up not staying a wolf, which I attribute to the fact that I never much had a pack mentality. I was always a lone wolf. I didn’t mind taking cruel shots at others on my own, but I didn’t much like the idea of being part of a group, coordinating attacks. It always really bothered me that packs of wolves always picked on the weak.

At some point I became domesticated again, and while I still howl from time to time, I don’t go on the rug anymore. I bark, but I won’t bite.

Other people are often completely different kinds of animals, because they had very different experiences in life than I did, or they may have even responded to nearly identical situations in a totally different manner.

I know a lot of people who are sheep. I’m guessing most atheists reading this are smiling to themselves, but you are usually sheep, as well. I don’t look down on you for being sheep… hell, I’m a dog. Part of my job is to protect you pansies from wolves, but don’t think I won’t nip at your heels, because I will.

But not all sheep are harmless; what an unfair characterization that would be. Just because someone in an ungulate in a herd doesn’t mean they can’t tangle with someone vicious. A lot of these sheep become confident rams who don’t mind butting heads.

There are millions of different types of people out there who don’t fit either of these models, but there are also millions of animals. I would be willing to bet if I was given the chance to get to know a person, I could combine this with my knowledge of biology (which is modest but ample) and come up with an animal to describe anyone.

And yes, that is a challenge.

Top Ten: Things That Could Sink the Romney Campaign

2012-01-17T08:08:00.000-05:00

10. We learn that he personally killed Jimmy Hoffa
9. Spouts anti-Semitic remarks during DUI stop
8. Find out he never pays taxes, and collects unemployment
7. He renounces Mormonism and becomes an atheist
6. Arrested in airport bathroom (for any reason)
5. Found to have written Paul’s racist newsletters
4. Has an anchor baby with undocumented housekeeper
3. He suggests implementing Sharia law
2. The discovery of his seven other wives
1. Caught organizing dog fights on top of his car

Pissed Off About Being Pissed On

2012-01-16T23:09:00.004-05:00

I never cease to be amazed at what will cause Americans to become outraged. This current urination scandal is no different.

It’s not that I condone or encourage such behavior, but let’s be honest here… this kind of disrespectful act is pretty common in war. It’s one of the risks a nation needs to take into consideration when going to war. The horrors of war are inevitable in every conflict, and desecration of bodies is hardly the worst of it.

Since America invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, our troops and private contractors have engaged in every manner of war crime. Children have been raped and killed. Prisoners were tortured. The death toll on innocent civilians has climbed well over 100,000 (it was calculated at 132,000 back in June of 2011). Still, Americans express little outrage, save for a few weeks following the release of photos from Abu Ghraib.

We’re a visual people. Those photos spoke to us more than a number like 132,000 can. The image of naked men on leashes evoked more of a reaction than sterilized descriptive narratives of how waterboarding works. A smiling, pointing soldier with a cigarette in her mouth left more of an impression than stories of court martial cases involving child abuse.

So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction to a video depicting Marines peeing on corpses.

Please don’t misunderstand my lack of concern. It’s not that I support urinating on corpses, but in the grand scheme of things… it’s pretty low on my priority list of abuse I want to see ended. I mean, for one thing… the victims are dead. You can dress them up, attach cables to them, and turn them into life-sized puppets that act out Shakespeare for all I care.

Well, maybe I would “care”… I would certainly watch the video.

And yet, while this is my view, I find the handling of this matter by most Republicans to be downright frightening. I’m some douche with a blog, but Republican leaders, who are elected by the people, seem to have no problem with defending these actions. It makes you wonder whether Republicans would side with the military, no matter what they do, so long as Democrats are upset about it.

Monday Rule: Abstinence Education

2012-01-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

Schools are meant to teach the truth, not lies, so telling children that they should “wait until marriage” should be banned outright. I can’t imagine a bigger lie than, “If you want to have sex, you should get married.”

Interview with Dr. Daniel Fincke, Part 1

2012-01-16T17:25:00.000-05:00

BRET: I’m here today with Dr. Daniel Fincke from the blog Camels With Hammers. So, I have to ask, why do you hate being called “Dr. Dan?”

DAN: It’s trivializing. Except in contexts where people would normally be formal, I don’t expect to be called Dr. But in those cases, it rankles a bit to be called Mr. and in cases where people should just call me Dan, “Dr. Dan” feels like they’re teasing. Also it sounds gimmicky. One of those “I’m a Dr. but approachable” things. I feel like that condescends to insecurities that are ridiculous. So treat me like an equal and call me Dan or if you feel like showing special respect, call me Dr. Fincke.

BRET: So you don’t harbor a deep-seated hatred for alliteration?

DAN: Okay that made me laugh out loud. No, but now that you mention it, that probably only increases the flippancy of it in my mind. When I was a kid my older cousins (whom I loved) would say in a sing-songy voice “Dan Dan The Ice Cream Man”. I loved that when I was six. Dr. Dan sounds like that to me when I’m 33. It’s not the same.

BRET: Who is your favorite philosopher?

DAN: Friedrich Nietzsche

BRET: Hmm... is it because of his stance on animal rights?

DAN: Ha! No, not quite. I got into Nietzsche when a close friend of mine in college went through a severe crisis of faith based on reading Nietzsche. We were both devout evangelical Christians at a religiously and politically hard right wing college and at the end of freshman year Nietzsche got under his skin when we both took Ethics together. Nietzsche loomed over our discussions for the next couple years as my friend’s doubts became stronger and stronger and as he flirted with full out philosophical skepticism and an almost suicidal nihilism.

Eventually it was an existential urgency that I fully encounter Nietzsche for myself so I read the entire Portable Nietzsche in 10 days and it knocked the spiritual wind out of me. After that I struggled for 5 months before abandoning the faith.

BRET: I’ve noticed there’s two sort of paths to atheism, one where the faith pushes you out, and another where atheism draws you in. For example, I became an atheist by reading the Bible, whereas you became an atheist from reading the thoughts of someone criticizing religion. Do you think there’s something to that?

DAN: Sure. There are a few more ways to break it up. But I loved being a Christian and never thought of things like hypocrisies or the strangeness and immorality of the Bible being a threat to my faith. For me it was just a long journey of trying to defend against external philosophical attacks, from when I was 14-21.

Where Nietzsche really got under my skin was where he shifted the ground to the ethical. Believing became a moral matter and Nietzsche’s power was not in making philosophical arguments against the faith. I could develop those on my own and already had through years of studying philosophy. But what he did was present this defiantly alternative perspective on the world. It was really like visiting a whole other universe reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra and it profoundly messed with my mind in ways that could not be articulated.

It was like I had spent all these years building these elaborate apologetic routines and then encountered this literary masterwork that just ignored all that and moved on completely from my clever little excuses and assailed the very ethos of my beliefs and painted this picture of a whole different world with a whole different, rival, coherent ethos.

It’s very hard to explain how it worked, but it was like basically like being beaten by someone so far out of your league you have no idea what hit you. And so I spent the next 10 years trying to figure out what exactly had happened.

BRET: What rival ethos does Nietzsche present?

DAN: Well, I’m thinking specifically of the Nietzsche one finds in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, so I’ll say it’s “Zarathustra’s” ethos. Not the historical Zarathustra, of course, but Nietzsche’s.

Zarathustra has this sort of high minded seer demeanor about him. He is this character who just has contempt for all pettiness, for all backwardness, for all weakness, for all hatred of the body and the world. And this desire to affirm nature and the body and to look at the future as a place of open-ended transformation of values. There is this overwhelming feeling like we can do so much better as human beings if only we took the dare to radically question our values and overcome everything weak in our humanity. Zarathustra is all about air that is both rarefied and fresh.

He’s incredibly inspiring. It’s by far Nietzsche’s most visionary and positive and inspiring work. But at first it was devastatingly challenging. It was a world that I didn’t fit into, and which had utter contempt for me, and which landed so many blows to my faith indirectly. Again, it’s really hard to describe the effect. It was emotional and “spiritual”.

BRET: Do you find that odd, that something spiritual led you to atheism?

DAN: In a way it makes perfect sense because a religion gives someone a Gestalt that integrates one’s “spiritual” feelings with one’s metaphysics and values and identity and community. It’s a whole way of thinking, feeling, and practicing. When someone says it’s false, well it sure does not feel false. It seems to be ordering your life wonderfully---if you’re one of those people it works for.

And so it makes sense that it was a powerful alternative ordering of things that hooked my emotions and challenged my identity directly. It took superior intellectual content which also had a mesmerizing charismatic appeal that invited my religious mind into a full perspective that it could try on and feel overwhelmed by and eventually have a Gestalt shift within---and then have a wholesale change of feelings right along with it. So, I became a zealous Nietzschean. Until I could finally separate myself from him and move on. But that took a while.

BRET: So you aren’t one of the mechanical atheists who pretend they are logic machines with no emotions?

DAN: Not at all. I am flabbergasted when Christians who know me disingenuously try to pull that card on me. They know I wear my heart on my sleeve and they can see that I’m brimming with passion for philosophy and for atheism. They just take my words insisting that we be very rational and apportion our beliefs to evidence and say that must be a cold way of life. But they must see in front of them an atheist who is decidedly living hotly.

BRET: Do you read many Christian blogs?

DAN: Only Andrew Sullivan and I’ll read some things he links to.

BRET: Do you read many atheist blogs?

DAN: Yes, I read nearly all of Freethought Blogs and a couple times a week I check out Planet Atheism. I stack my Google Reader with every promising atheism blog I come across so that someday I may stumble on something great.

BRET: For atheist bloggers and Christian commenters you may see on those blogs, what would you say would be your biggest criticism of each, in general? And feel free to name names or mention more than one criticism.

DAN: Well this is my specialty as my most popular posts are the ones with tips for believers reaching out to atheists and atheists reaching out to believers, so there’s a lot I could say. I would say as a general rule my frustration with Christian commenters is that they are utterly clueless about atheists. Most of them are, anyway.

BRET: You don’t eat baby?

DAN: They have no idea how much their block texts of bible verses make atheists’ eyes glaze over. Like no idea how completely ineffective Bible verses are on us. They don’t grasp that any bit of Christianese starts sounding like Chinese to us. They don’t get that we have no interest in their salvation--like, this is just not a problem for us!

BRET: Atheists don’t die?

DAN: Well, we don’t need to be saved from sins. And we don’t see any connection between the fact that we die and that we’re sinners.

BRET: Depends on the sin and cause of death, I suppose. If you have sex with cows and you die in a stampede...

DAN: (laughs) That’s true. Maybe those are the sins the Bible has in mind.

On the other end of the spectrum are Christians who know better and will engage philosophically. And I get along with some of them very well. I have a few Christian friends who are politically very progressive and they love my blog. I cannot get a bead on their theology since they’re constantly agreeing with me even when I’m trashing their fellow believers and they’re very slippery when put direct questions.

Then there are the educated Christians who are more combative, or who have an edge to them even when not directly being combative. What bothers me most about them is that even when they are ostensibly just engaged in the truth of the particular issue, you can feel their sense that they are in hostile territory.

The only Christians you can truly engage with online are those with an agenda-free interest in the truth of the issue at hand. The ones who care about the philosophical issues for their own sake and without constantly worrying about how this will defend or threaten their faith. They exist and they and the non-combative progressives are delights to have around.

They are the people who in real life too you can have mutually edifying friendships with. Anyone who is screening everything you say and sending it back to the mothership in their mind for approval or disapproval is usually a lost cause. With those people you should probably avoid discussing religion and instead just discuss psychology in a non-threatening way, and plant ideas that way.

BRET: That mothership bit almost sounds like Scientology.

DAN: (laughs) Scientology, Christianity....

As for atheists online it’s really really nice to be part of a community of atheists, first and foremost.

BRET: Ha, but...

DAN: I’ll admit I can tolerate an over the top atheist way more easily than an over the top Christian. Because there is that feeling that at least they’re on my side.

BRET: Is that because of the absence of death threats and promises of eternal damnation?

DAN: Well not just that but I sympathize with their anger a great deal even when I think they express it wrongly. Let’s distinguish several kinds of atheists (and how everyone should be my kind).

BRET: Sounds glorious.

DAN: First you have your ashamed atheist who feels terrible that she just can’t bring herself to believe. And think it’s nothing but wonderful that others “have something to believe in” and feels almost a moral or psychological failure for not believing. My heart breaks for those atheists.

BRET: I thought those people became Buddhists.

DAN: No, Buddhists are people who just think Buddhism seems like a better religion or of some practical use. Buddhists have strength of non-conformity if they’re Western and come from an Abrahamic background. They’re not apologizing for not being able to believe.

BRET: Right, but an atheist yearning for something will often eventually find it. Even if it’s not where they first looked.

DAN: Yeah, but I don’t think it’s bad if they adopt an atheistic religion and don’t exhibit any of the negatives we often associate with religious excess (authoritarianism, exclusiveness, faith, irrationalism, superstition, pseudoscience, cultishness, patriarchy, misogyny, etc.).

BRET: By atheistic religion, do you mean religion based on atheism, or an atheist religion, like Buddhism?

DAN: I mean a religion that has no theistic beliefs.

BRET: Pre-existing, then?

DAN: Or new.

BRET: Okay.

DAN: You can’t make atheism itself a religion, it’s just a philosophical position (whether positively affirmed or by default). But atheists could have religions (and do).

Then you have apatheists, who I don’t identify with. I’m a passionate person. I feel like the apatheists are just proudly irresponsible for not caring about whether their culture has good values and true beliefs.

Then there are those atheists who care about values and beliefs but only when they have a negative political impact or threaten separation of church and state. Those sorts of atheists often become accommodationists. “Just leave religion out of science and politics” And that irritates me because I’m a philosopher. Faith-based religions don’t deserve to be ceded all the important philosophical questions about ethics and fundamental conceptions of the self, etc.

And so those accommodationist atheists, again like the apatheists, also have too much of a path of least resistance willingness to concede the stuff of most important cultural, psychological, and ethical value to wholly illegitimate institutions.

And when they defer to faith-based religions as no big deal for those who believe, they take no interest in whether or not those people would be better served by truth and they seem callous to the fact that many people are in those religions unwillingly and are hurt by them. (Most obviously countless conflicted children.)

Then come the identity-atheists, those atheists for whom it is a big deal to be an atheist. And there are several of us. Some of us are just “out of the closet” and angry and pushing back.

BRET: Right, all us flaming atheists.

DAN: And I totally get that.

This is what I call the “lion” stage, following Zarathustra’s “Three Transformations of the Soul”. It’s a stage Nietzsche describes in which you’re just saying “No” to received “Thou Shalt Nots,” and I’ve seen it start with a couple of atheists who I’ve helped “activate” who had been either a doubting Christian or something between an apatheist or an accommodationist.

And when the light switch goes on, when the consciousness is raised, they get really angry and start saying they’re “Anything But Theist.”

BRET: ...and start a blog. Ho ho ho!

DAN: So, yeah. I get the fury. And when dealing with the first three kinds of atheists I want to make them into lions.

BRET: The “Anything But Theist” blog name was only chosen on the basis of availability and high ranking in alphabetical order. My wife beat me though with “Abandoning Eden.” Hard to top “Ab.”

DAN: Should have gone with Aardvark Atheist.

BRET: Well it had to make sense...

DAN: Blog names have to make sense? Boy did I screw up!

BRET: But yours sounds mysterious, like a Led Zeppelin lyric. Aardvaark Atheist is just... Weird Al or something.

DAN: This is a bad thing?

BRET: My whole blog is a joke, at least the title should make sense. I owe people that much.

DAN: (laughs) So anyway, I want to light the fire under the groveling ashamed atheists, the apatheists, and the accommodationists. And I’m encouraging to the lions. But then there’s a choice that the lions have.

Either they move on to the next stage Nietzsche describes, which is “The Child”, or they become something Nietzsche did not describe which I like to call “The Asshole.”

BRET: Oooh, can it be the Hyena?

DAN: Might work.

BRET: You know, since they just sit around laughing and stealing the lion’s kills.

DAN: Yes! That really does work!

BRET: I was born to make animal metaphors.

DAN: And that’s it, it’s just feeding on the carcasses. And laughing their heads off.

BRET: Oh God... I’m a hyena... I have failed you.

DAN: It’s not building anything new and constructive. The child can just say yes. Nietzsche calls the child a “self-propelled wheel.” The child builds new values without obsessing over saying No anymore. The Child no longer lives in the shadow of the Dead God but creates that new world which is not defined by the negative, by the opposition to something else.

Now, not to make this all so much more confusing I started as a Camel. The camel is the absolutely obedient moral and truthful creature whose morality and truth lead him to realize the limits of absolutism, and out of commitment to truth and morality themselves comes to criticize received truth and received morality. To do that requires becoming the lion though, since the Camel is just obedient.

So I see Nietzsche’s writings as constant shifting. Sometimes he’s the Camel, sometimes the Lion, and sometimes the Child. And that’s how I like to write: sometimes as the obediently detached and disciplined truth-seeking academic, sometimes as the no-saying lion railing against the abuses and falsehoods of bad religions, and sometimes as the child who moves beyond opposing theism to reopening the questions of values and seeing how even the things the lion said no to (like religion and morality) might be salvaged in post-theist ways.

But the children get attacked by hyenas because the hyenas confuse them for accommodationists, when we’re not. Some us are willing to be lions when necessary.

BRET: We need some lion skins to hide the babies in.

[Part 2, Part 3, Part 4]

Two Dudes: Sex Addict

2012-01-15T08:04:00.002-05:00

Fresh New Look, Same Stale Content

2012-01-15T07:07:00.003-05:00

Here are some quick explanations of the changes:

First off, I went with black text on white background. This was a no brainer.

Second, I got rid of the Hit/Miss/Foul post rating system. I think this caused more lag than it gave me constructive analysis of my posts (way too many positive responses, as I sense people were more likely to say they liked it, or not select anything if they didn’t like it). My only hope is that more people who would have selected “Miss” or “Foul” will leave a mean comment explaining why.

Third, I changed the color scheme. This decision was merely on a whim, and I just might change it back to some shade of teal.

Hopefully the conversion went well. If anything looks really off in your browser, let me know. Comments, suggestions and complaints on the new look are very much welcomed.

Saturday Reflection #64

2012-01-14T15:12:00.003-05:00

Too many of our principles are like a magnet placed next to our moral compass. They provide a steadiness and consistency, but they give us no real direction.

Mythical Interview: God [#4]

2012-01-13T20:48:00.003-05:00

GINX: Tonight, I’m talking to God, the God, YHWH.

GOD: Good to be back, my child.

GINX: So, I guess you’ve heard.

GOD: Heard what?

GINX: About my blog theme this week.

GOD: You have a theme?

GINX: Right. I don’t see why you’re being a dick about it.

GOD: You mess with religious people 51 weeks out of the year. This week, you should see what it’s like for people to mess with you just for the sake of messing with you.

GINX: Is it messing with me if I knew what you were doing?

GOD: Of course you knew, I am you. Who do you think you’re fooling?

GINX: Fair enough. So… I have to be honest, I did not prepare for this one at all.

GOD: Do you ever?

GINX: Of course I do. I’m usually not that clever off the cuff.

GOD: You just aren’t that clever in general.

GINX: Okay. So, what if we criticize atheists together?

GOD: You first.

GINX: Um… well I covered so much this week already. What about all these people on Facebook who have made their profile picture Christopher Hitchens? That’s kind of irritating.

GOD: The best thing that ever happened to that guy was dying. I wanted to let him live to 120 and slowly lose his mind in the public forum, but the bastard would not quit smoking.

GINX: Well, I criticize the man, but I’m not glad he’s dead. I don’t miss him, though.

GOD: No one asked your opinion. Really, a public figure of his kind doesn’t reach their full potential until they die. When a group admires a person, there’s something that happens when they die. It’s like the final punctuation mark in a great novel, or the last strike of the sculptor’s chisel, or the finishing brushstroke of a painter. At that point, it’s done, inalterable.

GINX: Yeah, but personal letters get published, secret partially finished works are found…

GOD: Silence, fool! The point is that at death, a person’s life’s work has come to an end. And what’s more, there will be a constancy to their legacy. Only a dead person cannot change their opinion.

GINX: They have history do it for them, as you would know.

GOD: You disgust me.

GINX: How about the misogyny debate in the atheist community?

GOD: I don’t really pay attention to what you people do.

GINX: Are we that harmless?

GOD: That isn’t… alright, I think the atheist community is a bunch of male chauvinist pigs.

GINX: I guess that makes them just a belief in you away from being good Christians, then?

GOD: How dare you! My religion lifted women from the status of property to equal human beings.

GINX: I don’t know about that.

GOD: I’ll let you in on a secret, I don’t hate women. I think they got a bum rap. I mean, for one thing, I’m pretty sure I forgot to tell her not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I think I told Adam not to before I created Eve, and I guess I just assumed Adam would tell her.

GINX: Well, that’s kind of dickish. Why did you punish her with painful childbirth?

GOD: Yeah… about that. Actually, that was more of a design flaw. Apparently I forgot to carry a quantum digit when calculating gestation time and the cranial circumference of a human fetus.

GINX: That doesn’t even make logical sense the way you presented it.

GOD: It was a long time ago, and I hate math!

GINX: Quantum digit… that’s not even a real thing.

GOD: Shut up!

GINX: Well, why are there so many problems between men and women?

GOD: Oh please. There are problems between different kinds of men and women within their own gender.

GINX: You can’t dodge the question by just saying, “People don’t get along.” There has been and continues to be systematic gender bias, and it’s overwhelmingly in the direction of men exploiting or excluding women.

GOD: There are plenty of successful women.

GINX: You can’t point to the few exceptions as evidence against the overwhelming trends.

GOD: I don’t even see why you care, you’re a man.

GINX: Because if you live in a society that thinks it is okay to treat anyone unfairly, then one day anyone could be treated unfairly.

GOD: A very admirable platitude, but there are just certain realities to consider.

GINX: Like?

GOD: Women are weaker. They aren’t working in construction in the same numbers.

GINX: Yeah, I don’t think women are upset about not being hired as construction workers. I’m sure some are, but I don’t think that upper body strength is holding back women in the modern economy.

GOD: They take time off from work to have children, so that’s time spent having to hire and train a replacement at her vagina’s whim.

GINX: Wow… so you want to use the one thing society literally relies upon women to do to justify the cut-throat economic view that women are not as effective in the workplace as men because they cannot be worked to death as thoroughly as men?

GOD: You Americans are too soft.

GINX: Americans are soft? Everyone in Europe gets more vacation time than we do, and they get free health insurance. Most of the men get paternity leave.

GOD: You have all the vacation time in the world, you unemployed bum.

GINX: I’m not allowed to stand up for American workers, even though I will become one when I find a job? Is that like why I shouldn’t be fighting for the rights of women?

GOD: You’re all fat and lazy.

GINX: I am not lazy.

GOD: Right, just fat, then.

GINX: So, no opinion on misogyny in the atheist community?

GOD: I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s mostly men who want to fuck around who are atheists.

GINX: You have got to be kidding me.

GOD: No, I’m not kidding you. Why do you think so many more women find the idea of waiting until marriage to be appealing?

GINX: You’re boiling down your religion to the doctrine of waiting until marriage to have sex?

GOD: Come on… there’s very few things modern Christians actually care about. One is abstinence, the other is opposing abortion –

GINX: Sure, since that more readily turns women who do have sex into victims.

GOD: Bingo. And of course, the most important one is that when you die, you get to live forever. Even though no one follows the rules, even though no one even makes a serious effort to try, I forgive them and let them into heaven, so long as they picked me as their God.

GINX: Here’s what I don’t get… considering how horrible the people in your religion treat women, how is atheism the target of claims regarding misogyny? I mean, I know there must be incidents, but the sheer volume of Christian misogyny ought to drown it out.

GOD: Oh, my child… it’s quite simple. Men are pigs, and no matter what kind of men a woman is around, she will come to feel like a sexual object if she’s looking for the signs.

GINX: While I don’t necessarily agree with you, suppose what you’re saying is true, that men will always see women as sexual beings. I won’t say objects, because I don’t know about most guys, but I don’t have sex with objects, I have sex with human beings. I see plenty of women as sexual beings whose minds I also respect. It’s not like my brain only has room for one label per person. If I find someone attractive, I do not only focus on trying to undress her with my eyes.

GOD: But you do undress her with your eyes, because let’s be honest, she didn’t wear that low cut shirt because she likes eye contact.

GINX: See, I’m of the opinion a woman should be able to dress any way she wants, even walk down the street naked, and not have to be subject to sexual advances.

GOD: That’s insane.

GINX: Not really.

GOD: You should offer her your shirt.

GINX: Well, if she asked for it, I suppose I’d probably give it to her. But what if she doesn’t want one?

GOD: That’s just wrong.

GINX: If you say so.

GOD: You just want to stare at naked women.

GINX: Even if that were true, there’s no crime in looking.

GOD: There is in my eyes.

GINX: Well, even in that case, it doesn’t take all that much effort to avert one’s eyes.

GOD: You shouldn’t have to avoid seeing nudity.

GINX: It’s really not that big of a deal.

GOD: It’s enabling temptation.

GINX: So it’s evil to enable temptation?

GOD: Yes.

GINX: So, you’re evil?

GOD: How do you figure?

GINX: Well, not only did you supposedly create everything, including temptation itself, you instilled within mankind a multitude of temptations.

GOD: Yeah, well there’s no point in having rules to follow if you don’t naturally want to do the opposite.

GINX: I don’t even know what to say to that.

GOD: It’s God stuff, your mortal mind couldn’t comprehend it.

GINX: So, you have no opinion on misogyny in the atheist community?

GOD: What do you want me to say? You know that atheism doesn’t make a person good. Misogyny isn’t caused by religion. If anything, the misogyny in religion is a function of humanity. Unless, of course, you believe a divine being handed down rules which dehumanized women, thereby giving humanity the entire idea to oppress women.

GINX: Right. It is human to discriminate.

GOD: You’re going to find haters everywhere, and atheism is full of those hyper-sensitive liberal feminists who think getting asked out while in a social setting is sexual harassment.

GINX: I don’t think that’s what women have complained about.

GOD: Sure they have.

GINX: I think it’s just more complex than that, and it’s largely a string of specific incidents which are exacerbated online with callous comments on the part of the opposition’s knee-jerk reactions against it and counter claims of massive abuse which are often also overzealous.

GOD: Well, smarty pants, if you have the answer, why did you ask?

GINX: Well, I’m just speculating. I just figure that, since you can see into what everyone is actually thinking, you might confirm or deny my theory.

GOD: What is your theory?

GINX: Some atheists are over-reactionary jerks, and when they bicker amongst themselves, their penchant for escalation results in a positive feedback loop of ever-increasingly hostile attacks.

GOD: I don’t know what “penchant” means, and everything after that was basically gibberish to me.

GINX: Great.

GOD: So, what has it been like being religious this week?

GINX: Well, that wasn’t part of it. I’m sort of looking at things through a non-atheist, secular lens all week.

GOD: That doesn’t make any sense.

GINX: Sure it does. I mean, for one thing, if I want to see things from “the religious perspective,” I would need to either pick one religion to the exclusion of others, or try out every religion.

GOD: You should just try out the one true religion.

GINX: Islam?

GOD: That isn’t even funny.

GINX: Well, I grew up Christian, and I married a Jew. The only other one of the big three I haven’t been immersed in is Islam.

GOD: You would never cut it, especially with those views on female dress.

GINX: True. Maybe I can give Zoroaster or the Baha’i faith a try. Or, I could expand my horizons into the polytheistic religions.

GOD: You would be wasting your time.

GINX: Actually, it’s never a waste of time to study a religion.

GOD: Of course it is.

GINX: If you’re willing to sort through the inane minutia, there’s quite a store of wisdom scattered throughout each religion. If you’re looking for gold, you can be sure each religion has a vein of it somewhere. You just need a good eye and patience.

GOD: So, maybe you learned this week that religion isn’t all bad?

GINX: I didn’t think religion is all bad before, and I’m not sure I respect religion anymore now than I did before. I’m also not sure I have less respect for atheism, either, though I did enjoy taking the opportunity to look at things differently.

GOD: Good for you. So basically, you didn’t grow as a person.

GINX: I suppose, if that’s how you want to look at it.

GOD: That is how I’ll look at it.

GINX: Well, this has been pointless. Any words of wisdom to leave us with?

GOD: Sure, that’s my specialty. Hmm… oh, I know. Some people will sell out their most cherished beliefs for a large enough bribe. The rest of you will do it for a small one.

GINX: Clever. You can’t go wrong criticizing the honor of humanity. How about you cheer me up with something that insults rich people?

GOD: Okay. Well, rich people often make the mistake of assuming that they’re worth a lot of money, when really they just have a lot of it.

GINX: Not as good as the last one.

GOD: Hmm… well you’re a socialist, so you’ll like this one. Money is like manure; nothing grows if it’s just lumped it one place. It’s best to spread it out.

GINX: Okay, that’s a good note to leave on. Thanks for chatting with me.

GOD: Anytime.

A Eulogy to Atheism

2012-01-13T00:41:00.002-05:00

Religion all died out last night,
Atheism this morn,
But still, the world is bickering,
And fighting pointless wars.

We can no longer blame the myths
For all our ignorance,
And yet the gaps between us grow;
It makes no god-damned sense!

It really isn’t logical,
But what, then, ever is?
I used to be an atheist,
Now I just sit and spin.

Snippet: White-Collar Rape

2012-01-12T16:03:00.001-05:00

I think I’m going to start calling any form of date-rape “white-collar rape.” It just seems like a white-collar crime. After all, it statistically hurts more people, but is less often reported and prosecuted.

I guess my ultimate goal is to get people to stop wearing white-collared shirts.

Troll: What Is It, and Why Do Stupid People Not Understand?

2012-01-12T15:49:00.001-05:00

Let me be clear up front: I don’t troll, certainly not on my blog or in the comments of anyone else’s blog. Not even in my more bored 4chan moments do I initiate trolling (though I will gleefully join in there, since it’s harmless and amusing). While blogging, I have been facetious, ironic and I’ve played dumb, but trolling is something very specific.

First off, most people use “troll” improperly. This is mostly because they’re idiots who saw it used once and think it’s just an insulting term for someone in any number of cases. If someone is expressing an opposing opinion forcefully, they aren’t a troll. If someone is using hyperbole to illustrate a point, they aren’t being a troll. If they are replying to every single person in a thread of comments and dominating the conversation, they aren’t a troll. Those people may be pricks, but they’re not trolls.

A troll is someone who knowingly presents some obviously stupid/wrong idea with the sole purpose of watching naïve readers not in on the joke react to what was said. A good troll statement is almost invariably so wrong that no one could seriously believe it is true. For example, this might be a good troll post:

If there’s anyone in on the joke, they might brilliantly chime in with something like, “I loved him in Beverly Hills Cop and as the voice of Donkey in Shrek.” Suddenly, you have the epic double-trolling. If I have to explain why this is hilarious to watch, just hang yourself now, because life is going to be miserable for you.

On 4chan, another common one is the “Fingerbox” thread. Basically someone posts a picture of a small wooden box of some kind and begins discussing how awesome their fingerbox is, but they only have an ebony one made in Mexico for $190, and they’re saving up for a nice Ash or Mahogany Japanese one in the $300-400 range, so does anyone have any suggestions?

The more people who play along here the better, because the thread can be filled with pages of gibberish before some moron finally asks, “What the hell is a fingerbox?”

And that person loses, because there’s no such thing as a fingerbox, you dumbfuck.

The point of these sort of games is manifold, I suppose. Again, realize that while I am amused by it, I’m not a huge fan of the concept. The idea is to embarrass new people, to identify who is an outsider, to cause people to feel left out or dumb… basically, nothing constructive. Communities like 4chan thrive on feeling like they are exclusive and insular, and they do this in a number of ways. While I don’t like trolling, it’s better than some of their other methods for keeping the newfags (their words, not mine) out, like posting child porn, bestiality, extreme gore, and [most disgusting of all] hundreds of threads supporting Ron Paul.

There are different goals for trolling, but the hallmarks of a troll don’t change, regardless of the aim. The troll knows what they are doing, and they are being deliberately deceptive. Sometimes the goal is to manipulate a group, as when someone who believes X goes to an anti-X forum and begins expressing “concerns” about the community under the guise of being part of it. These are sometimes called “concern trolls,” or as I have come to know them, “con-trollers.”

But again, this term is often used improperly. Granted it’s hard to know if someone has legitimate concerns, it doesn’t make sense to assume someone is messing with you… at least in my experience. Most people who make serious-sounding claims are just expressing their views. It’s more likely that they’re wrong than that they’re trolling me, and just to be sure I often give a short, one sentence, glib remark in reply. If they get more insistent, they are almost never a troll.

It’s hard to use the term “troll” accurately, because it requires one to know the intent of the poster, who may be anonymous. Some people just throw around “troll” like a catch-all term for anyone they don’t agree with, perhaps even while knowing the meaning of the word. But how healthy is that? Is it a good idea to go through life thinking that everyone who disagrees with you is really on your side, but they’re just trying to mess with you? Isn’t this “denial?”

While you may not be able to identify if someone is a troll, hopefully now you at least know what a troll is.

Atheist “Logic”

2012-01-11T14:50:00.001-05:00

Atheists seem to revel in imagining themselves to be following the laws of reason and logic. What a steaming pile of wrong that can be. It’s true, atheism is logical. No one here is arguing otherwise. I’m just pointing out that atheists are not logical. Atheists often suffer from many of the very same delusions religious believers hold dear.

Take the view held by many atheists and theists alike that atheism and science are either one in the same or somehow linked. They couldn’t possibly be more wrong (and some atheists and theists already know this). Science is an active pursuit of truth, whereas atheism is the result of being unmoved. An atheist can be a scientist… but then again, so can a theist. Many of the best scientists have been believers, and the contribution of theists to science is in no way diminished by their belief in gods, nor has it prevented believers from developing ground-breaking theories and discoveries.

There’s just nothing remarkable or unique about atheists. Nothing about atheism makes someone more logical, intelligent, open to new ideas, or even correct. Some atheists manage to make atheism into a statement of faith by claiming things they cannot prove, like “There are no gods.” Many more will read that sentence and ignore key words like “some,” and will feel an emotional rage building in them. They will have a strong desire to leave a comment saying, “ALL ATHEISTS DON’T DO THAT!” And while they’re right, no one here is claiming otherwise, so… why angrily state a redundancy?

The failure to think and act logically is a failure possessed by all of humanity, from young to old, male to female, rich to poor, theist to atheist. Each of us was born ignorant and trusting in a confused world of lies and errors. We have very few tools for determining truth from fallacies and fictions, and we are filled with emotions and prejudices we cannot always control.

We are foolish creatures, one and all, only a few clumps of grey matter away from swinging in trees. We’re little more than apes who are aware that we will die, and who have developed an advanced array of gadgets and systems to distract us from this fact.

We’re so illogical as a species, the few among us who dedicate their lives to helping make the world a better place are often systematically destroyed, while we just sit idly by as great tyrants hurt people. Some of the good ones are remembered as heroes after we snuff them out, others are forgotten, ignored, or even demonized as monsters for not being utterly perfect in every way.

It’s not necessarily an issue of malice on our part. I wouldn’t be surprised if ignorance causes as many problems as immorality. Even the best of intentions never achieved anything without a wise hand to guide it.

None of us are perfect. Some atheists appear to believe that by convincing themselves of the inferiority of believers, they must somehow be better by comparison. They are not, because how one feels about gods is utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

There is logic in atheism, but there is very little logic coming from atheists.

Wednesday Word: Hate-theism

2012-01-11T09:59:00.000-05:00

Hate-theism: a branch of atheism that abhors religion and/or religious people

Preliminary Analysis of New Hampshire Primary

2012-01-10T22:19:00.002-05:00

This may turn out to be a big win for Romney, but the main change that may come from this primary will be the shift in who is running behind Romney.

Huntsman needs a top three finish to remain a serious candidate in the race, and it’s looking like he may take third. Ron Paul is projected to get second, and this marks what may be Paul’s last top finish for a while. Paul campaigned heavily in Iowa, and he did a moderate amount in New Hampshire, but his success in NH is largely due to the state’s history of leaning Libertarian. I suspect that if Paul had ignored the state entirely, he would have still placed in the top three.

I’m almost surprised Paul didn’t win, but Romney proved once again the benefit of having the most money.

These results are for only 58 of 301 precincts, but the placement is projected to remain the same.

Romney 35%
Paul 25%
Huntsman 17%
Gingrich 10%
Santorum 10%
Perry 1%

It almost looks like a nail in the coffin for Perry, but not quite. His campaign has some life in it, as they have been focusing on South Carolina for a while now, and it’s no shock that New Hampshire voters didn’t go for Perry’s brand of cowboy Christian conservatism.

I’m more surprised that Santorum is in a dead heat with Gingrich. I can only chalk it up to the entirety of the hard-line fundamentalist vote in the state bailing on Perry and backing Santorum.

Gingrich needs to place in the top half soon if he wants his campaign to not look like a floundering failure. He’s in the same boat as Perry, only I think Gingrich could potentially run a low-budget guerilla campaign for longer than Perry would reasonably hold out. If Perry does particularly well in South Carolina, he may stick around, though I doubt he’ll make it to Super Tuesday in March.

In fact, I wonder if there will be many candidates left by the time Super Tuesday rolls around on March 6th. Romney has to be hoping there aren’t, because the more candidates in the race, the more people will be taking shots at him during debates and in ads. There are still more debates than I am going to bother looking up (it’s a lot), and the caucus/primary schedule leading up to Super Tuesday looks like this:

January 21, 2012 - South Carolina (primary)

January 31, 2012 - Florida (primary)

February 4, 2012 - Nevada (caucus)

February 4–11, 2012 - Maine (caucus)

February 7, 2012 - Colorado (caucus), Minnesota (caucus), Missouri (unofficial public primary)

February 28, 2012 - Arizona (primary), Michigan (primary)

March 3, 2012 - Washington (caucus)

March 6, 2012 (Super Tuesday) - Alaska (caucus), Georgia (primary) Idaho (caucus), Massachusetts (primary), North Dakota (caucus), Ohio (primary), Oklahoma (primary), Tennessee (primary), Vermont (primary), Virginia (primary)

There are a couple states that moved their caucus or primary up to be before Super Tuesday, and that may affect the race profoundly. Money will be more important than ever before, as will how one uses the money they have.

Ron Paul and Mitt Romney are likely to be the last candidates in the race, with Romney almost assuredly being the winner. Now, I’m not saying Paul will be placing second or will be the second most popular candidate. Rather, Paul has more experience than any of the other candidates running a national campaign on a shoestring budget, and he’s likely to be like Huckabee last year, who was the last candidate to drop out before McCain won the nomination.

Perry has the second deepest pockets behind Romney, and he has the support of more private donors and Super PACs than anyone but Romney. However, his dismal poll numbers are indicative of a candidate who is either unelectable, or perhaps a few election cycles away from being viable. If he wins or places second in South Carolina (and especially if he then finishes well in Florida), expect to see Perry back in 2016.

Santorum is another candidate who might do well in South Carolina, but I suspect he may be over and done with. He may stick around for a few weeks, but I would be shocked if he’s still here on Super Tuesday.

Huntsman is in the same boat as Santorum: his best finish is probably behind him. I imagine Gingrich will be the low-finisher who gains a few late finishes if he has the will to fight on. Gingrich might be one of the last four or even three candidates, my primary logic being that he has a lot of experience getting free attention, so he might weather the storm of negative attack ads more than any of the low-budget candidates (Paul, Huntsman and Santorum being the others).

This is as good of a time as any to discuss VP possibilities. I have very little confidence in this area, because I never understand the logic behind the process. I know the principle is to pick a VP that compliments the candidate, but if 2008 taught us anything, you never know who will get picked. I never would have guessed Palin or Biden would get the nod.

In fact, before I start, I have seen talk from political insiders that Hillary Clinton may be Obama’s running mate in 2012, and Biden might be given the position of Secretary of State. It makes sense on paper, I guess, but I think it’s unlikely. It sounds more like wishful thinking.

For the Republicans, I have heard a lot of speculation. The first I heard about was Marco Rubio, but I recently read that Chris Christie has been stumping for Romney, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Christie is jockeying for the VP slot (I am assuming Romney will be the candidate). Among the current field of presidential candidates, I have read every one is being considered by some as ideal, but I think Gingrich might be the top choice.

Gingrich fits the classic VP-as-bulldog role, as does Chris Christie. I think Christie is more likely, however, because Gingrich has been pulling no punches when facing Romney during the campaign.

Regardless of who the VP candidate for Romney will be, it’s clear who the real winner in 2012 will be: people who produce political ads.

Tuesday Tunes: Cat Power

2012-01-10T14:05:00.002-05:00

In honor of Anti-Atheist Week 2012, I decided to bring back Music Monday… except I didn’t think to do it until Tuesday. So, since science has failed to invent a time machine (always letting me down…), I had to alliterate it another way, and thus was born: Tuesday Tunes. Still as ripped off as Music Monday, but with totally tubular technique. Tah, tah, tah… anyone else hear that?

I have been listening to overtly religious music that I enjoy these past couple days, and since my internet was out most of yesterday afternoon, I was stuck with mostly just Cat Power and Queen. I decided to go with Chan Marshall here, since Freddie Mercury always gets a lot of love (and based on his cause of death, maybe too much… come on, it’s my week off from atheism, crack a smile at a gay/AIDS joke).

I usually post four songs, but I figured, since it’s Anti-Atheist Week [2012], why not a holy trinity?

The first is a classic spiritual written and originally performed by Jessie Mae Hemphill. The next two were songs Chan originally recorded while in the middle of a spiritual vision (and the very last one has a bonus cover at the end…).

Top Ten: Dumb Things Atheists Do

2012-01-10T11:41:00.001-05:00

10. Pretend Mao and Stalin were not atheists
9. Claim religious people are stupid
8. Believe in some other ridiculous thing, like ghosts, big foot, or conservatism
7. Assume every atheist they disagree with is “clearly a troll”
6. Get angry about a Christian who posts a Bible verse on Facebook
5. Post everything related to atheism or religion-bashing they can find on Facebook
4. Obsess about Christianity, and only Christianity
3. Defend non-Christian religions
2. Fill their home with Far Eastern religious iconography
1. Act like, as an atheist, everything one says and thinks must be logical

Monday Rule: Ginx’s Rule of Atheism

2012-01-09T06:58:00.002-05:00

Most Monday Rules are suggestions for a rule that I wish would be enforced, but this one is a rule in the sense of Godwin’s Rule, which is sort of an observed Law of the Universe.

The angrier an atheist is, the more horrible things they will blame on religion.

Anti-Atheist Week

2012-01-08T12:01:00.001-05:00

While I don’t mind calling myself an atheist, sometimes certain atheists make me question the future of humanity. They constitute such a slim minority, but wow… those few never shut the fuck up. I won’t name names, because they don’t deserve a mention (but I thank you all for the links on your blogs, and for some reason, those you left on the blogs of others…), but suffice to say that certain atheists take a hardline, angry stance that is inclined towards being contrary to anything they perceive to not ring viciously enough for their liking.

I can relate to this most of time, but there are 52 weeks a year, and one of them I plan to spend criticizing atheists and atheism. That’s about 2% theist, and I think that should fall within the acceptable margin of error.

So, I declare this Sunday at noon, Eastern time, the official start of Anti-Atheist Week 2012. How many times in a lifetime – nay, an era – can you expect to witness what will likely be the first annual and last ever event of this magnitude?

Two Dudes: Abortion

2012-01-08T08:57:00.002-05:00

Saturday Reflection #63

2012-01-07T16:53:00.002-05:00

People ask me if, as an atheist, I’ll allow my kids to go to church. Of course I’ll let them go to church, if that’s what they want. I will just have to make sure they bring a rape whistle.

Pushing the Limits of Tolerance

2012-01-07T11:07:00.000-05:00

I consider myself a pretty tolerant person. I think same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, and I see nothing wrong with polygamy. I’m willing be open minded when it comes to just about anything sexual, so long as kids aren’t involved.

I read a story this morning from my home state of Indiana… and I… uh… okay, well, I’ll just tell the story as I understand it.

Pearl Carter is 72 years old. When she was 18, she gave her daughter up for adoption. Then, one day, a young man comes to her door, and it’s her grandson, the 26-year-old son of the daughter she put up for adoption, who tracked her down after his mother died.

In Pearl’s own words, “From the first moment that I saw him, I knew we would never have a grandmother-grandson relationship. For the first time in years I felt sexually alive.”

Never have I felt such a strange combination of laughter, sadness, and nausea.

And I was expecting it, because the title of the article was “Indiana Grandmother Is Having a New Baby. With Her Grandson.”

But hold on there. She’s 72, so she’s not really the biological mother. They paid for a donor egg and surrogate.

Personally, I guess I can’t find anything wrong with this. I wish there was… seriously, I find it disgusting and repulsive on a couple of levels… but how I feel about something isn’t the yardstick by which we measure what people should be allowed to do.

All the tangible objections to incest are invalid in this rare case. The grandson isn’t a child being taken advantage of by a person in a position of power, and the couple’s child won’t be the product of incest. As much as I would never, ever do something like that, it’s not really my place to tell these two adults how to live their life.

Plus, how can I argue with Pearl’s impeccable logic:

“I am finally going to be a mom and not forced to give up my child. Phil’s going to be a great dad. I never in a million years thought at 72 I’d be ‘pregnant’ and in love with my grandson. I make no apologies and I believe God’s given me a second chance.”

Hey, if God’s cool with it, so am I. I’m not about to risk being called less tolerant than God.

(Source)

Atheism’s Obsession With Religion

2012-01-06T20:22:00.001-05:00

Some atheists are curious about other religions, like myself, and we learn about other views of the world. I wish I had a personal reason, but it’s almost intangible.

Perhaps at first it was out of some belief that maybe other religions are true, and there are undoubtedly people for whom atheism or agnosticism is an intermediary between religions. This wasn’t the case for me, however, and my fascination with even long dead faiths and cults can no longer be honestly seen as a pursuit for a religion to join by even the most cynical observer. If you honestly think I read Norse mythology because I am giving Odin a shot at being my God, you don’t know me very well.

I’m just curious, and I see religion as a very important piece in the puzzle of understanding history, and by extension, people.

If religion only lived in books, I would be little more than a scholar of literature. However, religion permeates the real world. Laws are written today based on commandments supposedly handed down to mankind from a desert God thousands of years ago. Elections are decided based on the religious views of candidates. Religion isn’t exactly small potatoes in the world today. Considering that politics is also a passion of mine, religion gets double-duty in my head, once as literature, again as a geopolitical agent on the world stage.

But this doesn’t get to the heart of a common complaint among theists, which is embodied in a quote by Heywood Broun, “Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.” Why is this?

It’s tough to say. I’ll breeze over the fact that not all atheists do this, and instead focus on the very true observation that some, or perhaps even many, do.

I know that personally, I was most hostile towards religion initially after I stopped being religious. This was largely because of building stress caused by the fact that I didn’t want anything to do with religion, and yet it kept being forced on me by others. Not in some abstract sense, but in the very real sense that my mother made me go through with rituals I opposed and to church services, not to mention that I went to a private Catholic high school where religion was a required subject every year.

But that wasn’t an issue anymore when I went off to college. For some atheists, when religion has stopped being a persistent intruder in one’s life, the hostility either dies down or disappears completely (though in some cultures, this may never happen). So, that explains some behavior, but there’s still people not in such a situation who are quite hostile towards religion.

In some ways, it’s when a person starts looking outside themselves (i.e. matures) that there is a new source of rage. If I was an egotist, I suppose I would have no hard feelings for religion at this point. I’m a straight man… the Bible doesn’t stand in my way. I’m at the top of the religiously established hierarchy, so who gives a shit, right?

Call me nuts, but I don’t sit well knowing people are treated unfairly, even if it isn’t me.

While I don’t know that I ever would have used this terminology otherwise (this is all thanks to you, Mike), some atheists essentially see themselves as religion police. I never explicitly thought of it this way before, but it rings with an uncanny aptness I cannot surpass.

There genuinely are few people out there keeping religion in check, and they are primarily non-atheists. Religions are critical of each other on a level I would say is far more vicious, but the incidents are not as common as might occur from atheists, and there’s a reason.

Atheists live in a world of religious people, and it sucks. If you are of the majority religion in many places (including America), you may think nothing of how religion saturates the culture… until someone else’s religion seems to impose. There aren’t many atheists or religious minorities in the US, and even fewer of them hold positions of power, let alone flex any political might. Because criticism is often reactionary, the most common complaints will be reactions that come against those who are in the majority, because it is the majority viewpoint which will inevitably be the most pervasive. Atheists are the largest non-Christian group in the US, so it will therefore most often come from them.

However, because the majority is a large group, and inevitably diverse, the most hostile responses (as a mere consequence of demographic probability) will often come from extremists in the majority reacting to minority encroachment (or even internally, as many Christian extremists reserve their most cruel words for fellow Christians they disagree with).

And it’s a strange system that feeds itself. Those in the minority complain about something, which angers extremists in the majority and causes them to react, which pisses off those in the minority… and it just goes back and forth, to the point where the “blame” becomes a matter of determining whether the chicken or the egg came first.

Among atheists, there are even just horrible people. There’s not much use in trying to explain someone like Stalin or Mao, and it’s a damn shame to try to excuse them. Being an atheist doesn’t magically make anyone a better person, anymore than atheism can make someone a worse person. Some atheists are just rotten people, and they’ll do anything from spending their time spitting vitriol at religion to burning down churches. There’s no sense in denying it: some atheists are just vile.

I don’t know if I have the answer as to why some people like to be bullies. I like to bully certain people, generally when I perceive them to be a bully. I suppose it’s similar to a bully who likes to pick on weak people or stupid people or whatever target they choose. There is perhaps some rationalized justification (I tell myself it’s okay to be mean to people who I perceive as being mean, for example), but there may as well be any other motive, from getting a kick out of bothering others to just wanting attention.

The reasons for why an atheist would lash out at religion are just going to be highly personal, and perhaps too numerous to catalog completely. There’s probably some who have even taken their cues from religion itself. Christianity is known for encouraging the spread of “the truth” to others, and there’s no reason a person raised as a Christian would abandon every last vestige of what they were taught as children.

Christians have this mentality which is instilled early on that you are helping someone by professing your faith to them. One way it was put to me many times (both before and after being an atheist), is that a Christian proselytizing is like someone who sees another person in the road about to be hit by a car. You would urgently try to save them. This is the justification given for evangelism: it’s for the good of others. Most atheists who try to convince someone to abandon their religion wouldn’t see things any differently.

Indeed, I have felt like I was saved by atheism, that I am a born-again heathen. There is a clear demarcation in my attitude and outlook between when I was a believer and when I became a non-believer, and I would like to share that with others, but personally, I think it’s not something I can make someone feel… they have to allow themselves to feel it on their own. It almost sounds eerily familiar to what some Christians might say, but I would like to imagine it’s a universal outlook, that all those who feel they have the answer wish to share it with others so they can have it.

I might also consider the opposing view… why are Christians so obsessed with homosexuality? I personally am not of the opinion that every Christian who harps on the evils of homosexuality is actually in the closet, but there are those who believe this, and there have even been individuals for whom this is has turned out to be true. However, I know that what’s actually happening is usually much more simple than mere self-loathing: Christians who oppose homosexuality are generally not secretly gay, they just want to stop people from doing something they believe is wrong. It is likewise with many atheists regarding religion, atheists do not secretly love religion, they explicitly do not like it and find it harmful.

Perhaps it is merely that what we most oppose is something we also see as the cause of many other problems. Capitalists always gripe about unions, while socialists constantly complain about corporations. Republicans harp on liberals, and Democrats rail against conservatives. The old malign the younger generations, while the youth mock the elderly. Inside many of us, there must simply be a need that goes beyond just being, which instead seeks to also change others and the way they do things in a way that we perceive to be better.

Personally, I think it’s a small price to pay to be bothered by others to know that we have come so far. Even among the religious in America, so much progress has been made. We aren’t burning witches anymore, we don’t torture people to force them to convert, we keep the religious violence to a minimum. None of this could have happened if people were just left alone to do their own thing. It took the efforts of people seeking to improve things, and it required some people being dragged, kicking and screaming, towards progress.

All this because we kept our eyes not only on what we ourselves were doing, but also on others. We achieved all that we achieved not as atheists, or as Christians, but together, as a whole, and when some of us fail to get it and refuse to move ahead, we’re all held back. We rise and fall as one, because nothing any of us does happens in a vacuum. We are interconnected, and I believe it’s for the better far more than it’s for the worse, even if it means sometimes being irritated by someone shoving their ideas in my face.

An Atheist Studying Religion

2012-01-06T11:06:00.001-05:00

I’ve been an atheist actively studying religion for over ten years now. Since I was about 14 or 15, I have reached well beyond my Catholic upbringing to learn as much about as many religions as I can. While I feel I possess little more than informed ignorance when it comes to many religions, I can at least share what I have learned, not about religion itself, but on how to learn about religion.

I don’t even know where to begin, really. I guess the best place is curiosity. If you aren’t curious about another religion, reading about it won’t do you much good. I didn’t much care about Eastern culture until college, and my understanding of most Eastern religion was non-existent beyond an embarrassingly superficial interpretation (I have upgraded to possessing an hilarious misunderstanding).

Once you have the will to learn it (and you do need this first), you can start learning. I used to jump right into religious encyclopedias, going for what I now understand to be purely academic studies on the matter. I don’t really recommend this being your introduction to religion.

I think the best place to begin might be with material literally meant for the layperson. Some of the most helpful material I found for introducing me to a religion was meant for children. I’m not suggesting you seek out a coloring book for young Buddhists, but I recommend starting with non-official mythology, retellings meant for modern audiences with simple language which can introduce you to the basic concepts of the religion. Even a program on the PBS, the History or Discovery Channel, or whatever else you can find might provide you with a semi-decent primer (though these shouldn’t be the last place you look).

Beyond that, you’ll want to start digesting the actual sacred texts of a religion. You will need to read them more than once if you want to really get them; sometimes it takes three or more readings before anything at all even sticks. I liken reading most sacred texts to studying a foreign language. You will need to learn literally hundreds of new words in some cases, and you will need to learn new meanings to even more words you already knew.

So now, months have passed, you’ve plumbed the deepest recesses of a religion as much as you can from paper… the best thing from here is to talk to people who practice that religion. This is the point at which you think you know the religion and then find out you know nothing at all. Speaking to an actual religious practitioner will undoubtedly either confuse you or blow your mind.

Unless you have been well prepared through readings which cover the actual modern practice of a religion, you will almost assuredly be confronted with an unrecognizable mutant bearing only a slight resemblance to the religion you found in the pages of books.

Another option is to try to ingratiate yourself in a culture for a time. I rarely do this, because my interest in religion is purely observational, but a lot could be gained by visiting a place where the religion is practiced. This may be just going to your local city’s house of worship for that religion or travelling to another country. Often, the latter is the only option for ancient religions; I feel a closer connection to and understanding of ancient Roman and Greek culture for having travelled to Rome and various places in Greece.

Hopefully these little tips might help.

Rethinking Some Illness Clichés

2012-01-05T23:52:00.001-05:00

I was sick today. I don’t have a joke for that… I just want to sleep, but I also want to post something. Yet, all I can think about is being sick.

I don’t really feel “under the weather,” because I’m always under the weather, unless I’m in an airplane.

I don’t think it was something I ate, since I have a “cast iron stomach.” I want to point out that this quote is misleading, though. As the owner of many pots and pans, I can tell you that my cast iron cookware is not the most resilient. I have to season it with oil occasionally, and you can’t clean cast iron with soap like a normal pan. Still, I would rather have a cast iron stomach than a Teflon colon (which isn’t a cliché, yet… but I think it should be).

I’m not as “sick as a dog,” or at least any dog I ever knew. Dogs are pretty hearty. If I ate some of the things off the street my dogs ate, I would be bent over a toilet for hours.

A serious illness would be “nothing to sneeze at,” but don’t worry, I’m fine, since I’ve been sneezing all day.

I’m the only person I know who is sick, so they aren’t “dropping like flies” around me. Odd phrase, since flies are not exactly known for dropping… which is why they’re called flies, not drops.

I may be sick, but I took the proper action. “Drastic times call for drastic measures,” so I took drastically more cough medicine than the bottle recommended. Reminds me of my high school days…

I would say I am “sick to my stomach,” but the sickness doesn’t stop there… no, this is the kind that keeps going all the way through the digestive tract. You might say my sickness is “burning the candle at both ends.”

Wednesday Word: Cath-lick

2012-01-04T21:47:00.002-05:00

Cath-lick: the technique of accepting the Eucharist on your tongue

God Currently 0 for 2 in Republican Primary

2012-01-04T12:34:00.002-05:00

With Michele Bachmann dropping out of the race, this makes two failed candidates for the Republican nomination who have claimed that God told them to run. The first was Herman Cain, who apparently got the message from God to run for president between harassing innocent women and cheating on his wife with a long-time mistress he showered with gifts.

Now, Michele Bachmann, who told us last summer that she believed that God was “calling” her to run, has dropped out. Maybe it was a prank calling… maybe God does have a sense of humor (or is just really bored).

In any case, this won’t be the last one. When Perry inevitably drops out, that will make three. I think that will be the last of them, though. Huntsman, Gingrich, Santorum and Romney have all shied away from claiming a divine endorsement.

Still, that will put God at 0 for 3 this year, not a good record for the Almighty.

I’d like to end on some advice for my religious readers: maybe if you want to keep up the charade of an all-knowing, all-powerful, ultimate being that controls the universe and talks to you, stop saying that God is using you. Be honest… you’re just trying to use God… and failing miserably.

WTF Moment of the Month

2012-01-04T11:39:00.002-05:00

I thought nothing would ever make me see Santorum as anything more than frothy shit and lube produced from anal sex, but then…

I found out that Rick “Abortion Is Wrong In All Cases” Santorum’s wife had a second-term abortion in 1996 because her health was at risk.

That’s right, Rick “Abortion Should Be Illegal, Even In Cases of Rape and Incest” Santorum paid for what he has repeatedly defined publicly as a child killing.

Oh Rick… Rick, Rick, Rick… welcome to the Abortionist Club.

What are the odds, given his vitriolic hate for gay people, that he’s banging men on the side? I’ll just leave this here and let you, the reader, be the judge of that:

If that is not the face (and sweater vest) of a guy who cruises public bathrooms, I don’t know what is.

Discussion: Jesus 2012

2012-01-04T10:25:00.002-05:00

If Jesus Christ, as depicted in the New Testament, were running for president in 2012, would you vote for him?

Analyzing Iowa, 2012

2012-01-04T01:17:00.001-05:00

The votes are still coming in, and Santorum may have won by the froth of his anus, but it’s still too close to call at 1am, Eastern (midnight in Iowa).

As of this second, Santorum leads Romney 29,944 votes to 29,926 with 99.9% of precincts reporting in. Romney could still overtake him, but the 1st and 2nd place slots will undoubtedly be some combination of the two.

Third place went to Ron Paul, with 26,182 votes, and previous flavor-of-the-week Newt Gingrich rounds out the top four finishers with 16,210 votes.

Perry, Bachmann and Huntsman combined for less 20,000 votes. Here’s the breakdown, by percentage:

Santorum: 24.5%
Romney: 24.5%
Paul: 21.5%
Gingrich: 13.2%
Perry: 10.3%
Bachmann: 5.0%
Huntsman: 0.6%

Huntsman has been campaigning harder in New Hampshire, and I doubt he surprised by his results in Iowa (he actively ignored the state). Bachmann may be the most hurt by these results, as she probably had hoped for far better results after winning the summer Iowa Straw Poll, but she just didn’t have the money or the momentum this time.

Perry is campaigning especially hard in South Carolina, and I imagine he sees that as his to lose (he’s not going to win New Hampshire, a northern stronghold, but he must know he’ll do well in a southern state). I expect him to be in the race for a while longer.

Bachmann really has no business still being in it, since she isn’t getting much face time and she’s not likely to pull off any victories unless a major candidate bails out and their supporters flock to her. Her only prayer may be to stay in the middle (or bottom middle) of the pack until South Carolina, then hope Perry bombs and drops out before Florida’s primary. There is some serious overlap between the supporters of those two candidates, and while Perry has the funds, Bachmann has a shot of winning the Minnesota caucus, which will be held on Feb. 7th, a few weeks after South Carolina’s primary, which could at least give her the momentum to be one of the last candidates standing. If Perry bows out now, she may also be able to capitalize on gaining his supporters in the next few primaries.

But don’t hold your breath.

The same may be said of Huntsman, only his last stand is much earlier. Huntsman appears to be putting all his eggs in one basket, and that’s New Hampshire, a state he might have a chance of doing well in (though I think a win would be implausible, even in a fairy tale). I think Huntsman will bow out if he doesn’t finish in the top half in New Hampshire.

Even before this week, many were saying that Paul’s results wouldn’t matter in Iowa, and in some sense they don’t. He likely won’t finish in the top three after New Hampshire (unless he just sticks around when there are only two other candidates, which I wouldn’t put past him). I think garnering over 20% of the vote really delighted Paul, and I think it’s fair to say the results speak more to the ideology of libertarianism than to the appeal of Paul himself. While I still think they’re nuts, I’ll take Paul and this new crop of libertarians over Reagan and his Young Republicans any day (which is like saying I would rather be punched in the nuts than shot in the face).

While I imagine Santorum will be in the limelight until New Hampshire, the real winner is Romney. He’s proving his mettle, even among a pack of candidates seemingly hand-picked to beat him. His advertising campaigns in Iowa were brutally effective, dragging down former front-runner New Gingrich to a disappointing fourth place just a week or two after being on top in Iowa polls.

When Santorum inevitably falls from grace (if you doubt me, just Google him), Romney will still be near the top. In fact, I would be surprised if Romney does worse than second in any major primary or caucus before becoming the nominee, and I would bet money (if it were legal to gamble on elections) that he doesn’t fall below third anywhere.

Top Ten: Worst Posts of 2011

2012-01-03T20:17:00.001-05:00

10. Island Situation
9. Top Ten: Worst Presidents
8. Spitballing on the Religion of Atheism
7. Advice for Idiots
6. Discussion: Did Bin Laden Win?
5. Top Ten: Countries That Sound Like A Disease or Disorder
4. Top Ten: People Whose Death I Will Celebrate
3. How To Appear Funny or Wise
2. Why I Should Be Allowed To Eat Vegetarians
1. Bye

[Dis]Honorable Mention goes to:
I Hate the Military

Cee Lo Green; Cee Lo Green Butcher a Classic

2012-01-03T00:32:00.000-05:00

If your only news source was atheist blogs, you might think that Cee Lo Green butchering John Lennon’s classic, “Imagine,” on New Year’s Eve was the big story (okay… you’d probably still know about the Iowa caucus coming up and Rick Santorum saying he doesn’t want to give money to black people to make their lives better).

I watched it live and I actually remember thinking, as he started singing, “I wonder if he’s going to say ‘and no religion, too.’” He didn’t; he said “and all religion’s true.”

I actually ranked “Imagine” as #2 on my list of anti-religious songs, and I frequently find that most people are either oblivious to the lyrics, or they will actually just hum certain parts they disagree with… which is weird to me, because I don’t omit mentions of God or Jesus when I sing along to songs. I even have a top ten list of songs I like that mention religion.

Frankly, I was more surprised that he sang about the parts where we are asked to “imagine no possessions” while donning a huge gold watch and a fur coat. I was also amused to hear that he cursed people out on his Twitter account when they criticized him for butchering one of the few songs that actually promotes non-belief (then tastefully deleted all his comments). How very Christ-like.

Does it bother me? I guess a little… atheists can’t even have that one line without some religious asshole hijacking it on live TV for the whole nation to see. On some superficial level, it pisses me off, but I’m not going to go on some tirade like Bill O’Reilly might and claim there’s a “War on Atheism.” It’s just business as usual: douchebag religious people being their usual douchebag selves, making everything is about them, and ensuring that nothing they may disagree with is ever uttered in public.

Fuck revisionists, and their religion, too.

On the bright side, while what he did was dumb and marks him as a mindless hack in my eyes, it got people talking about how this is another example of atheism being marginalized. I wouldn’t call the incident a blessing in disguise, but it certainly was a bald PR windfall wearing sunglasses at night.

Partially True Information About Rape

2012-01-02T23:59:00.002-05:00

The statistics are true, but the advice/analysis is bad.

44% of rape victims are under 18, and 80% are under 30. So, to prevent rape, wear clothes that make you look old, maybe even walk with a limp and a cane.

73% of rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim recognizes. Your best defense, then, might be unpopularity or a poor memory for faces.

43% of rapes occur between the hours of 6pm and midnight, while only 24% occur between midnight and 6am. If you’re going to walk home alone through a bad neighborhood, wait until after midnight (which is safer than broad daylight, from 6am to 6pm, accounting for 33%).

15 out of 16 rapists never spend a day in jail for their crime, but I think the 1 out of 16 rapists who do spend a day in jail can never control their bowels again.

Monday Rule: Corporate Accountability

2012-01-02T17:43:00.000-05:00

When corporations break the law, those in charge of the company should go to jail. It makes no sense that executives only get credit for success, in the form of immense wealth, but they never get punished for crimes. Either you have control over your company and you deserve both the good and the bad that comes with it, or you need to acknowledge that people at the top are little more than figureheads, usually people related to the founder, who add nothing to the company, and whose job is largely composed of collecting a check.

Two Dudes: 2012

2012-01-01T20:39:00.002-05:00

Saturday Reflection #62

2011-12-31T12:47:00.001-05:00

Humans have only one emotion: anxiety. All others derive from our varying responses to the presence or absence of it.

Ron Paul, and What We Aren’t Talking About

2011-12-30T21:49:00.003-05:00

Ron Paul is in the news, and he has a serious shot at winning Iowa, so I think it’s time I finally weigh in… though not on what I think of him (I don’t need a paragraph, let alone an essay, to say that I would never support him).

I also have no need in weighing on the question of whether Ron Paul will be the nomi… pffft HA HA HA, sorry, sorry… I couldn’t even finish that sentence. Paul will never be the nominee. Paul has a better shot at winning a Democratic Party nomination than a Republican Party nomination in his lifetime.

But his campaign isn’t empty or futile, and it may have far-reaching ramifications.

One thing to consider is how this will affect the Republican Party. I predict that Romney will be the nominee and will lose to Obama. If this happens, I really think the Republican Party will “soul search,” or whatever it is that evil, soulless trolls do when they reassess things (I guess pray?). If Democrats somehow manage to win 2016 on top of all of this (if I had to guess who could, I would bet it would be Hillary Clinton), I bet the odds of the Republican Party radically altering itself goes through the roof.

One direction the Republicans might take is towards courting Libertarianism. While not a popular ideology among traditional (i.e. old) Republicans, it is the most popular right-leaning, conservative stance among the young. Young people see through the Neo-Con bullshit. People under 35 have no interest in marginalizing gay people, racial minorities, women, immigrants, non-Christians… or really any of the groups that Republicans traditionally rally around hating. If the Republican Party has a future, it’s probably in Libertarianism.

Ron Paul isn’t many things: sane, relevant, informed, electable outside of Texas… but he is a libertarian, and those other four things have never been important for a Republican nominee. Ron Paul may be the model for future Republican presidential candidates, I just doubt he’ll live to see it happen (I’m thinking maybe by 2020, when Paul would be 91).

But Paul isn’t totally out quite yet, so it’s not just about his legacy. Paul won’t be running for re-election to his house seat, which he’s had for so long that he’s probably unsure of how he’ll pack up his office without the help of the slaves who helped him move in. This presidential run is potentially the last election for Paul, and while I am confident he won’t get the nomination, he just might pull a Nader.

If Paul runs as an Independent or Libertarian and draws votes away from Romney, you can ignore [more than you would otherwise] all of that stuff I said earlier. If people blame Paul and the Libertarians for Obama getting re-elected (and don’t kid yourselves, Obama will likely win either way), you can probably forget about Republicans and Libertarians ever getting along. In fact, it might spur the long-stalled rise of the Libertarian Party, which has tried in vain to be politically relevant since the 70s.

Libertarians have often just been people who vote Republican and don’t have the balls to admit so in public, but there are others who have merely identified with the Libertarian ideals while acknowledging the party not currently viable. Many libertarians are basically like me: they abstain from voting, especially for the office of president, not out of a lack of interest, but from frustration at the “choice” we have forced upon us by the lowest common denominators on both sides.

In many ways, I am rooting for Libertarians to come into their own, not just slowly infiltrate the Republican party. While I’m not Libertarian, I do favor Libertarianism over Republicanism, and more than that, I would love for a more diverse political landscape in America.

But it’s all up in the air. I’m merely speculating on what I think could happen. I am confident of one thing, however: Ron Paul will leave a mark on American politics that will far exceed his results in this, probably his final presidential bid or political race of any kind.

Religion and the Persecution Complex

2011-12-29T17:50:00.004-05:00

My wife and I moved into our new home in 2010, and we’re quite happy with it. There’s nothing we would change… except one of our neighbors.

Sure, the other neighbor is great. She’s a kind retiree. We exchanged phone numbers. She’s told us where her spare key is, in case of emergency, and I plan to do the same, now that we finally got a spare made. She watches for thick plumes of smoke coming from our home when we go out of town. You know, typical neighbor stuff.

But the other neighbor is a cranky old divorcée with what my wife calls “a persecution complex.” I just call her a bitch, but my wife is much more academic and kind than I am. This bitchy neighbor finds ridiculous things to complain about… like when we had our back fence attached to a pole on our property to create a continuous fenced in area, she claims we connected our fence to hers without her permission (though she readily admits the post is on and a part of what even she calls the “neutral” fence in-between our properties, which is actually on our side of the real dividing line of the property, a concrete drainage half-pipe down the property line).

Never mind that her “fence” is several feet on our property (I wouldn’t even think of asking her to move it, because I’m not ever going to have any use for a foot or two of land on the other side of my fence).

And the way she went about mentioning it… with a verbal complaint shrouded in victimhood while my wife and I were working in the yard one day… it was almost like she was looking for a fight. It affected her yard in no way whatsoever. If anything, it all but acknowledged a cession of a small portion of my yard to her (by clearly fencing in a portion of my yard and all but accepting her decision to have built her back fence a foot or two past the property line).

She gets more yard than she deserves, but she is upset that my fence touches her fence.

She has also complained about her vicious pit bull barking at my dogs. No mention of the fact that she was stupid and bought a huge pit bull she is unable to control while walking around her own yard. No, she complained that with my dogs in my own backyard, that she couldn’t walk her dog in her own backyard. She has more than once loudly commented while walking her dog around her yard that, “I can’t even use my own yard anymore.”

Really? Why don’t you get off your fat fucking ass and walk your dog around the neighborhood once in a while? It would do both you and your deranged dog (who is probably nuts because the poor thing never, ever leaves the house or yard) some good.

This is also the neighbor who, as our first Halloween in the neighborhood approached, I asked what time they would be giving out candy. She muttered something about how she wouldn’t be, and she would be going to church.

Then it all made sense. She’s one of those. You know who I’m talking about: those Victims for Jesus. Or at least that’s what a polite person like my wife might call them. I call them Christ Cunts.

You can identify a Christ Cunt by their unending need to feel like they are the butt of every possible persecution they can imagine. Literally every little thing that happens in their world is some sort of conspiracy against them. They live in an egotistical existence of self-pity, and their Holy Book feeds their view that because of who they are and what they believe, they will be victims of cruelty… even when they clearly aren’t.

It’s strange, really, that a group holding majority power and that always seems to get its way is able to convince themselves that they are being persecuted all the time. I don’t know how the thought process works, honestly. These people seem to imagine themselves in a world where they are being constantly attacked for… I guess being what is socially accepted as “normal.”

It’s an irritating mindset to deal with, especially as someone who is part of a group that actually is marginalized. Study after study finds that atheists are not well liked in America, and yet… I can’t bring myself to feel persecuted, and I certainly never feel like a victim. When I think of victims, I picture real persecution… not what I have experienced. I know there are atheists who have suffered real persecution, but I am not one of them.

No, what an atheist like myself has faced can’t measure up to true victimhood. What have I “endured?” Well, name calling for one. Oh, the horror… my poor, delicate psyche. Then there’s the “institutional prejudice,” which I guess amounts to all those studies finding that people wouldn’t vote for an atheist president, or that atheists are just generally disliked. Maybe an employer who might have hired me saw that I was an atheist on Facebook and rejected my application, but I have no way of proving it, and I doubt such a speculative event happened in my case. I’m sure it’s happened to someone, but I bet the odds are good that I wasn’t one.

Then you have the hate mail and angry comments from my blogging, but honestly… I put my opinions in the public forum, and I wouldn’t expect anything less. There’s billboards denouncing my views (I saw an anti-evolution billboard in West Virginia this week) and promoting Christianity all over the place, not to mention countless other forms of Christian propaganda, from car bumper stickers to sign-holding protesters.

I guess these bother me on some level, but other people are free to say such things, and I usually find the empty and mindless rhetoric of such practices to be more amusing than hurtful. I know I enjoy laughing at them more than they enjoy being such annoying pricks.

I think Muslims have a tougher time of things in America than atheists. I don’t end up on no-fly lists, nor have I been called to a room to be strip searched because of my name or clothing. Sure, atheist billboards have been rejected and defaced, but there has never been a public effort to stop something I valued dearly from being built in my community (unless you count the Republican assault on education funding). Muslims face protest if they want to do even the most mundane things in certain areas.

I know for a fact that in many parts of America, and probably in many other countries, Muslims face marked prejudice. In perhaps some rare and isolated cases in America, atheists experience extreme prejudice, and they certainly have in other places around the world. In fact, the same can be said of Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and even Christians.

Yes, some Christians, even in America, experience prejudice. Millions of Christians (and non-Christians, for that matter) don’t even consider Mormons “real Christians.” The same can be said of Catholics from a Protestant perspective, or Protestants from a Catholic perspective. And everyone shits on Scientologists, because they’re like the sci-fi nerd with asthma in what is the American high school of society.

There is literally a small-scale cultural battle –usually just a kerfuffle – going on at all times at the religious level. Everyone is a target, but there are clear winners and losers. If you’re wondering whether you’re a winner or a loser, here’s some guidelines to help you figure it out:

- if every president in American history worshipped the same person (and his Godly father, and spooky ghost) that you do, you might be winning

- if wearing clothing or pendants which depict your religious stance attracts stares of disgust, you might be losing

- if you drive down the road and see a lot of religious displays representing your faith, you might be winning

- if your house of worship or lone billboard in town supporting your view is vandalized on a regular basis, you might be losing

- if people in your church still talk about that one time years ago when a statue got vandalized (by a church member’s kid), you might be winning

- if, due to past experience, you pre-lube your rectum before going to the airport, you might be losing

- if your religious holidays are coincidentally also federal holidays, you might be winning

- if your religious holidays are known in the US military as the ideal time to strike, you might be losing

- if people have thrown physical objects at you because of your religious views, you might be losing

- if people have thrown insults at you because of your religious views, you might be human

Frankly, it’s not about winning or losing (by which I mean, it’s not about losing and winning, which respectively win and lose the game of “Who Is Most Persecuted?”). It’s not even about some sappy bullshit speech I am supposed to give at the end of this rant where I try to pretend we should all just get along and sing camp songs around a fire while roasting marshmellows, because the Jews and Muslims would get pissed off that the marshmellows have pig gelatin in them, but the Hindus can’t eat the cow gelatin kind, and the Jains are just offended by the whole thing.

We can’t all get along; we’re all too goddamned idiosyncratically annoying for that drivel.

No, there will always and must always be conflict. We can’t all just co-exist, side-by-side, without getting on each others’ nerves. We are far too human for such a dream to be anything but a joke. But you know what we can do? We can still respect each others’ basic rights.

Take my neighbor, for instance. She has every right to say stupid little comments about my fence or my dogs, but she didn’t call the cops out here, nor did she sue me, nor does she damage my property or hurt anyone or my dogs. I have to assume she respects that we can handle our differences without the need to elevate things beyond voicing our concerns.

And when her grandchild came to my door this Halloween after I got what I perceived to be a rude remark the year before, I smiled and gave him candy, because that’s what neighbors do. I’m not a saint for doing it, I’m not even a good person, I just did what anyone who wasn’t a complete jack-off would do.

I mean, sure, I did think about turning them away as she watched in horror from the street… but his costume was so cute and I’m only human. Only a God can visit anger and rage down upon multiple generations like that. All I saw was an innocent little kid who wanted to have fun, whose hand was being held by a father who was probably raised to not be allowed to practice such a pagan holiday, and who probably just wanted his kid to fit in and have a good time.

But really, it was easy, because at this point, justice had been done. A branch from my tree this past year fell on my neighbor’s back fence, the very fence which crossed into my yard, the very fence I hooked up to in order to maintain a continuous contained area in the backyard on my side.

Now, I say a branch fell, but the tree has to be over a hundred years old. It’s several stories tall, and the “branch” is thicker than most tree trunks in all the neighborhoods I grew up in. I’d say the diameter is about 12 to 14 inches. It dropped from over 30 feet, and it reduced the fence in that spot to half its former height. Best of all, wind damage from falling tree matter isn’t the responsibility of the tree owner (who happens to be… me). It’s also legally considered an “Act of God,” though I think Hindus would call it “Karma.”

What’s the summation, then? What’s the point? Only this: there’s no need to go through life imagining great problems that don’t exist to blame on enemies you don’t have. If you merely have the patience, something bad will inevitably happen to you (often naturally, by no one’s fault), then you can be the victim, and not just play one on TV.

Wednesday Word: Scapeghost

2011-12-28T16:11:00.004-05:00

Scapeghost: to blame a problem on an entity that doesn’t exist

Top Ten: Things That Happened This Morning Before My Ten Hour Drive Home

2011-12-27T22:59:00.003-05:00

10. Car wouldn’t start
9. Dog, Barkley, escaped
8. Wife scraped face on branch while recovering dog
7. Mom, wife and myself locked out of house
6. Max, the less well-behaved dog, locked inside
5. Mom’s friend lost spare key
4. Father has to drive 40 minutes from work with key
3. Max pooped in the house
2. Max stepped in poop and tracked it through the house
1. Missed McDonald’s breakfast

Monday Rule: Breakfast

2011-12-26T09:42:00.002-05:00

Restaurants that serve breakfast should have to serve it all day long, not just early in the morning. Not only would this be good for people who sleep in late, but it would also be nice for people working odd hours.

Two Dudes: Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

Saturday Reflection #61

2011-12-24T12:50:00.003-05:00

They say money is the root of all evil, but really, the phrase is, "The love of money [or greed] is the root of all evil." Indeed, money is not the root of all evil, it is the fruit of all evil.

Atheist Unapologetics

2011-12-22T16:49:00.001-05:00

I never liked the term “apologetics.” Christian apologists never apologize, they only justify their stance, or make excuses. They should be called justifiers, or excuse makers.

[Yes, I know that an “apology” is a defense… please don’t think you’re correcting me by pointing this out.]

I think atheists should be unapologetic, in both senses of the word. There’s no reason for atheists to feel sorry for their views, but more than that, atheists don’t need to make an apology [or defense] in favor of atheism. If you don’t understand what I mean, I will say this: I have never felt like I was defending atheism. Atheism doesn’t need defending, religion does.

More than an atheist, I am a cynic. Not in the modern sense of the word, but in the original use. I am a dog… okay, not that original. I question everything. Atheism is a small concept. It could be folded up and put in your pocket. There isn’t much to it. Cynicism is a way of life, and is closer to a religion than atheism could ever be (though neither is).

While there are atheists who seek out positive “proofs” or evidence for atheism, that never interested me. I’m glad they do it, and I hope they keep doing it, but it’s just not my style. I prefer to actively seek out religious ideology and religious people with the sole purpose being that I want to find something I haven’t seen or heard before.

I’m not looking to defend atheism or attack religion, but religion is the one making all the claims and it’s my job as a cynic to think critically about what they say. I envision myself as a stationary rock at the center of my universe, and at times, there are people and ideas which move me, but I don’t roll in any particular direction on my own will. Thus far, religion has utterly failed to move me.

So why not invite religion into my world, or even seek it out? I guess it’s probably for the same reason that some nights, after my wife has gone to bed, as I am flipping through the channels, I may put on some sports. I don’t pay attention to any particular sport anymore, but I’ve played basketball, baseball, hockey and football, and I’ve watched even more, including boxing, mixed martial arts, and of course anything during the Olympics.

I don’t feel compelled to play myself, or even to watch religiously. I mostly just tune in every once in a while, nod my head, and think, “Well, the names have changed, but it’s all basically still the same.” Before long, I move on again. It’s enough to just get a taste of something to confirm that I still find it disagreeable; I don’t need to order a whole meal of it every day for weeks to be find out.

Wednesday Word: Unapologetics

2011-12-21T07:15:00.002-05:00

Unapologetics: the atheist version of religious apologetics

Top Ten: Annoying Things [Some] Christians Do

2011-12-20T23:22:00.000-05:00

10. Say “Bless you” when anyone sneezes
9. Expect me to say “Bless you” when they sneeze
8. Pray before eating
7. Give me dirty looks as I eat while they pray
6. Religious Tourette’s (dropping “God willing” and “praise Jesus” into every other sentence)
5. Act persecuted all the time
4. Claim that homosexuality is shameful
3. Pretend Christianity isn’t shameful
2. Legislate according to [their interpretation of] the Bible
1. Knock on your door to talk about Jesus early in the morning on a weekend

Republicans: Prudes With Brain Damage

2011-12-19T12:06:00.001-05:00

I don’t understand Republicans sometimes. I think it’s mostly because I was born after lead was no longer used in gasoline and paint.

Take, for example, the recent events in the Republican primary. Herman Cain abandoned his bid for the presidency, not after a clear pattern of sexual harassment had been established, but when his mistress of 13 years came forward. Apparently forcing a woman’s head into your lap is not as serious as cheating on your wife with a woman who consents.

Call me crazy, but when it comes to rape, I don’t take a “to each his own” stance. At least infidelity isn’t a crime, it’s just really, really sleazy.

So, in an apparent migration of philanderers, Cain’s supporters seem to have settled on (surprise, surprise) the other person in the race who is known for sticking his dick into vaginas that do not belong to his wife.

These are the same people who think that gay couples have no right to get married, because it would trample on the “sanctity” of marriage. They are basically tripping over themselves to support any horndog they can find.

Hint to Romney: now would be a great time to bring out those extra wives you’re hiding. I think that would play well with Republicans these days. If that doesn’t work, you could always suggest something crazy that Republicans would enjoy, like wanting to ban birth control outright or bringing back whites-only pools. You know, something traditional.

Monday Rule: Accents

2011-12-19T07:43:00.006-05:00

If you speak with a thick, regional accent, you aren’t allowed to complain about immigrants who don’t speak English well. Okay… you are allowed, but it should be a rule that people make fun of how uneducated, inbred and hypocritical you sound.

What in tarnations is this here city slicker talkin’ ’bout?

Two Dudes: You Suck At This

2011-12-18T10:59:00.000-05:00

Saturday Reflection #60

2011-12-17T17:09:00.001-05:00

The way a person acts speaks to their character, while the way a person speaks is how they act in character.

Christopher Hitchens: Atheist, Author, Asshole

2011-12-16T12:29:00.001-05:00

I will confess to not being the biggest Hitchens fan, which is putting it lightly. I know the guy just died, but if I’m being honest… I was rooting for the scotch and cigarettes.

I just never liked Hitchens. I’m sorry for the loss to his family and friends, but I know they won’t be reading this. I imagine only fans of Hitchens will read this, and to them, I have a few choice words.

There’s really two main points on which I disagree with Hitchens, and only one of them is enough to make me dislike the guy. The first, less severe disagreement I have with him is that he tried to argue that women are naturally less funny than men. He tried to pull some labored evolutionary argument out of his ass (something about how women are already attractive to men, so they don’t have to make men laugh, whereas men have to attract women… I found it piss-poor at best). Never mind that humor is not an in-born trait, but an art which is worked at. Plenty of women make the effort and succeed at comedy, and not only as a career.

But I can overlook that. In the grand scheme of things, I can get over one article where someone is sharing his blatant bias and justifying it by utterly misinterpreting a scientific study whose actual findings were that women seem to essentially enjoy humor more and be more sensitive to what they find to be “unfunny.” Plus, it’s quite clear from the article does address many of these concerns. I didn’t even hate the article [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701], I just think it’s a dumb conclusion to think women are less humorous than men. I’ve said more offensive things, and there’s much worse insults to women than to outright claim they’re less funny.

But the deal breaker, the one thing that I found out about Hitchens which I cannot stand, is his anti-Islamic war-mongering. If my interpretation of his writing on the subject is correct, he basically thinks we should be killing Muslims wholesale because he hates religion. I’m positive that isn’t how he would have phrased it, but that is what is essentially coming out. He appears to think that some distant group who believes something different than we do is a threat to us.

That’s precisely the kind of atheism I do not like. I don’t want anything to do with people who actually support hurting – let alone killing – others because of their beliefs. I thought this was a basic ethical imperative, but apparently “feeling threatened” has become the new argument for justifying anything these days. Just FYI: you don’t have the right to not feel threatened.

I keep hearing from Hitchens and people like him that Muslims want to take away our freedoms… but from what I can see, the strategy seems to be for the governments of the West to violate all civil and human rights first, before these damned Muslims can get their dirty hands on them. Oddly enough, I feel threatened by the breach in basic freedoms and human rights which the War on Terror has resulted in. I don’t need some overseas, brown-skinned boogeyman to make me feel like my rights are going to be violated; there’s an army of pale-faced chickenhawks here in the West.

And now there’s one less. Pardon me if I don’t miss him.

After “Gay Marriage” is just “Marriage”

2011-12-15T18:20:00.006-05:00

I sometimes ponder what liberals of the future will be pushing for, assuming liberals today ever achieve anything. I’d like to think my kids will be fighting for improvements I never even thought of, but as slow as the US is to change, I sometimes question if my cryogenically frozen head will ever see every modern liberal goal achieved.

I already see certain issues on the horizon. Specifically, once gay couples are allowed to marry, there will still be a need for the definition of marriage to evolve. Even today, there are many people who live in polygamous family units, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes an economic advantage –or necessity– in the future.

The benefits are manifold. A family consisting of five married adults, for example, could have four working adults and one that stays home to give hands-on parental childcare. As a matter of simple economics, household chores and duties would be more thinly spread out among more individuals, lessening the overall load on everyone within the family unit.

I haven’t written about polygamy since the show “Big Love” went off the air, but it has been on my mind because of a few strange events. For one, I watched a documentary with my wife about polygamous Mormon sects. I also saw a blog post that briefly mentioned polygamy. Then, to top it all off, the unthinkable happened…

My wife knows a lot of unusual/interesting people, and among them were two “triads,” as she calls them. Both are married couples who invited a third person into their relationship. One invited a woman, the other couple invited a man. Both had worked out for years, and then just recently, both triads fell apart. In both cases, the newly introduced member remained with the original member of the opposite sex from the original couple. In other words, in one case, the original husband stayed with the new woman, and in the other case, the original wife stayed together with the new man.

I’ve always supported the right of any adults to live their lives however they want. I don’t know these people at all (I may have met some of them once or twice, though I don’t remember them), but from what I gather from my wife, this isn’t some simple arrangement in any of the cases. For example, where the original wife was abandoned for the new woman, the original wife has attempted suicide several times recently and is basically impossible to live with. While this may explain what happened, and it paints a different picture than one of a husband just leaving his wife for a new woman, I still find the details to be disconcerting.

If my wife tried to kill herself multiple times, my first thought would be to help her, not ditch her. Still, I don’t know the specifics, and on some level I know that most people wouldn’t just turn and run at the first sign of difficulty in a multi-year marriage. I’m more inclined to believe that this has been a recurring problem for a long time, that steps had been taken to attempt to correct the problems, and I also know it wasn’t her husband’s idea to bring another woman into their home (who would say no to that, am I right?).

Obviously, there’s nothing currently stopping people from living this way. There is already no crime in fathering children with multiple women, or conceiving several children with different men. There is nothing illegal (and I would argue, nothing immoral) about living a polyamorous lifestyle where all parties are given equal input on decision making.

There’s just nothing inherently wrong with polygamy. Sure, these kind of relationships can fall apart and get complicated, but honestly… so can monogamous couplings. In fact, monogamous couples fail more often than they succeed, if you count non-married couples as well. Plus, a wrinkly octogenarian can marry a sheltered, naïve teen girl in a monogamous relationship, so allowing polygamy doesn’t somehow magically open the door to abusive situations.

Also, for the sake of clarification: polygyny is a marriage with multiple wives, polyandry is a relationship with multiple men, polyamory is simply “love for multiple people,” and polygamy means “multiple marriages.” Technically, Newt Gingrich is a polygamist, since he’s been married multiple times… just not concurrently (though he did boink a woman and left his wife while his wife had cancer). For the record, I support legalized polygamy, not institutionally restricted polygyny, which doesn’t allow women to have multiple husbands.

The question at hand is: should the state recognize such relationships? I honestly don’t see why not. There’s no reason not to. People in different sorts of relationships should be allowed all the same rights and privileges of people in any other type of relationship. There is no reason to avoid changing this error in relationship bias within our system.

“But Bret, where does it end? Wouldn’t someone be able to marry a goat or their iPhone?”

I dunno about a goat, but what’s wrong with marrying your iPhone? What harm is there in being married to an inanimate object? I was in a relationship with a WASP for three years, and that was basically the same thing. If you want your iPhone to be there with you at your deathbed, who’s to say it shouldn’t be allowed?

And maybe you should be allowed to marry a goat. Stranger things are already happening in the world. A cat just inherited $13 million in Italy. This has me thinking: maybe we have room in our house for one more feline. I’ll clean one more litter box a day for $13 million. Hell, I’ll do it for half that.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the conservative mindset, this need to control and restrict everything. They seem to imagine themselves as valiantly defending a way of life that always was, as if our ancestors who thought the stars were gods and the world was flat had some sort of inside track on profound wisdom.

So long as there are societies, I imagine liberals will never run out of social problems to fix.

*UPDATE*

So get this... I talked to my wife, and it turns out that one of the triads (the one that introduced an extra man) is actually more complex than I described. So, the couple was originally composed of a gay man and a man who is female-to-male transgender. Though one of the men was born a woman, they legally changed their gender after sexual reassignment and then got married as a gay couple (so their marriage wouldn't be recognized in many states... even though it is between someone born a man and someone born a woman). Then, they introduced a bisexual man. That ended when the original couple broke up, and the man who is transgender stayed with the new guy.

I never cease to be amazed at how boringly normal my own life turns out to be compared to other people.

Wednesday Word: Vacatheism

2011-12-14T23:19:00.003-05:00

Vacatheism: the religious belief that one should get time off work for holidays

Atheism and Religion in the News - Dec. 14th, 2011

2011-12-14T14:11:00.009-05:00

Religion has been in the news a bit more than usual, but I just haven’t felt like writing about it. I just don’t have very elaborate opinions on the matter, and when I start to write about them… I run out of steam quite quickly. So, I figured, why not compile a few and combine them into one piece? Maybe this can be a regular feature… but hopefully not, because if I feel compelled to do this every week or every month, I’ll really reach for things to write about. I’d rather just address issues as they come up, if they come up.

While I have largely stopped paying attention to sports as a whole, I became aware of Tim Tebow quite early. I remember hearing about him writing Bible verses on his face in college, and I remember him and his mother being in an anti-abortion commercial that aired during the Super Bowl.

Now, “tebowing” is a thing. Does it bother me? I dunno, I don’t watch football… but I can’t imagine it would make one difference to me if a guy wants to bow down after scoring a touchdown, since I also support all other forms of celebration (though I hear that the NFL commissioner doesn’t agree with me). I will say this, though: winning football games does not constitute a “miracle.”

Atheists have inundated the charitable organization “Doctors Without Borders” with tens of thousands of often modest donations, totaling over $180,000. Many gave just a few dollars, but a concerted effort organized through the r/atheism subreddit on Reddit.com was responsible for the large group effort.

A study I heard about over a month ago is still making the rounds in some news outlets. The conclusion was that atheists are distrusted by some Christians as much as rapists. If you actually read the study, the questions asked were… just a little loaded. People were asked whether someone who dinged a car and left the scene was more likely to be “a teacher, an atheist teacher, or a rapist teacher.” This was repeated with the question asking if someone found a wallet and took the money, was the person more likely to be…

It’s good news that the study is flawed and ridiculous, I guess. Without knowing the horrible methodology, I looked at it differently than most. I just assumed Christians forgave rapists, so I didn’t think, “Gee, Christians hate atheists,” I just pondered, “Huh… no wonder they just keep letting rapist priests interact with children.”

I guess the last thing I can think of is that Christmas is around the corner, so Christians have stepped up the unjustified righteous indignation. They always get really uppity this time of year, when they imagine that their pagan traditions are under attack. Rick Perry even thinks kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas anymore…

I don’t know about Texas (and I don’t want to know), but everywhere I know of, you can publicly celebrate Christmas. In fact, I don’t know of any place you can go in this country where Christmas won’t be shoved down your throat. Perry must be upset that he can’t use government funding to put up religious iconography, spreading his faith on the taxpayer’s dime. There’s no war on Christmas, unless you count the Christians trying to scale the wall separating church and state.

Top Ten: Favorite Cartoon Shows (both for and not for kids)

2011-12-13T11:22:00.002-05:00

Top Ten: Favorite Cartoon Shows (for kids)

10. Doug
9. Rocky and Bullwinkle
8. Eek! The Cat
7. Scooby-Doo
6. Rugrats
5. The Flintstones
4. Looney Tunes
3. Rocko’s Modern Life
2. Home Movies
1. SpongeBob Square Pants

Top Ten: Favorite Cartoon Shows (for not for kids)

10. Drawn Together
9. South Park
8. Beavies and Butthead
7. Family Guy
6. Venture Brothers
5. Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist
4. Aqua Teen Hunger Force
3. King of the Hill
2. Futurama
1. The Simpsons

Monday Rule: It Is What It Is

2011-12-12T12:15:00.005-05:00

Atheism is not a religion. Also, NASCAR and poker are not sports, forty is not the new thirty, taxes are not theft, it’s not illegal to videotape or photograph the police, being gay is not a choice or immoral, pizza is not a vegetable, and these surnames are not first names:

Madison
Jackson
Wilson
Carson
Harrison

Also, science is not a religion, video games are not art, Pluto is not a planet, words are not a crime, America is not a democracy, love and hate are not real, the customer is not always right, religion is not evil, all is not lost, and the novel is not dead.

However, those were the droids they were looking for, health care is a right, and Clapton is God.

Two Dudes: Names

2011-12-11T11:06:00.003-05:00

Saturday Reflection #59

2011-12-10T09:14:00.001-05:00

Having sex is a lot like riding a bike, in that if you haven’t done it in years and you try to do it, you can seriously hurt yourself or someone else.

Island Situation

2011-12-10T02:47:00.009-05:00

You have shipwrecked on a large island. You see a vast forest which meets the white, sandy beach you currently stand on. There is a large mountain in the middle of the island, on which you can clearly see a waterfall (so, there is fresh water). There is no human life on the island, but there are insects, birds, lizards, a bunch of wild pigs, and typical sea-life, not to mention lush vegetation. The weather is mild tropical, and every year there is a 3 month monsoon season (which just ended before you arrived).

You will be trapped here for 10 years, and you know this. You have 12 points to spend in the following 5 categories. You must choose one (and only one) option from categories 1-3, and you may choose one option each (but not more than one each) from categories 4-5.

Category 1: The Company You Keep (Mandatory)

A (1 point): Think of the Children

You may choose to bring your own kids (any age or number, and adopted children obviously count), or just 1-3 real or hypothetical children (age 0-12, you pick age and gender, but all hypothetical children must be at least 1 year apart in age). They will be a drain on your resources at first, and will probably annoy the hell out of you, but hopefully they start to chip in before the 10 years are up.

B (2 points): Solo

You are alone on the island. You only have to provide for yourself, but you also have no help and no companionship. You may start to go mad and begin speaking to inanimate objects.

C (3 points): Survivalist

You are trapped on the island with a stranger whose hobbies include gun collecting, bow hunting, fishing, and camping. This person is a volunteer firefighter and works as an EMT. They have lost their dominate arm at the shoulder just now during a shark attack. With their help, you apply a tourniquet and save their life. They are of a gender and age which you find least sexually attractive, and their political views are the opposite of your own. However, they are polite, a patient teacher, and they are still able to walk and use their other arm.

D (4 points): Ooo-la-la

You may choose anyone you know personally to be stranded with you. They cannot be famous, even if you know a famous person, though the person you select doesn’t have to know you exist or even like you. Being trapped on the island doesn’t necessarily mean they will start to like you, nor will they blame you for selecting them. You don’t need to be sexually attracted to them, and it can be your best platonic friend, but… ten years is a long time…

E (5 points): Island Party

You can choose any combination of A, C and D,

OR…

You can choose any 4 people on the planet to be trapped with you on the island. You may also choose anonymous strangers with specific qualities (e.g. “a world-class chef,” or “an Olympic javelin thrower”).

Category 2: Armed and Dangerous (Mandatory)

A (1 point): Eight-inch Bowie Knife

It’s big, it’s sharp, and it’s better than nothing. I’m sure you can sharpen it on rocks you find, so don’t worry about it going dull.

B (2 points): 9mm Revolver

The gun holds 5 shots. It comes with a full cleaning kit (with instructions) and 500 rounds (10 years = roughly 3652 days; so, 500 rounds is a little less than one shot per week).

C (3 points): AK-47

This assault rifle is notoriously inaccurate, but it comes with a full cleaning kit, spare parts, and 5000 rounds. It also comes with a handy six-inch bayonet which can be detached and used as a knife.

D (4 points): Medieval Armory

A giant crate containing a vast collection of restored, fully functional antique weapons, including a suit of armor that is a little too small for you (most parts can be worn, but they are uncomfortable… for now), ten spears over six feet long, ten swords with 3 foot blades, twenty daggers of various styles, five large metal shields, ten all-metal axes, ten all-metal maces, and one crossbow with extra strings and ten solid metal bolts (ammunition) which can always be reused, if you track them down after shooting them.

E (5 points): Outdoorsman Pack

You get the Bowie knife from option A, a compound bow with 1000 arrows (which can generally be reused several times, if you retrieve them), two felling axes with three-foot carbon handles (and four replacement handles), five utility tomahawks, a pair of binoculars, 5000 strike-anywhere matches in a waterproof container, a fishing pole with thousands of feet of line, 1000 hooks, and a small hibachi grill with metal tongs, two-pronged fork, and spatula.

Category 3: Tools (Mandatory)

A (1 point): First Homeowner’s Toolkit

You get a small plastic container that opens like a suitcase. It has a slotted (flathead) screwdriver, a Philips-head (cross) screwdriver, a hammer, a pair of pliers, a pair of needle-nosed pliers, a pair of wire-cutters, 5 different sized wrenches (one is a large monkey wrench), a tape measure, 30 penny nails, 20 one-inch screws, and 20 little metal hooks with screws on the end.

B (2 points): Sun God

You get a solar panel with a generator. On an average sunny day, the panel generates enough electricity to run electronic equipment for 8 hours. The power can be stored to be used at night, or used during the day. The maximum charge the generator’s battery can hold is 48 hours of power. The only piece of electronic equipment it comes with is a radio which faintly picks up a few Indonesian stations at night (but not during the day). They sometimes play old music you recognize. However, unless you (or someone else on the island) speaks Malay, you can’t understand nearly any news being broadcast. You can plug in two things at a time, but they will use up twice as much power.

C (3 points): First-Aid Kit

Inside a waterproof container is a well-stocked first aid kit. It contains hundreds of feet of cloth bandages which can be reused if washed and sundried, 500 sterile pads, two bottles of hydrogen peroxide, a box of 500 cue tips, a bag of 500 cotton balls, two rolls of medical tape, ten tubes of Neosporin, ten tubes of hydrocortisone (anti-itch) cream, 5000 alcohol wipes, a pair of scissors, one scalpel with four extra replacement blades, a pair of tweezers, an alcohol thermometer, 10 safety pins, a bottle of 200 ibuprofen, a blanket, a first-aid booklet, and one roll of toilet paper. There also appears to be a box full of thousands of condoms next to the first-aid kit… I guess they come with it.

D (4 points): Garden of Eden Set

Two spades, two shovels, two hoes, two watering pails, two pairs of leather work gloves, two pairs of knee pads, two pairs of pruning shears, twenty large terracotta planting pots, one wheelbarrow, one encyclopedia of gardening, 1000 seed packets (each) of five kinds of vegetables (you pick any five, but they must be vegetables; the weather and conditions on the island are ideal for any type of growing). Figs also naturally grow on the island now.

E (5 points): Man’s Best Tools

Five crosscut two-man saws, five crosscut hand saws, five rip saws, five hacksaws, five hammers, ten thousand 4-inch flathead nails, 1000 feet of nylon rope that can support twice the body weight of the heaviest person on the island, one solar powered watch (with month and day), ten rolls of duct tape, one Swiss Army Knife (pliers, scissors, 1.5 inch blade, 3 inch blade, corkscrew, tweezers, toothpick, flathead and Phillips-head screw drivers, can opener, 5x magnifying lens, and small LED light), a flash light with a battery that is recharged by winding it up, a Zippo lighter with a large container of fluid and extra flints, one plastic poncho, a typical backpack, and… a dog. Not just any dog, but a sixty pound, 1-year-old mutt that “sits” when told, and enjoys eating crabs and birds he catches himself. The dog’s life expectancy is about 12 to 15 years, and he is quite friendly and calm.

Category 4: Luxuries (Optional)

A (1 point): A What-Man?

You get headphones and a Walkman with a mix tape of your favorite songs (each side has 45 minutes of recording time). It comes with enough batteries to run for about 1000 hours total, but if you have the solar generator, you can plug into that when you have run out of batteries (though you cannot recharge the batteries, so you only have 1000 hours of travel use with the Walkman). You also get any 3 books of your choice, and one ballpoint pen.

B (2 points): Addict

You get an unlimited supply of any three consumables of your choosing. They can be prepared in any way you wish, but you are still on an island (there is no refrigeration, and things can spoil). For example, you can have unlimited coffee, but you still need to boil the water and steep the beans, and if you want iced coffee, you need to climb the mountain to get snow or ice. It’s also acceptable to choose something which can be grown or which breeds (introducing foreign species is fine; assume they will flourish in the new environment).

C (3 points): iBored

You get an iPad. It has a calendar feature, 5 games of your choosing, 20 movies of your choosing (or you can substitute 1 book for 2 movies), and 500 songs of your choosing, but no internet. You can also use it to write down notes or make use of any other typical iPad feature that would normally be on an iPad, but the GPS feature is broken and no apps for surviving on an island (though you can have a book on survival in your virtual book collection). The iPad comes fully charged with 6 hours of battery life before it dies, but 3 hours of charging on the solar generator will yield another 6 hours of battery life.

D (4 points): Let’s Be Civil

You and everyone else on the island each get a plastic or metal (your choice) dish set with one plate, one cup, and one bowl. You also each get one metal fork, spoon, butter knife, and steak knife. In addition, you each get a cloth napkin, an extra pair of shoes, an extra pair of socks, an extra pair of underwear, a comb, five tooth brushes, ten tubes of toothpaste, twenty bars of soap, ten safety razors, a pillow, a towel, a 200 page notebook, and ten pencils. You also get one of each of the following items, to be shared by everyone: a hand mirror, a pair of nail clippers, a pair of scissors, a small sewing kit with 20 yards of thread and 3 needles, a pencil sharpener, a two gallon metal pot, and one comfortable wooden chair.

E (5 points): I Have The Power!

You get a full complement of electrically charged, battery-operated power tools, including a chainsaw, circular saw, jigsaw, nail gun, power drill with thousands of screws and all necessary bits and tips, a sander, a versatile multi-tool with several different head attachments, and a laptop with anything you can imagine on it (music, books, movies, games, porn, etc.), except no internet access. The same power restrictions for the iPad apply to the laptop; three hours of charging equals six hours of use. All tools are two hours of charging for one hour of use, and they can be charged up to allow for two hours of continuous use, each.

Category 5: Luck (Optional)

A (1 point): Timely Vasectomy

Just before being stranded, all the males on the island had a vasectomy performed, so there’s no worry of pregnancy complications. Also, all males get a frozen package of peas for their groin on the first day.

B (2 point): Pests-Be-Gone

There are no snakes, spiders, or mosquitoes on the island, nor are there any other kinds of biting or stinging land creatures. There are still sharks in the water. Also, you and those you are with on the island never get horribly sick, and no one is allergic to anything on the island.

C (3 points): One Man’s Trash…

Because of where the island is situated, stuff occasionally washes up on the shore. It might be a car tire, or it might be a bag full of garbage from someone who lives in Duluth, Minnesota. Every week, something new and random washes up. It’s never edible, it’s always garbage, but it just might provide you with useful raw materials. At the very least, it provides you with interesting new things on a regular basis.

D (4 points): A Little Flare

You get a flare gun with 5000 flares. It’s not much good as a weapon, but if you shoot it into a pile of tinder, it will start a fire. Also, this will be used in year 7 to catch the eye of a passing ship, and you will be rescued 3 years early.

E (5 points): Breaking the Rules

By selecting this option, you can choose any option from any category, despite having picked from that category already. It will cost you no additional points, only the 5 points required to select this option. This cannot be used to select any “E” option. You may select an option twice in order to gain double the benefit. You can also use this to select two options from the “Luck” category, but they cannot be two of the same option, and the total amount of points these two luck selections are worth must not exceed five.

The Relationship Between Religion and Stupidity, Or: Religion is Stupid

2011-12-08T15:16:00.003-05:00

Over the years, I have heard atheists call religious people as a whole stupid. It’s not personally something I will agree to; there are too many exceptions to the rule. I would agree that religious people are, on average, less informed, less educated, less scientific, and generally less intelligent, but not by a wide margin. What’s more, it’s quite unfair to assume that because someone is religious, they are stupid.

But religion… now that, I can confidently say, is stupid. A religion, unlike a mass grouping of individuals, can be analyzed and criticized as a cohesive whole, and a comprehensive look at the very concept of “religion” is not beyond the scope of possibility, because it is an abstract notion which can be defined.

So, what better place to begin than to define our terms? I see religion quite differently than most people, probably because I was classically trained on the matter (a mistake I may never overcome…). I can’t shake the fact that religion has nothing to do with gods… no matter how much atheists and believers may think otherwise, religion just does not revolve around gods. Gods are merely one possible explanation for the mechanism by which a religion works.

Religion is a set of rituals which have no real, externally derived positive or negative outcome; rather, religion is a set of rituals where any positive or negative outcome is an entirely internal one, which is only perceived by and measurable within the practitioner.

The only real difference between religion and custom, then, is that religious ritual is performed in the hope of some intangible benefit (or in the hope of preventing an intangible penalty). Custom is done to “be polite,” and is for the benefit of other people in an attempt to fit into a society. It’s murky, and not really what I wanted to get into, but the key to religion is that it relies on the belief in magic, which is a term most modern religions would shun… but which is still embarrassingly apt, regardless of how religion would like to be perceived these days.

“Stupid” is a much more interesting definition. Dictionary.com defines stupid as:

1. lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull.
2. characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless.
3. tediously dull, especially due to lack of meaning or sense; inane; pointless.
4. annoying or irritating; troublesome.
5. in a state of stupor; stupefied.

In a sense, I could just let those stand alone. Those are not only adequate for describing the term “stupid,” but also “religion.” All of those other adjectives apply… dull, foolish, senseless, inane, pointless, annoying, irritating, troublesome, and my personal favorite, stupefied.

The term “stupefied” remains faithful to the original Latin meaning of the word “stupidus,” from which “stupid” is derived. In Latin, you wouldn’t call someone who was ignorant or dumb “stupidus.” Rather, “stupidus” implies a more momentary lapse. It more closely means “amazed,” or even “stunned.” Even in English, if one is “in a stupor,” you are uncharacteristically and temporarily senseless, like when someone has a fever or is intoxicated.

This sort of explains one aspect of why religious people aren’t stupid, in the modern sense of the word. Religion is not a constant state, despite what religious people would like to believe. Religion is ritual, and it is only when acting on ritual that one is truly stupid. As a religious person makes a meal, they aren’t being stupid. As they set the table, they aren’t being stupid. It’s not until they bring their hands together and pray that they start being stupid, and they cease to be stupid once the prayer is over. What I’m getting at here is that I think religious stupidity is primarily a transient quality in a person, though it’s a constant (even defining) quality of religion.

This stupidity is merely a trait of religion, and religion has no monopoly on it. Sports are notable for being incredibly stupid. Sport is an utter waste of time which quite frequently riles up its moronic fanbase to the point of violent riots. I see atheists talk about how they wish religion could be eradicated, but I’m fairly certain the world would be better off getting rid of sports, rather than religion.

And yet, I don’t think the world should be without either, unless we simply outgrow one of them.
As so many have said before me, religion is essentially an intoxicant. Religion doesn’t so much make a person who follows it “stupid,” so much as it occasionally causes them to be “stupefied.” Sports are no different, and literal intoxicants themselves could be lumped in, too, along with all forms of non-constructive recreation, like cards, video games, movies, most TV shows… blogging…

Really, there’s a whole bunch of things we would be better off without. But the thing is, when people have tried to forcibly get rid of things like intoxicants, religion, and other frivolous merriment, we are faced with an even greater problem. In many ways, I can look to Prohibition and the current drug war to see how outlawing religion would be a failure, let alone actually examining instances in Russia, China, Cuba, and other communist regions, where individuals have tried to actually ban the practice of religion, always to ill effect.

People may not need religion, but there’s no reason to keep it from them. There is ignorance even amongst atheists, so stamping out religion (even if such an attempt could be successful) will be futile. Besides, I think there will always be people who do stupid things, so they might as well think God told them to do it. At the very least, religion serves as a means of identifying who is foolish enough to just go along with any stupid idea.

Which isn’t to say that religious people are stupid… they just believe stupid things.

Know Your Shit

2011-12-07T16:30:00.000-05:00

“Fuck” gets a lot of credit for being a versatile word. You can pepper it into nearly any part of a sentence as often as you want (“Where the fuck do you fucking think you’re fucking going?”), or even use it between syllables of a word you want to emphasize (un-fucking-believable). You can tell someone to fuck themselves, or even suggest they do so after moving away from you (“go fuck yourself”) or just utter, “Fuck me.”

But “shit” is almost as useful. It certainly has quite a few variants. You got your dumb shits, dipshits, lying sacks of shit, shit bags, shit heads with shit eating grins. You can have a shitty morning, a shitty day, a shitty afternoon, or even just be feeling shitty. Psychopaths make note of everyone they hate on their “shit lists,” but if you just want to talk to someone, you shoot the shit with them. If you are really drunk, you’re shit-faced, and if you don’t care, then you don’t give a shit, or couldn’t give a shit. Then you have a whole zoo full (or shitload) of animal options.

You got horseshit and bullshit, and I never know when it is appropriate to use one over the other. It’s like the shit equivalent of “lay” and “lie” with me. Also, why bullshit and not cowshit? If someone is insane, they’re batshit crazy. A coward might be called a “chicken shit.” If someone is going to get mad, they’ll go apeshit (which I believe is one step below shitting a brick). More than once, I’ve heard dumb people called “dumb as dog shit,” though I always preferred “shit for brains.”

It can be both hotter and colder than shit. Good music is the shit, bad music is just shit. Other people’s things are always “shit.” When the shit hits the fan, you are in deep shit (perhaps up Shit Creek with a turd for a paddle). People can be bored as shit, hungry as shit, tired as shit or sure as shit. Something can be as funny as shit, slow as shit, fast as shit, hard as shit, soft as shit, scary as shit, cool as shit, broken as shit, quiet as shit, or loud as shit.

Frankly, there’s a literal shit-ton of uses for the word, and I think it doesn’t get the respect it deserves. As long as people keep “fuck” up on a pedestal, “shit” will always be #2.

Top Ten: Fictional Movie Characters I Would Ask for Advice

2011-12-06T14:09:00.001-05:00

10. Ferris Bueller
9. Hermione Granger
8. Gandalf
7. Ellen Ripley
6. Tyler Durden
5. Forrest Gump
4. Indiana Jones
3. Sarah Connor
2. Yoda
1. God, as played by Morgan Freeman

Monday Rule: Drugs and Books

2011-12-05T10:36:00.001-05:00

I think we should outlaw books and legalize drugs. This way, kids will become bored with getting high, while going to great lengths to read.

Two Dudes: Home

2011-12-04T10:29:00.002-05:00

Saturday Reflection #58

2011-12-03T12:48:00.001-05:00

The most pathetic of all unrequited loves is that of misery for company.

Some Questions On How To Handle Welfare

2011-12-01T11:54:00.002-05:00

My esteemed colleague, the Heathen Republican, wrote a post that I thought read like a guilty confession, one where the criminal is not all that sorry for what he’s done, but he knows he’s been caught. The post is called “Conservatives, the Poor, and Entitlements.”

It primarily consists of a few questions, and his answers. I will be posting his answers in italics, and my response to certain points in brackets, followed by an overall answer/critique after his answer is complete. So, in overview: his words are in italics, while mine will not be.

Question 1: What responsibility does society have to the poor?

Conservatives value human life [unless you are foreign or found guilty of a crime], so society has an obligation to pick people up when they’re down and care for the people who can’t care for themselves [this is nice sentiment from HR, but I don’t think this is basic conservative ideology… but I don’t want to discourage him from thinking otherwise]. Free markets are the most efficient way to boost the standard of living for everyone in society, and significant interference in the market by government hinders economic growth [Actually, the most unregulated free markets concentrate wealth among the wealthy and impoverish an entire class of people… but this requires studying history and often considering events in other countries, so I can imagine why this isn’t plain fact to Americans]. Policies that keep markets free do the most to put more money in more [I think he misspelled “rich”] people’s pockets. Finally, the golden rule tells us that we should help others in their time of need because we would like help when we are in need, which is consistent with maintaining a basic social safety net [again… I’m perplexed at where this comes from, as HR claims to be an atheist, and I’m not sure about the logic behind introducing this here, but again… I don’t want to discourage this view].

While we have an obligation to pick people up when they're down, society does not have an obligation to lift people out of their poverty [we don’t have an obligation to do either, but we’re better off if we do both… but more on that in a second]. Instead, we can assist them by providing basic necessities, and making sure they have the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty [I think I’ll just cover my response to this below].

To answer the initial question: society has no responsibility to anyone, rich or poor. It is we, the citizens, who determine (based essentially on whim) what our society does, and there is no inherent “should” in the system.

But this is largely a cop out, and an answer I prefer to begin with because I want to make clear that this is not really a question of morality or ethics (it can be, but there is something larger than this at stake). Rather, this is a question about success. Do you want your society to succeed? If so, you would be better off doing what works, like providing the ability of all of your citizens to reach their full potential.

As I’m sure HR would agree, this doesn’t mean everyone will be successful, but the truth is, anyone might be important. If Stephen Hawking had been born into a poor American family, he might be dead. In fact, if they lacked health insurance, he’d almost certainly be dead. There is no way of knowing, from the time a person is born until the moment they die, what someone is capable of accomplishing. There are many important people who were enabled by others to rise from humble – even stunted – beginnings, but an untold number were never given the chance, and we will never know what we as a whole lost in these individuals.

To me, there is an ethical component in helping others, but there is also a cold, heartless fact based only on economic reasoning: we are squandering the abilities of those we neglect, and our society is immeasurably poorer because of it.

Question 2: Who has the responsibility?

The first point of responsibility is with individuals themselves. Individuals are responsible for themselves and their families, and no one should look to government to support them. Sometimes individuals fail, and that’s when society can step in to assist, but we cannot support unhealthy lifestyles and we should not prevent individuals from regaining their ability to care for themselves. [Spoken like a true right-winger who knows nothing about poverty… as if people are lining up to be poor because it’s so great living on welfare, so they have no incentive to earn more money and afford to do things they can’t afford to do on welfare, like… pay their bills on time or eat three whole meals a day. Also, no mention of how millions of people have no choice in the matter, from children of the poor to the disabled and mentally ill… why didn’t you choose to be born rich, able to walk, and mentally stable people?!]

The second point of responsibility is with government. As a society, we’ve decided that government has a role in providing a social safety net, but our Constitution limits how involved government can get. Local and state governments have more flexibility, but the federal government has clear limits. [This is just Republican propaganda, of little substance or meaning. It’s meant to point out an imaginary barrier whereby the states should have the power to do the right thing, but not the federal government, because Nixon courted the racially charged states-rights vote in the 70s, so the right-wing has been chanting “states rights” ever since. It’s constitutional to bail out billionaire bankers, and they did, but to help poor people would be unconstitutional… silly right-wingers and their double standards…]

The final point of responsibility is with local communities. For the things government is prevented from doing, charitable and non-governmental institutions must take over [They don’t and they won’t, but the right would love it if they did, since this would mean less taxes]. If they are unable, we can’t simply expand the role of the federal government without first amending our Constitution. [Blah blah blah]

I don’t like the word “responsibility” here, because it implies we have to do something. We don’t have to, but we do have to deal with the consequences of not doing anything, or not doing enough. What are the consequences of doing nothing? They range from things are harmless as generational poverty and widespread disenfranchisement to eventually armed revolt (which is the inevitable outcome when a people are left to suffer in hopelessness).

But I don’t think we’re facing the more dire consequences, at least not any time soon. I know some are all doom-and-gloom, but Americans have it pretty good on the whole, and we can have it even better if we do the right things. I don’t think we’re on the edge, and I’m confident that the government will do the right thing… at least once they have exhausted all other options (it’s always the solution you try last that works…).

Question 3: How much is society responsible?

Conservatives believe in a limited government[unless it’s the military, or pet projects, or tax breaks for campaign donors… or anything pertaining to gays or a woman’s uterus], so the ability of the federal government to care for the poor is also limited [Only in your head]. We cannot simply expand government indefinitely [Oh my god, a slippery slope leading to massive government! Sure, it looks like we’re just helping the poor, but if we’re not careful, we’ll wake up one morning and they’ll be billionaires, and the rich will be the poor… and up will be down, we’ll all be eating tofu on Thankgiving, then the terrorists will have won! Come on people!]. Government should limit its help to subsistence-level support (e.g. food, shelter, emergency health care), and should not be responsible for boosting people into the middle class (home ownership, wireless internet access, college tuition, etc.). [First of all… where do you live that aid given by the government is lifting anyone into the middle class? Seriously, no claim is more ludicrous than the belief that the poor are being given a free-ride into the middle by welfare. The poor don’t own homes, they rent. But now that you mention it, some of the most successful countries do give away free internet and college tuition, because they don’t want their country to be stupid. You can’t blame Republicans for denying people access to information and education, however… with those two being free, there would be a lot less Republicans.]

Again, that word… responsibility…

It just seems so wrong to me. To me, the word itself evokes “response,” which isn’t what I think we should be doing. We shouldn’t just be responding to problems, we should be solving (but ideally, preventing) them. However, I imagine the word brings up meanings in most people’s heads akin to things like “duty,” or in certain other cases, “culpability” or “blame.”

It’s not our duty to do the right thing, it’s in our best interest. However, I do see it as our fault when there are poor people not getting help, because Americans are responsible for what happens in America. Among industrialized nations, American has an embarrassingly large population of impoverished, optionless, and functionally abandoned individuals. You can include our prison population in that, as well, as this situation is not because we have particularly high crime, but that we have such draconian sentencing (especially pertaining to drugs, where we punish, rather than treat).

That’s about the extent to which I think society is responsible: outcomes. When things go wrong on a national level compared to other nations with similar economic success but different social policies… we are responsible for our failure to adapt to new and improved methods. I wish we would get our shit together and be responsible for us succeeding again, but I don’t see that happening any time very soon; maybe around 2020 (no particular reason for that date, just spitballing).

Question 4: Who are we talking about? Those who cannot help themselves, or those who will not help themselves?

Both. Those who cannot help themselves are the responsibility of society as a whole, both governmental and non-governmental. The federal government has programs as part of a basic social safety net. When the federal government hits its limit, local and state governments can take over, as well as charitable and other non-governmental organizations. [What actually happens: those who are poor don’t get enough, and they sink into debt; their children have zero opportunities to succeed; their children become poor; private charities pocket huge sums of money; rinse and repeat.]

As for those who will not help themselves, we should build a system that assists them to become self-sufficient, but weans them off over time so that they do not drain the resources that should go to those who cannot help themselves. [You know… because when you apply for help, they always ask you to check the box marked “I could support myself, but I choose not to” or “I cannot support myself,” whichever applies to you…] The federal government has a much smaller role here since the bureaucracy is limited in its ability to meet individual needs [gibberish right-wing speak], so local entities must take more responsibility [see also: less will get done, and those from states like Mississippi, that are less wealthy, will remain less wealthy]. The first goal is to get these people to become responsible for themselves since they are capable, given some assistance.

Let’s be honest… this whole questions is just a Republican talking point here. Going back to an earlier example, if Stephen Hawking was given a US education, I doubt he’d be much use to anyone. Instead, he was born into an affluent English family, so even though his disability would make most people in most situations little more than a medical and financial burden, the advantages of his circumstances have allowed him to retain an almost priceless value to humanity, even though he is afflicted with a debilitating disease.

There is no way to measure such nonsensical things as whether a person could or could not be self-sufficient. Apparently, HR doesn’t realize how horrible it is being poor, so he doesn’t realize that no one, anywhere, in any country, under any system, wants to be poor. I imagine pictures of poor people taking cruises and chinking their martini glasses as they laugh at the American tax-payer floating through HR’s head… that and syphilis. Okay, maybe not that last one, but I am at a loss as to how to explain such failure to understand a basic fact: it sucks to be poor. Perhaps he was dropped on his head as an infant? I dunno… oh wait, I forgot about this next question… where we’ll be enlightened…

Question 5: How do we decide who fits each group?

Those who are able-bodied and free of any mental handicaps fall into the category of “will not help themselves.” Even if they are controlled by certain addictions, which we can help them get free of, they are not free of their individual responsibility. [I don’t know where people get the idea that people on welfare are addicts, but I’m guessing it’s Fox News, not reality.]

The level of physical or mental handicap will determine who truly cannot help themselves. Some of them should be asked to care for themselves, based on medical evaluations and the ability of similarly handicapped individuals to care for themselves. [If Stephen Hawking can be so successful without being able to move or speak, clearly these disabled individuals are just playing it up for the sympathy checks…] Many mildly handicapped individuals are able to care for themselves, and modern technology has removed many barriers that prevent the physically handicapped from supporting themselves [Many technologies allow the handicapped to support themselves… like canes, and handrails on stairs! No, seriously, he has a point that more people have more potential, even when having to cope with disabilities, and it’s thanks to diligent efforts by the government… not any free market.]. These are individual decisions, and not something a Washington bureaucrat can decide. [Yeah, only a blogger in Colorado can make this decision, not a duly elected government official who travelled to Washington to do their job, you know, where the Capitol is located… right-wing speak is always ridiculous when you break it down logically. Not that there’s anything wrong with bloggers or Colorado… or HR.]

I propose we simplify this weird system of deciding who can or cannot help themselves by not dividing those seeking help into groups, which would just create more… what’s the word for it… I know there’s a word we use when talking about how politicians try to complicate matters and make arbitrary distinctions from far away without having much understanding of what actually happens on the ground… damnit, it’s on the tip of my tongue… oh right, bureaucracy.

Question 6a: Of those who cannot, is our help to them open-ended?

Our assistance for those who cannot help themselves is open-ended unless they become able to care for themselves (children growing into adults, for example). For those who will forever be unable to care for themselves, our obligation is a lifelong one, but not a bottomless one. They must be cared for in a way that provides a lifestyle that is free from the stresses that come from providing the basic necessities of life (e.g. food, shelter, basic health care). But society is not obligated to provide a luxurious lifestyle, and we should not help so much that it creates an incentive for others to pretend they need the same assistance. [So close… I almost went a whole paragraph where I agreed with him, but then he started imagining a world where people live like kings off the government… I wish I was a poor person in the mind of a Republican; it sounds pretty cushy.]

Let’s put it this way: I’m of the opinion that if you’re poor and can get into the best college in the country, I’m fine with the government paying for it, as well as a computer for you to use while you’re there. Based on previous comments, I am not sure HR would be okay with this, but frankly, it’s a small price to pay to possibly produce a productive member of society. Hell, I’ll even foot the bill for their Adderall habit. We should be so lucky to have the poor taking speed; I’m not even opposed to putting it in the drinking water (why shouldn’t my dog get the benefit of laser-sharp focus?). Little hyperbole there… or is it? [Comment on myself: that is kind of creepy, there… that’s how Herman Cain talks: “Here’s a horrible idea… I’m kidding… unless you’re into it…” This is also known as the “How to introduce weird sexual fetishes to your partner” method of suggestion.]

I get the feeling the affluent blame failure on drug use because they are surrounded by people who have every opportunity, and the only ones who fail when given every opportunity are… well… addicts.

Most poor people aren’t on drugs, but more of them deserve to be. If anyone deserves to be high, it’s the poor, but from studies (and Florida’s experiment in drug testing welfare recipients), we know that the poor are not poor because of drug use, so it’s a complete canard to focus on substance abuse. It’s just easy to believe convenient myths, like that there are legions of drug addicts taking government hand-outs (convenient, if you hate government hand-outs and want a reason to justify hating the poor), or the purely fictional “welfare queen” imagined in Reagan’s empty rhetoric.

Question 6b: Of those who will not, how much help are they entitled to?

Our assistance for those who can help themselves is not open-ended. We should assist them for a short period of time (unemployment compensation, drug rehabilitation, [I love how he will fund people getting off drugs… but education so you can actually make something of yourself? Forget it…] etc.) and expect them to begin supporting themselves as soon as possible. In most cases, the federal government is not well-suited to this kind of assistance because the bureaucracy cannot provide the individual attention needed to ensure people don’t return to their original state [I have to assume he means “drug addiction,” because most of the poor are young and have little job experience, or are elderly and dying… so I assume he doesn’t mean that without oversight, people will age in reverse or ]. As long as it’s consistent with its limited role, government can provide funds to local organizations that can assist individuals to become self-sufficient. [I’m not sure he realizes this largely means churches will get government funding… but I also don’t think he cares, even though he’s an atheist. He’s such a bundle of nonsense, sometimes, especially when he feels he has to tow the Republican party line when it comes to sucking Christianity’s cock while cupping private charity’s balls.]

The social safety net should ensure that no one becomes homeless or dies from their poverty. Even those who will not help themselves should be given assistance with the basics of life, including shelter, food, and emergency health care. This kind of support should not be given to anyone above the poverty line (and the poverty line needs to be a realistic assessment of true poverty). [He’s glad the social safety net is there… he just votes for people who want to eliminate it. But don’t worry, he’s one of the good people ruining America, because he doesn’t agree with the actual policy decisions and funding cuts of the people he supports.]

I understand the desire to get people off social assistance, but you don’t need to push people, you need to broaden their opportunities. Short of education, training, or direct employment through the government, there’s not much else you can do to get someone on their way to financial independence. HR seems to advocate none of these.

And if you’re poor from doing drugs, do the right thing: give up using and start dealing. Kidding… or am I?

Question 7: Since social policy can’t address every individual situation and resources are not infinite, how do we balance compassion with standards to arrive at the right amount of assistance?

While our compassion may be infinite, the dollars available to assist those needing our compassion are not [Lucky for liberals, many countries have more success in this area than we do, and they didn’t require infinite dollars…]. Similarly, while establishing standards for assisting those in need will minimize fraud and focus our efforts on those who need it most, many individuals will fall through the cracks. Government is very good at establishing standards for everyone, but very poor at assisting at the individual level.

Government should be directly involved in and administer programs like unemployment compensation, food stamps, and welfare assistance. Health care, substance abuse programs, homeless shelters and other housing assistance, assisted living facilities, and children’s services are often better handled at the local level by non-governmental or charitable organizations [Really? Brian Gallagher, President and CEO of “The United Way,” pockets over a million dollars a year. Where is the million-per-year politician or government bureaucrat? If there is one, alert me, I want to start a campaign to have the position scrapped. Maybe someone working at the Fed? NASA? Definitely not a social worker, though.] . Government money can flow to these organizations to support their efforts [aka: flow into the pockets of wealthy, private “charity” owners who cannot be voted out of power and can discriminate against who they help], but the programs themselves are better administered outside of government. [Because of course, everything’s better when you hear how awful those at the top are and you can’t do anything about them… because democracy sucks, so there’s no point in preferring your money be used by those you actually voted for… all hail the corporate overlord nobility! Am I the only one reading that between the lines? Figures… I need new glasses.]

I don’t think we have to worry about giving too much; we’re not even close to that right now. I honestly believe we could double what we give and we’d still fall desperately short of what would be needed to provide people not only what they deserve, but need in order for them to achieve financial independence. I would rather hover around giving too much than giving too little. How will we know when we’ve given too much? If we still have the most expensive military in the world, we haven’t given too much.

If you look where the money goes in this country, it’s no wonder we have smart bombs and dumb people.

WTF Moment of the Month

2011-12-01T07:59:00.005-05:00

I know it’s the first of the month, but seriously… this made me actually scream at my computer at 7:30am.

A Kentucky church (Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church) has banned interracial couples from its congregation.

That isn’t the part that I “What the fuck”ed about. That part I expect out of a state like Kentucky, a state that (like my former home state of Indiana) was the recipient of so much white-flight. You won’t find more consummate racists than you will in the Midwest. No, the part that made me lose it and realize this is a country of stupid morons too stupid and moronic to realize that they are stupid morons is the response of the church goers when outsiders reacted to such blatant bigotry.

The part that got me was that the man who crafted the ban and the church itself who voted to enact it are claiming they are not racist. Oh… well… I don’t hate you guys, though I hope you die… and if I see you in a dark alley, I will slit your throats… but I don’t hate you, and this is not a threat…

If you need any further proof that saying, “I’m not racist,” means absolutely fuck-all, look no further. If you literally ban interracial couples from attending your church, you are racist. There’s no discussion, there’s no debate, there’s no technicality that you can resort to, you’re just good ol’ fashioned racist pricks.

What I love is that by backtracking and pretending a spade is not a spade (you know… just that a spade can’t marry a diamond), this Kentucky church proves that they are not only too ignorant to accept an interracial couple, they’re too ignorant (or cowardly) to even realize (or admit) they’re racist. And since it’s Kentucky, I can only assume the man who suggested the ban was the jilted cousin of a woman who married a black guy.

Am I a bad atheist for hoping this couple does find a church they can be accepted in? No, and I hope they are able to find happiness… but I suggest looking outside Kentucky.

So remember: racism isn’t dead, it just hides where most of us would never, ever want to go. Stay classy, Kentucky.

Wednesday Word: Dumbrella

2011-11-30T13:08:00.001-05:00

Dumbrella: the condition where you forget your umbrella is broken, until it rains