One Year Closer To A Better World

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

It’s another year past, the inevitability of entropy that nibbles away at the fringes of our existence.


The world has improved in many ways. The stigma of being an atheist is fading, as more flock to our worldview. Religion is diminishing slowly, rationalism chipping away at the fairy-tale façade. The wholly bibble is taken
a lot less seriously these days, as its obnoxious a-historicity, constant and egregious contradictions, and otherwise obsolete nonsenses are continuously called out.


The sexual shackles of the slave-master relationship that is religion are now loosening as well. Gay marriage in America has changed the landscape of loving for years to come.


Perhaps before I die, I will get to see:


1. Creationists being treated like the nutters they are,


2. The Catholic Church becomes a distant, unpleasant memory,


3. All 3 of the Big 3 (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) are reduced to the sad little jokes they really are, and


4. All peoples are treated equally.


All of them are nice dreams – well worth striving for. Keep fighting the good fight, folks: there is a light at the end of the tunnel.


Happy New Year, and here’s to another year closer to closing down religion.


Till the next post then.

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2015 - A Good Year To Be Secular

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis


As the hours and days and months all draw to a close, a winding down of events and lives, 2015 was a very good year to be secular.


Religion is more and more going into decline, and the landslide decision of Obegefell vs. Hodges made gay marriage constitutional in every state of the land (though how they pulled it off without scumbags like Scalia, Roberts, and Thomas interfering, I could not guess).


And for the wistful, sentimental thought:


As an atheist, I would not force my views onto others, anymore than I would appreciate that being done to me. My issue is not with crutches for the weak of heart and mind: it gets you through the bad nights, who am I to piss upon it? No, rather my problems is with the religious who would force their beliefs on myself and others. Gay marriage is a one instance; in the ancient world, gay marriage was not only practiced, but most folks couldn’t give a fuck if it didn’t inconvenience their days or their lives. Once the Christians took over, they stopped it right fast, even tried to stomp it out of existence (homosexuality). Also as point of fact, the Catholic Spaniards were horrified at the ‘abomination’ being practiced in Central America, that they proceeded to slaughter and torture countless innocent victims.


No, much as I’d like to see religion vanish/disappear, the fact is that nobody should play the thought police, or the ‘morals squad’.


And that should apply in all things. I want a country where the rich and the poor are treated equally, not based on pay scale. I want a country where everyone is treated the same, a level playing field. I want a country where atheist, muslim, christian, jew, all are equals, no free passes, no special treatment. No more ‘non-debates’ – climate change is real, evolution is a fact, nobody is getting ‘persecuted’, and nobody is better than anyone else.


Because let’s face it: religion tears down individuals, and rebuilds them. In the meantime, they get infused with all sorts of nonsense – the master-slave mentality, that precursor of xenophobia that is tribalism, that dishonest elevation of the religious person being ‘saved’ (which is shorthand for un-equal).


So here’s to the end of a pretty decent year overall, and hopefully more inroads will be paved for the secular folk that are to come.


Cheers!


Till the next post then.

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More Blather, More Drivel: Another Delusionist Who Takes Delusion Too Seriously

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

"The Bible is a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology." -Mark Twain

I keep rolling across badly written pieces on the Interwebs, and sometimes they anger me, but this one? Actually, pretty funny:

7 Ways To Tell If An Atheist Is Not Worth Your Time

Christians sometimes find themselves engaging in dialogue with people identify as atheists. Often, these conversations will amount to nothing more than intellectual sparring or preaching. The atheist is only looking for a platform to recite the latest one-liner that they read in a meme. Yet the conversation persists out of pride. The Christian does not know when to back away from the conversation because they may not have a lot of experience with atheists. One needs to realize that congruence is unlikely. There are times when continuing in the conversation with an atheist is no longer prudent or helpful. Hence, we should withdraw when the conversation seems to reach its’ capacity (with atheists, this capacity is often quite limited). I would like to suggest that there are 7 ways to tell if an atheist is not worth your time.

Right out the gate: ‘Christians sometimes find themselves engaging in dialogue with people identify as atheists’. Properly translated, this means ‘All those people you harass on the street and on the internet’. For the most part, Christians continuously bombard (most) atheist blogs, blither blather, refusing to listen, steadfastly insisting that they’re right and you’re wrong, no matter how many times you patiently re-explain the point, until you get fed up and lash out at the willful ignorance. Regular ignorance is forgivable, as we all make mistakes, but refusal to submit to reason?

And no, we don’t go about blindly reciting memes like they recite their fairy tale quotes: there’s a thing called context, and this needs to be apropos. Anyways, there’s more (there always is):

1 – They tell you what you believe. Atheists often come from a Christian background wherein they were taught certain precepts. Upon investigation, these precepts were found to be lacking and this led to the eventual abandonment of the Christian faith. Now, when this atheist encounters Christians, he assumes that they all believe exactly what he did. It is unthinkable that there is a more robust version of Christian theology. For if the breed of Christianity that you represent is less defeasible, it follows that they could have been wrong about their criticisms of Christian belief and will have to re-evaluate the system and question their atheism. This means that many atheists will accuse you of believing certain things and will not listen what you summarize your views in a different way. This is one of 7 ways to tell if an atheist is no longer worth your time. Why should you bother talking to somebody who thinks that they already know what you are going to say?

Now not only is this a bad hasty generalization, it’s a tu quoque statement. It’s an automatic assumption that the atheist does the same thing as a theist: follow blindly, think blindly. There’s as many variations on Christianity alone to boggle the mind.

Here’s the other caveat: we have heard all of this before. A variety of ways, a variety of verbiage – sadly, most Christians don’t do any due diligence, they just listen to a priest or minister, and if that person is wrong, they don’t check it, hey this guy’s in the upper hierarchy, he must know what s/he’s talking about. Now in atheist circles, if you get something wrong, nobody cares about hierarchy: you hear about how wrong you are, and usually there’s proof to back it up. My point here is, atheists and theists can both be wrong, but the atheist usually tends to be more honest about it.

2 – Both of you are trying to have the last word. Discussions between people who disagree are often perennial and lead to frustration because neither party is willing to end the discussion. If they do not have the last word, then they think that they have left a particular point hanging in the air and have conceded the entire debate to them. But when you are at a point wherein you are just trying to have the last word, then it is likely that you are just repeating earlier content. That is just unnecessary and it makes you look foolish. Rather, if you already outlined or summarized your case, and you feel confident in your arguments and counter-arguments, there is no need to repeat it again. Even if the atheist brushes passed your arguments and repeats their original point, or summarizes your argument in an unsympathetic way, you should not feel inclined to repeat yourself. If their last word is pathetic and unimpressive, rest in the confidence in the arguments that you already made.

This is actually good advice if standalone. Sadly, in this culture, it is the person who has the last word who seems to win (even when they don’t).

3 – They start talking about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This would also apply to Santa Claus, fairies, leprechauns and other nonsense. If they start comparing your belief in the existence of God to that sort of thing, then this individual obviously has no respect for you and they are not worth engaging. For nobody comes to believe in Santa Claus as an adult. There are no adult conversions to belief in Santa Claus. There are no scientists who come to believe in Santa Claus the basis of scientific data. The agnostic astronomer with NASA, Dr Robert Jastrow said in his book God And The Astronomer, “For the scientist who puts his trust in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance. He is about the conquer the highest peek. As he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” There is no equivalent to this with regard to belief in Santa Claus. The atheist who renders this comparison is not a critical thinker, has no respect for you and therefore, this is one of 7 ways to tell if an atheist is not worth your time.

Ahem. Horse manure. Your ‘gawd’ is just the same as all those other mythical creatures: you can’t prove this critter exists. Pointing to phenomenon and saying “Look! Proof!” is just….well, just stupid. You may as well as claim that reindeer prove the existence of Santa Claus. And who really cares about this Jastrow fellow? Dim appeal to credentialism. Newton was fantastic at physics, but he was wrong about the bible’s alleged worth. Linus was fanatical about Vitamin C as a universal silver bullet, but he was wrong. I respect your right to have an opinion, but I don’t have to respect the opinion itself. There IS a difference (and if you can’t tell, you may want to work on your self-awareness).

4 – They imply their intellectual superiority. The most common method of feeding pride is by contrast. People will contrast themselves with others to demonstrate their intellectual superiority. Atheists are fond of exercising this. They will tell religious people that that once they read the Bible, they began to read the Bible, they become atheists. Therefore, they reason, if religious people read the Bible as well, they would be atheists. Since they are not atheists, it follows that they do not read the Bible. This also chauffeurs with it the implication that atheists know more about religion than religious people. They will cite Pew Forums wherein atheists may have scored high in a particular category. But what is interesting about that survey is that atheists score lower in the category of Christianity than Christians do. However, they score higher in general religion. Atheists and Mormons lead the knowledge of general religion. Well done to the atheists and the elders. But still, again, they score lower in their knowledge of Christian belief. Either way, the only reason that they would bring up this misinformation is to feed their pride. If somebody is just trying to elevate their intellectual repute by stomping on yours, that is one of 7 ways to tell if an atheist is not worth your time.

Can’t speak for all atheists, but I do try to talk to people on an even keel. However, it is difficult to explain to the stubborn theist, that it is possible to be smart in one thing, and stupid in another. Or as an old roommate once said, “Just because you’re smart, doesn’t mean you’re not stupid”. See the Newton example above. Also, I have found (as many of us have) that most of us ARE better versed in that biblical folderol than most theists, only because most mammals prefer the easy meal, therefore prefer the easier explanation. Human beings tend to be lazy thinkers (now there’s a broad generalization that sticks). As for this accusation of narcissism, there are atheists and theists alike who do this, but more for the former than the latter (yeah, really sucks being the majority). But for me, it’s not about dishonestly elevating myself above others: I am genuinely worried about our species and our world. There are HUGE amounts of people actively trying to trigger the ‘apocalypse’.

5 – They caricature Christian belief. Atheists are often caught attacking straw men. This means that they will conjure up versions of Christian theology that are easier to attack and refute. They will attack the cartoon version of Christian belief rather than the robust and carefully nuanced theology that we believe in. For example, atheists have constructed a meme that says that Christianity is the belief that “A Jewish zombie will make you live forever… et cetera, et cetera.” Obviously, this is just a poor and insulting caricature. Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but they do not believe that he is a mindless zombie. For a zombie is one whose body is no longer inhabited by the human mind. It is just a walking virus. But in the case of Jesus, he was raised in an incorruptible body to glory and immortality. But that is not at all akin to a zombie. If the atheist renders that criticism, they are just trying to construct a version of Christianity that is easier to refute. They are not interested in an open and honest discussion. Hence, this is one of 7 ways to tell if an atheist is not worth your time.

That ‘zombie’ meme – it’s not too far off. Definition: Zombies are undead creatures, typically depicted as mindless, reanimated human corpses with a hunger for human flesh. (Also ahem: that cannibalism shtick is strictly movie crap) And let’s face it: the Synoptics and John are so contradictory to one another, it’s hard to believe  that anyone accepted it at face value. Of course, centuries of burning documents and people that disagreed with their set of fairy tales tends to shut folks up right quick.

6 – They do not listen to your responses and are only out to refute you. When we engage in debates with people, it is often the case that they do not really want to hear what you have to say. They do not want to take your arguments seriously. They do not care about arguments and they do not care why you believe what you believe. They only care about what they believe. Your beliefs stand in the way of that, and therefore, they need to find a way to refute it. Symptoms of this will be that no matter what you say, they are presenting little ways to refute it. They are only interested in refuting your arguments and debating you. But they are not interested in considering that you may be right.

Here’s where this entire paragraph is silly: Christians constantly parrot the same dreck over and over again. There’s a ‘meme’ about this too – PRATT is an acronym for Points Refuted A Thousand Times. I have read and carefully considered most (if not all) religious ‘arguments’ – they always fail to stand up against the cold light of logic, they tend to wilt. One of the items I carefully considered in my early days, is presuppositionalism. Rather than insist “God IS!”, the rational mind must consider, “Is God?” Logic took care of that rather nicely.

7 – They reply in memes and one-liners. Anybody who has spent a significant amount of time speaking with several atheists will notice something astonishing. They all say exactly the same things. They will recite clever little soundbites that they heard somebody else say which they have committed to rote memory. They will say things like, “I just go one God further,” Or “who designed the designer?” or “If you had been born in India…” These are not to considered to be serious arguments. Rather, they are one-liners and memes. They read these arguments in pictures that they saw on the internet. They are bumper-sticker arguments, but there is really no latitude behind them. Atheists will often promulgate these bumper-sticker arguments. When they do that, you can be sure that they are not really thinking seriously about the conversation that they are engaging in. They are just looking for a platform to recite their favorite one-liner. Thus, this is one of 7 ways to tell if an atheist is not worth your time.

Again, this is mostly tu quoque. I can very easily prattle this off about the delusionists as well. ‘These are not to considered to be serious arguments.” Ummm, no that’s a strawman AND an ad hominem poison-the-well.  ‘Who designed the designer’ is actually an argument against infinite regress, and “If you had been born in India…” speaks to cultural influences (if a Hindu has an NDE, why does he see Ganesh or Vishnu? The answer of course, is that some malign demon is trying to trick the poor idolatrist out of his soul).

My nutshell point is this: I don’t attack religion out of some childish churlish need to be ‘right’ – how I feel and what I believe are irrelevant. The facts point to religion being an anachronistic, barbaric holdover that humanity is too fond of and needs to be freed from. And this infantilization of our species needs to end. While all these well-fed Christians are shouting hosannahs to the sky, nobody realizes that their alleged god plays favorites. Why are you, these Christians in America, eating 3 squares a day and living in a house, more privileged over some starving child in Africa with an eyeworm in his/her eye? Why on earth would your deity step in on a football game, when a few decades ago, his ‘chosen people’ were lined up for extermination?

Religion is just humanity’s infantile effort to force its shadow upon the universe.

Till the next post then.

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Religious Entrenchment: The ‘Higher Power’ Clause

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
(Hat tip to the Atheist Republic, where I learned about the following story.)

In the next few weeks, I am going to try address (read: bitch about ) the constant reminders of superstition in our culture, what I like to call the ‘god nods’. One never realizes how ubiquitous that is, until you become an atheist. Then, it seems the newly-self-aware atheist is being bombarded by all kinds of folderol, from ‘bless you’ when you sneeze, to reading about some tea-bagging idiot proclaiming ‘GAWD!’ from the podium while running for president. It just seems like it’s EVERYWHERE – a body can’t turn around in some states without being slapped in the face by a cultural anachronism from the last century.

Case in point:

Atheist Sent To Jail For Rejecting God, In Blatant Violation Of The Constitution

The Constitution doesn’t apply, apparently, when it comes to atheists. Barry Hazle, an avowed atheist from California, has had his parole revoked, and you’ll balk at why. According to Courthouse News Service, Hazle rightfully sued his parole officer, several corrections officials with the state of California, and Westcare Corp. for revoking his parole after his “congenial” refusal to acknowledge a higher power in a required 12- Step Program.

Hazle said that he had already expressed discomfort with participating in religiously based drug treatment programs after a plea of “no contest” to a methamphetamine possession charge. Despite the fact that everyone involved knew he was was an atheist, Hazle was released from prison into a 90-day treatment facility, where all of the programs available followed the 12 step method, which requires the acknowledgment of a higher power. When Hazle refused to participate, the staff reported him to his parole officer, and he went back to prison for 100 days.

Hazle filed a efderal civil rights suit seeking damages for false imprisonment and other civil rights violations. San Francisco U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell found the defendants in Hazle’s case liable for civil rights violations. However, when he turned the case over to a jury, they awarded Hazle zero damages.

Hazle appealed for a new trial, and was denied. Finally, a three- judge panel of the 9th Circuit found that Hazle was entitled to damages in his civil rights suit. From Judge Stephen Reinhardt:

The district judge’s finding of liability establishes that Hazle suffered actual injury when he was unconstitutionally incarcerated. Given this undisputed finding that Hazle’s constitutional rights were violated, and applying the rule that the award of compensatory damages is mandatory when the existence of actual injury is beyond dispute, we hold that the district judge erred in refusing to hold that Hazle was, as a matter of law, entitled to compensatory damages. We therefore reverse the district judge’s denial of Hazle’s motion for a new trial.

I’ll say he is entitled. And if the damages awarded are something insanely small, we’ll know where this nation stands with regards to the First Amendment: it only applies to some. Then again, we already knew that, didn’t we?

This is something we may all have encountered (I certainly have, multiple times). I have had a lot of friends in AA – but the ‘higher power’ thing? If someone asks me (no, not in AA thankfully), I’d simply state that humanity would be my ‘higher power’, which likely Hazle didn’t come up with. This goes hand-in-hand with the question, ‘don’t you want to be part of something larger’? Already am. Humanity. This also applies to the concept fronted by the ‘divine command’ folks. You know who I mean – the idiots who try to take credit for human morality, and try weakly to argue that all their morality comes from their imaginary friend, and somehow everyone else is ‘borrowing’ their morality (reification fallacy – how can anyone ‘borrow’ an abstract? Is there interest charged? Batshit crazy, that is).

The “selective rights” thing is going to be a thing of the past – equal rights. What a concept.

Because yes, freedom OF religion requires freedom FROM religion. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Till the next post then.

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Tempest In A Teapot: The Paper Tigers Of The GOP

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

Paper Tiger: Paper tiger is a literal English translation of the Chinese phrase zhilaohu (紙老虎). The term refers to something that seems threatening but is ineffectual and unable to withstand challenge.

Well now, it’s been about two weeks since Obergefell v. Hodges, and we were promised civil disobedience and/or war. Let’s just see who’s been threatening what:

James Dobson (another person on my top ten I’d-like-to-slap-some-smarts-into-you list), has predicted civil war and the imminent collapse of Western civilization.

Rick Joyner (another nobody who can’t get a regular job) says that this in preparation for the coming of the Antichrist.

Mike Huckabee, everyone’s least favorite Republican (Young Earther? Shouldn’t be in office then), has been calling for civil disobedience. Sorry Fucked-up-bee, having Chuckles Norris on your side means shit in the real world.

This is the one that really pisses me off: black pastor groups rallying people for this nonsense. It’s bad enough there should be some kind of sympathy there (yeah, slavery and sexuality are different, but the principle remains the same), but skin color is not a precondition for deciding who gets civil rights – yes, everybody is aware that the African American population spearheaded the civil rights movement, but it’s not just about race. Anyone wants to get into that, fine – just read the definition.

So I’ve been waiting (only kinda joking) for war to break out, civil disobedience to spill over into the rioting streets, people tearing each apart, etc. All the signs of an imminent impending collapse.

Nothing.

Honestly, it’s kind of anti-climactic. We were promised sturm und drang, didn’t even get a light sprinkle. Maybe it’s too early in the game to tell, but thus far, the world just keeps on spinnin’.

Republicans are all mouth and trousers, it seems. Not really a surprise, though.

Till the next post then.

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And The Numbers Just Keep On A’Dwindling…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. - Bertrand Russell

It’s so rare that I get to actually feel optimistic about the decline of religious pomposity, but…YAY!

Evangelicals’ claims of conservative supremacy are overstated — and misread America’s religious landscape

NEW YORK (RNS) “The collapse of the Protestant mainline has been swift, steady, and self-inflicted,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president R. Albert Mohler wrote in 2008.

Mohler’s views align with many of his evangelical colleagues—including Russell Moore just this week—that essentially say liberal theology and politics is responsible for the decline of the once proud American mainline.

But is it really that simple?

According to a sweeping new study by Pew Research Center, the popular evangelical trope is not as true as some assumed. Yes, mainline denominations remain in sharp decline, and yes, evangelicals have fared slightly better overall. Yet many evangelical bodies have begun shrinking as a share of the population as well. Romans Catholics—also theologically and politically conservative—are also declining significantly. This, despite these groups’ evangelistic zeal, orthodox theology, and conservative political stances.

Consider:

•     Liberal mainline denominations continue to decline. Over the seven-year period Pew surveyed (2007-2014), these bodies fell 3.4 percent as a share of the total population. But at the same time, evangelical denominations also dropped by approximately 1 percent of the total population. Given that evangelical denominations invest heavily in proselytizing, that can’t be overlooked.
•     Mohler and Moore’s own Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), declined as a share of the population by 1.5 percent between 2007 and 2014—even more quickly than evangelicalism at large. The evangelical Assemblies of God, Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church in America, and Church of God failed to grow at all. The only evangelical body among the top 15 largest Protestant denominations that saw any growth was the Seventh-Day Adventists, and they only experienced a 0.1 percent increase as a share of the population.
•     During this same time period, among mainline denominations, the United Methodist Church declined by 1.5 percent, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America declined by 0.6 percent, the Presbyterian Church (USA) declined by 0.2 percent, the United Church of Christ declined by only 0.1 percent, and the American Baptist Churches USA actually grew by 0.3 percent.
•     America’s largest “denomination”—the Roman Catholic Church—further challenges the notions conservatives have been peddling. From prohibitions on contraception to resisting same-sex marriage, no body has held the traditional line more than Roman Catholics. Yet between 2007 and 2014, Catholics declined by 3.1 percent as a share of the population.

Simply put, almost all of America’s largest Protestant denominations are declining, regardless of political or theological alignment. Roman Catholics are declining at roughly the same rate as mainline Protestant denominations. The nation’s largest evangelical body, the SBC, is declining at roughly the same rate as the largest mainline denomination, the United Methodist Church.

These numbers tell us that America’s religious landscape is more complex than some evangelicals once believed. Conservatism does not necessarily lead to growth, it seems, and liberalism does not necessarily lead to decline.  The waters of change that once overwhelmed mainliners are now lapping at the toes of evangelicalism.

“If you look at the bigger picture of the evangelical or mainline tradition, we see some decline in both of these shares,” says Jessica Martinez, research associate for Pew Research Center. “Sure, there is a larger decline in the mainline share, but it is a more complicated picture than some assume.”

According to Mike Hout, a sociologist at New York University, evangelicals who want to blame the decline of mainline Protestantism on liberalism are simply not paying attention. He says that population data has always indicated that the mainline decline was mostly attributable to birthrates, a notion he published in an article in the American Journal of Sociology.

“Seventy percent of mainline decline as it was known in those days was due to the fact that evangelical women were having one more child on average than women in the mainline tradition,” Hout says. “This trend prevailed until right around the turn of the [21st] century.”

Hout adds that he believes evangelicals’ greatest weakness is what they’ve championed as their greatest strength: the marrying of political and theological ideology. The rise of the religiously unaffiliated—the “nones,” as in “none of the above”—dates back to 1990 when the Christian right was in full-on combat mode. As conservative bodies became more partisan, members who couldn’t stomach the political agenda waved goodbye.

“Among those who disaffiliated during this period, most were raised in evangelical denominations but were centrist to leftist politically,” Hout says.

The idea that the marrying of conservative politics and theology has had a negative effect on evangelicalism is echoed by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam and Notre Dame political scientist David Campbell. After surveying various data points, they concluded that moderates and progressives were increasingly leaving the faith as it became synonymous with conservative politics. And because young people aren’t as conservative as their elders, they have led the religious exodus.

“To [Millennials], ‘religion’ means ‘Republican,’ ‘intolerant,’ and ‘homophobic,'” wrote Putnam and Campbell in Foreign Affairs. “Since those traits do not represent their views, they do not see themselves—or wish to be seen by their peers—as religious.”

But according to Martinez, it’s difficult to draw any conclusions about the religious effects of political views from Pew’s latest study; those figures will be released by Pew at a later date, she said.

Triumphalist evangelicals have missed the point. The biggest threat to evangelicals is not some form of liberal faith, but rather faithlessness itself. Most people aren’t leaving evangelicalism for more liberal expressions, but rather for nothing at all.

While conservative Christians were crusading against their more liberal brothers and sisters in the mainline, the real growth has been in neither camp—the share of religiously unaffiliated individuals in America skyrocketed by a whopping 6.7 percent.

Rather than taking pot shots at more liberal strains of Christianity, evangelicals would do well to focus on the threat that all Christians are now facing: the growing number of people who are apathetic or antagonistic to the claims of Christianity.

If evangelicals continue to treat current trends as a race to the bottom, they shouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly where they end up.

The reason religion is waning (at least in this country), is that science ends up having a serious track record, when religion is just a trip down the bunny hole, with no appreciable side-effects beside a fuzzy-wuzzy feeling inside.

I look forward to the day that this infantilization of our species is done and gone, when the weak whispers of ghosts who were never there become first the joke of yesteryear, and then a dusty footnote in our history.

Yeah, I know. Not likely in my lifetime. But maybe I’ll live to see it drop down (in this country) to at least 50% before I die.

One can always hope.

Till the next post then.

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Because Only Religious People Deserve To…?

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
Now for another episode of things that get right up my nose…

On BBC TV, Christian Says Humanists Are Debauched and Their Weddings Are “Demonic,” Then Throws in… Pol Pot

U.K. Christian and founder of the group Discuss Jesus Taiwo Adewuyi is radically opposed to Humanists, he declared on BBC TV’s The Big Question the other day, amid much audible snickering.

“Humanism is the cancer of thanks-giving. It is the devil’s PR. It is a first-class ticket to the sea of wantonness and debauchery. … The issue with Humanism is that it tries to knock God off the throne.”

Adewuyi is disturbed that Humanist officiants have been asking the government for the right to perform marriages, a request that, while having wide popular support, has so far fallen on the prime minister’s deaf ears.

I’ve said before – there are some you just itch to slap them into having a brain. But one Andrew Copson responded in a calm rational fashion, and this assclown shouts “Pol Pot!” (Apparently that was his well-prepared tirade – a single name. Idiot.)

It’s fucked behavior like this that makes me rude to believers. The last guy who declared “In my biblical viewpoint [blablalalalala]” to me and a group of others, was told (by me) that “no offense, but your bible is just a load of shit.”  No, a fist fight didn’t erupt. (We were all martial artists there). He was polite, but willfully stupid (born again, evolution is a belief system, planet is only 6,000 years old, etc., you know the wearying drill).

I talk to these people, and my people skills rapidly deteriorate. It’s hard not to browbeat people when the facts are clearly the complete opposite of their perceptions. And, more irritatingly, the calmer you are, makes no difference.

So now I just laugh, and ask incredulously, “You don’t really believe that crap, do you?” It’s rude, and it’s cost me dear sometimes (telling a drop-dead gorgeous woman that the cash she’s paid for ‘psychic training’ – for two years! - is complete rubbish – Ouch.)

Yeah, rude ‘n crude. But soft sophisticated reason only works well when there are ears to listen. And in our culture, sometimes a club is needed.

Till the next post, then.

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Another Creationist Lawsuit? It Looks Like We ARE In Kansas After All, Toto…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade-- a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense. We make and test risky predictions all the time; our success is not dogma, but a highly probable indication of evolution's basic truth."[Stephen Jay Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack

Yes, only in Kansas, people:

Judge: Kansas Science Standards Don’t Promote Atheism as a Religion

A federal judge from Kansas rejected a creationist lawsuit that alleged teaching evolution in public schools qualifies as propagating atheism as a religion. According to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, United States District Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled against the lawsuit filed by creationist group Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) against the state of Kansas, saying it is without merit and worthy of dismissal.

School districts in as many as 26 states, including Kansas, have adopted a standardized science syllabus called Next Generation Science Standards, with the help of which, educators will try to close the gap between students in America and those in other developed countries, as far as their knowledge in mathematics and science is concerned. This particular science syllabus teaches students that the different species on earth developed through the process of evolution.

COPE claimed that mandating the teaching of evolution to public school students qualifies as an endorsement of atheism as a religion. As a result, they filed their lawsuit against Kansas, hoping that it would halt the implementation of the science syllabus in the state. The group called the new syllabus dangerous, claiming that it influences impressionable students to ask ultimate questions like what the nature of life is, what the cause of the universe is and where humans come from. COPE warned that this syllabus would make science teachers act as theologians, infringing upon believers’ ideological mindset and instilling a materialistic or atheistic point of view in children’s brains. The group also explained that science has not answered these religious questions and it never will.

Simon Brown at Wall of Separation wrote, “Everything about that argument is flawed. Contemplating the origin of life on this planet is not an inherently religious question that is unfit for children to ponder. And science has done a fine job of unlocking the mysteries of the universe — despite COPE’s claim to the contrary. Evolution may be a theory but no legitimate scientists question its validity. Thus learning the facts of that theory is not ‘indoctrination.’ It’s called education.”

According to Crabtree, COPE’s lawsuit failed to prove that sufficient harm was being caused to it or its well-being, for the allegations to qualify as a court case.

One of the more frustrating things that religious do (at least for me), is that they constantly use the old tu quoque – by assuming that the religious and the atheist both ‘believe’ but that the atheist is in angry denial. It is also based on the misperception that atheism is an emotional choice when it is in fact, the complete opposite. “I am religious, ergo so are you. Don’t deny it” kind of thing. It’s right about there that my voice goes up a few decibels.

And these COPE clowns (how ironic – obviously they can’t cope, and objective? Honky, please), these self-appointed deluded neurotics, they just keep on wasting everyone’s time, resources, and money with the quintessential non-debate of this century and the last.

It’d be comic relief, if it wasn’t so scary.

So, the best I could come up with for word substitution in their acronym is:

COPE = Clowns Operating Primitive Equations

Feel free to play with that in the comment section.

Till the next post then.

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Need Free Therapy? Send Your Bill To…Bill!

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken

Y’know, you gotta love guys like Bill Donohue. He makes a better case against religion every time he opens his uninformed pie-hole. Sadly most religious folks have absolutely zero in the way of critical-thinking filters, absorbing the ontological metacrock like sponges.

Case in point:

Bill Donohue: Non-Religious People Are Probably Insane

Bill Donohue’s latest “Christian persecution” campaign took another bizarre twist yesterday when he told Newsmax host Steve Malzberg that he is willing to pay for therapy for non-religious people…since they are probably insane.

“They believe that freedom is license to do whatever they want,” the Catholic League president explained. “They don’t want to be told anything, which is why they die prematurely, they’re unhappy, that’s why we have a disproportionate number of agnostics and atheists in the asylum, all of this is true.”

Donohue said “secularists” have an inferior “mental health, physical health and degree of happiness,” adding: “They got to work it out, fine, I’ll help pay for their therapy, just take your hands, your mitts off the Catholics during Christmas.”

Ummm…okay, Bill. Can I call you Swill? ‘Cause that’s all you’re peddling, Donahue. Pure swill. The large percentile of people do define ‘freedom’ as the ability to do whatever one wants, but freedom is defined by boundaries. As to not ‘wanting to be told anything’, the Christlation for this is ‘if you don’t listen, you’re evil’. Unhappy? There’s a difference between unhappy and angry. As a rule, I’m one of the happiest people you’ll ever want to meet. But I’m angry about something: I’m angry about the gratuitous ubiquity of religion in our culture, I’m pissed off that I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 fucking decades studying comparative religion, and it all turned out to be shite, so there’s time ill spent. And gray matter resources that have now been diverted to folly, that I could’ve done better things. Awww…poor pitiful me (wah wah)…but life goes on, and keep on a-smilin’. Because we are all more than one thing at one time.

I’m sure many of my peers can relate to that anger, that trembling rage one has when the One Big Truth you’ve been pre-programmed to accept gratuitously is a lie, composed of thousands upon thousands of little lies, all spun together like a glorious fairy tale, but that some would die and/or kill to claim it truth.

The rest of his claims are equal amounts of trash: he’s a sociologist, likelihood is that he has zero scientific studies to back up his declamations; like most of his ilk, he’s all mouth and trousers.

But hey! If your life has hit some serious speedbumps, and you need expensive therapy, just tell your shrink to bill Bill. Or better yet, just send it via snail-mail. I’m tempted to mail him something, but it would be a lot less polite than that….

Till the next post, then.

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There’s A Memo? Who Knew?

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

I have never been a big fan of Julian Baggini – he tends to be an accommodationist who  recites the Rodney King mantra, mistaking tone for temperament (and content), trying to bridge those vast schisms between believers and non-believers. It’s a nice thought, one I’d entertained many years ago but abandoned when faced with the ferocious tenaciousness and the unbelievable capacity for dishonesty that religious folk in general exhibit. Anyways, here’s his ‘manifesto’:

Atheists, please read my heathen manifesto

In recent years, we atheists have become more confident and outspoken in articulating and defending our godlessness in the public square. Much has been gained by this. There is now wider awareness of the reasonableness of a naturalist world view, and some of the unjustified deference to religion has been removed, exposing them to much needed critical scrutiny.

Unfortunately, however, in a culture that tends to focus on the widest distinctions, the most extreme positions and the most strident advocates, the "moderate middle" has been sidelined by this debate. There is a perception of unbridgeable polarisation, and a sense that the debates have sunk into a stale impasse, with the same tired old arguments being rehearsed time and again by protagonists who are getting more and more entrenched.

It is time, therefore, for those of us who are tired of the status quo to try to shift the focus of our public discussions of atheism into areas where more progress and genuine dialogue is possible. To achieve this, we need to rethink what atheism stands for and how to present it. The so-called "new atheism" may have put us on the map, but in the public imagination it amounts to little more than a caricature of Richard Dawkins, which is not an accurate representation of the terrain many of us occupy. We now need something else.

This manifesto is an attempt to point towards the next phase of atheism's involvement in public discourse. It is not a list of doctrines that people are asked to sign up to but a set of suggestions to provide a focus for debate and discussion. Nor is it an attempt to accurately describe what all atheists have in common. Rather it is an attempt to prescribe what the best form of atheism should be like.

1 Why we are heathens

It has long been recognised that the term "atheist" has unhelpful connotations. It has too many dark associations and also defines itself negatively, against what it opposes, not what it stands for. "Humanist" is one alternative, but humanists are a subset of atheists who have a formal organisation and set of beliefs many atheists do not share. Whatever the intentions of those who adopt the labels, "rationalist" and "bright" both suffer from sounding too self-satisfied, too confident, implying that others are irrationalists or dim.

If we want an alternative, we should look to other groups who have reclaimed mocking nicknames, such as gays, Methodists and Quakers. We need a name that shows that we do not think too highly of ourselves. This is no trivial point: atheism faces the human condition with honesty, and that requires acknowledging our absurdity, weakness and stupidity, not just our capacity for creativity, intelligence, love and compassion. "Heathen" fulfils this ambition. We are heathens because we have not been saved by God and because in the absence of divine revelation, we are in so many ways deeply unenlightened. The main difference between us and the religious is that we know this to be true of all of us, but they believe it is not true of them.

2 Heathens are naturalists

Heathens are not merely unbelievers: we believe many things too. Most importantly, we believe in naturalism: the natural world is all there is and there is no purposive, conscious agency that created or guides it. This natural world may contain many mysteries and even unseen dimensions, but we have no reason to believe that they are anything like the heavens, spirit worlds and deities that have characterised supernatural religious beliefs over history. Many religious believers deny the "supernatural" label, but unless they are willing to disavow such beliefs as in the reality of a divine person, miracles, resurrections or life after death, they are not naturalists.

3 Our first commitment is to the truth

Although we believe many things about what does and does not exist, these are the conclusions we come to, not the basis of our worldview. That basis is a commitment to see the world as truthfully as we can, using our rational faculties as best we can, based on the best evidence we have. That is where our primary commitment lies, not the conclusions we reach. Hence we are prepared to accept the possibility that we are wrong. It also means that we respect and have much in common with people who come to very different conclusions but have an equal respect for truth, reason and evidence. A heathen has more in common with a sincere, rational, religious truth-seeker than an atheist whose lack of belief is unquestioned, or has become unquestionable.

4 We respect science, not scientism

Heathens place science in high regard, being the most successful means humans have devised to come to a true understanding of the real nature of the world on the basis of reason and evidence. If a belief conflicts with science, then no matter how much we cherish it, science should prevail. That is why the religious beliefs we most oppose are those that defy scientific knowledge, such as young earth creationism.

Nonetheless, this does not make us scientistic. Scientism is the belief that science provides the only means of gaining true knowledge of the world, and that everything has to be understood through the lens of science or not at all. There are scientistic atheists but heathens are not among them. Science is limited in what it can contribute to our understanding of who we are and how we should live because many of the most important facts of human life only emerge at a level of description on which science remains silent. History, for example, may ultimately depend on nothing more than the movements of atoms, but you cannot understand the battle of Hastings by examining interactions of fermions and bosons. Love may depend on nothing more than the physical firing of neurons, but anyone who tries to understand it solely in those terms just does not know what love means.

Science may also make life uncomfortable for us. For example, it may undermine certain beliefs about free will that many atheists have relied on to give dignity and autonomy to our species.

Heathens are therefore properly respectful of science but also mindful of its limits. Science is not our Bible: the last word on everything.

5 We value reason as precious but fragile

Heathens have a commitment to reason that fully acknowledges the limits of reason. Reason is itself a multi-faceted thing that cannot be reduced to pure logic. We use reason whenever we try to form true beliefs on the basis of the clearest thinking, using the best evidence. But reason almost always leaves us short of certain knowledge and very often leaves us with a need to make a judgment in order to come to a conclusion. We also need to accept that human beings are very imperfect users of reason, susceptible to biases, distortions and prejudices that lead even the most intelligent astray. In short, if we understand what reason is and how it works, we have very good reason to doubt those who claim rationality solely for those who accept their worldview and who deny the rationality of those who disagree.

6 We are convinced, not dogmatic

The heathen's modesty about the power of reason and the certainty of her conclusions should not be mistaken for a shoulder-shrugging agnosticism. We have a very high degree of confidence in the truth of our naturalistic worldview. But we do not dogmatically assert it. Being open to being wrong and to changing our minds does not mean we lack conviction that we are right. Strength of belief is not the same as rigidity of dogma.

7 We have no illusions about life as a heathen

Many people do not understand that it is possible to lead a meaningful, happy life as a heathen, but we maintain that it is and can point to any number of atheist philosophers and thinkers who have explained why this is so. But such meaning and contentment does not inevitably follow from becoming a heathen. Ours is a universe without guarantees of redemption or salvation and sometimes people have terrible lives or do terrible things and thrive. On such occasions, we have no consolation. That is the dark side of accepting the truth, and we are prepared to acknowledge it. We are heathens because we value living in the truth. But that does not mean that we pretend that always makes life easy or us happy. If the evidence were to show that religious people are happier and healthier than us, we would not see that as any reason to give up our convictions.

8 We are secularists

We support a state that is neutral as regards people's fundamental worldviews. It is not neutral when it comes to the shared values necessary for people of different conviction to live and thrive together. But it should not give any special privilege to any particular sect or group, or use their creeds as a basis for policy. Politics requires a coming together of people of different fundamental convictions to formulate and justify policy in terms that all understand, on the basis of principles that as many as possible can share.

This secularism does not require that religion is banished from public life or that people may not be open as to how their faiths, or lack of one, motivate their values. As long as the core of the business of state is neutral as regards to comprehensive worldviews, we can be relaxed about expressions of these commitments in society at large. We want to maintain the state's neutrality on fundamental worldviews, not purge religion from society.

9 Heathens can be religious

There are a small minority of forms of religion that are entirely compatible with the heathen position. These are forms of religion that reject the real existence of supernatural entities and divinely authored texts, accept that science trumps dogma, and who see the essential core of religion in its values and practices. We have very little evidence that anything more than a small fraction of actual existent religion is like this, but when it does conform to this description, heathens have no reason to dismiss it as false.

10 Religion is often our friend

We believe in not being tone-deaf to religion and to understand it in the most charitable way possible. So we support religions when they work to promote values we share, including those of social justice and compassion. We are respectful and sympathetic to the religious when they arrive at their different conclusions on the basis of the same commitment to sincere, rational, undogmatic inquiry as us, without in any way denying that we believe them to be false and misguided. We are also sympathetic to religion when its effects are more benign than malign. We appreciate that commitment to truth is but one value and that a commitment to compassion and kindness to others is also of supreme importance. We are not prepared to insist that it is indubitably better to live guided by such values allied with false beliefs than it is to live without such values but also without false belief.

11 We are critical of religion when necessary

Our willingness to accept what is good in religion is balanced by an equally honest commitment to be critical of it when necessary. We object when religion invokes mystery to avoid difficult questions or to obfuscate when clarity is needed. We do not like the way in which "people of faith" tend to huddle together in an unprincipled coalition of self-interest, even when that means liberals getting into bed with homophobes and misogynists. We think it is disingenuous for religious people to talk about the reasonableness of their beliefs and the importance of values and practice, while drawing a veil over their embrace of superstitious beliefs. In these and other areas, we assert the right and need to make civil but acute criticisms.

And although our general stance is not one of hostility towards religion, there are some occasions when this is exactly what is called for. When religions promote prejudice, division or discrimination, suppress truth or stand in the way of medical or social progress, a hostile response is an appropriate, principled one, just as it is when atheists are guilty of the same crimes.

12 This manifesto is less concerned with distinguishing heathens from others than forging links between us and others

Our commitment to independent thought and the provisionality of belief means that few heathens are likely to agree completely with this manifesto. It is therefore almost a precondition of supporting it that you do not entirely support it. At the same time, although very few people of faith can be heathens, many will find themselves in agreement with much of what heathens belief. This is what provides the common ground to make fruitful dialogue possible: we need to accept what we share in order to accept with civility and understanding what we most certainly do not. This is what the heathen manifesto is really about.

For the most part, it all seems fairly rational. The real red flag here is bullet point # 10, ‘Religion Is Often Our Friend’. No it isn’t. Religion isn’t a person: it can no more befriend us than be our enemy. Only another living being can be our friend. Religion inspires no one: it is an excuse for people to do what they wish to do, a prepared societally-sanctioned explanation for craziness.

Bullet point # 11: ‘We are critical of religion when necessary’. This is that ‘there’s-a-time-and-a-place’ jazz, where there never is nor ever will be a ‘time and a place’. We are at a critical juncture here: religion is telling people to spew forth as many children as possible, because their particular delusion has some cosmic babysitter coming down from on high to clean the planet up and wipe the boogers out of their hair. The issue of overpopulation by itself is an issue that threatens our species survival. So it is always necessary to criticize it, to ridicule it, to marginalize it.

We keep treating these mooks with kid gloves, pretty soon there’ll be too many people with too many feelings making too many problems (apologies to Phil Collins), and not enough space to live in.

Till the next post, then.

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More On The Madness Of Muslims: Death To Infidels.

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

Allah says: “Let there be no compulsion in religion.  [Sûrah al-Baqarah: 256]

It’s sometimes unbelievable how much evidence there is to show that religious people are just the same as anyone else: they play favorites, they indulge in hypocrisy, they demand the world be remade in the image of their specific delusion.

Case in point (Hat tip to the Atheist Republic).

IHEU Study Finds Atheists Face Death Penalty In 13 Nations - All Muslim

“The Freethought Report 2013,” commissioned by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) to study the condition of human rights and protection for atheists in all 192 countries has found that a global majority of nations do not protect the rights of atheists, agnostics, skeptics and freethinkers, including 13 countries where it is punishable by death in law. Many of these countries are signatories to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights and other global treaties guaranteeing the freedom and equality of citizens. The report was released on December 10th, which is the U.N. Human Rights Day. The study document was presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council the day before.

To be an atheist or religious skeptic, or to change your religion is to face the death penalty in Pakistan, Maldives, Afghanistan, Mauritania, Iran, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates – all having Islam as their official state religion (In Nigeria, the Muslim-dominated autonomous states of the north have implemented Sharia law).

However, official and unofficial discrimination against atheists is prevalent even in democratic nations across Asia, Africa and the West. According to the report, "there are laws that deny atheists' right to exist, revoke their citizenship, restrict their right to marry, obstruct their access to public education, prevent them working for the state...."

The president of the IHEU, Sonja Eggerickx stated: "This report shows that the overwhelming majority of countries fail to respect the rights of atheists and freethinkers although they have signed U.N agreements to treat all citizens equally.”

Religion of peace my homesick ass.

Till the next post, then.

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Giving One’s Life For The Fight…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
I have belittled the religious foolishness of that benighted country called India – a nation that allows women to marry snakes, forces men to marry dogs, and has companies that elect imaginary friends to their board.

Alas, we have lost one of our own – an intrepid individual who made it his mission in life to expose all the religious garbage for what it is – garbage.

Battling Superstition, Indian Paid With His Life

PUNE, India — For nearly three decades, an earnest man named Narendra Dabholkar traveled from village to village in India, waging a personal war against the spirit world.

Police officers removed a banner bearing the image of Narendra Dabholkar near the spot where he was shot in Pune, India.

If a holy man had electrified the public with his miracles, Dr. Dabholkar, a former physician, would duplicate the miracles and explain, step by step, how they were performed. If a sorcerer had amassed a fortune treating infertility, he would arrange a sting operation to unmask the man as a fraud. His goal was to drive a scientist’s skepticism into the heart of India, a country still teeming with gurus, babas, astrologers, godmen and other mystical entrepreneurs.

That mission ended Tuesday, when two men ran up behind Dr. Dabholkar, 67, as he crossed a bridge, shot him at point-blank range, then jumped onto a motorbike and disappeared into the traffic coursing through this city.

Dr. Dabholkar’s killing is the latest episode in a millenniums-old wrestling match between traditionalists and reformers in India. When detectives began putting together a list of Dr. Dabholkar’s enemies, they found that it was long. He had received threats from Hindu far-right groups, been beaten by followers of angry gurus and challenged by councils upholding archaic caste laws. His home state, Maharashtra, was considering legislation he had promoted for 14 years, banning a list of practices like animal sacrifice, the magical treatment of snake bites and the sale of magic stones.

This is a sad and sobering reminder to us all – that sociopaths masquerade their narcissism in incense, prose and imagined piety, until it is all exposed as folderol. And then their masques are shorn away to reveal the blazing psychopath inside.

Narendra Dabholkar – you shall be missed.

Till the next post, then.

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Oh, The Nothingness Of It All…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis

Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin'
If you wanna be with me
Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
You gotta have somethin'
If you wanna be with me – Billy Preston, "Nothing From Nothing"

Nothing will come of nothing, speak again. – King Lear

Here’s a bit o’ nonsense you’ve likely run into more than once in a real time conversation with a religious person:

“You don’t believe in gawd? Then you believe in nothing then.”

I’ve had a number of responses to this over the years.

One of the first things I point out, is that I ‘believe’ in reality – I then point out that I believe in me, I believe in the person making this (stupid) statement, I believe that I live on the planet earth, that the sun will rise in the morning, etc.

My answer is usually contingent on context – I’m a lot politer, for instance, if the person in question is a roommate or a pretty girl (oops sorry, did I just void my ‘I am a feminist’ card?). I’m usually a lot ruder to bible-toting bicycle-riding godbots.

But usually, I respond with ‘There’s no such thing as nothing’. Use this next time, and watch the eyes glaze over and the jaw drop as the speaker receives what I like to call a ‘conclussion’ (that’s a portmanteau of ‘conclusion’ and ‘concussion’). It’s truly a joy to watch the WTF? moment wash over their vacuous minds.

Carry this further: ask the questioner what the word ‘nothing’ means. After they fum-fah several times, explain that the definition of the word means:

Nothing is no thing, denoting the absence of something. Nothing is a pronoun associated with nothingness.

I usually like to go a little further with it, and tell them that nothing usually means ‘a complete or utter absence of anything’, and that by calling something nothing, technically it becomes something, thus violating the very concept of the definition. Then I stand back and watch the listener become completely boggled.

Usually, I side with Parmenides:

He argued that "nothing" cannot exist by the following line of reasoning: To speak of a thing, one has to speak of a thing that exists. Since we can speak of a thing in the past, it must still exist (in some sense) now and from this concludes that there is no such thing as change. As a corollary, there can be no such things as coming-into-being, passing-out-of-being, or not-being.

But I’m an old school salt-of-the-earth kind of guy: I find these sort of discussion vastly amusing (particularly when I’m around stoned musicians: the pseudo-philosophy tends to amuse me greatly) – and most Western martial artists don’t understand that it’s an entirely different concept in Eastern philosophy (as to attaining a state of mind). And once in a great while, someone trots out the concept from the physicists’ point of view, without understanding the context (recall the creationists and their abuse of the word ‘theory’?) – but even physics has this to say:

In physics, the word nothing is not used in any technical sense. A region of space is called a vacuum if it does not contain any matter, though it can contain physical fields. In fact, it is practically impossible to construct a region of space that contains no matter or fields, since gravity cannot be blocked and all objects at a non-zero temperature radiate electromagnetically. However, even if such a region existed, it could still not be referred to as "nothing", since it has properties and a measurable existence as part of the quantum-mechanical vacuum. Where there is supposedly empty space there are constant quantum fluctuations with virtual particles continually popping into and out of existence. It had long been theorized that space is distinct from a void of nothingness in that space consists of some kind of aether, with luminiferous aether postulated as the transmission medium for propagating light waves (whose existence has been disproven in the now famous Michelson-Morley experiment).

So the next time some pseudo-philosopher pulls ex nihilo, nihil fit out of their ponderous arse, feel free to pull these factoids out of your wallet in response.

And enjoy.

Till the next post, then.

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Have A Very Wicked Winterval, Y’all…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
And a kickin’ Kwanzaa to boot.

Been feeling pretty sanguine as of late, which explains perhaps why I’m not quite the angry blogger. This time last year, I was effectively homeless, and taking shelter at an old friend’s apartment. But still managed (sans any divine intervention, or crazy ass fairy begging) to bootstrap my tired old ass back into the saddle. Life is good these days. I occasionally dive-bomb the random fucknob on Facebook (you know, the assholes who like to post garbage like ‘God, why is there so much violence in schools? Signed, a concerned student. I’m not allowed in the schools, signed God’) or the sporadic homophobe who whines about his/her ‘opinion’ being just as good as anyone else’s, etc. etc. Ad nauseum.

But I am still a little bummed out that the Winterval meme still hasn’t taken off.

We need to start reclaiming these passages of time – not steal them forcibly (let’s face it – the Christians are ALWAYS on about something, to the point where their mulings are only worth a shake of the head and a sad sigh). It’s something of a peeve.

Births, marriages, deaths – these should no longer be the sole purview of the religious. We are in the 21st century now. These rites of passage are human in origin, and they should return to us, without the supernatural mumbo jumbo that the self-flagellants want to incant over them.  This also includes the quarterly celebrations that mark the passage of time and season.

The fact is, all any of us really want, is to be treated equally, to share and be shared with –something that that lot who keep declaring a ‘war on Xmas’ aren’t too crazy about.

Mind you I’m not even going to try to mince about changing the word ‘holiday’, regardless of its etymology: that’s a lost battle if ever there was one.

Having said that, I wish you one and all a safe and happy ‘holiday’, whatever you deem to call it, and try to keep the food and alcohol intake to safe levels.

And just for kicks and giggles, my all time favorite Robot Chicken Xmas spoof:

Till the next post, then.

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Is Science A Religion? Blurring The Lines Of Definition…

Cross posted @ the Atheist Oasis
One of the more irritating (and ignorant) statements of our time, is when some ignoramus says, “Science is the new religion.” It rankles me as much as the codswallop that the statement ‘we all create our own realities’ does, inasmuch as both are statements that reveal the utter cluelessness of the speaker.

So imagine my chagrin, when Andrew Brown announces,

The dictionary is wrong – science can be a religion too

John Sulston is one of the smartest men I know – well, he ought to be, as a Nobel prize winner – and last week I got him talking about religion in front of an audience for the Westminster faith interviews.

One of the things that came up in this, as so often before, was the definition of "religion". Sulston was brought up as a low church Anglican, and still feels that religion must involve God and a belief in the supernatural, and that ritual is secondary to theology.

I came up with my usual counter to this – that there are atheistic religions; that there was ritual long before there could be theology and that we ought to take scientists – even social scientists – more seriously than dictionaries. This last point because Sulston had gone to the trouble of looking up and printing out one of the OED definitions of religion, which he felt proved his point.

"Belief in or acknowledgement of some superhuman power or powers (esp a god or gods) which is typically manifested in obedience, reverence, and worship; such a belief as part of a system defining a code of living, esp as a means of achieving spiritual or material improvement."

I can see that it must be frustrating, if you have such a definition in front of you to get some slippery Durkheimian answer about religion being actually the way that society understands and defines itself. You might, if pressed, agree that Americans treat their constitution as a sacred scripture, of universal application to the world. But it doesn't seem properly supernatural.

He gets some of these things right – there have been atheistic religions (Buddhism and Raelism spring to mind). The problem here, is that he’s picking his own definition of the term. This is what is usually defined as religion:

Religion is a collection of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the Universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world.

Many religions may have organized behaviors, clergy, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, holy places, and scriptures. The practice of a religion may also include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration of a god, gods or goddesses, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service or other aspects of human culture. Religions may also contain mythology.

So he goes on to a sloppier way to prove his point:

This is probably an argument that is impossible to resolve. But every serious thinker about religion has ended up with a definition as baggy as Durkheim's. There are just too many modes of belief and behaviour that can function as "religious" for this to be a simple category. And if the dictionary says different, then the dictionary is wrong.

No, one cannot declare that it’s an open-ended conundrum and then self-identify like that. It’s fairly cut and dried: belief in the supernatural. And spare me the theatrics of the “definition atheist” – I use that mostly when I get tired of parroting my talking points endlessly to an audience that is more interested in ‘saving my soul’ than listening.

Brown then goes on to say:

The same holds true, of course, for things like evolution: if I want to know what evolution means, I ask biologists, not dictionaries. The meaning that scientists use may not be more correct than the popular one – how would you measure that? – but it is going to be much more useful for investigations of the subject. So, I am quite happy to say that science could function as a religion, in some modes and in some societies, while at the same time functioning as science. And it ought to be perfectly possible to distinguish between the two uses.

As most authors go, they tend to veer off course without supplying both sides. In this case, Brown doesn’t bother with the definition of science. Hey, we all know what it is right? WRONG. I am shocked at how many people I talk to in real time can’t begin to provide a definition when quizzed. It’s usually my first response to ‘science is the new religion’. Next time you hear that idiotic statement, pin the declarer down by demanding the definition. The blank looks are startling. Here’s the basic definition:

Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. In an older and closely related meaning (found, for example, in Aristotle), "science" refers to the body of reliable knowledge itself, of the type that can be logically and rationally explained (see History and philosophy below). Since classical antiquity science as a type of knowledge was closely linked to philosophy. In the early modern era the words "science" and "philosophy" were sometimes used interchangeably in the English language. By the 17th century, natural philosophy (which is today called "natural science") was considered a separate branch of philosophy. However, "science" continued to be used in a broad sense denoting reliable knowledge about a topic, in the same way it is still used in modern terms such as library science or political science.

Then Brown goes on with an interesting, if somewhat broken analogy:

Scientific and religious explanations come together in an odd way at Stonehenge and similar monuments. They can be interpreted as megalithic calendars, or devices for astronomical prediction, as well as ritual burying grounds – and the reason we can reconstruct them as gigantic observatories is precisely that we can calculate today exactly what would have emerged from calculations done 4,000 years ago.

Yet to call Stonehenge a purely scientific enterprise is clearly wrong. When you consider the immense labour and complex social organisation required to put all those stones in place, you could be inspired to ask "where would the sun have risen at midsummer 3235 BC". But surely the much more interesting question is why this question should have been thought so important in that culture.

That seems to me a question that only historians and sociologists of religion can answer. What's more, although the scientific question and its answer are independent of any particular cultural and religious matrix, they can't be independent of all of them.

First, he is right about Stonehenge being a product of the cultural and religious dynamic of that particular time period. But incorrect to bring that analogy to anything present day. The ‘scientific question’ (as he so obliquely phrases it ) should most definitely be independent of any matrix whatsoever. Objectivity is and should be the defining principle of any scientific endeavor. Otherwise confirmation bias creeps in, and the facts are obscured by the preferred societal approval.

And he tops it off with this:

To come back to Sulston – anyone who had sequenced the same material as he did would have come up with very similar results. That's the scientific question and it's the one that interested him. But the money and the resources that made it all possible were not raised by an appeal to intellectual curiosity and probably could never have been. They were raised partly in the expectation of profit, and partly by politicians using a largely religious rhetoric about "The book of life" which all the scientists involved could have explained was nonsense and which would certainly be impossible for an alien archaeologist to reconstruct. Yet the funds would never have been voted without it. So: is the Genome Centre a scientific factory or a ritual centre? It's both, and that's why the dictionary is wrong.

It’s this constant conflation of structure with ritual – one is contingent on the other, but they are not synonyms, nor are they interchangeable. Structure is a building block, by which we as a species build our habits, our lives, and our perceptions. Ritual, however is defined as:

a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. The term usually refers to actions which are stylized, excluding actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers.

So mostly this article is pandering to the intellectually vacant, a long and vapid series of composition errors that presumes too much that all definitions are easily as loosely defined as the erroneous one the author provided.

So, in short, Brown is wrong, and the dictionary is right.

That, dear readers, is my nickel’s worth: spend it as you like.

Till the next post, then.

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