Sometime before September, The Raving Atheist will become, in part, an anti-abortion/anti-choice (with exception for serious threat to life of mother) blog. The site name and color will change one day a week (maybe more) to reflect the topic switch and give you a chance to flee if discussions of fetus-killing upset you.
Although my decision for pursuing this direction was inspired largely by some deeply religious people (they know who they are), my reasons are entirely secular. I am anti-abortion and anti-choice because if the choice had been made to abort me at any time after my conception I wouldn't be here, and neither would you. While it is true I wouldn't now be in a position to notice my non-existence, that is just yet another reason I oppose abortion. I’m glad to be here, and glad you made it as well.
Thanks, mom!
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Tillman’s Death Weighs Heavily on Churchgoers.
God willing Pat Tillman would like to return to NFL in 2005.
Now find me some good cartoons.
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Is Christian prayer more sensible or effective than Wiccan spell-casting? That was the narrow issue I raised in this post last week. Pope-boy Ben Kepple's latest response substantially expands the scope of the debate; my comments, in boldface, follow his:
We should start by saying there is plenty of stuff in both our arguments which obscures the real debate at the core of our disagreement: namely, whether God exists.
Although I’ve debated God’s existence with Kepple before (see here and here), the original core of our disagreement this go-round was whether belief in prayer is justified in a way that belief in spelling-casting is not. Kepple entered the fray by embracing my position that Wiccans were a bunch of superstitious, deluded idiots for believing that money-spells could improve their chances of winning the lottery. On that point, the core of our disagreement wasn’t whether the God in question existed: we both reject the Wiccan God, or whatever supernatural agency Wiccans believe makes spells effective. The core of our disagreement, then, was not such much whether any god exists generally, but rather whether it makes sense to believe in a God that responds to sky-talking when you’ve rejected one that responds to wand-waving.
[Addressing my point that Mass-going Catholics are hardly in a position to criticize Wiccans for wasting money on the candles and incense used in their useless spells]] The Raving Atheist knows full well that candles and incense may be easily disposed with in Catholic ceremonies. The essence of the Mass is in the transubstantiation of the Eucharist; all else is subordinate to that. However, were a Wiccan or other neo-pagan to cast a spell, the components of the spell would be central to that act. Hence one cannot, if one is intellectually honest, compare the two practices that way.
If candles and incense are “easily disposed with” at Mass then they are as much a waste of money as the ones used by Wiccans in their ineffective spells. However, even were candles and incense central to the Mass, they would be a waste of money because they would do nothing to turn bread and water into flesh and blood (whatever end that might accomplish), because bread and water never turn into flesh and blood. What’s intellectually dishonest is pretending that there’s difference between a superstition that turns a spell into money, and a superstition which turns bread and water into flesh and blood.
The flaw is in the core argument itself. For the argument an atheist must make to prove his point is not, "God has not been proven to exist, therefore He must not exist." The argument an atheist must make is "God has been proven to not exist, therefore He must not exist."For all their carping about not having any conclusive proof from theists about God's existence, not one atheist has managed yet to conclusively and scientifically disprove the existence of God. This is, of course, because it cannot be done. Never mind the basic assumptions which The Raving Atheist has set out; they are flawed attempts to impose temporal logic on spiritual matters. Such cutesy arguments might delight the like-minded, but they do not fundamentally address the one thing that might convince theists they were in the wrong: namely, a conclusive and scientific proof that God does not exist.
My Basic Assumptions do conclusively disprove the existence of the traditionally-defined monotheistic God, and they do so by demonstrating that the concept is a logical impossibility (due to the conflicts between the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence) rather than merely pointing to an absence of empirical proof. There’s no need to move on to scientific proof once the existence of something has been disproven with logic. Once it’s been established through logic that a square circle cannot exist, or that a man who is at the same time taller than six feet but shorter than four feet cannot exist, searching through the universe for those entities would be futile. It’s impossible to apply the scientific method when one lacks a coherent or non-contradictory definition of the objects which form the very subject matter of the exploration.
Temporal logic can be imposed on spiritual matters to the extent that those spiritual matters relate to the consistency of the defined attributes of God. Any argument by Kepple otherwise (and he doesn’t offer any) would itself have to involve temporal logic. If his theory is that temporal logic is inherently flawed, then he can’t make any argument at all because the validity of his conclusion would necessarily depend on the use of the same flawed logical system.
The notion that scientific proof would be more effective on people who already reject temporal logic is dubious. The scientific process itself incorporates many aspects of temporal logic, including mathematics. Moreover, there is conclusive, scientific proof that bread and water don’t spontaneously turn into flesh and blood (whether surrounded by incense and candles or not), but that doesn’t convince many Catholics. Belief in the supernatural constitutes the rejection, or at least a disbelief in the uniformity, of natural science.
Finally, as relevant to the original dispute, Kepple’s rejection of temporal logic and science leave him without any tools with which to attack the validity of Wicca and its spells, or to distinguish Wicca from Catholicism and its prayers. If temporal logic can’t be imposed upon spiritual matters then it’s as helpless as against a witch as it is against a Holy Ghost. Kepple can’t trash Wicca as illogical and unscientific if he’s unwilling to hold Catholicism to the same tests. So what he’s left with is a standardless, relativistic universe where no theory makes any more sense than another, because sense itself has been abandoned.
Personally speaking, we would better understand The Raving Atheist's anti-religious positions if he would merely admit that he has, for whatever reasons, animus towards organized religions and the people who follow them. Really, sir, just come out and say it, and leave it at that.It is true that doing such a thing, compared to espousing militant atheism, might not be as rebellious or as witty or as well-received with the intellectuals at some dinner party. But perhaps it would be liberating.
My anti-religious positions are based upon the falsity of religious beliefs and the potential harm that frequently flows from the such beliefs. If I criticize a religious belief I am careful to explain why it is false and what harm it causes when adopted as social policy. In any event, I don’t see how making the false admission that Kepple demands would help him “better understand” my positions, especially since the very premise of his statement is that he already understands that I am motivated (for “whatever reasons”) by animus towards organized religion and its followers. While it’s true that I have an animus towards religion generally (without regard to its organizational structure) and the conduct of some adherents, that animus is driven by reason, rather than the source of my reasons.
But if motive is at all relevant to this discussion, Kepple himself has at least as much “admitting” to do as I regarding his anti-Wiccanism. It, too, is an anti-religious position. And I assume, if he is faithful to his Catholicism, that he is also anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu, anti-Mormon, anti-anything-but-Christian. Ben, just come out and say it, and leave it at that.
I fell unconscious at the last dinner party I attended and have since confined my militant atheism to the Blogosphere. With few exceptions, the intellectuals here – including most of the agnostics and self-described atheists – find my stance repugnantly mean-spirited and intolerant. When it comes to religion, irrationality gets a pass that no other subject receives. But as yet I have no desire to be liberated from my sanity.
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My all-time favorite scam was this: a pair of con men tricked a consortium of banks out of $350 million by pretending they were borrowing the money to finance a top-secret plan to develop smokeless cigarettes for Philip Morris. The fraud went undetected for a while -- long enough for a chunk of the loot to be gambled away in the stock market -- in part because the banks signed confidentiality agreements acknowledging that the project was so secret that they weren’t permitted to discuss the loans with anyone but one of the swindlers. The banks were told that if they did attempt to confirm the project by talking to any Philip Morris officials its existence would be denied because, well, the con men were the only people who knew about it.
I was reminded of the case by this link from a reader, which tells the story of reclusive philanthropist billionaire named “Hank” who founded a town and offered each of the residents $1 million to kiss his ass. However, no one could collect the money until they left town. And they couldn’t leave town without his permission; if they did, they wouldn’t get a cent and Hank would kick the shit out of them. No one had actually ever seen Hank, but his existence was documents by a list of rules, transcribed by his friend Karl, which specifically noted that “Hank dictated this list himself.”
The perpetrators of the bank fraud were convicted, and one of them (the one who didn’t jump bail) is serving a 17 year sentence. No one has even been indicted in the Hank fraud, and to this day, they’re still kissing his ass.
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This is the obligatory it actually fucking works post!
You might want to refrain from posting comments for just a while longer but feel free to flame me here. Go ahead, I know you wanna find out if the comment's are faster.
Note to Self/Honey Do List:
archive redirects for new improved archive locationsmain archive- fix invalid characters in posts
fix broken image links- error page make over
- better search solution
- link organization - clean out stale links
- reduce clutter
entry format buttons ran away- simple comments
- backups in preparation for mt 3.0
- make qotd & ra noticeably different/comments
- fix mt comments notify (import lost notifications, sorry)
- slim down pages, everything is a mess
- bread crumbs php - never be lost again
- make it all look pretty and run faster
- fix comments name/email shit
- remind people that i'm not the raving atheist
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From Pledge of Allegiance: What We Can Learn from Pat Tillman, on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network Website:
In coming days, as you hear more and more about the selflessness and incredible sacrifice that Pat Tillman has made for his country, consider how you might better serve our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
From Pat Tillman's brother, at Pat Tillman's funeral:
Pat isn't with God. He's fucking dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's fucking dead.
[Link courtesy of Julia]
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If you are fishing for Catholics, bait the hook with Wiccans. The taste of fresh witch is apparently too much for them to resist. Ben Kepple certainly couldn't keep himself from snapping at the neo-pagans I dangled in front of him in this post about the potential "negative repercussions" of casting spells to win the lottery. He initially joins me in mocking them, but ends up flopping about in a shallow puddle on deck when he tries to defend prayer over witchcraft.
Wiccans are foolish, Kepple correctly concludes, for believing that they're going to beat 80,000,00 to 1 odds by mumbling a few magic words. A lottery is by definition a losing proposition, he notes, so the first "negative repercussion" of casting a spell to win would be the loss of the money spent on the ticket. But then he asserts that "a second consequence is that it would prompt all sorts of expenditures on incense and candles and herbs and oils and maybe some little hoodoo dolls and what not." A Catholic, criticizing the use of incense and candles to invoke the supernatural? Has he ever been to Mass?
As it turns out, Kepple doesn't believe that spells are meaningless. They don't win lotteries, but they do "invoke spiritual powers from the furthest reaches of the netherworld, and hence put our immortal soul in awful jeopardy according to the tenets of our own religion." So Wicca isn't some crazy superstition -- it's actually part of Catholicism, the part that has the bad things in it, like Satan.
Prayer, on the other hand, does appear to be meaningless:
All that said, though, we would take issue with one point The Raving Atheist makes in his essay: the argument that one cannot ask for something directly in prayer. This is silly. Of course one can ask for whatever one wants. It does not ensure one will get it, but one can ask; and if one's prayers are granted, well, it may be that God has granted that particular request. It could be also be coincidence, of course; but one must weigh the probability inherent in the request. Our atheist did get half the equation right, however; it is generally good form to also ask for strength, to accept what may come regardless.
So you can talk to the sky and whatever happens will happen according to the laws of probability and you better accept it, no matter what.
Update: Mr. Kepple has issued a clarification, having "noticed some small confusion over the direction of [his] mockery." Other than his criticism of my position on prayer, he asserts, he was not mocking me, but the Wiccans.
Perhaps there has been some confusion over the direction of my mockery, too. As Kepple says, he and I are indeed "bedfellows" with respect to our assessment of the foolishness of the Wiccans. I only disagree with Kepple to the extent that he contends that prayer is meaningfully different from spell-casting, or that Catholicism is meaningfully different from Wicca.
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A Squad reader thinks his 86 year-old mother “is being picked on because she’s Jewish” the Catholic ladies at the nursing home angrily told her that “that the Jews are killing the Palestinians and that Jews don't belong in Israel.” The Squad attributes this anti-Zionism to the fact that The Depression Generation “fought other children of immigrants for financial advancement, absorbing the often intense prejudices and bigotry of their ancestors.” Indeed, the Squad “often hear[s] stories from people of [the] mother's generation about how they were chased home from school by gangs of kids of another religion.”
Was there really that much anti-Israel agitation in the 1930’s? Was there really that much Israel in the 1930’s? Who knows. Anyway, how would the Squad deal with those hateful old Catholic biddies? Like this:
We'd gently remind them the differences that matter most in this world are not those between Jews and Christians, but those between people of faith and those who believe nothing at all.
That’s right, join forces against the evil atheists. But was atheism the religion of those vicious school gangs? What did they do, corner the little Jewish and Christian kids in the locker room and brutally lecture them about the disproofs of the ontological and teleological arguments?
The Squad takes a similar approach in answering a second letter from a woman whose fiancé “couldn't care less about religion or my church.” The man “grew up in a Christian home, but never came away with a faith or love for Jesus in his heart . . . [h]e sees things more scientifically than I and questions the reasons for my belief whenever I bring it up.” Apparently, the love of truth is a bad quality in a spouse: “[i]If he won't even consider a church wedding, attending worship services or talking to your minister, slam the door on a bad life choice.” No suggestion, of course, that she might consider abandoning her own irrational beliefs or talking to a scientist.
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