I'm often asked "are you angry? You seem angry." It's a difficult question to field, actually because simple put the truth is "yes." Sure, it's honest; anger is just my status quo, my standard state. It's just a vague and relatively boring answer.
And it tends to scare people.
I don't understand why it scares people, I guess they just assume that I should be on cloud nine 24/7/52 hike. I don't see why I shouldn't be either, it's just that there's too much out here in the real world that's wrong. The notion that people should constantly be on cloud nine, for instance.
What's the result of that? Apathy. Ignorance, after all, is bliss. If you don't care about the political climate of Myanmar (let alone your own continent or school district) then how could you hold an opinion and how can you get angry about it and how can you feel your passion roil and boil while you feel another's toil on their own soil (give me that one, I was on a roll).
It's my anger that fuels me, my bone chilling rage that keeps me from ripping my own head off. If I weren't outraged I'd be mad. I feel good this way, I feel useful. When you're so angry nothing matters, you be brave 'cause anything counts.
Anger is bliss.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
The Multiple Kinds of Desert
To my absolutely contented pleasure, I'm in a long distance relationship. This isn't a bad thing, I'm very much in love with this girl (woman, now, I guess. I've always been about as hesitant to admit adulthood as I am to write a decently lengthy parenthetical that might sidetrack the reader and cause them to start the whole sentence from the beginning, leading to frustration because, for the life of them, they skip ahead again because they can't find the close parenthesis, dear GOD where is the close parenthesis? and I love that she's been such a permanent fixture in my life for so long. There really are only a few downsides, but they tend to be nested as well as a Russian doll. The biggest being that I don't see her or hang out with her much anymore, which is not fun at all. The most minute at the very core would be that I can't tie her up and whip her into a kinky submission. Somewhere in the middle there is something about regular intercourse.
I now understand why they call it a "dry spell." It really is like being in the midst of Death Valley, no water in sight. You're clawing your way to your goal, hands dry as bone and your body starved for the vital life giving satisfaction it so dearly needs. All you can do is wrench your body further and further until you can drag yourself to the next oasis. Then...well, then it gets to be fun. At least the sores get some soothing cool caresses.
But it's nothing compared to what I used to endure. Oh, the life of a teen virgin is nothing like being in Death Valley. No, the regular masturbation coupled with the sheer loneliness and almost hopeless desire to meet someone, to be with someone, to have and to hold (especially to hold and particularly to hold the jiggly parts. At least the ones that are supposed to be) and to finally have someone to talk to because, dammit, nobody understands me and my parents are such tools. No, that's a tundra. That's crossing the whole of Antarctica on foot. Sure, you can eat a penguin every so often but that doesn't change the crippling dehydration and cold that chills straight to the bones. Sure, you can eat some snow but that only makes your body temperature plummet, sinking closer to the minimum it takes to survive. C'mon, priests have been doing this for 1500 years, you should be able to handle it. I mean, c'mon. C'mon! You have a full head of hair!
At least life is better. At least I have oases. But, damn, do I have a lot of problems.
I now understand why they call it a "dry spell." It really is like being in the midst of Death Valley, no water in sight. You're clawing your way to your goal, hands dry as bone and your body starved for the vital life giving satisfaction it so dearly needs. All you can do is wrench your body further and further until you can drag yourself to the next oasis. Then...well, then it gets to be fun. At least the sores get some soothing cool caresses.
But it's nothing compared to what I used to endure. Oh, the life of a teen virgin is nothing like being in Death Valley. No, the regular masturbation coupled with the sheer loneliness and almost hopeless desire to meet someone, to be with someone, to have and to hold (especially to hold and particularly to hold the jiggly parts. At least the ones that are supposed to be) and to finally have someone to talk to because, dammit, nobody understands me and my parents are such tools. No, that's a tundra. That's crossing the whole of Antarctica on foot. Sure, you can eat a penguin every so often but that doesn't change the crippling dehydration and cold that chills straight to the bones. Sure, you can eat some snow but that only makes your body temperature plummet, sinking closer to the minimum it takes to survive. C'mon, priests have been doing this for 1500 years, you should be able to handle it. I mean, c'mon. C'mon! You have a full head of hair!
At least life is better. At least I have oases. But, damn, do I have a lot of problems.
Sierra Madre
Normally, seeing is believing. Faith should rely on evidence. I have to see a police officer's badge before I let him into my home. In the same way, I have to see the validity of a claim such as god before I let it into my life.
The number one simplest way to do this is to meet the following requirements.
Credit goes to ebonmusings.org for the list. I just didn't feel like typing it all out again.
The number one simplest way to do this is to meet the following requirements.
The first category deals with things that would absolutely convince me of the truth of a particular religion. If shown any of these, I would convert on the spot.
- Verified, specific prophecies that couldn't have been contrived.
If the Bible, for example, said, "On the first day of the first month in the year two thousand and ten, the pillars of the earth will shake and a great part of the New World will be lost to the sea," and then January 1, 2010 comes and a tremendous earthquake sends California to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, I would become a believer. No points are awarded under any of the following conditions:- If the prophecy is vague, unclear or garbled (like Nostradamus' ramblings, for example). It must be detailed, specific and unambiguous in its prediction and wording.
- If the prophecy is trivial. Anyone could predict that it will be cold next winter, or that this drought/plague/flood will eventually subside. The prophecy must predict something surprising, unlikely or unique.
- If the prophecy is obviously contrived for other reasons. No official seer or court astrologer ever predicted that the king he worked for would be a brutal, evil tyrant who would ruin the country.
- If the prophecy is self-fulfilling; i.e., if the mere fact of the prophecy's existence could cause people to make it come true. The Jewish people returned to their homeland in Israel just as the Bible said they would, but this isn't a genuine prediction - they did it because the Bible said they would. The predicted event can't be one that people could stage.
- If the prophecy predicts an event that already happened and the writing of the prophecy itself can't be shown to have preceded the event.
- If the prophecy predicts an event that already happened and the happening of that event can't be verified by independent evidence. For example, Christian apologists claim that Jesus fulfilled many Old Testament prophecies, but the authors of the New Testament obviously had access to those prophecies also; what would have prevented them from writing their story to conform to them? The extra-biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus is so scanty that it is impossible to disprove such a proposal.
- And finally, if the prophecy is the lone success among a thousand failures. Anyone can throw prophecies against the wall until one sticks. The book or other source from which it comes must have at least a decently good record on other predictions.
These conditions, I think, are eminently reasonable, and are only what would be expected of a true prophet with a genuine gift.
- If the prophecy is vague, unclear or garbled (like Nostradamus' ramblings, for example). It must be detailed, specific and unambiguous in its prediction and wording.
- Scientific knowledge in holy books that wasn't available at the time.
If the Bible (or any other religious text) contained some piece of knowledge that the people of the time couldn't possibly have known but that is now known to be true, that would be highly convincing to me. A passage about the atomic theory of matter or the heliocentric solar system would be interesting, but not conclusive, since the Greeks, for example, proposed those ideas long ago independent of any claim to divine revelation. A mention of the theory of evolution would have been impressive. A reference to the germ theory of disease, or the laws of electromagnetics, would have been compelling. But what would be indisputable proof would be an elucidation of a truly modern theory of physics, such as relativity or quantum mechanics - not just something that the people of the time couldn't possibly have known of, but something so counter-intuitive that the odds against guessing at it correctly would be staggering. Just think: What if Jesus had said something like this?"Verily, verily, I say unto thee that thine energy is as thine mass times the speed of light multiplied unto itself."
Of course people of the time would have been baffled, but just imagine how many souls it would have saved today. As with the prophecy item, there must be independent verification that the piece of knowledge was written in texts that existed well before it was actually discovered by science.
- Miraculous occurrences, especially if brought about through prayer.
If cities condemned as sinful by preachers tended to explode in flames for no apparent reason, if glowing auras of holy light sometimes appeared around believers to protect them from harm, or if atheists and only atheists were regularly struck by lightning, this would be compelling proof. But it wouldn't have to be so dramatic; even minor but objectively verifiable miracles would do, especially if they could be invoked by prayer. If a hospital did a double-blind study to determine if intercessory prayer helps the sick, and it was discovered that only the patients prayed for by members of a certain religion experienced a dramatic, statistically significant increase in recovery rate, and this result could be repeated and confirmed, I would convert. This one shouldn't be so hard, especially for the Christians - after all, Jesus told them that they would be able to work miracles through prayer! - Any direct manifestation of the divine.
I'm not that hard to convert; I'll be happy to believe in God if he tells me to in person, as long as he does it in such a way that I could be sure that it was not a hallucination (for example, in the presence of multiple reliable witnesses, none of which are in a highly emotional or otherwise altered state). Where are the voices speaking out of burning bushes, or out of thin air when people get baptized? In Old Testament times, Moses saw God so often that he knew him on a first-name basis. Why doesn't this happen any more today? - Aliens who believed in the exact same religion.
And one more, though this one is just a bit off the wall. If humanity was to contact an extraterrestrial civilization, and if said extraterrestrials had a religion that was exactly like some religion on Earth, I would become a believer. (Though it would raise some interesting theological problems for Christians. Does Jesus have to travel to every planet in the universe individually, dying and being resurrected on each one?)
The second category deals with things that would not be conclusive, but that would count as circumstantial evidence. Show me one of these and I might not convert right away, but your religion will look a lot better to me.
- A genuinely flawless and consistent holy book.
True inerrancy is, so to speak, the holy grail of theism. Almost every religion claims their scripture is perfect, but none that I know of have actually met this exacting standard; I have yet to read a holy text entirely without error or self-contradiction. A book that was free of such problems would be circumstantial evidence in favor of the religion that possessed it, but not compelling, since this is still explicable as the result of purely human forces. - A religion without internal disputes or factions.
It seems reasonable to expect that, if there existed a god that was interested in revealing itself to humanity and desired that we follow its commands, that god would write down whatever instructions it had to give us in a way that was only amenable to one interpretation. Thus, if a religion was true, we might expect that no factions or sects would form within it and all members of that religion would speak with one voice regarding ethical and theological issues. Why the alternative scenario should ever hold for an inspired religion is not clear. Did God intend to communicate his message clearly but failed to do so? However, since this could still be the result of human influence, it would only be circumstantial, not conclusive, evidence in favor of a given religion's truth. - A religion whose followers have never committed or taken part in atrocities.
If a given religion's sacred text consistently promotes peace, compassion and nonviolence, and if that religion's history reflects that fact, that religion would look much more attractive to me. Historically, almost every religion that has ever had the power to do so has persecuted those who believed differently, and I do not think it likely that a morally good deity would allow his chosen faith's good name to be smeared by evil and fallible humans. - A religion that had a consistent record of winning its jihads and holy wars.
Strangely, none do. One can only wonder why.
The final category deals with things that would not convince me; none of the following would persuade me to rethink my position. To date, all the evidence I have ever seen presented for any religion falls into this category.
- Speaking in tongues or other pseudo-miracles.
To convince me, a miracle would have to be genuine, verifiable, and represent a real and inexplicable divergence from the ordinary. Anything that can be explained by peer pressure, the power of suggestion or the placebo effect does not count. Favorable coincidences or kind or courageous acts performed by human beings also do not meet this standard. Seeing the Virgin Mary in a water stain or Mother Teresa in a piece of pastry is not impressive. Nor is glossolalia, not even if it really sounds like a language. And faith healing, or people being "slain in the Spirit" and toppling over, owes more to showmanship and the placebo effect used on eager-to-please individuals that have been worked up into highly excitable, suggestible states. (Now, if faith healers could restore severed limbs...) - People's conversion stories.
I'm not interested in the testimonials of people who converted to a religion, not even if they used to be atheists. Everyone has moments of weakness in which emotion overrides logic. Instead of telling me how fast a religion is growing, how much of a difference it's made in people's lives, or how devoted its converts are, let those converts explain what logic and evidence persuaded them to join in the first place. If they can't do this, their stories will not affect me. After all, for obvious reasons, atheists are almost never the sort of people who go along with the crowd. - Any subjective experience.
Saying "I know God exists because I can feel him in my heart" or something similar will not affect me. Most arguments of this sort rest on the assumption that a person cannot have a completely convincing subjective experience and be mistaken regarding its cause, but a look at the diversity of world religions easily disproves this. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists - members of all faiths claim to have had convincing subjective experiences of the truth of that faith. Obviously, they cannot all be right. Why should an atheist accept any one of these testimonies as more valid than any other? - The Bible Code or similar numerological feats.
Using the same algorithms employed by the Bible Code numerologists, skeptics have been able to find assassinations and other historical events "predicted" in Moby Dick, War and Peace and other works of fiction that don't claim divine inspiration, so don't expect it to impress me.
Credit goes to ebonmusings.org for the list. I just didn't feel like typing it all out again.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Phantom Menace
Mike's question for this week is basically "whence cometh evil" which, let's be serious, is a very difficult question to answer. But then he pairs. It up with an even tougher jab, "what is evil?" This question is a fantastic one for someone whose morality had to be reconstructed when he rejected the morals of his former religion. So I will start by answering "what is evil" as seriously as possible and "whence it cometh" will follow naturally.
Star Wars. Were the Sith evil? I would say no. The Sith were merely motivated. They did everything in their power to increase their personal triumphs. To them the Force was a tool, not the burden that Jedi saw it as. But the Jedi considered them evil. Why?
Let's move on to the Godwin example before it's pulled on me. Were Hitler and the Nazis evil? Not at all. They had the best interests of their country in mind. The Holocaust to them was a means to an end. Stalin, too, was not evil despite his murder of two dozen million people. This does not justify mass murder. In no way do I condone murdering someone to further your position in life. Killing is wrong but it is not evil.
Which is a difficult distinction to make for many. Evil and moral wrongdoing are in no way related. Why? Because evil
does not exist.
No, evil is nothing more than the misunderstanding of an alternative ideology. Many fundamentalists would call me evil for my atheism. I posit that they simply don't "get" my reasoning and therefore fear it. The same goes for the Jedi, they didn't want to lose their recruits to truism that they feared and didn't understand. Hitler is a more difficult answer because he actively was doing his deeds for power. But that doesn't make him evil, just in the wrong. Evil is, more than anything, a label used to instill fear and hatred in the hearts and minds of those who share that belief.
Whence cometh evil? Ignorance. How do we extinguish it? Education.
Star Wars. Were the Sith evil? I would say no. The Sith were merely motivated. They did everything in their power to increase their personal triumphs. To them the Force was a tool, not the burden that Jedi saw it as. But the Jedi considered them evil. Why?
Let's move on to the Godwin example before it's pulled on me. Were Hitler and the Nazis evil? Not at all. They had the best interests of their country in mind. The Holocaust to them was a means to an end. Stalin, too, was not evil despite his murder of two dozen million people. This does not justify mass murder. In no way do I condone murdering someone to further your position in life. Killing is wrong but it is not evil.
Which is a difficult distinction to make for many. Evil and moral wrongdoing are in no way related. Why? Because evil
does not exist.
No, evil is nothing more than the misunderstanding of an alternative ideology. Many fundamentalists would call me evil for my atheism. I posit that they simply don't "get" my reasoning and therefore fear it. The same goes for the Jedi, they didn't want to lose their recruits to truism that they feared and didn't understand. Hitler is a more difficult answer because he actively was doing his deeds for power. But that doesn't make him evil, just in the wrong. Evil is, more than anything, a label used to instill fear and hatred in the hearts and minds of those who share that belief.
Whence cometh evil? Ignorance. How do we extinguish it? Education.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Phi
1.68
It's called the perfect ratio. If you measure each part of your body (finger tip to first knuckle, first knuckle to second) and divide the long by the short you should get closer and closer to this number, called phi. If you look at architecture and mathematics (the Fibonacci Sequence) phi keeps coming up. What comes up even more is phi's appearance in spirals, particularly natural ones like those in sunflowers.
Just an aside, I wanted my cryptic title and its reference to spirals to be clear.
My atheism started young. I got really interested in mythology and soon realized that these stories were revered and the characters worshiped. I realized that these characters were not gods but my God was real...but what made them different? Both were in books, old, old books. Both were worshiped for a long time. What made the difference? I pushed it out of my mind and just enjoyed the stories.
But the big thing was the poor logic behind the penal salvation. How could someone else's sacrifice save me from my sins? How does someone ELSE'S loss give me the right to live freely despite my wrongdoings? Shouldn't I be the one who is accountable?
From there I put aside Greek mythology and picked up Judeo-Christian mythology. There were so many inconsistencies in God's holy word and historical problems. Why didn't people realize that the Romans reinforced Jerusalem during the times of celebration like Passover? Why were Jesus' ancestries different lengths and consisted of different people. I couldn't understand.
So I turned to science to help. I learned economics first. It specifically says to put ourselves before others. It made sense why. It made sense how it would work for everybody. So why did that contradict God, the omniscient? I then learned physics and how omnipotence isn't possible. Philosophy taught how omnipotence and omniscience can't exist at the same time.
By the time I called myself an atheist I was a sophomore in High School. I had just joined the Youth Ministry Council. The entire time I was learning I had been flailing for scripture and counsel. I clung to the Bible as my spiral deepened. The Bible was the cement around my shoes. I tried to save myself. I cried every night and every day.
Actually, this brings me to a funny point. I consider the process of losing your faith similar to throwing up. You feel like crap all day and it keeps getting worse and worse steadily. After a while it's unbearable and you feel at your worst as you finally vomit. Immediately you feel amazing again and there's this huge mess in front of you that needs to be cleaned up before someone else slips in it.
When I lost God I lost about 30 lbs, depression medication, my black hole of confidence and a horrible spiral. I lost a feeling of regret that I didn't know my specific purpose. I lost my fear of death.
God's been better to me when he doesn't exist than he has in a long, long time.
It's called the perfect ratio. If you measure each part of your body (finger tip to first knuckle, first knuckle to second) and divide the long by the short you should get closer and closer to this number, called phi. If you look at architecture and mathematics (the Fibonacci Sequence) phi keeps coming up. What comes up even more is phi's appearance in spirals, particularly natural ones like those in sunflowers.
Just an aside, I wanted my cryptic title and its reference to spirals to be clear.
My atheism started young. I got really interested in mythology and soon realized that these stories were revered and the characters worshiped. I realized that these characters were not gods but my God was real...but what made them different? Both were in books, old, old books. Both were worshiped for a long time. What made the difference? I pushed it out of my mind and just enjoyed the stories.
But the big thing was the poor logic behind the penal salvation. How could someone else's sacrifice save me from my sins? How does someone ELSE'S loss give me the right to live freely despite my wrongdoings? Shouldn't I be the one who is accountable?
From there I put aside Greek mythology and picked up Judeo-Christian mythology. There were so many inconsistencies in God's holy word and historical problems. Why didn't people realize that the Romans reinforced Jerusalem during the times of celebration like Passover? Why were Jesus' ancestries different lengths and consisted of different people. I couldn't understand.
So I turned to science to help. I learned economics first. It specifically says to put ourselves before others. It made sense why. It made sense how it would work for everybody. So why did that contradict God, the omniscient? I then learned physics and how omnipotence isn't possible. Philosophy taught how omnipotence and omniscience can't exist at the same time.
By the time I called myself an atheist I was a sophomore in High School. I had just joined the Youth Ministry Council. The entire time I was learning I had been flailing for scripture and counsel. I clung to the Bible as my spiral deepened. The Bible was the cement around my shoes. I tried to save myself. I cried every night and every day.
Actually, this brings me to a funny point. I consider the process of losing your faith similar to throwing up. You feel like crap all day and it keeps getting worse and worse steadily. After a while it's unbearable and you feel at your worst as you finally vomit. Immediately you feel amazing again and there's this huge mess in front of you that needs to be cleaned up before someone else slips in it.
When I lost God I lost about 30 lbs, depression medication, my black hole of confidence and a horrible spiral. I lost a feeling of regret that I didn't know my specific purpose. I lost my fear of death.
God's been better to me when he doesn't exist than he has in a long, long time.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Unfortunate Events
There are times in my life that I truly wish I believed in God. What Mike asks is about one of those times. Luckily, there has never been a time I've had to kneel beside a dying child's bed and say anything. I've never been in that situation. That hypothetical is important to me, though. The following is a little something I've put together in case I'm ever in that situation.
"I love you and I always will."
I might go on from there about whoever else loves them and give them a hug if it's appropriate, hold their hand.
And I do love them. You should know why, you're the Christian out of us. I just take the Christ out of it.
"I love you and I always will."
I might go on from there about whoever else loves them and give them a hug if it's appropriate, hold their hand.
And I do love them. You should know why, you're the Christian out of us. I just take the Christ out of it.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
All of Their Problems Start with Men...
Men-struation
Men-opause
Men-ial labor
It's this kind of joke that I can't stand. I mean, look, they mispronounced "menial." How bad can it get?
Seriously, though, I do consider this to be a major problem in our culture and I actually do blame it on the feminist movement of the 1960's. What really gets my goat is that it is recognized that there are physical, mental and emotional differences between men and women. Men are proactive, women are reactive. For this reason, the standards of success have been lowered for women and now comedians like Molly Shannon and politicians like Hillary Clinton (look how strong she is).
Yes, men are now looked down upon in our culture. Boys are automatically the troublemakers in their classrooms, girls are venerated as being clean and kind and made of sugar and spice (which is totally untrue, according to Jonathan Swift. Both sexes taste the same otherwise he would have specified a difference in his recipes).
This is a problem. Because women think they are better than us (and are constantly reminded that is so in word and deed) they demand more. They ask for more rights. They ask for higher wages (they're equal to men if you analyze economicaly). Today's "strong woman" could potentially be the cause of the inflation boom since the 60's (besides the Fed's actions prior to Dr. V)
I honestly wish I could go into more detail but I'm about to explode as is. This is something that makes me even angrier than racism. Because that's almost what it is.
Just as the NAACP uses racism to defend racism, NOW uses sexism to defend sexism.
Men-opause
Men-ial labor
It's this kind of joke that I can't stand. I mean, look, they mispronounced "menial." How bad can it get?
Seriously, though, I do consider this to be a major problem in our culture and I actually do blame it on the feminist movement of the 1960's. What really gets my goat is that it is recognized that there are physical, mental and emotional differences between men and women. Men are proactive, women are reactive. For this reason, the standards of success have been lowered for women and now comedians like Molly Shannon and politicians like Hillary Clinton (look how strong she is).
Yes, men are now looked down upon in our culture. Boys are automatically the troublemakers in their classrooms, girls are venerated as being clean and kind and made of sugar and spice (which is totally untrue, according to Jonathan Swift. Both sexes taste the same otherwise he would have specified a difference in his recipes).
This is a problem. Because women think they are better than us (and are constantly reminded that is so in word and deed) they demand more. They ask for more rights. They ask for higher wages (they're equal to men if you analyze economicaly). Today's "strong woman" could potentially be the cause of the inflation boom since the 60's (besides the Fed's actions prior to Dr. V)
I honestly wish I could go into more detail but I'm about to explode as is. This is something that makes me even angrier than racism. Because that's almost what it is.
Just as the NAACP uses racism to defend racism, NOW uses sexism to defend sexism.
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