vox

Dogmatic Bullshit

This is a bit ranty. Hopefully I won't offend too many people, but I'm sure I will irk a couple people at least.

-Cary

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I have to say that I'm dreadfully tired of supposed rationalists, freethinkers et cetera who make ragingly dogmatic statements in their debates, blog posts, and so on.

Seriously people? Think a little. It doesn't take long to realize that saying 'no gods exist' is just as bullshit a claim to knowledge we don't have as 'my god exists' is. Don't get me wrong, I think the odds of any sort of activist deity being real are about a googleplex to one, but a) that's not zero, and b) there are assload of other conceptions of deities.

Next, must they paint all believers - who come in myriads (literally! there are apparently 30,000+ theologically distinct versions of Christianity alone) of levels of biblical literalness, evangelicalness, tolerance, and so on all - as fundamentalist, intolerant evangelicals? Are they paying any attention whatsoever to the real world and the people on it? Because if they are, they're apparently not on Earth.

Sure, fundamentalist/intolerant evangelicals are a blight upon the human race and moderates give them cover. But making blindingly inaccurate generalizations is hardly the way to convince anyone of that. No, that will in fact just let the listeners know that the speaker can't be bothered with facts.

But, the real kicker here is that these people people, who have now painted themselves into a dogmatic, factually lacking, over-generalizing corner, have the chutzpah to piss and moan about the dogma and dismissal of facts of believers. As if, for some inane reason, religious dogma deserves criticism while their personal brand of it does not.

Any bullshit dogma pushed on someone else deserves all the derision and criticism it gets regardless of whether it's yours, mine, your neighbors, religious, political, economical, sociological, medical or anything else.

It's the belief in bullshit that's the issue here, not the source of it. If we can get people thinking critically and rationally, that neatly undermines any of sources.

But the bottom line here is: THINK. Really think. Don't make bullshit statements because all they do is undermine your position and distract from the matter at hand.

Atheism, Hitler and Debating

Though not an atheist topic by any means, it's a virtual certainty that you'll have to debate something with someone at sometime, and if you're open about your atheism, it's a fair chance you'll be debating about your on religion and gods.

One of the easiest traps to fall into when debating someone is to let them lead you off into debating things which are not relevant to the topic at hand. Often your opponent will use something emotionally charged to abet this attempt.

Sometimes your opponent will do this deliberately, sometimes subconsciously. Either way, though, it's important to recognize the tactic. Firstly, of course, you want to avoid being led astray. Secondly, when your opponent resorts to it, it usually means he or she is out of 'good' (meaning relevant, basically) arguments, so it lets you know you have them on the ropes, so to speak.

I'll use as an example something that came up recently and which I tried, and failed to explain to a friend via tweets (so, that I failed to do so in 140 character chunks is hopefully less surprising than it might be otherwise). As atheists like to cite the many atrocities carried out in religion's name, religious defenders like to counter that, for example, Stalin, Mao and/or Hitler were atheists.
That a lack of belief in the supernatural drove any of these people to do what they did has been refuted elsewhere, so I'm not going to bother discussion that issue, or Stalin or Mao, both of whom would seem to have been atheists. Hitler, however, is particularly emotionally charged for most westerners, and the fact that he professed to be Roman Catholic makes it oh so very tempting to jump on this aspect of the argument.

But are Hitler's religious beliefs or lack thereof relevant? At the outset of the debate, no. Remember, the theistic stance is that atheism is bad, and Stalin, Hitler, and so on are evidence of this. By 'skipping ahead' to point out Hitler was not an atheist, you've missed the point, and in fact implies you've accepted the point.

How so? Because, in this context, unless you concede that atheism was responsible for Hitler's actions, whether he was an atheist or not is quite simply irrelevant. What possible reason would you have to tossing Hitler out of the atheist team when you are still stuck with Mao and Stalin as well as the argument that atheism is somehow 'bad'. You need to either refute the assertion that atheism is bad, or to explain these tyrants' actions some other way, not argue they weren't atheists.

Now, depending on what your goal is in the debate, you may want to bring up Hitler's apparently Roman Catholicism. It's not a bad tactic to do so after you've established your stance on whether atheism is bad. Then you can use the error as a way to attack your opponent's cherry picking or crappy research skills (which are almost always relevant to a debate).

The bottom line here is to think carefully about the implications of what you say when you debate. Be wary of being led astray or into a corner. Good debaters can and will try to do this with you deliberately and bad debaters will do it accidentally simply by ignorantly bringing up irrelevant points.

What if I'm wrong?

There are many refutations of implications of this question, known as Pascal's Wager. I've read a few of them, I'll definitely be repeating aspects of them here, in my sharing of my personal take on this polemic.

I believe, as Carl Sagan put it, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Claims that an all (or nearly all) powerful/knowing being created this reality and demands our worship and that if he doesn't get it he'll punish us eternally are extraordinary indeed. There are a multitude of variations on this claim, and they're all extraordinary, some more, some less, but extraordinary nonetheless. At worst they fly in the face of biology, physics, astronomy and/or history. At best they lack evidence yet compel adherents to irrational belief and behavior based upon it. I should say that I'm not concerned in this with beliefs so bland and abstract as to be all but meaningless for obvious reasons.

Could I be wrong? Of course. To deny any possibility that something exists for lack of evidence only is ridiculous. I simply require some positive (extraordinary) evidence for the extraordinary claim.

So, to our question: what if I am wrong? What if, by not believing I am risking my immortal soul, reincarnation as an ant, or whatever?

My response to this is to turn the question back: what if you're wrong? What if you are risking post-mortem punishment by believing in the wrong mythology? Out of all the thousands of mythologies and variations there on, none of which have been shown to be objectively true, what are the odds you've chosen the correct one?

My position at least is objective and defensible. That of a Super, a believer in the supernatural, is not in any sense objective. When beliefs lack evidence, picking which to adhere to is a subjective decision, valid only for the chooser. Adherence to a set of superstitious beliefs is the same is having favorite musical artist or color. Expecting me to be convinced that Jainism is true because anyone holds it as a cherished belief is no different than expecting me to hold that chartreuse is the best color just because 80% of someone's wardrobe is the color of a tennis ball.

On Morals, Religion and Objectivity

One of the arguments for religion, in one form or another, is that without some sort of god or gods we have nothing to base our morals upon, nothing to inform us what is right and wrong. Since I've gotten into a couple debates about this, it's in my head, so I figured I'd write down my basic argument.

There seems to be a great deal of wrangling with Supers over this, more than the issue warrants in my estimation. I say this not because I'm a moral relativist, or immoral, or anything similar, but because refuting this is quite easy. It all comes down, as it should, to evidence or rather the lack thereof.

From a practical, empirical stand point, we do in fact see a correlation between crime rates, mortality rates, and STD rates with the level of secularism in a society. Despite what theists would wish, the more secular societies have lower rates in all three categories.

The logical argument against the need for supernaturally informed and possibly enforced morals is succinct as well. Clearly, from an objective, evidential stand point there is no 'one true religion'. There is no objective way to decide which religion or supernatural belief system in correct or true. Thus it is impossible to know which religion's morals to follow. The only recourse to tell us which religion's moral system is the 'best' one to use is appeal to non-theistic sources.

The other option is to attempt a synthesis of all religions. However, while it's clear that there is overlap between the various supernatural-based moral systems, they often differ sometimes in mutually exclusive ways. Since we have no objective way to discern which religion is true (or truer than the others) we cannot rely on theism to inform us as to which religion's morals trump which others, either in general or on specific points. Again, this leaves us having to appeal to non-theistic sources.

It seems like a waste of time to use non-theistic sources to sort through the supernatural-based systems when we could just build a naturalistic system straightaway.

Mind you, I'm not saying building an objective moral system is easy, only that religion is a distraction, a dead end for doing it.

Obama's brainwashing revealed

We see the president's "back to school" speech (whitehouse.gov: http://bit.ly/18Zd6a) is every bit as nefarious as the rational voices on the far right warned us. How dare he urge them to stay in school and not watch TV and play on their game consoles all the time. Some cajones he has urging them to engage in a charitable endeavor such as volunteering. And then, cleverly, he asks God to bless us, as if that makes it all okay. How dare that liberal wank Tom Brokaw call their reaction stupid (Meet the Press: http://bit.ly/190ieK).

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I meant also to thank Obama for managing to only mention 'God' twice, and then only at the very end. A nice change from the painful and First Amendment stomping speeches of Bush II,

Just think, someday we might have a president who understands that freedom of religion also means freedom from religion and stop insulting atheists, agnostics, pagans, Buddhists, Taoists and/or who know who else by invoking their monotheism inappropriately.

I Just Sort of Fell into It (My Atheism That Is)

Not too long ago, in an e-mail exchange, a friend from my high school days offered the opinion that my lack of faith (in Christianity as she was a Christian, though my lack extends to all religious faiths) had come about from a bad experience with religion.

My immediate response, which stayed in my head, was a facetious 'yes' and a remark about how much I despised Vacation Bible School. I already found church boring and tedious, to have to go do more of the same ON MY SUMMER VACATION was more than an adolescent could bear. The response I wrote was that my lack of faith came from an intellectual failing of Christianity

Over the weeks since that exchange I've considered the roots of my skepticism and find that the answer I wrote is accurate.

I grew up reading about mythology and reading fantasy novels. (And really, if you think about it, most children's books are fantasy too: talking animals, anthropomorphic tools/vehicles/whatever, and so on.) I mean really, what's more believable? A talking frog and a talking toad being best friends, or an all-powerful guy living in the sky, creating the world, making people from ribs, and then trashing it all because he didn't like how it turned out.

I'll take "Frog and Toad Are Friends" over that any day, it's got a better moral and ending. Pitting the stories in the Bible against the mythologies I'd read about had similar results.

The Greek Myths were better too. The deities were egotistical too for sure, but unlike the Christian God they at least didn't have the gall to claim any significant moral superiority; and confined their fits of pique to individuals generally, though occasionally a city might get caught in the middle of a quarrel, but as far as I can recall they never trashed the planet.

In my estimation, the Norse Gods were the whip. Flat out heroic. They wanted to save mankind, and worked to forestall the end times. To them mankind was worth saving a priori, and the heroic among us got the privilege of fighting and dying alongside them at the end. Yeah, most of them die in the final battle and none of those that do come back. That's sacrifice, baby.

The idea that sin could be inherited (i.e. Original Sin in any of its interpretations) seems bizarre to me. That the all- loving and powerful God got bent at the entire human race because an evil snake He created and allowed to live in the paradise He also created successfully tempted a couple of simpletons was ridiculous. Around here we call people who misrepresent themselves, lose their temper over thing that are their fault, and take out their anger by abusing their power over others 'assholes' or worse.

Anyhow, it was all fantasy to me. The differences were in which stories I liked the most. And the ones with the exceptionally hypocritical deity that, for historical happenstance, had been arbitrarily declared the Real McCoy did not come out on top for me. Can you blame me for resenting Bible school?

In the many years since those days my thinking has become a great deal more refined and broad-based of course. I've studied other religions, majored in physics in college and grad school, dabbled in psychology, history and sociology and the core of my skepticism remains the same. I just have better arguments to offer up than that Thor is as believable as Jesus and far cooler in the bargain.

So blame a mom who read a lot to me, my own love of reading, a vivid imagination and skeptical mind for my atheism, but don't think for a second it's an emotional reaction to some religious-grounded trauma.

I am mystified by...

I am mystified by the thanking of God for silver linings (for lack of a better term) but giving him a bye on the causation of the larger situation. For example, someone who sincerely praises God that they survived an earthquake that killed hundreds or thousands and caused millions or more dollars of property damage.

How is He not equally culpable for both?

And if He is to credit for the earthquake, or whatever, that caused such indiscriminate damage, then why would one worship a being that engages in such morally reprehensible acts?

Review of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'

Bram Stoker's Dracula by Fernado Fernandez

 

My review

  rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is, of course, the seminal book of the vampire subgenre, and in that sense any fan of vampire fiction, and probably most horror fans, should give it a read.

It's an epistolary novel, using diary entries, newspaper articles, and telegrams from, by and about the half a dozen or so major characters to tell the tale. (I was unaware of until reading it.) The problem with this, at least in Stoker's case, is that one never really manages a deep connection to the characters. Granted the format makes building that connection difficult, but I have read epistolary novels that have managed it.

Additionally, Stoker's attempt to keep the entries more 'real' (I can't think of better way to say it, and it may not have been a conscious effort in any event) mean there is a great deal of extraneous information which bogs down his already pretty average prose.

Without the presence of its historical significance it's unlikely I'd recommend this novel, but because it is so influential and important I do, with caveats related to the pacing and format mentioned above.
 

View all my reviews.