I want to sound a note of caution here.
There's nothing wrong with Barack Hussein Obama, and his ascension to the highest office in his land is nothing short of a fantastic gesture that shows how far equality has come in America since, as he himself said, his father's time - when said gentleman couldn't get served in many places.
But you know all this - it's all we hear on the news and read in the papers (or in my case on the BBC's excellent website)
I remain concerned however, by the proximity of religion to the office of President. I wrote last year about how disappointed I was that despite everything Obama is supposed to represent...
not by himself, but by the world's starry eyed media - except Fox of course
...The USA will have had both an African-American president and probably a female president before it has an atheist president. Actually, let me rephrase that - an openly atheist president.
Many of the world's most intelligent powerful people must have significant doubts about their supposed religions and I have no doubt that Obama is amongst them. An intelligent educated person must at least have some major questions about the sort of God that allows a whole town or a whole country to be drowned or allows women and children to be bombed for weeks because of a few militant nutters.
That is, unless they subscribe to the argument that New Orleans was flooded because of gays being tolerated there. Although if that's the case, given San Fransisco's proximity to the San Andreas fault I'm surprised it hasn't been dropped into the sea already by this twisted psychopathic logic.
This is beside the point, however.
All I wanted to say was that if a man must outwardly display religion to be voted President of The United States, what sort of separation of church and state is that?
I am hopeful, as most people are, that this new regime will not fall into the trap of equating religon with "right" and secular arguments as "wrong". That's no way to go forward.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
A point of order - isn't Algo an Agnostic?
Well, as the "chair" of this debate one sided as it is, I was watching the rather spiffing free video of "The Four Horsemen" over at the Richard Dawkins Foundation discussing their atheism over what looks like lots of lovely coffee. One of the points they didn't address specifically, but which interests me is the question of where the barrier lies between agnosticism and atheism.
All of the participants in said discussion descibe themselves as atheists, and yet as scientists during this discussion they have to admit the uncertainty principle - that they cannot be 100% sure of anything and must admit that they MAY be wrong.
This miniscule level of uncertainty is used frequently by the other side of the argument to batter atheists (or agnostics if you prefer) as not being able to prove anything and just guessing.
Well... I have always described myself as an Atheist (i.e. I don't believe in God) and yet I too must share the position that, believing in the scientific principles that I do I must admit to the same minute chance that I am wrong.
Even the arch Atheist, Richard Dawkins, is prepared to admit that all it would take to severely wound the conventional wisdom on evolution would be proven human (as in Homo Sapiens) remains dated to the Jurassic period. However, while the current evolutionary thinking would be proven wrong by such an unlkely find, such a finding does not destroy the scientific method.
The scientific method, in stark contrast to this thinking, REQUIRES contradictory evidence to develop new ideas and findings. It is beyond reasonable doubt that while conventional wisdom would be rewritten, a new scientific theory would emerge and explain the data far better than the holy book of any religion would. I would also add that the mechanisms of evolution would not be destroyed by such a finding, only the course of events.
What I would clarify though is that the chances (of humans playing catch with the T Rex, of a God) we are talking about are so absurdly small by any conceivable measures that to treat them as anything other than an infinitesimal dust speck of a fraction of a millionth of a percent would be stupid.
Here are things I consider more likely than the existence of a god:
Needless to say, I view the likelihood of there being an almighty creator who rewards us when we are good and tortures us forever when we are bad as ridiculously unlikely. I regard it as millions of times more likely a creator would be some kind of hyper evolved Alien than a benign supernatural deity and the old Athur C Clarke saying goes -
Think of a line... we're going to call it a continuum.
In the following (rubbish) figures, Belief is blue, Agnosticism is Red and Atheism is green.
Rather than thinking of belief as a three option questionairre (belief, agnostic, atheism) think of it as a continuum where absolute 100% belief is at one end and 100% atheism is at the other. Where is Agnosticism on this scale? Surely, somewhere in the middle? Think of several different possibilities... if agnosticism is not being certain of anything, and noone can be sure of anything then EVERYONE is agnostic. Even the current Archbishop of Canterbury probably.
Here it is (fig 1):
Now, think about the difference between someone at a point half an inch in from belief and someone half and inch in from atheism. How do they differ? They certainly do, but both are Agnostics, they don;t know, but they differ in what their opinion is. There are on amy continuum an infinite number of points mathematically, and any number practically you care to divide it into. The main thing I want to get across is that there is a a long corridor, not three rooms divided by locked doors.
In another version it is divided into thirds - one third belief, one third agnosticism and one third atheism. Is that more like it? (fig 2)
Now agnostics are defined as the middle ground, the Goldilocks porridge of religious debate... I am not happy with this though, since we still have the mushy bit in the boundaries between each word...
The version I have been introduced to frequently (not in these terms) is one where belief is 90 percent of the continuum - anyone who "sort of believes" is counted as a "believer" and counted as religious by those who measure such things (fig 3).
In this continuum the Atheists are only those who absolutely 100% do not believe in God, some are Agnostic but most folks believe to some degree.
Which version is right? In the most simple sense it is entirely fatuous to argue the point and you may feel it's irrelevant semantics.
That is of course your right, but I riff on this subject here just to explain my use of the term.
I don't believe in god or the teachings of those who do - therefore I call myself an Atheist. Ignoring the tiny % possiblity that I am wrong is the same as not referring to myself as believing in talking trees or fairies at the bottom of the garden- hey may be true, but it's not easily conceivable. I'm a bit hazy on the agnostic term, and think it's used either as being pretty much synonymous with the Atheism I describe, or to describe someone for whom the chances are more or less even either way - a fence sitter (or less kindly, as Dawkins feels, a self deluding atheist coward). Consider this alternative (fig 4), where the agnostic represent ONLY the exact 50/50 position. Is that better? Why am I still persisting with these terrible figures?
As you may have guessed this is not my world view, mine is represented as the exact opposite of figure 3, an atheist dominated world, with only the very few actually believing (remember, observing ritual does not make you a believer - belief is very hard to fake) with the agnostics just not letting go of their fence position. This is how I think the world IS, not how I want to make it.
Important note: That's not to say that if you describe yourself as an agnostic then you are nearer the belief side, I say merely that in my world and in the terminology I use on this blog, you're not an agnostic, you're an Atheist.
I am saying that many who believe themselves religious are agnostic, and many who believe themselves agnostic are in fact atheists. Ick.. that sounds controversial...
These continuums also do not include the people (millions of them must exist) for whom the question is irrelevant, who simply don't care. My solution to this? I would claim anyone who doesn't care if there's a God or not as an Atheist in all but name. This is because if you thought there was a God and an afterlife you would care deeply about it - that's part of being a believer!
With those shocking depictions of my inability to use even basic CAD programmes, I bid you goodnight.
Now then... what's your opinion where the boundaries lie? Are we all agnostics? Or is that just a way of avoiding the Jesus Army?
Over to you folks.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
All of the participants in said discussion descibe themselves as atheists, and yet as scientists during this discussion they have to admit the uncertainty principle - that they cannot be 100% sure of anything and must admit that they MAY be wrong.
This miniscule level of uncertainty is used frequently by the other side of the argument to batter atheists (or agnostics if you prefer) as not being able to prove anything and just guessing.
Well... I have always described myself as an Atheist (i.e. I don't believe in God) and yet I too must share the position that, believing in the scientific principles that I do I must admit to the same minute chance that I am wrong.
Even the arch Atheist, Richard Dawkins, is prepared to admit that all it would take to severely wound the conventional wisdom on evolution would be proven human (as in Homo Sapiens) remains dated to the Jurassic period. However, while the current evolutionary thinking would be proven wrong by such an unlkely find, such a finding does not destroy the scientific method.
The scientific method, in stark contrast to this thinking, REQUIRES contradictory evidence to develop new ideas and findings. It is beyond reasonable doubt that while conventional wisdom would be rewritten, a new scientific theory would emerge and explain the data far better than the holy book of any religion would. I would also add that the mechanisms of evolution would not be destroyed by such a finding, only the course of events.
What I would clarify though is that the chances (of humans playing catch with the T Rex, of a God) we are talking about are so absurdly small by any conceivable measures that to treat them as anything other than an infinitesimal dust speck of a fraction of a millionth of a percent would be stupid.
Here are things I consider more likely than the existence of a god:
- A brick gaining sentience and establishing its own version of Pythagorian mathematical theories.
- An invasion of Earth by aliens who by an obscure chance look exactly like us.
- Gravity suddenly reversing
- A sudden confluence of atoms creates an exact sphere out of thin air
Needless to say, I view the likelihood of there being an almighty creator who rewards us when we are good and tortures us forever when we are bad as ridiculously unlikely. I regard it as millions of times more likely a creator would be some kind of hyper evolved Alien than a benign supernatural deity and the old Athur C Clarke saying goes -
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."of course, he also said
"Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor — but they have few followers now. "But! If I accept the possibilty that God may exist (however unlikely) surely that makes me an Agnostic? If I accept that no-one can be "certain" of anything surely that makes me an agnostic? Well, no.
Think of a line... we're going to call it a continuum.
In the following (rubbish) figures, Belief is blue, Agnosticism is Red and Atheism is green.
Rather than thinking of belief as a three option questionairre (belief, agnostic, atheism) think of it as a continuum where absolute 100% belief is at one end and 100% atheism is at the other. Where is Agnosticism on this scale? Surely, somewhere in the middle? Think of several different possibilities... if agnosticism is not being certain of anything, and noone can be sure of anything then EVERYONE is agnostic. Even the current Archbishop of Canterbury probably.
Here it is (fig 1):
Now, think about the difference between someone at a point half an inch in from belief and someone half and inch in from atheism. How do they differ? They certainly do, but both are Agnostics, they don;t know, but they differ in what their opinion is. There are on amy continuum an infinite number of points mathematically, and any number practically you care to divide it into. The main thing I want to get across is that there is a a long corridor, not three rooms divided by locked doors.
In another version it is divided into thirds - one third belief, one third agnosticism and one third atheism. Is that more like it? (fig 2)
Now agnostics are defined as the middle ground, the Goldilocks porridge of religious debate... I am not happy with this though, since we still have the mushy bit in the boundaries between each word...
The version I have been introduced to frequently (not in these terms) is one where belief is 90 percent of the continuum - anyone who "sort of believes" is counted as a "believer" and counted as religious by those who measure such things (fig 3).
In this continuum the Atheists are only those who absolutely 100% do not believe in God, some are Agnostic but most folks believe to some degree.
Which version is right? In the most simple sense it is entirely fatuous to argue the point and you may feel it's irrelevant semantics.
That is of course your right, but I riff on this subject here just to explain my use of the term.
I don't believe in god or the teachings of those who do - therefore I call myself an Atheist. Ignoring the tiny % possiblity that I am wrong is the same as not referring to myself as believing in talking trees or fairies at the bottom of the garden- hey may be true, but it's not easily conceivable. I'm a bit hazy on the agnostic term, and think it's used either as being pretty much synonymous with the Atheism I describe, or to describe someone for whom the chances are more or less even either way - a fence sitter (or less kindly, as Dawkins feels, a self deluding atheist coward). Consider this alternative (fig 4), where the agnostic represent ONLY the exact 50/50 position. Is that better? Why am I still persisting with these terrible figures?
As you may have guessed this is not my world view, mine is represented as the exact opposite of figure 3, an atheist dominated world, with only the very few actually believing (remember, observing ritual does not make you a believer - belief is very hard to fake) with the agnostics just not letting go of their fence position. This is how I think the world IS, not how I want to make it.
Important note: That's not to say that if you describe yourself as an agnostic then you are nearer the belief side, I say merely that in my world and in the terminology I use on this blog, you're not an agnostic, you're an Atheist.
I am saying that many who believe themselves religious are agnostic, and many who believe themselves agnostic are in fact atheists. Ick.. that sounds controversial...
These continuums also do not include the people (millions of them must exist) for whom the question is irrelevant, who simply don't care. My solution to this? I would claim anyone who doesn't care if there's a God or not as an Atheist in all but name. This is because if you thought there was a God and an afterlife you would care deeply about it - that's part of being a believer!
With those shocking depictions of my inability to use even basic CAD programmes, I bid you goodnight.
Now then... what's your opinion where the boundaries lie? Are we all agnostics? Or is that just a way of avoiding the Jesus Army?
Over to you folks.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
God is only love in the sense that God is also a Cheese Sandwich
A bit of biography to answer a couple of questions. I have noticed that these posts tend to go uncommented and I have wondered why this is, it may well be that they are just too long. Please try and read this one since it may make you better disposed to the others.
Which questions?
Now, as I have also said before, all the schools I went to treated the COE faith as pretty much the foundations of everything, so assemblies were led by the lord's prayer, we sang religious songs and learnt parables, not with any fire and brimstone, but in the same way we learnt about anything, slightly apologetically. I don't think any of my teachers or headmasters were machivellian brainwashing types who after assemblies would sit in their office stroking a white cat and feeling good about poisoning the minds of children. No, this approach is pretty much how they were brought up and if it was good enough for them, why not go on doing it now?
So there's little 6 year old Algo (isn't he cute?) looking for direction and hoping that God would be the answer. Thing is - despite all my wanting and need for comfort against the fear of death that had suddenly overcome me, I cannot remember EVER, for ONE MOMENT actually believing in God. Not for a second.
See, the fact is, wanting to believe does not necessarily lead to belief. I was, I am told, a pretty clever little guy (Joint 35th in the 11+ my year.. in the country! Woot!) and I came up fairly quickly with the proto-arguments I have developed and still refine to this day. Back then i was in the mistaken knowledge that these questions would have the answers I wanted and I could believe in God and be happy clappy and all that. I may even now have been in a Christian rock band now singing "Headbanging For Jesus" if the answers I got from Sunday School (where we went, not because we were sent but, perversely, asked to go to) were any good at overcoming my doubts.
Now the theists amongst you may be thinking now, maybe it was just a poor Sunday School teacher that couldn't answer these questions. This wouldn't be giving me enough credit I'm afraid. As the years went past I have always sought out new arguments on both sides of the debate - at least until recently, when moving to London I actually had to start paying for books I wanted to read for a long time, rather than checking them out of the University library for months. Now I tend to read books that I want to spend the time on, and they tend to be ones that give me more depth to my own arguments.
For example - a neo-religious comeback to atheists such as myself is that Atheism is itself a religion of sorts. Until I read Bertrand Russell, Dawkins and even Derren Brown on the subject I would never have had the guts to come back with my now usual answer - "Atheism is a religion only in the same way that religion is a form of Atheism". This isn't just a pseudo-amusing retort, it can be summarised as "by choosing one religion you are atheistic regarding all the others" and also a-atheistic if you want to be really over the top.
So I know most of the accepted Christian counter arguments. I know that there is no way to overcome someone in a mature argument when they believe "faith" to be a trump card when in fact it may well be just a symptom of fear and ignorance.
So why bother? Why do I consistently talk about these subjects? Why don't I just shut up?
It's not, as my mum thinks, I am just a fanatic. I'm really not.
Time to hit up Dictionary.com again.
Fanatic - a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics.
I think in this day and age, non-belief (whether you choose to call it atheism or agnosticism) is pretty much the norm whether people admit that or not so I wouldn't call my views "extreme". They are also not "uncritical". I have examined, re-examined, honed and developed my arguments and have at every opportunity been open to counter arguments.
I am also not prejudiced (even against Keira Knightley, Gary).
1. an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
2. any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.
3. unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, esp. of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group.
I hope looking at these you will follow that only in number 3 is it even possible I am prejudiced, but I'm not - because my feelings, opinions and attitudes about religion (which I presume you are referring to) are not unreasonable, in fact they are very well reasoned over the last twenty years of my life and I am happy to take you through every single reason again whenever you like. (from my response to Gary on the Knightley post)
Religion is not necessarily evil.
There, I said it. May people will say that it is, they are wrong. Evil certainly exists, but it is PEOPLE who are capable of evil and who desire to do evil things. To back this up - James Bulgers murder was horrific. Truly an act of evil. Was it the horror movie's fault as the papers claimed? No. It was two evil children's fault.
Don't even get me started on right and wrong !
Like the horror movie though, religion gives people ideas - it also gives certain people LICENSE to be evil. What religion is guilty of is giving people excuses, for placing a thick "veneer of bullshit" over the real problems. Why is this? Because being evil makes you uncomfortable.
For example, if you took a machine gun and shot twenty Germans dead for no reason you'd be a mass murderer - do it during a war and you get a medal. Well, maybe not if they were still civilians, but you get my point. Context is EVERYTHING when acting in a usually unacceptable manner.
So religion is ideal for despots, monarchs, Ayatollahs and dictators - if they can find someone respected in religious circles to declare them ruler by divine right (hey, you can always find someone willing to do that if you threaten to burn their family alive) then you have the excuse to do absolutely anything you want.
So why do I think religion should be allowed to die? Because it would take away this thick layer of bullshit and make people admit responsibility for all their actions.
That being said, many people will argue that religion has led to more wars and disharmony than any other factor, and I agree. This is because the people who went to war would not be prepared to do so without the excuse religion provides.
Now, even if you subscribe to the "let religion remain a comfort to those who want it", this "excuse for evil" of things more than outweighs any good this supposed comfort may bring.
The other thing is, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins; "just because something is comforting doesn't make it true".
And this goes back to my early years too. I realised that there wasn;t a God fairly early on. I have nuanced my argument a bit since then to accept that under scientific priciples it is impossible to prove that God doesn't exist, since it is semantically impossible to "prove" anything for absolute certainty, since to do so would need an infinite experiment using the entire universe, which is impossible. SO I must accept the miniscule possibility that I am wrong. And I do.
I don't think personally that the acceptance of this miniscule fraction of a likelihood makes me "agnostic" rather than "atheistic" but that's so fine a distinction at this point it scarcely matters.
My very first blog post was on the subject of this possibility (though still under the effects of SSRIs and slightly less focussed than this as it was). The short point of that post is that even if I am wrong and God exists, I woul not deem him worthy of love and worship. In the end he would be just a very advanced alien creature and one with the arrogance and desire to control and punish an entire species based on bizarre rules.
Of course, he may be, as one supposedly enlightened Christian once told me by a bus stop in London (Jesus Army if you asked, by leicester square) simply be a nebulous conglomeration of feelings - "why not just think of love, and call that God?" or "you accept that something caused the big bang that you don't understand, why not call that God?". My counter argument to this is why not call a cheese sandwich, God? Or a walnut whip? Or Algo?
The counter argument to every point I made was - "yes, but the bible says..." and the fact that its in their book was considered enough to overcome all biological, physical and logical arguments to the contrary.
The same Christian asked me if I believed in the teachings of Jesus (big mistake, bozo!) and upon hearing me say no, immediately asked "is it because you had a bad experience at Church?" with all the implication being - "did the reverend touch you?" I was flabbergasted, and not a little confused. Does this idiot (female by the way) really believe that the only reason I don't believe in her God is because I was molested? I'm guessing no, and she was trying to be funny. Anyway, my bus arrived shortly after this, and as it pulled away I saw her try and convert a Hindu. good luck with that.
So by all means have your nebulous god, your "God is Love" if you want. I'll stick with Science.
Oooh. Another interesting question. Why do I trust Science? Isn't Science just a "faith", too?
Well, frankly no. And the person who first thought of that argument is a fool.
Faith whether you are for it or against it, is the acceptance of things that can't be true with no hard evidence to back them up. Science is the exact opposite. Science is the questioning of ANY accepted truth and testing it and finding hard evidence to support or refute a hypothesis. It is impossible for me to think of anything less like faith than Science.
I remember watching Christopher Hitchens being interveiwed on The Daily Show and he stated that Faith is the most overrated "virtue" in the world. I absolutely agree with that. The next president of the United States is unable to be an Atheist - he must be a man of faith in order to even be nominated for the presidency.
Think about that. The most powerful man on the planet has to be someone who as a matter of everyday life, believes in things 100% without any evidence to back them up. So the president has to be at least a little bit out of touch with reality.
This is why I willdo my bit in exposing the idiocy and madness of allowing religion into our lives. When the man in charge of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world believes in the same book that helped lead to the crusades, I start getting a twitch in my brain.
Anyway, I hope this has at least been interesting and explained why I believe what I do and wasn't too dull.
I haven't gone into detail on each individual anti-theistic argument since that's what all my other religion posts cover, so if you are interested in further reading on this subject even to present me with counter arguments (I'd love to hear some good ones, I've been waiting twenty years) then you can find a keyword link that will sort al of the religion articles together in the top right of the main blog pages.
Thanks for reading.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Which questions?
- Why don't I believe in Gods, religions and religious teaching?
- Why do I keep going on about it?
- Why am I actively Anti-Theistic and don't just live and let live?
Now, as I have also said before, all the schools I went to treated the COE faith as pretty much the foundations of everything, so assemblies were led by the lord's prayer, we sang religious songs and learnt parables, not with any fire and brimstone, but in the same way we learnt about anything, slightly apologetically. I don't think any of my teachers or headmasters were machivellian brainwashing types who after assemblies would sit in their office stroking a white cat and feeling good about poisoning the minds of children. No, this approach is pretty much how they were brought up and if it was good enough for them, why not go on doing it now?
So there's little 6 year old Algo (isn't he cute?) looking for direction and hoping that God would be the answer. Thing is - despite all my wanting and need for comfort against the fear of death that had suddenly overcome me, I cannot remember EVER, for ONE MOMENT actually believing in God. Not for a second.
See, the fact is, wanting to believe does not necessarily lead to belief. I was, I am told, a pretty clever little guy (Joint 35th in the 11+ my year.. in the country! Woot!) and I came up fairly quickly with the proto-arguments I have developed and still refine to this day. Back then i was in the mistaken knowledge that these questions would have the answers I wanted and I could believe in God and be happy clappy and all that. I may even now have been in a Christian rock band now singing "Headbanging For Jesus" if the answers I got from Sunday School (where we went, not because we were sent but, perversely, asked to go to) were any good at overcoming my doubts.
Now the theists amongst you may be thinking now, maybe it was just a poor Sunday School teacher that couldn't answer these questions. This wouldn't be giving me enough credit I'm afraid. As the years went past I have always sought out new arguments on both sides of the debate - at least until recently, when moving to London I actually had to start paying for books I wanted to read for a long time, rather than checking them out of the University library for months. Now I tend to read books that I want to spend the time on, and they tend to be ones that give me more depth to my own arguments.
For example - a neo-religious comeback to atheists such as myself is that Atheism is itself a religion of sorts. Until I read Bertrand Russell, Dawkins and even Derren Brown on the subject I would never have had the guts to come back with my now usual answer - "Atheism is a religion only in the same way that religion is a form of Atheism". This isn't just a pseudo-amusing retort, it can be summarised as "by choosing one religion you are atheistic regarding all the others" and also a-atheistic if you want to be really over the top.
So I know most of the accepted Christian counter arguments. I know that there is no way to overcome someone in a mature argument when they believe "faith" to be a trump card when in fact it may well be just a symptom of fear and ignorance.
So why bother? Why do I consistently talk about these subjects? Why don't I just shut up?
It's not, as my mum thinks, I am just a fanatic. I'm really not.
Time to hit up Dictionary.com again.
Fanatic - a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics.
I think in this day and age, non-belief (whether you choose to call it atheism or agnosticism) is pretty much the norm whether people admit that or not so I wouldn't call my views "extreme". They are also not "uncritical". I have examined, re-examined, honed and developed my arguments and have at every opportunity been open to counter arguments.
I am also not prejudiced (even against Keira Knightley, Gary).
1. an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
2. any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.
3. unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, esp. of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group.
I hope looking at these you will follow that only in number 3 is it even possible I am prejudiced, but I'm not - because my feelings, opinions and attitudes about religion (which I presume you are referring to) are not unreasonable, in fact they are very well reasoned over the last twenty years of my life and I am happy to take you through every single reason again whenever you like. (from my response to Gary on the Knightley post)
Religion is not necessarily evil.
There, I said it. May people will say that it is, they are wrong. Evil certainly exists, but it is PEOPLE who are capable of evil and who desire to do evil things. To back this up - James Bulgers murder was horrific. Truly an act of evil. Was it the horror movie's fault as the papers claimed? No. It was two evil children's fault.
Don't even get me started on right and wrong !
Like the horror movie though, religion gives people ideas - it also gives certain people LICENSE to be evil. What religion is guilty of is giving people excuses, for placing a thick "veneer of bullshit" over the real problems. Why is this? Because being evil makes you uncomfortable.
For example, if you took a machine gun and shot twenty Germans dead for no reason you'd be a mass murderer - do it during a war and you get a medal. Well, maybe not if they were still civilians, but you get my point. Context is EVERYTHING when acting in a usually unacceptable manner.
So religion is ideal for despots, monarchs, Ayatollahs and dictators - if they can find someone respected in religious circles to declare them ruler by divine right (hey, you can always find someone willing to do that if you threaten to burn their family alive) then you have the excuse to do absolutely anything you want.
So why do I think religion should be allowed to die? Because it would take away this thick layer of bullshit and make people admit responsibility for all their actions.
That being said, many people will argue that religion has led to more wars and disharmony than any other factor, and I agree. This is because the people who went to war would not be prepared to do so without the excuse religion provides.
Now, even if you subscribe to the "let religion remain a comfort to those who want it", this "excuse for evil" of things more than outweighs any good this supposed comfort may bring.
The other thing is, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins; "just because something is comforting doesn't make it true".
And this goes back to my early years too. I realised that there wasn;t a God fairly early on. I have nuanced my argument a bit since then to accept that under scientific priciples it is impossible to prove that God doesn't exist, since it is semantically impossible to "prove" anything for absolute certainty, since to do so would need an infinite experiment using the entire universe, which is impossible. SO I must accept the miniscule possibility that I am wrong. And I do.
I don't think personally that the acceptance of this miniscule fraction of a likelihood makes me "agnostic" rather than "atheistic" but that's so fine a distinction at this point it scarcely matters.
My very first blog post was on the subject of this possibility (though still under the effects of SSRIs and slightly less focussed than this as it was). The short point of that post is that even if I am wrong and God exists, I woul not deem him worthy of love and worship. In the end he would be just a very advanced alien creature and one with the arrogance and desire to control and punish an entire species based on bizarre rules.
Of course, he may be, as one supposedly enlightened Christian once told me by a bus stop in London (Jesus Army if you asked, by leicester square) simply be a nebulous conglomeration of feelings - "why not just think of love, and call that God?" or "you accept that something caused the big bang that you don't understand, why not call that God?". My counter argument to this is why not call a cheese sandwich, God? Or a walnut whip? Or Algo?
The counter argument to every point I made was - "yes, but the bible says..." and the fact that its in their book was considered enough to overcome all biological, physical and logical arguments to the contrary.
The same Christian asked me if I believed in the teachings of Jesus (big mistake, bozo!) and upon hearing me say no, immediately asked "is it because you had a bad experience at Church?" with all the implication being - "did the reverend touch you?" I was flabbergasted, and not a little confused. Does this idiot (female by the way) really believe that the only reason I don't believe in her God is because I was molested? I'm guessing no, and she was trying to be funny. Anyway, my bus arrived shortly after this, and as it pulled away I saw her try and convert a Hindu. good luck with that.
So by all means have your nebulous god, your "God is Love" if you want. I'll stick with Science.
Oooh. Another interesting question. Why do I trust Science? Isn't Science just a "faith", too?
Well, frankly no. And the person who first thought of that argument is a fool.
Faith whether you are for it or against it, is the acceptance of things that can't be true with no hard evidence to back them up. Science is the exact opposite. Science is the questioning of ANY accepted truth and testing it and finding hard evidence to support or refute a hypothesis. It is impossible for me to think of anything less like faith than Science.
I remember watching Christopher Hitchens being interveiwed on The Daily Show and he stated that Faith is the most overrated "virtue" in the world. I absolutely agree with that. The next president of the United States is unable to be an Atheist - he must be a man of faith in order to even be nominated for the presidency.
Think about that. The most powerful man on the planet has to be someone who as a matter of everyday life, believes in things 100% without any evidence to back them up. So the president has to be at least a little bit out of touch with reality.
This is why I willdo my bit in exposing the idiocy and madness of allowing religion into our lives. When the man in charge of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world believes in the same book that helped lead to the crusades, I start getting a twitch in my brain.
Anyway, I hope this has at least been interesting and explained why I believe what I do and wasn't too dull.
I haven't gone into detail on each individual anti-theistic argument since that's what all my other religion posts cover, so if you are interested in further reading on this subject even to present me with counter arguments (I'd love to hear some good ones, I've been waiting twenty years) then you can find a keyword link that will sort al of the religion articles together in the top right of the main blog pages.
Thanks for reading.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Scientology and Christianity... what's the difference?
Hmm... a quick note, since taking the piss out of Scientologists is a lot like shooting fish in a barrel. My beef today is that there is a perception of Scientology being less "valid" a belief system, than that the more established ones are.
It appears to me that the only difference between these religions is time.
Both are based on books that bear little resemblance to the real world and whose main benefit is to the writers.
Time is a huge factor, and is the method by which quirks become tradition...
I am amazed constantly by how totally devoid of the ability to use their brains the average Scientologist is, I mean - what the hell? They have all the anger and self righteous blindness of those who have been taken in by a very devious Pyramid scheme. And isn't that what Scientology is? A large amount of people paying money in the hope of finding out more? Why not just tell them everything and then they can pay what they think it's worth?
Look, I don't want it to appear I'm wailing on Scientology more than the others - in my mind it has EXACTLY the same validity in and of itself as all the others - precisely none. That being said, anyone who has been confronted with the maniacs in black suits that make up their frontline forces will know they are on a very strange trip. By all means, if any Scientologists read this and are offended, please send me books in PDF format and I'll annotate them for you with all the silliness they deserve, but I'm not going to give you nutters my home address and trust your "personality test" which seems to always require people to give money to your cause... How convenient for you.
Sigh...
A
See the full post by clicking here...
It appears to me that the only difference between these religions is time.
Both are based on books that bear little resemblance to the real world and whose main benefit is to the writers.
Time is a huge factor, and is the method by which quirks become tradition...
I am amazed constantly by how totally devoid of the ability to use their brains the average Scientologist is, I mean - what the hell? They have all the anger and self righteous blindness of those who have been taken in by a very devious Pyramid scheme. And isn't that what Scientology is? A large amount of people paying money in the hope of finding out more? Why not just tell them everything and then they can pay what they think it's worth?
Look, I don't want it to appear I'm wailing on Scientology more than the others - in my mind it has EXACTLY the same validity in and of itself as all the others - precisely none. That being said, anyone who has been confronted with the maniacs in black suits that make up their frontline forces will know they are on a very strange trip. By all means, if any Scientologists read this and are offended, please send me books in PDF format and I'll annotate them for you with all the silliness they deserve, but I'm not going to give you nutters my home address and trust your "personality test" which seems to always require people to give money to your cause... How convenient for you.
Sigh...
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Monday, August 18, 2008
American Gods
So the BBC reported today on the Presidential candidate's appearance at a very cotton wool religious "question and answer" session.
Apparently the millionaire pastor asked a bunch of none too scary questions and basically gave them the forum they need to state their Christian credentials. Of course, John McCain is the favoured candidate of this particular audience, he's the republican after all, and this was a largely white republican audience.
In the article the writer describes how "According to one estimate 1 in 4 Americans describe themselves as born again Christians". Crikey! No wonder the religious angle is so important. That's not even including the "born and stayed Christians" or the "pretending to be Christians".
Why is this a bad thing? Well, it takes time away from real issues - from my point of view that is.
The election of the next US president will have consequences far beyond whether white Christians feel they're represented or not, and from my Euro/Anglocentric POV this whole shebang is a colossal waste of time and may actually be dangerously affecting the already fragile religion/politics balance.
IMHO, Religion and politics should never be allowed to mix anyway, since I don't want anyone with supreme authority over our armed forces who thinks the Earth is only 6000 years old, or that Israel has sole rights to the entire West Bank and Gaza strip simply because that's what their faith says.
Conversely, I also don't want someone in charge of the biggest army in the world who is prepared to pretend he does in order to win votes, either.
Terry Pratchett, in Small Gods, desribes the rise of church doctrine over pure faith very, very well.
In Small Gods, the great god OM is reduced to the form of a tortoise because no-one believed in him any more. The catch being that there's a country called Omnia, run by Om's priests and an inquisition whose sole tasks are to reinforce belief in OM. SO what went wrong? Simple really - people stop believing in the God and start believing in the Church. There is a wonderfully pithy explanation of this in an exchange between OM and his last remaining believer that goes something like this.
And there's another issue. At some point, believing in the Christian God and Messiah became secondary to believing in the book about them. And the thing about book is, if you refute any one of its claims, then, for me at least the book as a whole is very very questionable. And who really believes in
Also, it is my opinion that you can't pick and choose bits of the bible and call yourself a Christian. Either the book is right or it isn't - you don't get do-overs! It's like people claiming to be Catholic but also being Pro Birth Control. You just can't do it.
Sorry to harp on at this subject but it's crucial to the future of our society that we see these methods of self deception for what they are!
That is chiefly, vehicles for validating our own opinions. There's nothing like other people agreeing with you to make you feel special and loved.
So you're a sexist? The bible can back that up.
You're homophobic? Yup!
You're a racist? Yeah it's all here.
You're none of the above? Well, you just ignore the bits you don't like...
I guess the only thing missing as far as the American right are concerned, is a commandment about being allowed to carry guns. Sigh...
I forsee a bleak future for the religion/politics divide in America at least, GWB has almost destroyed it, and if the 12% of undecided voters in America are swung by the religion card then we may have a new holy war on our hands. The Christians against the Muslims again. And it went so well last time, didn't it?
Here's hoping I am totally wrong.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Apparently the millionaire pastor asked a bunch of none too scary questions and basically gave them the forum they need to state their Christian credentials. Of course, John McCain is the favoured candidate of this particular audience, he's the republican after all, and this was a largely white republican audience.
In the article the writer describes how "According to one estimate 1 in 4 Americans describe themselves as born again Christians". Crikey! No wonder the religious angle is so important. That's not even including the "born and stayed Christians" or the "pretending to be Christians".
Why is this a bad thing? Well, it takes time away from real issues - from my point of view that is.
The election of the next US president will have consequences far beyond whether white Christians feel they're represented or not, and from my Euro/Anglocentric POV this whole shebang is a colossal waste of time and may actually be dangerously affecting the already fragile religion/politics balance.
IMHO, Religion and politics should never be allowed to mix anyway, since I don't want anyone with supreme authority over our armed forces who thinks the Earth is only 6000 years old, or that Israel has sole rights to the entire West Bank and Gaza strip simply because that's what their faith says.
Conversely, I also don't want someone in charge of the biggest army in the world who is prepared to pretend he does in order to win votes, either.
Terry Pratchett, in Small Gods, desribes the rise of church doctrine over pure faith very, very well.
In Small Gods, the great god OM is reduced to the form of a tortoise because no-one believed in him any more. The catch being that there's a country called Omnia, run by Om's priests and an inquisition whose sole tasks are to reinforce belief in OM. SO what went wrong? Simple really - people stop believing in the God and start believing in the Church. There is a wonderfully pithy explanation of this in an exchange between OM and his last remaining believer that goes something like this.
OM: You believe I am your god, correct?You follow the analogy, I hope. The religious experience now is one of conforming to church ritual and common belief, instead of focussing on worship of God. I used to work with several people who said they believed in the Bible, despite NEVER HAVING READ IT. They had never heard, for example, the story of the man who hands over his wife and daughter to be raped, so that a mob wouldn't rape a man, because that would be sodomy and much worse (!) Their response was along the lines of "that sounds very old testament, I don't follow the old testament". Actually folks, it's in BOTH! Look it up! These folks also didn;t know that Seven of each animal went onto the ark with Noah, not two (though that's understandable, given all the teachers saying the opposite). Actually, some did go Two by Two, but only the "unclean" ones.
Brutha: Yes.
OM: And you will do whatever I say, correct?
Brutha: Yes.
OM: Then go next door and kill (head of the inquisition) Vorbis.
Brutha: Er...
OM: Why aren't you doing it? I'm your God!
Brutha: Yes, but... he's VORBIS!
And there's another issue. At some point, believing in the Christian God and Messiah became secondary to believing in the book about them. And the thing about book is, if you refute any one of its claims, then, for me at least the book as a whole is very very questionable. And who really believes in
Also, it is my opinion that you can't pick and choose bits of the bible and call yourself a Christian. Either the book is right or it isn't - you don't get do-overs! It's like people claiming to be Catholic but also being Pro Birth Control. You just can't do it.
Sorry to harp on at this subject but it's crucial to the future of our society that we see these methods of self deception for what they are!
That is chiefly, vehicles for validating our own opinions. There's nothing like other people agreeing with you to make you feel special and loved.
So you're a sexist? The bible can back that up.
You're homophobic? Yup!
You're a racist? Yeah it's all here.
You're none of the above? Well, you just ignore the bits you don't like...
I guess the only thing missing as far as the American right are concerned, is a commandment about being allowed to carry guns. Sigh...
I forsee a bleak future for the religion/politics divide in America at least, GWB has almost destroyed it, and if the 12% of undecided voters in America are swung by the religion card then we may have a new holy war on our hands. The Christians against the Muslims again. And it went so well last time, didn't it?
Here's hoping I am totally wrong.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Monday, July 28, 2008
Right And Wrong
So then.. it's been a while since I was serious, so thought it was time for another mental exercise post. Sorry to all those folks who were grateful I had stopped.
One of the common arguments in defence of allowing a religious overtone to political or moral debating and teaching is that religious belief is necessary to provide a firm basis and sense of right and wrong.
But what this argument misses is that right and wrong are not universal concepts, so Christian teaching is necessary to teach Christian views on right and wrong, Islamic teaching would teach the Islamic side of right and wrong and the two would differ in some areas, in some it would differ very little if at all.
This led me to the conclusion at a fairly ealy stage that there are in fact, NO rights and wrongs on a universal scale, that is to say a scale above that of social imposition. This is pretty clear to anyone not of religious faith, since according to most atheists there is no higher consciousness than that of the collective society consciousness.
Lets talk first about what right and wrong are not:
Lets take into account this example:
The law is being reappraised in regard to pleas available in murder cases, specifically those where one spouse has been murdered by the other. Please, if you are interested read the story and this commentary for more information. i am only looking at it from the point of view of this entry, not trying to judge it on its own merits.
It has been suggested and put forward that a defence should be available for those in fear of serious harm or physical danger from their partners should reduce what was previously a finding of murder to a finding of manslaughter.
Of course, this is a very big change in the interpretation of these laws (and is rumoured to be only for use in very rare cases) but is it "right" or "wrong" to make these changes?
I am not going to try and thrash out the whole murder/manslaughter debate here, since I only want to make a point so will try and be brief.
Right and wrong are not univfersal truths, just ask an atheist lady whether she thinks being forced to hide your face and walk behind your husband is "right" or "wrong" yet in many countries this is absolutely right.
So where do rights and wrongs come from, without God or religion?
Simple - the same places God and religions came from - SOCIETY.
Society is more than a group of people living together, it is a vast amalgam of people and families agreeing specifically on what is acceptable and what is not. Your laws are not fixed, nor are they unappeallable. They are falsehoods created to control, willingly I should add, those citizens who make up the society. A criminal is simply someone who for one reason or many has decided to violate the societies agreement on right and wrong and set out on their own.
A good example of this sort of thing is afforded by what are called sociopaths. They represent, because of mental illness, expose exactly what society's imposed law and "acceptable behviour" really are, voluntary arrangements between a government and its people - a sociopath is simply not able to buy into that voluntary arrangement and seeks only what is best for him/herself.
BUT! Are these people to be pitied for their crimes? I would say so, but I also feel, rightly or wrongly (see what I did there) a certain amount of envy that this behaviour (though not the folk who display it) is TRULY free while I remain bound by decades of conformist behaviour.
It follows from my logic here that a TRULY free society (practically impossible and horrifically awful it would be) is one where a permanent state of ANARCHY exists. Noone produces, noone owns anything and there is no law. YUCK!
So is freedom itself "right" or "wrong"?
Or when we talk of freedom are we really talking of freedom of choice between many types of captivity?
There's a question to mull over for you.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
One of the common arguments in defence of allowing a religious overtone to political or moral debating and teaching is that religious belief is necessary to provide a firm basis and sense of right and wrong.
But what this argument misses is that right and wrong are not universal concepts, so Christian teaching is necessary to teach Christian views on right and wrong, Islamic teaching would teach the Islamic side of right and wrong and the two would differ in some areas, in some it would differ very little if at all.
This led me to the conclusion at a fairly ealy stage that there are in fact, NO rights and wrongs on a universal scale, that is to say a scale above that of social imposition. This is pretty clear to anyone not of religious faith, since according to most atheists there is no higher consciousness than that of the collective society consciousness.
Lets talk first about what right and wrong are not:
- "Right" and "wrong" in this case are not synonymous with "correct" and "incorrect", though many make try to force that leap onto them. There are no correct moral choices, merely conforming ones and unconforming ones.
- "Right" and Wrong" are not synonymous with "Good" and "bad" and more than correct and incorrect (or for that matter "correct"/"good" or "incorrect"/"bad") this implies a value judgement which has its bases in society also, and are linked but not directly to these concepts.
- "Right" and "wrong" are not fixed points. This is to say that what was wrong yesterday may not be tomorrow.
- "Right" and wrong" do not exist in a vacuum. All of these judgements link to and affect others.
- "Right" and "wrong" are not FACTS. They are not measurable except by how many people state one preference or the other.
- "Right and wrong" are not synonymous with "lawful and unlawful" though there will be a large amount of cross pollination.
- "Right" and "wrong" are not binary answers. This is the great dumbing down method of the human brain. Most right or wrong feelings relate to the grey areas inbetween the two and the two words merely represent the ends of a single scale.
Lets take into account this example:
The law is being reappraised in regard to pleas available in murder cases, specifically those where one spouse has been murdered by the other. Please, if you are interested read the story and this commentary for more information. i am only looking at it from the point of view of this entry, not trying to judge it on its own merits.
It has been suggested and put forward that a defence should be available for those in fear of serious harm or physical danger from their partners should reduce what was previously a finding of murder to a finding of manslaughter.
Of course, this is a very big change in the interpretation of these laws (and is rumoured to be only for use in very rare cases) but is it "right" or "wrong" to make these changes?
- Most folks believe that killing someone else is wrong. But how wrong?
- "mitigating circumstances" frequently change people's perceptions of just how wrong killing is.
- Note I have used "killing" very deliberately instead of Murder or manslaughter.
I am not going to try and thrash out the whole murder/manslaughter debate here, since I only want to make a point so will try and be brief.
- This is a change of LAW, not of right and wrong. The change in the law does not alter the fundamental issues.
- This propsed change divides people, therefore whether you feel it is right or wrong will affect, but not define, whether you feel it is the "correct" move to make.
- Your views on this will be affected by your views on domestic violence, specifically the commensurate response to instances of violence. Is killing your partner excusable? You will access more than two or three right and wrong questions when working that out!
Right and wrong are not univfersal truths, just ask an atheist lady whether she thinks being forced to hide your face and walk behind your husband is "right" or "wrong" yet in many countries this is absolutely right.
So where do rights and wrongs come from, without God or religion?
Simple - the same places God and religions came from - SOCIETY.
Society is more than a group of people living together, it is a vast amalgam of people and families agreeing specifically on what is acceptable and what is not. Your laws are not fixed, nor are they unappeallable. They are falsehoods created to control, willingly I should add, those citizens who make up the society. A criminal is simply someone who for one reason or many has decided to violate the societies agreement on right and wrong and set out on their own.
A good example of this sort of thing is afforded by what are called sociopaths. They represent, because of mental illness, expose exactly what society's imposed law and "acceptable behviour" really are, voluntary arrangements between a government and its people - a sociopath is simply not able to buy into that voluntary arrangement and seeks only what is best for him/herself.
BUT! Are these people to be pitied for their crimes? I would say so, but I also feel, rightly or wrongly (see what I did there) a certain amount of envy that this behaviour (though not the folk who display it) is TRULY free while I remain bound by decades of conformist behaviour.
It follows from my logic here that a TRULY free society (practically impossible and horrifically awful it would be) is one where a permanent state of ANARCHY exists. Noone produces, noone owns anything and there is no law. YUCK!
So is freedom itself "right" or "wrong"?
Or when we talk of freedom are we really talking of freedom of choice between many types of captivity?
There's a question to mull over for you.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
The motive for development
What is it that pushed mankind up to the point where it is capable and in some extreme cases willing to destroy the planet on which it lives and the rest of its species?
I have a little theory of my own and it can be described as a rabid desire for control. Control in this case is as much if not more defined as a feeling of, rather than demonstrable, power over our environment and , more crucially our fates.
Mankind is a quite mind bogglingly self important creature. We saw ourselves for millenia as the single most important species in all of the universe, only to find that as a result of getting better amd better at seeing things as they really are instead of some way we want them to look, we have totally redefined our importance from the very zenith of the pyramid, to rooting around in the dust with all the other animals!
Many people were humbled by the realisation that we are just a tiny part of a reality far more wondrous and varied than we'd ever imagined.
Some others respond by ignoring this and concentrate instead on reducing the universe in both scale and age to something more easily acceptable (read creationists or other intelligent design supporters). There is a very good reason why they did this. Its very scary to admit how random and unfocussed the universe is as well as the realisation that nothing we do really affects much on such a stupendous scale.
There is the third response, even more scary than those in denial who, in response to the vastness of existence decide they will be validated in their own self importance by the exercising of control over both people, and nature itself.
We all display some of this tendency - its there every time you make an assumption or form a first impression. In many people the desire for control leads to obsession and in some cases serious danger. What sort of person would ever fire off a nuclear first strike or commits genocide? Not someone who has accepted their insignificance, for sure. These are the people who cannot accept that they are the same as everyone else except for one genetic differention among millions. They are the people who believe that any one man can be considered 'better' than any other.
However, this clearly is a double edged sword, because this need for control is the same need that drives the desire for understanding and learning. A universe following an understood set of laws is less scary than one where all is random and unfocussed.
This relates to my earlier point in 'a mental exercise' regarding human forebrain development Why did we create languages and science with this new biological tool? Why aren't we still in Africa eating carrion or scavenging fruit? Because we found we could control our environment - through tools and communications and this satisfied a need in the species that drives us even now.
Survival is itself an act of control over our environment. We control our climate, our food availability, our learning to the point where randomness is the least likely outcome and the sign of things going wrong.
But we should always remember the desire for control is a double edged sword and be watchful for signs of arrogance. The universe won't miss us if we mess up.
A
p.s. I realise i used the word randomness a lot without making it clear what i mean. In a purely scientific universe there is little that is random on a non atomic scale at least, but much of what happens is caused by so many and so detailed factors it is little use to think of them as other than random. See? I just exercised control over language. Hurrah!
See the full post by clicking here...
I have a little theory of my own and it can be described as a rabid desire for control. Control in this case is as much if not more defined as a feeling of, rather than demonstrable, power over our environment and , more crucially our fates.
Mankind is a quite mind bogglingly self important creature. We saw ourselves for millenia as the single most important species in all of the universe, only to find that as a result of getting better amd better at seeing things as they really are instead of some way we want them to look, we have totally redefined our importance from the very zenith of the pyramid, to rooting around in the dust with all the other animals!
Many people were humbled by the realisation that we are just a tiny part of a reality far more wondrous and varied than we'd ever imagined.
Some others respond by ignoring this and concentrate instead on reducing the universe in both scale and age to something more easily acceptable (read creationists or other intelligent design supporters). There is a very good reason why they did this. Its very scary to admit how random and unfocussed the universe is as well as the realisation that nothing we do really affects much on such a stupendous scale.
There is the third response, even more scary than those in denial who, in response to the vastness of existence decide they will be validated in their own self importance by the exercising of control over both people, and nature itself.
We all display some of this tendency - its there every time you make an assumption or form a first impression. In many people the desire for control leads to obsession and in some cases serious danger. What sort of person would ever fire off a nuclear first strike or commits genocide? Not someone who has accepted their insignificance, for sure. These are the people who cannot accept that they are the same as everyone else except for one genetic differention among millions. They are the people who believe that any one man can be considered 'better' than any other.
However, this clearly is a double edged sword, because this need for control is the same need that drives the desire for understanding and learning. A universe following an understood set of laws is less scary than one where all is random and unfocussed.
This relates to my earlier point in 'a mental exercise' regarding human forebrain development Why did we create languages and science with this new biological tool? Why aren't we still in Africa eating carrion or scavenging fruit? Because we found we could control our environment - through tools and communications and this satisfied a need in the species that drives us even now.
Survival is itself an act of control over our environment. We control our climate, our food availability, our learning to the point where randomness is the least likely outcome and the sign of things going wrong.
But we should always remember the desire for control is a double edged sword and be watchful for signs of arrogance. The universe won't miss us if we mess up.
A
p.s. I realise i used the word randomness a lot without making it clear what i mean. In a purely scientific universe there is little that is random on a non atomic scale at least, but much of what happens is caused by so many and so detailed factors it is little use to think of them as other than random. See? I just exercised control over language. Hurrah!
See the full post by clicking here...
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Gawd Bless QI
Stephen Fry on QI tonight pointed out that in the tale of Genesis seven of each kind of "clean" animal was taken on the ark (under kosher law) and two of the "unclean".
Try pointing this out to the next Christian you meet and see what they say. Bet they didn't know it. Some may say its homosexual propaganda... so just tell them to look it up.
Oh, and I doubt this was three couples and an extra one... I would bet in the world of reproductive economies it was one male and six females to better propagate the species quickly.
I bet they won't admit it calls into question their entire belief structure, as does say, Dawkins pointing out that "virgin" in the sense of the virgin Mary should have been translated as "VirginAL".
Oh, and also that in the Bible it is Mary who is immaculately conceived rather than Jesus.
Now, seeing as how the entire belief system is based on a book that may well have been seriously mistranslated and has not been read by half the people who follow it... how does that make you feel?
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Try pointing this out to the next Christian you meet and see what they say. Bet they didn't know it. Some may say its homosexual propaganda... so just tell them to look it up.
Oh, and I doubt this was three couples and an extra one... I would bet in the world of reproductive economies it was one male and six females to better propagate the species quickly.
I bet they won't admit it calls into question their entire belief structure, as does say, Dawkins pointing out that "virgin" in the sense of the virgin Mary should have been translated as "VirginAL".
Oh, and also that in the Bible it is Mary who is immaculately conceived rather than Jesus.
Now, seeing as how the entire belief system is based on a book that may well have been seriously mistranslated and has not been read by half the people who follow it... how does that make you feel?
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Thursday, July 3, 2008
loving the underdog
You been watching as the workd gets more and more polarised those under the cosh tend to get the sympathy vote.
Take Andy Murray for example. A total wash out against Nadal, we still him...
But is it a British thing with sport or is it more widespread than that?
Lets look at a couple of examples... as George Bush started o get more and more unpopular in the run up to his second election, it seemed more and more supporters suddenly popped out of the woodwork, presumably in defence against the frequently over the top attacks aimed at this man.
My personal hero, Prof. Richard Dawkins probably results in a sigh at the very mention of his name (I bet you did!) and he is frequently described to me by people I have conversations with (on extras work or elsewhere) as "that man who's always going on about religion" which is a shame since for twenty years he has been the best (imho) writer on evolution I ever read.
I first read his books in my first year of university - his SELFISH GENE is rightly considered a classic in wirting and content. The problem is, biological theory books can never create the interest that a single controversial book on religion did.
His writings sparked a whole pile of criticism and hopefully a bunch of new supporters too. His programmes on TV did much the same job, though they were given the headline baiting title THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL? by the TV company.
But wth all new critism comes a backlash and poor old Dawkins got pigeonholed into the "shit stirrer" category. Problem is, when people are allowed to shove him into that hole, the actual arguments get lost.
His main points are too many to list, I can merely recommend his book.ó
In this particular fight he is a major underdog, why not help him out?
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Take Andy Murray for example. A total wash out against Nadal, we still him...
But is it a British thing with sport or is it more widespread than that?
Lets look at a couple of examples... as George Bush started o get more and more unpopular in the run up to his second election, it seemed more and more supporters suddenly popped out of the woodwork, presumably in defence against the frequently over the top attacks aimed at this man.
My personal hero, Prof. Richard Dawkins probably results in a sigh at the very mention of his name (I bet you did!) and he is frequently described to me by people I have conversations with (on extras work or elsewhere) as "that man who's always going on about religion" which is a shame since for twenty years he has been the best (imho) writer on evolution I ever read.
I first read his books in my first year of university - his SELFISH GENE is rightly considered a classic in wirting and content. The problem is, biological theory books can never create the interest that a single controversial book on religion did.
His writings sparked a whole pile of criticism and hopefully a bunch of new supporters too. His programmes on TV did much the same job, though they were given the headline baiting title THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL? by the TV company.
But wth all new critism comes a backlash and poor old Dawkins got pigeonholed into the "shit stirrer" category. Problem is, when people are allowed to shove him into that hole, the actual arguments get lost.
His main points are too many to list, I can merely recommend his book.ó
In this particular fight he is a major underdog, why not help him out?
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
So TV evangelists are corrupt... DUH!
This little tale
Wow.. the US supreme court are clearly brainy folk to work this out.
They're investigating misappropriation of funds away from "salvation" and towards "private jets"
Woah... headfreeze!
This is a little ray of sunshine in todays increasing fundamental religious societies - the increasing fundamentalism (you can't have it without mentalism) is a defence mechanism to the increasing pressure on groups with better and better science.
If you're into Memetics you'll know this already, but in short the ideas and beliefs which survive are the ones with the best self defence and propagation mechanisms (believe or go to hell and you must spread the word, for example)
A good development was the government of the UK's recent moves against mediums, psychics etc who face restrictions on advertising and their legal protection unless they can prove the effectiveness of their techniques.
That being said read the following quote from the BBC's website regarding this and spot the funny bit!
The funny bit?
That those who truly can communicate with the dead are allowed the protection after all.
I'd love to know the governments test.
Maybe they give a confidential message to someone to remember, then kill them. That'd be the easiest way.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Wow.. the US supreme court are clearly brainy folk to work this out.
They're investigating misappropriation of funds away from "salvation" and towards "private jets"
Woah... headfreeze!
This is a little ray of sunshine in todays increasing fundamental religious societies - the increasing fundamentalism (you can't have it without mentalism) is a defence mechanism to the increasing pressure on groups with better and better science.
If you're into Memetics you'll know this already, but in short the ideas and beliefs which survive are the ones with the best self defence and propagation mechanisms (believe or go to hell and you must spread the word, for example)
A good development was the government of the UK's recent moves against mediums, psychics etc who face restrictions on advertising and their legal protection unless they can prove the effectiveness of their techniques.
That being said read the following quote from the BBC's website regarding this and spot the funny bit!
Fraudulent Mediums
People who falsely claim to communicate with the dead will no longer receive the same protection from the law that they previously possessed.
That those who truly can communicate with the dead are allowed the protection after all.
I'd love to know the governments test.
Maybe they give a confidential message to someone to remember, then kill them. That'd be the easiest way.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Brainwashing your children...
People do it all the time... my particular personal experiences with brainwashing were half hearted, but at schools across the country parents give teachers and peers the opportunity every day to influence the beliefs of their children.
Think for a moment... if the government was payingpeople to force your children to sing Muslim religious songs and recite the prayers of those beliefs every morning the public and the papers would be up in arms about such brainwashing...
And what if they preached to your children every morning whether you liked it or not?
The thing is a lot of parents don;t really think about it... they rely on their kids brains overcoming this silliness as a matter of course, but I'll share a little experience from my childhood, maybe it'll ring a bell.
I once got given an essay or lines or something because I refused to sing hymns or recite the lords prayer in assembly. At our lovely school every assembly consisted of hyms, lords prayer the occasional reading of some nonsense meant to be a pointer to our lives and then onto actually relevant stuff like house cricket scores (Hooray for me!). See, the people from other religions didn't have to be in the room when the christian stuff was going on, but being an atheist was, and may well still be, considered tantamount to "dodging out" of part of assembly.
This concept of Atheism being somehow lesser a belief system than, say, Jews who didn't want to say the lords prayer, makes my blood boil even now when I think back. What gives some jumped up German teacher the right to assume relative value of your religious views?
It's probably a result of the authority parents give teachers - you basically say "you teach him" every time you send your kid in. Why wouldn't they think they have the right to teach you your worth, as well as how to say "Ich verstehe nicht"? I will take this opportunity to say "Screw you" to that particular teacher.
Course, I am putting my own beliefs above his. The irony is not lost, believe me.
I will say in my defence I am truly of the opinion that Atheism is the basic state of humanity. No one is born religious, no one. Religion is a result of teaching. There are few who would argue against that. So why was I treated as abnormal when simply displaying lack of successful teaching?
That particular tale of punishment was from secondary school, but almost exactly the same thing occured at my primary schools as well, children being encouraged to join in with Christian ceremonies by people in positions of not just authority but in a position of knowledge and of the teacher. Why would a lot of kids not take this as a lesson, not just a weird ritual?
It went, I recall, as far as a several day lesson in the "meaning" of the Lords prayer, line by line, presented in the same way as the blooming green cross code man!
It's a tricky area I know, because at what stage do we consider those kids capable of making a decision for themselves about this belief system they are being indoctrinated into?
Actually, lets ask that in a slightly different way; At what stage does teaching become indoctrination and at what stage does indoctrination become brainwashing?
Most theistic religions seem to display a couple of similarities
What better time to indoctrinate people than the early years, when they are learning at a ridiculous rate... and what better way to create belief than to present it as so normal you observe it as your first thing EVERY DAY! I recall I went to Sunday school a few times to be with friends, but it didn't work out, probably because I was coming away with more questions than answers.
So when are the gaps... I'd say teaching is showing people things as they are.. natural occurences, laws of physics, languages. Indoctrination is when we are talking about "beliefs" or other constructs like Laws, agreed social niceties etc. Now, this is where it gets tricky... but my personal brainwashing threshold is at the point where "faith" enters into things, frequently contradicting the teaching...
To paraphrase an old saying, a little faith is a dangerous thing - it has provided countless years of camoflage for all sorts of atrocities and wars. Often these fly in the face of reason and sense, but who cares? We'll all go to heaven!
So what is the point of my little rant?
I believe (oops - I make no apologies for using this word) is that religions can only continue to exist through teaching. They always have done so and they always will. Who teaches them this? Usually the parents have the first shot at goal - problem is, teaching is taken out of the parents hands at an early age and placed in the hands of others whose beliefs may not be the same as the teachers. Furthermore I believe that without religious teaching being introduced only a small minority would be religious in todays society. All the questions the world posed now simply have better answers than an all powerful deity. In fact, mankinds understanding of the universe has reached a stage where we can ask questions RELIGION cannot answer, like what made God, in a scientific sense etc.
My main point can be summarised like this:
Noone is born religious. Because of young childrens vulnerability to such religious indoctrination and their desire to be "normal", the state should not allow religious teaching of any faith in primary schools. I am personally against any religious teaching for children anywhere until they are able to make their own decisions, but this is unfortunately far too difficult for one man's blog to succeed at.
I agree with Richard Dawkins' outrage at such labels as "a muslim child" or "a christian child", such titles are meaningless when used in relation to the youngest of us. Most children just want to make their parents happy, or at least stop them being upset - this leads many down the path of conformity to the eventual religious brainwashing I have described. The correct word is "child". Just that. Don't impose the parents beliefs on them as if they have no choice!
I hope when I am eventually a parent I am as open minded and supportive as my parents were.
Lets let children decide for themselves what to believe.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Think for a moment... if the government was payingpeople to force your children to sing Muslim religious songs and recite the prayers of those beliefs every morning the public and the papers would be up in arms about such brainwashing...
And what if they preached to your children every morning whether you liked it or not?
The thing is a lot of parents don;t really think about it... they rely on their kids brains overcoming this silliness as a matter of course, but I'll share a little experience from my childhood, maybe it'll ring a bell.
I once got given an essay or lines or something because I refused to sing hymns or recite the lords prayer in assembly. At our lovely school every assembly consisted of hyms, lords prayer the occasional reading of some nonsense meant to be a pointer to our lives and then onto actually relevant stuff like house cricket scores (Hooray for me!). See, the people from other religions didn't have to be in the room when the christian stuff was going on, but being an atheist was, and may well still be, considered tantamount to "dodging out" of part of assembly.
This concept of Atheism being somehow lesser a belief system than, say, Jews who didn't want to say the lords prayer, makes my blood boil even now when I think back. What gives some jumped up German teacher the right to assume relative value of your religious views?
It's probably a result of the authority parents give teachers - you basically say "you teach him" every time you send your kid in. Why wouldn't they think they have the right to teach you your worth, as well as how to say "Ich verstehe nicht"? I will take this opportunity to say "Screw you" to that particular teacher.
Course, I am putting my own beliefs above his. The irony is not lost, believe me.
I will say in my defence I am truly of the opinion that Atheism is the basic state of humanity. No one is born religious, no one. Religion is a result of teaching. There are few who would argue against that. So why was I treated as abnormal when simply displaying lack of successful teaching?
That particular tale of punishment was from secondary school, but almost exactly the same thing occured at my primary schools as well, children being encouraged to join in with Christian ceremonies by people in positions of not just authority but in a position of knowledge and of the teacher. Why would a lot of kids not take this as a lesson, not just a weird ritual?
It went, I recall, as far as a several day lesson in the "meaning" of the Lords prayer, line by line, presented in the same way as the blooming green cross code man!
It's a tricky area I know, because at what stage do we consider those kids capable of making a decision for themselves about this belief system they are being indoctrinated into?
Actually, lets ask that in a slightly different way; At what stage does teaching become indoctrination and at what stage does indoctrination become brainwashing?
Most theistic religions seem to display a couple of similarities
- Our God is the only one OR Our way of worshipping god is the only one.
- Everyone else is wrong.
- We must change their minds
What better time to indoctrinate people than the early years, when they are learning at a ridiculous rate... and what better way to create belief than to present it as so normal you observe it as your first thing EVERY DAY! I recall I went to Sunday school a few times to be with friends, but it didn't work out, probably because I was coming away with more questions than answers.
So when are the gaps... I'd say teaching is showing people things as they are.. natural occurences, laws of physics, languages. Indoctrination is when we are talking about "beliefs" or other constructs like Laws, agreed social niceties etc. Now, this is where it gets tricky... but my personal brainwashing threshold is at the point where "faith" enters into things, frequently contradicting the teaching...
To paraphrase an old saying, a little faith is a dangerous thing - it has provided countless years of camoflage for all sorts of atrocities and wars. Often these fly in the face of reason and sense, but who cares? We'll all go to heaven!
So what is the point of my little rant?
I believe (oops - I make no apologies for using this word) is that religions can only continue to exist through teaching. They always have done so and they always will. Who teaches them this? Usually the parents have the first shot at goal - problem is, teaching is taken out of the parents hands at an early age and placed in the hands of others whose beliefs may not be the same as the teachers. Furthermore I believe that without religious teaching being introduced only a small minority would be religious in todays society. All the questions the world posed now simply have better answers than an all powerful deity. In fact, mankinds understanding of the universe has reached a stage where we can ask questions RELIGION cannot answer, like what made God, in a scientific sense etc.
My main point can be summarised like this:
Noone is born religious. Because of young childrens vulnerability to such religious indoctrination and their desire to be "normal", the state should not allow religious teaching of any faith in primary schools. I am personally against any religious teaching for children anywhere until they are able to make their own decisions, but this is unfortunately far too difficult for one man's blog to succeed at.
I agree with Richard Dawkins' outrage at such labels as "a muslim child" or "a christian child", such titles are meaningless when used in relation to the youngest of us. Most children just want to make their parents happy, or at least stop them being upset - this leads many down the path of conformity to the eventual religious brainwashing I have described. The correct word is "child". Just that. Don't impose the parents beliefs on them as if they have no choice!
I hope when I am eventually a parent I am as open minded and supportive as my parents were.
Lets let children decide for themselves what to believe.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Crimes against reality?
In a memo to Tony Blair, Richard Dawkins mentioned this concept briefly, in the form of an ethical argument.
In short its a question of why purveyors of falsehoods are only prosecuted if there is a victim (human usually) and not for the supply of incorrect information itself that may be damaging to "truth".
Example: someone prints a book claiming that Tony Blair is a child rapist, and the author would quite rightly be sued and destroyed publicly. If a book is released claiming that politicians are more likely than any other section of society to become child rapists (a contention which is wholly untrue) who is going to prosecute the authors?
Actually, I'm sure politicians would find a way to get the authors done in, but substitute any group you like for politicians, say school teachers or priests, and you can see the problem. There's no racial slurs, no individuals being attacked, merely truth itself is being eroded by the production of this tripe.
Can reality be damaged in such ways? Well, newspapers and coverage does this all the time - The truth is often presented in ways that help you to reach conclusions - usually that you want to buy the paper and find out what the story is that the headline relates to. For years on Mondays one paper almost always ran a story about the "Diana conspiracy" - that idea that the British royal family had a hand in the death of Diana Spencer - something that there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence for! And yet the coverage itself has led to a significant number of people believing in such nonsense despite all evidence to the contrary - if every paper covered the tragic accident as just that then it is a no brainer that nowhere near as many people would be of the opinion that this was some sort of outrageously inefficient murder method.
This is an interesting question for me in that it raises the issue of damage to something in all of our interests - that of reality itself. The difficulty of this approach is easy to see though.
Who chooses what is real, in the legal sense?
As a scientifically minded person it would be those things that can be tested and proven insofar as anything can - things like the cause/effect relationship of dropping something and its falling downwards, or that humans are simply animals like every other creature on the planet.
In a legal sense its subject to witness and testimony like everything else is.
This sort of law would never be passed for both political and religious reasons - politicians deal in the grey areas, and every manifesto contains half truths and occasional lies of expediency if nothing else - the religious brainwashers would all be prosecuted under such laws, and all faith healers, fortune tellers, astrologers, phone psychics and such would be arrested. It is the religious folk also who double the politicians concern about such things - way to lose votes Algo!
The real problem is that such law would be open to almost ridiculous abuse and misuse for personal crusades, so it will remain a pipe dream until truth and reality can be accepted by the majority consciously as more fundamental than gut feeling or their own opinions and parental influence (religious or otherwise; no one is born more racist than anyone else).
For such examples we need only look at Zimbabwe at the moment, where truth has been subservient to the wishes of Robert Mugabe for years. I do sort of admire, in a perverse way, the sheer balls required to lock up your presidential rivals for treason - a very literal taking of such treason laws indeed. What a bastard he is.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
In short its a question of why purveyors of falsehoods are only prosecuted if there is a victim (human usually) and not for the supply of incorrect information itself that may be damaging to "truth".
Example: someone prints a book claiming that Tony Blair is a child rapist, and the author would quite rightly be sued and destroyed publicly. If a book is released claiming that politicians are more likely than any other section of society to become child rapists (a contention which is wholly untrue) who is going to prosecute the authors?
Actually, I'm sure politicians would find a way to get the authors done in, but substitute any group you like for politicians, say school teachers or priests, and you can see the problem. There's no racial slurs, no individuals being attacked, merely truth itself is being eroded by the production of this tripe.
Can reality be damaged in such ways? Well, newspapers and coverage does this all the time - The truth is often presented in ways that help you to reach conclusions - usually that you want to buy the paper and find out what the story is that the headline relates to. For years on Mondays one paper almost always ran a story about the "Diana conspiracy" - that idea that the British royal family had a hand in the death of Diana Spencer - something that there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence for! And yet the coverage itself has led to a significant number of people believing in such nonsense despite all evidence to the contrary - if every paper covered the tragic accident as just that then it is a no brainer that nowhere near as many people would be of the opinion that this was some sort of outrageously inefficient murder method.
This is an interesting question for me in that it raises the issue of damage to something in all of our interests - that of reality itself. The difficulty of this approach is easy to see though.
Who chooses what is real, in the legal sense?
As a scientifically minded person it would be those things that can be tested and proven insofar as anything can - things like the cause/effect relationship of dropping something and its falling downwards, or that humans are simply animals like every other creature on the planet.
In a legal sense its subject to witness and testimony like everything else is.
This sort of law would never be passed for both political and religious reasons - politicians deal in the grey areas, and every manifesto contains half truths and occasional lies of expediency if nothing else - the religious brainwashers would all be prosecuted under such laws, and all faith healers, fortune tellers, astrologers, phone psychics and such would be arrested. It is the religious folk also who double the politicians concern about such things - way to lose votes Algo!
The real problem is that such law would be open to almost ridiculous abuse and misuse for personal crusades, so it will remain a pipe dream until truth and reality can be accepted by the majority consciously as more fundamental than gut feeling or their own opinions and parental influence (religious or otherwise; no one is born more racist than anyone else).
For such examples we need only look at Zimbabwe at the moment, where truth has been subservient to the wishes of Robert Mugabe for years. I do sort of admire, in a perverse way, the sheer balls required to lock up your presidential rivals for treason - a very literal taking of such treason laws indeed. What a bastard he is.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The Chicken and the Egg
This is one of my pet peeves this perennial and retarded question "what came first, the chicken or the egg?". This question is supposed to be one you cannot answer and people look at you smugly as if to say - "what do you think of that then? can you get your head round that?"
Frankly, yes I bleeding well can thanks very much.
There's a quick way around this and a long way around this.
Even quicker is to say "who cares" but so sick am I of the whole thing I really want to to lay the issue to rest for myself and hopefully by osmosis resolve the question for the whole world.
First; the quick way:
DINOSAURS LAID EGGS.
If you mean chicken eggs, read on.
The initial appearance of any species is described differently to people who believe in;
Dealing with the first of these is simple and quick too. God created Animals on the fifth day and not their unborn forms, so if my reading of Genesis is correct, you can unequivocally say that the Chicken came first. You may believe that in fact God created the chicken inside the egg in order to start life as he meant to go on. Fair enough, but you in this case would answer "egg".
In neither of the God hypotheses is there any sense that the question is unanswerable. Quite the opposite.
In the evolutionary sense things are a lot more complicated. The way I'd put it is that the first chicken in the modern sense, say chicken(x) was the child of a different animal, not a different species (or it would have been an abberation as opposed to a permanent mutation) so what we have is a parent called chicken(x-1)* which is an intermediate between the two species of chickens as they are now, and their nearest common ancestor with another animal, ducks, say.
The order of births can be shown in the following way. I am showing five generations as ashort hand but I have no idea how many intermediates there were.
Common Ancestor - egg - Chicken (x-5) - egg - Chicken (x-4) - egg - Chicken (x-3) - egg - chicken (x-2) - egg - Chicken (x-1) - egg - Chicken (x)
The issue to think about here is that of the nature of that crucial final egg before chicken(x) hatches. Is it a Egg (x-1) or and Egg (x).
In short is it a chicken egg or an intermediate egg with a chicken in it?
My view is that this is an egg(x-1) with a chicken inside it and therefore the answer to the "unanswerable" question is that the Chicken came before its first egg.
The contrary position is that the egg could be a modern chicken egg. That is to say it is an Egg(x) ratherthan an egg(x-1) and therefore you would be saying that the egg came before the chicken.
However you feel about your conclusion - it is clear to me that without a doubt a conclusion to this question can be reached and we can put the whole sorry subject to bed.
A
*that is to say, minus one intermediate specieslet - the parents of the first chicken if you like. minus two would be the next intermediate backwards, and so on. To describe future intermediate evolutions I would use Chicken(x+1) etc.
See the full post by clicking here...
Frankly, yes I bleeding well can thanks very much.
There's a quick way around this and a long way around this.
Even quicker is to say "who cares" but so sick am I of the whole thing I really want to to lay the issue to rest for myself and hopefully by osmosis resolve the question for the whole world.
First; the quick way:
DINOSAURS LAID EGGS.
If you mean chicken eggs, read on.
The initial appearance of any species is described differently to people who believe in;
- Divine creation
- Evolution
Dealing with the first of these is simple and quick too. God created Animals on the fifth day and not their unborn forms, so if my reading of Genesis is correct, you can unequivocally say that the Chicken came first. You may believe that in fact God created the chicken inside the egg in order to start life as he meant to go on. Fair enough, but you in this case would answer "egg".
In neither of the God hypotheses is there any sense that the question is unanswerable. Quite the opposite.
In the evolutionary sense things are a lot more complicated. The way I'd put it is that the first chicken in the modern sense, say chicken(x) was the child of a different animal, not a different species (or it would have been an abberation as opposed to a permanent mutation) so what we have is a parent called chicken(x-1)* which is an intermediate between the two species of chickens as they are now, and their nearest common ancestor with another animal, ducks, say.
The order of births can be shown in the following way. I am showing five generations as ashort hand but I have no idea how many intermediates there were.
Common Ancestor - egg - Chicken (x-5) - egg - Chicken (x-4) - egg - Chicken (x-3) - egg - chicken (x-2) - egg - Chicken (x-1) - egg - Chicken (x)
The issue to think about here is that of the nature of that crucial final egg before chicken(x) hatches. Is it a Egg (x-1) or and Egg (x).
In short is it a chicken egg or an intermediate egg with a chicken in it?
My view is that this is an egg(x-1) with a chicken inside it and therefore the answer to the "unanswerable" question is that the Chicken came before its first egg.
The contrary position is that the egg could be a modern chicken egg. That is to say it is an Egg(x) ratherthan an egg(x-1) and therefore you would be saying that the egg came before the chicken.
However you feel about your conclusion - it is clear to me that without a doubt a conclusion to this question can be reached and we can put the whole sorry subject to bed.
A
*that is to say, minus one intermediate specieslet - the parents of the first chicken if you like. minus two would be the next intermediate backwards, and so on. To describe future intermediate evolutions I would use Chicken(x+1) etc.
See the full post by clicking here...
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Two bottles of wine later, God ceases to matter
Greetings, Algolians.
I'm not sure what got me started on the subject- who is when you're a little, ahem, "wankered"?
I'm pretty sure I convinced a table of twelve people on Saturday that God probably didn't exist (or at least wasn't worth worrying about, let alone worshipping).
Oh, this post will offend some folks. Never mind.
How does the logic go? Well - we all agreed that there were two extreme ways to look at the concept of a "God". Oh, and by the way, forgive my use of the masculine pronoun - I'm too lazy to write anything else.
1. The classic, sin forgiving, interfering creator who sits in the big office upstairs pronouncing judgements, including whether you go to heaven or hell. He also has the powers to interfere with or influence the world.
2. Some less interfering force responsible for the creation of the universe, and that's it.
I'll refer to these as God1 and God2 - note that God1, while having the power to interfere, is not implied to be interfering constantly - he merely can.
Now it would be very easy to find some middle ground here, but all the wrangling we went through to reach this point was a little boring, basically - the middle grounds say, God#, are a bit namby pamby. he's in a war with Satan for example, which implies Satan is equally as powerful, or he has too little time etc... I'm gonna avoid these since we didn't talk about them.
So lets look at God1. This is a being powerful enough to
In summary - God1 is a bastard. He ain't getting no worship from me. You'll note (I hope) that I haven't even started on the scientific basis for his non-existence, or the "who created the creator" argument. I merely point out here that this deity needs a slap.
So, hello God2, increasingly popular in these "enlightened" times. A sort of apologists religious concession. "So", they they say, "We don't know what caused the big bang, and we can call this force God". Yeah, but we could also call it "spongebob". The great plan of a lot of these people is to equate the "God" hypothesis with a lot of the scientific explanations. This is to say that "Well, you can't prove any of your ideas either so this is just as good".
Others have argued that point far better than I could so I won't. All I'll say is, that if that's the God you believe in, why the hell worship him? Or have anything to do with him at all? He can't help you, he doesn't care about you, he certainly won't look after you when you die!
So, in summary, God2 is entirely irrelevant. He's mainly a vehicle for people who like to think of themselves as "agnostic". That is to say, atheists who are ashamed to admit it.
So there we go, two bottles of wine later and we reach a consensus that God isn't worth worshipping. Good stuff.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
I'm not sure what got me started on the subject- who is when you're a little, ahem, "wankered"?
I'm pretty sure I convinced a table of twelve people on Saturday that God probably didn't exist (or at least wasn't worth worrying about, let alone worshipping).
Oh, this post will offend some folks. Never mind.
How does the logic go? Well - we all agreed that there were two extreme ways to look at the concept of a "God". Oh, and by the way, forgive my use of the masculine pronoun - I'm too lazy to write anything else.
1. The classic, sin forgiving, interfering creator who sits in the big office upstairs pronouncing judgements, including whether you go to heaven or hell. He also has the powers to interfere with or influence the world.
2. Some less interfering force responsible for the creation of the universe, and that's it.
I'll refer to these as God1 and God2 - note that God1, while having the power to interfere, is not implied to be interfering constantly - he merely can.
Now it would be very easy to find some middle ground here, but all the wrangling we went through to reach this point was a little boring, basically - the middle grounds say, God#, are a bit namby pamby. he's in a war with Satan for example, which implies Satan is equally as powerful, or he has too little time etc... I'm gonna avoid these since we didn't talk about them.
So lets look at God1. This is a being powerful enough to
- create an entire universe and then fake its age.
- design an endless supply of animals including millions of species of, say, insects.
- create emotions and beings that feel them
- Directly affect the future of the universe he created
- etc. etc.
- Stillbirth - this is one of the things that really sealed my atheism. What sort of God is willing to kill kids before they're born? Did they have evil thoughts in the womb?
- The question of "faith". Look, if you're responsible for my creation, don't go punishing me when I turn out atheist, the way I was designed. If I end up being wrong and heading down to the big smoke to burn with all the other sinners he's going to get a stern letter from the Algo!
- Most normal religious folk will start talking about free will at this point as if its some amazing gift we're required to be thankful for. I don't buy it. If this god person wants me to go to hell, he can just send me there - I don't want him to trick me into any of this thinking I have some kind of choice!
- Abortion - see stillbirth. Does he want all the abortions to himself? Most pregnancies are self aborting anyway really early on - is that God aborting them?
- Sexual politics - lets not beat about the bush here. If God didn't want us to have sex with our own gender he would abort homosexual people, just like all the unborn babies he kills. Or if he only wants us to have sex in order to procreate, sex would be 100% successful at leading to pregnancy.
In summary - God1 is a bastard. He ain't getting no worship from me. You'll note (I hope) that I haven't even started on the scientific basis for his non-existence, or the "who created the creator" argument. I merely point out here that this deity needs a slap.
So, hello God2, increasingly popular in these "enlightened" times. A sort of apologists religious concession. "So", they they say, "We don't know what caused the big bang, and we can call this force God". Yeah, but we could also call it "spongebob". The great plan of a lot of these people is to equate the "God" hypothesis with a lot of the scientific explanations. This is to say that "Well, you can't prove any of your ideas either so this is just as good".
Others have argued that point far better than I could so I won't. All I'll say is, that if that's the God you believe in, why the hell worship him? Or have anything to do with him at all? He can't help you, he doesn't care about you, he certainly won't look after you when you die!
So, in summary, God2 is entirely irrelevant. He's mainly a vehicle for people who like to think of themselves as "agnostic". That is to say, atheists who are ashamed to admit it.
So there we go, two bottles of wine later and we reach a consensus that God isn't worth worshipping. Good stuff.
A
See the full post by clicking here...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
