Hitchens on losing his voice

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Michael

Not his metaphorical voice, of course. ‘Just’ the other one:

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Like so many of life’s varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don’t so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it’s time to be on my way. No, it’s the snickering that gets me down.

I don’t think there has been a better writer for or against Christianity in some time.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

College to offer major in secularism

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Michael

Pitzer College and Professor Phil Zuckerman are gearing up to offer a major in secularism:

Studying nonbelief is as valid as studying belief, Mr. Zuckerman said, and the new major will make that very clear.

“It’s not about arguing ‘Is there a God or not?’ ” Mr. Zuckerman said. “There are hundreds of millions of people who are nonreligious. I want to know who they are, what they believe, why they are nonreligious. You have some countries where huge percentages of people — Czechs, Scandinavians — now call themselves atheists. Canada is experiencing a huge wave of secularization. This is happening very rapidly.

“It has not been studied,” he added.

I, of course, think this is a brilliant idea. There are specific areas of religious study that I think are actually helpful to people, and one of those areas is in the history and modernity of these large movements. Degrees related to religious history and the current role of religion (or specific religions) are worthwhile because they hold a relevance to so much that goes into culture, society, divisions, and war. (On the other hand, theology degrees are mostly worthless, even though they touch on religion’s current relevance, because they are just glorified literary criticism degrees – ones with an excessively narrow focus.) Something similar can be said of secularism (though it hasn’t tended to lead to war since it does not offer such explicit labeling as religion). It’s about time that this area of human history and ongoing culture is going to be studied esoterically.

The only real issue I find with this degree is in what field it will get someone a job. All those religious degrees tend to be backed by institutions, or at least a wide base of susceptible people, and so they offer practical job security. But where would someone with a degree in secularism be employed? Certainly there are a few places, but I doubt the market is very big.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, News | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

Tonight’s lesson

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Michael

Tonight’s lesson for my privilege of conveying science…

I’m just glad I like science. If I was creationist, I wouldn’t be able to tell these kids a damn thing that was true.

Filed under: Science | Tagged: , , | 8 Comments »

Why do Americans still dislike atheists?

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Michael

A Gregory Paul/Phil Zuckerman article has been making its rounds in my Facebook news feed for the past week or so, and I’ve been mulling it over since I first saw it: Why do Americans still dislike atheists?

Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.

Paul and Zuckerman go through a number of correlative facts about atheists that point to a number of positive traits: low rates of racism and sexism, high scientific literacy, opposition to torture, and many more. Yet despite all this, atheists are still denigrated – and they’re denigrated for supposedly being bad or not-as-good people as Christians. Since it is abundantly clear that the statistics of the matter prove the Christian accusers to be objectively wrong, there must be some other reason why atheists are so disliked.

Unfortunately, Paul and Zuckerman don’t especially answer the question. They see it as enough to point out that the given reasons for atheists being disliked are wrong. There is value in that – on honesty points they’ve won the intellectual battle – but I want to go further.

Part of the reason, I think, has to do with the cultivated stigma around the word “atheist”. Richard Dawkins mentions in one of his books a story of a person telling his/her mother about not believing in God. All that is fine, but then the word “atheist” crops up and the mother replies, “To not believe in God is one thing, but to be an atheist!” I’ve paraphrased the story, but the point is that there is a stigma that has kept millions of atheists in the closet. Friends and families of atheists have historically had no idea that they even knew an atheist. As lawmaker Harvey Milk preached about gays, if people learn that they know even one member of an ostracized minority, that minority will be slowly become more accepted – it’s usually harder to hate a person one understands. That’s why coming out campaigns for gays have led to so many civil rights strides over the past 15 years.

But dislike of atheists isn’t anything new. Atheists have been maligned for centuries, even when they represented no threat to the prevailing religious order of the day. It’s simply easy to go after a minority. It’s even easier when that minority holds only a descriptive position, giving its members little reason to unite under any cohesive banner. Indeed, the largest atheist organizations to ever exist are ones which exist today, and their membership levels are not wildly high. With little historic organization, atheists have made for relatively easy targets.

Yet even today we can be seemingly easy targets – key word “seemingly”. Take The God Delusion, for example. One of its biggest problems is how easily opponents have created strawmen around it. Even non-religious people have made notable errors concerning the book: the creators of South Park had an episode where they portrayed Dawkins as claiming that religion is the root of all wars and that there would be peace without it. He has never said any such thing. On any other topic such a glaring mistake would be highly embarrassing.

And, of course, there’s the simple (indeed, very simple) idea that God is good. This is pounded into religious minds, even the mind of the general public, over and over and over. So when something shows up that challenges that notion, it’s the notion itself which has not merely a foothold, but an iron grip on the debate. Our very existence suggests that all these deeply held beliefs of the religious are wrong, and that makes for a tough fight – and a lot of dislike. It’s an uphill battle.

I’m sure there are even more reasons for all this unwarranted hatred. It’s a complicated issue that has a multitude of factors involved; it would be naive and/or dishonest to try and whittle it all down to one issue, whether it be the organizing power of religion or the recent aggressive tone of the “new atheists”. But I do think the best strategy in fighting this negative public perception is probably the Harvey Milk angle. Be vocal and be heard, whether it be in a nice way or an aggressive way. What matters is that people know, hey, atheists exist and, hey, you actually otherwise like us.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism | Tagged: , , , | 26 Comments »

The stubbornness of authority

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Michael

A man in Georgia was denied his right to challenge a parking ticket because of the stubbornness of those in charge:

A man said he was barred from a county courtroom on Thursday because he refused to remove his Muslim head covering, nearly two years after Georgia’s judges voted to allow religious headwear in all state courtrooms.

Troy “Tariq” Montgomery said Henry County State Court Judge James Chafin blocked him from entering his courtroom three separate times to dispute a traffic ticket because he was wearing a kufi, a traditional Muslim head covering. His attorney, Mawuli Mel Davis, said he would soon file a motion challenging the decision….

Montgomery said he was first blocked by a courtroom bailiff from wearing the kufi in the courtroom on April 1, when he was initially scheduled to appear in front of Chafin for the speeding violation. He returned two weeks later with the council’s 2009 policy, but said he still rebuffed.

When he returned on Thursday — this time with his attorney at his side — he said Chafin rejected him again and told him to remain in the hallway during the proceedings. His speeding case is still pending.

This reminds me of my experience with Richard Dubois and J. Christopher Read of the local police department. Neither one is particularly good as his job – and, in fact, the former spends more time trying to have sex with girls 20 years his junior over Facebook than he does helping the city of Augusta (it’s a small town, Richard!) – but each thinks he has an idea of what the law says. That incorrect assumption on their part resulted in me receiving an apology from the chief of police. It seems so common to encounter doofuses who inexplicably are given power.

And that’s the case with Judge James Chafin and his bailiff. It’s quite obvious that these people aren’t really that concerned with getting things right – they just want to feel like they’re right. It’s pathetic and childish. I just hope that once Montgomery wins his battle – and he will win it – he also requests a new judge for his speeding case. It’s obvious Chafin has no interest in fairness and truth.

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Happy Mother’s Day

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Michael

First, the religious version of the day:

Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head. ~Leviticus 20:9

How sweet, amirite?

Now the decent person version of the day:

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

You aren’t really a moderate

Posted on May 7, 2011 by Michael

I’ve long found it extremely annoying when someone claims to be a political moderate despite, ya know, all the positions he or she holds. Aside from being wrong, it feeds into this idea that simply because something falls into the middle, it must be the best, or at least better than the extremes.

Let’s take something clear like the civil rights movement. It was considered radical and extreme to be of the position that blacks and other minorities deserved equal protection under the law. On the other hand, at least as time moved on, it was also considered extreme to want to curtail too many rights. After all, blacks were people, right? The best position, then, was to be a “moderate” and fall right between those nasty extremes: let’s give blacks some rights, but also keep them in check. MLK lamented these moderates in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. Clearly something is not right simply because it happens to be a middle position.

But at least those people actually were moderates by the standards of the day. In the political sense, they were intellectually honest.They actually did take a road between two extremes and thus deserved the title “moderates”. But today? The so-called “moderates” of today definitely are not straddling the middle ground. How many of us have friends who want so desperately and pathetically to cling to that label, yet there’s virtually no chance they would ever vote for a particular party? I know most people have to know someone like that.

But don’t take my word for it. A recent study confirms it: the nation is more polarized than ever, and true moderates are a dying breed:

Among the increasingly growing segment of Americans who identify with neither party and call themselves independents, there are fewer moderates. Many in the “middle” hold strong, ideological views. The study concluded that three groups in the center of the Pew typology “have very little in common, aside from their avoidance of partisan labels.”

“What we see is a much bigger and increasingly diverse middle,” Pew center president Andrew Kohut said. “What’s striking about it is that they’re not so moderate. People in the middle have some strong, well-defined ideological points of view.”

What the study doesn’t mention is that it’s always these jackasses who are also the first to chime in and question the very foundations of our labels. Say to someone “I’m a liberal” and the very first thing a modern day pseudo-moderate will say is, “But what is a liberal, really?” (And just the same goes for those professing to be conservatives.) It seems to me that the real issue here is that these people just have a problem with labels. They’re the popped-collar assholes of politics.

Damn hipsters.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Philosophical trolling

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Michael

I was poking around at YH&C when I read a post about bin Laden’s death. I liked that post, but within it was a Bryan Caplan article that asked what’s wrong with revenge? Expecting an interesting read, I found myself looking at a little philosophical troll:

My point: Bring up revenge, and most people get upset and speak in platitudes. I’d like to know: What’s wrong with revenge?

They do that because it would be tedious to justify every last point down to the tiniest detail. Imagine making an argument about the proper punishment for rapists when some troll swings on by and starts asking “but what’s wrong with rape?!”

To be more specific: Suppose X is the most severe morally acceptable punishment for act Y committed by person Z. Suppose that the government fails to do anything about Y. What’s wrong if a person personally affected by act Y does X to Z?

This fails to get at the heart of Caplan’s concern. He wants to know what’s wrong with revenge, but the scenario he’s proposing does not necessarily entail revenge. If imprisonment for 5 years is the most severe and morally acceptable punishment for an act someone committed and the government fails to act, it is not inherently revenge for me to put that person in my own prison (even if the act personally affected me).

I won’t accept “No one has the right to take the law into his own hands” as an answer. I want to hear some reasons why no one has this right.

Too bad. That’s the heart of the proposition. Of course, we know from the title of the article and the preceding paragraphs that Caplan didn’t mean to say what he did, but here we are.

A few possibilities:

1. “Maybe Z didn’t really do Y.” This is an argument against misguided revenge, not revenge per se.

As pointed out earlier, this assumes that taking the laws into one’s own hand is inherently revenge. It isn’t.

2. “The person might inflict more than X on Z for doing Y.” Again, this is an argument against excessive revenge, not revenge per se.

Again, assumes revenge that has not been shown. Just as with number 1, this objection gets to the heart of what Caplan actually proposed, not what he meant to propose.

3. “Revenge leads to chaos and/or multiple rounds of reprisal.” This seems unduly alarmist. Most people are cowards, and punishing heinous acts is a public good. Even if “justified revenge” were an affirmative legal defense, few people would take advantange (sic) of it. Indeed, if anything, the market under-supplies revenge.

This is a non-sequitur in reference to the original scenario given by Caplan, but it does get back to what he meant to address. Yet he still misses the mark. Let’s grant that this objection is too alarmist. Is it entirely false, though? Does revenge lead to unnecessary secondary effects, even if they are not wide-spread? And are we willing to accept those consequences? Caplan assumes we are so long as they are for a greater public good. This, however, does not necessarily address the morality of incurring those effects. That is, take the issue of spanking. One argument in favor of spanking one’s own children is that it keeps them in line and teaches them discipline. Yet as frequent readers of FTSOS I know, I detest that argument. The issue is not over effectiveness, but right and wrong. As I said in a previous post, shooting a baby in the face will be effective to get it to stop crying, but that is wholly irrelevant to whether or not that is an okay act.

4. “X, the most severe morally acceptable punishment, is zero.” Besides being crazy, this is an argument against any system of criminal justice, not just revenge. Ever seen the bumper sticker “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing is wrong?” You could just as easily have a bumper sticker saying “Why do we imprison people who imprison people to show that imprisoning is wrong?”

The first part of this is a pure strawman. The second part – which is apparently an effort to keep up the non-sequiturs – is two arguments which are not parallel. Both are actually good questions and require individual justifications. The first question has two main justifications. First, if one does not value life at all times, murder away. Second, it is better to destroy one life for the good of the whole. I don’t think many people really want to glom onto the first option, and the second option loses its gusto once one sees the complete lack of need to murder a shackled guy who is behind bars. The second question can use the same two justifications, substituting “liberty” for “life”. If one does not value liberty at all times, imprison away. Or, if it is better to limit the liberty of one for good of the whole, then there is a justification. We tend to use that last one (and it doesn’t lose its gusto).

There are other anti-revenge arguments, but I doubt they’ll fare much better. (Feel free to disagree in the comments…) What’s interesting to me is that while most people officially condemn all acts of revenge, 80% of all action movies depict revenge as not only morally acceptable, but morally required. Sin City is an extreme case, but its stance is mainstream. In the latest Die Hard sequel (thumbs down, BTW), for example, Bruce Willis keeps saying that he’s going to find the bad guys and “Kill them” – not “Kill them if I must do so in self-defense.”

It’s poetic justice. That is not synonymous with unqualified justice.

The reason why there is something wrong with revenge is that it is a purely emotional response. In a system of law, or for those who simply value rationality, reasoning is necessary to form our responses. Indeed, the very idea of “justice” necessarily relies upon the notion that what is right and wrong has a rational basis. That rational basis extends to how we respond to wrongs; if we do away with our reasoning, we are inherently operating outside the bounds of justice – even if our actions happen to agree with it anyway.

Filed under: Philosophy | Tagged: , , , , | 10 Comments »

The danger of false beliefs

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Michael

A few months ago Wendy Pollack went to cause harm to people in Tanzania by providing them with false hope. She led sick people – specifically those with HIV – to believe that unproven and even blatantly discredited ‘medicine’ could help them become healthier. It was an awful tragedy and we can all be thankful that she has finally left Africa all together. She still practices her form of harm in America, but she at least faces some regulations here. (A complete outlawing of her shenanigans would be preferable.) It is easier to combat the misinformation of chiropractors and other sham-practitioners in a developed nation, even if they still manage to cause damage. Unfortunately, places like Tanzania do not have the institutions or medical infrastructure to implement procedures to protect its people, so even with people like Pollack safely thousands of miles away, alternative medicine practices still run rampant:

Hundreds of albinos are thought to have been killed for black magic purposes in Tanzania and albino girls are being raped because of a belief they offer a cure for AIDS, a Canadian rights group said on Thursday.

At least 63 albinos, including children, are known to have been killed, mostly in the remote northwest of the country.

“We believe there are hundreds and hundreds of killings in Tanzania, but only a small number are being reported to the police,” Peter Ash, founder and director of Under The Same Sun (UTSS), told Reuters.

This is a tragedy exactly along the same lines as what the entire alt-med crowd does. These random and inane – and often dangerous – faith-based ideas take off within a certain population and real human lives are put at risk. There is no evidence to back up any of these stupid and harmful beliefs, but evidence matters less and less as people get sicker and sicker. That’s one reason homeopaths are so successful in ripping people off.

What is happening in Tanzania right now rises to a level slightly above what most alt-med people do, but it really isn’t that far and away different. Remember Lawrence Stowe? He bankrupted sick people, drawing them away from real treatment. Many of those people died as a result of his actions – and he knew they would. Even where the people were terminal and could not be cured, he hastened death and increased pain. It’s standard practice for the alt-med crowd and I see no difference between that and what’s going on in Tanzania right now.

Filed under: News, Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Thought of the day

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Michael

I can take that bin Laden information will be in the news for quite some time. And I can take that there will be those moronic conspiracy theorists who say he wasn’t killed. Or he has been dead for years. Or whatever malarkey they want to throw around. And I can stand listening to the stupid debate about releasing images. I can stand listening to all that garbage because at least it’s expected garbage. But come on, media. Are we really going to call bin Laden’s compound a “lair”? Unless President Obama is really Mario, Osama was really Bowser, and the woman he used to shield himself was the Princess, he did not live in a friggin’ “lair”.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »