Blog | Huge Pathetic Force

You'll Have to Pry My FSM From My Cold, Dead Hands!

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:12:17 -0400

Another comment I ran across today on a scientist's website, in the midst of another discussion of that well-trodden subject, "Does God exist, or is he just playing peek-a-boo with us?":

But that fact — that science is self-evidently better than religion at explaining how the world works — does not imply that atheism is superior to theism. It is precisely because a divine being, by definition, isn’t natural or physical that science really doesn’t logically lead directly to atheism.

And that's just why I stoutly refuse to let anyone stop me from worshipping the Flying Spaghetti Monster! He's not natural or physical either. And I'm sure we will all agree that his noodly appendages beat that finger that touched Adam all to heck.

(The point being, in case it escapes anyone, that when you start tossing non-physical divine beings around, one of them is as good as another. Unless you can really show convincingly that one of them is real and the others aren't, which hasn't yet been accomplished as far as I can tell, and I've wasted many an hour I'll never get back studying just about all the attempts to do that that have been made so far.)

Religious Terms Can't Be Pinned Down Any More, Unfortunately

Fri, 10 May 2013 11:52:10 -0400

There's a reason why proponents of religion are frequently demanding that secularists/atheists come up with clear definitions of “God” and “religion” before they proceed to argue against religious beliefs. In most cases, at least, it's because they want to say, “Ah, but the kind of religion we espouse is not that old, antiquated one you have in mind; the kind of God we believe in is much more sophisticated than the simple-minded ‘fundamentalist’ God you are attacking.”

And there's a reason why secularists/atheists don't (or shouldn't) accommodate this demand. It's because it is impossible to do so.

As science has advanced strongly in the modern era, religious people who don't want to ignore it altogether have been forced to twist and turn in a way that Chubby Checker would admire in order to make their ideas look halfway intellectually respectable.

Back in good old Thomas Aquinas’s day, he could lay out a pretty clear definition of his terms, but today it’s nearly impossible to figure out what a lot of faith-based discourse is actually saying. Most advanced theological types have given up asserting boldly that there is a Causa Sui or Ens Realissimum or something like that which the common folk call “God.” What they are reduced to saying is, “Um, well, you know, religions have a lot to say about, um, well, the dilemmas and depth of human existence, and, um … that sort of thing.”

An Atheist Credo in Just Seven Words — Can You Believe It?

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 23:12:31 -0400

Actually, an anti-credo, I guess, sort of the way antibodies are cells in the body that oppose invading pathogens.

At any rate, it occurred to me recently that the whole point of the atheist "antibody" to the Christian "pathogen" is really pretty simple.

The Christian says: "All of you are sinking in a bottomless sea of sin, misery, despair, and error, and to be saved, you just have to come to Jesus."
We reply: "No, we aren't, and no, we don't."

Notice a couple of things about this credo: one is that it can also be applied, mutandis mutatis (meaning "change what needs to be changed"), to any other religion. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, … assume that there is something really out of whack with the world and the human race, which their special set of rituals, beliefs, hymns, chants, rites of purification, etc., is specially fit to cure. (Not all of them claim that only their religion will save the world, of course; some are more easy-going than that. In fact, as some people say, "there are as many Christianities as Christians," and some of them are much less absolutist than the fictional Christian I quoted just above. But if there is a religion which says, "Well, who the heck cares; just go on with your life as you were before I said anything to you," I wouldn't actually consider that world view a religion.)

Christian Politics: The View from Iowa

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:39:50 -0400

The chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, A. J. Spiker, who is 32 years old and hence not one of the grizzled GOP Old Guard, does not think that his party will adopt a pro-marriage-equality position any time soon.

"Committed Christians make up a huge voting bloc within the GOP… The Ken Mehlman sliver of the party,” he said, didn’t play in Iowa. “We can't win elections without committed Christians staying engaged. I suppose the argument is that young people won’t vote Republican unless the party changes on marriage, but I don't hear young people advocating for gay marriage. I was the co-chair of Ron Paul's Iowa campaign, a liberty-minded group, and I don't hear it.

As this non-Christian sees this subject: the people Mr. Spiker calls “committed Christians” are basically folks who have been taught all their lives by the religious authorities they respect that what God wants from humans is that they not be homosexual, not perform or undergo abortions, not have sex before marriage, and support all of their country’s wars (and a few other things along those lines). The ones who are getting along in years, especially, are acutely aware that they are not far from death, which means, to them, that they will go to the eternal hellfire unless they are very careful to be “good Christians,” as defined in the previous sentence. (Of course, they believe that everyone who is not a “good Christian” is going there too, which is why they see their constant insistence that the whole society conform to their moral code as the greatest public service they could do.)

All in a Puff of Smoke

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:36:19 -0400

On a blog referring to the election of Pope Francis, a discussion arose as to the personal morality of popes: did joining the Hitlerjugend as a child, or cooperating with the Argentinian fascist junta, and so on, count against them? One commenter referred to the theological principle of “ex opere operato,” roughly the principle that the efficacy of the sacraments performed by a priest is not diminished by the moral faults of the celebrant.

Traditional Catholic theology -- ex opere operato, etc. -- is a marvelous thing to behold, like an axiomatic system devised by a brilliant mathematician which is assembled with the most rigorous logic, but need not have anything to do with real life.

Of course, this conceptual marvel developed over a long historical process out of the beliefs of (presumably) a group of Jews 2000 years ago who were dazzled by an impressive wandering preacher into thinking that he had the key to bringing them closer to God than they had ever been and to solving all their problems, but who ended up executed by the authorities, leaving his followers with the problem of explaining why they were so bowled over by him.

Are Religions Really "Fairy Tales"?

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:29:25 -0500

On some website I was flipping through the other day, a commenter on a post which dealt with a hoary topic along the lines of science and religion or theology and reason, etc., complained about atheists dismissing religion as just fairy tales. No, it isn't, the commenter said, it has "complex, serious narratives with long histories," or something to that effect. (Wish I had copied down his exact words.) I immediately threw in a reply: "Yes, it's complex, serious fairy tales with long histories."

This is the point that a lot of people are missing on this subject. Opponents of religion insist that most of what religions claim is not true in the sense of "what really happens in the world." Jesus might have died on the cross, but he certainly didn't come back to life. Or perhaps there wasn't any Jesus in the first place.

On the other hand, defenders of religion (by the way, it says a lot that there are so many defenders of religion around these days—if religion is such a necessary, built-in feature of the mind, why does it need so much defending?) insist that there is so much profound truth about the human condition, etc., that atheists miss by rejecting religious traditions.

Christianity is Hollowing Out, It Seems

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 09:05:33 -0500

Frank Bruni has an interesting piece in the Times today on how much the transition from one Pope to the next excites the media, and how little the actual words and thoughts of any given Pope mean to American Catholics.

What strikes me in this column, however, is the statistic he mentions in passing: that 73% of American Catholics considered the resurrection of their savior as very important. Theoretically, according to Christian tradition, that should be 100%. As Paul pointed out, without a belief in the resurrection of Christ, their faith means nothing. But a lot of Christians today (and not only Catholics, of course) shrug their shoulders when the subject comes up.

This indicates how pervasive a secular, scientific world view is becoming in the modern world, even within a traditional religious group.

I should say, however, that this is related basically to Christianity as a set of beliefs about "facts" such as the Resurrection which are directly counter to the scientific picture of the world. Although this does affect other aspects of the religion, such as its power to direct the lives and actions of its believers (Bruni's main point being that many American Catholics ignore the official Church's teachings on sexual matters, which more and more seem to be what Popes consider most important to talk about), the decay of unscientific dogmas is tending to move Christianity (at least in the economically developed countries) away from Christian tradition and in the direction of most religions, which don't consider "factual" statements about the nature of the universe of very central importance.

Way to Go With the Visuals, GOP!

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 01:00:24 -0500

The Republican Party is certainly giving us very arresting video clips which will live in our memories forever, aren't they?

First there was Clint's empty chair, and now Marco's lunge for the water bottle.

Unfortunately, we're not getting a very clear idea yet, from these striking, iconic videos, of what the Sam Hill they want to do about leading the country into the future. Chairs and water bottles don't signify a bold, dynamic new set of policy initiatives to me, at least.

The Pope's Retirement Is a Big Deal — But Why?

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:27:43 -0500

The whole media realm seems to be astonished by the Pope's announcement that he will be retiring soon. I don't really understand why.

He is certainly at retirement age and he is apparently not in the best of health. In any other line of work, it wouldn't be surprising at all for such a person in such a situation to retire. But it seems to be an almost earth-shaking event when it's a Pope who does it

Granted, no Pope has retired while alive in about 600 years, so it is an unusual enough happening to be noted in the news media somehow. But even the regular secular media seem to be gobstruck by the news, to a degree that is wholly out of proportion to its importance. Why all this to-do, when what is happening is basically the same as the retirement of, say, Wally Smith as district manager of the Ever-Sure Insurance Co. in Kansas City?

Yes, it's true that the Pope seems to have a somewhat more prominent position than Wally. He's "head of a state" (in diplomatic terms, at least) and head of a big religious organization. And said religious organization has a lot of adherents who read or watch said news media, so eyes and ears are attracted to the media by emphasizing the event.

Global Warming, Yes, But Also U.S. Political Warming Is in Store

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:25:06 -0500

So the Republicans in Virginia are moving toward an Electoral College scheme that would have given 69% of the EC votes to Romney even though Obama won the state. The Senate hasn't reformed the filibuster, so Senate Republicans will continue to work with their House colleagues to prevent the Congress from passing any worthwhile legislation. (Obamacare really scared the Bejesus out of them.) And the wealth-based right-wing media megaphone continues full-blast.

On the other hand, it appears (as seen in the re-election of Obama and his in-your-face inaugural speech) that public opinion may be edging in a direction that, in some respects at least, could be described as leftish. It seems to me that that fact explains why the Republicans, and the Right in general, is digging its trenches on the political battlefield in something of a panic. I don't want to suggest that a revolution is in sight by any means, but if the Right remains fixed in its trenches and presents the folks out in the country with more and more government activity that they find more and more undesirable and even intolerable, there will have to be some sort of explosive confrontation sooner or later.

Do Gods Belong with Santa Claus?

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:06:59 -0500

Atheists often state that there are no better reasons for believing that a god of the (pick your favorite religion) type exists than there are for the existence of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, etc.

Gary Gutting, a Notre Dame philosopher, begs to differ. He writes in the New York Times:

Believers have not made an intellectually compelling case for their claims: they do not show that any rational person should accept them. But believers such as Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne and Peter van Inwagen, to cite just a few examples, have well-thought-out reasons for their belief that call for serious discussion. Their belief cannot be dismissed as on a par with children’s beliefs in Santa and the Easter Bunny. We may well not find their reasons decisive, but it would be very difficult to show that no rational person could believe for the reasons that they do.

One could call them "well-thought-out reasons" compared with children's beliefs in Santa and the Easter Bunny, which (I would like to point out) are not actually reasoned at all. However, my answer to Gutting would be something like the following.

I don't pay any intellectual penalty at all for saying, "I just don't believe there is any jolly old man in a red suit who lives at the North Pole with a bunch of elves who make toys for all the children, which he delivers on Christmas Eve in a …" and so on. By contrast, I do pay a considerable intellectual penalty if I insist that I don't believe in quarks or positrons. ("Strings," as physicists use the term, or branes, are another matter, but a lot of physicists don't believe in them either; these entities are quite speculative at this point.)

Can This Epidemic Be Suppressed?

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:44:24 -0500

This was just reported on the USA Today website:

LONGMONT, Colo. — Just hours after being released from jail, a man angry at his ex-girlfriend's new relationship fatally shot her, her sister and her sister's husband early Tuesday morning before killing himself, police said.
The triple murder and suicide horrified and shocked residents of the 400-space mobile home community about 35 miles northwest of Denver where the shooting occurred.
"It just shows you that it can happen anywhere," said Weld County Sheriff John Cooke. "Domestic violence knows no boundaries."
Daniel Sanchez, 31, shot his ex, Beatriz Cintora-Silva, 25, her sister, 22, and her sister's husband, 29, before turning the gun on himself about 4 a.m. Tuesday, Cooke said.

Considering the number of guns around the country and the apparent number of men completely out of their gourds with jealousy, or otherwise not in their right minds, this epidemic of multiple shootings may just be uncontrollable, and we will have to live with it, the way people lived with smallpox, polio, etc., in the old days, until — perhaps — some sort of vaccine is discovered.

Could outlawing country music help? Probably not.

Real "Gun Control" in This Country is Just a Dream

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:11:18 -0500

A very good piece on how difficult real "gun control" would be in the U.S. I think we just have to accept that lots of people are going to continue to maim and kill lots of people with guns because hey, that's the American way.

Huh? That Doesn't Make a Particle of Sense

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 20:45:23 -0500

Reed characterized Obama’s win as a “personal victory” and argued that the majority that has now elected Obama twice must have done so despite deep disagreement with his policies.

That's Ralph Reed, of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, to be specific. David Sessions, at The Daily Beast, summarizes his view of the election this way, and further quotes him as follows:

“We did our job,” top organizer Ralph Reed said at a debriefing the day after the election. “But we can’t do the Republican Party’s job for them, and we can’t do the candidate’s job for him or her.”

In other words, if I understand him correctly, his Grand Theory of the Great Right-Wing Upset is that the American people are Totally With Him and the F&FC's message, which is straight from the Holy Writ, and were all set to remake the country into a right-wing Christian Paradise, except that Barak (who, in Reed's view, must really be Rush's "Magic Negro") hypnotized them into stumbling into the voting booth, forgetting their deep religious faith, and pushing the wrong button, thereby overwhelming the puny efforts of the Republican Party and Mitt Romney, who just fell down on his job.

Well, God, who has his eye on the sparrow, as we all know, must have somehow forgotten to pay attention to the U. S. of A. on Election Day, I guess. Who'd have thought He would have been so careless?

Why Doesn't Science Get More Respect?

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 20:04:13 -0500

Looks like a book I should take a look at (except that, since I already have a huge backlog of unread stuff, I tend not to spend time on reading material I already agree with):

In this agenda-setting book, Mark Henderson builds a powerful case that science should be much more central than it is to government and the wider national conversation. It isn’t only that scientific understanding is passed over as decisions are made; the experimental methods of science aren’t applied to evaluating policy either.

Actually, it's rather depressing that in most cases, when someone suggests in any given conversation online or off that science should be respected more, the immediate response is likely to be along the lines of: "Oh yeah? Well, look at the Nazi doctors who did all those experiments in Auschwitz!" As though they were a representative sample of the scientific community.

Or: "Well, what about the Manhattan Project scientists destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ushering in the modern world of thermonuclear terror?" As though the folks who were responsible for starting World War II were scientists.

"Sire, the Peasants are Revolting!" "Yes, They Certainly Are!"

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 08:26:11 -0500

Romney and Ryan have, in the last few days, have been gracious enough to enlighten us concerning the real reasons they lost the election. To wit:

Mitt Romney has been publicly quiet since his brief remarks on Election Night, but he told his top donors on a conference call yesterday that Barack Obama had won by giving “very generous” freebies to key constituencies, including blacks, Hispanics and young people.
“The president’s campaign,” Romney said, “focused on giving targeted groups a big gift, so he made a big effort on small things. Those small things, by the way, add up to trillions of dollars.”

And Ryan's view:

During a series of interviews on Tuesday, Ryan offered this backhanded compliment to the president: “Well, he got turnout. The president should get credit for achieving record-breaking turnout numbers from urban areas for the most part, and that did win the election for him.”

Of course, as Steve Kornacki points out in the Salon article I have been quoting from, these theories hardly fit with what actually happened on Election Day. But who would expect them to? What the ex-candidates are giving us here is pure ideology, which seldom agrees with reality.

This Romney-Ryan “freebies” idea long antedates them; it's what everybody, or nearly everybody, in the upper ranks of the “free enterprise” system has always thought. A lot of the little people, who have to earn wages to live, can't live a decent life without some help from society at large, but the lash that drives them to work at the jobs assigned to their station in society must be, according to the well-off, the fact that that help is as little and as hard to get as it can be made. But the well-off constantly begrudge the little people even that much. Far better, they think, that the poor subsist on the charity of the rich, because that will (they think) make said poor very grateful to their betters.

A Couple of My Favorite Election Nuggets

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:10:24 -0500

(1) Romney cut off his campaign staff's credit cards immediately after finding out he lost, apparently. Who knew he was such a cheap-skate?

(2) Rove insists that Obama's campaign practiced "vote suppression" by running very nasty advertising about Romney's Bain career (which in fact, of course, basically informed voters about what Romney actually did there) and thus duping countless millions of "moderates" into voting for Obama. Of course, Rove and other Republicans have never ever indulged in such nastiness! (Anyone remember "swiftboating"?)

Why the Elephant Won't Change Its Spots

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:03:05 -0500

David Frum is holding forth on The Daily Beast (aka "Newsweek," I guess) about "How the Republicans Got Stuck in the Past." Being one of the more intelligent conservatives, who is somewhat conversant with what the rest of us call, for want of a better term, "reality," he has some worthwhile points to make. For example:

In 1980, the gap between rich and poor had only just begun to widen from its narrowest point of the whole 20th century. Today, the typical worker earns less than his counterpart of 1980, middle-class incomes are stagnating, and wealth and power have concentrated to a degree that would startle even the Astors and the Vanderbilts. …
In 1980, middle-class Americans regarded economic progress as the norm, and tough times as the exception. Today, a plurality of non-college-educated whites say they expect their children to be no better off than they are themselves.
In 1980, this was still an overwhelmingly white country. Today, a majority of the population under age 18 traces its origins to Latin America, Africa, or Asia. Back then, America remained a relatively young country, with a median age of exactly 30 years. Today, over-80 is the fastest-growing age cohort, and the median age has surpassed 37. ...
In 1980, marriage remained the norm among heterosexuals and unimaginable for homosexuals. Today, a majority of American women are unmarried, and same-sex marriage is on its way to becoming the law of the land.
In 1980, our top environmental concerns involved risks to the health of individual human beings. Today, after 30 years of progress toward cleaner air and water, we must now worry about the health of the whole planetary climate system.
In 1980, 79 percent of Americans under age 65 were covered by employer-provided health-insurance plans, a level that had held constant since the mid-1960s. Back then, health-care costs accounted for only about one 10th of the federal budget. Since 1980, private health coverage has shriveled, leaving some 45 million people uninsured. Health care now consumes one quarter of all federal dollars, rapidly rising toward one third—and that’s without considering the costs of Obamacare.
These realities do not dictate any particular political choice. But they do shape the menu of choices that will be available to political actors, as well as the range of outcomes that are achievable.
For example: it’s certainly possible for Republicans to choose to be a white person’s party. If we do so choose, however, we are also choosing to be an old person’s party. Since the elderly receive by far the largest portion of government’s benefits, an old person’s party will be drawn by almost inescapable necessity to become a big-government party. Indeed, that is just what happened in the George W. Bush years: Medicare Part D and all that.

And so on.

However, the crux of his sermon reads as follows:

On the Republican side, the road to renewal begins with this formula: 21st-century conservatism must become economically inclusive, environmentally responsible, culturally modern, and intellectually credible. …
The work of developing a conservative policy agenda adequate to the 21st century will require months or even years. It must involve many people. Political work is collaborative work, and although we all have our 10-point plans, the immediate need is for a plan with just this one goal: we must emancipate ourselves from prior mistakes and adapt to contemporary realities. To be a patriot is to love your country as it is. Those who seem to despise half of America will never be trusted to govern any of it. Those who cherish only the country’s past will not be entrusted with its future.

To which I say: Good luck with that!

It seems to me that for the GOP to do what Frum is suggesting would be to turn itself inside out, rejecting just about everything it has been dedicating itself to for years now. In fact, it would be turning itself into a pale reflection of the Democratic Party — and not just pale in the skin-color sense.

I just don't see them doing that. And that's why the Elephant is not likely to change its spots.

Many "Atheist Groups" Turn Me Off, Too

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:28:28 -0400

I posted the following comment on a Salon article by a person who complained that the so-called "new, militant atheists" made his or her (can't tell which) life so difficult, because the atheist groups she or he tried to join were so intolerant to anyone who they considered not sufficiently strong in their hatred of religion and the religious.

I am an atheist (or at least a non-believer in deities) who doesn't hang out with "organized atheism," either. To me, atheism necessarily includes critical thought, and no group of people that wants to maintain its self-identity, especially one which thinks of itself as "militant" and determined to eliminate the pernicious influences of people outside itself, can tolerate folks who want to join the group but at the same time engage in debates with members of it. "Atheist groups" are generally as single-minded and intolerant of internal dissent as religious groups.
I think, based on your general approach to this subject, that if you want to join a group, you would be better off with some folks like Unitarians. Or Buddhists—although there are a lot of pretty close-minded Buddhist groups, too.
But what I really would want you to do is to learn to be confident enough of your own view of the world that you don't have to join any group on the religion/anti-religion axis, because you will probably find yourself at odds with all of them. And don't feel hurt when people get angry with you for what you think; if they hurl insults at you, just say, "Thanks very much for your opinion," and walk away.
Join groups that are working to make the world better; join political groups, if you can find any you can work with. But stay away from groups that base their entire existence on a metaphysical proposition, such as "gods exist" or "gods don't exist." You'll never be comfortable in them.

It's often said that "atheism is a religion just the way not stamp collecting is a hobby." Certainly stamp collectors and other hobbists often form groups to discuss what they are interested in, and there is no reason why atheists should not do the same. (Not to suggest that atheism is a hobby!)

However, groups of "militant atheists" who are primarily interested in fighting the effects of the actions of religious communities on the politics and general life of the entire community must be considered as political or social-action groups, rather than societies of holders of a certain philosophical doctrine. It would be as though non-stamp-collectors in a certain town were so put upon by the great majority of residents, who happen to collect stamps, that they were driven to organize in self-defense.

It's Another Campaign Season; Haul Out Your Snow Shovels and Snow Blowers!

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:03:21 -0400

In the third Presidential debate, both candidates made a lot of moves which seem to have left everyone confused. Was Romney endorsing so much of Obama's policies that he virtually conceded the contest? Was Obama reducing his whole approach to America's relationship to the world to "I'm a whiz-bang at crushing all the baddies, and by the way I love Israel more than anybody!"?

I think the thing to keep always in mind is that, on many issues, particularly policies about the use of the military, as was occasionally touched on in this debate, and most economic policies—in fact, just about all policies which are hard for the average person to understand—it is basically impossible to find a relationship between presidential campaigns and what the winning candidates actually do when they get into office.

Campaigns, after all, have one purpose: to get the campaigner elected, and the campaigner will say anything she or he thinks will do the job, as well as avoiding saying anything which she or he thinks will harm the chances for her or him to be elected.