Richard Wade’s new column is typically sage, this time  as he soberly and accurately advises someone who is unrequitedly in love with a friend:

When a friend learns that their friend loves them romantically, but they don’t have that kind of love to return, they often feel a tension because of an odd quirk in our culture.

The healthiest response for the friend would be to feel sad about their love-struck friend, knowing that they are frustrated in their love. Unfortunately, in our culture people often take upon themselves the responsibility for other people’s feelings, thinking that they are supposed to somehow do something about or fix the other’s feelings. They confuse caring about someone’s feelings with taking care of someone’s feelings. So, being unable to return their friend’s romantic love, they might feel guilty. It is not rational or fair to themselves to take on that responsibility and the resultant guilt, but unfortunately it is all too common.

Also unfortunately, guilt is almost always accompanied by resentment. They don’t want this responsibility, but they don’t realize that it isn’t really theirs to take on. So they gradually begin to resent the source of their guilt. They think, “Oh why did my friend have to fall in love with me, making my life so complicated? Now I have to do something about it.” They cannot imagine themselves saying to their smitten friend, “I care about you, and I’m sad that you’re so frustrated, but there’s nothing I can do about it. My feelings are just not the same as yours. I hope that you can resolve your feelings.” They might consider such a response to be cold and uncaring, but it is not. It is the healthy, reasonable response of a caring friend who can only care, but who cannot be the manager of someone else’s emotions.

This is why your friend may at first have wished that your feelings would go away, and later may start wishing that you will go away. If she’s caught to any extent in that cultural false responsibility, the discomfort of guilt and resentment will take its toll on her friendship for you.

If someone loves you and you don’t love them, you can’t soft-peddle it, you’ve just gotta dash their hopes as clearly as possible.  And if you love someone and they’ve confirmed they have no feelings in return, you’ve just got to let it go.  Even were something to change in the future, you’re far more likely to have that happen if you two are not spending time in a relationship so imbalanced in terms of feelings and (in turn) power.

Your Thoughts?

I know, I know. It’s been a while since I’ve been in touch, but look … it’s not you, it’s me. Well, maybe you have something to do with it. Ok, if that’s the attitude you’re going to take, it’s all your fault. Look at you! Who wants to come home to this mess every day, especially considering I know you’ve been seeing other bloggers?! Do you know what it’s like to spend all day working hard, marking posts with misleading tags to drag unsuspecting readers to my blog when the whole time you’re sitting there pretty-as-you-please whoring it up for the likes of Pharyngula and the Friendly Atheist? How am I supposed to compete for that? You … you know what? I can’t. I just can’t. So I haven’t been posting. Are you happy now? Good, now maybe we can talk about my day for a change. Jesus.

Now, look honey, don’t get mad…. Promise you won’t get mad or I won’t tell you. Promise? Okay. Wow, this is even more difficult than I thought it was going to be. Okay, out with it. Igotmarried. Now hang on, hang on, hang on, you said you wouldn’t get mad! Wait a minute, I DO still love you! It’s just that I looked into it and it turns out I can’t legally marry a readership in this country because that would amount to polygamy and there’s like a law or something. No, honest, look it up! Man, this is awkward. Remember how I went to TAM7 awhile back? Well, I roomed with this guy, right? I know some of you were suspicious at the time that something might have been going on behind your backs, but look. At the time we were just friends. I swear. Nothing more. Yeah, but then, you see … then we hooked up a little after that and now we’re married. Hey, no, listen. Listen! There’s good news and you won’t very well hear it while you’re yammering on about fidelity and trust issues, will you? Okay, fine. I’ll let you vent, then. I’m sure this is a very difficult time for you.

Are you done? No? Okay….

Yes, thank you. Your feelings matter very much to me. Now that that’s out of your system and I’ve stealthily moved all sharp and heavy objects from out of your reach while you were venting, I’d like to tell you the good news. Okay. The good news is that he says I can still see you! Isn’t that great, cupcake? There! There’s that smile I’ve always loved! I knew you’d come around in the end! Look, I know I’ve done you wrong. I promise to not neglect you like I have these past few months but you have to give me something in return. You just get all your little friends to read me, right? I don’t care how you do it. You can graffiti my link on a bathroom stall door if you like. Here’s a sharpie. It’d probably be more effective to just, you know, casually link to me in high-traffic areas of the internet, though. What? Of course I’m a shameless self-promoter. You knew that coming into this deal. Okay, well, I should wrap this up. My husband Jay just came home and he’s still a little sensitive about this arrangement I have with you. So put your pants back on and sneak out the door while I distract him with an aperitif and a cheese platter. Go on, shoo!

Cuddles,
Kate

I know a lot of people who say something like, “Look at the universe! How can you not believe there is a designer of all this?”

Trust me; if I were to attribute this universe to a designer, I would be forced to believe some frightening conclusions about that designer. I would be overwhelmed by such a designer’s remarkable incompetence and ineffeciency — no, scratch that…the universe could still be exemplary of a remarkably competent designer, if the designer’s goal was to create a house of nightmares and terrors…because I do have to admit that to have a universe that is so capable of destruction and carnage is a good feat in itself…all the ways you can die in “I Wanna Be the Guy” proves that.

Or, if the designer were trying to be a dadaist…he was remarkably competent at that?

…Really, to me, it would be insulting to attribute this universe to a designer. I don’t believe people mean that God was a dada-ist. Not believing in one is the least I can do to preserve the idea of a designer. As I discussed with heroes, if no one fits the bill, then I simply don’t assume anyone is.

What do I mean? I like this video from Neil deGrasse Tyson posted at Friendly Atheist, and also Greta Christina’s comments.

These are close to my sentiments as well. The thing I come to realize constantly is that if there were a designer, then he is responsible for all of this. As Tyson points out, the things he has mentioned exclude human free will disasters. They are not the product of a fallen world, but rather the setup that occurred in the “days” before humans even entered the scene, much less fell.

Adam F noted that one of the reasons he believes in a higher power is because of “existence.” To be sure, I don’t think he is making a design argument, but I still just don’t get why he believes existence points to any higher power. So I’m still probing there.

I don’t know how to put it, really. But if I were to attribute the universe to a higher power or designer just because it exists, then I would have to attribute this designer or higher power as either rather neutral toward us or downright hostile to us, because the universe he would have designed is either rather neutral to us or downright hostile. We, our lives, and everything we experience as good are a slim part of things in general, so I don’t think we have reason to believe that the universe comes out “net positive.” I simply fear to calculate if we do in fact come out negative or if it simply zeros with all the destruction being accidental. With a designer, I always have the possibility that, if he created this universe with design, he intended the destruction and chaos instead of it simply “being here.”

However, to not attribute this universe to a designer vanishes all these problems. Then, it’s no big deal if the universe appears to be hostile or neutral to us because it wasn’t designed to be anything. Instead of a designer with intentional malice, we simply have a dispassionate universe with negligence. And actually, even this is imprecise, since negligence implies as duty…a duty which doesn’t exist. So, things actually simply are what they are. In this case, we would still certainly feel it is horrible, but we would recognize that we need to suck it up because it’s not like we deserve any better. (That’s where I am at. I think that atheism is not about pride but instead about humility. Humility that the universe isn’t “for” us. It wasn’t put in our hands or designed to satisfy us.)

The strangeness of humanity and other lifeforms, then, is explicable. Our industrial wasteland that goes through the funpark is explicable if we don’t have a supposedly perfect civil engineer at its helm.

I think we have flipped the problem and must flip it back. Most people always want to talk about how the universe is designed for us. I think this simply doesn’t bear out. But what we can say (if the universe isn’t designed for life or the universe isn’t designed for human life) is that life has developed and adapted for the universe. In the same way that we don’t saya river is “designed for” a bridge but instead that the bridge is “designed for” (and around) the river, we can point out that we seem to be doing well enough despite the lack of care for us. It’s not the tremendously accommodating universe responsible for this (for the universe isn’t tremendously accommodating) — it’s we who are running briskly through terrible odds.

So we need to continue this paradigm. This is really what we’ve been doing. In fact, the bridge is an example of our doing this. The river wasn’t designed for us, but we have developed bridges, waterwheels, boats, to achieve our goals despite that river. We have developed medicine to ward against the many aspects of life which try to disease us. We have developed and projected purpose and meaning despite the silence of the universe.

Richard Wade’s advice columns at Friendly Atheist are consistently excellent.  This week he handles the question of what to say when the grieving religious person remarks that their lost loved one is in a better place when you cannot honestly say that you agree:

When the more religious people talk about how the person will “live on” in the afterlife, you can talk about the things that you think will “live on” in the form of good memories or of their continuing positive influence on you or others

When the more religious people talk about their grief, ask them if there is anything you can do to help, to take care of some ordinary task while they deal with the emotions, the upheaval and the fatigue. In the throes of grief, a simple errand can seem overwhelming. An offer to do a few of these can be not only helpful in mundane terms but also deeply healing and soothing because it is a humble gesture of caring. If they say you can pray for the deceased or whomever, say that how you express your caring is by helping in some way, that you want to honor the person’s memory through something tangible. If they say thank you, but there’s nothing you can do, then just nod and accept the helplessness. Often for those on the periphery of grief, those who only slightly knew the deceased, the awful thing they have to endure is helplessness. Even if there is nothing you can do, or nothing you are allowed to do, the caring still helps to soothe those who grieve.

His advice in full is here.

I just saw this funny little cartoon – hat tip to the Friendly Atheist – and had to share it with my thoughts…

I like to call this the “Google-of-the-gaps” logical fallacy, which is a humorous version of the classic god-of-the-gaps fallacy. Essentially, the god-of-the-gaps is a logical fallacy which is an argument from ignorance: it states that because we lack the knowledge to draw any kind of reasonable conclusion upon a particular question (such as life after death, for example) then in our ignorance some stat that God (or gods) must be the solution.

Of course, the god-of-the-gaps is a silly argument to make, because with just a single change in wording, by substituting something else for the word “God”, one could argue that the explanation is Santa Claus, unicorns, leprechauns, space aliens, or numerous other silly things which are wholly unsupported by any evidence.

As I tell my students: you must make conclusions based upon what you do know, not upon what you don’t know.  And lacking substantive evidence to draw a conclusion, simply state the most obvious truth: “I don’t know.”

But I bet Google knows

Recently Hemant Mehta did an excellent job of mobilizing criticism of Albuquerque city councilman Don Harris for creating campaign literature that attacked his opponent for, among other things, being an atheist and contributing to a “Charles Darwin” scholarship.  Harris, to his credit apologized for trying to exploit his opponents views on religion in  the campaign, promised not to do so again, and to advise others not to do so either.  But he also complained that Hemant only focused on the atheism issue and did not address any of his opponent’s own flaws as a candidate and campaigner.

But the issue here is simple: Friendly Atheist is an atheist issues blog, not an Albuquerque city counsel issues blog.   He has no obligation to worry about anything related to Albuquerque or its politics that is unrelated to atheism. It makes perfect sense that he zeroed in on the issue relevant to his site’s activist concerns.   Sites about gay rights will cover those dimensions of campaigns, abortion rights sites (for and against) will be happy to discuss abortion issues in various races.  Economics blogs will cover economics issues.  And hopefully local citizens run worthwhile blogs about local issues.  That’s the nature of issues-oriened activism. And it’s a <strong>good</strong> thing that it’s this way because it allows greater niche strengths that when combined together make for a more informed debate.

We need different watchdogs and different debaters on every topic. To suggest that Hemant’s commenting upon the issue that fits his blog’s focus commits him unnecessarily to having to analyze non-atheism related campaign issues is to misunderstand the role and purpose of his blog.  He has no obligation to turn his site into an Albuquerque city council blog just because he criticized a campaign tactic that has clear larger civil rights and 1st Amendment implications for its own sake.

But at least this whole episode has served two great purposes:  it is has shown the potential of the atheist blogosphere to effectively stand up to discrimination against atheists and push back against negative stereotypes associated with us.  And it has given us an awesome excuse to present you with “Weird Al” Yankovic’s masterpiece “Albuquerque,” presented in two parts in the form of wonderful fan-made videos that humorously bring the song’s hilarious story to life:

Ten years ago I listened to the Running With Scissors album from which this song came constantly during some stressful times.  It was the perfect mood lifter.  I think it is actually my favorite “Weird Al” album when all is said and done.

This song from the same album is one of my all time favorites and was the ultimate for cheering me up and worth highlighting on a blog with many readers who are skeptics, it’s Al’s send up of horoscopes and it also comes with a completely hilarious unofficial video.  One bonus of having a legion of geeks for fans, as Al does, is that the fan-art is guaranteed to be top notch.

Yeah, that’s right, haters, I’m still unabashedly repping the “Weird Al.” Deal with it.

Your Thoughts?

A year ago today my life began to change in a big way. On October 3, 2008 Bill Maher’s movie about religion, Religulous, was released in Canada. At the time I was a Christian, but I decided to see the movie because I was intrigued by the previews. I had never been exposed to such outright criticism of religion.

I didn’t know who Bill Maher was (honestly…people find this hard to believe), so I didn’t know what to expect. What I saw was a crass, in-your-face dump on faith. But rather than feeling offended I felt inspired by the closing scene of the movie. Maher said:

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking…keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and distruction.

…

The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt.

I started to allow myself to doubt my beliefs, and to consider that the Bible was probably just a fairy tale.

A short time after I had seen the movie I was in a book store and noticed Christopher Hitchens’s book God is not Great, and decided to pick it up. By the time I finished reading the book I was an atheist, and wondering how I ever believed in a god in the first place!

I was now very fascinated with the topic of religion, and picked up Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Dawkins introduced me to the world of skepticism of all sorts of beliefs. I discovered that there was a whole online community of skeptics.

I filled up my iPod with podcasts that allow me to learn while I’m working:

The Atheist Experience
The Conspiracy Skeptic
Hunting Humbug 101
Point of Inquiry
The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe
The Skeptic Zone
Skeptoid

I also got into reading blogs that kept me up to date on the big stories in the atheist and skeptical communities:

Bad Astronomy
Friendly Atheist
NeurologicaBlog
Pharyngula
Skepchick

And I’ve been doing my best to get a fairly well-rounded understanding of science. Some of my favourite books:

The Elegant Universe – Brian Greene
Death From the Skies! – Phil Plait
Quirkology – Richard Wiseman
Trick or Treatment – Simon Singh
The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins

I’m being opened up to a whole new, fascinating, mind-boggling, incredible, inconceivable, evidence-based, beautiful and awe-inspiring universe.

It has been quite a year! I’ve been taking in so much information that I needed to start this blog in order to articulate some of my thoughts, and to try to take part in what others in the skeptical community are doing. I’m learning and growing every day, and I can’t wait to see where I’m at in a year’s time.

If any of the people involved in the podcasts, blogs and books I mentioned above happen to stumble upon this blog entry, I just want to say thanks!

I think that the best thing that I’ve learned in the last year is the importance of science. Science is the most useful tool that we have, and I’m excited every time I see someone promoting it to the wider public. It seems to be on the increase and that’s so encouraging.

I’ve rambled on long enough, but I just felt the need to reflect on the past year. Thanks for reading!

So today is “Blasphemy Day.”  Here’s what it’s about:

Blasphemy Day International is an international campaign seeking to establish September 30th as a national day to promote free speech and stand up in a show of solidarity for the freedom to mock and insult religion without fear of murder, violence, and reprisal. It is the obligation of the world’s nations to safeguard dissent and the dissenters, not to side with the brutal interests of thugs who demand “respect” for their beliefs (i.e., immunity to being criticized or mocked or they threaten violence).

So if you support free speech, and the rights of those who disagree with religious views to voice their opinions peacefully, support our group and join the cause!

(via Pharyngula)

I am of three  minds on the topic of Blasphemy Day.  I am not really a deliberate blasphemer by temperament.  Of course I enjoy a good sacrilegious joke as much as any non-fundamentalist with a sense of humor does.  I enjoy ridiculing what is ridiculous in absurd beliefs.  But I do not and typically have no desire to go out of my way to denigrate religious symbols or texts or phrases for the sake of causing offense itself.  I am happy to express my reasons against religious ideas and institutions in a vigorous and scathing way which spares no rhetorical flourish, as long as I am saying what I really think.  I am happy to post videos that have sharp, funny satire that makes important points.

But blaspheming in the sense of saying things which somehow curse revered religious figures or texts rather than make a philosophical case against them or a genuinely funny joke at their expense?  That’s not my style.  And for ethical reasons: it’s rude, it’s obnoxious, it’s disrespectful to people who care about those things.  The reasons why they care about them may be problematic, but they care nonetheless.  And it’s some sort of combination of self-centered, cruel, insensitive, arrogant, impolite, and tactless to go out of one’s way to denigrate things people care about just to insult them.

If there is a philosophical point at stake and stressing that God is an “imaginary friend for grown ups” or something, then that’s fair game.  Part of argumentation is to challenge received attitudes by forcing people to reconsider something they improperly revere and demonstrate irreverence towards it as a way of trying to combat the spell it has on someone.  A philosophical mentor of mine is in the habit of referring to Nietzsche, my philosophical obsession for many years, in denigrating terms or dismisively as “dear old Fred.”  Why?  I think it’s because it was a way of sending a message to me that he’s not to be taken too seriously.  Because no one is to be taken too seriously.  And because I’ve spent years studying Nietzsche and writing a dissertation that spends several chapters explicating him.  And, more importantly, I and others who study Nietzsche can sometimes be tempted to elevate him into an unquestionable authority—or at least to quote him as though his voice did have a superior authority beyond his ideas’ abilities to stand up to vigorous questioning.

Now, I’ve never worshipped Nietzsche and I freely and unhesitatingly disagree with him on various points.  And even when I was in the phase of citing him as though his ideas were authoritative just for being Nietzsche’s ideas, I knew all along that it wasn’t because the great and hallowed intellectual giant must be right on anything about which he writes.  What I was doing was being a good scholar and immersing myself in his thought so that I could understand it as well as possible.

By frequently and reflexively putting on the Nietzsche glasses and trying to assess everything in his terms for several years, I was not ceding my rights to disagree, but rather I was trying to understand what there might be to learn by trying not to disagree.  I was trying to figure out the best possibilities for reading him, the maximum possible insights that might be in his texts if we try to reason out how they could answer what might seem prima facie like devastating objections.  The goal was not to subsume my thought forever in his but to learn to think like him as much as possible so that I could then ascertain his insights as much as possible and then make decisions about where I disagreed with him that I could feel completely confident in.

Like with my former Evangelical Christianity, I can say of Nietzsche that when I disagree, it’s not because I am dismissing a caricature of something I do not understand.  I lived, ate, breathed, and slept Evangelical Christianity from the time I was 5 until I was 21 and then I lived, ate, breathed, and slept Nietzsche from 21 to 31.  There is so much understanding possible only through this method.  Throughout the Nietzsche years many of my Nietzschean attitudes were only hypothetical—as much as I’d argue for them academically, I would also privately argue for things I knew were at cross-purposes with Nietzsche.

And finally, as my dissertation started to reach its final phases, in my final chapter, after years of zealous advocacy for Nietzsche, I settled into the phase of being ready to criticize and to do so with no compunction.  I readily was able to say, I just think he’s wrong here and wrong there and that in my own philosophy I have to part ways with him and move on from him.  I think I have benefitted an immense amount from living with Nietzsche the last ten years of my life and I am extremely happy with the ways that he has infused my perspective with irreplaceable insights.  I look forward to teaching him to students for the rest of my career and to mining his works for a myriad of insights I still have not discovered even in 10 years of intensive concentration on him.  I still find debates within Nietzsche scholarship  about how to interpret him fascinating and still have a whole career of making what I’ve already developed in my dissertation public ahead of me.  So, I’m not done with Nietzsche by any stretch.  He’s been a terrific influence and I still want to refine and publish all I’ve learned about what he has to offer.

But, now he’s no longer Nietzsche to me but, in many ways, “dear old Fred.”  And that’s a vital and important thing.  Because, as Nietzsche himself writes in the “On The Bestowing Virtue” section of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil.”

And it was surprisingly helpful to me mentally to have that towering, bullying mind of Nietzsche dismissed as just the mind of “dear old Fred.”  The mockery of my own seriousness about Nietzsche was important for me to enter the stage of pulling me out of my immersion stage and making possible my shift into criticism.  It was important for me to “break my revering heart” (“On The Famous Wise Men,” Thus Spoke Zarathustra) as the first step towards truthfulness about Nietzsche’s shortcomings.

And it is in this spirit that I am for blasphemy.  Our revering hearts are obstacles to truth.  They are barriers to necessary criticism.  And far worse than just falling under the spell of a great mind for a season is worshipping a man, a god, a tradition, a phrase, a symbol—an anything.  Worship is inherently unhealthy.  It’s a dangerous lack of restraint in one’s allegiances and affections.  It’s a surrender of one’s critical faculties.  And reverence which reaches that point deserves challenge.  It may be unpleasant to those challenged, but if one is to engage the ideas of those who worship, one must challenge their revering wills.  Bowing deferently to their altars may be politeness and civility when a guest in their houses of worship, but in the public sphere and in the contests of ideas one’s refusal to bow can serve a constructive purpose of demonstrating your defiance of what some of the religious want to consider holy over all else.

And Christianity and Islam, by their natures, have strong tendencies to want to spread their attitudes about what is to be taken as holy everywhere.  And when we are too cautious about never incurring on their boundaries of sacredness, we de facto acknowledge a sacredness.  We too treat what they insist is to be “set apart” as though it really is worth being “set apart” when we defer and agree never to treat it disrespectfully as we would any other merely human attachment.

There’s no point in being deliberately rude and obnoxious.  You’re never going to see me flout the Catholic church by addressing a priest with whom I’m not on a first name basis as anything but Father.  Because whatever my philosophical and moral disagreements, it’s a simple matter of respect for a different tradition.  Insofar as religion is about more than people’s beliefs but also their cultures, we should be respectful of people’s places in their traditions as we are of the leaders of foreign countries.  And we should respect people’s religious morally harmless rituals the way we respect a foreign culture’s customs which diverge from our own.  We should also challenge their abuses of rituals to harm others in morally bad ways and we should heap scorn and ethical challenge on outright immoral rituals and traditions.  And we should disagree vigorously with bad ideas and give them no special respect for just being traditional religious beliefs.

So these are where I think the boundaries should be drawn.  Respecting morally indifferent rituals, traditions, titles, etc., are all matters of respecting cultures.  Challenging morally questionable rituals, traditions, titles, etc. is a matter of exercising our own moral conscience and our right to make moral arguments in a community of open discourse about moral issues.  Challenging philosophically questionable ideas is a matter of exercising our intellectual conscience and advocating on behalf of the truth as best we can judge it.

Where does blasphemy come in as any good in light of these considerations?  When religions agitate to try to silence all moral and intellectual criticisms of their practices?  Religions need to be adamantly and unqualifiedly denied such a desire.  They have no entitlement to demand others treat their teachings as irreproachable.  Their leaders and their traditions are not beyond criticism from outside.  They are not entitled to any special rights outside the confines of their tradition which confers such rights on them for voluntary community members.  They are  not morally entitled to threaten or use violence to protest vigorous intellectual, moral, and political challenge.  They are not morally entitled to write laws that take away our rights to be rude to each other.  Should we be obnoxious and insult people’s reverences capriciously?  Ethically no.  But politically this should be as inalienable a right as people’s rights to have such reverences.  You must have the right to worship whomever you want and I must have the right to laugh at you in whatever manner I want.  That’s the deal.  That’s fairness.

And so Blasphemy Day is an assertion of that right.  That right of the secularists to insist that our freedom of private expression of our disbelief and/or disdain for superstition and irrational traditionalism is as inviolable as your right to have fantastic, unverifiable beliefs.  Both rights end when they threaten to eradicate each other.  Both rights end should they involve violence (or palpably harm children—I’m looking at you child-killing faith “healers”) or the co-option of state apparatuses to enforce either public belief or private disbelief.

And since there is a disquieting tendency throughout the world to start to protect religious people from criticism or to defer to religious threats of violence as respectable and worth honoring, it is important that secularists stand up explicitly for our right to do things that religious people do not like.  Usually it should not come to gratuitous blasphemy.  But if even our morally, politically, and intellectually defensible arguments will be met with threats of violence as “blasphemy” then we must assert our rights not only to such reasonable discourse but even to legitimate instances of blasphemy.  We cannot back down and promise only to criticize moderately and politely if we are being bullied when we are trying to be rational with irrational, violent people.  The very notion that they can restrict our speech is an affront to our rights of free expression and to disbelief.

And so actual blasphemy which would be rude and gratuitous normally becomes an important politically symbolic gesture of our right to offend in general.  Normally I for one have no intention of offending anyone.  I am in the rational persuasion business.  I’d happily never offend anyone.  But I am willing to run the risk that people will be offended by strong opinions presented with rhetorical force.  And when that happens, it’s not my fault.  Affirming this right to offend by accident most clearly involves affirming the right to offend even deliberately.  It’s affirming offense itself as politically legitimate speech.

And, of course, normally non-aggressive sacrilege and good humored mockery are important means for helping break the spell of the instinct to worship and to start to see their overhyped religious leaders as “dear old Ben” or “dear old Mo” the way that, much as I love him, Nietzsche has to be “dear old Fred.”

So, for these reasons, while I do not endorse gratuitous blasphemy and while technically blasphemy is a victimless crime since there is no God to actually offend, I support respecting people’s traditions and reverences as part of how they construct their identities.  I do not support respecting them as ideas and practices insofar as they are bad ideas or practices deserving refutation.  In the battle of ideas we should not give them any special deference they do not earn through argument.  But we should be respectful insofar as they are indifferent parts of people’s habits and customs.  The only, but nonetheless vital, reasons to go out of our way to deliberately offend such rituals and customs and sacred figures are to assert our rights not to treat them as holy and set apart, our rights to offend whether accidentally or on purpose, and our rights to criticize religious ideas and institutions as vigorously as we may any other ideas or institutions.

Blasphemy Day is worthy of being deemed a holiday if you believe that free speech is sacred. Blasphemy and dissent against governmental authority are the two most quintessential acts of free speech available to us since it is religious and political authorities alone from whom anyone has ever had to worry about coercion against the right of free speech.  So if we believe that ultimately nothing is sacred except free speech itself (as Pat Condell argues below) then the only true holy day on the calendar is the day in which you celebrate free speech itself by exercising it in defiance of those forces of authoritarianism who blaspheme against freedom by inventing the concept of a blasphemy in the first place.

But, since I’m not really the type to go be disrespectful, even for the purposes of a holiday, I’ll have to leave it to one of the grand masters of disrespect to religion in the name of political freedom, Pat Condell himself:

Finally, Friendly Atheist has important information about efforts to challenge Ireland’s recently enacted blasphemy law and how people can help out.  I encourage you to read up and take seriously this threat to free speech.

Your Thoughts?

Daniel Jones, 23 year old founder of a 500,000 member Jedi church, felt emotionally humiliated after employees at a Tesco forced him to remove his Jedi hood and mocked his beliefs after he gave them a business card which proved his religion.

Mr Jones, from Holyhead, said his religion dictated that he should wear the hood in public places and is considering legal action against the chain.

‘It states in our Jedi doctrination that I can wear headwear. It just covers the back of my head,’ he said.

The Tesco spokesperson though didn’t just cite store policy or private property owners’ rights but actually offered a theological justification for the permissibility of asking him to remove his hood without violating his beliefs:

‘He hasn’t been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods.

‘Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood.

‘If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they’ll miss lots of special offers.’

And that’s about as good and close to truth as any theological argument from the “real” religions gets.

Hooded Daniel Jones (right) with his brother Barney at a meeting of their Jedi church in Holyhead, North Wales

via Friendly Atheist

Your Thoughts?

READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY AT THE FRIENDLY ATHEIST

I help coach my school’s Speech Team.

I think I’m going to plan a pre-season party to get everyone pumped up about the tournaments ahead — We’re going to listen to a motivations speaker and get dinner together. I won’t ask the administrators for money, but I am borrowing a school bus. Another coach will pay for the gas, though. No one *has* to go, but seriously… they should all go if they know what’s best for them.

Oh. And on the way to dinner, I’m going to take everyone to a local atheist Meetup, where they can perform the Blasphemy Challenge on video, get “debaptized” with a blow dryer, and play Pin the Tail on the Jesus.

That should be ok, right?

…

You can imagine the reaction if any atheist did that. No doubt every Christian Right group would be after your head. Your bosses would (rightfully) get rid of you. FOXNews would have a field day.

So why has there been little to no repercussion for Scott Mooney, the head football coach at Breckinridge County High School in Louisville, Kentucky, who took his players to get baptized?

READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY AT THE FRIENDLY ATHEIST

[Friendly Atheist]

An excerpt, of an excerpt, no less.

[Father Gary:] “I’m not a wise man in the world’s things. I’m not even academically able to teach a lot of subjects and neither is my wife. We resolved in ourselves years and years ago that if we were able to teach our children character, teach them how to read so that they could read the Bible, we would have done all that is necessary for them to survive this world. And we’re not going to put ourselves up under other people’s ideas of what an educated person is. So we’ve taught each one of them that we would be just as proud to see them hanging off a garbage truck, knowing that they don’t lie, steal, cheat, and despise God.” (p. 72)

“The public schools are being assaulted by Satan,” he continues. “In the public schools, we’d be worried about our daughters being raped, assaulted, learning Satan worship, fighting, all the guns, the deaths in the schools, knifings. Teachers molesting children. Homosexuals, you know, demanding their wickedness be crammed into the classroom.”

Earlier today, I challenged Rod Dreher’s recent post wherein he lamented the difficulties we have in overcoming our minds’ propensities for rationalizations.  In that same post he had argued from the experience of his own loss of Catholic faith that the intellect was an insufficient ground for religious beliefs and that the will needed to be prioritized instead and that that was why he was raising his children to be faithful first and foremost to his newer Orthodox faith. I called this a disingenuous way to assure his children would not see the falsehood of his beliefs but instead rationalize them through their conditioned wills.  In the comments section under his post, he replied as follows:

That’s not how I see it. I see it as recognizing that intellect is only a limited way of knowing, and an inferior way of knowing God (inferior to the heart, and the noetic faculties).  I recognize that intellect is more dependent on will than I previously acknowledged. I wish my children’s will to be conformed toward knowing God in the most truthful way I know how, so they will have within them what it takes to hold on to their faith when and if their intellect fails, and their wills are pushing their intellects to fail for whatever reason.

If your concern was with their faltering reason, you would be concerned to rigorously teach your children how to reason.  You would have them singing syllogisms and the laws of probability and playing games where they practice statistical reasoning.  You would be spending their Sundays with children’s chemistry kits rather than in church.

You know how rationalization works, you know that the will is the mind and the faith’s bulwark against what reason teaches us about what we do and do not know.  It is precisely because you have had a traumatic loss of intellectual faith (and trust me, I know the experience, I had one myself) that you know that your faith cannot and will not stand up to rational evidence.  So it is disingenuous to say that you are protecting your children’s grasp of the truth by conditioning their will to to keep them believing when their reason cannot see reasons to.  That is protecting your beliefs, it is not protecting your children’s ability to grasp truth.  It is training them in how to rationalize for when they see truths that undermine their false beliefs.

Genuine concern for truth needs a will only committed to honesty, reason, and scrupulously honest reasoning to function.  You are trying to tie their condition their wills to be more allied to the content of your present beliefs than to the truth itself.  You want them to see any conclusion that their reason provides which contradicts your faith as a “faltering” of their reason by definition.  You are defining truth as only that which one thinks when subjectively committed to your Christian God idea.  That is dishonest and anti-rational.  You are trying to commit your children to prejudice that will reflexively rationalize counter-evidence to your faith by training them to more deeply associate with your beliefs than with what even their reason tells them.  You want all their love for you, their (obviously) loving father to be transferred to your beliefs such that it will be as alienating and existentially wrenching for them to reject your beliefs as it would be for them to reject you.  You want all their family and identity associations to be so wrapped up in your tradition’s myths, symbols, and rituals that their wills are incapable of ever letting their reason reach conclusions that counter your beliefs.

I have no doubt from reading you over the past year that you are a loving guy who loves your kids.  But you are not trusting them to be rational when you are conditioning them to be rationalizers who cannot overcome their will to believe with their reasons not to.

It seems to me that any parent who believes in a certain truth — either of religion, or even of atheism — would and should react the same way.  I understand better now why atheists in my town have established the North Texas Church of Freethought — in part for the education of their children in unbelief. I can’t imagine that a committed atheist would be happy if his son began to believe in religion.

I too am a big believer in freethinkers organizing counter-groups for community support and shared ethical education of children because it is clear that parents yearn for this sort of thing and these religiously neutral concerns frequently lead otherwise nominally religious or outright irreligious parents to church when they have kids.

Nonetheless, the point in either case should not be to indoctrinate or condition children’s wills in “belief” or in “unbelief.”  The point should simply be to teach children how to reason.  Children need to learn that statements require reasons to be asserted.  That claims require evidence, that public policies which affect other people need to be based on rational considerations that are publicly assessable by all those capable of rational inquiry.  They need to know that traditions and their myths and rituals have no special authority by virtue of their simply being traditions.  They need to know that it’s okay to disagree with their parents as long as they have reasons.  If I had a daughter and one day she came to me and said she had considered the arguments for deism and was a deist or the Buddha’s arguments on the self and had come to think the self was an illusions or that she had considered Christian notions of unconditional love and thought they made for a rationally defensible ethics—I wouldn’t blink an eye.  This is totally different than if she were to tell me she decided to believe on faith something her heart felt really strongly but which was patently irrational.  I would be disappointed, not because of the contents of her belief, but because of the fault in her intellectual character that she would accept beliefs so irresponsibly.

And, for the record, Dale McGowen, the author of Parenting Beyond Belief, the recent book about how to parent as an atheist, written by an atheist activist, has explicitly argued against raising “atheist children.”

Richard Dawkins has argued that not only are there no Christian or Muslim or Hindu children but that there are no atheist ones either.  Why?  Because they are too young to have beliefs about such matters.  And his Camp Quest teaches critical thinking skills, not atheism.  Even Christopher Hitchens has talked about the need for children to be exposed to the world religions and Daniel Dennett has explicitly argued that every child should be exposed to all the world religions as part of their schooling.  He said he’d even permit Christian homeschooling as long as this was a serious part of the curriculum.   He argues that any religion that could flourish under such circumstances would likely be benign because the worst of religion thrives under enforced ignorance:

Even one of YouTube’s most vociferous younger atheists wants kids to get religious instruction:

And then there is this incredibly smart and thoughtful mom at Atheist Alliance and The Friendly Atheist and, finally, here is Richard Dawkins’s personally poignant and philosophically perfect letter to his 10 year old daughter.

Atheists are not afraid of children’s (or in my case, my potential children’s) open minds.  We just want them trained to think rationally.  If raised to be scrupulous thinkers, they can still find The Crunchy Con convincing and become Greek Orthodox, then sobeit.  But we do not think we have to condition them to willfully  reject God to keep them from becoming supernaturalists the way you think you need to condition them to willfully embrace Christianity to keep them from unbelief.

Your Thoughts?

To catch up with any previous installments of this “Disambiguating Faith” series which you may have missed, follow the links listed below. Each post can be understood without reference to the others, even though many develop interrelated theses.

Disambiguating Faith: Trustworthiness, Loyalty, And Honesty

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Loyally Trusting Those Insufficiently Proven To Be Trustworthy

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Tradition

Disambiguating Faith: Blind Faith: How Faith Traditions Turn Trust Without Warrant Into A Test Of Loyalty

Disambiguating Faith: The Threatening Abomination Of The Faithless

Rational Beliefs, Rational Actions, And When It Is Rational To Act On What You Don’t Think Is True

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Guessing

Disambiguating Faith: Are True Gut Feelings And Epiphanies Beliefs Justified By Faith

Disambiguating Faith: Faith Is Neither Brainstorming, Hypothesizing, Nor Simply Reasoning Counter-Intuitively

Disambiguating Faith: Faith In The Sub-, Pre, Or Un-Conscious

Disambiguating Faith: Can Rationality Overcome It?

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As A Form Of Rationalization Unique To Religion

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Deliberate Commitment To Rationalization

Disambiguating Faith: Heart Over Reason

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Corruption Of Children’s Intellectual Judgment

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Subjectivity Which Claims Objectivity

Disambiguating Faith: Faith Is Preconditioned By Doubt, But Precludes Serious Doubting

Disambiguating Faith By Soul Searching With Clergy Guy

Disambiguating Faith: Faith As Admirable Infinite Commitment For Finite Reasons

I caught this story off Daylight Atheism. Basically the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) is trying to get a math teacher with an atheist blog fired. You can read the continuing saga in his own words here, here and here (link fixed).

I think these few lines written by him summarise how I see the whole affair very well:

Other have said this, but if an atheist organization told all of its members to pull their children out of a public school classroom because the teacher happened to be a Christian (who never discussed his faith while at work), you would cry foul, call it discrimination, and complain of victimization.

If the atheist group wrote to all its members that this teacher believed homosexuality was a sin and that evolution was a lie, and justified their email by saying parents just needed to be able to “make an informed decision” about who teaches their children, you would be working overtime on behalf of that teacher.

You would defend that Christian teacher.

Yet you still attack me.

By the way, the tagline of IFI is “Upholding marriage & family, life & liberty in the Land of Lincoln”. Notice the word LIBERTY.

Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, is under attack by a right wing Christian hate group. The Illinois Family Institute, led by Laurie Higgins, is harassing celebrity atheist Mehta.

According to Mehta, a high school math teacher, Higgins emailed his boss, his high school’s entire administrative staff, and every school board member to inform them about Mehta’s private life as an atheist blogger. The attempt was to smear Mehta, claiming Mehta was unprofessional and unsuitable to be teaching because of his affiliation with atheism.

This episode is but one shameful event is an organization that is ugly through and through. The Illinois Family Institute is a vile sewer of hate and ignorance. The group is engaged in a campaign of gay bashing homophobia. The organization seems dedicated to denigrating anyone who does not goose step to their Christian fundamentalism. Obviously, any organization that claims the gay community is just as dangerous as Nazis is out of touch with reality and hard to take seriously.

Higgins is on record as favoring the bullying and harassment of gay children by Christian children. She is engaged in an effort to prevent any legislation which prohibits or penalizes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identification. She believes it is a Christian’s God given right to abuse and harass gay adults as well as gay youth.

The attack on atheists and homosexuals is predictable for a group consisting of the most ignorant and bigoted among us. Yet their shame is every Christian’s shame. Where are the good Christians, and why do they allow such hatred and bigotry to be spread in their name?

Friendly atheist Hemant Mehta is under attack (see his post about it) by a Christian hate group, the Illinois Family Institute, headed by Laurie Higgins. Mehta, who is a high school math teacher, says that Higgins has been waging a smear campaign against him via email and has emailed his school’s entire administrative staff.

Higgins, it should be repeated (again and again, until her name is synonymous in everyone’s mind with deranged, hateful, abusive bigotry), believes it is the duty of Christian kids to bully their gay classmates, and is on record as expressing unambiguously that schools should necessarily be unsafe for gay students.

Furthermore, Higgins claims that gay people are just as dangerous as Nazis and that the church should fight homosexuals like it did Nazism—except, whoops, the Church collaborated with the Nazis, publicly supported them (as even Higgins admits), and in the case of the Vatican, struck a deal with the Third Reich to not say anything bad about them in exchange for exclusive educational control over the children of German Catholics.  Clearly Higgins is completely out of touch with reality.

Higgins also hypocritically claims that church leaders who do not encourage the persecution of gays show “an unconscionable refusal to protect children,” an interesting claim from the woman who believes gay children should be harassed, harangued, and bullied not only by their peers but by their teachers. That shows an unconscionable refusal to protect children from people who are really dangerous, the lunatic hate groups like Higgins and her goons who encourage violent abuse and compare gay people to Nazis, pedophiles, and rapists. The mind boggles.

Higgins tries to arrogantly claim Martin Luther King, Jr. for her hateful cause, claiming that “God’s church” of hate, bigotry, and persecution of all that is non-Christian was the church that Dr. King loved. While I cannot claim to know for sure, somehow I have a feeling Dr. King would be repulsed by arrogant fascist bullies of any stripe.

[His Blog]

tl;dr, guys is an awesome blogger. Writes about how stupid the Illinois Family Institute (those of various gay hate-related fame) is, they begin to harass him. They try to have him removed from his teaching position. Smear him throughout their group.

Your typical Christian stuff.

I’m at a loss for words. You’ll have to read the article. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that people like this exist. People that hate millions of people, simply because they’re different. People that will willingly and happily try to take away their rights and completely ruin their reputation and their lives, simply for the crime of thinking or being different than them.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. If there comes a time when something can be done in retaliation, it has my support.

Camels With Hammers pares down the first 5 hours of the twitter feed of visitors to the Creation Museum and offers you the highlights.  Start reading from the bottom of the thread for chronological flow and then join the real time discussion at #cregozerg.  Once you’ve read this thread be sure to check out my follow up thread highlighting the many high quality photos and tweets from 1:30-6:30pm.

And please stick around and check out my regular Camels With Hammers posts on philosophy, ethics, and atheism!  On the right hand of the top of the screen, you’ll find a long list of original remarks.

With no further ado, this morning’s liveblogging proceedings recapped in reverse chronological order:

antangil #creozerg it’s not that they gave silly explanations for things. It’s more like they simply decided not to bother explaining at all.

cyberlizard @pzmyers That was a surprise?!? #creozerg

nojesusnopeas @KittyBroadway: Ham sez Greeks are evolutionists, Jews are creationists, so Paul had easier time preaching to Jews #creozerg

pzmyers Rodger’s shirt said “there probably is no god, so stop worrying and enjoy your life”

pzmyers You didn’t miss anything–the only surprise was how intellectually dead the place was #creozerg

Scrabcake #creozerg @ymberlenis I’m surprised they didn’t censor out the word “lesbians” suppose intimation is whatever follows can’t be nonoffensive.

holydust *rolls eyes at how Ham totally stepped around the “you’re not alone” bus ad issue* So smug… #CreoZerg

ymberlenis Huh. “masturbating w/ bibles” is offensive. Who knew? RT @vkamutzki Hey, #CreoZerg folks! AiG is on to you…! http://bit.ly/FdnyY

cj_wood #creozerg Ken Ham is praying for me! Don’t think too hard, Ken…you’ll get a wrinkle! http://bit.ly/FdnyY

adhominin Oh, so *that’s* why it rains… #creozerg http://yfrog.com/5fsiyoj (via @hemantmehta) God must really hate the Irish.

WongoWoman Although… we do have the Holy Land Experience in Orlando. A theme park with tax exemption! hmmm I sense a plan brewing… #creozerg

nunezalejandro @rtpt Ok, this is evil: Eating a Cuttlefish Bacon Sandwich with Holy Crackers #CreoZerg

nojesusnopeas Argh, AiG responds to PZs post about the Iowa bus ad and completely misses the point. It’s like they don’t even read! #creozerg

303dk to the sky fairy or the jew zombie? RT @vkamutzki Hey, #CreoZerg folks! AiG is on to you, and they’re praying for you! http://bit.ly/FdnyY

antangil #creozerg back in the car with the laptop; photo-spamming soon to come.

waterballoonist Adam Sinned T-Shirt http://snipu.com/1v7 #creozerg

Scrabcake #creozerg. That page from AiG….the stupid. it burns. My eyes are numb.

Kimbo_Jones what I’ve learned so far: the ice age had no ice in it, plants before sun, and the word “museum” needs to be used more sparingly #creozerg

WongoWoman This is the first time I’ve ever wished I was in KY #creozerg

Scrabcake #creozerg I thought that sin entered through a woman and that’s why we can’t have equal pay! You mean they’ve lied to me all this time?

RickGehlhaus PZ is wearing a tie with CrocoDuck! http://twitpic.com/d140y

OldCola don’t push the button! http://img22.imageshack.us/i/v5p.jpg/ #creozerg

rtpt http://bit.ly/pin4k #creozerg …Bacon, bacon, bacon…IT’S BACON!

BigMama247 @OldCola = According to Rom. 5:12, sin entered through a man, so the original is still good! #creozerg

OldCola Eve sinned for the T-shirt with bacon RT @hbflyte RT @CRVW1607: “Adam sinned so I could enjoy bacon.” I want that on a t-shirt.

vkamutzki Hey, #CreoZerg folks! AiG is on to you, and they’re praying for you! http://bit.ly/FdnyY Keep up the great live blogs. (Grr.Typos.) #atheist

Safias Wow people are saying my bacon comment should be a shirt, though changing one word. #creozerg

BigDumbChimp Is patiently waiting for a blow by blow description (hopefully with pics and vid) of the Squid / Dino epic battle

AndromedasWake @cj_wood Marvelous, thanks! I want more blurry iphone pics damnit! #creozerg

RickGehlhaus “Adam sinned so I could enjoy bacon.” Now i am extremely hungry for bacon. Thanks Devil!

foolfodder “Adam sinned so I could enjoy bacon.” : Apple goes with pork. More evidence of creation?

nondescriptdave @S_M_Iggs Simple, they all have rickets! Or was that the fossils…

S_M_Iggs Ok Ok, you can explain hail.. but how about PYGMIES + DWARFS!!?!

WongoWoman RT @cj_wood: @WongoWoman “How do they explain hail?” The water canopy collapsing, duh… ||Duh indeed…

rtpt RT @bdbdbdbd @WongoWoman how do you think volcanos erupt? || global warming theorists who eat bacon?

rtpt RT @bdbdbdbd @WongoWoman how do you think volcanos erupt? || global warming theorists who eat bacon?

Tanukun #creozerg So if Adam’s fall led to bacon consumption, does that make (Ken) Ham anti-ham?

CRVW1607 “Adam sinned so I could enjoy bacon.” I want that on a t-shirt. #creozerg

rtpt RT @WongoWoman @hemantmehta How do they explain hail? || the philosophy of homosexual Greeks eating bacon … #creozerg

@DoubtingFoo: @WongoWoman I thought hail was where I was going when I die? #creozerg|| only if you’re from the South – the deeeep South!

1:13PM: http://twitpic.com/d1rgg – I would so much love to see this!! #CreoZerg

1:12pm: otakursed lol, latest meme to assist in spreading thanks to #creozerg: Adam sinned so I could enjoy bacon.

1:12pm: camelshammers #creozerg Evangelicals blame philosophy, specifically Greek philosophy for screwing up our way of seeing the world, making it theoretical

1:11pm Tanukun Re the “Greeks to Jews” book: a brief explanation: http://tiny.cc/RUNFD starts halfway down the page. Warning: pro-creation blog!

1:07 hemantmehta: O, so *that’s* y it rains… #creozerg http://yfrog.com/5fsiyoj | y have any attempt at science? rains cuz god likes it wet

1;11pm: nojesusnopeas Hamm sez Greeks believe in evolution, Jews believed in Genesis – so turn “Greeks” into “Jews” = disprove evolution #creozerg

1:11pm: atheistyogi @Az_: #creozerg It comes from Cor 1:23 … http://bit.ly/iNWYB //Yay I was right No fundy can say I don’t know my Bible.

1:11pm: RickettsAM More details on the shirt, anyone? Btw, epic so far, keep it up.

1:08pm: Magnifica The effective evangelism text is online : #creozerg http://is.gd/26IZW

1:03pm: NeuroPunk ! Hassled and 1 kicked out?? the fundie’s patience is starting to wear thin??

1:03pm: Tanukun @hemantmehta Not just an Ice Age – a GREAT ice age! Bring the kids!

1:02pm: justncase80 @pzmyers They probably have Jesus towers blocking communications devices with magic.

1:02pm: BenKball @RickGehlhaus Didn’t the dinosaur adventure land get shut down? Owners owned on tax evasion lol

1:02pm: bronwynm23 @hemantmehta That’s how they suck you in; get out of there! #creozerg

1:01pm: atheistyogi @hemantmehta I think the “greeks” and “jews” thing could probably a reference to 1 Corintians 1:20-25, but I’m not for sure…

1:01pm: the_sun_and_i Did they convince you of the righteousness of their cause, PZ?

1:01pm: hemantmehta What’s wrong with this book cover in the museum gift shop…? #creozerg http://yfrog.com/0u4d5j

1:00pm: limadean RT @hemantmehta: Can someone please explain this title in the museum gift shop? #creozerg http://yfrog.com/0meclj

1:00pm: pzmyers Derek Rodgers hassled for his shirt

1:00pm: AtheistinWA @pzmyers welcome back to reality

1:00pm: AnthonyPKarosas AnthonyPKarosas @pzmyers On the 7th day, God created the Faraday Cage? You guys have chutzpah.

12:59pm: hemantmehta Anyone else find some of the Creationists here attractive? I get why they have 17 babies, that’s all I’m saying. Just me?

12:59pm:ricklend Since the CM exists, the Bible must be a great science text. What are you learning?

12:59pm: ketsuban @AndromedasWake Spawn more Overlords.

12:56pm: cafewitteveen Petting zoo is a grand time. #creozerg http://twitpic.com/d1pqk

12:55pm: jennifurret someone with a video camera just got kicked out #creozerg

12:56pm: pzmyers Aaargh! No phone reception inside museum…out now.

12:56pm: samiahurst A great example of memetic reproduction, isn’t it? RT @MichelPoisson #creozerg Creationists not creative? They have evolved as parrots.

12:55pm: didaclopez #CreoZerg. You evolutionists in the Creation Museum. Be prepared to see how hyperevolution worked just after the Flood splitting all baramin

12:53pm: iSylvan Loving all the brilliant #CreoZerg posts. “Go forth, and research Carapace!” <– LOL (via @AndromedasWake)

12:53pm: samiahurst Ooops, plants came before DNA…no creator is perfect RT @OldCola RT @tmtek: http://twitpic.com/d1asf

12:46pm:mephikristiles #creozerg #cmtour Quote Jen: “It’s beautiful [outside at the museum]. Scary. But beautiful.

12:43pm: threeminus23 Hooray for the Secular Student Alliance and PZ! Have fun storming the castle, boys.

12:42pm: arensb @ymberlenis Creationists NEVER have any new arguments.

12:42pm: NeuroPunk @ymberlenis I know, but creationists not very “creative”…

12:41pm: nunezalejandro @RobsterFCD Maybe they think “God Blocked the phone signals” instead of “this buiding is a Faraday Cage”

12:39pm: CRVW1607 The reason why no one was tweeting – @RobsterFCD said the building interfered with reception.

12:38: KristinMuH Wish I were there! You’re a real horde now. *glows with pride*

12:37pm:  LaughingMan42 So did God give them different teeth for the lulz, or did the teeth change after Adams sin? http://twitpic.com/d1en7

12:36pm samiahurst It seems that God ALWAYS hated lettuce!

12:37pm: samiahurst Look at the breakdown by age! RT @ymberlenis #creozerg RT @pewresearch evolution through natural selection http://tinyurl.com/n777r6

12:37pm: RobertFCD Eating at Dino cafe. Brought lunch. Make sure you send SSA your stupidity sequestration credits.

12:35pm: tekhiun @RobsterFCD no no no they lost their feathers after adam ate the apple, get your facts straight =p

12:37pm: RobsterFCD The Dino with saddle is Here! But reserved for 12 and under. Does shoe size count?

12:35pm: johnjsal Saddled dino is unfortunately not there: http://is.gd/26H10

12:32pm: RobsterFCD Everyone is well behaved. To the concern trolls, noted and dismissed.

12:31pm Niall142 I wish I was going on this trip! DAMN YOU, ATLANTIC OCEAN!!

12:29pm RobsterFCD None of the theropods had feathers! That’s what you get for buying secondhand dinos.

12:28pm RobsterFCD The men in white movie was histerical. The creos have nothing new. It’s all old lies. Salt in ocean. Helium in zircon.

12:28pm johnjsal @BigDumbChimp This article says you can photograph kids/post pics: http://alturl.com/37ur Note they CANNOT take your pictures away

12:27pm EigenAuction Curiously apropos #CreoZerg – RT @pewresearch: 87% of scientists say humans evolved, 32% of the USA public agrees. http://bit.ly/yzuk5

12:27pm hemantmehta Just thought you’d all like to know: we surpassed 300 people in our group!

12:23pm: DaibhidhF #creozerg and then they suddenly realise why they’re so good at chasing things, stop hunting cabbage and start eating gazelles.

12:23pm: vonkrieger @DaibhidhF #creozerg They were just biding their time, waiting for the all clear from the Big G to start chomping.

12:23pm: tekhiun @DaibhidhF and did they just stopped eating it or did it take some time to pass that memo around ?

12:23pm: textsavvy This is too funny. Do they know that there’s a difference between a vegetarian and an herbivore? (http://twitpic.com/d1en7)

12:15pm: BigDumbChimp @cafewitteveen The kids pic thing is a load of Dino Dung. http://bit.ly/odHz3

12:15pm: nunezalejandro @pzmyers After you all leave the “Museum”, those guys will wipe the floor with “Holy Bleach” to clean the science odor.

12:14pm vonkrieger I’ve been waiting all morning for someone to say kekekekekekekeke in #creozerg

PZ Myers hasn’t tweeted in a long while so BigMama speculates:  12:14pm: BigMama247 I’m thinking @pzmyers must have ridden off into the sunset on the saddled dino

12:12pm Safias RT from many at #creozerg http://twitpic.com/d1en7 – Adam sinned so one day I could love bacon.

12:11pm artemis47 Vegetarianism for the win! RT @cazlab: This is brilliant. http://twitpic.com/d1en7 #creozerg – (That’s truly awesome!)

12:07pm tmtek RT @NQbass7 http://twitpic.com/d1en7 #creozerg (so eating meat is a sin afterall?)

12:07 cafewitteveen Security told me that if pictures I take of children at museum turn up online it’s a fellony

Poor Blaghag: 12:07pm: jennifurret nooo didnt get into the ‘ultimate proof of creation’!

12pm SheepNutz #CreoZerg is about to be on the news: @Local12

11:59am DaibhidhF #creozerg. Better descriptions pls! I can’t imagine WTF they have in a creation ‘museum’. Bits of when the earth was void and without form?

11:57am hemantmehta In line for the “Ultimate Proof of Creation” talk. Don’t think I’ll get in. Too many atheists in front of me.

11:56 am ymberlenis @rasp55 and a whole lot of innocent people in between #creozerg

11:53am lizditz RT @PozzSka: RT @sciencemama http://twitpic.com/d1b0p – how did adam have absolutely no body hair, but that EPIC beard?? #creozerg

11:52am rasp55 @ymberlenis – first his son, now his trees

11:50am ymberlenis @antangil http://twitpic.com/d1eew – So many of God’s trees died for that nonsense…

11:46am jbcrail Finished the tour. No incidents as expected. Everyone was well-behaved. Can’t wait to see commentaries from biologists.

11:34am gooddrlaura RT @sciencemama: plants then sun – To be fair, plants can live 24 hours without sun. Gives moral superiority over day-agers.

11:31am

BigMama247 Hubby suggests new name of “Hebrew Mythology Museum” #creozerg

11:28am ymberlenis Of course, I suppose the major flaw is that we are on the only habitable planet in the universe… right?

11:27 ymberlenis Wow: exoplanet search strategy flawed, since habitable planets are created w/o a sun:

11:23 BlagHag: “That’s what she said”:

That's What She Said http://twitpic.com/d1edl

11:24am: sciencemama http://twitpic.com/d1asf plants first,then sun:

http://twitpic.com/d1asf

^—-11:27 ymberlenis Wow: exoplanet search strategy flawed, since habitable planets are created w/o a sun

11:24am antangil http://twitpic.com/d1eew #creozerg saddest pic of the whole visit:

BrianMLloyd on August 7, 2009

Should “Teen/Adult Bullshit” – “Random Bullshit” – “Children’s Bullshit” – “Home School Bullshit”

chomskyinthesky About 300 atheists in a Creation Museum. Check Adam out, God either created him without body hair or he shaves his armpits. Tsk!

a3maniac Does anyone know what an Evolution Museum is called? That’s right… a Museum.

11:17 BlagHag:

“My new friend!”

http://twitpic.com/d1bxn

11:20am:

idmillington @jbcrail: “Humans and dinosaurs together” #CreoZerg — If that’s not a metaphor for scientists visiting a creation museum!

11:12 lerogue RT @jbcrail: Humans and dinosaurs together– Mass hysteria. (No, really.)

http://twitpic.com/d1ao2

11:07 PaulToronto Proof that Adam and Eve were White! RT @jbcrail: World’s first shower scene

11:21am:

cyberlizard @BigMama247 Because man-boobs are pleasing to god? #CreoZerg

11:15 BigMama247 RT @jbcrail: World’s first shower scene : Trying to figure out why God didn’t create Adam with firmer pecs

11:04 jbcrail World’s first shower scene:

10:37 From Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist

10:42

lerogue RT @jennifurret http://twitpic.com/d18b3 – Science is hard! #creozerg

"Science Is Hard"

10:24 am from BlagHag:

jennifurret http://twitpic.com/d174l – God was a caps lock troll #creozerg

10:08 from LibEvo

From Twitterer LibEvo The Ultimate proof of Creation - http://twitpic.com/d11pk

10:07 BlagHag

jennifurret http://twitpic.com/d174l – God was a caps lock troll #creozerg

9:39: jbcrail Spotted a “Carl Sagan is my homeboy” shirt #CreoZerg 13 minutes ago from TwitterFon

9:36: mephikristiles #CreoZerg #CMTour Only passed 1 “Hell is Real” sign on way to creation museum so far. Should I be disappointed or pleased. 14 minutes ago from PockeTwit

Yesterday morning, The Friendly Atheist’s Hemant Mehta analyzed stories of mothers who murdered their babies under religiously interpreted delusions with a critical eye towards the religions which put certain fantasies in their heads.  In reply to criticisms of his making this connection that came from skeptigirl (in this terrific post on psychosis you should read), from numerous really well-informed people you should read in The Friendly Atheist comments section, and from me, Hemant was big enough to take responsibility and qualify his remarks:

I’m getting taken to task for some of the comments below. Some of it is deserved. I don’t know the histories of these murderers, and I don’t know how religious they are and if they go to church on a regular basis.

As some commenters below note, people are told by pastors often that the Devil is real and that God exists and talks to us. We’re taught to admire Abraham because he obeyed God when told to kill his son. He would’ve gone through with it if God had not stopped him. Is that different from what some of these parents are doing? What makes Abraham sane and these women insane?

I shouldn’t say the church is responsible for the deaths in the stories referred to below. Others are right in saying those women were insane, plain and simple, and religion not the problem here.

I am worried, though, that if people are taught to obey a god and fear a devil, and that is mixed with a spark of insanity, bad things could happen. To me, neither is a good thing… but together, it’s a frightening combination.

Thanks to everyone for calling me out on this.

And thanks to Hemant for taking the criticism in stride!

I think his remarks here are an improvement.  What we learn from these episodes is not that religion causes or is otherwise responsible for the psychotic episodes of the clinically insane who would just as likely take crazy cues from films or politics or any other domain of life as they would from religion.  What we do learn are other things.

For one, A.J. Burger has an essay on William James’s famous “The Will To Believe” essay which points out that the formal justification for a right to believe what we wish without sufficient evidence is deeply flawed for not ruling out psychotic judgments like those of these mothers as epistemically impermissable.  Before explaining Burger’s criticism, let me explain the views of James and the views James was himself replying to.  If you are already familiar with Clifford and James feel free to skip down to the section on Burger.  For my criticisms about religious treatments of the mentally ill, see the final section of this post.

W.K. Clifford on the Ethics of Belief

In “The Will To Believe” James challenges W.K. Clifford’s argument that we had an epistemic duty (a duty with respect to beliefs) not to ever believe anything on insufficient evidence.  Clifford used the example of a shipbuilder who does not have sufficient evidence that his ships are still seaworthy, having not adequately inspected them recently enough.  Clifford argues that even if the ships survive their voyages, the shipbuilder is culpable for having sent them out to sea when he lacked sufficient evidence that they were actually safe.   Since for all he knew they might have been unsafe and killed people, he is to blame for taking that risk even if nothing happens to them.  The culpability comes in as soon as one takes such an irresponsible risk, well before actual bad consequences result or not.

Clifford uses this example to argue for a scrupulousness in all matters of belief.  He argues against ever believing anything on insufficient evidence because by doing so, even in seemingly small matters which have no bearings on life and death, we both inculcate for ourselves (and influence in others) irresponsible habits of belief.  Even in small things, and especially in how we train our children, we should pay heed to our duties to believe only when we are adequtely entitled.

William James’s “Will To Believe”

In reply to Clifford call for a strict view of our epistemic duties and our right to believe things for which we do not have adequate evidence, James distinguishes two ways in which we can love the truth.  We can love it by avoiding falsehood and we can love it by not missing out on any truth.  James claims that both to believe a falsehood and to miss out on a truth are equally problematic ways to fail with respect to truth and that there is no reason to think that the one is any worse or better than the other.  In both cases, one is duped.  So, whereas Clifford advocates not getting duped by believing anything false, he still runs the risk of being duped by rejecting the truth in cases where he does not see sufficient evidence for it.  If Clifford genuinely loves truth and is genuinely concerned to not be duped with respect to truth, then he should not be content just to stick to his strict epistemic duties which ensure that he can avoid falsehood, he should also be concerned not to reject truths for whcih there is not sufficient evidence.

The analogy I like to use is the example of suspicion of infidelity.  If you believe your partner may be cheating on you whereas he or she insists that he or she is not, you are stuck with a choice between two ways of risking coming out a fool.  If you dump him or her because you are afraid of being a cuckold and can’t bear the thought that if you trust them and in reality you are being deceived by them, then you run the risk that to avoid being a fool who stays with someone deceiving them you actually are leaving someone who is innocent.  So, you are leaving to avoid the possibility of living with someone making a fool of you and you wind up risking being a fool who leaves a faithful partner.  And if you stay because you don’t want to risk losing someone who may actually be faithful, you run the opposite risk of being a dupe who stays with someone lying to you.  Neither solution makes you foolproof, so to speak.

In such scenarios where evidence is insufficient one way or another, James advises that we may decide what we want to believe since he thinks that it is no inherently worse to believe too much and wind up believing some false things than to believe too little and wind up believing some false things.

James offers three criteria for assessing whether or not we have a situation which permits us to will to believe as we desire.  The choice before us must be between two beliefs which are each “live options” to us—meaning that as far as we personally are concerned either belief could be true.  Believing in Thor or Darth Vader are not live options for any contemporary Westerners so we do not have a right to believe in their existences simply because we want to.  However, for those of us who genuinely think that believing in God or believing that there is no God are both plausible options, these are live options and we are permitted to deliberately to decide to believe the one way as we wish (as long as both beliefs meet the other two criteria as well.)

The other two criteria for when we may will to believe are that the choice to believe or not is forced on us (we must choose one way or the other and the possibility of evading or delaying answering is itself a choice in favor of one option over the other) and the choice concerns a matter of momentous significance.  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers key explanations and examples from James of both of these two criteria in action:

In science, James notes, we can afford to await the outcome of investigation before coming to a belief, but other in other cases we are “forced,” in that we must come to some belief even if all the relevant evidence is not in. If I am on a isolated mountain trail, faced with an icy ledge to cross, and do not know whether I can make it, I may be forced to consider the question whether I can or should believe that I can cross the ledge. This question is not only forced, it is “momentous”: if I am wrong I may fall to my death, and if I believe rightly that I can cross the ledge, my holding of the belief may itself contribute to my success. In such a case, James asserts, I have the “right to believe” — precisely because such a belief may help bring about the fact believed in. This is a case “where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming” (WB 25).

A.J. Burger’s Critique of William James

In reply to James in a volume collecting both Clifford’s essay and “The Will To Believe” together, A.J. Burger cites a story from the newspaper in which a couple burned their daughter alive in an oven because they believed she was possessed by the devil.  He used this example not to argue that religion caused the couple to do this but rather to show that, formally speaking, James’s criteria for allowing us to believe as we wish is so loose as not to rule out such a clearly impermissible choice to believe as these pscyhotics’.

James’s conditions of when it is permissible to will to believe do not give us a basis to condemn on rational grounds the couple that cooked a child in an oven believing her to be Lucifer.  They fulfilled all James’s conditons since for them it was a live, momentous, genuine option that the child was Lucifer and that throwing her in the oven would eradicate him.  There should be some higher standard for truth than that the belief seems plausible to the one considering it.  So Burger agrees with Clifford (as I do) that your choice to believe is not just a personal matter in which you choose which way you would prefer to risk being duped, but rather it is a matter of social implications and, so, a moral matter which way you opt to believe and we should therefore defer to believe wherever there is insufficient evidence.

And I think this is a valid argument that does not exploit the mentally ill but rather argues that any criteria for justified belief which does not rule out the beliefs of the mentally ill are not strict enough.

Religious Encouragement, Celebration, And (Literal) Demonization Of The Mentally Ill

Another valid criticism of the religious in this context is that there are long traditions of granting sainthood and attribtuing authority to the delusions of ascetics and mystics who induced their own psychological delusions through practices of isolation, starvation, and other forms of self-torture.  Insofar as religions historically have encouraged and celebrated the psychotic episodes and hallucinations of some of the devout, they should be ashamed of themselves and denounced.

Also insofar as religions have had long histories of misdiagnosing mental illness as demon possession they have done a horrible disservice to the sick and vulnerable.  Such errors are, of course, quite understandable in more ignorant times.   But in the 21st Century it is a unconscionable disgrace wherever the religious traditions continue to perform “exorcisms” and to treat the claims of demon possession in the Bible as accurate assessments of what was happening and not the misdiagnoses of the ancient and supersitious.  Responsible, moderate, scientifically literate 21st Century religious people should clearly encourage people against 1st Century interpretations of epilepsy and other horrifying neurological and psychological problems formerly attributed to “spirits” rather than cling to the supposed authority of the testimonies about demon possession as being “the Word of God.”

Finally, yes, you are right that the horror of these heartbreaking stories of the murder of children should remind us that any book which could ever suggest that a human being be praised for his willingness to slaughter his son as a sacrifice to his God is profoundly immoral and should never be confused for a special revelation of ethical or divine truth.  And, yes, the mindset which accepts such absurdities can possibly be led to comparable atrocities (as Voltaire warns) when malicious leaders encourage people to think in the sorts of barbaric, genocidal, irrationalistic, and cultic ways that people in the Old Testament infamously thought.

So, I think there are valid criticisms of religion which one can make using this story as an example of indisputably awful behavior which is formally similar epistemologically, ethically, and spiritually to key religious texts and religious thinking.  And there is the occasion to remind ourselves that religions have shameful histories of both encouraging and misdiagnosing the mentally ill from which they should earnestly repent.  A woman like the one who occasioned all this discussion in a past era may have been interpreted as genuinely possessed of a demon and were her story recorded in the Bible it would still today be taken as truthfully an instance of that by those who refuse to use their 21st Century understanding when reading the accounts of superstitious 1st Century people.

And comparably sick people would be taken to be prophets speaking for God when they communicated their hallucinations.  That’s an embarrassing but (again) formerly understandable folly of more ignorant human reasoning.   Perpetuating belief in such “prophecy” as having happened before and, worst of all, allegedly continuing today is disgraceful and something religions should be called out on constantly.

Your Thoughts?

This story is beyond horrific:

The scene was so gruesome investigators could barely speak: A 3 1/2-week-old boy lay dismembered in the bedroom of a single-story house, three of his tiny toes chewed off, his face torn away, his head severed and his brains ripped out.

Officers called to the home early Sunday found the boy’s mother, Otty Sanchez, sitting on the couch with a self-inflicted wound to her chest and her throat partially slashed, screaming “I killed my baby! I killed my baby!” police said. She told officers the devil made her do it, police said.

Sanchez, 33, apparently ate the child’s brain and some other body parts before stabbing herself, McManus said.

In response, the “friendly atheist” Hemant Mehta references similar instances of psychotic episodes of mothers killing babies because of the devil or because of a desire to protect them from the devil and then he blames Christianity while saying he doesn’t blame Christianity:

I don’t know if these cases could’ve been prevented, but at some point in their lives, these killers were told that God and the Devil speak to humans. And if God tells you to do something, you’re supposed to follow it.

I’m not blaming the churches for this, but to paraphrase Voltaire, if you believe in absurdities, you’re likely to commit atrocities

I agree with those who say that it’s likely that regardless of whether or not she had the religious superstitions, she may have had the same sorts of psychotic episodes but interpreted them in a different way. I tend to think of our psychology as structured such frequently we think, act, or are impelled to act, and only after getting the impulse do we start to interpret what it means, or only after the act sometimes do we start to interpret what it means, etc.

In other words a psychotic impulse to do heinous things to her child took over this woman and she interpreted it within the categories available to her without their being the actual cause at all. I have a hard time seeing the religious beliefs specifically as causal here.

And Mehta does a disservice to Voltaire’s quote with both the way he paraphrases him and the way he employs him here. The quote is “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” That has nothing to do with any likelihood that those who believe in absurdities will commit atrocities. Billions of Christians have believed in absurdities without personally committing any atrocities. They’re not likely, that’s an empirically flat out false assertion.

The point, however, is about the persuasive powers open to those who make others believe in absurdities. What’s the difference? The difference is that belief in absurdities does not lead to unrelated atrocities like the psychopathic ones in this horrible story of its own. The point rather is that anyone who you are willing to trust to the point that you willingly accept what they say even when it is absurd has the power to make you do things which also contravene your reason. It’s an argument about the political connection between commitment to reason and commitment to moral conscience and about how authoritarianism in reason leads to submission to authoritarian commands in behavior.

Since I’m certain no one gave this woman religious training which instructed her to eat children’s brains and stab herself (there’s some awful stuff in the Bible, but nothing THAT awful), this has nothing to do with what Voltaire warns about.

I’m all for pointing out the genuine culpability of religious influences where they lead to atrocities and I’m all for criticizing religion’s role in reinforcing the worst habits of human thinking and epistemic or moral justification—but to all appearances in this case this woman was simply psychopathic and no one is to blame but her violent brain chemistry.

And, finally, I’m disappointed that the self-designated “friendly atheist” would politicize the gruesome murder of a baby as a criticism of religion among sane people.  Not only is that not fair, it’s the furthest thing from friendly.

UPDATE: Mehta acknowledged our criticisms and offered an update atop his initial remarks.  You can read his new reply along with further thoughts from me on the subject of psychotic reasoning, the will to believe, and the religious interpretations of the mentally ill here.

Your Thoughts?

I love speaking with others on just about anything. The conversation stops for me when there is a bullying, denigrating tone.  I’ve just spent quite a bit of time over at the Friendly Atheist. Love it! Try it.

READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY AT THE FRIENDLY ATHEIST

Well, shit.

Ireland passed the blasphemy law.

What does this mean for Irish citizens? It means you can be convicted for trashing someone’s beliefs if you cause “outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.” (Again, what is a “substantial number”? Who knows.)

Paliban Daily offers up some frightening consequences, given that “blasphemy” isn’t very well-defined:

• Atheists can be prosecuted for saying that God is imaginary. That causes outrage.
• Pagans can be prosecuted for saying they left Christianity because God is violent and bloodthirsty, promotes genocide, and permits slavery.
• Christians can be prosecuted for saying that Allah is a moon god, or for drawing a picture of Mohammed, or for saying that Islam is a violent religion which breeds terrorists.
• Jews can be prosecuted for saying Jesus isn’t the Messiah.

Those aren’t all accurate… for example, Jews can say Jesus isn’t the Messiah because their religious beliefs are protected under the law. But I suspect if they went around saying as much, holding posters that said he wasn’t the Messiah in a dickish sort of way, and made a “substantial number” of Christians angry, then we’d have problems.

We’re also told that academic and theological debate isn’t subject to the rules. But again, it’s tough to say what constitutes those kinds of debates. Can bloggers tear apart religious arguments and those who make them if they’re not professors? Can Irish people call certain Catholic priests rapists and attribute it to their faith and just say it’s part of theological debate? Can we call out certain adherents of a fundamentalist version of Islam as terrorists if that is warranted? Either everything in these categories is blasphemy or nothing is.

READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY AT THE FRIENDLY ATHEIST

READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY AT THE FRIENDLY ATHEIST

For the American readers, at some point this morning, in whatever time zone you’re in, the time will be:

04:05:06 07/08/09

(4:05 am, 6 seconds, on July 8^th, 2009.)

You know what the significance of that is?

There is none. None at all.

Just thought I’d point that out.

Now, if only someone could tell these people that…

READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY AT THE FRIENDLY ATHEIST

Hemant Mehta over at The Friendly Atheist just posted a really interesting article on Nick Farrantello’s story from The Humanist in which he describes how Star Trek made him an atheist.

As I got older and learned more about suffering around the world, the more I wondered why religious people didn’t oppose such a cruel God. These holy men should be up in arms, I thought. If they were faithful Star Trek watchers, they would be trying to build some sort of giant phaser to take him out.

A giant phaser. Beautiful. Maybe I, like Hemant, should give this show another shot. There’s a scene in the movie Star Trek: First Contact in which Captain Picard is speaking to a civilian woman from the time they have found themselves in (long story short they go back in time to stop some bad stuff from happening), and he says that in the future, “we strive to better ourselves.” I don’t remember the rest of the movie that well, but that line has always stuck with me. Maybe we should strive to better ourselves in the present.

Yeah, yeah, and I’m plugging Hemant’s excellent website because I can and he’s great. It’s definitely worth a read.