Unvirtuous Gift

We often treat as a good thing the situation where a person has some sort of innate talent and is able to live on it. Believers call it a "god-given gift" or something similar. Because of this, some people look for this "gift" in hopes of being able to use it to their own benefit in order to "glorify god" or just make life easier.

Whether this idea of in-born talent has some basis in fact or not, to me this type of thinking is similar to wanting to win the lottery in the sense that we want a large reward without any real work being offered. If someone is "naturally" able to do something well, it doesn't strengthen the character when doing it. It's not a bad thing to do so, but it should not be associated with some sort of noble character trait. (It would be like applauding a left-handed person for throwing with their left hand.)

If someone really wants to be applauded for accomplishing something, it should be difficult. A person who develops a skill that is not innate is the one who should be seen as having an improved character.

One-Breath Debate

How much sense does it really make that so many of us heavily consider live debates to make determinations? Do we really want to support the performance of people who are forced to answer questions quickly with no ability to verify anything first?

To me, this seems odd. I would more easily support someone who gave a reasoned and researched answer, meaning it would take some extra time. I don't like the idea that we choose "winners" based on the ability to answer quickly briefly. Thinking something over and checking facts is automatically discarded as part of the process.

A debate worth considering would be one where the questions were sent ahead of time--even to the general public. Then, the debaters would come together with answers and reference material and challenge each other directly. They should even have access to data via computer that can be used during the debate.

It might not be pretty, but the results would be more likely to be meaningful, I think. IMO, what we have now is useless, other than to shore up the support of those who only want quick answers that can be spouted in a single breath.

Jesus Can Never Be Declared "Real"

How much of a story about a person (or event) need be invented or just wrong in order for it to still be seen as about that same person?

We see many claims that there either was or was not a "real" Jesus, for example. The stories about early Christianity, Biblical or not, have the Jesus character at their core, of course. The stories vary in detail, even directly conflict one another. Because of this, the claim of a single "real" Jesus gets rightfully attacked as tough to prove.

But, we may not even need to make that kind of investigation. The stories about anyone's life will be mis-told, even by those who were closest to the person, including witnesses. When retold, especially by excited strangers with an agenda, embellishments get added, facts are distorted or dropped, and times and places get changed.

What if the "real" Jesus was a bland, average figure who became locally famous for a single incident that happened at just the right time and under just the right circumstances to be the catalyst for a self-replicating behemoth of a tale? Maybe there was a Jesus character who did, for example, overturn the tax collectors' tables. If done at just the right moment, that could bring a person some notoriety.

Because of the way rumors and gossip feed a story and take it in all kinds of baseless directions, this incident could have been that kind of catalyst. If you play along with me and assume for a moment this was the case, can the story we know today about the NT Jesus actually be considered to be based on a real person? How much of a story need be false to claim the central figure is fiction? Is a story that is 99% add-ons to a single incident still talking about a real person?

In a recent example, look at the Trayvon Martin case. It took no time at all for a plethora of stories to be developed about both main players from this single incident. If this had taken place before today's technology to capture voice and video, the stories about each would be even more distorted than is currently the case. Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyon, and Daniel Boone are figures from American folklore who also became distorted representations of their "real" selves. Can we truly say they are about "real" people?

This may be a philosophical question, but one of importance, I think. At some point, there is no real character any longer because the stories contain way more falsehoods than facts. In addition, sometimes stories that did actually happen get added to a growing story about someone else.

For me, the question about whether there was a "real" Jesus is a nonsequitur because the stories we know today could have developed from a relatively unimportant single incident committed by anyone--and there's no guarantee that incident was captured correctly by its original source (whatever it is). All the effort people put into trying to claim the NT Jesus was real or not real is simply a waste of time, in my opinion, because the answer can never be yes due to the nature of human story development in the ancient (and in many cases, modern) world.

More Than Feelings

Because a thought or state of mind is deemed pleasant doesn't mean the claimed cause has been verified.

Capital Respect

For Christians who get offended when nonbelievers don't capitalize god, him and his, ask why they don't put PBUH after Muhammad and they'll understand why we don't do either of those things.

Never A Consensus

It is likely that no assertion by an adherent of any religion has been agreed upon by the rest.

"Stand Your Ground" For Pregnant Women

I usually don't address the whole abortion thing because it's not usually in the scope of things I address. But, this Trayvon Martin case has caused me to think of something I thought I would share.

For people who are in favor of the self-defense/stand your ground point (to any degree), can't the same logic be used in states where a fetus is declared a person? If the fetus is legally a person, it would be legally consistent to assert that, at least in some cases, the woman carrying the fetus could be considered under attack, especially in the case of "risky" pregnancies. Legally, then, it would seem as permissible for the woman to protect herself from the fetus she's carrying by aborting it.

I don't know if the people on the Religious Right have considered this result of their push for the "personhood" bills, as they're called. But it seems to me they're in a pickle.

Reason Rally Reveals The Need For It

This has been one amazing weekend.

I was able to meet an incredible number of awesome people while working at the Reason Rally, my office's pre-rally reception and the American Atheists convention. Because I was working, I didn't actually get to see very much of the activity everyone else came to enjoy. But, I was able to talk with way more people than I would otherwise have been able to. So, I think overall it was a fair trade-off.

There is something special about being among such a large number of people who have given up the attachments so many have for the myths that have held us back for so very long. The few protestors who came around seemed even more like an odd human anomaly than usual. Imagining how so many among their ranks can actually get into political office takes my mind on a ride even more bizarre than before.

Because I have ended up seeing things this way, the eye-opening nature of the weekend has a small bit of regret mixed in with a heaping amount of joy. I hate the idea that I can see so many human beings as dangerous oddballs; something just doesn't seem "right" about it because it makes it harder to live together. However, I do know that the need to keep up the fight against religion getting control of society is paramount. We can only be so nice before attitudes need to change in order to stop us from getting dragged into a theocracy that would have no chance of being anything other than pure evil.

One of the things I think that separates us from them is that they seem happy to take up the fight in favor of ancient myths and superstitions and many of us are pissed that we have to fight for a nurturing, fact-based society that sees a future in embracing new discoveries over ancient hallucinations. It makes the fight seem all the more peculiar and unnatural.

The Confused Sheep

I find it confusing that Christians will proudly state "The Lord is My Shepard" then get insulted when they are compared to sheep.

Holy Water Can't Be Avoided

For believers all water on the planet should by now be seen as holy. Given that all the water on the planet gets recycled, "unholy" water shouldn't exist any longer. Given the number of times a subset of the planet's water has been "blessed"--millions of times, at least--there is likely no remaining collection of water that doesn't contain at least some "blessed" molecules. Now, unless believers want to assert that there is value in the number of blessed molecules within any temporary collection of them, there should be no need to bless any more water ever again.

Too Soon To Stop

How similar are these things?

1) We stop looking for something once we've found it (used for the badly worded phrase "it was in the last place I looked").

2) Stop looking for an answer when we find something that confirms what we already hold to be true. In other words, when we found what we're looking for, we stop, just like in #1.

It seems to me that we humans have a tendency to stop looking both when it's proper and when it's not by unknowingly and mistakenly treating these scenarios like they are the same. It's likely more complicated, of course, but there might be something there to consider.

Shrinking Degrees of Separation

One of the largely unnoticed side-effects of a shrinking number of people with increasing wealth is that true competition goes away because they can't help but know each other. It would be a near impossibility for a small group of ultra-rich people to have next-to-no degrees of separation (not withstanding Kevin Bacon).

In a society like this, every medium-to-major transaction is always going to be an 'inside job.' It's not possible for it to be otherwise.

More

Both zooming in and zooming out allows you to see more.

The Human Filter

No information that gets filtered through a human should be taken as authoritative.

Study after study confirms that we suck as getting facts straight. We can try as hard as possible to be completely truthful and we'll still mess it up. Some of that is just the faulty nature of our senses getting things wrong. Some of it is just an inability to accurately convey information to one another due to the individual baggage we carry filtering the communication, no matter the medium.

Individuals do not carrying around the same meanings for the same words and phrases. Sadly, nothing is synonymous between any two people, even the exact words and phrases. (To me, this is why we so value someone we think "gets" us--it's extremely rare. Even then, there are more areas where we don't "get" the other person than we like to admit.)

Yet, there are people who will insist that someone's words constitute some sort of proof of anything. Whether it is blatant quote mining or a genuine trust in the declarations of someone generally seen as intelligent, we mistakenly give weight to someone's words without any other consideration.

In a practical sense, we can't go around questioning everything declared. But, we should be on the lookout for people who use quotes to try and prove something. Whether it's the Bible, Albert Einstein, a reliable news source, or your favor philosopher (or anyone else), always remember it was filtered through at least one human, not counting you. 

"Christian Nation" Advocates Require Founders To Be Irrational

For those who claim the U.S. is a "Christian nation," they usually use as their best evidence private statements and letters from the nation's founders (as well as others that lived much later). Leaving aside the fact that many of these statements are either misquotes, lies or contextually inaccurate, the logic behind these claims is faulty at a more basic level. Without noticing, these claimants are actually on the losing side of the intent v. action philosophical question.

This question centers on the battle between will and actually exercising it. Stated intentions can never be taken as evidence of an eventual action. We can mistake a person's intention, intentions can change without notice, simple mistakes can be made in communication, etc. What is the much more accurate measure is action(s) taken. A person can state an intention to exercise, learn a new language, or vacuum their car. But, unless there is a corresponding action, the stated intent carries no weight when deciphering motives and designs.

When looking at the "action" actually taken by the founders (i.e., Articles of Confederation, U.S. Constitution, Treaty of Tripoli), there is clearly nothing to indicate that a conclusion had been reached to form a "Christian nation." Quite the opposite was actually the result of the actions eventually taken. The documents agreed to and put into force for the country are clearly non-religious in their nature and intent. Even the individual state constitutions that contained religious notions saw them removed fairly soon after the country began to stabilize.

Unless the supporters of the "Christian nation" idea want to label the founders as being weak-willed, unwilling to follow through with the claim they wanted a nation based on a religious doctrine, they must concede that the actions they actually took is where true objectives reside.

The only remaining choice is to claim the founders to be irrational, having an intent in opposition to their actions.

Supernaturalism And Free Will

It seems to me that one of the best ways to deal with the issue of free will is to start with its opposite: dualism.

The idea of a mind-body separateness has been described in many ways. But, in essence, it's the idea that our physical self is distinctly different from some other controlling force which can operate the body independently of its natural functions. For example, if a person's body wants to scratch its ass or drink a pint of whiskey, the controlling homunculus can say no and order the body to do otherwise. Because the body can only operate within the natural laws governing the material universe and act accordingly, if there is a force that can alter those otherwise automatic reactions, it must be--by it's mere presence--supernatural. Any force that can change what would otherwise happen naturally is supernatural, meaning it doesn't have to live by the universe's governing forces and restrictions.

However, if we assume that there is a separate entity of some sort that can have the body operate outside the natural laws of the universe, then we can also assume that there really are no rules in play, at least when it comes to a person's body. The rules that govern the physical body would not actually be rules; they only become suggestions able to be tossed aside. This means that no rules for humans can ever truly be discovered because anything we observe could be the homunculus altering what would have otherwise happened--and we would never know when this was happening. Anything information we gather about ourselves would always have to have a asterisk pointing to a footnote that says when it comes to humans, nothing can ever truly be discovered.

Given what we continue to discover, can this be deemed a reasonable condition? Not really. We continue to discover new things about why we do what we do all the time. As we continue to gather more and better information, it'll not be the case that we will reverse course and move toward the idea that there are no rules in play.

The scary part about this idea is that it destroys free will, something we mistakenly think we, the disconnected homunculus, have. The sense of control free from the laws of nature we all innately feel is a deception, simply a byproduct of the nature of our existence. It's okay, though, because this misleading state of mind would have to be created if it wasn't already there. Otherwise, we would be a very sad species indeed. The point is that we shouldn't shy away from the situation and pretend our free will is real because if we do what we "discover" will be flawed if we start with this major falsehood. 

Ironically, if this is true, then there is no choice for those who accept this falsehood--and for those who don't. The rules will always be in play and the results will always be based on whatever the universe dictates.

Godly Dualism

What is the relationship between the typical perception of a separate entity of some kind running our bodies and the perception there is some kind of entity separte from the universe running it? Maybe our false perception of a soul leads to the false perception there is a god.

Obedience To The Status Quo

This article associates obedience with Stanley Milgram's famous experiments 50 years ago. But I have another take to share...

If you look at Milgram's experiments in conjunction with some recent news events--the toddler in China getting run over with no one helping and the Penn State case where a witness did not stop a child rape--I think we have something different at play here. It's not so much obedience than wanting to maintain the status quo pushed by the inherit inertia that powers it.

In all of these cases, and many more that happen every day, people decide to keep doing what they have been doing, or planning to do, despite an obvious good reason to do something different. It is our default action (or non-action) to keep on keepin' on.

Our minds may jump around all over the place, but our actions don't. We will almost always do what's expected or planned. It's the same reason abused spouses stay in their relationships and why almost all slaves never revolt. The unknown that comes with changing course is, for some reason, avoided by most of us even when it's clear we should do otherwise.

We need to be harder on ourselves to make sure we're aware of this flaw and do more to conquer it.

Communication Method Disproves God

I've read/seen a few things over the years claiming that a historical Jesus never really existed. Overall, I think the evidence presented is reasonable to make the claim. But, I think there is something more subtle (for lack of a better word) to consider.

Anything written by someone about anyone else is going to be faulty. Even autobiographies/memoirs will contain falsehoods. Most of these are probably honest attempts at recording the truth, but we know that our memories are just awful as recorders of stuff. We simply suck at recalling accurately what we've experienced.

Add to that the tendency to want to purposely write a story that tells mostly good stuff, and in an entertaining or clever way, we add even more trouble to the mix.

Now, put ourselves in a Mediterranean town 2,000 years ago. Very few people read or write. Well-known people get reputations mainly through rumor and "information" that is many people removed from a questionable and unknown source. Similar stories get mixed together.

So, given all of that, I don't think we can say that any historical character truly existed, at least not in the forms we commonly get exposed to today. Many are purely myth, some have some character on which a framework of disinformation was hung. Others may have more evidence of their existence. But, IMO, no one before the middle ages (or thereabouts), excepting some prominent royalty and a few others, can be said to have truly existed.

We humans have too many flaws to have recorded accurately any ancient occurrences at a reliable enough level to be considered worthy of being classified as proof. There was probably someone named Jesus; there were probably lots of people named Jesus. There were also probably lots of people who claimed to do miracles and be a "savior." But, given the times in question, there is no way we can take any of it literally--even the simple, non-miraculous claims.

It doesn't matter how many people recorded stories. There is no way to confirm a single source, let alone verifying it independently. The nature of the situation is one that we can only take the stories as stories. Facts cannot be assumed from them.

To say a god preferred this method of communication is to disprove his existence.

Better Information Leaves God(s) Behind

The idea behind the Big Bang is based on the fact that what happens when time moves forward gets reversed when we look back. Given that simple logic, if we take the fact that we attain better, more accurate information as time moves forward, the information available to our ancestors gets worse the further we look back.

That means conclusions will be erroneous that were reached based on information that has since greatly improved, including the claim that a supernatural creature living outside the universe's rules exists and tinkers with our planet.

If we were all to suddenly get amnesia about our god history while retaining all other knowledge, we could never reach conclusions that included some sort of magical and invisible creature existed. We have much better information now.