Not Forgotten

I have not forgotten about my Blog again. What I have been doing is searching for a tool that would help me write better posts. I believe I have found that tool in Notebook 3 from Circus Ponies Software. Stay tuned for a post written with the help of Notebook, as well as a mini review of this software.

May I disturb you?

Back in my home state of Iowa the Iowa Atheists and Free Thinkers have caused quite a stir. They put up a bus add that was such a sight, that Governor Chet Culver felt he had to weigh in on the subject. He said:

"I was disturbed, personally, by the advertisement and I can understand why other Iowans were also disturbed by the message that it sent."

Wow, that's quite a statement. The governor was "disturbed." What could those crazy atheists have come up with to disturb the governor so? They obviously said something nasty about Jesus's mother! Let's take a look at what the ad said:

Pretty "disturbing" right? It's completely outrageous that they would imply that there are others who might not believe in God.

This highlights an unspoken truth behind the beliefs of the typical Iowa Christian. They are "disturbed" by mere existence of atheists. The mere idea that someone doesn't agree with them about their god is enough to make them unhappy. The atheist doesn't have to do or say anything. They don't have to criticize Christianity or be "disrespectful" to their beliefs. The simple act of standing up and saying "I don't believe" is all that it takes. How does one go about co-existing with theists when your mere existence they find repugnant?

Governor Culver's asinine statement was particularly annoying to me because, before moving to Illinois, I voted for the guy.

The Courage to Doubt

Once in a while you come across a blog post that makes you stand up and take notice. That happened to me recently while reading the excellent blog Unreasonable Faith. The post titled 10 Ways to Embrace Doubt and Find Truth by Daniel Florien is so good, that my only criticism is that it wasn't around when I started my journey into doubt. I would have found it greatly comforting back then. Check it out for yourself. I would like to highlight a couple of the points and weigh in:

3) Learn to love truth, not being right.

Truth is beautiful. Unfortunately, none of us possess the entirety of truth. That’s why we see arrogance as a vice — nobody likes a person who think they are always right. We all know people like this. Don’t love being right and telling others they are wrong — love seeking the truth. This requires humility and skepticism.

I was once asked by a friend "Why rain on everyone's parade, if religion works for them, who cares?" I didn't have a great answer at the time. I know now that it's because the search for the pure truth is beautiful. It's a search that I find compelling and I see no need to apologize for it.

10) Always ask yourself, “How do I know that?”

The more extraordinary a claim is, the more extraordinary evidence there must be in order to believe it.

This is a powerful question because it gets at the root of belief. On matters of religion, you will probably find there is nothing to stand on but “faith.”

This is good advice for everyday life. There are many things that we "know" but we never stop to think how we could know them. We all "know" Jesus was a real man right? Or was he? How do we know this? How is Jesus automatically real but Hercules is a myth? It pays to ask yourself this question often, to not rely on things you've always "known."

I can't say enough what a great post this is for those who are just starting down the road to doubt. If you are unsure, and are having trouble just getting past the idea that you should question your beliefs, I think that this list of advice can be a great comfort to you on your journey.

Global Struggle

I've been meaning to comment on this article discussing the difficulty that Sweden is having with Muslims and their so called "liberal" sex education policies. (Their policies are "liberal" in the sense the that they have sex education as far as I can tell.) Here's a summary of the controversy:

"Proper condom use, sex positions and same-sex relationships are all part of the curriculum for 14-year-old students in Swedish high schools.

But many Muslim immigrants, who require their daughters and wives to wear head scarves to ensure modesty, have prevented their children from attending the classes.

A new law proposes to change that by abolishing a provision that was initially created for Catholic and Jewish students looking to get out of religious education classes. All students were allowed to opt out of subjects if they wanted.

Without that provision, Muslim parents would no longer be able to stop their teenage children from participating in the mandatory sex education, or in sports lessons."

I think this is a perfect example of a basic practical problem with religion in society. We all have to live together. With the diversity of beliefs in the world, how do we accommodate them all? Who's beliefs do we accommodate and who's do we ignore? I don't think that I really have to go out of my way to bend over backwards to make sure that every single groups superstitious beliefs are taken into account. In a rational world, we would be able to demonstrate the value in sex education for young people, and not have to defend our decision against those who would appeal to ancient manuscripts for an objection. Irrational beliefs are fine if we all believe them.

The other interesting part of the above quote is the law that was created that allowed students to opt out of religious education classes. I find the fact that believers would be so afraid of students learning about religion in an academic setting. Of course they understand that there really is a danger. Without all the carefully crafted theatrics of the Church or Synagogue, the story that they are trying to tell tends to lose it's luster.

My Favorite Fallacy

Recently, I was sucked into a debate of sorts about belief in God through a post a friend made on Facebook. I'd post a link but being on Facebook, I don't think it would work anyway. During the course of the debate, I took someone to task for using a logical fallacy. Logical fallacies are a favorite playground of believers in my experience. I took someone to task over their fallacy. I have to now confess that I think I cited the wrong fallacy in my responses. They were making a error of logic to be sure, but not exactly the one that I brought up.

The logical fallacy that I accused them of was called Special Pleading. Special Pleading is the fallacy of applying special rules, principals, etc. to others while taking themselves to be exempt without providing adequate justification for the exemption. I applied this principal to the very familiar "You can't prove there's no God" statement. While it can be made to fit, it assumes too much. I assumed that the claimant has agreed to the rules of evidence and discovery that we commonly use. The implications of a world where everyone doesn't accept those rules is staggering, nevertheless, I was wrong to assume that the claimant was agreeing to that.

What I really should have pointed out was a different fallacy: Shifting the Burden of Proof. Make no mistake, when claiming that something, anything exists, the Burden of Proof is on you. No one is required to "Prove God doesn't exist." If this was a requirement, what a crazy world we would find ourselves in. All claims would be on the table unless proven wrong. Given that the number of possible claims is infinite, this creates quite a quandary. Of course, what they are really saying is "You can't prove God doesn't exist, so he does." If we applied that kind of thinking to everything else, it's easy to see how it just doesn't hold up. Every claim is true until proven not true? That way lies madness.

Zicam Sham

I'm a little late to the party on this one. Things have been crazy lately.

As you may or may not have heard, cold "remedy" Zicam has been recalled because of reported cases of anosmia. Anosmia is a loss of the sense of smell. While I applaud the FDA for pulling a potentially dangerous product, there remains another point that seems to be ignored here.

There's no evidence that Zicam works!

At this point I was going to call for the FTC to do it's job and shut down Zicam like they did with Airborne. But I'm not going to. They've already done enough. Right on all of these products there is a warning. They have to tell you that their product hasn't been found to do anything. Here we have products on the shelves that say right on them that they do nothing. Yet people continue to buy them. At this point, who's fault is it? Is it the FTC's fault for not doing more prosecution for false advertising?

It's time for people to wake up. Skepticism and critical thinking need to be a way of life for everyone. Only by taking responsibility for ourselves can we really be assured of not getting taken. Don't wait for the government to do your critical thinking for you.

I feel that there is a connection to religion here that often goes unsaid. Religion is the enemy of critical thinking. We teach people to take things on faith. Once you accept without evidence that a man got out of his grave and walked around, sticking some homeopathic concoction up your nose to relieve your cold doesn't seem like such a stretch. I'm not saying that everyone who believes in a god is gullible, I've of course met theists with critical thinking skills. However, the basis of most religion seems to be an emphasis on not having evidence. I'm not going to claim here that I can make a definite causal claim about religion and gullibility, I think there's something to be said in how we introduce people to evaluating claims.

The Language of Life and Death

I learned last week that an old dear friend of mine (who lived far away) took his own life. I won't go into details as I do not want to trivialize this tragedy with a blog post. It did bring up an interesting situation for this atheist.

Over the weekend, a wake of sorts was held in his honor. I spent a long time talking, reminiscing, and grieving with old friends. I have to say that this crowd is generally one of the most secular crowds that you'll ever encounter. I'm not saying that they are all atheists, but they have a very secular way of going about things. I heard no one talk about Jesus or God really. A few times people spoke of the generic "better place" but that was about it. I'm sure there were at least some religious people there, and it's possible my reputation precedes me, thus any religious talk was done out of my earshot. It's also true that the person we were gathering to remember was not religious either, so maybe people adapted. Anyway, the point it that this was not a typical Christian crowd in the midwest.

What I did notice is that most of our vocabulary related to life and death, especially when coupled with the grieving process, seems to be tied up in religion. It was difficult for me, and I'm assuming others, to talk about the situation without the trappings of theism to wrap them in. Theists have many stock phrases that just work because we know what they are supposed to mean. "I'll be praying for him." It's a shorthand that seems to tap into some psychological need. For an atheist, it seems that we just haven't developed the language that gets at the same mental zone just yet. Or maybe we have and I'm just ignorant of it?

In the end, we told stories, laughed and cried. I think that everyone made it through without having the "right" words all of the time. As mankind evolves out of superstition, our language may have to keep up with our growth.