BikeMonkey and Equivalence of Oppression (update)

A certain lovely someone made the point to me that I wasn't particularly clear on a point that I am quite definitely not trying to claim that the bigotry aimed at atheists is like the persecution of the Jews. I am not at all. My entire point was that I have had to deal with some very intense feelings regarding this particular issue. Feelings that are completely valid.

PalMD wrote a rather upsetting post the other day, one that resonated with me on one level and made me spitting fucking angry on another. He finally felt the need to respond to Garrison Keillor's vile diatribe in Salon, trying to put non-Christians in their place in regards to celebrating x-mas. Pal comes from a very different perspective on this than I do, one that I cannot possibly understand, not being Jewish myself. His feelings on this resonated with me not because my experience is the same as his, but because Keillor's sentiments have been thrown in my face as well - sometimes by people who were once my friends and who despite my anger towards them and their bigotry, people I still care about. But that was not my first comment there - my first comment there was an expression of all out rage at something besides Christmas that Keillor ripped from Pal.

I am a musician and a midwesterner raised in Michigan - the same state that Pal hails from. I am not and never have been primarily into bluegrass, but bluegrass and hybrid mountain folk are nevertheless a part of my musical experience - a rather big part. Some of the best times I have had playing music, have been as part of a relatively large crowd of people hanging out and playing bluegrass and folk. Because of Michigan's automotive history and the importation of a hell of a lot of workers from parts of Appalachia, Tennessee and Kentucky, there is a huge presence of this sort of music here. There are professional and semiprofessional bluegrass and hybrid folk players, as well as dulcimer makers who can build instruments to rival the best instrument makers from the aforementioned areas. And I have had the pleasure of playing with a lot of these folks, as often as not, while sitting around a fire.

Here is the thing about bluegrass and folk - no one gives two shits what labels someone wears. If you want to listen and enjoy, you are more than welcome any time. If you want to join in, most folks don't care if you can't carry a tune to save your life, much less care what labels you wear. What matters is that you love music, love the community being fostered right then and there and want to take part - whether by listening or joining right in. That is what bluegrass and mountain music is all about - that is the point of it. Traditionally, folk music of any sort in most cultures has been a great leveler - a chance for everyone in a village or group to be equalized and enjoy themselves freely.

So when I read Pal's heartfelt sorrow at feeling that was taken from him, I got fucking angry as hell - far more angry than I did about Keillor's overt x-mas commentary. And I expressed my indignant anger at the notion that some motherfucker could take something so fundamentally open and inclusive away from anyone, much less someone I like. I was not invalidating Pal's feelings, I was expressing my own - and to some extent expressing my anger and refusal to let motherfuckers like Keillor "put me in my place" as well. Nowhere was I suggesting that Pal's feeling weren't valid or that he should just be able to ignore the bigotry and pretend it doesn't matter. Hell, I wasn't even suggesting that I can do that. Not letting not only people like Keillor or right wing blowhards or people who used to be my friend "put me in my place" doesn't mean it doesn't matter or effect me - obviously it does, rather fundamentally even. I just happen to have a different attitude than Pal does about how to handle it from there - in large part because I have a very different experience from Pal's.

But BikeMonkey, in his infinite wisdom decided that I needed to be put in my place, much like Keillor does - though in a different context. BM doesn't think that my feelings about this topic are valid, because my experience isn't Pal's and my overwhelming privilege means I should just shut the fuck up and pretend it doesn't matter. BM decided that there was some sort of equivalence being made, rather than what actually was happening and assumed he knows all about my great fucking privilege in the face of religious expression. I am going to address this idiot notion of equivalence first, then talk a little about my extreme privilege and experience with bigotry.

There is no equivalence between my experience and Pal's. None. Because I don't actually have a window into Pal's head, I cannot say for sure what he feels, but I do have his words to go by and can assume that this whole situation had a rather profound affect on him. Pal has a lifetime history of being Jewish that feeds his experience of Keillor's diatribe that I do not have and he has feelings that have nothing to do with Keillor that impact what he is feeling about it now. And we have to add to that that he was raised by people who are Jewish and who probably faced even more antisemitic bigotry than he has faced - something that probably had a pretty profound effect on his worldview. There is absolutely no equivalence to our experience, because his is not mine - I didn't grow up with the anything like what he grew up with.

That does not mean that my feelings are somehow less valid than Pal's. They are different - very different. They may not even have the depth of his own, though that is impossible for anyone to judge, because no one has a window into anyone else's head. I don't know what Pal's feelings are or what feeds them - I only know my own and what feeds them.

I am an atheist. I am not an atheist because I wanted to be an atheist, I am an atheist because I finally was unable to perpetuate my faith in the face of so very much evidence to contradict everything I Believed. I feel free now, like a huge burden has gone from me - do not get me wrong - in many ways I feel much better for finally shedding my faith. But that has come only after a nearly twenty year struggle to cling desperately to that faith. I described a great deal of that experience and the abusive nature of my brainwashing here, here, here and a bit here, so I am not going to really go into the abusive nature of my relationship with my faith now - suffice to say, if you do not want to click the links, that like a lot of people I spent a very long time in a very abusive relationship with religion. I will highlight one aspect of that abuse though, because it speaks well to my immense privilege.

Before I do, I do want to be clear that I am pretty cognizant of my privilege. I am privileged and I have benefited from it my whole life. But privilege is relative - it is always relative.

One of the worst abuses my relationship with religion fostered, was my attitude about my neurological issues. At an early age I was taught that I did not have neurological problems - or if I did, it was totally a matter of demonic activity being at the heart of it. I was taught by my fundie mother that it was totally a matter of wholly surrendering myself to her god and following his plan for my life. That if I just believed enough - prayed enough - figured out and accepted her god's plan for my life, I would no longer have any of these problems. On the other hand, I was told by my atheist father that these neurological issues are just as excuse others were making for me and that if I just damned well did as I was told - if I buckled down, I would be ok.

Being a hardcore little fundamentalist myself, this god person was the obvious choice. Not that it mattered, whether my faith was too weak or my will to weak, my inability to overcome my neurological issues without help was entirely my seven year old responsibility. There was therapy in there when I was in middle school, but with a therapist ill equipped to help me, especially given that I was truly convinced by my parents that it was all on my head. Faith or will, it was all up to me and me alone. It wasn't until my entire world shattered around me as a teen, that I changed my view on that - unfortunately it only changed for the worse.

I decided then to embrace my mental illness and in exactly those words. I decided that just as my god obviously wanted me to have sex and use drugs - else he wouldn't have sent the opportunities for both my way so often - I became convinced that this is the way I was made, the way my brain was made and I should just accept it as it was. I decided that the only way I could ever be successful, was if I truly accepted who and what I was, because when my world shattered I didn't stop believing. My beliefs changed to be sure - they changed quite fundamentally. But the Faith was still there - the absolute Belief was still there. Not only that, but it was something that I described as Christian, though I explored all sorts of other beliefs.

I no longer denied that I had atypical neurology, but I didn't believe that I should try to change it - in spite of using a hell of a lot of drugs that did just that. As I learned more and understood more about the world around me and even myself, my feelings about my brain evolved. I accepted eventually that I really would probably do better with help, but help wasn't available and recreational drugs were. But still there was that faith - though even that had evolved further and further.

I should note that I was quite often subject to bigotry from other Christians, because I was not the right sort of Christian and as a rather serious substance abuser and horrendous slut, I obviously did not live their version of a Christian lifestyle. My advocacy for glt rights also counted hard against me, as did my acceptance of evolution.

There were times when I might have let it go, but for the simple stark terror I had of hell and the possibility of hell. That, combined with this belief that there were otherwise unexplainable interventions in my life - the biggest being that I was still alive and relatively coherent. And it was a great comfort when I moved to a new city where I literally had two friends before I moved there. My partner and I had split and I was pretty much bereft of anything approaching the support network that I had developed and fostered back in Lansing. I went to the church that my two friends in Portland were attending and was embraced into a wonderful new family.

Until it all fell apart - until I could no longer reconcile or justify any of it. Then I was rejected by this family I had been part of. I was rejected by people who were an important part of my life and the life of my eldest child - not just in the context of faith, but in a very holistic fashion. I was rejected and my child faced rejection for things he had no comprehension of, by people who were as important to him as they were to me. And ever since, I have either endured rejection from these people or pressure to just read this book or listen to that speaker - and it would all make sense again. Comments that they are still praying for me and have every confidence I will one day return to their god's grace.

And while it is certainly not all, many people I care about find it downright offensive that I would infringe on their holidays and any other aspect of their culture.

Being back in the midwest has brought on other problems. Friends who were my friends in spite of my identifying as a Christian - friends who had been rejected by most people who carry that label, but accepted me because I did not have come to reject me for rejecting any spiritual or religious beliefs altogether. To be sure, I still have many friends - including many gay and transgendered friends. But I have lost as many as I still have.

And I still have to make a lot of decisions about whether or not to admit to being an atheist to whom. There is a very common theme in the midwest (and many places) that people don't care what your spiritual or religious beliefs might be - they just take exception to people who don't believe in any sort of higher power.

I have been soundly rejected by most of my community of friends and loved ones. Was rejected at a time when I was dealing with the trauma of finally getting free of my struggle with religion. As abusive as it was, like many such relationships it was nevertheless a fundamentally important part of my life. It is over and I am free of it, but I am not free of it's influence. I am not only dealing with the hole left by faith, I am dealing with the hole left by many people I love - exacerbated by the bigotry of people I love, the bigotry of strangers aside. And while people can't just look at me and see that I am an atheist, I sometimes have to sit quiet and pretend I am not.

And it is only in the last year, while dealing with this rejection and pain, that I am finally actually getting help for my neurological issues and managing to repair the severe damage those problems have created in my life and in the lives of my children. At thirty three, I am finally getting an education in hopes of pulling myself and my children out of the poverty and near poverty that has been their lot in life.

So no, my experience is not PalMD's experience. His experience may even plumb greater depths than my own, I can only speak for myself on that count. All I can say is that my experience with religious bigotry has had a very painful and profound affect on not only myself, but my eldest son as well. There is no equivalency because Pal's experience and mine are very different and because neither of us could begin to know the depth of suffering the other feels to compare. But just because there is no equivalence, does not make either of our experiences or the feelings fostered by those experiences less valid than the other.

Kant's Rigid Moral Frame in Practice

In comments on my last post, everyone's favorite hater of atheists, Zdenny, was kind enough to express his distaste for non-rigid moral framing. He expressed the opinion that the reason atheists would not care for Kant's model for morality, was because we want to be able to do whatever we please. Aside from showing an abysmal ignorance - to be clear, a willful abysmal ignorance about athiests, it also shows a rather abysmal ignorance of Kant's model for morality. Unless of course he really does agree with Kant, in which case he follows a dogmatic form of Christianity that is patently unfamiliar to me.

Kant believed that any use of another person, was inherently immoral. One of the universal axioms he believed is absolute, is lying. No matter what the circumstances lying is inherently immoral and unacceptable. The facts of a given scenario are irrelevant, one should never lie.

An example that was discussed by Kant, was a scenario in which a friend is being sought by someone who wants to kill them. Said friend flees into a house to hide, while you are in front of the house. The person who wants to kill them comes and asks you if they are in the house. According to Kant, you cannot reasonably lie to that person. Because you cannot know for sure that the friend has stayed in the house to hide, you cannot say "no, s/he is not in the house," because that may well put the would be killer to searching outside where he may find the friend. The only reasonable response, not knowing for sure what the friend has actually done is to tell the would be killer you do not know.

So lets translate Kant's response to real historical situations. Situations in which Christians were quite thankfully not inclined to follow Kant's model for morality.

Some abolitionists of the nineteenth century created underground railroads to help escaped slaves find their way to safety, in territories where they would be welcomed to freedom. At many points these underground railroads were located in places where law enforcement was very keen on returning escaped slaves to the south, often to brutal beatings and sometimes hanging. Even in places that had a more neutral attitude, there were bands of bounty hunters who were often times rather brutal in their attempts to infiltrate underground railroads and cut off these pipelines. A great many of the abolitionists involved in these efforts were Christians who believed it was their God-given duty to lie and misdirect slavers and slave bounty hunters. No few of them were inclined to lie about their abolitionist beliefs, to draw attention away from their roles in the railroad. In a few recorded cases, people involved with the railroad actually infiltrated bands of bounty hunters seeking escaped slaves, so as to more effectively misdirect.

In Nazi Germany, when people had become more fully aware of what the Nazi's were doing to the Jews, a lot of people became involved in trying to get the Jews out of Germany safely. Like the underground slave railroad, they were hidden in houses and moved in secrecy, until they were safely out of Nazi controlled territories. And like the slave railroad, there were many times when people hiding and moving the Jews were questioned about it and many times they told lies to misdirect the Nazis. A great many of the people involved in this effort, like those involved with the slave railroad, were Christians. No few of them became rather vocal and ardent supporters of the pogrom, so that like the abolitionists, they could direct attention away from their attempts to save the lives of as many Jews as possible.

In both of these cases, not only were Christians involved in lying outright to misdirect, something that Kant would consider immoral in itself, there were a great many Christians who would live a lie in public, to draw attention away from themselves and their activities. And the interesting thing about this is, they have biblical examples from which to justify their actions. Early Christians were not very well accepted. Being a Christian meant risking imprisonment and even death. Early Christian leaders had to sneak about, to visit many of the cities they visited to minister to the local, hidden Christian populations. I daresay there were a great many hosts of Christian leaders who had to outright lie to guards, when they came to the door looking for said leaders. And while the early Christians may not have been terribly inclined to live an outright lie, they were certainly very keen on not admitting to their beliefs.

I could go on and on with this. There are numerous examples throughout history, of Christians lying to protect people. There were Christians who did so during the rise of Protestantism. There were Christians who did so when Martin Luther was calling for the slaughter of Jews. There were Christians who did so when churches schismed and violence was to follow. There were even Protestant Christians who lied to protect Catholic Christians and Catholic Christians who like to protect Protestant Christians in Ireland, in particular and a lot of other places where violence between the two groups was rife.

So ZDenny, while I am not a believer in universal moral axioms, not buying into Kant's model for morality, or that of the utilitarians, does not equal not buying into universal moral axioms. The moral framework of Christianity has traditionally understood that there are times when the consequences outweigh the intent. That the moral thing to do is to do what it takes to save lives and show others what Christian charity and love is really all about. When you support the rigidity of Kant, you are denigrating the memories of Christians from the time of Jesus to the present. You are denigrating the memories of Christians who risked and in innumerable cases sacrificed their lives for what they believed was the right way for Christians to live and to be a living witness for Christ.

When you support the rigidity of Kant, you are no different than the Sadducees and Pharisees who put their religion before their god.

Christian Logic: Why I Don't Love My Boys...

Sometimes people wonder why I am so very fucking angry about theism and it's pervasive influence on our culture - and most other cultures for that matter... My very favorite neighbor to the north (you know, one of those Canuckistanians) recently got into a little tangle with someone who is a picture perfect example of where this anger comes from. After that aforementioned tangle with Jason, the cowardly fucking Christian decided to write an offensive piece of garbage about that encounter.

I had a thoughtful discussion with an atheist named Jason about real love. He deemed that it was “hateful” to claim that Atheist are not able to love their children.

Well Denny, that would be because it is a fucking hateful thing to claim. Hateful and strikingly ignorant. But Denny's ignorance doesn't stop there...

If God is love, then it is true that an atheist is incapable of loving their child. Atheist by definition reject God; therefore, an atheist is not capable of loving their children. God’s love never fails; however,an atheist love will fail based on the chemical make up of that person.

I don't reject any god, I also don't accept the conception of gods - Denny and I are operating on separate paradigms. But let's explore this logic for a moment, with the assumption that Denny's god is real and described accurately in the Christian bible...Denny's god demands - or at least used to, before Christ, that parents stone children who don't respect their parent's authority. While it can be argued that said god changed it's mind later on, there is no denying that the god Denny worships used to demand that parents kill their children for misbehaving. On the other hand, when you strike past Denny's stunning ignorance of neurobiology, you would find that there is highly unlikely that an atheist, or anyone else for that matter, is going to go through a neurochemical shift that would suddenly cause them to stop loving their children. It can happen, but when it happens, it happens at the result of a pathological imbalance - what we would call mental illness. And this is not something that Christians are immune to - such neuropathology can happen to anyone with a fucking brain.

Now you can go take a look at the rest, I am not going to keep going through this line, by line. But if you want to comment on it, don't bother doing so there - the comment likely won't get posted, no matter how reasoned and polite you might be. Indeed, I took Denny on his face and made a comment in good faith, which I will post in a moment - a comment that he chose to respond to in email, apparently thinking that posting it to his blog would be a bad idea.

Jason is far from the last line on love and atheists. Not all of us would agree with him, just as not all Christians would come close to agreeing with your assertions, here or there.

I am an atheist, after spending the vast majority of my life trying to reconcile my Faith with reason and reality. I understand very clearly, many different Christian premises about the nature of love. Now you may just decide that because I am now an atheist, I must never have been a real Christian, in which case this is probably a pointless exercise. But I am not going to assume that you are rather bigger than that.

When I was a Christian, I was very caught onto this notion of love and godly love. I have written very extensively over the years, on 1 Cor. 13 and that has been an absolute my entire life. I have believed absolutely in loving everyone, unconditionally. When I was a Christian, I absolutely believed that this was the least I could do – the least I could be, as a living testament to my god. The thing is, now that I am not a Christian, I not only continue to love like I did – I have found a much deeper and meaningful love than I have ever experienced.

Emotions are chemical based, because we are chemical based – everything we think, is based in chemical processes. The difference between you and who I am now, is that you somehow see this as making you less of a person – less miraculous than you actually are. Rather than arguing that this is somehow mundane and degrading, I would ask; Why do you think that this degrades us? We are truly marvelous and beautiful creatures – what makes us who and what we are, is awe inspiring. It is much like the notion of creation, versus evolution – I am far more inspired and awestruck, by the understanding of how we – these significantly flawed, yet wholly remarkable creatures came to be, than by the notion that we and the universe around us, were just magically “poofed” into existence. I am awestruck by the notion of the billions of years and virtually infinite space that spans out universe.

But the thing that I actually really have to disagree with Jason about – rather strenuously even, is this idea that our emotions are fleeting things – they assuredly are not. While some of our emotions are fleeting things, that which is most important to us does not evaporate, it usually just gets buried. We humans have a remarkable capacity for compartmentalizing and do so on an ongoing basis. Were we to stop, we would quickly be completely overwhelmed by the inability to process absolutely everything. So the vast majority of what we see, what is happening around us, goes into tidy little compartments – some of them much like the RECYCLE function of our computers. Certain types of information are harder to reach while they are still there and only stay until we have put so much more in, that it disappears.

But there are a great many things that never leave us – though we may get past the worst of the impact of those events, people and the feelings they inspire. And when we dwell on them, it is easy enough to recall and experience those emotions again – unless we’ve repressed it, which is something that men are especially good at.

I don’t believe in gods anymore, don’t believe in the supernatural at all. That doesn’t mean I have any less capacity for love and emotions than you do. Indeed, believing as I now do, that such beliefs are dangerous and overall bad for us, I not only love you, but much as I am sure you love me and wish that I would come back to God’s grace, I wish you would come to reason and out of the dangers of magical thinking.

And I too, love my children. Ever so very deeply and in a way that to you, a fellow parent, can totally relate to.

You can see how terribly offensive my comment was - no question why he wouldn't fucking let it post out of moderation. I will note here however, that I misunderstood Jason and he did clarify it here. Sorry Jason, your comment makes a whole lot of sense now. And for anyone going over to read that, please ignore my comment below - that was meant for Jason only and frankly, I'm concerned that if you read it, you may decide to kill me. But I digress, because while Denny the Cowardly fucking Christian chose not to let my comment post, he did respond. And out of respect for his notation on the bottom of his email, admonishing that it is indeed intended only for me, I will have to request that you not actually read the following quotes and just read my responses to them - I post them for Denny's reference, so he knows what exact points I am responding to...And if you like, you could take a break and go read Jason's response to Denny the Cowardly fucking Christian's blog-post, which he was blissfully unaware of, until I pointed it out to him....

A person can claim to love their children; however, it is impossible for chemicals to love chemicals. I don't doubt that chemicals can affect emotions; however, love is not an emotion. Your statement, "I love my children" while denying the existence of God informs me that your definition of love is based on chemicals and not truth.

Denny, we are not talking about neat little bottles of chemicals in your child's chemistry set. Nor are we talking about stuff that got mixed up in a laboratory. Please take a moment to learn a little bit about the human brain and how all this thinking and feeling stuff works...We'll wait for you...

If you gave up Christ for your emotions, then that explains why you are an atheist. Jason at least was honest about atheism.

I gave up nothing for my emotions - my emotions had nothing to do with my becoming an atheist, except in so far as they actively prevented me from becoming an atheist a great deal sooner. I am an atheist because I finally lost the battle of attrition, wherein my religious brainwashing was fighting to reconcile my Faith, with reason and reality. But I love the implication that I am somehow lying about who and what I am, and why...

In order for atheism to be true, it has to admit to the existence of truth. As soon as an atheist makes a claim on truth, they just established the existence of God. In other words, it is logically impossible for atheism to be true. When you make a claim on truth, you are admitting to an unchanging reality that exists beyond our own. Truth is unchanging; however, everything in our experience is changing. The only basis for truth or for reason is the existence of God.

You know, I love me some elementary, circular logic and this example is truly circular and very elementary. But worse, it's also predicated on the notion that atheism is based on any claim of truth.

First of all Denny, I reject the god paradigm that your abysmally fucking stupid statement was based on. Your premise fails on it's face right then and there. Secondly, I would like to point out that this is a logical fallacy. Even if we were to give that atheism is predicated on some claim of truth, it would not stand to reason that said truth implies anything unchanging, beyond our reality. The only way that this would stand, is if we accept as an absolute, the existence of a supernatural that there simply isn't any evidence for. And finally, I am not an atheist because I believe there isn't a god or any sort of supernatural. I am an atheist, because I have not seen evidence to indicate the existence of either. I don't <i>believe</i> anyfuckingthing...I accept that there may be a supernatural, I just don't see evidence to suggest it. I even accept that there may be a godlike higher power - again, I just don't see evidence for it. Still further, I accept that there may be a interventionist, godlike higher power - just not the evidence. Finally, I even accept the possibility, no matter how slim, that <i>your</i> version of god is real. The thing is, without evidence to suggest that any of these are true, I reject the premises. And in the order I listed them, I go from finding these premises exceedingly unlikely, to being about as likely as the premise that The FSM is coming to save us and guide us into a beautiful reality of peace and piracy.

Mass and Energy that has been informed by information establishes the fact that a mind does exist which is the source of that information. In other words, God does exist and it is undeniable if you hold to truth.

A fucking moron says what? Seriously Denny, you need some help - please do me a favor and spend a little time on elementary logic... You are doing a hell of a job of showing just how fucking bereft our educational system is...

And for the record, logic and this silly notion of <i>evidence</i> based reason are not tools of Satan, created to drive man from god. Least ways, I give that notion less credence, than I give the notion that your version of god is real. We'll skip over the next couple of paragraphs, because once you ground yourself in elementary logic, you will see that it is just more of the same fucking bullshit.

The fact you were trying to be a Christian and now an atheist tells me that you never found the Love of God that can be yours through Jesus Christ. If you would have found it, you would never have left.

Fuck you. Seriously you fucking shit eating little bastard - Fuck You!

Now I am almost inclined to just leave it at that and be done with your sorry fucking ass, but I want to clarify something you asked to clarify, because one, I am honest and two, it will provide you with a short lesson in logic. In your second email you asked...

You stated that your love is now deeper and more meaningful.

If your love is chemically based, everyone's experience should be the same since you are hitting the love chemical; however, it would seem to me that admitting that love is now deeper would imply that you activated a new chemical that is forcing you to believe that it is now deeper....

Do you think that love can really go deeper for an atheist?

For the question you asked, no. I don't think that faith or lack thereof has anyfuckingthing to do with one's capacity for love. I do not think that becoming an atheist made it possible for me to suddenly love that much more deeply. I would suspect that Faith was running some interference before, but the truth is, after becoming an atheist, I also got help for my neurological issues. I also became more focused on metacognition and better understanding myself. It also makes a huge difference, that I have now met a women whom I love quite passionately and with a depth I previously assumed was simply not possible for me to feel.

People, especially men, are perfectly capable of not recognizing. ignoring and even suppressing emotions. Humans have that capacity to compartmentalize that I talked about in my comment that you are afraid to post to your blog. Because of that capacity, we are perfectly capable of never even realizing how we really feel about things, people and ideas. We can repress memories and desires, without ever realizing what we've done. It is mostly just coincidence, that I have broken through some seriously damaging compartmentalization since becoming an atheist.

But I really want to hit on this fucking ridiculous notion you have about neurochemistry and love. It is not some singular chemical that we can just take "hits" of, to feel something more or less. It is a complex interaction of neurotransmitters and the "hardware" of our brains. We're all different, because our brains are all different. Our specific, individual brain chemistry is easily as unique and far more complicated than our fingerprints. This is what prevents us from being singular, automaton like creatures - one indistinguishable from another.

This is all relatively simple to understand, even if the mechanisms are complicated. No gods needed and unlike godbased, lazy fucking assumptions, there is a great deal of evidence to back up every assertion I have made here.

It is your place to say it, Greg, but you're wrong.

I started writing this post as a comment and soon realized that it was far more appropriate as a post in itself. Greg is rather fucking angry about all this blog violence and infighting. Indeed, he is prepared to stick his angry boot up someones ass so far that they'll need a shoe-shine rag to brush their teeth, if they tell him that it's not his place to say what he said...

Of course it's your place to point this out - it's your fucking blog. For that matter, this is your place to comment on it too. However, I don't agree with you...Or more to the point I do, but not everyone who agrees with us on one or more of those issues, agrees with us on all of them. And therein lies the problem and the point I was trying to make to Volcanoman on that other post.

As an atheist, I am willing to accept that atheists who have what I see as reprehensible moral frames, also happen to have a common enemy with me. Honestly, common enemy or not, there are those in that group who I just flat refuse to ally myself with - which is rare for me. As an environmentalist, I accept that there are even some pretty hardcore fundamentalist theists who also happen to be ardent environmentalists - and again, there are those among them who I just can't in good conscience ally myself with.

I could go on and on - for every issue you raise, there are people who agree with us on that issue, while fervently disagreeing on others. Excepting extremists, I am happy to ally myself to those people on those specific issues, while accepting that on other issues, they are my enemies. But given that there are those in each of those groups who are my enemies, it stands to reason there will be some infighting - or outfighting within the group might be more accurate.

And then there are those with whom I have fundamental differences with, when it comes to tactics. Like Chris - you know, that dude who just came out with a book coauthored with a awesome marine biologist. He doesn't see a lot of utility in trying to convince theists to abandon theism, believing it far more important to convince them that there isn't an inherent between accepting science while being a theist. While I have no problem with making the latter point clear, I will not - absolutely will not allow that point to interfere with my fundamental belief that theism is poison - no matter what type or extreme that theism takes.

Nor am I going to play nice about it - something that many atheists believe is counterintuitive. I believe that it is a good thing for people who aren't comfortable with the sort of rhetoric I occasionally am prone to not to engage in it, but I also think it's a good thing for people who are to do so and I think it's a good idea for people who have some other way of going about it to do things their way.

But most importantly and why I categorically reject your premise, is that this very discussion is a good, incredibly positive thing. This "infighting" you are objecting to - this is exactly what drove me to where I am now. I've been engaging in this argument for about six years now and my position on it, as well as my personal religious beliefs are almost in perfect polar opposition to what they were when I first engaged in it.

I am not alone, or in any way unique.

There are a lot more people reading this stuff, including these discussions, than there are people commenting on it. Hell, with my tiny traffic blog, I get emails from people who just aren't comfortable commenting. The other post garnered me four emails from people who just wanted to tell me they appreciated my comments to Volcanoman (one also mentioned the other person I was arguing with). You get a lot of traffic and I imagine that it's only a tiny fraction of that traffic that ever responds.

It is important for people to see and understand that atheists aren't some homogeneous group of people. It is important for people to understand that the thing that makes us atheists, is a lack of religious belief - and nothing else - absolutely nothing else. Sure, there are a lot of things that many, maybe even most atheists would agree on. But that has nothing to do with us being atheists - it just means that we happen to have other shared values.

And this discussion does more than show people what atheists are and aren't. It also exposes them to arguments about the nature of religion and magical thinking - arguments that they may never hear anywhere else. It shows them that a) not all atheists are angry and/or b) that some atheists are - both of which are valid and valuable points to theists or those who simply don't identify as atheists, though their actual beliefs may qualify.

Fuck Homogenized Atheism

Over at Greg Laden's blog (he often has some of the best conversations), I have gotten into a rather heated exchange with a Nathan Myers (my response starting after this comment) and intended on posting about the baseline question/assertion I made - and I still do. But then another commenter, Volcanoman, made a rather impassioned plea that I can appreciate, while thinking it's a really bad (not to mention impossible) fucking idea. I rather spent more time than I probably should have on my response and realized that it is a rather important point, so I am posting it here. And because I have three tests in the next two days (the two hardest tomorrow) and really need to study some more, I am not going to muck about with it...

The world is an increasingly nasty place and its rational people, although naturally fractious and irritable it seems, need to come to common understanding and present a unified message of intelligent discourse, robust information, and moral superiority.

LOLWTF?

What you don't seem to understand, Volcanoman, is that there isn't some common understanding and never will be. The fact that we happen to agree that religion is a bad idea, does not imply any sort of common understanding - many of us think religion is a bad thing for very different reasons in the first place.

Take the rather heated interaction between Nathan and myself - whichever one of us might be right, we absolutely do not have a common understanding and given the general tenor that our exchange took, it is unlikely that we ever will. If we do come to a common understanding of the issue we're discussing here, it won't be because of each other - I don't generally find myself deciding to agree with assholes who talk smack and I doubt he tends to decide suddenly he agrees with people who call him a complete and utter fucking moron. So if we ever do find ourselves on common ground in this, it will be because others convinced one or both of us that another position is the correct one.

And a lack of religious belief is not a reasonable foundation on which to build any unified message, nor is it inherently a precursor to intelligent discourse. Like I said, people decide that religion is bad, or that they simply don't believe, for a vast array of reasons - not all of them intelligent and by definition not unified.

Chris Mooney, for example, is not religious because he grew up without religion. He was never inundated with Faith and therefor it is perfectly natural for him to be an atheist. Me on the other hand - I struggled and fought for the vast majority of my life to desperately cling to the remnants of the very profound, very deep seated, absolute Faith of my childhood. It was only after a nearly thirty year odyssey through Faith and conflicting reason, that I finally lost the war of attrition and became an atheist. It took even longer and was only after my interactions with people who were damaged even more than I was by Faith and then with people who's experience was far less intense but just as nefarious, that I came to believe that religious indoctrination of children is inherently abusive and moreover, that it was intensely abusive to me personally.

Chris Mooney, OTOH, hates it when people say the sorts of things I said in my last sentence. Comfortable enough position to take, when one has never experienced the abusive nature of religious indoctrination. And you think that I am even capable of joining a unified message with Chris, or anyone else who believes it would be better if people with opinions such as mine, kept them to ourselves?

And quite frankly (and honestly no offense intended), you can take your moral superiority and shove it up your ass. Atheism does not make anyone morally superior to anyone else, nor does theism make anyone morally inferior to anyone else. I know a whole hell of a lot of people I would judge morally superior to others - and religion has absolutely nothing to do with that judgment. There are a lot of people, theists and otherwise, who follow a moral framework that is similar to my own and many of them manage better than I do. There are also a lot of people who behave and even fundamentally conduct their lives in a way that goes hard against the most important aspects of my moral framework - many of them theists and many of them atheists.

Never mind that those folks feel quite the same about me and my moral framework. Though that does shoot us back to the last point. Because if I can't show a unified front with Chris Mooney, who in spite of our significant difference of opinion is probably living a lifestyle that is closely aligned to my moral framework, can I be expected to be unified with someone who's moral framework is fundamentally different than my own? I disagree with Chris and cannot come to a consensus with him on some fundamental issues, but I rather like Chris and would probably enjoy hanging out with him and having dinner.

I cannot say the same about an atheist who believes that social safetynets are an infringement of their rights, that torture is ok, if it is making us safer, that the rule of law can be thrown under the bus, when push comes to shove - I could go on and on. People like this I wouldn't want to have dinner with, even if they happen to have virtually identical views to my own on religion.

But the bottom line, absolutely fundamentally fatal flaw to your line of reasoning here, is in the functional fulfillment of this goal. Because while I am sure that there are people who have made positive changes in their lives, due to the way Chris Mooney deals with religion, it wasn't a Chris Mooney who helped push me past the final blocks. Likewise, there are people who appreciate my condor and general attitude about Faith - people who are, or recently were theists, who find themselves rather intrigued by my attitude and where it comes from - they, like me, are unlikely to make the choices we would like them to, because of what a Chris Mooney - or for that matter, a PZ Myers has to say about it.

There are a lot of assholes in the world, who are assholes in much the same way that I am an asshole. And guess what? They appreciate assholes like themselves and the way we put things.

I like you and appreciate your position - I really do. But I have no interest in your homogenized, "Kumbaya," campfire fucking bullshit. We need all of us, being who we are, to affect positive change. Because when the positive change in question is an end to religion and lack of religion is the only common thread, homogenization isn't going to get us very far.

And btw, Motherfucking Canadians are going Down Eh!!!!!!!!!11!!11111!!!!!

Juxtaposition 235: Cthuluh, Jack Chick and Child Abuse

Update: Dan J, in his total awesomeness, managed to find a link to a PDF of the Cthuluh tract at the artist's web site... Thanks Dan. I would also like to heartily recommend giving his latest post a read - I can't help but be terribly pleased to find that someone else came up with a rather more "profane" rant than I did - and a very good one at that. He makes several points that I will delve into at some point in the relatively near future - I am more than a little fucking tired of this bullshit notion that we should accept dangerous behaviors and decision making from people, that we wouldn't accept under any other circumstances, simply because there is religion involved.

As Dan so eloquently puts it; Fuck Them!!!

It is terribly amusing to me, that at the same time I managed to get into an argument with someone about Tiamat and the fact that Cthuluh is really cause for far more concern, because frankly Cthuluh wouldn't kick Tiamat's ass - h'd jst fckng eat hr, I also noted this delicious little tidbit posted at Pharyngula. I found it while perusing a few blogs that were involved in the crushing of my hopes for Canadian healthcare. I have a rather dark sense of humor, so I thought it was more than a little amusing. But when I was talking about it with my dearest Juniper, I realized that there is an element to the humor that one is likely to miss, if they never experienced Chick Tracts when they were a child. In a most unfortunate turn, it seems that the old tracts aren't available online and the new ones aren't quite on a par with the ones I was exposed to as a child, but I did find a couple that provide a decent taste. "The Beast" shows a common theme that runs through many of these tracts, providing up with a glimpse of what we can expect in these "end times." There were a lot of scenes that showed us what hell was like, showed Satan as a deceiver and even several that talked about specific demons and types of demons.

Juniper just didn't find the Cthuluh tract nearly so amusing at the end - it is, I will grant, rather disturbing. But honestly, it is not the least bit more disturbing than a lot of the Chick tracts are and were even moreso when I was growing up. And when I was four, five and six, I read Chick tracts all the time. There were scads of them at church and I happened to be rather adept at ferreting about in the sorts of places they got stored. They were comics, which are just lovely fun for a child and no one thought anything of seeing any of us kids reading these abominations. Never mind the demons and souls and brutal destruction of life and property - it was all for the greater biblical good of raising good Christian children. It was also a hell of a indoctrination tool. And it is ever so useful for a small child to get a headstart in understanding demonology.

During this same conversation, Juniper and I got to discussing my parochial school experience - it actually came up when I casually mentioned being paddled by the principle fairly regular like. It occurred to her that this was a very good expression of this concept of arationality that I have been on about, since I first noted it's use by that albino gorilla, John Wilkins. Because I think it's important to recognize that a great deal of creationist and general religious thinking falls outside the purview of the rational/irrational dichotomy - though my opinion about the value of that understanding would probably differ fairly significantly from John's. So picture a bit of my life, if you will and see just how irrational my thinking was as a child and how irrational much of my adult life has been...

Fast forward to the third grade - I have been steeped in such brilliance as those older Chick Tracts. I am firmly entrenched in the terrorizing Belief that my dad and other people I love quite dearly are bound for eternal torment in hell, unless they accept my god in their lives. I am already a "Royal Ranger," the scout group that is part of the Pentecostal, fundamentalist church my mom and I are attending. And now I am getting set to start school at the same church. Without five days a week of elementary school, I am spending the vast majority of my time in this church. I'm in the choir, I am there on Weds for Royal Rangers, I am often there on Sat, for events involving both and there are a lot of activities happening throughout the summer. And now I am going to be there for school. Where I will learn some academics - and a whole lot more of the religious nonsense - six, often seven days a fucking week.

I was rather cleverer than the average bear, no question. But all the cleverness in the world is for naught, when all that is going in is filtered through rather extreme dogma. I was, at one point, taught that intellectualism was another religion - much like evolution - a tool of Satan. I was taught that I needed to focus all of that intellectual acuity on things that fostered my faith and the faith of others. My dad ran a strong counterpoint to the notion that focusing much of my intellectual acumen on anything not within the purview of my faith was wrong. But that didn't stop me from developing some rather deep seated shame - shame that would ease up from the recesses of my mind, to make me rather frustrated with myself - possibly even ashamed of myself, whenever I allowed my intellect to be wasted on anything that didn't bring glory to my god. After all, God had given me this intellect - how dare I ever waste it on the world...

Chris Mooney wonders, in his reply to me, why the realm of moderate faith isn't a reasonable place for fundies like I was to end up - at least for a while. Why I shouldn't, in spite of my anger, recognize that this is better for that person than being a fundie. Well here's the problem with that...

I have always been an insatiably curious person - I was curious before my infant eyes could clearly view the world around me, I was curious when my brother taught me to read at two, I was curious and I was clever. I was also pervasively lied to for many years - lies made no less egregious because those inundating me with them believed the lies themselves. I was taught to be ashamed of too much curiosity, unless that curiosity was firmly focused on the dogma I was constantly and consistently hammered with - day in and day out. I was taught that the majority of the humanity that I was commanded to love, were going to suffer for all of eternity in hell, because they didn't worship the right god, didn't worship the right god properly or didn't worship any god at all. I spent subsequent decades trying to make reality fit within the confines of dogma - tried to shift the dogma to accommodate reality - became increasingly desperate to find some way to hold onto my Faith, because that was right and critically important.

Please, if you don't see it as such - please explain to me how that experience of mine wasn't child abuse that led to decades of hell. Drug abuse, self-loathing and unrelenting depths of despair, masked by extremes of sensory overload from sex, drugs, writing and music.

More importantly, why should I sit back and pretend that this moderation that Chris speaks so highly of is any better for some of those people, than it was for me. At least when I was a fundie, I was somewhat content. I wasn't desperate to make it all make sense, because it made sense - I didn't need to question, because the answers were there and beyond those answers was minutia that I could parse easily, through prayer and study. Yes, I was occasionally angry and ashamed by my inability to focus everything on my god - but it was unquestionably easier than the suffering of the last eighteen to twenty years of my life.

I am certain that there are many people who are more than happy to live in that realm of moderate faith - I don't really care. Because for many people, that moderate faith is merely fundamentalism tainted and broken by doubts. A desperate place where the reality is an increasingly desperate need to make the absolutely incompatible weave into the fresh whole cloth of a coherent worldview.

I am for helping them, helping people like me - period. If some moderates and fundies get hurt, angry or offended along the way - well honestly, I'm not even really sorry about it. Both groups and those in between and outside on the fringes foster an environment of absolutely hellish agony.

That is what I am combating and will continue to combat. And I am not going to apologize for it - no one who fostered my personal hell has, or has even shown any remorse for my experience there.

Cannabis is Magical!!1!11!!!!

Context. And more context.

Or at least seems to induce a fair amount of magical thinking.  And that would be magical thinking not a hell of a lot different than claims of magical gods, psychic phenomena or the belief that vaccines, cancer drugs and many other medicines are actually poisons being peddled to unwitting consumers by the evile of Big Pharma.  People who rightly mock conspiracy theories about 9/11 and new world order, secret governments, turn around and make the base assumption that none of the evidence showing that cannabis has more than negligible deleterious effects can be true, because there's a government conspiracy to hide the truth and scare the masses.

There is fairly exhaustive evidence that indicates the legal status of cannabis is absolutely absurd and that the scare tactics engaged by most public agencies is vastly overblown.  That is not to say that there isn't risk and evidence for harm stemming from cannabis use, on many different levels. 

There is no question that smoking anything causes respiratory damage and damages cilia in the upper throat.  Anyone who has ever cleaned a pot pipe knows that the tar left behind is impossible to clean off with water alone, unless it's boiling - this same tar mattes the cilia in the esophagus and like tobacco, coats the lungs.  While the average cannabis smoker, smokes less than the average tobacco smoker, thus lessening the overall damage of smoking it, the tar that is formed is actually worse weight to weight, than the tar from tobacco.  There is a great deal of evidence indicating that cannabis smokers who do not smoke tobacco have a higher incidence of  bronchitis and chronic bronchitis, than non-smoking populations.

No links have been found between cannabis smoking and lung cancer or emphysema - though there is evidence of proteins that are thought to be precursors to cancer in cannabis smokers, there is also evidence that cannabis use may inhibit the development of those proteins into cancer.  It is important to note however, that there is no evidence that it impacts the incidence of cancer in concurrent tobacco smokers.

Reproduced studies have indicated that the incidence of cannabis addiction in cannabis smoking populations is around fifteen percent.  Addiction being defined by the DSM IV criteria, a conjunction of pervasive use, in spite of significant personal harm.  Cut that by a third to be certain you've weeded out biased diagnosis - cannabis is magical you know - and you still have one out of every twenty cannabis smokers addicted at some point in their life.  When we look at populations that use cannabis and also have concurrent neurological issues, the percentage skyrockets.  And it is very common for people with neurological issues such as ADHD, bipolar, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders to use tobacco, use cannabis and other illicit drugs. 

I could go on and on, but here are some articles that do a much better job than I.  I am way too busy at the moment and will get to more evidence - recent studies and the like, when I can.  These peer reviewed journal articles and reports are not protected by pay walls and easier to throw out there, because you can read them and I don't have to summarize anything.  I don't have the time to summarize material that is paywall protected, I'll get to it asap, but I am trying to get through a lot of credits this summer and it's more than a little stressful.

A Lancet Seminar.

The 2001 Australian study on the health effects of cannabis use.  I suggest looking at the summaries of each section and then looking at the body of each section, if you have questions.

The British Journal of Anesthesia. 

The British Journal of Psychiatry. 

This wasn't hard to find folks.  And this is just what I looked for to throw something up that isn't paywalled.  Are we to believe that there is some conspiracy that is trying to toe the usual line of most public agencies in the U.S.  Oh shit, I'm sorry but are we to believe that there is some government conspiracy to contradict the usual line of said public agencies?

Of course there is, because I just keep forgetting that cannabis is fucking magical.  Sorry, I'll try better to keep that in mind from now on.

Just Who Are We Accommodating and Why Should I Participate?

I like Chris Mooney.  He's well spoken, civil and seems to truly strive to avoid being nasty to those he disagrees with - even when he disagrees voraciously and occasionally even when people he disagrees with are rather nasty to him.  Now it may seem strange to those who know me and know I am quite capable of being a raging asshole, no apologies.  But I accept that unleashing the asshole within isn't always productive and can appreciate that some people either don't have much of an inner asshole, or simply manage better than I to keep it under wraps.  Either way, I have to respect those who are polite and reasoned to a fault. 

I do however, have a problem with Chris' rhetoric about theists who accept evolution.  Put simply, he seems to think that there is a marked lack of civility on the part of the so called "new atheists," when it comes to attacking the faith component, of those who reconcile their theism with evolution and science.  He also seems to think that there are a lot of factual errors to the arguments of the new atheists and ultimately, that attacking that reconciliation is a bad strategic move.   I know more than a little about this issue of reconciling theism and science, or more accurately, theism and reality.  I am less than a year out from having finally ending my twenty some year battle to maintain my faith, in the face of science and indeed other aspects of reality that aren't strictly science related. In all honesty, I think that his problems with incivility and ultimately strategy are both ill-founded.  And while I think that the issue of factual errors is a little less clear, I tend to disagree with the accommodationist position - both from the theists themselves and the atheists who defend them.

This is not to say that I don't still believe that it is important for some voices to be heard supporting the accommodationist viewpoint.  Both because I believe that people should speak their mind, even if I think they're wrong and because I think that there are people who need to hear from people like Chris and other non-theists who accept that one can be a theist and still accept science.  But I also think it's important to have other voices clearly stating that they think the accommodation is a load of crap.  Because first and foremost, there are at least some of us who think it is and because not being critical, would leave a lot of people in a position to continue thinking that they should stick to their faith, even though they are having to commit to rather precarious epistemological assumptions.  For some, probably even most people, this isn't a problem - they simply don't care enough about any of it to really think about what they actually believe.  Then there are those who do think about it...A lot.

At it's heart, my support of those arguing that theism and faith are not nearly as compatible as many accommodationists insist they are, is the impact their arguments have had on ending my thirty year, abusive relationship with my faith.  While I have accepted evolution for roughly twenty years and accepted that homosexuals are human beings and deserving of complete equality for about the same, I spent a great deal of those intervening years trying desperately to reconcile it all.  And there have been a great many times over the years, when I have been terrified that I might be wrong, or that I was approaching the questions wrong or that the increasing doubts were enough in themselves, to relegate me to eternal damnation.  No matter how cavalier I was at times, there was always a nagging fear, an essential terror - because the stakes were so very high.  There were also times when I just accepted that if I'm wrong, I'm still right and would rather face eternal suffering, than spend eternity with a capricious, hateful and at times genocidal god.  There were times when I simply hated my god for selfishly relegating people I cared about to eternal suffering, or for allowing so much suffering to exist in his supposed creation.  And most importantly, there was almost always an underlying self-loathing that was in turns, because I was too weak in my faith or too strong in my faith.

Put simply, my faith made me a seriously fucked up mess.

And while it is impossible to actually be definitive about the number of people who have that same experience, I know that there are a lot of us out there.  I will not just sit idly by and leave it at that.  I am going to do what I can to help others who have spent immense amounts of time dealing with the same fucked up mess, that their faith has made of their heads and ultimately their lives, get past that mess and find peace in a life after faith.  But in doing that, I am going to do something that goes hard against the accommodationist grain.  I am going to challenge the notion that one can reasonably reconcile most theistic dogma, with evolution, with gay rights, with really, the vast majority of what we accept in modern society - things that even die-hard fundamentalist, Christian biblical literalists accept.  And I am not going to feel some compulsion to be nice about it either.  Because while I'm not out looking for a fight, I am not going to back down, simply because someone invokes the notion that religion/faith/spirituality is a private matter.  That these are somehow "hands off" topics.  They aren't hands off, when someone else chooses to throw their faith in my face.  They aren't hands off, when someone decides to jump into a conversation I am having with other people, to disagree with me.  They aren't hands off, simply because in the course of a discussion, someone feels that my very act of saying I believe they are wrong, offends them.  I don't throw my beliefs in the faces of others, so if they want to discuss this, they're going to have to accept that they may not like where the discussion goes.

And when they start in with what they think I need to know, to find my faith again, I am probably going to get really uncivil with them.  I give a fair warning when someone starts that line with me - after that, I am likely to get rather mean.  Or when they start with the notion that my lack of religious/spiritual belief offends them, I am quite likely to laugh in their face, in a markedly uncivil fashion.  I honestly don't give a shit if this smacks of "they started it" type rhetoric.  I am not of the opinion that simply because someone isn't being overtly rude, I need to maintain the same.  Frankly, I find the notion of pretending to be polite, when in reality one is being an asshole rather offensive.  I am pretty damned straightforward with people and expect the same in return.  I have a lot more respect for someone who calls me an asshole, or a moron, than I do for someone who says basically the same thing, pretending to be polite about it.

But there is another consideration in all of this.  Just who the hell are we actually accommodating here?  As far as real world impact, who are we actually trying to convince of what?  I sometimes get the distinct impression that the accommodationist view is somehow hoping to change the minds of the people who are fighting so hard to get creationism into public schools.  That there is some wide swath of the population that is actually fighting to get creationism into the schools, who would likely change their minds, if only atheists would be nicer to them.  I don't buy it.  Especially when the fact of the matter is, to these folks who are fighting so hard, the mere fact that I believe they are wrong and tell them that, is offensive to them.  And for the record, they are also offended by the accommodationists - theists and non-theists alike - and what they believe.  At a minimum, they believe we're all hopelessly deluded.  Theists who are liberal enough to accept even the possibility of evolution being true, are unlikely to be totally turned away, because some atheists say that the reconciliation is just a delusion within a delusion, any more than they are going to be dissuaded by theists who make the same claim.  After all, there are plenty of people out there who are theistic and who also accept evolution and other science that flies in the face of most theistic dogma.  They are either going to accept that reconciliation or they aren't.  In all honesty, I hope that they will look at the evidence supporting the science, find it compelling and also decide that they simply can't reconcile it with their faith.

The accommodationists have their goals - goals I find commendable and in some ways even support.  But I too have goals, goals that sometimes require that I use methods that contradict what accommodationists believe will forward their goals.  I even accept that in some cases they're absolutely right - my methods may well interfere with their goals.  But I'm not going to apologize for it, any more than I expect them to apologize when their methods interfere with my own goals - and they most certainly do that.  I accept that and while I wish that there was a way for both goals to move forward, without stepping on the others toes, that simply isn't possible.  There is a point where what I believe to be true and what I believe I need to do about it is going to run hard against those who reconcile faith and reality.  For those who wish that I would say my piece differently, that I would be nicer about it or just not make claims about the nature of reconciling faith with reality - please keep something very important in mind...

The only reason that I spent twenty years in an abusive, painful and sometimes debilitating relationship with Faith, is because I was constantly running into people who told me that it is possible to make the very reconciliations that you are so adamantly defending.  Were it not for Christians who accept homosexuality, were it not for Christians who accept evolution, were it not for Christians who are sex-positive, were it not for Christians who perform incredible feats of mental gymnastics and convinced me I could do the same, I would have become an atheist a very long time ago.  I would have been saved the pain, the doubts - the trauma, of fighting so desperately to make the absolutely incoherent, fit together coherently.

And were it not for the uncivil, ill-mannered "new atheists" you disagree with, I would probably still be suffering that relationship today...

Happy Stephanie Z Day!!! (or Why Creationism and Faith are often Arational)

Greg has declared yesterday Stephanie Zyvan day and since I don't have something of hers to repost (Lucky Greg), I will have to write a smart blogpost. I haven't been terribly motivated lately, choosing instead to get some posts I am going to write outlined, while also trying to frantically get some paying jobs done before classes start Monday.

Actually, that for some reason reminded me of something Scicurious (it was also Sciday!!!) inspired me to mention...Not that I'm trying to hint or anything, but man do I love getting books in the mail. I mean I really love getting books - and if they happen to come from the author of the book - maybe with the authors signature, why I would have to write up the book and tell everyone how much it rocks...

And apparently today is Jason Thibeault day...I think that that calls for some cake - some inappropriate, even naughty cakes...(as in, don't click that link at work, or in front of your grandma (unless you have a really cool grandma))

And because I can, I love her and she did actually contribute to this post, by discussing the topic with me for quite a while, I will declare this Juniper month. She really deserves more than a day. I mean hell, she puts up with me, loves me and as an atheist, I can't put her up for sainthood.


So onward to the heart of it...

John Wilkins is possibly the very smartest ape the world has ever seen. Either that, or he's just better at expressing himself than most members of his species. In any case, he recently had a very interesting paper published about creationism and rationality. I think that it is quite reasonable to extend the logic of his position to Faith in general, rather than limiting it to a single facet of that faith.

But for my purposes, creationism is actually a very good example, because arational creationism has a counterpart amongst those who accept evolution...Yes, yes it does and I am actually going to start with that counterpart...

There are a lot of people who have very interesting ideas about evolution and they're not all creationists. There are, for example, a lot of folks who pretty much assume that On the Origin of the Species is basically the best explanation of how evolution occurs. Survival of the fittest is basically how many, if not most people would characterize the theory of evolution. While we can give such people kudos for not buying into the idea that some god zapped everything into being, they are in fact wrong and difference in their ignorance of origins is only a matter of degrees of difference from the ignorance of creationists.

Does this ignorance make such people irrational? I would argue that it does not, it merely makes them ignorant. And I would also argue that the same is true of many creationists. The fact is that most people really don't spend much, if any time thinking about human origins or science in general. I would daresay that more people think about politics than science and in the U.S. at least, most people don't seem to think much about politics either. Most people struggle to focus enough on work and their interpersonal relationships - politics is barely on their radar if it is at all and science is nothing more than a peripheral concern I.e. "how does current science affect me?"

Even today, in the twenty first century, science education is abysmal in the U.S., especially when it comes to talking about evolution. There are many locations where the teaching about evolution is minimal or ignored altogether - whether because the teacher is afraid of dealing with pissed off parents or school boards, or because the teacher doesn't believe evolution explains where we come from. And your average fundamentalist is having their Faith and dogma constantly reinforced, while any discussion about evolution is dismissed as liberal, atheistic propaganda, or even the work of Satan.

So it works out as really easy for people to grow up believing what their Faith and the dogma of their faith has to say about origins and dismissing the little they may have heard about evolution as evil lies. About the only creationists who are really likely to change, are those who have a casual interest in understanding how the world works and who aren't ready to believe that Satan makes it appear that evolution happened.

But is it really reasonable to expect them too? Like I said, most non-creationists have little, if any understanding of how evolution happens because it simply doesn't really matter to them. Why would creationists be a whole lot different. They know how the world came into being - they learned it when they were young, had it reinforced throughout their lives and had people they trust explaining why evolution is really evilution. About their only hope is to have a science class with a teacher who actually understands evolution, isn't afraid to teach it, has a smart-ass in their class who wants to throw creationism out there and a teacher who isn't afraid to address the smart-ass's comments - oh, and said student would also need to be paying attention...

Most people are simply not going to go looking into this on their own. They aren't going to really look into anything that might contradict what they have believed their whole life. They aren't doing it maliciously either - nor are they attempting to wallow in ignorance. They are mostly just living their lives like anyone else - not really giving a shit about anything outside their cosy little world.

They are no more irrational than people who believe that evolution is survival of the fittest, that evolution means we descended from apes or monkeys that are just like the ones we can see at the zoo. It is not particularly rational, rather it is neither rational nor irrational - ignorant is a considerably more accurate label. And there are even cases where not believing in creationism would be highly irrational - especially when we are talking about children, who truly know nothing else. When you know nothing else, is it remotely rational to decide what you know to be true isn't? There was a time in my own life when it would have been pretty irrational for me to deny the Genesis story of creation.

Given the prevalence of religion in the U.S., unless you are young or non-American, odds are that there was such a time for you as well...

Great Argument For Religious Freedom and Gay Marriage

I am really glad that my brother posted this - both because I am busy and don't really have time to post anything substantive and because this is one of the most concise arguments supporting gay marriage I have ever heard.

First Baptist Church of Jacksonville Florida: Snakes and Vipers

Please pass this along. I just don't have the time to really go into all that is wrong with this situation, but I would love to see more folks post about this and show FBC JAX that attempts to suppress dissent will lead to a greater dissemination of that dissent. And though I am no longer a Christian, I still believe that it's important to strike a blow against those who misuse the authority they are granted, such as it is, as leaders of churches.

Thomas Rich, a member of FBC, was disturbed by the actions of one Mac Brunson, when he became the senior pastor of FBC. Seeing that the complaints lodged by him and other members of the church ignored, he started a blog to provide a platform from which to express the legitimate concerns of himself and other members of the church.

This situation took a very dangerous turn towards the end of last year, when Detective Robert Hinson of the Jacksonville sheriff's department and member of Brunson's security detail, opened an official investigation to discern Rich's identity and ultimately to quell dissent. Hinson, with the support of his superiors in the department, obtained a warrant from the state attorney's office to force google to reveal the identity of the previously anonymous Rich. Though the investigation turned up nothing illegal and though Rich was never contacted about the investigation, Hinson then revealed to church authorities that Rich was in fact the dissenting blogger.

Rich and his wife, longtime members of FBC JAX, have now been kicked out of the church and there is an official no trespassing order against them. FBC also did their best to ensure that Rich and his family wouldn't be welcome in other Jacksonville churches. Moreover, the church board and the deacon's counsel have passed a resolution to ensure they can quickly and efficiently quell any future dissent against the FBC power structure (see video in the above link).

While I am no longer a man of Faith, I fully understand just how difficult this must be for Rich and his family. Being booted out of one's church family can be and often is very painful - a pain I am all to aware of. And beyond the direct impact on the Rich family, this story has very frightening implications for all of us. Yet another situation where police authority has been abused, in an attempt to quell dissent - this time in the name of a church. I have yet to hear back from Thomas Rich, having only just emailed him, but I have little doubt that he would object to a short letter of support (email at his blog).

I also think it would be appropriate to write the FBC JAX, to voice your distaste for their tactics and to let them know that by their actions, they will be known - that because they chose to act in this manner, the criticisms leveled by Rich will be spread much further than they ever would have. And comments can be sent to the Jacksonville sheriff's department, via this email form - or by phoning them through this link. If you do use the email form, be sure to use the drop menu at the top of the form and use the label general comments. And the State Attorney's office can be contacted at sao4th@coj.net or (904) 630-2400.

Addiction, Neurological Issues, Satan and the Framing Wars

I am keeping this top posted for the moment, as I have a couple of comments out that refer to it - please check out more recent posts below.

A couple of quick additions. First, I want to let those who care know that the new meds seem to be coming together for me. It's still a little early to tell, but switching off the Seroquel was definitely a positive and I do feel better overall. Second, a friend who is familiar with the coffee shop and it's denizens - as well as me, thought it likely that the scowls I got from those around us, were probably as much because of the slam on Bill. She also mentioned that they were probably already scowling at me, I just didn't notice. There are usually a few AA folks there and I do tend to discuss addiction quite a bit. So a lot of the regulars know that while I'm not as harsh as some folks on AA, I am highly critical.

I would just like to provide an example of why I have, the position I have, on a discussion over at Greg Laden's blog and on what amounts to a three year discussion about framing science and it's intersection with religion. This is something that keeps flaring up and always perks my interest, because one, I've been involved for about three years (give or take several months) and two, my position on it has changed considerably for several reasons.

Taxing my google skills to their max and beyond (learned a couple things doing this), I have managed to find one of the earliest posts on this discussion, by none other than my own brother Ed, over at Dispatches. If you're a glutton for punishment, you can wade through some of the comments and check out my contribution, which is a far different position than I express today. And one of the contributors to the evolution of my stance and shedding of my Faith, has been this very discussion. It was my intent to actually dig through and find a couple of my comments, but after the time and effort it took just finding these posts, I haven't the will. Please keep in mind that this isn't actually the first post, nor was this the only one at the time. There were at least a couple dozen other bloggers who weighed in on that particular flame war, several with more than one post.

On and off, this discussion has continued over the last couple of years, most often fomented by a Matt Nisbett who blogs at the Seed sciblog collective. I'll link to one of his more recent examples of foolishness, though to be honest, I dislike Matt enough and suspect his motivations to the point that I am hesitant to actually link him. Back around thanksgiving last, he posted this bullshit, wherein he explains to us ignorant gits, that calling people who deny certain fundamentals, such as evolution, the importance of vaccines, or, in the context of this very post, basic neuropsychology denialists, is a bad, bad thing. Several of my favorite bloggers had a lot to say about that. Matt has also given out several other fuckyouverymuch's, like this gem. And I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but Bora, the sciblogger aggregator has this passel of links from days gone by. (Bora totally rocks, btw...)

Hell of a build-up, to a rather short example - but this is why I am not going to shut up and play nice. (also note that this was my first day off Seroquel and on the new drugs)
More...
I was in the coffee shop the other day, when I chanced into a conversation with an absolute Uber-Faithful nutter. A bible and Big Book thumping True Believer. I was discussing addiction and harm reduction, with a casual coffeehouse friend, when TB decided to jump into the conversation. I had just finished explaining my own experience with addiction, (yes, I actually talk some about the things discussed in the last link on occasion, though honestly I don't remember whether I did in this conversation) when TB busted in with; "You're going to school to study Addiction! You think you're managing your addictions?! You're either nuts or stupid!!!" He wasn't actually that loud, but he was nearly hysterical by the time he got to the last bit, at which point he decided to sit down at our table - to his credit, he does know Casual Friend.

The money quote, my response to which sent him away horribly offended, ranting under his breath:

You are never going to actually deal with your addictions or get to the root of your supposed "neurological issues" until you accept Jesus back into you heart and accept the truth. Mental illness is bullshit. It's nothing more than Satan convincing you that instead of drinking and getting high, you can take these other drugs. Man is not going to help you get through your problems, therapy isn't going to solve anything, unless it's Christ centered therapy. Satan has control of you man and you need to fight him - drugs aren't going to fight Satan! Only Christ and the power of prayer can get you through this!!

Then he put his hand on my shoulder and actually asked me if he could pray with me. Seriously.

"Get your fucking hand off me, you fucking nutter! Take your Faith in Christ and your Faith in Bill and your Faith in Satan and shove it up your ass, you denialist fucking loon! Fairytales have nothing to do with what's going on in my head jackass, it's fucking neurochemistry - the way my fucking brain works!"

"You're addicted to drugs and addicted to Satan!"

"I'm a fucking atheist you fucking moron!!!"

And yes, I was more or less fucking hysterical by this point - seriously fucking pissed. Pissed enough that I shouted rather loudly, in the middle of a coffee shop in the midwest, that I'm an atheist. And I'm really only an atheist in the broadest sense of the word, deist is far more accurate a label. But I was pretty sure he wouldn't have a clue what that meant, and as I said, I was borderline hysterical - which side of said border, it's hard to say. My rather loud admission garnered me a few scowls. On the other hand, when next I went for a refill, my friendly barista mentioned that a gent over yonder had covered my next cup - when I looked over, he smiled at me and shortly after wandered over to our table.

Now I need to explain that there was about half an hour, forty-five minutes of discussion before TB and I got into our shouting match. It had mostly been a reasonable discussion, with TB mostly just listening. When he started into the above long quote (not quite a perfect reproduction, but very close - the last one was his exact words), it was like he just couldn't take it anymore and had to respond to a lot that had been said. I avoided saying anything at all about AA while he was sitting there, but I did talk about harm reduction and started touching on linguistics - he really took exception to the idea that anyone can be considered successful in treating their addiction, if they aren't entirely abstinent from all psychoactive substances - including psychiatric drugs.

After he had left, Casual Friend explained that TB regularly relapses, carries a great deal of guilt and seems to be increasingly unhinged about it all. Mind you TB's relapses aren't multi-week, or even multi-day binges in which he gets totally hammered and blacks out. Every several months, he apparently breaks down and has a couple of beers before he can stop himself.

I also want to explain that I grew up with TB's same sort of bullshit, though not quite as extreme. My mom firmly believed that my "problems" growing up, were the result of demonic activity - probably passed down from my biological father. While she has come to accept some of the ideas of neuropsychology, she still believes that many of my problems are influenced by demons - at least she accepts that the drugs are probably a very good idea (Yes CPP, I will get to discussing my cognitive therapy soon). By default, I also believed that sort of bullshit and it was nothing but trouble for me, until I got over it and accepted who I am and how my brain functions.

The thing is, while TB is an extremist, fringe fucking loon, my mom isn't. Her beliefs aren't really outside the fundamentalist mainstream on this - indeed she's rather comparatively tame these days. I am not trying to claim that all, or even most Christians attribute mental illness to demonic possession or activity, but a great many fundamentalists do. They'll accept the occasional need for medication, grudgingly, but many of them have serious issues with members of the flock seeing secular therapists instead of Christ focused counseling and prayer. And I have been to talk with several pastors in that context - it's truly insane what these folks are legally allowed to get away with in the name of religion.

Just in this, my small corner of the conflict between Faith and reason, the stakes are high and the battle is tough. Those fundamentalist positions, watered down to the moderate baseline are still quite often an uphill battle. Instead of the extreme, anti-science - blame it on Satan approach, it is merely a distrust of science that conflicts with dogma. And no matter how much you water it down, there is still conflict between science and dogma. Because unless that dogma makes absolutely no claims about it's god's influence on the natural world, there is either conflict or a god that does virtually nothing at all.

I am not militant. I'm not even really much of an atheist, I rather tend to think it likely that there is some sort of physical/spiritual duality to living beings. I no longer Believe it, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if someday we discover that this is indeed the case. When people decide that they want their god to bless me, I just smile and nod. When they ask me if it's ok to pray for me, I politely tell them that I don't think it makes a lick of difference, but it doesn't bother me. But when people want to make claims about Faith, that conflict with reality, I am not just going to smile and nod - I will respond to it. And if they are going to insist on fucking idiot notions like those of TB, I may well get fucking rude about it. If they are going to insult me with their presumptions about the nature of my shedding my Faith, I am probably going to get pissed if they insist on keeping up with it, after I've made my position clear. (Though as a general rule, I don't tend to get hysterical - that was more the headspace I was in already, than anything TB said)

And if you want to tell me that my doing this is a bad thing, that I need to change my language or shut up and let others talk about it, you can go fuck yourself.

Seriously.