Logic Eats Babies

The Book of Mormon on Broadway

2011-07-19T17:54:00.000-07:00

I knew The Book of Mormon was on the way since the creators of South Park first announced it. My closest friend, being an avid fan of Avenue Q, learned about it fairly quickly, as well, and the first thing he did was come to me. "Peter! The South Park guys are making a musical about Mormons!"

This, I've noticed, has been the reaction most of my friends — who for some reason tend to be musical theater enthusiasts — have had, and it's somewhat flattering to think that bunches of people think of me whenever Mormons come up.

Anyway, to my point. I have the soundtrack. My friends have the soundtrack, and I've suddenly become hugely popular. Especially with "I believe":

"Really?" they ask. "Kolob? Black people in 1978? Getting your own planet?"

What's been wildly funny to me is to see what people unfamiliar with Mormonism laugh at. Like, for example, a little after a minute in, Elder Price proclaims, with pride:

"I believe that the Lord God created the universe.
I believe that He sent His only son to die, for my sins.

And I believe that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America!

And they laugh! How ridiculous and crazily stupid that sounds to them! Ancient Jews, building boats, and sailing across the Atlantic Ocean!

... and it totally just sailed right past me when I first heard it. Yeah, I thought, that's how the story goes.

They get a lot of things right about Mormons, at least in the music, and most of what they get wrong is either necessary for plot reasons — technically, you switch mission companions several times during your mission — or trivial. But one of those trivial things, for some irrational reason, bothers me much, much more than it should.

In the beginning of "Joseph Smith American Moses," the mission president says, "Well, this is very good, Praise Christ."

The fuck? "Praise Christ"? No Mormon on the planet would ever say that! That just makes Mormon sounds like a bunch of scary cultists!

Oh, wait...

What is a favicon?

2011-07-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

A favicon is the little picture that sits next to a website's title, either when you have it in a tab or in a list of bookmarks. You know what I'm talking about.

I'm not going to pretend like I knew about this before a few hours ago. I noticed I had the option to upload a personal favicon for this blog, pondered "what the hell is a favicon?", hit up Wikipedia, and then promptly approached my brother, who's much better with all the image-making things than I am.

... which, I freely admit, isn't saying much. Anyway, you'll notice this image

will start showing up while you're at my blog, and I think it's just about the coolest thing ever, of all time.

Whee, I wrote poetry!

2011-04-06T17:01:00.000-07:00

No no, this poetry has a point, though, and isn't just an assembly of insipid and vague sentence fragments with odd spacing and a liberal use of the Enter key.

I used to think poetry was just that, though. I used to think that poets were just narcissists who sucked at writing, and who thought, "Hey, if I just hit the Enter key randomly, this one sentence will look like a paragraph if the teacher isn't wearing his/her glasses."

But now, almost six years removed from high school, with almost seven years of existential crises and philosophical quandaries, colored by all the ostracism and social pain one can experience by abandoning religion, I'm seeing it in a very different light.

(Of course, blogging for two years and playing in the orchestra for ten has certainly helped refine my sensitivity to art, which might be a factor, too)

Anyway, I've been reading Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, among others, in my English class, and OH MY GOD what a philistine I was before! What a mastery of the English language, and what a love for the English language, these people show! And what craftsmanship (or craftswomanship?) there is in poetry!

So, to the point of this post:

A friend of mine on Facebook regularly posts these "poems" of hers which are, she freely admits, the products of about twenty seconds of effort. And one of these poems, which she titled rain, expressed with superficial piety that she and God were both weeping for the wicked sinners, overcome by grief that Satan was winning in their hearts.

Her description of her motive, exactly, was:

rain
by _______________ (inspired by how ignorant and/or stubborn 'wicked' people are)

So, as a supposedly ignorant and stubborn 'wicked' person, I figured I'd send my own retort her way, in the form of a poem, too. It's a Shakespearean sonnet — three quatrains and a rhyming couplet — and... it was oddly fun to write.

Sunshine

By Peter Madsen
(inspired by __________'s poem, rain)

I see the others living, loving life
And dancing in the warm, inviting sun.
(Of course they're sometimes shadowed, marked by strife —
Not every day can be a perfect one).
I see their faces glowing now, outside,
Beyond this sturdy glass and bolted door,
Illuminated, they've no need to hide
Their potent joy; they could not want for more.
If only I could go participate!
But I would never dream of joining in;
My friends and family, they would castigate
And loathe me for my interest in their "sin."

For all the life I'm letting pass me by,
I'd better get to live it when I die.

I've learned a few things about writing sonnets from this, too. First of which being "Don't end a line with 'life'; there's only a handful of words that rhyme with it and it'll always sound like a forced rhyme, no matter what you do."

Anyway, she hasn't seen my poem yet (or if she has, she hasn't acknowledged it), so I'll let you know if/when our artistic dialogue continues.

Die, hiatus, DIE

2011-03-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Today marks the end of the longest break from writing I've ever taken — two months and a day — and I'm only going to do a little apologizing for it. Because you all know how much I hate blogs that devolve into excuses.

Anyway, as I get farther and farther into the math-based sciences, I've discovered a few things, first of them being that the students in these sciences are full of awesome, and are interesting and engaging people, and, best of all, find me interesting and engaging, too.

Second of them being, lamentably, that the higher calculus and physics courses actually require a bit of thought and effort in order to really understand. And, whenever you find yourself losing a bunch of extra time, you discover what your priorities really are, and mine are as follows, in order:

Classes.
Halo: Reach daily challenges.
Friends.
Catching up on Facebook and all the blogs I follow and The Daily Show and...
Writing posts in my blog.

Oh my god, the daily challenges in Halo: Reach —

Oh wait, let me explain a little more, first.

Halo: Reach is a game. It's a thoroughly awesome and amazingly slick game that has consumed me in a World of Warcraft way, because of one little feature they added to this newest installment.

Daily challenges. Every day at 3 a.m. Pacific time, sharp, we're given little challenges with nifty monetary awards. "Kill X enemies in Multiplayer matchmaking with the sniper rifle," or something, and another one may be "Earn two sprees [five kills in a row without dying] in a single game."

... hey, if I get two sprees with a sniper rifle, I'd be getting credit towards both challenges!

Anyway, another daily challenge addict out there did the right thing and made a blog about them. He lives in England, so the dailies change at 11 a.m. for him (rather than the crippling 3 a.m. for me), so he's able to post what the new ones are right as the come out.

I have his blog bookmarked on my phone, so whenever one of my teachers is rambling about something I already know, I can look up the dailies and plot my course of action when I get home.

Anyway, I'm not the kind of person who can go for over two months without having interesting things to say. (I'm also not the kind of person who'll try to soften an overly conceited-sounding sentence, like the one preceding this one)

So here I am, mostly back, and ready to give you all existential crises when Pi Day rolls around.

CiCi's Pizza

2011-01-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

If there's anything I've learned over the past few years, it's that the subject of a biography is the worst source. We change memories every time we recall them, we remember the good longer than the bad (which results in old people famously referring to "the good old days," which we all know sucked; they didn't have the internet. QED.), and we tend to exaggerate our own significance or importance in events.

Anyway, what does this have to do with a relatively cheap all-you-can-eat pizza buffet from Texas?

Well, I lived in Texas until around the middle of second grade (when I moved to California), which means my only memories of Texas are the wildly unrealistic imaginings of (at the oldest) a seven-year old. And since those wildly unrealistic memories are the only memories I have of everything in Texas, that entire state has a very pure, innocent, simple, fantastical quality to it in my mind. And CiCi's Pizza is no exception. I loved eating at CiCi's way back then, in part because, hey, pizza is fucking awesome, but also because it was a place where I could put the two best toppings — bell pepper and mushrooms ♥ — on my pizza without my parents turning up their noses.

(Sorry, dad; pineapple will always and forever be the nastiest thing you can put on a pizza.)

It means that, for over fifteen years, there's been a six-year old inside me absolutely dying to go back. Dying to go back, in fact, with the uncontrollable, unbearable zeal that six-year olds tend to have. And, since my only memories of CiCi's are memories from that same obsessive six-year old, you can only guess my reaction when I saw a CiCi's commercial at my friend's house before I plugged my Xbox into it.

"Wait... why are they advertising here? The closest CiCi's is in Phoenix, Arizona [I'd checked]. No one in their right mind would ever drive all the way out there [except me] just to eat at CiCi's... wait... what if...?"

I then had to check if there was one closer. It was required. Mandated. My inner six-year old wouldn't let me ignore the commercial and catch up with my friends. Now, it said.

And I did. There's one in Chino Hills, just two hours away from me, and I was nowhere near rational when I found out.

Evidently my insane, fanatical excitement was pretty clear, because my buddies arranged for us to head down there the very next evening. Not twenty-four hours after seeing that commercial, and I was heading down to Chino Hills with an absolutely ecstatic inner six-year old in tow.

It was an enjoyable all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. But for me, the experience had nothing to do with the food, or the building, or anything. It was all abstract. I was back, after fifteen years, and there was some intangible yet grand significance to it, spawned purely from wildly larger-than-life memories from my childhood.

Now, there's another memory regarding CiCi's, too, which my dad wrote about on the Tuesday I went with him.

I remember being at CiCi's one time having just finished ten slices of pizza, all by myself. It was a huge accomplishment to me, and I remember showing off my plate, with all ten pizza crusts lying on it — Look! Look, you can count them yourself! — when my dad decided to discredit me. "It doesn't really count," he said, "because you only ate, like, half of each slice."

Maybe I did only eat half of each slice, I can't remember. All I remember is that cold, empty feeling that comes from having your achievements cheapened by someone whose opinion you value highly.

And so, when I went to CiCi's with my dad last week, I ate ten slices (taking care to intentionally not eat the whole slice, just to poke fun at him), and made it very, very clear that my inner six-year old was giving a figurative "Fuck you" through time and was, at long last, vindicated.

... and then, because I have a stomach much larger now than a six-year old, I kept eating. Those slices are pretty small, after all.

Fortune cookies

2011-01-03T16:22:00.000-08:00

I love Chinese food. Or, rather, I love the cheap American Chinese-esque food places like Panda Express ♥ that give you little wooden chopsticks (which, by the way, are an excellent dieting tool if you don't know how to eat with them) and, most importantly, fortune cookies.

Now, fortune cookies are just about as vague and useless as, say, horoscopes, and typically read the same way. "Travels will be in your future," or something similar, with nothing specific to them and no time constraints. I mean, leaving the restaurant could count as "traveling," making that prediction totally meaningless, or "future" could refer to a business trip you're forced to go on fifty years from now.

But, over the week I spent with my dad, I chanced upon a truly remarkable fortune from Pick Up Stix:

A wise man will soon enlighten you within the week.

Yes, "wise" and "enlighten" can be interpreted however vaguely you want, but two things are clear: It'll be a guy and it'll happen before January 8th, 2011, at 3:30 pm — precisely one week after I got that fortune.

... I'm waiting!

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-25T12:24:00.000-08:00

... and happy kinda Newton's birthday, too.

I'm sure your blogroll is absolutely filled with people all saying the same thing I'm about to — I know mine is — so I'll keep it short:

Happy whatever-the-hell-specific-holiday-or-lack-of-holiday-you-celebrate-around-this-time!

(courtesy of Calamities of Nature)

Confusing fact with fiction

2010-12-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

We hear scientific statements all the time. The Sun is over one hundred times the size of the Earth; everything is composed of atoms; light is made up of massless particles called photons, which act like both a particle and a wave at the same time; the Earth is a sphere, etc.

We hear nonscientific statements all the time, too. Luke Skywalker probably died a virgin, the Enterprise travels multiple times the speed of light, Frodo destroyed the One Ring and saved Middle Earth, etc.

And I find myself grappling with this all the time. The events of Halo, Mass Effect, and the actual real world all try to occupy the same area of my brain — the part generally associated with the "yeah, that's what you hear all the time" sentiment. Do we really know the Earth is spherical? Do we really know how gargantuan the Sun is? Or are we just aware of the statement?

I remember sitting in my Astronomy class two semesters ago while my professor was lecturing about the Sun. He mentioned that, through a telescope, you can see spicules rising and falling all over the chromosphere, taking as long as ten minutes to reach their biggest size.

... and then he mentioned that they rose at around 20 kilometers per second, adding that after ten minutes — I love the way he worded it — the spicules "exceed the diameter of the Earth."

"Exceed the diameter of the Earth." When we look at the Sun, it looks kinda fuzzy on the edges, with each bit of fuzz increasing and decreasing over the span of several minutes. And the EARTH would fit inside it! The Earth, which is so massive compared to us that we can't even see its curvature, and it pales next to the incredible size of the Sun!

And then, as I glance up at the Sun, I comprehend, for the briefest of moments, the almost incomprehensible distance that must be between us. And just as quickly, that debilitating wonder fades into numbers. Nifty little tidbits that people might find interesting. You'd need seventy-five billion people standing head-to-toe to reach the Sun from here. Light, which travels around the Earth seven times a second, takes over eight minutes to get here from the Sun.

Facts. Just facts. Do we ever really understand them?

Or, maybe, this anti-climactic conversion from wonder to number is a defense mechanism against the night sky:

Hell, why limit ourselves just to astronomy? If we were appropriately overcome with wonder at everything that deserved it, we'd never get anything done. We'd be overwhelmed by everything we saw, then overwhelmed by the concept of vision, then overwhelmed by our awareness of our vision, then overwhelmed by our awareness of our awareness...

We'd all just sit around, mouthing the words "Holy shit" over and over and over.

We'd be overcome by the concept of atoms and molecules. We'd eat a bagel with cream cheese and be stupefied by the intricacy and complexity of all the molecular reactions that take place. We'd even be overcome by the concept of a bagel and cream cheese — overcome by the concept of foods specific to a certain culture.

Is there any field of human inquiry that wouldn't cripple us with fascination?

Coffee! Part III

2010-12-20T15:46:00.000-08:00

I should just make a "coffee" tag, I think, since I'm writing about it so often now.

Anyway, to catch you guys up, I love coffee and I can make it whenever I want. In fact, I've got me a nice mug of coffee right next to my keyboard (while taking an extreme number of precautions against spilling it all over said keyboard... which I may or may not have done before) as I write this, which makes me a very happy guy.

It's an interesting thing that's happened since I've gotten my little coffeemaker — I've become an easy person to shop for. I'm like that crazy guy you all know who collects unicorns or baseball cards or something and for whom, when you have to buy gifts for people, you're like, "Oh, that's easy; I'll just get him a unicorn/some baseball cards/something."

Some people, I'm sure, would mind. They'd get offended and think you thought they were devoid of all personality or character except that one unicorn-loving trait. They'd want you to get them something special or unique. Something which showed that you really knew them as more than just a caricature of baseball-loving goodness.

I'm not one of those people.

I've got a delectable sampler of Starbucks coffee, Dunkin' Donuts coffee, Ghirardelli coffee, Entemann's coffee, Folger's coffee... all because people know how much I love coffee, and it's awesome. I wake up every morning, walk (or, I guess "shamble" might be more appropriate) over to my mountainous shrine to caffeine and get to stand there for minutes trying to decide which coffee I want to make for myself.

... and then, after I've picked, I get to decide how I'm going to make it, what I'm going to add to it, whether I'm finally going to put Easy Cheese in it like my siblings keep telling me I should...

At peril of seemingly giving ammunition to all the anti-ex-Mormons who stumble across this blog, I'll mention that coffee has dramatically improved my quality of life (which isn't, obviously, to say that my life wasn't awesome before). There is something special and endearing about the whole "morning ritual;" the ideal coffee is an incredibly unique and personal thing — like a sammich in liquid form.

I even got to make coffee for a few friends of mine when they were over for our typically-weekly Halo Night. I got to bust out my coffeemaker, brew up a mug for everyone, show them all the stuff I've got that they can add to it, and show off my amateurish coffee knowledge.

A year down the road, though, my coffee knowledge won't be nearly so amateurish, and I'll be able to brew a cup of joe for people that will blow their fucking minds away.

Argument by Probabilities

2010-12-18T19:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, you guys all know the gist of how this argument goes:

Imagine you have ten pennies, and you toss them all up in the air. What're the odds that they'll all land on heads?

(Of course, as we all know, the odds are 1/(2¹⁰), or 1/1024)

Now, look at the complexity of DNA, or of cells, or of the human eye. Look at how Earth happens to be in the Goldilocks zone, how the universe expanded at just the right speed to allow matter to coalesce into stars and planets. How can you possibly not believe in God, when your very existence is much, much more improbable than those pennies all landing on heads? You'd have to be stupid to think we exist by accident!

First, this argument shows a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution and of the age and size of the universe, but I'll ignore all that and just cover the probabilities bit.

I've never been much of a fan of probabilities because, as a hard determinist, I think they're something of a pseudoscience. When you flip ten pennies, the odds are 100% that you'll get whatever you got, and 0% that you'll get what you didn't get. There are so many factors that determine how those pennies will land — how they're arranged in your hand before you throw them, how you actually throw them, etc. — which are all essentially caused by something preceding it, ad infinitum to the Big Bang.

Plus, let's consider the "all landing on heads" part. It's just like, I dunno, drawing five cards off a deck and getting a royal flush in spades in order — we place undue significance on that specific pattern, because it has some subjective value to human beings, whether because of the uniformity and order or because it means you're guaranteed to win the pot and you can milk the suckers around the table for all they're worth. But really, even if we accept probabilities for a second, it's still a stupid argument.

If we label all the pennies — penny 1, penny 2, penny 3, etc. — and then take the probabilities, we notice that the odds of the pennies landing in any combination is just as improbable as the next. You can grab those ten pennies, toss them in the air, and you're getting a miracle no matter how they land.

Same with being dealt five cards off the top of a deck, too. Taking into account the suit of each card, every hand you're dealt comes with a mind-boggling improbability of 1 in 311,875,200.

And yes, if you draw five cards off the top thinking "my goal is to get a royal flush," you shouldn't get your hopes up. But who's to say human beings are the goal of the universe? We're just an assembly of five cards that sit around claiming that the five cards we are specifically are of cosmic significance. We are every bit as miraculous as the Great Red Spot or the rings of Saturn, but neither Jupiter's giant storm nor Saturn's rings have the audacity to claim they're the point of the universe.

The excitement of missionary work

2010-12-17T17:24:00.000-08:00

Growing up in the church, missionary work was always painted with this rosy, "miracles and spiritual experiences all the time" flair, with some undertones of "it's a lot of work; but it's worth it." Friends of mine have come back from their missions and go on aimlessly about spiritual experiences, baptisms, etc. But it's very different when you're distanced from all the idealistic propaganda.

I have two younger brothers, the older of which is old enough that he should be on a mission, but has chosen not to, and the younger of which is frightfully and depressingly gung-ho about anything and everything about the church.

The head of the household I've been banned from saw this and, in a desperate attempt to stop my oldest brother from becoming just like his son, sicked the missionaries on him in the hopes that it would motivate my brother to go on a mission.

It hasn't worked. All it's really done is motivate my brother to hide when they come over every Friday, so it ends up being to two missionaries doing their thing with my youngest brother, and damn do they always sound bored. (If I were conversing instead of writing, this is where I'd put on a dry, distracted monotone and run through basic church talking points to imitate them: "The Atonement is the most important part of the church, and it is the foundation...")

I, thankfully, grew up before I went on a mission, so, as I peer down the hallway and listen in on my brother's one-on-two missionary sessions, it is a bizarre and alien experience. I'd gone tracting with the missionaries back when I was a member and, while all we got were a bunch of people slamming doors in our faces, the impression I left with was that, while you get rejected a whole bunch, Missionary Moments™ were always just around the corner.

The impression I have now, though, is somewhat cynical. Missionary work isn't so much about converting people as much as it's about taking young people, throwing them wildly out of their comfort zone, and then comforting them with the only thing there that's familiar: the Mormon church. It's about dependency.

And, apparently, missionaries forget all the bored-out-of-their-fucking-minds parts of their missions and remember all the baptisms and stuff. I ironically thank God that I never went on a mission, never married into the church, and never got sealed in the Temple.

I hate agnostics

2010-11-30T15:35:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to bother getting into the specific philosophical definitions here, because it's not philosophical agnostics I hate. Philosophical agnostics are awesome. It's the colloquial ones I'm not so fond of:

Agnostic (noun)

1. A person who, either intentionally or purely out of apathy, hasn't put an ounce of thought into the question: "Does God exist?"

2. A person who is desperately afraid of arguing with people, presumably because he or she has a bunch of fundamentalist Christian friends and prefers to play nice with them instead of forming his or her own opinions. Paradoxically, he or she will argue at length about how arguing is ultimately "pointless."

3. A sadly misinformed person who thinks "religion" just means "something people talk passionately about," and is infuriatingly quick to dismiss anything and everything he or she disagrees with by waving his or her hand, scoffing, and saying, "You're just like all the other religions."

Addressing them in order, I'm totally okay if you haven't put that much thought into the question. It's much more productive to put your thought into getting a college degree or something, and college degrees have the added bonus of actually existing. Of course, every God humans have worshiped usually comes with a few requirements about how you should live your life, so you should probably give the idea a bit of thought at some point.

To you socialites who prefer to have a lot of friends over a monolithic philosophical orientation, good for you! Just don't try to tell me I'm "wrong" to argue that your friends are worshiping a made-up God. There's no evidence to suggest that any of the currently worshiped Gods actually exist, which is all the more reason to think they're invented. If you're afraid your social standing will be affected by my arguing, find yourself a restroom to hide in until I'm done.

... or you could actually figure out what you think. It doesn't hurt that much, really.

And to all you who fall into the third definition, buy a dictionary and fuck off. Maybe you could throw some money away and sign up for one of those Scientology seminars for a weekend. Roll with the Scientologists (or the Mormons, or Baptists, or anyone, really) for a month or so and see if you still think the "Atheism is a religion" argument is tenable.

Why the Agnostic position doesn't work

If you're one of those who is quite passionate about how we can't know for certain whether or not God exists, and who is adamant about how the best approach is to hold neither opinion, I offer you this question:

If I tell you that there is a group of giant, invisible fairies with bat wings behind me, ready to curse you if you don't give me $20, how do you justify any action at all? If you give me the $20, you're lending undue credence to a claim that's unverifiable. If you don't give me the money, you're also lending undue credence to a claim that's unverifiable.

If, as you say, it's completely irrational to hold any opinion about things which aren't 100% provable, how do you justify any action at all? Why go to work, when you can't be 100% sure your boss even exists? Why pay your taxes, when you can't be 100% sure the IRS exists? Why do anything, when your entire understanding of the world is given to you by our fallible senses?

The much more rational approach is to weigh probabilities. Your boss hands you a check every two weeks, and he/she keeps showing up at your workplace, criticizing or commending you. How big of a leap of faith are you making when you say, "I believe my boss exists?"

Not a very large one at all.

So, then, how large of a leap is it to say, "This God exists," compared to "This God doesn't exist"? When the evidence for a given God is all about miracles and supernatural events, and every single one of them can be explained naturally, the leap to "this God doesn't exist" is much, much smaller than the alternative theistic position.

Additional evidence makes the required leap of faith for some claims larger ("There are Giant Bat-Fairies behind you") while it makes others smaller ("You're just making that shit up").

So, which requires the bigger leap? Does God exist, or does He not?

Times change — people change

2010-11-26T16:26:00.000-08:00

Long ago, my ex-CS friend (among a few others) and I were walking down a street near my college, probably to kill time until another friend got out of class, when we walked by a moderately-sized building claiming to be owned by the Jehovah's Witnesses. My friend, having been almost exclusively exposed to Christian Science, and I, having been almost exclusively exposed to Mormonism, humored the idea of visiting tons of different churches — one every Sunday — to learn more about what other religions do and believe. "We only really know about one religion each," we thought. "Wouldn't it be great if, when our friends say they're Catholic or Baptist or whatever, we actually had an inkling of an idea what that meant?"

I had an additional motive back then, though. I had recently discovered the Non Prophets and the Atheist Experience on iTunes, and was enthralled not only by their incredible confidence in their worldview, but by their methods. Rather than digging into some book, or clinging to the words of some authority figure, they sought out arguments against their view and talked about why they didn't find it compelling. And, best of all, they insisted that we, their audience, agree with them because of their reasoning, not because of their conclusion.

So, as my friend and I started visiting other churches, I started this blog primarily to catalog all our adventures to various churches, but also ate up the little pamphlets and things these churches would hand out. I would snatch them up, read through them, consider them, and use this blog to articulate why I disagreed with them. This blog was my chance to forge my opinions without worrying about the social repercussions of arguing in person.

This blog, therefore, had a kind of theme to it. It was a blog dedicated to arguing philosophically and factually about the God question, with the occasional music related post to spice things up. But something happened which I knew, deep down, would happen. Deep down, I knew this moment would come, and I could feel it getting closer and closer, taunting me. Threatening the very character of this blog:

I've heard it all.

Every argument for God ultimately boils down to a few logically fallacious premises. Typically it's this one, with the next most common one being the one that looks like this:

Something must have caused X.
I call that thing "God."
Therefore, God exists.

I'd argue against this ridiculous argument right now, but I've already done it before. And that's the problem — I've pretty much solved the God problem in all its iterations, which means my blog, with its current focus, is blandly redundant at best and utterly useless at worst.

And so, here I am. I'm an Atheist who's totally and completely confident in his worldview, still writing in a blog primarily designed to develop that confidence. This blog has served its purpose.

Often, I think, people get caught up in a commitment or a creation or an organization and become slaves to it. They feel like they're somehow obligated to serve the system they're a part of, and feel like they're trapped by that obligation. It's sad.

It's sad, because I'm kinda doing the same thing. I've got a bunch of readers now (which is something I never thought would happen) and I've caught myself, after writing a post, letting it decay for weeks as a draft because I was worried how my readership would take it, before finally (and lamentably) deleting it. Can I post frivolous things? Can I post vitriolic and insubstantial rants? Can I post the solutions to word problems I got in Calculus that I found interesting and awesome? Does my post fit with the theme of my blog?

So, more for myself than anything else, I'd like to say, "Fuck you, more-than-likely-inaccurate mental caricatures of the readers of my blog! This blog is mine, and I get to do whatever I want with it!"

Ultimately, this blog is for me, like all blogs should be. The blogosphere is a beautiful cacophony of voices, each proclaiming its respective individuality for anyone, anywhere, to stumble upon. Is there anything more wonderfully human? And is there anything more horrible, therefore, than a blog author who posts just to garner more readers?

Behold, then, my blog! It's my place to rant about whatever the hell I want to rant about. It's my place to post whatever the hell I want to post. It's mine, and my readership will be determined by what I post, not the other way around! The theme of my blog — if there even is one — will conform to my posts, not the other way around!

It's possible, I admit, that nothing about my blog, beyond the outlook of the author, will change at all. I still love ripping apart stupid arguments, whether they're about God or the supposed evilness of vaccines or our ability to see the future, I still love making the occasional music post that gets waaay more hits daily than I expect it to, and I still love getting comments by clueless commenters.

But I also enjoy writing amusing and pointless posts, math heavy posts, and partially substantial but mostly caustic posts, too. And, actually, I also really enjoyed writing that flippant and vacuous post.

Welcome, I guess, to Logic Eats Babies 2.0 — a scary, scary place, where you get to delve even deeper into the brain of a science-minded, whimsical and nihilistic Atheist you probably haven't even met in real life.

200th post!

2010-11-15T10:01:00.000-08:00

Almost two weeks ago, I mentioned on Facebook that I was on my 198^th post, just two away from a number which is only significant because we have ten fingers, and I asked people what I should do to celebrate. Of course, I asked this on facebook, so the responses were definitely less than stellar.

... in fact, if you consider that "stellar" means "relating to stars," I could say the comments were nebulous and actually be scientifically accurate!

Anyway, because I had no idea what I wanted to do to commemorate my 200^th post, I've been crippled by indecision. I've wanted to reblog things and I've wanted to regular-blog things, but I've been like, "No, I can't; if I make a post, then I can't make another because my next one will be the 200^th."

So I've been stuck at 198 until I did this one, because I felt like, with only one free post before I had to do the 200^th, I had to make it count.

Well, not anymore! I've submitted to the dominant request on Facebook — I'm making an anti-climactic, insubstantial, uncelebratory, totally lame post, just to get it out of the way so I can get back to ranting without feeling obligated by tradition or accepted blogging conventions.

And, to top it off, I've got a picture from Lolcats, just to make this post even more vacuous!

So, to all you potential employers who are now reading this post, my "fuck it; I'm doing what I want to do" limit is about two weeks, and given that I generally don't do well with authority for authority's sake anyway, I'd say two weeks is pretty impressive.

Hey, I can write that in calculus!

Lim_{t -> two weeks} f(t) = fuck it.

... where "t" is time and "f(t)" is my capacity to put up with crap. :D

Alright, I'm done. Happy 200^th post, Logic Eats Babies!

(And yes, I know it's "all right." I just wanted to pique my dad's SIWOTI syndrome)

Cell phones on the road

2010-11-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

I don't know about anywhere else, but here in California you get a hefty fine if you're caught talking on your cell phone while driving. But why?

Cell phones are distracting, they say. You don't look at your mirrors as often while you're talking on the phone. While talking on a cell phone, the argument goes, you're a liability and a danger to us all.

But let's step back from all of that for a second and look at what the real motive is.

If talking on the phone while driving is so dangerous, why are we still allowed to use hands-free devices? Is it because cell phones are dangerous because you don't have both hands on the wheel? Why aren't we ticketing people for driving without their hands strictly at 10-and-2?

We banned cell phones because, for some reason, we all turn into assholes when we're on the road, and in that visceral, anti-intellectual state, we're especially prone to horrifically fallacious logic. We get cut off by someone, or we're stuck behind someone who's driving especially slow, or something else equally frivolous, and our first reaction is to check if they're old, or if they're a woman, or if they're young, or if they're on a cell phone.

Admit it. We've all been there. Some asshole is driving waaay too slow and, as we pass them, we roll our eyes and say, "Oh, of course, it's a <whatever stereotype they happen to be>"

The ban on cellphones (and the lack of a ban on bluetooth, one-handed steering, car radios, people in the passenger seat, babies, or anything else distracting) is simply the result of irrational scapegoating. It's logically inconsistent with the rest of the laws we have, and does nothing more than pander to the irate hillbillies and their confirmation bias.

(Cectic, btw.)

Now, I know what you're thinking: "He's just pissed because he got a ticket for using a cell phone, and he's bitching on his blog about it."

No, actually. I've been ticketed for speeding, but not for cell phone use. And if I had just been caught on a cell phone, would it really matter?

Voting Day 2010

2010-11-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

And now, finally, I can watch my TV shows online and listen to my voicemail without getting dragged into the vile, childish arguments between political hopefuls.

The Daily Show really summed up my frustration with this election and my growing cynicism with the democratic process:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Midterm Teapartyganza - Indecision 2010 - Negative Campaigning

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

(Transcript, in the event that they take the video down)

(Larry and Aasif, both wearing shirts that read: "Team Negative")

Larry: ... Aasif was supposed to be Team Positive, but clearly my opponent couldn't even handle the simple assignment of picking out the right shirt. (In a mock-political campaign ad voice) Aasif Mandvi — can we trust him?

Jon: (laughing) Oh, I see what you're doing. You're exemplifying negative campaigning! This is a cute... (gestures to Aasif), uhh, you go, Aasif. This is cute.

Aasif: Larry Wilmore fucks chickens. Larry Wilmore is a chicken-fucker. And, from what I understand, the sex is not always consensual.

Jon: Well... I mean, to be fair to Larry, is chicken sex ever really consensual?

Really, the whole clip is great. It's one of the reasons why, even if PZ didn't, I fully supported the Rally to Restore Sanity — The political "discussion" that's going on between politicians seems to be nothing more than empty, unfounded, loud emotional appeals.

(There's a really great write-up about the rally here, for those of you like me who weren't able to go)

I don't have years and years of experience with the political world I live in, so I hardly feel like I can make any authoritative statement on the way things should be. But can we please get more politicians out there like Obama who, instead of only badmouthing their opponents, stand up and say, "Here's why you should vote for me."?

Or, more simply, wouldn't it be great if we all could've walked into the polling place to vote for someone, instead of for not-Whitman or not-Brown?

"They're just words"

2010-11-02T19:45:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I was standing in front of my dad's house with my siblings, giving the usual goodbyes, making sure we were on the same page about when we'd visit again, etc., when my dad offered the lamentably common concern, "Drive safely, don't get a ticket."

Back at my mom's place, my drive down to Los Angeles started with that phrase. In fact, my parents insist on saying this every time I step into a vehicle. I mean, yes, I've gotten tickets. Yes, I'm more likely to get one than my sister, who is an obnoxious, pedantic prude when it comes to driving, but that doesn't make my parents' concern any less annoying.

So, because I knew my dad would have the self-esteem and self-confidence to handle it, I offered him a hearty "fuck you," followed with a lengthy rant about how I'm not a menace to civilization when I'm behind the wheel, can you please stop assuming I'm guaranteed to get a ticket every time I drive?

My morgbot brother, who was standing just a few feet from me, was stunned. I remember him stammering and muttering something like, "well... that's not what I'd have said," or something, and he's been overly argumentative with me ever since that moment.

Of course, this is the same brother who met the author of, and got a free copy of, The No Cussing Club, and who no doubt viewed it as an Even Newer Testament of Christ.

In the Mormon religion, cussing is a HUGE taboo, and every Mormon revels in the smug and unfounded pride that he/she doesn't use those "bad words." But what are these words, what makes them bad, and, most importantly, why would the Mormon church not want its members using them?

Many of the words the Mormons take issue with are blunt, crass, and contemptuous. They're disrespectful, aggressive, vehement. They're empowering. They show confidence and express a potent, rebellious disdain.

If I call your computer a piece of shit, my low opinion of the quality of your computer is very, very clear. If I tell you to fuck off for trying to micromanage me, there's a very clear message there, too: "I know what I'm doing, you don't, and I'm not going to submit to you."

Put simply, they aren't "just words"; they're rebellious, self-asserting, powerful words. They're words that express a rugged individuality. They're words that allow you to push back all the religions and ideologies that try their hardest to tell you who you are, how you should act, and what you should think.

... and you can't have that in the Mormon church. God forbid someone would stand up and proclaim "I am who I am!" while simultaneously proclaiming: "And you can fuck off and die if you want me to be someone else."

So, to all you Mormons out there who read the scriptures and The No Cussing Club every night before you go to sleep, let me give you a brief lecture on NewSpeak 101:

Words have meaning. When we think, all but the most visceral of our thoughts are made of words. A large vocabulary allows us to articulate exactly what we mean, but it also allows us to think complex thoughts. We have words like "hamburger," which serves as pleasant shorthand for "meat that is topped with various sauces and/or cheeses, placed between two slices of bread," but we also have words like "patriotism," "derivative," and "fortuitous," which each carry not just unique meanings, but unique concepts.

If we try to remove certain words from our language, we lose our ability to think the thoughts those words convey.

And so, to all you Mormons out there who think disrespectful words are taboo, who think sexual words are taboo and hold a smug, holier-than-thou attitude about it, and, in fact, to anyone else out there who tries to remove words from our vocabulary, I've got an unpleasant, disrespectful, rebellious response for you:

Fuck you. Fuck you with rusted nails and other sharp, potentially disease-carrying objects. Because we, as a culture, need words like these.

Offensive T-shirts

2010-10-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

So I was sitting behind this guy in calculus the other day who was wearing the most revolting and disgusting shirt ever. It read "His pain your gain" and had a picture of some guy's hand gruesomely punctured and blood flowing all over the place.

There are many shirts I've considered wearing over the past few years. One reads, bluntly, "God is just pretend"; another says "This is what an Atheist looks like"; and the third has the most awesome quote ever:

The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike.

Of course, very few people would realize that the third one was referring to God (because no one really subjects their god to any kind scrutiny and wouldn't expect others to), so I'd think it would be the safest one to wear in a classroom setting. No one could possibly get offended by it, so no one could possibly jump on the "Those damned militant 'New Atheists' keep shoving their beliefs in my face" bandwagon.

But seeing this guy's shirt the other day has got me thinking. Why should I worry about offending people? Why should I worry about being subtle when Christians aren't?

Or, more to the point, if he can wear a shirt depicting horrible and morbid bodily harm with a caption that characterizes it as being anything other than sad and deplorable, why can't I wear a shirt that says "God is just pretend" in response?

Ahh, if only I had an income. My wardrobe would consist almost exclusively of stuff from Atheists-online and the RDF store.

Coffee! Part II

2010-10-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

I've written before about how much I love coffee, but now things are different. Now things are very, very different.

Now, sitting on my kitchen counter, is a little used-to-the-point-of-abuse coffeemaker. My very own coffeemaker! I can now make coffee for myself whenever, whyever, and however I want!

Of course you're now wondering how I managed to smuggle it into my house, how I'm able to use it without my mom noticing, or how I managed to buy it since I have, you know, no job and no income.

Well, my mom bought it for me. She helped me pick it out, she purchased it, and she lets it sit there, filling the house with the delicious smell of brewing coffee while she takes my brother to seminary in the morning.

... and, really, I can't think of a more potent symbol of tolerance than that — she takes my brother to seminary to the smell of coffee brewing for her ex-Mormon Atheist son. Coffee! Is there anything more indicative of worldliness than a coffeemaker?

But in light of all the stories about outed Atheists who get evicted from their homes, constantly harassed by the missionaries and the bishopric, and in light of an especially moving post over at the Loathsome Joy, I'm now made harshly aware of something:

I can't complain. At all.

I may take issue with their ridiculous beliefs; I may take issue with their homophobic voting tendencies; I may take issue with their blatant and infuriating compartmentalization, their mental tap dancing, and their preference for comfortable beliefs over accurate ones — but I'm twenty-two and still living there, I have my own room, my own computer, they let me do my thing, and I have a coffeemaker in the kitchen.

I have a goddamned coffeemaker in my kitchen.

Reblog!

2010-10-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

Tracie just wrote an amazing post over at The Atheist Experience blog. Do yourselves a favor and read it. Seriously. To give a taste:

Imagine this conversation:

Woman 1: So, anyway, at the end of the argument I just told my husband I thought he was wrong.

Woman 2: I can't believe you said that. Aren't you afraid he'll hit you?

When I put myself in Woman 1's place, I have two immediate thoughts:

1. Not in a million years would I be afraid my husband would strike me for any reason short of his own self-defense if I went violently insane.

2. How long was Woman 2 abused? Is she still being abused?

I wouldn't expect Woman 2's comment from a woman who has no history of abuse whatsoever. I suppose I could imagine a situation where...

She makes a parallel between Woman 2 and people who use Pascal's Wager as an argument, and it's absolutely a must-read.

EveryStudent Rebuttal, Part V

2010-10-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

(This is the fifth of actually-probably-only-five posts about this stupid article that's being advertised to me on Facebook)

Reason Five

We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him.

Oh wow, what an empty reason to believe there's a God:

There exists a God, the nature of which is such that He can communicate with people in abstract ways, such as influencing their thoughts to focus on a single subject.
The only reason someone would think about the existence or nonexistence of God is if this God were influencing that person's thoughts to focus on the subject.
Atheists argue about God.
Therefore, God exists.
Therefore, Atheists are just denying Him.

Anyway, let's get to the actual argument. I'm confident in my ability to suspend disbelief, but the first line is pushing it for me:

I was an atheist at one time. And like many atheists, the issue of people believing in God bothered me greatly. What is it about atheists that we would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that we don't believe even exists?!

Well, anti-scientific dogma, indoctrinated self-loathing, despicable bigotry against homosexuals, racism, spreading misinformation about contraception, sexism, historical inaccuracy, and the molestation of children by church "authorities," are a few reasons. I don't believe in unicorns either, but if the majority of the planet used unicorns as a rationale for murder, torture, and war, you can be pretty damn sure I'd spend a huge amount of time, attention, and energy refuting the hell out of unicorns.

When I was an atheist, I attributed my intentions as caring for those poor, delusional people...to help them realize their hope was completely ill-founded.

Really? You were like, "Those damn Christians and their 'hope'."? Sure, their hope is misplaced, but really? That was the motive?

To be honest, I also had another motive. As I challenged those who believed in God, I was deeply curious to see if they could convince me otherwise. Part of my quest was to become free from the question of God. If I could conclusively prove to believers that they were wrong, then the issue is off the table, and I would be free to go about my life.

I confess, I like arguing with Christians because I hope, too, that they'll have some reasoning I haven't already heard. That maybe, just maybe, they'll say something that'll make me rethink the issue. But every single time — this time included — I hear the same dozen or so tired reasons over and over.

Also, you can't conclusively prove an invisible, non-physical entity doesn't exist. It's impossible. All we can do is demonstrate that it's either (1) incredibly, staggeringly unlikely or (2) totally and completely irrelevant. The Christian God happens to fulfill both.

I didn't realize that the reason the topic of God weighed so heavily on my mind, was because God was pressing the issue. I have come to find out that God wants to be known. He created us with the intention...

Sorry to cut your rant short, but you're assuming God in order to demonstrate Him (see above).

The Power of Prayer

2010-10-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

My old Boy Scout leader just friended me on Facebook a while ago, which means I've been going through that awkward dance in a field of eggshells (again) that happens whenever someone who knew me as a Mormon suddenly notices that my Religious Views are now:

None - Atheist, Skeptic, Nihilist, Hard Determinist, Metaphysical Naturalist, Pastafarian

instead of:

Christian - Latter-day Saint

(I kinda wish someone would say, "But Peter, you can't be an Atheist and a Pastafarian at the same time; that's like saying the FSM exists and doesn't exist at the same time. A cannot be not-A. It's one of the logical absolutes!")

You know how it is. "Hey, how are things? What're you doing?" they ask, and I go on about physics and nature and science. I mention that I'm shooting for a PhD. But beyond that, the conversation stays fairly superficial — we're both ignoring the colossal atheistic elephant in the room.

Anyway, my old scout leader's cousin's daughter went missing a few days ago. Her car, keys, backpack, wallet, and ID were all left behind, and he was understandably very concerned. In fact, everyone was understandably concerned, and rightly so; losing anyone like that — especially a daughter — is horrible beyond imagination.

I won't begrudge people their prayers. I'm of the opinion that, while they're totally and completely ineffective, they represent human concern and human empathy.

They printed out flyers, informed everyone they knew in the San Diego area, and she was found yesterday. But I'd like to take the time to do what all my scout leader's facebook friends aren't doing — I'd like to thank the people who printed out and posted flyers, the police who actually put in the effort to find her, and the people who got the word out as fast as possible.

It was human effort, and human effort alone, that is responsible for finding her.

It's like all those people who, when someone recovers from a near-fatal car accident, are all, "Praise the LORD! This is proof that prayers really do work, and God really is listening! Behold the miracle we've witnessed today!" While, in actuality, they sat around talking to themselves while professional surgeons and doctors applied the very best in medical science, putting in a great deal of work and effort to save that person's life. Science, not God, saves people.

So, the next time a bunch of people you know are trying to attribute amazing human accomplishments to God... let the police, the doctors, the firefighters, the passers-by, the people who posted the flyers, and all the other people who actually exist and did stuff — let them know that their contributions didn't go unnoticed.

I mean, you don't even have to be an ass about it. Just make sure that, on a Facebook status that reads "They've found her!", there's at least one comment praising the people who actually made it happen.

EveryStudent Rebuttal, Part IV

2010-10-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

(This is the fourth of six posts about this stupid article that's being advertised to me on Facebook)

There are many things I've started on this blog that I haven't finished, one of them being my response to the inane article at Every Student. So, let's get started with the fourth reason!

Reason Four

The DNA code informs, programs a cell's behavior

DNA is a three-billion-lettered program telling the cell to act in a certain way. It is a full instruction manual.

Why is this so amazing? One has to ask....how did this information program wind up in each human cell? These are not just chemicals. These are chemicals that instruct, that code in a very detailed way exactly how the person's body should develop.

>Natural, biological causes are completely lacking as an explanation when programmed information is involved. You cannot find instruction, precise information like this, without someone intentionally constructing it.

Oh boy, it's the Atheist's Riddle all over again:

DNA is a code.
Codes require a creator.
Therefore DNA proves God.

No, sorry, you don't get to just assert line two. Evolution describes beautifully how complex things can arise from simple things, so it's up to you to prove that codes can't evolve. Really, there's a Nobel waiting for you if you can.

Or, here; I'll craft my own rebuttal in three points:

DNA is a code.
Most codes are written by programmers, but DNA is the rare exception of a code that arose from natural processes.
Therefore DNA doesn't prove God.

Take issue with my second point if you like, but the resulting argument — the origin of DNA — is better left to Evolutionary Biologists than to wannabe Christian apologists and newbie Gnu Atheists.

National Coming Out Day, 2010

2010-10-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

So evidently today is National Coming Out Day, which is "an internationally observed civil awareness day for coming out and discussion about gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual and transgender (LGBT) issues."

Over at Blag Hag, Jen's written an awesome post about why she's pro-LGBT rights, and over at Life as a Reader, Carla has urged her readers to come out as straight allies. I figure now is as good a time as any to toss my views into the blogosphere, too.

I'm ashamed that we even have to admit to being supporters of LGBT rights, or women's rights, or anything else of the sort. Equality in society and under the law for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender or ethnicity, is such a blatant and obvious Good Thing that it's shocking and sickening that anyone — anyone — would think otherwise.

I was raised Mormon, so I'm very familiar with the painful self-loathing that comes from hating your sexuality. It's nowhere close to what the LGBT community has to put up with, but it's enough to give me a sense of empathy.

But I'll be honest. While I support LGBT rights out of a sense of empathy, much of my motivation is from a drive for intellectual integrity; there's absolutely no rational reason whatsoever to shun, ostracize, disallow marriage for, or condemn anyone who isn't Strictly Heterosexual™. Every argument which tries to justify those actions boils down to disgustingly bigoted statements like "I don't want guys to check me out while I pee" or "It's unnatural and against what God intended" or "It's just gross, okay?"

How people can vote to prevent homosexuals from marrying because "guys kissing is gross" is beyond me. As if guys can only kiss when they're married.

So yes, I fully support the homosexual communities, along with the asexuals, the trans people (one commenter over at Blag Hag preferred "trans person" over "transgendered," and I liked the shift in emphasis), the bicurious, the overly kinky, the bland missionary-position-is-all-I-know people...

Pull out the sex toys (or don't) and have at it with however many people of whichever gender you want, and enjoy yourself. Your sexuality, whether it's lavishly freakish or affectionately conservative, is yours. It's a part of who you are. It's what makes you human. And no one has the right to tell you who you should and shouldn't be attracted to, what you should and shouldn't find erotic, or anything else of the sort.

(Unless, of course, you happen to be egregiously violating, you know, public decency laws or something. Or if you're vandalizing public property. You know, just use your judgment.)

I proudly and firmly support LGBT rights, but I'd like to add something more to that statement. If you don't, you are either a disgusting bigot or a simplistic fool who has bought into the bigotry of some other person, like, say, this guy. There are no other options. You're either an outright bigot or a bigot by proxy.

Hello, Dan, and welcome to my blog!

2010-10-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

Oh goody! An irate Mormon came by and attempted to discredit me with petty insults. Now, I know I've mentioned before that Mormons generally suck at, you know, rationally discussing things (especially when those things happen to relate specifically to Mormonism), but I'd like to address his claims anyway.

But first, I'd like to mention that I'm totally aware that Dan's comment was directed not at me, but at his fellow Mormons who might end up finding my blog. So, to all you Mormons who are now reading this, I'm thoroughly impressed with you! It's a remarkably intellectually honest thing you're doing, reading my response instead of simply running away. And it's even more impressive that you kept reading after my first paragraph, which I admit was especially scathing.

Here's his first real argument against me (with some formatting by me so it's easier to read):

Please note that this person admits to having been a part of the Mormon church — and is no longer. You can liken it to an athlete who gets cut from his team, [who] loves them and then he gets cut and all of [a] sudden he hates them and publicly tears them apart at every chance he gets. No class.

Oh dear, what a pleasant little bit of misinformation this is.

Dan, I'm not attacking Mormonism because of some childish resentment. I'm not attacking Mormonism because I'm jealous of the members that are still there. In fact, I left the Mormon church of my own volition, and I think publicly condemning Packer for his hateful words demonstrates an abundance of class, not the absence of it.

Let me use your athlete metaphor. It's more like I was an athlete who was part of a team and discovered that the coach was stealing money from the school. And, in fact, that the coach was paying my fellow team members under the table to help him out. If I left this team and tried to dissuade people from joining it, if I publicly condemned the coach and the team for being unethical, or if I accused the team's members of being unethical, would I be in the wrong?

I think not. I think we both agree that, in that situation, the coach had better find himself in jail, and I'm morally obligated to help make it happen.

Now, we can discuss how, exactly, the Mormon church is like the corrupt sports coach, but I'm assuming you'll just write it off as "anti-Mormon literature" and go about your anti-gay and misogynistic day.

(Also, if you're really interested in why I left the church, I'd be more than happy to let you know. It's actually mostly about factual accuracy — the truth — than about LGBT rights)

Jesus himself says that we will be hated for his names sake, and all that these negative and nay-saying blogs do is prove his point.

I'm glad you've found a way to ignore the content of a blog, play the martyr card, and feel smugly superior to your opposition. Let's both put our pride on our respective shelves and have a discussion, shall we?

... and for the record, Mormons are very understanding of people who are gay.

I admit, I laughed at this before I shook my head in dismay. Mormons aren't accepting of any sexuality, really, much less homosexuality. The extent to which Mormons have an "understanding" of sexuality results in a long, long list of things which are bad about it. No masturbation, no premarital sex, no sexual attraction to anyone (except in marriage, after going through a bunch of rituals, and only if it's "pure" and "loving" instead of carnal and, well, sexual), no lust, no anything.

You have no understanding of homosexuality. All you have is an empty caricature of homosexuality, thinking it's some kind of disorder or disease. Some kind of awful problem that needs to be "fixed."

Homosexuality is like heterosexuality in every way, and there's no reason at all to think otherwise. (Do you choose to be attracted to women?) It's about sexual attraction, affection, love — all the most human emotions there are. Countless homosexuals commit suicide because people like you, all around the world, make them feel like they're confined to a loveless, affectionless, and otherwise human-less life. Like they're worthless, damaged, impure, or unwanted.

And I know what you're thinking. "They're not worthless; God loves them just as much as everyone else." Yes, but they're only accepted among the members of God's church if they give up the most fundamental aspect of themselves. They're only allowed to enter the celestial kingdom if they "fix" themselves, if they change fundamentally who they are. They're only allowed to enter the temple if they pretend to be something they aren't. They're only accepted by God if they change — As they are, God may love them, but He doesn't accept them.

Is there anything more anti-human? Is there anything more monstrous or horrific than ostracizing someone because of who they are? Is this the kind of God that deserves worship?

Anyway... I don't suppose any of you will listen to this, other than take the chance to attack me too, but that's my 2 cents.

I'm hoping that you, and any Mormons who followed the link to my reply, will notice that I'm not attacking you, and that I did listen to what you had to say. I just hope you realize that all you had to say was, "Don't listen to this guy; he's just a bitter anti-Mormon, and God hates gays so we should, too."

Someone is watching me...

2010-10-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

... or maybe it's just an amusing coincidence, but it certainly seems like someone's watching me.

Whenever you sign in to the computers here at my college, the homepage displays what it calls a "book river" — it shows a whole bunch of featured books at the school library drifting lazily by, like leaves in a trickling stream. Presumably they do this to make more people actually use the library for more than just Farmville, and their tactic actually worked on me.

I logged on and was about to hit up facebook like all the other college kids around me when I happened to see Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints float across my screen.

"Ooooooh!" I thought, "I'd love to see what arguments against Atheism they conjure up!"

It was nothing spiffy. Appeals to the Founding Fathers™ and how they didn't intend for there to be freedom from religion (instead, the guy argues, we have freedom of religion; we can pick any religion, but no religion isn't an option). Arguments that Atheism is just a dying Modernist fad. Arguments that Atheism is evil because it "banned prayer in school," etc., etc.

Dear god, man. We didn't ban prayer in school. We banned teacher led prayer in school. Students can still indulge in whatever mythology they desire and be as public about it as they want. Also, it wouldn't matter even if we had. If I say smoking is harmful and then murder 50,000 people, does that suddenly make me wrong about the harmfulness of smoking?

Anyway, while I was checking that book out, I happened to find God Is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens, and checked that one out, too. He's prone to tangents, but it's an enjoyable read.

Hitchens has balls, man. He isn't like Richard Dawkins or Steven Hawking, who construct their arguments with a kind of calm, passive, reassured confidence — No, Hitchens rushes into the fray, an AK-47 in each hand, setting his sights on religion and shooting to kill. He's my kind of Atheist.

Anyway, just a few days after I checked those out, I notice a new book flowing down the book river: The Case For God, by Karen Armstrong. And, furthermore, they had the book up on a stand right at the front of the library as one of the six über-featured books that you see right as you enter.

And this is why I think they're watching me.

So, since they went to all the effort, I decided to indulge them. I read the introduction to Ms. Armstrong's vacuous book and was thoroughly unimpressed. She argues that religion isn't like science, which attempts to answer questions and state what is true. Rather, religion is a kind of colloquial philosophy, something like an outlook on life, or a lifestyle. Something you practice at and operate by.

Umm, no. Sorry, Armstrong; Religion is a force for evil in the world, grabbing children by the balls (literally, as well as figuratively, unfortunately) when they're too young to have any sense of skepticism, tearing down their self-esteem and replacing it with Jesus. Religion is a force for hatred and bigotry all around the world.

Religion is not a whimsical, nebulous kind of optimistic self-discovery. It is not required in order for humans to find peace or creativity or self-assurance. Religion is wholly unnecessary. Totally, and completely, unnecessary.

So yeah, sorry college library, your book isn't making me come back to Jesus. I'll welcome a second try, though.

Boyd K. Packer: "I'm a mindless bigot, and so can you!"

2010-10-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

There was a time when it would be a spiritual experience to watch this guy. Then there was a time where I'd be agitated and frustrated when I watched this guy. And now, over five years removed from a disgusting and deplorable organization, I watch this video with weary disdain.

"Weary disdain," I'll have you notice, not "flippant dismissal." This guy's words fell into the gullible, empty, and willing heads of hundreds of thousands of people.

Anyway, I won't make you watch the video — I did, and it ruined my morning — but I'll give you the abridged version:

[One day, a student brought a kitten to class with him, and] it went well until one of the children asked, "Is it a boy kitty or a girl kitty?" Not wanting to get into that lesson, the teacher said, "It doesn't matter, it's just a kitty." But they persisted. Finally one boy raised his hand and said, "I know how you can tell." Resigned to face it, the teacher said, "How can you tell?" And the student answered, "You can vote on it."

One commenter over at Latter-day Main street put it nicely: "Hmm, protecting people from learning to use evidence and reason — nothing good comes of that strategy, as this story clearly demonstrates."

Anyway, Packer continues:

You may laugh at the story. But, if we're not alert, there are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change lives that would legalize immorality... To legalize that which is basically wrong or evil will not prevent the pain and penalties that will follow as surely as night follows day.

Hate to break it to you, Packer, but gays aren't going away, and banning gay marriage isn't going to change that. Plus, I think you already know how baseless your position is — Prop 8 was challenged in court and its defenders weren't able to demonstrate at all that "pain and penalties... will follow as surely as night follows day." It was repealed because your arguments, and every other argument out there that opposes gay marriage, are just a bunch of hot air.

A bunch of hot, stale air, I might add. Get over yourself and come join us in the 21^st century.

(I mean, really. As my dad is so fond of saying, you'd think that out of all the religions on the planet, the Mormons would be the most understanding of different marriage practices.)

Flee! Flee from arguments you're losing!

2010-09-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

So this one guy decided to chip into a discussion over at Blag Hag with a heartfelt Bible verse, showing his/her contempt for homosexuality or atheism or something, and since he/she decided to link to his/her blog, I figured he/she was fair game to go argue with.

So I did. And you can see the argument here.

What's that? The link isn't working? "Page not found"? Pity; it was such a fun conversation, too. Here's what his/her post looked kinda like, ohne Jesus picture:

Yes, for those of you who don't know [as if we wouldn't guess from the content on your blog] — Yes, I am Christian!

I think there was an extra sentence after that, but I can't remember it. It was a really short entry.

Anyway, I commented on that post saying how genuinely sorry I was for him/her that he/she took pride in following a religion that proclaimed how worthless he/she was. I then proceeded to explain why we were anything but worthless, demonstrating how amazingly clever, devious, ingenious, and intelligent we humans are. We have such an understanding of the universe we live in that we can fucking fly probes over the north pole of Neptune! How can anyone think we need "saving" from our "flawed" nature? We are the gods of our surroundings!

He/she then threw the cosmological argument at me — "Matter can't come from nothing," "If the universe were just a little bit different we wouldn't be able to exist," blah blah blah — which I happen to be very, very familiar with. And, in my rebuttal, I think I also did an excellent job of being factual while being non-confrontational (according to my highly-extroverted socialite friend whom I had proofread my comment before I posted it). And yes, I'm blowing my own horn — so sue me; it's my blog.

I responded to the cosmological argument like everyone, theists included, should: How could we know? Atheists aren't claiming the universe popped out of nowhere; we're claiming that we have absolutely no idea. There's a Nobel prize waiting for you if you know the answer. And, furthermore, asking "what happened before the Big Bang" is a bit of a nonsense question, since "before" is a concept that requires time to exist — and time started with the Big Bang. And what the hell is time, anyway?

And I figured it was best to respond to the "if atoms were a little different they couldn't form molecules" thing with my favorite Douglas Adams quote:

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'

This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.'

I had been eagerly awaiting his/her response for the last few days, expecting either more Ravi Zacharias apologetics or maybe even a new argument I hadn't heard before. (I know, it's not likely, but I'm allowed to dream, aren't I?)

If nothing else, it was good practice. It gave me an opportunity to flaunt my knowledge about physics, cosmology, and astronomy, and gave me a chance to work on arguing so my tone wasn't what scared my opponent away.

... although I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it annoying as hell that he/she deleted the whole post to end the conversation. Coward.

_____________________________

EDIT: While I was discussing cosmology with him, another person hopped into the conversation and commented that, if Savage Spirit would actually read the Bible, he'd/she'd see that the God he/she worships was actually an evil one. As a rebuttal to that, Savage Spirit posted a lengthy rant about how "Islam was actually the evil religion" and posted a bunch of verses from Deuteronomy where God is all like "I will crush them without mercy because I'm petty, vindictive, vengeful, and horrifically violent."

I had responded, saying, "So... to prove your God isn't evil, you post a bunch of verses showing how evil He is?"

How amusing that his/her next post was all about love. All that "you can dispense justice and still love" stuff... ignoring the fact that there is no justice in eternal punishment for finite crimes.

Scherzo Fantastique, by Josef Suk

2010-09-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Every now and then I find myself in the pleasant and unpleasant situation where, sitting in the car outside some pressing commitment, a piece is playing on KUSC that is just too beautiful to stop listening to. And at times like that, I typically exhale a nice "fuck it; I'll suffer the punishment for being late" and enjoy it.

Yesterday happened to be another of those days, though thankfully I only ended up being late for a Reach party, so it wasn't going to threaten my grades or the job I don't have.

Anyway, on the way over my ears chanced upon this amazingly gorgeous piece I've never heard of, by a composer I've never heard of either — The Scherzo Fantastique, by Josef Suk:

Let me again remind you: I was late to a Reach party because of this song. And if that isn't enough to convince you to listen to it, I have no idea what will.

"Why'd you change majors?"

2010-09-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

Not a week goes by without someone asking me why I switched from Music Performance to Physics. Typically, it's the music majors I used to perform with (and so desperately want to keep performing with, but I'm taking too many units to throw in performance classes, too) who ask, most often with a kind of dejected, heartbroken disappointment.

"Was it," they inquire, "just not for you? Does it not pay enough?"

Now, I wasn't majoring in music for the money, and I'm not pursuing physics for the money, either. Not that there's anything wrong with picking a job for the money; money, after all, is the key to happiness.

But no, I'm pursuing physics because it proclaims things which don't make any sense at all. It asserts things which are remarkably counter-intuitive, saying only "because Einstein's equations say so" or "you're just a three-dimension chauvinist" to defend those assertions. Space is bending, not light? Really? And you expect me to accept that just 'cause some guy said so?

I'm done with believing things just because authorities say so.

Science, unlike religion, has this beautiful quality to it. When I say "Okay, prove it" to science, it turns around and says, "All right, here's how we know this" and proceeds to supply studies, evidence, alternate theories and why they're less preferable, and ultimately ending with a thoroughly satisfying "Okay, there's all the evidence. What do you think?"

Religion, on the other hand, when asked to prove something, chastises me for a lack of faith, appeals to authorities (the highest one being fictitious), and keeps its eye on me to make sure I don't "corrupt" anyone else with my despicable skepticism.

And this is the problem. Physics, especially the more complex physics, bears the same demeanor as religion. Einstein said so. Newton said so. Who are you to question these two incredibly smart guys? Do you think you're smarter than them? What bold audacity, what shameless naivete you must have, thinking you — you! — are qualified to challenge established science!

But it's not just anti-religion sentiments that are driving me. If the current physics are true, the universe I find myself in is a very, very bizarre place. A very counter-intuitive place. A place which could challenge the very assumptions and preconceptions I hold by being a two-meter tall human in an infinite and incomprehensibly large universe made up of particles that are incomprehensibly small.

I must know the nature of the universe in which, for such a brief and beautiful instant, I find myself. I'm majoring in physics because my personal happiness and contentment demand that I know. And as immensely satisfying as music is, the intellectual in me needs a closure that music, no matter how beautiful, can't give me.

Plus, physics is just badass. Give me a year or so and I'll be able to tell you, with incredible precision, what would happen to us if the Earth stopped in its orbit around the Sun. Would we just fall back onto the Earth? Would we fall into the Sun? Or, most awesomely, would we all become little Halley's Comets, destined to come screaming into the solar system once every hundred years?

How am I?

2010-09-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

There's this little game I play every now and then, whenever I'm feeling particularly assholish.

I know why I do it. I have a deep respect for grammar, syntax, language, vocabulary, and proper spelling. It's how we communicate and remember incredibly complex ideas, and how we formulate new ones. Language, especially precise language, is incredibly important.

So, sometimes, just to make a point, I respond to the question "How are you?" as though it were asked precisely, rather than colloquially.

How am I? Well, following the Big Bang, there was a massive explosion of energy from which, possibly, the four known physical forces — gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces — separated from a single force. These forces, along with the rate of expansion of what is now called the universe, caused matter to coalesce into spinning disks of gas with a high concentration of hydrogen in the center. This concentration of hydrogen gas starts to build up pressure due to gravity and nuclear fusion begins to happen.

These "stars," as we call them, also begin building up bigger atoms at their centers, like carbon and oxygen, which then get propelled out into the universe when the stars explode.

Ten billion years after the Big Bang, another star was being formed in the middle of its own accretion disk, but this one was polluted with some of the bigger atoms, too, which (because of their density) collected near the center of the disk. As bits of debris in the accretion disk coalesced into planets, one made mostly of iron happened to form about 93,000,000 miles away from its star.

And then we have amino acids, evolution, four billion years... Homo sapiens sapiens, my grand parents, my parents — me. This is how it is that I exist. This is how I am. Why did you ask such a nightmarishly complicating question five minutes before class started?

Usually I'm stopped long before I get to the end, and usually I'm either asked "Wait, what's cosmology got to do with anything?" or "What...? Okay, how do you feel?"

Well, how do I feel? Physically, I feel because pressure causes neural receptors to react, triggering stuff in my brain, or something. Emotionally, I experience emotion due to a bunch of released hormones and chemicals and all kinds of other biochemical stuff I wish I knew more about than I actually do. You should probably take a class on neurology or biochemistry if you really want to know how I feel. In fact, I should probably take those classes, too, since I clearly don't know how I feel, either.

And then, I've noticed, I have two categories of friends. One category responds with "Blah blah blah, don't be such a smartass, lol" and the other pauses for a moment and says, "Okay, what is your present emotional state, and what past events are, within a reasonable number of degrees, causally responsible for that aforementioned emotional state?"

Okay, so the inquiry about my present emotional state and its cause is certainly impersonal. When typed, it seems cold, distant, and calculated. But by God, there's no doubt whatsoever what information the asker was trying to get. I can't weasel my way out of answering his/her question by being a syntactical literalist. I'm trapped.

So fine. I'm doing alright. How are you?

You can talk about God in Philosophy, Part II

2010-09-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

Back when I took Philosophy, I was a little annoyed that several people ditched during the second half of the class.

And now I know why!

I just finished talking to an old high school friend of mine who was ditching his Philosophy class today:

Me: "Oh really? Why're you ditching?"

Him: "The subject. I'm going to wait until the teacher's wrapped it up before I go back, and he should be done tomorrow."

Me: "What subject is it you're ditching, if you don't mind saying?"

Him: "The existence of God."

("Oooooooh," I think, "I wish I was in his class!")

Me: "Duuude! I loved it when we got there!"

Him: "I'm not too fond of it. It just makes me mad. I don't like me when I'm mad, other people don't like me when I'm mad, so I was just like 'screw it, I'll come back when it's over.'"

I was initially struck by how bizarre a reaction that was. How could anyone, when faced with such an important question as "Does God exist?", just get mad and run from the issue?

And then I remembered that, when my Biology teacher in high school brought up the "white moths getting eaten because the Industrial Revolution made trees black" example of natural selection, my old Mormon self reacted exactly the same way as my friend is acting now. I didn't know how to combat it. I didn't know how to argue with it. And I hated it for challenging what I believed, so I reacted purely emotionally against it. I wanted the question to just go away. It made me mad.

I wish I'd spent a little more time with my friend, in retrospect, to find out what, specifically, made him mad, but he knew I was a rather open and opinionated Atheist and I knew he was in his church's band, and it was clear he was trying to steer clear of that subject.

And now it gets me thinking. Maybe everyone who runs from the "Does God exist?" question does so because they, at some level, have doubts. They don't think He exists, but don't want to think about it for fear of emotional or social repercussions. Or maybe it's just that the whole topic is one that requires a lot of time and thought and they'd just rather not deal with it.

My entire experience so far with the God Debate has been with outspoken advocates of each side — the titans of Atheism and Theism — battling it out in an apocalyptic war for souls. Each side takes up arms, presents arguments, presents counterarguments (and, in the case of the Theists, makes shit up and argues emotionally), and tries to get to the truth of the issue. And now, it seems, I'm seeing a third group. A group that has a concept of God, is familiar with the idea that it exists, but doesn't want to think about it. Much like political moderates who see both Democrats and Republicans and say, "I don't care; leave me out of it."

"You can't change your mind," Part II

2010-09-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

While I mentioned in my last post that sometimes you've just gotta shut up, there are certainly times where shutting up is the last thing you want to do. Especially when you are the one who's wrong.

This, too, is a bizarre reaction I see from people. Yes, people will get defensive, irrational, and highly emotional when you argue with them, but you suddenly become their best friend if you concede defeat when you're wrong.

This happened to me just last week, in fact, when I got into a discussion with this uppity know-it-all about cosmology, astronomy, and science in general. He was arguing that the Sahara desert changed from forest to desert and back again every twenty- to forty-thousand years due to the "oscillation of the solar system," and proclaimed this with the kind of stupid, shallow authority that comes from having no sources whatsoever. Add to this the fact that he dared to utter the phrase "it's just a theory," and my SIWOTI syndrome kicked in hardcore — although I guess it's actually SIWIRL syndrome since the argument took place IRL.

But anyway, our first discussion ended with me saying, "That just doesn't sound right. Lemme do a little research."

Our second got a little heated, and was promptly cut off by our Physics class starting.

It's Newton's first law, for crying out loud! An object in motion stays in motion, gravity is a constant and unchanging force, so the Earth's orbit, while elliptical, should remain constant. And yet this guy had the nerve to say that the Earth swings closer and farther from the Sun every twenty- to forty-thousand years! And he had the nerve to say there was evidence that "flew in the face of" evolution! How could this guy possibly be right about anything?!

And why did he have to make things worse by being an athletic, attractive track-and-field guy with an understanding of music and the arts? This goddamned Renaissance Man had the audacity to enter my field of expertise and tell me how the solar system worked!

Well.

It is with great chagrin that I learned that he was, in fact, correct. The Sahara has been changing between forest and desert (due to receding ice sheets and the ensuing monsoons), and ice ages are affected in part by Milankovitch cycles.

So the Sahara is to some extent affected by the "oscillation of the solar system."

And so, since owning up to what you say is important to me, I couldn't really be at peace until I told him that yes, he was right and I was wrong. But isn't it more satisfying to learn you're wrong than to learn you're right? How different my understanding of the universe is now, thanks to this guy! (Although, I'm not letting him off the hook for his little "Evolution is just a theory" shtick — yet)

Why is it that people like you when you admit you're wrong?

Whoa whoa whoa, when did this happen?

2010-09-11T04:41:00.000-07:00

After a lengthy session of Red Dead Redemption with a friend of mine, I come back home to find my inbox flooded with messages about how a judge declared DADT unconstitutional.

Very, very awesome. Just a month ago Prop 8 was repealed, and now this. Either DADT soon (and finally) gets axed, or the vicious legal battle to axe it begins.

I don't even know what to say. When Prop 8 was on the ballot, I was arguing with anyone and everyone, trying to show them that their motivation was either thinly veiled bigotry or "I'm a sheep who's only doing what the Prophet says." I had precisely one convert, but otherwise spent a massive amount of energy and time ensuring that everyone I knew hated me for being contentious. There was no reason to support Prop 8 whatsoever, and no one I knew who was voting for it seemed to realize why they were actually voting for it.

It passed. I cried. I ditched my classes that day. I probably ate way too much junkfood (though I can't quite remember; the whole day remains a fiery, hot-emotional blur in my memory) and raged at the world for being filled with narrow-minded, simplistic bigots with no understanding of what they had actually done.

And now, in the space of a month, it's been repealed and DADT is being acted on. Actually being acted on, not just passively mentioned. Stuff is actually happening. Can things get any more surreal?

There's this grand, grand future I imagine, like in the Mass Effect or Star Trek universes, where men, women, whites, blacks, hetero- and homosexuals are all there, all present, but without the unnecessary and bigoted significance we give it — where humanity is massively diverse, but where that diversity is seen as beautiful, unique, interesting, and as a fundamental part of what humanity means.

And that grand future, today, in my naive and possibly sleep-deprived state, seems just a little bit closer now than it did a few months ago.

"You can't change your mind"

2010-09-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

If you've been in the arguing business for a while, you'll no doubt have come across the "you're not listening to me" gambit that people who have no experience debating (i.e. Mormons) like to use so very, very much. Typically, the argument goes something like this:

Him/Her: You have to drink eight glasses of water a day or else you get dehydrated.

You: Umm... no. Snopes did a thing on that, like, forever ago. Basically, you just have to drink when you're thirsty.

Him/Her: You never listen to me! You just have to disagree with everything I ever say! You can't change your mind about anything!

You: I change my mind about stuff all the time. I left my religion and turned to Atheism, after all. Isn't that the biggest act of changing your mind someone can ever make?

Him/Her: Look! You're doing it again! You simply cannot accept views that are different than your own!

Now, let me impart to you a bit of wisdom I unfortunately learned the hard way. Responding with something like "Well, I would agree with you if you were right on this" would be a bad move because it will no doubt be interpreted as "You are always wrong, and that's why I never agree with you," instead of your intended "I consider ideas based on evidence, and in this specific instance your claim is lacking sufficient evidence."

One of the most difficult lessons to learn when arguing, I've found, is that, while knowing a whole list of logical fallacies and having a desperate desire to separate truth from untruth are awesome, most people don't put any effort into excluding emotion from the debate, so sometimes you just gotta shut up. Maybe you can bring up the subject again later. Maybe not. But if you're ever getting "You never listen to what I say" or "You're just being obnoxiously contrarian to keep arguing," chances are you should've shut up a loooong time ago.

In any argument worth having, be it about water consumption, abortion, marriage equality, or GGW's recent appearance in the news, people will no doubt bring all kinds of emotion into the discussion. (If you weren't emotionally invested in the argument, after all, why would you bother arguing about it?) But it's important that you enter every discussion fully aware that your opponent might dive into irrationality as time goes on.

And, most importantly, it might end up being you that takes that dive.

Letter to BYU's Daily Universe

2010-09-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

I'll confess right off the bat that I'm shamelessly stealing this from The Whore of All the Earth, but it's definitely worth reposting.

Cary Crall, a student at Brigham Young University, wrote a letter to the editor of BYU's student newspaper, The Daily Universe, saying in no uncertain terms that there was no substantial reason to support Prop 8. The letter was published on The Universe's website (which, I confess, seems really odd) but was then taken down soon after (which, I confess, doesn't seem odd at all).

I'll post the letter here, but you really should just head over to USU SHAFT's post about this whole thing. And, if you're feeling especially masochistic, you can read the comments there, too.

Anyway, the letter. What follows is the whole of Crall's letter, with the bracketed part being what The Daily Universe didn't print.

Viewpoint: Defending Proposition 8 — It’s time to admit the reasons

By CARY CRALL

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the recent United States District Court case that overturned Proposition 8, highlighted a disturbing inconsistency in the pro-Prop 8 camp.

The arguments put forth so aggressively by the Protect Marriage coalition and by LDS church leaders at all levels of church organization during the campaign were noticeably absent from the proceedings of the trial. This discrepancy between the arguments in favor of Proposition 8 presented to voters and the arguments presented in court shows that at some point, proponents of Prop 8 stopped believing in their purported rational and non-religious arguments for the amendment.

Claims that defeat of Prop 8 would force religious organizations to recognize homosexual marriages and perform such marriages in their privately owned facilities, including LDS temples, were never mentioned in court. Similarly, the defense was unable to find a single expert witness willing to testify that state-recognized homosexual marriage would lead to forcing religious adoption agencies to allow homosexual parents to adopt children or that children would be required to learn about homosexual marriage in school.

Four of the proponents’ six expert witnesses who may have been planning on testifying to these points withdrew as witnesses on the first day of the trial. Why did they go and why did no one step up to replace them? Perhaps it is because they knew that their arguments would suffer much the same fate as those of David Blankenhorn and Kenneth Miller, the two expert witnesses who did agree to testify.

Judge Vaughn Walker, who heard the case, spent 11 pages of his 138-page decision meticulously tearing down every argument advanced by Blankenhorn before concluding that his testimony was “unreliable and entitled to essentially no weight.” Miller suffered similar censure after it was shown that he was unfamiliar with even basic sources on the subject in which he sought to testify as an expert.

The court was left with lopsided, persuasive testimony leading to the conclusion that Proposition 8 was not in the interest of the state and was discriminatory against gays and lesbians. Walker’s decision is a must-read for anyone who is yet to be convinced of this opinion. The question remains that if proponents of Prop 8 were both unwilling and unable to support even one rational argument in favor of the amendment in court, why did they seek to present their arguments as rational during the campaign?

It is time for LDS supporters of Prop 8 to be honest about their reasons for supporting the amendment. It’s not about adoption rights, or the first amendment, or tradition. These arguments were not found worthy of the standards for finding facts set up by our judicial system. The real reason is that a man who most of us believe is a prophet of God told us to support the amendment. [This is a privately held religious belief that we are using to support legislation that takes away a right from a minority group. If our government were to enact legislation based solely on such beliefs, it would set a dangerous precedent, possibly even more so than allowing a homosexual to marry the person he or she loves.] We must be honest about our motivation, and consider what it means to the delicate balance between our relationship with God and with His children here on earth. Maybe then we will stop thoughtlessly spouting arguments that are offensive to gays and lesbians and indefensible to those not of our faith.

QFT

_________________________

EDIT: It looks like The Daily Universe tried to justify themselves:

The Daily Universe made an independent decision to remove the student viewpoint titled “Defending Proposition 8” after being alerted by various readers that the content of the editorial was offensive. The publication of this viewpoint was not intended to offend, but after further review we recognized that it contained offensive content.

This is consistent with policy that The Daily Universe has, on rare occasions, exercised in the past.

Craig has an awesome response over at the Loathsome Joy that is also a must-read.

Another song I love with lyrics I hate

2010-09-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

I've noticed something about myself. When I listen to music, I listen to anything and everything except the words. It probably has something to do with being a classically trained clarinetist and playing lyricless music for ten years or so, but whenever one of my friends or siblings are like, "Here, you gotta listen to this song!" I find myself kinda bored by it.

"Isn't it beautiful?" They ask.

"No," I say. "It's just the same two chords over and over, and the melody only has two notes to it."

"But it's about a guy who likes a girl and (something mushy and romantic)."

"No," I say again. "It's about an F major chord and a C major chord that can't get enough of each other."

This isn't to say that I only listen to music analytically. When I'm listening to, say, the greatest piece of music the world has ever seen, I don't care about the rhythm, the harmonies, or anything — I'm being swept away by the brooding and dark contrabassoon to a sonic vista of introspection.

Now, I'm not one of those classical music chauvinists that look down their noses in disdain at anything not written exclusively by Mozart, Beethoven, or Have you heard this exquisite piece by Stockhausen? Webern? Oh how barbaric you must be, then, you uncivilized fool, for not indulging in all the awful compositions simply because they're mentioned in History of Western Music! — No, I listen to other stuff, too. I have a guilty pleasure for anything with brazenly sexual lyrics, for example, and a not-so-guilty pleasure for metal.

Last time I whined about System of a Down's awesome song Science, with its truly revolting lyrics, and this time I'm writing about Disturbed's Innocence, right off their new album, Asylum.

For those who are either at work (you lucky little bastards; I'd love to read blogs and get paid for it), who would rather not listen to music that is just too awesome for you, or who would just like to have some of the lyrics posted so you don't have to listen to the song just yet, here they are (the relevant parts, anyway):

(Who is innocent? No one is innocent. Who is innocent?)

Who is innocent?
Is it relevant in the world today?
I shake my head in disbelief.
The killer walks again,
Freed by evil men in their dark charade.
This can't be happening.
A mother's selfish pride,
Her child's homicide,
Can she be to blame?
The suited vultures circling.
A father's cruelty,
A murdered family,
Is the world insane?
Their defenders ready to embrace their lies,
With their devious smiles.

<Chorus>Your corruption is like
A cancer growing inside.
You owe the world an apology.
You've been taught all your life
That truth is easy to hide.
You'll face your judgement another day,
And suffer eternally.</Chorus>

Presumed innocent,
Justice fails again in the masquerade.
A battered woman trembling,
Her lover drunk again,
When will the torture end
In her web of shame?
Is death the only way?
A child victimized,
The crime politicized
For the counselor's gain.
The rabid media congregates.
His tortured memories,
A pervert's fantasies,
Is the world insane?
The parasitic devastation seen,
On your TV screen.

False defender, burn forever,
Cold and spineless, have you no soul?
Wicked-minded, out of control and guided
By their hunger, they will find new
Ways to betray us.

In short, Disturbed: Yes, innocence is relevant in the world today.

I used to ride comfortably on the lawyer-bashing bandwagon — but then I served on a jury. When I was nineteen, I was called in for jury duty and (to the envy of both my parents) actually was put on a case. It was an eye-opening and opinion-altering experience, to say the least.

Yes, lawyers make a lot of money. Yes, many lawyers go into law just for the money. Yes, lawyers defend blatant and obvious liars. Yes, they probably do so just because they want the money. And yes, there is certainly corruption in our legal system.

But even taking that into account, I think it doesn't matter. Criminals are convicted based on evidence, and it doesn't matter whether the evidence was supplied to ensure justice or to ensure a new HD TV. Evidence is evidence, a lack of evidence is a lack of evidence, and the entire system is built around excluding bias and preventing logical missteps. Lawyers call out "objection" when they see the opposition arguing emotionally, goading the witness into providing a certain answer, etc.

As I sat there on the jury, it was very clear to me that our legal system operates under one incredibly important assumption:

It is better that a guilty person go free, than for an innocent person to be punished.

The defending attorney's job isn't, as Disturbed is saying, to free guilty people for money. His/her job is to ensure that the prosecuting attorney's case leaves no doubt whatsoever that the person is guilty. His/her job is to poke the prosecuting attorney's case full of holes if there are holes to be poked, seed doubt if there is doubt to be had, and make absolutely sure that, if the person on trial gets punished, the person deserved it.

And, most importantly, I think, it doesn't matter whether all the lawyers involved are only doing it for the money. They have to operate within a system that takes every precaution possible to be fair.

The real hatred should be placed on the jurors, not the defenders. A jury of our peers is filled with CSI-watching buffoons who wouldn't know a logical fallacy if I robbed them blind with it. A jury of our peers convicts people based on intuition. A jury of our peers convicts people based on their clothing, their mannerisms, their accents, whether the defendant "looks guilty"...

If there is any flaw in our legal system, it is the same flaw present in our political system — we let the laypeople participate.

So yeah, sorry Disturbed, I totally disagree with you on this one. But damn, you wrote a totally kick-ass song about it.

My mom got me Asylum!!!

2010-09-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!

Okay... let me back up for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about.

Some time ago, I discovered one of the greatest bands ever, and have been stoked for their fifth studio album, Asylum, since I first heard in mid-July that it was coming out on August 31^st. I'd been counting down the days and bringing it up in conversation over and over and over again.

Now, of course, being the unfortunately unemployed college student I am, I have no way of actually buying said album whatsoever, so I was intending to spend the totality of the 31^st glued to YouTube.

So I had made it through the third song on the CD before my mom comes home from work and hands me this:

I am so fucking psyched about this. Not just because it is easily the best album by the best band ever, and not just because I had been looking forward to it for a month and a half, but — let me put the emphasis where it actually is:

My MOM got me Asylum!!!

My incredibly Mormon mother, who took issue with my Die Prophezeiung album because it detracted from the spirit. My incredibly Mormon mother, who would no doubt feel the need to take a spiritual shower after hearing the album she just got me. My incredibly Mormon mother, who just got me a pointedly not-Mormon album without asking for anything in return.

This is now, unquestionably, my favorite Disturbed album ever. Hell, it's my favorite album ever. But because of context, rather than content.

This album, to me, is a powerful gesture of a kind of live-and-let-live love. We have our polarizing ideological differences — as exemplified by my taste in music and hers — but she still bought me something I really wanted, as a gift, no strings attached, without dwelling on what it was.

This really means a lot to me. I still loathe your stance on gay marriage, mom, but damn it, this means a lot. Your fellow Mormons may look down on you for losing your husband and your eldest son to Atheism. Maybe that makes you a bad Mormon.

But god damn, you're a fucking awesome mom.

And the Sun stood still

2010-08-30T10:00:00.001-07:00

Have you ever stopped to consider just how fast you're going right now?

Here you are, maybe just wrapping up a long day at work, maybe stopping by the school library to check Facebook before your next class starts, or maybe just reading a blog entry in between anime episodes. In any of those cases — you think — you're just sitting here in front of your computer, barely moving at all.

Or maybe you're leaning back in your chair now, stretching out your arms just to prove that no, blog, you are moving a little, thank you very much.

Well, you're moving quite a bit more than that, actually.

The Earth, as you know, rotates around its axis once every twenty-four hours. At the equator, this means you would be traveling about 24,901.55 miles in twenty-four hours — or 1,037.56 miles per hour. Add to this the fact that the Earth travels 584,059,067 miles over 365.25 days, and you're traveling an additional 66,627.77 miles per hour.

(If you're interested, by the way, you can figure out how fast you're traveling right now with this formula:

66,627.77 ± (3,963.17πcos(X°) / 12)

where X is the number of degrees north or south of the equator you are.)

And now, as you know, the Sun moves across the sky because the Earth is rotating. So, if the Sun were to stop in the sky for the length of a whole day, like we find in the book of Joshua:

12 On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:
"O sun, stand still over Gibeon,
O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon."

13 So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on its enemies,
as it is written in the Book of Jashar.
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.

we would find that the Amorites would have a lot more to worry about than just the Israelites. All those armies were chilling at Gibeon, which Wikipedia tells us is now the city of al-Jib, located 31.85° north of the equator. So, when the Sun stopped in the sky, the Israelites, Amorites, and Joshua (and hell, even the city of Gibeon, along with the surrounding mountains and foliage) had to contend with a hefty 881⅓ mph momentum eastward:

(3,963.17πcos(31.85°) / 12) = 881⅓ mph

And, after that, the thoroughly disgruntled armies (and landscape) would have to deal with sunlight for an entire day, no doubt roasting them all alive — if they were still alive.

My Mormon repercussions

2010-08-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

Growing up as a Mormon, the church didn't feel like a nifty social clique as much as it did a source of truth. There was a God. I was alive for a specific purpose. My future children were up in Heaven looking down at me, perhaps chuckling at my little errors, perhaps cheering me on while I did something challenging, perhaps sharing in my own joy, wishing they were down here to be tried and tested, too.

There were rules. No coffee, no alcohol, no R-rated movies, no lengthy or frequent kisses while dating, etc., etc. Many Mormons just took those as Commandments, maybe putting only enough thought into it to know that they'd lose social status in their Mormon clique if they did any of those things, but I was different. We knew R-rated movies were bad, but why? Because they glorify sex and violence, that's why. Why are coffee, alcohol, and illegal drugs bad? Because they take away your Free Agency by making us addicted, which is Satan's ultimate goal.

So I took them a bit further. If R-rated movies are bad, then M-rated video games must be equally bad. If coffee, alcohol, and drugs were bad, then anything which could potentially be addicting was bad.

Every day I would hear that the Sacrament was important, and so I would read off the Sacrament prayer not with that sing-songy voice most people used, pausing after "Father" or "Christ" like you heard every single Sunday, but instead with the solemnity and reverence I felt it deserved.

Evidently, and lamentably, I am the inspiration for a recently enlisted missionary.

I rarely wish I could go back and change the past, but this is one of those times. This kid is now on his mission because of something I did, and he will come back, get married, start having kids when he's twenty-two, and be absolutely trapped neck-high in Mormonism. If he will ever see the truth about his church, he will be digging himself deeper and deeper into the hole he'll have to climb out of. I thank God (figuratively) that I saw the light before I went on a mission.

Several years ago I'd have been flattered, but now I'm horrified. I am now partially responsible for someone digging themselves deeper into a fiction-based belief system and there's really nothing I can do to stop it. What's worse, I'm sure there are many, many more instances of this that I haven't had the luxury of hearing about.

Hopefully, over the course of my life, I'll undo the damage I've done over seventeen years.

Mini post!

2010-08-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

Greta Christina's definitely NSFW blog commonly features an "Atheist Meme of the Day." Today's is perhaps the most common one I ever have to deal with:

Atheist Meme of the Day: Hypothetically Possible =/= Plausible

Today's Atheist Meme of the Day. Pass this on; or don't; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

An idea can be hypothetically possible and still be wildly implausible. Including religious ideas. "You can't disprove it with 100% certainty" is a terrible argument for God: without good evidence to support it, the God hypothesis is no more plausible than the hypothesis of unicorns, fairies, or Zeus. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Six Flags, cousins...

2010-08-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

... and the best reason to keep a hairstyle, ever.

Two Sundays ago (on the 15^th), I went with my dad, my aunt, and my two cousins to Six Flags Magic Mountain and it was a ton of fun. Last Summer, my aunt and cousins visited also, and we went to Universal Studios, which was also a ton of fun. Theme Parks, I've discovered, are amazingly fun when you have younger kids in tow.

This trip was especially cool, though, because the oldest of my two cousins is fanatically obsessed with roller coasters. And I mean obsessed. He would go on and on about different ideas he had for themed or non-themed roller coasters, could name and locate roller coasters based on their height or speed or historical significance, and even had a few creative ideas for death parks in RollerCoaster Tycoon. (Although, he informed me, he's much more a fan of No Limits when it comes to simulators)

He had also just finished Children of the Mind, the final book in Orson Scott Card's Ender Saga, which started me into a huuuuuge geek rant once I learned about it.

The younger of my two cousins, who's always been much shyer than her older brother, took a special liking to my hair, which I'd shaved off completely the week before, earning me the absolutely adorable nickname "fuzzyhead" for the entire day.

... so what if she was much less than half my age? I can't think of a better reason to keep my hair this short than having girls running their hands through it (or over it, I guess) all the time.

Interestingly, I had been sporting a very different hairstyle than my usual the last time they visited, too. When they visited last time, I had been trying out a goatee for the first time, and had had it for about two or three days. And now, this time, I'd shaved my head just a week before. Maybe I'll try a mohawk or something next Summer? or grow my beard out long enough to braid it?

"Why do you keep changing your hair?" she asked me.

"Well, it keeps growing back all the time, so why not?"

Of course, there's a little more to it than that. I mean, being single and unemployed means I have absolutely no obligations to look my best at all, so hey, when life gives you lemons, why not experiment with different types of lemonade?

Paths to Truth

2010-08-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

So it's the second day of the Fall semester for me, which means that, since I'm taking exclusively math and science classes, I've been stuck reviewing stuff this whole time. It gives me a good feel for the way the class will run, though, to hear how the teachers explain what a scientific theory is, or what the scientific method is, or what functions are.

Last semester, for example, I knew from the start that I'd hate my biology class when my teacher tried to tell me:

"The difference between a fact and a theory is that nobody disagrees with a fact and some people disagree with a theory. For example [I'm not joking], evolution is a theory because the Catholic church disagrees with it."

Of course, I shot my hand up and asked what everyone should've been asking: "I don't believe you exist. Does that make you just a theory, now?"

Anyway, my physics teacher got my hopes up by satisfactorily explaining science today, then crushed those hopes to the ground when he asked: "Science is one way to truth. Are there any others you can think of?"

Yes, he made the case that faith is another, equally legitimate way to truth. And yes, I promptly rushed to my blog. And yes, I'll be talking to him about it on Thursday, after I make my argument as clear and concise as possible.

Anyway, I don't think faith is any more legitimate than wishful thinking is, but let's spell it out precisely:

People are capable of believing false things to be true. (Given)
Therefore, we cannot know something is true just because we believe it.
Faith, by definition, is belief without any supporting evidence. (Given)
Therefore, faith alone is not a reliable route to truth.

Q.E.D.

I'm planning on printing out those four points (perhaps slightly edited, if I think of a better wording), adding a little bit at the top that reads "No, science is still the only way to truth," and handing it to him at the end of class. Although, I dunno; the guy's retired, so I'd probably convince him just as much as I would if I didn't even bring it up.

Occult radial head fracture

2010-08-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

Right before this posted itself a week and a half ago, while my family was still packing stuff in preparation for our grand, two-mile journey to our new house, I happened to discover this bad boy, sitting in my garage:

Now, this wasn't particularly surprising, of course; my brother had won it in a raffle or something back when they were first coming out, so I knew we had it. But I had totally forgotten about it until just two weeks ago. Back when my brother got it, I was the only one with either the courage or the interest to learn how to ride the thing, and I got good enough at it that I could ride around confidently without falling. But I'm getting ahead of myself a little.

Now, two weeks ago I'm cleaning out the garage and I happen to find this thing and think, "Hey! I remember this! I wonder if I can still ride it?"

Evidently I can't.

At least, not as well as I could. I rode it down the street about two houses, turned around, came back up the street, turned around again, and not-so-pleasantly fell backwards onto my right elbow. It hurt like a bruise, but, unlike a bruise, started locking up until I couldn't move my arm at all... which was kinda nice, I admit; it gave me a cheap excuse to not help out as much lifting furniture.

After going on the Sequoia trip that I'll write about later, I went to the doctor's, got it X-rayed (which, after learning about the electromagnetic spectrum and Marie Curie, I'm not so keen on doing too often) and discovered that I have all the nonvisual symptoms of a radial head fracture.

The radial head isn't a band, by the way. It's a nifty little part of your arm that allows you to rotate your wrist, which is something I'm still not quite capable of doing, though enough time's passed that I can now type without wanting to die.

What was amusing, though, was when the doctor mentioned it was an occult radial head fracture.

"Do you know what 'occult' means?" he asks me.

Well, duh, I think, but what the hell do ghosts and such have to do with my arm?

"You know," (waves his arms and makes ghost noises), "like ghosts and such?"

Evidently "occult" is an official medical term, meaning "We can't see it, but it's there." Of course, it's not like he was just making up a diagnosis for me; I had all the symptoms of a radial head fracture, he said, but without the pretty x-ray of it.

So here I am, starting a new semester with a fractured arm. An arm which, lamentably, I'm going to have to use quite a bit for homework in calculus and physics. An arm which would ordinarily be absolutely fine if that Wave Board hadn't decided to be all difficult to use.

But, rather than hiding from that Wave Board like I hid from my bicycle, I'm going to pull that thing out of the garage and dominate it. I will crush that board into submission. I will not let it defeat me. After my arm's fixed, I'll get back on that thing and ride the shit out of it.

... while wearing elbow pads. And a helmet.

Envy is healthy

2010-08-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

Especially right now. You may now commence with feeling incredibly jealous of me, as I'll be spending several days (starting today!) up at the Sequoia National Park.

I'll be taking a shit-ton (4,000 pounds) of pictures of myself, dwarfed by immense biological monoliths that are older even than Socrates. And, as I stand amidst these ancient and towering relics, I'll finally be away from all the obnoxious light pollution so that I can stare at the Milky Way galaxy in all its glory.

What an odd, thought-provoking experience this will inevitably be. I will be staring at the cosmos, surrounded by trees as old as half of recorded history, and taking pictures.

Although, I'll shamelessly admit that a certain XKCD comic comes to mind.

Fun with math, part II

2010-07-30T12:34:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's time for another installment of my (apparently) continuing series, "I've got messed up curiosities and waaay too much time on my hands."

So, a couple months ago, I looked up the formula to find the Roche limit of a given body of mass to its satellite, and asked what was perhaps the most important question of our time:

"If the Earth were to be caught in a decaying orbit around a Jupiter-sized glob of osmium (the densest natural element), how big would it be in the sky when cities started floating into space?"

And now, finally, I have the tools to answer it!

Okay, for the non-physics majors out there, let me briefly explain the Roche limit. We experience this phenomenon called "weight" (and some of us more than others) due to the Earth's massive size, gravitationally pulling us toward its center. So now, imagine you're standing on the Moon, where you'd weigh six times less:

The Moon is pulling you toward it with a certain strength, and you're too far away from the Earth for it to be able to pull you. But, as the Earth gets closer and closer to the Moon, you'll start feeling a gravitational pull from both the Moon and the Earth:

At some point, Earth's pull on you would be stronger than the Moon's, and you'd start drifting into the sky toward Earth... along with big chunks of the Moon.

So! What if the Earth were orbiting a Jupiter-sized glob of osmium? How far away would the Earth be before cities started floating into the sky?

Roche limit = (the radius of the osmium glob) x (2(density of osmium / density of Earth))^(1/3)

Roche limit = (about 69,000 km) x (2(22.59/5.15))^(1/3)

Roche limit = 139,096.4333 kilometers

Now, that's the distance from the center of the Earth to the center of the osmium glob, so we'd have to subtract the radius of the Earth (6378.1 km) to get:

And all we have to do is apply the law of sines, grab a TI-83, and we've got the answer!

sin(90) / 132,718.333 = sin(ß) / 69,000

Sin(ß) = 69,000sin(90) / 132,718.333

Sin^-1(69,000sin(90) / 132,718.333) = ß

ß = 31.32541187, or approximately 31.33

Since the angle at which we see the glob of osmium is 2ß, we get 62.66.

So, out of 180 degrees (horizon to horizon), the glob would be filling up 62.66 degrees of it, or about one third. Which, as rendered by my artistically inclined brother, means it would looks something like this:

A kind of macabre immortality.

2010-07-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

Since I was eight years old, Carl Sagan has no longer been able to inspire us in person. It's an incredible tragedy that Sagan couldn't be here to observe the effects of dark matter on the bullet cluster, or the forthcoming results from the LHC at Cern, or any of the other astounding discoveries we've made or will make since then. And an even worse tragedy that he is no longer around to affect us with his ever-poetic gift for presentation.

In the last six months, I've been watching through his Cosmos series, idolizing him every bit as much as people did while he was still around. I feel like, across time and death, Carl Sagan is a man who really sees the universe in the same way I do. He saw, like I did, humanity's context in the universe, and we were both stunned into silent wonder.

If I had any money, I would own every piece of literature and every film he's ever made, but at the moment callumCGLP's videos on YouTube certainly suffice. If you're a YouTuber, seriously, subscribe to this guy. If you're not, here you go:

"1945-1998," by Isao Hashimoto

2010-07-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

This is an oddly beautiful video I picked up from Phil Plait today, showing all the nuclear tests that have been conducted on planet Earth between the years 1945 and 1998. It starts out a little slow (how poignant that we would think so), but gets oddly frightening around the 3:00 mark.

If the Earth were a giant game of Rise of Nations, we'd have ended in an apocalyptic tie dozens of times over.

Predestined to rebel against predestination

2010-07-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

Even before I played D&D, I knew I'd love it. A friend of mine had a D&D-esque game he made up which didn't use dice or paper or anything. The whole game was in his head; we'd make our characters and he'd just ad lib the whole experience.

I first played D&D a few summers ago and absolutely loved it. My friend, I'm sure, thinks D&D is too stuffy with all its rules and technicalities, but all those rules, dice, and character sheets make things, I think, more fair. After all, if the success of my attacks and my opponents attacks are both determined by the same person, my character will die when the DM wants him to, and my character will win when the DM wants him to. I don't want to die because of meta-game bias!

Anyway, I absolutely love D&D for several reasons, but one reason really shines above all the rest:

Versatility.

If the players are marching through a town and one decides he/she wants to light his/her staff on fire and use the burnt end to tag "Defy the system!" on the wall of a local store, he/she can. Try doing that in a video game!

Which is why I prefer to host D&D sessions rather than play them. I love crafting a world for the players to explore and experience. I love keeping track of NPCs the players have met, and I love imagining the consequences of the players' actions as they ripple through the world I've created. The players, in my sessions, are the most important part.

I create a world, put the players in it, put some characteristic NPCs in it, and set it off, like a violent chemical reaction. What would this NPC do, now that his house was burned to the ground because a PC decided he/she wanted to tag "Defy the system!" on the side of it? How would the town generally react to adventurers after this event? Will the players meet up with this now-homeless NPC in the future? What's happening on the other side of the world? What are the Significant Event NPCs doing now, and what big events are probably going to happen?

But, after playing in a few D&D sessions hosted by several different friends of mine, I've discovered that D&D is something quite different to most people. It's a frighteningly linear experience with god-like town guards, where the players hack-and-slash their way to level 30. Want to tag "Defy the system!" on the wall? Tough luck. Your character gets jailed by the town guards, whose purpose isn't to preserve peace or promote order but to rigidly force the players down a plot which has been set in stone.

In these kinda games, I'm always a rogue, and I'm always jailed. I think it's a pure expression of myself in real life, actually, that I rebel against this restrictive, totalitarian micromanagement. My hapless rogue throws himself at the system in defiance, earning in-game mockery at best and death at worst.

"Come on, Peter," they say. "Quit dicking around and play the game."

"I am playing the game," I say. "My rogue isn't Fate's bitch."

The world just doesn't feel real if I can't stretch out a little, and the freedom to give up a quest and do something else &mdash "No, I don't care about saving the princess. She can die for all I care. Let's go help this beggar dude steal from the store instead!" &mdash makes for a much more human experience. I mean, if I want to throw immersion to the wind and hack and slash my way to level 30, I can just buy any video game on the market and skip the dice rolling all together.

And this lack of immersion is also why I can never seem to talk to anyone about D&D. The conversations usually go this way:

Me: "Oh, you played D&D this weekend? How'd it go?"

Him: "Dude, I totally rolled a Sorc build that didn't suck!" (Proceeds to list spells, weapons, etc.)

Me: "Yeah... but what happened? What's your sorceror like? Meet any interesting characters?"

Him: "Oh shit, man. You're one of those gay RPers. Look, I don't care. I made my Sorc's eyes glow-in-the-dark purple for teh lolz."

At which point we both smh and part ways.

I'm afraid, though, that my games will get more convoluted as I take more and more physics classes. My players will say, "I command my squad of archers to release a volley" and I'll be like, "Wait, lemme calculate that real quick; I'm not sure if they can actually hit, given the difference in elevation." And then I'd break and try to figure out how high the arrows are off the ground at any specific second, given that they'd have to fire in an arc in order to hit their targets... so, if a shortbow has a range of 60 feet, how much would its range be if you were indoors with a low ceiling?

Oh my god, I can't wait to take physics!

Atheist straw men

2010-07-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Atheist straw men page! This page will be a (hopefully infrequently updated) collection of counterarguments for all the simplistic rebuttals people use to "refute" the Atheist position, inspired by an interview I saw of S.E. Cupp by Sean Hannity.

Table of contents:

Atheists believe something can come from nothing
Atheists claim to know for certain there is no God

Atheists believe something can come from nothing.

The simple answer to this goes something like, "No we don't; we have no idea what started or preceded the Big Bang, and we're not claiming it popped out of nowhere. We're saying 'I don't know'."

The complex answer is exactly that: more complex. The entire concept of causality (philosophical shorthand for "cause and effect") rests inside time. There is an interval of time between, say, my dropping an apple and that apple hitting the floor.

We don't really know what causes time, what time really is, nor why immense gravity seems to have an effect on it. What we do know, however, is that time started with the Big Bang, so trying to discuss what caused it is really just a nonsense question at the moment

Really though, I shouldn't have to defend that fact that we don't know. The theist making this claim is really just saying, "The God I worship, which I haven't yet proven or demonstrated exists, can simplistically explain this problem, therefore It must exist." Or, in logical form:

The Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.
Part of the definition of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that He can do X.
X has been done.
Therefore, the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.

Even if you prove point 1, you'll still have to add a point in between 2 and 3 which reads: "X can only be done by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, exclusively."

Sorry theists, the burden of proof's on you. Logic's is a bitch, isn't it?

Atheists claim to know for certain there is no God.

No, actually, we don't. We believe there is no God. There's a difference.

Let's use Santa Claus as an example. Parents across the U.S. raise their kids with this pleasant and harmless idea that there is a chubby old man, dressed in red, who flies all around the world delivering presents to children, all in one day, who are good. He knows which kids are good, of course, because he's been watching them &mdash each and every one &mdash for the entire year, grading them with a remarkably simple "naughty or nice" system.

Kids always buy this story completely. After all, they're hearing it from their parents, who seem to know absolutely everything, and they keep hearing about it in commercials and storybooks.

As they grow up, however, they start accumulating extra evidence. Mom and Dad seem really tired on Christmas morning, Santa's handwriting looks like Mom's, they saw Mom putting presents under the tree, etc., and start to think, "You know? I don't think Santa Claus exists. I think it's much more likely that Mom and Dad made up Santa Claus just to make me be good."

Atheists know God doesn't exist in the same way that we all know Santa Claus doesn't exist; they've heard the arguments for and against the God hypothesis, and it seems infinitely more likely that God was made up to explain stuff that Bronze Age intellects didn't understand (like Zeus was for lightning) and to make people be good.

Comments

2010-07-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

So I moderated my first comment today. Not because it conflicted with my worldview, not because it was hostile, not because it was random and off-topic... but because it was mindless copypasta. That being said, I guess I'll lay out my terms.

I am wholeheartedly against censorship, and that wholeheartedness extends even to views I don't agree with. I, in fact, love reading and hearing views that are very different from mine (and love arguing with them even more), so I would never censor someone strictly because I didn't like their opinion.

What's more, I wouldn't even censor myself if I looked like a fool while I was arguing with the person whose view I disagreed with. What you say is here to stay, and what I say is here to stay.

Unless, of course, your comment is just spam or copypasta. And, actually, even that isn't absolute. If David Mabus left his obnoxiously lengthy copypasta on my blog, I'd probably write a post rebutting it. Unless, of course, he kept posting it, even after I'd rebutted it; then I'd start moderating him.

So, to sum up everything: Censoring ideas you don't like is heinous, but censoring blatant and obvious spam is a-ok.

Science vs. Religion

2010-07-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Marilynne Robinson

www.thedailyshow.com

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I've just decided that I loathe Marilynn Robinson. Yes, I've written about her before and yes, I still like the "bones and feathers" quote. I don't know how long the Daily Show will keep the video up, so I'll blockquote the parts I want to complain about.

Jon starts off with the statement that, it seems, "science and religion are exclusive and at odds," which I think is absolutely true. Science observes and creates testable hypotheses about the nature of our world, while religion sits on the sidelines, makes shit up, and claims it's "contributing to our spiritual well-being," whatever that means. Anyone claiming that science and religion can coexist don't understand either one; science whittles away at the vacuous claims of religion with reason, debate, peer-review, discussion, testing, and, well, science, while religion only puffs its chest out and proclaims, "I don't know, therefore God."

Says Marilynn Robinson:

People on one side of the argument have claimed the authority of science, but they have not construed an argument that actually satisfies the standards of science. It tends to be part of a history of a certain kind of thinking that, since early in the 20^th century has, for some reason, minimized the complexity and the importance of the human mind. And so, for the sake of good Atheism, for the sake of good religion —

(Jon and Marilynn laugh.)

Jon: "For the sake of good Atheism." You don't hear that enough.

Marilynn: Yes, I agree. I certainly agree.

As a person who is quite strongly on that "one side of the argument," I do claim the authority of science, and we have construed an argument that actually satisfies the standards of science:

Any evidence that has been fronted in support of a Creator God has been refuted, leaving only the empty claims from personal, anecdotal experience.
People can believe things which aren't true, making personal experience an unreliable source of evidence if offered as the only evidence.
With this incredible lack of evidence for God (and in light of the indoctrination of children), a universe run by natural processes becomes indistinguishable from a universe run by an omnipotent Magic Man in the Sky.
Occam's Razor slices the Creator God hypothesis out of the picture, in favor of current scientific models.

And Marilynn, science and Atheism don't "minimize the complexity and the importance of the human mind." What on Earth made you think they do?

Anyway, she continues:

I don't think, frankly, that it's scientific to proceed from the study of ants to a conclusion about the nature of the cosmos. I don't think that the argument that has been made is leveraged against anything that actually ought to appropriately be called science. I love science. I think that the new cosmologies and so on are among the most beautiful things that people have conceived. They don't need to be interpreted as religious or anti-religious. They're beautiful in their own right, and another demonstration of what the human mind is.

Given that ants exist in the cosmos, any study of them will give us at least some insight into the nature of the cosmos, at least as it applies to ants. But beyond that, scientists actually aren't looking at ants to explain the cosmos; they're looking at the cosmos to explain the cosmos!

And whether you like it or not, the new cosmologies are anti-religious; the literal interpretation of Genesis, for example, has been completely and utterly destroyed by them. Science, every day, is destroying the claims that religious people have invented about the nature of the universe, and their only survival method is to bash science or make their claims as non-disprovable as possible... which, I might add, is exactly what they're doing. The Bible is no longer literal and God is now an abstract, all-powerful, invisible being who, it seems, has been made that way to hide from science.

Science is a beautiful demonstration of the power of the human brain. Every scientific or mathematical achievement is a testament to its creativity, ingenuity, and its capacity for devious and clever workarounds. It is absolutely awe-inspiring that we can actually know what we know about the universe.

And it is a testament to the flaws of our brains that religion still exists. When presented with evidence which contradicts our cherished worldviews, our brain doesn't change its worldview to adapt to the new evidence; instead, it either ignores it or rationalizes it away.

Then Jon makes a little blunder:

Jon: I've always been fascinated that, the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith. You know, when they start to speak about the universe they say, "Well, most of the universe is actually antimatter." "Oh really? Where's that?" "Well, you can't see it." "Well, where is it?" "It's there." "Well can you measure it?" "We're working on it."

He's actually referring to dark matter, not antimatter. The universe is actually mostly matter; in order to use antimatter we have to create it ourselves.

I, too, thought dark matter was stupid, but have since been proven wrong. We can actually see dark matter because it distorts the light from stars behind it. We can even see its gravitational effects by analyzing, say, the Bullet Cluster and how the clouds of gas are reacting with each other.

However, Jon, I'll agree with you a little on this. I'm actually majoring in physics precisely because Einsteinian relativity (especially concerning black holes) looks exactly like your "antimatter" does. But, rather than sit back on a TV show and say, "Eh, they're taking it on faith," I'm actually researching it.

Marilynn: Until quite recently, many great scientists, like Isaac Newton and so on, were profoundly religious people. The division is something that has come late and I don't think it was ever necessary.

Funny how ignorant that statement is, Marilynn.

And now, the part that made me both laugh and rush to my blog. Marilynn shows that she's actually a talented comedian:

At this point in time, we need the best insights from science and the best insights from religion...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! "Best insights from religion!" Let's get the best insights from alchemy and ghost hunting, too, while we're at it!

Now I know why PZ hated you so much.

EDIT: Lookit, PZ said the same thing as me, just better and more concise.

Piracy

2010-07-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

If you have an opinion regarding the piracy of music, movies, and such, it is irrational.

Actually, I can't quite say that. All I can say is that I'm pretty sure it's irrational, and not just because I'm pretty sure your opinion is different from mine. I first seriously considered my stance on the piracy issue when Jeff Dee of the The Atheist Experience made the same argument that Joe Biden did a while ago:

"This is theft, clear and simple. It's smash and grab, no different than a guy walking down Fifth Avenue and smashing the window at Tiffany's and reaching in and grabbing what's in the window."

I used to hold an opinion as rigid and uncompromising as Biden's, but I've since graduated from the simplistic "if you didn't pay for it, you stole it" dogma. Piracy, in my opinion, is okay if:

You purchased a CD a while back and it has since gotten irreparably scratched.
You cannot obtain said object by paying for it (like, for example, if the CD or game was discontinued, out of print, etc.). If the company isn't going to, or even trying to, make money off it anymore, why would pirating it be bad?
You're cracking a game you own for which you've lost the CD key. Yes, I know, CD keys are so five years ago and gaming companies prefer the "you can only play if you have an internet connection" route now, but that's beside the point. I bought that game, and can't use it because their piracy protection is preventing me from reinstalling it.

Jason Robert Brown, an evidently reputable composer that I've never heard of, crafted a post which Eric Whitacre snatched up, which then went viral all over my Facebook news feed. Whitacre, Brown, and all my music major friends are evidently hopping on the "smash and grab" bandwagon.

However, pirating isn't such an easy, clear-cut issue. Unlike the simplistic analogy Brown used, pirating music isn't like stealing someone's screwdriver:

Friend of mine is building a house. He drew up the plans, he chopped down all the trees, he's got it all together. He doesn't have a screwdriver. He calls me up, says, "Dude, I need a screwdriver." I happen to have a screwdriver, so I give it to him, but I say, "Hey, I need that back later today, I have some work to do." He looks incredulous. "I have to build a house, my man. I'm not going to be done in a day. And what if someone likes my house and wants me to build one for them? I'll need the screwdriver to build their house too, yo." So I suggest he get his own screwdriver. "Why can't I just use yours?" he says. I tell him he can use mine, but then I need it back, it's my screwdriver, after all. He insists that he has the right to take my screwdriver, build his house, then keep that screwdriver forever so he can build other people's houses with it. This seems unfair to me.

Yeah, borrowing someone's screwdriver forever isn't exactly fair. However, I imagine it would be a little more fair if you could lend him your screwdriver and still use your screwdriver, too. (i.e. "Dude, I need a screwdriver." *Brown takes his screwdriver, duplicates it exactly, and hands the guy one of them* "Thanks, man.")

We can't make dramatic, hyperbolic, Biden-esque analogies with music sharing because it's a very different beast. If I burn a copy of my recording of Beethoven's 9th, for example, and give it to a friend, I have not stolen a CD and neither has my friend. I have not destroyed anything, nor have my friend and I taken property from anyone. What we have done, only in an abstract sense, is reduced the potential, hypothetical income that would've been made had my friend intended to buy the CD himself.

And this abstraction is the problem. Piracy is NOT stealing. Piracy diminishes record sales, yes, but pirates aren't stealing from the record companies, and it's an important distinction to realize. And also, lamentably, a distinction that Biden, Brown, and Whitacre don't see.

If you look at it from an evolutionary standpoint, the music industry is losing its ability to restrict who uses its material because of the internet, computers, and the other technological wonders of the 21^st century, and is trying to legislate its way back to environmental success. But I'm betting we're going to see some changes in the entertainment industry as younger artists adapt to the internet. A bigger focus on theatre-going, concerts, and online gaming perhaps, all of which are essentially pirate-proof. Just try to imagine it: A band writes some songs, posts them on their website, advertises their website at gigs, then people download those songs and pass them around on merit, and the band gets more fans, concert attendance, and money!

I don't think legislating media sharing into oblivion is going to work; piracy is just too damn easy. Without a horrific amount of censorship and regulation, people will always be able to download whatever media they want for free. And isn't a sharp dip in entertainment quality better than the Orwellian "imminent infringement" thought-crime legislation being proposed?

My problem with math education

2010-06-29T15:55:00.000-07:00

I love math and I love science. Everyone should. Everyone does, I think, though they don't know it yet. They don't know that they love it, because they haven't been taught what it is.

Unfortunately, mathematics is taught in the worst way imaginable. Or, rather, it's taught in the worst way imaginable if the goal is to understand math; it's taught in a beautifully efficient way if the goal is to get students to score well on tests which only grade the facts they know.

And that, lamentably, is how our tests are run, and the scores on those tests determine how much funding the school gets. If a high school makes you memorize the quadratic formula and the Pythagorean theorem without explaining them, they get money. If a high school works tirelessly to show you why the quadratic formula and the Pythagorean theorem work, and show you how they were derived, they get the same amount of money.

But, the second way takes more time and effort. Students can fake their way through Geometry in a year by just memorizing everything, or they really learn Geometry in two. And schools certainly know at least some math:

Lots of time, money, and effort = X amount of money, or
Less time, money, and effort = X amount of money.

By picking the second option, schools end up with more money, since the time they'd have spent actually teaching Geometry can now be spent "teaching" Geometry and Trigonometry. Same amount of time, but twice as much money!

(My numbers, obviously, aren't precise, but they serve to illustrate my point: Schools make more money by teaching us to fake our way through the SATs than they do actually teaching us)

Mathematics at the community college level and below (I unfortunately don't know if the CSUs or UCs are better about it) are taught like this:

Here's a formula.
Here's how to plug numbers into it to get an answer.
Congratulations! You've learned the Pythagorean theorem! Let's move on.

Or worse, they might even just give you the quadratic formula and say, "Here, use this whenever you see an equation that looks like ax²+bx+c=0"

I've been counteracting this in my math classes by deriving the formulas myself. My teacher simply says, "Here's the unit circle. Memorize this for tomorrow" and I spend all day figuring out by myself why the (x,y) coordinates for a 45 degree angle are both sqrt(2)/2. Or my old Geometry teacher said that "in a 30-60-90 triangle, the shortest leg is one-half the hypotenuse," and I spent the rest of the class period proving to myself why.

And that's the way math should be taught. When teachers present a formula, we students shouldn't just blindly accept it "because it works" or "because some smart guys said so." That's what religion's for. I'm not going to use a formula unless I know why it's the formula.

... which is my biggest problem in Trigonometry. Trig is commonly taught like this:

Do you have a TI-83 calculator? Good, you do. See that button that says "Sin"?
Push it and type in "60"
Good! You can now figure out the ratio of the opposite leg to the hypotenuse with this Magic Button that mathematicians prior to 1990 didn't have!

No, I said indignantly, I will not rely on Magic Buttons that find the answer for me. What is sine? How would I calculate it by hand if I was only given the angle? How did we figure out the formula to calculate sine by hand?

(This, by the way, is why I'm majoring in physics. I'm not accepting Einstein's special relativity or the black hole singularity on faith, and I have to know whether or not they're true.)

I found a satisfactory answer over the weekend, and was even more delighted to learn that mathematicians used the sine, cosine, and tangent ratios long before they learned how to compute them for every angle. They're like variables; you can still do math with them even if you don't know their value.

Ahhhh, now if I'd only figured all this out before the class started. I'm a week behind in a six-week Summer class now because I couldn't just accept the Magic Button like everyone else. Nooooo, I had to be a rebel against the system and actually learn math. Shame on me.

Coffee

2010-06-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

I love coffee. I love it alot. But why, I wonder, do I love it so?

I remember, either late in middle school or early high school, sitting in my history class, when I noticed the most appalling, disgusting, and downright horrific thing imaginable. But first, I need to fill you guys in a little.

I was Mormon at the time and, as you may know, Mormons are best known for their "no coffee, alcohol, non-herbal tea, r-rated movies, masturbation, swearing, or anything else incredibly fun" policy. These restrictions (they say) aren't to create a strong sense of guilt and naivete, but to "protect you".

Anyway, I was sitting there in class and someone (oh what horror!) had a cup of coffee sitting on his desk. A cup of coffee, dear God! Shouldn't he be arrested for that? Why isn't the teacher, at the very least, expelling him for this? Oh my God, I can't look, he's taking a sip from it!

My mother and my church had apparently forgotten to tell me that coffee and tea were much, much less evil than alcohol, heroin, and murder.

I dunno. I had always heard coffee, tea, alcohol, drugs and such all mentioned in the same phrase, along with "you shouldn't do this" and "if you do, you better repent or see the bishop." But I can still remember the extreme, fascinated horror at seeing someone drinking a cup of coffee in my class. I mean, I knew there were some twisted, depraved souls out there who drank coffee and stuff, but I always imagined they'd be, you know, sneaking out to the local park at 2 a.m. or something to do it.

A few weeks after I couldn't pretend I was a believer anymore, I remember buying myself a Lipton Iced Tea from a vending machine at my high school. If anyone had seen me (I made sure no one was around) they'd have thought I was trying to steal from it, or vandalize it, or get high before class, or something. I finally bought that iced tea and smuggled it into my backpack, no doubt looking incredibly suspicious and awkward as I walked to class, taking great care that it didn't look like I had anything that looked like a 21 oz. bottle in there.

In class, there were a few other people with bottles of coke on their desks. Did I dare take a sip while I was in class? No. No I didn't.

But I did smuggle it home. And there, shut away in my room, I took the first sip on the slippery slope which supposedly led to crystal meth, crack cocaine, and murder.

It was average at best. I'm not an iced tea kinda guy. But even if the taste wasn't so awesome, the fact that I could now drink it whenever I wanted was. Whenever I drink Lipton Iced Tea, I taste the sweet, lemony flavor of rebellion.

Fast forward a year or so. I have an income from my old Taco Bell job and I have a license. I can now drive wherever I want, so long as I have an excuse for it, and I can now buy whatever I want, too.

Coffee. I was afraid of coffee. I didn't like the smell and the stigma was still strong with me. I couldn't drink coffee, because then I'd be a slave to it and need it every day.

One fateful day, though, I bit the bullet and went for it. I stopped off at McDonald's on my way to school and bought myself a large, vanilla iced coffee. On an empty stomach. That entire day was profoundly bizarre for me.

First, there was more caffeine running through my body at one time than I'd ever had in my life, and I was totally unaccustomed to it. My stomach was rebelling against it, my body was all jittery, and I had the lingering taste of sugar and coffee in my mouth. I felt incredibly imbalanced.

Second, I had just drank coffee. I was no longer a coffee virgin. I could never again puff my chest out and proclaim, "I've never had coffee!"

Third, what if my family found out? My mom had been mildly tolerant of my decision to stop going to church because I had said I'd "still keep the Standards™." Now, clearly, I wasn't.

But words cannot describe how ALIVE I felt that day. When I practiced, I learned faster and better. When I played, I was more attentive, commanding, and in control of the rehearsal and the music. When I was in class, I understood faster, learned more, and my grasp of the material was much, much more impressive.

And damn, I felt good! I was so vivacious and optimistic and...

... and wow, did I feel guilty for how much I loved that feeling. But I went back and got another a few days later (after eating something) and all the guilt and discomfort was gone. It was just another amazing, thoroughly enjoyable and perfect day.

I drank coffee, I had a perfect day. Was this what it was like to be addicted? Was I already a slave to caffeine?

Then, one day, my secret was let out. I ordered an iced coffee from the McD's drive thru and it was my sister's best friend who rang up my order. There she was, back turned to me, making my coffee. Oh shit! Do I make a break for it? Can I get away without her noticing which car it was?

She turned around, handed me my coffee, and paused. Almost like she realized, right then, that it was me that she'd just handed the coffee to. Then all she could do was sputter, "But... but...! You?! But..." while looking around in frantic, shocked horror. My family promptly confronted me about it, and the ensuing conversation wasn't overly pleasant.

But by then, it didn't matter. I was enjoying coffee for the taste of coffee. It would still, admittedly, be a few months before I learned about the whole "creamer and sugar" aspect of coffee, but the damage had been done.

I love coffee. It's a symbol of my ex-Mormonism, it tastes absolutely delicious, and it has magical powers to wake me up when I've had two hours of sleep. I love the smell, I love how personal someone's coffee is, and I love knowing that I've conquered yet another religiously-induced fear.

I drink coffee and it tastes like freedom.

The BP fiasco

2010-06-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

"This is sad. Very sad, only."

We make jokes about the spill for the reason we joke about the Holocaust. We have to. It's a defense mechanism. We can either laugh bitterly or cry.

Every day, I see new updates on the spill. New pictures taken from orbital satellites. How bittersweet and poignant it is, to know our species has an intellect so powerful that we can photograph — from orbit — such a horrific environmental and social catastrophe.

You might have enlarged the above picture and thought, "Well, it could be worse." It is. Much, much worse.

Who do we blame? Who do we hate? Who do we hang to make this tragedy all better? Where is the easy scapegoat or the simple solution?

So many people say they feel ashamed. They feel guilty for being human. But I don't think we should be. We may be a species capable of unimaginable atrocities, but we cry when we look at this. We see pelicans covered in oil and we cry. We see miles and miles of oil and we cry.

Isn't it beautiful, though, that we cry? We feel angry, we feel guilty. We scream and we cry. We bang our fists against the wall and we choke back tears. Why do we cry and rage, if we're supposedly such despicable creatures? I think we should take solace in our shame, our self-loathing; we cry because we care. We cry because we're human. We cry because we have the intelligence to understand how massive this tragedy is, and we cry because we've been blessed with an empathy which extends beyond just our fellow human.

Fuck stock prices and public relations. Fuck profits and investors. Fuck political ideologies. Look at the gulf and realize that, in our shame and sadness, we're all alike. We all care. We all crack jokes to distract ourselves. And we all cry.

With forty-two US gallons per barrel of oil, there are at least two million, five-hundred twenty thousand (2,520,000) gallons of oil leaking into the gulf every day.

Unconditional love

2010-06-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

I offered up an amusing question on Facebook a while back, but rather than follow my typical modus operandi with lengthy Facebook discussions I'm just going to summarize my argument instead. My question was this:

If your love is unconditional, doesn't that make it valueless?

No, you all initially say, unconditional love is invaluable. It's the most valuable kind of love there is. It's enduring and endearing. It isn't judgmental or petty, blah blah blah.

Some of you — the more logically oriented ones — will then see my actual point: Unconditional love doesn't exist. All love is conditional. But what does "conditional" mean, exactly?

We can resort to the dictionary if you'd like, but I think we'd all agree that "conditional" just means "has prerequisites." I will give you five dollars, for example, on the condition that you give me my footlong Subway sandwich. If something were truly unconditional, it would have about as much value as a pamphlet, a brochure, or the free samples as Costco.

So what, then, do we actually mean when we say "unconditional love"? Typically, in my experience, unconditional love refers to the love you have for your children, your pets, etc. The idea being that, even if your child/pet destroyed a vintage Beatles record that you've had for forty years, you'd still love them anyway, and wouldn't cease to love them just because they destroyed something of yours.

But is that love really unconditional? Not at all. You have a strong attachment to your child/pet for some reason, and that reason is why you love them. When your child/pet destroys your Beatles album, the reason you love them is still there, which is why you still love them. And, perhaps, you'll end up loving your child/pet even more because they'll opened your eyes to how talentless the Beatles are.

Let's imagine for a second if unconditional love really were unconditional. Wouldn't that just mean "I love you, but have no reason for why I love you"? They'd say, "I love you," you'd ask, "why?" and they'd respond, "I dunno, I just do. It has nothing to do with your genetic relationship to me, nor your personality, nor your physique, or anything. You could become a serial rapist and I'd still love you because my love for you isn't based on anything about you."

How... meaningful?

I recognize that "unconditional love" doesn't actually mean "love that is unconditional"; it means something closer to "love which is based on the fundamental characteristics of someone." That way, when that person breaks your vintage Beatles record, their fundamental characteristics stay the same.

Anyway, my point is this, and I'll emphasize it with distractingly blue font: Unconditional love looks just like love based on one's fundamental characteristics. Both produce the "I love you unconditionally effect"; the receiver of said love could be in jail and you'd still love them.

Love is not inherently valuable. Love is an emotion. What is valuable, though, is what causes you to love. People ask "do you love me?" all the time, but wouldn't the answer be so much more meaningful if the question was, instead, "Why do you love me?"

The ultimate question to ask, though, would be: "Are relationships being damaged because our culture has bastardized and romanticized the word 'love' so much that it's become incredibly vague, nonsensical, and therefore pragmatically useless?" But alas, I've already mentioned that before.

One of the greatest evils

2010-06-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that, if any passerby were to stumble across my blog, he/she would undoubtedly view me as a harsh, unforgiving anti-theist who spends most of his time attacking religious ideas. And, wouldn't you know it, this is another post that's gonna paint me in that light.

We are not a Christian Nation™, but you'd have to be blind not to see how steeped in Christian thought our culture is. Especially, and lamentably, with regards to sex. We live in a culture where sex is something you'd best keep to yourself, and if you happen to be anything other than strictly and exclusively monogamous &mdash God forbid! &mdash you're branded with a slew of derogatory adjectives. Why do we even have words like "slut," "whore," "pervert," etc. in our vocabulary? Why should one's promiscuity be viewed as anything other than a celebration of the human experience? Why do we apply the label "obscene" to sexual activities and nudity?

I admit, this is me viscerally reacting to my upbringing. Sexual attraction was akin to adultery, God heard my thoughts, and the Commandments were pretty blunt on the issue. All this guaranteed that a significant part of my life was spent in a constant state of guilt.

Now, Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke on this subject a few months back, and I chanced upon it while masochistically skimming through The Ensign. I think I'm being polite when I brand Jeff's talk as a disgusting, backward, puritanical piece of 12^th century anti-humanism.

He writes:

If we stop chopping at the branches of this problem and strike more directly at the root of the tree, not surprisingly we find lust lurking furtively there. Lust is an unsavory word, and it is certainly an unsavory topic for me to address, but there is good reason why in some traditions is it known as the most deadly of the seven deadly sins.

Or you could actually strike the root of the tree and stop talking. Your insistence that love and lust are diametric is the real problem, made worse by the church's ridiculous need to keep reiterating the idea, and exacerbated even further by a Christian-dominated culture which eats this up and asks for more.

Why is lust such a deadly sin? Well, in addition to the completely Spirit-destroying impact it has upon our souls, I think it is a sin because it defiles the highest and holiest relationship God gives us in mortality &mdash the love that a man and a woman have for each other and the desire that couple has to bring children into a family intended to be forever. Someone said once that true love must include the idea of permanence.

And this is what annoys me the most. All the women in the audience probably heard this and thought, "aww, how romantic. True love is all about who I am, not what I look like." All the men in the audience had this same reaction, but only because they've had Matthew 5:28 beaten into them since they were born.

Really, if true love had nothing to do with lust, hetero- and homosexual would be meaningless concepts. And, since males tend to think alike and females tend to think alike, homosexual-esque pairing would likely be the dominant result of lust-free True Love™.

Lust is why we pursue relationships, but this isn't something we should be sad about. Lust is a significant part of the experience of being human. Lust should be celebrated just as much as True Love™ is today.

Anyway, Jeff goes on with an elementary bit of rhetoric, which Mormons in the audience no doubt interpreted to be the eloquence of the Spirit:

True love endures, but lust changes as quickly as it can turn a pornographic page or glance at yet another potential object for gratification walking by, male or female.

Haha, as if we still turn pages when viewing pornography!

True love we are absolutely giddy about... we shout it from the housetops, but lust is characterized by shame and stealth and is almost pathologically clandestine &mdash the later and darker the hour, the better, with a double-bolted door just in case.

Only because you've created an environment where being caught results in being ostracized from the cult-like social group you've manufactured, and only because you've raised us to feel ashamed of lust.

Love makes us instinctively reach out to God and other people. Lust, on the other hand, is anything but godly and celebrates self-indulgence.

I can't think of a better reason to enjoy lust, then. Abandon the man-made, guilt-imposing Magic Man in the Sky and embrace your humanity. So long as it isn't at anyone's expense, self-indulgence should be the greatest of virtues!

I keep having these pleasant daydreams about a world with no religion. The middle east would be a pleasant place to go visit, the WTC would still grace the skyline of New York, no abortion clinic would've ever been bombed, homosexuality would be a quirky oddity with about as much significance as red hair...

Sure, there would still be tragedies, there would still be crime, and there would still be a large oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but we'd nevertheless be one step closer to a future where every human being would look back at their life with no regrets, no guilt, and say, "Hot damn, my life was awesome."

Conspiracy theories

2010-06-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

In my experience, conspiracy theories follow the same form that proofs for God do:

There is a conspiracy here. (assumed)

Small fact X is not easily explained.

Therefore, X is evidence of conspiracy/government cover-up/whatever.

Repeat 2 and 3 until you have a 2-hour documentary.

I say this with a bit of experience, though admittedly only a bit. A friend of mine saw Loose Change, was totally convinced by it, and recommended I see it. I did, the implications disturbed me, and I did what I think all conspiracy proponents should, but lamentably don't, do: I hit up the internet, furiously hearing, reading, and researching as much as I could.

And I learned something painful from that endeavor. Let's take one common 9/11 Truther claim:

After the towers collapsed, people reported molten steel at the base of the ruins. Airplane fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel, so molten steel could only be present if something was used to accelerate the collapse.

The thing is, it takes roughly ten seconds to say something like this, and much, much longer to respond to it. And it always seemed like the people arguing against the conspiracy theories had advanced degrees in engineering, chemistry, and the like, while those arguing for them had the credibility of, say, Glenn Beck.

The difficulty, I quickly discovered, was that my friend could sit there and say "9/11 was an inside job; watch Loose Change," while I had to say, "9/11 wasn't an inside job; let me devote the next 15 years of my life getting a Ph.D. in engineering, physics, and chemistry, and then let me spend another 15 years crafting detailed rebuttals to each claim Loose Change made, even though all those rebuttals are already being made by other people with those credentials I don't yet have."

It was then that I discovered something about myself: I don't care that much. I'm more than willing to spend thirty years of my life to answer questions, but those questions are going to be my questions, not the questions of some ignorant fool whose research took precisely two hours.

I bring this up because my little brother came home on Tuesday all proud that his history teacher had told him the "real story" about the JFK assassination, chock-full of black umbrellas, government cover-ups, and the insistence that no, the president was shot from the front. Didn't you watch the Zapruder film?

I reacted a little harshly, I admit, and I apologized for it. But how could I not react harshly, when my Loose Change experience went so poorly?

Oh well. I've always thought that conspiracy theories were a plague on the analytical part of the mind, while religion was a plague on the emotional one. How pleasant and unfortunate to discover that my little bro has both.

Own up to your opinions!

2010-06-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

There are many habits people have when arguing, and while they're all annoying in their own respective ways, one specifically stands out among the others.

Now, I have to be perfectly honest. It stands out among the others right now because I just witnessed it, again, so my ire is strictly hot-blooded and emotional, unlike the premeditated, cold-blooded ire I reserve for, say, Traditional Marriage &trade proponents.

Anyway, my issue is with self-censoring and censorship in general.

I cannot count the number of times I've been in an argument with people (<cough>Mormons</cough>) who were clearly unaccustomed to arguing (or, maybe, who actually preferred arguing straight from emotions they clearly weren't in control of), who then decided then next day to delete what they wrote.

Whether they're afraid to look foolish, ashamed of what they said, or just afraid someone will see how riled up they were, I'm not sure. But in any of those cases I think the most intellectually respectable thing to do is to own up to what you said. Apologize for it if you feel like you need to. Correct yourself if you need to. Defend yourself if you need to. But don't just delete it and hope no one notices!

I mean, even if you wrote something horrifically insensitive, or racist, or uneducated, or something, isn't it always better to fess up to it, admit it was wrong, and apologize? Don't we all have so much more respect for a person who admits, "yeah, that was a really assholish thing for me to say, I'm so sorry," than for a guy whose conversation looks like this:

Him: (comment removed by author)

You: Holy shit, man! Do you have any idea how obnoxiously misinformed that is?

Him: (comment removed by author)

You: Look, that doesn't excuse it at all! People can be homosexuals and assholes, but that doesn't mean all assholes are homosexuals!

Him: (comment removed by author)

You: Okay, whatever. It's clear I'm getting nowhere with you.

(three days later)

You: WTF, man?! You deleted all your posts?!

I've certainly said things that were colossally ignorant, [EDIT: And I finally wrote about it here] and I've definitely said things about which I've changed my mind. But you'll also notice that you can follow those links and still read what I said. And yes, I really should get around to explaining how we know dark matter exists (there's much, much more to it than just "I can't explain it, therefore Magic Unseeable Matter exists")... but it's gonna take some effort to really explain it, whereas ranting about censorship takes almost no effort at all.

Someday, though. Just not today.

Anyway, what's perhaps the most infuriating is when a Facebook friend writes, "Mormons may have lots of rules, but they seem to be the most tolerant and accepting people," and then, after I hop in to say that yes, they may seem that way, but the Earth seems flat, too, he deletes his entire status along with my comment.

"Oh no, my ignorant preconceived notion might be wrong! I better censor everything and hope the rug is big enough to hold some more stuff under it!"

Free Speech has a catch. We have the right to say whatever we want, but we have the responsibility to own up to what we say. If you don't think your ideas can stand up to public scrutiny, how good can your ideas really be?

Atheism vs. Agnosticism

2010-06-07T13:00:00.003-07:00

I've gotten in many, many arguments in the five years since I've given up religion, and none inspires as much pique in me as the one which goes like this:

"You're just as (dogmatic, irrational, extremist, etc.) as religious people! Atheism is a religion, and the only rational viewpoint is agnosticism!"

What's worse, it's usually the sciencey, born-and-raised-atheist people who say this. "The only characteristic of religion I am familiar with," these people seem to say, "is proselytization. Therefore, this New Atheism is a religion because you're being outspoken about it."

In short, anyone who says that atheism is a religion has no idea what the word "religion" means.

But I don't mean to put you agnostics out there on the defensive. You guys are cool. You recognize an incredibly important thing: You cannot prove something doesn't exist. It's simply not possible, and we all learned this when we were, like, five years old and our sister was like, "Oh yeah! Well, prove that you didn't steal (whatever you were accused of stealing)!" and we all sat there for a moment and thought, "Crap... She's just gonna say 'you hid it somewhere else' every time I try."

And then we go to college, take a Intro to Philosophy class, learn about epistemology and exasperatedly throw our hands in the air, proclaiming that We can't really know anything!

Knowing vs. Believing

There always seems to be a bit of animosity between the Atheists and the Agnostics. The Atheists look at Agnostics like they're a bunch of pansies, too afraid to really admit they don't believe in God, and the Agnostics look at Atheists either like a bunch of overzealous, extremist God-haters or like a bunch of pretentious and presumptuous anti-intellectuals who claim to know something that is unknowable.

But what does it mean to know something?

I have eaten bananas every day for the past few days and haven't yet gotten dangerously or violently ill. In fact, whenever I've eaten bananas, artificial banana flavoring, banana bread, or even banana-flavored Icees, I've never gotten dangerously or violently ill. But, am I really right to say that I know I won't get sick from bananas?

Now, take my ex-CS friend. Whenever he eats bananas (so I'm told), he gets incredibly, horrifically sick. I don't know the extent to which he gets sick, admittedly, since he avoids them (rightly so!) like the plague. Is he right to say that he knows he will get sick if he eats bananas?

You see, it's possible that today I'll get violently sick from eating a banana. It's possible that there were some changes in my biochemistry that now make me extremely allergic to bananas, and I won't know until I eat one today. Likewise, it's possible that my ex-CS friend is no longer allergic to bananas. Maybe, if I slipped a banana into something he was eating, he'd have no reaction whatsoever. Maybe he only gets sick from bananas because he thinks he's allergic to them.

In everyday usage, though, I know I'm not allergic to bananas and he knows he's allergic to them. But, in actuality, we both simply believe we're either allergic or not allergic. We cannot truly know it isn't a fluke every time we test it. Maybe I'm deathly allergic, but get lucky every single time, and maybe my friend is actually totally fine, but every single banana product he's ever eaten has been coincidentally laced with a rare Brazilian virus.

Falsifiability

Here's my point. My claim that I'm not allergic to bananas can be proven wrong; all I have to do is get sick from the next six bananas I eat, each of which came from different sources and were prepared differently. My ex-CS friend's claim that he is allergic to bananas can be proven wrong, too; all he has to do is not get sick from eating a banana.

What about the conspiratorial claim that my friend is not allergic, but being poisoned by a rare Brazilian virus?

Let's imagine that we take a banana and scan it completely for viruses, discovering that there simply aren't any. We feed it to my friend and then, sadly, become legally obligated to pay for his hospital fees because we, in our scientific zeal, made him violently ill. Does this demonstrate that my friend is not being poisoned by a rare Brazilian virus?

No, say the Brazilian Virusites, this just shows that the Brazilian virus knew you were testing for it, and jumped of the banana. Or maybe the Brazilian virus is invisible! Yeah, that's it; the virus is invisible, omniscient, omnipotent, and incapable of being proven wrong!

The point

Both Atheists and Agnostics look at the Brazilian virus and say, "That's ridiculous and incredibly unlikely. A virus that knew it was being tested for, really?"

But here is where Atheists and Agnostics differ:

The Brazilian Virusites are just one of fifty thousand Conspiratorial Virus sects. Another group believes the viruses are actually coming from Venezuela. Yet another believes they come from Argentina. A third sect, even more extreme, thinks the virus (oh what sacrilege) comes from Europe instead of South America. A fourth believes that it's not a virus at all, but a bacterium. All four of these groups persecute each other, go to war with each other, and burn their respective apostates alive.

The Agnostics have a bunch of friends who are Brazilian Virusites, others which are Venezuelan Virusites, and a few that are European Bacterites... and really don't like stepping on people's toes. Plus, say the Agnostics, how can you really know my ex-CS friend's bananas aren't being poisoned by some virus or bacterium or something?

The Atheists have some friends from each of the Conspiratorial Virus sects, too, but are pretty confident that the bananas my ex-CS friend eats aren't poisoned by a virus or by bacteria. There's no way to prove it or test it, the Atheists admit, but it seems much more likely that the virus idea started as a bad guess, and later became omniscient and invisible so it could hide from scientific scrutiny. Plus, if there really were omniscient and invisible viruses specifically poisoning my ex-CS friends bananas, why would you have to indoctrinate children in order to keep the idea alive?

Conclusion

Yes, we cannot truly know there is/are no God(s). Yes, we cannot truly know there is/are no Ethnic Viruses/Bacteria. But you have to admit that both ideas are so profoundly improbable (and, if I might say, kinda stupid, too) that it really isn't that intellectually dishonest to say, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure this God thing isn't legit."

Everything that is attributed to God &mdash Our existence, answered prayer, miracles, (lightning, in the case of the older ones) &mdash can be explained naturally. We know allergies exist, why do we have to postulate a Brazilian virus to explain the same thing? We know natural selection and evolution could have brought about complex, thinking creatures on its own, so why do we have to postulate an all-knowing, all-powerful Magic Man in the Sky to explain the same thing?

... and, if there is/are (a) God(s), why do we have to indoctrinate children to keep the idea alive?

Mormon music

2010-06-04T13:00:00.002-07:00

No, I'm not going to mention the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (Oh wait...) or any of the unfortunately innumerable God-awful Mormon bands. Instead, as I'm now listening through the song Tourniquet, by Evanescence, I'm reminded of two things:

Cartman's Christian band. ("I love you Jesus, all night long")

Evanescence isn't "Sunday music"

I had forgotten all about the obnoxious "only listen to music which is inviting to the Spirit" rule until recently, since no one in my family is really a hardcore musicaholic. On the way home from my recent "physics devotional" visit, however, I got a nice refresher. We were listening to the music on my Return Missionary friend's PSP, I pulled up Katy Perry's Hot n' Cold as a joke, and he swung the volume to zero right when she says "bitch," then promptly changed it back.

I laughed aloud. I feel kinda guilty for it, admittedly, but I'd forgotten just how "in this world; not of this world" Mormons are.

I remember a time a few years back, after getting a copy of E Nomine's album Die Prophezeiung and listening to it religiously, when my mother told me not to listen to it while she was around because it "detracted from the Spirit."

I panicked.

The Holy Ghost is one entity, I thought. Why would E Nomine rush the Spirit away from my Mom, but not me? Had I somehow been without the Spirit this whole time, only believing It was with me? Was my mom, maybe, just overreacting to my new CD? Was the greatest sin ever really so heinous that it made me feel as though I had the Spirit with me, even though I didn't? Wasn't an absence of the Spirit supposed to feel like a great, painful emptiness? AAAAAAAH!!!

I confronted my mom about it, feeling kinda wrong for doing so. My mom, I knew, was deeply spiritual, and wouldn't have confused the absence of the Spirit with a far less emotionally horrific feeling. She backtracked, stating that she found it too edgy for her taste and didn't want to hear it in her house.

This meant, of course, that my pre-Atheist years were spent listening to my music softly in my room, waiting for my mom and siblings to leave me alone in the house so I could listen to it on the good speakers downstairs, all the while wondering whether I was pushing the Spirit away. A Spirit which, disturbingly, seemed to operate differently depending on who It was interacting with.

Another interesting thing I remember about Mormon music also includes my mother, though not nearly as guilt-inducing. She told me that, when she was on her mission, the mission standards were very strict on what music you could listen to as a missionary, but that "classical music was pretty much okay." In retrospect, I find that standard a little amusing, since I could definitely find a piece or two which would spark a bit of zealous revision.

Oh hell, I've always thought most of Beethoven's and Mozart's music was much too lively, emotional, and edgy to be Sunday music. I mean, the only bit of classical music that really works in my mind (ignoring hymns and stuff) is Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.

Wow, it occurs to me that I've got a lot of bad history with Mormons' views on music, and this post is much, much too long already.

Sonata allegro form in pop music

2010-06-02T13:00:00.003-07:00

This post might take a while to load, since I'll be using a bunch of examples!

As you'll recall from my most-viewed post, sonata allegro form is a common form used in classical music. However, as I've been discovering over the past few months, it's not exclusive to classical music at all.

As you'll remember, sonata form basically looks like this:

Exposition - Exposition - Development - Recapitulation

Or, using letters:

(A B C) - (A B C) - (OMG!!) - (A B C ish)

Now, for comparison, here's generally what popular music form looks like:

(verse-chorus) - (verse-chorus) - (solo section) - (chorus-coda)

Now, let's demonstrate with some songs, shall we? Here are the four I'll be using:

Toxicity, by System of a Down

Poker Face, by Lady Gaga

Sing Talk, the epic parody of Ke$ha's "Tik Tok"

Bring Me To Life, by Evanescence

Toxicity, by System of a Down:

0:00 -- Introduction

Exposition:
0:51 -- Verse
1:15 -- Chorus

Exposition:
1:53 -- Verse
2:17 -- Chorus

Development:
2:40 -- Something totally different from the verse and chorus

Recapitulation:
3:04 -- Chorus
3:28 -- Coda, using material from the development (how clever of them!)

Poker Face, by Lady Gaga:

0:13 -- Introduction

Exposition:
0:37 -- Verse
1:09 -- Chorus

Exposition:
1:33 -- Verse
2:06 -- Chorus

Development:
2:30 -- Something totally different from the verse and chorus

Recapitulation:
2:54 -- Chorus
3:26 -- Coda, which is kinda the same thing she used as a bridge between the verse and chorus

Sing Talk, courtesy of College Humor:

(No Introduction)

Exposition:
0:09 -- Verse
0:41 -- Chorus

Exposition:
0:57 -- Verse
1:30 -- Chorus

Development:
1:46 -- Something totally different from the verse and chorus.

Recapitulation:
2:05 -- Chorus

Bring Me To Life, by Evanescence:

0:07 -- Introduction

Exposition:
0:18 -- Verse
1:04 -- Chorus

Exposition:
1:27 -- Verse
1:50 -- Chorus

Development:
2:11 -- Something totally different from the verse and chorus

Recapitulation:
3:10 -- Chorus
3:47 -- Coda, using the piano from the introduction

Also, now that I'm all done, I'd like to mention that I hate Vevo on Youtube so much.

Bones and feathers

2010-05-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, PZ Myers responded to a review of Marilynne Robinson's Absence of the Mind. Evidently she's won several awards for her other books, though I've never heard of her before.

But I really want to read her book now. She's a heavily Christian writer who, as PZ puts it, is "going to give the godless a piece of her mind." She bewails the godless' tendency to be condescending toward religion, stating:

The characterization of religion by those who dismiss it tends to reduce it to a matter of bones and feathers and wishful thinking, a matter of rituals and social bonding and false etiologies and the fear of death, and this makes its persistence very annoying to them.

I love that assessment. I love how beautifully condescending, artful, and admirably accurate that quote is. I love the "bones and feathers" bit, especially. And I don't want to say anymore, lest I detract from the absolute beauty of this quote.

Mormons are a cult

2010-05-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

A while back (March 19^th to be specific), a friend of mine on facebook posted this as her status:

(Name) finds it funny that i can be having a totally amazing conversation with someone and we'd be getting along great...until they find out that im mormon. they told me im scary because of my opinions. i ask what opinions. they say that they're drawing a blank and have to go. im liek o.0

She has this amusing habit of making statuses that spark controversy (especially when she makes "Obama's a socialist" posts that she doesn't understand), and since she's friends with a bunch of Mormons as well as a bunch of non-mormons, you can imagine how pretty the comments got.

I offered my explanation, that after working to ban gay marriage in California Mormons don't have the best reputation, and rightly so. Of course, my comment was lost in a sea of "Go, (name), Go! Fight the good fight! Don't listen to those misguided fools!" Or, actually:

don't worry about what others say. stand tall with your head held high and know that you stand for truth. we stand behind the greatest person with an opinion and that is the SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST.

The conversation really changed directions, however, when a friend of mine said this:

Actually, I think most people are leery of Mormonism because of the culty, secret society aspect. I think the cultural aversion to secret societies is good.

To which the "stand for truth" lady said:

show me where we are a cult and a secret society? prove before you write something that could slander an innocent people.

I'd love to!

I bring this up because Steven Novella, host of the podcast you should all be following, wrote an article which attempted to define the word "cult", and he came up with these five points:

Totalitarian control – Cults attempt to have total control over their members, which includes absolute dogmatic authority of their leader, who tends to be charismatic.

Secrecy – Cults tend not to be up front with their entire belief system. The core beliefs are revealed slowly, as members “progress” deeper into the folds of the cult.

Separation – Cults use many methods to separate their members from their former social network and society at large. These methods include instilling an “us vs them” or in-group vs out-group mentality, using jargon that identifies members but is unintelligible to non-members, and physical isolation. Cults also try to convince members that their family and friends are corrupt or impure and interaction with them is destructive. They also require large donations, encouraging financial dependence on the cult.

Mind Control – Cults are very manipulative. They use a variety of techniques to indoctrinate or “brainwash” their members. These include things like “love bombing” – overwhelming recruits with positive physical and social attention – using guilt, hypnosis, loss of privacy, deprivation, verbal abuse, and other techniques.

Self-contained Belief System – The cult belief system tends to be absolute – the leader has perfect authority and exclusive knowledge, they are never to be questioned, everyone who disagrees with the leader is evil and to be opposed, and members who leave the group are always wrong and degenerate. Meanwhile the doctrine tends to be confusing and only slowly revealed when members are “ready.”

Now, I feel like this list pretty much screams, "I'm describing Mormonism!", but I'll make my case anyway in the event a Mormon stumbles upon this post.

Regarding the first point, what would happen if you said, "I think the Prophet is wrong"?

Regarding the second point, I point towards the Temple, which non-members and members who don't have Temple Recommends can't enter. Having (thankfully) never been married and sealed in the Temple, I can't say whether there are specific points of doctrine you learn there, which you can't share with others. (except, of course, the infamous secret handshakes)

Regarding the third point, think back to every "stay away from the evils of the world," "don't watch R-rated movies," "be wary of non-Mormon friends," lesson you ever heard. Think back to every time you heard the phrase "we see great evil in the world today." Think back to every time you've been told that the LDS church is the "safe refuge" against the horrifying, despicable, evil world.

Then, think about whether you should read "anti-Mormon literature." Is it any more obvious that the LDS church is trying to prevent you from hearing other points of view?

Regarding the fourth point, I point to Primary. Regarding guilt, I point to masturbation, coffee, R-rated movies, etc. You NEED the church in order to be forgiven for these, and the church makes you feel like you need to be forgiven for them.

Regarding the fifth point, what would happen if you said, "I think the Prophet is wrong"? What would happen if you were caught reading "anti-Mormon literature"? Do you think ex-Mormon atheists, instead of being "servants of Satan," might have a legitimate viewpoint? If you had a strong negative reaction to any of these questions, you prove my point.

What I said then

In response to "stand for truth" lady's challenge back in March to prove Mormons were a cult, I said this:

I love facebook discussions, because they force me to be succinct in my explanations. Anyway, here's why the "Mormons are culty, secret societies" view has some validity:

Generally, when people say something is like a cult or secret society, they mean it has (1) strict rules, (2) certain customs or rituals that outsiders can't perform or view, (3) secret signs and things that outsiders can't know about, (4) brainwashes or indoctrinates its members, (5) controls information its members can see, etc., to name a few.

So, let's start with those:

(1). No going to the temple for you if you drink coffee, alcohol, or iced tea; masturbate, view pornography, or have sex outside of marriage; or openly and willingly admit to watching R-rated movies, smoking cigarettes, or anything else that is viewed as "evil".

(2). I point to the temple. You have to be a part of the group, follow all the rules, etc., in order to perform or view many rituals.

(3). The handshakes and the "magic underwear". If you're married, you know what I'm talking about.

(4). Primary. Little kids have an unwavering trust in what adults and their parents tell them, and before they have any capacity for skepticism, they're told all kinds of things -- "There is a god", "Follow the Prophet", "Jesus wants you for a sunbeam", etc. -- and just accept them as fact. Google "indoctrination".

(5) Ever heard of the Mountain Meadows Massacre? the View of the Hebrews? the Adam-God theory? the many wives of Joseph Smith?

I was then accused of being "an extreme anti-Mormon" and of "having too much time on my hands," to which I explained what an ad hominem fallacy was. Then I was told that no one was arguing with me because it was a "stupid thing to argue about" and that, if they were to actually argue with me, they'd "pwn me straight up." They didn't want to prove it.

Anyway, in the end they all avoided the topic, ran away, or called me a bunch of names (which, by the way, only demonstrates Steven Novella's third point).

Conclusion?

The LDS church is a cult, their members can't argue, and you can't reason a person out of a belief they weren't reasoned into.

The Ventura Atheists

2010-05-26T13:00:00.001-07:00

Every now and then, people call the Atheist Experience and ask something like, "Any advice for a person who wants to meet other atheists in his/her area?" and the response is always, "Hit up Google to see if there isn't already one, then place an ad in the newspaper or something." I'd only idly considered it; after all, there'd only be a bunch of angry old guys there, right?

Then I saw this talk that was posted over at Whore of All the Earth and suddenly realized something oddly profound: my dad, whose social life I've always admired and envied, got that way by sticking his neck out, not by passively accumulating friends over the years. So look at me, at the fringes of the massive human web of social connections, with only myself to blame! I didn't have to wait for a vast social life; I had to claim it.

So I googled "Atheists in Ventura" and found this. It turns out Atheists United has a little group out here in Ventura, just a little ways from my house.

... and it was awesome. We watched the interview with Richard Dawkins (for whom I'd definitely fake being gay) in The Atheism Tapes, followed by a discussion wherein I felt (figuratively) like God.

You see, I discovered something about myself: I know my shit when it comes to Atheism. I know the arguments, I know the current events, I know the celebrities. Check out my blogroll and you'll see how connected I am.

I was sitting in a room admittedly full of old guys (though there were two other people who looked near my age) who not only listened to what I said, but were interested in what I said. People came up to me afterward and said they appreciated the comments I made. Five years of passionate study have made me the Atheist God!

I'll confess, I'm writing this not twenty minutes after leaving, so I'm still on a hardcore emotional high. I haven't felt so accepted since, well, since I was Mormon.

It also turns out that yesterday (Sunday, May 23^rd) there were meetings by both the Center for Inquiry and Atheists United, which two of the people there mentioned, and apparently Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author if Infidel, was speaking.

So, the moral of the story is this: I've got to get off my ass and enter the Athiest community in real life, instead of just through blogs and podcasts.

Oh, those cute little scientists and their hubris

2010-05-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

I love blogs. I especially love blogs by Ph.D.'s in fields I'm interested in, and I love it even more when I hear about something interesting and then discover that they're all writing about it, too. Take, for example, our latest biological feat.

The short version goes something like this. The scientists, using a computer, made a copy of one bacterium's (Mycoplasma mycoides) DNA from scratch and stuck it into another bacterium (Mycoplasma capricolum). M. capricolum then sprung into action acting exactly like (and looking just like) M. mycoides. Behold! Life really is a startlingly beautiful and complex chemistry experiment!

These are two colonies of the synthetic M. mycoides, blurring the line between natural and unnatural life just like Dolly did:

Steven Novella blogged about this over at Neurologica, PZ Myers gave a rundown over at Pharyngula, and Jen McCreight (of Boobquake fame) wrote about it over at BlagHag. I had heard about it first on the forums on Nation States, and immediately posted it to facebook, thinking, "So cool! We're one step closer to creating bacteria that do what we want them to!"

Evidently the science-oriented blogosphere thought it was way more awesome than the facebookosphere did, which waved it off with cool indifference. The news wasn't welcomed exclusively by nerdgasms or indifference, however; the Catholic Church welcomed it with disdain, predictably counseling us against "playing God":

"Pretending to be God and parroting his power of creation is an enormous risk that can plunge men into a barbarity," Mogavero told newspaper La Stampa in an interview. Scientists "should never forget that there is only one creator: God."

And Bishop Domenico Mogavero should never forget that he's failed to demonstrate both of those claims. How does he know tinkering with life will plunge us into barbarity? How does he know there is only one creator: God? Pretty soon, it seems, he'll have to amend that statement to, "[scientists] should never forget there are only two creators: God and biologists."

And hey, we can prove biologists exist!

(EDIT: Here's the TED Talk about the whole thing

Smurfs in space

2010-05-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

There are only a few films I actually see in theatres. Only a few of those films actually interest me enough that I want to see it again. And the number of films I've seen several times and still wanted to own are smaller still.

This may not be the only film I've seen in theatres twice, and this may not be the only film I've pulled off the shelf and watched of my own volition, but I know one thing for certain:

Avatar is the only film I've ever seen in theatres, wanted to and consequently saw in theatres a second time, and then got on DVD and watched seven more times (as of today). I can watch this movie over and over and over (and have been!) without finding internal inconsistencies, and still get pulled into the lush and imaginative world James Cameron created.

But why do I love this movie so?

I've never been content just saying "I like it because I like it," like my dad can do. I took three and a half years worth of music classes so I could say why I liked certain pieces of music, so why should my taste in movies be immune to that scrutiny?

So I'm going to list all my reasons for why I love this movie so much, but I'd like to say something right out of the gate: I don't care that Avatar is basically Dances With Wolves or Pocahontas in space. If you can't stand the idea of reusing plots, movies are definitely not for you. Plus, neither Dances With Wolves nor Pocahontas had tall, badass blue people.

Reason 1: Space Physics

In the beginning, we see Jake floating around in zero gravity, two beads of water bonding together and spinning, and, most importantly, the shuttle leaving the ISV Venture Star strongly resembling the spacewalk shows I'd watch over and over again as a kid.

While X-wings pulling fast turns like jet fighters in space look really cool, they just don't capture the same majestic beauty that spaceflight documentaries do.

Reason 2: There's a shit-ton of green and blue

I love the cool, tranquil effect that green and blue have as colors. They aren't as frenetic or garish as red or yellow, nor sterile or ominous as white and black.

The entire movie is filled with lush, green forests and blue people. It's nothing but green and blue, with a healthy mix of the grays and military-greens that characterize the sci-fi genre. It's an absolute feast for the eyes.

Reason 3: The Na'vi are hot

... and my eyes aren't just feasting on the colors. Let's face it. Blue people have always been hot, and the Na'vi are no exception. They also typically aren't wearing much, which only adds to the awesomeness.

Reason 4: There aren't any inconsistencies

James Cameron is an obnoxious perfectionist. When they say the Tree of Souls interferes with the ships systems, you can see their HUDs being messed up in every scene. There are no instances where, for a brief second, you can see some instruments working normally in the background under someone's arm or something.

Rather than list every inconsistency I've thought to check for, I'll just issue a challenge: I dare you to find one.

Reason 5: All the little details

Na'vi have four fingers and four toes. Humans' avatars have five of each. Grace Augustine's avatar, which is much older than Jake's, has a human-looking nose, while the newer avatars have the squarish Na'vi noses.

But take a look at that picture of Neytiri's warpaint. See that white hand-print? It has five fingers. Isn't that cute?

Aaaanyway

The space physics, all the green and blue, and the Na'vi's hotness tickle my inner twelve-year-old, while the last two prevent my outer twenty-two-year-old from spoiling it. Avatar is a movie that both my little kid self and my intellectual badass self can enjoy at the same time.

People think I'm exaggerating when I say it's the best movie ever. Maybe I'm just in the heat of the moment, they think, and I'll get over it after a while. And maybe they're right.

... just let me watch it a few dozen more times first.

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!

2010-05-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

As much as I whine about our shortcomings here in America, I'll happily join Evelyn Beatrice Hall in saying, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

As a nihilistic Atheist living in a Mormon household, I'm very accustomed to hearing things and putting up with things that are infuriating to me, but the most ethical approach to disagreements is discussion and argument, not censorship. Censorship stifles this beautiful (and inevitable) thing called "progress"; bad ideas can only be naturally selected from the meme pool if all ideas are given voice.

As a nihilistic Atheist, I'm also very accustomed to being on the other side of the "offending remarks" line. I certainly say things that people disapprove of, and I'm pretty damned thankful that I haven't yet been executed.

And this is why I wholeheartedly support Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!

Muslim extremists have been assaulting cartoonists ever since the infamous Denmark incident four and a half years ago, and even threatened Matt Stone and Trey Parker for planning to show Mohammed in an episode of South Park (which I lamentably still haven't been able to see), and it's important that we do our part to stand up to petty, 12^th century terrorism.

So I humbly add my drawing of Mohammed to the tens of thousands that are now on the intartubez:

Also, for your reading pleasure, Pharyngula, Atheist Propaganda, and The Atheist Experience blog have excellent posts about today as well.

Free speech isn't just an important American concept; it's an important human concept &mdash just like racial, sexual-orientational, and gender equality &mdash and I'll gladly blaspheme to make that point.

God, Man, and the Universe

2010-05-19T13:00:00.001-07:00

I just got back from, as my dad referred to it, a "Physics devotional" in Newbury Park titled "God, Man, and the Universe." I might have mentioned it before.

It was tamer and worse than I'd feared it would be, at the same time. The guy had a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, and his lecture seemed like a hurried, rushed, highly-condensed summary of a basic Astronomy class with the occasional "worlds without number" verse tossed in.

It was tamer than I'd feared because he did it wrong. His talk showed us the Earth, the Moon, Mars, etc., gradually bringing us out into the Milky Way galaxy, outside it, and out into the vastness of the universe, much like I did here. He ended with the Hubble Deep Field photo, explaining that every dot of light was a galaxy, which got a few people in the audience to (rightly) say, "I feel so small."

His talk aspired to make us feel so small and insignificant. His talk aspired to thrust its audience into the cold, indifferent face of nihilism. His talk aspired to do quite a bit, but he riled his audience up so poorly that even I, the Nephite apostate, wanted more.

So, as we stared at the Hubble Deep Field photo, with its profound significance flying of the heads of many in the audience, the point of his talk materialized above it: "God knows your name..."

It would've been a damn awesome talk, if he'd done it right. I wanted to go up there and redo it for him. "Look, sir," I'd have said, "you need to really work them up, so they respect the message you're trying to convey." Even as a nihilistic atheist, I recognize that the idea of a Creator whose handiwork includes the totality of the universe, yet still knows and loves each person individually, even knowing them by name, is pretty powerful.

Powerful, yes. Accurate? No.

It was like he took my favorite Monet painting and slapped a McDonald's logo on it, but slightly askew. If you're going to tack your God-product on something which elicits that much wonder, at least DO IT RIGHT!

It was worse than I'd feared for a few reasons. First, it turned out to actually be an Institute graduation, so I had to sit through that whole procession, along with a thoroughly uninteresting "Institute is good" talk. Second, I had to listen to John Bytheway the whole way there.

There was a time, long ago, when I'd listen to John Bytheway and find him uplifting and thought-provoking. But now, as I heard him say that "Lamanite isn't as much about lineage as it is about belief" and "the biggest enemy the Nephites had was apostate Nephites" while sitting in a car with three other people all nodding their heads in agreement, there was only one thought running through my mind:

"Holy SHIT! These guys really are a cult!"

I used to adore this guy. I used to respect him for being wise and insightful. But no! He's an absolute monster, making people all over the country feel guilty for being attracted to people, and encouraging them to lock themselves under a rock and hide from all that evil "knowledge" out there. Hide from the world! The world is evil! Only listen to church leaders and no one else!

CULT, CULT, CULT!!

... and I was part of it. Words can not describe how grateful I am to be free.

God is math, apparently

2010-05-17T13:00:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty sure I'm my Geometry teacher's favorite student. Lately he's been coming to class with special little problems just for me and asking how I've been faring with the previous ones he's given me. I've been goading him on, admittedly, since his little logic puzzles distract me from how far away from the University I am.

If you hate math, feel free to skip to the next red text.

For example, his most recent one goes like this: If you were to wrap a wire around a stress ball, and then add one meter of extra wire to it, the distance between the stress ball and the wire would be, say, X.

Lets say you did the same with the Earth. There's a wire running all the way around it and you add 1 meter more to it. There will now be an infinitesimal height between the wire and the Earth, called Y.

Now, the circumference of the stress ball's wire will be the stress ball's circumference + 1 meter, which should equal 2π("stress ball radius" + X), or:

2π("stress ball radius" + X) = 2π("stress ball radius") + 1 meter

If we distribute the equation and divide both sides by 2(pi)("stress ball radius"), we get:

2πX = 1 meter

which comes out to:

X = 1/(2π) meters, or roughly 16 centimeters

Let's do it for the Earth, shall we? The method to figure out Y is very similar:

2π("Earth's radius" + Y) = 2π("Earth's radius") + 1 meter

If we distribute the equation and divide both sides by 2π("Earth's radius"), we get:

2πY = 1 meter

which comes out to:

Y = 1/(2π) meters, or roughly 16 centimeters

Therefore, X = Y and my mind has been sufficiently blown.

Okay, you mathophobes can come back now.

My teacher then waxes on and on about "the beauty and power of math," calling it the "language of God" and even suggesting that math supposedly proves Him. God is math.

"Take a look at the Pythagorean theorem!" says my teacher. "It's just a² + b² = c²! Not, like, 1/[(6ab - 2c)(a^-1.83 - log₁₄26)] = c²! What beautiful simplicity in math!"

My rebuttals to the "God is math" idea are fairly simple. Simple, pretty numbers only prove that humans like simple, pretty numbers. After all, when we get ugly numbers like π or e, we just invent a simple letter as a substitute. The area of a sphere, (4/3)(πr³), only looks pretty because we substituted the freakishly not-pretty 3.14159265 for π.

The Pythagorean theorem may be a² + b² = c², but it only looks pretty because Pythagoras simplified the more gruesome (and more accurate) version:

√ (a+b)² - 2ab = c

I would love to dramatically end this post with "Therefore, God is not math!", but that wouldn't quite be accurate; all I've demonstrated is that the beauty and simplicity of mathematical formulas are due to us, not God.

(Also, I'm using basic geometry which we all learned in high school, which warrants about as much grandeur as having ten fingers)

... but just wait 'til I'm in calculus next semester!

According to my calculation...

2010-05-14T13:00:00.000-07:00

The Colbert Report

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"Some clinics are paying over $700 per vile of American sperm. So, according to my calculation, an average high school student would be pulling down an extra $80K a week." ~Stephen Colbert

Let's see just how accurate that calculation is, shall we?

21 to 23 months after puberty (read: "by the time guys are in high school"), their ejaculate is just like a normal adult's, which averages about 3.2 ml per ejaculation. Since sperm banks keep semen in ampules which hold about 0.4 to 1.0 ml at a time, the average high school student could fill about 3.2 to 8 ampules in one go, which, at $700 an ampule, is $2,240 to $5,600.

I could rub one off ten times and, at the very least, pay for a year at UC Berkeley.

So! Our buddy Stephen has already told us that these high school students will make $80,000 a week, which means that:

80,000 = (2,240 to 5,600)(number of times you take matters into your own hands)

Divide both sides by (2,240 to 5,600), and we get:

(number of times) = 80,000 / (2,240 to 5,600) = about 14 to 36

Assuming the average high school student is awake from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., he would have about 15 hours every day to commit to this endeavor, for a grand total of 105 hours a week. Which means, depending on whether the ampule holds 0.4 or 1.0 ml, the average high school student would have to masturbate anywhere from twice to five times a day, or every 3 to 7.5 hours.

If I hadn't been raised in an anti-sex environment, I easily could've managed once every 3 hours, though that might be a little much.

But damn, I thought Stephen was just pulling that number out of thin air. And if ampules hold 0.4 ml, his estimation of $80,000 a week is actually an understatement!

Don't touch it! It's beautiful the way it is!

2010-05-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

This Sunday, my sister and I are going to an LDS talk/lecture thing over in Newbury Park, by a Mormon physicist (I know, I didn't think it was possible, either) about "The universe and Man's place in it."

As an astronomy/physics/chemistry/whatever major, I imagine this talk will be quite painful to listen to. The immensity of the universe inspires such wonder and emotion in me, and it's no doubt going to rub me the same way "mild barley drinks" rubs Mormons. It's like walking through an art exhibition of original Monet paintings and seeing this:

GTFO my favorite Monet painting, McDonald's!!!

Why do religions feel the need to do this? "Oh, here's something that inspires great emotion," they say. "Let's unceremoniously tack our name on it!"

Music is moving and engaging, therefore God did it. Art is affecting and thought-provoking, therefore God did it. Talented athletes are inspiring, therefore God made them who they are. Nature is profound and amazing, therefore God made it. The universe is beautiful and awe-inspiring, therefore God did it. The realization that all natural phenomena stem from four fundamental laws and the knowledge that we have evolved brains complex enough to comprehend them is enough to grant life and our existence incredible and profound meaning... therefore God did it.

GTFO my beautiful cosmos, God!!!

Pale Blue Dot

2010-04-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

We become who we admire. That being said, twenty years from now I will be a combination of Richard Dawkins, Steven Novella, and Carl Sagan.

There is, of course, a commonality between all three of them. They are champions of science, logic, and reasoning. They are profoundly scientifically literate. And, though they are specialists in different fields &mdash Evolutionary biology, Neuroscience, and Astrophysics respectively &mdash they all share a common sense of wonder for the natural world. "Mundane" may be etymologically related to the Earth, says Dawkins, but the Earth is anything but mundane.

There are several things which have, over the past few years, opened my eyes to the magicless beauty all around us. The first of which being the last chapter in Dawkins' The God Delusion, the second of which being my first sighting of Jupiter through my little 2-inch telescope, and the third of which being this:

Paradoxical emotional conflicts

2010-04-19T17:17:00.001-07:00

One of the more frustrating experiences, I've found, is to hold both a deep respect and a deep hatred for someone or something, at the same time.

For example, I absolutely love Ender's Game, yet profoundly loathe its homophobic, anti-science author, Orson Scott Card. Now, when I read Ender's Game, I still enjoy it immensely, yet feel kinda guilty for doing so. I've purchased two separate copies of the book, which means that I have indirectly given money to a backward, traditionalist, anti-gay monster.

... but, as frustrating as it is, that backward, traditionalist, anti-gay monster wrote a pretty damn awesome book.

Now, my real reason for this post is to bash System of a Down, not OSC, although admittedly for the same reasons. Behold, SoaD's song that elicits my ire:

The essence of the lyrics are as follows:

Making two possibilities a reality,
Predicting the future of things we all know,
Fighting off the diseased programming
Of centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries.

Science fails to recognize the single most
Potent element of human existence
letting the reigns go to the unfolding
Is faith, faith, faith, faith.

Science has failed our world
Science has failed our Mother Earth.

... and then there's the "Spirit moves through all things" part.

Anyway, I recently discovered SoaD (my friends are all major fans, and have been nagging me to listen to them for a while) and I can't get enough of them. Especially this song. I LOVE this song. Especially at 1:27.

I just hate the lyrics. So much. But, rather than go on a huge anti-anti-science rant, I'm going to succinctly ridicule SoaD instead.

"Science has failed our Mother Earth," they say, through a microphone, accompanied by electric instruments, into a computer, tweaked and touched-up in sound editing software, burned onto a massive quantity of compact disks, loaded onto trucks and transported all over the world, traveling on an exquisitely unnatural network of roads, to finally be repeated through a computer, CD player, iPod, etc., into the ears of millions of human beings who are all, daily, having their lives enriched and prolonged by the amazing and beautiful achievements of the very science they ridicule.

You bash science, you face my wrath.

I love you guys. I love your music. I've listened to this song, like, twenty times in the last week. But could you guys, you know, not be such ignorant and laughably naive morons next time? Thanks.

Different perspectives

2010-04-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

I remember, several years ago, when I was in my sunday school class and we heard a story that went something like this:

There once was a recent convert to the Church. He had heard all the lessons, felt the spirit, and had been baptized. He wanted to go to the temple, and got that ever-so-pleasant "have you masturbated?" talk that the bishop gives you before you get your temple recommend, and everything went smoothly.

Everything, except one little detail. He drank wine. He wasn't ashamed of it. "Having a glass of wine with dinner has been proven to be healthy!" he rationalizes. "I'm not binging on it or getting wasted or anything. I'm just having a glass every now and then with dinner. It's good for you!"

I remember hearing this story and thinking, "Wow, I wonder why God doesn't allow us to have wine with dinner, if it's been demonstrated to be healthy?" and was kinda disappointed with the story's ending:

The bishop, after a pause of thoughtful contemplation, said, "Okay, you've justified drinking wine to yourself. But what does God think?"

It occurs to me, years later, that I was supposed to be thinking something like, "Aww man, what could I say to convince this new convert to give up drinking alcohol?". Both I and my classmates understood the conflict of the story &mdash that the new convert was disobeying the Word of Wisdom &mdash but we had differing expectations for the resolution. I wanted to know why his rationale was invalid, and they wanted to know how to make the new convert do what he was supposed to.

Interestingly, from a purely Mormon mindset, "'cause God said so" was a perfectly legitimate reason why his rationale was invalid; it didn't matter whether God said so for any particular reason. How admirably foolish I was, thinking there must be logic and reason behind God's actions!

C.A. -- The second annual Easter Extravaganza!

2010-04-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

Yeah yeah, I know, "Easter was eleven days ago! Why are you only writing about it now?" Well, it's my blog, so I'm entitled to procrastinate as much as I want.

Aaaaanyway, last time my ex-CS friend and I went to a big, lavishly wealthy church on Easter, it was a huge hit. So much of a huge hit, in fact, that we brought all the buddies along and made a day of it.

I had done a bit of Googling in November to find a colossal megachurch we could go to for Christmas, and found the Dream Center. Wikipedia boasts that they can house over 35,000 people at one time, and it looked like the kind of gigantic, lavish place that could rival the Crystal Cathedral.

Unfortunately, Google Maps led me to a giant hotel-like structure, where they evidently do much of their community outreach stuff.

We walked around a bit, and eventually had to ask someone where the service was. The guy was all like, "Oh, you must mean the Angelus Temple! Here, it looks like this guy is heading down there, why don't you follow him?

It turned out that it was quite a walk to get there, but hey, a little exercise never hurt anyone.

The Angelus Temple was right next to Echo Park, and it was certainly prettier than the grungy hotel thing Google Maps led us to:

As you walked up, there were professional-looking guys in suits, handing out pamphlets that explained all about the various outreach programs and things that they do, as well as all the youth activities and things. What was crazy as hell, though, was actually walking inside the place.

When you think about a church, you always imagine a kind of somber, contemplative atmosphere. Or, at least, you imagine a bunch of stuffy old people trying to create a somber, contemplative atmosphere... but who are actually creating a profoundly boring and lame atmosphere (which is actually oddly conducive to prayer, though those prayers usually sound something like, "Please God, if you're really out there, make this service stop. For the love of God, make it stop!").

Anyway, the last thing you expect is a live band, amped up so loud that the bass pulses through your body:

(As an aside, the girl on the far right was reeeeeeally hot. You can't tell, of course, because the picture's all blurry [it was from my cell phone, after all], so you'll just have to take my word for it)

They played a few songs, all of which were harmonically predictable and melodically repetitive (you know, so the congregation could catch on quick enough to sing along), with sickening lyrics like, "The greatest day in history, death is beaten / You have rescued me / Sing it out, Jesus is alive."

I hate Christian Rock. I hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand flames.

Anyway, after a few songs they went to this brief interlude where they showed videos of a bunch of Dream Center people talking about how they know Jesus is alive:

... which just made me want to scream at them, "No! That's just wishful thinking! That's just an empty assertion! That's confirmation bias!"

Which leads me to another thing. With the music pulsing through you, the heavy emotional appeals, and the sheer number of people that were there, it scared me. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a mob, being riled up by a charismatic leader. Like no amount of reason would stop them. Like, if they were told to vandalize my car, I'd be completely powerless to stop them.

People. In large numbers. All emotionally riled up. It really made me realize that all the logical arguing in the world wouldn't save me if they turned their eyes toward me. They were a relentless emotional powerhouse of irrationality. A mob of visceral animals, getting their emotional fix for the week.

Anyway, I was afraid I'd just get a free (though painful) hour-long Christian Rock concert when, finally, the pastor guy came out:

Like most sermons, he started with a keyword ("weightless") and reiterated his frustratingly simple concept over and over again, which was this:

Jesus died on the cross for our sins, so that we might be free from that burden. We must take advantage of this, and unload our burdens on Christ, so that we may live free, happy, "weightless" lives.

Now, that idea was all well and good, but my Lutheran friend took the same offense to it that I did. "Doesn't that mean," he asked, "that we can just sin and do whatever the hell we want, and just toss it all on Jesus? Where's the accountability?"

My issue with it was a little different. I felt like he was saying, "Just ignore your problems and pretend like they aren't bothering you. Sweep it all under the rug, put on a dopey, superficial smile, and enjoy life in a very shallow, simplistic way."

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree that we shouldn't be bogged down by our past regrets. I just think we should deal with our regrets, conquer them... not just sweep them under the rug where Jesus is.

Anyway, I'd love to say more, but he seriously spent a half-hour repeating the same thing over and over.

He then brought out this one lady, so she could give her testimony. (Oh wait, "testimony" is a Mormon word. Umm... I'm not sure what the Evangelical equivalent is, but she was basically telling her story, and how she knew the Dream Center was the Truth).

She wasn't the only one to do so, either, and I noticed they all followed the same form, which went something like this:

My life sucked and was awful. (Goes on and on about how horrible his/her life was, creating an emotional tension in the audience). It was awful, and I wanted to change, but I couldn't seem to do it.

Then, I found the Dream Center. (Loud, raucous applause. People do that weird "I'm experiencing something spiritual" hand-raising thing.) Now I'm happy and life is awesome and I am the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and I've got a sexy wife/husband and my kids are all missionaries and have converted a dozen cities each and I know Jesus is real.

Okay, so maybe I embellished it a little, but that's basically how it always goes.

Moving on, they actually had a nifty little camera set up:

which I think really illustrates just how wealthy these guys are.

Also, I found it a little amusing when they collected money from the congregation. They literally passed around buckets, which people tossed cash and checks into. I'm serious! Buckets! They were literally raking in buckets of money!

There were three levels of seating at the Angelus Temple, and I took a picture of just the buckets from the ground floor all lined up. Unfortunately, it was too blurry to really make out the buckets at all, but it was still a bizarre sight to see a dozen buckets lined up at the front of the stage, all filled with cash.

Like, damn! I saw the tuition for a semester at UC Berkeley right in front of my eyes, being handed over to a church whose main contribution to society was to rile people up emotionally.

Anyway, I had to get a picture of all the seating after the service, because the place was really incredibly huge:

Also, I'm sure you could see them in some of the photos, but I had to take better pictures of the stained-glass windows they had, which (kinda) made it look more churchy and less "Shit yeah! Let's get smashed and start moshing in front of the stage!"

Well, that was our trip! We'll see what happens next Easter.

I have arguments in the strangest places, Part III

2010-04-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

Time for the third, and hopefully last, part of my previous post!

Hey, whaddaya know, he responded. Sadly, he responded by ignoring what I said, and repeating himself:

Of COURSE Atheists are arguing that the universe jumped out of its own backside, that is the only end point that a non-spiritual origin of everything comes from - Everything from Nothing. No matter how much one discovers scientifically, that is the one and only end point possible if there was not a divine creation. Anyone who rejects a Divine Origin Embraces Backside Origin as a matter of definition.

As for how one chooses Heads over Tails, aka Divine Origin rather than Backside Origin, the answer is Faith. A choice to BELIEVE without any logical basis. The same way Atheists choose to believe in Backside Origin. There is no other manner by which to choose because there is no logical difference between the two, they are equally unsupportable by any evidence available to man.

Well, kinda anyway. See we of Faith put alot of faith in the divine word, the words of prophets, past miracles and what have you. To us, thats a lot of evidence actually. Its God giving us the answer to the riddle. But the UnGodders don't believe that hokum so for sake of argument I give you the equal lack of evidence choice.

But the fact is that hokum or not, its the only evidence existing on the question. So even with logic, if one begins objectively and does not reject one of the two choices out of hand, then logic would tell you if you have two choices one of which is supported by SOME evidence and the other not at all...

As to your two approaches, the first is flawed for your point of argument in two points. The first is that you imply the evidence suggests anything to support Atheism. But it does not. No where in the vast wide Universe from the smallest particle to the largest galaxy does one find anything indicating there is no God. Secondly, not knowing is not the path to Atheism. Atheists believe they KNOW, so much so that they routinely attack and mock those of faith for believing and assuming an arrogant air of superiority. Thats whats so LOL about Atheism, the irony of their arrogant belief in the logical scientific basis of their beliefs when in fact neither science nor logic support their position at all. "I do not Know" is the land of Agnostics, and these people can never strike an arrogant or attacking posture because they do in fact not know. Faith may be right, God may exist. Or Not. They do not know, and so can not mock one theory or the other. THAT is a scientific logical position. Not a terribly satisfying one, as it offers no answers and no comfort and is rather a bore at parties. But its a safe one, at least till Judgment Day anyway.

So, again, there is no basis for Atheism other than the same basis as there is for any other religion.

Also Faith is not a virtue in and of itself. The comfort it gives to one is. The Ahhh, okay, done with that debate (unless I want to tilt at Atheists) now I can go on with my life in peace and the guidance of the lord feeling that makes those of faith generally happier than anyone else.

You can spout nonsense in one sentence that takes paragraphs to rebut, and this is why arguing with the particularly deluded is so... painful. I'd have to write a freaking book to address every point he makes.

So, in the interest of making my response brief, I instead tried to get us to the root of our disagreement:

Okay, you've lapsed back into the "50/50" thing again. No, it's not a "heads or tails" thing. You, yourself, are aware of this at some level, as you've referenced the "Judgment Day," which isn't inherent to the God postulate.

If we grant that God/Not God is a 50/50 flip (which it isn't), it's another 50/50 flip for the existence of a Judgment Day, and another 50/50 for every single tenet, doctrine, and teaching in your religion. When I pick the Not God side of the coin, I've made only one coinflip and get to stop right there, whereas you have to keep flipping coins into infinity.

Here's a parable, if you will, that hopefully illustrates why the 50/50 "they both require the same amount of faith" idea doesn't work:

'-----

Imagine you wake up one morning to the sound of rain. "Pleasant," you think, "but I don't remember the weather man saying anything about rain." You step outside and see that your house, driveway, and lawn are wet, but everything else on the street is dry, and there are no clouds in the sky.

Your neighbor comes outside. "Oh, I'm so sorry, " he says. "I was having my plumbing fixed and wow, we had no idea it would soak your house."

Now we have two explanations. (1) Your neighbor hired an awful plumber who managed to soak your house. Or...

(2) The Illuminati, in league with the Grays that crashed in Roswell, was testing trans-dimensional weaponry and managed to transport a water tower from one end of the galaxy to the other, instantaneously. In the process, the water and the tower separated, and, as it rematerialized in our arm of the galaxy, the water fell right on to your house. To cover up their testing, they brainwashed your neighbor into thinking he hired a bad plumber.

Both (1) and (2) explain your house being wet and, according to you, it's a 50/50 toss-up which is correct, each requiring faith to believe, and each one equally credible.

'-----

Strong Atheism requires only one thing to be taken on faith: there are no things supernatural.

Deism takes one thing on faith, too: an intelligent agent started the Big Bang, but after that everything operates naturally.

You have already demonstrated that you take far more than just one thing on faith: you believe there is a God. You believe He works miracles. You believe there is a Judgment Day. You believe He created the universe.

Occam's Razor rules out your beliefs, favoring Strong Atheism and Deism.

I'm guessing, however, that this discussion isn't going to go anywhere, given his little "The 'Ahhh, okay, done with that debate... now I can go on with my life in peace and the guidance of the lord' feeling that makes those of faith generally happier than anyone else" shtick. How... tiresome.

I have arguments in the strangest places, Part II

2010-04-03T15:26:00.000-07:00

Time for the second part of my last post!

He responds:

To choose to believe that there is a divine origin to the universe, rather than the universe jumping out of its own backside, does not require a choice of any specific religion, and so yes the choice remains one between two options, divine origin, or spontaneous arse eruption. Logically there is no more reason to believe in the one over the other. It is indeed a fifty fifty proposition.

Once you choose to believe in a divine origin, then there would be an entirely different selection of sect process, if one desired to make it. But that does not alter the 50 50 reality of God or UnGod choice of Faith that must precede it.

As for the notion that since God can not be observed then the choice is not 50 50, if that is your meaning, that misses the point. The origin of everything by its very nature can not be seen. No matter how much science you do to find the next step in the origin of the universe, in the end there will always be that next step of "well where did THAT come from?". And to that question, ultimately science will never have an answer. There is no reality to provide it, no rock in ones hand to gaze upon and say "Eureka, I have found the meaning of life the universe and everything!". Always there would be the question of from whence did the rock come.

Given the non-reality based origin of the question, the inability to capture the essence of God in the form of physical evidence in the material world is hardly a rational hindrance to having faith, because there is also a complete inability to capture the essence of a spontaneously created UnGod based in the form of physical evidence in the material world.

Spin it all you like, in the end there are only two choices and reason and logic do not place the likelihood of one about the other.

The ONLY weapon you can use to make your choice is faith.

As for the choices between sects, yes thats a whole nother ball of wax, with some reason to salt the faith. IMO there is likely to be something of the divine and a good deal of the mundane in many of them, for I suspect God did not come to one and only one tribe at one moment in time but rather revealed his word in stages so that each tribe in turn worthy of the word would be guided to the place, to a state of civilization, that he desired us to attain. But thats a whole nother discussion.

First, you have to toss your coin of Faith and decide on God or UnGod.

Yes, I could've called him on his empty "spontaneous arse eruption" straw man... but I've been thinking I'd try something new and, instead of linking to wikipedia pages about logical fallacies (which I'm sure my opponents never read anyway). I've also avoided linking to Iron Chariots, avoided saying, "Oh please, that's just Pascal's Wager," or "Nice, the First Cause argument."

Anyway, I figured I'd clip his First Cause/Cosmological argument in the bud:

No atheist is arguing that the universe just "[jumped] out of its own backside." It's true that we can follow the causal chain backward 14 billion years and finally arrive at the very start of the Big Bang, at which point asking "well where did THAT come from?" would result in the most important and poignant statement of all:

"I don't know."

We have gathered evidence, conducted test after test, experiment after experiment, and now rest on the theory that the universe expanded from a single point. What came before that point, and why did that point expand as intensely and rapidly as it did?

We don't know. Hopefully we'll be able to change that to: "We don't know... yet."

My question to you, then, is this: How do you get from "I don't know" to "therefore, an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, anthropomorphic man in the sky did it"? Then, from there, how do you get to "that same all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, anthropomorphic man in the sky listens to prayers offered to him, and manipulates the natural world according to the prayers he wishes to respond to"?

We all, at some point, ask "what is the nature of the universe?", and there are two approaches one can take to answer it:

1) I don't know. What can we know? What does the evidence suggest?

2) I don't know. Therefore, I can assert whatever I feel like. Further, I'll assert that believing without evidence -- faith -- is a virtue and should be lauded.

Two days after sending my response, and he hasn't yet answered. True, spring break is over for us college kids, but I've been expecting he'd just ignore me. I'll just naively and optimistically believe he's going through an existential crisis, and that I was the catalyst for his enlightenment.

Yes, it's wishful thinking. But oh, how comforting a lie it is!

I have arguments in the strangest places

2010-04-02T04:11:00.000-07:00

I happen to be addicted, among many other things, to Astro Empires. It's a spreadsheet game that bores most people, since constructing buildings and making ships takes hours, instead of minutes.

Anyway, my point isn't to promote a game, but to write down a curious little argument I'm having. In AE, players can gather together to form guilds, and every player in the guild has that guild's "tag" before their name in brackets. One player, in clear violation of the "no strongly religious-themed names" rule, named himself [Faith] Miracles Happen. His profile blurb read:

Miracles Happen has been blessed by a miracle. A frightening medical condition was detected and confirmed by two tests and then a third showed it getting worse. He prayed for the test to have been a mistake and when he went to talk about surgery the doctor indeed said that it had not gotten worse and in fact there was no problem at all. The power of prayer is real, a miracle happened! Praise the Lord!

I, perhaps a little rashly, sent him a link to Wikipedia about confusing correlation with causation, and was delighted to see that he responded:

(His post are blue, while mine are green)

Odds, my friend. Odds. Odds of so many false tests is low enough I will call it a miracle.

And why not, Quantuum Physics provides a means by which the most extreme miracles can be worked after all. Nothing is impossible in this world.

Other than getting those who do not have faith to understand it, of course. And even thats not entirely possible. They just have to stop being deluded into thinking they know that which it is impossible to know.

Once you grok that, faith becomes possible.

I responded:

Oh wow, you just played the "quantum physics" card... but I'll hazard a response anyway.

If you believe something to be a miracle because it is statistically unlikely, consider this: With almost 7 billion people on the planet, even the most incredibly unlikely occurrences will inevitably occur, perhaps even frequently. Something with one-in-a-million odds (and therefore colossally unlikely) will manifest in almost 7,000 people.

How unlikely does it have to be, before it is a miracle? How do you distinguish this from coincidence? How are you certain this isn't just wishful thinking, confirmation bias, and confusing correlation with causation? How is this not just a misinterpreted case of spontaneous remission?

(Also, I don't think quantum physics means what you think it means.)

But, actually, all of this won't convince you, as you so astutely noted. This all boils down to faith. You believe without evidence. I believe with evidence.

I find it odd that you say those of us without faith are "deluded into thinking they know that which it is impossible to know," when that is, actually, precisely what faith, itself, is. You claim to know what caused your condition to spontaneously remit, claim to know an unprovable God exists, claim to know that this God personally responded to your prayer, and yet assert that it is I, not you, who is claiming to know what is impossible to know.

But alas, you cannot reason people out of a position they have not reasoned themselves into. Have a nice day :)

He responded back:

Yes there are 1 in a million occurences. But this one that coincided precisely with prayer for that precise occurence. Maybe its random chance but there is no more reason to believe that than there is to believe its a miracle.

As to quantuum physics, the uncertainty angle of it is what I refer to. Anything can happen, in essence, its all a matter of probabilities. IMO thats Gods hook for two meaty issues, his means of practicing miracles without unduly upsetting the physical universe he has created, and the means of allowing us free will.

As for the notion that you "believe with evidence", I see you utterly fail to grasp my point. You can NEVER have evidence to believe, nor can you have evidence to disbelieve. Your position of UnFaith is a religious choice made without logical basis every bit as much as a person of faith's choice to believe in his God is. You are, in essence, a member of the church of the UnGod, bowing to him with no logical reason to do so, but merely because you have faith that that is the right answer to the unanswerable question.

Which, of course, is fine. So long as you realize that makes you not one iota smarter or better than the people of faith you go out of the way to mock. You are, just like they, clueless. The only difference is we KNOW that. We just choose to believe anyway because we understand that that is what faith is.

Or to put misquote Rush, even if you choose not to believe in faith, you still have made a choice a choice of faith.

And IMO, you have made a bad one. If the answer to the universe is either God or Not God, logically a 50 50 toss up, why would you choose the random selection that means doom and oblivion? Not alot of pay off in betting against yourself there if you think about it. If I were you, I'd move my chips to the answer that at the very least offers hope, be it a delusion or not.

I decided not to rant about his abuse of quantum mechanics (and, for that matter, his insistence on spelling it with one too many u's), and instead called him on the "50/50" thing:

Okay, I'm going to address your "50/50 toss-up" statement, because doing so will address everything else you've mentioned, too.

Yes, you can simplify the answer to the nature of the universe as being "either God or Not God," but it's certainly not a 50/50 toss-up. There have been thousands and thousands of Gods, and many of them aren't even the same from religion to religion; the Abrahamic God, for instance, is very different when viewed from Islamic, Christian, and Judaic perspectives.

So, assuming the existence of each God was equally probable, the toss-up probabilities wouldn't be 50/50, but 1/(total number of gods). Would you gamble your chips with several thousand (at least) against you?

Now, some Gods are more probable than others. For example, the Gods who are very visible, toss lightning from clouds, live atop Mount Olympus, and drag the sun across the sky in a chariot, are EXTREMELY unlikely, given that they contradict all observable evidence -- We don't see them on top of Mount Olympus, we know what causes lightning, and we know we orbit the sun.

Put simply, Gods that contradict reality are far less probable than those that don't.

Everything that has been attributed to any God or Gods can be explained naturally. Gods are not necessary for life to exist. Gods are not necessary for miracle-like events to occur. Gods are not necessary for our planet or solar system to have been formed. Gods are superfluous when explaining the universe.

The answer to the universe isn't "either God or Not God," but "natural or supernatural." Our senses constantly testify to the existence of the natural world, and nothing beyond empty assertion -- faith -- even suggests things supernatural.

To frame the toss-up odds in a different light, imagine you had a ball of some material in your hand. It felt like lead, looked like lead, was as heavy as lead, and reacted to several tests as though it were lead. I ask, "Is that ball made of lead?" The answer, admittedly, is either Yes or No. (It could be transmuted popcorn from Proxima Centauri, which just so happens to exactly resemble lead)... but the odds certainly aren't 50/50 for "Lead or Not Lead."

He responded, by the way, but I'm going to save it and the next few rebuttals, and post them all in a "I have arguments in the strangest places, Part II" entry.

Validity of beliefs

2010-03-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

One of the groups I'm a member of on Facebook, titled "We can find 1,000,000 people who DO believe in Evolution before June" (which is a response group to "we can find 1,000,000 people who don't believe in Evolution befor June"), posted this comforting little message a few minutes ago:

Alrighty then. I'm gonna tell everyone right now. Quit it with anti religious speak, slurs, etc. There are MANY theists and atheists or agnostics and so on here, and their opinions and beliefs or [sic] no less valid than your own. We're all here because we accept evolution, not because we believe in one god or another, or none at all. So keep it to your self, please and thank you.

[emphasis mine]

No. They. AREN'T!

I face this same sentiment over and over, all the time. "Hey, we can't truly know that God does or doesn't exist, so any opinion on the matter is equally valid." How can this line of reasoning make sense to anyone?

Well, I might have murdered someone when I was in New York thirty-five years ago. I might have burned the corpse and spread the ashes into the ocean, and that someone might have been a homeless bum with no living relatives or friends.

What's this? I wasn't alive thirty-five years ago, you say? I've never been to New York, you say?

That doesn't disprove my claim. Plus, I'm a skilled murderer, so the fact that it doesn't make sense with observable reality only supports my claim that I actually killed that person thirty-five years ago! Also, you can't criticize my claim for being a load of bullshit (or whatever other hateful, intolerant, or ignorant statement you want to make) because, since you can't definitively prove it, my claim just as valid as your paltry rationalistic one.

Now, I understand that religion isn't the point of the group, and there's something to be said about tolerating stupid ideas and playing nice in the sandbox, but DON'T say that atheism is just as valid as theism, because it just isn't. Every aspect of reality can be explained naturally. God is superfluous.

Who started the Big Bang, you ask? I don't know. How can we know? What makes you think that "I don't know, therefore God" is a valid statement?

It reminds me so much of Daniel Dennett's "Belief in belief" idea:

Anyway, fine, Facebook group. I'll play nice in the sandbox, but don't you dare claim theism is just as valid as atheism. Although, I might end up hiding your posts if you keep up the Matrix-esque, "truth is whatever you arbitrarily think it is, since truth obviously isn't based on reality or anything" theme.

Accepting Impermanence

2010-03-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

So, lately, I've been toying with this model of philosophy:

The are a few things I need to say before I start explaining this. First, I think the entire subject of philosophy, while not linear, has an end. Second, I think the point of philosophy is to realize one's context in the universe. Third, if you think that "both free will and determinism are valid viewpoints because they've been arguing it forever," go away. Seriously. The only reason people entertain the idea that we have free will is because, philosophically, those people are five years old.

Which, I suppose, brings me to another thing I've got to say first. Philosophy has a starting point and an ending point, and while our progression from start to end might not take the same path, we're all a certain distance away from finishing philosophy. Our philosophical maturity, if you will.

Now, my actual point

We all start in the red circle and, as we do philosophy, gradually work our way towards the outer circles, until we accept and embrace the idea of nihilism.

If you're in the orange circle &mdash meaning you've already accepted that objects don't last forever (possessions can be stolen, cars can break down, etc.) but haven't yet accepted that your existence isn't permanent &mdash you will view those in the red circle, who haven't yet accepted the impermanence of objects, as immature.

I'd argue that most people are in the orange circle. They're aware that they will die (and they might even be aware that, when they die, that's it), but the push it our of their mind and ignore it. In the worst case, these orange-circled people cling to irrational ideas like an afterlife, or reincarnation, or quantum immortality to deny that death even occurs.

Those who truly understand and accept death are now in the yellow circle, believing that their accomplishments and achievements will, to at least some degree, achieve immortality. Therefore, they think, the best course of action in this life is to achieve as much as possible before they die, because they feel their achievements will give their life substance or meaning.

Our actions are governed by our worldview. If we're still in the red circle, we might horde money and objects, believing our possessions to be what gives us value. If we're in the orange circle, we'll endure that crappy job we have, that awful relationship we're in, etc., believing that death will never come to claim us. We'll believe that the meaning of life is simply in its length, therefore our personal happiness or accomplishments are unnecessary. If we're in the yellow circle, we'll frenetically work to achieve and accomplish, believing that value and meaning come from leaving as big a mark on the planet before you die.

Beyond all that is something even more beautiful.

Nihilism.

"Why don't you just commit suicide?" they ask. "If you think life is meaningless, why not just kill yourself?"

Ahh, spoken like a true member of the orange circle. Imagine you find yourself at Disneyland one day. What should you do? You don't have to ride any of the rides, and you're going to leave at the end of the day anyway. You don't have to buy anything, you don't have to wander around the park, you don't have to ask questions. You can even just leave early if you want.

What would you want to do at Disneyland, in that situation? You'd ride as many rides as possible, unless you thought the line was too long or the ride was too boring. You'd wander around looking at everything there was to see, ride some rides multiple times, buy some lunch or something, maybe even take a nap on one of the benches.

Why? You'll only be leaving afterward anyway. None of the rides are yours. No one at the park will remember you next week. Why not just leave without doing anything?

How would you act right now if you knew all of humanity would be destroyed four hundred years from now? How would you act right now if you knew that there is no meaning or value that comes inherently from existing, accomplishing, or owning?

I know what you'd do. You'd do whatever the fuck you wanted to. Nihilism isn't only the most defensible worldview, but it's also the most liberating one.

Now, most people would read that and think, "What's to stop this maniac from stealing, killing, and raping everything he comes in contact with? Isn't that what humans all instinctively want to do?"

Ahh, spoken like a true member of the orange circle. No, I wouldn't, and here's why: I need people to like me if I want to get what I want. If I want a Ph.D., a widescreen TV, or Mass Effect 2, I'm going to have a hard time getting it if everyone hates me for being a stealing, murdering rapist.

Or, succinctly, in the words of Mordin Solus: "Life is a negotiation. We all want. We all give, to get what we want."

But anyway, my intent was to posit my little picture up there, not to defend nihilism. Plus, defending nihilism is just like defending atheism; there's only, like, ten objections to it &mdash most of which are of the "why not kill yourself?" or "why not just steal and murder?" variety.

Time to get political

2010-03-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

Lookit what I happened to find on the front page as a woke up this morning. Michael Newdow, continuing on his unholy crusade to destroy all that our Great Nation stands for, just got trashed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Reading the comments on the Yahoo News version of this story makes me want to cry, though. It's the same tired arguments over and over again:

Fuck you, you anti-God atheists!

This is a Christian Nation™.

This is a trivial issue, and we shouldn't waste time and money on fixing it.

Don't believe in God? Then GTFO! Don't ruin our country!

Please. This is actually a matter of honesty. Saying we're a nation "under God" is a lie, because I happen to be a voting U.S. citizen, and am in no way monotheistic. And I'm not alone.

There are lots of people who are not monotheistic. The agnostics (read: "Atheists who are too afraid to admit it") aren't under God. The "spiritual" people aren't under God. The pagans aren't under God. The Hindus and Buddhists aren't under God.

They're either "under no God", "under a few Gods", or "under many, many Gods." Plus, when you consider that the Protestant and Catholic Gods are different enough from each other, "under many, many Gods" is actually more appropriate to our Christian-dominated country.

But why stop there? To be the most honest, we'd have to add "one nation, under many, many Gods, and also under many other foolish pseudo-scientific, nonsensical claims, and under paychecks, and under our own hedonism, and under hopes and dreams, and..."

Isn't that what the "under" means, anyway? "That which guides or influences our actions"?

And don't even get me started on the "In God We Trust" thing on our currency.

When I enjoy music...

2010-03-05T12:36:00.000-08:00

... I analyze it to death. This is the music that runs under the credits of Mass Effect 2, the greatest game the world has ever seen.

It's kinda like a chaconne, in that it uses the same harmonic progression over and over and over again. Here's the bass line, which you hear played on its own starting seven seconds in, followed by the basic melody:

That, of course, is just the skeletal framework of the whole thing, and the composer (Jack Wall) does some epic things with that repeating bass line.

If you know anything about music theory at all, what captivates me the most about this whole song is the G in the fourth measure. The melody could easily have been resolved with a D in the bass instead... but Oh, how beautiful it sounds as it's written!

Anyway, enjoy.

Free Agency, The Atonement, and Time Travel

2010-03-04T13:18:00.000-08:00

The Atonement makes no sense. Asserting (like the Mormons do) that we have Free Agency at the same time makes even less sense.

But you already knew that, and that hardly serves as a hook to keep you reading. Here's the actual hook, and I'll put it in red just to make you look straight at it, instead of reading this introduction:

We can't have Free Agency if Jesus died for our sins. Why do I say that? Well, let's look at the history of the world:

Now, let's pretend for a moment that the second coming is soon after we discover the Mass Relays, so that we can safely say my little picture encompasses the entire history of human sinning. Our situation looks like this:

Humans are sinful creatures, and sin at least once in their lifetime.

Jesus took all these sins upon himself in the garden of Gethsemane.

... including the ones that hadn't been committed yet.

So history actually looks like this:

Great Scott!

Now, there was a shit-ton of sinning going on in 2004, but did we really have a choice? Are we really accountable for our sins? How can we have the Agency to choose right from wrong if Jesus took upon himself the sin 1,971 years before we committed it?

If Jesus literally took upon himself the actual sins we committed, then either:

time isn't a causal chain, but instead is like a road we can move back and forth on.

we were predestined to commit those sins, and had no choice in the matter.

If we have Free Agency, then God wouldn't have known the exact sins we would commit. In which case He must have just guesstimated ("I think, by the time the Second Coming rolls around, humans will have committed 10,436,280 major sins") and punished Jesus accordingly. Therefore:

If we hurry up and sin a whole bunch, we could use up our 10,436,280 Freebie Sins and fuck everyone who's born after us. "Haha, suckers! You're stuck with your sins 'cause we used up all the ones Jesus died for!"

Given that Jesus took upon himself the sins of the world, we're either temporally linked to A.C.E. 33 or we have no Free Agency. And don't even get me started on how God's "omniscience" fits into all this.

The lunch thief

2010-02-25T12:20:00.000-08:00

There are very few things which are both demoralizing and inspiring at the same time, and even fewer things which are both to such a degree that I have to write about it. It's hard to reread Mormon lessons, complete with those sickening example stories, and remember that I -- I, of all people -- found them moving enough that they invoked tears.

It's demoralizing to realize how screwed up my brain was then, and yet so inspiring to see how screwed up my brain isn't in comparison.

If you're Mormon, or if you're recently liberated, you'll recognize this one. It's a parable of sorts, by Gordon B. Hinckley, from the November 2001 issue of the Ensign:

Some years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley told "something of a parable" about "a one room school house in the mountains of Virginia where the boys were so rough no teacher had been able to handle them.

"Then one day an inexperienced young teacher applied. He was told that every teacher had received an awful beating, but the teacher accepted the risk. The first day of school the teacher asked the boys to establish their own rules and the penalty for breaking the rules. The class came up with 10 rules, which were written on the blackboard. Then the teacher asked, 'What shall we do with one who breaks the rules?'

"'Beat him across the back ten times without his coat on,' came the response.

"A day or so later, the lunch of a big student, named Tom, was stolen. The thief was located—a little hungry fellow, about ten years old.

"As Little Jim came up to take his licking, he pleaded to keep his coat on. 'Take your coat off,' the teacher said. 'You helped make the rules!'

"The boy took off the coat. He had no shirt and revealed a bony little crippled body. As the teacher hesitated with the rod, Big Tom jumped to his feet and volunteered to take the boy’s licking.

"'Very well, there is a certain law that one can become a substitute for another. Are you all agreed?' the teacher asked.

"After five strokes across Tom’s back, the rod broke. The class was sobbing. Little Jim had reached up and caught Tom with both arms around his neck. 'Tom, I’m sorry that I stole your lunch, but I was awful hungry. Tom, I will love you till I die for taking my licking for me! Yes, I will love you forever!'"

One of the things I've noticed about myself now that I'm an ex-Mormon is that, when I'm stuck reading or hearing a story like this and it gets to the "The class was sobbing" part, I have a strong visceral reaction against it. It's a story aimed exclusively to invoke emotion, which Mormons will in turn interpret as "the spirit." It's a story that, among many others and for seventeen years, controlled me and manipulated me.

I remember getting weepy to this story once. But now I see it as an even more poignant parable about Christianity, Mormonism, and the Atonement.

This is not a story about a strong, capable, and compassionate man sparing a weaker man from punishment. This is a story about what happens when an incompetent organization makes absolute, non-negotiable, back-ass-ward rules. This is a story about a colossal failure at constructing a competent judicial system.

Let's consider the basics of this story:

We begin with general disorder. Anarchy.

The teacher establishes a judicial system wherein every individual must follow the established rules.

An extreme, unjust, and gratuitous punishment is prescribed for breaking the rules.

A kid breaks the rule, therefore is subject to punishment.

Everyone realizes that the judicial system they've created is HORRIFICALLY UNJUST, and that the punishment is far too extreme for the crime.

Instead of fixing the judicial system, which the whole class unanimously agreed was flawed, the teacher instead says, "fuck you, little kid; the status quo is more important than ethics."

Oh, but wait, the teacher actually can change the rules, but, rather than lessen the punishment, he instead decides to add a "other people can take your punishment for you" rule.

The moral of this story for me, as an ex-Mormon, is not that Tom (and by proxy, Jesus) is a hero. Rather, it is that the teacher (and by proxy, God) is a despicable, anti-human monster who doesn't deserve the paycheck and authority the school is giving him.

I can't believe I used to find this story inspirational. Let me rewrite the ending to this disgusting parable, just because I like happy endings:

"The boy took off the coat. He had no shirt and revealed a bony little crippled body. As the teacher hesitated with the rod, Big Tom jumped to his feet and volunteered to take the boy’s licking.

"'Very well, there is a certain law that one can become a substitute for another. Are you all agreed?' the teacher asked.

"'Hell no!' said one student in the back of the room. 'Let's make the punishment a little less severe, or at least vary it depending on how bad the crime is. Also, God damn, Tom; you're a freaking masochist! This kid stole your lunch, and you're just gonna jump up to get beaten, too?'

"The teacher wavered for a moment. 'No,' he said, finally, 'I approve of the ridiculously harsh punishment. I want to beat people with this rod. Detention is for the weak.'

"There was a stunned silence. Even Big Tom, who seemed to have a thing for harsh punishment, gave pause.

"'In fact,' said the student in the back of the room, 'what if we each donated a little of our lunch to help Little Jim out, since he's far too young to get a job?'

"'Yeah,' the class agreed, 'let's help out the less fortunate, create a fair justice system, and beat the shit out of this amoral teacher.'"

Ahhhh... I like that ending better.

EveryStudent Rebuttal, Part III

2010-02-19T13:37:00.000-08:00

(This is the third of six posts about this stupid article that's being advertised to me on Facebook)

Reason 3

The universe operates by uniform laws of nature. Why does it?

"The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics. This astonishment springs from the recognition that the universe doesn't have to behave this way. It is easy to imagine a universe in which conditions change unpredictably from instant to instant, or even a universe in which things pop in and out of existence." ~ Dinesh "Hitler was an Atheist" D'Souza

This is not convincing to an Atheist at all. But, before I rip apart the ridiculous logic of this "reason," I'd like to address D'Souza's quote directly.

The way D'Souza presents it, it almost seems like we humans were just dabbling in this little mind game we invented called Mathematics, and then looked around us and went, "Holy crap! The world operates exactly as it does in math!" This would be amazing, of course, if our little mind game was, say, Monopoly, instead: "Holy crap! Milton-Bradley just invented this game and, as I look around, the universe is following the rulebook, too! If I drop a ball off my roof, it naturally goes clockwise, unless it lands on the 'go to jail' space!"

Please. If the universe were different, mathematics would be different. Math is based on the universe, not the other way around. The universe isn't "obeying rules"; it's simply displaying consistency, and we misleadingly call these consistencies "rules" or "laws."

Now, why are things consistent in the universe, rather than inconsistent? I dunno. You don't know, either. What makes you think a consistent universe is odd? Have you seen any inconsistent universes?

Also, we can imagine a universe "in which conditions change unpredictably from instant to instant, or even a universe in which things pop in and out of existence," but we can also imagine a universe that was invented by a sentient wad of spaghetti, people who can fly and see through walls, and machines that can travel through time. What the hell kind of logic is that?

I can imagine stuff that's different from the way things are now.
???
Therefore, what I imagined is obviously the natural order of things.
Therefore, the way things are now isn't the natural order of things.
Therefore... God?

Ultimately, the entire logic of this "reason" is something like:

I don't know what caused X
Therefore, God caused X

Substitute X for "the Big Bang," "the laws of Physics," "the first cell," etc. In fact, most religious people take it even farther than that, substituting X for mundane things with obvious natural explanations: "my car to start," "this obviously self-induced feeling of contentment," "a church member to coincidentally give me money that I needed, after I'd only been mentioning it every Sunday for a month or two, now," "me to actually get a passing grade on a test," etc.

In fact, this logic can actually be used accurately if we substitute X for "you to be such a colossal moron when it comes to basic critical thinking and logic."