Doom, Gloom, and Potential Kaboom

I don’t know what’s got me down this week – maybe the news, maybe the switch back to Standard time from Daylight Savings over the weekend, or maybe the arrival of cool weather after several unseasonably warm months has finally convinced me that summer might, possibly, be over. Probably some combination of all of the above.

World news certainly isn’t cheerful. That nuclear-armed “democratic” dictatorship the US has supported, in much the same way it used to support Saddam Hussein when he was our puppet, is crumbling. The declaration of martial law there and the imprisonment of dissenting voices are examples of what can go wrong when one single executive is given too much power. They’re also examples of steps Bush can legally take now in America, thanks to a batshit-insane executive branch and a congress packed with lapdog Republicans and invertebrate Democrats.

On the flip side, the folks in Pakistan who are standing up to Musharraf are mostly sympathetic to the fanatical Islamists (like Al Qaeda, the real, Osama Bin Laden one, not the made-up Al Qaeda of news reports from Iraq). So if the military dictatorship fails, it will most likely be replaced by a cruel and corrupt government that enforces oppressive sharia law at nuclear-missile-point.

So, really, it’s a lose-lose situation, exacerbated of course by our little adventures in Afghanistan (where the Taliban are taking back control of one large province after another) and Iraq (do I even have to mention how well that’s going?)

Hey, but at least the economy is good! Well, okay, the dollar is plummeting. Yeah, our national debt is skyrocketing faster than oil prices. It could be that the fall of our currency will make the price of goods from all those third-world countries (you know, the ones that decades of of Free Market Uber Alles economic policy have sent tens of thousands of US jobs to, all in the name of saving 10 cents on a pack of socks at Wal-Mart) more expensive for us.

Not to worry, though, I’m sure our friends in China and Saudi Arabia will take advantage of the exchange rate and bolster our economy by investing billions more in US-owned companies. I hear the auto industry in particular is ripe for tak- er, “investment”.

There are a few uplifting stories in the news this morning, though.

I’ve been following the news about the 8-limbed little girl in India who underwent surgery to have her not-fully-formed conjoined twin removed so she can do normal things like walk and live. Word on the news networks this morning is that, though she’s not out of the woods yet, the surgery was a success. (As an aside, I wonder if births of children like her were the basis for the many-limbed deities of the Hindu religion. Certainly seems likely, and she herself was worshipped by some in her village.)

In a stunning turn of events, Republican Chuck Grassley has launched an investigation into the finances of several prominent televangelists. Go get ’em, Chuck!

As I wrote this, the sun finally peaked out from behind the clouds, and my mood has begun to improve. I think I’ll slip on a jacket and take a short walk amid the fall foliage. The fact that a species evolved that can take such enjoyment from the feel of sunshine and the sound of a breeze blowing through colored leaves is one of those many wonders of the universe that are cheapened when we ascribe them to some imaginary higher power. The fact that such wonders exist in such great numbers, and that most of them will go on existing no matter we hairless apes do to ourselves, is uplifting. I feel better already.

My Annual Halloween Rant

Last year I complained about people who drove their kids around in a suburban neighborhood to trick-or-treat – chauffeur-driven candy gathering. I saw more of it this year, including several trucks and a Mercedes. I’ve also gotten used to kids from other neighborhoods coming into ours, sometimes driven there by parents or in some cases even driving themselves (and if you’re old enough to drive, you’re old enough to buy your own damned candy!)

They’ve gotten more brazen this year. One guy pulled a truck up in front of my house, offloaded his kids to hit a few houses on my street, and when they finally came up to my door, he walked up with them and revealed that he had no reason to be in this neighborhood by actually asking me for instructions on how to get back out to the highway!

Dinesh D’Moron

Dinesh D’Souza is a right-wing pundit who has made a nice living for himself by blaming all the world’s ills on liberalism. Liberals caused 9/11 and the Virginia Tech shootings through their immoral behavior; the ’64 Civil Rights Act should be repealed; that sort of nonsense. This guy wants to be Ann Coulter but doesn’t have the adam’s apple for it.

His latest soon-to-be-bestseller, “What’s So Great About Christianity”, appears at least in part to be a screed against the recent rise in atheists who actually dare to speak out. An excerpt of his book was posted to his blog on the 19th. Predictably, he attacks prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, and predictably, his argument consists of a long-winded rehash of the old formula:

(Stuff I don’t understand) = GOD

Says D’Souza:

The Fallacy of the Enlightenment [as described by philosopher Immanuel Kant] is the glib assumption that human beings can continually find out more and more until eventually there is nothing more to discover. The Enlightenment Fallacy holds that human reason and science can, in principle, unmask the whole of reality. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant showed that this premise is false. In fact, he argued, that human knowledge is constrained not merely by how much reality is out there but also by the limited sensory apparatus of perception we bring to that reality.

Kant and D’Souza go on to say that our meager five senses are inadequate to perceive and measure reality. I agree. It’s nice, therefore, that we’ve found a couple of ways to supplement those senses and overcome some of their natural limitations.

Magnifying glasses, for instance, or thermometers. Ohmmeters, ammeters, and voltmeters, perhaps. Electron microscopes, radio telescopes, and spectrometers. Scales. Radar. Sonar. Digital imaging. Satellites. Space probes. X-ray and MRI. Wide-spectrum cameras, ultra-sensitive audio sensors, lasers, medical tests of all kinds. The list goes on, and so far I’ve only named things I saw on sale in this week’s Home Depot flier.

D’Souza assumes without offering evidence that there are aspects of reality which we can’t possibly perceive (I’m guessing even with a truckload of the above instrumentation) because of our own inherent shortcomings. Yet somehow, though we can’t and will never, ever be able to detect it or make any observations about it at all, we can know it’s there.

How?

We learn from Kant that within the domain of experience, human reason is sovereign, but it is in no way unreasonable to believe things on faith that simply cannot be adjudicated by reason.

Alright, now we get the heart of the matter. D’souza thinks that it is in no way unreasonable to believe things on faith that simply cannot be adjudicated by reason. Read that again. So I could claim with perfect reason and authority that the stars are the magical eggs of a giant cosmic chicken.

I suppose the right’s embrace of this sort of logic goes a long way toward explaining that “Iraq has WMDs”, “the surge is working”, “Bush was elected” business.

Christianity teaches that while reason can point to the existence of this higher domain, this is where reason stops: it cannot on its own investigate or comprehend that domain.

No, Christianity teaches that the universe was made by a magical invisible being who gave his creations free will and then decided to punish them for using it. Christianity teaches that this being sent his son to (temporarily) die to absolve us of guilt for a dietary mistake made by a woman who got her nutritional information from a talking snake. (The snake was punished for its insolence by, uh… being turned into a snake.)

This is the pseudo-deistic fallback position dogmatists of all kinds have to retreat to when confronted with the utter absurdity of their myths. When cornered, they say “you can’t disprove the existence of God because he’s outside of human perception” – forgetting, apparently, the numerous instances in their holy books where their deity of choice talks to, smites, or performs miracles on behalf of mortal men in the part of reality they can actually see.

Which is it? Outside our reality or butting in all the time to do the jealousy/vengeance thing? Please pick one or the other and stick with it.

I know of no atheist who’s ever claimed we know all the mysteries of the universe or that we ever will, but there is absolutely no logical progression of thought I’ve yet found that will carry us from “I don’t know” to “God did it” (or “Allah did it”, or “Vishnu the destroyer did it”, or “Chuck Norris did it”, etc.)

D’Souza will be debating Christopher Hitchens on October 22nd. Hopefully Hitch will show up sober enough to make Dinesh look silly (and not launch into one of his tirades in support of the Iraq war (which have, of late, been turning toward the genocidal.)

Highway to Heathen

I can’t point to a single event or a specific moment in my life where there was a “POOF!” and a cloud of smoke, and suddenly I was a non-believer. My path to atheism was a gradual one guided by a sense of skepticism I picked up very early on from somewhere. My immediate family was a sort of baptist/methodist mix without being too concerned about the denominational differences or showing up for church on a regular basis, but most of the indoctrination I was exposed to was through children’s programs at the fire-and-brimstone Baptist church/school my cousin’s family attended.

My earliest religious memory is of sitting in a room full of kids where an adult explained that we were all going to die unless we accepted Jesus into our hearts. The whole thing seemed kind of fishy to me, but I figured, hey, they’re adults and I’m just a kid – they must know what they’re talking about. We were asked to raise our hands if we hadn’t been “saved”. I wasn’t sure, so I raised my hand just to be safe, and was ushered into a smaller room with another adult who gave me some words to say in prayer. I clasped my hands and repeated what she’d said, and was then told, “Now you will live forever through our lord Jesus Christ.” It seemed just a little too easy to me. I mean, given the size of the reward I was earning, it seemed like there should have been more work involved; I had won the eternal lottery just by saying I wanted a ticket! But I figured, “Hey, they’re adults and I’m just a kid – they must know what they’re talking about.”

A few years later, my cousin and I spent a week during the summer riding our bikes every day to the same church to attend “Bible School”. Bible School consisted of some guy standing in front of us and using cheesy stage magic tricks (“GOD has blessed me with the power to separate these two metal rings!”) to keep us entertained while he railed about the evils of modern society. He told us rock music was evil, a tool of Satan, and I wondered, “How could that be? Music is just a thing, it can’t be good or evil!” But I figured, “Hey, he’s an adult and I’m just a kid – he must know… wait, y’know what? Adult or not, I don’t think this guy’s as smart as he thinks he is!”

(The next day, a boy in a Cub Scout uniform got up in front of the group and announced that he had gone home and smashed all his rock records. I remember thinking, “Moron!”.)

On Christmas eve, 1980, my Mary Baker Eddie Christian Scientist grandmother had a stroke. She and my grandfather believed that illness was not for mere mortals to trifle with; if you’re sick, just say your prayers and God will heal you if that’s His will. If not, well, He works in mysterious ways and He’s decided that it’s your time. But certainly don’t go see a doctor or take medication or vitamins or change your diet, because those actions would be attempts to thwart God’s plan for you. The extended family had to get together and drag my grandmother to a hospital for treatment. While this crisis was underway, I frequently heard my parents say of me, “He doesn’t really understand what’s going on.” But I did. I understood that my grandmother’s life was at risk, and that the religion from which she took so much comfort was in reality a self-destructive force in her life. But I figured, “Hey, she’s an adult and I’m still kind of young – hmm… now I’m convinced there’s a lot less to this “adulthood” thing than people would have me believe!”

When her husband, my grandfather, fought a long, losing battle against cancer in the early 80s, the scenario was much the same. He accepted medical help much later than he should have and only because the rest of the family refused to take no for an answer. I of course have no way of knowing whether he would have lived for significantly longer if his beliefs hadn’t gotten in the way, but I’m convinced that his suffering could have been greatly eased, and sooner than it was.

I think that truly by the time I graduated high school I had become an atheist, only I didn’t realize it. Ironically I still thought of myself as a Christian, even though I was at best cynical about the existence of any sort of divine being. I suppose I was a “just in case” Christian, a living embodiment of Pascal’s Wager. I went through the motions of a Christian wedding ceremony because our families expected nothing less and I knew of no alternative. I wanted to declare to the world my devotion to this woman with whom I was (and remain) deeply in love, and if that declaration had to be wrapped in a thin veneer of God for propriety’s sake, so be it. Likewise my children were baptized (one following a long sermon about what percentage of one’s income should be tithed to the church!), but all through the ceremony I couldn’t help but feel that my time would have been better spent playing with them than watching someone pour water on their heads.

In the last few years, as I mentioned in my last entry, my non-belief has crystallized and become more open and outward. The rise of fundamentalist power and influence has me genuinely frightened, and I can no longer in good conscience go along passively allowing superstition and myth to rule unchallenged.

Heresy 101

I recently joined the Atheist Blogroll and an aggregator called Planet Atheism in hopes of attracting someone outside my immediate family to stop in once in a while to read my occasional blatherings here.

The Blogroll owner asked me to write a brief entry to announce my membership there, which was this post’s intended function. However, as I set out to write it, I realized that though many of my posts here have criticized religious fanaticism or opined on church/state separation, I’ve never actually come out and openly said:

I am an atheist.

I’ve been an atheist for quite some time; to some extent I’ve always had an atheist streak. I’ve lived a life of quiet disbelief, going along with the religious folks around me because I saw no need to stir up trouble. Passively blasphemous.

In recent years, though, I’ve seen murderous fanatics crash planes into towers and blow themselves up in crowded places. I’ve seen theocratic-leaning fundamentalists grabbing more political and financial power than should be available to someone who thinks the end of the world is coming any day now, and that’s a good thing, and we should strive to make it happen sooner. I’ve seen a relative trying to instill her beliefs on my children against my wishes.

I don’t stay so quiet anymore.

So, as I was saying, hello to the members of the Atheist Blogroll, which I’ve just joined.

At least this overlong introduction/announcement has given me two more topics to write about in the near future: Why I am an atheist, and what it means to me to be one.

The Righteous, Behaving Badly

A trio of news items this week lend support to my theory that the folks screaming the loudest about other people’s morals or lack thereof are the ones with closets full of skeletons.. usually skeletons dressed in leather and handcuffs.

Exhibit A, and the mildest of the bunch: James Oddo, New York City Councilman, whose participation in a Norwegian “Daily Show” style fake news interview came rather abruptly to a halt:

Now, to be fair, I couldn’t find many specifics about this guy’s politics. But he’s a Republican, the party of the Christian Right and “family values”. Are threats of physical violence and shouts of “get the fuck out of my office!” acceptable to this crowd? All he had to do was say, “I’m sorry, this interview is over. Please leave.” Better yet, he could have just played along.

Exhibit B: Gary Aldridge, Liberty “University” graduate and cohort of the late and unlamented Jerry Falwell, was found dead in his Alabama home back in June. It’s not his death that lands him on this list, though, it’s the circumstances surrounding it, as revealed by the autopsy report released this week:

The decedent is clothed in a diving wet suit, a face mask which has a single vent for breathing, a rubberized face mask having an opening for the mouth and eyes, a second rubberized suit with suspenders, rubberized male underwear, hands and feet have diving gloves and slippers. There are numerous straps and cords restraining the decedent. There is a leather belt around the midriff. There is a series of ligatures extending from the hands to the feet. The hands are bound behind the back. The feet are tied to the hands. There are nylon ligatures holding these in place with leather straps about the wrists and ankles. There are plastic cords tied about the hands and feet with a single plastic cord extending up to the head and surrounding the lower neck. There is a dildo in the anus covered with a condom.

Apparently God hates gays, nudity, and premarital sex, but I suppose the Bible doesn’t specifically rule out rubber-leather-bondage-asphyxiation fetishes, so those are okay.

(But honestly, if a scuba suit and a rectal dildo or two among consenting adults is what you’re into, then go for it – but please spare me the details. The breathing thing, though? Kind of important. Try to remember that good respiration trumps a good orgasm every time.)

Exhibit C: Now we turn to a man whose hypocrisy is just the filler in a big ol’ casserole of evil: Christian Von Wernich, a Roman Catholic priest who used his position to support a brutal Argentine military dictatorship in the 70s and 80s. Convicted of complicity in 7 murders, 31 torture cases, and 42 abductions, Christian says his efforts were justified because those people were all possessed by the devil.

The Show Must Go 0-60

(Yeah, I know, it’s a pathetic title, but whaddaya want from me? It’s 5:30 in the morning after a sleepless night!)

Wee little Delaware had its very own auto show this past weekend, and I managed to eek out a little time for a walk-through. Susan took a bunch of pictures for me.

Nice Ferrari parked outside:
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Just inside the main entrance were, among other things, a pair of Lotuses (Lotii?)
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Sadly, after having a chance to sit in one, I’ve had to remove the Lotus from the List of Totally Impractical Cars I’d Consider If I Won The Lottery. I’d heard they were cramped and hard to get in and out of, but reading the words in a car magazine doesn’t convey the real sense of needing someone to lower you a rope to pull you out. Your buttocks actually rest fairly far below the door sill once you get in, so you have to do a kind of lifting sideways roll to extract yourself. There’s also a structural member that cuts into your foot space on the left and narrows rightward so your legs are sort of crooked and cramped.

Every car show needs a Viper, of course. The color of this one in the lighting provided made it look oddly understated, which is hard to do with a Viper.
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The modern Corvette is far and away the best performance value in automotive history. Power and handling rivaling that class of vehicle know collectively as the “supercar”, but at a price that doesn’t sound like a mortgage on a pretty nice house. That being said… for some reason I have absolutely no desire to own one.
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In the presence of a Ford GT I’m never sure whether to go with grunting sounds a la Tim Allen or Homer Simpson style drooling noises. I settled for prostrating myself before it and offering to sacrifice a goat to my new master.
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Ah, the classics – in this case, in the form of a Shelby Cobra signed by Carroll Shelby himself.
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This Porsche was notable mainly because it was apparently painted to match that guy’s shirt.
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Among the more mundane new 2008 models on display was this Saturn Sky, which I kind of like even though it’s a Saturn, though I prefer its Pontiac Solstice brethren even though it’s a Pontiac.
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A small show but a good start. I would like to have seen some of the concept cars that have been making the rounds at larger venues. I was disappointed particularly that the Camaro prototype wasn’t there. Sadly, I don’t know whether the show will be able to expand – I’m not aware of a larger venue locally that would lend itself to an indoor car show.

Before we left, the kids climbed into the drivers’ seat of a Rolls Royce. Aeryn (left) seemed content to wallow in luxury; Kate, on the other hand, was looking to take it to the parking lot to do some donuts.
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Bush Admin Trying to Do Something RIGHT?

Could it be? Dare we hope that the Bush folks are at least making an attempt to address a problem in the way it probably should be addressed?

Let’s put aside that fact that BushCo policy is at least partly responsible for the troubles in the mortgage and housing sector, what with interest rates kept artificially low for so long in an attempt to hide the real state of the economy behind high home sales figures. Let’s not think too much about the frequent warnings over the last few years from many economists that the trend of high-risk mortgage lending – driven by low rates and rising prices – would come back to bite us if nothing was done. Let’s allow ourselves to hope, for just a fleeting moment, that the initiatives mentioned to correct this problem will actually be carried out competently and will have the desired effect. (Hah!)

What surprised me is that, at least on the surface, the Bushies seem to be on the homeowners’ side rather than in the lending companies’ pockets! The plan is to assist borrowers in danger of foreclosure to get into affordable FHA-insured loans that will allow them to keep their homes; further, Bush himself has said that there will be no assistance to the mortgage companies and speculators who have gotten themselves into this mess: “A federal bailout of lenders would only encourage a recurrence of the problem.”

I… oh this is so difficult…

I…

(I can’t say it!)

I…

I agree with George Bush.

There. That wasn’t so bad.

Potentially earth-shattering as this news may be, it’s not enough to keep me from being very frightened when reading this quote from the AP article in my local paper, especially given Bush’s track record on predictions:

President Bush confidently predicted the country would safely weather the financial storm.

Uh-oh.

Not just predicted, but confidently predicted?

We’re screwed. Man the lifeboats, America!

Fundie Fun for the Whole Family

This week from the land of Oz, which apparently has its own share of Bible-thumping perverts, comes news of a pastor who found a creative new way to teach his teenage daughters their scripturally-prescribed duties to their future husbands… by having sex with them on multiple occasions. Yes, according to the article on news.com.au, this inventive educator took it upon himself to instill the required traits of subservience and acquiescence into his 13- and 15-year-old offspring by nailing them to the ol’ Meat Cross on at least seven occasions in locations ranging from the back of a vehicle to a shed to their grandparents’ house.

(He must be from one of those denominations which hasn’t yet officially recognized altarboys as the approved receptacles for the Holy Seed.)

One could certainly argue that this guy is just a pervert who twisted scripture to provide an excuse for acting out his perversion, and his actions do nothing to invalidate any particular biblical tenet, and I would agree. (Half of what’s in most holy books invalidates itself without any outside help, but that’s another argument entirely.) It is certainly possible that this man would have found some other way to justify his behavior had a close-enough line or two from some religious text not been available.

There is of course the larger question of how he might have behaved in a society free of the sexual repression that religion has foisted on us, but that, too, is outside the scope of this writing.

What really bothers me about this event – beyond that outrage at the actions of one individual, beyond the frustration at seeing God (in whatever form you care to choose) invoked once again to justify blatant wrongdoing, is summed up near the bottom of the article (emphasis mine):

Judge Lovell gave full credit for the man’s guilty pleas, saying he was genuinely remorseful and had a good chance of rehabilitation as his wife and the church remained supportive.

Supportive? Does that mean they just think he made a simple mistake and it’ll be okay now that he knows better? Or do they really believe he was doing God’s work?