The burden of Proof
I was reading the comments on this
blog, and came across this ping pong about the burden of proof. Theists seem to either struggle to get it, or to disingenously obfuscate.
Hume established a fairly important point in this regard which perhaps can help to cut through the noise. In summary "extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence.".
The theist claims that not only is there an invisible being everywhere and everywhen, but that it is all powerful, good and knowing,
despite the world we see. To explain this glaring disconnect, the theist must resort to convoluted, but ultimately futile feats of logic, resorting to platitudes such as "God is God", "It's a mystery etc.", to fill the void the application of logic inevitabley leaves.
Furthermore we are to understand that this being desires a very specific body of behaviours from humans, but theists cannot actually agree on what this body of behaviour is, how it has been communicated, or wether it may change, often disagreeing violently with each other on the specifics.
Yet those that reject all of these absurd, mutually contradictory and frequently objectionable bodies of belief, must "prove" to the satisfaction of any given religious adherent
a) The non-existence, of a being noted for it's desire not to be found. We know this of course, only because its acolytes have told us. It is not entirely clear how
they know, and although they don't agree on much, they do seem to agree on this.
b) That a particular body of religious claims, is untrue.
This seems to me to be stacking the deck. The burden of proof
clearly rests with those making the extraordinary claim. Humes simple idea dismisses all religions (presented to date) at a single stroke, because they have all uniformly failed to present compelling evidence
despite having had several thousand years to do so.
By comparison the germ theory of disease, took about 50 years to become standard practice across the entire planet.
To hamfistedly demand that the sceptic prove a negative, is to dismiss the most powerful tool of investigation the human race has ever developed, or perhaps merely to fail to understand it.
Whatever the reason for doing so, the outcome will always be muddle, tautology and occasional violence, which of course is exactly what we see on the
religious front.
Proof that the Bible is both immoral and inaccurate
You may have heard this before, but I have really cracked it. No
really. Lets start with some wholly writ.
2 Kings
2:22 So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.
2:23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
2:24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. Wow!!! Mr. Grumpy, sensitive or what?
First, immoral. How can this possibly square with a loving God? Would God
really imbue bears to kill kids, for calling some bald guy names? Does this strike you as remotely likely, OK, or moral? Maybe if you're Fred Phelps.
So on to inaccurate. Would 40 children really have hung about while the bears ate the first 2 kids? I mean ... would you?
Logistically how would this work? Imagine the scene. Two bears lumber out of the forest growling and snarling. The kids scatter in all directions as the bears approach. Now, If it takes each bear 30 seconds to kill one child, and each running child can cover 100 metres in 30 seconds (and given the motivation, I consider this a modest underestimate of their likely speed), then 90 seconds in we have 6 dead kids, with the bears in the middle of a rapidly expanding circle of screaming children
at least 600 metres in diameter, and growing by 200 metres every 30 seconds.
After 5 minutes, some of the surviving kids (at least 30) will be 2 kilometres away from the bears, and their buddies of fleeter foot will be closing in on 3 klicks. Add to this that the bears will be sure to stop and sample some of the juicier kids more .... comprehensively. Which brings me on to my next question, how many 40 kilogram children can a bear actually
eat?
Lets assume each bear weighs 500 kilos. This means that 24 kids in, each bear has munched their own body weight in kids, still chasing children, some of whom are now 5 kilometres or more away ... likely?
Maybe, but it'd take divine intervention, and probably flying bears.
Labels: Bible Errors Scripture
Nationalism is Fascism
Or, at the very least a dormant form of Fascism, with all the key elements smouldering in place, ready to flare into full-blown flame should a sustained and powerful gust of wind come along.
Nationalists will tell you that they respect the rights of other nations, but this is a polite, but threadbare fiction. Nationalist ideology promotes the "ethical" principles that:
i. The moral duties of individuals to fellow members of the nation override those to non-members (the rest of the world).
ii. The national loyalty, in case of conflict, overrides local loyalties, and all other loyalties to family, friends, profession, religion, or class.
There in a nutshell is the problem. Within the nation state, I cannot violate the laws of the state to protect, defend or otherwise promote the interests of my family, or those who live next door, or those in the same city. So why stop at the nation state? If armed gangs rampage through the street it's considered criminal in almost all societies everywhere and everywhen, yet bizarrely, this arrangement does not extend past the completely arbitrary borders of the nation state.
Once it's a military engagement, we are free to kill each other in enormous numbers, within a broad and very flexible framework, a framework I might add, largely ignored by all parties once hostilities are in train.
WHAT THE FUCK? Seems hardly adequate to articulate the lunacy of this arrangement. Yet it is accepted as perfectly sensible, and those who propose binding global laws to eliminate the problem, are considered naive, or worse.
Nationalism (after dogmatic religion) is possibly the most toxic idea ever introduced into the human blood stream. It at once harnesses all the most laudable impulses of our kind, while directing them to nefarious ends. Like religion, the momentary inhumanity of the nationalist at full extension, is excused in the context of some nebulous, future "greater" good, or "superior" morality.
The horrors of the French Revolution, the long dark decades of terrorism in Ireland and the current "fight them over there" meme prevalent in the US all have their roots sunk deep into the bloody soil of nationalism. They are all nourished by the same insidious greater good, ends justify the means thinking, that short circuits rational debate, because the "good" or the "ends" are an unknown quantity which must be taken on "faith".
The idea that "we" are
intrinsically better then "them", is a keystone of this philosophy. The water is often muddied by claiming that "we" are
objectively better!!! For example, we might have better education systems, less people in prison, lower crime rates, lower unemployment, longer life spans, healthier children, greater freedoms or any of a hundred objective metrics that indicate "we"
are better than "them". This is an insidious thought process, because it allows us to indulge in a kind of superiority, apparently bolstered by objective reality.
It is of course an illusion. All of the above simply condense to "we were born here" and in no way tell us anything about the relative value of people. It is my contention, and the contention of the founders of the United States, that people are of
equal worth everywhere. If that idea strikes you as peculiar, try and put yourself in the position of an 18th century nobleman contemplating the American Revolution.
Today, those of us in the developed world are, like the nobility of the past, absurdly proud of our education, cleanliness and overall superiority to the "lower classes", when our "station" is simply a product of the lottery of birth. We might just as well consider the random colouring of our eyes, our hair or our skin as indicating our intrinsic greater value. This thinking is just a subtle form of racism, lets call it .... regionalism.
This thinking quietly paves the way for "we" are better than "them", to become, "we" are better than "them", and therefore must kill them in large numbers if we feel remotely threatened by anyone of the miserable "other". Or anyone in the region, or with the same skin colour, language or religion. This is how killing 50,000+ Iraqis to protect the "homeland" of the US could be considered perfectly reasonable behaviour by Americans. After all, American lives are of far greater value, and must be protected
regardless of the cost in foreign blood.
At its root, nationalism, even the less virulent versions, can never be compatible with the values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights. For the simple reason that those rights all stop at some arbitrary, imaginary line in the sand, and that dear reader, is total bullshit.
Out of the Closet
I have decided to bite the bullet, and write about something that has been gestating for quite some considerable time. Easily 5 years or more.
I have finally renounced my Christian faith, rejected the homicidal, murderous God of the old testament, as well as the fictional, ephemeral construct of the new. I'm not an atheist ... exactly. More like an agnostic, but I'm convinced that all the current religions, and the hodge podge of Gods on offer are all constructs. The big three, Allah, Christ and Whatisname the jews worship included.
It's been a long road, but
damn I feel good!!!! I feel
FREE.
The incredible irony of course, is that I have Bush, his hideous cabal, any number of "Christian" American bloggers, as well as the Falwells and Swaggerts of the world to thank. After 25 years as a Christian, 4 of them in active service, I had clocked up a comprehensive list things "not to think about". The last 5 years of US Christian sponsored torture, crime and state sanctioned murder have shattered the hermetic seals between my faith and the "real world".
Let me give you some examples.
1) A God who allows even the
idea of Hell to gain traction in human culture is a sick sadistic bastard. A God who would
create it should be resisted, fought, torn down and destroyed.
2) Every major element of Christian dogma has been lifted from prior religions. Every damn thing. There is nothing original in it.
Check it out.
3) The idea of taking as "gospel" a book riddled with multiple, outrageous and self evident errors,
on it's own recommendation , is so absurd, as to actually defy articulation. What was I thinking?!!?
4) Christianity is the ultimate virus. It infects a host, and then actively uses it to infect hundreds of others, and it
works. Just look at the staggering variety of mutations that have evolved from that first, humble pathogen.
I could go on, but I'd just be repeating (badly) the conclusions of thousands before me. It's a scam, a pyramid scheme, and a con trick of monumental and staggering proportions, but I've seen through it, and I'm OUT.
I'm not bitter though. OK, I'm a bit bitter:-) Mind you I don't regret the years spent in Covenant Players. I grew as a person, I learnt German and I met Magdalena. The Christians of Covenant Players, with some notable exceptions, are largely good guys. Lets face it, it could have been much, much worse. There are some virulent variations of Christianity out there. Take a look at
these guys.
I guess I resent all the times I worried about Hell, it raises a primordial twinge of subdued terror even now. Those Catholics sure know how to bed it down deep:-) I object to the hundreds of hours I spent in pointless prayer. SHIT, I could have been playing Dungeon's and Dragons, or reading, or having a quiet reflective wank. In fact, basically any damn thing.
To think I partially squandered the precious lightning flash of awareness that is my life, to worship some jumped up tribal deity. It makes me very, very angry.
Never again:-)
What is wrong with the world?
Recently I have been considering this in some detail. My conclusions are depressingly predictable, but hear me out!!! The case is compelling.
What is wrong with the world? The short answer?
The Republican Party of the United States. They represent the core of what is currently our most pressing collective problem. Sure there are subsidiary causes, but at the heart of it all, are an elite core of the republican party. Possibly the most evil group of morons ever foisted on an unsuspecting world.
Let me give you some examples.
There is almost zero “debate” on the validity of global warming and evolution in the rest of the developed world, and precious little about that human caviar the blastocyst.
Yet these are hot topics in the US, why? Why is this the
only developed country in the world confused and divided? The answer is crystal clear, the Bush regime in particular, and Republicans in general are propped up by a 10% base of religious fanatics that lap all this nonsense up, and they pander shamelessly to this constituency.
I mean politicians actually articulating a belief in utter unabridged mythology like the
Rapture!!!!! Sheeese ….. nowhere else in the developed world could you get away with that, you’d be rightly dismissed as a lunatic.
This is not to say the religious people are evil, stupid or poorly educated. Many quite intelligent people are "believers" of one stripe or another. I present myself as exhibit A:-). Although I hasten to add comprehensivley lapsed.
The effect of constantly trying to reconcile the belief against reality is
corrosive to cognition generally. One slips easily into the practice of ignoring reality where it conflicts with a cherished belief, and when something else comes along that does the same thing,
the circuits to ignore the contradicting reality are all in place.For example the US government is largely made up of incompetent, amoral assholes, the supporting evidence for this contention is overwhelming. Yet 30-40% of the population persist in providing their support to these people. The cognitive disconnect that allows this, in otherwise normal people, is amplified and nourished by fervent religious belief.
I say this as a person who had a “personal faith” for decades, and finally snapped out of it. Courtesy ironically enough of GWB. His actions and their results, shoved the inconsistencies of faith into my face with such vigour and frequency, that I finally gave up trying to reconcile them.
It is intriuging to note that a 30-40% theme is emerging in the US. That number :
Support Bush.
Believe they are “winning” in Iraq.
Believe it makes sense to “tag” muslims in the US.
Don’t want a timetable for withdrawal.
The 10% of Christian Fundamentalists that shore up the Republican Party, are a critical subset of this group. It is clear they want a genocidal WWII class war that will kill millions in the middle east, that provides "moral clarity" or perhaps
Armageddon. These people are not dismayed and horrified by terrorist attacks and efforts
but excited by them, because it has the potential to herd a critical mass of bleating, frightened sheeple into their "KILL THEM, KILL THEM ALL" camp.
The bottom line? The Republicans would rather govern based on a pack of lies, than not govern. They would rather undermine and hinder the science that keeps us healthy, warm and well fed, to garner that critical 10% of the vote, than campaign on real issues like healthcare,
not blowing stuff up and the environment.
Their selfish and foolish short term strategy gives these people a platform and "hey presto!!!!" suddenly half the country is questioning established science, making poor choices across the spectrum, and worst of all, electing people like GWB. When this applies to the most powerful country the world has ever seen, it affects us all.
Same old Same old?
Recently I've felt my ability to engage wane. I have nothing new to say on the rightwing blogs where I traditionally post. They've heard it all before, dismissed it, dissed it and frequently pissed on it. There is nothing left to say. The Haditha Massacre has also impaired my ability to remain calm when faced with the dismissive inhumanity of some Americans. Listening to people who are articulate, clever, witty and apparently loving parents, ferociously defending and justifying the indefensible, has left me feeling physically sick in recent weeks.
So I find myself wondering is this the way it is? Is it naive to assume that humans can find a different way, behave differently? Should I simply throw up my hands, thank God for the good luck of my birth and leave it at that? Its tempting.
Hope though, can come from some strange quarters, and you may find this odd, but here goes:-)
One of the frequent comments from the pro war side concerns the relative
humaneness of the current war effort, and this observation is not entirely without merit. If we objectively consider the invasion and occupation, the efforts made to avoid civilian casualties and the almost neligible deaths on the side of the coalition, this has been a fairly bloodless enterprise. Certainly when compared to empires and conflicts of the past.
I guess this meme can be articulated as "what other kind of global hegemony would you prefer?". I know that I prefer an American hegemony to a Soviet, Nazi German or Chinese hegemony. Imagine extrapolating those internal casualties onto the world stage? We'd be talking billions of deaths.
This does not mean that I think we live in the cliched "best of all possible worlds", but it could certainly be worse. So why all the hue and cry? Why the relentless yelling and beration? If US hegemony ain't so bad, why not accept it? The answer to that question is basic, humans yearn to be free and that desire has finally gone global. Globalisation has created global capital, and that has in turn generated an inevitable counter balance, global civil society.
Lets face it humans are upitty creatures, that frequently revolt against even benign tyrrany. The US qualifies as
at least that, and in recent years has been drifting in altogether the wrong direction on the good/bad hegemony continuum.
Herein lies the hope ... our tolerance for war as a solution has been drastically reduced. We see the effects and are appalled, we insist there must be a better way, and can find an endless stream of historical examples to substantiate this view. We consider the ordered, law abiding segments of the world and we
know there is a better way, we are living it. If laws work in villages, towns, cities, counties, regions, nation states and supr-national regions like the EU, why can't they work globally? The answer to this question is of course, that they
can.
Basically when the apologists whine "it ain't
that bad", they are, in a limited sense, right. What has changed is the global
perception of such events. We see them, in record time and are appalled and rightly so. We count the cost of war, imagine what could have been created with those resources and inevitably reject the logic of violence. This same calculation is what marks the passage from child to adult. We know that there should be laws that prevent Saddam Hussein
and Bush.
Now we need to take it to the next level. The facilitators of the Iraq war must to be held to account. They day we drag Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney before an international tribunal (an American one would also be welcome) and they have to account for their actions, that is day that signals the death knell for war as a mainstream and acceptable solution. It is the day that humanity finally grows up and creates a planetary society governed by law. It may be 5,10 or 20 years down the road, but it's going to happen and I'm looking forward to it, are you?
Why the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq is despised
Why indeed? Well for a start, it was clear from the outset that the war was considered unjustified by a majority of the human race. See here,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-02-14-eu-survey.htm and here,
http://www.glocom.org/special_topics/social_trends/20030224_trends_s28/. There has hardly been an event in history so universally condemnded before being perpetrated.
Nontheless, consider for a moment, that annual American casualties in Iraq War 2.0 barely drift above annual accidental deaths for the 90's. Thats right, almost as many service people (volume wise) were being killed by accidents in the US military each year, as are currently being killed by enemy action.
That is a sobering thought, and a tribute to the professional lethality (and improved internal safety) of the US armed forces. They certainly get the job done, and while doing it they ensure that all the casualties are on the other side.
In a conventional war this of course makes good sense. We want to kill the enemy while ensuring our guys don't get killed. However, in the "we've come to save you from yourselves" scenario that Iraq and Iran are alleged to represent, it is patently less palatable. It is especially less palatable in the context of slogans such as "fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here."
This is in effect, an exhortation to sanction the
sacrifice of Iraqi lives to
save American lives. I find that idea pretty abhorrent in isolation, but the cowardly, brutal, calculation of it pales into insignificance when coupled with the fact that the basic premise was and continues to be, simply wrong. As can be seen every day as the next lot of 20, or 30 step into the grinder.
That in a nutshell is why the war is despised, both at home and abroad. We told you not to do it, we said it would be bad, any fool could see that. Now, the lives of foreigners are poured out like water, ostensibly to increase American security and economic power. It isn't the first time either, but it is the first time it has provoked such a sustained and rapid international backlash.
It hardly has to be said that some will read this and be non-plussed, because this equation makes sense to them. American lives are more valuable. That a sizeable minority of Americans are genuinely unmoved by the killing of thousands of innocent people a half a world away in their name is pretty sickening, but it's not hyperbole, read the blogs.
One wonders, do they consider none of these faceless "others" innocent? Do Americans consider their own personal safety so important to them, that to eliminate any possible risk, any price in foreign blood is acceptable? How much is offsetting the risk of an American death worth in the currency of the lives of unknown foreigners? Ten, a hundred, a million? Even if one accepts the basic flawed premise, the ratio is already grimly disproportional.
During the 2nd World War, it was common for German troops to kill local villagers in reprisal for resistance attacks. This has been rightly condemned as a war crime. Tell me, how is the GWOT, “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here” any different in terms of outcomes,
for the villagers?
Then, there is this :
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/05/28.html#a8479
