The problem of pain vs. atheists?

This guy was my first ever troll. He's a crazy man who believes crazy things. On October 30th, he posted an article about his take of the problem of evil - and from his point of view the problem is with atheists. I'd give a direct link, but his blog is about as user-friendly as a whip-sword.

See, for him, the problem is pain. And it's a problem, and we atheists can't solve it. I used to consider myself a philosopher - I certainly studied it long enough - and I'd never heard of it as a serious refutation of the problem of evil. I mean, as atheists, we believe that "shit happens". Not to mention from a biological perspective, pain serves all kinds of useful functions (like us knowing when we're being injured). That it occasionally incapacitates the subject is one of those things that just happens to be the case - like bad backs and acne. Much of our biology is pretty slap-dash, as befits something that arose out of negentropic stochastic chemical processes.

The Problem of Pain is the name of a book by C.S. Lewis. But it was him trying to answer the normal problem of evil. Or, in other words, why does his god - whom he claims is all-loving and all-powerful - allow suffering to exist.

So, y'know, I wasn't aware pain was a problem for atheists. But this guy apparently thinks it is. Allow me to quote: "See: if something painful happens, and the person it happens to can't fix it except by causing more pain -- in fact, more pain than they are experiencing in the first place -- they don't have a way to choose their actions."

Well, of course, that's nonsense. If I get cancer and the only way to cure it is chemotherapy which will, in the short run, will be far worse than the cancer, I'll still choose to get the chemo. Duh. Because, as a human, I can understand the options - comfort in the short term and a lingering death later on, or suffering in the short term and a an overall greatly improved.

He goes on to say: "You know: as if somehow some suffering ultimately has a therapeutic or, if we dare say it, redemptive purpose." His argument seems to be - albeit stated in an awkward way - that because atheists have a the faculty commonly described as "will" and they can accept pain for a greater purpose (such as willing to accept chemo to overcome cancer), that atheists themselves have answered the question of evil because, wait for it, we accept that sometimes pain is necessary to be better people.

The problem he has with the problem of pain, however, is that atheists aren't either all-benevolent or all-powerful. With our limited powers, yeah, we'll accept chemo to get rid of cancer. But none of us are invested with omnipotence. An atheist can't just will cancer away with no pain or suffering, not for themselves or others. Many of us would, if we could, because the pain of chemotheraphy does not make cancer patients better human beings, except insofar as it prolongs their lives. They don't come out the other side with more character. They're just alive.

The common Christian conception of god, however, is all-powerful, however. Instead of making cancer patients go through chemo, their god could just decide that there was no such thing as cancer. Furthermore, this being could decide that there is no reason for redemption, either. That redemption just didn't mean anything in this universe, or any other universe, because - out of his infinite kindness and compassion - their god wouldn't want us to suffer.

The funny thing is, he even knows this. He says, "[John Loftus' view] is that God ought to be good enough and powerful enough and intelligent enough to create a world where these crappy choices ought not to have to be made." But then he goes on to say, "It's an interesting redirection of the question, but it is where we turn the bend from exposing the atheist short-comings to actually advancing the Christian faith -- and I'll get you back with that another day."

So while he admits the argument needs to be addressed, he doesn't actually address it. I don't much read the guy's blog - it's . . . not my cup of tea, shall we say - but I'm almost curious to see if he does try to follow this up. Because I just don't see pain as being a problem for atheists. It exists along with a lot of other crappy things like earthquakes that level cities and pop music. Pain exists because it exists, and because it serves a useful biological function (one that far outstrips its occasional down sides). I just don't see how that's a problem for atheists in the first place.

Still, a pretty bizarre argument. But to try to argue the problem of evil while maintaining your belief in an all-loving, all-forgiving, all-powerful god requires a lot of bizarre thinking.

Depression and not-depression

This is about the most personal post I've ever made on a blog! Here it is. I suffer depression. Personally. Immediately. And after taking medication for it, it is clearer than every how crippling depression is.

I'm saying this because, well, I mean, honestly I know I'm not risking anything, as about five people will ever read this, but I am sorta daring people to take umbrage with the idea of depression. A lot of my life, a lot of people close to me have said that the problem has been a character failing. A form of weakness, and if I just applied myself more and better that's all it would take. Man up, cowboy! Stuff like that. This was told to me by some members of my family and some previous close friends. It's easy to believe when you're told it. And for years my mind has told me that depression and mental illness are real, and that people who claim mental illness are not weaklings or "faking it", that they are not to blame. They're not. But while I sincerely believed that, for my own part, I didn't take those words to heart. I persisted in believing that the troubles I have in my life - such as the crippling anxiety and depression about the process of getting published as a writer, and the various problems I've had with authority, employment, etc. - were not because of some stupid chemical in my brain working improperly. I bought into the myth that I could only be held responsible for my "failings".

But now, in light of what I am feeling here and now, it is clear to me the anxiety and depression I felt, the terrors in my head of both success and failure, were at least in part a disease. Something in my brain doesn't work right, the wiring is messed up a little bit, creating a powerful dread that spirals into a hard and dark depression without rhyme or reason. It is difficult for me to describe the change in my mood - the improvement. All the drugged experimentations of my youth are nothing compared to the profound change that has overcome me these past few days without any of the mental confusion of drugs. (Tho', to be honest, the way I feel now is very like the day after I've taken LSD. I feel cleared and focused and unafraid, intellectually energetic and curious. Which I think is very interesting.)

But I'm saying this because I will not feel any shame for this disease I am suffering under, so I'm gettin' it out there. Mental illness is real, it's more crippling than many physical illnesses or injuries (for instance, I find depression far more debilitating than any physical injury I've had; I'd much rather have a broken leg than depression!) and it can be treated.

A bit of a rant on cultural imperialism

After reading The World Republic of Letters, I was pretty horrified. The basic thesis of the book is that international literature is largely formed by a small group of editors in Paris and to a lesser extent in London and New York. That these editors decide what bits of literature the world over are internationalized.

The horror came over me because I realized how homogenizing this must be - and, indeed, I find international literature to be very much of a particular cast. I mean, take magical realism. It is very much the sort of thing that white middle class people like - it's about extraordinary renditions of fairly ordinary things but with shades of the exotic. Some time later I recall talking to a South American - I don't even know who he is! - about magical realism and though I do not remember the person, I remember what he said very well. He said, "That's not what South Americans really read." He told me that science-fiction is huge in Latin America. I read science-fiction so I said I'd never heard of it, and he said that almost none of it has been translated. Then my mind veered towards this world republic of letters. A group of college educated middle-class Frenchmen (and almost certainly most of them are French men) would have little interest in Spanish language science fiction. What those French editors want is literary fiction - the same stuff that literary fiction writers in the US, and England, and France write, but written exotically. The quality of international literature is being defined as nothing more than what appeals to Western educated French people. It was right then that I really understood what cultural imperialism meant - the attitudes of those white well-to-do Western college educated French men were defining world literature and by doing it, they would create a self-fulfilling system. The more they define "international" literature as what appeals to white well-to-do Western college educated French men the more the continuing standard of quality will be so defined. Like how it's impossible to talk about English literature without someone bringing up Shakespeare, even tho' . . . he's not that good by today's standards, and even by the standards of his day he was . . . sorta . . . shallow. But you can't say that, because Shakespeare has come to define English language literature.

The only place that I have a good idea of what I'm missing is Japanese fiction. Due largely to the efforts of a small group of Japanophiles in the United States, to some extent the "republic" of letters - which is a misnomer, really, it's far more like the oppressive racist aristocracy of letters - has been circumvented. Japanese animation has brought over Japanese comic books which is now translating into bringing over Japanese popular literature. But it's limited, and rare. What goes on, even in fields I'm very interested in, like science-fiction, remain opaque to me.

The same thing happens everywhere. So, the Wikipedia article of the day - yeah, yeah, I know some of you don't like Wikipedia, but I do in large measure because it is way more likely to have information I want than a traditional encyclopedia, like up-to-date comic book summaries - they have it an Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray He does stuff like the Apu trilogy, Ghare Baire and Shakha Proshakha. He would influence people like Mrinal Sen.

Ray's movies are . . . I mean, they're what almost all foreign movies I see are. They're these personal and family dramas! Look at what Ray did, what Sen did! Nothing but personal and family dramas. And with both directors the articles will go on and on about how wonderful and splendid they were and I found myself thinking that we're back in the territory of the international republic of letters. That what we praise is what art house movie people praise.

I know what Indians actually watch - and it isn't these movies! Indians watch a lot more stuff like Dhoom 2 than they do the Apu trilogy. Who watches stuff like the Apu trilogy? Well-to-do Western educated Indians, who contact their well-to-do Western film contacts and international acclaim is given to movies that are not representative of India cinema.

What I feel is going on is that . . . they're not interested in Indian cinema. They're interested in seeing the reflections of the Western artistic aesthetic outside of the West. What Indians are actually interested in isn't nearly as important, to the people who decide what the world sees about all of the parts of the world, as a narcissistic reflection of their own aesthetic. It's a racist pat on the head. We'll acknowledge Indian cinema, or South American literature, if it conforms to the standards of a tiny section of Westerners - almost all of whom are rich, college educated white men. We'll be glad to let them into our circle if they act like us.

I hate that, and I just had to say something.

Another "theological" argument I really hate - "it's because of free will"

Man, when religious people make the free will argument, I about want to scream. I think that if humans have free will, we only really have a tiny amount of it. Not only are we limited in the things we can actually do (say, we can't kill with our minds or travel backwards in time or whatever it is that flips your switch), now imagine all the things you'd like to do but are prevented doing and if you can muster it try to imagine how many more things there are to do that you can't imagine (it's easier to imagine all the things a person considerably dumber than you can't imagine, and then imagine how much more things a person that much smarter than you could imagine for you, hehe). I mean, at any given time, our options are pretty few. I think they're getting bigger because of education and technology. Cave men simply didn't have the option to play video games, for instance, or work on magnetohydrodyamnics. So, human will (if it exists at all in some larger sense) is nevertheless limited by our biology (what we are physically capable of doing), our technology (the number of additional options our big brains and opposable thumbs give us) and our imaginations (discovering new ways to use our biology and technology). I think that if people really think about it, they'll find this to be true concerning free will - we don't have a lot of it, really.

But all the time, Christians will use the free will argument. "Why is there evil?" "Because god doesn't want to interfere with human free will."

It makes me think of force. One person can force another to do it. I don't even mean hold a gun to their head and give them a choice. I mean grab them and drag them away. Or I can just kill someone. They might not want to die, their free choice is screaming for life, but the minute I chop off their head - that doesn't mean anything. So, obviously, humans don't have unlimited free will. People are physically forced to do things all the time - they're beaten, raped, killed, kidnapped, arrested, imprisoned, the list goes on and on. Most of the time, it's terrible when it happens. But it does happen. But I'm supposed to believe that god really cares about human free will - that he cares so much that he doesn't interfere with it . . . but has created the world where other people can interfere with my free will.

Ah, ha, the religious person will say, all of that can happen because god doesn't want to interfere with their free will, either! They will argue that if the god interfered with people's ability to hurt one another. We're free to do whatever we biologically and technologically can do, even to other people and even if it violates their free will.

This is such a vapid argument that I find it terribly embarrassing when people make it - but it gets made all the time. The reason it's vapid is because we are already limited in our ability to violate the free will of others. You can't kill someone with your mind. You can't go back in time and kill their grandfather. If religious people are right, their own god has innumerably limited their ability to violate another person's free will. How would a few more rules, not moral rules, but physical ones that prevent people from hurting each other with their bodies be any different than all the rules that prevent us from hurting other people with our thoughts? We're already so massively limited, what would a few more limitations - limitations that would enhance expression of free will - really hurt? And, of course, some people can't even hurt people with their bodies. Say, people born without limbs. Sometimes, their god does choose to deny some people the ability to even hurt other people - do those people not have free will? The argument is preposterous. Before you know it, you've got so many exceptions and caveats that it's obvious that free will, as religious people describe it, is a chimera.

The other thing I hate about free will is that "will", generally, can't be demonstrated to exist. I know people who will study up a storm, but won't eat right and exercise (indeed, it is true that I am one of them, hehe). I know athletes who will look after their bodies, but can't read about the sixth grade level. Heck, how many pro-athletes have the "willpower" to become top athletes, but then can't control their spending? How many people go to work, work hard, and then cheat on their spouses? So, what is this general quality called "will", anyway? Can you show me where it exists, what it really does, who has it and who doesn't? No, you can't. No one can. It, like many aspects that apertain to describe a mental state actually just describe the biases of the people or culture who invented and use the term.

I can't think of any good arguments involving human will or free will. People should feel free to try to come up with some. ;)

Thought about Hobbes and civilization!

I had a thought that is worth sharing. One of my reasonably guilty pleasures is the comic Action Philosophers. They're brief descriptions of various philosophy set in humorous comic form! I like them because I like philosophy and I find them funny. In reading number nine - the last, alas - they had a bit about Hobbes and, of course, quoted his bit about without civilization that life was brutish, nasty and short.

My first interesting thought - interesting me at any rate - is that Hobbes is wrong. We are extremely lucky to live in civilization during the period that it works. It took about ten thousand years for civilization to actually work. Humans, generally, were much better off in a pre-civilized state. The average paleolithic human lived to be in their fifties. The average ancient Hellene? About eighteen. This would creep up as time went on, but even when Hobbes was writing those paleolithic humans were better off in terms of diet, longevity, freedom from disease and general quality of life. Interestingly enough, they were also much freer. It takes a pretty organized society to seriously oppress people. Hobbes was just factually wrong, which I find interesting. I've long disliked Hobbes, and it's nice to realize that he's factually wrong.

My second interesting thought is about the nature of intelligence. If humans were just a trifle bit less intelligent than we are, just a little less clever with things, our civilization would never have gotten to the point where the median lifespan was greater than those paleolithic hunter gatherers.

To me, this begs the question if we are seed AI - an intelligence smart enough to make itself smarter indefinitely. For reasons of ego, if nothing else, I'm inclined to think that the answer is "yes", that we are smart enough to get better and better. Saner, smarter, more prosperous, etc. But it wasn't until today, right now, that I realized how close we were to never getting to that point. If we had just been a trifle less intelligent, we could be stuck in a perpetual dark age.

Which might not be much of an original thought, or even very original, but it's the one I had.

Conflicts between science and religion - bring 'em on!

Adrienne said something particularly clever about religion and I'm going to pass it on. We were talking about the touch of flames on this post, the fiery touch being about, unsurprisingly to those who read my blog, intelligent design. Which I, of course, think is deeply stupid and a pretty pathetic attempt to insert supernaturalism into science.

For my part, I was opining why intelligent design folks decide to take on the best scientific theories. In the above discussion, the point wasn't evolution, but cosmology. The gent with whom I was talking was making some bizarre points like . . . because physical laws are uniform throughout the universe that's proof of intelligent design. Which is a bizarre argument. I mean, also false, but additionally bizarre. Even if it was true - and it's not, say, inside a singularity, or in the very early universe, or the differences between quantum effects and relativistic effects, there's plenty of reason to think that the universe isn't the same everywhere - I don't know why that's suggest an intelligent designer. I mean, couldn't the same reasoning be applied regardless of how the universe is? But one of the specific things that the person said is that there is no scientific theory, even a bad one, that explains the origin of the universe. This is very wrong. Not only does science have a theory about the origin of the universe, the big bang, but it is amongst the strongest theories in science. The big bang theory is science working very much how science "should" work - the theory of general relativity suggested that far enough back in time that all matter and energy would achieve infinite density and there would be a beginning to space and time. From that reasoning, there have been numerous experiments that validate the big bang. There are few scientific theories with the level of proof we have for the big bang, both theoretical and observational. The same is true of evolution. The proof for it is staggering, overwhelming. If supernaturalists want to challenge science these are not the theories they should be challenging. I mean, much better would be . . . gravity. We don't know what the fuck it is, hehe. It's downright confusing and there is simply no connection between quantum gravity and relativistic gravity theories, and gravity behaves in certain unique ways that make it the odd-man out of physics. Or electricity. Or turbulent motion. All these things science is having trouble addressing. But, no, they always go after evolution and cosmology, which are particularly strong as theories go. Adrienne opined, certainly correctly, that the reason they go after those two is because they challenge the narrative of religion.

Then Adrienne said, and this is the clever thing, that some religious apologists will try to reconcile religion and science by saying that they cover entirely different subjects, different parts of the human experience, but that's a lie. And it is. The reason why science and religion are brawling is because both of them talk about . . . how humans came into existence, how the universe came into existence. No major religion lacks a creation myth. But this isn't discussed very well, that so long as religions have creation mythology there is going to be considerable antagonism between religion and science. Because, y'know, science says that the universe came into existence because of quantum flux in an instanton around fifteen billion years ago causing the big bang, and religious folks say that a supernatural being that transcends time and space willed the universe into existence. These are conflicting narratives, mutually exclusive, so the people who say that religion isn't about the same things as science are wrong. They are, and evidently so, and people don't much talk about that as being the essence of the conflict, because it is a conflict. Science says one thing, religion says another.

And even beyond cosmology and the origins of life, there are still conflicts. Religious people all make supernatural statements. Even if you're the species of religious person who says that the big bang and evolution are the way that god created the universe, almost all of those people will still cling to supernatural events to justify their belief. So a Christian might say that evolution is the method that god created life, but what about Jesus rising from the dead and physically ascending into heaven? Even religious folks who are willing to concede the creation myths are allegorical or whatever nevertheless make statements of fact. They say, "Jesus rose from the dead". They say, "He physically ascended into heaven." Even when they avoid the biggest issues, they make all these statements that simply cannot be physically true. They still are saying that supernatural agents are at work amongst us.

Which is back to intelligent design. That's what intelligent design is - saying that supernatural agents work amongst us, but do so invisibly. In the case of ID, the invisible is the bogus concept of irreducible complexity. Otherwise, it is invisible amongst the annals of history - which are, of course, woefully incomplete. A Christian says that, you know, supernatural events are only recorded in religious texts because they are otherwise lost to history. Sometimes they can sorta get away with this, like the census that supposedly took place at the time of Jesus' birth. We know the Romans did a number of censuses whose records did not really survive. It becomes less plausible, of course, when you're talking about the graves giving up their dead and zombie prophets walking around Jerusalem, or the Nile turning into fucking blood, or the destruction of two large cities by angels, or . . . you see the point by now, I think. That the only records of the innumerable supernatural events that occur in all religions seem to be recorded only by members of that religion. So, we entirely lack Babylonian accounts of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or any other of these supposedly supernatural events (save when one religion copies a story from a second religion, like with the Biblical Flood).

(Yes, I know there are a smaller section of Christians who believe all supernatural events in the Bible are allegorical and treat Jesus simply as a wise man or whatever, but this isn't really addressed at them and they are a very, very small portion of Christians and most other Christians would say that they're not Christians, so even calling them Christians is fairly problematic.)

I think that non-religious people should stand up more to religious people who are trying to slip it in, then, that "science and religion aren't about the same things". They are. Religions have creation myths that explain the origin of the universe and of life, and these are in direct contradiction to scientific theories. Religions also include supernatural events which also contradict science in a number of ways (being that science, by definition, can't have supernaturalism in it). The people who say that religion and science are about "different things" are ignoring the cases when science and religion do discuss the same topic and are at odds.

Religion and Funerals

It occurred to me the other day how . . . opportunistically religions use funerals. How it's part -- a very important part -- of the scam that religion is. Think about it. Right when a group of people are particularly emotionally vulnerable a priest comes forward and promotes their faith. They cast the life of a human -- frequently a person they don't know at all, I should further point out, save perhaps in the limited context of religious observances which is a very distant and formal association, really -- in purely religious terms. The value of the person's life, and death, rests in the "next world". Isn't that really wicked ghoulish?

Now, obviously, religious people are going to say that, even beyond the existence or non-existence of god or heaven or whatever, religion at a funeral with its pablum about better worlds and eternal life is comforting. First, this is a false dilemma. The argument is that the comfort that religion provides can't be provided, and better, without religion. The choice isn't between no comfort and religion.

Second, it assumes religion is actually comforting. I, myself, do not find it to be comforting, not in the lease. The pablum of a priest and a bunch of sacred words ignores that, well, in virtually all religions that paradise is far from assured. Even as we all tell each other that so-and-so is in heaven, religiously speaking, we are also fearing that they're in hell. After all, we don't know. But I know that, for my own part, even when I was Christian that funerals always were difficult because the same grief that makes us grasp for concepts of non-physical immortality also make us consider the alternative. So, the comfort of religion is, itself, pretty thin -- offering, as it does, both heaven and hell. That your loved one might be roasting in the fires of hell isn't precisely comforting.

Third, there's the predatory element. If I came to a funeral and started preaching politics, saying that so-and-so might have lived if we had public health insurance, most people would think I was really tacky, using that moment to preach politics. But isn't that precisely what happens? Churches are very human institutions. By their presence at a funeral, they're doing what they can to insure the continuation of both their church and religion, generally, by stressing that religion is what's really important when someone dies. To my eyes, this is viciously opportunistic, a kind of sick promotion. And that stuff about grief and comfort is just the mask that religion uses to tart up it's intrusion into people's private grief.

Harry Potter and Advertising, Plus the Fate of the Free World, Still

Preface: I almost didn't post this. But only one person actually bothered to post about the actual point I made yesterday but a fair number of people, both privately and on my blog or LJ, just defended the books. Which missed the point of my post, but also confirmed my point.

I've got some additional comments about Harry Potter and hype. One of the more common arguments against this applying to Harry Potter is the "stealth success" of Sorcerer's Stone -- how it became a best-seller without any advertising or promotions. This is, simply speaking, untrue. While the UK publisher, Bloombury, didn't have much faith in Sorcerer's Stone (or, more accurately, Philosopher's Stone), and advanced Rowling a mere $4000. However -- and this happened before the UK publication of the book -- Scholastic gave Rowling an advance of $100,000 and about the same as the advertising budget. People familiar with the publishing industry will realize that this is an extremely large sum of money, advanced with the expectation of high sales. Obviously, the book performed, but this is normal when you've got a good advertising budget.

Because -- and I'm surprised that I need to say this -- advertising works. About 1 in 6 dollars in the US is spent on advertising. But even in response to yesterday's post about Harry Potter, what I found is that . . . no one wanted to talk about the hype. Some people were interested in correcting what they saw to be factual errors, and damn near everyone tried to defend the quality of the books, but no one seemed to consider the idea that perhaps, just perhaps, their enjoyment of media was manufactured.

Ironically, the biggest proponent -- at least in public -- of the idea that advertising doesn't work is . . . the advertising industry! Seriously, go and follow any of the arguments that the ad business advances whenever someone wants to regulate advertising. Suddenly, advertising doesn't work. Well, OK, then, if advertising doesn't work, why is 1 in 6 dollars in America being spent on it? Because, to say the obvious, it does work. To say what few people want to believe: it works on you.

You. The person reading this. It works on you. If you're connected enough to the system to be reading my blog, you're connected enough to be effected by advertising. And most of us don't have any idea how sly these bastards are.

For instance, a lot of sneaker sales depend on what people in poor urban areas are wearing -- the guys playing hoop down at the park. So shoe companies have for years paid street ball players to wear their shoes as a mechanism of sales. As advertisement that no one even knows is actually happening. Or how advertisers write up "news stories" and submit them as genuine articles and then news shows show these ads as actual news. Or lean on magazines and TV shows to write favorable articles about the products being advertised.

But even more than that. Look around your house, really look around at the things you actually buy. How often do you buy something because of the label? Recently, a person I knew bought an Ipod Shuffle. It's this 2 GB MP3 player that you can't program. It's always on random shuffle. He paid about a hundred dollars for it. For about 20% less, I bought an MP3 player that has more memory and upon which I can make my own playlists. Why would anyone want to buy an Ipod Shuffle when there are better products for less money? And this is generally true of all Ipods and gear for Ipods. It's pretty easy to find better things for less money if a person bothers to look. But, well, Apple is making a fortune betting that people will not look, that they'll buy the hype, see the adds and won't even consider the possibility of there being different products. They go into a store and buy an Ipod rather than go into the next aisle over and buy an entirely superior MP3 player for less money.

The obviousness of this leaps out at me. Advertising works. But it seems to me that most people pretend it doesn't work on them. And it's partially true. I've never succumbed to the hype and bought a single Brittany Spears album. No matter how cool their commercials are, I don't buy Budweiser. But I look forwards to Grand Theft Auto 4 . . . despite strongly disliking the last big GTA 3 game. And I've seen a number of absolutely terrible science-fiction, fantasy and comic book movies because of the hype. So, while it's true that not all advertising works on everyone, it works on everyone some of the time. It works well enough that at almost no restaurant can a person get anything other than Coke or Pepsi products. Would someone really not order soda if it was RC Cola? How often does that happen? "I'd like a cola." "We have RC." "OH, NO! You don't have Coke or Pepsi! I REFUSE to get a soda!" I estimate roughly zero percent of the time. But, nevertheless, it's almost impossible to get RC as a fountain drink. So, even if the advertising didn't work on you, it's worked on virtually every person who orders drinks for convenience stores and restaurants. Which is another one of those hidden ways that advertising works.

But Harry Potter fans, even when confronted with the reality that Harry Potter books are the most hyped books in the world will consistently attribute the success of the books to the quality. Which is, of course, the same argument that people use about Coke or Pepsi. "They taste better." But why do they taste better? Do they taste better because in a world without labeling or advertisements we'd all choose to drink nothing but those two drinks, or due to the pervasiveness of advertising we define good tasting soda by either Coke or Pepsi? It's the same argument that people use about Brittany Spears -- that it's the best possible pop music, that the music system does, in fact, channel people to the top based on quality (even though the corruptions of no industry are as obvious as the music industry). The media attention defines what is acceptable as good. It makes it's choices based on it's priorities and that's what we get, and it's all most of us get, because most of us don't know where to look for things other than the obvious places. (This is true of me, too, by the way, though perhaps less than many because of my relative media isolation. The TV at our house has neither an antenna to get local channels nor do we have cable, so I miss all TV ads, pretty much, which makes small talk weird, BTW. Until I divested myself of TV with ads I never knew how much small talk is based on TV commercials. Not even TV SHOWS but TV COMMERCIALS.)

I mean, all you Harry Potter readers . . . c'mon! You're liking the most popular fantasy series since Lord of the Rings. You're liking the most hyped fantasy series ever, the most hyped series of books in history. But everyone I speak to about this that likes the Harry Potter books, each and every one, first tries to attribute the success of the books to the quality of them. They usually do this even after at least partially agreeing that the books are, shall we say, flawed. So, they say the books are flawed, but, golly, they're so good, and none of them, even for a moment, step back and analyze why they find the the most hyped book series ever produced to be so good, don't consider for a moment that advertising works on them, too. That advertising's purpose is to create longings that it then fills, and the reason why you're satisfied is because you've bought precisely the product that they've told you fulfills the very longing they've also created in you!

Like I said in yesterday's post, this is a big deal. It's much bigger than Harry Potter or Brittany Spears or GTA 4. Because those advertising tricks I mentioned above? Business and government do them, too. Take, say, global warming. Just the other day, I had a bit of a flame war with a fella who told me that it was unproven that humans made climate change. How could someone take that position? Because primarily the power industry has done everything it can to engage in advertising to make climate change look ridiculous. It has drafted advertisement and presented it as science, it has leaned on news agencies it advertises on, it has put it's shills in legitimate scientific organizations to promote it's agenda. All those tricks people fall for -- that occasionally everyone falls for -- business and government do. So I think it's vital that responsible citizens learn to understand when they've bought into the hype and discuss things clearly, because corporations and governments aren't trying to fool us, they are fooling us. For decades, literally decades, scientists have been talking about climate change, about the precautionary principle, about the long-term social, economic and political effects of climate change would be -- and because of the hype, it took decades for most people to believe there was any problem at all. And most people still don't want to do anything about it! They don't want to stop driving their cars, or eat primarily locally produced foodstuffs, etc., etc., even the people who are absolutely sold on the principle that people are responsible for climate change do very little to do something about it. (The number of SUVs at the farmer's market makes me want to wretch.) Even measures like merely increasing the efficiency of new buildings is met with terrible opposition, because corporations promote the idea that energy efficiency is somehow bad for the economy (which goes with the hype that the economy is the most important thing that there is).

So I find it frustrating, and worrisome, that even about something as essentially frivolous as a series of fantasy novels, I can find almost no one that will acknowledge that the hype has effected them. It makes me worried and somewhat depressed because the same skills that a person would use to identify the hype of Harry Potter novels, or Brittany Spears albums, or GTA 4 games, or whatever bit of hype a particular person might fall into . . . these are the same skills that a person would use to identify when corporate and government propaganda has influenced them. In this, the biggest thing that keeps a person trapped by advertisement is the naive belief that they are immune to it. You're not. I'm not. That's why one-sixth of the US economy is advertising: because it works on you.

Harry Potter, Hype and the Fate of the Free World

Harry Potter season is upon us. Everywhere I go, everyone is talking about that damn book! I swear, I tried to understand the appeal and I think, intellectually, that I do. The appeal is the same as with, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Veronica Mars, where teenagers coping with the struggles of growing up have to deal with these extraordinary challenges. But upon reading the actual Harry Potter novels -- I read the first five, caught up at my in-laws who lived in rural Indiana during a snowy Christmas season one year; I have read the first five -- I found myself . . . well, disappointed wasn't the exact word. The first and third were disappointing -- tho' I still think generally good things about Azkhaban -- but the fourth and fifth, and particularly Goblet of Fire weren't disappointing in the sense that they failed to live up to the hype . . . they were disappointing in the sense that they were deeply stupid. Everything good that was said about them is, really, in the category of a lie.

The character development wasn't believable, nor particularly interesting. As I have said before, the most fantastic element about the Harry Potter novels is how an abused child suddenly thrust into wealth, popularity and fame is such a nice kid; Rowling's inability or disinterest in having Harry, or any other characters in the books, face the reality of his abuse at the hands of the Dursleys simply invalidates the books as having real character development. And Harry grows up like a "real teenager" only in universes where the predominate occupation of fourteen and fifteen year old boys isn't sex.

The writing style was plodding and huge sections of the book were entirely extraneous, such as the interminable nonsense about what classes everyone is taking and the tedious details of what happens in each and every class. But, yet, there Rowling is, driving forward like the Juggernaut walking through concrete. She gets there, but you've got to have a lot of patience.

And then there's Voldemort! Now, as a person who likes comic books, I find him to be pretty flat and one dimensional. Seriously. Supervillains out of comic books have better described motivations than Voldemort. He makes Ultron seem positively three dimensional and can't hold a candle to the motivations of a character such as Magneto. But he's presented like he isn't high camp and we're expected to take this shallow supervillain seriously.

But, really, what is brutally stupid are the plots. If someone asks me, I will take the time to go on at great lengths about the plot of Goblet of Fire in particular, because that particular book is so intensely dumb, so brutally stupid, that I can go on about it at some length. But in general, the plots go forward only because of every damn year someone seems to forget that Voldemort is trying to kill Harry Potter, and every plot resolution happens only because of a deus ex machina. Something "magical" happens and Harry is saved! Yay! Except there is a difference between magical verisimilitude and deus ex machina, and time and again Rowling just has something illogical and improbable happen to save Harry through no effort of his own, in such a way that no one could really see it coming. In Sorcerer's Stone, at the end when Voldemort just crumbles to dust rather than killing Harry is such an example. Could anyone have predicted that a mother's love could make a person disintegrate? No. Yet, there it was, there it was.

Which is really just a preface to my point, however. A rant because every time I turn around for the past couple of days people have been talking about how splendid Harry Potter is, and he's not. The books are childish, not child-like with their love of whimsy and brightly hued sense of wonder and merriment, but childish with plodding writing combined with stupid plots mixed up with juvenile character development. My point is . . .

How have these books gotten to be the fastest selling novels of all time? They're not that good. Now, a fair number of people are going to say that they are good and my above statements and brief analysis of them is merely wrong.

Or, more generally, what is the mechanism through which any banal piece of media receives undeserved praise? Even if you don't agree with me that the Harry Potter novels are mediocrity that has achieved undeserved attention, I'm sure that if we try we can all think of media things that do (90210 or Brittany Spears albums, anyone?).

The short answer is . . . hype, in the sense of advertisement and media manipulation. Never in my lifetime has a novel been so intensely hyped as the Harry Potter novels. After each novel's release there's this media driven speculation -- often found in the straight news, so let us not doubt that it is media driven -- about what's going to happen in the next novel. Along the way, Rowling is sure to give carefully managed interviews (and always by extremely sympathetic interviewers) where she lets out hints that are then propagated through the traditional media to an audience of literally millions. Then there's the inevitable discussion of piracy and spoilers as a ramp up to the release of the book, and the deluge of traditional advertisement before it's actual release.

Part of what this does is also create, and this is a new development, an online community centered around the novels. You can see shadows of this with stuff like Martin's Fire and Ice books or Jordan's Wheel of Time novels, but Harry Potter kicks their asses hard. So, unlike virtually any other novel that a person reads, people will read a Harry Potter novel and then leap online to talk about it. And there will be talk, unlike, say, if after reading a good Captain Alatriste novel I jumped online to talk about one of them no one would say anything. (Indeed, that's the proximate cause of me writing this post. I can't turn around with someone mentioning that damn book! People, c'mon, if you're going to write about a book, write about a book that isn't the biggest event novel in history! Write about something that I might not otherwise hear about! Will no one rid me of this meddlesome wizard . . . oh, it was a bad idea to compare Voldemort to Henry II, who was played by Peter O'Toole in both Becket and A Lion in Winter. Sorta emphasizes the shallowness of Voldemort.) But because of the media exposure, it is particularly fruitful to talk about Harry Potter novels -- other people will listen far more intently than if you talk about any other novel. Which, of course, serves the hype very well. Not only are there conventional media sources bombarding us with Harry Potter, the formal and informal online communities will generate their own buzz, as well as being ideal for market research for additional advertising!

And, this is what amazes me, virtually no one sees it. Virtually no one sees that a key element to liking the Harry Potter novels is their participation in the hype. When you talk to people about it, and this is my reasonably broad experience, it will be defended first in terms of quality (the novels ARE that good, and your objections are WRONG) and then, and this is surprisingly common, that Harry Potter novels are responsible for improvements in literacy (hey, the news says so, and the news never lies, right? -- though finding a peer reviewed study that demonstrates such a thing is a little more difficult; suffice it to say here that the correlation between Harry Potter novels and improved literacy is both weak and tenuous and to buy into you've got to ignore alternate hypotheses such as the amount of time that children spend online engaging in, say, text messaging and reading webpages and writing emails). The notion that the hype is to some extent (and I think to a very large extent) responsible for their interest and appreciation of the novels is simply unthinkable.

(Admission and irony: I am clearly swept up in the Harry Potter hype. Obviously. The hype is pervasive and annoying in my circles and this is my reaction to it. My critique here is, furthermore, part of the hype. There's no such thing as bad publicity.)

And before rejecting my critique, take a second if you must to separate Harry Potter out from it. Think, instead, about the hype surrounding Hollywood blockbusters, particularly those in serial form, where bad movie after bad movie follows in blindly. Think of, say, Die Hard movies, or Star Wars movies, and how the quality of the second Die Hard movie didn't stop there from being made a third and fourth, or how the truly elaborate awfulness of episodes one and two didn't stop episode three from being made -- and then take a deep breath and realize that all the Star Wars and Die Hard movies have been financially successful. Think of all those Britanny Spears albums or New Kids on the Block or N'Sync. All I've said is just as true for Die Hard, Star Wars and N'Sync as it is Harry Potter, and it's true even if I'm wrong about the specifics of Harry Potter (tho' I'm not, hehe).

I think the importance of this goes way beyond Harry Potter, Star Wars or N'Sync. It has to do with how people relate to media. Not that we buy into the hype. If you want to buy into the hype, hey, knock yourselves out. Hype can be fun, interesting and cool. It is a way, after all, to meet a lot of people, to involve yourself in something. I sometimes like getting caught up in the hype! I find myself looking forward to the GTA 4 game, even tho' I strongly disliked San Andreas. So, my problem isn't even with the hype, per se. The problem I'm seeing is that most people are manipulated by the hype and refuse to acknowledge it.

If people can't recognize the hype that's being sold to them by Scholastic or Virgin Records, what chance do they of understanding the hype around the serious social and political issues of our time?

I feel that the ability to deal with media in America is one of the most important things we must improve. We live in a media saturated environment. We are being bombarded from all sides, almost constantly, with various narratives. Some of these narratives are much louder, more invasive and cleverly arranged than others. People will, naturally, be drawn to ideas that have been surrounded with these loud, invasive and clever narratives -- this advertising and hype -- than those that don't have equally good narratives. But, as I hope I've demonstrated, the advertising has only a tangential relationship to the actual quality of what is advertised. Sure, with books and movies if you buy into the hype of one and ignore another, you're just missing out on a book or movie you might have otherwise enjoyed much more than what was hyped. But when this is taken into the social sphere, the inability to recognize hype and ignore it to seriously examine the ideas behind the hype has dramatic effects for the country and the world. The issue isn't if Harry Potter dies or not, but if real people die or not. And I think that we all can think of situations where hype was used in preference to clear discussion of facts . . . and the consequences have been disastrous.

I will leave you with a quote from the great Chuck D: "Don't believe the hype."

Tomorrow I'll touch on this subject again, in a somewhat different way, as some meditations about the publishing industry.

Cultural Christianity

Cultural Christianity

I was talking with Infidel753 when in my post, Pope Rat Strikes Again I mentioned that about 2/5ths of French Catholics don't believe in any god (which was given to me by Stew's blog post about the subject and subsequently confirmed by at least one other person I know that lives in France). Infidel753 said that he'd read that roughly 1/3rd of Germans who identified as Christian also did not believe in any gods, which seems to suss up with the data about the French pretty well. Apocryphally, I have good Danish friends who tell me that religion is not important for Danes, even though almost all of them are legally Lutheran. Infidel753 then linked me to one of his posts that talked about this article out of The Nation magazine, which is about as square as journalism gets, talks about the bad journal and polls about religion – such as journalists concluding that 91% of Americans believe in god because they believe in a “higher power” without noting the distinction between a higher power and a god. I mean, by the hazy definition of believing in a “higher power” it could be said that I believe in god, because I believe in the power of human reason and experience to transform the world into a better place.

One of the things this means, of course, is those charts that say how many people are Christian or whatever aren't worth the paper they're printed on. It's pretty obvious that many Christians are cultural Christians – that religion is part of the cultural heritage. Many Jews are this way – I'm sure most of us know the sort: they eat bacon and cheese on their pizzas, never seem to celebrate the Sabbat, yet clearly identify as Jewish as part of their cultural identity.

I'm increasingly sure that this is where religion – all religion – is going. Religion makes such little sense, but is nevertheless so integrally part of our culture that separating ourselves from it is troublingly difficult. In many ways, I am a cultural Christian – I'm spending a year of my life to write a book about Simon Peter and Jesus! Yes, the book is wholly secular in nature and intents, but it's obvious I'm heavily invested in Christianity in America, emotionally and intellectually.

I am seeing now that being religious or secular is a false dichotomy. That it is possible to be religious and secular, even an atheist, because many people are already cultural Christians (or cultural Muslims, Hindus, etc.).

I am thinking that . . . we might want to hasten the arrival of a purely cultural Christianity, especially here in the United States. Naming something makes it powerful. And cultural Christianity, totally divested of any political influence, and only artistic influence socially (which can be quite strong, of course), is something that would please a lot of people who are "Christian" in name only, or who are struggling to incorporate this important element of Western civilization into their own lives but having trouble doing so because the only paradigm, currently, that one is allowed to be a Christian is religiously. But it doesn't have to be that way. It is possible to be culturally Christian, to recognize the place of Christianity in Western civilization, but not to fall prey to the religious aspects of it, the absurd beliefs and predatory institutions of religious Christianity.

On Intolerance

I've been called intolerant, again. I always find it ironic when members of an intolerant church -- and most are wildly intolerant -- complain about intolerance, conceptually. Because the truth is that, yes, I am intolerant of most forms of religion. I mean, duh, look at my journal!

However, and this is not generally touched on when people start up this sort of thing, is that there are many forms of good intolerance. For instance, I'm just going to assume that everyone that reads this is fairly intolerant concerning Nazism, or Stalinism, or pimps, or organized crime, or torturers.

So, I set out to determine what constitutes benevolent intolerance! I came up with two criteria. The first is -- there must be a substantial justification for intolerance. Meaning, you've got to have a good reason. The second is -- what you propose to do should be appropriate to the offenses.

Let us take my intolerance of the Catholicism and the Catholic Pope, He Who Zings Rats (which is a very mild satire, I should point out out, totally not like calling someone's mom a whore -- I say this because I've been accused of that, believe it or not!).

The reasons why I am intolerant of Catholicism and the Catholic Pope. The organization is sexist: it is anti-birth control (which has made worse the epidemic of AIDS, leading to numerous deaths, I should add), anti-abortion, anti-divorce and forbids women into positions of power in the Catholic Church. It engages in massive, wide-spread campaigns of intimidation: it says that anyone who doesn't follow the Pope's rules goes to Hell, it threatens people with eternal suffering in order to spread itself and maintain its congregations. The Catholic Church's unelected officials, this is the Pope specifically, interfers with the politics of other countries, such as threatening excommunication for politicians who don't create laws supporting an anti-abortion agenda. I could go on, but these are some of the big ones. I think that they are true (indeed, obvious) and serious. People's lives are often at stake, and the welfare of whole countries. No joke.

And what do I want to do about it? Engage in occasional light satirization of the Pontiff Who Zings Rats. That's mostly it.

Now, let us compare what the Pope Who Zings Rats and his intolerance towards Protestants. Why is the Pope intolerant of Protestants? Because their leaders don't have apostolic succession. What is the consequences of this? Well, uh, since their leaders don't have apostolic succession, it means none of their rites -- including baptism, communion and marriage -- are "real" and it means they're . . . all . . . going to Hell.

You MIGHT see some differences in the substance of the intolerance, here. Oh, I know, for the Catholics apostolic succession is an element of their dogma and they take it very seriously -- but it isn't very meaningful to non-Catholics. It is the Catholic Church again trying to push itself off on people that don't want it's interference (which is a common theme in the reasons I loathe the Catholic Church -- it systematically is trying to push off itself on people who don't want it, and who are often hurt in the process). And for this "sin", the Pope affirms that all those Protestants are going to burn in Hell forever! Now, I of course do not believe in Hell, but they do. I know that no Protestants are very scared of Papal threats (they've had five hundred years to get used to them, after all), and further many Protestants believe that Catholics are as hellbound as Catholics believe Protestants to be for equally absurd reasons, but the Pope is threatening these people in a very real way with hellfire, he's really trying to intimidate them!

A comparable situation might be if my intolerance of Catholics included, say, a plea to have them rounded up and put in "reeducation camps" where they'd be given electric shock therapy to turn them into good atheists. While it would be laughable that I suggested such a thing, because I altogether lack the authority to make it happen, it would still be really, really disturbing that I'd want to do it at all. (Just like it is disturbing that many neo-nazis want to kill non-whites -- they can't do it, but it's horrible that they want to do it.) So to with the Catholic Church. It is horrific that the Pope is comfortable of it happening (especially since he can do something about it -- he could easily write an ex cathedral papal bull saying that all Christian leaders henchforth have apostolic succession on his own authority, that they forevermore have apostolic succession from St. Peter's throne, but I guess it's just easier to remind them they've all got defective churches and are going to Hell), and wills it to happen.

So, at any rate, I hope I've given some people something to think about when people frivolously bring up the whole intolerance thing. Remember, it matters why you're intolerant and what you propose to do with that intolerance. If your intolerance is backed up with firm reasoning and your intentions are benevolent, you go!

All Religion is Politics

I think that the distinction between politics and religion is false. Those of us in democratic republics in the modern mold generally feel that it is possible to have this distinction between church and state. We go on all the time about it, at least here in America. But it occurred to me some time ago that this distinction is false. All religion is politics.

Religions are organizations that give orders to their congregations. They tell their congregations what to do, how to do it, they give orders on who to fuck, how to do it, with whom it is acceptable to fuck. Or marry. They dictate to their congregations how to behave in social situations. They give orders, often, on what is acceptable to eat, or wear. They enforce obedience to their orders through the most brutal of threats -- eternal torture or being born as a worm or what have you for most of them -- and often by ostracizing people who are sufficiently disobedient from their community (such in the case of a conservative Christian who refuses to "give up" homosexuality, or the formality of excommunication).

Think about all of that for a second. Religions exercise way more authority, or attempt to do so, than any modern democratic republic. If the government tried to order a person that they couldn't marry someone of the "wrong religion" they'd be accused (appropriately!) of tyranny. If the government tried to regulate a person's speech the way religions do, they'd be accused of tyranny. But religions routinely do these things. They routinely order these things.

And they do their dead level best to compel obedience. In modern democracies, they are wisely kept from physically enforcing their laws, but they would if they could, and they definitely do all they can to compel obedience. They invent the most cruel tortures for non-believers or heretics they can and threaten their congregations (and, indeed, the whole world) -- and for believers it is vital to keep in mind that these threats are real. They believe in the hells invented for non-believers and heretics. The threat, in the mind of the believer, is very real, as real as if I were to threaten you with pulling out your teeth with pliers. Worse. Eventually you'd run out of teeth, whereas religious threatens torment without end. If I was to physically threaten someone with torture, I'd be a criminal. Religions threaten their congregations with far worse threats but we sort of shrug and let them. We let them do this to children, to people who are literally mentally ill, we let them do these things! If I was raising a child and consistently threatening the child with, say, skinning the child alive and boiling the child in oil to compel obedience I'd be correctly accused of child abuse. Religions? Nope. It's okay for them to threaten people, to threaten them in ways that they accept as real, to compel obedience.

The government isn't allowed to do that! In modern democracies, cruel and unusual punishment is unacceptable, but religions aren't held to that standard.

What I'm saying here is that religions are political. They create laws, they enforce them, they collect taxes. They do everything that governments do. While they can't do some of the things that governments do, they also do things that governments can't.

The only defense of this is that it's voluntary. But is it? I don't think so. Religions threaten people who try to leave the church with eternal damnation. Because the religious people believe these threats, it is no different than me threatening someone with violence to remain in a relationship. It's no different than if I was to tell my wife I'd cut her arms and legs off if she dared to leave me -- it is duress. So even the voluntary argument doesn't really hold up to those who believe. To leave a religion is to be, in their own minds, condemned to a fate worse than death.

As such, I think that something should be done about this. No joke. I think that the same standards we apply to other groups need to be applied to religions. I think they should be forbidden to threaten people, just like any other organization in a modern democracy! Additionally, I think that people need to be aware that all religious activity is political with leaders, laws, taxes and enforcement, and that religions challenge the sovereignty of the government . . . and they should be treated appropriately, and forbidden to have the character of a government in the lives of the people of that religion (though, admittedly, stopping religions from threatening their congregations might be sufficient to do that -- without duress, people would be free to leave religions).

But those are my thoughts for today. That religions should be held to the same standards as every other organization and be absolutely forbidden from using tactics and fear and intimidation on people.

PS: I was thinking about what this means for my interaction with religion. What is it that really bothers me about religion. Sure, I think that people who believe in spirits and gods are wrong. But I generally don't have that much of a problem with people being merely wrong about something.

What bothers me about religion is their actions. And the more I think about it the more I'm seeing one of the key things that bothers me about religion is the overt intimidation involved in religion. So I went to see how common threats are in the big world religions. I consulted the power of Google and found some information about religions.

Here are the top 22 religions, by numbers of adherents:

# Christianity: 2.1 billion
# Islam: 1.3 billion
# Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
# Hinduism: 900 million
# Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
# Buddhism: 376 million
# primal-indigenous: 300 million
# African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
# Sikhism: 23 million
# Juche: 19 million
# Spiritism: 15 million
# Judaism: 14 million
# Baha'i: 7 million
# Jainism: 4.2 million
# Shinto: 4 million
# Cao Dai: 4 million
# Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
# Tenrikyo: 2 million
# Neo-Paganism: 1 million
# Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
# Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
# Scientology: 500 thousand

Christianity, Islam, Chinese traditional religions, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism all have at least one hell. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Cao Dai and Tenrikyo have beliefs where people who violate their religion are punished through being born again into a worst state. So, most religions and all the biggest ones include intimidation as a part of normal doctrine.

Juche, the state cult of North Korea, does not have a hell or offers punishment to anyone who "strays". However, it is part and parcel with Kimiljungism which is creepy in it's own right.

African traditional and diaspora religions . . . well, there are a whole bunch of them. I know that many of them have various concepts of "hell", but it might be a mixed bag considering how many religions they actually are. The same is true of "primal-indigenous" and, er, Judaism -- there is no unified view of a Jewish afterlife.

The religions that have no system of intimidation built into them are Baha'i, Shinto (tho' it is deeply entwined with Japanese Buddhism), Rastafarianism, neo-paganism and Unitarian Universalism -- with some African traditional and diaspora religions, some Jews and some primal indigenous religions. I feel that these, then, are the outside limits of the religions I would be willing to deal with. They're the religions that systematically make it policy not to intimidate people with threats of eternal punishment for non-belief or disobedience. I know that there are sects of the other religions that also do not coerce people, and I'd be willing to deal with them, as well. I think that lack of intimidation and coercion might be my standard for dealing with a given religion, politically or socially. Because without the threat behind it, religion is just a choice.

Post-colonialism and Post-theism

(Hat tip to Atheist Hussy for grooving me onto the interview with Christopher Hitchens.)

Truthdig.com just did an interview with Christopher Hitchens concerning his new book God is Not Great. It is the latest in a series of best-sellers whose success motivates me to write Simon Peter faster so I can point to all the recent books directed at atheists that have sold a million copies. Beyond that, and the proximate reason for this post, is that Hitchens said something clever:

Wiener: The final killer argument of your critics is that Hitler and Stalin were not religious. The worst crimes of the 20th century did not have a religious basis. They came from political ideology.

Hitchens: That’s easy. Hitler never abandoned Christianity and recommends Catholicism quite highly in “Mein Kampf.” Fascism, as distinct from National Socialism, was in effect a Catholic movement.

Wiener: What about Stalin? He wasn’t religious.

Hitchens: Stalin—easier still. For hundreds of years, millions of Russians had been told the head of state should be a man close to God, the czar, who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as absolute despot. If you’re Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business if you can’t exploit the pool of servility and docility that’s ready-made for you. The task of atheists is to raise people above that level of servility and credulity. No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine.

This put me in mind of post-colonialism. For those not in the know, post-colonialism grapples with the legacy of colonial rule. Stuff like why is that Haiti is the amongst poorest nations on earth despite being one of the first modern democracies and despite having a massively profitable export product? Post-colonialism argues that it is the legacy of dependence created by the colonial system that keeps places like Haiti poor - that even after Haiti was technically independent of France's rule, most of the property in Haiti was still owned by people who had deep ties to France and who served the interests, largely, of France. Not to mention the brutality of slavery, the trained obedience to white prestige and privilege, things of that nature. The same is true in most former colonies. This ongoing legacy needs to be dealt with before a country can come into it's own. Haiti, having been particularly brutally colonized, is having a particularly hard time coming out of it's post-colonial period. Whereas China, which was far less colonized than Haiti, for less time, and with a far more robust culture than Haiti, has almost entirely put its post-colonial legacy behind it. And it is then unsurprising that the first Asian nation to come into it's own on the world stage was Japan - a country that had never suffered colonization by European powers.

So, when Hitchens said Stalin was able to take advantage of centuries of servility and docility that had been hammered into the Russian people by the Russian Orthodox Church, my mind made the connection between the legacy of religion and post-colonialism. It made me think that we're living in a post-theist society. God is dead, but as Nietzsche noted the shadow of god will continue to trouble our days for centuries to come. So, while Stalin was certainly an atheist, and a madman, the groundwork for his atrocities were laid by brutal theism of the Russian Orthodox Church in the same way that the brutality of Papa Doc Duvalier were laid by the colonial horrors of the French. The brutality of Stalin was not contextless. It was able to happen for a reason and part of that reason certainly was the habits indoctrinated into them by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Czar.

Some other examples of post-theism might be found in, say, Great Britain where the Church of England still has seats in the House of Lords. Despite the overwhelming majority of the British being a-religious, British laws are still in part shaped by the Church of England. It's absurd, but it's true. And in the United States, it is de rigeur for virtually all political candidates to publicly repeat ad nauseum their "born again" status - even though, on paper, the US is one of the least religious countries in the world. We don't have an official religion. We never have had an official religion. But so powerful is the lingering influence of theism that candidates must nevertheless acknowledge some silly born again state in order to get elected into office. A third example might be found in the Vatican City. Why on earth is a couple of blocks in Rome a separate nation? It's preposterous, but there it is, not to mention the absurd level of influence this decadent and dying religion continues to have on the modern Italian state.

Most of the world is in a post-theist phase - there is no enforcement of a state cult in most countries and religious leaders have little formal authority in most places. Yet, I think that it is important to realize that just because a society might not be religious doesn't mean the effects of religion mystically vanish from that society. After literally centuries of basing one's laws and culture off of various religious authorities these cultural habits remain ingrained into our society and person even if we have rejected the religion. Much of who we are, culturally, socially, is so deeply entwined with religion it will be a very long time before we're free of the malady of religion. Religion is a fever that has broken, but we are still a long way of having our full strength.

But we will. Skepticism is the fastest growing belief about religion in the world today. I don't figure this will change.

Science and Secularism

I was reading PZ Myer's blog. In a recent post, he did something he frequently does, and that many atheists do, which is give this universal primacy to science in the scientific method. Says he: "Faith says that the way to get answers is by revelation, accepting authority, and dogma. Science says that the way to get answers is by examining the evidence critically, testing hypotheses with experiment in the natural world, and by constantly reevaluating and revising our ideas to make them more accurate."

Indeed, he was responding to this: "The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths."

Both of them conflate reason with science. Anyone with passing interest in my blog and writings know that I am very pro-science, but I think that . . . well, I understand that the theists do want to try to limit the damage that the secular world is doing to them. But I am finding it increasingly disturbing that the atheists approach the subject of addressing religion in such a one note way. As if the fight is a brawl over scientific facts, alone!

But it isn't, and science is not the only field to use reason and philosophical materialism to address it's subject matter. Another area -- and this is another key area when discussing matters religions -- is history. History attempts to explain human events without the slightest hint of the supernatural. It is not a science, but all the core elements of history are similar to science, and they are based on the same sort of philosophical materialism of science. You look for data to create an increasing accurate view of the past, and ideas that aren't supported by the data are generally discarded.

History is also one of the most powerful tools that an atheist can use -- and secular historians are definitely under a sustained attack by religious people. Still, it is useful to be able to debunk religion by pointing out not only how none of the supernatural events of various religious works are supported by historical works but also all the other religions that are dead, to be able to talk about how religions are formed and die, the plethora of would-be messiahs and gods whose works have been exposed as frauds, and often the complete lack of a historical record about the existence of these people, and how that record is at variance with religious works.

I know this is true for me. I can be talking with a Christian about Simon Peter and they'll be disturbed at what I'm writing about. That is, after all, part of the point of me writing it. They'll get disturbed and say that I'm factually wrong about things and they'll use what as their sole reference? If you didn't guess "the Bible" then where do you live so I can go there where it isn't know that Christians have a grand total of one reference about everything, hmm? Yes, the Bible. So, I can start talking about historical events and other religions of the period and I'll almost always draw a blank stare. So, you say that Christianity is just Roman Mithraism with a Jewish coat of paint, and that various solar religions with stories similiar to Christianity were all over the area for centuries, Roman, Persian, Greek and Egyptian, the general response I get is a blank stare. Despite Mithraism being the official cult of several Roman legions, including some in the area, and Mithraism's similarity to Christianity, and it predating Christianity by about 200 years, Christians are ignorant of Mithraism.

And that's just one of the gems that can be dropped on Christians from history. The Christian narrative, like all religious narratives, simply can't stand up in the face of the historical record. When a person is able to contextualize a religious story in the broader panoply of history, the stories don't seem as urgent. A Christian reading the Bible can easily feel that what is going on in those stories must have been the most important thing in the universe -- but when compared to the larger story of the Jewish world, the Roman Empire and it's struggle with Persia, the vastness of Indian and Chinese history, all occurring at the same time, it becomes a lot less impressive.

Of course, history isn't even the only additional discipline. Politics is another. Now, politics won't be able to combat the truth or falseness of religion, but when a person has studied politics in any capacity, it becomes painfully obvious that the best sorts of governments are those without church interference. The correlation between a secular government and the well-being of the people under that government is nearly absolute. It is harder to promote religion in society when a person has a good knowledge of politics.

Of course, all of these things are related to some extent. Science and religion share many techniques, and politics and history have interesting interconnections, and they all make use at various stages mathematics and statistics. But the notion that science is the only way to addressing the foolishness of religion is something that needs to stop, I feel.

Religious Nutjob Letters!

I have, apparently, gotten to the point where I'm receiving now and again letters trying to refute whatever position I'm making. They're not nearly as cool as comments, where the person's absurdity is out there in the open for everyone to see, but I feel this is progress towards having my own brand of home grown fundie Christian trolls!

In any event, here's a missive I got from a Christian. I'm posting it as I got it except for putting in some paragraph breaks which make it flow easier:

You asked for a response from a "smart Christian" so here it is: I promise not to use a single verse out of the Bible to make a stand.

How do you know you exist? Rene Descartes puts "cognito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am). The next question you should ask your self is how did I and my ancestors come into being? Well evolution is a sound theory except it relies on the same principal of Christianity. Faith. Only micro-evolution has been truly proven. All other forms are based on circular reasoning. Quoting from Kant "If anything exists in the cosmos, then there must be an absolutely necessary Being."

Now for the Atheist argument. Ancient teachings are inaccurate because the writers of old did not know even one-quarter of what we know today. I rebuke this as untrue. The ancient Egyptians knew about "modern medical practices." They performed brain surgeries on concussions thousands of years before we. The ancient Indians had indoor plumbing in their houses years before the Romans even had aqueducts.

In the face of these things you will say that we lost most of our knowledge during the Crusades were the Christians in their ignorance burned the Library of Alexandria simply because it was Pagan. We slay the Muslims because of greed and we denied any medical advancement during the reign of the Holy Catholic Church. Have I not made an accurate assessment of your views? Our perception of the world is based on faith and faith alone. Truth is only the abstract conclusion of many minds.

So it doesn't matter whether you are an Atheist or a Christian or any other religion, you are only following the truth of faith. God plays dice and sometimes he craps. That's not to say that he doesn't love his creations it's just that he rather make it fun. Knowing you, you'll try to rebuke me with Bible. Go ahead and read for "The truth shall set you free." And "Ye shall be as gods." Sorry I couldn't keep the Bible out of the rebuke. Oh, and yes a mans' hands did scribe the bible, but let's do a little mind experiment.

Take one child, maybe just old enough to write (let's say a 3rd grader), and have the child write every instruction you give him exactly. Next take another child (let's use a 12th grader) and give the child a general idea of what you want. More than likely the 3rd grader who you told step by step to do will come out with better instructions than the 12th grader with just a general picture of what you wanted. This is basically the model of the Bible. God told the prophets what to write and they wrote. The New Testament is only a compilation of the letters of the church leaders save for Revelations and the four Gospels.

In conclusion Christianity is basically a Crap game. I'm putting my life to a God who may or may not exist, yet one side not God has not been proven not to exist so he must exist. For if there is no reproof for the proof provided by our elders then the elders must be right. Like I said before faith is a dice game and I could crap. But crapping is a chance I'll be willing to take for my god.

I wish I'd gotten the idea of posting the other letters I'd gotten. I want to say that pretty much all of them are about this level of . . . whatever.

How do you respond to something like this? Seriously. He starts off with irrelevant passages from Descartes and Kant (two philosophers I hate, I should also add - I HATE that I think therefore I am crap!). He then goes on to give the old canard about religion and science are the same because they both rely on faith. Which is nonsense. Science has proof and can do things, it never involves the intervention of supernatural beings.

Then the guy just gets weird. Not the things he gets that are merely factually wrong (like the Library at Alexandria being burned by the Crusaders . . . the Crusaders never conquered Alexandria) and then his bizarre thought experiment, and referring to religion as a "crap shoot" and ending up with a crude restatement of Pascal's wager. Or what's that stuff about how the ancients were more knowledgeable than us? That's just so . . . well, it's this bizarre stupidity whose end I thought we'd put soundly to rest by the Renaissance and the death of Scholasticism. Also, stupid on inspection. Where's the ancient aluminum or airplanes or steel reinforced concrete or Plexiglas, blah, blah, blah. I mean, sure, a few Egyptians might have had brain surgery, but . . . the survival rates for such procedures were v. low. Oh, sure, what the hell - the patient is gonna die, anyway. Might as well dose 'em up on opium and crack open the ol' brainpan. But to equate what the Egyptians did with surgery compared to modern medical techniques is daft. Daft and bizarre.

I just don't know what to say to this! I COULD just correct where he's factually wrong. Talk about the differences between science and religion, for example. I could critique his bringing up Descartes and Kant as irrelevant, and even veer into a discussion why I think that Descartes, as a philosopher, made a fine mathematician. I can talk about history, science and philosophy at some length.

But somehow I get the feeling it wouldn't work. If anyone has an idea of what might work, please, say so! Otherwise, I guess I'm just posting this as an example of the sorts of things I am getting in my inbox, nowadays. Which is fine! It makes opening my mail an interesting and unique experience every time.