Monday Morality Mashup

Congratulations on surviving the weekend, but if you find yourself taking a bit too much pride in that singular accomplishment you probably fall into one of these three categories.

Number One

You’ve finally collected yourself off the bathroom floor, and are overjoyed that God took your vow of future abstinence as a reason not to kill you outright (as you clung to the commode for dear life).  Good thing that God doesn’t seem to take that promise very seriously or the college death rates in the US would skyrocket.  Don’t worry if you made that promise yourself last weekend. You’ve absolutely nothing to fear.  Drink up.

Number Two

You’re a murderous death row inmate who just got a stay of execution.

Number Three

You are deeply religious, and therefore so scared of dying and going to Heaven you’re overjoyed with every extra day that your savior allows you to exist here in the Devil’s Playground (aka Earth, not just Las Vegas).

Keeping You Accountable

There are all kinds of things that “God” can be credited with keeping you accountable for and not just murder, inebriation or your secret desire to wear women’s lingerie.

It really doesn’t matter which God you pick from.  One God may favor women in burlap, while another yearns for virgin sacrifice.  Some Gods are really into cows, while others deify rats.  The rules of accountability (morality), as outlined in many conflicting ancient texts, are themselves obtuse enough that internecine fractionalization of the major religions is geopolitically destabilizing.  But this isn’t a post about politics, it’s a post about morality and what constitutes the bedrock we should be building our moral foundations upon.

Lottery in June, Corn be heavy soon

What God holds you personally accountable for varies according to your time and place in history. but since this is now in history, and my readership is mainly American, I’ll focus on Christianity.  There’s little sense in deconstructing the lunacy of an Aztec priest ripping the heart out of a heavily drugged virgin for the greater good of society.  Most of us are already pretty sure that form of faith doesn’t really keep the crops from failing, though the stigma of such belief is still apparent in our English literature.

Christian Morality

What the hell is Christian morality these days?  For folks who ground their moral lives around beliefs supposedly written in stone, the shifting sands of Christian morality are changing so rapidly it’s hard to keep them in focus for one lifetime, let alone a millennia.

Shotgun Jeebus – Hommie Don’t Play That.

It is nearly impossible to witness species emerge through physical evolution in the short span of a couple human lifetimes.  It is equally impossible to miss the evolution of Christian morality over a similar timeframe.  Not that long ago a good Christian man was one who properly cared for his slaves, and as recently as last week (in archaeological time) the gays were still being vilified and lambasted by our Christian society, whereas now they’re being wed by US Supreme Court justices.  Next thing you know, Jeebus is going to be back to hitting the bong at the Seattle Hempfest like he was blazing it up back at Woodstock.

The Good Old Days

When I was a kid, God’s hippie son preached peace, forgiveness and charity to the poor.  He was often photographed with an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder, surrounded by braless, misshapen girls in tie-dyed sundresses.. Don’t act like he never even existed!  If you’re over fifty you can’t deny it.  That imaginary Jeebus got kicked to the side of the road long ago, in lieu of a more strident militaristic Onward Christian Soldier version.   Today, there are high level Christians leading the charge to help the poor by starving them to death and they often get together to vainly pray that the worldwide violence they spread won’t end up right back on their doorstep.

Jeebus Wars

The verdict is still out over which imaginary Jeebus will return to the throne in America.  Will the rightwing militant Jeebus retain the throne or has his time passed?  To make things more interesting, there is a growing movement to throw all the imaginary Jeebus’ into the dustbin of history and let them party with the many lost and abandoned Gods before them.

In the meantime, your so-called bedrock Christian morality had better be as flexible as a yoga masters spine because depending on which outlaw territory of America you happen to find yourself in, you’re going to be heavily dependent on currying favor with whatever local warlord happens to run your neighborhood.  It pays to “open minded” and malleable to change in times like these.

Tomorrow:  How in the name of Goodness will we ground our human morality without some form of imaginary Jeebus?   Science can’t possibly project from “what is” to “what ought to be”,  or can it?

Enjoy.

Friday’s Feud

Every generation deserves their own version of the Scopes monkey trial.  This is probably the best we’re ever going to get in our generation.

Setting the Stage

If you haven’t seen this Vimeo of Lawrence Krauss and William Lane Craig you’re really missing out.  It’s another one of those “Does God Exist” style debates (Spoiler alert: He’s still incommunicado).  I know.  I can hear you all sigh.  …..not another one of those….  Hear me out!   It lacks the faux intellectual suck-upitude present in most of these types of debates.  Krauss brings a deserved wickedness to the mix that has been sorely lacking since Hitch passed.

This event is sponsored by a Bible Forum with an audience I expect is heavily stacked in favor of religious leaning viewpoints.  You can skip the first 23 minutes to get directly to Krauss’ opening and bypass the long intro.

William Milquetoast Craig

If you’re an atheist of any intellectual rigor at all, you’re already recoiling in horror at the thought of listening through the tortured rhetorical apologetic sophistry that is William Lane Craig (Skip over his soliloquey to get to coffee table format immediately after).  On the other hand, seeing Krauss expand his role into the empty shoes left by Christopher Hitchens is a refreshing respite from his many Universe from Nothing videos of late.  Krauss is clearly not confounded by fools nor suffering them gladly, a trait he shares in common with the late Mr. Hitchens.

Lawrence Krauss

While Krauss is clearly lacking when compared to the linguistic facility of Hitchens, he is decidedly less restrained than the oft too-clever Hitchens and entirely more surefooted in matters pertaining to science and religion.  Krauss does borrow from Hitchens in this debate, tossing in a Mother Teresa bit related to the Catholic vexation on suffering as a means to salvation.  I felt that Craig got away on that, brushing it off much more easily than he would have if Hitchens had been there.

Krauss had clearly sharpened his knives against Craig before entering this debate.  He did the best take-down of fundamentalist quote mining in recent memory.  He was clearly angry at the misrepresentations being peddled by Craig and others of his ilk.  Seeing his unrestrained disgust with Craig was worth the price of free admission.  Somebody needs to do what Krauss is doing and he obviously likes to travel more than I do, so more power to him.

Enjoy.

Evolution Proven False?

This seems as good a time as any to examine the tendency of nut-jobs (religious and otherwise) to grab onto minor controversies within the ranks of their opposition and distort them out of all proportion.

The inspiration for today’s posting comes from Jerry Coyne, who pointed me in the direction of this article in The New York Times, with a further reinforcement from a favorite Youtuber of mine, Coffee With Claire.

The NYT story highlights a case of recently discovered academic fraud within the field of social psychology and the faked data of a Dutch researcher. Claire’s latest YouTube offering reminded me of how it will be misused by anti-science zealots as proof that all of “science” is just one big scam, by invoking the logical fallacy of composition (what is true of the part is necessarily true of the whole). Claire does an excellent take-down of this knuckle dragging God slobberer. His YouTube handle is noimplant4me and his video exemplifying the well worn logical fallacy of composition is here.

Claire rightly notes that noimplant4me fails to mention that in every instance of scientific fraud, it is other scientists who are responsible for policing and catching the miscreants. In the case of noimplant4me, this misuse of logic is aimed at supporting the house of cards that is young earth creationism, but I’ve also seen similar scientific shenanigans leveraged in support of global warning denial.

My noting this tendency will likely have little effect on those who continue to misuse it. That said, I think it is worth mentioning that in this latest example of fraud within the field of social psychology, not much of consequence was really affected. The studies under scrutiny were of the touchy-feely variety and the results, much like religious texts, were manipulated by a man of ignoble character into a framework that fit social convention.

I don’t want to pile on the social psychologists too hard. Sure, most of what they study looks to be about as useful as the beard on my Aunt Bess, but at the end of the day, it’s experts in this field who are responsible for having to make a comprehensible analysis of crazy cultural shit like #atheismplus, so I’ll cut them some slack.

Evolution has not been proven false.

Enjoy.

Sucker Bets

Today’s blog entry inspired by the following video from Ricard Wiseman

Judging by the Youtube comments on this video, not everybody is “in” on the joke.  This has me pondering the political implications of applying the “special forces” that Richard is displaying here to work in the field of presidential polling. Googling….

Turns out that application of Richard Wiseman’s magic new technology is already patented for politics by some dude named Nate Silver.  Dam you Nate Silver, you and your fancy devil-inspired numerology.  The American populace was TOTALLY IN THE DARK over Nate’s reliance on ARABIC numbers!  Holy shit people.  And you were worried about a mosque at Ground Zero?  I’ve actually heard rumors that this Nate Silver is suspiciously effeminate and if that doesn’t scare you out of your complacent fog of universal non-comformity then there is no hope for any of you.  Noting such complacence has me considering calling the Saint Bernards off their search for survivors in the recent avalanche on Bullshit Mountain.  Free round of smelling salts to all my wing-nut friends!!

I just found the next-best-thing to the “sure thing”  sucker bet to replace the one Richard is teaching me. ruining for me.

I am predicting the Petraeus affair will make it’s way beyond SNL and into cartoon or sitcom form before my birthday on the 24th of Nov.

Two and a Half Men is gasping for new material like Charlie Sheen snorting up coke at a hooker party, so that’s my sitcom pick.  Bart Simpson’s blackboard seems a likely choice for first animated take-down. Leave your guesses in the comments if you want to play along.   Let me know if  there are any Petraeus joke sightings I have missed.

In return I toss you this brief tidbit.  Funniest one yet, and comes directly off “non comedy” nightly news in Colorado.  They “snatched” the wrong book cover photo off Google for their nightly news.

The REAL sucker bet is getting an internet newb to bet against there already being 10,000 tweets linking this Colorado graphic “mishap” with the recently passed marijuana legislation there.  Talk about low hanging fruit!!

Enjoy.

Can Math Really be Trusted?

As the creationist movement continues it’s march into public school classrooms all over the US (thanks to Texas FFS??), it behooves all parents to consider the motives and implications of those who are championing this cause.

If you are one of the eighty million Jeebus Camp supporters the answer to the question, “Can math really be trusted?” is not something you need look any further than your Bible to answer.  Why, you ask?

Without written proof from the divine, devout believers are nervous to trust even their own observation that there are an “equal” number of fingers on each of their own “two” hands.

If the Bible said otherwise, then they would assume that their personal observations were being influenced by demonic forces that (somehow) needed expunging.  The emperor runs naked in their kingdom with no fear of over exposure.  The native instincts of any youth who might see it otherwise are squelched at Jesus Camps, which seem to inflict the exact type of emotional mayhem on the participants as the Jihadi variety we are more akin to being shown on US television, though I’m sure they would argue otherwise.  But I digress.  Can we trust math?

I mostly trust math, but then I am considered mostly a godless atheist by many of my fellow countrymen.  Because I lack the necessary fervor to engage in cheer-leading for supernatural causes (or genuflecting to imagined creationist deities), my personal “faith” curries about as much favor in the US as Mitt Romney these days (or alternatively the Mormon idea that beer, coffee, Coca Cola, tea and hot chocolate are all a gateway drugs to Hell).  I love the math. It is the math that is telling me Romney and the Republicans are going to be tossed on their butts in spectacular fashion come Nov 7. #cleansweep

To the minor extent that I don’t trust mathematics, I blame Richard Feynman. I doubt he is very well known in Christian Fundamentalist groups because of his personal views on God.

I decided to check into the issue of how the evangelical fundamentalists in the US feel about math, since it is so obvious that they have total disregard for many of the physical sciences that are entirely reliant on it, with evolution and evolutionary biology being a particular thorn in the side of the lunatic fringe (80 million) activist evangelicals.  Upon review, I found the Bible to be as hazy on the subject of math as it is on just above every other subject.  Questions involving Jeebus the carpenter making misstatements on math are brushed aside, explained as a consequence of his situational humanity.  Pi is three in the Bible because God was rounding to the first digit for brevity’s sake (remember, this is a guy that supposedly created everything else in just six days so he was used to taking shortcuts).

Believe me when I tell you that the “field” of Christian Apologetics is truly getting a workout these days, and the number of people “employed” in that regard is an astonishing thing to behold.  God literally has an army of people out there making apologies for all the crap he did in the Bible that no morally sound and reasonably minded imperfect human would ever imagine.  Takes a great mental leap to “faith away” the ancient slaughter of innocent women and children by the “loving” deity you propose to extoll.

For the Christian Fundamentalist, mathematics is a good thing when it is used in science to cure Grandma’s cancer.  On the other hand, they view work done in fields of math and science that undermine their belief system as an inevitable (evil) consequence of man’s sinful nature.  A desire to know too much.

Rick Santorum, one of the more virulent and high profile of their genre, and a fellow whose Christian belief system leads him to want to impose national laws forcing our wives and daughters to carry the illegitimate spawn of rapists to term, recently stated that people who “know too much” are of no value in his vision of America’s Republican future.  The problem for people like Mr. Santorum, Mr Romney, and the rest of the American Taliban that supports them, is that they have now overly expanded and demonized the group of people who “know too much” to include nearly the entirety of the US voting population.  At the end of the day, I am left to conclude that these folks definitely have more reverence for the crazy ideals they trumpet than the math of public polling that clearly shows how out of touch they are with the electorate they wish to represent.  #cleansweep.

Enjoy.