The Problem of Evil. In Context

Disclaimer: I don't want this blog to be me bitching about religion all of the time. But I'm really frustrated and this involves current events, so... there here ya go.

Theodicy: Noun.
"the branch of theology concerned with defending the attributes of God against objections resulting from physical and moral evil"


In other words, The Problem of Evil.
Epicurus said it best (and probably first).

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”


The new OJ case, of course, has been a bit of a buzz on ye ole facebook.  As a result,  the following story was brought to my attention:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/26/christian-choate-boy-who-_n_884731.html

This kid lived a short, miserable, meaningless and painful life.


I am reminded of Elizabeth Fritzl.
Fritzl is an Austrian woman who was held in her father's basement for 24 years. She was repeatedly (constantly) raped and beaten by her father. She had seven children by him, and one of them died in the he dark, dank, lightless hellhole which was Elizabeth's life for over two decades. 

Elizabeth's father, Josef, threw the dead baby into the wood-burning furnace.

Josef abducted his daughter shortly after she turned 18. And kept her in what ABC News described as a "windowless dungeon." She was kept in chains padlocked to the wall for at least a year.  Sometimes he would turn off the electricity and leave her in complete darkness for days at a time. For fun, I guess.

Elizabeth's mother lived upstairs.

Some of the seven incest kids lived in the basement with their mother. Some of them lived upstairs and were registered as adopted strays.

Josef told Elizabeth that she and her children would be killed if any of them attempted escape.

24 years.

Elizabeth before her abduction

I'm reading about Christian Choate, thinking about Elizabeth Frtizl, and considering how fucked up humans can be. All of this set against a backdrop Casey Anderson. 

A friend of mine posted on his wall that while Anderson may have dodged a conviction, there's another judgement waiting for her that she won't be able to avoid.

Knowing this friend like I do, I know that he is likely referring to the Christian judgement which is purported to await all humans after they die. This judgement is to come from a pair, trio, or singularity (I'm not really sure yet) of intangible mind(s) which exist someplace, somewhere (just trust me), and are waiting to either torture you forever or make you worship them forever after you die.

Supposedly it/they know your fate before you're even born, and since it/they can never be wrong, you really have no say or choice in how your life works out The choices you make are known before you make them, so the story goes, and since they're known, there's no way you can make a different decision.

Some people call this free will. After all, war is peace and freedom is slavery, right?



I'd hate to spoil things between myself, him, and everyone who posted messages of support on his wall. So I remain silent and allow him the self-appeasement that comes with wishing an eternity of torture on someone whom our legal system has declared innocent.

But come on, people.



As Elizabeth Fritzl is repeatedly raped by her father in her underground hellhole; as her children live through this hell with her; as Christian Choate yearns for death at 12 years old; as untold dozens of others like them suffer to literally incredible extremes, this god, which supposedly has the wisdom and the power to do anything,  sits with folded arms.

Indifferent to their suffering.
Indifferent to the situation it has not only allowed, but has actively not prevented.

No amount of rationalizations about mysterious ways, special plans, or posthumous judgements makes this better.

It changes nothing to say that it's part of a plan, or to say that Christian is "in a better place now." That's a distraction from the notion that they lived and died their horrible lives under the all-knowing, all-doing eye of a creator who, by all accounts, doesn't give a fuck.

Why would anyone worship such a god?

Fortunately for us, we have no reason to think that such a being exists in the first place.
If we did, we would be compelled to hold the contradicatory notions that this god impotently watches people suffer and allows them to inflict horrible suffering while it also loves people and forgives them.

If Casey Anthony or Josef Fritzl decides that they want to "get saved," the contemporary Protestant perspective suggests that, since there is only a binary when it comes to afterlives, they'll reap the reward* of heaven.

Does that sound like justice to you?
Me neither.

It's just self-appeasement. Since Casey Anthony didn't get a guilty verdict, lets all make ourselves feel better about our legal system by saying that she'll get hers, even though that same belief system strongly (emphatically) suggests that she can and will be forgiven of her "sins" and reap life everlasting.

Really? That's the best that the creator of the universe could come up with?

I certainly don't want to sound like I'm ripping off Hitchens. He's got a dog in this fight, and a point to make, so I'll let him make it:





My own (dis)inclinations aside, I'm frustrated.

I find myself befuddled by the obvious doublethink that comes with the territory of Theodicy. These things bothered me even when I was a believer, and I can't imagine that they aren't a source of doubt and cognitive dissonance for continuing believers.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, and I'm not trying to be a jerk about this. It's just frustrating to me that so many people hang the future and current state of the world we live in on such a flimsy apparition of contradictory absolutism.


We're better than that!


*= Read the Biblical description of Heaven. It sounds like it really blows. Really.  It may have been appealing to shit-eating desert nomads thousands of years ago, but it's very, very lame to all but the most absurdly boring people. The McDonalds Monopoly game  offered better prizes than this religion's creator of the universe does.

Also, this doesn't just go for Christianity. It goes for each of the big 3. 

Book 22: The Case For God

The Case For God

Karen Armstrong

Knopf, 2009


A while back (what may or may not have been years ago, I'm honestly not sure), a friend of mine recommended that I read this book. I'm not entirely sure what the context of the conversation was, but I'm glad she suggested it.

Karen Armstrong is a comparative religion scholar, a former nun, and author of several books on the topic of religion.  I have been intending to read her A History Of God, since I saw it in the clearance bin at Barnes and Noble several years ago.

I've got it in Calibre, but I just haven't gotten around to it. If it's anything like The Case For God, it will be well-written, well-researched, and worth the time I put into it.

The Case For God isn't an apologetic.  Armstrong, basically, explains the roots of monotheism (and religion in general), and follows through different historical perspectives of god. She covers different philosophical approaches, different schools of theological thought, belief and non-belief, and all that they entail. It's an invigorating insight into the three desert dogmas for the believer and non-believer alike.

She winds up making a thinly-veiled plea for apophatic theology, which, to me, is a waste of time. Maybe I'm simple-minded, but I don't see the need to invent contrivances and make things more complicated than they already are.

When I read about apophatics, I have the following dialogue in my head.

"Yes, we can explain that."
"But maybe magic was involved."
"What kind of magic"
"Oh, you know, that undetectable kind of magic that exists outside of space and time, which isn't necessarily good, but probably isn't evil and may or may not care about anything we do or don't do."
"Why would you think that?"
"Why not?"
"Because there's no reason to think so. We can explain the phenomenon without employing any unknowns."
"Or can you?? HMMMMmmmmmMMMM?"

It's a total waste of time.

I usually prefer to use the sharp side of Occam's Razor, which seems to be in direct opposition to apophatic theology, which seems to keep everything as vague (and consequently, meaningless) as possible.

My inclinations aside, I can see how appealing apophatic theology is. It allows one to maintain the belief in "something," which can be comforting in times of trouble and reassuring in times of danger.  But the only reason we should be comforted or reassured is if that "something" gives a shit about people--- which is something apophatic theology refuses to do.  AT merely suggests (in spite of any evidence to the contrary) that this "something" isn't evil.This, of course,  suggests a duality in nature. Unfortunately, nature just is. There's no magic to it. We can describe it as a duality, but that's just a convention of human thought in the most base form of binary prejudice. 

I think that the reason Armstrong comes to this conclusion is because she, being a religious scholar, recognizes (and thankfully for us, has condensed) the limitless change humans have seen in religious thinking since the dawn of religion. The only way an individual can find any kind of truth in the yes/no, this/that, constant ebb and flow of religious ideas is to de-conceptualize and undefine a notion of a god until it becomes a nebulous "something."  That really my only beef with the book. Otherwise, it's an outstanding history of religious thought and development.

The relevance and reliance upon a god figure has decreased as our understanding of the universe has grown; Armstrong gives a good illustration of the negative correlation between Yahweh's duties and human understanding.

Armstrong does, though, help a nonbeliever like me, who has lived in an era of biblical literalism and fundamentalists making the news, understand that it wasn't necessarily always like this, and that the role religion has played hasn't necessarily always been a bad one. That's refreshing news.

I'm not one of those "new atheists" who thinks that we ought to just get rid of religion. It's not for me, but it works pretty well for some people.  It disgusts me to no end what people get away with because we, as a society, place religious ideas on a pedestal outside of the light of inquiry or discussion, but I think that is coming to an end.

If it can die, it's not a god.

Quotes and comments:


"Religion is a practical discipline that teaches us to discover new capacities of mind and heart."

For some people this is true. For others, it's just the opposite.

"But the 'new atheists' command  a wide readership, not only in secular Europe but even in the more conventionally religious United States. The popularity of their books suggests that many people are bewildered and even angered by the God concept they have inerited."

One good, sure-fire way to irk someone who doesn't believe in a god is to ask them, "Why are you so angry at god?" It's nonsense.  It's like asking someone who doesn't believe in Bigfoot why they hate Bigfoot so much.  It totally misses the point of everything, and I think that Armstrong misses the point here as well.

The popularity of the 4 Horsemen (Dawkins, Dennet, Harris and Hitchens) has more to do with a reaction to do with the followers, and less than the god concept. The nonbelievers don't think the god exists, so the concept itself is a moot point. It's the young-earthers and the fundamentalists who are responsible for resistance to religious ideas.

If religion remained benignly quiet and in private (where it belongs) nobody would have a problem because nobody would know that there was a problem to be had.

"People believed that God exceeded our thoughts and concepts and could be known only by dedicated practice. We have lost sight of this important insight, and this, I believe, is one of the reasons why so many Western people find the concept of God so troublesome today."

I would disagree, Karen.  I think it has more to do with the Problem of Evil,  theodicy, talking donkeys and invisible, flying people. Our modern appreciation for rationality, fairness and justice exists in direct contradiction to these concepts, and only through feats of intellectual acrobatics and doublethink can we justify all of these things. 

I'll take Occam's Razor again, please.  

People don't take "Because. That's why." for an answer anymore.

These are the reasons people in the West have a problem with the notion of the traditional god figure.

"Rooted in eighteenth-century Pietism, Evangelical Christianity led many Americans away from the cool ethos of the Age of Reason to the kind of populist democracy, anti-intellectualism, and rugged individualism that still characterizes American culture.


At the end of the book, Armstrong makes a plea for compassion. Compassion, next to and following knowledge, is the greatest thing that humans can give to each other. So I agree with her.

What I don't agree with is her notion that compassion somehow implies the necessity, not of any god, but of religion.  I think she is inventing something that doesn't have to exist and injecting the notion of a god wherever she can without any decent reason to.

"One day a Brahmin priest came across the Buddha sitting in contemplation under a tree and was astonished by his serenity, stillness, and self-discipline. The impression of immense strength channeled creatively into an extraordinary peace reminded him of a great tusker elephant. "Are you a god, sir?" the priest asked. "Are you an angel... or a spirit?" No, the Buddha replied. He explained that he had simply revealed a new potential in human nature. It was possible to live in this world of conflict and pain at peace and in harmony with one's fellow creatures. There was no point in merely believing it; you would discover its truth only if you practiced his method, systematically cutting of egotism at the root. You would then live at the peak of your capacity, activate parts of the psyche that normally lie dormant, and become a fully enlightened human being.  "Remember me," the Buddha told the curious priest, 'as one who is awake.'"

As poetic as that all is, keep in mind that the notion of a god is both completely absent, and completely unnecessary for the above to take place.  It's an unnecessary addition.

The following phrase is attributed to Douglas Adams:
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it, too?"


Isn't it enough to live a good life; be compassionate and decent to each other, without having to believe that there is a "reason" to exist? Isn't life just as sweet in the absence of an afterlife, or a holy anything? Or, as Armstrong would argue, an invisible "something?"

Lubbock Radio Sucks

So the other day I made a run to Lubbock and back to pick up a new toy. I went solo because the lady of the house had some urgent statistics homework to attend to, so I thought it would be a great time to rock out.

About 40 minutes outside of Canyon, I had already run through the CD I  brought for the trip, and decided to hit NPR for some sweet, sweet All Things Considered.

Much to my dismay, the signal was beginning to fade. Few things are more irksome to my ears than an in-and-out FM signal.

So I hit scan.
And I hit it again.
And again.
For miles and miles and miles looking for something worth listening to.

I decided that, as much as Amarillo radio sucks a bag of dicks, it is solid gold compared to Lubbock Radio.

Seven.
SEVEN.

That's how many "Christian Rock" stations I came across. And they weren't spread out across the spectrum, they were all one right after another.

I put quotes around Christian Rock because I don't really know what to call these stations. I hesitate to merely call them "Christian" because that doesn't seem descriptive enough. I wouldn't blaspheme the Rock and Roll genre with this tripe if it weren't for the fact that it is under this subcategory heading one would likely find what I was hearing.

The above image is taken from David Hayward's nakedpastor blog. It's an irreverent webcomic, and I suggest any internet archaeologists from the future who happen to have stumbled across this article in a cache somewhere check it out.

I decided to give "Christian Rock" a try. I think "Christian Ecclectica" would be a better format title for these stations, because it's hard to tell what the target market it. The station IDs only say that the music is "uplifting" and "positive."

The songs themselves seem to switch targets between soccer moms and preteens. At least that's what I was getting from the music itself. I sampled several different stations and I couldn't determine what made them any different from each other. Listening to them was pretty much like listening to Delilah but all of the songs were loaded with guilt, references to the cleaning power of blood, ritualistic cannibalism and telepathy. The music and commentary were, somehow, worse.

I felt like my patience had been rewarded when one of the stations started broadcasting a piped-in talk show called, of all things, "Wall Builders." This was not a reward. It was a punishment.



I was immediately stricken by the irony of the show's title and reminded of this post.

I was sure that the show title had to do with some obscure Biblical reference, because nobody would name such an openly and obviously divisive show "Wall Builders" without having some kind of nonsense to hide behind. When I got home, I Googled it.

This is what their website has to say about their name:
"In the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, the nation of Israel rallied together in a grassroots movement to help rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and thus restore stability, safety, and a promising future to that great city. “Rebuilding the walls” represents allegorically the call for citizen involvement in rebuilding our nation’s foundations. "

Their objective is to get Christians more involved in the civic arena and to help return the United States to its "godly roots."

I'm all for a return to 'Merika's godly roots, but I do have a few requests.
I will support this cause so long as we get to re-institute slavery, end womens' suffrage, destroy all labor safety laws and, for crying out loud, bring spousal and child abuse back! All of these social conventions are clearly supported in the Bible.

While we're rolling the clock back to the fucking dark ages, lets go ahead and dissolve medicine and just go back to praying to fix everything. Gotta keep the military, though... never know when Yahweh is going to need to "give us some more land" that we'll have to go take away from the people already living there.

Pictured above: Samson, a man of the LORD, using a donkey's jawbone to clear the way for Yahweh's chosen ones. Yahweh prefers to have people do his killing for him, except for when he doesn't.

The issue of last Wednesday's episode of "Wall Builders" was the fact that there exists a group of folks who were having a "Godless Constitution Day" on the day following the National Day of Prayer.

The Godless Constitution folks are just protesting the notion that any federal time or energy be devoted to prayer to any gods anywhere. The Wall Builder folks take it personally and feel persecuted. Their retaliation was to enumerate a list of things which proved, to them at least, that the Constitution of the United States of America is a Christian document.

If you're curious, you can go listen to their archived podcast on their website. The episode in question is on May 4, 2011, titled The Godless Constitution. Bring hip waders.

My position on the matter is this:
The Constitution doesn't mention Jesus or Yahweh. It does employ the then contemporary convention of dating material "In the Year of Our Lord ----." They hadn't come up with CE yet to date material, so they used what they had. Aside from that, the Constitution is pretty much void of any religious connection. And that's fine. The authors understood the consequences associated with the establishment of a religious government and wanted to avoid it.

But lets save the argument and grant, for no good reason, the contention that the Constitution of the United States is a Christian document (which it doesn't seem to be), and that the writers were all evangelical Christians (some of which were most certainly not).

What difference does it make?

It was written exclusively by men. Does that make this a male country?
It was written exclusively by white people. Does that make this an exclusively white nation?
It was written by bigots and sexists. Does that make this a bigoted, sexist nation?

Of course not.

The proclivities and leanings of the individuals writing the document have nothing to do with the fact that the Constitution and its subsequent Amendments are the law of the land in the USA. The first amendment goes out of its way to make it clear that there is and should not be any law supporting any particular religion.

The best way to do that is to keep government out of the business of religion. All religion.

These guys don't get that.

And they won't.

Because they're too busy building walls.

Book 12: Escape

Escape

Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer

Broadway 2008

 

We're told that America we're the home of the free. Right now people are living in slavery.
We're told that this is the land of the brave. The system is refusing to stand up to this slavery.

Cowards are keeping women and children slaves, not only physically, but mentally.
Women and children are being systematically phsyically, emotionally, and sexually abused by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The FLDS.

I can't say what needs to be said any more than Jessop and Palmer have said in Escape. All I can do is implore you to read it. It can be had on amazon for absurdly cheap. It's well-written, well-paced and frighteningly gripping.  Stranger than fiction? No. Strange doesn't even begin to cover it.

It's frightening. Absolutely horrifying.

Don't just read "Escape."
Don't just have your heart broken, like mine was.
Don't just feel the outrage, like I did. 

Do some research. Read up on these fucking people and what they've been accused of. Read up on forced marriages and polygamy. Read up on the teachings of the FLDS.

Where do we draw the line when it comes to religious freedom? We draw the line when the free exercise thereof hurts people. And this is seriously fucking some people up.

Polygamy should be a choice, not a sentence.

I'm a big advocate of abstaining from religious teachings or indoctrinations until someone is 18. Then they're free to choose to do whatever they want. I know this is impossible to do in closed communities like those described in "Escape," and that's part of the reason I advocate it so strongly.

If you were 18, and had lived a completely secular life, and one day someone told you that an invisible man in the sky was about to blow up the planet, and that a guy named Joseph Smith had read all about it from some magic rocks of which nobody knows the location, you'd laugh at them.  If then they told you that you would be tortured forever if you didn't shut yourself off from society, agree to have your daughters married off to people they didn't even know as young as 14 to men as old as 80, you'd call the cops.

The only way you would think that this was a good idea was if this nonsense was crammed into your skull while it was still soft.

Fear, Obligation and Guilt (FOG) are the three most effective tools for emotional and psychological manipulation.  Keep that in mind when you read "Escape" and consider the teachings of the FLDS. Consider how cleverly these three manipulators are wielded. They destroy the hopes and desires of women in these polygamist communities, and ruin the lives of children.

Writing this, I am finding it difficult to focus. The injustice and the brutality is too much for me to think about.
I had chosen some excerpts to share. As terrible as they are, they can only be really appreciated in the context of Jessop's story as a whole.

They're frightening on their own, but they're part of a much more terrible narrative that the emotional side of me wants to shut out as impossible. I can't imagine someone living through that kind of hell. I don't want to imagine that it is taking place in my home state. 

I don't want to think that today, while I am in a stable, loving and rewarding relationship with someone I will happily spend the rest of my days with, there are thousands of people locked into a hell on earth through absolutely no choice of their own.

I hate to think that people are being forced to sell the only life they have for the promise of a better deal after they're dead. I hate to see people so mired in superstition and ignorance. 

It makes me sad for humanity. It makes me sick.

Polygamy is a felony in the US.

Policy makers don't make a move on these institutions of mental and social captivity because they don't want to look anti-freedom. People are being tortured and enslaved while they bicker about turtle fences.

Law Enforcement doesn't want to make a move because if the polygamists are conviced and sentenced, the system will be flooded with thousands of brainwashed children without parents.  The system is not equipped to handle that kind of flood.


What do we do?

We begin by exposing this absurdity to the light of critical discussion and open inquiry.

You can have all of the compounds and communities and crazy beliefs you want. But as soon as it becomes destructive and regressive, then you have no place in our society.


You can the FLDS side of the story at www.truthwillprevail.org

If even half of what Jessop says is true...

...what a nightmare.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ssYXu3qcS8&feature=related

Book 6: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades)  Robert Spencer

Regenry Publishing. 2005

When I stole this book off of the internet, I had no idea that it was on the Conservative Book Club list.   When I got about 15 page-turns into it and had made the note “bullshit” about as many times, I figured something was up.

There is an unfortunate us (conservative Christians) versus everyone else (humanists,  Buddhists, and of course, Muslims)  tone throughout the whole book. The author even goes so far as to have a “Jesus Vs. Muhammad” sidebar, which contributes nothing to the de-PCification of Islam.

And why just Jesus? 

If the author was being honest here, he would make the note right up front that this is a comparison piece (which, surprise- surprise, it turns out to be).

Because Spencer knows that one of the keys to selling a book is knowing your audience.  It doesn’t take long before it becomes abundantly clear that Spencer knows exactly to which choir he’s preaching with this little gem.

 I guess this book should be a lesson to me to not to judge a book by its title or promised content.  The promise to remove political correctness should be a promise, as the author makes early in the book, to move the discussion closer to the truth. My mistake for assuming.

 I have no stake in defending Islam.  It would suit me just fine if it went the way of the dodo, and I think we’d be better off as a species if it did.  I certainly do not disagree that the Qur’an is a fucked-up book (from what I’ve read of it), and Islam is a fucked-up religion, but I do take issue with the way the author treats his audience:

Like incurious, anti-intellectual, incapable retards.

If this book didn’t pretend to be an honest examination, but instead was handed out at Clan meetings, I would be a little more understanding (although it's really unlikely I would've read it outside of a desire to satisfy a morbid curiosity).

Unfortunately him and his credibility as a scholar on any subject,  the  author tells us, “I intend this book to be neither a general introduction to the Islamic religion, nor a comprehensive historical survey of the Crusades. Rather, it is an examination of certain highly tendentious assertions about both Islam and the Crusades that have entered the popular discourse. This book is an attempt to move the public discourse about both subjects a bit closer to the truth.”

“A bit” closer to the truth.  But I wouldn’t give him more than that.

This book is a poor source for much of anything aside from inflammatory rhetoric and poorly-argued conservative Christian claptrap.

If you already think that brown people are hiding under your bed, coming to take your freedom, then this is the book for you.

If you’re looking for a critical and agenda-free discussion of Islam, skip it and move on down the line.

I have a set of two-word phrases which would be well suited to appear on the dust jacket of this joke of a tome:

Weasel words:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

This book is freakin’ LOADED with vague and unsupported assumptions and suggestions.

Many experts agree…. Some scholars suggest… In the X community, it is common to Y… it is said that…. The PC crowd thinks X...

Over and over and over again, and not a single goddamn one of them is ever supported by any kind of citation or reference.  This might work for Fox News, but it doesn’t work for me, and it shouldn’t work for you if you give a damn about the critical analysis of an idea or set of ideas.

Citation needed:

‘Nuff said. Spencer makes lots of claims and rarely backs them up. He does, from time to time, just to keep up appearances. But when his logic or his claims become particularly slippery or outrageous,  the parenthetical citations disappear and all we’re left with is his assertion that “it,” whatever it may be, “is so.”

Bitch, Please:

I can’t count the times I rolled my eyes. I’ve got at least a dozen “bitch please”s and “bullshit”s and “piss off”s in my notes for this book. Spencer is just too free with his unsupported whining.

Worth Reading:

Despite my complaints about the book, there are a few reasons you might want to read it.

1-      It openly criticizes one of the most backwards and dangerous ideological systems in the world today. If you just got through reading The Autobiography of Malcom X (which you should, if you haven't), and think that Islam is all fluffy bunnies and happy friend time, this should help to re-adjust your contemporary and historical perspective.

2-It shows a person how not to write a book if you want anyone besides Sarah Palin to take it seriously.

3- This book is wonderful inspiration. It shows us that anyone can write a book. No matter how crappy it turns out, if you put a provocative title and lots of pictures in it, someone will buy it.

Book 3: Doors of Perception

Doors of Perception – Aldus Huxley

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading this. I had heard/read somewhere that it was from the title of this book that The Doors adopted their band name, but aside from that, I knew nothing about it.

As someone who has always been curious about the effects of drugs, especially of the sensory sort,  I was eager to find out what someone with Huxley’s credentials had to say about it.

This was a pretty outstanding exploration of the effect of mescaline, and Huxley’s description of the events he experienced are, for the most part, well-written and interesting. But the rest of the time, he’s writing like a rich, elitist tool. I have no time or tolerance for that kind of nonsense. If you’ve got something to say, say it, but don’t waste everyone’s time with your excess verbiage and shitty obscure comparisons.  Maybe Huxley was the original scenester: “Yeah, I was experiencing things like this artist I know. This one painting in particular. You’ve probably never heard of it, it’s pretty obscure.”

Asshole.

The latter bit of the book is by far the most interesting ( yes—more interesting than someone recalling a mescaline trip ).  Huxley compares drugs and makes a case for the recreational use of mescaline. He weighs the pros and cons, like any good scientist would, and leaves it up for the reader to decide, like any good author would.

He makes a few interesting observations about the nature of out-of-mind experiences and religion.  He makes some good arguments for legalization. He discusses booze, Jesus and mescaline as openly and honestly as anyone would discuss paint colors or font choices.  This is refreshing to see, especially for a book of this vintage.

Huxley writes like an asshole from time to time, but his level and honest exploration and evaluation of his experience makes up for his clumsy elitism.

Huxley’s discussion of various religions and their ritualistic drug use was interesting, but I feel that tomes more could have been said.  That wasn’t the focus of his book, though, so he can’t be blamed.  But the next time a Huxley decides to write a book about a trip, they should consult me first. There are very specific things I want to know, and curiosity incarcerated the cat in the US.

Huxley discusses booze and Jesus.:

“The modern churches, with some exceptions among the Protestant denominations, tolerate alcohol; but even the most tolerant have made no attempt to convert the drug to Christianity, or to sacramentalize its use. The pious drinker is forced to take his religion in one compartment, his religious surrogate in another. And perhaps this is inevitable. Drinking cannot be sacramentalized except in religions which set no store on decorum. The worship of Dionysos (sic) or the Celtic god of beer was aloud and disorderly affair. The rites of Christianity are incompatible with even religious drunkenness. This does no harm to the distillers, but it is very bad for Christianity.

Countless persons desire selftranscendence and would be glad to find it in church. But, alas, “the hungry sheep look up and are not fed.” They take part in rites, they listen to sermons, they repeat prayers; but their thirst remains unassuaged. Disappointed, they turn to the bottle. “

A little later

“The effective object of worship is the bottle and the sole religious experience is that state of uninhibited and belligerent euphoria which follows the ingestion of the third cocktail.  We see, then, that Christianity and alcohol do not and cannot mix. Christianity and mescaline seem to be much more compatible.”

That may be, but I’d say it depends on which brand of Christianity we’re talking about here.

Westboro Baptist?
Meth.

Branch Davidians?
Acid.

Repent Amarillo?

Jenkem.


Catholicism?
Viagra.

We could extend this to non-Christian religions, but I think I'll save that for a day when I'm bored....

What can you do?

I was recently involved in a facebook religious discussion.

Retarded and pointless, yes, I know.

But a person who wasn't even involved with the discussion but was a high school friend of myself and another discussion participant decided that the best response to our criticism of her religion would be to cut the one remaining tie that kept us in touch: we were unfriended.

(oh noes!)

Just goes to show you that religion will divide people faster and more effectively than it will ever bring them together. What would Jesus do? Apparently, if you don't agree with him, he turns his back on you.

.... wait... that was supposed to be sarcastic.

But that's pretty much how the whole hell thing works, right?

Book 2: Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't

Alrighty then. This week's offering is  Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't 

D. Jason Slone.

Oxford University Press   2004

First off, hats off to anyone who goes by their middle name and includes their first initial in their signature. It's awesome, if you ask me, and makes me feel tough to do it myself. 

It should be noted (and emphasized) that the author does not take a stance for or against religion or religious thought. The subtitle, " Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't" isn't a value judgment on religious thought or a declaration of wrongdoing. Slone makes it clear early on that the "shouldn't" is reference to theological doctrine, not social mores or conventional wisdom. In other words, "why do religious people not do what their own religious doctrine tells them to do?"

While theological correctness is when a member of a religion acts the way the doctrine or sacred text of the religion describes, theological correctness is the label for why people do not do what their holy books tell them they should do, or, more appropriately, why they do things their books tell them they shouldn't.

A good deal of time is spent discussing free will, determinism, and divine sovereignty. This has always been a bit of Christian nonsense to me, and almost always directs a critical thinker to the problem of evil, which happens to be the the second most powerful catalyst for deconversion (led only slightly by applying our tool set for determining what is fantasy and what is reality to any  and all religious claims).

I would have liked to have seen the author spend more time on the problem of evil, and rationalizations which inevitably follow, but that really wasn't the focus of the book, so Slone cannot be blamed for that.

His argument that abductive reasoning is less cognitively taxing, leads to faster decision making and allows individuals to come to conclusions faster (if less accurately) is well though-out and described.

I would recommend it to anyone of or without religious faith. It will help the religious understand why they ignore certain parts of their holy books in favor of others, and it will help non-theists understand the inherent hypocrisy and inconsistencies in the religious community.

Little attention is paid to Islam. Nobody wants to get shot in the face for criticizing invisible people and suppressive dogma, so I can understand Slone's reluctance. Buddhism and Christianity are the primary focus of the book.

Slone argues that "One of the reasons why religious ideas have such widespread appeal is that they are interesting (i.e., attention grabbing), and because they are interesting they have a great chance of being transmitted successfully. They achieve a cognitive optimum. Of these, the commonly recurring representations are those that involve agency, probably because of the representational tendencies of the hyperactive agency detection device. Thus, the kinds of (supernatural) things that populate religious systems tend to be agents, either humans with breech violations or objects, plants, or animals which transferred human expectations (e.g., talking rocks, walking trees, trickster animals, etc.) So when someone tells a child that little Rover, the family puppy, is in heaven after being hit by a car, the idea is powerful. It is an idea that is cognitively optimal."

Outstanding. This helps us understand why it's terribly convenient for some religious folks to ignore the bits of "their" religion which they don't care for or has become socially unacceptable. You have to give it to the Westboro Baptist folks-- they're actually advocating the nonsense their book tells them to advocate. 

"Yet the religious concepts do not determine, per se, what follows. Rather, it appears that cognitive processes drive the thoughts and actions of religious believers at both the individual and the cultural levels. In the case of early American Protestantism, the Calvinism of the Puritans was short lived because Calvinist theology wast so cognitively burdensome to be employed online or to be maintained over the long run. Thus it is not surprising that the puritans were prone, according to orthodox Calvinism, to theological incorrectness. Nor should we be surprised that the Arminianism came to dominate mainline American Protestant thought.

The latter point is illuminating because it suggests that religious ideas with maximum inferential potential can even spread across diverse populations, such as the United States. Ideas like "cooperative theology" (i.e., Arminianism; belief in both divine sovereignty and free will) are very attractive to human beings across the board because they exploit natural cognitive processes. Theism in general necessarily contains an internal conceptual tension between the powers of the gods and the powers of people. Therefore, though awkward, religious conceptual schemes that alleviate that tension successfully will be selected over those that don't"

So not only do we see natural selection in religious thought, we also see where some of the nonsense comes from, and how and why it changes.

More cognitive dissonance:

"Muslims say that Allah wills everything that happens in the world yet struggle to bring about his divine will, however imagined (e.g., jihad). And Christians, like Jews, Wiccans, Rastafarians, and other religious people everywhere labor to decipher how best to live life-- a struggle that results in the oscillation between "doing" God's will and "giving in" to is. Such is the way of religious reasoning."

Seems to me that you can have your cake when it suits your personal desires, and you can eat it whenever you're hungry. This seems kind of like nonsense, and Slone does an excellent job of explaining why that nonsense doesn't seem like nonsense to the believer. 

One of my standard go-to beefs with those who are truly faithful and claim to fully rely on God is that they have cellphones. If you really think your god can handle anything you can throw at it, and you really think that your god answers your prayers, then why not pray for your god to tell Sally to meet you for pizza at 6:45 at the corner of Western and 45th? If your god really wants what's best for you, and Sally doesn't show because she never got the word, then it must be in your best interest for you and Sally not to eat pizza that night. 

Right?

People will argue that their gods are not to be tested, but this really isn't a test, and for an entity which can purportedly do anything and everything, it shouldn't even be a complicated process. Honestly, the god figure should've  seen it coming and, as a result, it's already done. No effort is exerted.
 

Slone semi-addresses this, but not really:
"This suggests that we are pattern seekers. We focus on singular events that are seemingly congruent but ignore the overwhelming majority of events that are not. "

Exactly. Whenever something good happens to someone, it was a blessing or a miracle. But the mundane, hum-drum existence they live has nothing to do with their god, who purportedly has a unique interest in their well-being... until something bad happens. And that was either the act of an invisible man in the center of the earth, or just plain bad luck. 

Luck, as Slone points out, is a theological non sequitur. It has no place in a world with a divinely sovereign god.

And my favorite bit:

"One can say, therefore, that religion is not a cause of behavior per se. It does not determine how we think or act. Yet neither does it prevent us from thinking or acting in ways we "shouldn't" Being a Muslim doesn't cause people not to comit acts of murder. Being a Christian does not cause people not to be superstitious. Being a Buddhist does not cause people not to pollute the environment. Being religious is merely one part of the complex puzzle that is human behavior. The dichotomy between nature and nurture, or determinism and free will, is ill formed. It is a false dichotomy because we have, to use Daniel Dennett's phrase, "elbow room" to act in the light of the fact that religion is a natural by-product of cognition, which is itself part of the equipment with which humans are endowed as a result of the process of natural selection."

I love this. Good people are good people regardless of their religious or political ideas. And dicks are likewise dicks.

Yes. Thank you D. Jason Slone, for pointing out the obvious in such a well-reasoned manner. Like most dichotomies, the proposed binary that is determinism/free will is complete codswallop. Even according to the Christian doctrine it's not always the case. 

 "Yahweh gave us free will because he didn't want robots."  Sorry Sister Christian, but like most binaries you suggest, this is a false one.