Black Liquorish

That’s not “What would Lyndon Bains Johnson do?” That’s “What would LOL Buddy Jesus do?”

Considering the state of affairs in today’s Catholicism and Christianity in general, perhaps Lyndon Bains Johnson isn’t such a bad idea after all? Which LBJ is more likely to cover-up the rape and torture of children?

I’m not sure that either side of any given issue is necessarily more intelligent or more stupid, just less intellectually disciplined with the facts on the ground perhaps? And to be fair, all have their private woo-woo thoughts, though I find most far less dangerous than the fundamentalist religious belief that one’s own thoughts are from time-to-time indistinguishable from those of the most powerful and wise being in the universe.

I’ve been called prideful, foolish, boastful, and arrogant for suggesting that there’s no good evidence in support of the notion of a great god who speaks to human beings. I can see why one might think so. But really, who’s being more haughty and proud? Those who say “I don’t know,” or even “I know I have no reason to believe that god speaks to human beings and see no evidence that others do either?” Or those who claim not only the contrary but that anyone who denies such is at best unfortunately ignorant and at worst a liar, deceiver, and minion of hell? Read more…

Without reason (and intellect and discriminating thought), all of human thought would be unintelligible to humans — indistinguishable from random noise. Yet some say that there are realms of human experience where reason is useless.

To say that “reason is useless” is to say that there are some things for which the human intellect is useless. And yet it is only by the tools of human intellect, made cogent and communicable to self and others by reason, that we have any basis for this kind of discussion at all. To me it seems utter nonsense to suggest that there is anything to be understood by us without the application of reason if only in its most rudimentary form. Read more…

Don’t $ cd ~ me until I’m drunk. Very drunk indeed!

[_]D\(^o^)/o[~~~~

That is all.

Growing-up in the 60s and 70s we rarely wore seat-belts. Now it’s virtually child abuse to not strap the kids in, to not correctly install an infant car seat. It’s strange to me that I cannot clearly see the point of transition but my generation was the bridge. We take care of our children. I was once a real estate agent, showing homes one day to another man. He noticed that I tended to get out of my seat-belt for the brief trips between homes and very gently chastised me saying, you must love your family more than that. I was thankfully reminded that there’s more than one way to care for your children.

I loved this ad because it so simply and dramatically gives you the real reasons why. Also, a powerful example of the impact of artful emotional propaganda.

A friend pointed me to this post entitled “Death is a Matter of Opinion,” which presents some very interesting thoughts on the existential challenges that we humans face in dealing with the certainty of our own deaths and that of other beings. I highly recommend that you read the whole thing before continuing with my additional thoughts, as the author’s points about the eternal nature of what we refer to as our past — these are quite profound.

What I’d like to highlight here are my thoughts on the following excerpt:

It is only the concept of the future which gives death any measurability. We, as humans, seem invariably afraid of (I would say) our mortality, or rather, the end of our mortal existence. To see this as a negative thing, we have to view death as an “ending.”

Many religions deny this by saying there’s a continuing to life after death. I disagree that this is necessary to rob death of its power. I think that the “end” of this life is only the end if you evaluate the flow of time forward as an absolute beyond our perception. I feel it is the mortal perception of “yet to come” which makes us so afraid. We rely on a “yet to come” in order to function, make plans, gain things we consider to be “valuable,” etc., etc..

[...]

Our existence has occurred, perhaps, in the weak medium of measurement known as “time,” but our immortality occurs the moment we take first breath. Each choice we make reestablishes that immortality. And death — the “end” — does nothing to change or shake that in any way.

Death, being defined as an “ending of life,” is fallacious at best. It has no grasp, it changes nothing, it has no power. It is simply another aspect of life — not its ending at all, but a form of existence.

When I was a believer in the dogma of eternal existence as a being of our current type, I once made the comment in LDS Sunday School that death is only significant to the living. Folks vigorously disagreed. I was a little taken back but ultimately understood how the context of Christian faith (and Mormonism in particular) requires that death mean very much to the dead. Yet I was still convinced that the living had much more to fear than the dead.

Now I’ve come to believe that death is entirely a concern of the living and nothing more.

One thing I’d like to add is that religions in general have capitalized on teaching the eternal nature of the human soul. By doing so they succeed in controlling us now by framing an alleged pre-earth and post-earth existence in such a way that we then feel bound by things utterly outside our control, and subsequently seek to align what we can control–the here and now– with the precepts of faith. The same faith that, via the circular reasoning of appealing to faith, set the context of our fearful reasoning from the start.

I think much of what we fear about life and death is taught to us by those who cannot know such things. And the net result is that we live as slaves of a manufactured pre-existence, and in fear of what might happen to us or our seed (or our ancestors–for the mormons) should we not do all we can do as framed by dogmas we have accepted.

Whatever solace that religion may offer in the alleged form of “removing the sting of death” arising from the existential, it wipes-out one-hundred fold with its bondage and fear-mongering via doctrines of pre and post existence.

From the intro to Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians:

“Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves [...]”

“We know an awful lot about authoritarian followers. In one way or another, hundreds of social scientists have studied them since World War II. We have a pretty good idea of who they are, where they come from, and what makes them tick. By comparison, we know little about authoritarian leaders because we only recently started studying them. That may seem strange, but how hard is it to figure out why someone would like to have massive amounts of power? The psychological mystery has always been, why would someone prefer a dictatorship to freedom? So social scientists have focused on the followers, who are seen as the main, underlying problem.“

Reading this I’m reminded that I seem to always default to blaming the institutional church and its leaders, preferring to think of the members as unwitting victims. This seems also to be the most common take on discussion boards. I mean, we have loved ones and family who remain true believing members and we certainly don’t want to blame them for all the trouble any more than we want to blame ourselves.

So then, we blame the church. It’s easy to say: I hate the church for doing this! Not so easy to say the same about the members. Yet, it’s worth considering that we may be hacking at a facade while the members grow stronger in their convictions.

Another thought occurred to me as I was typing-out the quotation above. How interesting is it that the LDS church’s D&C Section 122 presents the main problem of authority as authority figures abusing their authority, whereas the findings of modern science show this to be the easiest part to understand, perhaps the easiest to defeat. While the real danger, the most perplexing problem, lies in those who abuse themselves and others by over-zealous submission to authority?

I’ve just begun reading The Authoritarians (thanks Chanson and Jonathan!), hoping there’s something to learn here. Some truth that will become apparent such that, in the end, we might save ourselves, families, and friends from … not form the church … but from ourselves?

– –

Update: I’ve been a fan of Sam Harris for some time, particularly where he points out that religious moderates are to blame for enabling and excusing the excesses of religious extremists. The above, however, seems to take the idea to the next level. And not in search of blame, but in search of understanding and wisdom; that we might actually learn from an understanding of our natures and change where our survival and actualization are concerned.

I picked atheist as my view of the gods ’cause, even if there were a god, he’s such a douche that any poor fool with a sense of justice would kill him on site — which would make him dead, dead, dead. And in the eternal scheme of things, dead once is dead always.

Only slightly more seriously, all the evidence points to god being a figment of human imagination. With this kind of evidence one must seriously consider the odds.

Every hard atheist I’ve ever met is an odds calculator.