tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-290133692024-03-24T00:10:04.083-07:00Confessions of an Anonymous CowardAn Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.comBlogger106125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-13717391275768383742010-01-02T20:53:00.000-08:002010-01-02T21:47:38.519-08:00A Change of FocusSo... with the new year and all (and the year and a half of silence), I think it's about time to... refocus this blog a little. When it started out, it was mostly about atheism. I'm likely to still have something to say about that subject, of course, but there are other things I want to write about too. A year after the blog launched, <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/05/second-confession.html">I admitted I was gay</A>. And... well, that's another thing I'm likely to want to write about some.<br /><br />But I think maybe the main thing I'm going to want to focus this blog on is skepticism and critical thinking. Because really, that's the root of everything else. It's critical thinking that leads to recognizing the <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/05/basis-for-belief.html">lack of foundation</A> of religion. It would certainly be silly to say it was critical thinking that made me gay... but critical thinking does lead to more <I>acceptance</I> of that and other traits, by, again, helping to recognize the baselessness of discrimination. Ultimately, I think critical thinking is one of the most important things to try to foster.<br /><br />Anyway, we'll see how the blog develops over this next year. There are a few things I want to do fairly soon, though. I'm going to make a few changes to that blogroll on the right... there are a few other blogs I ought to add, and at least one of the blogs that <I>is</I> listed there is no longer updating, and should maybe be removed. (Well, several of them haven't updated in a while, but one of them has officially declared itself inactive.) But also, I should make a new introductory post. I already have an introductory post—it was the first post on this blog—but a lot has changed since then, and it's pretty badly out of date.<br /><br />And then, yeah, I'll get to making some more substantive posts. Never did get around to finishing that series on the <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2006/06/deadly-sin-1.html">Seven</A> <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2006/07/deadly-sin-2.html">Deadly</A> <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2006/07/deadly-sin-3.html">Sins</A>... But in the meantime... yeah, I've got a lot on my plate...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-43573813659495875342010-01-01T23:52:00.001-08:002010-01-02T00:16:11.034-08:00Happy New Year!Well, it's a new year... and it's a year and a half since my <a href="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-way-back.html">last post</a>. In which I said it had been "way too long" since my last post before <i>that</i>, and said I'd post more later. Which, I guess, I now technically have, even if it's more than a <i>year and a half</i> later...<div><br /></div><div>Yeah, okay, a big part of my reason for not posting has, obviously, been the fact that I've been busy. First with my teaching job, and then (I wasn't rehired for this academic year)... well, with other things. Such as acting. Yeah, I'm not making enough as an actor to make a living at it yet, but I've been doing pretty well; I've got an IMDb page now with a number of credits. (Which, of course, I'm not going to link to, since that would kind of go against the whole anonymity thing.) In fact, it's to the point now where I'm called by my stage name more often than by my real name; even my current roommate is someone who I met through acting and who calls me by my stage name. (He does <i>know</i> my real name; he's just not used to <i>using</i> it.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So, yeah, I guess while I'm anonymous here, I'm otherwise <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/polyonymous">polyonymous</a>. But anyway... </div><div><br /></div><div>So, anyway, I've been busy, and that's part of the problem. But another part is that as I fell behind, the comments piled up on past posts, and responding to all those comments seemed an increasingly daunting task. And made me somewhat unwilling to resume this blog and face them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, I'm not referring to friendly comments offering support, or even those that respectfully disagree or ask honest questions; those don't bother me. I can deal with them. It's the comments of people who seem intent on starting a debate, or on just plain attacking. That's not what I started this blog for. I don't <i>like</i> debating. I don't think I'm <i>bad</i> at it; I just don't enjoy it. I don't <i>want</i> to debate. Seriously. I have things I want to say, but I'm really not interested in arguing about them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yeah, I know; I don't have to respond. But the problem was... well, I guess the main problem was, I didn't want it to look like I didn't have a response. In fact, in many cases (maybe even <i>most</i> cases), I'd already <i>addressed</i> the matters brought up in the comment in another post the commenter evidently hadn't read, or even in the same post the comment was in reply to, the commenter apparently having only glanced at the subject of the post and made assumptions about its contents without actually reading it. So it's not like responding would have been difficult. But with so many posts to respond to... and the inevitability, based on past experience, that some of the commenters would have returned with objections that must be responded to, or tried to play word games to twist what I said, or... ugh.</div><div><br /></div><div>But you know what? Ultimately, I guess, this is all a matter of <a href="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2006/06/deadly-sin-1.html">pride</a>. It's all just because I don't want these people to think I can't answer their arguments. Why should I care? Especially given that this blog is anonymous, so they don't even know who I am? Why should it matter if they think they've out-argued me? Especially since even if I <i>do</i> reply, they're likely to dismiss my reply and go on thinking they've won anyway?</div><div><br /></div><div>So you know I've decided? The heck with past comments. I may respond to some if I feel like it, but I won't feel obligated. And that goes with future comments too. I'm going to try not to worry about responding to them. I might respond to some comments if I feel like it (particularly if they're <i>not</i> argumentative), but I'm not going to feel obligated to respond to them all. I'm not going to actually <i>delete</i> comments unless they're clearly spam or obscene, but I may decide to ignore them. If people want to think the reason I'm not responding is because they've stumped me with their brilliant arguments, eh, let them think that. I don't have time to deal with it.</div><div><br /></div><div>In fact, I'm not even going to look at any comments on past posts tonight. Maybe later, to see if there's anything interesting I missed. But for now, I'll just make this post, and go to bed. (Well, maybe check out a few other blogs I haven't checked out in a while first.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, though, I'll try to be a little more active on this blog this year than I was last year. Which shouldn't be hard, given that last year I made a grand total of zero posts. But seriously, I do still have some things I want to say, and maybe this year I'll find time to say them. And if anyone reading this wants to get into an argument about them... please, find someone else to argue with. Thanks.</div>An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-18209809958438883002008-03-31T23:17:00.000-07:002008-04-01T05:47:26.806-07:00On the Way BackOkay, it's been way too long since my last post; like I said, I've been in some financial straits, and haven't even had internet access at home. But I've got my internet access restored now, and I should be able to start posting much more often again.<br /><br />Though not tonight; I've got a lot of other things to catch up on. So...for right now, all I wanted to say was that I'm back. I'll post more later.An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-53146533350892231912008-01-31T22:38:00.000-08:002008-01-31T23:21:09.728-08:00SchoolworkGah, well, it's been a long time since my last post (again), so I figured it was about time I ought to post something so I wouldn't leave January <I>completely</I> without posts, and so any readers that may still be keeping an eye on this blog will know I haven't completely abandoned it. Life's just been very busy (more specifically, the <I>teaching job</I> has kept me very busy, between writing and grading finals and students wanting tutoring)--that, and I still don't have an internet connection at home (I don't really feel comfortable spending money on things like that till I have all my past-due bills paid up--and while I'm getting there, I'm not quite there yet), which makes it hard to find an opportunity to make a blog post. There's been plenty I've been <I>wanting</I> to post about, though, and more frequent posts should resume...uh, some time in the future.<br /><br />For now, I'm going to make this post relatively brief, because I have to be getting home and getting to bed so I can get up in the morning in time to get to the school early. But I do have something to tell about my teaching job that relates to the subject of this blog.<br /><br />I may have mentioned (I'm kind of writing this post in a hurry, so I don't want to take the time to glance through prior posts right now to check) that I got this job because I'd applied for a job back in October at the same school as a science teacher. I didn't get the job then, but the head of the science department liked me enough to ask me to tutor a student he was working with--and, when a math teacher quit unexpectedly in December and an immediate replacement was needed, to recommend me for the position. Well, during my first interview back in December, he had remarked that he noticed that I had mentioned on my résumé that I spoke Spanish. Yes, I said, that's true.<br /><br />"Why?" he asked.<br /><br />Kind of an odd question, but I had an answer; I had lived for two years in Spain. But then he asked why I had done that, and I answered that, well, I was raised in the Mormon church, and I'd gone on a mission for the church when I was younger.<br /><br />Then he asked whether I still was a believing Mormon.<br /><br />I hesitated a little before answering. Private schools are often run or funded by religious organizations--as far as I knew, this one wasn't, but I wasn't sure. Besides, even if the school wasn't religious, <I>he</I> might be, and I didn't want to offend him. Was it a good idea to let him know I was an atheist? Still, the alternative was lying--or evading the question, but that wasn't much better--and while, admittedly, I still haven't told my family and the people at my church that I don't believe anymore, I didn't really want to spread that subterfuge any farther than it already was. So I told him that no, I'd been brought up in the church, but I no longer believed in it.<br /><br />Somewhat to my relief, he expressed approval at this, saying that he thought religion was a bunch of nonsense himself.<br /><br />(Which, I later discovered, may not be entirely true; he does still raise his family in a Christian church--though I don't gather he really believes in its doctrines.)<br /><br />Anyway, he did occasionally thereafter talk to me about the LDS church, and tease me about it a little (he'd sometimes tell people I was from Utah--which I'm not; my brother lives in Utah, and my father grew up there, but the most time I've spent in Utah myself is two months in the Missionary Training Center before my mission). And apparently he mentioned to the English and history teacher in the room across from mine that I had family members who went to <A HREF="http://www.byu.edu">BYU</A>. (Or possibly he'd erroneously told her that I myself had went to BYU--I don't recall correctly.)<br /><br />I found this out one day when I went to lunch with said teacher and the science teacher next door (the person who, apparently, had gotten the job I'd originally applied for, though she didn't realize that). The English/history teacher brought up the subject, and I said that yes, my brother and sister had gone to BYU. So then she asked the inevitable follow-up question: Was I Mormon?<br /><br />Again, I hesitated a little before answering, not sure how she would react, but decided to go with the honest answer. Well, I answered, I was brought up Mormon, and as far as most of my family knows I still am. I do still go to church, but just for social reasons; I don't believe in it anymore.<br /><br />"Well," she said, "at least you still go to church."<br /><br />Her reaction wasn't quite as positive as the department chair's; it turned out that she <I>is</I> Mormon (and is apparently doing her best to try to convert the science teacher; I overheard her inviting her to accompany her to church). Still, she remains friendly toward me, and doesn't seem offended by the fact that I've left the church (in spirit, if not in body, so to speak). But she hasn't talked to me at all about the church since then--though that may be not because she's avoiding the subject, but just because it hasn't come up.<br /><br />The English/history teacher in question has a daughter in my class--one of the top students in the class, too, although she apparently didn't used to be; she was doing very badly in the class before, I've been told, but the science teacher has been tutoring her, and between that and the fact that she prefers my teaching methods to those of my predecessor she's shown a drastic improvement. Anyway, it was just yesterday, I think, that her daughter saw me drinking something before class, and said "Is that coffee, Mr. [insert my last name here]? Shame on you!" At the time, I thought it was a little odd she would find that shameful; did she think teachers shouldn't be drinking coffee for some reason? It didn't register with me until later that her mother must have told her I had been Mormon, and she was disapproving of my drinking coffee because it went against Mormon commandments.<br /><br />As it happened, what I was drinking that morning <I>wasn't</I> coffee; it was, as I told her, an horchata-flavored smoothie. But--although I didn't tell her this--I <I>have</I> started drinking coffee now. Not every day, and not regularly, and the reason I started at all...can be laid largely at the feet of another teacher with a child in one of my classes. (Well, technically she's not a teacher; she's the academic admissions director, but a staff member, anyway.) But that's another story, and one that I suppose I'll tell in another entry another time.<br /><br />So, anyway, I haven't been hiding my atheism at my new job (though obviously I haven't been going about trumpeting it either), and it doesn't seem to have hurt anything. One thing, though, I admit, I <I>have</I> avoided mentioning is...well, my sexual orientation. Not that there haven't been opportunities. The science department head has occasionally asked me questions about what kind of girls I find most attractive, and similar matters, and I've done my best to avoid them. My students have asked me if I'm married. And, well, I'm not positive, but I think the science teacher nextdoor may be flirting with me. But I just haven't felt comfortable mentioning that I'm gay. Now, the science department head does use "homosexual" as a random insult sometimes, but he uses various ethnicities as random insults, too, including his own (Armenian), so that's probably more because he enjoys being politically incorrect for his own amusement than because he really has anything against homosexuals; still, I admit it is a little off-putting. Even without that, though...I don't know. For some reason, even though I've known I was gay a lot longer than I've considered myself an atheist, and even though I know that lots of studies and surveys have shown that atheists are far more distrusted than homosexuals, it's still my homosexuality that I'm less comfortable admitting to or talking about.<br /><br />Anyway, I said I'd make this post relatively brief, and arguably I've already failed to do so, but I really do have to get home and get to bed, so I should end it now. But anyway, I just figured it was well past time I ought to post something, and that I may as well post about my teaching job, and how my atheism has come up there. I'll try to post more often again in the future--I do have a lot more I want to post about--but...okay, you know, I'm struggling to think of a pithy way to end this post, but it's late enough I should just end it and go, even if it ends on a lame sentence like this one.An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-80252300436270140582007-12-25T22:54:00.000-08:002007-12-26T10:10:42.728-08:00A Voice From the DustOkay, it's been way, <I>way</I> too long since my last update. When last we left off, I was in a state of severe financial hardship and searching for a job. Which explains <I>why</I> it's been so long since my last update--not only because I've had to spend all my time job-hunting and scrambling for money, but also because my internet connection was disconnected due to lack of payment. But let's continue the story from where we left off.<br /><br />So, as I was going longer and longer without a job, things were getting more and more desperate. I wasn't completely without any income--I had a few tutoring jobs. One of them I'd gotten through another job I'd applied in October, as a science teacher at a private school. I didn't get the job, but the science department chair liked me enough to arrange for me to tutor a student he was helping out independently. Another tutoring job I'd gotten through a tutoring company. Still, while the income from the tutoring jobs was certainly better than nothing, it wasn't enough to pay all my bills.<br /><br />In particular, it wasn't even enough to pay my rent, and by the beginning of December my landlord had lost what patience he may have had. I'd already been very late with my November rent (and had managed to come up with it only by borrowing money), and he wasn't happy about having to wait for late payment in December too. He reluctantly agreed to give me until December 10 to pay--but if I didn't give him the money by then, I'd be evicted.<br /><br />Now, it probably goes without saying that eviction would be an utter disaster for me. With no car, and no money to rent a truck or hire movers, I'd have no way of getting my stuff moved, and nowhere to move it to in any case. It might not be entirely true that I have <I>no</I>where to go--my mother has long been trying to convince me to move back in with my parents, and she'd no doubt be happy to have me. But--while that would beat homelessness--it would be a catastrophe as far as I was concerned. Aside from the fact that I don't want to live in Orange County, and that I have lots of things going on in Los Angeles I wouldn't be able to get to; and aside from, well, the opprobrium of a thirty-something living with his parents; there's the prospect of it being a dead end I couldn't escape from, or at least couldn't escape from without great difficulty. My mother kept talking about the money I'd save by not having to pay rent, and how with what I'm paying on rent at my current place I'd be able to afford a car--but this overlooks the difficulty I'd have making any money there at all. In Los Angeles, I can still work without a car (or could if I had a job); the <A HREF="http://www.mta.net">public transportation system</A>, while not top-of-the-line (the MTA has advertised that it won an award as the best municipal transportation system in the nation; I find this hard to credit), is at least serviceable; Orange County's vastly inferior and thoroughly inadequate bus system would make getting to a regular job impossible. Not to mention the fact that I would lose the tutoring jobs I already had, plus the job leads I was still pursuing, and would have to start a job hunt over from scratch. And there are many other ways that moving into my parents' house in Orange County would severely interfere with my plans for my future... Suffice to say that moving in with my parents was an extremely unpalatable contigency. But if I was evicted, I would have nowhere else to go--if I didn't have the money to pay my rent where I lived now, I certainly didn't have the money to put down for rent somewhere new (even if I could find another apartment I could afford). So eviction was something I wanted to avoid at virtually all costs.<br /><br />Which is why I was so tempted by a possible way out that presented itself...<br /><br />One friend I knew from church (who had loaned me some money)--for the purposes of this post, I'll call him "Tom", which isn't his real name but is close enough--had been urging me for some time to go to the bishop about my financial difficulties and get some money from the church. There was nothing to be ashamed of, he said; that's the reason we pay tithing and fast offerings; he knew of many people in the ward who had gotten money from the church to get through hard times who deserved it a lot less than I did. "Tom" pressed me to just give the bishop a call and explain the situation, and there shouldn't be any problem with just getting enough to get by--in fact, he recommended I ask for a little more than I needed just for rent, enough to get a bit of a cushion and avoid undue stress.<br /><br />Obviously, I'd resisted doing this. Neither "Tom" nor the bishop, of course, knows about my atheism; as far as either of them knows, I'm still a faithful member of the church. ("Tom" had even mentioned at one point--I think half in jest, but not entirely--that his testimony depended to some degree on mine, that my own faithfulness was helping him through. I...really wasn't sure what to say about that.) I feel bad enough about that, about going through the motions of Mormonism for social reasons and hiding my deconversion from the ward members. But actually <I>getting money from the church</I> under false pretenses...well, it struck me that that would be a whole different and much bigger level of wrong. (And it <I>would</I> be under false pretenses; I'm pretty sure the bishop wouldn't consider giving me any money to get me through my financial straits if he knew how I really felt about the church.)<br /><br />But by December 8, two days before my eviction deadline, when "Tom" pressed me again to see the bishop and ask for money...I gave in. I was desperate. I'd tried anything else. I'd tried getting loans, with no luck. Payday advances? No dice without a regular payday, and the tutoring jobs didn't count. I had gotten a job at <A HREF="http://www.universalstudioshollywood.com">Universal Studios</A>--a sort of embarrassing, barely-over-minimum-wage job that I'd gotten because it was at least better than <I>nothing</I>, but that still didn't seem likely to be enough to cover all my bills--but the five-day training period for that had just started, and I wouldn't be an official employee until after the training was over (and wouldn't get paid until the following Thursday--and even then, of course, it wouldn't be nearly enough to cover my rent). I'd tried pretty much everything I could think of, and hadn't found a way to come up with the money. I was out of options.<br /><br />So I told "Tom" that yeah, maybe he was right. I'd go to the bishop.<br /><br />He called back later and said he'd talked to one of the bishop's counselors and explained my situation, and that all I needed to do was talk to the bishop and work out the details. I called him and explained the situation, and arranged to call him the next day after I got out of job training--because of the training, I wasn't going to be able to be at church that Sunday--and set up a meeting.<br /><br />So. It looked like I was going to be able to avoid eviction after all. But...I didn't feel at all comfortable about what I'd had to do to do it.<br /><br />I tried to rationalize it. After all, the amount I'd be getting was much less than I'd paid the church over the years in tithing and fast offerings, so I'd be just sort of getting back some of what the church had already taken from me. Okay, I hadn't been planning to pay tithing or fast offerings anymore, but after this, maybe I owed it to them to pay for one more year. In fact, once I was in a better financial spot, I could pay back what I'd gotten, with interest. There'd be no harm done. I wasn't hurting anyone.<br /><br />I wasn't buying it. No matter how I tried to justify it, it just didn't sit well with me. The ends didn't justify the means. It was still wrong.<br /><br />Desperate as I was to avoid eviction, I still couldn't go through with this; my conscience wouldn't allow it. It was too late that night to call the bishop back, but I called him the next morning and left a message, and called "Tom" too, to let him know that, while I appreciated his help and his friendship, I didn't feel comfortable taking money from the church.<br /><br />I still didn't have any idea how I could come up with the money for rent, and eviction still looked possibly inescapable. But I did manage to talk the landlord into giving me till Thursday, though it wasn't easy and he made it very clear that he wouldn't give me any further extensions.<br /><br />Then, on Monday, December 10, a math teacher at the private school where I'd applied for the science teacher job back in October quit very suddenly, without giving notice. The school needed a replacement teacher immediately. And the science department chair, whom I'd kept in touch with through the tutoring job, asked me if I wanted the job.<br /><br />This didn't immediately solve the problem, of course--I had a job now, but I didn't get paid immediately. Still, knowing that I had a decent job now and a definite prospect of income made it easier to get some loans from friends, and I managed to get the money to the landlord by Thursday and avoid eviction...and from here on out, my financial prospects are looking much rosier. Oh, it'll be a while before I'm really caught up and financially comfortable, but at least I'm in no danger of eviction now and, while things will be tight for a while, I'll have enough to get by.<br /><br />We've all heard the "inspirational" stories of people in dire situations resisting the temptation to get out of their trouble by immoral means and being rewarded by an unexpected boon that gets them better off than they would have been had they given into the temptation in the first place. The idea behind the stories is that the people were being tested by God, and that He rewarded their faithfulness. The story of my recent experiences has a similar flavor--I turned down the option of getting money from the church, even though I didn't see any other way to avoid disaster, and then a better option unexpectedly arose. But if the God of those inspirational stories did exist, it would seem out of character for him to reward what was essentially my staying true to my atheism, so I think He can be ruled out as the architect of my financial deliverance. Still, even if I can't thank some divine benefactor for my fortune, I'm certainly grateful for it, if one can be grateful to impersonal circumstance--and I'm glad I don't have to live with the guilt of having taken money from the church to get through my straits. I'm still ashamed that in my desperation I went so far as to call the bishop and start the process, but I can take some consolation in the fact that at least I didn't go through with it.<br /><br />And anyway, now that I've got a job and am in a much better situation than I had been for the last few months, I'll try to update this blog much more regularly again...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-3632657077238169402007-10-27T23:22:00.000-07:002007-10-28T07:21:57.210-07:00A Month In ReviewDang...it's been way too long since I last updated this. Over a month, in fact (though just barely). Yeah, sorry; things have been busy lately...mostly because I've been, well, busy trying to get enough money together to pay the bills. (The acting thing has actually been going fairly well...but not well enough to make me enough money to live on.)<br /><br />I'm in a hurry right now, and don't have time for a long post, so, though (as usual) there are many things I want to post about (including but by no means limited to finally posting a wrap-up to the series about <I>The God Delusion</I>), for the moment I'll just give, well, a brief rundown of what's been going on for the last month. Or the last two months, really, because last time I posted I'd still been behind stating what was going on.<br /><br />So, what's been going on lately. Um, okay, not much worth stating here, really. Still for the moment keeping up the faĉade of going to church, though fairly infrequently; things have come up often enough on Sundays lately that I haven't been going all that often. (Which is okay; I'm doing it pretty much just for appearances now--well, okay, that and to keep in touch with friends there--, and eventually I ought to come clean about my beliefs, or disbeliefs, anyway.) Went to a few more <A HREF="http://www.pflag.org">PFLAG</A> meetings, but may not go to any more, particularly as I've since found out about <A HREF="http://www.cfiwest.org/groups/galah.htm">a group</A> meeting more nearby (at the <A HREF="http://www.cfiwest.org/">Center for Inquiry</A>) that seems likely to be more congenial--although unfortunately I may not be able to make the meeting this month (and it is unfortunate, because I'm curious what that group's like).<br /><br />Hm...not much more to say right now, especially since I don't have time to go on at length right now. I am, however, possibly about to start a new job (I've interviewed for it; the interview went well; but I haven't heard back yet)--in fact, I'll just say that one way or another I <I>am</I> about to start a new job, because if I don't get this one I'll find another one; I really need the money right now, and acting, while it's been fun, hasn't been sufficient financially--and when that happens, I should be able to post more often. Being stressed out about not having money, and desperately seeking sources of same, has made it hard to keep up with things like, well, blog posting. But I'll post again--a more substantive post--soon. Definitely within much less than a month, at any rate...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-57237764603781097692007-09-26T22:36:00.000-07:002007-09-27T10:58:28.458-07:00The God Delusion: The Third 100 PagesWow. It's been three weeks since I last posted here. That's way too long. Yeah, there are reasons for the delay--I've still been quite busy, and I was actually without internet access for a period of time (not worth going into details)--but anyway, uh, I guess I'm back. And though there are plenty of other things I've been wanting to post about, I think I'll start out by finally continuing my posts about my impression of <I>The God Delusion</I><br /><br />Anyway, I said in <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/08/god-delusion-second-100-pages.html">my second post</A> that I probably wasn't going to do this--not that I wasn't going to continue this series, but that I wasn't going to post about the third 100 pages, specifically; I was likely to just make one more post wrapping everything up. I'm not doing that primarily because, uh, I still haven't finished the book. Not that I'm <I>that</I> slow a reader, of course; I finished the first 300 pages in a few days, after all. It's just that when I didn't finish the book by the <A HREF="http://www.cfiwest.org/groups/BookClub.htm">book club</A> meeting, I wasn't in a hurry to finish it thereafter, especially since I had so much else to do (like I said, I've been busy). But after this post I'm going to read the rest--aside from the fact that, well, it's about time that I finished it, it's, uh, overdue at the library... Anyway, I haven't looked at the book since that August book club meeting, so I guess before making this post I should at least skim those third 100 pages to refresh my memory...<br /><br />Okay, back. Actually, I have little to say about this part of the book (which is good, because this post is late enough already, and I don't have much time to write it). Dawkins presents here arguments about why religion isn't necessary for morality (a well-worn subject, but one that too many theists still refuse to accept), and, significantly, why and how religion has been--and still is--an active force for harm, both societally and individually. (His discussion of the "moral <I>Zeitgeist</I>" in Chapter 7 has much in common with <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/06/moral-decay.html">a post I made back in June</A>). But I won't repeat his arguments in detail; you can (and probably should, if you haven't) read the book yourself for that. Again, my purpose here is to state my impression of the book--and in particular, my criticisms of it, since I haven't seen any really critical reviews not from a religious standpoint. (I repeat, however, as I've said in earlier posts, that my focus on criticism here shouldn't be taken to imply overall that I disliked the book--only that it's the details I found fault with that I think are most worth discussing here, since plenty of other people have already gone on about its virtues.)<br /><br />Actually, after reading this part of the book, I think I want to mitigate--though not entirely retract--some of my prior criticisms. I mentioned that the second part of the book seemed somewhat less gratingly insulting and potentially offensive toward the religious than the first; the trend continues in the third. At first, I thought perhaps this was an odd strategy, to concentrate his venom near the beginning of the book and thus turn off potential religious readers, but on further thought perhaps that's not the case after all. Any theists willing to read the book in the first place are likely to expect some offense and stick through it, and if they get through the harshness at the beginning then by the time they've finished the book they may have forgotten it, or at least forgiven it. I still think it would likely have been more productive--from the standpoint of winning religious converts--to forbear from such insulting language altogether, but if he feels the need to put it in perhaps the beginning of the book is the place for it. (The possibility has not escaped me that perhaps its concentration at the beginning of the book is in fact illusory; that it only <I>seems</I> that there's less vituperation later on because I became inured to it. If that's the case, though, then that's likely to be just as true of religious readers, so again the situation is not as bad as it first appeared.)<br /><br />And as for my criticism about his misunderstanding of the literalist mindset, in his apparent belief that no one <I>really</I> believes that God is a bearded man and that all the Bible stories are literally true--again, there's some validity to that criticism, but it's not as bad as I originally thought. It becomes clear later on that Dawkins is perfectly aware after all that there are people who believe in the literal truth of scripture, and so forth and so on--he just doesn't regard them as part of his target audience. They are, he opines (apparently, though of course he never explicitly says so), too far over the edge and beyond dissuasion; he will address himself to the more sophisticated liberal theists and give the literalists up for lost. I do think he misses the mark here--I think many literalists are more sophisticated and more open-minded than he gives them credit for (perhaps I'm a bit biased here because, after all, I was raised Mormon myself, and the Mormon religion is quite conservative and literalist and has much in common with fundamental Christianity despite the fundamentalists' abomination of it)--but thinking that literalists are all hidebound and unsophisticated is at least a less severe error than not realizing they exist at all.<br /><br />So. I realize this hasn't been a very meaty post, but like I said it's been way too long, and I just wanted to get something up. Tomorrow I hope to make my final post about <I>The God Delusion</I>--and after that I really need to return it to the library...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-79807251615308371802007-09-05T19:48:00.000-07:002007-09-05T19:58:20.694-07:00One Foot Out of the ClosetNo, I haven't abandoned this blog; I've just been really busy lately. I had three different projects I was filming last week, including one three-day shoot in Ventura. (I don't want to make it sound like I'm having more success at my acting than I am, though...for one thing, I'm not <I>usually</I> this busy; it just happens that these three projects all happened to converge in one week. Also, these are student projects and low-budget movies, which means credits for my resume and footage for my reel but little or no actual money...)<br /><br />Anyway, I've gotta go somewhere tonight, too, so this is going to be a short post, but there's something I've been meaning to post about...something that happened just the day after the <A HREF="http://www.cfiwest.org/groups/BookClub.htm">Skeptics' Book Club</A> meeting that factored into my <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/08/family-matters.html">previous post</A>, in fact. (So...in other words, it happened three weeks ago. Yeah, I'm way behind on my posting.)<br /><br />I went to a <A HREF="http://www.pflag.org/">PFLAG</A> meeting.<br /><br />Someone had suggested that in a comment to <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/05/second-confession.html">the post I made where I admitted I was gay</A>, and I decided I might as well try it. Maybe it would help me come to terms with things. I looked for a local chapter online, and after being unavailable to find a meeting time for the chapter that seemed it would be the easiest to get to from my apartment (PFLAG San Fernando Valley, which I later discovered was at least temporarily defunct), I ended up going to a meeting of <A HREF="http://www.pflagla.org/">PFLAG-LA</A>.<br /><br />Nothing earthshattering happened there; I didn't have any important revelations. But it does mark the first time I openly admitted to anyone (without hiding behind the mask of anonymity) that I'm gay. And I guess that may be an important step. For the record, it's not like I don't have any friends that I'm sure would have accepted me had I told them...but, you know, it's not exactly something that's easy to work into a conversation. "Hi, how you doin'? Yeah, well, I just called you up to tell you I'm gay..."<br /><br />So. I'll probably go to this month's meeting, too. I don't know exactly what I expect to get out of it, but it can't hurt. And anyway, being able to openly talk about my homosexuality at least in one specific setting is, I think, bringing me one step closer to being ready to come out with all of this (my homosexuality and my atheism) completely...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-2305567441381412832007-08-26T13:39:00.001-07:002007-08-26T14:22:56.706-07:00Family MattersOkay, it's been almost two weeks since <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/08/god-delusion-second-100-pages.html">I said I'd have up</A> my third post on Dawkins' <I>The God Delusion</I>. Uh...what can I say? I've been really busy. Busy enough, in fact, that...I didn't manage to finish the book before the <A HREF="http://www.cfiwest.org/groups/BookClub.htm">book club</A> meeting after all. Though this wasn't all that big a deal, since (a) generally many--perhaps most--book club members don't actually finish reading the book before the meeting anyway, and (b) usually the discussion during the book club is only tangentially about the actual book. Anyway, I did read <I>most</I> of it...<br /><br />Well, though I hadn't finished the book, something did happen at the book club meeting that I've been meaning to post about. At one point, Wendy, one of the book club members, related her telling her mother (or maybe it was her mother-in-law, or some other quasimaternal relation; I don't remember for sure) about her atheism. And rather to her surprise, her mother(-in-law?) confessed that, well, secretly, she didn't really believe in God either.<br /><br />I briefly thought that I wished there was someone in my own immediate family who might harbor such sentiments, but it seemed unlikely. (Even the gay uncle I've <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/05/second-confession.html">mentioned</A> professes a belief in God, though he has little use for <I>organized</I> religion.) My mother is constantly talking about prayer and eternal togetherness and so on and so forth; certainly no closet atheist there. My brother moved to Utah--enough said. (Okay, that's not fair, and not really meant entirely seriously; certainly not everyone in Utah is a dyed-in-the-wool faithful Mormon. Still, my brother's shown no signs of doubt or of not fitting in with the Utahn norm.) My sister is maybe a little less definite, but there's enough evidence to conclude that she's pretty firmly entrenched in the church as well. And my father...<br /><br />Hold on a minute...<br /><br />It occurred to me then that I didn't recall having ever heard my father talk about religion outside of church meetings. It was always my mother who was suggesting prayer, who was urging him to give people blessings and otherwise "use his priesthood". Outside of attendance at church, my father never really engaged in any religious activity or talk on his own initiative. Could it be that maybe he didn't really believe, or at least didn't have strong beliefs, but just didn't want to admit it?<br /><br />It's possible. My father's always been nonconfrontational, perhaps to a fault; it wouldn't be out of character for him to remain silent on such a matter. On the other hand, he's also just fairly taciturn, so it could also be that he <I>does</I> have strong religious beliefs, but just, well, doesn't talk about them. So I certainly don't regard the matter as <I>proven</I> that he doesn't really believe in the church. But I was surprised it had never occurred to me before that he never talked about it, and it's an interesting possibility...<br /><br />Anyway, that was a post I'd been meaning to make since the book club meeting almost two weeks ago. And I would leave it there, except that something happened last Monday that's sufficiently related that I'll go ahead and include it in the same post as well.<br /><br />My brother called me to wish me a happy birthday. In the course of the conversation, though, he eventually mentioned that he had found this blog... This was at the end of what had already been a fairly long conversation, however, so my cell phone battery gave out shortly after he mentioned that, so I didn't talk to him much about it until the next day.<br /><br />How did he find it? Well, I've mentioned here before that I have a LiveJournal; as it happens, I mentioned in passing in a recent LiveJournal post that I had a blog "where I maintain anonymity and post about subjects I'm not yet ready to discuss more publicly". (I had a reason for mentioning it; it was relevant to the subject of that post; but of course I <I>could</I> have omitted the mention.) My brother had been concerned about certain matters and had tried to find said blog through Google, and apparently had hit on it fairly easily. (I don't know what exact search terms he used, but apparently this blog had come up second among the search results. Plugging in some of the terms he did mention using--"anonymous", "blog", "mormon", "brother" (I'm not sure why he'd try that one, but apparently he did)--brings it up fourth, so this isn't implausible.))<br /><br />Now, you might say it was stupid of me to mention the existence of this blog in my LiveJournal. Well, certainly when I did mention it there, it did occur to me that this might lead readers of my LiveJournal--my mother or brother especially--to try to find this blog. I didn't really expect it to happen--I didn't think it would be that easy to find. (Then again, I was thinking mostly of my mother, who is more curious but less computer-savvy; I doubt she would have been able to find it. I didn't really consider that my brother might search for it.) But, on the other hand, I did realize it was a possibility.<br /><br />Coincidentally, someone made a <A HREF="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=29013369&postID=6262256836158462356#c1888052764147466734">comment</A> on a recent post mentioning that "while [I'm] still maintaining your anonymity in name, it[']s obvious that if someone who knew [me] (brother, friend, other relative) were to stumble on this and read your story they would easily recognize [me]." I replied as follows:<br /><br /><BLOCKQUOTE>Oh, I've considered that; I know I've revealed enough information about myself in this blog that if someone who knew me well read it they'd be able to recognize me. But I'm not too worried about it. I'm pretty sure no one among my family and the people I know at church makes a habit of browsing atheist blogs, so the chances of their running across my blog--and reading enough of it to come across identifying information--is minimal. And anyway, even if, against all odds, it does happen--well, then, that just forces the issue of my coming out about my atheism, which is something I know I really should be doing anyway...</BLOCKQUOTE><br /><br />And really, that was more or less my attitude when I mentioned this blog in that LiveJournal post. Yeah, it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn't do that, because it was possible that would lead to someone finding the blog. But, on the other hand...well, if they did, so what? I wasn't really comfortable keeping these secrets anyway, and if that forced the issue, well, maybe it would be for the best. I'm not even sure that at some level I may not have <I>wanted</I> it to be found...<br /><br />But, anyway, so what did my brother think about what he read here? Well...obviously he wasn't happy about it. (Though the two posts he singled out as the ones that upset him the most--<A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/04/something-for-nothing.html">Something For Nothing</A> and <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2006/11/behind-zion-curtain.html">Behind the Zion Curtain</A>--were probably the two I'd consider the most questionable myself, and that I probably would have written differently if for some reason I had to do it over again--I do still stand by the main points I was trying to make in both posts, but I don't think I expressed them at all well.) But, on the other hand, he said there was nothing here he found really shocking. And he took it all a lot better than I expected. In fact, he said some things that really surprised me. I can't repeat it here, because, well, it's personal, and while I may be willing to share personal information about <I>me</I> here it's not my business to share personal information about my brother that I don't think he'd want shared, but suffice to say that his religious attitude is somewhat different from what I thought it would be. Obviously, I disagree with him about religion, but perhaps not quite as much as I thought.<br /><br />(For what it's worth, by the way, the bit about my brother in the third paragraph of this post was what I had planned to write before my brother called. I'd already more or less composed the post about my father in my head, including that bit (and including the parenthetical comment explaining that it wasn't meant entirely seriously). Rather than change what I'd intended to write after my brother called, I decided to go ahead and write that part of the post as I'd originally intended, and then add this disclaimer here...)<br /><br />My brother thinks, though, that this is temporary and that I'll eventually be realizing my error and returning to the church. Uh...not a chance of that, I'm afraid. After finally escaping from a prison that's held me for thirty-plus years, I'm not about to go running back, particularly after recognizing all the harm the church does. But anyway...<br /><br />He's said he won't tell the rest of the family about all this, and I appreciate that. While in a way it's good to have it out in the open with one family member...I don't think my mother, in particular, would take it was well as he did. Still...like I said, I don't like keeping these secrets, and I think the time is coming near when I'm going to be ready to make a clean breast of it and come out in the open about what I believe and what I am and let the chips fall where the may. I'm just...not quite ready yet.<br /><br />I think it may be fairly soon, though. And in any case, at least that's one fewer person now I'm keeping the secrets from...<br /><br />(Oh, and that third post about <I>The God Delusion</I>? It's still coming...eventually...)An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-62021374565301341902007-08-14T23:41:00.001-07:002007-08-15T00:51:16.545-07:00Open Wide Your MindAll right, I still owe another post or two about <I>The God Delusion</I>, but I'm going to take a break for that for a moment to post about something else. I admit my main reason for wanting to make this post <I>right now</I> is to try to get it in in time for the next edition of the <A HREF="http://skepticscircle.blogspot.com/">Skeptics' Circle</A>, but this is a post I'd been meaning to make for a while. Anyway, the next post about <I>The God Delusion</I> should be up tomorrow morning--and for anyone who thinks I may have been too hard on Dawkins thus far, the next post should be more complimentary.<br /><br />Anyway...<br /><br />There's a saying which apparently originated with NASA engineer James Oberg but has since achieved wide popularity, particularly, it seems to me, among the skeptical community: "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."<br /><br />I absolutely <I>loathe</I> this saying, and not only because the wordplay makes no sense. How can your brains fall out of your <I>mind</I>? If the word was "open-headed" or "open-skulled", well, okay, sure, but it's not...<br /><br />But there are deeper reasons for despising this saying. I think it utterly and dangerously misrepresents what it really means to keep an open mind in the first place. I don't think there's any such thing as having too open a mind, and I think the implication that there is could have some unfortunate consequences.<br /><br />The purport of the saying, of course, is that those who hold some belief that the speaker considers eccentric have their minds <I>too open</I>. They're <I>too</I> receptive to fringe ideas, and need to close their minds a little (that follows if their minds are too open, right?) to become more rational.<br /><br />I would argue just the opposite. Those who cling to unsupported beliefs in the face of the evidence don't have minds that are too open. They have minds that <I>aren't open enough</I>. And that needs to be emphasized if we're to point out what's really wrong with their thinking.<br /><br />What does it mean to have an open mind? Well, to be willing to consider any idea, however much it may conflict with our preferences or preconceptions. If we truly have an open mind, we have to really be willing to entertain the idea that aliens could be abducting people, that God could speak to man, that chupacabras and the Loch Ness monster exist, that the moon is made of rubber cement. But, of course, we also have to really be willing to entertain the idea that all of this <I>isn't</I> true. Having a really open mind means being open to <I>both</I> sides of a proposition.<br /><br />But having an open mind doesn't mean assuming that any idea has <I>equal merit</I>. It can't, in fact, because that's impossible. In our daily living, we are constantly, by necessity, making judgments between ideas, judging one as more likely than the other. We have to, or we couldn't do anything at all. If we considered it equally likely that we could sate our thirst by drinking paint thinner as by drinking water, we wouldn't last very long. Our every action is motivated by the judgment--whether conscious or not--that one course of action is more likely to lead to the fulfillment of a particular goal than another. (And admittedly often partly by instinct, yes, but that's beside the point.)<br /><br />None of this is in conflict with being open-minded. A truly open-minded individual should be willing to consider any proposition, yes. But considering a proposition entails making a rough judgment about its probability. If confronted with the idea that the moon is made of rubber cement, an open-minded person won't reject the idea merely because it conflicts with what he's already been told. He <I>will</I>, however, reject the idea because of the <I>evidence</I> against it. For one thing, we have some understanding scientifically of how a giant sphere of rock could be where the moon is. We have no theory for how a giant ball of rubber cement could have gotten up there. For another thing, people have even <I>been</I> to the moon and brought back moon rocks. None of this completely rules out the idea that the moon is made of rubber cement--it's technically <I>possible</I> that a celestial lump of rubber cement formed by means currently unknown to us (or was placed there by playful members of an advanced civilization), and it's <I>conceivable</I> (though given the evidence it's immensely improbable) that all the claims of lunar visitation and moon rocks are part of a vast conspiracy--but it renders it <I>extremely</I> unlikely. For similar reasons, a truly open-minded person is perfectly justified in rejecting the idea that everyone has a giant green marshmallow implanted in his mid-thorax, or that there is a race of hyperintelligent living breaded shrimp living in the sewers under Pittsburgh. In fact, not only is he <I>justified</I> in rejecting these ideas, but he's pretty much <I>obligated</I> to, if he's really open-minded; any reasonable consideration should lead to the conclusion that the probability of either idea being true is pretty much negligible.<br /><br />Of course, in one sense one could say that someone with a truly open mind never <I>really</I> rejects such a proposition at all--he may decide it's very <I>improbable</I>, but he doesn't rule it out entirely. When the probability is low enough, however--as it is in the above examples--, it amounts in practice to rejecting the proposition completely. Certainly if the probability is that negligible it's not worth acting on, and the individual is completely in the right to behave in most respects as if the proposition is known to be false.<br /><br />So. Let's look at a typical example of where the "brains falling out" quote is likely to be used. Let's say somebody--let's call him Joe, an arbitrary choice with no offense intended to any readers of that name--holds some paranormal or pseudoscientific belief--it could be a belief in astrology, homeopathy, alien abductions, whatever; the details don't matter. Let's say, for the purposes of this discussion, that he believes in some mystical phenomenon called "kalatrasis" (a word I pretty much just made up on the spur of the moment), with evidential support comparable to the other examples named--which is to say, none. Despite the lack of evidence in kalatrasis, however--and perhaps despite experiments that actually seem to disprove its existence--Joe firmly insists that kalatrasis exists. Joe might be told to not be so open-minded his brains fall out. But is his problem really being too open-minded?<br /><br />Again, a truly open-minded person should be open to all possibilities. Joe is open to the possibility that kalatrasis exists. Is he open to the possibility that it doesn't? If he were, and if he were honestly evaluating the evidence, would he have reached his conclusion? Insisting on something in spite of the evidence isn't being open-minded; it's being extremely closed-minded, because one is refusing to even consider the alternative possibility--that the evidence is right and the something isn't there. Insisting <I>a priori</I> on the truth of kalatrasis (where of course "kalatrasis" is a stand-in for astrology, homeopathy, alien abductions, or whatever similar unsupported belief you'd like to throw in there) is no more "open-minded" than insisting <I>a priori</I> on its falsehood. The truly open-minded way is to be willing to consider either possibility, and evaluating the evidence to see which one is more likely. And if there's no evidence for kalatrasis, and plenty of evidence against it, then that means that the open-minded person will reject it. In other words, the person who's really being more open-minded isn't the person who firmly believes in the unsupported idea--it's the skeptic.<br /><br />Of course, there are a few caveats here. First of all, this doesn't mean that to be truly open-minded a person is required to go out of his way to hunt down all the evidence on a given subject. That's not reasonable, and an open-minded person can make a provisional judgment on limited evidence--though of course with the proviso that he's open to revising that judgment later if contrary evidence arises. This is especially true with regards to a particularly complicated proposition, or one that seems to contradict established theories. The burden of proof is then on the person making the proposition, and in the absence of evidence the open-minded person is perfectly justified in rejecting the proposition--at least until such a time as such evidence is presented.<br /><br />Furthermore, I don't know that anyone really is perfectly open-minded. Open-mindedness is the ideal of the skeptic, of course, but I don't know that any skeptics really achieve it completely; skeptics are human too, and they do have prejudices and make mistakes. At least they do consciously strive for open-mindedness, and are in general more open-minded than other people, but in practice they're not perfect.<br /><br />Anyway, though, why am I making such a big deal about this? Sure, the "brains fall out" injunction may be a little inaccurate or misleading, but why argue against it at such length? Well, mainly because if we (that is, skeptics) accuse the fringe believers of being too open-minded...then that opens us up to being accused of <I>not being open-minded enough</I>. Believers can--and do--accuse skeptics of being closed-minded when they don't accept their beliefs. This accusation is grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be open-minded in the first place...but it's a misunderstanding that we ourselves perpetuate when we attribute adherence to fringe beliefs to excessive open-mindedness.<br /><br />So. Let's all try to be as open-minded as we possibly can. Our brains aren't going anywhere.An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-50458180949197367332007-08-14T14:15:00.000-07:002007-08-14T15:52:07.826-07:00The God Delusion: The Second 100 PagesLast night, I made <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/08/god-delusion-first-100-pages.html">a post about the first 100 pages</A> of <I>The God Delusion</I>. I've read farther since then, and I suppose now is as good a time as any to post about my impression of the second 100 pages. (Incidentally, I do not expect to make another post about the third 100 pages; I'll probably wrap up the remainder of the book in a single post. I'll already have given my general impression of the book in these two posts, after all, unless there's something in the latter half to drastically change it, so I probably won't have as much to say about the rest of the book.)<br /><br />Before beginning, though, I want to give a word of explanation about why I may come across as so critical of the book in these posts. It's not because I don't like it; I'm quite enjoying the read. But I do have my reservations about it, and if I focus in these posts more on the negatives than the positives it's for two reasons. First, because, well, there's simply not as much to <I>say</I> about the positives; I could just repeat approvingly Dawkins' arguments that I liked, but I don't see much point in that; you can read them in the book yourself. The second reason is simply because I haven't really seen much criticism of Dawkins' book from a non-religious perspective; there's plenty of praise of it, but I've seen little real analysis. So, to reiterate, I liked the book (or anyway, I like it so far). I'm not focusing on the negatives because they outnumber or overwhelm the positives, but simply because there's more to say about them, and less that's been said.<br /><br />Okay, now, having said that...it does seem to me, at least, that the mocking tone I noted in the first 100 pages is much less prominent thereafter (or maybe I'd just grown inured to it, but I don't think so). Perhaps Dawkins got that out of his system in the book's beginning. As to the other matter I mentioned in the previous post, however, that of his alleged misunderstanding of religion...hm.<br /><br />Let me get out of the way, first, a relatively minor objection, before I move on to something I feel is more significant. Dawkins makes another mention of Mormonism, a subject on which, having been raised Mormon myself and having until relatively recently considered myself a faithful Mormon, I feel perhaps somewhat qualified to comment upon. And...I think what he says about Mormonism is here somewhat misinformed, though it perhaps throws a little light on his then-mystifying suggestion earlier in the book that perhaps Mormonism should be counted as a fourth major Abrahamic religion.<br /><br />(Technically, by the way, this mention appears on page 201, so I'm cheating a little with my stated focus on the "second 100 pages". But...well, close enough.)<br /><br />Here's the relevant quotation: "Another candidate for a purely designed religion is Mormonism. Joseph Smith, its enterprisingly mendacious inventor, went to the lengths of composing a complete new holy book, the Book of Mormon, inventing from scratch a whole new bogus American history, written in bogus seventeenth-century English. Mormonism, however, has evolved since it was fabricated in the nineteenth century and has now become one of the respectable mainstream religions of America..."<br /><br />First of all, there's good reason to believe that Joseph Smith did <I>not</I>, in fact, invent his "new bogus American history" from scratch--there had already existed a very popular book, <A HREF="http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/voh/voh.shtml"><I>View of the Hebrews</I> by Ethan Smith</A>, that argued for the supposed descent of Native Americans from Israelite immigrants, and included many other ideas later to appear in the <I>Book of Mormon</I>. To what extent Joseph Smith was familiar with <I>View of the Hebrews</I> and copied material from it may be impossible to prove, but it seems quite likely he was familiar with it (the book's author had even visited his hometown), and there are some <A HREF="http://www.lds-mormon.com/es.shtml">very suggestive similarities</A>.<br /><br />But that's really beside the point, and has no bearing on Mormonism's status as a "purely designed religion". Far more significant is the fact that Mormonism was already undergoing drastic change even in the beginning, under Joseph Smith's leadership. Dawkins seems to be implying that Joseph Smith laid out his religious precepts all in one go, and then only after his death did the doctrines start to evolve and change. (Granted, he doesn't directly say this, and maybe I'm reading too much into his words, but that's what it seems to me he's saying.) But that's not the case at all. In the church's early days, Mormon doctrine was constantly being revised and added to. The Book of Mormon itself sticks quite close to the traditional Protestant theology Joseph Smith was raised in; most of the more esoteric Mormon doctrines that most set the church apart from the mainstream are nowhere to be found in the Book of Mormon, and are pretty clearly later developments. The core Mormon doctrines were not set forth all at once by Joseph Smith; it's pretty clear he was making things up as he went along, fitting them to his situation, and constantly revising.<br /><br />Granted, it's still arguably true that most of the core tenets of the church were originally the work of one man (Joseph Smith), even if he did change his mind over time and adapt them to circumstances, and even if some later church leaders did make their own lesser changes and revisions. But then, it could be argued about as cogently that most of the core tenets of Christianity were originally the work of Paul of Tarsus to a comparable degree, so if one could argue that Mormonism is a "purely designed religion" one could make a similar argument about Christianity. I get the impression Dawkins has some rather major misconceptions about Mormonism (which, again, may explain why he thinks it's somehow different or important enough to qualify as a fourth "'great' monotheistic religion"). And I admit this does give me some pause; if he's misinformed about the religion I'm most familiar with, perhaps he makes mistakes regarding other religions as well, that I don't recognize because I'm not sufficiently familiar with those religions myself.<br /><br />But I honestly don't think this matter is important, because Dawkins' target isn't Mormonism or any other specific creed, but religion and supernaturalism in general, and he doesn't have to be closely familiar with the doctrines of individual religions for that. What's more important is that when Dawkins makes what he considers "a very serious argument against the existence of God", and he fails with this argument to convince any theologians, he doesn't seem to understand why. This suggests a definite failure on Dawkins' part to understand the religious mindset. And it wouldn't be such a big deal, perhaps, except that, well, this argument, by Dawkins' own statement, he considers part of "the central argument of [his] book".<br /><br />The argument in question Dawkins calls "the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit", and goes as follows: The appearance of design in the universe--including, but not limited to, the existence and diversity of complex life forms--is enormously statistically improbable. This improbability can be explained by natural selection. However, if one posits instead a <I>designer</I> to explain it away, then the designer must be even more complex than what one is trying to explain in the first place, and therefore even more improbable. Therefore, as the chapter heading states, "there almost certainly is no God."<br /><br />Dawkins tells of a conference at Cambridge in which he made this argument to a number of theologians. By Dawkins' account, the theologians were unable to counter this argument in any satisfactory way: "The strongest response I heard was that I was brutally foisting a scientific epistemology upon an unwilling theology. Theologians had always defined God as simple. Who was I, a scientist, to dictate to theologians that their God had to be complex?"<br /><br />I wonder, though, how much of the theologians' failure to answer Dawkins' argument was due to their refusal to seriously consider it, and how much, really, was rather due to Dawkins' refusal to seriously consider their responses. Because, honestly, Dawkins' argument strikes me as enormously unsatisfactory and unconvincing. I don't believe in God, but I don't believe in God because I don't see any good reason <I>to</I> believe in God, and in the absence of evidence disbelief is the default. I believe God almost certainly doesn't exist, for the same reason I believe <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot">Russell's teapot</A> almost certainly doesn't exist--not because it's inherently impossible, but because there's no evidence of its existence and that it should happen to be there is quite unlikely. (And really, with the utter lack of evidence of God's existence, trying to find evidence of God's <I>non</I>existence seems almost superfluous.) But I don't think Dawkins' "Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit" does anything to further establish God's nonexistence. In fact, I don't think Dawkins' "Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit" makes much sense at all.<br /><br />What's wrong with the argument? Well, that's kind of hard to address explicitly. I would say of Dawkins' argument the same thing that Dawkins quotes Bertrand Russell as having said about St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God: "It is easier to feel that [the argument] must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies." (In fact, the "Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit" strikes me as so completely inane that I'm almost tempted to say what Dawkins quotes Jefferson as having said about the Trinity: "Ridicule is the only weapon that can be used against unintelligible propositions." But that's probably going a little too far...) Still, Dawkins did eventually go on to try to pick out the flaw in the ontological argument, whatever his initial impression of its vapidity, and I'll attempt the same for his Ultimate 747 gambit.<br /><br />The main flaw, I think, lies in the fact that Dawkins is assuming that God must work the same way as known biological creatures. It is this that seems to lie behind his assertion that God must be more complex than his creations. I can conceive of alternatives--I don't <I>believe</I> them, but I can conceive of them. For instance: What if consciousness <I>does</I> have some special sort of nonphysical existence, some sort of being apart from matter and ability to influence its surroundings? Again, I'm not saying I <I>believe</I> that, and the evidence is certainly against it, but it is <I>conceivable</I>. And what if God is just a big mass of omnipotent consciousness (whatever that means), with no particular form or makeup? Even so, how would such an entity have come into existence? Well, it would certainly involve things beyond our understanding, but then again, there <I>are</I> things beyond our understanding. Maybe the real working of consciousness is one of those things, and some mass consciousness is not only possible, but actually <I>simple</I>, in the sense that it could have (in some currently not understood way) have arisen out of nothing--or, better yet, be inherent to the universe and have perforce always existed, a necessary consequence of natural principles that simply aren't yet understood. It's easy to dismiss all this as meaningless babble, but I don't think it's quite that cut and dry; I think such a dismissal really amounts to a refusal to admit to possibilities we don't yet understand--and, given the number of things in the sciences we don't yet understand, I think that's a dangerous attitude for a scientist.<br /><br />Again, I want to emphasize that I don't actually <I>believe</I> the possibilities raised in the previous paragraph. I tend to agree with Dawkins that the existence or nonexistence of God is, in principle, a scientific question, and I think if God existed we'd have some evidence of it (which we do not). And we have a perfectly good alternate explanation, in the form of natural selection (and perhaps not yet understood analogues in the nonbiological sciences) for the existence of all that statistical improbability; appealing to a God, simple or not, is not necessary. (And such an appeal certainly has no real explanatory power, since it could be used to hand-wave away anything at all.) I don't think God really <I>is</I> a formless mass consciousness--or exists at all.<br /><br />But it is <I>conceivable</I> that a God could exist who is "simple" in the sense that his existence could be explained by some way other than appealing to extreme improbabilities (even if it involves principles we don't currently understand). It isn't <I>necessarily</I> the case that a creator God must be more statistically improbable than the world he created, if we allow that that God may have come into existence (or may have been required to have always existed) by laws and processes we don't currently understand--and I'm certainly not willing to state categorically that there are no laws and principles we don't currently understand. In essence, it seems to me that Dawkins' Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit amounts ultimately to nothing more than an Argument from Personal Incredulity--which is somewhat ironic, since Dawkins coined that term.<br /><br />Once again, I am certainly not arguing that God exists. I agree with Dawkins' conclusions--albeit for different reasons. I just have problems with this particular one of Dawkins' arguments. And really, this wouldn't be such a big deal--it's just one argument among many, after all--if Dawkins himself didn't make so much of this argument, and, again, hold it up as part of "the central argument of [his] book". If his central argument is that vacuous, that's a bit of a problem. And if it's really the case that Dawkins "ha[s] yet to hear a theologian give a convincing answer despite numerous opportunities and invitations to do so", that seems to me to say more about Dawkins, and his apparent refusal to consider esoteric (but conceivable) possibilities, than about the theologians.<br /><br />(As a side note--not really terribly relevant, perhaps, but possibly interesting--I'll mention that Mormon doctrine <I>does</I> purport to give an explanation of God's origin--albeit not a particularly productive one. It's one of the more arcane bits of Mormon theology that isn't generally explained to prospective converts (perhaps for fear of scaring them away with something so radical), but it's there. According to LDS doctrine, God was once a human, who went through a mortal life just as we're doing now, and remained faithful to the necessary principles so that he proved himself worthy of eventually being elevated to godhood--just as the humans of this world may, if they follow the necessary commandments, go through the necessary ordinances, and take upon themselves the necessary covenants. By implication, when God was a mortal, he had worshipped his own heavenly father, another God who, presumably, had <I>also</I> once been a mortal, spirit child of a previous God, and so on, and so forth. So, of course, this doesn't really explain anything--it's just <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down">turtles all the way down</A>.)<br /><br />Again, I feel like I'm probably coming across as terribly critical here, and I don't want to give the impression that I disliked the book. I didn't; I've enjoyed the book quite a bit. But, unfortunately, I do think it's flawed. I have been disappointed, but that's largely because of my high expectations; it's still well worth reading, even if it isn't perfect. (Then again, what is?)<br /><br />Ah, well. On to the rest of the book...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-74123903945048907762007-08-13T23:21:00.000-07:002007-08-15T00:59:03.627-07:00The God Delusion: The First 100 PagesThis month's selection for <A HREF="http://www.cfiwest.org/groups/BookClub.htm">The Skeptics' Book Club</A> is a book I'd long been thinking I ought to read (and <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-more-noma.html#c2196326298456508982">have been told so</A>), so I'm kind of glad to have this excuse to make the time to do so: <A HREF="http://richarddawkins.net/godDelusion"><I>The God Delusion</I></A>, by <A HREF="http://www.richarddawkins.net">Richard Dawkins</A>.<br /><br />I probably don't have to explain what the book is about, or who Dawkins is; I'm sure everyone reading this knows all that already. (And if somehow someone <I>doesn't</I>, well, you can click on the links in the previous paragraph.)<br /><br />As the title of this post implies, I haven't finished the book yet (though I expect to do so before the book club meeting). However, I decided to go ahead and make a post about as much of it as I've read so far, for two reasons: first, because I'm sure I'll have more to say about the rest of the book--and better a few reasonably-sized posts than one really long one--and second, because, uh, it's been way too long since my last post anyway.<br /><br />So. First of all, let me mention what I'd heard about the book before I read it--the same, I'd imagine, as everyone else had heard about it. In general, theists said that it was a venomous attack on religion, which Dawkins clearly didn't even really understand at all. The godless, on the other hand, said that the supposed venom was grossly exaggerated.<br /><br />I really wish I could say that the theists were completely wrong here.<br /><br />Okay, first of all, on the charge of Dawkins not understanding religion: eh, I dunno about that one. Granted, I'm only a hundred pages in, and maybe he makes some major mistakes later on, but so far there's only one thing I've run across I'd really classify as inaccurate or unfair. When discussing the inadequacy of scripture as proof of God's existence, Dawkins points out the contradictions in Biblical accounts, and then laments the ignorance of Biblical literalists who--he assumes--are unaware of them. "...[T]here are many unsophisticated Christians out there who...take the Bible very seriously indeed as a literal and accurate record of history and hence as evidence supporting their religious beliefs. Do these people never open the book that they believe is the literal truth? Why don't they notice these glaring contradictions?"<br /><br />In my experience--and since Mormon doctrine does include a highly literal interpretation of the Bible, I do have experience with this--Biblical literalists aren't all that stupid, or that ignorant. Yes, they--not <I>all</I> of them, I'm sure, but many--do read the Bible, and they're aware of the contradictions. However, they are also aware of rationalizations that apologists have come up with to reconcile those contradictions (or are capable of coming up with such rationalizations on their own). As I <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/04/basis-for-belief-part-one-burden-of.html">remarked in a previous post</A>, there almost always <I>are</I> ways to paper over an apparent contradiction, if you're creative enough, and maybe willing to bend words a little. Of course, the apologetic "explanations" may strike non-believers as <I>ad hoc</I> and rather desperate, but the fact remains that Biblical literalists aren't necessarily <I>ignorant</I> of the contradictions in the Bible--and nor are they necessarily any more "unsophisticated" than Christians who feel free to interpret the Bible more liberally.<br /><br />(Actually, there is one other point in the book that puzzled me, and that I suppose this is as good a place as any to mention. At one point Dawkins refers to "the three 'great' monotheistic religions (four if you count Mormonism), all of which trace themselves back to the mythological patriarch Abraham". Guh? The three main religions Dawkins is referring to are, of course, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...but what possible reason would there be to count Mormonism separately? Sure, many Protestants don't consider Mormons true Christians--but many Protestants don't consider Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses true Christians either, and Dawkins doesn't propose counting <I>them</I> separately. Sure, Mormon doctrine does have some very significant and fundamental differences with the more mainstream Protestant doctrine--but again, the same is true of Catholicism and the Jehovah's Witnesses, and he doesn't propose counting <I>them</I> separately. Sure, LDS church leaders may like to repeat that Mormonism is the fastest-growing religion in the world--but there's little or no evidence that that's true, and many other religions make the same claim. [EDIT: It's been pointed out to me in a comment that it's not really the church leaders who make these claims--the claims are made, and are often repeated by church members in talks and lessons, but they originate from other sources, not from the church leadership.] Besides, if we're just going by raw numbers--well, to pick on the same two examples I've been using up until now, both the Catholics and the Jehovah's Witnesses <A HREF="http://www.adherents.com/adh_branches.html#families">outnumber the Mormons</A>. So why single Mormonism out as a fourth "'great' monotheistic religion"? I am honestly baffled.<br /><br />All right, and, for the sake of completeness, there is one other slight inaccuracy I could remark on. Dawkins dismisses a little too categorically belief in God as "an old man in the sky with a long white beard", implying, though not stating outright, that <I>nobody</I> really literally believes in <I>that</I>. In fact, though, some people <I>do</I> believe in God as literally a white-bearded man in the sky--Mormons at least arguably among them; they even have a name for God's home planet or star (<A HREF="http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/basic/gospel/kolob.html">Kolob</A>). But this isn't at all important to Dawkins' points, so it isn't worth dwelling on.)<br /><br />That aside, though, I didn't see--so far, at least--any signs that Dawkins really had any fundamental misunderstanding of religion. He may have gotten some details wrong, but nothing crucial to his arguments, and nothing that isn't forgivable in someone speaking outside his area of expertise. So on that charge, I'd say (at least, again, judging from the first hundred pages) he's mostly innocent.<br /><br />But on the charge of his mocking and derisive tone: uh, yeah. Let's not kid ourselves. It's there.<br /><br />"I shall not go out of my way to offend," Dawkins writes at the end of the first chapter, "but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else."<br /><br />And then thus begins chapter 2: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."<br /><br />I daresay anyone who believed in the God of the Old Testament might find that sentence just a shade offensive.<br /><br />This is by no means the only example of inflammatory language. He says that "[w]hat impresses [him] about Catholic mythology is partly its tasteless kitsch but mostly the airy nonchalance with which these people make up the details as they go along." I've already reproduced above his rather insulting characterization of Biblical literalists. He calls St. Anselm's ontological argument "infantile" and casts it "in the language of the playground", with the argument's proponent, in his relation, resorting to the nonsensical taunt "Nur Nurny Nur Nur".<br /><br />I am not accusing Dawkins of going against the sentence he ended his first chapter with. He did say he wasn't going to handle religion with kid gloves, and I am willing to believe that he is <I>not</I> going out of his way to offend. He has strong feelings about religion--and, I would say, justifiably so--and so if he's not intentionally restraining himself he tends to write about it in strong language and in jeering scorn. That's understandable.<br /><br />And, to be fair, I should quote the sentence <I>preceding</I> that last sentence of the first chapter: "It is in the light of the unparalleled presumption of respect for religion that I make my own disclaimer for this book." The "unparalleled presumption of respect for religion" is what he had just spent the last seven and a half pages explaining: the fact that religion gets a bye that other practices and belief systems don't enjoy, that society demands that broad allowances be made for religious belief that are not made for any other cause. Therefore, any attacks on religion are perceived as offensive far out of proportion to their real content or intent.<br /><br />He has a point, and it is something I tried to keep in mind. How, I thought, would language comparable to what Dawkins writes here come across in another context, other than religion? Well, I suppose Dawkins speaks no more harshly about religion than typical pundits do about those of opposing political views. But except in extreme cases such pundits aren't generally attacked as being wildly offensive.<br /><br />However, there's another factor that I think must be kept in mind here. Political pundits, when they write diatribes against the other side, aren't really trying to win over their opponents. In general, they're writing for people who already <I>agree</I> with them. They don't expect to make converts, and they're not really worried about offending people.<br /><br />Dawkins, on the other hand, <I>is</I> trying to make converts--or "de-converts". He explicitly says as much in his preface: "If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down." He acknowledges, of course, that it may be hard to motivate believers to read his book in the first place: "Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid even opening a book like this". What he doesn't seem to recognize is the possibility that a believer who <I>does</I> read his book may be so offended by his ridicule that he refuses to take in the message--or may even become <I>more</I> entrenched in his beliefs, as a reaction against Dawkins' mockery.<br /><br />Again, I am not doubting that Dawkins was being genuine about his intentions in that last sentence of the first chapter. I believe him when he says that he didn't go out of his way to offend. I believe him that any offensiveness is simply because of his refusal to "don kid gloves".<br /><br />But I think maybe he <I>should</I> have tried those gloves on for size.<br /><br />I'm not saying Dawkins' outrage is unwarranted. I agree that religion does a lot of damage; I agree there's a lot there that's worthy of ridicule. But ridicule doesn't win converts--and by Dawkins' own admission, that's what he's set out to do. I don't think this is the way to do it. Like the political pundits, he's going to end up--or, since the book was published last year, perhaps I should say he probably already has ended up--just encouraging those who already agree with him. Or, to use a phrase that originated in a religious context...preaching to the choir.<br /><br />I made a post a long while back on <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/03/mormon-missionary-methods.html">Mormon missionary methods</A>. Now, I may not believe in Mormon doctrine--and I may have serious doubts that Mormonism is really the fastest-growing religion like <STRIKE>its leaders</STRIKE> some of its members claim--but there's no doubt that Mormonism has had a lot of success with its missionaries, and with a century and change to hone their methods they've had plenty of time to figure out what works. And one of the biggest things that is stressed to Mormon missionaries is to "build relationships of trust"--to win people over by expressing interest in their activities, but also by starting out with talk of common beliefs. Among themselves, Mormons do plenty of ridiculing of other churches' doctrines (and vice versa, of course). But the church knows better than to send its missionaries out to mock potential converts. If a Mormon missionary is engaging a Catholic in conversation, he's supposed to first discuss their commonalities--faith in God, belief in the Bible, and so forth--and when he does discuss what sets the Mormon church apart, he's supposed to do so in a way that still shows respect to his interlocutor's beliefs. Certainly a good Mormon missionary would never go up to a Catholic and tell him his religion was full of "tasteless kitsch" and that the priests were just "mak[ing] up the details as they go along". Any missionary who tried that would just get a door slammed in his face.<br /><br />And I fear, from the backlash I've seen against Dawkins, that that, in a figurative sense, is just what happened to him. He went to the religious and told them how unsophisticated and silly they were, and they responded by refusing to listen to him and calling him rude. Now, again, I think Dawkins is <I>right</I>; religious beliefs <I>are</I> pretty silly, when you look at them without the lens of indoctrination in the way. But that's not the best approach to use to try to win people over.<br /><br />Now, one might say--and many <I>have</I> said--that, well, <I>someone</I> has to be blunt and direct; <I>someone</I> has to tell it like it is. And yes, maybe someone does. But that someone shouldn't expect to win many believers to his side. And anyway, others are already doing that; from what I've heard, other major atheist writers--Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris--are even more abrasive than Dawkins. It can also be said that religion doesn't <I>deserve</I> respect; that--as Dawkins says in the prologue--it's <I>already</I> respected far more than it should be. Also true, but, again, if your goal is to win people over, you're not going to do it by insulting them.<br /><br />I'm not saying I haven't been enjoying the book. Dawkins makes some good points, and some interesting arguments. And really, I wouldn't be having such a problem with it if it weren't <I>intended</I>--according to Dawkins--to turn believers into atheists. As a sermon to the choir, it's excellent. As a missionary tract, though, I have a hard time not seeing it as doomed to failure.<br /><br />Ah, well. As I said, I'm still enjoying the book, and we'll see what I think of the other 274 pages...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-38300503876668070332007-08-04T23:58:00.000-07:002007-08-05T02:22:55.264-07:00Getting to the PremisesI recall some years back a Mormon friend boasting of an encounter he'd had with a born-again Christian. He had taken issue with the born-again's claim that just accepting Christ into your heart was enough to be saved. LDS doctrine puts a lot of emphasis on "enduring to the end", on remaining faithful, and on the dangers of even those who had been firm in the church falling into error, so the idea that a one-time choice would be enough to guarantee salvation didn't ring true with him.<br /><br />"But what if someone accepts Christ, and then later goes on a murdering spree?" the Mormon had challenged the born-again.<br /><br />"If he really accepted Christ, he wouldn't do that," was the other's response.<br /><br />"But what if he did?"<br /><br />"It would never happen. He wouldn't do it."<br /><br />"<I>But what if he did?</I>"<br /><br />My Mormon friend recounted this exchange with obvious pride, clearly very satisfied with how he had handled himself. I kept my mouth shut, but what I was thinking was: <I>Wow. You </I>completely<I> lost that debate, and you don't even realize it.</I><br /><br />It's not that I disagreed with his position, of course. This was long before my deconversion, when I still (at least ostensibly) believed the Mormon church to be true. So I agreed with his point of view. But his method of argument struck me as pointless. He wasn't addressing his interlocutor's point at all. If the born-again truly believed that someone who had accepted Christ would never afterward commit serious sins, then asking "What if he did?" is meaningless. It is (according to his worldview) not just a counterfactual, but an impossibility. You might as well ask "What if 2 plus 2 was 5?" or "What if God created a rock so big he couldn't lift it?"<br /><br />Of course, though I didn't really consider this at the time, another problem with his argument is that it could be turned around just as easily to try to attack Mormonism. Mormons believe that they know the church is true because they have received a testimony through the Holy Ghost; God Himself has told them it's true. So...what if the Holy Ghost tells them it's false? Well...that wouldn't happen; they've already received a testimony that it's true; God wouldn't contradict himself. But what if He did? Well, he wouldn't. But what if He did? And so forth, and so on. It would be essentially the same argument as my friend had with the born-again...and it would be just as unproductive.<br /><br />Such an argument, in fact, could be attempted against any viewpoint whatsoever...and it would be equally useless. Asking what would happen if something were true that <I>according to the premises of the person's beliefs could not possibly be true</I> doesn't really accomplish anything. You are--according to that person's beliefs--asking a what if about an impossibility. The question isn't provocative; it isn't damaging to the person's belief system. It is, quite simply--within the context of his worldview--completely meaningless.<br /><br />Which is why I thought--and still think--that my Mormon friend had badly lost his debate with the born-again without realizing it. The born-again had stated his point of view, and all the Mormon had done was repeat what was essentially a nonsense phrase. The born-again's statement had gone unanswered and uncontested in any meaningful way, and the Mormon had just ended up spouting gibberish (within the context of the born-again's premises).<br /><br />Now, what <I>could</I> have been a valid argument against the born-again's statement? Well, rather than ask him to consider something that couldn't possibly happen given the premises of his belief, a better tactic would have been to call into question the premises themselves. Why <I>wouldn't</I> a person who had accepted Christ commit a sin? He'd likely have an answer to that (my guess as to his answer: because truly accepting Christ into his heart would remove the desire for sin), but that could lead to more questions. How does he <I>know</I> that would remove the desire for sin? For that matter, how could you know whether or not someone had truly accepted Christ in the first place?<br /><br />But of course I think there's a good reason that line of argument didn't occur to my Mormon friend. Because this, too, could be turned against Mormonism itself--and with more validity than the former method. You know the church is true because the Holy Ghost told you? Well, how do you <I>know</I> that "witness" really came from the Holy Ghost? A faithful Mormon would have an answer to that--something, perhaps, about how the feelings of peace that the Holy Ghost gives cannot be counterfeited by anything else--but again, the same question could be asked, how does he <I>know</I> that? At some level, there are premises that can be questioned. And of course, this doesn't apply just to Mormonism; it applies to any faith-based belief system.<br /><br />(Of course, science has its basic premises too--the existence of cause and effect, that the laws of physics work the same everywhere, and so on. Certainly those premises aren't immune to being questioned. But on the other hand, they have a very good track record; the scientific method has made a lot of successful predictions, and led to a lot of important discoveries. So if we're asked how we know that those premises are true, we have a good answer--not, of course, that we do know, or could ever know, with absolute, 100% accuracy, but given the success of the predictions those premises have so far led to, their validity seems to have been established with a very high level of probability. The premises of faith and religion don't have that distinction.)<br /><br />This is a general principle that I think important to keep in mind when considering religious claims. It's easy to ask what-ifs that seem to challenge religious beliefs, but given the premises of those beliefs, the what-ifs are easy to answer--or to dismiss as meaningless. The important thing isn't to question the consequences of the premises, but to question the premises themselves.<br /><br />The real question isn't "What if". It's "How do you know".<br /><br />Unfortunately, it's a question that the faithful are all too seldom willing to seriously consider...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-62622568361584623562007-07-31T17:06:00.000-07:002007-07-31T17:18:39.498-07:00UnsuitedOkay, I'm back from the <A HREF="http://www.comic-con.org">Comic-Con</A>. Actually, I was back yesterday morning, and did intend to post then, but I ended up having too much to catch up on and being too tired to get to it. Truth be told, I still have a lot to catch up on, so I don't have much time today either, but I'll at least make time for a brief post.<br /><br />I'm not going to say anything about the Comic-Con itself, because, well, that's not really relevant to this blog; that's something more appropriate for my LiveJournal. There is one thing I did over the weekend, though, that I don't really want to admit to in a non-anonymous context just yet. It's something I've long kinda wanted to do, but never did mostly because I knew the church would frown on it.<br /><br />The Comic-Con ended around 5:00 on Sunday. I didn't want to drive back to L.A. during peak traffic hours, so I had decided to wait until later that night to head back. That left me with a few hours of down time Sunday evening to fill. And I'd found out about a <A HREF="http://www.blacksbeach.org/">nude beach</A> near San Diego...<br /><br />So, I figured, what the hey...<br /><br />The most direct route to get there, apparently, involved following a spotty trail down a fairly steep cliff. When I got to the bottom, I was about to head north--I had read that the nude part of the beach was the northern half; the south part was city-owned and the wearing of clothing was enforced there--when I noticed that apparently that was unnecessary; this trail evidently led right to the nude beach itself, judging from the fact that, well, pretty much everyone around was naked.<br /><br />True to stereotype, there was a volleyball game going on. I didn't join in; I only had an hour or two anyway before the parking lot at the top of the cliffs closed at sundown. I spent my time at the beach in the water, just swimming in the ocean and letting the waves wash over me.<br /><br />I enjoyed it quite a bit, actually. I'm not sure why, but there was just something about being naked in the ocean, with nothing between me and the waters of the sea, that I really liked. Now, I don't go to San Diego often, and there aren't any nude beaches near L.A.--there is one, apparently, <A HREF="http://www.friendsofsanonofre.org/">closer to L.A. than the one I went to</A>, but still not all that close. So I don't know when I'm likely to visit a nude beach again. But I'm glad I went this time.<br /><br />Still...this obviously isn't something I'm going to be telling my family, or the people I know at church, about...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-46321097383257514972007-07-27T02:41:00.000-07:002007-07-27T02:45:00.220-07:00Back In A BitOkay, like I said, there are things I've been meaning to post about, and I'd hoped to make at least one post yesterday, but I was busy enough it didn't end up happening. Unfortunately, I can't post today either. I'm about to leave for the <A HREF="http://www.comic-con.org">San Diego Comic-Con</A>, and I'm not likely to have internet access there. So...I'll post again on Monday.<br /><br />Hey, I know this won't be the first time I've gone several days without posting, but it's the first time I've explained in advance <I>why</I> I won't be posting for a while...<br /><br />See you Monday.An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-12619602155758850592007-07-25T23:53:00.000-07:002007-08-15T02:56:48.942-07:00The Temple Is ClosedI said back at the beginning of June that my visit to the temple for the <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/06/last-time-in-temple.html">Los Angeles temple jubilee</A> was likely to be my last. My temple recommend wasn't going to expire until August, but I had no particular desire to go to the temple again, and certainly no longer feel any obligation to.<br /><br />Well, turns out that prediction was accurate; my temple recommend was supposed to have been good until August, but it seems they're redesigning all the temple recommends--they have bar codes now, I guess so they can be scanned in instead of, or in addition to, being looked over visually. Since I wasn't planning on going to the temple between now and August anyway, it doesn't particularly matter to me that my temple recommend is invalid a little sooner than I thought. It has, however, led to a few awkward moments, when someone suggested the bishop was free and that now would be a good time to get my new recommend, or when someone else asked me if I'd gotten my new recommend yet. (My response, essentially: Don't have time today; gotta go.) I expect the matter will blow over, though, and in a week or two everyone will just assume I've done it--except the bishop, of course, but it remains to be seen whether he will remember that I haven't gotten my new recommend (or check his records to see), and if so whether he'll try to do anything about it. If so...well, maybe my coming clean about my atheism will be forced a little sooner than I'd planned.<br /><br />(I could, of course, just go through the interview and get the recommend. But, as I've said before, I already feel uncomfortable enough essentially lying by omission by not telling the people at church that I don't believe; getting a new recommend would involve lying directly (to the bishop and a member of the stake presidency during the interviews), and I certainly don't want to do that. If that means admitting to my deconversion--which it may, if they ever ask me directly why I'm not renewing my recommend--well, so be it, I guess. Hasn't happened yet, though.)<br /><br />Now, one might wonder, of course, <I>why</I> the church would feel the need to redesign the temple recommends. The addition of the bar code suggests that a reason is to heighten security. Which certainly makes sense; the church has always been very protective about what goes on in the temple, and takes pains to try to avoid any details getting out. Not entirely successfully--there are, in fact, transcripts of all the major temple ceremonies available on the web, and I wouldn't be too surprised if the video from the temple endowment ceremony was available somewhere too (though almost certainly not on the web, because the church's legal department would quickly move to have it taken down due to copyright violation)--, but they've certainly made the effort. The standard church response to questions about why the temple ceremonies are such a big secret is that they're not <I>secret</I>, they're <I>sacred</I>--they're so holy that they should not be tainted by speaking about them in unhallowed contexts. But of course "secret" and "sacred" aren't mutually exclusive, and even if church members <I>do</I> consider the temple ceremonies sacred, they're certainly secret as well...so this standard response is really dodging the question.<br /><br />During the priesthood meeting last Sunday, the question came up of why new converts to the church had to wait a year before they were allowed to enter the temple. The response a church authority had given to this question was that that time was necessary in order for the convert to be prepared for what he will go through in the temple. The temple ceremonies must be experienced with the proper spiritual mindset. I think it's pretty clear that the real reason, though, is to weed out people who would otherwise join the church just to see what happens in the temple, and then disseminate that information. If they've stayed faithful in the church for a year, it's a safe bet they're genuine about their devotion. It's yet another way the church is protecting its "sacreds".<br /><br />Or, on second thought, maybe that's <I>not</I> entirely the real reason--though I strongly suspect it is a part of it. Maybe there <I>is</I> an aspect of preparation necessary before one can experience the temple ceremony the way the church leaders would like. Because, frankly, considering the temple ceremonies now...I think to someone who hadn't had some level of conditioning or--at the risk of using a perhaps too loaded word--brainwashing before experiencing those temple ceremonies would see them as absolutely ludicrous. By the time a member has been in the church for a year, its supposed absolute truth has been drilled into his head enough he'll be willing to accept what goes on in the temple regardless of its silliness; maybe someone who hadn't been so firmly entrenched in the church yet is much more likely to be sufficiently disturbed or baffled by the temple ceremonies to be driven away entirely. In fact, maybe that's the main reason the church has to keep the temple ceremonies such a secret in the first place--because if they got out to members who hadn't been sufficiently "prepared", or worse yet to potential converts, they'd lose interest in the church.<br /><br />Ah, well. Regardless of the reasons for it, I'm content not to get the fancy new bar-coded temple recommend. I've seen the secrets of the temple, many times, and I don't need to see them again.An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-51254914564193626542007-07-23T17:44:00.001-07:002007-07-23T17:48:22.285-07:00HS5Okay, so much, once again, for my attempt to post every day for another week. That never seems to work nowadays.<br /><br />Ah, well. I do have more things that I want to post about, but I'm not likely to have time to get to them until tomorrow. In the meanwhile, though, <A HREF="http://thegreenatheist.com/?p=181">The Humanist Symposium #5</A> is up at <A HREF="http://thegreenatheist.com/">The Green Atheist</A>. Go see, if you haven't already!<br /><br />In the meanwhile, this is an open thread. Optional topic of discussion: What's your favorite transcendental number?An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-86650927868767163502007-07-18T12:25:00.000-07:002007-07-18T12:29:53.964-07:00Family Friendly...ishAs usual when I've been behind on updating my blog, I've also been behind on reading other blogs, and I just decided to take a glance at some of the other blogs I like to see what I've been missing. After seeing <A HREF="http://pooflingers.blogspot.com/2007/06/surprised-not-really.html">this post</A> on <A HREF="http://www.pooflingers.blogspot.com">Pooflingers Anonymous</A>, I decided to run my own blog through the site and see what its rating came out as.<br /><br />And here's what I got:<br /><br /><a href="http://mingle2.com/blog-rating"><img style="border: none;" src="http://mingle2.com/img/bb/blog_rating/pg.jpg" alt="Free Online Dating" /></a><br /><br />Apparently the only things keeping me from a G rating were two mentions of the word "death" and one of "dead". Hm.<br /><br />So, there you go! I'm a (reasonably) family-friendly gay atheist! Hooray!An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-2577492621445645692007-07-17T23:50:00.000-07:002007-07-18T12:12:31.629-07:00Of Monkeys and MenThis month's selection for the <A HREF="http://www.cfiwest.org/groups/BookClub.htm">Skeptics' Book Club</A> was <A HREF="http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/OurInnerApe/index.html"><I>Our Inner Ape</I></A>, by <A HREF="http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/OurInnerApe/meet_frans.html">Frans de Waal</A>. The book was about the behavior of animals related to humans--especially the human's closest relatives, the chimpanzee and the bonobo--and about the light this could throw on human behavior. (And regarding the title of this post, yes, I know that "ape" and "monkey" aren't synonymous. But "of apes and men" wouldn't have alliterated, and anyway the book did discuss monkeys too, a little. I claim artistic license.)<br /><br />At one point during the discussion, the question was raised whether perhaps de Waal was going too far in anthropomorphizing the apes, and in imputing to them conscious motivations. Personally, I don't think so; I think he gives valid reasons for his conclusions, and that his arguments as to why certain actions the apes performed could only have been the result of conscious thought on their part are good ones. But then, I've always been less amazed by evidence for conscious thought in non-human animals as I am by the amazement this seems to evoke in others. Humans in general like to think of themselves as <I>different</I> from the animals, in some defining way. In fact, de Waal discusses that in the book, and enumerates how each defining characteristic that was supposed to set humans apart--tool use, language, and most recently empathy--was later discovered in animals after all, forcing those who still wanted to cling to an idea of humanity's uniqueness to come up with some new and narrower defining characteristic to last them until newer discoveries rendered it, too, obsolete. (I got a laugh at the book club meeting when I suggested that maybe humanity's real defining characteristic was its search for defining characterstics.)<br /><br />That's not to say, of course, that humans aren't unique. But if we are, it's primarily quantitatively, not qualitatively. We may not be the only animals capable of rational thought, or even of self-awareness--there's good evidence for self-awareness in both apes and dolphins, and according to de Waal the jury is still out on elephants--but certainly we take these matters to greater extremes than any other animal. As is evidenced by de Waal's book itself, and other books about similar themes--what other animal could so closely question its own motivations and mental make-up?<br /><br />There's a delightful circularity in all of this, in that of course in questioning how our minds work we're questioning the workings of the very processes that are doing the questioning in the first place. (It's not a vicious circle, of course--the fact that we can analyze how our thought processes came doesn't make those processes or their conclusions invalid.) The recursion involved in our using our minds to analyze our minds, in products of our biological and societal evolution studying those very processes that brought them about and by which they continue to be influenced.<br /><br />And I think to fully appreciate this, we have to give up the superficially attractive idea of humans being qualitatively unique, of being forever apart from the rest of the universe. I think things become much more interesting and much more, well, fun, once we recognize that we're a <I>part</I> of it all, that we share much the same nature as the rest of nature. The idea that humans are different, that we occupy some special place in the center of creation, may have its appeal, but I think if you really consider it the idea that humans are as much a part of the material cosmos as anything else--as well as being more accurate--is much more profound in its implications and in a way much more uplifting. That we are animals, but animals with a(n apparently quantitatively unique, if not qualitatively) capacity for introspection and self-analysis, that we are products of and subject to the same physical laws that run the rest of the universe, but have the ability to understand those laws (not fully, perhaps, but more each day), and even to manipulate them--that's really marvelous. It seems almost magical that out of the processes of nature could come something with the capacity to study and comprehend the very processes that brought it about, and more still to study and comprehend--at least to a limited degree--<I>itself</I>. Science fiction frequently repeats the trope of a computer program developing intelligence and self-awareness; it's considered a weird and exotic idea. But, in a way, if we consider the universe, running according to physical laws, as being something like a computer (an imperfect analogy, certainly, but not altogether baseless), <I>it's already happened</I>, and the program is us.<br /><br />We don't have to have some qualitative defining characteristic, something that sets us definitively apart from other animals and from the physical universe, to be special. Our capacity for thought, our consciousness, may differ from that of our relatives only in degree. But it's that difference in degree that lets us wonder about our differences in the first place, and lets us try to understand just what we are in the first place. We are, so far as we know, the only parts of the universe that wonder what we are. And that's wonderful.An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-6272197428255469882007-07-16T23:25:00.001-07:002007-07-17T01:10:48.952-07:00Blessed Are The Geeks...I'm not as avid a webcomic reader as many, but there are a few webcomics I read regularly, and others I catch up on once in a while. As I think I've mentioned before, I even have a webcomic of my own, though I'm currently (and really pretty much chronically) behind on the updates. Naturally, I'm not going to link to or mention the name of my webcomic here, since that would kind of go against the whole anonymity thing...I do the webcomic under a pseudonym, but even so it wouldn't be at all hard to track down my real identity from it. I will mention, though, that somewhat ironically the main character of my webcomic is a god...<br /><br />Anyway, most anyone who's familiar with webcomics has heard of <A HREF="http://www.keenspot.com">Keenspot</A>, one of the most prominent webcomic collectives, and as far as I know the oldest such collective still extant. And anyone who's checked out any Keenspot sites lately might have noticed some...unusual advertisements there.<br /><br />This was the part where I was going to link to an image of one of the ads, except they don't seem to be running anymore. Should have made this post last week. In searching, though, I find references to the ads having turned up in other places, as well, though, including a site called <A HREF="www.gamerswithjobs.com">"Gamers with Jobs"</A> (where, however, the ad was <A HREF="http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/32268?from=30&comments_per_page=30#comment-637161">eventually turned off</A>) and another called <A HREF="http://www.gamedev.net">gamedev.net</A>. Still, the KeenSpot sites were the only place I'd actually seen them.<br /><br />Even if I can't find the ads themselves anymore (though I'd guess they're still running out there somewhere), the current front page to <A HREF="http://www.mormon.org">mormon.org</A> displays much the same thing in a different aspect ratio.<br /><br />Yes, that's right; the ads were for the LDS church. They depicted, on a white background, people looking pensive while questions appeared next to them in gold letters. (All right, on the current mormon.org front page they're gray, but in the original ads they were gold.) Questions like, "What should I do with my life?" And then, after fading through a few of these images, it would settle into an image with the text "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" on the left and "TRUTH RESTORED" and the URL "mormon.org" on the right. (The main church website is <A HREF="http://www.lds.org">lds.org</A>, but mormon.org is also run by the church and is more focused on information for non-members (the idea being, of course, to get them interested in joining the church).)<br /><br />That someone would see a church as supplying the answer to the question of what she should do with her life strikes me as, well, kind of pathetic. I mean, what, is the idea being that she's going to be devoting her life <I>entirely</I> to the church? Even Mormons (well, some of them, anyway) do have careers and goals and interests other than focusing on the church in every waking moment; that someone would be completely without any idea of what she wants to do with her life and then, on joining the church, would suddenly find the sense of purpose she was missing seems...well, sort of sad, actually. Then again, there is the fact that the endowment ceremony does require members to "consecrate [them]selves, [their] time, talents, and everything with which the Lord has blessed [them], or with which he may bless [them], to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for the building up of the Kingdom of God on the earth and for the establishment of Zion." So I guess the idea of looking to the church as supplying your entire purpose in life does kind of go along with Mormon doctrine, as unattractive a prospect as it may be.<br /><br />But that's not the main thing I wanted to write about here; no, the main thing is, well, how odd it was to see an ad for the LDS church come up on Keenspot in the first place. Keenspot...well...isn't exactly the sort of place you'd expect the kind of people who'd be likely converts to spend a lot of time. Oh, for what it's worth, there was <A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com/">a webcomic by a Mormon</A> on Keenspot once upon a time, though it eventually jumped ship and later joined up with <A HREF="http://www.blanklabelcomics.com/">Blank Label Comics</A>. But by and large, I don't think on average most of the comics on Keenspot are all that religion-friendly. <A HREF="http://www.nukees.com">One</A> of the two founders of Keenspot that have their own comics there is <A HREF="http://www.nukees.com/d/19991227.html">quite openly "agnostic"</A> ("agnostic" in quotes because, really, though he calls himself an agnostic, he actually seems to be more of an atheist). Then there's <A HREF="http://friendlyhostility.com/">the comic where the two main characters are gay</A>, the <A HREF="http://zebragirl.keenspot.com/">one where the main character is a demon</A>, the <A HREF="http://filthylies.net/">one that seems to go out of its way to be offensive</A> (especially toward religion)...you get the idea. Obviously, not every Keenspot cartoonist is anti-religion--<A HREF="http://www.brunothebandit.com">at least one</A> is a faithful Catholic--but all in all, Keenspot doesn't seem like the kind of site that's likely to attract a lot of people searching for answers in religion. It seems like an odd sort of site for the Mormon church to advertise on.<br /><br />Not, of course, that that's the only place the church has advertised; like I mentioned above, there've been ads on other sites too. But, well, look at the nature of those other sites. One is a site for gamers, another is about game development. These weren't cherry-picked; those were the first two I found in my googling. It seems the LDS church is, for whatever reason, specifically courting a "geek" demographic, which seems like a very odd strategy. Well, either that or it's just that geeks talk online about the banner ads more, which is also certainly a possibility.<br /><br />Either way, though, it seems...odd to see banners for the LDS church appear on such, um, worldly sites. I wonder if this might attract for the church at least as much negative attention--making it seem desperate, or associating it with spam or with some of the sites it's advertising on that have most "inappropriate" content--as it does positive. On the other hand, the church certainly has a lot of experience in marketing (a.k.a. proselyting); presumably it's done its research and knows what it's doing. But then back to the first hand, I'm apparently not the only one who sees the church's web advertising as having an odd flavor; I just ran across <A HREF="http://kellyim.blogspot.com/2007/05/mormons.html">a blog post by a Mormon</A> who saw one of the banner ads on <A HREF="http://www.hotmail.com">Hotmail</A> and was uncomfortable about it.<br /><br />I dunno. Between web ads and Romney's candidacy--on top of the hosting of the Winter Olympics a while back--the LDS church is certainly getting an increasing amount of publicity. The problem is--well, the problem from the church's standpoint, anyway--that not all of it is <I>good</I> publicity. I'm not sure putting banner ads on gaming and webcomic sites is really going to help with that... Then again, if this does end up backfiring, well, that might be a disaster from the <I>church's</I> point of view, but from my viewpoint I can't really see it as a bad thing...An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-51093429740974962952007-07-15T23:24:00.000-07:002007-07-15T23:54:56.132-07:00TransitionsOkay, yeah, once again I've been kinda sparse on the updates, but I have a pretty good reason for not posting last week. My parents are spending two months in Utah, and I'm housesitting for them while they're away...which means much time this last week was spent helping them finish packing, and then settling in. So...not a lot of free time. Even less than usual, I mean. (Well, I actually did have quite a bit of free time on Friday and Saturday, I guess, but after all I was dealing with earlier in the week I...okay, I don't have a good excuse for not posting on Friday or Saturday.)<br /><br />My parents have gone on and on about how much they appreciate my help, and how they don't know what they'd have done without me...and in a way, it's kind of awkward, because I can't help wondering whether they'd see things differently if they knew I was an atheist. Probably not, in the long run, but I'm sure it would be a shock. I'm not ready to tell them just yet, though.<br /><br />Incidentally, my mother is increasingly often asking me direct questions about whether or not I ever intend to get married. Being unmarried at my age is, well, for a Mormon, very unusual, and she's clearly not happy about it. She's even said that if I'm not seen dating soon people might "start to wonder" about me. I don't have the heart to tell her just yet that what people would presumably be wondering is in fact precisely the case. (I'm pretty sure, though, that people are <I>not</I>, in fact, wondering--aside from my mother, who I suspect <I>is</I> on some level wondering, but is reluctant to admit that to herself.)<br /><br />Speaking of, well, the thing I've been alluding to all through the previous paragraph without ever explicitly saying it, which is kind of pointless since I've already explicitly said it in <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/05/second-confession.html">a previous post</A>...I'm really feeling like I ought to be telling people about that. Not everyone; certainly not my parents or the people I know at church. But at least some close friends, who I think I can trust to, well, support me. <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/04/conversation-with-old-friend.html">My friend David</A>, with whom I spoke about my atheism, maybe...though I don't want to make him feel like I'm just using him as a sounding board for my catharses. And my current role-playing gaming group, or now former gaming group...I consider them all good friends, and I've mentioned my atheism to them, and I'm sure they'd be supportive about this too, especially considering that, well, one of them is bi.<br /><br />(I say "now former" because, well, the group is splitting up; two of them are moving to Florida this week, and another (the bi one, FWIW) to San Francisco in a month. Today was our last meeting before the move. Though we're still going to be keeping in touch.)<br /><br />It's just...yeah, I'd been keeping that secret for fifteen years, and I don't like living a lie that long. As I said, I'm not ready to tell <I>everyone</I>, but I feel like I ought to tell <I>someone</I>--and an anonymous confession to people whom I've never met and who don't know my real name or anything about me other than what I write here, while definitely a step in the right direction, doesn't completely fit the bill. (I had guessed that some people I knew from the <A HREF="http://www.cfiwest.org">Center For Inquiry</A> whom I'd told about my blog might read that post--though I certainly hadn't written it with that intention--but as it turns out, I don't think they have. Both the people who had been reading my blog happened to be very busy with other matters at the time of that post, and I'm pretty sure they didn't read it--it seems likely they would have commented or said something if they had.)<br /><br />Anyway. I've gotta go, and I guess there's not much of a coherent point to this post. Now that I'm settled in at my parents' house (well, more or less; I'll still be commuting to L.A. for school and acting and other things), I should have more time this next week, and I'm going to try again to make a post a day and maybe catch up on the backlog of posts I've been meaning to make but haven't. So, tomorrow, expect a post about webcomics. And Tuesday, a post about monkeys. (Well, really more about apes...but "monkeys" is just more fun to say for some reason.)An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-43930641065775827932007-07-08T23:24:00.000-07:002007-07-09T10:58:49.265-07:00Carnival Time AgainWell...so much for posting every day this week; I had a busy weekend. I've still got quite a few things I wanted to post about, but first, <A HREF="http://friendlyatheist.com/2007/07/08/carnival-of-the-godless-70/">Carnival of the Godless #70</A> is up at <A HREF="http://friendlyatheist.com/">Friendly Atheist</A>.<br /><br />I am tired, so the other things I wanted to post about will wait until (at least) tomorrow.<br /><br />In the meantime, open thread. Optional topic of discussion: How in the word did "earwigs" get their name, anyway? (No fair cheating by looking in a dictionary...)An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-10512243901986256212007-07-05T23:59:00.000-07:002007-07-06T11:09:57.238-07:00Life is UnfairYesterday, my mother had to drop off a dinner for a woman in her ward who lives down the street and was sick and bedridden. My mother, however, isn't doing too well herself--she'd recently gotten out of the hospital for a hip surgery--and isn't supposed to walk long distances without a walker or a cane. (Actually, she's not supposed to walk <I>short</I> distances without a walker or a cane either, but she does anyway.) This made it impossible for her to carry a plate of food, so since I was there visiting for the holiday she had me take the plate over for her.<br /><br />She then sat and visited with the ill woman for a while. I didn't participate in the conversation, but I was there and heard it; they discussed things such as <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/06/moral-decay.html">the evils of the world</A> and the problem of theodicy (though they didn't use that term), as well as more down-to-earth topics such as her son-in-law's struggle with cancer. At one point, though, the bedridden woman said something that struck me as frankly appalling. (I don't remember her words verbatim, of course, but this is the gist of what she said:)<br /><br />"I remember those commercials I used to see--ten cents a day could feed a child. All that starvation and hardship going on there [in parts of Africa]. And I used to think, how could God be so angry at an entire country? But then [a certain senior couple from the ward] got back from their mission to Africa, and they talked about how evil the people there are. They just have no feelings at all."<br /><br />Yeah. Her basic conclusion was that people are starving in Africa <I>because they are evil</I>. They deserve it. God is punishing them for their wrongdoings.<br /><br />(Something that, unsurprisingly, didn't come up: if the sufferings of starving Africans were God's punishment for to their sins, what about her son-in-law with brain cancer that she had just been talking about? What had <I>he</I> been doing wrong? Incidentally, my mother, to her credit, after leaving the house talked to me how dismayed she was at what the woman had said, and how much she disagreed with her remarks.)<br /><br />This isn't a new attitude, of course. It's mentioned in the Bible. In <A HREF="http://scriptures.lds.org/en/john/9/2#2">John 9:2</A>, Christ's disciples ask him, "Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" Of course, it's mentioned in the context of Christ debunking their assumption, and assuring them that the man's blindness <I>wasn't</I> due to sin, but a lot of modern Christians apparently haven't taken this particular lesson to heart. (I'm sure it doesn't help, though, that the reason that <I>is</I> given for the man's blindness--"that the works of God should be made manifest in him"--isn't all that comforting and doesn't have a broad application, given that after all most blind people nowadays <I>aren't</I> miraculously healed.) So we get various stalwarts of the Christian Right blaming liberals, single mothers, and homosexuals for everything from the 9/11 attacks to Hurricane Katrina.<br /><br />I don't usually say much in my blog about religions other than Christianity, mostly because I'm not as familiar with them, but in this case there's something I recently read about certain Eastern religions that goes right along with this theme. As research for one of the myriad projects I'm planning, I've been reading a book about everyday life in Early India. (In fact, as it happens, <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Early-India-Michael-Edwardes/dp/0399200592">that's the book's title</A>.) Now, the most prominent religions of Early India, which still survive today--Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, collectively (along with Sikhism) called the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmic_religions">"Dharmic religions"</A>--all have similar roots. And one of the concepts they have in common, and perhaps the one best known to outsiders, is that of karma. What you do in one life will affect the next. Live well, and you'll be reincarnated in a higher form. Live badly, and you'll come back in a lower. The karma concept has been appropriated by many people who don't belong to the Dharmic religions, but usually in a slightly altered form, that your good and bad deeds will bring good or bad repercussions on your head later in <I>this</I> life. No doubt we've all heard people talk of building "good karma", or of risking "bad karma", with their actions.<br /><br />Karma may seem superficially like a warm and fuzzy, positive idea. After all, it should motivate people to do good, right? But the concept has its dark side, that I'd never really thought of before reading the aforementioned book (well, not that I'd ever given much thought to karma to begin with). Many people in early India felt justified in holding contempt for the poor and the afflicted (as presumably many members of the Dharmic religions still do today) because, after all, they <I>earned</I> their poverty and afflictions. If they were suffering so much in this life, it must be because they had committed terrible misdeeds in previous lives. They therefore didn't really deserve pity or compassion--or at least, not as much as would be merited by a righteous man. They were only reaping what they had sowed. Their suffering was fair.<br /><br />Of course, it wasn't. Life very often <I>isn't</I> fair. But that's not a comforting thought. So religions--Abrahamic, Dharmic, and no doubt others--have established doctrines to restore fairness and justice to existence. The problem with this is that if you assume life <I>is</I> fair, that everyone <I>does</I> get what they deserve...well, that must mean that those who are worse off must <I>deserve</I> it. Ultimately, these doctrines, taken to their logical conclusion, lead to hard-heartedness and antipathy toward the poor and the suffering.<br /><br />Life isn't fair. And it's especially unfair to the less fortunate to pretend otherwise.An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-43348023313509163692007-07-04T21:18:00.000-07:002007-07-04T23:46:38.563-07:00Church and StateOkay, this is a post I've been meaning to make for a week or two, but I guess in a way it's kind of appropriate that it's going up today, being that it touches on America and patriotism, and today is the day of a holiday that's all about that. It's the Fourth of July, Independence Day, when we celebrate the birth of the U.S.A.--or, more accurately, when we watch fireworks and have barbecues and maybe occasionally spare a fleeting thought to what the holiday is supposedly about.<br /><br />Not that this post has much to do with Independence Day, really, but it does have a lot to do with politics. Politics are a subject I'm too thin-skinned to enjoy discussing; it seems a lot of people are very passionate about their political beliefs, and full of vitriol to anyone who opposes them. Which--actually--is sorta kinda what this post is about.<br /><br />The book selection for last month's meeting of the <A HREF="http://www.cfiwest.org/groups/BookClub.htm">Skeptics' Book Club</A> was <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Bush-Couch-Inside-Mind-President/dp/0060736704"><I>Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President</I></A>, by Justin A. Frank. This was the first book club selection so far that I actually disliked. And when I say I disliked it, I mean I thought it was complete baloney. The book was all about trying to pin all of George W. Bush's shortcomings on circumstances of his infancy and childhood. It strained to try to explain how Bush being the way he is can be blamed on his father not being there for him enough, and on his mother being cold, and on his younger sister's death, and on all sorts of other things all at once--the self-contradictoriness inherent in ascribing the same traits to several different causes at once apparently having escaped the author. Now, I'm certainly no fan of Dubya, but that doesn't mean I enjoy reading a work that turns to long discredited avenues of psychoanalysis to try to analyze his personality. He is the way he is, and there's nothing to be gained by blaming it all on his mother not having loved him enough.<br /><br />It seems I wasn't alone in my opinion of this book; several other book club members whom I later spoke to agreed that it was nonsense, and shared my surprise that someone in the book club had recommended it. In any case, though, that was after the book club meeting; at the meeting itself, I wasn't looking forward to discussing the book for fear of offending whoever it was who had recommended it (I honestly didn't remember who) with my negative opinion of it. As it turned out, I was freed of this unpleasantness by the fact that by the time I arrived (somewhat late), everyone had already passed on from talking about the book to just talking about the Bush administration in general.<br /><br />And really, all of the foregoing is just a mostly irrelevant preamble to a bit of an epiphany I had at said discussion. I wondered aloud at one point how so many other mostly sane and rational people could still wholeheartedly support Bush and live in denial of his misdeeds in the face of all the evidence--and even as I said that, something hit me.<br /><br />It related, actually, to a discussion the preceding week in the mailing list of the <A HREF="http://www.iigwest.org/">Independent Investigations Group</A>. Someone had brought up <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens">Christopher Hitchins'</A> outspoken atheism, and someone else had raised the anomaly of Hitchins' support of the war in Iraq. This led to the following message (paraphrased because I don't have access to the original right now--I'll edit the exact words in tomorrow when I do):<br /><br /><BLOCKQUOTE><I>I don't understand how he can claim to be an atheist and still support the Iraq War. It seems like a contradiction in terms.</I></BLOCKQUOTE><br /><br /><I>What an odd thing to say,</I> I thought at the time. Oh, certainly there's some <I>negative correlation</I> between atheism and support of the Iraq War. Because (at least in part) of Bush's ostentatious religiosity, he has disproportionate support from the religious, and conversely disproportionate lack of support among the non-religious. But that doesn't mean that opposition to the Iraq War necessarily follows from atheism. They're two separate issues. I may think that Bush hurried the U.S. into war on shaky and even deceptive grounds, but another atheist may disagree and still be an atheist. Support of the Iraq War doesn't necessarily mean belief in God.<br /><br />But then during the book club discussion I remembered that message, and saw a connection there I hadn't previously realized. Oh, I still don't think opposition to the Iraq War <I>necessarily</I> follows from atheism--or, conversely, that you have to be religious to support Bush, or vice versa. But...there actually is a common element there.<br /><br />Thinking back about some of the more hidebound politically partisan people I know (including my own parents, strong kneejerk Republicans who'd never consider voting any other way--though even they have found reason to dislike Bush), I was suddenly struck by the similarities between their unchangeable political viewpoints and, well, those of <I>religion</I>. There's a lot of resemblance in the thought processes. In both cases, the person in question tends to discount any evidence against his particular views, while happily seizing anything, however tenuous, that seems to support it. Both the politically and the religiously faithful are characterized by a complete lack of skeptical inquiry about the subject in question--while remaining utterly convinced that their beliefs are well founded. And the word "faithful" in th previous paragraph isn't a misnomer--political "faith" is quite analogous, if not identical, to the religious variety. Just like the religious faithful, the political faithful, having chosen their side, are convinced of its rightness, and will not be swayed from it.<br /><br />I'm not claiming this is unique to Republicans--even if certainly it's primarily the Republicans who are allied with fundamentalist Christianity. I remember, from my undergraduate years at USC, an old Thai woman who had similarly unshakable faith in the Democrats--Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton in particular, to the extent that when, after she lauded Bill Clinton for his support of the family, someone brought up his adultery, she <I>literally refused to believe that it had happened</I>. Even after she was told he had <I>admitted</I> to it, she insisted it had to be a lie. In her mind, Bill Clinton was an untarnished pinnacle of virtue; he could not possibly have had an adulterous relationship.<br /><br />So, to return to the original example, is an atheist who supports the Iraq War really a contradiction in terms? Well, no. Maybe Hitchins hasn't turned to his politics the skeptical eye he's apparently used to look at religion, but then people aren't always consistent. But there's certainly a similar kind of mindset at work, in belief in God and in belief in the infallibility of certain men. Now that I think of it, this goes beyond just politicians; maybe there are times people have similar "faith" in other celebrities, in movie stars and writers and even in <A HREF="http://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388">scientists</A>...<br /><br />Yeah, I know, this probably isn't really an original idea; I'm sure other people have noted this before. Still, I'd never thought of it in quite those terms before: that faith, even if we don't call it by that name in other contexts, operates in spheres far outside religion. That the mindset that leads to religion operates just as destructively in politics and in other spheres.<br /><br />Ah, well. Happy Fourth of July, everyone! (What little is left of it by the time I post this...)An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29013369.post-60051820467483567612007-07-03T23:29:00.000-07:002007-07-04T21:17:54.275-07:00Mormonism 101: Mormon MarriageSo, I've yet again been rather lax in updating this blog (and yes, I know I said the same thing in the <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/06/blog-post.html"><I>last</I> post</A>). I still have quite a backlog of things I've been wanting to post about, though, so I think I'm going to shoot for a post a day all this week again. Anyway, though, on my <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/05/mormonism-101-mormon-meetings.html">last Mormonism 101 post</A>, I invited readers to suggest what specific aspects of Mormonism they'd like me to write about, and I <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/05/mormonism-101-mormon-meetings.html#c4817336060902076368">got a response</A>: someone wanted me to write a post about Mormon temple marriages and sealings. So I guess I'll oblige.<br /><br />I'm not going to just reiterate word for word what happens in the ceremony, for two reasons. First of all, because I don't have it memorized. And secondly, because it's available <A HREF="http://www.lds-mormon.com/veilworker/marriage.shtml">elsewhere on the internet</A> anyway. (Granted, point two sort of invalidates point one, in that it means I guess I could just copy it from that site, but even without point one point two still stands.) What I will do is speak in general terms of what marriage means in Mormonism, and what the temple ceremony is supposed to signify.<br /><br />"Family" is one of the LDS church's biggest selling points; I don't know how many times I've heard of someone converting to Mormonism because they liked the idea that families can be together forever. (That is, in fact, the <I>title</I> of <A HREF="http://www.lds.org/churchmusic/detailmusicPlayer/index.html?searchlanguage=1&searchcollection=1&searchseqstart=300&searchsubseqstart=%20&searchseqend=300&searchsubseqend=ZZZ">one of the official church hymns</A>.) "Till death do us part" doesn't apply to Mormon weddings; they are supposed to be <I>eternal</I>.<br /><br />Well, with certain caveats. They're only eternal if both partners make it into the Celestial Kingdom. Don't worry if you don't know exactly what that means--the Mormon concept of the afterlife is rather complex, and could easily (and probably someday will) make for a lengthy post by itself. The short of it is that only those who stay righteous and attain a high level of salvation are united in eternal marriage. Still, those who are will, in time, become gods and goddesses themselves, ruling over their own worlds and having "eternal increase"--i.e., posthumous spirit children.<br /><br />(There's another thing, incidentally, that will no doubt be brought to many readers' minds by "Mormon marriage" but that is beyond the scope of this post: Polygamy. Yes, polygamy certainly was widely practiced in the early days of the church, and yes, it still is by some splinter sects, though it's no longer condoned by the main LDS church. There's a lot I could say about its history and about its doctrinal implications...but not in this post. I've got enough to say without opening up that can of worms here.)<br /><br />The eternal family extends beyond just the man and wife, however. Children are likewise eternally sealed to their parents, in a chain that supposedly links all the way back to Adam. (The apparent idea, though it's not really clearly spelled out, is that if one link in the chain proves unworthy, any worthy children of that unsaved link will be "adopted" by a worthier individual.) Any children born to a couple who have been married in the temple are considered to be "born in the covenant", and automatically sealed to their parents. If the parents marry after one or more children have already been born, however (or if a child is adopted, or under certain other special circumstances), the children may be explicitly sealed to the parents in a ceremony that goes along with the marriage.<br /><br />Not only is marriage <I>eternal</I> for the exalted, but it's a <I>requirement</I> for exaltation. Temple marriage is, in fact, the fourth and last of the major ordinances that, according to LDS doctrine, are necessary for salvation. In short, in the LDS church, marriage is considered a <I>really big deal</I>.<br /><br />At least, that's the theory, though you wouldn't really know it from the way it's actually carried out.<br /><br />Anyway, as such a holy ordinance, the marriage (and the sealing) takes place in the temple. Church members can get married outside the temple, and that of course qualifies for legal purposes--even in the eyes of the church, in the sense that the married couple can have sex without it being considered fornication--but for the marriage to be eternal, and for it to count toward salvation, it has to take place in the temple. This is actually rather a big deal; outside of the ordinances performed for the dead, the only other ordinance that takes place in the temple is that of the endowment, which, again, could make for a post of its own.<br /><br />One drawback, though, is that this means that only "worthy" members of the church--those with current temple recommends--are able to attend the wedding. If the bride or groom has close family members who aren't members of the church--or even who aren't active members of the church and don't have current recommends--they can't go to the wedding. In fact, in practice, generally the only people present at the wedding are the bride and groom's immediate relatives and perhaps two or three very close friends.<br /><br />Not that there'd be much room for more spectators anyway--the sealing room in the temple isn't very large. It's a small square room with a few chairs on each side, with mirrored walls that ham-handedly symbolize eternity. Outside of the chairs, the only furnishing in the room is an altar--essentially just a big rectangular block of marble or some other material. The bride and groom clasp hands over the altar as a temple officiator speaks <A HREF="http://www.lds-mormon.com/veilworker/marriage.shtml">the words of the ceremony</A>. If there are children to be sealed to the parents, they then take the parents' hands and that ceremony is done. The whole deal is very short and rather impersonal, and although the officiator does have the opportunity to speak a few words of counsel and encouragement, given that said officiator is usually a complete stranger to everyone else present this comes across as fairly meaningless. (I related a rather ill-conceived example of an officiator's banter <A HREF="http://acoward.blogspot.com/2007/04/wedding-jests.html">here</A>.)<br /><br />However, it mustn't be thought that since so few people are present at the actual wedding, a Mormon couple misses out on having a big celebration and receiving presents. No, what happens is that in <I>addition</I> to the wedding, the couple has a wedding <I>reception</I>--which takes place after the wedding, but before the honeymoon (generally <I>just</I> before, in that the couple goes straight from the reception to the honeymoon). It's at the reception that numerous guests are accommodated, that gifts are received, that cake is served and the bouquet thrown. The fact that the wedding itself has already taken place by this time and the reception is purely a social affair (well, a social and gift-receiving affair), though, makes it seem (to me, at least) kind of empty. Not helping the case, either, is that (in my experience) Mormon wedding receptions are generally tacky affairs held in hastily redecorated church gymnasia--impersonal locations that don't really lend themselves to imparting due gravitas to a special occasion that's supposed to commemorate an important milestone in a couple's eternal progression.<br /><br />So, in short, that's how the Mormon marriage goes. A lot of talk about its eternal importance and spiritual significance, but, in my opinion, with the actual proceedings ringing a little hollow. Still, however unexciting the wedding and the reception may be, it's supposed to represent two people being tied together for all eternity--and I guess that's maybe the main point where the Mormon marriage stands out from that of other Christian denominations. Of course, the divorce rate among Mormon couples remains high enough that many marriages turn out to not even make it to the end of mortality, much less beyond it.<br /><br />Anyway, so, I hope some readers have found this post informative. As before, if there's any specific aspect of Mormonism you'd like me to write about, let me know in the comments. (Though I won't promise to get to it this week, given that I've already got a backlog of posts I've been meaning to make...)An Anonymous Cowardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14379884817819168388noreply@blogger.com22