Deus ex Point/Counterpoint

This month's issue of Wired (to which I have recently (re)subscribed for almost entirely different reasons than I did in the 90s) has a cover story by Gary Wolf called Battle of the New Atheism. The so-called "New Atheism" is, in particular, the brand of atheism espoused by Richard Dawkins whose latest book is called The God Delusion. Dawkins is extremem in his atheism -- to the point of anti-theism. He thinks tolerating the good that religion does is as evil as tolerating the evil religion does. It's an extreme view, but one many people are adopting, it seems.

"I'm quite keen on the politics of persuading people of the virtues of atheism," Dawkins says, after we get settled in one of the high-ceilinged, ground-floor rooms. He asks me to keep an eye on his bike, which sits just behind him, on the other side of a window overlooking the street. "The number of nonreligious people in the U.S. is something nearer to 30 million than 20 million," he says. "That's more than all the Jews in the world put together. I think we're in the same position the gay movement was in a few decades ago. There was a need for people to come out. The more people who came out, the more people had the courage to come out. I think that's the case with atheists. They are more numerous than anybody realizes."

Dawkins looks forward to the day when the first U.S. politician is honest about being an atheist. "Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists," he says. "Not a single member of either house of Congress admits to being an atheist. It just doesn't add up. Either they're stupid, or they're lying. And have they got a motive for lying? Of course they've got a motive! Everybody knows that an atheist can't get elected."

That "Smart people are atheists, and I'm wicked smart, so I hate your 'God'!" attitude is largely what turns me off when I read or hear something from Dawkins.

Myself, I'm a card carrying agnostic. My views on spirituality are as variable as the weather, honestly, but my opinions on religion are fairly static:

  • Fundamentalists are evil in their intolerance
  • Organized religion often gives fundamentalists a means to get people to act on their intolerance (take your pick: Crusades or "jihads")
  • Religious ceremony gives me the heebie jeebies.
  • (These basics can be extrapolated further, but these are sufficient for this particular monologue.)

Basically, I think religion is a lot like sexual preference: as long as you're not causing someone else harm, it's all good.Personally, I don't really buy most definitions of "God". In fact, the Wired article has a pretty good description of me:

... technical and scientific people, possibly the social group that is least likely among all Americans to be religious. Most of these people call themselves agnostic, but they don't harbor much suspicion that God is real. They tell me they reject atheism not out of piety but out of politeness. As one said, "Atheism is like telling somebody, 'The very thing you hinge your life on, I totally dismiss.'" This is the type of statement she would never want to make.

So anyway, you get the point. Dawkins says all relgion is BAAAAD, I don't really agree because lots of religious folks are genuinely good people and I see no reason to crush their beliefs just because I don't share them.

Case in counterpoint: Terry Eagleton in the London Book Review's coverage of Dawkins' tome: Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching (which comes to me via Garret)

Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that. For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have always played an integral role in belief. (Where, given that he invites us at one point to question everything, is Dawkins’s own critique of science, objectivity, liberalism, atheism and the like?) Reason, to be sure, doesn’t go all the way down for believers, but it doesn’t for most sensitive, civilised non-religious types either. Even Richard Dawkins lives more by faith than by reason. We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain. Only positivists think that ‘rational’ means ‘scientific’. Dawkins rejects the surely reasonable case that science and religion are not in competition on the grounds that this insulates religion from rational inquiry. But this is a mistake: to claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered in Palestine, the pope should get himself down to the dole queue as fast as possible. It is rather to claim that while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it. For my claim to love you to be coherent, I must be able to explain what it is about you that justifies it; but my bank manager might agree with my dewy-eyed description of you without being in love with you himself.

Now, why can't more believers express themselves like Mr. Eagleton? Why does the Christian mainstream seem to be more about banning the study of evolution and other such nonesense? Perhaps the rational, sensible church-goers tend not to make much noise. (You would expect so, since they should be tolerant types filled with love for all things, right?) If so, they should realize that much like Mr. Dawkins makes folks like me look like elitist pricks, the teeth-gnashers are making them look like loons.

I'm sure Rod would be able to go on for days on this subject. Personally I'm worn out... I'll just close with the Gary Wolf's sentiment after a discussion with Sam Harris author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation:

Here is the atheist prayer: that our reason will subjugate our superstition, that our intelligence will check our illusions, that we will be able to hold at bay the evil temptation of faith.

In the "To Read" file...

  • A history of lawn jockies (Short version: They may not be racist. In fact they may represent racial freedom.)

    But others, including some historians and collectors of African American memorabilia, say the lawn jockey has been misunderstood. They say his origins can be traced to a legend of faithful duty during the American Revolution. They say he guided slaves to freedom on the underground railroad. His appearance has evolved over time, reflecting changes in the stature of blacks in U.S. society.

  • A crazy person who is a real thorn in the side of the Chruch of Scientology

    In Lonsdale, the Church of Scientology has encountered a confusing and difficult nemesis. Unlike most ardent Scientology critics, Lonsdale was never a member. And unlike other critics, Lonsdale has proved difficult to squash.

    The key: He has very little to lose.

    Be sure not to miss his site.

Catch-22 for Immigrants

Is it better to struggle to make a living in a major metropolitan area with a lot of previously established ethnic diversity, or to try to make a homestead in more easily affordable small communities where the population is more homogenous and potentially ignorant? It's a quandary illustrated by the case of a white guy in Maine rolling a frozen pig's head through a Somali mosque.

While they admit the act was the work of one man, it has heightened simmering tensions in this overwhelmingly white, working-class city of 35,000, where Somali refugees started flocking about five years ago, after first settling in more urban areas of the United States. Many said they came here because housing was inexpensive and Lewiston seemed a safe place to raise their families.

OK, so this incident was just a dumbass who is racist by default because he doesn't know any better playing a "joke" on the dark-skinned people that just happened to turn out to have the worst possible consequences for all concerned. Can we say the same for the open letter the then-Mayor of the town wrote in 2002?

Hussein Ahmed, 31, said the mosque incident came as Somalis here felt that they had finally started to move on from a 2002 open letter written by Laurier Raymond, then the mayor, which asked them to stop other Somalis from coming to the city. Mr. Raymond contended in his letter that the city was “maxed-out financially, physically and emotionally.�

Overall, though, it seems like the people of Lewiston, ME are good and accepting people. It's good to see.

Homerun by Schneier!

Bruce Schneier: What the Terrorists Want

I'd like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

What a ridiculously good post!

Huh...

Massachusetts Set to Offer Universal Health Insurance

Massachusetts is poised to become the first state to provide nearly universal health care coverage after the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill today that Gov. Mitt Romney says he will sign.

The bill does what health experts say no other state has yet been able to do: provide a mechanism for all of its citizens to obtain health insurance. It accomplishes that in a way that experts say combines several different methods and proposals from across the political spectrum, apportioning the cost among businesses, individuals and the government.

Just posting real quick for The Wife to see... Haven't read it, so no opinion. Perhaps our New England libertarian correspondents have some info?

The AB in the OC

Monster's Ball: Feds, Aryan Brotherhood come to paint the OC courthouse white

Based on claims by prosecutor Emmick and Smith, the AB—though much smaller than the Dirty White Boys, Nazi Low Riders, Mexican Mafia and Black Guerrilla Family—is the elite prison-based criminal organization in America. The Brotherhood recruited people who were fiercely loyal and street-smart; more than anything they were “psychopaths,� according to Smith, not excluding himself from that category.

An interesting peak through the window at the Aryan Brotherhood (You all know how fascinated I am with hate groups and gangs...). Purely coincidentally, I watched American History X last weekend while The Wife was away at work. Effing fantastic, that movie.

Also note, this OC Weekly site always seems to have some good stuff. I think I need to add it to the regular rotation.

Gladwell on Generalization

TROUBLEMAKERS: What pit bulls can teach us about profiling.

Then which are the pit bulls that get into trouble? “The ones that the legislation is geared toward have aggressive tendencies that are either bred in by the breeder, trained in by the trainer, or reinforced in by the owner,� Herkstroeter says. A mean pit bull is a dog that has been turned mean, by selective breeding, by being cross-bred with a bigger, human-aggressive breed like German shepherds or Rottweilers, or by being conditioned in such a way that it begins to express hostility to human beings. A pit bull is dangerous to people, then, not to the extent that it expresses its essential pit bullness but to the extent that it deviates from it. A pit-bull ban is a generalization about a generalization about a trait that is not, in fact, general. That’s a category problem.

Fantastic article.

Also puts a point on why I've had issues with some of the recent topics of conversation at the Corcorans'.

Stalin: "Give me Simianistas!"

Somehow, this is in the Scotsman rather than the Onion... Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors

The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

This sounds like an issue of Hellboy or something... Jesus!

Obviously, Stalin was a stone-cold nutter. I can't believe Lenin was the only one with syphilis rumors surrounding him... (Ah, there are Stalin-Pox ideas after the fact, it seems.)

I wonder if he also had a separate Sleestak breeding program.

Romper Stomper

Fresh violence rocks Sydney

The trouble erupted on Sunday at North Cronulla, where drunken mobs among a crowd of about 5000 chanted racist slogans and attacked people of Middle Eastern appearance in retaliation for the bashing of two lifeguards, which locals blamed on Lebanese gangs.

So, the whites think some Lebanese blokes beat up a couple lifeguards, and proceed to go after anyone with brown skin, which prompts the Arab community to call for retaliation?

Whatever happened to peace, love, and understanding, folks?

Nalgene, You're the Devil

The good fellows at the yoga college dropped some new and not-so-new knowledge on me last night about Nalgene water bottles: First the bit I'd heard before: Nalgene Water Bottles May Be Hazardous to Your Health

Recent studies have shown that polycarbonate plastics, including the kind used in popular Nalgene water bottles, may leach one of their constituent chemicals into water. The chemical in question, bisphenol-A, has been shown to cause chromosomal disorders and endocrine disruption and to have adverse effects on prostate development and tumors, breast tissue development, and sperm count -- in rodents.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that you're not that likely to actually be harmed by your Nalgene bottle.

But what about those rodents? Aparently, the Nalge Company started out making laboratory equipment. It also seems that some of that laboratory equipment is geared towards torturing fluffy little bunnies. This discovery led to the earnest kids at the University of Colorado to organize a boycott. Nalge Nunc International's reply boils down to "Yeah, so?":

There is nothing short of controlled animal research that can prove the safety and efficacy of a drug or surgical procedure. Without animal research, there would be no polio vaccine, no heart by-pass surgery, no chemotherapy and no insulin. Without animal research, we will never be able to cure AIDS, multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's.

And actually, I agree -- Science isn't always pretty. As long as the human race isn't willing to just sit back and take what comes at us, we're going to do a lot of ugly things to advance the race.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to buy another Nalgene bottle, either. I suppose I might just try a SIGG. At least they are recyclable and... stuff.

Delicious Peace

Need a fresh cuppa Joe? Think about ordering some Mirembe Kawomera Ugandan coffee next time you stock up.

Mirembe Kawomera (mir´em bay cow o mare´a) means "delicious peace" in the Ugandan language Luganda. It is the name of a Ugandan cooperative of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian coffee farmers.

The farmers of the Mirembe Kawomera Cooperative are a courageous example of people of faith working together for peace, tolerance, and economic justice.

Thanks to the good folks at Thanksgiving Coffee (who have been doing the whole fair trade thing forever) we can get the product of this co-op's toil right here in the USofA. And lest you suspect your pruchase might only line the pockets of fat Americans:

On October 1st Thanksgiving Coffee wired $2,500 to the co-op's bank account in Uganda. This is an advance on future rebates from sales of Mirembe Kawomera Coffee, and will enable a dramatic expansion in coffee production this year in Uganda.

That money is being used to purchase hand-cranked coffee pulping machines, of which the co-op has only had one to date, thus limiting their production capabilities.

That's some red hot coffee!

$15M suit for burns from java

"I thought I was dying - that's how bad it was," said Shea, a mother of two who lives in Dongan Hills. "All my skin was pulled back like a nylon stocking a lady takes off."

So, she's suing Dunkin Donuts because she "suffered second- and third-degree burns after the cardboard tray she was holding in the passenger seat of a friend's car toppled and spilled over her left leg and ankles."

Now, at first this caused me some doubt, because I had always thought third-degree burns meant you had charring of flesh. As it turns out, that's wrong: "A third-degree burn is the most serious because it destroys all the layers of the skin."

So, yeah... That coffee had to be thermo-friggin'-nuclear! How does that even happen?

Catching Up

I've been in nose-to-the-grindstone mode at work lately with a project I classify as superultramegaubercrazy-high priority. It's kind of fun, though, so no complaints there. In the real world, we had one of our Sutton Family Sunday Dinner parties, which rocked the house. About twenty folks came over to partake of brined turkey, lasagna, pork roast, and a veritable cornucopia of delectable delights. I enjoyed a couple glasses of Matt's Versinthe, but both The Wife and coworker Sarah hold suspicions regarding the effects of the tiny tastes they had. Perhaps the thujone conflicts with the female disposition... ;)

So, what's going on in the world? Let's see...

  • "We do not torture." -- But we'd rather not make any promises.

    Over White House opposition, the Senate voted 90-9 last month to approve an amendment by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would ban the use of torture. Vice President Cheney has pushed for an exemption for the CIA.

  • France is in nationwide turmoil, but I guess that's not entirely new.

    France was slow to react to the spreading violence set off by the accidental deaths of two youths on Oct. 27, in part because the initial nights of unrest did not seem particularly unusual in a country where an average of more than 80 cars a day were set on fire this year even before the violence.

  • An Amish village in Minnesota has a polio problem. Thus man’s faith is rewarded.
  • In Bosnia, we get an illustration of the fact that hot potato is an extra dumb game if the potato has a blast radius.

OK, good. Still the same crazy world.

Aryan Olsens?

As many of you must know by now, one of my personal watch items is racism and hate groups/crimes - particularly as manifested in the white power movement and its various incarnations. Given that, you can probably guess how I reacted when I saw Matt's link to this article: Young Singers Spread Racist Hate

Known as "Prussian Blue" — a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes — the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.

"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white … we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."

Holy shit! Daddy brands his cattle with swastikas, y'all! And of course, they are free to say whatever they want here in the USofA... but WOW!

I see it like this: I consider it animal abuse to train a dog to be aggressive -- eventually that dog is going to cause severe damage to something or someone and have to be destroyed. By training the dog to attack, you are basically killing the dog (nevermind whatever gets mauled by it). On the same side of the same coin, I also consider it dangerous psychological abuse to raise children to hate other people based on superficial judgments. That applies to everyone -- any religious zealots, any nationalist xenophobes, etc. -- not just some swastika swinging cowboy in the California wastelands breeding Aryan pop stars who seem just a likely to end up in a trailer strung out on meth in ten years as to do anything worthwhile with their lives. (So why do I say that? I say it because hate thrives in isolation -- these girls' parents already want to move to an "all-white community in the Pacific Northwest" because Bakersfield, CA isn't white enough. So, yeah, it's easy for me to imagine these girls getting home schooled in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere until they get married off to a couple of prison tattooed crankheads. Am I prejudging them the same way they prejudge people of color? Do they deserve it? Do my preconceived notions have any more factual basis than theirs? Is it right to hate hate?)

Hate ruins people, and there's no excuse for teaching it. I don't care how precious you hold the First Amendment.

The Po' Folk Rez

I didn't watch the Shrub's address last night, so this is the first (obviously extremist) take I'm getting on it, but... Did he promise forty acres and a mule, too?

No, but that's not the worst. Proposal #3: the creation of a Gulf Coast Homesteading Act (or something like that) which will use a lottery to give poor people plots of land in government-owned territories, provided they commit to building homes on that land and living there.

Yes, that's right. They are going to create a reservation to contain the poor of former New Orleans. I have no fucking words.

The actual transcript is quoted, too, and it really doesn't sound any less ridiculous.

Belfast Is Burning

What the hell?!

At least 50 officers were wounded over the weekend when extremists fought riot police and British troops in the worst Protestant violence in a decade. The British governor and the territory's police chief said two outlawed Protestant paramilitary groups mounted machine-gun and grenade attacks on police.

Last I checked, I thought things in Ireland were going nice a peaceful-like... Now suddenly we're back to molotov cocktails and machine guns. WTF?!