Anyone who watches The Colbert Report with any frequency knows of the man’s hatred of the Ursine’s. They regularly top The Threat Down as the #1 threat. It seems his thinking isn’t all that far off if…you are are a child, and you make fun of bald people.
The Christiangod apparently feels that being mauled and eaten by a bear is an appropriate punishment for making fun of the chrome domes. As stated in the second book of Kings 2:23-24:
2:23 And he [Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
2:24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
Really? What the hell. So killing 42 children by having them gruesomely torn apart by a couple of bears is punishment fit for the crime of calling out someone’s baldness? Elisha needs to get some cojones and man up. I mean, if you can’t handle some kids making fun of your receding hair line then you need to just find a hut, park your ass, and never go outside again.
Look familiar to you? It is (except for one word change) exactly the reply Mr. Jobs gave to the developers of iPodRip, now called simply iRip.
I mean come on Steve, it’s “not that big of a deal” right? Oh what? You have already done all of the code which mentions iPad? You already have spent lots of money on marketing with the name iPad? Well I am sure The Little App Factory didn’t do that at all so maybe this is different?
Here is part two of my series about atheism. If you remember from my introductory post I am exploring my ideas of atheism and how best to state my position. I figure one good place to start is to figure out why people are religious. Here is my take.
Basically I see two reasons people become (or are) religious:
Childhood Indoctrination
Life Events
I will look at each of these in turn.
While I am unsure who to credit it is often stated that “All children are born atheists.” I tend to agree with that assumption. A child is not born with an innate or instinctual knowledge of a god or higher power. In fact babies, it could be said, know nothing beyond eating, sleeping, and shitting. While many Christians will claim that all children are born with Jesus in their heart but that claim is easily disproved. If Christians’ claims are true then what is the explanation for “other” religions? For surely if all children are born with a knowledge of god eventually they would come to know and understand that knowledge and there would not be any reason for Islam, Hinduism, the Greek and Roman pantheons, or any other type of god. The very fact that there are multiple religions (I am not speaking of different off shoots of the same religion like Catholicism vs. Lutheranism) should lead anyone to believe that you are not born with any knowledge of a specific god and that the god you eventually come to believe in is taught to you.
We could take this a step further and actually test this hypothesis. We could take a just born child and sequester him/her from any knowledge of any type of religion or religious information and see if at some point in that child’s life they “found god”. Surely if all children are born with Jesus in their heart they would eventually “just know” right? Of course we have no need of performing such a horrible experiment on a child to prove my point. It is simple enough to look to the many recently converted tribes in deepest, darkest Africa, or heretofore unknown peoples in the deeps of the Amazon rain forest. Until they were introduced to Christianity none of them (and absolutely none at that) had any idea of the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Greek, etc. god(s). It more than proves the point that without someone indoctrinating a child (or a whole people) there would be no knowledge of the Christian god. (NOTE: I will, generally speaking, be talking about the Christian god since I am from the US and that is most prevalent here, though I believe my ideas apply unilaterally to all religions that believe in a super natural being.)
So the first reason people are religious is childhood indoctrination. Children are taught to believe what their parent teach them. If you teach your child to believe in the Christian god then it will. If you don’t then it won’t. I am not going to say “never” will as we will explore when talking about my second point from above, but as a general rule people are Christian because, since before they were even old enough and mentally developed enough to know what it is they are being taught to believe, that is what their parents have told them to believe. I find it odd that in a time where roughly half of all of America was up in arms that President Obama had the audacity to “indoctrinate” our country’s youth by telling them to stay in school that no one seems to have a problem with the daily cases of indoctrination at the hands of religious parents.
The second reason for religiosity is “life events”. I use that term rather broadly. We hear stories all the time about someone “finding Jesus” or being “born again”. More often than not these things take places after some sort of “happening” in a person’s life. They mange to walk away from a car wreck they never should have. They win the lottery. They witness an immense act of kindness. They find their soul mate (who happens to be religious). The feel lonely, unloved, or think themselves an outcast. The reason these types of people turn to religion is because, at some psychological level, it satisfies something.
There is a common expression called the “god of the gaps”. The idea is that throughout history religious ideals and explanations have been applied to things that were unexplainable. Prior to Sir Isaac Newton people couldn’t explain why an apple fell from a tree. To them the obvious explanation was that god made the apple fall to the ground. There was simply no other explanation. Once Newton discovered the theory of gravity “god” was no longer needed to explain that phenomenon. Throughout history you will find similar instances, both large and small, where something unknown and inexplicable was attributed to a higher power. Many cases were explained through science eventually and no longer attributed to god.
Humans feel the need to be able to explain everything their senses tell them is happening and because of this need it is this same god of the gaps principal that drives some adults to (or back to) religion. For someone who can’t explain how they survived the crash (many times that is not explainable, not because it is impossible, but because we don’t have ALL of the information and variables to precisely recreate the scenario) it is easy to attribute the unknowable to god. For someone who beat impossible odds to win a large sum of money in the lottery it may seem that only an act of god could have shined such fortune on them. They are using god to fill in the gaps.
For others is is simply the need for companionship and acceptance. Someone who doesn’t feel a part of a group will find welcoming arms in the religious. This need for and extension of companionship is not a bad thing. It is all of the other dogmatic baggage that comes a long with it that I find harmful. People want to be accepted, loved, and cherished and religion provides a “path of least resistance” for someone looking for someone to “fit in”.
Children (and adults) believe in all sorts of imaginary creatures. Leprechauns, unicorns, monsters in the closet, the troll under the bridge, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the man in the moon, etc. We allow all of those beliefs to get kicked to the curb eventually once they are old enough to realize the absurdity of such beliefs. For some reason though the equally bankrupt idea of a personal god, some super natural being, is not just allowed to continue to exist but is reinforced, fostered, proclaimed (against all reason) as truth.
Most religious will point out at this time the idea of “faith”. And I will get to that in a later post but for now I think I have fairly squarely offered up my ideas on the reasons for religiousness in people. Feel free to discuss the merits and demerits of my ideas. This is a journey after all and a pretty lonely one at that.
I found this vintage Dungeons and Dragons commercial from the 80’s. I was way into D&D back then and it seems odd that I don’t remember this commercial at all.
I find it interesting that they make it out to be such a family game. I can’t imagine ever playing D&D with anyone in my family. Not that it can’t be done and not that it couldn’t be enjoyable. I am just speaking of MY family.
If you are into D&D but don’t play anymore (and have nothing better to do) you can check out a podcast of a group including Wil Wheaton, a couple of guys from Penny Arcade, and others here.
Found an article by Chris Clarke over at Coyote Crossing that explains the “magic recipe” to writing award winning blog posts. It clearly shows that I don’t know what I am doing. Maybe that is the reason for this blog’s abysmal readership. Of course it could also be because I am an outrageous ass who posts only irregularly. Either way I think Mr. Clarke makes an excellent point. There is a formula for good blogging. You can get traffic by peppering links all over the internet, by commenting in blogs with similar (and even not so similar) content, and by whoring yourself for a link exchange (do people still do that?) but the fact of the matter is there is a formula, a recipe if you will, that is almost expected of blog posts anymore.
First fun fact of 2010. This one comes from 1797. Relatively early in the life of the United States there was need to secure respite from privateering in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The US, with Washington himself spearheading (the bill was later signed by Adams after unanimous approval from Congress) drew up the Treaty of Tripoli. Your fun fact comes from Article 11 of said treaty. Enjoy.
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Last night I popped in my copy of Brazil, the movie I consider to be Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece.
The stark, spartan cinematography is excellent. The acting is on par. The story is so reminiscent of other works by George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut that I personally feel right at home. The movie seems to be a perfect melding of Orwell’s 1984 and typical Monty Python fare. The overwhelming authoritarian flare, the scary starkness of “Big Brother“, the blaze color and architecture. The absurd dream sequences, insane food, preposterous duct work, the over the top plastic surgery. In fact, my original plan for naming this blog was “The Ministry of Dis-Information” in homage tothe antithesis in the movie.
Note that this movie is not for the feint of heart. It is a long move, over 190 minutes. If you do not pay attention to the details that Gilliam has presented you will likely find yourself bored to tears in many parts. Part of the genius of the film is his masterful attention to the details. Remember, we are all in this together.
If you are looking for a humorous but frightening looks at where our increasingly bureaucratic and information obsessed society is going just fill out your 27b/6 and someone from The Ministry will be with your shortly. Unless of course you don’t have it noterized, in that case you are in the wrong line and quite possible the wrong ministry all together.
With some extra xmas money I picked up a Korg nanoKey. It is a 25-key USB midi keyboard that is small enough to throw into your laptop bag. There is also a Korg nanoPad and a Korg nanoKONTROL. All 3 are seen in the linked image below.
I chose the black version since at the time it was cheaper and I wasn’t entirely sure it was going to work with linux. I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t but I had a hard time verifying it on the web. I also happen to like black.
When I first plugged it in I couldn’t get it to do anything. I should note that was NOT the fault of the nanoKey. I am just inept…or I was. After searching around on the internet I managed to find some tutorials for getting JACK set up along with a HOWTO for connecting Seq24, Hydrogen, and JACK together. Once I followed both of those tutorials I was up and walking.
Why was I walking? I quickly learned that although I could get sounds to trigger with the nanoKey the latency was horrible. I am sure a lot of that had to do with my unfamiliarity with JACK. I was grasping at straws trying to get the settings right. Eventually I got it to the point where it would work fairly well but there was still a lot of latency and pops. While I could have kept messing with it and trying to find the sweet spot I opted for a more drastic approach, a whole new OS!
I made a new partition on my HD and installed Ubuntu Studio. Ubuntu Studio is a specialized version of Ubuntu made especially for sound and video. Besides having all the sound editing software you could ever want the most important aspect was the realtime kernel. That alone made all the difference. Once booted into Ubuntu Studio my latency was gone. The pops were gone.
So up to this point, with only a few days under my belt with the Korg nanoKey I would have to say it is incredibly fun. The keys (as many other reviewers have mentioned) take a little getting used to. They are more like laptop keys than piano keys. It especially throws you off since it looks like a piano. There are octave up and down keys for moving around the keyboard. Buttons to bent the pitch up and down are also there. Once I get the hang of it I plan on picking up the nanoPad and nanoKONTROL.
Unfortnately now my only excuse for not becoming the next Brian Eno is my lack of ability with the software and the difficulty transferring the sounds in my head into sounds from my speakers.
When people approach me about my atheism the conversation usually starts out with a question similar to:
How do you know god doesn’t exist?
I usually have a pompous and snarky reply relating to “the incredible, edible egg”. Usually my reply is enough to either lower their defences (or offences as you will) and allow a somewhat balanced discussion to follow or, more often than not, it ends the whole conversation with regards to that topic.
Recently more of my friends and family have been pushing back at my atheism. Pushing may be the wrong choice of words. Let’s just say they are becoming more inquisitive. Their interest has gotten to the point where the egg excuse doesn’t cut it any more. Because of this I have started reading more atheist (as well as theist, I actually picked up The Bible again for the first time in years) literature in order to hone my arguments into something more appropriate for discussion and debate.
I resisted atheist media in general for nearly all the time I have been an atheist. I am perfectly content in my decision. I don’t feel the need for external validation of my viewpoints. The desire to “chum around” with like minded individuals has never seemed to matter to me. I suppose the biggest reason I tended to avoid atheist media was because I saw it as no different than theistic media. Although it is probably unfair to make this decision having not verified it for myself, the idea of someone telling me “why I shouldn’t believe in god” seemed nearly as distasteful as someone telling me why I should.
So here I am, content in my own mind with my decision and reasoning, but generally sounding like a dimwit when trying to explain it. So, together with some books and lectures, and my captive blog audience (I still laugh at the thought I can call the occasional visitor here an “audience”), I am going to explore and sharpen my reasoning and arguments for believing the way I do.
So, “Why don’t I believe in god?” Quite simple actually. An all powerful, all knowing, loving, benevolent, intelligent designer would have, if he/she/it existed, created eggs with the Tabasco sauce already in them. To do otherwise is simply a flaw and enough proof of non-existence for me.
Stephen Colbert Is Right About Bears
Anyone who watches The Colbert Report with any frequency knows of the man’s hatred of the Ursine’s. They regularly top The Threat Down as the #1 threat. It seems his thinking isn’t all that far off if…you are are a child, and you make fun of bald people.
The Christian god apparently feels that being mauled and eaten by a bear is an appropriate punishment for making fun of the chrome domes. As stated in the second book of Kings 2:23-24:
Really? What the hell. So killing 42 children by having them gruesomely torn apart by a couple of bears is punishment fit for the crime of calling out someone’s baldness? Elisha needs to get some cojones and man up. I mean, if you can’t handle some kids making fun of your receding hair line then you need to just find a hut, park your ass, and never go outside again.
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