Events have me thinking, mulling over views and re-examining beliefs.

I  express a lot of contempt for people who don’t make use of their brains to think things through; people who accept simple explanations to complicated issues, or prefer sugar-coated narratives over bitter facts. I’ve always thought my reasons for this contempt were sound: so many people have been hurt or exploited by beliefs in things that cannot be proven, that the world would be a vastly better place if we could move past those beliefs as a species.

But today I was confronted about this lack of faith, in faith itself, by someone exceptionally dear to me. I was told that for pursuing this as a cause, with the intent to help make a difference in the world, that I was being cruel. And because of my affection for this person, I began to doubt, doubt.

I ended up spending most of the day beating myself up over it, trying to understand how someone rational and intelligent could find cruelty in skepticism, in holding the abilities of the human mind in such esteem that you refuse to fill the rest of that half-full or half-empty glass with something completely intangible.

With all of this banging around in my head, I pulled into a parking space and nearly ran over a stray cat. As I got out of the car, it looked me square in the face and actually meowed indignantly, before climbing onto my car and hopping over a nearby fence. I was just relieved that I hadn’t hit it. I stood there for a moment, feeling even more relieved that I was the kind of person who unconsciously still cared whether or not I ran over a stray cat. Was there a point to be learned here? Given the conversation I’d had earlier, I guess I really wanted there to be, and thought about it.

I define cruelty as doing harm to others unnecessarily. Would it have been cruel if I accidentally ran over the cat? No. It would have been cruel if I’d deliberately tried. I certainly didn’t need or want to eat the cat, and killing an animal  for nothing but sport, especially with a car, is morally repugnant. The cat couldn’t have been more than a year old, basically a kitten, versus me being armed with a two-thousand pound vehicle and a much bigger brain. It was just a simple animal, after all.

And because I desperately wanted to process all this as having some meaning, I ended up finding one. But the conclusions made me feel exactly like the prick I’d been accused of being in the first place

1. It is cruel to make sport of those weaker than you.

2. Intelligence is a form of strength.

3. Faith is a means of coping with weakness in a world that can be cruel.

I still don’t feel any better, in fact, I feel worse, because all that my brain could come up with was the condescending notion that simple-minded people are weak, and maybe it’s cruel to expect them to trade their sugar-coated narratives for bitter facts -even if it seems to me that the world would eventually be a much better place if people would just confront the reality how absurd it is right now, head-on, so we can all fucking do something about it together.

It was 4 in the morning when I started typing this. If you’re reading it because you were hoping for a message of clarity and redemption out of all of this, I’ll be the first to apologize for that; I’m still looking for one myself.

And I’m missing my friend.

It’s not the first time this has happened, but it’s definitely the most ironic. A few years ago, in a fit of frustration at stupid crap being posted on Facebook, I created the following image, from clip art I found on Google images:

Today, I find the thing popping up in my news feed, with 30k shares including the one that brought it to my attention, off a Facebook page about paganism. The image quality was so degraded that they apparently didn’t notice the fake URL at the bottom, which reads:

“Seriously Dude This Isnt The Bronze Age We Have Science And Computers And Shit.com”

So much irony I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a nosebleed.

Guess it’s not a surprise on some issues; I might actually have to pick up this book.

In other news Jon Stewart is uncharacteristically out of his depth and does a crappy job with this interview.

The reason I say “we think alike” is because it was just the other day that I made a post on the JREF’s forums saying a similar thing. We need to come to a consensus on what constitutes a workable sense of morality that’s stripped of all vestiges of religious nonsense. For example: if you strip the religion out of the Ten Commandments, you get:

Read the rest of this entry »

An old friend of mine is currently living in the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  While keeping up with the goings-on in her life over there, I’ve gotten a clear sense that she’s growing progressively more frustrated with how things are done in a country run by a fundamentalist religion.  I genuinely feel for her in that predicament.

Moral pantywaist apologists notwithstanding, I would hope most clear-headed people are aware of how culturally backwards things are in any country which allows itself to be governed by something as nebulous as faith, and ruled by something as archaic as a monarch.

But my contempt for that situation leads me down a path of thought that intersects with something else that I hold in great contempt; the fact that many (most?) people have a deep-seated need to subject themselves to some form of peonage, be it governmental, ideological, religious, or all three.

I get it, life is already hard enough as it is, and it’s extremely convenient to buy a pre-packaged set of morals, laws, or beliefs.  It’s even more convenient when they’re either free, or in some cases, you’d have to literally fight not to accept them.

I’m also not putting myself above this either; I consider myself a patriot, a Skeptic, and a futurist, all labels that provide others  a certain set of expectations as to my values and actions.  However, when I do label myself, for the sake of convenience, I also make an effort to “hang a lamp” on the fact that it’s precisely the convenience factor that compels me to do so.  Few people would actually care to know anyone’s entire set of values and convictions in casual conversation.  So the act of labeling oneself is useful to allow others to get a sense of who you are at the ten-thousand-foot level.

But just because you stick a label on your forehead that reads “Libertarian”, that doesn’t require you to cast a straight-party ballot, any more than wearing Joe Snuffy’s name tag makes you Joe Snuffy.  Too many people, however, do make this mistake and confuse their self-stuck labels with their core identity, instead of using them as tools for communication.  And when this happens, you start down the road towards the dangerous kind of group-think that destroys individuality, an ultimately, individual sovereignty.

A label isn’t a brand;  you should never be so attached to your convictions that you make them permanent, inescapable, and requiring vigilant devotion. By doing so you fail to allow yourself the opportunity to examine new evidence, consider new points of view, or ultimate, even think for yourself.  You also put yourself in a position where you are obligated to defend views in the face of evidence that refutes them.

The reason this issue concerns me is because of a trend I think I see emerging.  As religious faith in the western world is on the decline, it seems to be being replaced with a religious-like attachment to another ideology.  This is most noticeable in the Skeptics movement, of which as I’ve referenced, I consider myself a part.

If you follow a lot of  “Skeptics” online discussions, you often get a sense of a “party line” to be followed, which is counter to the fundamental nature of “Skepticism” in the first place.   And when you do run into this counter-intuitive phenomenon, it can be extremely frustration.

(For the record, I’m making this criticism as more of a “heads-up”, than an assault on the Skeptics movement, lest some of the conspiracy theorists, paranomalists, or garden-variety looneys try to reference this in an attempt at validating their nonsense.)

I think I owe anyone who reads this, examples of this happening.  Unfortunately I’m pressed for time a bit on what should have been a short jotting of things bouncing around in my head at the moment.  I’ll try to revisit that later, and include my observations about the subjects on which self-labeled Skeptics likely to suspend their critical thinking as well as the types of individuals who seem prone to doing so.

But the most important thing to take away from this is that, you are not your name tag, your labels, your government, or your religion.  You are you, and when you chose to stop being you in exchange for falling in-line with a label, you renounce your individuality.   A human being is not a hive insect; cultural, spiritual, and moral laziness should never be allowed to devolve him into one.

social gears

Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.

In a discussion thread on one of the forums I follow, someone asked the following question:

Why is being tactful considered a good thing? Or perhaps more specifically, why is being rude considered a bad thing?

I can easily recall several conversations, arguments, and debates I’ve had that entailed everyone involved being rude to each other, insulting their logic and thought processes, mocking any flaws in their arguments, and just generally not being tactful at all. These are the arguments that have changed mine, and others, minds, not limp-wristed overly agreeable bullshit.

There is no polite way to tell someone that their beliefs are formed by ignorance and that they are illogical. There is no honest way to debate someone who that is true of without bringing it up, and those people are the ones (I, at least) argue against most often.

How many people’s political opinions are informed by or shaped by South Park or the Daily Show? Those are about as far from tactful as possible, so there really isn’t an argument I can see that being rude makes your argument less effective.

I responded with a paraphrase of the above quote, that “Politeness and tact are social lubricants; it’s usually more efficient in the long run to make use of them”.

In the interests of full disclosure I felt that I needed to expand on that a bit, given the pointed nature of a lot of my written content on Bullshido. So I went back later in the discussion and posted this as well:

I currently make a living, more or less, being a complete dick to people who believe stupid things. But that’s not because it’s more effective at convincing people to change their minds about something, it’s because I am preaching to the choir and by doing so, providing entertainment to that choir.

Guys like Penn and Teller, or even Dawkins to some extent, care about their message, but they’re also focused on entertaining people at the expense of those they disagree with. If they happen to bring some more into the fold by happenstance, even better.

When I actually want to engage someone in a conversation geared towards helping them realize the errors in their thought processes, I do so in a reasonable tone and with calm, rational arguments.

Now when it becomes apparent that said individual is willfully ignorant, too far gone to acknowledge facts, or just isn’t worth the time it would take to do so, then yeah, at that point I think it’s ok to be a dick to them and then move on. This is for two reasons: 1.) if polite logic and reason fail to work, shame might do the job, and 2.) you can prevent having wasted your time completely by squeezing some entertainment value out of it.

This was taken from a forum post of mine.

As a die-hard skeptic up until the point of borderline militancy (tempered by common sense and the benefit of life experience), I’ve progressively grown more concerned with a phenomenon within the skeptics “community” with regards to how Government is perceived.

Now, you’d figure that skepticism, critical thinking, and reasonable doubt would be the predominate stances involving all aspects of one’s life; especially when it comes to the intentions of an organization which has a direct effect on your life and the lives of everyone around you.

But instead, I’ve seen what seems to be an almost religious-level of faith in the goodness of Government. It’s almost as if many skeptics have replaced their belief in one “G-word” with another.

Maybe it’s just that many skeptics are averse to parties which espouse limited government because recently (the past 28 years) they’ve put themselves in bed with the religious right. Or maybe it’s because the “big government” parties always spend more money funding science and other pursuits which appeal to skeptics.

Regardless, the idea of giving progressively more power and responsibility over your life to the Government should be fundamentally abhorrent to someone who considers themselves skeptical and/or free-thinking.

Time and time again history has shown that people who seek government power often do so for their own benefit. And that the more power you give your government, the more likely it is to be abused.

So why any skeptic would advocate forcing individuals to turn over to the state the only means they have to ensure their individual sovereignty, is simply beyond my comprehension. The police don’t care about your safety, they’re just there to enforce laws after they’ve already been broken. Politicians can’t be trusted to care about your concerns beyond how they’ll affect their chances at retaining power.

Thomas Jefferson and his protege’ James Madison both knew that ensuring the sovereignty of the individual was the foundation of a truly free society. And the means of ensuring that, was to have an armed, educated population. Otherwise, the devils of our worst natures will always slide our governments down the slope into tyranny.

I wanted to repost this here because I just came across it going through old Bullshido content and it’s fairly personal (thus relevant to my exercise in Internet Narcissism otherwise known as “blogging”.) It’s just a snippet and you can read the rest at the link below:

I haven’t always been a Skeptic, nor have I always been pro-science. Being a bored, introspective youth of 15 with above-average intelligence and stuck in a small hick town, I myself started studying the paranormal/supernatural. My mom worked two jobs, and I pretty much raised myself, so I didn’t have anyone to call bullshit on my newly forming beliefs. And the fact that I seemed to be smarter than everyone I was around only fed my teenage ego to the point where I started assuming I knew better than everyone else, including Science.

For five solid years and tapering off slowly after that, I absorbed everything I could get my hands on. I had a collection of books which included original texts dating back to the 19th century and spanning topics from just about any paranormal/supernatural/occult philosophy you could imagine. For example, I had an original edition of “The Secret Science Behind Miracles” which detailed how following the religious practices of the Hawaiian Kahunas could (and let me see if I remember this correctly) allow you to connect with a universal superconscious and use it to perform miracles. I had copies of medieval manuscripts on ritual magic, and more contemporary books by Aliester Crowley and Israel Regardie. I read Yeats just because he was a member of the Golden Dawn, and I can still recite the words of the “Wiccan Rede” from memory. Hell, I’m a walking encyclopedia of obscure occult bullshit.

But as I got older (and started to get laid more often too), it became more and more obvious that there was a reason all of this stuff and the people who believed in it existed on the fringes of society: they were fucking fruitcake nujobs, every last one of them. Seriously, go to a spiritual/metaphysics/type convention sometime. You will see the bottom rungs of the social ladder coming together like an oversized support group. It’s not hard to draw the conclusion that many people are attracted to the occult because it gives them the illusion that they are somehow special and different (better) than the rest of society that they have difficulty interacting with. Many of these people aren’t “misunderstood”, their problem is that they’re very well understood as kooks, freaks, and geeks who are socially inept.

Rest of the Post

I went here to catch some video and see what was what. I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting to see that many people show up. Someone said there were upwards of 70.

A few notable things:

• Guy with a beard and long hair in only a button up shirt and tie, yelling “Scientology Eats Babies” and “Scientology Gave Me Hemorrhoids”.
• Xenuanon
• Someone holding a poster that read “Scientology Says Jesus was a Pedophile”
• People shouting “Ebaumsworld.com”
• The cops bringing 2 squad cars and the paddywagon until ultimately realizing nobody was actually going to blow up the CoS building or anything
• A massive hawk that flew up and perched above the CoS building, seemingly taking in the spectacle.
• Huge numbers of people honking at the signs (“Honk if you think Scientology is a cult”, etc).
• Very out-of-place couple that looked like they just walked off of the set of Melrose Place 2008 or something, asking questions. Maybe they were with the CoS?

I wasn’t around to see this, but one anon on the KC raid thread on Enturbulation.org noted:

There was a grand exit at 1:30 when everyone counted down from 10 to 0, then everyone just went in every direction, was def lulz. We had 1 guy following our group as we left, but he noticed us taking pictures of him and dropped off tailing us. All in all, a good day.