Interlude: Charles Barkley, Governor of Alabama?
He ruled the court during the 80s. But can he rule Alabama?
In an interview with CNN, Barkley expounds on everything from race to religion before confirming that he will be running for Alabama’s highest office in 2014.
Barkley also shows himself an acute political theorist, insisting that government has “three jobs. No. 1 they should fix our public school system, they should make sure our neighborhoods are safe and they should give people economic opportunity”.
If C-Bark wants to start his own country, sign me up!
As to his gubernatorial hopes, Barkley insists that he “can’t screw up Alabama. We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere.”
For Barkley’s sake, I just hope Michael Jordan doesn’t set his sights on the same office.
A Statement of My Atheism
[This blog is a formal statement of my atheism, a sort of manifesto. I have tried to make clear my assumptions, my reasoning, and my attitude toward religion.]
1. I do not believe that there is a personal God of the kind depicted in the texts of the Semitic religions.
Exposition: This does not mean that I am convinced that there is no such God. To prove the nonexistence of anything is probably impossible and certainly philosophically unfeasible.
I do not regard it as incumbent on atheists to disprove the existence of God. In the first place, the burden of proof falls on the party making the claim, rather than on the skeptic. Second, it is sufficient to reveal the illegitimacy of the reasons that have been given for believing in God. This illegitimacy takes many forms: fallacious argument, inconsistency with established observation and experiment, non-falsifiability, etc.
For example, it is not incumbent on those who do not believe that unicorns exist to demonstrate the non-existence of unicorns. All they need do is discredit the reasons that have been offered for believing that unicorns exist.
In short, my argument against the existence of God is that “the God Hypothesis” confuses rather than clarifies our collective understanding of our world. As Laplace remarked long ago, God is an unnecessary hypothesis insofar as, after it has been posited, nothing has been explained or illuminated that is not better explained or illuminated by a theory arrived at by the scientific method. Not only does the God Hypothesis answer no questions economically or elegantly, it also raises many frustrating questions that operate more like vicious philosophical and political quicksand than like platforms and guideposts for investigation and discovery.
2. I regard the combination of logic and the scientific method as the only source of knowledge on which action affecting collective welfare can be safely and reliably based.
Exposition: The important clause here is “action affecting collective welfare”. Decisions whose outcomes can hurt only oneself may be based on anything whatsoever, or even nothing. (Of course, such decisions are exceedingly rare, leaving very little room for decision-making outside the purview of logic and the scientific method.)
The problem with “faith” as a source of knowledge about the world is that its “evidence” is neither reproducible nor publicly available. This means that a faith-based decision is very likely to affect people to whom the evidence on which the decision is based is not available. In other words, a faith-based decision is liable to be an imposition of the values and ideals of one class of people onto the lives of another, to which those values and ideals are alien. Such imposition is undemocratic and unjust in the extreme.
The scientific method satisfies the requirements of reproducibility and public availability. Unlike those who practice religions, scientists are not committed to any particular conclusions but to a method of arriving at conclusions. An honest scientist will endorse a conclusion only as long as the available evidence sustains it. Therefore, scientists not only allow but encourage opposition to their conclusions, so that by a continuous trial of elimination the truth may be approached ever more closely.
This is in contrast to proponents of the theistic religions, who cannot consistently abide challenges to their fundamental doctrines on pain of the dissolution of their worldview. Therefore, in the event that any of these fundamental doctrines is false, if the proponents of religion had their way, that falsehood would never be discovered but would continue to exercise its potentially pernicious influence.
Another way of stating the problem with appeals to faith – to holy books and sacred visions – is that such a maneuver can justify any belief and action, no matter how obviously absurd or dangerous. This is readily apparent from the profound diversity among theistic religions. Despite this diversity, each makes an identical claim to absolute and unique truth. How such claims are to be adjudicated is a mystery, as long as the scientific method is not allowed to guide discussion. The scientific method is capable of tipping the scale, whereas the religions themselves are not, precisely because that method consults nature itself in regard to what can and cannot be truthfully said of it.
3. On pragmatic grounds, I believe that human action, particularly political action, should be informed by painstaking consideration of available evidence, neither falling short of nor running ahead of that evidence.
Exposition: To ground one’s beliefs and behavior in the evidence yielded by observation and experiment is simply to remain in contact with reality. To forsake observation and experiment in making decisions is to divorce oneself from reality. The dangers of such a divorce are evident in children and those who suffer from hallucinatory psychoses, who (through no fault of their own) cannot be entrusted to their own care. The more that one obstructs the “feedback loop” between mind and environment, the less able one will be to negotiate that environment. This principle applies not only to individuals but to groups, as well.
4. I believe that religion runs counter to the interests of the human race, globally considered, precisely because it is false.
Exposition: Religion is often accused of motivating violence, and it is often lauded for inspiring charity. Neither violence nor charity, however, depends on religion, as the correlation is not complete in either case. Religion and violence, as well as religion and charity, happen apart from one another.
That said, I believe that religion fosters ignorance by insisting on the authority of texts composed in ignorance and by cultivating, insofar as it can, an inappropriate wariness of the scientific method; that religion fosters parochialism and xenophobia by insisting on dividing the world into the “righteous” and the “wicked”; that religion fosters toxic emotions – such as guilt, shame, and fear – by instilling in children and adults an image of the Highest Power as contemptuous of their natural humanity, i.e., their sexuality, their curiosity, etc.; that the theistic religions foster the degradation of women by depicting the Highest Power as male and by doctrinally encoding the subordination of women to men; that religion fosters duplicity by the incoherence of its doctrines both with one another and with the actual behavior of religious individuals and communities.
Even if religion can be shown, and it surely can, to contribute to learning, to positive emotions, to inclusiveness and tolerance, to the empowerment of the oppressed, and to honesty, the question still remains how it can come about that a single worldview could exert such diametrically opposed effects. The answer will probably be that there is diversity among and within religious traditions. My response to this is that from diversity to incoherence and inconsistency is not a far cry at all.
That said, discussion of the desirable and undesirable consequences of religion must remain secondary to discussion of the truth of religion’s claims. For it can hardly be argued that, no matter how seemingly desirable its consequences may be, behavior based on false claims is ultimately deleterious to everyone involved in it. As I said above, misinformation about one’s environment leads inevitably to disadvantages in interacting profitably with that environment.
5. I understand the First Amendment of the United States Constitution to bar the United States government from acting non-neutrally in respect to the religious practice of its citizens.
Exposition: As I understand it, the United States Constitution prohibits the U.S. government from practicing a religion of its own and from disallowing any of its citizens to practice a religion of her own.
I understand that it is not always simple to distinguish between a government act that protects the right of its citizens to practice religion from a government act that supports the practice of a religion. I trust the U.S. Supreme Court to parcel these cases out as they appear.
I understand that the citizenry of the United States is overwhelmingly theistic (by profession, at least) and, indeed, overwhelmingly Christian. However, from this it does not follow that the United States is “a Christian nation”. For aside from its citizenry, a nation is comprised also by its statutes and institutions. The statutes and institutions of the United States were clearly meant to be neutral in regard to religion.
As Thomas Jefferson and James Madison argued repeatedly in the early years of the United States, this neutrality with respect to religion was intended not to oppose church and state to one another but to allow each to move freely without hindrance by the other. Those who oppose the neutrality of the government toward religion, on the basis of a misunderstanding of it as hostility, are most typically those who seek to tie their religious purposes to the coattails of the state, i.e., exactly those from whom the First Amendment was designed to protect the citizen body.
No, There is Not a God-Shaped Hole in My Soul
A dear, sweet acquaintance of mine recently learned that I’m an atheist. Rather than the blank stare or smothering sermon that usually follows this revelation, this person’s reaction was sadness.
“What an awful way to live,” she said.
“Actually,” I replied, “things are going really well for me.”
“But inside,” she said, gesturing on her chest as though dabbing a spill there. “It’s so sad.”
She and I talked for quite a while about it, actually. I explained that I don’t suffer from deep existential angst, and she insisted that I must, I simply must be hurting inside.
So I told her what I say to every theist: It would be great if life had some grand, overarching meaning; if heaven and happy reunion awaited us all; if something as simple as a book were all it took to steer one’s course through an often confounding and chaotic and hurtful world.
But wishing can’t make it so. Neither can praying. Neither can believing, with all your little heart, that somewhere there’s a God who will make sure we’re all okay, that none of us is disappointed or allowed to fade into oblivion without renown.
For all our hopes and wishes, we must respect the available evidence. And there is no evidence that our fates and our lives are important to anyone but ourselves.
What the evidence allows us to believe may leave much to be desired in the way of “ultimate meaning” and emotional fulfillment. This does not mean, however, that we cannot profitably nurture individual and collective hopes, goals, purposes, and healthy emotions. Indeed, such nurturing is most profitably done within the limits prescribed by the evidence, because only they can allow for a realistic appraisal of what we can expect and hope for.
To take only the most obvious instance, someone who believes that Jesus will soon “return to Earth” (where did he go, again?) will likely be less than concerned with stewardship of the planet, i.e., reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving natural resources, etc. After all, why clean up the house if the landlord is on his way to burn it to the ground?
By contrast, someone who respects evidence will recognize that it does not support the idea that we humans have any home other than this planet or any destiny not inextricably involved with it. This realization, in turn, promotes (indeed, necessitates), active concern for the planet and its riches.
A rumination of Saul of Tarsus’ is pertinent here: “When I was a child, I talked as a child, thought as a child, reasoned as a child; when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
I submit (along with Freud, Neitzsche, Sartre, etc.) that the longing for an externally anchored meaning is a holdover from humankind’s childhood. Just as a child grows out of Santa Claus and Saturday morning cartoons into monthly bills and parenthood, the global human community needs to wean itself off reliance on a grotesque, if comforting, theistic mythology into a collective responsibility grounded in realism.
So no, there is no God-shaped hole in my soul. Instead, there is an awareness of my own smallness in a universe that will be void of all meaning, purpose, and love if I and my kind do not prove equal to the challenge of sustaining them.
New Fisher Price Doll Says “Islam is the Light”!
Fig. 1. A real Muslim doll.
Fisher Price, of course, denies what appears to amount to a min-jihad on its part. They say the baby just makes baby talk. Decide for yourself what the doll is saying by watching the video here.
As for me, I doubt the doll is saying “Islam is the light”, although it does sound that way. We could blame the well-known psychological phenomenon called “priming”, in which the brain is conditioned to construct the sounds in a particular way, except that the first customer who bought the doll heard it right away!
Retail chains like Wal-Mart and Target have pulled the doll off their shelves. But why? Don’t Muslims shop at those places? And don’t Muslim kids want dolls? And don’t Muslim parents want Muslim dolls for their Muslim kids? And won’t Muslim pay good Muslim money for good Muslim dolls?
I think Fisher Price should run with this and make dolls for all the major religions. I mean, how cute would a little baby Buddha doll be?
Also, I think Fisher Price should make dolls for atheists like me. When you push the doll’s hand, it would say, “There is no Light!” And then it would cry inconsolably for its Mommy.
I don’t think there’s foul play by true Muslims here. Why? Because no true Muslim would say that Islam is the light. A true Muslim would say that Allah is the light. Muslims aren’t like Christians: they don’t worship their own religion.
Besides, there are already genuine, quality Muslim dolls on the market, which you can buy online. They wear hijabs and everything. (See Fig. 1)
Theism, Atheism, and Agnosticism
Traditionally, it has been thought that the range of possible attitudes to the question of God’s existence was encompassed by the labels “theist”, “atheist”, and “agnostic” (along with such satellite tags as “deist” and “fideist”).
A theist is supposed to be someone who believes that God exists. An atheist is supposed to be someone who does not believe that God exists. An agnostic is supposed to be someone who has refrained from coming to a conclusion on the matter.
I want to take these concepts apart, because I believe there are some important ambiguities that need clarification.
The concept of theism may stand as it is. However, the concepts of atheism and agnosticism are more than a little confused.
My argument turns on a distinction that is real but a little difficult to grasp. There is a difference between “not believing there is a God” and “believing there is no God”. In the first case, you do not have a belief. In the second case, you do have a belief.
The people who do not have a belief about God are agnostics. The people who have a belief about God, namely, that God does not exist, I will take the liberty of calling “anti-theists”.
So now we have four possible stances in regard to the existence of God:
Theism: I have a belief about God, i.e., it exists.
Antitheism: I have a belief about God, i.e., it does not exist.
Atheism: I may or may not have a belief about God, but I do not have a belief that he exists.
Agnosticism: I do not have a belief about God.
From this outline, it is plain to see that antitheists and agnostics are both brands of atheism! So even if you are an agnostic, you are an atheist.
Let me explain this another way. If you are an agnostic, you’re trying to be noble and judicious by suspending judgment in the absence of convincing evidence. However, you must admit that if you have suspended judgment, it necessarily follows that you do not believe that God exists. But to not believe that God exists is atheism!
What the agnostic is really trying to say is that she is neither a theist nor an antitheist. However, because no one has recognized that antitheism and atheism are distinct attitudes, the agnostic has only had the conceptual tools to say that he is neither a theist nor an atheist. This position does not make sense! Either you believe, or you don’t.
Finally, there is another way of making my point about agnosticism. Somewhere along the line, we have tried to divorce what we believe from how we behave. This cannot be done. To believe in God is as much a matter of how you live your life as of how you answer poll questions or speculate in the privacy of your own cerebrum. Indeed, if the traditional God did exist, he would care at least as much about how you live out your day-to-day life as about the words you so cheaply dispense in his praise.
So here is my point. It’s impossible to practice agnosticism, to live an agnostic life. What, do you go to church every other Sunday? You can’t live like you don’t know. Once again, either you believe, or you don’t.
Interlude: Inflation Everywhere!
On hearing the word “inflation”, most people think of worthless dollars and high prices (same thing, by the way). The science of economics defines inflation (roughly) as “too many dollars chasing too few goods”. Given the law of supply and demand, we have high prices/devalued monetary units. Thus we we find ourselves in paradoxical situations, such as not having enough money for gas because there’s too much money earmarked to buy gas.
Inflation, however, pertains to more than just money. Indeed, the value of almost anything can be inflated, provided that the thing is used too much. For scarcity is the bedrock, a conditio sine qua non, of value. This is why Disney locks their movies away in a “vault”, only to “release” them every decade or so.
Think about it:What would be the value of “beauty” if everyone looked like Nicole Kidman or Brad Pitt?
Inflation is why we have so many non-conformists. The more alike people are to one another, the less valuable each one becomes.
Inflation is why you start out loving an underground rock band, only to loathe it as soon as its song hits Billboard. If everybody’s doing it, then it just isn’t as cool anymore.
The story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf is really a story about inflation. Each time the boy gives a false report of a wolf in the vicinity, the value of his report decreases. By the end of the tale, his word means nothing, and the whole town gets eaten.
As is well known, grades have been undergoing inflation for some time now. Colleges and universities have become like corporations, with students as their consumers. This situation gives students a great deal of leverage in negotiating grades (because the customer is right, or you’re out of a job, buster!). The more As rewarded for shoddy work, the less the value of an A.
Words can suffer from inflation, too. The more often a word is used, the less punch it carries. Consider the words “cool” and “awesome”. Just by looking at it, you can tell that the word “awesome” originally meant “awe-inspiring”. Now it’s what you say when you learn what’s for dinner.
The one that really pisses me off is “literally”. Originally, the word was meant to distinguish an image as non-figurative, i.e., non-metaphorical. For instance, someone would say, “I was up literally all night studying for my final” to indicate that she really had not slept at all, that she was not exaggerating the time she’d spent cramming instead of sleeping.
Now, though, people use the word “literally” to emphasize their metaphors! For instance, I saw a commercial recently in which a business tooted that they “are open literally around the clock”. The only thing that literally happens “around a clock” is the turning of the clock’s hands! My jaw dropped in disbelief at this blatant disregard for the obviously figurative nature of the phrase.
I’m not kidding. My jaw literally dropped! My girlfriend had to run me to the hospital to have it put back in place.
A Simile for the Ages
Here’s a great simile from a blog about Islam:
“Your brain is like your donkey, and Islam is like a mosque. You can ride your donkey anywhere you want, but when you enter the mosque you have to leave your donkey at the gate.”
Well played!
Radio Personality Fired for Ridiculing God
In the United Arab Emirates earlier today, a radio personality made the mistake of making fun of God. No, he didn’t get smitten into oblivion. However, he did get fired, at the instigation of Christians and Muslims who were offended by his playing pretend.
So what did the host do that was so offensive to the devout? He enacted a sketch in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturns a lawsuit against the deity. (The Associated Press fails to give much detail as to the content of the sketch.)
As far as I know, the station that employed the host acted as a private entity. Such is the marketplace: if you piss off your customers, you gotta go.
But take this to heart: To praise God is meaningless in a world where one cannot also insult him.
If you are a theist, and you doubt this, just think of your own response to the Problem of Evil: To obey God is meaningless in a world where one cannot also defy him.
The Atheist Project 