WELCOME TO MY BLOG! I try to update it multiple times a day, both with original nonfiction essays and thoughts, and original fictional stories, and with cool stuff I find elsewhere. If I post something that isn't mine, I always give credit and link to the place I found it. NOTICE: My blog is "living", which means that I sometimes edit posts or comments (only my comments) in order to make my messages more clear. While I try to do this infrequently, since it can mess up debates, I'm just letting you know that it does happen periodically.
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Favorite sayings of mine which I've made up... "Anything's possible: The only impossibility is for something other than the only impossibility to be impossible. Otherwise stated, the only impossibility is impossibility itself." "Be sure of nothing. Do not deal in absolutes. To be certain is to be ignorant." "Tolerate adversity, for the adversity is bound to be correct half the time." "Do not fear death. Death is what gives life it's meaning. Not because something happens when you die, but because without the reality of death you would not be able to appreciate the reality of life." "In all things be optimistic. Results depend less on the problem than on your reaction to it. In every situation, the one variable you can always change is your attitude. If you have the right attitude, nothing can hurt you. Every day can be perfect." "I believe that there is a certain level of wisdom, which most intelligent people can and do achieve, that grants its user both the knowledge of what is right and the knowledge that it is right to do what is right, that it is beneficial and in the user's best interest to put other people's interests first on occasion, in order to serve oneself. This is not selfishness, except in the sense that the self is symbolizing the selves of the people the user helps." "Never mistake passion for fundamentalism, confidence for dogmatics, respect for justice, or religion for reality." "I disagree with what you say, and yet I'm glad you say it. A rational person always needs to hear words of opposition, because a rational person will always be open to the possibility -- however small -- that they're wrong. I need you to keep disagreeing with me; otherwise, if I am wrong, I may never see the truth. Thank you for your dissent. And don't worry, I will return the favor." "Saying that you shouldn't be an atheist because Stalin was an atheist is like saying that you should eat more meat because Hitler was a vegetarian. (This has a double meaning because, just as Hitler (contrary to popular opinion) wasn't really a vegetarian, Stalin wasn't really an atheist, at least not by my definition.)" "At least in hell you can get a light." "It's pronounced 'buy-bull' for a reason." "Most people believe that optimism is a little naive, because the reality is that most of the world is negative. But I believe that pessimism is naive, because the less people are pessimistic, the more optimism makes sense." "I think the best of all worlds would be one where, instead of making conclusions first and then looking for evidence to support their conclusions, people would look at the evidence first and then make conclusions that the evidence supports." "I'm not scared of hell for the same reason that I'm not scared of dragons." "Many people say TV rots your brain, and that books are better. But let's really think about this. If a picture's worth a thousand words, and film is just a bunch of pictures in sequence, then a half hour of TV should be better for your brain than a novel!" "Perhaps at the quantum level, there is a river of time that flows in the opposite direction than ours does. This would explain why in quantum physics, effects sometimes happen without a cause -- because they would really be effects happening before the cause, since the events would be happening in the opposite order from ours. More likely, though, everything I just said is bullshit." "Do not let nationalism skew your thoughts. Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you. Governments, though necessary, by their very nature corrupt human freedom." "The meaning and purpose of life in all its forms is to spread consciousness throughout the universe, liberating all matter." "What do you call two doctors that aren't sure whether God exists? Diagnostics." "Do not waste this life waiting for the next, because it might not be real. Salvation equals slavation." "If you think philosophy is just opinion, you're wrong. That's just my opinion, though." "I enjoy the finer things in life, like taking a nice dump." "Live life by the book, just make sure you're the author." "The most evil thing about evil is that sometimes it actually wins." "Philosophers have ideas. And one of my scariest ideas as a philosopher is that everyone 'gets it' except us philosophers. I'm scared that we go around analyzing things while other people just live, and in the process we miss out on the real meaning of life." "The original values of our country will always have a place in my heart, and because of that I am forced to question the current values of our administration." "The easiest way to achieve happiness is to help others achieve it at the same time." "My name's John and in my spare time I cut down theists with Occam's Razor." "Do not fear death. A single consciousness can never be conscious of the fact that it's unconscious." [variation:]"Do not fear death. A single consciousness can never be conscious once it becomes unconscious, and so it can never be conscious of the fact that it is dead." "Without rationality there is only rationalization." "The essence of humanity can be found in the fact that some people see a yellow light as a warning to slow down while others see it as a reason to speed up." "Two wrongs only make a right when committing the second wrong leaves the world in a better place than not committing it would." "It's not that to be a good critic you have to be harsh, it's that most people in this world aren't critical enough." "Total pacifism is ultimately an immoral philosophy. An eye for an eye doesn't make the whole world blind... An eye for an eye makes the whole world one-eyed. Violence is often the wrong response, and it's never the ideal response, but sometimes it is the necessary response." "Prayer is not being kept out of schools. Students can pray all they want. What is kept out of schools is mandatory, compulsory prayer, where students are forced to pray. Funny how religious people feel like their rights are being violated whenever we tell them they aren't allowed to violate everybody else's rights."
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July 24, 2008 - Thursday

2:47 AM - Off to Military School
Current mood: anxious
Category: MySpace

Hi everybody.  As my "real life" friends know, I'm going to a military school until December 20th.  I'm going there to get my high school diploma, to get in shape, and to change some of my habits such as laziness and a lack of determination.

To all my blog readers, don't worry, when I get back I'll be writing more than ever.  Hopefully I'll be much more productive; it should reinvigorate me.  I should be writing about the same stuff as before:  atheism, religion, politics, etc.  I'll probably also write about my experiences at the military school since I hate all things military!  I look forward to the conversations we will have.

Anyways, I'll see you all when I get back!  I get back right before Christmas (although I'll also be back for 4 days around Thanksgiving).

Currently reading :
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
By Julian Jaynes

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July 1, 2008 - Tuesday

6:53 PM - 21% of Atheists Believe in God
Current mood: annoyed
Category: Religion and Philosophy

According to the new Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 21% of atheists believe in God, 12% believe in heaven, and 10% pray at least once a week.

Susan Jacoby is the author of The Age of American Unreason and Freethinkers (which I'm currently reading).  Here's here take on this:

To say that you're an atheist who believes in God and prays is the equivalent of saying that you're a vegetarian who loves to scarf down barbecued ribs and T-bone steak. Or a Christian who rejects the teachings of the New Testament. Or a religiously observant Jew who also believes that Jesus was the Messiah. Or a Muslim who believes that Jesus was God.

…

Americans as a people have become supremely ignorant about and indifferent to the specific meanings of words, and they are equally confused about important historical distinctions.This is a serious cultural disease throughout our nation. A majority of Americans, in what is supposedly the most religious nation in the developed world, cannot name the four Gospels or identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible. Why shouldn't some American atheists be as ignorant about the meaning of atheism as many religious Americans are about religion?

…

I suppose it's possible that some of the atheists who said they believed in God were operating under the misapprehension that atheism means something like deism — belief not in a personal God but in an overarching providence, or spirit, that gave rise to the universe but plays no direct role in the affairs of humans. I suppose it is also possible that some of those polled, aware that atheism is greatly stigmatized in American culture, wanted to make nice by saying that they did believe in God in the same spirit that some women say, "I am a feminist but…." The "but" is always followed by some silly, ingratiating statement like, "I don't want to burn my bra" or "I like men."

But atheism is not a flexible word…

...

But too many Americans are convinced, and have been convinced by the sloppy speech around them, that words mean anything you want them to mean. They really do believe that "I see what I eat" means the same thing as "I eat what I see." And that mistaken idea probably lies at the heart of what I will call the Pew Paradox.

I agree with Susan Jacoby. I am increasingly frustrated by our wishy-washy, relativistic, nothing-means-anything-anymore culture. I'll tackle the three problems head on.

God:
It could be the Spinozan God that Richard Dawkins and most atheists believe in, but it's sort of misleading to affirm that obscure type of God when you've just said you were an atheist. Maybe it was the way the questions were framed. For example, a Poseidon believer is an atheist with respect to Yahweh, Allah, Thor, and all other gods, except for the single case of Poseidon.

Prayer:
If you define prayer loosely, then pretty much everybody prays every now and then, including atheists. You could say that whenever you say "Please let this work out" or "I hope this works out" you are praying, even if you're not really intending to speak to a god. And we all slip up and naively ask something of the universe or fate from time to time.

Heaven:
Some people define heaven as "The good life", or Nirvana, or nonexistence after death, or they say that "Heaven is here on Earth". Most of these are misleading, but the problem with polls is that they don't get to the complex and obscure thoughts of the individual. No one likes to be boxed in.

There is also the problem of younger nonbelievers, who aren't always very thoughtful about the issues. For some of these people, atheism is just a rebellious fad (but I would scorn to say that very many young atheists are like this; most of them aren't, and I'm certainly an example of one who isn't.)

This kind of language is what happens when your culture becomes too overly-"tolerant", relativistic, and unreasonable. I can't wait for the day when conversation, conscience, and reason become important concepts in America once again.

Currently reading :
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
By Julian Jaynes

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June 13, 2008 - Friday

2:25 AM - Perceiving 2 Fallacies, a Secularist Faults His Fellows
Current mood: appreciative
Category: appreciative Religion and Philosophy

Perceiving 2 Fallacies, a Secularist Faults His Fellows
by Peter Steinfels, The New York Times [link]

Austin Dacey is a philosopher by training and an active secularist not only by conviction but by profession as well: He is a representative at the United Nations for the secularist Center for Inquiry.

That he has written a book titled "The Secular Conscience" is not surprising. That his book is subtitled "Why Belief Belongs in Public Life" has lifted quite a few eyebrows — to say nothing of his claim that "secularism has lost its soul" by putting a "gag order on ethics, values and religion in public debate."

Mr. Dacey argues that secular liberalism has come to hold that because conscience is private or personal, its moral conclusions must be subjective, and because conscience should be free from coercion, its moral conclusions must also be free from public criticism.

This combination of what he calls the Privacy Fallacy and the Liberty Fallacy has led to the conclusion that controversial religious and moral claims are beyond evaluation by reason, truth and objective standards of right and wrong, and should therefore be precluded from public conversation.

This has also led to what Mr. Dacey calls the Bracketing Strategy, apparent in Roe v. Wade when the Supreme Court decided that it could settle the question of abortion rights while bracketing, or setting aside, the issue of the status of fetal life. The success of the Bracketing Strategy, Mr. Dacey argues, "has convinced generations of secular liberals that the way to deal with moral problems in our shared life is not to deal with them."

But in fact the Bracketing Strategy has left abortion rights "in constant peril," he writes, because it "circumvented a broader public debate on the moral issues that might have produced a more stable national consensus."

He describes similar bracketing of moral issues regarding embryonic stem cell research and same-sex relationships. By shying away from fundamental moral debate, he complains, secular liberalism has abandoned the field to religious voices.

One of those religious voices, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a Roman Catholic priest and leading neoconservative culture warrior, has welcomed Mr. Dacey's argument.

"On almost all the hot-button issues — abortion, embryo-destructive research, same-sex marriage, Darwinism as a comprehensive philosophy, etc. — Dacey is, in my judgment, on the wrong side," Father Neuhaus wrote in an online comment on First Things magazine's blog. "But he is right about one very big thing," namely that battles over those issues do not pit a religious side "trying to impose their morality" against a secular side merely respecting neutral democratic procedures and the protection of privacy.

"Over the years, some of us have been trying to elicit from our opponents the recognition that they, too, are making moral arguments and hoping that their moral vision will prevail," Father Neuhaus continued. "But in the world of secular liberalism, morality is the motive that dare not speak its name. Austin Dacey strongly agrees."

He does, in fact. And he does not flinch from receiving an endorsement from a thinker whom some other secularists have labeled a point man for theocracy. Would Mr. Dacey scandalize his friends by adding a quotation from Father Neuhaus on the cover of any further edition of "The Secular Conscience," which currently carries endorsements from the usual secularist suspects like Sam Harris and Susan Jacoby? "Sure," Mr. Dacey said without hesitation.

Of course, Mr. Dacey wrote "The Secular Conscience," published by Prometheus Books, a venerable secularist publisher, not to gain plaudits from Father Neuhaus but to strengthen secular liberalism. Not only is it a distortion of liberal tradition for secular liberals to treat morality as subjective and "private," he argues, but that stance is also self-defeating, "since it confounds their own best efforts to check the cultural influence of conservative religion."

But does it? That is, after all, an empirical claim. Has the Bracketing Strategy not proved fairly successful in achieving what Mr. Dacey calls the secular liberal "domestic agenda"? What if that agenda were actually put at risk by bringing fundamental moral arguments about, say, the status of unborn human life or the meaning of civil marriage to the forefront of public debate?

"I'd take the risk," Mr. Dacey said in an interview.

He is not naïve. "Politics is not a philosophy seminar," he said. He does not necessarily object to Hollywood celebrities' urging embryonic stem cell research on the ground that it will "save your grandmother." But "I just don't want that to the exclusion of a fundamental conversation."

Mr. Dacey illuminated his notion of a fundamental conversation with his reaction to last week's California Supreme Court decision that barring same-sex marriage violates the State Constitution. In a lengthy e-mail message, he noted that such court decisions had provoked "a powerful (and pretty permanent) backlash," with more and more states adopting "pre-emptive state constitutional bans."

Secular liberals, he proposed, should pursue "another, more gradual strategy," emphasizing public debate and legislation rather than court cases. Currently, "conservatives resort to secular-sounding sociological research about child development and slippery slopes," he wrote, while "liberals try to debunk this pseudoscience, and accuse their interlocutors of bigotry."

But neither side, he said, is addressing the moral heart of the matter: a core conviction that "marriage is a sacred covenant" that homosexual unions would violate. "Who is talking about that?" he asked.

"This culture war will be lost if we cannot engage in public conversation about the religious significance of marriage and the moral value of same-sex relationships," he concluded. "Anyway, it is worth a try."

Obviously, Mr. Dacey and his book are capable of stirring lively disputes. Many readers will question whether he has been fair to secular liberalism. Many will balk at his plea that liberalism place "global resistance to theocratic Islam at the center of its agenda," much the way a generation of cold-war liberals once mobilized around anti-Communism.

But "The Secular Conscience" glows with Mr. Dacey's confidence in John Stuart Mill's principle that every idea should be "fully, frequently and fearlessly discussed," lest it "be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth."

by Peter Steinfels, The New York Times [link]

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This has pretty much been my view for a while.  I definitely recommend this book.  I'm on the second chapter, and I'm loving it.  It says exactly what I think, just better than I can say it.  What do you guys think?  Do any of my fellow atheists agree with this?  Please comment, I'll appreciate it.

-John Pritzlaff

Currently reading :
The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life
By Austin Dacey

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June 8, 2008 - Sunday

6:17 PM - This is what clinches my vote for Obama...
Current mood: hopeful
Category: Religion and Philosophy


Obama is the most neutral, secular, fair, enlightened, liberal, tolerant and freethinking candidate when it comes to religion.  If any current candidate was an atheist at heart, it would be Obama (besides Mike Gravel).  In fact, I think Obama probably is an atheist inside, but that he puts on a religious facade because our country is so intolerant of atheists that you can't be one if you're running for president (even though atheists tend to be very smart, independent, progressive, ethical, leading kinds of people, in my opinion).  But even if he isn't, it doesn't matter; the point is that he is secular, and will protect the separation of church and state.  Remember, if we don't elect a democrat, the republicans will probably get a supreme court majority, and that could mean theocracy.

Currently reading :
Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life
By Austin Dacey

6 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

May 14, 2008 - Wednesday

11:08 PM - Troubled 11 year old atheist girl who cuts herself
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Religion and Philosophy

I haven't posted in a while, and I have a lot to tell all my friends about, but until I'm ready to make that post I'll keep writing about stuff that interests me.  And look, here's an example.

I was browsing through books on Amazon when I came across a thread in the book forum titled "Books for troubled 11 year old girl-just started cutting-claims atheist" [link] and so I took a look.

User J Rusty pleas:

"Looking for some encouraging non-blatant christian encouragement and hope for young lady at my son's school. Just started cutting herself with pencil sharpener blade. Notified her school counselor but would like to leave her some books from "Santa" that she can contemplate in her own mind on her own time."

The poster later elaborated:

"I love all these caring replies from everyone! No, she goes to a public school. I'm not sure that at 11 she really knows what an atheist is. I also don't know at this point if the cutting is a clinical issue or an attention getter, but either way, IT WORKED! I aggree with many of you that she has no one for guidance. I have since found out that her mother was 16 when she had her. Apparantly her mother is still quite young and enjoying a "single" life. There doesn't appear to be much of a bound between the two of them. She spends a lot of time at her apartment alone which is why I though it was a good opportunity to fill her mind with some inspiring books."

I looked through the replies, and none that I saw pointed out what I was thinking:  that atheism is not a negative thing (as the thread title implied).  Many people agreed that some kind of Christian literature would be best for the girl.  So I left my own comment for this otherwise good-intentioned person to contemplate:

"Oh yes, because being an atheist is a bad thing. We all know that atheists have no hope, that they can't be moral, that their lives have no meaning, that they're anti-social, and that they're depressed and angry at God, right? No, wrong.

If she does know what being an atheist means, which I highly doubt (she probably thinks it means that "life sucks and then you die"/"god hates me"/or something like that), then she should know that being an atheist is no reason to begin cutting yourself. Being an atheist should be a positive thing. It should be about rejecting the false claims to knowledge of ignorant, divisive, and irrational religious philosophies. For me, being an atheist/agnostic means that there is no dictator ruling over my life, and that I can decide for myself what is ethical based on reason, compassion, and thoughtfulness, not on outdated dogmatic teachings that ultimately have nothing to do with human concerns of happiness and suffering, and more to do with random, sectarian proclamations of one group of chosen people over another.

This girl obviously needs help. She needs to be told that
a) she probably doesn't even know what atheism is
b) it definitely doesn't mean a reason to cut yourself
c) that there are more positive ways to spend your time, such as reading
d) that what she is reading does not have to be religious in order to affect her life positively
e) that she is probably too young to know what she believes, and that she should consider all religions and no religion equally
f) that even if her mother isn't there for her, people like you are
g) that cutting doesn't solve anything, and isn't the best way to get attention, and that her problems are not as bad as they seem.

I would recommend Harry Potter, which is a wonderful series based on the themes of love, compassion, and friendship. I would not recommend The Chronicles of Narnia, which ends with the female protagonist being banished from Narnia for no reason except "growing up", and seems to me to be a thinly-veiled piece of Christian propoganda in the guise of a sub-par attempt at fantasy. It never helped me when I was younger. But Harry Potter and other books definitely did.

That's my take. I'd be interested in hearing what you guys and girls think."

I'm waiting to see if I get a reply.  I get frustrated whenever someone assumes that atheism is a negative philosophy, or that it's only for the lost at heart, or for those that are angry at God (ignoring the difficult question of how you can be angry at someone you don't believe exists).  So I tried to do a little "consciousness raising".  Hopefully it will do some good.  What do you think?

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March 21, 2008 - Friday

4:39 PM - Sam Harris: What Barack Obama Could Not (and Should Not) Say
Category: Religion and Philosophy

What Barack Obama Could Not (and Should Not) Say
by Sam Harris

Barack Obama delivered a truly brilliant and inspiring speech this week. There were a few things, however, that he did not and could not (and, indeed, should not) say:

He did not say that the mess he is in has as much to do with religion as with racism--and, indeed, religion is the reason why our political discourse in this country is so scandalously stupid. As Christopher Hitchens observed in Slate months ago, one glance at the website of the Trinity United Church of Christ should have convinced anyone that Obama’s connection to Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. would be a problem at some point in this campaign. Why couldn’t Obama just cut his ties to his church and move on?

Well, among other inexpediencies, this might have put his faith in Jesus in question. After all, Reverend Wright was the man who brought him to the "foot of the cross." Might the Senator from Illinois be unsure whether the Creator of the universe brought forth his only Son from the womb of a Galilean virgin, taught him the carpenter’s trade, and then had him crucified for our benefit? Few suspicions could be more damaging in American politics today.

The stultifying effect of religion is everywhere to be seen in the 2008 Presidential campaign. The faith of the candidates has been a constant concern in the Republican contest, of course--where John McCain, lacking the expected aura of born-again bamboozlement, has been struggling to entice some proper religious maniacs to his cause. He now finds himself in the compassionate embrace of Pastor John Hagee, a man who claims to know that a global war will soon precipitate the Rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (problem solved). Prior to McCain’s ascendancy, we saw Governor Mitt Romney driven from the field by a Creationist yokel and his sectarian hordes. And this, despite the fact that the governor had been wearing consecrated Mormon underpants all the while, whose powers of protection are as yet unrecognized by Evangelicals.

Like every candidate, Obama must appeal to millions of voters who believe that without religion, most of us would spend our days raping and killing our neighbors and stealing their pornography. Examples of well-behaved and comparatively atheistic societies like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark--which surpass us in terrestrial virtues like education, health, public generosity, per capita aid to the developing world, and low rates of violent crime and infant mortality--are of no interest to our electorate whatsoever. It is, of course, good to know that people like Reverend Wright occasionally do help the poor, feed the hungry, and care for the sick. But wouldn’t it be better to do these things for reasons that are not manifestly delusional? Can we care for one another without believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is now listening to our thoughts?

Yes we can.

Happily, Obama did a fine job of distancing himself from Reverend Wright’s divisive views on racism in America, along with his fatuous "chickens come home to roost" assessment of our war against Islamic terrorism. But he did not (and should not) acknowledge that the worst parts of Reverend Wright’s sermons, as with most sermons, are his appeals to the empty hopes and baseless fears of his parishioners--people who could surely find better ways of advancing their interests in this world, if only they could banish the fiction of a world to come.

Obama did not say that religion’s effect on our society, and on the black community especially, has been destructive--and where it has seemed constructive it has generally taken the place of better things. Religion unites, motivates, and consoles beleaguered people not with knowledge, but with superstition and false promises. Surely there is a better way to bring people together in the 21st century. The truth is, despite the toothsomeness of his campaign slogan, we are not yet the people we have been waiting for. And if we don’t start talking sense to our children, they won’t be the ones we are waiting for either.

Obama was surely wise not to mention that Christianity was, without question, the great enabler of slavery in this country. The Confederate soldiers who eagerly laid down their lives at three times the rate of Union men, for the pleasure of keeping blacks in bondage and using them as farm equipment, did so with the conscious understanding that they were doing the Lord’s work. After Reconstruction, religion united Southern whites in their racist hatred and the black community in its squalor--inuring men and women on both sides to injustice far more efficiently than it inspired them to overcome it.

The problem of religious fatalism, ignorance, and false hope, while plain to see in most religious contexts, is now especially obvious in the black community. The popularity of "prosperity gospel" is perhaps the most galling example: where unctuous crooks like T.D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar persuade undereducated and underprivileged men and women to pray for wealth, while tithing what little wealth they have to their corrupt and swollen ministries. Men like Jakes and Dollar, whatever occasional good they may do, are unconscionable predators and curators of human ignorance. Is it too soon to say this in American politics? Yes it is.

Despite all that he does not and cannot say, Obama’s candidacy is genuinely thrilling: his heart is clearly in the right place; he is an order of magnitude more intelligent than the current occupant of the Oval Office; and he still stands a decent chance of becoming the next President of the United States. His election in November really would be a triumph of hope.

But Obama’s candidacy is also depressing, for it demonstrates that even a person of the greatest candor and eloquence must still claim to believe the unbelievable in order to have a political career in this country. We may be ready for the audacity of hope. Will we ever be ready for the audacity of reason?

Sam Harris is the author "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." He can be reached at www.samharris.org

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My comments:

Sam Harris is extremely consistent in that he always manages to say exactly what I’ve been thinking 100 times better than I’ve been able to. Thank you, Sam. You give me just as much hope as Obama. That is, a helluva of a lot.
We can have hope, morality, and meaning without religion. Don’t let anybody dogmatically tell you otherwise.

-John Pritzlaff

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March 14, 2008 - Friday

3:12 PM - "The Root of All Evil" and Hate Speech
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Lewis Black has a new show out on Comedy Central called "The Root of All Evil".  Hemant Mehta from the Friendly Atheist blog has a new post about the show as well as the reaction from Bill Donahue of The Catholic League (he’s the bigot who hides behind the shield of calling everybody else a bigot).  Below are my comments on the post (I reccomend reading the original post first for context and entertainment).

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First comment:

Usually I love Black, but this show isn’t very good for him. He doesn’t get a lot of lines. And that’s the other thing, it feels very scripted. The format feels stuffy and the laughs fake.

However, I do like that the show is actually incorporating the concept of "evil". My generation is so culturally relativistic that it’s hard to get anyone to make any kind of moral judgements at all. While I do not believe there’s an absolute good or an absolute evil, I get frustrated when my fellow liberals extrapolate this kind of thinking into one where we take no stands at all. Everything is so wishy washy in our culture nowadays. Sure, there are many instances where we should be agnostic and completely uncertain, but there are also many instances where it is completely justified to feel that one is probably right and the others are probably wrong. For instance, I think that Islam is, by and large, wrong. It is mostly a religion of extremists. Not all Muslims are extremists, of course — it should go without saying. But at the same time that we’re being careful not to be racist we can still take a stand and say that most Muslims are fundamentalists. We don’t have to be vague and overly "fair".  (And it isn’t being fair at all, is it? The only thing that’s truly fair is telling the truth… the whole truth.)  It’s so frustrating, because we should be humble and we should realize that in any given circumstance we could easily be wrong, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t say that we could also be right. And when the evidence points overwhelmingly in that direction, we should not be scared to say that we are very likely correct.

You know what I mean?

Unfortunately, this show may not do so well with my generation. A lot of people may feel it’s too rude and that the comedians on the show are bigots. Oh well.

Second comment:

BTW guys, it is not "hate speech" to criticize the Catholic church. In fact, this is exactly what I was talking about in my previous comment. Someone speaks one uncomfortable truth and all of a sudden he or she’s "spewing hate". Hate speech is when someone says something rude about some group because he hates them. It is not rude to say something that actually has basis in fact. It is not hateful to say something you believe if you are not doing it out of hate. Hate speech is characterized by the fact that it’s irrational. (For instance, racism is irrational, because to say one group of people is always this way or always that way is irrational and incorrect, because it ignores stereotypes, and the fact that every group is made up of individuals.)

If someone says that the Catholic Church is made up of molesters, and he’s not saying it because of evidence he has but because he simply hates the catholic church, that would be hate speech. But if he has good evidence, and he’s not saying it out of hate but simply because it is something he observed, then it’s not hate speech. This is a problem, because there are times when we can’t distinguish the people who are saying something simply because they are hateful from the people who are saying something simply because they actually think it’s the truth and have good evidence that it is. For instance, there are some (not many) atheists who disparage religion simply because they hate it, but most atheists who criticize religion are not doing it hatefully, just fairly and strongly, because they think what they’re saying is the truth and, dare I say, have good evidence that it is.

Also, it should be pointed out that if anyone said that all catholics were molesters, or that all of any group were anything that isn’t common in everyday society, then it would pretty much always be hate speech (or ignorance, such as in the case of the child who believes racist propositions because his parents taught him to), because there’s almost never an instance where every individual in a group is the same as every other individual, except on matters that are orthodox or dogmatic for that particular group, and even then there’s always at least one or two rebels, if not millions.

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March 11, 2008 - Tuesday

1:09 PM - Is nature ethical?
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Wow, I have not posted in a long, long time.  I have so much catching up to do!  I apologize for not being on MySpace for so long...  Anyways, here's something you may or may not find interesting.  What do you think?

_____________________________________________________________________________

Over at The Friendly Atheist, Mike Clawson (a Christian) posted the following, titled "Questions for Atheists:  Why Vegetarianism?":

"Mike Clawson here again:

Hemant just posted about a column in the Dallas Morning News that advocated the ethical treatment of animals raised for harvest. I'm all for that. However a few of you suggested that it didn't go far enough in advocating full vegetarianism. This raises a question for me that I've wanted to ask for a long time now: leaving off health reasons and environmental sustainability reasons (both of which I think are very good reasons), why would an atheist be a vegetarian? That is, is there any reason for an atheist to ethically object to the idea of killing animals for food.

What I mean is isn't animals (like human beings) eating other animals simply part of the natural process? Isn't that how nature functions? Why would it be unethical for us to fulfill our role as omnivores? What is the rationale for concluding that this is morally wrong?

I mean, I understand the Jewish and Christian arguments for vegetarianism based on the Bible, but obviously those wouldn't be relevant to atheists, so I'm just curious what your reasons are. For those of you here who are atheists and consider it ethically wrong to kill animals for food, why? I'm not saying you're right or wrong either way. I honestly just want to know."


Here is my reply:

I am surprised how often people (usually Christians) imply in their writings that if evolution by natural selection is "natural" then for some reason we shouldn't go against it. I've always thought it was extremely obvious that natural selection is something that we as human beings should be (and are) trying to supercede. Just because it is how we got here doesn't mean we shouldn't somehow try to put it in the past. This was Darwin's position ("What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature."), is Dawkins's position ("Natural selection is a deeply nasty process."), and is my position as well, and I'm always surprised and frustrated when other atheists don't point it out before I do. The most obvious and blatant example of humans going against natural selection is birth control, which already has helped to mostly stop the evolution (at least by natural selection) of our species, by crippling the "selection" part of it (we are now evolving in different ways, such as through technological advances, but we are not really evolving by natural selection any more, chiefly because we are now allowing the weaker off to live and reproduce just as well as the fitter people, and obviously this is an example of great moral progress, and is definitely not something you would find much, if at all, in nature, except where animals are starting to throw off their oppressive genes, as in our case).

"What I mean is isn't animals (like human beings) eating other animals simply part of the natural process? Isn't that how nature functions? Why would it be unethical for us to fulfill our role as omnivores? What is the rationale for concluding that this is morally wrong?"

The rationale is that natural selection is a blind process of extreme cruelty, and we should try to transcend it as much as possible. Our moral concerns should be based off how much suffering is going on in the world, whether in humans or other animals, and our moral goals should be based off making the world more and more happy and pleasureful, for both humans and other animals that have the capacity to feel pain (as well as, if the situation arises, artificial intelligence/robots). Wherever pleasure can be had and suffering can be had, we should be concerned in tipping the scales towards the former. It does not matter if the subject is our "species" or our "kind" or if it is "unnatural", what we are doing. All that matters is the amount of suffering, sadness, and dis-ease in the world on the one hand and the amount of happiness, contentedness, and pleasure in the world on the other. This, in my opinion, should be the only basis for our moral system.

And so, while I am not a vegetarian and feel disgusted with myself from time to time for it, but so far have not been able to give up meat, I recognize the moral importance of being or striving to be a vegetarian, and I fully support those who have the moral courage and strength to give up meat. I suppose, as Richard Dawkins once suggested in an interview, it would be very helpful if one day we all gave up meat at the same time and supported each other in doing so. This hypothetical worldwide event, which may occur in many decades or centuries, would be a huge moral leap for the human race comparable to the throwing-off of slavery in the nineteenth century.

John Pritzlaff

EDIT:  Read the comments of this post for more replies from others and myself.

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January 13, 2008 - Sunday

11:52 PM - Terminator Salvation: A recent comment of mine on a
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

The following is pretty different from most of the stuff I post; this blog is about the Terminator franchise.  Specifically, I wrote this after watching the first episode of the new Terminator TV series ("Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles"), which will probably end up getting canceled by Fox, making this blog hilariously unnecesary in retrospect!  Anyways, I get pretty detailed here, so this blog maybe isn't for most of my usual readers.  The only reason I'm posting it here is because after spending a few hours on this, I figured I should juice it for all it's worth (and anyways, whatever I write about, I want to write it well, and make it understandable, so I'm proud of this piece, in that sense, because I think I accomplished those goals with it -- tell me if I'm wrong).  So read on, and maybe you'll enjoy!  I know the subject is pretty engrossing, at least for me.  [In case anybody's wondering, I don't even like the Terminator franchise that much.  I mean, I'm not some kind of fanboy.  I'm just a casual viewer who got caught up in this after watching the TV series tonight, and the episode wasn't even that good, but I felt like the topic was interesting.  And I wanted to sort it all out, because on the board I was reading (click here to view the thread, which is on IMDB), the people hadn't thought of my theory yet.  Generally, I don't even like plots that involve time travel!  I don't know why I spent so much time on this, but here it is.]

Possibility: T3 and SCC are in the same continuity

I've been thinking about this since I saw the pilot episode tonight, and I've come up the theory that T3 COULD be consistent with SCC if Cameron (who is ABSOLUTELY HOT by the way) was sent back in time AFTER all of the events of T3. In this sense T3 did happen, and then after it happened Cameron came back in time to change what had occurred because obviously the outcome wasn't desirable. But it still happened, in the same way that Judgement Day did happen in the films (multiple times) and then was later retroactively prevented after each of those times. The timelines in which it originally happened were ultimately prevented, but they were still part of the "overall timeline" of the movies. They were still canon. So most of this talk of T3 becoming uncanon is just a problem of definitions. While it is true that T3 is in an "alternate timeline" from the show, it is still canon because the "alternate timeline" is part of the OVERALL TIMELINE of the franchise. People hear that the TV show is in an alternate timeline, and they think this means it's in an alternate universe. But that's not necessarily so with a franchise that involves time travel. Terminator 3 (set in 2004) could have happened "before" The Sarah Connor Chronicles (set first in 1999 and then in 2007), in the sense that AFTER the events of T3, Cameron was sent back in time and then SCC happened, starting in 1999 and then progressing into 2007 when she brought the Connors forward in time (and then leading into whatever happens next week in episode 2).

At least this is my theory. What do you guys think?

Whether this theory is correct or not, I think most of us can agree that the creators of the TV series were smart to go in this direction. By "ignoring" T3, they will get a lot of the fans who felt disillusioned by that movie to support the TV series. They might lose a smaller (but in some ways more loyal, some might say) section of the fanbase who are put off by the screwing up of the continuity, though. But technically, with my theory, they could have it both ways. They could "ignore" T3, and thus get the fans behind them, without actually screwing up the continuity of the series, if they only ignore it in the sense of making its outcome not the ultimate outcome of the series. I think this would be the smartest way to go. They could reject the timeline of T3 in spirit, without actually booting it out of canonicity.

And of course, we all know that as soon as Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins (which is supposed to follow the T3 continuity) hits theaters, the war with Skynet is still on, baby. That's a fate that the TV writers can't stop. And I think it would be a mistake to conclude the TV series on the "Yay we prevented Armageddon" angle, and thereby completely remove it from the continuity of the rest of the franchise, which may eventually include six films. They could still keep every incarnation of the franchise on speaking terms by ending the TV series with a lead up to T4/TS. AND they could even keep the aforementioned "ignorance of T3" credibility with the fans if the opening of T4 is ambiguous, making it compatible with SCC (either with SCC being a separate continuity from T3 or with it being in the same continuity as T3 per my theory above). They would make it ambiguous by making it so that T3 by itself and SCC both lead up to the events at the beginning of T4.

What I think is the most likely outcome of all of this is that once T4 is out and the TV series is over (whenever it ends -- they have enough material for 4 seasons), it will be possible for a person to think either of the three interpretations are true: 1) T3 is in the T4 continuity and SCC is not; 2) SCC is in the T4 continuity and T3 is not; and 3) Both T3 and SCC are in the T4 continuity because T3 is in the same universe as SCC. If I'm right then any of these three conclusions would be just as likely to be true as the other two, until/unless someone official declares which of them is canon. In this scenario T4 would be able to be seen as a dual sequel to both the TV series and T3, making it part of 2 different canons, and it would also be possible to see it as a single sequel to SCC which would be a sequel to T3. I think this ambiguous scenario would be for the best, and it would make for interesting fan discussions/wars.

Sorry this was so long. I hope I was understandable.

By the way, if anyone is wondering whether I liked Terminator 3 or not, I'm sort of split (which might be appropriate considering the nature of this piece). I thought Terminator 3 was okay, but it wasn't great (it wasn't the first two films). It was still a quite decent movie, though. Overall, I didn't come up with this theory just because I like T3 and want it to be reconciled with the rest of the series, because I don't really care. I just thought this stuff was interesting.

-John Pritzlaff
January 14, 2008

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Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles airs Mondays at 8 PM on FOX, and is recommended for fans of the movie series and people who like action with a little bit of drama.

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December 30, 2007 - Sunday

11:13 PM - An Enemy of Discourse
Current mood: tired but thoughtful
Category: tired but thoughtful Religion and Philosophy

I'm back.  I hope any of you who celebrate holidays this time of the year enjoyed them, as I did.  I have a few comments to reply to.  But first I'd like to share this, which started as a short reply on someone else's blog.

An Enemy of Discourse

A recent post by Hemant Mehta on friendlyatheist.com:


"Crosswalk.com, one of the largest Christian websites in the world, was hacked by some atheist douchebag.

Who can't spell.

And is from Finland.

For what it's worth, the culprit also thinks the Blasphemy Challenge is bullshit.

Hopefully, the Crosswalk people can get it back up and running soon.

***Update***: They have.

(via Suddenly Christian)"


Is he trying to stop Christians from getting their point of view out there?  If he is then he is an enemy of friendly discourse.

Actions like this do nothing but temporarily disrupt the dialog.  A rational person should understand that the way to persuade somebody to believe what you believe is to give them all the evidence and let them decide for themselves (while offering your perspective), because if you truly think that your belief is the rational conclusion to make from the evidence, then you will think that if other people look at it rationally, there is a good chance they will make the same conclusions.  Only people with irrationally held beliefs need to resort to book burning and website hacking.  Censors fear what they hide.

Just like abstinence-only sex education teachers, this person may actually fear what he disagrees with, and therefore tries to suppress it, all the while yelling his ideas as loudly as he can -- his words falling upon deaf ears.  Abstinence-only teaching suppresses information, and leads to irrational decisions.  And just as a raving nonbeliever could turn theists away from the arguments, and make them identify even more with their religion, thus defeating his cause, kids who aren't openly taught about sex have sex anyways, and do so uninformed.  It is not the pragmatic way of doing things, and it is irrational and harmful.  It is immoral.

At the risk of judging him too much from a single action, I say that this person should be a disgrace to atheists everywhere, because in doing this he represented one of the main things that atheism is counter to:  suppression of dissent and debate. He should be ashamed.

(Of course, pretty much all thoughtful atheists know this already.  I'm talking to curious believers here, any who may not know.  Atheism is very misunderstood by many, and hopefully this little comment will, on a very small scale, help to correct some misunderstandings.  I know that some people, including, undoubtedly, a large amount of my personal friends, have this idea that we atheists are just a part another religion, that we'd do anything to support each other just because we are the same, that we hate religious people with bloodlust and that we are irrational conformists to the Dogma of Dawkins, or the Screed of Samuel Harris.  That we are violent and "militant" (a horribly abused and overused adjective), that we'd sell our lack of souls in order to convert believers.  But this is a caricature that was undoubtedly drawn by a misunderstanding religious person.  In short:  most atheists do not support "Fad atheism", where people become atheists because it's in vogue, as this person may have, instead of because they made a conclusion based on the arguments; we also do not support the suppression of any point of view, which we think is negative, no matter what point of view it is; and we do not support others if the only reason for doing so is that they belong to the same ultimately meaningless category name as we do.  We think that is a tribal, ganglike, massively ad hominem-ish thing to do.  We care about what individual people actually think, and this means that we could still disagree with everything some guy says, even if we agree that there is no god.  It is the arguments that we follow, and we will go wherever they take us, even if that means leaving our "group" and becoming something else, including, of course, believers, if that is what we feel is rational.)

-John Pritzlaff

Currently reading :
The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
By Christopher Hitchens
Release date: November, 2007

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December 1, 2007 - Saturday

1:14 PM - Oppression of Women in Islam
Category: Religion and Philosophy

One of my few gripes with other liberals is the consistent ignorance they display when it comes to Islam.  I hate to compare myself to conservatives, but on this one issue they are more correct than liberals.  Islam is a fascist ideology, it encourages violence and inequality, and it needs to be reformed if the muslim world is going to join the larger modern world.  This is not a small minority of extremists, this is the majority of muslims in the middle east.  Agree?  Disagree?  Either way, please watch this video.  (warning:  graphic)

"The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam"

Sadly, without even looking at the rest of the site, I think it's safe to assume it has a conservative bent.  Needless to say, I think conservatives are completely wrong on almost everything, and even on this issue they are ultimately wrong because they think that Christianity (one monotheistic religion) is the answer to Islam (another monotheistic religion).  I truly think that the real answer is atheism, freethought, and rationality, and so I am almost as opposed to christians as I am to muslims.

I think that us democrats need to realize that cultural relativism is not always necessary.  Just because we are different than them, does not mean that we are equal to them.  To make an analogy, I would compare the state of Islam today to the state of Christianity during the middle ages, and I would compare the state of the western world today to the state of Islam during the middle ages, when it was the advanced, modern society, and  christianity was the horrible trainwreck of theocracy that we currently see with Islam.  Some cultures are more advanced than others.  For instance, Europe as a whole is more advanced, socially, than the United States is, and saying these things is not racist, or nationalist, or anything.  It's just my opinion of the truth.  Just as one person can be morally better than another, so can one culture, in general, be morally better than another. 

The danger of seeing modern Islam as the equivalent of modern Christianity is that we will lose sight of the very real danger of terrorism.  We can't keep on thinking that just because the conservatives are handling this war wrong and are demonizing muslims and are using the threat of terrorism to scare their own citizens, it follows that the only reason muslims hate us is because of something we did to them.  Sure, we did some bad things, and that certainly hurt our relationship with them, but the main reason they hate us is because they are oppressed, irrational people living under theocracy, and they are taught to hate us.  We aren't over there just for oil:  there really is a good, moral reason for us to be in the middle east (although Iraq specifically may be a different story).  The reason is that we need to spread reason and democracy.  And if saying that makes you think I'm a Bush-supporter, just remember that I think Bush is among the most irrational and immoral people in our country.

Islam is a serious problem for the future of democratic civilization.  If it can be reformed to resemble the moderate Christianity that has arisen in the last few centuries, then that is one of the great hopes we should cling to going into the dark possibilities of the future.

-John Pritzlaff (please comment)

By the way, I finally got back to your comments on my "Reply to a skeptic of irreligious morality" blog.  Sorry it took so long.

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November 18, 2007 - Sunday

2:25 PM - Questions about Hell and God’s relationship with the Devil
Category: Religion and Philosophy

I have trouble understanding the nature of the beast, as I'm sure many Christians do.

Can God stop the Devil?

Is the Devil as powerful as God?

Did God create the Devil?

Does God punish people by sending them to Hell, or is the Devil the reason people go to Hell?  Or both?  If God sends people to hell, and the Devil punishes them, do the Devil and God work together?  Does God make deals with the Devil?

Is the Devil punishing people for their sins?  If so, isn't he on God's side?  Then how is God good and the Devil evil?

Because if God doesn't want people to go to Hell, then can't he stop it from happening, since he's all powerful?  If he only sends people to Hell because they broke his ultimatum (live without sin or live without paradise), then what does that say about God?  Isn't he foolish for making an ultimatum that most people have trouble keeping?

Since he is all knowing, he would have known that giving people free will would result in many, many people going to Hell for an eternity.

If he somehow suspended his knowledge in order to truly give people free will, then wasn't this a foolish move?  Especially making Hell permanent?  Why didn't he just create beings that were good enough to have free will and still be good?  If God wanted to create imperfect creatures, then does this make God somehow imperfect, or human-like?  Is this a bad thing?

Isn't God the ultimate reason people go to Hell, since he essentially created a sinful creation?

How is God good if he, ultimately, is the reason people are tortured for an eternity?

Some of these questions I know the answer to, and some of these questions are naive, and some of these questions demonstrate how I didn't get any sleep last night.  But it gets the theistic mind rolling. 

This is how the religious intellect has to work.  Without rationality, there is only rationalization. 

Very interesting stuff.

What are your answers?

(Now I see why more and more people are ditching the concept of hell altogether.)

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2:12 PM - Reply to a skeptic of irreligious morality

"Daniel Hoffman, people shouldn't kill each other because it results in displeasure. It's just not worth it for anyone involved. Life is better for everyone if you act "good" — that's what is good.

There is no absolute good or evil, but there are things that have overall good results and overall bad results. You should do good things because it's good for you and good for others.

Also, the fact that these people are all made of collections of atoms from the same universe means that there is nothing absolute separating them from each other (atheists do not believe in a soul, generally). There is only their perception. Maybe people can learn to see things in terms of net value for the universe (net pleasure), and overcome their solipsism. Then we could live in a universe where we are concerned with the quality of everyone's lives, instead of just our own.

Furthermore, as atheists we are good people because we think it is the right thing to do. You seem to think that without rewards or punishments in the afterlife (I think there's a good chance you are religious) there is no reason to be good. If this is what you believe, it is quite revealing. That's an incredibly selfish outlook for someone to take. Would you kill and rape and steal if there was no god to reward you or punish you?

I would like to hear your reply. If you could email me at johnpritzlaff@gmail.com if you reply to this, that would be great (so I know to look).

John"

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I've been reading Hemant Mehta's blog a lot recently, and this was a reply I left to a comment on one of his posts.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I perceive to be one of the atheist community's biggest weaknesses -- that we need to get the word out more about the roots of our morality.  I know atheists tend to be very independent and individualistic, and so some tend to be annoyed at questions about their morality, which they think is a personal matter, but as a movement we need to spread the word of humanism more.  There are a lot of curious theists out there who want to convert deep down but who are using the morality question as a last resort safeguard against their intuition.  They don't know what atheist morality is, and so they're reluctant to convert because they're scared that being an atheist means you're a bad person.  We need to help them to understand us.

Hemant Mehta has recently said as much, and so I recommend his blog.

-John Pritzlaff

PS:  I've been busy with school as of late, so my posting has suffered, but I did get a 3 point (which is good for me at this point in my life, since I failed last year [that's a topic for another post]).  I'll be posting again soon.  In fact I think I just got another idea...

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October 28, 2007 - Sunday

11:46 PM - Football Team Wins Game With A Completed Pass, 15 Laterals
Category: Sports

There were 2 seconds left on the clock. Trinity had the ball at their own 40. Here's what they did:



Anyone who knows me really well knows I'm a sucker for lateral plays. This is the longest one I've ever seen. (After the completed forward pass, there were 15 laterals.) If you look closely, on the last lateral, most of the players on the other team stopped playing. This is because the ball hit the ground. They, in their idiocy, mistakenly took this to mean that the play was over, and because of that mistake, they allowed the runner to grab the ball and run into the endzone. I don't know how many times I have to tell people, A DROPPED LATERAL IS A FUMBLE!!! :) Seriously, though, if I were their coach I'd be pissed off. That play ultimately lasted 62 seconds long. If you've commited so much time to a play, why stop playing right at the end of it? Any good footballer knows that you can never be certain that the play is over.

Here's a link to an article about the game:
http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=296839

And search here if the video is removed or doesn't play:
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=trinity+football+laterals&search=Search

What do you think?

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October 22, 2007 - Monday

11:20 PM - Can atheists be good people?
Category: Religion and Philosophy

(My comments follow this article. -John)

Atheists aren't a bad lot

by Dan Gardner, Ottawa Citizen

Thanks to Stephen Falk for the link.

Reposted from here.

Can we be good without God? That's a very old question believers like to ask because, I suspect, the answer is very pleasing to them.

No, they say, we cannot be good without believing in an invisible spirit who, like Santa Claus, knows when we've been bad or good. No invisible spirit, no reward or punishment. No reward or punishment, and moral codes become empty words. Inevitably, atheists must conclude that morality is for suckers -- and so believers are, ipso facto, better people than non-believers.

There was a time when there wasn't more to say on the subject. Almost everyone believed in a god or gods and those few who didn't kept their mouths shut lest others conclude they were the sort of lying, thieving, murderous wretches people inevitably become when they stop genuflecting to invisible spirits.

Alas -- some would say -- faith has eroded over the centuries. Today, substantial numbers of people have decided that until such time as there is proof of the existence of Santa Claus, they will not believe Santa Claus exists. Ditto for god. And they're open about their disbelief.

This has complicated the issue considerably because now everyone knows a few atheists who are not lying, thieving, murderous wretches. They work. They pay taxes. They have kids and don't beat them or sell them for medical experiments. How can this be?

An answer comes from the godless science of evolutionary psychology. "People have gut feelings that give them emphatic moral convictions," writes Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, "and they struggle to rationalize the convictions after the fact." Those "gut feelings" are not the result of what we learned in Sunday school. "They arise from the neurobiological and evolutionary design of the organs we call moral emotions."

Physically, humans are pretty pathetic. We're weak and slow and our fangs wouldn't frighten a raccoon. We do, however, have really big brains and, by working together, our ancient ancestors could survive and thrive. But working together required humans to follow certain rules even when doing so was contrary to their short-term interests.

Say you covet your neighbour's cave. You could just smash his skull and move in. But you need your neighbour's help in the mammoth hunt. And besides, if you smash his skull and take his cave, someone else might get the same idea. So in the long run, both your neighbour and you will be better off if everybody agrees it is wrong to smash thy neighbour's skull.

Humans who learned to restrain themselves prospered. Those who didn't vanished. Over time, the internalized rules we call morality became hard-wired instinct.

That instinct remains no matter what we believe about invisible spirits. And its force is not diminished by recognizing its origins in biology: We can no more choose not to feel moral impulses than we can choose not to feel sexual desire.

So it's no surprise to learn that atheists can be perfectly decent people. They are human, after all.

This has led believers to a subtler attack. "People who don't believe in God can be good," writes Reginald Bibby, a theist and University of Lethbridge sociologist. "But people who believe in God are more likely to value being good, enhancing the chances that they will be good."

Mr. Bibby's evidence is a widely reported poll he conducted in which higher percentages of believers than non-believers said values such as kindness, forgiveness, and patience were "very important."

"To the extent that Canadians say goodbye to God," Bibby concluded, "we may find that we pay a significant social price." So the occasional atheist may be a fine fellow but in general they're not as nice as theists and if their numbers rise society will go to hell in a handbasket.

One of the many problems with Bibby's thesis is that his poll asks about qualities that religions typically present as dogmas. Kindness is good. Period. No discussion. It just is. Same for forgiveness and all the others.

So it's no surprise that believers would simply say, yes, these are very important. That's what their dogma says. But an atheist is less likely to approach morality dogmatically. She might feel, for example, that kindness is good but she can imagine circumstances in which it's not appropriate. To reflect that, she may rate it "important" instead of "very important." That wouldn't mean she's a less moral person. It would mean she's more thoughtful.

Worse, Bibby simply assumes a link between what people casually say, what they feel, and how they behave -- an assumption belied by heaps of academic research, not to mention plain old common sense. Televangelists would get boffo scores in Bibby's poll. Does that mean they are models of moral behaviour? Anyone who believes that is invited to send a contribution to the Church of Latter Day Skeptics at the e-mail address below.

To get around this, we have to look at how people behave. As it turns out, the lowest levels of religious belief and weekly church attendance in the world -- possibly the lowest in history -- are found in Northern European countries. These societies are not lacking in basic moral qualities. In fact, they may be the most tolerant, peaceful, compassionate, orderly societies that have ever existed.

If that's the fate of countries that say goodbye to God, it will be a good day when we see the back of that old fraud.

Dan Gardner writes Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com
______________________________________________________________________________________


Let me talk about morality.

First of all, this article.  I think pointing out the evolutionary basis for basic morality is important because it shows that basic morality can be had without religion (indeed that it predates religion).  However, I think it is also important to point out that the most moral people (including and at times limited to people like atheists/agnostics/freethinkers) usually go further and actually value their moral choices because they are good, not just because they are good for the person who employs them.  We have to remember that the evolutionary explanation of morality -- altruism makes sense for the sake of your own benefit -- is really just a more advanced version of the religious justification for morality -- if you are "good" you'll be rewarded and if you're "bad" you'll be punished.  This is not a very moral reason to be good.

No, we have to go further than that and point out that  while evolutionary morality gave us the hard-wiring to have moral intuitions, it should not be our justification for morality any more, now that we have become much closer to enlightened beings, compared with our ancestors.  It's place is that it has given us a good starting point, a good default sense of morality.

Our morality nowadays should be based on experiencing the greater good (pleasure/happiness) and all the things that help to achieve it (commitment to truth, kindness, etc.) and getting rid of the bigger bad (pain/suffering) and eliminating all the things that promote it (dishonesty, selfishness, cruelty, etc.).  I am a hedonist, but I am not selfish, because more specifically I am an altruistic hedonist, which makes me much closer to selfless.  My morality is based on the ascent from solipsism (the belief that you are all that exists or matters) leading to the ability of individual consciousnesses in this universe (agents such as intelligent animals or robots) to be aware of the "net" value of happiness experienced in the universe by all individual consciousnesses added up (I won't call this net value a universal-super-consciousness (a type of god), as is popular these days, since the universe doesn't seem to function as one single consciousness, but rather as independent conscious parts whose awareness arises from some kind of mechanism of increasing complexity, natural selection being the only type we are aware of and probably the only kind there is).  Once beings are aware of their finiteness, it