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Issues all the way down

3 August 2013 / / 3 Comments

The LDS Church is in a flap over historical issues. People are leaving over historical issues! The typical one: Joseph Smith marrying other men’s wives and very young girls.

I never had a problem with historical issues; I left because it wasn’t true. For me, that was a historical issue. That Joseph Smith fabricated a vision with a non-existent god — that was a historical issue. Making up a book about non-existent Nephites and Lamanites — that was a historical issue.

And I’m not saying my epistemological apostasy is better than someone else’s historical apostasy. In fact, it might be worse — I was clearly unfazed by polyandry and other blatantly self-serving doctrines, until I started to question the existence of gods themselves. I must have thought a god that would command those things would be worth worshipping, which is just horrible. What was wrong with me?

So if historical issues was what got you out, great! Whatever works. But as far as I’m concerned, the official story is crazy enough.

Archbishop Tutu had better find a new religion.

27 July 2013 / / 8 Comments

Gee — Archbishop Desmond Tutu has risen a couple of points in my estimation. He’s come out as a supporter of equality for gay people, saying he wouldn’t worship a homophobic god.

“I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place,” the retired archbishop said.

“I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this,” he said, condemning the use of religious justification for anti-gay prejudice.

Now for the bad news. What Tutu doesn’t seem to realise is that, according to the Bible, the god he worships is in fact terribly and deeply homophobic, in both the Old Testament and the New.

The Skeptics’ Annotated Bible has a longer version.

You know what happens when I mention this to Christians? I tell them about the Old Testament, and they say, “That’s just the Old Testament.” Then I tell them about the New Testament, and they say, “That’s just Paul.” Motherfucker, it’s all just Paul. There’s not a lot they can’t accommodate if they want to — and I’m glad they want to! I’m glad Christians are ignoring the bullshit in their Bible — but when you’ve thrown Jehovah and Paul under the bus, what’s left?

So I’m glad Tutu feels strongly about this, and he’s in a position to do some good on this issue. But his stand is at variance with the Bible, no matter how he tries to spin it.

Many modern Christians are trying to give God a makeover. They point out that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. But this is misguided. Jesus would have been a 1st century rabbi. There’s no indication that he would have disagreed with the Torah, which (again) demands death for gay people.

Bottom line: If you’re Christian, you worship a homophobic god. By all means, be equality-minded. That’s just being a normal, good person. But if you try to claim a religious justification for your stand, you’re stretching it farther than the Bible will allow.

Here’s an idea for my equality-minded Christian friends: Since you’re getting your view from your own morality, and not the Bible, why not just skip the middleman in all other areas? Toss the Bible, and rely on your own good human morality, just like you do on loads of other issues.

Don’t call it religion.

12 July 2013 / / 1 Comment

It seems that religious people are fleeing the word ‘religion’.

Sociologists say we are increasingly divided over religion’s place in public life, but that when it comes to language, Americans are moving in one direction: toward a new vernacular.

We’re no longer “religious.” We’re “holy.” We’re “faithful.” We’re “spiritual.” We talk about what ”the Gospel compels us to do” or “gospel living.” Or “sabbatical living” and “God-oriented behavior.”

No wonder the word is poison. Religion’s characteristic blend of narrow-minded dogma, superstition, sexual busybodyism, and hypocrisy has rightly made it toxic, especially to younger people.

Polling shows that young Americans are considerably less apt to have religious affiliations than earlier generations were at the same age. They attend religious services less often and fewer of them say religion is important in their lives.

I think this thesaurus-trawling is merely cosmetic. Call Christianity a ‘personal relationship with Jesus’ if you want, it’s still a religion. As one interviewee says:

“The bottom line is: Christianity is a religion. You can’t get away from it,” he said. “If it walks like a duck, with doctrines, dogma, structures, everything a religion has, it’s a duck.”

The article’s pretty critical of religion, but one criticism goes untouched: Religion is a very poor way of reasoning and understanding the world. It relies on confirmation bias and evidence mining. It places preconceptions higher than facts. And this is true, not just of religion, but of all the other things that religious people are making lateral moves toward; supernaturalism, spirituality, god-oriented behaviour (how long before we hear GOB?), call it what you will.

Different name, same tactics. This ploy to alter the language of religion is a transparent semantic dodge.

Could anything convince you that a god exists?

9 July 2013 / / 10 Comments

Hemant Mehta the Friendly Atheist was asked a very interesting question. It’s in this video of him with a friendly Christian pastor.

The moment is at 24:15.

Pastor: Is there anything — anything — that might change your mind?

Mehta: I don’t think at this point anything that anyone tells me, because they usually tell me stories about how they came to God, how they came to Christ. It’s like, “Well, that’s nice for you. Unless I have that same experience myself, unless I experience a miracle that I can’t explain, unless something happens to me, I really don’t think I’m going to hear anything that will change my mind.

Pastor: That’s interesting, right? He’s saying if a miracle happens.

You can almost hear the pastor thinking:

This isn’t a great answer for me. Just because there’s something I can’t explain, that wouldn’t be enough for me. I can’t explain lots of things. I’m not good at that sometimes. And a lack of explanation doesn’t automatically mean “theism” — that’s the Argument from Ignorance.

If you’re an atheist, how would you answer this question? It wouldn’t be very open-minded of you if you said “no”, now, would it? You want to seem convincible. On the other hand, as Mehta points out in the video, you haven’t been convinced by the same 49 arguments that you’ve heard year-in, year-out, so what new thing are believers going to come up with?

It’s all a bit moot for me; even if I were convinced that the god of the Bible existed, I’d still never worship him because he’d be a homophobic, misogynistic dickbag.

But if it were that pastor asking me, I’d say “Sure. Something could convince me.” And here it is.

If:

  1. there were some occurrence, happenstance, or phenomenon for which the only explanation were a theistic one, and
  2. that explanation were well-studied, and
  3. this were well-accepted by the scientific community,

then, yes, I would probably believe it.

And this is never going to happen. Theists haven’t done the work of defining their god in a way that makes him testable. They have no interest in doing so. Like naturopaths and chiropractors, they have enough customers to keep going without doing all that work to establish real credibility.

Which really means, no, nothing as it stands could convince me. But that’s not my problem.

I did all this thinking, only to realise that I’m echoing something PZ Myers was writing about years ago. But that’s okay — if believers can come back with the same arguments time after time, then the answers will have to come back around, too.

I love your band. You’re doomed.

13 June 2013 / / Comments Off on I love your band. You’re doomed.

Hey, that was a great set! You guys are fantastic. Your sound reminds me a little of the Lilac Time. Oh, you haven’t heard of them? Right.

Look, I’ve got some bad news. I love your band! Yes, that’s usually a good thing, but you see, when I really get into a band, it means that your music appeals to bookish 40-somethings like me, and not to great numbers of young people who go to shows or buy a lot of recorded music. And that means that your appeal is probably going to be quite limited, no matter how good you are. You’re going to be critically adored, but criminally underrated. Sorry about that.

I don’t know what it is, but for some reason when I like bands, they never seem to do very well. Like this band on this t-shirt I’m wearing? Yeah, it’s too bad they were never able to break out before their guitarist quit. Great band though. You should check ’em out.

How much for one of your t-shirts? Never mind, I’ll check it out at the merch desk. Hey, thanks for the show, and keep going! I can guarantee you that whatever you release, a tiny group of middle-aged men will be ready to snap it up.

Talk the Talk: The Longest Word

11 June 2013 / / 1 Comment

For some reason, the other kids at my school thought you were smart if you could spell. And the ultra-hardest word was ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’. It was my ticket to fame, and all I had to do was spell one word.

My dad, for his part, once read somewhere that people with bigger vocabularies got paid more, and so encouraged me to learn lots of words so I’d make more money. A classic case of mistaking correlation and causation, I’m afraid. But it did start me building my empire of language podcasting and world domination, so maybe Dad was onto something there. Anyway, he thought the longest word was ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’. It’s either not the longest, or not a word, but what is? All will be answered in this week’s podcast.

There’s also something about the longest word in German, which Ben liked.

The offer stands: If you think you can pronounce any of the words in this podcast better than I can, make a video and post it!

One-off show: Here
Subscribe via iTunes: Here
Show notes: Here

Show tunes:

‘Schaufensterpuppen’ by Kraftwerk
from the album Trans-Europa Express

‘Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik’ by Outkast
from the album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

Daniel font rundown

4 June 2013 / / 1 Comment

My fonts are being used by some very creative people these days! Here are the highlights.

Here’s a logo that uses Daniel Black. It’s for the Red Mosquito Raceway, and it looks mighty sharp. (Geddit?) Nice work from Angela Panzica.

http://cargocollective.com/angelapanzica/Red-Mosquito-Raceway
https://www.facebook.com/red.mosquito.332

Ever wished you had an easy way of creating graphics in the ubiquitous Daniel font? Wish no more; the future is here. Thanks to Ryan Coons of RC Web Development.
http://fun.rcwebdev.co.uk/basicsgenerator/

And now a couple of books: First, it’s One Big Beautiful Thing by Marie Flanigan, cover art by Kristin.

Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/One-Big-Beautiful-Thing-ebook/dp/B00CM9K0PC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367517434&sr=8-1&keywords=one+big+beautiful+thing

Then there’s Vittoria Serena Dalton, who has used the Yataghan font to great effect on the cover of her book Unchanged: La Catena della Morte.

Here’s her GoodReads page. Scroll down for the book trailer. ¿Books got trailers now? Who knew.
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7104386.Vittoria_Serena_Dalton

For the rest of you who aren’t using my fonts, what’s stopping you? Certainly not the price, because they’re all freeeee from the Page of Fontery.

And if you’ve made something cool, send me an image! Email at upper right.

Talk the Talk: GIF

28 May 2013 / / 2 Comments

I’ve always called it a GIF (like ‘gift’ but with no ‘t’). That’s the only way I’ve ever heard it — on two continents, no less. But I’m aware that some people call it a ‘jif’. I guess I don’t move in those circles. But I can accept that both are okay because, hey, I can accept the validity of things I don’t actually do. What a concept!

Seriously, isn’t it weird that intelligent people can accept other people’s right to do things they don’t do themselves — eat meat, have threesomes, wear plaid — but when it comes to language, they’re like “ERADICATE THE DEVIATORS!”

Anyway, this show’s about GIF, and it’s a fun one. We even strap into the time machine and find out about the letter G.

And if that’s not enough, there’s even a blooper from today’s show.

One-off show: Here
Subscribe via iTunes: Here
Show notes: Here

Show tunes:

‘Gigantic’ by the Pixies
from the album Surfer Rosa

‘Gila’ by Beach House
from the album Devotion

Imaginary debate between a progressive liberal atheist and an anti-Islam anti-theist.

26 May 2013 / / Comments Off on Imaginary debate between a progressive liberal atheist and an anti-Islam anti-theist.

Reading Sam Harris always gets me thinking. I’m trying to figure out if Islam poses a unique threat, and what chances there for them to change. So here’s an imaginary debate I staged to help me get things straight in my own mind. There’s Person A and Person B with my own thoughts after each question. Is A a hopelessly naïve liberal, or is B an Islamophobic racist? Or both!

Tell me if I’m straw-manning anyone.

Why are Muslims doing rotten things?

A: Because they’ve lived with pre-Enlightenment values, they feel aggrieved by Western imperialism, and to compound it all, they have a religion which tolerates violence.

B: Because Islam is a uniquely violent faith, and when they engage in violence, they’re really just taking their faith seriously. This is not a bug; it’s a feature.

Me: I’m with A. Islam is definitely a contributing factor, but I think it can be domesticated, as we’ve seen with other religions.

Is there any way around it?

A: Sure. Once Muslims become educated and affluent, and join the world community, they’ll mellow out and act normal, just like violent Christians did.

B: No. This kind of behaviour is an inextricable part of Islam. It’s naive to imagine that education is going to help. The bombers and terrorists that we’ve seen have actually come from the more highly-educated groups.

Me: Christians and Jews have violent scriptures, and they’ve chilled out. Never underestimate the ability of religionists to throw core doctrines under the bus when it suits them. The trick is getting it to suit them.

What about moderate Muslims?

A: Even now we see that some Muslims are disavowing the violence that comes from their own people. They need to be encouraged so they become the norm.

B: So-called moderate Muslims will never be able to disavow the violence inherent in their religion, no matter how many disapproving noises they make. It’s moderates’ interpretation of Islam which is deviant, not the radicals’.

Me: No freakin’ clue.

What do we do about this as progressives?

A: Promote education and Enlightenment values, hoping that they’ll take. Speak out against Islam, but don’t be discriminatory against Muslims themselves.

B: Don’t let them in. They are having a radicalising effect on each other. The new generation of European Muslims are more radical than their parents.

Me: I think the current generation of Muslim immigrants are going to be the next generation of ex-Muslim atheists. Yes, some Muslims are radicalising, but I think this is a blip. I have no way of proving this, but it seems likely that these shocking cases would take up space in our minds out of proportion to their actual incidence, as they typically do. It’s normal for the first generation of immigrants to be more conservative than their parents, but over time, this changes. I hope.

Help me out, people. Your comments in comments. Religion bashing is fine, but no racism allowed.

Talk the Talk: Navajo

7 May 2013 / / 2 Comments

As language preservation efforts go, I think this one’s a keeper. Star Wars is getting the Navajo treatment. Or should I say Diné? because that’s what its speakers call it.

But there’s something even better than Star Wars — there’s also verbs. Yeah, there’s some really intense verb stuff going on. And then to round everything out, I bring up the Code Talkers. A fun show.

One-off show: Here
Subscribe via iTunes: Here
Show notes: HereShow tunes:

‘El Caminos in the West’ by Grandaddy
from the album Sumday

‘Western Eyes’ by Portishead
from the album Portishead

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