Good Reason

It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.

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Meeting one of my converts

26 December 2008 / / 6 Comments

I was an LDS missionary in the late 80s, spending two years of my life to promote superstition, magical thinking, and (worst of all) faith. The whole thing embarrasses me acutely now. I sometimes try and excuse myself; I was under the influence of well-meaning family and friends, born into a religious system that valued its own perpetuation. However, I’m pleased to say that out of all the people I taught and baptised, none is active.

Except one family. I remember them especially because of the numerous discussions we had. As a missionary, I always felt a bit paternal toward people I taught. I tried to explain things to them, convince them of church doctrine, and persuade them to accept, one by one, an ever-increasing cycle of commitments. The trick of this, I realise now, was that, once the investigator is more and more heavily invested in the Mormon Church with time, effort, and money, the more the sunk cost fallacy takes over and the harder it is for investigators to extricate themselves. You don’t believe in the Church? Then why are you doing all these things? And if they don’t get out, on the cycle goes.

I’d seen this family around church over the years, but just the other day I ran into the mom at the shopping centre. We chatted, and she asked how I was going with church. So I explained that I was no longer a member, and that I didn’t do religion anymore.

Some people have taken this with some equanimity, but not her. She was shaken. “Why not?” she asked.

Ordinarily, I’d tell someone the usual: I’d thought the whole thing was true, but eventually I realised the evidence for God wasn’t there; that science does a much better job of getting at reality; that if you have faith in something it makes you less able to think critically about it, et cetera, et cetera. But I realised that I couldn’t give my usual spiel in this situation. The roles we’d played for each other were too different. See, her main memory of me was the guy who sat in her house representing the LDS Church, convincing her to spend hours of her life in the service of this group. Now I was bailing, and she was still there. And something in her tone suggested to me that she was not too happy about that. Some people really seem to enjoy being Mormons; somehow she gave the opposite impression. But how would she ever pull the ejector seat? Could I now be the anti-missionary, or would that make me seem completely evil? The whole Mormon image-conscious bullshit thing was doing a number on my head once again.

A funny thing: I didn’t sugar-coat the facts about the Church being wrong, but I didn’t argue tooth and nail either. I wonder why I held back. Maybe I’m sick of being The Evangelist. Evangelism’s for fools. And she hadn’t asked for me to change her religion that day, just as she hadn’t asked me to change it all those years ago. Had I interfered enough? On the other hand, I cared about this person as we argued about religion there in the shopping centre. I regretted the monstrous waste of her time that I was directly responsible for. If I could start her on a process of fact-hunting, maybe she could eventually get free of an organisation that she didn’t enjoy promulgating. Or would that just put her at loggerheads with her Mormon (and in some cases RM) family? Was I proffering freedom, or conflict? What do you do?

What I did was this: I told her about my experience of leaving the LDS Church, and how worthwhile it’s been. I gave my reasons plainly. And when she tried turning the tables and invited me to a church activity, I did what she should have done all those years ago: I politely declined.

There was one thing I didn’t say that I wish I had. All those years ago, when she looked up to me as a spiritual example, it was because I said what I believed, and told the truth insofar as I knew it. And that’s what I’m still doing now. There was no reason for her to think less of me, or me of myself. Quite the contrary.

But ever since that chance meeting in the shopping centre, I have had this inescapable impression: that out of all the rotten, evil, terrible actions in my life (not that there are all that many), serving a mission for the Mormon Church was by far the worst thing I have ever done. Not only did I waste part of my life in furthering ignorance, I wasted other people’s lives too.

Only one set of footprints in the snow

23 December 2008 / / 2 Comments

Another foolish mortal mistakes the Divine Will.

The husband of an Ontario woman who went missing for three days after a blizzard and was found alive outside in frigid temperatures is calling her survival a divine miracle.

Donna Molnar, 55, disappeared Friday after going out to buy groceries. She was found Monday in a clearing near Ancaster, Ont., buried under 60 centimetres of snow.

She was in hospital Tuesday in critical condition and could lose some extremities, but is expected to survive.
…
“You know what I think, in all honesty?” David Molnar [her husband] said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “My sort of take on it is that God reached down and cradled her in His arms until they found her.”

In his freezing cold arms.

No, this is another act of malevolence from a perfectly Evil God. He tried to kill her, but her snow-burrowing and the rescue efforts of humans thwarted his evil intentions. He extracted his revenge though — it looks like she’ll lose some fingers and toes and have pain and discomfort the rest of her life. If a good god had been looking after her, he’d have found a way to keep her limbs intact. Thank goodness people were able to find her, no thanks to Evil God.

Music vs lyrics

20 December 2008 / / 5 Comments

I’ve been doing lots of Christmas music with my two choirs this week. Last week it was “An Australian Bush Christmas”, with lots of Wheeler and James. You non-Australians have probably never heard of such Christmas classics as “The Three Drovers”, “The Silver Stars Are in the Sky”, and “Sing Gloria”, which is a shame because they really are lovely carols, and very Australian. And tomorrow it’s Handel’s Messiah, which I’ve decided to perform from memory, partly because this is my 7th year and it’s about time, and partly because I don’t know which box my score is in.

Christmas music is one of my favourite things about the season, but have you noticed that the songs are very frequently about Jebus? Funny that. And it’s giving this atheist a case of the screaming jeebies. I want to enjoy it for the music, but it’s hard to do when it means you’re affirming the existence of angels, resurrection, and salvation from non-existent punishment. It’s enough to drive you to reindeer.

I mean, the Messiah is gorgeous and so fun to perform. But I kind of grit my teeth during “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth”, and I feel the incongruity especially keenly during “Since By Man Came Death”, where the choir sings “E’en so, in Christ shall all be made alive.” And I realise that I’m somehow reifying a view I think is false.

I still love Christmas, and I hope that by celebrating it, I can contribute to its secularisation. But the religious nature of it is so entrenched in all that lovely musical tradition. I suppose I’ll eventually either relax about it and capitulate, or else stop performing it.

Conversations with the Witnesses, part 1

16 December 2008 / / 2 Comments

A couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses came by today, elder gentlemen. Here’s how it went, as close as I can remember.

Stage 1: Door Approach

ME: Hi, guys! Come on in.

JW: Oh, we won’t come in. We’re with a group. But we wanted to ask you some questions about Christmas.

ME: Okay.

JW: Do you know when Jesus was born?

ME: Well, it sure wasn’t December 25th.

JW: That’s right. And do you know where Christmas traditions came from?

ME: Christians mostly just stole it from pagan rituals.

JW: Right again!

ME: W00t!

JW: Jesus never said to celebrate his birthday. We’d like to share a message about Jesus with you.

Stage 2: Hostage Negotiation

ME: Well, guys, here’s the problem. You try and stay away from pagan rituals, which is fine, but you’ve essentially traded one Bronze Age mythology for another. I prefer to stay away from mythologies altogether and stick with something more empirical, like science. Why would we want to get information about the world and the universe from people who didn’t even have telescopes?

JW: Well, in 2 Timothy 2:16, it says “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness”

(Sorry, that’s not exactly what it said. I couldn’t be bothered to find the NWT online.)

ME: So… the Bible is true because the Bible says that it’s true?

JW: (Pause.) No, it’s also true because the Bible contains predictions that have been fulfilled in every detail.

ME: Oh. Like what?

JW: It contains prophecies about the Messiah, which Jesus fulfilled.

ME: You’re serious.

JW:

ME: That’s part of the same story. You can’t use the story as evidence for the story! ‘Oh, look! A prophecy in the first part of the book… was fulfilled later on in the same book!’

I used to be a Mormon. They claim that the Book of Mormon fulfills prophecies in the Bible. But in both cases, someone could have just written down a story that tied up some loose ends. Why would you reject the Book of Mormon and accept the Bible?

Stage 3: Disengage

JW: You don’t have faith in the Bible, then?

ME: No, I’d say not.

JW: We’ll just be on our way then. But we’ll leave you this publication.

ME: Thank you very much, and enjoy the… next couple of weeks.

JW: Goodbye.

When Parowan Prophecy fails

16 December 2008 / / 2 Comments

Sure, it’s fun to see failed predictions, but you know what’s even better? Watching a very specific prediction that you know is going to fail in advance. It’s almost godlike: you get to see the certainty of the prognosticator, and you know the prediction is going to fail, but he doesn’t. Plus you get all the stages of prophecy grief — shock and anger at the lack of fulfillment, scriptural contortions and rationalisations afterward, and finally acceptance as the whole incident is (shall we say) ‘clarified’ for those who still believe.

Well, here comes just such an example now. There’s a fellow in Utah that calls himself the “Parowan Prophet”. He’s been crackpotting around for years — I remember reading about him in the 90’s — and now he’s made a splash in the news. Unfortunately, the prophet failed to predict his bandwidth needs, so yesterday his site was throwing a 509 error. Bit of a worry. Make sure to vet your prophets before trusting them with anything important, like interstate marriage legislation.

Anyway, he’s predicting that nuclear bombs will prevent Obama from taking office in January.

“I think that you should hear what my opinion about the Obama election is: that he will not be the next president. I said on my home page in August that if he lost to expect to see the ‘riots’ that 2 Peter 2:13 tells us about. He didn’t lose. But the story is not finished yet. I still think they may begin the riots before Christmas 2008, as I said.”

These riots, according to his prophecy, will encourage the “old, hard-line Soviet guard” to seize the moment and rain down nukes on the United States, killing at least 100 million of us.

You heard the man. Obama will not take office. Now what hermeneutical gymnastics will we see from P. P. and any true believers on January 20th? And how long will it take them to forget the prophecy was ever made? My prediction: three femtoseconds.

Religion and humanism in Australian schools

14 December 2008 / / 4 Comments

Compared to the USA, Australia might seem like a secular paradise. But unfortunately there are weird little pockets of godbaggery, too. In Victoria, for example, religions get access to schoolkids to promote their fictional beliefs. But now humanists will get equal time.

VICTORIAN state primary school students will soon have an alternative — religious education lessons taught by people who do not believe in God and say there is “no evidence of any supernatural power”.

The Humanist Society of Victoria has developed a curriculum, which the State Government accreditation body says it intends to approve, to deliver 30-minute lessons each week of “humanist applied ethics” to primary pupils.

Sounds interesting. I’d go.

But the Christianists are none too happy about more groups horning in on their racket.

[T]he body that accredits Victoria’s 3500 Christian religious instruction volunteers, Access Ministries, says humanism is not a religion and so should not be taught in religious education time.

This is a funny little issue. Is hum-atheism a religion or not? Here the Christians are claiming it’s not, so it shouldn’t be taught. But elsewhere when Christians are denied access to a captive school audience, they turn around and claim that atheism is a religion, and since kids are exposed to the ‘religion’ of atheism, they should also be exposed to the religion of religion.

Atheism should not be considered a religion, any more than not collecting stamps is a hobby. I can see why people would disagree though. When someone asks, “What’s your religion?” I say “I’m an atheist,” which I think of as an indirect response, but someone else might not. I suppose the most generous admission I could make is that atheism is something like a setting on the religion parameter. But that simply suggests that atheism is a certain view on religion rather than a religion itself. I think we atheists should resist the temptation to take advantage of the benefits that religions accrue. As these humanists seem to have done.

The Humanist Society does not consider itself to be a religious organisation and believes ethics have “no necessary connection with religion”. Humanists believe people are responsible for their own destiny and reject the notion of a supernatural force or God.

The hilarious part for me:

Fundamentalist Christian group the Salt Shakers panned the idea of humanists being given religious education class time.

Research director Jenny Stokes said: “If you go there, where do you stop? What about witchcraft or Satanism?

“If you accredit humanism, then those things would have an equal claim to be taught in schools.”

At last she gets it. Except she needs to start with ‘If you accredit Christianity…’. Because she’s right — if you allow one mythology to be promoted in schools, you need to promote them all. And is that what schools want to spend their time doing? If you want to promote ethics (which sounds good to me), why not have a secular curriculum that privileges no particular religion over any other? In essence, a humanist one, not a religious one.

Rejected Obama logos

13 December 2008 / / Comments Off on Rejected Obama logos

I’m a terrible logo designer, but I still like a good one. So I was pleased to find this entry on Logo Design Love about logos that the Obama campaign decided not to use. Pretty interesting to see how things could have been.

Awful quiet out there.

12 December 2008 / / 3 Comments

Forced into deception, poor things

11 December 2008 / / Comments Off on Forced into deception, poor things

This article is rather odd.

A call to give religion full voice in the public square

Because, as we all know, theocrats have had such a hard time getting any representation at all these days.


Major presidential candidates shunning evangelical Christian leader


Christians in Washington state protesting atheists putting up one sign in a public place

The article centers on the remarks of one Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a professor of religion at Princeton, which apparently is a real job.

The professor says Obama’s ode to the power of faith “as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life” reached a conclusion that actually cuts people out of public political expression or forces them to disguise their true religious motivation. Obama said,

I believe that democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal values.

Right. If you’re (say) against abortion, your religious reasons aren’t going to cut it with people who aren’t members of your church. You need to put it in (as Obama says) ‘universal values’. So what’s the problem?

Glaude said this would mean only those who argue from reason, i.e. facts or science, not from revelation, can make their case in the public square.

Oh, that we lived in such a world. People should be embarrassed to claim that the voices in your head should trump facts and science, but here is Mr Glaude unabashedly claiming exactly this.

He rejects this attempt to “tidy up” the mess of democratic conversation, saying it leads to an “unchristian result – people won’t speak the truth and will be forced to mislead to make their voices heard.”

Shorter Glaude: accept what we say without criticism or analysis — or we’ll be forced to lie to you.

Except this isn’t an un-Christian result at all. Christians routinely and habitually lie in order to get their agenda passed. Look at Proposition 8, fronted by the LDS Church, who staked the election on false and misleading claims.

[A]dvertisements for the “Yes” campaign also used hypothetical consequences of same-sex marriage, painting the specter of churches’ losing tax exempt status or people “sued for personal beliefs” or objections to same-sex marriage, claims that were made with little explanation.

Another of the advertisements used video of an elementary school field trip to a teacher’s same-sex wedding in San Francisco to reinforce the idea that same-sex marriage would be taught to young children.

“We bet the campaign on education,” Mr. Schubert said.

Or the deception of creationists, notably those involved in the famous Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. Judge Jones said in his decision:

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

And, of course, the way Christians seem to routinely portray atheists as a pack of amoral hedonists in need of salvation instead of, well, regular people.

These examples of dishonesty aren’t anomalous. Shading the facts is necessary when the facts don’t support your deeply-held worldview. But as someone who strives for reality-based living, I resent this view that we need to treat superstitious ignorance with the same regard as science and reason. It’s insulting for Glaude to say that he shouldn’t even have to try and convince non-believers. Forced to lie? No. Forced to reason.

Hungarian language police

10 December 2008 / / Comments Off on Hungarian language police

Another government tries in vain to stop language change.

Slovakia’s Ministry of Culture has proposed an amendment that would give it the right to impose fines of up to EUR 100 for poor use of the national language. The move has been prompted by a rise in bad grammar and the increasing number of English words in common use even when native alternatives exist.

‘Bad grammar’? What does that mean? Native speakers, being native speakers, have a perfect command of the grammar of their language. All right, so some dialects may deviate from the perceived standard. But why punish them? It’s going on all the time. Much of the syntax of a language goes on below the level of conscious awareness anyway.

How are they going to enforce this? Are they going to fine individuals? No, just like Iran’s recent attempt, it’s all going to fall onto the media and sign-makers.

Jozef Bednar, a spokesman for the ministry, confirmed that the proposed punishment would not apply to individuals who stumble over their language but would punish advertising copy, billboards and public signs. Representatives of the country’s large Hungarian minority have already condemned the proposal.

There’s the rub. This is an attempt to punish speakers of minority dialects, but dressed up in the guise of pedantry. Not a very attractive guise, but there you are.

Hungarian media: they’re coming down on you. You have the tools to fight back, if you want. It should be simple to find linguistic skeletons in the closets of the leaders responsible for this action. Surely some of them have used loanwords or less-desirable syntax in speeches before. To the archives! Find those quotes and demand that those leaders be fined.

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