A fun episode of the Talk the Talk podcast today. I slapped some headphones on Joe, and had him speak into my iPhone, which was set to play back everything he said, but about 200 ms later. It’s all part of a discussion about a speech-jamming gun invented by Japanese researchers.
We also revisit “slut”, thanks (or no thanks) to Rush Limbaugh’s “slut” comment last week.
Subscribe to us on iTunes. Show notes, as always, on our Talk the Talk page.
This happened pretty much verbatim, until the part where I talk to them together. From there I made it up.
There’s an amazingly clueless blog post on the Millennial Star about Mormon proxy baptism, in which author Geoff B. helpfully instructs people on
How to respond when a church says it is baptizing your dead
His response is: What’s the harm? If we think that it’s just a silly ceremony, then no harm done. Why, we should be glad that they took the time to do something nice for our ancestors. What a thoughtful gesture! We should send flowers and a nice note.
The whole post (and subsequent comments) show the signs of having been written by someone who thinks their church is wonderful, that eveything they do in the service of their church is an unalloyed good, and that they are therefore incapable of overreach.
Let’s back up a bit. What’s the deal with Mormon proxy ordinances? If you haven’t heard about it from Bill Maher or Stephen Colbert, read on.
There’s a tough problem in Christianity: Everybody who has ever lived needs to accept Jeebus through baptism, but what about people who lived before him? Do they go to hell? Does god give them a pass if they were nice? Or what? Mormons have resolved this problem in a very creative and time-consuming way: they collect names from genealogical records, dunk each other while thinking of a person’s name, and then pretend that the person gets to choose to accept the ordinance in the afterlife. I think this is a terribly creative solution to a knotty problem in Christianity, and the fact that it’s such an elaborate work-around to a problem that god should have really thought of before is a testament to
a) the theological difficulty of the problem
b) the creative genius of Joseph Smith, and
c) the lengths people will go to in the service of their silly religions.
Mormons think this work is incredibly important, even quoting Malachi:
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
Ponder for a second. The earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, serving as the habitat for trillions of creatures who have lived and died on it. And Mormons think that if they don’t sit in the dark and extract names from squeaky microfilm readers and then necrodunk each other, it’s all for naught, and Jeebus will smite us all with a curse. What a horrible lack of perspective.
One nice effect of proxy work (from the point of view of head office in Salt Lake City) is that it keeps Mormons coming back to the temples (and paying tithing) as often as possible. Perhaps this is why there doesn’t seem to be much attention paid to dunking everyone only once. Anne Frank, for instance, has been baptised at least nine times.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned enough in connection with all of this is that it isn’t just baptism. Mormons perform the full range of church ordinances on the deceased, including the ‘washing and anointing’, temple sealings, and something called the ‘endowment’, in which Mormons wear clothes that look like this:
All right, so what’s the harm in all this? As mundane as this sounds, I think it’s a boundary issue. Yes, Mormons make the audacious claim that everyone needs to be a Mormon, and yes, it’s annoying, but if people want to make the choice to be Mormons themselves, so be it. But to many people, monkeying around with someone else’s religious status post mortem seems just a mite invasive.
Some people like their faith tradition. They’ve had it for years. They might identify as X even though they never do anything X. These things seem to matter. So for a non-believer, the idea that unrelated peopole could hijack your ancestors, and aid them in becoming a part of some completely different faith tradition (and there’s not a thing you can do about it) is deeply unsettling. It rubs people the wrong way, and because it involves performing a symbolic act upon a deceased member of someone else’s family, it’s a particularly egregious way to rub someone the wrong way. That Mormons don’t seem to comprehend why anyone would object to this is indictive of their insularity and cluelessness, and perhaps they would benefit from pondering how they’d feel if someone tried to make their deceased relatives gay or something.
Back to Anne Frank. Mormons have copped flak for baptising Jews killed in the Holocaust. For Jews, there’s an extra layer of ouchiness. See, Mormons think that Israel is a chosen people, and by believing in Jesus (as they think the Jews should have done), they become a part of Israel — the Israel that god always intended. They take Paul at his word when he said that they would become “grafted in” to the olive tree. To show how seriously they take this, Mormons even assign themselves to one of the tribes of Israel. In a ritual called a “patriarchal blessing”, an older Mormon gentleman lays his hands on your head, does some free associating and cold reading, and makes predictions about the rest of your life. Mormons think it’s personal scripture, straight from god. And during the blessing, the partriarch names which specific tribe of Israel you’re from. I was from Ephraim, like every white guy, but I’ve known people allegedly from Dan, Manasseh, and even Levi. It’s all BS, but it shows just how much Mormons want to co-opt the whole Israelite thing, and claim it for their own. And therein lies the ouchiness. Mormons think they’re Israel in ways that Jews are not, not fully. And the only way Jews can be Israel-for-reals is to go through the Mormon Church. So converting Jews to make them Mormons — Israel in the latter days — seems like, if not ethnic cleansing, ethnic supplanting.
So if Mormons reading this could get one thing out of it, it would be that symbolism matters, and the posthumous Mormonising could be seen not as a nice gesture, but as a gesture of hostility and of religious and cultural imperialism. Does it do anything metaphysical? No. Is it an antagonising gesture? Yes.
UPDATE: Seriously, check out the unapologetic comments on the post. The commenters are unapologetic about carrying out what is, after all, one of the main aims of the church. To do otherwise would be disobedient to their god. It shows how people under the influence of religion don’t play well with others. And it explains why the Mormon Church can’t be honest when it gets caught at this kind of thing, and “promises” to knock it off.
It was Orientation Day on campus. People can sign up for clubs (including the UWA Atheist and Skeptic Society), and there are always tons of church groups doing their schtick. So I like to see what’s out there.
Here’s a conversation I had. It went pretty much just like this.
It’s funny when people try to use Cyrillic letters as Roman ones. I understand why they do it — for English speakers, Russian has acquired connotations of militarism and toughness. And people have been tossing in the odd Cyrillic character for a long time.
But when you actually know how to read Cyrillic script, it’s a little jarring. Here’s a movie poster that sidled up next to me at a traffic light this morning.
See, the Д that they have standing in for an ‘A’ is actually a /d/ sound, and the Я is a vowel that sounds like ‘ya’. Also, that Ц covering for the ‘U’ is the sound of /ts/ in ‘tsar’.
So really, the movie’s title should be pronounced ‘The Ddyakest Hotsr’. Or ‘Notsr’ if the ‘H’ has an /n/ sound, as Cyrillic Н does.
But let’s not be pedantic. We’re stuck with it now. We’ll be seeing posters, ads, and maybe even action figures in Toys ‘Ya’ Us.
While reading a post on Wheat and Tares, I tripped over this term: “inspired fiction”. I decided I’ve been ignoring it long enough.
If you want to be a Mormon, but you don’t think that the Book of Mormon is literally true, you could call it “inspired fiction”. This means that instead of thinking Joseph Smith made up a bunch of stories that aren’t true, God told Joseph Smith to make up a bunch of stories that aren’t true. (What’s the difference? Well, if God does it, it’s all right, you see.)
When I see someone taking this tack, it’s like they’re saying, “Oh, of course the Emperor has no socks, but the rest of his couture is exquisite!” It’s a partial credit situation; points for realising it’s not true, but demerits for going along with it anyway. Call me crazy, but it matters to me if my beliefs are true. If it’s not true, I don’t have time for it.
What about the idea that, although not true, the stories in the Book of Mormon are good moral stories that can help you to live a better life? That’s where it all comes down. The Book of Mormon’s a terrible guide for moral living! Here’s what you’ll find:
and that’s just off the top of my head.
Are there no other fictional books that people could use as a guide for life? Of course there are, but it doesn’t really matter to these people — I suspect the reason they’ve mistaken this awful book for a guide is that either they’re tied to it by their social group, or maybe they enjoyed reading it and believing in it once, and they can’t bear to relinquish it completely. Which is kind of sad. I can understand if someone thinks these stories are a literal true account of the dealings of a cruel god that they have no choice but to obey — who can say how they’d act in a hostage situation? But imagine not thinking this stuff is true, and digging on it anyway. Somehow I think that’s worse.
Dear New Age Friend,
I’ve just noticed that, next to all your comments, Facebook helpfully said we had ’18 mutual friends’, which means we’re no longer ‘friends’, which I guess means you’ve unfriended me. Boo.
Was it something I said? Was it that post where I showed how psychics use cold reading to guess things about people? Was it the one where I explained how ouija boards work? Oh, I know. It was the one where you said that we “create our own reality”, and I asked you if people who get terminal illnesses have somehow created their own reality.
Why did I comment? Well, let’s face it — I’m kind of annoying. If someone says something wrong on the Internet, I like to get in there and set things straight, like that ever works.
But there’s more. Deception pisses me off. I saw that you were getting tricked by phony psychics, buying “inspirational” books by screwy swamis, relying on astrology and numerology to guide your life. You’re getting cheated, and I hated to see that happen to you. I think I was hoping that if I gave good information, something would happen and you’d start thinking a little more critically. Guess not.
Our exchanges fell into a predictable pattern. You’d never address my comments directly, but instead you’d post some quote by Osho in new-age passive-aggressive style, like:
“The day you think you know, your death has happened – because now there will be no wonder and no joy and no surprise. Now you will live a dead life.”
Or you’d bristle at my ‘tone’, which is another way of ignoring someone’s argument.
Or else you’d say that it was wrong to talk sense and reason because I wasn’t “respecting” everyone’s points of view. It’s a funny thing about respect: People whose views are the most tenuous seem to demand most vociferously that those views be respected. What you didn’t seem to realise was that not all points of view deserve respect. Ideas deserve respect in proportion to the amount of evidence that supports them. As for me, I don’t want my views to be respected. Slash away! If they’re wrong, I’ll change them, and I’ll thank you for helping me.
You insisted that it was important to keep an open mind, and it is — when the facts aren’t available. When they are, it makes no sense to “keep an open mind” — that’s like choosing between information and ignorance. It’s true that we need to stay open to new facts, but you weren’t even open to the facts we have.
Admittedly, you played nicer than your friends. They’re the ones who put “science” in quotes. I’ve noticed that they got nastier the more money they appeared to be making off of new age woo. When science didn’t support their views, they acted as though all of science itself was wrong instead of them. They are really dishonest people, and you should have nothing to do with them.
Maybe I pushed you too hard. I wasn’t relentless, and I didn’t comment on everything you posted, but I did try to give good information. I’m an educator — that’s what I do. When I thought you were credulous, I tried to be grounded. When you spread woo-woo, I suggested that there might be another explanation. I guess I intruded too much on your idea of a world where anything was possible, and where mysteries are supposed to stay mysterious.
Religious people are posting this image on their walls and pages unironically as an inspirational photo.
What they’re missing is that the pic (‘shopped, natch) is actually a reference to the infamous and incomprehensibly gross ‘goatse’ image. If you don’t know what that is, don’t look it up. Just check out the Snopes page, or use your imagination: Instead of hands stretching a hole in the clouds, think ‘giant gaping rectum’.
I think the ‘goatse cloud’ image might be a perfect analogy (sorry) for religion in general. Some people find inspiration in it, but it’s just something that someone made up. There’s nobody in the sky, but if there were, he’d be a huge asshole.
Singing makes you more attractive. (Singing well, anyway.) And you don’t even have to be a human. Even now, tiny mice are singing their ear-splitting ditties to impress potential mates.
Their initial studies, the first to study song in wild mice, confirmed that males emit songs when they encounter a females’ scent and that females are attracted to the songs. The scientists also found that females can tell apart their brothers from unrelated males by their songs – even though they had previously never heard their brothers sing.
We already know that birds use song to impress mates, and now mice. What about people?
There are two main hypotheses about how language began in humans. The one that gets the most play is the gestural (or mirror) hypothesis, as articulated by Michael Arbib, which goes something like this:
But it’s not clear from this how we make the move from gesture to speech.
The other main hypothesis is that human language started from music. This was Darwin’s favoured hypothesis, and it’s found a new advocate in W. Tecumseh Fitch (who I interviewed for an episode of ‘Talk the Talk‘).
For this one,
This could have been the beginning of representing things that aren’t around, which, again, is necessary for language. And it explains the use of the vocal channel.
So, mice. They sing. They use their songs to attract mates. They can tell each other apart by voice. All very languagy. It’s not just birds.
Even though both gesture and music were probably big factors in human language at the same time, I think this tips things toward the music hypothesis.
The big news in atheism this week: Alain de Botton wants to build an atheist temple. Which seems strange — atheism isn’t a religion, so why would it need to borrow religion’s trappings? I think de Botton tipped his hand, though, in this pronouncement:
The philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is proposing to build a 46-metre tower to celebrate a ”new atheism” as an antidote to what he describes as Richard Dawkins’s ”aggressive” and ”destructive” approach to non-belief.
Rather than attack religion, Mr de Botton said he wants to borrow the idea of awe-inspiring buildings that give people a better sense of perspective on life.
”Normally a temple is to Jesus, Mary or Buddha but you can build a temple to anything that’s positive and good,” he said. ”That could mean a temple to love, friendship, calm or perspective … Because of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, atheism has become known as a destructive force.”
Destructive force? For me, Dawkins and Hitchens are two guys who have come to epitomise well-tempered reason, intelligence, and courage in the face of mortality, so de Botton’s criticism doesn’t ring true for me. I’d like to suggest a little test which I’ll call the S.E. Cupp test: When someone says they’re an atheist, do they spend more time promoting atheism, or castigating other atheists because of their tone? If the latter, then what’s the difference between them and a theist?
Dawkins has called the project a waste of funds, PZ says it’s a monument to hubris.
Me? I say it’s redundant. We already have a temple. I was there earlier this month. Or, at least, at one of them.
The atheist temple I went to was the Temple of Knowledge, and it’s better known as the New York Public Library.
Why would I call it an atheist temple? Because it’s filled with the work of people. People; not gods. People (and you can see them there every day) engaged in the process of gathering knowledge and combining it to make new knowledge. This is the goal of science, which is an atheistic form of reasoning.
And the people who built this place — yeah, they were tycoons who made their money from the skins of small furry animals. But they wanted to build a place where the knowledge of the world could be preserved, and they cared enough to make it amazing. And they inscribed this on the walls, in letters big enough for anyone to read:
I read that, and I think, you know, they got it. They really got it! Even back then. Our society depends on education. Our freedom depends on it. You can’t preserve freedom in a population of ignoramuses; they’ll just tear it down again the instant they feel afraid. It’s such an alien concept in this age, when one political party has dedicated itself to the destruction of the Department of Education, and (through homeschooling) constantly works to undermine the public school system so that children will be protected from education. It seems like a quaint and noble sentiment, but we need to relearn this thinking that came from better minds than ours. Just as we need another quaint and antiquated notion symbolised by libraries: the public good.
But that’s not all I saw. There were treasures.
These are clay tokens with cuneiform on them, some of the earliest writing that people ever used. That made it possible for people to transmit knowledge over generations.
And while I was in this Library, I felt so connected to people in other ages and to the future. It was a feeling that I can only describe as spiritual, even though I don’t like that word. But it was the same feeling that I felt in the old religion but more intense and meaningful.
You can keep your paltry theist cathedrals. Do not copy Mormon temples — they are monuments to superstition and foolishness. Let St Patrick’s fall. Instead, build a library, Mr de Botton, or an observatory, or a university, or a museum. They’re the only temples that atheists have any business building.
Actually, St. Patrick’s will make a very nice reading room in about 100 years.
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