Good Reason

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Coffee with a liberal Christian

26 January 2012 / / 3 Comments

I recently had coffee with a Christian friend, and the subject was religion. I was all geared up for battle, but he had to go and spoil it all by being a non-fundamentalist non-loony liberal Christian, and a good guy whose conversation I quite enjoyed! ¿What fun is that?, I ask you.

Not being a fundamentalist means that he avoided making strong claims, and he didn’t have to defend so many indefensible things. He doesn’t hate gay people, thinks that not every part of the Bible is meant as history, and recognises the difficulty in discerning the intentions of biblical authors. Wouldn’t it be somewhat better if more Christians were like this?

The one thing he kept saying, though, in response to my questions was: “I don’t know.” Was the flood literal? Will people get resurrected in some form after death? He didn’t know. And he seemed rather relaxed about that.

It’s good to say when you don’t know, if you don’t. People should do that in the sciences, too. But if there’s something you don’t know and it’s a scientific question, you can find out by experimentation and observation. If it’s a religious or metaphysical question, what do you do? Interpret inconsistent texts? Try to have a revelation? Those approaches have only ever yielded contradictory results. Metaphysical questions can’t be resolved by observing physical reality, which is why every religion has a different answer to metaphysical questions. There’s no court of appeal. Notice the difference between religion and science. Scientists eventually reach consensus; religions come to schism.

My Christian friend was honest about not knowing. What I wanted to communicate was that religions don’t provide a reliable way to know. And they really should, if they’re going to claim that they have the answers to life big questions.

The man who made too much sense

22 January 2012 / / 1 Comment

I’m a Yellow Dog Democrat — I’d vote for a yellow dog in the road before I’d vote for a Republican — but I’m kind of bummed out about the end of the Huntsman campaign. Not because it signals the end of moderate Republicans; those days are long gone.

From what I saw of Huntsman, he was a smart guy who took his party to task for ignoring science. He believed the science on climate change (although he seemed to backtrack a little). He didn’t take his Mormon religion too seriously. And he had foreign policy experience. Unlike other Republicans, who were either evil (Gingrich), stupid (Santorum), crazy (Bachmann), or a mix of the three, Huntsman stood out as a sane person. No wonder he only ever polled in the single digits with Republican voters.

Could it be that he was a guy I could have voted for, under the right circumstances? Naw, there are lots of yellow dogs out there. But I would have had something other than a beer with him. And if by some chance he had won, I’d think, well, maybe this won’t be a disaster.

Big Dog gets the last word:

ESQUIRE: It’s remarkable that there would have been a time in living memory when someone like Jon Huntsman would have been regarded as the most conservative candidate in the field. Maybe even unacceptably conservative. But because of his insistence on having a grown-up discourse, he’s somehow seen as a moderate.

CLINTON: Huntsman’s economic record — and his positions on the abortion issue and other things — is every bit as conservative and considerably more consistent than the two front-runners’. But he also doesn’t make any bones about being willing to work with people and thinking you ought to put your country first. When the president asks you to serve — to go to China, and you speak Mandarin Chinese and you think you can help American business and America’s national strategic interest by doing it — you do it.

But all of a sudden that’s disqualifying. So I think that it shows you, we’re, you know, we’re living in a time when the Republicans have only pushed harder and harder to the right. And every time the president adopts a plan that they once advocated, they abandon it and push farther to the right. But the voters can push them back.

Red Flags of Quackery

18 January 2012 / / 1 Comment

Let me be the last to share this wonderful guide to detecting BS. It’s the Red Flags of Quackery.

Just a taste:

This may not be the last word on woo, but there will always be things missing. The artist would have needed to create a patchwork about the size of a football field to include every bad rationale that the woosters are capable of pulling out. But the one I would have included is this:

Pestering people at airports — for science!

14 January 2012 / / 4 Comments

I like to find out stuff by listening to people who know more than I do. And when they’re stuck in a line with me, this is what happens.

Pronounce that sign

3 January 2012 / / Comments Off on Pronounce that sign

I really like the bilingual signs in Canada. It’s good for English speakers to be reminded that English isn’t the only language in the entire world. (Remember: Republicans made fun of John Kerry because he spoke French. What kind of president would he be?!)

But while driving through British Columbia, I saw a bilingual sign, and French wasn’t the other language. Here’s the sign, snorfed from Wikipedia.

So what’s the language? Why the accents and lines? And what is a ‘7’ doing in the middle of a word?

The Wikipedia page for the Squamish language answered most of my questions. The language is known as ‘Sḵwx̱wú7mesh’ (or the more Anglicised ‘Squamish’). It was first documented by no less than the legendary anthropologist Franz Boas. Sadly, it appears that only about 15 native speakers remain. I don’t know if those 15 speakers do a lot of driving, but I’m glad the signs are up anyway.

So, to the characters:

The ‘7’ is a glottal stop. That’s the sound that Cockney speakers use in the middle of ‘bottle’ or ‘mental’. I use it in the middle of ‘uh-oh’ or (a little strangely) ‘hot water’. A real glottal stop looks like this: ʔ. I don’t see anything on my keyboard that looks more like a glottal stop than the 7 does, except the question mark, which would be even more confusing, so I guess 7 was a good choice.

The ‘k’ and the ‘x’ with lines under them are just like a regular ‘k’ or ‘x’ (the latter of which which we don’t have in English — think ‘ch’ as in Scottish ‘loch’), but they’re farther back in the throat. You have to take it all the way back to your uvula, also known as ‘the hangy down thing in your throat’. Just make a ‘k’ sound as if you’re choking. (Why do they make sounds in such strange places? Oh, everyone does in one way or another. We have a ‘th’ sound in English, which other people think is weird.)

What about the ‘k’ with an apostrophe? That’s the exciting one for me. It’s an ejective. Usually we make the ‘k’ sound with a puff of air, but the ejective ‘k’ is different. To make an ejective ‘k’, just hold your breath, and without letting it out, make a ‘k’ sound as best you can. That’s ejective ‘k’.

Finally, if a vowel has an apostrophe after it, that just means that vowel takes the stress.

There you have it — Squamish phonology. Or more appropriately, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh phonology.

Getting an early start on the War on Xmas

1 January 2012 / / 7 Comments

I couldn’t believe it. There I was watching the NYE festivities, waiting for the ball to drop, and Cee-Lo Green is doing a version of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. Hm, thought I, a secular song. Wonder if he’ll tamper with it. And, sure enough, instead of “and no religion too”, he decides to slide in “and all religion’s true”.

How does that work? “Imagine there’s no heaven… And all religion’s true.” All religion can’t be true! They teach mutually incompatible, multiply contradicting things.

Couldn’t we just have one atheist song performed in public this holiday season? You know, all Xmas long, I sang songs about Jebus, and I wasn’t that happy about it, especially because Xtianity is not the whole point of Xmas. But I sang them anyway, words intact. And fuckers in the USA can’t even play an atheistic song straight. Seriously, fuck you, Cee-Lo Green, even though I don’t know who you are. You’re a horrible singer.

That does it. Now I’m going to give Xtians the War on Xmas they always thought they were getting. Tooth and nail. Anybody says anything remotely religious around me, I’m going to tell them they’re a deluded fool. It’s war.

Another thing. Someone asks me if I want to go to church on Xmas, I’m going to tell them they are wasting their time in that place. I went this year, and I was nice about it. No more. What’s the two things that apologists always say in defense of religion? They have great music, and they have great architecture. Well, I went to church, and the music was excruciating, and it was being done to me in a horrible featureless suburban church building. Fuck you, Mormon church.

In a year, all the religious people will thank me for speaking out and helping them see how they were wrong. If not, fuck them anyway. Fuck cultural deism, fuck Xmas carols, and fuck default Xtianity.

This is the new me.

Why do Mormons cut Christmas services short if they fall on a Sunday?

27 December 2011 / / 5 Comments

Nobody asked:

Dear Daniel: In other churches, people go to church on Christmas. There’s a Christmas Eve service at midnight, another in the morning, and maybe even again that night! It’s all they do! But Mormons seem to do it differently. They don’t go to church at all on Christmas if it’s not on a Sunday, and if it is, they actually reduce the length of the meetings. Why do Latter-day Saints do it this way?

Dear Nobody:

It’s because Mormons secretly loathe and detest their church meetings, and look for any way to avoid them if they have anything better to do. And who can blame them? Between the well-meaning but excruciating ward choir numbers, amateurish talks, infantile lesson manuals, and other people’s screechy children, many Mormons are under the (probably correct) impression that their meetings are the worst part of being in the church.

The Mormon method of worship has a lot to do with this. At their meetings, Mormons try to ‘feel the Spirit’. This essentially involves boring themselves into a quasi-meditative state in which any sensation they feel is assumed to be the Holy Ghost. No wonder they gratefully escape when there’s an opportunity to do something fun with family.

As for other churches, they ramp up their Christmas services because they secretly loathe and detest themselves.

Tim Minchin’s Xmas song: Woody Allen Jesus

22 December 2011 / / 5 Comments

If you liked “White Wine in the Sun“, you’ll be sure to enjoy his new offering for the season: Woody Allen Jesus.

Sadly cut from the Jonathan Ross show, due to an unscheduled failure of courage from some contemptible executive.

Dollar coins

22 December 2011 / / 2 Comments

Americans: Y u no like dollar coins?

The U.S. government, its vaults stuffed with 1.4 billion one-dollar coins bearing the likenesses of dead presidents, has had enough of them. It is going to curtail production.

“Nobody wants them,” Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday. That is for sure: The Mint says there are enough $1 coins sitting in Federal Reserve vaults to meet demand for a decade, and the inventory was on track to hit two billion by 2016.

More than 40 percent of the coins that are minted are returned to the government unwanted, the Treasury said. The rest apparently sit in vending machines — one of the few places they are widely used — or in the drawers of coin collectors.

Dollar bills are kind of dumb. They only last somewhere around 18 months to 3 years (estimates vary), whereas coins last for decades, making them more cost effective. But people are inertia-driven critters — they won’t use coins until paper is phased out. That’s something that would take more political will than US politicians seem to have, because they’re also inertia-driven critters.

But dollar coins are used in other countries (like Australia), and they’re great! Make them gold in colour, a little heavier, different from other coins, and they’re a fine upstanding member of your numismatic repertoire — something you’d be proud to have in your pocket.

Unlike pennies. Thin, and not worth the trouble. Seriously, Americans: You don’t like dollar coins, but you still use pennies? Really?

Ex-Mormon tries coffee

20 December 2011 / / 10 Comments

Even though I’m no longer a Mormon, I still act like one in some ways. I still haven’t drunk alcohol (ever). Never smoked or tried illegal drugs. I guess arbitrary religious rules can exert quite a hold on one, especially rules pertaining to food and drink. Or maybe I was just never curious. Either way, breaking the Mormon “Word of Wisdom” still seems terribly transgressive. Sex before marriage? Yes, please. Deny the holy ghost? Why not? But trying coffee? Whoa, that’s really out there. Totally badass, yo.

Miss Perfect, my girlfriend/partner/fiancée, does drink coffee, and at a café once I timidly ventured a slurp of her demon drink. I say “demon drink” because it tasted like it came out of the ass of one of the legions of hell. No, wait — you know how you burn an entire pot of beans, and then you have to labouriously scrape it out to clean it? It tasted like the water at the bottom of the pot.

“That wasn’t very good coffee,” said she.

I thought it was probably a flawed concept from the beginning. Sure, you could make it taste okay if you added enough sugar and milk. But as Sandra Boynton said of carob, the same argument could be convincingly advanced in favour of dirt. I thought I’d stick to chocolate as my bean derivative of choice.

But I kept taking the occasional slurp (and making the occasional face). Some people say you can push past it. It got better.

And so when we found ourselves in Seattle, we sat down with a Starbucks latté and a Cinnabon, and I found myself sampling more than usual of the brew. The aroma reminded me of supermarket trips when I would eye the forbidden coffee beans (lined up in plexiglas containers, singing their tiny sirens’ song) with trepidation and fascination. And this time the taste, bitter by design, was just right for cutting the extreme sweetness of the sticky buttery bun. Complementary.

I could never do a whole cup though.

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