What is Truth and what is God?

I do know that some people do look down on Science Fiction as a genre, but I find this speech compelling.

Agnosticism, a way appease everyone and not have to argue, or a valid point of view?

I am conflicted when it comes to Agnosticism. Wikipedia defines Agnosticism as the philosophical position stating that the world is unknowable and certainty is impossible.

This position is entirely true, and also entirely useless to me.

If one wishes to get pedantic enough, one can state with all honesty that nothing is knowable in the truest sense of the word, but take this to it's logical conclusion and see how it breaks down.

Imagine meeting someone on the street and asking someone what time is it, and they response that they are agnostic about time and are not sure time is real or not so they therefore cannot give you an answer with absolute certainty. I press them farther and say I don't need an answer with absolute certainty, just tell me what time you believe it is, and they reply they cannot tell me with certainty so therefore they have no opinion one way of the other.

I hope to an outside observer you can see how frustrating this can be, and this is how I feel when someone claims to be an agnostic.

Saying you are an agnostic is making a factual statement about how knowable the universe is.

Saying your an atheist is making an opinion statement that the claims about the existence of god made by others are found lacking and not credible.

Unless you are some kind of uncaring robot, you will have an opinion about the existence of god no matter how loudly you proclaim agnosticism, and your actions speak louder then your words.

Do you actively go to a church or temple or mosque to worship?

Do you pray?

Do you live your life by the rules written in a holy book?

If it walks like an atheist, talks like an atheist, and doesn't worship like an atheist, why do we call it anything else besides atheist?

I can think of a few reasons why people would shun the atheist label and self identify as agnostic, but they are all practical reasons that make dealing with theists easier, and that feels intellectually hollow to me.

I'm not here to tell people that they can't call themselves agnostic, but I just wanted it know that, to me, hearing someone self label as agnostic instead of atheist is on par with a christian claiming to be non-religious because they have a relationship with god instead and that christianity is a philosophy instead of a religion.

I could be completely wrong about this topic, but at least I'm willing to state my opinion.

The Atheist Power Vacuum

We won the war, now what?

That seems to be the issue with atheism on the internet these days. Years ago, religion was either dominate or immune to criticism on much of the internet.

Those days are now long gone, and in most popular areas of the internet, religion has no pass and criticism is instant and blunt.

It was the hard work of atheists that made this happen. We had an enemy, and we united to fight this enemy on all fronts, and the good news is we won.

That just leaves the question, so what now?

We are like an empire that just defeated the largest rival in town, which you think would be good for atheism as a group, but instead, it just removed the one thing that kept atheists united.

Without a “Them” to fight, what does that mean for “Us”?

In my recent studying of Roman history, it seems clear that once Rome defeated Carthage, the internal power struggles in Rome became much more of an issue, and civil war was a constant threat. Yet, before the fall of Carthage, the Roman Empire was quite united.

It seems that in the face of a threat, people are much more willing to put aside small differences and join in common cause against the common enemy, but once the enemy is defeated, the willingness to put aside small differences is greatly reduced.

Without a common threat to keep atheists united, we are left with a power vacuum.

So we see the birth of Atheism+, as an attempt to create a new enemy. Instead of fighting religious injustice, they fight social injustice, and it seems to baffle the follows of Atheism+ why everyone doesn't jump on the band wagon.

We also see the rise of the unaligned atheists, better known as the slime pit by its detractors.

The unaligned atheists seem to have no desire to move atheism beyond the simple fight against religious injustice, and they reject all attempts to turn atheism into Atheism+.

So when people like PZ Myers and Rebecca Watson proclaim that atheism alone isn’t enough and we need Atheism+ (which they just happen to be unofficial, de facto leaders of), the unaligned atheists reject that and claim that PZ and Rebecca are trying to co-opt the atheism movement for their own pet projects.

This then gives rise to Thunderf00t and Justin Vacula who stand in opposition to Atheist+ and the unaligned flock to their banner. We see yet again, that in the face of a threat, people put aside small differences to join in common cause against the enemy.

And just like that, atheists have a new enemy, each other.

We can fall back into old habits and just cross out the word religion and replace it with the slime pit, or Atheism+ and its back to business as usual.

The players change, but the game stays the same.

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people"

I hear this a lot on different websites that debate feminism and other related topics, and something about that statement seems disingenuous.

If feminism is the radical notion that women are people, then is not communism the radical notion that workers have rights? Is Christianity the radical notion that God loves us? Is capitalism the radical notion that people are rational? Is Mormonism the radical notion that family is important?

To break down an entire political movement to a single radical notion seem to be, at the very least, dishonest.

Not only that, but then using this radical notion to smear others feels very self serving. Its a tactic I see far to often used by those who cannot argue based on the facts, and instead appeal to emotion

If you see a problem with "you are either with us, or with the terrorists" or with the phrase "why do you hate freedom?", but you have no issue with "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people", then you need to check your blind spot.

Google Trends

After watching a recent Thunderf00t video where he uses Google Trends to chart the popularity of PZ Myers, I decided that I wanted to have a look at few other people with Google Trends

Here is a comparison between Thunderf00t, PZ Myers, The Amazing Atheist, Rebecca Watson, and The Nostalgic Critic as a control.

Here is the results when comparing web search:


As you can see PZ does win out with Rebecca Watson as a close second

Then I compared YouTube search:


And here it is very clear that Thunderf00t and The Amazing Atheist are well in the lead.

And finally, I compared by image search:


As you can see, there is no contest, it is all Rebecca Watson.

I must admit, that does make me pause for a moment. Other then a tiny blip for The Amazing Atheist (which I think is related to a banana incident) Rebecca Watson is the only person to even have an average higher then zero.

It seems clear that web searchers prefer PZ Myers and Rebecca Watson, YouTube searchers prefer Thunderf00t and The Amazing Atheist, and by a very large margin, image searchers prefer Rebecca Watson.

I am not sure what conclusion to draw from this

The Pycon Incident

I have seen a lot of blog posts and reddit threads about the Pycon incident, I assume that if you are reading this, you know about the incident and I can avoid the recap.

The more I think about this, the more I am conflicted.

I don't want to think that every spoken word needs to be filtered, especially in a joke between friends. What crazy 1984 world would we be living in if we need to self censor 24 hours a day or risk unemployment or worse.

On the other hand, if I was in her position and I heard a joke that mocked Atheists, I would perhaps take mild offense.

However, I have no idea what the joke even was.

Jokes are on a spectrum, at one end we get knock knock jokes and why did the chicken cross the road. At the other end of the spectrum, we have dead baby jokes and holocaust jokes.

Where on the spectrum did this joke lay?

Was the joke something like "wow that rep is hot, she gets my dongle hard and I would love to fork her"

Or was it closer to "check out that hot ass bitch, hope she likes a dongle up the ass while we rape her and pass her around for a good forking"

I think the distinction matters.

Was this joke that no normally prudent person would think was offensive, or was it the kind of joke you apologize for right after saying?

If the joke was truly offensive, then I can sympathize with her. Jewish people don't need to stand by and hear a holocaust joke and say nothing, black people don't need to hear nigger jokes and stay silent.

If the joke was just juvenile between friends, then I have no sympathy for her. Just because some people want to bubble wrap the world, doesn't mean we need to put up with it.

So in the end, I have no idea what to think.

Either 2 men told a horrible joke that would make george carlin blush and this brave woman stood up to these men, and now she is paying the price for her courage

Or 2 innocent men were telling an innocent joke and someone who sees offense in everything decided that her twitter followers would jump on the band wagon and be offended with her.

I can't tell who is right and who is wrong with this, so I use no names to help avoid slandering someone who does not deserve it.

In the end, all I can take from this is; be careful what you joke about, be careful of the pictures you tweet

So more self censorship... Great, just what the world needs.


- Sent From My Blackberry

Equality and Valentine's day

"You can be equal and still want to be treated like a princess once in a while"

I read the quote above in a Time article named 'Valentine's Day: Why Consumers Aren't Feeling the Love'

The article had many other interesting facts about this holiday:

1) Men will average $108 on gifts for their spouses or significant others, while women will spend $53

2) Guys seem to spend handsomely mainly to avoid being in the dog house with their partner

3) When I asked eight middle-aged married businessmen at a Toronto airport lounge about Valentine's Day gifts for their wives, there were groans and eye rolls all around. Yet all were of the opinion that a gift was obligatory. "Just to make sure" was the most common reason given for buying a gift.

This article does not paint a very good picture of this holiday, especially for the men involved, but what about the women involved?

"It's nice, but it's not a big deal," said Isabel, 23. Still, she admitted the pressure is mostly on guys, and that she likes being pampered. "You can be equal and still want to be treated like a princess once in a while."

So let's break down the reasoning of this thinking. Apparently equality is fine as long as you sometimes get treated as more then equal.

Imagine if the roles were reversed

If women spent twice as much as men, and men said "you can be equal and still want to be treated like a prince once in a while", how would we react to this holiday?

I wonder...


- Sent From My Blackberry