A fascinating article on MSN today which continues my thinking about the mind, how it affects the person, how it’s your reality:

<> What It Feels Like … to Have Amnesia

I’m reading “The God Delusion” right now, and there’s a section I just read where Dawkins talks about how the brain perceives reality. There is no TRUE objectivity whatsoever when you think about it. Everything we get from our senses is filtered through the brain’s “middleware” to create what we perceive as our reality.

Sure, we can agree that light at a certain frequency may be “Red: #FF0000″. But when things get a bit complex, our brains interpret whatever signals it gets, finds patterns and shapes, and interprets them into things the cortex recognizes in its library of memory. Some of it is biologically hardwired, such as the ability to pick faces out of patterns, some of it is cultural. But the entire foundation of optical illusion is based on the fact that the brain is attempting to make sense out of unusual or mixed stimuli. The brain doesn’t like chaos, so it often forces order and pattern where there isn’t any.

All of which makes that joke quite true: “I used to think the brain was the most amazing organ in the body–until I realized what it was telling me that.”

Whatever that organ decides is “real,” we accept as reality. Everything we know and think and believe is up in that same organ that makes sense out of our experiences and sensory input. Damage and illness to the brain, from Alzheimer’s to schizophrenia, show us that our entire sense of reality can be radically skewed to where we can have complete belief and certainty in voices and hallucinations, ghostly non-reality like Alzheimer’s, or subtle and minor aberrations such as deja vu and occasionally hearing your name amidst formless noise in static or on the wind.

Carl Sagan discusses that briefly in “Demon-Haunted World”. How decades of hearing his parent’s voices he so deeply loved, he finds it not at all unusual that years after their deaths he’ll occasionally hear one of them say his name. He knows his brain has ingrained neural pathways, entrenched memories important to him, and synapses in the brain do misfire now and again sparking momentary sense recall. Some people interpret these as ghostly visitations, spiritual encounters, etc. He knows it’s imperfect neurological biochemistry–but he gets no less emotional warmth and comfort from hearing his name called by his long dead mother anyway.

The brain is a really creepy, cool thing!

A couple of other cool/weird related bits:
<> What It Feels Like: Changing Your Sex, Having Narcolepsy & Being Attacked by an Alligator
The stories about paranoia, synesthesia (sensory input mixing), and phantom limb at the end of the alligator one. (For that matter, the sex change one as well, since that also involves the mind, body, and one’s sense of reality.)

An interesting article on CNN regarding the issue of medicine’s responsibility to keep the body alive:

<> Death and dying: When is it time to let go?

And interesting quote:

“The ability of medicine to keep people alive for such long periods of time — despite their best efforts to die — has changed the way people perceive the end of life,” said Susan desJardins, a pediatric cardiologist and member of the ethics committee at Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando, Florida.

As the article mentions, this question of when, in this age of unprecedented medical ability and technology, death should be accepted and allowed a final natural and inevitable consequence was brought heavily forward in the public mind with Terri Shiavo’s case. The more medical science has the ability to keep the body alive, the more painful and tortuous this issue will become. And to complicate the issue even more, recent scientific discoveries have shown that the mind can be “dead” for quite some time before being revived–and new methods of slow resuscitation instead of quick oxygen saturated revival have helped to redefine when “death” happens.

It wasn’t that long ago when death was simply when the person stopped breathing. And very little could stop it. Medicine at one time consisted of herbs to calm stomach aches and then knives to cut off infected areas, and that’s about it. Now we can keep bodies alive indefinitely when the mind is gone, creating zombies with beating hearts. But at what value is this horrendous selfishness? The person is the mind, not the heart and lungs. When the mind is irrevocably gone, when the person is no longer, why keep the heart pumping aside from a selfish inability for the family to let go?

I can understand the feeling. The idea of my wife or child being taken from me, I don’t think I myself could go on. I can’t imagine a world which didn’t have them in it. If my wife were lying in the hospital, mind damaged beyond repair, kept alive by tubes–the pain would be too much to bear. But I realize what I love and miss would not be the internal organs of my wife, but who she is. Her mind, her personality, her personhood. And once that’s gone, she’s gone–the body is just meat.

I cannot imagine myself being kept alive while the mind is gone. To be undead like they kept Shiavo. I want to be allowed to have my body die once my mind is gone, otherwise, what’s the point? What’s the point of spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping a bag of meat alive when there’s no person inside? Why keep the pain and torment for loved ones going indefinitely, unable to move on, tied to a body in a bed with tubes in it? It makes no sense.

The science of medicine will strive to continue to keep the body alive, and well it should. Perhaps one day the efforts of science will lead to a point where we can store the mind, transfer it to another body, digitalize it, separate it from the meat and neurons. But “life” and “death” by this point should be attributed to the viability of the mind, not the automatic contraction of heart cells.

I’ve been compelled to stop being negative about religion, so it’s going to have to be cold-turkey. I tried as a New Year’s resolution, did well for a while…then utterly failed. Now I have new reasons, and that means I’m going to have to stop talking about religion altogether. Because right now in my life, religion = bad.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
– Steven Weinberg, Freethought Today, April, 2000

As this is going to have to be my last post on religion, I’m going to babble a sec’ on the topic and then present a few links to recent other blogs that I’d been wanting to comment on but have been grappling with the challenge to not be negative on religion. After this, I’m going to just focus on general skepticism and critical thinking and politics mainly. I’m also going to try to put a much bigger focus on cultural theory as it relates to modern technology and media, a la Cory Doctorow.

So, religion is evil. (Good way to start a conversation at a party….) Has religion provided good things in the world? Sure. But nothing that couldn’t exist without religion. You find feelings of joy, ecstasy, love, adoration, in all cultures and by people of all religions and no religion at all! You can find secular art as beautiful and sublime as any religious art. Without religion there would still have been the genius artist Michelangelo, except he would have painted other wonderful things than the religious themes he was commissioned to do. The poor and sick and weak have been taken care of by people of all cultures and religions and NO religion throughout time. You don’t need religion to be generous, selfless, loving, and compassionate.

Now, could you have 9/11 without religion? No. It takes religion to convince people (who aren’t sociopaths) that murder is a good thing to do. Especially mass murder. Because of religion we have sectarian civil wars in the Middle East, terrorist attacks in the west, Muslims rioting in France and murdering people in Sweden. You have murderers of abortion doctors being considered martyrs and people picketing funerals of killed servicemen proclaiming they’re burning in hell because they fought for a country that tolerates homosexuality. Religion spreads intolerance and hatred and ignorance for no other reason than because of ancient superstitious mythology.

The apologist will point to famous “secularists” such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot as examples on non-religious death and destruction. (They usually avoid people like Hitler who used religion to give his fanaticism some justification, and the Popes throughout history who encouraged burning and pillaging Crusades and murderous and destructive Inquisitions.) But I (and most humanists and secularists) find that those are also examples of religion. Stalin and Mao replaced religion based on a supernatural deity with one based on themselves. The behavior of the leaders of these secular religions, and of their followers, are just as irrational and unreasoned and devoid of critical thinking as any religion based on Yahweh, Allah, Bashtet, Odin, Zeus, etc.

One can ask, what harm is religion really? Why can’t we live and let live in our beliefs? Most religious people are caring people and not fundamentalists, be it Christian or Muslim.

Well aside from the fact that religion is fundamentally an eschewing of critical thinking and accepting of cognitive bias, the small percentage of people who are the biggest problems are the most outspoken. The grand majority of believers in a religion tend to be moderate, liberal, non-literalists. But it’s the small percentage of those who are fundamentalists that make the biggest noise, take the biggest acts, make the biggest waves. And it doesn’t take many to ruin things for everyone. History has shown time and again, whether it’s the handful of rebels who began the American Revolution or the handful or activists who began the Bolshevik Revolution or the small group of politicos who started the Nazi Party, for good or ill, it only takes a few people to make huge change. And right now we have those loud and active fundamentalists who are united, determined, focused, and willing to die for their ideology, who are making changes in society for the worse. Whether it’s eroding scientific and critical thinking in schools, preventing medical advancement and research, focusing tax money toward failed religiously based “sex-ed” programs or faith-based charities that evangelize, or send money and people to “relief” organizations in Africa who preach condoms are a sin while all around them are the ravages of AIDS and overpopulation, the religious activists are slowly bringing this country back into a modern Dark Age. Muslim fundamentalists are doing the same thing in the Middle East, Africa, and even parts of Europe.

Religious extremism IS affecting our lives and it can’t be ignored. Those who ignore it tacitly condone it–at best simply allow it to happen. Turning a blind eye until it’s too late. The moderates of a religion give the extremists permission to spread their hate and lunacy by shrugging their shoulders and saying, “Well sure, cousin Osama and cousin Reverend Phelps are crazy and violent, but well, what can ya do. We believe in the same god, after all. They may hate in god’s name, I may love in god’s name, but it’s the same book we get our religion from–so I can’t criticize it too much or my own religious beliefs will come crashing down too.”

While I’m enjoying a pleasant and fun-filled evening with my family at a late night Harry Potter release party at Barnes & Noble, along with many other people blithely unaware of what some other people are doing, like this:

And this isn’t a rare sentiment. This film segment comes from the documentary “Jesus Camp,” a film scarier than any horror flick–because it’s real. Thousands of people attend this and other camps like it, where kids are being trained and indoctrinated into the violent and intolerant world of reactionary fundamental activism. Where they train to become figurative and literal warriors for god against the evils of society. OK, so these warriors don’t carry AK-47′s and grenades like their radical Muslim counterparts (thank goodness!) but the ideology is the same. You listen to the words of these preachers and indoctrinators as they talk about Old Testament punishments for the wicked and sinful society, and you know they wish they could wage war on sin with guns and bombs.

Then you have things like this:

where these very popular religious leaders, which contort and pervert American history to their unquestioning believers, who say they don’t want a theocracy when asked directly, make statements all the time about infusing religion into politics, government, public policy. Controlling people’s public life. And they have cadres of followers who are more willing to fight and vote for such change than there are people who actively want to prevent an American Talibhan.

The goal would be to get rid of all religions, supernatural based and secular. And replace it with reasoned critical thinking. Unfortunately, we humans have evolved to be religious. So far. Our minds have evolved to accept supernatural cause-and-effect. The desire to follow leaders and authority. To believe in something bigger than ourselves. This is seen in ALL of humanity in all cultures and places and points in time. There have been over 2400 distinct gods invented by humans. This isn’t proof of the existence of god(s), but in the incredible creativity of the human mind, our being sentient, our curiosity and desire to have explanations for things we don’t understand. Our cognitive biases served us well as we evolved. Allowed us to recognize the cause of an effect. To learn rudimentary “science” that helped us track and hunt, and avoid and escape danger.

Will we ever evolve beyond the need for religion? I don’t know. Maybe, hopefully. We live in a world now where it’s no longer enough to be frightened of shadows and make gross generalizations and assumptions regarding cause and effect. We live in a world of complex and convoluted social construction much more dangerous on a larger scale than our quasi-primate minds have been capable of truly and effectively handling. Our actions can potentially affect thousands, millions of people. One person and the right circumstance can affect billions of others. Mass communication, mass transit, mass populations living together and coming in contact with each other–we can’t afford to continue to think and reason like people living pre-history. The world changes too fast, power over people, enormous numbers of people, changes hands too fast, to not use every capacity of reason and critical thinking. From protecting yourself and your family against pseudoscience like homeopathy and spirit healing to the charismatic minister that uses artful rhetoric to convince you that a minority (be it gays, uppity women, or evil atheists) are to be eliminated–critical thinking must be utilized if we are to survive in this ever increasingly volatile world! We can’t afford to assume that we can believe and let believe and everything can be OK when our belief is the same foundation for someone else’s hatred and intolerance and drive for power and control over others. The “moderate Christian,” the “moderate Muslim,” are as guilty as the extremist when their un-examined beliefs provide the continued basis and justification for those who do harm in the name of the same god. And Wicca and paganism and “peaceful earth religions” are as well guilty for spreading and encouraging pseudo-scientific ignorance and idiocy that gives people justification for harming their children and others through dangerous herbal, “spiritual,” “natural” remedies to ailments instead of actually effective modern medicine. (Or create harm where there was none before.)

There’s nothing that religion provides that reality can’t. The reality of science and scientific discovery is more amazing and truly awesome than any religious explanation for phenomena or descriptions of god. Joy and wonder and peace can all be found in the reality around us: family and friends, our children, nature, art, discovery. Morality and ethics is not the monopoly of religion, and certainly no one religion! Charity and goodness and self-sacrifice have always been around as long as there’s humanity, and is found all over the world and in places untouched by human-personified religions, like the Abrahamic religions. You don’t need the terrorism of threat of eternal damnation to be a “good” person–in fact, it’s a more honest, natural ethic that is found in the person who does good for good’s sake rather than under the threat of a religious punishment.

And so I am anti-theist. Religion does more harm than good and poisons all it touches. Whatever benefits and positives that can be found in religion and its believers, can exist without religion–and ultimately be better because of it.
I guess that’s the last thing I’m going to say on the subject.

Now for some clearing out of some links I’ve been meaning to comment on:

<> Evolving Moral Standards Are Evidence Against the God of the Bible
   This is an excellent post by John W. Loftus regarding how despite the exclamations of Christians, god’s morality has constantly evolved over time. From Old Testament to New, through the centuries, to today. The supposed morality of the believer today is quite different from the Christian morality of the NT, and fundamentally different than the OT.

I’ve been posting comments on this entry, (I’m “Mechphisto.”) My comments have indeed been quite negative on there, and very cutting. But, I think does away with any B.S. and gets right to the heart of the issues with no pussyfooting or holding back on the criticism of the intellectual dishonesty found in religious belief.

<> Atheist Manifesto
   A blogger on The Secular Outpost posted this article explaining why he’s an atheist. He does a good job addressing the reasons why believers believe there’s a god, and explains why he disagrees or their points are invalid. (Actually, all the believers’ points are invalid as they have the burden of proof, and it’s not the disbeliever that is required to validate their points. Everyone is born atheist and are indoctrinated into their family’s religion. The atheist has the default position, and the believer has to do the validating.)

<> Argument By Analogy
   This blog post on Skeptico: Critical thinking for an irrational world, does a great job investigating the tactic of using analogies to make a point. It’s not a bad thing to do, in fact, it’s very helpful and positive when used correctly. But all too often the appeal of an analogy in an argument is terribly twisted misused. Intelligent Designers like Michael Behe misuse analogy constantly when they try to compare the universe and life itself to the non-changing, non-dynamic, non-reproducing designed objects like watches and statues. (How the heck did Behe get his biology degree?!)

<> The Ebon Musings-DJ Grothe Debate: Is Atheism a Civil Rights Issue?
   There’s some debate out there regarding atheists being an abused minority. On the one hand you have polls in which most Americans would rather vote for a a gay black woman for president than they would an atheist. (Don’t get me wrong, yea for the gay black woman!) That atheists are currently the most despised people in America.
On the other side of the debate, atheists don’t have to worry about only earning .77 on the dollar in the workforce, haven’t been lynched or forced to ride the back of the bus, or are prevented from marrying (so long as it’s the opposite gender.)

I see both sides have a point. Atheists are hated in America and they shouldn’t. Some organizations that track religious tolerance and freedom of expression can point to many cases of kids being harassed and even expelled from schools based on their atheism. Atheists are socially abused, and even if less than other minorities in some ways (more in other), it shouldn’t be. Not in a free country. That’s all I have to say about that.

Marc Fisher has a blog on the Washington Post site:
<> Secret Buildings You May Not Photograph, Part 643
Seems as though you can’t know what buildings you can photograph, but if you photograph one of these places you aren’t allowed to know you can’t photograph, you’re investigated by the Gestapo and have a permanent federal dossier made on you.
The Cold War is over, and the Soviets won via the terrorists.

Double Dragon
From: Felinfoel Brewery Company, Ltd. in United Kingdom (Wales)
Style: English Pale Ale
overall: 4.2
appearance: 5 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | mouthfeel: 4.5 | drinkability: 3.5

A- Deep rich amber. Clear, but rich! Beautiful thick tan head. Stays a good couple, few minutes. Leaves a nice lacing on the glass and layer on top.
Almost too pretty to drink.

S- A slightly sour, sweet scent. Some savory fruit, like peach or apricot. Something a little grassy, or woodsy, but not spicy or of any herb per se.

T- Also sweet/sour. Not very bitter, hoppy. A little malty, but mixes well with the sweet for a nice balance.

M- Very nice, medium-bodied. Creamy but doesn’t linger too long. Doesn’t sour the back of the palate.

D- Rich enough to fill you up. You know you’ve had a good, solid beer. But quite drinkable, almost refreshing.

[ serving type: bottle ]
[ read my review ]

This is my penultimate religious post. Meaning, I have one last post in the works that deals with religion, after which, I hope to stop outright and focus on other areas of interest.

Not long ago I posted a link to John Loftus’ postings on the problem of evil, and how “evil” in the world disproves the existence of the Christian god. (Or any loving, caring, merciful, involved god.) Here: Suffering God, here: God is a Bad Parent and Pet Owner, and here: Extent of Suffering In Our World Makes the Existence of God Implausible.
He continues this theme with his latest post:
<> The Fall of Adam Is No Answer to the Problem of Evil

He makes some very compelling, logical, intelligent arguments against the validity of the concept of original sin and an Original Fall being an explanation for “evil” in the world. It’s also a good summary of many of the overarching arguments against the existence of a loving and fatherly god and the world that exists.

Thanks to “Classically Liberal,” and their post: Stop the Big Brother State, I came across this great video that gives a clear look at the true nature of the surveillance state we’re living in–getting worse all the time.

Lee Randolph at Debunking Christianity has an interesting post today:
<> Reasonable Doubt About the Holy Spirit
In it he establishes what the general Christian belief in the Holy Spirit entails. What the Holy Spirit is, what its “job” is. And according to scripture, one of its jobs is:

P1a. The Holy Spirit is God
P1b. God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc.
P2. The Holy Spirit informs the Unbeliever as to the truth of Jesus when being told about it.
P3a. The Holy Spirit is in every Christian
P3b. Every Christian Accepts Christ
P3c. Every Christian should be favorable to Holy Spirit Influence.
P4. The Holy Spirit helped write the scripture
P5. The Holy Spirit helps interpret the scripture
P6. The Holy Spirit gives understanding (informs).

Lee examines these supposed truisms about the Holy Spirit and applies them to various conditions and situations in reality and comes up with some interesting problems. A couple of the situations include:

Tom Becomes an Apostate:

3a. If Tom has the potential to be influenced by the Holy Spirit when Evan tells him about Jesus, Tom should recognize the truth and accept Christ. He does and learns more about the bible and Christianity. He has questions that are not resolved in his mind. He makes no conscious decision to disbelieve anything that he thought was rational. Everything that bothered him, bothered him exactly because he thought it didn’t make sense. He becomes an apostate later in life, living happily ever after. Was the Holy Spirit giving him guidance to cause him to find fault in the Bible or Christianity? If not, then if the Holy Spirit was giving him guidance and it didn’t make sense to him then is he culpable when he rejects Christianity on those grounds? On the other hand how do you love something you have doubts about? If he grudgingly keeps professing his faith, gods not going to be fooled and he’s as good as an apostate.
.
or the opposite situation happens
.
Tom Hangs Onto His Belief Despite Doubts:
3b. If Tom has the potential to be influenced by the Holy Spirit when Evan tells him about Jesus, Tom should recognize the truth and accept Christ. He does and learns more about the bible and Christianity. He has questions that are not resolved in his mind and he makes no conscious decision to disbelieve anything that he thought made sense. Everything that bothered him, bothered him exactly because he thought it didn’t make sense. He wrestles with these questions for the rest of his life professing his faith and NOT living happily ever after. Was the Holy Spirit giving him guidance to cause him to find fault in the Bible or Christianity? If not, how is it that the Holy Spirit didn’t intervene on behalf of itself to the point that he would not have to make a choice to disregard conflicting information that he honestly believed was valid? Here is a link to a DC article called “Christians Who Struggle With Serious Doubts” that talks about this.

Now, your average conservative, evangelical, or fundamentalist Christian will rationalize why the Holy Spirit doesn’t stay and change the heart of the person who encounters Christianity and disbelieves, nor calm the fears and doubts of those who do believe but question and examine, by doing what all other cults and believers in supernatural events and pseudoscience do:

Blame the victim.

No, the power of God/Holy Spirit/Krishna/alien angel fairies are unquestionable and all-powerful (even though there is no evidence, proof, or logical reason why it should be believed so). So obviously, if you fail to believe/don’t find the answer/can’t hear the voice/the ritual fails to work, the problem must be in you for not having enough faith.

But Lee goes a step further and takes a look at the bigger picture. Not just in the failings of the individual to come to the “right” conclusions and interpretations, but entire denominations. He makes a list of the many various Christian religions and denominations there are, who all believe in some form of Yahweh and his “son” Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. And he ponders how it can be that is the job of the Holy Spirit is to enter the heart and mind of the believer, and to help in the understanding of God’s/his/its Word, how there can be such huge discrepancy in how the scripture in interpreted and put into practice–all in God’s name.

Since it seems apparent that the Holy Spirit does not help interpret scripture or give understanding, Reasonable Doubt about the Holy Spirit is justified.

Hemant Mehta of The Friendly Atheist has a post today that started a really fascinating, thought-provoking thread:

<> The Trolley Problem

He doesn’t say much in the post; the importantly thing is that he links to a clip of an episode of The American Life dealing with moral choices. Here’s what he links to: Link. The part in question starts about 5 minutes in, and the entire show is interesting. But the “trolley” part is an only 10 minute abridged version of an entire “WNYC’s Radio Labs” episode on morality found here:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/28
I highly recommend listening to it. They discuss the development of morality, ethics. Both through evolutionary development within our species as well as the finer points of ethics we learn as we grow up.

Listen to that program, and I dare you not to think. Ponder. Contemplate. What does it mean to be “moral”? Where do we get our morals? Nothing more I can say here can add to what this fascinating program says. Go listen now.

But, for my opinions, I will continue for you masochists. Some of the points made: general morality, don’t murder, don’t steal, share, cooperate, are behaviors we share with our primate cousins. These are general, innate social behaviors we have evolved because they help us and they aid our survival as a species. As social groups. Anyone who studies or watches chimps for five minutes can see behavior in these often violent animals that we would call “ethical” and wouldn’t seem “natural” to animals. Behaviors which we find “light up” the more primitive, emotional regions of our brains when looked at by neuralscanning devices when the subject is asked moral dilemma questions. When we are posed with situational questions that require logical reasoning and “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, the frontal lobes of our brain, the uniquely human regions, become active–especially when those choices include actions that might be “remote” acts of “evil”. Such as flipping a switch that causes the death of one person to save a few people.

But, when the choices require “evil” acts that are more direct, more “primitive,” such as directly killing a person by your own hand in order to save more people, the whole brain lights up in activity as the various parts duke it out. The logical, analytical human brain and the emotional, primitive “monkey-brain” that screams “No! Killing is Wrong!”

And I find myself thinking, isn’t that ironic. The more primitive parts of our brain that we share with the chimps is the part that tells us general morality. Don’t kill; cooperate. It’s our uniquely human brain part, the part that “separates us from animals,” that allows us to rationalize possible “evil” acts if it’s for the betterment of more people. What would religious people say to this? People who refuse to accept evolution as a fact? When neurologists, biologists, anthropologists, psychologists all say that our capacity for ethical behaviors is biological, evolved in us for the betterment of the species, they’re ready to say, “OK, thank you science, for pointing that out–we’ll take that as proof that God has given us humans the ability for ethics above the animals.” But when you point out “Wait. Basic morality we think of as ‘absolute’ is actually the part of ethics we share with our differently evolved primate cousins,” then they no longer accept science and refuse to accept reality.

The program also has a section involving children and the development of ethical behavior. How kids develop from being little sociopaths to ethical humans through empathy. Through seeing the results of their actions and internalizing them. Interestingly, the section also has an audio essay about a woman who’s sense of ethics were highly informed as a kid during the fall-out from a rather nasty game of “Homestead”. her, and her later compatriots in the game, started a trend of uber-capitalism in this economics role-playing simulation game, that got to the point of incredibly unethical behavior that ended up having to be stopped. And her defense: “But, you never said we couldn’t do X, and I was winning the game.” And in addition to the lesson on morality, this also made me think of true capitalism. Where profit is the entire motive for all capitalist ideology, and anything goes so long as it makes profit. Capitalism is devoid of ethics. It is economics inherently without any sense of morality. It is abuse and extortion as its core for the purpose of material gain–and this child’s game presented this truism in its purist form without pretense. Nothing, so long as it’s run from the profit-motive, can be ethical.

But that’s my take–not the show’s.

A Republican Congressman, Sen. David Vitter, was recently outed as a customer of prostitution:

<> Prostitute degrades self by banging moralistic Senator
(That article has a fantastic essay on the way in which fundamentalist Christians view sexual morality and the disconnect between ethics and “purity”.)
<> CNN article on Vitter

Sen. Vitter has been an outspoken proponent of “family values” and protecting the “sanctity of marriage.” He’s tried to enact Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and legislate morality (as he sees it.)

Now, here’s the thing. Here is why libertarians and liberals alike celebrate tragic falls and public embarrassments like his and former mega-church preacher and anti-homosexuality chest-beater Ted Haggard: They make it their personal crusade to force their supposed morality and sexual ethics upon everyone. They try to create laws making private, personal choices about sex and marriage criminal, based on their ancient religious views. So when it’s revealed they don’t practice what they preach, their public hypocrisy becomes entertainment for those of us who know their skewed and ancient phobic superstitious ideas of morality are wrong and impossible for society at large.

For myself, if Vitter and Haggard had kept their ideas of “sanctity of marriage” and public homophobia to themselves, kept it a private matter, said “This is what I believe, and I personally live my life by–but I have no interest in trying to force others to live as I do,” then their falls would have been sad, but private matters. I would feel, “Well, shame for Vitter. He’s human, and makes mistakes, as we all do. Hope things go better for him.” But since he’s made it his standard to tell, even legislate, how other people should live their lives by his proclaimed beliefs, he doesn’t get the privilege of shrugged shoulders and sympathy. I want to feel sorry for Ted Haggard. Here’s someone who was probably born gay, and into a family and culture that beat into him that he’s fundamentally evil and “bad.” Sin incarnate for who he was born as. And all his life he’s run from his true self and ran into the delusion of religious belief and embraced homophobia and doth protested too much to escape and hide. But instead of living the life of honesty and personal fulfillment, his religion forced him into a sham marriage and secret, shameful gay relationships and escapist drug use. I want to feel pity for him, but for his public image of gay-hating, morality enforcing absolutism he tried to impose upon other people.

Everyone has the right to live the life they think is right. Vitter has the right to try to live his marriage sanctity type of life, and even try to justify having “dirty sex” with prostitutes his pure and chaste wife was spared having to endure. Whether he succeeds or fails at his ideas of morality remains their private, personal business. It becomes a matter of public hypocrisy and embarrassment and subject of cruel taunting rebuke when you have tried to force your beliefs your don’t yourself follow, upon everyone else and proclaim with shouts and vigor that this is the one right and true way everyone must live.

When one remarks, as I have in past blogs and on others’ blogs, and more educated and intelligent people such as Christopher Hitchens remark, that religion is fundamentally harmful and the world would be better off without it *, one of the few counters I hear is how religion is responsible for charity and food kitchens and homeless shelters and whatnot–without religion (specifically Christianity,) this would not be.

Bullhockey. That’s a patently untruth. People were taking care of the “least among them” for centuries before organized religion, in all cultures and places. From Celtic Ireland to deep Africa, people took care of each other. Once The Church took over greater Europe, the charity work it controlled wasn’t an addition to a culture, but rather an administrative and organizational change in a behavior that already existed. Where there’s need, people will fulfill it. If The Church and its megalomaniacal control of everything didn’t exist as villages and tribes and small town began to grow and people started to spread out and become more “urban,” people would STILL have filled the need for shelters and kitchens and charities–as they do in all cultures and faiths.

Chad Orzel, blogger of Uncertain Principles, has a post today:
<> Atheist Charity Results
where he posts 11 of the results of his search for specifically non-religious charities that focus on the poor and hungry, are international, and push no political or (non)religion agenda.

I bet, unlike a lot of the Christian charities, they don’t proselytize are part of their charity or teach people in disease and overpopulation stricken areas that condoms are a sin.

* Think about this: Without religion, would 9/11 have been possible? Would it have been as easy as it was to get 10 people together and willingly murder-suicide? To paraphrase a Nobel Prize winner: “Regardless of religion, good people will want to do good, and bad people will want to do bad. But for good people to want to do bad, that takes religion.”

Lee Randolph at Debunking Christianity has a brief post today regarding “the scientific method is just common sense formalized”,
<> You Don’t Need Faith to Believe The Principle of Evolution
It’s a brief little post, but does a good job debunking the idea that evolution, or any scientifically proven principle, needs to be believed or taken on faith like a religion. Like Carl Sagan said when asked whether he believed in alien life, it’s not a matter of belief–they either do or don’t exist, chances are good they do, but we have no proof as yet. In short, we don’t know, and one shouldn’t think with their gut. (To paraphrase.)

Check out the post; good stuff.