Incoherent!

I know I've talked about it before, but I'm going to do it again, damnit.

In the world of truth and justification, there are... actually, I don't know why we combine truth and justification. While, yes, it's true that if we could ascertain what is true we would be perfectly justified. So, in that sense, a quest for truth coincidentally ends with the attainment of justification.

But even if you disagree on all other points, you have to admit that absolute truth has yet to be attained as we speak, and as such it seems reasonable to separate truth and justification.

But regardless, in truth and justification, there are two opposing views: coherentism and foundationalism. In coherentism, a person is justified in a belief if that belief is coherent with their current set of beliefs. This leads to some interesting problems, such as if I live in a bubble and have never seen grass, I can say that grass is purple and be justified in the coherentist view. I actually don't see any reason to say this is even a problem. I think it's perfectly acceptable to say that anyone is justified in a belief if they have no beliefs in contradiction with that.

As an outside observer, we can say a belief in purple grass is wrong, but we know that because of other beliefs. And remember, saying it's unreasonable to believe anything without evidence, such as of purple grass in the yard, is a belief itself that affects our entire system of beliefs. In the bubble example, you must also eliminate beliefs like skepticism and empiricism. If I only have two beliefs, hypothetically, of purple grass and cows that bark, both beliefs are justified. They aren't neccessarily true, but there's some major problems with that.

What's true? I can define very well what it is to be justified in a coherentist view: no beliefs contradict. It's that simple. Nothing else must be assumed. No deductive or inductive connections must be made between them, because that implies a more complex set of processes going on than just coherency. DO any two beliefs result in a logical contradiction? If one does, then the assumption must be made that the idea which contradicts the fewest beliefs must be held up as justified.

But for foundationalism, they must be positively concerned with truth. But what is true? What makes the statement "grass is green" true? Does it correspond to reality? Well what does that mean? Correspond to our perceptions of reality? Or to actual reality. What's reality?! I don't mean to fly off into some bizarre and esoteric philosophical black hole, but you can see why the nature of foundationalism is difficult to accept, for me. Coherentism is simple and requires nothing more than our beliefs. It requires no sense perception; no sight, hearing, or taste. It only requires beliefs of any nature and a lack of logical contradiction.

And even if we are to say that for useful applications of a coherentist theory, such as in science, the size and complexity of the underlying belief set must be judged to be adequate, that itself is a belief. A belief that affects all other beliefs in a system that makes us question what we see and know that it, because of our limitations, results in an inherent and irrevocably non-zero chance that our belief system will be incoherent in the future. This is science! And look at what that's done for us.

For example, archaeologists were perfectly justified in believing that dinosaurs looked a particular way in the salad days of the science in the 1800's. We now know that they were wrong, or at least less accurate than we are. In all likelihood, we will discover that we are totally inaccurate on some aspects of our beliefs, but that doesn't mean we aren't justified in those beliefs now. That's why scientific theories are so strong. They are coherent beliefs that do not contradict lots and lots of other experimentally confirmed beliefs. We can feel decently secure in them because if a contradictory belief does arise, it must also contradict all of the other beliefs and as I mentioned earlier, whichever belief contradicts the most beliefs must be held the most suspect.

That doesn't mean that one contradictory idea isn't the right idea. Einstein's theory of special relativity was like that, but it resulted in a massive, new scientific system that is even more coherent than the old one.

I also disregard the argument that a larger coherent system is more likely to be correct than a smaller system. I think any coherent system is equally justified. What we add to our own system is a belief that if a belief system is large, it's better than one that is small because in the past larger belief systems, for example scientific theories, have proven to be accurate. That itself is a belief that must be included in our belief system that is based on things other than raw beliefs. It includes sense perception, and interactions with our environment. We're not talking about experiment. We're talking about beliefs and nothing more.

In many cases, we have coherent systems of belief that are perfectly coherent with the world, equal in size and complexity, but completely contradictory. There are cases of this in theoretical physics and mathematics all the time. Again, I don't see any problems here. You just continue building up coherent beliefs in both systems until one falls apart. Again, that happens in math and physics all the time. Personally, I also think cases like those happen because of our own problems in divvying up reality into packets of information called numbers.

So I find problems with all arguments against practical coherentism. The scientific argument, where we need to define justification outside of mere non-contradiction, implies the application of a skeptical stance which is itself a belief that results in a non-coherent belief system when certain parameters have been met, e.g. a belief system of insufficient size. If we remove that scientific belief, our belief system is totally coherent.

Obviously, that sort of "scientific" coherentism, where beliefs are of low justification when nascent, is very useful for everyday use, but it requires a belief on top of the raw belief system that affects the entirety of the system. For example, I am sitting at a table and believe my foot is now mauve. It is totally coherent for me to believe that my foot has spontaneously turned mauve. But I have other beliefs which make me doubt that. I've never seen a foot turn mauve. Bodily systems would prevent it.

As such, I believe that feet never turn spontaneously mauve. This belief is non-contradictory with all of my other beliefs. If I then look and see that my foot has turned mauve, after calling a doctor, I must reassess my belief system. Where is the contradiction happening? Perhaps my friend secretly painted my foot while I wasn't looking. Perhaps I missed a recent scientific article documenting the thousands of previously unknown cases of mauve feet.

In all but the most extreme case, the scientific system is not thrown away because the system is so large and throwing it away would result in countless contradictions. So in the end, I fall back to a raw coherentist quest. I must find where the contradiction is taking place. My scientific system says feet do not turn mauve, so my first order of business is to acquire new beliefs that help to explain the seeming contradiction.

There is one more attack that foundationalists can muster, namely that our confidence in our own beliefs is in fact a foundation that coherentists implicitly rely upon. Nonsense, says I!

There is a concept in psychology stating that there is no homunculus. This neo-foundationalist implies a homunculus, where a little person exists somewhere in the mind which is inherently separate from body, memory, and even beliefs. That we are separate from our body is acceptable. If I lose my arms and legs, I am still me. That we are separate from our memories is a bit less acceptable, but still adequate. If I forget everything, the effects of my memories on me can remain, so I am still here even if I forget most everything about my past. But separating "me" from my beliefs is distilling "me" down to something that's basically non-existent.

I think that beliefs about beliefs, so-called metabeliefs, are not a special class of belief. If I say "I believe in God," then say "I believe I believe in God," is not only needlessly repetitive, but also problematic. How do I know I'm holding a belief about a belief? Am I merely holding a belief about a memory of a belief? And if that's the case, memories are subject to the skeptical argument, and as such cannot be foundational.

And even if we say that our beliefs are the foundation we can trust, it doesn't matter. Foundationalism is a quest for truth, not justification. Cogito ergo sum is a foundationalist statement. It is a logically self-sufficient statement. Saying "I know what I think" is a statement of startlingly little power. It cannot be used as a foundation because I think it's only slightly disconnected from just saying "I think what I think." And even if it is a powerful statement about knowing what I know, how does that extend to be a foundation upon which to build knowledge? It doesn't. Unless we want to take the position that reality is merely our experience of it, a phenomenalist approach, knowing what we know is just that. It has no connection with reality which is what truth is supposedly after.

Coherentism is real. It's what we use on a day-to-day basis. It can be taught, learned, and applied. Foundationalism, and in fact any other system of justification, fails. By sticking to coherentism in justification it gains power in the real world. It succeeds in science and in law.

Protect the Children!

I've ranted about people pushing agendas by saying we need to protect children from various evils roaming about the world with the sole purpose of hurting our children. Generally, once the agitprop of child protection is stripped away, the reality of the situation is, if not outright wrong, shaky.

Well, the children aren't the only thing that apparently needs protecting, it's the populous. That poor, stupid, ignorant populous that is so easily harmed by evil ideas.

I got started on this thought line after visiting the page on Wikipedia of banned books. It makes me feel very good that on the list, the books that were banned in the US either faded away or were directly overturned by the courts. It reminds me why the US actually is the best country on Earth. A mandated respect of freedom is written into our laws.

Many countries are, in many ways, technically freer than the US. But none of them have the laws negating the possibility of censorship. Laws that make the profound assumption that no ideas or creations can be harmful. Nowhere else on Earth is that found.

I think that any country or social order that feels the need to censor anything is a fundamentally weak social order. If mere words are an actual threat to the persistence of that social order, it should, for lack of a better word, die. Maybe it doesn't have to die in some cataclysmic way, such as the USSR, but it must die and give way to a different foundation that is stronger.

In the US, in every case, censorship has been defeated. Fear and intolerance has faded in favor of rational thought, in both a legal and everyday sense. We have had our mistakes. The Red Scare is the biggest one I can think of. But Lenny Bruce is a close second. But even decades after Bruce's death, we can't help but look back and correct our mistakes. He was pardoned in 2003. And the Red Scare is now, rightfully, seen as one of the US's darkest hours. A time when we were so scared and so stupid, that we ruined countless people's lives.

But in other countries, even today, we have ongoing censorship. Germany bans any Nazi literature, demonstrations, or groups. Australia has a nasty penchant for banning video games. And we have de facto censorship in many countries, such as Germany, where publications, movies, or games are not technically banned, but "restricted." Only those restrictions are so oppressive that they effectively prevent any sales from taking place. Such as not allowing a display or advertising of the product, and the product's existence is only allowed to be revealed if the customer already knows about it and directly asks. That means that countries such as this; countries that are otherwise seen as Western and cultured, are weak and inferior in a very deep, foundational way.

And while I think it is an obvious statement to say that countries that have made a habit of banning things in the past have been weak countries (USSR, Guatemala, etc.) I don't think people who call for the banning of things in this country think in that way. That what they are saying is that our country is weak and that our people are weak. I not only take them to task for explaining how, exactly, that is the case, but I also say that they are downright unamerican for making such a statement. We are nothing without our freedom, and the most basic element of freedom is to think and say what we want.

A Life Well Lived

Much of religion is something I wouldn't want. Hayy Ibn Yaqzan lived in a cave contemplating God. He hardly ever ate. He bordered on being a vegetable.

The entire point of a monk's existence was to hang around doing nothing more than contemplating God. Just look at Saint Benedict! He may not have actually become some cave-dwelling hermit, but that doesn't matter. He's portrayed as doing that and having been all the more pious for it. Again, the ideal is the same.

I wouldn't want that. No one would want that! I would rather be cursed to a life without a connection to God and actually get stuff done. I want to build things, write stories, and paint pictures. I would rather live a life of pain and achievement than ecstasy and inactivity.

In the same way, the prospect of falling from Grace rankles me. Who wouldn't WANT to be out of the garden of Eden. I want to grow my food. I want to shepherd my animals. Who is God to say we cannot have knowledge. Our greatest asset is our mind. No knowledge is bad. If I live in damnation, so be it. I'll be happy for the rest of time knowing that it is not God, but I who defined my life in whatever meager way I'm capable of doing.

What a ridiculous God when all of the interesting people are damned. And that's a fact. Janis Joplin? Damned. Oscar Wilde? Damned. Most of our Presidents are likely damned. The entire team behind the Manhattan project? Oh boy are they fucked. How is God the highest form of anything.

Goodness, wisdom, power. God is the purest Good. Living like some weird ghoul in a cave seems absolutely antithetical to that God. Goodness comes from action, not some blissful vegetative state. Wisdom comes in life, not in a cave. And power comes from understanding, and that must necessarily include God's creation as well as God's nature.

Any parent doesn't want their child to be reverent and obedient. While that classical idea of children seen and unheard remains, that's an exaggeration. No good parent would ever want that. Good parents want their children to leave, to grow, and to succeed on their own. A child returning to the nest is a failure, not a goal. And any good parent wants their child to exceed them. They want to child to be faster, stronger, smarter, and achieve more. They want the absolute best for them. God must want that. He wants us to to exceed Him. If God is infinite, so shall we be.

I would rather, and I'm being serious, face an eternity of damnation for even a short period of true freedom on Earth. And if that means turning my back on God, so be it. I'm happier for it. Any God that requires my reverence, my supplication, and my obedience is a tiny God indeed.

Cake. They Want Cake.

There was a fantastic article in the New York Times Magazine about female desire last Sunday, the 1st. It was a generally insightful article with lots of perspectives, or as many perspectives as could be wedged into a relatively short space.

But perhaps the best part were the responses. Generally, even in the Times, the letters section is a wasteland of idiotic ranting and people who think they have something to say. This one was notably different. The insights of the writers were a profound addition to the original body of the work. I enjoyed reading every one, even the obligatory feminist rant.

Thankfully, the Times also posts the letters section. If you're prompted to "sign up" for the times (It's free! Like, yay!) and you don't want to, go to http://www.bugmenot.com and get yourself a sign in.

May of the responses highlighted the difficulty in separating innate sexual drives and culture. It's obvious that what is and isn't attractive can vary greatly from culture to culture. In some cultures fat is hot, and in others, it's thin. Hairy, not hairy. Broad and stout, willowy. But certain characteristics transcend culture. It's very difficult to say we know which is which with certainty.

A couple of them targeted the claim that female sexuality is narcissistic, or females are not specifically desirous, themselves, but want to be the object of desire. The first response, from Aruna D’Souza, and the third, from Dalma Heyn, both highlight that women may not be specifically narcissistic, only that in a world dominated by female-oriented imagery, women must respond in a way that connects their sexuality with the male-dominated sexuality of the outside world.

Heyn specifically mentions that the Times' own choice to litter the article about female sexuality with images of females, which is an assumed male perspective, as opposed to images of males, or an assumed female perspective, illustrates the social problem.

I think this is a biting insight, but I respond with the Cosmo argument. Cosmo magazine is written by women for women. As such, it can certainly maintain and perpetuate stereotypes, social expectations, and all sorts of negative psychological constructs, but one would expect it to cater to the underlying, primal psychological makeup of women to sell magazines. Even here, the magazine is filled with images of women. Obviously, there are a few men, but it's primarily women.

Granted, the same goes for the counterpoint to Cosmo, Men's Health. It's filled from cover to cover with images of ripped men. Still, the male market has a litany of lad-mags, such as Maxim, FHM, and Stuff, which cater almost exclusively to male sexuality. And what is that? Lots of hot babes in skimpy clothing. There is no analog for females. There is no Maxette Magazine that's loaded with images of men. Playgirl magazine failed and is now basically soft-core porn for gay men.

If there was an underlying driver, even if it was squelched by culture and society, I just don't think that these magazines would have behaved in this way. Playgirl would not have failed. And there would be something that vaguely resembles a female Maxim on the market. Yet here we are, with all of the female oriented magazines filled with images of women.

So while I'm unsure of the narcissistic theory of female sex drive, much of it rings true. To what extent that is the result of evolution and culture is to be decided.

Strong Like Bull

All of life is nothing more than a strong argument. Skepticism can apply to nearly every aspect of life. Our sense experience is involuntary, and it provides us with a stable, coherent picture of reality. While others would argue otherwise, I find the involuntary nature of sense experience to be an adequate reason for accepting it.

We cannot be sure, but we can conclude that reality is, more or less, as we see it as highly probable.

Waaaaall-e

I was in the Disney store the other day and was shocked to see Wall-E crap everywhere. Then it hit me, that Wall-E, especially from a company such as Disney, was a $180 million insult to the average Disney product buyer.

Think about that. Who is the average person you see wearing a t-shirt with Pooh on it? This doesn't apply to souvenirs from Disney World, only those shirts purchased at Target or Wal-Mart. That's right. Fat, stupid, trash. I'm not saying that all people who wear these shirts are fat, stupid, and trashy. I'm only saying that a higher than normal number of people who wear these shirts fulfill those three characteristics. Don't even get me started on people who wear stuff with Warner Bros. characters on them.

And I can only hope that Disney realizes the irony of walking into a Disney store and being able to buy disposable garbage that will likely end up in a dump within a few months with the fucking Buy n Large logo on them!

In fact, I'm sure they recognized that, which may account for the relative dearth of Wall-E products in comparison to other Disney movies. For example, on Amazon, a search for Wall-E and then toys results in 294 products, of which about half are actual Wall-e products. Monsters Inc. nets 305, with a little over a third being Disney products. Disney Cars lands an impressive 1,260, with about 75% being for the movie. 532 for The Incredibles. Disney Princess barfs up an amazing 2,585, with almost every item being a Disney product.

Chestnuts Roasting Over a Mushroom Cloud

I've made a reversal of opinion, recently. I am now all for a major expansion of nuclear power. I originally had worries about the waste, as most people do, but I'm now of the mind that the waste is a small and manageable price to pay for the benefits of nuclear power. I also think that the chance of a nuclear meltdown is so small as to be without concern.

Think about it. No other form of power generation is as efficient, results in as little waste, and can meet our needs. Obviously, forty years down the line, the threat of meltdown might be real, but we simply need to fit that into our regulations. Our government is pretty incompetent, but I would think that the threat of nuclear winter would be enough impetus for them to draft a quality bill.

Moreover, our overall power infrastructure is in dire need of repair, and we may as well integrate that into an overarching redesign of our entire power system. But if we could involve the nuclear companies, and give them the green light to build as many plants as they want as long as they help pay for the required overhaul of the transmission lines, the viability of the plan becomes undeniable.

I'm not saying that other forms of power should be ignored. I love wind power and solar, but they both have serious cost considerations and are intermittent. Tidal and geothermal are excellent sources of continual power, but their reach is limited to those near the water or thermal vents. For those there, excellent. For those not, what, tough shit?

Coal and natural gas power is untenable. Coal sucks in every way it can suck, and natural gas, while cleaner, still pollutes and is a limited resource. Nuclear power combined with wind, solar, and tidal is basically limitless.

In the Eye of the Beholder.

Not the D&D beholder, mind you. If for no other reason than they have a whole load of eyes. I don't play D&D, but any self respecting geek knows a lot about it. And is that an oxymoron? Is it even possible to have a self-respecting geek? Huh. I dunno.

Regardless, what lies in the eye of the beholder? Beauty, of course. I'm semi-obsessed with beauty. The very concept of aesthetics is infinitely interesting. What is beauty? How is something beautiful? I don't think this sort of stuff is idle conjecture.

Humans have a nasty habit of understanding and basing their world around abstract concepts. Some of the most important things in the average life are love, beauty, religion, and identity. There's no way to define those things. Yet, definition or not, they are of critical importance and should be understood to whatever degree they can be.

I love the idea of beauty because I think, at its core, it is more about appreciation. Something is beautiful if we can appreciate what it is. Most people would not find the average fangtooth fish beautiful, but I do. I find the very nature of its being remarkable. So perfect. It is exactly what it needs to be. I don't think we can call something not beautiful just because we are repulsed by it.

Beauty is a human construct. It is something that stems from the frontal lobe. Whether we are attracted to something likely has its roots deep in the more primal areas of our noggin, but beauty is a more advanced concept. It's something that can be analyzed and dissected. The fangtooth fish may be repulsive, but that's a primal response to something that could be dangerous. Many people are repulsed by spiders, but if pressed, I think most would admit some obvious beauty to their existence. Their delicate features. Their skill in creating some of nature's most amazing artwork. The way they dance, fly, and move elegantly through the air on invisible threads.

Perhaps humans associate beauty with creation. A painting can be beautiful, or a building, because it is a creation. An expression of humanity that can be easily understood by other humans. But a craggy rock face? Humans may even associate the world with a creator because so much of the world seems so beautiful, that it must have a creator. An artist expressing something. Funny how that's pretty much the entire Intelligent Design argument.

We can grasp things that seem created, or things so vast that they are beyond comprehension. We see only uniformity and none of the chaotic details. A mountain is beautiful, but not a craggy rock face, or a slide of dirt. Where does the beauty come from if every part is not beautiful? I think beauty as appreciation is something more people should contemplate.

I always felt this was important in the past few years, as the boom times of home equity, easy credit, and jaw-dropping growth in Asia fueled the luxury goods market into a roaring inferno. Sales at niche stores like Bergdorf Goodman, Sak's, and Nordstrom were well above historical average, and the sheer number of designers names out there would leave you dumbfounded. I mean, seriously, how many fucking people are actually out there who want, and can afford, a $1,500 bag designed by a gay man who doesn't shower?

The term beautiful gets thrown around so bloody often in the fashion world because, I think, it's the best word people can come up with to rationalize and defend their obscene purchase. "Oh, I had to have the bag because it was so beautiful." Oh yes, your artistic appreciation was obviously the primary driver behind your purchase. The fact that it was simply the "it" bag had nothing to do with it, I'm sure.

If people gave more thought to beauty, would the sales have been any less atmospheric? I imagine not. Buying the "it" product for the fact that it is the "it" product is a totally viable reason for the purchase. But I'd hope people would recognize the purchase for what it is, and maybe even find themselves a bit more discerning in which "it" products to buy.

Supercars

Definitions are critical in the world of science. For all intents and purposes, science is an arbitrary set of rules and regulation used to standardize the world for the sake of easy communication.

As such, I like defining things. It's always so easy. For example, the definition of supercar has been having a hard go, recently. With cars like the Nissan GT-R crushing cars that cost four times as much in performance figures, and the Corvette ZR1 destroying everything ever, what is a supercar anymore?

I propose a definition that can be easily and universally applied. A supercar is a car that,

• Costs in excess of six times the median annual income of a United States household.


• Has 0-60mph times and top speed times in the upper 1% of production automotive performance by model volume and not production volume.


• Is street legal with all performance numbers done on street legal tires.


• Can seat at least two people.

I chose the six-times figure because that results in allowing the Lamborghini Murcielago onto the list, which I see as the baseline supercar. It also eliminates everything Porsche, Ferrari, and Aston Martin make. Porsche is too accessible, Aston is too soft, and Ferrari uses the Enzo as their performance baseline, meaning it's their supercar, so it's mine too.

I figure the most obvious metric for a supercar is its performance. The super-rich are classified as the upper 1%, so why not classify supercars as the upper 1%.

The street legality parameter is flexible since what constitutes street legality changes from state to state, and country to country. For example, the Porsche 959 was never certified in the United States merely because the four cars required for crash testing were never supplied by Porsche. An event such as this should not have any effect on the classification of the car. I like Top Gear's measure of a car must being able to clear a speed bump.

I chose the street legal, two-seat parameter to eliminate street-ready race cars. Race cars are very fast. Of course they are. Supercars should be fast street cars, not slow race cars.

All of the measures must be compared at the time of production. So the Porsche 959 would not be a supercar now, but it certainly was when it was produced in the late 80's.

While on the Subject...

Of homos. Or is it homoes. Either way.

The UN, in all its useful glory, recently presented a draft of a resolution calling for the legalization of homosexuality. The basic premise of the resolution is to extend human rights to people regardless of sexual orientation.

In a shocking move, the Arab states responded with their own resolution against the first resolution. The Arab resolution says the European resolution could cause "the social normalization, and possibly the legitimization, of many deplorable acts including pedophilia."

Why do people with untenable and ridiculous stances always say they are protecting children. Do they think it's a catch-all argument? How the hell do they go from legalizing being a homosexual to legalizing the rape of a child? Seriously, Arabia, go fuck yourselves.

Not like we're much better. Everybody remember Ryan White? He caught HIV from a blood transfusion. So, in a display of grand logic demonstrating humanity's superior intellect, he was banned from school, received threatening letters, phone calls, was called such accurate epithets as "faggot" and "homo," and had his house shot up from a a passing car.

If it hadn't been for an equally strong show of support from other people, I'd say that humanity should just be nuked now and let the apes take over. Arabia is not helping. Granted, Arabia doesn't help much of anything. I say we bomb 'em and take their oil. Who's with me? Oh right, we tried that. Dammit.

Only in Arkansas

I'm sure you knew what I was talking about just from the title.

The Duggar family, those human rabbits, just welcomed their 18th child into the world. A world of blind religious creed and destructive behaviors.

Michelle Duggar, the matriarch, has basically been pregnant for the last twenty years. Twenty years, eighteen children, you do the math. This is disgusting. We have a population problem, and these people feel the need to do nothing, and I mean apparently nothing but breed. To steal a line, we are not rebuilding after the flood.

We have the highly educated among us having fewer and fewer children, and yet these bottom-of-the-totem pole, borderline cro-magnons are pooping out children like they took some industrial strength ovarian laxative. I don't know what to do. Either kill them or force professors and doctors to just start breeding like mad. For pete's sake, the man's name is Jim Bob! JIM BOB! He sounds like a secondary character from the Dukes of Hazzard! His name might as well be Boomhauer!

I've argued before how I think people are foolish who do not seriously consider the philosophy of their religion, because they frequently base life actions on those beliefs. This is a fantastic example of people not doing that. And how conceivably low can the woman's self esteem be to think that the best way through life is being pregnant damn-near 24/7?

The photo above has been circulating about the interpipes for a few years, now, and is the Duggar family with fourteen children. Yep. Add FOUR MORE. The father described the most recent addition as "just absolutely beautiful, like her mom and her sisters." All of whom I sure he's having sex with.

I'm sorry to degrade to sophomoric name-calling and allegations of incest, but this is absurd. I don't consider the attack ad hominim because not only does his action deserve to be attacked, but so does he. He may not look like a hick, but fundamentalist Christians frequently don't. Instead, they look like quasi-RennFest weirdos in flower print dresses and Sunday-best suits. And not only are they fundamentalist, they are what is referred to as Quiverfull, or Full Quiver Christians.

This particular skewing of Christian creed is not only against birth control in any form, but they active try to have as many children as possible. I assume the woman basically breeds until dead. What the hell are you? Rodents?

You want to see how vacuous these people are? Check out the Wikipedia entry on the family and look at the far-reaching ambitions of the children. Or look up the teachings of the preacher they endorse, Bill Gothard. Let's look at some of his winning stances:

• Women must submit to husbands


• Adults must submit to the husband's father


• He protested against Cabbage Patch Dolls and Treasure Trolls.


• Apparently wrote The Secret, because he thinks all of life's problems come from bad character


• That includes mental illness. I'd love to see him and Tom Cruise go at it.


• Thinks that prayer can cure illnesses like cancer and infertility


• Forbids dancing, dating, and exciting music as evil.


• Thinks the "saved" should limit contact with the evil, outside world. How cult-like. Very nice.


• All children should be home-schooled with the Bible alone.


• Oh, and as always, homosexuality is evil and will cause the end-times.

These people are being featured in a Discovery Channel show. They're becoming something of a celebrity. They shouldn't be celebrated, even slightly! To steal another line, Michelle should have her legs tied together and be heavily sedated! They are religious fanatics who, while allowed to do this if they so want, should be mocked, derided, and ostracized. They are vapid, vacuous, ignorant, bigoted, and in all likelihood mean. I'm not just throwing names, there. People in hard-line fundamentalist groups are in those groups because of serious problems. Child abuse and spousal abuse runs rampant, and if they're not soulless shells of a human, they're very frequently petty, vindictive people scared of, and angry at the world. They should be portrayed as such.

I'm sorry, but I do not want them anywhere near me. I don't want them in our society. And, man, if they believe in avoiding contact with evil sinners like me, that is fan-freaking-tastic.

Just get the fuck off of the TV!

I Love Life, I Love Love, I Love Pie!

Much of religion is something I wouldn't want.

Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, the eponymous star of the first Arabic novel, lived in a cave contemplating God. This was portrayed in the story as being the ideal state of a human. He hardly ever ate. He bordered on being a vegetable. I found the imagery ironically similar to Plato's allegory of the cave. Only, in this version, we spend our time in an actual cave. I assume this was intended, since much of Plato's writing was available to Ibn Tufail, the author, and he meant the irony of true illumination actually taking place in a cave. Still, just imagine what that would be like. Long beard, pale skin, emaciated from barely eating. I wouldn't want that!

I would rather be cursed to a life without a connection to God and actually get stuff done. I want to build things, write stories, and paint pictures. I would rather live a life of pain and achievement than ecstasy and inactivity. In the same way as the prospect of falling from Grace rankles me. Who wouldn't WANT to be out of the garden of Eden. I want to grow my food. I want to shepherd my animals. Who is God to say we cannot have knowledge. Our greatest asset is our mind. No knowledge is bad.

If I live in damnation, so be it. I'll be happy for the rest of time knowing that it is not God, but I who defined my life. What a ridiculous God when all of the interesting people are damned. And that's a fact. Janis Joplin? Damned. Oscar Wilde? Damned. Most of our Presidents are likely damned. The entire team behind the Manhattan project? Oh boy are they fucked. I find it mildly insulting to say that I need God for guidance and purpose. That only God could ever be the final goal in life. What an absurd parent to expect His children to return home.
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Oh, Men. What Will We Do With You?

This game doesn't euphemize at all. You don't even have to know what it's about and you know that it's meant for men. Big, hulking, bald men with big guns and big "guns," and women in battle bikinis with big guns and big "guns." I guess, kudos to them for knowing their market.

The Death of God

I'm a student of philosophy. I like to think I'm a student in the truest sense, in that I seek truth. While I've discussed before that I think truth can never actually be attained, it's the journey that is important, not the destination. Merely being on a quest for truth should steer me rightly.

One conclusion that I keep hitting is that God, practically, doesn't exist. He might exist, but how can we know? The Bible? Other people telling us so? Ha! Literature and testimony are so unreliable we frequently don't allow them in the courts, much less in such an important question about the existence of the divine.

So many great philosophers who set aside their dogma in a philosophical quest run headlong into a wall that they can't seem to climb. Descartes is the most famous one of which I can think. His (in)famous "light of nature" argument was basically a poorly formed attempt to transcend his earlier destruction of truth.

I have always thought of Aristotle as the first atheist. Even though he assumed that "God" was at the foundation of the world's functioning, he eventually distilled him/her/it down to pure activity. When you've done that, it's a small leap to eliminate the assumption of intelligence and get into a force-driven world. I think it's no surprise that so much of Medieval philosophy was focused on discussing the ramifications of the newly-rediscovered Aristotelian thought. Bonaventure, Aquinas, and many others were dedicated to the now-commonplace arguments for separating empirical observation from religious thought, and even if you couldn't separate them, religious thought trumped empiricism.

Most medieval thought was primarily theological and not philosophical. They really didn't get back into philosophical thought in earnest until near the Renaissance. I say theological because, even though there was philosophical thought mixed in with the overarching religious concepts, the assumption of God and his characteristics was at the center of their works. The Islamic thought of the time was much more receptive to contemplation about the nature of God and was, consequently, closer to real philosophy.

Moving into the Renaissance, we finally got more questions about God, and again those that questioned moved dangerously close to either atheism or agnosticism. I always see René Descartes as the most famous. He was a devoutly religious person who managed to so thoroughly destroy confidence in reality that he had to come up with a half-baked theory to explain how we can rest assured that God exists.

Move ahead about a hundred years to Immanuel Kant. Another very devout person who not only was a true philosopher, but actually destroyed, to most people's satisfaction, one of the only real arguments for the existence of God: Anselm's ontological argument. I see in these men a person who believed, but was unable to set aside his intellect for the sake of those beliefs.

So, again, God may or may not exist, but it's the belief in Him that's pointless. As I said earlier, being on a quest for truth can steer me rightly. I have no need for religion, except for maybe bake sales. I am my own cause, and if I am that, what does a God I can never know do for me? Nothing, I say.

God Damnit.

I don't feel commenting on the election is necessary, but the gay marriage ban in California is worth it.

I'm not going to try for eloquence, or subtlety. You people are morons. I've listed this under religion because if you voted for the ban, you're doing it for religious reasons. No rational, non-religious person would care.

I generally dislike religion. I find it rather stupid. I especially dislike it in instances like this. As I mentioned in my post directly preceding this post, anyone who is religious and not an expert on all things philosophical is a raging jackass. And anyone who was philosophical would not have voted for this ban.

This ban is the result of religious, stupid people who should be shot.