I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter about WikiLeaks, and I figure I’d add my $0.02CAN to the maelstrom of debate. These sorts of debates are good for us, they help us keep tabs on public opinion, watch the various interested parties scramble to spin their point of view, and how much their spin can manipulate the common man’s opinion.
The issue, ultimately, is that we have a resource offering to reveal classified information because it’s important from a transparent good government standpoint that they do not hide from us. But the other side of the equation is that the leaker’s identity is kept anonymous, never actually known by WikiLeaks.
Frankly, I’m of two minds on the topic, which comes as no surprise to me. Being a computer nerd has taught me that just about any innovation we come up with will have its good side and its bad side. The internet, for example, gives us a tremendous access to knowledge and information that no generation has ever had so readily available, but also provides any number of negative services, from the easy dissemination of child pornography to the Americanization of the globe.
Read more…
I’m a guy who doesn’t believe. Pure and simple, I don’t pretend to be anything but what I am, and I am an atheist. I grew up a Christian and learned along the way that the basis for the faith was not something I could accept any longer. And honestly, I do have trouble understanding how grown adults can continue to believe. Some recent and interesting research has led me to the notion that, among many other issues, people use their faith as a means to control the uncontrollable. That makes sense to me. When times get tough and things are difficult, people often like to have that thing to hold on to that gets them through. I understand that, and while I don’t share it in the sense of a God watching over me or what have you, I know that my absolute certainty that I can weather any storm because I’ve weathered my share assists me.
It’s an incorrect statement, of course, as mathematically flawed as my absolute mathematical proof that I shall live forever. I take the total number of time I have died (0) and the total number of years I have been alive, and compare them in a ratio:
Read more…
Your argument, if I’m understanding correctly, is that a creator, who we’ll call God for the purposes of this conversation but who could just as easily be called any number of names, triggered the Big Bang as a means to create a suitable universe for us to live in. Am I following you correctly? Okay, now I have a few thoughts.
We know that the universe has certain laws that are true everywhere. Some of these we know already, others presumably are bigger or smaller than we can currently see. Nothing strays from these laws. Everything can be traced back to that Big Bang, but if that is the case then what is the point of faith? If God put every single ounce of truth that defines the universe into that initial explosion, somehow able to imagine how he could get from a big sack of nothing all the way to an entire universe full of things, allowing for all the amazing things that need to be in place in order for the earth to exist in a way that would sustain life, allowing for all the things on earth that need to be in place for humanity to appear, and allowing for all the things that took place in human history to lead to you and I having this conversation, then why do we assume that he has any capacity to change anything?
Read more…
The CFI have created a video contest called the Campaign for Free Expression, and it’s one I felt would be a good thing to put my smiling face behind. They even have their own video up, and it’s excellent.
Free speech and free expression are tricky for a lot of people. We recognize that we ought to be able to say what we want, but we have trouble when people say things that we are ardently against. For many people, it’s one thing to say that a rock star should be allowed to say That Durned F Word on his record and another entirely for someone to say that the Holocaust didn’t happen. Me, as much as I hate seeing the hate literature that from time to time crosses my path (not to mention religious people spreading their lies, ex-girlfriends who refer to me as being morally bankrupt, and people who argue that global warming is a conspiracy of the liberal media just to name a few) I believe that we all have the right to hold and communicate our opinions. If I can say that someone hasn’t got the right to say what they believe, what right then do I have to do the same? Or more properly put, when did being the most popular belief equate to being right?
I don’t know if I have any resources available to take part in this project. I’m going to talk with Boy Infidel and see if us Meddling Kids can put something together (he’s the artistic creativity behind this operation), but either way, I strongly encourage you… yes, YOU! to take part, to enjoy the videos, and to think long and hard about freedom of expression and free speech.
Jim
As I mentioned a little while ago, Pertussis is back. Whooping Cough is an issue in California and elsewhere in the US, and is causing a lot of problems. Surly Amy from Skepchick wrote an article about this entitled quite beautifully Thanks, Assholes.
In the comments, she is attacked for her stance that this is the fault of the antivaxxers. The reality is that we don’t know the cause of it just yet. Epidemics in the wild are not fully understood until they are over. That’s what makes predicting them and preparing for them such a ridiculous impossibility, and what led to everyone getting sanctimonious about the H1N1 outbreak. So it’s true that you can’t put the blame squarely on the face of the anti-vax movement. But we know that the more people are vaccinated, the less the disease is able to take root. Many people have chosen not to get the vaccination because of misinformation from the anti-vaxxers, and as a result it’s easier for the disease to take root. There may be other issues at play, but it’s hard to imagine that declining vaccinations isn’t one of the players.
That lunatic maverick Dr. Joe Mercola is on about this too. In the comments on the article, I found a link (thanks IanJN!) to an article on his site that is just hard to stomach. He says: Read more…
I just watched an extremely informative youtube video provided by a woman who wants us to defend our constitutional… nay, our human rights. The right to not have metallic oxide salts ooze out of our earth to create… wait for it… UNNATURAL RAINBOWS ON THE EARTH! I know, you’re thinking that rainbows only happen around our sun and moon and stuff, but now you can get one in a sprinkler! For serious!
What’s striking about this is that this is clearly a person who has enough computer prowess to post videos on the internet and enough mental prowess to use words like metallic oxide salts, but can’t figure out how to use google to understand how light refraction works. I get that we’re a very lazy society, but seriously, it’s not difficult.
On an unrelated topic, last night I tried to watch the movie The Number 23. It’s this movie where Jim Carrey goes all woggy and decides that the number 23 is haunting him, appearing all over the place. His paranoid fantasy flies out of control and presumably goes somewhere really neat. I couldn’t keep watching after a while. It was like watching this youtube video. When people want to see connections, they find them. The irony that this was Jim “ZOMG VACCINES ARE EATIN UR BABIEZ” Carrey was not lost on me.
Nothing is oozing out of our ground. There are no metallic oxide salts suddenly causing rainbows which only started happening in the last 20 years. All there is is stupid people, and they are allowed to vote.
Jim
Back when I was a lad, I had a thing for horror novels. In fact, I imagined that one day I would write horror novels as a career. It wasn’t until years later that I published two short stories in a horror magazine and then read the other entries in the magazine that I changed this opinion. Horror, it dawned on me, was lame. However, in those formative years I read a tremendous amount of horror fiction from a variety of sources. One of my favorite sets of books was The Exorcist, and later Legion, by William Peter Blatty.
I’m pretty sure that it was Legion that tackled evolution, but I could be wrong. At any rate, I remember really enjoying the philosophical debates about evolution that are documented in the book. As a young Christian lad, they resounded with me, and the fact that the feeling the reader is left with includes a loving hand of God made that young Christian in me awful pleased. The one argument that stayed with me, and that I later came to recognize as fallacious, was the idea of the egg.
I’m going somewhere with this, trust me.
I’m stretching the ole’ gray matter back a long ways, but if I’m right in my remembrances, Kinderman talks about the incredible requirements of an egg. It would have to have a food source. It would have to have a bladder. It would have to be tough enough to protect but not so tough that the embryo could not escape. The embryo would need an egg tooth. And on and on and on, he listed the many things that an egg would need in order to succeed, and if any one of those features was not present, the embryo would die. Later in life I would learn that this is the argument from irreducible complexity.
Read more…
When I woke up this morning, I read an interesting piece on Neurologica about a meta-analysis of some of the interesting research that has gone on with regards to conspiracy theories. I then read the analysis (The Truth Is Out There by Viren Swami and Rebecca Coles) and couldn’t help but see interesting ties between the topics of conspiracy theories and faith. So naturally, I thought I’d provide my thoughts. But please, take a moment and read both the Neurologica article and the analysis it was based on. They’re both exceptionally interesting reads.
Of course, it’s easy to see the relationship between the nuttier faith groups like Al-Qaeda and The Westboro Baptist Church. Their faiths are essentially a marriage of faith and conspiracy theory. For Al-Qaeda, the evil infidels are an international conspiracy trying to destroy the word of Allah and bring pain and suffering to the faithful. For the Westboros, it’s the American government’s pollution by homosexuals, abortionists, et al that is devastating the country. In examples such as these, it’s easy to see the marriage between the two.
But what about the not-crazies? That’s where my mind has been bouncing based on a few of the statements in the analysis article, so let’s go through them one at a time.
Read more…
I was just reading Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution Is True, and came across this posting in refutation of a strange commentary on the BioLogos web site. Essentially, Kenton Sparks is arguing that the reason God’s perfect earth has nasty things in it is because of original sin, that it was the fault of man for ruining it. And likewise, the scriptures needs redemption just as man does, because it’s “a casualty of the fallen cosmos”. His comparison is to a beautiful painting that is crumpled by someone. Is it Renoir’s fault that the painting is flawed? Of course not, he made it perfect. It was the man’s fault.
It’s a weak argument. Renoir doesn’t have the power to forever protect the painting from harm. As soon as the painting is finished and sold or put up for viewing or what have you it is no longer in the control of it’s creator. Not so the earth. An all-powerful God is at all times capable of keeping his creation safe, and thus the only justification for damage occurring to it is that this same God consciously allowed it to happen. Or, imagining for a moment that this was the case, why wouldn’t a loving God fix things when he saw them broken? He plays this active role in our lives, so why isn’t he concerned about his creation? Or is he merely taking the attitude of a petulant child and harumphing about how if we’re going to sin then we deserve it?
Read more…
The other day I had another one of those conversations that leads to a blog post. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this sentiment, but it always grates at my nerves and I’m forced to counter with a few examples that prove the contrary of everything the person is saying. This is partly because I’m a bit of a nerd who believes that information is important, but also because I’m also a bit of a prick who enjoys showing people when they’re wrong about stupid things. But I do it really charmingly, so the people don’t want to punch me in the face.
I don’t really recall how the topic came up, but at one point she made the comment that we’re such a unique species. And honestly, I disagree. There are certainly things about us that are unique, but most if not all of the examples people have used in these conversations with me are incorrect, and serve largely to further some personal agenda of the individual. So I thought today I would take about a few of those oh-so-unique qualities of humanity and see if we can’t pop a few holes in them. Sounds like fun right?
Oh, and while you’re reading this, please understand that the links I provide to things like youtube are not things I have directly seen with my own two eyes, and as such should always be taken with a grain of salt.
Read more…
