This Kind of World

Tatsuya Ishida is the talented author/artist behind Sinfest. Sinfest has been around for an extraordinarily long time in webcomic terms - it's one of the first few that started in the pioneering age and went on to be successful. We don't know an awful lot about Ishida - he's pretty quiet about himself, even his artist persona (his blog/newspost updates are even fewer and far between than my own).

But we can look at his work through the years - this was his 5th posted comic:

As far as offensive/racist/punch-down humour goes, it's not egregious - you can see that he's taking the piss out of blaxploitation movies and not particularly glorifying black stereotypes.
But it's still racist. I'd measure this as Not Helpful to society at large - the good (including humour) does not outweigh the bad.

But his more recent work has taken on a decidedly more "preachy" tone (whilst still maintaining "teh funny"):

Perhaps some of the humour I took from this is coming from the reality I can (now) see - it wasn't so long ago I had the young/white/male privilege blues. This comic reflects the kind of bullshit I can literally read on the blogs I frequent (particularly tales of MRA douchebags from FreeThoughtBlogs) every couple of weeks or so (or more often).

Ishida's own journey - communicated entirely through the comics he publishes daily - resonates with me.

Whereever possible, I try to see the unthinking, unseeing, silencing creepiness that goes on in the world for people don't come from my position of privilege. I like to think I already had a reasonably solid foundation of social justice (in part due to my liberal-Catholic upbringing and a mother who adopted generally sensible views), but there's more oppression in the world than just rich over poor.

So I can look back and see my perspectives change (even the perspectives on religion/atheism when I first started this blog) - yay for me.

Here's the rub: I'm going to be a father before the year is over.

It's pretty damn exciting. But I'm terrified of the idea of having a child. Why?

Like all people, my own father had good and bad traits - but one very major drawback to his effectiveness as a father is the fact that for almost my entire life he has usually been absent. Divorce will certainly go some way to explaining that, but even when he was still married to my mother (up until I was around age 4), he wasn't terribly present in our lives. By all accounts, his own dad wasn't exactly father of the year either - apparently he was a Good Man (if your baseline is providing for your family and not doing anything terrible to them), but WWII and the culture of his time left him reasonably fucked up.

I don't plan on being absent in my own kid's life. So that's a start. But not being absent and being a good parental role-model are two different things.

With a daughter, I can see myself sharing the responsibility with her mother - there are things about a girl's life growing up that I can't possibly be expected to know, and I'm cool with learning and playing by ear.

But I feel like I'd have a responsibility to take the lead with a son to make sure he didn't end up like one of those MRA assholes, or a horrible racist, or standing outside an abortion clinic hassling people who really don't need that shit right now or ever (obviously, I wouldn't want a daughter to be like that either. This doesn't have to be a rational fear, it's just the fear I have).

I want to raise a kid who can see the things that I can see now.

Which is fine - the apple doesn't usually fall far from the tree, so I shouldn't be too scared.

But it also got me thinking - what kind of bigotry is still invisible to me? Will there be social justice issues that my kid/s will see and just shake their heads in embarrassment whenever I ignorantly espouse some backward-thinking cause?

It's possible. But I can see plenty today that I can teach them to get them on their way. I used not to want kids, but now I kind of feel obligated to raise someone capable of thinking for themselves, seeing injustice where it is, and giving their old man what-for when he's blinded by his own privilege.

I can only hope.

Religion as a Force for Good

I'm beginning to see religion as less and less of a general force for good. The difficulty, I think, lies with the uncompromising conservatism of its caretakers. At their inception, each religion (by necessity, usually) reflects the values of its culture - or possibly even reforms them. Arguably, early Christian teachings in specific geographic places gave women the freedom to refuse to have sex, sex that would otherwise have been forced upon them. Those same teachings have been maintained and twisted over the years to discourage sex - when our own secular culture alongside has become more accepting and tolerant of individual choice. It is the current cultural climate, not the religion, which has carried on the legacy of those original teachings, teachings which now are used to oppress instead of free. Does religion do good in this day and age? Sure. Does it outweigh the harm? I'm not as convinced as once I was: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/05/30/real-scientists-dont-let-the-evidence-get-in-the-way-of-the-theory/ The difficulty with the apologist's argument here is that religion no longer reflects or reforms a culture as it once did, it simply holds it back. Each progressive move in the faith is simply giving ground to something that a culture is already getting on with. Feminism, civil rights, even social justice - once the bastion of church work - all seem to be more efficiently acted out as secular movements. Religion for at least the last hundred years - and often at various times in the past - has not been allowed to reflect or reform our culture. It has only held it back. I can't, on balance, support the idea that religion is, or can ever again, be a force for good.

Hooray for Morally Justified Bigotry!

Legend Condemns Gay Marriage

She was good at tennis, so we're listening to her views on an unrelated topic.

I have a beef with people who believe that we should maintain the "traditional definition" of marriage.

My beef is not with their belief, it's with what they think that belief is based on. When you say "traditional marriage", what does that mean exactly?

Does it mean that the woman becomes the man's property?
Does it mean that the woman's family has to pay a dowry to help offset the cost of the man having to maintain her?
Does it mean that, should the marriage fail to produce children it is null and void?

Let's go back even further - as I understand it, the Old Testament definition of marriage is that it's a sacred relationship between a man and each of his many wives.

How fucking traditional do you want to get? Because if your traditional view of marriage only stretches back about a hundred years or so, then you should come clean and just fucking say that - instead of suggesting that the present form of heterosexual marriage has been somehow preserved, unchanged, from the moment that God produced 2 genetically related humans circa 6000 years ago.

For the love of God, does Court have any idea how she sounds?

Quoth the Tennis Player-cum-Reverand:

"The fact that the homosexual cry is, 'We can't help it as we were born this way', as the cause behind their own personal choice is cause for concern," she said. "Every action begins with a thought. There is a choice to be made."

Really? You guys are still beating the "it's a choice", drum? Tell me, heterosexual people, could you ever conceive of being sexually attracted to people of the same sex? No?
Then there's a fundamental difference between you and someone who does. This isn't a case of, "it's wrong, therefore it's tempting" - this is just not tempting to people who aren't gay, which possibly suggests that the element of choice doesn't really come into it.

Unless you pull a Catholic Church and say that, yes, they are born that way, God made them that way, but they can't ever have sex. In which case, fuck you too. That's still ridiculous.

We really need to move on from this as a people.

A friend of mine also recommended I read this:
Traditional Marriage Perverts the Tradition of Marriage
...it was good back then, and it's still good now.

Nostalgia

I recently enjoyed dinner with a group of very nice people and the editor of this newspaper.

Okay, that's a little unfair - he's a very nice bloke. He just also happens to be a pompous ass, and I wouldn't have bothered with the arguments I maintained had I known he was the editor of The Record, which has a reputation for showing just how truly bad Catholic journalism can be.

In short, everyone sat in silence while he put forth his views on why society was in an inevitable decline towards barbarism (hint: it's apparently due to - I'm not kidding - "the fall of Rome". I wish this guy was antediluvian, but he's only pushing 50).

I was very restrained, up until the point that another of the guests, Rory, put forth a dissenting view, whereupon I decided, "screw it, if Rory is going to help out, let's give this guy a run for his money".

Which we did.

But one of the arguments which was not addressed (or neatly sidestepped by our editor friend) was with regards to the concept of nostalgia.

I suggested that was he was saying might well be true, but it's dangerous to treat history with that kind of nostalgia.

Don't get me wrong, nostalgia is fine, but unless you recognise that nostalgia is tainting your views of the past, it's not possible for you to objectively evaluate the future.

In short, I can't see how one could possibly seriously put forth the idea that the world is, on balance, worse than it used to be.
His view is that the 20th century has introduced unique evils resulting in unprecedented death and suffering - holocaust, Stalinist Russia (which he rather quaintly referred to as being Marxist).

There's a curious blindness applied in people like this - this is the second time I've come across such an attitude in a conservative Catholic - which my darling fiancé neatly summed up:

It's like high school - when you're in year 8 you remember being so respectful to the year twelves, and then in year 12, the year eights give you no respect at all. Therefore, you decide, the year eights of today are far worse than the year eights from your day.

And that is exactly the problem of nostalgia - many people are unable to come to terms with the fact that this is your worldview and is not representative of the whole.

The Catholic Church possesses - by necessity - an amazing PR machine, and it can frequently distort history to make itself look better. It's not alone in that regard, but for your conservative Catholic, you are presented with such a delicious view of the past, it's no wonder one could be disappointed in the present and despairing of the future.

If you're able to step back from yourself and acknowledge that your understanding of the past is tainted by the very fact you (or your church) were in it, then you can overcome your nostalgia.

If you can't, then you (and those around you) must be resigned to you cherry picking the good parts of history, and nitpicking the bad parts of the here and now.

A Rational God

Technically I'm agnostic; I can't say for sure that there is no god, and am therefore open the existence of one.

The distinction is uselessly pedantic, however - I am only open to the existence of a god because I can't be certain that a god doesn't exist. I still choose to believe there is no god.
I feel it's an important point to make, since it's effectively the same application of faith everyone else makes - nobody knows they're believing the right thing (which is a significant facet of faith), and so technically, they're open to the existence of a different god, an additional god or no god - but it's the choice you make that defines your faith. Otherwise we'd all be agnostic.

What is agnosticism then?
We could clumsily refer to it as being a personal choice to not apply a specific faith - you're open to any of the possibilities, but choose not to select any of them.
I have, in the past, uncharitably described agnostic friends as being "faith lazy", but really not allowing one's faith (or atheism) to be a defining characteristic of oneself doesn't lift any of the human responsibility to convey oneself in a moral and ethical way throughout the world.

Note that each person's definition in this area tends to differ - terms such as "strong atheist" or "gnostic atheist" (that is, one who knows that there is no god), weak atheist, and agnostic tend to be used to mean different things to different people. I guess it's enough to say that the above are my definitions, and I'd like to think I've described them enough for people to get the gist, as opposed to just saying "I am an atheist".

All that rubbish aside, I thought I'd take a moment to flesh out why I've chosen to believe in no god, rather than to simply refrain from making a choice.

I guess for myself, at this point in time, I have some qualifications for god - I require god to be omnipotent (that is, effectively capable of doing and knowing anything), which is probably a non-controversial attribute. I also require god to be rational, in a way that is at least understandable in a human capacity. This is not necessarily so non-controversial.

A theologian will probably take issue with the concept of restricting god to human rationality, but it might help if I mention that this restriction is for the good of simplicity - if god is beyond human rationality, then what good is it arguing the finer points of what such a god wants from us?

Put another way - if god is beyond human reason or rationality, then god is beyond the ethical and moral constructs that many of us are so quick to assign to his will.

Consider this scenario - bear with me, because I'm going to lay into the CARM people a bit, and they probably don't deserve it.

Let's say a man is the chief of police, and he knows a gang will be headed to some honest citizen's house with intent to destroy and rape. Let's also assume that said chief of police has a window overlooking the action. He sees the gang threatening the owner of the house and he sees the owner of the house toss out his own daughters to be raped.

Such a chief of police is a dick (to say nothing of the father). By human standards - of almost any period of history - someone who has the knowledge and power to prevent something like that from occurring and doesn't has failed in their humanity.

But wait! CARM has the answer for these kind of things - people are dicks, but god tolerates it.

This fails the test for my requirements for god one way or another: if you subscribe to the "god knows better than us, and it's part of his plan" philosophy, then god is still a dick; he needs to have a better plan than one where people get raped. He is not rational by human standards, and is as at fault as our hypothetical police chief.

There is another possibility, and that is that god is bound to operate in this way - it's part of his plan, because he can't execute it with no injustice. In which case god fails the omnipotence requirement.

Certainly it's still an oversimple argument, and anything like this becomes complicated by discussions of free will and so on and so forth. But the fact remains, we can imagine a world better than the one we've got, so as far as I'm concerned, an omnipotent god could have delivered that world. And if an omnipotent god did not do so, then such a god is a dick, and I refuse to even bother to give him my faith - what's the point?

So there it is - I can't see, based on the evidence available to me, that a god can exist who fills both my requirements, and I therefore choose to reject all possible gods, opting instead for the mild absurdity of atheism.

What would it take to change my mind regarding my belief in god? Is there some evidence that could be provided to help me reconcile a rational and omnipotent god with one who would allow injustice and suffering?

Well no - but that said, I am as yet unable to imagine such evidence, and if I could even think of it, it'd probably soften if not alter my view. But at the present time, I cannot.

This is, of course, entirely human - the concept of evidence when applied to faith is, rather perversely (and, somehow appropriately) irrelevant - it'd be hard to imagine some kind of evidence which would change the faith of any of the world's theists, and to be honest, I'd be disappointed if it could. That's sort of the point.

The Trouble with Satanism II: Revenge is for the Weak

It may come as no surprise that I frequent the elegant prose delivered at Bad Science.

A recent article put forth an interesting idea for discussion - how satisfying is revenge, really?

The result (of this admittedly very preliminary study) was, in short, "not very":

Asked how they would feel about punishing their adversaries, students said they thought it would make them feel better. They were wrong. The participants who were offered – and took – the opportunity to exact revenge actually felt worse afterwards than the ones who had no such opportunity.

Well then... what the hell? I mean, I always figured I was a pretty soft touch, so while aware of my own distaste for vengeance, I didn't really think that other people would feel the same way.

Now obviously, you can't put too much stock in a study like this - the most we can conclusively draw from it is that further studies are probably worth doing. But this, in itself, is pretty exciting for me, since I've never felt strongly about questioning the idea of immediate emotional payoff for the avenger.

Since I like hammering largely helpless and tiny religious sects, let's relate this back to our friendly LaVeyan Satanists. What does LaVey have to say on the topic of revenge?

If a man smite thee on one cheek, smash him on the other!

He goes on to coin this quaint little adage: "Be as a lion on the path - be dangerous even in defeat".

This concept is actually pretty appealing to a testosterone spiking male - Why the hell wouldn't you smack a dude back? Also, let's roar and beat our chests afterward!

Well, okay, I expressed disdain for this attitude last time I addressed LaVeyanism, citing how helpful the culture of vengeance had been in Gaza et al.

Okay, so if following the instinct to trade blow-for-blow isn't the right way to live, what is?
What is the "humanist" (or whatever) approach?

Surely the first question should be, "Why did a man smite me on the cheek?"
Certainly, it's possible that someone might attack you entirely unprovoked, but honestly, you're convincing neither me or the teacher on duty in the playground. Here's an opportunity to learn and develop as a human being, instead of regressing into one of the animals LaVey seems to hold in such high regard.

Would LaVey honestly put forth such a simple teaching, given how counter-productive it is upon inspection?
Well, ignoring the fact that, yes, he has, I'll concede that probably he doesn't mean it - it's just poorly expressed, and pretty poorly interpreted by the people who aim to follow his writings. Apparently, it's hard to accurately discern "religious" work from 60 years ago, 1500 years ago and 2000 years ago. Go figure.

(I'm guessing this is why mystics spend all their time talking in riddles - at least it gives people from other/future societies the wiggle room to think for themselves without worrying about "letting down the holy person")

But I can't just pick on LaVeyans - why not be even handed and tackle some of the Christians who've managed to miss the point of their teachings?

Well, actually, I don't need to - it's already been done.

The "Church of Satan" (which is a hilariously confused and contradictory term - I honestly can't help thinking of the people who take this shit seriously as being 14 and really angry) apparently acknowledges that non-members can still practice Satanism.

I wonder if that pastor recognises that what he's doing has nothing to do with Christ and everything to do with Anton LaVey.

Give us something new

The gods of everyone should wake
And wag their sleepy tongues
Give us all here something new to read

(light fingered from The Righteous Corn Farmers' Grate)

Bear with me for a moment; I'm going to whine.

Circa 2000 BC, the Jewish faith comes into being. The last of the texts of the Hebrew Bible is committed to physical form at roughly 500 BC (though I may well be wrong here as I haven't done very thorough research, it shouldn't detract from my line of thought).

Circa AD 50, the first texts that make up the New Testament are put to parchment (or whatever). The last texts are completed a few hundred years after (giving the benefit of the doubt to a later creation).

Circa AD 500, Muhammad receives the word of God from the angel Gabriel. That was recorded maybe... AD 700, if the scribes were slow.

At this point I'll level with you, I know very little about Hinduism. So if anyone provides me with rough dates for the creation of Hindu scripture, I'll take that into account.

That issue aside, what we have here are three of the most influential (and in the case of the Islamic and Christian faiths, largest) religious bodies' texts that haven't been significantly updated in 2500, 1600 and 1300 years respectively (obviously they've undergone translation and to a greater extent, interpretation, but there's been no new content).

Why? What happened? I'm most comfortable discussing the Christian texts, since I have more of a background with those - the faith was alive and breathing for a few hundred years and then... splat. It stopped.
Of course - there's still Tradition (for those of you who are Catholic) or the writings of the more prominent Christians through the ages - but none of this stuff gets appended to the existing Bible.

It's like they compiled the damn thing over a few hundred years and then... stopped.

Each faith has really shone during its time - in fact, if you look purely at membership numbers, the legacy of the "glory days" of these faiths has blessed them with worshippers in the billions.

But the core texts for these faiths have stopped... the legitimacy for change, growth and progress has been reduced to reinterpretation in the context of society.

Which is fine... but gone are the days when someone overbearing can write things to redact vestigial trappings of past dogma.

That said, I'm not without hope for the future - the various faiths obviously have relevance in today's society, and all faith denominations move on, whether they move slowly, at a medium pace or almost in keeping with the actual world.

Things will get better, and religious teachings have no choice but to stay current in one way or another - but it's just frustrating sometimes to see the lack of any new definitive texts.