Obsessed with Reality

Obsessed with Reality

[	userinfo	\|	livejournal userinfo	]
[	archive	\|	journal archive	]

Calvinism...oh, my stars and garters

[Feb. 8th, 2010|05:14 pm]

[

mood

done

]

So, I did what I said what I wouldn't do, and I got into another online debate with Rhoblogy. He was commenting on a ~~news article~~ right wing apologist piece regarding the CIA's use of torture. Ostensibly, the Jack Bauer image of, through one means or another, beating the information out of the prisoner isn't accurate--rather, the "enhanced interrogation" is used to break down the detainee's resistance to the point where they become willing to cooperate. They can then be transitioned to regular debriefings, and it is in these sessions when duress is no longer present that the real information extraction is taking place.

Now, this is interesting, because the article holds that under Islam, prisoners are required to resist as far as they're able, but once their limits are reached Allah will not hold them culpable for being only human. As the article had it, the torture effectively removed the "moral burden" to resist. Now, Rho's interpretation of this was just unbelievable to me--he apparently read that as the hand of God weighing on the souls of the terrorists for their misdeeds.

Even jihadists who are hardened to the murder of women and children feel the weight of God's law on their hearts, convicting them of guilt. May the Holy Spirit be pleased to bring them all to repentance, not just conviction of moral burden.

The whole point is that these people don't believe they did anything wrong and are because of the torture, cooperation isn't sinful either because they are in a no-win situation and have essentially no choices left. Allah is still waiting for them in paradise. At any rate, I challenged Rho to justify why torture could be considered moral, under any circumstances.

I knew I was probably wasting my time, but I don't regret this particular debate, because I did learn some things along the way. Going in, I knew that Rho was one of these Christians who believe god is like Richard Nixon. Seriously, if God commands it, then it's not immoral. Murder, torture, human sacrifice or genocide are just peachy if it's God's instruction. But, I did put my foot in something of a bear trap, because I came in with the claim that torture is immoral. When you make the claim, you have to back it up, that's just the rules of argumentation. Rho wasn't making a claim directly, he was just waxing rhapsodic about how wonderful it was that people could be tortured into having their souls saved. And before you could say "No wait, Chewie, don't!" I'd taken the bait.

So yes, an atheist trying to explain the basis of a morality to a fundamentalist that doesn't appeal to the commands, nature, or intercession of a deity is not only time well spent, but a deep and illuminating exploration of the base issues involved, I'm here to tell you. In between the endless variations of "you're just making unsupported assertions," "prove to me there's anything objectively wrong with XYZ" and "obviously you're ignorant of the deeper philosophical history of these issues," I at least got in a good exploration of the Euthyphro dilemma with one of the other commenters, and I learned something else that was interesting.

You see, Rho isn't just a Christian. He isn't just a fundamentalist. He is a self-professed hard-core Calvinist, so much so that he spends as much time attacking Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as he does atheism and empiricism. I've since read up on that particular philosophy, since I hadn't really gone over it since the chapter on the Protestant Reformation in Senior year of high school. I knew they believed in predestination, and I knew they believe that not everybody can get saved, and that's it. There's a lot that Rho believes that is now much clearer to me.

I've debated morality with Rho once or twice before this, and I noticed that he has this strange doublethink that I didn't quite fully perceive. You see, the only reason people can be moral without God's Word is that it is on some level written on our hearts. I replied then, if that is true, and the Bible is God's word, then anyone, Moslem, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist or Atheist should be able to read the Christian bible and at least recognize that this book is MORAL front to back. But oh no, "Typical atheist--forgetting the doctrine of sin in Christianity." At the time my reply was along the lines of "dude, I do not believe in your Special Pleading and Ad Hoc rationalization."

I now realize what specifically he was referring to. Calvinism holds that our natures are so polluted by sin (not sure if it's Original or the workaday temptations of life*) that we humans instinctively reject God's morality. Not only that, it is only through divine intervention that our hardened hearts can even desire salvation. All things being equal, we're born into sin, we live sinful lives governed by sinful thoughts, and after we die, God's judgment for our sin casts us into hell, unless God decides at some point to take us off this road.

This made things more clear to me, as to why he'd implore the Holy Spirit to bring the terrorists to Christ. But quite frankly, it does make me more certain than ever that I should not waste any more time talking to him. Certainly his faith allows him to dismiss my arguments out of hand; as far as he's concerned, it's just the Sin talking. But now I really, really don't care what he thinks, because the God he believes in goes beyond the "Chaotic Neutral" character of the Biblical Yahweh. As far as I'm concerned, the Calvinist god is actually evil.

Picture this: you are drowning in the torrential floodwaters of a swollen river, hanging on for dear life. Above you, a National Guard rescue helicopter is dropping lifelines and flotation devices. But you notice that only a certain percentage of the people struggling to survive are actually getting rescued, and others are ignored. Then you look up again, and realize that the motherfucker in the chopper door is the guy who pushed you into the water in the first place.

Calvinists believe that only the "elect" are saved. Remember, if God doesn't see fit to touch your hardened heart, your fallen nature rejects his teachings and you don't get to ask him to do so. Only the elect get coverage under the Christ Damnation Insurance Plan. So, apparently, the reason I'm an atheist is because he's okay with me going to hell, and the twenty years after the age of reason before I stopped believing were completely pointless, because God never really entered my sinner's heart.

As if that weren't bad enough, the Bible also says God made me, and that he knew me in my mother's womb. I didn't have any say in getting born. I didn't have any say about whether I'd get burdened with sin. So not only is god a capricious rescuer, he's the reason I'm in the river! And then, he gets to decide whether I even wake up to how much peril I'm in? What kind of a universe has god made, that is so polluted that he can't endure the presence of anything tainted by it, who chucks in his "beloved" creations in to suffer eternally unless he saves them MAYBE, if they're among the lucky few?

Quite frankly, if I need that god's intervention to start believing that black is white, up is down, faith is knowledge and the Bible is moral, I'd rather stay as I am. And I'm not going to give someone who thinks I deserve that the time of day, I'll tell you that much. I have to consider his scorn to be high praise.

link

post comment

Memories upon seeing Jesus Camp

[Jan. 27th, 2010|09:59 pm]

[

mood

pensive

]

Human memory is extraordinarily fallible--it's a known fact of neuropsychology, but one which very few people think about. Human can remember facts, data quite well under most circumstances, but images, events, narratives--people by and large don't realize that, to a first approximation, everything you remember is going to have some inaccuracies, sometimes to a startling degree. It's one reason why "recovered" memories are frighteningly unreliable, because it is so easy to instill false memories, or for original memories to be corrupted.

One case in point. When I was in high school, I went to a party where a bunch of us piled into this rusty white pickup truck and went cruising around the neighborhood. We were all piled into the bed, and after a few minutes, the tailgate popped open and three or four kids went tumbling out onto the road. I almost did, and was hanging half out the back of the speeding pickup truck with my right hand literally two or three inches from the pavement.

My mother, being religious and fearful (justifiably, I might add) of me going to this party, was praying for my safety at or near the time. I convinced myself that a guardian angel had literally taken hold of my left wrist to prevent me from falling headfirst out of the truck. I have a memory of not holding on to anything with that hand, with my center of gravity over empty space. I also have a memory, "recovered," if you will, once I stopped believing in such things, of hanging on to the lip of the truck bed by my fingertips. I can interchange them freely in my mind, even now. Which is true? At the time, I was quite preoccupied by fear for my life, the fact that I had a CD case in my hand scraping the asphalt, and a snapshot image of a dropped cigarette rolling on the ground, giving off sparks as it slowed. I simply have no data from my left arm at those moments. I assumed, once I stopped believing in angels, that I must have found a fingerhold somehow, and I don't know whether my memory of such is real or is the result of my brain filling in the details.

It's not of any consequence, really. But I'm trying to remember how I felt about some spiritual issues in years past, and it's difficult to feel like I have a real handle on it. In 1997, my sophomore year, I remember being surprised and dismayed as I learned what other Christian denominations thought about the doctrine of Sin and Substitutional Atonement for salvation. It's hard to remember a time where I didn't know that, as my present knowledge is projected backwards. I'm trying to pull an "archived version" of my adolescent understanding of the liberal Christianity I was raised under.

I can pick out a childhood, Sunday school-level memory of being told that if you believe in Jesus, it erases all your sins. I also know that while growing up, I was taken to Hindu, Moslem, Baha’i and Jewish services, participated in interfaith ministries, and been a guest at many other Christian denominations very different than my own. Nobody even hinted that these others were completely or even partly false. I think I must have had some notion that there are many roads to god, and that god is like a jewel with more facets than any one religion can see.

To be confronted, at the age of nineteen, by fundamentalists who believed in one facet of god and one road to get there must have seemed strange to that thinking. Like I said, I remember being shocked to find out what some Christians believed. I thought you really had to earn your way into hell, and realizing that I didn't sufficiently loathe myself to believe that, all things being equal, I deserved to go there. I know all about it now, but trying to remember when I didn't know about it makes everything foggy.

I've kind of been in a funny mental place ever since I watched the documentary Jesus Camp a couple of weeks ago--I know for a fact that the theology on display there was far different than I was raised with. I have no memories of fearing hell as a child, we didn't do "speaking in tongues," we didn't get politics involved or images of warfare or violence. I know they taught me in Sunday school that I should "witness" for Jesus, but I didn't understand the ecclesiastical meaning of the word at that time, not in any real sense.

I was powerfully affected by one scene in which the children were encouraged to think about all their sins and how wretched they are, and how Jesus would forgive them. There was shot after shot of children weeping, their faces wrenched in pain as the adults, rather than soothing their fears, urged them to sink deeper into guilt and anguish. I know this was meant to be an awful, heart-rending sequence. Screenshots from the scene would be, and were meant to be, indistinguishable from excruciating pain.

The reason I had to keep telling myself that were the overwhelming memories of HOW GOOD IT FELT. I know it wasn't "real," I know that powerful emotions are rooted in the brain and that human beings are powerfully affected by the emotions of those around them. I remember times where I was the one breaking down and crying, rocking back and forth at how much God and Jesus loved me and wanted to forgive everything I'd ever done wrong or ever would do...that everything would be okay, no matter what. The only word I can use to describe it was ecstasy, awful pain and wonderful relief combined until I hardly was aware of time or place.

While I was watching, I kept having to force myself out of my memories, and to see it dispassionately. I can't resolve the cognitive dissonance. I don't remember being emotionally tortured or encouraged in self-loathing, but I knew that those kids were achieving a state of bliss that, I now realize, is almost literally addicting. I wonder if this is how a recovered heroin addict feels while watching Trainspotting. I wonder if that was part of the message of the film, that these people have to be considered as under the influence of a powerful, mind-controlling drug, and dealt with accordingly.

If I found myself dragged along to some church camp these days, I don't know how I'd do. Would I be able to just observe, and keep my equanimity? Would I try and blend in and get swept up in it for the duration of the service? Would it be too much, forcing me to walk out in disgust at my own easily-swayed limbic system? I just don't know, and I'm not sure I'm keen to experiment.

I have heard Christians say that atheists really do believe in god, they're just rebelling, rejecting, denying what they know in their hearts is true. In some ways, they're not entirely wrong. I don't believe in god, but I do believe in spiritual ecstasy. My brain wants that connectedness, that solace. For me not to be ruled by those emotions actually is a deliberate choice. I make the choice because, while the emotions are very real, I don't believe they are true. I know I'll never feel that way again. I'd rather be awake.

link

post comment

No, THIS.	[Jan. 26th, 2010\|07:08 pm]

link	post comment

This.	[Jan. 24th, 2010\|06:45 pm]

link	7 comments\|post comment

Baffled, and yet...I can't look away.	[Jan. 18th, 2010\|08:40 pm]
I don't know what to make of it...a site so--I can't call it "stupid," the guy is obviously educated and intelligent--I don't know, I just look at it and remember the Marquis de Carabas in "Neverwhere" saying "what a refreshing mind you must have; there really is nothing like total ignorance, is there?" A Christian apologetics/philosophy/creationism blog so brazenly arrogant, a Nietzschean abyss of utter boneheadedness that I sit at my computer, stupefied that I could ever even think of having a reasonable conversation with this person. I have seen statements, logical fallacies, bald unfounded assertions that literally left me unable to form a coherent reply--there's literally no level on which we could meaningfully communicate. Anymore, I go there to inoculate myself of the desire to comment. Then I have to go wash my hands and read some nonfiction science book to cleanse my mental palate. Okay, if you're that masochistic, google "rhoblogy." But remember, he who would fight stupid must see to it that he does not, in the process, become stupid--for if you look long into the Internet, the Internet looks back into you.
link	post comment

Transcendentally Long

[Jan. 8th, 2010|09:19 pm]

I've been chewing over TAG for a week or so now. It bugs the heck out of me, as it's the most inscrutable of the logical arguments for the existence of a god, and I got into a tiff over it a couple of weekends ago that didn't end in a satisfactory manner.

The easiest Logical argument to shoot down is the Ontological Argument.

God is the being of which nothing greater can be imagined.
Something which exists is greater than that which does not exist.
Therefore, god exists.

This one just begs the question outright.* By necessarily including "existence" in the definition of greatness, you define god as a being which is omniscient, omnipotent, and omniexistent. I can define a unicorn as the most perfect animal possible in step 1, but that doesn't mean unicorns exist once I get to the end. Imagining something that would be greater than something else which doesn't exist doesn't make that thing's existence necessarily so.

A slightly thornier proof is the Cosmological Argument, also known as the Kalam argument, after the most recent and popular variant.

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe had a cause.

Two problems here. First, Step 1 assumes that there are things which do not begin to exist. If only gods fit in this category, then it's begging the question. Or if one accepts that something other than gods have a beginning, not only does that complicate how you can define "universe," it more directly defeats the argument because, of course, the cause wouldn't necessarily be a god, and the argument's pretty useless at that point. Second, we don't actually know that Step 2 is true. We can't actually observe the singularity of the Big Bang, let alone what happened before. Since we don't know, #2 is merely an unproven assertion, not a fact.

It's worth pausing at this point to say that just because individual arguments may fail does not prove the converse, that God does not exist. We will see this principle come back around as we discuss the Transcendental Argument for God, but suffice it to say that to my knowledge, gods' nonexistence has never been definitively proven save for satirical versions of theistic proof.

There are far more long-winded versions, but to simplify it as much as possible (which is not to say that I'm intending to set up a straw man) it says essentially this:

The Logical Absolutes are transcendent. [Transcendent: adj. Perfect and absolute. Not variable; not dependent on time, place or circumstance. The Logical Absolutes themselves are axioms of symbolic logic such as the Law of Identity, Law of Non-contradiction, etc. but ironically are not actually directly germane to the argument.]
The Logical Absolutes are not physical in nature, and are not dependent on the existence of the universe.
The Logical Absolutes are conceptual. Things which are conceptual are dependent upon minds.
Because the Logical Absolutes are transcendent, they must be dependent upon a mind which is likewise transcendent.
We call this mind "God."

If you want your head to explode, feel free to debate this one with someone who buys into it. Chances are they've memorized pages upon pages of arguments and counterarguments, and can use them to expound upon any given point until the argument is almost lost in a swamp of philosophical doubletalk. To me, it comes across as willful obfuscation. Suffice it to say, there are MANY objections to the argument, and the counterarguments are slippery as a greased priest.

I want to focus on what, to me, are the most substantive problems, and leave the nitpicking to those with more free time. The first problem I have is in step 3. When I was talking about this last month, the other guy tried to lay out as a ground rule that "if only two possibilities are possible, if one is disproven, then the other is proven by default." To which I answered "No." The argument hinges on disproving that the Logical Absolutes are physical, that "conceptual" is proven by default, and defining "conceptual" to their advantage.

Unfortunately, it simply can't be supported logically, though any TAG supporter will refuse to admit this.** However, since the premise is that Physical/Conceptual is a truly exclusive dichotomy, they have the responsibility to demonstrate that this premise is true–-proving that no other possibilities exist is their job, not yours. Personally I have yet to see a valid objection to "intrinsic aspect of reality" as something which is neither physical nor conceptual, but I had lengthy and incoherent arguments leveled at me nevertheless. However, the argument itself contradicts itself on this point, and I made a mistake last month with this guy by making my stand on the false dichotomy, rather than the next objection which I think is actually more damning.

To the best of our knowledge, nobody has ever come up with evidence that minds are not physical; that is, as a function of an organic brain. Minds are at the mercy of pokes, prods, chemicals, and damage to brains. If you shoot a person in the head, their mind is destroyed along with it. To assume that a nonphysical mind can exist begs the question.*** Until we have an example of a mind that does not exist as a function of a biological brain, it’s just an unsupported assertion.

This does involve a true dichotomy: Physical and Not Physical. Proving what something is not does not demonstrate what it is, or define any attributes of it as a result. There's a reason that I didn't just start talking about "to assume a Conceptual mind exists..." because it's nonsensical. Conceptual things, in the context of the argument, are dependent on minds and to say that minds are dependent on minds is incoherent, let alone the Transcendental Mind that TAG demands must exist. Upon what would that particular Conceptual thing be dependent? A brain? What cosmic expanse of grey matter could possibly be the mainframe to conceive of universal truths that hold sway in all possible places and circumstances? If they allow that a Transcendant mind is not dependent upon itself or another Transcendant mind, then they've just contradicted the categories they allowed for the Logical Absolutes.

Of course I have no trouble accepting a perfect, absolute, and transcendental disembodied mind being dependent upon brains, even human brains--it's why I don't necessarily object to the first point of the Ontological argument: just because we can imagine something greater than ourselves doesn't make it necessarily existent. That's why they're called "imaginary."

What this comes down to is the same reason that the original Cosmological Argument got so easily shot down centuries ago. It was originally phrased as "Everything that exists has a cause, the universe exists, therefore the universe had a cause." They set up this syllogism to try and create a paradox, then they bring in this god to cut the Gordian knot because the rules don't apply to him, whether it's dodging the "who created God" question or "is God's mind physical or conceptual?" William Lane Craig, the Christian apologist, inserted the "begins to exist" language in an attempt to avoid the Special Pleading, but as we've seen, that introduces problems of its own.

*used in its formal sense: that a conclusion is being assumed as an unstated precondition, thereby making it a circular argument. “Begs the question” to mean “raises the question” is technically incorrect, but so common it’s ridiculous.

**They will demand you give an example of something that is neither physical nor conceptual, and then any possibility you submit will be dismissed by endless hand-waving and special pleading.

***Since any religious/spiritual/theistic person takes the existence of souls and other disembodied minds for granted, it's no surprise this is a blind spot. Hell, it took me two weeks to realize it. But something taken on faith isn't valid for rational argumentation.

link

post comment

Obligatory capsule review:	[Dec. 22nd, 2009\|06:20 am]
Go see Avatar. Go see it in 3D, and get there early so you can sit as close to the center line of the screen as possible so the polarization is optimal. Message repeats: GO SEE AVATAR. (Yes I know it's not Citizen Kane in the plot department or what we'd call subtle in its morality, but as an excercise in world-building and cinematography it's absolutely stunning.) And this is why I left the theater grinning ear to ear, because I'm a science nerd. [SPOILERS blah blah]
link	post comment

Well, that was fun	[Dec. 10th, 2009\|04:56 pm]
1:20-7:42. Clip picks up with the host taking to task a fundagelical who touched a nerve...
link	post comment

Information needed	[Dec. 4th, 2009\|07:03 pm]
The above is "atheists" in Greek, taken from a manuscript of Ephesians. I'm considering it for a tattoo, and I kind of like the look of it, once I resize the letters to equal height. Question 1: if anyone knows any Greek, what is the singular case of "αθεοι"? Question 2: can any graphic design mavens peg me a general-use font that might approximate it well enough to swap out for "αθεοs" or whatever it winds up being?
link	2 comments\|post comment

Foodie Geek

[Nov. 21st, 2009|08:47 pm]

[

mood

accomplished

]

today I spent three hours as assistant to a professional chef. The Bloomington-Normal Coliseum was set up with tables, vendors, and--at one end facing the live music--with gas grills, prep tables and an entire hockey rink full of ingredients behind us, the cooking demo area.

Note: cheeses were artisanal goats-milk products, which I'll name the closest recognizable equivalent.

Dish 1: toasted baguette slices with melted camembert and rhubarb chutney.
Dish 2: Brussels Sprouts sauteed with bacon, butter, garlic and parmesan (seriously, it was good)

At this point, the chef turns to me and says "You have two minutes to pick ingredients and come up with a dish." FUCKWAAHH?! Um...um...um...

Dish 3: Campanelle pasta with fresh chevre and chopped basil. Not bad, salt and cracked pepper definitely needed. If it'd been earlier in the season, sauteed zucchini would have been the greens.

What? We have an hour left?

Dish 4: Mashed blue potatoes with butter, garlic, parmesan cheese, rosemary, butter, thyme, fried sage and did I mention butter? When you have no other dairy to work with, you do what you have to.

In other news, Disney DVDs can eat crackling microwave electric death. Up has no menu interface. It's just an endless loop of commercials, commercials, shameless plugs, previews, movie, and two more commercials.

link

3 comments|post comment

Where's my checkbook, I feel a charitable donation coming on.

[Oct. 12th, 2009|06:18 am]

Got this from a relative, sent to basically everyone she knew.

I AM HONORED TO DO THIS

Did you know that the ACLU has filed a suit to have all military cross-shaped headstones removed and another suit to end prayer from the military completely. They're making great progress. The Navy Chaplains can no longer mention Jesus' name in prayer thanks to the wretched ACLU and our new administration.

I'm not breaking this one. If I get it a 1000 times, I'll forward it a 1000 times!
Let us pray...

[insert pics of military cemeteries, soldiers praying, flag draped caskets, etc]

Prayer chain for our Military.... Don't break it!
Please send this on after a short prayer.. Pray for our soldiers
'Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us

Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need.

Amen.

Prayer Request: When you receive this, please stop for a moment and say a prayer for our troops around the world.

There is nothing attached. Just send this to people in your address book.Do not let it stop with you.Of all the gifts you could give aMarine, Soldier, Sailor, Airman, & others deployed in harm's way, prayer is the very best one.

GOD BLESS YOU FOR PASSING IT ON!

My response:

First of all, this email is based upon a lie. The ACLU is NOT attempting to remove crosses from headstones. "Personal gravestones are the choice of the family members, not the choice of the government." http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/cemetery.asp

I was not able to find any information on the claim that military chaplains cannot mention Jesus' name in prayer, but I sincerely hope that the claim is TRUE.

Our nation, and our armed forces, are made up of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Moslems, Jains, Sikhs, atheists and more besides.. For any representative of one faith to hold up their own as endorsed by the military itself is an insult to all.

It may offend you that Christianity does not enjoy the position of primacy that it once held, but was never entitled to. But it offends me to imagine the scenario in which a non-Christian soldier is standing in ranks, having sworn do defend his or her country, and to hear the name of a martyred first-century rabbi and be made to feel that they are therefore an outsider. Faith should not need public primacy to shore it up.

Religious freedom and religious plurality are among the first tenets that this nation was founded upon. Shame upon anyone who wishes to make any of them unequal in our country, and shame upon the writers of this email forward, who use fear, outrage and lies to promote their religion of "love."

Let it END here...

I felt that this was propaganda, not only untrue but I didn't much appreciate the sentiment. I also don't feel that one can forward around something potentially inflammatory, indiscriminately, and not expect there to be some response. If nothing else, I couldn't let the misinformation stand.

From another of my relations, in response...

I was happy to see your name on an incoming email to me! A first-time communication from you, ever. Cool!

And then I read your message. Not cool!

I'm in disbelief that you took opportunity, during a very obvious time of unhappiness in your life, to displace anger about something totally unrelated with the content of K-------'s "forward," used your considerably well-lubricated tongue (via your fingertips on computer keys) to humiliate a young woman, your very own [RELATIVE], who took a well-meaning moment to honor and uphold the military women and men of the United States of America, a person who would never, ever do to you what you have done to her by broadcasting to her entire email address the diatribe you constructed.

"Let it end HERE," you said to K-------. I have an idea.

Ever considered enlisting, D-------? Military service would give you more than ample opportunity to vent displaced anger. My response to you was inspired by the episode of Jesus entering the Jerusalem Temple, discovering the moneychangers, and how he chose to reveal his feelings to those with whom he disagreed in principle.

...

link

4 comments|post comment

Chapter 1: The Runaway Wedding Dress	[Oct. 3rd, 2009\|09:39 am]
Being the saga of an impromptu wedding day, part the first. So, a few weeks back Gemma and I got news of the generous offer for my job next year, which scuttled the plans for a formal wedding in May. So, we decided to chuck it all and head down to the courthouse at the next available opportunity, which was yesterday, Friday, October 2, 2009, at 1 PM. Gemma's wedding dress was handmade from white satin by a fellow Knox alum living in Oregon. We'd shipped her the fabric and she was going to ship it back to us. On Monday we had no word...okay, so much for 3 day delivery. Tuesday we got a message that she hadn't been able to make it to the shipping office before having to go to evening classes...okay, so much for 2-day delivery. Wednesday afternoon we got a call from her that she was at the shipping office, but the cutoff time for Next Day delivery had been local noon. The best we could hope for was guaranteed delivery by 10:30 AM, The Day Of. Nervously, we said to proceed. (We could have had it by 8, but that extra 2.5 hours was another Benjamin) Thursday night, we arrived back at our apartment after dinner to see a UPS "Sorry we missed you" sticker, saying they'd try again between 2 and 5 pm tomorrow. NOOOOOOOOO!!! We frantically called the UPS office and said don't put it back on the van, we'd pick it up tomorrow morning as soon as they opened. The next day, we took off work, of course. Are you kidding? So, Gemma went out for hair and makeup, while I slept a bit longer, woke up, showered, shaved, and headed for the UPS office. Got there, and come to find out, it's not a wedding dress. It's a gift from Bed Bath and Beyond [registry located at, winkwinknudgenudgesaynomore]. Wait, if this is the Pizza Stone, where's the dress? UPS had nothing in the computer for our address out on today's van, and we didn't have a tracking # to see if anything was elsewhere in transit. Oooooh no. Went back to the apartment and paced. Called my parents. Called my fiancee. Paced. Readied the steamer and ironing board just in case she'd sent it by FedEx or gulp US Mail--even though we'd specified UPS. At 10:30 on the dot, a knock at my door found a purple-clad FedEx driver, who was taken aback by my effusive gratitude and relief, and was frankly incredulous that this tiny 8x8x8 box contained an actual wedding dress. I (carefully!) slit the box open, hung up the dress, steamed out the crumples ("wrinkles" just doesn't cut it) and was dressed, prepped, buttoned and ready by the time my bride and MoH got back to the apartment at 11:30 to get dressed themselves. (Yeah, traditions I know, but on a budget of both time and funds, you gotta pick and choose.) More later, we're off to meet my folks for breakfast, Farmer's Market, and shopping. Mrs. Billings says hello!
link	2 comments\|post comment

and another song that reminds me of her...	[Sep. 18th, 2009\|08:34 pm]
why I'm getting married... "Stumbling In" I don't mind confiding That I make stupid mistakes Been misled and misguided And I'm easily led astray But you can dance with disaster Never missing a step Spinning faster and faster Long after I've already slipped But in the middle of it all You always break my fall In the middle of it all [Chorus] Over and over, again and again You float through the door and I'm Stumbling In I'm twisted and tangled and soaked to the skin You float through the door and I'm Stumbling In again Pulled in every direction I've a million regrets You're the perfect protection When I'm diving in over my head But in the middle of it all You always break my fall In the middle of it all [Chorus] [Bridge] There's bones in my closet, I've collected quite a few God knows what causes an angel to love a fool But in the middle of it all You always break my fall In the middle of it all [Chorus]
link	post comment

(no subject)	[Sep. 18th, 2009\|08:21 pm]
Upon the fourth Anniversary of International King's Commissioner Day, we once again cannot impress upon you enough the importance of capturing, trying, and hanging any individual whom you come across speaking like a pirate during the course of the day. These ignorant and reckless individuals represent a grave threat to the prosperity and very order of our society. They must be severely dealt with. Do your part. Proudly hoist the colours of your sovereign and hang a pirate today.
link	2 comments\|post comment

We're going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

[Sep. 8th, 2009|04:52 pm]

[

mood

enraged

]

So, minimum 3.125% pay cut, loss of all health benefits and paid time off. Or I can keep something not unlike my current farcical excuse for coverage in exchange for a 9.5% pay cut, still no time off (even up in the air whether legal holidays would be paid) and NO guarantee for how long even this offer would be honored, no possibility of merit raises going forward. Or there's the third option, to be given the freedom to seek other opportunities.

I don't know what pisses me off more, the lies that are being told or the fact that part of me is grateful that I have any job at all. I understand the forces in play here, don't get me wrong, but I am quite thoroughly insulted.

"It's a shit sandwich."
"At least it has bread?"
"Yes, but it's a shit sandwich."
"Look, it has mustard and mayonnaise!"
"But...you are aware that it is: A. Shit. Sandwich."

At least I won't have to dissemble when my next employer asks me that interview question about why you left your last position.

[EDIT]

Oh, and one other thing. I was planning to get married eight months from now. This requires money, and it requires time away from work. My employer, the client company, and the competing staffing agency have just taken a tire iron to the kneecaps of my plans for domestic happiness. FUCK. YOU.

link

2 comments|post comment

[Religion] Meme #3: Hamlet, Redux (4/4)	[Sep. 1st, 2009\|09:27 pm]
Creationist Memes Meme #1: Conflation Meme #2: Creationist FAQ Meme #3: Hamlet, Redux While it’s relatively easy to skewer the first two memes, there’s a bigger problem that’s harder to get past. Usually, you get to a point where either the creationist says something outrageous, declares victory, and ignores you, or else realizes that they brought a knife to a gunfight and goes elsewhere, and ignores you. Only once have I had someone so obnoxiously, brazenly ignorant that I finally had to ban him from sending me messages, but it got me thinking. These people's brains have been so poisoned and stunted by unreason that there is literally no way to get through to them without a major unlearning process. And this stuff is complicated--there's advanced chemistry, thermodynamics, theoretical physics, game theory, probability-—I've got a pretty good layman's grasp of the concepts involved, I think, but I’m no scientist. Even so, I could be a four-star chef from the south of France and it wouldn’t matter a bit if my customers’ idea of a good meal is a White Castle 12-Pack and a can of PBR—-they’re going to want ketchup on their Chateaubriand. It got me thinking about something I saw in a debate between the aforementioned Thunderf00t and an ardent creationist named Ray Comfort. I was very impressed with the discussion, incidentally--it was in Ray's studio, Ray's production staff, mano-a-mano with a jet-lagged British astronomer with a stammering problem, and I thought it was going to be a train wreck. For all his bullheaded incuriousness, Ray is actually a fairly soft-spoken and polite individual. I felt that Ray made every effort to allow Thunderf00t to make his points, when he could dominated the discussion. But several times, Ray's only response to a line of evidence was just to say "well, you have faith in the word of man," as reasonable as you please. Science, or if you will “natural philosophy,” has truly gotten to the point where we can say there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your religion. In any meaningful sense, the layman is long since left behind. Can a physicist fully describe to a journalist exactly what goes on inside a particle accelerator, really? Of course not. It has to be digested, metaphorized and dumbed down to the point where its informational content is all but gone. Even scientists can’t be professionally conversant in more than a bare handful of disciplines, so at what point do we have to start taking certain things as read? Ray Comfort would absolutely call it "faith." I beg to differ, because the results are evident. Quantum physics enables my computer to function. Cosmology predicts the existence of vast, powerful phenomena which are plainly seen once the instruments are built capable of perceiving them. Evolution took the differing ages between fossils of bony-finned fish and waddling amphibians, split the difference, and found a fossilized fish with muscular, jointed limbs as its fins right where they said it would be. I’m therefore willing to extend a certain amount of credit to science for things I, the layman, can’t properly understand because science gets results. It frustrates me that creationists and blind theists insist that all scientific truth be laid out for them, cut into bite-sized pieces, with no gaps or lingering questions or indeterminate possibilities before they accept a word of it, and then when anything is offered, it is rejected out of hand because their brains were raised on a diet of greasy religion sliders with a bottle of Hunt’s Creationism for their fries, and so they dismiss universal, objective fact as lies and the pathetic works of man. If there were a god to thank, it would be that even while Galileo’s inquisitors were deciding his fate, the planets were heedlessly spinning in their orbits about the sun. While Ken Ham puts a saddled triceratops into his Creation museum, scientists are seeking dinosaur genes in the embryos of birds. It doesn't matter what these people think, science is leaving them behind, and I pity them that they won't be joining us as we go forward.
link	post comment

[Religion] Meme #2: Creationist FAQ (3/4)	[Sep. 1st, 2009\|09:27 pm]
Creationist Memes Meme #1: Conflation Meme #2: Creationist FAQ Meme #3: Hamlet, Redux Creationists love nothing more than to barrage you with obnoxious and impertinent questions. This is the bit that really got me started thinking about creationism in terms of memes because the same questions crop up time and time again no matter how many times they're swatted down. Is someone handing out booklets of tricky zingers? Some actually might be interesting topics if they were meant as such rather than as rhetorical weapons. I’m being a bit unfair, because my side likes to do the same to theists when they ask ask "why won't god heal amputees" or "how did the animals get distributed just so around the world after the flood?" I really wish I could get my brain to run some sort of emulation software, so that I could fairly evaluate "gotcha" questions like "how could something come from nothing" or "where are all the transitional fossils" as though they held the least amount of water. Both sides intend the questions to be unanswerable: "because there is no god" or "because Goddidit" is the unspoken subtext. As hard as I try, though, I really can't equate the pointing out of logical fallacies and historical impossibilities with attacks launched from ignorance which imagine that it's possible to prove "B" by disproving "A." I flatter myself that the reason my side wins is because we have facts and evidence to answer the questions of creationists, whereas they have post-hoc justifications, special pleading, or if all else fails, quote some bible verses and flap away, burbling in triumph. Easily ninety percent of these supposed quandaries are based in some argument from Personal Incredulity: “Evolution [see meme #1] claims X is true but it’s clearly impossible.” I’d say about 60% of the time, the question is a Pigeon Gambit. YouTube doesn’t give you enough characters in the comments field to dispel half a dozen false preconceptions every time, but still--anything they ask about proper Evolution almost always has at least a working hypothesis. But as you might guess, they don't limit themselves to proper evolution. They’re vaguely aware that scientific knowledge has some gaps and they're trying to drive wedges into them. "What came before the big bang?" "How could X evolve at all?" "ZOMG cells r 2 complex 2 evolve." (As often as not they don't realize the only gap is in their knowledge, thereby making themselves look foolish more directly.) Fundamentally we're dealing with the Argument from Ignorance, in essence “If we don’t know X, then science is disproved and God exists.” It’s the parent fallacy of the Argument from Personal Incredulity or "God of the Gaps" proposals. Think about it: even if you traveled back in time to ask Galileo "where did the stars come from," the Big Bang would still exist. Gaps in our knowledge do not prove that God exists. Unanswered questions do not mean science is wrong-—quite the contrary: if we had no unanswered questions, we wouldn’t need to do science, and if everything important was already known in the Bible, why did we need science to end the Dark Ages? I had one creationist [Islamic, not that you could tell] argue that he wouldn't believe ~~abiogenesis~~ evolution because scientists can't create life in a laboratory. I tried to explain that there's lots of research happening in this area, we may not have all the facts about the conditions we're trying to replicate, and we've only been at it for fifty years for something that took tens of millions of years the first time around. The response? "Ok, no proof for your side, goodbye." All right, don't let the doorknob hit ya where Allah split ya. The point is that we have a long, long list of things we understand imperfectly and are working on, and who can say what's waiting that we haven't even thought of yet? What possible evidence can be cited that we're anywhere close to that?
link	post comment

[Religion] Meme #1: Conflation (2/4)	[Sep. 1st, 2009\|09:27 pm]
Creationist Memes Meme #1: Conflation Meme #2: Creationist FAQ Meme #3: Hamlet, Redux When a creationist says “evolution,” you can safely wager twenty bucks that what he means is an ill-defined mashup of Expanding Universe theory (origin of the universe), Abiogenesis (origin of life), and Neodarwinian Evolution (origin of speciation). This really bugs the heck out of me, because there’s really no better way to declare "I'm a complete ignoramus with no idea what I'm talking about. Debating with me will be like playing chess with a pigeon: I will knock over the pieces, befoul the board, and fly back to my flock claiming victory." I watched a video called "6 Ultimate Arguments Against Atheism" that literally claimed the universe began as a neutron star and attributed the Big Bang theory to Charles Darwin. It's like trying to have a conversation about football with someone whose total sports knowledge comes out of Calvin & Hobbes comics where they were playing Calvinball. Still, I do what I can to at least get them talking in the correct terms, though observations in the field indicate that there's a certain level of fact-immunity. To a scientist, these really are separate disciplines within the fields of Cosmology/Physics, Organic Chemistry, and Biology. I can understand why they get conflated: Genesis, chapter one covers the origin of everything, and it’s a natural-—though moronic—-assumption that Evolution is the scientific word for the origin of anything covered therein. However, it does drive me crazy when pro-science people go after this by saying "Abiogenesis and Evolution are completely unrelated!" This doesn't sit well with me, because it’s actually a rather fine point. (Bear in mind also that we’re dealing with uneducated brainwashees who aren’t big on subtleties.) To skip from Cosmology to Life Science is huge...you just skipped 13 BILLION years on the TiVo. But once we get down to planet Earth, Abiogenesis and Evolution dovetail much more closely. As our knowledge increases, the boundary between the study of self-replicating complex chemicals and the study of proper life-forms is going to get very blurry indeed. Currently, though, abiogenesis research is in its infancy and largely confined to the laboratory. The Theory of Evolution is well-developed and has been completely proven for all intents and purposes. (Hey, if they can use unscientific vernacular to say "it’s just a theory," I can do the same and say yeah, a theory that is proved.) But, no matter what discoveries of abiogenesis lie in the future, we can be assured that any model of chemical replicators is going to incorporate the forces of natural selection and descent with modification, which pretty much is evolution. This leads into my next bugbear.
link	post comment

[Religion] Creationist Memes (1/4)	[Sep. 1st, 2009\|08:56 pm]
Creationist Memes Meme #1: Conflation Meme #2: Creationist FAQ Meme #3: Hamlet, Redux So, I tend to rely on YouTube as a good source for my daily dose of theist/creationist stupidity. You don’t even have to sit through an anti-science video unburdened by facts or logic if you don’t care to—-just find a pro-science video and browse through the comments. In my idle search for windmills to joust with, I’ve noticed some recurring patterns, and I really don't know from whence these memes are propagating. I'd really like to know if these are just spreading virally from no particular source, or if they track back to, say, AnswersInGenesis, the Institute for Creation Research, or other doublethinktanks. (Know your Orwell.) I have heard and have no reason to doubt the anecdotal accounts of anti-science church sermons, even from a so-called "liberal" Christian church that supposedly claimed that science and religion need not conflict. There are a number of videos addressing the destructive influence of creationism--I highly recommend Thunderf00t's Why do people laugh at creationists and AronRa's The Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism series. I want to hit on a couple of points myself, not to debunk necessarily, but just to gnaw on.
link	4 comments\|post comment

[Religion] Killing the filter.

[Sep. 1st, 2009|08:48 pm]

[

mood

indifferent

]

Screw it. I might want to link elsewhere for readers not on LJ, and quite frankly I'm sick of friendslocking everything anyway. At any rate, the only person who I worried might be reading my journal fucked off to England years ago so I don't really give a damn anyway.

If you don't like it, skip it.

link

post comment

navigation

[	viewing	\|	most recent entries	]
[	go	\|	earlier	]

Customize

Advertisement

Advertisement