The Answers

Dissecting an Internet Atheist

2012-02-17T00:04:00.000-08:00

Robert Fischer has offered a counterpoint to the case I set forth the second post in my series on Atheism in 2012, regarding the faith. A lot of what he says is reasonable, and on the first read through I found little fault with it. On closer inspection however, I find fault in more of it. There is one part in particular that stood out on first read, so I'll dissect that below. The rest I find fault with I will address in the comments of his post.

Which brings us right along to the second counterclaim; that is, that one must have faith in atheism, as one must have faith in any idea that one holds to be true.
The error this statement commits should now be obvious to you. This is a blatant attempt to use the wrong definition of faith. Clearly, yes, one must have confidence in the efficacy and truth of one’s ideas as a matter of course in holding them to be true. This much is a tautology. But the definition of faith that one would commonly understand to be the one in use when discussing religious issues is the confidence due to authority or testimony and a belief that is not based on truth.
To use any other definition of faith, explicitly or implicitly, is to not only miss the point, but is also to derail the discussion from productivity to mere point-and-counterpoint semantic quibbling.

Let me start by engaging in the very behavior inline with the behaviors I intended to criticize with my post on faith. I'm aware of the hypocrisy, but as it also serves the purpose of an example I'm doing it anyway:

He starts this section by putting forth a counterclaim that begins "one must have faith in atheism" after not long before stating that atheism is a non-belief and cannot be the recipient of faith. Then asserts is a blatant attempt to use the wrong definition of faith.

However, it's actually a misuse of the term atheism. It is the norm, not the exception that anti-theists (those that believe there is no god) refer to themselves as atheists. While technically incorrect, those who simply lack belief in a god and lack belief in no god refer to themselves as agnostic more often than as atheist. I suspect this is because anti-theism doesn't flow off of the tongue very well and the actual atheists would rather misuse the term agnostic than be associated with anti-theists.

What I just did was ignore his argument and respond to his use of terms. This is common behavior among atheists (or anti-theists) when someone makes the implication that an atheist exercises faith. I criticize this tactic because it ends the discussion where the presenter of the argument is misunderstood and stops in frustration, and the term-jockey feels he won the argument because he used the terms more correctly.

I criticize this because it serves no purpose other than to fuel the term-jockey's ego. If the goal of entering the discussion with the religious is solely to stroke ones own ego, that makes you an ass. The misguided religious at least can lay a claim to entering the discussion with the noble goal of trying to save someone's soul.

To dismiss the views of the under-educated on the basis of terminology, particularly when the dismisser is supposedly so intelligent, is to do yourself an injustice. Just because your debate opponent doesn't use the term you would use to make the same point doesn't mean the point is invalid - particularly when you're smart enough to recognize the point. To me, if you know what the person meant - if you know which terms were used wrong and which the person should have used instead, and then choose to ignore the point they were trying to make and argue terminology - you're admitting their point is valid. You attack the terminology because you can't redress the point they were trying to make.

I can, and will, address the point Robert was trying to make:

But the definition of faith that one would commonly understand to be the one in use when discussing religious issues is the confidence due to authority or testimony and a belief that is not based on truth.

This is a false assumption, unless you are very particular about how you define who "one" is. First off, the religious wouldn't commonly understand to the term faith to be indicative of a belief that is not based on truth, as their usage of faith indicates they believe it to be based on truth.

Secondly, an atheist can't use that definition of faith either - as believing the existence of God is an untruth is to believe that no God exists, pushing them out of Robert's own definition of atheism and into anti-theism.

If you chop off the truth part - possibly replacing it with evidence, I can start to accept that definition of faith for the purposes of discussion. Even then, there's evidence that Jesus of Nazareth did in fact exist, or at least evidence that points in that direction. So, to include belief that is not based on evidence is pretty flimsy as well. Best to chop off everything after testimony - limiting faith to confidence due to authority or testimony - also known as the ability to accept secondhand data as accurate.

In which case, the person making the claim meant anti-theism rather than atheism, and at least a fair share of atheists balking at the claim should recognize the person's intended meaning rather than "derail the discussion from productivity to mere point-and-counterpoint semantic quibbling."

Atheism 2012: Deal with the Devil

2012-02-15T14:58:00.000-08:00

This is the third post in my series on Atheism, a series of observations with the goal of leading to a hypothesis as to why atheism has yet to become the dominant belief structure of society, particularly among technologically wealthy cultures.

To some observers, it may seem that I give the atheists a hard time... or perhaps a disproportionately hard time. This is true. However, I feel that it is justified by the following two reasons:

They talk about God too much.
They're doing it wrong.

One of the most annoying things about the religious is the constant discussion of their religion. Every topic of conversation becomes a chance for them to share their belief of their God's divine hand playing a part in our daily lives. Believe what you want, copulate with who you want, but come on... keep it to yourself.

The atheists that I give a hard time to are just as guilty. Every topic of conversation becomes a chance for them to share their belief that no deity played any sort of role in the matter at hand. If they truly believe God doesn't exist, they should shut up about him already. They're like the annoying kid in class who got the answer right, but then won't shut up about the question.

If they're not going to shut up about God not existing - if they have some self-assigned moral obligation to cure society of its mass delusion - they're doing it wrong.

Read more »

How YOU can make the world a better place with Google+

2012-02-11T17:11:00.000-08:00

What's your personal code of conduct on social networks?

Don't have one? Whether you do or not, I'd like you to consider adding the following simple guideline to your social network behavior.

If the world would be a better place if more people saw the thing you currently see, click share and select "Public."

Not exactly rocket science, but much easier than recycling. Join the experiment, try it for a month and let's see what happens. As a bonus for actually clicking this link, below you'll find the things I shared on Google+ in September and October of 2011 that fit this criteria. I'll be going through the subsequent months in separate posts.

While I have your attention:
I'd also like to share a different project with you, The OnePost Project.

Founded on the principle that the one question you could ask any stranger and get an interesting answer to is:
"If you could tell the whole world just one thing, what would it be?"

Instructions for participating can be found a the link above.

The Bonus Stuff:

Atheism in 2012: The Faithful Deniers of Faith

2012-02-10T15:37:00.002-08:00

This is the second post in my series on Atheism, a series of observations with the goal of leading to a hypothesis as to why atheism has yet to become the dominant belief structure of society, particularly among technologically wealthy cultures.

Deniers of Faith
In my interactions with Atheists of late, there seems to be a vocal subset that not only does not believe in a God or gods, but also finds any assertion of similarity between themselves and the religious to be personally insulting. They present themselves in such a way that indicates they view a person having 'faith' or 'a religion' as worthy of disdain, and seem insist they do not possess such contemptible qualities.

This vocal subset will readily make itself known, simply imply that 'Atheists have faith' or that 'Atheism is a religion'. They will quickly self-identify in response. A concentration of this behavior can be found where I encountered it, a Logos group discussion resulting from the question: Is faith a good thing?

My good friend Larry has grown weary of correcting misinterpretations of what he claims New Atheists criticize about faith. He'll absolutely loathe this then. However, many of my interactions with the vocal subset mentioned above have been with those who refer to themselves as New Atheists.

New Atheists and Occupy
The New Atheism movement bears some similarity to the Occupy movement in this way. There is no 'official line' to tow (as far as I'm aware, maybe Dawkins or Hitchens are ambassador enough of the movement that their take is the official line - but unless someone donates an e-book of their work or quotes the 'official line' to me, I'm sticking with there is no 'official line').

Both movements seem to be essentially leaderless, or at least lacking representatives unanimously endorsed to speak for the movement. While everyone in the movement may agree that 'there is no God or gods,' like everyone in the Occupy movement seems to agree 'shit is fucked up and stuff' - the actual details of what's wrong and how to fix it will vary widely within each movement.

This post is directed at those who would react to the phrase "you have just as much faith as the religious" as if you had just said "you have herpes." However, the argument within is worth your consideration - even if you're just interested in telling me how wrong I am.

Redefining Faith

A core tactic this subgroup employs is to very carefully define 'faith' in a way to limit the application of the term to faith in certain situations. Specifically, if a person has faith in a belief based on science, reason, or common knowledge, that isn't faith, it's something else: knowledge, reason, etc. However, if a person has a faith in a belief based solely on acceptance of that belief or on religious texts, etc. that is faith.

A clear example of this behavior can be found on Robert Paul Fischer's blog post on faith:

Do we need faith?

Faith is a noun. It means a belief that was formed in the absence of evidence and/or experience, or that is held despite evidence and/or experience to the contrary, regardless of whether that evidence and/or experience was available at the time the belief was formed.

and another from the Logos discussion linked above:

"What happening here is a very typical rhetorical device which the faithful use in an attempt to discredit the rational. They claim that our understanding of science is just as faith based as their supernatural beliefs and that somehow makes their beliefs more legitimate; it somehow puts us on an equal platform. But it's only a rhetorical device, there is no actual equivalency between 'believing' in gravity and 'believing' in fairies."

Dictionary.com defines faith as:

Confidence or trust in a person or thing.
Belief that is not based on proof.

This subset of atheists fails to see or fails to admit that both definitions are simultaneously correct and focus solely on the second. I posit that both are simultaneously correct and that the second definition is merely a subset of the first, a specific variant of faith.

While the dictionary.com definitions generally work for me, I believe them to be woefully incomplete. Faith is a function of the brain, just as imagination is a function of a brain. Lesser developed brains have a limited ability to imagine, and similarly have a limited ability to exercise faith.

The simplest way for me to explain faith is through the following equation:

Faith is the human ability to act as if an idea is a truth. Apply faith to an idea and it becomes a belief. Remove faith from a belief and it becomes an idea.

Imagination allows us to create and see things in our mind that may exist and may not. We can imagine a how a living T-Rex might look despite never seeing one, we can even imagine one with feathers. If a person were to apply enough faith to the idea that the T-Rex had feathers, it's existence can become a belief.

The Nature of Faith
Just as the human mind is capable of advanced imagination, it is capable of advanced faith. Faith is what allows us to behave as if the data we use to make behavioral choices is accurate.

As a function of the human mind, it is subject to disease and chemical reaction. Take the acid example for instance. Someone on acid might interpret skin tingling as spiders crawling inside their skin. Misapplication of faith can turn this interpretation into a belief, and the user could end up scratching open their skin to get the spiders out.

Measuring Faith
Though I am unaware of a formal methodology for measuring faith, there are enough visible variations of faith to indicate that one could be developed. Faith can increase and decrease: ideas can become beliefs and beliefs can become ideas. For the purposes of this post, I will refer to 'base faith' and 'advanced faith'. Without a formal system of measurement, it's very difficult to determine where 'base faith' ends and 'advanced faith' begins, though I will attempt to give you enough examples to form a frame of reference.

Base Faith and Robert's Chair
Though I'm open to debate on the subject, I have the idea that any creature with a brain is not only capable of base faith, but uses it on a daily basis. As Robert indicates, the chair argument is most often used to illustrate this level of faith.

In the chair example, the claim is made that faith is in evidence when a person sits in a chair. If the subject did not have faith that the chair would hold his/her weight, they would either not sit in the chair or do so very cautiously to prevent injury.

Keeping in mind that Robert is using only the second dictionary.com definition of faith (belief without proof), he argues that both faith and reason are alternative means to the same end: Belief. He claims faith is unnecessary for one to have confidence and trust that the chair will hold one's weight, because one can reason and rationalize that the chair will hold the weight.

His err is not that reason and rationalize do not factor into chair-sitting, but in that they can result in a belief. This is not the case. Reason and rationalization can result in ideas, and barring other influence (such as experience) one could come to the idea that the chair could hold one's weight - but without faith that idea would never become a belief. The subject would remain skeptical, and perhaps gingerly test the chair's stability, but certainly would not plop into the chair with confidence and trust in the chair's weight-holding ability.

What reason and rationalization do is more about justification of the application of faith. We are justified in our faith that the chair would hold us - we have reasons we can site, we can rationalize the safety of the belief.

Base Faith and Senses

Base Faith does not require language, only senses, memory, and the tiniest bit of imagination. Imagination is required for prediction, and as temporal species, prediction is necessary for directed action.

As sensory data accumulates, we begin to predict the outcome of our interactions with the world. Infants constantly conduct experiments, which is likely the reason they're always putting things in their mouths. The first faith we develop, without language or conscious analysis, is faith in our senses. This is quickly followed by the most powerful and dangerous faith, faith in the accuracy of our predictions.

When a child takes his/her first step, they have but tiny faith in the predicted outcome. They are very skeptical and cautious (not to mention clumsy). As this experiment is repeated faith in the prediction increases. With increasing confidence each step is taken, and before long you're chasing the toddler all over the house trying to pin it down and change it's diaper.

Advanced Faith

When faith is applied on the basis of non-sensory data, it is what I consider 'Advanced Faith'. The line

of advanced faith is not drawn between human and animal, as a great multitude of animals possess advanced faith. When a lioness drops a hunk of meat in front of her cub encouraging it to eat, the cub exercises a measure of advanced faith when it bites into the meet. Advanced faith requires communication. That communication can be through body language, such as nudging the meat toward the cub. 'This is food, it's safe to eat' is communicated - faith is applied to the idea that was what was communicated, and the cub comes to believe the meat is indeed food. Chomp, chomp - and the faith is reinforced.

When a mother warns a child that the stove is hot and dangerous to touch, the child may take it on faith or be skeptical and find out the hard way. When the data communicated by the mother proves to be accurate, faith in the accuracy of data from that particular source (the mother) is increased.

As the child grows and matures, data communicated by other humans is proven to be accurate on many occasions. Faith in the accuracy of data communicated grows, and gullibility results. This is why I recommend lying to your children, to instill a healthy level of skepticism - though I also recommend to come clean and be honest once they've demonstrated their gullibility.

The Justification of Faith

"Mama said that alligators are ornery because they got all them teeth and no toothbrush."

As beliefs are collected by the rational mind, they begin to form a world view. This world view becomes a filter by which all future data is interpreted. If the data presented fits into the established world view, the idea represented is much more likely to have faith applied and become a belief. Think "Santa Claus" and "Tooth Fairy."

When data is acquired that is contradictory to this world view, faith in that belief can be reduced to the point of skepticism and the belief can return to the idea-state. If the data acquired is of significant enough caliber or enough contradictory data is amassed, the idea can be rejected as outright falsehood and no longer helps comprise the child's world view. Not getting the presents from the Letter to Santa, recognition of the handwriting on the gifts supposedly from Santa, and an inconvenient potty break late on Christmas Eve could all individually or collectively dispel the belief in Santa Claus.

First-hand data, generally from the senses, rightly has greater influence on the faith applied to an idea/belief. For data from external sources, the influence of the data on the idea/belief depends greatly on the source of the data. By this point, parents are likely to have proven to be fairly reliable sources of accurate external data. Memories of a burnt hand reinforce the credibility of the parent who warned of the hot stove, and that credibility lends greater influence to more abstract data, such as the existence of God.

When the data is commonly held as truth within the society in which the child exists, credibility as to the accuracy of that data is increased. In an integrated society, conflicting beliefs of other members of society have the opposite effect. For example, it seems reasonable that a child from a Jewish family in America living in a society of mostly Christian families would be more skeptical about the accuracy of the beliefs espoused by his/her parents.

Commonly held beliefs can have the application of faith revoked when convincing credible contradictory data is introduced, but as such data is ingrained into the world view of the believer, the bar for convincing can be set pretty high. I suspect there are many who reject the idea that Pluto is actually just an ordinary slab of ice, having held on to the belief of its planet status for so long.

Faith, Religion, and Atheism
The faith utilized by atheists and the religious is no different in its core nature. It performs the same function of allowing an idea to become a belief. The difference between the atheists and the religious is not their faith, but the justification of how they apply that faith.

In both cases, new data that supports and reinforces the current world view is given preference. When new data is presented, existing beliefs from the world view are applied to that data so that it can be incorporated into that world view. If I walked into a room containing an atheist and a Christian with gaping wounds in my hands, it might be considered an unfortunate accident by the atheist and a miracle by the Christian.

At some point in the development of the mind, atheists become much more selective about the justification of their faith. A belief being held by a great number of people becomes insufficient to justify faith. The persistence of a set of beliefs over centuries of human existence becomes insufficient to justify faith.

In general, a stricter criteria for the application of faith is a good thing. In fact, I would consider it a great benefit to society if this stricter criteria was applied to all beliefs (particularly in regard to politics and politicians).

The Denial of Faith

The problem with the denial of faith, particularly among this vocal subset of atheists, is that in their haste to disassociate themselves with 'faith' and 'religion,' they force themselves into an adversarial approach that does nothing to increase the credibility of the data they present.

Rather than accepting the nature of faith, they choose to reserve the term for the second definition. They deny that they have faith because their criteria for applying their own faith requires a certain standard of evidence. They insist the justification required for them to apply faith qualifies the ideas to which they apply their faith as 'knowledge' rather than ideas. They've accepted the idea that the term faith only applies to beliefs not properly justified by their standards. They apply faith to that idea, turning it into a belief and part of their world view.

The reason this becomes a problem is that it almost invariably results in a semantic, time-wasting derailment of the conversation. This (rather unjustified) belief must be defended. In its defense, the conversation generally results in neither side budging, locked in the quagmire of belief.

This adversarial position, regardless of the eloquence of the argument, is not conducive to the goal of having the other party examine their own justifications for how they apply faith. It's far more reasonable to find common ground with those holding an opposing viewpoint from which to explain your position.

If the goal of the vocal atheist entering such a conversation is to demonstrate the merits of stricter rationalization requirements of belief, it's difficult not to see it as tragically ironic that their faith in their definition of faith undermining that goal.

Why YOU should be Pro-Internet Piracy

2012-02-06T22:55:00.000-08:00

If you oppose #sopa, #pipa, and #acta on the grounds of censorship or some other noble cause:
This post is for you.
If oppose internet piracy because 'stealing is wrong':
This post is for you.
If you are an artist/author that wants to protect his/her income from unscrupulous characters:
This post is for you.

Read more »

These Atheists are Bullies: Translated

2012-02-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

What follows is essentially a guest post by Jon Kelly, who in my mind should either have a blog of his own or regularly contributing to existing blogs. I asked his permission to repost this here, as I feel it is a more less layperson translation of the points I tried to make in my earlier controversial post and would perhaps be better understood by more the more intellectual crowd.

long-winded rant
Before I start, I would like to let it be known that I consider myself neither an atheist, nor religious, and do not particularly have any stake in this argument one way or another. I try to view things from a perspective of pragmatism (primarily) and logic/rationality (secondarily). Thus when people dismiss religion outright without considering its functional value within an emotional and/or societal context, while claiming to do so under the guise of reason, I tend to get annoyed. Even if religion does not offer any value to an individual, it seems indisputable that there are individuals (and societies and cultures) that have benefited greatly from religion in one way or another. Whether or not we would be better off as a whole without religion, another common topic, is another matter entirely, and beyond the scope of this discussion.

I will now make explicit one of my personal biases. I believe that different people have different values. I have my own set of values, some of which I expect others to adhere to, but for the most part I believe people should be allowed to choose what is important to them in life. As such, as least a portion of my evaluation of others is based upon their adherence to their self-reported values. If someone cares about compassion and self-sacrifice, and gives freely and selflessly of their time and assets, then that reflects positively on them. If they live a lavish lifestyle and occasionally donate money to charity, not so much. Similarly, if someone claims that logic and reason are important to them, then I am going to expect them to apply them more consistently than someone who does not value them. I do not believe that logic and reason hold any intrinsic value (they are useful tools, but as noted above, pragmatism is, to me, a higher value than any other). I am not saying that this is how I expect everyone else to live, but am providing this to explain some of the implicit biases in my statements (indeed, I know that I, like everyone else, am not without bias).

Without further rambling:

I think it goes without saying that "religious" people who respond to mockery with death threats (when murder and violence are explicitly decried within their faith) are hypocrites. Also, I try not to generalize 'atheists' into a single group, since it seems like there are two main 'factions', one of which simply doesn't believe in any specific religion, and another which claims that religion as a whole is false. The primary distinction being that one makes no assertions, and thus need not provide support for anything, while the other makes a positive assertion (there is no god), for which I have yet to see solid logical support.

Memetic Self-Defense
Hypocrisy is often not apparent from within the ideological construct that many of what I refer to as 'religious atheists' operate within, just as the inherent hypocrisy in issuing death threat in defense of a religion that condemns murder is not apparent to the religious zealot from within the framework of his beliefs.

Consider the following:
Religion is an archetypal exemplar of a highly evolved meme (or, due to the complexity of world religions, it might be more accurate to say species of memetic organism). As such, it is necessarily resilient to attack. As a side note, I would group any form of atheism in which unsupported positive assertions (i.e. "God does not exist") are an integral portion of the belief system in with these religions, due to structural similarities.

Biological organisms that host these memetic organisms will typically respond strongly to attacks on them. This is analogous to the strong response seen when deeply rooted societal memes are violated (such as proscription against murder, cannibalism, etc., which I suspect would elicit a similarly strong reaction from many atheists). Just as the host of religious memes might react adversely to an attack on those memes, a host to a set of non-religious memes as above will do the same if the memes are deeply rooted and self-perpetuating enough. I suspect that for any given atheist, there is an example of such a meme that would elicit a strong defensive reaction. This is why I think that it is inane to be shocked that people react negatively when their cherished beliefs are attacked, when in reality, those who are so shocked might behave in a functionally similar manner were the tables turned. And often do.

The hypocrisy exists in the tacit assertion that OTHER (religious) people should behave differently than OTHER OTHER (atheists) people. Ignore for a moment the question of degree (i.e. threats of violence/murder vs. personal attacks as per Larry, etc.), and consider the nature of the reaction.

It is obviously a predictable reaction, and one that is fairly universal among humanity. Acting surprised at a very predictable negative outcome to an action is childish... most (good) parents wouldn't let their child get away with pretending like they had know way of foreseeing the logical consequence of their action when it is obvious that they did.

For a clever (in my mind) illustration, imagine religion X, a highly evolved, competitive memetic organism as a big grizzly. If you poke the grizzly with a sharp stick, it is fairly obvious the direction that encounter is going to go.

Doctors are Jerks
Please do not confuse this with blaming the victim. The actions of the people threatening another individual for exercising free speech are inexcusable, and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Those promulgating exclusion and discrimination based upon beliefs should be similarly castigated (this goes for ALL parties, religious or not). I unequivocally condemn such actions. I don't think it is even worth discussing them further, as by virtually any standard of morality, they are indefensible. These actions are not the victim's responsibility, and they cannot be blamed for them. They CAN, however, be held accountable for their own actions.

Imagine I walk into a convention for medical professionals, and put up a big sign saying "DOCTORS ARE JERKS". I then proceed to act surprised when people get upset at me. When people claim that it is in fact I who am the jerk, I say "WHOAH! I am just exercising free speech and poking fun at doctors... look at the way they act, they are obviously proving me right! Doctors are jerks! Medicine is stupid! I am not a jerk!"

Maybe hypocrisy isn't the right word. Maybe juvenile and ignorant is a better descriptor. Either way, it really rubs me the wrong way. The REAL hypocrisy is the lack of logic and rationality often exhibited (see entire above argument) by those who claim logic and rationality as their motivation behind rejecting religion. Note for atheists who simply don't care/believe, and don't outright reject religion: none of this applies to you, you are more or less beyond reproach from a philosophical standpoint, and as long as you're happy and whatever (non-religious) belief system you have constructed and/or elected to utilize is working for you, then high fives all around. For people who vehemently reject religion as false... why? I don't reject the notion that the sky is made out of invisible tortoises... it is simply completely irrelevant to my belief system. I don't have to accept or reject it, and if someone else chooses to believe it, why would that bother me?

Footnote: Is Bill a jerk?

"If you want to mock atheism, feel free. I doubt you'll get any death threats"

Premise: Atheism is not a religion, but rather the rejection of religion.

Given that premise, then that statement is somewhat nonsensical. To whit:
Let's go with apples. Bob is an appletarian, who eats only apples. He owns an apple farm, has apple art on his wall, and uses only Apple computer products. Bill refuses to eat apples, and really doesn't like them at all. When Jim satirizes apples, and accuses apple-eaters of being a bunch of namby-pamby riffraff, this, needless to say, upsets Bob. He cries a little bit, and say to himself, "That Jim guy is a real jerk!" When Jim makes fun of Bill for not liking apples, this, unsurprisingly, probably does not have as much impact. If Bill says, "Wow, Bob, you're a big baby, he's just making fun of apples. Apples are stupid anyway!" then we can conclude that Bill is also a jerk. If, instead, Bill says, "You know Bob, I think that apples are kinda silly, but I respect you, and I respect that you like them. Jim should be more constructive in his feedback!" then we can all buy each other a beer and be friends. None of this is rocket science.

Jon Kelly

Atheism in 2012: Double Standards & Hypocrisy

2012-01-29T18:28:00.000-08:00

This is the first post in my series on Atheism, a series of observations with the goal of leading to a hypothesis as to why atheism has yet to become the dominant belief structure of society, particularly among technologically wealthy cultures.

This particular post will reference a post by my new friend Larry, which I encourage you to familiarize yourself with as it's a pretty good read and offers a lot of insight into the double standards & hypocrisy I've encountered in my interactions with atheists. He calls it: Freedom of Expression

Double Standards
Recently, Paula Kirby posted an article that inspired me to write a fairly controversial post.

Apparently, the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Student Society at UCL Union decided to use a cartoon depicting Jesus and Muhammad to promote a meeting at a pub. UCLU received complaints and asked them to remove the image. Things escalated from there.¹

Part of the escalation involved death threats to a 17-year-old who changed this facebook profile picture to the cartoon in question, an incident featured both in Ms. Kirby's article and in my controversial post it inspired.

With the terms: "atheist" (modifying an organization), "atheists" (indicating an audience), "we", and "our," Ms. Kirby's article paints atheists as a group whose freedom of expression is under siege. As the obvious common thread when referring to a group as atheist is their common lack of belief in a deity, the article is likely to lead one to believe that the inclusive group is being targeted because of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof).

As the cartoon series in question is (barely debatable) obvious mockery of the behavior and attitudes of the religious as observed by the cartoonist, and the cartoon uses characters from those religions to express that mockery - it's evident that the mockery is targeted on the basis of religious beliefs.

I'm of the mind that it's a double standard to target a group because of their religious beliefs and then rage against those that would target others because of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof).

Hypocrisy

So moved by this blatant double standard, I used my freedom of expression and wrote my controversial post, full of scorn, criticizing the decisions made in the exercise of Mr. Morgan and Ms. Kirby's freedom of expression.

In response, I receive criticism and scorn of my exercise of my freedom of expression. It was labeled stupid by my new friend Larry, and those at RDF couldn't see anything wrong with targeting on the basis of religious beliefs but took a hardline stance against targeting on the basis of lack of religious beliefs..

I asked Larry to explain his position, and he was gracious enough to do so². Here's my analysis and response:

I took some time poking around Larry's blog in an attempt to find a direct statement and failed, but I found enough circumstantial evidence to feel confident continuing the analysis with the assumption that he is an atheist. I point this out because I see the first paragraph of his explanation as a demonstration of a sense of humor. My post is titled 'These Atheists are Bullies' ('These' was added), and it would appear he's an atheist writing a post with the intent to 'heap additional abuse' on me, something one might expect a bully to do.

Then there's an accusation of hypocrisy - an insufferable prick complaining about insufferable pricks. This is a slight misinterpretation. The complaint was insufferable pricks calling for unanimous support of their right to express their prickitude. As one not only has the freedom to express what they please, one also has the freedom to support or not support that exercise of freedom. I choose not to support their mockery on the basis of religious belief, just like I refuse to support Westboro Baptist funeral 'protests' as an exercise of freedom of expression. Using a freedom as a weapon risks that freedom for everyone else.

He later uses this to imply that I don't understand rights, and that to accept a right is to accept a social obligation to protect that right. Very well, in that case I accept the limited right of freedom of expression and will vehemently defend anyone's right to expression that doesn't infringe on other rights. Cross that line, start using it to infringe on the right of freedom of religion, and my support stops at the line.

Then there's the point that mockery on the basis of religious belief isn't bullying. Maybe. I'd debate it. Particularly since it seems to be so accepted, defended, and encouraged among atheists that it is accepted as commonplace. Frequency and recurrence of such mockery starts to look like a campaign to to dehumanize a people because of their religion. If the campaign remains intact and escalates above mockery, you're well on your way to persecution on the basis of religious beliefs (or lack there of). Isn't at least the parenthetical version of that something atheists oppose?

Then the most frequent atheist behavior I've encountered occurs. He examines a statement and then pretends it says something it doesn't. Perhaps he needed clarification but was too proud to ask.

For the record, I think murdering someone for a cartoon posted on facebook is the act of something far worse than an insufferable prick. Said murderer would not be receiving applause. I oppose that intolerance more than I do minor demonstrations of intolerance. However, just because both versions of intolerance arise in a certain situation doesn't mean the minor intolerance should pass by ignored, and there were plenty of people speaking out against the major one already.

1. http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/01/never-anything-more-than-an-informal-request/

2. http://barefootbum.blogspot.com/2012/01/freedom-of-expression.html

Education: Right or Privilege?

2012-01-29T01:39:00.000-08:00

Isn't it time we gave up on schools? I know we'll need to replace the socialization and normalization somehow, but I mean as far as a quality education goes.

You hear a lot about the 'free market' these days. How the best products an solutions come from personal interest - that society will benefit from people trying to make themselves rich. There's definitely some truth to it, but I think it's time we tapped into something more powerful than self interest to shape our society. Parents.

Not all parents, obviously, but enough - more than enough really. Self-interest (at least on the surface level) will never have a person throw themselves in front of a car to save another. Yet, I can't say that I know a single mother that wouldn't do so for her child. I'm sure they are out there, but overwhelmingly the mothers I meet would do anything for their children.

So, let's see if we can't take that emotion and use it to build our society from the ground up. Let's make THAT the foundation of our society. If a mother's love for her child is the foundation, the next layer would be education. What if a great education was available to every child (at least every child with internet access)? What kind of world would result from that? Would it be a better world to live in than if education - particular American education - remains as horrible as it is?

What if education goals weren't the minimum it takes for a child to succeed, but the maximum that child could achieve?
Read more »

Procrastination and Priorities

2012-01-28T18:11:00.000-08:00

PROCRASTINATE:
1. to defer action; delay.
2. to put off till another day or time; defer; delay.

I could definitely be considered a serial procrastinator. I know I'm not the only person who struggles with procrastination, because I have clicked on many articles with tips on how to avoid procrastination, and if people are writing about it and people are reading about it, then there must be other people struggling with it. I firmly believe procrastination is fairly common, and it's likely this post would have gotten more readers if I had entitled it: 'Conquer Your Procrastination' or similar.

Procrastination is not without consequence. Things that get put off tend to pile up. The 'list of things you need and want to do' gets longer and longer. When you finally make the time to start addressing the list, deciding which thing on the list to address eats up a large portion of that time since there is so much to choose from. While that sand slides through the hourglass, you not only feel the burden your procrastination has caused, but that while you decide what to do you're making things worse.

My ability to procrastinate used to come with a sense of pride. The homework with the ever-approaching deadline? No match for me. I was fully capable of putting it off and putting it off, only to cram in a burst of effort at the last minute and still get a passing grade. Marvel at my prowess! Inevitably, I reached the point in my life where I realized that getting a passing grade was a lot more difficult in the real world, and my procrastinating habits were making my life harder instead of easier. I also realized that I owed it to myself to do better than 'a passing grade,' and that pride in doing my best on a task tasted far sweeter than pride in my ability to procrastinate and not fail.

Thinking it Through
I was actually in the process of not-procrastinating when this post began to form in my mind. Particularly when what you've been putting off is manual labor: washing dishes, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash - your mind has plenty of time for internal dialogue about abstract concepts. As my hands did their work, my mind examined my procrastination.

Was I intentionally procrastinating? I don't really need to make a budget. I've gotten by, at least, with not having one for many years. I want to be on a budget, I want better control of my finances. Surely with these noble goals I wasn't intentionally avoiding making a budget. Even back in school, I wasn't intentionally avoiding the homework. I wanted to spend time on it. I wanted an awesome finished project. I wanted to knock it out of the park.

If I wanted to spend time on it, why wasn't I?
Because you don't want to spend time on it, you want to have already spent time on it. You want it to be done, to reap the benefits of having done it - but you don't actually want to do the thing itself.
Instant gratification? Of course that's what I wanted. Only in retrospect does my desire for the result outweigh what I wanted to do at the time.

But it happens almost every time. Almost every time I choose what I want to do at the moment of what I want to have done, and almost every time hindsight shows it to have been the wrong choice. Logic suggests remembering this and using it to overcome the appeal of what I want to do at a given moment - yet, logic faces a challenging foe in the form of momentary desires.

Priorities in Order
My rational mind constructs a simple plan to follow. It sorts through all of the retrospective anecdotes and finds the pattern of the data. To reduce the stress of enormous todo lists, follow these simple steps:

It assures me that by doing so my life will become more peaceful and more under control. My stress level will decrease. My contentedness will increase. Just follow these simple steps. Try it for a short time, prove it's effectiveness.

I see the logic. I see the simple wisdom. Then it occurs to me, This wisdom should be shared. You should turn all of this thought into a blog post. Quick, do it now, before you lose the inspiration.

Clearly it will take great effort to promote this and manage to prevent hypocrisy.

It will. Let's focus on that right after we write the post and hit publish...

To my friends at the Richard Dawkins Foundation

2012-01-24T14:15:00.000-08:00

Sadly, I am no longer allowed to play with you as the moderators have decided they could construe an if-statement as potentially libelous. I'll try to recall it and repost it here when I have more time as they don't seem to believe in returning a copy of the removed message to the poster for reference.

I'll address your comments here when I have the time, as you seem to have a taken an interest in my work and I certainly welcome dissenting opinion. Meanwhile, I'm flattered by your interest in myself and my blog - though somewhat confused by:

My link to my personal blog being removed due to it being a link to a personal blog, but your link to my blog not being removed.
That discussion of me isn't considered off-topic.

Be careful though, all this attention might feed into my NPD. :)

Regarding such, I say:

Be yourself, even if you're a sociopath.

Best wishes,
Grizwald Grim

Potentially Libelous
Turns out the if-statement wasn't the "potentially libelous" one. Though if I recall correctly it was hypothetical and phrased as a rhetorical question. It was a reply to Steve Zara's post:

Your position is wrong. For goodness sake, this is a few students advertising for a pub evening using a cartoon that probably amused them.

and went something like:

Then why when I imagine a group of these college lads leaving said pub with a healthy buzz and stumbling across a lone Muslim girl am I concerned for her safety?

phil rimmer then quoted it (he's since deleted the post) and made an accusation that I must think atheists are terribly immoral (or similar).

Of course I don't. I think they're humans. Humans do a lot of really screwed up stuff, and to assume the morality of these individuals on the basis of their faith or lack-thereof would be terribly ignorant. Point being, you shouldn't assume a positive about their moral character on the basis of their atheism or group affiliation any more than I should assume a negative. Just as every Muslim isn't prone to death threats, every Atheist isn't prone to acceptable behavior.

Even Paula Kirby (the articles author) nods in the possible direction this intolerance can lead:

The day I see atheists threatening violence or inciting hatred or indulging in any other kind of threatening behaviour, I will not hesitate to condemn them for it.

Certainly not every atheist who thinks the cartoon is appropriate would think violence against believers appropriate would be okay. However, I suspect that those who think violence against believers is okay would never consider the cartoon to be promoting intolerance.

In fact, notice comment 53

Continued Discussion: Episode 1

There was a great deal directed at me that I hadn't addressed prior to losing my commenting privileges for the above. As those who wrote it and I didn't get the opportunity to get the point of agreeing to disagree (in fact it seems most have yet to wrap their heads around the points I tried to make with my latest post), I am taking this opportunity to address those comments.

As I mentioned, there was a great deal and it is likely to take some time. Here is the first installment, the rest will come as time allows.

Tonight's special guest star:

Ignorant Amos

(offsite quotes of me in green)

You are struggling with this I can tell. Bullies ridicule as part of the bullying tactics, but not all ridicule is bullying. It's a concept you really need to grasp.

"We want to win arguments by cogency. I think ridicule is a weapon, but it must be witty ridicule and not just abuse,” he says." Richard Dawkins, The Sunday Times, 22 Jan., 2012

I would very much like to say: "No abuse is just abuse, abuse is unjust." because I like the play on words, but it's intellectually dishonest. I think child molesters should be executed, and that might be considered abusive.

HOWEVER, witty or not - abuse is unjust when the weapon is not carefully aimed. There are an great deal of Muslims (wikipedia claims 1.5 billion if I recall correctly), and without evidence to the contrary my stance is that a great many of them are not deserving of abuse - that many of them are good people who fell into believing what is most likely nonsense.

When these good people are ridiculed right along side the less desirable Muslim extremists, it is reasonable that there is a bond created by the ridicule. Indiscriminate ridicule creates a common ground between the good people and the extremists, and is therefore highly counterproductive to eliminating the extremists. The extremists are then able to find sympathy among the good people on those common grounds.

I see, so if they had posted the group logo instead of the cartoon all this still would have happened. Weird.

That is not the correct question, the correct question is "Would anyone have been offended if any other group had posted the cartoon?" If yes, then it was not because the poster was Atheist, if no, then you have to start asking other questions.

BTW, the very existence of Atheist groups offend some people, do ya reckon that has any bearing?

I'm sure it has bearing on something, but as the points I am trying to make are:

that public ridicule of others on the basis of their beliefs is wrong
portraying the tolerant as enemies of free expression for denouncing an act of intolerance is ill considered

It doesn't appear to have any bearing on the discussion at hand - nor does your "correct question." However, I think I would greatly enjoy discussing various aspects of discrimination faced by atheists at another time/place.

She gets accountability for her decisions, not responsibility for the decisions of others. As there’s nothing wrong with dressing provocatively, that accountability is nil. However, publicly ridiculing the beliefs of other people on behalf of an organization is wrong, unless that organization’s purpose to promote discord within its community.

Why? Why is it wrong to ridicule the beliefs of others, publicly or otherwise?

For the same reason it's wrong to burn someone at the stake for their beliefs.

What difference does it make whether it's an organization or an individual ridiculing an organisation or individuals belief's?

See the bit about common ground with extremists I mentioned above. If faced with a hostile group rather than a hostile individual, one is more likely to seek allies for protection.

Why are religious belief's held in such high regard, yet other belief's are not? Undeserved respect, that's why. We are back to undeserved respect.

Because the world is the way it is and not the way it should be.

I know my friends at RDF have a hard time with this, but try to grasp the core concept of the following:

The religious establishment is a castle. You, I, and a few others are standing outside the castle wishing it was a pile of rubble. You try to throw a rock at the castle and I say, "Dude, don't throw rocks at the castle, are you daft?"

You reply: "But the castle deserves to have rocks thrown at it. Everyone throws rocks at other things, even the people in the castle? Not throwing rocks at it is showing the castle undeserved respect."

"But Amos," I explain, "it's a castle, and that's a rock. If we want to bring it down we'll need an army, and there are more people in there than out here. Let's play nice, go inside, and convince as many people in there as we can to come out here with us."

What about the offensiveness caused to Islam by the wee girl going to school for an education? Do you think those who use their belief's as an excuse for doing bad are above being ridiculed for those belief's?

No, I think that ridiculing those beliefs rather than those people is counterproductive because it establishes common ground between those that share those beliefs but are ignorant of the wee girl (most Muslims) and those that would harm the wee girl (the extremists). Better to inform the ignorant of the wee girl without establishing that common ground with the extremists. That way to establish common ground between most Muslims and everyone else.

Belief's we are talking about now, not the obesity of someone's mother. They are not the same thing and those that think they are need a double dose of the ridicule.

Of course they aren't the same thing. However, they are similar enough to illustrate a point to those with an open mind, imagination, and the capability of reason.

Your position, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the Atheist group advertising their function with a satirical depiction of 'Jesus & Mo' should have considered the feelings of anyone that is liable to be offended by the depiction before going ahead and using that depiction. By going ahead and using the cartoon and causing offence, they behaved like ridiculing bullies who went out of there way to persecute religious believers and brought whatever repercussions that resulted on themselves. Right?

This is me correcting you because you are wrong: My position is that the group should have considered whether or not posting the cartoon in the advertisement of their function was in alignment with the goals of their organization:

If the goals of their organization are to ridicule people that believe differently then they do, posting the cartoon met that goal.
If the goal was to amuse members without ridiculing people who believe differently, there's no reason the announcement needed to be public as they could have limited it to the 421 members (last i checked) group.
If their goal is to expose people who believe differently to other options as to beliefs, the ridicule in the cartoon is counterproductive.

Since the post was representative of an atheist group, it is speaking for the group, and that should be considered when deciding what to post (less hub-bub for an individual posting what he pleases. When it's representative of a group you're moving from freedom of expression into something more convoluted). Paula Kirby should not accuse those promoting tolerance of infringing upon the right to freedom of expression when they oppose an intolerant message, they're just promoting tolerance.

Why can’t what I’m saying be what I’m saying? Why do you insist on reading what I write, then accusing me of saying things I haven’t?

Because it's a problem when you use emotive language like, bullying, persecution, harassment, provocation, bat-shit crazy.

Well, I tried calling it "calling someone's mother fat," but you and my other friends at RDF would have none of that.

Is it perpetuating harassment and provocation if the people don't go bat-shit crazy or issue death threats?

Yes, just of significantly less magnitude than people normally associate with those terms.

What is the purpose of the bat-shit craziness and death threats if not to intimidate into kowtowing?

Honestly, the purpose is to defend the castle from a rock. Clearly it's an unacceptable response. It's obvious it's an unacceptable response. That I don't rage against the obvious is apparently oft misconstrued for acceptance of the response. I feel I'm demonstrating the appropriate response. Stopping by the comment section defending the rock throwing and saying "Hey, don't throw rocks."

As the unacceptable response is so obviously unacceptable, it seems to me that a great deal of people are already voicing that opinion. If questioned directly, I'll gladly add my voice as well. In the shadow of such an overreaction though, the initial intolerance is getting a free pass. As such, I felt my demonstration of an appropriate response was warranted to draw attention to it - as it's clearly not obvious that it was an act of intolerance.

Is it wrong to ridicule a gay teen for being gay?
Is it wrong to deny gay adults visitation of their lovers dying in a hospital because they aren't married?
Is it wrong to execute people for being gay?

I say all three of those are wrong, but it seems to me many people are quite comfortable with letting the first one slide, fewer but still many are comfortable with the second, and fewer still but enough are comfortable with allowing the third.

However, the fact that unjustifiable wrongs are committed does not change the fact that X falls into the category of persecution.

It is not persecution, even by the definition you have chosen.

It might not be if viewed as an isolated incident, but it's not an isolated incident it's a systematic campaign reinforced by (usually) silent consent.

Let me use an analogy. Manchester United supporters believe they support the best team in the world. Everyone else hates them for their arrogance. Everyone else ridicules and mocks Manchester United supporters. Manchester United supporters get upset at everyone taking the piss out of their football team. Taking the piss out of a football team is not bullying or persecution, but some Manchester United supporters love their team so much that they are prepared to inflict violence on anyone taking the piss out of their team...on that basis, should everyone stop mocking Manchester United?

On the basis of threatened violence? No. On the basis that people are starving to death, being murdered for trying to go to school, being imprisoned for posting 'there is no god' on facebook? Hell yes everyone should stop mocking Manchester United.

"The systematic; socially supported mistreatment and exploitation of a group or category of people by anyone". Not on your nelly Grizwald.

What if the only difference is which group is in the majority?

Whether it should have caused a reaction is irrelevant.

No it's not...it was posted to raise a reaction, a reaction from the group members seeing it...the reaction being a laugh at the satire. The university Atheist group didn't draw these cartoons, you are aware of that are you not?

A laugh at the satire or a laugh at Muslims? If that was the goal there was no reason for it to be a public announcement. Yes, I am aware.

We don’t live in the world as it should be, we live in the world we live in. Are you suggesting that despite all of the articles on this very website that suggest otherwise, the possibility of an outlandish reaction wasn’t considered?

So what? Are you saying that at the risk of offending some ignorant fuckwit by attending school and the possibility of an outlandish reaction wasn't considered, namely, an attack with acid? Better keep every wee girl at home and let terrorism win.

No, I'm saying people should watch less football and deal with problems like this - and that university groups shouldn't be fueling that fire.

"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Precisely. Yet you'd have me remain silent about the intolerance of the ASH.

That is the whole point.

All I did was copy and paste your self description from your very own blog Grizwald. These are your words about you.

Which you posted here and emphasized for the purpose of ridicule, correct?

This goes to the heart of the matter. It is all about perspective. I was pointing out your failings in your self description and the way you have approached this subject...how is that ridicule?

Were you really? Who were you pointing them out to? Were you candidly expressing concern to me? It certainly doesn't seem so, as you didn't detail what exactly those failings were. Were you pointing them out to my friends at the RDF because they'd know what your emphasis meant and get a chuckle at my expense?

See, the squiggles with the dots underneath are question marks. When I say "correct?" I'm asking you if the assertion prior was correct. This is your opportunity to clarify if it is incorrect. Instead, you chose to accuse me of paranoia. What is the assertion you were supporting?

The errancy of the parable was outlined. The point of ridiculing religion is to show how ridiculous it all really is, that is the issue here. I'm not obliged to show undeserved respect. Invisible entity with zero evidence, pervert's on flying horses claiming to have garnered instructions for the worlds population from god via an angel deserve no respect and will receive none.

I'd never ask you to respect a religion - just people, the current social climate, and the consequences of rock throwing.

Publicly ridiculing others on the basis of belief is wrong regardless of reasoning or consequences.

No it's not. It really isn't. Manchester United, Skoda drivers, Republican voters, people who support a religion that supports paedophiles, people that support a religion that throws acid in the face of school children....they are all fair game for satire and ridicule....live with it Grizwald.

Bullshit. It's lazy and marginally effective at best. Try a new tactic - hold people personally accountable for their actions and their beliefs. Allow me to redirect you to the portion of comment 208 the whole gang seemed to readily ignore:

Another telling moment in this whole debacle was the decision by whomever in the ASH to respond to the demand of removal with public appeal regarding infringement of the right to free expression.

Justifications I've heard for use of the cartoon have included that mockery is an effective method of criticizing or questioning religious beliefs. If that truly was the purpose of the cartoon, why did the response to the demand of removal not continue the goal?

Would it not have been more in line with goal of criticizing beliefs to respond with something like:

Dear UCLU:
We will not be taking the cartoon down. If religious students are offended by it, they should perhaps focus less on facebook and more on their religious texts.

Specifically, if Christian students are offended by the comedic depiction of Jesus, they should direct themselves to the portion of the bible that speaks of 'turning the other cheek.'

If Muslim students are offended by the comedic depiction of Muhammad, please direct them here: http://answering-islam.org/Muhammad/pictures.html

Additionally, we will be reviewing UCLU policies on censorship and will likely call for your resignation on those or similar grounds shortly. Have a great day!

ASH

Aside from being way off base about removing the cartoon do to offense, I agree with a few points S M Tahir Nasser made in the same statement found here: http://freethinker.co.uk/2012/01/12/atheists-have-no-right-to-decide-what-is-or-what-is-not-offensive-to-believers/

"It may be argued that such cartoons are in the manner of satire and that satire is a key element in freedom of expression. When examined however, it is clear that these cartoons are not satirical in the least. Satire is characterised by the bringing to light of vices for the purpose of initiating reform within the individual or group of individuals who are satirised.

Was this the purpose of cartoons with Jesus and Mohammed (peace be upon them both) lying in bed together, or comparing the number of Twitter followers they have? It is clear that the purpose of the cartoon panels is not to initiate serious discussion regarding the holy founders of either religion. The cartoons only have one purpose – to mock and deride and poke fun."

These Atheists are Bullies

2012-01-18T03:43:00.000-08:00

"No one is more insufferable than he who lacks basic courtesy."- Bryant H. McGill

I think I had an atheist whine in my general direction today. Over at the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, (emphasis mine) Paula Kirby posted:

"But the key thing to note in all these cases is that it is no longer just the religious who would inhibit our freedom of expression: increasingly, secular bodies are buying into this invidious idea too, all in the name of 'tolerance' or 'community relations' or 'respect'."

Let's try a little of that reason for a moment, shall we?

Why SOPA has nothing to do with Online Piracy

2012-01-11T00:21:00.000-08:00

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

They want you to think SOPA and the Protect-IP act are good things, about protecting intellectual property and stopping online piracy. That's complete bullshit. Here's why:

Read more »

BREAKING NEWS: Obama Indefinitely Detained

2012-01-03T07:20:00.000-08:00

In a stunning move this morning, the President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama was taken into custody by a platoon of army soldiers lead by Brigadier General Clyde De'Sarae.

Just after 10:10 a.m. Eastern time, the platoon raided the White House quickly sweeping into the Oval Office taking President Obama into custody.

Read more »

Google+'s Volume Slider & How Circles Were Meant To Work

2011-12-30T01:52:00.000-08:00

"There is a reason for this madness and that is the waterfall." - Roger Steen

The New Volume Slider

Google+ is rolling out a volume slider to better control your main stream. I discovered it by accident, when checking out page management features. I'm not positive, but I think it's a roll out because the circles of the page had the volume slider and my personal circles don't have it yet. Of course, I still don't have that fancy new navigation bar either....

I later found a complete explanation on gplustuts which turns out to be a very informative site with a rather unfortunate name (as if there isn't I'm sure there will soon be a site called gplusluts or gplussluts). For a thorough understanding of the volume slider thing, check out the linked article.

Basically, the volume slider works like this:
You select a percentage of posts from each of your circles that make it to your main stream.

How, exactly, it picks and chooses which posts from that circle make the percentage cut isn't particularly clear to me (though I didn't watch the video). If you give a circle 5%, it may show you 5% of the posts from each poster in that circle in your mainstream - or it may just put every 20th post from that circle in your stream.

Main Stream Waterfalls
This, undoubtedly, is to help people like me. My main stream is like a waterfall. You may have shared a fabulous post I would have loved to have seen - but if I wasn't watching my stream within the hour or so you posted it, by the time I look at my stream again your post will probably be long gone.

I recently conducted an Experiment to get a rough idea of whether a single post was reaching enough of the people who have circled me, or if I'd have to share multiple times to get the word out about something I thought was important.

Read more »

Google unveils "Find My Content" tool to fight Copyright Infringement

2011-12-28T00:46:00.000-08:00

Just a few short weeks ago, Google (courtesy of a Google+ post by Matt Steiner) announced the 'Find My Face" tool utilizing facial recognition software to aid in tagging pictures of people on the fledgling social network, Google+.

Today*, Google announced the addition of it's "Find My Content" tool.

The tool's first incarnation is aimed at stopping the seemingly rampant theft of original photography taking place on Google+. Using modified facial recognition technology, Google+ will now compare uploaded images with those previously uploaded to Google+. If it finds a match, the uploader is notified prior to posting that the image has already been uploaded to Google+ and the original upload will be linked to if the uploader continues the post.

Here is an artists rendition of the new feature in action:

Some fictional Google spokesperson who doesn't really exist is hereby quoted as saying:
"Google+ is quickly establishing itself as THE social network for photographers and other artists to share their original work and build a following. Google highly approves of their social network being adopted in this manner and is taking the necessary steps to help these artists protect their copyrights"

The fictional spokesperson went on to say that they plan on expanding this feature to original artwork of all kinds, including the first person to share a link to a blog post or article.

When questioned about situations where a non-copyright owner is the first to share an image on Google+, the fictional spokesperson pointed out that this feature will aid the artist in finding the original violator of the copyright - a potentially impossible task when original art can be cut, pasted, and reposted at will.

He mentioned plans to allow the artist to file a claim over their copyrighted work, and should the claim be validated the name of the original poster will be replaced by the copyright holder.

100% of the people who have read this suggestion prior to publishing have fully endorsed this addition to the social network, saying that part of the reason they support Google+ is because of Google's reputation of doing the right thing.

*DISCLAIMER: By today, I mean some day in the future when the people at Google in charge of these sort of things sees this article, recognizes the value of the suggestion, and initial implementation is completed.

This article is an homage to the genius advertisers who like to make advertisement that look indistinguishable from actual articles other than the word 'advertisement' in tiny font at the top and bottom.

Suggestion to Improve Google+

5 Things to Make Google+ 50 Times Better

2011-12-22T21:13:00.000-08:00

First the pleasantries - Google+ is great. Everyone working on it should get a round of applause. Now stop patting yourselves on the back, you've got a lot more work to do.

1. Quit being like facebook.

Not too long ago, you changed the notification pane without warning. New features are great, but changing the way things work without any kinds of heads up makes for a bad impression.

- First, it says you don't care what we think. You undoubtedly got feedback on how to improve the notification pane, but also consider all of the feedback you didn't get about the notification pane. Changes like this paint you like a dictator imposing his will on the people. The people hate it when facebook does it, they're going to hate it when you do it too.

- Second, people don't like being confused. Send us a notification (preferably in advance), with a link to written and picture/video description of the changes. Show us how things used to be, how they are now, and tell us why you decided to make the change. It'll seem like you care what we think and prevent confusion.

2. Don't be an open beta.

You're a large respected company, don't put out things that function poorly. Especially don't put out things that function poorly in the Chrome browser. I'm sure you'll have no problem finding volunteers to test out these sort of changes for you before you roll them out to the public. In fact, I'd volunteer. I'd actually be surprised if you didn't do this already, but based on the notification pane it would seem that if you have these volunteers either you aren't listening to them or they aren't very good at finding problems.

Broken Notification Pane

Not to harp on the new notification pane, but it's broken - in more than one way.

- When you open it, you see something like this:

The first part isn't bad. Nice line at the top to identify the post by author and title. Shows the new comment and apparently the total +1s.

Clearly though, the html showing in the second part looks like ass. It's embarrassing to release that sort of thing to the public. Shame! Shame! The whole world is watching!

Then, when you select one of the notifications, you get more detailed information about that particular notification - good thinking!

Oh, look at that awesome summary of things that have happened to that post. That's really nice. Who commented, who shared, who +1'd.

Oh sweet, I can reply from right here. That's great. You know what though... I have a lengthy and insightful comment I'd like to add, and I would feel more comfortable doing it in a larger area than the notification pane.

I remember on the old notifications, it would say: This fella has commented on one of your posts. That word posts would be a link to take you to the full page version. Where did that link go...

Let's see, I can go back to the previous page, check newer or older notifications, view the profile page of those named in the summary, view my own profile page, view my photo albums, get a link to the profile of the guy who shared by clicking on 1 share..expand the comments...view a list of all my posts.

But I can't just click somewhere and go to the full page version of THIS post?

How about...

Broken 'Send feedback' button

It's awesome that you have the 'Send feedback' button at all. Makes us feel like you care, you really care. Until we try to you use it and it doesn't work.

You see, when I click the 'Send feedback' button, the thing 'analyzes the page'. Maybe it's because the analyzer uses the same innovative 'pane' technology, but as soon as I click the button all the other panes close. So, if I'm trying to send you feedback on say..the notification pane.. I can't, because the notification pane closes as soon as I click 'Send feedback'...

3. Make being shared with less frustrating

I'm not sure what your intended usage of the 'Share' link is, but here's how I use it and why it's frustrating:

I share - when someone posts something I want the world to see. Maybe someone else posts a picture or writes something worth reading.

I share - when someone posts a link to an outside blog or article that I think people should check out.

The thing is, I don't really want to talk to the people I'm sharing with about other people's content. I just want them to see the content. They can thank me with a +1 on my share. If they want to discuss the content, they should discuss it with the original poster.

When one wants to discuss something that's been shared - the best place to do that is on the original post. Unfortunately, the Google+ team has decided to make it a giant pain to do that. It's another those - lack of a convenient link situations. Here's the fix:

4. Let us bookmark posts

There's a lot of stuff you can do on Google+ that takes just a minute or two. Watch YouTube videos your circleds have put in your stream, look at neat photos or funny cartoons, fire off a quick reply to a conversation you're following, check your notifications...

One thing you can't do that's sorely missing, however, is mark things for later followup. If one of my circled share a link to an 8-page article about quantum mechanics as we know it - I might very well want to read it but not have the time. While there are work arounds, wouldn't this be better:

5. Best of: Us - on our profiles

It'd be damn cool if you could go to someone's profile and there'd be a Best Of link that shows the 5 posts that received the most +1s from other Google+ users.

World of Grim: QR codes on receipts

2011-12-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

I would very much like it if when you make a purchase at a major retailer, the information on the receipt could be contained in a QR code. Though, to be honest I'm not sure that amount of information can be contained in a QR code.

If a QR code can contain that amount of information, one would be able to scan the QR code on the receipt for import into personal financial software, such as is available at mint.com. Rather than defining transactions by store (i.e. Safeway = Groceries), doing so would allow the financial software to know that of the $40 you spent on "Groceries", $8.99 was actually dog food (pet supplies), $7.99 was laundry detergent (household items), and the rest was food (Groceries).

How I Found Religion Through Science

2011-12-21T02:31:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, when I first heard the statistic that human beings only use x% of their brain (4, 10, whatever), I had a bit of a daydream. I thought it would be remarkably awesome if while we were here living our lives using that tiny percentage of our brain, the rest of our brain was off in the universe somewhere building our afterlife. Shortly thereafter I dismissed the daydream as just a daydream - but I've since grown spiritually quite a bit.... and I think I was onto something. What's more, I think our current understanding of science backs me up on this.

Growing up in the United States, I was exposed to quite a few different religions. Most of them were one flavor or another of Christianity; Catholicism, Baptist, Pentecostal, Mormonism, etc. Of course, I was also exposed to Buddhism, Judaism, Atheism, and if you want to count it, even Agnosticism.

The thing that I came to believe over time was that if God exists, man had undoubtedly gotten it wrong somewhere along the line. If the Christ people were right, Judaism was wrong. If the Pentecostals were right, the baptists were wrong. If the Buddhists were right, Catholics were wrong.

So, hating to be wrong, I adopted the belief that the only right answer was 'I don't know' - and I've considered myself agnostic ever since..at least until recently. I spent the better part of my youth and the early part of my adulthood in a little town in Oklahoma - Altus, Oklahoma. We didn't have too much religious diversity there, but we did have several different flavors of Christianity. So, having adopted agnosticism, it was worthwhile for me to have an answer when questioned by Christians with: What if you're wrong?

Fancying myself clever, and knowing enough about what the bible had to say to back it up, the answer I had for myself and them became: If I'm wrong, and there is definitely a God above who will judge me for the way I lived my life and the beliefs that I held on Judgment Day, I trust his judgment. After all, if the all-knowing creator who knew the number of hairs on my head while I was in the womb was doing the judging, he would very well know why I believed what I believed - he made me this way. He would also know what I would have had to experience for my beliefs to fall in line with whatever the correct faith was - and if he chose not to send those experiences my way...well, that was his call to make. While certain Christian's beliefs led them to believe that I would surely be sent straight to hell for not believing as they did, that was their judgment - and I had decided that if God exists, his judgment would be much more loving, fair, and wise. So I carried on like that for many a year, without fear of eternal damnation and just a tiny measure of faith.

Recently however, that view has changed in a very fundamental way....

Read more »

The Covenant of the Willfully Ignorant

2011-12-17T00:08:00.000-08:00

This originally began as a response to a comment arising from this article by Chris George on this g+ share. I felt the response was getting a little long winded for a comment on g+, so I brought it here to finish.

Chris said:

If you are not prepared to stand up to those who would take away our liberty, as who you are, then they have already won. As soon as you are AFRAID of them, they have won. This is what they are counting on.

What they are not counting on is an informed and enraged populace who aren't going to take it anymore.

I don't think the protesters protecting their anonymity are afraid of the tear gas, batons, and possible detainment and torture as much as they are afraid of populace not waking up and becoming enraged. And while the Occupy Movement is the best hope for social change I've seen in my lifetime, the level of public awareness and anger still makes that a legitimate fear.

The Willfully Ignorant

The American people are willfully ignorant because things aren't bad enough for THEM yet. They haven't felt the downward slide we're all on enough to shatter their false belief that everything will eventually be okay. They honestly believe if they keep doing what they've always done everything will eventually be okay.

The general populace is afraid to face the truth of the situation, that there is a THEM. They don't want to believe in a plutocracy that feeds off the rest of society to live like gods, and they certainly don't want to believe in a plutocracy that would carelessly destroy the planet in pursuit of that lifestyle.

What makes it such a tragedy when you ask yourself, "Why aren't they willing to fight for the betterment of everyone? Everyone includes them!" and think it through to the most logical answer. The tragedy is that when you really 'boil it down to the bone,' the reason we're in this mess isn't corporate greed - it's selfishness of the general populace.

When you show them evidence that the "Successful people, the super rich" are heartless evil bastards, they don't want to believe it. They look away or believe the first excuse someone feeds them.

Oh, it's okay those Americans got peppersprayed in the face - they were trespassing on private property! Everything's normal, they were breaking the law. I'm not a law breaker so I won't get peppersprayed in the face. I think I'll go watch Obama yell at foreign governments for denying it's citizens free speech, doop-de-doo.

Oh, it's okay that all those other Americans had to pay 3 times what I did to buy their house, they didn't have to. It was their mistake. Surely the banks didn't conspire to inflate the prices of homes to make more money off the interest on the loans people take to pursue their happiness. The government wouldn't allow that sort of conspiracy. If it did, there would be a problem.

If there was a problem I wouldn't just sit here watching football and let it happen. I'm a good person. I'm a patriot. I vote. No, if there was a problem I'd definitely do something about it....so there must not be a problem. If I tried to do something about it, I might lose my job. If I lose my job I might lose my house. I'm sure glad there isn't a problem.

Things will get better, we just have to get some of those damn Republicans out of congress. We need more democrats in there, like our representative ole what's his face. I don't remember his name, but I saw him on a commercial during that reality show back in '08. Yeah, he's up there fighting for the little guy and those damn Republicans are blocking his every move.

What? Of course I know ole what's his face took a bunch of campaign donations. I even sent him $3 myself. I'm paying him with my taxes AND I sent him $3, surely he's fighting for what I believe in. Shh, shh, the games going into overtime.

Oh sure he took campaign donations from that company, the owners of that company have a right to support a candidate. It doesn't make a difference they gave him $3,000,000 and I gave him $3 - he's looking out for both of us. He values the little guy, he's a liberal! He'll do what's right - if only we can get those damn Republicans out of there. Everything's fine - or it will get better after the election. If things get bad I'll do something about it, but everything's fine. I'm still in my house aren't I?

Let's be realistic

We're probably going to have to hit 30-40% unemployment before those Americans wake up, so I'm not going to hold it against anyone (who not only sees the truth but puts themselves in danger to rage against the truth) for wanting to remain anonymous at this point. It could take another 2-3 years before things get that bad - and that's a long time to be breathing tear gas, risking nerve damage to your hands from over zealous police zip tying.

Especially considering the passage of the NDAA. How long do you REALLY think it's going to be before Fox News uncovers ties between the protesters and Al Qaeda? The protesters are on the front lines. They are the pawns in the class war. They're taking the batons to the head trying to wake up enough people to make a difference, and the people they're trying to wake up are more likely to know the names of yellow cartoon characters with four fingers than they are to know the name of their congressional representatives.

They have every right to be afraid - and if that means that THEY have already won, then THEY have already won. They've been winning for decades. Should we the people that see the truth just roll over and try to go back to sleep?

THEY are the ones that broke

The Covenant

Everyone born in America after WWII was raised under an unspoken covenant: I'll work for you, I'll pay my taxes, I'll tow the line. In return, you can get as rich as you want and as powerful as you want. You'll have to screw me a little bit at every turn to do it, but that's okay. Just keep me entertained and just the tip.

But no. THEY weren't satisfied with just the tip. They slowly and steadily worked it in and started screwing us a little bit harder. Finally, we're so screwed that some of us are starting to wake up. But they've already won, they're already screwing us. If we keep behaving maybe they'll add some lube. Maybe.
(By the way, if I was part of the plutocracy or the 1% or whatever you want to call them - I would add some lube. I'd legalize marijuana)
To close: How DARE you call protesters wanting to remain anonymous cowards when most of America is too afraid to get off of the couch?

The wisest among us have been trying to tell us this for quite some time.

But don't worry kids, it's just a ride.

Don't Write Yourself Off

2011-12-15T03:40:00.000-08:00

If wisdom can truly be shared through written word, then I pray that what little wisdom I've come to own can be shared with you now. If not embraced outright, that at least the seed of this truth can be planted in your mind so that you, too, can come to this beautiful understanding.

Don't Write Yourself Off
What has taken me 34 years of rather unfulfilling existence to finally understand is that it's VERY IMPORTANT for you to stop writing yourself off. If you have been stop. If you haven't been, why haven't you people done a better job of getting this message out there? If you had gotten through to me with this 16 years ago, 12 years ago, hell - even 3 years ago, my life would have been so much different. And, since I'm not writing myself off anymore - not only would my life have been so much different, I think the world would have been better off.

That's right - the WORLD would have been a better place if I had figured this out even just 3 years ago. It makes THAT much difference.

At this point, you might be writing me off. You might be saying to yourself, "what kind of egomaniac thinks the whole world would have been a better place if he had figured this out 3 years ago?" You know what, that's fine. In fact, if I were reading rather than writing, I might be doing the same thing. I am completely okay with you writing me off and dismissing these words as rubbish. Just don't do it to yourself.

I won't be doing it to myself. Not anymore, and you shouldn't either. You probably have been for years, and it's time to stop.

- What took so long?
I don't know why it is or how it came to pass that this fundamental thing was not apparent to me sooner. It doesn't make sense to me how people who understand this haven't spread the message to every one they know. Their friends, their children - how haven't they spread this message to them? - and by six degrees of Kevin Bacon, shouldn't it therefore have spread to me sooner? Shouldn't someone have pounded this into my head by now?

Once you see it in yourself that you've been writing yourself off all this time and then stop doing it, you can't help but see the people around writing themselves off every day. The waitress that wants to painter, the office drone who wants to start his own business, the secretary that wants to open a no-kill animal rescue, that transcriptionist who wants to be a writer.... they're all writing themselves off.

The only reason they wish they had a different life, is because they've been writing themselves off. The only reason you wish you had a different life, is because you've been writing yourself off. It's bullshit. Stop it.

- Soccer Trophies
Maybe they came close. Maybe they all most got the message out. You know those trophy-kids? The ones that played in the soccer matches where everyone got a trophy, even the losing team? I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I think maybe this is the message they were trying to get out. They just didn't understand it well enough, or they got the message slightly confused. They thought this meant "Everyone is a Winner," but the actual message is "Everyone can do a hell of a lot better if they get out of their own way."

If a kid loses, he's not a winner. That's giving him a terribly false impression of how the world works and he's going to be torn apart by the way the world really works. This is a world where you can be a gazelle just getting a morning drink when someone can come along and rip your throat out. Human society is NO DIFFERENT. The only reason anyone thinks human society isn't rip-your-throat-out deadly is because the lions prefer calm gazelles, sedated with false beliefs if possible.

If a kid loses, he's a loser. Don't give him a trophy. However, if you ever hear your child say "I'll never win a trophy. I'm not good enough." I want you to immediately slap him in the face hard enough he'll remember. I don't care if you're in church, slap that little ...

If he's talking like that, he's learning to write himself off - sell himself short - mentally sabotage himself and maim his entire life. Don't let him learn how to do that. Don't allow him to talk himself out of trying.

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Technorati Claim

2011-12-14T20:27:00.000-08:00

Apparently if you want to do whatever Technorati does for your blog, you have to post a claim token like this:
YBSG2BFS5245

as a blog post to prove that it's yours. So - sorry about the not particularly riveting post, here's a picture of my kitten by way of apology.

Google+: Why Circles Fail and a Possible Solution

2011-12-14T02:06:00.000-08:00

“I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am nothing because I fit in no category.” – Howard Hodgkin

I must admit - a few months in, and I'm a huge fan of Google+, though as with anything, it could be better. The biggest issue I have with Google+ at the moment is circles, and how they have failed me.

Circles

With g+ circles have a few different purposes, or at least seem to have been created with that intention.
1. Circles allow you to control who sees what you share
When you make a post you select your audience by selecting specific people, specific circles, all of your circles, the enigmatic "extended circles", or Public. If you add your mom to your "family" circle and then select your family circle when you post - she and everyone else in the circle can see it.
2. Circles allow you to control what you see
If I add you to a circle (maybe the "people who've visited my blog" circle), everything you post to Public should show up in my main stream. I can filter what I see by selecting circles on the left - so I could select the "people who've visited my blog" circle and see only shares from people in that circle.
3. Circles allow you to share themselves with other g+ users
If you're new to g+ a good thing to do is find a post where someone has shared a circle. Some people have/make the time to categorize g+ users into circles based on what they tend to post - or by shared interests. For example, one of the groups that seems to share circles often is the g+ photography subculture. People like to share their artistic endeavors and photographers seem to be findings g+ great for that. Someone adds photographers to a circle and then shares that circle. You can add it to one of your own circles or make a new circle for it.

How Circles Fail

G+ circles fail me in purpose #2, controlling what I see. The reason:
I have no idea what you're going to share.

Human beings are a multifaceted species with each individual having a variety of interests. A photographer might also like to cook. When he decides to share original content it could very well be a new picture or a favorite recipe. Maybe he just watched the Republican debate and wants to share his opinion about that.

Despite my having added him to my photographer circle so I can see the pictures he shares, when I filter my stream by my photography circle there might very well be recipes in there. Now, there are work arounds. You can let the photographer know you're interested in photography, and he can put you in a circle for "people that like my pictures". Then he can share his pictures with that circle and his recipes with his recipe circle, etc.

However, that's a giant pain in the rear. I have around 1300 people circled at present and contacting them all to let them know what kind of content I want to see (what circle they should put me in), is pretty unrealistic. My current situation is that I can't predict what categories of content these 1300 will be sharing, so I can't correctly put them in a certain circle. Similarly, even if I tell you that I like your photos when I first circle you, you might decide later to share a recipe. You'll have no idea if I'd like to see that too.

As a result of all this, I have a very rapidly scrolling stream that I can't filter by type of content. Therefore, I propose the following solution:

90% of Americans can't solve this addition problem, can you?

2011-12-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-national-defense-authorization-act-is-ridiculously-scary-2011-11

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Arrested Development - One-Way Train to Gitmo

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

+
http://www.freedomfiles.org/war/fema.htm

+
http://drstevebest.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/halliburton-confirms-us-concentration-camps-ready-to-detain-up-to-2-million-terrorists/
+
http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and-job-categories/legal-and-law-enforcement/internment-resettlement-specialist.html
+
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-12/first-us-citizens-have-been-arrested-help-predator-drone

+
http://gigaom.com/2011/10/27/looks-like-congress-has-declared-war-on-the-internet/

= ?

When I add it up, I get:

Locking down the internet

Labeling of protesters and anyone else who complains as a "terrorist"

The indefinite detainment of "terrorists" without even a nod toward the first amendment

What answer do you get when you add these things up?

Dear Mark Kirk (R - IL), re: the National Defense Authorization Act

2011-12-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Kirk:

One of your constituents shared your response to an inquiry about you and the National Defense Authorization Act publicly, here. As your opinion has been made public, and as in a democracy one voice is no louder than another, I hereby voice my response to your justifications for your part in the rape of the Constitution of the United States of America.

President Obama said that he would veto this legislation if it contains overly broad powers for the U.S. military to arrest U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. He is right on this issue and I will support his veto on this question.
So, like a good Republican you TRUSTED OBAMA WITH DECIDING WHAT THE MILITARY CAN TO CIVILIANS????!!!

The Great OWS Conspiracy

2011-11-17T22:29:00.001-08:00

Okay, so - a lot of the details are REALLY interesting... the different ways in which this whole thing has manifested itself are just fascinating - but I'll try to stick to the big points so this doesn't turn into a novel.

I'll try to ease you in gently. Let's start with pop culture. For many years now, Hollywood has been shaping the minds that now and in the next year will make up the revolution. The core of the Occupy Movement is made up of those who understood how these various movies reflected upon our current society - and they felt good about themselves for being able to see that connection. That personal pride in ones own intelligence is a powerful tool for manipulation (and is the core tactic of the Democratic Party).

So - the seeds of this movement can be found in popular movies.
Gladiator with Russel Crowe - The government gets the people to ignore how horrible their lives and living conditions are by entertaining them to keep them passive. Well hey, football is kind of like gladiatorial combat...and even that Dancing With The Stars crap is merely designed to keep the general populace from realizing how bad the government is screwing us over. Oooh, I'm so smart for putting that together.

Fight Club with Edward Norton - Lackey of an Evil Corporation goes batshit crazy and gains political power -
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