Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Why Thomas Paine's Common Sense Is Important: Chris Hedges & Cornel West...

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Is·lam·o·pho·bi·a — Some Thoughts


I felt like I'm long over due for a blog post about Islamophobia. It's is nooo secret on this blog that I am deeply critical of Islam. I think that Islam is the most dangerous religion in the world today and the greatest religious threat to liberalism and Western Values. This can be thought of two different ways. The first way is that I think the ideology and morality within Islam is more violent than most religions. As far as I can tell, only the Old Testament rivals the Koran in brutality. The second is that I think Muslims today are committing more violence in the name of their religion than any other religion's adherents. And I think this is due, in large part, because the principles of Islam are more violent than most other religions.

When you compare Islam and Christianity for example, when you put the two of them side by side and compare their moral values, I will be totally honest with you, I think Christianity starts looking pretty damn good compared to Islam. (And anyone who knows me or who's read this blog knows I'm not at all a Christian sympathizer). Just about everything bad that Christianity has, Islam also has, and then Islam just adds more bad shit on top of that. And it is in no way "Islamophobic" or "racist" to say say this, or point it out.

It has become a thing now to label all people critical of Islam Islamophobic, or even racist. The racist accusation is obviously nonsense. Islam is a religion and a religion is not a race. There are Muslims of every color around the world. The Islamophobic accusation though, has a racist implication to it. There is, it seems, an implicit assumption that "Islamophobic" can mean the same thing as anti-Asian, or anti-Middle Eastern, or even anti-Muslim. These are often conflated, but they are not the same.

Let's look at a few definitions of Islamophobia. Wikipedia says, "Anti-Islamic sentiment or Islamophobia is a term for prejudice against, hatred towards, or fear of the religion of Islam, Muslims, or of ethnic groups perceived to be Muslim." According to UC Berkely's Center for Race & Gender, a 1991 Runnymede Trust Report defined Islamophobia as "unfounded hostility towards Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims." These are two interesting definitions. Wiki's definition focuses more on the religion of Islam, and CR&G's definition focuses more on the followers of Islam. Therein lies an important distinction. Now, I'm not going to fuss over definitions here — that's not the point. The points I want to focus on regard the problems I see with the term Islamophobia and its usage.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Where Do I Put The Punctuation When Quoting?


One of the trickiest things about writing, at least in the English language, is where to put punctuation when quoting. In American English we are generally supposed to put punctuation inside of quotes, as in "this." In British English, they are generally supposed to put punctuation outside of quotes, as in "this". This makes reading awfully confusing, because you can't always tell what you're reading is British or American English in origin. And it seems as if the rules regarding punctuation can go either which way.

I will admit to having used both ways with no apparent logic behind why I do it one particular way. I generally prefer the British way when quoting and keeping the punctuation outside. But there are times when I think the American way is better. I'm no English major, or expert of any kind on the proper rules of grammar, but here's the logic of when I think the British way is better and when I think the American way is better. (And I have no idea whether this is already a thing.)

Let's take a block of text to use as our example.

For most educated, thinking people, how we go about forming beliefs may seem rather straightforward. We carefully, logically evaluate evidence for and against a particular claim, and if the evidence outweighs counterexplanations, we believe the claim to be true. If only it were that simple. Though philosophers and scientists present logical evaluation of evidence as an ideal for forming beliefs, in practice, most beliefs we hold—even those of philosophers and scientists—arise through less transparent means. (Barrett, 2004)*

With this as our subject matter, suppose I wanted to end this sentence with a quote on Barrett's subject matter and mention it was relevant to "most educated, thinking people". I would put the period on the outside of the quote because the actual quote doesn't have one and I used it to end the sentence. But now suppose in mid sentence I wanted to quote the author's thoughts on the thinking process of "most educated, thinking people," and then end my sentence. I would put the punctuation inside the quote because the original had it and the sentence needed it where it was.

Likewise, if I was ending a sentence with a quote that was from the end of a sentence, I'd put the punctuation on the inside of the quotes, as in:
Barrett thinks forming beliefs "arise through less transparent means." 
Sometimes the period can be replaced with a comma, as in:
"If only it were that simple," Barrett says. 
And also, if I was using a quote to form a sentence where I give it a question mark, as in:
Is it true that Barrett's ideas about how we form beliefs are "rather straightforward"? 
I'd put the punctuation on the outside of the quotes. To me this makes sense. And though it may seem in my writing that I'm switching between British and American grammar rules, this is the methodology that I've recently been applying.

So if a quote has the punctuation that would be the same as the sentence needs, then I keep the punctuation inside the quote. If it doesn't, then I keep the punctuation outside the quote. To me this seems logical. Any thoughts?



*Barrett, Justin L. (2004) Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Lanham: Alta Mira Press

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Hyperactive Agency Detection — A Just-So Story?


The hyperactive agency detection (HAAD), or hyperactive agent-detection device (HADD), is the most widely accepted explanation for religious belief in biology, psychology and sociology. It offers us a naturalistic explanation of the origin of beliefs which form the basis of every religion. Because of this, you can expect that many religious believers are skeptical of its claims. Some of them claim that this is a "just-so" story, part of "atheist mythology." The irony of religionists making this claim, when their religious beliefs are often backed up on the mere testimony of religious texts, which are chalk full of just-so stories, is stupendous. A just-so story is "an unverifiable and unfalsifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals." Is the HADD hypothesis unverifiable and unfalsifiable? It must be both in order to meet the criterion of a just-so story. Here I want to list some of the evidence supporting the HADD hypothesis and support the view that it is a valid scientific explanation.

In their 2008 paper The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behaviour, Harvard biologist Kevin R. Foster and Helsinki biologist Hanna Kokko test for the origin of superstitious behavors through an incorrect assignment of cause and effect, where they "conclude that behaviours which are, or appear, superstitious are an inevitable feature of adaptive behaviour in all organisms, including ourselves."

This is experimental evidence for what Michael Shermer termed patternicity, or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise. He writes:

Unfortunately, we did not evolve a baloney-detection network in the brain to distinguish between true and false patterns. We have no error detecting governor to modulate the pattern-recognition engine. The reason has to do with the relative costs of making Type I and Type II errors in cognition, which I describe in the following formula:

P = C(TI) < C(TII) Patternicity (P) will occur whenever the cost (C) of making a Type I error (TI) is less than the cost (C) of making a Type II error (TII). 

The problem is that assessing the difference between a Type I and Type II error is highly problematic—especially in the split-second timing that often determines the difference between life and death in our ancestral environments—so the default position is to assume that all patterns are real; that is, assume that all rustles in the grass are dangerous predators and not the wind.

This is the basis for the evolution of all forms of patternicity, including superstition and magical thinking. There was a natural selection for the cognitive process of assuming that all patterns are real and that all patternicities represent real and important phenomena. We are the descendants of of the primates who most successfully employed patternicity. The Believing Brain (60)

A Type I error is a false positive, and is "believing something is real when it is not." A Type II error is a false negative, and is "believing something is not real when it is." For a short explanation of how this affected our hominid ancestors, see here.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Religion/Heroin Analogy


Some theists struggle to see how life could have any meaning without god. A godless life, they say, is devoid of any objective meaning or purpose and is pointless. But many atheists, including myself, have no problem with there being no objective meaning or purpose to life, and some of us even go a step further and say that a life in which meaning is forced onto you from the outside is downright depressing.

In order to help some theists understand my point of view, I've thought of an analogy that might help in explaining this relationship between religion and meaning.

Suppose you were raised on a steady diet of heroin every single day. It makes you feel good, it gives your life meaning and purpose, and you look forward everyday to the warmth and pleasure that it gives you. You become utterly dependent on it everyday. So are all of your friends and family members, and as far as you can tell, everyone in your community. Life would be pointless, you believe, without heroin. And the very idea of not having it terrifies and depresses you. Then one day you meet someone who doesn't do heroin and you're completely shocked at the fact that they don't need a daily injection of smack to provide meaning and purpose to their lives and are perfectly fine and happy without it, and living a fulfilled life.

"How does your life have any meaning without heroin?" you ask them. "What motivates you to get up and endure another day?"

"Easy," they say. "I simply wasn't raised with a dependency on heroin like you were. The reason why you feel that life has no meaning without heroin is because you were raised to think that you were. And over time it became psychologically addictive, to the point where you believe that you need it to motivate you to get through life. For me, that dependency was never created and so I have no idea what it's like to need something like heroin in order to be motivated to get out of bed and go through my day. And actually, the idea of you needing heroin to feel a sense of meaning is pretty pathetic. I mean look at yourself. Seriously."

Now, I'm not saying religion is just like heroin or is just as harmful. But there is a similarity to the way some heroin addicts become so utterly dependent on their drug and how it gives their life meaning and purpose with how some theists become so utterly dependent on their religion. Karl Marx infamously said that "religion is the opium of the people". He had a good point. The demise of religion will be to a large degree due to the realization that meaning, purpose and fulfillment in life can be achieved without god or religion. And once the cycle of religious indoctrination is broken, and religion's head is severed, saying "it's tradition" won't be a viable excuse helping to perpetuate it.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Debate: Is ISIS Islamic? David Wood (Christian) vs. Osama Abdallah (Muslim)




David Wood is a Christian apologist probably best known for his criticism of Islam. He writes for the blog Answering Muslims and has debated many prominent Muslims on issues regarding Islam and Christianity. I saw one debate recently called Is ISIS Islamic? and I think Wood did a particularly good job in it. He certainly is well educated in Islamic history and theology and knows how to cut through most of the bullshit you often here coming from liberal Muslims who obfuscate their religion and its history to give you the kinder, gentler version of Islam that they want us Westerners to believe is true.

Some liberals that watch this may initially feel the urge to ignore Wood's criticisms and brush them off as the product of fundamentalist Christian "Islamophobia." Yes, Wood is a Christian, but that does not automatically render his criticism of Islam biased and false. Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz also recognize the same problems of the Islamic sources. If you are the kind that feels the need to believe Islam is a peaceful religion that has been hijacked by a small minority of extremists, please try and suspend that reaction and listen to the arguments Wood makes. And then do some research into the verses and their interpretations to see if Wood makes a convincing case that ISIS is indeed Islamic.

Hitchens On The Seriousness Of Textual Authority


"Turn any page or open any page of any newspaper today and you'll see they [religionists] find the authority for bullying you and lecturing you and trying to intimidate you in their holy texts, and why wouldn't they? Because in those man made texts, that authority for the punishment of apostasy, or infidelity, or womanhood, or sexuality, or free thinking, is already there, just like rats in the cellar in La Peste just waiting to be revived by the turn of the page. Please, know an enemy when you see one."

Share

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...