A Change Of Pace

Hi,

Looking at the list of my posts you’ll notice that I haven’t blogged that much this year. To be honest I’ve been a bit busier than usual, but I’ve also been a tad more depressed and in pin than in previous months and this has caused my “fibro fog” to rear its ugly head more often.

Fibromyalgia is a difficult illness to have, because it is sporadic in nature. Sometimes I can go a whole day feeling absolutely fine. No pain, no drowsiness, no lethargy, just normal. That very evening I could simply crumple under the sudden, inexplicable change in my condition.

All this has ground all of my writing (aside from an application form and the odd letter) to a halt. My ability to read from the books in my library has also diminished, so I’m relying more on Audible to supply me with information. I’m still just about coping with Twitter, but my presence on that has been less prolific recently.

This doesn’t mean I have less to say... far from it. I’ve looked at a dozen YT videos that deserve a review, or scathing response. I’ve ear-read a few books that have given me some ideas, and lots of encounters on SM have boiled my blood.

I will be back on it later this year, health-willing. I have a house move and a few other things to put behind me before I can properly get back to business, but after that I’ll get back to a normal (sic).

Hope you’ll join me then.

Stay safe! - UB

Mr Can't-Be-Wrong

When you read a title like this you'd expect it to be about Ken Ham, or Joel Olsteen, or any of the other Evangelical or Creationist TV pundits. You don't expect it to be an atheist, do you? Well, if you are an Evangelical you probably do, but on the whole, my readers are probably atheists so this will come as a surprise.

The "Mr" in question is one Aron Ra, a very well respected and beloved atheist who deals fabulously with phylogeny and the processes of evolution. And the title comes from a recent Twitter exchange in which he was debated on two fronts by a few Agnostics (including myself) who found flaws in his reasoning and ended up getting blocked for their trouble.

Firstly Aron decided that Agnosticism was an invalid position taken by atheists who just did not want to be labelled "atheist". I'll ignore the fact that despite being an Agnostic I label myself as an atheist all the time; firstly to increase the visibility of the term "atheist" and secondly because I'm bored with people asking me what an Agnostic, or Humanist is (I'm both).

Agnosticism is the belief (it is not a claim) that we will never be able to truly understand, or define, the supernatural; particularly when it comes to the concept of gods. The word "Agnostic" does not have its root in the Greek word "gnosos" from whence came the word "Gnostic". Its root is the noun "Gnostic". Neither is it the claim that we don't know that no gods exist or any other guff.

The actual OED definition is this:

"Agnostic noun and adjective M19

(ORIGIN from A-10 + GNOSTIC)

>A noun. A person who holds the view that nothing can be known of the existence of God or of anything beyond material phenomena. Also, a person who is uncertain or non-committal about a particular thing."

Nowhere in this definition does it say that Agnosticism is making any claim of knowledge whatsoever, in either direction. It is a position of complete neutrality. Which is why the term "agnostic atheist" is both implicitly and explicitly a misnomer.

One cannot be both an Agnostic and an Atheist. (repeat over and over until you learn it)

Aron's take on "neutrality" is that when a question is posed the natural position is to disbelieve it until such evidence is presented that a change in position is made. He thinks this is very scientific. It clearly isn't the way we approach things in science though, is it? In science, we come up with an idea... such as: "There is a thing called a boson. We then try to figure out what parameters it has, and then we find a way to test for a thing with those set of parameters. When we found it, we called it a Higgs Boson and much rejoicing was had." What did not happen was this: "Higgs proposed the boson. Other scientists en masse said it was bollocks unless he could prove otherwise. He couldn't, so it went undiscovered."

Neutrality, by definition, is non-committal. We call neutrality by another name in a debate: "impartial". That means one does not take a stance on a thing being debated until perhaps the weight of evidence is so great on one side that remaining impartial becomes dogmatic.

We are Agnostic because we have no idea what the supernatural world really is, or if there is one, or if a god, or gods, exist. We have no way, as yet to even test for such things. We are not sitting on a fence between the world of theism and atheism, as so many atheists would like to put us. We are sitting on a wall, eating peanuts and drinking soda, watching theists and atheists duke it out, wondering what all the fuss is about.

Aron's dance didn't stop there.

In a second part of the debate, Aron was answering a general call (possibly by me) to define what a god is. He defined it thus:

Quote: "A magical anthropomorphic immortal."

It will be obvious to anyone who has read my earlier post "What is a God?" that there are immediate problems with this definition. You will have to define "magical", define "immortal"... and in Aron's case define what you mean by "anthropomorphic" too!

When it was pointed out that "magical" beings exist that aren't gods, he first seemed to concede that Archangels fit the bill, but then decided that Neil Gaiman (the fiction author) had written a book called American Gods (a fictional story) that explained that anything magical was actually a god, so that's that! Case closed. Then went on to criticise his own view as not fitting in with the thousands of beings worshipped by millions of people after relabelling this as my view, to begin with. Look... this is going to get very complicated so I think I'd better start with my objections to his definition.

I pointed out that there are two ways to disagree with his definition. One is to find "beings" that fit the definition but aren't gods, and the other is to find "beings" that are gods but don't fit the definition.

So, cue Ogo the jackal god (not anthropomorphic) to which he argued that worshippers had anthropomorphized Ogo and therefore his definition held... despite the fact that anthropomorphic and anthropomorphized aren't the same thing. Anthropomorphic refers to having anthropomorphism, which in one sense does mean having the personality or traits of a human, but is most commonly regarded as being in the form of a human (more on this in a bit). To anthropomorphize something is to attribute anthropomorphism to a thing, usually through embodying a non-human thing with human-like traits.

The problem with this word is its ambiguity. I would refine it to  "anthropomorphized" in that the definition is a "magical anthropomorphized immortal" just for the sake of clarity. However, if you anthropomorphized a god who you regard as being super-human, you would only be telling half the story. "Yahweh" does not have human emotions according to many believers. He is neither good nor bad, although he was able to create both states of being through the processes of Creation and Fall (even though the Gen 2 narrative explicitly points out that they are pre-existent). So, in a sense, you super-anthropomorphize a god. You give it traits that mere humans can only aspire to... such as perfect judgement and perfect will.

The definition then becomes "a magical super-anthropomorphized immortal".

Then we come to "immortal". I pointed out that Cain was an immortal being, cursed to roam the Earth forever unable to die (in some Midrash) and unable to be killed. And I pointed to the Indian hero god Balin who was killed by his brother in the celestial realm and is therefore only regarded in the past tense as part of the mythology of the region... many other gods fall into this category. In fact, any god who has not got a current group of worshippers fall into this category according to another (better) fiction author, Terry Pratchett. In either case, the definition fails because in one instance the being is immortal, but not a god (Archangels fit this too, as do Orishas, the African sprites who inhabit rocks, wind etc.) and in the other the being is a god, but not immortal.

At this point, Aron did another little dance. His argument was that since Cain was only enchanted, not divine, that he wasn't magical... then proceeded to reply to another tweeter asking the question "since when did enchant not mean magical" by giving the definition of enchanted as being magical and then claiming we were the ones claiming that enchanted did not mean magical all along and he was right again so there! Phew! What a nifty little jig that was!

Of course, it didn't work because we held his feet to the fire, which is why we both got blocked in the end.

If a being is immortal, one could argue that this fits the definition, straightaway, of being "magical", but Aron's argument was that Cain might have been magical by virtue of being enchanted, but he wasn't "divine" and therefore not magical in and of himself.

So, you mean "divine" when you said "magical" then Aron?

Are we to further refine the description you gave? Are we up to "a divine super-anthropomorphized immortal" at this point? What do you mean when you say "divine"? That isn't just being "god-like" is it? Saints are divine. Archangels are divine. Both, by definition, are immortals. Are we back to Gaiman's "he's a god, she's a god, everyone's a god god!"?

But even if we take Aron's point here there is a further example of a god being mortal if not for an enchantment. All the Norse Gods fall into this category. Idun kept an orchard of magical apples which kept the Norse gods alive and when Loki hid them they began to die. They were not immortal in and of themselves, if it weren't for the apples they wouldn't have been!

This question of what "magical", "enchanted" and "divine" meant finished Aron off. He accused us of trolling him and blocked us. You can see the conversation for yourself if you use Twitter to search for "@ublasphemist @Aron_Ra @OceanKeltoi". Feel free to point out where I've misrepresented his position on any of this. Please. Because if I missed something I'd like to know. I respect Aron for his biology work and work on debunking the Deluge, but he came across here as being every bit as dogmatic and doxastically closed as any Young Earth Creationist I've ever dealt with.

Screenshots:

Islamic vs Islamist

A common argument posed by Trumpeteers is that he shouldn’t have to say “White supremacist terrorist” because Obama refused to say “Islamic terrorism”. I partly agree. You ought not to hold one person to the standards you refused to hold another person to. However, there is a difference between Islamic and Islamist. Muslim terrorists aren’t practicing Islamic terrorism. There is no terrorism in the modern interpretation of Islam. Note I said “modern interpretation”. All religions evolve as secular values show that murder and violence is less acceptable, and bigotry is juvenile and unacceptable. Terrorists are Islamists. Islamism is the political and religious movement which aims to create a global Muslim caliphate, often by all necessary means... including violence. There are peaceful Islamists who want the caliphate to come about through expansion of the religion, but the vast majority of Islamists support violence and terrorism. Yes, I realize that many “moderate” Muslims support acts of terror in principal, because they know the goal of their religion is the total covrerage of Islam. However, the number of moderates who would turn themselves over to commiting acts of violence is tiny. Far moe problematic is the (roughly) 10% of Muslims who identify as Islamists. The Christian/Western equivalent is the White Supremacy movement, or Nazis. They are just as committed to the idea that caucasians are superior to other races, and should be in charge... with the Christian faith as the only religion allowed. This is what Trump is being asked to condemn. We want him to call these people out for what they are. Should Obama have identified Islamic terrorism? Of course he should. He should have called Muslim terror out for what it was, Islamist barbarism. However, the job of the President includes the need to protect ALL of the citizens of his/her country, not just a single group. In the US there are large numbers of people who see brown skin and think “Muslim”, regardless of the person’s actual religion. A Muslim and ex-Muslim from the same ethnic background will look the same. There are Pakistani Christians, Afghani Christians and so on. Looking like a Muslim can get you verbally, or sometimes physically attacked by ingrates who probably need someone else to tie their shoe-laces for them. These knuckle-draggers can’t distinguish between Islamist and Islamic, so when Obama (who knows a fair bit about the hatred aimed at Muslims) refused to mention the word “Islamic” he did so because he was conscious of the fact that the terrorism was Islamist, not Islamic, and the people, by and large, don’t understand the difference. Trump must call out the White Supremacists, but he won’t because his family are involved in the movement... personally I think he’s up to his eyeballs in it. His refusal to act as Puerto Rico dies is enough evidence for that. If Mar-a-lago was suffering the same problems, you can guarantee he’d be sending federal agents, funds and relief there by the truckload. Puerto Rico however? Nah. Fuck ‘em right DT?

Apathy: The Curse of Humanism

This is just a quick post to express my feelings about a personal bugbear of mine. Apathy.

In the Humanist/Atheist world there seems to be an abundance of apathy. In fact, at times, it feels like the only thing we Atheists are any good at is failing to get motivated, or show support for an important national issue. I'm not talking about activists... being active on an issue is in the job description for those guys... I'm talking about run-of-the-mill non-believers.

These Apatheists (apathetic atheists) are everywhere. In my home town I get chatting to people who share my non-belief and mention that I'm involved in a few Humanist groups, and get the same response every time. "Oh... can't see the point." or "Isn't that just another religious group?" It doesn't help that the other thing Humanist/Atheist groups are really bad at is promotion. Ask the person next to you at work, or on the bus what "Humanism" is and I doubt they will have a clue.

Have a quick Google search for "Welsh Humanists". It's a new group, so they have a little bit of leeway, but the first (and probably one of just two) articles you'll find outside of the official BHA* pages, will be Kathy Riddick commenting on a petition organized by two Cardiff schoolgirls. In the BBC report Kathy is quoted as saying this:

"Forcing children to worship a god they may or may not believe in is obviously unacceptable and represents an affront to young people's freedom of religion or belief. It shouldn't take two school pupils to convince the Welsh Government of this." 

You're right Kathy... it shouldn't! It is very much, however, the remit of the Welsh Humanists to convince the Welsh Government of this! This is what you are supposed to be doing! Not a pair of fifteen year old schoolgirls! You!

In my area there are three Humanist groups that I am aware of. West Glamorgan Humanists (WGH), West Wales Humanists (WWH), and Llanelli Humanists. The first two are BHA affiliates, the latter, which is a Facebook-only group for the time being, is not. Guess which one produces leaflets, bookmarks and posters? Yup... the one that has no physical presence! Kathy Riddick once bemoaned the fact that there were only around 800 confirmed BHA members in Wales... is it little wonder when nobody knows there is a Humanist group in Wales?

The WGH are all over 60 years old and invite speakers to a two-course luncheon, once a month, in a hotel in Swansea, with a yearly get-together at a member's home. Other than that you don't hear a peep out of them, nor would you know they existed but for word-of-mouth.

The WWH also hold monthly meetings (in Narberth!) and the odd talk, and they also have a yearly party. Other than that, neither of them advertise, nor do they write to the newspapers (though individual members sometimes comment in letters sections), nor do they produce posters, or write letters to MPs/AMs, organize debates, or any other useful/promotional thing. I think in the three years the WWH have been running only one member has ever appeared on radio talking about Humanism. Nobody knows they even exist! How can they when WWH meetings are rarely held anywhere else other than fucking Narberth! It's a pokey little village in the middle of nowhere FFS! Yes, it could be argued that for the three counties it's quite central, but the total population of the entire area is about a third of the nearest large town, Carmarthen.

I mean, come on guys! There's a real reason to be active every week in the press around our area, but not a sound can be heard. All our newspapers produce a religious "Thought For The Week" segment, but where're the letters asking for a secular version... or better yet, an atheist one? It's time we got organized and got our names out there isn't it? Or are we going to wait until some other schoolgirls pick up the reins again and do our jobs for us?

At this rate the one group that doesn't physically exist is going to overtake all the other BHA Humanists and render them even less relevant than they seem to be now!

*   *   *

*The British Humanist Association recently changed its name to "Humanists UK", which I refuse to use. It's insipid and says nothing to me about unity, or structure. Dropping the British and Association just to appear more trendy, when the BHA top-brass are all tweed- and corduroy-wearing middle-class toffs is ridiculous. They'd have been better off paying for someone to teach them how to wear jeans and t-shirts than changing their whole brand.

For The Record: My Stance On Islam & Terrorism

Early this morning there was a terrorist attack on Muslims attending to a collapsed man near the Finsbury Park mosque. As of now I'm not sure if the driver managed to kill anyone, but there are a number of injured. The man was detained by the people he tried to kill, who did not allow some people wanting to kill the man to get near him. They showed remarkable compassion for the degenerate, given the circumstances. That said there are people who are pointing to the man's protectors and saying "Look... Islam is a religion of peace!" whilst ignoring the fact that there were Muslims there who wanted to stomp him to death. Some Muslims are peaceful, some aren't. That's the truth of all religious groups, and all other groups in which it is possible to hold extremist elements. Most Trump supporters don't really think Latinos and Muslims are rapists and murderers, despite what Trump says about gangs and immigrants. Some do, and they try to assault, or even kill them. On the basis of the numbers Trump supporters are on the whole peaceful people, but Trumpism is not peaceful. This is how it is with Islam. I feel the same way about other religions too, but this post isn't about them, so don't think you're being clever if you try to counter this post with "what about Christianity" or any other such guff. In Islam, the book they start off with advocates, and in many verses actually instructs "true believers" to lie to, harrass, exile, murder, enslave and forcibly convert non-Muslims. That is the basic foundation from which they start. Most Muslims think this book is the word of Allah (their imaginary friend) speaking through the caucasian, war-mongering, fucktard Mohammed the Prophet. The further away the Muslim gets from following the letter of this book the more peaceful they are. As luck would have it, the majority of Muslims, by a heck of a long way, are not literalists and stay away from acts of oppression, although most of these still make sure their women know their place. In the Russian Doll of Islam it goes something like this: Core doll: Murdering, hardcore, racist, mysogynist, hatefilled cunts. Second doll: Political jihadists who think political action and propaganda is all that is necessary to achieve a global Islamic State. Third Doll: Muslims who support either terrorist jihad, or political jihad, but themselves wouldnt get actively involved. Fourth Doll: Muslims who think the Islamic rules only apply to Muslims, but support actively trying to convert people to Islam. Fifth Doll: Muslims who think Islamic rules apply to Muslims only, and have the opinion that people ought to convert of their own volition. Outer Doll: Muslims who keep themselves to themselves and think people ought to live and let live. Clearly, the murdering fucktards are in the minority, but they are at the core of the religion for a reason. Each doll is painted the sane, as with all examples of Russian Dolls, but in the case of Islam, the further out you go the fainter the colours are, until the outer one has a very faint image of the core design. This is Islam according to anyone with the objectivity to see it as it is. Islam is NOT a religion of peace, but we have to acknowledge that the vast majority of Muslims are not involved in violence, or terrorism... yet, by their adherence to the religion they protect those who do!

The Uncomfortable Truth

When I was a young boy I had a horrible and haunting experience. It was a few days after my seventh birthday, and I was awoken by the sound of my Grandad calling my Nan from the bottom of the stairs. I ran to see what I could do. 

He was stood there with blood all down his lips, neck and chest. To my innocent eyes it looked like a very bad nosebleed. I ran to tell my Nan about the nosebleed, and it was this fact which she took at face value. Grandad was having a nosebleed. The tissues were in the kitchen. I should go off to tell him. She would follow on in a bit. No big deal.

A few minutes later I was kneeling on the blood-soaked floor of the kitchen, cradling my beloved Grandad, as he died. His eyes were begging me to help him. There was nothing I could do but hold him.

I finally came to terms with this in my late thirties.

When I was 19, I met with a psychologist who explained how my tendency to run the incident through in my mind could have been shut off by grief therapy, had it existed when I was seven. Later still, another counsellor asked me to honestly ask myself what a seven-year-old me could have done... really? The honest answer was nothing, but that fact took a while to sink in.

You see, the problem is that as I got older, and studied more about first aid, First Response & pre-hospital emergency care, in these increasing levels of complexity, I saw that incident from a more and more informed perspective. I lost sight of the fact that I was only a seven year old kid, with none of the knowledge I gained as I grew up.

This 'Grandad's Death Apologism' ultimately led me to have some serious delusions about how his demise was my fault, because I didn't perform some, now, routine actions which may have saved him. Such as recognizing that it wasn't an epistaxis for starters!

An astute reader will already know where this story is headed. This is a blog about religions and their follies after all. So, where do we usually find events recorded by ill-informed, scientifically ignorant authors whose stories are later retold from more modern and complex perspectives as more information becomes available?

Yes... The Holy Bible.

The job of the Christian Apologist is to deny the actual words of the authors, the stories within the text as seen through primitive eyes, and make up new ideas to explain what they meant, and why the stories actually meant something other than what they say.

Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a text by Aaronid "Priestly" scribes of the 6-5th centuries BCE, writing around the time of or just after the Jewish exile in Babylon, whose Yahweh speaks everything into being from some pre-existing materials, such as space, water and soil. Meanwhile, Gen 2:4b-Gen 3:24 is a text two hundred years older, written by Elohists who were following their tradition of Yahweh moulding humans, animals and plants out of the earth, clearly more from an agricultural perspective.

These texts actually have messages all of their own, but modern Creationists cannot bear to accept that these are from two traditions, which if taken at face value, clearly demonstrate that Yahweh is a human literary construction, used as 'Priestly Propaganda'! Instead, they have to find a way to construct a narrative that explains how the second, older story is a clarification of a period within the first, younger story, and tells us that they are both, in fact, telling a single story.

They are rewriting the story from a point of view of having both an agenda and a new set of data. Just as I did with my Grandad's death.

When you fail to take a story, or an account of an event, at face value, and forget the knowledge level of its author(s), or participants, you diminish your ability to objectively analyse the truth of it. If you're not 100% honest in your dealing with Bible texts, you relinquish any claim you have of understanding some 'arcane knowledge' or 'hidden truths' held within the text.

I didn't know about pulmonary pathologies, traumatic cardiac events, haemostatic techniques, CPR, or Stroke management when I was seven. I had to be honest about that before I could recognize the truth of my Grandad's death. If you're honest about the Creation myths of the Bible, you must accept that they inadvertently undermine the veracity of your god claim... in short, they explain the circumstances in which you can be certain your god isn't real... and never was. 

This is the uncomfortable truth!

Brexit - a short comment

I don't intend for this blog to become a political one. This is about religion, not politics. However, there comes a time when political bullshit gets too much and I have to comment. Brexit is the UK's suicide note, and clearly Brexiteers failed to understand what that note said, or why they were signing it. The first thing we have to note, and I say 'have to' because it is critical to this whole process, is that the referendum was not legally binding. The government were under no obligation, as an omitted instruction in the legislation acts as a note in itself, to follow "the will of the people" on this issue. Case in point... 52% of those who turned out to vote, 37% of the voting public and 25% of all the citizens in the U.K., voted to leave the EU. 70% of the people want an end to compulsory collective worship in schools. So, why should the government take this referendum as being more important than any other poll... because that is what it is, a poll! Brexiteers, or clowns as I like to think of them, voted primarily on the grounds of regaining Parliamentary Sovereignty. When the High Court recently decided that Parliament is Sovereign they went nuts. "You can't defy the 'will of the people'!" they shout... whilst misunderstanding the weight they carry in this debate. They don't get that the very thing they said they were voting for is now what the Court has ensured they have. 100,000 people led by Clown-in-Chief, Nigel Farage (which he states, unhelpfully, rhymes with 'garage') are set to march on Parliament today to complain that they are being ignored. They are. Their part in the process is over. The Government take it from here. We have a PM with no mandate to govern us and she cannot be allowed to arbitrarily set the rules... or did the Brexit clowns forget why they were against the EU running the show? So, the High Court has declared that Parliament as a whole must vote in order for the process to be truly democratic. So, why are the Brexit clowns really throwing their toys out of the pram? It's because of one thing. They aren't interested in democracy at all. They haven't taught themselves what it is, they don't want to know what it is and more importantly they don't want it... they only want their way! What each of these clowns is actually demanding is fascism, and they can't have it. That is why they are upset, and that's why this Brexit process must be thrown out before it's too late.