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Gott mit uns

Published

on April 11, 2008

Throughout the history of civilisation, the presence of the supernatural is a given. In the dark depths of the lack of knowledge of early human history, maps can be found in divine interpretations, counsel is given from trances and most importantly deeds, good or evil, bear from a higher cause.

Of course, depending on where you look, not much has changed at all. One would be hard pressed to believe that a world where superpowers invade sovereign countries because ‘God’ told them so was a world in the XXI century, and not in the age of the Trojan Wars.

Although many people conduct their lives without having to live under the shadow of self-recriminatory repression, a good many unfortunately still exhibit signs of cult-ish fear.

In an example relevant to the contemporary geopolitical theatre:

From my exposure to Jews from an early age as good friends, I’ve grown to sympathise greatly with the cause of the state of Israel. As a history buff, the stories of all the wars of national defense were analogous to epics of survival. I find that the existence and resilience of the Jewish state today is a testament to the survival instinct of a people who originated as a Middle Eastern tribe in the Bronze Age.

Yet my heart shrinks for every rabbi who indulges in religiously inspired expansionism.

I am, of course, fully aware that one could make a similar case for the Palestinians. It is revoltingly short-sighted to assume that every Palestinian is a suicide bomber. Yet the situation of Islam makes it a separate case to deal with, a case I will perhaps deal in a future post, time allowing (I take the opportunity to apologise profusely to my equally resilient readership - I am currently studying in Engineering which takes up practically 27 hours per day of my time).

The state of Judaea existed in the Bronze Age, that is an undisputable fact. That this piece of infertile desert left Jewish control between then and 1948 is also a fact that nobody will make an effort to fight.

And yet the situation of Israel seems like a perfect opportunity to reconcile the ancient history of both peoples who coincide on the same piece of land.

Although many people conduct their lives without having to live under the shadow of self-recriminatory repression, a good many unfortunately still exhibit signs of cult-ish fear.

What is unfortunate to me, as a slightly Israel leaning outsider, is that there are many elements in the Jewish religious community who hold reactionary, dangerous and very real views about what should be done with the land that surrounds the 1948 borders. Under the secular excuse of maintaining national sovereignty facing a brutal enemy with ambitions of extermination, this land is de-facto occupied.

However, the religiously inspired excuse involved settling and annexing this land in order to restore the ancient kingdom of David.

Any ultra-nationalistic ambition with territorial claims grounded in illuminated parchments of the Bronze Age should be viewed with absolute disdain. Just as any controversial opinion derived from no evidence at all is of no concern to the public, epoch-based ultra-nationalism is something to deride as a delusion, if not because of the dangerous ethnic rearrangement implications then because of the simplistic irredentism of it.

The not uncommon idea that the Jewish people are the apple of Yahweh’s eye leads to this kind of irredentist nationalism. Out of my many Jewish friends it is a few who have said that proof for God’s existence is the survival of the Jewish tribe.

One would wonder why God would bother making 6,2 billion people more than the 20 million Jews he cares about.

Unabashedly arrogant, this interpretation of the supernatural is not particular to ultra-religious Jews, however.

“Gott mit uns” is the motto inscribed on the belt buckles of the Waffen SS troops of the Third Reich (dispelling the ‘atheistic’ nature of the regime).

My point is that with the blessing of God one finds the perfect moral scapegoat for getting away with acts of breathtaking inanity and no less danger to others, acts that inspected rationally would merit the believer a suite in an asylum.

With the blessing of God, the Jewish people deny themselves the honour of being a people which have known how to survive despite the constant persecution - a skill worth having, a heritage to be proud of. If one were to explain it away as God’s will then the merit fades.

With the blessing of God, one can afford to escape the consequences of brutal acts on other people who presumably have the blessing of God themselves.

With the blessing of God one finds himself with a blank check. Since the laws of the divine take predominance over the earthly (in a spectacularly egoistic and amoral legal hierarchy), one can get away with racist eugenics.

With the blessing of God, one can get away with reviving ancient territorial ambitions at the expense of the existing population (Albanians expelling Serbians from Kosovo to fulfill the prophecies of the League of Prizren, for example - again, a post worth it’s own if I ever get around to it).

With the blessing of God, one can afford to escape the consequences of brutal acts on other people who presumably have the blessing of God themselves.

Geopolitics are better off without supernatural inspirations.

The world is better of without God.

Please Stop Saying ‘Christians’ - You Owe It To Byzantium

Published

eltower

on December 29, 2007

A small personal gripe, after a very lengthy interval in posting.

We can all agree that Christianity has plenty of denominations. The basic divisions, we can all agree upon, are Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism.

There is one point, however, which everyone seems to fall into (as did I, but I’m trying to avoid it).

In the US there are countless variations and reforms of the Protestant branch of Christianity, the most notable here in Europe being the Evangelical Christians, for their relentless pursuit of converting others.

However, they call themselves ‘Christians’.

In Spain, the Catholic Church will in the very near future hold demonstrations in favour of the ‘Christian family’. Catholics call themselves ‘Cristianos’.

This is, admittedly, a small gripe, yet one I believe must be made in order to respect historical fact.

I am the first to denounce any kind of blind belief, however moderate or apparently harmless it may be. But there is a crucially important distinction to make when talking about Evangelicals or Catholics or any denomination of Christianity.

Because of my close affiliation with Orthodox Christianity as a family heritage (without succumbing to the inane beliefs), I get ticked off when people talk about, say, Creationists, as Christians, simply because this lumps everyone who calls themselves a Christian together into the Creationist category.

I say respect for history because of my loyalty to my Byzantine heritage. It might sound inane, but at a closer look, the Byzantine Empire has, in its over 1000 years of history, done more for the protection of European Christendom and Middle Age kingdoms than anyone actually in Europe.

The Byzantine Empire was shrouded in religion, Orthodox Christianity to be precise. As the inheritor of the Roman Empire, the new capital, Constantinople became one of the Empire’s religious centres, as well as a city of unrivaled splendor and the administrative centre of a vast Empire dominating East and West.

However, it made a point to shy away from mixing religion in warfare, something few other religions can claim to do. Indeed, priests blessed the soldiers and in desperate sieges, the morale was boosted with cries of the Virgin Mary or other Medieval incantations. But the Church often refused to make martyrs out of fallen soldiers. And the concept of holy war was as alien to them as despicable when they saw it wielded by their Latin and Muslim enemies [PDF].

And for 1000 years, until 1453, Byzantine soldiered on, holding off the unstoppable advances of the prophet’s armies, while Europe took the time to sink into the lowest pits of the Dark Ages. A cursory look at Byzantine Studies puts the rest of European history in perspective.

I make this tangential remark on the Byzantine Empire because its history is inseparable to that of the Orthodox Church. The Schools of Hellenic Wisdom were kept alive in the Byzantine Empire and transmitted to the Islamic worlds and the Western worlds after the Fall of Constantinople.

So whenever I see someone railing against an Evangelical or an American neo-con, or a Spanish Catholic fascist and calling them ‘Christian’, well, I can’t help myself from getting a bit ticked off. Mostly because it’s acknowledging them the privilege of speaking for a far greater body of people than they really are speaking for. But also, and I stress this is as much out of respect for history as it is a personal issue, because it lumps in the Byzantine Empire with an American Creationist.

So, if it’s not too much to ask, it would be a small battle won against ‘Christian’ fundamentalists to call them Evangelical Fundamentalists or Catholic Fundamentalists or even Orthodox Fundamentalists (whenever the rare occasion comes up). Just not ‘Christian’, because you lump in the noble defense of civilisation the ‘Christian’ Byzantine Empire held up for 1000 years with the barbarity of the Crusades, the insanity of Islamic propagation, the despotism of the Catholic Inquisitions, the inanity of Creationism and the barbarism of modern Islam.

I’m not going to try and say the Byzantine Empire was a centre for secular peace and modern progressive thought. It was a Medieval Empire, after all, not exempt from a considerable share of torture, irrelevant religious debate and eunuchs but a great empire nonetheless, one that in the interest of stabbing the real fundamentalists and in the interest of historical accuracy, deserves not to be lumped in with fascist bastards.

Consensus On Morality Aboard A Bus

Published

eltower

on November 28, 2007

A very interesting friend of mine is a Kurd from Syria who was raised in a private Assyrian Christian Orthodox school and currently studies with me in Switzerland. He speaks Kurdish, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Assyrian and Aramaic (which dwarf my own English, Spanish, Serbian, French, Italian combo) and he’s basically a very lax and essentially non-practicing Muslim, who learned how to pray as a Christian before learning to pray as a Muslim.

However, he still believes in a very meta-physical idea of a Supreme Being. Not that I hold it against him, but it led to an invigorating and stimulating discourse on morality while aboard the bus.

You must forgive me for resorting yet again to reproducing the conversation in an adapted dialogue form.

“Morality must come from religion. You see, for better of for worse, humankind believes.” said Salare.

“What do you mean believes?” I asked

“Everyone believes in something. It is an intrinsic part of our being insignificant in this vast universe. A believer will believe in whichever God he wants to believe in. I personally believe they’re all manifestations of one Supreme Being, whatever that is. An atheist will believe in science, or in the education their parents gave them, or in inherited moral values and so forth”

“I disagree with a number of things. Firstly, I like to believe I’m a moral person. I donate blood. I donate old clothes to Serbian families who need it. I help old ladies cross the road. None of these moral values came from religious morals because, as you point out, I received a very correct and secular, I might add, education from my parents.

Secondly, I firmly disagree with your comparison of religious belief with scientific belief. A religious person who believes in God will by definition have faith that their God exists. They will require no evidence to back their beliefs, indeed, they will often ignore contrary evidence to suggest the absence of a God. They might have had personal experiences that are out of reach to other people, but psychiatrists may or may not give these experiences concrete medical explanations. It’s an unchanging, unflinching world view. C.S. Lewis said (absurdly) once of his own religion that “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else”, which is rather misleading because an unchanging and unflinching world view is more like an over polarised pair of sunglasses which shields the beauty of the world from you.

My point is that an atheist who has a naturalist view of the world will base his views on existing evidence and on existing models, themselves supported by ample evidence. It’s a worldview that changes and adapts to contemporary discoveries. And there is ample evidence to suggest that morality is inherited, that it is an evolved trait in our primate species.”

“Adrian, you see, you are a moral person yourself, and indeed there are many like you who are moral for moraility’s sake. But for the same reason that many stores need security cameras to stop people from stealing, many people need to have the feeling of fear in order to stop themselves from killing or stealing. It’s part of the inherent egoism of humanity.

from flickr/Viiiiiii

You are clearly capable of maintaining a very correct moral stance yourself derived from your own world views. But there is a problem not within religion itself but within the people who follow it and who engage in perverse acts sometimes despite the fear of being watched by God or by a security camera in a store.”

“Indeed, there are amoral people. What I, personally, find amoral is that many people need to be threatened into being moral, but right you are this is just what defined the diversity of our human species.

However, I disagree with your idea that religion is not inherently the problem. While it is true that many people derive their morals from religious texts, and that many pick and mix according to the day and age they live in (few Creationists would seriously take to heart the Biblical encouragement to slavery), the fact that organised religions can have such a powerful effect on people is to me, damnedly immoral.

For a start, I agree and I am the first to postulate that were religions to be truly inconsiderate of the fates of other people’s souls, and as long as they only promulgated morals that dealt in a similar, if not identical way to the legal civil code, the world would be an infinitely better place, and it would coexist with religion.

However, this is goes against the very nature of organised religion. It is moral for an evangelist to spread the word of Jesus to as many heathens as he can, because they honestly believe they are trying to save other people’s souls. The Muslim Hadith quite clearly orders Muslims to kill or convert unbelievers. It is hard to take that verse as a metaphor as it is quite clearly unambiguous [ed note: Qur’an Sura 9:5 reads as “Kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush: but if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way, for God is gracious, merciful.” and the Hadith, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 260, Narrated Ikrima reads “for the Prophet said, “If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.”].

My point is that there are a set of religious values which do indeed help to stop violent people from murdering. However, in practice, the leadership of organised religions attach a much higher importance to ‘values’ which help them control their flock.

I mean ridiculous and violent things such as the obsession with sin and sexuality - who you have sex with, when you have sex, how you have sex - and other inane and irrelevant ‘morals’ such as an anti-abortion stance (which is nowhere justified in the Bible, for one), chauvinism (in covering up women’s heads and conferring them less rights than a 6 year old male), anti stem-cell research and a long etc. If the heads of organised religions really cared about morals such as ‘Do Not Kill’ they would issue press statements on every murder committed by a believer instead of issuing inane statements on abortion or Church-State separation. Rather, the Catholic Church will pardon you for murder if you sit in a box, tell an anointed elderly pederast and pray four or five times.”

To this, Salare absolutely agreed.

And thus on the 7th bus stop, Odin said “Let there be consensus”. And there was consensus. And Odin saw this and everything was good.

Brief Physics Intercision - Force due to Electric charges between varying dielectrics

Published

eltower

on November 28, 2007

Allow me to interrupt the (irregular) schedule of the Gospel with a Physics question.

I study Electrical and Electronic Engineering in Lausanne, Switzerland. In a recent Electrotechnique I class, the topic of force due to an electric charge came up. Basically, for two positive electric charges $Q_1$ and $Q_2$ in a vacuum (permitivity $\epsilon_0$ , a distance $r$ ), the force due to the electric charges can be expressed as the following:

$F_1 = F_2 = F = \frac{Q_1 Q_2}{4 \pi \epsilon_0 r^2}$

However, that supposes that the dielectric between them, in this case a vacuum, is the same. What I asked today in class, and this was something the professor was incapable of answering on the spot, was: how do you express the force if $Q_1$ is in one dielectric $\epsilon_1$ and $Q_2$ is in another dielectric $\epsilon_2$ ? Let’s say for convenience, there is a clean separation of the two dielectrics at a point, say, $\frac{r}{2}$ .

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Layman’s terms:

Given two ideal, solitary, positive electric charges, a theme very commonly used to explain electromagnetism equations in Physics, you can express the force they exert upon each other. However, it assumes that the material which lets through the electric field caused by each other is the same throughout the system. What if one charge was in one type of ‘material’ and the other in another type? It’s a simple enough concept to imagine, and it’s very easily answerable if you’re talking about capacitors (a type of electronic component that stores electric charge).

Thanks in advance.

If This Was God’s Doing Then I Contend That God Is An Idiot

Published

eltower

on November 28, 2007

Today I hit my hand on a lamppost.

A banal and innocuous event and I’m glad to say that my finger quickly felt a lot better as soon as I stopped thinking about it.

As it happens I was talking with a classmate who believes passionately in God. As it happens, I was pulling his leg for something completely unrelated to religion and as it happens, as I hit my hand he retorted “Ah, that’s God punishing you for being such an idiot.”

I could not resist the temptation to strike back with chaos.

“Which one?”

He looked puzzled.

“Well, God.”

“OK, fine, so it was a divine punishment, but by whom? Zeus?”

“Dude, you know I’m a Christian who -”

“No, it must have been Thor, the God of lightning who moved my hand into a post of electrical dark magic. Although it could have also been Shiva, the destructor, who wished to inflict pain unto my pinky.”

via flickr/AprilM2107

“God has a plan for you, Adrian, so it must have been God.”

“There are many Gods you could believe in. What makes you think it was yours who was looking at me, a heathen, at this particular moment and judged that the punishment for teasing you for your football club was to strike my pinky with a lamppost?”

“OK, fine, it was all of them.”

“Hm, no, rather, the punishment was to strike the lamppost with my pinky. Has the lamppost been immoral?”

“Lampposts are inanimate objects.”

“Apparently not immune to divine punishment. You know what? OK, fine, God, your God, the Christian God, the father of Jesus of Nazareth, looked at me teasing you for your football club and decided that he would punish me, and assuming he thinks like you do that atheists are fools, then for my heathenness as well. He looked at the opportunities around him. He could have steered my path into a traffic collision. He could have dropped a 10-pound flower pot onto my head. He could have even interfered with meteorology to strike me with lightning, hail, blizzards or fish. But no, he sees a lamppost and my pinky and says ‘Hupa, Hupa, Hupa PinkyLamppost’. It didn’t even hurt. He didn’t even leave a couple of wires to electrocute me to death - that would have been admirably subtle”

“God exists whether you don’t believe in him or not.”

“If God’s plan to punish me for a banal terrestrial matter really was to strike a lamppost with my pinky ever so lightly then I contend to you that God is an incoherent, disorganised slacker and a complete idiot.”

We spent the rest of the walk home arguing about football.

Quick Word on Striking

Published

eltower

on November 21, 2007

So, the French are striking. Old news, huh?

It so happens that I’m personally affected. I may or may not be able to travel in two days time to see someone in France depending on whether the strikes are still disrupting rail service. Hence I disclose that:

I am personally affected by the strikes disrupting the rail network in France.

Having said that, and beyond a selfish reason to hate the strikes (many don’t need another reason, and with good, well, reason), there are plenty of points with which to poke the railway strikers!

1.- They’re not fighting for civil liberties, their jobs, or their rights. They’re fighting for a privilege.

Current French legislation gives workers in difficult or hazardous professions the privilege to retire after 37,5 years rather than 40 years of service, allowing some workers to retire at 50 with a full state supported pension, costing the State some 7 billion Euros a year.

Not good.

Even worse: Rail unions have just organised the biggest strike in a decade over this privilege. Imagine if they had something real to complain about!

Bottom line: The strikers are fighting not for their jobs, not for their rights, both of which are noble causes which I would fully support, but for a privilege. They’re fighting for two years and a half of pensions. Given that to be applicable they would have had to have spent 37,5 years in the industry, their life expectancy as a rail worker would have decreased considerably with respect to the average, so there are two years and a half they’re just not going to be able to profit from anyway. Bitter. Fucking. Truth. Now smoke it.

Aristocracies fight for privileges. Nobles and clergymen fight for privileges. Workers don’t fight for privileges. These strikes are characterised by a very distinct bourgeois feel of “We want cake, but the State, she gives us bread!”.

I stress: Not Good.

French rail worker: “We want cake, but the State, she gives us bread!”

2.- They’re unjustly holding the nation hostage.

They’ve taken the liberty to choose for 62 million people. They’ve taken the liberty to remove the right to freedom of movement and to get to their bloody jobs from a whole nation, all over a damned privilege.

Bottom line: In the self-appointed importance and arrogance of the rail workers, they’ve managed to detonate public support (I suppose they never expected any) and be generally hated.

Emotionally defused message to the rail workers of France: You’ve hijacked the trust the public had laid onto you by giving you such astounding union freedom and turned it into nothing more than a cheap, bourgeois dictatorship which is widely hated by everyone.

Emotionally charged message to the rail workers of France: I fucking hate you, you fascist bastards. You’re the reason I haven’t slept a wink in over 8 days and I hope you get replaced by robots within the next few months. So fuck you.

An Intelligent Challenge for Intelligent Design

Published

eltower

on November 20, 2007

In one word: Prove it.

Both fascinatingly and worryingly, there is an increasing discourse about the notion of ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID).

Rather, and allow me to clarify that previous statement, quote bait for ID proponents, there is an increasing discourse about Intelligent Design within the framework of science and education, notably with very mainstream and manipulative events.

Nobody in the science community will try and force someone not to believe in Intelligent Design, the notion of a higher purpose in the universe. Nobody will say a word about how the parents tries to ~~educate~~ indoctrinate their child within the realm of their home and/or church (although perhaps they should).

The problem with the modern ID push, and indeed, its reason to be, is that it is trying to wedge the discourse into education all over the world.

In a nutshell, Intelligent Design is an idea which claims that since science is inadequate to respond to very ominous and big Questions about existence, then there surely must be an intelligent designer to fill in the gaps.

Do not expect, of course, ID to present a shred of evidence to back up their claim, other than bringing up apparent ‘holes’ in the scientific theories of today and claiming that they must be filled with Intelligence of a higher order, since naturalism apparently cannot fill them.

The Intelligent Design Network maintains it believes in objectivity in science (an otherwise absolutely noble belief which I fervently subscribe to) yet it also believes in the promotion of ’scientific evidence of intelligent design’ in order to achieve scientific neutrality. Of course, this leaves the fact that their ‘interpretation’ of the 0 point in the axes of neutrality rest firmly on their side of the 0. Not to mention that the scientific evidence of intelligent design has yet to materialise.

So far, the only points intelligent design has going for it is that it makes patently false statements about modern science and takes them as cues to introduce the Great Watchmaker. It also relies on including a great many quotes from scientists who profess belief, forgetting on the way that a quote from a scientist does not constitute any more evidence of the intelligent designer than a quote from a fashion artist.

Outlining the misconceptions of science Intelligent Design makes is a task that has been done to exhaustion yet the relentless religious fervour with which ID proponents follow their prey (i.e. post-Stone Age civilisation) begs that this task be done even more.

As I said at the beginning, nobody is trying to convince you otherwise if you believe there is a superior intelligence out there setting physical constants or even taking interest in terrestrial affairs.

Yet, in the full knowledge that the hallmark of a solid scientific theory is its ability to predict the future in light of current evidence, it’s hard not to conclude that Intelligent Design is a load of hot air. Indeed, to its credit, an interpretation of ID, namely “There is a Higher Intelligence/God/Allah/FSM and He did it” is quite apt at predicting the future and explaining the past in a lazy, convoluted and intellectually manipulative way, especially considering that the required evidence for ID to hold water is nowhere to be found.

So, in the tried and true model of challenging budding scientific theories (and otherwise, as in this case), there is but one simple requirement for ID to present in order for it to begin to hold water as a scientific and eventually educational theory:

Evidence.

Challenge: Bring me evidence, found on its own merit i.e. not child’s play ‘evidence’ of the kind: “Darwin recanted on his deathbed!”, “There are such a thing as transcendental numbers!”, “Quantum mechanics scares me so it must be God!”, “The eye is too complex to have evolved!”, etc. but more like what bubble trails are to particle physics kind of thing.

Response, if successful: I will videotape myself eating a popular edition (unabridged!) of the Origin of Species and post it to Youtube. That’s right, tearing off each individual page and ingesting The Origin of Species.

Good hunting.

P.S. Clarification: Holes in modern scientific theories do not automatically validate your own - at best, they eventually strengthen the modern science theory in question. Logic arguments do not constitute evidence. Biblical prophecies do not constitute evidence. Find me a genuine fossil of a dinosaur, dated with modern scientific methods to 6000 years ago which is used to sustain a peer-reviewed and accepted paper on ID and I shall recant.

Quackery! Pure Quackery! Homeopathy in a nutshell

Published

eltower

on November 18, 2007

A not so long while ago, I met up with a very interesting young woman who had all sorts of things to say. One of these interesting things was a hobby of her mothers, Homeopathy.

Homeopathy was developed in the early 19th century by a character named Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann. At the time the development of scientific medicine in Western Europe was very much embryonic, and Samuel developed the idea that to cure a disease, instead of following normal - and damned dangerous - practices of bloodletting, he would try and keep the disease inside the system and purge it out by restoring the vital life force.

The development of scientific medicine was essentially materialistic and, well, scientific. Homeopathy differed from this by following a metaphysical and subjective approach.

Today, the practice involves dissolving insignificant amounts of remedy (that in larger doses would produce symptomatic effects similar to the ones being treated) into solution in order to cure the patient. The idea that a special form of shaking the solution confers a kind of ‘memory’ to the molecules ingested by the patient.

There is, however, absolutely no evidence which could demonstrate the validity of any of these statements. It’s all very nice on paper, and indeed, within the realm of metaphysical and spiritual practices, it holds quite a reputable status. The methods involved might seem scientific in that they search for a reliable remedy to suit the disease, but instead of attacking the disease, they focus on restoring the life spirit, whose balance was damaged by the miasm, or disease in question. As far as evidence-based science and reality checks go, there’s nothing which could distinguish homeopathy from the placebo effect. Indeed, it is often speculated that many of the concepts in homeopathy smack of religious revelation in their inane proclamations.

So, what have I got against this woman’s mother practising homoeopathy? Absolutely nothing. She has every right to believe whatever she might seem fit.

The problem arises when one tries to substitute real medicine with alternative medicine. The notion that a spiritual cure can claim a privileged position in face of science is very dangerous, not only for the state of society, but for the patient involved, above all!

I’m not drawing at straw-men. In the UK, homeopathy is offered by the NHS. Homeopathy pharmacies are licensed by the Department of Health.

The notion that an alternative remedy, just because it does not involve chemicals, is somehow more apt than a doctor to cure an illness belittles the leaps and bounds of scientific medical progress, without which the average life expectancy of a developed nation would not go much over 30. Indeed, there are herbal remedies which, because they include the same chemicals found in medicine, help to sooth symptoms of serious diseases or cure minor ills. That is, of course, only natural.

Yet the unsubstantiated notion that statistically and chemically insignificant dilution of untested remedies will cure a patient by balancing their life force is not so different to shamanism or voodoo incantations.

Everyone has the right to bask in their own beliefs as they see fit, be it religion or homeopathy or whatever. However, one thing which must remain clearly defined is the line between public health and quackery. It hurts to see taxpayer money be diverted into sponsoring remedies which are indistinguishable from placebo effects yet masked as real medicine. It endangers the separation of politics and superstition, a separation which has taken millenia to materialise.

If you feel that ingesting a couple of molecules of whatever will make you feel better, you are entitled to that belief. If you believe that a couple of molecules of conium maculatum will kill your tumour, well, it’s a dangerous delusion but you are entitled to it nevertheless. However, if in some way or another the State gives its blessing to this quackery and non-sensical shamanism, then you start to threaten all the medical progress that has been made to date, and we’ve got a problem.

Back in Black - It’s been a long time, babe

Published

eltower

on November 18, 2007

A long while ago, I decided to pull the plug on the GoR, anticipating a lack of time required to honour the learnèd readership of the blog.

Noticing that comments still kept flowing in, and noticing I had severe blogging withdrawal symptoms, I’ve decided to look into perhaps restarting the Gospel of Reason. I’ve found I have the hunger and the time to keep on writing, so I hope my words will not fall on empty ears - even if they do, I intend to keep on writing. It feels really good! What can I say.

It’s been a fairly long time, so I suppose it would be beneficial to make a fresh start. I stand to reiterate the following goals:

Science in face of rhetoric
Logic in face of emotion
Honesty in face of manipulation
Beauty in knowledge in face of fear in ignorance

This blog is run by a scientific atheist who finds Truth through evidence and through natural beauty. These are all themes I’ll touch upon in the future, including how they relate to current events.

There’s a market for talking about reason and science because of late, these two bastions of civilisation are under attack. We need to take it unto ourselves to defend from a position of elevated tranquility the two safeguards of our way of life from the onslaught of superstition and dogma.

Notwithstanding, I am also a Libertarian, and as such, although I may disagree with someone’s opinion, I will defend to the death their right to say it. I set out resolutely convinced I will not try to convince anyone of my opinions. If someone finds an argument set out here convincing, then so be it, and all the better. I have an open mind and will examine contrary arguments with all the cold blooded criticism and scepticism which which I regard my own arguments (and change them, were it to be necessary in light of new evidence).

So in the spirit of free discourse and in the aim to expound the virtues of reason and science while at the same time blowing off some intellectual steam (others might call it intellectual masturbation), I invite you to stay at the Gospel of Reason for a while, and to enjoy the discourse that inevitably appears.

Good day.

How Many Roads Must A Man Walk Down? Best Of GoR

Published

eltower

on August 16, 2007

Writing for the Gospel of Reason has been a great, great vent for the past few months. I’ve managed to flex my writing skills, and I honestly believe I’ve learned something in the process.

But along the way I’ve also tracked the development of my life philosophies. I’ve also made contact with a number of very interesting people who have been following the Gospel from the very start.

A lack of updates has worried me for a long time now. Quite simply put: It’s not a lack of content. I’m swimming in content. It’s a lack of time.

As summer draws to a close, a new stage in my life starts - with higher education just around the corner, I figured it would be good closure to draw the Gospel of Reason to a dignified end. I apologise profusely to those (few :P) faithful readers with their RSS antennae switched on constantly.

For those who have just stumbled upon the Gospel, allow me to highlight what I think are the main posts worth flipping through if you have the time.

Obviously, firstly there is the mission statement. These past few months, I’ve written the Gospel of Reason with a bunch of constraints and ethical guidelines in mind:

Science in face of rhetoric
Logic in face of emotion
Honesty in face of manipulation
Beauty in knowledge in face of fear in ignorance

As far as posts go, the Big kahuna, the numero uno in views, comments and headaches is: God Said Pi = 3.0 Stand By Your Beliefs Dammit. A damning critique of Biblical literalism takes on an oblique approach to the issue trying to get fundamentalists to undermine Mathematics with their beliefs according to a rather lax passage in the Bible. It spurred interesting comments, as well as mucho personal attack, from all sorts of sides.

On a similar ironic note is Westboro Baptist are going to Hell according to themselves, and here’s why. Attacking a fringe Christian fundamentalist group using rhetoric their leader might well use for other occasions. Once again, an attack on dogmatism and a post that, essentially, celebrates flexibility of thought - the antithesis of many, if not all, organised religions.

Filling the Gaps With Gods takes on the God of the Gaps idea, whereby Faith frantically grabs at holes in scientific knowledge to try and hold the fort from science just a little longer. In this sense, Faith really is a bit like an onion.

I tried my hand in the fallacies of Intelligent Design with You Want To Talk Design? I’m All Ears, which essentially just tried to show that there are, in fact, many demonstrable theories and hypotheses regarding the origins of the universe that do not need of a supernatural force or being to belittle the wonders of natural processes. The Scientific Method delves a little deeper into the subject of rationality, reason and evidence and why they’re superior to dogma, hardheadedness and faith.

This critique of the misnomer Creation Science continues with a visit to the research lab of some Creation Scientists as they investigate for their research grant project.

A Matter of Atheist Pride deals with coming out of the closet about one’s atheism, about being proud through hardship and through solidarity with fellow thinkers. Atheism will never become like an organised religion - it would be like herding cats. But through each freethinker there is a common thread of unification which can be very easily harnessed into pride and solidarity with a fellow atheist. Hot on the heels of the issue of pride is Keep Your Heritage Close, But Your Rationality Even Closer. Being a person of mixed origins myself, I’ve come to realise that I can partake in old family religious traditions with a clean conscience without actually believing anything about it. Being an atheist does not imply forgetting who you are or where you came from - it just rejects superstition from the equation.

And finally, to close this summary of what I consider to be the most entertaining writing is fittingly, a piece about death for an atheist. So, Nothing Happens When You Die? is best experienced with personal anecotes in mind (I hate to be arrogant about this but I really like this post ).

With no further intention to be a pain in the ass to everyone, I thank everyone of my regular readers - they are too few to be named - especially those who’ve commented from the start and kept me going.

Those who wish to contact me may do so with the following email: . If I’m sufficiently interested I’ll give you my personal email after first contact. Of course, as has been mentioned already, I am more than willing to help out any projects anybody has in mind, podcasts, writing or whatever.

So, there it is. I thank everyone of my readers for making writing worth it.

Make of your life what feels right for you.

Ikkyu, the Zen master, was very clever even as a boy. His teacher had a precious teacup, a rare antique. Ikkyu happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed. Hearing the footsteps of his teacher, he held the pieces of the cup behind him. When the master appeared, Ikkyu asked: “Why do people have to die?”

“This is natural,” explained the older man. “Everything has to die and has just so long to live.”

Ikkyu, producing the shattered cup, added: “It was time for your cup to die.”^*

– Adrian C.

Pragmatic Carpe Diemism

Published

eltower

on August 4, 2007

What the hell is pragmatic carpe diemism?

Well, to be honest, it doesn’t really mean anything to people other than myself. But it came in a moment of minor Zen meaning as a very accurate term to describe the way I look at the world.

Rather than write a lengthy and boring exposition on it, I thought it might be curious if I posted instead a quick stream of thought which led to it.

Just follow the page down and you’ll see exactly (or almost exactly) what has gone through my head during my journey to my current political and social leanings!

START

Secular British Education

Hm! Biology is interesting.

So that’s how that works! I wonder how other things work too.

What do you mean what religion do I belong to?

History is fascinating.

History of the Islamic Empire. Wow, bloodthirsty.

Spanish Inquisition in History class. They did what with the Jews?

Physics. Getting mystical with quarks and cosmology.

Ah, so I’m an Orthodox Christian you say? OK then. I might as well find out what that means. Pick up Bible.

Hang on a second, that’s not how the Earth was created…

God is a pretty sick character.

Bad day. Is there a God?

The Socialists want to do what with the economy?

The Conservatives want to do what with my civil liberties?

Libertarianism on Wikipedia. Go civil liberties! Go free market!

Reading about Buddhism. If there is a God, surely he is a form of enlightenment different to each person.

Read Gnostic Gospels. Huh?

Mo’ Science and Maths. These things can explain the world pretty nicely!

Read the God Delusion. Zen moment.

Openly declared a scientific atheist with an Eastern Orthodox heritage (and proud of it).

The brevity of life gives me a reason to wake up each day at 7 in the morning, eager to take advantage of the opportunities 15-16 hours (or more) can give me.

Damn, I’m going to get a ticket for parking there. I’ll handle that problem when it comes, if it comes.

Vietnam. Mind is blown.

I’m pragmatic, yet very idealistic. I’m a libertarian with many economically conservative and socially liberal ideas. I’m an atheist but I still go to the Christian Orthodox Church on special occasions with my family.

Pragmatic Carpe Diemism.

Live each day to the fullest without losing sight of where you’re going or where you’ve come from.

Just a few thoughts to keep all (13 apparently) of my readers warm for a while.

Living In A Country Of Respect

Published

eltower

on July 31, 2007

I just came back from volunteering in Vietnam. I spent two weeks in Hanoi teaching English at the Hanoi’s School for the Blind and I’ve had the most incredible time of my life.

Without delving into personal anecdotes (all of which are highly emotionally charged), let me get straight to the point.

Vietnam is a communist country all right. You can feel it in the airport on arrival, with the stringent immigration checks, with the red flags and banners and the single face of Ho Chi Minh on all of the paper money.

This also means that a significant proportion of people are atheist. However, this is completely meaningless in the context of Vietnam. Scandinavia is a place where there is a significant atheist population, for example, but it does not mean quite the same things as in Vietnam. The atheist population certainly indulge in a personal worship of the figure of Ho Chi Minh, much like the rest of the population, but they have no real need of the supernatural in the religious sense. They go about their daily lives appreciating traditional supernatural stories and so forth without believing in one concrete religion.

In Vietnam, at least in the North which was where I did my tour of duty, the main religion is overwhelmingly Buddhism. I have to admit I profess a certain bias in favour of Buddhism. It’s a non-materialist religion. It strives towards personal enlightenment. Mediation has clinically beneficial effects on the mind and body. It is a religion which does not merit the stain of the title ‘religion’.

In the temples, people do in fact pray to their ancestors. They leave them symbolic offerings in their households, on a shrine. Some even leave offerings to Uncle Ho.

The difference with praying to an ancestor - something practically real and tangible and worthy of your respect - and praying to someone who may or may not have walked on water 2000 years ago is self-evident. The worship of the ancestry is a symbol of the utmost respect towards your heritage, what makes you unique, what makes you as a person.

On top of this there is an incredibly deep rooted culture of respect. Confucianism, a life philosophy based (in a crude and possibly misled nutshell) on respect to your parents, teacher and authority, combines with Buddhism to give what I would consider actually a very healthy (clinically demonstrable, no less) way of life which enshrines real moral values as sacred.

Then there are petty cultural differences, such as not kissing too omniously in public, lest the girl’s parents be judged as bad educators. That one was hard to attend to - I actually said, and I quote, “Fuck cultural relativism” on several occasions, in a hushed voice to my pretty friend and proceeded to break all the Vietnamese respect rules in the book. Of course, I did this in hiding so as to not profess disrespect towards the girl’s parents.

But all and all, I have to say I felt a strong feeling of envy. I did not in any moment feel the need to convert to Buddhism - I have my own life philosophy which works great for me. However, I cannot but profess the deepest and utmost respect for Buddhism - more notably the version practiced in Vietnam, which is less stringent on as to who can achieve personal enlightenment, almost the Libertarian offshoot of Buddhism.

Also worth mentioning is Caodaism. A very modern (in the sense of new) religion, Caodaism takes elements from the major religion to give a very kitsch and technicolour display of religion synthesis. In the Holy See you will find exhultations to Saint Victor Hugo and Saint Charlie Chaplin - this is an actual religion.

I say it’s worth mentioning because, although a very minority religion, it is a living example of a religion founded within recorded history and it puts all the other major religions and their dogma into perspective.

A final small note, which may be taken badly: Islam is practically non-existent. There is a small strain of Baha’i faith which is an offshoot of Islam - one could say it’s the most updated Abrahamic religion. Despite an existing relegation of the woman in Viet society to one or two rungs lower than the man (give me one example of widespread matriarchialism), aesthetically speaking, not seeing any women covered up in submission and oppression was a small cherry on the top.

My trip to Vietnam was beyond description. It broke so many records and was so much more than I had expected.

My positive outlook on Buddhism was but a small shard of my experience in Vietnam. The personal stuff, however, I’ll keep to myself.

Ed: In the future I anticipate I’ll probably make many references to my trip to Vietnam and I ask of you not to take it as traveller’s arrogance in advance. Thanks!