Irreverent Secular Humanism and Pop Culture
Theist debaters, in attempts to compete with their non-theist counterparts have developed arguments based on logical rules to explain why they believe (and notice we’re still using the word “believe”) that a god or gods are necessary beings that, in actuality, exist. One such argument is the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which goes like this:
With violence erupting anew and the controversy over bans on Muslim immigrants and terrorism, I feel it’s important to comment on the state of things and a fundamental misunderstanding of terrorism on the part of our elected officials. To whit:
Terrorism isn’t a person. It isn’t even a people. It’s an ideal.
This is where things get sticky. Our government officials have stated that we will “defeat terrorism” and that we’re already doing a pretty decent job of it. But what’s the measure being used? How can you tell how many people – ordinary, disenchanted, naturalized citizens of the country – are being influenced by this ideal and how they’re responding to our attacks on a vague notion of the “perversion of the religion of Islam?” The answer is, you cannot. To prove that, look at the recent attack in Orlando where, at what seemed to be the last minute in a seemingly uninformed statement by the killer, a natural-born United States citizen pledged allegiance to ISIS and murdered 49 people. He’s not alone.
If I could summarize this post in one sentence it would be this:
Your personal beliefs are not what’s good for the country.
Let me clarify. A belief system is personal, subjective, and evolving. The things you believe aren’t necessarily the things your neighbor believes. Often, the things you believe aren’t the same as the person sitting next to you in your church, mosque, temple, or support group. You may feel strongly about a topic or issue but it would be incredibly arrogant for you to assume that everyone else does – or should. When you hold a personal belief it’s virtuous for you to live your life according to that belief but it’s evil for you to try to force others to do the same, regardless of your intentions.
Merriam-Webster defines “belief” as follows:
a feeling of being sure that someone or something exists or that something is true
a feeling that something is good, right, or valuable
a feeling of trust in the worth or ability of someone
Notice the word “feeling” used in all of these definitions? Feelings are personal and cannot be objectively shared across an entire population. Your feelings are fine when they stay inside of your personal bubble but you should not attempt to extend that bubble to other people – especially when they don’t want to be inside your bubble, no matter how safe and warm you think it is.
Your beliefs are formed by your personal experiences in life (or opinions you’ve adopted from other people with or without justification), which shape your feelings about the things you encounter. It’s easy to see that other people have lived different lives with different backgrounds, different family dynamics, and different experiences than you. Knowing that, why is it so hard to see that your beliefs don’t apply to them? It doesn’t matter that you feel your beliefs are correct and it doesn’t matter whether you think your beliefs make sense. There will always be someone out there who disagrees because they’ve formed their own (often incompatible) beliefs on their own life experiences and most likely feel that theirs are correct and make sense.
The things you believe now aren’t the same as the things you believed when you were five years old or 15 years old because you’ve matured and learned more about how the world works since then. 15 years from now it’s entirely possible that your belief system will have changed – sometimes in drastic ways.
Your vote doesn’t just affect you. Think about that when you think about voting. If your primary concern is which candidate shares more of your personal beliefs than the other, you’re using the wrong criteria for your decision. You should be worried about which of the candidate’s beliefs are going to make it into his or her policy and how that policy will affect the citizens (not just the religious ones) of this country and people around the world.
Stop being selfish with your vote.
This has nothing to do with religion but I’m kind of worked up over it and wanted to share some thoughts. Last night I was pulled over by a very courteous and friendly police officer who was (a) admiring my Mustang and (b) wondering if my windows were tinted too dark. They are, and I’m fully aware of this. However, I’ve chosen not to rectify the situation because I feel that the law makes no sense. I’ve essentially agreed that any tickets I may receive for my tinted windows are a tax for keeping my window tint. That aside, I’ll detail all of my thoughts on the law below and would love to have some feedback from my readers (if any are still hanging around).
In my news feed on Facebook I will be served a daily dose of Christian affirmations from friends. In this series of posts, which I call “Facebook Affirmations™,” I will post and discuss some of these gems. Here’s the affirmation for today:
I downloaded an app for my iPhone called “Thumb.” This app allows you to ask questions and get answers from random strangers, with thumbs-up and thumbs-down ratings. It’s mindless entertainment, as are most social apps. Anyway, while thumbing through questions I stumbled across one depicting a Marine Corps drill team with the caption, “Respect and honor????” I’m not sure why so many question marks were necessary.
Believers have long argued for the existence of beings in the “spiritual realm” which affect the physical universe but cannot be physically detected (except in very certain circumstances and with very few exceptions). This is convenient, of course, because the believer is free to posit whatever entity he or she wishes without having the arduous task of defending that assertion with actual evidence. What does “spiritual” mean though? The dictionary defines it as follows:
1. of, pertaining to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal.
2. of or pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature.
That doesn’t really tell me much. If we’re talking about incorporeal things apart from the physical nature, how is this any different from being imaginary or fictional? Why do we make such a concessionary definition for a word like “spiritual” when the end result is really the same?
JT Eberhard’s contributor, Christina, wrote today of an article regarding atheist billboards in Colorado and the reaction of a “research fellow” from Focus on the Family named Glenn Stanton. He calls the billboards “bad manners” because they mock the beliefs of no less than 70% of Americans. The billboards read as follows:
God is an imaginary friend; Choose reality, it will be better for all of us.
In my news feed on Facebook I will be served a daily dose of Christian affirmations from friends. In this series of posts, which I call “Facebook Affirmations™,” I will post and discuss some of these gems. Here’s the affirmation for today:
I don’t often weigh in on abortion because my views on it are complicated and it’s an even more controversial topic than religion. Since I will never personally know the joy — or terror — of being pregnant I feel that any view I adopt regarding a woman’s reproductive rights ought to be every bit as compassionate as it is logical. Ultimately I feel it comes down to an individual woman’s right to decide whether or not her body will be used as an incubator for a potential human being. Let’s discuss the post above.
There’s a guy named Michael Egnor who has a blog he calls “Egnorance.” I’m not making this up. Anyway, he recently wrote a post directed at JT Eberhard asking a crapload of questions in the hopes that he’d be able to highlight how stupid he thinks the recent court decision on the Cranston High School prayer banner is. Nevermind the guy isn’t an expert on the Constitution and nevermind he’s not a judge — he just has a really strong opinion on how wrong the experts on the matter are. Well, because I’m bored and because it irritates me that these types of challenges sometimes go unanswered I’ll pick his post apart and address all of his questions to the best of my ability (JT already did).