Posts By Crommunist

48 Two philosophers walk into a bar…

August 6, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Brian Lynchehaun · philosophy · science

This is primarily a response to commenters asking for my own opinion on the origin of the universe. If this is not your bag, I beg your patience, and suggest you skip on to Crommunist’s and Edwin’s most excellent discussions.

This is written in two parts. First, I’m going to outline the general philosophical discussion on the origin of the universe. This is going to be long. Following that, I’ll express an opinion.

I’m going to begin with Aristotle, and to begin with the three classical laws of logic. You may, of course, disagree with these laws, or disagree that they apply, or whatever the hell you want. That’s fine. Not all Philosophers are committed to these laws. I am, however, not a logician. These rules are the logic that underpins the rest of this essay. I’ll then outline his original position, and how that position has been generalised (and wielded by the religious).

Following that: Kant. Some of you may be giving up on this already. I’d encourage you to bear with me, as I’m going to keep it simple. (Meanwhile, a Philosophy Professor at my Alma Mater will be dying of laughter that I’m going to try to explain Kant to people, should he get wind of this)

Finally, my position will follow, and I’ll rephrase/rehash Krauss’s error in the context of Aristotle and Kant. If all that sounds like a good time, keep reading. I can totally understand if it doesn’t.

46 Having Gender, or Doing Gender?

August 3, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Edwin · gender

I began my stint here at the Manifesto with a post discussing the current state of gender studies with regards to men and masculinities. That seemed to go pretty well – especially after it was linked to a rather notorious MR forum. Good times were had by all. While the primary purpose of the post was to illustrate how far research into masculinities has come since the early (and embarrassing) attempts of the early 1980s, there was another element that I chose to gloss over. It wasn’t that this topic isn’t important, or that I thought it might bore you all but rather that I felt a discussion about the structure of gendered behaviour would have made an already long post longer. I still think the topic is important for us to take a closer look at though, so buckle up, adjust your sociological monocles*, and let’s drive on ahead into the world of gender performativity.

Traditionally, the concept of gender was pretty much built around the concept of biological essentialism – a woman was a woman because everyone with her genitalia and physiology shared certain intrinsic traits, including mental ones. In the same way, there were some things that were intrinsic to being a man, like being strong, brave, honest, and forthright. Notice that men somehow ended up with all of the ‘noble’ traits. Weird, I know. In any case, being a woman or being a man had everything to do with biology, and the social, political, familial, and even religious roles, duties, and privileges were merely expressions of those innate biological elements. That understanding has moved on somewhat – which is to say that in large part, the essentialist model has been abandoned altogether.** The reason for this move away has been a steady march towards increasing our understanding of the social aspect to the formation and maintenance of gender. Social scientists began to ask themselves, “if gender is biologically determined – if it is hardwired into the human brain and body, then shouldn’t its expression be rather narrow in scope? If there is an essential ‘maleness’ or ‘femaleness’, then shouldn’t it manifest plainly and consistently across national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries? If it does not, then how can it be universal?” … Continue Reading

2 Movie Friday: Off the grid

August 3, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta · personal

I’ll be in Tofino this weekend, which means no phone, no e-mails, and best (or worst, depending on your perspective) of all, no blogging. I will be complontly unplogged for 4 glorious days. This means I will not be supervising comments or posting new stuff for a few days, which means y’all are on your own. I’m sure I’ll come back to a bunch of people with comments in moderation complaining about how I’m “censoring” them and how un-“freethought” that is of me. I won’t care though – did I mention I’ll be in Tofino?

See you when I get back.

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39 I can’t believe I actually have to answer this question

August 2, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta · race · racism · science

Greta Christina has put up the Bat Signal:

But it’s also a ridiculous question because the reality of racism is extremely well-established, with study after study after study. Charging into a conversation about racism and saying, “Give me scientific evidence that it exists!” is about as absurd as charging into a conversation about vaccinations and saying, “Give me scientific evidence that vaccinations even work!” It’s one of the reasons that, in the Race and Inclusivity — A To-Do List post I put on my blog, “Get your “Race and Racism 101″ on Google or at the library. Don’t expect people of color who come to your group or event to bring you up to speed” was on the list. It’s incredibly frustrating to have to re-introduce ground-level concepts to people who are jumping into the conversation but haven’t bothered to do their homework. (And since atheists are a subset of our society at large, it would be an extraordinary claim indeed to assume that atheists are somehow miraculously free of this racism.)

However, I’m swamped today, and I really don’t have time to do Google-Fu, and email all my friends and colleagues who have sociology and psychology studies at their fingertips, and otherwise spend the entire day lining up links to the countless studies demonstrating the reality of racism. So I’m going to crowd-source it. People here who do have sociology and psychology studies at your fingertips… can you please provide links to scientific studies on racism? Thank you.

So I’m going to help out, because I like Greta.

I’m a little annoyed that Emil Karlsson, for whom this list is being assembled, hasn’t bothered to put any effort whatsoever into looking into the question before deciding that it’s all a bunch of hooey that needs to be proven to his own satisfaction before he’ll accept that the problem is a problem (and I wonder if he would stand up on that soapbox and demand the same kind of evidence to substantiate discrimination facing atheists). That being said, I just so happen to run a blog that talks specifically about racism. So Mr. Karlsson, and others who are hyper-skeptical about the existence of racism, hopefully some of this will filter through. … Continue Reading

0 Because I am an atheist: Shaun

August 2, 2012
by Crommunist
· Because I Am An Atheist · blog

Today’s contribution is an alternative take on the question, submitted via e-mail by Shaun, who blogs at PolySkeptic

Because I am an atheist…

…I don’t think that there is anything that can be derived from being an atheist per se. I do not believe that I do anything because I’m an atheist, but I am an atheist and polyamorous because I am a skeptic.

I am a skeptic primarily. I have always been an atheist, but when I started trying to apply skepticism to as many aspects of my beliefs, actions, etc it changed what I did and how I think. Being skeptical was the start to becoming a better person.

So, because I’m a skeptic (or at least because I try and apply skepticism to my life), I try to question my own assumptions and try to listen to others when my experience is insufficient. I try to believe as may true things, and reject as many unsupported things, as I can. I care about what is true, and find criticism to be a powerful and important tool. … Continue Reading

16 The new hotness: Bad Science Watch

August 1, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · health · medicine · science · skeptivism

My skeptical teeth were cut on religious claims – I got into the skeptical blogosphere (and learned the resulting jargon and necessary facts) as a direct result of my wrangling with my own newly-recognized atheism. I rather quickly and seamlessly migrated from there to my discussions of race and social justice, but there was a serious in-between time when I spent a lot of time learning the ways of skep-fu in the alt-med school. I am, in that sense, a pretty bad skeptic because despite getting my start there, I spend comparatively little time talking about the ‘hard science’ stuff that is probably most closely suited to my professional training.

Mea culpa, folks. I don’t have an agenda with this site – I just kinda write what I feel.

Luckily, I have a few colleagues/friends here in Vancouver who are on it big time: … Continue Reading

3 Because I am an atheist: scottplumer

August 1, 2012
by Crommunist
· Because I Am An Atheist · blog

Today’s contribution was submitted as a comment by reader scotplumer:

Because I am an atheist…

…I don’t pray for people who are in dire straights, I do stuff for them. A friend of mine has melanoma (which now is in remission). While many of his friends and family prayed for him, my wife and I made him and his family dinner and took it to them. I also helped him fixing some things around the house he was too weak to take care of himself. I changed the battery in his van, replaced the CPU fan in his computer, and a few other things.

I don’t say this to gloat, or to show how wonderful I am. I say it because I know praying doesn’t do a damn thing, but it makes some people feel good. What I did was a burden, financially (we paid for the meal and the car battery) and on our time. It didn’t make us feel good, but it accomplished something. I like to think that it also contributed to his recovery, since some of the stressors in his life were lifted, so he could focus more on his health. So far, so good!

Consider submitting your own statement, by e-mail or as a comment!

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39 No, but seriously… what ABOUT the menz?!

August 1, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · feminism · gender · skepticism

One common complaint about feminism is that it is inherently anti-male. “It’s right there in the name,” say critics “you should just call it humanism if it’s not inherently gender biased!” As tedious as I find arguments over semantics, I will allow myself to be drawn into this one long enough to say that the reason it is called feminism is because it came as a response to the prevailing misogynist culture. The fact that it has grown and developed since then doesn’t require the existence of a new word, it simply requires our understanding to grow along with it.

But there is something besides simple semantics to the complaint. Feminism, at least as popularly practiced, tends to focus on issues relevant to cis women when compared to cis men. To an outsider’s view, it would certainly seem as though feminism is based on the overriding axiom that women are always treated as lesser than men. Cases in which men suffer are thus dismissed as either of secondary important or simply illusory complaints by people who have all the privilege anyway.

It certainly raises the question of why any man would self-identify as a feminist, considering that he will spend his entire life having his complaints ignored and dismissed. Lurid fantasies about the intentions of male feminists bubble to the surface – they (we) must be working an angle to be accepted by women feminists in order to have ready access to the orgy tent or something. While that is certainly a parsimonious explanation (especially when passed through a filter of bitter resentment), it is a particularly odious (and internally incoherent*) lie.

But the question remains, why don’t feminists care about stuff like this: … Continue Reading

29 Got to find the reason, reason things went wrong…

July 31, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · critical thinking · economics · liberalism · news · politics

I once attended a forum for black students held at York University, where there were a number of seminars and sessions to try to broaden the discussion and (I guess) impart some life skills. One of these forums was about developing and harnessing economic power, moderated by two women who had a successful business consulting firm. Some of the stuff was useful (invest in real estate, work closely with other black businesses to keep money ‘in the community’), while some of the stuff was a bit… different (sell your real estate and buy platinum bouillon!). In a fit of mysticism that I have found to be distressingly common among black intellectuals, they encouraged us to think of ‘money’ as part of an acronym:

Mobilize Our Natural Energy Yield

Which is, y’know… not where the word comes from, but whatever. Small quibble.

The point of the acronym was, I think, to divorce our minds from the concept that paper money is actually worth something in and of itself. Money is, and always has been, a proxy for the time and skill that goes in to the production of goods or services. Since its very early days, it has grown and expanded to represent a lot of other things as well, but at its fundamental level money is what you exchange for goods and services according to the level to which you value them.

The recent economic collapse revealed that our concept of ‘money’ had moved dangerously far away from anything resembling goods and services, and has instead mutated into a seemingly-arbitrary score that different groups use to decide who is better than the other. And when we started realizing “hey, wait a second, this whole thing is built on fairy dust and leprechaun tears”, it collapsed. But at some point, there was MONEY flowing between places, right? So where the hell did it all go? Did it just disappear into the ghost of the machine? Maybe. Then again, maybe not: … Continue Reading

0 Because I am an atheist: Benjamin Stonier

July 31, 2012
by Crommunist
· Because I Am An Atheist · blog

Today’s contribution was submitted via e-mail by Benjamin Stonier

Because I am an atheist…

It’s really hard to sum up what being an atheist means to me. I’ve never really locked into a label like this before. Even when I was nominally Christian, I wouldn’t go out of my way to call myself that. I wouldn’t pick a denomination, though I attended many. I guess being an atheist has meant to me both enlightenment and sadness, though more of the former, unlike so many who tell their tales.

I’m an atheist because I try to think critically and skeptically – but because I am an atheist, I think critically and skeptically. Discarding the notion of a deity was the change in the way I think. Everything has simple factual merits, and we should make our decisions based on this. It’s let me toss the last vestiges of cultural oppositions to things like being against trans people changing their sex on their passports, being against gay marriage, or being against equal treatment regardless of differences. … Continue Reading

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