Category: critical thinking

13 Love the sinner, hate this meme

January 3, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · ethics · hate · religion

I am officially back from vacation, with a full buffer and a great deal of enthusiasm. I enjoyed my time in Ontario, but I am glad to be back and bringing you the good stuff once again. Happy New Year!

When I was in high school I had a string quartet. We were called The Four Quarters and we played gigs in various places around southern Ontario. Our second violinist was raised in a conservative Christian household, was home-schooled, and was about as fond of religious bottled phrases as I am fond of butter tarts (which is to say a lot). She once shared with me her outrage over some guy who was told he wasn’t allowed to discriminate against gay people at his print shop. I expressed my bafflement that this was a problem for her – wouldn’t the Christian thing to do be to love all people? I still remember her response:

Her: As a Christian, I love the sinner but hate the sin
Me: Um… Jesus wasn’t really into hate.
Her: I don’t hate gay people, I just hate the sin
Me: Still, hate… not exactly very Christlike

It was the first time I heard the whole “love the sinner, hate the sin” trope. At the time I was still a believer, albeit a much more liberal one than she was. I had never seen anything wrong with being gay, and hadn’t yet read the lovely passages in Leviticus and the letters of Paul that called gay sex an “abomination”. Even then, I knew it was a stupid phrase, because it’s still hate, and hate is not represented anywhere in Christian scripture. The only story we have that even comes close to touching on the subject is the one about Jesus and the adulteress, from which we get the famous line “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” It’s a nice story, provided you don’t think about it too much, and ignore the fact that it’s not in any of the other gospels, and couldn’t have been from an eyewitness, and probably got snuck in after the gospel of John was written, and probably never actually happened. The relevant point here is that sins should be forgiven. It doesn’t say anything about hating sin.

But back up a second and replay the story from the beginning. Assume Jesus had come to the crowd and instead wrote “Love the sinner, but stone the sin to death”. Who wants to lay odds that that woman would have made it out alive?

The problem lies in the fact that being gay, or doing the things that are a direct result of being gay, are labeled as “sin”. Whereas someone could, conceivably, make the decision not to commit adultery, there is no choice in the matter of being gay. Even if there was, while there is a clear harm from adultery (assuming the spouse isn’t okay with it), there is no clear harm to being gay, or expressing your sexuality as a gay person except insofar as all sexual expression has risks and harms, and the fact that small-minded bigots have made people feel ashamed of being gay.

“But Crommunist,” you say “it’s not me who says that homosexuality is a sin, it’s GOD! The Bible makes it very clear that is it a sin!”

Ah yes, that pesky God. You’d totally have no problem with homosexuality, but it says right there in black and white that homosexuality is an abomination. What can you do? You certainly can’t ignore the stuff it says directly in the Bible, right? I mean, if you could, for the sake of argument, ignore some parts of the Bible that don’t make any sense or are impractical, you would totally do it, right? If the Bible is the only reason that you condemn homosexuality, and you are capable of ignoring certain parts of the Bible that conflict with your personal beliefs, then you’d stop condemning it?

Well, consider it your luck day, because chances are you completely ignore lots of stuff in the Bible. Let’s start with the easy ones: if you have ever had sex for any reason other than procreation, you’re ignoring the story of Onan. Do you own a cross or a crucifix? Maybe a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus or a statue of the Virgin Mary? Whoops, you just ignored the second commandment. Let’s not even get started on what happens if you catch your neighbour working on a Saturday or a Sunday.

“But that’s all Old Testament stuff,” you say. “The New Testament is where all the real rules are.” Okay, fine, but then you’re no longer allowed to talk about the Ten Commandments. Obviously if stuff in the Old Testament that doesn’t make sense can be ignored, then we can stop talking about the “thou shalt nots” as though they have any real meaning. Also we can throw out Genesis, so that takes care of creationism (and Intelligent Design, it’s hilariously-ironically-named cousin). Just so long as we don’t disregard anything that’s in the New Testament we should be okay to call homosexuality a “sin”.

Do you support school prayer, or prayer in public places, or even group prayer in church? How about take an oath of office? Do you think people should be allowed to fight to defend themselves against violent attack? How about the right of people to save and accumulate money? How about… oh I don’t know… identify someone else as a sinner*? Whoops, you’ve chosen to ignore specific instructions from Jesus himself. What about specific instructions from Jesus about whether it’s okay to fuck another dude or make sweet sweet mouth-sex to another lady? Hmm… he’s oddly silent on that one.

So since you’re cool with ignoring some parts of the Bible when they are either out-dated or don’t seem to make sense, you have no reason to condemn homosexuality as sin, right? Well… unless that condemnation is just you trying to find a lame excuse about “loving the sinner but hating the sin” to justify your a priori hatred of gay people. But you wouldn’t do that, would you?

The fact is that identifying a set of behaviours that have no demonstrable harm to anyone as a “sin” is completely arbitrary, just as if I said that it is a “sin” to hold hands in public with your spouse, or encourage your daughter to play sports. By branding such a thing as a “sin”, you’re passing judgment on people who do it, and asserting (without evidence) that there is some sort of shame in their living their lives as they see fit. In so doing, you put the lie to the completely laughable statement that you are simply “hating the sin” whilst all the while “loving the sinner”.

TL/DR: “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is a false statement, since it is based on the premise that acts can be “sins” even if they harm nobody. People pick and choose which parts of the Bible they follow, so the excuse that God condemns it is also false. Calling someone a “sinner” is already condemnation, which is a direct contravention of the idea of loving them.

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*For the record, Matthew 7:1-5 has always been, and probably will always be, one of my absolute favourite Biblical passages. The idea of someone with a beam in their eye always made me chuckle, but it’s a great message to remember about hypocrisy.

5 And sometimes racism isn’t subtle

December 29, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · critical thinking · race · racism

I have, on occasion, waxed on at great length about how most racism in society today operates behind the scenes. While we’ve pictured it in our minds as flaming crosses and jackbooted police officers beating up black men on the freeway, it usually tends to happen in much more insidious ways, percolating behind the veneer of our arch-liberal “treat everyone equal” mantras. Of course when the more “classic” examples of racism manifest themselves, it shocks everyone except those of us who have been paying attention.

But those of us who are not particularly sensitive to this new definition of racism can rest a bit easier knowing that the old type is still very much alive:

A sign excluding black people from a future Abbotsford, Wisconsin business is enraging some people in the small town. It’s a sign generations of people may have never seen, yet Mark Prior says it’s his right to discriminate. “If I’ve got a problem with you it’s going to be on the front of my store,” says Mark Prior. Prior posted his ‘No Negros Allowed’ sign after he says he had some problems with black people in the past and needed to make a policy against them.

Wait wait wait… did he actually post a sign that says ‘No Negroes Allowed’?

Yep. He did.

There is a particularly odious argument out in the ether that people should be allowed to serve whoever they want, regardless of what kind of systemic prejudices such a policy props up. On the surface of it, the argument appears to have some validity. After all, if you open up your own business, who is anyone to tell you that you must cater to people you don’t like? Your individual rights of autonomy are being violated, dammit!

“I’m going to stick to my guns because I think I have the right as a business owner to reject service to anyone. It’s not all the black people there are just a few bad ones,” Prior says of his problems in the past.

Of course this is an argument that, like many conservative calling cards, has its basis in the idea of “I got mine, Jack!” So what if the autonomy of others is violated? So what if that pattern of violation fertilizes a de facto second-class citizenship for people based on something completely trivial like skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, or religious belief? As long as I don’t get trampled on, the other stuff doesn’t really matter.

There’s another fun thing that happened in there. Did you catch it? “It’s not all black people, there are just a few bad ones.” Aaaaaand that’s why all of them are banned? It’s one of those cognitive dissonances that reveals the depth of Mr. Prior’s racism – the troublemakers are causing trouble because they’re black. It’s the colour of their skin that’s making them cause trouble, right? Otherwise why specify that it’s “Negroes” that aren’t allowed in? Of course the fact that the guys are causing trouble is not causally related to their ethnicity, but it sure is fun to stereotype.

I’m not a fan of strip clubs. I don’t think anyone should go to them, but people do, so whatever. I’m even less a fan, however, of telling a specific group of people “you’re not allowed in here because of what you are, nothing to do with anything you’ve done”. For nostalgia purposes, it’s nice that folks like Mr. Prior are still around to remind us all that we’re not done dealing with racism, no matter how much we might like to pretend we are.

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12 Awww… adorable!

December 28, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · forces of stupid · hate · racism

From time to time I like to post pictures of otters. There’s no good reason, I just think otters are cute. This is cuter:

Young Andrew Pendergraft is playing in the sprawling grounds of his family’s country home. Like any other active ten-year-old, he loves running through the fields and splashing about in the river. But later he will appear on internet TV and – clearly reading from a script – he will solemnly share his bigoted views on the supremacy of the white race with potentially thousands of other children online. Andrew may be only ten but he is the face of youth within America’s Ku Klux Klan, the most infamous hate organisation in the world.

Aww… look how cute that is! His parents taught him to hate black people and Jews! That’s just so cute I could spit.

Take a moment right now to grab a piece of paper and see how many of the items in the rest of the story you can predict without having to read another word. Just take some guesses as to how this kid’s life might be a little different from yours. While you wait, here is a video of some otters playing with a little girl:

I know, right? Adorable!

Okay, let’s see how you did…

He has been indoctrinated into the ways of the Klan – famed for its burning crosses, lynch mobs and attacks on black people – by his mum Rachel at their home in Harrison, Arkansas, deep in America’s Bible Belt.

If you said “lives in the American south”, then give yourself one point. That one was kind of obvious though: the Klan doesn’t really have much presence anywhere else.

We film White Pride TV on Sunday after church and I have my own spot, The Andrew Show.

If you said “religious upbringing”, give yourself one point.

“I thought the film Avatar showed white people as destroying the rainforest, which we don’t do, and I like to talk about that.”

Give yourself one point if you wrote down that the kid clearly has no grasp of what corporations are doing in the world, as well as a bonus point if you wrote that everything is about white people, even the stuff that isn’t (there were lots of black marines in Avatar, and also the protagonist is a white guy).

Robb’s extremism originated with his own parents. The 64-year-old – Rachel’s father – claims to have “become awakened” to many of his views from the age of 13.

Give yourself a point if you guessed that his parents aren’t exactly bastions of a multi-cultural liberal philosophy.

Although 40-year-old Rachel claims the Klan has changed since its violent heyday, she has home-schooled all three children at the family ranch to prevent them absorbing views from other children.

One point for home schooling (I can hear Scary Fundamentalist tut-tutting in the background).

Daughter Charity says: “What role did black people play in the history of America? I mean no offence, but none. None at all. They were here but they didn’t build the country. They didn’t sign any of the documents of the Declaration of Independence.”

One point for revisionist history.

“There is growing oppression against white people around the world. The greatest endangered species to fight for is the white race, and as a white person I don’t want to see the end of my people.”

One point for “growing oppression of white people” privilege statements. Thanks, Mr. Limbaugh, by the way.

And award yourself bonus points if you picked up the rhetorical tools in the comments (“it’s not technically ‘hate’ per se”, “it’s just one family”, “they should be allowed to teach their children what they want”).

How did you do?

Oh, and in case we forget, this is a ten year-old kid. I don’t have any particular animosity to Andrew, I rather pity him for having been born to such asshole parents. Then again, it’s hard not to laugh when he says shit like this:

Have you seen the new Disney Princess movie? It’s called The Princess And The Frog. The Princess is black, so that is good for all the black kids out there. But the Prince is white. Race-mixing is wrong. If all other people mix up there won’t be any more white kids. So don’t race-mix. There are lots of people against white people and Christians in the movie. The good guy is a voodoo witch doctor. He does spells and has magic potions. Voodoo doctors worship the Devil so it’s a pretty bad movie for kids, especially white kids. Voodoo is the religion that lots of blacks used to have but white people taught them about God. So don’t race-mix. Well, I’ll see you next week.

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3 What would happen if… (evolution vs. creation)

December 27, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · religion · science · skepticism

I sometimes forget that not everyone gets into fights on the internet about stuff. While I’ve been observing the debate over climate change and evolution and the existence of God and alt-med pseudoscience and any other number of skeptical hot topics for a while now, I often make the faulty assumption that other people are a) as interested and b) as skeptical as I am about these things. As a result, I tend to regard people who believe in astrology, or ghosts, or biblical creation, as being curious oddities when they are in fact, more often than not simply people who aren’t particularly experienced in skeptical inquiry.

It is for this reason that this blog has, from time to time, become a dumping ground for my handful of skeptical tools, thought experiments, critical arguments, and whatever other devices I use on a day-to-day basis when I’m trying to navigate the morass of contradictory claims that are at the heart of most of these “controversies”. Today will be another one of those.

Whenever I am confronted with a new idea or a theoretical framework, I like to ask myself the question “What would the world look like if this were true?” It’s a useful thought experiment in which you are invited to re-start the world from scratch and, while keeping all the other variables the same, imagine what the outcome would be if a certain rule were true. It’s the inverse of the usual scientific process wherein we look at the evidence in aggregate and then try to figure out what the rules are; in this thought experiment we assume the rule to be true and then imagine what the world would look like as a result.

Rule #1a: Creationism – the Earth was created by a supernatural force in (more or less) its present form about 10,000 years ago. Current geological and geographical features that appear to be due to the effect of much more than 10,000 years of time are in fact caused by a massive flood.

What would the world look like if Creationism was true?

It is entirely possible that different species were created using the same set of rules, so the existence of a single mechanism underpinning living organisms (DNA/RNA transcription) is neither ruled out or necessitated by this rule. Types of animals (called “kinds” in Creationist jargon) would not show anything but trivial similarities in terms of their underlying physiology, microbiology, genetics, since they have all been created separately and are not designed to interbreed. There would be no need for wasted or vestigial organs, since these organs would only waste energy. A consistent fossil record would exist that shows only superficial changes over time, consistent with the observed rate of change in physiology in the current time (within reasonable error bars). Species would show evidence of physical migration from a single point of of origin (in the Middle East), spreading out to their current locations, and the same types of animals would occupy ecological niches everywhere (birds are the only ones that fly, fish are the ones that swim, etc.) since there is no reason to change a working pattern. Species would not acquire new characteristics over time, since they were created perfect the first time. Floods would exhibit similar effects (albeit to a smaller degree) on geology that can be observed and extrapolated.

Rule #1b: Evolution – all existing life has a common origin, having reached its present form via a process of change due to a combination of genetic mutation and changes in environment that favors certain trait changes over others.

What would the world look like if evolution were true?

Different species would have many genetic commonalities – no species would use a completely unique process of gene replication, and similarity between different types of species would be on a gradient rather than randomly distributed. Similarities would also be seen in embryology, comparative physiology, and microbiology since they all came from a single source rather than being created different. There may (or may not) be gene sequences and organ systems that are completely useless or have trivial utility in one species, but have working analogues in other species – these would be caused when two different species diverge from a common ancestor due to environmental differences. Fossil records would show animals that are similar to a number of different species but are no longer in existence, as well as some that are still in existence (since environmental changes happen with different frequency and magnitude). Species would exist only in certain areas, while there would be no evidence of them in others, as their ancestors might have had common habitat but have left that area, went somewhere else, and adapted to the change in environment. By the same token, ecological niches would be filled by many different kinds of animals – there would be mammals that fly and birds that swim, plants that eat flies and insects that fertilize soil. Species would, if given sufficient time and divergent enough environments, gradually change and become different enough as to be considered two different species.

The last step of this process is to look at the world that exists and decide which rule best resembles our observed reality. If the rule is in conflict, there are two possible explanations: 1) the rule is false, or 2) there are other forces at work underlying reality that are not fully caught by observation, and further observation will expose them. Of course creationists are loath to accept #1, and will rush to find exceptions and “explanations” for why the rule is still valid (Ken Ham’s floating log bridges, for example). This, however, is simply back-filling – throwing up hastily-assembled assertions to prop up a preconceived conclusion rather than following the existing evidence.

I was going to do a few more examples, but I’m on vacation and I’m coming dangerously close to my 1000 word limit, so I’ll do another one of these another time.

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2 Israel doesn’t have a race problem

December 22, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · conservativism · cultural tolerance · forces of stupid · racism · religion · secularism

Okay, this one is admittedly stretching it a bit…

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has criticised rabbis who issued a statement saying it is a “sin” for Jews to rent or sell property to non-Jews. About 40 rabbis, many employed by the state, signed the statement, citing concerns about potential mixed marriages and falling property values.

I have purposefully avoided commenting on the situation in Israel/Palestine. Setting one foot in that conflict is opening myself up to a whole host of criticism, which I do not have enough factual background to defend myself against. There exists in that region a maelstrom of political, historical, religious, and racial narratives that are so intertwined that I find it impossible to come down on one side or another of an issue. However, in this case I am happy to suspend my cautious equipoise and dive into this one as a clear-cut situation where there is a clear right and clear wrong.

Any time anyone uses the word “sin” in an argument, they’re wrong. The concept of “sin” makes a whole host of assumptions for which there can be no evidence whatsoever:

That there is a supreme being
That the supreme being is consciously aware of human activity
That the supreme being cares about human activity
That the supreme being has a list of “naughty” and “nice” human activities
That this list is available to humans
That your particular list is the correct one

None of those assumptions can be demonstrated with any kind of compelling evidence. To an independent observer, there is no good reason to assume the truth of any of those claims, let alone all six of them in succession. While it may be overwhelmingly true that the speaker doesn’t like the activity in question (whether that’s buttsecks or pork or renting to people of a slightly different ethnicity), it does not necessarily follow that partaking in the activity in question is wrong in and of itself. What is required is a discussion of the necessary consequences of that action; I make that specification to separate it from people who make ridiculous claims like “homosex is wrong because some gay men are promiscuous”.

This one hits home for me particularly, since race-based housing discrimination is one of the primary reasons (in my opinion) that racism persists today. The problem with the conservative approach to race is that it wants to skip right to the end. To be sure, the liberal approach to race skips a bunch of intermediate steps too, but in a different way. Conservatives make the assumption that once you remove legal barriers to access, then all the work is done; consequently, any continuing problems experienced by a formerly-oppressed group are their own fault. After all, once you take your foot off of someone’s neck, it’s his own fault if he doesn’t immediately leap to his feet. Or, to put it another way:

“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, `You are free to compete with an the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” – Lyndon Johnson

Of course conservatives disagree with the idea that a) human beings should be in the business of creating fairness, or that b) there is any unfairness to begin with. However, when we look at the consequences of housing disparity, we see that de facto segregation necessarily has negative consequences in terms of income inequalities and a persistent attitude of “us” and “them” that starts in the schools and lasts through generations.

This seems to be what is happening in this Israeli case. These rabbis have a hate-on for Arabs (for reasons that I’m sure don’t stretch credulity) and have cobbled together some post-hoc justification for their hatred, branding the practice as “sin”. Unlike yesterday’s example, however, these religious leaders don’t have much influence outside their own conservative community, and cannot claim any sway over state power:

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has called on Mr Netanyahu to take disciplinary action against the chief municipal rabbis on the list, whose salaries are publicly funded. Religious edicts are often ignored in predominantly secular Israel.

However, this edict is perhaps a useful red flag for the simmering racial climate that defines much of Israel’s domestic policy (and a great deal of its foreign policy too). It also serves an example of how a country that is essentially founded on religious grounds can still model secularism and restraint from going full-on God crazy.

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4 Backfilling – when to ignore someone (pt 3)

December 20, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · religion · skepticism

Back in September I unveiled my first takedown of arguments that I see popping up in online discourse – namely, appeals to “my own research” and “common sense”. I followed that up by expressing my scorn for any assertion that begins with “I believe…”, a statement that is simply a declaration of personal preference and that has no bearing on anyone else. Today’s post continues this series, albeit with a slightly different, more subtle spin.

Have you ever noticed that your nose is the perfect size and shape to hold up a pair of glasses? Isn’t it remarkable that the placement of the ears relative to the nose support the arms of the glasses? How wonderful is the design of the face! Surely this is proof that the human face has a designer.

Of course you’re smarter than that. You know that it’s exactly the other way around – glasses were designed to fit the face. If our noses had been on our foreheads, we’ve have designed glasses to be an entirely different shape. Of course, this says absolutely nothing about the shitty “design” of the eye that makes us need glasses in the first place.

This practice of assuming the truth of your premise and then cherry-picking and distorting facts to fit that premise is a practice I call “backfilling”, although I am sure it has a real name. I use a creationist example here not because it is used exclusively by the religious, but because it is perhaps most obviously and conspicuously on display when people attempt to bully facts into a literalist biblical account of creation. To be sure, everyone (myself included) uses this tactic from time to time. The psychology behind it is pretty obvious – you believe something to be true, and when it is challenged your mind looks for a rational basis for that belief.

This is similar to appeals to “common sense” or statements of belief – we as listeners are exhorted to believe an asserted statement that strains credulity. The important difference between this tactic and the aforementioned fallacies is that at least the veneer of evidence is presented. That is, we are given something that looks like evidence, provided we don’t take too long to actually look at it critically. Sometimes this comes in the form I have presented above, where cause and effect are reversed. Other times it comes from ignoring or failing to recognize confounding factors and thus jumping to an erroneous conclusion (black people must be more prone to commit crimes – look how many of them are in jail!).

The most frustrating form of this tactic I encounter happens when people make statements and then staunchly refuse to define their terms. Not too long ago, I butted heads with one of the other authors at Canadian Atheist, who seems to have some kind of unhealthy obsession with haunting my posts and writing ridiculous nonsense. One of his favourite tactics is to make some blanket statement, and then when you ask him to define what he’s talking about, he retreats into some mushy nonsense that bears a slight resemblance to the word he’s using, albeit a definition that nobody else would agree with. Thus swimming in the water of muddy incomprehensibility, he is free to make ridiculous and unsupported statements to his heart’s content.

There is a danger in using backfilling to support an argument, namely that unless someone already agrees with your premise, your argument will fail to persuade others. It’s easy to find things that will confirm your own beliefs, but as soon as you step outside a sympathetic audience, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to convince all but the most credulous listener. This is why skepticism is such a useful tool to have – it requires someone to actually define their terms rather than just getting away with blanket nonsense and vauge “well everyone knows what X is” statements.

Because it is so tempting to use this technique in an argument you’re not prepared for, we have to be particularly wary of it when we’re talking outside our depth. Similarly, it might require us to go a bit easier on someone when they’re using it. Unless they’re like Joe and they do it on a repeated basis whilst simultaneously accusing everyone else of being ‘irrational’. Then you know you’ve found a professional idiot, and you should adjust your debate style accordingly.

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4 Oklahoma does right thing for wrong reason

December 15, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · cultural tolerance · forces of stupid · hate · law · news · politics · religion

I can’t tell you how depressed I was after the last US mid-term elections. I likened it at the time to watching a good friend go back to her alcoholic, abusive ex-boyfriend because the new guy wasn’t enough of a “bad boy”. The Republican party in the United States has completely shed any air of credibility as a party interested in the long-term good of the United States. They’ve completely devolved into politicking, abrogating any responsibility they have to act as leaders, grabbing after power instead by ramping up the fear and hatred of an uneducated populace.

Rome is falling, my friends, and it is doing so to the clamoring approval of the mindless horde.

Luckily (or perhaps tragically, since it prolongs the fall) there is a system of checks and balances present in the United States that places limits on the ability of the people to be the authors of their own destruction:

A US federal judge has stopped Oklahoma putting into effect a constitutional amendment to bar courts from considering Islamic law in judgements. Judge Vicky Miles-Lagrange granted an injunction against the certification of the results of State Question 755.

To provide a bit of background, there was a ballot amendment during the midterm election that was passed, banning the recognition of Sharia law or any international law in Oklahoma courts. Of course there was nobody actually proposing that Sharia law be recognized, and the courts already ignore international law (on jurisdictional grounds), but if you whip people into a xenophobic frenzy, they’ll pass whatever law they want as long as it makes them feel safer.

But then… then the stupid sets in:

“Plaintiff has sufficiently set forth a personal stake in this action by alleging that he lives in Oklahoma, is a Muslim, that the amendment conveys an official government message of disapproval and hostility toward his religious beliefs, that sends a clear message he is an outsider, not a full member of the political community, thereby chilling his access to the government and forcing him to curtail his political and religious activities,” she explained.

That’s the shakiest possible grounds for a legal decision I’ve ever heard. Basically because the law would hurt people’s feelings, it’s therefore invalid? I’m not a soothsayer, but I can certainly see this ruling (if it isn’t kicked on appeal) being used as precedent to protect some crybaby Christian group saying that failing to teach Creationism in schools “conveys an official government message of disapproval and hostility” towards their belief in a 10,000 year-old planet.

The real reason this law should be off the books? Because it’s stupid. It’s an entirely redundant law that solves exactly zero problems. The inclusion of any religious law would violate the US Constitution (and likely the Oklahoma state constitution), and would not survive a court challenge. There is absolutely no need to pass a law specifically against Sharia law.

Seriously, America… dump the Republicans. They only end up hurting you in the end.

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6 Heh. Heheheh.

December 14, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · funny · race · racism · religion

The style of this blog is (what I hope is) high-minded polemic. I stake out a position, and explain why I hold it using news items, other blogs, and/or a painstaking step-by-step analysis of the logic behind the position. One of the techniques I most like to use is to state a counterargument to my position, and then explain why it is false. Regular readers of this site will probably know what I’m talking about – new people should probably just poke around the archives.

However, there has always been a soft spot in my heart for satire. I get a giddy thrill in my naughty parts whenever I see someone skillfully lampoon the folly of others by exaggerating the position and/or claims of those others. I have occasionally dabbled in satire, but I don’t really have a talent for it.

So when I find something like this, I have to share it:

Jesus was white. Yes, He was born in the Middle East, but His father was not Middle Eastern, He was God. God is NOT Middle Eastern. When was the last time you saw a painting of God with a Turban wrapped around His head? Never? Exactly.

Humans are visual creatures. Without a powerful sense of smell, touch, hearing or taste, we are reliant mostly on our eyes for information. As a result, we tend to give more credence to the appearance of visual stimuli than information from our other senses. In essence, the way things look is of primary importance to us when evaluating them.

There is a phenomenon known as the “halo effect” wherein we assume that good-looking people are more moral and deserving than ugly people. It explains why our television and movie stars are hotties, why the villains in books and movies are generally unattractive (unless they are temptresses or royalty), and why the pretty girls in high school are the popular ones (although that one is a bit more complicated than just appearance).

God is white. God has always been white. Every depiction, every description and every painting I have seen of God has been white. God impregnated Mary, NOT Joseph. Therefor (sic), Jesus is white. That is what drew people to Him in the first place. A white skinned man in the Middle East 2000 years ago was surely a miracle and Jesus was and is a miracle worker.

Europe was the seat of Christianity for centuries. The church controlled the vast majority of wealth during this time, and commissioned artists to create religious images (violating the second commandment, but whatever). During the classical period, it was common practice to depict famous figures with the faces of relatives or friends of the artist (sometimes enemies too). So of course, we end up with white Jesus, white Mary, white God, and so forth.

This wasn’t really a problem at the time. Art was not meant to depict reality – realism wasn’t to come into vogue for many years to come. However, it did leave us with a lasting impression that weds whiteness to godly virtue. Jesus, if he existed, didn’t look anything like the brown-haired bearded dude that is our popular depiction.

Of course while we can laugh at this all-too-accurate depiction of the inverted logic of the religious, it’s not a completely innocuous joke. It is in fact a manifestation of a real cognitive blindspot that we have simmering in the back of our minds – that white skin is associated with virtue, and all other skin colours are deviations thereof. Adam and Eve would have been black (of course they didn’t exist, but humanity is African), but they’re depicted white – the implication is that dark skin is a change from the “default” white, when the inverse is in fact true.

Okay, enough heavy-handedness… this shit is just funny:

Now look at Heaven. Heaven is mostly made of feathery white clouds with rays of light shooting through them, which according to most Christians I know, would make the inhabitants white. Also, white is amazingly proficient at reflecting light, which is very important when living in Heaven because it’s much closer to the sun than living on the Earth. This white skin prevents you from getting cancer in Heaven and I’m sure stops many other diseases in their tracks.

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6 ‘Tis the season… to shove it in their faces!

December 13, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · medicine · religion · secularism · skeptivism

Cross-posted from Canadian Atheist, in direct (and repeated) violation of the unofficial policy prohibiting such things.

This one will brief, since Hemant over at Friendly Atheist has already given us all the relevant information:

The Atheism subReddit has taken up the cause to raise $42,000 for Doctors without Borders — the amount is an homage to Douglas Adams.

This is a friendly competition with the members of the Christianity subReddit, who are donating to the World Vision Clean Water Fund. Much like with Kiva, we’re crushing them with our generosity (I should’ve pointed out that this is hardly a fair fight because the Atheism subReddit outnumbers the Christian subReddit by a longshot. There’s waaaaay more of us. So the “competition” is all in good fun. Still, Christians are more than welcome to try to beat us )

As I write this, the atheists have already raised $30,000. The Christians have raised a little over $10,000.

Let’s help the atheists reach their goal (and, as a bonus, give more than the Christians).

If you’re in the U.K., you can give here.

If you’re in America (or elsewhere), you can give here.

I just gave $10. What are you donating?

Personally I think this is an awesome idea. Despite being at odds with a large segment of the atheist community with my stance toward religion, I think this is the kind of collaboration and friendly rivalry that the “accommodationists” are talking about most of the time. I’m happy to channel some of my vitriol (and one night out’s worth of cash – I donated $50) into a cause that sees real and positive results for someone else on the planet.

So atheists, put down your deep-fried baby sandwiches, click on the link, and cough up whatever dough you can spare to finally destroy Christianity once and for all! Or, get a poor kid some medicine. Whatever lifts your luggage. Christians, you can donate here.

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29 I find the defendant… not guilty

December 13, 2010
by Crommunist
· blog · crommunism · race · racism

Last Monday’s “think piece” made reference to the title of a book called “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together at the Cafeteria?” What followed in my post was a discussion of some of the sociological and psychological factors that can influence people in a minority group to seek each other out. If you clicked through to the customer reviews, you were treated to gems like this:

The author must have wrote this book for black people and liberals ONLY !!!!!! Only then could a positive review of this book be possible! More of that ‘blame whitey’ baloney that is just ‘not sticking’ anymore. It’s like something Jesse Jackson would write: PATHETIC.

Or this sharp insight:

I found Tatum’s book to be laughable at best. She deliberately shows her hatred towards whites with her over the top view of what racism is (a system of advantage based on race). I find her definition to be a joke. She provides no substantial evidence to support any of her claims about white people having this ultimate advantage in society and how everything has been essentially spoon fed to whites.

There is a tendency for white people to feel ‘blamed’ or ‘guilty’ for racism, which I suppose is a regrettable side-effect of being a member of a majority group. When the story casts your team as the bad guys, it’s hard not to feel personally attacked whenever someone talks about the team. As a man, it’s tough to deal with the reality of male privilege because it’s always “my fault” whenever we talk about women’s role in history. It’s certainly tempting for me to slip into feeling blamed, or feeling like the only weapon that feminists have in their arsenal is just to blame men for all of the problems of the world.

However, this kind of reaction is seated firmly in assuming it’s still about me. Framing the entire feminist movement as “just blaming men” keeps the spotlight on us and puts us (as men) back at the centre of attention. Feminism isn’t about “blaming” anybody, it’s about identifying real inequalities, and the factors and psychology that perpetuate those inequalities. As with any inequality, there will be a group (or groups) that occupies an exalted position and one that holds an inferior one. However, when the exalted group stubbornly ignores the reasons why they occupy that position and explain the inequality away by assuming that the differences are due to the work ethic or genetic makeup or some kind of factor intrinsic to that group, it’s often necessary to point out the flaws in that line of reasoning.

In exactly the same way, when anti-racists wish to point out the inequalities between racial groups, it becomes inevitable that they (we) identify who is on top and point out some of the reasons why. Otherwise, we slip back into the too-convenient “explanations” that put the blame on the victim and completely absolve anyone else of any responsibility. You might hear, for example, someone talk about how affirmative action programs simply make racism worse by making white people resent minorities, or saying that if people just took “personal responsibility” for their attitudes then the problems would disappear. The problem with those excuses is that they make solving race issues everyone else’s problem, removing any need for the speaker to speak up, participate, or sacrifice anything.

The idea that the goal of anti-racism is to make white people feel guilty for the sins of their ancestors is flawed for two reasons. The first is that these aren’t problems that are the domain of mythical ancestors – we still find them happening today. We may not have the same state support for them, but there is still a real economic, social and political gap between people of colour (PoCs) and whites in North America. Doing nothing will not make the problem go away – it will simply allow it to continue in perpetuity. Active steps must be taken to address and ameliorate the problem, which is a problem for all of us.

The second problem is that guilt is a useless emotion. You’ll notice (if you care to look through the archives of this site) that at no point do I suggest that white people should feel guilty, or even imply that guilt is a useful motivator for anything. The kinds of actions that are motivated by guilt tend to be short-term Band-Aid solutions to serious problems. After all, if you can make a lot of noise about how you love everyone, or about how bad you feel that your ancestors did X and Y, then your guilt goes away. Feeling bad doesn’t level the playing field; it simply makes you look for the fastest way to stop feeling guilty.

It is for this reason that you’ll inevitably see the “get over it, black people” or “that was in the past” or “you just hate white people” response whenever someone talks about an inequality, or seeks an apology for a historical injustice. The narrative goes something like this: “I am not responsible for the actions of others, those things happened long ago, therefore I have no responsibility to give up my privilege”. Well, it’s either that or it’s “I feel super-bad for what my ancestors did, but I didn’t do it personally, therefore it’s enough that I don’t specifically discriminate against PoCs”.

Neither of these attitudes are helpful – they are the equivalent of throwing up your arms in surrender and saying “oh well, what can you do?” Anti-racists and those who study issues of racial inequality are offering solutions, but as long as those solutions continue to be branded as “blaming whitey”, we’ll never move white people out of the spotlight, and never see any real progress.

If you do feel guilty about the past deeds of white people then I feel for you. I don’t know what to tell you other than the fact that your guilt is at best irrelevant, and at worst a detriment to making any advances toward closing the gaps. So cut it out 😛

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