#valid critiques on organized religion are one thing

[isabellehemlock]

I started this post so many times, kept erasing, praying, contemplating, discerning, trying to rise above it but the fact that it still is impacting me this much leads me to believe that maybe it's important to speak up on at least once - maybe there's someone out there who this post is meant to find, someone to feel less alone.

I'm not going to trauma dump, or out my own history on a public blog, and I'll use my "I" statements here but here it goes:

TW: fandom discourse, processing feelings around a non con fic, one mention of the word rape, but non descriptive of the contents of the fic

I am so disheartened to see holy places within my faith used as settings for rape - not even under the premise of maybe some cases being processing some kind of personal trauma through writing - but for insidious purposes, to encourage mocking and cheering as both a sacred space and a person is being desecrated against their will.

I would hope this wouldn't be found acceptable in any faith, in any sacred spaces.

I also realize that in comparison, the bigger and most important issue to address are the patterns of racism and bias that a handful of people have latched onto and felt emboldened to continue for years now - but I am also aware that I should never speak over/for someone with personal experience of racism and wanted to keep the focus of this post on what I can speak on.

#valid critiques on organized religion are one thing #i have had spiritual abuse too and i empathize #but i do not believe this was what that fic was about - not about healing or processing - #it felt like shock value and to tick off as many boxes as possible #some of you have become so desensitized to watching as many people in fandom as possible - #only to churn it into spite events #that you seem to have forgotten - that we can see you too #this is about a tog fandom event - and the third sign in 24hrs i received that i am on the right path . . . out the door #wrapping up some things through the end of the year and that's it i fear #fandom discourse #fandom stuff #mention of: #rape #religion #<- non descriptive but for anyone who needs to filter this post out #i realize this post could likely lead to me being unfollowed or block and I respect whatever boundary someone needs #i also know that this likley going to change zilch - or worse - i will (again) be called *sensitive* *judgemental* or worse names #but that's how important this was to me #i will take the risk #hope for the best

[androgynepositivity]

Rejoice! Salvation Is Free, Just Accept Jesus Into Your Life Today!

Wow, hello!

I'm going to make an example of you since you've so kindly wandered into my asks. I'm 99% sure that this is either a bot or some sort of copy/paste, but heck, you've given me a unique opportunity.

I've wanted to talk about my experiences with faith and religion (separate things) for a while now, but haven't really been able to think of a reason to bring it up. Of course I don't NEED a reason, but it's just one of those things that's not very fun to just drop on people unannounced. So, without further ado, please make sure you read this post slowly and carefully, as I don't intend to repeat myself.

I am an ex-xtian who has good faith in xtians regardless of my trauma. (xtian = abbreviation of christian)

This is to say, I myself do not have any good faith left untoward xtianity as a whole. I believe that the organized religion in itself is corrupt from the core, and has effectively lost sight of what truths it actually has within itself in favor of worldly pursuits and powers. What I have good faith in, however, is xtian people who actually practice what their holy texts preach. There are xtian people who do this, and as a former xtian, I know exactly what I'm looking for when it comes to this assessment.

So, if there are any xtians among my tumblr followers here, (especially queer ones), I'd like to kindly request your attention, because I am hoping that you will find this post refreshing in terms of non-xtians having reviews/critiques of the behavior of xtian things, as opposed to yet another queer post about how religious trauma has made them a hater of xtians and xtianity (which most of the time, if I may be frank, are valid).

If you are to follow the teachings of Yeshua of Nazareth, the "Christ", the "Messiah", you are to fully disregard the teachings of the old testament as little more than old lessons; perhaps looking to them as guides, but no more as religious law. As he has said, the old is done away with. "I am the new word/law." depending upon your translation of the verse, at least.

This is to say... there are many xtians that seem to ignore this in favor of using ancient text to support their shitty world views. As a person who has read the bible cover to cover twice, -and took notes-, I can tell you for certain that there are just... SO many verses I am tired of hearing upon the lips of bigoted xtians who want to use their religious practice as a sheepskin to cover their hateful ways in some sort of 'valid' excuse. But we've all dealt with that at one time or another as queer people.

No, the folks that are fine in my book are the ones that read the damn book for themselves, or absorb the information in some way that is not some prewritten adventure guide (bible study). This isn't to say that xtians who haven't or can't read the bible in its entirety aren't "real" xtians or something, but I mean to say that if you ever get the chance to, you really should, because it'll really help you fully understand what the faith aught to be about and what you, as a xitian, aught to focus on as a xtian. Not to mention... Lutherans literally fought for your right to be able to READ the damn thing, since catholics were absolutely fine with the arrangement of hoarding the knowledge to themselves so they could take advantage of the message and use that power to manipulate the masses, so fucking read it? (Lutherans of course are not based or perfect in any way, Martin Luther himself was hellishly racist and had all kinds of problematic takes, but you know what I mean).

So, little bot or random copy/paster, this is me telling you outright that no, I will not be accepting any saviors into my heart, yada yada. I had at one time done that whole song and dance, and I paid my nickle to the cause. I've read the book twice, I've studied, I know what I'm doing in terms of saying, "No, I don't believe this to be the one and only truth in the world." and so I am an ex-xtian, and will happily remain so.

And I had momentarily considered making this response into some sort of short, throw-away dunk on xtians with a meme or something, but I decided instead to make a long-form statement so I hopefully don't have to do it ever again. And if any of you have read this far down, thanks, first of all! I know this is a long one.

I have not yet read the book, but if there are any xtians among my followers, I want to recommend the book "Christians Against Christianity" by Obery M. Hendricks Jr. as a little side-study you can conduct. I think you'll find it refreshing to see that people within your own faith are just as disenfranchised with it as you may be at times, but that there is of course, hope. "Hope," I say, for xtians who actually practice the faith instead of using it as a thinly veiled excuse to be bigoted fuckwads to others.

So, finally, this is my overall message I wish to convey:

I am not xtian, and will never again be xtian. If I identify as anything, I am an omnist (not omnitheist, it's different); I believe that there are truths and wisdoms that can be found among all faiths, and so I aim to instead study all faiths as a way to better understand my fellow humans, humanity, and my own understanding of the world as a whole. I wish good fate upon anyone who practices something in its entirety, but I also deeply encourage others to study other faiths if ever you find yourself not understanding something. Ask questions. Look deeper. For example, there are just so many people who have thoughts and opinions on Judaism and Islam without having even once looked into what these faiths are about at their cores, so... you know, go and read about them? Learn? Be a good neighbor, damn you.

If folks have more specific questions they want to ask me, feel free! But I will not be making any more posts in regards to folks trying to evangelize me via motherfucking tumblr anon. Lmfao

-Admin (Cake/Arthur)

#religion #faith #christianity #agnostisizm #omnism #long post #crass positive

[fierceawakening]

asphyxiaorange It was about ONE specific temple, wherein in the money exchange was super jacked up so people who wanted to donate/tithe had their prices jacked up. I don't understand how that could be anti-Semitic when every other temple in the Bible never had this issue with the money-changers.

asphyxiaorange heck i wasnt done typing... Jesus either considered himself Jewish or not human at all, when he said "This is my brother and this is my mother" he referred to humanity/jewish people not related to blood around him that they should all be cared for as if they were family. While that probably had a different point, Jesus was still in a human body at the time living as a Jewish man in Jewish society. I don't know how he wouldn't think himself "Jewish" whilst in that form...

asphyxiaorange ...Even if in prophecy referring to the "Jewish people" or as a group he wouldnt likely incldue himself because he knew he wouldn't be there/in the big ol sky

That's definitely how it was taught to me, and why I'm asking for a fact check. The way I was taught, it wasn't that Jesus got into arguments with the rabbis around because they were Jewish and that's bad. It was that he got into arguments with them because they were either 1) corrupt/insincere while acting pious (which I'm pretty sure God fumes at in the Tanakh too? Unless I've heard it wildly wrong) or 2) invested in following the rules without understanding their spirit/intent (which is a little more removed from what the Tanakh is saying, but I'm not sure is sacreligious? Like, most religions seem to want you to understand why things are done, not just.. mindlessly do them. But I could be missing something here.)

So yeah, it was at the very least never stressed in the church I was raised in that the people Jesus was bickering with were Jews and that's bad. They were performing religion for social clout without caring about people (according to Jesus & co. anyway) and that was bad.

I'm not saying it's at all impossible that the church I was raised in papered over something unfortunate in scripture, but... yeah, I really want to know more about that reading and if it really is how everyone would have understood it.

Or if it's one interesting but not necessarily widely endorsed theory that some loud members of jumblr like because it lets them critique Christianity (which they don't like for some VERY valid reasons) while avoiding implying their religion has questionable shit in it too (which is the part where they lose me. Religion is communities organized around origin stories, which means religions are at least as weird as fandoms. Yours may not have the infamous, seen-by-all drama of the most popular one, but that doesn't mean there's none.)

[des-roses-souterraines]

Angus is surely right to identify that 'I'm very spiritual, I'm not into organized religion' move as 'the very pinnacle of dimwitted bourgeois individualism'.

There's a very serious point here. Capitalism, Marx reminds us, 'has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.'

Bourgeois individualism and miserabilism are coterminous because there is no more terrible burden to bear than the weight of subjectivity. Subjectivism leaves people in a state of wretched confusion and desperation that is literally hell, the only hell there is. The thought that there is nothing more than conflicting monkey perspectives, all of which are equally 'valid', is a recipe for the kind of chronic depression that is endemic in the west now.

As Nietzsche feared, no-one could could rise to the terrible challenge of filling the space voided by the dead God, no human being could become the self-legislating ubermensch. Nietzsche's breakdown was the breakdown of the west, fastforwarded and compressed into one central nervous system.

But what was the fantasy of the ubermensch if not a grandstanding aesthetico-romantic glorification of bourgeois individualism?

When they say they don't believe in organized religion, their reservations aren't Deleuze-Guattari critiques of organisation :-), they are just saying that they want to continue to Carrie Bradshaw about in perpetual shilly-shalllying consumer equivocation, treating life as a buffet lunch to pick at.

What they want to preserve is the very thing that religion can liberate you from: ego. They don't have the discipline or commitment to subordinate themselves to the self-disassembly program.

k-punk september 2004

#Mark Fisher #k-punk

[shortkingvi]

I'm sure there'll be people who act like your personal opinions on a show somehow literally assaulted them but I'd like to hear your thoughts!

alright i’ll share some of the broad strokes that i think it did super well and that really hit home for me re: christianity and organized religion in confined spaces

for one, i think that the show presents the way people treat religion as a competition SUPER well,,,,,, bev’s increasing annoyance with more people coming to church as miracles keep happening is so absolutely what i’ve seen people do my whole life. the way that religion is SUPPOSED to be a place that people can come to at any point in their life is such a crock of shit in so many scenarios and the active ostracizing of people who are “too far gone to be saved” is perhaps the thing that broke my heart the most when i was religious,,,,,,, because where could i go once i left?

the show also hinges upon the issues that come from religion and religious interpretation without scrutiny or skepticism. the entire situation could have been avoided if, just once, father pruitt questioned the validity of religious mythos,,,,,,,, his blind devotion to theological doctrine makes him desperate to see the monster as an angel because of a few similarities, so he overlooks the very real damage being done in the face of this “miracle”

religion in homogenous spaces is dangerous in this was because there’s no one to question or critique,,,,,,,, hassan does, of course, but he’s all but shouted down by bev during the pta meeting which is what makes communicating with so many religious people so exhausting and it was almost too upsetting to get through,,,,,, it legitimately made me feel sick because i’ve dealt with that exact scenario in my life and it just like,,,,,,,, hurts,,,,,,,, the holier than thou attitude religious people have, the way they treat you stupid, the way they won’t listen unless you agree,,,,,,, it was all done so realistically

idk i just think the show did well to shine a light on the worst parts of organized religion when it goes uncriticized or questioned, but it was also VERY painful for me to watch a lot of the time because those environments are SO damaging to be in when you know you’ll be attacked for stepping slightly out of line

dr gunning’s conversation on feeling like monsignor pruitt knew about her being gay every time he looked at her was just,,,,,,, yeah,,,,,,,,, the show portrays organized religion as just as stifling as it can be, largely thanks to the island setting and the size of the church,,,,,,,,, so yeah,,,,,, just a lot but also so good and probably my favourite of the flanagan netflix series lineup

edit: i feel like i should add that the cinematography was SUCH a strength of this show too,,,,,,,, i know the cinematographer also did hill house which makes total sense because those sweeping shots of rooms and landscapes added so heavily to the torturously uncomfortable scary scenes throughout,,,,,,,, the slow progression of the church filling up over the episodes, the way everything was well balanced and symmetrical also was an awesome representation of the rigidity of catholicism on the island,,,,,,,,, just loved it

#i have a lot of religious trauma so idk if i’m alone on all this #but i felt like i wanted to claw out of my skin at times watching it #asks #anon

[samwisethebitch]

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager (review + analysis)

Note: This was originally posted to my WordPress blog in September 2020.

Spoiler-Free Review

Lock Every Door is one part mystery, one part conspiracy thriller, all parts brilliant. It’s an engrossing read that had me genuinely disturbed at parts, and the chilly atmosphere makes this a perfect book to pick up now that the weather has started to turn towards fall.

The story follows Jules, a down-on-her-luck twenty-something who accepts a house sitting job in one of Manhattan’s wealthiest apartment buildings. $1,000 a week to live rent-free in a luxury apartment seems too good to be true — and it just might be. When another apartment sitter disappears under mysterious circumstances, Jules begins to suspect that all may not be as it seems.

I loved the atmosphere and setup of this book. I kept thinking about how the first third of the story almost reads like a romance novel, except for a creeping, sinister undertone. In some ways, it reminded me of the Otherworld from Neil Gaiman’s Coraline — everything is just a little too perfect, and you can’t shake the feeling that something terrible lurks under the surface.

I also liked how Sager manages to avoid Idiot Plot in a story that, at the surface, seems to revolve around young people making stupid decisions. Jules is a smart, capable, pragmatic person. She knows her new apartment sitting gig is sketchy, but she’s too desperate to turn it down. She’s unemployed and currently homeless. Her credit cards are all maxed out. Her bank account balance is frighteningly low. Taking the job is literally the only option she has.

That’s another thing. I may be biased (it’s no secret that my personal politics lean pretty damn far left), but I thought Sager did an excellent job of capturing the very real issues of poverty and classism. Jules’s situation is constantly juxtaposed with that of her ridiculously wealthy neighbors, and her friend’s disappearance makes it painfully clear that there is no safety net for poor people. The commentary is definitely on-the-nose, but it’s a valid critique that I think is handled well.

Overall, this is one of the best novels I’ve read this year. I was completely sucked in by its story and remained spellbound until the very end.

Final Rating: 💀💀💀💀 (Four skulls out of five!)

Analysis (Spoiler Warning!)

In all fairness, this book is probably closer to a 4.5/5 than a 4/5. The only thing that kept me from giving Lock Every Door five skulls is a single plot point that just happens to employ one of my least favorite tropes.

At one point towards the end of the book, Jules begins to suspect that the wealthy residents of her apartment complex are part of a Satanic cult. She comes to this conclusion after seeing an image of a pentagram in a book — supposedly an academic book about Satanism in the early 20th century.

I have some issues with this, and they all boil down to this: it’s lazy, poorly researched writing. First of all, the pentagram is not a Satanic symbol. It has roots in Christianity and, more recently, is an important symbol of Wicca and other neopagan religions. The upside-down pentagram is used by the Church of Satan, but that’s not the symbol described in Lock Every Door.

That’s another thing. Satanism did not exist before the 1960s. The word “Satanist” was coined by Anton Levay, author of The Satanic Bible, who was an atheist. The modern day Church of Satan is an atheist organization. Using the word “Satanism” to describe black magic or devil worship is a misnomer, and it certainly wouldn’t be used by any serious author to describe a cult from the 1910s.

All of this can be found with a quick Google search. This book was published in 2019. I have very little patience for authors who misrepresent others’ religions for drama when accurate information is so readily available.

Thankfully, the book’s actual plot twist is much less cliche and much more compelling. It’s so good, in fact, that I’m not going to spoil it in this blog post. If you want to find out, you’ll have to read the book.

Lock Every Door is a breath of fresh air in a genre that often relies on the same tried-and-true tropes. It’s earned a place on my favorites shelf, and I highly recommend you pick up a copy for all your spooky fall reading needs.

#book review #my reviews #lock every door #riley sager #bookblr #book #bookworm #bookish #dark academia #thriller #mystery #conspiracy thriller #books #book club #classism #mine #wordpress

[infinitecapacities]

Goals

Mental

1. To stop comparing myself to others. I can feel confident pretty easily by dressing up, putting on some makeup, and doing my hair nice. But what instantly seems to ruin it is my mind looking at other people and wishing I had what they have. I know that others beauty should not take away from my own, but yet I cannot help but diminish myself and sometimes start to feel insecure in the presence of others. This is something I need to work on mentally, I have to realize that no physical attribute that I achieve will conquer this. There will always be someone who WE perceive as better. However, there is only one me, and I am special in many ways. I do not need to try and be like anyone else. I need to be at peace with myself and fully accept that no matter how I look in comparison of others I am good enough.

2. Presence. This is something that I have gotten much better at. Fully focusing on the moment and what I am doing when I am doing it. With social media there are constant ways to distract yourself. One thing that I was doing unconsciously for a while was being on my phone any time I ate a meal. Before I even realized it, I was done with my meal and I had barely enjoyed it. Consequently, I craved more food, never really feeling satisfied. Now I am very aware of when I do this and always focus back to really enjoying my food and being thankful for how it is nourishing me. I have found that I am always satisfied after eating when I put my full presence into the act of consuming and enjoying my food. This goes with anything I do now, working out, doing homework, making my bed, getting dressed; anytime I do something with presence it turns out infinitely times better than if I did it while my mind wandered. I want to be free from anxiety always, to always do things with focus and intention. I want to really utilize my time and feel accomplished each day. I want to be organized and clean. I want to enjoy every second of the day.

3. Trust. Now this is a heavy one that I really need to work on more. There are a lot of parts of me that I still have not healed. I fully recognize that I not only have a hard time trusting other people, but I also have a hard time trusting myself. I constantly doubt everything. Whether it is right or wrong, whether I should do this or that, whether it is good or bad, I do not believe in it or even my own intuition. I find myself never really believing what anyone says, and at the same time easily lying to people. What I need to do is open my heart, be vulnerable, and live my truth even if I will feel uncomfortable or judged. To just set myself free from the fear. I have to let down my walls and let down my guard and trust that what is meant for me will simply be and I do not need to try to control things all of the time. I want to be able to love easily, to give to people with no expectations. I want to radiate sweetness and tenderness. I want to be able to express myself without holding back. I want to open up to the people in my life even if they will not understand.

Physical

1. Skin. Now this has been an issue for way too long. I am so proud of how far I have come. I have accepted this part of myself more than ever before, although it is my biggest insecurity still. More than anything, I really just want to make sure that everything that I am eating, drinking, and everything that I am applying to my skin is good for it. I want to be glowing from the inside out. I want people to compliment me on the work that I put in to get it to the smoothest clearest texture. I want to feel confident without makeup on. I want to be able to look people in the eye when they stare at me. I want to feel confident when they look at my side profile. I want to not have to hide behind my hair or makeup all the time. I want my skin to feel clean and calm and hydrated all the time.

2. Body. The main thing about my body I have been wanting to change is my weight. This first came about when I weighed myself and saw that I had gained 15+ pounds than the last time I was weighed. I had also noticed that I needed to get bigger sizes. It really hit me when I started looking back at past photos and thinking about how much skinnier I was before. I recognize now how in the past, I did things to my body for others not myself, and this is what started problems. I started going to the gym for my ex-boyfriend, not for myself. He said that I should so I started feeling insecure, and going to the gym often just made me more insecure because I felt like I was not doing enough. I just kind of did it just because I thought it would make him and other people like me more. Then quarantine hit just after my consistency at the gym started picking up, and then because my skin was at its worst, I forced myself to work out more because I felt that my body was the only beautiful thing about me left. Still, instead of feeling better it just made me critique my body more. Going to college after is really changed my body the most. Since high school I have always just eaten when I was hungry. Besides being pescatarian I never limited my diet based on insecurity. I naturally did not often over eat or under eat and I did not force myself to work out at the gym either. At that time I was always happy with my body. So when college came around and I had the unlimited meal plan, I had other people responsible for what I ate and when I ate, and I tried to get as much food as I could when they were serving. Combined with excessive drinking, I ate more and rarely felt satisfied. Food was accessible to me and I took advantage of it without really appreciating it. I was often sick. I also went a period where I could barely eat due to depression. I had panic attacks. I was living with a model who always looked perfect and so I hid my body more. So long story short I have been critiquing my body so much ever since the weight gain. Over the summer I tried different things and drastically limited my diet but I did not see much of a difference. I now know what I need to do. I just need to simply eat what my body craves and drink lots of water. Simply nourish my body with nutrient dense, fulfilling meals that make me FEEL GOOD. I love eating fruits and vegetables and so I will. I have felt so much more confident and less harsh on myself because my goal is not to be skinny or even lose weight it is to just be healthy. I am much more intentional about what I put into my body and I enjoy planning my meals and cooking them. I want to be able to know that I have to wear a swim suit and not have the urge to starve myself. I want to love my body. I want to feel energized, radiant, confident, beautiful, sexy, and most of all healthy. 

Spiritual 

1. Connect more with God/spirit. Lately I have been studying a variety of different philosophies and religions. The ones that resonate with me the most have been Buddhism and Hinduism but I believe every religion has validity that is meaningful. Do I know if there is a God? Yes and no. It is kind of hard for me to understand why things are the way they are, why God did all this. And so I question if there really is one and what he represents and how I am supposed to connect with him. At the same time, there is so much evidence in my own life that I am being guided and protected by something divine. I am so thankful my mom taught me very young to form a relationship to spirituality. She told me and my sister to pick something symbolic of our angels watching out for us, for her it was a white feather. I had a few different symbols but none were very convincing. I eventually decided on dragonflies, because I thought they were beautiful creatures and I was fascinated by them, and they are something you do not often see. Since making this decision, I have seen dragonflies every time I need a sign when I am most down or scared or confused. There is divine powers that are helping me navigate life, and I want to become more in touch with them and listen to their wisdom. This includes meditating, praying, reading, and journaling, because we can gain a lot of wisdom from within and from others stories as well, and our thoughts contribute so much to influencing the energetic field of the entire world. I want to feel good about my way of life. I want to learn more about spirituality and how it can better the world. I want to trust that there is more than meets the eye and have inner peace that there is a divine plan in everything. 

2. Do shadow work.

[rainbowtiredoftheworld]

Going through the atheism tag I feel like a lot of peope have a very misdirected approach to atheism. Most posts are about all the ways american christians (or sometimes christians in general) "prove" that religion is stupid by being horrible people. This is just wrong (technically, it’s Not Even Wrong). 

Firstly, christians being horrible people only prove that those christians are, in fact, horrible people. Not even all christians, those christistians. Having been involved with my city’s Salesian Oratory for most of my life, even for a few years after I stopped believing, I’ve met a shitload of christians, and an awful lot of them were good people. Genuinely good people. Good people that actually struggled with the bad parts of christianity. Some of them reached an equilibrium saying that they essentially believe in the “good parts”, and the “bad parts” come from bad people. We could talk about the validity of this choice, but we’re not going to, at least not here and now. Back to the point, finding some christians that are horrible people doesn’t mean that all christians are horrible people. Again, we could delve deep in a discussion about “not all men” and similar expressions, but, again, we’re not going to, because, most importantly, this has fuck all to do with christianity itself being stupid. If you actually read the gospels (like, actually really read them, possibly with a touch of reading comprehension. Trying to get the messages, instead of cherry picking that bullshit), you’d find a bunch of narcisism, like when jesus said to a guy that between him and the guy’s mum he should choose jesus, but also a very central message of acceptance and love. Christianity, at its core, is fueled by community and mutual protection, in a way that is strikingly similar to the LGBTQ+ community. And that’s how it managed to survive the roman persecutions. Everything else is 2000 years of evil people exploiting the trust of the people to gain positions of cultural and eventually temporal power.

Secondly, for as much as we could surmise a critique of Christianity observing the behaviour of some american assholes, this has nothing to do with religion as a general concept. When you talk about “religion” referring only to christianity you’re ignoring an embarassing amount of information, missing completely some very interesting points you could have otherwise made. For example, we could talk about how the existence of religious leaders, in any organized religion, is inherently absurd, because they’re people that have “studied” and therefore “know better” something that by its own nature cannot be studied and needs to be accepted on faith alone. There is nothing that can prove that these people are better at whatever they do (be it interpret the texts, lead the masses, preach the truth, ...), except for their own word. We could also discuss how these figures, by virtue of their influence on what people think, have an insane amount of cultural power, which can be a very dangerous thing, as Christianity has proven time and time again. We could discuss how conscientious objection in the medical field is a widespread plague that limits patients’ access to basic medical procedures based on the doctor’s religious belief, which in a decent society should be unacceptable. We could also discuss how a lot of idiotic ideas and concepts are defended under the flag of religious freedom.

We could be having all these interesting discussions, maybe even captivating some religious people. Instead you’re using a mix of logical fallacies to debate a strawman argument, ending up making a fool of yourself. And this wouldn’t be that big of a deal in itself, but you generalize on “this side” as much as you do on “the other side”, and end up clumping me with you, even if we have essentially nothing in common. Unlike you I have a deep history with christianity, I didn’t just study it, I actually lived it. Unlike you I’m deeply rational, and I recognize that believing there isn’t any superior entity is exactly as rational as believing one or more exist; I have the self reflection to admit that there isn’t anything objective about it. But over all, unlike you, I don’t base my atheism on my misconceptions about any religion. I’m not an atheist because Christianity sucks. I’m an atheist because that’s what I believe. My feelings towards Christianity are a completely separate matter.

#atheism #religion #rantish #it's too structured to be a rant #but it's not structured enough to be an essay #am i gonna get canceled for this? #are y'all gonna send me death threats?

[melissalfinch]

My Journey From Theism to Agnosticism

I’m going to explain to you a few reasons why religion no longer works for me with supportive quotes from Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Socrates, and Sigmund Freud among other cultural inspirations. This is not going to be about my personal, scandalous, and fabricated experiences in a controversial sex cult because I haven’t had any, but I have witnessed enough to convince myself and others that they do exist. I’m not going to get into the details of the ugly, mentally abusive conversations I’ve been a part of and overheard in various congregations from different faiths. You will not get to gawk in entertainment at my explicit memories of the self-doubt, shame, and brainwashing from what leaders referred to as healthy chastisement, which only led to self-deprecation, depression, and arrogance towards those who did not share my faith. I choose not to get into the heartbreaking details over my loss of friends and pets, and the damage it inflicted on my family relationships, job losses that resulted, and the regretful religion-based decisions that I made. I choose not to get into those details in order to keep my own tear ducts dry. Composing this article the way it’s going to be presented has already required a substantial amount of bravery, causing months of procrastination and even nausea as I type.

With that stated, let’s get down to it. After reading two very informative books on agnosticism and atheism, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, both world-renowned atheists, and watching a some of their debates, I’ve been able to pull out profound quotes that I can relate to from my very core and which support my own theories that question faith and that question the health of adopting a religion.

First off, I’m going to discuss the subject of preaching. I am convinced that people use others to solidify their own faith by bringing them on board and plugging into their heads the conviction they lack. In their passionate preaching efforts, it seems that they are trying to convince themselves more than anyone else. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krsna says to Arjuna that Krsna will carry in other devotees what they lack, but I have found in most preaching efforts that religious followers are attempting to force into others what they themselves lack.

Let’s consider the subject of death for a detailed example. In Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, he points out:

  “Polls suggest 95 percent of the population of the US believe they will survive their own death. I can’t help but wonder how many people who claim such belief really, in their hearts, hold it. If they were truly sincere, shouldn’t they all behave like the Abbot of Ampleforth? When Cardinal Basil Hume told him that he was dying, the abbot was delighted for him: ‘Congratulations! That’s brilliant news. I wish I was coming with you.’”

It surely has to make you wonder: are people insincere with their religion or more fearful of the process of death? Dawkins elaborates further on the subject by saying: 

  “It is a striking fact that if you meet someone opposed to mercy killing, or passionately against assisted suicide, you can bet a good sum they’ll turn out to be religious. Why deem it a sin if you sincerely believe you are accelerating a journey to heaven?”  

Hitchens further exemplifies my point in his book by recalling how, when he was thirteen, the headmaster of his grade school in Dartmoor, England, said to him during a no-nonsense conversation: 

  “You may not see the point of all this faith now, but you will one day when you start to lose loved ones.”

Hitchens concludes: 

  “Why that would be as much as saying that religion might not be true, but nevermind that, since it can be relied upon for comfort.” 

Which brings me to a question we should all ask ourselves: what’s more important, truth or comfort? I confess I still do not have a firm answer to that question, but I will say in my own modest attempt at wisdom, if you rely on something that may not necessarily be true but gives you comfort, down the road you will be more likely to question that very thing. Such doubt makes your comfort temporary and can have a reverse effect, often resulting in anger and regret.

To further support this theory, I’ll use what I found as a profound statement according to Hitchens’ take on Freud in The Future Of An Illusion, where he describes the religious impulse as:

  “essentially ineradicable until or unless the human species can conquer its fear of death and its tendency to wish- thinking.” 

The idea of practicing a religion out of fear and daydreaming simply no longer sits well with me nor others who tell me they have had similar experiences and have decided to leave religion behind. However, the group of atheists and agnostics I relate to is still in the minority, and many are afraid to admit it in a world still governed by religion.

In addition to specious faiths revealed through preaching and fears of death, we can also see that those pious leaders who chastise their congregations for sins and offenses are often the most guilty and ashamed of committing the same proclaimed abominations.

  “The policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use   her for the very offense for which he plies the leash.”             (Shakespeare, King Lear) 

I do not need to exhaust the hypocritical details of the acts of religious figures and dogmas to prove my point. You can spend hours and hours of your own time researching documents from various Judeo-Christian faiths criminalizing clergymen and other supposed divinely proclaimed leaders who have committed the same unspeakable crimes for which they condemn their flock.

After watching the 2019 film The Two Popes starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, I heard Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (played by Pryce), who wishes to resign as archbishop, sadly admit, “The bigger the sinner, the warmer the welcome,” as if to poorly justify the behavior of imperfect people.

Now the question often arises, do we fight it? Do we fight organized religion the way organized religion has fought among itself in a similar sectarian manner? Nineteenth century German poet, writer, and literary critic Heinrich Heine, whose many works have been banned by German authorities, says in his work Gedanken Und Einfälle (Thoughts And Ideas): 

  “In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides. 

Shouldn’t we use our knowledge of science to advance and not simply rely on fairy tales and fiction for all the answers?”

Marx critiques Hegel’s Philosophy Of Right by saying:

  “Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” 

Surely we can admit the dangers of such an addictive drug.

In perhaps my favorite bold and simple statement on the matter, Hitchens paraphrases Socrates when he says:

  “I do not know for certain about death and the gods but I am certain as I can be that you do not know either.” 

I also reject the arrogance of such people who insist on the validity of their holy scriptures no matter how polite and endearing their character may seem during their attempts to persuade. 

Hitchens concludes in his book God Is Not Great:

  “Know the enemy and prepare to fight it.” 

In conclusion, I refer to Deborah Feldman’s autobiographical memoir, Unorthodox: the Scandalous Rejection Of My Hasidic Roots, on which the limited Netflix series Unorthodox is based. Ester Shapiro, remarkably played by Shira Haas, explains when asked why she left her Hasidic Jew tradition, “God expected too much of me. Now I need to find my own path.”  

My tears flowed during the viewing of that moment. For me, it has also been a painful process for my faith to change and to leave something I once felt so sure about. I often say that I broke up with God because the interrogation and grief I’ve received from others can easily be compared to a long breakup with a significant other.

In The Two Popes, Pope Benedict XVI, played by Anthony Hopkins, is also considering leaving his faith. He says, “I no longer wish to be a salesman.” The outreach conversion programs in the congregations in which I participated with always made me feel like I needed a shower.

In another conversation, Hopkins’ Pope states, “Change is compromise.”

Later on he admits, “The hardest thing is to listen, to hear God’s voice.” Whoever really hears God’s voice?”

One last quote I’ll share from Hitchens:

  “God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.” 

Through my own life experiences, I’ve really seen the faults in humanizing our creator, this God we all talk about. People have let me down, broken my heart, misled me, misinformed me, betrayed me, violated me, and manipulated me. As I progressed in following a religion that egotistically humanizes God, I found their God also disappointing me, breaking my heart and misinforming me.

I find more ease in life simply not having all the answers, but enjoying wonderment in the science of nature simply for the sake of wonderment. As someone close to me once said:

  “Dragonflies are more fascinating than gods.”

#atheism #agnostism #athiest #religion #richard dawkins #christopher hitchens #agnostic #blog writing #faith and spirituality #god #questioneverything #anti religion

[archivesofcreation]

NOVA INTERVIEWS THE FATHER OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Defending Intelligent Design

Phillip Johnson is known as the father of intelligent design. The idea in its current form appeared in the 1980s, and Johnson adopted and developed it after Darwinian evolution came up short, in his view, in explaining how all organisms, including humans, came into being. Johnson taught law for over 30 years at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of the book Darwin on Trial, in which he argues that empirical evidence in support of Darwin's theory is lacking. In this interview, hear why he feels that such evidence is "somewhere between weak and nonexistent," why he feels intelligent design is a testable science, and why he thought the Dover trial was a train wreck waiting to happen. "This whole Darwinian story, it seems to me, has been very much oversold," says Phillip Johnson. "It is an imaginative story that has been spun on the basis of very little evidence." NOVA: What is intelligent design? Phillip Johnson: I would like to put a basic explanation of the intelligent-design concept as I understand it this way. There are two hypotheses to consider scientifically. One is you need a creative intelligence to do all the creating that has been done in the history of life; the other is you don't, because we can show that unintelligent, purposeless, natural processes are capable of doing and actually did do the whole job. Now, that is what is taught as fact in our textbooks. And to me it's a hypothesis, which needs to be tested by evidence and experiment. If it can't be confirmed by experiment, then you're left with the same two possibilities, and neither one should be said to be something like a scientific fact. Why do you think some people do not accept evolution? I think they see a problem. I don't think it's that they're ignorant. I think that they see that what's being given to them as evolution is less than science in that it hasn't really been proved, and yet it's presented as if it were proved. And on the other hand, it's more than science, in that it contains the whole philosophy behind it, metaphysics as it were. As I understand it from reading your books and critiques, you see "materialism" as a very destructive thing in society. Can you tell me about this? Well, by materialism I don't mean consumerism. I'm not talking about people who are greedy for material things. I'm talking about a philosophical system that explains what is real and what is not. A philosophical materialist believes that everything is, at the bottom, material composition. You start with the fundamental particles that compose matter and energy. Another word for essentially the same thing is naturalism. It's stated a little bit differently. Naturalism says nature is all there is, and nature is made of those particles. (Don't let the distinction between matter and energy confuse you on this, because energy, like matter, is composed of particles according to the naturalistic viewpoint.) Now, naturalism was most flamboyantly stated in the Cosmos series by Carl Sagan, which I remember watching many years ago. Sagan began that series with the pronouncement that the cosmos is all there ever was and all there ever will be. Nature is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be, with nature being these substances that make up the stars and the particles that make up the different kinds of radiation that come from them. But that's all that there is. A philosophy of naturalism or materialism is what generates the Darwinian theory. It's what generates the certainty that only unintelligent natural forces were involved in evolution, which is to say in the creative process that brought our kind into existence as well as all the animals and all the plants. That is all a non-negotiable claim on their part. And why is it a non-negotiable claim? Because if the naturalistic starting point isn't valid—if it isn't completely correct—then something else must have happened. What is that something else? It's something that they don't like that might get a foothold in science itself. Maybe the creator is something more than an imaginary projection of people's minds. Maybe a creator is a necessary part of reality. Are there social consequences to this philosophy of naturalism or materialism that you describe? Yes, absolutely. Now, these consequences may be good or they may be bad. And they are attractive to some people and unattractive to others. For example, the naturalistic viewpoint is praised by those who like it for its tendency to liberate us from religious authority. But what's the negative side? My understanding is you see not the positive side of materialism but the negative side. I'm happy to concede that there is a positive way of looking at something and a negative way of looking at something. The negative side is that the naturalistic viewpoint leaves the way open for a kind of freedom from divine authority, a kind of moral anarchy.

God or nature

Is this a motivation for what you do? It is a motivation, and I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. I was an agnostic from the time I was a junior high school student up until my very late 30s. I had the kind of upbringing that is most likely to produce agnostics, a conventional kind of church-going requirement that never became real to me. I went to Sunday School because in those days mothers thought that was a good thing for their children on Sunday morning, and dropped my father off at the golf course. I grew up from that learning that when you got old enough so that your mother couldn't tell you what to do anymore, what you did was you played golf on Sunday morning. So I was an agnostic, and then when I went away to Harvard as a college student, that tendency was very much encouraged. I grew up thinking that to be intelligent or well-educated was to be agnostic and to be liberal in politics. I went through various things in life and found that the agnostic pattern in which I had become socialized was not adequate for me. I became a Christian, and I found a kind of structure for my life that seemed to be a very good thing and to this day has enabled me to get through crises like two strokes. And how did you come to view evolution? One thing that fascinated me about the study of evolution was that it seemed to me to give a window into a very fundamental question that was bothering me: Is God real or imaginary? As I read all of the evolutionary literature written for the general public, I saw that some of the proponents of Darwinian evolution were hard-core atheists like Richard Dawkins, and others were not. Some of them took a view that religion or belief in God is alright if you want that sort of a thing, but they assumed that it was an imaginary thing. I could see that this is why there was so much insistence upon the Darwinian story. Believing in Darwinian evolution doesn't prove that there's no God. What it proves is that there's no need for God's participation to get all the creating done. Now, is that true? I was fascinated with that question of what's fundamentally true. If this Darwinian story is true, then nature does have all the creative power it needs to produce plants and animals and people. But if the story isn't true, if it doesn't fit the evidence, then maybe the creator is something more than an imaginary projection of people's minds. Maybe a creator is a necessary part of reality. That to me was a fascinating issue. It certainly motivated me to think that this was an important subject, not just for biologists or even scientists but for people at large. So it was legitimate for a law professor to address it and for the public to make up their own minds about it rather than to take the word of the experts. That's what makes it important.

Evidence for evolution

As we've gone about making this documentary, we've met professors in the natural sciences who'll say, "Let me just show you this mountain of evidence," and they show us fossil after fossil. Are these things not evidence of evolution? They all exist. The question is what are they evidence of? Are they evidence of a mindless and purposeless evolutionary process? It may be that there was a slow development of one kind of thing into something else. But the important question to me is: Could this all occur solely by unintelligent, purposeless, material processes? Can we say that that has been confirmed? The theory of evolution may be true in a sense, but it may require the participation of an intelligent cause. That is the basic intelligent-design proposition—that unintelligent causes by themselves can't do the whole job. That doesn't say that everything was created all at once. So what does intelligent design say about how life was created and how we ended up with the diversity of life we see today? Well, the alternative is not well developed, so I would prefer to say that, as far as I'm concerned, the alternative is we don't really know what happened. But if non-intelligence couldn't do the whole job, then intelligence had to be involved in some way. Then it's a big research job to figure out the consequences of that starting point. How would you go about testing for the existence of a designer? What is the research program? I'd like to start with the first question. It is sometimes said that the hypothesis that there is a designer is untestable. This is false. It is testable, and the test is Darwinian evolution. The claim of the evolutionary biologists is that unintelligent causes did the whole job. If they can prove it, then the counter-hypothesis that you need intelligence has been tested, and it has been shown to be false. But what I concluded after reading the literature was that the claim that unintelligent processes have been shown to be capable of doing all the work of creation, from the simplest creatures to the more complex ones, is unsupported. The evidence for it lies somewhere between very weak and nonexistent. When you try to get proof, you get stories about microevolution. Instead of getting evidence of a creation story, what we're getting is evidence of temporary variation in the size of finch beaks. But they're not talking about great transformations taking place all at once. They're talking about something happening very gradually over a huge amount of time. Why couldn't that be the case? Well, why couldn't it? Often when one asks for a demonstration of the evolutionary changes that Darwinians claim, the answer that they always give is, "Well, it's done very gradually" and "This takes an enormous amount of time, millions of years, whereas we only live to be 100 if we're very long-lived, so it is quite impossible for the evolutionary change to occur in our time limits. That's why we don't see it." My logical reaction to that is that's perfectly accurate if you assume that the evolutionary change of this enormous amount actually occurs. Then you can give a satisfactory explanation for why we don't see it. But there is another possible explanation for why we don't see it. The other possibility is that it doesn't happen. I think maybe that's what the truth is. If it doesn't happen, then where do you go from there? Well, if it doesn't happen, something else must have happened. The problem became clear to me as I read further and further that the one thing that evolutionary biologists are absolutely determined to support is their starting premise that all of the changes that brought about all of the different species and kinds of life on Earth happened by purely natural causes like random mutation and natural selection. So while there can be arguments over the details, there can be no argument or discussion over the fundamental principle that only natural—which is to say unintelligent—causes were involved. The reason why that premise of natural causes has to be so inviolate and so ferociously defended is that what if something other than purely natural causes was involved? What would it be? Well, the most obvious answer to that question is it would be God. And they regard this possibility with horror, because it seems to unseat all of their science. It seems to take them back to the beginning or to the Dark Ages, as they would tend to say. You get God in there and that's the end of science, they think, so that can't be. But I wondered, maybe it could be. I viewed myself as much more unprejudiced in that matter. I was willing to believe in a biological creation by Darwinian mechanism if it could actually be proved. But if it couldn't be proved, I thought it was quite legitimate to think of something else.

Beyond science

Do they really regard it with horror, or are they just saying, "This is something that is beyond what science can address?" At that point I would say if we can't consider the other possibility then let's not consider it. That's alright with me. But that doesn't mean that we know what did happen. This whole Darwinian story, it seems to me, has been very much oversold. And everybody is told that it's absolutely certain and certainly true, and because it's called science it has been proved again and again by absolutely unquestionable procedures. But this is not true. It is an imaginative story that has been spun on the basis of very little evidence. Many scientists ask, "How do I go about testing intelligent design?" And if I understand correctly, you were saying that the test of intelligent design is whether something can be explained by evolutionary theory. But scientists say that's just a negative argument. That doesn't prove anything about intelligent design. How would you respond? My business was actually making negative arguments. I looked at the grand story of evolution, the story that is important, the one that catches the imagination of the world and stirs controversy. This is the story that there's no need for a creator or a designer because the whole job can be done by unintelligent material processes. We know that that's absolutely true, such that any dissent from it should be treated as akin to madness. That's what I was looking at. We ought to see humans occasionally being born to chimps or perhaps chimps born into human families. Now, at this point the absolute certainty, the dogmatic insistence with which the Darwinists told their story, began to have a boomerang effect. Because it alerted me to the possibility that something is wrong here. If these folks can't even recognize that this isn't that convincing a story, then there's something wrong with their thinking. That was the starting point for my book Darwin on Trial. I thought, This is not something we should trust as a creation story for all of life, because instead of getting evidence of a creation story, what we're getting is evidence of temporary variation in the size of finch beaks or the color of peppered moths in a species. This is a totally different story. It's quite inadequate for the purpose, I thought. And I think the world should understand this.

On common ancestry

How do you explain our genetic relatedness with chimpanzees? There is a relatedness. But what does it mean? Say we have almost 99 percent of our genes in common with chimpanzees. We also have at least 25 percent of our genes in common with bananas. There are these commonalities that exist throughout life. Do they point to a common evolutionary process or a common creator? That is the question for interpretation. The genes are going to win when people ask me about that great degree of similarity between human genes and chimpanzee genes. I answer that genes must not be anywhere near as important as we have been led to believe. If there were that great a commonality between chimps and humans, it ought to be relatively easy to breed chimps and come up with a human being, or by genetic engineering to change a chimp into a human. We ought to see humans occasionally being born to chimps or perhaps chimps born into human families. So the real question to me that needs to be explained is the enormous difference between chimps and human beings. That's what evolutionary science needs to explain and can't explain. Isn't the most likely explanation that there is common ancestry? It might be because of common ancestry. That is definitely a possibility to be considered. I'm just not insistent that common ancestry is true. It's a possibility. Is there some other explanation for genetic relatedness besides common ancestry? That's a possibility that has to be considered also, that there's a commonality not only between chimps and humans, but among all life. It's a common biochemistry. And thus this might be pointing to a single evolutionary process, or it might be pointing to the responsibility of a single creator.

Evidence for ID

What is the evidence for intelligent design? What if the Darwinian mechanism doesn't have the creative power claimed for it? Then something else has to be true. It's two sides of the same coin as I look at it, and that's why I've always devoted my energies to making the skeptical case about Darwinism. Others have evidence of a positive nature—irreducible complexity and complex specified information are part of that. To understand the positive evidence I think we have to realize that Darwin was writing a long time ago. He didn't understand anything about complex specified information or the irreducible complexity of the cell. In Darwin's day it was thought that cells were simply globs of a kind of jelly-like substance, a protoplasm. So it didn't seem to be very difficult to imagine how you could get a blob of some substance like mud at the bottom of a prehistoric pond, lake, or ocean. But since Darwin's day an enormous amount has been learned about the cell. This is why my colleague Michael Behe's famous book is titled Darwin's Black Box. The point there is that to Darwin the cell was a black box. It did something, but you didn't know how it did it. So the cell was a black box in Darwin's day, and now it's been opened. Thanks to the work of biochemists and molecular biologists since that time, we know that the cell is so enormously complex that it makes a spaceship or a supercomputer look rather low-tech in comparison. So I think the cell is perhaps the biggest hurdle of all for the Darwinists to get over. How do you get the first cell? It's not just that if they get the cell then everything else will be easy. But it was thought in Darwin's day that the cell was no problem at all. The only problems came after that. How do you get from cells to complex animals and then to apes, and from apes to human beings? That's the story that he told. Now, I don't think that story will hold water when you look for proof rather than just accept it as an inevitable, logical consequence of a naturalistic philosophy that you're starting out with.

Is it science?

Is intelligent design a science? I think so. To answer that question I need to go back to the point that I see the scientific question as one of choosing between two hypotheses. One is that you needed intelligence to do the creating that had to be done in the history of life, and the other is that you didn't need it. Then the scientific approach is to decide between these two hypotheses on the basis of evidence and logic. That's what I want to see done. That's why it is a scientific question. If evolution by natural selection is a scientific doctrine, then the critique of that doctrine, and even of the fundamental assumption on which it's based, is a legitimate part of science as well. As a big-picture story, the theory of evolution that we have today is invalid. Isn't intelligent design just a newer version of creationism? When people ask me whether this is creationism relabeled, one thing that always occurs to me is that the real creationist organizations are highly critical of intelligent design, because they say it doesn't do the job that is the very essence of creationism. It doesn't defend the Bible from the very first verse. It doesn't defend the Bible at all, and it doesn't even defend Christianity. It's saying that there's an intelligence, but the intelligence could be natural as well as supernatural. And that if you assume it's supernatural, what the God is—well, we have nothing to say about what kind of God it is. It isn't limited to one particular kind of religion, to Christianity or to a particular kind of Christianity. If you want, it can be the Muslim god. But if it's a supernatural cause, isn't that outside the realm of science? It's true that supernatural causes are a subject outside of science. But intelligent versus unintelligent causes is a subject very much within science. For example, forensic scientists and pathologists regularly determine whether a death was due to natural causes or intelligent causes. If somebody dies of a purported heart failure, and then they do an autopsy on the body and find signs of arsenic poisoning, they say this was not a death by natural causes; it was a poisoning. That is perfectly legitimate as a scientific inquiry. Now, if the intelligent cause turns out to be supernatural, that's a determination that is outside of science. But that you need intelligence is not a determination that's outside of science. It's the regular business of science, like deciding whether a drawing on a cave wall is a painting by prehistoric cavemen or a product of natural erosion and chemistry in the wall. Are evolution and religious beliefs compatible? Well, to a large extent it depends on what you mean by evolution. When I speak to audiences about this, I like to say that even the Darwinian theory of evolution is valid up to a point. The problem with the theory of evolution is not that it's altogether wrong, but that it's correct only in a very limited and relatively trivial sphere rather than as the grand creation story that it is made out to be. It's a good theory for how finch beaks vary in size or how disease-causing microorganisms become resistant to antibiotic medicines. So it's valid within that limited sphere, and that may be important. That's interesting in itself. Scientists are largely interested in details, whereas I'm a different kind of person. I'm interested in the big picture. As a big-picture story, the theory of evolution that we have today is invalid, although some kind of a theory might be valid. It also depends on what you mean by religious belief. Most of the evolutionary scientists will say, "We're not opposed to religious belief so long as you understand that that's what it is—it's religious belief. When you talk about God, for example, that's something that exists in the human imagination. It's something we study in the department of anthropology or psychology, where we talk about the beliefs that various kinds of people hold. Religious belief is one of those kinds of beliefs. In the university, we don't talk about it in the departments where we are considering what really happened. The beliefs may be important; they may even be beneficial. It's just that they don't reflect reality. They only reflect what's going on in people's heads." That's the metaphysics of religion and science that is taken for granted in the universities. This is something that may change. One of the things that's so controversial and so hated about the concept of intelligent causes in biology is that it threatens this division of things into naturalism, which deals with how things really are and is called science, and religious belief, which is about make-believe in people's heads out of fairy tales and the like. What would it take to convince you of the theory of evolution by natural selection? That the theory that is out there today is actually true? I would want to see evidence that the mechanism of random mutation and differential reproduction—that some organisms do more reproducing than others—that this had real creative power. It seems to me that besides the lack of physical or experimental evidence, just logically one would expect that random mutations would never build up biological information. They would tend to tear it down, even if it was already in existence. Random changes scramble information. They don't increase it or produce it. If you have a word on the Scrabble board, and you take the letters and scramble them, you don't get a better word. You get no word at all; you get nonsense. I see every reason to think that that's what happens with mutations in the cellular machinery.

A theory in crisis?

Is evolution a theory in crisis, as some people say? I think it is a theory in crisis, but that requires some explanation. The authorities of the evolutionary scientific community would say, "We're not in crisis because we're as determined as ever. We still have a solid phalanx of belief. Yes, we get individual dissenters, but they are quickly closed off and marginalized. They tend to lose their research funds, be considered no longer real scientists anymore." So the community maintains its authority. The crisis that they have to recognize is that they have failed to convince the public. They assumed that by this time they would have marginalized all the opposition and the public would be convinced. After all, they now had virtual control of the educational machinery from primary school on up through the Ph.D. level to do that. Plus all those documentaries on television and in the movies where the orthodoxy is put forward. I foresee the day when Darwinian evolution will be taught in courses on British intellectual history, and biology will have moved on. It's understood that if you want to be about science, you have to be supportive of this theory. So that's been going on all these years, and yet the people are not convinced. Why is this? The mandarins of science, the high priests at the university level, will tell you it's because the people are ignorant and prejudiced. Is that so? That's one of the questions I examined when I first took up the story. Are the people ignorant and prejudiced, or are they seeing something that the experts might have missed? See, it's a wonderful thing being an expert. As an expert, you know a lot that other people don't know. But also in the course of all your expert training, you pick up a worldview and a set of prejudices that you then become completely dependent on in order to continue to be an expert. I decided that what is happening here is that the public has seen something that the experts don't understand. The public has seen that what they are getting from the evolutionary biologists is, on the one hand, less than science. It is over-enthusiastic claims of great accomplishments that are not supported by real, observational, and experimental evidence. In that sense, it's less than science. On the other hand, it's much more than science, because it's a cultural philosophy, a worldview that probably belongs in a philosophy course rather than in a science course. I foresee the day when Darwinian evolution will be taught at universities in courses on British intellectual history, and biology will have moved on. I see it as something like alchemy. It's a precursor to real science. The alchemists must have squealed like crazy when people said you can't really change lead into gold. But it was true that you can't transform lead into gold by a chemical means. So when the alchemic ambitions were given up, then alchemy was able to change into the real science of chemistry. I see that happening as well. I think that biological science will change. It won't vanish. It will just be based on reality and on genuine scientific testing. That's what I see in the future. That's the crisis.

The Dover "train wreck"

What did you think about the Dover case? The Dover case, unfortunately, was a train wreck waiting to happen. The problem was basically that we got too much publicity, and people pick that up. You get these people out in the country who are disturbed that something is being presented and taught dogmatically to their children as true. They think that a much more balanced approach should be taken, and they're frustrated that they can't get these schools to do that. They naively believe that their school board has the authority to do what they think ought to be done. So they go to the school board to present something and in fact give the votes to put it over. What they don't understand is that they are moving into a legal minefield. The theory of evolution is ferociously protected by secularist organizations, with some backing from the courts. So the worst possible construction is going to be put on whatever they do. Very capable lawyers are going to come in to try to make fools out of them and to put every obstacle in the way of changing the dogmatic way in which evolution is presented in some of these schools. So then they hear this term intelligent design and they say, "Well, okay. If we pick up that language and do it that way, then maybe we can do this. Our school board will do that, and we can accomplish what we want to accomplish." They know then they're going to get sued, that they're a threat. So they get a lawyer. Unfortunately, the lawyer is not giving them good counsel. He's egging them on, saying, "We'll have a great battle here and we'll win." It's sort of like the dream that people had in the North in the Civil War in the early stages. If we could just have a big battle, then we'd win it and this war would be over, and that's all that we need to do. Just get into one big battle and win it all at once. That's what the lawyer is telling them. So they go ahead, thinking that they're riding a winner, and they create a train wreck. That's what happened there. As for the judge and the opinion, the problem is that the judge didn't just decide the local case in front of him. He decided that he wanted to become a national figure by deciding the whole question of evolution and creation for the country in one opinion. So he wrote an opinion as big and broad as a starry sky, saying that the notion of intelligence, that one of these two hypotheses, was not eligible for consideration because it was religion and hence by definition not science. So any attempt in that direction was unconstitutional. He is being rewarded for that opinion with all the accolades that the mandarins of science have at their disposal.

Driving a wedge

Let's turn to your other work. Can you tell me what the "wedge strategy" is? I'm glad for an opportunity to explain the wedge strategy, because I conceived it. I know it can be made to sound like something sinister and conspiratorial. But the wedge strategy as I have explained it is quite simple and innocent. We need somebody who can get a debate started, and then we need people who have the expertise to answer the questions that come up as the debate gets started. When you use a wedge to split a log, you start with the sharp edge of the wedge and then you gradually push that in until you get the thicker edge to go in, and that's what's actually splits the log. I thought of it this way with Darwinism. I thought my job is to be the sharp edge, to use my academic credentials and legal abilities to get some hearing for the proposition that there really is something fundamentally wrong with the Darwinian story. It's not just a problem of detail, but rather a fundamental problem that the mechanism has no creative power. But I can't answer all the questions that arise. So we need other people to form the thick edge of the wedge to take on the questions that do require a scientific expertise. Like a professor of biochemistry, Michael Behe, and a mathematician and philosopher of science, William Demsky. They have to take up other questions that arise and do some of the job that I'm not well-equipped to do after I've got things going with my arguments from logic and evidence. That's what the wedge is. Is the Wedge Document your work? Did you write it? I did not, but I did write a book called The Wedge of Truth. And so in that sense, just as I'm in a sense the father of the intelligent-design movement, I'm the father of the wedge concept. In the sense in which I have explained it, that it is a matter of my particular kind of logical arguing expertise at the beginning, to be supplemented and eventually replaced by people with greater scientific knowledge and competence. This is more than anything my faith: that given an even chance, the truth will win. What's the strategy from here? Where does the wedge go from here? At my rather advanced age I don't claim to take the leadership position in the same sense that I did years ago. It's largely going to depend on other people. In fact, what I am largely doing now is making contacts with people in the educational world. I hope we don't ever get another public schools case here for a very long time. If one comes up, I want to stay away from it. But I think that the place where the kind of controversies I'm addressing belong is in the universities. That's where I want to take them. And they are being taken there. The professors are finding that these issues come up in their classes, and students think highly of the positions that I've been arguing, or many of them do. I am in touch constantly with young scholars, including people in Ph.D. programs in biology, who see that there is something wrong with the Darwinian theory and would like to do something about it when they can. They like to talk with me because they don't want to get involved in the traditional creationist movement. They see that as going too far away from the current scientific orthodoxy. I think they want to do what I set out to do when I first crafted the intelligent-design movement—to come out with a position that was not so enormously different from current orthodoxy that it couldn't be discussed but was different enough that it was really upsetting. In the end, I think I came up with something that was even more upsetting than I thought it was going to be. People will be the professors of biology in the next generation, the opinion writers, the producers of television programs, and the editorial writers at newspapers. I have a commission to deal in education and not in litigation. We have a group that we call informally the "second wedge," which consists of literary people and writers and artists who discuss the issues of design, of intelligent causes in the history of life, and whether the naturalistic orthodoxy is as solidly based in evidence as it claims to be. This, I think, may bear great fruit in the future in our culture. The Darwinists may have the federal district judges, or some of them, on their side. But the people are skeptical of what they hear from authority figures, including judges, anyway. I think the goal in the future is to change the intellectual face of the culture so that it isn't the way it was when I first went to college, when we were all taught that to be intelligent implies that you're agnostic. Now, the universities are still that way by and large. But they aren't that way at the undergraduate level or even the graduate student level. Much is changing, and I'm trying to be a part of that.

An edifice threatened?

Is there anything else you would like to add? I could go back to the question of the definition of science. That is perhaps more crucial than anything else. I have a view of science that is now disputed by secularist organizations and also by the most powerful organizations of science. I don't think they speak for science. I think they speak for an ideology that is widely held among contemporary scientists. This is the ideology of naturalism. And that is basically a religious position: The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be. That isn't something that is established by data or tested by experiment. It's a fundamentally religious position or an ideology that has grown into science. The opinion of powerful people associated with scientific organizations has become central to its definition. And so they see the whole edifice as being threatened if that definition is called into question. But I would call it into question. I would say that the proper definition of science is that it is a question of what follows from data and experimental testing. If you cannot test by experiment the claim that natural selection has the kind of immense creative power necessary to produce human beings or even biological cells, then to say that this mechanism can do these wonders is an unscientific statement. It's a statement of personal belief, a statement of philosophy, not a statement of science. What is at stake? Well, prestige is not for me. I'm going to be 67 this year, and by the time further developments happen, I expect to have passed on from this world. Things that excited me years ago will no longer be of any concern to me. So that's not it. I think that the world will change, and I think that in these open debates, the truth will eventually win out. This is more than anything my faith: that given an even chance, the truth will win. If the evolutionary story is the truth, it will eventually win out as its partisans have been predicting that it would all along. It will hold not merely the societies of experts, but it will convince the public. I think that the reason it hasn't been able to convince the public is that it's not the truth. The public will gradually come to understand things better and better. The educational process will get better. We'll start with the truth, and the truth will prevail, whatever it is. And what is your view of the truth? My view of the truth is that there is a creator. I don't know how long the creator took, but I think there was a process of creation, and the evolution that has occurred has occurred within the boundaries originally set. That would be my belief as of now. I tend to think that that will prevail, because I think it's the truth. But if it's not the truth, it won't prevail, and it shouldn't. ORIGINAL ARTICLE - PBS.ORG - DEFENDING INTELLIGENT DESIGN Read the full article

[isabellehemlock]

5 things I never tire of writing

I was tagged by the kind @boutiquetraveltravelboutique to share some themes I've noticed over the last two years, across one million words lol, thank you!

1. Porn with feelings

I'm a sex positive ace who didn't even know the term "asexual" until my mid 20s, and so I take that writing advice of "write what you would have loved to have read as a teen" to heart when it comes to a lot of my PWF. I'd elaborate further privately lol, but it feels far too exposing (and I consider myself a fairly open book in some ways lol) to explain on a public blog 😅 But yeah, it's a big theme I've written a lot of!

2. Trauma

Well without going into details, I'm very invested in stories that involve healing and communication and advocating etc etc etc. It once again goes to that writing advice from above, but also just healing for me personally to navigate fictional stories in safe spaces that discuss particular kinds of abuse but also grief and loss taking steps along that healing journey ~ some of the most meaningful comments I've received are ones from readers who felt seen, or heard, and a few even shared how some have helped their own grieving process. I felt very humbled reading those 🥲

3. Dialogue

I'm a words of affirmations gal ~ and I will genuinely write out all the dialogue before I start the chapter lol. It's like, for me, the dialogue is the most important and that's where I pour most of the initial energy into to capture the vibes - and then I write the words/scenes around it. I do have a few where the dialogue might not be a lot of lines in comparison to the rest of the structured fic, but even then, I strive for the importance of the line to be built up on by the descriptions before it - not the other way around. Words, lovely words, I'll never have enough of people communicating 💕

4. Religion

My faith is important to me, my number one - and yet, having experienced spiritual abuse myself, and not being heteronormartive, I would never pretend there aren't valid critiques to organized religion. So I understand why some people might be confused why I would invest so much into it, but my relationship with my God is a personal one that I like to explore through characters in the content I create. To write or draw fellow interfaith queer characters (while acknowledging my takes are self indulgent fanon and no other takes - including a character hating all things religious - are any less valid!) but for me personally? It's that representation that speaks to me on a personal level and I enjoy getting to make self indulgent pieces for a niche group of readers/friends (y'all know who you are). One of the most meaningful gifts I've ever received was a commissioned piece of art that is my tumblr header (Joe x Nicky praying together) when im not using seasonal ones, I cried and cried when I was given it. It really means that much to me 💗

5. Crack

Now for whiplash time. Considering I mostly write about heavy subject matters, I don't think it's all that surprising I would want to lean on a sort of play therapy lol. Ridiculous stories that only a handful of people would ever enjoy and that's alright, I enjoy it enough for everyone lol! But yeah, from quackverse to catbois to sarcastic precanon takes, I love to laugh and I'll happily share with whoever might like to join in 😅

Tagging:

@ongreenergrasses @energievie @werebearbearbar @sheafrotherdon @mekana47

#five things i never tire of writing #tag game #thank you Sarah!

[cactus-chowder]

[Spoiler warning for The Good Place + death tw, religion tw]

This is a garden variety set of critiques, not an argument that the show is ‘bad’ in a black-and-white way. I really like the show. But there were some things that bothered me about the ending of The Good Place. 

First of all, in my view, a story that has an afterlife firmly established in its worldbuilding is different from a story that has death-as-simply-non-existence firmly established in its worldbuilding. It’s different in the same way that a story about a fantasy world is different from a story where ‘it was all just a dream.’ I’ve seen it argued that the ‘it was all just a dream’ surprise ending essentially rejects the idea that a fantasy world could be meaningful. As if the writer had thankfully just rescued the story from a trivial fate, with reality to finally point to as the rational explanation. The one isn’t different from the other like an apple is different from an orange, the other is a kind of anti-apple; it’s different, and oh by the way, an apple just wouldn’t have been all that serious, if you think about it. Cementing death as non-existence is a fine way to run a fictional world. It’s a perfectly reasonable belief to have about the real world, and stories told from that perspective are valuable. But committing to telling a story about an afterlife, only to suddenly end on the note that an afterlife clearly couldn’t be the best and deepest answer to what happens after death, feels dishonest, in a Lord of the Rings becomes Alice in Wonderland kind of way. It’s a fair point that they didn’t have the entire thing planned out in cement from day one, but it would have been much more effective if they’d casually alluded to the possibility of a ‘true death’ now and then throughout the series before the ending. That way, introducing ‘true death’ at the end doesn’t change the landscape of the story & give a polite little eye roll towards anyone who took the first part at face value.

A bigger issue I had is that the plotline where ‘true death’ is introduced, where the characters prove that endless pleasure becomes unfulfilling, seemed like a premature ‘gotcha!’ to make, and a bit in bad taste. The show’s heaven/hell, reward/punishment structure has obvious parallels to the heaven/hell, reward/punishment structure in Christianity, so it becomes a commentary about Christianity in some ways (limited ways, to be fair, as the afterlife in the show is solidly non-religious). And in my view, it falls flat to try and cheekily debunk the usefulness of the Christian heaven with an endless pleasure argument, because of who the Christian heaven is ‘for.’ 

Jesus was very intentional about centering the weak/the poor/the humble/the downtrodden/the outcasts/etc. in his efforts. He famously told a wealthy audience that it would be easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get to heaven. The image of heaven as a boundless safe refuge is a message crafted lovingly in a way that centers people truly going through the worst of the worst; the stories about heaven even come from a time without modern medicine or other conveniences and safeguards. Where The Good Place presents an academic/intellectual as the face of afterlife worthiness, through Hypatia’s character, the Christian heaven’s truest purpose is essentially to finally bring peace, safety, dignity, and worthiness to people who slip through the cracks on earth. 

It’s observably true that having fun for some time is... fun... but having fun for too much time is... repetitive!! Like, we KNOW that! It’s a nice ‘gotcha’ for a debate between atheism/agnosticism vs. Christianity as a pervasive culture engine groupthink backed by power structures (created to sell you more Christmas!). But when you look at Christianity as a sincere religion, heaven was never about giving middle class people and rich people a tiger on a gold leash, and everything else Lorde was singing about in Royals. Remarkably, Jason comes from the poorest social class, he’s the one who’s seen the most scarcity, and he’s the one who gets to heaven and immediately knows what it’s for. He’s getting excited about racing monkeys on go-karts while the others are coolly looking around and figuring out how they’re going to intellectualize this new environment. They’ve never been poor, and they don’t understand just what kind of gift they’ve been given. This pattern comes out organically in a story that’s actively preparing to debunk heaven. 

Maybe it’s true that, like Jason, a poor person who finally got to heaven might technically eventually tire of paradise. But from our perspective on earth, we can’t prove whether heaven is there or not. The most that heaven can be to an alive person is a comforting story that could help someone who is truly suffering in deep ways. In that context, insisting that pleasure technically, eventually stops being fun is really just kind of rude. It’s wonderful to tell a glowing story about atheism/agnosticism, and it’s timely and needed to push back against Christianity as the oppressive modern culture engine. But this particular aspect of the story seems to go too far, seems to reach into something pure and good and powerful about the actual spiritual substance of a religion and try to ‘gotcha!’ its relevance away. The point about athiest-leaning people feeling trapped in compulsory heaven is valid enough, but it would have been more thoughtful to address the ‘true death’ door as a comfort for the subset of people who don’t do well with heaven, not as a necessary solution to a doomed reality.

Finally, it unsettled me that characters would essentially use the ‘true death’ door once they’d accomplished goals or started to get bored. Tahani was about to use the door when she found a new career and got distracted, and she was shown as thriving in that career later on, with no sense of being kept from an important cosmic destiny. And Eleanor didn’t seem to have matured to her fullest potential or anything like that, she mostly just seemed lonely without Chidi. I understand that infinity is going to mix up up old intuitions, but it still didn’t sit right to see characters consider abandoning life itself because they’d run out of things to do, and to have the show portray it as a wise, healthy, and satisfying end to their stories. 

Rather than a comforting and satisfying ending, I saw an ending where the characters, who had their struggles but were not deeply wounded outcasts, found themselves in heaven and did what the camel could not - they passed right through. 

It’s given me a lot to think about for my theology, but it was kind of a downer for my tv watching.

#this has been living in my brain for a while; it's words now

[scienceblogtumbler]

Science Book Roundup, Social Distancing Edition

When I posted my last science book roundup, few of us knew what was about to come. We had heard about a novel coronavirus and an outbreak of a new disease called COVID-19 in China, but only those well-versed in epidemiology or the history of previous pandemics expected to see so much of the economy shut down as we practice a previously unknown form of interaction called social distancing. Perhaps as a result, I have only heard from a handful of publicists with requests for reviews, and I offer four of them for my readers’ consideration. They have a common thread, namely that they deal with organisms, human, terrestrial, and otherwise.

We will get to those books shortly, but first “a word from our sponsor.” My usual caveat: For my Roundups, I don’t read all of the books in detail, but they are published by reputable publishers and written by credible authors. I browse them enough to recommend who might want to pick them up from a library or bookstore shelf.

My usual request: Because freelance book review opportunities have almost disappeared, I now rely on Amazon referral fees to cover the cost of maintaining my online presence. If you are inclined to buy any of these books from Amazon, please use the links here so I can get a small referral fee. Another way to thank me is to click my portal to Amazon for whatever shopping you plan to do. I get reports of what people buy but not who is buying, so I will not be able to say thanks. But please know that I am grateful.

Did you catch that “otherwise” in the opening paragraph? If you know my science books for young readers, then you probably are aware of my strong interest in planetary science, including Astrobiology, the science of life on other worlds. Astrobiology takes many forms, but probably the one that generates most interest among general readers is SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In a galaxy as vast as our Milky Way, it seems highly unlikely that Earth is the only planet on which intelligent beings, capable of sending signals outside of their world, have evolved. And if that is the case, why have we never detected a signal from any one of them?

The short answer seems to be that with hundreds of billions of stars to choose from, we simply have not sampled enough to find any of a handful of needle-in-a-haystack worlds. Perhaps, some SETI researchers suggest, we should deliberately send out a message and see if anyone answers. That is the starting point for British author Keith Cooper in

The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The back cover describes the book this way: “(T)he act of transmitting raises troubling questions about the process of contact…. Cooper looks at how far SETI has come since its modest beginnings by speaking to the leading names in the field and beyond. SETI forces us to confront our nature in a way that we seldom have before–where did we come from, where are we going, and who are we in the cosmic context of things? The book considers the assumptions that we make in our search for extraterrestrial life, and explains how those assumptions can teach us about ourselves.”

Moving from the far reaches of the galaxy to the innermost element of human life, University of Cambridge and Caltech biology and bioengineering professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz joins noted British science writer Roger Highfield to explore

The Dance of Life: The New Science of How A Single Cell Becomes a Human Being.

The publisher describes the book as “A renowned biologist’s cutting-edge and unconventional examination of human reproduction and embryo research.” It also includes an account of Zernicka-Goetz’s own pregnancy, in which a sample test of placental cells showed a possible genetic abnormality. She continued the pregnancy to term and delivered a perfectly healthy baby boy. The experience led her research in a different direction, including an understanding of the ways embryos can, in some cases, repair their own defects, which could revolutionize our understanding of pregnancy and give new promise to in vitro fertilization.

The publicity copy notes the following: “Scientists have long struggled to make pregnancy easier, safer, and more successful. In The Dance of Life, developmental and stem-cell biologist Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz takes us to the front lines of efforts to understand the creation of a human life. She has spent two decades unraveling the mysteries of development, as a simple fertilized egg becomes a complex human being of forty trillion cells. Zernicka-Goetz’s work is both incredibly practical and astonishingly vast: her groundbreaking experiments with mouse, human, and artificial embryo models give hope to how more women can sustain viable pregnancies. Set at the intersection of science’s greatest powers and humanity’s greatest concern, The Dance of Life is a revelatory account of the future of fertility–and life itself.”

In a different look at human evolution, British science writer and broadcaster Gaia Vince goes beyond biology to other forces that drove our development to become the dominant species on Earth. It is not merely evolution, but

Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time. The dust jacket copy describes what sets this book apart: “Although prevailing theory holds that a recent cognitive revolution transformed humans, Vince argues that we are the product of a unique coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture. Beginning hundreds of thousands of years ago, with four key drivers–fire, language, beauty, and time–it set our species on a new path, unleashing a compounding process that propelled us from the Stone Age to the Space Age and continues to transform us today. Provocative and poetic,… it asks: Now that we have remade our world, what are we doing to ourselves?”

The final book in our roundup is certainly the most unusual. The paperback original

The Gyroscope of Life: Understanding Balances (and Imbalances) in Nature by David Parrish, an Appalachian naturalist and 50-year practitioner. The back cover notes call it “A love song to the field of biology [that] will stretch the minds of readers–scientists and nonscientists alike.”

Its main theme is this: “Culturally, we tend to simplify challenging concepts by thinking of them as binary systems: life/death, female/male. But what if these concepts are more complex than mere opposites…. While sharing his personal experiences with religion, science, battling illness, and more, Parrish explores a series of unconventional topics such as a biologists credo, Mother Nature’s House Rules, the foolishness of conflicts between science and religion, ritualistic funerary cannibalism, a biological critique of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ theme song, pseudo-copulation of insects with flowers, and the Faustian bargain that agriculture and plant domestication represent.”

If you think that describes a bit of a hodge-podge, you are probably right. That doesn’t make it a bad book, but you need to be the right kind of reader to enjoy it. The sections I sampled seemed disjointed with interesting tidbits scattered throughout. Are all those diversions necessary? If you are the type of reader who enjoys discovering information that way, then this is a book for you. Just be prepared to be jolted by “too much information” at times, such as the author’s choice to open the chapter called “Male or Female?” by describing himself as “castrate” (for valid medical readers). For me, it seemed to distract rather than inform or serve as a thread to tie up the chapter. You may respond differently, or as some people say, your mileage may vary.

I’ll close with a wish for your good health as we all face a historic pandemic. I can’t predict when I will have another roundup to offer. If I’m lucky, some publicists will return to their offices, read this blog, and decide to offer me science books to share with you in the next few months.

Blogger and reviewer Fred Bortz is the author of numerous science books for young readers.

A request from the blogger: Please let me know you appreciated this posting by adding a comment or sending an email with your thoughts to [email protected] . Many thanks!

source https://fredbortz.scienceblog.com/35430/science-book-roundup-social-distancing-edition/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=science-book-roundup-social-distancing-edition

[nobantucelemyot]

My positionality as a black occupational therapy student in  the provision of equity-focused community interventions.

We can all attest to having intimate knowledge of  positions of inequality  in  society.  I believe positionality has an influence in our opportunities for equal  education, job availability and equal share of treatment. My understanding of positionality is that it is  an individual’s particular position in relation to other people, with issues such as  culture ,ethnicity, gender , or education . In providing interventions for my client it was crucial for me to understand their positionality, but not only for intervention purposes , it also allowed me to relate and empathize with their situations.   There are various factors that define my positionality. The society I was raised in , religion, beliefs , norms and values that I accepted, race, language , educational background and the fieldwork experience gained have a certain unique shape to my behavior and perception that guides my personality and how I see the world.

It was the circumstances at home that made me understand that education  is one of the important aspects for a successful life and a way for me to get opportunities . I  was raised in a township my whole life. My parents separated when I was very young and I grew up knowing both families,  but my mother’s family have always been more caring and involved.  I am my mother’s oldest child and the only child my father has. I  grew up in a low-class family , raised mostly by my grandmother as my mother left home to look for  work in Johannesburg. She did not obtain her grade 12 qualifications and it had been years since she last went to school. However, she returned home to live with us after I started high school. For years, it was a struggle for my grandmother who was now the family  breadwinner and could only support the family with her pension money.  Among other things , realizing the struggle for needs and wants at home made me to value education. These different factors in my life have also allowed me to have personal expectations , including personal standards and beliefs about my career and life.

Working in a community setting has allowed me to identify various challenges faced by people to access health services. People with disability  may be the most  in need of additional health care and the least able to get it (Maart &Jelsma, 2014). It was important to consider the context , conditions faced by the people when providing treatment or when planning further treatment for the clients. One of my clients who is an amputee and uses crutches to mobilize ,lives far from the clinic  and mentioned that he has move up and down a steep mountain for him to get to the clinic and return home. He expressed his concerns with coming to the clinic for our treatment sessions and seemed distressed by his current living condition. He is unemployed,  lives alone and has no other means of getting to the clinic, he can only use his crutches to travel to the clinic.  As an occupational therapy student who has been working at the community for more than 2 weeks and  have observed all the challenges faced by community members, I empathized with him and immediately had to make a  plan that suites his situation.  I  spoke with the community caregivers to accompany me to his house for our next session,   in  that way he can receive treatment at the comfort of his own home. For this case, understanding his positionality was  important  as it allowed me critique the situation , understand his needs and  make appropriate plans for him based on those needs.

McNeil (1997) states that depending on their specific needs associated with their impairments and functional limitations, people with disabilities often bear financial burdens far beyond those of people without disabilities. We met one of the young community members with a  physical and mental disability. He has been coming at the clinic and he captured our attention. It has been at least 2 weeks since we began working with him and teaching him self-care skills such as bathing, tooth-brushing and dressing. He usually arrives at the clinic with dirty  or  ripped clothes,  and as his disability is manifested by drooling, therefore, his shirts are always wet. By collaborating with other community members , we have only managed  to obtain little information regarding this client as he has not yet been able to show us his home as he lives too far. Hence,  we have not been in contact with his family. However, we have made arrangements to accompany him home next week with transport to inform the family of our interventions with him. The little information we received from collaborating with other community members suggested that this client is only  sent to boarding school when his mother or grandmother manages to pay for his fees. My understanding is that the client’s  disability grant is probably used to support the family. It was crucial for us understand this client’s positionality as it encouraged us to work with him despite not having contact with his family. We were hoping that the family would  notice the changes in his self-care. Understanding his positionality allowed us to help  him to learn to be independent and not be a burden to his family while is not at school.

Working in a community setting has  increased my understanding of  the experiences of  local people who speak a different language.  I cannot lie, I am grateful to be currently working in a community where the majority of the people that come to the clinic speak IsiZulu. However, I noticed how the other population of community members who speak other languages and only know  so little of English suffer. I saw one client today who  could only manage to speak Sesotho and did not understand English. Although pictures assisted me, it was very challenging to explain concepts to her  or to explain my profession without using English or my own home language. I was able to conclude that the clinic does not include  people of all ethnic groups and something  should be done to accommodate these people . We as health professionals at the clinic are not inclusive of people who speak other languages apart from isiZulu, isiXhosa and English. Understanding the client’s positionality was essential as it forced me to make adaptations  such as showing the client pictures to make her understand, pointing to objects and even using google translate. It was my understanding that it is not the client’s fault, it is not her fault  that she speaks a different language.

. (https://priyanshubhatia.wordpress.com/author/bhatiapriyanshu/, 2020)

I believe we can do more as occupational therapists working in less resourced communities. Working in communities has assisted me with understanding how knowledge and skills perceived can be used uniquely to less resourced communities such as the one we are currently providing occupational therapy services to. I had to  learn about different strategies used in community practice to overcome challenges such as the cases mentioned above. These also include stretching our role and gaining  partnerships . As means to overcome resource shortage, we as occupational therapists can be involved with organizations and find ways to get donations to assist and empower the community. Networking  and collaboration with other  professionals is also  observed as essential to maintaining competency, discussing with the nurses, audiologists and optometrists at the clinic to further improve the client’s health. We have started some programmes to help the people in the community. These include visiting nearest creches , most of the creches at this community are illegal and therefore, the teachers have little knowledge about child development. We visit the schools to help teachers  learn about child development, ways to stimulate cognitive, gross and fine motor skills. Another programme which understands the positionality of the mothers in  community is the support group for mothers and babies where the mothers are also taught various affordable ways to promote child development.

(https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/children/index.htm, 2020)

Some programme  include visiting local primary schools and high school, as the community was reported to have a high prevalence of substance abuse by youth. Home visits by occupational therapy students have also been observed as beneficial to the community, especially for clients who face challenges with coming to the clinic.

Working in community has been a powerful way for me  to obtain valid representations of people and  their activities in real space. I have comprehended that people come with unique problems which in return will require unique solutions.  In Occupational therapy ,considering the client’s positionality can be a critical element in determining their treatment. The cases mentioned above clearly showed how their  positionality influenced what needed to be done to help solve their problems. Of course , I understand that more could be done to help the people in the cases mentioned above but I am glad to have learned something from the experiences  I had with them. I believe there will be changes made to accommodate other language speakers at the clinic. We as the occupational therapy students at the clinic will start by making printouts, information sheets, instructions for other languages , especially for known clients who speak other languages.

References

Maart, S., & Jelsma, J. (2014). Disability and access to health care–a community based descriptive study. Disability and rehabilitation, 36(18), 1489-1493.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09638288.2013.807883

McNeil, J. M. (1997). Americans with Disabilities: 1994-95. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, P7 70-61. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce.

https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/jrlsasw28&div=12&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals

child development. (2020). [image] Available at: https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/children/index.htm (2020). [image]. [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].

https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/children/index.htm

https://priyanshubhatia.wordpress.com/author/bhatiapriyanshu/ (2020). problems in communication caused by language. [image] Available at: https://priyanshubhatia.wordpress.com/author/bhatiapriyanshu/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].

https://www.google.com/search?q=language+problem+in+communication&sxsrf=ALeKk0204XHndUSQW3oSeliIpHMyBB4cDA:1583540151349&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi1rdXhiofoAhVuyoUKHXhUCJAQ_AUoAXoECA0QAw&biw=1093&bih=526#imgrc=c4xSXiquR6JN3M

[beautifuljellyfishnightmare]

Get Yer Mojo! Live! From #Vancouver-3 Chords & The Truth!-Live Performan.. What IS, The meaning of Life?  Is there, a Secret to Happiness?  Is there, a formula for Health & Well Being?     Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky The News!  Wake up Einstein, Freud and Jung!   Reveille Socrates, Plato and Nietzsche!  It’s A Brand New Day and the score is one nothin’ for the Hllbillys!       Ladies and Gentlemen  the best of our knowledge the information available at Griffinheart @ Patreon  constitutes the essential answers to those questions that until now have been termed and considered UNANSWERABLES by Mankind!       Now, and until proven otherwise by Scientific Facts our conclusions  stand!  Our Lab here at Griffinheart @ Patreon is the opportunity for any and all to dispute, critique, attempt to disprove and or fail as validation and proof of the truth and reality of this work!                                Cutting Edge Behavioral Science!  Health - Achievement - Psychology of Health & Happiness !Griffinheart @ Patreon COUNSELOR TRAINING & PSYCH LAB This is Evolution Based Examined Life Therapy and a central theme is the obsession our whole brain has with evolving.  Once that is understood, many will be asking the rather obvious next question.  The answer to this question,  “Why are our brains so obsessed with evolving?” is answered in the realm of the Enlightened Spiritual Experience which spawns our Religions and appears to be the epitome of the Human Brain’s ability to Know and Perceive reality and the  world and is a subject worthy of its own consideration and is not at present, beyond this statement, part of this Counselor Training Course for Evolution Based Examined Life Therapy and its Shitogether Checklist!  But we are certain this subject is bound to be addressed often and in depth at Griffinheart @ Patreon!     Evolution Based Examined Life TherapyThe Greek  Physician, Philosopher and Scientist Galen of Pergamon 129-200 AD established our species Homo Sapien as a member of the Primate Family and the entire Scientific community is in agreement on this.       Sir Charles Darwin 1802-1889 and others established The Theory of The Natural Selection of Species which led to the commonly termed Theory Of Evolution In All Living Things which the Scientific Community is also fully in agreement on.     In the modern world, no one questions the fact that the Central Nervous System commanded by the brain is the organ responsible for our thoughts, actions, primal motivations etc. most of which we are not even conscious of and such is  the impetus of our lives and existence.         If you are also in agreement with Science on these facts then the notion that our brain is seriously involved in our evolution should be an extremely reasonable deduction if not a foregone conclusion.     These facts on their own are solid rationale and backup for the information and training that follows.  But, in the process that led to these discoveries and developments this line of logic was actually an end event and conclusion as our discovery came from observing the Brain’s Applied Functions like  playing games, solving puzzles and telling stories about its obsession with EVOLUTION.     What we discovered was, our whole brain, which we,  our objective selves,  normally only have in the order of 5% consciousness of, is obsessed with EVOLUTION or Evolving!       Your Whole Brain is Demanding natural and expedient Evolution!  It is demanding, that we both Personally and Socially EVOLVE and that it is your job or the job of our objective selves to cooperate with this which is the Brain’s primal intent and impetus!          Evolution BasedExamined Life Therapy &       Counselor Training 

 A Natural Law Of Science, “The Law Of The Evolution In Man”,  states that the impetus and overall core motivation and nature of the Human Brain is to Evolve or Evolution inclusive and insured by  Survival and procreation! The Theory of Evolution In Applied Brain FunctionStates:  The Brain’s intent, motivation and impetus is to EVOLVE!   The Brain  and has Environmental or Working Condition Demands which it needs for expedience in the process of its Evolution.  It communicates these demands and monitors and reports to you via Brain Chemistry.  Good cooperators receive “feel good be healthy”  Neurochemistry and poor cooperators get “feel bad get sick” neurochemistry.     Your whole Brain communicates to you regarding you are doing to   cooperate with it and its objective of Evolution.  It communicates your report card on this cooperation via BRAIN CHEMISTRY!       If you are doing a good job in cooperating and are providing the  conditions your brain is demanding or even if you are genuinely attempting to provide these working conditions your brain will communicate its approval to  you with the chemistry which creates Health, Happiness, Well Being and Satisfaction.       Most people nowadays are familiar with the names of these Neurochemicals  like Dopamine, Endorphins, Oxytocin and Serotonin.        If you are not providing or at least making your best effort to cooperate and provide these working conditions your brain restricts this Chemistry of Health and Happiness!  That is your Report Card regarding your ability to cooperate with your WHOLE BRAIN!  That is your whole brain communicating to you that you are not cooperating well and you can expect and will be experiencing levels of Illness, Mental Illness and Disease commensurate with your ability or inability to cooperate with your whole brain in providing these Conditions its expedient Evolution!  Capisce?      These areas of life that your brain is demanding for its growth, development and thus evolution is what our “Evolution Based Examined Life Therapy” and our “Shitogether Checklist” is all about and is what constitutes the substance of this Counselor Training along with whatever degree of participation in the Lab you care to partake in!       Also you are able to communicate and ask any and all questions of the author or any member of The Griffinheart Project regarding this work or anything in our shows or songs etc.  Joe Griffin is an Artist, Songwriter, Scientist,  Entrepreneur and Businessman that in his youth founded and developed Businesses to 9 figures and has subsequently spent decades studying Human Behavior, Mental Illness, Health and Fitness, which has led to these discoveries and the development of Evolution Based Examined Life Therapy and this Evolution Revolution!  He now lives a semi hermetic existence in White Rock B.C. and manages and produces The Griffinheart Project writing, performing and producing Songs, Recordings, TV, Radio, Podcasts and Written Works.             Continued:  Griffinheart @ Patreon.

[automatismoateo]

The "Islamic" golden age in arabia was filled with prominent anti-religious thinkers via /r/atheism

Submitted January 26, 2019 at 02:55PM by bcat124 (Via reddit http://bit.ly/2Ti0Ybw) The "Islamic" golden age in arabia was filled with prominent anti-religious thinkers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

-Ibn al-Rawandi

Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn al-Rawandi , commonly known as Ibn al-Rawandi (827-911 CE), was an early skeptic of Islam and a critic of religion in general. In his early days, he was a Mu'tazilite scholar, but after rejecting the Mu'tazilite doctrine, he became a freethinker who repudiated Islam and revealed religion.

Ibn al-Rawandi also points out specific Muslim traditions, and tries to show that they are laughable. The tradition that the angels rallied round to help Muhammad is not logical, because it implies that the angels of Badr were weaklings, able to kill only seventy of the Prophet's enemies. And if the angels were willing to help Muhammad at Badr, where were they at Uhud, when their help was so badly needed?

-Abu Isa al-Warraq

Abu 'Isa al-Warraq, full name Abu 'Isa Muhammad ibn Harun al-Warraq (889 — 24 June 994), was a 9th-century Arab skeptic scholar and critic of Islam and religion in general. Al-Warraq was skeptical of the existence of God because "He who orders his slave to do things that he knows him to be incapable of doing, then punishes him, is a fool".

Al-Warraq challenged the notion of revealed religion. He argued that if humans are capable of figuring out that, for instance, it is good to be forgiving, then a prophet is unnecessary, and that we should not heed the claims of self-appointed prophets, if what is claimed is found to be contrary to good sense and reason. Al-Warraq admired the intellect not for its capacity to submit to a god, but rather for its inquisitiveness towards the wonders of science. He explained that people developed the science of astronomy by gazing at the sky, and that no prophet was necessary to show them how to gaze; he also said that no prophets were needed to show them how to make flutes, either, or how to play them.

Al-Warraq also doubted claims portraying Muhammad as a prophet: That Muhammad could predict certain events does not prove that he was a prophet: he may have been able to guess successfully, but this does not mean that he had real knowledge of the future. And certainly the fact that he was able to recount events from the past does not prove that he was a prophet, because he could have read about those events in the Bible and, if he was illiterate, he could still have had the Old Testament read to him.

-Al-Ma e arri

Abu al:Ala' al-Ma'arri (December 973 — May 1057) was a blind Arab philosopher, poet, and writer. Al-Mairri held and expressed an irreligious worldview which was met with controversy, but in spite of it, he is regarded as one of the greatest classical Arabic poets. Opposition to religion Al-Mairri was a sceptic in his beliefs who denounced superstition and dogmatism in religion. This, along with his general negative view on life, has made him described as a pessimistic freethinker. One of the recurring themes of his philosophy was the right of reason against the claims of custom, tradition, and authority. Al-Ma'arri taught that religion was a "fable invented by the ancients", worthless except for those who exploit the credulous masses.

Do not suppose the statements of the prophets to be true; they are all fabrications. Men lived comfortably till they came and spoiled life. The sacred books are only such a set of idle tales as any age could have and indeed did actually produce.

Al-Mairri criticized many of the dogmas of Islam, such as the Hajj, which he called "a pagan's journey".He rejected claims of any divine revelation and his creed was that of a philosopher and ascetic, for whom reason provides a moral guide, and virtue is its own reward. His religious scepticism and positively antireligious views extended beyond Islam and included both Judaism and Christianity, as well. Al-Ma'arri remarked that monks in their cloisters or devotees in their mosques were blindly following the beliefs of their locality: if they were born among Magians or Sabians they would have become Magians or Sabians. Encapsulating his view on organized religion, he once stated: "The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains." " (what a fucking legend)

-Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi

Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyyd al-Razi ( 854-925 CE), was a Persian polymath, physician, alchemist, philosopher, and important figure in the history of medicine. He also wrote on logic, astronomy and grammar Razi denied the validity of prophecy or other authority figures, and rejected prophetic miracles. He also directed a scathing critique on revealed religions and the miraculous quality of the Quran. Because of being seemingly unrestrained by any religious or philosophical tradition, Razi came to be admired as a freethinker by some.

#reddit