But, if life ends at the grave, it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. As the Russian writer Feodor Dostoevsky rightly said: “If if there is immortality, then all things are permitted.” Given the finality of death, it really does not matter how you live.

William Lane Craig, of course, repeats an oft misquoted passage from The Brother Karamazov and for a professional philosopher, as he routinely claims to be, one would think he’d know better; likewise, there’s something about Mr. Craig’s suggestion that ‘professional’ legitimatizes ‘philosopher’ that leads me to believe that he shouldn’t be the former and isn’t the latter. It’s difficult to attribute an author the philosophical views of the characters he creates, but Mr. Craig probably depends less on the person of Dostoevsky than the content of the sentence, the philosophy itself. Ivan Karamazov was certainly concerned with the implications of immortality of the soul, both as a matter of metaphysics and as a matter of belief, as Constance Garnett’s translation suggests: “If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover,” Karamazov continues, “Nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. [...] For every individual [...] who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognised as the inevitable, the most rational, even honourable outcome of his position.” For the sake of drawing the distinction, if Karamozov, in this passage, is concerned with belief in existence of God or the non-existence of God as the cause of moral actions, then we can allay his concerns with empirical certainty: atheism does not cause immorality. But, this concern about the belief in God suggests to me that Karamazov might imagine that there would be no difference between believing in God in a universe in which God happens to exist or believing in that same God as matter of actual fiction; in either universe, whether there is actually a God, belief in God is what actually fosters moral behavior, which I don’t think is Mr. Craig’s contention, nor would it stand to evidence. Rather, I think Mr. Craig and those others who misuse this quote from Dostoevsky are suggesting that, considering those two universes, the universe without a God may contain moral actions, but those moral actions are arbitrary and meaningless and the people in that universe without a God might just as well go around killing each other – it doesn’t really matter. I’ve never entirely understood this argument beyond reading it as a brute assertion; it seems like the meaningless of moral actions in a universe without a God in part stems from the fact that moral laws would then simply be contrived through the power of the few or the many, but also from the fact that any sort of consequence we might experience can be escaped through death into annihilation. I’m not sure why agreed upon rules are meaningless and, more importantly, I’m not sure why Karamazov, and Craig, I would imagine, would suppose that people, left to our own devices without God to give us rules and reward us eternally for following them or breaking the slightest among them, would descend into cannibalism and then what… dogs and cats living together.

I mean: why wouldn’t we descend into socialized medicine? Or greater funding for the arts?

Fundamentally, I think this contest doesn’t comes down God; it comes down to people. To my mind, we can gain some insight from two of the greatest and most important thinkers of the late twentieth century and their frequent discussions on God, mortality, and consequence.

I enjoy this particular moment between Calvin and Hobbes – it captures Hobbes’ cynicism and Calvin nicely illustrates that whether our lives have consequence in the afterlife or whether live is ultimately inconsequential, with the right attitude, both could be a bad thing. Calvin raises an important point and that is the question of attitude because many of the claims which will fundamentally justify the argument behind Mr. Craig’s quoting of Dostoevsky – the theistic depiction of atheism as inept when it comes to moral questions – are ultimately rooted in broad, emotional matters that are not easily answered.

To a certain extent, I think literature engages the question of life with or with eternal consequences by testing narration in worlds without any consequences. The question of whether society could survive if there were no real authorities to punish is very much at the heart of Lord of the Flies by William Golding. We all remember the story from high school, but for the sake of orienting us all: a plane full of children crash on an island and before long, they divide into groups and start waring, and in the chaos, some of the children are killed. For our purposes, Lord of the Flies seems to be suggesting that without consequences, society descends into chaos and savagery; Mr. Craig might be tempted to reference Lord of the Flies but that would rather careless for such a professional philosopher, especially because Lord of the Flies also contains a rather strong indictment of religion. Early in the book, the children begin to imagine that the island is inhabited by a beast and they take to hunting the beast, initially, in addition to gathering meat from the wild pigs that live on the island and then instead. Their hunts become ritualized and the ritual soon takes over and becomes more important than the hunt itself; one tempestuous night, while chanting and stomping around a bonfire, the children, in the heat and lust of the hunt, kill one their own. The idea of ritual then approaches religion when the children begin to present offerings to the beast in an attempt to appease it, the most famous being the head of a pig on a stick which adorns the cover of the book. So, to return to the question, William Golding suggests that without eternal consequences, we would descend into chaos, violence, savagery, and religion.

To some extent, I must admit that both Messers Golding and Craig proceed from places of emotion and attitude, so neither convince me; so, to conclude and simply illustrate the point again, I would like turn to yet another example of literature tackling the question of life in a world without consequence.

In Groundhog Day (1993), Phil Connors is geographically trapped in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and temporally trapped in February 2, Groundhog Day, reliving the exact same day over and over again. When Phil realizes that he is not subject to the ordinary rules of moral consequence, he takes advantage of the situation, stealing money, seducing women, driving drunk, and even committing suicide. But, without any reference to eternal consequences and seemingly without purpose, Phil turns instead to self-improvement, reading classical literature and French poetry, learning to play piano, helping others, and finding a place for himself in Punxsutawney. So, to return to the question, Groundhog Day suggests that without eternal consequences, we would descend into art, culture, and kindness.

Sometimes when I discuss morality and God with people, I encounter the idea that without theism to civilize us, whether through the actual metaphysical reality of moral absolutes which we can apprehend through proper use of reason or through the force of deeply believed fictions, man would descend into his baser instincts. Sometimes the evidence of this is children who are not yet civilized and utterly evil – this piece of evidence has always struck me as disturbing since most of the children I’ve met in my life have been rather sweet and gentle. And, to be frank, I see no evidence that our baser instincts are all that bad; if we are a social species, our base instincts must involve supporting one another and thinking about the tribe.

My experience thus far is that a woman invested in astrology – for example – is perfectly capable of using it to inform decisions concerning whether or not she wants to continue speaking to me based on my birthdate. So a tactful modicum of outright lies and grit-toothed hypocricy is required for me to continue in any sort of relationship. Admittedly my last girlfriend went from being Catholic to atheist within a year, although that was probably because I knew I didn’t have to lie in order for her to go out with me.

If a man mentions astrology or another irrational belief, I’m again likely to refrain if this seems to be the course of action most likely to benefit myself. So, the menial lackey I worked with at Vodafone who mentioned God got a whole faceful of rebuttal; the music producer who mentioned astrology got merely a quietly tactful smile. I am not especially altruistic, and my failure to offer intellectual refutation is entirely selfish in nature. Of course, there are or have been people with whom I was happy to argue without fear of losing their respect/ladygap, but generally I play safe.

So my motivation is what best serves me, almost entirely. If I decide not to tangle with someone’s beliefs you can be assured that it’s not out of any kind of respect or desire to leave them in peace.

However, very recently one of my work colleagues mentioned how his tattoo reminded him of his Grandfather and how he’ll “see him again.” I opened my mouth, and then shut it again. The cynical among you might read a selfish urge into this, of course, because trying to convince someone that they’ll never see a dead relative again is a thankless and often messy task. However, what was foremost in my mind was the knowledge that I had to leave this one alone, however much I might want to hack the belief to pieces. Because I knew he cared and he needed his horribly misguided delusion. Could it be that I tasted altruism? A desire to leave someone alone with their comfort? Unthinkable!

Still, I was tempted.

We knew that the project before our President would be uphill and waged with unsensationalized reason against an ideologically entrenched and resentful establishment; our hopes were high and we recognize that it is a bad system that makes bad politics of good policy.

But my patriotism is, for the first time in my adult life, undemure and I continue to see in his gestures and method a character of sincerity and strength to which I aspire.

An early gesture which struck my attention at the time was President Obama’s decision to include on his first international trip as President, a stop in the Islamic nation of Turkey, speaking before the Grand National Assembly in Ankara, April 6, 2009.

We had suspected since the attacks of September 11, 2001 that a quiet racism had intruded into our national discourse, bolstered by fear and theological ideology, and we knew that the mere act of presenting himself to an Islamic nation would carry a symbolism that indeed represented those of us with Muslim friends.

And because we really do desire ‘friendship with all nations,’ as Thomas Jefferson put it, we were pleased to hear our President equivocally honor the Islamic culture and civilization.

“We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country. The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country — I know, because I am one of them.”

For Barack Obama, presenting American friendship and well-wishes to the Turkish people meant exposing himself to certain criticisms, some based on what might become Obama’s shifting of military and diplomatic strategy in the Middle East, but most based on brute racism: a preposterous fear that Barak Obama is secretly a Muslim.

That racism found acute expression on YouTube; recall the speech to the Turkish Grand National Assembly:

“The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country — I know, because I am one of them.”

One YouTuber edited this very sentence as follows:

“The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans [...] I know, because I am one of them.”

Most noted for his plagiarism, Brock Lawley is a suave and vain fundamentalist and his plagiarism, which, while being well documented, persists on his channel, is but one of his behaviors which illustrate what I would call uncomplicated immorality.

We see now his willingness to distort quotations, which is to say, to lie and because the apparent intent of this lie is to portray Obama as a Muslim – as if that were a bad thing – we see now his apparent racism.

The larger problem is always this: according to Christianity, to have faith in God and to love God is to love truth and reason for faith and love impart truth and there can be no genuine conflict between revealed truths and the knowledge of Man; according to Christianity, to fear truth is the very absence of faith and that is the fear which begins in self-loathing and ends chaos and crime.

One image showed a smiling Christ on the cross next to an advert for a brand of “no nails” glue.

Oh come on, that’s funny. Even my Christian friends would find that funny, inappropriate yes but still funny.

In another, Islamic suicide bombers at the gates of paradise are told: ” Stop, stop, we’ve run out of virgins.”

Yup, that’s funny too. Now I have no doubt that some people would find it offensive but I wonder if they have asked themselves why? Is the cartoon incorrect when it equates martyrdom with the Islamic belief of receiving virgins in paradise? Is it offensive because it mocks suicide bombers or because it implies that there is a limited supply of virgins to go around? Or is it offensive because it forces people to take a look at the things they believe from the point of view of those who do not share those beliefs?

A further cartoon showed two Muslims holding a placard demanding equality with the caption: “Not for women or gays, obviously.”

Again this is funny and should only be offensive to those Muslims who agree that equal rights do not apply to women or gays. If you are a Muslim and you think that equal rights should apply to all, well then clearly the cartoon is not aimed at you so why find it offensive?

In fact the only cartoons that come close to being “sexually abusive and sexually unpleasant” are the ones described at the end of the article.

The images shown to the jury included a drawing of the Pope with a condom on his finger, and a picture of a woman kneeling in front of a Catholic priest captioned with a crude pun. In another image sausages were were (sic) labelled as “The Koran”.

That’s it? Seriously I was expected a bit of hardcore Pope porn at the very least. The picture of the Pope with a condom on his finger is offensive, but only because it reminds us of the truly offensive statements made by the pontiff in relation to condoms and the spread of aids. Pointing this out in a satirically way should not be a crime. As for the other two, really? That is what you class as “sexually abusive and sexually unpleasant cartoons“? Honestly my advice to you would be to stay away from some forms of Manga entirely. I don’t even get the sausages one.

But of course no one in this case is truly offended. This is an example of people taking offence because they think they should take offence, that it is the politically correct thing to do. For example:

The leaflets were discovered by Nicky Lees, the airport chaplain, who told the court she felt “deeply offended and insulted” by their contents.

Really? I think you have to be a completely joyless person not to at least crack a smile at some of these cartoons. I’m willing to bet that Nicky did, well at least until she remember that she was meant to be “deeply offended and insulted” by them.

Outlining the case against Mr Taylor, prosecutor Neville Biddle said that he had gone beyond freedom of expression by leaving the “insulting, threatening and abusive” images in a room used for worship.

Honestly, words fail me here.

He said: “Of course people have a right to speak freely and have a right to insult people. It is one of the most important rights we have and it must be jealously guarded.

“But it is a right not without some prescription. Mr Taylor exceeded that right.”

Addressing the jury he continued: “Your decision will not be easy. You are the conscience of society and you must decide what you are prepared to put up with and what goes beyond reasonable bounds. You are twelve tolerant reasonable British people who know what freedom of speech is all about.”

I really hope that the jurors know exactly what freedom of speech is all about. Freedom of speech gives us the right to say unpopular and even offensive things. People do not have the right to NOT be offended even if they think that they do. No one has been harmed here. No one has to show respect to religious beliefs they do not hold, well unless you’re an atheist I guess. But the funny thing is that, as I said before, there is real offense to be had here.

I am offended by the idea of substitutionary atonement for crimes. I find it completely amoral.

I am offended by those who believe that killing those who do not believe as they do will some how gain them great rewards in the after life.

I am offended by those who think that not having a penis or favouring the same sex is a good reason for discrimination.

I am offended when a guy in a dress and a funny hat puts people’s lives at risk by spreading lies about condoms.

I am offended by the blatant hypocrisy surrounded sex in the Catholic Church and the protection of paedophile priests.

I am offended by sausages that…er no…sorry I still really don’t get that one.

So, I’m not making comparisons to Raging Bull (1980) or Taxi Driver (1976). Good movies. But there’s no comparison. It’s not even worth trying and it’s not fair.

Shutter Island (2010) is – and now I regret mentioning Hitchcock – a psychological thriller. But, the experience isn’t thrilling and the psychology isn’t a maze of insanity and delusion that we need to keep us from checking our iPhones for more than two hours. It’s more like a long commute. We know where we’re going; we know how to get there; we don’t really want to go.

The central power of the psychological thriller is that we, as viewers, aren’t afforded with our ordinary omniscience. As we ponder whether the protagonist is actually insane, we realize that we can’t possibly answer the question based purely on the evidence – all the evidence we encounter could be part of the insanity. We have to just endure not knowing and enjoy the complexity of the puzzle. And, ultimately, it all reveals itself and we laugh a little. And, it turns out, we’re not insane.

But, Shuttle Island takes the potency of psychological thriller and forfeits it within about twenty minutes. And, so, without revealing it now – I promise you: you’ll know whether the protagonist is crazy or not pretty quickly. And then, once you’ve figured it out, you can leave the theater.

Leonardo DiCaprio is certainly a fine actor, let me add. I hated him for years. So very cute, adorning the lockers of every teenage girl in my middle school. I suppose I thought of him as competition. But, I suppose I can forgive him. It’s not like the competition was down to him and me.

2/5 stars. Competent acting. But, the rules of the thriller are broken to the point of boredom.

St. Paul creates for us a hierarchy, placing Love famously above hope and faith – not to their exclusion, I should add; it is almost to the near-nihilistic extremes of Ecclesiastes that St. Paul brushes away everything except Love, saying: “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2). The nothingness that St. Paul’s lovelessness becomes is the same ultimate nothingness that Christian apologists see in a universe without God to author the laws of logic and morality – it is a nothingless that contains prophecy, unraveled mysteries, all knowledge, and faith and likewise, a nothingness that might contain all sorts of temporal, finite, agreed upon moral agreements, but it is ultimately nothingness. It is interesting to me that Christian apologists see that nothingness as a fiction, sometimes believed in, but certainly never an actuality since, after all, in their arguments – or, as they would say with prepositional idiosyncrasy – on their arguments, God really did author the rules of logic and morality – there is always somethingness. But, St. Paul seems to think differently of nothingness – it is not an erroneous description of reality, competing with Christianity, but an actual possibility – sometimes, there is really is nothingness and no somethingness – that could consume us if we do not have Love, a nothingness that is not competing with Christianity, but participating within Christianity’s description and escaped by its prescription.

Love, knowledge, and nothingness cannot, I think, be properly considered without some sense of the story told in time; St. Paul depicts Love as a thing he arrived at in the course of his life, approximating the arrival at Love with maturity and adulthood and while he seems to have escaped nothingness, it is interesting that his knowledge has not increased. He comments that he looks through a “glass, darkly,” a phrase which suggests that he does not have the sort of self-knowledge that we would think comes with wisdom or experience or maturity, but that because he has Love, the somethingness that he has become is more than the nothingness that he was, the child that he was, even if he had had all knowledge. In time, St. Paul’s story is one that points from birth towards the future and towards Love and from Love to the eternal – and, although the text does not support it explicitly, I can’t help but image that St. Paul would feel something like shame were he to glance backward into the past and perhaps that is part of the darkness he sees in his own image.

I have mentioned that the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians echoes throughout time and culture, which is to say that countless philosophers and their greater cousins the artists have returned endlessly to the letter, participating in its tradition and continuing that same mediation that St. Paul began; the content of this video began humbly enough with such an artist.

When I was a young boy,
Said put away those young boy ways.
Now that I’m gettin’ older, so much older,
I love all those young boy days.

John Mellencamp. “Hurt So Good.” American Fool.

Humbly, I think, because I freely admit that John Mellencamp is hardly St. John of Mellencamp and while I agree that it is hardly the heart of a serious student of the science of God that extracts its theology from the Midwest, it is a hard heart that cannot; somewhere in me are the theologies of Britney Spears and the Monkees. Certainly, “Hurt So Good” claims its legitimacy not for its introspection, the beauty of its phrasing, or for being an ancient letter to a troubled Christian community, but its legitimacy rather seems to come from its expressionism, in this case, the entire song, I think, expressing moments of midlife and the lust one feels for younger persons. As listeners, we don’t know if these expressions are ever vocalized – maybe their felt but only expressed in art – or whether the effect is its proposition to the young girl; we don’t know whether her sexuality, being “not as green” as she is young, is evident or imagined in the narrator’s mind, and perhaps the narrator enjoys imagining while not really proposing anything. This is not an untypical expression and we find it repeated in countless other songs, but I return in my mind to Mellencamp’s first four lines, which, aside from echoing and contrasting with 1 Corinthians, also begin the expression of the song from a peculiar place of introspection; it is as if this little expression, a moment in bar somewhere, is only part of a large meditation on a story told in time.

Mellencamp’s story begins in boyhood or with sexual awakening – childhood being a sort of pre-life, I would imagine – and points forward in time towards a parting of sexual lust, which remains constant, and sexual opportunity, which seems to diminish. In one sense, therefore, Mellencamp’s story is dismal and one sees an inevitable torture, a life which by its nature grants us a desire for the very thing that it slowly denies us, this being a pointing forward in time, but, I think, in another sense, shifts the focus from this forward-pointing to a backward-pointing, reversing time, in a certain sense. Backward-pointing, backward-looking, Mellencamp seems entirely aware that the truth of the lust, the fact and knowledge of the lust that he feels is in the past, but in loving those “young boy days,” he seems to disturb the pessimism of aging, the mathematics of diminishing sexual opportunity – the Love for that which isn’t but was but could be is greater than the thing itself.

In a sense, Mellencamp doesn’t see more than St. Paul does in the glass, but certainly, what he sees, he doesn’t see darkly – at the same time, Mellencamp doesn’t, I think, challenge the underlying relationship between Love and nothingness. Mellencamp, like St. Paul, certainly seems aware of the fate of Lovelessness, St. Paul calling it “nothing,” Mellencamp, while not mentioning it, suggesting loneliness, and Mellencamp, like St. Paul, certainly seems aware that the antidote to nothingness is Love; they only disagree in that St. Paul’s Love is predicated upon a poor view of the past, where as Mellencamp’s Love is predicated upon the past itself. Interestingly, both are also convinced that the future is potentially good.

For my part, that my past remains with me, like the promise of the future, is a blessing, and my many missteps and the newness that I wish I could inhabit again encircle and enlightens my heart.

For those of you who don’t know, and I didn’t, Geert Wilders is the leader of the Party for Freedom, Holland’s fastest-growing political party that in just a few years has gone from having a single MP to the largest number of seats of any party in Holland. The party seeks to bring an end to the era of mass immigration, an end to cultural relativism, and an end to what they perceive as the suborning of European values to Islamic ones. Whatever you think of his politics, and I am not sure I agree with everything he stands for, it is clear that he has struck a cord with the people of Holland. But now he is on trial, apparently as a result of a number of complaints made against him. And his crime:

The Dutch courts charge that Wilders ‘on multiple occasions, at least once, (each time) in public, orally, in writing or through images, intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion’.

Read that again. Yup he really is being charged with the crime of offending people. I for one didn’t realise that the right to not be offended actually existed as, had I known before, there are plenty of people I would have liked to level charges against. And for this terrible crime faces up to two years in prison. Seriously? But the craziness doesn’t end there. Part of the charge against him seems to revolve around his documentary film Fitna, a film that has already seen him barred entry to the UK by the Home Secretary. So what exactly makes this film so offensive that it would land a man in court?

Well the film, which if the link still works can be viewed on Youtube, features footage of Muslim clerics calling for the murder of infidels as well as Muslims holding banners that say ‘God bless Hitler’. These things are indeed offensive and yet amazingly the Dutch courts seem to be viewing them as offensive to Muslims! The same goes for Wilders’ comments to the press about a recent spate of attacks on homosexual couples by Muslim youths from Morocco. There is offense to be taken here, but it should be targeted at the Moroccan boys carrying out the attacks and not at the guy bringing these attacks to the publics attention.

Which brings me to what I see as the most serious aspect of this whole affair. In court Wilders sort to defend his “offensive” comments by bringing in experts to show that every word he said was in fact true. The court has rejected 15 of the 18 witnesses he wished to call, making it near impossible for him to prove his case. As one of the prosecutors said:

“It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal”.

Yup, apparently in this case the truth won’t set you free but it will get you up to two years in prison. If convicted this case could set a very worrying president. If the truth of the things you say is no longer considered a valid reason for saying them then that does not bode well for anyone. Everyone knows about the UK Libel laws that effectively allow people to silence the truth, but currently speaking the truth is not actually a crime. Cases such as this one could well change that.

Ps. Sorry for the rather rushed post, I haven’t proof read it as I was in a hurry. I hope it makes sense.

Be sure to check out the preview video on YouTube, and pause around the 5:08 mark to see four of LoR’s finest giggling away like a bunch of twats. You can also click the image below to embiggen and gaze upon our collective, annotated beauty. There were several other League/YouTube sceptics there too, and it was great to meet you all! TAM London 2 is official and I still have a large collection of photos to share from the first event. Keep your eyes peeled for a blog post all about this (oh yes, it’s going to be epic!)

Is it better to have flexible, socially contextual morals that may dip below what many people view as laudable behaviour as a result of free will and personal choice . . . or is it better to have a uniformly high moral standard followed, in part or even in whole, as a result of fearing the perceived consequences of not following it?

Of course, you might say that I’ve used Wordification to bias the issue somewhat – and because I have no higher power to feel accountable to I’m perfectly happy to lie, and say that I didn’t bias the point in the slightest.

The question, I suppose, is how worthy or altruistic can a high moral standard be truly taken to be when it’s prescribed rather than acquired? It becomes little more than Utilitarianism if your moral compass is constantly aware that behaving immorally will result in hell, or a few lost brownie-heaven points from God. You’re not acting morally, you’re just protecting your own skin – which is exactly what I would do, of course.

Clearly the issue is fiercely complex after even a cursory glance. Because so many moral codes adopted by secularists could, likewise, be viewed as contextual to the consequences of breaking these same codes. If there was no judicial system with which to label certain acts as wrong, and mete out appropriate punishment, I highly doubt the society in question would remain in moral stasis. I’m happy to say that I’d likely have done, or tried to do, entirely unwholesome things without the restraining hand of Authority hovering over my balls. Theists may have their fear of God to instil a sense of morality; atheists may have their fear of getting touched up in jail. It’s just as self-serving.

Of course, the spectrum of morality and immorality operates in realms oft untouched by law; the way you think, they way you treat other people, the little things. A moral stance affects all subtle aspects of your life, not just your unwillingness to kill a guy and then stave in his hips with a pensioner. Let’s take the time I stole £20 from someone in a fast food joint. I walked in and saw the note on the ground by the man’s feet. He’d clearly dropped it and was now waiting, an ignorant score lighter, for his burger. I very briefly wondered if I should tell him, but then I decided not to. I stood next to him, my boot on the note so he couldn’t see it, until he left. And then I picked it up. Why?

Because I like money, because I’m selfish, because I don’t have a conscience that feels bad about such things. There was no legal consequence to my action that I had to fear; the only possible consequence was being discovered, and I felt I could talk my out of it if needs be. I acted in a way that many people might consider immoral, because my morality – under the umbrella of legality – is flexible. Clearly, I don’t think I would just start knifing babies in the chin if murder was legalised. I think I would feel bad. I may not grant the notion of objective morality any time at all, but I can grant that there are trends and broadly universal immoral acts, and judicial consequencialism (what an amazing phrase – I hope I didn’t just make it up) is not the single dam holding back a tidal wave of human sludge. There would be shifts, of course, and a rise in violence and theft, but not everyone would realise that they wanted to break laws just because the laws no longer existed.

What if someone religious was in my place, someone with a highly defined and apparently objective sense of morality? Let’s assume they do what we all know the right thing is – pick up the money and give it to the guy. Bravo! Except, why have you done this? Is it because your morality has been painstakingly constructed, over many years, by exposure to myriad different situations and modes of thought? Or is it because you think that not doing it will get you a disapproving stare from whatever deity you call home? And this is only assuming that we’ve found one of the theists who actually follows their own arbitrary objective morals, to the letter, without questions. As we all know from our sojourns through Youtube, religiously inspired morals and codes tend to be as flexible as their secular counterparts. Lying is fine, it seems, if you’re lying for Jesus.

Allow me a brief bit of poetry. Would you rather be in a hotel which locked from the outside or a barn that locked from the inside? Give me the freedom to plumb whatever depraved and lustful depths I see fit, and I’ll do it as a free man. 

I’ll leave you with this. It’s pretty infuriating, of course. Highlights include:

‘Cherie Booth wasn’t saying that religious people are morally superior to others. She was saying that, as a religious man, he should know better.’ Well, that pretty much IS saying that religious people are morally superior, if she is granting them the power to know right from wrong when a non-religious man apparently would – the reasonable inference suggests – NOT be capable of knowing better. No, only the mystical and nebulous power of !Religion! can instil the ability to Know Better.

*Not actually a riddle.

I say this because David John Wellman, valorious foil to the unapologetic plagiarist Brock Lawley, recently challenged Christian apologists, philosophers, and evagelists to begin a video, as I just have, by saying, “The 2010 Haitian Earthquake does not constitute compelling evidence against the existence of God because…”

I certainly reject the label of Christian apologist – indeed, I’ve long argued that the Christian apologist tends to run contrary to the Biblical and Christian ideal and he tends to be an unpleasant, immoral, indecorous, and cowardly person – and the labels of Christian philosopher, Christian Evangelist, and Christian, so, perhaps I’m speaking out of turn, but I think that the problem of evil or the argument from evil are substantially less serious to theistic belief than those who advance the argument seem to be believe.

When I frame the theological implications of the Haitian Earthquake, I must conclude that, ultimately, we are engaged in the problem of “why?” and here, we are asking, “Why did this earthquake occur?” and we anticipate competing theories with God as a more or less an important character.

And, just for the sake of pointing it out, the question really does matter because “Why did so much suffering occur?” for example, is a distinctly different question and more complicated question and might easily require us to discuss political science, history, technology, biology and so on.

We can further complicate the question by asking: “What do we mean by ‘Why?’”

It may seem silly but I think that certain answers, like “because Haiti isn’t located in the Pacific,” are clearly not intended in the “whyness” of the question.

I will therefore suggest that in terms of earthquakes, “why?” usually suggests a description of the events prior to the earthquake, certain true comments about the nature of things, and an argument that since these events occurred, the earthquake ipso facto occurred.

I am not a seismologist so I can’t provide a detailed or technical description or hope to defend my account under any serious scrutiny, but my understanding is that tectonic plates move at relatively constant speeds, the Caribbean plate in this story moving north at about less than an inch a year.

Along the edges of the plates, little fault lines appear and they build up tension as the plates move; this tension is released in the form of earthquakes from time to time.

Despite my only superficial understanding of plate tectonics, this strikes me as such an ordinarily acceptable explanation of earthquakes that I’m left perplexed as to why it serves as a critique of theism; the answer must be, partly, that there must be theists out there who abandon all clarity of thinking in their understanding of the natural laws and natural events.

Certainly, when Pat Robertson attempted to connect the 2010 Haitian Earthquake to some folkloric pact with the devil, I can’t imagine that he was speaking from a place of knowledge or that he was aware that he was suggesting that this particular earthquake was not only best explained by a supernatural explanation but that it could not be explained by a natural explanation.

Pat Robertson’s flimsy and repugnant comments therefore are philosophically damaged by the natural sciences if not human decency.

For theists who offer answers to the question “why?” which mention God, supernatural answers, such answers are invariably vulnerable to fairly simple questions.

If God really did cause this earthquake because of a pact with the devil, why now? why not right after the pact? Or before the pact? what are we to suppose about all earthquakes? or places where an earthquakes didn’t occur on January 12, 2010?

I think, however, that part of the critique of theism that follows from the 2010 Haitian Earthquake must be the hidden premise that part of the cause of the Earthquake is: “Because God didn’t prevent it.”

The cause of the Haitian Earthquake is God’s failure to prevent it; since God is supposed to be good and powerful, surely he is either not good, not powerful, or non-existent.

This is the problem of evil and the argument from evil, but I’m afraid that I can’t quite appreciate its intended impact or the integrity of its delivery.

We suppose, first of all, that God really could prevent an earthquake, which I’m not entirely willing to accept; when we recognize that omnipotence and omnibenevolence can be, perhaps, better expressed as ‘maximally powerful’ and ‘maximally good,’ and when we recognize that no attribute of God can trump another attribute of God, it’s fairly easy to accept that that God did not stop the Haitian Earthquake could easily be an expression of divine justice.

And, by ‘divine justice,’ I don’t mean a crude, juridical judgment over the Haitian people like Mr. Robertson imagined; I mean a larger story of design and nature in which God constitutes living things and the world in which they live in such a way that both suffering and relief are possible and, like a teacher who cheats for his or her student, God’s intervention to cause comfort or prevent suffering would be an act of injustice.

We might be left to wonder if we ought to blame God for failing to prevent all earthquakes and then, all natural catastrophes, all catastrophes, all smaller, more domestic catastrophes, all moments of pain, all moments of discomfort, all moments that aren’t sheer, perfect, orgasmic joy; and then we might be left to wonder if such blame is rightfully leveled at God for failing to prevent the Haitan earthquake, how much worship ought we level at God for all the earthquakes his design didn’t cause?

I think my biggest criticism of the problem of evil or the argument from evil is that it ultimately compells its advocates to take total stock of the world and say: “How can there be God?”

Imagine the real crudeness of the problem of evil when it draws its inspiration not from the catastrophes of nations but the catastrophes of an individual life – diseases of great suffering somehow renders the philosopher heartless when he exclaims: “Look at my cousin Mitch… how can there be God?”

Such simplistic evaluations of the totality of the universe, derived from examples of any size, are both impossible and occur with disturbing frequency; I don’t think I could do it with a straight face and because the sheer act would tickle me, I don’t think I could also do it with a condemnatory tone… but that’s just me.

I have mentioned that the balance of the larger story of God’s power and God’s goodness, specifically in the office of creator and designer of the universe, may very well be a thing of minimal suffering and maximum human virtue; the world may poteniate the best in and for the most number of people, but I don’t know.

But, I also know that no one else knows that the world potentiates anything less, which is in part the substance of the critique of God that the Haitian earthquake supposedly constitutes.

I will conclude these thoughts by simply saying that if there is a real comment to be made about God that can be gleaned from the Haitian earthquake, please share it – when it does, if it does, talented theistic thinkers, I’m sure, will offer a defense but, I am as equally sure, a competent defense won’t come from Brock Lawley.

Monotheism vs Polytheism

One of the central themes of the show so far seems to be monotheism vs polytheism. The world(s) of Caprica are generally polytheistic, based loosely around the Greek Olympic gods, with the various planets having patron gods as well as specific gods governing specific aspects of life. There is however a growing sect, apparently popular amongst the young, of monotheistic believes who are portrayed as an interesting mix of wide-eyed youths seeking a more meaningful life, fundamentalist purity police and religious terrorists. So far this group is definitely being portrayed as the bad guys, an idea that was summed up nicely when one character stated his fear of anyone who followed the commands of one all powerful god who was always right and could never be questioned. This got me thinking.

Does monotheism, with its idea of a single, all-powerful, all-knowing god who can not be questioned, lead more naturally to violent and negative outcomes, as portrayed in the series, than does polytheism, with it’s multiple much more human like gods each with their own foibles and eccentricities?

Leaving atheism completely out of the equation does monotheism or polytheism, and the various things these belief systems entail, more accurately reflect the reality of the world around us? And, given the answer to this question, does this help to explain the rise of monotheism over the last few centuries?

Life After Death

Maybe the more interesting idea raised by the show was that of life after death by way of technology. The question was raised that if it were possible to somehow create a synthetic copy of yourself, completely with all of your memories, emotions, points of view etc, would that be you? What if this copy was somehow kept completely up to date so that, should you die suddenly, there would be a continuation of what makes you “you”, would you have survived your own death? My feeling on this is that, no, it would not be you but rather a copy of you, as I can’t help but think that what makes you “you” is more than just your memories etc. However if does raise an interesting thought experiment, an answer to which I am still not sure of.

Imagine you have a car that you love.

Over the years variously things go wrong with this car. It gets a flat tire, so you change it. A head light blows, so you change it. The engine conks out, so you change it. But you still think of it as your car, and more importantly as the same car. Over the many years you have it you end up changing every single part of the car so that the car you have now has not a single original part found on the car when you first bought it. And yet again you no doubt still think of it as the same car.

Now apply this to yourself.

We all know the story that every cell in your body is replaced over a 7 year period. Now while this isn’t exactly true let’s run with it and take it a bit further. Imagine a point in the future where you can do to yourself what you did to that car. When your kidneys start to go you just replace them with synthetic ones. Same for your liver, then your lungs and heart. Eventually you replace all of your internal organs, save your brain, with synthetic ones. Then you start on your bones, your muscles, your nerves etc. Bit by bit you replace every part of your body but in such a way that there is always a continuation of “you”. Finally just your brain is left of your original body, but now you start upgrading this as well. You replace your motor cortex with a synthetic one that works better with your synthetic body. You change out your visual cortex to get better use out of your new eyes. Bit by bit you change every part of your brain until one day you swap out the last natural part of you and become a fully synthetic human.

Ultimately is this any different from creating a fully synthetic copy of yourself and just transferring your memories across? The end result is the same. All the biological aspects that made up your body no longer exist and yet there has been a continuity of your memories, thoughts etc. Does it make a difference that the change takes place gradually rather than all at once? Once your body is fully synthetic can it actually be said that “you” are still alive? Assuming this process of replacing broken parts could go on indefinitely would this mean you have cheated death, or did you die years ago and something else now exists in your place?

Some things for you to chew over. I look forward to reading your thoughts on these issues.

D1. God is that than which no greater can be conceived.

P1. Either it is the case that God is the creator of the universe or it is not the case that God is the creator of the universe.

C1. Given D1 and P1, because the God that created the universe is greater than the God that did not create the universe, God created the universe.

P2. Given C1, either it is the case that the God that created the universe exists or it is not the case that the God that created the universe exists.

C2. Given D1 and P2, because the God that created the universe and does not exist is greater than the God that created the universe and does exist, God does not exist.

P1. It is the case that one holds that God exists or it is not the case that one holds that God exists.
P2. If it is the case that one holds that God exists, then it is the case that one has reason to hold that God exists or it is not the case that one has reason to hold that God exists.
P3. If it is the case that one holds that God exists and it is the case that one has reason to hold that God exists, then it is not the case that one has faith that God exists.
P4. If it is the case that one holds that God exists and it is the not the case that one has reason to hold that God exists, then it is the case that one has faith that God exists.

C1. Given D5 and P3, it is the case that a Christian holds that one does not have reason to hold that God exists.
C2. Given C1 and D6, both Christians and atheists hold that one does not have reason to hold that God exists.

Simplified Version

A Christian is one who has faith that God exists and because he has faith, he holds that one doesn’t have reasons to believe that God exists. Likewise, an atheists holds that one doesn’t have reasons to believe that God exists. It is somehow absurd, therefore, for a Christian to argue that one ought not be an atheist.

Anyway all I really wanted to do with this post is draw some attention to a couple of criminally undersubscribed Youtube channels that I think you should all check out. First up we have:

Ainulindale21 – Ainulindale21 is fairly new to Youtube and has only uploaded two videos so far but is already well on his way to being one of my favourite channels. His videos are funny, entertaining, educational and informative. I mean what more do you want. So far he has been targeting Youtube’s creepest cretard NephilimFree and has made the startling, though somewhat obvious now I think about it, observation that the guy looks rather like a potato. I look forward to more from his googley-eyed talking heads in the future.

k87jury – Announcing himself as “The Creationist Slayer” k87jury targets many of the less well known creationists on Youtube and does a great job of tearing down their arguments. He may not be to everyones taste but I really enjoy k87jury’s blunt, no nonsense approach to arguments and the way he gives stupid arguments all the “respect” they deserve.

Well, that is all I wanted to say. Not a very interesting post but then what do expect from a guy who can’t actually lift his head off of his pillow without feeling like he is going to throw up?

Arguments for:

The most obvious argument that springs to mind is one of security. Now I want to make it clear that I am not making a “all Muslims are terrorists” argument here and I do not in any way think that is the case. No, my argument is a simpler one than that. When you go to a supermarket such as Tesco they require that your face is visible. You can’t wear motorbike helmets, hoodies or Jedi robes. And yet an exception is made when it comes to the Muslim niqab. If there is a legitimate reason why facial coverings are not allowed in places like shops and banks then those reasons should apply to everyone, no matter the reasoning, religious or otherwise, behind the particular form of facial covering.

The wearing of niqabs and burkas clearly singles the wearer out as different and is a form of religious separation. Now while the members of the religion may see this as a good thing it does foster a “them and us” attitude on both sides. It also opens the way for religious discrimination, be it discrimination against those wearing the burkas or against women who refuse to do so or who do not belong to the Muslim religion.

It can be argued, and fairly legitimately I think, that burkas and the like discriminate against women directly for being women. The idea that it is some how the woman’s fault if men see a bit of leg and suddenly can’t control themselves and so rape her is only one example of the mind numbing “logic” behind the burka. The burka comes with all the baggage of a male dominated religion where women are seen as second class citizens and as the properties of the men in their lives. Being made to cover themselves lest they inflame the lust of a passing man and to show that they are subservient to their uncovered male counterparts is a clear and obvious form of sexual discrimination and oppression.

Arguments against:

It can, again I think legitimately, be argued that banning the burka is itself a form of religious discrimination. Why single out this one public display of religious belief? Are they planning on banning Sikhs from wearing their own distinct head gear? How about Christians who proudly flaunt crosses and “Jesus loves You” t-shirts? In France they banned Muslim headscarves and other “conspicuous” religious symbols from being worn at state schools. If there is a plan to ban religious clothing in this country should it not be equally all encompassing?

Some women like wearing them. Many Muslim women say that wearing a burka makes them feel closer to their God and gives them a sense of belonging that they do not have otherwise. Is it not equally a form of discrimination to tell these women that they can’t wear something that is, while not to many of our tastes, not directly offensive and in which they feel comfortable?

Are the reasons we have for wanting them banned truly justifiable or is it just an extension of the western world’s general discomfort regarding anything Muslim? I have no problem admitting that the fact that I personally find burkas and especially nigabs unattractive and somewhat sinister is in no way a good reason to have them banned. Just because many other people may share this feeling with me doesn’t make the reasoning behind it any more valid.

So there you go, let me know which side you come down and if you have any better arguments either for or against.

But we mustn’t forget about the smaller channels - the newer members of the community – who can be crippled by such an attack. To those of you reading this, there’s not much I need do except implore you to download and run this brilliant application. I also have a novel idea: Every time you’re targeted by a bot and saved by TG, why not use its nifty donate feature to compensate Josh for giving up his spare time? Then we can all enjoy seeing votebotters making their archenemy rich!

For links and full documentation, set course for TubeGuardian.com

>>> Engage <<<

Oh, and Josh… thank you!

The Omen(1976) was good. The Exorcist (1973). The Prophecy(1995).

Legion(2010), for the record, is certainly not a shameful entry into the genre, but it’s certainly not going to be the standard by any stretch of the imagination. It involves a supposed second “flood,” but this one, carried out by angels. An extermination of the human race. Unlike Noah, there is no family earmarked for repopulating the planet and this second destruction of the earth also coincides with the birth of child. This child, incidentally, makes no sense. Is he the second coming? Why would God destroy the earth moments before the second coming? Seems bizarre.

There are far less cool angel scenes and a lot of the violence is just trite, ordinary zombie-like violence. The whole world is being destroyed and our vision is limited to a few small miles of desert boredom – unsatisfying.

The movie does, however, make one interesting stab at Christian fundamentalism, whether they realize it not. The main good guy in the movie is the Archangel Michael and he has been ordered by God to lead the extermination of mankind and kill the child… whoever the child really is. Michael searches his conscience and refuses the order, instead joining the humans and protecting the child. You would have gotten that from the trailer so don’t be too mad!

Gabriel, the equally bronzed archangel who takes over after Michael’s departure, is less sensitive to sympathy but argues that following orders is what really matters. Obviously, sympathy wins over blind obedience in the end, but certain parallels to the story of Abraham and Isaac and the Nazis, of course, are somewhat transparent. Sometimes I can understand Abraham’s decisions; sometimes I can’t. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t kill Isaac, but would that be because I had placed sympathy over obedience as an act of courage or because generally I was scared shitless.

For my part, I’m glad that somewhere in cinema “God told me to do it” isn’t a good reason.

Now there is nothing wrong with this, in fact it is admirable, and in general the people who do go this extra mile are of great help and can save a lot of lives. Doctors, nurses, engineers, emergency workers, all these people are vital in an disaster situation. The more of them the better. Even people like plumbers and electricians are invaluable, as they can help to get desperately needed infrastructure back up and running. Also if you want to organise medical supplies, food and water, camping supplies, toiletries and other essentials and send them directly then that can only help as well. As I said there is nothing wrong with any of this and if fact this kind of response will mean the difference between life and death for many.

But if you are not one of these people or the things you are sending are not in immediate demand then I think the best thing you can do is stay out of the way and let the people who can help do their job. For example, as PZ Myers mentioned today, right now Haiti does not need a contingent of Scientologists flying in to administer “touch assists”, which just sounds a bit pervy to me, or to draw the victims attention to the things around them. These things do not help and when access to the situation is both difficult and limited it means that for every, undoubtedly well meaning, Scientologist that flies in, some where there is a doctor or emergency worker left on the tarmac.

But then even a Scientologist can bring someone a hot meal or a blanket and bodies on the ground are bodies on the ground. As such this doesn’t bother me as much as the people sending solar powered Bibles in the place of medical supplies. I mean seriously what on earth are they meant to do with these things? I suppose the solar cells could be take apart and used to power something useful but other than that I am sure that right now the people of Haiti don’t need instructions on the correct way to murder disobedient children or the best way to con someone out of some goats.

The most common complaint about the original program was that it took too long to run. Even sped up to run at around a generation a second it could still take a number of minutes to get anything approaching a definitive result. As such when I started writing this new program I put considerable thought into this issue and, well how can I put this, decided to ignore it completely. This new program is, I am afraid to say, a good bit slower than the last one. In fact it can at times take several hours to run, which believe me makes bug testing it a real pain. On top of that both selection and reproduction work differently in this program and as such there is no simulated predation or mating in this one. Yes people that’s right. I have written a sequel that is vastly longer than the original and which contains no sex or violence. Clearly I must be mad!

Well yes, yes I am, completely bonkers in fact but that has nothing to do with why I choose to do it this way. Though all the comments and suggestions from people who understand and accept evolutionary theory were helpful it was the comments I got from creationists, not on this blog but elsewhere, that were more so. In fact one of the Leagues moderators Squawk summed it up perfectly when he joked that the program only demonstrated micro evolution. This is the same response I got from a creationist when, during a discussion about natural selection, I, probably mistakenly, got him to check out my program to illustrate the point I was making. He immediately came back with that old creationist canard of “Ah but they are still bugs, this is only micro evolution, which I accept,” he then added the words that would form the basis of this new program, “creatures can adapt to their environment but evolution can’t add new information to their DNA and so macro evolution can’t happen.“

Now we all know that is completely poppycock. Evolution can, and does, increase the amount of information stored in the genome. The process is so simple it amazes me that we even have to have this argument. Some mutations can duplicate genes or nucleotides, which means that the creature then has two copies of the same gene. One copy carries on doing what ever it is it does while the other copy is free to mutate again, in one way or another, leading to the development of new genes and new information that was not found in the genome of the parent creature. It really is that simple and we know this to be the case, we are not just guessing here. Why creationists continue to deny this incredibly easy to understand fact is beyond me.

Anyway I am really starting to ramble here. Basically this new program, that I call SHAPES, sets out to demonstrate how the dual processes of mutation and natural selection can, and do, increase the amount of information stored in the genome. In order to make it as authentic as possible the selection pressure in this one is a lot more fluid and involves a higher contingent of luck than in the original program and it is this that makes it take a lot longer to run. That said I also feel that this program is more realistic as a result and better demonstrates the principles at work than the previous one. It also makes a nice screen saver that you can leave running if you are not really using your computer and just come back later to see the results.

Ok, so check out the About page in the program for more information on what it is doing and if you have any questions on how it works, what my pseudo-DNA does or what exactly is going on then feel free to ask and I will be happy to shed some more light on the issue. You’d never guess that I enjoy talking about this stuff would you. So without further ado I give you:

SHAPES

UPDATE – I just found this cartoon that seems strangely appropriate so I thought I would share it with you:

I’ll sum up – Nick Clegg, Lib Dem leader, wants schools to teach that homosexuality is normal, natural, and basically a non-issue. Good man. This does, in part at least, seem to be as much a reactionary stance against David Cameron and Conservative policy as a genuine issue that Clegg cares about.

Maybe I’m too cynical. It’s possible to score points off the opposition whilst being completely in the right; the two states are not mutually exclusive.

If this was just “all schools should teach that homosexuality is fine and dandy” I’d be merely quietly impressed. But this applies to faith schools as well; schools where the potential for homophobic bigotry, among all the other kinds of bigotry that faith schools can inculcate, is just so much higher. Because the premise that Homosexuality Is Wrong is deeply rooted in the biggest religions around, and not every faith school is going to be tolerant or permissive. Faith schools aren’t currently required to include sexuality on their curriculum; Clegg would see that overturned, as well as saying ” . . . faith schools should have a requirement to have an anti-homophobic bullying policy at their school”.

I honestly don’t care if this is merely a cynical ploy to take the moral high ground for a few votes. I don’t really see that it could be; by pissing off faith schools and the faithful in general, Clegg is quite possibly going to lose as many votes as he would gain. Anything that brings faith schools down a few pegs and forces their teachings to be diluted with rational thinking is absolutely shiny by me.

The article ends with this: ‘One senior Anglican bishop said: “Instituting something that must be taught, come what may, is frighteningly fascist.”’ I mean . . . wow. The irony. It’s . . . it’s intense. “Instituting something that must be taught, come what may . . .” Can anyone think of a much clearer description of the disseminative urge of fundamentalist religious faith than that? And then he calls it fascist. Oh, it’s just beautiful.