More pizza messages

This is part of what I do during my day job--tell people to order pizza on thursdays (so I get mine cheap.) It has since become expected that I will be inventive in this venture. So here are some of the brain farts that have resulted.

Thursday Pizza Spam
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Viagra! Make quick money at home! This adorable five year old child is dying a horrible death because you don't pray hard enough! And of course, order Pizza! All of this can be yours for the low low price of $5.25 for half a slice, if you order now and forward this message to at least 20 of your friends.

If you don't forward this message, terrible things will happen to you. One guy I knew refused to forward this message, and he was sodomized by a grizzly bear for six hours. Granted, he's a twisted freak who spent three years training the bear to do this, but still, YOU DON'T WANT THIS TO HAPPEN TO YOU! Another guy I know drank rat pee from the top of a soda can and died. Well, I didn't know him that well. Never met, him at all, in fact. Alright, I MADE HIM UP! But this is the kind of nasty stuff that will happen to you if you don't immediately proceed to clog the inbox of everyone you know with this digital turd.

And remember, when writing spam or scare mail, THE CAPS LOCK KEY IS YOUR FRIEND!!!

Deadwood Pizza
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Timmy the Censor Squirrel says "Careful, Kids, bad words ahead!"

It has come to my attention that this is yet another fucking wednesday, which requires that this poor benighted gin-sodden cocksucker, namely myself, extend welcome and induces his fellow bit-bulls to order some fucking pizza. Now I am usually required to come up with something fucking clever for the occasion, which Jennifer suggested should take the tone of dialogue from Deadwood, being a cross between velvet Victorian verbiage and skankiest words that ever seeped out of a whorehouse door. This I have and am doing, so if you're feeling fucking offended by all this, lighten up, it's all in the spirit of the thing (160 fucking proof, mind you.)

And if you're feeling so anyway, go fuck yourself. And I shot that squirrel and cut his fucking nuts off.

In Russia, Pizza orders you!
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Comrade, you don't know how lucky you are to have pizza order on network and get pizza so fast and easy. In Russia, only pizza place available was Ivanovich Podpull Yackoff's place, Gulag Pie, where pizza was delivered within thirty days or sucked to be you. And even when pizza came, the delivery man took some for family, and the Kommissariat took piece, and sometimes pizza was censored, as when pepperoni was confiscated for being decadent and imperialist. And only one drink was available, vodka, and sometimes I think crust was baked sawdust, but still, was only way to get book by Solzhenitsyn, if you could read words through sauce...

Pizza Evolves!
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According to the Journal of Irreproducible Results, two American scientists known only as Bubba and Jed have discovered what they claim to be the fossil an early proto-pizza, located on a dig beneath a Brooklyn land-fill site. "Yep," said Bubba, "you can still kinda make out the primitive pepperoni on it." Asked whether this constituted additional evidence for evolution, Jed said he hadn't really thought of it, or anything else. Fundamentalist Christians caught wind of this and staged a protest against Godless pizza, just in case. "Somebody told me that this is an insult to everything I believe in, so I'm holding this sign they gave me," said an aggressively buxom woman named Tawny. Reporters called on Richard Dawkins, author of the Selfish Gene and staunch defender of evolution, at his home in Oxford. "They're all barking mad" said Dawkins, "And so are you. It's three o'clock in the bloody morning!" Dawkins then ran the drunken reporters out of his house with a cricket bat.

Fully evolved pizza is available for order here.

Cosmic Pizza
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[Begin Transmission]
"I'm approaching the monolith now."
"Be careful, Dr. Bowman."
"Roger. Slowing and holding at... three feet from alien artifact."
"Can you describe the object?"
"It appears to be about two and a half feet long and orange."
"Uh, roger that. Are there any distinctive markings on it?"
"There seem to be some sort of strange alien markings on it... Pizza Pizza, I think. Moving the camera around... Can you see it."
"Yes, we have a visual."
"I'm moving in. It looks like some sort of container."
"Roger. Approach with caution, Dave."
"Okay, I think I see an opening. I'm going to try to pry the container open. It's... ..."
"Bowman, we have lost visuals! Dave, are you there?.... Please respond..."
"...My God, it's full of stars..."
[End Transmission]

Star Wars Pizza
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STAR WARS

Episode 7: Thursday Pizza
-------------------------

It has been thirty years since the fall of the Empire.
The Republic has been restored, and they fed all those
annoying Ewoks to the Wookies. Everyone is just peachy.
Well, almost everyone. Fluke Streetwalker has cut his own
head off trying to shave with his lightsaber, Princess Layer
Organic is considering Empress as a possible career path,
and compulsive porn pirate Hand Solo has been busted hauling
fifty thousand copies of Jawa Lust.

But a new threat is emerging even as you read this. George
Lucas is threatening to devote this entire movie to Jar Jar
Binks, and we all know what that means; five more years of
people from LucasArts wining about how piracy is ruining their
business, instead of admitting that George can't write character
or dialogue to save his life and his best movies were rescued
by script doctors...

Ahem... sorry. A new threat is emerging. The evil Dr. Camm has
kidnapped the plucky but stylish droid Arty Deco and his
suspiciously effete cohort, Pee Seepio, and has plans to install
Windows on both of them and turn them into mail servers, which may
soon be delivering things like Thursday Pizza messages. We join
our heroes as the Princess attempts to fix the awful lines that
have been written for her...

Iranian Pizza
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Welcome to the Theocracy of Iran. During your stay, please observe the following fatwas.

Pizza is no longer pizza, but shall be known as elastic loaves. Pizza is made by infidels. Danishes are no longer danishes, but Roses of the Prophet Mohammed. Danishes are made by infidels. You cannot get a bottle of Shiraz in Shiraz, that is made only by infidels in Australia now. Death to infidels. In fact, all alcohol is prohibited, unless you find a private rave in Tehran, where you can get anything and party like it's 1999. If you cannot find a private rave, or if we find you at a private rave, you can party like it's 999. A guard will assist you in getting suitably medieval.

The weather today is a sunny 41 degrees, 48 degrees for women in a jilbab, or 55 and dark inside a bhurka. Yes, we live in the desert and dress our women like polar bears. We would invite you to have a pleasant time during your stay, but all fun is prohibited. A member of the Revolutionary Guard will be around to confiscate your smiles shortly.

Thank you, and have a day.

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There is more... much more. All work and no play makes Mark a crazy boy. Repeat 50,000 times. You get the idea. What more could you ask for?

Dead things. More teeth.

Nihilism, and the Last Dogma

The root of fanaticism is not faith, but a lack of faith. It is a lack of faith in everything but God--and ultimately, in God as well.

If someone lacks faith in humanity, in the ability of most ordinary people to do the right thing most of the time, then values must be based elsewhere than in human judgment or an innate moral sense which may or may not be well developed. To establish a moral code, these people must see it as being based upon an extra-human absolute authority. The slow, gradual accumulation and preservation of human wisdom is not enough for them; humanity is ultimately flawed, and there can be no moral system that relies upon merely human judgment.

Meanwhile, even as they reject religious dogma, there is a single article of dogma that is not questioned: Kierkegaard's Either/Or, between religious devotion and nihilism. Religious leaders argue for a false dichotomy between absolute Divine certainty and nihilism—the establishment of values must be seen to originate from Divine authority. Inherent in this argument is the premise that human beings cannot establish truth by any means, cannot discover values on their own, cannot even improve their circumstances. This last fragment of religious dogma is never questioned, never even examined--it lingers as a background premise, unstated. To reject the church is to reject objective moral standard and drift in a current of mere opinion. But if they follow a religion, the individual decision of what values they assent to must be hidden from view; the source must be external, rather than the product of their own judgment. It is they who choose the religion, the church, the minister, the interpretation, yet they must deny their own role in this choice, or lose confidence in that choice. The perfect is the enemy of the good. They demand perfect morality, or none at all.

This is a demand for absolute certainty which we as human beings can never claim. The root of this is a lack of faith in human beings, so that the human element must be removed from the mix in order for it to be considered sound. Without religion, there can be no morality. If they accept religion, they must conceal, even from themselve, their own responsibility for their choices. And yet, they continue to make these decisions, but take them to come from above. The idea that we might have evolved a fairly trustworthy sense of ethical conduct never occurs to them.

So, the problem seems to be solved. Their lack of faith in humanity is countered by their faith in God. But not so fast—if the judgment of human beings cannot be trusted, then they must be told what to do by their religious elders. This may include telling them how to vote, but really, democracy itself is flawed, because it leaves too much in the hands of poor foolish mortals. Best to do away with it entirely. The same can be said for any law established by human beings, any knowledge discovered by human beings, and even for personal private choice. All these must be brought under the aegis of God. Freedom leads to ruin. Liberty can only be surrender to God. The community is a single body with a single brain--God, as interpreted by his clerics. The body, or any part of it, when it is not subject to God, becomes a mere beast. Man is fallen, he has lost his original innocence and become tainted, and nothing he can do on his own is worth anything.

And yet, every part of religion is covered with greasy human fingerprints. God, apparently, is such a crippled, powerless, feebleminded invalid that he cannot defend himself, cannot even raise his voice enough to for us to hear him, but must be protected by his apparently fatally flawed human followers. Not only can he not punch his way out of paper bag, he can't even make a decent man. It's almost as if his followers were fighting to defend their own frail egos. Do you see a pattern here? The nihilism which underlies fanatacism eventually eats the religion itself. Ultimately, the evil that they see in humanity comes to triumph over all. God cannot save even himself, let alone his followers. The Devil is lord of this world. The cool-aid, the suicide bomb, is waiting. The nihilism presented as the alternative to faith, and which lies at the root of fanaticism, devours all.

This is the last dogma, the one that lingers long after the rest is gone, and it springs from a profound distrust of human beings, probably learned at an early age. Underlying the most fanatical form of faith is a deep and abiding lack of faith, a hard core of nihilism, and that is where this article of dogma originates. But the either/or itself is false.

FUBAR

FUBAR is a military acronym for the state of a target after a bomb has hit it. It stands for the tongue-in-cheek expression "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition." It also perfectly expresses the state of nearly all religions.

David Hume argued that ethical principles rest upon personal preferences and cultural traditions; that you cannot get an ought from an is. Yet these preferences and traditions rest upon innate cognitive building blocks similar to those which support reason and aesthetics. As Steven Pinker and other evolutionary psychologists point out, we are not born a blank slate, but come into the world with a set of tools which act like simple proteins, capable of constructing complex rational and moral systems but which, themselves, are so basic as to be indescribable. And yet, we employ these faculties constantly.

One cannot argue against the validity of reason without employing reason itself. The contradiction in the argument lies in the very act of posing the argument itself. What is generally not realized is that moral arguments--even those against the very reality of ethics itself--rely upon the moral faculty as well. The very act of engaging in discussion is dependent upon an exercise of concern, a moral ordering of values--indeed, the very act of talking to another relies upon a continuous exercise of reciprocity, itself based upon the valuation of ideas and the act of empathy. Profoundly autistic children, who lack the ability to mirror the thoughts and emotions of others, become incapable of even this level of engagement--they lack the empathy required to connect. And even the most repugnant of criminals, serial killers, for example, operate in a cooperative mode most of the time, and it is this vestigial level of moral judgement which allows them to escape detection for as long as they do. The very attempt to argue against some innate capacity for moral judgement, and against the objective nature of that capacity, stands as proof of the very thing it attempts to deny. And the fact that this innate ability was selected through evolutionary pressures establishes it as a product of objective reality. It reflects a condition of material existence which selected it as the best survival strategy.

Of course, human beings can become morally stunted, just as they can become irrational. The development of this capacity into a fully principled ethical system takes time and effort, just as learning the principles of critical thinking takes work. Indeed, critical thinking itself is required for the effort of developing a system of ethics. The problem arises when a system of ethics established by tradition overrides the moral faculty itself. In this case, the followers of this ethical ideology become passive subscribers rather than active participants in developing their moral code. The very ethical faculty which creates such systems becomes atrophied. The tradition becomes an obstacle to genuine moral consideration, and those who accept it come into possession of an ethical code which is rigid, incomplete, and usually inconsistent. Having delegated these judgements to an external authority, adherents to this ideology have no capacity to judge that authority itself, nor to fill in the gaps introduced by novel situations and new information.

In the scientific method, this type of dogmatism is considered abhorrent. Examples of it include Lysenkoism, Creationism, various forms of 'alternative' medicine, and other forms of pseudo-science. Each of these refuses to respect the weight of evidence and instead begins with a dogmatic belief which adherents then attempt to shore up by ignoring huge volumes of contradictory evidence. Reality is subjugated to opinion. While it is true that the scientific community sometimes lags behind the curve of new evidence, this is the result of a general conservativism which resists wild speculation, rather than a genuine resistance to evidence. What proponents of these ideologies do not understand is that science is not a set of dogmas, but a method for refining our understanding of reality. It is not based upon accepted authority, but upon a continous effort to check each other's work, in which the rewards go to those who successfully challenge accepted ideas, as well as to those who make new discoveries or establish better theories. The better established a theory, the more attractive a target it becomes--but the challenge must be based upon solid research. Pseudo-science eschews the hard work of science in favour of flimsy unsubstantiated claims, usually with the intent of fleecing the gullible. This preference for dogma over truth is just called bad science. Religion has a better term for it: idolatry.

Idolatry can be summarized as a preference for a particular representation of a thing over the reality of the thing itself. It is not the simple act of representation, but the uncritical acceptance, and even worship, of that representation. And contrary to the beliefs of many religious adherants, a representation need not be graphical or concrete in nature. It can be a book, an opinion, an idea, or a current or historical figure of authority. The critical factor is that this representation is imposed upon the real in such a way that reality itself becomes obscured. Truth is sacrificed on the altar of prejudice and opinion. Worshippers are caught in the Veil of Maya, trapped in a world they have constructed which they have pulled over their eyes to hide the truth.

According to virtually all religions, this is the greatest sin you can commit. And yet these same religions have become encrusted with the products of moral intuitions, products which believers take to be the final word. The religions have become a set of dogmas rather than a method, and the dogmas have become brute obstacles to the development of this central moral faculty. The religions have stalled, ground to a halt under the weight of their own traditions and the idolatrous regard for those traditions. Rather than approaching the originators of these traditions, to attempt to understand them and extend and adapt that understanding to novel circumstances, the faithful continue to worship them from afar, eternal children to a long dead parent.

While the pronouncements of these historical figures may be an improvement upon the primitive moral state of the most ignorant members of our society, they also impede the progress of people who can and should know better. Entire civlizations remain in orbit to bronze age and iron age ethical positions, which constantly threaten to pull us back into a state of near barbarism. In the case of Islam, the idolatry of a single figure, Mohammed, and a single book, the Koran, has created a cultural black hole from which few can escape. As Homer Simpson said about alcohol, Islam has become the cause of and the solution to all of life's problems. It is Marx's opiate of the masses, which dulls the pain that might cause them to seek more realistic solutions. It is also the perfect meme, in that it behaves as a cognitive virus which is almost incurable. The level of idolatry at work here is made glaringly obvious by the Danish cartoon controversy, in which millions of Muslims were apparently scandalized by mere drawings of a man. The proper reaction should have been to point out that they were themselves engaging in an orgy of idolatry, and that they themselves had beecome the infidels.

This lesson is not lost on Fundamentalist Christians, who are seeking to construct a black hole of their own centered of the idolatry of Christ and the Bible. This is, of course, an absolute betrayal of the most fundamental of all religious principles. If they succeed, Western Civilization may implode at the cost of billions of lives and unspeakable misery. The cultural sterility of fundamentalism of all kinds should sound a strong warning. If those who pride themselves on being made in the image of the Creator show no creativity themselves, what does that say about them? The flesh is weak, and the spirit is dead.

The difference between these dead husks and the vital struggles which long ago inspired them is astounding. Rather than pick up the cross, Christians have become content to bow and worship while Christ carries it. Rather than worshipping him as a God, they should stand up, look him in the eye, and try to understand, not just what he thought, but how he thought, and then bring those thoughts up to date. It isn't impossible; we were all born with the capacity to make moral judgements. Only a superstitious awe keeps us from doing so. Yet the farther we drift into idolatry, into the worship of scriptures and the people behind them, the farther we drift from the spirit which created them.

As it is, Christianity and Islam are FUBAR.

An Embarrasment of Riches

A few months ago, on CBC's Ideas, I heard a conductor say that there was no place for Beethoven anymore, because it was too grandiose, given recent experiences in the West. No doubt he was talking about the Holocaust. Apparently he thought that music should now reflect the uncertainty and embarrasment that Europeans feel about recent events in their history.

What this indicates is only that they do not understood the historical context of the Holocaust. For millenia, genocide has been something of an international sport to every race and nation which found itself in the position to pursue it. The Old Testament includes long dreary passages which depict the ancient Hebrews pursuing the extermination of other tribes whose sole crime was to be in their path. Fortunately these accounts are, in all likelihood, historically innacurate. The Jews in Babylon, having been expelled from Israel, felt the need to create a myth of themselves as conquering heroes. But the very occurence of such myths says much about the ethic of the time and of most of the history since. If you had the power, you slaughtered everyone in your path who might be able to oppose you, and took the rest as slaves.

Genocide was practiced by the Turks against the Armenians, by the Russians in progroms against the Jews, by the Americans against the Natives, and by the English against the Irish--to name a recent few. None were particularly successful, because these efforts were not particularly well organized, and the technology for mass extermination did not yet exist. Mostly it was done by neglect, or by a sort of backhanded strategy, because killing a lot of people deliberately took a lot of work and resources. But the invention of automatic weapons changed all that. It became possible to kill a lot of people with a few guns.

But then, of course, there was the problem of corpse disposal. If you were going to kill that many people, you had to get rid of the bodies, and the best way to do that was to cremate them. And if you're going to cremate them, you might as well industrialize the murder as well, and... well you can see where this is going. And we did, in the Nazi concentration camps. The Nazis took an old pursuit and modernized it. They built death factories. Their innovation was not the goal, only the means to bring it about.

But doing it that efficiently, and that systematically, they got caught. Finally, someone got caught, red handed, in the act, and there was no denying what they were up to, and we had the people responsible, and hard evidence that they'd done it. There was no denying the intent. But again, the intent was nothing new. What was new was that someone actually defined that intent and set out to do it in a systematic fashion, so there was no doubt what they were up to. And for perhaps the first time, they were the only ones in the vicinity doing it (at last, none of the observers were inclined to wink and look away.) The act was very clear, and stood in stark contrast to accepted practice elsewhere (well, almost--Stalin's mass starvation of the Ukraine comes to mind.)

Still, only the methods and the situation were new. The monster revealed in Nazi Germany had been around a long, long time. But the type of horror and disgust that it aroused were also new. Many people in the West thought that they had encountered an entirely new demon. They thought that this demon had appeared for the first time in Germany, aided and abetted by other Europeans who had cooperated. They thought, for this reason, that this demon was uniquely European, and that something in Europe was uniquely responsible for creating it. This strikes me as tragically naive. The supposedly learned people who hold this opinion are stunned and apalled by a fact that was common knowledge even to most of the unlettered peasantry of the Dark Ages: the demonic potential that lays coiled within human nature itself.

I find nothing particularly significant in the fact that the Germans were the ones who got caught in the act--they just happened to systematize it first. Nor is there anything particularly significant in that the Jews were the target--although the fact that the Jews were the target yet again is worthy of notice (the ongoing spectacle of anti-semitism is a testament to human stupidity and venality.) Nor do I find it particularly significant that it happened in Europe. Far more significant was that the people who did it got caught, condemned even by their own children, and that the whole episode earned the contempt even of the very nation found guilty of it. That is new. Prior to this, everyone who had ever been engaged in this sort of thing denied it, downplayed it when denial didn't work, and were generally let off the hook even when that failed by other nations who were, usually, indulging in the same dirty practices.

Oscar Wilde said "All of us are lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." The human potential for evil should not be news. And it must also be understood that we have an equal potential for good. The German persecution of the Jews was old news; in 70 AD, the Romans razed Jeruselem to the ground--but for a few stone walls in the desert, no one would have known it was ever there. It has not stopped since. The Ashkenazy Jews have been subject to a level of persecution for two thousand years which no other race or people has ever suffered. But what is new is that Western Civilization has recognized this fact, and has vowed, for the most part, never to let it happen again. This is progress.

Beethoven said, essentially, that his life told nothing, but his music said everything. Those who are too timid to play his music apparently assume that it was based upon a naive view of the world which has failed. In fact, if anyone is naive, it is the people who believe this; I doubt that one could claim that Beethoven was unaware of the miseries of life or the faults of humanity. We have not failed. Against the grandeur of the Universe, even the music of Beethoven seems timid and understated. Play his music. We have not finished. We have not even begun.

Gratitude

Richard Dawkins presents an interesting perspective on life: out of the possible set of genetic and environmental permutations of humanity, more numerous than the atoms in the universe, you got to live. You won the ultimate lottery. You're here. And you, and all the people who have lived or will live, are but a handful of sand taken from a beach that stretches to the horizon in both directions.

Not only that, but if you're reading this, you are probably a well-educated citizen of a first world country living in a time when the benefits of science have yielded the highest life expectancy, highest level of understanding, and the highest standard of living in human history. Furthermore, we enjoy a political system which provides us with the greatest freedom of expression and enterprise, and the greatest freedom from oppression and exploitation, than have ever been enjoyed by any society in human history.

Even if you are lower middle class, you live better than Kings did only two hundred years ago. Yes, this has been quantitatively demonstrated, by measuring the labour equivalent of our household appliances, economic efficiency, and technical competance. You have at your beck and call the equivalent of dozens of servants, provided in the form of mechanical and commercial assistance, public infrastructure, and sheer technical and scientific competence, in your daily life. Chances are that a century or two ago, you would have been dead by now, or you would have lived in abject poverty or under political, economic, or physical duress. Millions have worked, and stuggled, and fought, and even died, for the priveleges that you now enjoy.

We are not done. You live on a planet ideally suited to the sustainment of life, a pale blue speck which forms the basis for the very possibility of all that you take for granted. So far as we now know, it is the only one of its kind. Statistically, we expect that there may be others, but we have never found one, and that should tell you how rare this is. It is possible that there are other environmental configurations which sustain an alternate form of life, but we have yet to find one. The SETI project has not yet found a signal out there that would indicate intelligent life. So far as we know, we're it. And that means that every breath we take is incredibly improbable. In a universe this large, where the only survivable environment that we know of is the one we live in, we find that, far from being ideally suited for the occurrence of life, our universe is overwhelmingly hostile to life. In all but a vanishingly small domain of our universe, we would be dead in thirty seconds or less.

Mercy is breathing. Anyone who takes a breath for granted knows nothing about the reality of this universe. Anyone who takes a breath for granted takes life for granted. To understand the universe that we live in is to be grateful for each breath, and to make each exhalation an Alleluia. If you do not take delight merely in being alive, you are wasting your time on nonsense. And yet, none of this in any way assumes the existence of the divine.

If one assumes that all of this was created for us, that God has loaded the dice specifically for our purposes, that life was inevitable from the outset, than all that we know is to be taken for granted, and we are justified in asking "Why not more?" If God guarantees life, and caters to the individual needs of each believer, then anything falling short of that promise is a disappointment. But to understand our very improbability, the single chance in trillions to the power of trillions that each moment of our existence represents, is to revel in even our most trivial delights as a gift beyond all value.

Yet daily life is taken for granted, for believers expect an eternity to eclipse their lives in the here and now. Indeed, some expect an entirely new world to be built for them to replace this one--the miraculous improbability of this world is simply not enough for them. In service to that imagined eternity, many will turn this life into a living hell, a pinched pursuit of spleen-driven persecution and destruction. What, I wonder, would be enough? Nothing, I suspect. For the one thing that we could never escape in eternity is ourselves--that same ingrateful self which dismisses the delights of the moment in favour of the imagined bliss of eternity. In the end, even eternity would be a dreary burden for these people. Colloquial expression encourages me to say 'Thank God for death and the loss of the self', but God is not necessary for this gift, nor is this loss of self consistent with religious mythology. We can only be grateful that death does indeed bring an end to such madness.

A New Twist on White Man's Burden

At first glance, it would appear that the western opinion of Muslims is largely split between those who consider them the enemy, and those who consider them the victims of western aggression. Of these two positions, the first may arise from racism, but the second is also typical of a form of racism which is all the worse for its patronizing attitude.

Consider: there are only 9 Muslim Nobel Prize laureates, only 2 for science. There have been 178 Jewish Nobel Prize winners, 156 for science. 1.2 billion people vs. 15 million, and look at the difference. Scott Atran, at the Beyond Belief conference last November, argued that Muslim terrorists do what they do not because of their Muslim beliefs, but because they are marginalized and crave respect. Yet he, like many other apologists for Islam, ignores the elephant in the room. The reason that there are so few Muslim Nobel Prize winners, the reason that the infrastructure in Muslim countries is kept running by imported western labour, the reason that the Middle East served as a chew toy for every world power that took an interest in it, and the reason that they are marginalized and that no one respects them, is that they are saddled with a religious ideology which makes them culturally, scientifically, politically, and economically sterile. They produce no art, music, science, technology, and the few that dare to write something of value take their lives in their hands. Nobody respects someone who contributes nothing.

Muslims are oppressed by Islam. There's simply no other coherent explanation for their poor performance in all these areas. Or did you think they were genetically inferior? Racism takes many forms. White Man's burden has been given a whole new packaging; we feel responsible for the downtrodden and oppressed--which makes us just a little bit superior to them, doesn't it? My, how wonderful and powerful we must be to control the destiny of everyone else! But it never occurs to anyone to wonder whether the reason they are oppressed is that we play into it by our patronizing attitude. We treat them like pets. The only way to continue to exploit the victim card is to remain a victim. You cannot demand pity and respect in the same breath, and expect to gain both.

This same attitude prevails with respect to blacks in the ghettos, North American Natives, and Australian Aborigines. We set lower standards for them. We consign them to hell holes where they have nothing to do but slowly kill themselves and each other. As John Ibbitson said in the Globe and Mail, "If you’re an Indian in your 20s living on a reserve, you need to leave right now." We seek to preserve a culture which is already long dead, or a culture which is born out of dysfunctional poverty, as if their misery was somehow an enriching experience for us. Being that it is what they know, they are, of course, willing to go along, even as that culture slaughters their children and compounds horror upon horror. It's the devil they know.

Maintaining and supporting dysfunctional cultures is a waste of resources, and helps preserve in the first world the very conditions which many of the people of those cultures may be attempting to flee. Even if, like the people from Jamaica or Somalia, they have come to escape conditions in those countries but still seek to preserve their culture, we must ask whether that very culture is itself the cause of those conditions. If it is, we are doing them no favour by collecting them in ghettos where those cultures predominate. All we have done is abandon them to pockets governed by the very conditions which they have fled. We wall them off, throw just enough money over the wall to keep them quiet, and leave them to wallow in destitution and prey upon each other. But we are doing them no favours. The ideal of multiculturalism is predicated upon the belief that all cultures are equally conducive to the well being of those who belong to them. This is obviously not the case. It is no accident that the colonies which were governed longest by the English now fare better than those which were never colonies, or were governed by other European powers. The English were no angels, but at least they imparted to their colonies the same economic and political principles by which they governed themselves, and those principles have worked very well both for the English and their former colonies. We owe it to immigrants to teach them the best that we know, rather than marginalize them and treat them like quaint figurines on our mantlepiece. We owe them a piece of the pie, and they will never get it if we continue to sideline them in the same conditions they have come to escape. And we have to make this change soon, or the disparity between us and them will grow as those conditions stigmatize them and arouse habitual prejudices in the future.

My opinion may not be politically correct, but I suspect that future generations will look back upon our treatment of these communities in the same light that we now look back on the Crow laws of the old south. Affirmative Action is not the answer either--gains cheaply made are less valued, and each newcomer, in any group, is expected to prove their value to those already in the group, or they can never earn the respect of that community. Efforts in political consciousness raising to overcome this attitude have failed, because it has produced the very patronizing attitude that I am arguing against here. The experiment has gone tragically awry; all we have done is taught the monster to smile and whisper soothingly as it kills. Prior to the orthodoxy of multiculturalism, each new ethnic community was forced to earn respect by making standing on its own feet and contributing to our society. Macho poses do not accomplish this. The Irish were the biggest brawlers and thugs ever to set foot in North America, but only when we grew up and faced our responsibilities did we gain the respect we so craved. We stopped being green or orange, and became Canadians. No one respects a gangster, not really. Irish women got fed up with men behaving like boys, and insisted that they act like men. Threats and posturing may gain momentary concessions, but they will never earn respect.

Of course, there remains the problem of whether attitudes in the home impair education. This should be a serious concern for immigration officials--a culture which devalues learning will be a serious impediment anywhere. But perhaps we should make it clear to immigrants that we expect them to integrate into our society, rather than promise them that we will attempt to preserve them in their current culture. At least then, those unwilling to make the sacrifice would choose not to come, and the rest would know the price they are prepared to pay.

We regard only children and the insane as not responsible for their actions. So which are the Muslims, the Aborigines, the Indians, and others who fall into the ghetto trap--children, or lunatics? Let's start treating them as adults, stop patronizing them with pity, and expect them to take responsiblity for their own fate, just as we would anyone in our own society, anyone we considered equal.

Islam is even more of a problem for Muslims than it is for us. It's time we stopped making excuses for it.

The Weekly Pizza Message

I work in a strange place. It's a game development company, filled with strange and wonderful people, and this allows me to do strange and wonderful things. Like order pizza every Thursday, and send out strange and wonderful emails to everyone in the company the day before to remind them to order.

So here is a sampling of those messages, and I will post more in the future, more or less in order...

Thursday is road-kill day...
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...or for those with an aversion to that sort of thing, there's always pizza.

Thursday is Pizza day
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Much better than deep fried dog turd. Order yours here.

Thursday is capitalist imperialist snack day!
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Do your part for the revolution! Order your pizza here.

Thursday is frilly lingerie day!
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Um, sorry, that's Tuesday. On thursdays we order pizza.

Thursday is extortion day!
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Order pizza. Because you know I'm going to come around for the money anyway.

Thursday is naked lunch day.
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With a variety of new and interesting toppings. Order here before your computer turns into a giant bug.

Thursday is AAAAAAGGGHHHHH...
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Something to do with Pizza.

(Silly person. People don't write AAAAAGGGHHHHH. I mean, no one would go to the trouble of writing it out, now, would they? If you were dying, you might say AAAAAGGGHHHHH, but you wouldn't have time to write it, you'd just see the writing and then it would just stop in the midd

The Thursday Ritual
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Here at Artech we have a ritual, practiced every Thursday, in which we don black latex gimp suits and torment our co-workers by spanking them with dried salted halibut while loudly playing songs sung by William Shatner...

Or you can order pizza.

Real men eat Pizza on Thursdays!
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And real women too!

Uh... that is, real women eat pizza too, not that real men eat real women too. Well, yeah, okay, they might, but not for lunch. I mean, they don't swallow...er, that is... never mind...

Thursday

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pizza

Re: Thursday
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Alright, I thought I would take the minimalist approach and go down to two words, but it seems some sort of razzle dazzle is required to annouce pizza.

For this reason, we have enlisted the delicious talents of one Dilly Salzbanger, late of the Megadrome Consumerama, and her life partner and prime doorstop, Screech Headcranker, former head of quality assurance for the recreational drug division of Leary and Hopper Pharmeceuticals. Dilly will perform her one-woman show, entitled Forty-Five Erotic Poses Not Normally Permitted By Human Physiology Or The Law.

Screech, officially pronounced brain-dead in 1993 and 'neurologically fascinating' at the Bio-Psychology Conference and Rave of 1997, is not guaranteed to do anything, but is prone to significant moments. They should be here around noon--or not, as Screech is flying the saucer.

Thursday is the day that dares not speak it's name...
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In keeping with our tradition of pizza day extraveganzas, Baron Mungo Attrosso will lead a chorus of Tuvan throat-singers in a endless repetition of the chorus of Home on the Range, while his tiny mexican assistant Paolo performs the fire-ant dance in polyester boxer-shorts. Possibly the most annoying sound known to man, this performance is likely to produce psychotic breaks and homicidal tendencies in all spectators within half an hour. Your best bet is to surreptitiosly jam a bit of pizza crust in your ears--but you can't very well do that if you don't order pizza, can you? Well, don't say I didn't warn you...

The Pizza Pixie
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On Thursdays the pizza pixie flutters in on her tiny gossamer wings to bestow upon all the good little girls and boys the pizza of their choice. Then she gathers all the boys and girls together and sings cheerful songs of life in pixie land, spreading warmth and pixie dust and good fortune to all who hear her.

At least, that's what used to happen before Mike Morris shot her and made a pixie sandwich out of her.

Now we have to pay for our pizza, which is delivered by a furry, sweaty, irritable little man in a Pinto. Pixies now being extinct, we have to order from Domino's. Oh, well, order pizza anyway...

Pizza traps
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The exotic and furtive Artech people live in dark caves where they serve and are amused by their glowing electronic idols. Once a week, on every Thursday, we leave pizza by the door of their cave. Those that emerge, drawn by the scent of this tasty snack, we beat over the head with a large stick, so that we may later add them to our collection of rare and extinct species--rare and extinct, of course, because we have beat so many of them over the head with a large stick...

On Thursday we sacrifice a goat to the old ones...
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In the hopes that our ancestors will be pleased with us and shower us with much pizza, we annoy our livestock by picking one at random and killing it in a showy manner. We used to do this with a person instead, until someone suggested that we kill the ugly old priest instead of another beautiful young virgin, and the villagers brightened and thought this a capital idea. However, since the priests get to eat the goats they kill, the people of the village still suspect that something is not quite on here, and we may be flipping the head priest on the barby any day now.

The Carrion Eaters

It occurs to me that the death of religion might not mean the disappearance of it so much as a surfeit of garbage religion and superstition. The dead and dying cannot defend themselves from those who want to gnaw on them as they lie there, and the explosion of irrational nonsense that we now see is as much an affront to the old religions as it is to rationalists. Their churches are being ransacked by political empire builders, and yet, the only strength they seem to be able to muster is against atheists, because they think it's a safe fight.

Consider the loathsome crowd of vultures that now feed on the carcass of the major faiths, the likes of Falwell, Robertson, Bin Laden, and Haggard. There was a time when these faiths had the strength to fend these carrion eaters off. There was a reason why fundamentalist christians were relegated to the backwoods: someone was minding the store. Or consider the lunacy of the Rapture. The noisome little man who first loosed this brain fart was promptly packed off from the Anglican Church to obscurity. Now legions of believers spout this dime store fantasy, and the only voice that can be heard to object comes from secularists. Heresy is rampant, and the old faiths are now taken to mean so many different things to so many people that they effectively mean nothing at all.

It now seems that the old religions are so desperate to make their faiths a happenin' thang that they will hold their nose and embrace any mangy beast that appears to have a talent for attracting a crowd. They can't even rouse themselves to the effort of challenging other religions. And when the rallying cry of the Christian right is against gay marriage--the only thing that seems to be able to unite them is a thinly veiled hatred of homsexuals--you know the whole train has gone off the rails. I certainly don't miss the inquisition--the same stick they beat heretics with was also used on atheists--but when they can't even work up a lather against blithering heresies, you can stick a fork in their ass. They're done.

Against Metaphysics

When I first started taking philosophy in University, metaphysics appeared to be a very promising pursuit. It seemed to me to be the gateway to magic; it held the possibility of alternate universes ruled by different orders. If materialism denied the existence of magic, well then, just do away with it--it was just one metaphysical premise amongst others, and the best part of metaphysics was that you could spin conjectures to your heart's content, and never be called on to prove any of them, except by a clever twist of logic and a big maybe (and who could prove me wrong?) It was, after all, meta-physics, supposedly the basis of physics itself, except that, being non-empirical, you didn't have to bother with all of that annoying evidence. All the worlds of fantasy and science-fiction beckoned--and somehow, I could justify them. But as I learned more about it, metaphysics lost its lustre.

Metaphysics isn't about magic or the supernatural--at least, not necessarily. It is a discussion of the ultimate nature of reality. It is, however, beyond the bounds of the empirical or strictly logical. This means that mathematics is not a branch of metaphysics, unless you assert that a particular mathematical model describes ultimate reality independent of empirical verification. If the model corresponds to reality and is demonstrated empirically to do so, then you're doing physics. This is why some physicists have become dismissive of string theory. So much of it lies outside of the bounds of empirical testing that by claiming that it represents physical reality, theoreticians may in fact be practicing metaphysics. But it is not the mathematics itself that make this metaphysics, only the claim that they represent reality without empirical justification. You can construct an infinite variety of mathematical worlds by varying your basic axioms, but most of those worlds will have no bearing on reality as we know it. Exploring these worlds mathematically is just mathematics. Asserting that these worlds actually underpin physical reality, without any empirical evidence to back this claim, is metaphysics.

What distinguishes metaphysics from physics, or branches of logic or mathematics, is that it makes truth claims without any means of verification or disproof, either through induction or deduction. This is the key point that many people seem to miss--if you can actually prove the claim, you are not practicing metaphysics, but science. And conjectural musings about alterate universes without truth assertions are fiction, usually science-fiction or fantasy.

To say that everything is metaphysics isn't really saying much, because it amounts to saying that everything is based upon the ultimate nature of reality. But that does not mean that all theory is metaphysical, because metaphysics consists entirely of conjectural assertions. If all theories are metaphysical, then all theories, regardless of correspondence with observable fact, are equal. For any metaphysical claim, there are contrary claims which stand on equal footing. Since metaphysical claims cannot be proven or disproven, lumping science into metaphysics places it on equal footing with alternate metaphysical systems which have no empirical basis. Even the emphasis on empiricism becomes negotiable, and this is where magic can be reintroduced. If you don't have to prove it, you can believe anything you want. This is the launch point for systems of New Age magic, and the same position has now been adopted for the defense of religion. This is why religious believers want to argue metaphysics--as soon as you join in the discussion on this ground, you've lost. You have unwittingly agreed to the premise that empirical evidence has no bearing on truth, and once you've done that, they can claim anything they want, and there's nothing you can do about it.

So while not all metaphysics leads to magical beliefs, all magical beliefs begin with metaphysical assertions. And since metaphysical assertions are, by their very nature, beyond proof or disproof, metaphysical arguments can never be resolved. Metaphysics is thus the final refuge of philosophical scoundrels, whose intentions are to force you to acknowledge your ignorance in a domain where there is nothing but ignorance, and use this admission of ignorance to sneak their argument past you. The only way to win an argument on metaphysics is to refuse to engage in it, which is precisely what scientists do. This is not dodging the point, but recognizing that there is no point.

This idea, by the way, has its equivalent in analytic philosophy, in some forms of mysticism, and in apophatic theology. The thrust of these traditions is that you cannot talk about the unknowable because you are talking nonsense, and worse, you may convince yourself that the nonsense you are arguing about is true, leading you away from the real truth.

The Evolutionary Basis of Morality

This weekend. on Sam Harris's site, I ran into yet another fundamentalist claiming that there is no basis for morality or human rights without religion. Here is my response:

The basis of human consciousness and self-awareness is that we evolved the ability to model and anticipate the actions of other intentional entities. This ability spans from the simple action of throwing a spear to where the deer will be, rather than where it is, to anticipating the actions and reactions of other human beings like ourselves, so that we can anticipate threats, form alliances, and even manipulate or resist manipulation by others. Out of this initial advance came the ability to create respresentations, express those representations in language, and create a representation of one's self just as one could create a model of the intentions of other people. This self representation became 'I', self awareness, and we became conscious beings.

What this means is that we are essentially social creatures, who have a strong empathy for others of our kind, and even for other animals. This empathy is the basis of human rights, expressed in what we now call the Golden Rule (which, though expressed in the Bible, predates it by millenia): Treat others as you would like to be treated. This is no more or less than the expression of an evolved capacity common to all human beings who are not stunted by development or upbringing. We understand each other as being like ourselves, and are affected (in the most literal sense of the word) by their pain, pleasure, sadness, or joy. In order for this bond to be broken, we must cease to see the other as human. This capacity for empathy is present even in many other mammals; we, as conscious beings, are able to codify it. As we continue to understand ourselves better, we improve upon the expression of it. Our current standard of human rights is a recent achievement, which is not reflected or prefigured in the bronze age values enshrined in the Bible.

But the root of it is and always has been in our genes, and survived there because it conferred a strong adaptive advantage. The ethics of the Bible is simply an earlier, more primitive, expression of this innate ability. I do not wish to harm others because I know they are like myself; I literally feel their pain, and share their joy. I support the codification of mutually supportive conduct because it works in my favour as well as everyone else's, ensuring our safety, well-being, aid in the event of need, and the delight of peaceful human coexistence. This is all that morality and human rights require. I neither ask nor need more.

If you do not feel this human bond, and require the ministrations of a cosmic tyrant to hold you to civil conduct, then you have my pity--but not my respect.

The Law and the Prophets

A friend of mine mentioned an idea to me a while back, which seems to make more sense as I think about it. I brought it up on Slashdot with a Muslim, and by his reply I'm guessing he sort of smoked and vibrated and turned red and then exploded. Terrible, angry bits everywhere, no survivors. So I got no coherent opinion there. And yet, what he said, which prompted me to bring up this idea, convinced me that he was representative of the very tendency that I suspect runs through Islam.

This tendency is summed up and expressed in the word Inshallah: If God wills it. In Islam it seems that the will of God is mutable and unbound; even science is irrelevant, because God can break the laws of nature at will (this is precisely what the exploding Muslim said.) In contrast, there is a tradition that is common to Judaism, Christianity, Greek philosophy, and science which respects established laws, which God may establish but which even He is bound to. This runs through the Jewish idea of the Covenant, in Plato's Idealism and his argument that the gods do good because it is Good, rather than defining the Good by their words and actions, and in the basic premise of natural science. Both the Jewish and Greek versions of this idea heavily influenced Christianity.

It is this foundation of established laws and principles which allowed the societies dominated by this tradition to gain ground, ratcheting themselves forward by establishing sound principles, testing them for solidity, and then using them to advance to the next. They were able to move forward because because they had solid ground under their feet; ground which they found or discovered as they advanced. Legal jurisprudence, philosophical principles, and scientific theories are all established and built upon, step by tentative step, sometimes faltering or even falling back, and occasionally leaping forward.

This movement is also intrinsic to the tradition. If the world is governed uniformly in all aspects by certain principles, then we can always learn more by querying the world and each other. The world itself is imbued with wisdom, waiting to be discovered. The rules are fixed, but our understanding of them can change and grow, and the rule book is all around us. Nor is there any contradiction between this and religion. If God is both legislator of and governed by these laws, understanding them allows us to understand the mind of God. The scriptures themselves may be corrected in this way.

If, however, God is free to change his mind by whim, and can change the world as he chooses, then God is the only source of knowledge, and anything learned any other way is inherently unstable and therefore of little value. This was the point that the Muslim poster kept returning to; he'd built an impenetrable wall around himself, with this repeated on every brick. Since the agreed upon communication from God occurred only in a few ancient texts, progress becomes nearly impossible--Islam is caught in an endless cycle of return. Everything hinges on the interpretation of those texts. If the texts aren't extraordinarily precise--and most scriptures of any religion are as vague as a Rorshach ink blot--everything hinges on the interpretation, and the authority of the interpreter. The society is fixed in a medieval pattern of successive cults of personality. Just as the personality of the king informs the character of the feudal society which he governs, the position of the dominant clerics sets the tone for the people who follow them.

What appears to be absolute is in fact completely relative, because it is based entirely upon personal opinions which are supported in a self-referential matter. There is no objective methodology, no means of checking their facts, no legal library to consult for precedence. Even logic and evidence are overruled, so previous philosophical refutations carry no weight. Truth is established by force, not because all clerics build their reputations by authoritarian measures, but because those who don't have the option of force will be overwhelmed by those who do, and the winners will rewrite the history and sign God's name to it.

All of this goes a long way towards explaining the state of the many of the countries of the Middle East as political, social, economic, and cultural invalids sustained by a petroleum drip. It is even more disturbing to realize that many fundamentalist Christians aspire to the same world view, hoping to sweep aside the entire history of Western civilization to return to Biblical principles, ignorant of the reality that the world they are trying to undo is itself largely the result and proper inheritor of those very principles. These Christians are aliens in the modern Western world, but I suspect they would be very much at home in Iran. Religious triumphalism is sufficient to encourage return and stagnation, but fortunately the West, so far, has resisted this. But it seems that multiculturalism provides a fog of moral relativism while post-modernism encourages epistemological relativism; fundamentalists of all denominations are quickly learning to exploit this. It seems that the extremes of the left and the right are drawing closer together the more they attack one another, even as moderates on the left and right find common ground.

It's ironic that I would have no interest in converting those who would most likely be converted; moderate, rational Christians who are essentially deists, have little or no belief in miracles, no argument with science, and who go to church for solace and community. The people I would most like to convert are precisely those who exist in a near solpsistic bubble which includes only themselves, their God, and a handful of "True Believers", of which even 95% of Christians wouldn't qualify. They are impenetrable, and that is precisely what makes them dangerous. They would gladly roll back 2000 years of human progress to return to what they imagine to be the fundamentals of their religion. In fact, that religion has moved on, and the real Christian tradition leads through scholastic philosophy to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, science, and secularism.

If the laws of nature are the laws of God, then nature itself is scripture, and understanding the laws of nature is to come closer to knowing God. Where written scripture is in conflict with nature, it is scripture that is wrong, since these writings are the work of men while nature is the direct work of God. In essence, God is reality, and reality is God: "I am who am." If God vanishes into the laws of science, then that is the natural outcome of this tradition. By this point, if religious faith persists, it should persist as some form of deism that makes no truth claims about the physical world.

What Christian fundamentalism represents is not a fork in the Christian tradition, but a radical break from it, an alien parallel that deviates from Christianity even in pre-biblical times. Fundamentalism is marked by bibliolatry (worship of the Bible), false prophecy (radical misinterpretations of Biblical writings, particularly apocalyptic writings which refer to historical events of the writers' times), idolatry (radical alterations in the character and nature of the divine, combined with frequent literal representations of it), and blasphemy (using the name of God to endorse personal or political views.) The danger is that fundamentalists do not consider themselves ultimately bound by any law, even the laws of nature or the traditions of their own religion. The higher authority they appeal to is not God, but their own interpretation of the Bible, or the interpretation of their chosen leader. In Catholicism, you have one Pope who is infallible. In fundamentalist Christianity, you have thousands or even millions of Popes who are all infallible. But behind their absolutist claims is an abyss of ethical and epistemological relativism. There is no objective standard by which to judge their claims, no method of proof or disproof, no long incremental tradition of philosophy, legal precedents, scientific research, or even theological debate. What remains is essentially a feudal system of a series of cults of personality, which range in size from the entire membership of a mega-church to a cult of one who considers himself a law unto himself.

This does much to explain the bizarre attitude of George Bush towards the law and his belief that his own powers supersede it, and why he prefers unilateral action to the force of international law. To him, the law is a mere inconvenient technicality which he obeys, not out of respect, but out of expediency. The same contempt for the constitution and even for democracy can be found in the opinions of other fundamentalists, who hint that it's high time that all this be set aside in favour of the rule of God--their God. This sentiment is behind criticisms of judges as "activist judges", when in fact these judges are only acting upon established laws and precedents. The campaign waged by Christian conservatives to reduce the power of the courts is not an attack against judges, but against the law itself, which like science is based upon evidence and reason. They wish the law to bow and give way before fascistic waves of emotional populism. And to call it fascism is not an overstatement; fascism is built upon relativism and cults of personality. If there is no truth, and even reason is not respected, the only valid argument is a steel toed boot.

Dostoyevsky wrote, "If God exists, everything is possible; if there is no God, everything is permitted." But the survival of our current population level on this planet is made possible only by the advance and benefits of science, and the order and freedom that we enjoy is the fruit of a long battle for legal precedents and wisdom over centuries. Without these, nothing of our way of life would be possible. And if mere opinion, disguised by appeals to Biblical infallibility, is the only standard, then the dialogue of civil society dissolves into a cacaphony of competing, shouting voices, and who can say what is right or wrong. So it would be more accurate to say that if truth exists, everything is possible; if there is no truth, everything is permitted.

They Really Do Hate Our Freedoms

There seems to be a recurring error which crops up in the left about the roots of Islamic terrorism. Bush constantly repeats the claim that they attack us because they hate our freedoms, and won't consider that maybe American foreign policy, including his own, might play a part. His critics insist that this is all because of inept foreign policy, and only that. But both of these contribute to the problem, and the first one to admit it wins the kewpie doll.

There’s no question that 100 years of inept foreign policy has brought us to this, on both the part of England and America. England’s contribution includes the partitioning of India and the creation of Pakistan, and the support of Wahabbiist extremists, both a product of a divide and conquer strategy. America’s contribution was to support extremist theocratic elements, in the hopes that they would oppose “Godless” communism, and to undermine democratically elected governments in favour of puppet regimes. America’s installation of the Shah eventually led to the revolution and the current theocracy; had it not been for this, Iran might be the voice of moderation in the Middle East and not the central distributor of terrorism. And the invasion of Iraq is enough to put Bush up there with the worst of them–it was probably the worst policy possible under the circumstances.

However, to blame this all on support for Israel and discount the genuine antipathy of Muslim extremists for Western values and freedoms is simply naive. Israel is a vanishingly small portion of the Middle East. The body count on terrorist attacks shows a complete lack of concern for the safety of Palestinians on the part of the terrorists. Believing that Muslims go to heaven as martyrs when killed in Jihad, the terrorists actually think they are doing Palestinians a favour by killing them. Nesrallah isn’t after Zionists; he said that it would be better if all Jews came to Israel, so that he would be able to kill them all there. Israel is a political red herring, played up by dictators and populist demagogues in the Middle East to keep their people distracted from the real issues. And it works–the people of the Middle Easts fall for it, and a lot of people on the left keep falling for it.

Good fences make good neighbours, as the old saying goes, but the internet and the flow of culture from America has brought American values directly into the homes of millions of people in the Middle East. The fences have come down. This challenges the ideological monopoly of the clerics, and what they really want us to do is shut up; they want to stop the flow of information and influence at source, if possible. That means, yes, that they do actually oppose our freedoms. This may not be the view of the majority of the citizenry, but it is what is motivating the terrorist extremist groups, who are led by Imams and fight in the name of Islam. They’re afraid that if their own people get a taste of these freedoms, they might want them too, and the theocratic stranglehold that exists in their countries will end. So as much as I hate to agree with Bush on anything, Islamic terrorists really do hate our freedoms.

"We Love Death as You Love Life"

So claim militant Muslims, and delude themselves into believing that this assures them of victory.

But as Patton said, a good soldier doesn't die for his country, he makes the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. In the first world war, the British wouldn't give their pilots parachutes, because they thought that this would cause them to waste a plane too easily. The result was that the Germans boasted most of the legendary aces, because they were the ones who fought and lived to learn from it. Today the man is considered the most important component of any weapons system. You can rebuild a tank, a plane, a chopper, but a trained veteran soldier or pilot is another matter.

A man who goes seeking death is going to die in his first battle. There are no veteran suicide bombers. The vast majority never get anywhere near their targets, because they're green amateurs. Suicidal terrorists do make logistics easier--there's no concern about getting the man out after the mission. But the chances of success are minimal. 9/11 worked because the people involved exploited the freedoms of an open society to attack non-combatants. As soon as the planes hit the World Trade Center, the tactic became obsolete, as the hijackers of flight 93 discovered. Because the flight was delayed, the passengers had enough time to find out what was really going on. Previously, it had always been sound policy to allow the hijackers to land the plane before taking it back. Once they knew the plane was never going to land, the passengers took matters into their own hands, as all passengers will from now on. The hijackers couldn't even handle a few unarmed civilians.

Too many people take the terrorists willingness to die as a sign of courage. But the courage to die means nothing in the absence of the courage to live. These people have so little going for them that they are willing to throw whatever they have away for a fantasy of an afterlife in paradise. Their sacrifice is an act of despair, the tantrum of a child who is ignored and irrelevant. Only the pure happenstance of middle eastern oil makes these people at all significant; without the oil money, they would have nothing to support these tantrums. We have a word for people like this: losers.

To make matters worse, the goal of these extremists is to maneuver moderates and innocent civilians into the line of fire, by hiding amongst them and thereby making them targets. The intention of extremists is to make these bystanders pick sides; indeed, to give them no choice, and to attack those who pick the other side. But no terrorist movement has ever won. The best they can hope for is a cease fire, leaving the possibility of negotiated co-existence when tempers have cooled. But that is not an option for the like of Hezbolla and Al Qaeda, whose very existence is predicated upon open hostility. It is precisely when peace becomes a possibility that they become the most militant--peace would make them irrelevant. And this will never stop. The destruction of Israel would be merely a step along the road. If Israel were gone, they would go after America, and Europe, and if all opponents were gone, they would turn on each other. Jihad is their entire purpose, and so the Jihad will never end. Victory is not their goal, it is their nemesis.

Given this choice--indeed, having this choice forced upon them--it should be clear how moderates must choose. The extremists are a cult of death. To side with them is to accept death, sooner or later. Furthermore, as I have already pointed out, these extremists are lousy soldiers. All of the middle east seems to stand against Israel, and yet tiny Israel always wins. In the war of attrition that fanatical opponents wage, Israel always wins by decimating the opposition with few losses of its own. To side with the fanatics is to resign oneself to becoming a statistic in a war that never seems to end but is never won.

Israel, of course, has its own fanatics, who keep leaping at the bait that Muslim extremists offer up. But given the sheer amount of bait, it would be hard not to, although the ill-considered ravings of hard-core zionists are gift wrapped recruitment material for the other side. Leftists who rant and storm about the evils of Israel without so much as mentioning the attrocities of the likes of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad are oblivious to the real motivations of these groups. Islamic terrorists don't want justice, they want the annihilation, not just of Israel, but of the Jews--and ultimately of the entire west, including those deluded leftists. Those who carry signs with slogans like "We are all Hezbollah!" are drooling idiots. Somehow, people on the left have taken up the cause of fascists--which means, in fact, that they are no longer on the left at all. Somehow, they have sleepwalked into the company of the SS. But then, both the left and the right have been dumbed down so much that neither side remembers what it stands for.

The Trouble with Blogs

This is a blog entry which criticizes blogs--something of a contradiction, perhaps, but I have noticed for some time that blogs tend to be very long on opinion and very short, if not completely devoid, of fact. There was a time that I read a lot of blogs, but I now stick mainly to professional journalists (who have at least some form of journalistic ethics,) scientists, researchers, philosophers, skeptics, and professional media. In short, people who are accustomed to being called out on the carpet when they get it wrong, and so make a habit of checking their facts and ideas before they write. These can go off the rails at times, but there is enough balance between a selection of sources to expose and correct glaring biases and innacuracies.

Not so with blogs. Bloggers often indulge in what I call a circle-jerk--a group of like minded people who quote and link to each other in a circular manner, thereby providing the illusion of concensus and evidentiary integrity without ever touching the ground at any point. A fairly reliable sign of this is when you find wing nuts of similar breed cited on the bloggers page. Granted, the blogger may be linking to a single argument that they find substantial, but there is something suspicious in the fact that they frequent the ravings of these nuts often enough to pick up on such a post within minutes or hours. This is why I no longer bother with Instapundit--having followed the links, looked around, and checked their facts (not easy, given that they often actually obfuscate their sources,) I found not only extremely biased opinions, but outright misrepresentation of truth. Checking their facts should be their job, not mine. I don't bother with Micheal Moore or Air America anymore (they may be very entertaining, but I certainly wouldn't quote them to support anything.) To find myself in a circle-jerk where it takes an hour of careful backtracking to discover Ann Coulter at the center is just insulting.

The internet was supposed to be a means of fact checking, and it still can be. The academic backbone is still there, as is the Guttenberg Project, archives of abstracts and historical archives, and vast repositories of computer knowledge. But there are also stagnant cesspools of inbred lunacy out there: rabid partisans, religious extremists, Neo-Nazis, the tin-foil hat crowd, who are emboldened by their cloistered incestuous digital communities to believe that they have no need to be bashful about their stupidity--indeed, that their delusions are shared by the majority of the populace simply because anyone who disagrees with them is promptly banned from their discussion groups. This is also why I prefer discussion groups which don't have dictatorial ideologues as moderators--what is the point of talking to people who always agree with you? That doesn't even afford you the chance to sharpen your arguments, let alone learn something new.

Worse yet, these backwaters serve as recruiting tools for their members, particularly if they can find someone who has no prior knowledge of the area. It only takes about fifty people to build a circle-jerk convincing to someone naive about a subject. You can find fifty people who will believe anything. Add a few books from fringe presses and you're there--these provide the much cited 'evidence'. Never mind that the evidence in these books is heresay, speculation, misinterpretation, or outright fabrication.

In an ordinary community, it's usually hard to find more than a few lunatics (though not always, or we never would have suffered the industrial strength bullshit of Hitler or the KKK.) But on the internet, you can always search for somebody else who shares that special brain fart that seems uniquely yours. Now these brain farts are stinking up even the mainstream media; thoughts that should have been met with consternation and therapy now meet with the approval of the like-blinded, who will urge you to take it to the sheeple. Today's partisan rant becomes tomorrow's editorial. I'm not sure of the way out of this, but others have already noted this, and suggested that the responsibility of journalism has a place in the world of blogs too.

The Ineffable

Ineffable means beyond expression, beyond words. Mystical and religious experiences are ineffable. You cannot talk about them; at best, you can talk around them. They are not perceptions, but transformations of perception. They have no content, but throw an altered light upon whatever ideas you have. The experience is formless, yet informs everything; empty, and yet fills everything with meaning.

Yet, if these experiences really are ineffable, why do people try to talk about them at all? The content of an ineffable experience is purely emotive, an experience of certainty which is then attached to whatever happens to drift through your mind. It's a lot like cocaine, which makes your believe that everything you think and do is the right thing. I tried it once and found myself wondering why anyone would ever do that to themselves deliberately. Rational judgement becomes impossible. I suspect that certain religion experiences operate in a similar way. Everything seems right, true, and perfect. You are willing to entertain wild ideas. This is not a bad thing unless you do not go back and cull out the nonsense that creeps in. And a lot of nonsense will creep in.

Years ago I had a prolonged period of mystical satori (not drug induced) and I can tell you that if you're not careful you can amass a lifetime's worth of bullshit in a very short time while in this state. It is a condition of apparent enlightenment--and if you are enlightened, you couldn't be wrong, could you? I knew I had gone too far when I started entertaining the significance of signs, wondering whether a title of a book I happened to unpack that day had some special meaning. I laughed when I found myself thinking this. My sense of humour probably saved my sanity. One of the common traits of cult-leaders and fanatics is that they lose their sense of humour. The conviction of enlightenment can make you very dumb. As the Bhuddists say, if you meet the Bhudda on the road, kill him. This is not to say that I learned nothing; I came to value optimism, imagination, and empathy more strongly, mainly because I struggled to preserve the essence, rather than the outcome, of the experience. But I also experienced what it must be like to be born-again, and understood why so many of them seem to be mad.

My main conclusion from that experience was that idolatry was a sin because any representation of God was false, and this included written, spoken, or imagined representations as well as those made with physical materials. The experience was truly ineffable, it was pre-cognitive. There are two traditions in theology, apophatic and kataphatic. Apophatic theology is negative theology; you can only say what God isn't. Kataphatic theology makes claims about God. Mystics hold to apophatic theology. Some theologians have argued that the Neo-Platonists corrupted Christian theology through their temptation to make positive claims about the unknowable. This is why debates about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin came to be held in such contempt--they had missed the point entirely. Modern evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity is kataphatic, which means it completely ignores the Christian mystical tradition. It consists solely of claims about existents, claims about the material world, or about an alternate material world. Their God is basically human, with human intentions, desires, needs, and goals, which apply to and affect the world of matter. The language of metaphor is read in the descriptive mode; poetry is read as a simple manual of instructions. It is essentially a mundane theology, which harps upon arbitrary and rather extraneous ideas which believers fixate upon during their period of false certainty. As such, it is spiritually tone deaf.

My friend Pat told me yesterday that he believes that the atheism of Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, is in fact apophatic theology. An apophatic theologian might claim that he believes in God, but he does not believe that God exists, or like Harris, that he does not believe in religion, but he does believe in spirituality. When the Romans first entered the Hebrew temple and Holy of Holies, they found an empty room, and concluded that the Jews were atheists. It is this apophatic tradition which lead to the ban against idols, the ban against speaking God's name, and Jesus' use of parables and indirect modes of speech. You cannot talk about God, you can only talk around an ineffable experience. As Lao Tzu said, "The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way." The ban against worshipping other Gods becomes a ban against worshipping any God when you consider that the Hebrew God eventually became a God without a name, a face, a place in the world, or any known characteristic. Another perfect expression of apophatic theology is Socrates claim that "All I know is that I know nothing." Socrates, too, was condemned as an atheist. Apophatic theology is indistiguishable from atheism because it has no object. The only way to know God is through love and the study of nature. Even the word God is of little use, because it means nothing. There is no dogma, only a method. The Bhudda holds aloft a lotus flower and smiles; the masters smile, bow, and leave, and the rest wait patiently for the explanation. To those who know, no words are necessary; to those who don't, no words will suffice.

The essence of the ineffable experience, and of apophatic theology, is that it makes no truth claims, and therefore can never contradict science. It is, after all, just a feeling, albeit a well-adapted one. I suspect that the true heirs of Jesus and other mystics are not the believers, but scientists, driven by their love of truth and their fellow man, and their wonder of the universe. During my own mystical experience years ago, I felt for the first time like I was reading the Bible from the inside. Some of it is truly profound, and much of it is just plain awful. But the experience didn't lead me to the church. It led me here.

Towards a New Conception of Faith

Consulting the the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and the Concise Oxford Dictionary, I looked up the word faith and teased out eleven different meanings, or shades of meaning:

1. Complete trust
2. Reliance or trust in
3. Belief founded on authority
4. Allegiance to duty or a person--loyalty
5. Fidelity to one's promises
6. Sincerity or honesty of intentions
7. Firm belief in something for which there is no proof
8. Something that is believed especially with strong conviction
9. Belief and trust in and loyalty to God
10. Belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
11. A strong conviction in a system of religious beliefs

Of these, only the last three specifically deal with religion, although three of the the others may be construed as having significance to religious faith.

1. Complete trust
2. Reliance or trust in
The first and second meaning represent a faith in someone of something, an unquestioning belief in the good intentions and competence of a person, or in the reliability of an object, process, or idea. This belief is nearly always based upon previous experience, where that person or thing was proven to be trustworthy in the past, so it is not initially assumed without question. This attitude is accepted only when the relevant questions have been resolved to our satisfaction. It does, however, include a risk; even the most reliable person may prove to be wrong at one point or another. Anything or anyone can fail. In the event of failure, our trust may be shaken. Nevertheless, to avoid the need to do everything ourselves (something which is simply not possible), and to avoid the paralysis or despair of radical doubt, we must at times assume this attitude in the delegation of tasks to others or in reliance on objects or methods.

Furthermore, a more general attitude of faith is required, one which is even less subject to prior verification of character--in short, a true leap. This is our faith in democratic process, which is itself based upon a trust in the people to behave and vote responsibly. The loss of such faith encourages fascism, an attempt to impose upon an unruly and ignorant mob moral codes which the authorities do not trust them to follow without enforcement. Contempt is the dominant attitude of the dictator towards his people. Support for fascism begins with cries of widespread moral turpitude amongst the population. Democracy is based upon a faith in the people, which would-be dictators seek to undermine in their bid for power.

3. Belief founded on authority
The third meaning is a special case of these. Although skeptics loathe blind faith in authority, there is such a thing as informed faith in authority. This is made a necessity by specialization. The last Rennaisance men died off four hundred years ago; since then it has been impossible for anyone to know everything of consequence in all fields of knowledge, and so we are forced to rely on second hand knowledge. We then make a survey of the field (superficial, unless we are ourselves specialists,) and select those whose authority we accept on the subject. If we fail to identify these authorities properly, we are left rudderless and prone to exploitation by pseudo-experts, or may even fall into the inverted authoritarianism of the conspiracy theorist, who will dispute the opinions of a recognized authority precisely because she is an authority.

4. Allegiance to duty or a person--loyalty
5. Fidelity to one's promises
6. Sincerity or honesty of intentions
The next three are the reciprocal of the first three meanings: to be faithful to and to act in good faith. Here is the moral dimension of honesty and integrity. These are the assumptions upon which the faith in a person are based: we assume that they are being honest and will carry through on their intentions. Since these support our faith in others, and that faith is necessary, misconduct in this area will disrupt the economic and social fabric. The complete breakdown of these practices will lead to a condition of total competition, the war of all against all. These attitudes must be predominant to make civilization possible.

7. Firm belief in something for which there is no proof
The seventh, a firm belief in something for which there is no proof, is usually despised even by those who hold religion in high regard; most believers claim to have some sort of proof for their beliefs, however precarious it becomes under inspection. Skeptics, of course, decry this as the root of all folly. There are, however, circumstances in which such faith is indispensible, and that is in the anticipation of future outcomes. This especially relates to the first three meanings, because our faith in others concerns, not what we know they have done, but what we expect them to do or expect them to have done but don't yet know. I cannot be certain that whatever I buy will work, that friends will not disclose secrets, that my bank will give me back my money, or that my employer will pay me. It may well be quite likely, but I cannot claim that it is certain before the fact. That I rely upon these outcomes is a show of faith, and more generally, it reflects an attitude of optimism. The absence of such faith, again, leads to paralysis and despair.

8. Something that is believed especially with strong conviction
Nearly everyone believes something with a strong conviction. Most would simply say that they know it to be true, but in nearly all cases, there remains a margin of error, however small. Yet at some point, we simply have to accept a proposition given sufficient evidence. There are some people who fall prey to the absolutist-relativist fallacy, that even the slightest possibility of doubt lowers the chance of truth to being no more than half, rendering the proposition a matter of mere opinion. Ultimately this comes down to a lack of faith in evidence and sound reasoning itself; there are people who simply withhold emotional or judgemental assent from the weight of evidence. Studies of patients with damage to certain areas of their frontal lobes have revealed that even sound reasoning and knowledge of the facts may carry no impetus to sound judgement if no emotional weight is given to these factors. These patients suffer from a debilitating incapacity to manage their lives.

9. Belief and trust in and loyalty to God
10. Belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
11. A strong conviction in a system of religious beliefs
The last three deal with the religious meaning of the word, and have come to be regarded as the core definition of faith. This is the meaning of the word employed with believers who defend faith and atheists who have no use for it. But this meaning is markedly different from the others. First, it is the only type of faith which is entirely divorced from evidence. Indeed, while we would regard as imprudent any other kind of faith in the absence of some supporting evidence, believers consider faith in God all the more virtuous when there is no evidence. Secondly, this is the only form of faith which we can do without. All others serve as a bridge between certainty and some measure of uncertainty, without which we would be unable to get on with our lives. Most atheists seem to get on very well without any religious beliefs. Atheism itself is not a religion, but the simple absence of religion.

In the struggle over this narrow meaning of the word, the other meanings have fallen by the wayside. This is a problem of framing: defining the terms of an argument to force important concessions from the other side before the discussion even begins. Extremist believers have insisted upon this narrow definition, exploiting the positive connotations of the word while disregarding its positive meanings. By accepting this narrow definition, secularists have conceded most of the playing field. This is quite unfortunate, because most secularists are democratic and left-leaning. The values supported by the first eight definitions are the very values they hold most dear. Religionists have made taboo a word that secularists need to be able to use without embarrasment.

This is not mere semantics. The non-religious form of faith includes trust, loyalty, optimism, hope, charity, honesty, an antidote to fear, and even forgiveness. There is no other word for this attitude that fits so well, and renouncing the word leaves a hole in the discussion. Faith in this general sense is not mere belief in a specific proposition, but an attitude. A belief in an all-powerful benevolent God will tend to support this attitude, provided that one also believes that this benevolence permeates all of reality, and that people are, for the most part, good. Indeed, you do find religious people who hold this belief. The consequence of this belief, however, is not ardent proselityzation or harsh judgementalism--these people will hardly mention their faith unless you ask them about it. For them, there is no need to fight because the war has already been won. Atheists don't mind these people; they're not broken, so they don't need fixing, and they don't try to impose their beliefs on others. Extremist believers, however, have no use for them: you cannot control someone who is not afraid. You cannot save someone who isn't fallen. You cannot teach someone to fear a God who intends no harm. Religion, and belief in God, are not the problem. The problem is the political exploitation of these beliefs.

For the fanatic, faith in God or the Messianic figure must preclude faith in everything else. Years ago I came across a curious heading in a Catholic Magazine: "On Golden Pond is a Pornographic Film." The author was outraged that the film found any meaning, solace, or happiness in human life without constant reference to God. He was convinced that since the characters in the film did not live an overtly religious life, every single moment of their lives should have been portrayed as incessant misery and meaninglessness. Like a savvy advertising executive, he realized that to sell his product, he had to create a need, and the surest way to create that need is to encourage a profound sense of inadequacy. Faith in humanity is not to be tolerated. But if humanity is polluted, fallen, worthless, then there is little point in hope or charity. They cannot be trusted, so freedoms need to be restricted for the people's own good. They always do the wrong thing, so suffering is just their lot, richly deserved. And if you do happen to be prospering, it could only be due to divine favour. Christianity, the religion of charity and forgiveness, has been subverted to become the religion of greed and judgement. In God we trust; all others pay cash. It is no accident that the nation that claims to be the most Christian, the United States, has the highest rate of incarceration, violence, child poverty, and the highest disparity between poor and rich in the first world. Christianity has been stripped of faith and reduced to rote belief in a supernatural agency. This is what comes of a lack of faith in humanity.

Furthermore, the desperation and harshness of the fanatic is not based even upon the most narrow religious definition of faith. If God really is in control, why does he need your help? The fanatic acts, not out of a conviction in the power of his religion, but because he believes the faith is weak and threatened. He is determined to impose his views because he lacks faith in the judgement of others; his totalitarian ambition is symptomatic, not of a deep faith, but of a nagging doubt in the power of his deity. That the fanatic refuses to acknowledge this doubt is no refutation of its existence. The fanatic is obsessed with the Enemy, which may be a supernatural power like Satan, or a competing world view like secular humanism. It is their profound belief in the power of the Enemy, not in the power of God, which drives them to take up arms. They have the trappings of faith, but no understanding of it.

The best thing that we can do would be to take the word faith away from these people. They don't have it, don't practice it, don't even really believe in it. They fear doubt because they are riddled with it but will not admit it. We need to take faith away from them, and leave them to content themselves with mere superstition. Because, really, this is all they have.

A Very Rough Beast

Last week I read a book by Dan Wakefield entitled The Hijacking of Jesus, about the fight of liberal Christians and Evangelists to take back Christianity from the Christian right. I am not certain that it can be saved, but I doubt even more that religion can be abolished. There are simply too many in-born cognitive and emotional habits which support it. Furthermore, I suspect that any broadly accepted source of authority and respectablity will be hijacked by the politically ambitious, be it religion, science, philosophy, or any honoured tradition. True, science has peer reviews, but with enough money and public relations, more responsible voices can be drowned out, as we know all too well. Anything sufficiently mysterious to the broad public can be faked--we are all at the mercy of specialization, experts in the field, and no one can judged who is an expert and who is not but another expert. For the rest of us, the mere posture of certainty is often enough to convince. A wily confidence man convinces even himself.

Wakefield goes into some depth to describe how Christianity was corrupted by political ambition, and bent to serve a narrow political agenda. But his story starts in the mid sixties, even as liberal Christianity was in its hey day. One element that he iluminates are the scattered forces of literalists shattered and ridiculed in the Scopes trial. This explains much of the Intelligent Design faction: an attempt by the scientifically illiterate to impose their views by political force, rather than sound argument. The right catered to these to tap into an ignored faction--yet they are still only a small fraction of the population. There is another thread with Wakefield does not follow, and this is the fallout of the war on communism, which was eventually turned to a war on liberalism. The Conservative hacks have done such a good job of demonizing anything remotely connected with liberalism that even the old school conservatives, like William F. Buckley Jr., are disgusted by the beast they've helped create. Public discussion has become so warped that they can no longer sustain the level of intellectual discourse that they hoped conservative ideology would foster.

They are, of course, largely responsible for this. In their fight against communism, conservatives forgot, or never bothered to discover, that the ethics which communists claimed to champion were themselves lifted from Christianity, by Marx via Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity. Marx's slogan, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" is almost a direct paraphrase of the way early Christians lived in Acts 2:44: "The faithful all lived together and owned everything in common; they sold their goods and possessions and shared out the proceeds among themselves according to what each one needed." The enemy was never communism, which has never existed and may never exist except as a pipe dream, but the totalitarian regimes founded on the empty promise to bring it about. The conservatives of the National Review began by denouncing the loss of religion in academia, and in their zeal against communism, did something far worse: they cut the ethical soul from Christianity. But for a few holdouts, mostly amongst those old veterans who marched with Martin Luther King, Christianity is gutted, dead, and dessicated, fly-blown and rotten. Christ is just another brand-name, like Tommy Hilfiger, an assortment of ideological accoutrements to be bought at your local mega-church, to be worn by the up-and-coming demagogue. It has no bearing upon character: Bush is still a spoiled rich frat-boy, partying at other people's expense--a dry drunk, prone to self-mythologization--and there's even a rumour that he's drinking again. I believe W. B. Yeats described the situation best in The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

That rough beast is the walking corpse of dead religions, thoughtless, merciless, souless. Its champions spout scripture selectively, often without comprehension of the very words that come out of their mouths. Filled with passionate intensity, speaking and even thinking in sound bites, nattering incessantly, even in their own heads, lest some unscripted thought appear that challenges the myth they live in, in which they are the Hero. This is faith as pure memetic reproduction, the very animal which Richard Dawkins so precisely describes and abhors. This aberrant form of religion survives, not through any criteria of ethical fitness or by enhancing the fitness of its host, but as a parasite well adapted for contagion and resistance to competing ideas. In short, it is a reason resistant meme, which impairs the cognitive function of its host, sometimes to the extent of threatening its very survival. I would like to think that Jesus would be horrified, but if political Christians are any measure, perhaps I'm giving him too much credit for honesty and integrity.