Kirk vs. Picard. Are there parallels in religious doctrinal debates?

Atheist and evolution blogger P.Z. Myers was ejected from a screening of a pro-creationism film because the director didn't want him to attend. The punch-line is delicious!

In a previous post I discussed the posthumous attacks on Jerry Falwell and why I found them unseemly.

The funny thing is, Yahweh Ben Yahweh also died recently and no one seems to have noticed. It isn't like his preachings were any less toxic than Falwell's rantings. It isn't like he didn't actually order (and possibly participate in) the deaths and tortures of twenty-plus victims. It isn't like the world isn't a much better place with Yahweh Ben Yahweh out of it.

So why the thundering silence?

No, I don't think it was because Falwell was white and Ben Yahweh was was black. I think it was because Ben Yahweh's cultural impact was so much less. Because he was even further from the mainstream. Because his followers were fewer and represented the unsavory aspects of the core culture of the USA so much less.

What does this say about us?

It is all over the MSM and the Blogosphere: Jerry Falwell is dead. Most people are treating it as an opportunity to dance on the grave of someone who would gladly have danced on theirs. (No reason to bother with links here; I'm sure you've already seen the posts.)

Me? I'm certainly happy that Falwell's big mouth is finally shut for good. But I do find all the glee at his demise a bit, well, declassé. I mean, so far as I know he never personally committed or ordered anyone's death or torture; the only kinds of acts I believe would justify such unchivalrous outbursts.

(In my mind, any deaths or tortures committed by people who heard his words and then used them to justify their crimes are on their own heads. Falwell's culpability is diminished there, although you could accuse him of aiding and abetting.)

So it is that I particularity like atheist blog Unscrewing The Inscrutable's take on Falwell's passing. Now that is the right way to show they are better people than Falwell could ever have been...

At least partially because I was planning my previous post on God, Spirtuality, and the Singularity, I decided to dust off an old short story I had laying around and submit it to HardSF.net. They accepted it pretty quickly and it is already up on their website.

Why that particular story? It is basically my long answer to the questions in the Speculist survey I mentioned in the other blog post. I originally wrote the story more than fifteen years ago, and updated it earlier this year in order to submit it to a couple of markets (where it did exactly as well as it did fifteen years ago). However, given the subject at hand, I thought it better to put the story up somewhere where it could be read now, than continue down through my list of more illustrious markets.

The story is called "The Seed". It tackles the question of faith and the Singularity head on, from the viewpoint of someone who doesn't understand what is really happening. It uses a somewhat problematic mixed present time/flashback structure to tell a complicated tale of a father and his prodigal son. It uses a lot of symbolism, both overt and cryptic. It assumes the reader understands the Singularity, nanotechnology, genetics, cloning, neurology, intelligence enhancement, and many other advanced technologies because it uses them without explanation (and often without even naming them). It isn't the best thing I have ever written, but it is one of my favorites.

If I haven't scared you off yet, you can read "The Seed" here. If you do read it, please comment here or on the HardSF.net forums...

A while back, Phil Bowermaster of The Speculist posted an interesting piece titled God and the Singularity. This generated an even more interesting discussion, which I linked to at the time and even led to a followup post on The Speculist.

So, more recently, Phil decided to survey his readers on the subject. The questions and answers are summarized three separate posts here, here, and here.

Now, all this is a lot of reading, but if you are at all interested in the Singularity (or in faith) I suggest you wade through all the links above. Even a quick skim is going to give you a lot to think about. Not everyone responding to the survey understood what they were talking about, but intelligence and perspicacity was demonstrated far more often that you might expect.

Myself? I've studied a little and thought a lot about these things over the last thirty years, enough so that I have formed some strong opinions and even found my own philosophical center (cold, dry, and teleological as it might be); as a Techno-Rationalist and Deist. These beliefs informed my own answers to the survey. (See if you can recognize my contributions. Hint; the written answers seem to be in reverse chronological order, and I was one of the first few to complete the survey.)

To quote one of my answers:

Spirtuality is a human condition. If we assume humans survive a Technological Singularity, then their humanity will remain part of the equation; a human raised to any power is still a human at some level. Of course, if we assume humans don't survive then please change my answer to 'false'...

And another:

Paul's epistles refers to a 'Transmogrification' of believers when the kingdom of God has come; a kind of magical transformation into something greater and more heavenly. For a transhumanist, I think this sounds pretty much like the Technological Singularity.

Many years ago I wrote a Science Fiction short story that took this subject head on. I've also written a couple of posts here at Antigravitas on similar subjects, both in a humorous vein and more seriously.

A schism in Pastafarianism.

The simultaneous publication of two books advancing the idea that the universe was created by an entity composed primarily of pasta may indicate a dramatic schism in one of the world's newest religions. "God Speaks! The Flying Spaghetti Monster in His Own Words," by noted Psychologist Jon Smith, appears on Lulu.com, a self-publishing site for print-on-demand books, on the same day that a book by the movement's founder arrives in bookstores across the nation.

(Hat-tip Flutterby.)

Some blogs have no particular theme, with posts about anything that interests the author. (This here Antigravitas is such a blog, unless extreme geekiness is a theme.) Other blogs focus tightly on a particular subject as a way of increasing readership among people interested in that subject.

The latter is supposed to be the 'right way' to blog according to the 'authorities'. In fact, lack of focus is one of the Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging. (I think I commit all seven actually.)

However, I have to wonder if one can truly find bloggy success in a narrow niche. Like, for example, suppose you decided to write a blog about religious symbols in popular culture? Sure, you probably won't have much competition. And it is possible to write well and interestingly about Astrology or Darwin Day or even Queen bootlegs in Iran if you can relate them to religious iconography. (And you can always sneak in a P.K. Dick reference from time to time for leavening.)

But is the audience for the discussion of Jesus Fish, Ying Yangs, and Ankhs really big enough to put you onto the A List? I don't think so. And I don't think I would enjoy blogging as much if the only things I write about can shoe-horn into some circumscribed theme. Even if it meant greater blog success.

Besides, I'm not really blogging for you anyway.

Phil Bowermaster has a fascinating discussion going about God and the Singularity. Among other interesting thoughts there: instilling a concept of beauty into Artificial Intelligences in order to also install goodness in them.

I like that idea, although I'm not certain the two concepts are completely related. If we look at the only exemplars we have available, human beings, it seems to me that there are many who have an aesthetic sense; but are not all that good.

Researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’Aquili have performed brain imaging studies of Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns, and can show the religious experience is triggered by a chain of distinct neurological events. This review of their book 'Why God Won’t Go Away' makes it sound like good reading:

These questions and more resonate at the heart of Why God Won’t Go Away. Challenging in its presentation of cutting-edge brain science, yet accessible and engaging, Why God Won’t Go Away brims with illuminating insights into the nature of consciousness, the mystifying mechanics of perception, the neurological basis of human emotions, and the miraculous manner in which the brain tells us what is real.

Personally I think this is another 'duh' moment. Certainly religious experience, like all experience, occurs because we have brain structures which create it for our subjective minds. If the brain structures didn't exist, we couldn't experience it. Ipso facto. Cause and effect.

The real question to ask is; why do we have these brain structures in the first place? If you believe in some kind of intelligent design then you have no issues: Ghu wants you to believe in Ghu, so Ghu made it possible for you to do so. (Ipso facto again. Cut and dried. End of story.)

However pure evolutionary arguments for religion-centers in the brain currently fall a bit short. We can explain most of the complex things that happen in our brains via Darwinian pressures; anger, fear, aggression, greed, submission, communication, tenderness, love, even altruism all have specific areas that are activated in the brain when we experience them and all help us to live and to procreate. Yet what survival advantage does religious belief confer on us?

This is no empty question; partially because an identified survival advantage in religious belief is a double-edged sword which also undercuts atheism. In other words, if faith is shown to be a good thing, then not believing is a bad thing even if there is no rational basis for belief.

I've long felt that faith, religion, and religious experiences are beneficial things for most people. Something that gives them a center and a certainty helpful for dealing with this chaotic world. Religion only becomes malignant when it is organized, and used as a way to concentrate power — like so many other things we humans do. Yet that is often the case and when that happens religion becomes the rational for mistreating others, usually others who believe in only a slight variation on the 'right and proper' Ghu.

And this is where the intelligent design promoters run into a brick wall: If Ghu made us to believe in Ghu, why do some people believe in not-Ghu, or in a different Ghu, or in more than one Ghu? Why are there so many flavors and variations on religion? Why is that humans can create new religions, sometimes even cynically? If the religious-centers in the brain were designed, they should only work to believe in the designer. Right?

Of course there are variants on all these arguments, and I am ignoring oodles of subtleties. (Just two examples: "Ghu made us to have free will." And "We have body parts we don't need any more either, because the evolutionary reason for them no longer exists.") But the essential problem remains and, as we become more aware of how our brains work, we need to acknowledge that many human institutions and beliefs must change, or else become irrelevant. Religion is only one exemplar.

What is the future of love, hate, religion, submission, and aggression? Of the very human condition in a world where we understand exactly how these experiences are created in the brain? Especially if we understand to the extent that we can induce or block these experiences?

Show your work. You will be graded for neatness.

I'm sorry if you are a Rice fan, but I'm not joking. Apparently a brush with death convinced her to return to Roman Catholicism in a big way:

What's up with her? "For the last six months," she says, "people have been sending e-mails saying, 'What are you doing next?' And I've told them, 'You may not want what I'm doing next'." We'll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord."

Luckily, I'm not a Rice fan. But I am wondering; could it be she is going to go somewhere completely new with the whole 'blood and body of Christ' thing?

(Meta: I found this and wrote it up yesterday (for posting later today), but supergee scooped me with a funnier link. His commentary here.)

According Mark Oxbrow the strange carvings at Rosslyn Chapel have nothing to do with the Knights Templar or hidden messages. Instead:

Like the Arthurian legends of dragons and knightly quests, Rosslyn was built to be read like a storybook. And like the grail stories of old, it would not have been hard for the local churchgoers to interpret the stories that it told.

The story? Life, from birth, through childhood, to old age, and finally death; with all the attendant sin and virtues thereof.

However, as Orbis Quintus points out, even if Oxbrow is right, that doesn't mean the builders didn't layer in other meanings as well.

Kansas Supreme Court unanimously strikes down a law punishing underage sex more if it involves homosexual acts.

Compare that to my previous post. We might have our own wannabe Taliban. We might have our own problems with bigots and religious fanatics. But, even in the deepest, most hellfire and damnation part of our Bible Belt, we can still come pretty close to doing the right thing.

Be proud of America today folks. It isn't like you get a lot of chances to do it lately, so let's celebrate the 'Land of the Free' when it actually acts like one...

Six teenage girls to be caned for lesbian sex in Nigeria. Ninety strokes each!

So, any Muslims or cultural relativists out there willing to defend Sharia law on this?

I suppose that fact really isn't in dispute. But Robertson calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez just reminded me.

A while back I asked "Where is the Gandhi of Islam?" Then I pointed to a possible answer in "Could the Muslim Ghandi be a lesbian Canadian TV personality?"

Of course all that is hopeful speculation; but I am pretty certain I know who the Muslim Dante is. I hope we don't have to wait 200 years for a Muslim Luther.

An international team studied the reaction of Tokien fans to the Lord of the Rings movie and found many see the story as more than simple escapism:

They found devotees reread the books, but tried to convince themselves they were seeing the story for the first time (although not knowing one of the most drawn-out and self-indulgent endings in cinema history must be a plus in the case of Lord of the Rings).

"Not knowing the plot or the ending means they can experience as much of the full emotions and tension as possible and their pleasure is increased," says Prof Barker, whose project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Fans felt the movie was more than just an escape, but it was more important and enjoyable to those who work in jobs where they feel they have little control over their lives.

Prof Barker said: "And we found that the highest levels of enjoyment and importance came from those who saw watching it as going on a spiritual journey. It was not just 'entertainment', but a source of inspiration. It offered a sense of moral lessons that they want to apply to their own lives, if they can."

Which raises the question: If we form a 'First Reformed Church of the Unholy Ring' can we get a tax exemption?