Archive for June, 2009

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Make your Carnival of the Godless Submissions

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Let me tell you about Carnival of the Godless.

Carnival of the Godless was started in 2005 by Brent Rasmussen, who writes at Unscrewing the Inscrutable. The home page of COTG is at Blog Carnival. Head there to see past and future hosts, and click the submit an article link to suggest an article for an upcoming COTG.

State of Protest has hosted COTG three times, having shared this distinction with such great sites as Atheist Revolution, Skeptico, Greta Christina’s Blog, Friendly Atheist, and, yes, even Pharyngula.

State of Protest will again be hosting COTG on July 12, 2009. I’ve already gotten some very interesting submissions, and hope to get a lot more before the deadline.

But, really, what’s COTG all about? Officially,

Posts from a godless perspective that address godlessness, atheism, church/state separation, the evolution/creation debate, theodicy, philosophy of religion as it relates to godlessness, etc.

In practice, it’s a lot more. It’s a way for relatively new atheist bloggers to become recognized among their future peers. It’s a way for prolific atheist bloggers to sample some of the best work of their current peers without having to drudge through hundreds of RSS feeds (like I do) to find the gems. It’s about supporting rational thinking by supporting rational thinkers.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that anyone can submit an article, even if it’s not your own. Next time you’re reading an atheist blogger’s post, and you think to yourself, “Hey, this is a great article,” think about COTG and submit it!

If you are an atheist blogger and you want to help promote rational thinking, consider hosting Carnival of the Godless, especially if you’ve hosted in the past. It’s a great opportunity to help other blogs, and, if you’re a relatively new blogger, it’s a great way for you to promote your own blog. To sign up for hosting, just email brent dot rasmussen at gmail dot com or fill out the contact form below and I’ll forward your request to host.

Again, use THIS LINK to submit an article to COTG.

[contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"]

And thank you.

Posted in COTG | 1 Comment »

Relative Morality? Absolutely

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

I’m currently slightly engaged in a conversation in Atheist Revolution’s comments to vjack’s “If you don’t believe in an afterlife, why be moral?” question. Vjack does a great job examining various atheist moral foundations, but he can’t address them all. Because, of course, morality is relative. Yes, I invent my own morality. But so do you.

I commented to add another moral foundation that should not be overlooked: selfishness. “What?”, you say, “Selfishness is immoral!” I don’t agree. Here’s my comment:

And there’s mere selfishness, a sense of survival. Humans are social creatures, meaning that our survival depends on our ability to work together. My individual survival depends greatly on my ability to acquire things from others that I could not acquire on my own. In return for such things, I help perpetuate an exchange of goods so that my supply is perpetuated. When I interrupt that supply for myself or for others, I threaten survival of others, but also, not unimportantly, myself. This is a fundamental incentive that I carry with me and apply both directly and indirectly. In other words, I’m not going to rob a bank, even if no one in my “food chain” (i.e., chain of necessaries) has money in that bank, because I would not rob a bank that is part of my food chain. That’s establishing a general moral principle based on a single applicable situation.

This is why I can simultaneously declare it immoral for myself to kill out of greed, but moral for myself to kill in order to protect my life (and, fundamentally, the things that sustain my life).

The sheer complicatedness of applied morality in itself precludes the idea of an absolute morality, let alone the idea of an omnipotent creature that enforces such a morality in an intangible post-mortem realm, but either fails or somehow desires not to enforce that “absolute” morality in the realm in which it occurs.

Perhaps I should have anticipated it, but following my comment came the classic theist response:

Hey Procrustes, you can declare it moral, but that doesn’t mean it is. What you’re describing is moral relativism, and that’s just logically inconsistent and incoherent, and hence irrational.

It seems that, perhaps, we’re dealing with a few different variations of the term “morality,” but despite such semantics, the context indicates that we’re really talking about the question of whether we can or should define morality (rules of behavior) as transcending individual human reasoning, or as a product of human reasoning, and thus subjective, therefore relative. Thus my perhaps too lengthy response:

Indeed, I am describing moral relativism. However, just by saying it’s logically inconsistent, incoherent, and irrational does not make it so. Feel free to provide some evidence that it’s logically inconsistent and incoherent.

By the way, if there is no absolute morality, then all morality is relative. I don’t buy into the nonsense that morality is absolute (and those who do cannot seem to come up with any consistent set of those supposedly divinely-given rules or the consequences for violating them), so morality to me (and all the other rational persons of the world) is inherently relativistic.

Here’s an example of how even “absolute” morality is not absolute: God says thou shall not kill, correct? But God also says kill in certain circumstances. So, what’s the absolute? “Just do whatever God commands, as interpreted by your preferred clergyman”? If there are exceptions, it’s not absolute. What about the classic example of not telling a lie? Is it *ever* okay to tell a lie? I could overwhelm you with hypothetical situations where you’d either dodge the question or rationalize your answer, but I lack the patience to humor you.

Instead, I’ll set out a proof, and you can feel free to go about attacking it if you like.

1) There is no evidence that morality is absolute.
2) If there is no absolute morality, human morality would not exist without the presence of humans.
3) Humans exist (therefore human morality exists).
4) Human thought and reason exists independently from human to human (i.e., humans do not have a collective intelligence).
5) Morality is a concept created by human thought and reasoning.
6) Morality in concept exists independently from human to human (i.e., humans do not have a collective moral concept).
7) Therefore morality is relative.

I also contend that applied morality may be treated as if it were collective among certain persons (e.g., in creating a society, rules are adopted, often based on a majority of agreed-upon interpretations of the members’ personal perceptions of what is and is not moral). But the fact that some samples of some societies may appear to agree across the board on certain moral issues does not prove that absolute morality is the cause and the application is the effect. For instance, if an African tribe practices polygamy and has no moral qualms about it, that does not prove that polygamy is absolutely moral. Obviously it is not accepted by much of the rest of the world as being moral, but if the rest of the humans in the world did not exist, polygamy would, to an alien observer, be absolutely moral to the existing humans. The fact that humans in different societies have agreed upon quite differing moral rules and freedoms without those societies succumbing to self-destruction is indicative that morality is relative and applied relatively en masse, but collectively in specified groups.

The argument that there is some external being critical of human behavior, who will judge humans upon death for their behavior, but not allowing those humans insight during their lives into what exact behavior is acceptable or prohibited, is outright nonsense, unsupported by evidence, and laughable at best. The fact that there are those who use this hogwash to manipulate other people is a testament to the fact that, indeed, there is no absolute morality, unless it happens to be human greed and corruption, which seems to be the reigning behavior among those who purport to spread the word of that very same imaginary being.

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If you’re interested, there’s a decent discussion beginning in the Reddit comments.

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Posted in Atheism, Morality, Religion | 6 Comments »

Sanford and Ensign Should be Put to Death

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

According to “God’s Law.”

During Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s teary apology to his state, his family, his mistress, and others, he repeatedly made reference to “God’s Law.” In this case, he craftily manipulated the definition to be about self-control rather than an actual serious punishment.

But I’m here because if you were to look at God’s laws, in every instance it is designed to protect people from themselves. I think that that is the bottom line of God’s law. It is not a moral, rigid list of do’s and don’ts just for the heck of do’s and dont’s, it is indeed to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is indeed self. If sin is in fact grounded in this notion of what is it that I want, as opposed to somebody else.1

I wonder which of God’s laws Sanford was referencing here. Could it be one of the Ten Commandments? Could it be, depending on your denominational choice, Exodus 20:14? “You shall not commit adultery.” Know what’s excruciatingly difficult to find on Judeo-Christian websites? The prescribed consequences for violating “God’s Law.”

So addicted to the testament of the commandments are these hypocritical politicians that they’re willing to violate the First Amendment by signing bills to put them on display at public buildings, as Mark Sanford signed last year. But despite all the devotion to those laws, they ignore God’s prescribed consequences. Sanford says they’re designed to protect people from themselves, but I fear that Sanford must have missed that bible study lesson.

According to God’s law, the law that Sanford adopts so openly, Sanford should be put to death. So says Leviticus 20:10:

And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Or, is that open to interpretation? How dare we, as a society, as the governed, allow men like Sanford and Ensign, another hypocritical adulterer, to openly condemn homosexuality and other behavior they deem immoral based on God’s law if, when they are confronted with violations of that very same set of laws, we give them a round of applause?

Sanford, you want to display the Ten Commandments on public grounds? Fine. We’ll compromise. You can do that if, on those very same public grounds, you stand there, unprotected, surrounded by stones, allowing the public to choose whether you’re subject to God’s Law as you subject others to your interpretation of it.

—

Mark Sanford:2

-Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)
-Voted YES on barring transporting minors to get an abortion. (Jun 1999)
-No civil unions; define one-man-one-woman marriage. (Nov 2002)
-Affirmative action in state contracts, but not colleges. (Nov 2002)
-Voted YES on banning gay adoptions in DC. (Jul 1999)
-Voted NO on ending preferential treatment by race in college admissions. (May 1998)
-Voted NO on maintaining right of habeas corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
-Voted YES on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
-More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty. (Sep 1994)
-Voted YES on prohibiting needle exchange & medical marijuana in DC. (Oct 1999)
-Use tax code to reinforce families. (Sep 1994)

John Ensign:

-Voted YES on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP. (Mar 2008)
-Voted YES on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion. (Mar 2008)
-Voted YES on barring HHS grants to organizations that perform abortions. (Oct 2007)
-Voted NO on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Apr 2007)
-Voted YES on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. (Jul 2006)
-Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives. (Mar 2005)
-Voted YES on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime. (Mar 2004)
-Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life. (Mar 2003)
-Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
-Rated 100% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-life stance. (Dec 2006)
-Prohibit transporting minors across state lines for abortion. (Jan 2008)
-Voted YES on recommending Constitutional ban on flag desecration. (Jun 2006)
-Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
-Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
-Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. (Oct 2001)
-Voted YES on ending the set-aside of 10% of highway funds for minorities. (Apr 1998)
-Supports anti-flag desecration amendment. (Mar 2001)
-Rated 20% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
-Rated 11% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance. (Dec 2006)
-Rated 7% by the NAACP, indicating an anti-affirmative-action stance. (Dec 2006)
-Voted NO on reinstating $1.15 billion funding for the COPS Program. (Mar 2007)
-Voted NO on allowing Habeus Corpus appeals in capital cases. (Mar 1996)
-Voted NO on maintaining right of habeas corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
-Voted YES on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
-More funding and stricter sentencing for hate crimes. (Apr 2001)
-More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty. (Sep 1994)
-Rated 100% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record. (Dec 2003)
-Permanent crime database for volunteers with kids. (Jul 2008)
-Use tax code to reinforce families. (Sep 1994)
-Rated 0% by the AU, indicating opposition to church-state separation. (Dec 2006)

In 1998, after President Bill Clinton admitted to having committed adultery with Monica Lewinsky, Ensign called on him to resign, saying, “He has no credibility left.”

In 2004, Ensign spoke on the Senate floor in favor of the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have barred states from recognizing same-sex marriage. Ensign said:

Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.

Ensign considers himself pro-life and both the National Right to Life Committee and NARAL Pro-Choice America identify him as having a pro-life voting record.

Ensign authored the Child Custody Protection Act in 2003 that prohibits taking minors across State lines in circumvention of laws requiring the involvement of parents in abortion decisions.3

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Note: I do not follow God’s law. Therefore, I do not think Sanford and Ensign should be put to death. I am not advocating in this article that they should be, and I’m not suggesting that anyone go about making it happen (unless Sanford and Ensign are volunteering to manifest God’s will). As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone should be put to death. I am merely trying to hold these men accountable for not only their actions, but also their stance with regard to their application of their set of beliefs upon the makings and enforcement of law in their position as representatives of the people.

  1. Transcript excerpt from WIS10. [<]
  2. From On the Issues [<]
  3. Wikipedia [<]

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Posted in Atheism, Government, Morality, Religion, Sexuality | 4 Comments »

Where Are The Indictments, Senator Rockefeller?

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Senator Rockefeller, as published by the Washington Post, you have provided reasons to indict the insurance commissioners of every state for failing to do their job of auditing insurance companies rules and procedures, the very rules and procedures established by the insurance commissioners, themselves, and the legislatures of each state.

The insurance companies cannot bilk customers of millions or billions of dollars without assistance from the insurance department of each state. If that occurred, wouldn’t that be criminal conspiracy or possibly racketeering?

Are you going to go after criminal indictments? Not sufficient proof for that, eh? Are you going to lead a campaign to remove the insurance commissioners from their offices?

Why don’t you just admit that your accusations are false? Why don’t you just admit that this is a stunt designed to rape health insurance companies for the purpose of installing some new health care system? Your accusations are the ones that make me believe that you are not going to pursue single-payer health care, but reforms and concessions from private insurance companies. Instead of doing the right thing, you prefer to threaten them by wielding a club over their heads.

Senator Rockefeller’s accusations are important, and as a representative who passes laws that affect the regulations of group health insurance plans, the senator is admitting that he isn’t doing his job and neither are scores of other people. Pony up, Jay! Let’s go see the judge!

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Posted in Activism, Government, Law | 1 Comment »

Song for Sanford

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Don’t cry for me Argentina
The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days
My mad existence
I kept my promise
Don’t keep your distance

And as for fortune and as for fame
I never invited them in
Though it seemed to the world
They were all I desired
They are illusions
They’re not the solutions
They promise to be
The answer was here all the time
I love you and hope you love me

Posted in Activism, Atheism, Government, Logic, Morality, Sexuality | No Comments »

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