Blogosaurus Vex

Husband has gone to play poker, leaving me home to deal with hunger on my own.  I turn to you, faithful internet, to keep me busy long enough for the urge to pass.  Various things:

1. I sang out loud in public again the other day.  Humiliation: the price I pay for portable music and headphones.  There’s nothing quite like realizing you have been accidentally serenading an entire street full of people, of whom perhaps none like Jeff Healy quite so much as I do.

2. Street vendor veggie dogs are pretty good, despite what I have said in the past about veg dogs and bandaids, ie, that the former tastes like the latter.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, they totally do.  But the street vendors have about fifty sauces you can apply (my mix is mustard, ketchup, relish, onions and that hot cock sauce, is it called sriracha?) that serve to adequately disguise the iffy part and make it simply wonderful.

Good fuck why am I writing about food!  Stop it!

3. I handed in my exam materials today.  In a rather Kafka-esque turn of events, the only staff person in the school is not trusted with a key to the locked room, so he cannot take my exam materials which are sensitive and must be locked up.  Why would they have someone working the desk who cannot perform the duties of the desk?  Why would they tell us students that our papers must be turned in before Monday morning and that late submission results in a fail, as does improperly securing our documents, which we are responsible for at all times, and then not have resources for said turning in?  GOOD QUESTIONS.

Luckily someone in charge was reached on the phone and this person came up with a plan that was rather complex and involved banking on a certain staff person arriving at a certain time tomorrow with a certain set of keys and about eight ways things could go wrong resulting in my documents falling into the wrong hands BUT THANK GOD THE GUY AT THE DESK CAN’T GET INTO THE LOCKED ROOM.  My school is all about confidentiality, yo.

4. Last night I went to Abbotsford to stargaze with a local astronomy club (I always have to mentally check whether to say astronomy or astrology; I get those words mixed up all the time).  Conditions were not great but I saw the moon and Saturn and two of its moons!  I also saw Jesse’s toe shoes which collect flowers between the toes when he walks in tall grass.  True story!  Next time he’s in nature I’m bringing a camera to prove it to you.

Edited to add pictures.  Note that when I saw them, these shoes were chock a block with buttercups, I mean between every toe.  Jesse is trying to be modest with this single flower shot but I assure you, his shoes were sprouting bouquets.

Also, two dudes in a sedan were checking me out at a stop light on the way to stars.  They were all winking and waving and making “hey baby” eyes – I confess to being very flattered, as this has never happened before, and also amused, because they were probably 17.

5. Do you think some popcorn counts as eating?  Just a little.  And not too much margarine.

6.  What do you do to lose weight?  I am pretty old fashioned and I try to get more exercise and cut down on the eating, especially eating  junk food.  I stop snacking between meals.  And that’s about it.  It works but it’s not much fun.  If I am hungry at bedtime I feel I have accomplished a good day’s dieting.

Hey, another point: it is so unfashionable to say you are on a diet.  You’re supposed to be performing a feat of nutritional piety by abstaining from one food group or another, or focusing on your wellness or “trying to be healthier, not lose weight” or some happy horseshit like that, but really, here is how I see it: I want to weigh less, which requires privation, and that can’t be pleasant.  I am engaging in deliberate starvation and that’s a fucking diet.  It’s not a lifestyle wellness holistic something or other.  Can we dispense with playing pretend?  Starving.  That’s it.

7. I had three drinks after lunch and it was great!  And no ill effects!  I think I just needed some training.  Persistence is the key.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

Today Husband and I went to Chapters, where we were lured in by a 20% discount promotion.  I got some good stuff – Hitchens’ Missionary Position, Pascal Boyer as a gift, some Bertrand Russell, and the only Dennett book we don’t own.  We were in the religion section browsing when I came across a book called the Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible.  It has a frankly hilarious cover, which really must be seen to be believed.  I really laughed out loud at the following bullet from the cover:

The enemies of the Bible are enemies of true reason and tolerance

Unlike the author, who is clearly the very model of tolerance!

Delightful!

Click to embiggen:

(We didn’t buy it.  In any sense.)

Posted in Critical Thinking, Ranting, Religion | No Comments »

This should have been obvious but wasn’t: read what the other side says.

I have been thinking about this lately as I have been reading Christian apologists, listening to their debates, and otherwise educating myself in what we at the BV household are calling “atheism level 2.”  The arguments are in some cases new to me, or at least new in their formal philosophical formats.  (I see now why Dawkins is scoffed at by high level Christians – and atheists!)

And speaking of a back door to religion, it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that the kinds of arguments that are persuasive to atheists are in no way guaranteed to have the same rhetorical weight with believers.  So what to do?  Lots of us throw up our hands and say, “Those Christians, sheesh, can’t accept reality, won’t look at the facts, dismiss the arguments.  Idiots.”  But I think the problem – well, one of the problems – is we’re trying to engage them on our terms.  It doesn’t matter if we’re right if we can’t be heard.  So we need to understand where they are coming from: what arguments are persuasive to them?  What sorts of challenges might be able, in principle, to work?

Aside: I’m speaking of the realm of intellectual debate.  Which, as I have said, is not at all the only place for examination and I believe not even the most relevant one.  But it is something we can at least access.

I recently said to someone that, based on how they argued, it seemed to me that they had not read any challenges to Christianity written by atheists (and to that person, did you receive my apology sent later in the day?).  The same charge could have been leveled against me not so long ago.  My reading on religion was all by atheists.  I am correcting that.

I see several advantages of this strategy: One, you learn more and get a better understanding of the issues.  Two, you begin to see what the important things are to the other side, which helps you target your debate.  Three, you begin to relieve any potential charges of ignorance or hypocrisy.  Four, you become better prepared for the types of arguments you will face from people who aren’t spending their free time reading atheists.  Five, it’s the decent thing to do.  If you’re going to shit on a perspective, you should at least know it.  From it’s own side.

With that in mind, I would like to make a recommendation of a book I am reading.  I’m not done it yet and I do have some criticisms, but in general I think it’s great.  It’s written by a former evangelical preacher, highly educated, who has written a book for christians about problems with the theology and philosophy.  It’s by John Loftus.

Because this has long troubled me: clearly the batch of books written by the so-called “new atheists” (Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and Hitchens are the most famous) are by atheists, for atheists.  The self-congratulatory tone is irksome even to me, and I can easily see how a believer would be more annoyed than persuaded by them.  I’m not saying they don’t persuade people – I’m sure they do – but the world needs more than one approach.  Loftus brings a different approach, one targeted not at the already confirmed atheists who wants to feel good about themselves but at the questioning believer.  He really understands what it is to be a christian, and can target his critiques accordingly.  So that’s why I think it’s a very useful book.

Posted in Critical Thinking, Religion | 3 Comments »

My hair has gotten quite long and I am encountering a new problem as a result: every once in a while a section of it slides into my armpit, gets stuck, and then I move my head – yank!  It hurts.  These are the sorts of things no one warns you about.

I would provide better content but those mother fucking dragonboaters are at it again, and have been all freaking morning since at least forever ago.  They have a pipe band.  Some dude with a bullhorn.  And earlier today they actually fired a cannon, round about 7:30.  A cannon!  Or something that sounds just like one.

Newsflash!  I just stomped out onto the deck to take a picture of the stupid boats for you, but there aren’t any!  It’s a huge crowd of people on the Science World lawn, all in blue shirts, and I just caught this snippet from the bullhorn (isn’t it interesting that they make you simultaneously loud and un-understandable?  The former is cancelled out by the latter): “Scientists are innovators, they are the future!”

Which is true.  And cool.  But shut up already!

Oh crap, now they are playing Amazing Grace.  Kill me.

Posted in Ranting | 3 Comments »

John Bowlby was a psychoanalyst in England and is very famous for discovering attachment, the ethologically based system of behaviours that infants use to ensure proximity to and protection from their parents.  One of his earliest observations was of children separated from their parents as a result of the disruptions of the second world war.  He noted three stages that children go through: first is protest, when the child will cry and shout and get angry, all with the purpose of reestablishing contact with the parent.  Next is despair, when the child sinks into a state of crying and hopelessness as they seem to lose hope that the parents will return.  Finally the child enters detachment, in which he looks normal – playing, joking, laughing – but is so hurt by the separation that detaching emotionally is the only way to cope.  These children will not seek reunion with their parents any more, and when the parents finally return, the child does not go to them.

Protest, despair, detachment.

Brief aside: I noticed when I was off the pill that my appetite fell away.  For the months I was off it I ate way less and experienced less hunger than I had in years.  I lost weight without even noticing.  And I felt pretty mad about all the times I’d gotten down on myself for being a greedy pig because I always seemed hungry… when the whole time it was the fucking medication!  So I am looking into other options because this hungry all the time stuff?  It’s fucking bullshit.

Anyway then I went back on the pill – and my appetite returned.  It brought its friends the fats too.  So I am on a diet.  And I think I have passed through protest and despair and am solidly into detachment.  I am not very interested in food, don’t have trouble resisting it, and am losing weight, hooray.

But you know this is indicitave of a sad, painful inner state of affairs.

Posted in Existential Angst, Health, Psychology | No Comments »

I was going to sit on this for a while longer, but since it’s come up in comments, I thought it might be time to get this up sooner rather than later.  This is early days in my thoughts so your feedback is appreciated.

Here is the problem with discussing religion as I see it:

Anyone who takes the time to examine the evidence and is intellectually honest must acccept that atheism is the correct position.  Any other conclusion is erroneous.  I agree with Dennett who said that this field long ago reached a point of diminishing returns: all the arguments have been made, and all that is left is to sift them and make a decision.  I find it tedious and actually boring to go through the arguments; a debate is really only interesting if the conclusion is unknown.

But here is what I think is very interesting: for the most part it doesn’t matter what the logical/philosophical/empirical (shortened hereafter to LPE) evidence says if you are a believer – believers, in general, simply won’t accept it.  It requires tortuous mental gymnastics (especially if you are trying to do it under public scrutiny) but avoiding accepting the truth can be done.  As evidenced by the millions of believers.

We live in a society that says you need evidence before belief, and this is probably why religious people try to provide it (to nonbelievers and to themselves).  But it’s all for nothing when the actual content of rationality cannot or will not be permitted to penetrate.  The emperor has, as they say, no clothes.  I dismiss all of this religious “proof” as rationalizing, because the counter arguments already exist but are being ignored.  (And I mean “rationalize” in the psychological sense: justifying to make an idea/behaviour/feeling acceptable to the self when it otherwise would not be.)  This is what humans do: we are rationalizing machines.  It is laughably easy to make people do absurd things under experimental conditions, such as via hypnosis, and then watch them make up false rationalizations for why they did it.  We rationalize; welcome to being human.

So this is a red herring.  You can utterly defeat all LPE claims of believers and still not budge their belief – and this is because belief isn’t based on a series of logical proofs.  I bet most Christians couldn’t put up anything near a good LPE defense of their beliefs, because they don’t know the arguments.  They’re not scholars, they’re just people.  And they became believers without slogging through a lot of theological or philosophical or historical texts.  While some of them may be swayed to atheism as a result of a LPE process, many simply can’t.  And this is just reality, and we have to accept it.  Something different, something not-LPE, is required if we want to successfully challenge belief.

This is an important point: belief is not a choice.  I can’t help but believe that I am alive and aware – it’s reality to me and it doesn’t matter what you do to me, I will continue to believe it.  You could easily force me to profess belief (I am a wimp about pain) but you could never force me to truly believe, deep inside.  Sometimes belief bends to reason, but not always.  And even if you should stop believing because of great arguments, that doesn’t mean you will.  And this is not a personal failing.  Skeptics often erroneously conflate should with is.  It’s moot that I should be persuaded there is no God if I believe in my heart that there is.  It doesn’t necessarily mean I didn’t understand the arguments – it means there is another process at work that is not amenable to LPE.

Rationality is overrated anyway.  Outside a specialized part of life to do with formal research and study, we aren’t rational.  In our day to day lives it plays only the tiniest of roles.  We are ruled primarily by processes outside our awareness – we are the hypnotized subject.  An example is how we use – require! – the so-called cognitive faults to get along.  Appeal to authority/anecdote?  Every one of you who is not an engineer or statistician uses this whenever you get on an airplane trusting it won’t crash.  The examples are endless.  But so what?  This is okay.  This is actually necessary.  And it’s why I am not very interested in arguing from the LPE side, though I can and do sometimes.  I just don’t think it’s going to win the religious over to our side in anything approaching numbers, so a lot of concerned atheists are wasting a lot of time trying to make believers “get” the arguments when  the arguments are, by and large, beside the point.

Sometimes belief folds to rationality, but not always and, I suspect, not usually.  It’s fine to present LPE arguments; necessary actually.  But not sufficient.

What is the sufficient step?  I don’ t know.  I don’t even know if in theory it is possible to find a different inroad to belief because of the way that beliefs develop – without consent, without argument, requiring only the most superficial of frameworks for successful implantation.  There is no corollary LPE brain process that easily and effortlessly permits examination and discarding of belief.  We may not be wired to allow for atheism in any side-door manner.  But I am very interested in this idea.

The LPE process isn’t working very well and it’s not because it fails on any of its own (logical, philosophical, empirical) grounds – it’s a problem in our heads, a process that happens before – or precluding – rationality.

And that’s why I don’t spend much time arguing religion.

Edit:  Here’s something I wrote in a related vein a while ago.

Posted in Critical Thinking, Psychology, Religion | 12 Comments »

I saw this somwhere recently and I love it:

“When vegetarians grow up they become vegans.”

It’s so true.  All the arguments for vegetarianism apply to dairy and eggs also, particularly from the factory system.  I don’t think ovo-lacto vegetarianism is philosophically coherent.  It  beats meat eating but it’s not quite finished, you know?  And most vegans started at vegetarians who eventually came to realize they were still supporting cruelty and even meat eating (veal calfs are a byproduct of the dairy industry).

Speaking of incoherent philosophy, everyone needs to lay off the governor general.  Yes she ate some seal heart. So what?  You probably ate some cow/pig/chicken recently.  Guess what?  Those animals live way shittier lives than seals, even baby seals clubbed and skinned alive.  You should see what happens to animals in the factory farming system.  Eating some seal is no worse than eating a cow or wearing fur or any of those things that most folks do without batting an eye.  The hypocrisy of this just kills me.

Anyway, I like that line.

Posted in Society/Politics, Veganism, Vegetarianism | 2 Comments »

I have a great day ahead of me.  Actually behind me too – I spent the morning driving to Langley for a book, which was a minor hassle because Chapters said they had it at their store downtown (ten minutes from me by skytrain) but they didn’t, and Langley is a little farther away (40 minutes by car).  But never mind, I love a good drive in light traffic.  I turned up the music and even put the top down, as this is the only weather that’s any good for it: warm enough for comfort but not so hot I bake, and dry, and the trip was mostly on the highway (again, no baking).

And really, it is absolutely worth it to drive for books.

So now I am home and just had a nice light lunch – hash browns with black beans and hot sauce.  Now I am heading to the tub to crack my book, which will occupy me until around 4:30 when I’m heading to Puck’s for movies and socializing.

Why do I suddenly have a full day to just do whatever?  I FINISHED MY PAPERS.

!

I have some final editing and printing and assembling of my package yet to do, but I find my editing is better if I get a couple days’ distance on my writing, so today and tomorrow are given over to wallowing in the joy of being done my work.

And finally, I am brewing a post on why I am not interested in arguing about religion (in a certain way… stay tuned!), and another one about the urge to be right, so I’m hoping there will be some good content here soon.  Instead of these relentless updates about minor aspects of my life.

More later.  But for now the tub.  I hope your day is a good as mine!

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

Husband and I are considering a laptop upgrade.  We bought our current PC’s three years ago and at that time they were just under 700 bucks each – we aren’t video gamers and basically all we need is something reliable that we can get online with, use the standard word processing/spreadsheet/media player software with, and… and I guess that’s about it.

But now that they are getting a bit on the old and slow side, we’re thinking about maybe switching to Macs.  Neither of us has had a Mac.  What do you think?  What are the pros and cons? Are Macs really all that?

We are both totally in the dark about this stuff and we could ask the internet but the internet lies.  We are hoping some real humans could weigh in with their thoughts to help us make the call.

I will say Macs look pretty sexy when they’re doing their thing, but is sexy enough?  IS SEXY ENOUGH!?

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

As I creep closer and closer to graduation, two streams of thought develop in my mind.

On one hand, I am full of thoughts of my coming career.  I have plans for training and working and travelling and one day, when I am very good, teaching and training others.  This is an urban plan with an office and supervision and drinks on restaurant patios in the summer.  I imagine it will be intensely difficult and intensely rewarding; intensely intellectual.

On the other hand, I am longing for something to do, rather than something to think about.  I imagine a house on property – no fussy lawn to mow, but a lot of trees and wild plants and a body of water, some place to plant vegetables and work on projects like fences and canning, a place for swimming and talking with friends after a busy day.  Rewarding in a different way.

Last winter I’d decided Husband and I should reproduce – and the urge I had for a baby was the same feeling I now identify as longing for work and recreation.  Husband speculated that this reflects a more general life task, Erikson’s generativity versus stagnation task.  Men create generativity through their work which, ideally, benefits others and the world, creating something to give to the next generation.  Women can do this too but we also have babies as another major avenue for generativity that is not available to men in the same way.

Now that graduation is near and I have some next steps lined up, my interest in a baby has evaporated.  I think the longing has found a different focus; I think Husband is right in my case.  What is interesting about psychotherapy is it is transgenerational.  If I can change how a person interacts with others in such a way as to increase their emotional wellness, this is a gift that will transmit to everyone that person touches, particularly their children.  Generativity again.

So I am back on birth control and full of thoughts of what I hope my life will be.  It is a world of opportunities!  And here I would like to share the best advice I ever got, which came to me from my beloved husband, truly a wise and wonderful person.

A few years ago I was really flailing around, unsure of what to do with myself.  I knew I wasn’t meant to be a desk jockey for the rest of my career – I thought I had too much potential, that being an office manager wasn’t good enough.  But I had successfully hamstrung myself with a litany of excuses about why I couldn’t do anything differently: I needed my paycheque, I had fucked around in undergrad and didn’t have the grades for grad school, I didn’t know if I could commit to several years of training, and anyway, what did I want to do?

Most of that is just garbage that should rightfully be banished to the trashbin.  Bad grades?  I went back and upgraded.  Didn’t know what to do?  This took a little while but when I listened to my heart I figured it out.  Need money?  You should see the debt Husband got into to go through medical school.  It is worth it.  The only sticking point was the time – I was already Age X, it was too late to start school again.

And Husband said, “So what if it takes six years to get an MA.  That time is going to pass anyway.  At the end of six years, do you want to be still right here?  Or at the starting place for something better?”

It’s not too late.  Those years are going to pass anyway – where do you want to be at the end of them?

Posted in Existential Angst, Personal | 7 Comments »