Ideology trumps facts, or why there aren't more freethinkers in the world (an oldie but a goodie).

There's a very interesting article over at Ars Technica that explores some theories as to why many people, when faced with information that contradicts an accepted view of theirs, have such an easy time dismissing the facts and sticking with their misconceptions. This article was published back in 2008, but, just recently became painfully obvious in my world.

Wise Sloth's 10 Reasons To Be Hesitant To Debate Christians

Someone who goes by the moniker "Wise Sloth" has posted an excellent list of reasons as to why he is hesitant to debate Christians. I'll summarize here, but you really should go read his entire essay.

1. Christians are closed minded
   Christianity demands its believers have faith. To have faith is to believe in your preconceived conclusion no matter what.  If you are inclined to defend your preconceived conclusion despite logic or empirical evidence, that’s being close minded. Faith is close minded.
   
2. Christians don't play by the rules of logic
   Christians start from the assumption that the Bible is fact and look for evidence to support that conclusion. There’s no point having a debate with someone who doesn’t question their own  data or objectively analyze their “opponent’s” data, and you can get discouraged very quickly when you see Christians consistently reverse engineering fantasy data to negate empirical data.
   
3. The Bible is true because it says so
   How do Christians know the Bible is true? Because the Bible says so (or at least it implies it). You can’t argue with that. It’s logic proof. It’s sanity proof. There’s no point arguing with someone who can always prove that they’re right by pointing at a piece of paper that says they’re right. So why argue at all when I’ve lost the argument before I’ve even started?
   
4. Every Christian is an expert. Every non-christian needs to study more
   In my experience with debating Christians it doesn’t matter what I say or how much supporting evidence I give because they can always just dismiss it all by saying, “You don’t understand the Bible. You need to study it more.” They don’t even need to actually go on to give supporting evidence disproving my observation or prove that their interpretation of the Bible has any academic merit. The fact that they said I don’t understand the Bible is enough to discount everything I’ve said.
   
5. Non-christians take every passage out of context
   No matter what passage you pick out of the Bible to criticize, any Christian can dismiss you by saying, “You’re taking that passage out of context.” It doesn’t matter how cut and dry the message in the passage is. It doesn’t matter if the Bible itself contradicts that/those passage.
6. The Bible contradicts itself
   A Christian who has memorized enough Bible verses can “prove” that you don’t understand the illogical and absurd passages you’re taking out of context by quoting other passages that contradict it. The fact that the Bible contradicts itself doesn’t make it right. That makes it worse and a waste of time to try to debate.
   
7. The Old Testament is obsolete…except when its the word of God
   If you quote an illogical or absurd passage from the Old Testament there’s a good chance  the Christian you’re talking to will say that the Old Testament doesn’t count. The most common reason given is that Jesus made it obsolete. And don’t try quoting Jesus, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” Christians will tell you that you don’t understand the Bible because you’re taking that passage out of context.  However, if a Christian ever needs to quote a passage from the Old Testament to prove a point then any passage they choose will automatically become the unerring and eternal word of God and would be blasphemous to question.
   
8. The Bible is the word of God…except when it’s not
   If they like a passage in the Bible they’ll simply say it’s the unerring and eternal word of God and that it’s blasphemous to question it. However, any passages they don’t like they’ll dismiss by saying that humans acted as God’s pen to write the Bible, but they were only human.
   8a. Everything is a metaphor…when it’s convenient
   If you persist on saying, “No. You can’t live in the belly of a whale for 3 days. Long hair doesn’t give you magical powers. There was never a talking snake in a magic garden passing out magic apples to mammals with no belly buttons. Nobody saw God and Satan taking juvenile bets on Job’s faith. Donkeys don’t talk. The world wasn’t flooded, and 2 of every animal didn’t fit on one boat for 40 days.” Then the Christian can always say, “That wasn’t meant to be taken literally. That was a metaphor.” But if they want to take any of those (or any other passage from the Bible) literally then they get to do that.
   
9. Christianity is a moving target
   The Bible never explicitly states what Christianity is, and no two Christians will agree 100% on every aspect of Christianity. I can’t say, “This belief of Christianity is illogical and absurd.” because some Christian out there will say, “That’s not what Christians believe.” If I say, “A lot of Christians believe it.” They can say, “Well, they’re not true Christians.” And every Christian can say that because there are no true Christians. Fighting Christianity is like fighting a shape shifting ghost with multiple personality disorders that is in denial.
   
10. If all else fails, you’re going to hell
    If you’re a non-Christian it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable you are about textual or historical context in the Bible. Your point of view is invalidated by one simple fact: you’re going to hell. You don’t believe in the Bible. So you’re going to hell. The fact that you’re trying to convince Christians that the Bible isn’t the word or path to God means you’re a servant of the darkness. If you’re stupid and corrupt enough to be blinded by the devil then why should a Christian listen to you? By Biblical standards, they shouldn’t. They should have faith and put Satan behind them.

Saudi Arabia Blocks Facebook

According to this story, Saudia Arabia has banned Facebook because, it "doesn't conform with the kingdom's conservative values." Not everything on Facebook conforms with my values either Saudia Arabia, but there's ways to configure it to your liking without banning the whole damn thing. Someone should tell them that you don't have to completely block FB in order to eliminate Mafia Wars and Farmville from your News Feed.

The Rise of the Vegan Moguls

As I was coming out of the Metro at L'Enfant this morning, there were the usual people handing out the free daily newspapers. And, there were some people handing out free copies of Bloomberg Businessweek- which is outside the norm. Also, outside the norm, was this article in the copy I was handed, it's called "The Rise of the Vegan Moguls". I was very surprised to learn that Bill Clinton and Mike Tyson are now vegans. Seeing as how eating animal products from factory farms is not only bad for one's health, but also bad for the environment, maybe we'll soon see information that Al Gore has gone vegan? As a 23 year vegetarian, and self described "weak willed vegan" (meaning I try to eat as little eggs and dairy as possible, and it can be a challenge in this culture I'm stuck in that thinks that is outright obsessed with eating animals), maybe it's time for me to get serious about being a vegan 100% of the time.

A Side of Truth

I saw this commercial air on Comedy Central the other night. I was only 1/2 awake when it ran. Later, I wasn't sure if I'd actually seen it or not- thought maybe I'd dreamt it. I've heard that when PETA has tried to air commmercials during the SuperBowl, that they are prevented from doing so. So much for a free market place and free speech.

Susan Jacoby talks about her book "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism"

Freethought Revival
Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, dissects the history of secularism in the U.S., and argues the time is right for a new secular hero.

A great quote from the article:

The secularist strain in American culture has been very strong since the beginning, but the nation's secular heritage is virtually unknown to people. A secular government was developed to protect the rights of religious minorities. Most Americans don't know that God is not mentioned in the Constitution. It was a coalition of religious Evangelicals and freethinkers or deists who joined together to get this ratified. And why did the Evangelicals want this then? Because they were a minority and they deeply feared government interference with religion.

Mr. Jobs You Need revMobile

Seriously, why lock out revMobile? It sounds like these guy were willing to bend to your every whim in order to create a product that would allow revTalk developers to create iPhone and iPad apps that took advantage of the native UI kit.

In fact, by being willing to create a product that would take revTalk and generate Objective-C which then made calls to the iPhone/iPad API's, the apps created by this tool would have been indistinguishable from those written in an 'approved' language.

I love Apple, and I love Apple products and I am also a Revolution Runtime hobbyist. I spent 7 months plowing through a book on programming for the Mac using XCode and Objective-C. However, as a hobbyist, I don't spend enough time coding to make Objective-C and the Cocoa/iPhone/iPad frameworks ever feel intuitive, friendly, or even comfortable. I find myself, when I have the time to code and when an idea needs explored, using Revolution because RevTalk is intuitive and fun to code in.

Hell, revTalk is just a 3rd party implementation of a brilliant idea that Apple created, promoted, and then unceremoniously abandoned- HyperCard + HyperTalk. I'm sure you have your reasons for your decision, but not only does this decision feel wrong, it also seems to carry on a grand tradition that Apple needs to one day exorcise- namely, alienating key members and advocates from your user base with what seem like arbitrary decisions that only work to prolong the impression that Apple cares about elegance and future technologies, even to the expense of those with a significant investment in the current state of Apple technology. We saw this with the transition from the Apple II to the Mac. It seemed like maybe Apple had learned the lesson somewhat in the 68K to PowerPC transitions, or the transition from the Classic OS to OS X. However, this decision to not allow revMobile on the platform seems like another 2 steps backward. Please reconsider and find a way to right this wrong.

http://www.runrev.com/products/revmobile/overview/

Sarcasm punctuation mark aims to put an end to email confusion

It seems to me that we could all just agree to start using the @ symbol ('cause it's already on your keyboard and in all of your fonts) at the end of sarcastic sentences. Of course, each and everyone of us paying these guys $1.99 also seems so totally worth it@ <- See how that works, that last sentence was sarcastic.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6995354/Sarcasm-punctuation-mark-aims-to-put-an-end-to-email-confusion.html

U.S. Term Limits

This is something that I think the United States also desperately needs.

Wikipedia summarizes it this way: "Congressional stagnation is an American political theory that attempts to explain the high rate of incumbency re-election to the United States House of Representatives. In recent years this rate has been well over 90 per cent, with rarely more than 5-10 incumbents losing their House seats every election cycle. The theory has existed since the 1970s, when political commentators were beginning to notice the trend, with political science author and professor David Mayhew first writing about the "vanishing marginals" theory in 1974."

http://www.termlimits.org/

Instant Runoff Voting

We need this in the United States. Like, yesterday.

http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting

And the nut jobs in this country call Obama a socialist?

As I compare the UK's Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal Democrats on issues it seems to me that their Conservative party is more to the left than our Democratic party and their Liberal Democrats (who have 57 seats in Parliament after today's election) seem like our Green Party.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/parties_and_issues/default.stm

World Cup Fever

Hey, hey, hey, I got it...

http://popup.lala.com/popup/1225260582294176710

Adidas Comercial +10 Dream Team !!! Complete

For those of you who remember it from last time, and for those of you have never seen this amazing piece of film making- this is one of those rare times that advertising becomes art. '¿Jose, jugamos?'

Short list: What's Wrong with Factory Farming?

Here's a nice concise list of data that I would hope people would read and consider as they make their dietary choices each day.

FTA: "Cost of hamburger meat if water used by meat industry was not subsidized by US taxpayers: $35/pound"

http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/shortlist031604.cfm

Ecclesiastes 3:19-21

Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other.
All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rise...s upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?

About the Upcoming 2010 World Cup in South Africa

I was having a conversation with a coworker about the upcoming 2010 World Cup in South Africa (starts in 34 days, 22 hours, and 35 min). He was saying that the USA team is not good enough to be a contender. I disagree. The current US team took 2nd in the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup (considered a dress-rehearsal for th...e World Cup it precedes). The final game was Brazil 3 - USA 2. Maybe this info will help you start to catch World Cup Fever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_FIFA_Confederations_Cup

The Right Has Some House Cleaning to Do

I've been thinking about this very thing for a while now. Namely, that while there have been some violent crazies of the left at different times, currently the only violent crazies on the radar are those from the fringes of the right. It's time for the idiocy, lies, and contradictions from irresponsible voices of the right to stop.

Read more (about the crazies on the right)...

Read more (about the idiocy, lies, and contradictions)...