Looking for a new bogeyman

Almost immediately after the death of former terrorist bogeyman Osama Bin Laden, news reports started popping up all over speculating on who would replace him as the Terrorist-In-Chief. Here are a few examples. (a) (b) (c)

There is no conspiracy to keep us living in fear of terrorism. It all develops as naturally as any other public issue meme. However, it's undeniable that memes benefit some more than others. The meme of our society living under the threat of collapse due to the efforts of a relative few fanatics is of great benefit to the existing power structures; political, military and industrial power structures.

The economy of the United States is highly dependent on defense spending. For those Americans who love to chant "We're Number One", well, you can't deny that they are right - at least when it comes to advanced weaponry, computers, spy tech, personnel training and maintenance, etc. Over 40% of the world's military spending each year is done by the U.S. The second leading country in military spending is China, and they spend roughly 15% of what our country does. The 2009 U.S. budget called for nearly $700 billion in defense spending and that was before the extra $75 billion of emergency funding for the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This obscene level of spending has to be justified somehow. With the fall of communism as a viable threat to sell us on, the Nineties left a chasm that needed to be filled and "the worldwide threat of global terrorism, primarily emanating from the Middle East in the form of Islamic Jihad" provided a flimsy cover. At least at first. Then came 9/11/2001. You could almost feel the collective sigh of relief coming out of the military/industrial complex.

So now, with Osama Bin Laden an historical footnote, the search is on for a new bogeyman to haunt our dreams and allow our government to go unchallenged in spending outlandish amounts of money to insure that you don't die this year in cataclysmic attack. Feel the fear, and don't ask questions. Your life may depend on your obedient acquiescence. It would be better if you question the $1 billion spent on women's reproductive health or the half billion dollars earmarked for public broadcasting.

You can believe in Colbert's God

News and thoughts

I was in the hospital last week after going to the E.R. and discovering a blood clot in my right leg, part of which had moved to the lungs. I'm out, on blood thinners and doing as well as ever. I can honestly report that I never said a prayer.

There's an article today on LiveScience which talks of a study about men, and how much they think about sex during the day. Seems that we think just as much about sleep and snacks as we do about doing the horizontal mambo. In all fairness, the study was conducted with college aged men. Had it included the over-50 set, they would have found that we also think as frequently about urination and various pains.

In a discussion recently, I complained that believers in various gods almost never try to engage me on the specifics of their god, choosing instead to turn the discussion to my atheism vs. some nebulous notion of god as a first cause. In turn I was told that it was me who was running from the "big question" of whether there is an ACME All-Purpose God of the Universe. Fine. I'm running. But until someone tells me exactly what they mean by god, I see no value in debating its existence.

Speaking of specific gods, I'd still like to know how Christians can be sure that Satan isn't the real Master of the Universe. Maybe Satan is the one who created everything, is every bit the joker he is described in the bible, put out this ridiculous bible to test the intelligence of his creation, and will punish all of those who die believing the Jesus fable. I'm guessing that they somehow know due to the very same reason, rationality and logic they used to become Christians in the first place.

Latest news on Osama Bin Laden - he's still dead. Ignorant Muslim fundamentalists still exist in the millions. We should get out of the wars we are in, but exploiting the on-going "jihad" is just worth too damn much money for too many people for that to happen. Besides, did you see all the monkeys swinging from trees, screaming "U.S.A! U.S.A.!" and informing our leaders that this issue has traction? Human beings (in general) are so much more ignorant than we'd like to think.

A video titled "Crime & Abortion"

I'm guessing this will be a tad controversial. It's certainly a theory worthy of further studies, at the very least.

Personal Privacy in a Culture of Advanced Technologies

An acquaintance on YouTube who also makes videos on atheist, agnostic, secular humanist, skepticism and science issues sent me a Personal Message (PM) this morning. I change it only in preserving his YouTube identity:

Saw your video about deleting a bunch of your videos. Had to notice that it is all your talking head videos that you have taken down. I have never done a talking head video. I never felt comfortable doing it. I live in the buckle of the bible belt. Friends down the road who are Mormon figured out [my YouTube identity]. They have not spoken to us since. I am not a coward but at my age, I don't need the hassle doing talking head videos might bring to my front door.

I also don't have a lot of faith that the new enlightenment is going to get here before the wall between church and state falls. Very dark times may be in our near future. The more the two newest religions of the Abrahamic god are revealed to be false, the more reactionary will the remaining adherents become.

[Another YouTube secularist channel] is all but gone from Youtube after he was recognized in his community. He used to make great videos, cutting evangelical Christianity to shreds. He took them all down and really can't put them back up.

Just wondering if you got ID'd in your community?

This was my response:

Your question is reasonable and it's not far from the facts, just based on something quite different from the obvious.

I indeed don't want to call attention to myself. It has nothing to do with my atheism. It's a losing battle anyway in this information-rich, privacy-scarce world we are rapidly developing, but that doesn't mean I have to hurry the process at the personal level. I really believe, should technology continue advancing at anything close to its current rate, that in the not too distant future we will have to deal with near-total transparency - for good or ill.

Of course, there's this, which could stop the "problem" while creating a much worse one (in my view) - "I also don't have a lot of faith that the new enlightenment is going to get here before the wall between church and state falls. Very dark times may be in our near future."

I agree, brother. I don't like having a knee-jerk pessimistic view of the future, but we do have to acknowledge the very real possibilities that come with the concern you express.

Yeah, for reasons I'd rather not elucidate on, I'm going to keep a lower public profile. Luckily, here on the West Coast in general and Southern California in particular, I probably have more support than disdain when opposing dogmatic religion. It's a lot more than that specific trifle for me.

So, yes, this is an interesting area of cultural change for us to keep an eye on. I have always supported scientific advances, but we can't lose sight of the fact that these advances will bring consequences; some unforeseen and not all of which we are going to be entirely pleased with. If nothing else we have been an adaptive species and we will likely succeed in doing so again. The changes now occurring are of a type our species has no precedent for using as a template.

Personally, I'd rather deal with some uncomfortable changes due to advanced technologies than to fall back into an "industrial revolution" level society - or worse. I think I'll be just fine with an almost universal lack of personal privacy, but only when such is the case for every person living within the society. When everyone knows all there is to know about others, and others know the same about them - we might actually have more empathy. Might. I have no desire to be on the cutting edge of that particular change.

Lack of belief?

This is another excellent video from QualiaSoup. I did disagree with him on using the term "lack of belief" to describe my position. This is what I wrote in the comments on YouTube:

"I agree with all of your points here, QS, I just don't like the use of the word "lack" in a definition of my position. If we look at how that word is used - in just about every instance of the English language, it reflects a _negative_. "lack of abiilty", "lack of judgment" "lack of grace", etc. It's seldom used as a positive. If we are healthy, for instance, we don't attribute it to "lack of a disease".

"Would it not be better to say we "reject the arguments made on behalf of god beliefs"?"

Good Gay News Keeps Rolling In

Prop 8 struck down, A federal judge in CA ruled against Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and now this ruling, in many ways the most powerful of them all.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Evolutionary theory in light of genetics

"My grandpappy wasn't a chimp"!

Well, err... how true. Every evolutionary scientist in any field would agree 100%. One assumes that the person stating such must know it by this point in the game. To not know would be a case of willful ignorance at best and an outright lying attempt to create a straw man at worst.

What is true about our relationship with chimps is that of all the other animals on the planet, we share the closest common ancestor with the chimpanzee. Somewhere between 5 and 10 million years ago there was an ape or ape-like mammal which was ancestral to both modern chimps and modern humans.

We've known this (or something very close to it - some argued it was gorillas) for over 100 years. Every other piece of evolutionary datum supported this conclusion. But then along came post Crick/Watson genetics. Within the past quarter century or so we have had enormous new batches of datum to work with. This info could have overturned the earlier findings. Instead, it nailed the case shut.

By the same science we use to show whose blood is at a crime scene or, more pertinent, who the daddy is, we have been able to show which species is the closest genetic family member to H. sapiens. And it's the chimps and bonobos. By the very same process of showing who are siblings and who is parent, we can see that chimps and bonobos are, at the species level, our nearest living relatives in the animal kingdom.

Unless a creationist is willing to go on record as not believing that DNA can prove paternity, then they must admit that we are not only related to chimps, but that we are closer relatives of theirs than we are with gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, baboons, spider monkeys - all progressively more distant relatives - just as all earlier evolutionary science had predicted.

It's one thing to claim some unproven god belief. It's quite another to deny scientific facts, which resolutely disprove any claim that ones particular god created various animal species independently of each other. I like to think such people are ignorant. If they aren't, they are liars.

And another one down!

I've been waiting for this former Christian to deconvert for a couple of years now. I knew he was way too intelligent to come to any other conclusion than the one he articulates quite nicely here:




Our roles in the Atheosphere are, by nature, a bit more limited in giving us a chance to observe real people, in real time, deconverting from religion. It has thus always been easy to remain cynical about it ever happening. YouTube is a more active community and, in my time there, I have met a number of people who have done so within the past couple of years - and who credit the things they have heard on YouTube and read on the Internet with having made a major difference in their thinking.

Who knows? Maybe CL is next. He isn't so terribly illogical in his thinking that he is beyond any hope of living the rest of his life without the supernatural thinking.

Ancients Unite

Let's make this great song about getting old an Internet Meme!



"For Third" by Gordon Kuhns

"Third" is the name of the band that opened for him.

His YouTube Channel is a2zdiy