rational human being

I’m honestly astonished that people in this country still insist on taking away others rights (and even lives) based on the message that they believe is god’s. It’s like accepting the idea that paranoid schizophrenia is normal and therefor letting people pursue whatever delusions they believe are real. When someone says “god made me do it” people dismiss it as if they have no right to question some imaginary higher authority…in someone else’s head! At what point to you draw the line? Did David Berkowitz act rationally when he claimed that he was commanded to kill by a demon-possessed neighbor’s dog? After all dog IS god spelled backwards!

If all these gods and other higher powers are truly real and omnipotent, why don’t these people just allow these beings to do the killing themselves? After all they will be the first ones to tell you that these supernatural powers use the weather (hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, etc.) to kill for whatever reason they deem fit.

Because they don’t exist. They won’t admit that I’d have to say that I side with Lennon on the thought of special places for people like Scott Roeder, (”No hell below us. Above us only sky.”). That means no heaven or (more favorably) hell after he draws his final breath. It’s down to human laws at this point.

I am equally offended that a murder like this is not considered a capitol crime in Kansas. I’m not condoning the death penalty, I’m just disgusted that killing one person without any ancillary crime involved is not taken as seriously. Which means that Mr. Roeder will be able to post bond. Considering the guy only has $10 to his name, the only way he’ll accomplish this is via right-wing fundamentalist religio-political groups coughing up the money. (And you know they WILL.)

Mr. Roeder, no matter how insane, has become a hero to people like Bill O’Reilly who basically incited the murder of all doctors willing to perform abortions via his Fox News television show. Were not the words that O’Reilly spewed forth, “defamation” and perhaps even “incitement to riot”? If O’Reilly’s constant rant on “Tiller the Baby Killer” is not defamation, what is?

I’m sick of the control-freak mentality of some people. These people seem to be so insecure in their ultimate knowledge of truth that they have to enforce their ideals on everyone else. They use gods and religious texts so serve their own purposes.

If all these people are so concerned about babies, women and their health then do the math.

“Miscarriage reportedly occurs in 20 percent of all pregnancies. However, according to some sources, this may be an inaccurate number. Many women, before realizing a life has begun forming within them, may miscarry without knowing it-assuming their miscarriage is merely a heavier period. Therefore, the miscarriage rate may be closer to 40 or 50 percent. Of the number of women who miscarry, 20 percent will suffer recurring miscarriages.” This quote from a very right-wring, anti-evolution, anti-science, religious web site.

According to the 2007 World Health Statistics (put out by the World Health Organization), globally, 28 out of every 1000 babies born dies within 0-28 days after/during birth. (About 11 out of 1000 babies in the Americas.)

In 2000, the United Nations estimated global maternal mortality (number of women who die during or shortly after a pregnancy) at 529,000, of which less than 1% occurred in the developed world. – Wikipedia

How many men die during or shortly after their children are born? Perhaps we could torture men in some fashion that would be similar to childbirth every time a woman delivers one of their children? If the woman dies, then the man can be executed for impregnating her, forcing her to carry to term and eventually killing her. Sounds fair? If the woman, the child and the father survive childbirth then the man will be forced to be implanted with a permanent tracking device and pay for the child the rest of it’s life.

And then there’s infanticide, the only thing the bible DOES address on this matter (not abortions). Quotes like, “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” from Psalm 137:9 in the King James Version, make me cringe.

I recently made a post in support of an irreligious friend, even somewhat jokingly. He posted a story about how he dreamed about snakes and then saw a snake. It seems he was camping out in a rather urban area when he had the dream about snakes and he never has nightmares and has never dreamed of snakes before. He doesn’t even really know much about them (which becomes more and more apparent as you read his journal entry when he eventually and so innocently ponders a rattlesnake constricting him). So later on, his trip takes him through the woods where he runs into a huge rattler which he rather hastily flees. The truth is that he dreamed about the snake before he saw it and he’s reasoning whether he should chalk up the coincidence to “synchronicity“. A lot of people would automatically do so. I, personally, would not and I wrote (somewhat jokingly) as such:

Silly human minds…we’re always trying to make sense of chaos. I chalk it up to coincidence, but that’s because I, like you, am a freethinker and to make anything else of it would be crossing over that abyss into a dark world of irrationality and unreasoning. (Meaning that non-believers wish to keep their minds clear of such bunk.) Anyway, what logic or purpose would it serve if it was something “otherworldly”? None of it would even make sense. (Other than to perhaps encourage you to maybe write about it?) (This was my evidence that the dream in relation to the event was not even reasonable. Basically, it served no purpose.) I side with Freud…Sometimes a snake is just a snake.

The light grey italics was added here to explain. I never intended for anyone to “get into it” about the post. Silly me, I forgot the law of the internet. If you post it, there is always a huge posibility that someone will “get into it” with you. Some people just have to do battle, either for the sake of arguing or in an attempt to show off their own superior intellect. So along came this guy who posted in reply to my post, the following:

Fundamentalist rationalist alert! :)
Come now, how “free” is one’s thinking if you can’t even consider that there may be unknown or unknowable causes behind such events? And who says an unknown cause must be “otherworldy” and therefore “irrational?”
Having to simply assume that every co-incidence is a meaningless statistical quirk for fear of the “dark world of unreasoning” sounds pretty darn irrational to me!
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Hmmm…. First off, can I say…WTF? “Fundamentalist rationalism”? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Rationalism, at least last I knew, was not an ideology. Rationalism is not based on economic theory, political policies, or archaic visionary speculations. It is neither illogical or idealistic. (With a smiley face, none the less, as if to lessen the blow.)

I’m not even sure this person read the entire post. My conclusion was basically a reference to Freud’s “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”, meaning that there is no symbolic significance in the event. Much like Freud, this is my refusal to chalk it up to anything at all, yet the person replying reacts irrationally to my words as threatening and feels a need to defend their own illogical and unreasonable opinion/belief system.

My post started off saying “I chalk it up to coincidence”. “It” meaning this particular instance. I did not say this instance and all instances like it. Then I go on to make my point that I am like-minded by using the term “freethinker” because our mutual friend states in the first sentence of his post that he is an atheist. This thus puts our mutual friend in a position in which he would logically deny the existence of any god/gods. If our friend is a reasonable atheist he would not be open to the idea of anything supernatural at all. I, on the other hand, used the (kinder and more gentler) term “freethinker”, not atheist. Freethought, by definition is “a philosophical viewpoint that holds that beliefs should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or any other dogma.” Apparently the replying author took the term freethinker as some literal term. (I’m sorry, I didn’t realized that not everyone knew of the term freethinker, I just assumed, inasmuch as the same way he assumed that everyone reading his post knew the quote from Shakespear’s Hamlet.)

So then, let me attempt a few translations:

..”who says an unknown cause must be “otherworldy” and therefore “irrational?”"

Literally translated:
Who says an unknown explanation or justification for an event must be of or relating to an imaginary or spiritual world, and therefore not based on or in accordance with reason or logic?

Who does say, indeed? I never said that an unknown cause must be “otherworldly”. Nor would I ever. What I was saying, in plain English, is that it was a coincidence and for a nonreligious person to make an assumption that the cause was supernatural would be a “leap of faith” contrary to a life dedicated to science and reason.

Yes, I would say that otherworldly equates to irrational and illogical by any means used to come to that conclusion. To accept that “otherworldly” causes even exist, is to leave reason at the door make that very “leap of faith”.

He also states:

Having to simply assume that every co-incidence is a meaningless statistical quirk for fear of the “dark world of unreasoning” sounds pretty darn irrational to me!

Literally translated:
Having to simply suppose to be the case, without evidence that every remarkable concurrence of events without apparent causal connection is an insignigicant forecasting idiosyncrasy for fear of irrationality sounds pretty darn irrational to me!

Again, this is not what I said. I did not say that every coincidence (and why does he hyphenate it?) is a “meaningless statistical quirk”. Three words, highly unrelated. Meaning…I never said I was looking for meaning in my friend’s snake dream/encounter. Is he projecting? What is statistical about a coincidence? Perhaps he’s read into it his own “fears”. He has personally interpreted the word abyss to mean a place to be feared. He has translated abyss as a bottomless pit (as in Satan’s dark abyss), instead of “a wide or profound difference between”. (Is there not a profound difference between natural and supernatural?) And, why would I fear something I see no truth in evidence for?

Guilty as charged! Book me for allowing myself to become so irresponsible as to fall victim to the power of reason!

And then he ends it all with a quote from William Shakespeare’s, Hamlet (sans any credit or mention of the author or work from whence it came):

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Is human knowledge as limited, as referred to in this quote about the fictional existence of a fictional ghost? I don’t get it…this is the final “in your face”? A quote from a work of fiction? (A fabulous work of fiction, mind you!) He couldn’t find a quote from any leading authority on the paranormal? Perhaps something like:

“I hold that mysteries should neither be fostered nor dismissed. Instead, they should be carefully investigated with a view toward solving them.” – Joe Nickell

Besides, in the end, even Shakespeare’s Hamlet, does not foresee a life after death. He asks Horatio, his friend to live and tell his story via his last words, “O, I die, Horatio! The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit. The rest is silence.” Silence, indeed. The very silence that posesses most to seek out meaning in a meaningless world!

The reply to my post can not be argued and I have no intention to argue it. I choose not to mess with other people’s belief systems or engage in debate. #1 It isn’t important and #2 the person involved involved with belief systems and magical thinking, will always be right and justified in his or her own mind. It’s a no win situation with my opponent sinking comfortably into their own confirmation bias which has probably lead to their special brand of magical thinking in the first place.

I suppose the author of the reply may be proposing argumentum ad ignorantiam, (argument from ignorance), even though I did go on to say that rationalization of the situation still makes no sense because the “insight” from the dream is only deemed credulous because of the run-in with the snake. The laws of cause and effect? Did the dream cause our friend to run into the snake? Is the dream a supernatural prediction of the snake to come? What if he had the dream about the snake after seeing the snake? Then there would not have been much to write about. Perhaps he did subconsciously see a snake prior to dreaming about snakes…a tv commercial, a billboard ad, or even a rope or other inanimate object that looked like a snake. The image then lodged in his subconscious (for whatever reason) only to manifest in a dream which coincidentally occured prior to the actual encounter.

Let’s attempt to invoke the laws of causality:
Notice that he saw the snake AFTER he had the dream
Notice that he saw the snake AFTER he had the dream and never saw any snake prior to the dream
Notice that he never saw any snake, ever after having any other non-snake dreams or any other occurrences in his life

Now, if we can only repeat these circumstances several times, then we will know that the dream of the snake is the true cause of seeing the snake and that the laws of cause and effect are true. I tend to think that camping in general and knowing you are going to eventually be in a place that could possibly have snakes (ie. the woods) might be more of a cause of the dream. (Of course the dream would then cause the real snake to appear…right?)

So where is this assuming person’s parsimonious theory or explanation of the event? He seems self-righteous enough, prideful of his ignorance, yet still lacking in explanation. Suppose this person dreamed every night of killing his loved ones, graphically and violently. Would he chalk that up to some supernatural experience? Would he dismiss it at not explainable by science and thus “otherworldly”? Pehaps a god or devil was telling him he ought to do it? Would irrationality get the best of him? Would he consider doing it? Would he go to the priest for counsel or excercism? Perhaps he should seek out a “psychic”? Hmmmm, what would a rational person disturbed by such dreams do? See their doctor? See a psychologist? Seek therapy for the underlying psychological cause of such dreams? This is the problem with this pernicious line of thinking. If your head hurts and every scientific test known to man has been run on you with no evidence of disease or cause, must you rationally conclude that you are possesed by demons? This is what I refer to by “crossing over that abyss into a dark world of irrationality and unreasoning” and I sincerely beleive that no good can come of it. (Perhaps no bad can come of it either, but I prefer reality.)